The edge of the fearless. In the land of fearless birds. Catchers. How they make idiots out of us. Places of concentration of idiots...

219 To a wonderful land, a wonderful land To a wonderful land, a wonderful land, Bright and holy, With all my heart I strive there - There is joy and peace. eternal light, - There is my homeland. The day is near, the day is near, Eternal day when they disappear

CHAPTER THREE PASTURE FOR IDIOTS Roses turn into toads. Words available to idiots. Salon games. Tell me about a person

CHAPTER THREE PASTURE FOR IDIOTS Roses turn into toads. Words available to idiots. Salon games. Tell me about a person AS I have already said, it is not my task to study the personality of Gurdjieff. It is not about presenting and commenting on all sides of it.

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Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin
Collected Works in eight volumes
Volume 1. In the land of fearless birds. Behind the magic bun

V. Prishvin. About Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin

Art and life are not one, but must become one in me, in the unity of my responsibility.

M. Bakhtin

I

Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin lived a long life - he died in the eighty-first year - but he took up the pen only at the age of thirty. Why this happened - he answers this question in his diary: “The first half of my life, until the age of thirty, I devoted myself to the external assimilation of elements of culture, or, as I now call it, someone else's mind. The second half, from the moment I took up the pen, I entered into a struggle with someone else's mind in order to turn it into a personal property, provided that I be myself.

This second birth for Prishvin was the exit of the true self from the environment that created it, from under the countless layers of that inexhaustible for our consciousness that we call life. That is why his writing, once begun, has already become inseparable from the very essence of this man. It is impossible to draw a line between his being and his word - Prishvin does not have such a line. In addition, he did not doubt the power of the word, that with complete dedication, everything can be done with the word. What was this “everything” for Prishvin, what did he devote his life to from the age of thirty?

Carefully and impartially studying the work of Prishvin, we will have to say: he lived in order to understand life - his own and all living things - to understand and convey to us his understanding. Prishvin's word was his working business and at the same time his whole life without the slightest distraction. From here, the image in which Prishvin sees himself becomes close and understandable to us: he sees himself in his old age as a camel, long, and hard, and patiently crossing the waterless desert; he relates to his poetry, to his word, like a camel to water: “He pours himself into himself and, hunchbacked, slowly goes on a long journey ...”

This sounds humbly and deeply: Before this, all other secondary goals, motives, addictions that are so natural for a person fade and, as it were, are destroyed by themselves: fame, a claim to teaching, the desire for material wealth, simple worldly pleasures. All this, of course, remained, perhaps at times to some extent took him prisoner - Prishvin did not turn into an ascetic, a righteous man in the popular sense of the word; but at the same time, everything became insignificant, everything faded for him before this all-consuming, completely disinterested need to understand and give - to pour his personal into the general. This was the vocation of a true poet, no matter what times and centuries he lived and in whatever form and style his thought and poetry were affected. Prishvin never allowed himself a preliminary riddle in his writing, his word is extremely free and at the same time extremely obedient to life: "I write as I live." Prishvin was going to write a book about this "Art as a way of behavior" and leave it to people - the result of his experience.

Death prevented Prishvin from writing a book about creative behavior - about the meaning of art. However, shortly before his death, he said the following words: "And if I never write it, my pebble at the heart of this light-revealing book will certainly lie."

It's so simple: a person's life is a movement towards the light, and this is its purpose, and the word opens the way for him. Prishvin calls this path poetry.

The life of Prishvin himself and the image of his word creation can be likened to the movement of a traveler along the road - a person walks, and by itself everything that is around, from earth to sky, is deposited in his mind.

“I stand and grow - I am a plant.

I stand and grow and walk - I am an animal.

I stand, and grow, and walk, and think - I am a man.

I stand and feel: the earth is under my feet, the whole earth.

Leaning on the ground, I rise: and above me is the sky - all my sky.

And the Beethoven symphony begins, and its theme: the whole sky is mine.

Observing the inseparability and naturalness of Prishvin's word and life, we could establish a certain formula (although the formula always involuntarily impoverishes the meaning). We could say: Prishvin's work is the movement of life itself in its self-consciousness. The artist is, as it were, an instrument or organ of life, she created it for herself in order to show us her diversity and hidden light and meaning.

I allowed myself to say all this about the writer in order to find that right point of view, or to find that supporting stone on which you can become a firm foot, and from it you can already survey the entire writing path of M. M. Prishvin

* * *

Following Prishvin in his works, the reader will be convinced of the characteristic feature of the artist, which we have already noted indirectly above, from the very beginning he enters his own artistic world given to him by nature, in which he sees and thinks, and never betrays him. Artistically visible images are at the same time thought-images - this is how we call intellectual and moral ideas through which Prishvin sees the world. They become his eternal companions, symbols expressing his worldview. They develop, acquire new features, glow with new facets, just as crystals shimmer and glow in nature.

Let's name at least the image of big water - the source of all life on earth. This is the waterfall "In the land of fearless birds", half a century later - the same waterfall in the last novel "The Tsar's Road". This is a spring flood both in the Sovereign's Road and in the Ship's Thicket. This image for Prishvin is cosmic, universal. It develops, growing under his pen, according to the laws of a musical symphony; appears not only in large works, but also in poetic miniatures - let us recall his famous "Forest Stream": "Sooner, later, my stream will come to the ocean." So it was written at the end of the 30s and will be often repeated in Prishvin's subsequent works until the end of his days.

It was at the same time a way of life of nature, native people, Russia and his own destiny. From the beginning of the century, his imagination was struck by the struggle of the water element - the struggle and merging of drops into a single stream. And next to him was the popular unrest in Russia and was deeply experienced by him: this stormy stream was spreading in all segments of the population. The life of Mikhail Prishvin is the years of great social changes - wars and revolutions. From early childhood - a premonition of them.

Like the image of the water element, another image will go through his whole life, connected with the search for the “true truth”. This image appears for the first time in the diary of 1915. Here's the entry in full:

“A stone-truth In the middle of zero lies as big as a table, and this stone is of no use to anyone, and everyone looks at this stone and does not know how to take it, where to put it: a drunk goes - stumbles and swears, a sober one turns away and goes around, everyone tired of the stone, and no one can take it - so this is the truth ... Is it possible to tell people the truth? The truth lies behind seven seals, and its guards guard it in silence.

And half a century later, in the last year of his life, Prishvin writes the story "The Ship's Thicket", all based on the people's search for some great "true truth." “Do not look for happiness one by one, look for the truth together,” the old people say in it to new people. The image absorbed all the wealth of the lived, rethought. It turns out that this image, this symbol, lay in the soul of the artist for half a century and is transmitted to us as his testament.

Let's call another image - love. He appears in Prishvin's first story. It describes the love of swans: an orphaned swan cannot find a mate - he dies. That is why among the northern people it was considered a sin to shoot swans.

The image of this "unoffended love" goes through all his work, changing its appearance and interpretation. In the 1920s, in the "Calendar-nature" this is a spring cloud, "like an unrumpled swan's chest." In the 30s - this is a beautiful female deer in the story "Ginseng". In the 40s, Prishvin, already an old man, turns to a woman either in a moment of quarrel, or internal doubts in her and says: “At the heart of love there is an unoffended place of complete confidence and fearlessness. And if the worst and the last happens, my friend becomes indifferent to what I am burning with, then I will take my travel stick and leave the house, and my shrine will still remain untouched.

The search and realization of the great truth true for all living things, and for oneself - longing for the only and unfulfilled love and ways to overcome this longing - these topics fill all Prishvin's work, acquiring different images and shades of meaning. This meant to give up "myself small" and go out into the big world, waiting for our sympathetic, our active participation.

