сижу и тупею

Finally IKEA has figured out what Swedish expats cannot live without and started selling it in their food store: inlagd gurka. When I bought it on Monday was just as glorious a day in my life as the day about a year ago when they began selling mustard… Life is not complete without salted cucumbers & mustard.

Does hard work pay off? I think so. Today I went to see my professor Aleksey to discuss my thesis – it has by now grown into some 172 pages [but 50 of those are attachments so no need to choke on your tea there, comrades] – for he has finally read it [roughly anyway]. I crossed myself before entering his office… Of course there are a lot of things that need to be fixed and corrected in it during this weekend – before I’m off to Kazan’ with Shalamov – but that’s not everything he told me, for he also said: “I think we should publish your thesis as a book”. I’m still trying my best to digest this sudden joyous information. Why should my thesis be published as a book then, you might be wondering? Well, Aleksey commented that my thesis is already a productive compliment to previous scholarship. In addition to this it contains new scientific results that should be made available to other and future scholars researching Dostoevsky. My comments on how he used “The Siberian Notebook” in his novels could be used in the notes to future editions of Dostoevsky’s works, for example. Plus my methodology is in many ways much more accurate and complete than what can be found in previous scholarly works on this subject. I’m quite amazed at his idea, as a matter of fact. I don’t even remember how I came up with my methodology; I can only recall a distant and extremely cold evening in March in the communal kitchen when I studied how the notebook was used in “The Brothers Karamazov” and made some innocent conclusions… I guess that’s how scientific progress happens, comrades? The important thing now is to not get carried away. But to have published an academic book on Dostoevsky in Russian at the age of 25! My head is spinning! It will only be printed in a few hundreds copies and sent out mainly to libraries in Russia, it will most likely not be available for purchase in general bookstores. Except for maybe some local academic ones here in Yekat. Now that’s something to put on the curriculum vitae, eh?

This means that I’m already aware of what kind of grade I will receive… And that I will not be able to defend it early, as was the plan, but will have to wait until the middle of June and defend it together with all the other Master’s students. Aleksey and I first wanted to defend it already on June 1st together with the заочники, because my opponent is the American professor and she’s leaving on June 2nd. But today Aleksey changed his mind because we have to suggest a publication of the thesis after the defense and that would look bad if the commission isn’t the “best” possible [for the заочники are at all whole other level and it would be rather weird for me to defend my thesis together with them] – i.e. made up of our faculty’s most prominent professors who can approve [or disapprove for that matter] of it being published. So there are still more than a few steps left to handle before I can actually say that I have done it and go brag about it to anyone who will listen. First and foremost I have a whole weekend ahead of me with nothing but sitting in front of my computer and working, writing, working, writing… and researching. But the thesis is pretty much done by now. I could actually stop right here. But as my roomie commented: “You’re a maximalist” and thus never truly satisfied until everything has been brought to its outmost perfection. All I need to do this weekend is add some things here, remove some things there, change the order of the chapters a bit, further explain my motives in the introduction and summarize my results in the conclusion. I am already finished with all the counting. I stayed up until three last night just counting and counting and counting… At this Aleksey told me: “What degree are we giving you, anyway? MA in mathematics or MA in philology?” Why not both?!

Another weekend ahead of nothing else but repeating to myself silently: сижу и тупею, сижу и тупею. It is one of my favorite Russian verbs: тупеть [here: to become stupid; less intelligent]. It sums up so much. At least in my life.

On the Border

Today on the border between Europe & Asia outside of Yekat. On the [right] European side: Jan Erixon & me [of Sweden]. On the [left] Asian side: Alexey & Asya [of Russia]. And what do we do with the American then? She’ll stand in the middle, of course!

When people one day in the future will ask me how I spent my youth, then I will tell them: “With scholars of Russian literature”. Today Jan Erixon, Swedish pastor [from Gothenburg] and author of the book “Somebody Visited My Soul: Dostoevsky’s Spiritual Journey”, visited our university to present the Russian translation of his book which our university publishing company [of which Alexey is the director] has just published and to give a speech on one the American professor’s lectures. Life is an adventure filled with amazing people, comrades! After the lecture we all went together to the border between Europe and Asia, located a only a few miles outside of Yekat. The funny thing is that it is the place where all tourists go when they visit Yekaterinburg but despite living here for almost four years I had yet not been there. Until today! First we visited the “new” monument at the border, where we took this picture, and then we went to the “old” monument, where the picture on my current avatar was taken. After this the American professor had to leave us and we met up with Jan’s translator and her husband to have lunch together. It was a splendid lunch. All in all it was a splendid day today! Jan is going to visit Stanford University in October and has promised to introduce me to the outstanding American professor Joseph Frank, author of an astonishing five volume book on Dostoevsky. Jan visited Joseph Frank in January-February 2010 and told him about me and that I had been accepted to Berkeley. Then, according to Jan, he commented: “What a loss for us that she didn’t pick Stanford instead!” This comment, of course, means the world to me. What a compliment! I am very much looking forward to meeting him and to discuss Alexey’s plans to publish his books in Russian translation [we’ve been talking about this since 2006 actually].

