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C(3)P: 1st---Suppress That Poem!, The Secret Policeman Said
The Poet Soselo In Shoelessness
must be suppressed as a forbidden text.
Its dangerous subversion has long vexed
our Great Leader, more than he can express.
They say the first part, poignant in its sadness,
leads to the second part's frenzied emotion,
to drive a Bolshevik to frenzied madness,
denying to the Party his devotion.
Destroy all copies; guarantee exclusion
from every book about our literature:
persuasive verse threatens the Revolution:
the State must not allow such to endure.
Be proactive---alert to this attack,
for poets would displace even Karl Marx;
poets like Mandelstam and Pasternak:
muzzle their bites, Comrade; silence their barks.
What a tragedy if Pasternak's
What a tragedy if Pasternak's great works had been destroyed! (Not that they didn't try.) I remember in his novel he wrote: "No one loves poetry like a Russian."
When I was young I was involved in a ministry that advocated on behalf of Soviet dissidents in the 80's. We conducted letter writing campaigns on behalf of Christians imprisoned for their faith, which included letters of protest to the Soviet government as well as letters to prisoners themselves because inmates who received attention from the West were treated better, sometimes even released early.
One woman I advocated for was a young poet who wrote "subversive" poems. It has been so long and I worked on behalf of so many prisoners that I'm afraid I forgot her name. (It was something beautiful.) I do remember that she lost all her teeth in prison, having been so malnourished. I was particularly disturbed by her case because poetry was such an important part of my life, and it seemed particularly ruthless to crush this young life along with the beauty within her.
So this is my longwinded way of saying your very moving and powerful poem was particularly significant to me. Fortunately, the totalitarian leaders are relegated to history's dumpsters, while the great poets' contributions live on.
Truly enjoyed this emotional work.
This is one of the finest
This is one of the finest comments you have ever given me, and I am deeply appreciative. I enjoyed every word, especially what you told me about yourself. And your work to help the dissidents will be openly acknowledged and rewarded someday.
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Although my reading in Soviet history has been limited, I have the distinct impression that the persecution of poets was much more a device of Stalin, rather than Lenin. And I have to wonder if Stalin was not expressing a kind of self-hatred toward his past self by symbolically murdering it each time he sent a living poet to imprisonment or death. While I have not the least sympathy for him, I can imagine that the contrast between the metaphysical and symbolic beauty of his poems, as Soselo---and the dismal landscape of the industrialized Soviet Union---must have been unbearable.
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Thanks again for your wonderful and very profound comment. The biographical information you shared gives me even more reason to admire, and to proclaim, your greatness.
Starward
A brilliant and fascinating
A brilliant and fascinating perspective: your thoughts on Stalin's inner conflicts. You may be correct in that analysis. Thank you kindly for your insights and encouragement.
Thank you. Your comments are
Thank you. Your comments are always so encouraging. I have long had the impression that Lenin simply did not acknowledge the arts or think they were politically significant. And if the young Stalin, who had suppressed his poetic self, was trying to reconstruct a new self on the model of his mentor, then that disregard of poetry may have turned into an active dislike, which would also serve to further suppress, and possibly destroy, Soselo. I know nothing of psychology, so I do not know how this process works. Just as I believe that Lenin's primary, and most secret, purpose in bring Revolution was to avenge his brother's death upon the royal family and the aristocracy that supported it, I believe Stalin's purpose was to suppress the poetic side of himself---and to accomplish this, he ruthlessly persecuted anyone who reminded him of that self, and radically reconstructed the landscape of Russia to eliminate the rural, and perhaps backward, environment from which his poems emerged, and replace it with the dismal, industrialized juggernaut that it became.
Starward
Very intelligent premise. You
Very intelligent premise. You may be correct.
Thank you. I think I will
Thank you. I think I will take Claudel's perspective on my guesswork: it may not be historically correct, or acceptable to scholars in their specialties, but it does make poetic sense. That is really all of the validation I can claim for my speculation, lol.
Starward