Summary Day of the Beast
Victor Sosnora The
Day of the Beast
“The Yaureys left for Israel, the deer fled to Finland, the fish went to Japan, there were instants and dissidents in the capital, they fought.”
This is how the poet who lives in Leningrad, which he calls the Capital, tells about his time. However, he calls everything in his own way, rewriting the usual words, not knowing the boundaries of neither geographical nor chronological. In the morning he goes out of his attic in the House of Ballet along Zaichik’s street Rosa (ie, the architect Rossi) to Nevsky, no – to Nessky Prospekt. At eleven o’clock the seven-headed monster Nessie emerges: “The instants and dissidents are on their knees and, bowing to Nessie, they drink: the instincts from the cup of honor, washing down with a sauce of conscience, and the dissident – a glass of satanism, drinking, eating, chewing cuffs.. Ideas are heard here and there! “
The poet presents himself
“My syllable is complicated,” the poet confesses and tells readers his own “classic novella” “Patmos Island”. At the seaside, in tents, there is a scientific expedition of three people: Julia – specialist in dolphins, Julius – “a boy with a theodolite and alpenstock, a dissenter of grains of sand” and the author himself, he draws a “twig on sand, archimedes”. Julia and Julius love each other. Julia is engaged in experiments for the armed forces, the goal is to make kamikaze dolphins. Dolphins die one after another, and it seems to the author that they all commit suicide. Julia has a dog Cristea, at the request of Julia, he kills her, causing the author’s indignation. The quarrel leads to a strange and cruel duel: the author and Julius take turns jumping from the boat to the iron stake. One of them will inevitably perish, “the second will love Julia.” Yuliy is defeated. Julia gives favor to the winner and goes to the capital to defend the thesis about dolphins.
Basmanov is alone: ”I do not have the honor to consider myself a human caste of beings, I’m not a man, and who I do not know.” The poet suffers from tears, but his crying is heard only by the secret services, on behalf of whom the chief of the gendarmes, Major Milyuta Skorlupko, visits him. The next day Basmanova invited a high-ranking lady of Titan Sebastyanovna Suzdaltseva, as it turned out, a colonel of the secret chancery. From the house of “instant” Ivan Pavlovich leaves through the window to which a personal “Boeing” is served.
In the mornings the poet leaves the house and visits the “Morozhenitsu”, where “red-cheeked” Katya sells alcoholic beverages, where even cologne Krasnaya Moskva is drunk. “Tsaruyut in the capital shopkeepers are red-nosed, they have all the power.” The poet erects a monument to Katya “on Nessky Prospekt, between the Ellipseevsky Deli, the Public Beliberdeca, the Jóly Lenz Palace of Youth and the St. Yoshkin Theater.” Yes, this is the very monument to Catherine II. Here the poet observes daily the life and customs of the “bloodstones” that have not changed for centuries: he gave this name to his compatriots, because they are “quick to shed blood” and worship the Beast.
The poet remembers different stories. Here is a “sentimental novel” about the “instantolator” who has reached high ranks and who lived with his young wife “from the congress to the congress.” His wife betrays him with a thoroughbred dog, whom his jealous husband treacherously kills. Here is the story of the poet X., a “nugget” strangled by his wife Alena Kulybina, also a poetess. But the story of the brave hero MN Vodopyanov, the pilot-cosmonaut. After forced landing in the orange grove, he consumed only ten days with oranges and now suffers a strange nervous disease: he takes revenge on oranges, buys, rips off the “skin alive” and puts them in a closet.
Gradually, we learn about the fate of the poet himself. About his wife Maya – capricious, unpredictable, mysteriously feminine. About an unfaithful chemist friend Fedor, who tried to seduce Maya. About the lascivious “esthete” Gene Zhasminsky. About Leo Tolstoy – the father of Maya is named: this “soldier of All Wars, the instant of the Secret Chancellery” became an exceptional moralist in his old age. Completely entangled in life, Maya ends up with herself. “We killed Maya… We are all murderers,” the poet tells himself, experiencing the death of his beloved woman as his own death. “Three days I was dead and now I’m risen.” Risen, for in the life of the poet there is one more, special dimension. In it, he is absolutely free and independent, he has a continuous dialogue with Khlebnikov, Tsvetaeva, Indian mathematician Ramanujan, dancer Vaclav Nijinsky, who used to live in the same Ballet House, where the poet now lives. “Tomorrow Vatslav Nijinsky will turn 30 and he will go mad.” But for a moment to insanity, he (and with him the poet) has time to say: “I want to love, to love. I’m love, not brutality.” I’m not a bloodthirsty animal.
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