Read related report from ITAR-TASS
Life loved Aksyonov back, too – to such an extend that it tortured him in the end, refusing to let him go; he spent the last year and a half, after a sudden stroke, inside life’s boundaries – but at the same time also outside of its range. Just like that element called Aksenium, described according to all the rules of the ordinal periodic system, but not existing in reality. Who ever said, though, that reality is more important than fiction? That a fictional element can’t be equal to the system? Writing allows the author to step outside any limits, to live through dozens of different lives, not fitting into any one of them fully and completely. The limits will have to move, then.
And Vasily Aksyonov was always a true writer, in all respects. Just like Joseph Brodsky was always and in all respects a poet; the relationship between the two was, to put it mildly, rather chilly. They don’t make men of letters from this kind of material anymore, the warehouse ran out of it; current authors can write probably just as well, but they can’t and will never learn to carry themselves the same way – very naturally, yet being fully aware of belonging to the special class of “literary men”.
Aksyonov always spoke just the way a writer is supposed to – his discussions were unhurried and weighty, with the words carefully selected to fit in with each other; he stood on the ground as an emphatically significant weight, too; with a cheerful yet somewhat detached smile, he would immediately notice small details: “Oh, what a fresh little sweater”. And he would even misbehave, as a carefree writer is allowed to: for example, by serving on the panel of judges for “The Best Breasts of Moscow State University” contest. Maybe that wasn’t the right thing to do – but it was definitely a “writer’s thing”.
As a writer, he broke through the boundaries of generation; he created the stylistic canon for the early Sixties, for “young prose” – and then, without giving it a second thought, he left his peers behind to finish up the crumbs from the master’s table, and moved on to where new plans and ideas took him. For better or for worse – it doesn’t matter a bit; one who’s won the lucky “star” ticket always prefers changes and doesn’t reckon with stereotypes. Even of you’re the one who created these stereotypes once. Otherwise you’ll stay a “star boy” forever; no, thank you, spare me, please.
As a writer – not as a political figure, not as a romantic dissident – Aksyonov quietly fought against the Soviet regime; the hostile element believed that the system should change, not he, since the system was unlucky enough for him not to fit into it. As a writer, in recent years Aksyonov lived in three different countries, not giving geographical preference to any one of them, seeing himself as a sovereign part of the universal literary process.
At the same time, only one of these countries he saw as his homeland and worried about. His linguistic – and thus also historical – homeland. This is where we touch upon a dangerous topic – that of Aksyonov’s patriotism; if we take a step to the left, we’ll end up with a primitive cosmopolite, gliding along (or, maybe, sliding downward?) the rounded surface of our terrestrial globe; a step to the right – and we’ll find a cowardly self-taught writer who ridiculously tries to copy authentic Russian style, and who believes that change will only do us damage, that all that exists is reasonable and that all that is reasonable is substantial. Aksyonov never was and never wanted to be either of the two. Every reader of his early short stories and his late novel “Voltairian Men and Women” (“Volteryantzy I Volteryanki”) knows how natural “citizenship of the world” was for him.
And any fan of “The Island of Crimea” (“Ostrov Krym”) and anyone who leafs through (and that’s just the way it was written, very unevenly) “The Moscow Saga” (“Moskovskaya Saga”) can feel exactly how much Russian history and Russian life mattered to him and interested him. Neither here nor there. Both here and there. Because the strict lines of historical space were not for him. If you’re the one who drew these lines – you get to figure out where exactly I stand right now. And on what grounds.
How great was the surprise of cracker-barrel liberals when in the late 1990s the oh-so-democratic Aksyonov gave a very harsh, very uncompromising, in a writer’s way, interview to the journalist Yevgeny Kiselyov. In this interview, he explained why Chechnya is part of Russia, and how exactly Gunter Grass, who demanded freedom for Basayev’s slave traders, is a combination of great writing talent and poverty of political intellect. And while he was at it, he remembered how the head of Gussinsky’s security service, Phillip Bobkov, once interrogated him, Vasily Aksyonov, so freedom is a topic better discussed in a different place and in different company. But even greater was the indignation of cracker-barrel patriots, when Aksyonov, who seemed to have accepted Putin early on, so ungratefully changed by the mid-2000s. And started saying something so irreparably Westernist about our own Russian politics.
