Assessment of Marseille Proust on one side. Marcel Proust questionnaire: what distinguishes one person from the rest? Your favorite poets

Claude Chabrol answers. Translator: Dmitry Zhukov. Based on the book Claude Chabrol, cineaste. Et pourtant je tourne ...

- Your most characteristic trait?

- Patience or indifference - depends on how you look at it.

- The qualities that you value most in a man?

- Politeness.

- The qualities that you value most in a woman?

- What do you value most in your friends?

“The experiences they bring me.”

- What is your main drawback?

“Perhaps to look for him and not find him.” I am selfish, like everyone else ... If you think about it - a certain duplicity.

- What is your favorite pastime?

- Thinking.

- What is your dream of happiness?

- Do not have time to think.

- What do you consider the biggest misfortune?

- Either to be always alone, or not to be able to be alone.

- What would you like to be?

- Irrefutable! I would like to be certain.

- In which country would you like to live?

- In France, south of the Loire.

- What is your favorite color?

- I love white and black, brown and green. Colors that seem opposites and blend well.

- What is your favorite flower?

“I love flowers because they are elegant.” I love the rose, but I don’t know if it is the most elegant.

- Your favorite bird?

- Nightingale, because of its legend: Nightingale.

Claude Chabrol in the film Philippe de Brock "Love Games" (1960

- Your favorite writers?

- There is a line: Balzac, James, Simenon. And the other: Edgar Allan Poe, Clifford Saymak, Philip Dick.

Since 1832, Balzac stopped writing novels and began to create works united by a common plan, and this led to a change in form. From now on, the book itself can be more or less successful, more or less finished. It is important that its structure takes place in the overall architecture. The lengths, the sluggishness of Balzac, or, conversely, the parts made in haste — all this must be considered through such optics. Is it possible to judge the spire of the cathedral in isolation from the cathedral entirely? He is a significant element of the whole from which it cannot be separated.

The difficulty is that no one knows in what order to read Human Comedy. In 1845, Balzac established the sequence: a description of the morals of the 19th century, novels about the past, philosophical and analytical studies. Many of his works were never written, and some of the latest novels were not planned on this list. At the beginning of the century, "Human Comedy" was published in order of release. But the order of appearance is not the order of design. Twenty years ago, another publication was built in accordance with the development of the action, which led to the transfer to the end of historical novels or “Jesus Christ in Flanders”. The only solution is to constantly read and re-read everything written by Balzac until it becomes clear that the question of chronology is not even worth it.

Balzac is also inconvenient for political classifications. He said that he wrote in the light of two torches, the Church and the Monarchy. Indeed, he was convinced that he was a monarchist and a Catholic. At the same time, what he writes shouts the opposite. His portrayal of the July bourgeoisie is ruthless. So, reactionary or revolutionary? Here is a question that can never be answered and which is of no interest. Nothing.

Another stamp regarding Balzac runs from one textbook of literature to another. Due to the fact that he wrote a lot, that he had tremendous vitality, that physically he left a feeling of power, it is often said that his work flows like a big river.

Quite the contrary: Balzac is a stream or, rather, a lot of streams with very clear water, as in Touraine, a region that he most often described because of deep kinship. (The landscape is of paramount importance to him. Didn't he say that the descriptions are important?) Even when you have to expand the topic, as in The Shine and Poverty of the Courtesans, his most ambitious novel, he resorts to feuilletonist tricks.

When there is a greater tendency to miniature than to large strokes, how to make a work, starting with little things? The only way is to create a puzzle. Each element will be included in the overall composition. You never know what the puzzle will look like. It is collected gradually.

For all modesty, this is my course of action. I am terrified of all kinds of huge gizmos and large crowds of people. I'm not Cecil B. De Mill at all. I feel more inclined to the accuracy of the drawing, to the thoroughness. I try to portray with the help of small, insignificant, indicative, exemplary. It’s not at all necessary that my every film be considered completed. Perhaps I just wanted to portray the idea that appeared in the film and which I picked up. I strive to ensure that the totality of the productions gives a very accurate idea of \u200b\u200bmy vision of things.

