We are a country without recourse to another. Here is what I heard from one emigrant who came to Russia: “Do you know what has replaced the appeal to another person? The word "well". The guide always turns to us and says: "Well, let's go …", "Well, now we'll have lunch …" The constant "well," the habit of using prodding entered the language.
How many words were there about protecting culture - a waterfall! Inflation of words, chattering of lofty concepts - this is no less harmful for the soul and the Russian language than party censorship. And the result is the same - dumbness. Then it was impossible to say, but now there is nothing. It even seems to me that the people on the bus do not communicate, but hum at each other
- We are a country without turning to another. Here is what I heard from one emigrant who came to Russia: “Do you know what has replaced the appeal to another person? The word "well". The guide always turns to us and says: "Well, let's go …", "Well, now we'll have lunch …" The constant "well," the habit of using prodding entered the language. I remember how in 1937, when the mass arrests began in St. Petersburg, I suddenly heard that at the post office they say "citizen", the policeman says "citizen", the conductor on the tram says "citizens", but they always said "comrade". What happened is that every person was suspect. How to say "comrade" - or maybe he is a spy for some Iceland?
Was it an official ban?
- I don’t know what the ban was, I didn’t read it, but one fine day, like a cloud, came over the city - the prohibition to say "comrade" in all official institutions. I asked someone: why did you say “comrade” to me before, and now “citizen”? And we, they say, was told so. It was humiliating. A country without respect for another person. What kind of relationships do you get from childhood, from school, if girls start swearing? It is very difficult for me to talk about this, because I feel that I am falling into the mainstream of a moralizing conversation. But I have a lot of letters about this obscenity or, as they said more cautiously before the revolution, “three-story expressions”.
Abuse invades literature. When last year I first saw obscene words under the blue cover of Novy Mir, I felt uncomfortable, just scared …
- If the shamelessness of everyday life turns into language, then the shamelessness of language creates the environment in which shamelessness is already a familiar thing. There is nature. Nature abhors shamelessness.
"Interlocutor" published an obscene newspaper a year ago, as if as a joke. The boys were frolicking, but one of the authors tried to seriously prosecute. What started here! Almost all of the literary and journalistic Moscow rose to defend the "hero."
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- Not him, but one must defend against him. The lawlessness in which the Russian people lived for almost a century, it humiliated people. Now it seems to someone that permissiveness is the shortest way out of a humiliating position. But this is self-deception. Those who feel free will not answer with obscenities …
Have you had to resort to "profanity" vocabulary in some extreme situations?
- No, I didn't.
Even in the camp?
- Even there. I just couldn't swear. Even if I decided to myself, nothing would come of it. On Solovki I met the collector Nikolai Nikolayevich Vinogradov. He ended up in a criminal case on Solovki and soon became his own man with the authorities. And all because he used foul language. Much was forgiven for this. They shot most often those who did not swear. They were "strangers". The intelligent, kind Georgiy Mikhailovich Osorgin was going to be shot by the island authorities and had already been imprisoned in a punishment cell, when, with the permission of the higher authorities, his wife, Princess Golitsyna, came to visit Osorgin. Osorgin was released on parole as an officer on the condition that he would not say anything to his wife about his impending fate. And he didn't tell her anything.
I also turned out to be a stranger. How did I not please them? It is obvious to those that he wore a student's cap. I wore it in order not to beat with sticks. At the doors, especially in the thirteenth company, there were always thugs with sticks. The crowd fell in both directions, there were not enough stairs, there were three-story bunks in the temples, and therefore, in order to walk faster, the prisoners were driven with sticks. And so, so that they would not beat me, to distinguish myself from the punks, I put on a student's cap. And really I was never hit. Only once, when the train with our stage arrived in Kem. I was already at the bottom, by the carriage, and from above the guard was driving everyone and then hitting them in the face with a boot … They broke their will, divided into “friends” and “aliens”. It was then that the checkmate was launched. When a person swears, this is his own. If he did not swear, he could be expected to resist. Therefore, Vinogradov managed to become his own - he swore, and when he was released, he became the director of the museum on Solovki. He lived in two dimensions: the first was determined by an internal need to do good, and he saved intellectuals and saved me from common work. The other was determined by the need to adapt, to survive.
