Nikolai Zabolotsky is the first poet of the Bronze Age. Presentation for a lesson in literature (Grade 11) on the topic: Pop lyrics. Bronze Age of Russian Poetry
Nikolay Zabolotsky
The first poet of the Bronze Age
Online magazine "Religare"
Interviewed by journalist Alexei Gladkov
It fell to Nikolai Zabolotsky to open a new era in Russian poetry. And the war and the prison term helped him in this - the philosopher, political scientist and sociologist of religion Alexander Shchipkov is sure.
One would like to call the small Tarusa near Moscow a city-museum. Marina Tsvetaeva, Konstantin Paustovsky, Bella Akhmadulina, Svyatoslav Richter lived and left their mark here ... It is difficult to pass by the monument to commander Mikhail Efremov with the inscription "He who did not betray the Motherland and the soldier" - a clear antipode of the infamous General Vlasov. Soon there will be a monument to another, perhaps the most mysterious cultural celebrity - Nikolai Zabolotsky. The author of the famous "Columns", at first an oberiut, then a traditionalist - Zabolotsky lived in Tarusa for the last two years of his life. And only today we are beginning to realize that this is not just a wonderful Russian poet, but also the discoverer of an entire era - the Russian Bronze Age.
Everyone celebrates the Year of Literature in their own way. Someone holds festivals and awards awards at public expense. And you erect a monument to Zabolotsky in Tarusa at your own expense ...
– It was not easy for me. Firstly, I had to go for the most budget option, otherwise there simply would not be enough money. Well, it was necessary to explain to the household why this hole in the family budget.
- Explained?
- Yes. The wife and children understood and agreed. But this is a family. But some representatives of the humanitarian community accused me of lacking, so to speak, ideological consistency in their approach to Russian culture.
– Is that how? Why did Nikolai Zabolotsky not please them?
– You see, they are sure that in culture everything should be built according to some plan. And our 20th century must correspond to the image of an imposing, decadent, chilly Russia. This is such a refined culture, culture under the hood.
- Mythologizing?
- Well, yes. And within the framework of this stable cultural myth, the image of the Silver Age is a kind of border between culture and “barbarism”. A historical precipice, after which, right up to Brodsky himself, nothing of value could and should not have grown on Russian soil. These are the dark decades of Russian culture, which should be deleted from the annals.
– Akhmatova and Pasternak lived in this intertime. Both Voznesensky and Akhmadulina ...
- Of course, it will not work to cover up whole decades with such a stroke corrector. But it is possible to create optics, within which some of the phenomena will become indistinguishable, merge with the background. But others will remain distinct. And this optics is a myth about the Silver Age as the axial time of Russian culture of the 20th century. It is advisable to pretend that it never ended, even Joseph Brodsky belongs to it. And in general, there can be no “after” - only echoes, imitations. To this end, the line of literary succession is deliberately described as inertial and imitative.
– And what happens in the end?
- A certain cultural and historical "chauvinism" is being formed. From the point of view of which any continuation is survival, a trail, a glow by reflected light. Therefore, Akhmatova and Pasternak seem to prolong the Silver Age. From this point of view, only that which inherits the era of poetic salons or imitates the great ones is valuable. Therefore, let's say, the monument to Marina Tsvetaeva fits into this format. Bella Akhmadulina also fits in due to obvious traces of Tsvetaeva's influence. But Zabolotsky is superfluous, a stranger. It turns out segregation, dissection of culture.
- Do you think that the monument to Zabolotsky will help overcome this dissection?
- By this I want to point out the need to overcome the gap in tradition. You can not adapt and adjust the tradition to the requirements of the moment. Erase something with an eraser, but leave something. Such experiments with literature are dangerous, they distort the cultural history of the people.
- This is reminiscent of the practice of the Soviet era, don't you think?
- That's what she is. Only the sign changes, but the method of cultural "cleansing" remains in force.
– What does the cultural landscape of Tarusa look like today?
- Here lies the "stone" of Marina Tsvetaeva - a rather old cult is associated with her. There is a musical cult of Svyatoslav Richter, twice a year the "Richter Festivals" of a very, very good level are held. In their shadow are other Tarusians - Paustovsky, Akhmadulina, Borisov-Musatov, Ivan Tsvetaev, Efron, Vinogradov and many others. In the center of the city there is a monument to General Mikhail Efremov, and the inhabitants of Tarusa are well aware of his merit. But it is obvious that without Zabolotsky this series will be incomplete. I found out that in about twenty cities of Russia there is a street named after Anna Akhmatova. And only in one small town - Urzhum - there is a street named after Nikolai Zabolotsky. I do not want to somehow belittle Anna Andreevna, but I am against the belittling of Zabolotsky.
- How is Zabolotsky perceived today?
- They know him, and they know him well, but somehow one-sidedly. For example, as a person who translated "The Tale of Igor's Campaign". Translator, interpreter - it hangs in the air. They know him as an oberiut and an employee of the magazines "Hedgehog" and "Chizh". As a cheerful experimenter, an eccentric, talented and slightly unhappy person. They quote a poem about the girl Marusya, about the washerwoman and the alcoholic who lived in the house opposite. Occasionally they recall that he toiled in the Stalinist camps. And it's all. But this is number one in Russian poetry of the XX century.
- Are you exaggerating?
- Not. There are many talented people in the 20th century, but I'm not talking about this, but about his unique position in culture. Zabolotsky lived two lives: before and after the camp, before and after the war. And at this turning point, great changes took place in his poetry. It was filled with new, sub-religious meanings. Nevertheless, Zabolotsky, by inertia, continues to be considered a poet of the beginning of the 20th century. But he is also the first poet of the second half of the century, that is, the Bronze Age.
– Who was the creator of the term “Bronze Age”?
- Among the poets - Oleg Okhapkin. And in literary criticism, this concept goes back to the works of the famous researcher and archivist of Russian poetry Slava Lyon. This is a completely unique person who defended three doctoral dissertations - a geographer, philosopher, art critic and poet. He was born in 1937. And in the 1990s, Lyon methodically went to poetry conferences, brought with him Whatman sheets, on which he marked with felt-tip pens all the figures and milestones of the literary process. According to his classification, the Bronze Age began in 1953 with the death of Stalin and ended in 1991. Although the second boundary is not so obvious.
- 1953 and 1991? Why such borders?
– In 1991, the “autumn of stagnation” gave way to the iron age of commerce, and this was reflected in the literary process. Stalin's death is also understandable. A new era began. By this point, the remnants of the Silver Age no longer made the weather. The paradigm shift has accelerated under the influence of the military theme. “Get up, the country is huge!” There is no time for sparks of snow on the teeth of acmeism ... Although, by and large, the Silver Age ended immediately after the revolution. This is such a pre-revolutionary thing. Futurism, constructivism killed the aesthetics of the Silver Age. Decadence laces spread and burn in the fire of futuristic domain.
- A great change in everything?
- It happened that way. Futurism is a transitional state: no longer silver, but not yet bronze. More like burnout. Dynamic pause in the change of epochs.
- And Zabolotsky?
– He turned out to be a link between pre-war and post-war lyrics and became the ancestor of the poetic explosion of the 1960s-1970s, that is, he opened the gates to the Bronze Age for us. He melted himself - to use the "metal" metaphor - and this speaks of his great talent.
– What then is the role of the famous poets of the era of the Polytechnic University?
- I would still draw a line, not offensive, but important. There are poets of the Bronze Age, and there are those of the Polytechnic Museum. And not necessarily those who performed in it, because they could live in other cities and not appear in Moscow at all. But it's a label. This is publicistic poetry, for which there was a request from above. Not “stolen air”, but permission to breathe from now to now, something licensed.
- Did the Bronze Age need permits?