The past week has been consumed – as always – by academic work. On Thursday I did a presentation on a conference about Dusty’s Siberian Notebook in his novel “The Devils”. I think the presentation was received fairly well, even though I can never help myself – even when discussing the most strict of scientific topics – to make jokes and cause my audience to laugh. On Thursday I got more than just a few laughs and it made me happy, even though I afterwards thought I had come across at not as serious as the other young scholars. It was a highly selective and prestigious conference for the top students in the Ural Mountains – from Perm, Chelyabinsk, Ufa and Yekat – and you have to be voted the top student by your professors in order to be able to make a presentation so I think that alone should make me feel content with myself at this particular point in life.

Yesterday Jan looked me deep the eyes and asked: “I hope you won’t have to drag some Russian man with you to the states this summer?” And I answered as I always do: “Not to worry. I am chronically single”.

In a way I’m very sad that this part of my life is soon to come to an end. Not that I wake up every morning and think to myself: “Soon this will be over”. Not at all. But of course I think about it sometimes. But also I know that I had a great ride with many wonderful experiences throughout these six years in Russia. I achieved more while living in this country than I ever dreamed of achieving. Yet nothing turned out at all the way I had planned it. Much better, without a doubt, but still – very different. There have been both good and bad days – there always are both good and bad days anywhere in the world, in anybody’s life. Yesterday was a bad day. Today was a good day. Tomorrow will hopefully also be a good day for I’ll meet up with Katya and Masha [new found friend] at a coffee shop to discuss literature and everything else that matters in life. Yesterday I found out that two of my fellow students in the MA program will be getting married on one and the same day this summer. That’s great news. But when they told me and showed me their rings it all felt to me… so distant. So unreal and I couldn’t really relate at all. That made me sort of sad. I also want to get married. But not this summer. For this summer I have other plans: to visit fröken A in Stockholm, to spend a lot of time at my mother’s summer house, to spend at least two weeks with Aaron in the states. Oh and then move to California…

My professor Alexey & me: friendship & scholarship over the border!

Культурный хлам

Napa Valley July 16th 2008. There are many interesting things to be noted about this particular photograph. Yes, it was taken on my 23rd birthday. But that is hardly interesting. What is interesting, however, is that at the time I was unaware of the following things: 1) that I was going to start [and finish!] the MA program in Russian literature at Ural State; 2) that I was going to apply [and get accepted!] to graduate school at Berkeley; and 3) that I was not going to marry my more handsome half M. Interesting to note is also that I’ve lost approximately 7 kilos [or maybe even 10, as people here in Russia are of differing opinions about my weight – some say I lost 7 during my two years in the MA program, others claim 10. I am deathly afraid of getting on the scales so I trust mirrors and the opinion of others] since this picture was taken… Also I’m suspecting that my hair will be this long again for my 25th birthday this summer as I have noticed some serious growth on my head lately.

Comrades, I’m half a day ahead of my plan for writing my thesis! Yes, this weekend wasn’t spent solely on «Подросток» [“A Raw Youth”], but as a matter of fact I skipped right ahead and worked on the chapter on «Бесы» [“The Devils”] instead on Saturday and finished it today [sixteen pages – do I hear a “hurrah”?]. Right away upon its completion I started with «Подросток» [75% finished already], and because my professor Aleksey told me that the scholar from Czech Republic can’t fly in tomorrow morning for the conference here on Wednesday I don’t have to take him to lunch tomorrow and can thus stay home and finish that chapter and perhaps even get a head start on «Село Степанчиково и его обитатели» [“The Village of Stepanchikovo and its Inhabitants”] in the evening. After that novel I only have the most dreaded chapter of them all left to do research for and then write clever conclusions on – some 300 quotations from “The Siberian Notebook” in “Notes from the Dead House”… The thesis has now grown into some 80 pages; I’m aiming at 100 for then I know for sure it will land at around 120 by May 1st [which is when I have to finish its first version; then on May 3rd I’m off to a conference in Kazan’ where I’ll spend four days with lovely Shalamov]. Am I boring you with this information, comrades? I think I’m boring myself. My mother proved very wise when she told me: “See how you like writing one thesis before you say you want to write several of them…” I would be lying if I said I “don’t like writing this thesis”, but also I would be lying if I said that I don’t find any pleasure what so ever in it. I guess my biggest problem with the whole thing is that it is so time-consuming. Especially on days when it is warm outside and the sun is shining. On those days it is extra time-consuming and to be seated in front of my computer for ten hours a day seems much worse than the 4 years Dusty spent in the prison where he compiled the notebook which I am now studying in depth. Okay, so you might argue with me now and say: “But you’ve written six full length novels? Didn’t that take time? And planning? And didn’t you sometimes just want to escape it and go out in the sun and meet up with friends and forget about the whole thing at times?” These are all valid arguments, dear comrades. But when I write a novel I’m always writing simply and solely for myself; whereas a thesis is written a) according to the definitions as stated by literary science and the current regulations for a MA thesis at Russian universities; b) to complement previous scholarly works on the subject [thankfully for my subject there’s only a handful of those]; and most importantly c) in a strict yet forthcoming union with the ideas, comments and thoughts that my professor Aleksey takes pleasure in informing me of from time to time. Today I spent three hours writing a presentation on the Siberian notebook in Dusty’s novel “The Devils” for a conference here in Yekat on Thursday, which I sent to Aleksey straight away. He returned it to me within a couple of hours [with corrections] and said it was нормально. I guess that is also one of my problems with the thesis: I would like to have more feedback! Right now it feels sort of like I’m in a dark and secluded room somewhere on the moon writing away day and night without knowing at all how it will be received by other people down on Earth.

