Samuil Marshak

1887-1964 

Back in the perestroika era, all of Moscow clamored to see Henrietta Yanovskaya’s marvelous Goodbye America, at the Young People’s Theater. The production was supposedly based on “Mister Twister” by Samuil Marshak, but in fact the fairytale show had very little to do with the ideologically-surefooted tale that we all knew from childhood about

Mister

Twister,

Former minister,

Mister

Twister,

Businessman and banker,

Owner of factories,

Newspapers, and ships…

Мистер

Твистер,

Бывший министр,

Мистер

Твистер,

Делец и банкир,

Владелец заводов,

Газет, пароходов

…who came to Leningrad and refused to stay in a hotel because a black person was among the guests. After some time in the Soviet Union, he quickly came to see things differently. 

Yanovskaya’s play had less to do with Mister Twister than it did with the image of America in the minds of a generation that could not dream of one day seeing the United States. But Marshak’s presence could be felt and, after an hour and a half of side-splitting comedy, one of the actors suddenly stepped to the edge of the stage and addressed the audience:

Kids, don’t believe it. I don’t wish to shock,

But you have been tricked by your Uncle Marshak.

This silly tale couldn’t happen here,

Not in the Hotel Astoria or even the chic Angleterre.

Дети, не верьте. Все было не так.

Вас обманул взрослый дядя Маршак.

Быть не могло этой глупой истории 

Ни в «Англетере», Ни даже в «Астории».

Many years have passed, but from time to time I still ponder the question of the extent to which the marvelous poet and translator Samuil Yakovlevich Marshak deceived me and my fellow readers, that the facts of his life contradict the beauty of his art.

Marshak entered every Soviet citizen’s world while they were still in early childhood. He came in the form of “Mister Twister,” with lines that instantly stuck in your memory.

If the daughter so wills it,

No question! So be it.

Все, чего требует дочка, 

должно быть исполнено. Точка.

Or:

You’re not in Chicago, my dear.

Вы не в Чикаго, моя дорогая.

Or the charming “Tender Age in a Cage.”

Look at the little owlets

Babies sitting side by side.

When they are not sleeping,

They are eating,

When they are eating,

They are not sleeping.

Взгляни на маленьких совят -

Малютки рядышком сидят.

Когда не спят,

Они едят.

Когда едят,

Они не спят.

Or the lady who “checked her baggage – a couch, a suitcase, a valise, a painting, a basket, a cardboard box, and a little doggie…”

And of course there was the unforgettable “Oh, forgetful scatterbrain, who resides on Basin Lane,” who “instead of putting on his hat, which was his daily plan, walked outside with head adorned by a frying pan” and who “to purchase the beverage he most often drank, went straight to his local savings bank.” Furthermore, “having reached the station platform, he walked inside a railway car, but as it wasn’t part of any train, he wasn’t going far.” Every now and then he would look out the window and ask what station he had reached and was always surprised to hear that the station was Leningrad.

These lines were such an essential part of our childhood, that today they easily roll off our tongues. Marshak’s works, much like Griboyedov’s verse comedy Горе от ума (known in English translation as The Woes of Wit or Woe from Wit) that appeared over a century earlier, spawned countless sayings – his words become our words. 

Years passed, and the theatrical Marshak entered our lives. I remember one of my very first visits to the theater and the excitement I felt as the chandeliers of the Maly Theater gradually dimmed before the curtain was raised on Marshak’s Умные вещи (Smart Things). And I cannot begin to calculate how many dozens of times I read and reread Двенадцать месяцев (Twelve Months), feeling pangs of empathy for the poor stepdaughter, sent out into the pre-New Year’s forest to hunt for snowdrops, or how I laughed at the young queen mangling the words of the dictation, “The grass is greening, the sun is shining.”