– The poets of the Bronze Age did not need the abolition of any prohibitions at all. They were guided by other motives. The author of the term poet Oleg Okhapkin wrote a poem in 1975 called "The Bronze Age". There we are talking about the poets who were touched by Christ. They felt God's breath again. They brought back to life the religious component that had been lost in decadence, rejected in futurism and vanished in Soviet literature. But after the war, this feeling was stirred up.
– What contributed to this?
- War and Victory. After all, this is a return to the theme of Christ and Calvary, and it does not matter whether Stalin did it or not Stalin. Even those who were lured by the authorities, but at the same time honest and talented, like Tvardovsky, of course, the war woke them up. It was inevitable. It came from below. It’s just that people under fire in the trenches became believers, people were plowed up. And they were ready for a new meeting with God. And in the case of Zabolotsky, the war and the camp term came together. Both were his personal Calvary.
- Why is the era called the Bronze Age, and not another "ism"?
- Good question. This is not only a universal chronology, but also a symbol. Bronze is a hot metal similar to gold. And silver is a cold metal, white with black: “And the silver month is bright / It froze over the silver age.” Bronze, when melted, shimmers with all shades. And so Oleg Okhapkin voluntarily or involuntarily opposes the new faith to the cooled, chilling decadence. Let this faith be non-church, let it be sub-religious. No matter. But Okhapkin opens the royal doors - and Christ enters the heart. And then the wheat is separated from the chaff.
He plucked the superfluous from the Temple.
Traded talent to
The Almighty reigned in the hearts,
And in the merchants - the spirit of the womb.
And the poets went home.
Those who met God - in peace,
And the merchants scattered around the world
Gold to serve an idol.
Scattered on all roads.
We went to all the thresholds,
And on bronzed faces
Quietly the Bronze Age burned.
- Okhapkin portrays the internal emigration of Soviet bohemia this way?
Not all, but the best part of it. And he sees this emigration as a departure from the world. Sovietness is somewhat reminiscent of the atmosphere of the Roman Empire, Brodsky has many such parallels, in Letters to a Roman Friend, for example ... But poets go into service, not into a monastery. They form a community similar to the apostolic one. There are Russians, and Jews, and Tatars. Victor Shirali, in my opinion, is generally an Uzbek. Christ International. “There is neither Greek nor Jew,” everyone is equal. Poetry is their prayer.
Is it a religious community?
- Practically. They felt that way. There is an obvious duality here: here is the earthly - here is the heavenly, here is God - here is Mammon.
What about the Silver Age?
“It's occult, twisted religiosity. How did they speak? "Let's unite Christ with eros", "Let's abandon weather forecasters". All this is very far from God.
- But the romanticism of the golden age - let's say, Lermontov's, Byronic - is it still "golden"?
– You see, in fact, even the fight against God is in line with the biblical tradition. It is possible when God is near. And the Silver Age has an invented god, this is minus religiosity. God-seeking, God-building are exercises in mysticism without faith. Then comes the period of constructivism, where there will be no traces of religiosity at all. There will be an energy of destruction and renewal, behind which is emptiness. A "non-religious" period will pass - and it is in the person of Zabolotsky that a new era will begin, reminiscent of the one before last.
– The Bronze Age is a roll call with the Golden Age?
- Not just a roll call, but inheritance, albeit through a generation. In the poetry of Okhapkin, Brodsky, Rein, Krivulin, Lipkin, Lisnyanskaya, Chukhontsev, Sedakova, the voices of Pushkin, Tyutchev, Baratynsky are heard. There is a bit of gold in the bronze color.
- And Zabolotsky?
- Of course. Zabolotsky after prison comes to sub-religiousness in creativity. In his poems, the subjection of the world to a higher law becomes tangible.
- He comes to this earlier than Okhapkin's contemporaries.
- Exactly. Therefore, Zabolotsky got the keys to the Bronze Age. He opened this age. He became the ancestor of a new sincerity and a new depth. This is such a liturgical feeling, "mixed" in the picture of the world. Like an inner light. The poet to whom he shines becomes a missionary. He feels: I have something to say seriously. Not to the public, which is sitting in the hall or reading a book, but on top of their heads. This is an imperceptible prophecy.
– Haven’t the polytech bands ever prophesied?
“They couldn't, because they were in the same situation as official poetry. It was just the second officialdom, alternative. And he also had his own format. Voznesensky plays futurism. Why? Because Mayakovsky is a symbol, and imitation of him gave carte blanche to experiment within certain limits. But in fact it was a step back, not forward.
– Is this the destiny of all Soviet literature?
There is no such literature. There is Russian literature of the Soviet period. “Soviet literature” is a myth that was beneficial at first to the Soviet government, and then to its opponents. He helped to separate the comfortable from the uncomfortable, the lambs from the goats. It is clear that the authors of the rank of Pasternak sought to record both sides in the holy calendar. The concept of "poet of the Silver Age" over time began to play exactly the same role: from a term it turned into a sign of quality. More specifically, goodness. It has become synonymous with "poet of the first grade." At the same time, Tvardovsky, Samoilov, Slutsky or the most powerful Bagritsky were considered lower class poets, although Brodsky, for example, names the same Bagritsky among his teachers. To some extent, the coincidence of chronology and taste criteria helped out. But it didn't always work.
– Yes, to call Pasternak “Soviet” in the 1990s was out of the question.
- How can you! It was even more difficult with the underground poets who formed in the Soviet era.
- Today?
- Today, for the same selection purposes, the concept of the "Silver Age" is being expanded. And its border should be moved as far as possible along the historical scale, to Brodsky and even beyond Brodsky. But common sense suggests that this division is flawed - ideologically motivated and caste.
- Let's return to the monument to Nikolai Zabolotsky. When will he appear?
– Soon it will be ready in bronze. The work is very good in my opinion. The author of the monument is Alexander Dmitrievich Kazachok, who has already made two works for us in Tarusa: monuments to Ivan Tsvetaev and General Efremov. He portrayed Zabolotsky as he was immediately after the camp, about forty years old. And he managed to convey his special state - a combination of simplicity, openness, intelligence and gullibility. Zabolotsky almost smiles, but his eyes smile, not his lips. Amazing condition.
– Why is the role of monuments growing again today?
– Because the return of tradition begins. Because, as the great Konenkov said, "without sculpture, the people will turn into cattle." The history of culture must be returned and put everyone in their places. No need to throw anyone off the next ship of our time. For example, Rozhdestvensky and Voznesensky are also bright poets, and they also need to erect monuments.
From the book Pugachev and Suvorov. Mystery of Siberian-American history author Nosovsky Gleb Vladimirovich14. Numerous Ural cities of the supposedly Bronze Age, including the famous Arkaim, are traces of the destroyed Moscow Tartaria of the 18th century AD. e Relatively recently, quite a few old settlements were discovered in the Southern Urals, among which Arkaim is the most famous,
From the book The Big Forgery, or A Short Course in the Falsification of History author Shumeiko Igor NikolaevichChapter 11 ESTONIA OF THE "BRONZE AGE" However, it would be extreme great-power arrogance: to announce this "Baltic stop", and limit ourselves, as an example, to one Latvia. Saying about the Baltic states with their "singing revolutions" is enough. And all their national differences -
author Mansurova TatianaGreat-grandfather from the Bronze Age Do we know our roots well? In most cases, our knowledge is limited to information about great-great-grandparents. In the East, this is approached more responsibly: for example, the average Japanese knows nine tribes of his ancestors.
