Analect2.679x

17 March 2010. Hazy sun, and an almost warm spring day. Birds enjoying things, too...

The older Volga, fishing weirs, poles for nets, sometime in the late 1800s... Where every surface seems touched--worn and woven at the river's edge. Figures gathered around a skiff--their stiff poses of an early spring. Heavy Russian coats, belted, an arm wrapped round a riverman's staff--tall and thin diagonal set against a sky of incoming clouds.

It's the scale of each part--this one feels--the size and shape of a piece of wood, or the stones piled carefully into a low wall...

As in the paintings, or Tarkovsky's film--Andrei Rublev, the painter/monk as he "confronts Russian pagans cavorting naked through misty forests." He resists. But later, it's Marfa, the pagan woman, who unties the cords with which they've bound him--and saves the painter from crucifixion...

Analect 2.678x

16 March 2010. Rock Island Refrigerated Dist. truck parked on street, white hood lifted into the air, motor running, repair...

Two young women from Georgia--a Song of Batum, Maia Kalandadze and Nino Komakhidze, standing close side by side. Village women with baskets over their arms--plums and coriander, set against dry hills rising from the sea. A medieval fortress in the distance--the stones for its walls plucked from the same land.

Long faces and sad eyes, as in Arshile Gorky's painting of himself and his mother--A Quiet Garden in Sochi, except that it wasn't Sochi at all, but some unknown village high in the hills. The back country, as Mom used to say, road to Temecula, winding through dry boulder land, dry and hot in mid-summer. The Pala Mission--Asistencia--an old church with adobe walls, worn red tiles. Spanish arch with bells...

San Luis Rey...

Analect 2.677x

15 March 2010. Early pool, cool shadows...

Boris Shtokolov as Ivan Susanin, the legendary peasant martyr hero who led the new Tsar Michael's Lithuanian/Polish pursuers deeper and deeper into the Russian woods, where on a particularly cold February night in 1612 all perished. Glinka's opera based on these events--which premiered in 1835. Nicholas I being in attendance, Glinka changed the title to Zhizn' za tsarya--A Life for the Tsar, but after the 1917 Revolution the opera again became known as Ivan Susanin...

Russian folk melodies throughout...

Analect 2.676x

12 March 2010. Circling jet with heavy wings, two engines each, gray clouds moving towards rain...

Puchezh. A theater group, indeterminate year. Staging or restaging an early Soviet event. Each character distinct in their seeming sameness--a padded jacket with tilted head, the young man in long European leather coat, floppy wide lapels, serious mein. Youthful women wrapped in babushkas. It's cold, as well--hands tucked in pockets or behind backs. Young faces, attentive and ready. At once accepting--and questioning.

A miracle.

Analect 2.675x

11 March 2010. Fistful of sunshine...

A metaphor less fraught...Sergio Leone on the Volga. Here in the form of a rare Isaak Levitan portrait, the figure in a formal white dress (full-cut fabric, one imagines) with an almost invisible corsage high on her lapel. Head to the side--unexpectedly--so that the effect is one of pensivess rather than display. Grays and off-whites, merging. Recalling his landscapes, better known--Vladimirka, for instance, an empty road stretching to the horizon, intersected in the middle distance by an even more undulating path. Far off, a few trees against darkening sky--their sizes and shapes as varying nicely. World of moderation, yet vigorous throughout...

Russian...

Analect 2.674x

10 March 2010. Black crow on pool deck, morning sun. Pointed steps, one by one...

Another go at Repin, Surov's portrait from 1892. Forget it. Yes, Repin was his teacher, but somehow I don't quite believe this kindly face of middle years. Usually warmth in a painting is beguiling, but can it not also be a form of deceit? A covering up? As in the scene from War and Peace, the late-night revel, when Pierre clambers onto the third-floor window ledge, demanding a bottle of rum--if he drinks it, he'll fall, without a doubt--and Anatol Kuragin makes his soto voce aside to their drunken pals, "I'll fool him..."

Good intentions, questionable tactics...

And Brecht? "Und das nasse Ohio wuchts unten..."

Analect 2.673x

9 March 2010. Nicola tucking herself in next to my side, down the bed just at dawn. First light in eastern sky, line of hills...

Serov's drawing of Pushkin, imagined on a bench in a park (Mikhailovskoe?), from 1899. The artist was 34--a good year to tackle the very icon of Russian literary culture. Casual, light touch throughout--but not unstudied. How many Madonna's in that upward gaze? And yet the effect is one of youth--self-assured, but more pensive than cocky. Wind in the trees, line of distant hills...a Russian setting to be sure.

Talking about Sargeant--with Midgette, half a century ago. The same questions--a discipline of immediacy, lost in all forced resolution. Bonnard's sustain--he'd begin from the motif, which, once registered, could endure a lifetime...

