Alexander Genis - Native speech. belles-lettres lessons

Peter Vail, Alexander Genis

Native speech. belles-lettres lessons

* * *

Over the years, I realized that humor for Weil and Genis is not a goal, but a means, and moreover, a tool for understanding life: if you investigate some phenomenon, then find what is funny in it, and the phenomenon will be revealed in its entirety ...

Sergey Dovlatov

Weil and Genis' "Native Speech" is an update of speech that prompts the reader to re-read all school literature.

Andrey Sinyavsky

…books familiar from childhood over the years become only signs of books, standards for other books. And they get them off the shelf as rarely as the Parisian standard of meter.

P. Weil, A. Genis

Andrey Sinyavsky

fun craft

Someone decided that science must necessarily be boring. Probably to make her more respected. Boring means a solid, reputable enterprise. You can invest. Soon there will be no place left on earth in the midst of serious garbage heaps erected to the sky.

But once science itself was revered as a good art and everything in the world was interesting. Mermaids flew. Angels splashed. Chemistry was called alchemy. Astronomy is astrology. Psychology - palmistry. The story was inspired by the muse from the round dance of Apollo and contained an adventurous romance.

And now what? Reproduction reproduction? The last refuge is philology. It would seem: love for the word. And in general, love. Free air. Nothing forced. Lots of fun and fantasy. So it is here: science. They set the numbers (0.1; 0.2; 0.3, etc.), poked footnotes, provided, for the sake of science, with an apparatus of incomprehensible abstractions through which one could not break through (“vermiculite”, “grubber”, “loxodrome”, “parabiosis”, “ultrarapid”), rewrote all this in a deliberately indigestible language - and here you are, instead of poetry, another sawmill for the production of countless books.

Already at the beginning of the 20th century, idle second-hand booksellers thought: “Sometimes you wonder - does humanity really have enough brains for all books? There are not as many brains as there are books!” – “Nothing,” our cheerful contemporaries object to them, “soon only computers will read and produce books. And people will get to take products to warehouses and landfills!”

Against this industrial background, in the form of opposition, in refutation of the gloomy utopia, it seems to me that the book of Peter Weil and Alexander Genis, “Native Speech”, arose. The name sounds archaic. Almost rustic. Smells like childhood. Sen. Rural school. It is fun and entertaining to read, as befits a child. Not a textbook, but an invitation to reading, to divertissement. It is proposed not to glorify the famous Russian classics, but to look into it at least with one eye and then fall in love. The concerns of "Native Speech" are of an ecological nature and are aimed at saving the book, at improving the very nature of reading. The main task is formulated as follows: "The book was studied and - as often happens in such cases - they practically stopped reading." Pedagogy for adults, by the way, to the highest degree, by the way, well-read and educated people.

"Native speech", murmuring like a stream, is accompanied by unobtrusive, easy learning. She suggests that reading is co-creation. Everyone has their own. It has a lot of permissions. Freedom of interpretation. Let our authors in belles-lettres eat the dog and give out completely original imperious decisions at every step, our business, they inspire, is not to obey, but to pick up any idea on the fly and continue, sometimes, perhaps, in the other direction. Russian literature is presented here in the image of the expanse of the sea, where every writer is his own captain, where sails and ropes are stretched from Karamzin's "Poor Liza" to our poor "villagers", from the poem "Moscow - Petushki" to "Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow".

Reading this book, we see that the eternal and, indeed, unshakable values do not stand still, pinned, like exhibits, according to scientific headings. They - move in the literary series and in the reader's mind and, it happens, are part of the later problematic achievements. Where they will swim, how they will turn tomorrow, no one knows. The unpredictability of art is its main strength. This is not a learning process, not progress.

“Native speech” by Weil and Genis is a renewal of speech that encourages the reader, be he seven spans in his forehead, to re-read all school literature. This technique, known since ancient times, is called estrangement.

To use it, you need not so much, just one effort: to look at reality and at works of art with an unbiased look. As if you were reading them for the first time. And you will see: behind every classic beats a living, just discovered thought. She wants to play.

For Russia, literature is a starting point, a symbol of faith, an ideological and moral foundation. One can interpret history, politics, religion, national character in any way, but it is worth pronouncing “Pushkin”, as ardent antagonists nod their heads joyfully and unanimously.

Of course, only literature that is recognized as classical is suitable for such mutual understanding. Classics is a universal language based on absolute values.

Russian literature of the golden 19th century has become an indivisible unity, a kind of typological community, before which the differences between individual writers recede. Hence the eternal temptation to find a dominant feature that delimits Russian literature from any others - the intensity of the spiritual search, or love of the people, or religiosity, or chastity.

However, with the same - if not greater - success, one could speak not about the uniqueness of Russian literature, but about the uniqueness of the Russian reader, who is inclined to see the most sacred national property in his favorite books. Touching a classic is like insulting your homeland.

Naturally, such an attitude develops from an early age. The main tool for the sacralization of the classics is the school. The lessons of literature played a tremendous role in shaping the Russian public consciousness. First of all, because the books resisted the educational claims of the state. At all times, literature, no matter how they struggled with it, revealed its internal inconsistency. It was impossible not to notice that Pierre Bezukhov and Pavel Korchagin are heroes of different novels. Generations of those who managed to maintain skepticism and irony in a society poorly adapted for this grew up on this contradiction.

However, books familiar from childhood, over the years, become only signs of books, standards for other books. And they get them off the shelf as rarely as the Parisian standard of meter.

