Category Archives: Essay

Dusha, Toska, Sud’ba: Russian Culture in its Key Words

11 Sunday May 2014

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Yesterday in the evening i was gazing at the setting sun from the porch of my friends’ suburban home. The sun sets very late in Moscow. Over here, Shabbat candles, which mark the beginning of the Day of Rest, are lit some two hours later than in the NYC. As i am inhaling the scent of black earth, chernozem, sprinkled by the ephemeral spring rain, i am starting to feel something, which Russians call toska.

As Vladimir Nabokov puts it, “Toska – noun /ˈtō-skə/ is Russian word roughly translated as sadness, melancholia, lugubriousness. No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody or something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom.”
I couldn’t explain in any other language what i feel and, more so, why i am feeling it. In my own culture, such inexplicable lonesome inner wandering is neither understood nor welcomed – and rightly so, Balkan sensuality, our history and the mountains around inspire an all another range of emotions.

I don’t know what i’d call that feeling in English either – and probably no need to label it at all because i don’t feel it out of Russia. Here, my friend Lily glances at me and, without hesitation, diagnoses my state with a verse by Mikhail Lermontov :

It’s boring and sad, and there’s no one around

In times of my spirit’s travail.

It’s not that she or i will do something  about it. Toska is acceptable here, it comes and goes on its own liking and it’s not that you can do much about about it anyway. Toska is not a debilitating sadness or a severe depression – you can be hit by it and go about your everyday business. It’s only that you won’t smile all that much. Smiling isn’t a norm here anyway, so that’s OK too. Other external expressions of toska are prolonged, deep breaths and a specific hand waving gesture which conveys an almost audible “don’t ask…”

Polish Australian linguist Ana Wierzbicka considers toska, along with sud’ba and dusha, to be the key concept of Russian culture.

Sud’ba would be fate in its most passive understanding and dusha  is Russian word for soul, to which way more is ascribed in this culture, than in any other. Wierbicka notices that “dusha” is used in numerous, if not all, sayings and expressions where in English we’d say ” mind”. Russian soul also gets blamed for a myriad of things for which in other languages we blame our vanity, silliness or even lust.

Wierbicka is popular in Russia – to the extent to which a linguist can be popular, you can feel from her work that she is fascinated with this culture and that she, like me and pretty much all the foreigners here, does love it, albeit most of the times it is beyond our understanding. At the predefence of my own Phd thesis, the famed professor Alla Yuryevna Konstantinovna asked me: Do you agree with Wierbicka that the language itself and its key concepts make Russians passive? I don’t. I am not even sure Wierbicka sees it as passivity, she speaks more of a Russian fatalistic attitude towards life itself. That’s how she sees it and maybe, just maybe, it could be explained by some tenants of Christian Orthodoxy (versus the presumed Protestant proactive attitude towards pretty much everything.)

To me all of it could be explained geographically – or, better to say, located, if not explained. The farther you go to the East, towards Asia, the more you’ll feel it – this acceptance of the things as they are and you’ll observe certain (more or less) patient awaiting of the circumstances to change, more and more, as you progress to the East and Far East. Maybe it has to do with the language, maybe with the weather – or we could blame it all on dusha, the black earth and that special scent that birch trees emit in the spring…

20140509_103328 20140509_103442 20140509_124856 20140509_124955 20140509_132000 20140509_132020With Lily, Ilya, Sasha and Ksyuha on Victory Day, May 9th, round and about Moscow city (Arbatskaya street, Mikhail Sholohov monument and the wall on Arbat street dedicated to the memory of Viktor Tsoi.) Graffiti on the wall translates as: He/she who is not forgotten, he is immortal.

For Arlen, Dianne, Amras, John, Jessica and a ‘silly petite woman’

23 Sunday Mar 2014

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I’ve been ‘missing in action’ and, besides to Bonnie Cehovet, with whom we are friends even before WP and (thus) keep in touch via other media & social networks, i think i owe you all a long explanation and an excuse…

I didn’t give up on WP, i was trying to post here and there so you’d know i am alive and kicking, as the saying goes, but last couple of months were indeed the craziest period of my life.

I am well, thanks Goodness, but with work, it’s been… Ugh! I’ll try to reconstruct in chronological order what’s been going on (luckily, all are good news, but in full seriousness i hardly had the time to sleep, not to mention other stuff.)

So, firstly, my doctoral thesis is finished, i’ve spent four months in Moscow and by the end of this week i am going there again for the pre-defense. The ‘finish’ nearly killed me i must say, i am used to hard work, but this was too much even for me.

My short story ‘The New Testament’ is included into Dalkey Archive Press’ Best European Fiction series, featured in The New York Times, The Guardian and so on.

You can imagine what excitement surrounded the selection in my native Montenegro, we are a tiny, quite homogeneous nation and when one of us makes an achievement it is celebrated on a national level; long story made short – i spent a month or so giving interviews and answering congratulations letters.

Then, my new collection of poems The Color of Change (link to a review in Montenegrin), illustrated by one of the most renowned contemporary Montenegrin artists, Biljana Kekovic was published and launched.

I was a guest of numerous tv shows, among  most popular and region- wide watched being Atlas TV primetime show ‘Signs by the roadside’ hosted by internationally acclaimed novelist and a friend of mine, Ksenija Popovic:

(You can watch the show on youtube, in our language.)

Unrelated to writing engagements, i had the honor to interpret during visits of foreign officials to my country:

on official visit: president of Bulgaria H.E. Mr Rosen Plevneliev in Montenegro, with our head of state H.E. Mr Filip Vujanovic


on official visit: president of Bulgaria H.E. Mr Rosen Plevneliev in Montenegro, with our head of state H.E. Mr Filip Vujanovic

Last but not the least, with prominent Montenegrin poetess and my dear friend Tanja Bakic, on behalf of Dragana Tripkovic (scroll down for her bio in English) and Jelena Nelevic-Martinovic in Zagreb, Croatia we launched the very first anthology of Montenegrin poetry written by women: Koret on the asphalth (chief editor – Danilo Ivezic, authors: Tanja Bakic, Lena Ruth Stefanovic, Dragana Tripkovic, Jelena Nelevic Martinovicč published by National Association of Montenegrins of Croatia and Skaner Studio, Zagreb 2013.)