From the book Great Secrets of Civilizations. 100 stories about the mysteries of civilizations author Mansurova TatianaBronze Age Gold The people of Ireland have long been famous for their highly elaborate gold objects and jewelry. Especially a lot of gold items from the Bronze Age (2400-1800 BC) have come down to us, and the precious metal was already processed by experienced
by Child Gordon From the book The Rise and Fall of Ancient Civilizations [The Distant Past of Mankind] by Child Gordon From the book Ancient Greece author Lyapustin Boris SergeevichTHE FLOWERING OF THE BRONZE AGE CIVILIZATION IN THE BALKANS The civilization that developed in mainland Greece was, in its main features, of the same type as the Minoan. Of course, it had local features characteristic of the peoples who inhabited the Balkan Peninsula. This allows you to count
From the book Ancient Greece author Lyapustin Boris SergeevichDECLINE OF THE BRONZE AGE CIVILIZATION IN THE BALKANS At the end of the 13th century. BC e., after the Trojan War, in the palace households of the Achaean kingdoms, there were signs of an economic crisis. In addition, at that time the ethno-political situation in the Balkans deteriorated sharply. Due to some
From the book Prehistoric Europe author Nepomniachtchi Nikolai NikolaevichView from Estonia: obscure symbols of the Bronze Age As we can see, "sledoviki", "chalices" and other stones with some signs are quite widespread in the European part of Russia. However, it is rather difficult to draw any generalizations and conclusions, since so far
From the book of the Hittites and their contemporaries in Asia Minor author McQueen James GChapter IV. Daily life at the end of the Bronze Age Excavations in the settlements of the II millennium BC. e. in Anatolia, they gave a lot of information about how people lived and worked here in those days. Sufficiently extensive explored areas in places such as Bogazkoy, Aladzha,
author Badak Alexander NikolaevichChapter 9. Tribes of Europe and Asia of the Bronze Age
From the book World History. Volume 2. Bronze Age author Badak Alexander NikolaevichCultures of the Bronze Age at the beginning of the II millennium BC. e If we cut off the zone of ancient slave-owning states, then on the map of Europe and Asia at the beginning of the 2nd millennium we can see the following centers of cultures. The vast expanses of the Baikal region and the Baikal steppes to the east
From the book Gold of Troy author Wood MichaelChapter Eight THE END OF THE BRONZE AGE In the last years of dynasties, famine and pestilence become a frequent occurrence. As for hunger, its cause lies in the fact that most people at such a time refrain from cultivating the land. Because in recent years
From the book History of the Ukrainian SSR in ten volumes. Volume One author Team of authorsChapter III. TRIBES OF THE BRONZE AGE On the territory of Eastern Europe, and in particular Ukraine, the Bronze Age occupies the second half of the 3rd - beginning of the 1st millennium BC. e. This period is characterized by the further development of cattle breeding and agriculture (which began in the era
From the book History of Russian Literature of the Second Half of the 20th Century. Volume II. 1953–1993 In the author's edition author Petelin Viktor VasilievichNikolai Alekseevich Zabolotsky (May 7 (April 24), 1903 - October 14, 1958) was born into a wealthy family of forty-year-old agronomist Alexei Agafonovich Zabolotsky (1864-1929) and school teacher Lidia Andreevna Dyakonova (1879-1926). In "Autobiographical Sketches" Nikolai Zabolotsky
From the book History of Russian literature of the twentieth century. Poetry of the Silver Age: study guide author Kuzmina SvetlanaNikolai Zabolotsky The Association of Real Art, or OBERIU, together with the young Leningrad poets of the "left" flank (D. Kharms, A. Vvedensky, I. Bakhterev, etc.) was organized by Nikolai Alekseevich Zabolotsky (1903, Kazan - 1958, Moscow), a poet, whose vital and creative
Poetry of the beginning of the 21st century should be called the “Bronze Age” in Russian literature. Many worthy poets representing the 20th-21st century. It was at the turn of the century that poetry became a harbinger of change, And we have had a change not only of the century, but of the millennium. And only the poet is entrusted with the flight of the soul of mankind. I want to introduce the poet and just one of his poems. I would like modern schoolchildren to understand that it is necessary to grow up to poetry, to good poetry, that "the soul must work."
Ivan Fedorovich Zhdanov ( , With. Ust-Tulatinka ) - Russian .
Was born in the village of Ust-Tulatinka, Charyshsky District, Altai Territory, the eleventh child in the family of a peasant dispossessed and exiled to Altai. When Ivan was 12 years old, the family moved to Barnaul, and at the age of 16 Zhdanov went to work at the Transmash plant. Graduated from night school. Studied at , expelled, graduated from . Actively participated in the unofficial literary life of Moscow since (joint performance at the Central House of Arts by Zhdanov, and submitted ). The first publication in the newspaper "Youth of Altai" in 1967. The first book "Portrait" brought Zhdanov all-Union fame, was published in and received a wide response in the Soviet press. Laureate ( ), first laureate Academy of Russian Modern Literature ( ), winner of the literary and cinematographic award named after Arseny and Andrei Tarkovsky ( ). Occasionally he also turned to poetic translation and essays on literary topics (in particular, about , about ). Lives alternately in Altai, Moscow and Crimea.
Holistic Analysis
lyric poem
Thatch masonry demi-light
Snow that retained the starkness of water.
Where there is no snow, where there is ice with filling windows,
Sleepy rustle of birch sap
Leaves streaks on the glass.
Ice floats in water like wood.
You don't have to listen to the trees anymore
Hints, noisy and dumb.
You no longer know how to breathe on the glass.
Will the snow melt behind this breath
Or plunge into the water melted ice?
Everything acquires the gaze of water.
A poem about spring, but it has such philosophical depth and versatility that it is difficult for an unprepared reader to perceive it. “This is not a poem, it doesn’t even have a rhyme,” says another superficial critic. Or maybe, indeed, poetry is the lot of the elite, not only poets, but also readers: “the soul must be winged”
This is a poem by a mature poet who is not afraid to be misunderstood, this is a poem by a person who knows his own worth, who does not seek to please. It was written at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries. Still, the third millennium is coming, you need to cleanse yourself of filth, give advice, show the way to salvation. But the poet will say this only to the elect, who understand and feel what has poured out into lines, like a stream of consciousness or like a study of the human soul.
Analyzing a poem is interesting at any level. Three-line stanzas with the same number of syllables in the lines-11-11-10, that's the rhythm.
A bewitching intonation accompanies the philosophical masterpiece in each stanza, which is very reminiscent of the number of lines, completeness and aphoristic thought of Japanese haiku, the number of syllables is only not 5-7-5. The interrogative sentence makes the world space of the poem universal, eternal and open.
And the last line sounds like a warning: “Everything acquires the gaze of water.” “The gaze of water” is the attention to what is given for purification, self-improvement and, in extreme cases, as a reminder of the biblical flood.
The poetic size is determined easily:
So-lO \ menn-y \ u-clad \ ku-po \ lu-sve \ ta
Where-snE \ ga- no \ where- ice \ sleep-chIn \ koi- O \ con
This is iambic pentameter with pyrrhic. Failure at the rhythmic-intonational level occurs at the words "snow, ice, everything." The author removes these words from the word "water", as if created for iambic. When analyzing the vocabulary, it becomes clear why.
The first line of the poem is written in such a way that it becomes clear to the amateur that he is free. He doesn't need to read any further. The line shocks with poetic hooliganism. A possible phrase "Straw half-light" is beautiful, romantic and other "ah, ah, ah", that is, ordinary. But the word "masonry" is a stylistic nonsense, "thatched half-light" - the author's invention - this is a metaphorical chain in which words, intertwined, acquire more and more new meaning. And this is the principle of constructing the entire poem: endless nuances in the meanings of words, crumbling images, the reader, as if through a looking glass, discovers something new for himself behind one image, and after it another, and then a third, just endless corridors, we pass, we rejoice in the open doors, and there is the next door or the depths of a bottomless well. This is who lives.
