Slavic music mini-series #2: The Wintering of Beasts

The first installment of my Slavic music mini-series featured a relatively accessible, catchy Ukrainian rock song.

And now for something completely different.

Konstantin Arbenin is a Russian poet. Or rather, a POET. His music is so-so - it is there to support his amazing lyrics, but doesn't do much to enhance them, in my humble opinion. In this, he continues the Soviet bard tradition, which I hope to revisit later. Arbenin, and his group "The Wintering of Beasts" (Zimovje Zverej), has a cult following. This is one of the groups Anton Gorodetsky from Night Watch listens to on his mini-disc player. Arbenin composed many songs of the fantastic, including a song based on Lukjanenko's SF novel Rough Draft.

This song is not fantastic per se, it is a song about St. Petersburg (Admiralty, the sphinxes) and what it means to be a writer. Note that he does things with the language here that I will not be able to faithfully translate, because English just doesn't swing this way, and because in my translations I am usually trying to stay faithful to the original rather than rewrite it as a poem of my own.



ETA, Oh god, I really cannot translate this, it's too multilayered and too culture-specific, EEP. Nevertheless.

Gin and Tonic

He was jealous of the rain
and covered with his jean jacket
her June-colored locks,
 clutching the umbrella to the elbow.

The day waited patiently for darkness,
life began in the middle, 
and the stores yawned with their unbridled mouths.
  But instead of  stars, they were protectedby two benevolent spirits  - Gin and Tonic ,and it seemed that the world would drown in them, barely touching the ground.
 And it seemed to me it seemed to me 
that white envy is not a sin, that black envy isn't smoke,  And I could not write, That night I could not write,
I was getting used to being the "great silent"*                         (* this reference is to silent film; I suspect there's an English equivalent, which I do not know)
 He was jealous of the gods and sheltered her under the bridge from the sky while pigeons begged for bread and would kill themselves for a shotglass. 
 And the flesh swaying, and the soul once moreborne in a storm's dance from the inability to stay to the inability to tame; 
 The evening of long cigarettes
molted in municipal colors
he scared the sphinxes by  answering
every trick question.
  It isn't just for fun that bloodin the veins goes against the flow. 
Here it is - the moment of braking - collapse of unity - and again - the solid ground. 

And it seemed to me ...
The great wave retreated melting its sugar in the haze,
With inspiration, he felt jealous
of poetry, of Dovlatov, of Ordynka -But instead of rhymes, he was followedby two young sphinxes: Gin and Tonic,and the air was stubborn and subtle,
having absorbed the diffused dawn.