Lawns and herbaria

As long as there is something to read and for now there is someone to write for, everything is generally normal

I myself fantasies about the genre of specialized literary magazines. At least one such is already. This is the quarterly magazine of the Aryon poetry, the existing third year, contrary to all that there is no more strength. "Arion" exists. He, referring to him in different ways, knows all those who, for one reason or another, have retained the habit of reading poems, not to mention those who have the habit of writing them. To the magazine, to its strategy, concept and structure, one can, of course, have a lot of all kinds of claims. I have them and I. The fact is that the basis of the magazine strategy is based on a low -productive, in my opinion, principle of text centrism. The context category is rammed as vain, although it is the context that is capable of actualizing the text and activating it, force it to “work”.

The fact that editors are trying not to manifest their own aesthetic addictions is good, because this allows you to include texts and manifestos of authors of various artistic orientations in the coffee space. But it is also bad, because it in a certain sense dilutes and desalcates this space itself. The amount of aesthetic representations, reduced to the limit to the extractive in essence of the formula “There are no“ shifts ”, but there are good and bad poems,” knocks out any arguments in the conversation from the hands, presenting the very possibility of conversation very problematic. And what is a literary publication, if not a conversation? Warehouse, or what? Museum? Or maybe a cemetery?

The publication claiming to become a lawn, where “a hundred flowers bloom”, but to ignore the role of a cultural context, inevitably prepared the fate of a herbarium at best, deprived of even scientific value, because grass and leaves were collected by a random principle “how we spent Sunday in the Autumn Forestry and what leaves we liked”. Which, by the way, is also not bad, but what makes sense to clearly realize.

However, all these passing considerations that would be dishonestly with them resolutely retreat before serious admiration for the disinterested and literally heroic enthusiasm of those who make a magazine in the conditions already mentioned at the beginning. No matter how grumble, but still, thank God, there is someone to read and there is where to publish. At least a third of each book of the magazine should be read, and this is a lot. Criticism is more appropriate when there is something to compare with. "Arion" is the only publication of this kind.

Recently, the magazine energetically recalled its existence by the award of its own literary awards in 1995. The award ceremony literally “to the music of Vivaldi” was held in the house-museum of Marina Tsvetaeva. Inna Lisnyanskaya was awarded the first award “For the poetry cycle“ Songs of the Yurodiva ”in“ Arion ”No. 4 and an outstanding contribution to modern Russian poetry.” In her short, very modest, worthy and touching performance, the poetess, in particular, admitted that this is the first prize in her life. God give her a lot of others.

The two second awards were divided by Yuri Ryashentsev for the “masterful combination of traditional and innovative in the modern poetic word” (such a wording, if possible, will leave it without comment) and the young poetess Olga Kuznetsova. The poetess, thanking her honor rendered to her, innocently reported that she received the prize for poems written in those days when she still wrote poetry, but actually she did not write them for a long time, mainly engaged in criticism. In connection with this curious circumstance, it would be appropriate to reformize the jury’s decision with “for the best poetic debut of the year” on “for an adequate attitude to the process of poetry and the husband, shown in the struggle for overcoming harmful habits”.

Night watch in Stockholm

It is not easy, as everyone knows, the fate of the artist. Namely, Onato moved me for a couple of days to the city of Stockholm, where I was awarded the invitation to participate in the international poetic festival. The festival was held at the former factory converted “under art”, on the outskirts of the city, at night and lasted five hours with two, however, breaks. "Who, I thought, will be caught on such a bulky event?" "Pot" as nice. The hall was full and throughout the entire time disciplinedly showed all the external signs of enthusiasm. “Here,” I thought, looking in the hall, “a genuine hero of the modern literary and artistic process,” recalling, by the way, how in the ninth grade they carefully explained to us that the main character of “War and Peace” was not some kind of Pierre Bezukhov, but, generally speaking, the people.

All this is wonderful, but it is impossible not to note that against the background of such sadomasochist events as a five -hour night reading of poetry in different languages ​​on the outskirts of the city, sorrowful complaints on a steady increase in the gap between poetry and society seem not entirely consistent. Or legalize and aggravate your own marginality with your own hands, or complain. Something one.

The next day, I was happy to talk with curious and pretty Swedish Slavists, simultaneously introducing the word “oven in their terminological asset” in their terminological asset. (“Is this, the stove?” Asked, looking into the dictionary, one of them. “And the stove too,” I said.) With that and left for his homeland.

"How it seems familiar"

Any public literary and artistic or even academic action can be quite adequately assessed from the point of view of what percentage of pretty people it can concentrate in one place. The atmosphere was amazing in this sense recently in the AD Marginem bookstore, where Vyacheslav Kuritsyn presented his weekly (Thursday) author’s heading in an “independent newspaper” with a simple name “people, years, life”. From the pleasure of listing the people who gathered there, I will refuse only in order not to slip into the genre of secular chronicle that is not genre for me.

The minimalist, in terms of plan and embodiment, was that the author handed out the assembled selection of photocopied newspaper texts and made a speech so short that most of it easily fits in a small quote: “Composing these works, I focused on very specific readers, namely, guests of this evening. It is always nice to know that this or that text has completely unfamiliar fans, but when writing you still have to think how it seems familiar ... Winter will begin soon, the snow will cover the houses and trees, the blizzards will be overtaken, the column will burst loudly on the thermometer. All the best to you. "

All the best and the author, actively, sequentially and, in my opinion, very successfully developing the genre of periodic elegant literature that is very successful today.

But not the whole holiday. The sad events of recent times I would attribute to the fact that a strip of art of the newspaper "Today" had fallen from our cultural everyday life. The role of newspaper criticism in the current cultural situation is so obvious that the disappearance of one of the very few newspaper departments of this kind, all the more that has been actively delighted for the past few years, annoyed, caused bewilderment, provoked polemic, and in any case read, realized as an unconditional loss. Regardless of whether it is a symptom of something-for example, outlined stabilization in society, or just like that, still a pity. However, the hope that the team will be discovered in some other place remains and will again fill the gaping niche.

And in order not to finish “for the repose” and with the aim of “allowing optimism”, let's not forget that until there is something to read and is for someone to write, everything is generally normal. This simple thought led us all away from despondency and in knowingly worst times.