The Blessing of Language

In early June, a noisy, colorful band landed in Manhattan. Thirty Russian authors, two dozen publishers, as many journalists, and half as many organizers – a large crew indeed!

The whirligig was immediately set in motion. Meetings, discussions and receptions spilled out into the furthest corners of New York: the New York Public Library, the Brooklyn Library, clubs, and, of course, Javits Center, site of the BookExpo America exhibition, which was giddy with the sounds of Russian speech.

Two elderly gentlemen who were at the expo trading in children’s books, after finding out I was from Russia, quickly became rather interested. “Do you like Putin? No? Well, then you must like Medved!” they exulted, hugely impressed by their own knowledge and wit.

These two would have benefited from attending the meeting with the writers Alexander Arkhangelsky and Yuri Miloslavsky, who spoke about stereotypes in perceptions of Russia.

As a matter of fact, every meeting destroyed such stereotypes. German Sadulayev, Dmitry Bykov, Sergei Kuznetsov discussed what had changed in Russian society since the demonstrations at Bolotnaya. Mikhail Shishkin, Andrei Gelasimov and Alexander Ilichevsky explained what the Russian language and writing meant to them. Zakhar Prilepin and Sergei Shergunov spoke of the Russian revolution, which in their opinion will not happen – the time has passed. Meanwhile, on the screen behind them were projected images of writers taking part in the recent protest strolls along Moscow’s boulevards.

The main thing one would take away, if they attended even just a few of the meetings with Russian writers, is that Russian literature is a highly varied thing, with many genres and trends. There are exacting stylists, harsh realists, biographers, fantasy novelists, belletrists, and writers of mysteries, thrillers and “women’s novels.” There may be no Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy, but certainly we have authors on the level of Jonathan Franzen and Cormac McCarthy. Several in fact. What are their names? That is not for me to say. Let the publishers and literary agents seek and find them on their own.

Of all the events in which I took part, I most enjoyed the evening at the New York Public Library,* alongside Dmitry Bykov, Olga Slavnikov and German Sadulayev. We were discussing writers about whom we had written (or are writing) biographies: Gorky, Nabokov, Yesenin and Leskov. The subject of the discussion and the attentiveness of the large audience was especially gratifying, although there was far too little time for discussion, forcing one to speak aphoristically and pithily, which Bykov did particularly well, yet the rest of us didn’t do so baldly either. Then the usual melee followed – questions from the audience, champagne, appetizers, and heaps of business cards stuffed into pockets.

After the library reception, everyone headed over to the Read Russia Roof for a midnight soiree atop the Dream New York hotel. Beyond the windows, the lights of this fantastical, great and completely insane city shimmered. Psoy Korolenko belted out his songs, Dmitry Bykov recited poetry, Zakhar Prilepin read from his book, Sin, which has just been translated into English. It was noisy, a bit muddled, and, in general, a wild time was had by all.

Everyone, of course, wanted to know if the Americans, impressed by the breadth of Russian literature, would now start publishing modern Russian authors? Would this clamorous appearance by Russian writers in New York have any impact? Clearly, this will only be known with time.

The poet Fyodor Tyutchev has so far best summarized the effects of casting one’s words out into the world:

Нам не дано предугадать,
Как слово наше отзовется,
Но нам сочувствие дается,
Как нам дается благодать.

We are not empowered to foresee
How our words may be perceived,
Yet we are granted compassion,
Just as we have God’s blessing.

And this at least we can say with some definitiveness: we cannot know if Russian writers will end up with American publishers, yet the blessings of our native tongue will be with them forever.

* Here it was mentioned that the first book recorded as taken out of the NYPL in 1911 was a book by Nikolai Grot, in Russian, about the ethics of Tolstoy and Nietsche.