THE SHARED LAUGHTER MAKES PEOPLE CLOSER


COME TOMORROW. THE 20 C. RUSSIAN CLASSICAL CINE NOVELLETTE

ODESSA FILM STUDIO, 1963



A daughter of a forester from a godforsaken place in Siberia is saying goodbye to her parents before leaving for Moscow to learn.

COME TOMORROW. A EVGENIY TASHKOV FIILM

Script by Evgeniy Tashkov, Camera Radomir Vasilevsky , Art Director O. Perederiy, Asisstant Directors V. Vinnikov, A. Milyukov, Original Music and Arranger Andrei Eshpai , Sound E. Goncharenko and A. Blogerman, Costume Designer M. Kvashina, Makeup Artist V. Laferov, Editors T. Don, V. Oleynik, V. Fyodorov, Conductor D. Sipitiner (Odessa State Philharmonic Orchestra), Manager S. Beniova.
CAST: Nikolai Vasiliyevich - Anatoliy Papanov, Frosya - played and sung by EKATERINA SAVINOVA, Alexandre Alexandrovich - Boris Bibikov, Natasha - A. Maksimova, Kostya - Yuri Gorobets, Mariya Semyonova - N. Zhivotova, Vadim - Alexandre Schirwindt, Volodya - Yuri Belov, Cloakroom Attendant - A. Denisova, the Gnessin Institute Chancellor - Boris Kokovkin, Accompanist - Z. Dyakonova




COME TOMORROW (Приходите завтра) 00:00 - 14:12 (total 1:33)

CHAPTER ONE: `KOLYA THE COGNAC`

Train to Moscow. 1962, Moscow Railway Station.
Frosya (short for Efrosinia. - AAO): My sack ...
Woman: Your sack is there!
Frosya: Gimme it, move!
Voice: Who needs a carrier? Lemme help you! Oh my! You’ve loaded yourself up with heavy things!
Frosya: Thanks, I’ll do without outside assistance.
Doors of a Moscow flat. Frosya being not aware of any doorbells is knocking at the door with all her feet and hands.
Nikolai Vasiliyevich: What’s the matter?
Frosya: I kept knocking in vain.
Nikolai Vasiliyevich: Why to knock? There’s a doorbell there.
Frosya: Really! But I had no idea ... I haven’t noticed...
Nikolai Vasiliyevich: So what?!
Frosya: I’ve come to you!
Nikolai Vasiliyevich: Well.
Frosya: Tell me if that person, what’s his name ... what’s his name lives here ... Wait a little ... #23 house, #8 flat, but his name ... family name I’ve forgotten.
Nikolai Vasiliyevich: Well.
Frosya: I must have put it in my basket. One minute, please.
Nikolai Vasiliyevich: What are you looking for?
Frosya: A letter. Oi!
Neighbour with his dog: Good evening!
Nikolai Vasiliyevich: Good evening, Yuri Borisitch!
Neighbour with his dog: You feel like accepting a guest?
Nikolai Vasiliyevich: Who knows?
Frosya: What a big dog! ... (looking for a letter) Where is it? But it was, it was!
Nikolai Vasiliyevich: Well.
Frosya: Have you known the person who wrote the letter?
Nikolai Vasiliyevich: Whom?
Frosya: He is a custodian in our school. Ivan Kirillovich, that’s his name. He was a custodian in your school too, when you went to school. ... Where did you go to school?
Nikolai Vasiliyevich: In Zaporozhiye City!
Frosya: That’s right! It was long ago surely. Later he moved to us.
Nikolai Vasiliyevich: I don’t remember.
Frosya: He’d been staying with you for a couple of days. It was six years ago! His name is Ivan Kirillovich.
Together: I-van Ki-ril-lovich! I-van Ki-ril-lo-vich!
Nikolai Vasiliyevich: (pretending to have remembered) Ah! (getting immediately obvious) So it was him who’d written to me to accept you?
Frosya: Surely!
Nikolai Vasiliyevich: Ivan Kirilitch! M-m! What to do? Well, come on in if that’s the case.
Frosya: It’s so nice you’ve remembered him, I have got nobody in Moscow, otherwise I have to stay out in the cold and cry!



IN THE ROOM
Nikolai Vasiliyevich: Well, what about the custodian. Alive and kicking?
Frosya: Alive! He works and lives with no trouble at all.
Nikolai Vasiliyevich: What’s this?
Frosya: What?
Nikolai Vasiliyevich: That yellow liquid.
Frosya: That’s honey.
Nikolai Vasiliyevich: You think there’s no honey in Moscow?
Frosya: It’s ours, home-made.
Nikolai Vasiliyevich: By the way, what’s your name?
Frosya: Frosya!
Nikolai Vasiliyevich: Well, let’s drink some tea, Fro-sya! Besides, you must have felt tired from your trip and needed a rest.
Frosya: Never mind!
Nikolai Vasiliyevich: Are you in transit or directly to Moscow?
Frosya: Moscow is my destination.
Nikolai Vasiliyevich: Where are you from?
Frosya: From Yeltsovka Village.
Nikolai Vasiliyevich: A-a! Where is it?
Frosya: It’s in Siberia! Help yourself to this ... with tea.
Nikolai Vasiliyevich: Is it good there?
Frosya: It is not the word! So good! ... Peace and quiet! And no crowd! Just look! Water’s running ... But we have to pull it, pull it out of our well until shoulders get tired and hurt. Today I had to carry my luggage all day long until I found your whereabouts at last.
Nikolai Vasiliyevich: You don’t like Moscow.
Frosya: I can’t say it so for certain. But it’s fussy. Uneasy. My head was ready to burst.
Nikolai Vasiliyevich: What village are you from?
Frosya: Strictly, I am not from a village, even Yeltsovka village is 8 km far from our apiary. My daddy was also a forest warden. Oi-oi! Ain`t it dirt? Looks like clay!
Nikolai Vasiliyevich: And very much so!
Frosya: What for?
Nikolai Vasiliyevich: That’s what I need for my work.
Frosya: It sounds obscure. ... I can’t see your wife, I don’t know why! Where is she?
Nikolai Vasiliyevich: Indeed where is she? I have got no wife.
Frosya: But you had got her, right?
Nikolai Vasiliyevich: Right!
Frosya: You must have deserted her, eh?
Nikolai Vasiliyevich: It was her who had left me!
Frosya: Can’t believe it. Why then?
Nikolai Vasiliyevich: Frosya, you are asking too many questions!
Frosya: A-ha! I won’t anymore! But who keeps your flat?
Nikolai Vasiliyevich: One lady, living in this house. Kinda housekeeper. Today’s her day off!
Frosya: A-ha! Can’t understand anything! Have housekeepers got holidays?
Nikolai Vasiliyevich: But they have.
Frosya: (echoing) ... they have.
Nikolai Vasiliyevich: (with a bottle of cognac in his hand) Gonna drink with me this?
Frosya: O-oi! You gonna present a real jug! No, I do not drink. Oh! I’ve remembered: Kolya the Cognac! Your name is Nikolai Vasiliyevich!
Nikolai Vasiliyevich: Yeah!
Frosya: Our school’s custodian told me all about you!
Nikolai Vasiliyevich: How’s he over there? Alive ... Sorry, I’ve already asked it! What are you going to do in Moscow?
Frosya: Perform. Oi, sorry. Not to perform at once. First, gonna learn. Stop laughing! I was performing in my place every Saturday! Have you ever heard me? Look! He has never heard me, yet he’s laughed.
Nikolai Vasiliyevich: I’m kidding, don’t pay attention. What institute are you going to enter?
Frosya: Where they teach how to become an artiste!
Nikolai Vasiliyevich: There are a helluva institutes like that in Moscow.
Frosya: Helluva indeed?
Nikolai Vasiliyevich: Indeed!
Frosya: Why do they need so many? Oh, I got it. A terrific deficit of the artistes!
Nikolai Vasiliyevich: I wouldn’t say so, no! Sooner vice versa!
Frosya: What? Really very many artistes? That’s worse, of course! Does everybody sing here?
Nikolai Vasiliyevich: Oh! You mean singing?! That’s quite different. Then you should go to the Gnessin Institute or Conservatoire! Have you really got voice, eh?
Frosya: I had it in my village, at the least.
Nikolai Vasiliyevich: Had in your village? It’s funny. Funny that’s it!



IN THE KITCHEN ( Nikolai Vasiliyevich is hearing Frosya`s voice)
Frosya: I see you are a good person, Nikolai, how could your wife leave you? (being back with the kettle, Nikolai Vasiliyevich see Frosya fast asleep)
IN THE MORNING
Nikolai Vasiliyevich: When you’re hungry, look into the fridge! Hearing me, Frosya? I’ll be back soon! (to himself about his lady housekeeper) Mar`(short for Maria. - AAO) Semenovna is late by some reason. (to Frosya) What do I see?
Frosya: A dress. My mom’s. Smart.
Nikolai Vasiliyevich: Well. Please do not go anywhere until I’m back. Or you gonna get lost. When I’m back we’ll go to the Institute or Conservatoire. If anybody rings me up, tell them I’ll return in an hour and a half.




COME TOMORROW (Приходите завтра) 14:13 - 28:18 (total 1:33)

CHAPTER TWO: `TALENT AND THE CITY`

SCULPTOR`S STUDIO
Frosya is in a sculptor’s studio, busts and figures, she’s feeling spellbound, but soon while cleaning them with a duster she is singing an improvised vocalization. Suddenly she is noticing through the window the crowd of pedestrians gathering beneath in the street and is hurrying to join them to ask about their impressions.



Guy (to another one) She’s likely to go and swallow a raw egg.
Frosya: This is why?
Guy: To make the voice sound better!
Frosya: Has this voice sounded bad? Has it, eh?
Guy: Do you like it?
Frosya: Do YOU like it?
Guy: Not very much.
Frosya: Then why have you stopped to hear it?
Guy: What?!
Guy: Why do you defend her? Is she your aunt or anyone like this?
Frosya (teasingly): Aunt, aunt! Stand jawing here!
Another Guy: What?
Frosya: Deaf or what? I mean you! (shrugging his shoulders the pedestrian is leaving the scene. Frosya is coming back to the sculptor’s flat. But the door has slummed in front of her because of draught. She’s looking into the flat though the slit for mail. Suddenly she’s pulled up by the lady housekeeper who’s appeared behind her back).
Housekeeper: What are you listening to, eh?
Frosya: Me? The door shut up!
Housekeeper: I see that the door is closed. But it's none of your beeswax! (opening the door with her key and noticing the girl’s following her) Where you to?
Frosya: My trunk is there. Things.
Housekeeper: Things?! (pushing the girl out of the flat and closing the door)
VOICE OF HOUSEKEEPER TALKING BY PHONE BEHIND THE DOOR
Housekeeper: Kolya, hi! My dear, it is not me who’s come late, it’s you who’s gone early. A-ha! Yep! A-a-a-h! Yes, all right. (opening the door and addressing the girl) Well, still standing? Come on in! So it is you who’s Frosya, eh?
Frosya: Yes, it is!
Housekeeper: How have you occurred behind the door?
Frosya: It`s slammed.
Housekeeper: Slammed! ... Look at this mess. I’ve been off just for a day, and just see! Or ... have YOU just started cleaning?
Frosya: A-ha!
Housekeeper: Then in vain. They are very fond of mess and disorder!
Frosya: Who they?
Housekeeper: Painters, artists. As to ours, do you know who he is? A sculptor! It’s even worse. He’s in clay all the time, sometimes works with the stones. (pouring out some tea and offering it to the girl ) Some tea?
Frosya: No. We’ve just drunk it.
Housekeeper: All right. Before him I was working for an artist, he liked being praised very much. He painted landscapes. He would take a piece of sackcloth, daub something with his brush and step aside. Quite forgot the name of that sackcloth. ... teasel? easel? He used to make a mess on it and then he scraped it away! Then he called me: `Maria Semyonovna, come here!` I would come closer and flap with my arms! `Wow! Have you finished at last?` By no means. Having stood in front of it he used to work even more! (to Frosya): Still hearing me? (this very time Frosya is admiring something in the sculptor’s studio, and all of a sudden, quite by chance after stepping back she’s blown a statue of the girl holding an oar into bits)



Housekeeper: Let’s put the fragments into the corner!
Frosya: Can we glue them together?
Housekeeper: Are you kidding?
Frosya: Will he be back soon?
Housekeeper: Nope. He’s to attend the conference today. You are to go to the Conservatoire tomorrow.
Frosya (pointing out to the statue’s ass): But this place seems to be intact.
Housekeeper: This place must be replaced too. C’mon, help me! Bring it in here. Do put it into the corner!
Frosya: I’ll put it myself, don’t hold it any longer.
Housekeeper: I’m afraid he’ll notice its absence all the same! It was too big! How on earth have you managed to break it? You’d better break any of those smaller ones on the shelf. I broke them regularly, and then arranged them wider apart, and he noticed nothing at all! A work is a work!
Frosya (pointing out to the upper shelf): What are they?
Housekeeper: They are thoughts of an artist, so to say.
Frosya: Good thoughts! So many! Why are they so small?
Housekeeper: He makes them big afterwards.
Frosya: Oh! ... I shall confess when he’s back. Wait! Gonna take a broom!
FOYER OF THE CONFERENCE HALL
Nikolai Vasiliyevich (on the phone): Natasha, is it you? I couldn’t come yesterday! I’m sorry!
IN THE LIBRARY
Natasha (his lady friend, a librarian): I was waiting! You should have rung me up! (laughing)
Reader: Sorry, this is not all!
Natasha (to another desk attendant): Lyuda!
Lyuda (to the reader): Hearing you!
Reader: I ordered as well `The Herald of the Organic Chemistry` ...
Natasha (over the phone): Conference? Again?
Nikolai Vasiliyevich: If you could only hear what they told about me you might have fallen out of love with me! To hell with them, those pygmies! By the way, Boris is also here! It looks like they gonna give me the collective dressing-down! Details later! ... No, I don’t know! I don’t think so! We are but friends at the least! Vice versa! I hope I can only rely on him!



FOYER OF THE GNESSIN INSTITUTE
Cloakroom Attendant (old woman) (to Frosya): Where to?
Frosya: I came to enter!
Cloakroom Attendant: I’d not believe it is true! Could you come even later? They went through all rounds! Return home, home. Come next year now!
Granny and her grandson are entering the entrance while talking: `Don’t be so nervous, for God’s sake. But I don’t. So why your hand is that trembling?`
Frosya: Those rounds? What are they?
Cloakroom Attendant: They are... God dam if I have a slightest idea. Rounds are rounds. Kinda folks are sifted or screened! First they keep sifting them, but then they can chuck some of them out all of a sudden. But despite this all the same the best ones not always remain here. If you are late ... don’t be upset. You’ll preserve your health at the least. I don’t like to work here. But I need somehow to earn my pension. I thought it would be easier here! In vain! In winter you have to bring so many coats you can’t raise your hands afterwards. In summer there are tears! People who enter here they seem to be very nervous. They cry. Why do they cry? They cry because they don’t understand anything. The unhappiest are those who remained here. Talent! It is or it is not! What if there is no talent, eh? You occurred to be on the list having got no talent. Another loser is available. A lifelong loser! Why are you dumb as a fish?
A merrily singing `Living apart from her my soul is full of melancholy` handsome old man, professor, is coming down the stairs and turning to the cloakroom:
Professor: Let’s dress myself!
Cloakroom Attendant: Here it is!
Professor: My cane!
Cloakroom Attendant (bowing): Take it please! Have a nice day, Sir!
Frosya: Who is that?
Professor: Our professor!
Frosya: Of singing?
Cloakroom Attendant: Of singing.
Frosya (catching him up): Tarry awhile, you! Wait a bit! Hey you, stop! Stop!
Professor: Are you addressing me? You do not need to shout `Hey!` I am professor Sokolov!
Frosya: What about your name? How do they call you?
Professor: What do you need me for?
Frosya: I need you badly!
Professor: If you gonna enter, it’s too late.
Frosya: Late!
Professor: Late indeed! No more admittance! If there’s another problem, then come tomorrow, agree?
Frosya: Tomorrow!
Professor: Tomorrow! Have a nice day!
Frosya (chasing the bus): But when tomorrow? At what time?
Professor: At six!
IN THE CAR
Nikolai Vasiliyevich (to Natasha): I trusted my friend, but it was him who bitterly criticized me as if I were his enemy! He literally trampled my dignity while calling himself my friend taking care of my perishing talent! He said I had discredited the theme of labour.
Natasha: But Kolya, he criticized you earlier too...
Nikolai Vasiliyevich: Who is he to criticize me? All in all, he is an insignificant provincial who made his name just after two or three works! Arrived to be my critic! What can he create, after all? He had neither discipline, nor will, as I remember him. Practicalness was not his strong point either.
Natasha: No, Kolya ... Even earlier he ...
Nikolai Vasiliyevich: He blamed me for my being out of touch with the reality. Kinda he travels everywhere! My works, however, aren’t worse indeed!
Natasha: If it’s so why are you so upset?
Nikolai Vasiliyevich: I am not! It only seems I am. But frankly speaking, he carried conviction very much.
TO BE CONTINUED

COMMENTS

Ekaterina Feodorovna Savinova (1926-1970) played Frosya Burlakova, a seventeen-year old girl when she was 37 years old. She also sang for her, and it’s the only record of her singing left, the other are lost. She also post-synched the lady housekeeper while her husband, film director Evgeniy Ivanovich Tashkov (1926-2012) dubbed Nikolai Vasiliyevich (actor Anatoly Papanov). The voice of Anatoly Dmitriyevich Papanov (1926-2012), an actor of the legendary and iconic Moscow Satire Theatre in the 60-70s of the 20 c., the one who played sculptor Nikolai Vasiliyevich seemed very specific, a little bit grotesque (a fragment from the feature film `Beware of the Car` can serve as an illustration):




`Beware of the car`. Yuppie - Andrei Mironov. Father-in-law - Anatoly Papanov. Even in that satire Papanov`s voice was being regarded as too grotesque, but fortunately the decision to dub him wasn’t taken that time.

Yuppie : I’m finished, an investigator has visited me.
Father-in-law : They’ll imprison you, so stop stealing.
Yuppie : Semyon Vasiliyevich, you’re in my home at least!
Father-in-law (retired colonel): Your home’s a prison.
Daughter : Father, your barrack-like jokes are really out of place!
Yuppie (to his wife, colonel`s daughter): Inge, what to do? What to do?
Father-in-law: To put yourself on bread and water to get used to the prison beforehand.



Film `Come Tomorrow` was being shot not in Moscow but in Southern Russia (New Russia) in Odessa City. The reason was simple, Ivan Alexandrovich Pyriev (1901-1968), the omnipotent cine boss, general manager of the Mosfilm State Company forbade Ekaterina Savinova to play the title role in the film as she was a person non grata in his secret `black list` of actresses who once refused to make love with him.


A Russian crazy love machine Ivan Alexandrovich Pyriev, really great and really terrible and iconic Evilwin! The toughest self-made man who contrived to turn into the omnipotent Tsar of the Russian cinema from the son of a loader killed in the drunken brawl and a Siberian girl farm hand.

Even the most prominent, independent and influential Soviet film directors of that time such as Grigoriy Tchukhrai, by the way, a paratrooper vet, and Vsevolod Pudovkin drew back in fear. At least Pudovkin rang her up and frankly confessed: `You see, the matter is … Well, to be short, they ban my using you in the film`. By this very reason Ekaterina`s husband had also to leave cinema for TV soon after he’d finished that feature film where she played the title role, the only in her life. But he shot a pair of one of the first iconic TV series in Russia.


Young film and TV director Evgeniy Tashkov

Ekaterina Savinova had to play the walk-on parts in the motion pictures and even to graduate from the conservatoire, but she was late to become an operatic singer because she was infected with the Bang's disease after drinking a glass of raw milk in a Southern Russian street market. Aftereffect of the illness was the schizophrenia-like madness which appeared from time to time and one day made her commit suicide under the train in Siberia. Thus, by putting her head on rails she played the part of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina she’d presented in the admission examination in the Moscow Cinema School in real life.



Ekaterina Savinova used to call cinema a devil, but she couldn’t once and for all leave it for the operatic stage as she obsessively dreamed of becoming a film star. Besides, she was often invited to become a pop star. Alas, she chose the wrong for her, disastrous, and fatal way, and had to wait, rather in vain, and go through many trials on the path of cinema. She, however, seemed to have been born for singing only. (Her voice had got a three and a half octave range). Artist and the Doom, ill fate, Fatum. Persons are not always architects of their own fortunes no matter how hard they can try. You do not believe me?



Believe Shakespeare at least, I mean a tragic figure of Hamlet, leaving alone the antique tragedies that were not only literary but deeply rooted in the real life.






Diva Plavalaguna - The Fifth Element

Frosya Burlakova`s improvised vocalization reminds of that of the Diva Plavalaguna’s famous song `The Diva Dance` by Eric Serra (born 1959) after she had performed `Il dolce suono`(Il dolce suono mi colpi di sua voce! The sweet sound of his voice struck me!), an aria from the opera Lucia de Lammermoor by Gaetano Donizetti. (`It is one of the most difficult arias because of its length, its soaring arpeggios, and the high F above high C`).


Composer Eric Serra

As to Serra`s vocalization it granted the women singers an opportunity to show the full might of their voices and even more. Diva Plavalaguna was sung by soprano Inva Mula (born 1963), an Albanian operatic singer.


Supersoprano Inva Mula

When composer Eric Serra showed her the score for The Diva Dance, she said some of the notes couldn’t be changed that fast by a human being, with a human voice.


Actress Maiwen Besco

So they digitized those notes to record the soundtrack based on the score composed sooner for the E.T. Divas. (I mean, of course, Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element). As to actress who played Diva she was Maïwenn Le Besco (born 1976).




The DIVA. Interview with actress Maïwenn Le Besco. Sub Esp&Rus.

Besides Ekaterina Savinova`s vocalization made us remember the great Peruvian soprano Yma Sumac (Zoila Augusta Emperatriz Chavarri del Castillo):




Yma Sumac Vocal Range (B2 - C7)

and my favourite Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez, an American soprano who appeared in the 1981 film Diva by a French film director Jean-Jacques Beineix:




Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez: Aria from `La Wally` from `Diva`



The feature film `Come Tomorrow` is based on the real events of lives of some actors and actresses who played in it. Ekaterina Savinova was an ordinary girl from a Siberian farmer-forester family who came to Moscow to enter the Cinema School. She failed, learned a year in the land amelioration institute, entered the Moscow Cinema School and was expelled a year later under the pretext that her gift was exclusively for a drama stage rather than for cinema. But a year later she entered the Moscow Cinema School again. Her tutor from the institute Boris Bibikov also played in the film `Come Tomorrow`, he played the professor, Professor Sokolov, Alexandre Alexandrovich, from the Gnessin Institute, who auditioned Frosya Burlakova. De facto, Boris Vladimirovich Bibikov (1900-1986), or Bib as he was called by students behind his back, played himself. The `Come Tomorrow` describes his real nature and philosophy of an educationer.
He and his wife Olga Ivanovna Pyzhova (1894-1972) brought up and educated a lot of the cinema superstars, besides they trained the national courses from many national republics of the USSR and the Russian Federation. After the death of his wife in 1972 six years later professor who lost his sight married (it was a fictitious marriage) one of his post-graduate students, Malika Khalimbekovna Jurabekova from Tajikistan and moved there with her and never came back to Moscow where the new generations of students and young teachers began to despise him and his artistic principles and often expressed their attitude quite openly, for example, by not noticing him while meeting in the passages of the institute. By the way, the title of Jurabekova`s dissertation reads `The Pedagogical Principles of Professors Pyzhova and Bibikov`. The Tajik scholar explains the reasons of the phenomenal success of Bibikov and his wife as the cinema star makers in its research.


Boris Bibikov Younger years

Bibikov graduated from the drama school led by Mikhail Alexandrovich Chekhov (1891-1955), Anton Chekhov`s nephew, and played in the 1st Studio of the Moscow Art Theatre. From 1942 to 1969 he was a permanent professor of the Moscow Cinema School.


Mikhail Chekhov

As an actor he played the classical repertory on stage, and mainly played roles of the Russian, British and German colonels, generals, admirals and diplomats in cinema (Colonel Seidlitz, British diplomat John Spencer Smith (1769-1845), General von Brenner, General Neubut, Adm. Kirk (not that of the Star Trek, of course), General Polovtsev, a collective farm`s accountant Kalistrat Kalistratovich, etc.).


Boris Bibikov as German General Neubut in the Andrei Tashkov TV Series `Major Vikhr (Whirlwind)`

His appearance, in his own opinion, interfered with his inner dramatic type of a comedian and simpleton. He paid much attention to humour, its nature during his pedagogic activities.


Boris Bibikov as John Spencer Smith

As a teacher he had to lick into shape and teach manners many poor, poorly educated, very simple, but extremely gifted young people. He unmistakably felt real talents. Bib was strict enough and exacting, but in any case it only did well. Being a nobleman he made his pupils become the noble too. He was not only a teacher for them, but also their father. He gave them great chances in life, and many got used of these chances, paupers became princes, dark people turned out to be the highly educated ones, artistic elite.


Konstantin Sergeyevich Stanislavsky (Alexeyev)

But Ekaterina Savinova was number one for him, he and actor of the Art Theatre, professor of the Moscow Cinema School Boris Vladimirovich Dikiy both concurred that only two individuals had made upon them an impression of the `improbable ones` with their talent and personalities, it was Konstantin Sergeyevich Stanislavsky (Alexeyev) (1863-1938) and, as they simply called her, Katerina.


Boris Bibikov as German General von Brenner

It’s interesting that despite he used to say that Lenin was a German spy he never was the GULAG prisoner in the 20-40s. Even that time his appearance, he was tall, handsome, and his aristocratic manners of the 19 c. impressed all. But, on the other hand, his career was being developed not as fast as he deserved. My guess is he could have been involved into the process of bringing up the aristocratic agents, illegals of the Soviet foreign intelligence service from time to time.



The film director Evgeniy Tashkov was also his former student and Ekaterina Savinova`s student fellow. Tashkov and Savinova got married in a family way being both the recent villagers as they never ever even heard of courting unlike those city folks. Before that they’d been the old friends, exchanged the laughable gifts and tried to `feed up` each other in the poor postwar years.




DEEP PURPLE IN CONCERT WITH THE LONDON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Sometimes I Feel Like Screaming

MISTAKEN IDENTITY

Quite often the Romanian Cosmas are confused with the Hungarian one, also of the Jewish origin, who also moved to Paris but 30 years earlier in 1933.


Joseph Kosma

I mean Josef Kosma (1905-1969), the famous French composer of soundracks for films of Marcel Carne, Jean Renoir and songs from the poems by Jacques Prevert.


Jacques Prevert

The most famous song by Joseph Kosma, lyrics by Prevert is the `Autumn Leaves`` (Les Feuilles Mortes, i.e. literally `The Dead Leaves`). It became an international hit!




Yves Montand - Les Feuilles Mortes (The Autumn Leaves)

It is interesting that the text by Nikolai Dorizo set to music of the Autumn Leaves became one of the Russian romances, even a folk song of the second part of the 20c. after it had been performed off-screen by Claudia Shulzhenko for an iconic Russian feature film `The Simple Story` (`Простая история`) of the early 60s.




Nikolai Dorizo`s Russian lyrics + Josef Kosma`s French melody of the Autumn Leaves= Russian romance song. Sung off-screen by Claudia Shulzhenko in the motion picture`Simple Story`.

In the midst of the scene the successful Russian agrobusiness lady (actress Nonna Mordyukova)who madly fell in love with a tough boss, but timid man says while leave-taking: He: `Farewell, Sasha!` She: `You`re a good guy, Andrei Egorich, but not a brave eagle! ... Ha-ha! Puddle!` Later she regretted she hadn`t taken the initiative and reproched herself: `What a silly woman, a fool I was! What a fool, fool, fool!` and inconsolably cried.

And finally quite an unexpected interpretation and arrangement of the song:




Joseph Kosma - Autumn Leaves by Polina Tarasenko (trumpet, saxophone, trombone) and Vladimir Spivakov` s Moscow Virtuosi (Spring 2014).

MODERN CHILDREN ON LERMONTOV AND ... YEVGENIY PETROSYAN


Mikhaïl Yurievich Lermontov. Picture by Olga Samoshkina, 13 years old. What a nice portrait!


From an essay `Summer Holidays` (elementary school): This year, 2014, my parents made up their minds to have a rest. To have a rest from me... They sent me to spend three months in the sanatorium `Pioneer`. Just fancy, three months!!!
If I only could know! I never ever was alone such a long time; I had to be responsible for me myself. They exiled me to where Lermontov had been exiled before me. But we have got just one thing in common, it’s our patronymic - Yurieyvich. Besides, he was in Lazarevsky City in transit, adult and talented. As to me I was held up there being a child. By the way, a child from the ordinary family. In 3, 000 km from home, though in 300 m from the sea. There were 300 children and 100 grown-ups there.

From an elementary school’s literature written test (questionnaire): Why Lermontov was disliked in the High Society? Answer: Have you seen his photo?

Questionnaire: How did Lermontov die? Answer: As a real gangster, killed in a shootout.

Questionnaire: What is your favourite poem by Lermontov and why is it so? Answer: Lermontov wrote so many poems that you can’t remember all of them. But I’ve remembered. He wrote about Moscow that it had been burnt. But my parents promised me to show it. So one of two sides is a liar, either my parents or Lermontov.

Questionnaire: How did Lermontov die?
Answer: He died because he told a lame joke! Evgeniy Petrosyan must be informed about this, so that he could come to reason until too late.


LORD`S FAVOURITE MINION


Evegeniy Vaganovich Petrosyan (born in 1945) is a Great Russian Comedian (and a longstanding stand-up comedian, in particular). He is the director of the theatrical company `The Distorting Mirror`. Recently he has been severely criticized for being `vulgar`, but he’s just people’s comedian, he plays the modern Russian folklore. It’s true, he’s often very commercially viable, and it can’t help irritating many other Russian clowns who explain their failure by the fact that Petrosyan cashes up conniving the bad tastes of the Russian mob (by this they mean the ordinary Russian people).


Akutagawa Ryunoske

It reminds me of a short novel by Akutagawa Ryunoske (Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (芥川 龍之介) (1892-1927)), I mean the second part of `The General` (`Shogun` 将軍, 1922) about a general who forbade his soldiers to play a folkloric scene because he found it `vulgar`.

2. THE PERFORMANCE IN THE CAMP
- What’s happened? Lieutenant-colonel Hozumi was asked by an astonished French officer.
- General ordered to stop it.
- Why then?
- It’s vulgar. The general dislikes vulgarity.



