Random thoughts about The Lover From An Icy Sea

I always feel a certain degree of fear and secret loathing when I start to read a work of fiction that makes claims on my attention of greater than fifty pages. The book I recently had in front of me was of over seven hundred. What made me do it? I must confess: it might’ve been the title—at least to some extent. It’s beautiful—and provoked my curiosity.

After I’d read a few dozen pages, I could say with absolute certainty that I liked the novel. The start was quick; the digression, unexpected; the continuation, intriguing. I felt myself becoming more and more absorbed into the imaginative “texture” of the text itself. No matter what the author apparently chooses to write about, her pen is as deft as the paintbrush of Maarten van Heemskerck. By the way, the author of the novel, Alexandra S. Sophia, is alive and well in the United States—and hers is a name, I believe, worth remembering. She’s one of us; however, her understanding of what people call “life” is much deeper—you’ll just have to believe me.

I like how the author portrays cities in her novel.  Regardless of where she sets the scene—whether in Leningrad, Paris or Manhattan—her locations are detailed in such a way as to allow the reader easy access to both place and time. Geography plays a significant role in the narrative: if at the beginning of the novel, the reader wonders whether any of these locations (or other, even more exotic locations) really matters, that same reader is thoroughly convinced by the end of the novel that none of Alexandra S. Sophia’s story could’ve happened any other way—so entangled are the principal characters with the locations in which they operate.

I like the novel’s style. Alexandra S. Sophia knows how to put words together and make prose sound like poetry, yet without sounding forcibly “poetic.” Her metaphors are all fresh and original, not clichéd. The author describes incredible sex with economy and grace, while demonstrating a skilful understanding of the subtle line between what is potentially beautiful between two human beings and what is simply crude—which is no mean accomplishment! The way she skilfully works foreign speech into the canvass of her novel is marvellous. Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, Swedish, Danish, Russian and German—even Latin—lines of dialogue (all of which are carefully and artfully paraphrased in English) create a certain atmosphere, lend extra charm, and help to make the reading experience a pleasurable one. This novel is, indeed, well crafted—every sentence of it!

As one whose native language is Russian, I admire the skill of his quite original translation of Yesenin’s poem. I know it was hard work. Some Russian words and expressions are untranslatable due to their very specific nature. The author managed to do the impossible. Her translation absolutely conveys the great poet’s message and spirit. It actually represents a separate independent piece of poetry—and as such, is both remarkable and wonderful.

I’ll risk saying that this story is unique. There’s so much pain and wisdom in it. (Have you noticed that I’ve placed ‘pain’ before ‘wisdom?’) What’s the novel about? I cannot tell. It’s about everything:  love; life; war; crime and punishment; pain; the generation gap; professional relationships; career issues; sex; money; history; and many, many other things. A totally unexpected bonus theme occurs in The Lover From An Icy Sea, by the way.  Allow me simply to call it “the lichen theme.” This theme of lichens is so important to the narrative that if I now address the issue of character development, I’d have to mention it right alongside that of Daneka and Kit. Actually, to my mind, the title of the novel applies to the particular serenity conjured up by the author’s singular elegy to lichens. The theme is so very powerful, so very unlike anything else I know of in literature, that it puts the novel into a category sui generis.

I am categorically naming Alexandra S. Sophia a Master and declare her novel, The Lover From An Icy Sea, to be a significant contribution to modern American literature—maybe more significant even than Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises was back in the mid-twenties of the last century.

I could easily write a longer essay about the talented Ms. Alexandra S. Sophia’s novel, but I’ll cut it off here with an urgent appeal to you to read it for yourself and make your own assessment.  Oh, and one last thing: if my name were Joe Wright, I’d be screening this novel for sure!

The World’s Greatest Tatar: on the Edge of Living

In Memory of Rudolf Nureyev

Rudolf Nureyev was born in a train somewhere in Siberia. His mother Farida (the same first name as mine!) with her three daughters—Rosa, Liliya and Rezeda—was travelling to the Far East, where her husband was serving in the Red Army. Rudolf spent his childhood in Ufa, my native city. His youth was in Leningrad and Moscow. The rest of his life the great master lived in emigration. Libraries all over the globe have thousands of volumes describing his biography. Every minute of his adult life is analysed, videotaped and photographed.

