Русское зазеркалье (двуязычная версия)

There is, according to Chesterton, a clear difference between those people who write beautiful poems and those who—like Saint Francis or Victor Tsoi—are brave enough to actually live them. People of the second type, if they happen to be poets or writers, describe the spiritual reality they live in rather than their fantasies or dreams. Tsoi speaks of the spiritual reality in the voice of its eye-witness—he therefore never mentions the phenomena of which he has no personal knowledge. Please compare his attitude to that of Vyacheslav Butusov and Ilya Kormiltsev. The Christ of their song is only partly credible; we believe that the two most contributing members of Nautilus Pompilius might have seen the Saviour in their dreams or in their imagination. Victor Tsoi never mentions Christ, showing no wish to just speculate about the figure of which so many people eagerly talk and which so few humans in human history were able to directly perceive. (I believe, too, that the musician was a Buddhist, not a Christian, and it is not just his half-Korean origin that makes me think so.) But when the musician refers to the war between Heaven and Earth that no man can escape from, whatever he or she is doing, we believe in every single word that he says. The message of the song in question leaves no room for speculations, and neither does the personality of its author who, as we sense it, is completely serious in his wish to join this ever-lasting battle. Tsoi is a warrior of spirit whatever he is writing and singing about. The fact that this warrior happened to become a musical celebrity of the late Soviet Russia and an idol of young adults may be regarded as a bizarre coincidence that never bothered the actual artist very much.

I am not a great philologist, but I cannot help noticing that Tsoi’s immanent honesty manifests itself in the style of his poetry. His tone is reserved and lacks any unnecessary pathos—I mean the sort of pathos that so often embarrasses us when we are reading a nineteenth-century romantic poem, listening to a sermon of a young Christian preacher or to many a hymn broadcast on Apostolic Grace Radio. Here are ten brilliant lines from ‘The Star Called the Sun,’ just to give you a taste of Tsoi’s poetic laconism.

And two thousand years of war,

The war with no reasons in view.

The war is the thing for the young,

A good anti-wrinkles old cure.

Red and much redder is blood;

In an hour it’s just only the ground;

In two hours it’s just flowers and grass;

After three it’s again living bound

And caressed by the light of the star

Referred as the Sun to.