Annensky, "Сентябрь"

A marvelous composition ("September") from one of Russia's most abstract poets.  You can read the original here.

In golden gardens wilt deceitful gates
Of purple’s glory and consumption slow,
By sun’s late dust in shortest arcs they flow
To perfumed fruit on which no master waits.  

The yellow silk of rugs leaves proof impure,
Assented lies of our last words and gaze,
The endless ponds of black lend parks their maze
And passion ripe their ready, yearned cure.

Yet only loss brings beauty to our hearts,
Enchanted force alone inspires love’s haste. 
To those already with sweet lotus’s taste
The fawning autumn scent but fear imparts.

Burnt by the Sun

About fifteen years ago, the Soviet Union – its flag, its revolution, its endless crimes against human individuality – had just recently faded into our collective past.  In its stead we embraced an open Russia because we felt, and rightly so, that the worst years were long gone and that all the perpetrators of these misdeeds were deceased.  What good then to speak of the unspeakable and name the unnamable?  Russia in particular (some day, we may see the same occur with other large communist states who shall remain anonymous) was in need of a rewrite.  World history had been so distorted by the alleged class struggle and ensuing bedlam that many old heroes had to be demolished, and the real purveyors of truth and justice, to use a classically Soviet term, rehabilitated.  Apart from the millions massacred or led helplessly into massacre by the Soviet government, the greatest toll of the revolution was the irreparable damage inflicted upon its literature.  In the first ten years of its existence (1917–1927) New Russia, or whatever it called itself, had assembled the greatest collection of contemporary first-rate poets and writers in one country since Ancient Greece: Bunin, Blok, Tsvetaeva, Akhmatova, Pasternak, Mandelshtam, Gumilyov, Mayakovski, Bely, Khodasevich, Esenin, Olesha, and Ilf and Petrov (among many other lesser lights), as well as the crown jewel of the land that abandoned him, Nabokov.  From this superior stratum, only Bunin, Olesha, Akhmatova, Pasternak, and Nabokov would live past 1945, with Olesha, Pasternak, and Akhmatova (all of whom were not allowed to flee the country) laboring under critical and societal repression.  Russian literature, which in the late eighteenth century was still mostly composed of epigoni and imitations of European models, had risen to the apex of cultural traditions only to be decimated and destroyed by a government that prized, in no small irony, the uniformly mediocre tastes of bourgeois society.  Yes, this is certainly a topic for much debate, and the core of the controversy surrounding this early post−Soviet film.

Our protagonist may or may not be Dmitri (Oleg Menshikov), first seen in Paris talking impatiently to an uncle of his who seems, like many émigrés, to be more proficient in French than Russian.  The year is 1936 and the handsome thirtysomething Dmitri, a polyglot and trained pianist, will be returning to his homeland on business.  What that business entails is not elucidated in detail until the film’s end, but knowledge of the happenings of that year and the next might provide a clue.  His destination is a peaceful hamlet in the Russian countryside which happens to house the great General Kotov (Nikita Mikhalkov, also the writer and director).  I say “great” because Kotov is completely convinced of his greatness and everyone else appears to agree with him.  As a display of his power, he halts an entire battalion instructed to do something dreadful to a crop field.  There is also the lovely if overly picaresque scene in which Kotov, accompanied by his much younger wife Maria (Ingeborga Dapkūnaitė), seven-year-old daughter, and other familiars, treks down to a local river to swim and sunbathe (they also rehearse, with melodramatic gusto, a gas attack).  Father and daughter slip away from the madding crowd on a small boat, and the great general finds this an opportune time to talk about the greatness of socialism and the future generations of this great nation, and so forth, all under the blazing sun.  This sun, we understand, is a powerful symbol of the omnipotent state which has made Kotov a demigod and cast Dmitri out to do, well, whatever he seems to be doing over there in Paris.  So when Dmitri comes back, he and Kotov look hard at one another because each of them knows the crimes on the other’s conscience.  There will be at least one more crime to count by the end of it all, at which point Dmitri will cease his disingenuous laughter and Kotov will no longer thump people on the back and wish them well.

The real problem with this film, say its many detractors, is that it was made by Mikhalkov.  As an actor whose family survived all the purges and whose grandfather composed the somber Soviet anthem, his attempt at political correctness comes about sixty years too late.  In an interview in Moscow several years ago, Mikhalkov (who, shall we say, is not lacking in confidence) defended his preeminence by saying that his family was “like the river Volga, flowing past all the powers that be over all the centuries” – a lovely sentiment, but one that will doubtless seal his reputation for later critics.  We wonder whether a more humble approach to the subject matter, whose sequel is actually due out later this year, might have quelled the roar of indignation that attacked him when he won both the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film and the Grand Prix du Jury at Cannes.  Yet the film itself is beautiful.  The haunting chiaroscuro of the old house full of secret corners and engravings and the lushness of the countryside cannot be denied.  All this wonder and lightness is tempered, however, by the inevitable results of hubris as well as by revenge, revenge that was a long time coming.  But I fear that all of this, whether it be of generals or of artists, is ancient history.

