The purpose of this blog is to introduce the Museum of Russian Poetry and Music to the wide American audience and attract like-minded enthusiasts who wish to promote Russian culture in the US. Read more.

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

The Museum That Makes The World Less Small



G.M. Temnenko
Simferopol City, Russia
Master of Linguistics
Dean of Taurides National University
Division of Cultural Studies
Department of Philosophy

"The World Is Small, As Always." Thus reads the title of a book by Uli Zislin, published in Chicago in 2008. Uli Michailovich himself has lived in DC since 1996. In Moscow he was a Master of technical sciences, engineer-architect, inventor, poet and bard, and also a collector. In America he is the founder and the curator of the "Washington Museum Of Russian Poetry and Music," which has existed since 1997.
 The informal brotherhood of people for whom poetry, music and culture are as necessary as air knows no national boundaries. For those who belong to it, space and time are experienced differently than they are for everyone else.

Saturday, October 27, 2012

Washington Museum of Russian Poetry and Music turns 15!

Facts about the Museum:
1. Museum was founded in 1997.
2. First visiting group, of 7 people, came to the museum on October 20th 1997, after the 2nd Washington Tsvetaeva Bonfire, where the opening was was announced.
3. 213 tour groups visited the museum, altogether 600 to 700 people, from 21 states of America (32 cities) and from 14 other countries, including:
- Russia (18 cities)
- Europe (England, Germany, Bulgaria, Latvia, Ukraine, Slovakia, Montenegro)
- Asia (India, China, South Korea, New Zealand, Kazakhstan)
- Israel, Republic of Georgia
4. Several thousand people were present at the museum’s excursions, of which there were about 200 (America, Russia, Canada, Israel).
5. Museum has hosted 10 literary-musical programs on Russian TV America, and dozens of performances on radio in New York, Boston, Voice of America, etc.
6. Museum featured more than 200 publications in USA, Russia, Ukraine, Israel, and received more than 2000 donations from these countries.
7. Museum initiated:
- Creation in Washington, DC in 2003 of an “Alley of Russian Poets,” which also included Russian composers and artists;
- First international Tsvetaeva Bonfire in 2002;
- All-American Festival of songs to the poems of Marina Tsvetaeva (15 participants, 9 nights, 35 poems of Tsvetaeva were sung);
- Russian section in the new Public Library of Rockville in greater Washington;
- Creation of a project “American museum of Russian Culture” for the American public.

Washington Museum of Russian Poetry and Music was dedicated to Russian culture, however, the greatest space in it, besides Pushkin, is occupied by Russian Poets of Silver Age of Russian Culture, namely Marina Tsvetaeva, Boris Pasternak, Osip Mandelstam, Anna Akhmatova, Nikolai Gumilev.
October 7, 2012 (first Sunday of the month – Tarusa tradition) the Museum conducts in Washington the 17th Tsvetayeva bonfire: 120th anniversary of Marina Tsvetayeva, 100th anniversary of Ariadna Efron, 15th anniversary of the Washington Museum.
Museum has a web site: www.museum.zislin.com
Russian language blog: http://museumprojectsru.blogspot.com
and a collection of videos on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/zislinmuseum/videos?view=0

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Museum Celebrates 120th Birthday of Russian Poet Marina Tsvetaeva


Mark your calendars!
Sunday, October 7rd, 2012, at 2:00 PM. Rain or shine!
At Rock Creek Regional Park near Meadowside Nature Center enthusiasts of Russian poetry and music will gather for the 
17th annual Tsvetaeva Bonfire
Bonfire from previous years.

Guest performers are the students of the local Russian school "Bukva".

Location of the Bonfire Gathering: 5100 Meadowside Lane, Rockville, MD. (Enter Meadowside Lane from Muncaster Mill Rd. (Route #115). Enter Route #115 from Shady Grove Rd., Georgia Ave. or Avery Rd.)

