Alexey Varlamov biography. Always be in the mood

Varlamov Alexey Nikolaevich - prose writer.

His father is an employee of Glavlit, his mother is a Russian language teacher. Among the writer’s ancestors were nobles (great-great-grandfather - Senator N.N. Myasoedov) and peasants of the Kaluga province. Since childhood, Varlamov was fond of reading, traveling, and fishing, which was reflected in the autobiographical novel “Kupavna” (2000). Traveled a lot around the country and the world - in Central Russia, the Caucasus, the Russian North, the Urals, Siberia, was on Lake Baikal, Far East, in the Carpathians, in the USA, China, European countries.

Any existence is better than non-existence.

Varlamov Alexey Nikolaevich

In 1985, Varlamov graduated from the Faculty of Philology of Moscow State University, where he attended lectures by A.A. Taho-Godi, M.V. Panov, V.V. Kuskov, N.I. Tolstoy, V.A. Beloshapkova, A.V. Karelsky. The writer assigns a significant place to linguistics in his professional development.

The first literary experiments date back to early childhood. V. recalls that he always loved to invent stories and write them down. The first publication was the story “Cockroaches” (October 1987. No. 12). Already in his early works, Varlamov’s orientation towards Russian is visible. classic literature. The prose of A.S. Pushkin, A.P. Chekhov, I.A. Bunin, as well as A.P. Platonov and Yu.P. Kazakov had a significant influence on the writer’s work.

The turning point of the 1990s in Russia forced the writer to turn to questions about the present and future of the country, to national characteristics. “Folklore expeditions, the village, a turn to realizing one’s Russianness. Political upheavals that occurred in his youth. The desire to understand everything, understand your attitude and find your way. In more later years purchase village house in the north of the Vologda region (not far from Belovskaya Timonikha). This is the story “A House in the Village,” which, by the way, Belov read and returned to me with numerous notes, but on the whole his resolution was positive and very dear to me” (Autobiography. Department latest literature IRLI). Interest in Russian character and Russian life is noticeable in many of his works.

IN literary creativity The writer's path goes from stories to novels and novels. The stories “Veil” and “Sacrament” were published in 1991 in “Znamya” (No. 6), “Christmas Eve” and “Galasha” - in “New World” in 1992 (No. 6). This was followed by the stories “Mountain”, “Hello, Prince!”, and in 1995 - the first novel “Loch” (October. No. 2). At the same time, essays, critical essays, journalistic and literary articles were created. At the same time, 2 plays were written, one of which was staged at the festival of young dramaturgy and was highly appreciated by M. Roshchin.

The author himself conventionally divides everything written into “fictional”, even if it has real basis, and "documentary". He classifies as “fictional” the stories “Alloy”, “Partisan Marych and the Great Steppe”, “Angel”, “Going on Air”, “Sacrament”, “Tutaev”, “Entry”, “Kal-varia”, etc., the stories “Hello, Prince!”, “The Mountain”, the novels “The Loch”, “The Sunken Ark”, “The Dome”. The author defines the last three novels as “a kind of trilogy about viruses that have infected our national consciousness”: in “The Sucker” this is apocalypticism (in parallel with the writing of this novel, the author defended PhD thesis on the topic “Apocalyptic motifs in Russian prose of the late 20th century”), in “The Sunken Ark” - sectarianism, in “Dome” - utopianism. Moreover, in all three, the motive of escape from reality comes first. The heroes of the novels are modern people, restless, unstable, doubting, often worthless, but trying to find themselves.

On the library subscription. M. Gorky presents a book exhibition about Alexei Varlamov -famous Russian prose writer, publicist, philologist, researcher of Russian literature of the twentieth century.He is the most versatile prose writer - his novels and stories easily coexist next to the masterfully written biographies in the ZhZL series,” says Tatyana Kotova, librarian of the Gorky Library.

Alexey Varlamov is a laureate of the Alexander Solzhenitsyn Prize, the Patriarchal Literary Prize, as well as the Anti-Booker, " Big Book", etc. His soft narrative prose is like "a sip of warm mother's milk in the cold world of adults abandoned by God."

Alexey Varlamov was born in 1963 in Moscow, into a literary family. His father worked as a censor at the newspaper Pravda, his mother was a teacher of Russian language and literature at school. He graduated from an English special school, then entered the Faculty of Philology of Moscow State University, from which he graduated in 1985, although since childhood he had gravitated toward the natural sciences and regretted that he did not become a biologist or geographer.

Since childhood, he was fond of fishing, traveling and reading, traveled a lot around Russia - he visited the central zone of our country, the Caucasus, Siberia, the Urals, Lake Baikal, the Carpathians, the Far East, he was in the USA, in European countries and in China.

The writer recalls that he always liked to invent various stories and write them down.

Much of his literary life is connected with magazines. He was published in a variety of magazines: “New World”, “Znamya”, “October”, “Friendship of Peoples”, etc.

He made his debut as a prose writer with the story “Cockroaches” in the magazine “October” in 1987. And the first book, “House in Ostozhye,” was published in 1990.

He became famous after the publication of the story “Birth” in 1995, which was awarded the Anti-Booker Prize. In the story, the life of one married couple is compared with the life of Russia in the 90s. A boy is born in spite of poverty, dirt, fratricide and menacing prophecies about the end of the world, and the parents fight for a weak premature child, dragging us into this fight, as if this is not only the birth of a boy and not only the problem of his father and mother, but also our birth, as if the heroes stand, we will stand too. This is about the fact that Russia itself is being born in its own way, anew.

The novel “Loch”, published in the magazine “October”, together with the subsequent novels “The Sunken Ark” and “Dome”, formed a trilogy of the nineties about Russian life, its viruses and vulnerabilities.

The collection “The Tale of the Heart,” published in 2010, includes the well-known stories “Birth,” “House in the Village,” and “The Padchevars,” as well as the new family saga “Eva and Myasoedov.” The events of each of these stories are closely intertwined with the life story of Alexei Varlamov himself and the life of the modern world. Everything has been experienced, thought out, and deeply felt by the author. This is an artistically meaningful, bright and dramatic history of society, embodied in images and destinies, the history of time.

Alexey Varlamov became one of the authors who contributed to the revival of the series ZhZL(Life wonderful people). His masterfully written biographies at the intersection of romance and documentary, truth and fiction captivate and force us to empathize with the fates of historical figures, as if they were our friends and neighbors.

Book by Alexey Varlamov "Mikhail Prishvin"- the first biography of Mikhail Prishvin. The author showed his hero in all the complexity of his character and fate, removing the textbook gloss from his amazing life. Prishvin was called a hermit, although he was least of all like that. Russian Seton-Thompson, a wonderful children's author, this writer was considered by us exclusively as a singer of nature. But in his diaries, for example, you can find the most accurate, deep, verified social analysis Russian life. He wrote about collectivization, about Stalin's repressions, about the Patriotic War, and about the post-war period. His spiritual evolution was reflected in these diaries. He denounced the Bolsheviks, but went over to their side and, as an Orthodox man, tried to combine Christianity and communism.

Biography "Alexander Green" reveals the image of a wonderful writer, a bright romantic Alexander Green. Few people have not read Green's books, which give faith and hope, teach dreams and high goals. Alexander Green himself lived a difficult life. He did not become a sailor, but he became a Socialist-Revolutionary, was never recognized as one of the writers, lived in poverty and knew how to be content with little. He never chased wealth, but lived by the creativity and fantasies of his almost real heroes. At any time, he was an untimely man and left conflicting memories among those who knew him. Alexey Varlamov cites many previously unknown facts and details from the biography of Alexander Green, reveals the secrets of his fate and his creative workshop.

For a novel about Alexey Tolstoy in 2007, Varlamov received the Big Book literary prize. Alexei Tolstoy was called a cynic and an opportunist. An aristocrat by blood and by life, who remained a count in Stalinist Russia, Tolstoy was an actor who played not one, but many roles: a symbolist poet, a realist writer, a fierce anti-Soviet, a national Bolshevik, a patriot, an egoist, a caring husband, he was in love with life and hated death. His life had ups and downs, literary scandals, conspiracies and revelations; it intertwined generosity and greed, hospitality and arrogance, immorality and generosity. But Tolstoy was a hard worker, and two of his novels will remain in Russian literature, a story about childhood and a fairy tale that will always be read.

In 2008, the publication of Alexey Varlamov’s book was timed to coincide with the 120th anniversary "Michael Bulgakov". Alexey Varlamov carefully traces the fatal logic of Mikhail Bulgakov's life path, relying on numerous studies and memoirs. From a happy Kyiv childhood - to the hated practice of the zemstvo doctor and morphinism, from the first literary successes and great hopes- to journalistic day labor, from “Notes of a Young Doctor” - to “Notes of a Dead Man”, from the success of “Turbine Days” - to the failure of “The Cabal of Saints”, from the position of leading playwright of the Moscow Art Theater - to forced service as a librettist of the Bolshoi Theater - these are some parts of the path , according to which fate relentlessly and rapidly led Mikhail Bulgakov to early death and immediate posthumous glory.

