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Month: November 2008

Slava Polunin: The Monologue of a Clown – 3: Tradition

Tradition

I feel pity for the good audience that it denies the clownery. Historically, there is a great and magic treasure in this world, and that is the clown. For why, then, do we see a figure or a picture of a clown in almost every house? His image is nearly in every book, and almost every poet has a poem about the clown, but why? It means that there is something magical, something eternal in the clownery. I personally belong to such a powerful tradition that I can actually build upon this base whatever I want. But at the same time I feel a perpetual resistance. I feel it in America, in England, everywhere. They say: “Oh, a clown? Then it is for an infant matinee or a birthday party”. Or: “My, the clownery?! Are you mad? Oh, and you even apply make-up… It’s dull and old-fashioned”. All this is because we haven’t seen the real clowns for ages, since the silent films. The tradition of clownery is completely sophisticated. The number of true things is fantastically small. Perhaps, in Russia there are no such things at all. There were good guys – The Southern Birds, The Unison, The Tales of the East, The Mimicrici, and The Masks-show. Because they were not allowed to grow stronger and stand on their own feet, because of the money situation, all of them shook loose: some broke down, some emigrated, some went for big money and now have a fear to leave this path. So, there were people, but no conditions.

People always make traditions. But perhaps, in order to live long, tradition must die, from time to time? Once commedia del-arte had been all but buried in the sand, then a sudden ‘oops’ – and there came English music hall, Grimaldi circus, then ‘hap’ – all had disappeared again, ‘bang’ – there came French fairs, the pantomimes of the well-known Deburot, the one as whom Jean-Louis Barreau starred in ‘Les Enfants du Paradis’. Later it disappeared as well. Then it was revived in the silent cinema. The silent cinema for me is the top of the top of clownery. There was no decent clown who would not leave the stage for the silent film. Like in the vortex, everyone was absorbed by it. But the sound came and crossed out all of them. Thus, after a long period tradition had come to grief again. Two or three comedians did survive, and Chaplin was the greatest among them. Almost everything I know I took from the silent cinema. If one day people realized what the silent cinema had been in the art history, and began studying it, they would find the main secret of mine. Everything I own has been taken from there: bits of pieces, of personages, of atmosphere… I have a huge collection of silent films, assorted by periods, by genres and by personalities. I am a very reasonable man: I do not settle down till I dig to the truth. At first, I was collecting Chaplin’s films. Having all 92 films, I began watching them a-new and eliminating them. Then I arranged everything that could be proved useful for those interested in clownery. Now they may not watch all Chaplin, for I have assorted the finest of him: the best, the typical, the tricky, the tragic. Of all 120 films of Oliver Hardy I’ve only chosen 16. If one is interested in Hardy, I can demonstrate all his aesthetic principles upon the precise examples. I have all de Funes, more than 40 films. Of those, I have only chosen the tricks and arranged them in 3 hours of killing laughter. I know all these tricks by heart. Same for my son Vanya. It is like the ABC, everyone should know it.

However, everyone should know what the Grimaldi circus, the Deburot’s pantomime, the English music hall, the commedia del-arte, and the psychological theatre were. Not forgetting, as well, about the Eastern theatre, i.e. Chinese, Indian, Japanese, No, Kabuki, Buto theatrical traditions, in which I have had a great interest and which I have studied. And yet even that’s not the end. Many different things blended in me. I brought these goods from everywhere, from all the antics where they were buried in the dust, useless. I brought them from all types of theatre that as yet managed to preserve the decent state. My way in art is the way of studying the avant-garde, of looking for the new expression, for the unexpected form, accompanied by the study of folk tradition, of all that had been before us.

Of course, my term for it – ‘clownery’ – is conditional. In fact, my occupation is the world of plastics, of eccentricity, of abnormal behaviour. Meanwhile, a clown, a mime is a man of abnormal behaviour. He behaves conditionally, and by means of this he changes the style of real life, he makes something different of it. Any plastic art at its top must necessarily be a fantastic and strange stylization, unlike any traditional dramatic theatre.