Also, on Sunday, October 14 at at 2:00 РМ 
Everyone is invited to lay flowers by Tsvetaeva's tree at the Alley of Russian Poets in DC in Guy Mason Park. Enthusiasts of Russian poetry will be reading poems by Tsvetaeva and other poets.  

Location of the Alley of Russian Poets: 3600 Calvert St., DC 20007. Guy Mason Park.

For additional information about these events please contact Uli Zislin at  301-942-2728 or museum@zislin.com
Media sponsors of Russian News are RussianDC.com and RussianWashingtonBaltimore.com


Monday, August 20, 2012

17th annual Tsvetaeva Bonfire

This year museum celebrates: 
 120th Birthday of Russian Poet Marina Tsvetaeva
                15 years of “Washington Museum of Russian Poetry and Music” 
Everybody is invited to the 17th annual Tsvetaeva Bonfire!
It will take place on Sunday, October 7rd, 2012, at 2:00 P.M., at Rock Creek Regional near Meadowside Nature Center  

For further information contact Uli Zislin at 301-942-2728 or museum@zislin.com


Friday, August 10, 2012

The Washington Museum of Russian Poetry and Music (Repost)

(Originally published by Tabatha Yeatts in her blog).
 
I'll be a doctor for others, and a poet for myself.
~ Dr. Zhivago


This month, I visited The Washington Museum of Russian Poetry and Music, which is currently housed in composer/performer/author Dr. Uli Zislin's home. Dr. Zislin is devoted to sharing Russian culture and he would dearly love to find another space for his museum -- one that people can visit more easily, without making an appointment! If anyone reads this who is also dedicated to sharing Russian culture and would like to help Dr. Zislin relocate the museum, email me or Dr. Z.

I thought I'd share works by poets spotlighted in the museum:

Boris Pasternak (1890-1960) is famous for writing the novel Doctor Zhivago, for which he won a Nobel (although the book was banned in the USSR). He wrote poetry as well:

February. Get ink, shed tears.
Write of it, sob your heart out, sing,
While torrential slush that roars
Burns in the blackness of the spring.
Go hire a buggy. For six grivnas,
Race through the noise of bells and wheels
To where the ink and all you grieving
Are muffled when the rain shower falls.
To where, like pears burnt black as charcoal,
A myriad rooks, plucked from the trees,
Fall down into the puddles, hurl
Dry sadness deep into the eyes.
Below, the wet black earth shows through,
With sudden cries the wind is pitted,
The more haphazard, the more true
The poetry that sobs its heart out.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Muse
By Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966)
Translated by Eric Gillan

When late at night I wait for her arrival,
It seems my life is hanging by a thread.
I offer youth, my freedom, glory,
To my adored guest with flute in hand.
And here she comes. She throws back her cloak
And pours a steady gaze on me.
I ask, "Did you dictate to Dante
The pages of "Inferno?" She answers, "Yes. I did."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Giraffe
by Nikolai Gumilev, (1886-1921)
Translated by Katharine Gilbert

Today, I see, your gaze is particularly forlorn,
And your hands particularly thin, embracing your knees.
Listen: far away, far away, on Lake Chad,
A refined giraffe is roaming.
His proportions are harmonious and his legs are long,
And a bewitching pattern adorns his skin;
Nothing dares compare with it, save the moon,
Fragmented and flowing on the liquid of broad lakes.
He juts out like the many-colored sails of ships,
And his gait is floating, like joyous birdflight.
I know this earth has seen many wonders
When at sunset he hides in a marble grotto.
I know the happy stories of secret lands,
About the dark maiden, about the passion of the young chief,
But you have breathed in the heavy mists for too long -
You will believe in nothing, except rain.
And how I would tell you about tropical orchards,
About elegant palms, about the scent of extraordinary grasses…
You're crying? Listen… far away, on Lake Chad,
A refined giraffe is roaming.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To Byron
by Marina Tsvetaeva (1892-1941)
Translated by Ilya Shambat

