Aleksandr Deineka (1899-1969) : an avant-garde for the proletariat
Download 4.48 Mb. Pdf ko'rish
|
|
318 Unexpected for themselves The sleepy ones have started a brawl And have raised such dust As though they were taking Port Arthur (Chorus). The chariot of victory goes forth Drawn by the two horses of victory How exalting it is to fall Under its wheels
Ist strongman. — Stamped with sealing wax It is a ripened victory Now everything is trifling to us The sun lies slain at our feet! Start a fight with machine guns Squash them with your nail Then I shall say: here you are Big strongmen! (Chorus). Let the burning horses Trample And hair will curl up In the smell of skin! . . 2nd strongman. Salt crawls towards the shepherd The horse has built a bridge in the ear Who keeps you at your posts Run across black ribs Through steam and smoke And the jets from taps The people have come out onto the porch Of the tea room waving switches
1st strongman. — Do not go out beyond the line of fire An iron bird is flying The wood goblin waggles his beard Beneath the hoof of someone buried The violets moan Under the heavy heel In the puddle of the grave Both strongmen (singing). The sun has hidden Darkness has begun Let us all take knives And wait locked up C u r t a i n. 3rd scene: Black walls and floor. (The Funerarians enter. Their upper half is white with red, the lower is black.) (Singing). To smash the turtle 12 To fall on the cradle Bloodthirsty turnip’s Greet the cage The fat bedbug smells of the coff in . . . A little black foot . . . The squashed coff in rocks A lace of shavings curls. 4th scene.
(Talker on the telephone): — What? They have taken the sun in captivity?! Thanks for letting me know.—
(The Sun Carriers enter—they are so crammed that the sun is not visible): One: — We have come from the 10th lands 13
Be advised that the earth is not revolving. Many: — We have pulled up the sun with its fresh roots They reek of arithmetic, greasy them Here it is, look One:
sun. Singing: (Chorus). — We are loose 14 The crushed sun . . . Hail darkness! And black gods Their favorite is a pig! One:
The sun of the iron age has died! The cannons have fallen broken and the tires yield like wax before [people’s] gazes!
Talker: what? . . Anyone hoping for cannon fire will be cooked with the kasha today! Listen!
One.
— To more solid steps Forged not from fire neither from iron nor marble Nor ethereal slabs In the smoke and fumes And greasy dust Blows energize We are growing healthy as pigs Our look is dark We are warmed by The dead udder of the red dawn 15 BRN BRN
16 (CURTAIN).
Fundación Juan March THE TENTH LAND. 2nd doing 5th scene. the external walls of houses are depicted but their windows strangely look inside, like drilled pipes there are many windows, arranged in irregular rows, and it seems as if they are moving suspiciously. (The “Mottled Eye” 17 appears): the former leaves as a fast steam and shoots the bolt and the skull like a bench has galloped into the door (he runs off as if watching the skull.) (the new enter from one side and the cowards from another): the new: we have shot into the past cowards: and is anything left? — not a trace — is the emptiness deep? — it airs the whole city. It became easier to breathe for everybody and many peo- ple don’t know what to do with themselves now that they feel such lightness. Some have tried to drown themselves, the weak have gone mad saying: we can now become intimidating and strong. That was too much of a burden for them.
Cowards. They shouldn’t have been shown the new trails, hold back the crowd.
The New. One person brought his sadness saying, take it, I don’t need it any- more! he also imagined that inside him everything was lighter than an udder. let him swirl 18
(Reader) 19 : how extraordinary life is without the past With risk but without remorse and memories . . . Mistakes and failures that were tediously droning into one’s ear like a pest are forgotten and you are now similar to a spotless mirror or rich reservoir where in a spotless grotto carefree goldfish flex their tails like thanking Turks (disturbed—as he was sleeping—the fat man enters) fat man: my head is 2 steps behind—it’s obligatory! always behind! Grrr a nuisance!
