Dunham, Vera S.

English

Canadian Woman Studies / les cahiers de la femme (E-Journal, York University)

It is dificult to start, and for that matter, stop "commenting" on a sample ofRussian poems about Soviet women and the Second World War. Twenty million people were killed. They were mostly soldiers. Mostly men. Mil- lions of women grieved. So did their families. To this day, even an unadorned statement of these factssoundsglib. Some ten poems picked out of an enormous number which for a half-century have been written on that theme- if it can be called that - testify to the narrowness and, hence, arbitrariness of this selection. How can it be otherwise? Alas, the topic also triggers clichis even through the filter of goodwill or especially through it. "The war was not lost because of women and children." True. But it can no longer be put this way because the passage of time and the ava- lanche of writing about the war make it a clicht. And sacrilege. This is so because of the perils of sentimentality. Even though I don't know what sen- timentality is-which isa lie becauseldo know, especially in the sense that what's sentimental in one culture isnotnecessar- ily that in another- it is tempting to use saccharine in the very attempt, for in- stance, to transport the ancient Russian reverence for women across the Atlantic or any other ocean. The Soviet intelligentsia has taken up remembering. Massively. The longer the memory stretches in this effort in which all factions of intellectuals and profes- sionals seem to be currently swept up, the more the perception of the past splinters into glorification, sarcasm and skepti- cism. Thus, a unified attitude toward Stalinism itself turns out to be not alto- gether possible. And that's quite a prob- lem. Even the diachronic matter ofperio- dization of Stalinism in its three sequen- tial manifestations-pre-war, war, post- war-is still a mess in terms of determin- ing and accepting corporate responsibil- ity for the crimes of that past. Therefore, the stubbornly lingering memories of war in recent literature still combine politi- cized materials with existentially irre- pressible mourning. In this small chapter, it has been un- dertaken to remember also. For outsiders, it behooves to remain sober, yet without a foolish attempt to crush compassion. What Poems about the Great Patriotic War BY VERA S. DUNHAM might verily justify this effort is its modest intent. It is just a salute from afar to the power, passion, andpain of the tenacious memory of war. The first and the last poems, encircling more than four dec- ades, seem to have emerged during the same sleepless night. It is in 1945, as harbinger of peace, that Margarita Aliger wrote her "New Name." New Name MARGARITA ALIGER After seeing him off to war and saying the last farewell for an instant it seemed all of her strength was gone. Surely it would not hurt if she were to fall on the floor and the heart would stop beating forgetting it all. But she did not fall and she did not cry. A voice close by said ringing: "This is only the beginning." She wanted to go home, to lie down and weep. But that's not what she did. Things tumed out otherwise. Under a cloudy sky fmly  her feet obeyed. She didn't forget on the way to stop by for the bread. She fed the baby and put him to bed. And she knew that she was in the thick of the fight. She knew she was now alone at the very front "How to break the siege?" not dodging a single attack. Erect she marched on, no more doubts, no more fear. From afar she seemed old, quite young from near. She wouldn't give up and her heart stayed warm in the unthinkable frost of the deepest rear. No warmth of a fire, no rest, not a single exemption. The whole war you marched in an infantry's grey platoon. You waged war wrapped in longing, the female urge for rest, the faith in your loved defending with the might of your breast. The faith that he is known as the bravest and best, that he will come back unharmed and safe to retum all that was in the fullest way. Others had failed in this righteous faith. Others were numbed by the message of death. People would comfort and say: "Don't believe it." What's yours isn't theirs and their tears come easy. "A misprint, maybe - an error, maybe - " Not to accept is easy, to wait for that knock on the door, to believe in the miracle of his return from there. But just try how it feels to perceive with your blood. to accept with your womb the merciless title of widow. Try to live up to it VOLUME 10. NUMBER 4 and make it a glory. For some - it's not fitting, for others - not pleasing. Widows don't wear mourning, do not cry in front of others, do not hide their eyes in the morning, do not throw their moans to the winds. Lips pressed drier, voice choked lower, singed hearts have nothing to fear. the hour will come to appraise, soldierly, what matters. Brothers, let's think and figure like men, like brothers. For those who honestly fought in our camp, for those who with us remained after all that happened, having marched in the wake of war with a burden of tons, for Russian women, widows, who have looked at death, who came through alive with