Polyushke Polye
I'm sure that my spelling is not standard. In my priggish younger years, a long time ago, I liked to listen to Red Army Songs, inter alia, as I walked the several miles to school. The Soviet Union had fallen, and somewhere in my younger mind I liked the idea that the Red Army was now singing songs in studios rather than menacing the west in the service of some totalitarian abomination. I especially liked 'Polyushke Polye' and 'Ochi Chernye',--'my field' and 'dark eyes'.
It's odd how songs can sum up eras. One of my favourite hymns, for instance, How Great Thou Art, is set to a tune drawn from a traditional Swedish melody. Yet, that tune, rearranged and varied in tempo, was also the basis of the Horst Wessel Song , the song of the armies of the night.
All the complications of the twentieth century can be perceived in that one musical knot; hymns bound up with the eruption of the Satanic principle just as a page of Rousseau read languidly under a summer tree or in a public house might be made of the stuff of the gulag. One doesn't have to read John Webster to see the skull beneath the skin.
The darkest sides of our traditions, and the depths of the west's shame, are inseparable from some of our glories, and it has always been that way. Nazis thrilled to Die Fahne Hoch, worshipping their perverted anti-christian parody of Catholic institutionalism, in part because the Church I love was so flawed and sick at the time that it allowed that badness out. Good Americans sang of Custer's Horse Comanche and forgot the Trail of Tears. I used to think of God when I heard from the devil.
They'll be singing Polyushke Polye in the Caucasus mountains by the end of the day, if anyone remembers the lyrics. As I write, Russian operations in Georgia have been declared over by President Medvedev. Thanks to decades of Green nonsense, we Europeans can now look forward to paying the Russians a great deal to keep warm in the winters to come.
This version of Polyushke Polye links to the Russian Army's Tribute to john Paul II ; this to Ochi Chernye, and this to Farewell of Slavianka.
Things are all going to end in tears unless the political and moral character of western leaders, and I don't mean what they do in private or how they treat their dogs, improves radically. We need nuclear power, clean coal, food security and a very tough grasp of our interests, and soon.
Unfortunately, what we may end up with is lifestyle narcissism, hubris, and a world made by and for the super-rich. If you want that, just pause, take out the earphones, and listen to the song and the sounds drifting over from the mountains and the steppe. You may just experience some apperception of what follows after.
I'm sure that my spelling is not standard. In my priggish younger years, a long time ago, I liked to listen to Red Army Songs, inter alia, as I walked the several miles to school. The Soviet Union had fallen, and somewhere in my younger mind I liked the idea that the Red Army was now singing songs in studios rather than menacing the west in the service of some totalitarian abomination. I especially liked 'Polyushke Polye' and 'Ochi Chernye',--'my field' and 'dark eyes'.
It's odd how songs can sum up eras. One of my favourite hymns, for instance, How Great Thou Art, is set to a tune drawn from a traditional Swedish melody. Yet, that tune, rearranged and varied in tempo, was also the basis of the Horst Wessel Song , the song of the armies of the night.
All the complications of the twentieth century can be perceived in that one musical knot; hymns bound up with the eruption of the Satanic principle just as a page of Rousseau read languidly under a summer tree or in a public house might be made of the stuff of the gulag. One doesn't have to read John Webster to see the skull beneath the skin.
The darkest sides of our traditions, and the depths of the west's shame, are inseparable from some of our glories, and it has always been that way. Nazis thrilled to Die Fahne Hoch, worshipping their perverted anti-christian parody of Catholic institutionalism, in part because the Church I love was so flawed and sick at the time that it allowed that badness out. Good Americans sang of Custer's Horse Comanche and forgot the Trail of Tears. I used to think of God when I heard from the devil.
They'll be singing Polyushke Polye in the Caucasus mountains by the end of the day, if anyone remembers the lyrics. As I write, Russian operations in Georgia have been declared over by President Medvedev. Thanks to decades of Green nonsense, we Europeans can now look forward to paying the Russians a great deal to keep warm in the winters to come.
This version of Polyushke Polye links to the Russian Army's Tribute to john Paul II ; this to Ochi Chernye, and this to Farewell of Slavianka.
Things are all going to end in tears unless the political and moral character of western leaders, and I don't mean what they do in private or how they treat their dogs, improves radically. We need nuclear power, clean coal, food security and a very tough grasp of our interests, and soon.
Unfortunately, what we may end up with is lifestyle narcissism, hubris, and a world made by and for the super-rich. If you want that, just pause, take out the earphones, and listen to the song and the sounds drifting over from the mountains and the steppe. You may just experience some apperception of what follows after.
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