Almond tree in early spring...adding that touch of...

Analect 2.672x

8 March 2010. Natasha in yellow chair, curled up in one dark ball. The queen of fur, lifting her head for a furtive caress... Her small pink tongue...

Alexander Sergeevich, in exile at Mikhailovskoe, where Arina Rodionova, his old nurse, will of an evening share fairly tales and legends in her own Russian tongue (the poet had heard them before, of course, but only in courtly French), thereby (as he phrased it) "making up for the defects in his accursed education..."

Last night: Sergey standing at Tatiana's shoulder, his every gesture defining the cadence of a song. Count Sheremetov's setting for a poem, also from Pushkin--one of the most seemingly simple--Ya Vas Lyubil...

I loved you once, love still perhaps...

Analect 2.671x

5 March 2010. Sun pops in window at 7 am, annunciation...

And why not? A Mari girl (this is a guess) in national costume. But how can there be a national costume for a people who worship the trees the stars? Every living leaf carries a note...

As when, last night, we distribute small sheets of plain white paper, cut swiftly on zinc, to be held in the fingers of each hand, pulled taut across the lips--a home-made kazoo. Smiles all round as we try the sound (chorus to Jesse Fuller's San Francisco Bay Blues), hard to tell if the experiment really works--for half the fun is in imagining so... No way to know, unless you are there...

A water bird, Kostroma, early spring...

Analect 2.670x

4 March 2010. Possible sun, moments of cloud.

The claims of the 19th century, as put forth by Serov and Repin--two Russian wanderers in the realm of paint. The bravura brushwork--Valentin Serov--flashy until the crunch, when a fine-tuned draftsman appears, setting all in order. A little too much so, perhaps--the knowingness of a hand inserted into a lapel, or the turn of a wrist on a woman lounged on a divan--a knowingness that knows we know as well--as if the full-embodiment of a culture could be indicated in these social minutiae. And yet, the sheer skill--and a willingness to take it all on--as in his portrait of Glinka, amply holed up in bedclothes, manuscript in hand... A Farewell to St. Petersburg, perhaps... Zhavronok, the Lark, "melodically gloomy to the point of melancholy..."

His portrait of Mamontov's daughter, Girl with Peaches...

Analect 2.669x

3 March 2010. Gray, with touch of blue. Sheets of water on downhill streets, last night's rain...

Winter, somehwere near Rybinsk. A town on the Volga, once a fishing village in the province of Yaroslav. Coat of arms--a standing bear, halberd on shoulder. Below, mirrored steps extend into river, where a pair of fish set face to face--sturgeon and sterlet--recall that past.

Mother and child on a frozen road, car trouble, heavy coats. Distant trees hover in winter fog. A small figure, opposite (za mashynoj) sets off on path.

Songs unwritten, songs not yet sung...

Analects 2.668x

2 March 2010. Gray gull against darker gray clouds, swooping low. Rain...

Masterskaya. A workshop or studio, but here more on the order of an office, in a provincial town from the time of Chekhov. Shelves oveflowing with books and pamphlets, stacked this way and that--records of a sort. Moody light. Young woman on lower rung of ladder--imagined as Aunt Ruth, while closer to us, Osher, my father--the cap, the Russian shirt, a characteristic forthrightness, time of uncertainty...

Standing by the counter in Walters, decades hence, in a California beach town. Orders for shirts and shoes, Stacy Adams, Van Heusen, their sizes running this way and that--broken lots--fitted carefully onto varnished plywood shelves, small white cardpaper tags on the outer fold: trousers small/medium/large. Pulled one by one with a deft tug, the stack unchanged...

Doves under the eves, evening call...

Analect 2.667x

1 March 2010. Moist gray morning air. Unidentified pickup lodged in front of house: small toothpaste tube on corner of dash, acrylic blanket tossed in back, along with some hard-to-read cds. As opposed to small child in wide blue and white striped hood, hand in her mother's, crossing street to Harding school. Morning rites.

On the Banks of the Great Volga, 19th century photographs by Mikhail Bukar'. A Tatar man, dated 1872, from the Saint Petersburg Collection of Russian Nationalities. (Stary vopros: whose Russia, whose nationalities?) Long kaftan with narrow vertical stripes, green and white, black, off-red, strangely homogeneous. His undergarment, a reddish-oxide print, vivid and open shapes. A kind of allegory of space--the containment from without, freedom from within.

Are their Tatar songs the same?

Analect 2.666x

26 February 2010. Two crows heading east , set against bank of dark cloud. Row of melaleuca, mimosa just behind. Profusion of tiny yellow flowers...

The cares of a family man. Kafka's wry tone. Or is that that indeed the word? A tone, nonetheless, as in all that he wrote--something implied, more whiff than designation. And yet so seamingly solid. So that one almost gives up wondering... But never quite...