Hasn’t he warned us, though, that nobody owes anybody anything? He thinks that it’s right for Chechnya to be part of Russia and for Bobkov to be retired without the right to practice his profession ever again – and he’ll keep saying that. He is convinced that it’s not right to sacrifice freedom for the right to rule the country with ease, without effort – and he’ll say that, too. Because he is a writer. A Russian writer. We should accept him the way he is. Or reject him – the way he is. He is the element that is in the center of newly formed systems. And never the other way around. [rc]
© Russia Profile.org 2009
July 8, 2009
RUSSIA: An Element Outside the System
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MOSCOW, Russia / Russia Profile / July 8, 2009
Vasily Aksyonov Was Above All a Man of Literature, and Neither Right Nor Left Can Claim Him For Its own
Comment by Alexander Arkhangelsky
Special to RIA Novosti
Vasily Aksyonov, writer, died on June 6 at the age of 76. Best known for his “Moskovskaya Saga” (published in English as “Generations of Winter”), an epic novel charting the lives of several generations of a single Moscow family through the 20th century, Aksyonov was himself a victim of Stalinist terror and eventually exiled to the United States in 1980. But although he often held forth on the fate of Russia, he was neither a politician nor a dissident, but a writer to the bone.
Vasily Aksyonov’s last novel – “Rare Earths” - was far from his best, but it was still written, in his usual manner, on a large scale and without any timidity. Aksyonov presented it to the reader in a cheerful, upbeat jazzy mood.
The title is “Rare Earths”? Here’s what we’ll use in advertising games, then: the name of a literary chemical element, “Aksenium”, atomic number 111, with a relative atomic mass of [286]; encoded in the description is the date of birth.
The element is heavy, but the attitude toward life is very light. Not careless, not boyish, not fake-cheerful; with a complete understanding of life’s tragedy, but without even a hint of whining.
Read related report from ITAR-TASS
Life loved Aksyonov back, too – to such an extend that it tortured him in the end, refusing to let him go; he spent the last year and a half, after a sudden stroke, inside life’s boundaries – but at the same time also outside of its range. Just like that element called Aksenium, described according to all the rules of the ordinal periodic system, but not existing in reality. Who ever said, though, that reality is more important than fiction? That a fictional element can’t be equal to the system? Writing allows the author to step outside any limits, to live through dozens of different lives, not fitting into any one of them fully and completely. The limits will have to move, then.
And Vasily Aksyonov was always a true writer, in all respects. Just like Joseph Brodsky was always and in all respects a poet; the relationship between the two was, to put it mildly, rather chilly. They don’t make men of letters from this kind of material anymore, the warehouse ran out of it; current authors can write probably just as well, but they can’t and will never learn to carry themselves the same way – very naturally, yet being fully aware of belonging to the special class of “literary men”.
Aksyonov always spoke just the way a writer is supposed to – his discussions were unhurried and weighty, with the words carefully selected to fit in with each other; he stood on the ground as an emphatically significant weight, too; with a cheerful yet somewhat detached smile, he would immediately notice small details: “Oh, what a fresh little sweater”. And he would even misbehave, as a carefree writer is allowed to: for example, by serving on the panel of judges for “The Best Breasts of Moscow State University” contest. Maybe that wasn’t the right thing to do – but it was definitely a “writer’s thing”.
As a writer, he broke through the boundaries of generation; he created the stylistic canon for the early Sixties, for “young prose” – and then, without giving it a second thought, he left his peers behind to finish up the crumbs from the master’s table, and moved on to where new plans and ideas took him. For better or for worse – it doesn’t matter a bit; one who’s won the lucky “star” ticket always prefers changes and doesn’t reckon with stereotypes. Even of you’re the one who created these stereotypes once. Otherwise you’ll stay a “star boy” forever; no, thank you, spare me, please.
