Мир человеческий изменчив.
По замыслу его когда-то сделавших.
Сто лет тому назад любили женщин.
А в наше время чаще любят девушек.
Сто лет назад ходили оборванцами,
неграмотными,
в шкурах покоробленных.
Сто лет тому назад любили Францию.
А в наши дни сильнее любят Родину.
Сто лет назад в особняке помещичьем
при сальных, оплывающих свечах
всю жизнь прожить чужим посмешищем
легко могли б вы.
Но сейчас.
Сейчас не любят нравственных калек.
Весёлых любят.
Полных смелости.
Таких, как я.
Весёлый человек.
Типичный представитель современности.
1957
Source
Joseph Brodsky recites “The human world is fickle” (1957) by his friend the poet Vladimir Ufliand
The human world is fickle.
It was planned that way by them who made it way back when.
A hundred years ago, people loved women.
But nowadays they more often dig chicks.
A hundred years ago, people went around ragged,
illiterate,
in kinky furs.
A hundred years ago, people adored France.
But nowadays they fancy the Motherland more.
A hundred years ago, you easily could
spend your whole life as someone's laughing stock
in a manor house
lit by greasy, guttering candles.
But nowadays.
But nowadays people don't care for emotional wrecks.
They like funny folk.
People full of moxie.
People like me.
A cheerful sort.
The very model of a modern bloke.
1957
The original poem and the video were gifted to her friends and acquaintances, today on her birthday, by the fabulously courageous and definitely cheerful Leokadia Frenkel, to whom I dedicate the translation, above. I also had the good fortune to be acquainted with the gentle, funny, gracious Vladimir Ufliand in real life.His photo, above, was taken by Vadim Egorovsky (1940–2020) in 1995, and is courtesy of Rosphoto and the Tamizdat Project.||| TRR
Arzamas recorded a concert in which members of the project Brodsky Ad Libitum played the poet’s favorite pieces and discussed his relationship with music.
“Una furtiva lagrima” (1832)
Nemorino’s aria from Gaetano Donizetti’s opera L’elisir d’amore
Arranged by Alexei Chizhik
“La Cumparsita” (circa 1914)
Tango by Gerardo Matos Rodriguez
Arranged by Alexei Chizhik
“A-Tisket, A-Tasket” (1938)
Jazz standard by Ella Fitzgerald and Al Feldman
“Lili Marlene” (1938)
Norbert Schulze (music), Hans Leip (words)
Arranged by Alexei Chizhik
Minuet in G minor (1725)
Johann Sebastian Bach
Arranged by Alexei Chizhik
Stabat Mater (1736)
First movement (“Stabat mater dolorosa”) of Giovanni Battista Pergolesi’s cantata
Arranged by Alexei Chizhik
“Joy Spring” (1954)
Jazz standard by Clifford Brown and Max Roach
“Remember Me” (1689)
Dido’s aria from Henry Purcell’s opera Dido and Aeneas
Arranged by Alexei Chizhik
Concerto for Flute and Orchestra in E Minor
Saverio Mercadante
“Rondo Russo”
Arranged by Alexei Chizhik
Brodsky Ad Libitum:
Irina Chizhik – project designer
Alexei Chizhik – vibraphone
Stanislav Chigadayev – piano
Vladimir Volkov – double bass
Anton Alexeyevsky – flute
Producer: Yulia Bogatko
Operators Sergei Tishchenko, Sergei Davidyak, Alexandra Kallistova, and Utromedia Studio
Sound engineers: Sergei Yermakov and Yulia Glukhova
Editing: Alexander Kallistov
Motion design: Seryozha Okhta
Editor-in-chief: Victoria Malyutina-Lukashina
Arzamas thanks Anatoly Naiman for his voice and photograph, as well as Anna Narinskaya, Anna Malenkova, Anton Alexeyvsky, and the Room and a Half Joseph Brodsky Museum for their help in filming.
Arzamas is a cultural history education project. You can listen to our courses and podcasts on the Radio Arzamas app.
Masha Ivashintsova, Krasnoi Konnitsy [Red Cavalry] Street, Leningrad, Winter 1977. Shot with a Zeiss Ikoflex 6×6. Courtesy of FacebookWhen your weary mind
loses its balance,
when the steps of this staircase
give way beneath your feet
like a ship’s deck,
when your nocturnal solitude
doesn’t give a hoot about humanity,
you can
reflect on eternity
and doubt the purity
of ideas, theories, modes
of art appreciation
and, interestingly, the conception
by Madonna of her son Jesus.