«Культурный хлам» can be translated as ‘cultural rubbish; trash’. You see, the past week wasn’t all consumed by the thesis but I managed to receive a huge package from the Swedish Institute. In it was, among other things, a copy of the huge two volume Svensk ordbok publicerad av Svenska akademien [Swedish dictionary]. I played with it on my own for two days and had so much fun that I also played with it together with my third year students of Swedish in class. In it one of the funniest things are the several popular phrases from various areas of Swedish culture [mainly from songs and books] scattered in it here and there. During class I happened to call these fascinating little bits and tiny pieces of my national heritage культурный хлам. This made my students laugh at me. And I love it when people laugh at me. I don’t know how I even lived without this dictionary before; now I am decided on getting me one of those for myself. This one I will have to leave to Marina here in Yekat when I leave.

In between thesis writing I’ve managed to make some notes for my future novel that is a sort of new version of “Letters to Father” but nothing like it at all because it has changed so much already inside of my mind and in my notes on it that it doesn’t feel like I’m ruining the old novel by writing a new one anymore – for the two are separate now inside of my head. The main characters are no longer Marion and Joseph like in “Letters to Father” but Marion and Miriam and in my notes I sometimes call them “The Sisters Karamazov”… It is a story of all the diseases of our current human society; each of the four main characters who are all brothers and sisters will be first and foremost a ‘type’ that can be found everywhere among us today, even though not entirely for they will have some personal traits also. a) Marion is ‘the eternal student’, financially independent [due to tragic reasons] and in a relationship with ‘the working class boy’, with whom she cannot make any commitments for she has never felt passion [and in the novel she will come to feel passion for the first time with tragic results]. b) Joseph is the ‘upper class man’ partly because of a personal choice, partly due to lying to himself [hating his rich step-father yet taking his name and his money and seeing himself as a part of that family rather than his mother’s family and ignoring the social status of his real father – the son of a simple farmer], who is a doctor [prestigious profession] and in and out of relationships as other people change their status on Facebook. c) Jonathan is the ‘settling for too little too early’; he got engaged to his girlfriend in school at the age of sixteen, married her at eighteen and had his first child at the age of twenty. He is studying to receive a profession [teacher] and to later live a common, quite life [sadly his brother and “The Sisters Karamazov” get in his way a little in that regard]. This is, in my opinion, a very common type in my generation. And then there’s d) Miriam – the most interesting type for she is modelled after me! – ‘the severely detached from homeland yet strangely attached to native heritage globetrotter’ [also a very common type in my generation, I’m afraid], who has lived abroad for the past eight years or so, visiting Sweden only at short times once or twice a year. She is the only one of the siblings who are without a recorded intimate past. Perhaps it is held secrete; perhaps there has truly never been a man in her life. She stays with her half-sister Marion when in Sweden. Marion owns a house on Brännö outside of Gothenburg where their father Gabriel [sentenced three times for rapes of underage girls] will eventually come to be murdered in the novel. The plot constitutes of a sort of “who did it?” story, and as we speak I am not myself entirely clear as to who did it. All I’m certain of at this stage is that Miriam confesses guilty to the murder already the next morning when the police come knocking on Marion’s door after finding the body in the water… Most certainly, they all could’ve done it – and they all at one point or another stated that they wanted to murder their father. Among other notes that I’ve done for these characters are that 1) Jonathan will use no less than five times different versions of the popular expression “han har inte alla kantareller i korgen”; 2) Marion speaks with several subordinate clauses, often using old words and always correct grammatical constructions; 3) Joseph is all colloquial speech [says things like “tjena” and asks “hur e läget?” in text-messages and Marion hates it]; and 4) Miriam quotes and sings Evert Taube’s “Brevet från Lillan” through out the whole novel, as well as many other Swedish traditional folk songs [Olle Adolphson, Cornelis Vreeswijk, Dan Andersson].

Needless to say, this novel will be written in Swedish and in Swedish only. It will be a heartfelt tribute to my native language and an open attack on the country where it is spoken.

Mitt eget land

Första gången jag tänkte på dig så

när jag i dig fann ett hemligt språk

som ingen annan än jag förstår

vid fontänen som inte längre står

den offrades för den kyrka

som en gång offrats för den…

Sommaren i Sibirien 2005

med Edith Södergran i hand

öppnades upp för mig det enda land

jag utan tvekan kallar hem –

dit mina känslor i hemlighet flyr

när mina minnen till dina ord tyr

som inte till någon sägas kan –

de tillhör endast dig –

en kärlek som bara blir mer sann

som växer inom mig

ju mer främmande ditt land sig ter

desto djupare språket sjunker ner

i själen som allt minns…

Svenska språket, i dig finns

allt jag vill säga och allt jag är –

i dig vill jag både svära och be!