where is the sunset? I would rather get away . . . it’s shining . . . I can see ev- erything from my home . . . I should get away quickly . . . (he lifts something): A piece of airplane or samovar (he bites into it) hydrogen sulphide! obviously a hell machine 20 I will take it just in case . . . (he hides it). (reader hurrying): I want to say everything—recollect the past full of the sorrows of mistakes . . . the breaking and bending of knees . . . let us remember it and compare it with the present . . . so joyous: liberated from the heaviness of universal gravity we can imaginatively arrange our belongings as if a rich kingdom were being moved 21 (fat man, singing): the shyness to shoot oneself it is diff icult on the road the scaregun and the gallows hold the calf . . . 22 (Reader interrupting): or you cannot feel how the two balls live: one is corked sour and warm and the other springing from underground like a volcano transposing things upside down . . . (music) they are incompatible . . . (music of strength) just the gnawed-at skulls run on their only four legs—probably they are the skulls of the basics . . . (leaves). 6th scene. Fat
Man: The 10th lands . . . the windows all face inside the house is fenced in; live here as you can
These 10th lands, gee! I didn’t know I would have to sit locked up I cannot move my head or my arm or they will become unscrewed or move and look at how the axe is doing here damned thing it has fleeced us all we walk around bald and it’s not hot only steamy such a pernicious climate even cabbages and leeks won’t grow and the market—where is it then?—they say on the islands . . . oh if I could climb the stairs into the brain of this building and open door No. 35 that would be a wonder yeah, nothing is simple here although it looks like a plain chest of drawers—and that’s it! yet you ramble around and around (he climbs up somewhere) no, it’s not here all the paths have got mixed up and go up to the earth while there are no sideways . . . hey, if there is anybody of ours there, throw me some rope or say something . . . fire a shot . . . shshsh! cannons made from birch trees—so what! the old resident: here is the entrance, you will go right back . . . there is not any other otherwise straight up to the earth — but it’s a bit frightening — well it’s up to you fat man: how about winding up the clock. hey you stupid shaft where do you turn the clock? the hand? attentive workman: they both go backwards immediately before dinner but now only the tower, the wheels—do you see? (the old resident leaves) fat man: gee, I can fall (looks at the section of the clock: the tower the sky the streets—all the tops facing downwards as if in a mirror) where can I pawn my watch? Attentive Workman: don’t dream they won’t take pity on you! Well, work it out —speed reveals itself. if you put a railcar load of old crates on each of two molars and sprinkle them with yellow sand then let it start rolling off you can imagine what will happen well the simplest thing is that they will run into some pipe in an armchair and if not? the people there have got somewhere so high after all that they can’t be bothered with how locomotives and their hooves and so on feel, it’s only natural! the stove searches for scythes as antelope would run after but that’s the point that no one will yield his forehead anyway I am leaving everything as it was (leaves) (Fat Man from the window): yes yes you are welcome yesterday there was a telegraph pole here and there is a snackbar today, and tomorrow it will probably be bricks. it happens here every day and no one knows where it will stop and where they will have dinner hey you take your feet off —(leaves through the top window) (noise of a propeller off stage, a young man enters running: frightened he sings a petty bourgeois song): yu yu yuk yu yu yuk gr gr gr pm
pm dr dr rd rd u u u Fundación Juan March 320 k n k n Ik m
ba ba ba ba . . . . . . . . . . . . the motherland is dying from dragonflies the lilies are drawn by locomotive (the noise of a propeller is heard) I won’t get caught in chains in coils of beauty silks are bizarre tricks are crude I will make my way stealthily along the dark road along the narrow path a cow under my arm black cows the sign of mystery behind the silk saddle hidden treasure is buried I secretly admire it in the silence a thin needle hides in the neck (sportsmen walk marching parallel with the buildings): this way . . . everything runs without resistance roads from all directions converge here a hundred hooves steamroller along outrunning and conning the clumsy or just crushing them beware of the monsters with mottled eyes . . . there will be futurian countries those who are bothered by these wires can turn their backs
(they sing): from the height of skyscrapers oh how unstoppably carriages stream forth even shrapnel does not hit so hard automobiles from everywhere produce ice glasses and posters perish with deadly demise Footsteps are hung on signboards people run with bowler hats upside down (music and the sound of engines) and awry curtains knock over window panes gr
zhm km odgn sire vrzl gl . . . (an extraordinary noise — an airplane crashes — a broken wing is visible on the stage) (shouts) z . . . z . . . it’s knocking it’s knocking a woman has been crushed a bridge has been knocked over (after the crash some rush over to the plane while other watchers say): 1st: by the view by the siew 23 began somersaulting began scratching himself 2nd— sprenkurezal stor dvan entel ti te 24 3rd—amda
25 kurlo tu ti it grabbed it sucked in (aviator laughs off stage, enters and is still laughing) Ha—ha—ha I am alive (and everyone else laughs) I am alive only the wings are just a bit ruff led and a shoe too!
