Editor KB "Strelka" Ksenia Butuzova about favorite books
IN BACKGROUND "BOOK SHELF" we ask journalists, writers, scholars, curators, and other heroines about their literary preferences and publications, which occupy an important place in their bookcase. Today, a philologist, an expert in Russian literature and the issuing editor of KB "Strelka" Ksenia Butuzova shares her stories about favorite books.
I remember very well the first time I encountered a coherent artistic text. I was about five years old, in the summer at the dacha my grandmother, an aircraft designer, a woman of amazing taste and upbringing, forced me to read a four-line poem about a bird. I do not remember the poem, but I remember the illustration very well - a beautiful puffy bullfinch, but I also did not want to read anything. Not that it was difficult (it turned out quite well for me) - just the very type of thinking, when some metamorphosis occurs in my head and a meaning develops, it was very unpleasant, I was rocked by it. I really wanted to eat, run and climb on an apple tree. In general, I did not like reading at once. And then, when I was eleven, Dad gave me “Harry Potter” for the New Year, and everything changed. I grew up with a sad magic boy and other book characters - the games in reality with people became boring and painful.
I studied in a regular school, but I had an amazing teacher of literature - she taught me to think. Natalya Viktorovna forced us to read a giant parallel program: there were Hoffman, Byron, Voynich, Kesey, Salinger. Now I know for sure that I would like to open the world of literature and philosophy to my children in precisely this order and this age. The ability to read the right books at the right time is a great happiness. Since then I have always been lucky. Dad in the nineties began to collect a collection of the first editions of Nabokov, they looked at me from all the bookshelves. Once, as a child, I went with all my family to Rozhdestveno (his family estate) on a map from the Other Shores memory book, and we got lost. Then, ten years later, when I was already working at the Nabokov Museum, I remembered this story and realized that the map was wrong, because Nabokov had forgotten everything. The realization that such a writer is also primarily a person was very important to me.
I began to write research works on the work of Nabokov at school under the guidance of my dear teacher, and I did not succeed. It was hard and bad, and it also turned out to be at the department of Russian literature at the university. It seemed that I was surrounded by geniuses who can memorize any amount of information read and understand any text. Course I also wrote about Nabokov, routinely, boring and through pain. I didn’t want to describe in my own language what was going on in the head and text of the genius author, it seemed to me that I did not have such a right and opportunity. In general, the first few courses I studied terribly.
Then, before the diploma, I accidentally started working with Boris Valentinovich Averin on an anthology about the First World War. As a result, thanks to a piece of this book, poorly done from the point of view of textual and other things, I realized that working with text is my life. About Averin need to tell separately: I was lucky to meet and talk with him - everyone should go through something like that. He taught me to read again - without expectations and reflection, without interpretation, pronunciation and internal discussion - to read, how to look at the sunset over the sea, how to walk in the morning forest. As if the book is a source of beauty, and your reader’s task is to see this beauty and be delighted with it. I traveled to his estate (a house with cats, books and a garden) by train from the Baltic Station for several years - and in this train, it seems, all the philological finds in my life happened to me. Because it immediately became clear that the task of the philologist was not to penetrate the head of a genius, but to tell about the mechanisms of beauty, point out important points, so that this flower blossoms in the mind of any reader.
Reading is my working skill. Now I read a lot and write for work - you get very tired of this. In the routine there is no place for reading "for yourself." To readjust, breathe out and read something of my own, I read aloud to a loved one. We move a lot and often, and when I imagine a house, I think about the place where all my books lie - in order and silence. Now almost my entire library is packed in boxes in another city, but still most of my baggage is books. Every summer I manage to escape to the country loft for a few days, and there, while the grandmother on the veranda brews tea from currants and mint, I read something that I had long wanted to start.
Linor Goralik
"So it was a beep"
I do not remember how I first read something from Linor. But I remember how several years ago, when I was in Kiev without friends and acquaintances, I walked around the city with her collection of short stories "In short", I read and cried. Some I remember by heart. The end-to-end system of images of Linor is very close to me, I well understand almost everything that she writes about love, beauty and pain. Small prose is closer to me than poetry. It seems that this is a new genre that has grown out of LJ: each word has its place, but compared to poetry, it is easier, more human, something, simple.
