Русское зазеркалье

You do not feel compelled to win the hearts of teenagers as long as your income in no way depends on the sales of your new album; actually, you ca

This was my explanation of why you ca

Having done with the preliminaries, let us turn to Igor Sarukhanov’s ‘Skripka-Lisa.’ The song, written in 1997, was a hit of the late 90es, and it still evokes sweet nostalgic memories in a great number of Russians.

The name of the song suggests a pun; you also may see it as a typical mondegreen. The term mondegreen was coined by Sylvia Wright, and American writer, in 1954.

They have slain the Earl O' Moray,

And laid him on the green.

Can you, too, hear it as ‘And Lady Mondegreen’ the way she did when she was a child?

The Russian [skripkalisa] can be interpreted as either ‘the screeching (Russian “skrip”) of a wheel (Russian “kolesa”),’ probably a wheel of an old traditional horse-carriage, which is the most obvious interpretation, given the next line that speaks of muddy roads, full of puddles. Or, again, the name can be read as ‘a violin’ (Russian ‘skripka’) that somehow resembles, or maybe imitates, a ‘vixen’, a she-fox (Russian ‘lisa’). At the first glance, the second reading makes no sense whatever, and yet, the official name of the song is ‘Skripka-Lisa,’ ‘A Violin [Resembling] a Fox’—or maybe it is the fox who imitates the violin, who knows… One must have a Soviet background to fully understand that—to understand, that is, why the name of the song was so absurdly distorted. Because of the aesthetic reasons, one might say: a violin sounds much better than a screeching wheel, figuratively and literally so. The fact is that Russian artists are not particularly concerned with purely aesthetic reasons as long as ‘more important issues’ are at stake.

My own interpretation is as follows: the audience is given a hint, a signal that there is an important message in store and that this message is deliberately encrypted by means of a metaphor. Who would care to encrypt it if it hasn’t been important? Various figures of speech and ‘Aesopian language’ had been the standard operating tools of those Soviet dissidents who somehow managed to get a position of, say, a film director, but who were prohibited by the Soviet censorship to directly express their social views on ‘the ugly reality of the country they lived in.’ An instant rapport between the artist and his or her audience was established every time any such metaphor emerged. ‘Now, listen!’ those metaphors said. ‘Here comes someone who can reveal the truth. Pay attention!’

After 1991, the situation changed drastically. In the ‘New Russia,’ you wouldn’t need any sort of the metaphorical language any longer. You could criticise the social reality at your heart’s content—nobody cared, just because nobody really listened to. You don’t really pay attention to social critics when you have more urgent issues to take care of—your own survival, for instance. ‘Freedom of speech’ it was all right, but, allow me to say, a very starving sort of freedom. Why would Igor Sarukhanov still use those ‘disguising metaphors’ in 1997 when it was completely safe to say the truth in plain words, namely, that the wheels of the carriage we call ‘the Russian state’ are old and screeching? Everyone who had eyes could directly observe that simple fact. A great question. Please note it as one of the questions for our discussion. Allow be to give you a hint, though. Those of you who are familiar with The Demons by Fyodor Dostoyevsky might remember the figure of Stepan Verkhovensky, a political radical in his youth, a conformist in his fifties, who, when being left completely undisturbed and long forgotten by the authorities of the province he lived in, still proudly posed himself as a person ‘under secret surveillance.’ I guess Igor Sarukhanov wouldn’t be overly happy about my comparing him to Stepan Verkhovensky. Why? We might want to discuss this question, too.

The subject of the song is in all probability a troupe of wandering circus artists who tour to different venues—along the dirty roads with puddles, accompanied by the screeching of the wheel. Or maybe by the song of a fox-like violin, or by howls of a violin-like fox even. Do they also have a fox that performs simple tricks on the circus stage? The first verse mentions another ‘wounded animal’ (or is it the same?) who ‘wants to escape in the fields’ and ‘has no shelter.’ This wounded animal is our love, the song says. It looks like there are two persons in the artistic troupe who, when loving each other, obviously feel very unprotected. Why do they? Because of their being a same-sex couple whose relationship is not looked upon favourably even among the circus artists with their liberal views? I leave it to your own interpretation.