(sings a military song): l l l kr kr tlp tlmt
kr vd t r kr vubr du du ra l
k b i zhr vida
diba 26 the strongmen enter: all is well that begins well and has no end the world will perish but to us there is no end! (Curtain). 1 Rus. letel’bishche – letaiushchee chudovishche (flying monster or leviathan). 2 Rus. drug looks like “friend” but seems to be rather a truncated vdrug (“suddenly”). 3 Rus. ozero (“lake”) appears here and one more time below as ozer which transfers it from the neutral gender to the masculine. 4 Rus.
pennochka (normative spelling penochka) – little singing bird (Chiff chaff or Phylloscopus collybitus). 5 Rus.
afiba does not match any known word but is similar to too many. First, it might have something to do with ephebes – Athenian youth between 18–20 known inter alia for their participation in Apollo, the Sun god, cult. Second, it might resemble Ethiopia (in Rus. Aefiopia). 6 Rus.
proval can mean either abyss or failure. Both are hardly usable with the adjective “dozhdevoi” (“rainy”). But it is possible to say “rainy failure.” 7 Rus. pugati – neologism for those who are fearful or scared. 8 The words of the Traveler (except for the lovi – “catch”) belong to Kruchenykh’s transrational neologisms. Snoiu and spnye relate to dreaming and sleeping – as well as Z.Z.Z. – which might be a sound of snoozing. On the other hand, we are hesitant to call them real zaum’ because many of these words are quite rationally built. Thus garizon may be Ukrainian or Bulgarian for “horizon,” or corrupted “ garnizon” (Rus. for “garrison”). Snoiu and spnyue can be truncated Russian words sTEnoiuand sTEpnye. In this case the outcry of the Traveler could mean “Harrison! Catch the steppe [invaders] by the wall.” Letters Z. Z. Z. can be in this context the next command: “Zalp, Zalp, Zalp” (“Fire, Fire, Fire”). 9 Rus. kichka – dialectal for the beak (or nose, prow) of a ship. 10 The above passages about the sword and the ball are based on the Russian omonyms mechom (“with a sword”) and miachom (“with a ball”). 11 Evidently a recollection of Tamerlane, or Timur the Lame. 12 Possibly Kruchenykh is invoking here a popular expression, “smash the skull” ( razmozzhit’ cherep) in the disguise of
razmozzhit’ cherepakhu. 13 Rus.
desiatykh stran goes back to tridesiatoe tsarstvo from fairy tales and means faraway lands. 14 Rus.
vol’nye more often is translated as “free” but here “loose” has more appropriate overtones. 15 In 1913 “the udder of the red dawn” ( vymia krasnoi zari) sounds prophetically apocalyptic which almost tempted me to render it as “red aurora.” But in the English “dawn” we can discern the reminiscence of old Russian “den- nitsa” – 1) a dawn; 2) a fallen angel turned infernal. 16 As one of the principles for creating zaum’ was to use only parts of words (sometimes only vowels or consonants), “BRN BRN,” which appears here at the end of a rather aggressive song, can be a contraction of BRaN repeated twice. This Russian word has a double meaning: 1) swearing or vituperation, and 2) war, fight, skirmish. So we can possibly say “WR WR.” 17 The word combination pestryi glaz (which can be translated not only as “mottled” but as “dappled eye” as well) is not common for the Russian language. Kruchenykh could have borrowed it from Alagez – the name of an extinct volcano and the highest mountain in the Erevan province in Armenia, which in Turkish means literally “mottled eye” (now it is known under its Armenian name: Aragatz). If this suggestion is correct, it explains his words “the former leaves as a fast steam.” The “former” might refer to the extinct volcano.
Another context to the Mottled Eye brings the expression “mottled people,” which became popular in Russia after the prominent writer Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin coined it in the satirical tale Vialenaia vobla (“The Dried Caspian Roach,” 1884). When, a few lines later, Kruchenykh’s Cowards say: “It became easier to breathe for everybody and many people don’t know what to do with themselves now that they feel such lightness,” it can correspond to the following text from this tale: “The resolute people tried hard, in torments, this way or that; they questioned the sit- uation but instead of any answers they only saw the locked door. Mottled people looked in bewilderment at their eff orts and at the same time they sniff ed what was in the air. The air was heavy, there was felt an iron ring, which became stiff er and stiff er every day. ‘Who will help us, who will say the right word?’ longed the mottled people . . . [The word was pronounced]. The society became sober. This picture of everyone’s liberation from superflu- ous thoughts, superfluous feelings and superfluous conscience was so touching.” Saltykov-Shchedrin gave an additional characteristic to mottled people in his Mottled Letters (1884–86). See Mikhail E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, Sobranie sochinenii v 20 tomakh, vol. 16, part 1, 376. 18 The reference to the “weak,” turned crazy, and the “strong,” and the order to swirl to one of the weaklings might bear an allusion to Leonid Andreev’s play Anatema, staged and published in late 1909. The devil Anatema says: “I kill the strong, and as for the weak, I force them to swirl in a drunk dance – in a crazy dance – in a devilish dance.” 19 Rus.
