[ Music ]
This is KZSU Stanford.
Welcome to entitled opinions.
My name is Robert Harrison and we're coming to you from the Stanford campus.
[ Music ]
Let me begin today with a declaration of principle or an article of faith,
which is also a statement of fact, namely that it's not about me, Robert Harrison.
It's not about my guests, it's not about Stanford.
My opinion is all about you, the listeners.
You, the listener, are the main interlocutor of these on-air conversations I conduct,
weekend and week out because if listening to a show is not worth an hour of your life,
entitled opinions falls into the void and gets lost in the general noise of our times.
I'm acutely aware that you cannot just hear these shows, you really have to listen to them.
That's why as host of this program, I am always listening to the listener.
I'm always listening to what you are hearing when my guests and I do the talking.
I may not be hearing your voice inside my head, but believe me, your presence as an interlocutor is palpable in here.
I can hear your attentive silence all around the studio and soak in my guests.
It's in that silence, in fact, that the words we speak on air resound.
Stay tuned, all you listeners. We have a very interesting show coming up because the silence I'm talking about takes on a voice today.
I have with me in the studio a special guest who, like you, is a listener of entitled opinions, the listener who came in from the cold.
[Music]
Again, if listening to one of our shows is not worth an hour of your life, in title opinions, may as well pack up and call it quits.
An hour of your life is a lot to ask. We live in our hours, even more than we live in our days.
As Emerson once put it, I quote, "to fill the hour and leave no crevice for repentance or an approval.
To finish the moment, find the journey's end in every step of the way to live the greatest number of good hours that is wisdom."
And that's what we try to do here to fill the hour and leave no crevice for repentance.
Today we're going to fill the hour in conversation with an individual who my metin person only yesterday.
His name is Alexander Bordeaux-Vique, like many of you listeners have done over the years. He wrote me an email a few months back expressing his appreciation for the show.
He told me something about the circumstances of his life and how he happened upon entitled opinions, and I thought it was all very interesting.
I heard from him again when he wrote to say that he would be passing through Stanford for a couple of days, and that he would like to drop by my office and say hello if I had the time.
He dropped by my office yesterday, we spoke for an hour, and here he is on entitled opinions. Sasha, welcome to the program.
Thank you so much. Silence must be heard, and I'm here to express my appreciation and tell you in person this time that I'm an addicted listener to the entitled opinions.
I have a group of friends around me, and we have different social and cultural strategies, and we all get together once in a while, and we will listen to your voice.
So, surreal now, not just to listen to your voice, but also see you here.
You must have heard some of the old ones too, because silence must be heard was our theme song until a few years ago.
Exactly.
So, the circumstances of our doing the show are a little bit unusual or unique, at least for me, because we have a number of things that we are going to cover.
But you also told me that you're particularly fond of this 19th century Russian writer, Lehr Montove, and we're going to talk about Lehr Montove later in the show.
First, I'd like to ask you to share with our listeners some details of your personal biography, starting with where you grew up and when.
All right. I was born in Western Ukraine, in a city just as big as San Francisco. It's called Lehr Follivu, Flembuk.
And I actually upon how you pronounce the name, I probably will be able to say, "U.S. Nessity" or "political affiliations" your religion.
The city was changing hands fairly often over the 8th century history. It's a beautiful city on UNESCO list of architectural monuments.
I was born there during the Soviet Union. I always was in my nori day wherever I lived and it started from my hometown. We were a Russian-speaking minority in Western Ukraine.
I think that feeling I carry with me through the rest of my life. I then grew up between Lehr Flembuk, however you want to pronounce it.
And the city of Odessa, on the Black Sea, beautiful city established by French in the 19th century. And also, Riga, the capital of Olatvia.
And I believe that these three cities had a major effect on what kind of person I became.
So you did your schooling in Western Ukraine?
Western Ukraine, correct?
It was still under the Soviet Union thing. Yesterday you were telling me something about the kind of scarcity that was the general rule in the Soviet Union at the time.
And it's hard sometimes from our present perspective to recall how recently this was the case. So can you give our listeners some sense of the reality of being a school boy in the Soviet system?
