Boris Akunin, Grigory Chkhartishvili
cemetery stories
EXPLANATION
I wrote this book for a long time, one or two pieces a year. This is not such a topic to fuss about, and then there was a feeling that this was not just a book, but a certain path that I needed to go through, and it was not worth jumping around here - you could miss a turn with a running start and go astray. Sometimes I felt that it was time to stop, to wait for the next signal to move on.
This road turned out to be five years long. It started from the wall of the old Moscow cemetery and took me very, very far. During this time, much has changed, “and I myself, subject to the general law, have changed” - I split into a reasoner Grigory Chkhartishvili and an entertainer Boris Akunin, so that the book was already being completed by two: the first was engaged in essayistic fragments, the second fiction. I also found out that I taffophile,"A lover of cemeteries" - it turns out that such an exotic hobby exists in the world (and some have mania). But I can only be called a tafophile conditionally - I did not collect cemeteries and graves, I was occupied with the Mystery of the Past Time: where does it go and what happens to the people who inhabited it?
Do you know what seems to me the most intriguing about the inhabitants of Moscow, London, Paris, Amsterdam, and even more so Rome or Jerusalem? That most of them died. You can't say the same about New Yorkers or Tokyons, because the cities they live in are too young.
If we imagine the inhabitants of a really old city throughout the history of its existence as one huge crowd and peer into this sea of heads, it turns out that empty eye sockets and skulls bleached by time prevail over living faces. The inhabitants of cities with a past live, surrounded on all sides by the dead.
No, I do not consider the old cities as ghost towns at all. They are quite alive, vain and sparkle with energy. It's about something else.
For some time now, I began to feel that the people who lived before us have not gone away. They remained where they were, it's just that we exist with them in different time dimensions. We walk the same streets, invisible to each other. We pass through them, and behind the glass facades of newfangled buildings, I can see the outlines of the houses that once stood here: classical gables and naive mezzanines, swaggering openwork gates and striped barriers.
All that once was, and all who once lived, remain forever.
Have you ever seen somewhere in a dense crowd on the Kuznetsky Most or on Nikolskaya a silhouette in a wellington hat and an Almavive raincoat that appeared out of nowhere and immediately melted away? And a transparent girlish profile in a cap with ribbons-mantonieres? No? It means that you have not yet learned to see Moscow for real.
Ancient cities are not at all like new cities, which are only a hundred or two hundred years old. In a large and ancient city, people were born, loved, hated, suffered and rejoiced, and then so many people died that this whole ocean of nervous and spiritual energy could not take and disappear without a trace.
To paraphrase Brodsky, who talked about antiquity, we can say that ancestors exist for us, but we do not exist for them, because we know something about them, and they know absolutely nothing about us. They do not depend on us. And the city in which they lived also did not care about us, the current ones. Therefore, the older the city, the less attention it pays to its current inhabitants - precisely because they are in the minority. It is difficult for us, the living, to surprise such a city; he saw others who were just as brave, enterprising, talented, and perhaps those who died were of better quality.
New York exists in the same rhythm as today's New Yorkers, it is their contemporary, partner and accomplice. But Rome or Paris, with indifferent indulgence, look at those who hung advertisements for Nescafe and Ariel washing powder on the old walls. The Old City knows: a wave of time will sweep and wash away all this tinsel from the streets. Instead of nimble little men in jeans and colorful T-shirts, others dressed differently will walk around here, and the current ones will not go anywhere either - they will only move from one quarter to another, underground. They lie there for several decades, and then merge with the soil and finally become the undivided property of the City.
Cemeteries in megacities usually do not live long: just as long as it takes to fill the territory allocated for the churchyard with graves, and even fifty years, until those who came here to look after gravestones die out. In some hundred or a hundred and fifty years, a layer of earth will grow over the bones, squares will be spread on it or houses will stand, and new necropolises will appear on the outskirts of the expanded City.
The dead are our neighbors and roommates. We walk on their bones, we use the houses built for them, we walk under the canopy of the trees they planted. We and our dead do not interfere with each other.
Near Paris a few years ago, a whole kingdom of cadavers was discovered - catacombs, where millions and millions of former Parisians lie, whose remains were once transferred there from city cemeteries. Anyone can drive to the Dunfert-Rochereau station, go down into the dungeon and survey the endless rows of skulls, imagine their own somewhere in the corner, in the seventeenth row one hundred and sixty-eighth from the left, and perhaps make some adjustments to the scaling of their personality.