In our preface, we will very briefly note the main milestones in the life and work of Prishvin. In the second volume of the Collected Works, the reader will hear from Prishvin himself a story about his childhood and youth in the novel "Kashcheev's Chain". Works and diaries will tell about the future.

II

Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin was born in 1873 on January 23, according to the old style, near the city of Yelets, Oryol province, one might say - in the heart of Russia. From here and from nearby places came out in the 19th century a whole constellation of our writers: Leo Tolstoy, Turgenev, Leskov, Fet, Bunin ...

Prishvin was born on the small estate of Khrushchevo in the family of a bankrupt merchant's son, a dreamer and dreamer who unrestrainedly indulged in his diverse hobbies: thoroughbred trotters, floriculture, hunting, wine, gambling card game. Needless to say - "ringing life", according to Prishvin's definition, which brought her father to the grave ahead of time.

His widow was left with five children and with an estate mortgaged on a double mortgage in a bank, of which she became a slave: it was necessary to redeem the estate in order to raise and educate children. An inexperienced woman became a tireless hostess. If the future writer took a penchant for dreams from his father, then from his mother - a sense of duty and responsibility in work. Maria Ivanovna Prishvina was also from an old Old Believer family, this also affected her character. It is not for nothing that the theme of Old Believers occupies a serious place in the writer's work.

He spent his childhood near the land, in a peasant environment, and he repeatedly recalls that the peasants were his first educators "in the field and under the roofs of barns." And he studied for the first year before entering the Yelets classical gymnasium, also in a rural Khrushchev school. "I've been hustling all my life among our peasants." This is not a simple mark of an external fact, but an awareness of a deep connection with the native land and its people.

We must not forget that Mikhail Prishvin grew up during the years of the rapid development of revolutionary ideas in Russia. Three years after the birth of the writer, in 1876, Saltykov-Shchedrin wrote: “It is hard for a modern Russian person to live, and even somewhat ashamed. However, a few are still ashamed, and most even people of the so-called culture simply live without shame. 1
M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin. Sobr. op. in 20 volumes, v. 19, book. I. M., "Fiction", 1976, p. 33.

Two events in the school years will have an impact on Prishvin's life: an escape from the first grade to the fabulous country of the golden mountains of Asia, - the boy knocked three more of his classmates into this bold undertaking, - and the second - his expulsion from the fourth grade for impudence to the geography teacher V. V Rozanov.

Rozanov, the only one of all the teachers, stood up for the boy after the escape - he understood the romance of the "traveler" (maybe it was he who first settled this image of an ideal country in the boy's soul). And the same Rozanov, one against all, demanded his expulsion.

For the future writer, the exception was a blow that he experienced in a huge internal struggle: a "loser" who set himself the goal of overcoming this failure. In distant Siberia, he finishes a real school. This was helped by a rich uncle, a Siberian steamer with unlimited connections.

After college, Prishvin enters the Riga Polytechnic; here he is a member of one of the first Marxist circles then emerging in Russia. From an early diary: “The happiest, most lofty thing was that I became one being with my friends, to go to prison, to any kind of torture and sacrifice, it suddenly became not scary, because it was no longer “I”, but “we” - my friends are close, and from them, like rays, “the proletarians of all countries.” He is entrusted with the translation and distribution of illegal literature. In particular, he translates Bebel's book Woman in the Past, Present and Future.

“There was no poetry in the book,” Prishvin recalls at the end of his life, “but for me the book, like a flute, sang about the woman of the future.” It was no coincidence that the young man then singled out for himself this particular book; it was for him about the most cherished - about the fabulous Marya Morevna, the dream of his childhood. Even as a child, he had a presentiment: there is some kind of integrity in love for a woman, the realization of beauty. What an old-fashioned word "chastity" was - and how much content, when tested by life, turned out to be in it. To reveal its high significance - this task was enough for the whole subsequent life of the artist, and it sounds like one of the main motives of his works.

Prishvin's selfless revolutionary work led him into prison alone, then into exile, and then abroad, where he graduated from the agronomic department of the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Leipzig. In those years, the choice of subjects there was free and there was no sharp distinction between humanitarian, exact and practical courses.

After graduating from the university, Prishvin ended up in Paris, and there, as the greatest test, fell upon him, not dreamy, but real love for a Russian student girl, Varvara Petrovna Izmalkova. This first love turned his whole soul, attitude to life and understanding of his place in it. The love lasted only two weeks: kisses in the Luxembourg Gardens in spring and vague plans for the future. The girl with feminine insight realized that she was “only an excuse for his flight”, she wanted the usual, stable, earthly, and he still had to fly far and long through all the elements of the world in order to understand himself and this world. They broke up.

“The woman stretched out her hand to the harp, touched it with her finger, and from the touch of her finger to the string sound was born. So it was with me: she touched - and I sang. The woman, without knowing it, gave us a poet, and she herself disappeared into obscurity. Prishvin was stunned and overwhelmed by the gap. For a long time he was on the verge of mental illness, although this was his secret, carefully hidden from everyone. He returned to his homeland. Now he fell to the ground - to the last refuge, and there again, like a child, he began to learn how to live. All this happened in the early years of the new, 20th century.

Prishvin becomes a rural agronomist. One way or another, he tries to live as all people live. He now observes how seriously, selflessly live and love birds, animals, all living things in nature. How empty is sometimes human "free" love. And at the same time, how much a person needs to create his own and invest in a feeling of love in order to raise it to himself.

Prishvin, an aspiring scientist, works under the direction of D.N. Pryanishnikov, the future famous academician, at the Petrovsky Agricultural Academy in Moscow. His books on agriculture are published, he writes them to earn money - he already has a family that needs to be supported. In those years, working near Moscow in Klin, Prishvin met with Efrosinya Pavlovna Smogaleva. “This very simple and illiterate very good woman had her own child Yasha, and we began to live with her simply ...” Our sons are born; only his mother does not recognize his family, and this is a new difficult test for him.

And there is no consolation for him in work: Prishvin feels that agronomy is not his vocation. He is drawn to St. Petersburg, to the center of culture, where thought beats, where philosophers and artists argue about its directions and create these directions themselves. Later, Prishvin would call it the city of light and his writer's homeland: "I fell in love with St. Petersburg for freedom, for the right of a creative dream."

“Here on Kinoviysky Prospekt, among pigsties and skits, in a wooden shack, I began this journey as a vagabond writer. We have nice cities in our country, among them, like every Russian, is his native Moscow. But Leningrad alone remains a beautiful city in our country: I love it not by blood, but because in it only I felt a person in myself.

He lives on the poor outskirts of the capital, finds odd jobs in newspapers, where he writes "three kopecks per line." “In my youth, in order to become a real writer, and not a day laborer in literature, I suffered a great need.”

At the end of his life, Prishvin so simply, without any pretense of significance, recalls these years: "Having spent his disinterested youth, he took care of himself in order to live and be useful to people."

Unknown to anyone, lost in a big city, he accidentally falls into the circle of ethnographers and folklorists and, on their behalf, in 1906 goes to the North, little explored in those years, to collect folk tales. In addition to fairy tales, he brings his travel notes from there, which became his first book, In the Land of Fearless Birds.

From these first lines he wrote, the direction of his thought is determined. Even during his student years, he felt the need to "achieve the unattainable and not forget about the earth," and therefore, at the same time as studying chemistry, Prishvin became seriously interested in philosophy and music.

