"There will be many more unexpected appearances of the "Mythogenic Caste Love" in completely different incarnations."

Interview with Pavel Pepperstein

What are the feelings of visualizing a novel? "MLK" is written in the spirit of romanticism, that is, visual images prevail – a detailed description of objects, hallucinations, interiors and panoramas. You can say that you invited other artists to become your eyes – what does it feel like? What do you feel? How much does your novel differ from the comics that originated from it?

In my eyes, this is just one of the advantages of a novel — that it can be visualized with an infinite number of images, in various styles. Long before this powerful visualization was carried out by the efforts of many artists, he was already visualized in my head with many different images — in different styles, including those far from my own. Of course, I'm interested in making a comic based on the "Mythogenic Love of Castes" myself, but it's a thousand times more interesting to see comics created by other artists. I already know my visualization, and seeing how another person sees it, especially an artist, is always wildly interesting. And I hope that I will live to see the visualization of the novel by film directors.

The project has a beautiful and rare idea: to attract so many different artists for a comic strip in one piece. I don't recall anyone doing that at all. How did this process take place, and by what criteria were the artists chosen?

The criteria were simple and the only ones were who Sonya and I liked and who really reflected our taste. Of course, not everyone agreed and was able to do it from those who we liked. Not all of them, but many of them, and they showed amazing responsiveness and talent. All the artists reacted differently to this task. Someone really gave their all, which plunged Sonya and me into a state of prayerful ecstasy and grateful ecstatic delirium, and someone was a little minimalistic about the task, which does not make this artist's contribution any less valuable.

Artists are very different, their attitude to the task is also different, and their attitude to the text is also different. Someone is really a masterpiece of the art of comics, someone worked in this genre for the first time. So the diversity itself is already fascinating. Sonya and I really like the swings from chapter to chapter: every time you fall into some new world. You can take, for example, the transformation of the image of the main character Dunaev: I wonder who represents him, although he seems to be described in some detail in the text. The dynamics of what is happening are also different, for some it is a very bright world saturated with colors, for others it is a very spatial world saturated with air, incredible flights, movements, perspectives, distances, approximations, for others this plane is a kind of wall or surface on which some black-and-white movement takes place. shadows.

Would you like to repeat this experience with some other work? What other text would be great to present as a graphic novel?

Many literary works deserve this, but for some reason it was "Mythogenic Love" that called for this especially. It is, after all, mythogenic, and indeed love, that is, the combination of these two words and the two qualities of "mythogenicity" and "loveliness" especially calls for this kind of further unwinding. The fate of this novel is unusual, and in a sense, this text is more than just a literary work. Therefore, it seems to me, although maybe this is some kind of glitch, that there will still be a lot of unexpected appearances of the "Mythogenic love of castes" in completely different incarnations. However, I would love to participate in comics based on Dostoevsky, Sorokin, Mamleev, Agnia Barto.

Whose MLK comic would you like to see, but it's impossible?

Granville or Dora would be nice. These are great illustrators who have proven their absolute versatility and ability to work with absolutely any text. I've always appreciated that very much.

If we talk about comics, then all nations have contributed, but the most significant contribution is from Japan, America and France. Our artists are, of course, the best artists in the world, but if this were such an international project, we would like to attract artists from these countries in addition to artists from the CIS countries. And in general, artists from different countries. We would do it now, but the problem is that the text of the Mythogeny has not yet been translated. But maybe it will be fixed soon.

When did you first see comics? Was it something Soviet or imported? What impression did they make on you?

Before I saw the really real comics, which are called comics, I saw some kind of protocomix in several different versions. But in my childish brain, which was really young at that moment, several observations were compared.

I was fascinated by the icons in the church. Actually, I saw them not only in the church, but also in museums — in the Tretyakov Gallery, in the Andrei Rublev Museum — and I really liked them. They were also hanging at home: they were Old Believer icons of the Southern Russian school, given to my parents by an absolutely wonderful priest, Father Moses, with whom they became friends in an amazing place called Vilkovo. This village is called the "Venice of the Danube." It is located at the mouth of the Danube, where it flows into the Black Sea. And all the houses of the residents of Vilkov are built on stilts and the movement is carried out by boats, such a river village, amazing. And it was inhabited by Russian Old Believers. My parents came there when they were young and met a priest there. He asked them what their fates were. They replied that they were artists from Moscow, and he offered them to live in his house for free. They became very, very friends with him, he even came to visit Moscow several times and lived at our house, and they painted members of his family, gave him works, and in return he gifted them with icons, very beautiful, which I still have.

And looking at these icons, I drew attention to such a phenomenon as the stigmata of life. Along the edges of the image is, strictly speaking, a comic strip depicting a sequence of certain events related to the life of a particular saint. Indeed, like any child who watches any comic book, I am fascinated by this storyboard of successive events.: You see the same character who travels, transforms in some way, and has various adventures. This is the first comic book that I remember.

