Expressing Love For Germany On the Eve of WWI
In 1914, at the Time When The Whole Russia Went Blind Due to Its Hatred of Germany, Russian Crowds Stormed German Embassy in St. Petersburg and Threw The Massive Equestrian Sculpture off Its Roof. It was at that time that tsarist government decided to rename its capital Petrograd, to avoid German Sounding St. Petersburg. It was exactly at that time that Russian poet, Marina Tsvetaeva, has composed her poem, "To Germany." She was twenty two then.
Challenging the mass psychosis, Tsvetaeva asserts her love for the country of her dreams and inspirations. She refuses to play along with the deranged crowds. With the exception of Bolsheviks and poets, very few people were against the war at that time. Bloodshed clearly excites.
As I was translating this poem, I was wondering what kind of a poem, the poets, raised on Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Pasternak, Mandelstam or Mayakovsky, would compose nowadays?
"Give me sanctions, or give me death ? "Down with with the Tyrant, Long Live Biden"? "NATO is the Answer One More Time"? In any case, there was a great poet in the United States once. In the midst of another mass hysteria, he wrote a perfect poem, a nice counterpart to Tsvetaeva’s. Excerpts from this poem will follow my translation of Tsvetaeva.
Marina Tsvetaeva, “To Germany”
Given to the world to be hunted down,
There is no end to your enemies!
But how can I abandon you?
How can I betray you?
Where will I get this common sense:
“Eye for an eye, blood for blood”?
Germany, you are my obsession,
Germany, you are my love.
How can I deny you,
My banished Vaterland?
Where the narrow-faced Kant
Wonders through the streets of Konigsberg.
Where--dreaming of a new Faust--
The Privy Council, Goethe,
the walking stick in hand,
Strolls an alley in some forgotten land.
How can I abandon you,
My German star?
When nobody taught me,
How to love halfway. When
Crazy about your songs,
I don’t hear the clinking of lieutenant’s spurs,
When St. George on the Swabian Gates
Is as sacred for me as it ever was.
When the anger at Keizer’s raised mustache,
Doesn’t suffocate me,
When I swear my love to you
Till the very grave.
There is no more enchanted, nor wiser
Land, than your fragrant realm,
Where Lorelei brushes her golden locks
Above eternal Rhine.
And yes, they don't make poets like that anymore. Allen Ginsberg, "America"! Is it a great poem or what?
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys. …
America you don't really want to go to war.
America it's them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power mad. She wants to take
our cars from out our garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader's Digest. Her wants our
auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our filling stations.
That no good. ...
Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
America is this correct?
Yes, Mr. Ginsberg! It is correct. Except it is not just America. It is the whole free world, as it used to be known, which is convulsing in hysterics, rushing to ban and sanction anything, including Tchaikovsky and Dostoevsky.
I wish somebody published this Tsvetaeva's poem in Germany, and see if any German poet can answer in kind.
I also find it rather peculiar, that Russians proved to be fully capable of forgiving Germans twenty seven million lives wiped out during the bloody WWII, while Americans seem to be unable to forgive a rather harmless Cold War, or the incompetent Trump, whom only such a loser as Hillary couldn't defeat.
