A literary train traveled from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok

2023-08-18 14:41:16

A unique train traveled from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok through August. At the stopping points – meetings with talented people, poets. Among them are not only Russian authors, citizens of multinational literature, but also former Ukrainians. This route showed the paradoxes and problems of our spiritual life.

This can only happen in Russia: in the days of trials, an event of the spirit is created – a literary train rushes. The project was invented by Denis Kotov, the founder, creator and leader of many initiatives in the field of education. The initiative was taken up by the Russian Union of Writers, which creates new formats for communication between literature and society, and brings talents to life. The poets in that composition gathered different ones, each in his own way carried out the work of plowing our fantastic reality. The literary trip gave rise to and left several very important thoughts.

The first thought: what and for what we pay. How many ideas there are in Russia, how many projects, this is a national wealth! But the greatness of the plans and the minimum of possibilities are obvious. Literature has returned to the pre-Pushkin format in terms of losing the status of a profession – now they don’t pay for it. What generations of talents fought for is lost. The state excluded the spiritual development of society from the budget, and we got what we got – poor great poets and prosperous vulgar people clipping coupons in popular culture. For this we are paying.

Thought two: how poetry is coded. “Blessed is he who has visited this world. In his fatal moments … “- Tyutchev told the truth! We live in fateful times – and Russia has responded to the trials with the rise of poetic creativity. No, the formula “when the guns speak, the muses are silent” does not work for us. On the contrary, in fatal circumstances, the folk soul responds by amplifying the voices of the muses. We are all looking for cultural codes – and here it is, one of the main codes of Russia – in times of crisis and mortal trials, Russia responds – with art. Country of poets. Our personality is poetic. People speak in verse. Creativity is how Russian civilization responds to historical upheavals, it is our ultimate national idea.

A glance at history is enough to understand that the upsurge of Russian literature was a response to military tensions. “A singer in the camp of Russian soldiers” by the brilliant Zhukovsky, “Borodino” by young Lermontov, Raevsky’s poems – the entire Russian “golden age” is baked in the heat of the war of 1812. Leo Tolstoy the writer was born on the redoubts of Sevastopol, in the Crimean battles. And the “Silver Age”, poets-warriors, one Nikolai Gumilyov is an iconic figure of this link between literature and battle. What can we say about the great poets who accomplished their human and creative feat during the Great Patriotic War, their name is legion – they gave the world an unprecedented phenomenon of folk patriotic poetry, including the lines of boy lieutenants. And – the wise poetry of classical poets, adults who passed the furnace – Konstantin Simonov, Ilya Ehrenburg, Sergey Mikhalkov. Isn’t there an answer to that very elusive “Russianness” of our civilization, the formulation of which everyone is preoccupied with?

Thought three: why does the country need poets. Anna Arkaeva (project “From what rubbish”), in order to popularize contemporary authors, made 20 programs. Sergey Dizhonkov is a massage therapist, saves children, and his poetry is heroic. Sergei Chernoglazin, lyricist: “And so light from the dreams of life …”. Anna Anatole – wants to bring poetry and youth audiences together – makes exhibitions of photographs with poetic texts. Franz Desimon – artist-designer, poems about cities – “sunny morning – and the cheeks of the walls blush.” Strokes group – Stanislav Churnov and Marianna Martynenkova, their theme is love. “Because Love is that which is born with the body and does not die with it.”

What hooked me: the tone of poetry has changed, there is no dominance of irony, characteristic of the 1990s and zero, poisonous sarcasm, cheap banter is gone. There is no poetic lamentation of the 2010s. A pure luminous stream has gone. The choice of texts did not imply censorship, there was one condition – regulations. This means that a natural turn took place, and the very spirit of poetry rushed to the Pushkin testament: to good feelings.

Poets have spherical vision: both up and down, horizontally and vertically. I caught the expansion of this offset. The past entered the logic of the present, the semantic space grew. Actual work with meanings has become a new sign of poetry. The poets have shown themselves to be virtuosos of juxtaposition of times, ideas… And – excellent mastery of versification. Poetry re-entered the mainstream of the great Russian literature, from the very first fruits showing not only the breadth of the soul, but also the breadth of thought, and already from the first annals it thought cosmically, sending the country on a path calculated from the Creation of the World. In today’s verses – the relevance, multiplied by Time.news, the world was re-created.

I joked: “poets are like devices – they are charged from each other.” But everyone is charged from poets, the business of poetry is to give energy to life. Without poetry, there is no life – the same, worthy, human.

Fourth thought: did Ukrainian poetry go to Russia? I was surprised by the geography of the meeting, where not only Muscovites, and not within the Garden Ring. Olga Krasilnikova from Yaroslavl (“I have been writing poetry since the age of 6, but I started showing it recently”). Yaroslavl – of course, the Golden Ring has always embraced the cultural core of Russia, and has been the core of Russian culture. Irinka Kovaleva is from Altai, Shukshin’s homeland (“I recently moved to Moscow, my soul is still there”), and her theme is the search for God. Vladislav Kienko from Kharkov (“In order to come here, we crossed a minefield under bombing. We came under fire. We lived on the front line for two months”). Under the shelling there was a revaluation of values. He began to write poetry, realized what was most important in his life and what he should do. Left for Russia.

But Mira Olgina is a pseudonym: “I am from Odessa, I lived there until 2014, and since 2014 I have been living in Russia. After May 2, she could not stay. Changed name.” At the word Odessa – tears in the eyes. The hall fell silent before the strength of her verbal bliss and meek charm. It was like clairvoyance. Signs of nature, like “beads of ancient words.” August – “time to collect fruits and meanings – and distribute everything …”. Martha and Mary Magdalene is about repentance. But here it is, the soul of Odessa, the true Muse! Conscientious, gentle. Playful and trusting. The soul of the tormented city fled to Russia. It turns out that Ukrainian literature moved to Russia? Ukrainian muse with us?

Fifth thought: where should we go? Above what he saw and heard, it was as if there was a parting word from the patriarch of modernity, poet, professor of the Literary Institute Konstantin Kedrov: “What remains of time? Not gas, not oil – poetry! What’s left of the 19th century? Pushkin! And the revolutionary era? Mayakovsky, Yesenin, Blok! And the 60s, and the end of the twentieth century – Voznesensky, Yevtushenko, Akhmadullina. In creativity – the flour of the poet. How many they beat him, but he was all his own! He is condemned to write. But in the end, the poet gives a name to what is happening! This is our happiness…”