The best lectures on Russian literature. Where to listen to lectures on literature

Literature can be interesting. Yes, yes, even the school curriculum! We chose online lectures and books that will help you fall in love with Tolstoy and Pushkin, teach you how to invent stories and write essays.

Lectures and online courses

A selection of video and audio materials that will help you love and understand school curriculum according to literature.

Lectures by Alexander Zholkovsky, which reveal the secrets of Pushkin, Pasternak, Mandelstam, Tolstoy, Chekhov - and artistic creativity in general.

Yuri Mikhailovich Lotman is a legend, whom everyone interested in Russian literature and culture should hear or read. Lectures can be found on bookshelves, but videos in which Lotman talks about the pre-revolutionary Russian world are much more impressive. Yes, they look a little “retro”, but the meaning is not lost from this.

Six Arzamas courses on the main Russian writers and poets of the 20th century, as well as materials on literature for every taste: anthologies, dictionaries, tutorials, tests and games.

A selection of lectures by Dmitry Bykov: speeches at the Moscow Institute of Open Education, open lessons, lecture hall “Direct Speech”, recordings of programs broadcast on “Echo of Moscow”. Lively and incredibly interesting stories about the works of Pasternak, Gorky, Mayakovsky, Akhmatova.

The Audeamus project was conceived as a platform distance learning, but now it works more like an archive of audio courses. Here you can find high-quality lectures on mysticism in Russian literature of the Silver Age, modern poetry, Russian folklore and the history of Russian journalism.

Interior with a reading woman. Painting by Karl Holsø. Denmark, before 1935

Doctor of Philological Sciences Sergei Zenkin explains the benefits of literature using the example of six concepts from the theory. An inspiring article that will make you want to pick up a book.

Instructions for writing Eugene Onegin, Dostoevsky's novels and Chekhov's stories, as well as lectures by Igor Pilshchikov on why we do not understand the classics.

Audio lectures about the life and death of the great Russian writer, as well as his funny expressions, wise thoughts, personal things and a test of literary flair.

If you are familiar with the words “iamb”, “trochee”, “syllabic-tonic” and “foot”, then open this lecture. The editor of Arzamas and a former poetry critic is trying to help schoolchildren determine the meter of a poem if it is assigned at home.

Audio lectures by Marietta Chudakova about “The Master and Margarita”, playing Bulgakov’s characters, as well as amazing statistics, recommendations of films and stories and other materials about the Russian classic.

Books

A selection of books that will help develop your style, writing skills and teach you how to express your thoughts. Books for any age.

642 ideas of what to write about

“Your cat dreams of world domination. She figured out how to switch bodies with you”... This book is a creative “simulator” for practicing writing skills. It will come in handy for anyone who wants to develop their imagination and learn to express their thoughts succinctly. On its pages there are 642 beginnings of stories - funny, funny, sad, fantastic and even a little strange... They need to be developed and turned into complete stories.

How to write cool texts

If your child wants to become a writer, journalist, poet, critic, blogger or screenwriter, and loves to invent and tell exciting stories, the book “How to Write Cool Texts” will help hone their talent and take the next step in their craft. The book will be useful to all children who want to better study the school subject “Russian language”.

A creative notebook that helps teenagers understand themselves, think about important things and write down interesting thoughts on paper. Your child will be able to make a wish list, learn about themselves through their handwriting, overcome fears and get to know themselves in the future. The book will inspire future writers, artists, collectors, inventors and researchers to discover and develop their talents.

Reader's diary

To teach a child to love books and look deep into each one, there is a magical tool - a reading diary. Not the kind they force you to teach at school. Another. " Reader's diary» Marta Reitses. In it you can write down your impressions and favorite quotes, draw your favorite characters, compile a dictionary of unknown words, come up with a crossword puzzle or a mind map... The diary will help develop writing skills, broaden your horizons, and instill a love of literature and reading.

Write your own adventure book

This book will teach your child how to turn fictional stories into exciting stories and make him feel like a real writer! The most interesting thing is that in the album you can immediately practice and record your stories. There are the makings for a haunted horror film, a thriller involving a shark, a spy detective story, a chilling story about an abandoned cabin in the woods...

Book of my poems

To become a poet, you need not only talent and a special, poetic view of the world. Any poet must know the rules of versification and be able to use literary techniques. This tutorial contains entertaining poetry lessons that will explain to your child what rhyme and meter, line and stanza are, how lines are assembled into poems and how to help them sound beautiful. By completing simple, interesting tasks, the child will learn to feel the rhythm and hear the music of the poem. And this will help him become a real poet!

Book of my stories

Children love to make up different stories. But to become a real writer, it’s not enough to come up with an interesting plot - you need to be able to write it down. In this book, Louis Stowell shares the secrets of writing with aspiring authors and explains how to create compelling stories! Little writers will try their hand at different genres - diary notes from a schoolchild, a detective story about a mysterious murder, a comic book about pirates, a fantasy story about an alien, and even a script for a film.

Series "Cherry's Diaries"

An unusual graphic novel about a girl Cherry who wants to become a writer. . On the advice of the writer Madame Desjardins, she begins to keep a diary, because a writer must be able to build a story, collect facts, interview, and most importantly, observe. In addition to stunning watercolor frames, the comic contains diary entries from Cherry herself, her drawings and photographs. All this creates a unique personal story and provides an opportunity to look at the world through the eyes of a 10-year-old aspiring writer.

In the age of the Internet, knowledge is available to anyone - you just need to know where to find it. The editors of the Subculture Portal have selected ten lecturers who can talk about literature in an engaging and informative way.

Yuri Mikhailovich Lotman is a classic that anyone interested in Russian literature and culture in general should read. Lectures can be found on bookshelves, but videos in which Lotman talks about the pre-revolutionary Russian world are much more impressive. We recommend watching the entire series.

Where to find: youtube

Many people are familiar with Dmitry Bykov - he is a very media person, loves to talk about literature and does it in a very interesting way: he shares not so much facts as interpretations, refers to numerous sources and often expresses very original opinions.

3. Lectures by Andrei Astvatsaturov on Anglo-American literature of the 20th century

Astvatsaturov - King of St. Petersburg American literature XX century He teaches at the philology department of St. Petersburg State University and writes novels in his free time. We especially recommend it to lovers of Joyce, Salinger, Vonnegut and Proust - Astvatsaturov is really well versed in the subject. - We especially recommend his lectures to lovers of Joyce, Salinger, Vonnegut and Proust, whose works Astvatsaturov understands really well. It will also be interesting for those who are concerned about the questions posed by modernists and the history of the 20th century in general.

Where to find: VKontakte , youtube , the writer's own website

4. Lectures by Olga Panova on foreign literature of the 20th century.

If the previous two points will be of interest to a trained listener, then these lectures talk about literature “from scratch”, for beginners. Olga Panova organizes the material in a very structured manner and explains ideas and facts in sufficient detail. This does not deprive the lecture of its excitement: Panova’s rich erudition will allow even trained listeners to learn a lot of new things.

He teaches at the philological department of St. Petersburg State University. Another lecturer who can be recommended to those who are just starting to study literature as a science. Kaminskaya pays great attention to the historical context in which the writer worked. We especially recommend lectures on Hermann Hesse and The Glass Bead Game.

6. Lectures by Boris Averin on Russian literature

A charismatic and highly educated lecturer, a true scientist, author of more than a hundred scientific works. Boris Averin is not only an expert on Nabokov, but also a specialist in sociology and the problem of memory. Through the prism of literature, he analyzes important problems of society and man's relationship with himself. Particularly interesting are the cycles of his lectures “Memory as the collection of personality”, “Literature as self-knowledge”, “Rational and irrational in literature and life”.

7. Lectures by Konstantin Milchin on modern Russian literature

Konstantin Milchin is worth listening to simply because he is perhaps the only lecturer who talks about the literature of modern Russia and whose lectures can be found in the public domain. And since learning about modernity is, as a rule, much more interesting than learning about “the legends of deep antiquity,” it’s definitely worth listening. In addition, Milchin is a writer himself, so he speaks about techniques and techniques with great knowledge of the matter.

After getting acquainted with modern Russian literature, it's time to find out what's happening in the West. Alexandrov’s course of lectures “Ecology of Literature” on the Culture TV channel is conveniently divided by country: French, English, Scandinavian writers. But we still recommend listening to it in its entirety.

9. Lectures by Peter Ryabov on the philosophy of anarchism and existentialism

Ryabov's lectures are distinguished by his great passion for the subject: he talks about Sartre and Camus as if he knew them personally. In addition, his lectures are very relevant and suitable for those who like to tie abstract matters to today's agenda. Lectures on the philosophy of anarchism are invaluable if you want to get acquainted with this movement without reading two kilos of books. And although anarchism is a personal philosophy, Ryabov knows how to maintain objectivity.

