The life of Leva Odoevtsev, a descendant of the princes Odoevtsev, proceeds without any particular upheavals. The thread of his life flows measuredly from someone's divine hands. He feels more like a namesake than a descendant of his glorious ancestors. Leva's grandfather was arrested and spent his life in camps and exile. In infancy, Lev, conceived in the fateful year 1937, also moved with his parents towards the "depth of the Siberian ores"; however, everything went well, and after the war the family returned to Leningrad.

Levin's dad is the head of the department at the university, where grandfather once shone. Lyova grows up in an academic environment and from childhood dreams of becoming a scientist - "like a father, but bigger." After graduating from school, Leva enters the Faculty of Philology.

After ten years of absence, the former neighbor Dmitry Ivanovich Yuvashov returns to the Odoevtsevs' apartment from prison, whom everyone calls Uncle Dickens, a man "clear, poisonous, expecting nothing and free." Everything in him seems attractive to Leva: his disgust, dryness, harshness, thieves' aristocracy, sober attitude towards the world. Leva often visits Uncle Dickens, and even the books he borrows from a neighbor become a childhood replenishment.

Soon after the appearance of Uncle Dickens, the Odoevtsev family is allowed to remember their grandfather. For the first time, Lyova learns that her grandfather is alive, examines his beautiful young face in photographs - one of those that “stung by the undeniable difference from us and undeniable belonging to a person.” Finally, the news comes that the grandfather is returning from exile, and the father is going to meet him in Moscow. The next day, the father returns alone, pale and lost. From unfamiliar people, Leva gradually learns that in his youth his father abandoned his father, and then completely criticized his work in order to get a “warm” department. Returning from exile, the grandfather did not want to see his son.

Lyova is working out for herself the “grandfather hypothesis”. He begins to read his grandfather's works on linguistics and even hopes to partially use the grandfather's system to term paper. Thus, he takes some advantage of the family drama and cherishes in his imagination a beautiful phrase: grandfather and grandson ...

Grandfather is given an apartment in a new building on the outskirts, and Lyova goes to him "with a brand new beating heart." But instead of the person he created in his imagination, Lyova is met by a disabled person with a red, hardened face, which is striking in its inspiritualness. Grandfather drinks with friends, confused Leva joins the company. Senior Odoevtsev does not believe that he was imprisoned undeservedly. He was always serious and does not belong to those insignificant people who were first imprisoned undeservedly, and now deservedly released. He is offended by rehabilitation, he believes that "all this" began when the intellectual first entered into a conversation with a boor at the door, instead of chasing him in the neck.

Grandpa immediately notices main feature his grandson: Leva sees from the world only what suits his premature explanation; the unexplained world leads him into a panic, which Leva takes for mental suffering, characteristic only of a feeling person.

Andrey Bitov

Pushkin House

© Bitov A.G.

© AST Publishing House LLC

All rights reserved. No part of the electronic version of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, including posting on the Internet and corporate networks, for private and public use, without the written permission of the copyright owner.

© Electronic version of the book prepared by Litres (www.litres.ru)

But it will be that we will not be.

The name of the Pushkin House

Academy of Sciences!

The sound is clear and familiar

Not an empty sound for the heart! ..

What to do?

Prologue, or Chapter, written later than the rest

On the morning of July 11, 1856, the servants of one of the large St. Petersburg hotels near the Moskovskaya station railway I was confused, and even a little worried.

Somewhere, towards the end of the novel, we were already trying to describe that clear window, that icy celestial gaze that stared point-blank and unblinking on November 7 at the crowds that took to the streets ... Even then it seemed that this clarity was not without reason, that it was almost not forced by special aircraft, and in the sense that it is not without reason that you will soon have to pay for it.