Anyone who decides on such an act - to reread the classics without prejudice - is faced not only with old authors, but also with himself. Reading the main books of Russian literature is like revisiting your biography. Life experience was accumulated along with reading and thanks to it. The date when Dostoevsky was first revealed is no less important than family anniversaries. We grow with books - they grow in us. And once the time comes for a rebellion against the attitude to the classics invested in childhood. Apparently, this is inevitable. Andrei Bitov once admitted: “I spent more than half of my work on fighting with the school literature course.”

We conceived this book not so much to refute the school tradition, but to test - and not even her, but ourselves in it. All chapters of Native Speech strictly correspond to the regular high school curriculum. Of course, we do not hope to say anything essentially new about a subject that has occupied the best minds of Russia. We just decided to talk about the most stormy and intimate events of our lives - Russian books.

Petr Weil, Alexander Genis New York, 1989

Legacy of “Poor Lisa”

Karamzin

In the very name Karamzin one can hear cuteness. No wonder Dostoevsky distorted this surname in order to ridicule Turgenev in Possessed. It looks like it's not even funny. Not so long ago, before the boom in Russia brought about by the revival of his History, Karamzin was regarded as a mere shadow of Pushkin. Until recently, Karamzin seemed elegant and frivolous, like a gentleman from the paintings of Boucher and Fragonard, later resurrected by the artists of the World of Art.

And all because one thing is known about Karamzin: he invented sentimentalism. This, like all superficial judgments, is true, at least in part. To read Karamzin today, you need to stock up on aesthetic cynicism, which allows you to enjoy the old-fashioned simplicity of the text.

Nevertheless, one of his stories, "Poor Liza", - fortunately there are only seventeen pages and everything about love - still lives in the minds of the modern reader.

The poor peasant girl Lisa meets the young nobleman Erast. Tired of the windy light, he falls in love with a spontaneous, innocent girl with the love of his brother. But soon platonic love turns into sensual. Lisa consistently loses her spontaneity, innocence and Erast himself - he goes to war. “No, he really was in the army; but instead of fighting the enemy, he played cards and lost almost all his estate. To improve things, Erast marries an elderly rich widow. Upon learning of this, Lisa drowns herself in the pond.

Most of all, it is similar to the libretto of a ballet. Something like Giselle. Karamzin, use...

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By decision of the copyright holder, the book «Native Speech. Lessons of Fine Literature "is presented as a fragment

P. Weil and A. Genis are Russian writers formed in the West - authors of fascinating and subtle essays. In their new book, with brilliance, wit and grace, the authors show a fresh and unconventional view of Russian literature.

The book is addressed to language teachers, high school students and all lovers of good prose.

FOREWORD
Andrei Sinyavsky. FUN CRAFT

But once science itself was revered as a good art and everything in the world was interesting. Mermaids flew. Angels splashed. Chemistry was called alchemy. Astronomy is astrology. Psychology - palmistry. The story was inspired by the Muse from Apollo's round dance and contained an adventurous romance.

And now what? Reproduction reproduction?

The last refuge is philology. It would seem: love for the word. And in general, love. Free air. Nothing forced. Lots of fun and fantasy. So is science here. They put numbers (0.1; 0.2; 0.3, etc.), poked footnotes, provided, for the sake of science, with an apparatus of incomprehensible abstractions, through which one could not break through ("vermeculite", "grubber", "loxodrome", "parabiosis", "ultrarapid"), rewrote all this in a deliberately indigestible language - and here you are, instead of poetry, another sawmill for the production of countless books.

Already at the beginning of the century, idle book dealers thought: "Sometimes you wonder - does humanity really have enough brains for all books? There are not as many brains as there are books!" “Nothing,” our cheerful contemporaries object to them, “soon only computers will read and produce books. And people will get to take products to warehouses and landfills!”

Against this industrial background, in the form of opposition, in refutation of the gloomy utopia, it seems to me that the book by Peter Weil and Alexander Genis, "Native Speech", arose. The name sounds archaic. Almost rustic. Smells like childhood. Sen. Rural school. It is fun and entertaining to read, as befits a child. Not a textbook, but an invitation to reading, to divertissement. It is proposed not to glorify the famous Russian classics, but to look into it at least with one eye and then fall in love. The concerns of "Native Speech" are of an ecological nature and are aimed at saving the book, at improving the very nature of reading. The main task is formulated as follows: "The book was studied and - as often happens in such cases - they practically stopped reading." Pedagogy for adults, by the way, to the highest degree, by the way, well-read and educated people.

"Native speech", murmuring like a stream, is accompanied by unobtrusive, easy learning. She suggests that reading is co-creation. Everyone has their own. It has a lot of permissions. Freedom of interpretation. Let our authors in belles-lettres eat the dog and give out completely original imperious decisions at every step, our business, they inspire, is not to obey, but to pick up any idea on the fly and continue, sometimes, perhaps, in the other direction. Russian literature is shown here in the image of the expanse of the sea, where every writer is his own captain, where sails and ropes are stretched from Karamzin's "Poor Liza" to our poor "villagers", from the story "Moscow - Petushki" to "Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow".

"Native speech" by Weil and Genis is a renewal of speech that encourages the reader, even if he is seven spans in his forehead, to re-read all school literature. This technique, known since ancient times, is called estrangement.

FROM THE AUTHORS

For Russia, literature is a starting point, a symbol of faith, an ideological and moral foundation. One can interpret history, politics, religion, national character in any way, but it is worth pronouncing "Pushkin" as ardent antagonists nod their heads happily and amicably.

