Posted on

We’re just devoted readers of Black book

 I give you hand  and call  to join the journey
 To go along the searching path together. 

 This story will begin one charming morning
 When the whole world will be the same  as ever
 And any resident of Istanbul could lead 
 His wife in evening to the  theatre called  "Konak"  -
 In  ancient city  where the West meets East
 And where the sun hangs over sea like orange.
 
 
 These narrow winding streets may match  Damascus
 Where you were wandering to find your love for years.
 Do not forget to wear your old black glasses,
 You may believe you are  bashaw or someone else.
 
 
 You'll lose your way in maze of city streets
 Where you  may feel some presence of, it seems,  
 A person seeking you and soon  you'll meet...
 No, it's just people rush for their things.
 
 
 And if  perspective is at least a little changed  
 In this case you will see no symbols any more.
 
 
 Remembering Ruya means remembering  games
 Of your idyllic  past in the ancestral home.
 The man is always woven from his past
 And wandering  around his life museum, enchanted,  
 Observes exhibits in a layer of silky dust.
 
 
 Until you realize your wife has dumped you
 You'll joyfully discover secret hints  
 Of  hidden world where Ruya  still exists,
 And only after this you'll start through tears
 To look at her abandoned empty  seat.
 
 
 A loving man sees everywhere reminders 
 Of his sweetheart with whom  he's  separated.
 She's gone to  man from her imaginary garden.                       . She'll stop to dream of someone  when she's grey-haired.
 
 
 Yet her indifference's deep as silent pit
 Which you may see from window of old flat.
 And scary thoughts that you want to get rid,
 All memories that you need to forget,
 Her stuff that's hard for you to look at still -  
 
 
 All things you burry deep  into subconscious -  
 You need to put in former pit that's filled  
 With earth and  turned in gap between the houses.
 
 
 Then everything will happen  like a dream
 And as surreal  as forgotten book
 With you or with a man you'd like to seem
 Whose  photos and news clippings you've just looked.
 
 
 You'll look at  scary shots in video reports   
 Which seem you've already seen somewhere.
 The clock in house'll be forever stopped.
 Life'll be divided in "before" and "after".
 
 
 Let's leave Galip with his unending woe
 Imagining the map  of  streets with souks
 And hearing the city sounds through window -  
 We're just devoted readers of "Black book".
 
 
 Galip  felt love for Ruyya  first while  reading   
 The ancient book together with  his friend -  
 In our thrilling  trip  sometimes we  snuggled in
 Each other, getting  closer in the end.
 
 
 The heroes disappear, leaving stage.
 We  hold back our tears, feeling sad.
 And now we may close the last page,  
 Still thinking of the mystery just read.

I often see The Black Book is not so highly appreciated – perhaps this is due to some unevenness or blurred text, but, in any case, there is a certain captured drive in it.

From the very first line of his novel, Pamuk sets a certain tone for the entire narrative, immersing the reader into the unique Universe of this book – Universe that is at the same time touching and family one and Universe that is full of voluminous meanings. Into the Universe of the life of Galip, who is in love with his wife, which is always eluding him. And into the Universe of the history of Turkey of the 20th century, geographically located between the West and the East and trying to digest these diverse influences in its everyday life at the end of the 20th century, and here it is no wonder to stumble upon a description of the flawed dystopian reality of Soviet reality which is so familiar to us.

Pamuk seeks to add depth to the novel, prompting the reader to identify his characters with archetypes from Eastern culture. The theme of searching and wandering through the maze of streets is layered in the novel on the Eastern tradition of storytelling, sometimes taking a slightly more modern form – reading newspaper articles on a variety of topics, from Trying to be yourself to Rulers playing in dressing-up. And the path of the hero’s quest will miraculously repeat the path of the “cult” author of the Poem on the Hidden Meaning.
And therefore, leafing through this book, one can feel both the diverse breath of the ancient city and the echo of bygone centuries, as well as the despair and insights of one particular person.

Posted on

Please do not beat the pianist!