The phrase "straw masonry" exists in Russian, but it is associated with straw, that is, inanimate stems that a person stores not in wonderful haystacks, shocks, but in briquettes, blocks, twisted, pressed, twisted, in straw masonry bales.
The next word reinforces the negative impression, it is an antithesis in one word “half-light” This is a weak morning light in one sense and an ironic generalization of the 19th century about a non-secular society that has broken away from naturalness, has not achieved its mercantile goals, but still has the opportunity to return to its roots, soul. Will he just come back? Want? Here it is - the 21st century. In the half-light, half-light, we look and see no longer the sun's rays, but the solar masonry. Terrible Where is the exit? What is salvation? Answer given
Thatch masonry demi-light
With a frosty morning connects quietly
Snow.
Not laying k-d-k, but frost, silence. Snow.
What a sound recording: s-s-s-s-s-s-x-s!
Remember the story of the flood, look around, realize what is happening and admire the poet's talent, his gift of foresight. The author believes in the cleansing power of the elements of water, spring renewal. Water will cleanse and protect from sorrows, troubles, delusions, mistakes, temptations, wash the soul, mind, body .. On a frosty morning, water is “... snow that retains the gaze of water” “Ice with window filling” Behind each word is an endless chain of metaphors.
Gaze. Close attention. The intentness of water is tension, continuity, concentration of the primordial element observing what is happening, mother nature, which peers into the world, man. The gaze of water is a criterion of purity, honesty, it is attention to you and your vision of the depths, it is you in everything and everywhere. This is your reflection, clear consciousness Everything is interconnected Snow-water-ice-window-birch sap-glass-ice-water-snow-water-ice-water and further in a circle. For 10 lines 10 words about water
In the second stanza we read “Ice with window filling” - even the metaphors are ambiguous, leading the reader to comparisons: 1) ice floes are like glass, 2) windows are reflected, 3) it is visible through the ice, as through a window. The image of the window is ambiguous - a window between the worlds (real - unreal, material - spiritual, the world of eternity - the world of today)
Birch sap is also a portal between the worlds, the inner, spiritual and outer, material worlds. Childhood impressions of a small homeland and stains of birch sap on the glass of ice. A window within a window, the specularity is created in an off-plot way by a senselessly and brutally wounded birch. When there are stains on the glass of ice, there is no purity, it ceases to serve as a window, an exit to the world of salvation.
The picture of the world is presented in 6 lines: masonry is quiet, a sleepy rustle (although they were wounded), stains on the ice. This is the perception of the world by the lyrical hero, which coincides with the perception of the poet. In the 21st century, the world was like this in the first decade.
Imagery, infinitely deep meaning is seen in stanza 3. “Ice floats in the water like wood” “Wood hints, noisy and mute” The image of a tree, insensible, sleepily rustling with juice, patiently carrying a cross. A political sounding stanza. It is bad to endure, and stupidly make noise, and be silent. It is necessary to return to the roots, not to swim in the water, but to be it.
Ether is an integral world of water (snow, ice, birch sap), air (frost, breath), earth (birch). The author suggests the way out in stanza 4.
“Breathe on the glass ... with a breath”, the snow will melt after a breath. Inhaling on the glass, and the image of the window is the image of parallelism, the connection between the worlds (involvement is emphasized by both verbs of the 2nd person and interrogative intonation), the lyrical hero drowns snow in himself, turns melted ice into water in himself, i.e. loses beauty and amorphous snow and wooden properties of ice. Only water gives wisdom, thoughts flow like water, water soothes, heals. If everything acquires the qualities of water, then the responsibility must be before everything. Unfortunately, the world is not perfect. Like all the verbs in this poem. The author could not get away from this imperfection. But, after analyzing the poem, you can start the path to the origins with yourself
Try to “breathe on the glass” to return from vanity to yourself, so that everything acquires the “gaze of water” ...
As part of the events of the Year of Literature in Russia, on July 11, an event that was imperceptible in form, but grandiose in meaning, took place: the first monument in Russia to the great Russian poet was opened in Tarusa Nikolai Zabolotsky.
The initiator and organizer of the installation of the monument is a philosopher, writer, political scientist Alexander Shchipkov made a speech at the event:
Dear friends!
Allow me to begin the opening ceremony of the monument to the outstanding Russian poet Nikolai Alekseevich Zabolotsky, who spent the last years of his life in Tarusa.
The opening of the monument to Zabolotsky is included in the federal list of events to perpetuate the memory of Russian writers, timed to coincide with the Day of the City of Tarusa and is held as part of the Year of Literature in the Russian Federation.
What is Zabolotsky? This is a mega-phenomenon in Russian culture, which, under the pressure of certain political circumstances, was in the shadows. I won't say now whether it happened by accident or on purpose, it doesn't matter. Repressed talent. During his life, he was physically repressed, and after his death, he was actually ousted from the literary platform.
But Zabolotsky created a new direction in poetry. Literary critics call it the "Bronze Age" of Russian poetry. The "golden age" of Russian poetry - Pushkin's, Lermontov's - is on everyone's lips. The "Silver Age", to which Tarusa is directly related, is also known to everyone. The "Bronze Age" includes poets who were born during the war, these are the children of front-line soldiers.
The concept of "The Bronze Age of Russian Poetry" is an established literary concept. And it belongs to my late friend, the Leningrad poet Oleg Okhapkin. It was he who for the first time, in 1975, formulated this concept in his poem, which is called “The Bronze Age”.
After 1945, after blood, after suffering, after the Leningrad Siege, after the victory over world evil, the game of parlor poetry becomes inappropriate. People's truth and people's suffering are returning to Russian poetry. After 45, Soviet poetry becomes religious poetry.
Listen to Okhapkin:
Krasovitsky, Eremin, Uflyand,
Gleb Gorbovsky, Sosnora, Kushner...
Macintosh, remember, covered
The way of the Lord into living souls.
Rein da Naiman, Joseph Brodsky,
Dmitry Bobyshev and Okhapkin
They broke birch trees before Him,
Armfuls of flowers were laid out.
Okhapkin describes the Trinity, birches are brought to the temple. This is the day of the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles. allegorical comparison. A new spirit descends upon the poets. The spirit of sincerity, non-covetousness, service to the fatherland, and not decadent games in the capital's salons.
And the poets went home.
Those who met God - in peace,
And the merchants scattered around the world
Gold to serve an idol.
dispersedon all roads.
We went to all the thresholds,
And on bronzed faces
Quietly the Bronze Age burned.
But our poetry is bronze
It will stand menacingly over the car,
Spread seraphically
Fiery soul composition
And again about the 45th year:
We stood on those granites.
Where is the sacred speech of the slain
Your ancestors, our lyres
Sanctified the world to come.
Blood and people's sacrifice sanctify art, says Oleg Okhapkin. And concludes:
This bronze is still in the melt.
But the sculptor has the right to cast
To commit to the master's eye.
Remember, understand us!
The poetry of the "Bronze Age" was shaped by the state of scorched by the war. Before the war, there was an incredible number of experiments in poetry, a mass of various directions, a game with form - Nikolai Zabolotsky, who belonged to the Oberiut movement, also paid tribute to this. But after the war, his work is already a completely different poetry.
Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky, who had the subtlest sense of style, language, talent, compared Zabolotsky with Derzhavin and Tyutchev. That is, he put him in the first row of Russian poets. Zabolotsky was one of the first who in his poetry gave impetus to the emergence of poets of the Bronze Age. These are names like Sosnora, Gorbovsky, Kushner, Kublanovskiy, Brodsky, Krivulin, Linen, Okhapkin and others. Nikolai Zabolotsky was much older than the named poets, he was their teacher, their forerunner, as Joseph Brodsky spoke more than once.
