July 5, 1932

We excerpt these biographical notes about Sasha Gorny (October 13, 1880 to July 5, 1932)

'Sasha Chorny, one of the greatest Russia lyric and satiric poets who managed to combine a sense of comic irreverence with an appreciation of the sublime, was born under the name Alexander Mikhailovich Glikberg in 1880 in warm sunny Odessa. ...[His] father....was a Jewish worker in a chemical laboratory. Soon enough the question of education came up in the family. At that time it was difficult for an unchristened Jewish kid to get a formal education, so little Sasha began his familiarization with worldly enlightenment by getting a comprehensive home-schooling courtesy of his cultured family. When Sasha was ten, his family decided that he ought to get christened to get ahead in life and, after finally accepting Christ into his life, the boy entered a gymnasium.

'At the age of fifteen he went off to Saint Petersburg where his brother and aunt already resided, but didn’t do too well at his new school and soon flunked out of it due to his inability to pass algebra. Having disappointed his family who simply stopped responding to his letters, the future poet suddenly found himself utterly broke and homeless. Miserable and discouraged, Sasha wallowed around the cold streets and slept on the benches of scenic parks. This destitute period came to an abrupt end when a young journalist named Alexander Yablonovskiy decided to write an article about this strange homeless kid and his “Dickensian” circumstances of a fall from middle class grace. The article drew the attention of an empathetic wealthy man named Konstantin Roshe. Roshe had recently lost his son and was apparently looking for a substitute. Sasha, a distinctly well-spoken and educated charity case, proved to be a perfect match. Roshe adopted the grateful boy and proved to be a wonderful mentor. Under his tutelage the youthful Sasha Chorny was first exposed to the world of poetry beyond the limited, and mostly somewhat archaic, examples of it taught at the gymnasium. This exposure to poetry very soon turned into a passion which would last a lifetime. This is when Sasha began to write poems as well, though the first time he got published was still a few years away in 1904.


'At the turn of the century our hero ... decided... to tempt fortune by joining the army. From 1900 to 1902 he served as a private in a peacetime garrison, but eventually grew bored of that too and got a job as a customs official in a tiny town of Novosiltsy, which may not have been less boring but certainly much more of a financially stable vocation. And possibly thanks to this financial stability, these were the years when the still-youthful Alexander first exhibited the necessary determination to propel his poems into print. In 1904 some of his earliest poems began to be published in the newspaper Volynsky Vestnik (which translates to “The Messenger of Volyn”) under various pseudonyms such as “All Alone”, “Dreamer”, and others. The following year Sasha moved back to Saint Petersburg where he found work as a customs official for the Saint Petersburg-Warsaw railway line. The railroad office is also where he met his future wife Maria Vasilieva who happened to serve as his manager and direct superior at the time. Chorny’s very first published creations were already filled with that acerbic type of ironic satire which would become his trademark.

'...[He]... was not the most contented of Russian citizens. ...[H]is writing would often get Chorny in trouble. As early as 1905 the first publication of satirical work Chepuha (which translates to “Nonsense”) in the satirical magazine Onlooker resulted in a sizable scandal and the closing of the magazine. One can’t help but wonder about this novice writing professional’s popularity with publishers in the wake of such an episode… But regardless of whether his standing was affected or not, this ill-fated publication is also remembered for being the first documented use of the pen-name “Sasha Chorny”.

'Unfortunately, the young poet’s troubles with tsarist authorities did not end there. One of his earliest collections “Different Motives” was banned by the humorless eagle-brained censors in 1906. ...[Gorney] took a couple of years off to study at the Gendelberg University. His inevitable return to popular literature took place in the pages of the Satyricon magazine where wily wits were quite appreciated. The magazine was a must-have for any educated and culturally hip big-city Russian at the turn-of-the-century and, thus, assured not only a relatively wide readership for Chorny but one composed of precisely his target audience: the people who could appreciate a well-woven lyric as much as a good joke... The following three years were to become some of the most fruitful of the poet’s life. He became the most popular and sought out of the magazine’s writers. His poems were memorized and recited a dinners and drinking parties all across the country. He may have approached the kind of instant success only dreamt-of by writers of any time and place. ...

'Around that time the poet was published in many other magazines ...1911 sees the release of Chorny’s books Satires and Satires and Lyrics. In-between 1912 and 1915 he penned and published several books aimed at children and, at once, became one of the country’s favorite children’s authors. ....

