For the Very Soul of Me

At the close of a sweltering night,
I found him at the entrance
Of a bank building made of blue glass,
Crumpled on his side, naked,
Shielding his crotch with both hands,

The missing one, missed by no one,
As all the truly destitute are,
His rags rolled up into a pillow,
His mouth open as if he were dead,
Or recalling some debauchery.

Insomnia and the heat drove me out early,
Made me turn down one street
Instead of another and saw him
Stretched there, crusted with dirt,
His feet bruised and swollen.

The lone yellow cab idled at the light
With windows down, the sleepy driver
Threw him a glance, shook his head
And drove down the deserted avenue
The rising sun had made beautiful.

Charles Simic [from Night Pinic]

Cho linh hồn rất linh hồn của GCC

Vào một đêm ngột ngạt, cận sáng
Gấu kiếm thấy nó ở lối vô
Một tòa nhà ngân hàng làm bằng kiếng màu xanh
Méo mó, trần truồng
Hai tay che cái chạc

Kẻ thiếu nhớ chẳng ai thèm thiếu nhớ
Như mọi điều đáng thiếu nhớ
Mớ rẻ rách quần áo, xoắn lại làm cái gối
Miệng toác hoác như chết rồi
Hay nhớ lại một sa đọa, trụy lạc nào đó

Mất ngủ và cái nóng khiến Gấu mò ra đường sớm
Thay vì chọn con phố này, thì con phố kia
Và thế là, Gấu nhìn thấy nó, cái rất linh hồn tội nghiệp của Gấu Cà Chớn
Nằm 1 đống, bụi đường nghẹt họng
Chân thâm tím, sưng phồng

Cái tắc xi màu vàng, đơn độc, ngồi rồi, dưới ánh đèn
Cửa kính kéo xuống, anh tài xế buồn ngủ
Ném 1 cái nhìn, lắc 1 cái đầu
Rồi chạy xuống con phố hoang
Mặt trời lên, con phố mới đẹp làm sao.

Fitting tribute to Chekhov’s work of grand gestures and missed connections

Aug 9th 2014  | From the print edition

ANTON CHEKHOV knew he was doing something different with “The Seagull”. “I sin frightfully against the conventions of the stage,” he told a friend while the play was still a work in progress. The drama, such as it is, involves the love triangles and familial tussles of a multi-generational gathering in the Russian countryside—with, as Chekhov observed, “much conversation about literature, little action and five tons of love”. All this aimless kvetching repelled the play’s first audiences in 1886. But what was audacious then feels timeless now. “The Seagull” may be Chekhov’s finest work. Much of the dialogue—which veers from grand questions about love and happiness to prosaic observations about money and horses—still feels fresh.
So why mess with it? Imitations are as common as they are reliably disappointing. Playwrights tamper at their peril. This is what makes Aaron Posner’s “Stupid Fucking Bird” such a revelation. (1) This irreverent update, playing at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre in Washington, DC, until August 17th, manages to capture the enduring essence of Chekhov’s classic even as it reimagines it for the 21st century. The original ingredients are all here, including the basic characters—an ageing starlet, her famous lover, her frustrated son and his ingénue girlfriend, among others—and all their messy pining (for love, fame, youth, “new forms of theatre” and anything else just out of reach). But the script is new and crackling, at once incisive, poignant and darkly funny. Like the original, it affords plenty of opportunities to chuckle with recognition. And like the original, it delivers an ending that is destined to make its audience weep.

(1) Not my word!
Such a revelation, Yes!

GNV

Một Hải Âu cho thế kỷ 21. Bài  ngắn, nhưng thật tuyệt. GCC rất mê đọc điểm sách, nhưng không phải của Mít, mà của tụi mũi lõ. Nhất là của những tay nhà nghề. Thấy khen, là kiếm, đọc tác phẩm.
Mít điểm sách, là tìm cách tóm tắt, rồi đi 1 đường, khen, hoặc chê, ba vạ, huề vốn. Hoặc thổi, nếu là gà nhà.

VP nhà văn thế kỷ 20!
Nhà phê bình Mít xuất sắc, không phải thời nào cũng có!

