Moscow publishing house “the Individual” celebrated the 75th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima edition of the book of John Hersey “Hiroshima” (1946-1985). About the first Russian translation of a masterpiece of documentary literature of the twentieth century — Michael Trofimenkov.Exactly 50 years ago — the 25th anniversary of the tragedy — the magazine “Star” published only a few excerpts from “Hiroshima”, which is somewhat strange given the reputation of the progressives Hersey as a great friend of the Soviet Union. After all, having been on the Soviet-German front, Hersey praised the courage of the Soviet people: once again it’s only excerpts from his texts included in the great Soviet anthology of American war correspondents “Road to Smolensk”.After the release of the first book Hersey “People with Bataan” (1942) — the defenders of the Philippines from the Japanese aggressors critic declared it the “new Hemingway”. In the 1960s, when the American literary firmament up the star of the subjective “new journalism”, Hersey (1914-1993) has already announced its founder. Roughly — very roughly — speaking, the significance and grandeur Hersey was the fact that his documentary prose became a kind of bridge between journalism and old journalism, “new”. Between “razgibatelnyh dirt” and witnesses-participants of the global cataclysms 1910-1930-ies — Lincoln Steffenson, by Upton Sinclair, John reed, Ernest Hemingway, and the young savages the 1960s, also razgibanie dirt American domestic and foreign policy.To a generation of elderly Hersey tried to sit down, analsis in 1937 as his personal Secretary and chauffeur to Sinclair Lewis, but stood long: it was too hot was in the home and in the work of the alcoholic Lewis. And although in the same year, Hersey, born in the Chinese Tianjin, the son of missionaries-Protestants, was appointed correspondent for “Time” in the far East, a real writer of him forged by the war. He landed in Sicily, and received the Pulitzer prize for the book “the Bell Adano” us occupation administration of the island. Four times fought in crashes. Evacuated under Japanese fire wounded from Guadalcanal.But star and classic made it all the same Hiroshima. In the spring of 1946, demobilization Hersey, a happy deliverance from the yoke of military censorship, went to write about the post-war reconstruction in the Far East. But it turned out one of the most horrific books of the twentieth century.By and large Hersey first testified about the nuclear Apocalypse in a single city. Voenkoram to do this prevented censorship. In Japan the theme of blatant war crimes, committed by the liberators, was virtually taboo. Yes what there to speak, if victims of radiation sickness received the status of victims and the public welfare only in the late 1950s. And it took another tragedy: the painful death of fishermen ��on the schooner “Happy dragon” caught in 1954 under the radioactive ashes of American nuclear tests on Bikini.To the credit of the editors of “the new Yorker”, she immediately realized what a “bomb” — an article, then revised in the book and in 1985, supplemented with Hersey a story about the fate of his characters— was in her hands. Magazine cover from August 31, 1946 was no different from standard covers of the postwar era, when everyone wants to forget about the blood and mud: happy picnic pictures. However, it was discovered the number of the editorial cautions: “to Our readers. This week’s “new Yorker” gives editorial space article, which is dedicated to the almost complete destruction of a city by one atomic bomb, and what happened to the inhabitants of this city. The magazine does so because I am convinced that very few of us yet realize the destructive power of these weapons and we should all think about what monstrous consequences of its use.”It was an unprecedented double. And for the first time in postwar America, covered by the nuclear euphoria of omnipotence, came the voices of the victims of A-bombs, translated Hersey.The pioneering role of the theme itself is guaranteed Hersey place in the history of the twentieth century. But, surprisingly, a reporter hot on the trail also created a literary masterpiece. The great books are identified by their first phrases. That’s how I began “Hiroshima”. “At exactly a quarter past eight, local time, on the morning of 6 August 1945, when the atomic bomb flashed above Hiroshima, Toshiko Sasaki, an employee of the personnel Department of East Asian plant, tin products, sat behind her Desk and turned to talk to a girl at the next table. In the same moment, Dr. Masakazu Fujii is located on the terrace of your private clinic, which stood on a hill above one of the seven branches of the Delta of the OTA river, which flows through Hiroshima, crossed her legs and was going to read a newspaper “Osaka Asahi””.All. Trapped not only, as we would say today, respondents Hersey, but we, the readers. It happened to them, but it can happen to us. We are all in Hiroshima.All respondents in Hersey six. Employee, two doctors, two priests (a German Jesuit and Japanese-Methodist), the widow of a tailor. None of them is a picture of a disaster in General: it seems that suffered only their hood. Each of them sees only a piece of the puzzle. And when mosaic was gradually formed in their minds, they are not able to comprehend its devastating unity. “Most of them were too busy, too tired or too badly injured to think about the fact that they became the objects of the first great experiment on the use of nuclear energy.”The irony Hersey interested in no less than the fate of the victims. Don’t be late someone of the characters in the tram, he was�� would be in the epicenter of the explosion. Step to the other side, safely off the face of the earth. One of the clinic’s patients was a few days before the explosion on the verge of madness, fear of positive results of Wasserman. He died in the explosion first.It seems to us that a fiery whirlwind swept through Hiroshima at the time of the explosion. Far from it: the fire started immediately. And yet — what we do not know — for fires was followed by a mini tornado. Behind them, a flood that claimed the lives of the wounded, doctors and volunteers painfully, for hours pulled out of the river and dragged away. And how amazingly polite was blinded, burnt, buried under the rubble of people. Not just screaming “water” or “save us”, and — true Japanese — like bend in a slight bow: “be kind, you might dig us,” “sorry to bother you whether you have a little water.”Then, as they say, nor subtract or add. Although Hersey and fill in then post-war fates of his characters — their desire to be forgotten or, on the contrary, not to allow decay of memory, the Chapter established in 1985, it seems a story from the world. They all died in Hiroshima. And Hersey, no matter how fruitful he worked nearly half a century, too.Hersey, John. Hiroshima. M.: The Individual, 2020.
