How did the idea come about to create academic editions of children's books - not just unobvious ones, but just those that everyone already read?

Everything is somewhat more vital and less conceptual. I have been working on books for quite some time, not as an independent publisher, but as a partner of publishing houses. My books were published under the brands “Samokata”, “White Crow”, “Terevinf” - and continue to be published as such. And they began to be commented on quite a long time ago - and in different ways, commenting techniques. That is, such a hyper-project has arisen that can be called “Russian 20th century in children’s fiction and in commentaries.”

About three years ago I decided to make a completely new series - “Ruslit”. This is, as it were, a reference to “Literary Monuments”, but with such differences: in Russian, for teenagers, the twentieth century, and the comments themselves are non-academic (in terms of presentation style, first of all) and multidisciplinary. That is, this is not a history of literature, but rather an attempt to tell about the time and place of action, starting from the text, without specifically trying to explain the dark, insufficiently understood parts of it. The text is seen as the starting point for the commentator's own statement.

“Three Stories about Vasya Kurolesov” is the sixth book in the series. Accordingly, the seventh, eighth and ninth are now being published - “Deniska”, “Vrungel” and comments on Brushtein: in this book - for the first time for the series - there will be no text of the commented work. And in all these previous books there were different types of comments. And besides, similar comments have already appeared in my other series. Do you know, there is such a series in “Samokat” - “How it was”, books that look like they were wrapped in newspaper?

In general, the project arises: it seems to me that this is a natural way - when you still have a vague idea of ​​​​the final form. Actually, I still don’t have a completed idea. I don’t think that what is happening now is what I strived for and what I achieved. This is a process, an idea, a development. The difference between Kurolesov, last year’s leader in our sales, is not that it is in any way significantly better than the previous ones, but that it attracted attention.

Commentaries on “Three Stories about Vasya Kurolesov” were written by Ilya Bernshtein in collaboration with literary critics Roman Leibov and Oleg Lekmanov

What examples do you rely on when compiling these books - “Literary Monuments”, Gardner’s comments to “Alice”, which are hard not to remember?

Explicitly, I think, not at all. It seems to me that we are creating our own format, which relies on technology. First, it matters how it is done. I comment (together with co-authors), act as a designer, build editor, layout designer, and color corrector. A lot is dictated by the technology of work. I find an interesting picture and embed it in the text of the comment, write an extended caption for it - the result is such a hypertext. I can shorten the comment because it doesn’t fit; it’s important to me, for example, that there are two pictures on the spread and that they correspond with each other compositionally. I can add text, if I don’t have enough, for the same purpose. This technology, strange at first glance, creates a conceptual effect.

Secondly, let’s say, “Deniska’s Stories” is the result of conversations. The three of us gathered dozens of times - Denis Dragunsky, Olga Mikhailova and I - thought and talked. Olga and I (by the way, she defended her dissertation on Deniska) prepared - she was in the archives, I was at the computer, reading a book - then we went to visit Denis Viktorovich to discuss - not just with the grown Deniska, but with a person who has taste to material and other history and great knowledge. I, too, to some extent, am a witness of this time: I was born in 1967, I caught the time of action only at the edge and in early childhood, but then the environment changed much more slowly and imperceptibly than now. I am younger than Dragunsky, but significantly older than both Olga Mikhailova and the main addressee of these books - not the child, but the child’s parent. And then these recorded one and a half to two hour conversations were transcribed, we processed them, and this is how this commentary turned out.

In the case of Oleg Lekmanov and Roman Leibov, co-authors of our commentary on Vrungel, it was different, since Roman lives in Tartu. Our environment was Google Doc, in which the three of us worked, edited, and commented. I’m talking about this in such detail because it seems to me that it’s all really tied to manufacturing technology.

Moreover, when I talk about multidisciplinarity, I mean this word in the broadest sense. For example, in the commentary on Leonid Solovyov’s story “The Enchanted Prince” about Khoja Nasreddin there were several important and paradoxical topics: Sufism in Soviet literature, Solovyov’s behavior during the investigation from the point of view of the traditions of the picaresque novel (the writer was convicted under Article 58 in 1946, “ Prince" is one of two or three large prose texts in Russian literature written from beginning to end in the camp), Persian classical literature today. I did not complete the last study, but a series of interviews was taken (with photographs of interlocutors, their workplaces and housing) with Moscow Tajiks - scientists and janitors, white collar workers and cooks - about the place of Persian classics and Islamic mysticism in their lives, in their minds. Because where we have Pleshcheev or Koltsov in our primer, in Tajikistan there are Jami and Rumi. I hope to complete this material for the second edition of The Enchanted Prince.

