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By night I talk to lamp-posts and walls, to Roman helmets and caryatids. I discuss the methodology of social phenomenon with my gestures, the fear of space with germs, I argue about sensual attraction with bowler hats, coats, canes, noses, moustaches and the wind.
By day, I am hanging pictures of illusion. Nobody knows the colour of my eyes. The history of language is a cocktail of regurgitated sounds cascading as memories of cosmic spheres. The gestures of an armless dancer are wordless mimicry of ancient movements of our spirits. I fail to define them with words.
A strange business, when one comes to think about it. Parallelepipeds are the tragedy of philology; wisdoms, the root of consciousness. Idle thoughts, cerebral playfulness, shadows buried in muffs walk on water. Bearded men carry the weight of this World on their shoulders, the chronology of events is running backwards, tripping, tumbling, exploding.
I caught sight of an inexpressible surrounding. The mirrors burst into laughter in a beautiful and cascading tonality. That is my last conscious impression of ordinary reality.
* * *
I was born in a coffin, surrounded by nymphs and satyrs and the palm-shaded melody of a Hawaiian guitar. Philostrartus is my name, author of Lilliputian ballads and formulas for construction of non-existent objects.
My nanny read to me, under the green light of evening lampshades, the Downfall of Humanism. Between the thick folds of the middle ages, between horror and desolation, mother combed my hair, patted my cheeks and gave me a kiss. I am not dogmatic, I am far from stupid. I live in heroic times with a shimmering dead sun and mythological beasts dividing people into necessary and unnecessary.
An unknown poet committed a spiritual manslaughter and disappeared into the remote past tense, his footprints swept away by the wind.
I died in a cradle, in the middle of a desert, surrounded by the dramatic, gesticulating statues of prophets and philosophers. One of them ate the arrows of a clock, another one swallowed a whole calendar page.
I don’t like this life, real and concrete to the bone’s marrow. Goodbye starry nights, apple trees in bloom, houses of ill-repute, sacred madness, divination, the lady with camellias, Syrian chariots, barbaric imitations, the waiving of hands. My dream is over.
* * *
I was born Jeremiah Babkin in 1895, a son of a bitch and a crook. I know very little about myself. I died in 1958, a completely sober, ugly old writer, a fellow with no pretensions of being anyone special. I died from a broken heart. What remains to be said? I tiptoe through the list of my occupations:
Student – post and Telegraph Office Commandant – Doctor (for two days) – Shoemaker – Agent for Criminal Investigation – Private Detective – Instructor for Chicken Breeding – Instructor for Rabbit Breeding – Barber – Weight Master – Bath House Attendant – Card Player – Actor – Policeman – Soldier – Journalist.
Here I list the table of my life’s events:
Broke my leg – once
Prayed to God – 2 times
Arrested – 6 times
Sentenced to death – once
World wars fought – 1
Wounded – 3
Fought in revolutions – 1
Committed suicide – 2 times
Got beaten up – 3
Fought a duel – 1
Locked in a refrigerator by mistake – 1
Drank beer with Yesenin – twice
Met Rabindranath Tagore – 0 times
Got my pockets picked on the tram – 2
Got really nervous – 4
Run over somebody with a car – 1
Run over by somebody’s car – 2
Lost my temper – 2
Wrote to Stalin – once
Musical instruments played – 0
Whatever I said became part of some drama or other dominated by the complicated mental structures of my fellow citizens: shush, shove, Oooo you writer from hell he said, push, shush, ah, crash, comme-ci comme-ca I said, shout, kick, smash, ahhh, bang, crash, shove, bump, punch, smack, scrub, wring, ehhh, bash, huh, aw, hey, ugh, clap, tap, tick, tack.
Work it all out by yourself, I don’t have any time left to explain it all.
* * *
Once there was a big eared man who one day decided to go mad and starve himself to death. Prior to that he stuffed himself with mushy peas and died, then leaned out of the window and thanks to his excessive curiosity fell and smashed himself to pieces. In his head he solved equations with two unknown quantities while whacking someone over his head with a cucumber, he smashed Karlov in the chops and Alekseyev in the teeth, he tore off Petrov’s head, threw Charms off a roof, chucked kerosene over Mishkin and set him alight, then slammed Pushkov over the gob, struck a gentleman with a brick, bashed Senka across the chops and tore off Fedka’s right ear with a poker. He flung a granny to the floor.
