I decided to write a short review of two works on the Russian Aksenov. Anyway American friends had never read, and even if you suddenly decide to read - do not understand. How can you understand what the sixties in the translation? Sixties - poetry (despite the fact that the writer Aksyonov himself), and poetry can not be translated. These people - part of Russian culture that Americans can not understand (unless, of course, do not speak in Russian). I am sure that most likely I made some stylistic and grammatical errors - not often write such articles in Russian. I apologize in advance.
Star Ticket
Roman Star ticket was written relatively recently, in 1961, the year. He was one of the first works Akesenova, and author of the sixties focuses on the lives of the younger generation. In 1960 the novel was considered skandanlnym as protagonists belong to the "dudes" called each other "dudes" and by his own admission listen to western music on X-ray films. They do not fit into the usual Soviet life, they had sex before and outside of marriage, and wandered without purpose on the expanses of his vast country.
Looking at this novel now, only 50 years later, it seems a bit trite, trivial and boring. Still Aksenov had to get the approval of Soviet censorship, and even at the height of the Khrushchev thaw, this meant that we should chant the ordinary Soviet laborers and their simple and repetitive work. The protagonist, Dimka, away from mods and eventually finds happiness in the fishing farm on the Baltic Sea, where the time to praise feudal (you can even say antediluvian) system workdays. Aksenov attempts reader lengthy descriptions sprat fishing in the worst traditions of socialist realism. Dimka's elder brother, Victor, refuses to scientific degree and goes against their professors after finding that their theses are wrong. At the end of the novel, he "heroically" dies, performing a secret mission to the country of the Soviets. Everything is coming out too clean and too lofty. Even friend Dima, Galya, who ran away from the actor's arms Dima returned to him and confesses that threw it.
Nevertheless, through the nonsense of Soviet propaganda still slip the truth. Aksenov in many places openly calls the older generation to understand the young and their "deviations" from the expected behavior for Soviet citizens. Even if his heroes in places too good, there is some truth in the fact that the younger generation was looking for, even demand, some sincerity in his life, and from this it was unpleasant false, which was felt in the generation of parents. They lived without arrests and executions, only vaguely remembered the last years of Stalin, and could not understand the willingness of senior accept injustice.
It is clear that the novel could not be published at all under Stalin. Despite the superficial compliance with novel social realism with all the hideous consequences, Star Ticket is a kind of deviation from the books in the style of cement or How the Steel Was Tempered, even if not up to a very anti-Soviet ideas as Pasternak's novel Doctor Zhivago, or Solzhenitsyn's story One Day of Ivan Denisovich, who came at the same time (the living, of course, only abroad and in samizdat).
Love Dimka to Gale was described well and the whole storyline of young friends was badly written to the point where they "mature" and become farmers. In this case, my personal impression of the novel Starship ticket was that the novel is very outdated.
Mysterious Passion
The novel Mysterious Passion, the last novel of the late Aksenov, very different from his earlier works. This book is a kind of memories Aksenov about his life and the lives of his friends, though he changes the names slightly, so that the reader understand that the novel is a free interpretation of history, and not the truth.
The name of the novel comes in many places and it is difficult to say for sure what exactly it is. Meanwhile, it seems that the most correct interpretation of the values stored in the phrase:
For each of us longs to depart from vanity and to show their devotion to the mystery of passion, poetry.
As I wrote in the introduction to the review, the sixties - poetry. All the major figures of the book - Vysotsky, Okudzhava, Yevtushenko, Christmas, Ascension and Ahmadulina - in the soul of the poet. Aksenov himself appears in his own novel, but as a single writer. There he played the role of chronicler, who is obliged to leave chronicles the life of a remarkable generation. He knows how they lived, loved and fought against the Soviet reality with all my being.
The first part of the novel compares two political events of the 1960s (the persecution of Khrushchev on young workers of art in March of 1963 and the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968, the year) with a disorderly, wild and free life of the main characters in the summer Koktebel, with elegant descriptions artists' gatherings "amorous intrigue and true friendship of their generation. The author jumps in time, back and forth, but nevertheless the story line of the book does not suffer from this. In old age Aksenov nobody sang - all the characters are shown with all faults and weaknesses. For example, Aksenov describes Yevtushenko (or, as Aksenov crossed for his novel, Jan Tushino) and slippery as a proud man, but he is still willing to make sacrifices for the sake of principles. Christmas, too, though the right and at times naive, yet not afraid of anything and always in favor of friends.
The novel brilliantly written, and I would occasionally get a book of poems whether Christmas, or Akhmadullina or put songs Vysotsky and Okudzhava, in addition to reading the novel. The whole book is imbued with the spirit of the past, mad time, and all the personality so pronounced that it seems that the reader knows them personally after the first 50 pages. Magnificent quotes scattered throughout the book, such as:
There was a good mood, typical of those years, when the poems were set higher than hockey.
and
I never have anything to look: that is, it happens without action.
The second part of the novel is beautiful in its tragedy. That spike, that creative impulse that pushes forward the sixties, could not hold forever, and Aksyonov told about how their cheerful company fell apart in the 70s and 80s. The author warns readers that the second part is a sad fact that it begins with the funeral of Vysotsky. Someone dies prematurely, some emigrated, some forcibly deported (he Aksenov, for example), people curse and stop to chat.
As a result, all sunk into oblivion, but left a bright and unique imprint on the soul of mankind. No wonder the famous quote verses Akhmadullina posted in the photo at the end of the novel:
And then the tears from out of the darkness
of ignorance, poor former
friends of my beautiful features
appear and dissolve again.
There remains the feeling after reading this excellent book about the great people that the sixties were the latest in a flash of something lost in the creative history of mankind. They were the last generation in Russia, in which television and film are not influenced so much that ottisnuli high culture. There was no Internet, there were smartphones, it was not all that gives us to get involved in day-to-day life of the present. They lived, loved, fought for real. May God grant us all to live fully so.
Edits for formatting