JD: below is the famous Table Ballet by Charlie Chaplin.

Translated from Russian by Julia Shuvalova.

 

Slava Polunin: The Monologue of a Clown – 2: Clown

Clown

Clown is the most spontaneous creature on Earth. When you start restraining his freedom, he loses himself and whimpers like a child. Basically, it means that you offended him deeply. Clowns are very special, and they need a special treatmeant. Like the lunatics or, I don’t know, like the drunk or the dogs.

It’s not merely that you see the one like yourself. You sense him, through the means of perception, through certain external moves, the manner of life… All of this is for him only, but absolutely useless for the rest of people. At a glance you notice how unusual he is. Like, when you offer him a seat, he answers: “I will lie down here”. His answer is inadequate, but that is not because he wants to show off, rather it is his normal condition, the only one in which he feels happy. I always use my son as an example. I tell him: “Vanya, bring me a teapot”. Vanya lies on the floor, rolls to the kitchen and comes back with the pot on his head. This is his normal enjoyment of the game. To live as usual would be dull and uninteresting, he feels the emptiness of this life. All his being fights against everyday occurrence, routine, and he seeks the festival and the game.

Freedom is everything to the clown. The only thing I cannot stand is when my freedom is restrained. I cannot imagine the situation when I have no freedom of choice. Generally, I might never need it. But, when signing a contract, I do never agree not to be free, and I always ask to cross this clause out. I am annoyed with the very fact that somebody dictates me something. This is the reason, by the way, why the majority of clowns take to drinking, being unable to regulate their free zone in the society. The clown cannot stand against the violence, just like a child. You swaddle him, yet he is screaming, bastard. He wants to run to THAT bench, he wants to push his head into THAT tube, for the life of you. The child and the clown are quite alike.

The nature of talent is important for the clown, too, but not as much as freedom. When I was creating my troupe for the Licedei (Pagliazzi) theatre, my criterion for the actors was “an electricity-man”. I found some five like this. But there were others – gracious, languid, and tender. Like Robert Gorodetsky, for instance. He has no energy, no aggression. Instead there is depth, subtlety in him, he and Vertinsky are soulmates. Apparently, it is possible not only within the society. There are periods in history that create conditions for the emergence of such clowns. If there were a normal cabaret atmosphere in Russia, we would get a score of perfect melancholic, poetic, metaphysical clowns. But in the revolutionary vortex and cataclysms only the leaders and the monsters can survive.

The biggest question for the clown is his mask; sometimes you search for it all your life. You try different ways, different varieties: once you find a piece of make-up, next time – a piece of costume, then – a psychological detail, the rhythm, the walk. Doing that, you can go back to different things. But first of all you’ve got to ‘catch’ yourself.

There are lots of masks nowadays. Life became diverse, a traditional duo-typical system, to which everyone was used, has disappeared. There are no Red Clown and White Clown, Harlequin and Pierrot, no city fop and country bumpkin, no Quick and Slow or Witty and Silly Clowns, etc. As soon as the archetype of social life has broken down, so did the type of relationship between the clowns and the audience.

Today’s clowns, as before, are reflecting the archetypes of our life, and mould their own system. My idea of choice of the clowns for the Theatre Olympics was to recreate the image of the 20th century through their masks. I chose anarchist, extremist, philosopher, poet, absurdist and metaphysician, – this, I believe, was an ideal choice. The French Dechamp is a true Kharms!

And the Italian Bassi is a fantastic extremist. For nine days I was talking him off an idea to explode a cask of shit at the Duma! That was a real problem to me, for I knew, if it happened, there would be no festivals for me in future. Yet for him it was natural. “The world is a gigantic Coliseum”, he thought, “and I must make people listen to me. But to do so, I need to hear the world: what are its interests, what is topical for it. What is the clown for? – To give joy to people. And what will give more joy to people than if I explode a cask of shit at the Duma?” He is a very logical man, this Leo.

But generally, all clowns are philosophers, in the end.

