Category: Translations

On the Eve: An Excerpt from the Novel “USSR” by Vladimir Kozlov

About the Author

Vladimir Kozlov is a writer, screenwriter and documentary filmmaker. He was born in 1972 in Mogilev, Belarus. After graduating from Mogilev University, Kozlov moved to Minsk and then to Moscow. His coming-of-age coincided with the collapse of the Soviet Union, which is reflected in his early work. Kozlov is the author of a dozen books of prose and non-fiction, including Gopniki (Hoods), SSSR (USSR), which was shortlisted for the Big Book Prize, and Domoy (The Return), which was shortlisted for the National Bestseller Prize. He was nominated for GQ Russia’s Writer of the Year in 2011 and 2012.

Kozlov’s book USSR: Diary of a Perestroika Kid has been translated into English. The story of the teenagers in this book takes place in the year of the Chernobyl disaster. What makes it particularly disturbing is that the vibrant life of the city and the preparations for the Victory Day celebration took place at a moment when the radioactive clouds from Chernobyl were already spreading over Europe.

Translated by Andrea Gregovich

Andrea Gregovich is a writer and translator. She holds an MFA from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Her translations have appeared in a number of journals and anthologies, including “Tin House”, “AGNI Review”, “Hayden’s Ferry Review”, “Guernica”, and the Best European Fiction series. Gregovich’s translation of Mikhail Tarkovsky’s Ice Flow was featured in Best European Fiction-2015 by Dalkey Archive Press.

We didn’t have practice that Wednesday. The coach met us at the bus stop at the Goods for Men store. We went to the grocery store and bought two cakes and two large cans of orange juice from the cafeteria.

The coach lived on the second floor of a building just like ours, in the same two-room apartment, except you had to walk through one room to get to the other. He had sent his wife and child to the neighbor’s. “That way they won’t bother us,” he said.

I sat on a chair by the window, right under the open transom.  Children were chirping like birds in the courtyard, climbing all over the parallel bars and spreading last year’s dead grass all over the place.

“Boxing is a really interesting sport because it’s a spectacle,” the trainer said. “The way it goes in sports is the way it goes in life. If a guy is a weightlifter, this is how he goes about weightlifting…” The coach stood up, hunched his shoulders, let his arms hang down, and took two big two steps. “This is what he does in life, this is how he goes to the store, this is how he goes everywhere. A boxer, on the other hand, is always mobile. I would even say graceful. Do you know this word? Do you know what it means?”

A few of the boys nodded. I took a piece of cake from my plate, took a bite and sipped some juice, it was in a white cup with the wolf and rabbit from I’ll Get You! on it..[i]

“I remember once at a competition,” the coach continued. “It was the student championship of the Republic of Belarus. There were a lot of trained boxers who were studying at the various institutes, but there were also guys who were just students. They’d obviously never had any training. There was one guy from the Teachers’ Institute who was competing. He was a fellow from the countryside, big and strong.  His weight category was eighty-five kilograms.  So anyway, when he got in the ring he didn’t know the stance or anything. His opponent is circling him, jogging in place, getting ready to throw a punch. Then suddenly this collective farmer takes a wide swing, just like in a country brawl, and hits the guy with one punch. It was a knockout. All the spectators were pissing themselves; they were laughing so hard. Although it isn’t always funny.  I know a boxer named Vova Kriptovic who killed a guy in the ring once.”

“Did they send him to jail?” asked Litvinenko.

“No, and why would they?  He didn’t violate any rules, did everything by the book.  His opponent just turned out to have a weak heart. Generally speaking, boxing – and really, this is true of any sport – is always a benefit in life.  I’m not talking about the obvious things like getting in a fight to defend a girl’s honor,” the trainer looked at us.  “That stuff goes without saying.  I’m talking about something else.  For example, it made things much easier for me in the army.  I graduated from the history department at the teacher’s institute.  They didn’t have military classes there so they took me in the army after I already had my diploma.  They sent me straight to Pechi, next to Borisov.  Have you heard of Pechi?  It’s a pretty crappy place to be stationed.  The regimen was there and everything else about it.  Our wake-up call was at six o’clock in the morning.  I had late classes at the university so I was used to waking up around ten.  Anyhow, maybe some of you will have this opportunity.”

“Why weren’t you assigned to the sports unit?” asked Kostin, a short guy from the Mir-2 neighborhood.

“I have no idea how you get assigned to that one,” the trainer picked up his glass and sipped his juice.  “But ultimately my situation wasn’t any worse.  They recognized what a good boxer I was when I was still at college.  Right away the commander told me: let’s have you focused on training.  Well, I trained, won  first place in the unit, then first place in the division.  At regionals I got second just as easily.  Then that was it – from then until I was discharged I never once held a gun in my hand or marched in formation.  Just training and competitions.  They let me go home a lot too.  The only orders the commander ever gave me were, buy me this in Mogilev, buy me that.  But I didn’t waste my time looking all over for it – I just bought whatever shit I could find in GUM.”

“Did you hear about that girl who went to America?” asked Kostin.  “Like, she wrote a letter to Reagan or something.  A kid from America came here and then this one went over there.”

“Katya Lycheva?” I asked.[ii]

“I don’t care if her name was Lycheva or Gorbacheva, I would totally go to America,” he said.

“America probably wouldn’t turn anybody away,” said the trainer.  “America is America.”
*

There was half an hour left before training.  The gym was still closed, the cloakroom too.

“Let’s go inside the institute,” suggested Kuzmenok.

We walked up to the second floor, went in the first door and stood on the balcony overlooking the gym.  It was more than twice the size of the one where we had training.  There was a real football goal with a net in it under the basketball hoop.

There were students running in the gym for their P. E. class.  “I figure they must separate babes and guys for P. E. here,” said Kuzmenok.

“Yeah, I know.  Natashka told me.  Her class is separated too,” I said.

P.E. was taught by a tall bald guy. The students were all wearing shorts and t-shirts in different colors and fashions.  Their breasts were bouncing around under their t-shirts as they ran.

“That one’s hot, do you see her?” Kuzmenok pointed at one with a big chest and butt.  “Would you screw her?”

“Yeah,” I said.  “Would you?”
“Me too.  Who else?”
“That one,” I pointed.  “And that one.  And probably that one.”

The PE teacher told the girls to stop. The students turned their backs to us and began stretching. I could see the outline of their panties under their shorts.

“Now we will work on sparring,” said the trainer.  “You, Kuzmenok, you’ll spar with Frolov.”

“Get ready to see a knockout,” Kuzmenok whispered to me.  “I’m gonna smack him around like a little puppy.”

Frolov was short and compact, almost fat. I didn’t know what neighborhood he came from. He was almost always quiet. He came to practice alone and left alone. alone, almost always, since the first time we went to practice. He wasn’t there on Volkov’s birthday.

Kuzmenok and Frolov punched each other with their gloves, went to their corners, then touched gloves again.  Kuzmenok threw a right uppercut.  Frolov dodged it, threw a hook to Kuzmenok’s jaw, a cross to his stomach, and gave him a series of jabs. Kuzmenok ran back to his corner, danced in place, ran at Frolov again, faked right, jabbed left, then left again.  Frolov deflected the blow and crossed to his gut.  Kuzmenok gasped and stopped.  Frolov punched him full force in the jaw.  Kuzmenok crashed down to the oil cloth floor of the ring.

“Knockout!” yelled the guys.

Frolov crawled out of the ring.  Somebody patted him on the back.  Frolov didn’t smile.  He wiped sweat from his brow with his glove, which tore open a pimple and spread a little drop of blood.  Kuzmenok got up and crawled out of the ring on the other side.

“I guess he totally overpowered him,” the trainer looked at Frolov, then at     Kuzmenok.  “I didn’t intend for this to happen.  I thought this bout would be an example of equally matched strength.   Alright, let’s have the next pair get up there…”

Kuzmenok and I went to the bus stop.  He was still all red.  One of his cheeks was swollen.  “He got off easy,” Kuzmenok said.  “That moron trainer had no right to say our match was over.  I would have ended him.”

“He beat you,” I said.

“What?  He did not kick my ass; did you get that?  He just got off easy.  And what, do you think you kicked Skvortsov’s ass?”

“I never said I did.  It was a tie.”

“Ours was a draw, too.”
“Oh right, a draw,” I said.

“Okay, so what if he kicked my ass,” he said.  “But don’t blab about this at school, alright?”

Mama and Papa were sitting in the kitchen eating sausage patties.  Natasha wasn’t home.

“Has training been over long?” asked Mama.

“Forty minutes ago.  I’ve been on my way home since then.”

“It’s best that you come straight home.  Rather than what you do, goofing around out there all evening.  The result of that business is evident in your grade book.  All 3’s and a zero for conduct for the week.  I can’t fathom why he signed up for boxing,” she said to Papa.

“Boxing is a good idea,” said Papa.  “A fellow must learn to stand up for himself.  I support him on this one.”

“It’s fine so long as it doesn’t interrupt his studies.  Only a few months left until the end of the year, and you have so many 3’s to fix.”

“I’ll fix them,” I said.  “You don’t need to worry about that.”

“We’re not worried about anything.  You’re the one who should be worried, that you’ll end up with 3’s this year.”

“I could care less.”

“Seriously?  What would make you say that?” Mama said.  “You could care less about your progress report?”

“Progress reports don’t mean anything.  Natasha only got three 4’s and the rest 5’s, didn’t she?  And then at the institute she got all 3’s.”

“This conversation isn’t about her, it’s about you.”

“Quiet, listen to what they’re saying!” Papa got up and turned up the radio.

“…an accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power station,” said the announcer.  “There were two deaths as a result of the explosion at the second reactor, as well as a few isolated occurrences of background radiation.”

