The Prism of Culture

Address to ICC International "Cultural Crossroads" Conference (Museum-Panorama cinema,
Thursday 10th September, 2015, 11:00-13:00)
The Prism of Culture: translating Soviet war songs into English
Introduction
Ladies and gentlemen, esteemed colleagues
It is my very great honour to address the “Cultural Crossroads” theoretical and practical conference
here in the wonderful city of Volgograd. As a Scotsman, I find it especially poignant to be here to
consider questions of cultural relations between Russia and the English-speaking world, given the
enormous suffering that took place here just over seven decades ago.
Seven decades – or, as it is so poetically expressed in Psalm 90, in the Authorised English
Translation of the Bible that was commissioned by the King who united the Scottish and English
thrones – “threescore years and ten”.
Three score years and ten is said by the Psalmist to be the allotted lifetime of a human being:
“The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore
years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.”
Labour and sorrow (труд и страдание): these concepts were introduced to me through the work of
the famous Russian-Armenian philosopher and spiritual teacher George Ivanovich Gurdjieff.
However, as can be seen from the above Psalm, there is nothing new in the recognition of their
centrality to authentic human existence and spiritual practice.
It was seven years ago, at the invitation of Ivan Dontsov, that I first visited Russia to perform at the
Moscow City Day. However, long before then, I had become convinced of the pivotal role that
Russian culture and language have played, play and will continue to play in the unfolding of human
destiny in the world. For, in no other culture is consciousness of labour and suffering so universally
recognised, not only in the great literature of Pushkin and Lermontov, Dostoevsky and Bulgakov, in
the songs of the modern bard Vladimir Vysotsky and the films of Tarkovsky and Zvyagintsev but
even in the popular wartime songs that memorialise the Russian and Soviet sacrifice that finally
defeated Nazi fascism, which songs it has been my privilege to have been commissioned to translate
into English for this commemorative event.
I have been translating and singing Russian songs and poetry into English for nearly a decade now.
Your language is really so beautiful and poetic! Unfortunately, it is extremely hard for us non-Slavs
to acquire fluency in spoken Russian. All those endings! Perhaps one happy day I will learn to
speak Russian like a native; until then, the Russophile in me will have to satisfy himself with
poetry, song, literature and translation.
Background
Given the significant differences between our cultures, I am always looking for the areas that they
have in common. When I first heard Vladimir Vysotsky, whose song “Он не вернулся из боя” is
included in our commemorative programme this week, I immediately knew that he was going to be
my idol! Discovering that he has the same birthday as our very own Robert Burns – 25th January –
I realised that I had found a means of popularising Vysotsky in the west through English translation.

