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Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
Mark Twain, an American writer.
Also visit Mark Twain’s House and Museum website.
Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.
El Poema de las Danzas, or The Poem about the Dance, is the title under which the famous Carmen Suite Ballet was transferred onto the screen in Russia. Here is the story of how the ballet had actually come about (from Video Artists International):
Maya Plisetskaya always dreamed of dancing the role of Carmen and had approached Shostakovich for a score. He demurred out of respect for Bizet’s celebrated opera. It was eventually Plisetskaya’s husband Rodion Shchedrin who agreed to provide the music after seeing some of the initial rehearsals with his wife and the choreographer Alberto Alonso. His Carmen Suite Ballet, based on Bizet, was a perfect complement to Alonso’s choreography and, in its theatricality, a showcase for Plisetskaya’s considerable dramatic gifts. Plisetskaya’s Don Jose is the brilliant dramatic dancer, Nicolai Fadeyechev. Sergei Radchenko dances the role of the Bullfighter. The Carmen Suite Ballet, one of the darkest settings of Mérimée’s tragic story, deeply symbolic and overtly sensual, premiered at the Bolshoi Ballet on April 20, 1967.
The film was made in 1969 and, according to IMDb.com, released in Argentina in 1970.
I have always been somewhat hesitant when it comes to speaking about the members of my family, particularly their accomplishments. I want to tell about these, and I want the world to know that we are related for no other reason that I feel happy and proud of them, as the members of the kin should. Yet I cannot temper my feelings, I am truly HAPPY for them, and for some time I was wary that this may come across as boasting. And because I have had plans for my own accomplishments, the last thing I wanted to do was to be a vain name-dropper.
Nowadays enough accomplishments back me, so without further ado I can say that I have the honour to be the niece of the director who made El Poema de las Danzas. Vadim Derbenyov (this link will take you to his filmography in Russian; a slighly less complete list is at IMDb.com) is the nephew of my Grandma; I mentioned his father, a writer, previously. Vadim went on from being a cameraman to becoming a director who has left his mark on the Soviet cinema with adaptations of crime stories and the Western classics. A televised Carmen Suite, being based on a classical story by the French author, is one such example. Other examples include The Secret of Blackbirds (a version of A Pocket Full of Rye, an Agatha Christie story involving Ms. Marple), and The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins.
I realise now that Vadim Derbenyov is a kind of Russian Peter Sellars or Franco Zeffirelli, with the difference that he turned ballets, not operas, from stage to the screen. In addition to The Poem about the Dance, he also made Spartakus (a story about the Roman rebelious slave) and The Terrible Age (about the Russian tzar, Ivan the Terrible).
Now that I have come back to Moscow, such family connections feel so much more significant, while my interests and goals I pursue suddenly appear not so strange or coincidental… In any case, this is the beginning, and I am hoping to be able to introduce to you my large family fairly regularly.
And maybe I could it earlier, but to talk without showing anything is like bragging. Someone posted the entire El Poema de las Danzas on YouTube, which I include in this post. Our uncle told my mother that making the film wasn’t an easy job, not merely because of the difficulty of filming a ballet, but also because of Carmen herself. Plisetskaya was able to demonstrate her dramatic gift and outstanding dancing technique, but her aging meant that muscles occasionally went stiff, and filming then had to be stopped. Still, with El Poema de las Danzas we have a great example of bringing the ballet to screen, of using the light, as well as the camera movement, to articulate the dramatism of the story, the choreography, and the emotion of the music.
My father once told me that there were two types of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group: there was much less competition.
Indira Gandhi, an Indian politician.
If art, in the words of Victor Hugo, once consisted of putting the mask of the visible on the invisible, our world, deprived at once of art and criticism, would then have an unhealthy tendency to lose consciousness and finally to “pass out”.
Paul Virilio, a French cultural theorist.
I wanted to share something about what I am presently doing in terms of literary work.Whereas previously I had often lived in the space created by one language, my space is now always bilingual, whereby I have recently found it very easy to translate poetry into English. I have translated two songs from Soviet movies, one is fully translated, another (The Island of Bad Luck) is a work in progress. With both, I am trying to not merely translate the text, but to also preserve the rhythmic structure. I am inspired by the work by Marshak, whose rendering of Burns’s poem used in Hello, I Am Your Aunt! is so true to the original rhythm that the original poem can be sung to the film’s music.
Most importantly, I have started working on translating Rainer Maria Rilke’s The Beholder (Der Schauende). It was already genuinely translated into Russian in 1961 by Boris Pasternak, and, rather than trying to contest his translation, I draw inspiration from it to produce an English rendering of Der Schauende. If I give you a few lines, you will understand why it is now that I am working on this poem.
Wie ist das klein, womit wir ringen,
was mit uns ringt, wie ist das groß;
ließen wir, ähnlicher den Dingen,
uns so vom großen Sturm bezwingen, –
wir würden weit und namenlos.
Was wir besiegen, ist das Kleine,
und der Erfolg selbst macht uns klein.
Das Ewige und Ungemeine will nicht von uns gebogen sein.
From an existing non-rhythmic English translation by Robert Bly (found at Wellspring by Larry Clark):
What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights with us is so great!
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names.
When we win it’s with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small.
What is extraordinary and eternal
does not want to be bent by us.
I’m also interested in translating this poem because the motive expressed there corresponds well with my current work on revising and reviving my German. I can only subdue to the Time and Effort, meaning that, just as it took me a few years to perfect either English or French, it will also take something to get me to once again have a decent command of German. In the words of Rilke,
Die Siege laden ihn nicht ein.
Sein Wachstum ist: der Tiefbesiegte
von immer Größerem zu sein.
(Winning does not tempt that man.
This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,
by constantly greater beings.)
I don’t remember if I mentioned before that figure skating used for years to be my favourite sport, along with a few winter sports. Because the British are better during summer, in the last seven years I have almost stopped following my favourite winter sports and tuned in to tennis, football, and rugby instead.
Now it looks like my passion for figure skating is going through a renaissance stage, filled with some nostalgia and also a realisation how important are the figureheads you choose, sometimes even in such fields, as sports. If your country consistently wins at least in one sport, can it not make you want to emulate the strength, focus, sense of humour, and love for their work, as you see in some sportsmen?
I haven’t followed or loved just Russian skaters; I adored Katarina Witt, in particular. I literally grew up watching every championship and the Olympics. The story has it that in 1982, during the Winter Olympics, my mother was carrying me to and fro in our room, from the TV by the window to the wall, and back. She held me facing her, so I looked behind her back. When she was walking to the wall, I was silent; the moment she’d turn to walk back, I started crying. Eventually it downed on her that I was watching the figure skaters performing.
I’m not saying that you should only love successful athletes or teams. But whomever you choose for your object of affection, emulate them at their best. This is exactly what I want to do, watching this groundbreaking performance by the Olympic golden winner, Evgeny Pluschenko. The video also contains commentary in English.
Knowing others is wisdom;
Knowing the self is enlightenment.
Mastering others requires force;
Mastering the self requires strength;
He who knows he has enough is rich.
Perseverance is a sign of will power.
He who stays where he is endures.
To die but not to perish is to be eternally present.
Lao Tse, Tao Te Ching.