Русское зазеркалье (двуязычная версия)

Я едва удержалась от вопроса, что же ему мешает. Вместо этого, правда, миролюбиво пояснила, что совсем не ставлю своей задачей непременно дойти до Тэйт Модерн. Просто хочу гулять по Лондону и радоваться хорошей погоде. Если устанем — найдём по дороге кафе. А галерея современного искусства — да гори она синим пламенем! Что я там не видела, в конце концов! («Никаких я ваших стихов не читал! Ну, что ж тут такого, как будто я других не читал?» — как сказал об этом Мастер Ивану Бездомному; но цитату из Булгакова переводить и пояснять я не стала.) Патрик выслушал всё это со смесью недоверия и восхищения: в его голове, похоже, не укладывалось, как можно поставить цель и не достичь её, верней, как можно что-то делать просто так, получая удовольствие от процесса, а не от результата. В ответ он пробормотал, что, мол, творческие люди имеют право на свои чудачества, и чем больше их талант, тем больше эксцентричность. Эх, почему молодое поколение британцев всё больше смахивает на каких-то скучных немцев? Правда, кто их вообще разберёт, на кого они смахивают… После этой его реплики мы некоторое время шли молча.

— Shall we talk about art? — это он нарушил молчание.

Я не могла не улыбнуться:

— Please don’t feel like you must ask questions or entertain me, Patrick! I am comfortable as it is. But I certainly don’t mind talking about art or about whatever you like.

— You know, I have composed a list of questions before our conversation —

— Go ahead, — подбодрила я его.

— The trouble is that they seem to me rather stupid now when we talk face to face.

— Try one.

— ‘What makes a successful artist?’ Because, you know, music is what we are supposed to do after we leave the college.

— What makes an artist successful? I have not the slightest notion, Patrick dear!

— But—sorry for asking—do you see yourself as one?

— I have recently sold one of my paintings for £5000, and I was artistically active for three years selling my pictures—for smaller sums, to be honest—and occasionally giving drawing classes, but—

— So the answer is ‘yes.’

— The answer is ‘no,’ actually, or, rather, ‘I don’t know.’ I definitely am not the most talented painter of our time. My ambitions are in the realm of, erm, creative writing, if we must call them ambitions at all.

— Are you qualified for such writing? Sorry if it sounds rude. I mean, would the general artistic impulse be enough for me to start doing something else other than music after I leave the college?

— You mean whether I have received any formal training as an author at an educational institution of some sort. No, never. Artistic training might give you elementary skills, but it never teaches you anything beyond. It doesn’t do that. Instead of it, it tries to reconnect students with the previous artistic tradition.

— Which is sort of important, isn’t it?

— ‘Sort of,’ precisely, as long as you recreate this tradition or help maintain it with your own activity. Just bear in mind that the most important works rarely, if ever, have traditions to be fitted into. Language matters, and the creative language in which you can say what you want to say may not yet exist, so you will have to develop one. Or the tradition which provides you with the language may be essentially misused by your predecessors so that you will have to start anew all the same. But I guess you can only start if you are able to get in touch with ‘something beyond you’ rather than with any of the artistic traditions—a poor explanation, I know. It is very far from ‘expressing yourself,’ as people call it. It rather resembles a process of making essential self-existing thoughts and images visible by your mediation, of letting things slowly grow through you, for which you have to be humble and to make your own personality as little visible as possible.

(«Приятно иметь кого-то, кому не лень это всё выслушать, — мелькнула у меня мысль. — Только с таким слушателем и проговариваешь для себя все эти вещи, и сама их отчётливо понимаешь».)

— But they don’t pay for such things? You know, I can sound cleverer. I can say things like ‘the audience doesn’t give much attention to the unconventional forms of art, whose authors cannot count on sufficient financial support, can they?’ I just want to be short and clear.

— I see, and I like it.

— I knew you would… Do they?

— It depends—you may run into a rich connoisseur… Usually they don’t, obviously so. Which leaves you with a dilemma: to create meaningful works and to earn your living by something else—or to fabricate away products of little significance, pleasing the general taste, or perhaps to do both at once in turns.

— Which is kind of schizophrenic?

— Quite true. Art is not a very healthy occupation as it is, Patrick. At the art colleges, they invite their students to see art in general as the highest achievement of human race, as the fragrant essence of culture, as the very best that a free individual can produce.

— You mean to say that they tell lies?