*

The school’s parade formation walked down Peace Avenue, past the school supply store, the Sausages store and the Enlightenment bookstore, crossed at the end of First of May Street and came out on Lenin Square.  The portraits hung from the sixth floor of the House of Soviets: Marx, Engels, and Lenin.  Engels’ head was very small and Lenin’s was very big.  On the side with the portraits, starting on the second-to-last floor, there was red material draped from the windows.  Below it, on the Lenin Square side, there were even more portraits.  The first one on the right was Gorbachev, the rest I didn’t know.

Once Papa took me with him to a parade when I was little, but we didn’t stand with the formation from his factory, just walked.  One time we saw the GUM women’s brass band walking on First of May Street, all of them in yellow hats with black stripes, white shirts, blue skirts and yellow high-heeled boots.  Their hairstyles were the only things different about them: some had ponytails, some were just long, and a few had theirs cut short.

Dolgobrodov said to Timur:  “I called my sister in Dniepropetrovsk – she said there’s already a panic there because of the emergency at the power station.  Supposedly it wasn’t just two men who died but several dozen and there’s serious nuclear contamination…”[iii]

“I was listening to Voice of America – on there they said the radioactive cloud is moving across Europe, meaning we might already be covered in it…”

“What does that mean?”

“That means that we really shouldn’t have gone outside today for the parade, especially with the school children. But everything’s always like this.  We have serious conversations only about perestroika and democracy…”

“Alright, alright, you don’t need to yell about it.  Especially around the pupils.”

“You think they don’t understand anything?  They’re grown up enough to get it already.”

I woke up…It was cloudy out the window.  It had probably rained during the night.  The rails on the balcony were wet.  Drops were hanging from the antenna wires.  Far away, behind the houses, a train was going past.  The radio was playing in the kitchen:

Today is Victory Day
The scent of gunpowder
Permeates this holiday
With gray hair in our whiskers
We will find joy
With tears in our eyes
Victory Day!
Victory Day!
Victory Day!

[i] I’ll Get You! was a classic Soviet cartoon in which a villainous wolf was forever trying to capture the protagonist rabbit.

[ii] Katya Lycheva was a Soviet schoolgirl who was invited to visit the USA in 1986 in response to an earlier visit to the Soviet Union by American schoolgirl Samantha Smith in 1983. Lycheva’s visit was highly-publicized in the Soviet media and she was for a short time a celebrity.

[iii] Dniepropetrovsk is a major city in eastern Ukraine downstream from Chernobyl on the Dnieper River.

 

Several Poems by Feodor Svarovsky in Translation

About the Author

Feodor Svarovsky was born in Moscow in 1971. At the age of 19, he emigrated to Denmark. In 1997, he returned to Moscow and worked as a journalist and editor at Vedomosti, then at the Paulsen Publishing House and Esquire. In 2007, he published his first book of poetry Все хотят быть роботами (Everybody Wants to Be a Robot). He is also the author of Путешественники во времени (Time Travelers, 2009); Слава героям (Glory to the Heroes, 2015). In  2011, Svarovsky participated in PEN’s New Voices reading series at the National Arts Club in NYC. He currently lives in Montenegro with his wife and amazing cats.

“When the Antarctic ice melts”

Fyodor Svarovsky hardly needs any introduction. One of the best contemporary Russian poets, he is well known in Russia, and readers admire his poetry, both romantic and metaphysical. He is a universal poet. The appeal to the world of nature and feelings, their projection into the future – these are the main components that create the versatility of Svarovsky’s poetry and cause the readers’ love.

As soon as Svarovsky’s first book, Everybody Wants to Be a Robot (Все хотят быть роботами), was published in 2007, it was an instant hit with literary critics and readers. Even among the diverse and vibrant voices of contemporary Russian poetry, his poems immediately stand out for their fantastic adventurous spirit and unusual poetic style. His book was nominated for the Andrei Bely Prize and won the prestigious Moscow Schyot Prize for the best debut poetry collection. Since then, Svarovsky has played a significant role in the revival of the ballad genre, or narrative poetry written in an “epic” mode. In the process of renewing the genre over the past decade, it has often been defined as a “New Epic”. It represents an original artistic approach to understanding complex reality as a scene of interaction between various forces and actors. Its main characteristics are a narrative text without an author’s linear voice or lyrical statement, the predominance of metaphysical meanings and unusual themes, and a fascinating plot. They were defined in the famous Manifesto (2008). This type of poetry, postmodern in nature, often refers to metaphysical forces beyond the control of the individual.

This trend in Russian poetry continues and flourishes in recent days. Many contemporary poets explore the long ballad genre at the new level of metaphysical comprehension of the world. Among them are such prominent poets as Maria Stepanova, Leonid Schwab, Arseny Rovinsky, Stanislav Lvovsky, Linor Goralik, Pavel Goldin, Andrei Rodionov, Sergei Kruglov, and others.

Drawing on the potential of the “new epic” form, Svarovsky’s first works were bizarre and sometimes grotesque – they introduced themes and heroes unusual for Russian poetry: robots fighting in civil wars, aliens stranded in the Moscow suburbs, or post-Soviet warriors acting in extraordinary circumstances and sometimes in timeless space. In the poetic space of Svarovsky’s first book, Everybody Wants to Be a Robot (Все хотят быть роботами), humans and robots, heroes and villains interact in bizarre circumstances, moving freely through time and space. Besides the unusual plot, some critics immediately noted the features of Anglophone postmodern literature: fragmented narrative, paradox, dry humor, and irony. One of the hallmarks of his first book was the attribution of infinite human emotions to robots, which expanded the poetic space to universal proportions. In one of the most poignant stanzas, the tragic situation in which the robot finds itself is described with almost human sentiment:

знаешь
у роботов ангелов нет
никто не беспокоится
не летит
не закрывает
невидимыми крыльями
нас в пути
поэтому в тяжёлый момент

мы обращаемся напрямую
и вот я прошу
кислоты и воды
но
главное
я тоскую

                    *                        *                   *

you know
robots don’t have own angels
no one worries
no one’s watching us
or covers us with
their invisible wings
on our path
so in times of need
we deal with it directly
and here I’m begging
for acid and water.
but
above all

I’m aching.

Written as contemporary ballads without the visible presence of the author, Svarovsky’s poems meet the aesthetic demands of postmodern literature. They address the realities of modern society, both technologically advanced and aesthetically sophisticated. The unusual settings and characters – space pirates, robots engaged in galactic wars, and humans communicating with robots – perfectly met the public’s desire for literary forms and characters beyond the usual lyrical standard.

This debut brought Svarovsky deserved fame, many of his poems became famous among readers, and the author became one of the most popular and admired poets in Russia. The reason for this phenomenon is not only the author’s poetic talent, but also his style, which appeals to the reader’s imagination. Svarovsky explained: “The author describes events whose reality or apparent fiction does not matter for achieving the aesthetic effect, since the main goal of the ‘new epic’ is mostly artistic – to provoke an aesthetic, emotional, or intellectual reflection”(Manifesto, 2008).

Like the heroes of ancient tragedies, his characters often face difficult choices and sacrifice themselves. The poet’s detached voice evokes emotions beyond our comprehension. Behind the captivating plot hides the timeless epic story of a man overcoming despair and tragic circumstances. Entertainment is replaced by compassion, and readers find themselves captivated by a dramatic story, as in the poem “Mongolia,” about the incredible bond between an old robot warrior and a little Japanese girl, Aiko, in a desolate land devastated by endless wars (Everybody Wants to Be a Robot). As a result, we react to the fantastic events in Svarovsky’s poems as if they really happened, and indeed we all coexist in a complex universe where time, space and nature are interconnected.

In Svarovsky’s recently published book, Glory to the Heroes (2015), new themes and metaphorical systems emerged. In the book’s preface, Oleg Pashenko emphasizes that Svarovsky has become more open about his Christian eschatological ideas, including the “image of water, sea or seashore as the Kingdom of God.”  His poetic style has become more sophisticated and reflected new ontological dimension of reality, “when a person sitting in front of the screen, writing or reading, and at the same time swimming or diving in the notional sea in such a way that the reality is not alien but exists as an additional dimension, as another layer of ontological freedom” (Pashenko,  Preface).

In an interview with Sergei Sdobnov about his book (Colta, Oct.25 2015), Svarovsky emphasized that ”for the postmodern and other consequent paradigms, time does not exist; like any other categories, it is an easily controllable part of artistic creation. Since the author isn’t identified with the text, his or her personal sense of time isn’t important.” In this respect, his poetry is in tune with the work of such Russian postmodern prose writers as Mikhail Shishkin, Valery Votrin, and others. The objects in them are only approximations to an ideal world.

Timelessness and the idea of a universal world in which man lives in absolute harmony with all living beings are embodied in his poetic texts. It echoes Plato’s idealistic conception of the unity of all things, but it is also an integral part of the poet’s Christian worldview:

life is love
people are immortal
and glory
glory to the heroes

Far from being a “banal slogan,” as the recent History of Russian Literature (Oxford: 2018) suggests, or an “irony,” this is one of the most powerful humanist messages in contemporary Russian poetry. As such, it can’t be trivially dismissed; it is the only way out of the crisis of human civilization in recent years. All this makes Svarovsky’s poetry relevant to our times, when we all suddenly realize that the survival of humanity depends on harmony with nature, on a return to humanity in politics and society, on refusing to mistreat animals and other living beings, on the love and heroism of the many nameless heroes who fight for all of us. This may seem idealistic in today’s cruel world, but ultimately only poetry can explain life in its entirety.

We are pleased to present some of Feodor Svarovsky’s poems in translation to English-speaking readers. Authentic poetry always loses some of its beauty and magic in translation, but we have tried to preserve as much as possible the originality of the poetic texts and the author’s voice.