But it’s better to worship what’s given
with its deep graves.
Later,
many years from now,
they shall seem so dear.
Yes, better worship what’s given
with its short roads.
Later you’ll find them
strangely
large,
wide,
dusty,
strewn with compromises.
They’ll seem like large wings.
They’ll seem like large birds.
Yes, better worship what’s given
with its wretched standards.
Later, to the nth degree,
they’ll serve as a railing
(though not a particularly clean one),
keeping your hobbling truths
in balance
on this chipped staircase.
1959
Original text. Thanks to Katya Vidre for the suggestion. Translated by the Russian Reader
Late Soviet-era co-op apartment buildings on the Smolenka River in northwest Petersburg, near the Primorskaya subway station. Photo: Roman Bezjak/Hatje Cantz Verlag. Courtesy of Business Insider
* * *
Along with the heating, in every building
there is a system of absence. Concealed in the walls,
its noiseless radiators
flood the apartment with unadulterated emptiness
the year round, whatever the weather.
Connected to the main, it apparently runs
on fuel supplied by death, arrest or
simple jealousy. This temperature
rises towards evening. One turn of the key
and you find yourself in a place where there is
no one: like a thousand years ago,
or somewhat earlier—in the Ice Age,
before evolution. Usurped space
never relinquishes its
uninhabitedness, thus reminding
the upstart monkey
of emptiness’s primordial, pre-glacial right
to housing. Absence is merely
the home address of nonexistence.
Being bourgeois,
in the long run, at curtain call,
it prefers wallpaper to boulders or brown moss.
The more elaborate the wallpaper’s jungles, the unhappier the monkey.
I don’t hear what you’re saying to me, but a voice’s echo.
I don’t see what you’re wearing, but the snow’s even expanse.
And this isn’t a room where we sit, but the polestar’s shadow.
Plus our footsteps leading away from it, not hence.
Once I knew by heart all the spectrum’s colors.
Now I can make out only white, to my doctor’s disbelief.
But even if the little ditty is truly over,
One might still recall its leitmotif.
I would gladly lie down with you, but that’s mere idle splendor.
If I lie down, it will be with the turf, warm and snug.
And the old hag will sob in her hut on chicken-leg timber
And cook herself up a soft-boiled egg.
Once I used soda instead of other stain removers.
It always worked, like talcum powder on a mole.
Around you nowadays the riffraff crash like breakers.
You wear brightly colored dresses. And I mourn.
Source: Odnoklassniki. Translation and photo by the Russian Reader
Provincial towns, where you’ll never get a straight answer.
What’s it to you? It was yesterday however you cut it.
Outside the elms murmur, nodding to a landscape
Only the train ever sees. Somewhere a bee buzzes.
The knight made a career of crossroads, but these days
Is himself a stoplight. Plus there’s a river in the distance.
And between the mirror into which you gaze
And those who can’t recall you there’s also little difference.
Closed fast in the heat, the shutters are entwined in gossip,
Or merely ivy, to avoid making a blunder.
Bounding through the front door, a sunburnt stripling
Clad in only his swim trunks has come to collect your future.
So twilight’s a long time in descending. Evening’s usually cast
In the shape of a train station square, with a statue, etc.,
Where the glance in which you read “You bastard!”
Is in direct proportion to the crowd that’s not present.
1996
Source: Culture.ru. Image courtesy of Ozon. Translated by the Russian Reader
Petersburg real estate developer and Brodsky museum founder Maxim Levchenko
43-year-old Maxim Levchenko is a managing partner at Fort Group, the developer of a large number of shopping centers in Petersburg and Moscow. His company is one of the largest proprietors of commercial real estate in the country. In 2020, at the height of the pandemic, he opened A Room and a Half — a Joseph Brodsky museum located in the communal apartment where the poet lived with his parents. A Brodsky museum has long been the talk of the town in Petersburg. Friends and fans of Brodsky have been trying to open [a museum in the apartment] since the late 90s. A neighbor in the communal apartment [where the Brodskys lived], Nina Vasilyevna prevented it from happening, responding to all requests [to sell her room in the flat to make room for the museum] laconically: “Over my dead body.” That is, until a shopping center proprietor seemingly remote from literature, businessman Maxim Levchenko, showed up at the flat. Brodsky’s fans naturally wondered who he was. Anna Mongayt asked Levchenko to give her a tour of the museum for the program “Patrons” and recount how he managed to persuade Nina Vasilyevna [to make a deal], how architect Alexander Brodsky was involved in designing the museum, and why the businessman wanted to invest in such an unprofitable project.