Biography Andrey Platonov, the most mysterious and incorrect Russian writer of the twentieth century, was created by Alexei Varlamov on the basis of a significant number of archival documents and texts, including those that have recently been discovered. It traces the creative path and recreates the personal and everyday traits of the writer, who, in the words of Viktor Nekrasov, “was not a writer in life, but in writing always remained human in his own way.”

"Mental Wolf", published in 2014, is Alexey Varlamov’s latest novel to date. For it, the writer received the Student Booker Prize in 2015.The action of the novel takes place a hundred years ago, during one of the most acute moments of Russian history, during the First world war and the revolution that followed. Heroes live and die in it, in whom sometimes famous personalities can be discerned: Grigory Rasputin, Vasily Rozanov, Mikhail Prishvin, the scandalous hieromonk Iliodor and the sectarian Shchetinkin; Real and fictional events get mixed up. The characters of the novel love, argue and philosophize - about the nature of Russian people, about permissiveness, about Nietzsche, about the future of the country and about... the mental wolf - a terrible, lovely beast that invaded Russia and became the cause of its troubles...

Genre: Contemporary prose, Language: ru Abstract: What is the miracle of faith? How is Jesus Christ incarnate in each of us? A new book famous writer Alexei Varlamov does not give direct answers. Varlamov writes about ordinary people whom we meet every day, and at the same time, the fate of each such person is unique, as is his faith in...

Genre: Historical prose, Language: ru Abstract: Alexey Varlamov is a prose writer, laureate of the Alexander Solzhenitsyn Literary Prize (2006), the National Literary Prize “Big Book” (2007), and the Patriarchal Literary Prize. The novel is called "Mental Wolf". This phrase goes back to one of the ancient Orthodox prayers, where there are words that are striking in their mystery: “I will be hunted by a mental wolf.” This is why...

Genre: Contemporary prose, Language: ru Abstract: At first glance, Alexey Varlamov is a happy person. Famous writer, professor at Moscow State University, author of several books of prose, almost all of which were awarded prestigious awards. Just remember the “Anti-Booker”, the Alexander Solzhenitsyn Prize, the national literary award “Big Book”. But in each of his works there is pain for what is happening in the world...

Genre: Contemporary prose, Language: ru Abstract: Alexey Varlamov became a classic during his lifetime, and his stories covered the life of an entire generation. They defend the “outdated” concepts of honor, cordiality and openness, justice and love in an era of creativity and mobility. And the charm of this viscous honeyed prose is irresistible. The book includes famous works"Birth", "House in the Village" ...

Genre: Contemporary prose, Language: ru Abstract: The breath of modernity, attention to inner world a man with his restless and passionate soul, deep sympathy for his problems - this is what distinguishes the subtle and heartfelt prose of Alexei Varlamov. The writer's new book presents stories, each of which is whole life, living next to and together with...

Genre: Contemporary prose, Language: ru Abstract: Stories-parables, stories-confession, stories with a mystical background, with elements of fantasy, making one remember Gogolian tradition, - all these works, so different, are united by the author’s desire to show the hero in unusual, often extreme circumstances, in which the main qualities of a person are manifested. The author's world is polyphonic and voluminous. It covers different eras and destinies, life...

Download the book (size 4878Kb, fb2 format) Genre: Biographies and Memoirs, Language: ru Abstract: Andrei Platonov (1899–1951), the most mysterious and incorrect Russian writer of the 20th century, passed almost unnoticed past the brilliant literary mirrors of the era. However, in no other writer’s life has the national life of Russia manifested itself so acutely and in no other work...

Download the book (size 6166Kb, fb2 format) Genre: Biographies and Memoirs, Language: ru Abstract: The book of the famous writer Alexei Varlamov “Grigory Rasputin-New” is dedicated not just to one of the most mysterious and scandalous figures in Russian history. Rasputin is the key to understanding what happened to Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. What forces were behind Rasputin...

Genre: Historical prose, Language: ru Abstract: In Russian literature there are writers who control fate and are controlled by fate. Mikhail Bulgakov is one of the latter. His entire existence was continuous, meaningful, doomed to defeat in life and to a brilliant victory in literature, a duel with Fate. What should be done with a person, how to reward him with a gift, through...

Genre: Biographies and Memoirs, Language: ru Abstract: The name of Alexander Green, the creator of an entire world called Greenland, is known to everyone today, although only a few know the work of this amazing writer well. His fantastic heroes, who can fly, walk on the waves, dream and see their dreams come true, have always fascinated readers and endowed them with hope in any circumstances. But there was...

Alexey Nikolaevich VARLAMOV graduated from the Faculty of Philology of Moscow State University (1985). He defended his candidate and doctoral dissertations (dissertation “Life as creativity in Prishvin’s diary and fiction”). Doctor philological sciences, professor at Moscow State University, teaches Russian literature of the early 20th century and at the same time conducts a creative seminar at the Literary Institute. Gorky. Member of the Union Russian writers(since 1993).

Was a member of the public council " Literary newspaper"(until 1997), the editorial board of the monthly "On the Eve" (1995). Member of the editorial boards of the magazines “Literary Studies”, “October”, “Roman-Gazeta” (since 1998).

He gave lectures on Russian literature at universities in Europe and the USA. Visiting Professor at the University of Iowa (USA, 1998).

He made his debut as a prose writer with the story “Cockroaches” in the magazine “October” (1987, No. 12). The first book, “House in Ostozhye,” was published in 1990. The author became famous for his novel “Loch” (October magazine, 1995) and the story “Birth” (magazine “October”, 1995) New world", 1995), which won the Anti-Booker competition. The novel “The Eleventh of September” caused mixed reviews from critics (it was published in the magazine “Moscow” in 2003).

Author of a number of journalistic and literary articles.
Regular author of the “Lives of Remarkable People” series. In the ZhZL series, A. Varlamov published books about Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin, Alexander Green, A. N. Tolstoy, Grigory Rasputin, M. A. Bulgakov.

Prize winner: "Anti-Booker" (1995), "October" magazine (1995, 1997), Leipzig literary club "Lege Artis" for the best Russian story (1995), "Moscow Railway" newspaper (1997), "Roman-Gazeta" publishing house (1998), the Alexander Solzhenitsyn Prize “for the subtle tracking in artistic prose of the strength and fragility of the human soul, its fate in modern world; for understanding the paths of Russian literature of the 20th century in the genre writer's biographies"(2006), National Literary Award "Big Book" (2007, second prize for the documentary novel "Alexey Tolstoy").
Awarded a scholarship from the Moscow Literary Foundation (1999) for the novel “Kupavna”.

Alexey Nikolaevich VARLAMOV: interview

What is happening in modern Russian literature? Some say - crisis, others - prosperity. Why is there so much “black stuff” on book shelves? Is it true that people used to read more and more deeply? Should a writer have internal inhibitors? And if he is a believer, what should he write about and how? Should his work become a form of preaching - or will it turn out to be a profanation of literature? What can you learn from the fates of Russian writers of the 20th century?
We are talking about this with the writer Alexei VARLAMOV, winner of the Alexander Solzhenitsyn Prize in the field of literature.

“I THINK IN HUMAN FATES”

Remember how during the perestroika years people voraciously read thick literary magazines? Why has the mass reader now turned away from them? Who is to blame - writers or readers?
- Life is to blame - it has changed too much. No matter how much we now criticize Soviet times, people then had enough time to read, think and argue. The truth, in conditions of a total lack of information, could be found mainly in fiction. Of course, not the whole truth - but a considerable share of it. That is why the works of Belov, Astafiev, Rasputin, Aitmatov, Trifonov, Shukshin, Bykov, Vorobyov, Nosov and many others were so popular that readers saw in them prophets, “representatives of truth on earth.”

Nowadays, the situation has changed dramatically. Firstly, if you want the truth, a wide variety of press, radio, television, and the Internet are at your service. No matter how biased and one-sided this or that media may be - but, drawing from different sources, you can get to the truth. Secondly, today's life does not particularly stimulate people to think. On the one hand, people began to work much more and earn much more. On the other hand, before there were no such opportunities to spend money, now they have appeared - and therefore there is really no time left for reading. And if it remains, then modern man, in my opinion, is looking for entertainment in literature, not food for the mind.

He wants to get some kills for his money, if it's an action movie, or some kind of clever criminal puzzle, if it's a detective story, or a set bed scenes, if this erotic novel. And he wants to be sure that he will not be deceived. And serious literature is always a “pig in a poke.” You don't know in advance what will happen there. And this to modern man I don’t like it, it’s too simplified. He is not interested in what these writers think...

