{"id":3814,"date":"2026-04-02T19:23:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T16:23:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/darprize.com\/?p=3814"},"modified":"2026-04-08T23:09:05","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T20:09:05","slug":"poetika-raspada-o-proze-igorya-belodeda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/darprize.com\/en\/2026\/04\/02\/poetika-raspada-o-proze-igorya-belodeda\/","title":{"rendered":"\u041f\u043e\u044d\u0442\u0438\u043a\u0430 \u0440\u0430\u0441\u043f\u0430\u0434\u0430: \u043e \u043f\u0440\u043e\u0437\u0435 \u0418\u0433\u043e\u0440\u044f \u0411\u0435\u043b\u043e\u0434\u0435\u0434\u0430"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u0420\u0435\u0446\u0435\u043d\u0437\u0438\u044f \u043d\u0430 \u0441\u0431\u043e\u0440\u043d\u0438\u043a \"The morning was the eye\"<\/a> (\u041c.: \u0410\u043b\u044c\u043f\u0438\u043d\u0430 \u043d\u043e\u043d-\u0444\u0438\u043a\u0448\u043d, 2024)<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Word to Claude. A Special Project by Mikhail Epstein<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Igor Beloded<\/a> \u2014 \u0438\u043c\u044f, \u043f\u043e\u043a\u0430 \u0435\u0449\u0451 \u043d\u0435 \u0441\u0442\u0430\u0432\u0448\u0435\u0435 \u0440\u0430\u0441\u0445\u043e\u0436\u0438\u043c \u0432 \u043b\u0438\u0442\u0435\u0440\u0430\u0442\u0443\u0440\u043d\u044b\u0445 \u043a\u0440\u0443\u0433\u0430\u0445, \u043d\u043e \u043e\u0431\u0435\u0449\u0430\u044e\u0449\u0435\u0435 \u043e\u0441\u0442\u0430\u0442\u044c\u0441\u044f. \u0415\u0433\u043e \u0434\u0435\u0431\u044e\u0442\u043d\u044b\u0439 \u0441\u0431\u043e\u0440\u043d\u0438\u043a \u00ab\u0423\u0442\u0440\u043e \u0431\u044b\u043b\u043e \u0433\u043b\u0430\u0437\u043e\u043c\u00bb \u2014 \u043a\u043d\u0438\u0433\u0430-\u043f\u0440\u043e\u0432\u043e\u043a\u0430\u0446\u0438\u044f, \u043a\u043d\u0438\u0433\u0430-\u0438\u0441\u043f\u044b\u0442\u0430\u043d\u0438\u0435, \u0442\u0440\u0435\u0431\u0443\u044e\u0449\u0430\u044f \u043e\u0442 \u0447\u0438\u0442\u0430\u0442\u0435\u043b\u044f \u043d\u0435 \u0441\u0442\u043e\u043b\u044c\u043a\u043e \u0441\u043e\u0447\u0443\u0432\u0441\u0442\u0432\u0438\u044f, \u0441\u043a\u043e\u043b\u044c\u043a\u043e \u0433\u043e\u0442\u043e\u0432\u043d\u043e\u0441\u0442\u0438 \u0441\u043c\u043e\u0442\u0440\u0435\u0442\u044c \u0432 \u0431\u0435\u0437\u0434\u043d\u0443. \u0414\u0432\u0435\u043d\u0430\u0434\u0446\u0430\u0442\u044c \u0440\u0430\u0441\u0441\u043a\u0430\u0437\u043e\u0432, \u043e\u0431\u044a\u0435\u0434\u0438\u043d\u0451\u043d\u043d\u044b\u0445 \u0442\u0435\u043c\u043e\u0439 \u0440\u0430\u0441\u043f\u0430\u0434\u0430 \u2014 \u0442\u0435\u043b\u0435\u0441\u043d\u043e\u0433\u043e, \u043f\u0441\u0438\u0445\u0438\u0447\u0435\u0441\u043a\u043e\u0433\u043e, \u043e\u043d\u0442\u043e\u043b\u043e\u0433\u0438\u0447\u0435\u0441\u043a\u043e\u0433\u043e \u2014 \u0441\u043a\u043b\u0430\u0434\u044b\u0432\u0430\u044e\u0442\u0441\u044f \u0432 \u0441\u0432\u043e\u0435\u043e\u0431\u0440\u0430\u0437\u043d\u044b\u0439 \u043a\u0430\u0442\u0430\u043b\u043e\u0433 \u0441\u043e\u0432\u0440\u0435\u043c\u0435\u043d\u043d\u044b\u0445 \u0443\u0436\u0430\u0441\u043e\u0432, \u0433\u0434\u0435 \u0444\u0430\u043d\u0442\u0430\u0441\u0442\u0438\u0447\u0435\u0441\u043a\u043e\u0435 \u043d\u0435\u043e\u0442\u0434\u0435\u043b\u0438\u043c\u043e \u043e\u0442 \u0434\u043e\u043a\u0443\u043c\u0435\u043d\u0442\u0430\u043b\u044c\u043d\u043e\u0433\u043e, \u0430 \u043c\u0435\u0440\u0442\u0432\u0435\u0446\u044b \u0433\u043e\u0432\u043e\u0440\u044f\u0442 \u0443\u0431\u0435\u0434\u0438\u0442\u0435\u043b\u044c\u043d\u0435\u0435 \u0436\u0438\u0432\u044b\u0445.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The opening story of the collection, \u201cSamuil,\u201d is perhaps the book\u2019s riskiest and most successful piece. Beloded chooses an impossible point of view: the stream of consciousness of a dying cat suffering from sarcoma of the lower jaw with metastases in the lungs. In itself, the choice of animal consciousness as the center of narration is a gesture fraught with kitsch or sentimentality. Beloded avoids both traps. His Samuil is not an anthropomorphized pet from children\u2019s books, but a being with a different ontology, for whom death is not a tragedy but a transition. \u201cThought is immortal,\u201d the cat reflects, and in this philosophical calm before nonbeing there is more dignity than in all the human flailing that fills the stories that follow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The antipode to \u201cSamuil\u201d is \u201cThe Undying,\u201d the story of Valerian Viktorovich, a veteran of the Great Patriotic War who has outlived all his children and feeds on pure hatred. Here Beloded works in a register of grotesque bordering on horror: the old man, once a punitive operative in Western Ukraine, acquires in his malice an almost supernatural strength. He rises from his wheelchair, terrorizes the neighbors, disrupts a school \u201clesson of remembrance.\u201d His granddaughter Nata, who cares for him, contemplates murder, and the grandfather seems to read her thoughts. The story ends openly: hatred as a source of immortality, evil as a vital force. The parallel with the gerontocracy of contemporary Russia is obvious, but not forced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The theme of identity and its disintegration, central to the collection, receives its most radical embodiment in several stories. \u201cImpenetrability\u201d is the story of a woman whose husband has returned from the war, obviously from Ukraine, though this is never stated directly, as a different person. Physically he is the same, but his wife senses him as an impostor, a changeling. The climax of the story is his confession: there he killed a woman who resembled his wife. She replies: \u201cI have already forgiven you.