As a writer – not as a political figure, not as a romantic dissident – Aksyonov quietly fought against the Soviet regime; the hostile element believed that the system should change, not he, since the system was unlucky enough for him not to fit into it. As a writer, in recent years Aksyonov lived in three different countries, not giving geographical preference to any one of them, seeing himself as a sovereign part of the universal literary process.
At the same time, only one of these countries he saw as his homeland and worried about. His linguistic – and thus also historical – homeland. This is where we touch upon a dangerous topic – that of Aksyonov’s patriotism; if we take a step to the left, we’ll end up with a primitive cosmopolite, gliding along (or, maybe, sliding downward?) the rounded surface of our terrestrial globe; a step to the right – and we’ll find a cowardly self-taught writer who ridiculously tries to copy authentic Russian style, and who believes that change will only do us damage, that all that exists is reasonable and that all that is reasonable is substantial. Aksyonov never was and never wanted to be either of the two. Every reader of his early short stories and his late novel “Voltairian Men and Women” (“Volteryantzy I Volteryanki”) knows how natural “citizenship of the world” was for him.
And any fan of “The Island of Crimea” (“Ostrov Krym”) and anyone who leafs through (and that’s just the way it was written, very unevenly) “The Moscow Saga” (“Moskovskaya Saga”) can feel exactly how much Russian history and Russian life mattered to him and interested him. Neither here nor there. Both here and there. Because the strict lines of historical space were not for him. If you’re the one who drew these lines – you get to figure out where exactly I stand right now. And on what grounds.
How great was the surprise of cracker-barrel liberals when in the late 1990s the oh-so-democratic Aksyonov gave a very harsh, very uncompromising, in a writer’s way, interview to the journalist Yevgeny Kiselyov. In this interview, he explained why Chechnya is part of Russia, and how exactly Gunter Grass, who demanded freedom for Basayev’s slave traders, is a combination of great writing talent and poverty of political intellect. And while he was at it, he remembered how the head of Gussinsky’s security service, Phillip Bobkov, once interrogated him, Vasily Aksyonov, so freedom is a topic better discussed in a different place and in different company. But even greater was the indignation of cracker-barrel patriots, when Aksyonov, who seemed to have accepted Putin early on, so ungratefully changed by the mid-2000s. And started saying something so irreparably Westernist about our own Russian politics.
Hasn’t he warned us, though, that nobody owes anybody anything? He thinks that it’s right for Chechnya to be part of Russia and for Bobkov to be retired without the right to practice his profession ever again – and he’ll keep saying that. He is convinced that it’s not right to sacrifice freedom for the right to rule the country with ease, without effort – and he’ll say that, too. Because he is a writer. A Russian writer. We should accept him the way he is. Or reject him – the way he is. He is the element that is in the center of newly formed systems. And never the other way around. [rc]
© Russia Profile.org 2009
Read related report from ITAR-TASS
Life loved Aksyonov back, too – to such an extend that it tortured him in the end, refusing to let him go; he spent the last year and a half, after a sudden stroke, inside life’s boundaries – but at the same time also outside of its range. Just like that element called Aksenium, described according to all the rules of the ordinal periodic system, but not existing in reality. Who ever said, though, that reality is more important than fiction? That a fictional element can’t be equal to the system? Writing allows the author to step outside any limits, to live through dozens of different lives, not fitting into any one of them fully and completely. The limits will have to move, then.
And Vasily Aksyonov was always a true writer, in all respects. Just like Joseph Brodsky was always and in all respects a poet; the relationship between the two was, to put it mildly, rather chilly. They don’t make men of letters from this kind of material anymore, the warehouse ran out of it; current authors can write probably just as well, but they can’t and will never learn to carry themselves the same way – very naturally, yet being fully aware of belonging to the special class of “literary men”.
