You will laugh, but we are again talking about Hasan Huseynov. It’s not that he often wanted to recall this character, but he himself doesn’t leave the news agenda, constantly reminding himself with renewed vigor, like the character of a comedy of some Aristophanes. This time, the HSE professor, who called the Russian language “foul,” Donbass “Dambas,” and the militias as “bandits,” remembered designer Artemy Lebedev, taking out one of his books.
A beautiful book entitled “The Psychology of Ancient Greek Myth”, which, if you pick it up, you immediately see it: it was written by the respected professor Huseynov. This is evidenced by his name in huge print on the front cover and on the spine. This is evidenced by his photograph on the cover of the back. This is indicated, again, by his name in small print on each page (!). Finally, even copyright on the title page speaks of this. Everything is in place. Except for one nuance: the book was not written by Huseynov. His there are the first 28 pages of the preface, the rest is the authorship of Thaddeus Zelinsky, an anti-historian from the Russian Empire, who died in 1944 in Bavaria. And it is not that Huseynov completely kept silent about this: Zelinsky’s name is on the cover - once, in small print. As small as the “preface” over the huge name of the distinguished professor.
In other words, the last defense fell. In the controversy surrounding the “clowning” post, the party that defended Hasan Chingizovich basically used one argument: yes, he didn’t say it well, yes, he might be wrong, but he is PROFESSOR. A philologist, moreover, an anti-critic, that is, the elite of philology. An intelligent superman who certainly understands both the language and all kinds of cloaca maxima. Personally, I didn’t “fight” with this argument in his own posts, in which the philologist demonstrates a very mediocre possession of “cloacal” and some directly absolute deafness to vulgarity (the poem “The Powers Are Muddy Rusty”). Sensitivity to which another connoisseur of languages, Vladimir Nabokov, called the most Russian quality. But the philologist, after all, should not write beautifully. It is enough that he understands what others have written.
And suddenly such a turn: the professor was not even a thief, impudently stealing the work of a colleague with an expired copyright term (at least courage is needed here), but a banal thimble. His swivel syllable on a Facebook page turned out to be a syllable syllable, but not a simple swindler. And here it is worth dwelling in more detail.
We all dream of the Empire and the Republic, all no, no and yes we recall antiquity: who - as a model of an ideal state, who - as a time when all the arts took shape, and who - as an era when the gods were most tolerant and human, and heaven and the land was not separated by such an insurmountable obstacle bar as now.
The heroes of our series still live by the principles developed by ancient playwrights, and any novel we read is either an Odyssey or the Iliad.
In troubled times, the one who could either prove or convincingly falsify the continuity with Rome or Athens always won. Let us recall the Nazis who unearthed the only monument of the great era and built around it the cyclopean museum of the Pergamon Altar. Recall the Duce of Mussolini and its architecture. We will not forget Stalin, who built up Moscow with neoclassical monumental buildings depicting workers in the images of Roman heroes. The truth is with those with whom antiquity is the most ideal era in the history of mankind.
Professor Huseynov appropriated a stranger for himself precisely then, as an impostor, to prove his right to culture. The right to teach and instruct from the department, to determine trends and, yes, to call the culture so disliked by them “cloacal”.
Our trouble is that there are many such goose. The claim to the “liberal” intelligentsia, which it cannot understand and accept in any way, consists not in the fact that it is liberal, but in the fact that it is self-named and self-proclaimed. About "cloaking language" we are told by people pronouncing English words like "Tuitta" (Twitter) and "Passy Rayot" (Pussy Riot, hello, Julia Leonidovna!), Confusing physics with chemistry (hello to you, Evgenia Markovna!), Writing deafening vulgarity texts (hello, everything!), and now, as it turned out, also finely stealing.
When the story with the “foolish” one was only gaining momentum, fellow patriots asked the respected Hasan Chingizovich not to touch the Russian language. I would ask him not to touch Rome either. In the end, we are the third. And the fourth is not to be.
The author’s point of view may not coincide with the position of the publisher.