St. Petersburg: The Light of the North

St. Petersburg: The Light of the North













St. Petersburg,

The Light of the North,

Window on Europe, saviour of the Russian soul,

Harbinger of the Russian Renaissance,

Birthplace of Great Russian literature and ballet

City of novel ideas, beauty, glory, revolution and grandeur,

City of Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky and Bronze Horse Man,

City of white nights, innumerable canals and bridges,

City of Heroes,

City that withered the nine hundred days of blockade.



St. Petersburg ceased to be the capitals of Russia a long time ago but its inhabitants still call it as the Northern Capital or Cultural Capital of Russia. Peter I (Peter the Great) founded the city in 1703 reclaiming the marshland to open a window on Europe.


The area where St. Petersburg is located today was under the control of Swedish King Karl II whom Peter I defeated in the battle of Poltova and built St. Petersburg with the help of the prisoners taken during the battle. Many thousand lives were lost in building this beautiful city out of a marshland but St. Petersburg was built from scratch and became the capital of the Imperial Russia in 1713. It continued to be its capital till 1918 when Lenin, after the Russian revolution of 1917, decided to make Moscow the capital of the new Soviet Union. After the revolution St. Petersburg was renamed as Petrograd and in 1924 after the death of Lenin it was renamed as Leningrad in his honour however after the break up of the Soviet Union, its original name St. Petersburg was returned to it in 1991.

People of St. Petersburg consider their city one of the most beautiful cities in the world and especially more beautiful than the Russian capital Moscow. Moscow and its culture is considered here a little rustic and crude compared to the finesse of the St. Petersburg traditions with an European touch. Having spent two years in Moscow, which I found grand and magnificent, I have to be diplomatic about my admiration for Moscow while being asked ‘which city is better between the two’. Each time my answer would be –‘Moscow is magnificent but nothing compared to St. Petersburg’. And I wonder sometimes, it is true. St. Petersburg has innumerable, rivers, canals and bridges adding to its splendour. It is also the city of White Nights, world famous Hermitage museum, Marinsky theatre and the birthplace of Great Russian literature and Russian ballet. Above all it is a compact and convenient city without much of traffic hassles.

St. Petersburg has population of 4.6 million people and is the fourth largest European city and the most populous city at its latitude. St. Petersburg has a very compact historic centre which has been declared as UNESCO heritage site. In fact almost all its activities take place around 6 lanes wide beautiful Nevsky Prospect and one can see majority of the great architectural monuments walking on this long street. These include Elisievsky Palace, Alexandrsky theatre, Kazan Cathedral, Church on Spilled Blood, Winter Palace, General staff and Admiralty building, St. Isaac cathedral and Central Manezh. One can admire the panoramic view of the river Neva, Rostral Coulumns and St. Peters and Paul Fort (first settlement of the city) standing on the Palace bridge that opens every night at 12:30 A.M. during summer months.



City Blues

The city is more than three hundred years old and so are most of the buildings built in baroque and neo-classical architectural styles. But the outer beauty compensates very little for the inner comfort. The water pipes are old and rusted and tap water must be first filtered and boiled and then again filtered before it is fit for drinking. Buildings being old do not have lifts and though I am lucky to live in a building that has a lift, the lift starts from the first floor (In Russia floors are counted as ground floor, first floor and so on…). It seems the building planners during Soviet times just were too busy to look at these small details and as a result now I have to carry things up to the second floor before I can put them in the lift and take them to the fifth floor where I live. I tried to find out what was the reason of putting a lift from the first floor and was told that the residents of the first floor during the Soviet times did not want to pay for the lift services so the planners decided to deprive them of the free lift services. In that process they forgot about those living on the higher floors!

When I came to St. Petersburg, I could not think of travelling in Metro because of skin head fears and buying a car was not easy at all, first I had to put an order and wait for the car to be imported. When the car was imported, the price quoted by the car dealer had already changed and I was left with no choice but to pay the price they wanted. Once I had the car, I had to take it to several places for registration.