- So, it’s still the reader’s fault who has not matured enough to become a writer?
- No, of course, it’s not just about the readers. Completely new conditions have emerged that influence creativity. For example, if ideological censorship previously dominated and there were some methods of countering it, now it has been replaced by commercial censorship. And many were completely unprepared for it. Meanwhile, this censorship must be fought, one cannot follow its lead, one cannot accept its laws. Literature should not turn yellow.

But here there is a danger of taking a proud pose: well, let them not read us, they have not grown up to us, their level is Marinina and Dontsova. So you can be left without readers at all. Of course, a writer must look for some artistic moves, techniques, use certain genres in order to reach his contemporaries. In my opinion, we should have some kind of combination of serious prose and mass literature. An author must appear who will force himself to read. In the West, by the way, there were such writers. Marquez, Fowles, and even earlier Hemingway - these are exactly the people who managed to combine real literature and commercial success. We can't do it. Maybe due to the notorious mentality. Or maybe we are not ready for this yet. But I think some kind of breakthrough will happen in Russian literature.

Maybe the quality of pulp literature is determined precisely by the laws of the genre? Is it possible to talk about something serious in science fiction, detective stories, or romance novels?
- No, this is a strong simplification. The question cannot be asked which is better - realism or postmodernism, science fiction or detective fiction. You need to look practically - what gave literature this or that direction? What are the fruits? I think that realism still gave more quality, good texts. Although they also exist in postmodernism. For example, Venedikt Erofeev, his “Moscow - Petushki” is outstanding work. Or Sasha Sokolov, his novel “School for Fools”. Pelevin had some good stories. A rather interesting author is Vladimir Sharov.

If we take realistic prose, then here you can name much more serious names - Belov, and Rasputin, and Leonid Borodin, and Boris Ekimov, and Svetlana Vasilenko, and Oleg Pavlov, and Oleg Ermakov, and Boris Evseev, and Alexander Yakovlev, and Alexander Segen... There are a lot of authors who have written and are writing serious realistic prose.

Then, of course, Solzhenitsyn. The writer, on the one hand, is deeply traditional, morally very clear, but his style of writing is very complex, it combines both the traditional and the new. “The Gulag Archipelago” and “The Red Wheel” are, first of all, fundamentally new genres of Russian prose. Russian realism is not some kind of closed system or fossil. He is open to time. It lives, develops, and is incredibly varied and diverse.

As for science fiction, I know little about modern Russian science fiction. In my youth I read with great interest the Strugatsky brothers, Stanislav Lem, Clifford Simak, Ray Bradbury, whom I consider simply an outstanding writer. I think these are high, serious names. But I’m not sure that modern science fiction reaches such heights. I repeat, I know her less well, I can name few of the authors, and therefore I can hardly act as an expert. But I think that the demand for science fiction is much less now than in Soviet times. Now this is still largely the lot of amateurs, even if their circle is quite wide. But now, in my opinion, there is no such mass success among the intelligentsia as the Strugatskys or Stanislav Lem had 20-30 years ago.

They often say: people have lost the desire to read because too often in today’s literature, including serious literature, the theme of violence, murder, all kinds of extreme things arises - in a word, what is called “black stuff”. Do you agree with this?
- You know, I thought about this, and even wrote an article, which is called “Murder.” It seems that murder became the archetype of Russian literature in the 90s. IN Soviet literature In the 60-70s there were very few murders; serious prose did not address them. Perhaps in Shukshin’s “Red Kalina” or in the story “The Hunt to Live”. In modern life there are much more murders - so they penetrate into literature. But there is a deeper reason. People's views have changed.

Take, for example, Viktor Astafiev’s story “Lyudochka”. There, a girl from the village came to the city, she was abused, she could not stand it and committed suicide. What to do with the bastard who is to blame for this? Lyudochka's stepfather kills him. He sees no other way out. And what is the author's position? The writer actually justifies his hero. He sympathizes with him. He believes that such evil is worthy of only one thing - death. With this murder, Astafiev puts an ethical end to the situation. And he is not alone. Moral justification for murder and lynching is inherent in the work of many serious writers.

Take last piece Valentina Rasputina “Ivan’s daughter, Ivan’s mother.” Almost the same collision: rape, and this time it is not the father, but the mother who kills the rapist, because the state will not protect him from him. And no one will protect. Only a person himself, through murder, can protect his human dignity and punish evil. Boris Ekimov, a writer whom I love very much, also has such justified murders in his stories - because people have become defenseless. Leonid Borodin’s novel “Bozhepolye” has the same thing. There, a woman kills her lover, who turned out to be a scoundrel and a traitor, and the author sympathizes with her because he sees no other way out of this situation.

The measure of evil has exceeded the measure of good - hence what is now called “chernukha”. And the point is not that the authors are deliberately whipping up evil. The writer writes the truth. Literature reflects what is in the air. You need to have the courage to admit it.

It’s another matter when “chernukha” is deliberately used for the sake of commercial success. This is a completely different turn. But it is necessary to distinguish between speculation on blood, which is characteristic of mass literature, and a much deeper relationship with her, inherent in literature serious.

Is the “commercial censorship” you mentioned really so omnipotent? And what should a writer do in a situation of publishing dictatorship?
- I think the publishing dictatorship is really very strong. After all, an author who not only writes for the table, but also wants to be published, is forced to accept the “conditions of the game.” But the situation is still different from Soviet times: when there was censorship, there were some absolutely taboo topics, but there were topics that were simply “inconvenient”, and sometimes it was somehow possible to bypass censorship obstacles. Now everything is much more cunning. Nobody directly prohibits anything, but you understand that they won’t take this thing from you here, they won’t take it here, but over there - there are some chances. On the one hand, this is unconditional freedom, on the other hand, those who absolutely need success sacrifice their creative freedom.

However, a lot of good books are still being published, there are publishing houses that publish serious literature - for example, “Chronicle”, “Young Guard”, “Time”, “Russian Way”. But almost everywhere there are small circulations and, therefore, low fees.
And what should a writer do in this situation? Choose what is more important to him.

It is known that you publicly expressed dissatisfaction with the fact that Boris Akunin’s novel “Coronation” received the Anti-Booker Prize. What didn't you like?
- From a literary point of view, I like the way Akunin writes. There, playing by the rules of commercial literature is combined with convincing psychological drawing, elaboration of images, ability to build a plot. Of course, he also has obvious failures - for example, the cycle about the nun Pelagia, where he, being completely off topic, touches on religious issues. But overall I read it with interest.

But as for his novel “Coronation” - there is fundamental rejection. You see, for me, Emperor Nikolai Alexandrovich is not just a literary hero with whom you can do whatever you want... When Dumas does this with the French kings and queens, it does not cause rejection: after all, the story is too distant and alien.

But Russian history of the twentieth century is still so bloody, so close, that moral protest arises here. Not to mention the fact that the Tsar and his family have been canonized; for us, Orthodox Christians, they are saints, and therefore Akunin’s novel is perceived by many people as blasphemy, as a mockery of a saint. For Akunin this is foreign, it doesn’t hurt him. But for me it hurts, and my protest is born out of pain.

- Let's take the other end of the spectrum. What do you think about “Orthodox prose”?
- I'll start from afar. The relationship between Russian literature and Christianity has always been very complex and, I would even say, mysterious. Look, in Russian XIX literature century, literature deeply Christian in its meaning, in its content, you will find very few images of not only priests or monks, but also simply Orthodox church-going Christians. Basically, Russian literature focused either on “superfluous people” or on those who opposed themselves to society. There are, of course, exceptions, but they do not change the overall picture.

Unlike, for example, France, where the concept of “Catholic literature” was formed, we cannot say that we have a special direction - “Orthodox literature”. Our literature is Orthodox in itself. The most Christian work Russian literature is “ Captain's daughter" There is no explicit preaching of Christianity in it. But everything there breathes Christianity - that’s how this thing is written. And this, it seems to me, should be a model for us.

But we did not have literature that emphasizes the theme of the Church, the theme of coming to faith, the theme of Orthodox life, neither in the 19th nor in the 20th century. Such a tradition has not developed. And I think it’s no coincidence. There is not just some kind of riddle, a secret - but also some kind of lesson. Perhaps it was the special chastity of Russian writers that did not allow them to touch the shrine. Or maybe it was believed that this was the sphere of non-fiction.

Therefore, when neophyte works now appear, where the theme of the Church, the image of a believer, the image of a priest comes to the fore, we must realize that this does not really coincide with our tradition. However, tradition is not synonymous with immutability; new traditions can also arise. But there are dangers here.

