English Translation: Ramses the 4th’s favorite songs
Artist: Аквариум (Akvarium/Aquarium)
Release: 1993
Note: Ramses the 4th was the Pharaoh of Egypt from 1155 to 1149 BC
Quote from the artist: “Рамзес IV известен только тем, что про отца его известно все, а про него ничего неизвестно.” [English translation (provided by the submitter): “Ramses IV is known only for the fact that everything is known about his father, and nothing is known about himself”.]
PABLO THICCASSO
Artist: Barter Queen
Release: 2017
Note: This is a play on Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), one of the greatest, most prolific, and most influential artists of the 20th century.
2025 Translation Tuesday Entry - 33/52
Title: 25 к 10 (25 to 10)
Artist: Аквариум (Akvarium)
Album: История Аквариума, Том 1: Акустика (History of Aquarium, Volume 1: Acoustics, 1982)
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Я инженер на сотне рублей,
(I'm an engineer making a hundred rubles)
И больше я не получу.
(Per month, and shan't be making more.)
Мне двадцать пять, и я до сих пор
(I'm twenty-five years old, and I still)
Не знаю, чего хочу.
(Don't know what I want at all.)
И мне кажется, нет никаких оснований
(And it seems there are no grounds at all)
Гордиться своей судьбой,
(For me to be proud of my lot,)
Но если б я мог выбирать себя,
(But even if I could choose to be different,)
Я снова бы стал собой.
(I'd want to be as I am again.)
Мне двадцать пять, и десять из них
(I'm twenty-five, and for ten of those years)
Я пою, не зная, о чем.
(I've been singing, not knowing why.)
И мне так сложно бояться той,
(And it's hard for me to be afraid of her,)
Что стоит за левым плечом;
(Who stands behind my left shoulder;)
И пускай мои слова не ясны,
(Even if my words should be unclear,)
В этом мало моей вины;
(That's not entirely my fault;)
Но что до той, что стоит за плечом,
(But before her, who stands behind my shoulder,)
Перед нею мы все равны.
(In her eyes we are all equal.)
Может статься, что завтра стрелки часов
(It may happen that tomorrow, the clock's hands)
Начнут вращаться назад,
(Will start turning backwards,)
И тот, кого с плачем снимали с креста,
(And he who, with tears, was taken down)
Окажется вновь распят.
(From the cross, may be crucified once more.)
И нежные губы станут опять
(And gentle lips may begin again)
Искать своего Христа;
(To search for their Christ;)
Но я пел, что пел, и хотя бы в том
(But I sang what I sang, and at least)
Совесть моя чиста.
(In that my conscience is clear.)
Я счастлив тем, как сложилось все,
(I am happy about how everything turned out,)
Даже тем, что было не так.
(Even if they might have gone wrong.)
Даже тем, что ветер в моей голове,
(Even if there's wind blowing through my head)
И в храме моем бардак.
(And my temple's all in a mess.)
Я просто пытался растить свой сад
(I simply tried to grow my own garden)
И не портить прекрасный вид;
(And not mar a beautiful view;)
И начальник заставы поймет меня,
(The keeper of the gates will understand me,)
И беспечный рыбак простит.
(The carefree fisherman will pardon me.)
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Behold! This is one of the granddaddies of Russian rock. 🥰 I initially wanted to leave discussion of this band and the major players of Russian rock to the very end of this series; people who like Russian music tend to know about them already, so I wanted to give the lesser-known groups room to breathe. But I've since realized music history requires a holistic approach, as the stories of every band and each individual contribution are constantly merging and twisting around one another. They all come up eventually, famous or not. Nothing wrong with enjoying them as they come.
Аквариум (Aquarium) are a very long-running band. It was formed in 1972 in Leningrad by Boris Grebenshchikov (b. 1953) and Anatoly Gunitsky (1953 - 2025); with the recent death of the latter, Grebenshchikov remains the sole original and permanent member of the group. He's an incredibly productive person and has seen Аквариум through four incarnations and 500+ songs. With an output like that, one post isn't enough to cover the band's history - nor all of their genre experiments and influences, ranging from Russian bard music to Western rock circa 1960s-70s to Buddhist mantras. But I bring you today's song nonetheless, because it illustrates best what I like about Аквариум, as well a glimpse into uncle БГ(BG, Boris Grebenshchikov's initials)'s philosophy.