I don’t intend to relate what has already been told and written thousands of times. I will merely attempt to share my thoughts about my great compatriot, whose life nearly coincided with mine, and whose talent was an important milestone in ballet. I am proud to be one of those who could touch his sleeve when he was passing by in the street. His life was controversial and unique. He left devastating sadness and elevation in our souls. He let everyone understand that behind the glamour of dance was work—hard work. He succeeded as a dancer. He did very well as the Manager of the Grand Opera. He did everything very well in his life.

I admire his talent. I am proud of his contribution to the arts of the 20th century. 

The Nureyev family lived hard life. The Soviet Union was exhausted with many years of military actions. Ufa, like many cities to the East of Moscow, was devastated financially and physically. Any material valuables were sent to the front. Misery and poverty was huge. People were dying of hunger and cold. I don’t know how people would ever think of such things as music and dance.

Despite hardships, Rudolf’s mother introduced the world of ballet to her son and daughters. During World War II, Rudolf—as a boy—watched a professional performance in the Bashkir Opera House in the city of Ufa. I also spent many inspiring nights in this very theatre. My mother took my brother and me to the ballet almost every week. I saw the stage where the great Nureyev performed. I used to seat in the stalls where he did and first fell for ballet.

The first performance Rudolf Nureyev ever watched in his life was the national ballet “The Crane Song.” Zaituna Nasretdinova, a great Bashkir dancer of that time, was on stage. Nureyev was overwhelmed with emotions. During that memorable theatre night of 1944, the boy’s mind totally changed. He realized he was born to dance. His father, a military officer, was against this passionate love for theatre. He tried to persuade his son to quit. They even had fights. The father warned him that the ballet theatre is full of gays and he could become one of them. Nothing could stop Rudolf.

During the tour of the Leningrad ballet in France Nureyev was suddenly called back to the Soviet Union. The authorities explained to him that he was to perform at a Moscow stage for the government officers. They said it was a big honour for him. Nureyev didn’t buy it. On the day when the whole group was supposed to fly to London to continue the tour, Nureyev was taken to the airport Le Bourget. Instead of boarding to his plane to Moscow he decided to cut off his connections with his home country. It happened on June 16, 1961.

No doubt, his notoriously famous frantic leap to freedom at the airport in Paris—when KGB agents were literally holding him—was his life’s best jeté. The Soviet Union tried to burry his name, the memory of him and eliminate his any traces from our lives. In the then-Soviet Union, his name could not be relegated, forgotten, forbidden or disgraced—as the authorities had tried to do with the names of Olympic champions Belousova and Protopopov, with the hockey player Mogilny, with the dancer Baryshnikov and with others. Even from behind the Iron Curtain we could watch him growing as a dancer. The star of Nureyev’s talent was shining too brightly.

His mother and sisters were experiencing the worst from KGB. The torture lasted very long, as long as twenty six years. Perestroika lessened the pain, but it was too late: Nureyev was fatally sick and so was his mother. I remember the article about Nureyev in the newspaper “Soviet Bashkiria” and his photo in front of the Opera House in Ufa, where he’d danced in front of the audience for the first time in his life. Wearing a beret, he looked handsome, sarcastic and sad. Gorbachev let him come to Ufa for a few hours (!!!) to visit his dying mother. It was in November, 1987. In Ufa he was allowed to meet his first teacher and inspirer, Zaituna Nasretdinova. Many years before, she’d given him her blessing and had pushed the little bird out into the high sky. Nureyev, in his older age—then a celebrity—still considered Nasretdinova a prominent ballet dancer. During the same visit Nureyev also visited Leningrad, already renamed to St. Petersburg, and met his ballet school teachers, very briefly.

Rudolf Nureyev highly respected the ballet stage in Ufa, which knows many great dancers. I could name Tamara Khudaiberdina, Khalyaf Safiullin, Guzel Suleimanova, Maya Tagirova, Ildus Khabirov, Eleonora Kuvatova and many others. All of them were students of Zaituna Nasretdinova. Each of them studied the art of dance in the Kirov Ballet Theatre in Leningrad. Fate decreed that my brother Ildar and I were personally acquainted with all of them. We saw each of them in Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake” in different decades.