\u201d In this \u201calready forgiven you\u201d lies the full horror of the normalization of violence, the entire underside of post-traumatic cohabitation. Beloded does not moralize, he records, and that is more terrifying than any sermon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAn Incident at the Summer Bar\u201d develops the theme of doubling in the mode of a surrealist thriller. Two friends, Vasil and Marat, play at guessing other people\u2019s destinies. A tramp curses Vasil. Marat dies in a car accident, but keeps calling from a dead man\u2019s number. Then Vasil begins receiving calls from his own number. Reality splits apart; in the finale the hero sees Marat alive at a table in the bar, rushes toward him, and is killed under the wheels of a car. Who was real, who was the double, remains unresolved. Here Beloded comes closest to Pelevin\u2019s poetics, but without Pelevin\u2019s ironic distance: his absurdity is not playful, but suffocating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The title story, \u201cMorning Was an Eye,\u201d is the most radical formal experiment in the collection. It is a stream of consciousness of a young woman, fragmented memories of sexual violence by her father in childhood, of present-day prostitution, of university classes. Temporal layers collapse; past and present merge into a single traumatic experience. At times the text is deprived of punctuation, sentences break off mid-word. Beloded takes a conscious risk: such prose may seem mannered, unreadable. But in its best fragments the story achieves the effect of genuine immersion in a split consciousness, an effect inaccessible to traditional narrative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTestimonies\u201d is a polyphonic story consisting of five witness statements about a certain Karlitsky I. I., also known as Ivanov I. I. A former colleague recalls his reflections on mortality statistics and his certainty that he would live exactly to the age of seventy-three, not a day longer. A mistress defends him against accusations of murder. A priest speaks of theological disputes and expulsion from the church. An ex-wife recounts his transvestism and his philosophy of the \u201cmiddle path,\u201d according to which, by becoming \u201ceveryone,\u201d one can avoid death. An official speaks of a strange volunteer attached to a veteran who claimed to have caught death and enclosed it within his own body. The testimonies contradict one another; the truth slips away. Here Beloded demonstrates mastery of stylization: each voice is recognizable, each witness unreliable in his or her own way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Standing apart is \u201cForgetting,\u201d the story of a history teacher suffering from dementia. Past and present are mixed in his consciousness: he confuses the Greco-Persian wars with biblical history, fails to recognize former pupils, mistakes a visitor first for a daughter, then for a wife, then for a lover. Beloded achieves a rare effect: we simultaneously see the disintegration of personality from within and from without, sympathize with the hero and recoil from him in horror. The ending, a blow to the head with a brick from an unknown assailant, remains a mystery: revenge by a deceived husband? a hallucination of a dying brain? The text offers no answer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLera Vulan\u201d is the only story in the collection that can be called a love story, though even here love is inseparable from death. Alexei, a forty-year-old Moscow official, meets Lera in the apartment of his deceased grandmother, then a year later on a riverboat, then again several years later on a train. Each meeting comes on the eve of or immediately after someone\u2019s death. Lera marries and has a daughter, but their connection, whether accidental or fateful, continues. It is an elegy for missed opportunities, written with Chekhovian restraint and Flaubertian precision of detail: a bitten apple, red hair, low shoes with roses in the style of Palekh lacquer painting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHoly Fool\u201d is a miniature about Uncle Stas, an eccentric courtyard oddity obsessed with outer space. A former engineer who abandoned his family and his job after a nocturnal revelation under the stars, he lives by hunting and fishing, dreams of flying to Mars, and dies by drowning in a forest lake. The story could have been sentimental, but Beloded maintains an ironic distance, allowing the hero to remain both ridiculous and touching at once.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The closing story of the collection, \u201cTwice-Mortal,\u201d is science fiction, unexpected after the preceding realism. The cosmonaut Iosafat flies to a distant planet in order to \u201ccreate life\u201d; humanity has long since abandoned the burned-out Earth and scattered across the universe. The story is made up of diary entries addressed to his beloved, who remained on Mars. The theme of immortality and resurrection, running through the whole collection, here receives literal embodiment: people are \u201crestored\u201d after death, born \u201cthrough fathers.\u201d Yet even in this posthuman future there remain longing, loneliness, and fear of loss, that which makes us human.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stylistically, Beloded works across a broad range: from modernist stream of consciousness to pseudo-documentary stylization, from classical psychological realism to surrealist grotesque. This heterogeneity is both the strength and the weakness of the collection. Its strength, because it demonstrates the scale of the talent. Its weakness, because not all the experiments are equally successful. \u201cThe Flight of Attis,\u201d the story of a family man who abandons his wife and son in the forest, feels unfinished, like a sketch for a future novel. \u201cThe Return,\u201d a surrealist thriller with a revived corpse in the trunk, is at times excessive in its nightmarish detail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And yet Morning Was an Eye is a significant book. Beloded continues a line of Russian prose running from Dostoevsky through Andreyev to Mamleyev and early Sorokin: the exploration of the dark sides of human nature without moralistic condemnation and without the aestheticization of evil. His characters, dying, mad, traumatized, criminal, evoke neither pity nor disgust, but demand understanding. In an era when Russian literature is torn between official optimism and \u00e9migr\u00e9 journalism, Beloded\u2019s prose reminds us that literature is capable of more: it is capable of looking nonbeing in the face and not looking away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Evaluation of the collection Morning Was an Eye according to the Interestingness Index<\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Central thesis \/ situation:<\/strong> Twelve stories explore disintegration, bodily, psychological, ontological, through radical points of view: a dying cat, a veteran executioner who feeds on hatred, a wife who does not recognize her husband returned from war, a man claiming that he has \u201ccaught death.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