Denis Dragunsky himself, the prototype of the main character, took part in the creation of comments to “Deniska’s Stories”

In the additional materials for Deniska’s Stories, I was struck by the plot of your essay about the semi-censored editorial changes that haunt these stories throughout almost the entire book. It turns out that between the Soviet Union with its censorship apparatus and today with laws to protect children from inappropriate topics, censorship has not gone anywhere?

I would not politicize this and call it censorship. This is editing. There is a publishing house with editors working there. There are many books by beginning authors or even non-beginners, where the editor’s contribution is very great. Experienced editors can help a lot, and this has a long, Soviet tradition. In general, the writer Dragunsky, a beginner, despite his almost fifty years, comes to the editor, and he, according to his understanding, gives him advice and works with his text. When a writer is young, or rather not yet mature, it is difficult for him to defend his own; as his popularity grows, he has more and more rights.

I’ll tell you a short story about the writer Viktor Golyavkin and his story “My Good Dad.” I published it in “Samokat” in the “Native Speech” series. And - a rare stroke of luck: Golyavkina’s widow told me that before his death he wanted to republish “The Good Dad”, he took the book from the shelf and straightened it with a pen and whitewash. And so she gave me this publication. Imagine two pages with the same long dialogue: in one version - “said”, “said”, “said”, in the other - “muttered”, “flashed”, “mumbled” and “mumbled”. Which version is the author's and which is the editorial? It is clear that “said”, “said” was written by the author. This is a typical situation.

Every profession has a tradition, an average, tested opinion, and rarely does an editor, for example, understand the conventions of this corporate law, the appropriateness and even the desirability of violating it. Golyavkin, like Dragunsky, sought to make the text natural, childlike, and less smooth. And the editor did not censor at all (in the literal and simplest sense of the word), it was precisely the desire to comb his hair. The editor thinks the author can't write, and in many cases that's true. But fortunately, not in all of them. And the editor insists, combs out the unusual, strange, clumsy, especially if the author is no longer able to stand up for his text.

The edition of “The Adventures of Captain Vrungel” includes a biography of Andrei Nekrasov and fragments of his letters

This conversation confuses me, because I don’t really like to talk about the future, and besides, now, in a sense, I’m at a crossroads. When the result of work becomes clear in advance, when it is clear how it works, you want changes. It seems to me that in the field of children's literary monuments I have already spoken out. It would be possible to make “Old Man Hottabych”, or a volume of Gaidar, or something else - I even have a couple of projects that are not so obvious. But now I'm thinking about something completely different. For example, I want to build an Instagram chain - a book. When commenting, when searching and selecting illustrations, a lot remains unused. Stories that interested me, but related to the topic of the commentary only marginally and therefore were not included in it. Or included, but fragmentarily. That is, my computer stores a collection of facts that are interesting to me, visualized in images downloaded from various sources. And so I’ll start an account - in fact, I’ve already started one - where I’ll post all sorts of interesting stories around these pictures. If you do this often, every day or almost every day, then by the end of the year you will have enough for an album in the coffee table book format - books on the coffee table in the living room. A collection of interesting facts on my topic: the same Russian 20th century, only not in texts, but in images.

Last year, in my other series - “One Hundred Stories” - I published Elena Yakovlevna Danko’s book “The Chinese Secret”. This is a fictionalized history of porcelain written in 1929 by a porcelain artist (and writer). And there are large comments, also with pictures, more complex than in Ruslit. Here is an example of a story that was only partially included in the commentary.