Figures on the bank of a river--a group of women with baskets and satchels, a waiting boat, dark water. Hills lightly drawn on the far shore.

Volga. Something sensed more than defined...

Analect 2.665x

25 February 2010. Round and nubby cloud shapes packed close in northern sky, one open lane of blue...

A boat on the Volga, on a moody black-and-white day, indeterminate past. A verb of motion, khodit' for example--the general sense of action rather than an act of going per se. In the perfective--a movement in one direction. Uglich to Saratov--like the river itself...

Lesley Chamberlain's book, from years ago. Volga, Volga, named for the film from Stalin's time, a location revisited after the Soviet fall. Names of ancient towns as well. Odd Russian byways on an unending stream...

Analect 2.664x (Плес)

24 February 2010. Rain in the night, gusts...

The town of Plyos, with it's golden light, set wide on the Volga. River boats moored to muddy bank, a single side-wheel steamer in the distance. Heavy dark hulls for the grain trade, low in the water even without cargo. A Sunday morning, perhaps--Voskresenie--na tretij den' posle raspyatiya... No one present, only the quiet river, the simple church on hill further downstream, a few clouds...

Isaac Levitan...

Analect 2.653x (золотая урда)

23 February 2010. Gray skies, unending...

The city of Pskov, dark medieval towers over gray river, set against a gray sky, all without color in this northern light. Ripples breach the river's face, a wide arc, tiny flags from each spire--the compass points of seige and defense. Livonian knights, in 1242-- "on the frozen straits," where a legendary Novgorodian Prince, Alexander by name, led the Russian defense...

For a moment, today--a girl plays the gusli, her narrow fingers sounding each string. An Asian face beneath Russian adornment--the folk cap, a deep red with tiny-flowered band, delicate metal cone over the heart. As with the towers themselves--a mixture of peoples and ways...

Golden Horde...

Analect 2.662x (не умеющего жить)

22 February 2010. Peeking sun from behind a few gray clouds, tiny golden needle of  high-lining jet...

"And she separated herself from the young man, who did not know how to live...," a Tolstoyan observation, indeed. Anna Pavlovna speaking, in the context of her first uncertain conversation with the young Pierre Bezukhov, recently arrived "from abroad," in frock coat and trousers of the most recent fashion, but with spectacles, and his expression of shy intelligence...

One can see the whole truth, but only at an infinite distance...

Analect 2.661x

19 February 2010. Cold and damp... Into the bone...

Three figures, drawn with perhaps too much care--a mood of restraint unbefitting the age. (Early Soviet.) And a mother carrying a child, her back turned. The source? That kind of day, the edges worn from last night's fray--a conversation with a dozen youngsters--and a television, bumpy and wild... Modern times.

As with my younger double, this morning, seated alongside, employed in the scanning of grandmothers and rabbis--a pile of photos, mostly old, a few in color--the world of Polaroid--faded 70s tones... The ripply edge...

Snapshots and scallops--can an image be treif? When what appears before the lens would have us all believe...

Analects 2.660x

18 February 2010. Foggy streets, light drizzle... Pine trees half-disappearing in the mist...

A river story-- Grigory Alexandrov's Volga Volga, with Lyubov Orlova, and the band of amateur musicians en route to Moscow to make their mark. Russkiye narodniye pesnyi--songs of the people, here with a Chaplinesque twist (it was on a rowing expedition on San Francisco Bay that Chaplin suggested the title to Alexandrov)...and the film (1938) soon proved to be Stalin's favorite...

And a song from a much older source:

Вниз по Волге-реке,
С Нижня-Новгорода,
Снаряжен стружок,
Как стрела, летит...


* * *

(Down the Volga
From Nizhny Novgorod
A strong river boat
Like an arrow flies...)

Analect 2.659x

17 February 2010. Fog at dawn, muting all the corners... Yellow pool lights, shadowed swimmers' bodies...

A Russian song, "Down the Volga...," as on the ancient Monitor recordings, voices of Sergei Lemeshev, Ivan Skobtsov and Artur Eisen, "All the babushkas would weep..." And Lyudmila Zykina, available only on Soviet-era Melodia-- her squarish face, close-fitting white knit dress, the wide cheekbones, and decisively feminine pompadour...

A hint of Patsy Cline...

Analect 2.658x

12 February 2010. Gray rain, fine mist...

Charter member of the Russian Far East Surfing Society-- dodging ice flows in the Bering Sea... A large black seal swims up alongside, giving me one of those looks, "And what are you doing?" I might have asked the same, these distinguished creature of a watery world...

