Alas, poor Revisiting Russia has given up the ghost.  VL was taking up all of my blogging time and energy.  It was a valiant effort though.

My new professional website is here.

Yes, I am in fact still here.  All my blogging time and energy has been taken up by Vulpes Libris recently, but I will try to resurrect this poor ailing blog too.

For now, a shameless plug.

Writing this one raised a swarm of prickly but extremely interesting questions.  What makes a historian?  Should we hold popular history books to a set of standards?  What’s in a BA, an award, a celebrity endorsement?  I would dearly love to carry on the discussion that started over in VL, so if anyone is listening, chime in…

I am blogging as I watch Khovanshchina on DVD. This is already kind of odd. My usual policy when it comes to watching opera – in the theatre, on DVD, wherever – is very much one of eyes front, don’t talk, don’t move, don’t breathe too loudly. Especially when it comes to Mussorgsky, about whom (I am told) I am just a touch obsessive. So yes, blogging while watching opera is possibly even more than kind of odd. It’s right into the realms of the highly odd.

The thing is, though, it’s not even nearly as odd as the experience of watching the DVD.

Khovanshchina is a very, very historical opera. This is not, as with many historical operas, a love story against the background of a given time and place. There is a love story; in fact, to my eyes there is effectively a love triangle, with the Old Believer heroine sharing a far stronger bond with the charismatic priest who guides her than with the fickle and unsuitable tenor who is her doomed love interest. (Vladimir Matorin brought that point home in by far the most compelling performance of the Bolshoi’s 2002 revival). But the romantic and personal aspect is dwarfed by the events of the time: the Streltsy revolt, the schism in the Orthodox Church and the accession of Peter the Great. The characters act out these great clashes on stage, in an idiomatic Russian that stinks of the 17th century from a mile off. This opera culminates in a mass suicide. This is not an easily transplanted story. And yet, the nice people at the Gran Teatro del Liceu in Barcelona (together with the lovely folks at La Monnaie) have attempted to transplant it.

They transplanted it to the 1950s.

When I saw the cover, with the army men with rifles aiming down at some fairly modern looking oppressed masses, my first reaction was something like “Oh no, not this again!”. But my second, immediately after, was “Wow, look at the cast!”. And I remembered the excellent, nicely abstract Boris Godunov I had seen at the Liceu and decided that very likely, this was worth the possibly discomfort.

I’m not sure yet. I am currently in Act 2. I have seen bodies hanging from nooses (the opening visual, in fact), and people being shot with cap guns, and people shooting off their own cap guns for no apparent reason. Ivan Khovanskii, the rebellious leader of the Streltsy, is in full Soviet style army dress; but Vladimir Ognovenko has the presence to overcome any outfit. Dosifei, the charismatic Old Believer priest, is wearing a black military overcoat with a silver cross and questionable facial hair. Vladimir Vaneev, unfortunately, does not quite have the presence to carry that off, and neither does he have the vocal weight for the role; he has a fine, relatively light voice which doesn’t fill out Dosifei’s impressive vocal line. Robert Brubaker as Golitsyn looks very much like a cardinal in his red cassock; if this is intentional, it is beyond unhistorical, and if it is unintentional… well. They have put Elena Zaremba, as the Old Believer Marfa, in a black leather trenchcoat, but with a black headscarf as a nod to her convictions. She has to perform her fortune telling scene without a cauldron or any other prop, staring into the orchestra pit as if she could read the future in the brass section. Nobody looks particularly sure of themselves, with the exception of Ognovenko, who is barnstorming to just the right degree. He seems to be acting in his own version of the opera.

Of course I will write a more thorough, balanced response once I have seen the whole thing. But for now, I am disconcerted and rather unconvinced. Ognovenko aside, this production and its cast seems to lack focus; and with an opera on this scale, not to mention a production that obviously aims to challenge the spectator, having one charismatic and centred actor on stage is not nearly enough. The confrontation between Dosifei, Khovanskii and Golitsyn, which is unrolling right now, highlights this rather cruelly: what should be the clash of titans is unbalanced to such a degree that it is frustrating rather than compelling. This may be at least partly due to the (to my ear) unusually slow tempo; another, larger part is due to Vaneev, whose performance lacks vocal and physical substance. Dosifei should be Khovanskii’s equal when it comes to charisma, if not his superior; here, he seems rather bloodless. It may be that the dynamic of the production will change as the action evolves. However, since this trio – which contains all the tension of the opera and the historical drama at its heart – is limping along with such difficulty, this spectator remains to be convinced.

I promised Alex, some days ago, a discussion/debate/barney about Classical Marxism and Marxism-Leninism and Soviet Socialism and all the various very distinct things that get lumped together way too often. However, while I was spoiling for a fight when the issue came up in the comments for Emma Darwin’s excellent VL piece about literary fiction, I’m now rather tired and overworked and not particularly capable of sitting writing an entire post about my particular relationship to Marx.

I will probably have to come back to this later and write something more useful. Unless anyone starts a fight with me in the comments, in which case I’m almost certainly too weak of will not to wade in.