And the second one is "Max and Moritz" by Wilhelm Busch. Boys are hooligans, as they would say now, then it was called the word "mischievous". I had books in German and even in Russian, published back in tsarist times. They were called "Fedka and Grishka, naughty boys," and I loved it. And of course, the Soviet protocomix. For example, Nikolai Radlov, a brilliant Leningrad artist. He drew such humorous animal comics — very short stories of no more than 4-6 pages, but each time they created a very powerful unfolding effect.

Well, at some point, I won't say exactly at what point, I saw real comics, which were called comics, and immediately clicked on them. There were also comics in Funny Pictures, which I was lucky enough to collaborate with myself as an illustrator from the age of twelve. And we were also overtaken by various Western treasures — me and Antosha Nossik, with whom we spent our childhood together. Anton's dad, the writer Boris Nossik, spent a lot of time in Paris and brought or sent armfuls of comics: Asterix and Obelix, all these "Pythas and Hercules" and "Tin Tin" in full. In addition, there was an absolutely amazing French magazine Pilote. Apparently, Boris Nossik bought it for his son without looking, thinking that comics were something childish. In fact, Pilote magazine was clearly intended for adults, and that's why we children, that is, Antosha Nossik and I, especially liked it. Very erotic comics were published there; they made a huge impression on me, shaped me in many ways as a graphic artist, and at the same time influenced the world of my erotic fantasies.

During my childhood, there was a wonderful Druzhba bookstore on the site of the Moscow bookstore. Books from socialist countries were sold there, including the Polish magazine Relax, dedicated exclusively to comics. I've been buying it all the time, and I still have a huge stack of these magazines from the late 70s somewhere. Returning to the artists of the French magazine Pilote, virtuosos such as Milo Manara, Enki Bilal and many others collaborated there. The work of these artists provoked me to a wide range of enthusiastic reactions. And of course, I've been drawing comics myself since I was very young. I think I drew my first comic book when I was about five years old. These were endless adventures of some gentlemen, mostly in top hats, with curled moustaches, in plaid trousers and tailcoats.

American superhero comics have grown enormously at some point and are now an important provider of stories for Hollywood. How do you feel about this and do you try on similar development models for MLK?

I love the Marvel and DC universe, and of course, here this question leads us, with logical inevitability, to another very important topic — the topic of cinema. Comics are the most important intermediary between literature, visual arts and cinema. In the comic, these three worlds meet. And the actual text meets with the drawing in order to last later in the form of a motion picture, hand-drawn or game. A comic book makes it possible to assemble a movie from text and pictures in the mind, in the brain of the viewer/ reader. I know perfectly well from everyday speech that it is never known which verb to use in relation to a comic book: some people say "watch a comic book", others — "read a comic book". There is a free Brownian motion between the concepts of "watching" and "reading", between the viewer's position and the reader's position. As someone who has always been involved in literature and visual arts, and at the same time has always been a rabid moviegoer, comics play a very important role for me. And in this case, I cherish the hope, secret and not very secret and completely anti—secret, that this exhibition, this project, and the comic book are infinitely valuable in themselves, but they also represent a bridge to the further incarnation of the novel "Mythogenic Love of Castes." Namely, the transformation of this novel into hand—drawn films, game films, into hand—drawn TV series, game series, and then computer games, merch, toys, plush characters or plastic characters, and then it will go into an infinity of new technological versions that my brain doesn't even know about yet. The world of entertainment is limitless. And it is wonderful that no technological innovations, no inventions of the new do not cancel out anything old in this world. Everything always stays in it and plays a huge role. Everything that some other Neanderthal did, grinding his genitals against the surface of a rock, remains exactly as relevant as the latest squeak of some technological innovation.

And who could film MLK?

We really liked Denis Villeneuve's new film Dune, and he has another great alien movie, Arrival. So Villeneuve would definitely be welcome here. I also liked it, and it somehow resembles the "Mythogeny" series Doom Patrol. On the other hand, I recall the masterpieces of Soviet cinema. We won't be able to resurrect those directors, at least not in the near future, but who knows? Nobody canceled the utopia of Nikolai Fedorov, and perhaps after some time Andrei Tarkovsky and Sergei Bondarchuk will work in our country again. Moreover, in this situation, many Hollywood films will not be officially shown, and it will really be necessary to resurrect the dinosaurs of the local film industry.

In addition to MLK in Comics, several more exhibitions are planned, and all of them are dedicated to the novel. Can you tell us a little more about them?