Henry James is an ideal that I am sure I can never achieve. His work may seem less impressive than the work of Balzac. James was one of the first to attack history in a direct way. He, as far as I know, the narrator is never the main character. He also rarely witnesses the whole story. The narrator can pick up a rumor, a scene ... Everything goes through a series of filters that allow only incomplete, sometimes conflicting elements. When I filmed James novels, I asked myself if it is possible to transfer his art to the cinema. Now I think not. We have not yet come to such refinement. However i like Le banc de la désolation (1976) played by Catherine Sami and Michel Duchossois. I was very fascinated by this work.

Simenon is even closer to me. I share his taste for pathology. He was fascinated by crime, flight. Each time it goes deeper. It does not remain superficial or anecdotal. He had to face the same problem: he was not inclined to build huge structures. But he had amazing ease. Now that the puzzle has developed, we must admit that Simenon is a very important writer. Since he wrote a lot, he is unfairly compared to Balzac. The author closest to him is Dostoevsky. But Simenon is different in that he does not want to go beyond the chronicle of incidents. He is afraid to fly above the ground, to surrender to imagination - that which he must most hate. Hence this anxiety, at times an unpleasant and bewitching desire to stay as close to real as possible. I would like to film Simenon. Maybe Ghosts of a Hatter.

Edgar Allan Poe is both logic and fantasy, delirium and connectedness.<…>

According to Philip Dick, the world is governed by a small number of individuals in whose hands all power is concentrated. Others are just naive madmen; they can be made to swallow anything. In the “Last but One Truth”, humanity, hiding underground, is working to supply the few remaining above with everything necessary for a war that does not end. In fact, they have not fought for a long time. The military refrain from disseminating this information in order to feast at the expense of others.<…>

Clifford Saymak is a humanist. He thinks people are kind. Their only mistake is that they have an instinctive distrust of what they are not. Saymak developed this simple idea through completely stunning walks in time and space, full of undivided optimism regarding the nature of man and even android. He gave an excellent interpretation of the problem of racism. In one of his novels, Again and Again, he raises the question of whether an android, an artificial creature that has all the physical and mental characteristics of a person, can be a person himself. The answer is beautiful: yes, since birth from a man and a woman is not a necessary and sufficient condition for being a man.<…> Many other science fiction authors are interesting. Dick and Simak are only dearer to my heart.

- Your favorite poets?

- This is Pierre Cornell, my favorite poet - and even more than that.

- Favorite literary hero?

- The son of Cardino Georges Simenon.

- Favorite literary heroines?

- Esther van Gobsack.

On the set of the movie "Girl Cut in Two" (2007)

- Favorite composers?

- Depends on the mood. In any case, Mozart, Debussy. For the lyrics - Prokofiev.

The “divine” Mozart is actually a mathematician. Its lightness sometimes disguises the bottomless depths, its childishness may turn out to be weeping, its unique grace - everything is born out of combinations and strict, pure calculations. I admire Mozart more and more.

He depicted the end of civilization like no one else. “The Marriage of Figaro” is a beautiful work, but a little visual. In The Marriage, Mozart goes beyond Beaumarchais's work effectively and deftly. He added rot to the powder. The music is powdery, and at the same time it is slippery, nasty. In the notorious transitions between the rooms of the Countess, Cherubino, Suzanne and Almaviva - a conditional, superficial comedy game, and at the same time meanness, cruelty. When, while working on Don Giovanni, Mozart brings a few measures from Marriage to him, the degeneration that sounds throughout the work suddenly invades it. However, his "Don Juan" is greater, deeper. Funnier than Moliere. Debauchery, condemnation, death are better represented here. Through the music. I could not say why.

Cinema did not have its own Mozart. He did not achieve his classicism. Academism - yes, and very fast. But not classicism. It is true that this is a new art.

