From: verbit@brauer.harvard.edu (Mikhail S. Verbitsky)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.soviet
Subject: Re: Boris Grebenschikov
Date: 22 Dec 92 08:04:06 GMT
Article-I.D.: husc3.1992Dec22.030407.18775
Organization: Sozialistische Patienten Kollektiv


I have flamed Igor already more or less for the same attitude
which I highly dislike in Sovoks. Say, if they don't know,
much about literature ar music, they still pay a high respect
to it. That's good, but they regard any attempt on they 
sacred values as vandalism, never understood what these
values are about. 

Even if I agree with the idea of Igor that BG 
completely redefined the meaning of Volokhonskii's
poetry, his incompetence and misunderstanding of
the cultural context where Volokhonskii's
poetry belongs is appaling. 


In article igor@cs.columbia.edu (Igor Pankevich) writes:

	[ regarding BG & co song  "Pod Nebom Golubym" ]

>The author of the song is actually well known. I don't immidiately recall his 
>name right now, but he lives in Paris, having emigrated there some 10 years 
>ago. 

	15++ actually - both authors

>BG, I think, completely screwd 
				huh?
>up the meaning of the song, though, by
>replacing in the first line "Nad nebom golubym" (Above the blue sky) with
>"Pod nebom golubym" (Under the blue sky). The song came out ok, but the meaning
>is totally different, if you think about it, from the original. I myself never
>heard Bob referring to the song as "narodnaya", and I would think he knows 
>the author well (BTW, the name got back to me: XBOCTEHKO (no first name, sorry)).

And this is bullshit as well: text was written by Andrei Volokhonskii,
music was stolen from Francesco de Milano by Alexei Khvostenko,
who is indeed a great poet and songwriter, but actually wrote
neither text nor music.

>His songs are becoming increasingly popular at least in StPetersburg.
>And the music, as I think everybody knows, is XIV century "lyutnya" (in English?).

lute

>Actually, BG has borrowed texts, at least, from a lot of Western musicians, 
>one of which is Bob Dilan, for instance. ("This is the end of the world as we know
>it", I think is his product). 

	And his "borrowings" which are actually translations
	have nothing to do with the original because nor
	BG understood English correctly neither he "borrowed"
	more than one phrase from each song. His method of
	writing is collage. BG uses English phrases
	not because he thinks that, say, Mark Bolan or
	Bowie are great poets. He actually laughs at poetry,
	saying that it is a dead art no more interesting etc.

	The interesting question is *why* BG songs are ridden
	by quotes from English authors. First of all, he is
	attracted by unusual grammar. Even his own sentences
	(as mentioned Gradskii), like, say, "Dvizhenie v
	storonu Vesny" sounds like a bad translation from English.

	Second reason, no less important, is that he uses
	English quotations as contemporary rock musicians
	use samples: to put his songs in rightful cultural
	context. By quoting Bowie or Bob Marley he shows
	to someone who knows them that his music belongs
	in the same cultural space. Even more important,
	these samples are signs used to remain of images
	which are outside of apparent scope: say, Tolkienist
	imegery. Finally, most important, all those 
	literally translations from Bowie-Talkien-Ursula Le Guin
	and borrowings from I Ching are plain strange 
	for Russian ear and bring to BG songs the element 
	of weirdness - he could use computer-generated
	text with no less success. Basically, he does
	this when uses Gunitskii lyrics, which are not
	far from computer-generated.

	So all pretension to BG changing the text 
	of "Pod Nebom Golubym" are worthless:
	you need to judge the artist by his own merits, and in BG
	language the poetry is not worth much. Moreover,
	he changes his own text almost each time
	he sings, sometimes from passable to totally
	unintelligible. The best example is changing
	"videt' tebya za kazhdoi bedoi" na "videt'
	tebya za kazhdoi edoi" v sleduyushchem shedevre:

Smotri, Gospodi, za krepost'yu strakh
I my deti u tebya v rukakh
Nauchi nas videt' tebya 
Za kazhdoi bedoi

Primi, Gospodi, etot khleb i vino
Smotri, Gospodi, vot my ukhodim na dno,
Nauchi nas dyshat' pod vodoi...



>And, back to the "Gorod Zolotoi", it's lyrics, 
>as you rightly noticed, could not possibly be "folk" one. It is one of the
>parts in Kabballistic cosmogony, just put into verses. If anybody read "Altist
>Danilov", they will remember the part which the Blue Bull played there. It is the
>same one as "Sinii vol ispolnennii ochei". Anyway, bull, lion and an eagle go
>together trough a whole lot of cosmogonic concepts, not only the Kabbalistic one.

	And this is bullshit too! Volokhonskii is Catholic
	theologist and he uses Catholic imagery everywhere
	in his lyrics. BTW, he is not a good poet: it is easily
	seen from his poetry (other than Pod Nebom...)
	that his true profession is pharmacy. In other
	words, he is too bourgeois for my taste ;)

	In Pod Nebom Golubym, he used some verses
	of Revelation from Ioann which were used
	by Gumiliov a way before, so even the words
	of this song are triple plagiatry :):)


>Now, I think you should see why this song, taken as it should have been, and
>looked upon from the right point of view, is one of a kind, different from all the
>other songs sung by BG. There can not possibly be any unity of stiles here: 
>"Gorod" is a philosophically loaded piece, while "Storozh Sergeev" is just a
>nicely drawn picture "Iz gorodskoi zhizni" (city life), and "Innokentii" is
>simply an example of what in Russian called "graphomanstvo" in it's best
>appearance. Or a caricature on such...

	Judge yourself who's a caricature

	Misha.
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