 

Translated from Russian by Julia Shuvalova

 

Slava Polunin: The Monologue of a Clown – 1: Context

The internationally acclaimed Snowshow by Slava Polunin has again visited Manchester recently. Unfortunately, as I noticed from the reviews, very little seems to be known about Slava, despite his world-wide fame and unquestionable talent. James Ellaby writing for Entertainment Manchester tries to get to the core of the performance, giving a notice to surrealist and circusesque features. Liz Connolly on The MEN’s Urban Life is more on the “adult” side of the fence, which sees its spectators recommending the show primarily for kids. The two huge problems we are to find here is that, first, Polunin is Russian by origin, but in matters of his art he is the citizen of the world. To describe the Snowshow as ‘Russian surrealism‘ (Ellaby), even partly, is to understate the whole artistic baggage of Polunin, and indeed, of surrealism. And to state that the kids were mesmerised and adults were not is, alas, to prove that ‘your childhood is in the dim and distant past and pragmatism has gripped your soul forever‘ (Connolly). I dare say that Polunin’s show is aimed primarily at adults: a clown is a child, and the child is the one who readily empathises with the clown. The task is to bring an adult to their childhood past, but instead of having the older people to empathise with the performance, the aim is, perhaps, to have them empathise with themselves.

Anyway, back in 2003 when I was engaged as a Russian-to-English translator for The Herald of Europe, the very first text I had to translate was a very long interview with Slava, following the 2001 Theatre Olympics in Moscow. By the time the first edition of The Herald of Europe saw the light of this world in 2004, the article was perhaps quite outdated and somewhat heavy-weight, so it was never published. Thanks to online publishing, though, you can now read it in full, either here, in a series of blog posts with illustrations and YouTube extracts.

And one note on the title of the show, which might just explain a few things. In Russian, it is called ‘сНежное шоу‘, playing on the similarity of the Russian words ‘снежный‘ (snezhny – snowy) and ‘нежный‘ (nezhny – tender). By capitalising the ‘N’, Polunin gives a little hint to the story: on the outer side, it is about snow; on the inside, it explores the tenderness. Unfortunately, this is the kind of a linguistic nuance that inevitably gets lost, and hence the spectators notice the visible snow, but only intuitively guess about the invisible tenderness.

As for myself, I have grown up on Polunin’s clown shows, and there were quite a few really famous ones that he produced. The one turn that he referenced in his interview was called Blue Canari. You can read the English text and watch the Polunin’s theatre group performance below.

Slava Polunin, Natalia Kazmina: A Monologue of the Clown, or A Pie of Ten Layers

Context
Having left for London from Leningrad, he was out of the Russian cultural context for nearly ten years. Once back, he smashed our straight rows and, delivering chaos to the sober landscape of the theatrical Olympus, he opened our eyes on ourselves. After his tender “sNow Show”, after his street theatre performances during the Theatrical Olympics it became clear – we had a lack of him. We had a lack of this man-clown and a festival-man. We laughed and were not afraid to see, how constrained and set apart, false and envious, mean and timid we were. We realized, how difficult it could be to open your heart to a spectator, or a reader, or a friend, or even to the one you love. Some have a fear that people will not understand them, others are afraid they will be mocked, and some just have nothing to say. Yet he fears nothing. He walks into the crowd and cuts it through, like a breakwater. And what is important, he does not dissolve in the crowd. “I have made an attempt to bring to Moscow everything that had driven me mad earlier”, – he said at the press conference. – “I wanted to shift your appreciation of the theatre to a different path. I wanted to broaden your horizon”. You bet he did! We saw that the clownery, these fantastic mimes, rope- and stilt-walkers, people in masks, the buffoons and street musicians are all a completely forgotten part of our culture. It is a lost joy that Polunin wants to revive. He feels dull when enjoying alone.

Translated from Russian by Julia Shuvalova.