I would definitely like to mention our childhood friend Eldar Valiev and his wife and partner Liliya Valieva-Lugina. They graduated from the Leningrad Choreographic School and became leading dancers in the Bashkir Theatre of Opera and Ballet. They actually followed the pattern of their great colleague and fled from the country. For many years, they have been successfully teaching dance and choreography in the school of ballet at the Cumberland County Playhouse in Tennessee, USA. I am absolutely sure that their prominent fellow-worker Rudolf Nureyev indirectly influenced the creative work of everyone who danced on the brilliant stage of Ufa.

I used to know Irina Fomicheva—who, as a little girl, attended the same ballet class as Rudolf. The class was held in the children’s creative center in Ufa. Like Rudolf Nureyev, Irina Fomicheva devoted herself to ballet. It was definitely a much lower level of performance, but the strength of her passion for the Art was probably the same as her remarkable childhood friend Rudolf. She worked as a teacher of the dance studio in Ufa all of her life. Through the decades she taught hundreds of boys and girls how to dance and love ballet.

After Nureyev’s death, reporters from all over the world came to interview Irina Fomicheva. She asked me to be present at one of the interviews. I was merely supposed to sit beside her and encourage her, as she was so very nervous because of all the global attention she was drawing. According to Irina, Nureyev was neither arrogant nor tough nor mean—as has often been depicted by most of his biographers. Irina called him Rudik. I remember her saying that Rudolf was older than she, and that he was taking care of her. He used to give her sweets and take her to Yakhutov Park to play. Their plays were simple, like hide-and-seek or climbing benches and rocks.

Yakhutov Park is situated right behind the children’s creative center where they both daily spent many hours. The park is one of the most popular recreational places for children in the city, with a picturesque lake and boats, with a real railway with real trains for kids—and also with an eternal flame. My brother and I liked to spend weekends there and always impatiently awaited the day our parents would take us there. The childhood impression was strong. I am sure that Rudolf Nureyev kept the sweet memories of this particular park through all his full-of-events life.

The image of Rudolf Nureyev has captivated my imagination for all my life. I left Ufa for Canada more than twelve years ago. I live a different life, I have a different surrounding, different everything. It was my joy when at the place of a Downtown Toronto parking lot which I used to cross for so many years there appeared a huge Ballet Theatre. I know its official name is the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, but I call it Ballet Theatre. From time to time (rather often, I must confess), I would Google for Nureyev’s. I read, watch and get inspired. The following nostalgic lines appeared on one of those cosy evenings in my home in Etobicoke.

In My Home City

The rock in the middle

Of the knotted carpet

Woven of yellow leaves

Witnessed history.

In this park,

The great dancer

Used to play

With his sisters

Long before

Paris, the Grand Opera

And AIDS

Happened.

I closed my eyes.

The wind caressed my face

With the veil of

Glory and eternity.

I remember him, so does the whole world. Since 1993, the annual International Ballet Festival named after Rudolf Nureyev has been held in Ufa. The globe’s best talents come to Ufa and perform on Nureyev’s first stage. No one would argue the statement that he was the greatest dancer of the last century. He showed the ballet world how to be persistent, patient and stubborn in order to gain success. He proved that a talented boy from the most remote edge of the world could gain ballet Everest if he works hard. Nureyev’s high leaps, multiple revolving jetés and pirouettes were very risky and required hard rehearsal work and an Olympic level of physical conditioning. Nureyev drew the attention of both specialists and spectators to masculine dancing. He caused a general change in attitude to the male dancer, who up till then had been treated as no more than background to the ballerina. Nureyev’s talent sparked interest to ballet all over the world. Now, many years after his death, it still shines in its full. The historical significance of his contribution is impossible to overestimate.

Let it be said again:  Rudolf Nureyev succeeded as the Ballet Manager of the Grand Opera. Ballet lovers in Paris are grateful for what he did. He mobilized his administrative power and actually transformed a company torn with intrigues and quarrels into a creative and disciplined unit of confederates. The world’s leading female dancers worshiped him and are very proud to have danced with him. When the doctors pronounced their verdict, he took it with all his courage. He knew that he was doomed, but his artistic spirit was not defeated. He worked up until his death, directing the orchestra and staging ballets. Love for dance was stronger than the disease that took away his life.

There is no one else on Earth like Rudolf Nureyev. Even his grave with a bright motley mosaic Persian rug at the cemetery Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois, near Paris, is unlike any other in the world. He is unique, unconquerable and majestic.

Farida Samerkhanova

Toronto

June 18, 2011