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	Vladimir Filonov / MT

A Distinctive Point of View

Poet, journalist and TV personality Dmitry Bykov has never been shy about offering contrarian opinions on politics and literature.

By Victor Sonkin
Published: April 14, 2006

"Prolific" is the word that springs to mind when one thinks about the opus and personality of Dmitry Bykov. A prolific journalist, Bykov has produced a steady output of newspaper articles, reviews and essays since the early 1990s in publications too numerous to count. Many of his articles have been successfully converted into book form, as in his recent collection of humorous pieces titled "How Putin Became the President of the U.S.A."

Not content with just being a scribbler, though, Bykov juggles several editorial positions too. He is helming the effort to bring out a Ukrainian edition of Profil, he is creative editor at the newspaper Sobesednik, and he works on the magazine Moulin Rouge ("making decent reading out of an erotic publication," he says). He also hosts a weekly radio show and sometimes co-hosts the late-night television program "Vremechko."

A busy man? We haven't even started. A prolific poet, Bykov has published eight collections of poetry. Writing poetry is an overwhelming passion for him, cutting across standard boundaries and spilling over onto the pages of his prose, and even into his magazine articles -- so that readers of Ogonyok sometimes find a survey of recent political events written in rhyming iambic pentameter (Bykov's prosody is elaborate and traditional).

Bykov's recent foray into literary scholarship was another surprise. Commissioned to write a biography of Boris Pasternak for Molodaya Gvardiya's series "The Lives of Outstanding People," he completed a huge monograph -- which could easily have been the crowning achievement of someone else's entire career -- in just a year and a half, to a confused but mostly benevolent chorus of venerable specialists.

"I feel awkward because of that book," Bykov said, speaking last week in his small office at Sobesednik. "I am so used to being derided or insulted that positive response makes me wonder: Where did I screw up? What did I do wrong?"

Now, however, he is set to get back to normal. Bykov is finishing a novel that will inspire the hatred of everyone, he thinks. Scheduled for publication in August, it is titled "Zh.D." in Russian, an abbreviation that means many things and could be tentatively rendered as "A.D." in English, also evoking many meanings. The novel, set in the not-too-distant future, tells the stories of several people -- a governor, a soldier, a little girl, a pair of lovers -- set against the background of a war between Russians and Jews raging on what is now Russian territory, while the "indigenous population" (not the same as the Russians!) looks on indifferently.

"It's going to be fiercely Russophobic and fiercely anti-Semitic," Bykov said with a wicked smile. "It depicts both Russians and Jews as virus nations, which bring misfortune and decay to whatever they're trying to colonize. It's the best book I've ever written, it's actually the best book that can possibly be written today, and it's very, very funny."

To date, Bykov has written five novels. Some went relatively unnoticed, like "Acquittal," his personal favorite. "Orthography," an intense personal saga set in revolutionary Russia, was met with eager response by readers and critics alike, and was universally considered the best novel of 2004, though it failed to gather any significant literary awards. Last year's "The Evacuator," a morality parable posing as an anti-utopia, was condescendingly praised by some but ignored by many.

Vladimir Filonov / MT Besides numerous newspaper pieces, Bykov has written five novels, eight poetry collections and a biography of Boris Pasternak.

A flamboyant and jovial interlocutor, Bykov never pauses for a word or for a thought, and he's got plenty of both. Most of them gravitate toward literature, which seems to be what his world is centered around. However, he's also a political journalist with consistent if unorthodox views on Russia's eternal issues: who's to blame and what's next.

Bykov thinks that Russia, unlike many other countries, is trapped in a cycle that goes on and on without any real input from the authorities. "Russia doesn't have a historical will of its own, because it's a country that's been colonized," he said. "By whom? By the mysterious Northern race, which can produce nothing, only create 'the power vertical.' The story of summoning the Vikings to rule Russia [according to some historical sources, squabbling Slavic tribes invited a Scandinavian prince to rule over them in the 9th century] was the beginning of this trend. In a colonized country, consensus and general human values are impossible, which makes the whole liberal project untenable in Russia."

In Russia's vortex, Bykov argues, people in positions of power do not act on their own free will; they merely follow the cycle, fulfilling a role. "Thus, a Communist governor becomes a reformer and a liberal; a quiet democrat from Anatoly Sobchak's entourage becomes a dictator," Bykov said. "Can you imagine anyone more ill-suited for dictatorship than Putin? And yet here he is. It's not him, it's his role that's dragging him -- and all of us -- along its way."

After pausing for a phone conversation with Yabloko leader Grigory Yavlinsky ("he says Moscow's real-estate bubble is going to burst, maybe not right away, but still"), Bykov confessed that politics was rather boring. What's far more important to him is poetry -- a subject on which he has strong views too.

For example, he considers Nobel laureate Joseph Brodsky to be hugely overrated. "He's a good poet all right," Bykov conceded. "But there are many authors in his generation, or those somewhat older or younger, who are just as good or better. ... You know what the problem with Brodsky is? His style is a dead end. You can't take anything out of his texts that is not Brodsky. That's why he's got no followers, only epigones."

Bykov also finds fault with Osip Mandelstam. "I hate this attitude, so popular among so-called intellectuals: 'I'm a poet, so please bear with me; I can insult you, I can steal from you, I deserve candy and warm clothes more than you do.'" Indeed, Mandelstam's haughtiness in life was well described by memoirists, but what does it have to do with his poetry? "Everything," Bykov said. "It's exactly the same arrogance. He 'thinks in missing links,' which means he doesn't bother to fill them in. We simply don't deserve his divine attention."

Meanwhile, Bykov himself loves to provide missing links. For "The Onegin Code," a recent spoof of Dan Brown's best-selling thriller "The Da Vinci Code," he wrote a text that played a key role in the book's conspiratorial plot -- the mysterious, missing 10th chapter of Pushkin's "Eugene Onegin," which the poet ostensibly wrote in code, describing the Decembrist rebellion and forecasting the destiny of Russia. "The Onegin Code" was written by Bykov and Maxim Chertanov, though it came out under the obviously tongue-in-cheek pseudonym "Bran Down."

Chertanov was Bykov's coauthor on another wild project, a rogue biography of the founder of a certain major company, which Bykov declined to name. The book was originally commissioned by the company's PR department, Bykov said, but it was ultimately rejected in favor of a duller, more traditional biography. The authors, after some deliberation, rewrote their text into "Pravda," a novel featuring Vladimir Lenin as a picaresque figure. They were still amply paid for the original PR project.

Most of Bykov's ventures into literature, though, have not brought him much income. "I won't even hint what I was paid for 'Orthography' -- it's utterly indecent," Bykov said. "Pasternak's biography, on the other hand, was a commercial breakthrough. It's already been published in three print runs. Actually, Boris Leonidovich [Pasternak] has completely renovated my dacha."

A father of two ("I hope there will be more") and the husband of writer-translator Irina Lukyanova ("I read some of her prose, ditched my current girlfriend and lured Lukyanova away from her husband"), Bykov seems pretty sure of his place in life and literature. But like every artist, he needs reassurance and encouragement. "Remember what I told you about my new novel?" he asked. "When it's published, I'll need all the help I can get. Will you at least read it? Does it sound interesting to you? Good. I've got a reader, then."

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