The Hunterian

As a poet of the circles of Russian emigration in Paris and Berlin, Vladimir Kemetskii’s early poems are imbued with decadent depictions of the West. Once back in Soviet Russia, soon after his arrest, Kemetskii’s poetry changed dramatically. The poet appears to have started a dialogue with his muse in an increasingly sad and tormented way. Kemetskii clearly felt doomed and devoted himself fully to the depiction of his feelings in his lyric poems.

Before Navigation shows this mood. By focusing on sheer pain, Kemetskii found inspiration, channelling it into the depiction of nature – the silent godmother of his poetry. Snow-capped fields triggered the poet’s nostalgia for a world that is ‘frolicking’ elsewhere. Kemetskii's belief in his eventual freedom, which in a previous poem was ‘deceptive’, becomes in Before Navigation ‘ill-founded’, since he knew it would never be realized.

Перед навигацией 
Vladimir Kemetskii - Before Navigation

В иных краях безумствует земля,
И руки девушек полны цветами,
И солнце льeтся щедрыми струями
На зеленеющие тополя…

Ещe бесплодный снег мертвит поля,
Расстаться море не спешит со льдами,
И ветер ходит резкими шагами
Вдоль ржавых стен угрюмого кремля.

Непродолжительною, но бессонной
Бледно-зелeной ночью сколько раз
Готов был слух, молчаньем истомленный,

Гудок желанный услыхать для нас
О воле приносящий весть, быть может…
Но всe молчит. Лишь чайка мглу тревожит.

Before Navigation
Vladimir Kemetskii - Before Navigation (English)

In other regions the world frolics
And the hands of the girls are full of flowers,
And the sun pours his munificent rays,
Over the greening poplar trees.

The unfruitful snow still makes the fields lifeless,
The sea is in no hurry to part from the ice,
And the wind goes with brusque strides
Along the rusty walls of the gloomy Kremlin.

In the brief, but sleepless
Pale-green night how many times
My ear, exhausted by the silence, was ready

To hear the long-awaited signal for us
Bringing news of freedom, maybe…
But all is silent. Only a seagull disturbs the darkness.

Iurii Kazarnovskii was a very gifted humourist. He published poems, short stories and humorous articles filled with wit. Kazarnovskii published a series of literary parodies of famous Russian poets entitled What would some poets write if they arrived at Solovki?, where he mimicked perfectly famous poems by Russian poets and rooted them in the reality of the camp, using the contrast between the original and camp reality in order to create puns.

There are numerous instances of puns and moments of irony in the poem below, which do not translate easily into English: the play between ‘dessert’ and ‘desert’; the reference to the rotunda connected to the elephants’ mightiness (i.e. the camp’s – ‘slon’ means ‘elephant’ in Russian); the use of the invented verbs ‘uslonet’ (i.e. they do the USLON) or ‘kaerit’ (to do the kaer, a slang word for ‘counter-revolutionary’); the reference to the nobility, which was formed in colleges and ended up in the Solovki camp; the word-play linked to the verb ‘sidet’’ which means both ‘to sit’ and ‘to serve a term’; the play on the verb ‘idti’ (to walk) in regard to the specific use of ‘srok idet’ (i.e. the term is being served); the use of Latin letters for a Russian word (which hints at criminals in the camp), while the whole text is based on erroneous spellings in Russian of French and Italian words; the reference to the balan, i.e. the slang word referred to the logs of wood harvested by the prisoners.

Литературные пародии. Игор Северянин (отрывок) 
Iurii Kazarnovskii - Literary parodies

Среди красот полярного бомонда,
В десерте экзотической тоски,
Бросая тень, как чeрная ротонда,
Галантно услонеют Соловки.

Ах, здесь изыск страны коллегиальной,
Здесь все сидят – не ходят, – а сидят.
Но срок идeт во фраке триумфальном,
И я ищу, пардон, читатель, blat.

Полярит даль бушлат демимонденки,
Вальсит грезер, балан искрит печаль,
Каэрят дамы – в сплетнях все оттенки –
И пьет эстет душистый вежеталь.

Literary parodies. Igor’ Severianin (excerpt)
Iurii Kazarnovskii - Literary parodies (English)

Among the beauties of the polar beau-monde,
In the dessert of exotic anguish,
Casting a shadow, like a black rotunda
Gallantly the Solovki uslonate.

Ah, here you find the cream of the world of colleges,
Here they all sit – they don’t walk, they sit.
But the term wears a triumphant tail-coat,
And I’m looking for, begging your pardon, dear reader, a favour.

The distance of the jackets of the demi-mondaines is polar,
The gréser waltzs, the balan makes sadness sparkle
The ladies kaerate – in all shades of gossip –
And the aesthete drinks sweet a perfumed hair lotion.