Of course, only literature that is recognized as classical is suitable for such mutual understanding. Classics is a universal language based on absolute values.

Naturally, such an attitude develops from an early age. The main tool for the sacralization of the classics is the school. The lessons of literature played a tremendous role in shaping the Russian public consciousness, primarily because books opposed the educational claims of the state. At all times, literature, no matter how they struggled with it, revealed its internal inconsistency. It was impossible not to notice that Pierre Bezukhov and Pavel Korchagin are heroes of different novels. Generations of those who managed to maintain skepticism and irony in a society poorly adapted for this grew up on this contradiction.

However, the dialectic of life leads to the fact that the admiration for the classics, firmly learned in school, makes it difficult to see in it living literature. Books familiar from childhood become signs of books, standards for other books. They are taken off the shelf as rarely as the Parisian standard of meter.

Anyone who decides on such an act - to re-read the classics without prejudice - is faced not only with old authors, but also with himself. Reading the main books of Russian literature is like revisiting your biography. Life experience was accumulated along with reading and thanks to it. The date when Dostoevsky was first revealed is no less important than family anniversaries.

We conceived this book not so much to refute the school tradition, but to test - and not even her, but ourselves in it. All chapters of "Native Speech" strictly correspond to the secondary school curriculum.

Of course, we do not hope to say anything essentially new about a subject that has occupied generations of the best minds in Russia. We just decided to talk about the most stormy and intimate events of our lives - Russian books.

Peter Vail, Alexander Genis

New York, 1989

Beetle formula. Turgenev

(About the novel "Fathers and Sons")

Peter Vail, Alexander Genis. Native speech. Graceful Lessons
Literature. - "Independent newspaper". 1991, Moscow

From the preface

We grow with books - they grow in us. And once the time comes for a rebellion against the attitude to the classics invested in childhood. (Apparently, this is inevitable. Andrei Bitov once admitted: "I spent more than half of my work on fighting with the school literature course").
We conceived this book not so much to refute the school tradition, but to test - and not even her, but ourselves in it. All chapters of "Native Speech" strictly correspond to the secondary school curriculum.
Of course, we do not hope to say anything essentially new about a subject that has occupied generations of the best minds in Russia. We just decided to talk about the most stormy and intimate events of our lives - Russian books.
Peter Vail, Alexander Genis. New York, 1989

"Fathers and Sons" is perhaps the most noisy and scandalous book in Russian literature. Avdotya Panaeva, who did not like Turgenev very much, wrote: “I don’t remember that any literary work made so much noise and aroused so many conversations as Turgenev’s story Fathers and Sons. It can be positively said that Fathers and Sons were read even by such people who have not taken books in their hands since school.
It is precisely the fact that since then the book has been picked up just at the school bench, and only occasionally after, has deprived Turgenev's work of a romantic aura of resounding popularity. "Fathers and Sons" is perceived as a work of social service. And in fact, the novel is such a work. It is simply necessary, apparently, to separate what arose due to the author's intention, and what - contrary, by virtue of the very nature of art, which desperately resists attempts to put it at the service of something.
Turgenev quite succinctly described the new phenomenon in his book. A definite, concrete, today's phenomenon. Such a mood is already set at the very beginning of the novel: “What, Peter? can’t you see it yet?” he asked on May 20, 1859, going out on a low porch without a hat ...
It was very significant for the author and for the reader that such a year was in the yard. Previously, Bazarov could not appear. The achievements of the 1840s prepared for his arrival. The society was strongly impressed by natural scientific discoveries: the law of conservation of energy, the cellular structure of organisms. It turned out that all the phenomena of life can be reduced to the simplest chemical and physical processes, expressed in an accessible and convenient formula. Focht's book, the same one that Arkady Kirsanov gives his father to read - "Strength and Matter" - taught: the brain secretes thought, like the liver - bile. Thus, the very highest human activity - thinking - turned into a physiological mechanism that can be traced and described. There were no secrets.
Therefore, Bazarov easily and simply transforms the basic position of the new science, adapting it for different occasions. “You study the anatomy of the eye: where does the mysterious look come from, as you say? It’s all romanticism, nonsense, rot, art,” he says to Arkady. And logically ends: "Let's go and watch the beetle."
(Bazarov quite rightly contrasts two worldviews - scientific and artistic. Only their clash will end differently than it seems inevitable to him. Actually, Turgenev's book is about this - more precisely, this is her role in the history of Russian literature.)
In general, Bazarov's ideas boil down to "watching the beetle" - instead of pondering over enigmatic views. The beetle is the key to all problems. Bazarov's perception of the world is dominated by biological categories. In such a system of thinking, the beetle is simpler, the person is more complicated. Society is also an organism, only even more developed and complex than a person.

