A journalist acquaintance (Russians have always frowned upon the casual use by English speakers of the word "friend"), Andrew Osborn, has written an article in today's edition of The Independent of London about plans by British architect Sir Norman Foster to redesign the city centre right next to the Kremlin.
I've seen vague accounts about this scheme before, but it is the first time I've read a detailed description of what is being planned to fill up the 52,610 square meter area to be vacated when the Soviet-era Rossiya Hotel, one of the USSR's most hideous landmarks, is finally torn down from its prestigious riverside location.
The Rossiya was once trumpeted as the biggest hotel in the world when it opened in 1967. It admittedly had its uses - it provided inexpensive accommodation in a ridiculously expensive city. One could plan a summer trip to Moscow without needing to make a reservation simply by walking into the lobby and asking for one of its almost 3,000 hotel rooms, most of which were available for under US$100. Of course, in practice foreign visitors would have to make some kind of reservation anyway in order to secure a visa from a Russian Embassy overseas but at least there was some reassurance in theory. With this behemoth (two of its ilk preceded it - the 434-room Intourist Hotel was demolished in 2002, and the 1000-room Moskva in 2004 - while another, the Minsk, has been shut down) gradually being razed, the hotel business in Moscow appears inexorably headed upmarket.
Anyway the plans for the revival of the district, which centers on the rebirth of Zaryadye, the pre-revolutionary name of the area, give long-time residents of Moscow, a 860-year-old city currently undergoing its most extensive makeover since Stalin tinkered with it in the 1930s, something to look forward to in the next couple of years. Andrew writes thus:
When construction of the new district is finished in 2008, it will be a self-contained town-within-a-town, including hotels, offices, shops, cafés, restaurants, subterranean parking space for 2,000 cars, a concert hall, cinemas, a huge public square and a terminal for boats on the adjacent river Moskva.
The design of the buildings' façade is being left to Russian architects who want to erect pastel-coloured recreations of 18th- and 19th-century Moscow mansions so as not to jar with the Kremlin next door. But Sir Norman will be responsible for creating all the inside space and for coordinating the overall project.
The buildings will not be higher than eight storeys so as not to overshadow the Kremlin. An entire pre-revolutionary street, called Velikaya Ulitsa, will be recreated, a church painstakingly resurrected, and the area's 16th-century walls rebuilt.
Much has been bruited about the involvement by a foreign architect in the Russian capital's prestige project. Foster is said to have won over the property developers with his design for the Reichstag in Berlin and the "Gherkin" in London. In Russia, he has been contracted for the construction of Europe's tallest tower in the Moskva-City district and the Holland Island project in St Petersburg.
Andrew appears to have scooped other papers with his revelation about the Zaryadye plans as well as a commission to build a Russian version of Disneyland in an area called Nagatino Poima, a spit of land in southern Moscow said to spread over 1.858 square meters.
I've just returned, tired, thirsty and on foot, from the office after having dinner with my ducky. We ate a simple dinner at OGI, a basement restaurant tucked into the upscale complex on Tretyakovsky Passage intersecting with Nikolskaya Ulitsa. One of our favourite hangouts, OGI is part of a chain of intellectual hangouts that stick to the same formula of low-priced meals in a simple but Bohemian interior that features a bookshop, all running on a 24-hour schedule. While its sister establishments - Cafe Bilingua, Project OGI, Cafe OGI and Pir OGI - are located more or less in quiet or small side streets, OGI stands out as unusually demokratichny in this gravely pafosny milieu, better known for such novy russky-frequented shops as D&G, Versace, and Bentley.* * *
Before that, I attended an academic meeting at Room 204 in the Institute of Asian and African Studies, organised by the Nusantara Society. Nusantara is a portmanteau word from Old Javanese that means "archipelago"; accordingly the society promotes the languages and cultures of the people who populate the Malay archipelago, including the countries of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. It called a special gathering to commemorate an anniversary my country is celebrating in its relations with Russia.