Svenska språket, du är mjuk och lätt,

vokalerna ljusa och verben många,

hos dig låter allting rätt –

du skiljer korta ljud från långa,

du har ord för allt jag känner

och dina ord är precis som vänner…

Svenska språket är ärligt och trofast

mycket bättre än jag själv oftast.

Sverige kan gå under eller förtvina –

men din kraft skulle inte sina.

Svenska språket, förlåt mig mina fel ibland

för trots allt anser jag dig vara mitt hemland.

Red Trench Coat Season

Another April day in the Urals. My new heels are lovely… and match the red trench coat that I bought in April 2001 surprisingly well.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about age; my own age, mainly. But also the age of others – Russians, mainly – and what a person my age is supposed to look like in Russia. Yesterday I went to the library – it was Sunday and I’m almost always at the library on Sundays – and something funny happened. Well, not solely funny, as it was also puzzling to me. Yesterday was a lovely spring day in the Urals: the sun was shining and it was about 15C. To honor the wonderful weather I was wearing a black mini-skirt and a red blouse and decided to match it with a red bow in my hair. It should be noted that when applying for a library card in Russia you are photographed at the library [at least at the Belinsky Library here in Yekat] and this photograph is printed on your library card [and can thus be used as a sort of ID]. You have to make a new library card every year in Russia [to me this was strange because in Sweden I’ve had the same library card that I received when in first grade; once I showed it to a Russian and this Russian laughed at my signature. But what else can you expect? I was seven years old when I signed it!] and also take a new picture every time. The last time I received a new library card at Belinsky Library was in October 2009. I was offered to keep my old picture because the librarian said I looked “cute” on it, but I didn’t agree and so we made a new one. On the new one I look like any person would do on an average October morning in the Urals: tired, serious and pale. Yesterday I checked in at the library – yes, in Russian libraries you have to “check in” by holding up your card against a machine that registers your card and displays information about you together with your picture on the computer of the librarian behind the check-in desk – and the woman suddenly asked me: “Is this you?” I was puzzled and answered: “Yes?” She wasn’t pleased with my answer for she commented: «А на фотографии какая-то женщина, а ты – девочка!» [But on the picture there’s some woman, but you’re a girl!]. I was surprised first and soon offended that she called me «ты» so I said dryly: «Ну молодею, что ли?» [Maybe I'm getting younger?]. She muttered something about the woman on my picture being “my mother” but at that point I was already walking away from the check-in desk… She had left me feeling unsure of myself. Yesterday I did have a red bow in my hair – but since when is this something only young girls wear? Yesterday I didn’t wear any make-up – I always thought make-up made me look better [read: younger] but apparently I have been mistaken… This is not the first time in Russia lately when people have mistaken me for being several years younger than I am. A couple of weeks ago I was buying something for which you have to be 18 to buy in Russia and I was asked to show identification. When the cashier saw that I was born in 1985 she actually laughed out loud and said: «А я вам бы не дала больше семнадцати!» [I didn’t think you were older than seventeen!]. I always have to show identification in Russia but not always do people laugh at me when they find out my real age. Of course it is better to look younger than older but at this point I’m getting a bit annoyed actually. Once this semester I was refused access to the auditorium that my dean had booked for my Swedish class because the woman on the faculty of journalism [where this auditorium is located] thought I didn’t look old enough to be a teacher… I often have to stand up for myself and demand they give me my auditoriums when dealing with professors from other faculties – where they don’t know that I’m indeed old enough to be a university teacher in Russia at the age of 24 – and it is getting tiring. I told the visiting American professor about this problem of mine once and to her the reason for this was obvious: “It is because the Russians don’t take care of themselves!” And that’s probably true.

Also I think that staying home on Friday nights and reading books instead of going out drinking and dancing will leave a remaining impact of youth on your face. Literature makes your brain older, your soul wiser and your character stronger – but does nothing of the sort for your face. Reading a lot of books will leave your face completely untouched by time. So what’s my tip to prevent aging then? Forget all about the lotions and the botox – read more books.

Last night I finished “The Brothers Karamazov” and jumped straight to “Notes from the Dead House”. I don’t even know how many times I have read this particular novel of Dusty’s since I read it for the first time in Russian five years ago. And you know what, comrades? I never get tired of this book. I can’t get enough it. Every time I read it I feel like it is taking me on an entirely new journey, as if every time I read it I’m opening up something completely new and yet undiscovered to me. Despite the fact that I have not only read it several times but also studied it in-depth and even written my BA thesis on it and many articles about it since then – still it remains always different, always surprising, and never fails to touch me as if for the very first time. It is probably my favorite book in the whole world. The first two pages of it is probably the best thing that Dusty ever wrote. Yesterday I laughed and then re-read every single sentence of those first two pages… Dusty said that the people who loves “The Idiot” the most of all his novels are closest to him in character. Well, I don’t think I’m very close to Dusty in character even without this reassuring information. Lev Tolstoy, on the contrary, loved “Notes from the Dead House” so much that he even concluded that it was the best book in Russian literature. I always knew Tolstoy and I had much in common.