The play “At the Bottom” ends very effectively. The night shelters - among them there is no longer Luke, there is no Ash, Anna has died, Kostylev has been killed - they sing a song. This song is heard throughout the play:

The sun rises and sets
And it’s dark in my prison.
Hourly days and nights
They're guarding my window.

Guard as you wish,
I won't run away anyway.
I want to be free -
I can't break the chain.

This time they don't have time to finish the song until the end of the second verse. The door opens, and in the doorway is the Baron, who shouts: “Come here!” In a vacant lot... there... An actor... hanged himself! And then Satin says the last line of the play: “Eh... ruined the song... fool.”

Who ruined the song? At first glance, everything is obvious: the Baron ruined the song. But it often happens that the first meaning leads to the second, and the second turns out to be deeper, more important and more reliable than the first.

What does “I can or cannot break the chain” mean? I may or may not start life over again, get out of this basement, from this shelter. Let us remember that throughout the fourth act the Actor - and not only the Actor, but also Nastya - say: “I will leave” (“He will leave,” says the Actor).

And next to the song, as another ideological pole of the play, a poem sounds. This poem by Beranger “Mad Men” is recalled by the Actor when he manages to abstain and not drink. He says with surprise: “Here they are, two five-altyn coins. I chalk the street, but I don’t drink.”

Gentlemen! If the truth is holy
The world doesn't know how to find a road -
Honor the madman who inspires
A golden dream for humanity!

If tomorrow our land were the way
Our sun forgot to shine -
Tomorrow I would illuminate the whole world
The thought of some madman!

It is in these contrasts—light and darkness, prison and freedom—that the play “At the Bottom” exists.

One can find controversy about whether Luke is lying when he tells the Actor about a city where there is a hospital where drunkards are treated. The actor is filled with hope that he can recover and return to the stage, and Luka tells him: “I’ll tell you the city, but for now you abstain, don’t drink.” For some time, the Actor actually manages not to drink. Why doesn’t Luke name the cities? You can find, especially in popular textbooks, the following saying: “Luka is lying to the Actor, and there were no hospitals.” In fact, there were hospitals, and there was even a special magazine published by the Temperance Society - there was a very broad campaign to combat alcoholism. I think Luke does not name cities and hospitals not because they do not exist, but because a person must free himself.

In the fourth act there is a very important moment when the Tatar is praying, the Actor gets off his bunk and says: “Prince, pray for me.” To which the Tatar replies: “Pray yourself...” What does this mean? Rudeness, inhumanity, selfishness, insensitivity of the night shelters? No. A person just has to believe for himself.

As Satin, who has already been fermented by Luke’s ideas, will say, a person pays for everything himself - for faith, for disbelief. A person must free himself - he does not need a guide. And then the Actor remembers this poem by Beranger. And here these two truths collide, which Gorky always collided with. The first is the truth of a real fact, the obvious truth:

“What kind of truth do you need, Vaska? - Bubnov asks Vaska Pepel. “You know the truth about yourself, and everyone knows it about you.”

What does it mean? This means that Vaska is a thief, Nastya is a prostitute, Baron is a pimp, Satin is a card sharper. Here it is, the truth of this inhuman, undoubtedly real, but clearly not the only world.

Gorky says that there is another truth. There is the truth of human aspiration, the truth of the human ideal. And she is stronger, she is more important. In the fourth act, the Actor constantly feels that he needs to break the chain, he needs to leave. Another thing is that he can only leave the way he left, only by committing suicide.

There is an interesting intersection between the plot of the fourth act of “At the Bottom” and the parable of the righteous land that Luke tells earlier: how one man asked an exiled engineer to show on a map where the righteous land was located. And he laid out his cards and said: “There is no righteous land anywhere.” “Why not?” And man lived and held on only because he believed in this righteous land, hoped for it. “You’re a bastard, not a scientist!” - and punch him in the mouth. And then he went and hanged himself.

What is the truth? The fact that this righteous land does not exist? Yes, it's not on the map. But does this mean that it does not exist at all? This is very important.

This play, which was staged in December 1902 at the Art Theater, sounded like revolutionary. Because the meaning was this: while a person lives in a basement, he will not be able to free himself, he will not be able to be a person. This basement needs to be destroyed. But until the last performances (and the play is still being staged) it cannot be reduced to one idea, to one thought; it cannot be unambiguously interpreted once and for all.

Gorky was puzzled by the way Ivan Moskvin played Luka. But Moskvin did not play a swindler. Here we are faced with a situation very characteristic of Gorky. Gorky did not really like his plays; he did not consider himself a significant playwright, but he tried to comment on and interpret his plays. In particular, after returning to the USSR, he interpreted the play “At the Lower Depths” as a play directed against comforting lies. But everything that Gorky wanted to say, he said in the play itself. Its interpretation is only one of the possible ones. How convincing it is is determined each time by the theatre, the reader, the actors and the literary historian. 

Decoding

In 1904, Innokenty Fedorovich Annensky wrote a programmatic article called “Balmont the Lyricist.” It was dedicated to the work of Konstantin Balmont, but there Annensky, as often happens with poets, also determined the main theme of his own work. " I among nature, mystically close to him, and someone painfully and aimlessly linked to his existence.” I want to draw attention to the word “linked”, because this theme – the meaningless, aimless, linked existence of man and nature by someone (either God, or not God, it’s unclear who) – indeed appears and develops in many of Annensky’s poems and they solve it differently. And the poem “Black Spring” was written precisely on this topic. It describes a person's funeral. Moreover, they are described with such a Gogol-like illumination.

Under the rumble of copper - sepulchral
The transfer was taking place
And, terribly torn up, waxy
The nose looked out from the coffin.

Here it is, Gogol’s illumination, a nose that looks like a person. And here some of the readers may recall the legend (and for Annensky, of course, this was important) that Gogol was buried alive. And then this theme of a living nose, a revived nose on a dead body, continues.

Breathing, or something, he wanted
There, into an empty chest?..
The last snow was dark white,
And the loose path is hard...

A nose that wants to breathe. The nose that is personified becomes a living existence. “The last snow was dark white, and the loose path was heavy” - this is, apparently, the last path to the cemetery, the coffin that is being taken there.

And then this image: “the last snow was dark white” - Annensky begins to play out the theme of not only the death of a person, but also the dying winter. Each of us remembers when the snow turns black, becomes loose, spongy. Annensky has a remarkable ability to work with realities, to work with objects. Snow that becomes mournful. And then the stanza, which is already connected with the death of winter and with the death of man.

...And only frost, cloudy,
It poured on the smoldering
Yes stupidly black spring
I looked into the cold eyes...

This stanza is very expressive and wonderful. When it is said about “the frost that pours on corruption,” the reader asks the question “Whose corruption?” In fact, it is clear that smoldering and human body(the coffin is apparently open, and frost is dripping onto it), and nature, which is also covered with this disgusting frost. And so way dead man and dying winter seem to be combined into one very gloomy picture, as is often the case with Annensky.

I want to draw attention to one of the most terrible, in my opinion, images in Russian poetry - jelly eyes. Here, on the one hand, the open eyes of a dead man are described. The eyes are relaxed, relaxed, sluggish, meaninglessly looking at the death of nature. On the other hand, nature responds to this look, black spring responds. It is mournful: it is black branches and black snow. And she (also scary and very expressive word) stupid looks into this jelly eye. Two stupid, meaningless views of nature and man appear at each other. And then this topic continues.

...From shabby roofs, from brown holes,
From green faces.
And there, across the dead fields,
From the swollen wings of birds...

“The roofs are peeling.” This is also very exact image. The snow wore away and removed the paint from them. “...From the brown pits” - these spring pits were exposed, and immediately the theme of the grave arises here: graves that are scattered in nature. And then a wonderful image of “green faces...”. The poem is called “Black Spring”, and we are waiting for the word “green”, because spring is when everything turns green. It’s not the linden trees that turn green here—“from the green linden trees,” one could say, for example—it’s the faces that turn green here, the haggard, tired faces of the people who take part in this funeral. And then it’s direct: “And there, through the dead fields.” We are used to it: spring is, on the contrary, life is being born. Annensky emphasizes something else - dead fields.

“From the swollen wings of birds...” Also a very scary epithet swollen, because the body of a dead person is swollen. We are used to it: in poetry, birds symbolize the beginning: rooks, starlings, arriving birds. Here these birds clearly do not fly - they sit on these dead fields, not being able to take off, because they are swollen from the death of winter, from the moisture that overflows them. And the poem ends not with a metaphor, not with a symbol, as we have the right, it would seem, to expect from Annensky, it ends with a very direct allegory, a direct appeal.

O people! The trail of life is hard
Along the rutted paths,
But there is nothing sadder
Like the meeting of two deaths.

