"Parnassus on end": How was the fate of "literary hooligans" and the first Soviet book of literary parodies

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

The famous Parnassus standing on end! 92 years ago, these witty and funny parodies were published, the authors of which managed not only to accurately capture, but also expressively reproduce the features of the literary style and manner of writers from different countries and eras. "Goats", "Dogs" and "Veverleys" immediately after their release in 1925 won the readers' love. Mayakovsky, to whom "Parnas" (where, by the way, there were parodies of himself) fell into the hands in Kharkov, said: "Well done Kharkovites! It's not a shame to take such a little book to Moscow with you! " It was with this book that the history of Soviet literary parody began.

Why do people laugh? The king from Eugene Schwartz's book "smiles graciously" when the merchant Friedrichsen in the jester's story fell on an old woman, and she crushed the cat, the British lady from the textbook laughs at the play on words "from what country", the mathematician - at the root of evil, equal to 25, 8069 (root of 666), etc. Laughter is not just an expression of emotion, but a socialization and contagious way of communicating with others like you. The book in question is funny to reading people. In 1925, in Kharkov, Parnas stood on end, the subtitle read: A. Blok, A. Bely, V. Hoffman, I. Severyanin … and many others about: goats, dogs and weverleys. " And then there were 37 texts.

What is this book? Show, not tell, is the best teaching strategy

The authors were not indicated, but already on the second edition strange initials appear: E. S. P., A. G. R., A. M. F. The idea of the book is twofold, scientific and fun. To distinguish form and content, one can assume how famous writers and poets would write on three themes: “The priest had a dog”, “Once upon a time there was a gray goat with my grandmother” and “Weverley went to swim”.

Shakespeare's Sonnets “It is better to be a sinner than to be reputed to be a sinner. Vain is worse than reproof "are easily reborn into" Yes, I killed. Otherwise I could not. But don't call me a killer in a cassock I loved the bulldog wholeheartedly … "and ends with" Your tomb is my sonnet. This is how Marshak will convey Me in Russian."

With the light hand of stylists, the green body and hair of the gypsy, sung by Federico Garcia Lorca, turn into the green voice of "an old woman, into a goat in love." Gumilevian giraffe from Lake Chad - in the Irish setter. The voice of Marshak, no longer a translator, but a children's writer, continues: “Once upon a time there was a grandmother, And how old was she? And she was ninety-four years old."

Literary Hooligans: Who Are They?

The book was a resounding success, until 1927 it was reprinted four times. Mayakovsky, whose parodies ("and to me, goats, those who have been offended are most dear and close …") were also there, he approved the texts and took a small collection to Moscow. And in our time, the State Museum of Mayakovsky holds literary evenings of "dogs" and "goats" - a literary stylization of the Soviet era.

However, until 1989 "Parnas" was not reissued (possibly due to the fact that it contained parodies of Gumilyov, Vertinsky and Mandelstam, perhaps because of the biographical details of the authors), and the real names of the authors were unknown to the public. The circulation has long been sold out, the book has become a rarity. And only forty years later, before the then failed second edition, at the same time in Kharkov and St. Petersburg, two authors spoke about literary imitations and about their project. Who turned out to be the impudent ones who encroached on the sacred?

Very young, E. S. P., A. G. R. and A. M. F. met in Kharkov: all of them were then graduate students at the Academy of Theoretical Knowledge (now - V. N. Karazin Kharkov National University).

E. S. P. - Esther Solomonovna Papernaya (1900-1987). "Where have you gone, my gray, my goat?" - this is her Vertinsky. The children's writer, poetess and translator, who introduced the Soviet kids to "The famous duckling Tim" Enid Blyton, was the editor of the magazine "Chizh" and the Leningrad branch of "Detgiz" - Children's State Publishing House. According to the stories of a contemporary, she was a sparkling humorist, loved to play music and knew several thousand songs "in all languages of the world." Arrested in 1937 in the "Detgiz case", accused of sabotage (in fact, Papernaya is credited with writing a certain anecdote about Stalin). D. Kharms, N. Oleinikov, G. Belykh, N. Zabolotsky, T. Gabbe and many others were involved in the same case. E. S. P. spent 17 years in the camps, continued to write poetry even there (this part of the literary archive can be found in the book by E. Lipshitz "Genealogy"), survived, and after the death of Stalin and her own rehabilitation returned to Leningrad.

A. G. R. - Alexander Grigorievich Rosenberg (1897-1965), who glorified after Nekrasov the village of Pustogolodno and the defrocked priest, did not live to see the authorship being made public. He was a connoisseur of French literature and worked first as an assistant professor, then as the head of the department of foreign literature at the same university, which all the "Parnassians" graduated from. A man of broad scientific interests, a brilliant lecturer, he wrote about folk songs, Shevchenko's rhythm, the city of Kitezh, and the philosophy of Potebnya. A colleague, literary critic L. G. Frizman, writes that Rosenberg's doctoral dissertation "The Doctrine of French Classicism" was buried by the struggle against the "cosmopolitans" and remained unprotected.

A. M. F. - Alexander Moiseevich Finkel (1899-1968) - professor of the same Kharkov University, literary critic and translator.

Photo from the book of students "25 entrance" (compiled by M. Kaganov, V. Kontorovich, L. G. Frizman)

A stern, slightly grasping lecturer who for twenty years read to philologists "Introduction to Linguistics" and "Historical Grammar of the Russian Language", co-author of the famous "Finkel Grammar" - a classic university textbook "Modern Russian Literary Language", as well as the author of a huge number of books and articles (there were more than 150 published only). A pioneer in many issues of grammar, lexicology and phraseology of the Russian and Ukrainian languages. A major theorist and practitioner of translation, he carried out a complete translation of Shakespeare's sonnets, the fourth in the history of Russian Shakespeare. A workaholic scientist who consistently wrote two doctoral dissertations: the first had to be destroyed after the Stalinist criticism of the ideas of academician N. Ya. Marr, on which the work was based. How could such a person be a humorist? Of course, yes!

A. M. F. this is how he described the beginning of what the Parnassians called scientific fun: “… We were not and did not want to be parodists, we were stylists, and even with a cognitive attitude. The fact that all this is funny and amusing is, so to speak, a side effect (so at least it seemed to us). However, the effect turned out to be more important than our seriousness and completely supplanted it for publishers and readers."

"Parnas" was reissued only in 1989, when none of the authors was already alive. The collection almost doubled: new works were transferred from the archive by A. M. Finkel's widow, Anna Pavlovna.

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To be continued?

The boom of new stylizations continued and continues to this day. Finkel's "and again the bard will lay down someone else's song and, as his own, will pronounce it" echoes in the texts of Viktor Rubanovich (1993) - not only about the goats, but also about Nessie. Tatiana Bleicher (1996), in the voice of Cicero at the trial, picks up: "Carthage must be destroyed, the Goat must be eaten - this is indisputable, but the Roman people, who are all goats, demand justice, and democracy must triumph, at any cost." Mikhail Bolduman calls his collection of 2006 "Parnassus on end-2". And, I think, this is not the final.