Translations by Ilya Gutner
A fall is the companion to all fear, and
Fear is itself a sense of emptiness.
Who throws us stone... more A fall is the companion to all fear, and
Fear is itself a sense of emptiness.
Who throws us stones from up above our heads -
And stone denies itself the slave of being?
And with a monk’s wood footstep going stiffly
You measured out the paved yard's length time past,
Paved cobble-stones and dreams as rude as grass -
They hold the thirst of death and lust of greatness…
Then cursed be, o Gothic solitude
Where in the hearth they burn no merry wood
And he who enters sees the ceiling sinking!
Not many live for the eternal good
But if the moment is what keeps you thinking,
Your lot is fearful and your house is flimsy!
Papers by Ilya Gutner
Lermontov wrote his "Shtoss" to seem serious and to turn out a joke on those who were convinced. ... more Lermontov wrote his "Shtoss" to seem serious and to turn out a joke on those who were convinced. The story proceeds by paired motions of events, of which the first always leads to nothing and the second always leads to no good. The first time Minskaya speaks to Lugin in the room away from the half-way boring party, asking him to say something to divert her, the hypochondriac remains silent, but the second time he tells her simply: И у меня сплин! 1 But
Mandelstam's images of conversation partners engaged in their eternal disputes are invariably con... more Mandelstam's images of conversation partners engaged in their eternal disputes are invariably constructed in such a way that there is no telling which is which, the two melding into one another, for it is impossible to understand another without accepting the necessity of that other's existence into one's own life, and consequently mirroring that other in one's thoughts and actions. Friends grow to share a vocabulary, spouses to resemble one another even in their physical appearance, and it is a commonly observable fact in our experience that Tolstoy scholars differ in their ways from those who study Turgenev, Tiutchev, or, for that matter, this same Osip Mandelstam: the conversation leaves an indelible mark upon the one who enters in it.
Lev Rubinshtein avoids physical description. If his poetry is evocative of the everyday, then thi... more Lev Rubinshtein avoids physical description. If his poetry is evocative of the everyday, then this is precisely because the everyday is not in it: no more than Akaky Akakievich in the old story who did not know whether he is in the middle of the street or in the middle of a line, does this poet know whether he is in the middle of the street in Moscow hearing an interjection, or in the middle of a line of 19 th century poetry hearing an association in his head. Thus, his "Six-winged Seraph" is not about Pushkin's poem at all, but about the reader of Pushkin's poem, anxious that his personality as a reader step forward through his poetry, and at the same time equally anxious to keep back that which he considers personal and unrelated to poetry, waiting to share his personality as a person with his friends after the poetry reading. 1 But there is no "after the poetry reading" once a poem leaves the author's hands and goes out into the world. There is something missing in this poetry: a point. It takes us nowhere and it gives us nothing, which is, in Rubinshtein's understanding, the best point of them all. Now I hear the counterarguments knocking at my door: poetry does not need to have a point, poetry needs only be itself, poetry is this and poetry is the other. And for all that, poetry is language which is spoken in time, takes time to read, introduces thoughts and associations into our minds, and leaves us vulnerable to the consequences if it gives us nothing more than good light fun. Good light fun was what they wanted in their music in the time of the Third Reich, and in Stalin's Russia it was also the way to go: be an optimist, be a Stalinist. I do not say that Rubinshtein wants to be a tyrant, although I say indeed that his poetry positively overflows with commands, orders and demands upon the reader which exceed all bound of decency considering that he speaks to people whom,
In 1937, the year of the Great Purge, Osip Mandelstam wrote an Ode to Stalin. Some say it was fea... more In 1937, the year of the Great Purge, Osip Mandelstam wrote an Ode to Stalin. Some say it was fear that made him do it, others that it was a work of madness produced by old anxieties in Mandelstam's own mind, while others still will have it that it was neither an illness of the mind nor any fear of death, that old illness of the soul which ruins poets, but rather the desire to live and to be no worse than anyone that made Osip Emilievich want to praise the tyrant from the bottom of his heart. The result was some of the most sincere praise poetry this world has ever known. Well, how can it be that the only poet who dared speak out against the Collectivization, this man who was arrested for reading to his friends in 1934 a little poem of suicidal daring about Stalin's loathsome appearance and domineering ways; how can it be that this proud dreamer whose inspiration was never moved either by fear or want of gain but always only by the love of work wrote only three years later a poem to stand alongside Pindar's greatest odes, in praise of that same Stalin? What kind of an overdue Enlightenment paradox is this?
the hero of Balabanov"s 1997 film "Brother" gets involved in the Petersburg crime world, makes th... more the hero of Balabanov"s 1997 film "Brother" gets involved in the Petersburg crime world, makes that petty universe pay him good money, but is not himself a gangster for the simple reason that, alone of all the characters in the film, Danila does not have a gang. No one can claim him for his own without Danila"s own consent, although many try.
