Comrade Marcel
11th July 2005, 10:12
This is a repost from the Stalinist (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Stalinist/) listeserv....
It contains a small amount of info about Stalin's peotry from when he was young, and a request to those who may know of a source for more info.
I would like to see some of the poems that Stalin wrote when he was
young. I have looked around but it seems hard to find, I found one
that has beent translated and reference to another... does anyone know
of any sources for this?
-MR
http://www.livejournal.com/users/shimgray/48100.html
To The Moon
11 October 1895
Translated by an unknown source from the original Georgian
Move on tirelessly--
Don't let your head droop,
Disperse the misty clouds
The rule of the Lord is great.
Send your gentle smile to the land
That spreads beneath your feet,
Sing a lullaby to the icy peaks
Suspended from the sky.
Be sure that some day
Even the deprived and humiliated
Find the strength to climb up the sacred mountain
Supported by hope.
Keep shining, beautiful one
Among the clouds as long ago,
Cast your delightful rays
Through the blue firmament.
And I, too, will unbutton my collar
Baring my breast to the moon,
Reaching out my hands
And singing a song of glory to the moonlight.
-- Soselo (his childhood nickname).
http://www.salon.com/books/review/2005/05/...n/index_np.html (http://www.salon.com/books/review/2005/05/05/stalin/index_np.html)
Stalin's poetry isn't too bad. It mainly consists of verses in a
romantic-pastoral vein that was apparently conventional for Georgian
poets of the 1890s:
The pinkish bud has opened,
Rushing to the pale-blue violet
And, stirred by a light breeze,
The lily of the valley has bent over the grass.
In English translation that's nothing more than pleasant. To readers
of the Georgian language, according to biographer Robert Service, "it
has a linguistic purity recognized by all" as well as an obvious
nationalist subtext. (Writing about the loveliness of the Georgian
landscape was understood as a wink and a nudge that the Tsarist
censors would never notice.) That poem, "Morning" (which continues for
two more stanzas), appeared in the radical intellectual magazine
Kvali, and was then published in an influential textbook by the
Georgian educator and nationalist Yakob Gogebashvili. As art by future
dictators goes, that's a lot more success than Hitler ever enjoyed for
his insipid watercolors.
Everyone in the modest literary scene of Tbilisi, the Georgian
capital, knew the author. He was a 17-year-old seminary student named
Joseph (or Yoseb) Dzhughashvili, and he was smart, ambitious,
headstrong and quick to anger. For two years young Dzhughashvili was a
rising star in Georgian poetry, but he quit writing sometime around
1897 to focus his attention on another passion: revolutionary Marxism.
It contains a small amount of info about Stalin's peotry from when he was young, and a request to those who may know of a source for more info.
I would like to see some of the poems that Stalin wrote when he was
young. I have looked around but it seems hard to find, I found one
that has beent translated and reference to another... does anyone know
of any sources for this?
-MR
http://www.livejournal.com/users/shimgray/48100.html
To The Moon
11 October 1895
Translated by an unknown source from the original Georgian
Move on tirelessly--
Don't let your head droop,
Disperse the misty clouds
The rule of the Lord is great.
Send your gentle smile to the land
That spreads beneath your feet,
Sing a lullaby to the icy peaks
Suspended from the sky.
Be sure that some day
Even the deprived and humiliated
Find the strength to climb up the sacred mountain
Supported by hope.
Keep shining, beautiful one
Among the clouds as long ago,
Cast your delightful rays
Through the blue firmament.
And I, too, will unbutton my collar
Baring my breast to the moon,
Reaching out my hands
And singing a song of glory to the moonlight.
-- Soselo (his childhood nickname).
http://www.salon.com/books/review/2005/05/...n/index_np.html (http://www.salon.com/books/review/2005/05/05/stalin/index_np.html)
Stalin's poetry isn't too bad. It mainly consists of verses in a
romantic-pastoral vein that was apparently conventional for Georgian
poets of the 1890s:
The pinkish bud has opened,
Rushing to the pale-blue violet
And, stirred by a light breeze,
The lily of the valley has bent over the grass.
In English translation that's nothing more than pleasant. To readers
of the Georgian language, according to biographer Robert Service, "it
has a linguistic purity recognized by all" as well as an obvious
nationalist subtext. (Writing about the loveliness of the Georgian
landscape was understood as a wink and a nudge that the Tsarist
censors would never notice.) That poem, "Morning" (which continues for
two more stanzas), appeared in the radical intellectual magazine
Kvali, and was then published in an influential textbook by the
Georgian educator and nationalist Yakob Gogebashvili. As art by future
dictators goes, that's a lot more success than Hitler ever enjoyed for
his insipid watercolors.
Everyone in the modest literary scene of Tbilisi, the Georgian
capital, knew the author. He was a 17-year-old seminary student named
Joseph (or Yoseb) Dzhughashvili, and he was smart, ambitious,
headstrong and quick to anger. For two years young Dzhughashvili was a
rising star in Georgian poetry, but he quit writing sometime around
1897 to focus his attention on another passion: revolutionary Marxism.