"The Instrument of Language:
About People and Words" by Evgeny Vodolazkin, summary

"The Instrument of Language: About People and Words" is a collection of short nonfiction essays and stories by Evgeny Vodolazkin, first published in 2011. The texts were written at different times and in different contexts; some were published in Novaya Gazeta, Nezavisimaya Gazeta, and the magazines Zvezda and Ogonyok, while others existed only orally. The author — a medievalist, a researcher at the Pushkin House (Institute of Russian Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences), and a specialist in Old Russian literature — collected these texts under a single cover and discovered an inner dramaturgy within them: the lives of scholars and the lives of words were inextricably linked, and at times indistinguishable from one another.

The little things of academic life

The first and largest section of the book is a gallery of portraits and episodes from the life of the St. Petersburg scholarly community. Vodolazkin documents specific cases involving real people he knew personally or knew about through the oral tradition of the Pushkin House.

The gallery opens with a story about Dmitry Sergeyevich Likhachev: at the Warsaw Congress of Slavists, Alexander Mikhailovich Panchenko explained to a Polish waiter that the "Count" didn’t need dessert — and the waiter at the restaurant "Under the Crocodile" unmistakably identified the right person. Next, we see the staff of the Pushkin House in the fields of the Fyodorovskoye state farm: doctors of science are tying parsley into bunches under the supervision of the foreman, Lyuba, when two buxom state farm beauties suddenly appear at the edge of the field and ask, "Is this the Academy of Arts?"

Irakli Andronikov, who came to the Pushkin House to work in the Manuscript Department, refuses to write anything about women in the congratulatory album: "All I have left is experience." The regional party committee calls the administration with the question, "Did they rape the model again?" and it turns out they had the wrong number — they meant the Academy of Arts, not the Academy of Sciences. Two graduate students named Alexander try to drink vodka in the cafeteria on Vasilievsky Island, but an elderly cleaning lady methodically takes their glasses away until one of the graduate students, in a fit of despair, attacks her, intending to strangle her.

In the fields of the same Fyodorovskoye state farm, during the perestroika-era Congress of People’s Deputies, literary scholars abandon their vegetable beds and gather around a small radio broadcasting live from Moscow. On the commuter train platform, a piglet escapes from a peasant’s sack and runs around the platform until its owner catches it with his boot. The forewoman, Lyuba, who hadn’t spoken a word before, turns to the scholars: "That’s all there is to democracy."

Pushkinodomets L., not a member of the Cinema House, enters a private screening after politely greeting the ticket inspector. When asked, "Are you a member?" he replies, "No, bring your own," and calmly enters the theater. The author recounts how he once picked up 1,810 rubles worth of bills rolling in the wind on Bolshoy Prospekt on the Petrograd Side and waited a long time to see if anyone would return for the money. The stooped man in a shabby coat who eventually arrived turned out to be heading to a bar.

After the 1987 fire at the Academy of Sciences Library, smoking was banned in Pushkin House. Pushkin scholar Vadim Erazmovich Vatsuro sarcastically declared from the podium that the fire was apparently caused by "The Northern Bee" smoking with "The Russian Invalid." The ban was boycotted by everyone, including non-smokers, as the smoking room was an institution for free speech.

A drunken scientist, M., calls Likhachev, and the next morning fears he’s been rude. It turns out he was "exaggeratedly polite" and addressed the academician as "Your Excellency." Egyptologist Vasily Vasilyevich Struve, who enthusiastically welcomed the Bolsheviks and saw similarities to ancient Egyptian civilization in Lenin’s mummification, calls home in his old age in a disguised voice and asks where Academician Struve has gone. Historian Vasily Grigoryevich Druzhinin, in the midst of a card game, receives a compliment from a guest: his cat plays vint better than Professor Chechulin.

A student taking an exam with Viktor Andronikovich Manuilov reports that what she remembers most about Dead Souls is "Manuilov’s repulsive image." Professor Bauer of St. Petersburg University explains Dante by saying that he "had one foot in the Middle Ages and the other welcoming the dawn of the Renaissance" — and that this is the only thing his students will learn from the historical experience of wars and revolutions. A philology student, unable to pass a physical education test, asks about the cost of a bribe right in the gym — the witnesses tactfully leave the room.

Berlin professor Heinz P. yawns and dislocates his jaw at a department meeting: he sits for twenty minutes, clutching a folder to his mouth, comparing himself to Laocoon, until an ambulance takes him to the hospital with his mouth open through the entire university corridor.

A separate portrait is dedicated to Lev Alexandrovich Dmitriev, a colleague in the Old Russian Literature Department. Vodolazkin recalls his restraint, naturalness in any situation, his invariable tie, and his habit of beginning toasts with the words, "Here I am, my wife, Rufina Petrovna…" On the eve of Rufina Petrovna’s doctoral dissertation defense, Dmitriev paid for the restaurant in advance. When asked, "What if I don’t defend my dissertation?" he replied, "Then we’ll celebrate my sixtieth birthday."

Schliemann and the nature of truth

A special place is occupied by the essay on Heinrich Schliemann — entrepreneur, polyglot, and discoverer of Troy. Vodolazkin examines his so-called "pathological mendacity": Schliemann described a meeting with Cardinal Angelo Mai in Rome in 1858, although Mai died in 1854; he called himself the director of the State Bank. But Schliemann measured the world not by objective reality, but by subjective reality — and in this sense, he was not lying. The fifth son of a Mecklenburg pastor (1822–1890), shipwrecked off the coast of Holland, ended up as an office clerk in Amsterdam, developed his own system of language learning, opened a trading house in St. Petersburg, became a millionaire, abandoned everything, and found Troy, guided by Homer. Official science laughed at him.

Words

The second part of the book is about language. Vodolazkin examines the nature and typology of abbreviations: from post-revolutionary "shkrabs" and "glavnachpups" to modern-day OSAGO and SMS. An abbreviation is a sign of a sign, a reality generalized twice over, and at the same time a disabled word, incapable of inflection. But language is alive: TASS became masculine because it ends in a consonant, and SMS became "semeska."

The author separately examines the flow of English loanwords — "bikers," "boyfriends," "killers," "lifting" — and asks: why are foreign words often favored by those who don’t speak foreign languages? Borrowing often serves not as a guarantee of precision, but as an imitation of something external. The word "shokirovat" (to shock) in the sense of "shake" is the result of a poor translation from English, and "ambitious" (ambitious) has shifted from a minus to a plus sign over the past few decades under the influence of the English word "ambitious." Language doesn’t simply record change; it itself becomes a field where cultural and social contradictions play out.