Croatian literary critic Darija ZIlic speaking at the launch of Koret on the Asphalt (left to right: Darija ZIlic, Tanja Bakic, L.R. Stefanovic, Danilo Ivezic - the editor of the anthology

Croatian literary critic Darija ZIlic speaking at the launch of Koret on the Asphalt (left to right: Darija Zilic, Tanja Bakic, L.R. Stefanovic, Danilo Ivezic – one of the leaders of Montnegrin Diaspora and the editor of the anthology.)

Our amazing host – Božidar Petrač, president of the Croatian Writers’ Association:

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Montenegrin Diaspora - Council of the Montenegrin National Minority in the City of Zagreb and National Association of Montenegrins of Croatia

Montenegrin Diaspora – Council of the Montenegrin National Minority in the City of Zagreb and National Association of Montenegrins of Croatia

For your enjoyment, i’d like to end this ‘post up’ with magical verses of Jelena Nelevic Martinovic, which i believe reflects the spirit of numerous Montenegrin female voices, united as one:

“ I am neither the size of my hips,

nor the measurements of my breast,

I am not the color of my eyes

neither am i the perfect ratio

between inches and pounds…

The difference is that I is the one who penetrates,

While off me all the things bounce of.”

J.N.M.

Some of my dearest WP friends, in no particular order:

Arlen

Dianne

John, the magician from the Bartolini kitchens

Amras

a wise, great and marvelous woman with a camera

Jessica

and, of course:

Bonnie Cehovet

You can’t get Russia with your mind

02 Thursday Jan 2014

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Some century and a half ago Fyodor Tyutchev, one of the greatest poets of Russian Romanticism wrote a quatrain that with time became proverbial:

You cannot grasp Russia with your mind 
Or judge her by any common measure, 
Russia is one of a special kind –
You can only believe in her.
(translation via Russkiy mir)

Celebration of the New Year is one of those occasions when i become aware of this truth even more than usually – you can’t get Russia with your mind (or with with any other of your brain functions for that matter.)

Right, we know it all – that New Year madness has roots in various Pagan festivals, that during communism it was forbidden to celebrate Christmas and the symbolic of the two Holidays were switched and traded off… Still, none of it explains the contagious fanaticism with which majority of Russians ‘sees off the old year’ and greets the new. (In Russian language it’s literally ‘seeing off’ the old year and ‘meeting’ the new one, mind you.)

There are countless traditions to be observed before the Holiday and within its course – from paying off all your debts, via tiding your home generally to asking forgiveness from the people you hurt  and what not.

Couple of weeks leading to December 31st we are having an extended  “Black Friday” over here – the amount of shopping that’s done is intimidating and overwhelming, yet it can’t be avoided; see, it’s a must because you simply have to give gifts to as much people as possible and you have to  buy tons of stuff for yourself as well… Among else, you have to stock up on food because it’s an 8 day long public holiday and the stores are closed at least until January the 3d. (In case you’ve skipped that, like i did, you’ll be living exclusively on chocolate and cookies which are gifted generously in the spirit of the season – you can’t get any other food in this time, unless you’ve provided for yourself in advance.)

Thus one of the NY traditions is to watch ad nauseum the movie Irony of Fate or Enjoy Your Bath, a romantic comedy from 1976 on which importance for Russian people even some serious books were written – see  Olga Fedina’s book, What Every Russian Knows (And You Don’t)

“Foreigners who spend years mastering classical Russian grammar and getting used to the rapid-fire slangy exchanges of contemporary spoken Russian need one more thing: a personal cultural guide. We dream of someone who will take us by the hand and explain why a 30-year-old film is still watched by the whole family every New Year’s Eve, whisper the allusions to films in the jokes our co-workers are making, and help us understand how a traditional fairy tale shaped our friends’ characters and sense of morality” says the author and i couldn’t agree more with her.

In those three hours that movie lasts you get a glimpse into Russia’s drinking culture – and if you are from the West or from Balkans like i am, i bet you that you won’t get it (i know i don’t – out of first ninety minutes of the first sequel, some 25 min are devoted to provision and consumption of alcohol); you’ll get an insight into the notorious pressure to which Russian women are subjugated to marry and have family (almost 30 years later hardly anything changed there); besides, you’ll see what a Russian banya stands for and maybe you’ll understand why Russian people attend it with a religious devotion (i confess i don’t get that either.) Mind you, these are just first 30 minutes of the movie which can’t be re-told, but can be watched on youtube with English subtitles: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVpmZnRIMKs

Another NY custom, which goes observed with religious-like fanaticism, is the traditional Russian zastolye – at least six courses and several hours long  meal accompanied by unlimited quantities of alcohol and countless toasts to health and honor of the participants. Some of the ‘ritual foods’ are pickled herring, caviar, Olivier salad, mandarines and all of it seems to be deeply rooted in pre-Christian observances and connection to the departed ancestors; anyway it is, by now zastolye is an essential part of Russian way of living which, being a foreigner, you’ll never ever understand.

