Peter Weil, Alexander Genis - Native Speech. Fine Literature Lessons

Weil and Genis as founding fathers

At the presentation of the luxuriously republished book “Russian Cuisine in Exile” (Makhaon Publishing House), three legendary writers appeared before Muscovites as authors: Weil-i-Genis, Peter Weil and Alexander Genis.

I use the epithet “legendary” not as a catchphrase, but as a definition: while remaining one of the most influential in literature of the last decade and a half, these writers never became an integral part of Russian literary life. For most of us, they were and remain characters who, in many ways, created the myth about Russian literary New York of the 70s and 80s.

A situation that provokes a conversation not so much about “Russian Cuisine” itself, but about the place of its authors in modern Russian literature and, more broadly, culture.

Of the three books with which our reading of Weill and Genis began, “The 60s. The World of the Soviet Man", "Native Speech" and "Russian Cuisine in Exile" - the latter became a bestseller. To get to know its authors, this is, in general, the most closed book, although it contains all the components of their prose: energy, emotional pressure (unexpected in a cookbook), wit, almost dandy elegance of style, simplicity and sincerity of the “confessional beginning” . But even at the same time, there is a precisely maintained distance with the reader, and finally, the magnificence of the very gesture of two “highbrows” who have taken on the “low genre.” This book became an event not only in culinary literature.

The most humorous writers of the 90s - one of the first titles of Weil and Genis in their homeland. The reputation at that time was by no means derogatory. Against. Banter in those years was something of an everyday form of conceptualism. They joked about the “soviet” and sovietness, freeing themselves from the ethics and aesthetics of barracks life. For many, the “stupidity” of Weil and Genis was then correlated with Sots Art, which was the leader in Russian conceptualism. And the style of their essayistic prose very quickly became the style of newspaper headlines (including Kommersant), the language of a new generation of radio presenters, and the style of the most advanced television programs.

Well, in the field of intellectual life, Weil-i-Genis turned out to be surprisingly timely thanks to the beginning boom of cultural studies - the ability to connect everything with everything, the ability to “scientifically” prove anything. In this intellectual fornication, which intoxicated the consumer with the illusion of emancipation of thought, and the manufacturer with the unexpected pliability of the objects of “analysis,” the question of the responsibility of the thinker was removed by the spectacularity of the constructions and the absolute irrefutability of the conclusions (if, of course, you agreed to play by the proposed rules). I was intoxicated by the “non-triviality” of the very language of the new science, or, as they began to say then, “coolness.” This peculiar “coolness”, freedom from all sorts of traditions, as it seemed to the mass reader at that time, was taken by both “Native Speech” and “60s. The world of Soviet man."

Well, not the least role was played by the charm of the legend on whose behalf they represented - the legend of the Russian emigration of the third wave, personified, in particular, by the figures of Brodsky and Dovlatov.

No, I don’t think that banter was invented by Weil and Genis; by that time banter, as one of the components of the youth subculture, was becoming the style of the generation. And it turned out that the stylistics of Weil and Genis codified this style as banter for the reader in Russia; the banter seemed to have become a fact of literature.

The place that Weil and Genis occupied at that time in the minds of the mass reader was unusually honorable for a writer - but also deadly.

To become a feature of the time, the color of this time, no matter how bright, means to go down in history with this time. But history in Russia moves quickly, what was news yesterday is commonplace today.

For example, the very idea of the book “Russian Cuisine in Exile” degenerated into culinary TV shows with the participation of current stars, that is, into a way of keeping the largest possible mass audience in front of the screens in order to sell advertising clips.

Banter also became a regular TV dish - from the evenings of the favorite of pensioners Zadornov to the “intellectual” Svetlana Konegen. The creativity of the Sotsartists lost its relevance much faster than the aesthetics of socialist realism that fed them with its energy; moreover, Sotsart is already history, and the new generation of writers in Russia, who sincerely, earnestly crave “partisanship in literature,” is today’s reality.

The very charm of the aura of Russian life abroad has finally melted away - today’s readers of Weil and Genis have their own image of abroad.

It would seem that their time has passed.

And this is where the fun begins – their books remain relevant. And not only new ones, but also old ones.