Not only he participated in the formation of the poetry of the "Bronze Age". I would bring here more brilliant Alexander Tvardovsky and David Samoilov. But we must honestly admit: Zabolotsky is the first. Its distinguishing feature is openness, a complete lack of play in literature, absolute sincerity, and almost liturgical depth. Zabolotsky opened a completely new post-war page in Russian poetry.
Tarusa - as it is destined for her - was directly related to the origins of the "Silver Age" and in some incredible way is directly related to the "Bronze Age" of Russian poetry - the presence of Nikolai Zabolotsky here.
Here, in Tarusa, the poet-philosopher reached the poetic peak. His writing is absolutely simple and perfect. And filled with evangelical depth:
I'm in the community of washerwomen today
Benefactors of the local husbands.
These people do not crush the bedridden
And the hungry are not chased out.
Having worked age-old calluses,
Turned white in soapy water
Here they do not think about hospitality,
But they do not leave in trouble.
This is said about the Tarusians. This is about Russia.
This is the third monument that our family gives to Tarusa. The first monument to a statesman, Ivan Tsvetaev, who at the beginning of the twentieth century actually played the role of the Minister of Culture, that is, he formed the ideology of the development of culture and laid the foundations for the future meanings of Russia. The second monument is to the commander, defender of the fatherland - the red commander, general Mikhail Efremov. The third monument is to the poet who determined the vector of development of Russian literature of the 20th and 21st centuries. And not only literature, because the concept of the "Bronze Age" will have both a social and political dimension on the way to the revival of Russia.
We are obliged to return the name of Zabolotsky to Russia in full and sound. We are obliged to honor him and say directly that this is Zabolotsky, the first Russian poet of the 20th century. The first poet of the "Bronze Age" of Russia.
Last night, the people of Tarusa came to me and asked me to voice their request - to name the Tarusa Cinema and Concert Complex after Nikolai Zabolotsky. And then here we will open the first museum of the best Russian poet of the 20th century, Nikolai Zabolotsky.
Dear residents of Tarusa, we are handing over this monument for your keeping. Take him under the patronage of the people. Keep it and take care.
The book "The Bronze Age of Russia. View from Tarusa” is dedicated to the difficult process of overcoming the social crisis. The picture of the cultural and political landscape of the country is given as a view from the small Russian town of Tarusa, where the author lives, and where the fates of the military, scientists, writers, and dissidents are intertwined. The ideological and semantic axis of the book is the study of such a unique phenomenon of Russian culture as the Bronze Age, the phenomenon of which goes far beyond literature, being filled with historical and social content. Each chapter of this sincere book reveals to the reader little-known, but no less significant phenomena of Russian life. The reader will find out how many believers there are in Russia and why there are always, at all times, 85% of them, what were the mistakes of the post-Soviet intelligentsia, what are the origins of modern Nazism and why there is a synthesis of left and conservative ideas. This is a collection of texts about Russian culture, religion and politics. All of them, with the exception of the introductory one, are written in the form of an interview, which facilitates the perception of sometimes complex ideas and makes them accessible to the widest range of readers. The book was published on the initiative and with the support of the World Russian People's Council.
* * *
The following excerpt from the book Bronze Age of Russia. View from Tarusa (A. V. Shchipkov, 2015) provided by our book partner - the company LitRes.
Bronze Age and axiomodern
(instead of preface)
In the almost legendary "nineties", against the background of the curtailment of long-term cultural projects, "club style" flourished. Touching cozy poetry festivals and small conferences were held at which Brodsky was discussed (“ah, not so long ago he was only in samizdat”) and the Silver Age (“oh, he was completely underestimated”). They hurried to correct the historical injustice - and underestimate it.
The Silver Age, despite its decadent "tonality", was perceived as a standard and a kind of matrix for the coming renaissance. The subtext was as follows: the cultural field has been scorched by totalitarianism, so we must mentally return to the last “fat” years for culture, and this is the beginning of the century. And then a new flowering is possible. That's where they stood.
Meanwhile, the literary process in the post-Soviet "new" Russia was becoming less and less prestigious and in demand. New literary awards like the Russian Booker became a brawl and a field of clan squabbles within the "tusovka" - in those years, the very word "tusovka" was considered almost an attribute of respectability. The writing class was doomed to work for an increasingly narrow circle, and the humanitarian community essentially found itself in a cultural ghetto, but preferred to consider itself an elite closed club. It was psychologically easier that way.
The mythology necessary for the moment was built, which influenced, among other things, the spectrum of interests. Priority was given to phenomena that, in one way or another, were silenced and discriminated against in Soviet times.
Glory to Leo. Historical counterpoint
The idea of the Bronze Age was conceptualized by the poet Slava Lyon, a collector, researcher and archivist of modern Russian poetry. He appeared at humanitarian meetings, offering the public a carefully constructed scheme according to which, in his opinion, this poetry developed. He convincingly drew this scheme on whatman paper. All currents, schools and "schools" were marked there - from textbook symbolism-acmeism to modern conceptualism and qualityism.
It followed from Len's scheme that from 1953 to 1989 the Bronze Age continued in Russia - a new era when poetry again mastered the lost deep and universal meanings. Then I could not yet fully appreciate the accuracy and depth of this concept; this happened a little later.
After the Silver Age, a special period follows, associated, in particular, with futurism. In my opinion, futurism is a transitional state: no longer silver, not yet bronze. Rather, a kind of burnout of the melting furnace. Dynamic pause in the change of epochs.
This intermediate position did not prevent futurism and constructivism from killing the aesthetics of the Silver Age. The lace of decadence spread and burned in the fire of the futuristic domain.
But that was just a prelude.
The Bronze Age itself begins in the 1950s. It is brought to life by many factors. This is both a natural weakening of the poetic influences of the beginning of the century, and war. "Get up, huge country!"... - there is no time for sparks of snow on the teeth of acmeism. And the Victory of 1945, which created in the minds of people the image of a holy collective sacrifice. And the death of Stalin with the end of the hard ideological "freeze".
Under normal conditions, all this could well have ended in the flowering of religious lyrics - but not in the conditions of the USSR and the ongoing anti-religious persecution. Khrushchev's electoral "thaw", of course, did not apply to everyone and did not "discover" all topics. Nevertheless, poetry at this time receives a charge of new sacredness and new sincerity; poets again learn to speak about heavenly, not momentary things, albeit without obvious biblical motives.
This sacredness could have an impact in different ways and for a very long time - throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Here is a simple example. Once in the 1970s, the legendary David Samoilov sharply scolded the young poet Vladimir Burich, almost denying him the right to write poetry, for these lines:
The world is filled
post-war people
post-war things
found among the letters
bar of pre-war soap
didn't know what to do
Obviously, Samoilov was touched by the unbearable ease with which Burich, with his imposing vers libre, touched on the military theme. She was like a shot.
Where does the sense of blasphemy come from? The fact is that the theme of war for a person of the "bronze" period has a special meaning. This theme is comparable to the crucifixion motif, although the comparison could not be directly stated. But at a deep level, it was read. A person with historical citizenship of the Silver Age - and such remained until the end of the Soviet period - would have treated this text much more calmly. I would weigh it on the scales of aesthetic feeling and leave it alone. This is the difference.
Oleg Okhapkin. New sacredness
The concept of the "bronze" era was compiled by the aforementioned Slava Lyon on the basis of sources located in the literary space itself. The Bronze Age is largely a poetic self-name. Today, its chronology is built automatically - take it and use it. As, for example, Irina Sidorenko:
And the golden age intoxicates -
There's a Boldino autumn
Leaf rustle of battles
At the Nerchinsk churchyard ...
Age of silver ringing:
Wine and opium - in lines!
Snow baptizes into death! -
"Hurrah" - human dots ...
And bronze! - like revenge
For a million violence.
Let's return the beauty and honor?