Since I have bought a car, I have had an adventurous driving experience in the city. Drivers here are full of adrenaline and aggressive driving is the norm. The insurance companies are legendary in this city. In case one has an accident, the vehicle should not move an inch till the traffic police arrives and takes all the measurements and issues a certificate. Afterwards the trial begins. Parties involved in accident have to go to the regional central office of the traffic police where ‘who is guilty’ will be decided and it might take months. After obtaining certificates from this office one has to go and file for an insurance claim. First the long queue and then inspection and then again to the repair shop for inspection and quotation of the prices and more…it can take anything like 6-8 months for the repair to be done.


The traffic signs in the city could be more confusing than assuring and at any given time some or the other road is closed for reconstruction purposes. Besides that, there can be VIP movements any time without warning and the traffic police can shut any road any time and then people have to wait for hours to find one’s way out from the resulting traffic mess.


Lately there have been a lot of investments in automobile sector and St. Petersburg has been turning into a Russian Detroit. It seems there will be many more cars on the road in the near future though the financial crisis has provided a respite.

The Great Russian poet Alexander Pushkin said- “Nature does not have bad weather” but St. Petersburg is severely cold in winters and it rains most of the spring and summer. The normal sunny days in St. Petersburg are rare. Though Peterburgers love their city, they are always ready to leave it for the warmer and sunny tropics viz. beach resorts in Turkey, Egypt, India, Thailand or Maldives.


Silver linings

But every cloud has a silver lining. I have spent a year in St. Petersburg, and what a tremendous year it has been for me. What has been remarkable is the number and variety of the people I have met during the past year- writers, painters, singers, poets, diplomats, soldiers, businessmen, song-writers, actors, theatre-artists, students, dancers, professors, political leaders, thinkers, museum curators, interpreters, India-lovers and more. I have enriched by their energy, ideas and friendship beyond expectations and have no hesitation in saying that St. Petersburg is a city of creative people, a city of people with beautiful minds.

St. Petersburg is cultural capital in true sense as its inhabitants have real love for arts and culture. The statues of their writers, poets and painters adorn the squares and streets of the city. I have had the opportunity during the past one year to know many people who form the core of the St. Petersburg art circle and are internationally reputed. They have inspired me to look at life from a different angle. They have shown me the power and beauty of arts and the influence it has on our lives. It has helped me to acquire a new language to express my deeper consciousness through colours, drawings and paintings and photographs which I could not do through written or spoken words. St. Petersburg has inspired me to paint and now I also have a small gallery at home of over fifty paintings I have done in since my arrival to St. Petersburg.
(Available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1qhnzmDsoE )


It would be difficult to imagine St. Petersburg without its greatest treasure i.e. Hermitage. Hermitage is an institution in itself and has a huge influence on the city dwellers. It has inspired generations of St. Petersburgers and moulded many of them into fine artists. It has some of the finest collections of Renaissance and post Renaissance paintings and sculptures. From time to time it organizes special exhibition and invites members of Hermitage’s Friends Club along with the members of the Diplomatic Corps in the city.

Besides Hermitage, Russian Museum, Marinsky and Mikhailovsky theatres, a number of art galleries play a central role in the cultural life of St. Petersburg. Pushkinskaya- 10, Art Centre, is one such address in St. Petersburg which leads the contemporary arts scene in the city and is well known in European capitals such as Paris, Amsterdam and London as well as in New York. Loft Proekt Etazhi at Ligovsky Prospect-92, is another such Project that has transformed an erstwhile bread factory into a centre of contemporary arts in St. Petersburg and since the past one year I have been a witness of its mind boggling transformation process.

One can enjoy walking in the legendary Summer Garden built by Peter the Great (which the City authorities plan to close for three years for its transformation) and the Nevsky Prospect, along the banks of Fontanka River (the boundary of the old city) and the Garden of Joy in the Elagin Island or take the boat rides in the Neva, Moika or Fontanka rivers and watch the sunset at midnight from the Gulf of Finland from the bank of the Baltic Sea on the Vasilievsky Island. One can go to Peterhof (a palace located on the shores of Baltic Sea with fountains and design like the Palace in Versailles) riding a speedboat, driving to Pushkin (Tsar’s Village) and treading upon the golden leaves of autumn or can see the ancient city of Novgorod (190 Kms from St. Petersburg) or the city of Vyborg (close to border with Finland and has unique architecture) or one can play volleyball at the beaches in the north of the city in June or July on sunny summer days or can walk around the city whole night.