While it was good to finally meet up with a number of luminaries in the field, the aging pioneers put up an anemic show, coming ill-prepared and speaking off-the-cuff. The new generation of students actually acquitted themselves better, not just for their energy and youth, but for their heartfelt enthusiasm and interest.
* * *
After the meeting, Natasha told me about the day's tragedy earlier at the main campus of the Moscow State University. She said two students died and at least four people were hurt in a fire that broke out at 5 am in a dormitory on the 12th floor of the university's 26-floor central building. According to a BBC report, Yevgeny Serebrennikov, deputy head of the Emergency Situations Ministry, said that 1,500 people were evacuated.
Although the cause of the fire in the Stalin-era building, one of Moscow's most conspicuous landmarks, remained unclear, I couldn't help but somehow think of the anniversary of Hitler's birthday just yesterday. A similar fire at a five-storey students' dormitory of the People's Friendship University (formerly Patrice Lumumba) in November 2003, which killed 42 people and injured more than 200 people from 34 countries, is a sad reminder that foreign and mainly non-white students suffer heavily from racial discrimination in Russia. While the conflagration itself was believed to have been caused by an electrical malfunction, the firefighters were criticised for their sluggish response and allegations of extortion or racial preference. Russia has a high rate of fire deaths, totaling around 18,000 a year. Experts say fire fatalities have skyrocketed since the end of the Soviet Union, in part because of lower public vigilance and a disregard for safety standards. The age of Russia's buildings also plays a role: Many older buildings have wood partitions between the floors that help fires spread rapidly.
(The university was founded in 1960 and named Patrice Lumumba People's Friendship University in honor of the post-colonial Congo's first prime minister; its name was changed in 1992. Its aim was to offer a strict Marxist curriculum to students from developing nations.)
(It served as a showcase of Soviet patronage of the Third World, receiving generous state subsidies, but declined after the 1991 Soviet collapse as government funding dried up. But the university has continued to attract students from impoverished with its low tuition — medical school tuition runs US$1,200 a year.)
* * *
On the way back home, I noticed that Sultanna Frantsuzova has set up a small boutique on my street. (I wrote a blog entry about a fashion show of hers I attended in late summer 2005.) Since that entry the designer has become more visible and celebrated more openly for her unfailingly stylish and affordable designs. Do I still want to move out?
Whenever the subject of the colour revolutions comes up in conversation here in Russia, it's not easy to find the golden mean; that is, the conversation sooner or later gravitates to the extremes: either all the street protests are manipulated by the West in a conspiracy against Russia or that Western intervention was less instrumental in the success of the uprising than the spontaneous explosion of long-festering popular discontent.
Having had a similar experience in my teens and yet again just a few years ago, I tend to hew to the second camp — with all the romantic implications. However, the years since our own little popular revolt in 2001 have not been kind to my people and have taught me harsh lessons.
While Ukraine provided the world a dramatic example in 2004, even more so than that in Georgia the year before that, the supposed rush for a democratic outcome in the Kyrgyz Republic was in no way clean or ideal. There were no made-for-media heros this time, and victory itself came at a price. The violence in Andijan, Uzbekistan and the Kazakh government's effective outmaneuvering of the opposition in presidential polls late last year served as warning that there was no inevitability to the democracy domino theory and that the rose-tinted days of people people revolts might soon be over. The Ukrainian political theatre, much degraded last September before descending into farce in February, continues to appall for its pettiness.
In the weeks leading to its presidential elections, with the score leveled at 2-2, Belarus was shaping up as the ultimate showdown between the "dark" forces supporting the old Evil Empire (now symbolised by Russia) and the "light" forces represented by the US and Europe. Like in the battle between the two Viktors in Ukraine, the battle between the two Alexanders in Belarus was portrayed in stark contrast. With the US shrilly repeating to any who bothered to listen that Lukashenko was "Europe's last dictator" it doesn't take a Mandela to figure out who's who. The rest, supposedly, is history.
The only problem was, history didn't occur as expected. Rather, it unraveled. More than a month after the presidential elections in Belarus on 19 March, it would now flummox those very same champions of the Rose, Orange and Tulip Revolutions to admit that the democracy movement failed miserably against the "evil dictator".
