{"id":441,"date":"2017-02-01T20:23:02","date_gmt":"2017-02-01T20:23:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bravenewclassics.info\/?p=441"},"modified":"2017-02-02T09:08:45","modified_gmt":"2017-02-02T09:08:45","slug":"a-view-from-the-wild-surf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bravenewclassics.info\/index.php\/2017\/02\/01\/a-view-from-the-wild-surf\/","title":{"rendered":"A View from the Wild Surf"},"content":{"rendered":"

Happy February! Last time we spoke I was on my\u00a0way to meet Helen Lindsay (above), heritage consultant<\/a> and daughter of the British poet Jack Lindsay<\/a> (1900-1990). Well, that was back in December and today, you can listen to our\u00a0podcast, fresh\u00a0from the cutting room desk. Here\u00a0it\u00a0is<\/a>.\u00a0Or, I suppose, you could\u00a0get the whole Conversations on Communism<\/em>\u00a0series\u00a0directly to your myriad mobile devices by\u00a0subscribing to it on iTunes<\/a>, or\u00a0Soundcloud<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"In any case, it was a joy\u00a0talking to Helen\u00a0about her father. I think my favourite part was hearing\u00a0about\u00a0the complications\u00a0of spending an excess\u00a0of roubles for\u00a0a British antimaterialist at the height of the Cold War. It reminded me, a little\u00a0perversely, of the plot line of that hyper-capitalist\u00a0classic Brewster’s<\/em> Millions<\/em><\/a>\u00a0(1985). <\/em>In case you’ve forgotten, it’s the one where\u00a0Richard Pryor (as Monty Brewster, the minor league baseball pitcher) has to spend $30 million in 30 days in order to inherit $300 million. It’s got John Candy in it, and was a staple of my days skiving off school… I suspect, however, the Lindsay family’s rooms in the Soviet\u00a0writers’ hotel on the Black Sea coast bore little resemblance to\u00a0Brewster’s suite in the Plaza Hotel<\/a>, neither\u00a0do I imagine the\u00a0royalties for his translated books quite stretched to $30 million — even if he was rumoured to be “the biggest selling author in Outer Mongolia”.<\/p>\n

\"\"A couple of weeks ago I returned from my own trip to Russia. It was cold, really cold, and I fell over twice. Apart from that it was brilliant. I was in St. Petersburg again, working on my Russian and, as always, scratching around\u00a0for clues. I was fortunate this time that my teacher was Vladimir Kuznetsov (‘Smith’), an expert in and lover of Russian poetry. The scene was perfectly set then for my first shaky\u00a0steps up the Slavic Parnassus. I loved reading the poems I was given by Vladimir, poems by\u00a0Osip Mandelstam<\/a>, Arseny Tarkovsky<\/a> and Joseph Brodsky<\/a>. I feel a whole new world of literature opening up. But…\u00a0\u0448\u0430\u0433 \u0437\u0430 \u0448\u0430\u0433\u043e\u043c (‘step by step’).<\/p>\n

\"\"In my free time, I spent hours in the Hermitage<\/a>\u00a0Museum. I don’t know many\u00a0better\u00a0collections of ancient sculpture than those four or five rooms in the Winter Palace. I like it mainly because it’s so\u00a0mischievous,\u00a0full of\u00a0podgy Erotes — up to no good, shaggy Sileni\u00a0and Maenads in thrall ( not to mention the baffling “Boy with Duck<\/a>”\u00a0). There’s some of the more\u00a0austere stuff in there too, but “glory” and “grandeur” couldn’t have been further from my\u00a0mind as I wandered around.<\/p>\n

Some friends from the language school and I took a day trip to snowy\u00a0Vyborg<\/a>, where Lenin prepared for the October\u00a0Revolution 100 years ago. I also went to the\u00a0Leningrad Blockade Museum, which really brought home the \"\"suffering and sacrifice of the Russians during WW2. I don’t think I learned anything much\u00a0from my trip to Tsarskoye Selo<\/a>, but it sure is shiny.<\/p>\n

In other news,\u00a0Dr Hanna Paulouskaya<\/a>\u00a0has kindly contributed\u00a0two excellent “player profiles” for the Brave New Classics website. She introduces us to the\u00a0musician, musicologist and classical scholar,\u00a0Yulyan Dreyzin<\/a> (1879\u20131942), and the Soviet theatre maker\u00a0Valentin Smyshlyayev<\/a> (1891\u20131936). I hope these will be the first of many “guest posts” on the BNC site. Please do get in touch if you think you might have something to contribute. I want this website to be a platform for international collaboration. I am delighted to announce that Dr\u00a0Sergey Krikh<\/a> (Omsk University), who has worked extensively\u00a0on Soviet Ancient Historiography, has bravely agreed to join the haughty ranks of BNC collaborators and advisors<\/a>.<\/p>\n

OK. Right. Until next time. Oh, one more thing. If you’re wondering why this post is called “A View from the Wild Surf” — you’ll have to listen to the podcast. In it you’ll find two of Jack Lindsay’s poems read by poets, Caroline Bird<\/a> and Hannah Silva<\/a>. And if that wasn’t enough, about halfway through I let slip\u00a0a tried and tested method\u00a0on how to shake off\u00a0that post-writing haze. Here’s the link again<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Happy February! Last time we spoke I was on my\u00a0way to meet Helen Lindsay (above), heritage consultant and daughter of the British poet Jack Lindsay (1900-1990). Well, that was back in December and today, you can listen to our\u00a0podcast, fresh\u00a0from the cutting room desk. Here\u00a0it\u00a0is.\u00a0Or, I suppose, you could\u00a0get the whole Conversations on Communism\u00a0series\u00a0directly to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":442,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[29,27],"class_list":["post-441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-helen-lindsay","tag-jack-lindsay"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t