Episode 4: Of Books and Gems
If you want to understand Russian culture, you have to first acknowledge that this means very different things in different situations, depending on whom you ask and what, exactly, you mean by “culture.” Russians are very proud of their “kultura,” but with that word, they are not referring to celebrations, traditions, language, food, dress, or really any of the components of life we typically think of as cultural. When Russians say “kultura” they are referring to the music, art, and literature that make up a sort of high-brow, intellectually superior, Euro-centric vision of themselves. So, ballet is part of “kultura,” but the Kalinka dance isn’t. Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker is part of “kultura” but the Romani song Ochi Chernye (Black Eyes) isn’t. But ask any Russian to hum a few bars from The Nutcracker, and they may or may not be able to come up with something. Ask that same Russian to sing Ochi Chernye, and chances are they will be able to sing at least some of it.
Here’s a version of Ochi Chernye
Очи черные, очи страстные Очи жгучие и прекрасные. Как люблю я вас, как боюсь я вас Знать, увидел вас я в недобрый час
Translation: Black eyes, passionate eyes, fiery eyes, and beautiful. How I love you, how I fear you. I must have met you at an unlucky hour.
Intense, right? This was another one of my favorites, growing up. Not that I cared about the lyrics all that much. Beautiful, dark eyes are all very well, but the pathos and desire in those words were lost on my young mind. The melody grabbed my heart, though, and didn’t let go. It moaned and wailed in my ears, equal parts love song and dirge. Somehow, I understood the music, the pain and loss, the deep longing and hopelessness it expressed.
At home, I wasn’t a particularly expressive child, myself, at least not outwardly. I wasn’t dramatic, didn’t go around singing Romani ballads, or pretend to be a heroine in an adventure story. I was mostly quiet and compliant, a bookworm who was never so content as when the world left me alone in some hidden corner with a good story (and maybe a bowl of noodles). I spent hours reading, having learned to read at a pretty young age.
But in my mind, the stories I read came to vivid life, and I was there! I was Mowgli, living in the jungles of India, fighting Shere Khan, the tiger, leading my pack of wolves through our next adventure. I was Tom Sawyer, playing tricks on my neighbors, and Huck Finn, sailing down the Mississippi. The stories captured my imagination in the same way that music did!
I remember having toys when I was young, but I don’t remember playing with them much. There was only one beloved toy, a giant, stuffed, yellow thing, a bear or a dog, I don’t remember and might not have known at the time, either. Whatever it was, I did drag it around with me a lot, and it did feature in some of my story-induced play, always as a side character to my hero or heroine. When I played with other children and discovered that they had read or heard the same stories, our imaginations would combine to relive those stories together, playing out scenes from books, sometimes exactly as written, and sometimes re-imagined and improvised. There were the inevitable arguments about who got to be the lead at any given time, but we always worked it out.
Most of the time, we played this way using nothing but dialogue from the stories and our own selves, with no additional accessories. There were two exceptions, though. Once, when playing outside the apartment building I lived in, in the empty fields that surrounded the project, we found several small bags, which contained several dozen brightly colored, faceted glass beads. Where these had come from, we couldn’t even guess, and didn’t care! We divided these up among us, and the beads became part of our play. They were traded, fought over, worked into stories we had read or come up with ourselves. They were currency in a mythical kingdom! They were a lost pirate treasure! They were part of Alladin’s trove! They were a king’s ransom to be paid to retrieve his kidnapped daughter from a monster who held her captive! Eventually, the beads were all lost, scattered carelessly throughout the fields and playground of our little world. I wonder if any of them had been found later, by other children, to be once again included in plays of their imagination.
The second instance of using any kind of props as part of our play that I remember was also a case of a found object. Somewhere in the rubble around our buildings, someone discovered a piece of cable. Inside the black outer shell, there were lots and lots of small copper wires, each wire in its own rubber shell, but in many colors. These copper wires we plaited, twisted, formed into crowns and bracelets and necklaces, even rings. Eventually, these were lost, too, but I remember!
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