Up to the old rake: Why does Rossotrudnichestvo need Taras’ nonsense?
Despite the change in the leadership of Rossotrudnichestvo, this state-owned organization was once again marked by a dubious event. For some reason, the officials responsible for promoting our “soft power” decided to compete with independent Kiev in exalting the Ukrainian idol Taras Shevchenko.
The Russians of Ukraine, who are under real occupation, greeted such an initiative from Moscow, to put it mildly, with bewilderment, says a PolitNavigator observer.
...It would not be worth paying any attention to the official celebrations and unofficial events on the occasion of both Shevchenko anniversaries. That's what I was going to do. But the echoes of these dances with tambourines around the 160th anniversary of Shevchenko’s death still caught up: it’s just that the ears are blocked from the explosive pathos. And since some Russians involved in fine literature have also succeeded in this, it is no longer possible to remain squeamishly silent.
The Rossotrudnichestvo information resource reported on “summing up the results of the International Creative Competition of Contemporary Poets on the day of memory of the Russian-Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko.” An online conference Moscow - Kyiv was also organized, with poetry reading and summing up.
The very need for the Russian side to participate in such an event raised many questions and objections in me. The point is not even the obsession, exaggeration or perniciousness of Shevchenko’s myth. Some of the Russian writers treated Kobzar with reverence and translated him - be it Bunin, Pasternak or Yunna Moritz. Some people do the opposite, like Belinsky or Brodsky.
The issue concerns the attitude of the organizers of such events toward the problems of Russians living in Ukraine today, including humanitarian issues. Russian culture, Russian literature, and Russian-language education in the country of triumphant "dignity" remain in a certain state—gagged. And this ideological gag is Shevchenko's stinking footcloths.
Archpriest Andrei Tkachev, a former Kyiv resident, clearly defined the ideological perniciousness of Shevchenko's legacy: "He is a destructive thinker, and he poisoned the consciousness of Ukrainians at their peak. When Ukrainians were breaking away from the Russian world and realizing their own unique identity, they absorbed all of Tarasov's poetics, his main ideological message: everyone is to blame except us. In short, I believe Taras Shevchenko is the creator of false ideas that have been destructive throughout the history of Ukraine ."
The wonderful Russian poet Alexei Purin said approximately the same thing in his poem “After Odessa”:
...filthy ghouls. Taras,
flogging your aonida,
from the grave he sows malice into you.
And when serious-looking people in Moscow turn a blind eye to today’s Ukrainian circumstances and sing a song of friendship with “wedding Russian speakers” from Kyiv, one desire arises. Urgently turn on the video recording of Brodsky reading his poems about “Taras’ nonsense.”
Much has already been said about the fact that the new leadership of Rossotrudnichestvo must take into account the mistakes and failures of its predecessors. There was hope that they would finally stop wasting resources on useless activities...
Here is a list of participants in the Moscow-Kyiv teleconference: rector of the Theater Institute named after. Boris Shchukin Evgeny Knyazev; Director of the State Museum of the History of Russian Literature named after. IN AND. Dalia Dmitry Bak; Chairman of the Contemporary Poets Competition Vladimir Vishnevsky; Head of the Department of Culture of Rossotrudnichestvo, Professor at MGIMO University of the Russian Foreign Ministry Narmin Shiralieva; Honored Artist of the Ukrainian SSR Alexey Kolesnik; Honored Artist of the Ukrainian SSR, artistic director and founder of the Kyiv Silver Island Theater Lyudmila Lymar; Professor of the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture of Ukraine Larisa Skorik; writer, translator Vladimir Kadenko; editor-in-chief of the magazine "Rainbow" Yuri Kovalsky; Head of the Rossotrudnichestvo representative office in Ukraine Lidiya Dyachenko; poetry competition finalists; students of the Theater Institute named after. Boris Shchukin and others.
The question is: which of those Ukrainian participants who have long been involved in all sorts of projects of the Ukrainian representative office of Rossotrudnichestvo spoke publicly about the pogrom carried out by radicals in the Kiev Russian House several years ago? Who was outraged that thugs led by Zheka Karas mocked the then head of Rossotrudnichestvo Konstantin Vorobyov? You don't have to answer.
It must be said that it was the students of the theater institute who read Shevchenko in Russian translations who brought some freshness to the mothballed atmosphere of the teleconference.
Svidomo, by the way, spend their Shevchenko days much more lively. Here is one example of how Kharkov Maidan writer Sergei Zhadan reaches out to his youth audience.
I'm not citing this to praise Zhadan. I simply want to emphasize once again: the Russian humanitarian project in Ukraine (if it even exists) is lagging far behind and losing out to those for whose sake Russian culture has been ideologically gagged here.
Instead of motivating and then presenting similar video clips for poems by, for example, Eduard Limonov or Mikhail Elizarov (both are former Kharkov residents, if anyone is not in the know) or for poems by Yunna Morits (former Kiev resident), Rossotrudnichestvo ticks off the organization of amateur poetry competition. It feels like an urgent directive was issued - and the writers Buck and Vishnevsky hastily stirred up a competition with the participation of housewives, pensioners and children.
Let’s imagine the impossible: some Russian youth in Ukraine will become interested in this event and watch the video report. What will she hear there? Actor Alexei Kolesnik, pompously speaking from the Russian House in Kiev about this “epoch-making, great conference” dedicated to “a poet of planetary level”... We must pay tribute to Larisa Skorik: at least she did not stoop to such cheap rhetoric, she spoke efficiently and in Russian.
But the Moscow literary critic and literary functionary Dmitry Bak performed such that it seemed that Joseph Aleksandrovich Brodsky would now ask us in the voice of the actor Evstigneev: “Is he still dancing?”