'He was drafted into the Russian Imperial army and, ... sent to work in the 13th field hospital in the vicinity of Warsaw (Poland constituted Russia’s westernmost border at the time... Tending to the wounded, some lacking in both body parts and facets of their sanity, was a taxing experience for Chorny. He developed an intensely melancholic disposition which eventually grew into a genuine depression. Thankfully, his wife was around to nurse it to an extent. .... His poetry of the time feels simultaneously more naturalistic and detailed than his former peaks and also more conscious of life’s simple beauties embodied in such sights as setting suns and vistas of Russia’s vast fields....

'...... The second, October revolution, arrived on the heels of the first and brought forth a brand new world, one in which Chorny could no longer recognize his home. It certainly was no place for satirists and, in order to avoid a social and artistic reality in which the eventual fate of Chorny's fellow satirist and genius Mikhail Bulgakov was considered lucky, the poet almost immediately emigrated to Western Europe. .....A wanderer with a fresh wind at his back, he passed through Berlin, Rome, Paris, across the French coast. And with each new destination which seemed so exotic to his imaginative Russian eyes he seemed to regain some of the strength and spirit which was drained out of him by the bloody war. .....

'Chorny began regularly performing with readings at the Russian communities of the various places he'd turn up. In 1923 he released a book entitled Jajda (Thirst) which was followed by Detskiy Ostrov (Children's Island). Soon thereafter came Dnevnik Foksa Mikki (The Diary of Mickey the Fox-terrier) which was written in the voice of Chorny's trusted dog Mickey .... Around that time Chorny also penned Soldatskiye Skazki (The Soldiers' Fairy Tales) which approached the subject of war and soldiering from a decidedly brighter perspective than his war-time poems. Among Chorny's other major prose works are Goubiniye Bashmaki (Pigeon Boots), subtitled “Short stories about children and for children.”, as well as the short novella Chert Na Svobode (The Liberated Devil). What all of these prose works have in common is a balance between richly detailed, sublimely beautiful descriptive passages, sometimes bizarre, consistently imaginative plot-lines, and the wealth of the author's typical humor and irony. ... He was living in relative comfort and peace in was quite the little gourmet food capital, famous for its fish, wines, and olives.

'Chorny moved ...[to a French village located in the province of Provence...named La Favier,] in 1929 ....Being genial and fairly charismatic he ... made a lot of friends and began involving himself in the village life. ....And yet, it was precisely Chorny's altruistic nature which brought forth his demise. On July 5th, 1932, a farmhouse in the town of Le Lavandou, not too far from the poet's residence, caught on fire one bright and scorching day. Chorny was at the scene in no time and began tirelessly trying to help put out the wild blaze and rescue the people inside.....When the flame was finally out, .... fifty-one year old Chorny traveled home, laid down on his bed in relief and satisfaction and... never again got up. A sudden heart attack put an untimely ... end of his existence. According to legend, Mickey the pup.... jumped atop of Chorny's chest once the poet died and immediately joined him in death. ....'


Let us hear Mickey then, from: In the Zoological Gardens ("Micky the Fox Terrier's Diary")

'Gardens, my foot! Just a prison for the wretched animals.
....
'The tiger is quite off-putting. Just a big cat. Imagine what it'd do if you let it loose in a dairy shop. Would lap up a whole bathful of cream, I'll wager. And then gobble up the dairy maid and retire to the Bois de Boulogne for a quiet snooze.
...
'I didn't see any people in cages. But a cage would be just the place for our gardener, and the cook, too. With a notice saying "Enemies of dog." Feed them on one cabbage head and a couple of carrots a day - nothing else. Why didn't they give me food? Why did they steal eggs, and cream, and brandy, but kick me for every bit of bone I got hold of?'

Mickey sounds a worthy dog, for a worthy master, Sasha Gorny.









english trans his poetry---https://www.albany.edu/offcourse/issue41/cigale_translations2.html#chorny


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Sasha Cherny


No 234





Zina's daddy is always "busy." That's the way with people: everything has to be paid for - a villa, an umbrella, meat, bread, a dog collar... and it is even rumored that the tax on fox terriers will be doubled soon.But to pay one has to have money. It comes in various shapes: round, metal, with a hole - that's the "sou"; round but without a hole - that's the "franc." And also several paper kinds. The paper pieces, for some reason, are more valuable, they start at five francs. This money, now, it somehow contrives to "fall," "rise" - all a lot of rubbish really, but I am not a human and this is nothing to do with me.

Well then, to have money one has to do "business." Get my meaning? So Zina's daddy went to Paris for a week, and took Zina with him, and Zina took me.

While her daddy was "rushing about" on business (oddly, he never walks but always rushes about when on business), Zina put me on a leash, took a taxi (why does it stink so abominably I wonder?), and went to the Zoological Gardens.