There is a very famous ornament from the Lomonosov Porcelain Factory - cobalt mesh , blue diamonds. It appeared in 1944; it is generally accepted that the artist Anna Yatskevich was inspired by the sight of windows taped crosswise in besieged Leningrad - there is such a romantic myth. There is another, related version - about the rays of air defense searchlights crossed in the Leningrad night sky. At the same time, the most famous product of the LFZ (then still IFZ, Imperial), the one with which the plant actually began, is Elizaveta Petrovna's own service , second half of the 18th century, - decorated very similarly. The diamonds there are more intricate, and there are flowers in the knots of the ornament - Elizabethan baroque. All the more interesting is this connection, a paraphrase of the twentieth century, a modernist understanding of the cultural heritage of the previous era. Much more meaningful, in my opinion, than a romantic war myth.

The presentation of the commentary to the trilogy “The Road Goes Away” will take place on December 3 at the non/fiction fair

Or this is the story that unites Deniska with Vasya Kurolesov. In our publication Koval there is a comment about “police cologne “Chypre”. They say it was produced at Novaya Zarya, contained at least 70 percent ethyl alcohol, and was the most common cologne of middle-income Soviet men. It is also known that the Soviet “Chypre” imitated French cologne Chypre Coty "Chypre" The perfume, whose aroma, consisting of a mixture of oak moss, bergamot, patchouli, sandalwood and incense, was created in 1917 by the famous French perfumer Francois Coty.. The story “Red Ball in the Blue Sky” describes a machine that sprays cologne. The commentary explains: spray vending machines hung in hairdressing salons, hotels, and train stations; one zilch cost 15 pre-reform kopecks at that time. And I also came across feuilletonous denunciations of irresponsible citizens who strive to catch a stream of cologne in their mouths in the morning, and even corresponding caricatures. So a chain of pictures is built that visualizes this whole story - from Chypre Coty to the morning sufferers.

All this still looks quite incoherent and lightweight. But in my experience, form and conceptual completion come as you work with the material. You just need to let them germinate, discern these potentialities, help them to materialize, or, as they say in your newspapers and magazines, “tighten them up.”

‒ Ilya, in your interviews you often talk about your activities as a “publisher-editor”. Is this your special personal position in the publishing world or can you learn this somewhere and make it your profession?

I'll try to answer. There have been several civilizational trends in history. For example, industrial. This is the era of standard products that are mass produced. This is the era of the assembly line. The product should be designed accordingly, and the method of promoting the product after release should be the same standard. And this industrial method was a very important thing in its time. This is a whole civilizational stage. But he's not the only one.

There is also non-industrial production. Some brew craft beer, some sew trousers, some make furniture. Today this is an increasingly common activity, at least in the world of megacities. And I am a representative of just such a world of non-industrial activity. And since this business is underdeveloped and new, everything has to be built from the very beginning: from a system for training specialists to a system for distributing finished books. Our publications are even sold differently from other books: they do not fall into the usual consumer niches. The store merchandiser, having received them, finds himself in a difficult situation. He doesn’t know where to define such a book: for a child’s book it is too adult, for an adult it is too childish. This means that it must be some other way of presenting, selling and promoting. And that’s pretty much the same with all aspects of this matter.

But, of course, this is not a combination of some unique individual qualities of one person. This is normal activity. She just needs to study differently, do it differently.

- So what is it - back to the Middle Ages, to workshops working to order? Towards a system of masters and apprentices?

We actually called it a “shop” structure at some point. And I really teach, I have a workshop. And in it we really use terms such as student, journeyman for simplicity.

It is assumed that someday the apprentice should become a master, having defended some of his master's ambitions in front of other masters, and receive the right, the opportunity to open his own workshop. And other masters will help him with this.

This is how it should be - the way it once was: a workshop, with a workshop banner. I'm not sure if I have any followers in this. But I try to build it exactly in this form. And I don’t see any problem in this.

The problems lie elsewhere. In our country, everything has been sharpened since school in such a way that (to exaggerate a little) a person either draws or writes. And if he draws, he usually writes with errors. And if he writes, then he does not know how to hold a pencil in his hand. This is just one example. Although relatively not so long ago it was completely natural for a guards officer to easily write poetry in the album of a county young lady or draw quite decent graphics in the margins. Just a hundred - a hundred and fifty years ago!

‒ There is also an economic component to the question of your profession. You said in one of your interviews that industrial civilization creates a lot of cheap goods that are available to people. And what you are doing is a rather expensive, “niche”, as they say now, product. Right?