To a certain extent, the appearance of two new writers played a role: Weil separately and Genis separately. If initially their joint work provoked a certain symbolism of perception: the content and poetics of Weil-and-Genis’s books as a fact of collective creativity, as a kind of generalized voice of the Russian emigration of the 70-80s, then their current work separately forces us to treat it as to an individual phenomenon.

And the first thing that readers of the new books by Weill and Genis discovered was the disappearance of banter from their content. No, the irony and paradox remained, but it was no longer banter. The irony of Weil and Genis changed its function for the reader.

The fact is that banter in Russia was in many ways a continuation of the so-called indifference of the 80s, a form of denial - and nothing more. Irony in Weil and Genis implied not so much negation as “clearing space” for the affirmation of one’s own ideas about the norm, worked out both by thought and by accumulated life experience - about compliance with the laws of thinking, the laws of art, the laws of life.

In the most significant of the books published in recent years by Weil, in “Genius Loci,” the author does not abandon what he once did in essayism with Genis. Weil continues here, but on new material and with new tasks. He took up self-identification in world culture and world history. The book contains extensive essays about Joyce, Aristophanes, Borges, Wagner, Brodsky, Fellini; about Dublin, Athens, Tokyo, New York, Istanbul, etc. - not studies, not study, but a gradual methodical formulation of one’s own image of the world and its culture.

Weil takes what is clear to him (and to us, his contemporaries), what is relevant, what he (we) are today. In other words, when we read about Khalsa or Mishima in Weil, we read about our current selves.

The same thing happens when reading Genis’s book “Dovlatov and the Surroundings,” which discouraged critics with its very genre. What is this, a memoir? Autobiography? Essay on the psychology of creativity? Portrait of Russian emigration?

Both, and the other, and the third, but as material on which the author reflects on modern literature as an aesthetic phenomenon. A distant analogy is a literary manifesto. But distant. Because a manifesto is, by definition, a protocol of intent. Genis explores an aesthetic phenomenon that has already taken place and has proven its viability. And he does this both as a theorist and as a practitioner.

In 1991, I heard from a venerable philologist a review of the authors of the just published “Native Speech”: “Lazy people! At least three essays in their book provide a brief outline of the monograph, but they won’t sit down to study it in detail.”

No, why not, we sat down and worked.

The lightness, aphorism, and stylistic play with which Weil and Genis write do not in any way cancel out, but paradoxically create in their books the image not of light-footed runners on eternal topics, but of people (writers, thinkers) tightly locked in a tense battle with the unsolvability of damned questions .

Actually, that’s why I wrote the phrase “founding fathers” before this text, meaning Weil and Genis not as writers who once literary formulated banter as the language of the era, but as writers who determined - from the very beginning - ways out of dead ends where this banter leads.

From the book Lectures on Russian Literature [Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Gorky] author Nabokov Vladimir

“FATHERS AND CHILDREN” (1862) 1 “Fathers and Sons” is not only Turgenev’s best novel, one of the most brilliant works of the 19th century. Turgenev managed to realize his plan: to create the male character of a young Russian man, not at all similar to the journalistic doll of the socialist

From the book Selected Essays of the 1960s-70s by Susan Sontag

From the book Life will fade away, but I will remain: Collected Works author Glinka Gleb Alexandrovich

From the book Articles from the magazine “Russian Life” author Bykov Dmitry Lvovich

Fathers and Sons - a remake of new fragments of an old novel

From the book Fantavria, or the sad story of Crimean science fiction author Azariev Oleg Gennadievich

1. Candidates for founders For many years, Crimean science fiction began its origins with Alexander Green. In many ways this is true. Alexander Stepanovich was not a native Crimean, that is, a person born on the peninsula. Due to health reasons, he settled on the peninsula in

From the book Little-Known Dovlatov. Collection author Dovlatov Sergey

From the book History of Russian Literature of the 19th Century. Part 2. 1840-1860 author Prokofieva Natalya Nikolaevna

From the book 50 books that changed literature author Andrianova Elena

“Fathers and Sons” In 1862, the writer published his most famous novel, “Fathers and Sons,” which caused the greatest number of very controversial responses and critical judgments. The popularity of the novel among the general public is not least due to its acute