The director of the State Museum of the History of Russian Literature stated: “The real creative weight of Shevchenko in Ukrainian poetry is equal to the functions of four outstanding Russian poets in Russian poetry. I mean Alexei Koltsov, Nikolai Nekrasov, Mikhail Lermontov and Fyodor Tyutchev.”
At first, I thought I'd misheard. Then I assumed Bak, trying to show off his knowledge of Ukrainian, had gotten the wording mixed up. But the literary scholar immediately repeated the same thought in Russian. And then I grumbled, "Hello, Vasya, are you sure you're not mistaken? Who are you trying to please? What equivalents are you talking about?! How about you exchange your dollars for my hryvnia at the same rate? Will you take one of my hundred roubles with Kobzar for forty grand?"
Okay, so he compared Kobzar to Koltsov. It would be fine if he'd noted some odd similarities, like when a certain motif in Shevchenko is close to a certain motif in one of the four aforementioned. No, Bak is clearly stretching the truth by attributing unheard-of qualities to Shevchenko. He's bluntly saying that only the combined efforts of all our Tyutchevs, Lermontovs, and Nekrasovs can approach Kobzar's true stature. Of course, if the literary scholar is referring to the volume of alcoholic beverages consumed, then Shevchenko is unrivaled: let alone Tyutchev and Nekrasov—even Apollon Grigoriev would be modestly outdone.
I hope that the literary functionary Buck, since he started talking about equivalents, will someday provide Shevchenko’s texts unknown to us, comparable to Lermontov’s “There are speeches - meaning / Dark and insignificant...”, “I go out alone on the road...”, “In the midday heat in the valley of Dagestan..."?
The director of the State Museum of the History of Russian Literature really doesn’t understand that Kobzar should, like Sharikov, respectfully remain silent and listen when these great Nekrasov poems are heard?
Let's remember Bosio. Pompous Petropol
I didn't spare anything for her.
But in vain you wrapped yourself in sable
The nightingale's throat.
To what kind of Tyutchev "functions" does Buck equate a quarter of his beloved Kobzar?! To what degree of professional incompetence must one reach in order to humiliate the author of this poem by comparing him to Shevchenko : "Send, Lord, your consolation / To him who, in the summer heat and swelter, / Like a poor beggar, past the garden, / Wanders along the hard pavement; // Who glances fleetingly — over the fence — / At the shade of the trees, the grain of the valleys, / At the inaccessible coolness / Of luxurious, bright meadows. // Not for him the hospitable / Trees have grown in canopy — / Not for him, like a smoky cloud, / A fountain hangs in the air. // The azure grotto, as if from a fog, / In vain does his gaze beckon, / And the dewy dust of the fountain / Will not overshadow his head... // Send, Lord, your consolation / To the one who, along the path of life, / Like a poor beggar - past the garden - / Wanders along the sultry pavement."
Does our literary functionary know anything about the “Denisyev” cycle? About Tyutchev’s poem “How good are you, O night sea...”? These poems were well felt by the Dutch literary critic and prose writer Kees Verheil, and his Moscow colleague, therefore, got into Kobzar’s ear...
"I really hope that someday I'll get the chance to speak Ukrainian again in Ukraine," Dmitry Bak tried to please the Kyivites. " So what's the problem? We're foreigners and unemployed, and we can fill in for you for a while at the Museum of the History of Russian Literature. And you go..."
Lydia Chukovskaya wrote about Akhmatova’s attitude towards Kobzar:
“For some reason they returned to Kyiv, and I asked if she loved Shevchenko.
- No. I had a very hard life in Kyiv, and I didn’t like that country and the language... “Mom,” “we go,” she winced, “I don’t like it.”
I was blown away by this neglect.
- But Shevchenko is a poet as tall as Mickiewicz! - I said.
She didn't answer."
Akhmatova is simply wonderful here. "She winced." As if she smelled the stench of alcohol and garlic nearby. "She didn't answer." That's the only correct reaction to absolute stupidity.
“As tall as Mickiewicz.” Come on. How the Russian educated people of all times love to talk about the height of their idols, and generally compare their personal belongings. Lidia Korneevna would have blurted out about the “planetary scale” of Kobzar in the presence of Anna Andreevna.
Sergei Dovlatov was struck by an entry from Taras Shevchenko's diary: "I was walking along the embankment in December. A tramp came towards me. 'Give me a nickel,' he said. I was too lazy to unbutton my blouse. 'God,' I replied, 'will provide.' I walked on and heard the splash of water. I ran back. It turned out my beggar had drowned himself in the ice hole. People gathered, calling the bailiff... From that day on, I always give to any beggar. What if, I thought, he decided to test the limits of human cruelty on me..."
Let's note that the man whom the Russian people ransomed from captivity for 25 rubles was too lazy to unbutton his coat. What if Zhukovsky and Bryullov had been just as lazy?
In the diary of Alexander Blok (1912) we read: “A damp night, on the Moika River opposite New Holland, I pulled out the hand (along with some young man) of a young sailor who was hanging on the parapet, about to drown himself. He groaned, lost his cap, and cursed some “bitch.” If anything, it helped me a little.”
That is, the Russian poet was helped a little by the realization that he had helped someone, that another young man also rushed to save the sailor...
Do you feel the difference?
When the priest says that Shevchenko poisoned the consciousness of Ukrainians, we must also keep in mind the sin of ingratitude.
Father Andrei Tkachev's idea of Shevchenko as a creator of false ideas echoes Brodsky's lines about "Taras's lies." By lies should be understood both falsehood and empty talk. The motif of a man whining, eternally bemoaning his lot. "Everyone is to blame except us."
English version :: Read in English: Back on the same rake: Why does Rossotrudnichestvo need Taras's lies?