White on the blue, the sail has gone, to vanish with the breeze; what does the sailor seek alone in far-off seas?
His tackle tautens in the stress of favouring winds astir; alas, he seeks not happiness, nor flies from her.
The sun is bright above; below, the ripples curve and crease; he, rebel, craves a storm, as though in storm were peace.
by Михаил Юрьевич Лермонтов (Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov) (1832) translated by Frances Cornford and Esther Polianowsky Salaman
A recital of the poem in it’s original Russian
Additional information: The Sail was written when Mikhail Lermontov was only 17 years old in 1832. This was the year when he was forced to leave Moscow and his university studies. Recorded in a letter sent by Maria Lopukhina, whom he had sent the first version of the poem, upon his arrival in Saint Petersburg Lermontov immediately produced this poem’s outline while walking along the Gulf of Finland’s shoreline.
Below is the original Russian Cyrillic version of the poem.
Парус
Белеет парус одинокой В тумане моря голубом!.. Что ищет он в стране далекой? Что кинул он в краю родном?...
Играют волны — ветер свищет, И мачта гнется и скрыпит... Увы! Он счастия не ищет И не от счастия бежит!
Под ним струя светлей лазури, Над ним луч солнца золотой... А он, мятежный, просит бури, Как будто в бурях есть покой!
Going home is a concept most first associate with the trek back to their parent’s house when leaving school for the day.
Home is where children go.
Where you feel safe.
A secure sanctuary and endless cornucopia.
Adults have no such place.
You can never go home again.
The place where they live they pay for, work for, are enslaved to. The food they eat they go buy, cook, serve, wash the dishes after. The garden, if they have one, they maintain through rain and shine.
To children all things are infinite by default but adults know, just know, things are finite and so they fear to waste it. And in fearing to waste it they do not do anything and so all things are fear and there is no safety haven.
An adult may try to surpass the limitations of their fears but ultimately most are satisfied to wallow in it. Socrates, via Plato, spoke of people being satisfied to watch the flicking shadows on the cave wall instead of leaving the cave and becoming enlightened. Fear served the small mammals we evolved from well but now it means we are all vagabonds even in our own houses.
But of course this can be counterintuitive if we expose children to this realisation to early. Children considered adults to omniscient and omnipotent authority figures but perhaps no more. In aiding children to challenge authority of thought society also taught them that there are limits. A teacher only knows what is on the curriculum. A police officer can be out run. Anyone who is not in a leadership role failed at life. Everything has limits they learned and so they came to fear aging and the limitations they now knew with age came restrictions. They knew their rights and those they could assert to control their superiors.
Thus no one would be in control. Without that there could be no direction. Without something to resist and rebel against there is nothing to stand for and people just lie down without motivation. Without this there could be no drive to surpass limitations and so everything becomes a stagnant exclamation of futility where people could have their say but have nothing worth hearing. To move in any direction carried risk and people became satisfied to accept their lot in life and with just accepting and making do they could never have a home, just somewhere they lived for the moment while aspiring to the greener grass of someone else’s life which they were unwilling to work towards but expected to be able to achieve immediately if they wanted it. Just like a child living in their parent’s home.
You may die in a home accident. You may die in a road accident. You may die in an industrial accident. You may die of old age.
You can never relax. Never feel safe. Never rest. Never relax. Never feel safe and be unburdened by life. Even if you do for a moment you always fear it being taken away and thus enslave yourself only further.
You can make a home for others but you yourself will never know it again.
You can never go home again once you know the cost of your life to others.
Rambling on a blog called Rambling At The Bridgehead… no editing really. Just ashort piece that is ficitonal or real or a polemic on a loss of innocence and the neverending ‘destabilisation’ we experience currently in day to day life…
There is nowhere to feel happy. you carry the burden with you where ever you go. In the end you are stuck with yourself and all the burdens you carry. Go on holiday, flee to a foreign country. It’ll be there when you remember it.
Rambling At The Bridge Head 