In a Nutshell

 

Victor Pelevin “The Sacred Book of Werewolf”

 

The cause of error by living beings is that they believe it is possible to cast aside the false and attain unto the truth.  But when you attain unto yourself, the false becomes true, and there is no other truth to which one need attain after that.

November 21st, 2009 | Tags: "The Sacred Book of Werewolf", false, true, truth, Victor Pelevin | Category: My Lava Life, Quotes | | Leave a comment

 

 

Victor Pelevin “The Sacred Book of Werewolf”

 

Anyone who wishes to understand the nature of beauty should first of all ask himself: where is it located?  Can we say that it is somewhere inside the woman who is considered beautiful?  Can we say, for instance, that there is beauty in the features of her face?  Or in her figure?

 

Science tells us that the brain receives a flow of information from the sense organs, in this case from the eyes, and without the interpretations imposed by the visual cortex, this is simply a chaotic sequence of coloured dots, digitized into nerve impulses by the visual tract.  Any fool can understand that there is not beauty in that, so it doesn’t find its way into a man through his eyes.  In technical terms, beauty is the interpretation that arises in the consciousness of the patient.  As they say – in the eye of the beholder.

 

Beauty does not belong to a woman and it is not her specific quality – it is just that at a certain time of life her face reflects beauty, as a windowpane reflects the sun that is hidden behind the roofs of the houses.  And so we cannot say that a woman’s beauty fades with time – it is simply that the sun moves on and the windows of other houses begin to reflect it.  But we know that the sun is not in the windowpanes that we look at.  It is in us.

 

What is the sun?  I’m sorry, but that’s another mystery, and today I was only planning to reveal one.  And in any case, from the point of view of practical magic, the nature of the sun is absolutely irrelevant.  What matters are the manipulations that we perform with its light…

November 20th, 2009 | Tags: "The Sacred Book of Werewolf", beauty, fools, manipulation, mystery, reflection, Victor Pelevin | Category: Literature, Quotes | | Leave a comment

 

 

Victor Pelevin “The Sacred Book of Werewolf”

 

‘… Did Mikhalich give you the flower?’

 

‘Yes,’ I answered.  ‘And he told me I should think about the meaning of the message.  But I haven’t come up with anything.  Maybe you can tell me yourself?’

 

He scratched his head.  He seemed disconcerted by my question.

 

‘Do you know the folktale about the little scarlet flower?’

 

‘Which one exactly?’ I asked.

 

‘I think there is only one.’

 

He nodded towards a desk with a computer and a silver figurine standing on it.  There was a book lying beside the figurine, with bookmarks in several pages.  The half-effaced red letters of the title on its cover read: Russian Fairy Tales.

 

‘The story was written down by Sergei Aksakov,’ he said.  ‘His housekeeper Pelagia told him it.’

 

‘And what about it?’

 

‘About a beautiful girl and a beast.’

 

‘And what’s the little flower got to do with it?’

 

‘It was the reason everything began.  Do you really not know this fairy tale?’

 

‘No.’

 

‘It’s long, but the gist is this: a beautiful girl asked her father to bring her a scarlet flower.  The father found one in a magical garden a long way away and picked it.  But the garden was guarded by a terrible monster.  He caught the beautiful girl’s father, and she had to become the monster’s prisoner so that he would release her father.  The monster was ugly, but kind.  She fell in love with him, first for his kindness, and then simply in love.  And when they kissed, the spell was broken and the monster turned into a prince.’

 

‘Aha,’ I said.  ‘Do you have any idea what it’s about?’

 

‘Of course.’

 

‘Yes? What is it about?’

 

‘About love conquering all.’

 

I laughed.  He really was quite amusing.  He’d probably bumped off a few heavy hoods and ordered a hit on some banker, so now, with typical human presumption, he thought he was a monster.  And he also thought that love would save him.

 

He took me by the arm and led me across to a futuristic divan standing between two groves of dwarf bonsais with miniature arbours, bridges and even waterfalls.

 

‘Why are you laughing?’

 

‘I can explain,’ I said, sitting down on the divan and pulling my legs up under me.

 

‘Okay, explain.’

 

He sat at the other end of the divan and crossed his legs.  I noticed the edge of a holster peeping out from under his uniform jacket.

 

‘It’s one of those folktales that express the horror and pain of a woman’s first sexual experience,’ I said.  ‘There are lots of stories like that, and the one you just told me is a classic example.  It’s a metaphor of how a woman discovers the essentially bestial nature of man and becomes aware of her own power over that beast.  And the little scarlet flower that her father picks is such a literal symbol of defloration, amplified by the theme of incest, that I find it hard to believe the story was told by a housekeeper.  It was probably composed by some twentieth-century Viennese postgraduate to illustrate his thesis.  He invented the story, and the housekeeper Pelagia, and the writer Aksakov.’

