A new anecdote I heard (retelling is mine):
“In Moscow the first gay marriage was registered, but… But nobody knows in which way two mischievous persons contrived to obtain the keys of the Registry Office. The police inquiry tries to clarify this question now”.

I have a new work, but I can’t publish it at DeviantArt, because it is not my writing but a translation. I’ve made the translation of the nice secular essay and would like to bring it to the notice of those who are interested in history of literature.

*Introduction*

Zinaida Gippius (1869 - 1945) and her husband Dmitriy Merezhkovsky (1865 - 1941) were a happy childless couple of Russian writers from St. Petersburg, who lived in Berlin. The young Nabokov used to visit their salon. Look at Leon Bakst’s famous portrait in which the middle-aged Zinaida Gippius was wearing a costume a la Oscar Wilde (1906):
null

Before looking at the portrait I deemed my manner of lounging on the chair is unique. She was red-haired, myopic, slim. Half myrrh-bearer, half garconne. In her poems she used masculine gender and pronoun ‘he’ speaking of herself. Her poems left me cool, because like her husband she was a religion and mystique-oriented writer: between 1894 and 1905 Merezhkovsky wrote a trilogy of historical novels entitled The Death of the Gods (1894, on Julian the Apostate), Leonardo da Vinci (1896) and Peter and Alexis (1902) about Peter the Great and Tsarevich Alexis. I read a part of Gippius’s St. Petersburg Diaries; the Diaries is a great historical nonfiction; her thoughts and theories concerning the current politics and everyday life of the beleaguered Petrograd are so close to my thoughts on the theme that it seemed to me that I read my own words. I hardly have anything in common with her but her firm politics and her manner of lounging on the chair. When recently I reread her Parisian gay themed essay “Disharmonie harmonieuse” I tried to find its English text on the Net, but in vain. There are not her works in English on the Net, which is a pity. Then I decided to translate the essay. The small essay is a bagatelle, if you like, but in my view, it is most interesting and worth rereading and remembering. You may take this incondite translation as purely cognitive text. I don’t share the author’s irony concerning harmony of the world, and I believe in harmony of the disharmonious. Now imagine: the 1920s, Paris by night…