If I were Henry Ford, I would be competing with the entire auto manufacturing world for millions of consumers. If I make something completely atypical, not mass-produced, in my workshop, I naturally don’t have many consumers. Although not so little. I believe that any most exotic product can be sold today. I still have it quite understandable... But I don’t have competition and all its costs. There is no fear that my product will be stolen from me. No one will make a book exactly like mine anyway! In general, by and large, nothing can be taken away from me. You can’t even take my business away from me, because it’s all in my head. Yes, let’s say my circulation will be seized, in the worst case. So I'll do the following. But, in any case, 90% of the cost of the goods is always with me. And I can't be kicked out of my company. No one will be able to make the Ruslit-2 series, for example. That is, he can publish something, but it will be a completely different product. It's like a master's mark. People go to a specific master, and they are not at all interested in another workshop. That's not their interest.

‒ Do they want a different relationship model?

Certainly!

And relationships with students in the workshop other than with employees in the company. I am not afraid that my employees will be lured away for a higher salary, or that an employee will leave and take some “client base” with him. Fortunately, we are also freed from all these business ills.

- Everything is more or less clear with the organization of work. Is the very idea of ​​commented publications your own idea or the result of some surveys or contacts with readers?

Here again: the industrial method involves some special technologies and professions: marketing, market research, conducting surveys, identifying target groups. Individual production initially assumes that you do, in general, for yourself, in the way that interests and pleases you; you do for people like you. Therefore, many traditional issues that are mandatory for ordinary business simply do not arise. Who is your target audience? Don't know! I do what I think is necessary; things that I like; what I can do, not what people buy. Well, maybe not quite so radically... Of course, I think about who might need it. But to a large extent, in such a business, demand is formed by supply, and not vice versa. That is, people did not know that such books existed. It never occurred to them that they needed “Captain Vrungel” with a two-hundred-page commentary.

‒ What follows seems clear: they saw such a book, looked at it, were surprised at first, then they liked it...

And when such a proposal arose, they will already be looking for it, they will be looking for just such publications. Moreover, it turns out to be incomprehensible and strange that this did not happen before.

‒ You think that comments in the book are necessary. Why? And do you think comments can harm the perception of a text as artistic?

I don't think they are necessary. And yes, I think they can do harm. That's why I separate them - there are no page-by-page comments in my books. I believe that a page-by-page comment, even something as seemingly innocent as an explanation of an incomprehensible word, can really destroy the artistic fabric of the narrative.

I don't think comments are necessary at all. I even had the following agreement at home with my children: if we watch a movie together, don’t give dad the remote control. This meant that I did not have the right to stop the action at some important, from my point of view, moments in order to explain what the children (again, from my point of view) did not understand. Because I – and I’m not the only one, unfortunately – have such a stupid habit.

But for those who are interested, it should be “explained”: separate, differently designed, clearly separated.

- Both from your comments and from the selection of works for publication, it is clear that the topic of war is, on the one hand, relevant for you, and on the other, you have a special attitude towards it. For example, in one of your interviews you said that a war cannot be won at all. This is not entirely consistent with current government trends. Do you think it is possible to find a balance between respect for ancestors and turning war itself into a cult?

I would say that this is generally a matter of respect for a person. It's not about ancestors. After all, what is a great power? If a great power is a country whose citizens have a good life, where the state’s efforts are aimed at ensuring that the elderly have a good pension, everyone has good medicine, the young have a good education, so that there is no corruption, so that there are good roads, then these questions don't even arise. These questions, in my opinion, are a consequence of a different idea of ​​greatness, which absolutely does not correspond with me. And this is usually a derivative of national inferiority. A feeling of inferiority, unfortunately, in our country - source of the national idea. A kind of inferiority complex. And therefore our answer to everyone is always the same: “But we defeated you. We can do it again."

- On the issue of literature and the state. Tell me, were Soviet teenage books heavily censored or were they already written within certain limits?

Both. And they were further censored by editors, including after the death of the author. I have a separate article about this in the publication of Deniskin’s Stories - about how Deniskin’s Stories were censored and edited, how Deniskin’s Stories were shortened - although, it would seem, what is there to censor? And this is discussed there using a large number of examples.

‒ One of your publications is “Conduit and Shvambrania” by Lev Kassil. You write that the original author’s version was very different from the current well-known text. Why couldn’t it have just been published instead of comments?

