Свобода (Freedom) by Vladimir Kornilov

I’m not ready for freedom yet.

Am I the one to blame?

You see, there was no likelihood

of freedom in my time.

My great-great-grandad, my great grandad,

my own grandad never

dared to dream of

‘Freedom now!’

None of them saw it: ever.

What’s this thing that they call freedom?

Does it bring satisfaction?

Or is it helping others first

and putting oneself last?

An overwhelming happiness,

pride and envy expelled,

throwing open one’s own soul,

not prying in anyone else’s.

Here are oceans composed of sweat,

Himalayas of toil!

Freedom’s a lot harder than

unfreedom to enjoy.

For years I, too, awaited freedom,

waited till I trembled,

waited till I ached – yet I’m

unready, now it’s come.

 

by Владимир Николаевич Корнилов (Vladimir Nikolayevich Kornilov)

(1986)

translated by Katherine E. Young

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Fun facts: Here is my rough effort to translate the Russian language Wikipedia article page on him as there is no English page available and most of the results for his name will lead you to information about the historical naval figure.

Vladimir Nikolaevich Kornilov ( June 29, 1928 , Dnepropetrovsk – January 8, 2002 , Moscow ) was a Soviet Russian poet, writer, and literary critic. He was heavily censored throughout the Soviet era for his, to the Soviet authorities, ideologically troubling works.

He was born into a family of civil engineers. When the Great Patriotic War began (i.e. World War II), he was evacuated to Novokuznetsk ( Siberia ), then moved to Moscow . In 1945 – 1950 he studied at the Gorky Literary Institute (i.e. the LitInstitute mentioned in this poem) , which he was he was expelled from three times for absenteeism and “ideologically vicious verses”.

Kornilov’s first poems were published in 1953 . However,  his works were rarely published, and even then only after ‘corrections’ had been made by censors. In 1957, his collection of poems “Agenda from the military registration and enlistment office” was rejected. Only in 1964 his first book of poems, The Pier, was published by the Soviet Writer Publishing House, and in 1965, on the recommendation of Anna Akhmatova , Kornilov was successfully admitted to the Union of Writers of the USSR.

A hard time awaited the prose works of Kornilov. His first and second novels – “Without arms, without legs”, completed in 1965 , and “Girls and ladies”, written in October 1968 he tried to get published for a long time unsuccessfully in the Soviet Union . The former was not printed and although the latter was accepted for publication in December 1971 but immediately thereafter rejected or banned.

By his third and largest prose work – the novel “Demobilization” – Kornilov no longer even tried to be publish in his homeland and instead sent his works to the west, where, from 1974 onwards, they were in print.

[he has two books in English I could find after a very brief search: Girls to the Front (1984) and Building a Prison (1985) so it’s possible the others were in German and other languages or have different titles in other languages. By all means comment on this post if you find others available in English.]

Being published in samizdat and in foreign Russian-language publications, as well as Kornilov’s speeches in support of Julius Daniel and Andrei Sinyavsky ( 1966 ), displeased the Soviet authorities.

In 1975 he was made a member of the Soviet section of Amnesty International and on the recommendation of G. Böll, he was accepted also into the French Pen Club.

Kornilov signed a letter to “heads of state and government” with a request to protect academician Andrei Sakharov , and in March 1977 he was expelled from the Union of Writers of the USSR (he was initially accepted in 1965, and while expelled his membership was eventually restored in 1988 ). His books were removed from their libraries and sold in 1979. He began to publish his works again in the USSR from 1986 onwards.

Kornilov died from a bone tumor on January 8, 2002 .

… hopefully that is helpful to anyone wanting a little information about the poet.

 

Original Russian cyrillic version of the poem:

Не готов я к свободе –
По своей ли вине?
Ведь свободы в заводе
Не бывало при мне.

Никакой мой прапрадед
И ни прадед, ни дед
Не молил Христа ради:
«Дай, подай!» Видел: нет.

Что такое свобода?
Это кладезь утех?
Или это забота
О себе после всех?

Неподъёмное счастье,
Сбросив зависть и спесь,
Распахнуть душу настежь,
А в чужую не лезть.

Океаны тут пота,
Гималаи труда!
Да она ж несвободы
Тяжелее куда.

Я ведь ждал её тоже
Столько долгих годов,
Ждал до боли, до дрожи,
А пришла – не готов.

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Birth by Gillian Clarke

On the hottest, stillest day of the summer

A calf was born in a field

At Pant-y-Cetris; two buzzards

Measured the volume of the sky;

The hills brimmed with incoming

Night. In the long grass we could see

The cow, her sides heaving, a focus

Of restlessness in the complete calm,

Her calling at odds with silence.

 

The light flowed out leaving stars

And clarity. Hot and slippery, the scalding

Baby came, and the cow stood up, her cool

Flanks like white flowers in the dark.

We waited while the calf struggled

To stand, moved as though this

Were the first time. I could feel the soft sucking

Of the new-born, the tugging pleasure

Of bruised reordering, the signal

Of milk’s incoming tide, and satisfaction

Fall like a clean sheet around us.

 

by Gillian Clarke

from The Sundial (Gwasg Gomer, 1978)

You Can Never Go Home Again

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.

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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.

You are your own prison.

Tomorrow: ‘The Poppies Do Not Weep For You’