And indeed, the morning of November 8, 196 ... more than confirmed such forebodings. It blurred over the extinct city and swam amorphously with the heavy tongues of old St. Petersburg houses, as if these houses were written in diluted ink, fading with the dawn. And while the morning was finishing this letter, once addressed by Peter “in spite of an arrogant neighbor”, and now addressed to no one and reproaching no one, not asking for anything, the wind fell on the city. He fell so flat and from above, as if rolling down some smooth celestial curvature, accelerating unusually and easily and coming into contact with the earth. It fell like the same plane, swooping in ... As if that plane had grown, swelled, flying yesterday, devoured all the birds, absorbed all the other squadrons and, having become fat with metal and the color of the sky, crashed to the ground, still trying to glide and land, collapsed into touch. A flat wind, the colors of an airplane, planned for the city. The children's word "Gastello" is the name of the wind.

It touched the streets of the city like an airstrip, bounced in the collision somewhere on the Spit of Vasilyevsky Island, and then rushed strongly and silently between damp houses, exactly along the route of yesterday's demonstration. Having thus checked the emptiness and emptiness, he rolled into the front square, and, picking up a small and wide puddle on the fly, with a run slapped it into the toy wall of yesterday's stands, and, pleased with the resulting sound, flew into the revolutionary gateway, and, again taking off from the ground , soared wide and steeply up, up ... And if it were a movie, then in an empty square, one of the largest in Europe, yesterday’s lost children’s “scatterer” would still catch up with him and crumble, finally damp, burst, revealing how the wrong side of life: its secret and pitiful structure made of sawdust... And the wind straightened out, soaring and triumphant, turned back high above the city and rushed swiftly through freedom in order to again plan for the city somewhere on the Strelka, describing something, Nesterov's loop...

So he ironed the city, and after him, through the puddles, heavy courier rain rushed - along the embankments so famous for avenues, along the swollen gelatinous Neva with oncoming rippling spots of countercurrents and scattered bridges; then we mean how he rocked dead barges off the coast and a certain raft with a pile driver ... The raft rubbed against the unfinished piles, drenching the damp wood; Opposite stood the house we were interested in, a small palace - now a scientific institution; in that house on the third floor an open and broken window was banging, and both rain and wind easily flew in there ...

He flew into a large hall and drove handwritten and typewritten pages scattered all over the floor - several pages stuck to a puddle under the window ... And the whole view of this (judging by the glazed photographs and texts hung on the walls, and on the glazed tables with unfolded in them books) of the museum, exhibition hall was a picture of an incomprehensible defeat. The tables were shifted from their correct places, prompted by the geometry, and stood here and there, at random, one was even knocked over with its legs up, in a scattering of broken glass; A cupboard lay prone, with the doors open, and next to it, on the scattered pages, a man lay lifelessly under his arm. Body.

The work begins with the story of the life of Leva Odoevtsev. The ancestors of our protagonist belonged to the ancient family of princes Odoevsky. Accordingly, Leva was also one of them. His grandfather had been in exile and prison all his life, and Lev, from birth, also lived in far Siberia. However, this did not last long, and after the war he began to live in Leningrad. His father works as a department head at the university where his grandfather used to work. Leva is obsessed with the dream of devoting his life to science, and therefore, after graduating from school, he enters higher educational institution to the philological department. Soon after a long absence, their neighbor returns, who for some reason is called Uncle Dickens and he really likes sharp judgments and a sober attitude towards the world. He often visits him to borrow books to read.

Soon, the family is increasingly talking about grandfather. Levushka examines old photographs with special curiosity. One day, news comes to them that their grandfather is returning home, and his father is going to meet him. However, returning the next day, he returns in no mood. It turns out that his father did not want to see his son for the fact that he abandoned him only in order to make a career for himself. But on the other hand, our hero is fond of the linguistic works of his grandfather, and wants to apply his system in his test work. Soon he visits him in the new apartment he was given after returning, and sees a completely different person than he imagined in his thoughts. He was a man with shaky health, a little rude. Moreover, when Leva paid him a visit, he drank with friends. He joins the conversation, from where he hears how his grandfather is offended by rehab. And of course it all started with how he - intelligent person arguing with a brute. Grandfather chases away his grandson, who tried to accuse his father of betrayal.

