Viktor Toporov. Long live the world without me! Victor Toporov What are you, countrymen? The literary community has lost a mirror that could not only hint, but say in plain text that someone has a “crooked face”, according to a well-known saying

COUNTRYMANS The sharp, slightly rattling voice of the loudspeaker flew around the waiting passengers. They instantly started up, began to fuss when they heard about the beginning of landing, and together went to the plane. Among them was Agrippina Vasilievna, a hunched old woman, with a wrinkled,

Viktor Toporov

"Hard Rotation"

To the question "What is your profession?" I don't have a clear answer. In any case, one and only. A Germanist philologist, as it says on a university degree? Literary and film critic? TV reviewer? Essayist? Columnist? Political publicist? Poet? Prose writer? Translator of poetry and prose? Publisher? Teacher? Founder of literary awards and public organizations? The gray-haired master or not disdainful " wet business» godfather? Ruler of thoughts or "pique vest"?

Sometimes they call me a professional brawler (in all of the above fields and in addition in everyday life), but this, of course, is slander. Scandalous my creative behavior looks only in the conditions of the universal, to put it mildly, Through the Looking-Glass. The definition of "cursing philosopher" (as Sergei Shnurov called me) is good, especially from his lips, but also inaccurate. They compared me even with Vasily Vasilyevich Rozanov and even with Archpriest Avvakum, compared with Spinoza and Uriel D "Acosta - but let it remain on the conscience of the then flatterers. They compared with Belinsky and (more often) with Burenin; they regularly titled Moska barking at the Elephant (on a herd of Elephants), and to the extent of multi-stage idiocy, they repeatedly played up my “talking” surname. words".

From the side, of course, it is more visible. Especially if you judge offended and biased. Therefore, we will stick to strict facts. First of all, I am, as it has recently become customary to say, a newspaper writer. At least, it is in this capacity that I appear on the pages of the book brought to your attention. Here are collected (or rather, selected) articles and feuilletons over the past three years, first published in the Political Journal, the St. Petersburg magazine City, the electronic newspaper Vzglyad, the monthly Petersburg. On Nevsky" and a number of others. In all these publications, I publish articles and columns on a regular basis (sometimes once a week, sometimes less often) from year to year and I focus on the intended audience of each thematically and, last but not least, stylistically. When the audience coincides, when it doesn't, this is how the first intersections (but also the first discrepancies) appear, movement arises - both translational and rotational - rotation occurs. But not yet a rigid rotation - meanwhile, my book is called that way.

The term that became the name is borrowed from the practice of music TV channels. Rigid (or, more often, hot) rotation is the regular, to the point of importunity, inclusion of the same songs and clips in the program. (On television, such a rotation, as a rule, is paid, but in our comparison this is not relevant, because everything is paid for on television.) In this book, the same plots, the same names, the same the same topics; are repeated from article to article within each of the five sections and from section to section. Key expressions, important images, illustrative examples are repeated. Evaluations and thoughts are repeated - however, each time being specified, concretized and acquiring new connotations. They are repeated, gradually forming into a general (and, if you like, universal) picture.

In book form, all articles included in the book are published here for the first time. They are printed with minimal discrepancies compared to the first publications in periodicals: where a word that hastily escaped has been removed, where, on the contrary, a couple of lines have been restored, removed by a reinsured editor, or even a layout designer, where a typo, inaccuracy or stylistic error has been corrected. However, all these cases are isolated; there are about the same number of footnotes that also first appeared in the book. The texts collected in the book were not subjected to opportunistic revision or updating - for this I answer with my head. In the end, the collection included about a third of what I wrote and published in three years - and the articles, which in my opinion are outdated today, simply did not make it into the book.

The material of the book is organized thematically into sections, and within each section the articles are arranged not in chronological (or reverse chronological) and not in thematic, but in alphabetical order. Moreover, the sections themselves follow each other alphabetically. Such is, you know, a tough rotation, such is, I beg your pardon, know-how. Of course, the organization of the material alphabetically is a purely formal technique, but this is exactly what I needed to emphasize the internal unity of articles that differ chronologically, thematically, and sometimes genre. It was needed, not least, to emphasize the internal unity of the sections devoted to different aspects of our life.

The "Diagonal of Power" contains articles on, relatively speaking, political topics. The conditionality of the definition itself (ironically fixed already in the title) is explained by the fact that we are talking here not so much about politics - and we don’t have any politics at all! - how much about the reflection of what, due to a misunderstanding, is reputed to be politics in the philistine (that is, in ours with you, reader) consciousness. What has been instilled in us for years or, on the contrary, hushed up, is tested here, first of all, for elementary common sense.

