Russian art: I like the icons, but apart from that, it is/was difficult to find Russian art outside Russia. When I visited the USSR I went to the Tretiakov Art Gallery and was bowled over – I remember hearing a British art critic complaining about the proportions in typical Russian art, about the people being to small and insignificant in the landscape. But that totally misses the point: they capture the spirit and atmosphere of Russia, and of its landscapes. Also, these paintings are quite simply beautiful. The Russians have well developed visual senses, or, I had better say, have not yet lost their visual senses and awareness of the world about them as the people of the more ‘advanced’ countries, like the UK and the USA. This visual awareness is also apparent in the descriptive writing in novels and poetry.
I remarked above that one of the things I liked about Russia was that it was not ‘imposing’, in any sense of the word.
Well, firstly, tourists frequently complained that Russians did not smile enough – wrong. People in the west typically smile too much. It is a way of imposing on other people, forcing them to pay attention and smile back, whether they feel like it, or want to, or not. People in the west have lost their sensitivity to others, so, rather than reading each situation as it comes and responding suitably, they ‘make it a rule’ always to ‘be polite’ and smile – it is annoying and intrusive. And if they cannot impose themselves on other people themselves, then they get their children or their dogs to be “oh, he’s just friendly!”, and do it for them.
Then there is the architecture, which, also, is not imposing. Some of it is huge, but none of it is ‘imposing’. None of it says, (to quote Shelley) “Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.” I would compare it to the architecture of Vienna and Washington, both of which go in for ‘monumental’.
Moscow is much more Russian than St Petersburg. I like the traditional arts and crafts, the onion domes, the traditional costumes and so on, so Moscow has a particular appeal for me. Also, it is so full of trees, lots of sycamores I think, that it feels as though it has been built in a forest.
As to St Petersburg, one usually hears it compared unfavourably to French Cities, its architecture being French, but that misses the point, again, on so many levels. The Winter Palace is huge. Lots of the buildings are huge. For size they compare easily with the Hapsburg architecture of Vienna or the neo-classical architecture of Washington. But in Vienna the buildings loom around and over one; the oppress and suffocate, and that tells of the ‘spirit’ of the Hapsburg Empire – oppressive.
In Washington there is much more space, like St Petersburg, and there is not that feeling of oppression; it’s more the feeling of a dead weight. You walk down the Mall and it’s like a broad causeway through a necropolis. (From necro = dead, and polis = city, hence ‘city of the dead’, or cemetery. See also: necromancer = wizard who specialises in death magic, necrophile = person with a penchant for dead bodies, necromonger = seller of/trader in death.) And when you stand eye-balling the toe of Lincoln’s boot the impulse is to laugh. It’s puffed up like one of those toads that inflate their bodies to deter predators – comical. Big Buddhas in the Far East, Thailand e.g., work; Big Presidents in the USA do not. They’ve lost it.
In St Petersburg the feeling is of space. One hardly really notices the huge size of the like of the Winter Palace. In fact, both Moscow and St Petersburg, in spite of being huge cities, actually feel like part of the landscape. They have been built, in other words, to fit in, not to dominate or conquer. And you think of Peter the Great (who had St Petersburg built), a Tzar who was not above touring Europe to see what was new with the neighbours, and of working as an ordinary man in the shipyard of Britain and the Netherlands in order to learn the trade – that does not say ‘conqueror’, ‘oppressor’ etc. If he’d been your typical arrogant, domineering monarch he would have sent his minions to get their hands dirty, not gone himself.
I remember seeing the Mayday military parades that took (take?) place in Red (= beautiful in Russian) Square in Moscow, and, of course, they looked huge, overwhelming, monstrous – but then I have seen news cameras turn a puddle into a flood. And if you see Red Square – it is vast, by far the biggest square I have ever seen, bigger than Tiananmen Square, and alive, not dead – well, I won’t start on China. China is something else – except that the one good thing about Tainanmen Square was the bats: instead of moths fluttering round the street lights, there are hundreds of bats – lovely.
Moscow, in the other hand, is a city of crows. On windy days they perch all round the domes, taking turns to launch themselves into the air to tumble and cavort and play in the turbulence.
Then there are Russian films. Superb. Made by people who still have the use of their eyes and are still aware of the world around them, and interested in it. I have already remarked the same in connection with novels and poetry and art, so it is not surprise to see it showing up in films as well. Also, they are made for people who have not yet succumbed to ADHD! Tarkovsky, of course, I like very much – though I will say that I think some of his films are too clever for their own good.
I remember seeing the famous Russian film of Hamlet, with the blond Hamlet, when I was younger and thinking it by far the best version of that play that I had seen. Just recently I got a hold of Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin, and I thought it had a lot to teach modern film makers: humour, humanness, and there was no ‘hero’, just people, some of whom could rise to the occasion when pushed.
Coming from the other direction, UK and US films typically show Russia/USSR as dismal, grey, dirty and the people as sullen and boorish – it is all lies, propaganda.
The Russians I do not much like are the likes of Stravinsky and Solzhenitsyn, the one’s who sold their Russian souls for western gold and stardom. This is not a matter of saying I prefer Russian art to Western art. The point is that to do what Stravinsky and Solzhenitsyn did you literally have to deny and suppress your own spirit, your soul, and in doing so you can only diminish and trivialise yourself and your art.
Finally, I remember hearing a radio programme about the USSR in which some famous TV/radio journalist went to that country to investigate and report back. He sought out some infamous retired prison guard who had worked in the gulags, and traced him to a flat in some city or other. He found that next door was an ex-inmate of the gulags who had suffered cruel treatment at the hands of the guards. “What is it like having one of those gulag guards living right next door to you?” the reporter asked the man. The man shrugged and said, “There but for the grace of God go I.” The reporter was struck dumb. You’d have a hard time finding that kind of tolerance, insight, self-awareness, and forgiveness – forgiveness? no, he did not think there was anything to forgive, more: forgetfulness – in this country, or probably any other country in the ‘developed’ world.
Oh, and one other VERY IMPORTANT thing: I think that Russia is still a country in which one can get lost. There is a scene at the end of the David Lean film, Dr Zhivago, in which we see a last glimpse of Lara before she disappears into the vast Russian hinterland. I live that scene. In this country you are tagged by bureaucracy form the moment of your birth until you die. You cannot escape. You are forever ‘tracked’ and monitored. How wonderful to be in a country where you can still just disappear.