Turgenev saw a new phenomenon and was frightened of it. In these unprecedented people, an unknown force was felt. In order to realize it, he began to write down: "I painted all these faces, as if I were painting mushrooms, leaves, trees; they pricked my eyes - I began to draw."
Of course, one should not completely trust the author's coquetry. But it is true that Turgenev tried his best to maintain objectivity. And achieved this. As a matter of fact, this was precisely what made such a strong impression on the society of that time: it was not clear - for whom Turgenev?
The narrative fabric itself is extremely objectified. All the time one feels a zero degree of writing, uncharacteristic for Russian literature, where it is a question of a social phenomenon. In general, reading "Fathers and Sons" leaves a strange impression of a lack of alignment of the plot, looseness of the composition. And this is also the result of an attitude towards objectivity: as if not a novel is being written, but notebooks, notes for memory.
Of course, one should not overestimate the importance of intention in belles-lettres. Turgenev is an artist, and this is the main thing. The characters in the book are alive. The language is bright. How wonderfully Bazarov says about Odintsova: "A rich body. At least now to the anatomical theater."
But nevertheless, the scheme appears through the verbal fabric. Turgenev wrote a novel with a tendency. It's not that the author openly takes sides, but that the social problem is put at the forefront. This is a novel on the subject. That is, as they would say now - engaged art. However, here a clash of scientific and artistic worldviews occurs, and the same miracle occurs that Bazarov completely denied. The book is by no means exhausted by the scheme of confrontation between the old and the new in Russia in the late 50s of the 19th century. And not because the author's talent built up high-quality artistic material on the speculative frame, which has independent value. The key to "Fathers and Sons" lies not above the scheme, but below it - in a deep philosophical problem that goes beyond both the century and the country.
The novel "Fathers and Sons" is about the collision of a civilizing impulse with the order of culture. The fact that the world, reduced to a formula, turns into chaos. Civilization is a vector, culture is a scalar. Civilization is made up of ideas and beliefs. Culture summarizes techniques and skills. The invention of the cistern is a sign of civilization. The fact that every house has a flush tank is a sign of culture.
Bazarov is a free and sweeping bearer of ideas. This looseness of his is presented in Turgenev's novel with mockery, but also with admiration. Here is one of the noteworthy conversations: "- ... However, we philosophized quite a lot. "Nature evokes the silence of a dream," said Pushkin. "He never said anything like that," Arkady said. "Well, he didn't, he could and should have said so as a poet. By the way, he must have served in the military. - Pushkin was never a military man! - For mercy, on every page he has: "To fight, to fight! for the honor of Russia!"
It is clear that Bazarov is talking nonsense. But at the same time, something very accurately guesses in the reading and mass perception of Pushkin by Russian society. Such courage is the privilege of a free mind. Enslaved thinking operates with ready-made dogmas. Uninhibited thinking turns a hypothesis into a hyperbole, a hyperbole into a dogma. This is the most attractive thing in Bazarov. But the most frightening thing, too.
Such Bazarov was remarkably shown by Turgenev. His hero is not a philosopher, not a thinker. When he speaks at length, it is usually from popular scientific writings. When brief, he speaks sharply and sometimes witty. But the point is not in the ideas themselves that Bazarov expounds, but in the way of thinking, in absolute freedom ("Rafael is not worth a penny").
And Bazarov is opposed not by his main opponent - Pavel Petrovich Kirsanov - but by the way, order, respect for which Kirsanov professes ("Without principles taken on faith, one cannot take a step, one cannot breathe").
Turgenev destroys Bazarov, confronting him with the very idea of a way of life. The author guides his hero through the book, consistently arranging exams for him in all spheres of life - friendship, enmity, love, family ties. And Bazarov consistently fails everywhere. The series of these examinations constitutes the plot of the novel.
Despite the differences in circumstances, Bazarov fails for the same reason: he invades order, rushing like a lawless comet - and burns out.
His friendship with Arkady, so devoted and faithful, ends in failure. Attachment does not withstand the tests of strength, which are carried out in such barbaric ways as the reviling of Pushkin and other authorities. The bride of Arkady Katya accurately formulates: "He is predatory, and we are tame." Manual - means living by the rules, keeping order.
The way of life is sharply hostile to Bazarov and in his love for Odintsova. This is strongly emphasized in the book, even by the simple repetition of literally the same words. “What do you need Latin names for?” Bazarov asked. “Everything needs order,” she answered.
And then the “order” that she brought in her house and life is described even more clearly. She strictly adhered to it and forced others to submit to it. Everything during the day was done at a certain time ... Bazarov did not like this measured, somewhat solemn correctness of daily life; “You’re rolling on rails,” he assured. Odintsova, on the other hand, is frightened by the scope and uncontrollability of Bazarov, and the worst accusation in her lips is the words: “I begin to suspect that you are prone to exaggeration.” Hyperbole is the strongest and most effective trump card of Bazarov’s thinking - regarded as a violation of the norm.
The clash of chaos with the norm exhausts the theme of enmity, which is very important in the novel. Pavel Petrovich Kirsanov is also, like Bazarov, not a thinker. He is unable to oppose Bazarov's pressure with any articulated ideas and arguments. But Kirsanov acutely feels the danger of the very fact of Bazarov’s existence, while focusing not on thoughts and not even on words: “You deign to find my habits, my toilet, my neatness funny ... Kirsanov defends these seemingly trifles, because instinctively understands that the sum of trifles is culture. The same culture in which Pushkin, Raphael, clean nails and an evening walk are naturally distributed. Bazarov poses a threat to all this.
The civilizer Bazarov believes that somewhere there is a reliable formula for well-being and happiness, which you just need to find and offer to humanity ("Fix society, and there will be no diseases"). For the sake of finding this formula, some insignificant trifles can be sacrificed. And since any civilizer always deals with an already existing, established world order, he goes by the opposite method: not creating something anew, but first destroying what is already there.
Kirsanov, on the other hand, is convinced that well-being and happiness itself lie in accumulation, summation and preservation. The uniqueness of the formula is opposed by the diversity of the system. You can't start a new life on Monday.
The pathos of destruction and reorganization is so unacceptable to Turgenev that it forces Bazarov to ultimately lose outright to Kirsanov. The climactic event is a finely crafted fight scene. Depicted as a whole as an absurdity, the duel, however, is not out of place for Kirsanov. She is part of his heritage, his world, his culture, rules and "principles". Bazarov, on the other hand, looks pitiful in a duel, because he is alien to the system itself, which gave rise to such phenomena as a duel. He is forced to fight here on foreign territory. Turgenev even suggests that against Bazarov - something much more important and powerful than Kirsanov with a pistol: "Pavel Petrovich seemed to him a big forest, with which he still had to fight." In other words, at the barrier is nature itself, nature, the world order.
And Bazarov is finally finished off when it becomes clear why Odintsova renounced him: "She forced herself to reach a certain line, forced herself to look beyond her - and saw behind her not even an abyss, but emptiness ... or disgrace."
This is an important confession. Turgenev denies even greatness to the chaos that Bazarov brings, leaving only one bare disorder.
That is why Bazarov dies humiliatingly and pitifully. Although here the author retains complete objectivity, showing the strength of mind and courage of the hero. Pisarev even believed that by his behavior in the face of death, Bazarov put on the scales that last weight, which, ultimately, pulled in his direction.
But the cause of Bazarov's death is much more significant - a scratch on his finger. The paradoxical nature of the death of a young, flourishing, outstanding person from such an insignificant reason creates a scale that makes one think. It was not a scratch that killed Bazarov, but nature itself. He again invaded with his crude lancet (literally this time) of the transducer into the routine of life and death - and fell victim to it. The smallness of the cause here only emphasizes the inequality of forces. Bazarov himself is aware of this: "Yes, go try to deny death. She denies you, and that's it!"
Turgenev killed Bazarov not because he did not guess how to adapt this new phenomenon in Russian society, but because he discovered the only law that, at least theoretically, the nihilist does not undertake to refute.
The novel "Fathers and Sons" was created in the heat of controversy. Russian literature rapidly democratized, the priestly sons crowded out the nobles resting on "principles". "Literary Robespierres", "cookers-vandals" confidently walked, striving to "wipe poetry, fine arts, all aesthetic pleasures from the face of the earth and establish their coarse seminary principles" (all are Turgenev's words).
This, of course, is an exaggeration, a hyperbole - that is, a tool that, naturally, is more suitable for a destroyer-civilizer than for a cultural conservative, which was Turgenev. However, he used this tool in private conversations and correspondence, and not in belles-lettres.
The journalistic idea of the novel "Fathers and Sons" was transformed into a convincing literary text. It sounds not even the author's voice, but the culture itself, which denies the formula in ethics, but does not find a material equivalent for aesthetics. The pressure of civilization breaks down on the foundations of the cultural order, and the diversity of life cannot be reduced to a beetle, which one must go to look at in order to understand the world.