an unriddled strength, And when the muzzles of our guns for them in Russia will cool down, we must find a new name. when our worn-out men will lay down their arms, "Novye Stikhi," Znamya (No. 1, 1945). Was a new namefound? Only one year later Boris Slutsky's requiem commenced for millions offallen peasants and their widows, a requiem both Russian and all- human. In the Village BORIS SLUTSKY They line up by the rural post office. A long line without end, without bound. It's women who receive that which Is due to them for dead husbands. She has taken her due. She has Shoved it into her breast pocket and left. Covered with smoking new snow, The earth turned whiter than white. Alone all alone like a chimney On a farmstead burnt to the ground. Work has made her hands stiff. Hunger has emaciated her body. What is it, soldier's widow, soldier's Mother and sister of a soldier, What is it that you whisper? Perhaps, words You had whispered to him long ago. Everybody weakened. Women weakened, Through hunger and sickness, war and draught, They silently rocked the cradles, Saving our sons. Women were better. They were cleaner. And they didn't betray their virginal dreams For bread, for this here food, For medals, for new clothing. Rabota (Moscow 1964), pp. 98,99. At this point I cannot not remember MikhailDudin's compassion for a woman who remained "neither mother nor widow." MIKHAIL DUDIN Special words are needed To console a widow. 52 Mother, Salasplb CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIESLES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME But you -with your lost love - YOU are alone, Neither mother nor widow. In your longing you have grown tired Of waiting and of tears. He had carried away two young lives Straight from the graduation ball He left the cheerful school commotion Without as much as looking back. No straight and no roundabout road Leads to him now. With his battalion From under Strelna He stormed the Crow's mountain He was the first to fall unto the blizzard snow. That January was as gray as gray eternity. Blood spots spread on the snow. That snow had choked in blood. He did not manage to give back Your love to you. The love of your open soul, Like a flight through infinity, Lives in his soul that has been killed And does not give it peace. Forever and ever the field post office Has lost your addresses. The entire world is a Bullet wound. Your lives are Its opposite poles. - 1963 From "Pesnya Voroniei Gore,"Dalnyaya Doroga (Moscow, 1982), pp. 157-159. Just as uncountable were the women who went to war. Many, many of them were adolescents. By Birth I Am Not From Childhood YULIYA DRUNINA By birth I am not from childhood. I am from war. And, therefore, probably, l value more than you can value The bliss of stillness As well as each new day I live. By birth I am not from childhood. Forgive me. I am from war. Therein no fault of mine. Once, on my way Through a guerilla path, I firmly grasped that We must love All tender blades of grass. By birth I am not from childhood. I am from war. And, therefore, possibly, Not well protected. Front soldiers' hearts are scorched. And you, your hands are rough. By birth I am not from childhood. I am from war. Den Poezii (Moscow, 1970), p.73. Boys and girls at seventeen, at ff- teen ... their youth ran out on them in the trenches. But memory across decades cannot run out -pride, grief and love. Decoration ELENA MESHKOVA I also held the rank of senior lieutenant Just like the fellow who is coming to- ward me. VOLUME 10, NUMBER 4 The Unbroken, Salaspib 53 I do recall the way we marched That balmy night of June before the war, My gait was light and brisk and girlish. Only - this was the very last time. Thereafter - trenches and forest paths And the blood of friends in heavy battles and their death. Hunger in fox holes. Lethal frost in the trenches. Four years of this. So many endless days. My youth ran out on me near Lenin- grad. Since then, my rank and title changed to that of veteran. The change is marked by decorations. Please, let my grandsons be proud of them. Den Poezii (Leningrad, 1978). Choosing one poem over another is es- pecially unbecoming in the Russian cul- tural space of reverence for old women. In all of Evgenii Evtushenko's oeuvre - which remains important per se and for the vibrant record of the early post-Sta- linist era - a passage in one of his long narrative poems is  outstanding. This is the only excerpt thatlpermit myselfto in- troduce. EVGENII EVTUSHENKO ... I saw Christ for the first time not in church but in a hut. It was in Siberia, in 1941. An old woman was praying for her son, missing in action somewhere at the front. She bowed very low to the saint on the icon. He resembled a bearded guerilla fighter to be found among documentary film clips put together into a book in Tashkent to the sounds of peacefully murmuring imgation ditches. The old woman bowed to God the way one bows to wheat when cutting it down with a sickle which sweats with dew. The old woman bowed to God the way one bows to nature when picking milk mushrooms or mountain cranberries in the grass. The old woman prayed to God barely