I want to bow to Debussy because he also tried to rationalize the unreasonable. He felt that in his time musical language came to a standstill. He came up with new forms to talk about what has not yet been expressed in music. He created the architecture. I am not a musicologist, but I can say that his musical development stops moving horizontally. Finished with the refinement of detail, sensual uncertainty. All this is destroyed in order to recover immediately, everything is mixed up, remaining clear. The filmmaker has a lot to learn from Debussy.

In Prokofiev, health attracts me. It is said that while traveling in Domremy, while his wife was visiting the house of Joan of Arc, he inquired about the best local bistro. Moreover, he wrote music every day. Lots of. But I think that the main quality of a musician is to compose music, a writer to write, an artist to draw, a filmmaker to make a movie. I hold on to this belief.

Prokofiev also tried to combine the incompatible, to combine the full chord in C major with the most extravagant sound noises, the most daring designs. From the age of forty, he has been striving to use all his finds so that they are understood, accepted, appreciated by a wide audience. Since this change coincides with his return to the Soviet Union, he was accused of drowning in Stalin's pomp. He had to listen. But ready-made performances prevented critics from hearing.

- Favorite artists?

“Sure, Velazquez.” Renoir. And Magritte.

Velazquez is absolute perfection. Until now, no one has achieved such success in painting. A painting with a little infant combines everything that I love in painting, in music, in literature: perfection of form, grace of contour and color, manner of approaching things from the side, so that it becomes unclear to us what these objects are. This is a metaphysical picture - because of two mirrors, a door, views. Because of the staging alone.

Renoir - because of his sensuality. Due to the fact that his son brought to the cinema: a completely new understanding and use of the environment. And the evidence. I don’t understand my passion for Auguste Renoir, but that’s precisely passion.

Magritte managed to awaken to life the unreal, the fantastic, and in the soul of the viewer - to cause confusion, or fear, or amazement due to the juxtaposition of ordinary things depicted with painstaking realism.

Landscape. Canvas on an easel. On the canvas is part of the landscape that is behind, which has already been painted.

A picture with a pipe and the inscription: "This is not a pipe." What is the pipe then? An item that allows you to smoke tobacco. So this is not a tube, this is a drawing.

Rose in the room, which she fully occupies. An anomaly is born due to the difference in scale. We do not allow the existence of a giant rose the size of a room. Maybe this is such a small room? Maybe we are in a rose's room ... but such an “explanation” is all the more impossible to take into account.

Each picture cleans your brains a bit, as the surrealists wanted. Magritte is the most convincing of them. He is a hygienist.

- Favorite heroes in real life?

- Philip Augustus. But perhaps here we are talking about a specific, our life with you. And I rely on Proust and answer like him: Monsieur Darlou, Monsieur Burt.

I don’t have a political mind at all.<…> And yet I can recognize the great politician in Philip Augustus. He understood that there was no need to doubt matters, that the end justified any means, if only these means were worthy, that is, bloodless.<…> During the Third Crusade, he pretended to be sick. Leaving Richard the Lionheart to fight with Saladin, he returned to Christian land and seized Richard's French possessions without drawing his sword. He was just as resourceful under Buvin. He perfectly used this battle, which was not so fierce, to make it a great national holiday, to strengthen the national feeling that he first gave us.

Now they explain to me that he represented the reaction and, under the threat of excommunication, defended the church, while the German and Flemish princes were free in their actions. In my opinion, this is too sophisticated. He promoted the incomplete, but real freedom of the communes, and thereby established central authority, which limited the self-will of small tyrants and feudal castles.

He finally invented the cobblestone street - the politician should first of all be a good administrator. I like him - small, red. (There is still the secret of his sex life. He divorced Ingeborg the day after the wedding. No one ever knew why. She was not virgin? She was a man, a transsexual?) I admired him already in childhood. In my historical album, however, he was neither small nor red. He had the bearing of a young god. He was wearing a long blue dress trimmed with lilies. After all the past troubles, and most importantly, in the face of future ones, I said to myself about the winner of the Battle of Buvin: "This is the sovereign." He must be a movie hero. He is much more attractive than this neurotic Richard the Lionheart, who actually has nothing but a name. But the French rarely talked about the Middle Ages on the screen.