At one time, Prokofiev was at the head of the Leningrad Writers' Organization. In the regional committee, he was considered one of his own, although all his life he was the son of a policeman, he knew how to swear and therefore knew how to somehow find a common language with his superiors. And intellectuals, even sincerely believing in socialism, were rejected on the fly - too intellectuals, and therefore not their own.
A hundred years ago, there were 287 words in the Russian dictionary beginning with "good." Almost all of these words have disappeared from our speech, and those that remain have acquired a more mundane meaning. For example, the word "trustworthy" meant "full of hope", "encouraged" …
- Words disappeared along with the phenomena. How often do we hear "mercy", "benevolence"? This is not in life, therefore it is not in the language. Or here "decency". Nikolai Kalinnikovich Hudziy always amazed me - no matter who I spoke about, he asked: "Is he a decent person?" This meant that a person would not be an informer, would not steal his comrade from an article, would not come out with his exposure, would not read a book, would not offend a woman, would not break a word. What about "courtesy"? "You have done me a favor." This is a kind service that does not offend the person to whom it is provided with its patronage. "A kind person." A whole series of words have disappeared with concepts. Let's say, "a well-bred person." He is a well-mannered person. This was primarily said about the person whom they wanted to praise. The concept of good breeding is now absent, they will not even understand it.
Until now, the problem of the Russian language is that the teaching of the Church Slavonic language was canceled. It was a second language, close to Russian.
Smart …
- Yes, yes, this language raises the meaning of what the word is talking about. This is another completely high emotional environment. The exclusion of Church Slavonic education from school and the invasion of swearing are symmetrical phenomena.
The general degradation of us as a nation affected the language first of all. Without the ability to address each other, we lose ourselves as a people. How to live without the ability to name? No wonder in the book of Genesis God, having created animals, brought them to Adam, so that he would give them names. Without these names, man would not have distinguished a cow from a goat. When Adam gave them names, he noticed them. In general, to notice any phenomenon is to give it a name, to create a term, therefore, in the Middle Ages, science was mainly concerned with naming, creating terminology. It was a whole such period - scholastic. The naming was already knowledge. When the island was discovered, it was given a name, and only then it was a geographical discovery. There was no opening without naming.
After the first documentaries with your participation and television meetings at Ostankino, your speech became a kind of standard for the speech of a cultured person. Who could you use as an example, whose speech you like?
- At one time, the language of the Maly Theater actors was the standard of Russian speech. There has been a tradition since Shchepkin times. And now we need to listen to good actors. In St. Petersburg - Lebedeva, Basilashvili.
Words over the years of our life are overgrown only with shades we know, memories - this is how the ship grows with shells. Maybe that's why I find the dictionaries of writers so interesting. Alas, there are not many of them. The dictionary of Pushkin's language, which has long become a rarity, recently came out a dictionary for Ostrovsky's plays …
- I would put in the first place the need to create a dictionary of Bunin. His language is rich not only in connection with the countryside and the noble milieu, but also in the fact that there is a literary tradition in it - from The Lay of Igor's Host, from the chronicles.
Reading out loud to children is very important. For the teacher to come to the lesson and say: “Today we will read War and Peace. Do not disassemble, but read with comments. This is how our teacher of literature Leonid Vladimirovich Georg read to us at Lentovskaya school. Most often this happened in the lessons that he gave instead of his sick fellow teachers. He read to us not only War and Peace, but also Chekhov's plays, Maupassant's stories. He showed us how interesting it is to learn French, rummaged with us in dictionaries, looking for the most expressive translation. After such lessons, I studied only French for one summer.
The saddest thing is when people read and unfamiliar words do not interest them, they let them pass, follow only the movement of the intrigue, the plot, but do not read deeper. It is necessary to learn not fast, but slow reading. Academician Shcherba was a propagandist for slow reading. Over the course of a year, he and I managed to read only a few lines from The Bronze Horseman. Each word seemed to us like an island that we had to open and describe from all sides. From Shcherba, I learned to appreciate the pleasure of slow reading.
Poems generally cannot be read the first time. First you need to grasp the music of the verse, then read with this music - to yourself or out loud.
Interviewed by: D. Shevarov