Dina Rubina: «Human dramas cannot be adjusted to terms»

Psychologies: Dina Ilyinichna, usually it is not customary to talk about age with women. But I would like to make an exception for the upcoming anniversary. I think this is a special date for you. Or I’m wrong?

Dina Rubina: As for «it’s not customary to speak». I think Oscar Wilde said, “Don’t trust a woman who tells you her age. A woman who can do this is capable of anything!

You know, I even mentally smiled in response to your touching question. You see, I am completely, absolutely, amazingly indifferent to all dates. Here is such a defect in the mind and attitude of a seemingly normal person. The date on the calendar means absolutely nothing to me. In my family, this is known from several anecdotal cases. For example, when one day our whole family ended up in Maleevka, in the house of writers, husband Boris, lying on the sofa in the living room in the evening, melancholy said: “Hmm … And today I turned forty years old …” And I, the damned soulless wife, “with the penitent fell on his chest with a cry, ”is it written in the novels of the XNUMXth century? I think in those days I was working on some story or story — I don’t remember anymore, and therefore I shamefully forgot about my husband’s birthday. What he himself, I’m sure, did not remember in the morning, thinking about some problem of combining colors in the next picture.

My mother usually reminded me of my own birthday in the morning. The current date — semi-circular — touches me about as much as a non-circular date, like any other. Interestingly, this year it coincides with Judgment Day. My daughter, looking into some past calendars of the Jewish rolling chronology, discovered that I was also born on the Day of Judgment, in what! And this is a special day, you know? On this day, you need to ask everyone for forgiveness, especially if you know for sure that you offended. On this day, everyone reads a special prayer in unison, which is called «Kol Nidrei», «All our vows.» A prayer of incredible intensity and terrible despair.

By the way, such a story is connected with her and this day. As you know, the outstanding composer and pianist Anton Grigoryevich Rubinstein, the founder of the St. Petersburg Conservatory, was forced to be baptized — otherwise, as a Jew, he had no right to live in the capital and study music. Once, when he was already at the zenith of his fame, he was invited to one of the Grand Dukes (I forgot the name) to perform something for the guests. During the performance, he suddenly stopped playing, covered his face with his hands and said: “I can’t! At this moment, all my people are reading “Kol Nidrei,” and they left the hall… So, what is the significance of anyone’s birthday compared to the many thousands of years of Repentance Day?

How did you imagine yourself at this age in childhood, adolescence? My interlocutor once said that when she was little, she thought that 30 years old is when you can walk in a long, long blue dress and earrings (her mother told her that only very adult people pierce their ears). And 60 is when you can go to the cinema every day (because you don’t have to go to work). Did you have any image of you now?

I don’t remember ever dreaming of growing up. I dreamed of many things: about some wild accomplishments, about how I would certainly be famous! But it had nothing to do with age. In general, I have the feeling that I always (and now) am in the emotionally saturated age of a teenager, about fourteen years old, who suddenly jerked off in his development. The age of awareness of one’s own personality and many secrets of being, the age of all-consuming reading. Age of creativity: at this time I was already writing stories and novels with might and main. And according to an inner feeling, according to some kind of surprised attitude towards life, I didn’t move anywhere. And the jubilee… How long did it take for me – 65? It’s like in a taxi: you are driving, the meter is ticking, but it has to do with this car, and not with you personally. You’ll pay for the ride of a lifetime, get out of the car and go about your business.

And then, I always had some kind of heightened sensitivity to … I’m trying to find the exact words: to a certain extent, immortality of the genus. As a child, I closely followed my mother and grandmother, trying to realize that this woman gave birth to this woman, and both of them have some kind of sacred tribal relationship to me.

I remember when daughter Eva was expecting her first child and we already knew that it would be a girl, one day I took her for a walk, we called for my mother and together, happily chirping, drove off somewhere, I don’t remember already — to some park have ice cream. I was turning the steering wheel for myself, and suddenly the following thought pierced me: now four women of my family are driving in this car in a straight line, counting my granddaughter, not yet born, but my mother’s great-granddaughter. I just froze at this piercing thought: you know, this is how Abraham gave birth to Isaac, Isaac gave birth to Jacob, and so on. The link between generations is what has always fascinated me. In creativity, too. And it shows in all my books.

Can you complete the sentence: “The older we get, the more…”?

Listen, I am a writer by profession, I can finish any phrase in forty ways, depending on who pronounces it. Tell me only what kind of hero and in what situation he begins it. For an old pensioner is one thing, and a hardened recidivist thief is another. And with age, one and the other (the pronoun “we” is generally not suitable for anyone in life, except for newlyweds on their honeymoon) acquires completely different, you see, dividends from life. We are so different, different, different! And the older we get, the “we”: smarter, dumber, more active, lazier, more frightened, more brisk… the more we love to give advice and less willingly climb into someone else’s life with our advice, because we understand that it is useless. You can continue this list indefinitely. Like I said, it depends on the character.

Every year the border beyond which maturity, old age, moves away. We are told that we are young at 50 and 60, they tell us how many opportunities mature men and women have. What can you do now that you couldn’t twenty, thirty years ago? What would you brag about to your kids?

Well, firstly, in front of the children, I do not brag about anything except junk, successfully bought at a flea market for three pennies. Secondly, you need to understand exactly what is invested in the concept of “I can” (personally, I immediately recall an indecent anecdote with a lord and a servant against the backdrop of English smog). And, most importantly, do you know what worries me, and all my life? This is what they tell us and tell us. We are always told by someone and something — books, theater, TV. And the Internet tells us a hundred things that you can spend your whole life enchanted by changing pictures and rejoicing at how young we are in our eighties and how many opportunities «mature men and women» have.