Alice and Tiger

In my early childhood
it was absolutely necessary

to keep a super small dog
the size of my pinky

and honestly

a similarly sized little girl
so, they fit in my pocket

the dog was called Tiger
and the girl’s name was Alice
I loved them

I wanted to own a swimming pool too
but a weird-shaped one
long

with curves
with the houses
under the water

where we would be at home
and there
we would swim between the walls
in the crystal water
devoted to each other until death
and absolutely immortal

Day at the zoo

1.

we went to the zoo
but we didn’t see a crocodile
because he was lying at the bottom of a concrete pit
and didn’t float up
and we didn’t see the hippo either
my parents said: look, there are his ears and nostrils
but I saw
neither ears
nor nostrils,
polar bears
and brown bears alike sat in their cages
the giraffe was cold
and didn’t come out
monkeys and lemurs were hiding
eagles were sleeping
capybaras were peeking out of their homes
with their backs to the audience
the elephant was standing in the distance
and it was hard to see him
just some pointless
deer
and bulls
which could be seen everywhere
were posturing in plain sight
all of a sudden, I’ve got an upset stomach.
and they didn’t buy cotton candy for me

it was Saturday
on my birthday
seventy-two-and-a-half years
ago

2.

it was a special day
everything went awry from the start
giraffe had a stomach ache
crocodile had a toothache
monkeys and lemurs were bored and cold
eagles were sad and cold
capybaras were sleepy and cold
hippo was cold
brown bears were cold
and even polar bears were cold
and the elephant was appalled
deer and bulls
wandered in some despair
nobody remembers now who it was
but one of the animals
or not of them
but definitely someone
said:
Animals, so be it, it is okay,
one day it will end
it will be over
and we’ll go
home

When the Antarctic Ice Melts

when the Antarctic ice melts

we will be happy
after many rainfalls
dry bones will become wet
gardens will bloom
on  Queen Maud’s land
on the Queen Victoria Peninsula –
white tents flitter in the wind
and meadows stretch from one lake to another –
the bird snatches fish and bread from our hands
everything will be be fine
all the dead will come back to life
all the good
except the bad
oh, glass cities
oh, the land rising from the ice
His Majesty the Emperor
is swinging
ankle-deep in warm water
walking
towards the green coast

just a penguin
imperial

Glory to the Heroes

four Canadians
saved the world from a genetic catastrophe
one Armenian invented a new type of rocket fuel
and a treatment for cancer
one Russian sacrificed himself
he shut down the reactor and saved the international space station
one Englishman gave his liver to a wounded journalist
who came back from the California coup
one Tatar during the ethnic conflict in Southeast Asia
saved 240 Malaysian babies
one Frenchwoman died for the freedom of Phobos in the dungeons
of Deimos
one Cardian
was supposed to attack Earth on a neutrino-driven ship
but
after seeing the blue planet
he turned the ship toward the sun
life is love
people are immortal
and glory
glory to the heroes

Слава героям

четыре канадца спасли мир от генетической катастрофы
один армянин изобрёл новый вид ракетного топлива
и лекарство от рака
один русский пожертвовал собой
отключил реактор и спас международную космическую станцию
один англичанин отдал свою печень раненной журналистке
вернувшейся после переворота в Калифорнии
один татарин во время этнического конфликта
в Юго-Восточной Азии спас 240 малайских младенцев
одна француженка умерла за свободу Фобоса в застенках
Деймоса
один картадианин
должен был атаковать Землю на корабле с нейтринным приводом
но
увидев синюю планету
он развернул корабль в сторону солнца
жизнь есть любовь
люди бессмертны
и слава
слава героям

Brothers     

the elephant would never
start fighting the whale

not that the whale is stronger than the elephant
it’s that a war between them is impossible

these animals are brothers
together they swim under the water

the whale is young
and lively
the elephant is jovial and young

the whale’s fin cuts through currents in the depths
the elephant’s trunk flaps overhead

mermaids glide after them
they are the people and gorillas’ brothers

Aristotle
wrote about it

and Plato at the Academy spoke
of it

 Elena Dimov

Charlottesville, 2020

Ascend to Acrocorinth by Maria Rybakova

An Excerpt from Anna Grom and Her Ghost by Maria Rybakova translated by Elena Dimov
About the Author

Maria Rybakova was born in Moscow. She studied Greek and Latin in Russia, then in Germany, and subsequently in the USA. She currently resides in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Her first novel, Anna Grom and Her Ghost, was published in 1999 and translated into French and German. Rybakova is a recipient of numerous literary awards in Russia, including Students’ Booker Prize, Eureka Prize, the Russian Prize and others.

About the translator

Elena Dimov was born in Vladivostok and grew up in the Russian Far East. She graduated from the Far Eastern Federal University with a master’s degree in Oriental Studies and Chinese Language. She holds a Ph.D. in Russian History and Culture from the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. After living in Europe, she now resides in Charlottesville, where she teaches Russian language and culture. Her primary scholarly interest is in contemporary Russian poetry.

28th Day.
Dear Wilamowitz!

The bright light that some hope to see after death should not be sought in death. We, phantoms, wander in the twilight. The bright light should be sought where the land exposes its chest under the sea’s blows – in Greece. Myths like beacons are scattered in our souls like islands of this light. I came to this land of light, and it turned out that white columns did stand against the blue sky in reality. And because I couldn’t imagine anything more beautiful, I kept trying to touch them and I couldn’t believe that this beauty and my existence suddenly intersected in this moment. This scene, which I had imagined so often as a child, now seemed to have crept out of my most cherished dream, and it happened not because this dream arose by itself, but because it was derived from books. But in the course of time, especially when I had forgotten what I had read, the boundary between the written word and the imagination had worn away, and I had almost forgotten that this world and these columns did exist only in my mind. When I saw them in reality, I thought the world and I had swapped places and now the tourists were roaming the hills and gardens of my imagination.

The crowds of tourists bothered me. It was frustrating to see all these plebs in colored shorts with their cameras now walking in the places that were meant for the elite, for the elders, or for the priests, or just for the free-born citizens of Athens. Their unpleasant faces and flabby legs, their whole degenerative complexion, seemed to contradict the spirit of this place and violate the ancient ruins. After I met you, an idea of my exclusivity was born in me, and the statues of the gods and the ruins of the temples seemed to confirm this idea. I thought that it would be impossible to destroy the human hierarchy, just like it’s impossible to destroy these ruins that exist until our time, and even though they have turned to dust in reality, they still live on in our imagination. What was wealth? What was the meaning of success? After meeting you, I realized what the ancients meant by the word kalokagathiya. You were so much more perfect than the people around you that you seemed to be a representative of a different biological species that, by its very existence, disproved the idea that there couldn’t be a natural superiority of some human beings over others. You radiated superiority and exclusivity, and approaching you seemed like attaining immortality.

In dirty and muggy Athens I had to stay overnight in a strange hotel; it seemed that these are called rooms by the hour. It was on a central street leading to the Acropolis, but it was artfully hidden between relatively more respectable hotels. Previously it was apparently a brothel. Marble staircase and dusty velvet curtains adorning the foyer seemed remains of the past luxury. The ceilings were high, but the dirt seemed to accumulate even under the ceiling. The hotel was cheap and empty, if you didn’t count the old, drunk, and low-necked concierge and a woman I met who walked holding on to the walls. She filled the space under the high ceilings with the smell of alcohol. I wasn’t alone. I was accompanied by a relatively young German man who, having visited Greece before, had a strange peculiarity: he couldn’t stand the sight of the Acropolis. This peculiarity caused even more difficulties because the Acropolis could be seen from almost anywhere in Athens. So he had to walk with his eyes downcast, observing the piles of garbage in the streets and the stray cats.

The room we were given was large, but almost all the space was taken up by a bed covered with an unclean blanket full of holes. Lying on the bed, you could see yourself in the large broken mirror hanging on the opposite wall and wonder what circumstances had led to the mirror being broken. The furnishings were complemented by a sink with running cold water. I decided to take a shower, left the room, and went down a long dark corridor in anticipation of coming across some person standing unsteadily on his feet, but this time it was lifeless. The bathroom was located at the end of the corridor. The narrowness of the space and the height of the ceiling began to annoy me. There was no light in the bathroom, and when I locked the door I had to wash in the unreliable light coming in through the cracks in the door. It wasn’t a shower typical for hotels, but a spacious marble bath as dirty as an entire hotel itself. The water turned out to be cold, and it didn’t go through the hole but began to fill the bath with a murky fluid. I thought that it might be salty to taste, and at the thought of trying this slush I felt sick, gave up on the idea of taking a shower and returned to the room.
A bare bulb illuminated the dismal setting. I went out to the balcony – there was even something like a balcony where I could hardly even squeeze into – to smoke. This fortified my spirit. They make excellent cigarettes in Greece! The city noise gradually subsided, but this didn’t bring calm, as the Athenian streets begin rustle early at day break, and after a quiet Berlin to be awakened by this noise meant immediately to realize that you are being awakened in a foreign city. Yet, even Berlin was a strange city for me, and all other cities differ only in the degree of my being accustomed to them, otherwise all were alien. But the cigarette smoke wasn’t to be taken away; it was mine, because I sucked it into the very inside of my lungs and exhaled it into stuffy Athens, thereby providing a part of myself to it. Smoking is probably the only way to communicate with a foreign land. Puff – exhale, and your lungs expand to the size of the foreign country. And the tobacco smoke obscures its clear air.

The next day I went to the agora where once upon a time Demosthenes and Isocrates walked, but who could possibly believe it nowadays? Shopkeepers from the shops huddled near the Acropolis offered to let me come in the evening to smoke weed. And the elderly young man was following me like a shadow. Sometime in the early summer this young man had become the object of my short-living passion; it was then that this trip was planned, but after I met you the circumstances changed and there was no way to explain it to him. And I ran away from him.