Blok, "Незнакомка"

One of the greatest poems ("The Stranger") of the twentieth century, as composed by Aleksandr Blok.   You can read the original here.

Above the bistros and the day,
A warmer air, both wild and dumb,
Holds shouts and cries of drunken sway,  
The noxious breath of springtime come.

Afar, above the crossroad dust,
Above the languor of dachas plain,
Street pretzel stands sell golden crust,
And children’s cries ring out in vain.

And every eve beyond barred ways,
Fine bowler hats are cocked on tip,
Near ditches ladies stroll and gaze,
As raconteurs their barriers strip.

Above the lake are oarlocks moored,
A female shriek finds no remorse,
And in the sky, to all inured,
A senseless disc repeats its course.

And every eve a single friend,
Reflected in my sordid glass,
As tart and secret potions blend,  
Shares all my stunned and quiet past.

Beside the tables of our confreres,
The servers sleepy tasks amass,
And dizzy drunks with eyes of hares
Exclaim: "In vino veritas."

And every eve, in time prevailed
(Or am I foolishly asleep?),
A girlish shape, in silks regaled,
Moves by the foggy window’s deep.

Between the drunks, still gliding slow,
E’er unaccompanied, alone,
Perfumes and fogs she has to show,
And by the sill she makes her home.

Beliefs of ancients coat the winds:
Elastic silks reform unplanned,
Funereal feathers of past sins,
And rings upon a narrow hand.

In strange closeness so ensnared, I
Escape beyond the darkened veil:
A shore enchanted I espy,
Set softly by enchanted dale.

Unspoken secrets find their tomb,
Between my hands a sun falls grey,
And all wine’s dregs have spun their loom,
My soul’s red thread has gone astray.

And ostrich plumes bent in restraint
Relieve my mind of its dark lore;
And endless eyes of bluish taint
Refract and bloom on distant shore.

And in my soul a secret hides,
Its key is only known as mine!
O, drunken beast whom man derides,
There is indeed much truth in wine.

The Lady with the Lap Dog

Should you have any doubts about the intentions of this story’s protagonist, look no further than his first spoken line: “If she’s here without a husband and without anyone she knows, it wouldn’t be a waste of my time to get to know her.”  Gurov is a still-young playboy on vacation from his wife and children on the beaches of Yalta, and there is no immediate reason why he should gain a morsel of our sympathy.  Not that his wife, whom we only see once much later on, has anything great to offer this world.  For to understand Gurov and why he is in Yalta to meet a woman he will never be able to do without, it is his wife one should consider:

She read a lot, didn’t write the hard sign in her letters, didn’t call her husband Dmitri, but rather Dimitri; and he secretly thought of her as intellectually limited, narrow, unrefined; he feared her and didn’t like being at home.

Yet Chekhov, too subtle a writer for modern tastes, does not allow Gurov to find his wife’s opposite.  That would be too easy, the fodder for romance novels where every maudlin expectation is gratified.  Instead, he comes upon the titular Anna Sergeevna and her Pomeranian, who may or may not be better examples of moral creatures, but whom he loves completely and absolutely.  This story has nothing to do with honeycombed love and the effusive, romanticized backwash of pink weddings and little white houses; this is a tale of destiny, of suffering akin to that of “two migratory birds, a male and female, caught and forced to live in separate cages.”  This is about the conundrum of finding your fated twin soul, and not being able to cast away the dregs of your previous life.

The love affair, like the seasons, has four parts.  Gurov and Anna Sergeevna are first seen around a summery boardwalk, and Gurov is portrayed as the rakish misogynist.  That he calls women “a lowly race” but cannot do without them for “two days” coincides with the most prolific clichés about Lotharios.  How strange is it that in this story which will do anything to convince us of Gurov’s artistic authenticity, of his difference from the Philistine masses who have assumed the contours of his daily existence, we find he is nothing more than the commonplace womanizer.  I cannot be persuaded by literature’s thousand and one tales featuring immoral beasts and hedonistic daredevils, that under some of these exteriors lurk true artistic souls.  How you treat the world reflects your innermost passions and beliefs.  If you believe in saying and doing whatever is necessary for monetary, political  or sexual gain, then you are as empty and as meaningless as the moments you spend deceiving others.  We wonder to what extent deception is part of Gurov’s repertoire.  What does he say to these lonely women as he comforts them, albeit for “a short time”?  What is his role in life outside of a comforter of women who have no interest in his personality (another tedious chestnut)?  What motivation might he have for continuing in this vein?  Why is Anna Sergeevna any different?  Is this a cautionary tale or an allegory for pursuance of the Good?