My sentiments lie inevitably with the protesters, who I believe were sincere in their intent. In fact one of my Belarusian friends is part of the protest movement. We have only been acquainted for a year, but I can tell in the period I've known her that she aspires only for a bright future for her homeland. However, I have my doubts about the purity of the objectives of the opposition leaders — Milinkevich included.
The first cracks in my belief appeared when a Moscow-based Belarusian friend of mine some days into the poll protests replied to an SMS from me wishing her family and friends well. Although I had known her and her family to be anti-Lukashenko, it had been a while since we exchanged thoughts about the domestic situation in Belarus. So I merely registered neutral concerns about the crisis. It was fortuituous, in hindsight, to have sent a moderately worded SMS: her reply, which could not conceal her contempt, expressed no sympathy for the demonstrations and pointedly suggested that the results were karmic retribution for the self-righteous conceit with which the opposition operated throughout the whole campaign.
While my friend is not exactly the most politicised person in the world, her turnaround in a little over a year from a seething critic of the Belarusian establishment to a damning disapprover of its fractured-then-united opposition was telling.
A week after that text message, I had a guest at home who works as a contractual consultant for UN- or EU-funded human rights and development projects in troubled spots in Eastern Europe and Africa. While his work on those projects strikes one more as mercenary than mécène, this guest of mine evidently carried the baggage of the civilising missionary. So when he raised the topic of Belarus (he has traveled extensively in the former Soviet Union and had lived a couple of years in Minsk) I more than half expected him to launch on a harangue against Lukashenko. To my surprise he turned his contempt toward the other Alexander: "That Milinkevich is a real bastard, eh?" He related something else apart from this, but for me, that one sentence put me off the whole democracy-for-Belarus project in its current incarnation.
While the jury's still out on the opposition's intent, a decision apparently has been reached regarding their tactics. In today's Kiev Post, Lionel Beehner, a staff writer with the Council on Foreign Relations' website, wrote a quotable piece about how the opposition in fact did itself in. Beehner, who was in Belarus on a German Marshall Fund Journalism Fellowship, attributes the failure to a lack of focus. Despite having the advantage of reading from a well-worn playbook, the opposition was too disorganised, he said, to even light a revolutionary spark. A real Slavic damp squib.Earlier this month, the opposition in Belarus unveiled a new strategy. “We are switching from the wonderful romantic sentiments of a brave minority to everyday educational and informational efforts involving tens of thousands of freedom volunteers,” said opposition leader Alexander Milinkevich in a statement. Unfortunately, this shift in strategy may be too little, too late.
Belarus’ opposition missed a golden opportunity after last month’s presidential elections, if not to force the regime of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko to its knees, then at least to force a second round of voting. Civil society and youth groups there had had months, even years, to plan for this moment, as well as playbooks handed to them by their pals in Ukraine, Georgia, and Serbia.
But the opposition was too disorganized and too focused on what Milinkevich calls “romantic sentiments” and symbolic gestures, like lighting candles and wearing blue denim, instead of mobilizing more people, particularly adults, to take to the streets in protest. In the end, numbers matter more than gestures.
Sure, the opposition was up against a number of hurdles, including a lack of access to state-run airwaves, imminent threats of arrest, and a populace anemic after 12 years of dictatorship. Not to mention that many of its leaders were either behind bars or hiding abroad. And unlike Ukraine, these groups could not rely on domestic oligarchs for their funding, and most Western civil society groups had been booted out years ago, making financing tricky to navigate. But the opposition, particularly on the night of the March 19 elections, made a number of avoidable mistakes.
Around 8 p.m., responding to fliers and text messages posted by activists, thousands flocked to October Square —declared a no-go zone by the authorities— to hear opposition candidate Alexander Milinkevich address the masses. The trouble was that though he said all the right things, no one could hear him. The opposition did not think to bring an adequate sound system or generator to power it, just an inaudible bullhorn.