 

The Theatre of Fashion Photography (On Eric Traore)

This video is fairly short but serves well to introduce both the Watches supplement to the 2002 Vogue Russia, and the work of Eric Traoré. What I noticed recently, going through different fashion and photographers’ websites, is that in a bid to protect their content from unfair use they build the site in such way that it doesn’t allow you to save the photo off the page. As much as I understand this, some rethinking should be made, in my opinion, if only to prevent the re-distribution of content in the form of screen grabs. A gallery of images for public use, as I see it, will not only enrich the website, allowing for a fair doze of social bookmarking and sharing options, but will also assist at distributing the name of the brand or artist.

In case with Eric Traoré, there is a [very short] introduction to his work at LifeLounge with a gallery of public images. Traoré’s style is distinct, and as you will be able to see at his website he is often concerned with the unusual. This may not sound like a particularly innovative thing for a beauty photographer to do, but Traoré does really succeed at unveiling the ‘other side’ of beauty. There is, for example, a stunning image of a Japanese-looking girl with beetles instead of eyes… that is, until you notice that her eyes are closed and beetles are painted on the eyelids. Traoré works productively with the make-up artists, infusing the art of photography with theatrical effects. This is manifestant in his session for Elle (Beauty 1 gallery on Eric’s website), where an observant viewer can find a couple of reverberations of the ‘Venus at the mirror’ theme, as well as a hint at Coco Chanel’s famous photo (left). At the same time, his work for Harper’s Bazaar (which has long been one of my favourite magazines; Beauty 2 gallery) explores both the glittering and vain quality of fashion. This finds its expression as in images (right), as in make-up: a woman’s eye dressed in peacock’s shades – how about that for a pun?

In his personal (i.e. less related to fashion) work, Traoré continues studying the unconventional beauty and the restrictions of the world (including that of fashion) on the very concept of beauty. The photos in Studies subgallery (Personal Work gallery) are a superb example of this. His use of ropes in the Studies series also brings to mind Man Ray’s Vénus Restaurée and Blanc et Noir (left and right, respectively). A short article at Incubus Choice gives a summary of the series. The notions of insecurity, restriction and movement are further explored in the black-and-white NYC series: people and cars that drift or move chaotically between the sky-scrapers, the odd blazing ray of sun that gets in the picture, the ghostly sfumato-esque atmosphere. The buildings and objects are little more secure than people: the reclining skyline and streetlamps seem to be supported by the same effort than keeps upholding the Pisan tower. Traoré’s New York strangely reminded me of Washington Irving’s Sleepy Hollow. The sense of restriction and the Gothic feel reach the climax in the photo of the tree branches. The picture at once reminds of the intricate imagery of the medieval manuscripts, as well as of the slender Gothic architecture – but the twisted bodies of the trees hint at the lack of freedom and at the same time call to remember the Mannerist painters’ figures and slim silhouettes of today’s fashion models.

Eric Traoré’s website.

Italy: Bloggers, Internet, and the Government

Free Blogger

There are diverse and sundry initiatives happening across the English-speaking Internet with the help of blogs. Blog Action Day, various BlogCatalog appeals, Amnesty International… Add to this the rise of Social Media and Networking, which we have only recently witnessed in Manchester. Somewhere in the States the use of these social tools is even wider than in Britain, although there is a still a proportion of people who don’t know what a blog is or don’t have access to the Internet.

Well, if England can be considered the northern pinnacle of Europe, then Italy must be its southern counterpart, and as far as blogging and Internet are concerned, things could hardly be any more different. Beppe Grillo, a well-known Italian actor, comedian, activist, and a prolific blogger, has been closely following the Levi/Prodi law, renamed into Levi/Veltroni, thanks to the new clauses, and labelled the “blogger-killer“. According to the law, every blog is considered a publishing product and as such is the subject to the regulations relating to the crimes via the printed word; if the blog publishes Google AdSense or banners, the publisher may be taxed by the Tax Collecting Agency; and the publisher is required to register with the ROC (Registro degli Operatori di Comunicazioni), otherwise he or she will be considered a clandestine publisher and liable to financial sanctions and up to 2 years in prison.