Well, it was probably happy years in retrospect all considered. But thinking back, it does.
I sometimes don't believe that was me. At the age of seven I was put in a uniform that was resembling the military way of dressing people.
Just like all the other kids, I walked to school and they were teaching us the subject that kids of that age would normally go through.
Except that there was always, there was always, as I realized later in my life, there was a strong machine of brainwashing. And the teachers themselves, they probably not realized that they were brainwashing kids because they were brainwashed before.
And that's how we lived through all these years. I will be talking about the Letterman to later on. And Letterman to have any other writer, Russian or otherwise, was always presented just from one perspective. It's us versus them, Soviets and how lucky and happy we are here and them, whomever happened to live abroad, how little they understand.
And whatever whomever was the main character in Letterman to have a case, it will be pejorian. He was always, so they were always presented as victims of a certain social and political economic society. And so it was always us versus them.
It was particularly close to the end of the Soviet Union. It became hard, not just with close, but with food as well. We could get my karoni bread and rice, but there was no butter, there was no sausage, there was no essentials really.
You would not even get bread or rice and you would just come to a store and you turn around and you go home. And that was how we lived. It was hard to differentiate yourself, not through the dress, naturally. It was hard to differentiate yourself through the haircut or anything else.
For kids at that time, we pretty much were set to get our young souls lost, if you will, or get equalized, so to say.
And to a very large extent that happened when we will talk about Letterman to use the word loss generation. And I think that term applies, for some extent, to my parents who barely see anything outside of their hometown.
And my generation, that till the age of 18, pretty much was robbed of childhood and had to go through that experience. There are some positive things in that as well. I noticed, for example, I now I don't need many clothes, I have a fairly simple life. I live in Munich now, in Germany, and there's no luxury involved.
And I don't need that. If I compare myself to how I grew up, in fact, I have the access of things.
Is it the case as you were telling me then that how many years did you not only go to school in the school uniform, but it was what you wore even outside of school?
Yeah, the last years was my parents just could not get any clothes. Not that they didn't have money, they even had some money, but it was impossible. The stores were empty, it was nowhere to buy it.
So one thing was for sure that you'll get the school uniform, so my parents would buy me two uniforms, and I would wear one to school and one outside of school. It was not that usual, but many people had that.
So when you went on to what we would call high school, then I gathered that people started to notice that you were a very intelligent student, right?
What happened? Can you tell us what happened at that point?
Yeah, when I was in the high school, I was approached by some people who stroked me as very intelligent, very sharp. Sometimes they spoke with a slight accent that I could not quite determine where they came from.
And they watched me, they spoke with me for a while. They suggested that it somehow related to my future military service because there was a compulsory military service in the country.
But then they started running some tests, checking on my intelligence, and they were checking on my cue and ability to speak.
I imagine ideological strength from their perspective, and eventually, I believe at the age of 16 or 17, they suggested that I devote my life to the Soviet intelligence.
Secret intelligence.
And they painted a very nice perspective from that gloomy Soviet life. They said I will go through rigorous training and education that I would be one of the most educated people in the country, speaking many foreign languages, eventually living abroad.
I remember from early days they were telling me that I should choose a few African countries that I should specifically look at and develop interest.
And eventually, when I became a bit older, they invited me to come to Moscow, and I was put into a special program where they trained people to later join the secret intelligence.
And I went through four years there.
And what was that like? What did you discover?
I discovered a lot. I discovered that whatever I heard in school was not correct or other, there were facts that they told us about, but the interpretation was completely different.
I got access to the archive materials, I got access to classified materials where I could read first and probably foremost the history, the Soviet history, which, as I understood at that time, was pretty much fabricated as it was taught in schools.
And that felt bad, I felt robbed really, and at the same time I felt privileged, I felt that I am gathering all this intelligence about our society, and it felt special to very large degree.
So the historical accounts in the archives were very different from those that were in the textbooks, is all.
And what did you learn about the history of the Soviet Union from the inside, from the secret classifieds?