At the beginning of the 2000s, the novel “The Pianist” thundered thanks to the film of the same name by Michael Haneke (it was released almost simultaneously with the film “The Pianist” by Roman Polanski), and when retelling its plot, of course, the viewers paid attention primarily to the most scandalous moments.
In those days, the following conversation was quite likely:
– Have you watched “The Pianist”?
– “The Pianist”? Do you mean “The Pianist” by Roman Polanski?
– No, “The Pianist” by Michael Haneke.
– Hm … It seems not.
– Can you imagine, there is the main character … well … she is a masochist and she likes to hurt herself with a razor THERE …

But let’s return o the book. The author not only skillfully describes reality – no, she also analyzes and systematizes it, and does it as bitingly and harshly as possible, using complex phrases that are deep in meaning and structure. The author not only describes reality skillfully – no, she also analyzes and systematizes it, and does it as bitingly and harshly as possible, using complex phrases that are deep in meaning and structure. This innovative prose, refined on the verge of paradox and sophisticated on the verge of understanding, is rethinking sarcastically the very stereotypes of usual human behavior.

Sometimes, somewhere at the very top, on the final round of the next metaphor, there are such bold analogies that seem not entirely justified and obvious – somewhat reminiscent, if you use the appropriate musical terminology, false notes, which causes something like annoyance in the reader’s soul – however, perhaps these comparisons, on the contrary, are as fresh as possible and give the narrative the necessary volume, and therefore it is better not to think about their irrelevance, but, on the contrary, to admire their originality.

SHE is a tired dolphin, indifferently preparing for the final trick, wearily fixing with her gaze a funny multi-colored ball, which the animal picks up on its nose with its usual movement.

The world of children’s constructors is opening up before her. .. She thinks hard and slowly. A dead lead weight hangs on it. Brake shoe. She is a weapon turned against herself that will never fire. She is a vice made of tin.

Erica soars on the wings of art in the high air corridors, rising almost to the ether .. Her mother looks around in search of a brake rope for her daughter, for this kite. Just don’t let it go, just don’t let go of the rope!

A cold, icy wind blew out, and she runs into the ice fields, dressed in a short dress, like a skater, white boots with skates on her feet … The endless blue ribbon of her skirt begins to sway, carefully fold into frills.

Jelinek’s reasoning moves along a trajectory that is not always easily traceable, temperamentally illustrated by impressive metaphors and accompanied by unexpectedly bold pictures written out with all the details – here we see visitors to an ice cream parlor or families with children relaxing in the Prater Park, here on the ice a skater in a skirt with a blue edging is performing, and here is an almost ready-made guidance to the arrangement of school washrooms …
Over time, the number of such deviations from any linear narrative so much exceeds the critical mass that, in general, one involuntarily has to recall those times of his adolescence, when with greedy eyes you look out for “racy” details in the text, by default considering everything else as something terribly boring and insipid.

As for the “racy” details, they are very specific here – it is not for nothing that this novel attracted the attention of Michael Haneke himself. And, besides, they are somewhat instructive.

It seems that Erica is the obedient daughter of her mother, after the next chamber concert dreaming to quickly return to her sweet nest and sit in her favorite chair in front of the TV …
“There is the only one source of light lit in Erika’s head, from which it is as bright as day all around and which illuminates the sign with the inscription ‘Exit’. A comfortable chair in front of the TV pulls his hands towards her, the soft callsigns of the news program are heard, the announcer busily straightens his tie. On the side table there are vases with delicacies that amaze the imagination with their abundance and colors, and both ladies, alternately or simultaneously, resort to their services.”

But no! It turns out that over and over again something persistently forces Erica to rush around the city like a meteor in the most strange places such as peep shows, showing films of light porn or remote forest clearings for copulating couples in an attempt to see something that remained incomprehensible to her in the very core of the female body and in the mechanism of the interlacing of two bodies …
“A man, Erika thinks, should often have the feeling that a woman is hiding something important from him in this jumble of internal organs. It is it, the most intimate, that spurs Erika, pushes to consider everything new, deeper, more forbidden. “
Probably, the writer herself is interested in looking for such emotional zest against the background of measured philistine life in a respectable prosperous European city – the capital of music.

And when a man appeared in the life of the main character Erica, she thought about how she could use “his services” in the most effective way. Erica had already managed to study herself a little in this matter, and her imagination generated some fantasies in which her desire to obey to the partner and her interest in experiencing pain would be realized. The heroine, not too experienced in love relationships, did not come up with anything better than to tell her potential lover naively and straightforward about her fantasies …

After all, Erica is generally a rather uncompromising woman – this is the way, in a moment of emotional experience, she plays her instrument, which her fingers have long become a continuation of:
“She gathers with all her strength, strains her wings and rushes forward, right at the keys, which are rushing swiftly towards her, like the earth flies towards a plane in disaster.”