Watch the thirty-nine-minute program (in Russian, with no subtitles) on TV Rain. Image courtesy of TV Rain. Program synopsis translated by the Russian Reader
ILYA SHAKURSKY, an antifascist political prisoner in Russia, appeals to you in this interview to write to him, and to others imprisoned in the infamous Network case. Please see a note at the end about where to send messages.
Tomorrow, Tuesday 19 January, is the anniversary of the assassination of antifascists Anastasia Baburova and Stanislav Markelov, who were shot dead in broad daylight in central Moscow in 2009. People will gather – in Moscow, to lay flowers at the place where they were killed, elsewhere online – and we publish this article on several web sites simultaneously, to express solidarity.
The Network case began in Penza and St Petersburg in October 2017, when the Federal Security Service (FSB) started detaining young anarchists and antifascists, who had supposedly participated in a terrorist group. The security services claimed that the young detainees were preparing terrorist acts, aimed at the presidential elections and the football World Cup in 2018 [which was staged in Russia].
It soon became clear that this “Network” had been dreamed up by the FSB, and the confessions extracted from the alleged participants with the use of the most barbaric tortures. Details of the methods used, including electric shock batons, were published widely before the defendants were tried.
Nevertheless, the defendants were found guilty and sentenced – in January 2019 in Petersburg, Igor Shishkin, to three and a half years in prison; in February 2020, seven defendants in Penza, including Ilya Shakursky, to sentences ranging from six and 18 years in prison; and in June 2020 in Petersburg, Viktor Filinkov to seven years, and Yuli Boyarshinov to five and a half years.
In October 2020, an appeal by the Penza defendants was heard and rejected. An appeal by Viktor Filinkov is in progress.
All ten defendants are included in a list of 61 political prisoners compiled by Memorial, Russia’s largest human rights defence group.
This interview with Ilya Shakursky, who is serving a 16-year sentence, is by Dmitry Semenov. It was published by Free Russia House, an “alternative embassy for Russian civil society” based in Kyiv, and by the Rupression collective that supports the Network case prisoners. (The questions were sent via Elena Shakurskaya, Ilya’s mother, and answers received, via Elena, in written form.)
Ilya Shakursky, speaking at Anticapitalism 2013
Question: Do you feel the support from outside the prison system, and how important is it? Could you say something briefly to our readers and to people who support you?
Ilya Shakursky: It feels good to realise, every morning when they call out my surname and hand over letters I have received, that people remember me and continue to support me. At those moments, the grey monotony of imprisonment is broken up by different colours. It doesn’t matter whether the letter is a couple of lines or goes on like a whole essay. Just getting some news gives me strength and happiness. When I see photos of solidarity actions all over the world; when I read interviews with well-known people who speak about the absurdity of the criminal case against us; when I hear the drums and voices of friends [demonstrating] on the other side of the [prison] wall; when I think of the concert, at which the whole hall sang “This Will Pass” [“Vse proidet”] (a song about the Network case by the Russian punk group Pornofilmy), or of the rap-battle, where verses were read in support of our case, or of the street artist who used graffiti to speak out about repression in Russia today – I feel like it wasn’t all in vain.
The young woman (left) and the late Russian-American poet Joseph Brodsky (right) have nothing to do with the story, told below, of a Central Asian female migrant, working as a residential building caretaker in Petersburg, and her temporarily misplaced daughter. In recent days, however, this “graffiti” portrait of the Nobel laureate, which was quickly painted over, has been the talk of Brodsky’s hometown. The brutal conditions in which Central Asian migrant workers live in Petersburg and other Russian cities are virtually never the talk of the town, although it is their poorly paid drudgery that makes it possible for the “natives” to lead such rich spiritual and intellectual lives, chockablock with fine poetry and heated debates about “street art” and aesthetics. Photograph courtesy of the Instagram page Dom Muruzi
While I was at work, I found a little girl outside the entrance of a residential building. She was calling for her mother, her mommy. She was lost. Although the girl could speak Russian, she was unable, of course, to say where she lived and when she had last seen her mommy. But she was enjoying playing with a broken plastic motorcycle.
I couldn’t go to the police. Who knew what problems with papers the little girl’s family had? In any case, the police would shake down the girl’s mother and father and rob them.