Time passed. After graduation, Leva becomes a graduate student, after which he works in the Pushkin House at the Academy of Sciences. He had an excellent reputation in society. Once he has an unpleasant incident, where a colleague signed the wrong papers, and Leva needs to report. However, numerous events helped to dodge this episode. There are both happy and sad moments in his life. And after his return from Moscow, he learns that his friend quit, and Levin's reputation was ruined. But he did not pay attention to this, because he believed that it was imperceptible to work and live more safely. On the love front, he has everything under control. Of the three women who sympathize with him, he prefers to meet with Faina. She is older than him, but this does not repel Lyova from her. He borrows from Uncle Dickens to take his girlfriend to a restaurant. Faina is cheating on him, but he cannot leave her. One day, he discreetly takes a ring from a woman in the hope of selling it. Having learned from the jeweler that the jewelry is not worth a lot of money, he returns it to Faina, saying that he bought it from his hands for next to nothing. Soon Leva stops dating her.

Once, his sworn enemy, classmate Mitishatiev, Blank, Gottikh and Leva, after drinking, began to talk on various topics. During the conversation, they began to argue about whether Natalya loved Pushkin, during which Mitishatyev began to insult Faina. Leva could not stand it and challenged him to a duel. After they've fired, our hero sees what a mess they've made. It's good that the local technician and Uncle Dickens got the place in order. Grigorovich's inkwell thrown out the window was found and put back in its place, and a copy of Pushkin's mask was brought. The management has no idea about anything and Lyova is invited to the office only to become the escort of the American writer on the trip. Giving a tour of Leningrad to a foreigner, standing on the bridge over the Neva, he feels tired. The novel teaches us to develop spiritually, and not to forget the origins of spiritual culture.

Picture or drawing Bitov - Pushkin House

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Uncertainty arises from the very beginning - the time of action is not clear: 196 .. year. The origin of the hero is unclear: is he a descendant of the Odoevskys or is he just their namesake?

“If his parents still had to remember and determine the attitude to their surname, then it was in those old years when Leva was not there yet or he was in the womb. And Leva himself, since he could remember himself, no longer needed this, and he was more of a namesake than a descendant. He was Leva

Who is the real father of the main character? (And once again a double father, when retribution comes, when he is crushed by his own betrayal, when the image of Uncle Dickens expands and obscures the father ... Because although the author laughs at Leva for his youthful imagination, he himself has not yet decided definitively that Uncle Dickens he is not a father. What does not happen? ..”). Despite the fact that the author seems to give unambiguous answers to these questions, a feeling of understatement remains - hence "cult of obscurity", generated by the era itself.

Leva Odoevtsev grows up in an artificially illusory world, where everything seems to breathe with decency and nobility, but in fact is based on lies and selfishness. The true state of things has been hidden from Leva since childhood. Raising Lyova on abstract ideals, his parents teach him to “aristocratically” not notice the surrounding reality. Leva is a disoriented person, not knowing life, who grew up on myths about his own country and his own family, absorbed the required rules of the game with his skin.

“He himself learned the phenomenon of ready-made behavior, ready-made explanations, ready-made ideals”

Leva's world is illusory.

There are many gaps in the novel, which the author himself points out, for example, a description of Leva's school years.

Hints: Leva was supposed to testify in one case in which a comrade was involved, but left; when he returned, he found that the case had been hushed up, and his comrade had disappeared - he had been arrested:

“At all these trials, he was deprived of the opportunity to attend, and when he could, everything was decided and the friend was gone. That is, he was, but somewhere no longer at the institute, but having met once on the street, he did not shake hands with Lyova and, as it were, did not notice.

2. At the level of axiology

Decanonization: firstly, literature and literary criticism; secondly, the image of a positive hero; thirdly, the Soviet era.

The halo surrounding literary criticism and philological sciences in general is dispelled by the ironic description of "Pushkin's House" and the description of the "academic environment", as well as by the "retelling" of Levina's article.

The motifs, heroes and plot points characteristic of Russian classical literature are played out in a new way, reduced, even vulgarized. This trend is most clearly manifested in the use of such cultural signs of Russian classical literature, as "prophet", "hero of our time", "masquerade", "duel", "demons", "bronze horseman", "shot".