Sleepless in the Age of Reason: Mikhailo Lomonosov's "Evening Meditation" and the commonplace of ... more Sleepless in the Age of Reason: Mikhailo Lomonosov's "Evening Meditation" and the commonplace of the nocturnal vigil in the works of Feofan Prokopovich and Antiokh Kantemir Beginning with Feofan Prokopovich and Antiokh Kantemir in the early 18th century, the night vigil has been a trope of sincerity in Russian literature. In the performance culture of the Russian 18th century, when you put off your old Muscovite dress to assume your new European habits, you had to show somehow that you mean your devotion to Peter the Great, his reforms and the stormy line of his Imperial successors. Staying up all night, whether to fight the Turks, to think about the good of the people, to learn the natural sciences or to drink with the Emperor, was one important, and well-documented, way to do so. Accordingly for the Russian poets from Prokopovich to Lomonosov, staying up at night is not so much a transcript of any real insomnia, as it is a symbolic marker of sincere devotion to a cause.
We use words for constituting our experience. But words are never innocent of rhythm and sound. O... more We use words for constituting our experience. But words are never innocent of rhythm and sound. Our direct and self-immediate experience of the constituting word, whether fluid or jagged, musical or cacophonous or something else, must therefore be incorporated into any phenomenological exercise in the constitution of experience. Nor is the experience of words limited to their sound component. (Of course, another way of thinking about the limitation of words to their sound component is not as limited, but as upraised to their primal, pre-logographic wholeness: written words do after all make objects, reproducible and therefore questionable for their reality, of the word). 1 We do not only consume words, but in some part also author them.
Lomonosov wrote his odes in a language unique unto himself: not Russian, but Rossperanto. The ode... more Lomonosov wrote his odes in a language unique unto himself: not Russian, but Rossperanto. The odes of Lomonosov would have made sense in the future when man had broken through the downward fall of the Epicurean universe and transformed the Creation of God to his own will and pleasure. The high illogic of these odes would impress the subjects of Russia Cosmic as mere grammar, old-fashioned and down to earth.
The tales told around the old beekeeper Redhead Panko"s table in the two volumes of Gogol"s Eveni... more The tales told around the old beekeeper Redhead Panko"s table in the two volumes of Gogol"s Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka are tales of fancy, dressed up as tales of folklore.
Long papers by Ilya Gutner
Konstantin Balmont's moments of sudden personal address to the reader: "в этих случаях он похож н... more Konstantin Balmont's moments of sudden personal address to the reader: "в этих случаях он похож на дурного гипнотизера. "Ты" Бальмонта никогда не находит адресата, проносясь мимо, как стрела, сорвавшаяся со слишком тугой тетивы". 6 It is not enough to say that Balmont resembles a sorry hypnotist shocking his unconvinced patients with unnecessary familiarities. Mandelstam transforms Balmont into one of his own Scythians and, in getting back at the poet for striking him with too personal an emotion difficult to describe in words, Mandelstam makes Balmont the clumsy Scythian, whose arrows never hit the mark because the archer is excessively enthusiastic. Remarking on the perfect balance of pronouns in Baratynsky's poem which, evidently, suggested to Mandelstam the whole elaborate distinction in his essay between contemporary readers who are too near of kin in order to know the real interest in a poet's words and readers in posterity who have the right remove in order to actually read his poems and be interested in them for what they have to say, Mandelstam compares his feeling first to that of one who finds a letter in a bottle, but then refines that impression by comparing it to the feeling of one who has been suddenly called by name:
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Translations by Ilya Gutner
Fear is itself a sense of emptiness.
Who throws us stones from up above our heads -
And stone denies itself the slave of being?
And with a monk’s wood footstep going stiffly
You measured out the paved yard's length time past,
Paved cobble-stones and dreams as rude as grass -
They hold the thirst of death and lust of greatness…
Then cursed be, o Gothic solitude
Where in the hearth they burn no merry wood
And he who enters sees the ceiling sinking!
Not many live for the eternal good
But if the moment is what keeps you thinking,
Your lot is fearful and your house is flimsy!
Papers by Ilya Gutner
Long papers by Ilya Gutner
Fear is itself a sense of emptiness.
Who throws us stones from up above our heads -
And stone denies itself the slave of being?
And with a monk’s wood footstep going stiffly
You measured out the paved yard's length time past,
Paved cobble-stones and dreams as rude as grass -
They hold the thirst of death and lust of greatness…
Then cursed be, o Gothic solitude
Where in the hearth they burn no merry wood
And he who enters sees the ceiling sinking!
Not many live for the eternal good
But if the moment is what keeps you thinking,
Your lot is fearful and your house is flimsy!