Bakhyt Kenzheev: “We need to preserve human dignity”

Bahytik my. As long as possible
Do not drink the blood of this power-
Not dead to us and not alive,
Be on Moscow watchdog.

Who is a poet? He is the watchman here.
Before him the field. Flowers grow.
He is a gardener here. He is a forester.
See how the tree has clung ...

And all that clings to the tree
And he could grab a sheep.
Sheep, Bakhytik, also fruit
Love screams and troubles.

Do not sleep, Bakhyt, I say.
Be sighted and sensitive. Am I angry?
Don't sleep in New York. Create a poem.
Now. Got it? Repeat.

Veronica Valley. 2 August 2014 /

KENZHEEV Bakhyt (b. 1950), Russian writer. One of the authors of samizdat, since 1977 he has been published in emigrant magazines (Continent, Syntax, etc.). Together with Alexei Tsvetkov, Alexander Soprovsky, Sergei Gandlevsky and other poets, he founded the Moscow Time poetry group. Since 1982 he has lived in Canada, and later in America. Collections of poems were published in the USA. Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Holland.

Winner of numerous literary awards, a regular contributor to thick magazines and a participant in poetry festivals in Russia and around the world. Member of the Russian PEN Club. Jury member of a variety of poetic contests.

Rachel Gedrich spoke with Bakhyt Kenzheyev.

— Bakhyt Shkurullaevich! Recently, you received a poetic greeting from a girlfriend of youth, Veronika Dolina. What did Veronika Arkadyevna want to say with these strong lines?

- “Don't sleep in New York. Create a verse”... Writing is synonymous with the intense life of the soul. Every time one of my friends stops doing this, it becomes terribly sad, because this is the wealth of humanity. I really root for my comrades to write all the time, because without this they feel very bad about themselves.

— You are a chemist by training, a graduate of Moscow State University, how did you end up in the literary workshop?

- Yes. Chemistry is a very beautiful science. Especially applied - you take two flasks with cloudy colorless liquids, mix and get bright red... But my father dreamed of me entering MGIMO. I refused - I can neither lie nor pretend, so I definitely would not have made a successful Soviet diplomat. However, chemistry did not become the main profession for me. I was already interested in literary creativity, and the further I went, the stronger it became. At the same time, research work required absolute dedication. I had no time left for either family or writing. For some time I tried to combine science with him, but I soon realized that the quality of both activities suffered from this. And I could no longer not write. I began to publish in samizdat and abroad (I was not published in Russia for a long time - I was sharp-tongued). He supported his family by translating into English.

— You are a Russian poet. Why did you have to leave Russia?

— A few years before leaving, I married a Canadian girl and persuaded her to move to Russia. We lived in Moscow for almost four years, but then I was called to you know where and given a well-known choice: to leave either to the West or to the East, so as not to irritate the authorities.

— Have you repeated the fate of Joseph Brodsky?

- Well, I won’t impose myself as a godfather on the Nobel laureate, but in general - it seems... By the way, I repeated the choice of my father, to whom “good people” in 1953, after a long conversation, offered to quickly disappear from Chimkent, reminding him that his father after all, he (my grandfather) was an ishan* before the revolution of Southern Kazakhstan. Dad was wise - he quickly packed his things and left with us to Moscow, to my mother’s homeland.

A week or two after arriving in Montreal, I visited the Russian consulate. They kept my Russian citizenship (although my rights were considerably reduced: I lost the right to participate in elections, have an apartment in Russia, and generally had to obtain a visa to visit the country). So the possibility of returning remained purely theoretical. But I still remember the specific Soviet atmosphere in the consulate - there was even a wall newspaper hanging there...

— You elected Canada. What was your first impression of her?

- It was so long ago... However, the first impression was common for both Canada and America. I was surprised by the lack of fences. Yes, it is precisely the absence of fences - well-kept villas in rich suburbs, private houses - picket fences, sometimes a hedge - but not a three-meter fence... And also - if several doors lead to a public building, then none of them are locked. I would advise our national patriots to think about this openness.

One of my friends assures me that all the misfortunes of Russia are due to poverty. What nonsense, God forgive me! Russia is by no means poorer than Brazil. We lived a terrible, generally speaking, 70-odd years. To break - they broke, to build - to build, but everything was not the same. Then new times came, they began to steal and trade in oil, which, fortunately for us – or rather misfortune – became more expensive. And gas. And fertilizers. And weapons. But there is still no happiness, you know they are looking for a national idea. Now they seem to have found it - it’s called “restoration of the empire.” This is all vanity and stupidity, in my opinion.