Though Petrosyan has got the Armenian roots, he’s absolutely Russian man. He was born in Azerbaijan as an Armenian and became a Russian artiste, a very important person of the Russian culture. His cultural contribution is immense, though some find this contribution to be rather tremendous. He’s been a comedian with the God-approved talent. When he was a child he and other children ran into the synagogue by chance and having been taken aback and not knowing what to say and how to beg pardon, Petrosyan who came to conclusion that a synagogue was a kind of the Orthodox church just blurted out: `Christ’s arisen!` and that very moment all the present felt the Father God bursting out laughing and saying `This little one must be a comedian!` And he’s really been a very successful professional stand-up comedian in Moscow since his 16 years old. His gift is God blessed and sunny!




Evgeniy Petrosyan - The Breaches of Faith (Евгений Петросян - Супружеские измены), May 25, 2015 (The Humourina Festival, Russia TV) https://youtu.be/NnTYAa8G0dA

THE BREACHES OF FAITH
O those breaches of faith! They were told about a lot, they were shown in movies and described in many novels, and numerous funny stories were invented about them! ...
A woman has phoned her best female friend:
-Tanya! Just fancy, I’ve come home and heard that my hubby is with a whore in our bedroom! Now I’m sitting in the kitchen and waiting for their coming out!
After dropping the receiver her best friend Tanya is exclaiming:
-Misha, what are we going to do?
The most annoying thing is that you are often let down by trifles. My good acquaintance has been visiting his neighbour for five years, and everything was okay until his wife noticed that the woman next door was cleaning the floor with his boxer shorts in their stair hall.
O those breaches of faith!
A woman once said:
-Those males like hens, just 20 metres far from home, and they’re nobody’s.
It came to cases when men are undergone treatment for cheating on as for alcoholism by their wives. One of those victims of that hypnotism complained to me:
-As soon as I’ve seen a woman I jump aside shouting: `Don’t come closer, I’m married, I love my wife. Don’t touch me!` He was thrown out of Metro seven times!
O those breaches of faith! Not all understand this problem properly, some are not tactful!
A sergeant got the wrong number, sex on the phone, and the girl on that phone started immediately: `I am taking off my overclothes, I am kicking off my high boots, I am tearing down my sexy underwear` ... Having heard this, the sergeant ordered her: `Do stop! What does it mean? Throwing, kicking ... Right now pick all up, fold up your clothes neatly and put on your bedside table!`
The other, however, are too outspoken in understanding such affairs. We’ve got the sharp contrasts, either one approach or the other. At a party: `Me and mine wife (the character is speaking in broken Russian with an accent. AAO) has lived for 25 years. His neighbour`s corrected: `Not `mine` but `my`. The speaker: `With `yours` wife I’ve lived for 24 years!`
Some wives think that being cheated on by their husbands is a betrayal. I’d like to offer the more tactful wording. The breach of faith, unfaithfulness is a kind of the refresher courses.
Man, he’s an eternal child. If he has to make little love on the side, it’s not a breach of faith, but a pure childlike curiosity. It’s a child who gets to know the world’s true colours! He does not deserve any punishment! He likes children’s games, for example, he likes to play la puta, sorry, lapta (a Russian baseball-like ball game.-AAO). One wise lady once confessed: `Stop your arguments! Do not be nervous! Personally I take his breaches of faith for granted. No matter how long he plays the field, he’ll be back again! After knocking on the door with his horns he’ll be let in the door by me!` She’s a woman of great sense; she understands that if your hubby frolics on the side, the main thing is to avoid meeting him in the same playground.
O those breaches of faith! What do they not tell about them! A woman caught his husband with their female neighbour in the act ... just imagine, caught him in the act in the bath of the flat in the lower floor! Her husband tried to explain what had happened indeed, but she failed to believe him. Me, stranger, believed him, but his own wife did not! This is worth telling. He was washing plates in his kitchen as he is said to be fond of washing dishes very much. And I believe it’s true. This very moment he felt the quake in the region of his flat, it started shaking, he fell down into the sink, and he was sucked down into the drain, or as he pronounced this word, he was `sackled` down. Let him say like this if he will. I believe him all the same, because after that he was washed away as a piece of ... sh... soap to a lower floor. While pursuing the titanic efforts not to go down even lower he managed to struggle out of the bathtub drain of the flat in the lower floor the very moment their female neighbour was taking her bath. Having seen him to be dirty, she began to wash and clean him. That very moment his wife showed up. I believed his story, his friends believed it, it was that woman`s husband who believed it too, but his wife started shouting: `This can’t be so! It’s the third male neighbour who was sucked down to that whore! But none was sucked down to me!`
O those breaches of faith! Recently, on TV, I’ve watched a public opinion poll carried out by the journalists.... They’ve asked the women in the supermarket if they ever cheated on their husbands: `And you, ma`am, what about you, eh?` None of them confessed! Such smart girls! Never confess it, I beg you, right? Say: `I can’t remember it, can’t add anything!` Another good phrase: `I was out of it!` That’s all. Only one granny, however, told the truth because she had nothing to lose by now! She was neat, grey haired, wearing the black astrakhan fur coat, when she shared that secrets with the reporter: `Of course, grand sonny, dear, for the first time I did it in time of Rasputin, and last time I did it in time of Putin!` A young woman was asked about her response to her husband’s infatuation with the younger girls, and she said: `No problem. My pet dog also runs after every single car, but it doesn’t mean that after overtaking the car it’ll be able to drive it`.
O those breaches of faith! An SMS from a husband to his wife: `Kidnapped by the E.T.s! I am experimented on! They took all my money, lipsticked me totally, bathed me in their perfumes, scratched my spine ... Promised to release in an hour!` Several days later it’s her who sent him her SMS: `Gone where you used to tell me to get lost to! Behave as you used to call me names. Now I understand that I should have listened to you earlier!` Well, SMS messages are a remarkable means of communications being used by many. Lately some wives have started using them to correspond with the girl lovers of their husbands! It’s an interesting process which I’d like to define as obvious progress. A wife partly attempting to catch out her husband’s lover wrote to her: `I’ve bought the new boxers for my husband. When in bed with him appreciate their true value.` Several days later the lover responded: `He’s got the Raffaella sweets (Raffaella Raw Coconut Sweets. -AAO) in the pocket of his new boxers. Keep it! It’s for you!`



O those breaches of faith! One woman complained that her husband wanted to make love with anybody else. She told she had dissuaded him from this: `It’s costly! We cannot afford of it! It would be better to find anybody on the side for me, because an additional cent won’t be an excess for our household.`
And finally, as my monolog is coming to its end, I gonna propose a toast. In Old Russia if a girl was faithful to a boy while he was in the army they cast a cannon. If she failed to wait for him a tree was planted. So let’s drink to our thick woods, and the only Tsar Cannon! THE END


The Tsar Cannon is a large long cannon on display on the grounds of the Moscow Kremlin cast by the Russian master bronze caster Andrei Chokhov in 1586. Look what the fucking huge balls it has got! Wow!


Bashful Mona Lisa Of Fence


Rule, Britannia!

THE SELF-PORTRAYING PORTRAITS, OR LIFE IN THE HALL OF MIRRORS OF THE ART


Feodor Chaliapin on the cover of the famous Russian men’s magazine `Maxim`. The real black and white photo taken in his old years went through coloration. I liked it. He looks either an aged made-up courtesan or an elegant gangster kinda Lucky Luciano though slightly advanced in years. Simultaneously. Why not? Firstly, angles, viewpoints and tastes differ. Secondly, binocular seeing of the same object can be different, one eye may see one thing, the other may see the other thing which may hardly affect the natural asymmetric harmony of the entire picture seen with both eyes at once. (In any case, as Dr. Headshrinker Jr. are used to say: `You`ll leave my office, both your precious self and your precious self`s masks and mirrors and images and portraits and self-portraits as you are all, asltogether and for altogether are but one and the same, self-identical beautiful person!`).




Mask

Thirdly! Even long after his death Chaliapin has nothing against make-up, marketing and advertising. Just one more of his numerous roles and essential aspects of his great, free, rich, lucky and complicated personality. You do not believe me? I gonna prove it later (or farther, below?) in the current post where time and space are used to swap. Chaliapin truly established himself not only as a great artiste, but also as a prospered Lucky Man! I know only one figure who`s his bird of feather. It`s Dédé (Monsieur René Maxime Lionel Depardieu (1923-1988)). Or maybe two, Dédé`s son, Monsieur Gérard Xavier Marcel Depardieu. O Lucky Men!




Alan Price 1973 - O Lucky Man! (Full album)

THE VOLGA COCNEY, OR A PORTRAIT IN PORTRAIT, A STORY IN STORY AND THE PAST IN THE FUTURE

PREFACE
Irakliy Andronikov who combined two spheres of activities, being a prominent scholar and a famous actor at once, in his famous stories used to revive the images and manners of speech of the great artistes of Russia who in their turn told their own stories about their forerunners. It was a picture in the picture (PIP). Besides, his gripping instructive, sometimes unobtrusively didactic narrations accompanied by imitation of true voices and facial expressions reminded of symphonies and the sea, now rough, now calm though never the dead calm.




Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov - Scheherazade, Op 35 Conducted by Valeriy Gergiev, Russia

Irakliy Andronikov was a unique superstar as he attracted attention of the public at large in the USSR although the subject of his stories was not the popular but so called serious culture (literature, poetry, classical music, ballet, contemporary history etc.). The wide masses loved him and he was frequently shown on TV at the prime time. Wow! Incredible! On the other hand, Voltaire, Diderot, other Encyclopaedists could have succeeded on TV too.



The speech manner of Ostuzhev in his story is ambivalent as was the personality of Feodor Chaliapin, that former Volga cockney guy, who managed to win the international popularity and even married an Italian ballerina (when he initially met Iola Tornaghi, his first wife, he only knew four Italian words - Allegro, andante, religioso, moderato!, yet he was able to somehow explain himself).




Giuseppe Verdi - Aida. The Triumphal March. At Arena di Verona - 2012. The orchestra and chorus of the Arena di Verona.

Chaliapin in Ostuzhev-though-Andronikov`s narration prefers to express himself in common parlance playing his usual offstage image of a hill billy whom he had NOT been by that time.


Chaliapin pulling faces

The speech manner of the great drama actor Ostuzhev combines the Moscow pronunciation of some words with the French-German pronunciation of the `oe` in the word of `noebo` (palate) which he pronounces like that of in the word `Goethe` (in the middle) or `Depardieu` (in the end).



He is an educated European, yet he is Russian, moreover he is a Muscovite. As to the speech of Irakliy Andronikov he is a man of St. Petersburg culture and speaks accordingly though he descends to established colloquialism, firstly, to be closer to public, secondly, because he describes in public the informal, almost private situation, its portrait.

THE DEEP THROAT, OR HOW CHALIAPIN BECAME CHALIAPIN (ANDRONIKOV SPEAKS FOR OSTUZHEV WHO SPEAKS FOR CHALIAPIN)




Irakliy Andronikov tells his stories: Actor Alexandre Ostuzhev tells about Feodor Chaliapin. Translation from 20:17 to the end

I was given permission to be offstage, behind the curtains and had a rare opportunity to observe the work of the greatest artistes of the Russian Opera. It was a real school for me. But wouldn’t you know, my dear, a writer, scholar, scientist, they all finish their work in silence of their studies. A poet when he composes his verses may stay alone even in the street. An actor, however, a great actor too, when he prepares to go on the stage he can’t help feeling like being amidst the market. Everyone disturbs and troubles him, giving him their smacking kisses, whispering in his ear dirty funny stories ... I thought what a nuisance it must have been for such a titan as Feodor Chaliapin. He was severly distracted before the performances with every kind of trifles. Therefore I never interfered with him and even never bowed to him before his entrances. Having seen him behind the curtains I used to step aside. In case he happened to notice it he shouted to me: [CRESCENDO] `Why? Your neck can’t bend anymore or what?` He was simply [RECITATIVE] mag-ni-fi-cent! [DIMINUENDO]
Yet I can`t abnegate for myself the personal enjoyment of observing the process of his making himself up. Oh! You hardly met such a make-up artist in your life! And you will hardly ever see! Strictly speaking, an actor should be able to make himself up himself, because to count only on the hand of a professional make-up artist is as to rely on your expressing my own feelings with your face. Go on, try it! What?! You’ve failed! Aha! None could know better than Chaliapin himself how his face would behave during the following performance. By the way, he was an excellent artist.


Feodor Chaliapin`s Self-Portrait

He would drive to a night club after the performance where he took out a piece of chalk out of his pocket and drew the self-caricature or caricatures of his friends or sketches of his make-ups. As a rule, an owner of the club, that scoundrel, canaille person, used to grab the tablecloth under the pretext it was not clean and needed a replacement with a new one, and afterwards the one with Chaliapin`s pictures on it would be sold to Chaliapin`s fans at a triple price.
He always made himself up leaving the door wide open as they fetched him from time to time either arms, props or his wig. I used to stay in the door of his dressing room and watched his activities.
He is sitting naked up to his waist before the cheval glass made of three unfolding glasses and frowning looking at himself and hemming, and blinking with his blond eyelashes! A strongly curled triangular black beard is lying before him on the little table ... it means he gonna play a part of the fierce warlord Holofernes הולופרנס in Serov`s opera `Judith`.
He jams his phiz a little with his fingers to understand what it’s been made of today, coughs k-h-a-k-h-a-a! mm hems and having taken the beard adds it to his face to watch ... then he puts it aside to brighten up a place on his face here and darken there, joins the beard once more and sings [CRESCENDO] Aaaa-ooo-aaaa! after that he puts it aside again and draws such big blue triangles .... and this very time there are a helluva people in his dressing room! Kind of the characters wearing dinner jackets and mourning coats with the starched dickies and showing one another dial plates of their pocket watches, sharing with him the latest stage gossips, except perhaps puffing smoke right into his face. Not being worried at all he turns to them from time to time and is back again to his beard.
He sticks on a beard, [CRESCENDO, I TUTTI] takes a sidelong glance so that you can’t help feeling scared, [DIMINUENDO] tears it off and draws such a cruel brown wrinkle or fold on his face ....
And that very moment he’s approached by his laryngologist.
-Feden`ka, baby, what about your little throat today?
-Never mind, no sore throat today. I’ve recovered.
-Do not be lazy, baby, come on, show me your nice little throat!
Not being worried at all Chaliapin is opening his mouth and showing his throat to him:
-Well, you go and see it! A-a-a-h!
And then all the present in his dressing room cease yelping, barking their lies, and having together approached Chaliapin, and elbowing their ways through the crowd start looking into Chaliapin`s mouth. They are all beside themselves with delight.
He’s been showing it without being worried for some time, calling them one by one. `Hey, you there, come closer ... you over there, come here ... ` At last he feels sick and tired of them and he banishes them from his sight. They shrink back, gather in circle and begin to discuss what they’d seen.
Judging by the scraps of their phrases which reached my ears when I stood behind of the door, I realized that they had managed to see something remarkable that I would hardly ever see in my life. I grew bolder, tore myself away from the doorpost, neared Chaliapin and said:
-Feodor Ivanovich, can I also ... wouldn’t you be so kind ... to look into it?


A frame from the Jack and the Beanstalk (ジャックと豆の木 Jakku to Mame no Ki? (1974) produced by Group TAC and Nippon Herald Films and directed by Gisaburō Sugii. If you haven’t seen it yet, make haste to fill in the gap, or I have treated you like Vrubel! A-ha! (About Vrubel read below. - AAO)

Chaliapin asked me: `Where have you been? Stood in the door? What prevented you from coming closer? A-ha! You were afraid! Not gonna cry here, eh? Such a shy boy! As a result you remained the only dark and not enlightened! You know-nothing! Well, come on, go and see! A-a-a-h!`
You can’t even imagine what I’ve seen! No exaggeration, his throat - wow! it seemed to be wider than his neck! His roof of mouth found itself as far as Chaliapin`s eyes! It’s under that unique dome that the inimitable timbre of Chaliapin`s bass is being born! His tongue is rooted somewhere in the depth of his larynx and is lying flat like a wide leaf behind the crown of his lower teeth ... and the whole throat has got not a single unnecessary thing! I regarded it as a perfect architecture, so I could not tear myself away from the picture. I simply stunned!


Photo of Chaliapin playing Holofernes by V. Chekhovskiy

At last Chaliapin asked me: `Is it a feast for your eyes to look at or what? Not? So what have you goggled at? Go there, and y`all follow him! You devils! I’m to go on the stage in five minutes! Go away, you imps!`
And the entire crowd has poured out of his dressing room. So have I. Having jumped out I concealed in the curtains so as I could see Chaliapin passing by me while wearing his silk and brocade, having got the golden diadem on the ebony curls of his throwing back head with the Assyrian goatee on his chin. Here was him, Chaliapin with the bracelets and rings on his arms and hands, wearing the gilded sandals and breathing heavily while passing past me! I heard the first burning hot sound of Chaliapin`s voice reaching the ceiling of the theatre hall! I looked, I heard, and was obsessed with the picture of that enormous singing bell mouth, especially when Chaliapin played the high notes and his tongue was oscillating in his mouth!


Alexandre Yakovlevich Golovin`s Portrait of Chaliapin playing Holofernes, 1908.

The performance is over. I am at home. The first that I do, I switch on the light. Then I take a little mirror with handle to look how my own throat looks like. A-ha! Just fancy what I saw. My larynx was narrow like that, throat was a bottle’s neck, roof of mouth was as a cellar, tongue stuck out and there was nothing farther except for the coal darkness. Pitch-darkness!
The next day, it was in Kamergersky lane, near the Bolshoy theatre I met my acquaintance, friend who was educated in the Moscow conservatoire, dedicated himself to singing, took lessons from Mazetti and wrote on the vocalism in the press. I couldn’t resist the temptation to ask him about Chaliapin. I told him I’d observed Chaliapin`s throat offstage. It’s a great miracle! A natural miracle you can witness rarely.
But there was no response, no questions, no interest, no asking to repeat, no smile at all! After I’d finished he just wondered if it was all I had to tell him and added: `Well, you should know, dear, we, professionals, do have an idea about Chaliapin`s throat. It’s just you, silly, who is unaware of this subject. I do agree with you that his throat is a miracle! But it’s not only a natural born miracle, but also a miracle made by his hard work. Yeah, yeah! Stop staring at me in such a way! It was a miracle of his own and his teacher’s hard working that created his throat indeed. Chaliapin had got remarkable vocal cords as a natural gift, it’s true. But it was his first teacher Usatov who had them developed with the help of the special exercises. He made his soft palate be opened like the curtains. He taught him to rinse his throat with sounds, strengthened tissues of his throat.


Dmitriy Andreyevich Usatov

Chaliapin is now a singer who hasn’t got any limitation related to the technical skills. Plus it’s an artiste of the Shakespearean talent and scale! He is an artiste of the greatest exactingness when it concerns him and other artistes, his partners on stage. He absorbed the greatest artistic culture within the shortest time! He’d never learned anything and never ever gone to school before that. You, young actors, should stop chattering about his having allegedly been so far a Volga river loading worker who is simply dawned upon with the sudden flashes of inspiration and illumination as soon as he goes out on the stage! It is a man of great industry and hard work! His only care is thinking about what to do to make the best of his talent and of what he creates on the stage.


Feodor Chaliapin was also a sculptor who literally shaped himself too!

It’s just an idle talk that Chaliapin just spits and all the day guesses whether he will be in the good voice in the evening or not. It’s gossips of the vulgar men and scandalmongers who would like to make Chaliapin squander the gold of his gift on the copper coins in the art. You must learn from him, especially you, young drama actors should follow his example. You’ve got the same faces everyday but speak in different but husky voices every night as cockcrows at sunrise! It's simply a disgrace! I’ll reveal you later the principle of Chaliapin`s exercises.
Well, since that time I have also begun to train my throat, darling. I started doing it 40 years ago. If you are interested to know what I managed to gain you’re welcome to look into it. Aha!
I glanced, wow! His roof of mouth was like a dome, throat was tremendous, and his tongue lowered and opened up an access to the widest tunnel. While looking at this picture I couldn’t take my eyes from that incredible sight. Having been convinced that I was totally amazed, Ostuzhev shut his mouth, and having modestly but triumphantly flung the Turkish towel over his hand and taken the soap-box went to wash his face before going bed while holding his hand at the place of the absent neck tie. As soon as he was off, I immediately took out of the drawer a mirror to examine my own throat. Aha!
If you only could see what I had to see! A tiny throat, no room under the roof of my mouth, and my tongue which like a fist stuck out in my mouth. And farther there was a coal, ebony darkness and no perspective in prospect. Since then I’ve also started training my throat, I’ve examined it quite recently, but I have got nothing to boast of so far, yet prospects are bright, as I’ve got 40 year ahead of me.

PORTRAITS & COMMENTS
Ostuzhev




Irakly Andronikov on Alexandre Ostuzhev.

`I consider my acquaintanceship with great Russian actor Alexandre Alexeyevich Ostuzhev one of the best events of my life. His name is forever linked with the history of the Maly Theatre.


Alexandre Alexeyevich Ostuzhev (Pozharov) (Александр Алексеевич Остужев (Пожаров)) (1874-1953).Ostuzhev`s artistic name originates from the verb `to cool, extinguish` while his original name Pozharsky originates from the word `heat, fire`.

Long before the Revolution that young and extremely artistically gifted drama actor who was very handsome and had got a rich voice fell ill and lost his hearing. Since then he has not been able to hear his own voice! His plans, hopes, his future - all seemed lost too. Like hell! Ostuzhev loved theatre too much to be too far from it! He relied upon his will, work and patience, his phenomenal memory, on the support of his friends and remained on the stage. To play a tiny part in a performance he had to learn by heart the whole play, and who knows how, but he managed somehow to co-act with his partners. No breather in the world could save him if he would have forgotten just one word. But he played title parts, passionate characters from the plays by Shakespeare, Schiller, Hugo and Pushkin, Griboyedov, Ostrovsky.




Alexandre Ostuzhev, atrist of the Maly Theatre, Moscow, was the best performer of Othello in the Russian Shakesperean repertory. Listen (since 00:23) to his performing the scene of Othello`s death.

He played his Othello when he was 63 years old! He played this hero as good as none had played Othello in the Russian theatre for a long time. He was playing in the performance that lasted two hours and a half, and the Moscow spectators greeted that remarkable actor who performed a great artistic and I would say moral feat with the standing applause`.

Chaliapin
Being quite at home with the other capi di tutti capi of the then world’s `operatic mafia` ( I say in a jocular way, of course) young Chaliapin was sometimes treated like a stranger among some Russian colleagues. Once at a banquet when he was attended together with the great Russian artist Mikhail Alexandrovich Wrubel (Михаила Александровича Врубель) (1856-1910) who created a portrait of Lermontov`s literary character Daemon Chaliapin demanded the red wine though they served fish there.


Gang That Sings: Titta Ruffo, Enrico Caruso, Feodor Chaliapin (1913)

Vrubel was shocked and distinctly uttered: `They would have hardly elected you a lord in England. You must learn to eat and drink properly and never be a cow! It’s so disgusting to sit beside you!`


Porco Scialiapinoso vs. Mikhail Alexandrovich Vrubel (1856-1910). His name is played on in an iconic Soviet funny story that reads: `Once very old Brezhnev accompanied a very important foreign delegation in the Tretyakov Gallery. The guide whispered the titles of paintings and names of their authors in his ear. At last they reached the Vrubel. The guide (in a whisper): `Leonid Iyich, this is one of the best Vrubel`s paintings`. Brezhnev turned to the foreign delegation and explained: `This is a very good, but not expensive picture. Just one rouble`. This great Russian artist Vrubel (his family name originates from the Polish word of wróbel,i.e. `a sparrow`) finished his days in madhouse due to his hard working (chronic workaholism), infatuation with occultism (an obsession with the image of Daemon from the Lermontov, in particular) and bohemian style of living at his leisure time. The direct material reason of his madness was the tertiary syphilis.

There’s the special Wrubel Hall in the Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. After all, he was the first founding father of the Russian symbolism judging by his painting. I tell you about this just to explain the reason by which Wrubel left that party intact, his prestige was high that time too. As a rule, Chaliapin practised fist fighting in such cases.


Daemon (the title character of the same name long poem by M. Lermontov) painted by Mikhail Vrubel (The Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow)

Chaliapin was afraid of an arrest in Russia despite the further he lived in the newly-born USSR the more he was being in good standing with the Soviet authorities. But he was a bit out of it. The last straw that broke his back must have been an offer of the Revolutionary authority to perform in front of the Marine Horsemen. This ridiculous oxymoron amazed and startled Chaliapin at the same time. Besides he was still remembered of having dropped down on his knees in front of the Czar during singing `God, Save Our Czar` though later he no less sincerely used to perform the Marseillaise. Maxim Gorky once said to him: `I beg you, remember this once and for all: never ever join any party, be just an artiste as you are. You’re self-sufficient as an artiste`.
When Chaliapin acted like this he really gained a lot. By this very reason, feeling being involved not only in the art, he, once in the early 20s., emigrated from Russia, or to be exact, escaped, never came back. Simply he did not return from one of his tours round the USA when his family happened to accompany him. Yes, he was the first People’s Artiste of the USSR but this title meant nothing for him as he was an international superstar. Besides he was rich and free, as to the first years of the Revolution he couldn’t forget that his flat was often searched at nights, the Revolutionary soldiers and sailors looked for gold, wine and diamonds. But they couldn’t find anything except for the bottles of the expensive French wine and flat silver.


Webley & Scott – The Biblical Gun

Once they occasionally found his personal Webley & Scott revolver but failed to register it in a right way and put down it as they heard and understood its foreign brand name: the Biblical gun. We should also bear in mind that Chaliapin was a true cosmopolitan due to the very nature of his artistic activities. Being Russian he was too old to become Soviet.



JUDITH&HOLOFERNES



I failed to find out Chaliapin`s record of that aria. But there`s one record as old or even older than thanthat of Chaliapin and sung in his manner. Out of it you can get the expression of the famous performance.




Vasiliy Semyonovich Sharonov (Василий Семенович Шаронов) (1867-1929) performing Holofernes's Song of Battle (Alexandre Nikolayevich Serov`s Judith, Act 4) in St. Petersburg in March of 1901 (Berliner Co.). His manner was close to Chaliapin`s though he is in the Wagnerian repertory dress and beardless in the photo in the video.

Usatov
Dmitriy Andreyevich Usatov (Дмитрий Андреевич Усатов) (1847-1913), the former, emancipated slave




Verdi Nabucco-Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves

who entered the Mariinsky theatre as an ordinary chorister and later got the St. Petersburg conservatory’s A. Dargomyjsky scholarship. A contemporary popular music critic wrote about him: `Usatov is our best tenor who ably uses the skills of the Italian singers. Obviously, he learned a lot and worked hard to develop his voice.


Dmitriy Andreyevich Usatov on stage in the Aida

We remember him soon after his graduation from the St. Petersburg conservatory. Then his little tenor was weak, flabby and as if broken. It was impossible to suppose that time that having got such potentialities he could reach such brilliant results` (Iskusstvo, #2, 1883, p. 23 - Искусство. 1883. № 2. С. 23). The matter is that time Usatov became Camillo Everardi`s pupil.


Camille François Everard (1825-1899) from Belgium known in Russia as Camillo Everardi, a graduator from the Paris conservatory, singer of Italian Opera in St. Petersburg and professor of St. Petersburg, Kiev and Moscow conservatories.

Everardi was a remarkable bel canto expert, and while teaching Chaliapin Usatov also made him master bel canto vocal skills, compactly rest his voice on breath and use the latter as a fiddlestick moving about the vocal cords to produce sounds of the various and beautiful timbre, keep the voice in mask and answer the other rules of cantilena. Usatov was a natural born teacher, by the way, the first and only instructor of Chaliapin whom he taught free when he was a professor of the Tiflis Musical Academy (nowadays Tbilisi (Georgia)) in the 90s of the 19 c.


Mikhail Lermontov. View of Tiflis

Mazetti


Umberto Mazetti

Umberto Mazetti (1869-1919), or as he was addressed in Russia `Umberto Avgustovich Mazetti` was an outstanding personality. He was born in Italy, graduated from the Bologna conservatoire (or `consevatory` if you will) as a pianist and operatic singer and was invited to teach vocalism in Russia. Thus he became a professor of the Moscow Conservatory, and not an ordinary one!


Umberto Mazetti and Antonina Nezhdanova

Like Everardi he was one of the founding fathers of the Russian operatic vocal school. He was a practitioner, and while working with his pupils he always gained the excellent results. His waiting list was long. By the way, the first-rate Russian operatic stars Nadezhda Obukhova and Antonina Nezhdanova were among his pupils too. He refused to return to Italy on the eve of the WW1 and in 1919 died of smallpox and was buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery, Moscow.

MAZETTI`S SINGING GIRLS




Antonina Nezhdanova (1873-1950), La Serenata by Paolo Tosti (Gramophone Co. in 1913)

Great teacher Mazetti`s best Russian girl pupils were also his creative projects, and his own self-portraits. He was an excellent `sculptor`.




Nadezhda Obukhova (1886- 1961) - Russian romances `We Went Out Into The Garden` and `The Quiet Summer Night`.

TWO SMALL SELF-PORTRAITS IN THE AMERICAN BACKGROUND, OR AMERICA AS IT WAS, WASN`T, IS AND ISN`T, WILL BE AND WON`T BE IN CHALIAPIN`S PRIVATE LETTERS

Among the papers left by Maxim Gorky to his biographer I.A. Gruzdev there’s a letter sent by Chaliapin to Gorky who lived at Capri, Italy, from New York and dated back to November 15, 1907.



This letter was written on three sheets with the letterheads of the Hotel Savoy:
`New York, 15.XI.-907
Six days ago, early in the morning I was about to jump, sing and turn somersaults because seven days later I could see the land, but now all my joy seems to be going to pot. Yes, though water is the magnificent elements, but I prefer to observe the waves and storms from the shore. Now then, my sweet Alexei, a view of land filled my heart with joy, but I can’t say the same about the city. The statue, that symbol of liberty, has been driven out, so it stands behind its gates, perhaps feeling insulted as it’s dotted of the dark hatred, and, in my opinion, her sad look directs towards Europe as if she thinks that over there may still be any hope, and it seems if it were possible, she would have made her way over the ocean waves to there, to our Europe.


Every self-made person in the world has got a particle of a gangster and scoundrel in them, or else their success has been hardly possible. (Who said this? It`s me, my friends!)

