As The 100th Anniversary Of The First Year Of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars) Continues ... Some Remembrances-Poets’ Corner  
 

In say 1912 in the time of the supposedly big deal Basle Socialist Conference which got reflected in more circles than just workingmen, small shopkeepers and small farmers, or 1913 for that matter when the big deal European powers were waging "proxy" war, making ominous moves, but most importantly working three shifts in the munitions plants, oh hell, even in the beginning of 1914 before the war clouds got a full head of steam that summer they all profusely professed their undying devotion to peace, to wage no war for any reason. Reasons: artists who saw the disjointedness of modern industrial society, freaked out at what humankind had produced, was producing to place everybody in an inescapable box and hence their cubic fascinations from which to run, put the pieces to paint; sculptors who put twisted pieces of scrape metal juxtaposed to each other  to get that same effect, an effect which would be replicated on all those foreboding trenched fronts; writers, not all of them socialists either, some were conservatives that saw empire, their particular empire, in grave danger once the blood started flowing  who saw the v   of serious history books proving that, according to their Whiggish theory of progress,  humankind had moved beyond war as an instrument of policy; writers of not so serious novels drenched in platitudes and hidden gabezo love affairs put paid to that notion in their sweet nothing words that man and woman had too much to do to denigrate themselves by crying the warrior’s cry and for the sweet nothing maidens to spent their waking hours strewing flowers on the bloodlust streets; musicians whose muse spoke of delicate tempos and sweet muted violin concertos; and poets, ah, those constricted poets who bleed the moon of its amber swearing, swearing on a stack of seven sealed bibles, that they with all their creative brethren would go to the hells, literary Dante's rings, before touching the hair of another human, that come the war drums they all would resist the siren call, would stick to their Whiggish, Futurist, Constructionist, Cubist, world and blast the war-makers to hell in quotes, words, chords, clanged metal, and pretty pastels.

And then the war drums intensified and they, they made of ordinary human clay as it turned out, they who could not resist the call, could not resist those maidens now busy all day strewing flowers on the bloodlust streets for their soldier boys, those poets, artists, sculptors, writers, serious and not, musicians went sheepishly to the trenches with the rest of the flower of European youth to die deathless deaths in their thousands for, well, for ….            


Alexandr BLOK. The greatest of Russia's Symbolist poets, Aleksandr Blok, was born in St. Petersburg in 1880. He spent his childhood with his grandfather on his country estate of Shakhmatovo, near Moscow. Blok began writing poetry in earnest at age 17. His major early influences were the early 19th-century Romantic poetry of Aleksandr Pushkin and the apocalyptic mysticism of Vladimir Solovyov (1853–1900). In 1902, at his grandfather's death, Blok inherited Shakhmatovo. Two years later he published his first book, the mystical Stikhi o prekrasnoi dame (Songs to the Beautiful Lady). In 1906 Blok received a degree in philology at the University of St. Petersburg.
After the failed Revolution of 1905, in which Blok was an ardent participant (carrying a red flag in street demonstrations), his poetry became ironic and pessimistic, especially in Kniga vtoraya (1904-08), and Na pole Kulikovom (1908), which, describing the battlefield of Kulikovo, (site of the Russian victory over the Mongols in 1380), struck a note at once ominous and prophetic of the cataclysms to come..
Henceforth Blok's poetry dwelt more and more on the theme of Russia herself, and on the disjuncture between his mystical vision of his native land and the spiritual deadness he perceived in its institutions and in so many of its inhabitants. Blok's disillusionment, exacerbated by poverty and heavy drinking, found expression in themes of bitter social protest and ruthless realism.
In 1916 Blok was conscripted into the army and served behind the front lines in civil defense work near Pinsk. In 1917-18 he worked for the provisional government in a commission interrogating Czarist ministers, whose findings he later published under the title The Last Days of Imperial Power
As did many of his writer compatriots, Blok greeted the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 with high hopes, though less for its promise of social and political reform, than for his own mystical conception of it, viewing it as a manifestation of the spirit of music.
Blok's greatest poem, Dvenadtsat ("The Twelve",), is perhaps also the greatest poem to come out of the Russian Revolution. In the poem a band of twelve Red guardsmen, apostles of destruction, march in the first winter of Bolshevik Russia through icy streets of Petrograd, looting and killing. The are led by a strange Christ figure, who appears beneath a red flag. Published in January 1918, amid considerable controversy, it enjoyed enormous sales. Along with The Twelve Blok published The Scythians, another of his greatest poems.
After 1918 Blok worked on government editorial and theatrical commissions. In 1919 he was arrested and nearly executed for alleged counter-revolutionary activities. From 1918 to 1921 he translated books for Gor'kii's publishing house Vsemirnaja Literatura. In 1919-21 he was chairman of the Bolshoi Theatre and the head of the Petrograd branch of the All-Russian Union of Poets in 1920-21. By this time Blok's mental and physical health was in decline. He died in Petrograd of heart failure brought on by malnutrition, on August 7, 1921.