- I released “Conduit and Shvambrania” in the original version. This is what Lev Kassil wrote and published for the first time. These are two separate stories, very different from the later author’s combined version. For example, because the scene of action is the lands where the Volga Germans lived compactly. This is the city of Pokrovsk - the future capital of the first autonomy in our country, the Autonomous Republic of Volga Germans. Since the action of “Conduit” and “Schwambrania” takes place during the First World War, this is a time of anti-German sentiment, anti-German pogroms in cities. All this happened in Pokrovsk. Kassil wrote quite a lot about this, writing with great sympathy for his German friends and classmates. There was also a significant Jewish theme in the text. Naturally, all this was not included in the later version. And here we can already talk about censorship, about a combination of internal and external censorship. Such historical circumstances require commentary.

‒ You publish a lot of relatively old books, from the 1920s to the 1970s. What can you say about modern teenage literature?

It seems to me that she is on the rise now. And I expect that it is about to reach a completely new level, to some kind of peak, like in the 20s and 60s. Literature is generally not spread evenly over time. There was a Golden Age, there was a Silver Age. I think that even now the blossoming is close, because a lot has already been accumulated. There are a lot of authors working, a lot of decent, even very decent books have been written, wonderful books are about to appear.

‒ And what outstanding modern teenage books could you name? Or at least attractive to you personally?

No, I'm not ready for that. First of all, I read relatively little these days, to be honest. I'm actually not one of those adults who likes to read children's books. I don’t read children’s books for myself. And secondly, it so happens that I know the people who write books much better than their works.

- What do you attribute this rise to now? Does it have any external reasons or are these simply internal processes in literature itself?

I don’t know, this is a complex thing, you can’t explain it that way. I think it's all inclusive here. After all, what is the Golden Age of Pushkin or the Silver Age of Russian poetry connected with? There are probably special studies, but I can only state this.

This is exactly what I really want. On the contrary, I don’t want to just continue doing what I’m already doing well. Something new has become interesting, but you don’t do it because your previous business is doing well. I don't work like that.

- Thank you very much for the interview.

The conversation was conducted by Evgeny Zherbin
Photo by Galina Solovyova

_________________________________

Evgeny Zherbin, holder of the diploma “Book Expert of the 21st Century”, member of the children’s editorial board of “Papmambuka”, 14 years old, St. Petersburg

Books in the Ruslit series

The master classes of the Moscow independent publisher and editor invariably attract the attention of creative people wherever he conducts them. Pskov was no exception. He came to us at the International Book Forum “Russian West” and shared with the audience the secret of his publishing success, as well as his thoughts about reading and, in fact, about books. And secrets are just that, so that the correspondent “ Pressaparte“I was interested in them, so that later I could tell our readers in confidence.

Ilya Bernstein put the main secret of a successful publisher in his “Editor's Book or 4 in 1”. Layout designer, literary, art and scientific editor: these are the four specialties that a book publisher combines and which need to be mastered by anyone who wants to rush into this exciting and stormy publishing sea. Despite the fact that the publisher accepts these four specialties as independent of each other, he sees his success precisely in the combination of all four. To be able to feel the text in order to arrange it on the pages and make it readable, to be a competent literary editor, to know what book design is, to explain to the reader certain concepts in the book, this is the complex that Ilya Bernstein uses in his work.

His second secret is that... “You don’t need to invent anything,” the publisher convinces. The text, in his opinion, only needs to be carefully studied and understood in order to select the appropriate design and illustrations.

Ilya expressed an interesting thought that runs counter to what is currently dominant in society. He believes that there is no need to put age restrictions on books, and the reader’s freedom to read what he wants should not be taken away. “Every age finds its own in a book,” said a publisher in Pskov. And as a businessman, he explains that books must satisfy consumer demands, the book must meet the reader’s expectations, in which case it will be successful and reprinted several times.

In his Moscow publishing house, Ilya Bernstein began work on a series of books on military topics, “How It Was.” For the 70th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War, he plans to reissue books about the war, if possible, with the original text restored and with the addition of scientific comments. He already knows that the series will include works by Viktor Dragunsky, Vadim Shefner, Vitaly Semin and other writers who witnessed events at the front. In the future, the publisher will continue to work on publishing books on military topics. “Somehow it turns out that books about war are always relevant,” the publisher is sure.

