The Parachutist

If I had to single out one song as Pyotr Mamonov’s masterpiece, I think it’d be this one — especially given the authoritative and utterly stupefying live performance (!) featured below, which is NOT TO BE MISSED (although the same could be said of many of his performances, one of which actually inspired a video by the American band “The National”). Found on the album Крым (Crimea), recorded in 1988, this song might serve as a kind of catalogue of many of the essential themes seen across late Soviet rock, including a very Russian sense of paradox: what first seems to be an absurdist lament, humorous, disjointed, even completely nonsensical, at last coalesces into a bitter confession of a failed quest for meaning in life. If anything, the speaker seems to be looking back at life from outside it — if we assume that the “sinister whistling” is the sound of the wind in the ears of a parachute-jumper who has at last “saved himself,” then the “life” with which the song so suggestively opens is the plane (planet?) from which he has jumped, in despair of ever finding purpose or a sense of deeper reality amidst the “dreams” of dancing the twist naked, the tawdry “color television” of the nights, etc., or even, it seems, an abortive attempt at charitable giving. Life is a dream, by turns unclean and wondrous, but is remains insubstantial. The metaphor of the Soviet Union (and, by extension, the entire world, the universe, life itself) as a kind of vehicle that is taking someone somewhere they don’t want to go is seen in bands as different as Mashina Vremeni, Akvarium, KINO, and Auktyon. That motif is certainly at the heart of this song.

The song is punctuated by a jarring bridge that alludes to the “voice of authority” or “voice of the collective” (“they…”) that assures us that everything is in order, everything’s “going according to plan” (“всё идёт по плану,” as Yegor Letov sings elsewhere), and reduces the speaker to a kind of puppet, doing his mindless morning exercises. It is this abrasive passage, in fact, that directly gives rise to the “whistling” we hear “when life has lost its meaning.” Perhaps these unbearably meaningless words and images provoked the speaker to finally jump, to “save himself,” and have now blurred into a single, deafening “свист.” At any rate, the song ends with defiant, self-assertive relief: “I’ve saved myself, I’ve jumped to safety, I’m a parachutist!” Yet we remain in the limbo of “dreams, unclean dreams” — the meaning we’ve arrived at seems purely negative, and “life” is replaced by an empty solipsism.

There was a time long ago when I would show this video in class, so illustrative did I believe it to be of Holy Foolishness. The “Holy Fool” is an extremely important Russian type that dealt in provocation and paradox, on the volatile border between man’s folly and God’s wisdom — namely, where wisdom appears as folly, and vice versa. Students’ reactions to this performance ranged from nervous laughter to outright disgust. Without doubt, it is indeed both repulsive and extremely funny, if you ask me. When asked what they thought about it, students’ first “explanation” was almost invariably: “he’s high as a kite.” I don’t pretend to know what Mamonov might have been on during this concert, but I’m afraid drug use hardly accounts for this spectacle: Mamonov always acted like this, and his performances were carefully choreographed. Does anyone really think that his extended blank stares are drug-induced improvisations?

Mamonov is, in keeping with the song’s lyrics, very deliberately straddling the border between meaning and meaninglessness, order and chaos. A large part of this has to do with the hideous contortions of his face — highly suggestive, in terms of iconography, of the demonic, of the “mark of the beast” as opposed to the idealized countenance that embodies the divine “form and image” (stepping outside the Russian context, I’d also say that the video is a great example of what Kierkegaard points to as an essential feature of the demonic: “the sudden”). Lest this sound like a bit of a stretch, Mamonov goes on and on about this very thing at length in more recent interviews, including the one below, suggesting he was very well aware at the time of what he was doing; he’s not just “making faces.” Having gained new fame as an actor (playing a monk in the acclaimed film “The Island” (Остров), and, more recently, Ivan the Terrible!), he is now something of an Russian Orthodox spiritual guru, following what would seem, at first glance, to be a radical “rupture” of religious conversion. But I’m tempted to see a deeper continuity, within which Mamonov the spiritual thinker is all but indistinguishable from Mamonov as he was back when this video was filmed — a searcher, a spiritual wanderer, a странник. In any event, the surface buffoonery in this performance is part and parcel of a more profound inquiry into life’s essence — a search for meaning. I think it’s a great milepost in any student’s attempt to gain insight into a distinctively Russian sensibility — one that informs everything from rock songs to “serious” literature to theatrical productions, in which the tragic and the comic, meaning and meaninglessness, live side by side.

Парашютист

Жизнь...
После всего, что случилось
Я словно спасшийся парашютист
Жизнь...
А мне вчера снилось, 
что мы голые пляшем твист

Сны
Нечистые сны
Сны
Чудесные сны

Рубль...
Я отдал на работе
Чтобы кому-то там стало светлей
Рубль...
Вот сколько мне стоил 
цветной телевизор ночей

Сны
Нечистые сны
Сны
Прекрасные сны

А утром мне скажут, что у нас все в порядке
Мне сообщат, что пока нет войны
Утром я снова зайдусь от зарядки
Какое мне дело, что слышали вы

Свист
Этот жуткий свист
Когда жизнь теряет смысл
Свист...
Ужасный свист
Я спасся... я парашютист!

Сны
Нечистые сны

The Parachutist

Life…
After everything that’s happened,
I’m like a parachutist who jumped to safety.
Life…
Last night I dreamed
that we were dancing the twist naked.

Dreams
Unclean dreams
Dreams
Wondrous dreams

A rouble…
I gave away at work
So that someone somewhere could have it a bit brighter
A rouble…
That was the price I paid for
the color television of the nights

Dreams
Unclean dreams
Dreams
Beautiful dreams

Yet in the morning they’ll tell me that everything’s in order
They’ll inform me that, for the time being, there’s no war
In the morning I’ll wear myself out with my exercise drills
What do I care about the fact that you’ve heard

Whistling
That sinister whistling
When life loses its meaning
Whistling
A terrible whistling
I’ve jumped to safety… I’m a parachutist!

Dreams
Unclean dreams

Vocab notes

парашютист: parachute jumper • жизнь, и: life • случаться АЙ / случиться Иend: to happen • словно: like (a more poetic variant of как used in similes, etc.) • спасшийся: past active participle of спасаться АЙ / спастись С: to save oneself, be saved (past tense спасся, спаслась) • сниться И / присниться И кому: to appear in a dream • голый: naked • плясать Аshift: to dance • твист: the twist • сон: dream; sleep • нечистый: unclean, impure • чудесный: wondrous, miraculous (from чудо: wonder, miracle) • рубль, я: rouble • отдавать АВАЙ / отдать: to give away or back • там: literally, “there,” but often thrown in in a dismissive sense • становиться Иshift / стать Нstem: to become • светлей: comparative of светлый: bright • стоить И кому: to cost • цветной: color, adj. from цвет (pl. цвета): color • ночь, и: night • прекрасный: wonderful, beautiful • говорить Иend / сказать Аshift: to say • порядок: order • сообщать АЙ / сообщить Иend: to communicate, inform • пока: for the time being, for now • война: war • снова: (once) again • заходиться И / зайтись: to wear oneself out • зарядка: (morning) exercises • какое (кому) дело?: what does someone care? • слышать ЖА / услышать ЖА: to hear • свист: whistling • жуткий: sinister, uncanny • терять АЙ / потерять АЙ: to lose • смысл: meaning