Revolution and war in Ukraine

I witness

A novelist’s enlightening account of life in Kiev during Ukraine’s turmoil

Ukraine Diaries: Dispatches from Kiev. By Andrey Kurkov. Translated by Sam Taylor. Harvill Secker; 262 pages; £9.99. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk

SATIRISTS and surrealists are at once fortunate and challenged in the countries of the former Soviet Union. Their nefarious rulers and eventful politics volunteer themselves for parody, yet the lurid reality often outpaces satire and renders invention superfluous. Thus in his “Ukraine Diaries”—an account of the tumultuous past winter that saw his country’s president ousted and its territory dismembered—Andrey Kurkov whimsically imagines Russian tanks searching for the American commandos who are rumoured to have parachuted into western Ukraine. A few weeks later this fancy is superseded by events, as Russian forces do indeed invade, and Ukraine descends into chaos.

Best known for gently absurdist novels that combine affection for his region with deadpan despair—especially “Death and the Penguin”—Mr Kurkov lives in Kiev, close to Independence Square. That was the centre of the revolution that began last November when Viktor Yanukovych, then Ukraine’s president, rejected a trade deal with the European Union. The idea that the EU could inspire an uprising seemed odd to some observers; Mr Kurkov makes clear that, to Ukrainians weary of venal government, Europe represents the rule of law. His “Ukraine Diaries” contain his daily observations from November until April—by which time the Kremlin had annexed Crimea, and Ukrainian troops were engaging Russian proxies in the east.

One bonus of the diary form is dramatic irony: the reader, unlike the diarist, knows what will happen next. At one point, Mr Kurkov feels sure there will be no war, because those opposed to change are too apathetic to fight. By demonstrating that history is unpredictable, diaries such as his show that it is not inevitable: Ukraine’s rapid degeneration from protest to bloodshed was the result of a chain of errors, which Mr Kurkov’s entries chronicle. Mostly the errors were attributable to Mr Yanukovych, who, by trying to crush dissent, succeeded only in inflaming it.

But perhaps these diaries’ biggest service—one that only this sort of account can offer, more than compensating for the lack of hindsight—is to show how headline history intertwines with ordinary, private lives. “Life goes on,” Mr Kurkov says. “Not once has it stopped.” He drinks coffee and cognac with friends, one of whom gives him a vacuum cleaner. He juggles the demands of elderly parents and adolescent children. The family goes to the dacha for weekends. He struggles to concentrate on his new novel. Amid diplomatic and paramilitary manoeuvres, he organises a paintballing party for his son’s birthday. He takes his family for its annual winter holiday in Crimea, poignantly unaware that because of the annexation this will be their last. “I drove the children to school,” Mr Kurkov writes baldly one day in January, “then went to see the revolution.”

Mr Kurkov quickly adapts to the barricades: “Why does what seemed impossible or crazy before now seem logical?” Then the arrests and beatings escalate to abductions, torture and murder. Festive protests turn violent; instead of donated food, the protesters need bottles for Molotov cocktails. Rumours swirl: of troop movements and massacres, of the mining of metro stations. Thugs patrol the city with truncheons and guns. Russian-literature enthusiasts will be reminded of “The White Guard”, Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel of Kiev during the Russian civil war, and of Ivan Bunin’s journal of Odessa during that conflict. In mid-February, Mr Kurkov records, comes a “night of warfare” that “transformed the city centre to ruins”.

Increasingly this carnage crowds out the author’s personal life, though there is a nice vignette in which his daughter asks for extra pocket money, citing the spiralling inflation. Downtown Kiev, he joltingly notices, “looks like a paintball field”. Growing vegetables at the dacha begins to seem less a hobby than a necessity. Mr Kurkov sleeps badly; his eyesight suffers.

And as winter thaws, the focus of his ire shifts. To begin with it is directed at Mr Yanukovych, with his clumsy duplicity and flagrant corruption. “This country has never had such a stupid president,” Mr Kurkov concludes, “capable of radicalising one of the most tolerant populations in the world!” Or, more concisely: “Stupid bastard!” All the same, he is unsentimental about the revolutionaries, some of whom turn to score-settling and extortion. After Mr Yanukovych flees Kiev, however, and Russia’s insidious but deadly invasion begins, the main villain is Vladimir Putin. (The EU’s response is depressingly slow: “As if the news were arriving not by internet but by messengers on horseback.”)

For all their controlled rage and wry wit, nicely captured in Sam Taylor’s translation, Mr Kurkov’s diaries are valuable partly because of who he is. Born in Russia, he writes in Russian and considers himself Russian by background if not citizenship—though now he has “nothing in common with Russia and its politics”. He is an incarnation of a joint culture with a glorious but imperilled heritage. His book is a lament for Ukraine, but also, in the end, for Russia itself—as scarred by Mr Putin’s lies and larceny as Ukraine has been by his war.