I must say I have loved working with friendly and open hearted St. Petersburgers who love India, know our culture and wish us well. I would like to end this with these lines that came to my mind spontaneously-


I know the glorious short summer will be over

And the long cold winter will arrive soon

There will be no sunny skies

It will be all grey and gloom.

But then I’ll turn to the inner lights

And cherish the wonders of life

Till summer comes again

And the Light of the North turns white once again.


Abhay K. is author of ‘River Valley and Silicon Valley- Story of three generations of Indian family’ ‘Enigmatic Love- Love poems from the fairy-tale city of Moscow ’ & ‘Fallen Leaves of Autumn’. His fortcoming books are ‘Candling the Light’, 'Colours of Soul'. Views expressed here are his own.

Published in 74th FC Newsletter in October 2009

Anna Akhmatova( On her 42nd death anniversary)

A portrait of Anna Akhmatova by Nathan Altman
On 1st March I was invited to visit the Literary Museum at the Fountain House (part of the Sheremetev Palace). Here Anna Akhmatova spent many years of her life in a Communal flat where she shared the kitchen with at least ten other people. The museum has well preserved the articles,utensils, furniture,paintings, books etc. from that period.

Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966) was born near the city of Odessa as Anna Gorenko but she moved with her parents to the Tsarskoe Sello(The Tsar’s village)near St. Petersburg when she was just one year old. She began to write poem at the age of 11. It was at the Tsarskoe Sello she met the poet Nikolai Gumilev who proposed to her but was shown a cold shoulder by Akhmatova. Gumilev went to Africa to forget the bitterness of rejection and in the meanwhile Anna Gorenko’s parents separated and she went with her mother to live in Kiev. Gumilev wrote-
“You can’t call her beautiful
But all my happiness is in her”.
Later when Gumilev returned from Africa he again proposed to Anna Akhmatova and they got married in 1910. She completed her first book ‘Evening’ which was published later. Their son Lev was born in 1912. Their relationship was not easy as Gumilev himself was a well known poet and both of them pursued their hearts in terms of relationships.
The legend is that one of the ancestors from her mother side was Ahmad Khan, from the family of Chengis Khan and when her father told her that it was not good to be poet for a girl from a noble family then she changed her surname from Gorenko to Akhmatova.
Anna Akhmatova was one of the leading figures of the famous ‘Silver Age’ of the Russian literature and she shared the stage with writers and poets like Mikhail Kuzmin, Aleksandr Blok, Osip Mandelstam, Mayakovsky etc... Akhmatova had a long life and she was witness to the Bolshevik revolution led by Lenin and afterwards the repressive Stalin years. She did not leave Russia even though her friends and fellow poets either emigrated to the West, were sent to the Siberian camps, died or were killed. Her husband Gumilev was charged with anti-revolutionary activities and was arrested and shot. Their only son Lev Gumilev was arrested and released and arrested again. She could not publish her poems in the Stalin years until the Second World War began and she was given the opportunity to publish. During the 900 days of blockade of Leningrad she wrote her great poem ‘Courage’ to inspire her countrymen to withstand all the sufferings and defend the motherland. During the war years she wrote “Poem without a hero.” But once the war was over she was again banned from publishing and her son was arrested. She began to glorify Stalin for the sake of her only son Lev but this did not help much and Lev had to spend ten years in Siberia. In the 1960s Anna Akhmatova wrote her most important work ‘Requiem’ which had not been written since the last twenty years. Requiem celebrates the memories of her very near and dear ones. She wrote-
"To forget is a terrible thing
I remember each one of you".
Anna Akhmatova published her poems after the Stalin Era was over and the ‘Khrushchev Thaw’ began. She lived a long life and vividly narrated the history of her generation through her poems. In 1962 Robert Frost visited her country house. In her last years Akhmatova wrote memoirs and poems and made many translations. On March 5, 1966 Anna Akhmatova died. I am placing below one of her most widely read poems 'Requiem'.