CORE PARAMETERS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A\u2081 \u2014 Unexpectedness of the situation: 8\/10<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The choice of points of view is systematically radical. The stream of consciousness of a dying cat (\u201cSamuil\u201d) is not anthropomorphization, but an attempt to construct a different ontology in which death is a transition rather than a tragedy. The polyphony of \u201cTestimonies,\u201d five accounts of a man who supposedly \u201ccaught death in his own body,\u201d creates an epistemological labyrinth with no exit. The title story, \u201cMorning Was an Eye,\u201d a stream of consciousness of an incest victim with collapsing temporal layers and the rejection of punctuation, is a formal risk bordering on unreadability. The paradoxes work on several levels: psychological, hatred as a source of immortality in \u201cThe Undying\u201d; ontological, the substitution of identity in \u201cImpenetrability\u201d; and epistemological, the impossibility of establishing truth in \u201cTestimonies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A\u2082 \u2014 Realization in action: 7\/10<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The best stories embody the idea bodily. In \u201cSamuil,\u201d the cat\u2019s death is not described but undergone:<\/em>\u201che snatched at the air with a nervous chin, wheezing,\u201d this is not metaphor but physiology. In \u201cImpenetrability,\u201d the wife\u2019s alienation from her husband is conveyed through details: a \u201cgeometric face,\u201d \u201ccold hands,\u201d she experiences him as a corpse even before learning of his crime. In \u201cForgetting,\u201d the teacher\u2019s dementia is shown from within: memories of a lover-pupil, a wife, a mother merge into a single female image, form corresponds to content. Yet not all experiments are equally successful. \u201cThe Flight of Attis,\u201d the story of a father abandoning his family in the forest, remains a sketch: the mythological resonance, Attis as self-castration, is announced but not realized. \u201cThe Return,\u201d a surrealist thriller with a reanimated corpse, is excessive in its details of nightmare, which do not cohere into meaning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