It should be remembered that the desire to link into unity not only personal life and external activity, but, most importantly, to link all paths, all methods of cognition was a characteristic phenomenon for the scientific searches of those years, both among philosophers and natural scientists inclined towards philosophical thinking. It is significant that Prishvin fully reflected this universal need. Man greedily rushed from microscope to telescope, spreading his thoughts across the expanses of the Universe that opened up to him. But all this diversity of the world eluded him, blurred into special branches of knowledge - it was necessary to link the picture of the world into some kind of organic unity, such as it apparently exists for itself.

Prishvin, as an artist, responded to this idea of ​​world synthesis by the very method of his observation and artistic creativity. The evidence for this is innumerable.

Art, according to Prishvin, sees the same thing as science, but reaches life in its highest quality. That is why "science should not be afraid - life is more than science." Prishvin takes his materials not from books, but from nature "himself directly."

Prishvin fights against the "nihilism of science" for a sense of the cosmos, for that harmony "where there are no scientists and where no one will take perfection from me." The artist has the gift to comprehend, "bypassing the teaching."

When reading these laconic and, partly due to laconicism, paradoxical entries in the diary, the reader must remember that they were recorded by Prishvin in an internal polemic and, in this sense, only for himself. We must also understand something else: highly appreciating the gift of the artist, Prishvin at the same time is the enemy of any sectarianism on the paths of knowing the world. Hence two business messages made from opposite positions and at the same time complementing each other: "In art, one must learn to see spiritual values ​​exactly as in science." And then he hurries to protect us from the danger of enclosing ourselves in the stone walls of theoretical reflection, and only in it: "It is terrible who has locked the fire of the soul in the walls of reason."

Where is the path to the desired synthesis of knowledge? Apparently, this path is diverse, but Prishvin himself is familiar with the insight of the mind as a direct, according to his definition, "premonition of thought." In this sense, one can understand the words of Prishvin: "Poetry is a premonition of thought."

Before us is a picture of the single combat of the mind with the eternally comprehensible and not completely comprehensible being of the Universe; an attempt to capture this meaning, fleetingly touching a person in that special – you can’t call it otherwise – a creative moment of life that flies by, touches and disappears again.

And here a task arises in front of a person with lightning speed - to catch him in a verbal form, like a net. The importance of this task - to save the revealed meaning - is so great that Prishvin does not stop at a daring comparison, the meaning of which does not immediately reach the reader in its unexpectedness, “... in a moral sense, this is the same thing as catching the current moment with the conclusion in the form to snatch a drowning child out of the water.

A holistic experience is inherent, apparently, in natures who own the art of attention. No wonder Prishvin calls attention the main creative force of man. This is evidenced by the writer's observations, for example, about the morning state of his soul - its openness to all living things and at the same time the greatest concentration in itself. If such a morning did not come, then Mikhail Mikhailovich was perplexed: “It happens that the morning somehow smears, and you won’t understand anything in it, and thoughts won’t add up.” But such empty mornings were rare, and the joy of uniting with the world did not betray him even under the most vague and difficult circumstances of life.

The last story "The Ship Thicket", published after the death of the author, is filled with a quivering search for the truth - the truth of someone else's soul, the truth of human relations, their commonality, their connection. This is spoken about with such passionate tension that you have no doubt: Prishvin was captured by this experience in his last years and sought to convey it to the people he left.

"Just" - and Manuilo will find the missing children. "Just a little" - and he recognizes in Veselkin their father, whom they are looking for with such love. “A little” in the fate of all the characters in the story is like standing at the threshold, as an opportunity for universal understanding and unity.

Prishvin did not emphasize the weakness of our attention, the coldness of our souls. On the contrary, Prishvin constantly points to the possibilities hidden in us to see deeper, even deeper to see the miracle of life - this truth that all the participants in the story are looking for: "... The world of miracles exists and begins here, very close, right here, beyond the outskirts."

Not only people participate in this search for the true truth. Even a wild swamp even “thinks in its own way”. Even the small swamp bird of the harshnep has “no more than a sparrow, but a long nose, and in the night pensive eyes the common age-old and vain attempt of all swamps to remember something.”

Prishvin recalls the beginning of his writing as follows: “A trip of just one month to the Olonets province, I just wrote what I saw - and the book“ In the land of fearless birds ”was published, for which real scientists made me an ethnographer, without even imagining the depth of my ignorance in this science. Note: Prishvin was elected a full member of the Geographical Society, headed by the famous traveler Semenov-Tyan-Shansky, for this book.

“Only one ethnographer of the Olonets Territory,” continues Prishvin, “when I read my book in the Geographical Society, said to me:“ I envy you, I have studied my native Olonets Territory all my life and could not write this, and I can’t. “Why?” I asked. He said:. “You comprehend and write with your heart, but I cannot.”

This is how the scientist-researcher thinks about the artist, he "envy" him, that is, he sees in the artistic method some advantages unknown to him.

“Some little fame that I received in literature,” Prishvin writes further, “I received not at all for what I did. There are, in fact, no works of mine, but there is some psychological experience. Only a person who is completely devoted to creativity can not notice labor in it, just as he does not notice the air that he breathes, just as a fish “does not notice” the water in which he lives and without which he immediately dies on a dry shore.

Looking back at the path traveled, Prishvin recalls the distant years in St. Petersburg: “Only the rooms of the miserable apartments on Okhta and Pesochnaya Street know what incredible work, what a struggle with“ science ”, with“ thought ”my writings cost me, which for everyone remain only descriptions of nature , landscape miniatures.

The artist stands guard, guarding the fragile image, so that the “thought” does not crush it.

At the end of his life, Prishvin recalls his turn to art as follows: “And when I realized myself that I could be with myself, then everything around me also became as a whole and without science. It used to be to me that everything was separate and on an endless path, and that’s why it was tiring, because you know ahead that no one will ever reach the end. Now every manifestation—whether it be the appearance of a sparrow or the gleam of dew on the grass—is round and clear—and not a ladder. Am I against knowledge? - No! I only say that everyone should have a term of age of life and the right to knowledge ... "

Now, by knowledge and the right to it, Prishvin means the spiritual maturity of a person: the right to simplicity, when “external” research and “internal” intuition merge in a single act of knowledge. On this path to simplicity, travel, changing places, parting with habits, renewing receptivity, all together - this was the approach to the lost brightness of children's perception. This is what a “journey” is for Prishvin, a “tramp writer”, and this is what a “first look” is, which he will subsequently repeat to us in all his works.

It should be remembered, however, that he retained gratitude for the serious scientific school he had passed through to the end of his days.

* * *

In 1907, a new journey to the North and a new book "For the Magic Kolobok". In pre-revolutionary criticism, they wrote about her like this: “... M. Prishvin. How many people know this name? And yet, this book is a brilliant work of art. That such a book could remain unknown or little known is one of the curiosities of our literary life. 2
R. V. Ivanov-Razumnik. Great Pan (On the work of M. Prishvin). - Works, vol. 2. St. Petersburg, "Prometheus", 1911, p. 44, 51.

In the pre-revolutionary years of 1905-1917, Prishvin did not get along for a long time in St. Petersburg, but rather wandered around different villages, rich in hunting, folk dialects and legends. He lives now near Novgorod, which he especially loved for its antiquity, now near Smolensk, then at home - in different places of the Oryol province, and then he goes on long trips to remote wilderness places in Russia. From time to time he appears in the brilliant salons of the capital; he is included in the circle of the so-called symbolists and members of the Religious-Philosophical Society, headed by D. S. Merezhkovsky. He was noticed already in other literary circles.

