From Physics To Lyrics
Newspaper "Komsomolskaya Pravda - Spain", May 2006
 

When he entered the prestigious Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Vadim was full of the boldest ambitions. And they were all connected with science. He planned to make mankind happy with two or three fundamental discoveries that might not be capable of turning the world upside down, but would at least change it. The first couple years every student at the institute is like that - completely aware of their inborn brilliance.

Being a writer did not even cross his mind, although Vadim read all the time and even had "literary" dreams at night. This, it turns out, really does exist: miles of lines crawling in front of your eyes, you intuitively feel their rhythm, but their content eludes your grasp - a phenomenon that various writers have described at length. Dilly-dallying with rhymes in high school and college counts for nothing - that was not serious. What turned out to be much more critical was one day knowing that a grateful mankind had orally passed down the first poem praising the toilet in the university dormitory. To this day the author is reminded of these "ingenious" lines.

After he finished his studies at the university, Vadim's goals remained the same, his ambition had not abated - he thought about nothing but science and made every effort to become a star in the field of artificial intelligence, which was working hard to develop itself in "response" to the Americans and Japanese. He was fairly successful and gave little thought to literature. But then all of a sudden he found himself involved in a romance, and when it blew up completely unexpectedly, poems sprinkled down one after the other…

The romance ended quickly, and the burgeoning poet no longer remembered it - clearly its role was to give him this shock. "The poems were frightfully bad," he says of his earlier work. "If some novice brought me them now, I would definitely advise him to take up something else." Fortunately, he had nobody to show these verses except friends who did not know much about Poetry. They liked a lot of it and this inspired him. At some point over the next five years something resembling a butterfly struggled out of the cocoon - his poetic compositions became better while Vadim also learned to direct his creative energy - not letting it slosh out all over the place, but rather concentrating on each specific piece of work. The result was the publication of two collections of poetry over the next five years, where he demonstrated no lack of talent and was pleased himself. Yet all in all he was and remains not completely satisfied with his poetic efforts.

All this time Vadim was searching his conscience for the answer to the question: who am I actually? A poet? A scientist? Somebody else? He hardly slept and worked non-stop - trying to have his cake and eat it. In general he was successful, neither side of life suffered. "I don't think I would have written more poems if I hadn't had a second, scientific life. I believe I completely and totally realized my "poetic" potential," says Vadim confidently today.

- So ultimately you decided?

- Somewhere around my thirtieth birthday I understood that I was a writer and moreover a novelist - although I hadn't written one line of prose in my life. It was incomprehensible, I didn't understand it myself, but there was nothing to do - you can't argue with your own conscience. I immediately gathered my best poems and published them in the form of a poetic book called "To Gudwin and Kate" and began to write a large-scale novel in prose. At the same time I informed my friends of my "true destiny" and explained that my other activities were only to earn money.

- And your friends, I can imagine, hardly expected such a turn of events?

- It resulted in a good deal of disbelief and ridicule, both concealed and unconcealed. Almost nobody could take it seriously - at that time I had already received my PhD, experienced all kinds of scientific success and even developed some sort of reputation - in general I appeared to be the absolute prototype of a Soviet scientist. But soon all that became irrelevant - the USSR crumbled, the financial backing for The Academy of Sciences dried up, and Soviet scientists ceased to be.

- Not only scientists, but writers, by the way, also...

- Ceased to be. Yes, generally speaking, writers too - in the old sense of the word. The world as we knew it ceased to be - people were bewildered and tried to save themselves by any means possible.

- And you were saved by a new profession in different country?

- I spent a year in independent Russia and quite a bit happened over the course of it. I abandoned the novel I was writing (it was terrible) and did not take it up again. It became very apparent that this new Russian society was foreign to me, although my financial situation was perfectly secure. But the main thing was, I finally realized that writing was my calling and began to connect my ambitions with it - no less than I had back then in my relationship to science. I left Russia, worked in various spheres, but always knew that my true profession was to write novels. Eight years, however, passed before I began to really write prose, and all those years I prepared myself for this somehow or other.

That unfinished novel taught me a lot about the "subtle sides" of the process. I understood that I had big ideas but was still not ready - not having enough emotional-spiritual-intellectual experience in my soul. And furthermore I realized that it was impossible to combine such large projects with something else. So I set a goal for myself - achieve material independence to concentrate solely on writing. And as long as this did not come about, I would not take up large-scale prose.

- But you continued to write poetry all the same?

- My poetic drive also dried up fairly soon - I found it difficult to scrape together poems for my second, "American" collection ("The Twin"). The rhymes began to seem trite, and the poems that turned out appeared limited and recycled. Then I suddenly took an interest in free verse - initially using a classical rhythmical pattern, and then later more complicated rhythms and meters lending a largely poetic text a "prosaic" tonal touch. Maybe it was a search for a compromise - between desire, ability and possibility as well as a subconscious "education" on how to pursue larger projects by arranging the composition, retaining the tone, style… The process was long and difficult, it exhausted me, made me dissatisfied with myself almost the entire time, but I ended up writing two books ("In the Unnamed Seas" and "Buenos Aires") that completely reflected all my efforts to move from poetry to prose. The transition was smooth. But not easy.

- And finally the long-awaited novel came into being, moreover this happened in Spain...