 

While I was talking, his expression turned noticeably gloomier.

 

‘Where did you pick this stuff?’

 

‘It’s all truisms.  Everybody knows it.’

 

‘And you believe it?’

 

‘What?’

 

‘That this fairy tale is not about how love conquers everything on earth, but how defecation realizes its power over incest?’

 

‘Defloration,’ I corrected him.

 

‘It does not matter.  Is that what you really think?’

 

I thought about it.

 

‘I…. I don’t think anything.  That’s simply the contemporary discourse of folktales.’

 

‘So you’re saying that because of this discourse, when someone gives you a scarlet flower you think it’s a symbol of defecation and incest?’

 

‘No, don’t be like that,’ I replied, a little embarrassed.  ‘When someone gives me a scarlet flower I….I’m simply pleased.’

 

‘Thank God,’ he said.  ‘And as for contemporary discourse, it’s high time to take an aspen stake and stuff it back up the cocaine-and-amphetamine polluted backside that produced it.’

 

I hadn’t expected such a sweeping generalization.

 

‘Why?’

 

‘So it won’t defile out little scarlet flower.’

 

‘All right,’ I said, ‘I understand about the cocaine.  You mean Dr Freud.  He did have that little peccadillo.  But what have amphetamines got to do with it?’

 

‘I can explain,’ he said.  And tucked his legs up underneath himself in a parody of my pose.

 

‘Okay, explain.’

 

‘All those French parrots who invented discourse were high on amphetamines all the time.  In the evening they take barbiturates to get to sleep, and they start off the morning with amphetamines so they can generate as much discourse as possible before they start taking barbiturates to get back to sleep again.  That’s all there is to discourse.  Didn’t you know that?’

 

‘Where did you get information like that?’

 

‘There was a course at the FSB Academy about modern psychedelic culture.  Counter-brainwashing.  Oh yes, I forgot to say – they’re all queers too.  In case you were going to ask what the backside had to do with anything.’

November 19th, 2009 | Tags: "The Sacred Book of Werewolf", amphetamines, barbiturates, beast, beauty, cocaine, flower, generalization, horror, love, meaning, metaphor, monster, pain, power, sex, sexuality, Sigmund Freud, truism, Victor Pelevin, writers | Category: Conversations, Literature, Quotes | | Leave a comment

 

 

Victor Pelevin “The Sacred Book of Werewolf”

 

In speaking of intelligentsia’s debt of guilt to the nation, he kept using two terms that I thought were synonyms – ‘intelligentsia’ and ‘intellectuals’.  After a while I just had to ask:

 

‘But what difference is there between a member of the intelligentsia and an intellectual?”

 

‘There’s a very big difference,’ – he replied.  ‘I can only try to explain it allegorically.  Do you understand what that means?’

 

I nodded.

 

‘When you were still very little, there were a hundred thousand people living in this city who were paid for kissing the ass of a loathsome red dragon – which you probably don’t even remember…’

 

I shook my head.  Once in my young days I really had seen a red dragon, but I’d already forgotten what it looked like – the only thing I could remember was my own fear.  It was unlikely that Pavel Ivanovich had that incident in mind.

 

‘Of course, those hundred thousand people hated the dragon, and they dreamed of being ruled by the green toad who fought against the dragon.  So, anyway, they came to an arrangement with the toad, poisoned the dragon with lipstick that they got from the CIA and started living a new life.’

 

‘But what have the intell – ‘

 

‘Wait,’ he said, raising his hand.  ‘At first they thought that under the toad they would be doing exactly the same as before, only they’d get ten times as much money for it.  But it turned out that instead of a hundred thousand ass-kissers there was only demand for three professionals working in three eight-hour shifts to give the toad a never-ending blowjob.  And which of the hundred thousand those three would be, would be decided by an open competition, in which candidates would not only have to demonstrate their advanced professional skills, but also the ability to smile optimistically with the corners of their mouths while they were at work…’

 

‘I’m afraid I’ve lost the thread.’

 

‘Well, this is the thread.  Those hundred thousand people were called the intelligentsia.  And those three are called intellectuals.’

November 18th, 2009 | Tags: "The Sacred Book of Werewolf", intellectual, intelligence, intelligent, intelligentsia, skills, Victor Pelevin | Category: Literature, Quotes | | Leave a comment