This is a meeting between the death of man and the death of winter. Here I would like to draw attention to two more things. First: Annensky very skillfully works with the traditional, centuries-old cultural image of the end of winter and the awakening of spring. This is sometimes called the word "topos". How is it built? Winter is an old woman, winter is leaving, and everyone rejoices that a young spring is coming. I will remind you of two texts - one poetic, one picturesque. Poetic is the text that everyone probably learned at school, Fyodor Tyutchev:

No wonder winter is angry,
Its time has passed -
Spring is knocking on the window
And he drives him out of the yard.

Spring and grief are not enough:
Washed in the snow
And only became blusher
Against the enemy.

And the second is Sandro Botticelli’s painting “Spring”. Not one of the images on it embodies spring individually, but all of them together are young, blooming, beautiful girls in transparent clothes, their fresh bodies shine through the clothes: everything wakes up, everything comes to life. Annensky works very expressively, but with him everything is exactly the opposite. He emphasizes not so much the birth of spring as the death of winter, because it is important for him to show this meaningless, aimlessly cobbled together life of man and nature.

And the second thing I want to draw your attention to is the signature: “March 29, 1906, Totma.” Totma is a place not far from Vologda, in the very north, where spring really comes very slowly, sadly, and not joyfully. This is not an Italian, not a southern, not a Kiev spring. But the date March 29, 1906 seems even more interesting to me, because the Jewish Passover fell on March 29 in 1906. And this colors the whole point. Easter in the Russian consciousness is a Christian Easter, its meaning is dying for the sake of resurrection. For Annensky, everything is exactly the opposite: for him, dying does not end with resurrection. A person dies, spring dies, but there is no divine intervention.

To demonstrate that this association is not accidental, I want to read a poem by Annensky called “Palm Week” (that is, one of the weeks of Lent before Easter), in which the same theme and similar images arise.

In the yellow twilight of dead April,
Saying goodbye to the starry desert,
Palm Week has floated away
On the last one, on a dead snow floe;

Floated away in fragrant smoke,
In the fading death bells,
From icons with deep eyes
And from the Lazarus, forgotten in the black pit.

“In the yellow twilight of dead April,” “on the last, on a dead snow floe.” Here it is - dying winter. “...From the Lazarus, forgotten in the black pit” - here it is, the key image. If in the Gospel, as we remember, one of the main events, one of the main miracles of Christ is the resurrection of the dead, already beginning to decompose, swollen, if you like, Lazarus, then in Annensky Lazarus dies forever. He does not resurrect, and he is forgotten in the black pit. 

Decoding

We will talk about one of the most famous poems by Sergei Yesenin, “Letter to Mother,” written in 1924. At first glance, this poem leaves a feeling of something absolutely solid, monolithic. And it always produced an absolutely complete impression, ever since Yesenin began reading it in different living rooms and in different editions: pity, sympathy, tears. Let’s read the memoirs of publishing worker Ivan Evdokimov:

“I remember how a small cold shock went down my back when I heard: “They write to me that you, harboring anxiety, / Are very sad about me.” / That you often go on the road / In an old-fashioned, shabby shushun.”
I glanced sideways at him. The extremely sad and mournful figure of the poet was dark at the window. Yesenin shook his head pitifully: “...It’s as if someone in a tavern fight / put a Finnish knife under my heart,” - here Yesenin’s voice stopped. It was obvious that he moved on with difficulty, wheezed, and once again stumbled on the lines “/ Our white garden in spring.”
Then my impressions disappear, because my throat was clamped tightly and cruelly. Hiding and hiding, I cried in the depths of the huge ridiculous chair on which I sat in the darkened space between the windows.”

This is how they reacted to Yesenin’s poem more than once. This is how they react to this day. Meanwhile, this poem is by no means complete. It consists of scraps, quotations taken from completely different and incompatible traditions.

Let's read this poem and see what traditions Yesenin takes, what he touches on, what he uses.

Are you still alive, my old lady?
I'm alive too. Hello, hello!
Let it flow over your hut
That evening unspeakable light.

“Unspeakable light” is a quote from Blok. Moreover, the mystical Blok:

And full of treasured trembling
Long awaited years
We'll rush off-road
Into the unspeakable light.

Alexander Blok.“We live in an old cell...”

This quote is completely inappropriate in Yesenin’s poem. In Blok this phrase does not mean at all what it should mean in Yesenin. Further:

They write to me that you, harboring anxiety,
She was very sad about me,
That you often go on the road
In an old-fashioned, shabby shushun.

This is Nekrasov with his characteristic iconic rhyme “alarm” - “road”:

Why are you looking greedily at the road?
Away from your cheerful friends?
You know, my heart sounded alarmed -
Your whole face suddenly flushed.

Nikolay Nekrasov."Troika"

And to you in the evening blue darkness
We often see the same thing:
It's like someone is in a tavern fight with me
I stabbed a Finnish knife under my heart.

The Finnish Knife is a cruel urban romance, from a completely different opera.

Nothing, dear! Calm down.
This is just a painful nonsense.
I'm not such a bitter drunkard,
So that I can die without seeing you.

The situation of cruel romance is getting worse, associations with romance are becoming stronger. But a sharp breakdown:

I'm still as gentle
And I only dream about
So that rather from rebellious melancholy
Return to our low house.

Gentle-rebellious. Lermontov, classical romance, Pleshcheev  Alexey Pleshcheev(1825-1893) - writer, poet and author of romances, translator, critic., novel-ti-che-skaya tradition. Completely different associations. And they intensify in the next stanza.

I'll be back when the branches spread out
Our white garden looks like spring.

The typical romantic romance formula is “don’t wake me up.” Then “don’t worry” is another romance quotation formula. Then “early in the morning” are romantic associations. Now a cruel romance, now a salon romance and a romantic tradition, now a bitter Nekrasov, now a Blok quote. And all this is under the sign of Pushkin. Dovlatov writes well about how Pushkin emerges in this poem, recalling in “Reserve” his work as an ex-course guide in the Pushkin Mountains:

“I’m moving into Arina Rodionovna’s room... “The only truly close person was the serf nanny...” Everything is as it should be... “...She was at the same time condescending and grumpy, simple-mindedly religious and extremely businesslike...” Bas-relief by Seryakov... “Offered freestyle - refused...”
And finally:
“The poet kept turning to the nanny in poetry. Everyone knows such, for example, sincere lines...
Here I forgot for a second and shuddered when I heard my own voice:
“Are you still alive, my old lady?” / I’m alive too. Hello, hello! / Let it flow over your bush...”
I froze. Now someone will shout; “Madman and ignoramus!” This is Yesenin, “Letter to Mother!”
I continued to recite, feverishly thinking: “Yes, comrades, you are absolutely right.” Of course this is Yesenin. And indeed - “Letter to Mother.” But how close, mind you, is Pushkin’s intonation to Sergei Yesenin’s lyrics! How organically realized in Yesenin’s poetics...” And so on.
I continued to recite. Somewhere at the end, a Finnish knife was shining menacingly... “Tra-ta-tita-there in a tavern fight, tra-ta-tita-there, under the heart, a Finnish knife...” A centimeter from this menacingly glittering blade, I managed to slow down . In the ensuing silence, I waited for the storm. Everyone was silent. The faces were worried and stern. Only one elderly tourist said meaningfully:
“Yes, there were people...”

This Pushkin atmosphere, Pushkin’s general big association. This is another additional piece taken by Yesenin for the emotional structure of this poem.

So, flaps, different traditions. I jerked it everywhere. And yet... What unites the two quotes that I cited, Evdokimov and Dovlatov? The audience listens to all this with bated breath. The emotions in response are absolutely true. This poem really has an impact. Due to what? What's the secret? I think there are three secrets.

Firstly, the fact is that Yesenin is perhaps the first poet who so closely united his personal experience and poetry. What was a scandalous incident yesterday became the subject of a poem today. Yesenin did not hide the depths of his life. She was known to everyone and was known not so much through rumors as through lines. Yesenin shared with the public what was happening to him - of course, mythologizing, embellishing, putting light and shadows as he needed. But he shared. He hid almost nothing. And at the same time, he addressed listeners and readers, each as the only trusted friend who would understand: “You will understand me, but others will not. I'll tell you this pain. And others - let them be.” This is the intonation - it could not help but influence the audience and still has an effect.

And everyone, including Evdokimov in those memories, everyone feels that tomorrow something could happen to Yesenin. That this Finnish knife will be real in life tomorrow. That they will hurt him or something irreparable will happen. And now we know that this irreparable thing happened. From this incredible, never-before-seen connection personal experience and verse and in many ways our response occurs. It's almost inevitable. This is the first.

The second is, of course, Yesenin’s poetics, which seems eclectic to the researcher, but even for him it still turns out to be unified and integral. Due to what? Through keywords. My version is that such keywords are “shushun” and “very good.” This incomprehensible dialect shushun (rarely anyone can imagine what it is - and there’s no need) - it somehow organizes everything, connects everything. And, connecting with the word “very good”, also colloquial and somehow awkward, but at the same time sincere, he gives this amazing alliteration to “w” and “zh”.