The image of the "Positive Hero" is debunked, which may seem like Leva. In all his character duality, instability, amorphous pliability is manifested. Odoevtsev is not a scoundrel - but not a decent person either; not mediocrity - but not a knight of science; not a plebeian, rather a refined person - but not an aristocrat of the spirit either. Thought, feeling, behavior of the hero are, as it were, caught in a hoop of the requirements of the existing system.

The Soviet era is ridiculed, belittled, the "Pushkin" era is exalted.

However, Leva is positive person in the eyes of others - has a certain "reputation". The boundaries between good and evil, between the "ideal" and "anti-ideal" in the minds of the era are blurred.

Love and hate are mixed - love for Faina is full of contradictions. Leva submits to Faina, who makes him jealous of "everything that moves", and revels in Faina's humility, his power over her, acquired after the "story with the ring".

The oppositions "laughter-horror", "beautiful-disgusting", "high-low" are also blurred. Particularly bright is the polylogue between Mitishatiev, the “two” Levs and Blank in the section “The Poor Horseman” (in particular, the episode of the polylogue about Pushkin the Arap: Pushkin is a Black Semite).

The ontological opposition "Life-death" also does not exist: the author resurrects Leva after his death.

3. At the composition level

Fragmentation and the principle of arbitrary installation: with the undoubted symmetry and ring-shaped construction of the "Pushkin House", the composition of the work has a large degree of freedom. If one of the “inserted” parts is omitted (lyrical digressions in the spirit of Gogol and Chernyshevsky, works by “third-party authors” - articles by Lyova and short stories by Uncle Dickens, etc.), the novel will not lose its inherent completeness, but will become one-line. Rejecting a solid, continuous, undivided narrative that has chronological order, Bitov and the main sections are built from relatively complete and independent chapters that could be swapped without destroying the work. There are multiple endings in the novel, including mutually exclusive ones.

The Triumph of the Deconstructivist Principle: the artistic space and time of the Beat novel are open, heterogeneous, alternative, old connections are destroyed and new connections are established in chaos, and mainly with the help of the author's digressions and comments on what is happening, and not by means of plot and composition.

disproportionate part d: the action of the first and second sections takes place at the same time, but the events practically do not intersect (the first section is “dialectics of the soul”, the second is “description of Leva’s loves, the cult of the body”) and cover several decades in volume. The artistic time of the third section takes only a few days, the artistic space is limited to the Pushkin House and the surrounding area. This is disharmony, a violation of the proportions of the chronotope.

The description of events does not correlate with the logical development of events; the plot is not controlled by external events, but by the will of the author. With combination of incongruous: poet + alcoholic, scientist + alcoholic, philosophy + drinking, various endings, novel and "post-manufactured" space.

4. At the genre level

a) Marginality is manifested as a result of the destruction of the traditional novel genres, before us is a form of “intermediate literature”, which included literature, literary theory, philosophy, cultural studies and lost genre specificity. It is impossible to single out the leading genre feature - genre syncretism. At the same time this and literary work, and literary and even culturological research, in which the author himself reflects on what was written.

b) In a novel renunciation is declared, seriousness, the author himself repeatedly points out this - the fiction of the work.

in) On the intertextual nature of the work I indicate the inclusion in it, along with the author's text, of numerous quotations from Russian and foreign classics. A. Pushkin, M. Lermontov, N. Gogol, I. Turgenev, L. Tolstoy, F. Dostoevsky, F. Tyutchev, A. Fet, N. Chernyshevsky, A. Ostrovsky, A. Chekhov, A. Blok, F Sologub, I. Bunin, V. Khlebnikov, V. Mayakovsky, etc. Borrowing and quoting from foreign literature: A. Dumas, C. Dickens, Mark Twain, E. Remarque. The peculiarity of citation lies in the fact that most citations do not go beyond school curriculum(this is also noted by the author in the "Comments").

Along with the literary ones, the text contains quotations from "Soviet folklore", Soviet clichés and clichés. Often quotes are used for the purpose of irony, parody.