Analect 2.657x

11 February 2010. Neighbor's light across dark yard, 4 am. All asleep...or not entirely so...

Sergei Krotkoff, playing for Marusia Georgevskaya. A Treasury of Russian Gypsy Songs, recorded by Monitor Records in 1961. Shall we call it a kind of hopefulness? The seamless presentation of an entire world, coherence and clarity of vinyl disk. Starts here, ends there... The last few swirls, an exit flourish...

A dormitory room at Reed--or maybe the stairwell--about that same time. Guitar. Upstairs, another world, also of Monitor Recordings--John Cushing, listening endlessly to Leadbelly, and Joel Cope, ordering the entire take-out Chinese meal... All of us, denizens together in a kind of madness, searching for the discipline of the poems of Homer (Wars of Troy notwithstanding)... Or Margaret Deansley, A History of the Medieval Church. Worn gray paper dust jacket over deep blue cloth, from Oxford--sense of measure, always...under English skies...

Analect 2.656x (утро туманное)

10 February 2010. Gray morning--utro tumannoe, as in the song...

Russkoe ozero... a Russian lake, with layer of mist. Row of middle-ground trees against dawn sky, hint of rose above--as with reeds along the shore, their color edging beyond green...

A girl with covered face, curly hair (kudryavaya) and impossibly long nails. The world of polyesters set against that of human feeling. As in a story, on a page in a book--something about first meetings, quiet voices, faces from long ago...

The fields in sadness, covered in snow...

Analect 2.656x (масленица)

9 February 2010. Misty light over early pool. Glow of yellow timer light, its pronounced opposition to indeterminancy...

From Izaly, yesterday--the announcement of maslenitsa--pagan roots, a celebration of the sun at winter's peak--butter, eggs, milk--flat cakes and farmer's cheese...

A straw figure burned in effigy...

Visits and stories...

Analect 2.654х

8 February 2010. Proschai, proschai, podruga dorogaya...

A gypsy song, in the Russian style. "Farewell, farewell, my dear friend, God knows, will I see you ever again..." A sequence of farеwells, each one heartfelt--each one with lifted voice...

Hotel Europejski, Warszawa... 1968. Elegant, with old plumbing. A round enamel soap dish tucked in at angle to wall, square white tiles, shower fixture--flexible metal and white, wrapped around faucet head. White mat over white tile edge. Przedwojenny...from before the War...

A band of gypsies, two women approach, hands extended. Their narrow wrists, narrow fingers on narrow dark arms, full dresses, in the old manner, skirts with folds, and old faces as well--not in age, but in the possibility of a past...

Rings and bracelets, a disguise--narrow eyes...

Carmen Ledesma, dancing in Nimes. Por seguirías? Steve's photo, sent just yesterday--her full posture, thrust forward, ample arms, eyes on some ancient thing...

Analect 2.653x

5 February 2010. Golden light in blue-green pool--morning's sun after evening rain.

A Russian man with Russian face, Victor Toporov, b. 1946, his full gray beard with moments of black, lank hair, heavy brows--like two winter runways in Chelyabinsk--a fortress town just east of the Urals, snow, snow, and more... The Trans-Siberian route--a mountain of gold and mass graves. "Tankograd" in Stalin's time--the arms works shifted east--S.M. Kirov Factory no. 185. This kind of detail, as if a glass, held close, could again reveal the trail of wolf, or fox, or winter crow...

Analect 2.652x

4 February 2010. Dark clouds to the west, impending storm... Emory's face on pool deck, heavy gray wool watch cap, emphatic swoon to his voice, "It'll be pouring by five..."

Vera Zasulich(1849-1919), youngest daughter in a family of impoverished minor nobility, from Mikhailov Gzhatsk , Smolenskaya Guberniya. (Dad's voice here.) She became a clerk--then a teacher, bringing reading and writing to the Petersburg factory workers. Influence of Nechaev, then Bakunin. Narodnaya Volya--the People's Will. Her partner, Lev Deitch, writes of "...the extraordinary sincerity and unaffectedness of her relations with others."

Trepov affair--a Russian colonel who ordered the flogging of political prisoner Mikhail Bogolyubov for refusing to doff his cap. Cause celebre among the early revolutionists and Russian intellectuals. It was Vera's decision to take Trepov's life--a deed she brought to bear with the assistance of a well-constructed British Bulldog Revolver. Aquitted nonetheless by a sympathetic jury in a trial whose focus was in fact Trepov himself, she later opposed the campaign of terror that led eventually to the assasination of Alexander II.

Following the trial, she took exile in Switzerland. Described by her friend, Leon Trotsky, in his book on Lenin: " Zasulich was a curious person and a curiously attractive one. She wrote very slowly and suffered actual tortures of creation.... 'Vera Ivanovna does not write, she puts mosaics together, Vladimir Ilyich (Lenin) said to me at that time,' and in fact she put down each sentence separately, walked up and down the room slowly, shuffled about in her slippers, smoked constantly handmade cigarettes and threw the stubbs and half-smoked cigarettes in every direction on all the window seats and tables, and scattered ashes over her jacket, hands, manuscripts, tea in the glass, and incidentally her visitor. She remained to the end an old radical intellectual on whom fate grafted Marxism. But the moral political foundations of the Russian radicals of the '70s remained untouched in her until her death."