…You may wonder – and what about him, her lover?
Will there be a happy end and a “kiss on the diaphragm” in this story? 

Let us feel the excitement of the heart when reading the denouement of this uncommon love story.

Posted on

Operation Paracelsus booktrailer

I’ve just made video concerning my new novel Operation Paracelsus in the genre of ironic sci-fi and post-apocalypse https://youtu.be/0OFvx1crMPg . It is something like booktrailer but maybe rather variations on the theme.

Expressive songs in Russian are used as soundtrack so I made several explanatory inscriptions -not too many:)

The first chapter in English is here. http://samlib.ru/editors/r/rebekka_p/paracelxs.shtml

Posted on

“Upon a fiction, heavy tears I’ll weep”

Sometimes it happens so that a book comes to you at such a moment that it extremely resonates with the strings of your own soul, and then every barely noticeable hint in the text evokes a storm of emotions and tears are about to splash … It is exactly like “Upon a fiction, heavy tears I’ll weep “, as Alexander Puhkin said in his poem “Elegy” (1830)…

Reading this largely autobiographical novel by Cronin, I involuntarily recalled many other works of world literature about childhood. In general, it is always especially interesting for me to read the diary notes of a generation, refracted in the writer’s mind, telling about the youth that took place at the beginning of the 20th century … For example, the study by two friends of the fauna of the Wynton Hills, described by Cronin, reminded me of Marcel Pagnol’s childhood trilogy.

In his presentation of events, the author tries to be objective and to place accents accurately, at the same time striving both with a grain of irony to imagine how the hero looked from the outside, and not to miss the whole stream of thoughts and emotions that rushed through his head, while he was answering to his interlocutors with his meager restrained remarks.

Perhaps I will make this review rather personal since I’d like to describe my amazement when I was captured by emotions about the episode in which the “grandmother”, with the best intentions, sews a school suit for Robert instead of the worn one, using the fabric of the green lining of her skirt, and all the troubles that awaited the main character after that. And when a caring “mother” suggested that he put on his aunt’s women’s sharp-toed shoes in case his own ones would suddenly break off at the moment of perhaps the most responsible exam in his life …
“The poor are not given the right to choose, my boy,” says his “dad” with some hypocrisy, the main feature of which was stinginess … In this book, stinginess is perhaps brought to the point of absurdity, but perhaps this is somehow familiar to many readers in some form, and this is especially true of the older generation in our country – Russia, accustomed to try to save extremely – even if sometimes they could well afford something more.

There is, of course, a national flavor in the book, and it is described especially vividly due to the fact that the main character was born in Dublin into a Catholic family, but then he was forced to live in a small Scottish town inhabited by Protestants – by the way, through the prism of the perception of the little hero we we learn a lot about the way of life and manners of this very town.

Summing up, I will note that we have an example of such kind of book, in which, perhaps, there are no such action events as in a thriller or in an action movie, but, nevertheless, thanks to the correctly placed accents and interesting cognitive aspect of the text, the level of the reader’s response to which far surpasses many books of sharp genres. 

Posted on

Lost in … Or Robinson Crusoe in Search of Lost Time

“There will always be someone whose view is wide enough,” it is said mysteriously at the very beginning of the novel -really, it is not yet too clear what this is about – oh, this will become obvious only closer to the end of the novel.

And after that, paragraph by paragraph, the picture unfolds before the reader of a hero’s acquisition of his memories, for the time being, buried somewhere. Acquisitions bit by bit, with the help of some stable verbal turnovers being recalled, with the help of not too recognized yet person images who for the time being do not have their own name that are poping up from memory.

He identifies Russia by seeing himself in the church, and outside the window – a snow-covered country. And I think this very combination is extremely “Russian”!

“The church is a great joy, especially in childhood. Small, that means, I hold onto my mother’s skirt … And so I soar in church, float over the priest, waving a censer, through the fragrant smoke. Above the choir – through his chants (slow waves of the choir and his own grimaces on high notes). Above the old woman candlestick and the people who filled the temple (flowing around the pillars), along the windows, behind which there is a snowy country. Russia?”