Let's read and listen: “Are you still alive, my old lady? / I’m alive too. Hello, hello! / Let that evening unspeakable light flow over your hut. / They write to me that you, full of anxiety, / Are very sad about me, / That you often go on the road / In an old-fashioned, shabby shushun.” Here it is, this smoothness, this songfulness that Yesenin always had, and this “sh” that spreads out in waves throughout the poem. These awkward and strange words that make everything seem real.

And third. Maybe the most important thing. There is a real, sincere note to this poem. A real big theme, the theme of the last elusive hope. The last chance, the last meaning that you can cling to. The point is that everything later creativity Yesenin is characterized by the slippage of meaning. He had nothing to live for, nothing to write about. Only about myself and eternal self-pity. It’s a good, big Russian theme, but it’s not enough for poetry—that wasn’t enough for him either. And every time he seems to be looking for support, looking for something to cling to. And here is the old theme of mother.

Whether he loved his mother or not, this can never be understood. He tried to love, but rather hated, judging by the statements of memoirists and even his own poems sometimes: “And his mother is like a witch from the Kyiv mountain.” But here is an attempt to catch on to another meaning through the mother’s connection with the homeland. But here is the last, decisive meaning, which is slipping away before our eyes.

I'll be back when the branches spread out
Our white garden looks like spring.
Only you have me already at dawn
Don't be like eight years ago.

Don't wake up what was dreamed of
Don't worry about what didn't come true -
Too early loss and fatigue
I have had the opportunity to experience this in my life.

Hope comes and goes. Meaning comes and goes. Either he believes in his tenderness for his mother, returning to the low house, or not. It is on these fluctuations of meaning, on this last hope, that our perception of poems rests. And our sympathy for this poem, this poet, who can no longer be canceled. 

Decoding

In the essay “Kyiv-Gorod” of 1923, Bulgakov wrote:

“When heavenly thunder (after all, there is a limit to heavenly patience) kills every single one modern writers and in 50 years a new real Leo Tolstoy will appear, an amazing book will be created about the great battles in Kyiv.”

Actually, Bulgakov wrote a great book about the battles in Kyiv - this book is called “ White Guard" And among those writers from whom he counts his tradition and whom he sees as his predecessors, Leo Tolstoy is first of all noticeable.

The works preceding The White Guard can be called War and Peace, as well as The Captain's Daughter. All three of these works are usually called historical novels. But it's not easy, and maybe not at all historical novels, these are family chronicles. At the center of each of them is family. It is the house and family that Pugachev destroys in “The Captain’s Daughter”, where quite recently Grinev dines with Ivan Ignatievich, at the Mironovs he meets with Pugachev. It is Napoleon who destroys the house and family, and the French rule in Moscow, and Prince Andrei will say to Pierre: “The French ruined my house, killed my father, and are coming to ruin Moscow.” The same thing happens in the White Guard. Where the Turbins' friends gather at home, everything will be destroyed. As will be said at the beginning of the novel, they, the young Turbins, will have to suffer and suffer after the death of their mother.

And, of course, it is no coincidence that the sign of this collapsing life is cabinets with books, where the presence of Natasha Rostova and captain's daughter. And the way Petliura is presented in The White Guard is very reminiscent of Napoleon in War and Peace. The number 666 is the number of the cell in which Petlyura was sitting, this is the number of the beast, and Pierre Bezukhov, in his calculations (not very accurate, by the way), adjusts the digital meanings of the letters of the words “Emperor Napoleon” and “Russian Bezukhov” to the number 666. Hence the theme of the beast of the apocalypse.

There are many small overlaps between Tolstoy’s book and Bulgakov’s novel. Nai-Tours in “The White Guard” burrs like Denisov in “War and Peace.” But this is not enough. Like Denisov, he violates the regulations in order to obtain supplies for his soldiers. Denisov repels a convoy with provisions intended for another Russian detachment - he becomes a criminal and receives punishment. Nai-Tours violates the regulations in order to get felt boots for his soldiers: he takes out a pistol and forces the quartermaster general to hand over the felt boots. Portrait of Captain Tushin from War and Peace: “ little man, with weak, awkward movements." Malyshev from the “White Guard”: “The captain was small, with a long sharp nose, wearing an overcoat with a large collar.” Both of them cannot tear themselves away from the pipe, which they continuously smoke. Both end up alone on the battery - they are forgotten.

Here is Prince Andrey in War and Peace:

“The very thought that he was afraid lifted him up: “I can’t be afraid,” he thought.<…>“This is it,” thought Prince Andrei, grabbing the flagpole.”

And here is Nikolka, the youngest of the Turbins:

“Nikolka was completely stupefied, but at that very second he controlled himself and, thinking with lightning speed: “This is the moment when you can be a hero,” he shouted in his piercing voice: “Don’t you dare get up!” Listen to the command!’”

But Nikolka, of course, has more in common with Nikolai Rostov than with Prince Andrei. Rostov, hearing Natasha’s singing, thinks: “All this, and misfortune, and money, and Dolokhov, and anger, and honor - all this is nonsense... but here it is - real.” And here are Nikolka Turbin’s thoughts: “Yes, perhaps everything in the world is nonsense, except for a voice like Shervinsky,” - this is Nikolka listening to Shervinsky, the Turbins’ guest, sing. I'm not even talking about such a passing, but also interesting detail, like the fact that both of them proclaim a toast to the health of the emperor (Nikolka Turbin clearly does this belatedly).

The similarities between Nikolka and Petya Rostov are obvious: both are younger brothers; naturalness, ardor, unreasonable courage, which destroys Petya Rostov; a crush in which both are involved.

The image of the younger Turbin has features of quite a few characters from War and Peace. But something else is much more important. Bulgakov, following Tolstoy, does not attach importance to the role historical figure. First, Tolstoy's phrase:

"IN historical events so-called great people are labels that give a name to an event, which, like labels, have the least connection with the event itself.”

And now Bulgakov. Not to mention the insignificant Hetman Skoropadsky, here is what is said about Petlyura:

“Yes, he was not there. There wasn't. So, nonsense, legend, mirage.<…>All this is nonsense. Not him - someone else. Not another, but a third.”

Or this, for example, is also an eloquent roll call. In War and Peace, at least three characters - Napoleon, Prince Andrew and Pierre - compare battle to a game of chess. And in “The White Guard” Bulgakov will talk about the Bolsheviks as the third force that appeared on the chessboard.

Let us remember the scene in the Alexander Gymnasium: Alexey Turbin mentally turns to Alexander I, depicted in the picture hanging in the gymnasium, for help. And Myshlaevsky proposes to burn the gymnasium, just as Moscow was burned in the time of Alexander, so that no one would get it. But the difference is that Tolstoy’s burned Moscow is a prologue to victory. And the Turbines are doomed to defeat - they will suffer and die.

Another quote, and a completely frank one. I think Bulgakov had a lot of fun when he wrote this. Actually, the war in Ukraine is preceded by “a certain clumsy peasant anger”:

“[Anger] ran through the snowstorm and cold in holey bast shoes, with hay in his bare, matted head and howled. In his hands he carried a great club, without which no undertaking in Rus' is complete.”

It is clear that this is a “club” people's war”, which Tolstoy sang in “War and Peace” and which Bulgakov is not inclined to glorify. But Bulgakov writes about this not with disgust, but as an inevitability: this peasant anger could not help but exist. Although Bulgakov does not have any idealization of the peasants, it is no coincidence that Myshlaevsky in the novel sarcastically speaks about the local “God-bearing peasants of Dostoevsky.” There is and cannot be any admiration for the people's truth, no Tolstoy's Karataev in The White Guard.

Even more interesting are artistic overlaps, when the key compositional moments of two books are connected with the common vision of the writers’ world. The episode from War and Peace is Pierre's dream. Pierre is in captivity, and he dreams of an old man, a geography teacher. He shows him a ball, similar to a globe, but consisting of drops. Some drops spill and capture others, then they themselves break and spill. The old teacher says: “This is life.” Then Pierre, reflecting on Karataev’s death, says: “Look, Karataev spilled over and disappeared.” Petya Rostov had a second dream that same night, a musical dream. Petya is sleeping in a partisan detachment, a Cossack is sharpening his saber, and all the sounds - the sound of a saber being sharpened, the neighing of horses - are mixed, and Petya thinks he hears a fugue. He hears the harmonious agreement of voices, and it seems to him that he can control. This is an image of harmony, just like the sphere that Pierre sees.

And at the end of the novel “The White Guard” another Petya, Petka Shcheglov, sees in a dream a ball splashing spray. And this is also the hope that history does not end with blood and death, does not end with the triumph of the star Mars. And the last lines of “The White Guard” are about the fact that we do not look at the sky and do not see the stars. Why don't we detach ourselves from our earthly affairs and look at the stars? Maybe then the meaning of what is happening in the world will be revealed to us.