From the book History of the Russian Novel. Volume 1 author Philology Team of authors --

13. Ivan Turgenev “Fathers and Sons” Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev came from an ancient family of Tula nobles, the Turgenevs. Ivan's childhood years were spent in the village of Spasskoye-Lutovinovo, Oryol province - his mother's estate. In 1833, Turgenev entered Moscow University, the following year

From the book From Pushkin to Chekhov. Russian literature in questions and answers author Vyazemsky Yuri Pavlovich

“FATHERS AND CHILDREN” (G. M. Friedlener - § 1; A. And Batyuto - §§ 2-5) 1 The novel “Fathers and Sons” was conceived by Turgenev in August 1860 and completed a year later - July 30, 1861. Romap was published in the February book of the Russian Bulletin magazine for 1862. A separate publication was published the same year

From the author's book

Bykova N. G. “Fathers and Sons” In February 1862, I. S. Turgenev published the novel “Fathers and Sons.” The author tried to show Russian society the tragic nature of the growing conflicts. The reader is exposed to economic troubles, the impoverishment of the people, the decomposition of the traditional

Native speech. Literature lessons Alexander Genis, Peter Weil

(No ratings yet)

Title: Native Speech. Literature lessons

About the book “Native Speech. Lessons in Fine Literature" Alexander Genis, Peter Weil

“Reading the main books of Russian literature is like revising your biography. Life experience accumulated along with reading and thanks to it... We grow with books - they grow in us. And someday the time comes to rebel against the attitude towards the classics invested in childhood,” wrote Peter Weil and Alexander Genis in the preface to the very first edition of their “Native Speech”.

The authors, who emigrated from the USSR, created a book in a foreign land, which soon became a real, albeit slightly humorous, monument to the Soviet school literature textbook. We have not yet forgotten how successfully these textbooks forever discouraged schoolchildren from any taste for reading, instilling in them a persistent aversion to Russian classics. The authors of “Native Speech” tried to reawaken the unfortunate children (and their parents) interest in Russian fine literature. It looks like the attempt was a complete success. Weil and Genis’s witty and fascinating “anti-textbook” has been helping graduates and applicants pass exams in Russian literature for many years.

On our website about books you can download the site for free without registration or read online the book “Native Speech. Lessons in fine literature" Alexander Genis, Peter Weil in epub, fb2, txt, rtf, pdf formats for iPad, iPhone, Android and Kindle. The book will give you a lot of pleasant moments and real pleasure from reading. You can buy the full version from our partner. Also, here you will find the latest news from the literary world, learn the biography of your favorite authors. For beginning writers, there is a separate section with useful tips and tricks, interesting articles, thanks to which you yourself can try your hand at literary crafts.

Quotes from the book “Native Speech. Lessons in Fine Literature" Alexander Genis, Peter Weil

“They knew they were rebelling, but they couldn’t help but kneel.”

P. Weil and A. Genis– authors of fascinating and subtle essays in which they help readers of any age to move away from the usual stereotypes in judgments about Russian classical literature. Read a fragment of the article and answer the questions.