Current page: 1 (total book has 13 pages)

Peter Vail, Alexander Genis
Native speech. belles-lettres lessons

* * *

Over the years, I realized that humor for Weil and Genis is not a goal, but a means, and moreover, a tool for understanding life: if you investigate some phenomenon, then find what is funny in it, and the phenomenon will be revealed in its entirety ...

Sergey Dovlatov

Weil and Genis' "Native Speech" is an update of speech that prompts the reader to re-read all school literature.

Andrey Sinyavsky

…books familiar from childhood over the years become only signs of books, standards for other books. And they get them off the shelf as rarely as the Parisian standard of meter.

P. Weil, A. Genis

Andrey Sinyavsky
fun craft

From the authors

Of course, only literature that is recognized as classical is suitable for such mutual understanding. Classics is a universal language based on absolute values.

However, books familiar from childhood, over the years, become only signs of books, standards for other books. And they get them off the shelf as rarely as the Parisian standard of meter.

Peter Vail, Alexander Genis

New York, 1989

Legacy of “Poor Lisa”
Karamzin

Nevertheless, one of his stories, "Poor Liza", - fortunately there are only seventeen pages and everything about love - still lives in the minds of the modern reader.

Most of all, it is similar to the libretto of a ballet. Something like Giselle. Karamzin, using the plot of the European petty-bourgeois drama, which was common at that time, not only translated it into Russian, but also transplanted it onto Russian soil.

The results of this simple experience were grandiose. Telling the sentimental and sugary story of poor Liza, Karamzin - along the way! - opened prose.

He was the first to write smoothly. In his writings (not poetry), the words were intertwined in such a regular, rhythmic way that the reader was left with the impression of rhetorical music. The smooth weaving of words had a hypnotic effect. This is a kind of rut, once in which one should not worry too much about the meaning: a reasonable grammatical and stylistic necessity will create it itself.

Smoothness in prose is the same as meter and rhyme in poetry. The meaning of words that find themselves in the rigid pattern of prose rhythm plays a lesser role than the pattern itself.

Listen: “In blooming Andalusia - where proud palm trees rustle, where myrtle groves are fragrant, where the majestic Guadalquivir slowly rolls its waters, where the Sierra Morena crowned with rosemary rises - there I saw the beautiful.” A century later, Severyanin wrote with the same success and just as beautifully.

Many generations of writers lived in the shadow of such prose. Of course, they gradually got rid of prettiness, but not from the smoothness of style. The worse the writer, the deeper the rut in which he crawls. The greater the dependence of the next word on the previous one. The higher the overall predictability of the text. Therefore, Simenon's novel is written in a week, read in two hours and everyone likes it.