So, how important is the Tolstoyan tradition for Bulgakov? In a letter to the government, which he sent at the end of March 1930, Bulgakov wrote that in “The White Guard” he strove to portray an intellectual-noble family, abandoned by the will of fate in the years Civil War to the White Guard camp, in the traditions of War and Peace. Such an image is quite natural for a writer who is closely connected with the intelligentsia. For Bulgakov, Tolstoy was an indisputable writer all his life, absolutely authoritative, following whom Bulgakov considered the greatest honor and dignity. 

Decoding

The stories “Help” and “My First Fee”, the plot and a significant part of the text of which are similar, were written between 1922 and 1928, rejected by the Soviet press in 1933 and published in the 60s (“Help” in 1966 in the USSR, and “My first fee” - in 1963 abroad and in 1967 in the USSR). True, in a sense, “Spravka” was published during the author’s lifetime - in the USSR, but also, as it were, abroad - in the journal International Literature, a showcase of Soviet supposedly free literature in the West (in English “A Reply to an Inquiry”) .

Babel was not yet a repressed author  In 1939, Babel was arrested on charges of “anti-Soviet conspiratorial terrorist activities” and espionage, and in 1940 he was shot., so one of the questions is: what is forbidden in this story? And the second question is, which of the two options - “Certificate” or “My first fee” - is final?

I'll start with the second question. It has not yet been clearly resolved by science; the author’s will is unknown. Is it possible to consider Babel’s willingness to publish this story in 1937 as the author’s will - albeit on foreign language, but during his lifetime it was the “Help” version that was published. And my answer is, of course, the final option is “Help”. It’s half as long, without repetitions about “my sister is a bitch, my sister is a badass”  “She stretched out her bare hands and opened the window sashes. Cooling stones whistled in the street. The smell of water and dust walked along the pavement... Vera’s head shook.
- So - damn... Our sister is a bitch...
I looked down.
- Your sister is a bitch...
Vera turned to me. The shirt lay in a crooked piece on her body.”
Isaac Babel. "My first fee", blurring the final narrative effect. In "First Fee" this happens several times, and in "Help" it happens once at the end  “She pushed the money away.
“Do you want to spit, little sister?”
Isaac Babel. "Reference". And without the whole opening voyeuristic bit about sex behind the wall, which the narrator is jealous of. This piece also appears in another story, “Dante Street,” published in 1934. So it would just be a repeat. Babel loved brevity, a point delivered at the right time, as he famously formulated in the story “Guy de Maupassant.”

So, “Help”. The title is emphatically anti-literary and depressingly business-like. Babel said that the story should be as accurate as a military report or a bank check. The story is stylized as a response - either written or oral, but clearly fictitious - given by the author to some literary authority or readership, to comrades. This is the answer to the question of how the narrator became a writer.

The reason, he says, was love. From the very first lines we are struck by numerous paradoxes. Love, but to whom? To the middle-aged and ugly prosti-tutka, who looks like the image of the Virgin Mary on the bow of a fishing boat. A woman who is not at all romantic, extremely businesslike and successful in this, and also of a very family nature. Thus, an entire Russian tradition is immediately involved and provocatively undermined, and European literature, what can be called the “topos of prostitution.” Here you can find Gogol’s Nevsky Prospekt, Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground, and What to Do? Chernyshevsky, and “Resurrection” by Tolstoy, and “The Seizure” by Chekhov, and many other texts of Russian classics. This arch-plot is that an educated young hero encounters a prostitute and dreams of saving her, helping her buy herself out of a brothel. He is ready to marry her, give her an honest occupation, education, his name. He sees her not as a prostitute, but as a sister, sometimes a sister in Christ, Mary Magdalene.

The conflict is resolved in different ways, but within a certain unified framework. Gogolevsky Piskarev is rejected by a prostitute who does not want to change his lifestyle, and dies from drugs. The young doctor Kirsanov from the novel “What is to be done?” convinces Nastya to quit her profession, helps financially, treats her, weans her from wine (a characteristic moment) and only then begins to live with her as a mistress. But then she dies, giving way to the main character of the novel, Vera Pavlovna. Dostoevsky's hero poses as a hero a la Kirsanov, but in reality he only humiliates the prostitute Lisa, taking out his grievances on her. She eventually leaves him, turning out to be the type of strong Russian woman. Rejects money - Russian prostitutes do not take money.

Babel's Vera does not need any salvation. She doesn’t particularly need another client, a 20-year-old narrator, whom she drags around the city with her, doing various things, and then leaves him alone in the room, packing for the road and seeing off an old friend who is going to see her son in Armavir. Everything is very family-like. The hero is waiting for her in the room - everything there is extremely miserable and anti-romantic. Vera finally comes and prepares for sex, like a doctor for an operation. He says, yawning, the prosaic “Now we’ll do it.” Questions young hero about his life - whereas usually they ask a prostitute, wondering how she came to live like this.

The hero is clearly depressed by this and, as the reader guesses, does not feel at all in shape for the expected sexual initiation (“My first fee”, “My first goose” - Babel willingly takes on such initiation themes and gives such “first” titles). Answering Vera’s questions, the hero begins to compose a story about his life as a boy prostitute for men, “a boy among the Armenians,” flavoring it with details from the books he read: “Church warden - this was stolen from some writer, an invention of a lazy heart.” . And on the go, he presses on the effects if it seems to him that the listener is losing interest in the story. He himself, together with Vera (the name, of course, is not accidental), begins to believe in his invention, which he admits to the reader: “Self-pity tore my heart.”

He completely conquers Vera with his writing, she firmly believes in the truth of his story, recognizes him as her sister (remember the clichéd “sister in Christ”), with whom in the end she does not want to “split.”

He receives full confirmation of his successful initiation as a writer, since he presents his credentials to the bearer of precisely that profession and precisely that terrible reality to which he claims knowledge and involvement, and is completely successful. As often happens with Babel, for example in Guy de Maupassant, verbal success also leads to sexual success. There is an equal exchange between representatives of the two arts - a typical Babel barter. He is to her the art of words, she is to him the art of love.

The whole story is a hymn to verbal art, its ability to master life in its most challenging incarnation. The hero transforms a lethargic 30-year-old woman with drooping breasts into a passionate lover, charges himself with love fervor, and, in addition, creatively endows his relationship with her with all imaginable role hypostases. The client-prostitute pair also takes the form of a pair of equal lovers, a pair of art masters ( different arts), a pair of sisters (that is, lesbians), two brothers (in a metaphorical paragraph about a village carpenter who cuts a hut for “his fellow carpenter”) - like same-sex lovers; finally, the Oedipal pair of son and mother, with the mother carrying out the sexual initiation of the hero.

The carpenter’s cabin of a typical Russian hut for newlyweds (remember “Higher to the rafters, carpenters!” Sappho and the entire corresponding wedding topos) may hint at Babel’s construction of his own desired home in Russian literature. After all, from the very beginning, already in the essay “Odessa” in 1915, he dreamed of surpassing the Russian classics - Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Gorky. Which is what he does, entering the territory of the topos of prostitution and turning it inside out. His prostitute does not need salvation, but needs literary conquest, like a naive reader. And the story ends with their joyful tea drinking together on the Maidan. By the way, tea instead of wine is a constant recipe for traditional rescuers of prostitutes in Russian literature. But here you drink tea as purple as a brick, and as hot as shed blood, better than wine. Vera, as usual, does not take money from him, but not out of pride, but out of love and brotherhood. He puts two gold pieces in his pocket as his first fee. This last words“Informations” and the title of the first version of the story.

What is so unprintable about this story by Soviet standards of the early 1930s? First of all, of course, sex, and even sex with a prostitute, moreover, without any salvation, redemption, moral and political justification. This is absolutely Superman-like, Nietzschean, artistic arrogance towards a working woman from the bottom, who naively believes in the arrogant inventions of the hero, who is cheating right in front of her, stealing her supposedly hard life from her. But the main thing, of course, is the sophisticated equation of two arts - writing and prostitution, which sounds like terrible blasphemy against the backdrop of the official ideology, according to which writers are engineers human souls, they are called upon to serve the people and the high ideals of communism and at the same time present what is written as the truth. Isn’t this the same truth as the truth in quotation marks invented by Babel’s narrator?

By the way, about the bitter truth of this narrator’s life, about his difficult childhood. The great inventor and promoter of difficult childhood in Russian literature was, of course, Gorky, Babel’s senior comrade, patron, and adopted literary father. But in “Help” Babel upset Gorky himself by inventing and selling the listener a childhood that couldn’t be more difficult.

Gorky was also a persistent preacher of beautiful fiction - let us at least remember. In “Help” the hero magnificently and at the same time mockingly combines fiction with bitter truths. His hero seduces Vera not with an elevating deception, but with a humiliating deception that humiliates him. But this is how he finds a way to her heart.