I learned that it was not a happy country, as I thought it was, I learned that it was a totalitarian regime, and that people were dying not just in patriotic wars, but trying to be a part of the history of the country.
But rather, the same amount of people would die in concentration camps, and they were very smart, interesting individuals, writers, teachers, and military people as well, and that was shocking.
So you would read their interrogations, for example?
I personally didn't have a taste for the interrogation, I would read reports where the accounts of people's fates and how they held themselves in their prison cells were described.
And what was real in the indictment, what was fabricated, so that was something.
And then I also learned a lot about the West, because growing in the Soviet Union, I isolated from knowing anything about the West.
And so here we had access to all the foreign press, and we were taught by analysts who spent some time abroad, and they were painting,
painting, apparently from how I see it, now it was a fairly objective description of what the West and society is well like.
So, in your four years you undergo a disenchantment, and how do you go from the Secret Service to then you emigrate to the... well, you actually escaped?
I ran away. You ran away? I ran away. To the West.
I started realizing that I could not deliver what they wanted for me, not because I was not intelligence or intelligent or anything, but rather it was not my cup of tea.
I didn't believe in the system, I didn't believe that the methods that the agency was using were fair or that they could do them.
And then I actually became sympathetic to the Western way of living or brother. I became sympathetic to freedom.
And at that time there were revolutions in the Czech Republic, in Hungary, the wall fell down.
So, it became hard for the system to keep its soldiers in line, and I think I was one of those who fell off the line.
But the system had protections, and they immediately, when we agreed that it's not for me and I'm not for them, they sent me to exile of a sword.
They sent me to the Soviet military. And instead of going to the military, I forged some papers.
By that time I was trained to do a few things. So I forged papers and I legally crossed the border escaping to the Czech Republic first.
And that is where I tried to get to a university, to Charles University in Prague.
I couldn't, because it was expensive, I couldn't pay.
You didn't speak the Czech? I didn't speak Czech either.
And I was lucky to meet some interesting people, former dissidents, who were close to President Havel.
In fact, one of them was a personal secretary to President Havel.
Vladimir Hanzal and them.
And Havel wrote a letter to the dean saying, "The more educated Russians we have, the less is a chance of 1968 happening again referring to the Russian-Russia-
Russian-
and Czechoslovakia." And that's how I became a law student in Prague.
And that was my disengagement from the Soviet Union.
And then the Soviet Union collapsed and no one took interest in what happened to me, because the country had more serious issues to deal with.
And some run away was not on their agenda.
So did you complete a law degree at the Czech University?
Yes, I got a law degree from Charles University in Prague.
It was difficult, as you said, I didn't speak Czech initially, so I pretty much had to learn the language.
As I was studying law.
And then I tried to work for the UN.
They said that they don't need someone with my set of skills.
And I then got to Harvard Law School.
I received scholarship from them.
How did that work?
I just wrote an essay describing who I was and what I did in life.
And they found it interesting.
And did you speak English at the end of the year?
And at that time my spoke English as I do now.
So you go to Harvard and get a law degree.
You go to Harvard and international laws.
It's international laws.
Well, I mean, I specialized in my specialties,
what they call computer law.
And that is pretty international or internationalized set of rules that
applies to the internet and computer industry.
I'm admitted to a bar association in New York and in the Czech Republic.
And New York law is pretty much used for international work these days.
So to conclude a little bit with the biography,
you get the law degree from Harvard.
You go back to Europe.
And now you're working for Microsoft Word in Munich.
I work Germany.
In Munich from Microsoft, correct?
For Microsoft.
And this will be an odyssey that we've only covered.
Some of the basic facts.
I'm sure there are all sorts of fascinating things.
I have episodes within the chapters.
So before we move on to your passion of their month of,
and I'm not pronouncing them in the Russian accent, obviously.
You're doing this well.
Just at a curiosity, my curiosity, I haven't asked you this,
but how did you discover entitled opinions?
I was looking for Plato.
Plato.
Plato, right?
Plato.
I'm pronouncing it with Russian accent.
And I came to the podcast site, and I saw a podcast on Camille.