Excuse me for always returning our conversation to the starting point: someone has them, these “opportunities”, and someone doesn’t. We are all monstrously different organisms. Medicine, of course, has achieved and continues to achieve impressive success, this is wonderful.

I have a lot of doctor friends, and I always learn something new about the shining horizons of immortality. But then the other day, suddenly, at the age of 69, my acquaintance producer died. In a dream. A healthy, energetic person, apparently designed for 103 years of life. No one understands anything — the man did not complain about anything, only his dad also died in the same way at about the same age. Everything seems to be healthy, but the brain gives the command to the heart to stop beating. Mystery. Doctors can’t explain yet. But another friend of mine, a doctor, at the age of 93, continues to receive patients — a clear mind, an excellent sense of humor, and in food he prefers to treat himself exclusively to «unhealthy foods.» He likes to repeat that the best fish is sausage, and he always puts 4 tablespoons of sugar in tea. His parents also lived very long lives. Etc.

No matter what we are told and no matter how the sparkling horizons of immortality are pushed aside in statistics, a person still knows little about such a thing as DNA. That is, he knows, of course, but little. We are ruled by genes and destiny. So they still really tell and tell each of us something there. We just don’t hear them very well.

Mikhail Zhvanetsky wrote in his 1966 notebook with three exclamation marks: “I don’t want to be an old man!!!” «So what if you didn’t want to?» he recalls with a laugh. Did you have this? Have you ever been afraid to grow up, to grow old?

Like any normal person, I’m not Superman. But growing up is one thing, and growing old is a true tragedy of human life, no matter who pushes it anywhere.

Do you think there is a crisis of adulthood? If yes, how does it manifest itself?

It depends on what each of us takes for a «crisis». For one, these are problems in the family, for the other, creative stagnation. Again: one mature age is 35 years old, because he is already a doctor of science and the author of forty inventions, and suddenly there is a jam in the work of his research group. He understands that they were moving in the wrong direction, then depression, the wife threatens to leave her sad husband. Here is a crisis for you.

Or: a 65-year-old businessman who has achieved everything in his work, prosperous in everything, suddenly loses his only daughter, who has exceeded the dose of the drug. And everything is going downhill. Is this a crisis? Or how to call it? Please note that I can give you dozens, hundreds of such stories. Here’s what I want to say: life is incredibly diverse, human dramas cannot be adjusted to terms. In this term — «crisis of mature age» — there is not a single unambiguous word.

A few years ago, journalist Vladimir Yakovlev made an interesting project called The Age of Happiness. He collected the stories of men and women 60+ who at this age have just begun to live, or have finally realized what they dreamed about, or have abruptly and successfully changed their field of activity. These people are doing incredible things, discoveries. They are really happy. Are you happy now, at your age?

Indeed, an interesting project. I love plot twists like this. This happens to people who are internally mobile, to those who suddenly come across new circumstances of life and do not recoil from them, but follow the call of fate. I think all my characters (and I love bright characters) could take part in this project, except for myself. You see, books are written slowly and hard. The writer makes discoveries in each new book. He may not travel outside the district and even rarely leave his office, he may live all his life with a single wife or husband, and storms will rage in his books — both real and human. And in this sense, each new book — regardless of the age of its creator — is a new frontier. And again, in this sense, I am, yes, of course, a very happy person with a whole carriage of “discoveries”. No matter how much it hits me, because I am the creator of many worlds, the inhabitants of which very often change their lives abruptly and make unthinkable somersaults.

American psychologist Eric Erickson wrote the book The Age of Our Desires. For example, he writes that at the age of 19-25 we, as a rule, build relationships outside the parental family, at 25-50 we create, and after 50 we look for and find the meaning of life. Do you agree with him?

«Usually» hmm. Literature doesn’t deal with rules, so I’m out of business here. In general, I sympathize with a person who is accepted to look for the meaning of life after the fifty kopeck hits. As the famous character of the famous novel said: “You, professor, your will, came up with something awkward …” — and further in the text.

So we work from twenty to fifty? And what about Tolstoy, who wrote his best work, Hadji Murat, in his old age? And what should Lermontov do, who died a year and a half after the start allowed by Erickson? Byron, Pushkin… Life, I repeat stubbornly, never obeys anyone or anything — neither calculations, nor tables, nor age limits. Life is much smarter, more unexpected, more painful, more merciful and more diverse than those who try to drive it into the Procrustean bed of theories.

The characters in your books are mostly young or middle-aged people. Mature people are usually secondary characters. Why? Do you think they are not active enough, active?

From what? One of my most striking characters is the 98-year-old old woman Anna Borisovna from the story “On Upper Maslovka”.

Another thing is that from youth, like from a fresh pomegranate, you can squeeze much more bright ruby ​​juice of love, hatred, tragedy, frantic violent deeds, wild plot twists — everything that Literature needs and that life supplies us in especially abundant quantities.

For in youth we all live at a terrible emotional height and fall into terrible abysses — hormones boil, chemistry works. It’s nothing you can do. It’s just stupid to dismiss it. In my new novel «Napoleon’s Convoy», in his first book «Rowan Wedge», the heroine, head of the editorial board of modern literature, believes that novels are written not by talent and zeal, but by hormones: «Young, damn it, accordion!» she says. And therefore all these psychological minuets — they are suitable only in old age.

The wonderful Lidia Borisovna Libedinskaya, nee Tolstaya, said: “When you are young, you should do only what you want. And in old age, do not do what you do not want. And you will be happy.»

And I will say this: if in your youth you do not sweep away all the psychologists in the world, all theories, advice, tables and calculations, then you will be worthless, both in youth and in old age.