— Достоевский умер, — сказала гражданка, но как-то не очень уверенно.
— Протестую, — горячо воскликнул Бегемот. — Достоевский бессмертен!
I myself am not so sure about Dostoevsky. Perhaps Behemoth was joking, as usual. Mikhail Mikhaylovich Zhvanetsky, who passed away this month, yes, he is immortal. For me, he always was.
— Нового Жванецкого слышали?
In pre-perestroika times, you normally could only hear “new Zhvanetsky” on tape, just like you would only hear “new” (or any) Vysotsky in Brezhnev times. I was lucky enough to see Zhvanetsky live in the 1980s. Him and his equally immortal briefcase. Back then, his performances — Mikhail Mikhaylovich simply standing in front of the audience and reading his monologues — were like rock concerts. Not exactly banned, not approved of either.
In that era, Zhvanetsky was one of very few Russian writers worth reading — or, and especially in his case, worth listening to. I remember somebody asked Yuli Kim on one of his concerts in 1980s who, in Kim’s opinion, is the greatest modern Russian writer. “Fazil Iskander, of course”, Kim said. “Fazil is our banner”... He hesitated for a second. “But what about Zhvanetsky? He is our banner too. Looks like we have two banners then.”
The times have changed, Zhvanetsky has got the official recognition, was decorated with titles, orders and so on and so forth. It did not make him loyal to the regime though. And his old monologues still ring true. So the times did not change.
Unlike Dostoyevsky, Zhvanetsky was a true wordsmith. У нас с собою было, сколько стоит похоронить, тщательне́е, включаешь — не работает, длинная, как... — modern Russian language is unthinkable without Zhvanetsky. Thank you, Mikhail Mikhaylovich.
Процесс — это жизнь, результат — это смерть.
I don’t believe in heaven. I don’t know if Zhvanetsky believed in heaven either. But sometimes I think it would be really cool if there existed a place, let’s call it Odessa′ or Odessa+, where three old friends, Zhvanetsky, Kartsev and Ilchenko could meet again, have a drink and laugh. M.M. would smuggle there his old briefcase, open it, take a sheaf of rumpled papers out and read aloud a bit of “new Zhvanetsky”. That would be heaven.
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