But the opportunity to look into the bowels of the earth, where those who lived before us settled, is a rarity. Parisians, one might say, were lucky. More often, miraculously preserved old cemeteries, islands of thickened and stagnant time, where no one has been buried for a long time, become a meeting place for us with our predecessors. The last condition is obligatory, because the torn earth and fresh grief smell not of eternity, but of death. This smell is too harsh, it will prevent you from catching the fragile aroma of another time.
If you want to understand and feel Moscow, take a walk around the Old Donskoy Cemetery. In Paris, spend half a day at Pere La Chaise. In London, visit Highgate Cemetery. Even in New York there is a territory of stopped time - Brooklyn Green-Wood.
If the day, the weather and your state of mind are in harmony with the surroundings, you will feel like a particle of what was before and what will be after. And maybe you will hear a voice that whispers to you: "Birth and death are not walls, but doors."
OLD DON CEMETERY
WAS YES DISAPPEARED, or FORGOTTEN DEATH
From the existing Moscow cemeteries, I turn back from the soul. They look like bleeding pieces of meat torn out alive. Buses with black stripes on the side drive up there, they talk too quietly and cry too loudly, and in the crematory conveyor shop howls a chorale prelude four times an hour, and a government lady in a mourning dress says in a trained voice: “We come one at a time, we say goodbye.”
If you are idle, out of curiosity alone, skidded to Nikolo-Arkhangelskoye, Vostryakovskoye or Khovanskoye, leave from there without looking back - otherwise you will be frightened by the endless wastelands, studded with gray and black stones to the horizon, you will suffocate from the special greasy air, you will become deaf from the ringing silence, and you will want to live forever, to live at any cost, if only not to lie in a heap of ashes in the columbarium or decay into proteins, fats and carbohydrates under the flower garden zero seven by one and eight.
New cemeteries will not explain anything to you about life and death, they will only confuse, intimidate and confuse. Well, let them champ their granite-concrete jaws behind the ring highway, and you and I would rather go to Earthen City, to the Old Don Cemetery, because, in my opinion, in our entire beautiful and mysterious city there is no place more beautiful and more mysterious.
Old Donskoy is not at all like the modern giants of the funeral industry: there is asphalt, and here the paths are covered with leaves; there is dusty grass, and here are mountain ash and willows; there is a concrete slab with the inscription “Natochka, daughter, to whom did you leave us”, and here is a marble angel with an open book, and the book says: “Blessed are those who weep, as if they will be comforted.”
Blessed are the weeping
Just don't wander by mistake to New Donskoy, located nearby, behind a red battlemented wall. It will beckon you with the onions of the church, but it is a wolf in sheep's clothing - the converted Crematorium No. 1. And at the gate you will be met smilingly by the stone Sergei Andreyevich Muromtsev, chairman of the First State Duma. Do not believe this happy prince, who, like a bee, absorbed in his life (1850 - 1910) all the honey of short-lived Russian Europeanism and quietly rested before the onset of trouble, must be completely confident in the victory of Russian parliamentarism and the gradual growth of pleasant neighbors - privatdozents and sworn attorneys. Alas, all around are laureates of the Stalin Prize, brigade commanders, aeronauts and honored builders of the RSFSR. Time will pass, and their tombstones with satellites, drawers and stars will also become historical exotics. But not for my generation.
Cemeteries can seem gloomy, and even spoil the mood for some. But at the same time, the cemetery is always quiet, calm, and this special atmosphere is fascinating. It seems that this is where you can feel the value of life. And this is very important. And cemeteries can be interesting, no matter how it sounds. When you read the book "Cemetery Stories", you understand that this is true. The author of the book is one person in two roles - real and fictional. These are Grigory Chkhartishvili and Boris Akunin. The story is constructed in an unusual way, which makes the book even more interesting. It tells about different cemeteries of the world. In total, the author considers 6 cemeteries. On behalf of Grigory Chkhartishvili, a lot of informative things were told, interesting facts were presented. He writes about cemeteries in Moscow, London, Paris, Yokohama, New York and Jerusalem. There is something to tell about each of them, they have their own characteristics. On one, people had picnics, another clearly conveys the atmosphere of the country, on the third, people who came to these places only for a while, but stayed forever, rest. And all this is accompanied by reflections of the author. Fascinating and slightly scary stories about the same cemeteries are told on behalf of Boris Akunin. The writer combines reality and fiction, and it turns out a completely realistic creepy story. A classic ghost story, a romance novel, a little detective story, something dreamy and inspiring. Surprisingly, these stories about cemeteries evoke a feeling of warmth and joy of life, and not sadness at all.
