Русское зазеркалье (двуязычная версия)

Let us stop with superlatives and exclamation marks for a while. Let us behave as someone who wants to explore the significance of this song in all its ramifications rather than simply enjoy its sweet tune and sentimental lyrics. But are they sentimental, to begin with? The Wiktionary defines ‘sentimental’ as either ‘romantic’ or ‘characterised … by excess emotion.’ The same resource determines the meaning of ‘romantic’ as ‘pertaining to an idealised form of love’ or maybe as ‘fantastic, unrealistic, fanciful, impractical.’ The song is far from being overemotional, though; one of the main shortages of Diana Arbenina’s interpretation of this song is that she puts too much emotion into it, literally tearing its gentle matter into pieces, so that there is nothing there but the artist’s naked personality left in the end. And it is anything else but fantastic or unrealistic, because when a pilot or an astronaut performs his mission he literally is not there on this earth. He is not there—and no-one guarantees his return. I guess the suitable adjective is ‘archetypal.’ (Could you please give examples of some more archetypes or maybe of the same archetype as it re-emerges in different national cultures throughout the ages?) Even though the song still can be emotionally accepted by someone whose gender identity is other than heterosexual, the original underlying image of it is not two men, or two women, or two non-binary persons one of which is waiting for another. It is a feminine woman expecting a courageous man who is on his mission, and the very picture of it is of course an archetype, especially when we consider the second verse of this song that goes as follows.

It was just as empty on the earth,

As Exupéry flew West, or North.

Just as now, the air held falling leaves,

And the earth simply could not conceive:

How was she to live without him, while

He flew on,

Flew on, and the stars

Shone down, reaching out to him their

tenderness.

Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger, comte de Saint-Exupéry, whom the second verse refers to as simply Exupéry, was a French writer, poet, aristocrat, journalist, pioneering aviator—and an iconic figure in the Soviet mass culture. Soviet citizens eagerly forgave him even his aristocracy for the sake of his being both a celebrated author and a pilot—which occupation was at his time a very manly profession. The very beginning of Chapter Two of The Little Prince can easily convince you of that—let me quote it for you, by the way.

So I lived all alone, without anyone I could really talk to, until I had to make a crash landing in the SaharaDesert six years ago. Something in my plane’s engine had broken. Since I had neither a mechanic nor passengers in the plane with me, I was preparing to undertake the difficult repair job by myself. For me it was a matter of life or death: I had only enough drinking water for eight days.

The image of a man who can undertake ‘the difficult repair job by himself’ after he has completed a sublime poem fitted very nicely into what the Communist doctrine expected from an ideal citizen, a ‘Soviet renaissance man.’ Now comes a bunch of my questions to you: Why is this ideal so attractive (provided it is attractive)? Is it realistic? Why is it, or why isn’t it? Can you imagine yourself in a situation where you had to professionally perform manual labour for the sake of your artistic work? Why can you, or why cannot you?

As it is, there are some more questions in store for us. The first line of the song poses a ‘tremendous’ question when it states that

[e]arth is empty when you’re not around.