I pulled a card from my Véritable Tarot de Marseille and it was 3 of Wands/ Bâtons:

Le Véritable Tarot de Marseille

Le Véritable Tarot de Marseille

It’s a plain in imagery card – three wands are interlocking, leaves curling out from the intersection – yet it’s meaning, tied to the Empress and the Suit of Fire, is rich and promising; the card usually denotes the awaiting of goodness and abundance which somehow we happen to know is just about to arrive…

On that note, i am wishing you a Happy New Year, may it be as joyous, abundant and fulfilling, as Russian zastolye is 😉

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Let’s talk about the Tower, baby, let’s talk about you and me…

01 Friday Nov 2013

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Tarot card from the Rider-Waite tarot deck; a 1909 card scanned by Holly Voley for the public domain

Tarot card from the Rider-Waite tarot deck; a 1909 card scanned by Holly Voley for the public domain

Tarot’s Tower does come across as a phallic symbol and in some interpretations it is read as such*; the Star accordingly could be read as female orgasm – and as connection to sephirot Binah and whatnot.

It’s one of the Major Arcanum I have working knowledge of, but can’t connect to on a deeper level, I don’t get it.

Yes, I know it all – the connection to even more confusing Biblical tale of the Babylonian Tower; for an uber-intellectual analysis of the Arcanum and references to anyone you can think of – from Nimrod to Plutarch, see “Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey” by Sallie Nichols… It is a great book on theory of Tarot and I recommend it heartily, but I do doubt it will improve your practical reading skills even the tiniest bit.

It’s been said before that Tarot is a language – a system of signs in semiotic understanding. As such, it does need to be studied both theoretically and practically. To me personally, the two aspects of studying do go hand in hand, otherwise – theory without practice is abstract and dry, whereas practice without theoretic studying tends to turn the discipline into mere fortune-telling. (Nothing too wrong about it, except that on philosophical level it’s diametrically opposed to the doctrine of  free will, whereas in practice it too easily activates the notorious ‘negative self-fulfilling prophecy’, ie. negative predictions do influence sitter’s mind on various levels.)

I am not going to re-digest numerous valid and known interpretations of the Arcanum XVI, those didn’t do much for me. I did learn over years what Tower means in my readings – it’s usually denoting couple of days of stress and upset, but not more than that. (One of the cards I dislike getting way more is the depressing and dis-empowering Hanged Man, that energy for me is way more difficult to handle than shaky and unpredictable Tower.)

What I wanted to share is an unusual and non-deterministic take on the Tower to which I came during last couple of days, since I relocated once again from Montenegro to Moscow.

See, nevertheless we too speak a Slavic language and albeit my country throughout history had close ties with Russia – our own Balkan mentality and Mediterranean way of living has nothing to do with Russian ways. Italian mentality is close to ours – and no wonder, it is a neighboring country to ours and good part of Montenegro was historically ruled by Venetia. We get along with Turks very well – after all – as much as we fought throughout history, we did live in a close proximity for some 400 years and by now we do have a lot in common, taste in foods and similar cuisines among it. But Russians… as much as we love them, we have close to nothing in common with them – neither the system of values, nor the way of life. And it’s tough for me, every time I come here, to adapt and adjust to it all once again – and here we come to the Towerish experience which I wanted to share.

I wrote before on secondary linguistic personality and cultural adaptation ( you can read an excellent material – Russian source translated into English – here http://www.russcomm.ru/eng/rca_biblio/l/leontovich02_eng.shtml ), learning a foreign language is a profoundly transforming and deeply Tower-ish experience.

Leading kabbalistis of our times, such as Shaul Youdkevitch, say that the language we speak molds our personalities – and albeit I am a doctoral candidate in linguistics, I quote kabbalists way more gladly than linguists and philosophers. (After all, during brief 45 min of intro lecture to Kabbalah – which is mostly on what Kabbalah is NOT-  one learns way more than during hours long, boring and pretentious lectures by Slavoy Zizek for example, at least it is so in my experience.) The thing with me is that by now I speak Russian as a native and they don’t figure out easily I am a foreigner; but my attitude is foreign to them and that brings about a lot of confusion. Our society back home is conservative – and so is Russian, but in very different ways; I am from patriarchal culture, but I am not used to patronizing to which I am exposed over here due to my gender – and Russians are not used to women being as assertive as I am, at least not at my age (I look younger my biological age.) Back at home I don’t act from the framework of my gender – I am a responsible person, a member of the community and most often my gender is irrelevant to whatever I am doing or saying. It’s not so in mother Russia. I was told I speak too much for a woman (by a member of the academy of science, mind you.) I am constantly reminded I don’t need bother too much, it’s suffices that my looks are somewhat pleasing to the eye. That bothers me. I wasn’t raised as a girlie girl – I was raised to be a person, not a girl. More so that at my age and with social position I have back home it is ridiculous to be reduced to some kind of decoration… but it is what it is. I learned so far that there isn’t much point in arguing and explaining feminist premises to anyone, people get it or not. What’s important is that in my own microcosms – in academia and at my own Muscovite University it is NOT so; the treatment I – and most other women get out there… that I can’t change, as much as it bothers me. For the sake of the proverbial intercultural communication, you need to adapt- at least seemingly and temporarily – as difficult as it I; so, I learned a little trick, which makes my Towerish adaptation tad easier to bare – I introduced a heavy foreign accent which clearly marks me as an intruder. As soon as I step out from the comfort of Pushkin University, my faked accent distinguishes me as an outsider, a crazy foreigner, Albert Camus’ Meursault – by choice.

Meanwhile, I skyp with my family, so not to lose my mind completely 😉

my mom, my fur baby, my cousin Drago and sis in law Vanja

my mom, my fur baby, my cousin Drago and sis in law Vanja; father dearest on the snapshot bellow (he’s just back from a reception hence the tie & all that jazz ;))

Video call snapshot 48 Video call snapshot 50

* Lon Milo Duquette, Understanding Aleister Crowley’s Thoth Tarot; Weiser Books, 2003 (also Sexual Alchemy of the Thoth Tarot – DVD course by the same author)

 

‘If you wake up surrounded by broken vodka bottles…

10 Wednesday Jul 2013

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… ass-naked in the snow you had a quiet night with some work colleagues in Moscow’, says the Road Junky’s Instant Global Morning-After Self-Locator. Sounds funny and perfectly depicts the common stereotypes about mother Russia – but it’s false. 21st century Moscow’s reality is rather what they believe to await you in Switzerland, under the circumstances: If you wake up in a snow bank and are greeted in six different languages by a helpful hiker you are in Switzerland. Don’t touch anything; you can’t afford it.  You see, Zurich is ranking somewhere 7th in various lists of the world’s most expensive cities, and Moscow is either No1 – or second only to Tokio.