- First I had a brief period of luck and managed, surprisingly enough, to achieve my long-awaited financial freedom. Then I again moved to another continent, settled down in Spain and began to write my first really long novel - "The Black Pelican", which was recently published in Russia by the publishing house "Amfora". Now work on my next novel - "A Simple Soul" - is in full swing. I also have rather big plans for the future. My realization back then turned out to be right. It's too bad that nobody wanted to believe me at the time.

- And are you satisfied with this first novel?

- Yes and no. It is certainly a serious book and a lot of what I had conceived in my mind I was able to put on paper to a greater or lesser extent. On the other hand, a first work on such a scale invariably acts as a "training ground" where I worked out this and that approach and acquired absolutely necessary knowledge for future works. Therefore the novel is somewhat heterogeneous, and now, looking back as a more "experienced" novelist, I would have handled some aspects differently. But overall I consider it a good novel and I love it - all the more so because an enormous amount of effort and a lot of creative energy went into it.

- And how did readers respond to the novel?

- The novel generated quite different opinions - some readers have found it very close to their hearts while others have rejected it because it is not that easy to read. That's just the way it should be - nothing is worse than indifference.

- You lived in the United States, now you're in Spain. You must compare life in this and that foreign country. Have you ever thought you made a mistake by moving from the States to Spain?

- Living in the States is certainly better overall. Service is good, they are more willing to accept foreigners, there is a certain ambitious energy that has a tangible effect on you, even if you aspire to be different. Maybe I will go back in a few years. But I have no regrets about leaving 5 years ago - I was very tired of America and its fussiness at that time. I had a very difficult time trying to leave an American company and collect my money - I wasted a lot of energy and lost the rest of my illusions. Here I don't need anything from anyone, just as the people around me don't need anything from me. I live for myself and live as you do at your country house - on creative vacation. Isolation is very helpful for concentrating and not getting distracted from work. Spain has world-renowned advantages - its climate, food, proximity to the ocean and sea. I must admit that I am not involved in the intellectual side of Spanish life and it doesn't interest me that much. Furthermore, Madrid is much closer to Moscow and Saint-Petersburg than Washington - a factor of no minor importance to me, since it is there that the life of Russian-language literature is unfolding at this time.

- Five years is a sufficient amount of time to get used to a country. What do you like about Spain, what irritates you?

- I like the general atmosphere of friendliness and humanity. Its depth is fairly limited, as everywhere, but it's good that this exists to some extent - in contrast, for example, to Russia. When a person smiles at you, it is pleasant, whatever the "content" of these smiles is. In Spain people are nicer than in the United States - personal relationships are somewhat harsher in the States. On the other hand, I don't particularly like Spanish disorderliness - primarily, of course, in the practical sense. I understand that disorder and friendliness are related, but life isn't always easier as a result.

- And does this living in a foreign country with a foreign language have an effect on your writing?

- It's a painful question for me - I have lived outside Russia for a fairly long time. In America, English was my basic language of communication and I started to notice that it was not benefiting my literary activities in Russian. My work on "The Black Pelican" showed that the situation was not all that bad, but all the same I am somewhat hesitant to learn Spanish, although it certainly seeps into me by itself. Maybe my fears are in vain - and fortified by laziness. All in all, however, I do not have any particular reason for learning the language - I don't make money here and I know more than enough to communicate on a basic level. In general, the ability to concentrate and give your work everything you've got has a greater effect on your writing than anything else.

- Is it possible for a Russian ?migr? writer to live by his work alone?

- Living in a foreign country by your literary work alone is not more or less difficult than it is in your own. The work of an ?migr? writer will probably be printed in Russia first anyway. Who in Spain needs literature in a foreign language? They have enough of their own writers engulfing publishers with their own manuscripts here. There is only one direct route: publish in Russia so that they will bring your book to international book fairs and sell the rights to other countries. All other routes - having the text translated and making an attempt to place it with an agent or publishing house are more circuitous. Success is certainly possible, but as always, when you go against the grain, people approach you with a prejudice: if your texts are so good, they say, why don't they publish you in Russian?..

In general the question of how a writer can live by his work leaves me with an uneasy feeling. Because, to tell you the truth, the answer is almost always - he can't. The world doesn't need literary work - by which I mean serious sophisticated literature - and does not want to pay money for it. People are only ready to pay for entertaining, easily accessible literature, and it is also preferable if this comes with an element of "novelty" - scandal, something outrageous. But the results of serious creative writing are very rarely "easy to consume". The world tries to ignore those writers who do not wish to be "entertaining" as long as a successful PR campaign does not tell these people that this particular writer is trendy and good in general.

No matter what is trendy, serious literature remains art in which both commercial and ideological compromises - as in any form of art - are impossible because they dilute the essence. The role of serious art never boils down to entertainment, journalism, or the formulation of "values in life" - however much society tries to force it into a corner, enticing it with high circulation figures, popularity and different types of awards. Every creator is an individualist, egoist and developer of his own self, and not at all the fulfiller of an order made by society. This is absolutely how it is for writers. But you certainly pay for such freedom - by, for example, having mainstream society largely keep its distance from you. And from afar they sure don't toss you tasty morsels. There are exceptions, but they are rare.

- And how can we become acquainted with your work, where is it possible to buy your books?

- So far it is only possible in Russia and over the internet - for example, at "Ozon". You can also visit my website at www.vadimbabenko.com - complete versions of the texts are available there.

Interview held by Aleksandr Peunov.

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