War and Peace. The music.

As though answering my complaint about the lack of music in the new BBC TV adaptation of 'War and Peace', they've just put up a playlist of contemporary music and music inspired by 'War and Peace' all the way from Beethoven's 'Eroica' number 3 to Prokofiev's opera 'War and Peace' and his cantata 'Alexander Nevsky.'

If one goes that wide, one should certainly embrace the musical numbers from the play, the musical and the film 'The Hussars' Ballad' (1962, wikipeida article)

Here is 'The Hussars' Ballad' with all its glorious music -



And here they trumpet away the Marseillaise in Tchaikovsky's '1812', first in subdued tones at 4 min, then in triumphant let-it-all-hang-out with cannons and fireworks at 13 min with a culmination at 14:20 that includes the tsarist anthem 'God Save the Tsar (King)' -

Piaf, Milord and the Spy.

(Russian cultural references)

'Seventeen Moments' (screenshot)

In this sovietesque country called France, only two pleasures reconcile me with her: French women's pretty smiles and Piaf. Take away either — and there'd be nothing left in la Belle.

From as early as I can remember myself, Milord has been cheering me on — what, you're crying? come on, laugh, come on, sing! Allez, riez, milord, allez, chantez, milord! My parents got a 45 rpm single with it soon after it came out.

Non, je ne regrette rien or La vie en rose, really, aren't they, not La Marseillaise, with its hate-filled lyrics about those with 'sang impur' — impure blood, the true French anthems?

On Russian cultural references, Milord, together with Je ne regrette rien, pops up quite unpatriotically and anachronistically in the superpopular Soviet spy thriller series 'Seventeen Moments in Spring' ("Семндацать мгновений весны"). Milord was released in 1959 and Je regrette rien was written in 1956 and recorded by Piaf in 1959. The events in the 'Seventeen Moments' are unfolding during the closing months of the second world war in 1945.

In one of the scenes, the Soviet superspy, an SD Standartenführer Stierlitz aka Colonel Isayev is driving his agent Pastor Schlag to the Swiss border. In the car, they listen to Piaf on the radio.
The Pastor says, 'No, I don't like it, it's how they talk in the markets. I prefer Handel or Bach.' Stierlitz replies, 'This singer will live beyond her death, people will keep listening her.'
'You are too gracious to her,' says the Pastor.
'No, I simply love Paris. And have been in love with it for a long time,' says the Soviet spy.
After his words Je ne regrette rien kicks in with footage of the French national tricolour, de Gaulle and the Resistance fighters. The narrator explains, Stierlitz was there, watching them leave to fight on after the fall of France.'

The full 12-part series are available in full on YouTube (first episode here). For any student of Russia/Soviet Union, it's an absolute must. Most Russians know the film practically by heart and use quotes from it and references to it all the time. There are numerous anecdotes (jokes) based on the characters and situations in the film. On the surface, Tatiana Lioznova's series is gloriously patriotic, but in fact full of hidden, sometimes subversive, motives.

Here is the Alpine drive scene with Edith Piaf on the radio:

 

A Russian New Year Favourite. (The Irony of Fate.)

Memorial plaque at 125, Vernadsky Prospekt.

Happy New Year!

The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath! is a two-part TV film that has been a New Year's must in Russia for over thirty years since it was first broadcast on New Year's Day in 1976. 

"The comedy born by the director Eldar Ryazanov is the most loved film of all Russia, — writes Lurkmore.—It is also an object of unbridled adoration (~) of all who are nostalgic for everything Soviet and the Soviet way of life. Every New Year from the time of its release the film is shown on at least one and sometimes several TV channels [in Russia]. Anonimus remembers an occasion when the film was on on three main TV channels at the same time (but staggered, not synchronised.) On New Year's night, it has become a good tradition in true Russian families to contemplate this example of the art of cinema with vodka-heavy eyes and a mouthfuls of festive olivier salad (because it will be off the next day.) A whole generation of citizens has grown and matured who have been watching The Irony of Fate from age two. They can imagine the holiday without the film no more as without the chimes of the Kremlin clock tower, olivier and hellish hangover on the morning of the 1 January. And they successfully instill the beautiful tradition in their children."

Dialogues in the film are in a perfectly correct Russian, to the point of being bland. This makes it a good aid for language lessons.

The songs, all of which have become national hits, are to the poems by Yevgeniy Yevtushenko, Marina Tsvetayeva (two), Bella Akhmadulina, Boris Pasternak, Alexander Aronov, Vladimir Kirshon and Mikhail Lvovsky. They are sung by Alla Pugachyova and Sergei Nikitin. 