- Do you mean profanation of the topic?
- I am afraid that sometimes such literature becomes a kind of “Orthodox realism.” Before there was socialist realism, now there is “Orthodox realism.” But Christianity must express itself differently. More carefully, more tactfully, not “head-on”.

I came across works that irritated me with their sweetness, cloying, and excessive sentimentality. Belief in God is, first of all, a human drama. It is almost always associated with a feeling of being abandoned by God, with doubts, with a search. And if a person has achieved such perfection that all this torment is already in the past, then what is needed here is not fiction, but the life of a saint, hagiography. Literature is always tied to some kind of conflict. And, in my opinion, if it is possible for a writer to address the topic of Christian life, then it is precisely to the conflicts that arise on this basis. Conflicts, both external and internal.

- But they often say that for a Christian writer literature should become an instrument of preaching...
- This is an absolutely wrong attitude towards literature. It should not directly prove or illustrate any truths. This is destructive both for literature and for these truths themselves. Look what Leo Tolstoy's attempt to preach led to. And Gogol did not succeed very well.

We at the editors of “Thomas” are often sent works written for the most pious reasons, but from a literary point of view they are quite helpless...
- This is what I would advise to people who are now writing “Christian literature”: try to write an Orthodox work, only so that there are no churches, no priests, no prayers in it. And let the “spiritual component” be expressed through something else. For example, through a love story, human relationships. But only without dividing into black and white - “bad atheists against good Christians” and so on.

In any case, this is where we need to start. There must be such a period of apprenticeship. We must learn to balance our strengths. And only then, with the acquisition literary experience, perhaps, already give yourself the right to directly address the church topic.

You received the Solzhenitsyn Prize, among other things, for studying the life path of Russian writers. What attracted you so much to this topic?
- Let me start with the fact that I did not at all expect to receive this prize - the most, in my opinion, respected literary prize in our country. This is perhaps the main event in my life, and an unexpected event.

As for the fate of Russian writers... I have always been very concerned about the history of Russia, especially its turning points. And the writer is designed in such a way that in his fate social upheavals manifest themselves with particular clarity. He doesn’t just breathe the air of his era - he reflects, he splashes this “air” onto paper. And therefore, through the fate of the writer, one can discern something very important in the fate of the country, in its past, present and future. And, besides, this in itself is very interesting - delving into archives, studying drafts, letters, diaries, memoirs. The more I learn, the more clearly I understand how little I really know, and the more I want to know more... At some point it becomes more interesting than writing.

- But why exactly these three figures - Prishvin, Green, Alexey Tolstoy?
- All three were writers of the Silver Age. All three went through the horrors of the revolution, all three were forced to somehow build their relationships with the new government. And how differently they did it!

Here is Mikhail Prishvin, a writer who was considered exclusively a singer of nature. And few people knew that throughout his life Prishvin kept a diary in which he wrote down every day what happened to him, what worried him, what he thought about. So, it was in Prishvin’s diaries that I found the deepest, most accurate, most verified social analysis of Russian life. He wrote about the civil war, collectivization, Stalinist repressions, the Patriotic War and the post-war period. His entire spiritual evolution is reflected in these diaries. And the evolution was unexpected: the man who vehemently denounced the Bolsheviks in 1917 eventually came over to their side. An Orthodox churchgoer, after the war he tried to combine Christianity with communism. The idea, in my opinion, is deeply flawed, but how did he come to it?

And in this riddle is the key to understanding Russian history. Why did communism exist in Russia for so long? Why do we have such a hard time getting out of it and can’t get out? Why do so many people still remember the Soviet Union with emotion and longing and want to return to the Soviet past? Why are they still trying to combine Orthodoxy with communism? The answers to all these questions can be found in Prishvin...

A completely different figure is Alexander Green. In his work he is a fantasist, even almost a surrealist - “Scarlet Sails”, “Running on the Waves”, “Shining World”... And at the end of his life he is a deeply religious man, who confessed and took communion before his death. And what’s interesting is that during confession the priest asked him: “Would you like to make peace with your enemies?” Green replied: “You mean the Bolsheviks? Father, I’m indifferent to them.” The Bolsheviks ruined him, reduced him to poverty, but he is indifferent to them! A completely unique assessment. You will not find this in any of the Russian writers. Here is another option for relating to this power, which in the 60s would elevate Green as its singer. The last surge of Soviet enthusiasm will be marked by “ Scarlet Sails”, many Pioneer-Komsomol clubs of the same name will open. And he is indifferent to them. Here is a paradox that applies not only to literature, but also to the history of our society.

And finally, Alexei Tolstoy. A man who hated the Bolsheviks, who said that “he would gouge out their eyes with a rusty bayonet.” He hoped so much for the victory of the White Army!.. And he could not forgive her for the defeat. In 1923 he returned to the Soviet Union. He, who hated the Bolsheviks, returned because he saw that strength was on this side. Because the Reds did not win by chance. Because here is power Soviet state. And he returned, choosing the side that is stronger. This was his logic.

But not only this. He could not imagine his life outside of Russia. For him, Russia meant much more than this or that political regime. Under the Bolsheviks, not under the Bolsheviks - it doesn’t matter. All the same - Russia. Moreover, when he returned, no one promised him anything. No money, no fame, no personal security. He could even have been shot for writing before his return. Stalin destroyed everyone with whom he returned - the “Smenovekhites” - in the 30s; Tolstoy was the only one who survived. So the risk was huge. And although many complaints were made against him - Akhmatova said that he was a scoundrel (and he said about himself that he loved to be mean), but he established himself here as a major writer, he wrote the great novel “Peter the Great”. Alexei Tolstoy deeply loved Russia. And he quite consciously went into the service of the Bolsheviks, because he believed that the Bolsheviks were doing “ Russian affair" You can agree with this, you can disagree, but this also has a certain explanation of why communism is so deeply embedded in us.

That's why I do this research. And I talk about Russian history not as a historian who thinks in global historical categories, but as a writer who thinks in personalities and destinies. Through the fate of a person and the fate of a writer, I comprehend the fate of Russia.

- How do you imagine the reader of your biographical books? Who are they intended for?
- On smart, thinking people. Even though there are fewer of them now, they haven’t disappeared at all. The same series “ZhZL” - “The Life of Remarkable People” - is now very popular. There are a lot of good books appearing there. And the way letters, diaries, and memoirs are now in demand proves that the most thinking part of our society thinks more and more historically. We really miss it a lot historical thinking- For too long we have seen history through the prism of schemes and myths. The fall of communist ideology replaced one myth with another. And we need to fight this, we need to look for the truth - which is what I try to do to the best of my ability in my books.

If we understand our history and clear it of myths, then we will perceive modernity in a less mythologized way, and we will learn to honestly face the truth. And this will help us move on.

POGOST

This was my first summer in the North. We lived then in a village on the shores of the White Sea and restored the church. There was nothing remarkable in this church, no special carvings, no rare shapes or decorations, an ordinary wooden church, winter, five-domed, with a spacious refectory, built at the end of the last century and, from an architectural point of view, perhaps uninteresting. For a hundred years, no repairs were ever made to it; after the revolution, it was soon closed, the refectory was covered with slate and a warehouse was set up there. The crosses and ploughshares rotted on the domes, the roof was leaking in the altar area, and the church itself was slowly collapsing. The collective farm provided us with two small rooms in the village dormitory, but not everyone could fit there, and the four of us slept in the bell tower, which stood right there in the churchyard.

It was June, the height of the white nights, and at first it took me a long time to get used to them. Having swung an ax during the day, I was so tired that it seemed like I just had to have dinner and go to bed. But when we arrived at the bell tower after midnight, I tossed and turned for a long time and could not sleep. It was dark inside, but the feeling of a ghostly trembling light behind the wall did not give me peace. I unzipped my sleeping bag, got dressed and went to smoke on the bank of the Maloshuika River, which rustled over the stones and, bending, went towards the sea.

From here the entire village was clearly visible. The churchyard divided it into two parts: upper and lower. The upper one was older, and the houses here stood in circles like mushrooms - dark, rickety huts with suns on the roofs and large barns. In the lower part of the house there were new ones, painted, and they stood along one street that abutted the bend of the river. At night the village was deserted and quiet, sometimes only a short man in a worn black jacket wandered along the shore and boredly cast a spinning rod, hoping to hook a salmon. At about two in the morning the sun rose not far from the place where it had recently set, and dew immediately poured out.

The first days we went every day to the timber industry and brought boards from there, and then, having marked them, we cut them with axes. A week later, having prepared a sufficient amount of wood, they valued it and began to change the roof on the altar. The work was not difficult, but required accuracy; knowledgeable men went into the forest, selected strong pines there, cut them down on all sides and left them to dry on the root so that the resin would harden and protect the tree from rotting. Two years later, the timber was transported along the winter road, and carpentry teams built churches and bell towers during the short northern summer. They worked only with axes: the saw damages the fibers and weakens the strength of the wood. But the churches also had vulnerable places - crosses, roofing, ploughshares, which needed to be renewed from time to time. While the churches were alive, they were looked after, but now no one cares about them, and monuments that have no value are rotting throughout the north.