Аквариум was deeply entrenched in counterculture. I've written quite a bit about how underground bands distributed their music and found their audience, as well as the pitfalls associated with it; Аквариум went through all of that and more. A word that frequently pops up in discussions of this band is квартирники (kvartirniki), concerts that were held in private apartments. Those concerts were usually acoustic, as to not tip off that non-state-approved music was being played there, and the audiences were very small, as many as could fit in a small apartment. Maybe there was a tape recorder on the side, preserving the performance for future distributions. Many underground musicians in the USSR started that way, and since Аквариум first began playing during a time when there was no tolerance to rock and roll period, that was their most common style of performance. Their work was popular, but it wasn't smooth-sailing in the slightest, trying to show it to people.
They suffered penalties for it, too. Аквариум came under fire from the authorities after performing in the Tbilisi Rock Festival of 1980. Outwardly it was a competition for up-and-coming rock musicians; in reality, it was a state-sanctioned event to promote ВИАs and find new talent in that area, a plan which Аквариум immediately threw a wrench into. Their performance was so bizarre, yet so new and exciting, that the audience reception got out of control. There's an account of what happened in music critic and journalist Artemy Troitsky's book Рок в Союзе (1991):
Когда Борис начал играть на гитаре стойкой от микрофона, а затем лег на сцене, держа обалдевший о такого обращения одолженный «Телекастер» на животе и бряцая по струнам, жюри в полном составе встало и демонстративно покинуло зал, как бы говоря: «Мы не несем никакой ответственности за выступление этих хулиганов». Концерт между тем продолжался. Виолончелист Сева водрузил на лежащего лидера виолончель и начал перепиливать всю конструкцию смычком, фаготист, бегая вокруг со своим зловещим инструментом, имитировал расстрел всего этого безобразия... Такого Грузия еще не видела; половина зала неистово аплодировала, половина — возмущенно свистела. Но это были еще цветочки по сравнению с тем, что творилось в кулуарах. Бардак на сцене почему-то был расценен руководителями филармонии как демонстрация «гомосексуализма». «Зачем ты привез сюда этих голубых?!» — спрашивал удрученный Гайоз. Претензия была сногсшибательно неожиданной. «Почему голубые? Они нормальные ребята. Это у них такое шоу, эксцентрика...». — «Нормальные? Один ложится на сцену, второй на него, третий тоже пристраивается. Дегенераты, а не музыканты!»
[Boris started playing the guitar with a microphone stand and then lay down on the stage, holding the borrowed Telecaster on his stomach and strumming the strings. Astonished by such treatment, the jury stood up in full force and demonstratively left the hall, as if to say: "We bear no responsibility for the performance of these rabble-rousers." Meanwhile, the concert continued. Cellist Seva put a cello upon the leader, prone upon the stage, and began sawing at the entire structure with a bow; the bassoonist, running about with his sinister instrument, imitated the execution of this entire disgrace. Georgia had never seen anything like this. Half the hall applauded furiously, the other half whistled angrily. But this was just a drop in the bucket compared to what was happening behind the scenes. For whatever reason, the chaos onstage was seen by the Philharmonic's management as a depiction of 'homosexuality'. "Why did you bring these homosexuals here?!" asked a dejected Gayoz. The accusation was stunningly unexpected. "What? These are normal guys. This is their kind of show, eccentricity..." - "Normal? One lies down on the stage, the second on top of him, the third joins in too. Degenerates, not musicians!"]
For this stunt Grebenshchikov lost his Komsomol membership and his day job. Аквариум did not officially see the light until 1986, when they produced an album with Melodiya for the first time (Белый Альбом / White Album). And to be honest, even if they hadn't done the stunt, it's unlikely Аквариум would have made it to the mainstream faster. Conformist isn't the way БГ does things. Аквариум's lyrics are very poetic, literary, and rich in references, sometimes very obscure ones, and it was easy for the higher-ups to mistake/read offense into what they didn't understand. The same book quoted above contains a moment where БГ sung the line 'выйти замуж за Ино' / 'get married to Eno', and being mistaken for a depraved pervert by the festival organizers who did not know who Brian Eno was and heard it as 'выйти замуж за сына' / 'get married to the son' instead.