I think about the morning of your glory,
About the morning of your days too, when
Like a demon you from sleep had stirred
And were a god for men.
I think of when your eyebrows came together
Over the burning torches of your eyes,
Of how the ancient blood's eternal lava
Rushed through your arteries.
I think of fingers - very long - inside
The wavy hair, about all
Eyes that did thirst for you in alleys
And in the dining-halls.
About the hearts too, which - you were too young then -
You did not have the time to read, too soon,
About the times, when solely in your honor
Arose and down went the moon.
I think about a hall in semi-darkness,
About the velvet, into lace inclined,
About the poems we would have told each other,
You - yours, I - mine.
I also think about the remaining
From your lips and your eyes handful of dust.
About all eyes, that are now in the graveyard
About them and us.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

What shall I do with this body they gave me
by Osip Mandelstam (1891-1938)

What shall I do with this body they gave me,
so much my own, so intimate with me?

For being alive, for the joy of calm breath,
tell me, who should I bless?

I am the flower, and the gardener as well,
and am not solitary, in earth’s cell.

My living warmth, exhaled, you can see,
on the clear glass of eternity.

A pattern set down,
until now, unknown.

Breath evaporates without trace,
but form no one can deface.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Another poem by Pasternak: Winter Night

Saturday, July 28, 2012

Museum Exhibits

Few museum exhibits related to Ariadna Efron: interpreter, artist, poetess, writer, and the daughter of Marina Tsvetaeva and Sergei Efron.

Thursday, July 26, 2012

The 17th Tsvetaeva Bonfire in Washington, DC

The 17th Tsvetaeva Bonfire in Washington, DC will take place on October 7th 2012.
 
On October 8th 2012 (the 120th birthday of Marina Tsvetaeva) those who wish to honor the memory of the great Russian poetess are invited to lay flowers by Tsvetaeva's tree on the Alley of Russian Poets in DC in Guy Mason Park.

Monday, July 23, 2012

New translations of Russian Poet Marina Tsvetaeva by Ilya Shambat


Poets

1

Poet - from afar starts a speech.
Poet - for long leads the speech.

With planets, with signs, with roundabout
Tales's potholes... between yes and nay
He even having swung from the belfry
Took out the hook... For comets' way

Is poets' way.  The torn links of causation -
That's his connection! Forehead up - despair!
You know that the eclipses of the poets
Are not foretold by the calendar.

He's he, who mixes cards together,
Who does deceive all count and weight,
He's he, who asks from the school desk,
Who towers head and shoulders over Kant,

Who is just like a tree in its own beauty
Within the stone coffin of Bastille.
He is a train on which late are all comers,
Whose traces have been chilled
Always... For comets' way

Is poets' way: burning and not warming.
Tearing, not growing - to break up and tear -
Your pathway, o the mantled curved one,
Is not foretold by a calendar!

2

There are the extras, the unneeded
That do not fit within the norm.
(Not counting in your dictionaries
To them the landfill is their home).

There are the hollow, the pushed-down,
There are the mute - like dung,
Nail - to your silken skirt hem!
Dirt from under the wheels is wrung!

There are the unseen, the imaginary:
(Sign: speck of an autumn hen!)
There are the Jobs within the world
That would have envied Job - when:

We're poets - and in rhyme with scapegoats,
But from the shore thus having gone,
We argue over God with goddesses
And argue over girls with gods!

3

What should I do, blind and a stepson,
When all have fathers and have eyes,
When on anathema like embankments
Of passion! Where runny nose is the
Name of cry!

What should I do, with rib and thought
Singing! - like wire! Siberia! Sunburn!
Upon your dreams - like on the bridge!
With their weightlessness
In weights' world.

What should I do, singer and firstborn,
When gray is blackest in the world!
Where inspiration's like in thermos!
With this measurelessness in
Measures' world?!

Ilya Shambat
More translated poetry by Ilya Shambat can be found here.