Chekhov's heroes are directly related to the superfluous people of Pushkin and Lermontov, in the distant sense - with the little man of Gogol, and - in the future - are not alien to Gorky's superman. Made up of such a motley mixture, they all have a dominant feature - freedom. They are not motivated by anything. Their thoughts, desires, actions are as random as the names they bear at the whim of either the author or life. (When talking about Chekhov, one can never draw a decisive line.) Almost every character of his lives in the realm of the potential, and not the realized. Almost everyone (even the “American” Yasha) is not completed, not embodied, not stopped in his search for himself. Chekhov's hero is a sum of probabilities, a condensation of unpredictable possibilities. The author never allows him to take root in life, to grow into it completely and irrevocably. According to Chekhov, man still lives in a rational, existential world, but he has nothing to do there anymore. The unit of Chekhov’s drama, its atom, is not an idea, as in Dostoevsky, not a type, as in the “natural school,” not a character, as in Tolstoy, but simply - a personality, a whole person, about whom nothing definite can be said: he is absurd because he is inexplicable.<…>The arbitrariness, uniqueness, and individuality of Chekhov's heroes are the outward expression of that freedom that has reached the limit, making life unbearable: no one understands anyone, the world has fallen apart, man is imprisoned in a glass shell of loneliness. Chekhov's dialogue usually turns into interspersed monologues, a set of unaddressed remarks.<…>Chekhov's heroes rush around the stage in search of a role - they long to get rid of their worthlessness, from the painful freedom of being a nobody, from the need to simply live, and not build a life. However, no one works for Chekhov. Maybe behind the scenes (Lopakhin, for example), but never on stage.<…>The doctor cannot help Chekhov's heroes because they suffer from something other than what the doctors treat.<…>In the composition of all Chekhov's plays, scenes of meetings and farewells occupy a huge place. Moreover, the very atmosphere of Chekhov’s famous life is in fact full of the bustle of the station. There is an eternal platform here, and things are always in disarray: in The Cherry Orchard they are being sorted out throughout the entire first act, and put away in the entire last act. And behind the stage (the stage directions indicate) there is a railway. But where do the passengers of Chekhov’s drama go? Why do we always see them getting ready to travel, but never arriving at their destination? And where is this place anyway?<…>Nothing happens in Chekhov's theater: conflicts arise, but are not resolved, destinies become entangled, but are not unraveled. The action only pretends to be action, the stage effect is an effect, the dramatic conflict is a conflict. If the garden had not been sold, what would have changed in the lives of all those who are so worried about it? Would the garden have held Ranevskaya with her stack of recruiting telegrams from Paris? Would the garden prevent Anya and Petya Trofimov from leaving? Will the money earned for the garden add meaning to Lopakhin's life? No, the fate of the garden is truly important only for the garden itself, only for it it is literally a matter of life and death. The dead end into which debts supposedly drove the heroes is conditional. He is just an external reflection of another, truly deadly dead end, into which Chekhov led the characters in The Cherry Orchard, himself, and all of Russian literature in its classical form. This dead end is formed by time vectors. The tragedy of Chekhov's people comes from their lack of roots in the present, which they hate and which they fear.<…>That’s why Chekhov’s heroes live so hard, so crampedly, that the shadow of a grandiose tomorrow falls on them, which does not allow them to take root in today. It is not for nothing that the futurist Mayakovsky immediately recognized Chekhov as one of his own - he did not throw him off the ship of modernity.<…>Destroying all symbolism in his human heroes, Chekhov transferred the semantic, metaphorical emphasis to an inanimate object - a garden. But is it really that inanimate? The garden is the pinnacle image of all Chekhov’s creativity, as if it were his final and general symbol of faith. The garden is a perfect community in which every tree is free, each grows on its own, but without giving up its individuality, all the trees together form a unity. The garden grows into the future, without breaking away from its roots, from the soil. It changes while remaining unchanged. Submitting to the cyclical laws of nature, being born and dying, he conquers death.<…>A garden is a synthesis of intent and providence, the gardener’s will and God’s providence, whim and fate, past and future, living and inanimate, beautiful and useful (from cherries, the sober author reminds, you can make jam). The garden is a prototype of the ideal fusion of the individual and the universal. If you like, Chekhov's garden is a symbol of conciliarity, which Russian literature prophesied.<…>All Chekhov's heroes are members of one big family, connected to each other by bonds of love, friendship, affection, kinship, origin, and memories. They all deeply feel the commonality that connects them, and yet they are not given the ability to penetrate into the depths of the human soul, to accept it into themselves.<…>The connective tissue and the general root system have been destroyed. “All of Russia is our garden,” says Trofimov. Those who should plant tomorrow's garden are cutting down today's garden. On this note, full of tragic irony, Chekhov completed the development of classical Russian literature. Having depicted a man on the edge of a cliff into the future, he walked away, leaving posterity to watch the pictures of the destruction of harmony, which the classics so passionately dreamed of. Chekhov's garden will still appear in Mayakovsky, his ghost will still appear in Bunin's "Dark Alleys", he will even be transferred into space (“And apple trees will bloom on Mars”) But that Chekhovian cherry orchard will no longer exist. He was knocked out in the last play of the last Russian classic.

