Endquote: Sots-Art Literature and Soviet Grand Style

Transfiguration of Kitsch—Timur Kibirov's Sentiments: A Farewell Elegy for Soviet Civilization

Gregory Freidin Transfiguration of KitschTimur Kibirov's Sentiments A Farewell Elegy for Soviet Civilization A mad, mad dream and horror were imposed on an entire people-from the Kuril Islands to the Carpathian Mountains-as a daily regimen of existence. -Sergei Gandlevskii, Brain Surgery "Disneyland," Mr. Striedter said dismissively, "a Potemkin fa9ade." -Alan Cowelll POTEMKINLAND To appreciate Timur Kibirov's poetry, consider its conditions of possibility. Imagine for a moment that you are having a bad dream. You are at home but at the same time in Disneyland. You see Mickey Mouse outside your bedroom window. The sun is shining. You are happy. You want to shake hands with Mickey. Mickey is waiting. He is stretching out his gloved hand. You notice he has a gun in it, and the gun is now pointing at you. You run for help to Donald Duck, but Donald Duck ... you know Donald Duck. He is now with the gang ofthe Seven Dwarfs, and you avert your eyes lest you see what they are about to do to Snow White. You run to the fountain to splash some water in your face and hope that this nightmare will go away. But the fountain is not what it used to be. Wheezing and hissing, it shoots into the air a solitary rusty jet that goes splat on an old mattress, resting limply in the empty pool. Refuse is blowing in the breeze and you wade through discarded wrappers, watermelon rind, plastic bottles, and burger boxes. Around you ugly beggars with festering sores do their two-step shufRe. They stretch out their hands. They tap you on your shoulder. They beg. Aggressively. 123 Gregory Freidin This could not be real, you say to yourself, just could not be. You want to scream. You scream, and you wake up. Thank God, it was only a dream! You look around now. Where are you? Is this Disneyland? No, this is the Theme Park of Soviet Civilization! Disneyland is the other way. You tum and see Mickey Mouse pulling a gun on you. You run for help to Donald Duck, but Donald Duck ... It is just such a nightmarish Potemkin village-a Disneyland from hell or from Donald Barthelme-that serves as the return address of Timur Kibirov 's message in a bottle, a collection of poetry, Sentiments [Santimenty]. Published in 1994, Sentiments conveys a sense of what life was like in the twilight years of the Soviet Union-from the communal apartment experience to unheated outhouses in winter. A twentieth-century Atlantis, the Soviet Union was not destined to sink. As befits the less fabulous times, it became a theme park of its own fallen civilization, where the latest Western intellectual fashions blend with the dense and hoary traditions of Russia's antimodern past. As civilizations fall, many poets rush to respond to the call for memories , but in the end few are chosen. Ostensibly a lyriC, self-consciously sentimental poet, Kibirov is among them. Every poem in his collection may be used as a basis for reconstruction of Soviet Russian civilization as it resonated in the hearts of its citizens. Like a folk ballad or Homer's catalog of ships, these poems appear telescoped into infinity, with variations piled upon variations, detail upon detail, retarding the coda ad infinitum: ... You [Russia] know how to share the last ruble, How to confiscate it, or to booze it away, How to drown the great grandchildren Of your great writers! You can dance till you drop, Compose verses till dawn, And right there and then, tear A sheet from the same notebook and-IookYou write a denunciation of your neighbor, Quarrel over the communal garbage pail, Send Frenchmen into space in a rocket, Get stoned in the evening subway. You strike demonstrators with shovels,2 You deride the stubborn Estonians3 And imagine that your cowardly soul Makes for True Spirituality. Dekulakized through and through, you weep from pity, Deprived of Christ, you are busy painting Easter eggs, 12.4 Transfiguration of Kitsch-Timur Kibirov's Sentiments You toil like a slave building factories and roads To save up for a coat for the winter ... Oh your every last dive at the town gate, Your every last coin clutched in the hand, Your every last gulp of free booze, Your Lenin lodged in every last head. With sadness, you avert your eyes from the gallows Pushkin had to cover...