Well, six days passed, but I’ve already felt a little bit sick and tired here. None has got any soul in here, all their life is in Mr. Dollar’s service. I visited a concert (symphonic) and the Opera Theatre, but judging by their mugs none understands anything, but, at the least, they came, and though they were listening with a great interest, soon got very tired of it, sweating while trying to comprehend whether the seen by them was bad or good. There were three rehearsals. I kept silence during the first two, but during the third one I lost my temper, argued a bit and shouted a little. Thanks God, despite I offended almost all of them, I made them do everything in my way, they agreed with my mise-en-scènes, movements on the stage and lighting design. They must be having a very stereotyped idea of me, kinda a `bass`, and none more. They had very strange costumes in the Mephistopheles (the Broken) scenes, and if I hadn’t ever heard music conducted by Boito, none could have persuaded me to think that I was in the Opera Theatre. The dancing girls are dressed like it is the rule in the most low-grade café chantants.
The poor, very poor art. If to imagine their art, for example, as a male figure, then the local art is so gnawed round that if it had been a man he would have hardly had not only calves of his legs, but also hadn’t had the limb which makes difference between man and woman. Oh, Americans, Americans ... I was being told that America was first this then that! Those fucking liars!!.
However, I behave here, so to say, as a good child, I’m meek and mild as a lamb, kind of my being silly, having not any interests except for singing, visiting church, ignoring women, fearing sins, this and that, in a word, I compose such a cock-and-bull story that every American after their personal contact with me can’t help feeling 16 years younger, and they are welcome. I need to earn as much money in dollars as possible, perhaps, this year this can’t be true, but who knows, in case of my success I’ll rob all of those bastards and fucking DISSEMBLERS!..


Feodor Chaliapin and Sergei Rakhmaninoff. Rakhmaninoff became the second large Russian gain of America after Alaska though Americans didn`t understand it then. The most Russian of the Russian composers became an American.

As to the concert, it depends on a state of my affairs here. If everything goes smoothly, I’ll try to find possibility and sing in front of the socialists with pleasure. On November 20, i.e. in five days I am to sing in my first performance, I do not know what it is going to be like, but I’ll send you all the newspapers and describe the way I shall feel in my letters. It would be better to achieve a great success, since in that case the following concerts also could bring me much money.
My dear Alexei!
Should I tell you how strong is my love of you and how great is my appreciation. So receive my hot kiss, may gods and goddesses save you from dull and depression. In spring I plan to drive to Naples by car. You’ll have to join my scouring about the fields and meadows! Please do not think that the Spy (Gorky’s short novel `Life of an unnecessary man`. - AAO) is too long, it’s wrong to think so, it’s a splendid and rich work of literature that can’t be said about your `Mother`.



I met L. Andreyev in Peter (short for St. Petersburg. - AAO), he was tipsy a bit that means he spoke all he thought. Frankly speaking, he was saying the strange things I didn’t like. He must be really suffering from mania grandiosa, besides he is extremely selfish and touchy. It seemed to him that I’d been looking down on him! (How will you like it?) me `looking down`(?!), and by this reason he informed me that he would order to have his dedication to Chaliapin on the cover of the second edition of the Life of Basil of Thebes removed). In my opinion, this is very small-minded, and oughtn`t to have been anything like him. At the least when he was telling it I felt deeply hurt by his words.
Well, take care, my dear Alexei, I am all yours, Feodor Ch.
Be kind to kiss hands of Maria Feodorovna (Gorky’s wife. - AAO) and my best regards to Konst. Petrovich, as to Xena (Xenoviy Alexeyevich Peshkov (Xenoviy Mikhailovich Sverdlow) - adopted son of Gorky. - AAO), tell him that he will receive the photos the other day. He shouldn’t have been angry with me, remember me to y`all!`


Background happens!

Next letter, this time to V. A. Telyakovsky, written in spring of 1908 also reveals Chaliapin`s attitude for the USA of that time. He writes in that letter:
`Yes, America is a nasty country, and everything that is being told about America in this country, is nothing but nonsense. They praise the American freedom. Heaven forbid that Russia would ever come to that kind of freedom, since even to breathe free there one can with difficulty. All life is in work, in backbreaking work, so it seems that people of that country live just to work. The Sun, stars, heaven, God are forgotten there. Love is, but love of gold. Nowhere I felt so bad. There’s no art anywhere. For inst., Philadelphia, a big city of two and a half millions of people has got no theatre. Once in a week the New York opera goes there to show the archiprovincial performance of some `Tosca` or `La Boheme`, and the local wealthy watch it with fish eyes, never understanding anything which is certain as preaching.
You can’t see birds, both merry dogs and people in America. The houses are enormous, murky and are all unfriendly. It seems that mysterious fairy butchers live there. I’m so glad that I left that country, left forever`.


Mona The Beautiful America

What can I say in connection with this? A nice how-d'ye-do! But having re-read the above letters, those self-portraits of Chaliapin in the background of his American impressions I came to a paradoxical conclusion that Chaliapin was jealous of the USA. By irony of fate he`d chosen America as a place to emigrate from Red Russia before he returned at last to Europe to his beloved Gorky who was simply Alexei Peshkov for him and another Volga cockney, a bird of feather. He learned to earn really big money and invest it properly in the USA. It was a country of the magic, material and financial temptation for him, and the deeper he was in all that the stronger he scolded America. He was `broken` by America, in my humble opinion. So I think we shouldn’t misinterpret his letters, these self-portraying letters of his, interprete them literally, the more so because they’re a very interesting documents of that time. Some negative features of the USA have disappeared since then, some, however, got stronger. Now the USA is a great artistic and cultural power, not a cultural province at all, and Chaliapin is loved and respected there. Having read with me the above-mentioned letters you as if visited a hall of mirrors where some mirrors occurred to be distorting, but some quite exact. A portrait of the great artiste in the background of America and a portrait of America in the background of the great artiste, great hooligan, big, naive, kind and greedy person. He lived, my friends, he lived, and life always belonged to him! (So to say, `la vida es para ti, joven!`) Always sunny was in that rich man`s world! Besides, he liked his business and despite his lifelong hard work never regarded his singing as something that he had to do just to earn money! He loved his profession! I wish we were all like him (except for his `anti-Americanism`). His American letters, by the way, confirm the rightness of a saying `Never say never again!` (just Bond!) and ` cast no dirt in the well that gives you water`.



P.S. By the way, it was legendary Sol Hurok (Solomon Izrailevich Gurkov) (1888-1974), great American impresario who managed to decoy Chaliapin into the USA again in the 20s as into an ambush! `The singer's Metropolitan Opera debut in the 1907 season was disappointing due to the unprecedented frankness of his stage acting; but he returned to the Met in 1921 and sang there with immense success for eight seasons, New York's audiences having grown more broad-minded since 1907` (see WIKI), though not like in Europe. A special zest to that tour was added by the rumours that Hurok practiced `petty blackmail of the Russian bass Feodor Chaliapin, who toured with a mistress`, because `his fees seemed too high to Hurok`. Nothing personal, just business!
In the 60s Hurok repeated his feat, he decoyed another Russian `anti-American` (or to say more exactly, ardent `pro-European`) artiste, a great pianist Slava Richter. Then Slava used every pretext not to go to America, but Hurok shadowed him in Moscow and having met him as if occasionally in public exclaimed: `And there he is, to be sure though they would say he was ill!` (memoirs of Nina Dorléac, Richter`s wife). Everybody, Hurok, Richter and Soviet officials burst out laughing. (Chaliapin was fond of living in Italy; Richter was fond of living in France (after Russia, of course)).
Source of the letters never published in English so far: `Prometey`, Volume two, Moscow, Molodaya Gvardiya Publishing House, 1967, pp. 150-153

ALL PEOPLE ARE KIND, OR THE SONG ABOUT THE RUSSIAN MERRY KNIGHT OF THE RUEFUL COUNTENANCE



Irakliy Luarsabovich Andronikov was a unique personality of the Russian culture of the 20 c. He resurrected the genre of the oral stories. But he was not only a narrator, he was an unusual histrionic narrating highly artistic stories. On the face of it, he just made replicas of the outstanding creators of the Russian culture he’d ever met in his life. He was able not only to show gestures, voice, intonation, timbre, gait of a person he was telling about, but also to reproduce his way of thinking. Of course, the latter gift, ability to improvise in the name of somebody, was never used by him on stage, though there were cases when he entertained his friends reproducing the behaviour and the late artistes` opinions of the recent events.


Childhood

Kornei Ivanovich Chukovsky, a leading Russian children’s writer and anglophile, considered him to have been a magician. But he wasn’t, it was his gift of the literary, artistic extrapolation and creation of the artistic image, of the portrait as an image rather than a portrait as a dumb photo or formal replica. Once he was asked to lecture on the theme of the E.T.s` invasion from Mars for the late historian Evgeniy Vigdorovich Tarle within the informal circle of his friends, and he did it. He managed to do it, because he was aware of the logic of Tarle`s charaсter. Of course, it wasn’t Tarle, but it was his truthful image that was based on the real personality of Tarle as a starting point, as a prototype. Like Diego Velasquez he created highly artistic portrait that was `troppo vero` (`too true`), so even Konstantin Sergeyevich Stanislavsky whom he watched on the stage could have exclaimed his famous phrase: `Now, I do believe it!`


Young years

Andronikov could have become a writer, a musician as he had an absolute hearing, he was able to conduct a symphonic orchestra being not a graduator from the conservatory, excellently knew the Russian Orthodox Church’s service, and once he sang it in a deserted village church, and often amazed people by his ability to accurately and beautifully, and never out of tune whistle the whole symphonies by heart. He was highly rated by Svyatoslav Theofilovich Richter, Dmitriy Dmitriyevich Shostakovich and he was a close friend of Evgeniy Alexandrovich Mravinsky. Andronikov preferred to become a music lecturer who told about music before the concerts in the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Society (since 1935). Since 1954 he’d been performing on TV. His oral stories on the stage were different than those he was performing offstage. What were being shown on stage for the general public were the animated memoirs, revived personal memories of the famous figures. The audience had an opportunity to meet many outstanding persons of the recent past, those who managed to become the legends. But those memoirs were not less artistic, they were simple, but their structure was complicated, there were portraits in portraits, up to three characters playing one another whose parts, however, was performed by one person, actor, and it was Irakly Andronikov. His legendary stand-up `comedies,` he, table, chair and nothing more on the stage and the full house, haven’t been forgotten so far. Boris Leonidovich Pasternak, one of his close friends, told that Andronikov`s performances reminded him of chapters of novels by Charles Dickens, also slightly hyperbolized, but true and humorous and attractive for the masses.


Maturity

Andronikov was kind of Indiana Jones as well. To get the necessary document relating to Lermontov, for example, he traveled round the world, he went through the Caucasus, and visited all places in the mountains where Lermontov ever was. He knew many archives in the world as his own flat. He was a doctor of philological science and People’s Artiste. It was the only such case in the USSR (I mean his being an academic and theatrical general at once as those titles were replicas of the Czarist titles of the full privy councilor, i.e. a civil major general. So he was twice as a general! - AAO). He wrote several first-rate research studies based on the field work. He cleared up some mysteries that were considered to have been insoluble. He used to tell about the process of unraveling on TV, it was a real academic adventures and detectives. He acted the characters of the real persons he contacted during his investigations round the world! Wow! What he was doing we can define as educational TV. His academic works were published as a complete works (three volumes) in 1980. Being not the popular fiction, they were read not only by scholars. He made people take interest in culture, in history, in biographies, in outstanding creators. He would say that before him people only wrote memoirs but he was the first who guessed to play them. Not even to tell, but to play! Once he said: `The main thing is not to search and find out, the main thing is to share your discoveries with everybody!` In his personal horoscope, however, there can be read: He never forgets about himself, but due to his modesty he’s grateful for small favours and he often stints himself in everything.


On the stage: though he’s sitting, it’s a stand-up!

Irakliy Luarsabovich Andronikov`s father was a very famous Russian lawyer from Georgia. In 1925 Irakliy entered the St. Petersburg University and Institute of the Art History at once. The professors were Boris Mikhailovich Eichenbaum, Yuri Nikolayevich Tynianov, Viktor Borisovich Shklovsly, he got an opportunity to meet there Samuel Yakovlevich Marshak, Olga Dmitriyevna Forsch, Evgeniy Lvovich Schwartz who became his friend. He was a secretary of Alexei Nikolayevich Tolstoy. His colleagues were Daniil Ivanovich Harms (Yuvachyov), Alexandre Ivanovich Vvedensky, Nikolai Alexeyevich Zabolotsky whom he sheltered after he had been released from the GULAG although it put severe restraints on him and his family (wife, daughters and their merry, boisterous nanny whom they had had for 30 years) for a month. As he used to play a humorous part of a Georgian Prince he also spent two months in the GULAG, but was helped out owing to his father’s connections.


Nice wife

Being in the University and then in his first working place, in the children’s magazine `Chizh and Yozh` (The Siskin and The Hedgehog) and under the influence of his professor Yuri Tynianov young Irakliy started performing his amateur stories and parodies. They were so funny that visitors of the magazine when being witnesses of them often fainted because of laughter. He was asked to perform the professors of the University, often in their presence or even by them themselves, and had a great success. He liked to tell about his failure in the Lermontov seminar when the professor estimated his knowledge like this: `Junior, you faced woe indeed, but not due to wit!` (He meant Alexandre Griboyedov`s play `Woe to Wit’). That time Andronikov was paid quite well, and he even felt that it would have been more fairly for him to pay for working in the magazine rather than been paid for the working, because it was an extremely interesting activities there. Then he became a lecturer in the Philharmonic Society into where he was jobbed by Ivan Ivanivich Sollertinsky, the now forgotten legendary personality who seemed to have learned the whole art and spoken 65 foreign languages (he had got an eidetic memory).


Manana Irakliyevna Andronikova, the elder daughter, forever young and beautiful

Russian film director Sergei Apollinarievich Gerasimov said that the main secret of Andronikov`s popularity was his being fond of people he was talking about and performing. As a result, he enjoyed confidence both of the general public, artistic and academic gurus and the authorities (up to the government!). As to the severe period of the 20-30s of the 20 c., he also was like a sun ray in the darkness. His bosom friend playwright Evegeniy Schwartz wrote in his memoirs: `Unexpectedly, Irakliy brought inspiration and easiness into the severe, fierce social professional environment of that time, full of the spiteful losers, he freely entered the rogues` caves and nests of vipers, and rubbed shoulders with the most hardened sinners as if they were all just nice fellows and when it was time to part with them he still retained innocence which he had got before, as if he was soaring above all`.


Ekaterina Irakliyevna Andronikova, the youngest daughter

As the father of a family he was also and always good, his youngest daughter Ekaterina Irakliyevna, the former ballerina, then an art historian and TV art critic, remembers: `I liked the way he works, cleans his writing table, conducts. Music was his special love. He shook hand with Shostakovich in my presence; all members of the leading symphony orchestras had a great respect for him. I liked everything he did. At home he was even better than in public`.


Some of Andronikov`s books on literature from an ordinary library. Obviously, they were being really read.

All in all, he participated in about 100 TV programs, his oral stories was so popular that some often had to write down, and he had them printed in the popular editions. Being humorous, they were informative, combining both the academic analysis and artistic chic. His word of wisdom went hand in hand with his sincere desire to treat the audience, spectators as his partners. His performance became the part of the history of the Russian culture, people appreciated his yearning for adding culture to the masses, to the government, to the society on the whole, his view of culture not only as leisure or service sector, but also as something that makes you feel a creator and co-creator of the works of art and helps you to become a literate, knowing spectator, reader, listener (just for you yorself!).


Irakliy Luarsabovich Andronikov`s grave in the Vvedensky cemetery (18 sector), Moscow

Irakliy Andronikov was also a writer who described the art knowing it as a professional, described it as an artiste and scholar. Of course, Irakliy Luarsabovich Andronikov was a Russian man, but he never forgot the motherland of his ancestors, loved it, and he could speak Georgian, though he did it rarely in spite of his marvellous pronunciation.

THE UNKILLED MOCKING BIRD (A COLLECTION OF FUNNY WOULD-BE LITERARY STORIES AND ANECDOTES)


ANIMAL SPIRITS
Lord Byron loved animals. It was forbidden to have dogs in Cambridge where he learned, so he had got a bear cub. Later Byron had got various animals in his life, a fox, a badger, a crocodile, an eagle, a crane, a heron.


Colonel`s wife: Just look, lieutenant. My colonel drills privates on the parade ground!
Lieutenant Rzewski: Madam! If a commander can`t fuck his own wife, he `fucks` his subordinates!


NATURAL BORN SCHWARTZENEGGERS
When asked `Where to?` only the Russian answer: `I’ll be back!`


King Richard: A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse! A kingdom-horse diagram where x-coordinate is `horse` and y-coordinate is `kingdom.

ON WINNERS AND LOSERS
Quite recently I’ve met the beauty who was a star of our high school. Imagine! She’s been working an ordinary secretary so far! I was so pleasantly surprised that I dropped the pizzas I was carrying that time.

FROM ROMULUS & REMUS, OR LUPINE AND LEPORIN HABITS
Ticket Collector: Are there the stingy in here? Remember, folks, the stingy always pay twice.


Mona Lisa stands up: `Do you sing?`
-Yep!
-That’s pity, cuz I only dance!

WHAT`S IN A NAME?
Sometimes poetry creates the new names. For instance, the Russian feminine name of Svetlana (Sveta) is neither Russian, nor Slav one. It was invented by a Russian poet Alexandre Christophorovich Vostokov (1781-1864) in his long poem `Svetlana and Mstislav` and became popular only after it had been used by the prominent Russian poet Vladimir Zhukovsky.



HE WHO IS SAD HE SHOULDN`T LAUGH A LOT …
Cuban Poet Julian de Cazal wrote poems that were extremely sad, gloomy and pessimistic. Once he was told a funny story in a company of his friends and … died of laughter which caused him the aortic dissection.


America The Beautiful Triptych (Beautiful as Mona Lisa): Wise, Material, Hedonic. America`s `trinity` reflecting in the cheval glass of the art and media, however, remains elusive and illusive owing to its makeups dependent on its former and current, ideal or realistic, positive and negative, true and false images and roles being changed as flowing water that you can`t submerge twice. Living in the hall of mirrors of the art, America is its own self-portraying portrait.


Rule, Britannia!

THE SELF-PORTRAYING PORTRAITS, OR THE ART IN THE HALL OF MIRRORS OF LIFE


THE COOLEST SELFIE IN THE WORLD! WOW! DIEGO`S SELFIE! The great Spanish painter Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velazquez - Las Meninas (The Maids of Honour)(1656).

This picture is a bright example of a self-portrait inside of the Royal family portrait in a style of the gruppo di famiglia in un interno. By the way, there’s a plenty of room for us in this picture in picture (PIP), as if we stand inside of it too. Diego could have been a film director if he`d lived in our time when the technological development enabled us to shoot the motion pictures. Cinema, its principles, they have been in the heads of many artists since the ancient times. Observing Las Meninas, our eyes play a part of a camera. Such were observations of Manana Andronikova. The question, however, is whom Velazquez depicted indeed, the Royal family and their environment, or he just took his own selfie? These were the subjects which Manana Andronikova as a scholar tried to research one of the first in the USSR.


Manana Andronikova with her famous father, Irakliy Andronikov

Manana Iraklievna Andronikova (1936-1975) was an elder daughter of the famous Russian scholar and superpopular lecturer and actor (mimic) and leading expert on Lermontov and the Lermontov in the USSR Irakliy Luarsabovich Andronikov (1908-1990) and Moscow actress Viviana Robinson (1910-1995). She was a scholar who had an incredible erudition and was a real high society lady though not a lioness. She was too serious for that. Besides, it was one of the best regulated and gifted families of Russia of the Georgian and Jewish descent. The youngest sister of Manana, Ekaterina also became an eminent scholar.


An iconic photo, Irakliy Andronikov with his youngest daughter Ekaterina, sister of Manana

Unfortunately, being a young and very successful lady, Manana, aged 39, quite unexpectedly committed suicide having jumped out of window of a high-rise building. The reason has remained unknown so far. Not undisclosed, but unknown! For all, including her unhappy parents! She was known to have been very vulnerable and scrupulous person. Her death was a great loss not only for her family, but for the country, for Russia.


Grave of Manana in the Vvedensky cemetery

Manana wrote several brilliant and trend-setting books on the very complicated subjects of the art (on the verge of painting, cinema, literature). In 1980 three of them were re-issued in a single volume `From the Rock Paintings to Sound Film`, and they are very popular in Russia until now.


A volume of works by Manana Andronikova

She wrote: `We observe the artist’s study from different points of view, and we `see` not only his face, but also his back, and not only him who is painted on the canvas, but also him who is painting on that canvas as if standing beside us, since the painter while choosing a layout of his picture wanted it to be viewed from the point of view of a spectator who came closer to look at it. We see the creative process, firstly, as the spectators, secondly, from the point of view of Velazquez himself`.


We`re all the Diegovah`s witnesses, folks! We`re the velazquezes, my friends! Hurrah!

It’s interesting that once when their home was visited by a world-famous ballet star Galina Ulanova and Manana exclaimed: `Galina Sergeyevna, we are so happy to see you here! Alas, you can’t see you yourself on the stage`. Quite unexpectedly Ulanova objected: `Why not? I see, I do see myself on the stage!` This remark could become a starting point for Manana’s choice of the sphere of her later studies.


Bolshoy`s ballerina Galina Ulanova (1910-1998) and her `i-me-mine` images: `Juliete and Swan are exactly me, so they are mine!`

Manana came to the conclusion that Velazquez showed the very process of the creation of his picture in his picture, and the main character of this picture is none but he himself. Such a composition and creative approach were used by the Italian film director Federico Fellini in his feature film 8 1/2. It was a film about creating the film, showing the very creative process. It was a portrait, a self-portrait, another great selfie of an artiste in the background of his own throes of composition.


Fellini`s 8 1/2: an exciting itinerary from prototype to image

In literature, the brightest example of a book about book, a composition about composition in the form of an extended verbal selfie is Lermontov`s novel `A Hero of Our Time` (Герой нашего времени), 1839. But in the latter case it was also a portrait of the whole generation, and the author was one of the prototypes, starting points. A hero of our time `gentlemen, is in fact a portrait, but not of one man only: he is a composite portrait, made up of all the vices which flourish, full-grown, amongst the present generation` (M. Lermontov. `A Hero of Our Time`. (Translated by J. H. Wisdom & Marr Murray). See: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/913).


Lermontov was an excellent artist. He had got a self-portrait among his pictures.

Paradoxically, but this generalization makes portrait in the art very exact, not less exact than the penetration into the very essence of a certain character whose portrait in that case becomes not only his `photo` but also a very exact artistic image. This reasoning called up by reading Mana Andronikova`s books on the art allows us to conclude with what we had begun, with Diego Velazquez (by the way, he is my `favouritest-est` artiste).


The Portrait of Pope Innocent X by Diego Velazquez

When the Pope saw the portrait, he just said: `Troppo vero!` (`Too true!"). The Pope Innocent X who was not quite innocent, sooner cruel and tough, but shrewd, intelligent and highly educated, of course, meant not the photographic accuracy though it was present, but the artistic likeness of him as a prototype, on one hand, and the portrait as his image, on the other.


What an accurate picture! Those three naked Graces are exactly, three time as us! We`ve recognized ourselves at first sight! Hosanna-hey-sanna, sanna-sanna-ho!

RUSSIAN GIOCONDA, HER BROTHER THE MADCAP & THE MOSCOW ENGLISH CLUB


`Russian Gioconda`, or the Portrait of Maria Lopukhina (1797) by Vladimir Borovikovsky (Tretyakov Gallery). She’s 18 in the picture.

Яков Полонский: Она давно прошла, и нет уже тех глаз//И той улыбки нет, что молча выражали// Страданье - тень любви, и мысли - тень печали.//Но красоту ее Боровиковский спас.// Так часть души ее от нас не улетела, //И будет этот взгляд и эта прелесть тела// К ней равнодушное потомство привлекать, //Уча его любить, страдать, прощать, молчать.


Poet Yakov Petrovich Polonski (1919-1898) and artist Vladimir Lukich Borovikovsky (1757-1825)

By Yakov Polonski
She passed away, and neither eyes
Nor smile of her survived. They were the mute betrayers
Of throes, the shadows of her love,
And thoughts, the shadows of her sadness.
Borovikovsky saved her beauty from its turn to dust!
Thus part of soul of hers didn’t leave us for eternal Glory,
Her look as well as beauty of her body
Serves as an attraction for the unconcerned young eyes
While teaching youth to grin and bear it, forgive, love and keep mum.
(Trans. Andrew Alexandre Owie)

Maria Ivanovna Lopukhina (born Tolstoy-Maikova) (1779-1803) was a daughter of Count Ivan Andreyevich Tolstoy.


Feodor Ivanovich Tolstoy the American (1782-1846)

Her brother was Feodor American Tolstoy who due to his legendary violence and courage became one of the three prototypes of Lev Tolstoy`s Dolokhov (a character of The War and Peace). As a young Navy cadet he was participating the round the world travel led by Adm. Krusenstern, but was left on the Aleutian Islands due to his insidious, dangerous and clownish behavior.


Ivan Feodorovich Krusenstern (Baron Adam Johann von Krusenstern) (1770-1846)

It was a severe disciplinary punishment that time, yet he was not in despair, reached Alaska and befriended the Tlingit (Lingit), an indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America and was tattooed from top to toe and returned to St. Petersburg several years later as a ready `American`. After that he participated several wars and duels; he challenged and killed 11 noblemen.


Tolstoy’s portrait by poet Alexandre Pushkin

Playing cards in the prestigious Moscow High Society`s Non-Government Organization (NGO) `English club` (founded in 1772 by English diplomats and merchants) he lost at cards everything and was threatened to be expelled with shame and forever for nonpayment of gambling debts in time but was unexpectedly saved by Avdotia Tugayeva, a Gipsy girl who bought back his debts having spent all money he’d been presenting her as his favourite concubine and Gipsy dancer. He married her after that and never left, he lost 11 children of 12 by the number of men killed by him and was sure it had been the God’s punishment. He was buried in the Vagankovskoye cemetery (sector 13). Being in Moscow you can visit it.



His sister Maria (`Russian Gioconda`) died of the galloping consumption, incurable that time, when he was just 23. Her portrait was a wedding gift for her as the artist was a busy and expensive Her Majesty`s court painter. (By irony of fate it’s this occasional portrait that became his best work!). Lev Tolstoy born in 1828 was her and her brother’s first cousin once removed. Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy wrote in his memoirs: `I remember him arriving in a post carriage, entering my father’s study and asking being brought by a special dry French bread as he never ate the other. [..]. I remember his handsome face: bronze, shaved, with the rough blond whiskers up to the corners of his mouth and his blond curly hair. I could tell much about this remarkable, criminal and attractive man`.



As to the portrait of Feodor’s sister it contained an esthetic ideal of the European sentimentalism that drew attention to the psychological state of a character. `Elegiac` dreaminess, melancholy, languishing tenderness are the main features of the portrait’s female character. The background landscape really reminds that of by Leonardo da Vinci, the same fuzzy contours, blue, light violet, greenish and silver tints, both figure and landscape form the integral image and are in harmony with each other. We can feel the same Gioconda-like captivating beauty in the mysterious uncertainty of a girl’s smile in the picture.

A BAD BUM IS NOT A TRUE PUSSY (EXCUSE ME FOR MY BEING FRENCH: `LE FAUX-CUL N`EST LA VRAIE VULVE PAS`)

The above caption simply means `Accept my apologies for my being going (see below) to be compared with Rainer Maria Rilke in translating one of the most famous Mikhaïl Yurievich Lermontov`s poems. Of course, I am an arse after that, I mean the very attempt. On the other hand, better to keep up with the geniuses rather than with literary Pennisvaginas or Beavershots!

Михаил Лермонтов Выхожу один я на дорогу - Выхожу один я на дорогу;//Сквозь туман кремнистый путь блестит;//Ночь тиха. Пустыня внемлет Богу,//И звезда с звездою говорит.//В небесах торжественно и чудно!//Спит земля в сияньи голубом...//Что же мне так больно и так трудно?//Жду ль чего? жалею ли о чём?//Уж не жду от жизни ничего я,//И не жаль мне прошлого ничуть;//Я ищу свободы и покоя!//Я б хотел забыться и заснуть!//Но не тем холодным сном могилы...//Я б желал навеки так заснуть,//Чтоб в груди дремали жизни силы,//Чтоб дыша вздымалась тихо грудь;//Чтоб всю ночь, весь день мой слух лелея,//Про любовь мне сладкий голос пел,//Надо мной чтоб вечно зеленея//Тёмный дуб склонялся и шумел.




`I am going out on the road …` By M. Yu. Lermontov recited by Mr. Artyom Pir-Budagyan

Mikhaïl Lermotow
EINSAM TRET ICH AUF DEN WEG …
Einsam tret ich auf den Weg, den leeren,
Der durch Nebel leise schimmernd bricht;
Seh die Leere still mit Gott verkehren
Und wie jeder Stern mit Sternen spricht.

Mikhaïl Lermontov
I AM GOING OUT ON THE ROAD ...
I am going out on the road;
A stony way is glitt`ring in the fog;
Night is still. The waste attends Sabaoth.
And a star talks with a star atop.

Feierliches Wunder: hingeruhte
Erde in der Himmel Herrlichkeit...
Ach, warum ist mir so schwer zumute?
Was erwart ich denn? Was tut mir Leid?

In the sky there is so great and groovy!
Earth is dreaming in its azure dazzle...
Why do I feel so hard, so gloomy?
Am I in for anything? Or sorry for myself?

Nichts hab ich vom Leben zu verlangen
Und Vergangenes bereu ich nicht;
Freiheit soll und Frieden mich umfangen
Im Vergessen, das der Schlaf verspricht.

I’m expecting nothing in my lifetime,
I have no regrets a bit about the past;
I’m looking for an ease and quiet!
I wish I sought oblivion and slept fast!

Aber nicht der kalte Schlaf im Grabe.
Schlafen mocht ich so jahrhundertlang,
Dass ich alle Krafte in mir habe
Und in ruhiger Brust des Atems Gang.

Not to sleep the cold sleep in the graveyard.
I wish I slept forever so that
In my chest the vital forces there slumbered,
And while breathing chest of mine could palpitate;

Dass mir Tag und Nacht die süße, kühne
Stimme sänge, die aus Liebe steigt,
Und ich wüsste, wie die immergrüne
Eiche flüster, düster hergeneigt.
(Trans. Reiner Maria Rilke)

I wish a sweet-voiced bird sang at all hours
About love while charming ears of mine,
A dark and ever greening oak towered
Over me while murm`ring with its crown.
(Trans. Andrew Alexandre Owie)


http://www.russian-records.com/details.php?image_id=11168&l=russian Nicholas Grushko `Alone on the road` (acc. I. Basilevsky) - Колумбiя Рекордъ

The translation of this Lermontov`s poem, first published in the Otestvenniye Zapiski (The Homeland Writings), vol. XII, № 12, p. 290, in 1840 was made by Rilke in 1919. It’s been considered the classical one so far; a very exact one, except for the slightly changed meaning of the last stance. It’s a fact that the starting point of the poem by Mikhaïl Lermontov was a poem `Der Tod, das ist die kuehle Nacht` (The Death, it is a cold night) by Heinrich Heine. (Like George Gordon Byron who was Mikhaïl Lermontov`s distant relative (through Gordon whose wife was Margaret Learmonth (1608-1668), it was in the 16 c.) Heinrich Heine had the strongest impact on Lermontov. The German language was the second native for Lermontov as French was for Lev Tolstoy and English for Vladimir Nabokov (Lermontov`s nursery governess was a German lady, Christina Remer).