Peter Weil, Alexander Genis

Native speech. Literature lessons

* * *

Over the years, I realized that humor for Weil and Genis is not a goal, but a means, and moreover, a tool for understanding life: if you study a phenomenon, then find what is funny in it, and the phenomenon will be revealed in its entirety...

Sergey Dovlatov

“Native Speech” by Weil and Genis is a renewal of speech, encouraging the reader to re-read all school literature.

Andrey Sinyavsky

...books familiar from childhood over the years become only signs of books, standards for other books. And they are taken from the shelf as rarely as the Parisian meter standard.

P. Weil, A. Genis

Andrey Sinyavsky

Fun craft

Someone decided that science must be boring. Probably to make her more respected. Boring means a solid, reputable enterprise. You can invest capital. Soon there will be no space left on earth among the serious garbage heaps raised to the sky.

But once upon a time science itself was considered a good art and everything in the world was interesting. Mermaids flew. Angels splashed. Chemistry was called alchemy. Astronomy - astrology. Psychology - palmistry. The story was inspired by the muse from Apollo's round dance and contained an adventurous romance.

And now what? Reproduction of reproduction? The last refuge is philology. It would seem: love for words. And in general, love. Free air. Nothing forced. Lots of ideas and fantasies. So here it is: science. They added numbers (0.1; 0.2; 0.3, etc.), stuck in footnotes, provided, for the sake of science, an apparatus of incomprehensible abstractions through which one cannot get through (“vermiculite”, “grubber”, “loxodrome”, “parabiosis”, “ultrarapid”), rewrote all this in obviously indigestible language - and here you have, instead of poetry, another sawmill for the production of countless books.

Already at the beginning of the twentieth century, idle second-hand book dealers thought: “Sometimes you wonder - does humanity really have enough brains for all the books? There are as many brains as there are books!” “Nothing,” our cheerful contemporaries object to them, “soon computers will be the only ones to read and produce books. And people will have to take the products to warehouses and landfills!”

Against this industrial background, in the form of opposition, in refutation of the gloomy utopia, it seems to me that the book by Peter Weil and Alexander Genis, “Native Speech,” arose. The name sounds archaic. Almost village-like. Smells like childhood. Hay. Rural school. It is fun and entertaining to read, just like a child should. Not a textbook, but an invitation to reading, to divertissement. It is not proposed to glorify the famous Russian classics, but to look into it at least with one eye and then fall in love with it. The concerns of “Native Speech” are of an ecological nature and are aimed at saving the book, at improving the very nature of reading. The main task is formulated as follows: “They studied the book and - as often happens in such cases - practically stopped reading.” Pedagogy for adults, who, by the way, are highly read and educated.

“Native speech”, babbling like a stream, is accompanied by unobtrusive, unburdensome learning. She suggests that reading is co-creation. Everyone has their own. It has a lot of permissions. Freedom of interpretation. Even if our authors have ate the dog in fine literature and give out completely original imperative decisions at every step, our job, they inspire, is not to obey, but to pick up any idea on the fly and continue, sometimes, perhaps, in the other direction. Russian literature is revealed here in the image of a sea expanse, where each writer is his own captain, where sails and ropes are stretched from Karamzin’s “Poor Liza” to our poor “villages,” from the poem “Moscow - Cockerels” to “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow.”

Reading this book, we see that eternal and, indeed, unshakable values do not stand still, pinned up like exhibits under scientific rubrics. They move in the literary series and in the reader’s consciousness and, it happens, are part of later problematic developments. Where they will sail, how they will turn tomorrow, no one knows. The unpredictability of art is its main strength. This is not a learning process, not progress.

“Native Speech” by Weil and Genis is a renewal of speech that encourages the reader, no matter how smart he is, to re-read all school literature. This technique, known since ancient times, is called defamiliarization.

To use it, you don’t need much, just one effort: to look at reality and at works of art with an unbiased look. As if you were reading them for the first time. And you will see: behind every classic beats a living, newly discovered thought. I want to play it.

For Russia, literature is a starting point, a symbol of faith, an ideological and moral foundation. You can interpret history, politics, religion, national character in any way you like, but as soon as you say “Pushkin,” the ardent antagonists happily and unanimously nod their heads.