And the spinal cord - without rot?
These are current rehashes that have already become familiar. And the collective ode to the Bronze Age began in 1975 with a poem by my friend, the magnificent Oleg Okhapkin, which was called “The Bronze Age”:
He plucked the superfluous from the Temple.
Traded talent to
The Almighty reigned in the hearts,
And in the merchants - the spirit of the womb.
And the poets went home.
Those who met God - in peace,
And the merchants scattered around the world
Gold to serve an idol.
Scattered on all roads.
We went to all the thresholds,
And on bronzed faces
Quietly the Bronze Age burned.
Okhapkin is talking about the poets who were touched by Christ - they again felt God's breath. They brought back to life the religious component that was lost in decadence, rejected in futurism and carefully disguised in Soviet literature. Although after the war, this feeling stirred up. In the Okhapka "Bronze Age" there is even a list of the names of his brothers in the shop, who cast their poems into "bronze":
Krasovitsky, Eremin, Uflyand,
Gleb Gorbovsky, Sosnora, Kushner...
Macintosh, remember, covered
The way of the Lord into living souls.
Rein da Naiman, Joseph Brodsky,
Dmitry Bobyshev and Okhapkin
They broke birch trees before Him,
Armfuls of flowers were laid out.
That we can hardly fix the stanza,
If we list them all in a row.
Kupriyanov Boris and Victor
Shirali ... Stratanovsky, who
Don't remember them! Without them
It would be sad. Tell Serezha...
Chaygin, Earl...maybe. Lyon or someone
From others: Velichansky, or
Who else, but opened the gate
the whole procession. Thanks to all.
And when He entered our hearts.
We crowded before Him.
But they became a squad, a clan.
Slightly His whips whistled.
It is easy to see that in these "saints" there is no "official opposition", there is not a single poet of the Polytechnic University. And this is natural. Take, for example, Andrei Voznesensky. Incredibly talented. But which way is he going? He plays futurism, publishes the Triangular Pear. Because Mayakovsky is a symbol, and imitation of him gave carte blanche to experiment within certain limits. But in fact it was a step back, not forward.
And Oleg Okhapkin lists those who were ready to seriously testify about the world before God. And yet to list all of them is not enough verse. But the main contemporaries of the century have already been named, and the future compilers of the anthology are relieved of the need to once again crawl into reference books.
Okhapkin clearly and confidently draws the line separating his “bronze” era from the previous “silver” one. But he does this not in the main text, but outside it, in the epigraph, thus creating a poetic "frame". For the epigraph, lines are taken from Anna Akhmatova's Poem Without a Hero, the undisputed queen of the previous century:
An arch was blackening on Galernaya.
In Summer, the weather vane sang subtly,
And the silver moon is bright
Frozen over the Silver Age.
It's like writing in the margins. In the poem "The Bronze Age" Okhapkin also plays with the theme of the arch ("On the Galernaya blazed arch") - a through connection of times? It turns out: connection - through repulsion.
Fight for recognition
Actually, it was Oleg Okhapkin who created the concept of the Bronze Age, felt it and gave it a name. Of course, all this is not enough. To define the scope of the phenomenon professionally, and not poetically, someone was needed who would be able to go beyond the limits of the poetic workshop. Slava Lyon became this person. In practice, he rendered the descendants the same service that Nikolai Otsup once rendered them, who staked out the name of the neighboring era in his article “The Silver Age of Russian Poetry”, first published in 1933 in the Parisian magazine “Numbers”.
But the large-scale poetic anthology "The Bronze Age of Russian Poetry", compiled by Lyon, was published only in 2013 (The Bronze Age of Russian Poetry. - St. Petersburg: BBM, 2013). Moreover, the fate of all that large-scale work with the heritage of the Bronze Age, which the author carried out for many years in a row, turned out to be difficult. This is now Lenov's concept - an accomplished scientific fact. And in the 1990s, the educational activities of Slava Lyon caused different reactions among post-perestroika humanitarians. So, at one of the literary disputes, one philologist sarcastically objected to Len, suggesting changing the time scale on his diagram to "degrees of increasing degrees." The objection, perhaps witty, but clearly not to the point ... At different times I had to meet other objections. For example, that, they say, the concept of the “Bronze Age” affirms the idea of deterioration and degradation: after the Bronze and Iron Ages, there should be “bad” centuries without a name.
These arguments reveal the cultural chauvinism of the newest cultural bureaucracy. Firstly, denying the Bronze Age the right to be called that because of the supposedly downward appraisal, the Silver Age was willingly left the same right. Although "silver" is also symbolically less valuable than gold. And logic tells us: the objection to the “bronze” rebounds on silver as well. The conclusion is simple: it is necessary either to completely get rid of the scale of descending assessments and abolish the names of all eras, or, preserving it, give the Bronze Age general rights. But that doesn't happen. What is possible for "silver", that is impossible for "bronze". The "silver reserve" of Russian literature should supposedly be considered inexhaustible.
However, the Bronze Age does not have to be considered less "valuable" than its historical forerunner. Rather the opposite. Silver is a cold metal. Bronze is warm. It's like she keeps a piece of gold in herself. He strives in his own way to depict the fullness and warmth of being characteristic of the "golden" period. That is, it inherits the classical values of the Golden Age, albeit through a generation. Silver has a different task: perfection, symmetry, polished language. The game of forms and meanings from which the word "Eternity" must be composed. But not more.
People with systems thinking showed interest in Lehn's concept, but the high-profile humanities did not like it at all. If only because they already had their own generalizing schemes and no one wanted to share the honorary role of the creators of definitions. Lenovsky's approach was clearly dissonant with what had already been accepted and elevated to the canon.
According to this canon, the history of Russian poetry, and culture as a whole, was viewed as if through the prism of the Silver Age. And this century was prescribed to last and never end - to continue forever, even in the form of conscious and unconscious imitation, which, in general, was based on some objective facts of literary reality. After all, no one will undertake to deny the traces of the strong influence of Tsvetaeva in the poems of Bella Akhmadulina or the following of Mayakovsky by Andrei Voznesensky. Another thing is that this “fading silver” line in literature was, to put it mildly, not the only one. But the curators of the cultural process simply did not need any other. The museum's attitude to culture won. The Silver Age was to last as long as the world stands.
And the rest must wait for this protracted decadent age to end.
Party organization and party literature
It is probably superfluous to say that the leaders of the new generation of leaders in the humanities exactly reproduced the Soviet model of attitude towards culture, oriented towards the elimination of everything ideologically alien. Everything "seasoned" and fit for consumption is taken into account, the rest is ignored. The new people in the humanitarian sphere fought actively for influence with the former Soviet institutions, but continued to think and act within the old paradigm. It's just that this paradigm was appropriated by them or, if you like, privatized, in a word - turned over and remade for themselves.
In connection with this censorship-ideological shifter, it is necessary to say a few words about the so-called "Soviet literature". In fact, in my deep conviction, such literature did not exist. There was and is Russian literature of the Soviet period. “Soviet literature” is a myth that was initially beneficial to the Soviet government, and then to its opponents. He helped to separate the comfortable from the uncomfortable, the lambs from the goats.
The concept of "poet of the Silver Age" over time began to play exactly the same role: from a term it turned into a sign of quality. More specifically, goodness. It has become synonymous with "poet of the first grade." At the same time, Tvardovsky, Samoilov, Slutsky or Bagritsky were considered lower class poets. It was even more difficult with the underground poets who formed in the Soviet era. With this approach, it is obvious that the Bronze Age was not needed and uninteresting for literary leaders both in the Soviet and post-Soviet periods.
In the Soviet era, this was approved by the administrative order. In the 1990s, it was different - by means of media influence, since the principle has already come into force: if you are not in the information field, you are not at all. One way or another, the allergy to “non-systemic” cultural phenomena remained a form of ideology in the “new” Russia as well.
