What I know about the twentieth century Russian poet and translator Arseny Tarkovsky can pretty much be written on the back of a postage stamp - such as this commemorative one issued in 2007 to mark the centenary of his birth:
The fact that he featured on a stamp issued by the new regime whilst also having been posthumously awarded the Soviet Union's State Prize in 1989, shows how admired Tarkovsky was across the political spectrum.
Where he positioned himself on this spectrum is interesting to speculate. Revolutionary-minded, one wonders for example what Tarkovsky made of the way things developed, politically and in the arts, under Stalin.
He obviously didn't feel all that uncomfortable as he volunteered to work as a correspondent for an official Soviet Army publication during the war years and never seriously considered the life of an exile or dissident - not even after his own writing fell foul of the new guidelines established by Andrei Zhdanov.
(It wasn't until 1962, when he was aged 55, that Tarkovsky was finally able to publish a volume of original verse.)
However, one would like to believe that Tarkovsky secretly recognised communism for what it is; a form of political idealism doomed, like fascism, to end in tears, tyranny and state terror.
One perhaps finds a clue to his thinking on this question in a poem whose title is usually translated into English as Earthly; a work in which the fantasy of being an immortal and transcending limitations is decisively rejected.
In other words, it's the moment when Tarkovsky realises like Tommy Dukes that one has to be human, and have a heart and a penis if one is going to escape being either a god or a Bolshevist ... for they are the same thing: they're both too good to be true.
Below is a brilliant and startling new translation by Simon Solomon; his alternative title emphasizing the irreverence of the verse:
Soiled Song (after Arseny Tarkovsky)
Were our lives innately fated
to play in gods’ eternal laps
we’d all have guzzled ambrosia
from some Olympian nurse’s baps
and I’d be a river deity or worse,
guarding tombs or blowing corn.
Instead I’m mortal and have no time
for eternity’s celestial porn.
Happy the man whose blistered lips
are not sewn into a ready smile.
So take your polytheologies
and leave me to earth’s salt and bile.
Notes
Simon Solomon (aka Dr Simon Thomas) is a poet, translator, critic and tutor. He is a professional member of the Irish Writers Centre, Dublin and currently serves as managing editor with the academic journal Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society. He blogs at: simonsolomon.ink
The Tommy Dukes line can be found in D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1983).
The fact that he featured on a stamp issued by the new regime whilst also having been posthumously awarded the Soviet Union's State Prize in 1989, shows how admired Tarkovsky was across the political spectrum.
Where he positioned himself on this spectrum is interesting to speculate. Revolutionary-minded, one wonders for example what Tarkovsky made of the way things developed, politically and in the arts, under Stalin.
He obviously didn't feel all that uncomfortable as he volunteered to work as a correspondent for an official Soviet Army publication during the war years and never seriously considered the life of an exile or dissident - not even after his own writing fell foul of the new guidelines established by Andrei Zhdanov.
(It wasn't until 1962, when he was aged 55, that Tarkovsky was finally able to publish a volume of original verse.)
However, one would like to believe that Tarkovsky secretly recognised communism for what it is; a form of political idealism doomed, like fascism, to end in tears, tyranny and state terror.
One perhaps finds a clue to his thinking on this question in a poem whose title is usually translated into English as Earthly; a work in which the fantasy of being an immortal and transcending limitations is decisively rejected.
In other words, it's the moment when Tarkovsky realises like Tommy Dukes that one has to be human, and have a heart and a penis if one is going to escape being either a god or a Bolshevist ... for they are the same thing: they're both too good to be true.
Below is a brilliant and startling new translation by Simon Solomon; his alternative title emphasizing the irreverence of the verse:
Soiled Song (after Arseny Tarkovsky)
Were our lives innately fated
to play in gods’ eternal laps
we’d all have guzzled ambrosia
from some Olympian nurse’s baps
and I’d be a river deity or worse,
guarding tombs or blowing corn.
Instead I’m mortal and have no time
for eternity’s celestial porn.
Happy the man whose blistered lips
are not sewn into a ready smile.
So take your polytheologies
and leave me to earth’s salt and bile.
Notes
Simon Solomon (aka Dr Simon Thomas) is a poet, translator, critic and tutor. He is a professional member of the Irish Writers Centre, Dublin and currently serves as managing editor with the academic journal Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society. He blogs at: simonsolomon.ink
The Tommy Dukes line can be found in D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1983).