Great writers have always, and especially in the 20th century, fought against the smoothness of style, tormented, shredded and tormented it. But until now, the vast majority of books are written in the same prose that Karamzin discovered for Russia.

“Poor Lisa” appeared out of nowhere. Karamzin single-handedly controlled the future of Russian prose: it could be read not to elevate the soul, but for the sake of pleasure, entertainment, fun.

Whatever they say, what matters in literature is not the good intentions of the author, but his ability to captivate the reader with fiction. Otherwise, everyone would prefer Hegel to the “Count of Monte Cristo”.

So, Karamzin "Poor Liza" pleased the reader. Russian literature wanted to see in this little story a prototype of its bright future - and it did. In "Poor Lisa" she found a cursory summary of her themes and characters. There was everything that occupied her and still occupies her. First of all, the people. Dear Liza, with her virtuous mother, gave birth to an endless succession of literary peasants. Already in Karamzin's slogan "truth lives not in palaces, but in huts" called for learning from the people a healthy moral sense. All Russian classics, to one degree or another, idealized the peasant. It seems that the sober Chekhov (the story “In the ravine” could not be forgiven for a long time) was almost the only one who resisted this epidemic.

Karamzin's Liza is easy to find even today among the "villagers". Reading them, you can be sure in advance that a person from the people will always be right. This is how there are no bad blacks in American films. The famous “heart beats under black skin too” is quite applicable to Karamzin with his famous “peasant women know how to love”.

There is an ethnographic nuance here, a complex that torments conscientious colonizers.

Erast is also suffering: he "was unhappy until the end of his life." This insignificant remark was also destined to have a long life. From it grew the carefully cherished guilt of the intellectual before the people.

Love for a simple person, a person from the people, has been demanded of a Russian writer for so long and with such insistence that anyone who does not declare it will seem to us a moral monster. (Is there a Russian book devoted to the guilt of the people against the intelligentsia?) Meanwhile, this is by no means such a universal emotion. After all, we do not ask ourselves the question - did the people love Horace or Petrarch? Only the Russian intelligentsia suffered from a guilt complex to such an extent that they hurried to repay the debt to the people in all possible ways - from folklore collections to the revolution.

Karamzin already has all these plots, albeit in their infancy. Here, for example, is the conflict between the city and the countryside, which continues to feed the Russian muse today. Escorting Liza to Moscow, where she sells flowers, her mother says: “My heart is always out of place when you go to the city; I always put a candle in front of the image and pray to the Lord God that he save you from all trouble and misfortune.

The city is the center of depravity. The village is a reserve of moral purity. Turning here to the ideal of Rousseau's "natural man", Karamzin, again in passing, introduces into the tradition a rural literary landscape, a tradition that flourished with Turgenev and has since served as the best source of dictations: "On the other side of the river, an oak grove is visible, near which numerous herds graze; there young shepherds, sitting under the shade of trees, sing simple, dull songs…”

On the one hand, bucolic shepherds, on the other, Erast, who “led a dispersed life, thought only of his own pleasure, looked for it in secular amusements, but often did not find it: he was bored and complained about his fate.”

Of course, Erast could be the father of Eugene Onegin. Here Karamzin, opening the gallery of “superfluous people”, stands at the source of another powerful tradition - images of smart loafers, for whom idleness helps to keep a distance between themselves and the state. Thanks to blessed laziness, superfluous people are always frontiers, always in opposition. If they had served their country honestly, they would have had no time for Liz's seduction and witty digressions.

In addition, if the people are always poor, then extra people are always with means, even if they squandered, as happened with Erast. The careless frivolity of the characters in money matters saves the reader from the “accounting vicissitudes” with which French novels of the 19th century are so rich.

Erast has no affairs in the story, except for love. And here Karamzin postulates another commandment of Russian literature - chastity.

Here is how the fall of Lisa is described: “Erast feels a trembling in herself - Liza also, not knowing why - not knowing what is happening to her ... Ah, Liza, Liza! Where is your guardian angel? Where is your innocence?

In the most risky place - one punctuation: dashes, ellipsis, exclamation marks. And this technique was destined to longevity. Erotica in our literature, with rare exceptions (Bunin's "Dark Alleys"), was bookish, heady. High literature described only love, leaving sex to anecdotes. Brodsky writes about this: “Love as an act is devoid of a verb.” Because of this, Limonov and many others will appear, trying to find this verb. But it is not so easy to overcome the tradition of love descriptions with the help of punctuation marks if it was born back in 1792.

“Poor Lisa” is the embryo from which our literature has grown. It can be studied as a visual aid to Russian classical literature.

Unfortunately, for a very long time, readers noticed only tears in the founder of sentimentalism. There are really a lot of them. The author cries: “I love those objects that make me shed tears of tender sorrow.” His heroes are tearful: "Liza sobbed - Erast wept." Even the harsh characters from the History of the Russian State are sensitive: when they heard that Ivan the Terrible was going to marry, "the boyars wept for joy."

The generation that grew up on Hemingway, this softness jars. But crying was once a rhetorical device. Heroes of Homer now and then burst into tears. In "The Song of Roland" the constant refrain is "the proud barons sobbed."

The general revival of interest in Karamzin indicates that the bored poetics of courageous silence is being replaced by Karamzin's frankness of feelings.

The author of “Poor Liza” himself was fond of sentimentalism in moderation. Being a professional writer in almost the modern sense of the word, he used his invention - smooth writing - for any, often conflicting purposes.