Both in politics and in art, it is now customary to think: if you are not in the “box”, then you do not exist in nature. And the second section of the book - television criticism in the broadest sense - is therefore naturally called "The Box Game". Some of the talking heads move to this section from the “Diagonal of Power”, and many others will pop up more than once, as on the screen (“Heads pop up on the screen, like air bubbles,” the American poet wrote half a century ago) in further sections of the book.

Between the (absent) political and virtual television life, on the one hand, and the gardens of belles lettres, on the other, there is a kind of twilight zone, the extremely diverse inhabitants of which cannot be defined even theoretically, because they are united only by a categorical unwillingness to assume strict forms and at least to some extent outlined contours; in my book they (and the section devoted to them) are called "Unnaturals". Realizing some riskiness of this name, I will clarify in advance that we are talking here not only about “people of the moonlight”, and the author of this formula (still the same Rozanov) called “people of the moonlight” not only adherents of same-sex love, although, of course, and them too.

Non-naturals (although, of course, they are not alone) often write poetry and prose. The main Writer of the Russian Land, in fact, is a certain Pupkin (more precisely, the collective Pupkin), who traditionally takes not by skill, but by number. The section "Praise to Pupkin" includes articles about the current domestic literature. Pupkin has been reading me with particular interest and prejudice for fifteen years already, and takes offense at me more often, and most importantly, more strongly than anyone else. And once he even threw a lovingly looped rope into my mailbox. And only occasionally - in a clumsy attempt to get rid of resentment - sighs sadly: “What can you do! Toporov is the orderly of the forest! But our literature is not a forest, but a jungle - and the “Order of the Jungle” is called the one devoted mainly to controversy final section books.

On August 9, 2016, V. L. Toporov, a poet, translator, publisher, a passionate and biased participant in the Russian literary process, could have turned 70

Text: Mikhail Wiesel/Year of Literature.RF
Photo from LJ philologist

V. L. Toporov(1946 - 2013) translated prose and poetry from English and German all his life. Not surprisingly, he also wrote original poetry. Surprisingly different: what

he categorically refused to print them during his lifetime, although he willingly read in a friendly circle - and bequeathed to do this after his death.

Therefore, the introduction to the first book of poems and translations by Viktor Toporov "Long live the world without me!"(the title is borrowed from the last entry left by Toporov on Facebook), written by his daughter, begins with the words: "The later this book came out, the better."

But she appeared when she appeared. Sudden death Viktor Leonidovich August 21 2013 turned out to be a shock not only for his many friends and students (for simplicity, let's designate his friends who are sons and daughters in age), but also for the equally numerous ill-wishers (not to say "enemies") who could not forgive him categorical, sometimes even deliberate unwillingness to comply with the generally accepted rules of literary decency, bestial instinct for falsehood and conjuncture, draped in robes of progressiveness and relevance.

The literary community has lost a mirror that could not only hint, but say in plain text that someone has a “crooked face”, as the well-known saying goes.

The National Bestseller award, invented by him when he was the editor-in-chief of the Limbus-Press publishing house, and will remain. will remain “thousands of lines by Blake and Bredero, German and Austrian expressionists, in a word, just enough to be accepted into the Union of Soviet Writers ten times, approximately as many times at the reception he was failed miserably by envious colleagues”, according to the leading site "Age of Translation" Evgeny Vitkovsky. And now the original poems of the poet Viktor Toporov will also be included in circulation.

Texts and cover provided by the Limbus-Press publishing house

The Horde does not sleep until the khans lie down.
After all, the entire Horde is the vanguard.
Tomorrow we will be, guys, lifeless.
And now sleep while the khans sleep.

They sat with the princes yesterday.
In six tents, koumiss flowed like a river.
Lamb carcasses, fat shot, twirled.
And only in the seventh they were sad, shutting themselves up.

The night has come - Tatar, dear.
The moon entered, like a checker, into her palm.
Why are you laughing, my horse, not knowing the way?
Not yet blood, not time, not fire.

You, girl, be gentle with me on the road.
On this we stand, tireless.
There, in Rus', it is not serene again.
Oh, motherfucking, how can we subdue them!

Let's rush into the open field with an honest geek.
And we meet only a futile cry.
In Europe, they know about the wild Mongolian.
Only in Rus' it is known how wild it is.

It is, of course, stone castles.
Vigilantes, spare regiments.
We will cut, we will cut down, we will destroy without mercy.
Let's burn the country from the Vistula to the Oka.

Do not ask for earrings from such a case.
Don't wait for cloth, bitch, or cows.
I'll be back, okay. Wow, fucked up
And podkhanyata kicked up from the carpets.
1981

Georg Game
(1887–1914)
DAMN TO BIG CITIES

1
Crowned with a dead head
And with a black banner the white gates
Silently dissolve. dawn,
The dawn is flooded with miserable light,

A terrible picture is visible behind them:
Rain, sewage, stuffiness and mucus,
Gusts of wind and gasoline fumes
They merged into a whirl of noiseless lightning.

