June 14 at the art space «Vzar» opened a poster version of the traveling exhibition "To Live or to write. Tales of Varlam Shalamov". The event was attended by the project leader, Associate Professor, School of Social Psychology of the Moscow State Psychological and Pedagogical University, PhD Sergey Solovyov.
Such exhibitions have passed in Minsk, Bieraście, Prague, Parma, Luxembourg, Berlin, Kiev, Moscow, St. Petersburg. Viciebsk exhibition was held thanks to the support of social and cultural organization "Viciebsk for me" art space «Vzar» Houses and literature in Berlin. It was in Berlin for the first time and it was exhibited in September last year.
It should be noted that the interest of German writers and readers to the work of Russian writer Varlam Shalamov is large enough. At the moment, Germany has published six volumes of his works, and translation work continues. And the thing is that the theme of memory in such countries as Germany, Italy, Spain is very popular.
His conversation with the audience Viciebsk Sergei Solovyov began to debunk the myth of Shalamov once known about the author of "Kolyma Tales". In this regard, he stressed the creativity of the writer is much wider in this series.
Developing the theme of memory, Sergei Solovyov told about his recent trip to the Kolyma. Nature almost swallowed the terrible evidence of Stalin's gulag. Now, on the ruins of the camp buildings, where the memory and forgetfulness are inseparable, growing willow-herb. The playback screen is black and white photography clearly conveys this fact of memory and forgetting. Through the Kolyma river is crossed by three bridges: a ramshackle wooden built camp prisoners before the war; recently closed a concrete bridge built in the fifties; and modern construction with asphalt, on which are carried at high speed machines. Machinery, owners and passengers who do not pay any attention to the evidence of suffering and agony of millions of people who passed through the camp of humiliation and destruction of the system.
In an essay Shalamov "Memory" has the following lines: "How to bring the law of disintegration? Resistance law decay? How to tell that the only religious people were relatively resistant group? What party members and people intelligent profession decompose before others? What was the law? In the fortress there Physical? In the presence there any ideas? Who killed before? Guilty or the innocent? Why in the eyes of the common people were not intellectuals camps martyrs ideas? That man to man – the wolf and when it happens. In a last line lost man? How about all of this tell us?" According to Soloviev, these words explain why he wrote" Kolyma Tales".
After leaving the camp in front of the writer is not standing dilemma "To live or to write" for writing for Varlam Shalamov and meant to live. The camp experience is nothing anyone does not, but it captures the abyss of collapse of human beings in the mind of the writer, brought to the limit, when in front of the prisoners is one single task – the task of survival at any cost. Play this experience by means of literature and was the meaning of his life ular.
As noted by Sergei Solovyov, realizing the full extent of the creative heritage Shalamov created after almost twenty years spent in the camps, you begin to bow before a man who was able to create a literature of a similar level after have experienced everything that he writes about.
According to Solovyov, to imagine the scale of the Gulag under Stalin, just look at the map: just Kolyma camps network housed in an area equal to one-seventh of the former Soviet Union. Only "Dahlstrom" from 1932 to 1953 worked 859 911 prisoners, 121 of which 256 have died from overwork, abuse, hunger, low temperatures and disease.
Torture, abuse, humiliation, repressed citizens experienced not only by criminals, but – even worse – by the security officials, investigators, the camp guards and the authorities. Striking in its cynicism Stalin's letter of 1939 in which he provides security officers authorized to use torture during interrogations, and recommends not punish them for this kind of practice, although the widespread use of torture and abuse in the NKVD began earlier. Shalamov not experienced the torture, so never condemned those people who are exposed to violence signed confession documents and denunciations. I do not condemned, because he did not know was whether he is able to withstand such a test, because physically can break anyone.
Yet Shalamov primarily a poet. The poet does not lose the poetic perception of reality even in circumstances where it would seem, poetry, and cannot exist. On wrapping paper, inherited it from former paramedic, he writes poems and sends them to Boris Pasternak. Poetry came, and, according to literary critic Vyacheslav Ivanov, the poet read them and made notes in the margins with a red pencil.
I must say that Varlam Shalamov in the Soviet era and was primarily known as a poet: he, unlike prose published five books of poetry. However, the verses have been hard censorship screening, and all camp points were discarded from the text. At first glance, it seems simple and traditional poet, yet his poems did not all fully understood.
Concluding his speech, Sergei Solovyov said that Shalamov remains not only relevant, but arhiaktualnym writer. After all, his stories, first of all, teach a man how to behave in a crowd, how to keep, and how to see the dangers of human corruption, where seemingly everything is perfectly normal. Shalamov shows that the anti-human being is always with us, and that we are not immune from it no culture, no civilization, no quiet life. And we are powerless in front of it when it comes.
S. Horki