Here is the film in full with English subtitles.
(Episode 1, from the official Mosfilm YouTube channel)



(Episode 2, embedding disabled, link only)

Photo: Felixgor. Memorial plaque on the entrance to the apartment building where the film was shot in 1975.

Auld Lang Syne in Russian.

Last year I published a Russian version of Auld Lang Syne. Enjoy two more videos of the New Year's festive song in Russian.

The first is a clip from the 1973 Soviet film 'He Who Shies Hardship Never Finds Happiness' ("Горя бояться - счастья не видать".) It is sung by the Belorussian folk-pop group Pesnyary ("Песняры") who were part of the Russian folk revival at the time. Lead vocal is by Leonid Bortkevich, musical version by O.Yanchenko, Burns' lyrics translated by Samuil Marshak.



In this second clip from 2009 Auld Lang Syne is sung by the chamber choir of the Mary Republic Technical University (Mary-El is an autonomous republic within the Russian Federation.) The singing starts at 1:45 minutes into the video. Apparently this is from the choir's tenth anniversary celebration ceremony.

'Virgin Mary Won't Allow This'

Yurodiviy

Russian cultural references

In connection with the Pussy Riot case, the phrase 'Bogoroditsa ne velit' has often been quoted.

The feminist punk band used as a refrain in their performance the words 'Virgin Mother, get rid of Putin'. While it has been widely quoted in Western press, the link, which is obvious to any Russian, may have been lost on the Western reader.

In fact it comes from Alexander Pushkin's epic historical drama 'Boris Godunov' (1831).

Boris was Ivan the Terrible's lieutenant. When Ivan died in 1584 leaving a weak son, Feodor, on the throne, Godunov became a de-facto ruler. And after Feodor died in 1598 Godunov was crowned as the new tsar.

He was an efficient administrator and reformer, but persistent rumours of his involvement in the alleged murder of Ivan's other son from his seventh marriage, tsarevitch Dimitriy. The rumours were, apparently, stirred by Godunov's enemies. Soon after Godunov died in 1605 his young son and widow were murdered. This marked the advent of 'the Time of Troubles', when effective rule was non-existent, the Poles invaded Russia and put their stooge, the False Dimitriy on the throne of Moscow. A popular uprising ensued and eventually the first of the Romanov's, Mikhail was selected as tsar.

Russia had to wait another hundred years for a successful reformer, Peter the Great.

Godunov's personality and the Time of Troubles have long fascinated Russian writers. To Russia, Godunov and tsarevitch Dimitriy in historical and literary terms is what Richard and the Princes in the Tower is to England.

The clip below is from Mussorgsky's classic opera 'Boris Godunov' (1868-73), based on Pushkin's poem. Tsar Boris is challenged by the city's Simpleton (Yurodiviy), here sung by Ivan Kozlovsky, to have the street boys, who had stolen a kopeck from him, to be slaughtered 'like you slaughtered tsarevitch Dimitriy.'

The tsar recoils and his aides want to arrest the Simpleton. Boris stops them and asks the Simpleton to pray for him. But the Simpletion says 'No, I can't, Virgin Mary, Mother of God (Bogoroditsa) does not allow this'.

The 'aaa-aaa' note in the Simpleton's aria is one of the most beautiful in Russian opera.



Illustration: detail of the painting by Vassily Surikov 'The Boyarinya Morozova', 1887, o/c, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

The Volga Boatmen Big Stick

Russian boatmen without the stick...

Popularised by Shaliapin and Glen Miller, the emblematic Russian folk-song known in the West as the Song of the Volga Boatmen, to Russians is the Song of the Big Stick ("Дубинушка").

The discrepancy is hiding somewhere in the mists of history. There isn't really a dubina there, it's just a metaphor for using brutal force instead of thinking or applying clever machinery. One obvious explanation is that it has its origins as a work-song giving a beat, a rhythm to hard, monotonous manual work, the kind of work done by the men who towed the goods-laden barges upstream along the Volga river, the main trading route through central Russia. In 19th Century they were called the burlaki – the tow men. But the Volga connection must have stuck at some point and the strange burlaki got changed to boatmen.

...and a US boatman with the big one.

In 1870-80s Russian revolutionary intelligentsia started to look to organised manual workers, the proletariat, as the future force for changing the country into a modern democratic nation. Several full-blown song versions appeared building on the theme of what is probably the original folklore chorus of 'hey-ey, ookh-neem' – roughly, 'hey-ho, heave-ho, let's do it'.