Requiem


Not under foreign skies
Nor under foreign wings protected -
I shared all this with my own people
There, where misfortune had abandoned us.
[1961]

INSTEAD OF A PREFACE

During the frightening years of the Yezhov terror, I
spent seventeen months waiting in prison queues in
Leningrad. One day, somehow, someone 'picked me out'.
On that occasion there was a woman standing behind me,
her lips blue with cold, who, of course, had never in
her life heard my name. Jolted out of the torpor
characteristic of all of us, she said into my ear
(everyone whispered there) - 'Could one ever describe
this?' And I answered - 'I can.' It was then that
something like a smile slid across what had previously
been just a face.
[The 1st of April in the year 1957. Leningrad]

DEDICATION

Mountains fall before this grief,
A mighty river stops its flow,
But prison doors stay firmly bolted
Shutting off the convict burrows
And an anguish close to death.
Fresh winds softly blow for someone,
Gentle sunsets warm them through; we don't know this,
We are everywhere the same, listening
To the scrape and turn of hateful keys
And the heavy tread of marching soldiers.
Waking early, as if for early mass,
Walking through the capital run wild, gone to seed,
We'd meet - the dead, lifeless; the sun,
Lower every day; the Neva, mistier:
But hope still sings forever in the distance.
The verdict. Immediately a flood of tears,
Followed by a total isolation,
As if a beating heart is painfully ripped out, or,
Thumped, she lies there brutally laid out,
But she still manages to walk, hesitantly, alone.
Where are you, my unwilling friends,
Captives of my two satanic years?
What miracle do you see in a Siberian blizzard?
What shimmering mirage around the circle of the moon?
I send each one of you my salutation, and farewell.
[March 1940]

INTRODUCTION
[PRELUDE]

It happened like this when only the dead
Were smiling, glad of their release,
That Leningrad hung around its prisons
Like a worthless emblem, flapping its piece.
Shrill and sharp, the steam-whistles sang
Short songs of farewell
To the ranks of convicted, demented by suffering,
As they, in regiments, walked along -
Stars of death stood over us
As innocent Russia squirmed
Under the blood-spattered boots and tyres
Of the black marias.

I

You were taken away at dawn. I followed you
As one does when a corpse is being removed.
Children were crying in the darkened house.
A candle flared, illuminating the Mother of God. . .
The cold of an icon was on your lips, a death-cold
sweat
On your brow - I will never forget this; I will gather

To wail with the wives of the murdered streltsy (1)
Inconsolably, beneath the Kremlin towers.
[1935. Autumn. Moscow]

II

Silent flows the river Don
A yellow moon looks quietly on
Swanking about, with cap askew
It sees through the window a shadow of you
Gravely ill, all alone
The moon sees a woman lying at home
Her son is in jail, her husband is dead
Say a prayer for her instead.

III

It isn't me, someone else is suffering. I couldn't.
Not like this. Everything that has happened,
Cover it with a black cloth,
Then let the torches be removed. . .
Night.

IV

Giggling, poking fun, everyone's darling,
The carefree sinner of Tsarskoye Selo (2)
If only you could have foreseen
What life would do with you -
That you would stand, parcel in hand,
Beneath the Crosses (3), three hundredth in
line,
Burning the new year's ice
With your hot tears.
Back and forth the prison poplar sways
With not a sound - how many innocent
Blameless lives are being taken away. . .
[1938]

V

For seventeen months I have been screaming,
Calling you home.
I've thrown myself at the feet of butchers
For you, my son and my horror.
Everything has become muddled forever -
I can no longer distinguish
Who is an animal, who a person, and how long
The wait can be for an execution.
There are now only dusty flowers,
The chinking of the thurible,
Tracks from somewhere into nowhere
And, staring me in the face
And threatening me with swift annihilation,
An enormous star.
[1939]

VI

Weeks fly lightly by. Even so,
I cannot understand what has arisen,
How, my son, into your prison
White nights stare so brilliantly.
Now once more they burn,
Eyes that focus like a hawk,
And, upon your cross, the talk
Is again of death.
[1939. Spring]

VII
THE VERDICT

The word landed with a stony thud
Onto my still-beating breast.
Nevermind, I was prepared,
I will manage with the rest.

I have a lot of work to do today;
I need to slaughter memory,
Turn my living soul to stone
Then teach myself to live again. . .