It is in the fall, our story’s next section where little time has actually passed, that we catch a glimpse of their immortality.  Where modern literary critics might dissect “the old women dressed as young women and the bevy of generals” on the pier in some kind of countercultural gibberish, the fact is that these critics have never actually bothered to look at pictures and books of the Crimea of that time period as well as lack any imagination whatsoever.  Men all aspire to some title of greatness, while women really only want to be young enough to be coy (to paraphrase this author), and there is nothing more to it than that.  Those generals and old women are as fraudulent as any sentiment that you cannot understand and deem fraudulent because your narrow world has yet to experience it.  Against this backdrop, we are given a taste of what to expect once the seas have calmed and our last breaths have slowed, and stopped:

It was so noisy below, and here there was no Yalta, no Oreanda; now it was noisy and would continue to be as indifferently and deafly noisy when we were no longer here.  And in this constancy, in this indifference to life and death, each of us is covered, perhaps, by the price of our eternal salvation, of the unending movement of life on earth, of unending perfection.  And sitting beside that young woman who at dawn had seemed so beautiful, so serene, so enchanting before the fairy tale landscape around her, the sea, the mountains, the clouds, the wide blue sky, Gurov came to see that if one thought about it, everything in this world was essentially beautiful − everything except when we think and ponder, when we forget about the higher goals of existence and our own human dignity.

So later, when Gurov has gone through another season, this time a harsh winter, and realized that everyone’s “true life” is hidden beneath the surface, he makes one mistake.  He assumes that Anna Sergeevna thinks the way he does.  Men, especially those in more conservative societies, have the luxury of withdrawing from human interaction and relegating their secrets to a covert smile to a mirror or window pane when no one is looking.  But women, in those same circumstances, certainly cannot.  A woman will always be branded for her adulterous machinations, while a man may very well escape unscathed.  Yes Anna is also married, to someone whom we never quite meet but to whom she has bestowed one of our language’s most ignominious labels.  In fact, her husband seems to trot beside her as a reminder of her guilt, almost as if he were her Pomeranian (the Russian word for Pomeranian, shpitz, and his surname von Dideritz have some Germanic affinity), and almost like the two adolescents smoking above Anna and Gurov’s secret encounter in the opera remind the careful reader of Gurov’s two high school−aged boys. 

It is also no coincidence that the only line uttered by Gurov's wife is, "playing the fop, Dimitri, doesn't suit you at all."  And why would "Dimitri" have to be dressed so well if it weren't in his interests to look good to women around him?   We are not supposed to trust Gurov's wife because she is a classic manifestation of poshlost', of that smug vulgarity that is the absolute antithesis of art.  So then maybe Dmitri is very good in his role as seducer, and maybe his alleged love for Anna Sergeevna is no more than a delusion − Chekhov only hints in one direction but does not compel us.   The only compulsion we have, in fact, is to read on to the end, where Gurov asks himself another, much more important question. 

Briusov, "К Армении"

A lovely work ("To Armenia") by one of Russia's foremost symbolists.  You can read the original here.

And in that year of cruel rule,
When all our burden was one hand,
The twilight cover I sought out,
From day's bright face I stayed without,
And ran to graves' unpassioned cool.

This way I thought I might elude
The wrath divine in holy knoll,
Antiquity's gray eased my pain,
And melodies, millennial fame,
Relieved the ailments of my soul.

A world alive and whole I made
There where I once had sought sad tombs.
At break of day the reeds sang out,
Long crumbled ash, the flutes would shout,
The lea of death would never fade.

With lively greeting of my love,
Old tales came forth in no dead voice;
Nearby the vales would shudder, shake,
The ancient world as one would quake,
And clap like thunder: "Live!  Rejoice!"

As year and year divide the plains,
So now I hear the centuries' chant;
In mellow nature's glorious lair,
Of love, cognition, freedom's blare,
Of songs, of slaves, of breaking chains.

Armenia!  Your ancient voice,
Fresh wind amidst the summer's heat!
How cheerfully our locks are raised,
Engulfed by rain, I stand like maize.
Below the storm, above defeat.