Russian historical past has produced a subgenre of poems and songs about emigration (one thing American historical past has thankfully been largely spared). I blogged in March about Yevgeniy Kliachkin’s “Farewell to the Motherland,” and I additionally like the good Bulat Okudzhava’s poem that begins,
How good it’s that Zworykin left
And invented tv there
If he had not left the nation,
He, like all the remainder, would have gone to Golgotha….How good it’s that Nabokov left
Not sharing with anybody the secrets and techniques of parting
How fortunate that was! And on what number of prophets
Their place of birth confirmed no mercy! …
Not a cheerful sentiment, however, hey, Russia’s is just not a cheerful historical past. In any occasion, a couple of weeks in the past I got here throughout Robert Rozhdestvenskiy’s “The Proficient Had been Leaving My Nation,” written in regards to the emigration of the Nineteen Seventies. Listed here are the opening stanzas, which I discovered to be probably the most affecting; as normal, apologies for the flawed translation:
The gifted had been leaving my nation,
Taking with them their dignity.
Some having sampled the Gulag gruel
And a few per week earlier than it.Those that left weren’t some form of heroes—
The best way to inform who’s a hero and who’s not?
Merely individuals who could not suppose as instructed
Even when these had been the easiest of directions ….