In the wonderful Letters of a Russian Traveler, written at the same time as Poor Liza, Karamzin is already sober, and attentive, and witty, and down to earth: “Our dinner consisted of roast beef, ground apples, pudding and cheese” . But Erast drank only milk, and even then from the hands of the kind Lisa. The hero of the "Letters" dine with sense and arrangement.

The travel notes of Karamzin, who traveled half of Europe, and even during the Great French Revolution, are amazingly fascinating reading. Like any good travel diary, the Letters are remarkable for their meticulousness and unceremoniousness.

A traveler, even one as educated as Karamzin, in a foreign land always turns out to be an ignoramus. He is quick to jump to conclusions. He is not embarrassed by the categoricalness of hasty judgments. In this genre, irresponsible impressionism is a forced but pleasant necessity. "Few kings live as splendidly as English aged sailors." Or - "This land is much better than Livonia, which it is not a pity to pass through closing your eyes."

Romantic ignorance is better than pedantry. Readers forgive the first, never the second.

Karamzin was one of the first Russian writers to have a monument erected. But, of course, not for “Poor Liza”, but for the 12-volume “History of the Russian State”. Contemporaries considered it the most important of all Pushkin; descendants did not reprint for a hundred years.

And suddenly Karamzin's "History" was rediscovered. It became a bestseller overnight. No matter how this phenomenon is explained, the reason for the revival of Karamzin is his prose, the same smoothness of writing.

Karamzin created the first “readable” Russian history. The prose rhythm discovered by him was so universal that he managed to revive even a multi-volume monument.

History exists in any nation only when it is written about it fascinatingly. The Persians were not lucky enough to give birth to their Herodotus - and the great Persian empire became the property of archaeologists, and everyone knows and loves the history of Hellas. The same happened with Rome. If there had not been Titus Livius, Tacitus, Suetonius, perhaps the American Senate would not have been called the Senate. But the Parthians, formidable rivals of the Romans, left no evidence of their colorful history.

Karamzin rendered the same service to Russian culture that ancient historians rendered to their peoples. When his work was published, Fyodor Tolstoy exclaimed: “It turns out that I have a fatherland!”

Although Karamzin was not the first and not the only historian of Russia, he was the first to translate history into the language of fiction, wrote an interesting - artistic - history, a story for readers. In it, he managed to fuse newly invented prose with ancient samples of Roman, primarily Tacitus, laconic eloquence: “This people in poverty alone sought security for itself”, “Helen indulged at one time both in the tenderness of lawless love and the ferocity of bloodthirsty malice.”

Only by developing a special language for his unique work, Karamzin was able to convince everyone that "the history of ancestors is always curious for someone who is worthy of having a fatherland."

A well-written history is the foundation of literature. Without Herodotus, there would be no Aeschylus. Thanks to Karamzin, Pushkin's "Boris Godunov" appeared. Without Karamzin, Pikul appears in literature.

Throughout the 19th century, Russian writers focused on the history of Karamzin. Both Shchedrin, and A. K. Tolstoy, and Ostrovsky perceived the “History of the Russian State” as a starting point, as something taken for granted. They argued with her, ridiculed her, parodied her, but only such an attitude makes the work a classic.

When, after the revolution, Russian literature lost this, which had become natural, dependence on the Karamzin tradition, the long connection between literature and history was severed (it was not for nothing that Solzhenitsyn also knitted his “knots”).

Modern literature is sorely lacking in the new Karamzin. The appearance of a great writer must be preceded by the appearance of a great historian - in order for a harmonic literary panorama to be created from individual fragments, a solid and unconditional foundation is needed. The nineteenth century provided such a foundation Karamzin.

In general, he did a lot for the century, about which he wrote: “The ninth to the tenth century! How much will be revealed in you that we considered a secret.

But Karamzin himself still remained in the eighteenth. Others took advantage of his discoveries. No matter how smooth his prose once seemed, today we read it with nostalgic tenderness, enjoying the semantic shifts that time makes in old texts and which give them a slightly absurd character - like the Oberiuts: “The porters! Can you rejoice with such a sad trophy? Being proud of the name of the porter, do not forget your most noble name - the name of a man.

Weill and Genis as founding fathers

At the presentations of the luxuriously reprinted book “Russian Cuisine in Exile” (Makhaon Publishing House), three legendary writers appeared before Muscovites as authors: Vail-i-Genis, Pyotr Vail and Alexander Genis.

I use the epithet "legendary" not for a red word, but as a definition: while remaining one of the most influential in the literature of the last decade and a half, these writers never became an integral part of Russian literary life. For most of us, they were and remain characters in many respects of the created myth about the Russian literary New York of the 70s and 80s.

A situation that provokes a conversation not so much about the “Russian cuisine” itself, but about the place of its authors in modern Russian literature and, more broadly, culture.

Of the three books that started our reading of Weill and Genis, “60s. The World of the Soviet Man”, “Native Speech” and “Russian Cuisine in Exile” – the latter became a bestseller. To get acquainted with its authors, this is, in general, the most closed book, although it has all the components of their prose: energy, emotional pressure (unexpected in a cookbook), wit, almost foppish style, simplicity and sincerity of the "confessional beginning" . But even at the same time, the distance with the reader is precisely maintained, and finally, the magnificence of the very gesture of the two “highbrows” who have taken on the “low genre”. This book has become an event not only in culinary literature.