Also absent from the square were tents, which emerged as a poignant symbol of Ukraine’s Orange Revolution in 2004, when tent cities sprouted along Kyiv’s main thoroughfare, symbolizing the protesters’ willingness to camp out for weeks. Subzero temperatures and a biting wind in Minsk, more so than the threat posed by riot police, sent demonstrators home early. No plan was in place to keep protesters cozy or to supply blankets, thermoses of hot tea, or, most importantly, the tents themselves until the next day. By then it was too late.
Then, as the night wore on and the crowd thinned, a decision was hastily made to march a few blocks to Victory Square to lay carnations at a monument. This was a nice gesture symbolically, but not exactly tantamount to storming the Bastille or standing in front of a tank on Tiananmen Square. Only a few hundred bothered to march.
Next, came the opposition’s most disastrous decision: to postpone the protests until the following night. This killed any chance of reaching critical mass. Momentum was lost, as the next night’s crowd dwindled to only half of what it had been the previous night. By midweek, most of the foreign media had skipped town. Motorists passing by no longer honked in support. Even protesters’ chants of “Long live Belarus!” had lost their oomph.
Then there was the opposition’s odd rallying symbol: blue denim. Opposition leaders, trying to replicate recent revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia, were groping for a symbol, a color, a flower—anything to attract foreign media attention to their cause. They found such a symbol last year after a young Belarusian protester, his flags confiscated by police, held up a swatch of denim. Also, denim during Soviet times was evocative of the West. So, whenever Milinkevich appeared in public, he draped himself in a blue scarf to promote the spirit of what he hoped would become the “denim revolution.”
But the symbol failed and always felt a bit forced, like a marketing gimmick conjured up by Western NGOs. Not to mention, it was generic, the equivalent of Russian protesters donning fur hats or French rioters – berets. And while throngs of Ukrainians bedecked in bright orange might make for nice media coverage, protesters clad in blue jeans resemble just that: protesters clad in blue jeans.
Looking back, the opposition may have squandered its brief chance to bring reform to Belarus. They had the world’s undivided attention, but in the end, they were disorganized, improvising as they went along, instead of having a strategic plan in place. In the end, greater numbers were needed, not just pithy slogans, colorful flags, or gimmicky symbols to rally around, like denim.
Perhaps a repeat of a velvet revolution was never in the cards. But without an organized opposition, Belarus will never find out.
This is not to suggest that we should go the other way, of course. I think I'm too sentimental and idealistic a chap in any case to start cheering for dictators. More than anything it serves as a warning that things are never black and white as they seem. Now I get a bit leery when I see scenes of smiling young girls handing carnations to stern-looking soldiers or candle-bearing, pious-looking oppositionists. The cringe factor has now been raised; I am a tad -miniscule in cosmic terms, of course- readier to lend an ear to accusations of conspiracy by anti-Kremlin individuals.
We're off to Paris in 48 hours, yes!
One of the treats I'm looking forward to the most is Adriana Mater, the new work commissioned by the Bastille Opera from Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho, with the libretto written by Lebanese novelist Amin Maalouf. The premise is quite impressive. Even though I'm a bit skittish seeing another new work after thoroughly disliking Leonid Desyatnikov's The Children of Rosenthal at the Bolshoi on 26 March, I'm committing myself to this one as a way of rinsing the unpleasant aftertaste Detya left in my mouth.
So far, reviews have not been exactly unanimous. I've seen two posted already online after the world premiere just a couple of days ago. The first one, dated 4 April 2006, is written by Francis Carlin of the The Financial Times.Six years after the success of her first opera, L’Amour de loin, Kaija Saariaho is back with a modern fable, a striking story of lust and desire for vengeance.
Adriana is raped by Tsargo, who has been transformed by war from a drunk into a swaggering bully. He disappears. She gives birth and worries if her son Yonas will be Cain or Abel. Years later, the adolescent Yonas resolves to kill his father but falters when he sees Tsargo is now blind and a broken man.
The dream team that worked on L’Amour de loin is back. The libretto is by Amin Maalouf, the production by Peter Sellars and sets by George Tsypin. Saariaho again steers clear of the template of modern opera: the narrative is stark and linear. But you have to be a fervent supporter of the Saariaho style to overlook the flaws.