Gorky also wrote a lot about prostitutes; the story “Boles”, which contains a prostitute, literary services, and fiction, is especially similar to “Inquiry.” By the way, the theme of conquering a prostitute using literary methods was already outlined by Dostoevsky in “About the Wet Snow.” There the hero tries to turn the soul of a prostitute over with his reasoning (false, of course), parodying Chernyshevsky’s saving topos. And when it seems to him that this is not enough, then with living pictures. But Dostoevsky - our sick conscience - condemns his writer. And Babel glorifies his own.

How valid is the assumption about the anti-Gorky orientation of “Spravka”? After all, Gorky’s name is not mentioned in the story. But isn't it? “We lived in Aleshki, Kherson province” - these are the first words of the story that the hero weaves to a gullible prostitute  The real name of Maxim Gorky is Alexey Maksimovich Peshkov, Alyosha Peshkov is also the name of the main character of his autobiographical story “Childhood”.. The “Certificate” was published in English in 1937, after Gorky’s death. 

Decoding

In the autumn of 1931, theatrical and cultural Moscow lived in anticipation of an important event. The Moscow Art Theater, the famous Moscow Art Theater, was supposed to stage a play by a Soviet playwright. The playwright was Alexander Afino-genov, and the play was called “Fear.” The performance was a fantastic success. The curtain came up 19 times, the author, director, and troupe were called to the stage. Then Afinogenov was invited to the party leadership box, where they shook his hand and shared their impressions of the play. The play was accepted for production by about 300 theaters across the country. And then playwrights were paid royalties for each act - and Afinogenov earned 171 thousand rubles over the next year. And the average salary was about 100-200 rubles. What was it about this play that made it such a fantastic success?

The play “Fear” tells the story of a physiologist, Professor Ivan Borodin, who works at the Institute of Physiological Stimuli and conducts experiments on animals. Contemporaries could easily recognize Academician Pavlov in this figure. But Professor Borodin extrapolates his conclusions regarding animal behavior to human behavior. And when, after a long struggle within the institute and some behind-the-scenes intrigues, Borodin decides to make a public report, he gathers an audience, climbs to the pulpit and then makes a speech like this:

“...Eighty percent of all those surveyed live under the eternal fear of being shouted at or losing their social support. The milkmaid is afraid of the confiscation of her cow, the peasant is afraid of forced collectivization, the Soviet worker is afraid of continuous purges, the party worker is afraid of accusations of deviation, the scientist is afraid of accusations of idealism, and the technical worker is afraid of accusations of sabotage. We live in an era of great fear. Fear forces talented intellectuals to renounce their mothers, fake their social origins, and climb to high positions. Yes, yes, in a high place the danger of exposure is not so terrible. Fear follows a person. A person becomes distrustful, withdrawn, unscrupulous, sloppy and unprincipled...
A rabbit that sees a boa constrictor is unable to move, its muscles are numb, it obediently waits for the boa constrictor rings to squeeze and crush it. We are all rabbits! Is it possible to work creatively after this? Of course not!
<…>
Destroy fear, destroy everything that gives rise to fear, and you will see how rich creative life the country will flourish!”

These are not the words that you expect to see in a Soviet play, and even less do you expect to find out that they delighted the entire party leadership and the population of the country. How did Afinogenov decide to write them? If you look at the memories of contemporaries, it turns out that many of these remarks were remembered and written down in their diaries, that this play became an intellectual shock for them, that they did not expect to hear such harsh words in the Soviet theater.

A few months before the play appeared, the country was shocked by the first show trials. These were the Industrial Party process and the Shakhty process  The Shakhty case and the case of the Industrial Party(1928 and 1930) - Trials on charges of sabotage and sabotage in industry. In total, more than two thousand people were arrested.. Representatives of the old intelligentsia were accused of sabotage against the Soviet regime. Many of them were sentenced to death, and then the execution was replaced by imprisonment. The idea that the old intellectuals could not fit into the new Soviet life, but only caused harm, was extremely popular, and the play gave a response to these events.

In addition, Afinogenov belonged to a literary group called RAPP, the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers. Then it was the most hated literary group, which is believed to have persecuted Mayakovsky and did not give life to many writers and poets. Afinogenov was the leader of the dramatic section of this organization and in his theoretical works wrote that Soviet literature should take advantage of such extraordinary artistic method, which would use the developments of dialectical materialism.

Now, when they talk about Soviet dialectical materialism, they remember empty things, nothing meaningful phrases. Everyone is accustomed to the fact that this is some kind of emasculated method that does not carry any content. This was not the case in the 1930s. At that time, there was a strong belief in the teachings of Marx, in the fact that this teaching could scientifically explain the phenomenon of everyday social life - and build both literary practice and government practice so that a just society could be built.

Afinogenov tried to read Marx and other theorists of dialectical thought and apply this method to the theater. To more or less clarify what he might have meant, I will quote the work of Anatoly Lunacharsky, who was one of the most influential theorists at that time. The article is called “Thoughts on dialectical materialism in the field of theater.”

“We want to make the theater an instrument of struggle and construction of the proletariat. The theater must be a true court. He must prove good and evil in a new, proletarian way. Moral judgment must be litigation. It is necessary to depict the class struggle in such a way that at first it raises doubts, which are then resolved by the certainty of the moral victory of the positive principle. Various classes can be represented in the auditorium. Everyone can be excited differently. One thinks that this is true, the other believes that this is not true. The goal pursued by the moral judgments of the theater is great, because the theater is a workshop, one of the greatest workshops of people. And is it only because we see crafted people on stage, human images that are needed by time? No. Because in the auditorium people are re-educated.”

The theater turned out to be not a place where the viewer was supposed to have fun, it turned out to be a workshop in which new person. It is forged not only on stage, but mainly in the hall. And it is extremely important to keep an eye on the viewer who is being provoked into dialogue. If we look at how Afinogenov's play was received in Soviet theaters, we can assume that Afinogenov achieved his goal.

This is especially significant in the example of the Moscow Art Theater and the Moscow Art Theater. Before this, the most successful play, both in terms of audience response and box office receipts, was the play “Days of the Turbins” by Mikhail Bulgakov. This is not a Soviet play at all, which caused such a storm of criticism that it was either hushed up or reviled. It remained in the repertoire largely because Stalin loved it and went to see it. We know from the diaries of Soviet spectators that when “Days of the Turbins” was on, the audience was very sympathetic to what was happening on stage - the audience fainted and allowed themselves to shout. They sympathized with heroes who were perceived by official propaganda as non-Soviet.

In the case of “Fear” the situation was approximately the same. The fact is that the proletarian play was staged on the stage of the most non-Soviet theater in the country. It was clear that the audience was reacting to what was happening. When Borodin delivered his incriminating remarks about a country paralyzed by fear, part of the audience clapped. It was clear that Borodin was not only on stage, but also in the hall.

But after Borodin finished his speech, the old Bolshevik Klara rose to the podium and made a fiery speech that Borodin was wrong - because in his scientific constructions, supposedly objective, in fact he subjectively took the side of the counter-revolution. For fear to disappear, a real Bolshevik needs to become infected with Bolshevik fearlessness, as did the revolutionaries who died in prisons and exiles, which forged October Revolution. And if the class struggle is brought to the end, then fear in the sense that Borodin speaks of will die, and Soviet society will get rid of it and will live with fearlessness. And here most of the audience began to clap.

The main goal of both Afinogenov himself and the production was to excite the viewer by demonstrating the relevance of Borodin’s ideas. What he says is as close as possible to the criticism that can be found in an emigrant play or in uncensored letters. All his complaints against the Soviet government were voiced at the level of the intelligentsia. Relatively speaking, if Facebook existed then, opposition-minded Facebook would have exchanged such replies. But here, right in the hall, these sentiments were rebuffed.

And this demonstration was all the more impressive because it was not staged on stage - the Soviet audience had already seen this many times, by that time in Soviet theaters there were many such cardboard plays, where there were bad whites and counter-revolutionaries who were exposed , and there were impeccable Bolsheviks. And then there turns out to be a very nice hero, a professor, who scientifically explains his theory and is defeated.

This brings us to main idea, which must be remembered that literature in Soviet era very often thought of as an instrument, as a magic device that would make it possible for an ideal Soviet citizen to be born from an old person burdened with bourgeois remnants and incorrect ideology. The theater had to create this. 

Decoding

Speaking about Okudzhava’s poetics, we too often repeat platitudes about his folkloric nature - something that he himself emphasized all the time - about his openness and simplicity, melodiousness. But Okudzhava is an extremely complex poet. This is it main problem, that his such closed, such strong frame structures, in which we so easily place ourselves, consist of many other people’s quotes, dark circumstances to which he hints, circumstances of his biography, which is unknown to us.

Okudzhava is very secretive. And perhaps understanding most of his poems is so difficult because the song is designed for instant perception and, after listening to the song, we create some kind of our own, personal image of its meaning. And there is no time to read the song - there is no time to listen to it. Therefore, I think the time has come to analyze some of Okudzhava’s most mysterious works only now. Let's take for example such an obvious, seemingly simple thing, like "Farewell to the New Year's tree." This is also the longest of Okudzhava’s songs. In fact, his short pieces are even more complex because the concentration is greater.