« Pressaparte»

- Ilya, you position yourself as an independent publisher. What does it mean?

At a time when I did not yet have my own publishing brand, I prepared a book for publication from start to finish, and published it on the basis of a partnership with some publishing house. And it was very important for me that it was a well-known publishing house. Books from an unknown publisher (and from an unknown publisher) sell poorly. I have seen this from my own experience. For a long time I worked at the Terevinf publishing house - as an employee. And as an independent publisher he began to publish books together with Terebinth. But this publishing house specialized in publishing literature on therapeutic pedagogy. It does not occupy a serious position in the children's literature market. When the same books that I published some time ago under the auspices of Terevinf were published by the Belaya Vorona publishing house, the demand for them turned out to be many times greater. And it’s not just about the buyers, but also about the merchandisers. If a book is published by an unknown publisher, the application for it includes 40 copies. And books from a well-known publishing house are ordered immediately in quantities of 400 pieces.

Why were your proposals interesting for such a publishing house as Samokat, for example? Did your publishing program differ in something that the publishing house itself could not implement? Or was it some unexpected and promising project?

I propose not just to publish a separate book. And not even a series of books. Along with the book, I offer ideas for its positioning and promotion. And the word “project” is the most correct one here. I offer the publishing house a ready-made project - a book layout with illustrations and comments. The work on acquiring copyright has also already been done.

- Do you buy the rights to the book yourself? Do copyright holders agree to transfer rights to a private party?

In the area where I work - yes. For the most part, I deal with books by forgotten authors who have had little publication or have unpublished works. An older author or his heir is usually happy when he has the opportunity to see a book published or reprinted. The only difficulty is that they do not always agree to transfer exclusive rights to a potential publisher. But this most often does not interfere with the promotion of the book. I believe that my work is marked by special publishing qualities.

- So what is the main idea of ​​your project?

In hindsight, the project looks much more harmonious than it seemed at first. When I decided to get into publishing, I started simply by republishing my favorite children's books. I was born in 1967. That is, the books that I planned to republish belonged to the late fifties - seventies. Then I had no preferences other than nostalgic ones - for example, to publish Russian literature. My first book was “A Dog’s Life” by Ludvik Ashkenazy, translated in the 1960s from Czech. In 2011, it was published by the Terevinf publishing house with my comments, an article about the author of the book and about my publishing claims at that time. Irina Balakhonova, editor-in-chief of the Samokat publishing house, liked what I did. And after some time, Irina told me that Samokat would like to publish books by two St. Petersburg writers - Valery Popov and Sergei Wolf. Would I take it on? Maybe they need to be designed in a special way. But the editor was not given any special role in preparing these books for publication, and this was not very interesting to me. So I said that I was ready to take on the job - but I would build it differently. I got out everything that Wolf wrote, and everything that Popov wrote, and I read it all. I read books by Valery Popov in my youth. But I had never heard of Sergei Wolf before (except that I came across this name in the diaries of Sergei Dovlatov). I compiled collections, invited illustrators who, it seemed to me, could cope with the task, and the books came out. They turned out to be quite successful in the book market. I began to think in which row they could stand. What kind of writer's circle is this? And then it occurred to me that the project should be connected with the literature of the Thaw. Because this is something special, marked by the special achievements of Russian literature as a whole. You can also localize the project - take only books by Leningrad authors of that time. But, of course, at the beginning of my publishing career, I could not say that I conceived a project to re-publish “Thaw” literature. This concept now looks harmonious.

Wait, but the books by Wolf and Popov are from the 70s, no? And “thaw literature,” as I understand it, is the literature of the mid-50s-60s?

Do you think that books of the 70s can no longer be considered “thaw” literature?

But it seems to me that the “thaw” has a historically defined framework? Does it end with Khrushchev's removal?

I'm not talking about the "thaw" as a political phenomenon. I mean a certain kind of literature that arose during this period and continued to exist for some time. It seems to me that we can talk about some general features that were characteristic of this literature, which I characterize as “Thaw”. Writers of this period are people born in the late 30s - early 40s...

- Survived the war in childhood.