Saariaho’s decision to write for the stage was in part prompted by Messiaen’s St François d’Assise, an opera that is really a gargantuan oratorio. L’Amour de loin shared the same unconcern with dramatic pulse but worked for those who were entranced by its luxuriant orchestration. Adriana tries to tackle a more physical world and fails. Saariaho cannot juggle with theatrical pace and timing. A disembodied chorus barks out snippets of text and the amplification bombards us with crude distortion.
Adriana treats Maalouf’s wordy, banal libretto with scant regard for French meter. Vital sentences are drowned out. Worse, the first three scenes are dominated by a background blur from the orchestra.
As for the cast, Patricia Bardon is a rich-toned Adriana; Solveig Kringelborn, as her sister Refka, soars above the fray and Gordon Gietz is a lithe, energetic Yonas. Stephen Milling’s giant proportions suit Tsargo’s character but he stumbles over uninteresting music towards the end.
Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts a disciplined orchestra. There are cheers for Saariaho but scant applause. The dream team has been caught resting on its laurels.
Not the most encouraging review, really, but what can you expect from the FT? This business-oriented paper would probably label as disappointing anything hinting political liberalism. When you're talking about a morality play suggestively set in the former Yugoslavia involving possibly Muslim protagonists, when the outcome doesn't really end as vengefully bloody as Shakespeare or the Bible, would you be surprised FT found it limp entertainment?
Fortunately there's a balancing review by the New York Times - a daily I normally agree with. In a feminist-sounding piece entitled An Opera in Paris Addresses Motherhood in a War Zone, Alan Riding writes:PARIS - At its most powerful, opera takes human, religious and political dramas of the past and gives them enduring relevance. "Adriana Mater," the new opera by the heralded Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho, borrows its haunting narrative from our own age and shows it to be a story for all time.
Its setting is a modern war, modern because it could be happening now, yet primitive because its weapons include rape. Thus, while the country is not named, the plot inevitably evokes the Bosnian war of the 1990s, with its grim legacy of rape and ethnic cleansing.
But here there is a twist: Adriana Mater is raped by a soldier from her own community. Ignoring the advice of her sister, Refka, Adriana refuses an abortion and rears a son, Yonas, to believe that his father died a war hero. At 17, he learns the truth. When the man, Tsargo, returns to the village, Yonas decides to kill him.
A story of such intensity demands music of equal power, and to judge by the enthusiastic response of the Opéra Bastille's packed house at Monday's world premiere, Saariaho succeeded in forging a work on an emotional scale rarely heard in contemporary opera.
The cast comprises just four characters - Adriana, Refka, Yonas and Tsargo - who are backed by an amplified offstage chorus. The opera's changing moods are defined by richly varied orchestration, explosive and reflective, as well as by the urgent parlando and lyrical arias of the vocal parts.
"Adriana Mater" is Saariaho's second opera. And as with her first, "L'Amour de Loin," presented at the Salzburg Festival in 2000 and since widely performed, she has again joined forces with the Lebanese writer Amin Maalouf as librettist and with the American director Peter Sellars.
But "Adriana Mater," which was commissioned by the Paris National Opera and the Finnish National Opera, is a far darker work, one searingly painful in its depiction of humanity.
"If there is not a lot of action, there must be big feelings," Saariaho, 53, a soft-spoken woman known to be intensely private, said in an interview a few days before the premiere. "I am more for big feelings than a lot of action. I did not say I wanted something sad or violent. It just happened by itself."
Saariaho, the mother of two, said she was drawn to the subject of motherhood, still moved by the memory of another heart beating inside her. The idea of confronting motherhood and war then emerged from Maalouf's experience as a war reporter who chose fiction - and exile in Paris - when civil war erupted in his native Lebanon.
"The story is set in no fixed place at no fixed time," Maalouf, 57, said in the opera's program. "Even so, I had in mind some of the conflicts I have followed closely, notably that of former Yugoslavia. But the most important thing for me was that Adriana's aggressor was from her community, not the enemy camp."
