Neuro linguist and Turgenev young ladies: how Tatiana Chernigovskaya profanes art

Yulia Pyatetskaya, culturologist (Ukraine)

As I understand it, professor-neurolinguist Tatiana Chernigovskaya has taken up art closely, the feed brought me fragments of her art history lecture, I can't help sharing...

“I never understood why we were making copies. For example, I am a simple man in the street, why should I pretend to be a copy of a cup or vase? And it turns out that in this way we double reality in our brain. But why? The answer to the question "why?" I do not have. The famous Soviet and Estonian literary critic and semioticist Yuri Lotman argued that art does not copy life, it engenders it. Anna Karenina, Natasha Rostova, Rakhmetov and other characters do not exist. People, reading these works, compare their lives with the fate of heroes who do not exist. Get positive or negative emotions. All this affects the psyche. For example, the hero of the novel by Nikolay Chernyshevsky "What is to be done?" Rakhmetov lay down on nails, thereby testing himself. And Turgenev's young ladies had a tendency to constantly faint. Almost immediately after these works were written, girls willingly began to faint, and many people - to test themselves".

It is gratifying that Chernigovskaya does not have an answer to all questions and she cannot yet answer why Michelangelo created Pieta, doubling reality in her brain. Or El Greco. I have doubled up so much reality. Bosch again. Not to mention Picasso and Vrubel.

Lotman's "assertion" - "art does not copy, but gives rise to life" - is simply delightful. Yurmikh was an ironic person, but he would still be surprised that such ideas were spread in society on his behalf. Art that generates life is fresh and melodious. First - the play "The Inspector General", and then the inspectors appeared. First - the poems "Farewell, unwashed Russia", and then - oops - and unwashed Russia. And before that, it was normal. Until the play "Uncle Vanya" appeared, there was no Uncle Vanya.

Professor Vibegallo would certainly have liked the theme of the creation of life by art, and Lotman did not say anything of the kind, did not write or assert. He wrote that "the power of art lies in the fact that it gives us a choice where life does not give us a choice." He wrote that “art is not life. And we never confuse them". Well, he was definitely not confused.

I would also like to stand up for Turgenev. In my backpack I have bacon, and matches, and Turgenev's 10 volumes. Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev also entered the history of Russian literature as the creator of characteristic female images, which, in fact, "gave birth" to the concept of "Turgenev girl". Asya, Elena Stakhova, Anna Odintsova. Strong, expressive, enthusiastic, sublime, selfless natures. Their distinctive feature is the primacy of spirit over matter. They lived in captivity of illusions and ideals and were ready to go to the end for the sake of illusions. For example, Dobrolyubov (such a critic) saw young Russia in Yelena Stakhova, just don't say Chernigov, she is out of politics and generally believes that "the main task of a woman is to preserve her offspring." Turgenev girls could go to a monastery, revolution and war, and not faint. Louise de Lavaliere fainted. Since Tatiana Chernigovskaya has not read anything for a long time, except for lectures, she actively "generates" fakes, doubling reality in the brain of her many admirers, profaning science, and now art. What for? Maybe to test myself. Or maybe she doesn't have an answer yet.

Original is here.