At first I ran away just to eat alone. I went to a large open-air restaurant, exactly at the foot of the Acropolis. There was music playing. At the beginning, everything was peaceful. I ordered the swordfish and began to eat. A girl selling flowers scurried between the tables. Someone got up from a table and danced the Sirtaki. All in all, there was everything that the tourist’s soul desired. All of a sudden I felt someone’s glance. It was a grim bearded man sitting a few tables away from me. I looked away but after a few minutes decided to check again and looked up. Beardie continued to stare as if I were his acquaintance. After some thought, I came to the conclusion that no, we couldn’t possibly know each other. I looked up again, wondering whether to stick out my tongue at him, but his gaze embarrassed me and I decided it would be better just to stare at the plate. So I did, even if it spoiled my enjoyment. What was the point of sitting in the center of Athens, when all you could see was swordfish? After a while I felt someone approaching my table. I decided that the bearded guy had gone on the attack and shrank in horror in my chair. But it turned out to be the flower girl. She plopped a bouquet of nasty-smelling roses down on my table. I faltered, in broken Greek, saying that I don’t need roses. She said the roses are paid for, and pointed to the bearded man. The bearded guy nodded his head and perhaps winked to me behind his glasses, but I couldn’t see for sure. The salesgirl retreated, leaving me with a bunch of damned roses.

What could I do? Pay the bill and leave? But I didn’t know where to go and I certainly didn’t want to go back to the brothel. So I decided to outstay the bearded man. I ordered an ice cream and began to eat it in very small bits. I have always been proud of my ability to eat ice cream slowly, especially since I involuntarily eat everything else very quickly. I decided that I would think about something pleasant or important. But the bearded guy kept returning to my head. Because I didn’t have any information about him, my thoughts turned out to be almost meaningless, although intense. I thought: “bearded guy.” Sometimes I thought: “damn bearded guy.” And sometimes: “bearded guy, for hell’s sake.” But my thoughts didn’t extend beyond that.

And when for the twentieth time I thought “my god, bearded guy,” I looked up and noticed that he had disappeared. I outlasted him! This is what you can achieve with persistence. But I didn’t know then that restaurants, like the sea, conceal many sharp underwater rocks. At the table in front of me there was a pair of middle-aged people – the imposing gentleman and the small lady with plucked eyebrows. The lady was talking all the time, but the man was barely listening and looking around him. With foreboding apprehension, I noticed that his eyes met mine more and more often. But since he was with a lady, I decided that I wasn’t in danger.

But when I once again plunged a spoon into the ice cream to pick up a small, very small piece of ice cream, and then keep it on my tongue for a longer time, I saw the lady getting up and approaching me. She looked like she was going to hit me. But I reassured myself that she probably wanted to ask me for some matches. Of course she was going for the matches and I was about to get them out. But she didn’t need matches; she was interested in my nationality. She came up to me and asked in English: “Miss, what is your nationality?” Not being prepared for this sudden interrogation, I was confused and decided I should immediately admit it. “Jewish,” – I muttered. “Jewish? From Israel?” – She said in surprise. I was relieved. “No, I am from Russia… I am Russian, so to say…a Russian Jew…” I got confused in the subtleties of my national origin but she seemed to lose interest in this topic. “I am from France”, – she introduced herself, – and my friend is from Athens. If you want to spend the night with him, you can take him.”
And there it was. I remembered what my grandmother advised me to say in a sticky situation, and with dignity I said – “No, thank you. I have other plans for the evening.”
But she didn’t go away. “I don’t care about your plans”, – she said rather impolitely. “My plan was to spend this evening in the restaurant with my friend. This is our last evening. Tomorrow morning I am flying out. But he stares at you all the time, so if you want him for the night, take him.” Without waiting for my answer, the lady turned around and headed to the bathroom. Then her companion turned to me.“She is crazy, isn’t she, Miss?”- He said with a smile. – “And by the way, where are you from?”

I advised them to sort out their relationship without attracting strangers, paid off the bill and left. Then I took a cab to the railway station. Never before had my appeal reached such heights as this evening. In the taxi I anxiously looked askance at the driver, but my charms evidently had no effect on him. Upon arrival at the station, I studied the schedule, determined to catch the first train going to a more or less interesting direction. A train traveling to Corinth caught my eye. “I’m going to Corinth,” – I decided. The train’s wheels started to rattle and Athens went out of sight.

29th Day
Dear Wilamowitz!
Modern Corinth lies on the seashore and I had to take a bus to get to the ancient city, which is in the foothills. I stayed in a cheap roadside hotel. It was already night so I went straight to the first floor. When we recall our journeys, we usually remember  the monuments or landscapes and forget the successions of rooms in which we stayed. That makes sense because rooms as a rule are all similar to each other. However, the small events that have happened to us in these rooms influence how we perceive the monuments for the sake of which we came. When I touched the column in Athens and thought that maybe Demosthenes had touched it too, the impossibility of it arose between my fingers and the column’s marble, because these twenty something years I brought with me to the agora, as well as the morning coffee I drank at the coffee shop, surrounded me like a thick wall. I remember that there, in a small room in Corinth, while I was taking a shower, my sandals got soaked and became completely ruined, so I had to throw them out when I left.

The room was square and there was an exit to the corresponding square roof of the ground floor. When I went to bed (I was very sleepy), I remembered that there are earthquakes in Corinth. It seems that someone told me that there was an earthquake in Corinth a few years ago. I almost got scared because given my adventures so far, it would be surprising if I were not overtaken by earthquake. But I was so tired that I fell asleep very quickly, and before the final plunge into insensibility I had time to think that contrary to my custom, I was falling asleep quickly.

Then something happened which I still don’t know whether it was a dream or reality. I woke up due to the fact that the room was rocking. I opened my eyes and saw that I had forgotten to turn off the lights, and the light bulb over my head, which was casting an uneven light, swung like a pendulum to the direction opposite from where it was suddenly thrown. In the moment following my awakening, the whole room had returned to its original position and I caught them on their way back: the bed, the wall, the light bulb cord – all had shifted and they no longer represented a series of parallel and perpendicular lines. In the same instant as the loss of balance there was a feeling of horror that engulfed me. But I didn’t have time to think about running and escaping from the room, because it ceased rocking, and then sleep overpowered my horror.

Upon waking up in the morning, I went through the balcony door to the flat roof of the ground floor. The sun was shining with a vengeance even though it was already the beginning of October. The air was transparent to the extent that you could see all around for many miles, way down to the sea. I saw gardens, which I wouldn’t pass through, houses, which I wouldn’t be able to visit, and I wanted to go everywhere right now so badly that it was almost painful; to see them and at the same time to know that it couldn’t happen. Even if I could go down there now and enter some of the gardens, it certainly would be different from what I’d have seen on the flat roof, and what I saw would be farther removed once I entered. But the air, which was translucent to the extent that it seemed that even the sunlight had a physical solidity, was so calm and motionless that I decided to consider everything that had happened that night a dream.
Then I went out to eat, get some rest, and to somehow pass the time until five, when I found out that there was also Acrocorinth, an ancient fortress on the mountaintop. I was told that from there you can see the two seas at the same time – the Saronic and the Corinthian Gulf. And I, having put on my sneakers, decided to climb up there. I went out to the road, where a sign was marked “To Acrocorinth” and began walking along it having decided it would lead me to the fortress. But it didn’t happen; the road didn’t rise steeply and smoothly but meandered around the hill, so when I looked up at what I thought had to be the fortress, it gradually turned out to be the opposite side. All of a sudden, I realized that the place from which I had come was by now far below. Since I wasn’t aware of the distance I had been walking for a long time, my ascent appeared to be almost sudden. For a time I trudged with my back forward, so that my glance wouldn’t be fixed on the upcoming goal but my eyes might freely scan down the mountain, taking in the whole panorama below me. Everything beneath me was mine. I understood that even after I descended from the hill, I would know, walking through those streets, that I had seen them from the top; and now, standing at the top, I imagined myself as a little figurine walking down one of those narrow ribbons which my eyes could still detect; and I realized that my gaze, by subordinating everything for many miles around, had power not only over what I saw but also over my own body. I had not been able to formulate the idea precisely, but while I was looking around the hills and imagined that I was walking down the road, I understood that there was something within me that was stronger and bigger than my surroundings, though at the same time it was stronger and bigger than myself.

I climbed this mountain as if there would never be another chance to climb somewhere else. Before, I often had dreams of a mountain in front of me, to which access was blocked; these dreams didn’t return after I ascended the serpentine road to Acrocorinth. On the contrary, after death I remembered everything, down to the smallest detail. But while I was climbing this mountain all my memories remained behind and were obliterated. Nothing else was left: there was no abandoned native country with its maze of five-story buildings, the washed out roads, the cruel childhood friends. There was no other country, where a foreigner is reduced to such obscurity that he strives to turn into a grasshopper. There were no pubs, no post offices; there were no more dirty windowpanes. There was no more of my awkward body, or the face that returned to me in the mirror every morning, after I lost it in the flexible spaces of sleep. There were no bad grades, no domestic quarrels, no rain, no contempt, or anything that darkens life and makes it look like death.
With every step onward, the sun shone brighter. I found myself without a past and realized that the past was death, and oblivion is life itself; and only you, without a past, without a future, you were the real one who supported me in my ascent and, it seemed to me that you were the only one who was waiting for me at the top. Fate, the blind guide to death, turned out to be weaker than you; its tenacious embrace unclenched, and I hurried to you so that you would accept me and never let me go.

When I finally reached the top, it began to get dark. I write “it began to get dark” out of our northern habit. Here in the south, there is almost no twilight. It’s weird, because the half-light semi-darkness of the north is similar to ourselves; and the southern darkness coming unexpectedly frightens us because it’s like sudden death. The serpentine path ended, and I had to climb over the rocks and watch my step; sometimes a rock slipped under my feet and began rolling down the slope. In those places which to me seemed impassable, a herd of sheep suddenly trotted through, their bells jingling in the darkness.