Northern temples have different fates. Some were simply destroyed, others, beheaded, are now clubs or shops, others burned down, and others were torn out of the ground and transported to another place. They said that until quite recently in Kusherek there stood an amazingly beautiful wooden church, the only one in the area where services were held after the war. And then, when a museum-reserve was being created in Malye Karely, good men came to the Kusheretsk side and rolled out the church on a log, cheerfully brushing off the sobbing old women. Then these logs were numbered, tied and transported by helicopter to Arkhangelsk, and along the way some of them fell off and disappeared into the swamps. The rest were reassembled, supplemented with new ones, and they stand in the paddock for the amusement of visiting sightseers and antique lovers with easels and cameras. But Kushereka was soon declared an unpromising village, the school was closed after the church, and people left there.

Maloshuika was luckier in this sense. There was a collective farm estate, a post office, a store, an eight-year school and a highway to the railway station. There were people here, but they didn’t notice us, just as they didn’t notice the churchyard. They came only to pick up old boards, trimmings, wood shavings, and they didn’t even agree to sell us potatoes or let us into their bathhouse. At first it seemed wild, it was impossible to believe that village old women They could forget about everything so quickly. But it turned out to be completely different: those old women simply weren’t left; the rich Pomeranian village was completely evicted into collectivization. And others came to replace those taken away, who had no time for churches, but needed to survive the cold, the long dark winters on scarce land. They occupied other people's houses and began to cultivate other people's vulnerable land, destroying forests and neglecting arable land and meadows.

At one time I walked around the village in the evenings and looked for local old women to ask them about their former life, but everywhere I went, they answered me, sometimes in South Russian, and sometimes in Khokhlatsky dialect, that our mother is old, but she’s not from here , and go to Tatiana, she seems to be from here. But it turned out that Tatyana was brought in 1938 from near Kursk, and I was sent to another house.

And yet I found one local old woman. Her name was Evstolia Barysheva, she lived alone with her son at the upper end on the left bank of the river.

The old woman lay on a high bed, dry, stern, with thin hair, and looked at the ceiling. When I came in and said hello, she was not surprised, but only asked me to speak louder. I told her that I am a carpenter, restoring a church.

Father Martinian was kind to us,” she said thoughtfully, “his house, where the club is today, do you know?”
- I know.

It’s good that you are repairing the church, okay, okay, okay. I was young and almost never went to church. I was timid all week, and on Sundays I went out with the girls. Then, when I got married, the church was closed.
- Did you get married?
- We were married on Pokrov
- You made it, then?
- We made it.
- How do you live now, grandmother?
- How are we living? I have a son and a daughter in Onega, and my grandchildren come in the summer. We live well.
- Do you remember the war, grandma? - I asked and immediately regretted it.
- War? But how can we forget her, damned one? - she cried and began to cross herself. “My husband was killed, my brother was killed, and I was left with my small children.” The war, during the war, Lord, Mavo’s brother was killed, he was only eighteen years old. And I loved him more than my husband. And my father and mother died of grief. I was left alone. Everything, everything the war took from me. I'm going to die, but there's no church. There is no church, so I’m not dying.
- Aren’t you a priest, by the way, father? - she asked suddenly, suddenly looking vigilantly at my overgrown face. I shook my head guiltily.
- It’s bad, bad, father, to live without a church.
- So you have to ask, maybe they will open it.
- Whom will I ask? Nobody will listen to me. All my life I saw nothing but work, and I didn’t even earn enough to die like a human being.
- Are there any other locals left here?
- No, there is no one. - And she began to list the names of the neighbors: those died, those left, the house there was sold, the house here is boarded up. - I am the only one.
- Was everyone evicted during collectivization? - I asked with sympathy.

The old woman suddenly stood up, looked at me just as keenly and muttered quickly:

My parent was the first to enroll in the collective farm. We gave everything away, we gave away the horse, we gave away the cow. They exiled the kulaks, but we were middle peasants and didn’t cheat anyone. They did everything themselves, they gave everything away. And you, father, go, go, I’m tired.

Well, God bless you,” I said, bowing awkwardly, “maybe I can help you with anything you need?”

Go, go, I can handle it myself. Good health, God would grant me death as soon as possible.

She got up, walked me to the door and looked after me for a long time while I walked between the houses. And the day was windy, the wind stirred the water in the river, a dog from a neighboring house ran towards me barking, a boy on a large bicycle rolled past, bending under the frame, wagging the wheel, and, frowning, looked at me.

From the bell tower you could see the White Sea. It began about five kilometers from the village behind the forest. The coastline went into the distance, to where the village with the dashing name Vorzogory stood on a high cape. From Vorzogor you could see the entire bay and the approaches to Onega, and that’s probably why these places were chosen by Poles fleeing the people’s militia in the troubled times of 1717. They settled on the cape itself and for a long time They robbed the ships of the Pomors, for which they nicknamed the village “Beyond the Mountains.” In good weather, if you look closely, you could see the thin silhouette of the bell tower in Vorzogory, and all the time we worked in Maloshuyka, we dreamed of getting there. But there was only one way to Vorzogory - by water, and no matter how much we asked, no one local residents those who had motor boats did not agree to take us. They didn’t want to take any money, but demanded vodka, which we didn’t have. We tried to go there on foot, but the road beyond Nimenga was lost in swamps and forests.

And the sea seemed to be very close, and one Sunday I decided to go to it. I asked for directions, took a flask of water and went into the forest. At first I walked along a cow path, through unmown meadows, copses, crossed streams and soon found myself in the taiga. The path disappeared from time to time, as if dissolving in the grass and hummocks, but then reappeared. I walked quickly, sweating and fanning myself with a birch branch, tired after half an hour as if I had walked ten kilometers. I should have gone to the sea long ago, but the forest did not end, and then I climbed a spreading birch tree that towered above the surrounding trees. All around, as far as the eye could see, the forest stretched, and behind the trees the gray heads of the graveyard grew. Ahead, the forest ended, and behind it, smoky, creeping, whitish, either the sky or the sea could be seen

I walked there, making sure the sun was shining at my back, and soon found myself in a clearing, completely straight and equally swampy. Then the forest began to shrink and a swamp began. It stretched for several kilometers, and, knowing from the story that there was a strip of swamp between the sea and the forest, I was sure that I had come to just such a strip and that there would be a sea behind it. The feet in the boots sank to the knees, they had to be pulled out with effort. I walked like this for more than an hour, but when I raised my eyes and looked ahead, I seemed to stand still, like a rowing boat rowing against the current. The day was hot, windless, almost overhead, a small, prickly sun hung and the mosquitoes itched. There was only a few sips of water left in the flask; sometimes I picked dry, sweet cranberries that were strewn throughout the space, but the midges did not allow me to stay in one place for more than ten seconds. To the left of the clearing grew a stumpy, low pine tree, and I climbed onto it. Imagine my disappointment when, instead of the sea ahead, I saw moss, hummocks and a wavy forest on the horizon.

I sat on a pine tree, smoked, clasping the trunk with my hand, and did not feel anything. Then I got down and, just as mechanically, pulling my legs out of the slush, I walked forward towards the forest, no longer understanding why I was going there. I woke up in the forest near a clean stream, lay down on the grass, lowered my face into the water and lay there as long as I could not breathe. Neither mosquitoes nor midges annoyed me anymore. Then I filled the flask with water and went back, and when I walked all this long way through the swamp, and then through the forest and in one place I got lost, wandered into a windfall and only miraculously got out of my way, made my way at random to the path, it seemed to me that I was at home and I just remember this road and look at myself from the outside, as if I were telling to a loved one, as it was, and with this feeling I went out to the spreading birch tree, climbed up, where there were fewer mosquitoes, and looked for a long time at the heads of the churchyard.

When I came home, everyone was asleep, having just had dinner, and there was a pot of soup on the stove. I ate it without heating it and went to bed. Then they told me that a year ago two of our men went to the sea in the same way, were lost for eight hours, cursed everything and returned with nothing.

Over the next week, we again went to the station and tried to get material, but there was no platform, then there was no tractor, it turned out that our invoice was filled out incorrectly, and we had to ask, knock out, convince serious, exhausted people that we were also doing the right thing and we need a forest. And if it weren’t for our foreman Andrei Barabanov, an architect by training, one of the few people in the Arkhangelsk restoration workshops who actually worked and was not registered, then nothing would have worked out for us. And while he was visiting the authorities, we sat and waited for hours, and it already seemed that we were working not in a graveyard, but in this dirty, rumbling station made up of dozens of railway tracks, through which countless freight and only three passenger trains passed per day. trains, two local “mother-in-law” and one long-distance Vologda - Murmansk.