As opposed to the state of things currently in Italy, Beppe much admires the success of Barack Obama’s campaign which has potently shown the power of the Internet. In the face of the States’ progress, “Italy has suddenly got old“. One of the comments on his blog regarding the “blogger-killer” law has also remarked:

“All the contrary, the British have a saying which is very fitting: ” The silence was defeaning “. It has a LOT OF relevance to them [the Italian Government – JD], and to their many financial friends and accomplices, exactly because the internet makes it possible for millions of people to find out the truth, and what is really happening, in spite of all their efforts to lobotomise people through the regime controlled media, so that they will never find out what really happens, and the real why, and so, it must be stopped, or censored, at all costs“.

What is perhaps the most surprising is that Italy isn’t at all Internet-savvy. “The Internet is what first announced Obama’s victory. 3,000 Italian towns out of about 8,000 are without ADSL. Worse than in Africa, but with the antiquated digital terrestrial“. I would perhaps argue with Beppe on this, because 3,000 out of 8,000 is actually not too bad, however… “The Country has been struck by a bad case of digital divide. Two different groupings have formed. One gets its information on the Net, while other gets its disinformation via the newspapers and the television“. Again, let’s not forget that the Internet can get one their fair share of misinformation, but at the same time the number of occasions when an average Internet user has orchestrated a significant change in the world of Media and Advertising is also well-known and impressive. Unfortunately, the digital divide illuminates the societal and educational divide, and this is much more difficult to tackle.

With the imminent drastic change (if not demise) of the traditional media – which in Italy are state-controlled – the attempt is being made by the Government to extend its control over what is currently not under the control, and this is the Internet. There are many questions to be raised (i.e. what about Social Media, podcasts and videoblogs? or does an Italian publisher need to register a .com domain with the ROC?), but this is perhaps a more problematic issue. The future of advertising and its revenue – and Beppe has already pinned this down – is at stake, and this is precisely what we see tackled in the infamous Levi/Veltroni law. Apart from all concerns about the freedom of speech which Levi/Veltroni will most certainly curtail, the fiscal nature of this law is also quite obvious.

However… The case of Italian sector of blogosphere rises an interesting problem. In the English-speaking world, bloggers are indeed the independent publishers. Sometimes they use their websites to earn money. Sometimes the websites are used to raise money. If so, is the repetition of the Italian case in Britain or America completely out of question?

Social Media Cafe in Manchester – A Success!


Last night The Northern has welcomed yet another digital event. In spring the venue hosted a Digital Marketing event (the one organised by David Bird of FaceBookCreep), and now we all gathered there yet again, for the first (but clearly not last) Social Media Cafe.

And wasn’t it great! Over 80 people attending, a great selection of panelists (Craig McGinty, Chi-chi Ekweozor and Martin Bryant) chaired by Sarah Hartley, a load of good questions, and a thoroughly enjoyable communication and networking that ended – for some – next door to The Northern, at Matt & Phred’s. Ideas are already thrown around for the subject for the next get-together, and the whole organisation is a fantastic example of – sorry, folks, getting on an Digital Marketing soapbox for a second – what digital/Social Media tools and platforms can be used to power an event or to create a community, and how. There are now: a Google Group, a Wiki, a Flickr group, a Yahoo! Pipe, a Twitter stream, not to mention all the coverage in blogs and in print (The M.E.N., that is). Read Sarah Hartley’s round-up post that includes a video of the debate.

And the posts from the panelists:

Craig McGinty – Blog Posts and Twitter Talk at Social Media Cafe
Martin Bryant – Manchester – Social Media City
Chi-chi Ekweozor – Manchester’s Social Media Cafe Opens for Business

Some points that I’ve found particularly important or interesting were:

– the importance of a blog’s design on people’s opinion about the site. Apparently, it works very simply as: if you’re using a default template and never did anything creative with it, shame on you and no readership, no matter how good you write. This brought to mind a phrase I have long loved, something along the lines: “when a pivotal moment arrives, a man thinks: ‘what shall I say?’, and a woman thinks: ‘what shall I wear?’” To extrapolate this on to blogging, bloggers, regardless of gender, seem to worry more about the platform and design, rather than content. It would be an exaggeration, of course, to conclude that bloggers have a “female” streak about them, and I obviously realise the importance of a design for brand management and marketing. However, it all comes down to what a consumer (reader) pays for (in their free time, if not money), and it clearly isn’t just the look of one’s product.