Narodnaya Volya--the People's Will.

Analect 2.651x

3 February 2010. Quiet street, low sky, shallow bowl of peanuts balanced on hot coffee glass. Preparations...

As with Nestor Makhno, in a desultory moment, the year being 1919. Neglamurnyj--that's what the Russian says. But who's looking for glamour in this legendary, charismatic Ukrainian anarcho-communist guerilla leader... Mounted on horseback, inventor of the tachanka (lightening fast horse-drawn machine-gun carriage)...and known as Batko ("father") to his 15,000 devoted followers...

Makhno's anarchist forces--the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine--allied with the Bolsheviks at the outset, and anti-nationalist to the core, but finally in favor of no state whatsoever, resulting in his defeat and exile... Romania, Poland, Danzig, Berlin and ultimately Paris, "...where he worked as a carpenter, a stage-hand at the Paris Opera, at film studios, and at the Renault factory."

"Free communities as the highest form of social justice..." 

Hopes and depredations...

Analect 2.650x

2 February 2010. Hint of sun through white curtains at dawn...

While the two dudes converse--that's Stalin and Voroshilov, of course, their military collars and heavy hand... One white pinky extending downwards, the other, relaxed, in an embrace of fate... Not without planning, however. The pyatiletka, Five-Year plan, sounding almost tender in the Russian--a sly diminutive, as with a rabbit, or a child...

The solo bird on half-misplaced ring, a shepherd with staff. To guide the sheep, to find them even. Open fields...

Analect 2.649x

1 February 2010. Grey clouds and blue, a subtle tumble...

Корреспондент газеты <Крассной Кавалерист> Лютов... At your service, sir. No, not the right way to put it. More, "Ready...!" As in the man with a plan. Image of Jack Lelane, his shoulders shrouded in bay mist, a dark cold-water swimmer's cap pulled low, towing two, three, four or more life boats across the rough channel... Alcatraz...

My father, Byelorussia in 1921. Bullets whirling. The Chinese Bolshevik fighter alongside, kneeling with rifle raised, urging him to do the same. Later, standing before a committee of commisars, each one known, "Osher, how can you leave us, what we are building here..."

Choices, articulate and unknown. As in the shape of a sparrow, or the flaired stroke of a white-bristle filbert... Bonnard--each touch his own...

Analect 2.648x

29 January 2009. Pearl clouds on gray, be sunny or sad...

A Russian sailor and his girl, with watching bird. Story from Gauguin--that he carried with him to Tahiti prints of classical Indian sculpture from the Louvre--Greek as well. As an overlay to inspiration in an unfound world--an imagined wilderness of feeling, with shoulder and breast open to the air--a young woman holding a bowl of crimson-orange fruit, or night-time god waking from eternal sleep. His question--what was it, really, those endlessly sinuous lines, revealing youth--played against the knowledge of age...

A guide...

Analect 2.647x (Эй, моряк)

28 January 2010. Sun, pool returns to blue... sky and gull...

Moryak. The Russian sailor. A type, with all attendent folklore (especially in a continent-sized nation that went to war to find a port.) Black Sea or Leningrad (shown here)--the telnyashka, cut with narrow stripes--and a mariner's neck... Sailor's song...

Becomes an R&B knockoff, a la Bill Haley, sometime in Putin's gilded age. As with all else, a television platform, with wide-eyed blond and her sailor guy--a rather effiminate penguin-in-wetsuit fellow with floppy fins. None of this makes much sense, but then, neither does the song...

Нам бы, нам бы, нам бы, нам бы всем на дно.
Там бы, там бы, там бы, там бы пить вино.
Там под океаном
Мы трезвы или пьяны -
Не видно все равно.

Let's a, let's a, let's a, let's a head for the bottom
Drink some wine down there
Down under the sea
Whether we're sober or drunk--
It's not at all clear, and it's all the same...

(Whereas Rock Around the Clock, of course remains a model of cultural probity...)

A descent, yes, but of another sort... Brecht, whirling in a watery grave...

* * *

(Note: A search under "песня матрос" got us here--which, on second try, has disappeared, or there'd be a link. Okay then, все равно... "It's all the same..." )

Analect 2.646x (Гармошка)

27 January 2010. Garmoshka and guitarra. Staraya Smolenskaya... A curving earthen road in autumn, stand of narrow trees, forest floor. Two white birches, rising at an angle from common root, luminous. Conifers--larch and pine, darker below, then thinning in a scatter of light against gray sky. Subtle reds, burning, more felt than observed, colors falling...