A silly mistake. But even learned people miss various meanings in his work because his pool of references is so vast. There are three significant ones in today's song alone. The first is well-known to a Western audience, at least if you know the story of Lot's wife ('Но что до той, что стоит за плечом / Перед нею мы все равны', referring to death lurking behind the shoulder). But the last two lines of '25 к 10' would be impenetrable, unless you had some knowledge of Taoist texts.
The penultimate line about the 'keeper at the gates' (начальник заставы) is in reference to Laozi (老子), philosopher and author of the Tao Te Ching (道德經). He is said to have composed said text at the request of one Yinxi (尹喜), who was the keeper of the Hangu Pass, located between the Yellow River and Qinling Mountains. The 'carefree fisherman' (беспечный рыбак) of the last line refers to an anecdote about Zhuangzi (莊子), a philosopher who lived some hundred years after Laozi and developed on his ideas:
「莊子釣於濮水 楚王使大夫二人往先焉 曰 願以境內累矣 莊子持竿不顧曰」
[Zhuangzi was fishing by the Yellow River one day when two noble statesmen came to him, carrying the message that King of Chu was offering him a place in his court. Zhuangzi did not even look back, but kept hold of his fishing rod, and replied as such:]
["I am informed the King of Chu is in possession of a sacred turtle, which has already been dead three thousand years; they say the king has wrapped it with a cloth and placed it in a casket, and had it revered upon the ancestral shrine. But would the turtle have preferred, do you think, to be treated preciously in death, or would it have preferred to live while dragging its tail in the mud?" The statesmen replied: "It would have preferred to drag its tail and live." Zhuangzi replied: "Indeed. Now return, gentlemen, for I too would rather drag my tail." And so he turned down his place in the king's high court.]
In Taoism language and literature are considered instruments of bias. All forms of language are affected by one's attitude, that of the speaker or the listener or the reader; Laozi considered this to be in violation of Tao, or 'the way' beings must exist in the world. Taoism considers all things to contain its own internal universe, and aligning with one's natural self without artifice is its greatest virtue. It would not do, then, for a single book to redirect your perspective on the world - but for Yinxi's sake Laozi did write such a book, and it influenced Zhuangzi more than a hundred years later, who would go on to promote similar ideas of carefree harmony with the world.
'25 к 10' offers a universal comfort to wandering youth, but it's also about the Taoist attitude, and that resonates with me. Laozi and Zhuangzi are widely available texts (Leo Tolstoy edited a full Russian translation of the Tao Te Ching in 1894, and Zhuangzi was available from at least 1967) and it's not a complex song, but I don't think a lot of people could have written something like this in the time period БГ was writing in, let alone in their twenties. I like it very much indeed. 💖 With that, I will close out today's analysis, and see you next week!
Efter ett gäng färg- och ljusstudier var jag lite nyfiken på om jag kunde använda det som jag har övat på för att skapa något som jag aldrig har gjort förut. Jag ville testa att rita både från verkligheten och från ett fotografi i samma bild, för att se om jag kunde få det att passa ihop. Tanken på att sätta en mås på akvariet i vardagsrummet fick mig att le så jag bestämde mig för den idén. Bakgrunden i den här teckningen är alltså ritad från verkligheten och måsen är ritad från ett foto. Verkligheten fick bestämma hur ljuset skulle vara så måsen på fotot gav mestadels bara information om form och proportion, eftersom jag behövde anpassa både riktningen på ljuset och färgerna för att den skulle se ut att höra hemma i rummet. Om en mås alls kan höra hemma i ett rum, vill säga.
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Gull on aquarium, coloured pencil, 11,5x11,5 cm
After a bunch of colour- and light studies I was a little curious about if I could use what I’ve been practicing to create something that I’ve never done before. I wanted to try to draw from both life and from a photo in the same picture, to see if I could make it fit together. The thought of putting a gull on the aquarium in our living room made me smile, so I decided to go with that idea. Thus, the background in this drawing is drawn from life and the gull is drawn from a photo. The real life part set the lighting, so the gull in the photo mostly just gave information about form and proportions, since I had to adjust both the direction of the light and the colours to make it look like it belongs in the room. If a gull can belong in a room at all, that is.
