Русское зазеркалье (двуязычная версия)

Dear students, I think I must try to keep my promise and give you a lecture on each of the founding fathers of Russian rock. Today, we come to talk about Nautilus Pompilius, an influential Soviet, and then Russian, rock band founded in 1982. A few words will be said about the image of Christ in Russian literature. The connection between the two, meaning the rock band and Christianity, including Russian Orthodox Christianity, is natural, even though rock musicians in Russia, as perhaps rock artists all over the world, have never been famous for their piety or devotional feelings. But I am already anticipating what is to be explained later on, so let us proceed with one idea at a time.

Nautilus Pompilius started in the late Soviet era. It was named after a mollusk also known as the chambered, or the pearly, nautilus which is said to be a rather beautiful animal with its mother-of-pearl shell looking like a nearly perfect equiangular spiral. ‘Quite a bizarre name for a rock band’—this is what your first thought will be. Then, having been acquainted with their legacy, you might agree that the name suits the band perfectly, describing it as a pulchritudinous but an alien creature. (Talking about a very strange mollusk is perhaps the only opportunity to use such pretentious words as ‘pulchritudinous’—you see, I couldn’t miss it.)

The band was formed by Vyacheslav Butusov and Dmitri Umetsky while the two were students in the Sverdlovsk Institute of Architecture. In 1982, the band made its first attempts to record its own songs. The band’s first album, Pereyezd, was released in 1983. Pereyezd is strongly influenced by Led Zeppelin; no wonder, then, that this album of the Russian band produces an immature, not to say helpless, impression. Over the following years, the band slowly develops its own artistic style. After the release of Knyaz’ Tishiny, a 1988 album, its songs become truly original. We begin to hear the distinctive voice of Vyacheslav Butusov, the band’s only vocalist, and that of Ilya Kormiltsev, its key songwriter, amalgamated in a very effective artistic duo. Each of the two co-authors was able to listen to critical remarks of the other member of this duo, so that wrong interpretative accents were shifted and unlucky lines could be re-written.