Laurel

Evgeny Vodolazkin is the author of the novel Solovyov and Larionov (finalist of the Big Book and the Awards of Andrei Bely), the collection of the essay “Tool of Language” and other books.

philologist, specialist in ancient Russian literature, he He does not like historical novels, “their obsessive ethnographism - kokoshniks, sweatshirts, ports, zipunes” and other dull stylization. Using the intonations of ancient Russian texts, Vodolazkin bizarrely mixes different eras and language elements, giving the reader not herbaria, but a living bouquet.

The hero of the new novel “Lavr” is a medieval doctor. Possessing the gift of healing, he cannot save his beloved and decides to go the earthly path instead of her. So life turns into life. He nurses plague and wounded, wretched and weak, and the more he sacrifices himself, the more obvious his gift is stronger. But is it possible to save the human soul with love and victims, unable to protect its earth's shell?

is there what is easier to talk about in the Old Russian context. For example, about God. It seems to me that the connections with him were more straightforward. It is already important that they were just. Now the issue of these connections is occupied by the few that puzzles. Is it really from the Middle Ages we learned something radically new, which allows us to relax?

Evgeny Vodolazkin.