Solzhenitsyn once said that Russia needs “a hundred years of repentance and self-restraint” to revive. They didn’t hear... Something else won in the public consciousness: we are better than everyone else. We are the most spiritual. And everything would be fine with us if it were not for the damned West, which, well, absolutely does not allow us to live.

Now Ukraine. I have recovered a little from the bitterness that has haunted me in this regard for the last six months, because I remembered that there is nothing new under the sun. Let's remember the war with Afghanistan - then there was no such rampant information technology, there was no Internet, finally. But there was “no need” to talk about this war. For some reason, everyone was in favor, as in 1968 during the suppression of the democratic movement in Prague. Everyone said “that’s how it should be.” And now, when Crimea was annexed to Russia, they say: that’s right, otherwise there would have been a NATO base there. It’s impossible to argue with this - it’s an argument with fantasy. And we, they say, also rightly started the “Finnish” war, because Finland was very close to Leningrad. Yes, I was. But China is also close to Russia, so let’s start a war with China?..

— But we are not suicides. However, I’ll clarify that in the conflicts you mentioned with Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan, not everyone agreed with the policy of the Soviet government. There were people who openly opposed her.

- Well, then there were only a few. Today there are more such people, but still 13 percent of the population, not 87 percent.

RUSSIAN LITERATURE, PATRIOTISM AND LOVE FOR MOTHERLAND

— You wrote about your special relationship with Osip Mandelstam.

— Of course. He is my favorite poet, who else?

— But you also have poems dedicated to Arseny Tarkovsky and other poets

- Yes, there are many good poets. This is the most expensive thing we have. Otherwise, it seems, we did not distinguish ourselves very much, except perhaps for the October Revolution. Russian literature of the 20th century is rich in brilliant names. I consider Mandelstam a poet of the same caliber as Pushkin was in the 19th century. There are other very good poets: - Khodasevich, Zabolotsky, Georgy Ivanov and many others...

— Do you think patriotism was not alien to them?

- Well, of course. However, in recent times this concept has been turned on its head, a kind of national patriotism has appeared, the peaks of which are “I love you Russia, my dear Rus'” by Nozhkin, and the poems “Field, Russian field”, and “Now a birch tree, now Rowan". For me, patriotism is not Isakovsky’s song with the lines “I have seen many countries, walking with a rifle in my hand, but there was no greater resentment than living far from you,” but his own “Enemies burned my home.” And Georgy Ivanov once wrote: “Russia has been living in prison for thirty years, on Solovki or Kolyma. And only in Kolyma and Solovki is Russia that will live for centuries.” I don’t really understand how this fits in with our current “hurray-patriots”. However, I have also heard that a person with my first and last name, who also lives overseas, and who is also a liberal, has no right to judge love for the fatherland. Well, let it remain on the conscience of those who say so. By the way, in Russia now the word liberal has acquired a distorted meaning; it is more likely a libertarian, like Yulia Latynina, for example. I’m not even talking about the fact that Zhirinovsky’s party is called “liberal democratic”.

— Now the poem “To the Slanderers of Russia” by Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin has become widely circulated online.

- Yes, a very good, but rather mean poem. It was addressed to members of the French parliament who were outraged by the brutal suppression of the Polish uprising by the Russian authorities in the desperate struggle for independence. Unfortunately, genius and villainy are compatible concepts (you are familiar with this, you have written about Richard Wagner more than once). Thus, the brilliant Russian poet Pushkin writes: “Who will win in the eternal dispute, the arrogant Poles or the faithful ones, the Slavic streams will merge into the Russian sea, or it will dry up - that’s the question!” By the way, the poet calls a Pole, a representative of a people who has made a contribution to world culture no less than the Russian people, a “puffy Pole.”

This poem has an interesting fate. The uprising in Poland was ruthlessly suppressed. But after he wrote it, many people, they say, stopped shaking hands with Pushkin. I think this poem became the last echo of bygone eras - the era of Derzhavin, or the era of Kipling - those times when the conquest of foreign lands was welcomed. But a lot has changed since then. Kipling has a ballad about the war of the British Empire with Afghanistan, a well-known quote from it: “West is west, east is east, and they will never meet.” I recently read this ballad in its entirety - a brilliant work about respect for the enemy. I highly recommend this attitude to our readers, it is a correct and honest approach.