Saariaho said she frequently discussed the story with Maalouf, but only began composing when the libretto was completed. This she did on a computer, working mainly from her imagination. As a result, she said, when she heard the score played by an orchestra for the first time, it was "very shocking."
"That moment, when I start hearing it, I stop imagining it," she said. "I begin to forget what was in my mind. I go back and look at the score and remember what I heard the orchestra play and what I first imagined. And I ask myself, 'Is this what it is supposed to be?' I have to be very critical. Did I write it as I imagined it, if this is how it is played?"
Still, Saariaho is evidently assured by working with longtime friends, not only Maalouf and Sellars, but also Esa- Pekka Salonen, a fellow Finn, who is conducting the Paris Opera orchestra for the five performances of "Adriana Mater," through April 18. "If the artists come together, the result is so much more than music," she said.
With George Tsypin's translucent décor suggesting a Balkan or Middle Eastern village, Sellars's fluent direction helps the four characters of the opera, divided into seven tableaus, to occupy the Bastille's large stage. The opera's ending tableau turns from despair to hope. Adriana's son, Yonas, cannot bring himself to kill his father, the rapist Tsargo, now old and blind. Feeling he has betrayed his mother, Yonas begs her forgiveness. But now, Adriana is sure that her blood flows through the veins of Yonas.
"This man deserved to die, my son, but you did not deserve to kill," she says. And taking her son in her arms, she concludes: "We are not avenged, Yonas, but we are saved."
Sellars, clearly moved by the opera, described it as "a classic."
"In the 21st century," he said in an interview, "we have a responsibility to do more than sit around and tell sad stories. Here we see there will be a future. And that future has been guaranteed all over the world by women, women who in impossible situations nourish and cultivate human dignity."
With the score mixed, I toss the dice. (A man with a credit card can be dangerous.) I've just booked tickets for me and my Inessa for €50 each. The minimum was just €40 around a week ago, before the premiere, but they've gone up; a good sign, if anything. Even though for the same price you could see two operas for two people here in Moscow, they've different standards for opera there. I remember in 2002, when I saw Madama Butterfly at the Teatro Real in Madrid, I had to pay €18 - an astronomical sum for a student, especially one who was looking forward to pay just €2.
I hope Riding -and not Carlin- is right.
Depuis mes années universitaires je me demandais comment le mot "baiser" a-t-il acquis l'autre signification. Bien sûr n'importe qui peut deviner que baiser aurait dû commencé sa carrière en tant qu'euphémisme qui a subi un processus de transmogrification extrème.
Camille Laurens le mets au clair dans son rubrique Le grain des mots, qui est parue dans l'édition de l'Humanité du 15 novembre 2001.Non, non, n’y comptez pas : je ne vous dirai pas d’entrée de jeu ce que j’entends par là - s’il s’agit du substantif ou du verbe. Mais après rapide sondage autour de moi ("le mot baiser, qu’est-ce que ça t’évoque, là, tout de suite, sans réfléchir ?"), il semblerait qu’en ce début de siècle on le comprenne plus souvent dans le sens de Virginie Despentes - Baise-moi - que dans celui des troubadours - "d’un baiser ma douce et noble dame s’est emparée de mon cour". Enfin bref, inutile de biaiser davantage : j’adore ce mot dans les deux sens, dont on n’a aucun mal à saisir presque charnellement la proximité, la complicité ; il est une carte de Tendre à lui tout seul, des "premiers soins" aux "dernières bornes de l’amitié", de la Rivière d’Inclination à la Mer Dangereuse dans laquelle elle se jette avec la même logique qu’un nom dérivant vers un verbe. Selon le Grand Robert, "baiser, employé absolument, n’est plus d’usage décent comme il l’était à l’époque classique". Il est alors remplacé par embrasser. On peut cependant imaginer que l’autre sens a toujours affleuré ; ainsi chez Molière, quand Diafoirus fils s’enquiert des règles du savoir-vivre : "Baiserai-je, mon père, on ne baiserai-je point ?", le parterre devait se tordre. Louise Labé, quant à elle, en chante l’érotisme incendiaire, qui brûle à la rime : "Baise m’encor, rebaise moi et baise/ Donne m’en un de tes plus savoureux/ Donne m’en un de tes plus amoureux :/ Je t’en rendrai quatre plus chauds que braise." Là où la bise n’est qu’un petit courant d’air froid, le baiser, donc, est de feu, même s’il s’accorde aussi avec " aise " et " apaise ". La Belle Cordière en fait le geste souverain de l’amour, celui qui permet véritablement à chacun de baisser la garde et d’entrer dans l’Autre, physiquement bien sûr, mais aussi mentalement : "Ainsi mêlant nos baisers tant heureux/ Jouissons nous l’un de l’autre à notre aise/ Lors double vie à chacun en suivra/ Chacun en soi et son ami vivra."