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People are always attracted to stories related to death, and the best place to hide the whole truth is a cemetery. The famous master of detectives Boris Akunin invites us to get acquainted with the book "Cemetery Stories", which describes six famous cemeteries at once in Moscow, London, Paris, Yokohama, New York and Jerusalem. Reading this work, we are completely immersed in the fate of different people.
Of course, for some people, the cemetery is associated with a gloomy, negative and depressing environment. But in this work you will not find suburban cemeteries filled with paper flowers, unkempt graves inhabited by homeless people and stray dogs. The book tells us the stories that hide the necropolis-museums.
Boris Akunin is a famous Russian writer, literary critic and Japanese scholar. He has a unique storytelling style. He talks very simply and openly about familiar things and does not hide his personal reasoning. In his book "Cemetery Stories", the author perceives the cemetery as the last refuge for a person on earth, which holds many interesting stories. This unusual and at the same time fascinating tour of the old cemeteries will captivate any reader.
The book was written by the author under two names - Grigory Chkhartishvili and Boris Akunin. Each chapter of the work describes one of the famous cemeteries. At the same time, the historical publicist Chkhartishvili begins the chapter, who describes the history of each necropolis with its inhabitants, introduces us to the history of the country itself and the culture of the people. Each story is accompanied by beautiful photographs of cemeteries. Publicist and playwright Boris Akunin ends each chapter with a mystical or detective story about the described cemetery.
In the book Cemetery Stories, the author skillfully wrote the history of various cemeteries, while conveying the mood of the city in which it is located. The Moscow cemetery keeps the spirit of serfdom, Paris - romance and love, New York - prosperity and material independence of a person, Yokohama - ancient legends and the Japanese faith, Jerusalem has a special atmosphere of approaching the Almighty ... After you start reading the work, You will be able to feel for yourself all the mystery of these places.
Boris Akunin was able to give a special charm to his work and aroused interest in the history of ancient monuments. The author's skill is that he does not hide his love for this mysterious and quiet place, but shares his own impressions and feelings. The book "Cemetery Stories" is written in a very simple style, so it is easy and interesting to read, and beautiful illustrations convey to us the atmosphere of antiquity, art and history from around the world.
On our literary site, you can download the book "Cemetery Stories" by Grigory Chkhartishvili, Boris Akunin for free in formats suitable for different devices - epub, fb2, txt, rtf. Do you like to read books and always follow the release of new products? We have a large selection of books of various genres: classics, modern science fiction, literature on psychology and children's editions. In addition, we offer interesting and informative articles for beginner writers and all those who want to learn how to write beautifully. Each of our visitors will be able to find something useful and exciting.
cemetery stories Grigory Chkhartishvili, Boris Akunin
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Title: Cemetery Stories
About the book "Cemetery Stories" Grigory Chkhartishvili, Boris Akunin
Boris Akunin is known to readers not only for his many brilliant works, but also for his original creative solutions. Each of his novels is unique and interesting in its own way. Cemetery stories were no exception. This is an experimental book, on the cover of which you can see the names of two authors at once. And although most readers know that Grigory Chkhartishvili is Boris Akunin, nevertheless, such a presentation creates intrigue. But you will be even more surprised when you start reading the work. It strikingly intertwines historical facts, mystical and detective stories.
In fact, "Cemetery Stories" is a collection of stories about different cemeteries of the world. The author is interested in this topic, and therefore is able to offer readers really fascinating stories. The book consists of essays and fictional stories. The first ones are signed with the name of Grigory Chkhartishvili, and the second ones with the name of Boris Akunin. Together they create a unique work, the likes of which, perhaps, do not exist in Russian literature.
Reading this book will be interesting not only for fans of the writer's work, but also for everyone who is not indifferent to mysterious stories, and collectors of historical facts. In his stories, Boris Akunin tells about the Old Donskoy Cemetery in Moscow, Pere Lachaise in Paris, Green-Wood Cemetery in New York, London's Highgate Cemetery, the Foreign Cemetery in Yokohama, and the Jewish Cemetery located on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. Each story is unique and very different from the others. You will really enjoy reading them.