And we can speak later.
I see a lot of parallels between Leirmann-Tervand Camille's
characters.
And I, instead of listening to what I was looking for,
I started playing Camille, and I thought that was brilliant.
And I listened to that again.
And I wanted to listen to more things.
And I just went through the impressive list of topics that you
cover here.
And I just thought it's Kalondike.
I learned a lot.
I thought a lot.
It was everything I wanted, really.
I was a wrote to in my initial email.
I considered-- I started considering you as my teacher.
And it's a critic where you provoke my thinking by asking
questions and expressing entitled opinions.
And so I became addicted.
It's like, you know, whenever-- and it happens often,
I look to get some intellectual stimulus to my brain.
I tune on.
I develop certain culture around entitled opinions.
For example, cannot listen to it when I simultaneously do something.
That doesn't work for me.
It works for some other things that I can listen to.
But entitled opinions is like a ceremony in a way.
It comes late in the evening in Europe.
And it's more like time when you sit down and prepare yourself
to listening, something.
And when I know the subject ahead of time,
I do some research.
Some of the shows I listen with my friends.
I know someone wrote to-- you had this great show in medical
vocation.
And a friend of mine wrote to the Yogast.
And they were in touch.
I'm bringing up a 14-year kid, my niece.
And she also listened to some entitled opinions.
She didn't understood everything, but she particularly like the
Americans in Paris part after watching Woody Allen's.
She makes films, so she's trying to.
So she liked that French connection.
Well, that's great.
That's-- and in your email, you said that it--
listening to entitled opinions under those circumstances.
Because I guess if it posts late at night or in the early AM hours,
you either are listening to it live stream or you're right away.
But that it reminded you of earlier in your life when in the
Soviet Union, you would wait up till two in the morning because
there was one rock-- the only time you could listen to rock music
was a show at two AM.
Yeah, there was a show at two AM that talked about--
it was rock or other underground music.
I don't know somehow that person managed to deliver that show.
And there was no podcast you had to listen to that life.
And I would put an alarm clock for two o'clock,
and I would wake up.
And for an hour, I would listen to that music.
And it was very monocentric because that time that was the
that same feed that I needed for myself for my development.
And I felt that when I discovered the entitled opinions,
I was on a similar stage of my life when I needed something
that I could not get elsewhere.
And the circumstances are better this time.
But I was in the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle.
And I had to say, "Oh, I'm from the middle of the middle of the middle."
And I was like, "Oh, I'm from the middle of the middle of the middle."
Thank you.
Going through the kind of background search
that other people would probably do.
So last question about the rock, because I believe that
this was Russian rock music that showed.
Yeah, mainly for the use in theaters.
Yes, what was the capital of Russian rock at the time?
Right.
As we were walking to the studio,
you were telling me a little story about the importance
that Pink Floyd had in your moment of Christ's existential decision
in Christ's.
Can you just say a word about that?
And then we go on to a little bit.
It was in January '89, I believe.
I was walking around Moscow as very cold, very dark.
There were no street lights.
Right next to the Moscow University.
And I was lost.
I didn't know what to do with my life.
I certainly felt that I did not want to do what those people
who have identified me the years early
I wanted me to do.
And I also was afraid.
I didn't know where I will land.
So I was walking around listening to Adam Hads' mother.
And I remember coming to a tree.
Night time, right?
That was night time.
Yeah, I came to a tree in the park.
And I just held a tree, hugged the tree.
And I tried to get strength.
And miraculously, that happened within a few minutes.
And I started believing in myself.
And I pretty much convinced myself that I can do whatever
I want.
And if I wanted to be out, I should find the way to be out.
And that being Floyd music went deep into my head.
And so now I cannot listen to that without remembering
those days.
And at the same time, I take courage and strength
from those tunes.
That's great.
Yeah.
And you obviously heard there are Pink Floyd show.
I love it.
Yeah.
I'm going to do it.
Terrific.
So Sasha, you wrote to me when you set the email that you're
coming through Stanford.
You suggested it one day you should really
do a show on that month of and the connection with Kamir
because I find him very bad.