Oh and once again I almost forgot! My article comparing Dusty’s banya [from “Notes from the Dead House”] with Shalamov’s short story “V bane” will be published in the Четвертый шаламовский сборник [Fourth Collection of Academic Articles on Shalamov]. Yay! To me this is such a great honor that I can’t even find the proper words – I have read all the three previous collections [I own the two latest ones] and marvelled at the splendid scholars who get to publish their articles in them… And to think that I am now one of them! Crazy! The leading Shalamov scholar in Vologda corrected my article himself and concluded that when I’m in Vologda the next time [which will be in the middle of June] I have to go visit the banya there… Sure thing!

The Bear: Take III

Take I: the first time I & Gao Chao played Chekhov’s «Медведь» [The Bear] together was on May 30th 2007. I was only 21 years old…

Take II: the same year we repeated it on October 31st. By then I had turned 22…

Take III: together again for our faculty’s annual celebration «День филолога» [The Day of the Philologist] on April 10th 2010. Now I’m 24 and Gao Chao is 25 – we’re all grown up! He’s finishing his BA in two months and I’m almost done with my MA…

Today was – without a doubt – a good day. Yesterday wasn’t such a good day, as a matter of fact it was a pretty bad day [I was in such a terrible mood that I even had to cancel my Swedish class in the evening for I was in no shape to teach.] Yesterday I was too stressed about today [which was still tomorrow then] and constantly thinking of everything I had to manage to prepare myself for… Today before lunch I made a presentation on our faculty’s conference in the section for literary theory [on one note from Dusty’s “Siberian Notebook”], and after lunch we played “The Bear”. Everything went great; it even went better than I dared to dream! The conference was lovely and my presentation – so the professors said afterwards anyway – was one of the best. Everybody loved our interpretation of Chekhov’s short ‘joke in one scene’; Gao Chao was on a roll – probably the roll of a lifetime – and I did pretty well myself. We didn’t even forget one single line this time! One professor hugged me so warmly and for such a long time afterwards that I didn’t even know how to react… It was the same professor who kissed me on the lips when I told her I got accepted to Berkeley. She’s one of my favorite professors – not only at this university, but period. But what meant the most to me was what another professor told me afterwards – he’s заведующий нашей кафедрой русской литературы 19 века [the head of our chair for Russian 19th century literature] and our rough patches have been recorded previously here on the blog since we’re люди разных взглядов [people of differing opinions]. He had never seen me act before and thus he was both surprised at this my supposedly ‘hidden’ talent and also so impressed that he even claimed my intonation is better than that of the Russian students… And that I stood out among all the other students who took part in our капустник [skit] for I acted and carried myself like a real actress. He probably doesn’t even realize how much it meant to me to hear those words coming from him. Of course I duly informed him of the fact that in my ‘first’ life I did study to become an actress. And even acted almost professionally in a theater once upon a time; in a now very, very distant past… Yes, today was a good day.

Today I don’t know what’s waiting for me up ahead – I only know where I’m going, but I have no clue as to what awaits me once I get there. Today I understood what I’m leaving behind. I’m leaving behind a wonderful university where I was blessed to study for four years – three of them at this splendid philological faculty filled with lovely professors and amazing students. This faculty made me into who I am today, these professors carved me carefully into the person I have now become – and this person is proud to be a philologist. Maybe it is not the most prestigious profession out there, maybe it is not practical at all in today’s reality, maybe it is not valued by the rest of the world – but it is a profession I am thankful to have been given the possibility to acquire through these though years of solid education.

The past few weeks I’ve been slaving – yes, literally slaving – every day and every evening over my thesis and thinking over and over again: “God, let this cup pass by me!” But today I realized why I’m doing this. I’m writing this thesis to finish my education [awfully obvious, right?] and to pay homage to the astonishing professors who taught me. Not only do I HAVE to write this thesis, but also CAN I write it – they gave me all the equipment I need. New inspiration has arrived! And I’m not going to let down my beloved филфак! I’m going to do it so well, I’m going to write it as good as I can and even though we might sometimes be ‘people of differing opinions’ we will still always see eye to eye on one thing – the most important thing of them all – that we’re here because we all love literature, out of the deepest respect for the written word.

My thesis is called, for some people asked *winks at Annie*, as follows: «Сибирская тетрадь» в творчестве Ф. М. Достоевского: системно-функциональный анализ [“The Siberian Notebook” in the works of F. M. Dostoevsky: systematic-functional analysis].

Екатеринбург-Ташкент*

Can any other place else in the world ever beat Yekaterinburg at what's pictured above? [Click here to see what it looked like in spring 2009 (I'm wearing pink tights); or click here to see what it looked like in spring 2008 (I'm wearing purple tights)]. Sometimes I think I don't have enough friends here in Yekat at the moment. Today I thought differently. Having only one true close friend in this town is actually more than enough - for this friend is the best. Indeed: be careful what you wish for - you might get it!