- Favorite heroine in history?

“Ode, Roland's bride.” Josephine de Beauharnais. Ode is fidelity. I love fidelity. The case of Penelope seems doubtful to me: she somehow too kindly receives grooms. Ode dies in similar circumstances. I would like a woman to die for me.

Josephine. She was beautiful. She knew how to handle men. She should have had all the flaws that women love. She was a little whore, and that is very good. Very wasteful, she had a reason. She betrayed her husband, it does not hurt me. In poverty or on the throne, she did not change much in her behavior. As a result - true.

- Favorite names?

- I have a weakness for the beautiful name Augustus.

- What do you hate most?

- Everything that concerns political baseness and, first of all, when a politician takes you for a fool.

“Historical characters whom you despise?”

- Thier. And also Marshal Peten.

Monsieur Thiers. Pig. Right pig in its most revealing villainy. A nationalist betraying his own is worth his enemy go out to the square. Maybe he was not the first. In any case, he did not become the last. He went the farthest. And then he became the executioner of the Commune. This is too much for one person.

- What is the most important moment in military history?

- The battle of Verdun.

- A reform that you value especially highly?

- The right of women to abortion.

“An ability that you would like to possess?”

- The ability to draw.

- How would you like to die?

“Very old, moronic, in his bed.”

- Your state of mind at the moment?

“What vices do you feel most condescending to?”

- All vices cause me indulgence.

- What is your motto?

- "Yes, I will not crap."

Another - new - book by a popular Russian television presenter is called Pozner about Pozner.

“In connection with the fifth anniversary of the Posner program (we celebrated it in November 2013), it was decided to select about forty of the most interesting programs, decipher them and provide them with my brief comments. I liked this proposal for several reasons. First, I thought, what the reader will be interested in (time will tell if I was wrong); secondly, I will say with some shame, it seemed to me very simple: well, what kind of problem is to write a three-page commentary on my own interview? Oh, how wrong I was! comments turned out to teach hard, and my promise to do the job for six months were arrogant and irresponsible ", - writes Vladimir Pozner in the preface to the edition. And he indicates that the idea to make such a book did not belong to him, but to an employee of the AST publishing house who wished to remain anonymous.

During the existence of the Pozner program, more than a hundred major personalities took part in it: directors, writers, politicians, actors, and musicians. Vladimir Pozner selected the most interesting interviews, analyzed them and expressed his own attitude to the opinion of the interlocutors. In the book you can read conversations with Mikhail Gorbachev, Nikita Mikhalkov, Hillary Clinton, Alexander Gordon, Pavel Lungin, Anatoly Chubais and others. Why did the first president of the USSR want to send Boris Yeltsin to harvest bananas? Why does Yuri Luzhkov consider the yard to be the best educator? What is Alexander Sokurov guilty of before Rostropovich? When did Yegor Gaidar cease to be a Soviet person? Why did Zhores Alferov lay on the tram tracks?

The RG columnist called Vladimir Vladimirovich and asked him how he was preparing for an interview in his programs.

This is obvious, ”he answered,“ the team and I determine who we will talk to and invite this person to the program. ” If he responds with consent, then the team begins with him what in English is called researching - research work. A lot of material is being collected, then selection is made, the results of which are sent to me. This is usually about 35 to 40 articles. Of course, regardless of what I sent, I read and choose on my own. When everything is studied, I build the script of the conversation.

The texts of each interview in the book, as well as in the program, include answers to the famous questionnaire by Marcel Proust. And for the first time specifically for the book, Vladimir Pozner himself answered the same questions.

The book also contains those answers to the questionnaire that Proust himself gave when he was 20 years old. Since there was a lot of talk that there was no such questionnaire and Pozner himself invented it, I explain that such a questionnaire existed. Moreover - it was thanks to the unexpected, deep and clever answers of the famous French writer that she was called the Proust Questionnaire, ”Vladimir Vladimirovich explained. In the future, any set of such questions began to be called the "Proust Questionnaire", although they already had nothing to do with Proust himself. After Proust, I myself answered the questions in his profile - it seemed funny to me.

