Literary critic Anna Narinskaya 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 the book critic Anna Narinskaya shares her stories about favorite books.

In childhood - and in my youth too - if I didn’t like the book, I carried it out of the room for the night: I didn’t want to sleep in the same room with it; It seemed to me that if she was next to me, I would not be able to stop thinking about her and be angry. By the way, I am still angry at the texts - but without the same passion, of course. The last book I endured for the night - probably seventeen years old - was The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. She irritated me to convulsions, to physical nausea. Everything in it seemed pretentious, contrived - some kind of multi-page pointing the shadow on the fence.

Incidentally, I have never reread this book ever since, and generally calmed down on this dislike for her - perhaps because my new friend, Grisha Dashevsky, supported me. You can’t read Mann, he said, do not worry, he is not one of those who changes you. In the conversations of that time, a precise, though not obvious, opposition to Mann / Nabokov was developed. For some reason we thought that choosing “for love” only needs one of them. We chose Nabokov. Then Grisha and Nabokov fell out of love. He generally cooled down, I would even say, essentially cooled down to the idols of youth: Nabokov, Brodsky. Me not. I am a nostalgic person.

I love a lot of books not for what is written in them, but for memories of how I read them and what they did to me. Of course, this is narcissism, which I am ashamed of, but I can’t do anything about it. I remember when Peter Weil's book "Poems about Me" came out, I got angry at him (God, how much I am angry, it turns out), because he legitimizes this "my" shameful thing to some extent - to value not the text itself , and by its reflection in it, and by some concrete, momentary experiences. For example, I cannot “objectively” evaluate Boris Vian’s “Foam of Days”, for me in this book the main thing is that on the third course she has changed me — especially a rather constrained person — almost forever. If you can write like that, I thought, no, I felt, then you can probably live that way too. I then bought lilac tights from the fartsovschik for terrible money - it was the only way, it seemed to me, that I would be able to match this new “Vian” life.

So, as in my youth, I, of course, no longer read. Recently, I wrote a reader’s manifesto where I promised to quit the so-called smart reading - with constant stressful forgetting that you read the text, that the characters here are functions, that the books are actually about ideas, and not about, you know, love and adventure - and again begin to sympathize with the heroes, cry over their troubles and even fall in love with them a little. In general, not only children's books to read, of course, but only the children's way of reading to cherish.

I did not keep this promise. Of course, today I can cry over the book (most likely, the one that I first read thirty years ago), but the level of cordial involvement is lost. Falling in love with a character, as I once had sincerely been in love with Briand de Boisguillebert (how, how could Rebekah not reciprocate his love?), Or Prince Andrew, I can’t take it anymore. And in general, if, looking back, to try to assess what has changed in my attitude to reading and, actually, in my reading for all these decades, during which I constantly read, one can say this.

I lost a lot. Freshness of perception, these lively burning feelings to the heroes, carelessness, which allows you to read all night long, despite the fact that tomorrow it’s too early to work, the ability to sincerely resent the mediocrity and the generally "bad life", the constant book scabies - have you ever missed anything? the beautiful book I have not yet. Got one thing - freedom. Freedom not to read. Do not read by yourself and do not worry if others read.

Previously, it seemed to me that reading, books, texts - this is the necessary and sufficient world that unites and separates me and others. Understanding each other from polutsitaty, joint memories of how and what was read, and just a set of signals for the recognition of their / others, which gives literature - all this was irreplaceable for me. Over the years, this charm has died away, its deceptiveness has been revealed. A person who loves everything that I do (even Mandelstam! Even Deshila Hammett! Even the “Manuscript found in Zaragoza” is my beloved!) May turn out to be completely alien. Yes, and I myself, perhaps, than to take up another book, it is better to just lie down, staring at the ceiling. Especially if you want. And in general, the farther, the more obvious it becomes: you should try to do only what you want, for example, not to read. Very true thought - I do not remember where I read it.