Екатеринбург-Ташкент*

*из записной книжки ученых**

**Катя Б. и Жоня Л.***

***они же К. И. Б<…> и Д. П. Л<…>

«Никаких третьих, седьмых, двадцать девятых смыслов поэма не содержит»

- из поэзии Анны Ахматовой

«Мысли, которые приводят не туда»

- из современных русских народных пословиц

«Ты привык жеваное есть. Тебе небось разжуй да в рот положи»

- из записных книжек Ф. М. Достоевского

«А с бытием спорить не приходиться»

- из исследований в области эстетики М. М. Бахтина

ЧАСТЬ ПЕРВАЯ.

Был день апрельский, весенний еще не очень, в городе Екатеринбург, когда в комнату, которой на половину управляла студентка филологического факультета Жоня, зашла Катя, так же студентка филологического факультета. Катя и Жоня были филологи первой поры юности, которая располагает интеллектуально развитой молодой девушки к свободным размышлениям на мировые вопросы порой, порой – наоборот – к обсуждениям мелких житейских тем. Катя села и завязался диалог о предстоящем преображении родного классического университета в федеральный университет, в котором он будет – непременно – поглощен другим вузом в том же городе: технический именно Б. Н. Ельцина.

«Там ужасно – там учатся только для того, чтобы получить образование и работать», жаловалась Катя.

Жоня согласилась, громко и долго хохотав над выбором речевых оборотов Кати, а потом речь завела на другу тему (на неприличную довольно для таких образованных филологов, как Катя и Жоня, поэтому мы ее пропустим. Ладно, если так уж сильно интересно, то говорили они про то, что если бы «некто» был пять лет постарше, то Жоня, разумеется, «взялась бы», что и даже гнусно писать рядом с именем такого выдающихся ученого, как Жоня, но человеческий характер бывает самых разных свойств – широк человек, слишком широк!).

Вдруг Катя произносила судьбоносные слова, не ведая предстоящих последствий этого рокового предложения в мировой истории, всемирной культуре и вселенной религии: «Все-таки Екатеринбург лучше Ташкента».

Вдруг Жоня затруднилась в географическом местонахождении населенного пункта Ташкента, на что Катя попыталась утешить следующим ответом: «В Узбекистане, вроде бы».

Принято было единогласно решение немедленно гуглить город Ташкент. На самом деле он оказался столицей Узбекистана. И еще оказалось, он расположен от Екатеринбурга через сначала Челябинск (если едешь от Екатеринбурга, то есть не от Ташкента, но наоборот) а потом через Казахстан. Принимая в соображение новую информацию, было выражено предположение, что, возможно, есть рейс на самолете из Екатеринбурга в Ташкент (и если имеется такой то, скорее всего, есть рейс и назад из Ташкента в Екатеринбург, но если нет, то, думается, на поезде можно обратно добраться).

«А так ли это?» задалась вопросом Жоня.

«Что?» тоже задалась вопросом Катя.

«Что Екатеринбург – лучше Ташкента?»

«Сравнивать надобно».

«А ты была в Ташкенте?»

Катя не была в Ташкенте, и Жоня, что она уже знала и что Катя в очень скором времени тоже узнала, не была в Ташкенте.

В этот день апрельский ранней весны Катя не попала на свои занятия в университете – с кем не бывало такое, скажите мне – а Жоня сидела дома и работала усердно над своей диссертацией, которая носила нелепое и длительное название «Дополняя (но не исправляя, прошу заметить) М. М. Бахтина: К вопросу об уточнениях предыдущих вершин гуманитарной науки в области философии, эстетики и литературы (феноменологический аспект, исходя из исправленных работ Ганся Гадамера)». Многократно просили Жоню придумать новое название в преддверии своей диссертации, но Жоня, будучи гордой и на свою голову всегда принимающей не тех мер, которые надо бы принять, отказалась, сообщив, что «если не поймут так, то и по-другому не поймут».

Resurrection is...

…to throw a thing of the past in the water as soon as the ice melted.

…to give away the things [and shoes] you don’t need to those who will actually use them. This weekend – in the spirit of Easter and all things reborn also in Nature – I donated ten pairs of shoes to charity along with almost half of my clothes [hidden in the enormous bag in the background]. The coming week I will donate some fifty books in Russian to my university. And all books in English I will give to Katya…

…is what comes after dying; after realizing that there is still life to be lived ahead of you but that this life is – like everything else in it – only temporary. These are the shoes I’m temporarily keeping for my coming spring in Yekat. In June this – and more – will be donated to charity.