In the 1880s, long before becoming one of the greatest writers of his time, a teenager Marcel Proust filled out an English-language questionnaire given to him by his girlfriend Antoinette, the daughter of the then French president, as part of a game in the “Recognition Album”, a Victorian version of today's teenage profiles.

The Proust manuscript was discovered in 1924, two years after his death. Decades later, in the 1970s and 1980s, French TV host Bernard Beer began using the questionnaire for his interviews. In 1993, Vanity Fair magazine revived the tradition and began to publish the answers of famous people to the Proust Questionnaire on the last page of its issues.

In 2009, the magazine published the Vanity Fair Proust Questionnaire, which published responses to a profile of legends such as Jane Goodall, Allen Ginsberg, Gore Vidal, and Joan Didion. Among the most curious answers were those of David Bowie, a great literature buff, published in a magazine in August 1998.

How do you see complete happiness for yourself?

What is your most distinguishing feature?

The ability to screw a word.

What do you consider your greatest achievement?

Cognition of the morning.

What are you most afraid of?

Convert kilometers to miles.

What historical figure do you identify with?

With Santa Claus.

Which of the living people is your greatest admiration?

Who is your hero in real life?

Consumer.

What the hell do you blame the most on yourself?

When I'm in New York - tolerance. Outside of New York - Intolerance.

What the hell do you blame most on others?

What is your favorite trip?

The path of artistic excess.

What do you consider the most overrated benefactor?

Goodwill and originality.

What words or phrases do you abuse most often?

"Chthonic", "miasma".

What do you regret the most?

That I never wore flares.

What is your current state of mind?

I have.

If you could change something in the sense of your family, what would you choose?

My fear of them (except for my wife and son).

What is the most valuable of your things for you?

A cellophane-glued photo of Little Richard, which I bought in 1958, and dried chrysanthemum, plucked during a honeymoon in Kyoto.

What do you consider the abyss of misfortune?

Life is in fear.

Where would you like to live?

In the northeast of Bali or in the south of Java.

What is your favorite activity?

Squish paint over insensitive canvas.

What qualities do you like most about men?

The ability to return books.

What qualities do you like most about women?

Ability to burp on command.

What are your favorite names?

Sears & Roebuck (Sears, Roebuck and Company is an American company operating several international retail chains, founded by Richard Sears and Alva Robak. - Note ed.)

What is your motto?

“What” is my motto.

I do not like TV. Not the TV itself, like a device, of course. A television broadcast. Yes, I would be glad to watch it, but without fail with pleasure. That is the whole point. Because most often you watch it without pleasure. Well, somehow it turns out that it shows something that I don’t want to look at. As in that joke: “I looked into the home medicine cabinet. There was a feeling that we had only two tasks: not to crap and calm down. " There it is. Only besides, it’s also diametrically opposite to the “first-aid kit”. And therefore - there is no need.

Saves, of course, a multimedia player. You can pump gigabytes of programs, films, performances and other yummy into it. And look around if you find the time. But the broadcast ...

But there will always be exceptions. And such a pleasant exception for me, among others, are the releases of the Posner program.

I must admit that I respect Vladimir Vladimirovich Pozner himself with due reverence. In each of his interviews, I try to emphasize something, to pick up something in my arsenal. And I naturally watch his author’s program with great pleasure.

But now I would not like to talk about the program itself. And not even about any particular issue. Many of them, undoubtedly, are an independent topic for a long and thorough conversation.

However, today I’m talking about this.

At the end of each broadcast, Vladimir Vladimirovich asks the interviewed guest several questions from the so-called “Marcel Proust Questionnaire”.

Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust (French: Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust; July 10, 1871 - November 18, 1922) - French writer, novelist and critic, representative of modernism in literature.