Still more years passed and it turned out that Marshak was the one who gave Russian readers the sonnets of Shakespeare and the poems of Robert Burns (he gained English from studying at the University of London prior to World War I). Now we know that Marshak’s sonnets had little resemblance to Shakespeare’s and that his version of Burns was not quite what the Scotsman wrote, but I doubt this is terribly important. If there had been no Marshak, then Russian culture would have been deprived of 66 Shakespearean sonnets and would have known nothing about what happens when “a body meet a body / Comin thro’ the glen.” 

These verses would not have existed for Russians, few of whom know foreign languages. Shakespeare and Burns would have remained distant, at the farthest edge of our consciousness, and would not have occupied the vast mental landscape that Samuil Yakovlevich provided them. 

And yet, this man – who was a part of all our lives, who spoke to us from the pages of his books and translations – was not actually the kindly, affectionate grandfather of us all that we imagined him to be...

Samuil Yakovlevich was born in Voronezh on November 3, 1887, and grew up in a Jewish family, a descendant of rabbis. In his pre-Soviet youth, he wrote poetry to commemorate the death of the founder of Zionism, Theodor Herzl. The critic Vladimir Stasov was so impressed with the youth’s poetry that he connived to help the family get permission to live in St. Petersburg – outside the Pale of Settlement. Yet this same Stasov once told the young Samuil not to “renounce your culture and your faith.” And somehow Samuil managed to reconcile his Jewish upbringing with a successful Soviet existence, with the countless awards he received under Stalin (including four Stalin Prizes and one Lenin Prize), with official recognition.

In the 1920s and 1930s, Marshak headed up marvelous children’s magazines. Meanwhile, many of the wonderful authors in his circle were arrested, including Kharms and Zabolotsky. These two were accused of belonging to the “Marshak terrorist group,” yet Marshak himself somehow managed to survive the Stalin era unscathed. Is it true that Stalin crossed Samuil Yakovlevich’s name off a list of those to be arrested, calling him “a good children’s poet”? How was Marshak able to live with memories of the blows that fell so close to him, of the friends who had perished? Was he on good terms with his own conscience? We cannot know.

This author of tenderhearted children’s poems was, it turns out, moody, peevish, and egotistical. For many years he engaged in a running competition with Kornei Chukovsky for pride of place among Soviet children’s poets. He argued with Chukovsky and broke off relations with him for many years. This is the origin of the famous epigram, “As they parted at the station, he placed a kiss upon his cheek, but he later said ‘Chukovsky! What a scoundrel, what a sneak!’ Oh, forgetful scatterbrain, who resides on Basin Lane.”

Is it true, as Chukovsky asserted, that he preempted other people’s translations? Is it true that near the end of his life he became abnormally avaricious? In the end, what difference does it make? I have no desire to know how Marshak survived the 1930s, or to compare his sonnet translations with the Shakespearian texts that they resemble only slightly, or to hear about his run-ins with his literary brethren. I do not even want to introduce evidence in his defense, for example the fact that Chukovsky and Marshak had the courage to send a joint telegram in support of Joseph Brodsky when the poet was charged with parasitism. 

I am well aware that if certain of Marshak’s brilliant lines did not exist – if there was no “Это что за остановка, Бологое иль Поповка?” (a marvelous rhyme from the story about the scatterbrain from Basin Street that loses all its pith in literal translation – “What station is this, Bologoye or Popovka?”) or “Эй, не стойте слишком близко, я тигренок, а не киска” (“Hey, don’t stand so close, I’m a tiger cub and not a kitty”), and if there had not been the wonderful twelve months gathering in a forest clearing on New Year’s Eve or if the words had not been written “И какая вам забота, если у межи целовался с кем-то кто-то вечером во ржи” (the rough equivalent of Robert Burn’s “Should a body meet a body, coming through the rye, should a body kiss a body, need a body cry?”) – if none of that had ever existed, then I and many others would not have been who we are. And however silly the story of Mister Twister may have been, it did poke fun at the powerful of this world; it did teach kindness and justice; and, most importantly, it was absolutely brilliantly written. So no, Marshak did not deceive me.