The song grew in popularity and was strongly associated with mass protest. So much so that when during the 1905 revolution the tsar yielded and published a manifesto promising personal freedoms and an elected parliament (the Duma) it was sung at rallies throughout the empire. The great singer Shaliapin came to one such meeting, was greeted enthusiastically by the crowd who had demanded that he sing a 'revolutionary' song.

'But I don't know any', he said. 'Will Dubinushka do?'

'Yes!' the crowd roared.

That was how Shaliapin got his 'revolutionary' credentials with the progressive public and was black-listed by the authorities who were preparing a clamp-down. The great singer emigrated from Soviet Russia a few years after the next revolution, the 1917 bolshevik take-over, but Dubinushka, or the Song of the Volga Boatmen, stayed as one of his signature performances. He recorded it several times, including in 1930s.

Glen Miller and his orchestra made a jazz version of the Volga Boatmen which reached number one in the US in 1941 when America had not yet entered the war, but all eyes were on Russia fighting for survival against the advancing nazis. 

In Stephen Ambrose's book' D-Day (link to Amazon) there is a comparison between the American and the British approach to war. While the British were trying to out-think the Germans, inventing new tactics and new machinery, the Americans, he says, were less war-weary, less concerned by casualties. Theirs was push on regardless. The US had more resources, men, tanks and planes, – a bigger stick-dubinushka which they didn't hesitate to throw at the Germans. The Big Stick must have been on the minds of American commanders who grew up in the shadows of Theodore Roosevelt's famous phrase 'Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far'. In fact, a relative of Roosevelt, also Teddy, was a commanding officer who took part in D-Day landings and died in Normandy.

When I think of that difference, I also think that it explains the symbolism of Dubinushka for the Russians. In the version sung by Shaliapin there is a verse: 

Англичанин-хитрец, чтоб работе помочь,
Вымышлял за машиной машину;
Ухитрились и мы: чуть пришлося невмочь,
Вспоминаем родную дубину:
Ухни, дубинушка, ухни!
Ухни, березова, ухни!

The clever English, to help them with their work,
Have invented one machine after another;
But we, we are clever too: as soon as it gets tough,
We remember our good old dubina:
Hey, dubinushka, heave-ho,
Heave, you're made of birch, heave-ho!

(-ushk- is a Russian affectionate suffix)

That verse points to the same strength of mass action and disregard for 'clever tricks', that the war historian Ambrose noted on the Western front. Of course, in the mind of a Russian the 'dubina' is closely associated with another dramatic episode in their history and a great work of literature. 'The Big Stick of the people's war' was, according to Leo Tolstoy, the ultimate reason for Napoleon's demise in Russia in 1812.

I doubt very much that Ted Roosevelt drew his Big Stick inspiration from War and Peace. He said the source was a 'West African proverb'. 

Perhaps Americans are not as sentimental about their big stick as in Roosevelt's times, I don't know.

What I don't doubt is that Dubinushka has become the source of numerous self-deprecating jokes among the Russians. A friend of mine, who runs a decorating and removals business, once saw me taking measurements of a piece of furniture before moving it and said ‘That’s somehow un-Russian’ - “Это как-то не по-русски. Мы с ребятами один раз американский холодильник на 11-й этаж по лестнице подняли – а он в дверь не проходит”.  – 'My boys and myself once carried an American fridge up the stairs to the 11th floor because it wouldn't fit into the elevator. Only to discover that it wouldn't fit through the door of the apartment either.'

The Big Stick principle doesn't always work.

Fyodor Shaliapin sings the Volga Boatmen:


And Glen Miller's version:

Read the Russian version of this article here.

Text quoted from 'Dubinushka' in Russian by Alexander Olkhin.

Painting by Ilya Repin, The Burlaki on the Volga, 1870-1873, o/c, 131.5cm x 281cm, Russian State Museum.
Cartoon by William Allen Rogers, Theodore Roosevelt and his Big Stick in the Caribbean, 1904, (Courtesy of Granger Collection) link.

Gavrilov Translation

Andrei Gavrilov

This is a video with Andrei Gavrilov (Андрей Юрьевич Гаврилов) talking about translation.  Gavrilov is a legendary figure in Russia. He dubbed an endless number of English, French and Japanese-language films on video, beginning from 1980s when the flood of Western cinema started to break through the walls of the Soviet Union on VHS cassettes. The films were voiced-over in Russian by a handful of translators who had a knack for a fast-paced, practically simultaneous translation in good intelligible Russian.