chtets literally means “a reader.” Because the monologues this character pronounces are full of parody of symbolist theatre with its pretentiously bombastic rhetoric, it is stylistically better to say “Declamator.” The book titled Chtets-Deklamator, a chrestomathy of poetry and prosaic pieces for reciting from the stage, was widely popular in Russia from the time it was published in 1907. 20 Rus.
adskaia shtuka makes one think of adskaia mashina – what the bombs widely used by political radicals around that time were called. A perfect match of sulfuric infernality and new technology. 21 Rus. perebiraetsia can mean not only “being moved” but “being rearranged.” The latter reading is totally in accord with “imaginatively arrange” earlier in the same sentence. 22 Rus.
ikra may mean either caviar or roe or a calf. I believe that this fleshy part of a leg is more feasible here because it’s known that calves might tremble after being on the road for a long time as well as out of fear – invoked here by the scaregun and the gallows. 23 Rus.
s vidu na sidu. Vid – “view”; sid – meaningless (or possibly relates to sitting). 24 Zaum language in which certain Russian words can be traced using considerable imagination: “ Sprenku (genitive of feminine name Sprenka) rezal’” (“[Somebody named] Sprenka was cutting”) stor[ozh] (guar[d]) dvan (divan) entel ti te (can be an emotional exclamation “entel”). More likely is that the highly improbable Sprenka, “a hen” ( kur), is hidden there. This kur appears in the next line as well in the word kurlo which is formed the same way as Fundación Juan March murlo (a fat mug), khamlo (a cad), etc. So kurlo could have been a fat chicken or a smoking fat mug. But we should bear in mind that the translation of zaum’ is as precarious as sometimes it is meaningless. 25
Amda could be an overheard word used in a number of Turkish languages (meaning “now”). Also it was the name of a certain Ethiopian emperor (fourteenth century) known through The Abyssinian Chronicles for his battles. With the pervasive undercurrent of the Pushkin theme, the Ethiopian association cannot be excluded. Besides, an interest in African subjects in Russian avant-garde circles around that time was quite strong – see the work of Vladimir Markov (Voldemar Matvei), a member of the Union of the Youth, in The Art of the Negroes written in the early 1910s (although published only in 1919) and possibly known to Kruchenykh. And, of course, Gumilev’s Abys- sinian Songs (published in 1911 and 1912) add a valuable context for Kruchenykh’s Abyssinian trail. 26 The “military song” of the Aviator might not be totally meaningless. If we suggest that the consonants are usually the beginnings of words, we might have something like this (Kruchenykh’s letters are emphasized): Letel Letel Letel [I] Flew Flew Flew KRuzhil KRuzhil CiRcled CiRcled ToLPa CRowD Tak puLeMeT Thus MachiNeGuN otKRyl VDaril T-Rr oPeNed HiT BaNG
and so on . . . and so on . . .
— ES The original libretto was published . . . in an edition of 1000 copies during the last week of December 1913 (Book Reg- istry/Knizhnaia letopis’ No. 193, Dec. 20, 1913 – Jan. 1, 1914). It was printed on ordinary paper stock and was 24 pages in length, sewn, with the buff -colored paper cover drawn on; the size was 24 x 17 cm. A drawing by David Burliuk was letterpressed on the back cover, and a version of the backdrop for Scene 4 by Kazimir Malevich was reproduced on the cover. This new version of the libretto tries to follow the original layout of the Russian publication. However, margins of the libretto in the English translation vary somewhat from the original. This is due to a natural variation in length of words / sentences when translated. Originally published in Russian as Aleksei Kruchenykh, Pobeda nad solntsem, prol. Velimir Khlebnikov, music Mikhail V. Matiushin, decoration Kazimir S. Malevich (Saint Petersburg: EUY, 1913). For a German translation see Am Nullpunkt. Positionen der russischen Avantgard, ed. Boris Groys and Aage Hansen-Löve (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2005), 63–89. For a French translation see La victorie sur le soleil, trans. J. C. et V. Marcadé, postface J. C. Marcadé (Lausanne : Editions L’Age d’homme, 1976). The version here has been reproduced by permission, with minor changes, from Aleksei Kruchenykh, Victory over the Sun, 2 vols., comp. Patricia Railing, trans. Evgeny Steiner (Forest Row, East Sussex: Artists Bookworks, 2009), 7–9, 33–40, 44–101, 150–56. Download 4.48 Mb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: 
|