Letters to the Editor

To the Editors:

I just received my first issue of Russian Life. I read with great interest the comments by Alex Gordeuk [Letters, Oct/Nov 1999], and I could not disagree more.

Your articles are not too long.  They are as long as is needed to tell the reader what needs being said. I, too, used to subscribe to Soviet Life and disagree that it was a more informative and entertaining magazine.  For example, I would compare what was being said about Soviet agriculture with my personal experiences at various Sovkhoz’s and Kolkhoz’s as part of an agricultural delegation, and would observe substantial cognitive dissonance between what Soviet Life said and what I observed.  Enough said.  SL was better than nothing, but it falls far short of RL.

Your article on Lermontov is a good example. There is no way that you can shorten such an important subject into McDonald’s-type predigested tidbits. Every word was important.  The same goes for the hard-hitting article on the present state of Russian prison life.

You are not going to become a USA Today type of magazine, I hope.

You are to be congratulated on an outstanding magazine. I must admit that your editorial candor is most refreshing.

Sincerely,

Frederick A. Stresen-Reuter II

Lake Geneva, WI

To the Editors:

Just want to commend you on your wonderful magazine.  I didn’t know it existed until it appeared amongst our library’s collection of periodicals.  Anyway, I read the August/September edition cover-to-cover and then sent in for a subscription.

FYI, the impressario in the political cartoon feature would have been (Sol) Hurok, not Yurok.  Hurok made his name bringing premiere European talent to Broadway (for example, he introduced this country to the then recent Oxford grads Peter Cooke, Dudley Moore, Jonathan Miller and Alan Bennett in “Beyond the Fringe”).

In the feature on the convent at Borodino, the correct expression for a woman joining a religious order would be “taking the veil” (as opposed to “the cloth”).  Priests, ministers, pastors, etc. of all denominations would be referred to as “men of the cloth”.

Best regards,

Sarah Gallagher

To the Editors:

Thank you for your magazine. My wife and I returned home from Russia in January with our baby boy. I have been looking for a magazine about Russian life ever since.  We want to learn about Russia so we can pass it on to Jordan.  He was 51⁄2 months old when we came home and has been growing like a weed ever since.  He is now 13 months old and starting to walk.

Thanks again,

Jack, Jane & Jordan Copeland

To the Editors:

Thank you for your very interesting and informative magazine, Russian Life.

However, in your Vol. 42, No. 5 issue, in the article “A Widow’s Legacy,” there is an error. On page 56, the icon is not of Christ, as stated, but of John the Baptist, holding his own head. Three things make this obvious:

1. The inscription on the icon says “Saint Righteous John Baptist” in Church Slavonic;

2. Faces of the man and severed head are identical;

3. Halo of Jesus Christ is distinct from other saints. The one shown is not His.

Sincerely,

Sergej Cherjavsky

Rochester, NY

To the Editors:

Ekho Moskvy’s salute of Mikhail Gorbachev as “Russia’s most important politician of the 20th century (Russian Life, Aug/Sep 1999) may not be as fanciful as the heavy stride of history might suggest. For many Americans, Gorbachev’s brief flash of light was the brightest star of the political firmament. His eclipse, we feel, was as much (or more) the result of American procrastination as of the systemic card-stack against anything like a ready acceptance of “Perestroika” in Russia. The legions of reaction and selfish greed took over before even the foundation of a containment wall could be completed.

Respectfully,

Julian E. Merris, Jr.

Ventura, CA

To the Editors:

When I studied Russian in college, I got interested in Russian poetry, and the fact that it doesn’t translate well into English. The translations you have used in your recent articles on Pushkin and Lermontov are perfect examples of what I mean, and when I read the translation of Lermontov’s poem, Parus (The Sail), I had to write to you.

I know that poem by heart, and once recited it in class. My professor was in tears, seeing that an American loved this poem the way Russians do. It sounds so gorgeous in Russian!

I was determined to translate some of both Pushkin’s and Lermontov’s poems in blank verse, so that people who don’t know Russian could at least have an idea of the beauty of the thoughts and images in them. I even had an offer from a publisher to put out a book of them, but I was too lazy to devote my life to this project, so it never happened.

But I did do translations of several poems, and my favorite is Parus. Here it is, without the “spot” and “secret plot” which appear in the translation you used.

The Sail

A solitary white sale appears

In the fog above the blue sea!..

What does he seek in the far country?

Why does he flee his homeland?

The wind whips up the playful waves,

And the mast bends and creaks ...

Alas! It is not happiness he seeks

Nor is he fleeing from happiness!

The bright sea streams beneath him,

Above him beams the golden sun ...

But he, rebellious, seeks the tempest,

As if in tempests there is peace!

Sincerely,

Ruth H. Lucas

West Hartford, CT