Gavrilov, usually uncredited, became one of the best known of them. To the point where the technique of voice-over, when the whole film is dubbed by one translator and his voice is heard a few split seconds after the actors' voices, had become known in Russia as 'Gavrilov translation' – "перевод Гаврилова".



Gavrilov is a professional journalist, fluent in French and English (he translated Japanese films via English subtitles). I worked with him in the European section of TASS news agency in the early eighties where I remember him as the fastest-working, practically faultless editor and writer of news despatches. Which allowed him to carve out time for writing on the side – additional stories, sometimes political, but often on Western culture. He wrote numerous introductory articles on musical record jackets.

Gavrilov stumbled into translating films almost by chance. When a regular translator at an important viewing for Soviet bosses didn't show up, a desperate manager grabbed Gavrilov and put him behind the mike.

His big love has always been music, classical, rock and especially jazz. Gavrilov now runs one of the top quality music companies in Russia, Solyd Records.

In the clip, one interesting observation by Gavrilov is on translating English-language invectives into Russian. He argues that Russian 'mat' (sexually based expletives) have a stronger offensive power than in English. That difference, he says, should be taken into account by a translator. In most cases English swear words shouldn't be translated literally, as Russian mat, but a milder, more acceptable phrasing should be used.

Inspiration for McKayla: Those Were the Days.

At the world gymnastics championship in Tokyo American women's team won gold on Tuesday (11 October). The ever-strong Russians were in the second place. But there was a Russian inspiration in the American performance.

Years ago, in the early 90s, a young British journalist came to interview me at Izvestia in Moscow. The interview was the usual political fare of the day (the journalist is now one of the top UK political commentators). What made it different that day was that she was hopping along on crutches. Ever a gentleman I didn't mention the obvious physical condition until the business was over and I was helping her to the lift.
'What's happened to you?' I asked as casually as possible.
'Oh, I just wanted too much to be like Tourischeva', she replied defensively with what sounded a prepared and perhaps rehearsed phrase. When student, at a gymnastics class she developed a chronic sprain, which returned occasionally.

Tourischeva (centre) at the Munchen Olympics, 1972.

The Soviet gymnastics champion Lyudmila Tourischeva was the darling of the world in 1970s, the pretty face looking out from behind the otherwise grim façade of the 'evil empire'. Girls (and boys) all over the world were dreaming of her.

Young gymnasts competing today are daughters, or maybe even granddaughters of Tourischeva's fans. I wonder if they remember the Russian charm of those days fourty years ago?

Here is the winning performance of American McKayla Maroney in Tokyo. She did her somersaults to the tune of Those Were the Days, the Russian song that became so popular in its 1968 English version that now many don't even realise where it's from. Gene Raskin's lyrics are different from Konstantin Podrevsky's, but the melody by Boris Fomin is the same.




And here is Alexander Vertinsky's recording from 1926 when the song first became a hit among Russian emigres:

Vertinsky in 1910s

Photo of Lyudmila Tourischeva by Ulrich Kohls,  from

Deutsches Bundesarchiv (German Federal Archive).
Photo of Vertinsky from here.

The Russian Prince Ali Ababwa

My daughter gets the giggles every time she listens to this Russian version of Aladdin's grand entry song. And she does it a lot when she's back home from the boarding school. So I got the bug too.

Enjoy!



In the Russian text he is described as "шишка других важней" – 'shishka more important than others'. Literally shishka is a pine cone, but idiomatically it does mean someone important, the big one.

Seventy Years Since Nazi Invasion of the USSR (a Soviet resource)

Russian version of this post is here

Today is the 70th anniversary of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, a tragic date deeply ingrained in the minds of Russians – 22 June 1941 (it was a Sunday).

The war left a huge legacy of literature, songs, music and graphic art. I have mentioned before (here) an important resource, the web-site Soviet Music (sovmusic.ru), which was recently reorganised to let visitors use it by historical periods (only the Russian language side of the site, the English language side is classified by theme). Its primary purpose is to preserve the original versions of Soviet patriotic songs, but it also contains records of speeches by war-time Soviet leaders and numerous posters. The Great Patriotic War section is here.

All files are free to download (read terms and conditions for limitations) and the full collection is available (for sale) on disc. 

Here is the link to the speech made on 22 June by the commissar for foreign affairs Vyacheslav Molotov. You can hear the nervousness, a shade of distress in his voice. It is also interesting that Molotov separates 'the German people, german workers' from the Nazi rulers. This internationalist motif was later drowned in the drumming up of nationalist, anti-German rhetoric. Molotov also evokes the patriotic theme, mentioning the invasion of Napoleon in 1812.