The road connecting Obozersk with Belomorsk was built by prisoners shortly before the war. People died in the thousands, at first they were somehow buried in mass graves, and then simply thrown into the swamps. And it seemed that the curse still lay on this place - a dusty, absurdly built temporary settlement with ugly houses and barracks, railways, crowded with trains, as if in war, women in orange jackets, hammering crutches with sledgehammers, and to the left of them, on some booth, hung a red slogan “Only work makes a person happy and free.”

Several times we happened to wait out the rain with them in this booth; they swore tiredly, swore at each other, drank boiling water, and then went off again to repair the tracks. They all dreamed of leaving Maloshuika, but over the years they got involved, cursed the North, the swamps, the lack of food, and lived like this, afraid to go out into the streets in the evenings, where punks were running around on motorcycles and the police were timidly huddling together. During this month that we lived in the village, two murders happened at the station, and they talked about it as something everyday. And then it began to seem to me that what we were doing was truly pointless, no one needed this church, restored or not, which would not be opened anyway, and even if they opened it, would people who had lost faith in everything go there?

But then we returned to the village, and several kilometers ahead, against the backdrop of the taiga stretching out to the sea, tall slender heads, a tent and a bell tower spire appeared, and heavy thoughts went away.

In addition to us, in the village hostel there lived a team of Moldavian coven fighters and two guard men. The Moldovans had a tape recorder, and at night they played the same cassette. To this music, boys and girls were milling around the porch, dogs were walking around, sniffing people. We didn’t know any Moldovans at all, and sometimes we watched TV at our neighbor’s, although he was reluctant to let us in.

I had a better relationship with another watchman. He was a seemingly gloomy, silent man who used to work in the forest, where people earned a lot, but could not stand it for long, fell ill and eventually left for more light work. In his entire life, he had not saved any money, and apart from this dorm room with a stove, a bed, a nightstand and a table, he had nothing. All day long he lay on the bed, smoked and occasionally went out onto the porch. He asked everyone for one thing - to get vodka. They said that he was no longer a resident, they didn’t take him to the hospital, but he himself was rarely indifferent to his fate and was only happy if someone came to see him. Sometimes in the evenings we smoked with him, and with his humility he reminded me of the old woman Evstolia. One could feel in him the peasant rationality that had not yet been overcome; sometimes he indifferently scolded the authorities and said:

They ruined us, you bastards. And that means that’s what we needed. Drink milk, the women on the farm give me good milk. My wife left me. Children? Why the hell do I need children for the same b...shy life? My dad went to buy fish near Murman, but now there’s not a shish of ours left in Unezhma. Previously, at least there was vodka. Why don't you drink at all?

At all.
He nodded his head and fell silent for a long time
- Maybe Seryoga will go to Vorzogory for a week. There is wine there.

But they’re just making you all drunk,” I tried to say something, even though I understood that I was saying the wrong thing and that I was saying it in vain.
“Bitches,” he agreed.

For some reason, they really didn’t sell wine in the village, and they went to get it on motor boats to the very village on the cape founded by the Poles. When in Maloshuyka there was a rumor from God knows where that wine had been brought to Vorzogory, dozens of motor boats went out to sea at high tide in full water and returned twelve hours later in full water. At the end of June, disaster happened.

Seryoga, our second neighbor, a young guy who lived in fish and wine, together with another man went out to sea, bought wine in Vorzogory and began to return, hurrying to the tide while the river was passable. The sea was calm, and no one understood how this could happen, but Seryoga returned to the village alone. They sailed twenty kilometers across the sea, and only when they entered the mouth did the drunk motorman notice that he was alone in the boat, and his friend had fallen out somewhere along the way.

There was mourning in the village, the deceased had a wife and small children, the old women whispered that everything had happened before, but they never went out to sea drunk, and Seryoga sat on the porch, senselessly moved his head from side to side and then caressed, then kicked the dog. Then one of our people caught his eye, and he began to shout:

Bastards, monks! They will live, healthy, take care of themselves. And we'll die here! When will you finally leave? What do you need here?

They tried to calm him down, but he was banging his head, and horror was frozen in his eyes.

We only had a few days left to work. Everyone's vacation was ending and it was time to return home. On the last day we installed a cross on the dome. Andrey carved the cross from a hefty log. Then they tarred the cross, allowed it to dry and, tying it with ropes, lifted it to the roof. The most difficult thing was to climb the scaffolding to the dome and place the lower end of the cross into the solution. A terrible wind was blowing from the sea, and at some point the cross began to move in our hands, but we still managed to hold it. Below the church stood an old woman, she bowed, crossed herself and muttered something. At first it seemed to me that it was Evstolia who came, but it was another woman. She didn’t leave the whole time we were putting the cross into the solution, leveling it and fastening it. Next to her, without getting off his bike, stood a boy and, raising his head, also looked at us. When the cross was finally installed, we scratched on one of the edges: “Year of the 1000th anniversary of the Baptism of Rus'.”

We left that night. It was well after midnight. In Maloshuyka everyone was asleep, only somewhere at the lower end a Moldovan cassette was playing and a motorcycle drove there several times.

A week later a new shift arrived. They worked until September, and in November Andrei, who remained with two assistants, sent us photographs. All five chapters were renewed, crowned with crosses, and new ploughshares sparkled in the sun. Taken from afar, from the Kusheretskaya road, the church looked joyful and festive, just like a hundred years ago.

But most of all, one picture remains in my memory. Suffering from insomnia, I leave the bell tower to the river and look at the quiet northern village. Horses graze on the other side, the air is calm and clean, and it seems that the bell in the bell tower is about to ring, the village will wake up and people will come out of their houses.

Alexey Varlamov’s writer’s fate is not entirely clear (from my point of view). He was praised a lot for those things that I like less, almost no attention was paid to those texts that I really liked; everyone was very happy, what wonderful biographies Varlamov began to appear in “Young Guard” (the legendary ZhZL series), but now neither critics nor the writer himself can figure out whether the departure of an excellent master of fiction into non-fiction was for good, or not for good.

To my taste, Alexey Varlamov, with all his already excellent literary baggage (a dozen quite voluminous books and almost as many awards), is one of... no, perhaps the most versatile author in modern prose. He can do a lot and is not afraid to make mistakes.

Varlamov, it seems to me, is a hard worker. Yes, and in the biographies made by Varlamov (even Prishvin, even Alexei Tolstoy), no, no, but suddenly you will feel that here Alexey, although he was writing about the classics, was also a little “about himself.”

About myself - a tireless worker, about myself - a person who is genuinely curious and interested in the life of a person, about himself - a writer who is not at all averse to fame, but tries to avoid temptations... And so on. If you read Varlamov’s prose in a row or alternately, and then his books about writers from the “ZhZL” series, you will notice all this yourself.

- Alexey, tell us about yourself. Where was you born, how did you study, parents, wives, children, paths and paths - right up to the first book that you published, if my memory serves me correctly, in 1990, when Alexey Varlamov was 27 years old...

Born in 1963 in Moscow, in the maternity hospital at Peasant Outpost. I spent my childhood and adolescence in the Proletarsky district. And the parents were intellectuals of their time: father worked as a censor in the newspaper Pravda, mother was a teacher of Russian language and literature in high school. My wife is contrary to the advice that the writer Alexei Tolstoy gave to the writer Mikhail Bulgakov, to marry at least three times - one, two children. I first studied at an English special school, which I quietly hated because they “suppressed” me as a person, and then entered the Faculty of Philology at Moscow State University, to which I am attached to this day, although sometimes I regret that I did not become a biologist or geographer. But the university gave me a lot, and without it, nothing would have come of me. I was published for the first time 20 years ago, in the December 1987 issue of the magazine “October” in the “new names” section. The first book was actually published in 1990, very thin, on poor paper, but with a circulation that I have never dreamed of since then - 75,000.

- If I’m not mistaken, you have published several collections of short stories and novellas, five novels, and the fourth book in the ZhZL series is coming. I think that the collected works of Alexei Varlamov will already fill ten volumes. Do you feel like a prolific author? Is your work generally easy for you? Is there such a thing as inspiration? Or was it invented by slackers?

I have published five books of prose and four books in the ZhZL series. Two books of prose will appear in the near future, another one will be published in ZhZL - about Mikhail Bulgakov. It may indeed seem like a lot. But... what else to do in life if not write? I live sadly when there is nothing in the works. And you write, and content, meaning, justification, finally, appears in life. As for inspiration, for me this is the moment when you begin to understand that you are not writing a book, but it is writing itself. Well, it’s as if you find yourself in that territory where they take you by the hand and lead you. So you don’t have to wait for inspiration, but you have to - like it or not - sit down at the table, force yourself, force it, and then as a reward this feeling of lightness, swiftness, when the hand cannot keep up with the thought, will come. True, it often happens that the next morning you re-read this “inspiration” of yours and grab your head, but nothing... sit down and write again.