And I wanted, through this profile, to try to know a little better than myself. I searched the Internet, where, surprisingly, I found several different options for profiles. I chose the most attractive option for me. And called himself to account.

I bring this questionnaire here not only for my answers. Perhaps (and I see no reason to hide that I would be pleased) someone would be interested to learn something new about me. Then please.

At the end of the 19th century, when Marcel Proust was still a teenager, he filled out a questionnaire called “Album for recording thoughts, feelings, etc.,” which belonged to his girlfriend Antoinette, daughter of the future French President Felix Faure.

At that time, similar profiles showing the tastes, aspirations, and beliefs of the people who filled them were fashionable in English salons.

Marcel Proust himself did not compile a questionnaire. Questionnaires appeared before his birth, however it was his answers that were recognized as the most original. And this profile went down in history precisely under the name of Proust.

And now, in fact, my personal experience of answering the proposed questions:

1. What, in your opinion, is an extremely distressing situation?
Living life in anticipation of something, not noticing what is happening around.

2. Where would you like to live?
Where I live. I love Russia. True, the older I get, the harder it becomes for me to love her.

3. What is the highest happiness for you?
Wake up in the morning, anticipating the coming day.

4. What vices do you consider most condescending?
Selfishness.

5. What is your favorite literary hero?
For some reason, they change all the time.

6. What is your favorite historical character?
Protopop Avvakum.

7. What is your favorite character in real life?
The woman-keeper of the family hearth.

8. What are your favorite literary heroines?
Patricia Holman ( E.M. Remarque, “Three Comrades”).

9. What is your favorite artist?
Ivan Constantinovich Aivazovski

10. What is your favorite composer?
Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky

11. What quality do you value most in a man?
Kindness. Well, firmness of spirit, fidelity to the word - naturally.

12. What quality do you value most in a woman?
Understanding.

13. Which of the human virtues are most attractive to you?
Justice. Everything else is secondary.

14. What is your favorite activity?
Joint with the Son.

15. What would you like to change in yourself?
I try to develop all the time, constantly changing something in myself. What will be the result is a matter of time.

16. What is your main character trait?
Sincerity.

17. What do you value most in friends?
Honesty, kindness, sense of humor and reliability.

18. What is your main flaw?
High demands on oneself, "an excellent student complex."

19. What is your dream of happiness?
A dream I used to consider something unrealizable. But pleasant. Happiness is nice. I would not like to think that it is unrealizable.

20. What do you consider the greatest misfortune?
Survive your children.

21. How would you like to see yourself?
That when my parents could be proud of me.

22. What is your favorite color?
White.

23. What is your favorite flower?
Lily of the valley.

24. What is your favorite bird?
White lily of the valley stork.

25-26. Favorite writers and poets?
There are a lot of them. I simply cannot afford to single out my favorites.

27. Favorite characters in real life?
Do not make yourself an idol.

28. Favorite heroines in history?
² ° And Adam called the name of his wife: Eve, for she became the mother of all living.

29. Favorite names?
Vladimir, Boris, Konstantin, Ivan. Sophia, Anna, Elizabeth.

30. What do you dislike most?
When they offend children.

31. Historical characters that cause you contempt?
I do not have enough knowledge to answer this question.

32. The moment of military history, which, in your opinion, is most admired?
The hoisting of the Banner of Victory on May 1, 1945 on the dome of the Reichstag building in Berlin.

33. A reform that you particularly value?
The manifesto of February 19, 1861 "On the all-merciful granting to serfs of the rights of the state of free rural inhabitants."

34. A gift that you would like to possess?
To be able to always trust people.

35. How would you like to die?
A worthy person.

36. What is your current state of mind?
Looks like I learned to enjoy life.

37. What is your motto?
“And it doesn’t matter at all what you die from, for it is much more important - why was born” ( A.N. Bashlachev, “Like Autumn Winds”)

And also, at the end of each broadcast, Vladimir Pozner asks his guests the following question: “Facing God, what will you tell him?”.

For me personally, this is the most interesting, and at the same time the most crucial question.