To famous people he did damage too: called Jean-Jacque Rousseau a superstitious purist, pinched Tolstoy on the bum, beat up Pushkin’s children and pulled Gogol by the nose. To one of his friends he beat off his ear, tore the arm off another, spat in their faces and hit them with a primus stove. Then unbuttoned his jacket, scratched his belly and continued his battle with meanings. They really made him feel uncomfortable.
Gradually man shed his form and evolves into a sphere. And, once a sphere, man discards all his earthly desires.
* * *
I was born under a blazing rainbow, mother Maria, virgin, father Joseph, carpenter. God is my chum and death my buddy. Often I dream of angels, a fraction of a smile, midnight mystery, the transformation of my consciousness, a bird in a slow flight, perfectly rounded mermaids, a cannibal biting off my private parts, the glimmering scales of a siren.
I am a professor of despair, a monotonous man unable to deal in abstract notions, I eat sandwiches out of boredom, I am poor and enigmatic half-deity half-pig with a subconsciousness of an elephant. Nature keeps guard over me like a prison; caravan of sleepy stars hurriedly appears all over me. Behind my back, cattle with a radiant gaze said: ‘We stand and graze and think in a melancholy churchyard.’
When I was born a baboon predicted I’ll face an impossible history. Everybody calls me Jeezy-meezy. You can hear me with your eyes and read me with your fingers. In reality I am a bottomless casket of time buried in the mass-grave of human reason. I sleep the sleep of verbs and nouns, so many awkward meanings are contained in the lonely second of a duel I fight with pale mornings.
The clock is ticking on, over the earth an elementary moon is brooding on the meaning of idealistic sentiments brewing in an English teapot.
* * *
On a tragic stool perched upon a mule, an inmate stood and through his hood faced his intimate mood. ‘I am a pale vermin’, he whispered, he was so sick, like a bathroom sink, the doctor decreed. To the World, he decided, an elegy he’d leave as an approximate farewell.
Pointless hours look through a naked window, obedient lives whimper in the night. His heart dressed in empty doubt he betrays a friend, no, he won’t escape the abyss. Equating memory with refuse, he betrayed his intimate lies too. On the stage a creature stood, leaning on a statue, wearing a thousand scarves and shaking its pointless head in rage.
Night appeared, all dressed in pigments, the insane river yawned and said: you are not dying at all. You are the concealed treasure of the earth, you are a lonely ape, the best friend of natural philosophy. No, I regret the fact that I am not perfect, mortality is impeding my sleep, reality is really bothering me. My monotony I transport tied in a bundle. Underneath my swollen feet the World lies in splendour.
Go to sleep, I am bored, go and watch some dreams. Will I understand their intricate meaning? Like God appearing to me and saying: ‘go and think your last thoughts and remember everybody lies, everybody dies’.
* * *
Midday, on a blue-gray Sunday, in a World sad and strange. ‘Hey poet, church bells are toiling in the distance, on the day of your wedding, your feast, your funeral’. By day I am a poet, by night a delirium.
The echoes of crying babies and of dogs barking are shadows of primeval tenderness, a breeze of ancient legends. It is time to accept things such as somnolence, the rainbow mist, elusive childhood dreams, lanterns swaying in the blizzard, days of black boredom, indifferent nights. And countless times we go on living and laughing and talking; this day is like any other day, the problem is solved: all men die.
I said goodbye to the day. It is hard to pretend I am not dead. Bleeding sunset is laughing a magical laughter. The sky is tired of concealing the thoughts of my compatriots. Do you remember the footsteps fell silent, the voice fell silent, the discourses on the mysteries of various religions fell silent too? In dream, in somnolence, in indolence, that wonderful charm of my brush is on everyone’s lips.
I signal goodbye to the day. Beauty is terrible, everyone will tell you. I shake your hand and wish you good health.