An old lady in the neighborhood with whom I organized an ACSC (ad-hoc committee for saving the child) agreed with my assessment. During the ten minutes of our existence as a committee, we couldn’t come up with anything. Fortunately, the mother—a local building caretaker—showed up and fetched her daughter.
How disgusting it is to live in a society where you can’t go to the police, because the police are robbers and looters with blank stares.
George Losev is a housing authority electrician and revolutionary leftist activist in Petersburg. Translated by the Russian Reader
Oleg Kuvaev and patrons present Masyanya, Episode 142: “Isolation”
Masyanya: That’s that. We’re not going outside. It’s a full quarantine. We’re never going outside again.
Uncle Badya: What, never again?
Masyanya: Oh, come on. There was never anything good about the outside. “Outside.” Even the word says it: “outside” is a nasty word. “Outside” is violence, disease, politics, filth, viruses, rudeness, thievery, and other shit. There’s nothing good out there. Forget it, we’ve over it. Yeah, by the way, this is Brodsky. He’s going to stay on our couch for a while.
Grundel: What? What Brodsky? What the hell! No one asked me.
Brodsky: Don’t leave the room, don’t make the mistake and run.
Grundel: You shut up, bro!
Masyanya: We don’t get asked much in this life. There’s nothing to be done about it, Grundel. You’ll have to live with him.
Brodsky: Things are silly out there . . .
Grundel: And how are we going to get the groceries from the courier?
Masyanya: You cut a little hatch on the bottom so only a box can get through.
Grundel: But I don’t want to ruin the door!
Masyanya: Well, then we’re going to order only thin-crust pizza, so it slides under the door. It’s much tastier, too.
Masyanya: We should have a regimen.
Grundel: We’re lying down, that’s our regimen.
Masyanya: We should do calisthenics every day.
Grundel: Kid now . . . but better at night.
Masyanya: And get up at eight in the morning.
Grundel: And go to bed at eighteen in the evening.
Masyanya: And learn Japanese.
Grundel: Well, kid now, go crazy. Arigato gozaimasu, sou desu ka . . .
Masyanya and Grundel: It’s you again . . .
Masyanya: Stop, bitch! I know it’s you again.
Masyanya: I’ve woken up. And the question is, what the heck for?
Masyanya: I didn’t know you were such a sprat lover, Grundel. Is your maiden name Spratman, by chance?
Grundel: Why the hell do you need so much wine, Masyanya?
Masyanya: The dumbest thing you can do when the world ends, Grundel, is be sober. Capeesh?
Masyanya: Things are going badly, my Japanese friend.
Masyanya and Grundel: It’s you again . . .
Masyanya: So listen to me, people of Cell No. 15, and hear what I say. Basically, there was writer and traveler, Thor Heyerdahl.
Grundel: Sorry, who was “high”?
Masyanya: Cover your ears, children. Heyer, Heyerdahl. That’s a last name, damn it. Open your ears, children. Wait, did you hear that? Whatever. Basically, Thor Heyerdahl . . . sailed off. Cut, cut, cut! So, basically, Thor Heyerdahl, traveler, wrote in his book about traveling on the Kon-Tiki that the crew would sometimes lower on a rope from the back of the ship this little sloop . . .
Grundel: Sloo-oop.
Masyanya: Sloo-oop.
Grundel: Sloo-oop, Sloo-oop.
Masyanya: Quiet! Sloo-oop.
Thor Heyerdahl: Sloo-oop.
Masyanya: Sloo-oop.
Grundel: Sloo-oop.
Masyanya: Basically, there would a dude in the sloop who had bugged the shit out of the whole crew, and he’d have a little break from the company of his dear loved ones. Got it? We’re in a similar situation, and so the bedroom is now a sloop.
Grundel: Sloo-oop.
Masyanya: Sloo-oop. Quiet!
Grundel: Sloo-oop.
Masyanya: Basically, if when anyone gets sick of our company, they have the right to say they have problems, and go there and sit alone. Is everyone clear? Dibs! I’m first!
Brodsky: Don’t leave the room, feign that you’ve caught a chill.
Grundel: Hey, Masyanya, is bro going to have a turn, too?
Brodsky: Don’t be a fool! Don’t be like the others.
Grundel: That’s an interesting thought.
Masyanya: What’s going on outside? Any zombies?
Grundel: No, there’s no one at all.
Masyanya: Uh, what a virus, man, it sucks.
Masyanya: Damn, they don’t have that, they don’t have that, and they don’t have that, either. What are we going to do for chow?
Grundel: I can eat beer.