And, flabby, monstrous volumes,
The naked breasts of the city lie
In powdery spots - right up to the window -
And breathe the rust of the sky, and tremble.

And - booths abandoned for the night -
In the rays of the moon, only more clearly black,
Iron idols frozen,
In a senseless escape directed.

(Along the street in the bald patches of dawn
Vrashkachku woman, touched by ashes,
Wandering under the hooting of the clarinet -
It is played by a demon-possessed dwarf.

Behind her, like a chain, a mob drags
Silenced men,
And the dwarf plays drunkenly and bloody -
Lame grey-bearded baboon.

Down the river, in the halls and in the nets,
In the dens of darkness and in the twilight of the caves,
In the dump of the streets, in the pits and swamps,
Where the night is like day, and the day is like midnight, sir, -

Shines like a golden stream, depravity.
The child, sucking, sinks its teeth into the chest.
The old man, squealing, climbed into the girl's ass,
Burned by the desire to flutter -

Like a butterfly over a bush. Above the rose
Beats blood from the womb. Sodom is coming.
Virginity is killed by an indecent pose,
An old woman's bloody tongue.

In the delirium of love, in the torture chamber,
Like those called by Hermes,
They are shaking, foam flies from the lips -
And the song rises to heaven, -

And fills them with the paint of shame.
And they soar up, behind the corpse is a corpse.
To the sound of a flute. The pain is killing them
Vultures with one movement of the lips.)

VICTOR TOPOROV

1946, Leningrad - 2013, St. Petersburg
By education he is a Germanist. If translators had a traditional division into generations, Toporov would probably have been a “seventies” - only this word sounds wild and means nothing, in the seventies only a few were allowed to translate serious poetry and mainly through the last volumes of BVL anthologies. Thousands of lines by Blake and Bredero, German and Austrian Expressionists - in a word, just enough to be admitted to the Union of Soviet Writers ten times - about the same number of times at the reception he was failed miserably by envious colleagues. The fact was that the prolific Toporov was very willingly published in Moscow, and the city of Leningrad did not forgive him. Well, in the post-Soviet era, Toporov published author's books of translations from Gottfried Benn, W. H. Auden, Sylvia Platt, and much more, they are not forgiven now by representatives of the youth; she is angry, except for English, she tries not to know other languages, in a word, everything has always been like this, and will remain so. At the turn of the millennium, Toporov became the editor-in-chief of the Limbus publishing house and somewhat distanced himself from poetic translation.

Source: www.vekperevoda.com

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As a high school student, I regularly received school essay a double mark of 1/5 - "one" in literature and "five" in Russian writing. This was called, respectively, "content" and "literacy."
Until one day he was awarded - for the next “magnum opus” the size of just the “look” column - 1/1 marks ...

Inna Gavrilovna! I was outraged. - As for the “content”, everything is clear to me. But what's wrong with my "literacy"? Do I have mistakes?

You really don’t make mistakes, Vitya, - the teacher answered me judiciously. - But here I was thinking: with such a hooligan "content" as every time in your writings, what kind of "literacy" can we even talk about?

Inna Gavrilovna was, of course, right - if not as a teacher of the Russian language and literature, then as a teacher wise by life in Soviet society.
And then in this regard, almost nothing has changed.
Because later on - strictly speaking, all my life - it was exactly and only this way: at first I was given a wisely weighted grade of 1/5, and starting from a certain moment (when I was especially “getting it”) they went astray by a few absurd 1/1.

And on another question: "Do I make mistakes?" every time they answered me with imperturbable arrogance: “You really don’t make mistakes, but nevertheless” ...

And this “nevertheless” involuntarily brings to mind one more story - not forty-five years ago, but thirty-five years ago.

I then decided to join the trade union committee of writers, but my senior colleagues from the Writers' Union, whose work I had already managed not so much to criticize as to ridicule (orally; then, of course, they didn’t publish me as criticism), firmly resolved to refuse me even such pathetic professional recognition.

But to do this directly was, of course, a little ashamed, because I was already widely - and loudly - published as a poet-translator.

You see, Viktor Leonidovich, - the chairman of this obscure organization explained to me, - we had an inspection here, and it turned out that average age members of the trade union committee - sixty-two years. So we were recommended to sharply rejuvenate the staff. Therefore, we cannot accept you.

So? .. But I'm twenty-seven!

Nevertheless…

Well, but now I’m just these sacramental sixty-two years, and nothing has changed since then anyway: I still don’t make mistakes, but with such a “hooligan content” there’s no talk of any “literacy”, as usual, it doesn't work.

Unless, having finally become insolent over the years, my opponents now, sometimes, also talk about my “illiteracy”.

But that's bullshit!

My trouble is not in the scandalous content of my publications: most often it is not they that are scandalous, but the events and literary works, the assessment and analysis of which I am engaged in, are scandalous in themselves literary mores.