And I want to think that I would say the following: "Lord, let me go, please, just for a moment - I did not have time to say the most important words to the people who are most important to me ..."

There you are, friends. In this questionnaire, it would seem, very simple questions. But it just so happens that sometimes it’s most difficult to answer them.

I wish you to succeed. Not necessarily with ease. All the best!

P.S. But Posner, among others, look (those), listen (those), read (those), if you have not done so far. Like, dislike - this is subjective. You should know. All power lies in them - in knowledge. Yes, it’s more interesting to choose from more baggage ...

I have the honor.

, writer, winner of the National Bestseller Award:

Indolence.

I can hardly understand other people.

Ability to make decisions. Ability to act according to the decision. Even if it was wrong.

Everything. More perfect than women is only the forest. But he is more predictable.

5. What is your favorite activity?
Go.

6. What is happiness for you?
Lots of free time. Completely free. And a lot.

Roger Federer.

8. Where would you like to live?
Where I live now.

To drunkenness.

Gagarin, Iniesta, Svetlana Zakharova (ballerina).

Paste. Wine.

Herostratus, Robespierre.

Levitation.

, an independent book reviewer and literary critic:

1. What is your most characteristic trait?
Openness.

2. What is your main drawback?
Naivety.

3. The qualities that you value most in a man?
Mind, constancy, generosity, generosity.

4. The qualities that you value most in a woman?
Patience, kindness, loyalty, tact.

5. What is your favorite activity?
Sail on a boat and look at clouds and beaches, meet friends, wander slowly through the streets of unfamiliar cities, and acquaintances too, write, read, choose gifts, listen to classical music ... (plus ten pages of my favorite too).

6. What is happiness for you?
Harmony with oneself and the world.

7. If not yourself, then who would you like to be?
The English Queen, of course.

8. Where would you like to live?
“If it happened to be born in the Empire, it is better to live in a remote province by the sea ...” Seriously, Moscow, hometown, that's all. And also have the opportunity to try different options.

9. What vices do you feel most condescending to?
Gullibility and, perhaps, vanity in a light form.

10. What are your favorite characters in real life?
"Do not make yourself an idol…"

11. What is your favorite food or drink?
Young potatoes with dill and light-salted cucumbers, proper coffee and much more, try new tastes.

12. What historical figures cause your greatest antipathy?
Tyrants, provocateurs.

13. An ability that you would like to have?
Reborn.

, writer, winner of the Big Book Prize, editor of the department of culture of the Rossiyskaya Gazeta

1. What is your most characteristic trait?
Tediousness. I am the most boring person in the world.

2. What is your main drawback?
Uncommunicative. I once flew on adjacent airplane seats with my good friends who entered the cabin later than me, and pretended that I was sleeping and, in general, I wasn’t. It was extremely uncomfortable to sit looking at the window for four and a half hours, I remained hungry and felt I’m a complete idiot - and that's just because I didn’t want to talk to anyone.

3. The qualities that you value most in a man?
Stubbornness. Aguirre, the wrath of God at Herzog. Zamakhovsky in "Three Colors - White." A.T. Fomenko. That is all.

4. The qualities that you value most in a woman?
Mockery.

6. What is happiness for you?
When the person on the right in the passenger seat can be ruffled at the back of the head at any time, you don’t need to talk about anything, and wherever you go, it makes no difference.

7. If not yourself, then who would you like to be?
Carrie Matheson from the TV series Homeland.

8. Where would you like to live?
Muslim country between Morocco and Kashmir. Iran, for example. Maybe Morocco.

9. What vices do you feel most condescending to?
Vanity. Narcissism.

10. What are your favorite characters in real life?
V. Bushin. E. Limonov. Fernando Alonso.

11. What is your favorite food or drink?
Bibimbap Or bibambob? No, I'm lying. Dumplings with cherries - but only performed by my mother.

12. What historical figures cause your greatest antipathy?
Vl. Nabokov.

13. An ability that you would like to have?
Mathematical mind.