From Each

 

This post got me - rather tangentially - thinking of a poem by the Soviet  children's poet Sergei Mikhalkov. You're going to have to read a bunch of irrelevant ramblings before you can read the poem at the end of the post. 

The book is slightly older than me. A hand-me down from a family friend. Preserved atypically carefully by me to hand-down.

The 'tone' of the poems and stories from the Soviet stand out so distinctly. They are fun without being didactic. But they are consciously infusing a certain 'spirit' that runs through as a theme. In some ways that feels more 'complete' than the (understandable) Indian anxiety to ensconce in a tradition or devolve(!) to absurd fun. 

I was conversing with a cousin of mine a few days back about just how much Indian childhood, of a certain kind, was infused with so much knowledge of Soviet.

I used to get the Soviet children's monthly MISHA by book-post . There used to even be section where the same crossword was in English and Russian Cyrillic. To know how the equivalent word looks without knowing even how to pronounce it was a child's version of Rosetta Stone!

I had a collection of Raduga Publishers's collected folktales from each part of the USSR (Baltic, Central Asia etc.). Dreamy soft paper, beautiful illustrations, hard-bound and so ridiculously subsidised that a kid could buy with saved change! 

So, when I hear that the science-types, had access to quality textbooks from Russia @ affordable prices, I am least surprised. 

Of course we are intimately familiar with Russian literature more than any other world literature. For some reason that doesn't seem to have been the case with films. Of course the artsy types see their Tarkovsky. But we don't seem to know the pop-films as well.  In the early oughties I've watched 'Ballad of a Soldier' and Kalatazov's 'Cranes are Flying' in the Russian Cultural Centre. 

 I've been on a Soviet film-trip lately (On Mosfilm's free youtube channel. Hail Socialism!). I should probably blog about a couple of them some time.

Anyway, now to the poem.

           The Dullard

"Children who have talent

Aren't  like you, my dunce;

They take part in concerts

Act and sing and dance.

"Drawing on such subjects

As Peace and Labour go

Into print in journals

And are put on show.

"Many get the chance to

Travel round the world

To compete in contests

That other countries hold.

"Lisichkina Natasha

Was rewarded once;

Your friend Garrick also -

Not like you my dunce.

"Only hopeless dullards

Never meet success."

So says my own mother.

My own mother, no less.

Well I never answer,

Only bite my lips.

Arguing about it

Isn't worth fried chips.

Let those other children

Move on to success,

Sing and draw fine pictures,

Dance in fancy dress.

Let them play their fiddles,

Act in films and plays -

People may be useful

In a lot of ways.

Who I'll be in future

I know well: one day

I'll go on a journey

Very far away

And with other team-mates

Nowadays my friends,

We will build a railway

To the country's ends.

Trains towards the ocean

Whistling, will ride,

Of her son my mother

Soon will think with pride

Mother was unfair then,

Putting me to shame

Builders just like fiddlers

Have a claim to fame

Translated from Russian to English by Dorian Rottenberg.