I found the point where you could indeed see the two seas at once; but I was guessing at the dark water only by the absence of lights: there was a glowing strip of land between two dark semi-circles, where by now the Greeks must be sitting in the coffee shops and discussing the news. “I see, I see the two seas at the same time!” – I said to myself (in fact, I only saw the blackness in their place). Dark warm air embraced my shoulders. In the darkness the sky merged with the sea, and the sea with the mainland, and small lights shone at the top and the bottom. I stretched out my hands to them and swore that I would love you forever. Then I began to descend.

The descent from the mountain caused me great difficulty because of the ever-changing darkness. I was surprised at myself that I didn’t think of how dangerous a descent could be in the darkness. But soon I got out on the serpentine path, almost at the same time that the moon peeked through the clouds. While I was looking at it, I thought about all of those faces or rabbit’s likenesses that some found in the moon. At that moment it seemed to me that the moon indeed had a face, and now it was cheerfully looking at me. I hastened my pace, because I decided to call you in Berlin from Corinth before it got too late.
But it was already too late.

I don’t know what happened during those days, but something definitely did. You spoke absently; you didn’t ask me anything, and I had to hang up without saying much, but I wanted to tell you so many things. I decided to postpone our conversation until my return to Berlin. I thought that by this time your strange mood would pass (and at the same time something told me no, it wouldn’t pass, something changed and it changed forever). But I decided to follow my chosen path, without turning away; and if by now it turned out that my way didn’t make sense, it wasn’t as if I wasn’t aware of it then. I could guess, and I was happy and sad at the same time because I knew that I was doomed.

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Featured picture by Jenn Jones

  Drown Me, or Be Damned by Valentin Pikul in Translation

Valentin_Pikul02
  Drown Me, or Be Damned

Translated from the original Russian by Yuri Urbanovich and Michael Marsh-Soloway

Valentin Pikul (1928-1990) is almost forgotten author today. However, he was the most read author in the Soviet Union in 1970-90s.  Although Pikul is not well known by Western audiences, his works sold over a million copies in Russian markets between 1967 and 1979. In addition to producing more than two-dozen novels, Pikul published hundreds of historical miniatures. This story, Drown Me, or Be Damned, describing the trials of John Paul Jones in the American Revolution and the Russian Imperial Navy, appeared in the 1988 anthology, Blood, Tears, and Laurels.
Pikul was born in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, but he grew up primarily in the small town of Molotovsk, now Severodvinsk, on the shores of the White Sea. At the outbreak of WWII, Pikul and his mother were visiting relatives in Leningrad. In the ensuing violence, they became trapped by the blockade of the city that lasted over 900 days. While residents of the city endured bombings, starvation, and brutal winters, Pikul and his mother managed to escape the siege by traversing the frozen surface of Lake Ladoga, popularly called ‘the road of life’.
Upon his return to the Russian North, Pikul enrolled in the Midshipman school in the Solovetsky Islands, and throughout the duration of the war, he served as a cadet on the minelayer vessel Grozny. During this time, he developed a strong connection to the sea, and an enduring fascination with naval history. After the war,  Pikul became an author, and his writing flourished in a literary circle led by Vera Katlinsky. Shortly after his 32nd birthday, Pikul moved to Riga, where he produced most of his best works.
Pikul’s rich historical imagination resonated broadly with adolescent and adult readers alike, who enjoyed the author’s vicarious experience of pivotal scenes, events, and interactions from lesser-known annals of the past. In addition to providing audiences with the thrill of historical adventurism, Pikul’s texts promoted international collaboration through the presentation of common bonds uniting dissimilar nations and peoples.
In this regard, the figure of John Paul Jones serves not only as a heroic naval personage, but also as a personal bridge connecting the legacies of America and Russia. While John Paul Jones is most notably remembered as one of the founders of the American Navy, who fought vehemently against the British in the American Revolution, he also served with distinction as an Admiral of the Russian Imperial Navy in the Russo-Turkish War, and his efforts allowed Catherine II to proceed triumphantly through the annexed territory of Crimea with her ally Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II.
Despite looming hostilities of the Cold War, Pikul encouraged readers to reconsider bonds with people of different national and ethnic backgrounds. The popular reception of Pikul’s work demonstrates the resonance of themes promoting international collaboration, peaceful cultural exchange, and the ever-present possibility for rapprochement to settle the conflicts of divided peoples and institutions.

By Michael Marsh-Soloway                                   

The American ambassador to France, Mr. Porter, studied the time-trampled cemeteries during his six years in Paris. In 1905, his research was finally crowned with success. In the Grange aux Belles cemetery, he discovered the grave of a man about whom several books had already been written, one by Fenimore Cooper, another by Alexandre Dumas.
“Are you sure you found Paul Jones?” – the ambassador asked.
“I’ll open the coffin and look at his face.”
“Do you think the Admiral has been well preserved?”
“Of course! The casket was filled to the top with embalming alcohol.”

It was unsealed, and after the strong grape spirit spurted out of the coffin, everyone was struck by the striking resemblance of the deceased’s face to the plaster mask of Paul Jones in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Two renowned anthropologists, Pagelion and Captain, examined the admiral’s remains very carefully and came to the conclusion:

“Yes, we have before us the notorious ‘master of the sea,’ Paul Jones, and there are even traces in his lungs of the pneumonia from which he suffered late in life.”

The body was placed into a metal coffin, on the cover of which was installed a small round porthole like that of a ship. A squadron of U.S. battleships set off for the shores of France across the Atlantic. In Annapolis, the Yankees were erecting a ceremonial crypt, so that Admiral Paul Jones would find his final resting place in America. Paris had not seen such an impressive procession for such a long time!
The coffin with the body of the sailor was escorted by French regiments and a cortège of American midshipmen. At the head of the funeral procession marched the Prime Minister of France, carrying a top hat in his hand. Orchestras played triumphant marches. Behind the gun carriage walked ambassadors and ministers from different countries in ceremonial style.

The Russian naval attaché mentioned with a smile to the Ambassador A. I. Nelidov: “The Americans firmly remembered that Paul Jones was the founder of the U.S. navy, but they have forgotten that the Admiral earned his rank not from America, but from Russia… After all, from us!”

The son of Scottish gardener, Paul Jones began his life like many other poor boys in England, as a sea cadet. He got to know the taste of the sea on a slave ship traveling from Africa to the American colonies. He learned how to predict danger in the darkness and the fog, but his soul was outraged by the cruelty of his countrymen. The young sailor left the slave traders’ ship, swearing to himself never again to serve the British crown.

“British ships deserve only to be sunk like rabid dogs!” shouted Jones in a seaport tavern…

The new world hosted the fugitive. In 1775, the American War for Independence had begun, and Lieutenant Paul Jones offered his service to a country that was not yet even printed on the world map.


Washington declared, “I recognize the spirit of this man…Let him fight!”


Jones gathered a crew of ruthless daredevils, who knew neither their fathers, nor their mothers, and who grew up without roofs overhead. With these men, he crushed the English on the sea in such a manner that sparks were flying from the haughty bravery of this ‘Master of the Sea’. They boarded ships in brutal battles, decided by the strike of a saber or a spear. Jones captured British ships, and tugged the dishonored vessels to American harbors, where now ashore he was gloriously honored by clamoring crowds of people…


Paul Jones turned to Washington and stammered, “And now I want to burn the skin of the English king in his English sheepfold. I swear to the devil, it will be so!”


In the spring of 1778, a seemingly peaceful commercial vessel appeared on English shores. In reality, however, the ship had 18 canons hidden beneath its hull. It was the corvette, “Ranger”, masked as a merchant ship.


“What’s new in the world, friend?” the sailors asked the harbor pilot when he boarded the deck of the corvette.
“They say,” he turned to the captain, “that close to our shores roams the traitor Paul Jones, and he is such son of a bitch, such a swine, that sooner or later he will be hanged!”


“How can it be so? You Englishmen have such a good opinion of me. Allow me to introduce myself: it is I, Paul Jones! But I am not going to hang you…”


In a thunder of grapeshot and hand grenades, while encouraging sailors with whistle and song, Paul Jones drowned British ships at their own shores. The London Exchange was experiencing a fever. The prices for all goods grew steadily, and bank officers declared bankruptcy as cargo ships sat idly in the harbors.


The pilot of the corvette pointed into the distance, where the city lights were flickering, responding, “There is Whitehaven, as you wished, sir. What are you planning to do here?”

“This is my homeland,” answered Paul Jones, “and one’s homeland sometimes needs to be visited even by a prodigal son, such as I!”


Showered by a warm nighttime mist, the sailors, led by their captain, descended into the city, seizing the fort, destroying all of its cannons, and after having burned down the British ships anchored in the harbor, again disappeared into the endless expanse of the sea…


The King, who was dispirited, lamented, “I am ashamed. Is the glory of my fleet merely myth?”
“What is to be done?” replied the admirals to the King. “Jones is uncatchable, like an old hull rat. There is no rope in your majesty’s navy, which wouldn’t generate bloody tears from the desire to strangle this impudent pirate on a mast!”


By then, Paul Jones had already descended into County Selkirk. In the castle, he encountered only a duchess, to whom he expressed his deepest apologies for the disturbance. Meanwhile the men from The Ranger were dragging all of the duchess’ silverware to the boat. In taking his leave from the fair gentlewoman, Jones personally obliged himself, until the end of his days, to repay the Selkirks out of his own pocket.


“But I am not such a robber as the English think me to be,” stammered Paul Jones. “If my glorious men have such a desire to have supper only on silver, then let them eat like nobility! They have so few joys in their lives!”


Soon after having rested with his crew in France, he again appeared in English waters aboard The Bonhomme Richard. This time he was accompanied by French ships under the banner of someone named Landais, who had been discharged from the fleet for insanity. Jones recruited him into his own service.