And I have to confess that that month of is a name that I know.
He's obviously a big name in Russian literature.
But I have not really read him.
And I thought that it would be interesting to do that.
But then I figured, why not have you share your ideas
about why he's such an important writer for you?
So I'm not going to assume that our listeners know more
about later month of than I did before yesterday
or the last few days, let's say.
Who was that month of?
And why is he such a great writer for you?
Little month of is probably one of the most undiscovered
writers, Russian writers, in the West.
And it's probably one of the most misinterpreted writers
in modern Russia just because of how he was taught in school.
He was, in terms of poetry, he is right next to Pushkin.
He is right behind Pushkin.
In fact, there are very few people from that generation
who stand out.
And in terms of writing, he was the founder of a literature
that many--
that I believe you and many of you listen
is probably associated with the Russian literature.
It's like Dostoyevsky Tolstoy.
He was a founder of psychological realism,
as they call it, where he would paint
a portrait of a person who was a fairly difficult character
and made you think the same way as Dostoyevsky's characters
make you think and wonder about life.
And so it is essentially, in my view,
hard to fully understand and appreciate Dostoyevsky
without knowing Leirmanntovin, particularly
the here of our times.
And interestingly, Camu--
and again, also, love that show about Camu--
interestingly, Camu, in the English edition of the fall,
he used an epigraph from Leirmanntov's introduction
to here of our times, where he said,
"A gentleman I'm not introducing here a character or a person.
I'm rather introducing a portrait of a generation,
or a lost generation of a sword."
And because I kind of consider myself
that part of that lost generation in the Soviet Union,
the character I see many features that I recognize in myself
and in my friends from those times.
So, Leirmanntov--
Yeah, let's talk about a little bit his life,
because he had a brief life, but it
was very agitated, and it was full of tensions with the sword
and the court note and the intelligence.
He was born in 1814, which was two years
after French, after Napoleon invaded Russia,
and was defeated there.
And then he was 11 years old when there
was an uprising of Russian officers against its are.
And right after the uprising, the repressions had started,
and a push can die as a part of those.
And the generation was depleted.
The generation of writers were depleted.
Leirmanntov was brought up in a aristocratic family.
His mother died when he was young.
His grandmother seems like she was a very strong and charismatic
character.
She took her grandson away from her father
from his father.
And when he was sick, she took him to Cocagian mountains,
I'll call it Cáfquez, as they pronounce it there.
And so Leirmanntov, since then, he fell in love with Cáfquez.
He loved the mountains.
He loved the people.
There are about 50 languages there.
He tried to study some of them.
He also otherwise lived in the region of Volga,
where at that time, many outlaws were sent
by the Tsaris to regime for their rebellious activity.
And he was exposed to these stories, to songs.
And I guess this years with his grandmother,
and his time in Cáfquez and then on Volga,
that's where he was built.
He was a very cultural, very well-educated
spoken English, French, German.
And he started writing fairly early when he was, I believe,
12 years old.
And went on, he died when he was 26 in 1941, I believe,
and 1841.
And he was-- the red two do-els that he
is known to participate in.
In the first one, it was with the son of a French ambassador,
and interestingly, he actually initiated the do-el.
But then he was shooting into the air,
which kind of added the insult to the son of the French
ambassador.
And the same happened when, in the second do-el in 1941,
when he was killed.
There was his old college military college friend,
whom he knew very well.
He spent one summer with his family,
was very much liked by the sisters of the other do-el
and ultimately, when they met,
the liermont also shooting the air, and the other person,
my thing, did not miss.
He hit him, and liermont died right there.
And liermont was a very-- he could be very abrasive,
and insulting.
And I was reading that he had actually mocked,
and teased this duelist who ended up killing him,
rather mercilessly and constantly, and almost left
a guy no choice.
But--
Right.
He-- I believe he cold him a mountaineer with the long pocket
knife.
And that's how the whirl had started.
So he was a great poet.
And as you said, comes right after Pushkin
in terms of the ranks of the--
Absolutely.
But the book that really fascinates you
is the one novel he wrote, a hero of our time.