– what is blogging about: collaborating or self-broadcasting? This was a very good question, but I was surprised that panelists solely focused on comments as the measure of communication and/or collaboration. It is so to an extent, but – hands up! – when I link to someone’s site or article, I don’t always leave a comment on their site, to let them know. Similarly, I often find out that someone linked to me from my blog’s statistical data or a Google Alert, not from a reader’s comment. The access to this data and its analysis are pivotal in making a blog something more than a self-broadcasting venture. First and foremost, it teaches a lesson of responsibility. Next, some search queries can actually hint at the topics that may be interesting to explore. Also, the conversation about your blog or the use of it may be happening without you even knowing about this. The links to various posts on this blog can be found on Wikio, Ask, Google Books, but naturally, no-one from Google would write to me informing about the link. Finally, some findings can be very pleasant, like in the image on the left. Just this afternoon I followed an incoming link from Alexa, where Los Cuadernos de Julia is currently in the Top 10 Arts Weblogs. But I don’t loiter on Alexa every day, you see.

At the same time I don’t think it is possible to strictly distinguish between collaboration and self-broadcasting, when we speak of a blog written by a single author. In this case the author often not only creates the content, but also represents themselves as a brand, with the necessity to manage it as one of the consequences, hence she or he is also doing their own online PR.

Here also fits a comment from the audience during our night at The Northern: can blogging be seen as just a means to satisfy various human needs, be it vanity, or sharing experiences with people, and so on. It certainly can, but I much favoured Craig’s point about William Blake who is well-known to have published his own books. This didn’t earn him much income or fame in his lifetime, but it was him who had a significant impact on the Pre-Raphaelites. It was the Brotherhood, as a matter of fact, that re-discovered William Blake, just like Surrealists and Man Ray helped to re-discover Eugene Atget. I think there is a need for bloggers themselves to know why they are out there, while admitting that other people may enter blogosphere (and stay there) for their own reasons and needs.

– the future of blogging. I have little to add to the ideas of panelists, those being: 1) GPS and mobile technology; 2) multimedia blogging; 3) data portability; and 4) corporate blogging. But one obvious thought comes to mind: there will be more information, its dissemination, and the problems of its regulation. By the look of it, even now many people don’t know what blogs are, and many are petrified at the prospect of blogging. But what scares them most is not the technical things, but rather the sharing and presentation of information. What can be published? Who can read it? How can they use it? Robin Hamman explored this last year on BBC Manchester Blog, following the Virginia Tech tragedy. Yet people are ready to answer these questions and to really go beyond some blank guidelines in the style of “love thy neighbour lest you be libelled”. So, there will be not only an influx of general information in the guise of our posts, pictures, videos, etc, but also an influx of educational posts or websites that will serve to illustrate the opportunities of blogging and Social Media.

So, it’s looking bright and shiny both for blogging and for Social Media Cafe. I’ll continue blogging about blogging (sic) over at Avidadollars, and keep your eye on The Mancunian Way for the complete coverage. The next date is already announced, and it is 9th of December. I keep my fingers crossed it doesn’t get changed… If you want to attend, head over to #smc_mcr and put yourself on the list.

Social Media Cafe in Manchester photoset on Flickr.
Social Media Cafe Manchester Wiki.
Social Media Cafe Manchester Flickr group.
Social Media Cafe Manchester Twitter scan.

The Death of Blogging

When the “is blogging dead?” debate broke out, I thought: I am sure I read about this elsewhere, and it wasn’t on Wired. Ah, here it was: I read about it on Manchizzle blog, on 27 August, the title being precisely “Is blogging dead?” Only it had more to do with the low-down in meetings of Manchester bloggers, rather than the state of entire blogosphere.