The truth is that my friends and colleagues here don’t drink more than my other friends anywhere in the world, it’s only that they pay double and triple for the booze. All in all, if you are dying to live a genuinely Russian experience – or, rather, a Soviet one – you’d better head for Moldova or Belarus. I’ve been to Moldova couple of years ago – and it’s really an experience out of this world, somehow the globalization has bypassed it and you can indeed experience stuff unavailable anywhere else; i was told the same is in Belarus.

In Moscow – you won’t get lost if you don’t speak Russian, as it was the case some quarter a century ago, Russian cars are driven mostly by migrants from Central Asia, while locals prefer Mercedes and Audi. Wherever  you go – there is a McDonald’s and a Starbucks and there are very few foods from home which you’ll miss horribly while staying here – you can buy pretty much everything in Moscow’s hypermarkets.

If you were here 25 years ago, you needed to speak from the framework of Russian culture, so to be understood – cultural gap was huge because Russians at the time were watching their own movies exclusively, reading their own writers mostly and listening to music that was made-in-Russia… It’s not the case anymore, the same Hollywood blockbusters are screened in the movie  theaters here and the NY Times bestsellers are translated instantly. Nowadays, when you want to share something from another culture – your brain won’t explode while thinking of the Russian equivalent (i mean the impossible comparisons of a kind: Jim Morrison is to us, what Vladimir Vysotsky is to you, to which foreigners used to resort at the time), just spit it out, whatever it is that you thought of – chances are that your Russian host already knows about it.

Of course that there are certain local specifics – like the tea culture and certain traditional foods, such as herring which is savored with delicious Borodino bread … But those you can taste in any Russian restaurant pretty much everywhere in the world.

Oh, right – many Russian women still wear fur, but so do Montenegrin and vegetarianism is not as common as it is in the Western Europe and USA.

Other than that – i really have hard time thinking of some major differences; Russians, like other Eastern Europeans, were said to be gloomy because here it wasn’t common to keep smiling at all times, but that’s changing too; also the previously obligatory use of patronymics is mostly the matter of the past.

All of that being said, you can imagine my amazement when -unexpectedly – i’ve lived an jamais vu experience, here at VDNH which by now is as ‘all-Russian’ as KFC at the Chinese Great Wall is all Chinese.

After the stroll at the botanical garden, across the park’s ponds we headed to the Exhibition Center VDNH which is adjunct to it. With a friend who’s my usual sojourner during the local adventures, for some reason we ventured into the Pavilion No2, where Soviet geological wonders used to be exposed (nowadays it’s a flower market.)

Lo and behold, we hear loud Panjabi music coming from somewhere, we follow it and get to some stairs leading down, the entrance itself being hidden by white textile paravan… Excited, we head downstairs and find ourselves in the most amazing place in which i’ve been during my three years long stay in Moscow – it’s a restaurant and a shop owned by a Bengali gentleman, Amin, who runs it mostly for his own countrymates and the small business owners from the flower market.

I do doubt there is a friendlier restaurant owner in Moscow than Mr Amin – and i am certain that you can’t treat yourself to such delicacies at such a low prices anywhere else. The atmosphere is that of a local pub – and it doesn’t matter that you don’t really know anyone, you feel welcomed; with all the loneliness and alienation typical of Moscow and all other megalopolises – Amin’s restaurant does feel like a cosy, divinely smelling and tad messy home away from home. (Pictures posted with permission.)

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’tis all in the coffee cup

23 Thursday May 2013

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Coffee is big in our culture. A friend who had gone missing for a long time would call you and regretfully ask: when are you coming over for a coffee? Your crush, if you are lucky, will ask you: when are you going to buy me that coffee? (Sounds awkward, I know.) The ultimate despair is when you “don’t have with whom to share a cup of coffee.”

Morning coffee has cult-like status and if you see someone really pissed off early in the day – most probably they didn’t have the time to grab theirs. And you won’t see anyone carrying their coffee around in a plastic glass- you have to be seated to have it.

To drink coffee while standing – like many Italian does – for us would be a sign you are late, like… for your own funeral or something. It doesn’t happen. When we say to “have coffee while standing on foot” – it means the ceremony lasts less than hour – that happens seldom and is commonly frowned upon.

There is plenty of discrimination going on I must tell you. When it comes to the Balkan people and their coffee – alike does attracts alike. Cooking Turkish coffee in gezve, when done traditionally, takes some time and skills too – and if your coffee-mates have very different sugar preferences, it can become a painstaking… well, ordeal. See, you need to put the sugar first – and it’s done as soon as you placed the gezve on the stove, long before first bubbles come out (coffee itself is added only later , to the already boiling water).

When it comes to cooked coffee, timing is everything. I have a close friend whom I love, but our friendship is between the rock and the hard place – he takes his coffee at 4pm sharp and that’s whole hour after my afternoon coffee time, if I skip mine and wait for him – around half past three I already hate him with passion; if I have mine first and then another cup with him – that means I’ll spend the night counting the sheep. Another thing is that he likes his coffee “thin” and sweet and I like mine “strong” and without sugar.  It’s complicated.