In 2013, working with my colleagues, including – Ivan Donstov; Boris Petrov, President of the
Ural-Scottish Society, whose winter festival “Бёрнс & Vysotsky: Одна душа, два поэта” has
proved so popular in Ekaterinburg; my long time collaborator and sponsor Mikhail Feygin, CEO of
Ochki dlya Vas; as well as some well-known Scottish musicians and producer James Locke – we
produced a bilingual album of Vysotsky songs in English and Burns songs in Russian.
Meanwhile, work had begun on the multi-artform project entitled Saints & Sinners | Святые и
грешники: paintings by Russian painter Andrey Yeletsky, Scottish artists Frank McNab and John
Mikietyn inspired Russian poets Boris Petrov and the late Alexander Zyrianov to write verses which
I then translated and adapted into song form. An interesting issue arose during the course of this
work: I freely translated Petrov’s text “Георгий победоносец” into English as “St. George,
Arise!” However, in the course of this translation, I felt compelled to render the alternating 9- and
8-syllable Russian lines into 12- and 9-syllable lines into English, respectively. This was due to a
well-known issue in Russian-to-English translation: English generally requires more words and
syllables to render the same “quantum” of meaning contained in the Russian source text. Thus, in
order to preserve both meaning and poetic form, the poetic translator is forced to compromise –
either expand the lines or otherwise increase the available space, thus disturbing the form, or render
less meaning into the translated text.
After composing the melody to my translated text with added chorus it became clear that the
original text was now incompatible with the musical form. I therefore asked Mikhail Feygin to
back-translate the text into Russian, which he did without referring to the original Russian text in
any way. The process, resembling what we call in English “Chinese Whispers” – or, as you say in
Russia, “Broken Telephones” – raises interesting questions of authorship!
Last year being the 200th anniversary of the birth of Mikhail Lermontov, a member of the
Lermontov family, Maria Koroleva, approached me with a view to exploring the great Russian
poet’s Scottish connections, which turned out to be quite productive. It is a matter of historical fact
that Mikhail Yuryevitch’s Scottish ancestor, Captain George Learmonth, came to Russia in the
early part of the 17th century, founding the Lermontov dynasty in the town of Bely (“White”) in
Tverskaya Oblast. Thus it may very well be that the red blood of the legendary mediaeval Scottish
poet-prophet Thomas the Rhymer also coursed through Lermontov’s veins.
For this project, I translated a selection of Lermontov’s poems into English and composed music to
accompany them, as well as working with Mikhail Feygin to produce modern English and Russian
musical versions of the mediaeval romance of Rhyming Thomas and the Faery Queen.
I have heard it said that, while Pushkin is the ‘sun’ of Russian literature, Lermontov is the ‘moon’.
Although the light from Pushkin’s sun was extinguished after his fateful duel with Georges
D’Anthès, some of it continued to reflect back in that moon. In “The Bard is Dead!”, my English
translation of Смерть поэта, I tried to capture the emotion that Lermontov couldn’t help but
express with his true poet’s tongue – the same emotion that all of Russia must have felt at the time
and for which expression the Tsar had no choice but to banish him to the Caucasus.
This emotion is carried through the Смерть поэта not just by the words Lermontov chooses to
express his meaning but also by what I refer to as its “ur-music”. By this I refer to the unsung
melody that runs through all true poetry that has not yet been explicitly set to music. In my opinion,
successful poetry translation is largely a question of hearing this ur-music in the source text and
applying it to the target. It can be heard at first as a faint echo at the interstices of the poem’s form,
in elements such as rhyme and rhythm. Perhaps we are reminded of the music that was inseparable
from human language before the confusion of tongues set in following the construction of the
mythical Tower of Babel?

Results
I come now to the five songs that I was commissioned to translate for this commemorative event
here in Volgograd. I must admit that, while I have always found the songs from this era very
stirring, especially while sung by the large-scale Red Army ensembles, I had no idea that they
contained such depths of intimate tenderness.
In “Roads” (Эх дороги), in which the soldier narrator describes the roads upon which he and his
comrades have tramped throughout their many travails, opposing concepts such as (dry) dust
(пыль) and (wet) fog (туман) are used compactly to generate the song’s poetic effect. I chose
instead to distribute the meaning contained in one refrain in the original across different verses in
my translation; therefore – “rocky roads”, “muddy roads” and “winding roads”. This stretches the
concept of “translation” somewhat, making it something of an “adaptation”; however, it maintains
consistency with English language song-writing conventions. This is typical of the kinds of
compromise between form and content that all poetic translators – and especially song translators –
often have to contemplate.
In “Dark Maiden” (Смуглянка), a different kind of problem was encountered. The original song
is set in revolutionary times in a peasant settlement in Moldova. Of course, one valid choice would
have been to keep the original setting. However, in my experience, a better result may often be
obtained by shifting the location to one that is consistent with the idioms of the target language. In
this case, I chose to move the story to Scotland (e.g. “clans are gathering”, “through the glens”,
“fiery cross”, “buts and bens”) where, in the not-so-distant past, there were also peasant
communities and revolutionary movements. Of course, in so doing, something of the character of
the original was lost. Maybe a better translation could have been achieved using a different kind of
adaptation. When considering adaptations during song translation, a great number of possible
approaches are possible, with each of these approaches capable of yielding more than one good
result.
“Dark is the Night” (Темная ночь) tells the story of a soldier’s telepathic communication with his
wife. He is aware that his life is hanging by a thread; however, he wants her to know that he is
ready to face mortality so long as she keeps her faith in him. In this adaptation, I have used some
American English idioms that were being used during the same wartime period. The word “Venus”,
rhyming with “between us”, apparently does not sound very nice to the Russian ear; however, it sits
very nicely in the chosen English idiom. In my version it is implied that the soldier dies (“now the
chaos is whirling round me”, “your love will always surround me”) while in the original this
possibility is only hinted at.
On a very similar theme, but given a rather more optimistic mood, “Wait for me” (Жди меня) is
probably the most successful of the five I have translations for this memorial event. Perhaps
because the meaning is so very precisely fitted into the spare form of the original Russian song, I
found that little adaptation was required. It is simply a very beautiful love song in which the faith of
a spouse keeps the soldier safe through all his travails and brings him eventually home to the bosom
of his family. The lines “Drinking cups of bitter wine / remembering the soul... / Wait and when it
comes to mine / do not drain the bowl” are an especially satisfying solution to the translation
problems presented in the original text.
Finally, “Day of Victory” (День победы), tells the story from a retrospective vantage point (it was
written in 1975) of all the sacrifices that were made by the Soviet (and Russian) people that led to
the victory over the Nazis, of which the Battle of Stalingrad was the most significant turning point.
It is a poetically simple yet highly rousing and effective song; again, little adaptation was required.

