VASSILY AKSYONOV
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In aesthetics, things take no less cardinal turn. Take, for example, the
Russian futurists. Having borrowed a name from a distant Italian move–
ment, the Russian artists of the beginning of the twentieth century had
developed a powerful avant-garde Renaissance, which begat at least three
great poets, Khlebnikov, Mayakovsky and Pasternak; at least three great
painters, Kandinsky, Malevich and Chagall and also at least two great
Igors, Stravinsky and Sikorski. As it is known, that movement was
triggered by the notorious stimulus of the "slap in the face of public
taste." The rebutting slap of the public taste wiped the futurist off the
face of the Earth.
Forty years late, something akin to that was born on the West coast.
The movement was named by a word with the Russian-Jewish suffix,
"ik,"
beatniks. In some ways, Allen Ginsburg resembled the Burljuk
brothers, although, as far as I know, he has never drawn birds and cats
on his cheeks and never sported a monocle and top hat. The beatniks'
text had never been as rich as those of the futurists', however, their orig–
inal stimulus was the same: "a slap in the face of public taste." In other
words, that was a movement of individualism; if so, it might be said of
any movement. They didn't succeed in creating a revolution in the Arts
- if they ever had such an idea - however, they substantially shook the
pillars of society. It's interesting how society struck back. Unlike that in
Russia, the riot of individualism was absorbed not by ideology, but by
the market. The beatnik was not cut off and banned; on the contrary, he
was
promoted, multiplied, and transformed into a marketable item.
In general, the entire development of super-civilization is marked by
the ever-increasing adaptation of the daring and romantic "ego" into
the ranks of consumerism. Few people can withstand the temptation of
turning into good merchandise. Many cannot withstand the temptation
of turning into bad merchandise. The book world, and consequently
literature, that last harbor of pure individualism, are also undergoing
major changes. Then again, I'm going to talk on this subject somewhat
later. First, let me recall my literary youth in the world which tried to
transform literature into a mass ideological, rather than commercial
action. It seems that only the Korean People's Democratic Republic
managed to organize an ideal relationship between the writer and the
state. The novels and the stories over there have been released without
the authors' names. Thus, their nation-wide significance and all-people
derivation have been emphasized.
Soviet literature failed to reach such perfection, though Stalin liked
to
talk about writers in plural. Those whom he singled out usually were
reduced to a single common deno.minator. Once a party commissar
complained of the low moral standards of Soviet writers: too much al–
cohol, and there are some cases of extra-marital affairs. The leader