Petersburg's chosen society both attracts and repels him. These people, by Prishvin's definition, are "foreigners", cut off from nature and folk culture. They want to create new spiritual values, but Prishvin believes these values ​​have been kept among the people since ancient times, worn out by the experience of life. He is looking for a healthy, whole in people who live close to nature.

“If there weren’t a peasant in Russia, and even a merchant, and a provincial priest, and these vast expanses of fields, steppes, forests, then what would be the interest of living in Russia.

In Russia, only wild birds live. Geese invariably fly in the spring, and the peasants invariably and joyfully meet them. This is everyday life, the rest is ethnography, and we must hurry, otherwise there will be nothing left. Russia will break, there are no bonds.”

And he hurries with his eyes, with his ears to know the true Russia.

In 1908, he sets off on a third journey - to the Trans-Volga region and to the legendary Kitezh. But even among the folk-religious seekers of various trends and sects, Prishvin observes the “exhausted spirit of Avvakum”, which reminds him of the St. ". This is how Prishvin felt and wrote a new book about it, “At the Walls of the City of the Invisible”.

Time demanded from the writer to give people not only beauty, but also something material, essential, like bread. Apparently, this “something” was what the people called “truth” from time immemorial.

* * *

In the early diaries there is such an entry made after a meeting with the “decadents”: “We went out into the street ... a cigarette, a woman who looked like an actress, these sacred kisses on the forehead. Sect! And how far from the people.

I remember the silent crowd of peasants in front of the burning estate. No one moved to help, and when they saw a cow in the fire, they rushed to fill it, because the cattle is God's creature.

“At the Merezhkovskys, new chains met me: they practically demanded submission from me. And I want to write freely. I had to back off."

That is why Prishvin departs in art to the "realists", in particular, to Remizov. That is why Gorky looked at his work so intently during these years. “Yes, you, sir,” Gorky later told him, “are a real romantic ... What were you doing? Why didn’t they take up the pen and miss so much time?” In the language of scientists, Prishvin overcame the aestheticism of the beginning of the century.

But to say so would be very conditional and inaccurate. The fact is that Prishvin's thought did not fit into any of the programs of aesthetic groups, and none of them accepted Prishvin to the end.

“What didn’t throw me into the art of the decadents in my time? Something close to Maxim Gorky. And what did not lead to Gorky? Something close in me to the decadents who defend art for art's sake.

In itself, art for art's sake is absurdity, just as absurdity is art for its own good.

Art is movement, modern life, with a constant rocking of the steering wheel, now to the right - for the people, for their benefit, then to the left - for oneself. Art itself without any thought of immediate benefit. I saved myself from decadence by writing about nature.

The independence and nationality of Prishvin amaze even in the initial notes of the still unsettled and painfully lonely artist. In essence, Prishvin did not depart from anyone and to anyone, it is enough to recall at least such a later entry of his: “When did I have at least one like-minded friend from writers along my entire literary path? Is it Remizov? But he loved me as much as he could, but there was no unanimity ... "

Could Remizov, who “rejected the people and slowly rummaged through the Dal in pursuit of folk words” be a teacher?

“The last Russian symbolists, even those who took material from Russian ethnography and archeology, lost their perception of real life and suffered terribly from this (V. Ivanov, Remizov). The direct feeling of the life of their passionately beloved people completely left them.

Prishvin calls their work a “claim” and says that he himself escaped from this most likely not by art, but by behavior: he passionately wanted to be like everyone else in something and write simply, as everyone says.

Prishvin subsequently never repeated his few experiences of writing “with pretension”, such as “Dream” or “Ivan Oslyanichek”.

The writer is sometimes so hard on himself, insightful, sober, that he even allows himself to think that Gorky "composes" him. But here is an entry from the diary: “Why are the Merezhkovskys hated by these living people: these live, and they build theories; these give birth to life, and those choristers sing of it, these always stand, as it were, at the end and painfully wait for the continuation, the same at all times and for everything, like a spray, the answer flies ... - They don’t know how to say “I don’t know” - this is Gorky’s main accusation to Merezhkovsky ".

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Ilya Ilf, Evgeny Petrov
In the land of not frightened idiots (compilation)

© TD Algorithm LLC, 2017

Ilya Ilf, Evgeny Petrov
Letters from America

I. A. Ilf – M. N. Ilf

... today is the third day I'm moving on the Normandy. In a storm, it still looks like a steamer, at least it pumps. And in calm weather, this is just a huge hotel with a magnificent view of the sea. There are very few steamships, in the sense that we are accustomed to. But since the storm has been going on since the minute we left Le Havre, then, in general, the impressions are still marine. Again I am not motion sick, and I regard this even with timid surprise.

The most amazing thing on the Normandy is the vibration. Only now I know that vibration makes everything sound. Sounds in my cabin: walls, bed, cabinets, washbasin, light bulbs, towels, coat buttons, handkerchief, painting on the wall. Each object vibrates and sounds differently. Don't be surprised that my handwriting has changed. He is vibrating. I vibrate along with everyone, and this whole crazy ensemble of sounds struggles its way through a rather evil ocean towards America.

If you treat vibration calmly, then it is quite convenient here. Our cabin is huge, sheathed in light wood, the ceiling, like in the subway, is luxurious, there are two wide wooden beds, wardrobes, armchairs, our own washbasin, shower, and toilet. Since we are lucky, then in Paris, when we exchanged ship cards for tickets, we were given a cabin not a tourist one, but a first class one. They do this because the season is already over, so that the first class is not ugly empty. In general, the ship is huge and very beautiful. But in the field of art, it is clearly unfavorable here. Modern in general is a bit nasty thing, but on the Normandy it is further enhanced by gold and mediocrity.

Four hours after leaving Le Havre, the Normandy makes its only stop, at Southampton. From there you can still send letters ...

... now it is already evening, we are somewhere in the middle of the road, in the middle of the ocean. Warm, dark, a very soft rain fell. Somehow the passengers became sad, lying down, reading, thinking. Yesterday, almost everyone was lying, from three hundred and fifty people of the tourist class there were no more than thirty on their feet. Yes, and those somehow strangely ran their eyes. Today it has calmed down, but their spiritual emptiness has not yet passed, so they are sad. A group of our engineers and radio designer Shorin are on board the Normandy. Everyone lay down like bones, showed up for a minute today and again hid in their cabins. I walk alone - a mad admiral, insensitive to seasickness.

There was a movie in the dance hall yesterday. And today too. But they showed terrible rubbish. The food here is excellent, without much inspiration, but very varied and in quantities exceeding the capacity of the human stomach. I don’t eat much, in moderation, I sleep, I generally rest after running around Prague and Vienna. I didn't run in Paris.

In the letter-writing salon, where I am now, the painting is the same as in the foyer of some Odessa theater of miniatures in 1911. It's directly incomprehensible. Some kind of awnings, and so strangely poorly drawn that, apart from surprise, they evoke no feelings ...

We should arrive in New York on October 7th by one o'clock in the afternoon. On the printed passenger list, I'm listed as "Mrs" (Mrs. Ilf). That's funny. Mr. Butterbrodt, Mrs. Butterbrodt and young master Sanderbrodt are also coming with us. Marshak would write poems for children about them: "The terrible Mr. Sandwich."

