Dmitry Bykov: I know for sure that nothing threatens the Russian language
AM: Russian Language Day on the birthday of A.S. Pushkin. Who is Pushkin for you? “Our everything”? Or does it need to be revised?
DB: The twentieth century, on the one hand, the material is more relevant, I remember a lot – simply because I have been living for a long time. I just knew Okudzhava. I knew people who knew Gorky, I knew people who considered themselves Pasternak’s friends. This is closer to me. The 19th century is contained in more internal rethinkings that I just didn’t have the courage to do. In order to understand the drama of Pushkin, to understand his hostage, to understand why the left hand writes “The ruler is weak and crafty”, and the right hand writes “Slanderers of Russia” – a new height of view is needed. Our time has given us this height of view – we are witnesses of unparalleled events. Therefore, in order to write good books on the XIX study, the current experience was needed. Now I have received a powerful impetus for this.
AM: Your performance today is called “Poetry Cancels” – what exactly does poetry cancel?
DB: Poetry, it seems to me, cancels the “culture of prohibition”, poetry forbids prohibition. At one time, when Mandelstam proposed to persuade Bukharin to provide for the condemned, he sent him his book, in the signature he wrote: “… this separate book speaks against what you propose to do.” Poetry abolishes execution, poetry abolishes the original, transforms the common language. Poetry does indeed play the part that diplomacy should have played.
AM: There is a lot of talk these days about the “cancellation” of Russian culture, however, you are now working at Cornell University. How did all this come about, what exactly do you do and what is the attitude towards you as a Russian writer in these institutions?
DB: I was called there at the end of last summer. That is, I did not have today’s painful problem – to go or not to go. I do what a writer in residence should do (a writer invited to the university to lecture): I meet students and answer their painful questions. In addition, I teach one course for the Open Society University Network, the Open Society University Network (OSUN), and small courses that I myself created and offered to Cornell students. What will come of it in the future, I do not know.
As for students’ attitudes towards Russian culture, I observe how the prophecy of my older friend and teacher Lev Loseva happens. As soon as the East-West splits begin to intensify in the world and the Cold War becomes a reality again (he spoke about this in 2006), interest and fashion for Slavic studies of the age goes exponentially. And indeed, as soon as Russia became the main topic that did not cause negative or positive sentiments, interest in it increased enormously. Moreover, a huge number of American students really carefully read “War and Peace”, read Pushkin. Many are Gogol, because Gogol is a figure at the intersection of Russian and Ukrainian themes. In general, I do not observe any “cultural violations” anywhere except in Russia. And the Russian reader always especially carefully reads between the lines. So I do not share panic expectations.
AM: What are the expectations of American and Russian students?
DB: I have already said many times that there is only one difference between Russian students and Russian students – an American student knows that the more he plays sports, the better it is for his career. The Russian student knows that the more he stays silent, the better for his career. I am good with both. In addition, if you give a task to a student, you can be absolutely sure that it will be completed. One day my student read The Quiet Flows the Don for two nights and made one of the best reports. If you give an English student an assignment, you can be sure that the assignment will not be completed, but the reason will be so exquisitely and so culturally framed that it will be worth any essay.
AM: In the preface to your last novel, The Fighter, you wrote that it was “the last reference to Soviet history.” What will your next novel be about? Are you working on it while teaching at the university?
DB: I will write a couple of novels in English first, they are already invented, and they need to be written in order to finally master the language while I am here. I have the opportunity to live for the first time in my life in a separate house and work in my own office – in Moscow I have a kopeck piece. These sins are not religious, and I write quite a bit there. I think that now it would be interesting to write a book about the war through the eyes of Russians on the one hand, Ukrainians on the other. But for this you need to go to Kyiv. But while I’m in no hurry to write this, because the conjuncture is inappropriate here, we must let the situation settle.
AM: How do you work on a novel in another language?
DB: The appearance at 54 of the desire to shed a huge amount of stamps that have grown on me, like on ships. I want to change the language, the setting, the theme, the style very much. I want to get rid of many language cliches – when you write for a long time, when you have a lot of books (I have 15 novels) – I want to somehow update myself. I tried to write this book like the first one, as if I had just started the work and didn’t know anything yet. This book gives me amazing surprises. That is, it turned out to be not at all what I expected – and much more sugary, but also much more fun in a sense.
AM: In general, what is the attitude towards you in the USA?
DB: I regularly go to a hairdresser for a haircut, because I grow quickly, and every time he greets me – “Well, haven’t you been banned in your homeland yet?” I say, “No, not yet.” That is, for them, the fact that I am Russian is not an aggravating circumstance.
Moreover, somehow in pharmacies they clarified me what kind of interesting accent you have, maybe you are from somewhere in the Balkans? I said no, but I am against the war. And the old pharmacist showed me a fist in response, as a sign of solidarity. Therefore, there is no prejudice against Russians.
AM: Many authors complain that the focus on translating their novels into foreign languages is interrupted or postponed to an indefinite future. Has it affected you in any way, what do you think about attraction in general?
DB: I’m such a lucky guy in that sense – I’ve never been translated much. I have translated one novel into English – ZhD (Living Souls), back in 2010. My advantage is that in this sense I have absolutely nothing to lose. Americans are generally not very willing to translate foreign literature. I hardly have anything to add.
AM: What is the future of the Russian language? Does it retain its international status?
DB: Literature has now received a strong impetus, and we will now have absolutely great literature. I do not know where it will be written – in Russia in the table or in exile. Maybe somewhere in Ukraine, I don’t know, but it will be written unconditionally. Russian literature received this impetus because it responded to the game challenge. What about a strange woman who is being pushed into the abyss, will she have the strength to resist?
I know for sure that nothing threatens the Russian language. As Nabokov rightly said, the best poetry of the 20th century. I love Wystan Auden very much, I love Arlington Robinson very much, I highly appreciate Robert Frost, but the best poetry in the world is written by Rainer Maria Rilke and the Russians. Rilke, I think, is untranslatable, in Russian – translatable, oddly enough, because Russian poetry has always been ballad, plot. In this sense, everything is in order with Mandelstam, and with Pasternak, and with Tsvetaeva. Akhmatova, Mayakovsky are very fashionable figures now in university circles.