Еще про повторения у Орхана Памука

[yakov_a_jerkov]

Я получил много (как для ЖЖ-записи про книжку) откликов на мою запись о впечатлениях от романа "Снег" Памука. Я писал, что меня поразило, как много в "Снеге" повторяет "Меня зовут Красный" того же Памука; и я спрашивал считается ли это допустимым, так самого себя повторять. И все, кто прокомментировал, сказали, что (как я понял) никакой проблемы тут нет; если получился хороший роман -- так и отлично.

При том, что я понимаю, что ответившие мне люди понимают/знают литературу куда лучше, чем я... И я даже тут спрашивал профессоров English о том же, и они мне сказали примерно так же, как в комментариях -- что истории ниоткуда не возникают, что люди имеют ограниченное количество материала/жизненного опыта и т.д. Все равно, не убеждает это все меня.

Кстати, не знаю имеет ли это отношение к вопросу повторения самого себя (и, возможно, все это вообще клевета), но,думаю, стоит отметить, что Памука обвиняют в плагиате:

A group of writers assert that some parts of Orhan Pamuk's works are heavily influenced by works of other writers, and that some chapters are almost totally quoted from other books. One of the writers, Murat Bardakçı, accused him of counterfeiting and plagiarism in the Hurriyet, a national Turkish newspaper. Another accusation is that Orhan Pamuk's novel The White Castle contains exact paragraphs from Fuad Carim's Kanuni Devrinde İstanbul ("Istanbul in the Time of the Kanuni") novel. After a question raised at the 2009 Boston Book Festival as to whether he wanted to respond to these accusations, Pamuk responded, "No I do not. Next question?".

Я, правда, не понимаю, как обвинения в буквальном заимствовании целых глав у других писателей могут висеть в воздухе. Достаточно же просто сравнить тексты, чтобы доказать или опровергнуть обвинения. Или нет?

Но, вообще, опять пишу я об этом вот почему. Я утром в пятницу прочел комментарии к моей записи, а по дороге на работу вспомнил, что я читал что-то на эту тему (не совсем на эту) у Боланьо. Как я уже говорил, меня всегда очень радует, когда, в связи с какой-то ситуацией в жизни, я вспоминаю что-то из прочитанного, на что раньше не обратил внимания.

До того, как я прочитал "The Savage Detectives" и "2666", я начал читать сборник рассказов Боланьо "Last Evenings on Earth". И даже самый первый рассказ -- "Sensini" -- не дочитал до конца. Но вот вспомнил отрывок (выделено мной).

Sensini's reply was prompt and voluble, at least as far as writing and competitions were concerned. On one sheet, recto and verso, single-spaced, he set out a kind of general strategy for the pursuit of provincial literary prizes. I speak from experience, he wrote. The letter began with a blessing on prizes (whether in earnest or in jest, I have never been able to tell), those precious supplements to the writer's modest income. He referred to the sponsors—town councils and credit unions—as "those good people with their touching faith in literature" and "those disinterested and dutiful readers." He entertained no illusions, however, about the erudition of the "good people" in question, who presumably exercised their touching faith on these ephemeral anthologies (or not). He told me I must compete for as many prizes as possible, although he suggested I take the precaution of changing a story's title if I was entering it for, say, three competitions that were due to be judged around the same time. He cited the example of his story "At Dawn," a story I didn't know, which he had used to test his method, as a guinea pig is used to test the effects of a new vaccine. For the first competition, with the biggest prize, "At Dawn" was entered as "At Dawn"; for the second, he changed the title to "The Gauchos"; for the third, it was called "The Other Pampa"; and for the last, "No Regrets." Of these four competitions, it won the second and the fourth, and with the money from the prizes he was able to pay a month-and-half's rent (in Madrid the rents had gone through the roof). Of course no one realized that "The Gauchos" and "No Regrets" were the same story with different titles, although there was always the risk that one of the judges might have read the story in another contest (in Spain the peculiar occupation of judging literary prizes was obstinately monopolized by a clique of minor poets and novelists, plus former laureates). The little world of letters is terrible as well as ridiculous, he wrote. And he added that even if one's story did come before the same judge twice, the danger was minimal, since they generally didn't read the entries or only skimmed them. Furthermore, who was to say that "The Gauchos" and "No Regrets" were not two different stories whose singularity resided precisely in their respective titles? Similar, very similar even, but different.