Now, the Wired argument was such that today blogosphere has become a marsh, and every sane non-blogger will not start a blog, while every sane blogger will stop blogging. Furthermore, the article claimed that blogging is being submersed by Twitter and Facebook and various Social Media and Networking sites, whereby it is terribly hard for an amateur (and even professional) blogger to rise to the top.

The question is: precisely what kind of “blogging” is claimed to have died? With platforms like WordPress and Typepad allowing the users to have not only posts but pages, too, blogging is as useful as ever. Maybe in a couple of years I will be a web developer, building my own sites, but at the moment I take some pride in that immense technical learning curve that blogging has offered to me. So, blogging as a platform, when it allows the user to custom-build their own web site, seems to be quite lively.

Blogging as a form of online activity – this is a different matter, yet again, it depends on the point of view (and as we know, this point can be a major obstacle to seeing things). Ultimately, though – and this is what I have just written elsewhere – it is the purpose to which the blogs are written that is either dying or waning:

And here is the rub, and it is actually printed on the front page of WordPress.com: you are urged to start a blog “to express yourself”. This is true even for a business blog, for in the end a business that ventures into blogging is expressing something, be it their policy, product, or expertise. Well, what happens if someone expresses their “self” better than you? Or if the whole process of “self-expression” is too much of a labour? The beginning of a blog may be a technical question, but the blog’s sustainability rests entirely in one’s personal resources. And by that I don’t mean money or even the time you have to spare on your blogging efforts. What you know, what you remember, and how you use this, are the cornerstones of a successful blogging venture.

We are to discuss this tomorrow, 11th of November, at 6pm at the first Social Media Cafe in The Northern. There will be a panel of speakers, precisely on the subject, chaired by Sarah Hartley of The M.E.N., and, of course, there will be blogging afterwards (so again, what is dying?).

In the meantime, let me update you on the state of Los Cuadernos. I added the translation button, so please feel free to traslate the site into your native language. In fact, I’d really love you to do this and let me know if the quality is acceptable.

The email subscription to Los Cuadernos is now also available.

Now, back in August I said that I was thinking of adding categories to the blog, but wasn’t sure how this would work. If you now follow down the sidebar, you will see the result of my thinking. The ‘tags’ are assembled into categories by subject, and there are many of them, starting with Literature, Cinema, Music, Photography, and including Events Coverage and Special Projects, Renaissance, Art, as well as History and Fashion.

The November National Holiday: From Revolution to Union

When I was little, on the 7th November my mother and I once went to see my gran’s sister. Back in 1980s, this day was celebrated as the day of the Great October Socialist Revolution. In the evening there were usually fireworks that people cheered. My mother and I stood at the bus stop when the fireworks began. Since childhood I’ve had a very loud voice for the festive occasions. I was enthusiastically shouting ‘hooray’ at the top of my lungs at every burst of fireworks when an elderly woman who happened to be waiting at the same bus stop turned to me and said: “Why do you scream so loud? You can lose your voice”. For one reason or another, she didn’t approve of my patriotism.

When 1990s came, the Revolution started to be treated with disdain. If you read chapter 4 of Zizek’s In Defense of Lost Causes, you’ll instantly understand what I’m about. It was impossible to ignore the whole event, like you can’t ignore the French Revolution, so the attempts were made to either condemn the event or to ‘apologise’ for it. Finally, the late Boris Yeltzin renamed the ‘Great October Revolution Day’ into ‘Day of Concord and Reconciliation’, thus inviting people of Russia to leave the conflict-bearing watershed behind and think ‘positively’.

But clearly that was still not enough. To quote Zizek again:

Days before the second round of the presidential elections in May 2007, Nicolas Sarkozy formulated the exorcism of the ghost of May 1968 as the true choice facing the electorate: “In this election, we should learn whether the inheritance of May 68 is to be perpetuated, or whether it should be liquidated once and for all. I want to turn the page of May 68”.

