Why Vasily Shukshin is a unique phenomenon in world culture

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Peasant son

The boots, most likely, were still not tarpaulin, but yuft boots, officers' - wearing kirzach boots around the village is one thing, in Moscow, going to college is another. But the public, who packed the corridors of VGIK to overflowing in the summer of 1954, were unfamiliar with such subtleties - in any case, among them, one hundred percent urban, and for the most part, belonging to different layers of the Soviet elite, this guy was the only one: in a tunic, riding breeches and boots. From Altai. It seems to be the son of a party worker (otherwise how did he end up here at all, what is he counting on?). Shukshin.

Vasily Shukshin was not the son of a party worker, but of a repressed one, and in his decision to act "for the director" there was only impudence. However, it is possible that the director of a rural school, who defies his costume (at the age of 25, without higher education, and, in general, without secondary education, he received a certificate of maturity as an external student) came up with quite deliberately: in a civil suit bought especially for admission, he is nothing would stand out from the crowd, unless - the inability to wear it. It's a different matter - a jacket and boots, you will not soon forget this.

He turned out to be right, as he did many times later, choosing moves that were unexpected to the point of insolence - in life and in art. In any case, Mikhail Romm was so fascinated by the Altai savage who did not read Anna Karenina because she was “fat,” and who promised, however, if necessary, to do it in a day (in other versions of the story “War and Peace” appears) that he took him at VGIK without talking. Soldier's boots stuck to Shukshin tightly, and years later, in the preface to Shukshin's five-volume edition, Sergei Zalygin carved out of these boots the entire ontology of Shukshin the artist, a man for whom "from the plow" is not a mockery, but the very essence. In general, Zalygin quite accurately captured the unique status of his fellow countryman: there were many village writers (mostly - although not always - of rural origin) in Russia. The village director is one.

The fact that Shukshin would be cramped even within the framework of such an excessively universal craft as filmmaking became clear immediately. Already in the third year - the first main role, in the same 1958 - the first story. For any peasant, possession of several professions is the norm, and Shukshin in this sense was a real peasant.

Difficulties of the transition

The question of the comparability of his diverse talents has always arisen in one way or another. There are two opposite points of view, one of which claims that Shukshin the writer, Shukshin the actor and Shukshin the director are absolutely equal. Another insists on the immortality of only the literary heritage, considering Shukshin's films only part of the history of cinema.

The radicalism of both positions does not allow them to be analyzed more or less seriously. And it’s not worth it. Of real interest is the very fact of Shukshin's organic existence in three different professions - regardless of quality indicators. And this, of course, is a completely unique thing. And not only on a national scale.

Of course, the compilation "actor + director" is a completely ordinary phenomenon. Many directors write books, including fiction and in earnest. Professional writers sometimes sit in a chair with their own surname on the back (Stephen King did this once, Yevtushenko twice). But no matter how much we rummage in our memory in search of a great artist, whose time would be evenly distributed between the writing table and the set, except for Shukshin, only Ryu Murakami comes to mind (who, however, is still mostly known as a writer, and stopped making films more than 20 years ago). The authors of encyclopedic articles about Shukshin can only envy: the definitions "writer", "director", "actor" in the case of Shukshin can be put in any order without fear of provoking the anger of readers.

How the word will respond

Soviet literature, in which the author was paid depending on the number of printed pages in the work (adjusted for titles, of course), was not very lucky with short stories. Small forms remained the lot of either novice authors, or, conversely, literary generals who had long ago solved their financial issues, or the great Yuri Kazakov, who did not write novels in principle.

Shukshin, of course, wrote novels, moreover, he considered the book about Razin "I have come to give you freedom", probably, his main work. But nevertheless, it was in the stories that Shukshin did not get tired of doing all his life that his writing gift, sparse in imagination, but generous in details, received that very Razin's will - in a narrow volume it turned out to be amazingly easier for him.

The word "story" for Shukshin's short stories is not just a genre definition, but an ideally accurate description. At the heart of any of them is not just a narrative, but an extremely specific, and often real story. And if the best stories of the same Kazakov bear names bright, hysterical, such as not to forget forever - "In a dream you cried bitterly", "Candle", "Crying and crying", then in Shukshin these are "Strong man", "Resentment "," Cut off "," Lida has arrived "," My son-in-law stole a car of firewood "," How the old man died "," An incident in a restaurant "," How Andrei Ivanovich Kurinkov, a jeweler, received 15 days. " This is how the anecdotes could be called, if the anecdotes had names. Kazakov's novellas, for all their undoubted greatness, cannot be imagined in the form of a table conversation or chatter on the blockade. Shukshin's stories exist only in this form.

The world of his heroes - all these krasnova singers, Yermolaev's sashki, Vladimir-semyonichs "from the soft section", genki-prodisvet, malacholnye, freaks, brothers-in-law, brother-in-law and brother-in-law - cannot be described even in terms like "realism". Realism is still about the reflection of reality in art. Here, at first glance, there is no art at all - Shukshin seems to be only capturing life itself with the dispassion of a photo reporter, and only after turning the last page, you begin to choke on the understanding that you just, literally a minute ago, were just there, side by side with these people.

Vysotsky, who wrote the most convincing poetic eulogy to Shukshin, created in him the image of a high-cheeked rebel, stubbornly swimming against the flow of life. This, of course, is an exaggeration and confusion between the author and his heroes. Outwardly, Shukshin was a successful and systemic person by Soviet standards. A convinced communist who joined the party even before the thaw and wrote - not in Pravda, but in his work diary: “Every phenomenon begins to be studied from history. Background is history. Three dimensions: past - present - future - the Marxist way of studying social life. " Minor of state recognition: at the age of 38, in the seventh year of his professional life - the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, a little later - the State Prize, the title of Honored Art Worker. A favorite of the film distribution: the debut film "Your Son and Brother" was released on the screens with a record circulation for 1964 - 1,164 copies (and later no film less than a grandmaster of 1 thousand copies did not receive).

And yet he was strikingly free, that strange freedom that is usually called "internal", while implying an external resignation to the circumstances. It was not so with Shukshin: he did not adjust to the circumstances, he built them for himself, thoroughly, albeit hastily, as if realizing that he might not be in time. The volume of his legacy is amazing, considering that, even counting from the graduation film, Shukshin's entire creative life fit into less than a decade and a half. Two big novels, three stories, three plays, more than 120 stories, five films, two dozen film roles (not counting those in their own films).

He died on the set, and it turned out, for all the blatant untimeliness, in a very Shukshin style: a peasant cannot but work, even if this peasant is a writer and director.