“So it was a dial tone” - this is a book of poems. Complicating insinuating texts that are hard to read, understand from the first and even from the second time. Recently, I was able to listen to how Linor reads them, and everything fell into place. It looks like Brodsky - texts to recite. Immediately opens the second bottom, the melody of verse fuses with rhythm and rhyme. I reread the verses and texts of Linor, when it is very bad and not enough beauty. It becomes even worse, but this subtle pain helps to wake up and live your life further.
Pierre Vittorio Aureli
"The possibility of absolute architecture"
As a child, my father and I walked around St. Petersburg a lot, he told something, showed beautiful trees, houses and a river and said: “Remember”. I remembered. Now, when for several years my work is connected with architecture, I remember these walks and Petersburg with great love. Such a beautiful and native city, which is not very convenient to live. Urban studies in Russia are often contrasted with history and aesthetics, and Aureli writes why this is impossible, about how town planning is based on millennial traditions and why it is very important. The book has recently been published in Russian, and it needs to be read in order to remember that architecture has an important philosophical foundation.
Nikolay Gogol
Mirgorod
With Gogol it was very difficult at school and then further on the course of Russian literature. It was hard for me to read: I was confused in words, in a non-linear narration, I had to collect the plot, rereading the passages. I was struck by the story of "Dead Souls": a clear, delicate and very pure artistic plan, a text unprecedented in Russian culture - and did not finish, burned, refused.
I also remember that at school they told how little Gogol, while the parents were not at home, tried to squeeze the cat's eyes out. For a long time I thought nothing more about him. And then I heard at a lecture a piece from Taras Bulba about birds that fly up and down in the future - and this image struck me to the depths of my soul. In general, the spatial perception of time inside an artistic text takes me very much. Started to reread. First, "Evenings on the Farm", then "Mirgorod", then did not have time. But now reading Gogol is a great pleasure for my mind and heart.
Maria Virolainen
"Speech and silence. Plots and myths of Russian literature"
I read a lot of textbooks and books on Russian literature, like any person who graduated from philology. Only to some of them you return in scientific works and quite a few reread with love. In the book of Maria Naumovna, not so much the language is important, transparent, not at all pretentious, but strict and beautiful, as the purity and clarity of thought, which from the very beginning attracts attention. By the end, a "cultural cosmos" of Russian classical literature appears in your head.
I reread this book when I cannot find words or start writing a scientific text. It is not customary to talk about literature in our country, but in fact this is the only way to talk about literature. We have known Maria Naumovna for several years already, he and Boris Valentinovich Averin live together in that manor in Sergiev, near St. Petersburg, in perfect harmony. Now I rarely go there, but I often think about them.
Boris Averin
"The Gift of Mnemosyne: Nabokov's novels in the context of the Russian autobiographical tradition"
This book, I think I chose out of habit. She is in the list of references to all coursework, diploma and master, I often advise her friends and relatives. Boris Valentinovich, a man of crystal soul and the finest mind, writes about memory as the key image of the poetics of Nabokov's novels. What do we know about memory? How is the memory? What does time do to memory? Boris Valentinovich turns the search for keys to the interpretation of Nabokov's novels into an encyclopedia of Russian philosophical thought of the early twentieth century, and makes it with particular ease. If you want to understand why the artistic word stores more than a physical formula or philosophical essay, you need to read Averina. Better to listen, of course. See how he says - this is a separate happiness.
Sergey Dovlatov
"Branch"
Dovlatov love to tears and everything. I read every year from the ninth year: I reread when it’s bad and when it’s good. Mom gave me a collection of works several years ago - one of the most pleasant gifts in life. My ideal day off is to go by train to the Gulf of Finland with a book by Dovlatov about how he was traveling by train to the Gulf of Finland.