“I myself, when I fight,” Jones affirmed, “lose all sense of self. So this crazy man fits in perfectly with the matters that we are going to undertake…”


On the traverse of the Flamborough Peninsula, Jones saw through the fog, the high riggings of the fifty-canon ship of the line, The Serapis, which by its right was considered the best ship of the Royal Fleet, and behind it, the wind propelled the astonishing frigate, The Duchess of Scorborough.


At first, the Englishmen called to them on a bullhorn, “Identify your vessel or we will drown you!”
Paul Jones in a clean white shirt, rolled up his sleeves to his elbows, and answered with unusual rage:
“Drown me, or be damned!”


In this risky moment, ‘crazy’ Landais dashed behind the commercial vessels. Thanks to Landais’ obvious foolishness, the small Bonhomme Richard, squared off one-on-one with the thunderous royal opponent. The first artillery shot of the British rang out, and the American ship started leaking and burning. Throughout the volley, several cannons blew up during the first moments of the fight. The ships pounded with such fury for one hour, then another, then three, and the battle came to a close under the moonlight. While tacking sharply, and as showering sparks streamed down from burning sails, the enemies came so close to each other that the mizzen-mast of The Serapis suddenly crashed down before Jones’ feet, and he seized it with his own embrace.

“I swear,” shouted Paul Jones enraged, “I will not let go of the mast until one of us sinks to the bottom of the sea!”


The deck became slippery with blood. The Bonhomme Richard continued to fight in the crackling fires, losing cannons, masts, and spars. In the flames, one could hear whistling, obscenity, and song. The wounded Paul Jones continued to inspire his crew.


“Get ready to board the ship! Board the ship!” somebody screamed from aboard the Serapis.
“You are welcome!” Jones beckoned. “We will teach you a lesson that you will never forget!”


The English soldiers flew overboard, slashing with sabers, however, the power of the royal artillery also did its bidding: The Bonhomme Richard was sinking into the abyss with an audible hiss. The sea was already flooding over its deck, and suddenly they heard from The Serapis:


“Ahoy, it looks like you are finished. If you are surrendering, then stop fighting, and behave like gentlemen!”


Paul Jones suddenly threw a hand grenade at the English, with the quick reply, “Why do you think so? We haven’t even begun to fight!”
“It’s time for you to finish this story.”
“I will finish this story so fast, that you, I swear by the devil, that you won’t even have time to pray.”


The Bonhomme Richard collided into the side of The Serapis with full force; boarding hooks flying high clenched the wooden sides, and the two warring ships grappled with one another. Hand-to-hand combat commenced, and in this moment from the sea approached the ‘crazy’ Landais with his ships. Without understanding who is friend or foe, he covered the fighting parties with hot grapeshot, which immediately knocked out half of the English, and also half of the Americans.


“Now, he’s really lost his mind!” Paul Jones exclaimed, bleeding from his wounds.


But at this juncture, the captain of The Serapis surrendered his sword to Paul Jones.


“I congratulate you, sire! I have lost this match…”


The Bonhomme Richard was lost in the abyss with grappling ropes ripping as it sank, releasing huge gurgling air bubbles from the hold. A tattered, star-studded American flag was raised over the mast of The Serapis.


“And we are again on deck, men!” declared Jones to his crew. “We will board The Countess of Scarborough, and take it too!”


The victors headed for French shores on the two captured vessels. The burial rites of the fallen were read, the wounds were mended, barrels of wine were opened, canisters of “Yankee hash” were boiled, and the men cavorted and sang:
Cast a line in Puerto Rico, The cannibal waits onshore, Hum diddly hum!
Pray for our patron, dear Father, And we from our cannons, strike square between the eyes, Ah- ha- ha- ha!
The fight is now over, tonight we feast, And then we’ll sleep soundly, Hum diddly hum!

Everyone gets a piece to taste thigh, rump, breast, stomach, We clean the boiler down to the bottom, Ah- ha- ha- ha!


This spirit of rough times in this sailor shanty of antiquity was born in the stuffy taverns of the New World.


Flexible and dark, he looked entirely not like a Scot, but a Native-American Indian Chief. The look of his gloomy eyes pierced right through his interlocutor. His cheeks drilled in by the winds from all latitudes, were almost brown, like dates, and summoned to mind tropical countries. This is the extremely proud young face of friendliness that breathed contemptuous reticence. So this how his contemporaries remembered John Paul Jones.


Poets in Paris composed verses in his honor, but he did not like to be indebted, so he immediately paid for them with compositions of pleasant lyrical elegies. Parisian beauties started fashioning their hair in the image of sails and riggings in honor of the victory of The Bonhomme Richard. France, hostile to England from olden times, showered Jones with unprecedented favors. The King of France appointed him a knight of the crown, and in the Parisian opera, the sailor was publicly crowned with a wreath of laurels. The most distinguished ladies sought momentary interactions with him, and they displayed kindness in kind with a torrent of love letters.


Jones justifiably expected that the Congress of the country, for which he did so much, would appoint him to the rank of Admiral. He was outraged, when across the ocean, only a bronze medal was forged in honor of his exploits. Around the name of Paul Jones, which thundered across all the seas and all the oceans, had already begun the intrigues of politicians. Congress was jealous of his glory, and Paul Jones felt betrayed.


“I agree to shed blood for the freedom of mankind, but I do not wish to sink the burning ship for the gratification of shopkeeper-congressmen. Let Americans forget what I was, what I am, and what I will be!”
. . .
In distant snow covered St. Petersburg, the public had long followed Jones’ exploits. Catherine II, an experienced and cunning politician, immediately understood that beyond the ocean, a great country with an energetic people was now being born. She declared “armed neutrality” in support of America to win its freedom. Meanwhile, on the steppes of the Black Sea, brewed a new war with Turkey, and Russia always needed brave young captains for its fleet.


“Ivan Andreich,” Catherine II bid to the Vice Chancellor Osterman, “It would behoove us to entice the boisterous John Paul Jones into our service, so I ask you to submit a request through our ambassadors.”
Jones granted his consent to enter the Russian service. In April of 1788, Paul Jones enlisted and was promoted to the rank of Rear Admiral as indicated on his Russian documents.


“The Empress received me with the most flattering attention that adequately affords a foreigner,” he told his friends in Paris.
The Russian capital opened the doors of its estates and palaces. Jones was showered with invitations to dinners and luncheons for intimate receptions in the Winter Palace. The British merchants, as a sign of protest, closed their stores in Petersburg. Hired British sailors, who served under the Russian flag, openly resigned. British intelligence sharpened its teeth and claws, waiting for the chance to ruin the career of Jones in Russia.


As a sailor next to the Russian throne, Jones conducted himself in Republican fashion. He boldly presented the texts of the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence as gifts to Catherine. The Empress, like a discerning woman answered him:


“I have a premonition that the American Revolution cannot fail to ignite other revolutions. The fire will spread!”
“Your Majesty, I venture to think that the principles of American freedom will open your many prisons, the keys of which we will drown in the ocean.”

. . .
The Rear Admiral left for the Black Sea, where he raised his flag on the mast of the Vladimir. He raised his own sailing squadron that smashed the Turks under Ochakov in the Dnieper Estuary. The brave buccaneer now performed in a different guise, consisting of dusty Cossack trousers with a curved saber at his hip. Paul Jones smoked Ukrainian shag tobacco from a pipe, and drank Cossack vodka, downing it with chuck jerky, garlic, and cucumbers. At night aboard the Zaporizhian sharp-nosed vessel, The Seagull, after ordering that all oars be wrapped, the Rear Admiral sailed lengthwise past the Turkish fleet. Aboard the flagship of the Sultan’s navy, Paul Jones etched his resolution with a piece of chalk:


Burn.

-Paul Jones


The Russians were delighted with his prowess, but he himself was delighted in the unparalleled courage of Russian soldiers and sailors. At the battle of the Kinburnsky Peninsula, Jones shook hands with Suvorov ‘like century-old friends’, as Suvorov described it, and the Turkish fleet suffered a terrible defeat. Paul Jones might have been an excellent seaman, but he was an incompetent diplomat, and his relationship with Prince Potemkin soon became detrimental to his standing. British intelligence, with an invisible eye watching Jones even in the Dnieper floodplains, waited for the moment to strike!
The blow was very painful, for it was during this period that James started petitioning for the development of trade between Russia and America. He made plans for the creation of united Russian-American squadrons, which were to be based in the Mediterranean Sea as a guarantee of universal peace in Europe, but with Prince Potemkin, he quarreled all at once.

The British rained down on him from St. Petersburg a torrent of lies and dirty rumors claiming he was guilty of smuggling, and that he shot his own nephew, and so on. There was no affair without bribery at the capital summit. Much is still not clear to historians, and due to the lack of documents, the corpus of legends based on lies of this time period only muddles the real picture. But historians discerned something in this all the same. Paul Jones was neither in the favor of the Russian navy, nor of the Empress herself. He never tired in ‘educating’ her of the constitutional spirit, touting the Republican way of life everywhere he went.


But after all, his resignation was submitted. Suvorov gave him a fur coat.
“In spite of it all, I will return to Russia,” Paul Jones said with conviction when the horses set off carrying the carriage to the gate.


After roaming around Europe like a homeless vagrant, he finished his run on seas and oceans in Paris.
Paris was different, having experienced revolution. The Keys of the Bastille were forwarded across the ocean as a gift to Washington, with the words: “The principles of America opened the Bastille!”

Henceforth, from Paris, the sailor set about his own project, the amazingly successful construction of a 54-cannon vessel, which the French hid beneath a broad cloth.


Catherine recognized features of Paul Jones in conversations with those close to her: “Paul Jones possessed a very quarrelsome wit, and was deservedly celebrated by despicable riffraff…”


This phrasing of the Empress is easy to decipher: “despicable riffraff” always surrounded Jones. There were always these people, craving freedom. They were his fellow Jacobins.


