Dog Korolenko. We are driving along the roads of Europe

We are driving along the roads of Europe
Hans Zivers. Blood libel. Ur-Realist Records - Arctogaia-records, 2000

Dog Korolenko

Date of publication: September 28, 2000

Augustine says that we can help ourselves think about time if we start from the completeness of the whole - for example, the song that I undertake to sing from beginning to end. It, in itself whole, then unfolds in time. What kind of song is this? An early Christian hymn? Or human life? Or that praise of God, which turns out to be “the whole age,” totum saeculum, the history of the world? As with Aristotle, with Augustine we know time by the change of the soul: time is a changing soul, outside of which there is no measurement of time. This is not psychologism. The song that Augustine speaks of is essentially the same as the melody (tone) of presence, as Heidegger defines mood in his fundamental ontology.

Vladimir Bibikhin, "Mir"

The name "Blood Libel" was invented by Patrikey Lisidze . So he advised me to christen my group “Inhuman Music”. We didn't tell anyone about this - only Lisa . And now a year after this conversation, Ur-Realist Records, together with Arktogeya, is releasing a record of new - “well-forgotten old” - songs of the sad esoteric chansonnier Hans Sievers. The insert is decorated in Gothic style. The picture is written in red on black - what do you think ?.. Magic, as always .

the term “Blood libel” I know from Studia Сorolenсiana : the liberal Russian press of the 1910s called it the accusation of a famous people of ritual infanticide. The sacramental motif of the killing of infants is present in several of Sievers’ songs, but there it is woven into completely different contexts. Moreover, in its subtle virtual pre-existence, the album has a different name - “Bottles of Lies” (a collection of songs in real audio). For a long time I did not understand the meaning of both names and the connection between them. There was some kind of literary mystery in all this.

The name was also mysterious - Hans Sievers. The clue seems to lie not only in Evers's gothic style (the album includes the song "Ewers" about fairyland), but also in the "German Society for the Study of Ancient Germanic History and Ancestral Heritage," known as the Ahnenerbe . The founder of this institute was the prototypical Meister aus Deutschland - scientist and philosopher of the Faust type, skull-reader and seeker of Atlantis Hermann Wirth . In 1939, Ahnenerbe came under the jurisdiction of the SS, and the tougher “Hans”, Sievers, became its general secretary. I know from myself: a historical pseudonym is always an expanded metaphor. The hybrid of Hans Evers with the powerful heir of Wirth means the continuity of the warrior and the sage, the Kshatriya and the Brahman, the idea of ​​integration into power as a necessary step towards the implementation of a gigantic spiritual super-project.

According to the insert, Sievers' songs from 1981-1984 were recorded on "amateur audio equipment" in 1986 and are now released as "a tribute to the history of the Moscow creative underground of the late 1970s - early 1980s." Time is indeed important. in 1980 Vysotsky died . This death - and the very work of the “Tagansky bard” - marked the crisis of Russian art song, its gradual loss of its original claim to express a certain deep, extreme essence. Russian “rock”, or more precisely musicalized rock poetry, is now beginning to act in this capacity: the music was not extreme and less “rock” than Yuri Antonov . In this situation, projects bordering between rock and art song/chanson were bound to appear. And they appeared.

appeared Shcherbakov to give the author’s song a second wind by enhancing the culture in it , for which attempts the techies, which could not be fooled, declared him almost a “philologist”. Allusions to disturbing themes of Western literature and versification balancing act in long picture songs and reasoning songs are the common path of Shcherbakov and Sievers, in this they are allies. Only the first one mutters the same things, “human, all too human,” while the second one is metaphysical, “beyond good and evil.” From pure "art songs" he moves towards rock . Already in the Russian sense of the word.

appeared Khvostenko , who, like Sievers, sought to transcend the forms of art song and rock into a kind of European-Russian meta-chanson. According to Verbitsky, Sievers belongs to Mamleev’s Yuzhinsky salon , that is, to one of the main Moscow branches of the underground-samizdat continuum of the late 70s - early 80s, or, as it was called, “underground”. Khvostenko also enters this orbit. His infernal Orlandina , found in Zaragoza, a flute and a cloudy day, fearless couplets about the Last Judgment, endless Boschian half-animals and insects, the mysticism of the Vodka River , the Eurasian steppes of Lev Gumilyov and Khlebnikov - this is all already very “hot”, closer to the topic of our conversation . Now this, in the words of Shish Bryansky, “a cunning cultural grandfather,” through his work with “AuktYon” has joined rock, but rock itself is gradually losing its role as an extreme underground and is preparing to give way to the still almost undeveloped “new songfulness”. That’s when a meeting with the “Young South” bard seems relevant.