I guess I identify with the last generation, a century later.
But what is it that vibrates about the book for you?
It's the same as we find Byron attractive.
It's-- you see how does the Evesque look
at both Byron and liermont of--
and I'm very sure that Pichorin in here of our time.
Pichorin is the main hero.
The main hero.
Right.
He is a prototype of liermont, a liermont of a associate himself
with Pichorin quite a bit.
So the Evesque thought that these were both Byron and liermont
of where intelligent, cultural, interesting people who
never found their place in this society.
And they found that the rules of this society are not for them
and the rules that they had created for themselves
were also not acceptable for this society.
And that was their drama.
And I think as a part of you, at the lessons,
you always feel that you need to understand
how you fit into this society and what are those rules.
And why, especially if you are idealistic,
and I sense a lot of idealism in the entitled opinions,
when you idealistic, you are attracted to those same idealistic
characters.
And then you recognize that that path didn't take them anywhere.
They ultimately got lost.
They got unrooted.
And they became dead before the actual physical death.
And that's a drama and tragedy, which you keep in mind
as you go along life and you constantly put a check on yourself
as to, am I going too far?
Am I, when I practice my idealism and my rules
that I try to follow?
Am I going too far and is it going to be dramatic?
And so this, I found that very interesting in my childhood
for different reasons, because at that time,
when you start understanding that your society doesn't make
sense, you feel rebellious.
That's your first reaction.
And you see this intelligent people you
want to be just as intelligent and maybe just as witty
when you speak.
Pitcheotin was very playful with women.
And as you grow up, you wonder what is all that about.
And so I was attracted to him initially for his how brave
he was, how he wrote his horse.
And it seemed like he only lived by his own rules,
like nothing else really applied to him.
And then at the middle of the book,
he starts asking himself what he lived for.
And again, everyone, every intelligent person,
has that question and tries to answer through the whole life.
And you find it dramatic when someone doesn't have the answer
and pretty much agrees that he had wasted his whole life.
And you think Lermontov was saying something about his own
disillusionment through that regard?
I think so.
I think Lermontov certainly felt that his life
went not in the direction where he would love it to go,
though it was not clear what he really wanted from life
other than participating in parties and do
the yelling and just mocking people.
And of course, Lermontov got a song they would say in front.
Exactly.
And he was the Russian version of that Movega
song.
And he was probably even more radical in how he lived his life.
Well, Sasha, let me ask you this question,
because you mentioned idealism as something that is in the
equation.
But in our little colloquy yesterday and the hour that we had
coffee together, you said that Russians tend to be cynical.
That is too close.
Deeply cynical and that you were saying that you can read
Dostoevsky or that Russians can--
they know that many of the characters that they're reading about
in someone like Dostoevsky, I guess, Lermontov,
they're just down the block or on the other side.
And too many of them.
Too many of them that never actually talk to those characters,
but they'll go home and read about them in the literature.
Can you say a little bit more about this paradox?
Yeah, it's--
I frankly don't know how to explain it.
I certainly can state it because it's so obvious.
Certainly Dostoevsky did not--
he did not invent it his characters.
He took them from the Russian street.
Those characters--
the cars have changed a little bit, other things, but people's
still remain.
And you cannot help but noticing them around.
And they're not particularly luring you on the country.
They make you want to run away.
But then Russians have this tradition of reading.
It's so deep.
It's--
I'm not sure how to explain it even,
but it's certainly different than it is in the West, I notice.
And so when you read, it's almost like you go on the journey.
And if you did not have a chance to go on the journey
anywhere, reading was your avenue to travel.
And so I guess seeing the things you don't want to see
or you don't like on the street, you come back
and you take the journey where you know you're not
going to be heard other than emotionally.
Whereas on the street, you never know what those Dostoevsky
characters are going to do to you next.
That's great.
It's very different.
Certainly in America, for example,
there is a percentage, a very small percentage
of a reading public.
And it's getting less and less.
It's not a--
I don't know what the percentages are,
but it's a segment.
It's a part.