Aksyonov always spoke just the way a writer is supposed to – his discussions were unhurried and weighty, with the words carefully selected to fit in with each other; he stood on the ground as an emphatically significant weight, too; with a cheerful yet somewhat detached smile, he would immediately notice small details: “Oh, what a fresh little sweater”. And he would even misbehave, as a carefree writer is allowed to: for example, by serving on the panel of judges for “The Best Breasts of Moscow State University” contest. Maybe that wasn’t the right thing to do – but it was definitely a “writer’s thing”.
As a writer, he broke through the boundaries of generation; he created the stylistic canon for the early Sixties, for “young prose” – and then, without giving it a second thought, he left his peers behind to finish up the crumbs from the master’s table, and moved on to where new plans and ideas took him. For better or for worse – it doesn’t matter a bit; one who’s won the lucky “star” ticket always prefers changes and doesn’t reckon with stereotypes. Even of you’re the one who created these stereotypes once. Otherwise you’ll stay a “star boy” forever; no, thank you, spare me, please.
As a writer – not as a political figure, not as a romantic dissident – Aksyonov quietly fought against the Soviet regime; the hostile element believed that the system should change, not he, since the system was unlucky enough for him not to fit into it. As a writer, in recent years Aksyonov lived in three different countries, not giving geographical preference to any one of them, seeing himself as a sovereign part of the universal literary process.
At the same time, only one of these countries he saw as his homeland and worried about. His linguistic – and thus also historical – homeland. This is where we touch upon a dangerous topic – that of Aksyonov’s patriotism; if we take a step to the left, we’ll end up with a primitive cosmopolite, gliding along (or, maybe, sliding downward?) the rounded surface of our terrestrial globe; a step to the right – and we’ll find a cowardly self-taught writer who ridiculously tries to copy authentic Russian style, and who believes that change will only do us damage, that all that exists is reasonable and that all that is reasonable is substantial. Aksyonov never was and never wanted to be either of the two. Every reader of his early short stories and his late novel “Voltairian Men and Women” (“Volteryantzy I Volteryanki”) knows how natural “citizenship of the world” was for him.
And any fan of “The Island of Crimea” (“Ostrov Krym”) and anyone who leafs through (and that’s just the way it was written, very unevenly) “The Moscow Saga” (“Moskovskaya Saga”) can feel exactly how much Russian history and Russian life mattered to him and interested him. Neither here nor there. Both here and there. Because the strict lines of historical space were not for him. If you’re the one who drew these lines – you get to figure out where exactly I stand right now. And on what grounds.
How great was the surprise of cracker-barrel liberals when in the late 1990s the oh-so-democratic Aksyonov gave a very harsh, very uncompromising, in a writer’s way, interview to the journalist Yevgeny Kiselyov. In this interview, he explained why Chechnya is part of Russia, and how exactly Gunter Grass, who demanded freedom for Basayev’s slave traders, is a combination of great writing talent and poverty of political intellect. And while he was at it, he remembered how the head of Gussinsky’s security service, Phillip Bobkov, once interrogated him, Vasily Aksyonov, so freedom is a topic better discussed in a different place and in different company. But even greater was the indignation of cracker-barrel patriots, when Aksyonov, who seemed to have accepted Putin early on, so ungratefully changed by the mid-2000s. And started saying something so irreparably Westernist about our own Russian politics.
Hasn’t he warned us, though, that nobody owes anybody anything? He thinks that it’s right for Chechnya to be part of Russia and for Bobkov to be retired without the right to practice his profession ever again – and he’ll keep saying that. He is convinced that it’s not right to sacrifice freedom for the right to rule the country with ease, without effort – and he’ll say that, too. Because he is a writer. A Russian writer. We should accept him the way he is. Or reject him – the way he is. He is the element that is in the center of newly formed systems. And never the other way around. [rc]
© Russia Profile.org 2009