Of course, only literature that is recognized as classical is suitable for such mutual understanding. Classics is a universal language based on absolute values.

Russian literature of the golden 19th century became an indivisible unity, a kind of typological community, before which the differences between individual writers receded. Hence the eternal temptation to find a dominant feature that distinguishes Russian literature from any others - the intensity of spiritual quest, or love of the people, or religiosity, or chastity.

However, with the same - if not greater - success one could talk not about the uniqueness of Russian literature, but about the uniqueness of the Russian reader, who is inclined to see the most sacred national property in his favorite books. To offend a classic is the same as insulting one’s homeland.

Naturally, this attitude develops from an early age. The main tool for sacralizing the classics is school. Literature lessons played a huge role in the formation of Russian public consciousness. First of all, because the books opposed the educational claims of the state. At all times, literature, no matter how hard it was fought, has revealed its internal inconsistency. It was impossible not to notice that Pierre Bezukhov and Pavel Korchagin are heroes of different novels. Generations of those who managed to maintain skepticism and irony in a society poorly suited for this grew up on this contradiction.

However, over the years, books familiar from childhood become only signs of books, standards for other books. And they are taken from the shelf as rarely as the Parisian meter standard.

Anyone who decides to do such an act - re-read the classics without prejudice - faces not only old authors, but also himself. Reading the main books of Russian literature is like revising your biography. Life experience accumulated along with reading and thanks to it. The date when Dostoevsky was first revealed is no less important than family anniversaries. We grow with books - they grow in us. And someday the time comes to rebel against the attitude towards the classics invested in childhood. Apparently this is inevitable. Andrei Bitov once admitted: “I spent more than half of my creativity struggling with the school literature course.”

We conceived this book not so much to refute the school tradition, but to test - and not even it, but ourselves in it. All chapters of “Native Speech” strictly correspond to the regular high school curriculum. Of course, we do not hope to say anything essentially new about a subject that has occupied the best minds in Russia. We just decided to talk about the most stormy and intimate events of our lives - Russian books.

Peter Weil, Alexander Genis New York, 1989

The legacy of “Poor Lisa”

Karamzin

There is an affectation in the very name Karamzin. It was not for nothing that Dostoevsky distorted this surname in order to ridicule Turgenev in “The Possessed.” It's so similar it's not even funny. Until recently, before the boom created by the revival of his History began in Russia, Karamzin was considered just a slight shadow of Pushkin. Until recently, Karamzin seemed elegant and frivolous, like the gentleman from the paintings of Boucher and Fragonard, later resurrected by the artists of the World of Art.

And all because one thing is known about Karamzin: he invented sentimentalism. This, like all superficial judgments, is true, at least in part. To read Karamzin today, one must stock up on aesthetic cynicism, allowing one to enjoy the old-fashioned simplicity of the text.

Nevertheless, one of his stories, “Poor Liza,” fortunately it is only seventeen pages and all about love, still lives in the minds of the modern reader.

Poor peasant girl Lisa meets the young nobleman Erast. Tired of the windy light, he falls in love with a spontaneous, innocent girl with the love of his brother. But soon platonic love turns into sensual love. Lisa consistently loses spontaneity, innocence and Erast himself - he goes to war. “No, he really was in the army; but instead of fighting the enemy, he played cards and lost almost all his property.” To improve matters, Erast marries an elderly rich widow. Having learned about this, Lisa drowns herself in the pond.

Most of all it looks like a ballet libretto. Something like “Giselle”. Karamzin, use...

Sergey Dovlatov

“Native Speech” by Weil and Genis is a renewal of speech, encouraging the reader to re-read all school literature.

Andrey Sinyavsky

...books familiar from childhood over the years become only signs of books, standards for other books. And they are taken from the shelf as rarely as the Parisian meter standard.

P. Weil, A. Genis

Andrey Sinyavsky

Fun craft

Of course, only literature that is recognized as classical is suitable for such mutual understanding. Classics is a universal language based on absolute values.

However, over the years, books familiar from childhood become only signs of books, standards for other books. And they are taken from the shelf as rarely as the Parisian meter standard.