Il bacio - "rose trémière au jardin des caresses", selon Verlaine. Certes il y a le baiser de Judas (sans doute est-ce de là que vient l’idée de trahison : "je me suis fait baiser"). Mais le plus souvent, ce mot qu’on prononce en avançant les lèvres suggère l’abc de l’amour, le b a ba de la passion. On peut le voler, le donner, l’échanger : c’est toute une économie amoureuse. À la fois frêle et solide sur sa base, baume éphémère et fusion éternelle, le baiser est taillé dans le marbre de Rodin et dans le feu du Phénix. "Sonore et gracieux Baiser, divin Baiser !/ Volupté nonpareille, ivresse inénarrable!" : le poète ne cesse d’en chanter les louanges car l’homme, dit-il, "s’y grise d’un bonheur qu’il ne sait épuiser". Mille baisers, donc, c’est la grâce que je vous souhaite.
At work today I stumbled upon an article by staffmember Andrew Taylor in Pulse St Petersburg (there used to be a Pulse Moscow as well - I remember way back in 2003 -, but it was discontinued in early 2004) that talks about the risible inclusion of Russified English words into the language of Pushkin and Tolstoy. It's amusing.
Every year hundreds of foreigners from all corners of the world come to St. Petersburg to study the language of Dostoevsky and Pushkin. More, in fact, study Russian in the northern capital than in Moscow. But for Brits, Americans and students from other Anglophonic countries, the language they hear and see in St. Petersburg increasingly resembles their native tongue.
Piratskie kompakt-diski are sold at a sharp diskont on virtually every corner. Bukmekery and other gambling eksperty help you place bets. Khippi, rokery, rastamany, kul’tovye fil’m-meikery, along with other friki and nonkomformisty, are all part of Petersburg’s kountr-kul’tura (you can add gangstery, prostituty, bandity, khuligany and other riff-raff to the list). Lovers of ekstrim-sport engage in snoubording, vindserfing and bandzhi-dzhamping. Kustomery and komsumery frequent supermarkety, gipermarkety and mul’tipleksy… Oh, the list is prakticheski endless.
Many native-English speakers, along with those who speak English as a second or third language, are pleasantly surprised by this Anglicization of the language they’ve arrived to study: The more English cognates, the fewer "real" Russian words they have to memorize. But there are some folks, such as myself, who came to Petersburg to study good Russian, not "Russlish," the barbarized language that assaults them in this city of Peter
For a little insight into the Russlish phenomenon, I offer extracts from a tipichnyi day.
Russlish: a tipichnyi day
8:00 a.m.
My day starts at the fitness-tsentr. I enter the sports-zal, where rich, sweaty housewives engage in dzogging on treadmills, and buff fellows busy themselves with bodibilding. By the way, I recently read the following statement: "Bodibilding – ne eksklyusivno dlia streit men" ("Bodybuilding is not exclusively for straight men"). Thus, in order to avoid any awkward misunderstandings, I try not to be over-friendly with the muscle-bound toughs.
Note: Although streit is relatively new to the Russian tongue, it’s antonym, gei, has been firmly entrenched in the national lexicon for many years. Draw your own conclusions
9:15 a.m.