At first, I thought that “responsible” people just really didn’t want to mess with a new pile of literary facts. Later I realized that the reasons are much deeper. The instinctive rejection of any talk about the Bronze Age is not a manifestation of academic obscurantism. The fact is that this formulation of the question breaks the ready-made scenario of cultural studies. Within this scenario, the Silver Age is something like "axial time" or "reference point". The Matrix of the Silver Age - no offense to its admirers will be said - has become a new ideological standard for the enlightened public.
This matrix was imposed with the help of an elementary substitution. The Silver Age - certainly the most interesting and rich in artistic discoveries period of Russian culture - was used in a completely uncharacteristic function - as an ideological frame. To do this, it was necessary to move its upper limit forward as far as possible along the historical scale, implicitly inscribing in this segment something that simply could not relate to it, a different cultural reality.
Protests were not accepted. They rejected with the help of emotional argumentation: “Well, how can you! The beginning of the century is our everything. And in a few years, imagine: the Bolshevik turmoil, collapse, the dark ages of barbarism. The tragic collision "the flowering of the Silver Age against the Bolshevik barbarism" spread from the beginning of the century to our time.
In other words, the model of divided historical time, the model of "breaking tradition" was used for the second time. At first, she was in demand by the Soviet officialdom. Then, already from the opposite end - the liberal "anti-Soviet" officialdom, which came out of the same Soviet overcoat.
delayed era. New frosts
Few people were lucky enough to understand what was happening to the end at that time. Only now it becomes clear that the adherents of "historical decadence" froze the movement of culture.
In Russia, there is an exotic historiosophical tradition that describes the line of national development as a succession of "frosts" and "thaws". From these positions, if desired, you can explain anything. Thus, the Silver Age took place in a situation of relative “freezes” (1905–1916). But the period of the late 1990s against the background of the “thaw” of the 1980s meant “freezes”, including for the culture itself, which was simply completely marginalized. And the shock therapy with the destruction of the industry, the shooting from tanks in 1993, the infamous “letter of the 42s”, which in terms of concentration of hatred was not inferior to the collective appeals of the Stalin era - all this allows us to talk not about a thaw, but about new large-scale frosts that not finished even now.
The illusion of a thaw turned into an ice age. But if those old-time frosts did not seem to interfere with culture, and a fig in your pocket even developed the ability to metaphorize, then the current cold has led to the freezing of aesthetic sprouts to the very roots. There was a freeze of those growth points that were supposed to sprout in the "nineties" - "zero". But they didn't. This is our delayed Bronze Age.
After all, how did they argue at the end of perestroika? Right now, the noose of Marxism-Leninism will be pulled off science - and it will flourish. Humanitarians will freely educate the nation, pursue a high cultural policy... The noose was removed, but the morning did not come. Rather, on the contrary. If in the USSR humanitarians were controlled ideologically, in the 1990s they were simply thrown out of the borders of the “brave new world”, making them superfluous people. The musicians of the metropolitan orchestras had to become bombers and shuttles ... The names of Lotman, Likhachev and others faded in the minds of an intelligent man in the street. Because when the national culture was put under the knife, they did not stand up for it. So in Russia what happened in the West is usually called the betrayal of intellectuals.
The same is true in poetry. In the 1990s, its development stopped, as if it had been artificially delayed. After Krivulin, Okhapkin, Brodsky... The Bronze Age did not give rise to figures comparable in scale. It lasted but rarely bore fruit. This happened, apparently, due to the “freeze” of the 1990s, due to which the development of the Bronze Age was artificially delayed, and the prestige of high culture in society as a whole was artificially underestimated.
And this situation continues to this day.
It is easy to explain the vers libre fashion that spread in the 1990s and 2000s. Only by working on free verse could one come to the attention of Western Slavists. And these were not the free verses that were composed during the time of it by the French symbolists. Here the main task is to replace poetic speech with fragments of everyday, profane speech. At the same time, expanding as much as possible, which means canceling the boundaries of the aesthetic. Thus, under absolute monarchies in the 16th century, the boundaries of the historical were lost. Everything was “recorded” in history: what foot the monarch got up with, what color shoes he put on and what he ate for lunch. "This is history worthy!" exclaimed the court chroniclers. Everything was worthy of history. But everything means nothing. So the history of the state turned into something like the Marlezon ballet on the theme of royal thrush hunting ...
Or take the youth subculture of the 1990s. This is also decadence, only very mundane. The youth subculture was consumerist, tied to the club industry with a dance-drug repertoire. And next to them are visiting Western stars, who were released in circulation at home, but play with pleasure for “these Russians”. Everything seems to move - and everything stands still.
Victim. Return to history
That the Bronze Age is not only a literary, but also a socio-historical concept, it became clear to me a little later.
A dramatic story connected with Victory Park in St. Petersburg played its role here. In Victory Park, the townspeople wanted to build a temple on the site where the Blockade crematorium stood. For 15 years they were hindered by the city authorities. This combination, this grandiose resonance - the memory of the victims and martyrs of the war and the memory of the sacrifice of the New Testament - for the first time illuminated for me the whole essence of the Bronze Age as a new era. It was a return to the moral depths of the Russian tradition, where every sacrifice is a reminder of His sacrifice. Thus, the historical gap between the Soviet and pre-revolutionary traditions grew, different parts of the people's body gathered together. It was a return to deeper meanings. “So this is what the Bronze Age is,” I thought then.
I will not go into detail about how the townspeople put up a cross on the site of the future temple, how this cross was burned and uprooted by shawarma merchants - the new masters of life, with whom the newest fans of Russian decadence got along well at that time. But the temple was built. Have achieved. For me, this is one of the most important milestones of our Bronze Age. This connection is especially relevant now, when fascism has been rehabilitated and legalized at the international level.
And then I again felt the joy of Victory over fascism as an echo of another Victory - the Son of Man over death. This synthesis is a pass for our return to History. The return begins with a moral consensus in society, and the most important subject of consensus is one's own history.
View from Tarusa
Subsequently, I saw how difficult this consensus is - on the example of the life of small Russian cities, first of all - my native Tarusa. And here, too, I have observed and continue to observe signs of a delayed epoch, which should have come long ago, but is not yet coming. Paustovsky also raised the topic of saving small towns. And Rasputin's "Farewell to Matyora" seemed to set off this theme.
My favorite tiny Tarusa. Model of Greater Russia. Polenov, Borisov-Musatov, Vatagin, Tsvetaev, Paustovsky, Zabolotsky, Richter lived and left their mark here ... I saw a man crying near the monument to General Efremov, putting his hand on the bronze inscription "Not to betray the Motherland and the soldier." And how many more sons Tarusa gave to the Great Patriotic War, Afghanistan, Chernobyl ...
The concept of Tarusa's development was changing, reflecting the seething of all of Russia like in a drop of water. At the break of 1991, the idea was circulating to make the dissident theme of the 101st kilometer the main trend. The poetess Tatyana Melnikova called Tarusa a “dissident capital,” and indeed, “political” people lived here in dozens, if not hundreds, in different years: status Alexander Ginzburg, Larisa Bogoraz and less well-known, such as my favorite, a woman of a desperate character Valentina Efimovna Mashkova. Solzhenitsyn and Amalrik, Marchenko and Osipov, Kovalev and Balakhonov, Gorbanevskaya and Krakhmalnikova roamed the streets of Tarusa... And here it should be said that Soviet dissidence, no matter how harsh it may sound, is also bohemia, closely connected with cultural bohemia. On the one hand, Sakharov and Sinyavsky. On the other hand, Averintsev and Glazunov. Their own code, their own dissident ethics, "dynastic" dissident marriages. But this is a topic for a separate discussion.
