Гильотина… (The Guillotine’s…) by Boris Savinkov a.k.a. V. Ropshin

The guillotine’s
Sharp blade?
Well then, just what?
I’m not afraid of the guillotine,
I laugh at the executioner,
At his steel blade.
The guillotine is my life,
Every day they execute me…
Every day two gentlemen
In old-fashioned frock coats
Sit with me as guests.
And then they lea me through the door,
They take my hands firmly
And lay me under the sharp blade.
My life passes this way…
And on Sundays people go
To an execution, as to a low farce.
The guillotine?
A sharp blade?
Well then, just what?
I’ll drink the glass down now…
Let them lead me out to execution.

By Борис Викторович Савинков
(Boris Viktorovich Savinkov)
a.k.a. В. Ропшин (V. Ropshin) (his literary pseudonym)
Translated by Albert C. Todd

Гильотина…

Гильотина —
Острый нож?
Ну так что ж?
Не боюсь я гильотины,
Я смеюсь над палачом,
Над его стальным ножом.
Гильотина — жизнь моя,
Каждый день казнят меня…
Каждый день два господина
В старомодных сюртуках
У меня сидят в гостях,
А потом за дверь выводят,
Крепко за руки берут
И под острый нож кладут.
В этом жизнь моя проходит…
И на казнь, как в балаган,
В воскресенье люди ходят.
Гильотина —
Острый нож?
Ну так что ж?
Я сейчас допью стакан…
Пусть на казнь меня выводят.

Additional information: Boris Viktorovich Savinkov (Борис Викторович Савинков) (31 January 1879 – 7 May 1925) was a Russian Empire writer and revolutionary. As one of the leaders of the Fighting Organisation, the paramilitary wing of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, Savinkov was involved in the assassinations of several high-ranking imperial officials in 1904 and 1905. After the February Revolution of 1917, he became Assistant Minister of War (in office from July to August 1917) in the Provisional Government. After the October Revolution of the same year he organized armed resistance against the ruling Bolsheviks. Savinkov emigrated from Soviet Russia in 1920, but in 1924 the OGPU lured him back via Operation Trust to the Soviet Union and arrested him. He was either killed or committed suicide, by throwing himself out of a window, at Lubyanka prison.

He wrote a number of books under the pseudonym V. Ropshin and the poetry anthology I reference referred to him by that name rather than by his real name. I’ve put both surnames in the reference below so those who need it can choose which they feel is more fitting.

Ropshin (Boris Viktorovich Savinkov), born into the family of a public prosecutor under the Tsar, became a legendary figure, a kind of Count of Monte Cristo of Russian revolutionary terrorism. After studying law for two years at St. Petersburg University, he was expelled for political activity and completed his education in Heidelberg. He quickly became one of the leaders of the Russian Socialist Revolutionary party and took part in assassination attempts on members of the tsarist government, in particular against Vyacheslav Plehve, the minister of the interior and chief of the gendarmes. In 1917 Ropshin became a commissar in the Provisional Government in the headquarters of the supreme commander and then a comrade to the minister of war. He fought against the Bolsheviks and then emigrated to Paris by way of Shanghai in 1920. In Warsaw in 1920 Ropshin headed the Russian Political Committee for the Struggle Against Bolshevism and took part in fighting along the Dnepr. In 1924 he returned illegally to Soviet Russia to conduct clandestine operations and was captured and thrown to his death from a window of Lubyanka prison.

Ropshin’s poetry, like his novels Pale Horse, What Never Was and Black Horse, records the phenomenal experiences of this fatalist of almost pathological daring, whose superhuman actions were entangled with a sentimental romanticism characteristic of Russian terrorists of his time. A single book of poetry was published in 1931 in an edition of one hundred copies.

Biographical information about V. Ropshin (Savinkov), p.43, ‘Twentieth Century Russian Poetry’ (1993), compiled by Yevgeny Yevtushenko (ed. Albert C. Todd and Max Hayward) , published by Fourth Estate Limited by arrangement with Doubleday of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group Inc. (transcribed as found in the original text).

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Предсказание (A Prophecy) by Mikhail Lermontov

A year will come – of Russia’s blackest dread;

then will the crown fall from the royal head,

the throne of tsars will perish in the mud,

the food of many will be death and blood;

both wife and babe will vainly seek the law:

it will not shield the victims any more;

the putrid, rotting plague will mow and cut

and boldly walk the road from hut to hut;

in people’s sight its pallid face will float,

and hunger’s hand will clutch them by the throat;

a scarlet sea will send its bloody surge;

a mighty man will suddenly emerge:

you’ll recognize the man, you’ll feel

that he has come to use a knife of steel;

oh, dreadful day! Your call, your groan, your prayer

will only make him laugh at your despair;

and everything in his forbidding sight –

his brow, his cloak – will fill the land with fright.

 

by Михаил Юрьевич Лермонтов (Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov)

(1830)

translated by Anatoly Liberman

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Fun facts: He wrote this in 1830 and the irony hasn’t been lost on Russian people that less than a hundred years later Nikolai II would lose this throne and… well it’s hard not to immediately see Lermontov’s prophecy (though ‘prediction’ is the more direct translation of the Russian title) proved an all too accurate omen of events during the twentieth century during the Soviet era.

A recital of the poem in Russian:

Original Russian version:

Предсказание

Настанет год, России черный год,
Когда царей корона упадет;
Забудет чернь к ним прежнюю любовь,
И пища многих будет смерть и кровь;
Когда детей, когда невинных жен
Низвергнутый не защитит закон;
Когда чума от смрадных, мертвых тел
Начнет бродить среди печальных сел,
Чтобы платком из хижин вызывать,
И станет глад сей бедный край терзать;
И зарево окрасит волны рек:
В тот день явится мощный человек,
И ты его узнаешь — и поймешь,
Зачем в руке его булатный нож:
И горе для тебя! — твой плач, твой стон
Ему тогда покажется смешон;
И будет всё ужасно, мрачно в нем,
Как плащ его с возвышенным челом.