In one private letter of those years, Alexander Sergeevich’s friend and contemporary, Prince Vyazemsky, wrote a remarkable phrase: “Let us become Europeans again in order to redeem poems that are not at all European in nature... How these poems upset me! Power and state order often have to fulfill sad, bloody duties, but the Poet, thank God, has no duty to sing them.” I think this example can teach us a lot.

BETTER TO OVERCOME YOUR PAST, THAN NEGATIVE

— Your books are published by European publishers. I noticed that many Russian poets prefer to publish their books in Ukraine, this is a matter of quality-price ratio.

— I won’t say as to who they prefer; after all, much more poetry books are published in Moscow and St. Petersburg. But Ukraine has its own reader, so I also published in Kyiv and Kharkov, however, even before the Ukrainian events. Now I finally have a new book coming out in Moscow. Nowadays, the release of a poetry book is no longer such a holiday as it was 30-40 years ago. Books in our century have become much more accessible than before. By the way, Russia is perhaps the only country where e-books can be downloaded from the Internet for free. Poets have a philosophical attitude towards this “piracy” - “they read and thank God.” Although, by and large, an electronic book still does not replace a real one. There is no that aroma...

Here I have a whole bookshelf - all Akunin, whom I adore. One of the main “national traitors”, with a pronounced civic position - not only in life, but also in novels, which he voices, is not silent. When I first read his novels about Fandorin, I was shocked not by the detective story, but by Grigory Shalvovich’s correctly recreated pre-revolutionary Russian reality, including the perfectly stylized dictionary for that time. In essence, he very convincingly recreates the texture of life in a real country - with numerous shortcomings, of course, but whole, wonderful, without inferiority complexes, talking with other countries on equal terms. His novel “Extracurricular Reading” about Catherine’s times was also written. This sense of history and love for his homeland makes him a wonderful publicist.

And on this shelf I have Alexey Ivanov, a very Russian writer from Siberia. He writes great historical novels without idealizing Russia in them. In our country, they always blame America, the conqueror who exterminated the indigenous peoples. Russia, as you know, did not annex anyone by force, and the conquest of Siberia by Ermak or the conquest of the Caucasus is somehow not considered... Well, that happened - but it’s better to overcome your past than to deny it.

ABOUT DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AMERICA AND RUSSIA

— I am not an American, although I could have had an American passport long ago. I respect America, but I have many questions about its foreign policy. But the arrogant, contemptuous attitude towards the “Pindos” (and even towards “Geyropa”), which exists among many Russians, is a rather ridiculous thing. At the same time, many, many of our jingoistic patriots from the State Duma have children living abroad. And in this regard, I have not only no trust in their eloquence, but even no interest. These guys are “not responsible for the market.” But this does not cancel my love for Russia and faith in its, excuse me, bright future.

— Bakhyt Shkurullaevich, is there an effective cure for this, to put it mildly, provincialism?

— You see, during the period of Perestroika, Russia for some reason enthusiastically adopted the most disgusting features of the American way of life. Wild capitalism was built. And for many decades now it has been transformed beyond recognition. I repeat, there is enough savagery in the USA. For example, paid healthcare, or education, or growing (alas!) wealth inequality, or the number of prisoners per capita is the highest in the world. (We are in second place, it seems). Financial services (that is, to a large extent making money out of thin air) accounted for 2008% of GDP before the 40 crisis.

And yet, the cult of the dollar in our God-saved Russia, I think, if it does not overwhelm the local one, is at least more obvious. Well, we don’t have, for example, a club of billionaires founded by some Russian Bill Gates, whose members would undertake to give at least half of their fortune to charity during their lifetime. And the notorious political correctness, with all its costs (I call it “political politeness”), is also a good thing. In this damned America, in general, it is impossible to imagine a newspaper headline: “A native of Central Asia robbed a stall and killed the seller.” It falls under the category of “incitement to hatred” - which, in essence, is...

Real America has nothing in common with the country with which we supposedly “reproduced”. Today's America is primarily about billions of dollars given to charity. True business is the manufacture of products, and trading them is a legal scam. America, unlike Russia, does not disdain its own production. The main thing in business is not to earn a profit, but through business to be useful to society and your country. Due to this, you can and should assert yourself.

And further. As you know, there are no orphanages in Israel. In America there are, but the children do not stay there, they are sorted into families. This is what we need to think about. And we need to work on this. This is extremely important.

— Why do you think Russia supports Iran, North Korea, Syria?

- This is a good Soviet tradition - this is how Russia looks for allies, and far from selfless ones. It's a shame. About 15 years ago we had a real chance to fully join the community of civilized powers. But we chose a different path - now we have China as our allies. The country, of course, is a hard-working one, but I personally would not trust such a partner.