Hans Sievers has, as the French say, prèsance . Unearthly charm in the voice. A variety of rhythmic and metric figures on the guitar (blues, bossa nova, swing, smart-ass, waltz, rock and roll) and strange melodies, chords, seemingly random, but in fact carefully verified. The lyrics contain metaphysical anxiety cum grano salis: here there is “the seed of the terrible oh [feminine - P.K.] Satan”, and “red vampire-r-r” with an energetic guitar pa-ba-ba-bam , and even “ magical sex // with a shepherd named Rex." The songs contain many serious literary allusions, but they do not turn into an end in themselves for the author. Who from the 90s can you compare him with? Maybe with Shish Bryansky ? They are very different, but Shish , like Sievers, processes his predecessors like Pushkin, gives birth to something new and remains for many years not recorded and known under his bard name only for a narrow circle.

Sievers presents an independent path of synthesis of bard and rock songs with its simultaneous integration into a high European context. This context itself is openly stated as more than “literary”: rather philosophical-mystical, esoteric. The intonations of the masters of the author's song are carefully taken into account and slightly travestyed, for example, in Vysotsky's hysterical hoarseness and prolongation of sonorants ("...evil accord-r-rd") in the opening album "Astaroth", in "Agasfera" and other songs, but poetry, of course, smoother, more literary than Vysotsky’s, for which we are still sometimes ashamed. insinuatingly accusatory intonation In “The Old Master,” Okudzhava seems to be babbling ironically (“let’s, let’s, let’s, let’s...”), in “Moscow-1982,” Galich’s suddenly turns into a desperate cry of the “other” Vysotsky, not the “poet.” and-citizen,” and Nietzsche’s man-god: “But I will be a king here, // But I will be a monarch here, // I will drink this pain // In my white hands.” Hans Sievers goes far from the usual balladism of those Vysotskys, to the ambient spirit of another ballad, the “gothic”. In this alchemical distillation of the heritage of mainstream Russian bards, the esotericism of their genre crystallizes, which, if they had it somewhere, was unconscious.

Reading rock contexts is especially interesting. Listen to the third song of the album - “In a Soviet basement...”. "...During the week, during the week // He catches a big trout, // And in the evening at nine, the heavenly maidens // Joyfully share the bed with him . // In a buttoned tailcoat, in a buttoned tailcoat // He solemnly drinks kefir , // And the dogs bark, and the crayfish back away // In the darkness of Soviet apartments ." Isn’t it true, somewhere we heard such a tetrameter amphibrach-waltz, and even individual ends of quatrains? Clue. So, "Triangle" was released in 1981. And so, while one infernal old man is “sliding down the roof...” to die tomorrow like a dog, the other, “black as a cat,” is dancing in a Soviet basement with a book in his hand (a cheerful deception of expectation “in the hands of his Walter. .. Scott”, fraught with the metaphor “book = weapon”), and then dies, but in fact does not die - “and looks sadly out the window, // and looks anxiously out the window.” This old Master (apparently, it means some of the magicians of the Yuzhinsky underground, there were plenty of them there) is the real antithesis of the old man Kozlodoev, who should be soaked in the toilet. Many years later, Dugin will invite Kuryokhin to cut a cool cut-up: they say, shouldn’t we mix BeGe’s old “romantic” songs with his current self-satisfied Guruan carts? And Kuryokhin will answer: “They won’t understand.”

The next track is “Puberty Revolution”: the wild Chistyakovism in the voice before “Zero”, aggressively rhymed with wet dreams “Revolution” before “Civil Defense”, Mamon’s chaos and sur with abacdede -strophe until Petya’s metaphysical “three hundred minutes se-ek-sa” and “..it started so-so” (I want to shout in the old fashioned way: “ dear father ”). Indeed, a lot has been written in Russian rock about how the guys are not childishly sausage . not always so clearly visible behind this “human, too human” wobble But the subtle, subtle reality of Initiation was . The alleged real chain connecting Mamonov with Sievers is Shumov and Golovin .

The format of the original song is not only expanded by Sievers towards rock, but also deepens towards its real roots. In the Russian context, these are partly romances (with the only amendment that they were not performed by the authors), and even more so by Vertinsky , whose stylized and decadent imagery was developed, each in his own way, by Greben, Khvost, and Shcherba. Or even not Vertinsky, but Severyanin , with a nickname similar to the “sweet word Nord ” and with “ego-futurism” absolutely sovereign, like the “ur-realism” of Sievers and Sternberg . D e ka d e n tskaya kok etlivy " el e gantnaya stroller " by Igor Severyanin (the one in the e l e Ktriche bi e nyi e elastic sh e l e st e la) is brought by Sievers to the most unimaginable metaphysical threshold. "O romantic daffodils ss ... // O eonic nat sy zm // pupils of the o forbidden rchids // e in the ethereal s x ", " O erotic ... His name is whim...", " o rical O eif ts y nism ...". "Pampered-n e fritovy fash y st...". "P e rv er rt perfumes , furs of Madame Tudor, // Sterile shine of the toxic plan of this..." "Ster-vulture paran o idal sf e r-r, Blind b e rill-l d e lyrium st e ll-l...". In short, "from the buds of unopened daffodils // The d e ka d entskoe Nishto flew."