Then began a new phase of life.
From the window of his own squalid garret, The Мorraine Survey, he saw the tiled roofs of Paris and sweetly dreamed of powerful squadrons setting off into the ocean for the battle against tyranny.
. . .
Like all progressive people of Paris in his time, Paul Jones joined the Masonic Lodge of the Nine Sisters, which absorbed the best minds of France. In those years, he was surrounded by poets, philosophers, and revolutionaries, and he carried on the tutelage of his sincere friend Mrs. Telisen, the natural daughter of Louis XV. France wished for Paul Jones to head the revolutionary Navy, but the “surveyor of the seas” was already sick. Yes, he was sick and impoverished. He already carried on with a walking stick in his hands, but the white shirt of the sailor looked then, as it did on the eve of a battle, consistently waving, flashing dazzling purity.


Death struck him on July 18, 1792.
He died at night, all alone, when he was only 45 years of age.
He died standing up, leaning against as cupboard, holding in his hands an open volume of Voltaire’s works. A surprising end! Even in death, the admiral did not fall, and even death could not unclench his fingers firmly gripping the book.


The American Ambassador did not attend his funeral.
The French National Assembly dedicated the memory of a man who well served the cause of freedom with a moment of silence.
12 Parisian sans-culottes in the Phrygian red caps brought the foam of the seas to his grave. Then it was decided to move his body to the Pantheon of great men, but in the whirlwind of subsequent events, this all was somehow forgotten.

The place where Paul Jones was buried was also forgotten. In the end, most people forgot of Paul Jones…
But Napoleon thought of him on a dismal day in France, when Admiral Nelson destroyed the French fleet at the Battle of Trafalgar.


“I am sorry,” Napoleon remarked, “that Paul Jones did not survive until our present days. Had he been at the head of my fleet, the shame of Trafalgar would never have befallen the head of the French nation.”
In 1905, the historian August Buél found a man in America, who preserved the memoirs of his great-grandfather, John Kilby, a sailor from Jones’ command of the Bonhomme Richard.

This Kilby wrote about Jones:


“Although the British proclaimed him the worst person in the world, I am obliged to comment that this kind of sailor and gentleman was unlike any I had ever seen before. Paul was brave in battle, kind in his interactions among us simple sailors, and he fed us excellently, and in general, he behaved as he should. If he was not always given a salary, then it is not his fault. It is the fault of Congress!”


Paul Jones took his place in the American pantheon.
Recently, one of our country’s historians N.N. Bolkhovitinov offered the monograph describing the fate of Jones’s legacy:


Honor your war heroes, as best as you can. Every school pupil knows about Paul Jones, and texts about the valiant captain should be found alongside biographies of George Washington, Ben Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Initially, we were somewhat surprised to see Paul Jones in such brilliant surroundings, but ultimately we decided that Americans know best just whom should be honored most. We, generally speaking, least of all conceive of the details, which somehow diminish the merits of the famous admiral.


Upon reflection, we can say the latter. Of course, somewhere in the depths of Paul Jones’ soul, there has always been the adventurer with the manners of a typical pirate of the eighteenth century. Does it not link his fate to the struggle of American independence, if he had not become an admiral in the Russian Navy? Who knows? Perhaps, he would have slid into the usual business of piracy on the high seas, but if he had remained in this bloody arena, Paul Jones would have probably left our history, appearing instead on the most brilliant pages of sea brigandage.
But life writes itself according to the fate of this remarkable man, and Paul Jones will remain in the peoples’ history as an Admiral of the Russian Navy, as a national hero of America!

                           Biographies of the Editor and Translator

Professor Yuri Urbanovich was born in Tblisi, the capital city of the Republic of Georgia. He received his M.A. in International Relations from the Moscow State University of International Relations in 1972, and his Ph.D. in International Relations from the Diplomatic Academy of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1984. In 1992, Dr. Urbanovich was invited by the University of Virginia’s Center for the Study of Mind and Human Interaction (CSMHI) to coordinate dialogues defusing the “velvet divorce” between Baltic States and the Soviet Union. Currently, Dr. Urbanovich is teaching three seminars, Post-Soviet Challenges: National Ethnicities, Rise & Fall of the Soviet Union, and America through Russian Eyes.

Michael Marsh-Soloway is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Virginia. Throughout the spring of 2014, Michael embarked a tour of Moscow and St. Petersburg to conduct archival research for his ongoing dissertation project, The Ontological Necessity of All That is Imaginary: Mapping the Mathematical Consciousness of F.M. Dostoevsky. In 2011, he participated in the U.S. Department of State Critical Language Scholarship, and studied at Bashkir State Pedagogical University in Ufa, the capital of the Republic of Bashkortostan in the southwestern Urals. His research interests include the Russian novel, linguistics, and film.

**The editor and translator would like to express special thanks to Sergey Nikolaevich Dmitriev, Editor-In-Chief of Veche Publishers in Moscow for granting us special permission to publish the first rendering of this work in English. It is our sincere hope that the text will inspire interest among Western readers to investigate further the diverse writings and life experiences of Valentin Pikul.

Featured picture by Alexander Borisenko

Vladimir Vysotsky

 

“But I am certain of what is false and what is sacred,
I understood it all a long time ago.
My way is straight, just straight, guys,
And luckily there is no other choice!”
-Vladimir Vysotsky

Vladimir Vysotsky (1938-1980) was one of the greatest bards in Russian history whose influence and popularity among Russian people during the second half of the 20th century was unprecedented. It is still not understood in full, even now more than 40 years after his death. Vladimir Vysotsky was an actor and a balladeer; he wrote and sang his own songs, always with a guitar, in the Russian genre of bard poetry. As Vysotsky himself explained it to the audience: “I write author’s songs and I believe them to be a specific genre. Generally speaking, they are not songs  but poems on a rhythmical base…The point is that author’s songs give me a chance to tell  what worries me, what is of concern to me, that sort of thing.”(1)

What was so unusual about the balladeer Vysotsky’s music and personality that made his songs the voice of the Russian soul and  himself a true folk hero? He had no official status as a poet in the official Soviet hierarchy, as if he were completely invisible in the eyes of the authorities. He was not a member of the Writer’s Union, and did not belong to the official establishment, which would usually generate prestige and money. He sang his ballads in his free time and traveled, giving concerts all around the Soviet Union. But his voice is still alive in recordings and Russians continue to mourn the great bard who wrote to Russian people: “People!  I loved you! Be merciful!“(2)

Youth

Where are your seventeen years?
On Bolshoi Karetnoi.
Where are your seventeen troubles?
On Bolshoi Karetnoi.
Where is your black revolver?
On Bolshoi Karetnoi.
And where are you not today?
On Bolshoi Karetnoi.

Vysotsky was born in Moscow on January 25, 1938 in the family of a military officer. As a child,  he spent several years in Eastern Germany with his father’s family. After his return to Russia,  he lived in the hideous creation of the Soviet regime, the communal apartment, with several other families on Bolshoi Karetnoi Street. He studied at an actors’ school, and after his graduation worked as an actor in several theaters.  The famous director Lyubimov  took him on as an actor in the Moscow Theatre of Drama and Comedy on Taganka in 1964. In 1971, Vysotsky received the role of Hamlet and played it till his death. Well-liked by the public, he never received any official recognition. His salary of 170 rubles at the theater was not even enough to pay for the rent. He also played various movie and television roles, among them captain Zheglov in the popular serial Mesto vstrechi izmenit nelzia (1979).

But as he had told in the interview at Pyatigorsk TV studio in 1979,  the poetry meant for him more than “anything else: “Mostly inspiration comes to me, usually at night… when I’m working on poems. As long as I live, as long as I think, I will of course write poems, write songs.” (3)

He started to write and sing songs as a student in the 60’s. It was his  “courtyard hooligan” songs which made him famous very fast. (4)   By 1967 the entire country already knew about Vysotsky. Sometimes there were the dubious texts, but their simplicity and humor made them popular very quickly:

I happened to be walking around
And I hurt two people by chance,
They took me to militia grounds
Where I saw her…and broke down at once.

At the beginning,  they were songs written for his friends. As Vysotsky explained: “I began with songs that were called by many street songs or even gutter songs (blatnoi) for some reason. Doing so, I  paid tribute to the urban romance. Generally speaking, when I began to write my songs, I had no idea that I would write for such an audience as I have now – in great halls, palaces and stadiums. In those days my songs were intended for a narrow circle of very close friends. We were a bunch of students then…the atmosphere was one of trust, complete ease, and what is most important friendliness”( 5).

Among his close friends at that time were Igor Kochanovskii, Andrei Tarkovskii, Oleg Strizhenov, Lev Kocharian, Vasilii Shukshin; all of them became actors and writers. Later, appeared  friends who would stay with him for his entire life,  the actor Vsevolod  Abdulov and the artist Michail Shemiakin. And among them the young Vysotsky sang:
I was the soul of bad company.
And I can tell you, that
My last, first and middle names
Were well known to the KGB. (6)

Indeed, the company spent a lot of time drinking, singing songs, and wandering through public parks, and from that time Vysotsky became addicted to alcohol.

There would be more of them in the future: songs about criminals, workers, athletes and scientists, even about animals – dozens of them – written with such grace and humor that they quickly spread among listeners. It became an unrivaled encyclopedia of Russian urban life in the middle of 20th century embodied in the poetic form.

Russian Bard

Some critics view his poetry as a phenomenon of Soviet mass culture, based on the incorporation of Vysotsky’s phraseology into everyday Russian language. The characters from his songs and their vocabulary became a prominent feature of the linguistic scene in Russia. (7)

But who was Vladimir Vysotsky for the Russian people and for Russian culture in general? The bard’s influence on Russian mass culture in the  the second half of the twentieth century was enormous, not just that of a singer or poet, it definitely went beyond the limits of mass culture. It was much more complex and touched the very nerve of the Russian soul at the end of the Soviet era.