The artist, or wanderer, in Babel's terms. Two white mice tucked beneath his shirt--a replenishing of brushes...key to the painter's trade...

"You have a predilection for familiar faces, my dear Pan Apolek..."

Natalie's face, in parking lot dark. And Chris, yesterday morning, across the bright table--a Pennsylvania childhood, reappearing...

Analect 2.645x

25 January 2010. Morning rain on dark glass, night pools...

Pasternak reborn on a farm in Tennessee...Bonnaroo, the name from Ninth Ward slang, via Dr. John, as in bon and rue--the best on the street. Street. Poka, words of spring--a black torrent's rush, after black ink of winter. Fevral', self-annihilating absorption of cold... Regina Spektor, "Be afraid of the cold, they'll inherit your blood..." Inherit, not steal--more destiny than crime...

"Be afraid of the old, they'll inherit your souls..."

Vesná...

* * *

(Note: Regina Spektor's song, Après Moi, includes a verse from the Pasternak poem, Fevral' (February). In 2007 she performed a live version at the Bonnaroo Music Festival, whose name has New Orleans' roots. She herself was born in Moscow in 1980.
Vesná is Russian for spring--but as a name, it comes from the old Slavic ve + sna--"(awoken) from sleep". The ancient Slavic goddess of spring...a messenger...)

Analect 2.644x (Voix Ukrainiennes)

22 January 2010. Cold morning, light rain. Slush of streetside leaves, steamy auto glass, dampness...

A row of Ukrainian girls, on an eastern church dais--les Princesses Tsarivny. From forest to footwear--their modelled voices, black and red shoes... The latter not so much discordant as unexpected... As opposed to lapti--the old kind--woven from the bast of the linden tree--or birch bark. "A kind of basket fit to the shape of the foot...," the wooden blocks employed in their manufacture apparently found in even in neolithic excavations...

The past. To dig into the earth--one possible route. Or a chain of flowers, embroidered in greens and reds, violets, blue, sparkling on white blouse. Worn in the hair as well, on the left side, over the ear. Black skirts with more muted motif--one vertical row, set slightly to the left. Their faces--the impossibly high cheekbones, slavic eyes... And to sing...

A world of young beings, from there...

Analect 2.643x (страстное желание)

21 January 2010. Gray and rain, and rain...

El niño, bendecido... the boy child, blessed. And a Russian woman with a guitar. Tradition of the bard (old Celtic bardos--poet, singer--from a posited Indo-European gwer--to lift up the voice, praise). Here Veronika Dolina, Beznadezhnoe moë delo... It would be sad to translate such a phrase that makes sense only in the telling. The English "without hope" so starkly definitive--whereas the Russian all internally shaped with muted o's and zh's... Mournful sounds, yet filled with possibility--if only in the telling...

Srastnoye dyelaniye... A passionate longing...

Analect 2.642x (Никого не будет в доме)

20 January 2010. Dozhd' idyot--rain is falling, all throught the night, and into a dark morning. Ruthless handful of swimmers in their shared oblivion. Sharp drops on surface of pool. Dozhd' idyot...

Or Pasternak, and the snow. As sung by Sergei Nikitin, with his Russian seven-string guitar, a voice at once gentle and sure. Becomes a film--a tale of two cities, Soviet-style, for the new year--and a nest of contradictions (as every nest needs must be). The inadvertant apartment, a singer, unseen. A beautiful Polish girl playing her Russian counterpart, and the mother--in a telling moment of wry understanding--whose quiet presence informs all. A poem, a song, ongoing, and a story of love that might never have been...

Two birds in the snow...


* * *

(The film is Ironiya Sud'by--The Irony of Fate)

Analect 2.641x

19 January 2010. Sound of rain all through the night, waves wash up against the house, intermittent drips on all the sills...

The old cyrillic--Cyril and Methodious, those wandering Byzantines--two brothers, Apostles to the Slavs. The glagolitic text, Old Church Slavonic, with slashes and angles as appropriate to the the east. (Some say.) Pannonia and Upper Moravia, the names refigured in each generation. Town of Brno, with its dark arches--and a hilltop near Austerlitz. Bronze plate at the top, announcing a great battle--vista of all the surrounding lands. Napoleon, 1812...

Tatiana and Sergey--Kharkov--an inheritance...