Heinrich Heine

Der Tod, das ist die kühle Nacht,//Das Leben ist der schwüle Tag.//Es dunkelt schon, mich schläfert,//Der Tag hat mich müd gemacht.//Über mein Bett erhebt sich ein Baum,//Drin singt die junge Nachtigal;//Sie singt von lauter Liebe,//Ich hör’ es sogar im Traum.
Смерть – это прохладная ночь,//Жизнь – это душный день.//Темнеет, я засыпаю,//День меня утомил.//Над моей кроватью возвышается дерево,//На нем поет юный соловей,//Он поет о большой любви,//Я слышу это даже во сне.
Death is a cool night,//Life is but heat in broad daylight.//It’s getting dark; I’m going to sleep,//
Day’s made me feel fatigued all right.//Above my bed there towers a tree//Where a young nightingale sings,//It sings about the true love.//I can hear it even in my sleep. (Trans. Andrew Alexandre Owie)

By the way, the original name of Rilke (1875-1926) was Renée (not René Reiner) Maria (two feminine names in succession) as he was born in a family where before him there had been born a girl that lived a week.



Rilke`s mom considered him to be a girl until his 5 years old and played with him as with the girl and dressed him as a girl too. Now I think: `What if Rilke could have been a lady?`But he couldn`t have been! Or else his portrait, both inner and outer, might have been different. It would have been another personality. Thanx God, Rilke had, really had got the balls! By the way, the earliest portrait of Lermontov of 1817-181 painted when he was 3-4 years old by a slave artist shows us him wearing the girl’s white dress too. He is depicted as a young girl artist. Was it a portrait of his soul? Or of his Muse who borrowed his appearance? Thanx God, he didn`t live in modern Norway, or else he would have been castrated. Give men a chance! Both Rilke and Lermontov overgrew their girlhood as their clothes. They ocurred to have been the natural born artistes rather than the transgender persons. Just the highly creative men!



Lermontov (1814-1841) was just 27 years old when he passed away, yet he succeeded in becoming the great poet, playwright, artist and writer. As a writer he passed ahead his time and is at level of Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, though he lived much earlier than all of them. The most amazing thing, however, is that literature de facto was his hobby, as he was the busiest military officer, professional one by his education, a hussar.


Valerik battle. Picture by M. Lermontov

After the Valerik battle in the Caucasus he became a commander of the special mission unit made up of the Kuban River Cossacks, Kabardinians and Tatars (by the way, Muslims).



He replaced the wounded Rufin Dorokhov, one of the three prototypes of Dolokhov in Lev Tolstoy’s The War and Peace. Dorokhov wrote: `We made friends and when we’d to part we were frozen with tears. Kind of a murky apprehension told me he would be killed`.



He was died after he’d been challenged by his own request by his brother-officer and bosom friend whom he started regularly humiliating in public. That fatal evening they were attending the party in the house of general's wife Verzilina. Lermontov used to repeat in loud so that he could be heard by ladies and nonstop «Montagnard au grand poignard» (`A highlander with a big dagger`) (Martynov wore the Circassian uniform).



Martynov also said in French: `Lermontov, I had to too often bear your jokes. I told you that I didn’t like your repeating them in presence of ladies`. Lermontov responded: `If you don’t like, you’ll have to challenge me and get your satisfaction!` The duel which none took seriously thinking that Martynov will shrink in the face of danger came true. Martynov, however, kept insisting, partly to dispel the uncomplimentary mutual opinion. So the duel took place the following morning, and he was lucky to shoot Lermontov dead.


Nikolai Solomonovich Martynov (1815-1870)

Thus, Lermontov caught his at last, and even Emperor having heard of his death exclaimed: `A cur’s death for a cur!` The high society and women disliked him due to … to be short, it was not unfounded. As soon as Lermontov fell down dead an unprecedented tempest broke out. None of the doctors agreed to examine the victim due to the heavy rain, lightning and thunder. The requiem service over him wasn’t carried out either, as the death as a result of a call down had the same status as a suicide.


Lermontov`s oil painting. Lermontov literally illustrated the words of Lion Feuchtwanger: `A gifted person is gifted in every way`!

What do I think about all of this? I think that Lermontov was a great man of letters, but a very, very young man, a boy. As to us we used to judge him as a mature, adult person. Those duels were the vestiges of the past, the conflict between Lermontov and Martynov was worth of a simple fist-fighting as the biggest challenge.



I think Lermontov tried to make Martynov leave as he wanted to pick up a girl. That time he was making court to Martynov`s sister, so he couldn’t pick up a girl in his presence. Misunderstanding and misinterpretation are the most dangerous things in the human life. Friends, be friendly, and y`all will survive! Do it for me at the least.

Afterword (From the memoirs of a popular Soviet writer Anatoly Alexin): `Once in presence of Irakliy Luarsabovich Andronikov I called a popular poet a genius. He immediately objected: `He`s too complicated to be considered a genius. All great is simple and clear. It is `I am going out on the road …` that`s great. That sort of poems seem to contain nothing, but they include all: solitude, Universe, road ... `Night is still. The waste attends Sabaoth`.


Irakliy Andronikov

Since then I`ve been distinctly aware of the fact that the great literature suggests an itinerary not from simplicity to sophistication but from sophistication to simlicity. Great poems, clear and simple, are complicated, but not in a complicated way, and to reach this `simplicity` is much harder than to write the most sophisticated poetry. Of course, I mean not the simplicity that is worse than robbery, I mean the true artistic simpicity. when the complicated things are expressed by simple words`. But later Alexin suggested that as a rule great persons were simple in life too that I disagreed, because Lermontov was neither ever simple nor often kind at all. His ambitions and passions were no less great than his talent was. Unfortunately, being a very mature poet as an individual he hasn`t developed all the way by the moment of his death. (If am wrong be free to correct me ... eh, reasonably!).

WHAT SHOULD WE CONSIDER TO BE ABLE TO DISCERN ANYTHING IMPORTANT FOR US IN THE MIRROR OF THE ART (LITERATURE, CINEMA, PAINTING, etc.)?

Everything is meaningful in poetry, in every poem: contents, vocabulary, images, rhythm, metre, rhymes. It’s an entirety, synergy, system. Every poem is a message addressed to the readership. The first reader of the poem is his own author, and the poem also changes his consciousness, awareness. Strictly speaking, a poem is an informational program. Then while being read by readers a poem acquires additional, new meanings, it’s becoming informative in the new, additional, sometimes unexpected ways too. The same poem can be valuable and dear for one and has got absolutely no value for the other person. The poem can be estimated at its (and not only its) true worth by the not prepared readers and be ignored by an educated scholar if the latter one is not developed emotionally (the same may be true for an ordinary reader too) and has got the restricted personal thesaurus for getting response from a poem. Too limited and too wide thesaurus both can lead to the same result, and in this case the poem won’t be estimated as it deserves. Thus, the value of a bit of information in poetry varies dependant on the subjunctive perception and thesaurus. The value of informational program defined as a poem (verse) - V - can be described by the below following formula:

where I - quantity of information, T - thesaurus, A, B, C - constants. The more is T the less is V, the less is T or I the less is V. The maximal value should correspond to Т = I/C, or else you are either too proficient or ignorant to understand poetry. Thesaurus of a poet should coincide with that of the readers so that the poet could be successful, because creation is always a co-creation in case of a response (psyching out, tuning in) of the readers. Response is being sought by both sides, by a poet and by his readers. Response maybe complicated by the poem’s topic, original language, time and place of its creation. They interfere with a successful response; it often requires a preparation, proper translation, etc. Not only the past, the future, which can contain a poem, also make the immediate response impossible until the future becomes the present.


Andrei Beliy

For example, the prominent Russian poet of the Silver Age of the Russian poetry Andrei Beliy (Boris Nikolayevich Bugayev (1880-1934)), a mathematician and physicist by his education, wrote in 1921 a poem which was understood by readers only after Hiroshima in 1945 as a result of widening of a public thesaurus after the forecast had come true.

Андрей Белый (Борис Николаевич Бугаев): Мир рвался в опытах Кюри//Атомной, лопнувшею бомбой//На электронные струи//Невоплощенной гекатомбой...

The world was being blasted in tests of the Curis
As an atomic bomb’s boom.
In the electron stream
There was felt the hecatomb.
(Trans. Andrew Alexandre Owie)

The individual and public thesaurus can change being dependent on time, place, experience, knowledge (intellect) and owing to exchange of the individual and public `associative potentials`. Therefore the artistic value of a poem is not stable, it can increase or decrease. There was time when poetry of a genius, of Pushkin, was regarded by critics and public as much less deserving attention than the Russian poets partly or wholly forgotten now and having no chance to be resurrected. Therefore the artistic value of a poem is an objective phenomenon, it’s a constant in this sense, per se, but it’s simultaneously and subjectively variable being reflected in the public and individual consciousness.
Unevenness of perception is determined by progress of thesaurus and progress of poetry. That’s why we have to, may and love re-read the familiar poems as the new ones from time to time. In principle, there may exist poems which are indefinitely informative, they are re-read permanently generating the new thoughts and feelings. Some emotional and informative aspects of a poem may be hidden until some time. In this case a familiar poem can be interpreted in a new, sometimes unexpected way. The children are used to reread their favourite books because their thesaurus is being developed briskly and all the time. Their ability to a co-creation, associative thinking and phantasy formation (dream work) is very high. As to the adult sometimes they either need an inspiration for an act of co-creation, or they have to find something, or it’s a novelty effect that can trigger their interest, and then only their co-creation can be switched on, so the mechanism of the adult co-creation is not simple and linear either.


Alas! I am just a mermaid Little Mermaid!

But in any case an interest and co-creation require an optimal thesaurus. A novelty effect, unexpectedness, surprise, a conflict of the different styles in one poem, etc. plays their significant part. Rare words, after all! For example, a boy in a fable by Ivan Andreyevich Krylov (the 18 c.) dropped his comb into the river. The fable written in a folksy style is unexpectedly finished by a line that contains the word from the antique mythology: «Теперь им чешутся наяды» (Now the naiads comb their hair with it!). Just fancy, not even mermaids, but ... naiads (Ναΐδες)!


Gustave Dore `The Naiads`

This word is unexpected in the context of the fable written in a folksy style and thus is increasingly informative! You can easily imagine a Russian village of the 18 with its dark slaves and educated slavocrats infatuated with the antiquity and copycatting their Old Roman predecessors.


Ivan Krylov

The microcosm of Krylov`s fable expressed the social and cultural conflict and originality of time he lived in just in one bright word! Contrasts! They`re are important and meaningful in poetry too.

Борис Леонидович Пастернак: Весна, я с улицы, где тополь удивлен,// Где даль пугается, где дом упасть боится,// Где воздух синь, как узелок с бельем// У выписавшегося из больницы.

By Boris Pasternak
Spring, I’m from a street where a poplar’s startled,
Where distance scares, a house fears to fall down,
Where air is the blue as if a linen bundle tightened
By a man discharged from hospital just now.
(Trans. Andrew Alexandre Owie)


Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (1890-1960). It seems to me sometimes when I examine portraits and photos of Leonidovich that he looks like a Jewish gangster from Chicago!


What do you think `bout this, bro Bura .. sorry, Tarantino? (Quentin Tarantino`s morning mourning at Boris Pasternak`s grave! Farewell to the pulp fiction!)

The unexpected, contrasting description of spring makes it especially informative. It’s not only a simile, it’s an image. A reader literally feels spring. Repetitions. The main elements of a poem are repetitious; repetition is present in a sonnet, for example. The sonnet is rather a rigid structure, so repetitions containing in it just add the new information. A poem is a structure, a poem is a system. Even vers libre! It has to have got an inner rhythm. On the other hand, absence of novelty does not make a poem uninteresting if the poem awakes the associations that give us the esthetic pleasure.


Feodor Tyutchev

Фёдор Иванович Тютчев: Люблю грозу в начале мая, //Когда весенний первый гром,//Как бы резвяся и играя,// Грохочет в небе голубом.

Feodor Ivanovich Tyutchev (1803-1873)
I love the tempest on May mornings,
When the first thunder of new spring,
Like it is romps or children’s spoiling,
Rumbles in the blue of sky o`er a steeple.
(Trans. Andrew Alexandre Owie)

These classical lines have been familiar with us (the author means the Russian readers. - AAO)since our young years but while rereading them we don’t get the new information, yet we are made to enjoy them again and again a great deal by their repetition, feeling pleasure being associated with their reading. Assonance, alliteration (r-r-r) also strengthen that feeling. So a poem is an open self-reproducing dynamic system.
As to the translations of the poems their exact poetic reproduction by means of the other languages seems to be impossible, languages are different, thesaurus is different, but translators can quite exactly express the most valuable values of a foreign poem. Success is gained if the poem becomes a fact of the culture representing by a translator. So a successful translation of a poem is comparable with the writing of the original text by a poet. The translator transforms the original thesaurus into a thesaurus that can be estimated by the readers of his own culture. The example of a congenial translation is Rainer Maria Rilke`s translation of one of the Lermontov` poem `I am going out on the road … ` in German. The weakest line of the translation is the fourteenth line where the original `forever` is replaced with `for a hundred years` (jahrhundertlang). Plus Rilke added a title Strophen (Stances) while the poem has got no title in the original.


Nikolaus Lenau

It’s noteworthy that Nikolaus Lenau (1802-1850) who was Lermontov`s Austrian contemporary wrote a poem `The winter night` (Winternacht (Vor Kälte ist die Luft erstarrt …)) dedicated to the same topic of death and rest, quiet. But the Lenau`s excellent poem is simpler, it contains less information and requires more limited thesaurus. The comparison of the poems proves that Lermontov ceased being a romanticist while writing this poem. He was becoming a psychological realist in his poetry.
(The main points after the article `Poems as a complicated informational system` by Mikhaïl Wolkenstein. (`Nauka i zhizn` (Science and life), #1, 1970 (the USSR)[/I]


Mikhaïl Wolkenstein

Mikhaïl Vladimirovich Wolkenstein (1912-1992) was a Soviet physicist, biophysicist, Corresponding Member of Academy of Sciences of the USSR. His father Vladimir Mikhaïlovich Wolkenstein (1883-1974) was a Russian poet, critic, playwright, scriptwriter. His grandfather and brother of his grandfather were prominent Moscow lawyers and classmates and close friends of Anton Pavlovich Chekhov. The first wife of Wolkenstein`s father was Sophia Parnok (Parnakh), a Russian Jewish poetess, feminist activist and famous lesbian. (Mikhaïl Wolkenstein was born from the second wife). They all originated from Taganrog in Southern Russia.


Rolls-Royce Baby: `I`ve got a question! May I ...? What can I do if the true portrait of my inner world seems to be exactly like that? (to search to the bottom do not shrink into yourself, but get down to the bottom of the current post and read a twitter comic `The Lower Depths`).

PORTRAIT: HOW TO GRASP THE VOLATILE TEMPER?

The article above (I’ve preserved its main points) helped me understand why Anton Chekhov had been for some time considered by his contemporaries to have been inferior to a more prolific, well-known and profitable dramatist of that time, to I.N. Potapenko whom none could remember now. Chekhov was the pioneer and proved to be an evergreen classic, while brilliant Potapenko was a highly gifted `scriptwriter` who could have made a brilliant career in Hollywood if it had existed then. Actors and actresses strived for playing parts in Potapenko`s plays as the latter granted them with an opportunity to be shown in a favorable light while public having in mind their favourite stars craved for that as well. As to Chekhov he was destroying the well-established dramatic types. But today as always we need both types, Chekhov and Potapenko, Federico Fellini and Hollywood. We are not indiscriminate, we are omnivorous, we never needed a rigorous diet (repertory, etc.), but wanted a balanced `feeding`. It’s a natural thing, folks!
And, à propos, I don’t think that Nick Lenau wrote the weaker poem, since we can’t compare a fork and a bottle, they’re simply different, but I can’t but agree that Lermontov was telling `farewell` to romanticism by the above poem, and not only by this one. It’s enough to remember Lermontov`s `To a portrait`, another great poem, transitional to psychological realism, though less well-known one in the world.

К портрету - Как мальчик кудрявый, резва,//Нарядна, как бабочка летом.//Значенья пустого слова// В устах ее полны приветом.//Ей нравиться долго нельзя://Как цепь ей несносна привычка,//Она ускользнет, как змея,//Порхнет и умчится, как птичка.//Таит молодое чело// По воле - и радость и горе.//В глазах - как на небе светло,//В душе ее темно, как в море!//То истиной дышит в ней всё,//То всё в ней притворно и ложно!//Понять невозможно ее,//Зато не любить невозможно. 1840




Mikhaïl Lermontov - To a portrait. Recited by a Russian movie and theatre star Alyona Babenko (TV Channel `Culture`, Director of clip – Nikolai Neklyudov)

Mikhaïl Lermontov
TO A PORTRAIT
A tomboy, she`s curly and brisk,
A bright butterfly as in summer.
The meaningless words from her lips
Are full of a genuine glamour.

You can be her king for a day,
She can’t bear the shackles of habits.
She’ll slip out at once as a snake,
Take wing and be off as a parrot.

The innocent brow of hers
Conceals now joy now sorrow.
Her eyes are the bright sky `bove earth,
Her soul’s dark like the sea water!

Now all in her breathes the truth,
Now she’s a deceitful pretender!
You can’t understand her in sooth,
She can’t help being high in your favour.
(Trans. Andrew Alexandre Owie)

Judging by a note made on a manuscript by Count P.A. Vyazemsky, this poem was dedicated to a portrait of Duchess Alexandra Kirillovna Vorontsova-Dashkova (born Naryshkina) (1818-1856) lithographed by Henri Grévedon from the picture by Deutz in Paris.


Alexandra Kirillovna Vorontsova-Dashkova, lithograph by Henri Grévedon

Duchess was one of the high society lionesses with whom Lermontov really made friends. On the one hand, he created her poetic portrait, but, on the other hand, it was a generalized portrait of the high society lionesses who behaved like a really free women and undermined the well-established social stereotypes (like Anna Karenina, by the way). As to Lermontov who described this social and psychological phenomenon he, in his turn, destroyed the well-established stereotypes of the romantic poetry describing the slipping off, changeable reality of a human personality in its dynamics. The rough copy of the poem was entitled by Lermontov as the `Portrait. A high-society woman`. But the poem exceeded the limits, frames of a private portrait and of its previous title. The more precise definition ceased being precise and accurate.



In 1841 Lermontov who waltzed in the ball party in the mansion of the Vorontsov-Dashkovs` displeasured the Emperor and Grand Dukes because that time he was in disgrace for his daring poems abusing the Dynasty. His friends offered him to leave the ball party as he could be arrested. But having heard this Duke Vorontsov-Dashkov explained that none could ever be arrested in his home. Besides the Emperor was said that it had been an initiative of his wife to invite Lermontov to the party. They sought every opportunity for a conciliation between the poet and the Royal family. Duchess Vorontsova-Dashkova who had been rolling in money since childhood accepted the Royal family members in her mansion on equal footing. Unfortunately, Lermontov behaved like a child and lost a favourable chance to explain himself tête-a-tête with the Emperor.



After death of her husband the Duchess went to Paris and in 1854 married a rank-and-file French nobleman de Poilly who was an ordinary doctor. From the view-point of the St. Petersburg`s high society she fell into an unthinkable want. This established a durable legend of her ill fate, and it was reflected in Ivan Turgenev`s novel `The fathers and children` (a character of Countess R.) and in the poem `The Grand Duchess` by Nikolai Nekrasov.


Ivan Turgenev and Nikolai Nekrasov

Having read the poem her Paris husband arrived at Russia to challenge Nekrasov but it was not time of Pushkin and Lermontov, and duels were out of date. The evil tongues used to say the doctor came to get the Russian part of assets of his wife, but came back to Paris with bare hands.


Alexandre Dumas

All these gossips were disproved by Alexandre Dumas who wrote that `Vorontsova-Dashkova died in the lap of luxury, in one of the best mansions of Paris`. But in Russia they all wanted to have the plot of Pierre-Jean de Béranger`s La Pauvre Femme describing a progress from a princess to a beggar come true. Why? Because it was more interesting to think like that! After all, there’s no sense of the full happiness without a rumour about unhappiness of some of your neughbours or mutual friends. It`s that sweet to get to know that! (These lines have been written by me under the strong influence of Lermontov`s `A Hero of Our Time`).

THE PORTRAIT GALLERY OF MAXIM GORKY`S GENERATION

The poem by Lermontov `I am going out on the road` was put to music several times, by Piotr Bulakhov (1854), Konstantin Vilboa (1857), N. Chrztianowicz (1875), K. Davydov, Nikolai Ogaryov, N. Dmitriyev. Yet the most popular variant composed in 1861 belongs to Elizaveta (Elisabeth) Shashina (1805-1903).




Romance song `I am going out on the road` («Выхожу один я на дорогу») by E. Shashina. Sung by Natalie Gundareva (Russia) and Andrejs Zagars (Latvia) playing Marina Zotova and Stepan Kutuzov in the Russian TV Series of 1987 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090552/ based on Maxim Gorky’s novel `The Life of Klim Samgin`

`The Life of Klim Samgin` (`Zhizn Klima Samgina`) («Жизнь Клима Самгина») describing the life of an intellectual Samgin in the background of a grand panorama of Russian life from 1877 to 1917 is likely to be the greatest works by Maxim Gorky.


Maxim Gorky and Feodor Chaliapin

(begin. of quot.)`Though he completed four volumes that appeared between 1927 and 1937 (translated into English as Bystander, The Magnet, Other Fires, and The Specter), the novel was to remain unfinished. It depicts in detail 40 years of Russian life as seen through the eyes of a man inwardly destroyed by the events of the decades preceding and following the turn of the 20th century`(end of quot.). The TV version of the novel consisting of 14 episodes showing the rise and fall of the pre-Revolutionary Russian capitalism was created by Viktor Titov.




A fragment of `The Life of Klim Samgin` in the background of the Neapolitan song `Dicitencello vuje` (`Just say, I love her `) composed by Rodolfo Falvo and Enzo Fusco in 1930 and sung by Polish singer Anna German). Actors: Andrei Rudenskiy (Klim Samgin), Natalya Lapina (Alina Telepneva), Andrei Kharitonov (Igor Turoboev).

`Dicitencello vuje`? Isn`t it a fucking joke again? You may ask me what Gorky has to do with Italy, and I’m going to utter just one word `Capri`. Before his return to Russia he’d lived in Southern Italy as well as his bosom friend Feodor Chaliapin who was married many years to an Italian woman.


`The Lower Depths` (mini-comic): An expert in the art, Dr. Headshrinker Jr. (answering the question of Rolls-Royce Baby relating to her mistaken portrait’s identity (see and read it above)): `That’s not mortal, mon cher ami, as Gustave Flaubert, Lev Tolstoy and Leonardo da Vinci had been experiencing the same problems. The first two used to state that they were correspondingly Emma Bovary and Anna Karenina, as to Leo, he only smiled, but it was a joyful and mysterious smile of Gioconda. Either he was Mona Lisa or Mona Lisa was him. Or they both were and are at once`. Mona Lisa: `Wha-a-a-at?! Rubbish! Me always was and is me! If you’re like this, then ... Just think I am Mona Lisa `American` Tolstoy, so there! See me in Alaska country! Ba-a-a-a!
Vincent van Gogh: Mona’s kidnapping in progress! Get down to the bottom! This chick is mine. I know who I am for certain, I am ugly, blue-eyed, unshaved, drunk and I haven’t got one ear. I cut it so as to advance and be recognized by me myself at any time. No problema now! Hasta la vista, babies!


Rule, Britannia!

AN UNFADED CLASSIC OF LYRICS OF ALL TIMES AND PEOPLES (AHA-AHA!)


Pierre-Jean de Béranger (1780-1857)

THE EXCELLENT BERANGER

Recently I’ve read in the WIKI: "Pierre-Jean de Béranger was a prolific French poet and chansonnier (songwriter), who enjoyed great popularity and influence in France during his lifetime, but faded into obscurity in the decades following his death. He has been described as "the most popular French songwriter of all times" and "the first superstar of French popular music". What a contradictory and arguable para! There’s even tougher: `Today one would be ashamed to read Béranger and above all to admit it`. Wow! What a good beginning for an essay on Béranger! On the other hand, the modern critics admit that `the literary context in which the writer was producing was one in which the oral tradition was still very much present... [as] is often true with an opera libretto, the text by itself can appear empty and simplistic, fraught with platitudes and trivialitie` (See in: Lois Cassandra Hamrick `Artists, Poets and Urban Space in Nineteenth-Century Paris`, Amsterdam, Atlanta GA: Rodopi, 1997). Sometimes he added after the titles something like that: `Air du Vilain, ou de Ninon chez madame de Sévigné` (The tune is like in the Vilain or the Ninon as they`re being sung at Madam de Sévigné).


Le Carillonneur` - engraving by Emile Bayard on the cover of the "Les chansons de Beranger" n°6. Collection Partitions pour piano et chant pour "Le Grenier" et "Le carillonneur" et paroles de "La bonne maman".

You can listen to Le Carillonneur` («Пономарь»)(popular chanson by Pierre-Jean de Béranger) (`Digue, digue, dig, din, dig, din, don`) performed by Germaine Montéro (Germaine Montero, née Germaine Berthe Caroline Heygel (1909-2000) here: http://redmp3.su/1907522/germaine-montero-le-carillonneur.html, http://www.deezer.com/track/78595532, lyrics http://lyricstranslate.com/fr/germaine-montero-le-carillonneur-lyrics.html



Pierre-Jean de Béranger has been a classical lyric and satiric poet of the world literature so far, the lyric and satiric aspects of his poetry are often combined in his poems and lyrics. The same manner was typical, though in prose, for Charles Dickens.


Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

Like Dickens he hardly faded into obscurity, moreover he is used to triumphantly revisit from time to time here or there in the world.




Germaine Montéro, Les cinq étages («Пять этажей») (popular chanson by Pierre-Jean de Béranger)

By the way, Béranger, more than any other poet, attracted Johann Wolfgang Goethe`s great interest. Besides, it was a strong sympathy, so strong, that some German critics were ready to blame Goethe for his `almost unqualified praise`.



But what could they do versus Goethe`s clear and free thought? He repeatedly talked about the French genius in his conversations with his secretary Eckermann and stressed his great originality and good humour. He praised him in his letters to his friends and sent them poems which were called by him `the excellent Béranger` (See in: J. B. Segall An Estimate of Béranger by Goethe, Modern Language Notes, Vol. 14, No. 7 (Nov., 1899), pp. 206-213).




1918 - Ma grand' mère - Columbia A 2736 78113 (popular chanson by Pierre-Jean de Béranger)

The hundred songs of Pierre-Jean de Beranger were compiled and issued by Rufus Wilmot Griswold in the USA in 1844 (See: The Songs of Béranger: In English. With a Sketch of the Author's Life Philadelphia C. Sherman, Printer, 1844) in translations `by various hands, and of unequal merit.




Paul Barré Paillasse («Паяц»)(popular chanson by Pierre-Jean de Béranger). Sung by Serge Hureau https://youtu.be/y_sz0otfSsk

The larger number have appeared in various British periodicals, a few are from American magazines`). The most famous translator of the French poet was William Young in Great Britain in the 1840s. By the way, Pierre-Jean de Béranger, or, to be more exact, the Béranger greatly influenced William Makepeace Thackeray, Oscar Wilde and Robert Louis Stevenson.


Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863), Oscar Wild (1854-1900)




Les Souvenirs du Peuple (popular chanson by Pierre-Jean de Béranger)

Pierre-Jean de Béranger`s poem Le Vilain inspired Alexandre Sergeyevich Pushkin to write his famous poem Моя родословная (My pedigree). In the other case, in 1827, Alexandre Pushkin wrote the poem `Refutation of Mr. Beranger` (`Рефутация г-на Беранжера`) to refute and disaprove of the `T'en souviens-tu, disait un capitaineone ...` as a pro-Bonapartiste, anti-Russian poem, but this poem wasn`t been printed inter vivos, as it turned out that the author of the poem had been Paul Émile Debraux. This (not the best) Pushkin`s poem contained obscene words like `fuck your mother`, `fuck`, crap, etc.


Alexandre Pushkin and Paul Émile Debraux

Count Nulin, a character of the same name long poem by Alexandre Pushkin, comes back home from Paris with the latest poem by Béranger. Moreover, it was the Béranger`s poem `La Double Chasse`(Двойная охота) that became the source of Pushkin`s long poem `Count Nulin`(See in: Natalie Mazur `Pushkin and Béranger: a source of the Count Nulin`s plot`).




Colette Renard: La petite ouvrière (popular chanson by Pierre-Jean de Béranger)

A Russian classical critic Vissarion Belinsky wrote about Pierre-Jean de Béranger:


Vissarion Grigoriyevich Belinsky (1811-1848)

`His songs contain much witticism, there are jokes, love, wine in them, there’s the politics, and above all of this there are the sudden, unexpected flashes of a humane thought, enthusiastic feeling, and all is full of fun from the heart`. (See in: V.G. Belinsky. Complete Works, vol. II, Moscow, 1953, p. 153 - Белинский В.Г. Полное собр. Соч., т. II, М.,1953, с. 153).




Pierre-Jean de Béranger `Le petit home gris`. Recited by a great Russian comedian Igor Iliyinski (Игорь Ильинский Пьер-Жан Беранже «Как яблочко румян»)

In his turn, Goethe wrote that poems by Béranger were full of such a gracefulness, wit, subtle irony and had such an artistic perfection and masterly elaboration of a literary form that not only France but also all educated Europe had to marvel.


Vasiliy Stepanovich Kurochkin (1831-1875)

In Russia in the 19. there was translated all the Béranger, mainly by the satirist poet Vasiliy Stepanovich Kurochkin, besides, translations were being made by other authors. By the way, he’s being translated nowadays too in Russia, though I haven’t heard of the masterpieces so far. But some successes are present.

The 20 and early 21 c. were not too fruitful despite Béranger was not forgotten. You can find many Russian and French musicians in the Youtube who set their poems (the Russian in the classic translations, of course) to music. In my humble opinion, it should have been better if they didn’t. Aha-aha! The matter is Pierre-Jean de Béranger requires a special approach and talent of a translator, musician and performer. He is an exam which is very difficult to pass. If you’ve failed the whole planet gets convinced that you are a piece of shit! (I hope we`re not in the Parliament now!).




Pierre-Jean de Béranger - Mon Habit (Мой старый друг не покидай меня) (Trans. Dmitry Lensky (Vorobyov). Recited by a great Russian actor Igor Vladimirovich Iliyinsky (Игорь Владимирович Ильинский) 1901-1987)

Even Vasiliy Kurochkin who dedicated all his life to the French poet can’t be regarded as an ideal: he often adapted the Béranger to the contemporary Russian life, and by this reason the educated readership of Russia used to read poems by Béranger in French (that time French was used in the Russian Empire to the same, wide, extent, as English is used in the Post-Soviet universe nowadays). In England also `there was, moreover, no need to translate Béranger. The respectable classes in Victorian Britain habitually used French as a way of excluding the lower classes, and were quite happy to enjoy the pleasures offered by French literature and culture so long as these did not fall into the hands of the more impressionable members of society. Under these circumstances translating Béranger became a political gesture, a way of breaking the code and allowing the masses access to information previously reserved for the elite` (See:Joseph Phelan The British Reception of Pierre-Jean de Béranger in Revue de littérature comparée, 2005/1 no 313).