ROBERT L. STEVENSON

"Treasure Island"

Great book, for some reason translated into the category of "books for children." That is, it is for children as well - and this is part of her greatness. She refers to the essence of man, to a certain instinct that does not depend on maturity. Stephenson is generally a mono-writer, in principle he is concerned only with one thing - the strange attractiveness of evil and how it is achieved. Chemically pure evil - Mr. Hyde - disgusting, but passionate. What do you need to add to it to make it charming? Stevenson’s intuitive (and earliest) answer to this question resulted in one of the greatest images of world literature. The one-legged John Silver is a heartless killer who can be sincere with a child; traitor, in the most unexpected cases, true to his word; an uneducated pirate, from whose remarks you want to write a textbook of eloquence. Stephenson created the most vivid illustration of the non-banality of evil, long before the argument about it became a necessary part of any philosophizing.

Here it is necessary to add that the classic Russian translation of Nikolai Chukovsky is beautiful. It's funny to read how his father - Korney Ivanovich - scolds him in his diaries and offers corrections. His own translations, even Tom Sawyer, are much more pale. And then courage, directness, popping. "The dead don't bite. That's my whole faith. Amen!" - says pirate Israel Hands. What could be cooler!

Innokenti Annensky

"Cypress casket"

The first book of poems, which I read exactly as a book, as a whole, as a source of common experience. I was about twelve years old. At first I (someone, in my opinion, just left the book open) saw the terrible poem "Black Spring" ("Under the gulls of copper - the coffin / transfer was created, / And, terribly bullied, wax / Looked out of the coffin's nose") then she swallowed the whole book like a detective. And I reread it - just like a book - regularly.

When I grew up, I learned that this is probably not the most carefully prepared book of poems in the world - just a stack of leaflets, found, indeed, in a cypress box after the poet's death: in 1909, before he was fifty-five years old, he fell and died on the steps of the Tsarskoye Selo station. But here is the integrity of the statement, which I simply have nothing to compare.

Annensky is a completely underrated poet. Even those who know him say that he is a “forerunner” and quickly move on to those whose forerunner he seemed to be: Akhmatova, Gumilev, Mandelstam. And they lose a lot.

Ernst Theodore Amadeus Hoffman

"Princess Brambilla"

It is a completely awesome story that is not read, limited to "The Nutcracker" and "Little Tsakhes". Visionary and at the same time ironic work inspired by the engravings of Jacques Callot, depicting scenes from the comedy dell'arte. There is such a rather vulgar, but working description of the actions of some texts: "It is written that you can see everything directly." And if you keep in mind what exactly is written there, then you see strange and mysterious visions.

Charles Dickens

"Little Dorrit"

I glorified Dickens so much and often, “clearing” him of the snobbish accusations of sentimentality and lisping, that it is difficult for me to add anything to this. Just here it is - the perfect novel. In terms of composition, characters, the author’s relationship with external life, including with a very real policy. In the sense of his ability to balance between his reliability as the creator of everything that happens in the book, and the casual observer who released his characters and is no longer completely imperious over them. Dickens is at the same time a reliable and unreliable narrator - Dostoevsky, who adored (and partly jumped), was never able to learn.

Separately, it must be said about "Russian Dickens". This is quite a complicated story. Russian Dickens, translated by the dinosaurs of our translation school - Lann, Krivtsovoy, Kalashnikova, - is blamed for literalism, they translate "sweetheart" as "my sweet". Viktor Golyshev once told me that they were translating according to the covenant of the forbidden we then Nabokov, who recommended to translate word for word, but, they say, a clever reader will guess what is written there. But be that as it may, these translations have become part of our culture, there is such a phenomenon - “Russian Dickens”. And when I read Dickens in English, I even miss the Russian version.

Mikhail Zoshchenko

Blue Book

Zoshchenko, I do not get tired of repeating, is not "the author of funny stories" (that is, of course, yes, but last but not least), but the inventor of a language adequate to the murderous, macabrical reality that has gathered around. This is all: “This means that her husband died. At first, she probably reacted easily to this event.” Ah, she thinks, is nonsense! ... “And then she sees - no, it's not nonsense! ... ", or" She opened her mouth, and her mouth glitters in her mouth "- these are descriptions of a wondrous new world, in which all the usual connections are broken, in which everything must be described again, because the old has died, and the new has grown clumsily, scary and, yes, ridiculous.