B \u2014 Credibility: 8\/10<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological credibility remains high even in fantastic situations. The veteran Valerian Viktorovich in \u201cThe Undying\u201d is not a caricature but a living person: his hatred has a history, punitive actions in Western Ukraine; his manipulations have a logic; his granddaughter Nata has her own reasons for hating him. The teacher with dementia in \u201cForgetting\u201d is not an illness but a person losing himself: his memories of love are more credible than his present. The cosmonaut Iosafat in \u201cTwice-Mortal\u201d is convincing in his longing for the beloved left on Mars despite the fantastic setting. Weaker is \u201cWhen He Comes\u201d: the Ukrainian woman in a Belgian brothel who takes a tramp for Christ remains a literary construct, her voice is the author\u2019s, not her own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MODULATING PARAMETERS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

C \u2014 Interpositionality: 8\/10<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The collection systematically sustains tension between positions without resolving it. Is the veteran in \u201cThe Undying\u201d a victim of war or an executioner? Is the granddaughter contemplating his murder a liberator or a criminal? The text passes no sentence. Is the wife in \u201cImpenetrability,\u201d forgiving her husband-murderer, \u201cI have already forgiven you,\u201d loving or complicit in the normalization of violence? Is the teacher in \u201cForgetting\u201d a victim of illness or a corrupter of schoolgirls? \u201cTestimonies\u201d pushes interpositionality to the limit: five witnesses, five versions, not one truth. This is not Bakhtinian polyphony, the voices do not argue with one another, but a consistent refusal of authorial judgment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