In what sounds like a precise analogy to Sarkozy’s statement, the Russian Government in 2004 has shifted the national holiday to 4th of November and called it the ‘Unity Day’. You see, there’d be no happiness yet the misfortune happened yet Russian history was rich and eventful enough to have something memorable, apart from Revolution, happening in November. Namely, it was the victory over the Polish intervent forces in 1612. Following the death of Boris Godunov in 1605, the so-called Time of Troubles, or Mutiny Time, and the Polish intervention had started and lasted more or less until 1618. One of the decisive victories over the Poles that shaped the future of the Polish presence in Moscovia was in November 1612. The Time of Troubles was marked not only by the Polish intervention, but also by civil war, and the Unity Day thus celebrates – and commemorates the example thereof – the unification of the country against the threat of foreign rule. In pre-Soviet times 4th of November also celebrated the day of the Kazan Icon of Our Lady, with whose help the Second Volunteer Army under Kuzma Minin and Prince Dmitry Pozharsky had stormed the Polish forces in Moscow’s Kitai-Gorod. The Kazan Cathedral in St. Peterburg was built by Paul I in honour of the icon, and the icon (or possibly its copy) was moved to the cathedral in 1811.

There seems to be a difference in intentions between the Russian Government and the French President, but it is likely to be only nominal. In truth, both countries are trying at all costs to annihilate the events that may disrupt either liberal or conservative status quo. And while there may be nothing wrong with this sort of tendency in general, in particular it highlights the attempt to veil the rupture or the real problem facing the society. Having said so, it is unclear if Sarkozy had much to offer to either the French electorate or the Government in exchange of the memory and experience of May’68. Russia’s case is potentially much more fecund, as the year 1613 saw the proclamation of Mikhail Romanov as the Russian tzar, thus giving the rise to the Romanov dynasty. I don’t suppose that Russia may one day see the Restoration of the monarchy. But one can certainly expect some kind of political continuity between the Russian leaders, and to judge by the comments from Russia, this is precisely what is happening.

Illustrations:

The Icon of Our Lady of Kazan
Ernest Lessner, Poles Surrender Moscow Kremlin to Prince Pozharsky in 1612.
The Kazan Cathedral in St. Petersburg (the photo I took in 1999, during my first visit to the city).
The New Izvestia 2005 report of the new holiday.

Laughter at the Time of Financial Crisis

Just to what extent can you take things seriously? There is certainly a limit to the amount of tears one can shed over a particular issue. In Moscow, to my knowledge, people aren’t being given credits from the banks. Even those whose application was approved are still waiting. Each day the bank issues a letter ordering to give or not to give the money. So far it has been “do not give” – and that for nearly two weeks, at least.

What to do in this situation? I recall a phrase from one romantic novel: “He laughed – the only thing that a normal man could do who was close to going mad“. Possibly, this is the reason for diverse and sundry posts in the Russian LiveJournal laughing off the influence of the crisis on one’s mental sanity. Some of them were even “bound” in a .pdf file, as the “Anti-crisis” book of funny quotes, jokes, short stories, pictures, and slogans. One of the pictures (photoshopped, incidentally) you can see on the left; the description says: “What Are the Pants Compared to Eternity?” And below are a few jokes that I translated.

John Smith, who plummeted from the 75th floor in Wall St, upon falling has bounced off the ground up to 10 metres, thus improving the result of his morning fall…

One banker calls another:
– So, old fellow, how are you doing?
– Good, good.
– … sorry, I dialled the wrong number.

The Minister of Finances has said that the citizens have nothing to fear about the crisis. They should have feared before; now it is too late.

The crisis has got me back on my feet! The bank confiscated my car because I couldn’t pay the credit.

A man comes to the bank for a consultation.
– I’d like to start a small business. What do I do?
– You should buy a big business and wait.

Two bosses talk:
– Listen, do you pay salaries to your employees?
– No.
– Neither do I. But do they still go to work?
– Yes.
– So do mine. Listen, maybe we demand payment for the entry to work?
One week later.
– So, did the paid entrance help you to get rid of them?
– No way! In order to save money, they come into work on Monday and live there till Friday.

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