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Those Born in the Years of Stagnation

Those born in the years of stagnation forget now how they found their way. We ~ children of Russia’s tribulation ~ forget not a year, not a day.
What message, years of conflagration, have you: madness or hope? On thin cheeks trained by war and liberation bloody reflections still remain.
Dumbness remains! ~ alarm bells clanging have clapped all other tongues in chains. In hearts, familiar once with singing, a fateful emptiness remains.
And what if dark above our death-bed, cawing, the ravens climb ~ Let those more worth, God, O God, see your kingdom in their time.

8 Sept 1914

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from The Twelve

III. The lads have all gone to the wars to serve in the Red Guard ~ to serve in the Red Guard ~ and risk their hot heads for the cause.
Hell and damnation, life is such fun with a ragged greatcoat and a Jerry gun!
To smoke the nobs out of their holes we’ll light a fire through all the world, a bloody fire through all the world –Lord, bless our souls!


XII ... On they march with sovereign tread...‘Who else goes there? Come out! I said come out!’ It is the wind and the red flag plunging gaily at their head.
The frozen snow-drift looms in front.‘Who’s in the drift! Come out! Come here!’There’s only the homeless mongrel runt limping wretchedly in the rear ...
‘You mangy beast, out of the way before you taste my bayonet. Old mongrel world, clear off I say! I’ll have your hide to sole my boot!
The shivering cur, the mongrel cur bares his teeth like a hungry wolf, droops his tail, but does not stir ...‘Hey answer, you there, show yourself.’
‘Who’s that waving the red flag?’ ‘Try and see! It’s as dark as the tomb!’ ‘Who’s that moving at a jog trot, keeping to the back-street gloom?’
‘Don’t you worry ~ I’ll catch you yet; better surrender to me alive!’ ‘Come out, comrade, or you’ll regret it ~ we’ll fire when I’ve counted five!’
Crack ~ crack ~ crack! But only the echo answers from among the eaves ... The blizzard splits his seams, the snow laughs wildly up the wirlwind’s sleeve ...
Crack ~ crack ~ crack! Crack ~ crack ~ crack! ... So they march with sovereign tread ... Behind them limps the hungry dog, and wrapped in wild snow at their head carrying a blood-red flag ~ soft-footed where the blizzard swirls, invulnerable where bullets crossed ~ crowned with a crown of snowflake pearls, a flowery diadem of frost, ahead of them goes Jesus Christ.
Jan 1918

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from The Scythians

….Come to us ~ from your battlefield nightmares into our peaceful arms! While there’s still time, hammer your swords into ploughshares, friends, comrades! We shall be brothers!
If you do not, we have nothing to lose. Our faith, too, can be broken. You will be cursed for centuries, centuries, by your descendants’ sickly children!
We shall take to the wilds and the mountain woods, letting beautiful Europe through, and as we move into the wings shall turn an Asiatic mask to you.
March all together, march to the Urals! We clear the ground for when the armoured juggernauts with murder in their sights meet the charge of the mongol horde.
We shall ourselves no longer be your shield, no longer launch our battlecries; but study the convulsive battlefield from far off through our narrow eyes!
We shall not stir when the murderous Huns pillage the dead, turn towns to ash, in country churches stable their squadrons, and foul the air with roasting flesh.
Now, for the last time, see the light, old world! To peace and brotherhood and labor ~ our bright feast ~ for the last time you are called by the strings of a Scythian lyre! 30 Jan 1918
~~~ translations by Jon Stallworthy & Peter France