"MLK in Comics" is part of a larger project, an even larger exhibition, which was conceived and hopefully will be realized a little later. This exhibition is called "Dreams of milk. Semiotic studies for the film adaptation of the novel "Mythogenic Love of the Castes" (the pilot version of the exhibition is open from April 29 at the Voznesensky Center in Moscow — approx.). At this exhibition, not in the form of comics, but in the form of paintings, drawings, objects, installations, various artists (there are more than sixty of them) will show works dedicated to this novel. Artists are constantly looking for a unifying principle, as a kind of lost paradise. And they often try to find this unifying impulse in the sphere of ideas, discourse, in the field of constant discussions, certain professional polemics when artists argue about their work. In this case, another version is proposed for consideration, in fact, an older one, which consists in the fact that the unifying principle is not a discourse, but a narrative. No polemic or unanimity is needed here — each person offers their own version of the visualization of a certain narrative. The narrative is general, and the reaction to it can be completely different — and there is no need to seek a common consensus.

Artists have worked in a similar way for many centuries. If we talk about the Western narrative, these are the Old and New Testaments, ancient mythology, sometimes the mythology of individual countries, as well as a rather meager set of particularly significant historical events. And according to these two or three narratives, roughly speaking, artists have been quietly doing absolutely different works for centuries, and that was enough. For example, Actaeon spies on Artemis bathing and turns into a deer as punishment. For five hundred years (and in fact much more), artists have been painting how he turns into a deer. In the twentieth century, this Actaeon was already in the form of a square or triangle, but nevertheless stubbornly continues to turn into a deer within the framework of a certain mythological construction. That is, this narrative gives a huge scope, has an extremely long breath. We are conducting an experiment — is "Mythogenic Love of Castes" suitable as such a unifying text? Narratives of this kind can well be called "milk" — milk stories, to use English, or lactal narratives. After all, everyone drinks milk in infancy, and not only humans, but all mammals. In this case, the text of the novel "MLK" is proposed as an experimental text of this kind, which is why it is called "Milk": the abbreviation "MLK" is, in fact, the spelling of the word "milk" according to the Hebrew rules or according to the rules of Eastern Christian iconography, that is, a kind of maternal, nourishing, generalizing and unifying text.

Such activity in connection with MLK can be called abnormal: republishing, comics, exhibitions. How did it all come together and is there anything else planned that we don't know about?

Everything turned out in some amazing and mystical way. And we were not the initiators: without any agreement, some impulses related to this novel began to arrive from completely different points of space. At the same time, it was republished, and this exhibition took place. And then there's the audiobook. A wonderful actor and a great reader, Grigory Perel, voiced the "Mythogenic love of castes" and you can already listen to it.

You once argued that MLK should be included in the school curriculum. How would that be possible?

This procedure will be required… There is such a wonderful English term — "bowdlerization". In the 19th century, there lived in England a character named Bowdler, who created the "purified" Shakespeare. Because, if we talk about the norms of public speech of the Victorian era in England, then Shakespeare, as he is, absolutely did not roll. And Bowdler, on his own initiative, purged Shakespeare of everything indecent — of everything that at that moment did not fit into the framework of decency. And for almost a hundred years, this "bowdlerized" Shakespeare was published in large editions and was more popular than the original Shakespeare. Then the need for such a version disappeared and it was forgotten. But, of course, we had time to laugh and make fun of Bowdler — but we must thank him, because he really helped Shakespeare stay afloat during this "lean" period in English literature. And I think what he did was quite good. I don't know how Shakespeare reacted to this in the other world, but if I were Shakespeare, I would have completely blessed Bowdler and blessed him with some kind of Shakespearean blessing, especially since this is really a temporary topic. Such things are like a kind of bridge, so I don't mind if a "bowdlerized" version of the "Mythogenic Love of Castes" arises, from which all the mat and something unsuitable for the school curriculum will be removed, after which the bowdlerized "MLK" will be included in the school curriculum. I would do it myself, but I'm too lazy, so I hope that some great new Bowdler will do it, if there is one, of course.

Would you like to read the writings of schoolchildren on MLK?

With pleasure, of course! Moreover, when MLK came out, back in the late nineties, one of the reviews, very funny, had the form of a school essay. Of course, it wasn't a real school essay, but the literary stylization is nevertheless very funny. At the same time, for example, Sonya's brother, Leo, has come to visit us. He's 14 years old, and we gave him MLK. And now he's reading it, quoting it by the armfuls, he really likes it. And of course, if it weren't for stereotypes, teenagers would now enjoy reading and reveling, because the text of this novel was written by two of the deepest infantoids, Seryozha Anufriev and me, and I think that all children, maybe not so much children as teenagers, are close to the poetics of this text. With these words, I urge the new Boodlers: be bold, subject MLK to monstrous censorship, and put it wherever you want, including in the school curriculum.