The Blue Book is a striking attempt to describe the history and the universe in this language. From "Satyricon" Averchenko and Taffy, with whom she is often compared, she is - dramatically - distinguished by the introduction into the text of those most famous stories. Zoshchenko is trying to see the Soviet as universal: put a "mercenary thrush" next to Lucretia Borgia, and an "aristocrat" with Messalina. This is not something that works, but it certainly works.

Susan Sontag

"Thought as a passion"

In my opinion, the first book that we have published is the Contag. The book, not compiled by her herself, but a collection - articles selected from different books by Boris Dubin. There were "Notes on Camp", the article "Against Interpretation," memories of Bart. I don’t know how it happened that I didn’t read it before. The same Bart with Baudrillard is yes, but she is not. It just struck me then: that you can think like that and write about it with your thinking. What can be so peremptory and so free. What can bind unobviously related things. What can be so unbeaten and moral at the same time. I am still amazed at all this. Again and again.

Isaiah Berlin

"Philosophy of Freedom"

Two years ago I wrote a large text about Isaiah Berlin. Sorry, but I will quote myself. Every time (that is, many, many times a day), when the fierce Internet debates, after accusing someone of arguing in "liberal terror" and participating in the "liberal party committee," begin to find out what is in the end , “liberal” - we, among them, before, now and in general, should oust the devil out of empty discussion simply with the name of Isaiah Berlin.

Because the more senseless to be confused in terms, it is better to look at a model specimen. For example, flawless, by definition, non-hysterical liberal position. Towards a worldview without admixture of at least some self-deception: so that it also contained an understanding of the internal contradictions of the main value of liberalism - freedom, and the consciousness that "the main task of a decent society is to maintain unstable equilibrium, and this means that the rules, values, principles must give way to each other, in every new situation - in a new way. "

There is nothing to add here. The standard - he is the standard.

Nikolay Erdman

"Plays. Interludes. Letters. Documents. Memoirs of Contemporaries"

There are some bored considerations of Salinger that writers are divided into those who want to call and who do not. I always want to call Erdman. And not because he is the author of two great (I really think) plays, but because he is an incredibly charming and kind of piercing figure. From the texts of this book, it is composed.

I think this is the effect of forced literary dumbness. In 1932, his play "The Suicide" was banned, in 1933, right on the set of the movie "Jolly Fellows", he was arrested and sent into exile in Yeniseisk, in 1940 his friend Meyerhold was shot, putting "Mandate" and rehearsing " Suicide. " This, and much more, made Erdman shut up: he spent his whole life engaged in literary femininity and did not write anything more serious. But in this book - in his letters, in the memories of friends - as if pulsating this unexpressed, unspoken and very attractive talent.

Grigory Dashevsky

"Several poems and translations"

Dashevsky I, like many, I consider one of the most important voices of recent times - both in verse and in journalism. He stands apart from everything that happens: the level of his mind and insight of some fundamentally different than around. I remember when we wrote together for Kommersant Weekend, I asked him to review some pretty crappy book. And at this time he was reading the diaries of his father Alexander Schmemann for himself. And so he looked through the page, he looked through the volume I suggested, then he sighed and quite seriously said: "Sorry, I cannot switch to this from this precious one." So I almost always feel when I "switch" from Grishin's articles to our periodicals.

I especially like this book, because I remember how it was done. It was not long before his death. He was in the hospital and decided to select the texts himself, one changed a lot - and asked our girlfriend Dusya Krasovitskaya to make a little book, and our younger friend Dania Piunova - print it in a small printing house. My favorite poem from there (except for the very famous "Martians in the dungeons of the General Staff") is an "exemplary" translation by TS Eliot:

Since my wings are no longer a floating sail, but flippers just beating the air, the air that shriveled and shrunk: it and our permissiveness became small and dry. Teach us pity and indifference, teach us to sit back.

Lev Tolstoy