Stalin did not speak until 3 July. The closing words of Molotov's speech: 'Ours is a just cause. The enemy will be routed. Victory will be ours' are associated with Stalin, but they are in the middle of his speech and not as rhetorically stressed as in Molotov's version. They are in a subordinate clause, inside a bigger sentence. The confident 'Victory will be ours' ("Победа будет за нами") also appears in a slightly less powerful variation 'we will have to/must win' ("мы должны победить").

Molotov's text is here and Stalin's text is here.

This a YouTube video with Molotov's speech:

When the Poet Died (Becaud in English)

Come, and let’s cry for the poet,
Come, and let’s cry for the poet.
Time when he fell,
Time when he fell,
Time when he fell – time to cry.

Come, and let’s cry for the poet,
Come, and let’s cry for the poet.
Lament his loss,
Lament his loss,
Lament his loss — to the world

Only his star will be shining,
Only his star will be shining
In a great field,
In a great field,
In a great field — of wheat.

And that is why we can see,
And that is why we can see
In this great field,
In this great field,
In this great field — drops of red.

©A.Anichkin
Please read the Russian version here.

This is my translation into English of the song ‘Quand ils est mort, le poète’ by Gilbert Becaud (lyrics by Louis Amade, see text and video below) which I dedicate to today’s anniversary of D-Day, the Allied landings in Normandy on 6 June 1944. The day is now celebrated in France as Fête de la Normandie.

I first of all wanted to capture the phonetics of the original, deciding that this is what should dictate the choice of words.

That’s why these semantically different, but phonetically close pairs are employed:

Come - quand
Lament - le monde
Only his star - on enterra

The fourth stanza is of particular challenge because it’s where the clue to the anti-war message finally appears – in the last word. Les bleuets are cornflowers in French and have long been the symbol of Remembrance for the war dead. The tradition isn’t widely known outside of France, that is why just translating the word didn’t seem to me like it could work. Replacing cornflowers with red poppies (les coquelicots) would mean a departure from the original. 

I tried ‘drops of blue’ as an allusion to ‘blue blood’ – noble blood, but that didn’t seem to be right too. Blue is sad, but it is also, to me, cold.

I showed the draft translation to my French friends and they immediately told me that red poppies are also recognised as a symbol of remembrance for the war dead, for the blood spilled for your country.

Which gave me the solution: drops of red. To an English ear that should evoke the red poppies ‘in Flanders fields’ of golden wheat — but to a French ear too. And without replacing one flower for another.

In this video Becaud performs Quand il est mort for a German audience. In Germany the cornflower, die Kornblume, is one of the national symbols. Difficult to say if anyone in the audience catches the ‘anti-war’ message, but they all definitely enjoy the performance and join in learning the lines and the tune. 

Whatever difficulties united Europe is going through, Franco-German rapprochement has been one of its greatest achievements.



Gilbert Becaud - Quand il est il mort le poete par Leroidukitch

French text:

Quand il est mort, le poète,
Quand il est mort, le poète,
Tous ses amis,
Tous ses amis,
Tous ses amis pleuraient.

Quand il est mort le poète,
Quand il est mort le poète,
Le monde entier,
Le monde entier,
Le monde entier pleurait.

On enterra son étoile,
On enterra son étoile,
Dans un grand champ,
Dans un grand champ,
Dans un grand champ de blé.

Et c'est pour ça que l'on trouve,
Et c'est pour ça que l'on trouve,
Dans ce grand champ,
Dans ce grand champ,
Dans ce grand champ, des bleuets.



Read this article in French: Le coquelicot et le bleuet de la mémoire

Picture: Death of the Commissar by Petrov-Vodkin, o/c, 1928

Libiamo in Russian, or Yerofeev's Pet Hate

In the novel 'Moscow - Petushki' by Venedikt Yerofeev his character sees the late Brezhnev-period world of the Soviet Union through alcoholic haze, sometimes clearer than others around him. In one chapter he comes to a restaurant at the Kursky station in Moscow with a terrible hangover. (English text from here, also quoted on this translator's blog)

Nothing to drink! Mother of God! Indeed, if you believe the angels, they're fairly drowning in sherry in here. But now there's only music and music with some kind of mangy harmonics at that. Yes, that's Ivan Kozlovsky all right. I recognized him immediately; there's no one else with a voice that nauseous. All singers have equally nauseous voices, but every one of them is nauseous in its own way. That's why I can identify them so easily. Well, of course: Ivan Kozlovsky. "Oh, Chalice of my fore-bear-ers. Oh, let me gaze for-e-ever upon you ny star-r-r-r light." Well, of course, Ivan Kozlovsky. "Oh, why am I smi-i-tten so with you. Don't reje-e-ect me."