On Saturday I woke up and realized that I had been living in the past – despite having such an exciting future ahead of me! For the past couple of months I’ve been clinging to certain things of the past, desperately trying to justify certain aspects of my Russian life with the fact that “I can’t being doing this/that in California, so I might just as well do it while I can and to excess!”. That, dear comrades, is destructive behavior and being as such it is also the opposite of constructive. On Saturday I woke up and cleaned out half of the clothes in my closet; at first I didn’t want to throw anything away, so I cleaned it out a second time after the first one and felt so content with myself and was on such a roll that I wanted to throw away EVERYTHING and just go nude for the rest of my time in Russia. But I stopped myself in time. After this I took out all of my shoes from underneath my bed and cleaned them carefully and decided that I would give away ten of them now, and the rest of them in June and only leave the country with one [or two] pair. Then I threw down all of my books from the shelves and picked out from them mercilessly every copy that didn’t qualify as “hard to find” or “academic” or “having sentimental value” I decided to donate these books to my university. I think the ones with “sentimental value” might also have to go by the end of June…. God, I want to start a new life! I want to start all over again, I want to start fresh and I want to go somewhere and be someone else because I’m so tired of this Josefina person here in the Urals! Even though, of course, there are several perks to being this Josefina person here in the Urals.

The other day I went to the post office to get the package [my Xmas gift!] from Aaron. I didn’t even have to say anything or even show my passport; they knew who I was without a word. Now where else in this world will even the folks at the post office know who I am?!

The hardest thing to let go of wasn’t what’s on the first picture above [the key chain associated with A., which I had on my keys for exactly four months], but the teddy bear that my former more handsome half M. bought me in December 2007… I cried the last time I held it on Saturday and I didn’t want to let it go. Even though its been over a year since I let M. go, I have allowed for this teddy bear to continue sharing my bed… But I want a new life; and in this new life I also want to meet someone new. For this purpose I have to make room in my life; right now it is too clogged with the past. So that’s what I’m doing. And I think the kid who received my teddy bear will have more joy out of it than I ever did. Okay, so I DID get a lot of joy out of it… But still – I wouldn’t want to meet someone who’s so consumed by their past that they still have key chains associated with their ex and still sleep with the teddy bear their ex gave to them. That’s not what I’m looking for in a future partner. That would actually turn me off – if he had something like that or did something like that. So why should I expect anything less of the man I want to meet in the future? If I want someone good, then I should make myself good for them. Makes sense, right?

I'd never start a new life on a Monday; I always do it on weekends…

Där gränsen går

As I woke up I knew that it would happen today: that today I would leave Ural State University at 8:30 pm and it would not yet be dark outside… This is the turning point; from now on things are only going to get better!

What do I want to become when I grow up? I’m not sure yet. Lately I’ve been thinking that when I grow up I’d like to become either a) visforskare [scholar of Swedish folk music]; or b) a diplomat [say what you want about me, but I know how to get things done]. None of these professions have I been educated for – yet, anyway. But life is long, and I have so far in my six years of higher education only used one year of CSN – leaving me with another five that could be spent when I’m in my 30’s as to attend courses in Swedish folk music [I wonder if there’s a BA program for people who wish to become visforskare? or if that’s something you become on your own and during your own free time, like poet or blogger?] But you, dear comrades [and family members and friends], don’t know how much I’ve learned about Swedish folk music while teaching Swedish here in Russia and how I’ve become so passionate about this part of my own cultural heritage that I downloaded Dan Andersson the other day and walked for three hours around Yekat while listening [it’s this disc of covers of his songs sung by Sofia Karlsson] to him. It was lovely, absolutely lovely! I’ve been teaching a couple of classes the past three weeks with my third year students on Evert Taube and while studying his songs everything seemed like it brought me back – back home! Don’t you think it’s extraordinary how much the soul – the soul in itself – can remember, how much the soul knows and recognizes on its own, without you thinking about it first? I don’t think this passion of mine was something that happened all of the sudden – or вдруг, like Dusty would’ve put it – but more as if it entered into my life slowly and carefully; song by song [while teaching] all the while I was analyzing Russian literature and then – bang! – you apply literary theory to Swedish folk music and what do you get? Your soul. The answer is your soul [if you’re Swedish, that is – if not, try it with your own folk music]. When I grow up I want to write a big thick book about Swedish folk music.

But before that happens Marina [my former student, currently in Sweden] and I will write a textbook in Swedish as a foreign language together – using my methodology of teaching Swedish through traditional folk songs. It’s kind of a secret, this plan of ours, so far anyway; even though we’ve explained our plans both to Ural State and to the Swedish Institute and to a professor of Swedish as foreign language at Gothenburg University [everyone’s exited! but I haven’t told Berkeley yet so… shhhh!]. I think that I during the last couple of years I was looking more for a partner ACADEMICALLY than a partner in any other way. I know. But it’s true. Every time I met someone smart [it is always a girl – men are useless], someone with the same academic interests as me – for years I always tested and tried and sought to figure out: “Can this person become my academic partner?” Until Marina, I didn’t think I would ever find that academic partner. And that was – and is – important to me. I don’t really know WHY it is so important to me – academically I do alright on my own. But I always knew that my dream – my academic dream – was to find someone with whom I could work together, with whom I could share so much and just have this dialogue going on and on and on… What makes an academic partnership different from any other partnership? I don’t know. All I know is that I didn’t try and test and sought to figure out if Marina wanted to become my academic partner at all – she was picked out by the Swedish Institute as a potential candidate for taking over my classes in Swedish next academic year. I asked her and she agreed and then we started talking and all of the sudden one of my greatest dreams in life had become true. Marina is now my academic partner. I adore Marina! I adore her because she’s smart, because she can focus and be serious and conduct critical thinking [and besides her Swedish is as good as my Russian so мы стоим друг дружки], but also because we can have the most fun and discuss anything in the world. I know – of course – that Marina’s academic interests aren’t exactly the same as mine, but the most important thing is that we both want to achieve this first thing. From the summer of 2010 to the summer of 2012 we will write a textbook together. I can’t wait to publish something under our last names [all the more fun it is because none of them end on an “a” as is usually the way female last names end in Russian]. A textbook written by a student & her teacher [or the other way around :P]. I guess after all I’m one of those lucky teachers who leave a university after having started a school of their own – and as one of my other students put it [who will also be teaching Swedish once I’m gone]: “We’ll tell all our new students about you; everyone will know your name!”