And those who did not receive a Stalinist education. These are not “children of the 20th Congress”; they did not have to break anything in themselves - neither politically nor aesthetically. Young St. Petersburg guys from intellectual families affected by repression or otherwise suffered during the era of terror. People who entered literature on the ideological and aesthetic negation of previous values. If they were guided by something in their work, it was more likely to be Hemingway and Remarque, and not Lev Kassil, for example. They all started out as adult writers. But they were not published, and therefore they were squeezed out into children's literature. Only there could they earn a living through literary work. The specifics of their education also affected this. They were all “poorly educated.”

Do you mean they didn't know foreign languages? That they did not have a gymnasium or university background, like the writers of the beginning of the century?

Including. Pasternak and Akhmatova could make a living from literary translations. But these couldn’t. Valery Popov, for example, graduated from the Electrical Engineering Institute. Andrei Bitov said to himself: what were we supposed to do? We were savages. And they wanted to exist in the humanitarian field. So I had to “go” into children’s literature. But they came to children's literature as free people. They did not adjust or adjust. They wrote as they thought necessary. In addition, their own works found themselves within a very high-quality context: at this moment they began to translate modern foreign literature, which was completely impossible before, and the works of Salinger and Bel Kaufman appeared. Suddenly, writers of the older generation began to speak completely differently. “The Road Goes Away” by Alexandra Brushtein, a new pedagogical prose by Frida Vigdorova, has appeared. A pedagogical discussion arose... All this together gave rise to such a phenomenon as Soviet “thaw” literature...

But my interests do not end there. "Republic SHKID" or "Conduit. Shvambrania" are books from a different period that I am republishing. Although now the word “reissue” will not surprise anyone...

This is true. Today, everything and anything is being reissued. But do you think your reissues are significantly different from what other publishers do?

Well, I hope they differ in the level of publishing culture. Have I learned something in ten years? For example, the fact that, when taking on a reprint, you need to find the very first edition, or even better, the author’s manuscript in the archives. Then you can understand a lot. You can find censored notes that distort the original intent of the author. You can understand something about the author’s quest, about his professional development. And you can find things that existed until now only in manuscript. In addition, in the reprints that I prepare, the editor and his comments play a special role. My task is not just to introduce the reader to the first edition of the seemingly famous work of Lev Kassil, but with the help of comments, with the help of a historical article, to tell about the time that is described in the book, about the people of that time. In bookstores you can find a variety of publications of the “Republic of SHKID” in different price categories. But I hope the reader will buy my book for the sake of comments and a behind-the-text article. This is almost the most important thing here.

- So this is in some way a special genre - a “commented book”?

Let's put it this way: this is a transfer of the tradition of scientific publication of literary monuments to literature created relatively recently, but also belonging to a different time. The comments I provide in my books are not at all academic. But no literary critic should wince when reading them - at least that’s the task I set myself.

- How are books selected for the annotated edition?

The main criterion is artistry. I believe that I should republish only those texts that change something in the composition of Russian prose or poetry. And these, first of all, are works in which the main thing is not the plot, not the characters, but the way the words are composed. For me, the “how” is more important than the “what.”

- Your books are published by a publishing house specializing in children's and teenage literature, so the question arises to whom they are addressed. For example, I had a very difficult feeling when I read “The Girl in Front of the Door” by Maryana Kozyreva. It seems to me that not a single modern teenager, if he is not “in the know,” will understand anything - despite the comments. But if a book is chosen for its linguistic and artistic merits, they, it seems, should “work” on their own, without commentary. Is there a contradiction here?

- In my opinion, no. Maryana Kozyreva wrote a book about the repressions of the 30s and life in evacuation. This is a completely successful work from an artistic point of view. And it makes it possible to raise this topic and accompany the text with historical comments. But I don’t deny that this book is not for teenagers. Maryana Kozyreva wrote for adults. And Cassil wrote “Conduit” for adults. The address of the book changed during the process of publishing the book.

It seems to me that this was typical of the literature of that time. “The Golden Key,” as Miron Petrovsky writes, also had the subtitle “a novel for children and adults”...

In general, from the very beginning I made books with a vague age appeal - those books that were interesting to me. The fact that these books are marketed as juvenile literature is a publishing strategy. Teen books sell better than adult books. But I can’t exactly define what a “teenage book” is.

Are you saying that smart teenagers aged 15-16 read the same things as adults? That there is no clear boundary?