Many are fixated on brands – for another friend I need to keep a bag of a local blend, as she won’t even look at any other… The thing is that coffee needs to be freshly grinded to be good, that basically means replacing the bag with a new one at least every two weeks; if you have several friends who are set in their choices – chances are that sooner or later you’ll unintentionally hurt someone. People are very sensitive when it comes to coffee – forgetting their preferences is like forgetting their own  names; presumably if you make the coffee for somebody once, you shall remember how they like it – until the end of your days. It’s quite personal, you see.

Many have their personal mugs and won’t drink from any other; often a friend will “reserve” a mug of yours and will demand their coffee to be served in it exclusively. God forbid that you brake it or forgetfully lend it to a neighbor for example (coffee is freely landed and borrowed among neighbors – and usually fetched in mugs.) It can be the proverbial hair that breaks the camel’s back – your friend will look at you, their eyes full of tears, you will know it albeit they probably won’t actually say it – that you hurt them badly, you deprived them of something rightfully theirs, you took away an essential part of their identity and they don’t feel welcomed in your home anymore. It has happened to me too and I must say that it feels awfully saddening… So, if you love them – keep their cup in a safe place, preferably locked up in a pool with piranhas,  surrounded with couple of guardian dogs, take my word on it – it’s  worth the pain.

 

Here are some more captures from Sarajevo for you:

 

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book fairs aren’t fair

25 Thursday Apr 2013

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My heart was wrenching as i strolled down the spacious halls of Sarajevo’s book fair. The books were piled randomly -some new, some classics, some bigger ones, some tiny ones, hard to find books, out of print ones, bestsellers; poetry books, prose books, high brow books, funny books, sad books – all of them pushed to the sides of the aisles, gathering dust at the portable fair’s shelves. From time to time some passerby would slow their pace reluctantly, for a moment they’d almost gave in to the sellers’ desperate attempts, they’d fix their gaze at a title briefly and then walk away abruptly, further between the rows of unwanted books.

I felt sorry for the abandoned books, i was heartbroken for the unread words, my heart went to the authors – the unwilling participants of this ruthless wholesale, for that’s what most book fairs come down to ( among exceptions being author-oriented Leipzig Buhmesse and in this part of the world – Belgrade Book Fair.)

Real books are painstaking labor of inspiration, knowledge, skill and endless perspiration,  it’s downright sacrilegious to degrade them down to just another commercial product. There are many ways to make quick money, but books shan’t be among them… yet it’s being pushed down our throats over and over again.

I want to scream when some fool starts explaining me premises of the liberal capitalism and how books should fit into it… Hello, the latter had crashed bringing upon us wreath of economic depression and, unless it’s not already too late, it is high time to think over some premises.

Couple of publishers i met at the fair vented about low sales and poor attendance, NONE of them mentioned emerging writers they met or some new visions from the books they were promoting… And they blame it on the reader who presumably is dumbed down… It ain’t so. The good reader – who is even rarer bird than a good writer – is brought down to her knees by omnipresent greed, her buying power is diminished, her free time almost non-existent for she needs to take ever and ever more   workload to keep going. So, don’t blame it on the reader – i am a writer and i am a reader myself, i know… I know it all. That being said, it’s one of the main motives i switched to blogging, i write for the people (feel free to scream all you want*) and i don’t need much more than my text reaching the audience, that’s about  it. It is time consuming, more than that – it’s blood consuming… If you read Dianne Gray‘s writing – it’s clear that such writing is done by alchemically processing personal pain into the meaning of life and for those of us for whom writing is vocation it is the modus vivendi.

*As a side note – recently, i had an eminent literary critic nearing the edge of a nervous breakdown upon my mentioning that i do write for others… see, they thought writing should be both self-centered and self-indulging act where the unnoticed reader is reduced to not more than a peeping Tom… yeah, sure. 

Last night we hang out with an amazing Croatian writer, Edi Matic. Edi looks like  Raymond Carver at his best – tall, tanned with gray hair and penetrating gaze, he writes somewhat like him too – in short, sharp sentences which, read aloud at launches, seem to cut the air at the book fair’s hall, tearing it apart as a razor would, just above the heads of the previously lulled into sleep audience.

We agreed that we, the writers, are faced with an impossible mission – at the launches, we are supposed  to promote what goes labeled as ‘high brow prose’… and that’s close to impossible. Good prose is more than entertaining – it’s like a roller-coaster ride, but one that stays with you for a long time – if not for good; the thing is that you can’t market it as you’d market a dish washer because good books are a phenomena unto themselves, they are discreet, predestined to be enjoyed in privacy and seclusion. It’s an almost monastic task – to read a good book, you need your you-time, you need reasonably peaceful surroundings, and above all, you need a fertile ground -an open mind – to plant the seeds from the book into your personal discourse. Great writers from the past didn’t have launches, it’s a quite recent fabrication and quite a controversial one. Of course that a good reader feels like godsent to a writer – and most of us are indeed looking forward to discussing our writings, the thing is that the publishing and bookselling industry pushes us into burlesque of a kind and – with due respect – you don’t get Isadora Duncan to wig a fake fur tail in a smokey night bar… these are parallel universes which can not – and, for everyone’s best, shall not – coincide EVER.

No one knows with certainty what’s the way out from this living sand of commercialization and profanation. There will always be Dan Browns and hopefully there will always be at least couple of authors of Doris Lessing’s calibre…

Last but not the least – hopefully there will always be at least couple of non-commercial publishers, such as Bosnian Publishing House Fra Grgo Martic and inspired promoters such as Bosnian Croatian poet and publicist Milo Jukic thanks to whom good readers still manage to find their way to good writers – without fanfarras and the fake fur; the rest, together with megalomaniac publishers and cheap booksellers – the powerful weapon of time will sort out and uproot.

