Русское зазеркалье (двуязычная версия)

Кэролайн хотела что-то возразить, но вдруг покраснела и ничего не сказала. А я глупейшим образом подумала, что, будь я настоящей британкой, с высокой вероятностью посчитала бы эту человеческую симпатию признаком однополого влечения; что она сейчас испугалась, будто именно так я и могла посчитать; что у меня не хватит такта и ума её в этом разуверить.

Я решила сказать нечто более простое: что очень благодарна ей, и уже начала:

— Послушайте, Кэролайн, я так глубоко вам…

— Стоп, — перебила она меня и, вскочив с места, замотала головой из стороны в сторону. — Не нужно — не стоит благодарности — ерунда всё! Мне нужно идти, чтобы не пропустить другие пары сегодня. Пошлю Патрику смс, что у вас всё норм. До встречи!

Глава 9

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Today’s lecture concludes our course on Russian non-classical music of the late twentieth century. Nothing can be more appropriate than to devote it to Victor Tsoi who was a Soviet singer and songwriter, one of the pioneers of Russian rock, its last hero—and literally a cultic figure in the musical landscape of Russia. (In modern discourse, ‘literally’ often means ‘figuratively’—not this time, though, considering that Tsoi’s fans quickly developed a sort of worship for him that took the form of religious veneration.)

Tsoi was born in 1962 in Leningrad from a native Korean and a Russian mother. He started writing his songs as a teenager. He was a member of several rock bands before he and Alexei Rybin co-founded the band Kino. The band began recording its debut album in the spring of 1982. Its 6th album Blood Type, released in 1987, became a tremendous success. It made Tsoi a hero among Soviet youth and his band the most popular band ever. Over the following years, Tsoi appeared in two successful movies. He travelled to the United States to promote his films at festivals. He also went on tour in 1988–1989 to Italy, France, and Denmark. His 1990 concert at Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium was able to attract 62,000 fans. Tsoi died several months after in a car collision at the age of 28.

This is probably as much as needs to be said about Victor Tsoi’s life and career. (You still can follow the links to further reading on Tsoi’s biography that I sent you before.) The information about the artist that you will find anywhere on the web might make you think that he was just another rock star, just another pop idol of the younger demographics. Victor Tsoi was all that, but, strangely enough, this fact contributes literally nothing to our understanding of his phenomenon. All in all, external details of Tsoi’s life recorded by his biographers may be very misleading. Those who describe Tsoi as an ‘idol’ of the Soviet youth—which he of course was—forget to mention that he didn’t benefit much from his cultic status until a few years before his death: in fact, the artist lived a humble, a poor life, working and living in a boiler room of the apartment building, being completely satisfied with this very mundane job. (Can you imagine Justin Timberlake or John Lehnon working at a boiler plant? Why, or why not?) Those who remember his foreign tours tend to ignore his very sober view on his European audience and his refusal to be pleased or flattered by the fact that he was well received by someone whom many of his compatriots foolishly regarded as a ‘better sort’ of people. (In this sense, Tsoi always remained a vigorous supporter of Russia.) Those who see Tsoi almost as a political activist—due to his famous single ‘I Want Changes,’ for instance—seem to have never read his interview in which the musician clearly stated that it was spiritual, not political changes he was longing for. Those who portray him as an uneducated plebeian expelled from the Serov Art School for poor performance (which is a true fact of his biography) forget his reading of Plato’s philosophical texts while waiting for the beginning of a rehearsal. And so on it goes.