His friend, the artist Mikhail Shemiakin, expressed this idea very clearly: “Vysotsky was a great poet… He did what no one before him had done – a synthesis of the absolutely reckless Russian soul with the clear abstract thinking of a brilliant philosopher.”(8)

The transformation from actor to great bard did not happen immediately, but was the result of many factors that influenced Vysotsky in the 1970s. Russian post-war society at the time was in a deep ideological and moral crisis. The emergence of Vysotsky, who had extraordinary charisma, tremendous talent, a strong personality, and most importantly, spoke the truth in his songs, gave Russians a cultural hero.

However, only by considering Vysotsky’s ability as a poet to penetrate to the depths of the human soul and “bring to the surface eternal themes” of humanity can we get an explanation for the great love that ordinary Russian people felt for him. Sometimes it was his immense humor provoking laughter or his reckless nature sounded  in the songs,  but it were always the words of truth. Vysotsky said in one of his songs: “I do not lie by any of my words” and considered himself as the servant of the pure Word. Yuri Andreev wrote that Vysotsky’s songs, in their fundamental essence, were” the assertion of the prevalence of the good in life and in every person“, and of the “overthrow of evil of any kind  even at the price of one’s own life”.

Everything around Vysotsky was extraordinary, especially his ability to connect to ordinary people and to evoke a sense of trust. As Shemiakin remembered: “Volodya [Vysotsky] wrote about everything. He had never been at war, never did time in the camps, and never hacked at coal in the mines. But he has sensed everything vividly, and this emotion combined with the great poetic genius deeply touched the soul of the former warriors, prisoners…His entire work is that of one of the greatest analysts of the Russian land.“(9)

This young man carrying a guitar could potentially be seen anywhere in the Soviet Union, including Siberia and the Far East. He sang his songs, talked to people, and somehow during his journey he understood very important things about his country and the human soul. Most importantly, his poetic genius permitted him to embody this knowledge into his songs. In doing this, he succeeded in bringing his understanding at a very high level of communication. Vysotsky’s struggle to bring the words of goodness to the world was one of epic proportions and as a tribute to the great bard we should say that he succeeded.

Political Vysotsky

As Vysotsky became older, the themes of his songs changed with him. From the end of 60’s, the “hooligan” Vysotsky gave place to the analyst Vysotsky, a citizen of his country and a warrior. He made the progress extraordinarily swift. His songs evolved into complex ballads creating a panorama of Russian life. Vysotsky’s poetic universe consisted of thousands of characters, put into different situations, struggling and loving, suffering and laughing. It included fairy tales and war stories, ballads and parables. With the analytical eye of a thinker he recognized the disconnected state of his country.  His poetic genius allowed him put the feelings of many into words.

Much was written about his travelings around Russia. It had stimulated his growth as an artist and as a public figure in Soviet society.  What he understood during his contacts with the people, he was determined to bring to his listeners. Vysotsky said once: “I believe that these songs became so well-known precisely because of the desire to tell  something very important, that’s why people listen to them, that’s why they are drawn to them”.  His songs were powerful because they could explain the true nature of the current state of the Soviet Union to anyone:

It’s my fate till the end, till the cross,
Shout till I’m coarse, after that only numb,
To pursue and argue, till the mouth has froth,
That it’s all wrong, that it’s not right!

That the hucksters are lying about Christ’s mistakes,
That until the flagstone would press into dirt,
Three hundred years under the Tartar yoke were all a waste,
That was just it – hundreds years of indigence and shame.

But there was Ivan Kalita who did what he could,
And not only one but many who stood up to all,
The sweat of goodwill and the revolts in vain.
Pugachov, blood, and misery again…

Let the people not get it at first,
I’ll repeat it again even in the image of a fool.
But sometimes even the theme isn’t worth it,
And the vanity is the same old vain…

I am breaking my nerve, guys, to do what I can,
And someday one of you may for me light a candle,
For the naked nerves’ sting as I sing and I choke,
For the jolly manner in which I am joking…

“Was he Soviet or anti-Soviet? We did not discuss it with him. Most accurately, he was neither…. He simply could not tolerate unfairness and evil in any form “ (10).

Vysotsky often used metaphors in his songs: The Parable of the Truth and Lie, Wolf Hunt (1968), The Old House (1969), The Apples of Paradise (1973), but the listeners usually understood the true meaning within the songs. In 1975 he wrote Kupola (The Domes) – his  prayer for Russia, which he devoted to Mikhail Shemiakin.

His songs were accepted by the Russian people as desperately needed words of truth about themselves, about the society in which they lived, about their hope and desperation, and about philosophical problems of the fate of individuals. It was never about abstract ideas, but always the personal choice between good and evil.

Marina Vlady

I would not compare anyone with you.
Even kill, shoot me for that!
Look how I am admiring you
Like the Madonna of Rafael!

It was like a gift from above to Vysotsky that, in the midst of his popularity as an actor and bard, among all turbulence of his life, in 1968 he met Marina Vlady, a beautiful French actress of Russian origin. Marina became his soul mate. They were married in 1970; it was the third marriage for both of them. Their life together was described in Marina’s memoir Vladimir or the Interrupted Flight; it was one of the poignant love stories of the 20th century. Marina was his guardian angel until his death. A lot was said about her by the Russian media, but her love had kept him alive for twelve years.

Interrupted Flight

With smiles they were breaking my wings,
My scream sometimes was like a wail.
And I was numb from pain and helplessness,
And could just whisper: thanks to be alive!

Who were “they” in this famous song? During his lifetime, the authorities’ oppression of Vysotsky was tremendous. As the actor Bortnik from Taganka remembered, it seemed as though the invisible evil of Soviet empire was trying to suffocate Vysotsky at every level (11). Marina wrote that his poems have never been published in Russia during his life; his songs were removed from soundtracks, his concerts canceled, his book and record deals revoked at the last moment.

His humor and ability to laugh through the most difficult times as well as the connection with the ordinary people from all corners of  the Soviet Union helped him to overcome the failures but the level of stress was enormous.

What Vysotsky did in these conditions would not have been possible for anybody else: over thirteen years he held more than 500 personal concerts in the Soviet Union. From 1973 he started traveling abroad, first to France and Europe, then to the USA in 1978 and 1979, Canada and other countries. In New York he met with Joseph Brodsky and two of them spent a lot of time together.  Ironically, the meeting of two last greatest Russian poets of the 20th century happened in America.

The repression only added to his charisma in the eyes of the Russian people, who saw the sole hero against the oppressive regime. During his last years he had all the moral and material support of the Russian people: it was not possible for the authorities to either expel him or silence him. But “it was his unusual, suffering, vulnerable soul” – according to Shemiakin’s words – “that made him suffer because of all the unjustness he saw in the world.”  In 1972 he wrote one of his most tragic songs, Capricious Horses, full of reflection on the fate of the individual.

The wave of popularity and the material success of the preceding years did not mean a lot to him. Excessive oppression, stress, and addiction led to his early death. Vysotsky died on July 25th  during the Moscow Olympic Games. The authorities did not write a word about his death, but people somehow found out and several hundred thousand people came to bid their farewell to him.

Vysotsky stated in his last poem to Marina in summer 1980 that his mission in life was fulfilled:

…I have a lot to sing to the Almighty.
I have my songs to justify my life”

By Elena Dimov.

Translations of the poems by Oleg Dimov

Resources and collection of Vysotsky’s songs

http://www.kulichki.com/vv

Britannica about Vysotsky

Capricious horses

 

Along the ledge, on a brink of a precipice.
I lash my horses, drive them on.
Somehow the air is not enough for me,
I drink the wind, I swallow the fog,
Feeling with a reckless delight, that I am vanishing, vanishing.
Slow down my horses, slow down!
Don’t listen the tight whip!
But somehow I got the capricious horses –
I didn’t finish living; I will not end my song.
I will let my horses drink water,
I will finish sing my verse.
For a moment, somehow I will stand
on the edge….
 I will go like a feather from a hand – the hurricane will sweep me,
And the galloping horses will pull my sleigh on the morning snow.
Pace yourselves, my horses, do not hurry,
Let my last way to the shelter will be longer, just a little!
Slow down, my horses slow down!
The whip and lash are not your overseers!
But somehow I got the capricious horses –
I didn’t finish living; I will not end my song.
I will let my horses drink water,
I will finish sing my verse.
For a moment, somehow I will stand
on the edge. We’ve come in time: no late comings to God, –
Why then angels sing with such vicious voices?
Or is it a ringing bell got numb from sobbing?
Or is it me, crying to the horses not to carry the sleigh so fast?!
Slow down my horses, slow down!
I beg you, do not ran at such fast pace!
But somehow I got the capricious horses –
I didn’t finish living; I will not end my song.
I will let my horses drink water,
I will finish sing my verse.
For a moment, somehow I will stand
on the edge.

Notes:

1. Vladimir Vysotsky. On My Songwriting. In: Hamlet with a Guitar. Tr.by Sergei Roy. Moscow, 1990, pp.201, 203.
2.Vladimir Vysotsky.  Pesni i stikhi. V.2. New York, 1983, p.140.
3.Vladimir Vysotsky: Poet,Chelovek.Aktior. M., 1990.

4.Cherniavsky, G. I. Politics in Poetry of the Great bards. “Russian Studies in Literature”, vol.41, no.1, Winter 2004-5. p.63-65.
5.Hamlet…pp.203-204.
6.Resources and collection of Vysotsky’s songs  http://www.kulichki.com/vv
7.Hamlet... pp. 10-11.
8. Vladimir Vysotsky. Vse ne tak. Memorialnii almanakh-antalogia. Moscow, 1991, p.42.
9. Hamlet... p. 315
10. Vladimir Vysotsky v zapisiah Michaila Shemikina. N.Y., 1987. p.67.
11.  Vse ne tak. Moscow, 1991, p.36

 

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