Friday, and my Russian series piece is due up on Tuesday. I promised in ever such a carefree manner that this week I would write about Trotsky. Should be simple enough, right, writing about what you know?

[insert slightly hysterical laugh here]

Well, one thing is for sure: I won’t be writing about Trotsky the Commissar of War, or Trotsky the theorist, or even Trotsky the literary critic (although I will, at some point, look at Literature and Revolution). This is going to be Trotsky the author, in all his florid, metaphor laden, self-regarding glory. Perhaps I should even do a piece on his legendary wit; I was going to say wit and wisdom, but dismissing all his potential allies in a series of burning one-liners wasn’t a very wise decision in the longer term.

On a very much related point, I just discovered this piece from the Hoover digest:

Watching Stalin Win

Verbatim transcripts of Politburo discussions! Verbal battles between Trotsky and Stalin! And all to appear in three volumes this very year! Oh, nice people at Yale University Press, if you would but send me a copy of that three-set volume in Russian (to review, of course), you would make an impoverished student of Trotsky very, very happy.

Yesterday I reviewed Elizabeth Hanbury’s debut novel, The Paradise Will, over on Vulpes Libris. (You can see my effort here). Writing about a Regency romance was an entirely new experience for me, and it raised all kinds of questions. Specifically, what do you do when reviewing a piece of genre fiction? Do you treat it like any other new novel and assess it on its merits, or do you adopt the expectations and standards of the genre?

I went with option 1. There were several reasons for this. First of all, I know the Regency romance genre, but I’m not a particular fan or a practitioner; I’m not part of that community, although I respect it. Second, I wasn’t writing for a specialist website; Vulpes Libris has a very diverse remit and readership. Third, one of the things I really enjoy about VL is how what many people would regard as commercial/genre fiction – chicklit, romance, TV tie-ins – is reviewed alongside classic novels, poetry collections, academic history books… While all these things are obviously reviewed from different angles, they are all taken seriously; and every review is open to debate. It would seem inconsistent, not to mention condescending, to write a review that essentially said: “The characterisation and plot are excellent and very engaging, but I had some issues with the historical context and language. However, this is a genre novel, so that’s OK; nobody expects anything else, right?” That would be as bad, to me anyway, as dismissing the novel outright simply because it belonged to a certain genre. A genre novel can be a good book, like any other; just as a self-proclaimed literary novel can be a bad book. Genre defines many things – notably with regard to the structure of the book and the conventions of the plot – but it does not define quality.

In the case of The Paradise Will, too, I felt that this was a novel which in some respects reached beyond its genre. Hanbury included elements of social, economic and local history; an interesting decision and one that merited discussion. It is undoubtedly the case that many of her readers won’t particularly look for historical accuracy, and that the merits of the book as a romance novel more than outweigh any questions I may have about the period aspect. Nothing can be lost, then, in looking at this novel like any other and asking the questions that come to mind. I think it’s the least that any book deserves, “genre” or not.

When people ask me what my research is about, I fully intend to show them this.

I went to see Indiana Jones at the weekend. OK, there were some fun things about the film; there were some fatuous things about the film; there were some meh things about the film. But somehow I can’t sit and watch a film featuring a platoon of brutish, insanely violent Russians headed by a rapier-brandishing Evil Woman with a terrible accent without feeling just a little annoyed. And that’s okay! Really, when a multilingual, multiethnic amalgamation of states spanning a sixth of the world’s surface and almost seventy years of history (counting from the establishment of the USSR in 1922) is reduced to badly-drawn cartoon baddie status just so that Harrison Ford could put his hat on for a fourth and (I think) entirely unnecessary time, it is really quite okay to feel a little disconcerted. “It’s just a silly film” doesn’t cut it. By the way, Dr. Jones’ insane violence is deemed to be just fine; presumably because he spectacularly wipes out bad guys? Who knows. But between the violent nature and the constantly desecrating ancient sites, I wonder how he got tenure.

My annoyance, in a few short points (and I shan’t mind if you disagree, I just need to get it out).

No, it’s not just a silly film. It’s a major multinational blockbuster. Unimaginable amounts of people will see it. People in the former Soviet Union will see it. If it’s bad, it matters. Which brings me to my second point.

No, it’s not the Cold War anymore. Okay, the Russians have gone from being evil overlords to being (apparently) glamorous millionaires in the eyes of the world’s press. Which is odd, because I know many Russians and precisely none of them have very much wealth at all. Nor were any of them ever in a position to be evil overlords, despite being born in the Soviet Union and everything. Maybe I move in the wrong circles. But anyway. I know this film is meant to be ironic and nostalgic and lots of other things ending in -ic, but, and I can’t emphasise it enough, this is 2008 and people are going to see it. Not just people on this side of the old Iron Curtain either. So there’s little point in being surprised, or horrified, or amazed or amused when not everyone gets the joke.