The museum-dissident concept did not take root. It was supplanted by the theme of "Russian Barbizon". And cultural construction, as expected, went under the veil of the Silver Age. So it was in Greater Russia, so it was in our small town on the banks of the majestic Oka, carrying its waters in Time from the Golden Age to the Silver and further to the Bronze.
Zabolotsky. Keys to the Bronze Age
Nikolai Zabolotsky is perhaps the most mysterious celebrity of the Soviet period of Russian literature. The author of the famous "Columns", at first an oberiut, then a traditionalist, Zabolotsky spent the last two years of his life in Tarusa. Only today we are beginning to realize that this is not just a wonderful Russian poet, but also the discoverer of an entire era. It was he who became the connecting link of pre-war and post-war lyrics and the founder of the poetic explosion of the 1960s-1970s, opening the gates to the Bronze Age for us. He himself was melted down - to use the "metal" metaphor - during the camp period. His poetry is completely different. And this speaks of his great talent.
Here he is, as befits a "bronze" poet, throwing a bridge to the Golden Age. In this case, in the poem "The Lonely Oak" - to the famous Pushkin's "Anchar".
Bad Ground: Too Knotty
And this oak, and there is no splendor
in its branches. Some rags
They stick out on it and rustle deafly.
But tightly twisted joints
He developed so much that it seems to hit -
And he will sing the bell of glory,
And amber will drip from the trunk.
Look at him: he is important and calm
Among their lifeless plains.
Who says that in the field he is not a warrior?
He is a warrior in the field, even alone.
That's right. The religious impulse, the desire for a witness to the world is transmitted from the Golden to the Bronze Age. Through a generation. Over Silver - cold and indifferent. And Zabolotsky even seems to be arguing with Pushkin: instead of the tree of death, he draws the tree of life.
In the end, Zabolotsky comes to sub-religiousness in his work. In his poems, the subjection of the world to a higher law becomes tangible. At the same time, he does not break away from the folk soil that gave birth to him. Here he writes poems about the "Pigeon Book", recalling the story of "truth and falsehood." That is, about justice. After all, justice is the basis, the moral center of the Russian tradition.
And I hear a familiar saying
How the truth called falsehood to battle,
How falsehood overcame, and the peasants
Since then, they live offended by fate.
Only far away on the ocean-sea,
On a white stone, in the middle of the waters,
Shining book in golden dress,
Beams resting on the sky.
But seven seals are hung on it,
And seven animals guard that book,
And she was ordered to be silent until then,
Until the seals fall into the abyss.
The poet peers into the souls of people, appearing on their faces (“On the beauty of human faces”):
There are faces like magnificent portals
Where everywhere the great is seen in the small.
There are faces - the likeness of miserable shacks,
Where the liver is cooked and the abomasum gets wet.
Other cold, dead faces
Closed with bars, like a dungeon.
Others are like towers in which
Nobody lives and looks out the window.
But I once knew a small hut,
She was unsightly, not rich,
But from her window on me
The breath of a spring day flowed.
Truly the world is both great and wonderful!
There are faces - the likeness of jubilant songs.
From these, like the sun, shining notes
Compiled a song of heavenly heights.
Nikolai Zabolotsky comes after the Silver Age, but comes before Okhapkin and his contemporaries. It was he who got the keys to the Bronze Age. He became the ancestor of a new sincerity and a new depth. This is a liturgical feeling, as it were, "stirred" in the world. Experiencing it, the poet involuntarily becomes a missionary. He has something to say seriously - not to the public that sits in the hall, but on top of their heads. This is an imperceptible prophecy.
Zabolotsky felt it. And at the same time, I felt all the shades of the Russian mentality, emasculated in the Soviet era. This was one of the reasons why the poet was innocently convicted.
It is not clear why Zabolotsky's poems have not yet been elevated to the proper rank. After all, other literary “victims of the regime” received their “respect” in the 1990s. The discoverer of the Bronze Age is inconvenient for those who believe that the 20th century must correspond to the image of an imposing, decadent, chilly Russia. Although the "rehearsal" of the Bronze Age is noticeable among some centenarians of the Silver Age. In particular, in Boris Pasternak we find a special warmth of involvement. And vice versa: we see coldness, emasculation of religious images in the brilliant Tsvetaeva with her self-centered lyrical heroine. But the bearers of the split consciousness that was formed in the 1990s stubbornly orient themselves to the cultural situation of the early 20th century, to everything that grew out of the mycelium of artistic cabarets and “gatherings”.
Why do we talk about the Silver Age much more than about the Golden Age? The humanitarian elite pretends that both Akhmatova and Pasternak are prolonging this century, and they are even trying to fasten the obviously “bronze” Joseph Brodsky into the same place. There can be no "after" - only echoes.
This is how the eternal and unshakable cultural agenda is formulated. This is how culture-chauvinism is formed, from the point of view of which only that which preserves continuity from the era of poetic salons or imitates the great ones is valuable.
The establishment strategy is aimed at blocking cultural phenomena that by their nature are not integrated into the authoritarian-simulative model of an "optimized" culture. This model resorts to endless mythologization, uses informational suggestion and linguistic aggression as tools, and replaces full-fledged communication with PR. So the creative class, seeking to maintain hegemony, clings to the crumbling idols of corporate society.
People with this social profile inevitably reproduce a lukewarm "tolerant" model of society, devoid of genuine aesthetic demands.
Axiomodern
The Silver Age is not only poetry. Crystalline silver, fragility, coldness and soullessness ended in a revolution. And from the end of the 20th century, a revival, a renaissance, began. The Bronze Age began - a return and revival.
But for us, the witnesses of the "millennium", the Bronze Age is very late. It began in the work of Zabolotsky, Samoilov and other poets of the post-war period, the "St. Petersburg school", Oleg Okhapkin, Joseph Brodsky. But he did not have time to fully come into his own, did not become the foundation of Russian culture in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It was suspended by new political "frosts" and cultural marginalization, the collapse of public space, the betrayal and self-dissolution of the intelligentsia, and the decline in the prestige of the humanitarian professions.
Attentive observers speak of the archaization of culture, of the "new savagery". But what is the Bronze Age if not an opportunity to jump out of this infernal funnel?
“The Bronze Age of our poetry will acquire terminological meaningfulness if we see that modern poets, faced with the cruel fact of desacralization of artistic speech, begin to remember their ancient priestly task and take up poetry not as an aristocratic divertissement of the Golden Age or melodramatic eccentricity of the Silver Age - but as a sacrificial spiritual the practice of the Bronze Age, which gave birth, among others, to Orpheus and Orion,” wrote Andrey Novikov-Lanskoy several years ago in the article “Apology of Bronze”.
It's like that. Although much more preferable, this wish would look like being recoded within the framework of the biblical symbolic series.
Today, the social order based on rigid elitism is breaking down. Therefore, we have reason to hope for a "defrosting" of cultural processes that were previously subjected to total commercialization, economic, and what's there - and political censorship.
It is noteworthy that it is my Tarusa, who, by erecting a monument to the Bronze Age “keykeeper” Nikolai Zabolotsky, confirms that we are entering the era axiomodern. This is the state of society, which combines a sense of "modernity", "new time" (known from the period of modernity), universalism, the unity of the picture of the world and traditional moral values.
Society faces the need to dismantle the entire postmodern culture. What will replace?
The new model of culture is called differently: post-information society, post-conceptualism, post-secularism, new traditionalism. We call her axiomodern.
One way or another, a new marking of the cultural space and new rules of the game await us. The new paradigm differs from the old one by the priority of integrity, life by the same rules. And that presupposes a new social contract. From the bookish concept of the Enlightenment philosophers, it can turn into reality. But his goal will be egalitarian cultural and social models.