Ну что ж? Я польщена!

Interesting question: What do I want to become when I grow up? Since like the age of 17 or something I’ve answered this question by saying: “A professor of Russian literature.” But to say that was only possible when it in itself seemed impossible. Are you following me? Does this make sense to anyone else but me? I’ll try to explain [simultaneously heading off deeper into the forest to cut up more fire woods]. Now I’m baffled as I realize – and I only began realizing this like a couple of days ago – that I will have a Master’s Degree in Russian Literature in less than… three months! Can you believe it? Of course, somewhere deep down in my brain [in the debris of my sanity] I should’ve fathomed that if I start an MA program, then there’s a big chance that I’ll finish it [being as I am not a quitter]. But between starting it in September 2008 and finishing it in June 2010 there were three exam periods and a thesis… and during these two years it seems like EVERYTHING happened. Well, okay, so maybe not. But it feels like a lot! And here I am right now, two months away from defending my thesis on the Siberian Notebook in Dostoevsky’s novels [nobody’s touched this problem like I’m touching right now as we speak]. Last weekend I finished the theoretical part of my thesis, after which I applied this my brand new theory [read: methodology in literary analysis] to researching notes from the Siberian Notebook in “The Brothers Karamazov” and about which I wrote a presentation which I read out loud on our seminar at the faculty on Thursday. My professor Alexey was so pleased with it, as was everyone else, that our faculty decided to send me to a conference in the second half of April just to ‘rub it in’ that their master students are at the level of graduate students [they’re called ‘candidates’ in Russian, though]. I was sort of surprised at Alexey’s reaction at my methodology, though. On one hand, I couldn’t have done any worse considering the education I have received so far, but on the other hand, Alexey isn’t really the kind of person to give compliments and tell me exactly “how” I’m doing in his eyes. I’m content with my methodology. I think it turned out lovely, actually. Neat and structured and very mathematical. Why do people sometimes think literary theory isn’t a REAL science? Now when these people see my thesis they’ll change their mind. But being as I am a philologist in heart, soul and brain I find it sometimes so difficult to count and make up lists and all these diagrams… I have to count everything at least four times. Because I know that I count wrong the first three times. I’m very thankful that God didn’t make me a mathematician. God clearly has enough as it is on His table – even without me falling on my knees every night asking Him: “Why, oh why did You make me a mathematician?!”

“Där gränsen går” is the title of my new novel. Yes, I’m writing a novel again. God! Why? Okay, I’ll take up this cross and keep walking… I think it’ll be good this time around, though, I think this novel will be unlike anything I’ve written before. It is going to be a detective novel! A crime story! But Katya told me on Thursday – over diet Coke and two hours of heart to heart and brain to brain conversation – that once again I’m overloading my novel with ‘incidents’ and that she loves my short stories for in them there are no incidents… But in this novel I’d really like to take you all to the very end of the line and ask you all: “Where do you draw the line?” In Swedish: “Var går gränsen?” And I’m sort of answering you already in the title: here is where the line is drawn. This is is. If you cross over, you’re bound to get into trouble. But we all love to get into trouble, don’t we? I don’t even know why I’m writing a novel again – writing in a genre I think died a long time ago. I have no answers. I’m just writing because I just had a visit by these people.

“Där gränsen går” is a horrible and devastating new version of “Letters to Father”. I re-read that novel a couple of days ago and was disgusted by how I want to re-write it – such a beautiful thing! But sometimes you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.

Among other things I’ve decided бросить курить, что для меня очень сложно, поскольку просто так люблю курение, что слов даже нет… но надо и очень надо мне, ибо у меня и так низкое давление, а в последнее время я временами теряю чувство в конечностях и это преплохой знак… Поддерживайте меня, товарищи! Любовь к курению – самое плохое, что может быть у человека… А я вот его люблю. Я – неуравновешенная и неполноценная. Что с меня возьмешь?

So health it is! More health. I’m going to get so healthy I’m going to annoy you all. But for now – I’ll drink Russian cherry wine [which tastes like cherry juice and vodka] and listen to Swedish folk music while reading “The Brothers Karamazov”.