Grundel: Hey, Shaggy, what are you doing?
Shaggy: I’m fine, I’m dating girls. I even like it better this way.
Grundel: Оh, you’re playing GTA! Basically, you have to shoot everyone, break in there and rob it, and then steal a car . . .
Masyanya: Uh, wait, I’m just strolling. I’m going to the beach, then stop by the store and the café. Why do I need to shoot, kill, and chop up people? That was fun before the virus.
A YEAR HAS PASSED
Masyanya: What, just go outside like that?
Grundel: Yes, the quarantine has been lifted. Go ahead, go for a walk!
Masyanya: Outside . . . Ah, what is that? The sky? Ugh . . . what shit! Listen, Grundel, the outside is nothing but trouble. I’ll show you a forest in VR. It rocks! It’s pretty and there’s no shit. Let’s go back. Let’s nail it back up . . . It was nice.
Brodsky: Lock up and let the armoire keep chronos, cosmos, eros, race, and virus from getting in the door . . . Ouch!
Masyanya: You get the heck out of here, bro. You were to blame from the very beginning. Beat it, bro!
Thanks to Comrade Koganzon for the heads-up and transcribing the Russian. Image courtesy of Masyanya website. Translated by the Russian Reader
Private Brodsky Museum Opens in Petersburg, Featuring Room Where Poet Lived. Museum Will Host Tours, Lectures, and Performances Bumaga
January 25, 2020
The furnishings in Brodsky’s room have been recreated using projections. Photo by Anastasia Rozhkova for Bumaga
A private Joseph Brodsky museum opened in the Muruzi House on Liteiny Prospect on Saturday, January 25, according to Maxim Levchenko, the museum’s creator and managing partner at the development company FortGroup.
The museum plans to run closed tours for groups of fifteen people. Visitors will need to register for them in advance, and tickets will be sold on the project’s website. The price of the tour has not yet been set. According to Levchenko, the museum will charge enough to cover salaries and maintenance costs.
The memorial section of the museum occupies the room where Brodsky lived with his family. It was uncoupled from the communal apartment to which it was attached. In his works, the poet dubbed the space “a room and a half.” The furnishings have been recreated using projections.
The second part of the museum is housed in the apartment next door. According to experts, its purchase cost about 35 million rubles [approx. 510,000 euros]. The walls have been stripped, floor boards have been put down, and photographs hung on the walls. An amphitheater, where lectures and performances will be held, has also been constructed.
The museum’s creators note that they are collaborating with the Anna Akhmatova Museum, which will provide them with historical objects in the future.
In 2018, Levchenko stated that total investment in the project would amount to more than one million euros. He planned to attract partners after the exhibition was ready.
RBK wrote that the museum would be curated by the people behind Brodsky.online, a virtual memorial to Brodsky, produced in conjunction with the Anna Akhmatova Museum at Fountain House.
Attempts to open a full-fledged Brodsky museum date to 1999, when the Brodsky Museum Foundation was founded. With support from banks and sponsors, it bought almost the entire memorial communal apartment in the Muruzi House. It was not possible to complete the purchase, however, as the proprietress of one of the rooms refused to leave. Because of this, the room where Brodsky lived had to be separated from the rest of the apartment.
Thanks to Eugenia Kikodze for the heads-up. See more photos of the new museum here. Translated by the Russian Reader
Elegy
Once upon a time this southern town
was the place where a friend and I met.
Both of us were young and had agreed
to meet on the seawall,
built in ancient times: we had read
about it in books.
Many waves have crashed against it since then.
Back on dry land, my friend choked on a petty
but bitter lie of his own, while I
hit the road.
And once again I am
standing here tonight. No one
came to meet me, nor do I
anyone to whom I can say, Come
to such-and-such place at such-and-such time.
The gulls scream.
The crashing waves splash.
The lighthouse is more a sight
for the photographer’s sore eyes than the sailor’s.
I stand alone on an ancient stone,
and my sadness doesn’t defile antiquity,
but compounds it. Apparently, the earth
is truly round, since you arrive
at a place where there is nothing but
memories.
The young woman (left) and the late Russian-American poet Joseph Brodsky (right) have nothing to do with the story, told below, of a Central Asian female migrant, working as a residential building caretaker in Petersburg, and her temporarily misplaced daughter. In recent days, however, this “graffiti” portrait of the Nobel laureate, which was quickly painted over, has been 
The furnishings in Brodsky’s room have been recreated using projections. Photo by Anastasia Rozhkova for 
The Russian Reader 