But how. The hot summer rustles
Like a carnival outside my window;
I have long had this premonition
Of a bright day and a deserted house.
[22 June 1939. Summer. Fontannyi Dom (4)]

VIII
TO DEATH

You will come anyway - so why not now?
I wait for you; things have become too hard.
I have turned out the lights and opened the door
For you, so simple and so wonderful.
Assume whatever shape you wish. Burst in
Like a shell of noxious gas. Creep up on me
Like a practised bandit with a heavy weapon.
Poison me, if you want, with a typhoid exhalation,
Or, with a simple tale prepared by you
(And known by all to the point of nausea), take me
Before the commander of the blue caps and let me
glimpse
The house administrator's terrified white face.
I don't care anymore. The river Yenisey
Swirls on. The Pole star blazes.
The blue sparks of those much-loved eyes
Close over and cover the final horror.
[19 August 1939. Fontannyi Dom]

IX

Madness with its wings
Has covered half my soul
It feeds me fiery wine
And lures me into the abyss.

That's when I understood
While listening to my alien delirium
That I must hand the victory
To it.

However much I nag
However much I beg
It will not let me take
One single thing away:

Not my son's frightening eyes -
A suffering set in stone,
Or prison visiting hours
Or days that end in storms

Nor the sweet coolness of a hand
The anxious shade of lime trees
Nor the light distant sound
Of final comforting words.
[14 May 1940. Fontannyi Dom]

X
CRUCIFIXION

Weep not for me, mother.
I am alive in my grave.

1.
A choir of angels glorified the greatest hour,
The heavens melted into flames.
To his father he said, 'Why hast thou forsaken me!'
But to his mother, 'Weep not for me. . .'
[1940. Fontannyi Dom]

2.
Magdalena smote herself and wept,
The favourite disciple turned to stone,
But there, where the mother stood silent,
Not one person dared to look.
[1943. Tashkent]

EPILOGUE

1.
I have learned how faces fall,
How terror can escape from lowered eyes,
How suffering can etch cruel pages
Of cuneiform-like marks upon the cheeks.
I know how dark or ash-blond strands of hair
Can suddenly turn white. I've learned to recognise
The fading smiles upon submissive lips,
The trembling fear inside a hollow laugh.
That's why I pray not for myself
But all of you who stood there with me
Through fiercest cold and scorching July heat
Under a towering, completely blind red wall.

2.
The hour has come to remember the dead.
I see you, I hear you, I feel you:
The one who resisted the long drag to the open window;
The one who could no longer feel the kick of familiar
soil beneath her feet;
The one who, with a sudden flick of her head, replied,

'I arrive here as if I've come home!'
I'd like to name you all by name, but the list
Has been removed and there is nowhere else to look.
So,
I have woven you this wide shroud out of the humble
words
I overheard you use. Everywhere, forever and always,
I will never forget one single thing. Even in new
grief.
Even if they clamp shut my tormented mouth
Through which one hundred million people scream;
That's how I wish them to remember me when I am dead
On the eve of my remembrance day.
If someone someday in this country
Decides to raise a memorial to me,
I give my consent to this festivity
But only on this condition - do not build it
By the sea where I was born,
I have severed my last ties with the sea;
Nor in the Tsar's Park by the hallowed stump
Where an inconsolable shadow looks for me;
Build it here where I stood for three hundred hours
And no-one slid open the bolt.
Listen, even in blissful death I fear
That I will forget the Black Marias,
Forget how hatefully the door slammed and an old woman
Howled like a wounded beast.
Let the thawing ice flow like tears
From my immovable bronze eyelids
And let the prison dove coo in the distance
While ships sail quietly along the river.
[March 1940. Fontannyi Dom]

FOOTNOTES

1 An elite guard which rose up in rebellion
against Peter the Great in 1698. Most were either
executed or exiled.
2 The imperial summer residence outside St
Petersburg where Ahmatova spent her early years.
3 A prison complex in central Leningrad near the
Finland Station, called The Crosses because of the
shape of two of the buildings.
4 The Leningrad house in which Ahmatova lived.

Anna Akhmatova

Chuck Close at the Hermitage

Pictures taken by Abhay K.
Chuck Close- who is he?
A painter, photographer and a master printmaker. Chuck was born in Washington, USA in 1940. He has painted large portraits from photographs and
belongs to the school of hyperrealism.A hyperrealistic painting is a painting that resembles a high resolution digital photograph. For example this oil painting of Bill Clinton by Chuck Close.