- Let's tell you how you evaluate each of your novels - what worked there, what didn't. Did you meaningfully change the genre framework and style? Will there be new novels?

I try not to look back and am not used to evaluating myself. But if you think about each of my novels... The first was “The Sucker”, many of my readers like it, and I highlight it especially for myself. I wrote it during difficult years, when there was literally nothing to eat at home, for a long time I could not find a home anywhere, and then I received a prize for it from “October”. There, in “October”, he published two more novels - “The Sunken Ark” and “The Dome”, and together with “The Sucker”, in my understanding, they formed a kind of trilogy of the 90s about Russian life, about its viruses, vulnerabilities. Sometimes, however, it seems to me that my thinking and breathing are not entirely novel, but rather “narrative”, “narrative”. And perhaps I expressed myself better in the stories “Hello, Prince!”, “Birth”, “House in the Village”. But when I wrote novels, I was interested. Then there was another novel, “Kupavna,” published in 2000 in Novy Mir, very personal, autobiographical, not too harmonious, uneven, compositionally loose, and if I had the habit of redoing my things, I would be there now. that I corrected, but this river has already flowed away. And finally, the latest to date was the novel “The Eleventh of September” (it was published in the magazine “Moscow” in 2003, and then separate publication in St. Petersburg "Astreli") with tense, sharp plot, which many criticized, and probably for good reason, but it was important for me to write this book. In this sense, I generally believe that a writer writes not what he wants, but what he is supposed to write. So new novel, if it’s meant to be, I’ll write. And no means no.

- Regarding ZhZL. Firstly, critic Vladimir Bondarenko once joked (with an obvious degree of seriousness) that the Young Guard stole an excellent realist, a real artist, from Russian literature. What do you think about this yourself? And why exactly such a choice - Prishvin, Alexei Tolstoy, Mikhail Bulgakov? Can you briefly formulate your attitude towards these writers? What tasks did you set for yourself when taking on their life stories? Who else would you like to write? And who has already been written before you - and you, for example, see someone’s written biography differently, and would like to give your vision.

I believe that Bondarenko was not joking at all about “stole.” And for me, of course, this was also the subject of certain thoughts. But besides the already expressed consideration “what we write about is not our will,” writing books for the ZhZL series turned out to be a fascinating undertaking. This genre allows you to search and sometimes find the answer to a question that fascinates me as a writer and as a person: why do things turn out this way and not otherwise? human destinies? How do God's Providence, predestination and fate relate? Where is the real limit of human freedom and how much power does he have in his life choices? What can he oppose to the force of circumstances, history, time? The choice of heroes is not so important - any life is interesting, each is wonderful and worthy of description - Lermontov noted this in the preface to “A Hero of Our Time”. But the life of writers is especially clear and not accidental.

Prishvin amazed me with his diary. So deep, thoughtful, detailed analysis Russian life, such a depiction of history in faces and everyday events, I have not seen in any of his contemporaries. Even Bunin. Alexander Green, Alexey Tolstoy and Mikhail Bulgakov were offered to me by the publishing house; this series may seem random, but no matter how different the fates of all my heroes were, they were united by one important feature: they were contemporaries, and through them life paths, their books, their actions, one can understand what happened to Russia at the most tragic moment in its history. And from the point of view of the history of literature - all this is the Silver Age, overturned in Soviet time. They left me and said: survive. I wrote about how they lived before and after the revolution.

As for my attitude towards them. Prishvin was smart and lucky, his life is an amazing example of life creativity, he succeeded in what he failed in Silver Age to no one. There was a lot of talk about life creativity, but no one was able to embody this attitude as he did. Green, on the contrary, is a very tragic and unhappy figure. Life creativity is the opposite. A strange sprout on Russian soil, a man who deliberately burned his life, but in such a way that many warmed themselves and are warming themselves by this fire. Alexei Tolstoy is the Russian Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara rolled into one. “My family will never go hungry,” and they didn’t go hungry. An example of the amazing vitality of the Russian people, the national idea of ​​our history in the flesh. And finally, Bulgakov - how it was tempered... only not steel, no, but some other substance, some wonderful alloy. The story is about what needs to be done to a person, what temptations, temptations, tests to make him go through in order for him to write his books. Here are my writers, in whom both bad and good were generously mixed.

I also wrote about Grigory Rasputin, without understanding whose role, in my opinion, the Russian turmoil of modern times and those people who were involved in this turmoil are incomprehensible. It turned out not so much about Rasputin as a lexicon of that time, a reference book of the era.

Who else would I like to write about? About John of Kronstadt. But not life, but life, and not only his life, but also the one that was boiling around him. As for Zhezelov’s books that have already been written and did not completely satisfy me... In the last few years, ZZL has published two “Bunins” - Roshchina and Baborek. Both are wonderful in their own way, but I would like to read the third one, because Bunin is an inexhaustible topic. I would really like to have a deep, not superficial, not lightweight book about Rozanov. Unfortunately, the greatest Russian writer of the twentieth century, Andrei Platonov, has not yet been written either in ZhZL or in any other biographical series. We do not yet have a biography of Leonid Leonov.

- By the way, how do you evaluate “Pasternak” from Bykov and “Gorky” from Basinsky?

Bykov wrote a book that was brilliant in places and rather boring in others. Fortunately, there is more of the first. But I would still shorten it, although overall it is, of course, good, and I think Pasternak would be satisfied with his biography. But “Gorky,” for all its undoubted merits (and this is a very smart, precise, intonationally consistent book), on the contrary, leaves a feeling of some incompleteness, incompleteness, understatement. This is good for a novel, but not so much for a biography. Basinsky could have written in a little more detail about the personal life of his hero and about Soviet times, but he himself did not want to do this. Well, it's his right. In general, what can I say, these two books and plus I would add to them an extremely small, dry, but very efficient, well-crafted biography of Mandelstam by Oleg Lekmanov - in my opinion, the best thing that appeared in the ZhZL series in the rating of writer's biographies for last years. And mind you, all three are very different.

- The aforementioned Basinsky wrote about you, they say, Varlamov, “writes carefully, restrainedly, as if “for testing.” There is an ineradicable trait of apprenticeship in his prose.” What do you think of his assessment? Or is it already outdated? Or was it wrong from the start?

Pavel Valerievich Basinsky is a man who reads a lot and is much more knowledgeable about the secrets of the writer's life than I am. I can’t say anything definite about his indestructible apprenticeship, which, however, he wrote about many years ago, but I know for sure that he never engaged in the overthrow of authorities and tried to write carefully. Perhaps this seems from the outside to be cautious and restrained, but it most likely comes from human nature, and not from the writer’s calculation.

- Is there criticism in modern literature? How is your relationship with critics? Do they hinder or help?

My relationship with criticism has been very different. They scolded and praised. But in any case, I am sure that a writer’s assessment of a writer is more important than a critic’s assessment of a writer. They understand their own people better and more accurately, often more harshly, but more intelligently. The main thing I learned from observing literary life is: don’t be afraid of a critic who scolds you. Be afraid of the one who praises. In general, be afraid of this state of affairs when you are caressed. Once you sit on this needle, you won’t get off it.

- How do you perceive your - let's call it magnificent - literary path, literary destiny. What worked, what didn’t. Why did it succeed and why not?

I failed to write my “One Hundred Years of Solitude.” But here the question is not only about the author, but also about his fate. A book must first be lived, as I lived, for example, before I wrote “Birth” or “House in the Village.” But I can say one thing: I tried never to be lazy. It turned out differently, but sometimes it’s harder to write a weak thing. But if it weren’t unsuccessful, it wouldn’t be successful either.

- How do you assess the role of thick magazines in the modern literary process?

I don’t want to say this, but I’m very afraid that they are slowly fading away and the lost positions are unlikely to be regained. It is sad. Associated with magazines most of my literary life. I published in a variety of publications, deliberately neglecting ideological concepts - in “New World”, “Znamya”, “October”, “Friendship of Peoples”, “Roman-Gazeta”, “Grani”, “Moscow”, “Literary Education”, “ Change”... I have great respect for all of them, but what can you do if the public does not want or cannot subscribe as before. Only, I believe, magazines are still needed, and we ourselves do not understand what we are losing, what we are calmly reconciling with by migrating to the book market.

- I know that you received the Leipzig Literary Club Prize Lege Artis "For the best Russian story" - "Partisan Marych and the Great Steppe." I agree with those people who presented you with the award - the story is simply wonderful. Do you also consider it luck? Do you have things that you feel the critics have overlooked? And how do you evaluate premium processes - since we are talking about them. Are they adequate? They influence literary affairs, on the fate of the writer?