Solzhenitsyn, in one private conversation, said very precisely about Okudzhava: “How few words there are and how widely he takes away.” Indeed, with the help of his associations, quite eclectic, coming from completely different sources, he rakes in very widely.

“Farewell to the Christmas tree” evokes some distant example in our memory. But while the song goes on, while we listen to it, we are so delighted with it that we completely forget, and how, in fact, do we know this size and even these specific words?

Somewhere he touched old strings -
their roll call continues...
So January has come and gone,
mad as an electric train.

Sorry, but we've already heard this somewhere.

We are all a little away from life,
Living is just a habit.
It seems to me on the airways
Two voices roll call.

But these are Akhmatova’s “Komarovskie Kroki”, or “Komarovskie Sketches”, written when Oku-dzha-va was already familiar with Akhmatova, visited her and even sang to her. She probably read something to him then. Why does he suddenly quote Akhmatova in “Farewell to the New Year Tree”, in the first stanza? What do we actually know about the origin of this poem? What is it about and what is it dedicated to?

Its origin, according to Okudzhava’s wife, is as follows. Okudzhava goes to film the film “Zhenya, Zhenechka and Katyusha.” In this photo, Oleg Dal shouts at his then-companion. Everyone is dejectedly silent. Okudzhava says: “Why are you hiding your hands?” And then it turns out a stanza.

And refined like nightingales,
proud as grenadiers
what about your reliable hands?
are your gentlemen hiding?

However, firstly, there is some discrepancy in time - the filming took place later than the poem was written. And secondly, the reason for poetry is clearly insufficient. The poem was written in March 1966. What great and bitter event did Russian literature experience in March 1966? This is Akhmatova’s loss, her death on March 5th. And this is the last broken thread connecting Russian literature with the Silver Age. Here the meaning of farewell to the New Year tree becomes clear to us, which actually looks like a very ambivalent poem.

We dressed you up to the nines,
We have served you faithfully.
Blowing loudly into cardboard pipes,
as if they were in a hurry to accomplish a feat.

What are we talking about here? There is a completely clear reference here to Akhmatov’s “Poem Without a Hero”, to that carnival, the swimming around the Christmas tree that is described there, and to all the swimming of the Russian Silver Age. What's going on there? There is a farewell to the woman and farewell to the era. It is quite obvious that we are talking about Akhmatova. Moreover, Okudzhava says:

But the fuss begins again.
Time judges in its own way.
And in the vanity they took you down from the cross,
and there will be no Sunday.

This is a clear indication of the theme of the poem: it is about the death of a beautiful woman, a woman whose fate was one huge way of the cross. Of course, no one can be seen here except Akhmatova. And an even more frank statement:

My spruce, spruce is the departing deer,
You probably tried in vain:
women that cautious shadow
lost in your needles!

Why suddenly a deer? The deer that is on christmas tree in no way similar and in no way recognizable in her silhouette. Apparently, Okudzhava knew that in Akhmatova’s early poems “with a silver voice, a deer in a zoo speaks about the northern lights.” And he could well have known that in a humorous correspondence with Punin  Nikolay Punin(1888-1953) - art critic, common law husband Anna Akhmatova. Akhmatova signed herself “Deer,” and sometimes Punin called her that. In any case, in Russian literary mythology this nickname was quite well known.

But even if this deer appeared here by chance, according to the usual secret knowledge of poets, one cannot help but see that the hidden plot of the poem is a farewell to the holiday of Russian culture, farewell to the spirit of Christmas that was Pasternak, farewell to the spirit of the bitter and sad holiday that marked the fate of the Russian Silver Age. This is not just a farewell to the feminine suffering image, this is the funeral service in Akhmatovian style for an entire era, which will not be repeated and will not be resurrected, because Silver Age did not repeat itself in the 1960s, it was not given to be resurrected, they did not reach this level, and Okudzhava understood this perfectly well.

Are we complicating Okudzhava’s poetics? What if this is just a story about such a New Year's failed love? I dare to assure you that we are not complicating things, because Okudzhava himself always diligently hides his literary source. Why is he doing this? Not because he is pursuing originality, but precisely because in his mind, to move too closely to a literary source, to refer to it too clearly is bad form, it both harms the originality of the text and somehow betrays The author has a desire to be close to the hero. He never dedicated poetry to the memory of his great predecessors. Even his poem “Lucky Pushkin,” which is dedicated to the memory of Pushkin, is somehow deliberately smoothed out, all the pathos is subdued by irony. He could not afford to write “In Memory of Akhmatova,” because for him Akhmatova was on a huge pedestal. And as he repeated: “It was difficult for me to open my mouth in front of her - I didn’t know what to say, my wife was talking.” Perhaps this is why he made such a wonderful impression on Akhmatova because for the most part he was silent or sang, and this is the optimal position for a poet.

Okudzhava tends to hide sources of inspiration, because, for example, he subsequently called the brilliant song about Francois Villon “Francois Villon’s Prayer” simply “Prayer”, and to all questions about the origin of the song answered: “You see, then it was necessary to call it that, because it was impossible to say “Mo-lit-va.” Nevertheless, when in Poland, where one could freely say “Mo-lit-va”, in an absolutely Catholic socialist country, such an oxymoron, they recorded a record with this song, the name was re-re- generally conducted as “Song about Villon.” Why? Because this song basically has Villon’s picture of the world, Villon’s ballad of contradictions, Villon’s ballad of a poetic competition in Blois  “The Ballad of the Poetry Competition in Blois”, or “The Ballad of Contradictions”- a ballad by the 15th century French poet Francois Villon.. “Give the head to the wise, give the horse to the coward” - this is a refraction, a continuation of Villon’s poetics with his eternal “I am recognized by everyone, driven out from everywhere”, “Of the people I understand most clearly, the one who calls a dove a raven” and so on .

The myth about simple Okudzhava, everyday Okudzhava should be dispelled once and for all. Okudzhava is one of the most profound literary Russian poets. And by revealing these subtexts, we will more correctly understand his place on our poetic line. In his auto-description of his method, perhaps, Okudzhava is most accurate in the poem “From the Carriage Window,” which allows you to see the basis of his associative method, where the plan appears through the plan, the carnivals of the Silver Age through the gatherings of the sixties, the prayer of Francois Villon - through the prayer of our contemporary.

The poem, called “From the Car Window,” best shows this double exposure of Okudzhav’s worldview.

Low-growing forest on the way to Buzuluk,
all looking like a dusty army of goblin -
on foot, having finished singing dashing songs,
their legs were broken, they were chilled, they had not eaten for days
and frozen, as if on the eve of separation.

Their gray-haired commander, covered in scabs and rags,
writes letters home on a dull drum,
Having forgotten all the words, he stains the sheets.
Banners are tattered, pockets are empty,
the orderly is mad, the orderly is ugly...
How monotonous the landscape of defeat is!

Or was it a booth flashing outside the window,
where the hurricane of county passions rages,
where unknown comedians play,
selling fate and talents for pennies,
judges themselves and musicians themselves...

Their gray-haired director, stunned by the abuse,
writes a piece on a torn drum,
having forgotten all the words, he stains the sheets,
the decorations are crumpled, the pockets are empty,
Hamlet is deaf, and Romeo has long been ugly...
How monotonous the plot of our memory is!

Two comparisons, two metaphors that complement each other - a low-growing forest, equally similar to a defeated army and a poor traveling troupe. These two comparisons complement each other, helping to highlight the main plot of Okudzhava, the plot of a defeated army, the plot of a wandering artist, the plot of pride in spite of defeat.

These subjects are highlighted, of course, by the overlap of words, rhymes, and similarities. But the main thing, with this frank admission, is how monotonous the plot of my memory is, you won’t see anything else there, no matter how closely you look.

Okudzhava, wherever he looks, sees the same end-to-end world literary plot, the plot of victory despite defeat, the plot of bitter mockery of oneself, always doomed to lose and always forced to hold on. His “Old Soldier’s Song” (“The songs of our regiment have become noisy…”) also talks about this - a song about how the doomed old soldiers had nothing left except personal dignity.

Hands on the shutter, head in anguish,
And my soul seems to have already taken off.
Why do we write in blood in the sand?
Our letters are not needed by nature.

Sleep well, brothers, everything will come again.
New commanders will be born,
new soldiers will receive
eternal government apartments.

Sleep well, brothers, everything will come back again,
everything in nature must repeat itself,
and words, and bullets, and love, and blood,
there will be no time to make peace.

