The Volokh Conspiracy
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For a Less Pessimistic Take from a Russian Singer
Andrey Makarevich, another founding father of Russian (originally Soviet) rock was interviewed on a Ukrainian TV program two weeks ago. Unsurprisingly to me, he spoke in Russian, though the interviewers asked him started by asking questions in Ukrainian (they later switched to Russian). They asked him, among other things, how messages opposing the war can be spread in Russia, and he understandably answered that he didn't know, though he thought it was important to try and he hoped that eventually the word would get out.
Instead, he sang an older song of his that is a nice bookend to the beautiful but deeply pessimistic Vertinsky song sung by Boris Grebenshchikov, which I blogged yesterday. If you need some cheering up after hearing that one, here's a translation of Makarevich's (again loose and not rhymed and metered, which of course saps the words of their power):
Believe not in promises empty and tales,
The Savior won't save you from prison or ruin,
But there's slightly more life than death in this world,
And light in the world a bit more than the dark.
Let your path put trials aplenty before you,
Let novel prognoses put fear in our minds,
But still there is less of the devil than God,
And light in the world a bit more than the dark.Let sunset and sunrise debate in the heavens,
Let aged dogmas be worn down to holes,
Between black and white there still is no balance,
And that is what lets the world move.True, evil has crawled down the centuries to us,
And the sky again has been covered with smoke,
But there still is more life than death in this world,
And light in the world a bit more than the dark.