Thank you for the kind words. I won’t say anything about luck. What about the things that the critics overlooked? I think that most of my texts in the “zero years” - the narrative in the stories “Padchevars”, the stories “The Oath”, “All People Can Swim”, the story “Valdez” in the “New World”, a selection of stories in “October” - here exactly what they overlooked: they praised, they scolded, but no one seriously wanted to understand what was there, what they were talking about, why and why. Maybe because short prose We are generally on the sidelines. As for awards, they, of course, played a role in my life. And “Anti-Booker” in 1995 for “Birth”, and this German prize, and magazine awards - “Smena”, “October”, “Roman-newspaper”, “Moscow Railwayman”, and finally - Solzhenitsynskaya. I try to treat them soberly and not to exaggerate either their significance in my destiny or my own in the history of these awards. In general, from the point of view of the interests of literature, the prize is a way to attract public attention to a book in our time. TV time- important.

- About your literary genealogy. Where did you come from, on what soil did you grow up? Favorite books, after all.

I grew up on Russian soil, and for as long as I can remember at a conscious age, I have always considered myself a soil person. The Russian idea is dear to me, but, firstly, without any attempts to connect it with the communist idea, without any “nostalgia for the USSR,” a period that I consider generally hostile to the history of my people, and secondly, without hysterical anti-Semitism and searching everywhere for Masonic conspiracies and the actions of malicious forces. Favorite books... If you start listing them, then these are all Russian classics, but especially Pushkin, Dostoevsky and Chekhov, and in the twentieth century - Bunin, Platonov, Kazakov, Shukshin, Dombrovsky, Astafiev, Venedikt Erofeev. Of the poets, first of all Rubtsov. But I also rate Western literature very highly. In general, I love books as a fact of human existence.

- Shall we talk about our contemporaries, about older teachers? Who do you think will remain in literature and who will disappear? Solzhenitsyn, Rasputin, Iskander? Bondarev, Baklanov, Boris Vasiliev? Ekimov, Lichutin, Krupin? Bitov, Makanin, Esin? Ulitskaya, Tolstaya, Petrushevskaya? Limonov, Prokhanov, Polyakov? Or do you have different rows? Which of the names I listed would you not name? Whose ones did I perhaps (surely) forget to name?

If I suddenly decide to say that Bondarev or Baklanov, Boris Vasiliev or Tatyana Tolstaya will disappear, firstly, I will offend them. Secondly, how do I know what will actually happen? It’s better to admit the obvious: no one disappears in literature. Just like in history. Everyone has their own place and role, just don’t sit in someone else’s chair. Among those you named, there are writers who are closer to me (Rasputin, for example), and others who are more distant from me (Ulitskaya), but there are no non-writers, and I think there is no need to fear for their reading future.

Solzhenitsyn is especially dear to me, and not even because I received a prize from him, but because at one time his books amazed me. Not in the Soviet era, I didn’t read them then, I had nowhere to get them. But during perestroika, when I read “Matryona’s Dvor”, “The Calf Butted an Oak Tree,” these things helped in extremely troubled times to understand the value of true literature and the true author’s word. I love Boris Petrovich Ekimov very much, I believe that among the modern, actively, constantly writing authors, this is best writer, and, what is important, he is perhaps the only one on your list who, all the time, actually lives outside of Moscow, and knows, and therefore writes, current Russian life from the depths. In general, I don’t like placing writers in rows. This is a one-piece product and differences are more valuable here, especially between those who are at first glance close. For example, Ekimov or Belov, whom you did not name (I love him very much), are rather antipodes, despite the fact that both are listed in the department village prose. Someone you haven’t named yet and whom I respect very much both as a writer and as a person is Leonid Ivanovich Borodin.

- Of course, both Borodin and Belov are wonderful writers, I don’t argue, I don’t argue. Both with their literature and their fate, they have always aroused my admiration...

Do you feel like you belong to some literary generation? There is something in common between you - those born “nearby” (in time, during one “five-year plan”) - Pelevin (62nd year), Varlamov (63rd year), Dmitry Novikov (66th), Dmitry Bykov (67- oh year), Anton Utkin (the same 67th). You see how different the names are, right? Nothing in common – or can something still be found? (Besides the fact that, to my taste, this is precisely the series of names that largely determined literary process in the last decade).

I define my generation this way: Anton Utkin, Pavel Basinsky, Oleg Pavlov, Mikhail Tarkovsky, Vladislav Otroshenko, Boris Evseev, Alexander Yakovlev, Svetlana Vasilenko, Alexander Kuznetsov-Tulyanin (author of the wonderful novel “Pagan”), Andrey Volos. Pelevin is still a very alien person to me. Dmitry Bykov admires me in many ways, but this is also not exactly my circle and way of life. Unfortunately, I haven’t read Dmitry Novikov yet.

- You can also, by the way, remember Andrei Gelasimov (65th year) and Grishkovets (again 67th year). Or is this the most fragmented generation? Or would you have built a different generational row?

I haven’t read Gelasimov or Grishkovets either, although I met the first of them at a book fair in Geneva, and I’ve heard a lot of good things about Grishkovets. But what can I do? I physically don’t have time to read everything. True, I read Prilepin. But I don’t have too much faith in writers’ generations, as well as in groups, unions, associations, parties.

- You were a visiting professor at the University of Iowa. How do you like American students? What do they know about Russian literature? Whose names do they not know at all? Do they know at least one modern name?

And in America I was not a visiting professor (Sergei Ivanovich Chuprinin has a mistake in his dictionary; unfortunately, there are a lot of them there), but a “writer-in-residence”, a writer at the university, which is much more interesting.

It looked like this. I lived with my family in the most intelligent American city of Iowa City, I had an office in an old Victorian office, where I was recommended to always keep the door open, but I closed it so as not to be disturbed, and wrote the novel “The Dome”, in which I predicted even before the events in Yugoslavia, how the Americans will bomb countries that disobey them. And once every week or two they gave me a map of the state, a car, and showed me the place where I should go to meet American collective farmers and talk to them about life.

Along the excellent roads of the very middle state of the American continent, I drove between corn fields and untouched steppe to those lands where no Russian had ever set foot, and met people who had never seen Russians. These were not the Americans you find in colleges or universities. These were real soil people, their own people. My communication with them was like a meeting of two civilizations. Of course, they didn’t know any modern Russian writers, and why should they? In the English that was taught to me in the unforgettable special school No. 15 of the Proletarsky district, I told them about my country, about how they scared me about America as a child, what I think about it now, they listened attentively, and I saw one thing in their eyes - working lie detector. It was important for them to understand whether I was lying or telling the truth, whether I was sincere with them or not. Nothing else mattered.

- Do you have any political views? What are they? Did they change in the 90s, in recent years?

I am not involved in politics, I do not participate in any rallies or demonstrations, I am not a member of and do not like any of our parties, and in general I believe that partisanship in Russia has been a great evil since it appeared more than a hundred years ago. But, of course, I have political views. The state idea is dear to me, but not in itself, but because only a strong state with responsible power will provide us with a decent life. Unfortunately, this does not exist in Russia. No adequate power, much less a decent life. You just have to be realistic and not expect any miracle. Everyone criticizes Gorbachev and Yeltsin. But where will a Roosevelt or General de Gaulle come from in a country that was successively ruled by Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov, and Chernenko? It seems that we still do not fully understand what a terrible wound this has caused to our historical existence, to our gene pool. Soviet authority. As for Putin, my attitude towards him is even and calm, I do not share either the mass adoration or the individual hatred that the demos, okhlos and various elites feel towards him. He is undoubtedly head and shoulders above his predecessors, there is not so much shame in him when he goes somewhere, he is a good professional, but it seems to me that during the seven years of his rule, Putin spoke a lot beautifully and aphoristically and did much less exactly as statesman. I don’t know all the details, maybe it was connected with something, I’m talking about the results that exist today. They are modest, although they are constantly inflated by propaganda, both the Kremlin with a “plus” sign, and the opposition with a “minus” sign.

- There are forecasts: what will happen to Russia, is it destined to survive?

Everything is in the hands of God. For me there is no doubt that everything that happened to our country in the twentieth century is deeply providential, as, indeed, is the whole of Russian history, our entire path. But we and our fathers and grandfathers angered God much more than our ancestors in the 16th century, who placed Boris Godunov on the throne. Our people need to ask Heaven not for justice, but for mercy.

- Do politicians need to listen to journalists and writers?

Journalists - no, writers - yes (although in the late 80s it would have been better not to listen to them).

- Dream?

Write your own “One Hundred Years of Solitude.” In general, the main thing is that everything goes well with the children.

Interviewed by Zakhar Prilepin