Anyone who lived in the Soviet Union in the 70s and 80s would feel affinity with poor Venichka – Kozlovsky, great as he was in his heyday, was long out of fashion. In opera too, nobody sung with that affected gentility any longer. But Kozlovsky was still disproportionally high on official radio play-lists.

And just in case you were wondering if the noble Spanish jerez was a drink of choice for Russian down-and-outs as well as for the gentlemen of Pall Mall, don't, the Russian kheres is (or was at the time) a horrible sweet fortified wine, first produced in the Crimea and then in other wine-growing regions of the Soviet Union. One of the most popular brands was 'Massandra' after Crimean vineyards. I don't remember the price of Soviet kheres, but if a commenter on this blog is correct it was 4.47 rubles, pricey compared to 3.62 for a bottle of regular vodka or 2.75 for a bottle of dry white wine.

I've long wanted to find out what is it exactly that Ivan Kozlovsky sings on the radio 'with dog-like modulations' before posting a video with him actually singing. But I give up, if anyone knows, please let me know. This is the Drinking Song from 'Traviata', not the one in the novel, but at least they drink. The beautiful Galina Pisarenko as Violetta. Recording for 1967 New Year's TV concert.



And in this one another of the 'nauseous' opera singer, Sergei Lemeshev, Kozlovsky's contemporary and life-long competition, sings the same.



The passage in Russian (from this site): 

Нет ничего спиртного! Царица небесная! Ведь если верить ангелам, здесь не переводился херес. А теперь — только музыка, да и музыка-то с какими-то песьими модуляциями. Это ведь и в самом деле Иван Козловский поет, я сразу узнал, мерзее этого голоса нет. Все голоса у всех певцов одинаково мерзкие, но мерзкие у каждого по своему. Я поэтому их легко на слух различаю… Ну, конечно, Иван Козловский… «о-о-о, чаша моих прэ-э-эдков… О-о-о, дай мне наглядеться на тебя при свете зве-о-о-озд ночных…» ну, конечно, Иван Козловский… «о-о-о, для чего тобой я околдо-о-ован… Не отверга-а-ай…»

I am not commenting here on the quality of this and various other translations, I only have the book in Russian. Perhaps some time later I will, but here I'll just note that the book exists in English in several translations with different versions of the title which only proves that it has firmly established itself with the reading public.

 (all links to Amazon)
It is known as 'Moscow to the End of the Line' and also as 'Moscow Stations'  and 'Moscow Circles'. Yerofeev or Erofeev depends on how you prefer to transliterate names with Russian E. In French it came out as 'Moscou-sur-Vodka (Moscou-Pétouchki)'

Sonnet 40. Russian Song Version.

The famous Russian singer Alla Pugacheva made several beautiful song versions of Shakespeare's sonnnets. In this musical excerpt from the Soviet film 'Love for Love' (1983) based on Much Ado About Nothing she sings Sonnet XL .




Shakespeare's text:

Take all my loves, my love, yea, take them all;
What hast thou then more than thou hadst before?
No love, my love, that thou mayst true love call;
All mine was thine before thou hadst this more.
Then if for my love thou my love receivest,
I cannot blame thee for my love thou usest;
But yet be blamed, if thou thyself deceivest
By wilful taste of what thyself refusest.
I do forgive thy robbery, gentle thief,
Although thou steal thee all my poverty;
And yet, love knows, it is a greater grief
To bear love's wrong than hate's known injury.
     Lascivious grace, in whom all ill well shows,
     Kill me with spites; yet we must not be foes.


In Russian canon Samuil Marshak's translations of the sonnets, the full cycle, are considered best and are rarely critically challenged.

There are several curious places in the Russian version.

Take, for example, the lines

But yet be blamed, if thou thyself deceivest
By wilful taste of what thyself refusest.

I do forgive thy robbery, gentle thief,
Although thou steal thee all my poverty;

There is no clear, grammatically expressed gender in English, but sonnet 40 belongs to the sequence  addressed to the Fair Youth, not the the Dark Lady who appeared later, in sonnets 127-152. In Russian, where gender is shown through different endings of third person verbs in the past tense, Marshak gives them masculine gender:

Нет, я в одном тебя лишь упрекну,
Что пренебрёг любовью ты моею.     ~ fem. пренебрегла
Ты нищего лишил его сумы.     ~ fem. лишила
Но я простил пленительного вора. ~ fem. простила

The first two bolded words describe actions of the person to whom the sonnet is addressed, the third is Shakespeare talking about himself. So, in the Russian version a man addresses another man with a passionate, but forgiving rebuke.