At home, I sip coffee while listening to talk radio, where top-menedzheridebatiruyt ("debate") the effekty of off-shor kholdingi on the lokal’naya ekonomika. Interestingly, today’s top-menedzher in most any big-biznes is often referred to simply as boss.
Sometime around 11:00 a.m.
At work. A piarshik (i.e. someone involved in pablik releshens) sends me a press reliz via faks regarding the opening of a klab-khaus for baikery. The organizatory of the new klab (purposefully voweled with an “a” instead of the usual “u,” thereby further mutating orthography but phonetically bringing it closer to English) planiruyut ("plan") shou-programmy, khedlainery, frendli-atmosfera, rok-muzika from European and American khit-parady, along with open-eiry (i.e. "open-air" kontserty). Furthermore, the klab boasts a large number of memberz and several supporterz. My goodness, who pens this junk?
A bit later I overhear one dizeiner say to another: "Sokhrani vse khi-rez faily v folderakh na desk-tope" ("Save all high-resolution files in folders on the desktop"). The language of dizainery, kompyuterschiki, programmisty and other khi-tekh workers is so littered with Anglicisms that I often have no idea what they’re saying.
1:40 p.m.
Hunger strikes. I head to a restaurant advertising itself as a respektabel’nyi istebleshment. I order the biznes lanch (on weekends, this place offers branch, pronounced “brawnch”). For dessert, the waitress rekomenduet ("receommends") chiz-keik. I decline.
3:30
At the ofis, sitting at my kompyuter. A colleague asks me to translate a short article. The following sentence leaps off the page: "Inflyatsia, stagnatsia i dazhe defol’t – potentsial’nye rezul’taty disbalansa mezhdu eksportami i importami" (“Inflation, stagnation and even default are the potential results of the misbalance between exports and imports”). The rest of the article continues in this vein, and I finish the job in rekordnyi time. In short, it’s quick and easy to translate Russlish into English.
That evening
It’s been a hard day, one that I will kiss off in a feshenebel’nyi klub-bar. This place, like most alternativnye or anderground (not, heaven forbid, meinstrim) kluby in St. Petersburg, has a chillout (pronounced “cheel-ah-oot” by locals) room. That’s where I plant myself. I flip through the kokteil menu, which features skryu-draivery, zhin-toniki and even long-eiland eis ti. I order a domestic beer. The fellow next to me introduces himself. He’s in marketing. He diskutiruet (“discusses”) how to pozitsionirovat’ ("position") brendy so that the publika will receive the korrektnyi messedzh. This konversatsia causes me severe diskomfort. I finish my beer and take the first shans to exit.
It’s a bit dishonest, of course, to bemoan the Anglicization of Russian. All world languages, including English (especially English!), are amalgams that reflect the ebbs and tides of cultural exchange. Indeed, over the centuries, Russian itself gracefully has absorbed elements of the Greek, Latin, Tatar, German and French tongues. Many intelligent voices argue that Russian will do the same with English.
The difference today, however, is the sheer amount of English (along with Latin and French via English) words that have invaded the Russian lexicon in a relatively short time. It often seems that, when offered a choice, Russians will choose Anglicisms when a perfectly good Russian analog is available. This is unfortunate. Why not skidka instead of diskont? Podpol’nyi over anderground? Neudobstvodiskomfort? Hell, even delevoi obed over biznes lanch!
For the legions of foreign students studying in St. Petersburg – especially those from Anglophonic countries – this recent barbarization of Russian perhaps eases their task. But it is my hope that the language I chose to learn remains great, mighty, truthful, and free. Russlish, alas, will never be any of these.
Being bilingual from childhood, I had always been tempted to mix my two mother languages. Now if the resulting patois were to be used as a kind of insider's code, an idiolect that grants one access into a select circle of similarly fork-tongued individuals, then the accompanying humour alone would allow one to indulge in the use of such a mélange. However, when more than 80 million people do the same thing, it's no longer as funny.
My Russian is not exactly anything to write home about, but I still dream of speaking it fluently one day. If I even reach a hard-earned level of competence, I believe I too would feel as strongly about linguistic purity as the writer of this piece.