— After breaths of fresh air in the early 90s, the current rollback is not very clear

— Ksenia Sobchak recently wrote that the middle class in the post-Soviet space is very afraid of the prospect of Maidan in Russia. But in Russia, Maidan is hardly possible. Firstly, the people are not the same - they won’t come out. Secondly, the authorities will not allow them. And Donbass is impossible. Imagine that Finland sent its militants to Karelia and held a referendum for the annexation of this autonomous republic to Finland. Let this Karelia be bombed in two days, and it won’t last long.

— How can you explain the awakened national patriotism that has flared up among Russian emigrants who have been living in America for more than 20-30 years, successful and self-realized in a new country?

— For me, the main criterion for whether a person has succeeded or not is a sober attitude to political issues. A normal person rarely goes to extremes. Jingoism - a particular extreme - was once called the refuge of scoundrels. Well, this sounds too paradoxical, of course. I would say losers.

I think that in the pursuit of well-being and social status, our compatriots often forget that a person’s self-sufficiency is determined by whether he has achieved internal harmony. Where it is lacking, a person wants to join a team, a social group, and the larger it is, the better. It’s so understandable and pleasant to feel like part of a large and powerful force. Moreover, we have been through this school for seventy years, and many have developed a certain instinct to support their native government. What did it say: “we condemn with one accord”? So why shouldn’t there be jingoistic patriots among the emigrants? Moreover, the older generation regularly watches Russian television...

Americans think fundamentally differently. Recently there was a demonstration under my windows against the war in Iraq. Not five thousand people came out - half a million. This says a lot. And demonstrations in support of military action always depress me. I believe that if these actions are a conscious need, they must be carried out. But there is no need to make a fuss about this, and there is no need to “wish” anyone either.

— Bakhyt Shkurullaevich, in your opinion, where should we look for the sources of today's problems of Russia?

— In the open penetration of the criminal environment into the structures of state power. This disastrous process did not begin yesterday. It all started when tax police in camouflage masks with machine guns at the ready began breaking into the offices of Russian businessmen. From time immemorial, these masks were worn only by bank robbers and executioners. A person who wears such a mask ceases to be human. It is not for nothing that terrorists, encroaching on the lives of civilians living in various parts of our planet, wear this terrifying camouflage.

— But people who came six months ago to Kiev Maidan, also defended their faces with masks ...

Yes exactly. And this was wrong, it discredited the noble idea of ​​the Maidan. I don't idealize anyone. By the way, to be fair, very few people stood on the Maidan in camouflage. I am for objectivity.

ABOUT THE COLD WAR, HATE AND HUMAN DIGNITY

— Now there is a new and very serious round of the “cold” war. What can be done to pacify the most terrible apotheosis of mutual hatred?

— The Orthodox elders answered this question long ago: “by prayer and fasting.” No other way. Alternatively, sometimes a conflict situation can be saved by a sense of humor. Unfortunately, most national patriots do not have a sense of humor. The situation is complicated to the limit by the change in people’s psychology and the drastic recovery of Russia. This is truly terrible. We just have to endure it patiently, trying to speak by example. We must try to preserve human dignity.

— I recently talked with Alexander Gorodnitsky. He noted that the most difficult thing in this situation is that the authorities are denigrating the most worthy page of new Russian history - the victory in the Great Patriotic War. This sacred topic for all of us has become the subject of cynical speculation.

— Of course, Alexander Moiseevich is right. A lot of unnecessary hatred has accumulated in society. And alas, calling Ukrainians “fascists” is, firstly, untrue, and secondly, somehow ignoble. We have enough of our own ultras, Dugin or Zhirinovsky alone are worth something (and, by the way, the LDPR receives a much larger percentage of votes than the unfortunate “Right Sector”).

- You say hatred...

- Well, yes. To the rich, to America, to the dissidents. Once Ramadan arrives, the entire Internet is filled with photographs of Muslims praying on their knees with hysterical comments. These people celebrate their religious rite - this is their Procession of the Cross. What's so terrible about this? People pray to their God, why should this cause such a storm of indignation?

Mr. Zhirinovsky just now expressed that the North Caucasus should be enclosed with a wall, setting restrictions on fertility and going to Russia there. His statements have long been subject to a criminal article on inciting national hatred, and also on calls for undermining the constitutional order, God forgive me. And nothing, it protrudes, sprinkling saliva.