Analect 2.640x

18 January 2010. Rain from a bucket, black sky.

A game with gifts, each wrapped for the Russian New Year, hand-written numbers on paper strips attached. I was 12. Cyrillic shapes revealed in the long serif, the small loop on the two. Klara's hand. Sergey on the couch, holding forth--his alert eyebrow eye catches all--on which a subtle but explosive disquisition-- the theory of the evolutionary structure of the human vertabrae (elaborate back scratcher with wooden rollers), or the Japanese-ness of a Japanese tea (small bag with gen-ma chai)--not a circle, but a picture of father, mother, child. "A different structure within the brain." He unfolds the melody of "Vo pole beryoza stoyala" into a round--hands moving to guide--and soon all the room is singing. Sasha, high wide Russian eyes, his lady Masha, small and charming, with dark curls close to her head, like my mother. Vadim, eyes round with questions, and Natasha, alongside her daughter Ira, all inward, eyes upcast. Young Dara, in the corner, with many questions. And Marianna's delighted but shivery response to a small mechanical frog. Zoya, too, perched attentively in her private high-armed chair...smiling, listening.

Jack: "Like the evenings when I was a boy, with my parents and their friends, all of them sitting together, speaking Russian..."

***

(Drawing: Isaac Babel, and then his daughter, seventy years later, in California... The bird is a Russian starling...)

Analect 2.639x

15 January 2010. The birthday of Alice. Looking up from pool--an egret, wings spread wide, heading west...

To see a bird, in flight--we were somewhere near Warszawa on the day of Boże Ciało--Corpus Christi--the body of Christ. 1969. Driving west, on the road to Łowicz, with Robert and Gabryela and Blanka--who catches sight of a bird in the sky above. "A good sign, flying in our direction..."

Layers of belief, embedded in each perception. Attached by fine silver wire--almost invisible--the maker unknown. Like the story from Shelley Winters, about Brecht, in Hollywood, in the years during the war. "I'd brought him home to dinner, with my mother, who sometime later asked me about that 'jeweler' who'd paid us a visit. 'Jeweler? I don't remember any jeweler...' 'Well, when you were out of the room, I asked the fellow what he did, and he told me that he made jewels for poor people..."

***

(A note on the drawing. The two men on the left, Russians, from a city somewhere in the south. The one on the right a seminarian(the coat, the leggings, the shape of his shoes). Heavy lock of hair flopped over his forehead, giving him an even more intense visage. Standing alongside, a companion--maybe from the university--the small mouth, pale face, bow tie. Group to the right--a family from the Caucasus--the mother with folded hands, eyes downturned (strength and severity of inwardness). Her daughter close alongside, leaning in--hands held very much like her mother's. Feet turned inward slightly as well--in some way a repetition of that gesture. The father, with high black Caucasian wool hat, dark face, and a full black beard hiding his mouth. Patient but not resigned. The pockets of his closely buttoned shirt at a precise angle--as with a line of shells. On his waist, a dagger at the ready, just under his left arm. Above--a Budionnovka--the felt hat worn by Budyonny's cavalry. Something right out of Babel...

"You must know everything...")

Analect 2.638x

14 January 2010. Vapors rising from pool, ships in the night...

Soviet era songs, their bright instrumentation, touch of the Hebraic, American jazz (muted trumpets, wiggly clarinets) and a subtle marshall undertone thoughout--an obligato to difficult times. Gray upon gray--as in Deborah's description of Kabul--the dust in the summer, winter mud...three or four paved streets, rocks and potholes everywhere--narry a tree in sight--cut down for firewood, or blasted... Port-au-Prince...

Utesov. Song in honor of an armored train--from memory as well. A strange name--strannoe nazvanie--and strange the cities on its route: Irkutsk, Lvov, Krakow, Warszawa... Destinations of the mind, vapors rising from a pool...

Analect 2.637x (да ребята прощайте)‏

13 January 2010. Bright sun on backlit gray, gleaming gold, all surfaces...

A Russian gathering, by Lev Shestov. His arched nose and sliding brow--the summer cap, and a table, outside, amidst the dacha's trees. Women in careful blouses, short to the waist, with long Russian skirts. A tiny broach worn just at the neck, in black stone. Vera Petrovna, reading to us from Chekhov. Anton Pavlovich--her favored son--words from this world...

Words from all worlds--a pigeon's walk, or a toast--proschai--

Analect 2.636x (Песня о Kаxовке)

12 January 2010. Gray billows...rain...

Music of Utesov. Pes'nya o Kachovk'e... Then, images of these generals from the past. A question of which side... Regimental cross... "The 300th Jubilee of the House of Romanov," a basket of medals...sword and epaulette. The verse from the Glinka song--"either by the sword or upon the shield..."

Kooperativnaya Kolybel'naya... A Cooperative Lullaby...

And Deborah's face this morning--I kiss her on each cheek. Ezekiel's Wheel...

Analect 2.635x

11 January 2010. Winter sun, both grackle and crow--their imposing hop. Gathering tidbits off tabletop, in children's lot--a child's dream--or ghost, both present and not...