Cemetery Stories is both an entertaining and educational piece of literature. Reading it, you can learn some interesting facts about ancient burials, as well as get real pleasure from Akunin's original style. No wonder the author worked on this book from 1999 to 2004. It really contains a lot of interesting and, most importantly, reliable information.
Every fan of the writer's work should read Cemetery Stories. This is one of his most striking works, which, moreover, is very multifaceted. The essays contain entertaining facts from history, and the stories amaze with the originality of the plots. Akunin managed to harmoniously combine completely different styles, and the result exceeded all expectations.
I'm glad I decided to listen to this book instead of reading it. That's how the perception of the same information differs! I wonder. The book sounded great, emotionally, so I award Akunin and his novel with the highest rating. I am not enthusiastic about the work of Akunin. I had a chance to read his books, and each time I remained indifferent, well, I read it and okay - I'll be smarter. And I never had emotions, feelings, digestion of the plot for several days. And "Cemetery Stories" directly fascinated me. The novel has six chapters, each of which is devoted to the history of one cemetery. At the beginning, Akunin tells readers the history of the cemetery, about the graves, about secrets and important events. And then the fun begins - a detective-mystical art line based on all sorts of tales of this area. Here they are six cemeteries, six amazing places scattered all over the mainland: the Old Don Cemetery in Moscow, the London Highgate Cemetery, the Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, Yokohama Foreign Cemetery, Green-Wood Cemetery in America, Jewish Cemetery at the Mount of Olives. Each cemetery is special, not like the others. All the stories delighted and fascinated me, they are all interesting without exception. Akunin is truly a master at intimidating the reader. The artistic part of the work is somewhat poor. I especially liked some of the plots. For example, the story of the merciless Saltychikha, who suffered from her unrequited love. It was nice to see Oscar Wilde and his story with a robber on the pages of this book (I read his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray at school and was delighted with the plot). Fandorin also showed up on time, again surprising with his talent and professional instinct. But I didn’t like the last story, it’s somehow too philosophical and existential. A story about a long life and the meek acceptance of death and other nonsense. Vampire Karl Marx also left indifferent. I was already prepared to hear an interesting story, after all, Marx is a legendary man of his time, people still turn to his works, but it turned out to be dregs. Summing up, I want to say thanks to the author for this collection. It is very interesting, rich in history, the plot is thought out and devoid of obvious blunders. Everything is fine. I recommend.
Some wise man said that we fall in love with those books in which we find echoes of our own thoughts. I fully agree with this statement. In general, I am a person who likes to look for some secret symbols in all events and phenomena that need to be unraveled and put into a big puzzle (I redid the quote from the book for myself). I happened to get acquainted with Akunin's work as a student. I still remember my passion for the author, this all-encompassing power of the author's thought. Now I wanted to relive these emotions again, and my hand reached for the bookshelf, where “the volume was languishing”. I could not even think that with each page turned my head would nod in agreement with the writer. Everything written here seemed so familiar to me and carried through me, as if I had written this novel myself. Despite my young age, I love a calm and quiet life. I do not like huge high-rise buildings, mass gatherings of citizens, traffic jams, hum, stone buildings, a frantic pace of life. I prefer small buildings, calmness and regularity. If I suddenly see something beautiful and amazing, I do not undertake to photograph all this beauty with my phone, as most people do at the present time. I generally forget that I have a phone or a camera in my pocket, I just enjoy the moment and try to keep my emotions in my memory. I always come home from excursions without a single photo, because I think it’s not so important, my emotions are more valuable to me, the way I remember and keep what I saw in my head. Although, my expressive stories with different gestures, I think, are even more interesting to listen to than to view photos and videos. Traveling with Akunin through the ancient cemeteries gave me great pleasure, everything was as if in reality. The cemeteries are depicted not just as the remains of bones and monuments with the names of the dead, it is a whole story of numerous lives and deaths. At the beginning, Akunin leads us to the Donskoy cemetery, where, according to rumors, the murderer Soltychikha, known for her sad fate, was buried. The next stop is London's Highgate Cemetery, where Victorian England is buried. All lovers of the mysterious and Gothic will definitely like this tour. Here, immured tombs, repeatedly opened graves, spirits and ghosts, wild animals - all this is depicted in the style of Gothic England. Then the route turns towards