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Listening to the conversations of smart people is a pleasure. Moreover, the journalist Maria Slonim asks the writer Sergei Gandlevsky about the most interesting things. About meaning and joy, about creativity and destiny, about what the taste of life is.
Sergey Gandlevsky was born in 1952 and lives in Moscow, he is a philologist by education, he has been writing poetry since the age of 18, translated into many languages. Poetry books of 2008 “Some Poems” (Pushkin Fund) and “Experiments in Poetry” (Zakharov) were awarded literary prizes, as well as the most famous prose works originally published in the magazine “Znamya”: the story “Craniotomy” (1996) and the novel “NRZB” (2002).
It’s not embarrassing to be funny
Maria Slonim: Do you like your life?
Sergei Gandlevsky: It depends. I would have liked her more if it weren’t for my presence in her. It sounds absurd and flirtatious, but honestly, I really feel something like that. Such, you know, unrequited love for yourself. Almost everything bad in my life seems to me to be the work of my own hands. I also have lines on this topic: “And my life would be no worse if it weren’t mine …” Therefore, I know an acute sense of embarrassment in front of people who are objectively disadvantaged – and there are many of them.
M. S .: I don’t quite understand how to talk to you: as a friend, as a poet, as a prose writer, as an author of an autobiography, or as an author of one’s own life? For example, your “Craniotomy”, this is an artistic autobiography, right? And an interesting epigraph from Dostoevsky: “I love it when they lie! Lying is the only human privilege over all organisms.
S. G.: Then the word “lie” had another meaning. Do not lie, but chatter. I meant this value too.
M. S .: And is it about life?
S. G.: This is not a completely documentary work: if I had two options in front of me – to tell an approximate, but nice version of what happened or a less charming, but real one, I, without hesitation, chose the one that was more charming. Imposing on himself a single condition – not to build slander on anyone.
M. S .: But you portray yourself (both in “Craniotomy” and in the autobiographical notes “Thoughtless Past”) as a “shlimazel”, such a klutz… You laugh at yourself all the time. Why? Is this some kind of protection?
S. G.: I don’t know, but people with a serious to solemn attitude towards themselves are not a gift. Once I was worried that I had become a laughing stock, and Pyotr Weil told me: “It’s not a shame to be funny.”
M. S .: But still … I, for example, did not know that you had so many adventures, some completely, looking at you, implausible: you worked as a watchman, a loader, fought, beat and was beaten. “The curve will take you out,” you constantly repeat. But at the same time, you made your own choice, didn’t you? Did you have forks?
S. G.: When you especially dislike yourself, it seems that you are a toy of accidents, a swimmer with the flow … And when you are more indulgent, you console yourself that this flow itself is your choice. I know for sure one talent for myself: to choose good influences and fall under them. And here is the minus of maturity – you do it yourself with a mustache, the need to race for the leader comes to naught. And yet, I hope, the wonderful people from whom I gained my mind-reason were not driven solely by charitable considerations – to beat the newcomer. So they found something in me. But the choice of the company, of course, was made by me, no one was forced.
literary itch
M. S .: Well, you would go, say, to the biological faculty. I wonder where life would turn? Would you still write? It seems to me.
S. G.: There is no 12% certainty about this. At first I wrote, as almost all intelligent teenagers write at the age of 14-XNUMX.
M. S .: Well, maybe because your elders rhymed just in case, you wanted to be a writer … For example, I wanted to be a sculptor.
S. G.: In the father?
M. S .: Father, yes. True, my father did not really support me in this, but I did not know if he thought that I had no talent, or simply did not want this difficult profession for me. And they poked me at the philological faculty, none of this happened. But I often think: what if I took it myself, stamped my foot and said: “I will be a sculptor, you and your philologist should go!” At what point does all this decide and happen?
S. G.: Here, too, one cannot set up a pure experiment: after all, in the days of our youth there was a public cult of the writer. The whole country knew the name Yevtushenko, for example. The writer was in a special position. I wish I was a teenager if I didn’t take the maximum in my dreams! In addition, I come from a reading family; when friends of the parents gathered, conversations went mainly around and around literature.
M. S .: That is, you thought that, in addition to everything else, it was prestigious to engage in literature?
S. G.: Of course. Plus, of course, the literary itch as such.
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The serious reason
M. S .: It has always been a mystery to me, especially with musicians, composers, but also with poets: how is this born? Music is not clear at all. I even tried to ask the composers…
S. G.: I don’t understand music either.
M. S .: What about poetry? How does it suddenly stop, how does it suddenly break through?
S. G.: Each has its own kitchen. Which, however, has nothing to do with the result. Everyone writes in different ways. Someone – direct emotionality. Someone with reason. I, and perhaps this is the explanation of why I do it so infrequently, write by experience. And he comes slowly. And I also need some certainly good reason, or rather, an excuse. I can’t just sit down and write a poem. I say this with no hidden pride – perhaps my peeing an hour at a teaspoon indicates a lack of artistry. I need something to hook me. This may be an everyday circumstance, or maybe it’s a happy phrase or rhyme that captivated me and set the tone, and I begin to adjust a certain number of lines so that these finds “flush” there. It has never happened to me to write for money, but I do not exclude that such a reason could be …
M. S .: Complete lack of money.
S. G.: Right. But I know writers who write—and often very well—because they are great at it and always in a state of creative readiness. I envy. I am familiar with two regimes: either capacity, or suppressed graphomania.