Text saturated extra-textual allusions on the events of the Soviet era, reminiscences of the works of Russian classics, which is emphasized by the titles of sections, parts, chapters and epigraphs to them.

The title of the first section is "Fathers and Sons (Leningrad novel)" a reference to Turgenev's novel. The title of the second section "A Hero of Our Time (Version and Variations of the First Part)" refers us to Lermontov's novel. The title of the third section "The Poor Horseman (A Poem about petty hooliganism)" is a pun, which is a "mixture" of the titles of Pushkin's and Dostoevsky's works "The Bronze Horseman" and "Poor People", the epilogue "Morning of Revelation, or Bronze People" is the same.

"Prologue, or Chapter written later than the rest" is called "What is to be done?" and reproduces the titles of two novels by Chernyshevsky. In general, the compositional structure of the Pushkin House is somewhat reminiscent of the composition What Is to Be Done?: the narrative begins with a description mysterious death, then an excursion into the past is made (prehistory of "death"), then it turns out that "death" was not death (or was - depending on the final version).

The texts of the chapters within sections and appendices refer us now to Pushkin and Lermontov's "Prophet" and Tyutchev's "Madness", then to Lermontov's "Fatalist" and "Masquerade", then to Pushkin's and Dostoevsky's "Demons" and Sologub's "Small Demon", then to Pushkin's "Shot" and "The Bronze Horseman", then to Dostoevsky's "Poor People", then to Dumas's "Three Musketeers" (Ms. Bonacieux), then to ancient mythology ("Achilles and the Tortoise"). Their presence in the work widens the cultural space of the novel, activating the thought and imagination of the reader, and also helps to save money. language tools. - the presence of a broad cultural context.

5. At the level of a person, personality, hero, character and author

Leva is irrational in deeds and actions, lives “with the flow”, he is characterized by an apocalyptic attitude, escapism. Leva is a tragic character. His negative deeds outweigh the positive ones - hence the deheroization of the character, lack of ideal.

6. At the level of aesthetics

underlined antiaesthetic, shock, shocking, challenge, brutality, cruelty of vision, craving for pathology, anti-normativity, protest against the classical forms of beauty, traditional ideas of harmony and proportionality;

Anti-aesthetic and shocking: the use of profanity, the description of drinking parties, the description of the toilet bowl in the hallway of Uncle Dickens.

Challenge: Leva's articles are a challenge to modern literary criticism.

Violation of traditional ideas about the harmony of form and content: the writer does not try to keep the illusion in the eyes of the reader: this is life, but, on the contrary, he constantly emphasizes: this is a work of art that obeys its own laws, this is a text.

7. At the level of artistic principles and techniques

a) Inversion: reversing the titles of classical works of domestic and foreign authors, the inversion of the image of Dickens - from the sublime (the writer) to the mundane (Uncle Mitya, also, however, a writer).

b) Irony: a description of the Pushkin House, the author's frequent mockery of Leva, irony about his actions.

in) Game as a way of existence in reality and art: the whole novel can be likened literary game. The author constantly reminds us that we are reading about events not real life, but about fictional ones, that you should not empathize with the hero, because he is fictional. The form of interaction between literature and reality is peculiar: the reality depicted in the novel and literature as a way of reflecting reality are so intertwined that the text of the novel itself becomes reality, and reality becomes text. We can say that the text represents reality, because reality cannot exist without this text.

The ability to hide true thoughts and feelings: the author does not delve into the psychology of the characters, does not explain the motives for their actions, we do not know their thoughts - all this helps him form "plot riddles".

Destruction of pathos: the ironic tone of the narration, the constant reminders that we are reading “just a literary work”, the play with meanings, the inclusion of literary reflections and digressions in the text, reflection on what has been written destroys the pathos of the novel, and the work is no longer perceived as a traditional fiction novel.

Literature used:

1. A. Bitov. Pushkin house. - St. Petersburg: Azbuka: Azbuka-Klassik, 2000.

2. I.S. Skoropanov. Russian postmodern literature: Proc. allowance. – M.: Flinta: Science, 2001.

Other samples of text analysis:

And analysis of the poem by I. Brodsky "Nowhere with love"