“I hate tricks. At the first sign of a trick or gimmick in a piece of fiction, a cheap trick or even an elaborate trick, I tend to look for cover. Tricks are ultimately boring, and I get bored easily, which may go along with my not having much of an attention span. But extremely clever chi-chi writing, or just plain tomfoolery writing, puts me to sleep. Writers don’t need tricks or gimmicks or even necessarily need to be the smartest fellows on the block. At the risk of appearing foolish, a writer sometimes needs to be able to just stand and gape at this or that thing- a sunset or an old shoe- in absolute and simple amazement.”
Raymond Carver, Fires

Milo Jukic and Edi Matic, writers’ residence in Kreshevo, Bosnia (April 2013)

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Businessman, patron of art and stud breeder, Mr Anto Stanic (front row center)

422118Publishing House Fra Grgo Martic at Sarajevo Book Fair 2013, from left to right: Ljiljana Shop, Tanja Stupar-Trifunovic, Milo Jukic, Seida Beganovic, Lena Ruth Stefanovic, Edi Matic
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Literary evening in Kreshevo, during writers’ residence 2013.
kreshevo launch 2013

Let me take you to the Black Mountains

23 Saturday Mar 2013

Posted by in Essay

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‘Am I in paradise or on the moon?’ George Bernard Shaw famously quipped from the top of Mount Lovćen in Montenegro. Adriatic sea stretches to the horizon to its west and  on a clear day you can see Italy; to the south is  Skadar Lake, beyond it – the dark, mysterious hills of Albania; in the north is Bay of Kotor, Europe’s southernmost fjord…

To get to Kotor Fjord from the historical capital, Cetinje, once the only way lead through the mountains, up the steep, narrow and oddly curved road… When you look at it from the top of the mountain – a capital letter M is clearly seen, it seems to be engraved into the landscape by the road… The legend is that French architect commissioned to oversee the construction  in this way declared his love for beautiful Montenegrin Queen Milena – and had ran away from the country for his life! Whether the story is true we can not know, but Montenegrin women are known for their beauty – King Nikola and Queen Milena’s daughters had married into the most influential European dynasties and our King will be nick-named “the father in  law of Europe”!

Elena of Montenegro (born Princess Jelena Petrović-Njegoš of Montenegro)  was  wife of Victor Emmanuel III and Queen of Italy from 1900 until 1946; by Italians she was named “La Bella Elena” – beautiful Elena.

Two of our other princesses, with keen interest in the occult,  Milica and Anastasia, had married into Romanov dynasty  and it was them who later on introduced mysterious Rasputin to the Russian Court.

If you read serious historical sources – you’ll learn of False Tsar Stephen the Little; for my thesis i studied carefully archives of Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the diplomatic correspondence exchanged between two courts – Montenegrins were fully aware that their ruler had a false identity; but did they care? Not the least – he was a great ruler and that was the only thing that mattered; where he came from and who he was in reality – nobody knows until today.

The longest war in history , Montenegrin – Japanese war,  lasted from 1905 – 2006; when Russia declared war to Japan, the teeny kingdom sided with its ally and also proclaimed war to the Country of the Raising Sun! Albeit the answer was never received – Montenegrin gesture was not merely symbolical – the best warriors chosen from the most reputable of the tribes, along with Russians went to war, fought bravely, won victories and received medals! Again, all of it is documented in the archives of Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs where the names of these people who fought against Samurai and the awards they received are meticulously listed!

Then super powers got busy with their own business and it’s only in 2006, when high representative of Japanese Government traveled to Montenegro to recognize our regained independence –  that the truce was signed!

Montenegro is one of the oldest countries in Europe – Principality Doclea, the great-grand mother of Montenegro, was formed in 9th century; it shall have a turbulent personal history, like many outstandingly beautiful and rebellious princesses did … In 1042 it shall run away from what once was considered her home – the mighty Byzantine empire, in 1421, it shall get kidnapped by a Serbian Despotate; princess by birthright would renounce its nobility by joining the working class family of Yugoslav people and shall remain quite happy in its new home, as long as her inborn sense of human dignity was not jeopardized and her honorable name brought down to dirt. That’s when the princess decided it was the high time she hit the road and became a sovereign queen. (In 2006. Montenegro has regained its independence.)

In an earlier essay, Death by chocolate, i’ve written on Montenegrin cuisine.

Favorite  entrée is Njegushi cheese stored in oil – let alone that goats and cows are fed freely on the nearest valley on herbs and grass typical of this region, the cheese is later smoked at home and the village of Njegushi is unique for its blend of sea-air with the air from the mountains; two climates intersecting in that very spot give the food a taste that’s impossible to second.

After the cheese is imbued with this unique aroma – it’s stored in olive oil and that’s a story unto itself, because the oil is hand made by monks in the monasteries on the coast; at the end you get a a small piece of cheese that’s threaded with history of this magical kingdom of Black Mountains. The cheese, it seems, is served mostly to go along with the story of our rulers, Petrovic Njegos dynasty, and their tribe of Njegusi; the monks, while making the oil – read prayers and these prayers give you the strength of a tiny rebellious nation, which resisted its numerous oppressors for centuries and never in its history was enslaved.

As you would be snacking on the cheese, you would get served Montenegrin brandy – Prvijenac, which is made by unique technologies and in limited quantities; it comes  in numbered  bottles, like a part of a collection – which basically it is.

There is that joke – the proverbial Russian, American and Montenegrin argued whose beverage is the best and , as expected, without having agreed – they decided  to conduct an experiment; a group of mice got treated to Whiskey, Vodka and Prvijenac respectively and the effects were observed and recorded.

The mouse who had Whiskey started walking around nonchalantly, with a seductive aura of a western-movie actor, he demanded his own Colt to protect the mice maidens and after a while rode into the sunset.

The mouse who had Vodka started quoting Russian Classics and despairing over the current state of the world’s affairs, lady mice were admiring him while silently wiping off  tears  with tiny handkerchiefs and praying that this hero wins the duel against the usual bad guy.

The mouse who drank of Prvijenac just stood there.