Pierre-Jean de Béranger `L’Habit de cour, ou Visite à une altesse`
(Translated by M.L. Mikhailov). Recited by Sergei Yurski (Сергей Юрский. Пьер-Жан Беранже «Придворный кафтан». Перевод М.Л. Михайлова)

All in all, there were 70 Russian poets who had been translating Béranger`s poem for one hundred and a half years. Translators of the 19 c.: Anton Delwig (he translated `Le bon dieu`), Vladimir Benediktov, M. Mikhailov, L. Mei, M. Rosenheim, Alexandre Phoet, Feodor Tyutchev, I.&A. Tchorzewskis, A.N. Apukhtin, A. Somov, Tartyana Shchepkina-Kupernik, Alexandre Kuprin, Apollon Grigoriyev, etc. (all were the literary celebrities). In the early 20 c. there can be mentioned also famous names of the first-rate Russian poets, i.e.Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky, Benedict Livshits, Vladimir Levik. For the time being 133 of 238 translations of the poet in Russia belong to the pre-Revolutionary authors. (See in: Valentin Dmitriyev (Moscow) The side effects of a translation. Béranger`s poetry in the Russian poets` translations. Journal `Samizdat (Libweb.ru). 17/02/2009 Валентин Дмитриев (Москва) Издержки перевода. Поэзия Беранже в переводах русских поэтов. Журнал "Самиздат"17/02/2009 (Libweb.ru)).


Alexandre Sergeyevich Dargomyjsky (1813-1869)

A special topic is the use of the texts by Béranger in the classical music. The names of Richard Wagner (Germany), Charles Gounod, Hector Berlioz (France), Stanisław Moniuszko (Poland), Alexandre Sergeyevich Dargomyjsky, Georgiy Sviridov (1915-1998) (Russia), etc. speak for themselves.


Feodor Chaliapin

Listen to Feodor Chaliapin - `Le vieux caporal` (Фёдор Шаляпин `Старый капрал`). Music by A.S. Dargomyjsky. Lyrics by Pierre-Jean de Béranger. (Translation –Vasiliy Kurochkin):
http://www.russian-records.com/details.php?image_id=30322&l=Russian;
http://www.russian-records.com/details.php?image_id=29927&l=Russian.




Feodor Chaliapin - `Le vieux caporal` (Фёдор Шаляпин `Старый капрал`). Music by A.S. Dargomyjsky. Lyrics by Pierre-Jean de Béranger. (Translation –Vasiliy Kurochkin).

Other Russian singers also performed `Le vieux caporal`, like Vladimir Kastorsky, but their records have not been revealed yet (http://www.russian-records.com/details.php?image_id=7034&l=Russian).


Vladimir Ivanovich Kastorsky (Владимир Иванович Касторский) (1870-1948)

The English translations of Béranger`s poems of the 19 c. (for example, Le roi d'lveto (The King of Yveto) , Le Senateur (The Senator), Marquis de Carabas (Marquis the Carabas)) often skipped stances which had got the `indecent` contents from the Victorian point of view or were reflecting vices of the Royal persons, aristocracy and gentlemen on the whole. The family values were also above all, so poems about Lisette were never being translated by the Victorian authors. Moreover, some translations like those of Petit Homme gris (The little man in grey), Monsieur Judas (Master Judas) severely criticized the characters of Béranger`s poems. This meant the censure of their author as well.
In Russia where since 1825 there have been developing the Revolutionary process, Béranger was an idol of intelligentsia and opposition, but due to this he was very often severely russianized. Béranger was considered to have been the Czar of the French Poetry (by the way, it was Belinsky`s definition). Béranger remained popular in Russia in the 19 c and in the 20 c. and early 21 c. too, though now as never before the Béranger, poems by Béranger need the new translations, less russianized and showing the brilliance of Béranger`s literary form. His poems are very diverse and rich in this, formal respect. (Zoya Sidorovskaya. The linguistic and culturological aspect of the P.-J. Béranger`s English and Russian translations.Cand. disser.)




A.S. Dargomyjsky, Pierre-Jean de Béranger `Le sénateur` (А.С. Даргомыжский «Червяк»). Sung by Yevgeny Nesterenko (Евгений Нестеренко), 1970




Georgiy Sviridov, Pierre-Jean de Béranger `Le petit home gris` (Георгий Свиридов «Как яблочко румян»). Sung by Alexandre Vedernikov. Lyrics by (Translation - V. Kurochkin)

When Pierre Jean wrote his poems he`d meant a definite street tune or folk melody, and so he liked refrains. He wrote that he had been reproached for perverting the essence of the French songs by having made them more lofty … and he added in this connection: `It would be silly to dispute it since it was the secret of a success of my songs`. By this very reason the numerous authors of musicals and pop music couldn`t also put aside the Béranger, both in France that was natural, after all, and abroad (in Russia, for example). There are two very famous musical numbers based on texts of Béranger in translations by Kurochkin. Both poems (songs) belong to the early 20 c. One was composed before while the other one after the Revolution of 1917. They became the facts of the Russian culture, so many Russians even can’t believe that their texts were written by Pierre-Jean de Béranger. `Béranger? I can`t believe it!` (or something like that).


Dmitry Timofeyevich Lensky (Vorobyev) Дмитрий Тимофеевич Ленский (Воробьёв)(1805-1860)

The first number is a famous Gipsy romance (a real masterpiece) La pauvre femme (The actress in American English and (Nishchaya) (The Beggar-Woman) in Russian). This poem by Pierre-Jean de Béranger was translated by Dmitry Timofeyevich Lensky (Vorobyev) in 1840 and soon set to music by Alexandre Alexandrovich Alyabyev.


Alexandre Alexandrovich Alyabyev (Александр Александрович Алябьев)(1787-1851)

It is one of the most popular Russian Gipsy romances up to now though several lines in the Kurochkin`s translation are half as long again as it should have been. By the way, it was a real superhit in the repertory of a Russian pop music superstar of the early 20 c. Varya Panina and later it was like that in the repertory of her great grandson Vadim Kozin.

The modern performers, operatic and pop singers, sing it too, yet I avoid listening to them as they do not follow the pre-Revolutionary, classical manner of singing Russian Gipsy romances. This repertory is not for them. If they do perform the romances, they almost ALL look like modern schmos. Of course, there are exclusions (for instance, Karina Chepurnova, Vladimir Samsonov, etc.). Therefore I prefer to choose the illustrations of the Russian (Gipsy) romances presumably among the singers born, learned and having been taught singing before 1917. By the way, modern Gipsy do not sing the classical romances by Béranger, at least I never heard them doing it. (I’m muttering in my absent beard being belonged to a kind of people who always say that before a war or after a war all had been better. Bicycles, cars, songs, Gipsies… Aha-aha!).
In any case I recommend you never to listen to the modern Russian operatic and pop interpretations of the Béranger romances, those performers whine and yelp; observation of the phrasing is absent, let alone the modern Russian pronunciation and intonation do not correspond to strict requirements of the pre-Revolutionary Russian pop repertory. The modern post-Soviet operatic and pop singers are deliberately inferior to the old masters of the Russian Empire. So do not lose your time and spoil your taste!
An outstanding French composer Édouard Lalo (1823-1892) also set to music Béranger`s poem in his Six Romances, it is #1 before Beaucoup d’amour; Le suicide; Si j’étais petit oiseau; Les petits coups; Le vieux vagabond. But I’ve failed to find out the record of that classical vocal circle in the WWW. That’s pity, of course, yet not fatal. Aha-aha!

LA PAUVRE FEMME - NISHCHAYA

Pierre-Jean de Béranger (1780-1857)
Œuvres complètes de Béranger H. Fournier, 1839 (3, pp. 134-135).



LA PAUVRE FEMME
Air de mon Habit, ou d’Aristippe
Il neige, il neige, et là, devant l’église,
Une vieille prie à genoux.
Sous ses haillons où s’engouffre la bise,
C’est du pain qu’elle attend de nous.
Seule, à tâtons, au parvis Notre-Dame,
Elle vient hiver comme été.
Elle est aveugle, hélas! la pauvre femme.
Ah ! faisons-lui la charité.


Maximillian Karlovich Maksakov (Max Schwartz) (1869-1936)

Listen to M.A. Maks, La pauvre femme, 1902. We don’t know who was that Mr. Max, maybe it was Maximillian Karlovich Maksakov (Max Schwartz), the Russian and Austrian Jewish operatic singer: http://www.russian-records.com/details.php?image_i...d7gj06i8ctku7917lm0&l=russian

Trans. by Dmitry Lensky (Vorobyev), Music by Alexandre Alyabyev
НИЩАЯ (NISHCHAYA - THE BEGGAR-WOMAN)
Зима, метель, и въ крупныхъ хлопьяхъ
При сильномъ вѣтрѣ снѣгъ валитъ.
У входа въ храмъ одна, въ лохмотьяхъ,
Старушка нищая стоитъ...
И милостыни ожидая,
Она все здѣсь съ клюкой своей,
И лѣтомъ, и зимой, босая...
Подайте Христа ради ей!
Подайте Христа ради ей!


Varvara (Varya) Vasilyevna Panina (1872-1911)

Listen to Varya Panina, P.-J.Béranger - A.A.Alyabyev `La pauvre femme` («Нищая»), 1905: http://www.russian-records.com/details.php?image_id=1624&l=Russian or




Varya Panina, P.-J.Béranger - A.A.Alyabyev `La pauvre femme` («Нищая»), 1905

Compiled by Rufus Wilmot Griswold (1815-1857), USA, 1843
THE ACTRESS
It snows, it snows, but on the pavement still
She kneels and prays, nor lifts her head;
Beneath these rags through which the blast blows shrill,
Shivering she kneels, and waits for bread.
Hither each morn she gropes her weary way,
Winter and summer there is she.
Blind is the wretched creature! well-a-day! -
Ah ! give the blind one charity!



Savez-vous bien ce que fut cette vieille
Au teint hâve, aux traits amaigris?
D’un grand spectacle, autrefois la merveille,
Ses chants ravissaient tout Paris.
Les jeunes gens, dans le rire ou les larmes,
S’exaltaient devant sa beauté.
Tous, ils ont dû des rêves à ses charmes.
Ah ! faisons-lui la charité.


Alexandre Mikhailovich Davydov (Israel Moiseyevich Levenson) Александр Михайлович Давыдов (Израиль Моисеевич Левенсон) (1872–1944)

Listen to Alexandre Mikhailovich Davydov (I.M. Levenson), acc. Prof. A.Amichi, P.-J.Béranger - A.A.Alyabyev `La pauvre femme` («Нищая»), 1912: http://www.russian-records.com/details.php?image_id=20597&l=russian

Do not mix up this Russian Jewish operatic singer with the Russian Armenian romance singer Alexandre Davydovich Davydov (N.F. Karapetyan)(Александр Давыдович Давыдов (Н.Ф. Карапетян)) (1856-1910):



Alexandre Davydovich Davydov, P.-J.Béranger - A.A. Alyabyev `La pauvre femme` («Нищая»), 1906 https://youtu.be/W4KDE3U0bgo

This music video’s photo represents Alexandre Mikhailovich Davydov. Instead it should have been the photo of Alexandre Davydovich Davydov:


Alexandre Davydovich Davydov (N.F. Karapetyan) (1856-1910)

Listen to Alexandre Davydovich Davydov, acc. guitar, P.-J.Béranger - A.A.Alyabyev `La pauvre femme` («Нищая»), 1906

Сказать ли вамъ, старушка эта
Какъ двадцать лѣтъ тому жила!
Она была мечтой поэта,
И слава ей вѣнокъ плела.
Когда она на сценѣ пѣла,
Парижъ въ восторгѣ былъ отъ ней.
Она соперницъ не имѣла...
Подайте Христа ради ей!
Подайте Христа ради ей!



Ah! once far different did that form appear;
That sunken cheek, that colour wan,
The pride of thronged theatres, to hear
Her voice, enraptured Paris ran:
In smiles or tears before her beauty's shrine,
Which of us has not bowed the knee?
Who owes not to her charms some dreams divine?
Ah ! give the blind one charity!


Nina Viktorovna Dulkiewicz (born Baburina) (1891-1934)

Listen to Nina Dulkiewicz (Н.В. Дулькевичъ), P.-J.Béranger - A.A.Alyabyev `La pauvre femme` («Нищая»), 1910:
http://www.russian-records.com/details.php?image_id=22774&l=russian

Combien de fois, s’éloignant du théâtre,
Au pas pressé de ses chevaux,
Elle entendit une foule idolâtre
La poursuivre de ses bravos!
Pour l’enlever au char qui la transporte.
Pour la rendre à la volupté,
Que de rivaux l’attendent à sa porte!
Ah ! faisons-lui la charité.



Бывало, послѣ представленья
Ей отъ толпы проѣзда нѣтъ.
И молодежь отъ восхищенья
Гремѣла «браво» ей вослѣдъ.
Вельможи случая искали
Попасть въ число ея гостей;
Талантъ и умъ въ ней уважали.
Подайте Христа ради ей!
Подайте Христа ради ей!


Lev Mikhailovich Sibiryakov, a Russian Jewish operatic singer (1869-1938)

Listen to Lev Sibiryakov (Л.М. Сибиряковъ), P.-J.Béranger - A.A.Alyabyev `La pauvre femme` («Нищая»), 1910:
http://www.russian-records.com/details.php?image_id=19609&l=russian

How oft when from the crowded spectacle,
Homeward her rapid coursers flew ;
Adoring crowds would on her footsteps dwell,
And loud huzzas her path pursue.
To hand her from the glittering car, that bore
Her home to scenes of mirth and glee,
How many rivals thronged around her door -
Ah ! give the blind one charity!



Quand tous les arts lui tressaient des couronnes,
Qu’elle avait un pompeux séjour!
Que de cristaux, de bronzes, de colonnes!
Tributs de l’amour à l’amour.
Dans ses banquets, que de muses fidèles
Au vin de sa prospérité !
Tous les palais ont leurs nids d’hirondelles.
Ah ! faisons-lui la charité.



Listen to Elizaveta (Elisabeth) Pavlovna Gradova (Елизавета Павловна Градова), P.-J.Béranger - A.A.Alyabyev `La pauvre femme` («Нищая»), 1912:
http://www.russian-records.com/details.php?image_id=25802&l=russian

Text on the photo: Recently there have appeared a lot of performers of the Gipsy romances trying their best to imitate the ideal manner of Gipsy singing of late Varvara Panina, but their efforts remained nothing but the vain attempts. Elizaveta Pavlovna Gradova, however, both with her low, mellow timbre voice (contralto) and with sincerity of her performance can be for sure called the successor of gifted Panina, and her appearance on stage should be welcomed, since with her appearance this genre nearly died together with Panina revived and will have existed until Ms. Gradova remains on the stage. The other day the Metropol Records Company took advantage of the presence of the singer in Moscow to record several numbers, the best of her favourite repertory. Caption: Elizaveta Pavlovna Gradova, well-known performer of the Gipsy romances.

Въ то время торжества и счастья
У ней былъ домъ; не домъ — дворецъ.
И въ этомъ домѣ сладострастья
Томились тысячи сердецъ.
Какими пышными хвалами
Кадилъ ей кругъ ея гостей —
При счастьѣ всѣ дружатся съ нами;
При горѣ нѣту тѣхъ друзей...



When all the arts to her their homage paid,
How splendid was her gay abode;
What mirrors, marbles, bronzes were displayed,
Tributes by love on love displayed,
How duly did the muse her banquets gild,
Faithful to her prosperity:
In every palace will the swallow build ! -
Ah ! give the poor one charity!


Ekaterina Nikolayevna Yurovskaya (1886-1949)

Listen to Ekaterina Yurovskaya, P.-J.Béranger - A.A.Alyabyev `La pauvre femme` («Нищая»), 1929:
http://www.russian-records.com/details.php?image_id=18812&l=Russian




Ekaterina Yurovskaya, acc. Boris Mandrus (Е.Н. Юровская, партия ф-но Б.Я. Мандрус), P.-J.Béranger - A.A.Alyabyev `La pauvre femme` («Нищая»), 1929

Revers affreux ! un jour la maladie
Éteint ses yeux, brise sa voix ;
Et bientôt seule et pauvre, elle mendie
Où, depuis vingt ans, je la vois.
Aucune main n’eut mieux l’art de répandre
Plus d’or, avec plus de bonté,
Que cette main qu’elle hésite à nous tendre.
Ah ! faisons-lui la charité.



Святая воля провидѣнья...
Артистка сдѣлалась больна,
Лишилась голоса и зрѣнья
И бродитъ по міру одна.
Бывало, бѣдный не боится
Прійти за милостыней къ ней,
Она жъ у васъ просить стыдится...
Подайте Христа ради ей!
Подайте Христа ради ей!


Vadim Alexeyevich Kozin (1903-1996)

Listen to Vadim Kozin, acc. Mikhail Valovats (Вадим Козин, партия ф-но Михаил Валовац), P.-J.Béranger - A.A.Alyabyev `La pauvre femme` («Нищая»), 1939: http://www.russian-records.com/details.php?image_id=9152&l=Russian




Vadim Kozin, P.-J.Béranger - A.A.Alyabyev `La pauvre femme` («Нищая») in the background of the same name Yakov Protazanov feature film of 1916. Title roles played by Nikolai Branitski, Natalie Lisenko, Ivan Mozhzukhin, etc.

Vadim Kozin was born in St. Petersburg and died in Magadan, his mother was a Gipsy (Vera Ilyinskaya). Vadim Kozin never learned music and could not read notes. Yet he was a true superstar! A natural born singer of romances and folk songs. Sir Winston Churchill himself adored his artistic manner and inimitable talent. He sang in front of Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin in the Tehran conference. Iza Kremer asked Kozin to apply for emigration as he was to be returned to the GULAG after the summit, but he refused. The Russian people of that time preferred Russia despite everything.

But sad reverse - sudden disease appears;
Her eyes are quenched, her voice is gone,
And here, forlorn and poor, for twenty years,
The blind one kneels and begs alone.
Who once so prompt her generous aid to lend?
What hand more liberal, frank, and free,
Than that she scarcely ventures to extend? -
Ah ! give the poor one charity!



Le froid redouble, ô douleur! ô misère!
Tous ses membres sont engourdis.
Ses doigts ont peine à tenir le rosaire
Qui l’eût fait sourire jadis.
Sous tant de maux, si son cœur tendre encore
Peut se nourrir de piété;
Pour qu’il ait foi dans le ciel qu’elle implore,
Ah ! faisons-lui la charité.




Izabella Yurieva (Изабелла Юрьева), P.-J.Béranger - A.A. Alyabyev `La pauvre femme`


Izabella Danilovna Yurieva (1899-2000)

Listen to Izabella Yur'eva, acc. Evgeny Rokhlin (piano) (Изабелла Юрьева, партия ф-но Евгений Рохлин), P.-J.Béranger - A.A.Alyabyev `La pauvre femme` («Нищая»), 1955: http://www.russian-records.com/details.php?image_id=32396&l=Russian

Ахъ, кто съ такою добротою
Въ несчастьѣ ближнимъ помогалъ,
Какъ эта нищая съ клюкою,
Когда амуръ ее ласкалъ!
Она все въ жизни потеряла!
О! Чтобы въ старости своей
Она на промыслъ не роптала,
Подайте Христа ради ей!
Подайте Христа ради ей!



Alas for her! for faster falls the snow,
And every limb grows stiff with cold;
That rosary once woke her smile, which now
Her frozen fingers hardly hold.
If bruised beneath so many woes, her heart
By pity still sustained may be,
Lest even her faith in heaven itself depart,
Ah! Give the blind one charity.


Yakov Alexandrovich Protazanov (Яков Александрович Протазанов)(1881-1945)




A Yakov Protazanov film `The beggar-woman (Give her alms for Christ's sake!)` - Нищая (Подайте Христа ради ей), 1916
https://youtu.be/dRqzyCiCh6Y

GIVE ALMS FOR CHRIST SAKE (The Beggar-Woman)
from the song by Béranger. The I. Yermoliev Co., Moscow, 1916.Film Director Ya. Protazanov
CHARACTERS: Actress N. Lisenko, Poet - I. Mozhzukhin.



0:59 Are you ready? The curtain will rise in five minutes.
1:51 Is our poet in the theatre to admire his goddess?
2:52 Come on, I’ll introduce you. You can’t admire her from a distance forever!
3:47 Let me introduce to you our famous poet and one of your most enthusiastic admirers.
4:06 After my performance I’m going to have a party with my friends. Will you join us?
4:49 If you twist my arm I'll sing for you!
7:35 I love you, you see? I do love! But I don’t want to be...
7:52 I don’t want to be in the crowd of your numerous admirers. I want to mean more to you.
8:30 His love came home to the heart of the actress.
9:12 Suddenly she felt sick and tired of all her admirers.
9:38 But I ordered you not to accept anybody!
11:00 Take this letter to the post-office immediately.
11:10 Unexpected joy.



11:33 Text of her letter: I’ve been sick and tired of all my admirers. I’m disappointed with their sweet talk. I only think about you, because I`ve felt a deep and sincere love in your words. Tomorrow I’ll take a walk as always. Loving you.
13:16 When I’ve known you, my dear, I realized that I don’t need their flattering term. They are of no interest for me now.
13:39 Engagement in several months.
14:02 All have gathered. Waiting for you.
15:39 Actress was very kind. The poor and hungry were never refused if knocking on her door.
16:05 A woman came, madam, she’s saying you’ve known her. She was a chorus-girl!
17:31 Instead of taking her habitual walk, the actress went to the beggar.
19:51 Fatal volte-face of the fate. Actress contracted from the child.
20:40 I beg you to refuse the performance! Spare yourself!
21:11 But I have to sing. Today’s my benefit performance.
22:09 Madam’s ill, can’t perform today.



22:35 I have to upset you. The performance has to be delayed, unfortunately.
22:53 Next day all the city knew about the actress` illness. Her friends gathered about her bed.
24:56 Be careful! She’s ill with smallpox. Her home should be completely isolated.
25:46 Go and swear that you’ll not go in here until danger has passed, until I’ve called you.
26:40 Remove all the mirrors! The patient shouldn’t be upset.
27:20 Let me in, I must see her from a distance at least!
27:33 Doctor ordered not to admit anybody. Sorry, but I can’t.
28:59 Not receiving money from the patient creditors insistently besieged her mansion.
29:18 An article in a Czech newspaper: `A new star. Madam Sonya took place of an actress
who suffered from the serious illness and took her bed for a long time. We must congratulate the Opera administration on the new acquisition`.



30:37 At last the doctor allowed her to get up and walk.
32:48 My voice, I’ve lost my voice!
33:16 Next day things of the actress were sold to cover her debts.
33:48 Little mirror, just 5 rubles. Who`s going to take it for 5 rubles?
34:00 I’ll buy!
34:13 Have all you thing been sold out? What a sell!
34:53 The news of the sale reached the poet.
35:22 What does it mean? Why wasn’t I informed?
35:34 She ordered not to tell you anything.



35:42 A YEAR LATER
35:54 You must forget your past, darling. It’ll never return!
36:09 But I can’t. I permanently imagine the theatre, thousands of the applauding spectators and lights ... and lights ... and he ...
36:44 No love means no happiness.
38:38 His note:`Beauty left this world, I’m leaving to ..`
40:33 She whose name once ecstasized the public she is begging alms in the snowy street.
THE END



THEY ARE NOT EASILY FORGOTTEN




Mister Tro-lo-lo - Eduard Gil([khil`] (Эдуард Хиль) (1934-2012) - Songs from lyrics by Pierre-Jean de Beranger, Music by Ivan P. Shishov (Иван П. Шишов) (1-8 and 10) (Trans. Ya. Rodionov (Я. Родионов) and A. Dargomyjski (9)(Trans. V. Kurochkin) (St. Petersburg TV film `Beranger `s Songs`, 1974 - "Песни Беранже". Лентелефильм 1974 г.)[/I]

00:31 Застольная L´amitié; 03:09; Четыре капуцина, Les Capucins; 06:25 Моя бабушка, Ma Grand’Mere; 09:32 Сосед Le voisin; 11:11 Разбитая скрипка, Le Violon brise; 13:47 Брачный контракт, Le Contrat de Mariage; 16:19 5 этажей, Les cinq etages;19:27 Слепая мать, 21:54 Добрый пастырь;24:49 Червяк Le Senateur; 27:07 Покойной ночи Bonsoir

Nine of ten translations belong to Yaroslav Rodionov and form the vocal cycle to music of a classical composer Ivan Petrovich Shishov (Иван Петрович Шишов) (1888-1947). On the whole, this cycle based on the old folkloric melodies includes also Le grillon (Сверчок), Ma canne (Ma canne), Les hirondelle (Ласточки), Le ménétrier de Meudon (Чудесный скрипач), Ma nourrice (Кормилица), La chatte (La chatte), Le chasseur et la laitière (Охотник и красотка), Les chantres de paroisse (Приходские певчие), Le retour de Lisette (Возвращение Лизетты), Les vendanges (Сбор винограда), Frétillon (Вострушка), Le pape musulman (Папа-мусульманин), Qu´elle est jolie (Как она красива), Les papillons (Мотыльки), Le bon vieillard (Добрый старик), L´ami Robin (Друг Робэн), La mouche (Мошка ), Le bedeau (Пономарь).

Strictly speaking, it is partially the operatic repertory and partially that of musicals and operettas, and Eduard Gil always dreamt of opera remaining a very famous pop singer in Russia in the 60-70s.


Yaroslav Ivanovich Rodionov (Ярослав Иванович Родионов) (1902-1943)

(Among the most famous pop music composers of Russia in the 20 c. there was only one who wrote a vocal cycle from the texts by Pierre Jean de Béranger (Les Infidélités de Lisette (Расчет с Лизой ), Mon habit (Мой фрак) and Le bon vieillard (Песнь старика)).


Eduard Savelyevich Kolmanovsky (Эдуард Савельевич Колмановский)(1923-1994)

It was an iconic Soviet composer of the evergreen pop songs Eduard Kolmanovsky. Alas, I didn`t hear those songs from the Béranger, cuz I didn`t simply find them, but they are hardly hits! Surely! Not these ones unlike his usual songs).


Poster `A JOKE IN THE SONGS!` of 1957 depicting Lyudmila Gheoli

As to Rodionov-Shishov`s operatic and musical works from the Béranger they were very popular in the 30-50s of the 20 c. Now it’s a rarely performed classical repertory. Many first-rate stars of that time have been unfairly forgotten, so it wouldn’t be too bad to remember them. Ladies first, so let’s first remember Frétillon(Вострушка) sung by Lyudmila Gheoli as a Moscow operetta diva in 1945.


Lyudmila Filippovna Gheoli (Людмила Филипповна Геоли)

Listen to Frétillon accompanied by pianist S.A. Bak-Lvovich: http://www.russian-records.com/details.php?image_id=17243&l=Russian.

Liudmila Gheoli loved to perform the character songs in the concerts and she was often recorded. She was born in the 10s of the 20 c. and died in the 70s.


Liudmila Gheoli (first, right) with her Moscow aunties in her flat in the Sokolniki neighbourhood in Moscow in 1958

Georgiy Andreyevich Abramov, the first performer of The Roads by Novikov, also sang the songs from the Rodionov-Shishov`s vocal cycle from poems by Béranger. Listen to:


Georgiy Andreyevich Abramov (Георгий Андреевич Абрамов) (1903-1966)

Возвращение Лизетты Le retour de Lisette accompanied by pianist Elena Bogdanovna Senkiewicz (Елена Богдановна Сенкевич), 1938: http://www.russian-records.com/details.php?image_id=13518&l=russian ; Чудесный скрипач Le ménétrier de Meudon, 1940: http://www.russian-records.com/details.php?image_id=13520&l=russian;


Anatoly Andreyevich Doliwo-Sobotnicki (Анатолий Леонидович Доливо-Соботницкий) (1893-1965)
Another forgotten figure, an outstanding operatic singer Anatoly Doliwo-Sobotnicki was a professor of the Moscow conservatory, had got the highest musical culture, sang in many foreign languages, even in Kirghiz (!), and also recited poems on the stage as a drama actor. He had a very developed facial expression and an excellent gift of impersonation; besides, he found out and revived many Russian folk songs and romances. Listen to Ma grand´ mère accompanied by orchestra conducted by A.S. Reutemann, 1940: http://www.russian-records.com/details.php?image_id=17268&l=russian.


Efrem Borisovich Flax (Ефрем Борисович Флакс) (1909-1982)

As to Russian Jewish singer Efrem Flax, he was very popular in the 30s and absolutely forgotten now. By public, of course, since specialists and music lovers in Russia still remember him (just look Youtube) quite well. It is an amazing thing, taking into account that Flax had about 100 songs recorded. Son of a rich photographer in St. Petersburg he was a homeless child, he worked as a shovelman and drayman after the Revolution and came to enter the St. Petersburg conservatory riding the cart. He failed to pass all the exams except for vocalism and was accepted all the same as his vocal gift amazed the conservatory professors. After graduation he became a soloist of the Leningrad music hall. He volunteered for the WW2. He was the first performer of the iconic Russian military song `Where are you now my brother-soldiers?` («Где же вы теперь, друзья-однополчане?»). He became as well a professor of the St. Petersburg conservatory and was buried in the Preobrazhenskoye Jewish cemetery in St. Petersburg. Flax also sang Ma grand´mère by Béranger-Shishov-Rodionov, accompanied by pianist Yuri Abramovich Levitin (Юрий Абрамович Левитин), 1940: http://www.russian-records.com/details.php?image_id=17272&l=Russian. He also sang Les capucins, 1940: http://www.russian-records.com/details.php?image_id=33656&l=Russian.

THE HEART OF A POET, OR HE WHO LOVES NOT WINE, DANCES AND GIRLS, HE LOVES NOT LIFE

The second (after the Beggar-Woman) famous in Russia musical number based on texts of Pierre-Jean de Béranger in Kurochkin`s translation became the musical created by Nikolai Mikhailovich Strelnikov from the original libretto of A. Ivanovsky and poet M. Kuzmin. The musicle was staged in Moscow in 1934. The title read `The Heart of a Poet (Béranger)`. Béranger was a hero of this musical who sang his own songs to the tunes of the historical and historic French melodies of the early 19 c. (their harmony was, however, transformed by the composer).