My trouble is not in the allegedly unacceptable sharpness of tone: a gentleman, you know, never offends anyone unintentionally.

Women in Russia, as you know, do not give, but "regret". But a literary critic cannot "pity" anyone - unless, of course, he is a woman.

And the point is not that you will regret, but you will not (this is just not the case - and the method of mutual pity, it is cross-pollination, has flourished everywhere).

The fact is that you will regret it - and another critic will regret it, and a third one - and only the reader will not regret it.

Or rather, he will regret that, like the last fool, he listened to your obviously dishonest recommendation.

Pitying the writer, you become dishonest with the reader.

And with the writer you took pity on, too.

Well, and, of course, with his colleagues in the pen, whom for some reason you did not regret.

The literary critic must be loyal to the reader, not the writer.

A literary critic who is faithful to a writer is not a critic, but a literary servant.

Although, of course, I cannot but admit that much of what I do - and do honestly - is done with aggravation.

Or, rather, ahead of schedule, perceived by many as an aggravation and even abuse (the latter, however, is nothing more than a slander).

My trouble is in the nature of my abilities in the literary-critical field, which has become for me a partial vocation.

In literature, I am not Doctor Zhivago. And certainly not a kind doctor Aibolit. I'm Dr. House.

My specialty is early diagnosis.

Advanced diagnostics.

And if only for this reason, the diagnosis is objectively outrageous.

Seemingly blooming appearance in this or that branch (or person) of domestic literature, and I say: “To the morgue!”

It is even possible that sometimes I still slip errors. But that's just not likely.
Of course, they don't agree with me. They take offense at me. They hate me.

But, if the doctor said: “To the morgue!”, It means - to the morgue.

Domestic literary columnist, critic and editor.

His mother is a lawyer - defender in the case I.A. Brodsky.

“In 1937, my mother got two acquittals under Article 58! It must be said - this is being glossed over in every possible way today - that the courts then were not at all as servile and cowardly as even at least in the sixties and eighties. Of course, the "queen of evidence" was the admission of one's own guilt - and in this case the lawyer turned out to be practically powerless, and the court stamped out sentences. […] One of the mother's excuses was also rather anecdotal. “So you say that you are not guilty of anything, but you signed a confession,” the mother said to the client on a date, a remark that was traditional at that time. “Yes, but look what I confessed!” The mother looked. The defendant admitted - and the semi-literate investigator "ate" this - that he was a Japanese spy and as such he sold the Pulkovo Meridian to his foreign masters. Mother drew the attention of the court to this confession, and her client was acquitted.

Toporov V.L., Double bottom. Confessions of a brawler, M., "Zakharov"; "Ast", 1999, p. 29-30.

V.L. Toporov has been known since his youth for his witty, sharp and obscene assessments...

“... in my youth, I was struck - and inspired - by a samizdat essay Grigory Pomeranets(a person, as I later realized, not close, but sometimes - occasionally - almost a genius) about the intelligentsia and intelligence. The latter was considered there as a kind of penetrating radiation emanating from the core (the conscience of the nation, the best minds of Russia) and penetrating the entire intelligentsia in different times to different depths. The hotter, the more radioactive the “core” is at this particular moment, the more widely “penetrating intelligence” diverges in society. In less prosperous times - and I took note of this! - "Radiation" is only enough to bring (moral) cleanliness in one's own workplace. That is, to work honestly, conscientiously, not to join any clans and groups (the word "mafia" was not yet in use at that time) and, if possible, interfere with their professional omnipotence. Such a view of things became for me both the minimum program (because there was also a maximum program), and a kind of creed. Having taken up - by my own conscious and voluntary choice - not the most important thing in the world, I decided that such self-restraint allows me not to lie, not to dissemble, not to compromise with fate and deal with my conscience (if only because the very choice of a poetic translation at of all voluntariness of this choice meant a compromise and a deal). In short, without hesitation, I started a perestroika in Leningrad translation circles - fifteen years before Alexander Zinoviev guessed to apply a reverse translation into ancient Greek to this term - and he got a “catastrophe”

Toporov V.L., Double bottom. Confessions of a brawler, M., "Zakharov"; "Ast", 1999, p. 200-201.

“... having come to St. Petersburg in 1997, the first president of Russia convened Granina with the late academician Likhachev, Piotrovsky s Gergiev, Rosenbaum s Andrey Petrov and - under television cameras - proclaimed St. Petersburg "the cultural capital of Russia." And, immediately upon returning to Moscow, he took away cultural capital federal button - and handed it over to the Kultura channel. Petersburg television, however, eked out such a miserable existence by this time that the federal detachment did not notice the loss of a fighter. And the all-Russian viewer - even more so.

Toporov V.L., Rigid rotation, St. Petersburg, "Amphora", 2007, p. 130.