The question is of course provocative: your humble lecturer doesn’t see it that simple. Igor Sarukhanov probably addresses his audience each time he says ‘you,’ ‘our love’ can therefore be easily interpreted as ‘our love for our country,’ our patriotism, a feeling that is ‘shy,’ ‘wants to escape into the fields’ and ‘has no shelter.’ You had to physically be in Russia in her 90es to feel why patriotism in Russia could—and still can, probably—be spoken about in such categories.

Let us now have a look at the second verse. ‘For thousands of years we, you and I equally, are doomed to…’ To “mykat’ ”, which verb leaves me almost helpless, Russian though as I am. The closest possible translation would be I guess ‘to suffer from’ and ‘to get along with,’ ‘to patiently endure something,’ ‘to suffer from something while you are getting along with it.’ A very Russian vision—I might even say, a very Orthodox Christian vision—of suffering which is ‘beneficial in itself’ (well, not really), as it allegedly ‘purifies our soul from Evil.’ I wholeheartedly reject this vision, which doesn’t mean to say that my rejection of it is in any way exemplary for a Russian—I might be a bad Russian, after all. This is what the Russian songs that we discuss in this course are about. Just touch any of them—and you will be overwhelmed, overflowed by the multitude of cultural phenomena it refers to, including Dostoyevsky, a thousand years of Russian Christianity, and God knows what else.

We are, the text says, doomed to maintain this half-friend-half-foe relationship with ‘something in our destiny,’ still left untouched ‘by the malicious ravens.’ Black ravens play an important part in Russian pre-Christian mythology; they usually symbolise Death. The song probably says that those of us who will be still alive will envy the dead. A very dismal vision of Russian life as a purgatorium, shared only by relatively few artists. I do not subscribe to it, and yet I felt like it wouldn’t be very fair not to mention those artists in our course altogether. It is the second part of the verse, though, that makes the whole of it so remarkable.

For thousands of years we are doomed to be waiting for the Driver, and then

We who have hearts of the rich but carry beggar’s bags will flop down in the mud, when [he] yells at us, ‘Go down!’

The Driver definitely must be seen as the Vozhd, the National leader, the Tsar. To be honest, I would not know what to say if you asked me where the line between a vozhd and a tsar should be drawn. To me, all these terms are synonymous, de facto if not de jure. Russia has always been, and still is, an authoritarian state. (This is what you wanted me to say, didn’t you?) To ignore this fact of our social reality would be absurd, and yet, your humble lecturer and Igor Sarukhanov happen to have diametrically opposed views on whether having a monarch is beneficial or bad for a nation. Any admirer of the British royal family would perhaps be on my side… We are not talking about my humble person, though. For Igor Sarukhanov, the Driver ca

My subjective opinion is that Sarukhanov’s characters with their ‘hearts of the rich’ can hardly earn sympathies of an average Russian. It is the ‘poor and condemned,’ to use Dostoyevsky’s phrase, who win our hearts. We are not really sorry for the rich, thrown in the mud. Would the artist attribute ‘hearts of saints’ to his protagonists he undoubtedly would make us love them. The problem is, saints are not upset by the command to go down. This is what they are doing all the time, anyway. It reminds me of a short talk between the Russian Tsar and Bazil the Blessed, fool for Christ, in Boris Godunov, Modest Mussorgsky’s famous opera. Why does the beggar reject monarch’s humble request to pray for the salvation of tsar’s soul? Another question that we might want to discuss later on.

The whole of the second verse can basically be seen—or, rather, heard—as the voice of the Russian liberal intelligentsia, moaning about the fact that the ‘only civilised people in this wild country’ (sarcasm on my side) are forced to ‘go down’ by the Driver, be this Driver Nicholas I, Joseph Stalin, or Vladimir Putin. The pro-Western liberal intelligentsia in Russia will be lamenting until the second arrival of Christ. If Christ Himself asked those people to follow Him, to join Him in the Heavenly Kingdom, and to please leave behind all their petty thoughts and bad mental habits, this being the only condition for their rise—they would still say the strict Driver had forced them to go down. Does it sound too ecclesiastical? I ca