Chingiz Guseynov on the Caucasus and literature

See previous interview in the series here:http://www.google.ru/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBcQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fvestnikkavkaza.net%2Finterviews%2Fculture%2F8103.html&ei=z5dTTbanBsWDOsGouPoI&usg=AFQjCNH8BCEUR_AOcbTWsDZ-j-31JpOZ4w

VK: You were born in the Caucasus, to be more precise, in Baku, you are Russian due to your many-years residency in Moscow, or a Muscovite. What would you wish Russia as a native of Baku and how, as a Muscovite, would you wish natives of the Caucasus?

Chingiz Guseynov: I continuously thought about this while working on an autobiographical prose work called "Past – Towards", which was released last year. I owe Moscow a lot. Moscow, having enriched me with Russian and other peoples' cultures, has turned – here I am an exception to the rules – to my language, persistently returning me to my Azerbaijani roots, to my culture and language, while developing a Russian aspect through language. For decades a mysterious Baku-Moscow, or Azerbaijani-Russian art nouveau cloth has been woven inside of me. It is an ornament of so-called style and thought. So I would like to see Russia integrated and solid. It is possible, armed with historical thinking, to pursue a balanced, tactful and sensible national policy, and the Russian Caucasus as a full region of the federation. It is also necessary that in Russia should be born, cultivated and brought up by means of free and democratic elective competitiveness on all the levels in an empirical, practical, but not nominal way, persons, political figures, worthy of the great country. I realize, that my words are lyrical, but how can I express these sore, long-awaited and dreamt of things otherwise?

 

VK: What is the Word's power? 

Chingiz Guseynov: The question is worth a tetralogy. However, I'll try to express my opinion briefly.

To start with the essentials, the word is a great secret of mankind, a powerful means given to us by God, for us to know the worlds inside and around us. But, to continue the row of metaphors, the Satan keeps his eyes open. That's the reason why the words happen to be true and truthful, as well as false and deceitful. The first type of Words enriches, heals, endows people with virtue, and live with meaning, and the second type includes, for example, flattery, grovelling, falseness, hypocrisy, it dims and blinds.

The first type is stern. For example, Soviet authorities felt bodily fear of the Word. In 1920s those trying to tell the truth, were banished, from 1930s on they were put away, in 1950-1970s they were stigmatized and expelled from the country (B.Pasternak, A.Solzhenitsyn), some works were even arrested, I mean "Life and Fate" by V.Grossman). However, there is an exception: in superdespotic countries the master always has a private man of motley, the only one authorized to tell the truth, after all it is dangerous to ignore it completely, otherwise the ears will start growing, as eastern proverb says, because their growth is restricted only by hearing the truth, even if just occasionally.

Finally the experience always shows that such despotic regimes inevitably collapse, and it happened in our country, too. Here I'd like to somehow paradoxically notice that there is merely a semblance emerging at the present temporary level of science development that the Word has no weight, mass, colour, charge, etc. and that is why the truth and lies are nominal. However, actually false words' redundancy and lies do not only destroy the person's moral pivot, making him an unreasonable being, but also accumulates in the atmosphere as a dirt and abomination and stifles and smothers the truthful Word, meant to purify body and spirit of the earth and men.

The abomination steeps in the earth and gets into waters, does not only makes the nature men's enemy, but also makes the human mass aggressive, full of the destructive energy. This has distinctly showed in our so-called Eurasian space, such games of history (to be continued otherwhile).

VK: That is the role of literature in the modern world? How it has changed?

Chingiz Guseynov: Speaking about our Eurasian situation, I'd notice, aggravating the expression, that after the devastation period start, literature has changed its functions, which had been valuable through millennia: the situation damaged mostly such functions, as knowledge and research of life, prophecy, or view to the future, to put it in other words, social forecasting by means of bélles-léttres, and improvement of morals... However, I am glad, that in the environment of spiritual freedom, diversity of genres and styles of self-expression blossomed.

However, due to the collapse of functions and the criteria aesthetic importance judgement, which had been developed century by century, – I'll proceed to answering a next question:

VK: How to find a book really worth reading among the multitude of new books?

Chingiz Guseynov: In the luxuriant blossom of public relations, when profit is derived from everything, it is practically impossible even to publish a review free of charge. The stream, sometimes even influx of the so-called graphomania, without appeal or substance, healing or instructive power, that is why it became difficult to follow the new and significant works published. Awards give just a partly notion of work's literary virtues.

VK: What do you think of the Internet and e-books?

Chingiz Guseynov: It is the greatest invention of mankind, the infinite and bottomless as the Universe, space, whence it is possible to draw all riches accumulated centuries by centuries, and the new that appear.

VK: Are there any books every person must read? What books would you recommend to the person, who knows nothing about the literature of the Caucasus?

Chingiz Guseynov: The question is extensive. As of the literature of the Caucasus, I strongly recommend( however banal it may sound, it is quite up-to-date) – "Hadzhi-Murat" by Lev Tolstoy. I am convinced that very few people have read it, and those responsible for the national policy both the USSR and modern Russian Federation haven't read it at all. It is impossible to persuade me, and I became convinced in it even stronger recently, when I regretfully knew that in Pyatigorsk was erected an equestrian monument to general Yermolov,symbolizing Russian heroism in the war of 1812 in Russia, but who acted and remained in memory of the peoples of the Caucasus as a symbol of imperial colonialist cruelty. If they only had read the book, they would have understood: it is impossible to talk to the Caucasus in terms of intimidation and bulling.. If they only had read, there wouldn't have been the two wars in the Chechen Republic. . If they only had read – the row is endless. Every time I tell in the similar cases: Tolstoy constantly saves the honour of Russian nation.

Interview by Anna Demchenko. Exclusive to VK