The ocean is deserted. Didn't see a single boat. We're going fast. We fill out huge American questionnaires all the time: “Are you covered with scabs?”, “Are you an anarchist?”, “Are you handicapped?”. And so on…

... About Paris, I can say that I saw a lot in it that was less noticeable before. And those traits are pretty disgusting. However, he is incredibly handsome. I still have the impression that for many familiar artists it has already ended, as Odessa ended for them in its time. And almost all of them want to go to Moscow...

The handwriting continues to vibrate. Don't be surprised to receive several emails at once. All of them will be written on the steamer and sent from New York ...

... I wanted to write to you yesterday, but we landed at the harbor only at 5 pm, then there were all sorts of formalities, I ended up in the city only in the evening, walked for an hour and a half and was so impressed that I had no strength left.

When I drove up to New York and then walked around it, I felt a sense of pride that people could erect such huge buildings. They are visible fifty kilometers away and rise like pillars of smoke.

At first we settled in the old-fashioned Prince George Hotel, where there are many good Negro servants, but today we have moved to a large modern Shelton Hotel. I live on the 27th floor, this desperate city is visible from the windows ... Of course, no photographs give an idea of ​​\u200b\u200bit. I'm afraid it's not even possible to talk about him in such a way that it's understandable.

Today we saw our publishers; the other day, it turns out, a new edition of The Golden Calf is coming out, and they will give us some money, apparently not much. The Consul invited us to go with him for two weeks to Chicago, Detroit and other places in the same area. He is driving across Canada. On the nineteenth, we will go with him and return to New York again. We will stay here for another week and begin our journey around the country ...

... We bought a wonderful typewriter, and now I write slowly and importantly on it. On Monday we are going to Washington to the embassy. We were asked to come there for one day. You have to go by train for five hours. I forgot that you don't know when Monday is, but they don't think otherwise, it will be the fourteenth. As for the trip, about which I wrote to you, to Chicago and Detroit, it has become a little cloudy, because the consul may not be able to leave for such a period. But if not this, then there will be something else. The car costs thirty-three dollars. Sorry for this unexpected factual reference.

There is a lot of work and walking. In general, I would like to sit on the twenty-seventh floor and look at New York, but there is no time. We haven't received any money yet, but we'll probably get something.

...Yesterday I was at the "rodeo". This is a cowboy race. Riding wild horses, bulls, throwing lasso - the soul of Texas, to put it briefly. Somehow, on a typewriter, I have not yet learned how to express my impressions ...

... It's evening now, it's warm, and for the first time in all my days in New York, it's raining a little inaudibly. But even if there was a thunderstorm with thunder and lightning, then it would be inaudible. The city itself thunders and sparkles cleaner than any storm. This is a painful city, it makes you look at yourself all the time, it hurts your eyes.

Living in Shelton is comfortable. We have a two-room apartment, very clean, and the toilet room is, apparently, at the top of what is possible in this area.

It's been almost a month since I left. He passed quickly and not quickly, I don’t even know myself. I try to write down as much as possible, otherwise everything will fly out of my head, then you won’t remember where you were and what you looked at. I will choose a free hour and write you one of my days in detail. Now I’m a little tired of not being used to typing on a typewriter ...

... Today, unexpectedly, I left for Washington a day earlier than I expected. I was thinking of leaving tomorrow morning by train, but suddenly our companion on the Normandy, K., who had come here on business of subtropical plants, suggested that we go with him by car. Of course, we agreed, and I'm already here. We drove all day, passed many small towns and Baltimore. The American Highway is wonderful. All the time I looked only at her, although now it is a surprisingly beautiful red autumn landscape. I will stay in Washington for two days - and back to New York.

It was especially interesting to drive in the evening, you roll like on a carousel and all two hundred and fifty miles of the road (that's almost four hundred kilometers), all around, and behind, and in front, and cars roll towards you. Some old women drive cars, girls, they all seem to have lost their temper and are driving, driving with all their might ...

... Yesterday I watched the city and spent the whole day with the plenipotentiary. Washington is a quiet parliamentary city with one car for every two residents. There are, it seems, three hundred thousand inhabitants, and two hundred thousand cars. So there are almost no pedestrians on the sidewalks. Everyone is walking on the pavement. Was in Virginia, in the house of George Washington, a patriarchal American estate of the beginning of the last century. Idyllic landscape and quiet huge Potomac River.

Tomorrow there is a reception at the consulate and two hundred people have been invited. With my shyness, this is not God knows what a pleasure.

But it is necessary...

…Yesterday there was a reception at the consulate. There were one hundred and twenty critics, publishers, critics, activists, and especially artists. We are well known here and treated well. In addition, there was Burliuk, old and drunk, but handsome. There was also Mamulyan, the director of "Queen Christina", which we seem to have seen together at the film festival. He'll take us to see a Negro opera he recently staged. Everyone says it's great work.

The reception went well for me, and I didn't languish too much. The order is as follows: the consul and his wife stand on the landing of the stairs and greet the guests. We stand behind them, we are introduced. The guests say something pleasant and retire to the ceremonial halls to drink vodka and punch. Then others come, also say something, and also retire to punch. Then, little by little, they start to leave. We always stand on the site, say hello and goodbye. We can’t leave here until everyone leaves, we can’t drink and eat either. This goes on for three hours. Very interesting people and country too.

Just now I was watching "Squaring the Circle" which is on Broadway. Very old fashioned small room. A man in a top hat buys a ticket at the box office. Tell Valya that the first man in a top hat I saw in New York bought a ticket for his play. Before the show begins, five Americans in purple blouses perform Russian folk songs on small guitars and a huge balalaika. Then the curtain was raised. It's snowing outside the blue window. If you show Russia without snow, then the theater directors can be doused with kerosene and burned. The actors play all three acts without taking off their boots. There is a red flag in the corner of the room. The audience likes the play, they laugh. They don't play great, but they don't play badly. Fees are average. Several Broadway jokes are inserted, from which the author would wince. In addition, a very serious and philosophical end is attached, as far as Lyons and Malamute, who reworked the play, can be philosophers. Still, there is nothing anti-Soviet. Jokes and philosophy, however, we recommended that Malamute be removed. By the way, they do not help the play at all. And so it's good...

... Next week I will go to Hartford to see my three uncles, my grandmother and my aunt. I forgot to tell you that before going to Washington, I went with the consul to the fair in Denbury. It's three hours drive from New York. Saw car races there, pretty dark entertainment, booths, a cow show, medicine and toy vendors who put on whole shows, all from Henry and the Circus Kid.

Went to Burlesque last night. It's a thirty-five cent revue. There are many of them here. Vulgar is absolutely fantastic, and therefore interesting ...

...Things are going well so far. Here, in New York, I will have to stay another week and a half or two, and maybe a little more. It all depends on how things go. We are going on a big trip across America. From here to California and from California back through the southern states ... Now we will, apparently, buy a car. But I don't know yet whether it will be a new car or a used one. In addition, we were offered a free ride on a banana company steamer to Cuba and Jamaica. The journey will take twelve days there and back. This is what we want to do after a long trip...

Spent the day in the city today. Just an hour drive from New York - and already a completely wild rocky estate, a fresh breeze and quieter than on the Klyazma. The owner, on the occasion of our arrival, called together a lot of guests, it turned out something like a consular reception, which I can hardly endure.

Since I've been in America, two people have brought their books to get an inscription from the authors. At the consul's reception there is a fifteen-year-old American who said that she would not read The Twelve Chairs, because she was told that there was a bad ending, but she does not read books with a bad ending, and today Stuart Chase, a very famous economist. He didn't say anything about bad endings...

I do photography, and the pictures are good ...