France. The Pere Lachaise cemetery breathes French flavor. Here we get acquainted with stories of fate, duel, true love... The Yokohama cemetery contains the bodies of those people who did not even think about dying, they all dreamed of going to Japan and finding happiness there, but found eternal peace there. Green-Wood Cemetery in New York embodies the American way of life, it does not look like a necropolis, but like a park area - there is a lawn with beautiful paths everywhere, fountains rustle, flowers are fragrant. I was most impressed by the Jewish cemetery in Jerusalem, which does not show the past life of the people buried there, but allows you to look into their future. The book excites, evokes new thoughts and feelings. I never thought that letters could evoke such a kaleidoscope of emotions in my soul: curiosity, interest, fear, pity, pain, horror... It is impossible to glance through black and white photographs in passing, they catch the eye, make you think and listen. Not the whole book is shrouded in the grave twilight of the endless cemeteries of the whole world. Akunin added several of his stories to this darkness to brighten and brighten the reading. At each of the six cemeteries, we will listen to one author's story: the ghost of Soltychikha, the vampire Marx, the story of the living dead Oscar Wilde, a face-to-face encounter with death, a murder of foreigners in a Japanese cemetery. The last story will be investigated by Erast Fandorin himself, familiar to us from the author’s previous books. If you like to experience fear, if you have an interest in everything mysterious, otherworldly and still unknown to mankind, then boldly go on a journey with Akunin. He will guide you through the most interesting, gloomy places covered in the dusk of the night. Do not be afraid, I assure you, you will not be bored.
Everything that once was, and everyone who once lived, remain forever. Having become acquainted with the work of Akunin, I immediately wanted to continue, since my first impression was good, as you know, it is the initial perception that remains in memory. I didn’t even have time to rack my brains in choosing the next work, when “Cemetery Stories” caught my eye. I can not clearly say why I decided to read this particular book, is it a pattern or just a case. In general, lately I have been drawn to books with the topics of eternal life, philosophizing, accepting reality, etc. I must explain that I belong to the breed of people who seek out in any events, phenomena and even landscapes some personal messages that need to be deciphered and put into a piggy bank for further study. I am aware of some schizophrenia in this game, but, firstly, it is comforting for conceit (if Someone or Something addresses signs to you, then you, damn it, are something); secondly, life is more interesting this way, and thirdly, these messages really exist, you just need to be able to recognize them. This is where I found consonance between our thoughts and Akunin. Judging by the title of the novel, the book is supposed to inspire fear and horror, probably, it happens to other readers. For me, stories about cemeteries have become a source of the pulse of eternity and endless peace, no matter how strange and delusional it may sound. It is no secret that each of us at least once thought about death, thought when the end of his life would come, how it would happen. And I am no exception. Often, before going to bed, these thoughts creep into my head, because, if you think about it, we don’t know anything about life after death, what it is and whether it exists at all. Maybe a person dies, they bury him and that's it. I don't want to believe it. And no matter how we avoid this topic, we still understand that sooner or later we will get there. All living things eventually die. But this is a topic for a separate book. Each culture has centuries-old traditions and customs associated with the transition from the world of the living to the world of the dead, which are directly related to the religion of the peoples of a certain area. Akunin was interested in this topic for a long time and studied it, studied the culture of different peoples, customs, features of burials. The author considers himself a tatophile - these are people who are interested in cemeteries (horror, how can you love a cemetery!). He accumulated information for a long time and decided to present his main observations and show what can be learned about the inhabitants of a particular country by visiting its most famous cemeteries. Each cemetery has its own history, its dead, well-known personalities are buried somewhere, and thanks to this, one cemetery differs from another. There are two authors in this novel, however, one of them is fictional. The first author Chkhartishvili writes a documentary about cemeteries. And Akunin tells us various mystical, tragic, and sometimes very funny stories related to necropolises. Akunin's stories turned out to be very exciting and in a certain sense even instructive. Not all stories are equally good. I wanted to get more information based on real events. For example, learn something interesting about Oscar Wilde or Karl Marx. The book does not fill the atmosphere with grave darkness, although the title already sounds frightening. Perhaps the correct construction of the book played a role, because it ends on a bright note that gives peace and peace in the soul.