M. S .: “Suppressed graphomania”?
S. G.: Writing, if you have already picked up this ailment, is a very exciting activity: conjugate words this way and that in search of a better order, try to make the epithet hit the bull’s-eye. From the exact hit, you feel almost physical relief. Therefore, you have to be careful. Another average Handl poem is not to my liking – I need at least the illusion that I am somehow expanding the boundaries of my usual possibilities with a new opus.
Increased sensitivity
M. S .: Many of your friends left at the right time. You remember how you and your fellow poets were in London and how for you it was the discovery of another civilization. Have you ever had the feeling that everything could have turned out differently, that it would be better if you left?
S. G.: A sharp feeling of envy seized me some years ago, when the Weils invited my wife and I to Italy. We traveled wonderfully, somehow at the next bus transfer we went to a cafe. And Peter remembered that he had already been here with someone a long time ago, however, the chairs were replaced with new ones … And I felt bitter that I was staring like a tourist, and for him this is a biography. And in general, trips abroad, friendship with emigrants, with you, by the way, expanded my horizons. Life behind the Iron Curtain made us provincial. Many were distinguished by perverted pride – we are the most destitute, as if there are no countries in the world where it is just a matter of physical survival …
M. S .: People are constantly looking back at the past. This is especially true for poets. Uncomfortable all the time “backward”?
S. G.: Isn’t that okay? Pushkin exclaimed: “… Or is memory the strongest ability of our soul? ..” I’m not at all sure that poets without exception feel more acutely than others, including the past. Who is like. Poets do indeed have an increased sensitivity, not to experiences, but to words about experiences. And the subconscious belief that words can express everything. After all, poetic abilities, like others, are primarily a biological property. To which is attached a personality with a set of advantages and disadvantages. We do not expect exemplary behavior from a gifted doctor or tailor at the same time! And for some reason we are waiting for the writer. However, it is clear why: unlike other professions and vocations, art includes morality – and here the scissors between the beauty of the product and the appearance of its author are especially evident. Another thing is that a great writer can turn out to be a great person… Like Pushkin or Chekhov. But this is the bounty of heaven.
Flavor enhancer
M. S .: Again we return to the forks and crossroads. Your operation, for example. It’s scary when they tell you that you have a brain tumor. Saying goodbye to life, thinking about death?
S. G.: I allowed this possibility. I do not know your feelings on this part, but I was subject to attacks of the most heart-rending fear of death in adolescence.
M. S .: As a child, I would say. For the first time this thought came to me at the age of six or seven. This is a terrible discovery! And I constantly returned to this thought in horror and bounced at the last moment. Then the fear gets back a little dulled for some reason.
S. G.: Over the years, you get used to the idea of the end, because the natural forces in you decrease. Scary, no doubt, but not horror-horror. Batteries run down. You come to yourself. You know all your reactions, your good and bad sides, you do not expect surprises from yourself. I think that the human age is commensurate with the development of the human soul. It is not unlimited. If someone rewarded us with immortality, sooner or later we would lay hands on ourselves. Moreover, at first, out of cowardice, of course, those around us would become unbearable, but in the end, if we were honest with ourselves, we would turn all this anger on ourselves. It is sickening, like a gramophone needle, to ride along the same furrow. Everyone has their own age, but those few decades that nature has given us are enough. Sad but true.
M. S .: I remember walking past a shop window one spring. There were fun youth clothes, and I thought: oh, if I were 18, how would I put all this on! And then I realized that I don’t want to be 18 again, I don’t want to live another life again! And upset.
S. G.: Yes, I don’t want a repeat. And you’re still waiting for news. Let’s say I don’t have any experience with grandchildren yet. It seems that now that the passions have subsided and there is no particular hurry, I would be a good grandfather.
M. S .: In your opinion, what is the taste of life, what does it consist of?
S. G.: Of course, the strongest stimulant of this taste is the consciousness of personal mortality. It is not for nothing that you become especially cheerful when recovering from a serious illness, when every worldly burden becomes a joy – washing dishes, shopping, and the like. For some reason, I am in harmony with life when I see different beauties – be it the Pamirs, or Manhattan, or an empty and snowy country lane with rare lanterns. You almost like yourself then, although all the merit is that you tore off your ass and now you contemplate. The so-called creative activities brighten up life very much. Time somehow shrinks: you think that you just sat down at the table, and it’s already dusk. Work, if it is to one’s heart, and one is ashamed to call it work, is a pleasure, which, however, is quite exhausting. But in general, with age, you appreciate life more and more unpretentiously, without excessively torturing it with meaning. The itch of questioning begins to seem ingratitude, almost disgusting. It would be good if possible to examine life as little as possible. Well, you got an apple – and gnaw it to your health, and don’t pester the sky with questions: why is it given, are apples sweeter, is it supposed to be supplemented when you finish it …
M. S .: Three things that give meaning to life – what is it for you?
S. G.: Curiosity, a favorite thing and lofty feelings. At different times in life, something from this triad came out on top, but she herself, perhaps, remained unchanged for me.