— Traditionally, Muslim culture was built on a respectful, friendly and hospitable attitude towards other nations. Relatively recently, there was a serious problem of the radicalization of Islam. What do you think, why?

— A normal Muslim is a decent and hard-working man. Yes, polygamy is allowed in Islam, but these are features of Eastern culture. At the same time, they often forget that a Muslim does not have the right to take a second wife without the consent of the first. And that he is obliged to support his wife and children for the rest of his life. Multiple wives are a privilege for the rich.

In Kazakhstan, for example, there is a normal process of revival of Muslim culture. But a sensible Kazakh will not understand the obscurantist, who will be surprised by the lack of burqa among Kazakh women, and her full right to sit at the dinner table with men. The state remains secular. We will talk about the radicalization of Islam separately - this topic is very complex.

RETURNING TO POETRY ...

— How were your first poems born, Bakhyt Shkurullaevich?

— My first poetic experience was a school essay. I studied at the 20th Moscow school named after Natasha Kochubeevskaya, a GITIS student who voluntarily went to the front as a nurse and did not return from the war. I was 15 years old, I decided to write an essay in poetic form. I still remember these lines: “A simple girl Natasha lived in the Soviet capital. First she was a pioneer, then she was a Komsomol member.” I wrote it with an A. Since then I realized that writing poetry is an interesting process.

— Your poems require thoughtful and careful reading. I really liked your author’s performance - bright, interesting and intelligible.

- Thank you! The poems are indeed quite complex. And they should be read, ideally, before bed, thoughtfully and leisurely. However, this applies to any serious poetry, when it is possible to read it several times in a row.

— What comes from your pen can be defined as philosophical lyrics?

— No, “philosophical lyrics” is a derogatory term. Do you remember from Tyutchev:

“And there is no feeling in your eyes,
and the truth is not in your speeches
and there is no soul in you.
Take heart, heart, to the end:
And there is no creator in creation, and there is no meaning in prayer!”

Is this a philosophical lyric? Of course not. When a poet washes himself with his own blood, this is not philosophy. “Philosophical lyrics” as a genre is always a little cold.
We are all living people, sooner or later our earthly journey will end. But before we die, we must, as Tyutchev said, “accomplish our useless feat.” And this fact itself, as they say, prompts certain reflections.

— Is the creative process work for you or is it necessarily inspiration?

- I have a large computer file - about 15 years worth of drafts. I sometimes look through it, sometimes I find something and finish it. And there are two poems lying next to each other in the book, but one was written in 20 minutes, and the other in 10 years. So there seems to be a combination of inspiration and work. In fact, it’s both. Inspiration is the poet's ability to hear the voice from Above, and then work is necessary to translate it into a language understandable to people.

— Is there a time of day when it’s easier to write?

- Only at night. The phone doesn’t ring, cars don’t drive down the street, you’re sitting alone with your computer—sometimes you’ll come up with something. Of course, only at night... And in the fall. Pushkin's favorite time of year.

- What do you do when you can’t write?

- I'm suffering. These are terrible periods of dissatisfaction: something is not right, something is wrong. Thank God, I write more or less consistently. In Russian literature there are amazing examples of writers who sparkled once, abandoned brilliant prose, and suddenly fell silent. Sasha Sokolov, Yuri Miloslavsky, Venedikt Erofeev... This is very unfair. Yuri Miloslavsky, by the way, is your fellow countryman, a student of the Kharkov poet Boris Chichibabin, whom I adore. An absolutely honest and integral person who, unfortunately, raised the “Medusa Gorgon” - Eddie Limonov. But also one of the best prose writers of our time - Yuri Miloslavsky.

— Bakhyt Shkurullaevich, what do you mean by the concept of Love?

— The Apostle Paul has already said everything about love. “Love endures for a long time, is merciful, love does not envy, love does not exalt itself, is not proud, does not behave in an outrageous manner, does not seek its own, is not irritated, does not think evil, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; covers everything, believes everything, hopes everything, endures everything. Love never fails, although prophecy will cease, and tongues will be silent, and knowledge will be abolished.” (1 Cor. 13:4-8)

Without love there is no life at all. If love descends on you, you feel human. Without her there is darkness, and we are just a “trembling cymbal”...

— What do you need to feel happy person?

- Love, as we just found out. Love is the real criterion of happiness. And also, to put it pompously, the opportunity to follow the path indicated from above. You just need to try to fulfill the will of the Creator, without being distracted by following your own desires.

Source: International independent online magazine “Krugozor” http://www.krugozormagazine.com/show/Kenzheev.2322.html