Nikolai Mikhailovich Strelnikov (1888-1939)

The superhit of that musical which outlived it was the Aria of Béranger (as a character of the musical) `Au printemps, adieu la bouteille! //En automne, adieu les amours!` (`Прощай любовь в начале мая,//А в октябре прощай любовь` - `Farewell a bottle of wine in Spring, farewell love affairs in Autumn!`). It is being remembered and asked by people in the Runet up to now! The plot (libretto) was not successful, but the original verses by M. Kuzmin were superb. Poet Béranger in this play fell in love with Lisette who preferred a rich aristocrat. Of course, real Béranger never suffered from such a love in his real life. It was a pure fiction! Besides, the score of the musical included many music hall and jazz components. It was the fashion of those days!




Vladimir Kandelaki - Music by N. Strelnikov - Lyrics by P.J. Béranger – `Aria of Béranger` from the Heart of a Poet. Record of 1948.

This air was being sung by many singers. People, however, more often remember an outstanding Soviet operatic singer Vladimir Kandelaki from Georgia who also performed in the operettas,


Vladimir Arkadievich Kandelaki (Владимир Аркадьевич Канделаки)(1908-1994)

but I prefer Alexei Pheona. IMHO, he’s a champion! But … tastes differ! Aha-aha! By the way, first Alexei Pheona, then Vladimir Kandelaki were husbands of the most influential Moscow operetta diva Tatyana Shmyga! Tatyana Ivanovna Shmyga told that the climax of popularity of Pheona had been in the 50-60s when he had got the numerous women admirers, though his voice was not big.


Alexei Alexeyevich Pheona (Алексей Алексеевич Феона)(1919-1977)

He was very handsome and attractive man, and an ideal `tails` hero in the classical repertory. He was brought up by his famous father Alexei Nikolayevich Pheona as a real St. Petersburger rather than an inhabitant of Leningrad. He was invariably even with all in the theatre company and had neither friends nor enemies. He was a very pleasant man with the cold manners.
Listen to Pheona performing `Aria of Béranger` from the Heart of a Poet: Le pintemp et l`autumn` (`Au printemps, adieu la bouteille!//En automne, adieu les amours!`- `Прощай любовь в начале мая,//А в октябре прощай любовь`). Music by N. Strelnikov- Lyrics by P.J. Béranger. Conducted by M.N. Zhukov, 1945: http://www.russian-records.com/details.php?image_id=20269&l=russian

Pierre-Jean de Béranger
LE PRINTEMPS ET L’AUTOMNE
Deux saisons règlent toutes choses,
Pour qui sait vivre en s’amusant:
Au printemps nous devons les roses,
À l’automne un jus bienfaisant.
Les jours croissent; le cœur s’éveille:
On fait le vin quand ils sont courts.
Au printemps, adieu la bouteille!
En automne, adieu les amours!



SPRING AND AUTUMN
Two seasons regulate the order
Of life if it’s to your delight,
In springtime we have got the roses,
In winter it is juice that is advised.
When days are short wine’s made a lot.
Long days! The hearts wake up, of course.
In spring you say: `Adieu, my bottle,
In autumn: `Farewell, you girls!`

ПРОЩАЙ, ВИНО, В НАЧАЛЕ МАЯ …
Друзья, природою самою
Назначен наслажденьям срок:
Цветы и бабочки - весною,
Зимою - виноградный сок.
Снег тает, сердце пробуждая,
Короче день, хладеет кровь.
Прощай любовь в начале мая,
А в октябре прощай любовь.

Mieux il vaudrait unir sans doute
Ces deux penchants faits pour charmer;
Mais pour ma santé je redoute
De trop boire et de trop aimer.
Or, la sagesse me conseille
De partager ainsi mes jours:
Au printemps, adieu la bouteille!
En automne, adieu les amours!

No doubt that it would be better
To yield to two nice things at once,
But making love and drinking claret
Together drive to a collapse.
Thus, wisdom says to me `Don’t hurtle!
Why not to set their days in turns?
In spring you say: `Adieu, my bottle,
In autumn: `Farewell, you girls!`

Хотел бы я вино с любовью
Мешать, чтоб жизнь была полна.
Но говорят, вредит здоровью
Избыток страсти и вина
Советам мудрости внимая,
Я рассудил без дальних слов:
Прощай вино в начале мая,
А в октябре прощай любовь!

Au mois de mai j’ai vu Rosette,
Et mon cœur a subi ses lois.
Que de caprices la coquette
M’a fait essuyer en six mois!
Pour lui rendre enfin la pareille,
J’appelle octobre à mon secours.
Au printemps, adieu la bouteille!
En automne, adieu les amours!

In early May I met Rosetta,
My heart refused to follow bans.
Her coquetry, capricious habits
Fooled me all righ six months on end!
At last, lest I`d be up the pole
I called for help October. First!
In spring you say: `Adieu, my bottle,
In autumn: `Farewell, you girls!`

В весенний день моя свобода,
Была Розетте отдана.
Я ей поддался и пол года
Меня дурачила она.
Кокетке все припоминая,
Я в сентябре уж был готов:
Прощай вино в начале мая.
А в октябре прощай любовь.

Je prends, quitte, et reprends Adèle,
Sans façon comme sans regrets.
Au revoir, un jour me dit-elle.
Elle revint long-temps après ;
J’étais à chanter sous la treille :
Ah ! Dis-je, l’année a son cours.
Au printemps, adieu la bouteille !
En automne, adieu les amours !

In autumn I informed my Adel [ˈaːdəl]
`I’ve had enough, bear not grudge!`
`Well, farewell`, one day she mumbled.
Time quickly passed, we`re in touch.
I sang the grapes that met my throttle.
`Ah!`, I would say, all goes in due course:
In spring you say: `Adieu, my bottle,
In autumn: `Farewell, you girls!`

Я осенью сказал Адели:
"Прощай, дитя, не помни зла..."
И разошлись мы; но в апреле
Она сама ко мне пришла.
Бутылку тихо опуская,
Я вспомнил смысл мудрейших слов:
Прощай вино - в начале мая,
А в октябре - прощай любовь!

Mais il est une enchanteresse
Qui change à son gré mes plaisirs.
Du vin elle excite l’ivresse,
Et maîtrise jusqu’aux désirs.
Pour elle ce n’est pas merveille
De troubler l’ordre de mes jours,
Au printemps avec la bouteille,
En automne avec les amours.

But there’s an enchantress else.
It’s up to her to change the vices.
Like wine she can intoxicate,
She is the mistress of desires.
It won’t be difficult for her
To break your order, being perverse,
In spring you’ll say: `Salut, my bottle, [sa'ly]
In autumn: `You’re welcome, girls!`
(Trans. Andrew Alexandre Owie)

Так я дошел бы до могилы,
Но есть волшебница одна
И словно спирт лишает силы,
И охмеляет без вина.
Захочет - я смогу забыться,
Смешать все дни в календаре,
Весной бесчувственно напиться
И быть влюбленным в декабре
(Trans. Vasiliy Kurochkin)

The composer of the musical Nikolai Mikhailovich Strelnikov (1888-1939) was born as a Russian Baltic Baron Nikolai von Mensenkampff (he is originated from the Sweden and German knights of the 14 c.).



In the Soviet epoch he quite reasonably used his mother’s family name. His father, a councillor of State from St. Petersburg, was a second cousin of Sergei Rakhmaninoff, the great Russian and American classical composer of the first half of the 20 c.

There’s also the third tolerable performer of the Air of Béranger in the musical. He’s a Russian operatic singer Vladimir Bunchikov.


Vladimir Bunchikov

You are free to listen to his interpretation online in here, mes chers amis, http://classic-online.ru/ru/production/25994.



Our dear monsieur Pierre-Jean de Béranger can exist without notes, tunes, tra-la-la-la and bla-bla-bla, but his poetry is predisposed to music, succesful music, interesting music, striking, organic, impressive and brilliant music. If to regard his poems there`s been little music of that kind so far. So, you composers, roll up your sleeves. Dare and cheek up! And you translators be exact, be bérangers, your motto should be: The letter and spirit! You performers try your best! Stop howling and/or be such bores! You, artistes, are now a centre of our hopes! C`mone!




Nikita Khrushev: `Our aims are clear, our tasks are assigned! Get down to business, comrades! Towards the new triumphs of come-on-ism!`


The Nightmare of the Louvre: Mona Lisa as a poor old woman - La pauvre femme! God forbid!


Rule, Britannia!

ON THE VERY GOOD AND BAD GIRLS, POOR AND RICH LADIES AND PRETTY WOMEN WITH LOVE, FEAR AND LAUGH

Dawn Over Moscow

A VERY GOOD GIRL WHOSE NAME`S LIDA




A Moscow student Shurik (shoo-rik) (short for Alexandre) reciting several stances from Yaroslav Smelyakov`s poem `A Very Good Girl Whose Name’s Lida` (lee-da) to attract attention of a Moscow girl student Lida with whom he had fallen in love (a fragment from the 1965 Russian iconic comedy `Operation `Y` and other adventures of Shurik` http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059550/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1a, the 2nd Segment `Delusion`

Shurik (short for Alexandre): Lida, do you know what is my favourite poem by Yaroslav Smelyakov?
Lida: What?
Shurik: Just listen ... `Along the whitewashed little houses there floats the acacia’s thick scent. A very good girl whose name’s Lida lives near, it is Southern lane. … Reflecting in window glasses, unhurried, she walks through the hood, a very good girl whose name’s Lida`.
Lida: What comes next? Has it gone clean out of your head?
Shurik: `Reflecting in window glasses, unhurried, she walks through the hood, a very good girl whose name’s Lida`.
Lida: `What then makes her strikingly good?`
Shurik: `Just ask `bout this the good fellow, boy who lives next door to the girl. He goes to bed whisp`ring Lida, her name’s on his lips before dawn. It was not for nothing, indeed, eh? That where her sweet shoes would step he wrote `a good girl whose name’s Lida`! He did it in a desperate way`.

Yaroslav Smelyakov

ХОРОШАЯ ДЕВОЧКА ЛИДА Вдоль маленьких домиков белых// акация душно цветет.//Хорошая девочка Лида// на улице Южной живет.// Ее золотые косицы// затянуты, будто жгуты.//По платью, по синему ситцу,//как в поле, мелькают цветы.// И вовсе, представьте, неплохо,//что рыжий пройдоха апрель// бесшумной пыльцою веснушек// засыпал ей утром постель.// Не зря с одобреньем веселым// соседи глядят из окна,//когда на занятия в школу// с портфелем проходит она.// В оконном стекле отражаясь,//по миру идет не спеша//хорошая девочка Лида.//Да чем же она хороша?// Спросите об этом мальчишку,//что в доме напротив живет.//Он с именем этим ложится// и с именем этим встает.// Недаром на каменных плитах,//где милый ботинок ступал,// "Хорошая девочка Лида",-//в отчаяньи он написал.// Не может людей не растрогать// мальчишки упрямого пыл.//Так Пушкин влюблялся, должно быть,//так Гейне, наверно, любил.// Он вырастет, станет известным,//покинет пенаты свои.//Окажется улица тесной//для этой огромной любви.// Преграды влюбленному нету://смущенье и робость - вранье!//На всех перекрестках планеты// напишет он имя ее.// На полюсе Южном - огнями,//пшеницей - в кубанских степях,//на русских полянах – цветами// и пеной морской - на морях.// Он в небо залезет ночное,//все пальцы себе обожжет,//но вскоре над тихой Землею// созвездие Лиды взойдет.// Пусть будут ночами светиться// над снами твоими, Москва,//на синих небесных страницах// красивые эти слова.




Author`s Reciting. Yaroslav Smelyakov reads his own poem (rare record of the 50s).

Yaroslav Smelyakov
A VERY GOOD GIRL WHOSE NAME`S LIDA
Along the whitewashed little houses (var.: boxes)
There floats the acacia’s thick scent.
A very good girl whose name’s Lida
Lives near, it is Southern lane.

Her blonde-haired, light golden hair
Is tight braided into the plaits.
The field flowers are all over scattered
About blue print of her dress.

It is pretty good, only fancy,
That April, the red-haired rake,
One morning, without being noticed,
Strewed her with the pollen of freckles.

It is not for nothing the neighbours
Approving her merrily see
Her walking to school with her briefcase
Along their windowsills.

Reflecting in window glasses,
Unhurried, she walks through the hood,
A very good girl whose name’s Lida.
What then makes her strikingly good?

Just ask `bout this the good fellow,
Boy who lives next door to the girl.
He goes to bed whisp`ring Lida,
Her name’s on his lips before dawn.

It was not for nothing, indeed, eh?
That where her sweet shoes would step
He wrote `A good girl whose name’s Lida`
He did it in a desperate way.



The passionate love of the chappie
Can’t help making people feel moved.
Like this Pushkin must have been happy,
Like this Heine might have been drooled.


Henrich Heine and Alexandre Pushkin

He’ll grow up, he’ll become famous,
He’ll leave his Penates, of course.
The street he grew up will seem narrow
For his great affection for her.

Love will creep where it may not go,
Confusion and shyness are fraud.
The written name of his betrothed
Will shine at the planet’s crossroads.

He’ll write it with lights at the Poles,
He’ll write it with wheat in the steppe,
He’ll write it with flowers in the grass plots,
He’ll write it with the ocean waves.

He’ll climb the night sky o`er the planet,
He’ll burn all his fingers if tries,
But soon above our Gaia ([ˈgeıə] = the Earth, our blue planet)
The asterism `Lida` will rise.

May night by night shine in the stillness
O`er dreams of yours, Moscow, above,
The beautiful words he had written
On the evergreen leaf of the sky.
(Trans. Andrew Alexandre Owie)

MASTER & MARGARITA, OR THE RING MISTRESS

This 20 c. classical poem by Yaroslav Smelyakov has been popular in Russia so far, partly owing to a Leonid Gaidai comedy mentioned by me above. Yaroslav Smelyakov (who was just known as `Yara` for his literary environment) was a `small` classical poet of Russia. His poetic career and success reached their climax in the 60s of the 20c. The youth of that time accepted him as one of their mouthpieces despite he belonged to the generation of their parents. Yevgeniy Yevtushenko, #1 in the Russian poetry of the 2nd part of the 20 c., rather impudently, but quite exactly described Yara as his immediate forerunner and called him `Yevgeniy Yevtushenko of the 30s of the 20 c.` Besides he noticed that Yara had contrived to have been a Soviet and anti-Soviet poet at the same time. Smelyakov was a prisoner of the GULAG twice, before and after the WW2 and spent four years of that war as a prisoner of war in Finland (he was a commander of the Red Army).
Yaroslav Smelyakov originated from the family of workers, at the least formally. But his education, manners, etc. make us doubt it. He began to write poems at the age of 10. Besides he seemed to have been a Scottish Rite Freemason, and wore the Freemasonic Death’s Head and Bones ring which was once given by him to the main love of his life.



The Ring Mistress was a very famous Soviet poetess Margarita Aliger (ali-ger). Before they had partied forever he asked her never take off this ring, or else he has to experience plights. But she used to fail the promise from time to time to marry other men. Besides, she was a member of the Communist Party and dedicated atheist and despised the superstitions.


Margarita Aligher (born Seiliger)

What’s interesting every time she kept his Freemasonic ring in a drawer something wrong really happened with him, and every time she put it on her finger after another divorces or when the political situation permitted it he prospered and had a great success as a poet. Before his death Margarita unintentionally broke down the ring of her Master, and he soon died. After his death she made up her mind to show the rare ring to another poetess. At first she failed to find out the ring, yet when she managed to do it she screamed as the ring was … intact, it had no severe damages at all. This sounds mystic, yet it was true.

IF I EVER FALL ILL …

Yaroslav Smelyakov wrote many iconic poetic texts that made him immortal as a Russian poet. The Soviet hippies and yuppies of the 60s loved not only his `Lida` but also his poem `If I ever fall ill …`.

ЕСЛИ Я ЗАБОЛЕЮ Если я заболею,//к врачам обращаться не стану,//Обращаюсь к друзьям//(не сочтите, что это в бреду)://постелите мне степь,//занавесьте мне окна туманом,//в изголовье поставьте// ночную звезду.//Я ходил напролом.//Я не слыл недотрогой.//Если ранят меня в справедливых боях,//забинтуйте мне голову// горной дорогой// и укройте меня// одеялом в осенних цветах.//Порошков или капель - не надо.//Пусть в стакане сияют лучи.//Жаркий ветер пустынь, серебро водопада -//Вот чем стоит лечить.//От морей и от гор// так и веет веками,//как посмотришь, почувствуешь://вечно живем.//Не облатками белыми// путь мой усеян, а облаками.//Не больничным от вас ухожу коридором,//а Млечным Путем.




`If I ever fall ill …` (Если я заболею…) excellently recited by A. Pir-Budagyan

Yaroslav Smelyakov
IF I EVER FALL ILL
If I ever fall ill,
I’ll consult no physician,
I shall turn to my friends,
(Do not think it’s a rave):
`Make the bed of the steppes,
Pull the curtains of fogs as the window treatment
And set up a night star as a head of the bed.

I would push my way through,
Never passed for a coward.
If I’m wounded one day in another just war,
Bandage round my head
A mountain road,
Cover me
With a blanket
Of the flowers of fall.

Anything but the powder, drops!
Sunrays only should shine in a glass.
The hot winds of the deserts and silvery waterfalls
Ought to be the best treatment at last.
Deep sea, mountain’s high
Are as old as the world,
Just one look and you feel
That we shall never die.

My way’s paved not with the capsules,
I’m accompanied with the white clouds.
And I am going to leave you not through the hospital’s hall,
But the Milky Way’s pass.
(Trans. Andrew Alexandre Owie)

This text was set to music by an outstanding Russian author (poet, composer, actor, journalist, traveler) of the 60-70s Yuri Wizbor




Yuri Wizbor `If I ever fall ill …` by Yaroslav Smelyakov

This song was citated in a El`dar Ryazanov comedy `Beware of the car` where two men, an investigator of the criminal police and car thief of the Robin Hood type the policeman was hunting for suddenly befriended on the ground of playing Laertes and Hamlet in the amateur performance staged by a Moscow Culture Club. The fragment describes the moment when the friends sing Smelyakov-Vizbor`s song `If I ever fall ill …`, and the policeman refuses to persecute his friend, the noble hijacker who used to sell the luxury cars of the corrupt officials and transfer money to charity.




Fragment from an El`dar Ryazanov comedy `Beware of the car`. Two friends played by Innokenty Smoktunovsky (Car Thief) and Oleg Yefremov (Policeman) singing `If I ever fall ill …` while leaving the pub.

Car Thief: Friend, friend!
Policeman: If I ever fall ill …
Car Thief: Aha!
Together: I’ll consult no physician, I shall turn to my friends, Do not think it’s a rave: `Make the bed of the steppes, pull the curtains of fogs as the window treatment and set up a night star as a head of the bed.
Car Thief: I say, friend. Do not jail me until the first night! You see, such a part (of Hamlet. - AAO) an actor plays just once in a life!
Policeman: I won’t ever imprison you! Play the première and the following nights!
Car Thief: The following nights are of no use!
Policeman: But they are, they really are! ... You are such a darling!
Car Thief: Uh-oh! I feel like going to my girlfriend Liuba.

Though the true love of Smelyakov`s life was, so to jokingly say, `a sportsman, member of the Young Communist League and just a very good girl` Rita Aligher he was an incorrigible womanizer all his life. Like Heinrich Heine he could have said: `Every woman is the gift of a world to me`.


Liubov` Feigelmann

He loved women, and, as a rule, he chose the Jewish women. One of his prominent long poems of the 30s was dedicated to his girlfriend Liubka Feigelmann who cheated on him one day while wearing her kangaroo skin hat (do not mix up with the word of `skin head`. – AAO) and blue blouse.




Fragment of the 2010 Russian TV Series `The Attempt` («Покушение») where Yaroslav Smelyakov`s poem `Liubka Feigelmann` is even sung.

The USSR in the 30s of the 20 c. A dance pavilion. Animator’s voice: `Attention, everybody! Take your seats!` Little argument about who gonna perform further. The winner is a girl who is offering to sing a song to the poem `Liubka Feigelmann` by (as she’s said) `the remarkable poet and Red Army commander` so and so (that character implies Yaroslav Smelyakov). Audience is shouting `Hurrah!` The girl is proceeding after some argument with the embarrassed author.

A POET, AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN

In 1945 Yara wrote a poem `Sweet Beauties of Russia` («Милые красавицы России») where he expressed his gratitude to all the women of the USSR who sacrificed everything to victory. Yeah, he was a true gentleman, and he never joined men who several times after the war attempted to defame the female participation in the war. He was well aware of women’s contribution and said that men had owed a lot to them and must recoup their losses. Speaking for all men in his poem he promised to dress the postwar females with mink, lodge them in palaces, and sing them in poems full of adoration and admiration. And he really sang them in his poems.

МИЛЫЕ КРАСАВИЦЫ РОССИИ В буре электрического света// умирает юная Джульетта.//Праздничные ярусы и ложи//голосок Офелии тревожит.//В золотых и темно-синих блестках// Золушка танцует на подмостках.//Наши сестры в полутемном зале,//мы о вас еще не написали.//В блиндажах подземных, а не в сказке//Наши жены примеряли каски.//Не в садах Перро, а на Урале// вы золою землю удобряли.//На носилках длинных под навесом// умирали русские принцессы.//Возле, в государственной печали,//тихо пулеметчики стояли.//Сняли вы бушлаты и шинели,//старенькие туфельки надели.//Мы еще оденем вас шелками,//плечи вам согреем соболями.//Мы построим вам дворцы большие,//милые красавицы России.//Мы о вас напишем сочиненья,//полные любви и удивленья.




Yaroslav Smelyakov – The sweet beauties of Russia. Recited by Anastasiya Gulina, 17, Novokuznetsk, Kemerovskaya region, Siberia

Yaroslav Smelyakov
THE SWEET BEAUTIES OF RUSSIA
By the light of an electric tempest
Juliette`s dying showcasing efforts.
Festive boxes, circles in a theatre
Are by sweet Ophelia affected.
Dressed in gold, being dark blue spangled
Cinderella’s dancing a cute ballet.
Our sisters in the hall, in darkness,
Haven’t been described by us as icons.
Our wives tried on not hats, but helmets
Not in fairy tales, in trenches, shelters.
Fighting Perrault`s evil wolves from Europe,
They weren’t Little Riding Hoods, but troopers.
Not on stage as Juliettes and Ophelias
They were dying on the bloody hand frames.
`Killed in battle` ladies as it was required
The last tributes were paid by the gunners.
You took off the grey coats and pea jackets,
You put on old shoes of not designer labels.
Wait a bit! We’ll dress you in silk gowns,
Warm up shoulders of yours with sables, darlings.
We shall build for you big palaces and castles,
The sweet beauties of our dear Russia.
We shall sing you in all our writings
Full of adoration, ecstasizing.
(Trans. Andrew Alexandre Owie)

Personally, he fulfilled his promise, this Great Russian Knight and Troubadour of the ordinary paramours of the USSR.

THE JEWESS

Besides he also wrote a poem which’s considered to be to one of the most shocking and politically incorrect up to now, though, in my humble opinion , this poem innocent. Even at a time, not long before his death, when he was recognized, became a literary general and a kind of the poet laureate of the USSR Yaroslav Smelyakov could not have that poem printed. The reason was simple; this poem of his was misinterpreted as a rude anti-Semitic one. It was printed, quite occasionally, through an oversight, only after he had passed away. Why so? Because the title of that poem was `The Jewess` (like the same name opera La Juive by French composer Jacques-François-Fromental-Élie Halévy).
Synopsis The poem describes an old lady pensioner in a Soviet post office waiting for her turn to get her pension. Who is that old woman? She seems to be a relict of the past, history, she’s a former commissar, revolutionary, her life had been dedicated to the struggle for the New Society since her 19 years old. It is a collective, generalized personification of an entire revolutionary generation.




Fragment from the Russian feature film `The Good Comrade` («Служили два товарища»):
-We are speaking to you in plain Russian!
Lady Commissar : Wait! I’ve recognized you, Sir. You tortured me in the Intelligence Service! You are a white officer!
-You are mistaken, madam.
Lady Commissar : Look at your hands! They are all in blood!
Red Lettish Rifleman : Comrade Commissar! That’s what has been found in their machinegun cart!
Lady Commissar : All’s clear now. ... Shoot` em.

Of course, she spent 14 years in the GULAG barracks where her companions in adversity were those whom she persecuted, prostitutes, nuns, profiteers, etc. She gave all to the idea, political and professional activities, never giving a damn for her female fate, sometimes she was being afraid by enemies and her own comrades as she never felt pity either of her herself and others. The author calls her a true genius, by the way.




Lady Surgeon (in the 50s of the 20 c.):`On the fucking table without delay! Stop waiting for peritonitis!`

As every single genius she seems to be unnecessary in the modern society which had been built by persons like she was fifty years ago. People take care of their comfort, market wins ideology, none needs the yesterday’s heroes, and despite she’s formally honoured, even materially privileged she is forgotten. But she remains a lady of steel who regrets nothing. That’s what her ruthless look plainly says while she is passing her pension book to a cashier. (That very moment the author is standing behind her).

ME AND VERONICA

The poem `The Jewess` written in 1963 concerns not only Jewish women, but an entire special social strata of the professional revolutionaries, specialists and public figures where women of all nationalities of the USSR were represented quite good. It was a prominent social phenomenon. In the beginning many of them were struggling for women’s rights, equal opportunities of women and men. When young they learned in the Bestuzhev courses or the Szaniawski University in Russia, in the Universities in Paris and Sweden, studied engineering, science, medicine, etc. They actively participated in the Russian revolution, Civil war and building of the new society. Later they were army surgeons in the M.A.S.H.s of the WW2. Fortunately, most of them didn’t live long to see `perestroika` (`catastroika` (from `catastrophy`) as the Russian call this period of their history), but many of them were still alive and kicking in the early 80s, and I saw them, I talked to them in Russia, and I loved them. At the least, unlike many men, they had got balls.




That Russian feature film `My dear man` («Дорогой мой человек») of 1959 from the Yuri Herrmann`s novel `The Lifework` (Юрий Герман «Дело, которому служишь») describes the life and career of a gifted surgeon Vladimir Ustimenko. Being at war he was being influenced by two bosom friends, lady surgeons of the elder generation, one of them was Armenian (Ashkhen) while the other Russian (Xena). Both were the typical `Jewesses`.

From 26:45 to 30:59
Vladimir: Army Surgeon Ustimenko came to your order, Ma`am.
Ashkhen(strong Armenian accent): At last. I hope you agree that our profession is based on a moral law, do you? Do you agree with me?
Vladimir: No doubt!
Ashkhen: No doubt! Then how could you, Army Surgeon Ustimenko, sleep up to noon at that time? Be free to explain us, Sir!
Vladimir: I’m sorry.
Ashkhen: It’s out of all reason. One may think you rushed into attack! You keep silence. Nothing to say. Step back or you squash the kitten. What an example do you set by your behaviour and appearance for your subordinates? How could you dare to spend so much time for a sleep, eh?
Vladimir: I did not dare. It’s happened occasionally.
Ashkhen: Oc-ca-si-o-o-nal-ly?! Xenochka (informal from `Xena`. - AAO), just look at this Mr. `Occasionally`!
Xena: It seems to me, Ashkhen, that Army Surgeon Ustimenko should be given an exemplary penalty. And, on the whole, his generation is not too ...
Vladimir: What, Madam Military Doctor, is wrong with my generation?
Army Surgeon Veresova: Vladimir Ivanovich is not guilty. He kept awake till dawn.
Xena: It's beside the point in here now.
Army Surgeon Veresova: You haven’t understood me right, Xenaïda Mikhailovna.
Vladimir: (to Veresova): I can speak for myself.
Army Surgeon Veresova: I’m sorry, Sir!
Vladimir: Well, I was doing something no less important than your feeding the kittens!
Ashkhen: What?! What have you said, Sir?
Xena: Take it easy, Ashken. Don’t pay attention!
Ashkhen: Xena, be kind to leave us. Go! Army Surgeon Veresova, dismissed too! (to Vladimir) You insolent fella! Greenhorn! How could you say those awful words? What a bitchy thing to say! That person lost all her relatives in this war! All by herself! And you ... What do you know about her life? After graduating from the Sorbonne she went to the Saranski district, to the back of beyond! There were syphilis and trachoma at every turn there. The village constable told her `thee and thou` because ... do you know what is a village constable? The village did not tell her `Madam` because she was a subjection to police supervision. Xenochka had got no firewood to warm up the cold log hut. But despite all she gained her point! She drove out those dreadful diseases!
Vladimir: We also have some achievements! She must have gone there because she was in love with somebody.
Ashkhen: What does it have to do with love? She went there just to conquer sluggishness and ignorance! ... Tell me the truth, were you again at forefront helping the wounded? Well, sit down! it’s my order! To feed the kittens ... Xenochka was always at the most dangerous places. In 1919 she joined the Party and we were together the field surgeons aboard the armoured train `Death to the enemies!` Eat something. Later you can’t. You look not good. Help yourself to butter. Spread it thicker, get more.
Vladimir: Thanks. I don’t want to.
Ashkhen: Don’t be offended! Lately one patient has called me an old witch because I prohibited smoking. But, on the other hand, I really must have had something of an old witch.

31:26 - 32:12
Ashkhen (singing the Revolutionary songs `Kakhovka` and `The fatal battle`): Anything wrong, Ustimenko?
Vladimir: Honestly speaking, Ashkhen, I am afraid that this soldier can die…
Ashkhen: `I am afraid` is not a manly lexicon, Volodichka, you’d better leave these words for children. Baby, we have not right to be afraid here! And call for help! Do you still feel you are flying in your dreams?
Vladimir: Sometimes.
Ashkhen: It’s because you are still not adult. Teenagers often have such dreams. Even if these boys grow a ...
Vladimir: A what?
Ashkhen: A very little moustache!

Alas, sweet Ashkhen and Xenochka were killed in action. See the way they looked like in their young years. 37:39 - 37:47

Those women, quite European ladies by education, they were special, cultured, cultural, tough and attractive. The Jewish, Polish, Armenian, Georgian, Russian ladies, they were all Jewesses, daughters of Marx, Freud and Einstein, and they were true personalities. The lady whom I befriended was of Polish origin, she wore gold-rimmed spectacles, smoked the strongest cigarettes `Belomor` and `Sever` (The North) and, of course, she was an MD.



I liked sci-fi, and she presented me the illustrated Czech book for children by Ivo Štuka, Teodor Rotrekl. Šest dnů na Luně 1. (Six Days on Luna 1). I keep it until now.



As to her name, she was Veronica. Was she a Jewess? Abso-bloody-lutely! As to Yara`s poem it was a hymn to them. There was nothing anti-Semitic in it, as you can see now. He paid tribute to them. I am grateful to him for them, for my dear Veronicas, for all dear Jewesses no matter by what nationality they were. I saw the real women. They served for the humanity, yes, they were sometimes witches, but they were never bitches showing their tits and dancing in the temples. So, girls, stop twisting you tits, better enter the Paris-Sorbonne (medical department).