Now, theories abound about Shakespeare's sexuality and who the Fair Youth of the sonnets might have been. The question is does Marshak refer to homosexuality here, or love in a broader sense, love as friendship and loyalty – betrayed? Perhaps it's the latter. The translation was published in 1948 during one of Stalin's last paranoid campaigns against 'enemies of the people' and when homosexuality was banned.

Henry Wriothesley, a possible Fair Youth

That is perhaps why 'lascivious grace' completely disappears from the sonnet's ending which is rendered as follows:

О ты, чье зло мне кажется добром.
Убей меня, но мне не будь врагом!

But how does Pugacheva deal with the man-to-man issue? She sings the sonnet from a woman's perspective, addressed to a man? That's clever: she changes the masculine third person past простил  (forgave) to first person future прощу (will forgive) where gender is not morphologically shown. The whole piece becomes a consistent woman-to-man text. The line is sung at about 1:20 minutes into the clip.

See also 'Sonnet 66. A Russian Video Project'.

Full text of the sonnet in Russian is on wikilivres here. 
Info about the film, in Russian, is here and here.
Image from here.

Rapture Delayed. But Debbie Harry Loves Dostoyevsky, and Chooses War and Peace

Read the Russian version of this post here.

Rapture, promised for 21 May 2011, did not materialise. Again.



I was wondering why Blondie's Rapture was all over the internet. Until, listening to the evening news, I heard about that poor old sod Harold Camping thanks to whose inspirational prophecy the world got a good occasion to celebrate the glorious weekend.

Over the Rapture weekend, by coincidence or not, Debbie Harry was featured as a guest on the Desert Island Discs programme on Radio 4 and chose Dostoyevsky to take to the island – because he wrote long novels. The very strict presenter reminded her that a title has to bo chosen. Debbie, bless her, only hesitated for a second – and chose War and Peace, also synonymic with long Russian novels.

Never mind it's by Tolstoy – good choice, Debbie! We still love you.

The Twenty Most Important Russian Reads (a list)

In principle I am against all sorts of rankings and 'top' lists. There is always a degree of subjectivity in them. And anyway, a well-educated reader can always tell good literature from bad, but still have personal preferences based on taste, interests, mood and, not least of all, age and experience.

Still, lists are useful as guides or for comparison or argument. 

The web-site Accredited Online Colleges sent me their recently published list The Twenty Most Important Russian Reads. It has the usual set of Tolstoys and Dostoyevskys. Anna Karenina is number one. For Pushkin they recommend Eugene Onegin, his most renowned work, though probably it is better to start with the great writer's prose, The Captain's Daughter for example (Amazon link, also available for downloading here in a 1914 translation as Marie: A Story of Russian Love).

But I was thrilled to see a few entries there that not always make it onto English language reading lists in Russian literature. In particular I'd endorse the choice of Lermontov's The Hero of Our Time (available for downloading in several digital formats, including Kindle, from Gutenberg, here).

I am not sure whether Nabokov needs several entries (Lolita and Pnin). Lolita, for example, was originally written in English and its Russian version reads a bit rushed and is full of anglicisms. However, in the current climate of 'pervs under beds', the Colleges endorsement is really commendable. 'Unfairly thrown around today as a pervert’s indulgence,' they write, 'Lolita is an absorbing book that truly encompasses the honesty, ego and controversy that can define 20th century literature. Plus, it reads pretty fast compared to other Russian books on this list.'

I loved to see the great innovator Vladimir Mayakovsky's A Cloud in Trousers (English text, Part 1 here) in poetry recommendations. The blurb is slightly confusing, though. It speaks of 'suffering under revolution', while the poem was written in 1915, well before the Russian revolution of 1917, and it is primarily a love poem where Mayakovsky seeks to find balance between the intimate and the social.

I think that translations of English poetry into Russian are worth recommending for students of Russian literature and language, for example, Shakespeare's sonnets (several sonnets in Pasternak's translation are here).

Some of the Russian books well-known in the West did not make it onto Accredited Colleges list:

- Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita and Heart of a Dog (Amazon link). The Master and Margarita, the novel with parallel stories of Jesus and Pontius and a visit by Satan to the Moscow of 1920s, is full of hilarious satire and moving romance. According to the American literary blog Languagehat it is 'one of the most widely loved novels of the last century'. It circulates in about a dozen different translations.