Dovlatov - my real hero with a bottle of beer. "Branch" - a story about love in Leningrad and life in exile - probably my favorite text. Self-irony, courage and fate. Here is a quote from an interview, there is nothing better than it: “What is literature and for whom do we write? I personally write for my children so that after my death they read it all and understand what their golden father was, and then, finally belated tears of remorse will pour from their shameless American eyes! "
Donald Barton Johnson
"Worlds and antiworlds of Vladimir Nabokov"
Another very important book about what philology does. About how the American professor gathered on the same plate all the bases of the Nabokov text, all the keys to the complex interpretation of his matryoshk novels. Nabokov was famous for his game with the reader, the sophisticated torture of consciousness - and so, Barton Johnson played on an equal footing with him.
The book was recently translated into Russian, working with it is sheer happiness. Barton Johnson does not give answers, but tells how to search for them inside the text, shows how the complex Nabokov's Dvoymirye works. I think that before reading "Lolita", you need to read "Worlds and anti-worlds." Instead of arguing about the plot and the ethical side of the issue, it is better to consider the whole beauty of the novel.
Vladimir Nabokov
"Letters to Vera"
I think about Nabokov, I write and speak almost my entire adult life. I worked in his museum in St. Petersburg (you should definitely visit this amazing place), and for me it’s very important what happens to his legacy today. The story of the publication of letters to his wife is a good example. Soon this book will be released in Russian, but for a long time there was only the English version, prepared for publication by wonderful Russian scientists. This is not a policy issue, but financing.
Inside the book - the wonderful world of life of the great writer and his no less great wife. Vera was his good friend and editor, each of his works, any of his editions in any language is dedicated to her. Under each cover are two words: "To Vera". She loved him incredibly, their son Dmitry remembered her words after the funeral of his father: "Let's hire a plane and break up." Tears and a slight shiver.
Nadezhda Mandelstam
"Memories"
Probably the most important book in my life. Found by chance. I just moved to Moscow, and it was very hard for me. I rented a room on the first floor with a lattice window for half my salary and studied at the magistracy. As a student, they asked to read the article by Gasparov about the Mandelstam poem, and there was a reference to the book of memoirs by Nadezhda Yakovlevna. It began with a story about how Akhmatova came to Moscow with Osip Emilievich, how Nadezhda Yakovlevna covered the stove with a tablecloth and laid it in the kitchen, and the covered stove looked like a nightstand.
I read a couple of pages and could not stop. This book is an important document of the epoch, and also a giant love story. All the heritage of Mandelstam remained only because Nadezhda Yakovlevna learned it by heart from the line. It is necessary to read, to understand what country we all live in. And what was the twentieth century. I read it all entirely then, in the first year of my Moscow life, and when I finished a few months later, it became much easier to breathe.
Sasha Sokolov
"School for Fools"
The book was presented to me by my friend Arina. I fell in love with the text immediately, as with the main character, a boy with a split personality, who perceives time and space nonlinearly. That is, at the same time is at the cottage and in the train on the way to the cottage. And this summer forest, and the lake, and the station form the entire text. It is difficult to retell the book and sensations, but I remember how I changed in the process of reading.
A few years ago I found a very beautiful edition in OGI and presented it to my dad. The book has been idle for a long time, and then I came and saw my dad read it a little bit. Recently read. It was very nice after all the books he brought me to read, to give him something in return - you immediately feel like an adult.
George Danelia
"Stowaway"
Last spring I got sick, it was a hard time with mood swings. It was difficult for me to do even the simplest things, but I still had to write my master’s thesis. In order not to be distracted, I went to my parents, sometimes I went for a walk and forbade myself to read and watch something not at work.
This book of Danelia accidentally fell into the hands, and I could not stop. Danelia writes travel notes on how his film was shot and life passed between films, about the family, about Georgia and about Moscow. For me, this book was about work, peace and risk at the same time. I read two more books of his memories, they helped me fall asleep. Danelia sees such light in every person and works so well and honestly that it becomes much easier to breathe, do your own thing, you want to calm down and just live.