THE POET`S PROGRESS

SHRINKING BACK - BEDLAM
Yaroslav Smelyakov was a legendary person, and he was never afraid of anything. He reminds me the characters of Mikhail Bulgakov`s novel. Once he bought a cake in the restaurant of the Central House of the Men of Letters (CHML) and put it on the head of the manager who prevented his visits there. After that he ordered appetizers and vodka and started expecting the further steps of the manager. Having washed himself the manager came to him and inquired politely: `Yaroslav Vasiliyevich, what would you choose, police or asylum?` Yara answered that the asylum would fit him best as the police liked fist fighting, and having spent there two weeks he wrote a cycle of brilliant poems which he would have hardly written as a busy top official in the Union of the Soviet Writers.

FUCKING AROUND – BORDELLO
Yaroslav Smelyakov read a manuscript of a very young and improbably pretty poetess. He warned her: `Girl! You’ve got all chances to struggle through, yet they will be fucking you all right!` And it really happened so, she became the famous and prominent poetess, but she was being fucked desperately. Later she started fucking men and women as a mad sewing-machine too. A LOOPanarium!

SUICIDIAL AND TRANSIENT – DORTER (BUNKER)
Once in the early 60s young and beautiful Yevgeniy Yevtusheko (Russian poet #1 of that time) and Bella Akhmadullina (Russian poetess #1 of that time) came to Smelyakov`s office and declared: `Yaroslav Vasiliyevich, we`ve made up our minds to get married!` Yara looked at them and exclaimed: `This makes me remember the wedding of Eva Braun and Adolf Hitler!`

PAULINE, MISTRESS OF THE TROPES AND GODDESS OF THE RHYMES

Pauline Sibagatullina (Paulina Rashitovna Sibagatullina, born in 1976 in Siberia) is one of the most promising Russian poetesses, a permanent member of the theatrical company `Comedy Woman` (Moscow). In 2012 she also lip-synched Miss Macintosh in the Astérix et Obélix: Au Service de Sa Majesté. Her dramatic character in the company is Madame Pauline, the Yugoslavian Russian writing poetess and high society lioness and lady wino from St. Petersburg. (The theatre of the Comedy Woman like the commedia dell'arte has got several recognizable characters). Irony, satire and humour are main features of Pauline`s witty poetry. Read a poem which may be considered her `business card`: Не стоит громко называть меня поэтом//Пожалуй, это будет чересчур. //Достаточно скромней приветом – //Владыка рифм, богиня поэтических фигур!

Avoid of calling me a poet, don't be formal,
As it may be bombastic and too rife!
It would be fine with me, exact and loyal
If you`d call me the goddess of the rhymes.
(Trans. Andrew Alexandre Owie)



0,https://www.youtube.com/embed/tOE_VuPGsJI?feature=player_detailpage]
Madame Pauline and Dmitriy Khrustalev - One-Woman Show (Recital)

Dmitriy: And now, on this stage, there gonna appear the author of such collections of poems as `Love per mille` and `The faceted glass rhymes`. Meet a poetess from St. Petersburg, Madame Pauline.
Pauline: Я сок березовый вчера пила//Вы представляете, как это вкусно//Но что поделать, ведь в лесу//Нет совершенно никакой закуски.

I drank birch wine last night,
You can’t imagine how t`was delicious
Alas! As always I got drunk!
They don`t serve hot dogs, even vicious!
(Trans. Andrew Alexandre Owie)

Dmitriy: Bravo! Pauline, Cherie, you are in high spirits as I can see, you must have picked up a new cavalier, I wonder what’s his name? Johnny Walker, Jack Daniels, Rémy Martin?
Pauline: If only, Miten`ka, I’m celebrating the anniversary of my poetic activities.
Dmitriy: Who could have believed that? So for how many years have you been a sheet in the wind ... sorry, have been taking a sip of sweet* of the Muses? Five years, a decade, 15? Two decades, really?
Pauline: Mitya, it’s improper for men to ask a lady to answer such things!
Dmitriy: Well, Paulinochka, I have to congratulate you on the 20th anniversary of your creative activities!
Pauline: More than 20.
Dmitriy: Ah, never mind! Better tell me if there is a recital, stand-up party, etc.
Pauline: Yep! You are all welcome, 16 p.m., to the Music Hall as it is to be there where you will be able to listen to my five works of art in the bar during an interval of the Jubilee Concert of Dmitry Khvorostovsky (an outstanding Russian operatic singer. – A.A.O).
Dmitriy: Work of arts? This word in your mouth makes me feel funny indeed!
Pauline: May I make funny you a little bit right now?
Dmitriy: Go on!
Pauline: A poem from a cycle `The moth-eaten lyrics`.


Pauline Sibagatullina

Когда б не мамины гамаши,//То не сидела б я в тоске,//В кино бы сходила или даже//
Могла б кататься на доске.//Когда бы не мамины гамаши,//Что позабыла я надеть,//То пионервожатый Паша//Мог мною и не овладеть.//Когда б не мамины гамаши,//То злой насильник во дворе,//Да не в чужом, а прямо в нашем,//Атаковал меня извне.//Когда б не мамины гамаши, //Когда б не маменькин наказ,//То лет на шесть, наверно, раньше,//Я испытала бы оргазм.

If not my dear mommy’s gaiters
I would have hardly missed my friends,
I would have gone to movie theatres
And even practised roller skate.
If not my dear mommy’s gaiters
That I neglected to put on
Paul, the Boy Scout helmsman,
Would’ve hardly had me right on board.
If not my dear mommy’s gaiters
A cruel maniac in the yard
(The yard of ours, not neighbour`s)
Would’ve hardly found me and fucked.
If not my dear mommy’s gaiters,
If not my mommy’s strict mandate
I wouldn’t have six years later
Achieved my orgasm, it’s a fact!
(Trans. Andrew Alexandre Owie)

Dmitriy: Well, Paulinochka, I’ve just listened to you. Why do you pay attention to a nightmare you’ve dreamt, well, why to write it down and rhyme it, huh? You shoulda relaxed your brain; I mean not only your own brain, but mainly brains of our spectators!
Pauline: I’ll not buy that one!
Dmitriy: What do you mean?
Pauline: You won’t sucсeed in upsetting me!
Dmitriy: To upset you can only the price of a bottle of cognac at the trade exhibition! Besides it’s you who celebrate the 20th anniversary, not me ... So be free to continue....
Pauline: THE PAR - TING!!!

РАССТАВАНИЕ Я шубу норковую выпустила в лес,//Убегай от меня, ты свободна!//Вдруг вижу - на шубу мою кто-то влез,//Смотрю - барсук на ней скачет проворно!//Боже мой, что он с ней вытворял, -//Маньяк черно-белый пушистый!//Всюду нюхал ее, ковырял//Так нагло, так жадно, так быстро!..//А шубе смотрю это нравится все...//Лежит как влюбленная дура!//Барсук как шалаву таскает ее//Так нагло, так жадно, так хмуро!//Все! Стихло! Доволен барсучий мужлан//Ушел в свою темную чащу//Ненужная, брошенная словно хлам//Лежит моя шуба и плачет!...//Не плачь моя шуба! Пусть ворс твой помят//Но после такого разврата, -//Родишь ты мне маленьких шубанят,//И мы с тобой будем богаты!

Pauline Sibagatullina
THE PARTING (MINK LOVE)
I’ve set my mink coat free in the woods:
`Sling your hook, cut your lucky, be happy!`
So what? It’s being fucked, and the dude,
The badger, has advantaged of it as an expert.
O Lord! What the heck is he doing with it?
Sex maniac, black and white, so much furry!
It`s pecking it after he’d groomed it and sniffed
Impatiently, blatantly, sorely.
I see my mink coat being pleased, it wants more,
She’s lying as a woman in love, very stupid!
The badger is snogging and having it all,
Being impudent, horny and gloomy!
It’s come! Peace and quiet! The male satisfied!
It’s now faraway deep in forest.
And feeling being used, maybe raped or tried out,
My mink coat is lying and sobbing.
Don’t cry, my mink coat! Though fur of yours rumpled
On the score of the terrible fucking,
You’ll give birth to several mink coats of small size,
And you and I will be much moneyed!
(Trans. Andrew Alexandre Owie)

Dmitriy: Bravo, Pauly! What I appreciate best of all is your customary setting forth the practical aims! Thank you very much! It was Madame Pauline! THE END

* sweet wine, nectar, ambrosia


Comedy Women

WHERE ARE WOMEN, THERE`S A COMEDY




The Comedy Women: How to rob a police station!
http://rutube.ru/video/8e2f78c7be9bd27ac819c529c09bf1d1/

HOW TO ROB A POLICE STATION?

POLICE STATION, MOSCOW, RUSSIA
Policeman (Dmitriy Khrustalev): (writing an explanatory note) So notice, damn it, note ... explanatory note ..., not that ... maybe a report ... `Me being in a state of alcoholic intoxication .. . exercised the G.I. weapon because ... I was in a state of alcoholic intoxi ... shit! it won’t do ... it will be better to ... `Being in a drunken state I exercised the G.I. weapon by reason of being in a state of alcoholic intoxication`. What rubbish!
Two girls wearing tights on their heads are entering the hall.
Katya (Ekaterina Varnava (Barnabas Βαρνάβας)): Stop! Don’t move! Show your hands so that I could see them.
Policeman: What?
Katya: (to Nadya:): Shit! Can see nothing! Haven’t I warned you? (to the policeman)Stop! Do not move! Robbery is in progress!
Policeman: What? Can’t grasp it! Is it an open day in an asylum today?
Nadya(Nadezhda Sysoyeva): Shud up, you red-haired!
Katya: Why have you called him a red-haired one?
Nadya: But it was you who`d ordered not to say the real names and nicknames!
Katya: I meant our names, fool!
Policeman: Hey you, stop it! What do you need, huh?
Katya: We need your money!
Nadya: Yep, money!
Policeman: Ah! Money! Then go and rob the bank across the street!
The girls are choking with laughter.



Katya: We aren`t fools to rob the bank against the police station! Are you a fool or something?
Policeman: Get out quick! We have not got money in here!
Nadya: Well, just do not pretend to be an innocent lamb, we are watching TV, after all ... Your salaries were increased in two and half times! It was Putin who had said it!
Policeman: You stupid fools from a monkey circus!
Katya: You’ve meant the monkeys from the Foolov`s Circus, have you? You slow-witted!
Policeman: I can’t say anything. I’ve sent you in the right direction, make it out yourselves!
Well, leave for there, I’ve got a terrible headache, must write my report ...
Katya: (lisping) You’re mistaken, mister! (to Nadya) I’ve forgotten what I’ve been saying to him!
Nadya: You’ve been threatening him.
Katya: To be short, I`m pregnant ... If you don`t ...
Nadya: Wrong, it’s wrong!
Katya: A-a-a-h! Do you see anything in my hand? (In English):This is a gun! If you keep resisting it gonna make: `Bang! Bang!`
Policeman: God is my witness! I’ve done the best I can! You are asking for trouble!
Nadya: (to Katya) Diana, bump him off!
Policeman`s lighting his cigarette from the girl’s pistol and returning to his place
Katya: (to Nadya:) Alexa! Why did you tell me that it was the real gun?



Nadya: Never expected that newsvendors in news stalls would be so deceitful!
Katya: Stop! Don’t move, or else I light you!
Nadya: And I finish smoking you! Ha-ha-ha!
Policeman: Take off your tights! Gonna register you.
Katya: (unbuttoning her shorts) He’s just like that night taxi-driver!
Nadya: What? Again?
Policeman: Not these, tights on your tops!
Katya: Oh, only upper tights!
Policeman: Girls! Are you crazy? Do you understand you can be jailed for twelve years each?
Katya: Twelve? Years! Gonna go nuts! Just fancy when I’m released I’ll be 42 years old, right?
Nadya: Diana, are you indeed twenty years old now?
Katya: Most likely yes! Listen, uncle policeman!
Policeman: Ah?!
Katya: We haven’t been planning it, to spend 13 years in prison!



Nadya: No, we haven’t, no!
Katya: We were planning to get money for the concert of David Guetta!
Nadya: Simply, we haven’t enough money to buy the second ticket only!
Policeman: Well, where have you got money for the first one from? Robbed an ambulance? Or an emergency repair service, huh?
Nadya: We were just being driven in a taxi by Mozhaika str., and the driver asked us to take off our tights!
Katya: (to each other)Stop! Didn’t we agree not to tell about it? (to the policeman) We have just picked up this money in the street!
Nadya: We’ve not done anything bad to get it!
Policeman: Not gonna get involved in all this .. plus I must write my report ... so be it, not gonna jail you! But you gonna miss the concert of your whatshisname David too! What sum have you managed to save up for the first ticket?
Katya: 4,700.
Policeman: Not much, yet gimme it.
Nadya: We can kiss our Guetta goodby! (switching the record)
Man’s Voice: Internal Inquiry Office! You’re under arrest!



Policeman: What’s this?!
Man’s Voice: We’ve been working out this operation for two years, as your police station received many complaints.
Katya: Gonna get nuts, Alexa! Never expected you to be a male!
Man’s Voice: I am not Alexa! I’m Alexei Yaksov!
Katya: Wow! But we’ve been living in one flat, taking baths together, rubbing each other ... Just wait, that night in the taxi, how on earth could you ...
Man’s Voice: It is the price we have to pay for choosing that profession.
Nadya: Gonna get nuts!
Policeman: Comrade Boss! We are both policemen, we should support each other, can we come to an agreement somehow, eh?
Man’s Voice: If I catch you next time ...
Policeman: Yessir!
Man’s Voice: Now leave the office for a minute! I gotta contact people at the top and stop the special mission unit!
Policeman: Yessir! Comrade major!
Katya: Alexa, look how much is there?
Nadya: 50,000!
Katya: Do you know what it means? It’s the V.I.P. places!
Together:Te-te-te-te!
Katya:(responding to an unintentional touch of her face by Nadya) Shit! It hurts! I say, let’s go to your daddy one more time and ask him to read for recording several phrases ... tomorrow we might visit the tax police!
Nadya: Oh, yes! It`s an idea! THE END


Onegin Hacıqasımov, poet and Russian Orthodox church priest

By Onegin Yusif oğlu Hacıqasımov
E-E-E-VE! A-A-DAM!
You and me, we’re a recipe of eternity,
You and me, we’re a symbol of love,
You and me , it is when in each other’s eyes
We look af-fec-tion-ate-ly!




Larissa Mondrus singing `You and me` (1967). Lyrics by Onegin Yusif oğlu Hacıqasımov. Music by Eghil Schwarz (by the way, husband of Larissa Mondrus)

Ages are crumbling,
The world’s getting old,
It’s us, who are only eternal,
Just you and me.

You and me, we were forever indeed,
You and me, we’re sadness and joy,
You and me, it’s the first day of life
Of all the worlds.

You and me, we don’t need too much.
You and me, what do we want?
We just want hap-pi-ness!
(Trans. Andrew Alexandre Owie)




The Comedy Women: Noisy Ladies On a Plane http://rutube.ru/video/792b42d52633b3238e1034b47d7fef42/

NOISY LADIES ON A PLANE

Stewardess (Pauline Sibagatullina): Ladies and gentlemen! Our board Milan Moscow’s ready to take off. Fasten your belts, please. Do not leave your seats.
Russian Big Business Lady (Ekaterina Skulkina): Well, I like that! Better fasten your own tongue! Can’t you see that not all the princesses has sat down on their peas yet! (She implies `Prindsessen paa Ærten` (The Princess and the Pea) (1835), a fairy tale by great Danish classical author Hans Christian Andersen. - AAO) O Lord! (heavily sighing)
Russian Very Important Person (Lady High Official from Siberia) (Marina Fedunkiv): (to the Business Lady) Vasiliyevna! Cuckoo!
Business Lady: A-a-a-h! Ta-ma-ra Borisovna! Honestly, I thought you had had gotten stuck in the metal detector for good with your golden jaw! A-ha-ha-ha-ha! You were in one nightie and were ringing like Christmas bells! A-ha-ha-ha!
Lady V.I.P.: You shoulda known better Tamara Borisovna! Tamara Borisovna knows quite well whom to square and whom ... f.. off!
Business Lady: Foo! You have just told me the same only whispering in my ear, so what? Where’s the scream? A-ha-ha-ha!
Lady V.I.P.: It’s because I am now an air intrigue! Hop-la! Got the bottom of me, will you?
Business Lady: After 800 grams of cognac I’d get the bottom of you a treat!



Lady V.I.P.: Well, what to say ... I sat down on that belt ... on where the suitcases are placed ... just for a second to bite off a price tag attached to my panties ... and felt me being whirled and carried away into the compartment, into that abyss ... but there’s no great loss without some small gain, so I was the first one aboard! A-ha-ha-ha-ha!
Business Lady is placing her bags on the knee of the next seat foreign girl
Foreign girl : (indignantly) Hey, what’s happening?
Business Lady : (implying the foreign girl, but addressing the Lady V.I.P.): I seem to have smashed something in my bag! Ha-ha-ha!
Lady V.I.P.: (addressing her neighbour) Ma-an! Ma-an! Do you like caviar? Just look in my bag! I’m bringing 16 kg of it! I’m bringing it back! Ha-ha-ha! Ask me why? Cuz it’s fucking silly to spread our caviar on their plastic bread!
Young Russian gentleman : Thank you, ma`am. I am afraid I have to abstain from eating it. Thank you in any case, ma`am.
Lady V.I.P.: Oh! I see you’re Russian! I say, they provide the passengers with packets for their vomitive, they must be somewhere over there, I gonna put some caviar for you in one of them.
Young Russian gentleman: Please don’t. No need, I ask you.
Lady V.I.P. : Stop it! Auntie gonna let you have it for free! Ha-ha-ha! C’mon, boy! It’s like a Viagra all right! Yet the Viagra is much cheaper! You see? C’mon, guy, open up your starling-house in a friendly way!
Young Russian gentleman: Haven’t I said yet ... I don`t need .. your ... caviar!
A drop of caviar drops down on the young Russian gentleman’s trousers.
Lady V.I.P.: Pardon, monsieur! I see my caviar on your calves! Cav`s on calves! Ha-ha!
Young Russian gentleman is calling the stewardess.



Young Russian gentleman: Be kind to straighten that passenger out! I have to complain of an outrageous breach of all limits on your plane!
Lady V.I.P.: Oh! You should have warned beforehand that you’re a gay! One more minute and I was about to spawn!
Stewardess: Lady! We gonna take off now! So sit down please! You’ll serve us so much, if you do!
Lady V.I.P.: Darling! Our hubbies will serve our time for us! A-ha-ha-ha! (singing and caressing the hand of the young Russian gentleman) `It’s so hard for an official to be in chains of love! Her young lover wants to have a jeep or part!`
Business Lady: (counting money displaying her wealth) 24 thousand euros, 36 thousand euros , let it be 40 thousand euros. Stewardess, my heavenly angel! (a catchword line from a pop song `Stewardess whose name’s Jeanne` by a Russian pop music superstar Vladimir Presnyakov. - AAO)
Stewardess: How may I serve you, ma`am?
Business Lady: Have you got elastic bands to have my money tied together?
Stewardess: Sorry, ma`am, we haven’t got the elastic bands, sorry!
Business Lady: What does it mean? Today you’ve got no elastic band, and tomorrow I’ll lose my right to sock it to you? I’m kidding! (kindly) Go and be not afraid. (pulling the foreign girl’s hair)
Foreign girl: Ouch! What are you doing, you bitch?
Business Lady: Yes, yes, I’m just after lying on beach. Thanks. Thank you very much.
Foreign girl: I am a famous photo model!
Business Lady: Monster? (rhyming just for fun, kindly) Monsters marry ugly persons! A-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! ... Stop staring at me, you intestinal worm! Better look out of the window! They are just now handling our luggage! If you have felt sick, you’ll take a siesta!



Lady V.I.P.: (to Business Lady and the Young Russian gentleman while trying to fasten her seatbelt) When flying here I still could fasten it ...
Business Lady: Never mind, after we’ve taken off, you gonna lose your weight due to the pressure fall ... slightly! A-ha-ha-ha! (to stewardess) Boy, fetch us little vodka, will you?
Stewardess: I am not a boy!
Business Lady: The keyword has been `little vodka` in my phrase !
Lady V.I.P.: And a handful of blueberry! ... Gonna go and stretch my legs!
Stewardess: Walking during taxing is strictly forbidden, lady!
Lady V.I.P.: It’s me who is taxing in here, Junge! (ship's boy in German. – AAO)
Business Lady: (comfortably reclining on the foreign girl’s shoulder to make selfie)
Foreign girl: Don’t touch me, lady.
Business Lady: Don’t be so foreign at last! (tenderly embracing the foreign girl) Let’s have a group selfie, or else my subordinates don’t believe what a colon bacillus I was flying together with. A-hah-ha-ha. Good girl! Well done!
Lady V.I.P.: (returning from the lavatory, addressing the stewardess) Fuck! One can hardly breathe in your lavatory!
Stewardess: `Tis impossible! No smoking on our plane!
Lady V.I.P.: What? You do not trust the word of a dignitary? Then face with the fact! (opening her mouth full of smoke) A column of smoke right in my mouth! So go and impose order on the plane. Is it a business class or not? Your pilots shouldn’t do it. (laying her legs on the knees of the Young Russian gentleman) I say, be kind, massage the auntie’s little hind paws! C’mon! Rub`em a little!
Young Russian gentleman: Lady, it goes the limits! Get your goddam legs out of my knees!
Lady V.I.P.: So you’ve just now disdained `em, right? Are you aware of your having lost a three room flat in Siberia facing the beach? (singing) `Doves are flying over our apartment ...` To lose such an eco-friendly opportunity!
Business Lady: Aren’t you a stupid fool, huh! She controls the real estate of all Siberia! With a scratch of her pen ...
Young Russian gentleman: Enough for me! I’m sick and tired of you. Let me go to the economy class!
Lady V.I.P.: Sit down, you air monk! None wants you to sacrifice in here!
Stewardess: (pointing out to the noisy ladies) Comrade Captain! That’s the women for you. And that one even smoked on a plane!
Business Lady: Be glad that the very Missus Lopyryova missed that flight!
Captain: Well, thanks a lot! What’s it all about?
Business Lady: (to the captain)Look here, Lindberg! Still expect to remain the pilot of the international flights? Right? I say! Let’s drop in Norilsk on the way to pick up a little right person, huh?
Captain: Nope, vice versa, gonna set down two at once right now! If they haven’t calm down ... Will they, perhaps, eh?
Lady V.I.P.: I’m a customer. I’m paying for all here! Even for 120 kg of excess weight! You see?
Young Russian gentleman: 120 kg of extra weight are sitting next to me right now!
Business Lady: Just look at him! Is he Duncan MacLeod? Is it a flight of the Hollywood stars? (to the foreign girl) I hope you’re not the Alien! A-ha-ha-ha!
Foreign girl : What?
Business Lady : Shut up your mouth, or else that monster gonna get out of it!
Captain: Well, ladies, if you do not stop right now, we’ll have to call the flying squad! And you’ll have to spend 15 days on the public works!
Lady V.I.P.: It’s me who will get the public works for you! Due to the stratospheric lawlessness!
Business Lady : (to the captain) Do you know who I am at all? I am the Czarina of the KMAA!
Stewardess : Of the wha-a-a-t?!
Business Lady : Of the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Area!
Lady V.I.P.:(to the captain) Do you know who’s my husband? If you’d known you would have married him yourself!
Young Russian gentleman: Look, it must be Stas Mikhailov! (the most popular pop star of Russia for the time being, the minion and benjamin of all women. - AAO)
All women: Where?!
The young Russian gentleman is giving a shot of a long-acting hypnotic to the Lady V.I.P.
Young Russian gentleman: Relax! I am a doctor. It was a sedative!
Business Lady: (to him) What are you doing? Are you crazy?
He is giving her a shot, but medicine is failing to work.
Young Russian gentleman: (surprised) She can’t be alcoholized to such an extent!
Business Lady: What? Alcoholized? Another one! What have you done, I ask you!
Captain is knocking her out to the applause of all passengers.
Stewardess : Ladies and gentlemen, captain and crew wish you a pleasant flight! Thank you! THE END (Trans. Andrew Alexandre Owie)


WeMons: We`re all Mona Lisas!


Rule, Britannia!

THE KICKY MOUSE MISCHIEVOUS POETRY, PROSE, PICTURES AND THOUGHTS (IN MEMORY OF BRITISH MOCKER THE BYRON)

Nitty Mouse: Byron, incessant as heavy rain. Zeus.

THE KICKY MOUSE OUTRAGEOUS STORIES AND SKETCHES


After Nikolai Nosov`s `The Adventures of Dunno and his friends`
TALENT AND ADMIRERS, OR DUNNO THE POET
After Dunno failed to become an artist he made up his mind to be a poet and write poems. He`s known a poet who lived in Dandelion str. His real name was Poundling but as all poets he was fond of beautiful pen names. As soon as Poundling started writing poems he has become well known as Floweret.
Once Dunno visited him and asked to teach him to write poems.
-Have you got a talent, - Floweret asked him.
-Surely!
-Gonna verify it. Do you know what the rhyme is?
-Rime? I dunno, - Dunno said.
-Rhyme appears when two words have got the same endings. Duck - F.. ck, Walrus-Sirus. Grasped the idea, eh?
-Don`t just! Be sure for it!
-Tell me now what is a rhyme for the word `ring`.
-Herring.
-But I see no rhyme here.
-Why not? They end the same way.



-That`s not enough., - Floweret explained. - The words must be similar to form a smooth pair. Then only they`ll rhyme well. Attention, please! Stick - brick, stove - grove, book - brook.
-I see, I see! - Dunno shouted. - That`s great! Ha-ha-ha!
-Now invent a rhyme for the word `oakum`, - Floweret offered.
-Gokkum, soccum.
-There are not such stupid words!
-Are you kidding, dude?
-Nope! You must use the words that exist and never invent the new ones!
-What if I can`t?
-Then you`re giftless.
-Then try your your best to find a rhyme for your `oakum` yourself!
- A deal! - Flowered agreed.
He began to walk around a room and look at the ceiling examining options.
-Oakum, Nockum, Flockum, Trockum. Well, this word has got no rhyme!
-So you are wrong and I am not giftless! You see?
-Gifltless or not, but I`m sick and tired of you. I feel my head gonna blast. Go and try to write poems combining a meaning and rhymes, and poems will flow as a stream.
-Is it really so simple!
-Duh! Gotta get a talent, the rest will come.
Dunno returned home and began to write poems immediately. At last, at dawn, he invited other residents of their Flowerburg, city of the tiny folks to listen to poems he wrote about them. Being flattered all came in.



-First of all, I gonna recite a poem about our Know-all.
Know-all swam in the river,
He caught cold, he`s got high fever.
-What?! It`s all lies! I`m healthy!
-Of course, you are. I wrote it for the rhyme`s sake. Besides why to write about the real things? They are real all the same!
-Gonna get a sock, eh? But ... before it tell what you`ve written about the other folks.



-Bustler.
Bustler, hungry as a lion,
Can`t stop gulping a cold iron!
-Bros! - Bustler screamed. - Hold me seven at once, or I give him a hiding right now! I never ever swallowed any iron, neither hot, nor cold uns`.



-You did not, I know, - Dunno explained. - I was made to do it by the rhyme! Better listen what I`ve wrote about our Perhapser.
Our Perhapser, shush! A secret!
He hides a sweet under his pillow.
Having heard it Perhapser made a quick run over to his home and back and exlaimed in anger:
-There`s no candy under my pillow! You`re a liar!
But Dunno just stated that Perhapser must have understood nothing in poetry. --Poetry is when you write that something is under one`s pillow while there`s nothing under it!



-Friends! - T` was Doc Pillulenik who lost his temper at last. - Stop this outrage! Should we all stand and listen to Dunno`s lies?
-Agree! - the tiny folks shouted. - This is not poems but teasing rhymes!
But Know-all, Bustler and Perhapser disagreed. They insisted on Dunno`s going on with his mischievous ditties. The rest, however, objected to the very idea until Dunno said that he would go to other folks to read his poems about his friends.
-What? - the community gasped. - You gonna defame us! If you ever do, never come back to us again.
After that Dunno had to surrender under the condition they wouldn`t be angry with him. Since then Dunno hasn`t been writing poems any more.
THE END (Trans. by Andrew Alexandre Owie)



After Christopher Marlowe, Tsai, `Abgeschmiert aus hundert Metern`and what not!
DR. MAUSTUS AND ALL, ALL, ALL
PREFACE
There are people chosen by God. There are people chosen by devil. There are people chosen only by helminthes. There are people chosen by scholars. His name is Christopher Marlowe. If that wonderful guy could have ever been back to life he would’ve written quite a different play, or, maybe, a vauDEVILle.

Misty FARLOWE
SUUM CUIQUE (ballet-vaudeville with the brisk acrobatics and smooth tectonic)
Faustus is wearing the WW2 German Luftwaffe green uniform. He’s just now made salto mortale from the old good plane the Junkers from a height of just 100 m with an unopened parachute. He seems to be alive but none’s noticing this.




Paratoopers` informal hymn `Abgeschmiert aus hundert Metern` to the tune of a Russian folk song.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=UNfJXhIgYRo

The comrades have encircled his remnants thinking that tomorrow the same thing is likely to happen with them. His bones are broken, his soul, however, is on its way to heaven while sanitary assistants are gathering together Maustus` flesh.

MAUSTUS PhD (man’s voice):
Two black -winged angels (I’m in fear),
Pull me along to the Great Assize,
Right in the gateway devils drink their beer
And piss at times.

The last line means they do not give a damn for people and their souls! Before entrance to the Paradise he’s met by St. Peter who sees that he’s just another paratrooper and says that there’s no free place for Faustus in the Paradise. In the gates of the Hell there standing the Devil himself and he’s also sending Maustus away as the devils and sinners are equally afraid of paratroopers too. Why? Because they’re the green devils themselves. In Walhalla Maustus sees the Scandinavian God Odin also wearing the paratroopers` uniform. Being rather tipsy Mr. Odin is telling our sweet Faustus:
- If you’re one of us, let’s go right now to have some beer (Bierchen!) and then we gonna make love with girls. The guys are all here and it’s you only they are still missing and waiting for. Glueck auf! And help yourself to our patented shrimps!

SHRIMP (woman’s voice):
Once I was born as a shrimp in ocean
To freely swim, letting flows pass my barbels.
What will be death of mine, I had got no notion.
He wears the trunks. A bottle of beer in his five.

CALVIN’s satisfactorily summing up (rubbing his hands): HABENT SUA FATA HOMINI! Every person (and every single shrimp) has got their own predestined fate! Well done, Mr. Farlowe!