Yes, you can do Cold War parody without just making shit up. Seriously, I get that if you’re going to set a film in 1956, the Russians are the standard bad guys. However, USSR + alien remains + psychic warfare = bullshit. (Sorry for the language, but I can’t think of a better way to express it.) The Hunt for Red October is an example of a fine Cold War thriller that is silly in the right way. There’s fun characterisation and a sense that the Soviet Union is a big ol’ complicated messy place like any other. Sure, the plot is not so likely and the submarine manoeuvres are impossible, but it’s not so outright insane that you can’t suspend disbelief for a moment, and there’s actually humour in it too. Ramius is a man, not a representation. (I’m talking about the film rather than the book. I’ll come back to the book one day.) The argument that Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is just a fun parody doesn’t really carry much weight with me. Good parody has intelligence.

Yes, the Russian accent is easy, if you’re a good actor. Ideally, the lead Russian character should sound Russian (or Ukrainian, in this case). And if all your supporting actors are actually Russian, one bad accent is going to stand out even further. Unless it’s Sean Connery’s accent. Nobody expects him to sound like anyone else.

I suppose what it comes down to is that for cheesy parody to succeed, it has to be really well done; and it might succeed for some and not for others. This film didn’t succeed for me, although admittedly it would take a hell of a lot to make me overlook the evil-Russian topos in any film. If it succeeded for you, that’s wonderful. But for me, the questionable aspects were big enough, and the redeeming aspects small enough, to make it a less than fun experience. I think it’s time I watched Red October again…

*coughs in an embarrassed fashion*

Well, I originally created this blog because I was so enjoying writing for Vulpes Libris that I felt I needed another outlet for my Russian related enthusiasm.  However, I’ve since discovered that the heady idea of having my own blog as a kind of extension of the Russian series was well meant, but not very practical.  You see, the Russian series works for me because I have to write something every two weeks, and there’s nothing like a deadline to (a) concentrate the mind and (b) give one a healthy sense of perspective.  Whereas left to my own devices I sit here and worry about whether I could say anything anyone would want to read, and whether it would be academically sound enough even if they wanted to read it.  Gah.  Besides, there are days and even weeks where I’m so mired in whatever I’m translating for money at the time that once the work is done, I don’t want to pick up anything even vaguely research related, and would much rather talk about Iron Man (seriously, how cool was that suit) or how terrible the whole Russian thing was in Indiana Jones or the greatness of Yu-Gi-Oh: The Abridged Series or Katie Fforde or whatever “frivolous” non-researchy thing happens to be amusing me the most at the time.  (NB:  I’m actually quite opposed to the word frivolous when it comes to books and films and TV, but you get the idea).

In view of all this, I hereby declare this blog Not All That Serious, and will modify the tagline accordingly.

I promised translations – and rhyming ones – and these are underway, but it turns out that when I’m not frantically writing my VL piece in a big rush of guilt and adrenalin it is a far longer, slower process. So while I slog and sweat and haver in the hopes of sounding even vaguely like Lermontov while preserving his rhyme scheme, here are some I prepared earlier. Not rhyming translations, but at least written with an eye to conveying the feeling of the piece as well as the meaning. Pablo Neruda on the Spanish conquest of Cuba, Marti’s emblematic Guantanamera and Gabriela Mistral on fear and loss, below:

Pablo Neruda

NOW IT IS CUBA

And then there was blood and ashes.

And then only the palm trees remained.

Cuba, my love, they tied you to the rack,
they slashed your face,
they parted your pale gold legs
tore your pomegranate cunt,
pierced you with knives,
divided you, burnt you.

The murderers came down
through the sweet soft valleys
and in the high mountains the crests
of your sons were lost in the clouds,
but there they were caught
one by one, until they died
torn to pieces, in torment
without the warm flowered earth
that fled beneath their feet.

Cuba my love, what horror
shook the foam from your surf
until you became purity,
solitude, silence, density,
and the crayfish fought
over the bones of your sons.

Jose Marti

GUAJIRA GUANTANAMERA (Guajira = Cuban folk song)

Guantanamera, guajira
Guantanamera,
Guantanamera, guajira
Guantanamera.

I am a truthful man
from the place where the palm trees grow
and before I die, I want to
pour out the verses from my soul.

I come from everywhere
and everywhere is where I go;
among the arts, I am art
and among the mountains, I am a mountain.
Do not make me die in the dark
like a traitor;
I am a good man and as a good man
I will die with my face to the sun.

On the dark, dry mountain,
the leopard has its coat;
I have more than the leopard
because I have a good friend.

Gabriela Mistral

SLEEPLESS

Once a beggar, now a queen, I
live in constant fear of your leaving;
pale, I ask you every hour of the day:
“Are you still with me? Oh, please don’t go!”

I would so like to walk with a smile,
confidently, now you are here;
but even until sleep I remain afraid;
between dreams I ask you: “are you still here?”

BALLAD

He was walking with another;
I saw him pass by.
The wind was sweet as ever
and the path was quiet.
And these miserable eyes
saw him pass by!

Loving another, he walks
on the earth in flower.
The thorn is flowering;
a song floats past.
Loving another, he walks
on the earth in flower!

He was kissing another
on the shores of the sea;
the lemon-blossom moon
rose and fell on the waves.
My blood could not cover
the breadth of the sea!

He will walk with another
for eternity now.
He will have heaven’s sweetness.
(O God, be silent.)
He will walk with another
for eternity now!