Then he finds his memories even more accurately in space – this time with the help of recalling of the images of spire and the river.
I can’t help but quote this metaphorical description of the tramway movement:

“I am recalling. Tram rails on the frozen river. An electric tram making its way from one bank to another, benches along the windows … The car driver is concentrated, he is the last one to lose hope. The conductor is also strong in spirit, but does not forget to cheer himself up with sips from a flask, for the frost and moonlit landscape will discourage anyone, the conductor must remain vigorous. Sells tickets for five kopecks, rips them off with icy fingers. There are ten fathoms of water under it, a blizzard on the sides, but its fragile ark, a yellow light on the ice, strives to its goal – a huge spire lost in the darkness. I recognize this spire and this river. Now I know what city I lived in. “

And gradually this one who is recalling finds himself, feels himself, – first in space, then – in time. And most importantly – bit by bit he restores pictures of idyllic Russian life, forever lost and preserved only in the memories of those who, like him, are still alive, or … captured on paper by those who did manage to write it down.

“I try to approach the past in different ways in order to understand what it is. Something separate from me, or something I still live through?”

Honestly, keeping in mind the title of the novel – Aviator, I was afraid that it would turn out to be a text about the everyday life of some outstanding plane designer like Sergei Korolev, but my fears were not confirmed.
In general, when the reader tries to understand why the book is named in one way or another, then an amazing kind of scanning of the text occurs in his mind …
Of course, the theme of the aviator (really fashionable and sometimes tragic occupation for the 1910s) echoes the poem of the same name by Alexander Blok (1912).
But, closer to the end of the text, we may find a quote about a wide view of the picture seen, shedding light on the mysterious phrase about the width of the view at the very beginning and, besides, on the title of the novel:

“Once in Siverskaya I saw an airplane take off from a poorly mowed field. Taking a take off, the aviator went around potholes, jumped on bumps and suddenly – oh, joy! – was in the air. Looking at the car convulsively moving across the field, no one was flying, frankly speaking, he did not expect. And the aviator took off. And there was no more hummocky field, no laughing spectators for him – the sky appeared in the clouds scattering over it and the motley, like patchwork, earth under the wings. “

The hero of the novel identifies himself with Robinson Crusoe, the hero of his beloved childhood novel … By the way, the very book that his grandmother read to him when he was ill, listening to it through the sur of his fever, it is difficult to imagine something more idyllic.
That’s right: he is now Robinson Crusoe, because he was left completely alone, he was cut off from the world of which he was a part, and he was deprived of the opportunity to build a boat to get on it to the “Big Earth”.

So, all that remains is to remember and try to write down as many of your memories as possible.

“There is no point in writing about any major events … Descriptions should concern something that does not take place in history, but remains in the heart forever.”

Posted on

This smooth male voice

L’année dernière à Marienbad by Alain Resnais , 1961

“I was walking towards you along these endless corridors, along these too wide stairs, on carpets that absorb the sounds of footsteps …”

A man insinuatingly says something to a woman, a little secluded together with her from the rest of the respectable audience with their measured respectable amusements, and the woman, first with amazement, and then with polite interest, listens to his words, either smiling slyly, or in a flirtatious fright, a little picturesquely moving away from him while asking him to stop talking and leave her.

The words are repeated endlessly, each time from a slightly different angle, from a slightly different point, just as the camera is capturing the hotel’s interior, overloaded with the ponderous decoration of the “other century”, from a slightly changed angle, just as is capturing views of a formal, usually deserted park with frozen sculptures .. And as a result of these repetitions, a moment comes when the viewer seems to dissolve in this incessant sound of the organ – so solemnly cold and so detached, adding to everything that happens some otherworldly note and making the heroes themselves – man and woman – look like forever frozen statues in the park.

And now, towards the end, the whole situation with unswerving impetuosity turns out at first to be something that is sometimes called “adultery”, and then, after a few moments, it is “irrigated” by the presence of a pistol, after which the quiet words of a woman lying on the bed in a white peignoir , trimmed with feathers, that she felt cold and therefore would not go to the evening performance, no longer seem so unambiguously coquettish and intended only for a quick meeting with her lover.

Posted on

Herbalife and others

In those days, representatives of network marketing were wandering around the streets of Moscow. The internal structure of such companies, reminiscent of the complicated hierarchy of the bee community, was built very competently: lower level employees a priori would have never risen to the upper echelons parasitizing on their “slaves”, but, at the same time, they had the stromgest incentives to earn something in the absence of a fixed part of the salary. That’s why, dressed in their finest suits, these active young people were walking along the streets of Moscow and used to rush to the gray-faced unsmiling residents, blocking their way. “Congratulations, you have won a prize!” they shouted to you right out of the gate.