Dmitry Sheshnev (Russia)
WINTERMAERCHEN SIBIRIEN (THE SIBERIAN WINTER FAIRY TALE)
This poem in prose is shockingly unjust but beautifully gloomy and murky. It could be a good preface to a Hollywood thriller or computer game. Unlike me the author from Komsomolsk on the Amur (Russian Far East, or Pacific Russia) is a pessimist. Besides, I know for certain that ice of Alaska is hardly warmer than ice of Siberia. Alas, despite the glimpse of the literary talent the author has failed to adapt himself to the harsh as Arctic or Antarctic reality of the moderm liberal democratic society so far. He is likely to belong to the social stratum of the have-nots and hasn`t got any social capital, connections, etc.



The emptiness of the Territory where once lived mammoths and Mongol-like barbars entirely absorbed the author. Yes, Siberia is vast, but in reality none wants to live there. Only the most stubborn poor devils crushed by hopeless, ever leaden sky. Besides, there’s also unpopulated Far East suffering from its own wilderness, local caliphs*, submissive population which is being subsidized for their hard conditions of life to an extent incomparable with the level of the wages and salaries of Moscow. This population endures a sheer rip-off practicing by Moscow the mother country that robs the local population with a pure British colonialist fervour. This is a country of the shocking survival rather than of the normal life. And, again, IT WAS the hand of the eternal Chill which’s been taking you by your throats for chiliads THAT wiped you imbecile smiles from your faces (the author noticed it to the point) .. Yeah-yeah, we are that very `Winterland` behind the high walls ... Our people are senseless cadavers being burnt by frost, pacing along the never melting snow and cursed for their never-ending dreamlike lives in icy Hell which’s name is Russia ... *king for a day, timeserver
(Trans. by Andrew Alexandre Owie)

There`s an honest feature film about Siberia as it is nowadays shot in Germany in 2012. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1833843/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1 Ausgerechnet Sibirien (Siberia is on the right side (on the map).




Ausgerechnet Sibirien - Trailer (2012) http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=JTGzRy5VtAA



VILLAGE GREENWITCH
Epigraph
Open country, and beyond the village fence I stand!
Yes, I stand! What a blessed moment! An expanse, I start to chant!




Peasants` poet Yesenin (poetic battle Yesenin vs. Mayakovsky in St. Petersburg’s Polytechnic Institute in the 20s). He expressed moods of the free farmers on the eve of industrialization and loss of the traditional farmers` way of life. Poem recited by actor Sergei Bezrukov acting Yesenin. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABCieWL2sBI&feature=player_detailpage

CANADIAN FARMERS
We stand by the window absorbed in the daydreams
At home on Lake Erie`s shore.
December. The cold moon hang over the fir trees,
All was in the new-fallen snow.

AN AMERICAN FARMER
I grow crops for people, yes, I sow them all day,
Afterwards the whole bunch drinks late into the night,
Late at night the sowers sing their merry songs,
Our tastes don’t differ on the whole,
Apart the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Red Hot Chili Peppers.
The Red Hot Chili Peppers, that’s what I sing alone!




A Russian folk song `From behind the isle to the midstream` (00:00 - 0:30)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Ix6FgWhGFmU

VOLGA REGION FARMERS ON THEIR WAY TO THEIR FIELDS:
From behind the isle to the midstream
In the open of the river waves
There were sailing out the ornamented
Boats of the farmers with the raked stems.



THE KICKY MOUSE MERRY ADULT RHYMES

Improvised verses based on my previous translations but `tversed` i.e. abridged and transformed into ottava rima, an eight-line stanza developed in Italy, usually associated in English with Byron and in Russian with Pushkin and Lermontov. The standard rhyme scheme is a-b-a-b-a-b-c-c and in English the lines are usually iambic pentameters.

А.С. Пушкин
ДОМИК В КОЛОМНЕ
Четырехстопный ямб мне надоел:
Им пишет всякий. Мальчикам в забаву
Пора б его оставить. Я хотел
Давным-давно приняться за октаву.
А в самом деле: я бы совладел
С тройным созвучием. Пущусь на славу!
Ведь рифмы запросто со мной живут;
Две придут сами, третью приведут. 1830


Puskin’s writing desk in St Petersburg’is a photo-painting by Huib Fens 2014. Gicleeprint on Hahnemuhle ( Photo Rag 45 by 62 cm)

Alexandre Pushkin
A LITTLE HOUSE IN KOLOMNA
Tetrameter? Iambic? Fie!
It`s used by anyone who will. You`d better
leave it to little boys for fun. But I
Would try the octave! Now! May I dare?
Why not? I`d get the better, I don`t lie,
Of the iambic pentameter. It`s up to me! For fair!
The rhymes get on with me like friends,
Two`ll drag themselves, the third`ll be dragged.
(Trans. by Andrew Alexandre Owie)



After Julien Stebo
A CHINK IN MARTIANS` ARMOUR
The other days it was the evening party
That I attended at a Chinese restaurant.
I emptied a full jug of something yummy,
Ate a whole snake, and felt not wrong.
`Chef, what d`you think about the Martians?`-
I asked the Chinese cook not thinking long.
He answered: `The Chinese would eat it,
The life on Mars, if Martians existed. `
(Tversed by Andrew Alexandre Owie)

... delicious, tasty Martians, of course ... Martian meat - morc, meaf, meal, micken, mamb, mutton.



By Desperado
http://pandoraworld.su/index.php?/topic/9-%D1%81%D...D0%B0%D1%82%D0%B0%D1%80%D1%83/
ПАНДОРА И ЖЛОБЬЁ
Там на Пандоре - рай на блюде,
Тепло, светло и красота.
Туземцы - это тоже люди
За исключением хвоста.
Пускай у них другие гены,
Пускай у них в башке разъём -
На фоне тех аборигенов
Земляне выглядят жлобьем (с)

PANDORA AND THE BOX
Pandora`s Paradise, it`s on an unobtainium platter,
It is a warm, light, pretty place,
Its people, though blueskin, catlike,
Are just like us except for tails.
They`ve got the different genetics,
They`ve got the sockets in their heads.
Pandora`s box is unobtainium,
It`s their doom, but our premium.


Where are their fairy tails? Did they remain fairy?!(- A.A.O.)

(Var. of a concluding distich:
It`s us with them being as compaired
Who look like Imps out of the hell-gate.
(Tversed by Andrew Alexandre Owie)

Unobtainium: http://www.downvids.net/avatar-unobtainium-hq--46211.html,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unobtainium



After Та самая Танука - That very Tanooka
http://www.stihi.ru/2011/02/10/9319
GOTHIC LOLITA, CH. 1
Gonna sew myself a suit of black Lolita,
Trim my frock with lace and frills,
Gonna be a pin-up girl, a sexy diva,
A dream come true, a public thrill.
Are you laughing? It’s a kind of fever!
Plastic fabric fits me a great deal.
Gothic Lola’s dress, I tell you, by the way,
Becomes not all. But if it does, it’s great!
(Tversed by Andrew Alexandre Owie)

GOTHIC LOLITA , CH. 2
A housemaid? A schoolgirl? Servant?
I remind of all of them at once.
I’m a doll, an artless tomboy,
Innocent and black and sweet Ms. Vice.
I’m a dream come true, I’m real McCoy,
Men are used to think of girls like us.
On a long and gloomy night while dreaming
They see us, black, glamourous Lolitas.
(Tversed by Andrew Alexandre Owie)



GOTHIC LOLITA, CH. 3
Final touch’s to smooth out the creases,
Otherwise the picture’s incomplete,
Then to add the hemstitched mittens,
In a bow to tie each tail to fit the bills.
White as snow vinyl knickers
Shine as pocket flashlights, a death’s kiss.
If it’s wrong or right, it doesn’t matter:
Walking in the streets, I’m raptly stared.
(Tversed by Andrew Alexandre Owie)

GOTHIC LOLITA, CH. 4
Even a beauty in the altogether
Gonna hardly thrill you more
Than the children`s style short outwear
And the kinky underwear spied upon.
But a gown`s but a part of the endeavour,
You`d be an individual, first of all.
Like a sunlight spot I flash and disappear,
Leaving behind me a glimpse of a true thriller.
(Tversed by Andrew Alexandre Owie)



By Andrew Alexandre Owie
NIKITA`S TVERSE*
My favourite position is 68.
I scare a switched on vacuum cleaner.
In fact, I`ve got two dads.
I`m taken away by one tequila.
I don`t often know what I`ve said.
My name is famous, I`m Nikita.

Tvers, tvers, it`s tverse, tverse!

Skydiving makes me pooh into the sea,
I raise my leg when take a pee.



My fav`rite dance is cha-cha-cha!
I am such a bitch when tipsy.
I sneeze in bed when I have come,
Since childhood I’ve been tricksy.
I faint when someone tells me `arse`,
And tan with pebbles on my nipples.

Tvers, tvers, it`s tverse, tverse!

Although I was by Skype baptized
Thanx God, I mix not left and right.

*The "t" could be a result of blending with another word such as twist or twitch" like in `twerk` in choreography.

By the way? Do you like twerk as I love it … sometimes?



New twerk choreo on "Bring it back" by Travis Porter with girls from Fraules Dance Centre and also with ladies from Kazan', Tatar Republic of Russia. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Rba9Z0CcWwQ



By Andrew Alexandre Owie
ENDYMIONIC INSTINCT
In winter shutters down too early,
In summer up till late at night.
And being insipid, gone to glory
Selene* shines out all the time.
Yet no Moon, no further story
(It’s love affairs` true guide).
Nights when the moms as usual snore
Their daughters sleepwalk outdoor.



*Selene, the goddess of the moon, loved the mortal Endymion. She asked Endymion’s father, Zeus, to grant him eternal youth so that he would never leave her. Zeus granted her wish and put him into an eternal sleep. Every night, Selene visited him where he slept.



After Piotr Davydov` A GIRL PUZZLE
There’s a girl that in the street of city
Frankfort on the Main lies round-the-clock.
Sculptor who had carved her with his chisel
Must have done it just to make a mock.
As a log she lies and must be dreaming
Of a macho solid as a rock.
I can bet no street don juan ever touched her,
Sculptured loins of hers are for the Commodore.


A marble sculpture Die große Liegende (A big girl in a reclining position) by Willi Schmidt (1924-2011) in a pedestrian zone of Frankfurt am Mein, Germany. Her legs are enveloped in woolen leg warmers. Partly, it’s a result of pity and compassion, nut mainly it’s an artistic action in a style of the knitted graffiti (so called Strick-Guerilla, Guerilla Knitting, Urban Knitting, Yarn Bombing, Radical Stitching).

She lies bare-assed and dangles
Her big legs to warm herself at nights.
He who’d carved her didn’t simply care
For her stone-cold body’s human rights.
She lies naked dreaming in despair
Of someone who’d make her limbs alive.
She is dead for passers-by forever,
She is born to stare and be stared.
(Tversed by Andrew Alexandre Owie)

Readers` Response: `Without wanting to get into the numerous metre, rhyme and general grammar problems, maybe start here: Frankfort is in Kentucky, not on the Main`.




Amadeus - Don Giovanni Scene
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=kBXt9Bn4qns



THE KINKY MOUSE ARTISTIC PROFESSION DE FEU
My humble, broken poems seem to be lame and awkward und irregular. Their unexpected changing pace and rhythm puzzle me myself. Besides they never express my inner world, they’re objective and post modernistic. By this reason I so appreciated those lines of fingsaint:
I see your footprints//in the sand - you can't fool me//walking on your hands.
They’re awkward, simple, sincere and not private despite fingerprints in the sand. It’s a modernistic neo classicism! Only!

THE KICKY MOUSE BOOK & FILM LIBRARY, OR SHADOWS OF THE FORGOTTEN ANCESTORS THAT WERE TO HAVE BEEN REVIVED LONG AGO

But better late than never, if to let us get started.

By Sam Walter Foss, Librarian, Somerville (Massachusetts) Public Library
THE DESK ATTENDANT
See the gleeful Desk Attendants ever dealing while they can
The un-inspected canned beef of the intellect of man;
Dealing out the brains of sages and the poet’s heart divine
(Receiving for said poet’s heart ofttimes a two-cent fine);
Serene amid the tumult for new novels manifold, -
For new novels put this afternoon but thirty minutes old; -
Calm and cool amid the tumult see the Desk Attendant stand
With contentment on her features and a date-stamp in her hand.
As they feed beasts at the circus to appease their hungering rage,
So she throws this man a poet and she drops that man a sage;
And her wild beasts growl in fury when they do not like her meat, -
When the sage is tough and fibrous and the bard not over-sweet;
And some retire in frenzy, lashing wrathfully about,
When the intellectual spare-rib that they most affect is out.
But she feeds `em, and she leads `em, and beguiles`em with sweet guile,
And wounds `em with her two-cent fine and heals `em with her smile.
Oh, the gleesome Desk Attendant - who shall estimate her glee?
Get some mightier bard to sing it - `tis a theme too big for me!
1906



The Thai short film THE LIBRARY [English Subtitles]




"Jim" fell in love with "Ann" the librarian. Due to the library's rule "Keep Quiet" he writes down his love confessions in the books he borrows. One day "Ann" accidentally notices his messages but Jim no longer visits the library.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=HVI_MyyykAc



In 1987 the Polish film director Juliusz Machulski created a fantastic world where the modern dwarfs live in a library catalogue’s boxes and feel rather satisfied with them.




Kingsajz (1987). The scenes of Machulski’s movie `Kingsajz` (Kingsize) take place in the library’s boxes having got a collective name Szuflandią (Boxlandia).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCJ7pHxKlEM&feature=player_embedded



DOES MASTER DESERVE REST?



Vladimir Bortko`s The Master and Margarita TV Series (10 episodes), 2005 (Woland – Oleg Basilashvili, Matthew the Levite - Semeon Strugachov, Azazello - Alexandre Filippenko http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=VmHr8HTlipw

Woland: Ha! You are the last person I expected to see here, uninvited but foreseeable guest. What brings you here, of all people?
Matthew the Levite: I have come to see you, spirit of evil and lord of the shadows.
Woland: Well, tax-gatherer, if you've come to see me, why don't you wish me well?
Matth: Because I have no wish to see you well.
Woland: Then I am afraid you will have to reconcile yourself to my good health. As soon as you appeared on this roof you made yourself ridiculous. It was your tone of voice. You spoke your words as though you denied the very existence of the shadows or of evil. Think, now: where would your good be if there were no evil and what would the world look like without shadow? Shadows are thrown by people and things. There's the shadow of my sword, for instance. But shadows are also cast by trees and living things. Do you want to strip the whole globe by removing every tree and every creature to satisfy your fantasy of a bare world? You're stupid.
Matth: I won't argue with you, old sophist.
Woland: You are incapable of arguing with me for the reason I have just mentioned-you are too stupid. Now tell me briefly and without boring me why you are here?
Matth: He has sent me.
Woland: What message did he give you, slave?
Matth: I am not a slave. I am his disciple.
Woland: You and I are speaking different languages, as always, but that does not alter the things we are talking about. Well?
Matth: He has read the master's writings, and asks you to take the master with you and reward him by granting him peace. Would that be hard for you to do, spirit of evil?
Woland: Nothing is hard for me to do. Why don't you take him yourself, to the light?
Matth: He has not earned light, he has earned rest.
Woland: Tell him it shall be done. And leave me this instant.
Matth: He asks you also to take the woman who loved him and who has suffered
for him.
Woland: Do you think that we needed you to make us think of that? Go away.
(Matthew the Levite`s vanishing)
Woland (to Azazello): Go and see them and arrange it. (Azazello flew off ...).
(From Mikhail Bulgakov`s The Master and Margarita(Trans. by Michael Glenny) http://www.masterandmargarita.eu/estore/pdf/eben001_mastermargarita_glenny.pdf.



THE RUSSIAN SWAN TRIAD
FOR PREFACE
Lieutenant Rzewski and Natasha Rostova are walking around the pond with swans.
-Would you like to become a swan, lieutenant?
-Save me from that, Natasha. Just fancy, bare ass in cold water!

Three famous swans of the Russian art:
1)The Swan Lake by Peter Tchaikovsky based on the ancient Bavarian legends that also inspired Ludwig II Bavarian. The king spent almost all of his wealth on works of art and remarkable castles in the mountains since he considered himself to be the last knight of the legendary medieval Swan Order.




Tribute to Ludwig II of Bavaria, Neuschwanstein, Wagner
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=1vHU7On8WKE

2)Swan-princess from the Rimski-Korsakov`s `The Tale of Tsar Saltan` based on Alexandre Pushkin`s long poem `The Tale of Tsar Saltan, of his son, the glorious and mighty knight prince Gvidon Saltanovich, and of the fair Swan-princess`




The Tale of Tsar Saltan with English Subtitles
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=b3TQevs14CE

(see also Louis Zelikoff `s translation of The Tale of Tsar Saltan … and of the fair Swan-princess http://www.englishforkids.ru/Pushkin2.shtml#Saltan/
While 1) and 3) are the ballets, 2) is an opera.



Swan-princess in the picture of Mikhail Vrubel dedicated to that opera (The Tretyakov Gallery (Moscow)). http://www.tretyakovgallery.ru/en/




La Mort du Cygne http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=NXLTl-AuWME

3)Mikhail Fokin`s immortal miniature of La Mort du Cygne (The Dying Swan) to Camille Saint-Saëns` music (by the way, an interesting synthesis, coinage of the port de bras and pas de bourrée)!



TWO ICONS: PRETTY WOMAN WITHIN 9 ½ WEEKS




Young Doctors In Love http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UMRkil1SUA&feature=player_detailpage

Pretty Woman (1990) is a story for all times. The components of its success include
1. it’s an archetype. 1. Orbison`s song (half of it success belongs to this evergreen tune). 3. quotations in many movies (only 9 1/2 weeks can be compared with Pretty Woman by number of quotations. By the way, 9 1/2 weeks also had a hit, iconic song `You can leave your hat on!`). Yet 9 1/2 weeks has been almost forgotten, it belongs to its time and history of cinema, but Pretty Woman’s alive and kicking. Stars? Oh, yeah. But mainly its long-living is up the film director, his talent.



I mean Mr. Garry Marshall who also shot another masterpiece Overboard (1987). Pretty Woman and Overboard are still watchable, they are evergreen as well as not so great, but lovely movie Young Doctors in Love.

LOVE AS A SUICIDAL OUTISTIC PHENOMENON


A frame from the Bodo Kox Polish motion picture Dziewczyna z szafy (A girl out of a wardrobe)

The film was shot in 2013. The excellent picture of a woman on the wall (artist Andrzej Halinski) was according to the plot drawn by an autistic man who fell in love with a suicidal woman. (Of course, one day they …).




Dziewczyna z szafy (2013) - Trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwWpTjz82vE&feature=player_detailpage

FORMULA OF LOVE SEEMS TO BE SIMPLE: LOVE WOMEN, NOT CARRARA MARBLE




`Formula of Love`(with English subtitles) based on the short novel `Count Cagliostro`
https://youtu.be/kFW8kJ9Y1tM

Ideal of a marble statue and love of a real woman is the topic of the short novel `Count Cagliostro` by Count Alexei Tolstoy (http://www.amazon.com/Count-Cagliostro-Alexei-Tolstoy-ebook/dp/B009HUSKAQ) and the Russian feature film `Formula of love`.



THE KICKY MOUSE FAVOURITE CINEMA CHOREOGRAPHIC MINIATURES

THROWING HIS VOICE: `CHANGE YOUR PARTNER`!!!




A Day at the Races (1937) Groucho Marx Dance Scene (his blonde partner is Esther Miur, his black-haired one is Margaret Dumont)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=QccO0pvSqgU

BOB FOSSE`S MODERNISTIC CHOREOGRAPHIC SKETCHES. YE-YE!!!




Sweet Charity 1969: The Aloof, The Heavyweight, The Big Finish by Bob Fosse
https://youtu.be/DSSlWfOCgLw

OLD GOOD MOULIN ROUGE OF 1952!




John Huston 1952 Moulin Rouge Biografia De Toulouse Lautrec - Excellent work of artist, choreographer plus divine Zsa Zsa Gabor (all in one bottle). https://youtu.be/DPeOkd0vvX0

CHORUS LINE IN ODESSA




`The dangerous guest performances`. The Russian film by director George Jungwald-Chilkiewicz – SEE 1:11:19 - 1:15:00 (Uhlans` Exercises) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAVlqfMd4fk&feature=player_detailpage

On the whole this Russian film of 1968 is a thriller and detective. But it contains several excellent choreographic miniatures, one of which is a real masterpiece, I mean the Uhlans` Exercises. The movie shows Odessa of 1910 where Bolsheviks opened a variety theatre as a screen for their headquarters. There were many first-rate male and female actors, stars, but I liked exclusively the girl uhlans, their chorus line. (Choreographers Lev Golovanov, Valentin Manokhin).



NO PROOF BUT SOUNDS GOOD: THE KICKY MOUSE FOOLISH STUPID REASONING AND MOCKERY



IN MEMORY OF A GREAT CHINESE
Lee Kuan Yew was a great man, he was a trend-setter, he was a creative person. In very many respects he was the wisest man in the world, of all times and people. He shaped his own good world for all. He died not of his old age, he was required by the other worlds as a demiurge. I love Lee Kuan Yew, I always loved. Bon voyage, Lee laoshi!

HOTEL SENECONIA
Frederic Engels called Seneca `an uncle of Christianity`. Tertullian (Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus) stressed that Seneca had been `saepe noster` (`often of ours`) (see De anima 20). Hyeronimus directly states `Seneca noster` (`Seneca is one of us`). Lactanzius was amazed to see co-incidence of Seneca’s philosophy and Christianity.
Seneca would say that we must regard all the material things around us as a luggage in a hotel, and the world is a hotel as we’ll have to move out. Everybody of us will even have to leave all he or she brought to the world. We’ll have to leave here our blood, flesh, skin and even bones. To live in eternity we won’t need it any more.

AD NOTAM
The Assyrian gods are revengeful. Oh, those bloodshot eyes!

GOING GOOEY
They say that when the US President William Clinton occurred to be sitting next to Kim Cattrall in a banquet he used to speak to her as to Samantha, her character from the `Sex and the City`. The actors make us believe they are the characters they play. It’s their gift! They live many lives. I love Kim Cattrall as an actress, as a person and in any age of hers. She is divinely beautiful. And she acts divinely too. It makes me happy. Oh, yeah, baby!



FIRM EVIDENCE
I’m taking out of my trousers
Something as wide as a beef can,
View and envy of my arousal,
Have you received an evidence
That I’m no longer a dame?

This is a parody of a poem by Vladimir Mayakovsky about the Soviet passport. It’s its substandard, lower, folksy variant. It’s a doppelganger. In Russia many classical poems cast the obscene shadows sometimes more durable and lasting, but sometimes forming a double star system with original poems.

THUS SPAKE ANDRON KONCHALOVSKY
The language was being created by arguing, scolding, gooeying and gossiping women! Men were hunters and they had to keep silence so that not to frighten off animals. Besides women sang. Men drew pictures of animals, modeled figures of women.

LONG LIVE MR. PICKWICK(I)!
Posthumous poetry on tombs//Makes folks be predisposed to romps!

PALTROWING
Asked what would I recommend Ms. Gwynneth Paltrow`s ancestors in case of their occasional encounter with Hitler, I said: `They gotta avoid meeting him, I trow it as their pal`.

THE SEA OF IRONY OF THE SARCASTIC OCEAN
Once I confessed a lady that I’d always loved Jesus Christ Superstar. She answered: `I also came to hate JCS v much!` I burst out laughing. I couldn’t help it. Really, this phrase is worth of quoting, it’s a buzzword!
-What’s the buzz, tell me what’s happening?
-Your play’s though being the best has become a true pest. Or:
-Oh, I love JCS very much, I’d like to listen too it all the time.
-So do I! I also came to hate JCS v much. Or:
-I listened to that musical spellbound!
-One more word, and gonna unkennel my hound! It’ll also come to hate it!



GOING GOOEY ONE MORE TIME
Charlize Theron is a beautiful woman, and all attempts to deprive her of her divine beauty by having her nice head shaven are in vain. Beauty, either it is or it is not, let’s drink to Charlize with love!

TWO SAYINGS OF FANNY RANEVSKAYA
(she was a great Russian actress):
A woman cleans a loo in the theatre. I asked her to be my housemaid for a much larger sum, but she refused. She explained: `I can’t. I like the art.`

I think I am an orthodox Christian; I forgive not only my enemies, but my friends either.

MANY GENDERS – NO GENDER
God bless you, gentleperson!

FOREVER THE KINGS - THE KINGS FOREVER
His Majesty King Richard III deserved his Royal honours. Bad or good, he is the King. Why so? Because history is not only science or the past, it’s a part of the present and future. Continuum! I remember the solemn re-interment of His Majesty Tamburlaine in Samarqand carried out by the Russian with the help of mullahs and generals in full accordance with the all religious and medieval military requirements in 1942.




The Hermann Sidakov Drama School, Moscow www.sidakov.ru: Natalie Malakhova`s production. Monologue of Richard III (fromShakespeare). Richard - Evgeniy Voronetsky, Lady Ann - Evgeniya Serebrennikova, Richard`s pals - Stepan Zuyev, Dmitry Romanov, Pavel Sobolev.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PydTvIqx-XM&feature=player_detailpage

VANITY FAIR
Once I participated a burial of a V.I. woman. I knew her not like a V.I.P., but as a woman I loved. Informally, of course. She was married. The attending people used to lament for her broken brilliant career, destroyed by death, by an air crash. Ashes in the urn! They told that everything was in vain. I smiled, because the real meaning of our life is every single moment of our precious life. Not our achievements, careers, high places. But life. I does not mean we should not strive for anything. We should but we must understand that our life is a gift and death can take it back any moment. Why? Because all people are mortal, suddenly mortal. At least in the Earth!

LADY HAMILTON
Ivan the Terrible, not less famous and notorious than Richard III or Henry VIII, was an anglophile, he used to call Elizabeth I his beloved sister in his letters and dreamed of marrying one of British princesses. First it was Mary Hastings, but Elizabeth I showed the Russian Ambassador an ugly maiden for her. Then it was Ann Hamilton who was a cruel beauty and had a very firm character. When asked if she was afraid of Ivan the woman said she would tame that beast and she only had been afraid of the getting old. Ivan was absolutely delighted and promised to share his lands among their children if they appear. If not his death the history of the British-Russian relations could have been quite different.




Elizabeth I played by Mikhail Rom (see from 0:48) in Sergei Eisenstein`s film `Ivan the Terrible`. This episode was excluded by editors since Mikhail Rom was a big cineboss and famous film director himself. That time it considered to have been blameworthy. But today all play all, men play women, women play men, so to say `All was confusion in the house of the Oblonskys`! http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=VOBgQK6bsv0

SKYPESCAPE
Landscape, seascape, skyscape, e-scape, skypescape!




WHEN A POEM IS AN INSTRUMENT OF TORTURE
https://youtu.be/i5cN55MKmXk

Poem by Alexey Pleshcheyev: `Day by day grass greener,//Sunlight’s getting bright.//In the spring a swallow//Flies to our site`.
Mom helps her sunny to learn by heart a poem (homework)
Sonny: Swallow is flying … sun is getting brighter …
Mom: Try again! Day by day grass greener …
Sonny: ...swallows fly to our site.
Mom: Day by day grass greener,//Sunlight’s getting bright.
Sonny: Swallow … Fuck! … grass greener, … swallow …
Mom: Day by day grass greener,//Sunlight’s getting bright.
Sonny: .. green grass … sunshine, the swallow gonna fly to …
Mom`s repeating the whole poem.
Sonny (losing his temper): The teacher … bitch … she`s given us such a fucking difficult poem to learn! Her poem fucked me indeed! Fucking damn teach!

DADDY THE STORY TELLER
Little girl wakes up and asks mother to tell her a fairy tail.
Mother: Sleep, my dear, daddy will come in the morning and tell it to you and me.




Sportsmen: Our coach is the very confidence! A pure beast! What he says goes!
Coach: Well, guys. How about coaching?
Sportsman: Superbuffalo!
Coach: I have my own way of training the youth.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gz2YpLemzU&feature=player_embedded

THERE IS NO RUSH
(To guests) What! Are you actually going out?
-Yes!
-Then why so slowly?

LET THEM EAT CAKE! (INVITING MYSELF TO ...)
I always sleep with my knife under my pillow just in case.
What if you make up your mind and drop in at my place
With a bottle of champagne, big pineapple and cake.
I’ve got my knife at the ready even for your champagne!
(I`ve added this so that you couldn’t leave your `Moët
&Chandon` in your pretty mahogany cabinets`).

KEEP CALM AT ALL COSTS
If everything went wrong, and you’ve got nothing to keep, keep calm!

SEX DIFFERENCE
Women are gossiping. Men are exchanging information.

DISCRIMINATING FINENESS
The young specialist cannot work. The experienced one can not work.

RZEWSKI RETURNS TO THE PRANKS




Strauss Gala, Krasnoyarsk City Opera and Ballet Theatre, Eastern Siberia, Russia. Choreography by Sergei Bobrov.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Mc2T5Kf7Ka8

BILLIARD BALLS
Playing billiards at the officers gathering lieutenant Rzewski asks:
-Gentlemen, who do you think has got the biggest balls?
Cornet Obolensky:
-Strauss (= an `ostrich` in Russian).
-Do tell! Really?! Now I understand why he composes such good melodies for the balls!

TEMPO OF LOVE
Rzewski in a hotel. Behind the wall a pair is making love. He`s hearing:
-Wait … wait, wait … not that quick!
Rzewski can’t fall asleep. He`s hearing:
-Now quicker, quicker … quicker I pray you!
Rzewski: Couple! Now listen to my command! One-two, one-two …



THE TIPSY MOUSE TRANS-CAUCASIAN TOASTS, OR DOUBLE FOR THE ROAD




TO DREAMS COME TRUE (TOAST #2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LABb3TMhltE&feature=player_detailpage
-What’s this?
-You need a toast? But a toast without wine is like a wedding night without a bride.
-Sorry, I don’t drink.
-There’s nothing to drink.
-Sorry, I want to, but I have got no physical possibility to do it.
-Oh, this a good pretext for good toast! Write down the first toast! Not now, after that! Now take your glass!
TOAST: My granddad says I wish to buy a house, but can’t do it. I can buy a goat but that’s not what I wish! So let’s drink to eternal co-incidence of our wishes and our possibilities. (Chink!) Well done!




THE PROUD BIRD (TOAST #1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY9kR-antsI&feature=player_detailpage

TOAST: At the moment when the whole flock went to the South to pass the winter, one little, but `proud bird announced, `As to me I going to fly up to the very Sun`, and it began to fly up and up and up, but rather soon it burnt its wings and fell down to the very bottom of the deepest canyon of all the deepest canyons! So let’s drink to none of us whatever high place he’d flown up in should ever lose contact with his friends and display no team spirit!`
(Further in the video):
-What’s the matter, dear?
-I feel pity of the little bird!

Comic strip Goofy Leonardo. Fly swatter seems to be unnecessary! Artist: `Well, I`ll think what can be done!`


Lisamona Neytiri: `You do not thank for this! This is sad, very sad only! But ... awfully funny!


Rule, Britannia!