The painting of this woman below by Chuck Close is also an example of a hyperrealistic painting.

Chuck Close also works with the carpets and the self portrait of Chuck Close that can be seen below is his work on a carpet.

Chuck Close is a master photographer as well. His photos of the top model Kate Moss has been published by the Adamson Editions, Washington DC. The six prints of Kate Moss by Chuck Close can be seen by clicking here.

Reading Gogol in the 21st century

Pic by the author, for more visit PICTURESQUE
I am already more than six months old in St. Petersburg living on Vasilivsky Island and working not very far away from the Nevsky Prospect but I could get to read the two most haunting short stories I have ever read- 'The Nose' and 'The Overcoat' by Nikolai Gogol just yesterday.

'The Nose' is surreal and bizarre story of Major Kavaliov who finds one fine morning that his nose has disappeared. He does not believe it at the first instance but the reality slowly sets in. He goes out in the city streets to look for his nose and to register a complain with the chief of the city police about his lost nose. At Kazan cathedral he finds his nose praying dressed in the attire of a state councillor which is of higher rank than a major. He is awe struck and gingerly approaches his nose to return to its right place but the Nose refuses to even recognize him. Baffled he goes to a newspaper office to put advertisement about his lost nose but the newspaper office refuses to entertain his request fearing loss of credibility for the newspaper. Finally the major mired in hopelessness retires to his apartment but there is a knock on the door and a policeman comes up with his dried and dead nose. Major Kavaliov calls the best doctor to put his nose back but the doctor declares it impossible. The major drowns in despair but in the morning he finds his nose intact as it always was. He goes around in the street courting women once again with a new vigour.

'The Nose' has many conotations. It is surreal, it is satarical but most of all it is about faith. The dates 25th March(when the major loses the nose) and 7 April (when he finds the nose) are the same day acrroding to the old Julian calendar and the new Georgian calendar and that day is celebrated as the day of 'Ascension' by the Orthodox church.

The Overcoat is a masterpiece and has all the elements of a great story. It tells about the society's obsession with the small material things, ranks,medals, social status etc. and the pervailing spritual vaccum in our lives. His tales become even more relevant in our times as we increasingly encounter material forces clapsing us all in its jaws. The Overcoat is a mirror for the humanity where we can see our indifference , atrocity and apathy to the fellow human beings because of our obsession with material things and lack of spritual consciousness.


The protagonist of 'The Overcoat' is Akaky Akakievich, a copying clerk who is a bald, middle aged, mediocre, unmarried St. Petersburger. Everybody at work makes fun of him and he always finds himself in wrong places at wrong times. He is almost subhuman in his old tattered overcoat and has only one desire i.e. to get his overcoat repaired but the tailor refuses to do the job and insists that Akaky Akakievich gets a new overcoat. With this begins the year long preparations for stitching a new overcoat- selecting the material for the overcoat, comparing prices, selecting the material for the collar etc. Akaky Akakievich saves money and invests all his energy to get a new overcoat and one fine day when he gets it he finds himself on the top of the world. His colleagues at the work do not take lightly to his share of happiness. They insist that he should throw a party to them and when he shows liitle interest in doing so then one of his juniors decides to throw a party and invites him to add some insult to Akaky Akakievich. Reluctant Akaky Akakiviech goes to the party but does not how to behave himself as he had never been to a party. While on the way back home his new overcoat is taken away by some hooligans in the street. Akaky Akakiviech is shocked and can't believe it. He goes to the police but of no use. The overcoat that lit up his life for a moment is taken away. His only light of life, his only hope is robbed and he catches high fever and dies after a few days. His ghost appears in the streets of St. Petersburg and snatches the overcoat of a high official who had burst over him when he had gone to him to complain about his lost overcoat.


Gogol was born in Sorochintsy, Ukraine on 1st April 1809. He moved to St. Petersburg in 1828 where he worked as a civil servant for a brief time and later as a history teacher. He wrote 'The Nose' between 1833-34 and 'The Overcoat' in 1842. He wrote his great play "The Government Inspector" in 1836 and his novel "Dead Souls", which he wrote in Rome, was published in 1842.

Gogol's work today seems to be of great importance to me and I'll read his other works soon and post reviews.