The collocation “мартеновских печей” (open hearth furnace), a borrowing from the name of Pierre
Martin, the French engineer who invented it, nicely illustrates how terms can be borrowed from
foreign languages just as technological concepts can be imported as required – despite the riches of
their own language and culture, Russians tend not to be embarrassed about doing either.
Conclusion
The great victory of Stalingrad was forged not only in the suffering and labour of the Soviet people
but also in the white heat of technology. I note that Stalingrad is twinned with Hiroshima and that
there is a “Hiroshima Street” that not just joins different parts of this city but also links it to another
place whose name has become synonymous with suffering and widespread destruction during that
era of total war.
Seventy years on, in our own era, it is generally recognised that while there may, sadly, continue to
be wars, there can only again be total war if we as a species are ready to contemplate our common
total annihilation. Thus, however difficult they may at times become, relations between the great
powers – including Russia, China and what we euphemise as “the west” – must be characterised by
a refusal to employ totalising actions and rhetoric. And, while these relations at times may
necessarily comprise unpleasant elements that reflect the geopolitical nature of the relationship – we
are all too aware of the propaganda on both sides of the divide – there is also possibility for
communications characterised by beauty, intelligence and even sincerity, that can soften and
transform geopolitics into something much more human. I refer here to the cultural relationship.
In my view, the specifics of Russia’s cultural relationship with the English-speaking world must
take into account a certain asymmetry. English has become the dominant language of the world for
many reasons, including geopolitical. However, its dominance is especially due to the specific
circumstances that led to the emergence of something that would have astonished the totalitarian
leaders of the WWII era: the Internet.
Perhaps the English language has been able to adapt itself to become the lingua franca of the
electronically-intermediated world due to its gathering together of many strands of the Indo-
European tongues that evolved to form Greek, Latin, French, German; the Celtic strands, the Slavic.
In its prismatic merging of these vivid strands into a blinding white light, English-denominated
culture has spread itself incredibly widely; however, this breadth has come at a cost. In my view,
English-speaking culture, now seemingly all but universal, also suffers from an incurable
shallowness. If English-speaking culture were all that a human being was, annihilation could all-
too-quickly become a realistic option.
What if white were the only colour that there was? I am reminded of Mikhail Bulgakov’s famous
quotation: “Do you want to strip the earth of all trees and living things just because of your fantasy
of enjoying naked light?” However, we are currently faced not by a choice between light and
shadow but by the need to be able to adapt between the wide shallowness of an existence
illuminated by the white light of English-language culture and the narrower depths of a humanity
that is lived and experienced in full colour. This necessary adaptor is the prism of culture; in my
view, nowhere is this prism more effectively employed than in the poetic translation and
performance of songs from one culture to another.
Historically and metaphorically, the colour that Russian contributes to the world cultural prism can
be envisaged as red. Red – the colour of passion, of anger – is also, in Slavic culture, the colour of
beauty, of sacrifice, of humanity. It is the colour of suffering and the colour of labour – страдание
и труд. And, for as long as we may freely adapt between red and white through our common
cultural prism, we may have reasonable confidence that the primeval struggle between these two

colours that is expressed in Slavic mythology will never again break out into the terrible destruction
and annihilation characterised by humanity during the first half of the 20th century.

The Prism of Culture

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