I gather that in Russia reading, it's a much more general
activity that it's part of being the citizen.
Many Russians just read.
And it's where the words matter.
Or at least it still did matter.
When Solzhenitsyn, I remember when he came to the West
after his exile, he said, I left a country where you could not
speak to come.
And we're not free to say what you wanted to say.
And I've come now to a place where you can say anything
that you want to say, but nothing matters.
Whatever you say is absolutely no consequence,
because speaking about America, there are the words
of writers don't have consequences.
So tragic paradox and irony.
Yeah, absolutely.
So in Lehrmachtov, would he fit into--
you said that he--
Doseriski is not possible without a Lehrmachtov behind him.
Is it because he gave life to a segment of society that
did not have official rights of citizenship
in the Republic of Letters, as such?
I think what Lehrmachtov did was he took Byron
and he developed that concept of rominitism.
And he just died when he was translating the romantic ideas
from Byron's epoke into Russian reality.
And what he did was he must--
massively describe those people.
And for Doseriski, it was easier than to take those characters
and take the rominitism out and just stay
on this psychological realism, describing the characters
that he wanted to describe.
And that is why I believe Lehrmachtov
has this unique position of being both romantic and realistic
the same at the same time.
Doseriski actually--
when Doseriski was, I believe, 12 years younger
in Lehrmachtov.
Doseriski's contemporaries were criticizing Lehrmachtov
for being too romantic.
Doseriski always defended him.
And he believed that Lehrmachtov was
right on the path of developing into a real Russian writer
who would leave the Byronism behind and would become more
of what Doseriski left later became.
Well, can I read to you from the translators forward of the translation
into English by Nabokov, who translated the hero of our time?
And it's a-- rather, I gather it's a controversial understanding--
It's interpretation.
--interpretation, yeah.
So he says he's asking what makes the everlasting charm of this book.
Why is it so interesting to read and reread?
And he says it's certainly not for its style.
Although curiously enough Russian school teachers used to see in it
the perfection of Russian prose,
this is a ridiculous opinion.
Nabokov was--
He would have been a good entitled "Defingions"
guess, I think, in the real sense.
So let me repeat that.
This is a ridiculous opinion voiced according to a memoirs
by Chekov and can only be held if and when a moral quality
or social virtue is confused with literary art.
And he goes on, et cetera.
So he dismisses style as the reason.
He says, but if we regard him as a storyteller,
and if we remember that Russian prose was still in her teens
and the man still in his middle 20s when he wrote,
then we do marvel indeed at the superb energy of the tale
and at the remarkable rhythm into which the paragraphs,
rather than the sentences, fall.
It is the agglomeration of otherwise insignificant words
that come to life.
Do you agree with him on this?
I disagree.
I actually find the style of writing very unique and interesting.
Also, the structure of the book is quite unusual
where you have five chapters not necessarily
connected to one to another.
And in essence, it's written the same way as Paul Pthiction
or before the reign of Macedonian film
where the sequence is confusing.
It's written that same way.
And I think we find that style fairly appealing.
I find it very appealing because it makes me wonder a bit
more.
It's like bit-hovin's music where you don't know,
or just the coverage music, where you don't know what
to expect next, and that's how it comes.
And so I disagree with Nabokah about the style.
I find the style very appealing.
And the diary part is also very interesting.
And it's the same.
We spoke about Camuabit.
It's like Clemongz is talking about himself
as if he were writing a diary in a way.
And so here at Pthiction's diary is being shown.
And it's very personal.
It's very honest.
And this paradox of how cynical the man
was when he was surrounded by other people
when he was in the society and how honest he was with himself
as his super ego would just kick in immediately
when he was alone and was reflecting on his own life
very honestly.
I find that quite unique actually.
And maybe-- I don't know, maybe Nabokah missed that part.
Well, it could be.
It wouldn't be the first time.
In terms of the correlations between Camuabit's the fall
and the character, Clemongz, and--
Patrude and Patrude.
In Camuiz case, it's a judge.
And as you say, it's a monologue.
It's kind of like a memoir.
