Русское зазеркалье (двуязычная версия)

It would not be very wrong to say that in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia, romances find their own specific niche, serving as a nostalgically idealised musical image of ‘the Russia that we have lost’ and/or becoming exemplary specimens of high culture, art songs performed by high-class singers. It would be perhaps right to state that Russian romances—as much as art songs in general—are now trying to preserve the desirable image of a human being, a person who is intelligent, harmonious, delicate, lofty in his or her intentions, and capable of sacrificial love. This of course raises a bundle of questions, such as: What is art in general?What is the desirable image of a human being, provided there is any? Should the artist develop his or her audience rather than simply entertain them? Does or doesn’t the decline of art songs in the Russian popular culture and their practical absence in the Western popular culture prove our inability to morally and spiritually cultivate ourselves? Needless to say that I am very interested in your answers to those questions.

Our course tries to stay within the framework of the second half of the twentieth century. It would therefore be problematic to take for our analysis one of the old celebrated Russian romances, such as ‘I Go Out on the Road Alone,’ composed by Elizaveta Shashina in 1861 after the famous poem of the same name by Mikhail Lermontov. (The poem in question, being both a lyrical masterpiece and a heavily freighted philosophical text, is definitely worth the attention of anyone who studies Russian culture.)

My choice was rather between ‘All This Happened, All This Happened in Those Years,’ firstly performed by Nikolay Rastorguyev in 2002, and a ‘Romance’ initially sung by Nikolai Noskov in 1998. It must be the latter, both because the chronological framework we have set for ourselves at the beginning of the course should be respected, and because my personal feeling for the former song may inadvertently distort its true artistic proportions. It ends with the following lines:

Well, perhaps that forest is a soul of yours,

Well, perhaps that forest's always my remorse.

Or perhaps, one day when we will die,

To this forest we will travel—you and I [transl. by Maya Jouravel]

—and I must admit I get a painful pang each time I hear them.

A ‘Romance’ it is, then. The music was composed by Anatoly Balchev at the end of the last century after the poem by Nikolay Gumilyov, written in July 1917. (Please note the huge temporal gap between the year in which the poem was written and the time when it was put in music. What does it say to you? You also have to bear in mind that Nikolay Noskov, the performer, is not a typical romance singer: he is, in fact, a former vocalist of the hard rock band Gorky Park who now pursues a solo musical career and experiments in different genres.) You will hear the orchestral version of the song which is probably as close to the classical music tradition as we ever get to it in this course.

I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Marc Almond, a contemporary English singer-songwriter and musician, has recorded the English version of this romance. While appreciating his efforts, I regretfully must note that his performance pales against the original. Well, tastes vary…

Let us now carefully examine the text, quatrain after quatrain, line after line. I have found two English translations of the poem, one by Marc Almond (or so it seems), another one by Burton Raffel and Alla Burago.[1] For the sake of our analysis, we will refer to the latter, even though it lacks rhyme and meter. Here it is.

My days blow dully

by, as painful as ever,

like a rose-petal rain,

like nightingales dying.