AP's European source, which she is not always aware of, is French chanson, at least in its most advanced versions. It is no coincidence that one transparently hinted at Villon, the other constantly went to Paris and sang with the Paul Mauriat orchestra, and some Sukhanov set it to the music of some Verlaine . Khvost, with his naive macabre Russian villonism (“Oh, why was I hanged, God, // I don’t know how I was hung, God, // I don’t know how I was hanged”), with Brassans’s Trompetes de la Renome , translated more freely than Freidkin , with the popular Prisoner of Nantes , the French trace looks more reflected, aware of its connection with high poetry, with Baudelaire-Verlaine-Rimbaud. The French world is also important for Sievers, who gazes intently and restlessly at where “... Notre Dame cried // pa-a to you, pa-a to you, ma-adam...”. In many of his songs, a mixture of languages ​​openly dominates: “Ah, Hélène, ah, Hélène, // ou ta rob de matin?”, “Your veil awaits you, ta ville natal awaits you...”. Some kind of “unmanifested” French chanson is recognizable in many of Sievers’ intonations. But not the one like Aznavour , not even the mocker and blasphemer Brassans , and not Brel , no, not software. Most likely, it is the spirit of other, then still hidden, performers. The archetypal chancon par excellence.

And so you and I, following this false French trail, are taxiing straight onto other, forgotten paths . And we drive along these paths and listen to Hans Sievers sing with the charming courtly and avant-garde intonations of Andrei Mironov:

In a wonderful morning mood
In a sky blue Cadillac
We are driving along the roads of Europe,
Where the morning light is so beautiful.

Sky blue fascists
They greet us with their right hand,
You give them sly glances
And you laugh joyfully in response.

Sky blue fascists
In a sky blue Cadillac
There are terrible signs on their armbands,
And in the hands of huge cats

(Cadillac).

“We are driving along the roads of Europe...” - secret, hidden, esoteric Europe. In the clutches of the bull Jupiter, to whom everything is allowed, she has terrible dreams. What are they talking about? About the game with Astaroth in "tarok" - "on universes and worlds." About the fairy “Annabelle” in the “magic castle of Maldoror”: “... and the blue child’s corpse // She cradles...”. About sacramental games on the island of Lesbos the kingdom of the parties e - e - e legs , where “ is e - e - e for.” About how “I admired your white body // Crystal eye hanging in the dark.” About the virgin birth from the devil. About the structures of alchemical thought. About a sky blue Cadillac, a red limousine, a black Walther, orange and pink enemies, a crimson man, about the land of purple fairies and about the purple color that a beautiful lady is looking for in the Garden of the Hesperides. About the tragic “jade fascist” who awaits the night of long knives. About the “inflamed, languid silk” of the French actress, whom the “SA divisions” are attacking. About the black Saracen and the white rose. About infernal trips with the predatory Mother or the Harpy bird. About the Marquis de Sade, whose “...kisses from hell are // sweeter than sweet poison” and whose “your children scream one word at night: don't ." There will be coffin lids, // There will be gnashing of teeth, // And viscous childish blood..."

Are you scared? Are you uncomfortable? Are you bored? You want to recoil: “Fascists, some kind of slander... Do we need it ?” Dear humanists, wipe your glasses. Re-read the notes you took at university. This is your “history of European literature”, your favorite foreign country , n'est-ce pas? Only, maybe, before you didn’t pay attention to what was inside her.

On a blue bracelet
Silence fell.
Gave me violette
Master of evil dreams.
Gave me violette
Paradoxical dreams
Affectionate as an answer
To the most terrible question.

I slept for a very long time
Among the old books
And at night I rocked
The metaphysical cradle.
I walked for a very long time
In transcendental dreams,
And finally blossomed
Violette on my lips.

Violette - neon light,
Whispers of dead gentlemen,
Violette - purple delirium,
In the secrets of mirror waters

(Violette).

Our Europe. She was always eager to go there, to the “secrets of the mirror waters.” And now it’s still a little torn. The same Foucault and Bataille are not just “postmodernists”. They are spirit-seers, mediums, transcendental meta-politicians. America has already abandoned all this, but Europe is still sad. And here a guess arises: what if this is not even Europe at all, but its embodied subconscious - Russia ?

There is almost no Russia in these songs. Only there is a master in a Soviet basement , a glimpse of a policeman, Uncle Vanya and poor Liza from the school curriculum in “Puberty Revolution”. Another otherworldly Moscow 1982 in the song of the same name and some very vague shadows of Eurasia in “Cinderella”. The Russian language is only a surface, a transparent shell: the noumenal Hans Sievers does not sing in Russian. He sings in an all-European way, in the language of the “damned poets”, Lautreamont, Bataille, Serrano, Evola, Meyrink, Evers, Crowley and the mad Edgar Poe wandering around Europe incognito. In the metalanguage of tradition - not accidentally manifested as Russian: it is the Russian who is the “all-European” and the future of Europe, it is in him that the fulfillment of its violet and lilac dreams.

Where is he, what is he doing now? Will there be new songs?

I want more Hans Sievers!