After some time, he stood on his back paws and yelled out in a human voice, carrying the menace of vengeance high and low: Ladies, back to the hole, you have no business here! Where is the bloody cat?! I’ll do it away with my bare hands! ‘Nuff of this oppression! Come out, you villain, fight as a man!

You get an idea…

an airplane window shot of the Black Mountains

an airplane window shot of the Black Mountains

Vintage Cover of a French Magazine, public domain

Vintage Cover of a French Magazine, public domain

 

Montenegrin coast, a pic my mother took back in early 70ies

Montenegrin coast, a pic my mother took back in early 70ies

Here you can see the gallery of pictures from Kotor Fjord, Scadar lake and other shots of the amazing Black Mountains.

P.S. Just in case you are wondering what’s gotten into me to write on my country once again – it’s that after bitching about FP in how NOT to get freshly pressed, EVER, i do think the guys behind Daily Prompt deserve cudos for coming up with today’s “Local Flavor‘. 😉

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

the world is going to hell in a hand basket

18 Monday Mar 2013

Posted by in Essay, Photography

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I got up at dawn and for last five hours or so i’ve been researching the (scars) info on the owner of the amazing house number 53 in Bolyshaya Morskaya street, St. Petersburg. I got there by chance, the meeting i attended was held there – and i almost felt my jaw hitting the floor from utter amazement! I am posting the pictures for you to see – this is definitely NOT something you expect to get at some Chamber of Commerce!

As you would imagine, being a life-long student of humanities, i am not impressed with commerce in the first place.

But, it’s a long story and feel free to skip the stream of consciousness intro to follow…

If you are striving to be anything like a (presumably) independent person trying to earn the living by writing as honestly as possible on reasonably intelligent topics… You are standing right there on the edge of the slippery slope, like Tarot Fool does. 

Studying arts and humanities is generally considered quite futile, given that you are not a royal offspring, with nothing else to do  – whereas all the subjects related to consumerism, all kinds of marketings and similar idiocies, are considered to be a feet-on-the-ground and pragmatic course in life… But is it? 

Could be due to my growing up in the times of planned economy and all kinds of market deficits – but i really see no worth neither in advertising nor in any of it sick cousins. If the product is good & needed, it will sell, the rest… Well, it’s mostly ‘ol good greed that brought upon us the global economic meltdown and all stemming from it gruesome consequences.  

 Mostly peeps choose to turn the blind eye and do something , without overthinking it, but – if they do think for whom they are working and why, chances are they are in for quite an unpleasant surprise. 

Octogenarian former Canadian Cabinet Minister Paul Hellyer, with a long and varied career is still active and still deeply engaged in a wide variety of world issues. 

Hear him out: “The world financial system is a total fraud.  It is one gargantuan Ponzi scheme, no better than the one Bernie Madoff used to swindle his friends and neighbors, and thousands of times worse if you add up the total number of victims it has ripped off over countless generations.” (Adopted from globalresearch.ca)

Then there is a lengthy and credible explanation of how it happened – which makes sense even to my mind, alien to all kinds of conspiracy theories; there is even a plan how we could make it work. The things is that i had several ideas myself – and have worked for decades to implement them, i lived to see them sprouting and… decaying.

Be it a religion or a political doctrine, something happens to it instantly upon human interference – it gets corrupted beyond recognition.

There is usually a fool or two (i think idealist would be the appropriate euphemism) in the beginning and then the opportunists take the matters into their hands… From there on – it’s all downhill.

 

Anyways, we as humanity seem to be duped and after the active “Confucianist” phase where i actively sought to change things, i’ve pretty much given up and resorted to – minimalism. (And i’ve written on that too, in The Tao of Ruth.)

Honestly, for myself, except thinking, writing and NOT buying stuff i don’t absolutely need, for now i don’t see other means of personal resistance.

In an earlier essay i quoted  American educator Abraham Flexner  who back in 1939 warned of  the dangerous tendency to -as Maria Popova puts it – to forgo pure curiosity in favor of pragmatism.  (A. Flexner, Usefulness of Useless, pdf)

More than seven decades passed since he wrote those Orwellian words – but, sadly, not much seems to have changed.

… and start reading here:

So, nothing new under the sun, but it is rather strange – given my general aversion to the contemporary economy, that i ended up in St. Petersburg’s Chamber of Commerce.  Yet the way of man is froward and strange and once there, i was in awe, literally, its rooms and decorations are a museum material. I asked around whose it was before the revolution and someone vaguely responded the house belonged to some baron, an adventurer who traveled extensively in India and of whom little is known. Well, that sounds like a plot of one of the infamously poorly written Dan Brown’s novels! Thus,  this morning i spent five hours trying to get the history of that house in Bolyshaya Morskaya 53.

Chamber’s website teasingly advertises:  Don’t miss the chance to see with your own eyes the rooms of the castle of P.P. Golenschev -Kutuzov- Tolstoy, but there is no mention of who the gentleman was. Both surnames, Kutuzov and Tolstoy are big in Russia and from there i dug unto the tzarist archives and old registers so to figure out who on earth could amass such wealth and what for. So, according to Russian State Historical Archive, Pavel Pavlovich, listed as the home owner, was the grand-grand son of the famous field marshal of the Russian Empire, one of the finest diplomats under the reign of the Romanov Tzars  – Mikhail Kutuzov, whose name is inscribed in golden letters in Russian history for it was he who repelled Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812.

The noble family of Golenschev-Kutuzov had several branches and if i am following it correctly, named Pavel Pavlovich’s father was the filthy rich Pavel Matveevich, Godfather of Emperor Paul I, the only son of Catherine the Great, who was assassinated only five years upon ascension to the throne. (For a long time, the rumors were spread that the latter was delusional and mad, yet the truth seems to be different – he wanted the nobility to adopt a code of chivalry, had discovered outrageous corruption in the treasury and all in all his policies were viewed as a great annoyance to the “noble class”.)