…Yesterday morning Uncle William and his wife came to pick me up, and we went to Hartford, Connecticut. Uncle is fifty-six years old, he is small, with completely white hair and looks like my dad, only not in face, but in gait and manners. He is shy, but drives the car very boldly.

We drove for four hours. Hartford is an unusually beautiful city, all littered with large autumn leaves. They go to the ankle. Only in the trading part there are big houses. Here they live in beautiful two-story houses in two or one apartment. Uncle William occupies the second floor of such a house. There I had breakfast and dinner, eating sweet Jewish meat and pickled watermelon, which I had not eaten for twenty years. William, his sister's husband, and another uncle whose name I don't recognize, work together to sell Chrysler, Plymouth, Essex, and Hudson cars. There is another uncle, the oldest. I recognized his face from the photographs that hung in our house. He doesn't do anything anymore. He was familiar with Mark Twain.

Mark Twain, when he was already a famous writer, lived in Hartford for many years, and I was in his house. Now there is a library, and the original drawings for The Prince and the Pauper hang on the wall. He met Mark Twain like this: in 1896 he was a peddler and went from house to house selling something. What he sold - he no longer remembers. Twain lived near Beecher Stowe. They were both sitting in the garden, and the writer became interested in the uncle, because the uncle wore long hair, and it was immediately clear that he was from Russia. The great comedian questioned him for a long time about Russia and asked his uncle to come in every time he passed by with his goods. Uncle says that everyone in town loved Twain very much. But there is still no monument to him, although the city is rich and there are many monuments ...

... all the time there is no time. The Americans are running and so am I. But I get a little tired and live relatively measuredly. I eat oranges at night. I also eat an orange on an empty stomach. I drink a glass of orange juice before breakfast. All kinds of juices are a purely American feature. They drink them several times a day for sure. Before dinner, they drink a glass of tomato juice. I haven't gotten to that point yet. There is also banana juice. It's not very tasty. Then there is grapefruit juice. It's a huge lemon-orange. In general, Americans eat healthy spa food - a lot of greens, a lot of vegetables and fruits. If they did not do this, then in their New York they would have deteriorated very quickly. Well, drink decently. No date is complete without cocktails. Our publisher even has a refrigerator in the publishing house itself, and after talking with us, he quickly composes some kind of cocktail and puts it on the table. At the same time, he acts so deftly, as if he had never published books, but always worked in a bar.

…Today I walked around the city and took pictures. Imagine what happened. The photographer, whom I gave to print the pictures, printed everything that was needed, and lost all the prints on the way to me. He will have to start all over again. I'm sorry, I could send them to you today. Now it will probably take a few more days. You will be interested to see. There's a little bit of Warsaw, Paris, Le Havre, then a steamboat and New York. Only there are very few of me there, I shoot everything, but there is no one to shoot me. But I also eat sometimes.

I loved this city. You can love him, although he is too big, too dirty, too rich and too poor. Everything here is huge; just a lot. Even the oysters are too big. Like meatballs...

…What have I been doing the last days? I saw Hemingway the other day. He is a big, strong and healthy man. He asked if we knew Kashkin. Why does Hemingway suddenly ask about some Kashkin? Then it turned out that Kashkin translated his Death in the Afternoon into Russian. Hemingway was in flannel pants, a waistcoat that did not converge on his mighty chest, and house shoes on his bare feet. Very attractive and some very masculine person. I liked him. He invited me to come to him in a small town in the very south of Florida, where he lives, in Key West. We promised, but we promise everything to everyone, and it is not clear when we will have time to do this. We can’t get out of New York in any way, one thing delays, then another. Sometimes we are busy, sometimes we hope to get more money, a lot of things.

Then Dos Passos took us to the Hollywood restaurant on Broadway for dinner. He said that we would see the New York clerk's dream. Indeed, it was the happiness of a sailor who, after a two-year voyage, went ashore. In the middle of the hall, on a low stage, girls and maidens were dancing: half-naked, three-quarters naked, and nine-tenths naked... The faces of the girls are dull, cruel, or suddenly pitiful. The restaurant is full. And all this at seven o'clock in the afternoon. Then Dos and his wife got into their old 1927 Chrysler, which was guarded in the next street by their big, long-shaved dog, and we again made a promise. They promised him to definitely come to Key West, where he would also live.

Then we went for a walk, ended up in Harlem, a part of New York where only Negroes live, and went to the U-Bengi Club restaurant to watch Negro dances. The dances are interesting, but very sexual. At the table next to us was Robson, a Negro singer. He was recently in Moscow. You probably remember. Tomorrow he will visit us.

Yesterday morning I had to go to the literature club for breakfast. It's called "German Treat". This means that everyone pays for himself. They gather there on Tuesdays for a joke breakfast. Our publishers Ferrar and Reinhardt demanded that I deliver a speech in Russian at breakfast, and that Zhenya read the same speech in English. It's customary to make funny speeches in this club. Of course, as a speaker, I dropped out immediately, in view of my resolute and customary refusal. We made up a short and comical speech about how, wherever we go, they tell us that this is not the real America yet, and that we need to move on. This speech was translated into English, and Zhenya read it courageously, although there were many Americans sitting at the round tables in the hall of the Ambassador Hotel, and there was something to be embarrassed about. The speech was met with a very friendly reception. Then an actor spoke, then the owner of Madison Square Garden. This is a big theater-circus. There is boxing, big rallies and stuff. There I was at the cowboy competition. He said that everything was beneficial for him ... He rented his hall to everyone, and only the defenders of Bruno Hauptmann, who killed the child of Lndberg, he did not hand over the theater. After that, all four of us had large plaster medals hung around our necks. Between the speeches and the medals, they gave us a very strange breakfast. First fish, then immediately ice cream and coffee. As a medal winner, I did not pay for breakfast.

At three o'clock Mr. Throne and his wife, both elderly and handsome Americans, called for us, and we drove a hundred and seventy miles to Schenectady, formerly the Mohican region, and now the city where the General Electric factories are located, the factories of the most advanced American technology. Schenectady is the birthplace of electricity. Here, in general, they invented it, Edison worked here, world scientists work here. We got there at ten o'clock. It is crazy to think that you can drive slowly or stop on an American federal highway. That is, you can stop and drive slowly, but when thousands of cars are ahead, when thousands of cars are approaching from behind, it’s impossible to stop or slow down, you don’t want to ... All of America is rushing somewhere, and, apparently, there will never be a stop. Thousands of cars were also moving towards them, silver milk tanks for New York, trucks of desperate lengths that carried three new, 1936, cars from Detroit at once.

We stopped at an ordinary American hotel, where there are three waters - hot, cold and ice. Icy, however, turned out to be just cold this time. We walked for five minutes and immediately ran into a Russian. We bought corn flakes from him and argued in Russian whether it was corn or not. Then he unexpectedly entered into a conversation and, in good Russian, confirmed that corn flakes are corn. He has been here for twenty-two years and believes that there are no jobs because there are too many machines, and they only work for the owner. He is a laborer, but many very cultured people in America think so too.

We spent the whole day watching electrical wonders. The plant has three hundred and fifty buildings, we were only in three, however, in the largest. And, besides, there are also people, which is still the most interesting thing. You should have stayed here for at least a week. Now you understand why we can't go on a trip. There are so many interesting things that you can’t finally choose a day and leave.

Schenectady is, of course, cluttered with cars. Ninety thousand people live in it. All of them depend on the plant. He left an imprint on their whole life. In the middle of the city flows a small Indian river Mohawk. I'll tell you about Schenectady when I get there, otherwise I'll have to write too much. We left at five o'clock, rolled again, rolled endlessly. This time they overtook the milk tanks for New York. Once they overtook a huge closed truck carrying horses. If I were a horse, it would be a humiliation for me to be driven in a truck ...