As with Sebald--his photographs, Austerlitz and Vertigo--also gathered, years before. Stories follow--okra, beet and kale--a European host...

Farther to the east, on Odessa's shore. The ages of man, Soviet-style--that big-chested walk, all above the waist. And a towhead boy, alone on the sand...

Chernomorskaya dal'... Black-Sea distance...

Analect 2.534x (да и скоро будем знать)‏

8 January 2010. Gray and cold, sprinkle of rain, warm within, the seamless rungs of a song...

Leonid Utesov, played by tiny earphone on the docks of San Francisco--the former docks, I should say. Now one vast (yet somehow not intolerable) playland. Maybe the weather--a beautiful overcast day, silver skies disappearing into mist, boats lapping on waters of Vologda wax, faces with verifiable smiles. A man photographs a strutting gull, his ladyfriend just to the side, offering tidbits (off camera). Russian voices everywhere--their high-chested walk--all above the waist--Artur Eisen's progeny, moved now to the west. We turn the last corner to the sound of seals. Sea lions--big ones, wet and brown, huddling in one gemütlich communal pile...

Proshchal'naya Komsomol'skaya...man or gull... We'll know soon.

We'll know soon...

Analect 2.633x

7 January 2009. Floating mists over blue-green pool. "Popyli tumani nad rekoi..."

Words from a song, remembered only in part, as when a Mikhail Brodsky appears in the copyshop aisle--mistaken for a moment for Robin Williams (how can there be that strange resemblance?), but with a stronger and more foreward-looking jaw, vperyod--aged a bit, as needs must, but Soviet still...

Tanya's grandfather--the writer of the song (Katyusha), in another age... now they live just up the block.

Here, Utesov, 1926, in the checkered pants (checkered career), playing a winning tough-guy from the Odessa streets. He pulls a gun--a shpaler--home-made--which on closer inspection turns out to be a dark-toned pear... The job accomplished, he takes a bite and heads off down the road...

Mu-mu... Bremerhaven, Hotel Schneider...long ago...

Analect 2.632x

6 January 2009. Pool girl, shivering, with arms around middle, scooting inside. Emory engages her for a moment's back and forth--but the morning won't allow it--a smile and a continued dash...

Then, suddenly, behind the scenes in the Moscow Opera--three life-size figures in folk costumes--sarafan and veil. The light--northern and low, raking in from what one imagines to be tall narrow windows on the left. Pale white walls, worn, and a high Russian doorway just behind--the elaborate escutcheon, in brass--and, just above, a cursory cast-iron latch-bolt...

The ancient gusli... many presents...

Analect 2.631x

5 January 2010. Krasnaya zara...the Red Dawn... A dark Natasha poised at top of stairs, surveying the hinterland. Last night--through darkened upstairs window, a small face just outside--long nose with pink nostrils, impossibly dark eyes set on angle, fuzzy ears and a brusque furry coat, elongated tail with tiny scales... Opossum...

Or, the Moscow Art Theater, Odessa style--a partisan skit, on the Volkhovsky Front, performed for the troops--soldier and commander. Songs of Leonid Utesov--"Gop So Smykom"--Hop with a Violin Bow.... that's me...

Spirit through all...or at least almost all...

Gop so smykom eto budu ya
Slushayte vnimatelno, druzya
Ryemyeslom ya vybral krazhu
Iz tyurmy ya nye vlyazhu
I tuyrma skutchaet byez menya
No v kakoy tyurmye by nye sidyel
Nie bylo minuty shtob nye pyel
Zalozhu ya ruki v bryuki
I khozhu, poyu so skuki
Shto zhe budyesh dyelat kol zasyel?"

"But whatever prison I may be in
Not a minute passes without me singing
I stick my hands in my pockets
And walk around singing out of boredom
What else can you do when you've been tossed in the clink?

(Version Zygmunt Frankel)

Analect 2.630x (Ах, Одесса Моя)‏

4 January 2010. Early January sun, even earlier than the usual early January sun--and always associated with January 15th, the birthday of my mother, Alice... A warm and beautiful day.

Princess N, by phone: "A Russian year..." Yes, and the voice of Leonid Utesov, holding forth from the Moldavanka. Well, from Leningrad, to be precise. His memories of Odessa--the "ss" pronounced "ts" in the local way. Here as a sailor of middle years, and fitted out raffishly in telnyashka and Red navy cap... Knowing eyes, hint of a smile--a survivor--1895-1982.

The gathering at Klara's. Zoya, now ancient, resting in her small first floor room. Just outside, near the couch, I cue up the songs--Okudzhava, Artur Eisen, Utesov as well... Some of these from the mid-thirties--"Ax, Odessa Moya"--lyrical bounce, but with a certain Jewish plaintiveness...

Zoya, later, to Klara: "I was thinking to myself, where are these songs coming from...?"