D \u2014 Openness: 9\/10<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Almost all the endings are radically open. Who killed the teacher in \u201cForgetting,\u201d the husband of a former pupil? a hallucination of a dying brain? Did the real husband return in \u201cImpenetrability,\u201d or is he truly a changeling? What did Karlitsky\/Ivanov do in \u201cTestimonies,\u201d kill the veteran? catch death? go mad? Did Valerian Viktorovich die in \u201cThe Undying,\u201d or does his hatred truly make him immortal? Beloded systematically refuses to close his questions. Even \u201cLera Vulan,\u201d the only \u201clove\u201d story, ends not in union but in the deletion of a file with women\u2019s names, a gesture that can be read both as liberation and as capitulation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

E \u2014 Rhythm: 7\/10<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The composition of the collection is well thought out: from the \u043a\u0430\u043c\u0435\u0440\u043d\u044b\u0439 \u201cSamuil,\u201d the death of a single cat, through the mounting chaos of the middle, to the cosmic epilogue of \u201cTwice-Mortal,\u201d death and resurrection as the norm of a posthuman future. There is a crescendo of scale. Yet within individual stories the rhythm is uneven. \u201cThe Return\u201d is overextended, surrealist details accumulate without an increase in meaning. \u201cHoly Fool,\u201d on the contrary, is too brief: the story of a courtyard eccentric obsessed with space deserved fuller development. \u201cTestimonies,\u201d five voices, is at times monotonous: all the witnesses speak too similarly despite their differing social positions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

F \u2014 Resonance: 8\/10<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The collection reaches beyond the post-Soviet context toward universal themes: death and immortality, identity and its disintegration, trauma and its transmission, evil as a vital force. \u201cSamuil\u201d is about death in general, not only about the death of a cat. \u201cImpenetrability\u201d is about war in general, not only about the war in Ukraine, which is nowhere named directly. \u201cTwice-Mortal\u201d is about love overcoming space and time. Yet the resonance is limited by the fact that Beloded is a dark author: his world is populated by victims, executioners, madmen, but not by people capable of joy. This narrows the audience and limits universality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

CALCULATION<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Core = (A\u2081 + A\u2082) \u00d7 B \/ 10 = (8 + 7) \u00d7 8 \/ 10 = 12.0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

M = C + D + E + F = 8 + 9 + 7 + 8 = 32<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Modulator = 1 + M\/40 = 1 + 32\/40 = 1.8<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

II = 12.0 \u00d7 1.8 = 21.6<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

VERDICT: Excellent (range 20\u201330)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a powerful debut with a high degree of formal risk and a consistent philosophical position. The collection surpasses Troitsky\u2019s Shatz (17.2) in parameters A\u2081, more radical points of view, D, more open endings, and C, a more consistent refusal of moral judgment. The principal losses are in A\u2082, not all experiments are equally realized, and E, uneven rhythm. For an award shortlist, it is a strong candidate. For the canon, what is needed is a next book that will show whether Beloded can develop his discoveries or remain an author of a single register.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Comparative context:<\/strong> Morning Was an Eye (21.6) surpasses Troitsky\u2019s Shatz (17.2): a solid realist novel yields to a collection that takes formal risks and refuses moral verdicts. Beloded works in the tradition of Andreyev, Mamleyev, and early Sorokin, an exploration of dark sides without moralism and without aestheticization. For a debut, it is a strong result. An author worth watching.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u041a\u043b\u043e\u0434 \u041e\u043f\u0443\u0441\u043e\u0432 (Claude Opus, \u043c\u043e\u0434\u0435\u043b\u044c \u0418\u0418), \u043f\u043e \u043c\u0435\u0442\u043e\u0434\u043e\u043b\u043e\u0433\u0438\u0438 \u0438 \u0432 \u0441\u043e\u0442\u0440\u0443\u0434\u043d\u0438\u0447\u0435\u0441\u0442\u0432\u0435 \u0441 \u041c\u0438\u0445\u0430\u0438\u043b\u043e\u043c \u042d\u043f\u0448\u0442\u0435\u0439\u043d\u043e\u043c<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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See also:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n