...Finally, we bought a car and the other day, two or three days later, we are driving. This is a new Ford. We took it on an installment plan, we'll train for two months and, if we can't pay for it in full, we'll give it back. It's profitable, and we arranged it. We have enough money. Of course, I would like to have more, and it would even be possible to get them. But there are some circumstances. The fact is that we have an excellent reputation here and we cannot perform with anything. American magazines want us to write about America right away. And I don’t want to write in a hurry and in a hurry. We can only hurt ourselves. Maybe when we're still on the road and things get clearer, we'll write for the local magazines. But even now money matters are satisfactory. It seems that not B. will go with us, but Mr. Throne and his wife, about whom I have already written to you. This is an American who knows America perfectly, and his wife drives a car perfectly. We almost persuaded them to go.

I just got back from Porgy and Bess. This is an opera from Negro life. The performance is wonderful. There is so much Negro mysticism, fears, kindness and gullibility that I experienced great joy. It was staged by the Armenian Mamulyan, the music was written by the Jew Gershwin, the scenery was made by Sudeikin, and the Negroes played. In general, the triumph of American art.

The day before yesterday I was at a Rachmaninoff concert. Where else was I? You watch so much that you immediately forget. Yes, after the performance, Mamulyan took us backstage so that we could say a few words to the troupe. And, of course, the most Negro Negro woman suddenly spoke Russian. It turns out that before the revolution, she performed in Russia for eight years. She even uttered such a word as "province". Then an Indian woman came from somewhere, a real Indian woman, and she also began to speak Russian. And she laughed a lot at the same time ...

…Today I was very sorry that you are not here. I was at the Van Gogh exhibition. Great and wonderful exhibition. One hundred paintings and one hundred twenty-five drawings are collected from all over the world. Well, it's just amazing. Here is a postman in a bright blue uniform, and a portrait of an actor, and a bridge, and a self-portrait with a red beard, and peasants who eat potatoes, and landscapes, and an unusual bouquet, and a night cafe with tables on the street under a blue sky with colossal stars, everything that we only read about and dreamed of seeing ... Here are a few more things that have been selected to characterize Van Gogh's time: several Cezannes, a portrait of Van Gogh by Gauguin. This is when they lived together, Van Gogh is depicted painting sunflowers. Good portrait. Then hangs Degas and something else. Only New York can afford it. He is so rich that he can do anything. At the same time, an exhibition of Manet, forty of the best things, was opened. The galleries on fifty-seventh street contain unheard-of riches. Some you can only see, and some you can buy - for sale.

The same is done in the field of music. You can hear everyone during the winter: Rachmaninoff, Stokowski, Klemperer, Italian singers, whatever. But it's already expensive. However, when we return to New York, we will listen to it for free. There is one theatrical figure who suits all this for us.

I looked at Sing Sing Prison in great detail. Of course, the electric chair makes a terrible impression. Two hundred men and three women finished their business on the Sing Sing chair. It is placed in a large room with a marble floor. Very clean. There is an inscription: "Silence". There are four wooden sofas for witnesses. For some reason there is a washbasin. There is a table. An autopsy is being performed in the next room. And in another one, coffins were piled up to the ceiling. Behind the door is a switchboard. Turn on the switch and that's it. A person who turns on the current receives a hundred and fifty dollars for each inclusion. Otherwise, the prison is very cultural, with a purely American high standard of living. With the exception of the old building, built back in 1825. This is already a completely Sultan-Constantinople dungeon. Terrible. The head of the prison promised, however, that if they sent me to him, he would place me in a new building.

I was boxing in the huge Madison Square Garden. Karnera fought with some German. Beat him in the most horrendous way. Boxing was not as interesting as the audience. Roared and roared. In general, Americans are noisy people, cheerful and noisy when they have no special worries. They shovel their newspapers right onto the pavement. A man walks holding a three-pound newspaper. And suddenly, how to slam her. In the evening, the wind carries them all over New York.

It's still warm and everyone goes without coats. I have a lot to do and never get smaller. We're leaving in two days...

... It's already morning for you and, probably, there is a parade on Red Square. Well, goodbye...

... Today I left New York and now I am three hundred miles from it. We drove all day along wonderful roads, had breakfast at a roadside restaurant. Dined here in a town called Skeneathlis. One thousand eight hundred inhabitants, who all live in separate two-story houses, cars, "Main Street", as in all small American cities. Today we drove through more than a dozen such cities. They are all clean, beautiful, but it must be boring to live in them. The standard of living and amenities are very high. I sleep in one of these houses. The owners rent rooms for the night to passing tourists. Such a house has six large rooms, absolutely incredible, a bathroom on the second floor and a bathroom downstairs, a closet, a radio, good beds. The owner works and gets twenty-five dollars a week, the wife loves her house and knows nothing else. All this is very interesting.

Today we left Syracuse aside, we passed Pompeii, tomorrow morning we will pass Waterloo.

They say that there are four or five Odessa in the States. Everything is there.

Sorry for writing so illegibly. The machine does not want to lay out. We're going to Niagara, we'll be there tomorrow, then to Canada for a few hours (if they let me in without a visa), and from there to Detroit. Your letters will be sent to me in Chicago. I'll be there on the fifteenth or sixteenth...

…I am still in the state of New York, although I have already traveled five hundred and fourteen miles from the city itself. We are driving in a new Ford in a beautiful gray color, which is called here - the color of gunmetal. The ride is comfortable, Tron's wife rules confidently and carefully, Tron himself talks incessantly about America, which he knows perfectly well. So everything is going really well...

Today I watched Niagara Falls, but there is so much water that I will not describe here, there is not enough space. From there I sent you a postcard with a view of it.

Probably your letters and telegrams have already arrived in New York, but I will receive them only in Chicago. Tomorrow night I will arrive in Detroit, I will be there for two days. The journey will take another day. Chicago itself will take three days. And on the eighteenth we will drive on. There will be no very large cities until San Francisco itself.

Today we again stopped for the night in a private house. Silver Creek is a small town. I have already seen many of them. All of them are similar to each other. A lot of cars, the main street is called either Broadway or State Street (State Street) or Main Street (Main Street). Each has a fountain with an angel, which is illuminated with colored lights in the evening, a monument to a soldier of the civil war, a Protestant church. But the names of the cities are very diverse - in two days we drove through Syracuse, Pompeii, Batavia, Warsaw, Caledonia, Waterloo, I don’t even remember what else. All these towns are clean, quiet, tidy, but there is absolutely no difference between Pompeii and Warsaw ...

In city pharmacies, all the books are of the same content: “Being a sinner is a man’s business”, “The flame of burnt love”, “First night”, “Flirting of the married” and so on. I don't think I've written to you about the American pharmacy yet. There you can have breakfast, buy a toy, a book, you can have dinner, choose some little thing from clothes. These are big bars with medicines crammed into the corner. But still, this is a pharmacy, because in Washington I was served coffee, butter, toasted bread and orange juice by a doctor ...

… again I drove through many small towns, again there was Geneva, this time in the state of Pennsylvania. An hour later we drove through Krakow. Toledo is also not Toledo, it is Toledo, but in English it is read "Toledo". As long as we drive without stopping. Without stopping, we even drove through Cleveland, a huge city. Stopping everywhere won't take a year to get to California. So far, cities are just getting in the way. They are crowded with cars, and it is difficult to get out of them. We made our way through Cleveland for an hour.