And he is brilliantly walking that line between bad faith
or lying to himself and to his interlocutor, which
is the reader.
And at the same time, doing a confession.
Right.
Of a certain kind of self-deception or bad faith--
And being regretful too.
You're being regretful.
And that there's some sense that through his own damning
self-portrait, he's also damning, I believe,
a number of the intellectuals of the time.
Camuiz fellow colleagues in some cases.
And do you see in pitch-owning a similar sort of irony
being projected onto the society that
the amount of belong to, especially the apparition
laws, because--
Absolutely.
He's description of the story takes place in Kafka's
in a small town where people either rest
from the nearby war action or they come to drink
this mineral waters.
And so he mocks the mineral water drinkers
and they'll promenade culture and the parties
that he was missing.
And then he also mocks the military a bit as well.
When his counterpart, Bechorne's counterpart
in the story Guisinski, who actually has many parallels
with Martina of the killer of Learmont of--
in fact, one of the interpretations
is that Martina of God so angry,
recognizing himself in Guisnevsky, or in Guisnevsky
that he wanted to finish that walking.
So there was a lot--
there was a lot of Learmont's reflection of the society.
And he was a very unhappy young man.
He was remote.
He did not like the society.
He was not valuing it as much.
And he didn't respect it.
And so you can pretty much see those same threats--
character threats in Bechorne.
So when it comes to the duel that he
fights as a second duel, you believe
to a certain degree that he might have been ready for this death.
And that he had attempted suicide
previous to that or--
No, no.
He didn't attempt suicide.
But one could argue that going for this duels
and shooting in the air was a form of suicide.
Again, if you think of Camille and his paradox of absurd,
how Camille reflects on every human being
with some intelligence should think about suicide,
but then should rule it out and should die from someone else
hand or a naturally.
So in a way, that's what Learmont of did.
He was ready to die.
He was 26.
He was not clear where his life was going.
He did everything he wanted to do.
He probably could develop as a writer, except that in a gym
Morrison's way, he came to the wall.
And he was ready to go.
And so he came to this duel.
They didn't bring any doctor.
They didn't bring, apparently, no ways
to get back if a person is wounded
because everyone thought that they will make peace right there.
Learmont of refuse to make peace.
He shoot in the air.
They were standing just 15 feet from each other.
It was hard to miss.
And by that time, Martina probably was as upset as he could
have and he just killed him.
There were speculations and the Soviet scholars
like to maintain that.
That, in fact, it was the Tsar's way of bringing Learmont
to his death.
I don't think modern scholars agree with that.
I think there are no indications that there was the Tsar
seem to be happy with that development.
In fact, Martina was not sentenced to almost anything serious.
And he walked out fairly free from that.
But it seems that Learmont of pretty much
ridiculed him and was ready to deal with that.
Well, it could be that if he was a bironic figure
that you had to die young, if you want to assure your immortality
as a legend.
And as you mentioned, he went like Jim Morrison,
he hits up against a wall.
But in that moment of existential darkness and confusion
where he didn't know where his life was going
and complete disorientation, I was thinking
that it's a big pity that he didn't have pink Floyd
to listen to.
Or anything else or that matters?
I think it might have that sort because it might have made
a difference.
And we could have had a lot more books by what
I take to be a great writer in.
Who could have been.
And he seemed awfully lonely.
And pink Floyd is a great way to emphasize
how the outside sources can bring strength.
Well, that's great.
So I want to remind our listeners
that you've been listening to entitled opinions.
And we have a guest here, a special guest
who is visiting us from Munich, although he's originally
from the Western Ukraine.
And you've heard pretty fascinating biography.
Alexander Borovik.
Thank you, Sasha, for coming on to entitled opinions.
And I'm going to leave us with a pink Floyd song
from the wall.
And you have a good trip home.
Thanks, Your Albert.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
That is long across the ocean.
I'm leaving just steam and more rain.
The snapshot in the family album.
Hey, what else did you leave for me?
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Daddy, what you're leaving I'm on me?
All hell was just a break in the wall.
All hell had only worked.
They'll just break in the wall.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[BLANK_AUDIO]