Another offspring of that famous noble line was Pavel Vasilyevich , one of the conspirators in the mentioned assassination of the Paul I and chief-executor of Dekabrists… Having read that in the trustworthy encyclopedia, my heart jumped. Dekabrists or Decembrists as Britannica lists them, were Russian liberal princes and revolutionaries who had raised against one of the most reactionary rulers in Russian history – Nicholas I, the son of the assassinated Paul I.

There is very little if anything positive to be said of the autocrat Nicholas I, whereas Decembrists were back then what Occupy movement is today. They remained an everlasting inspiration for Russian writers and liberal thinkers of all times and even back in the day, they were supported by Leo Tolstoy, Aleksandar Pushkin and pretty much everyone else intelligent,  progressive and patriotic.

Pavel Vasilyevich is known for the blood-chilling note he sent to the autocratic emperor, upon the execution of the princes – revolutionaries he was overseeing and that in my eyes casts a heavy shadow on the merits he had earned as a general and a diplomat. (He had fought in 1812 Russo Turkish War and escorted the Emperor to the Congress of Vienna.)

But, what is the relation between the executor and the owner of house in Bolyshaya Morskaya 53 , who bear the same surname – that i couldn’t find out, regardless of all the materials searched.

While P.P. Golenschev -Kutuzov- Tolstoy’s life story remains a mystery and will eventually become a subject of some future fictional memoir, the times and circumstances in which this amazing house was built seem familiar: occasional  progressive rulers were opposed by corrupted nobility – the 1% of the time, there were individuals with noble intention to make it all better, there were intellectuals who supported them, but all in all, the greed and thirst for power dominated and the majority got duped and all of it the history pushed under the rug because this or that war was won… Sadly, i don’t see that much has changed for your average Joe, Jean Dupont, Juan Peres, Jan Janssen and Mrs. Cohen from Hadera, for whose well-being presumably all those wars are fought.

I’ll end on a brighter note and with another quote by Hon. Paul Hellyer:

“The internet is providing power to the people that they have never enjoyed before.  The young people of the world, in concert with the thousands of their parents and others who care about the state of the world can use the power of social networking to effect a miracle on their own behalf and that of succeeding generations.“

http://www.paulhellyerweb.com/

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Oh those Russians

08 Friday Mar 2013

Posted by in Essay, Photography

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… and those Americans too! I love you guys, being from a tiny nation myself, i am forever fascinated with dynamics of big nations – Russians, Americans, Chinese… to the extent that i learned your respective languages and made an effort to travel and even live in your ‘part of the woods’.  (I do know that many of you are equally fascinated with us – opposites attract, what else can i say? ;))

Anyhow, in my unsystematic and off-the-record research of foreign cultures, motivated mainly by quite childlike curiosity about the big world out there – one of the most fascinating phenomena to me is the bilateral relations  between the big guys… Let alone state politics – that’s a world unto itself, and quite a predictable and boring one, i am speaking of how your “average Joe” relates to his Russian counterpart and his better half (and the other way around.)

Inter-marrying is blooming and it’s always one of the best indicators, there is huge Russian diaspora in the US and there are numerous Americans living and working in mother Russia.

That being said, i am reading Akunin’s  “conspiracy mystery” – The Winter Queen and i am enjoying it thoroughly. After having suffered for years from poor translations of great writers into my native tongue, i am finally having an amazing first-hand experience. Akunin’s Russian is rich and flowing, it feels like warm gloves and a cup of grog in the cold of contemporary global scribomania.

According to  The New York Times review, Andrew Bromfield did good work with the English translation, so if you are looking for an awesome and truly Russian read – i wholeheartedly recommend it.

So, earlier today in the laundromat, as i was waiting for the washing machine to finish it’s heavy duty work and skimming through the book’s pages meanwhile – at pages 27-28 i burst out laughing!

Someone Ksaveriy Feofilaktovich (the name sounds funny in Russian too) says: “I read somewhere it’s called American Roulette. They came up with it in America, during the golden fever. You put one bullet into the barrel, you roll it and boom! If you are lucky – you win the pot, if not – bye bye, off you go.”

Akunin uses Russian poker slang expression сорвать банк – it’s when one player wins all the money, but given that i don’t play poker i have no idea what’s the exact English equivalent, i guess ‘win the pot’ will do

Right, he’s referring to the infamous game of chance which the rest of the world calls Russian Roulette! That’s from a novel too mind you; in 1937, Georges Surdez had written a story of the same name for Collier’s magazine:

‘Did you ever hear of Russian Roulette?’ … With the Russian army in Romania, around 1917, some officer would suddenly pull out his revolver, put a single cartridge in the cylinder, spin the cylinder, snap it back in place, put it to his head and pull the trigger.
Except that the linguist in me loves learning where some widespread phrases originated, what did amaze me is that two great nations ascribe to each other this potentially fatal “game”.
Most interestingly, the predecessor of the roller coaster – so called Russian Mountains, in mother Russia are called… American Mountains, of course.
Funny, isn’t it?
Other than that, March 8th is big in Russia, it’s a public holiday and everyone takes it very seriously, almost as seriously as the New Year!
I’ve written on Communist Calendar before and on this day a year ago i wrote the essay Keep the bloody carnations for yourself, on my own aversion to the “International Women’s Day”… But it’s different in Russia, it does feel like a holiday, everyone is excited, planning outings and looking forward to the (obligatory) gifts they’ll be presented. 
I gave in to the peer pressure, going to the Gorky Park where all kinds of most amazing  events will be held – free of charge for the ladies, mind you – and i must admit i am quite excited about it!
Here is my own early 8th of March gift, a “Brazilian monster” and couple of shots from nearby Starbucks with my gorgeous younger colleagues from Pushkin Uni – Sasha and Zhenya.
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