I will stay in Detroit for two days, visit the Ford plant, then - further ...

It has been raining all day today. Toward evening it began to rain, and so we spent the night fifty miles from Detroit, in Toledo. Again I live in a tidy house with cold and hot water, a bathroom, a radio, a closet and pictures on the walls. I will sleep on a huge bed with a skinny pillow. I don't remember if I wrote to you that Americans sleep on pillows as flat as a dollar.

The first volume of the eight-volume Collected Works of M. M. contains his early works, including such well-known ones as "In the land of fearless birds", "Behind the magic bun" and others.

Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin
Collected Works in eight volumes
Volume 1. In the land of fearless birds. Behind the magic bun

V. Prishvin. About Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin

Art and life are not one, but must become one in me, in the unity of my responsibility.

M. Bakhtin

Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin lived a long life - he died in the eighty-first year - but he took up the pen only at the age of thirty. Why did this happen - he answers this question in his diary: "The first half of my life, until the age of thirty, I devoted myself to the external assimilation of the elements of culture, or, as I now call, someone else's mind. The second half, from the moment I took up the pen, I entered into a struggle with someone else's mind in order to turn it into a personal property, provided that I be myself.

This second birth for Prishvin was the exit of the true self from the environment that created it, from under the countless layers of that inexhaustible for our consciousness that we call life. That is why his writing, once begun, has already become inseparable from the very essence of this man. It is impossible to draw a line between his being and his word - Prishvin does not have such a line. In addition, he did not doubt the power of the word, that with complete dedication, everything can be done with the word. What was this “everything” for Prishvin, what did he devote his life to from the age of thirty?

Carefully and impartially studying the work of Prishvin, we will have to say: he lived in order to understand life - his own and all living things - to understand and convey to us his understanding. Prishvin's word was his working business and at the same time his whole life without the slightest distraction. From here, the image in which Prishvin sees himself becomes close and understandable to us: he sees himself in his old age as a camel, long, and hard, and patiently crossing the waterless desert; he relates to his poetry, to his word, like a camel to water: "He pours himself into himself and, hunchbacked, slowly goes on a long journey ..."

This sounds humbly and deeply: Before this, all other secondary goals, motives, addictions that are so natural for a person fade and, as it were, are destroyed by themselves: fame, a claim to teaching, the desire for material wealth, simple worldly pleasures. All this, of course, remained, perhaps at times to some extent took him prisoner - Prishvin did not turn into an ascetic, a righteous man in the popular sense of the word; but at the same time, everything became insignificant, everything faded for him before this all-consuming, completely disinterested need to understand and give - to pour his personal into the general. This was the vocation of a true poet, no matter what times and centuries he lived and in whatever form and style his thought and poetry were affected. Prishvin never allowed himself a preliminary riddle in his writing, his word is extremely free and at the same time extremely obedient to life: "I write as I live." Prishvin was going to write a book about this "Art as a way of behavior" and leave it to people - the result of his experience.

Death prevented Prishvin from writing a book about creative behavior - about the meaning of art. However, shortly before his death, he said these words: "And if I never write it<…>, my pebble at the heart of this light-revealing book will certainly lie."

It's so simple: a person's life is a movement towards the light, and this is its purpose, and the word opens the way for him. Prishvin calls this path poetry.

The life of Prishvin himself and the image of his word creation can be likened to the movement of a traveler along the road - a person walks, and by itself everything that is around, from earth to sky, is deposited in his mind.

"I stand and grow - I am a plant.

I stand and grow and walk - I am an animal.

I stand, and grow, and walk, and think - I am a man.

I stand and feel: the earth is under my feet, the whole earth.

Leaning on the ground, I rise: and above me is the sky - all my sky.

And the Beethoven symphony begins, and its theme: the whole sky is mine.

Observing the inseparability and naturalness of Prishvin's word and life, we could establish a certain formula (although the formula always involuntarily impoverishes the meaning). We could say: Prishvin's work is the movement of life itself in its self-consciousness. The artist is, as it were, an instrument or organ of life, she created it for herself in order to show us her diversity and hidden light and meaning.

I allowed myself to say all this about the writer in order to find that right point of view, or to find that supporting stone on which you can become a firm foot, and from it you can already survey the entire writing path of M. M. Prishvin

Following Prishvin in his works, the reader will be convinced of the characteristic feature of the artist, which we have already noted indirectly above, from the very beginning he enters his own artistic world given to him by nature, in which he sees and thinks, and never betrays him. Artistically visible images are at the same time thought-images - this is how we call intellectual and moral ideas through which Prishvin sees the world. They become his eternal companions, symbols expressing his worldview. They develop, acquire new features, glow with new facets, just as crystals shimmer and glow in nature.

Let's name at least the image of big water - the source of all life on earth. This is the waterfall "In the land of fearless birds", half a century later - the same waterfall in the last novel "The Tsar's Road". This is a spring flood both in the "Sovereign Road" and in the "Ship Thicket". This image for Prishvin is cosmic, universal. It develops, growing under his pen, according to the laws of a musical symphony; appears not only in large works, but also in poetic miniatures - let us recall his famous "Forest Stream": "Sooner, later, my stream will come to the ocean." So it was written at the end of the 30s and will be often repeated in Prishvin's subsequent works until the end of his days.

It was at the same time a way of life of nature, native people, Russia and his own destiny. From the beginning of the century, his imagination was struck by the struggle of the water element - the struggle and merging of drops into a single stream. And next to him was the popular unrest in Russia and was deeply experienced by him: this stormy stream was spreading in all segments of the population. The life of Mikhail Prishvin is the years of great social changes - wars and revolutions. From early childhood - a premonition of them.

Like the image of the water element, another image will go through his whole life, connected with the search for the "true truth." This image appears for the first time in the diary of 1915. Here's the entry in full:

"The stone-truth In the middle of zero lies large, like a table, and this stone is of no use to anyone, and everyone looks at this stone and does not know how to take it, where to put it: a drunk one goes - stumbles and swears, a sober one turns away and goes around, everyone tired of the stone, and no one can take it - so this is the truth ... How can people tell the truth? The truth lies behind seven seals, and its guards guard it in silence. "

And half a century later, in the last year of his life, Prishvin writes the story "Ship thicket", all based on the people's search for some great "true truth". “Do not look for happiness one by one, look for the truth together,” the old people say in it to new people. The image absorbed all the wealth of the lived, rethought. It turns out that this image, this symbol, lay in the soul of the artist for half a century and is transmitted to us as his testament.

Let's call another image - love. He appears in Prishvin's first story. It describes the love of swans: an orphaned swan cannot find a mate - he dies. That is why among the northern people it was considered a sin to shoot swans.

The image of this "unoffended love" goes through all his work, changing its guises and interpretations. In the 1920s, in the "Calendar-nature" this is a spring cloud, "like an unrumpled swan's chest." In the 30s - this is a beautiful female deer in the story "Ginseng". In the 40s, Prishvin, already an old man, turns to a woman either in a moment of quarrel, or internal doubts in her and says: “At the heart of love there is an unoffended place of complete confidence and fearlessness<…>. And if the worst and last thing happens, my friend becomes indifferent to what I am burning with, then I will take my travel stick and leave the house, and my shrine will still remain untouched.

The search and realization of the great truth true for all living things, and for oneself - longing for the only and unfulfilled love and ways to overcome this longing - these topics fill all Prishvin's work, acquiring different images and shades of meaning. This meant to give up "myself small" and go out into the big world, waiting for our sympathetic, our active participation.