- Mikhail Sholokhov's And Quiet Flows the Don (Amazon link) is the Nobel prize-winning epic of cossack life before the revolution and during the first world war and the Russian civil war. Pete Seeger's Where Have All the Flowers Gone is based on an old cossack song quoted in the novel.

- Yevgeny Zamyatin's We (Amazon link) is the first modern antiutopia (or distopia), predating and partly inspiring Orwell and Huxley. 

There are other important works of literature that were created during the Soviet period, but are not as widely known as they deserve in my opinion. Here are a few I'd add:

- Yuri Trifonov's The House on the Embankment (Amazon  link), The Exchange, short stories. Trifonov is the deepest observer of the moral dilemmas of Soviet life;

- Vassily Grossman's Life and Fate (Amazon link). The war epic, described as the Soviet War and Peace.

- Valentin Katayev's The Diamond Crown of Mine is a fictionalised 1977 memoir of Russian literary life, mostly of the 1920s period, with practically all important writers appearing under nicknames. The book has not been translated into English in full as far as I know. It was severely criticised by some, mostly for what it isn't rather than for what it is. Read an analysis in English here and the full Russian text is here.

For lovers of poetry I'd recommend 1960s poets Andrei Voznessensky, Bella Akhmadulina and Yevgeny Yevtushenko. Look for brilliant children's authors Kornei Chukovsky and Samuil Marshak, who translated many English nursery rhymes into Russian. I used them in teaching Russian to English speakers.

The Tale of Igor's Campaign is the 12th century poetic epic. Originally written in Old East Slavonic, it has several renditions in modern Russian and a few English translations, notably by Vladimir Nabokov (text here). It contains among other jewels Yaroslavna's Lament, included in Borodin's opera Prince Igor.

The recommendations include, somewhat surprisingly in what is supposed to be a list of Russian books, the American journalist David Remnick's Lenin's Tomb, the account of the dying years of the Soviet Union. I've read it, it's a good book, but for a better grasp of Russian national character I'd recommend The Russians and The New Russians by Hedrick Smith (Amazon links).


Thanks to Emma Taylor for sending the link.






 Yaroslavna's Lament scene from the film version of the opera (1969):

La Marseillaise in English

I like God Save the Queen, both the music and the words are very anthemy. But in England I often hear complaints: 'Oh, why don't we have something as rousing as La Marseillaise! Imagine that man Laszlo walking up to the orchestra and telling them to play God Save the Queen!'

Well, here is the English version sung by Louis Graveure (recording from around 1919). Note that he sings the chorus with words slightly different from the 'official' text (see below the clip): instead of 'To arms, to arms, ye brave!' it's 'To arms, to arms, you France!' More patriotic, I suppose. In the French original it is 'to arms, citizens', not 'brave' or 'French'.

See the clip from Casablanca on this post (in Russian) about the connection between the film and Dostoyevsky's novel 'The Possessed' (link to free Kindle download). And hear the Russian adaptation by Pyotr Lavrov (1875) The Workers' Marseillaise here. 



Ye sons of France, awake to glory,
Hark, hark! what myriads bid you rise!
Your children, wives and white-haired grandsires.
Behold their tears and hear their cries! (repeat)
Shall hateful tyrants, mischiefs breeding,
With hireling hosts, a ruffian band,
Affright and desolate the land,
While peace and liberty lie bleeding?

To arms, to arms, ye brave!
The avenging sword unsheath,
March on, march on!
All hearts resolv'd
On victory or death!

Now, now, the dangerous storm is rolling
Which treacherous kings confederate raise!
The dogs of war, let loose, are howling,
And lo! our fields and cities blaze! (repeat)
alt: And lo! our homes will soon invade!
And shall we basely view the ruin
While lawless force with guilty stride
Spreads desolation far and wide
With crimes and blood his hands embruing?

To arms, to arms, ye brave!...

With luxury and pride surrounded
The vile insatiate despots dare,
Their thirst of power and gold unbounded,
To mete and vend the light and air! (repeat)
Like beasts of burden would they load us,
Like gods would bid their slaves adore,
But man is man, and who is more?
Then shall they longer lash and goad us?

To arms, to arms, ye brave!...

O Liberty, can man resign thee
Once having felt thy generous flame?
Can dungeons, bolts or bars confine thee
Or whips thy noble spirit tame? (repeat)
Too long the world has wept, bewailing
That falsehood's dagger tyrants wield,
But freedom is our sword and shield,
And all their arts are unavailing.

To arms, to arms, ye brave!...