The most bantering writers of the 90s - one of the first titles of Weil and Genis in their homeland. The reputation at that time was by no means derogatory. Against. Banter in those years was something like an everyday form of conceptualism. They mocked the "scoop" and sovietness, freeing themselves from the ethics and aesthetics of barracks life. For many, the “banality” of Weill and Genis correlated then with Sotsart, which was the leader in domestic conceptualism. And the style of their essayistic prose very quickly became the style of newspaper headlines (the same "Kommersant"), the language of a new generation of radio hosts, the style of the most advanced television programs.

Well, in the field of intellectual life, Vail-i-Genis turned out to be surprisingly in time thanks to the beginning boom of cultural studies - the ability to match everything with everything, the ability to “scientifically” prove anything. In this intellectual fornication, which intoxicated the consumer with the illusion of emancipation of thought, and the manufacturer with the unexpected pliability of the objects of "analysis", the question of the responsibility of the thinker was removed by the spectacular constructions and the absolute irrefutability of the conclusions (if, of course, you agreed to play by the proposed rules). I was intoxicated by the “non-triviality” of the very language of the new science, or, as they began to say then, “coolness”. This peculiar “coolness”, freedom from all sorts of traditions, as it seemed to the mass reader then, was taken by both “Native speech” and “60s. The world of the Soviet man.

Well, not the last role was played by the charm of the legend on behalf of which they represented - the legend of the Russian emigration of the third wave, personified, in particular, by the figures of Brodsky and Dovlatov.

No, I don't think that banter was invented by Weil and Genis, by that time banter as one of the components of the youth subculture was becoming the style of the generation. And it turned out that the style of Weill and Genis codified this style as banter for the reader in Russia; banter, as it were, became a fact of literature.

The place that Weil and Genis then occupied in the minds of the mass reader was unusually honorable for a writer - but also deadly.

To become a feature of the time, the color of this time, no matter how bright, means to go down in history with this time. And history in Russia moves quickly, what was news yesterday is commonplace today.

For example, the very idea of the book “Russian Cuisine in Exile” degenerated into culinary TV shows with the participation of current stars, that is, into a way to keep the largest possible mass audience at the screens for commercial clips.

Banter has also become a TV dish on duty - from the evenings of the favorite of pensioners Zadornov to the "intellectual" Svetlana Konegen. The creativity of the Sotsartites lost its relevance much faster than the aesthetics of socialist realism that fed them with its energy, moreover, Sotsart is already history, and the new generation of writers in Russia, thirsting - sincerely, earnestly - for "party spirit in literature", is today's reality.

The very charm of the aura of Russian life abroad has finally melted away - today's readers of Weil and Genis have their own image of the abroad.

It would seem that their time has passed.

And here the most interesting begins - their books remain relevant. And not only new ones, but also old ones.

To a certain extent, the appearance of two new writers played a role: separately Weil and separately Genis. If initially their joint work provoked a certain symbolism of perception: the content and poetics of Weil-i-Genis's books as a fact of collective creativity, as a kind of generalized voice of the Russian emigration of the 70-80s, then their current work separately makes us treat him as to an individual phenomenon.

And the first thing that readers of the new books by Weill and Genis discovered was the disappearance of banter from their content. No, the irony, the paradox remained, but it was no longer banter. The irony of Weil and Genis has changed its function for the reader.

The fact is that banter in Russia was in many ways a continuation of the so-called indifference of the 80s, a form of denial - and nothing more. The irony of Weill and Genis assumed not so much denial as "clearing the place" for the assertion of one's ideas, worked out both by thought and accumulated life experience, about the norm - about compliance with the laws of thinking, the laws of art, the laws of life.

In the most significant of the books published in recent years by Weil, in The Genius of the Place, the author does not abandon what he once did in essays with Genis. Weil continues here, but on new material and with new tasks. He took up self-identification in world culture, world history. The extended essays about Joyce, Aristophanes, Borges, Wagner, Brodsky, Fellini who compiled the book; about Dublin, Athens, Tokyo, New York, Istanbul, etc. - not studies, not studies, but a gradual methodical formulation of one's own image of the world and its culture.

Weil takes what is clear to him (and to us, his contemporaries), what is relevant, what he (we) are today. In other words, when we read about Khals or Mishima in Weill, we read about ourselves today.

The same thing happens when reading Genis' book "Dovlatov and environs", which discouraged critics by its very genre. What is this, a memoir? Autobiography? An essay on the psychology of creativity? Portrait of the Russian emigration?

Both that, and another, and the third, but - as a material on which the author reflects on modern literature as an aesthetic phenomenon. A distant analogy is a literary manifesto. But distant. Because a manifesto is, by definition, a protocol of intent. Genis, on the other hand, explores an aesthetic phenomenon that has already taken place and has proven its viability. And he does it both as a theorist and as a practitioner.

In 1991, I heard from a venerable philologist a review about the authors of the newly published “Native Speech”: “Lazy people! At least three essays in their book represent a brief outline of the monograph, but they will not sit down for a detailed study.

No, why, they sat down and worked.

The lightness, aphorism, stylistic play with which Weil and Genis write is not canceled in any way, but paradoxically they create in their books the image of not light-footed runners on eternal topics, but people (writers, thinkers) tightly grappled in a tense battle with the insolubility of damned questions .

Actually, that’s why I wrote the phrase “founding fathers” before this text, meaning Weil and Genis not as writers who once literary formalized banter as the language of the era, but as writers who determined - from the very beginning - ways out of dead ends into which this banter leads.

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