The plot of eternal repetition or, according to Nietzsche, eternal return - this is main topic lyrics by Okudzhava. Everywhere you look you are faced with the same monotonous landscape. That is why one of the main means of achieving effect in his texts is to involve the broadest poetic context, because for him all world literature, in general, is about the same thing. And in “Farewell to the New Year Tree”, and in “Villon’s Prayer”, and in the poem “From the Car Window” we see the same technique, tracing one’s own destiny in the present on great examples of the future. And it turns out that we won’t come up with anything new, but we won’t lose completely, because last Stand Our past will come with us. 

WRITERS, CENSORSHIP AND READERS IN RUSSIA

The lecture was given at the Celebration of the Arts at Cornell University on April 10, 1958.

In the minds of foreigners, “Russian literature” as a concept, as a separate phenomenon, usually comes down to the recognition that Russia gave the world half a dozen great prose writers in the middle of the last and at the beginning of this century. Russian readers treat it somewhat differently, including here some other untranslatable poets, but still, we, first of all, have in mind the brilliant galaxy of authors of the 19th century. In other words, Russian literature has existed for a relatively short time. In addition, it is limited in time, so foreigners tend to view it as something completed, finished once and for all. This is mainly due to the impersonality of the typically provincial literature of the last four decades, which arose under the Soviet regime.

I once calculated that the best of everything created in Russian prose and poetry since the beginning of the last century amounts to 23,000 pages of ordinary type. It is obvious that neither French nor English literature can be so compressed. Both are spread out over time and number several hundred great works. This brings me to my first point. With the exception of one medieval masterpiece, Russian prose fit surprisingly well into the round amphora of the last century, and for the current one all that was left was a jug for skimmed cream. One 19th century. It was enough for a country with almost no literary tradition to create a literature that, in its artistic merit, in its global influence, in everything except volume, was equal to English and French, although these countries began to produce their masterpieces much earlier. The amazing surge of aesthetic values ​​in such a young civilization would have been impossible if all the spiritual growth of Russia in the 19th century. did not proceed with such incredible speed, reaching the level of old European culture. I am convinced that the literature of the last century has not yet entered the Western understanding of Russian history. The question of the development of free pre-revolutionary thought was completely distorted by sophisticated communist propaganda in the 20s and 30s. of our century. The communists took credit for enlightening Russia. But it is fair to say that in the times of Pushkin and Gogol, most of the Russian people remained in the cold behind a curtain of slowly falling snow in front of the brightly lit windows of aristocratic culture. This tragic incongruity arose from the fact that the most refined European culture was too hastily introduced into a country notorious for the misfortunes and suffering of its countless stepchildren. However, this is a completely different topic.

Although, who knows, maybe not the other one. By outlining the history of Russian literature, or, rather, by identifying the forces that fought for the soul of the artist, I may perhaps find that deep pathos inherent in all true art, which arises from the gap between its eternal values ​​and the suffering of our confused world. The world can hardly be blamed for treating literature as a luxury or a trinket, since it cannot be used as a modern guide.

The artist has one consolation left: in a free country he is not forced to write guidebooks. Based on this rather limited view, Russia in the 19th century. was, oddly enough, a relatively free country: books could be banned, writers were sent into exile, scoundrels and imbeciles became censors, His Majesty in sideburns could himself become a censor and prohibitor, but still this amazing invention of the Soviet era - a method of coercion of the entire literary association to write under the dictation of the state did not exist in old Russia, although numerous reactionary officials clearly dreamed of it. A strong proponent of determinism may object that even in a democratic state the magazine resorts to financial pressure on its authors to force them to supply what the so-called reading public demands, and, consequently, the difference between this and the direct pressure of the police state forcing the author to equip his novel with corresponding political ideas, only to the extent of such pressure. But this is a lie, if only because in a free country there are many different periodicals and philosophical systems, but in a dictatorship there is only one government. The difference is qualitative. I, an American writer, decided to write an unconventional novel, say, about a happy atheist, an independent citizen of the city of Boston, who married a beautiful black woman, also an atheist, who gave birth to a bunch of children, small smart agnostics, who lived a happy, virtuous life until he was 106 years old and breathed his last in a blissful sleep, it is quite possible that they will tell me: despite your incomparable talent, Mr. Nabokov, we have a feeling (not a thought, mind you) that not a single American publisher will risk printing this book simply because not a single bookseller will be able to sell it. This is the opinion of the publisher - everyone is entitled to their opinion. No one will exile me to the wild expanses of Alaska if the story of my successful atheist is published by some dubious experimental publishing house; on the other side, American writers never receive government orders to produce epics about the joys of free enterprise and morning prayers.

In Russia before Soviet rule, there were, of course, restrictions, but no one commanded the artists. Painters, writers and composers of the last century were absolutely sure that they lived in a country dominated by despotism and slavery, but they had a huge advantage that can only be fully appreciated today, an advantage over their grandchildren living in modern Russia: they were not forced to speak that there is no despotism and slavery. Two forces simultaneously fought for the artist’s soul, two critics judged his work, and the first was power. For a whole century, she was convinced that everything unusual and original in creativity sounds a sharp note and leads to revolution. The vigilance of those in power was most clearly expressed by Nicholas I in the 30s and 40s. last century. The coldness of his nature permeated Russian life much more than the vulgarity of subsequent rulers, and his interest in literature would have been touching if it had come from a pure heart. With amazing tenacity, this man strove to become absolutely everything for Russian literature: a native and godfather, a nanny and wet nurse, a prison guard and literary critic. Whatever qualities he showed in his royal profession, it must be admitted that in dealing with the Russian Muse he behaved like a hired killer or, at best, a buffoon. The censorship he established remained in force until the 60s, weakened after the great reforms, tightened again at the end of the last century, was briefly abolished at the beginning of the current one, and then, in an amazing and terrible way, was resurrected under the Soviets.

In the first half of the last century, government officials who liked to poke their noses everywhere, the highest officials of the Third Section, who enlisted Byron in the ranks of the Italian revolutionaries, complacent censors of respectable age, journalists of a certain kind in the pay of the government, a quiet but politically sensitive and cautious church - in a word, This whole mixture of monarchism, religious fanaticism and bureaucratic servility fairly embarrassed the artist, but he could let his hair down and ridicule the powers that be, while receiving true pleasure from a variety of skillful, striking techniques, against which government stupidity was completely powerless. A fool can be a dangerous type, but his vulnerability sometimes turns danger into a first-class sport. Whatever shortcomings the bureaucracy of pre-revolutionary Russia may have suffered from, it must be admitted that it had one indisputable advantage - a lack of intelligence. IN in a certain sense The censor's task was made more difficult by the fact that he had to unravel obscure political allusions rather than simply attack obvious obscenities. Under Nicholas I, the Russian poet was forced to be careful, and Pushkin's attempts to imitate the daring French - Guys and Voltaire - were easily suppressed by censorship. But the prose was virtuous. In Russian literature there was no Rabelaisian tradition of the Renaissance, as in other literatures, and the Russian novel as a whole remains to this day, perhaps, a model of chastity. Soviet literature is innocence itself. It is impossible to imagine a Russian writer who wrote, for example, Lady Chatterley's Lover.

So, the first force that opposed the artist was the government. Another force that constrained him was anti-government, social, utilitarian criticism, all these political, civil, radical thinkers. It should be noted that in their education, intelligence, aspirations and human dignity, these people stood immeasurably higher than those scoundrels who were fed by the state, or the old stupid reactionaries who trampled around the shaking throne. The left critic was concerned exclusively with the welfare of the people, and he considered everything else: literature, science, philosophy only as a means for improving the social and economic situation of the disadvantaged and changing the political structure of the country. An incorruptible hero, indifferent to the hardships of exile, but equally to everything refined in art - such was this type of people. The frantic Belinsky in the 40s, the inflexible Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov in the 50s and 60s, the respectable bore Mikhailovsky and dozens of other honest and stubborn people - they can all be united under one sign: political radicalism, rooted in old French socialism and German materialism and foreshadowed the revolutionary socialism and sluggish communism of recent decades, which should not be confused with Russian liberalism in the true sense of the word, as well as with the enlightened democracies in Western Europe and America. Leafing through old newspapers from the 60s and 70s, you are shocked to discover what extreme views these people expressed under autocracy. But for all their virtues, leftist critics turned out to be just as ignorant of art as the authorities. The government and the revolutionaries, the tsar and the radicals, were equally philistines in art. Left critics fought against existing despotism and at the same time imposed another, their own. The claims, maxims, and theories that they tried to impose had exactly the same relation to art as the traditional politics of power. They demanded from the writer social ideas, and not some nonsense, but from their point of view, a book was good only if it could bring practical benefit to the people. Their ardor led to tragic consequences. Sincerely, boldly and courageously they defended freedom and equality, but contradicted their own faith, wanting to subordinate art to modern politics. If, according to the tsars, writers were obliged to serve the state, then according to leftist criticism they had to serve the masses. These two schools of thought were destined to meet and join forces so that finally in our time a new regime, which is a synthesis of the Hegelian triad, would unite the idea of ​​the masses with the idea of ​​the state.