moving her lips and God prayed to the old woman without opening his lips at all... "My Mother and the Neutron Bomb," Novyi mir (No. 7 ,  1982), pp. 5-6. Motherhood and 1941. Motherhood and the siege of Leningrad. AIeksandr Rudenko is one of its poets. A Leningrad Woman ALEKSANDR RUDENKO I can't remember a winter more fierce: I have given you birth, My son, In Leningrad during the siege. How hungry you were ... My breast Could not still Your hunger. A woman next door Grieved that I Didn't have enough Milk. (Night after night You cried So terribly). And she kept giving me Half Of her rations. I was weak ... I took Her bread Because I couldn't Wish you evil. Because that neighbour Used to say: "That's the way It should be." And then S he died Of hunger. How tall you are, How grown-up, How strong ... But listen. Until now, My son, That bread Lies heavy Upon my soul. Reka, Molodaya Gvardiya (Moscow, 1984), pp. 29-30. Mothers and waiting and a '7udg- mental," downright nasty poem by Liudmila Tatianicheva who wrote mostly about the war: LIUDMILA TATIANICHEVA A woman Having abandoned her son, Walks cheerfully unconcerned. Her eyes shine a radiant blue. Her arms move lightly Like swift strokes of an oar. On the river dock All night long she carouses With her new friend. Helplessly Her son calls her In his first unfathomable Sorrow. He remembers his mother And grieves, Falling asleep In his father's arms. I want another woman To become more precious For him than his mother. A woman who abandons her child Cannot be understood. I don't understand her Nor do mothers Who in the black blue dawn Wait for their sons Killed in the war. Poeziya (No. 12, 1974), p. 120. In conclusion, two poems by Yunna Morits about her childhood. It is com- pelling to cite two unforgettable lines by Vladimir Admoni: "Childhood is not a preface. It is an independent text ..." God knows. Recollection YUNNA MORITS Children were thrown from the burning train unto the grass. I slid down the bloody, slippery ditch of human guts and bones. The pilot who flew over me - brown pestilence - bared his teeth and laughed like a patient gone crazy. He soared in his flying trunk CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIESLES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME and bumped his head on the windshield. I saw the swastika on his arm and that which oozed from his forehead. And I also saw the red circle of the steam engine's wheel. From horror I had no hands to cover my eyes. The engine did not move but bloody steam and fog issued from the rolling wheels and the iron lever moaned. It was like an arm, with a bent elbow, tom off the body so that it should turn the wheels posthumously. Thus, in my fifth year the Lord sent me Salvation and a long road.. . But horror had poured into my blood and flesh. It rolls there like mercury. And when I fall asleep facing the moon, I cry so bitterly in my sleep that my tears flow down the wall in which I hide my memory Na etom berege vysokom. Sovremennik, from "Posle Voiny" 1980 (Moscow, 1987), p. 10. Farewell to a clean little girl and her clean mother and her clean hope: After the War A little light flickers among the ruins: Someone is alive there, holding the flame in his teeth. And there is no war and we have left the bathhouse And the world is comely and my road is long. And for three miles around I smell Of a bar of strong laundry soap And a clean force soars above us all. And my flannel is clean and my hair is clean And I am wearing clean overalls And step by step I proceed with my clean mother And almost drop off to sleep along the way; And the clanging streetcar bathes my eyes with silver; The little bathhouse bundle of wash- rags Turns silvery too, and the universe gleams like silver. There is no war and we have left the bathhouse. And I am light and my road is long. We do not dare sit down in the streetcar For after the bath we are free of lice And the world is comely and everyone is alive And we'll all live at least for a hundred Years And the world is comely and my road is long And being poor is no longer a danger. And, Lord, how eerie and how beautiful Is the flickering of the little light among the ruins. Ibid., p. 27. Comments and translations by Vera S. Dunham (last poem in collaboration with W.J. Smith). Vera Dunham is Professor Emeritus at the Harriman Institute, Columbia Uni- versity. She has written extensively on Soviet literature, including In Stalin's Time: Middleclass Values in Soviet Fic- tion. Themonuments photographed here are partof amemorial ensemble unveiled atsalaspils (near Riga, Latvia) in 1967, in memory of the victims of fascist terrorism. Salaspils concentration campwas the largest place of imprisonment and mass-scale murder of people in the Nazi-occupied Baltic. More than 100 thousand people were killed during the camp's existence: October 1941 to October 1944. VOLUME 10, NUMBER 4 

Poems About the Great Patriotic War

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Poems About the Great Patriotic War

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Canadian Woman Studies / les cahiers de la femme (E-Journal, York University)