And then one could see how it was going. Would you enter into a long and dangerous talk with them, or, shaking your string bag decisively, would demand giving way and would wander further with your boring things?

It was a quote from ” Flirting over a Cup of Coffee” (The Unbearable Longing of the Flesh Book 3) .

Posted on

The way my head works

I generally have a very complicated relationship with anecdotes. As you know, anecdotes and humor in general are based on an element of surprise. Usually I grasp the essence of the joke quite quickly, but then I begin doubting whether I understood correctly, and if that was really the case. These doubts corrode my brain – that’s why I am afraid of anecdotes in general.

It was a quote from ““Flirting over the Cup of Coffee” (The Unbearable Longing of the Flesh Book 3). You may buy the book here on amazon:

Posted on

Happy New Year!

The main thing in the new year celebration does not consist of something like digesting homemade food to the Kremlin chimes and listening to Putin’s TV speech, and is not in the subsequent looking at amateur performances on TV.

No, the celebration of the new year consists of precisely in this exhausting walking in a crowd, in the desire to discern a real treasure among the many ridiculous things, which you will then lovingly send to the shopping basket. This optional trinket is the quintessence of the new year… The main thing is not to forget, after the end of the New Year’s fever, to hide it somewhere far away, otherwise you will inadvertently shudder at its absurdity …
New Year’s utensils are stylized to resemble an old luxurious life, when a poor girl, shivering from the cold, admired the sparkling showcase with delight … Or, at worst, goods from the New Year’s stalls parody the reality of American films, where the ribbon of a gift box falls down under the song of Merry Christmas and under reasoning about the family character of the Christmas celebration, tender cheeks are filled with blush and the young charming woman waves her hands with delight….(Or maybe, as in the famous story of O. Henry, she is finding there in a gift box a comb for her newly cut hair.)

Rebecca Popova New Year post card
Posted on

And love, and happiness, and life

The ways in which the reader sometimes finds his book are truly amazing.
I was trying to remember the name of a completely different novel – actually, I intended to find The Kill Artist by Daniel Silva, but I forgot the author’s last name, and the search on the keywords “book” – “Venice” – “killer” unespectedly gave me “Death in Venice” by Thomas Mann, which I preferred to read instead of the book I was looking for initially.

Frankly I did not quite manage to grasp my emotions of Thomas Mann’s prose. On the one hand, everything he writes seems to be quite obvious, well-known and often met. But he expresses it so confidently and skillfully, adding to this a certain amount of quite modern details – well, in fact, what means the last hundred years on the scale of human self-knowledge! – and arranges his thoughts and extremely precise descriptions in such a way that the resulting whole text canvas looks quite convincing to the taste of the sophisticated modern reader.

Thomas Mann, exquisitely as a true master of the word, examined the mechanism of a love feeling, when some force makes a lover want to be near and strive to please the person he loved.  A writer by the name of Aschenbach is confronted with love in its pure undiluted form and in amazement tries to comprehend it. The object of love is a surprisingly handsome boy who does not possess intellectual dignity, at the same time the subject of love – Ashenbach – is an educated refined person prone to introspection.
In this state of love intoxication, Ashenbach becomes especially susceptible to arts that would have seemed vulgar to him before.

Beauty wounds Ashenbach like the arrows of Cupid. And then, unconsciously dreaming of possible reciprocity, Ashenbach is forced to think how outwardly attractive he himself looks to other people. He goes up to his hotel room and looks in the mirror … Indeed, people appreciated and extolled him as a master in literature, but will that be convincing in the boy’s eyes? Since the face that looks at him from the mirror is terrifying from an aesthetic point of view.

While polemicizing to himself with Plato’s theses, Ashenbach admits with bitterness and amazement that poets are lustful in their desire to possess beauty.
Under the influence of love intoxication, the hero’s value system changes. What seemed important before – comfort, the desire to write – suddenly became secondary.
The very scheme of love in the novel is reduced to the extraordinary power of beauty and naturalness over the intellect. As a result, the force of attraction of the intellect to beauty turns out to be destructive, and the intellect literally sacrifices itself for the sake of beauty .