And even at an earlier age, an aesthetically “pumped up” teenager reads the same things as an adult. He is already able to feel that the main thing is “how” and not “what”. At least I was that way as a teenager. And, it seems to me, the period from 13 to 17 years is the period of the most intensive reading. I read the most important books for me during this period. Of course, it is dangerous to make one’s own experience absolute. But a person retains a high reading intensity only if he is professionalized as a humanist. And in adolescence, the basic ways of reading are laid down.

That is, you still have a teenager in mind when you prepare a book for publication. Why else would you need illustrations?

Illustrations are important for understanding the text. And I attach great importance to the visual image of the book. I have always published and continue to publish books with new illustrations. I am looking for contemporary artists who, from my point of view, can cope with the task. And they draw new pictures. Although the dominant trend in modern book publishing is different. Books, as a rule, are republished with the same illustrations that the grandparents of today's teenagers remember.

This is very clear. This makes the book recognizable. Recognition appeals to people's nostalgic feelings and ensures good sales.

Yes. But in this way the idea is established that the golden age of Russian book illustration is in the past. The golden age is Konashevich. Or at least Kalinovsky. And modern illustrators are terrible at creating such things... And in reviews of my books (for example, in reader reviews on the Labyrinth website), the same “motive” is often repeated: they say, the text is good, but the pictures are bad. But now is the time for new visuality. And it is very important that it works for a new perception of the text. Although this is, of course, not easy.

- And it’s debatable, of course... But it’s interesting. It was very interesting talking with you.

The conversation was conducted by Marina Aromshtam

____________________________

Interview with Ilya Bernstein

January 24 publisher Ilya Bernstein gave a lecture about books " Conduit. Schwambrania" And " Republic of Shkid" Both works became classics of Soviet children's literature. However, as it turns out, we know far from everything about them. IN Children's hall Foreigners the publisher told what mysteries he had to face while preparing these books.

How to edit classics

New edition of “Conduit. Shvambraniya" surprises from the very title. Where did the traditional conjunction “and” go?

Ilya Bernstein: “The spelling is different from the accepted one. And this is no accident here. I published the first author's edition. Lev Kassil initially wrote two separate stories, and so it existed for several years. Only then did he combine them and rewrite them into one text».

Ilya Bernshtei n: " Since I am publishing the first author's version, I am publishing it as it was. Logical? But I don't do that. I imagine myself as the publisher to whom young Cassil brought his manuscript. And I believe that I can correct in the book what that first publisher might have recommended that an aspiring writer correct.

This is how typos, old spelling, and some semantic errors were corrected in the book. That is, what, it seems to me, the editor of the first edition should have paid attention to.

At the same time, I do not make corrections myself, but check them with later editions of the work. And if I saw that Kassil was wrong, then he corrected it in another edition, but in principle this could be left, then I left it.”

What do Lev Kassil and Bel Kaufman have in common?

Ilya Bernstein: “Conduit” was not written at all for children and was not published in a children’s edition. He appeared in the magazine "New LEF".

New times needed new literature, literature of fact. Not fairy tales and fiction, but something real. Or at least something that is given the appearance of being real. That’s why “Conduit” seems to be composed of real documents: school essays, diary entries...

Do you know another work that is arranged in a similar way? It is from a completely different time, written in a different language, but also about school. This is "Up the Downstairs" by Bel Kaufman.

I don’t know whether the writer has read Conduit, but it seems to me that there is an obvious inheritance here, although perhaps accidental...”

How the photographer Jean wrote a mission to Ilya

While preparing Lev Kassil's book for publication, Ilya Bernstein examined the scene of the stories, the city of Engels, in the past - Pokrovsk. He also became acquainted with the press of that time. One of the advertisements in an old Saratov newspaper won the publisher’s heart. A Pokrovsky photographer named Jean precisely formulated his own working principle.

Ilya Bernshtei n: " If I ever have my own website, and there will be a “Mission” section on it, then I will limit myself to this. “I ask gentlemen customers not to mix my work with other cheap ones that cannot compete with me because they use the work of other people. All the work that I propose will be performed by me, with my own labor and under my personal supervision.” This is exactly how I make my books.».

Ilya also wondered what the Dostoevsky School really was, and spoke about an alternative continuation of the book