Gardens, my foot! Just a prison for the wretched animals. Hold on a sec, I've got a flea on my back - I'll just catch the bastard and then tell you all about it.

When I was still a tiny puppy, Zina told me about those Gardens: "What a rhino they have there! Standing in a pool of filth! And you won't let me wash your face, Micky... For shame!"

None of it is true, in fact. There's no rhino here. Must have snuffed it from boredom, or else escaped into town, and is now hiding down in the Metro till he gets run over...

But then I saw a camel. He looks rather like our commissionaire except that he has a bigger lip and fur all over. As if one hump on the back was not enough, he's got to have hunched knees as well! He feeds on thorns and, I believe, also on vinegar. I'd give him gramophone needles! The brute! When Zina offered him a bun, he snorted and ate the bun, and then spat on her bow. If you weren't behind bars, I'd give you what for...

The polar she-bear is nice. She's sitting on the ground floor in a stone bath and sighs deeply. Aren't they cruel swine! Why didn't they put her on ice, at least, or on ice-cream - she must be suffering from heat!

A small boy chucked a sponge cake at her. She climbed out, shook herself dry, courteously pressed a paw to her head and ate it. Some offering for an animal this size! So the boy crumbled another cake for her - was worried that she might choke on it, I suppose. And sparrows pecked the lot. Why, oh why do they keep her in captivity? Zina has an old teddy bear. I'll drag it along tomorrow and throw it to the she-bear - let it be a child-substitute to her...

I feel no sympathy with the apes. They are a sight, and I never bothered them. All I did was approach and turn away a bit because they smelled horribly of sour rubber, rotten sprats and some sort of pickled pig shit.

One eyed me up and down and said to its mate: "Look at that ugly canine..."

Me? Woof, you moron! Me, ugly? What about you then?

I must dash to Zina's medicine cabinet and take a sniff at the cork from the sedative drops bottle. How my heart is beating!

The tiger is quite off-putting. Just a big cat. Imagine what it'd do if you let it loose in a dairy shop. Would lap up a whole bathful of cream, I'll wager. And then gobble up the dairy maid and retire to the Bois de Boulogne for a quiet snooze.

The lion is a sweetie... All alone, poor old thing. Bald, wrinkled, won't even jerk his tail. Zina read once that lions love having a little dog in their cages. They may tear five to pieces, but they'll make friends with the sixth. I'd rather be a seventh, though, and walk free.

There are also some beasts called bison. Shaggy, horned, heads like haystacks. What are creatures like that for? No earthly use for playing with of carrying about in your arms... There are generally lots of surplus things in the world.

The porcupine, for one. What good is a porcupine? To sweep the chimney with perhaps? Or take the kangaroo... It has a purse on its belly and in that purse, a baby kangaroo. Its hide buttons up on the back, I believe, like Zina's bodice. What nonsense!

Thank God I'm a fox terrier! Dogs are not put in cages, though some had better be, bulldogs and various other Great Danes. Most unattractive dogs! Uncultivated, too. For instance, there's Caesar, the bulldog next door, and he makes a point of committing an indiscretion in front of our door. I must pay him back. How? Elementary. They too have a door, don't they?

I didn't see any people in cages. But a cage would be just the place for our gardener, and the cook, too. With a notice saying "Enemies of dog." Feed them on one cabbage head and a couple of carrots a day - nothing else. Why didn't they give me food? Why did they steal eggs, and cream, and brandy, but kick me for every bit of bone I got hold of?

I saw snakes. One, big and long like a fire hose, looked at me and hissed: "This one's too big to swallow, I reckon." Bastard... As if they'd let you swallow live fox terriers!

The elephant has two tails - one in front, and one at the back, and horns in its mouth... They may tell me till they are blue in the face that these are a trunk and tusks, but I say tail and horns! Zina decided that if you looked at a mouse through a telescope, you'd see something like an elephant. Now, what the heck is a telescope?

Ah yes, there are birds, apparently, the size of a cupboard. Ostriches!.. And their tail feathers are just like those Zina's grandma has on her hat in the album. These feathers are out, and you can't milk ostriches, so they ought to be roasted, that's all, and stuffed with chestnuts and eaten. Care for an ostrich foot to gnaw, Micky? Oh well, I wouldn't mind, I'll try anything once...

It's getting late. Time to go to bed. But in my head there's a whirl of ape behinds, camel humps, elephant feathers and ostrich trunks.

I'd better go take a sniff at that cork. My heart is pounding so... Like a motorbike...

I'm feeling sick! Hic... Where's the cook's washbasin?


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