Kozma Petrovich Prutkov. Mysterious Legend of Aphorisms and Satire. Quotes

[edit] So what should I do?

It's obvious! If you can’t troll clearly and thickly, you need to do it subtly. This is how Kozma Petrovich came into being. Mutually exclusive paragraphs, selfless flurodros and moralism - everything came into play. Moreover, for greater persuasiveness, a biography was developed. Of course, this was not a legend on the level of Stirlitz, but this was not required. And then came filling with content, thousands of it! Poems, plays, fables and aphorisms, the last of which have retained their significance to this day.

From the moment he appeared in front of the eyes of the respectable public, the first troll of the Russian bottling was considered himself by the collective unconscious of the Sovremennik magazine, but after the appearance of interest and some seething, de-anonymization followed, the addresses of Tolstoy (not real), the Zhemchuzhnikov brothers and Ershov (the author of the poem about the Little Humpbacked Horse) were calculated. .

Even in the dull nineteenth century, without Yaga and fast Internet, it was impossible to know how to use those around you in order to raise your own mood. The method has not changed - to lull the reader’s vigilance with stereotypes, break the pattern and, at the moment of vulnerability of the surprised brain, treat it a little with its own limitations. Well, and so on in the same spirit.

A fictional portrait of a fictional writer

As Vladimir Zhemchuzhnikov wrote: “The moral and mental image of K. Prutkov was created, as my brother says, not suddenly, but gradually, as if by itself, and only then was it supplemented and completed by us consciously.” Lev Zhemchuzhnikov and artists Alexander Beideman and Lev Lagorio made sure that the writer Prutkov acquired a recognizable appearance. In 1853, a fictional portrait was painted, which was soon published in one of the magazines.

“...Skillfully curled and tousled, brown, gray-tinged hair; two warts: ... a piece of black English plaster on the neck ... long, sharp ends of a shirt collar sticking out from under a colored scarf tied around the neck with a wide and long loop; an almaviva cloak with a black velvet collar, one end picturesquely thrown over the shoulder. When the portrait of Kozma Prutkov was already painted on the stone, he demanded that a lyre be added below, from which rays emanate upward.”

Excerpt from the book “Biographical information about Kozma Prutkov”

[edit] Preamble

1851. The Crimean War has not yet begun. The Hungarian uprising has already been suppressed, as a result of which all sorts of r-r-revolutionaries look at Nicholas the First as the Gendarme of Europe. At that time, they did not stand on ceremony with the revolutionaries - without any article 282, those who liked to light things up could be brought to zugunder or even shot. At best, he was declared crazy with all that entails. In short, the same Orthodox national-communist autocracy only without the disgusting and heretical communism. Spirituality in the form of the slogan “Orthodoxy-autocracy-nationality” is attached.

Naturally, the intelligentsia, who did not yet know this name, expressed a facepalm from all such amusements, but quietly and imperceptibly, in their corner. After all, the fate of those actively indignant was sad. “Our Everything” by Pushkin - cunningly cut out in a duel. Lermontov - again trolled Martynov until his own death in a duel. Gogol completely fell into moralism and PGM, which is why he soon died.

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