*Disharmonie harmonieuse*

The small bright-lit café is white, cozy, douillette. Its windows and doors covered with reddish-rosy velvet. Its patron is a chic swarthy man wearing a dinner-jacket, white shirt and patent-leather shoes with white uppers. He wants nothing to be visible or heard outside, and every now and then, with his well cared-for hand adorned with glittering rings he straightens the close velvet of the windows.
It’s one at night. Theatre shows are over, and to Bar Auguste in the small suspicious lane in Montmartre the elegant smelly automobiles and cabs drive up. The door opens every minute. Gentlemen wearing tailcoats; ladies wearing evening dresses. Two mirrored walls vis-à-vis multiple reflections of everything and everybody between them.
Sounds of “matchiche” are heard from the corner where the musicians’ jackets show red. Snaking the middle-aged, clean-shaven Hautero dances with Bobete. Bobete turns his head to look at himself in a mirror every now and then. He loves himself. He is concerned in his accurate kinky hair: if only the hairstyle were not disordered. An odd hair, it looks like a wig of false astrakhan or like our soldiers’ hats. Hautero (he is… dressmaker) is draped with a large Spanish serape. The café is crowded, and the serape’s long fringe gets caught on the guests’ buttons. Hautero has a felt wide-awake on his head. A red rose is in his teeth. Clicking ivory castanets Hautero is fascinated by dancing. He enjoys the attention of the chic guests, who are numerous tonight in the bright-lit room; besides he loves Bobete and clings to the young man, snaking languorously.
Loud applause. The patron applauds looking askance at the door. “Bravo, Hautero!” the guests shout. And two ladies invite him at their table and ask to have a glass of champagne. One of the ladies has canotier and a coat on, a starched collar props her sharp chin; she has a cigarette in one hand, her other hand embraces her neighbor, a pale nice-looking girl, brightly lipsticked. The girl has rich flaxen-coloured hair; on her fingers she has such a great amount of rings that she seems to be metal gloved. A bebe style white frock.
“Lily!” Hautero worries her. “Sing for us!”
Mincing Lily goes to the middle of the room. Her friend never takes eyes off her.
But there is a small misunderstanding. Adolph, a lovely youth with dark languid eyes is tired of sitting at table with a German. The German treats Adolph to beer, the man hardly can speak French, in general, he seems to be rude, boring, uninteresting. Now a Pole wearing a tailcoat and top-hat throws a rose across the table to Adolph. The youth puts the rose in the buttonhole, comes to the Pole and kisses the man on lips. The German takes offence and begins to be insolent to the Pole. Who knows what would come of it but for the sophisticated patron; being confused not in the least he knows whose side he should take with: the Pole spends hundreds francs for champagne every night in the cafe. The patron speaks energetically about something to the German. The angry man turns red and goes out; everyone laughs and whistles after. Adolph laughs especially loud, however he is looking at the Pole no longer--now he looks occasionally at three clean-shaven Americans with thick cigars in teeth, who watch dully and imperturbably what’s going on. Lily has nearly taken alarm yet she calms down and begins to sing in a thin voice a sweet song, throwing her eyes up at her friend. Amidst the men the singer is not a success, but the chic ladies of demi-monde bend and begin to explain something to their tired elderly boyfriends, and then they applaud softly with their hands wearing long white gloves.
Bobete announces he wants to sing too. But it’s the same old story: being engaged in himself too much he demands everyone to keep silence while he is singing. As if on purpose talks arise amidst the listeners as soon as he begins to sing. He grows angry and becomes silent. To take offence affectedly, to make a little moue of plaint is profession of the kinky lamb Bobete. One of the guests, a young artist crosses out his funny well-meant caricature.
Like Lily Bobete has liking for sweet sentimental songs. Pressing his hands on his bosom he sings of unshared love, of men’s heartlessness. But Lucien is quite another matter; the young man dislikes the sloppy endearments. His baritone is not bad at all. Opening his eyes wide, looking seriously he shoots out the free-spoken things that in virtue of their specific character hardly can be comprehensible at times. Most spicy bits he underlines with gestures. The listeners enjoy.
The Pole laughs especially loud. He has forgotten of Adolph and invites the vigorous Lucien at table. However there are two Luciens. The second one is a modest, non-singing boy about eighteen or may be younger. The young Russian artist, the enigmatic habitué (“enigmatic” because nobody, including Hautero, knows his name here, though everyone here has got used to him and loves him) calls the second Lucien to sit at our table. Hautero, who is tired of dancing, sat at our table too.
The artist presents little bouquets of violets to Hautero and Lucien. Lucien is so stupid that he doesn’t know what he should do with his bouquet. Lucien is stupid to utter perfection--not only to innocence, but even worse, to ultimate virtue. He hardly can speak. He just smiles with his fresh children’s lips. His eyes are either an infant’s or a deer’s, very beautiful. Being slightly confused, an elderly Russian writer admires the eyes; yet the man doesn’t look for a wit, being content with his own, as for adolescence, Lucien has it to your heart’s content. Really, what for a wit, if there are freshness, beauty and virtue?
“Gha-a…” Lucien smiles. “J’aime tout le monde…”
And Hautero is not stupid at all. He doesn’t mind philosophizing, pretending to be une cocotte chic as usual, as usual repeating female feline grimaces. His face is whitened as a mask. The nostrils of his flattish nose swell, he puts the violets and round green leaves in his ears. He has tousled the little bouquet to parts.
“Life is good, isn’t it, bon camarade?” I ask.
He makes a small bow on one side:
“Good, because there is always hope”.
“Hope of what?”
“I don’t know. Is that of importance? O, speranza, speranza!”
“You lie”, I think. “You know the old age is coming; you know that at your art of “dressmaker” you need adolescence as nobody else; even une cocotte chic, even she keeps her fortune longer than you…”
Some movement. A new face. A boy, well-dressed, remarkably beautiful, seems to be a Spaniard. His eye is confused, alarmed and somewhat badgered. He looks round. Hautero jumps up pushing Lucien neglectfully. The Spaniard is encircled. Another moment he is jammed. What has become of him?--presently--I don’t know.
The musicians have nearly begun to play a gipsy romance, but they are interrupted with everyone’s demand of “matchiche”. Snaking someone goes to dance again… Lifted arms sway in the dove-coloured air…
Well, what comes next? We seemed to do all tonight--both sang and danced--and all was good, in friendly way … But there is a new guest: a little old woman in black with a little reticule in hands. She looks like a usual parishioner of a church. A woman like she stands at a chapel and moves her lips telling her beads. But there is not a chapel here, and the old woman has a pack of cards in hands instead of beads. She is a fortune-teller.
The well-dressed ladies are glad. At their table the fortune-teller shuffles the worn, greasy cards. The elderly tailcoat-clad boyfriends put monocles in eyes and pretend to be interested in the fortune telling. The ladies laugh loudly.
But someone of the guests is off. The Pole went away along with the little Adolph, because he preferred Adolph to Lucien after all; Lucien followed them with envious eye. Hautero rushes about tables, arranging affairs: “About twenty! Take my word for it! He overcharges!” The patron glances at his watch. Chasseur calls automobiles, cabs. The musicians make their round with a plate in hand; the waiters give the fantastic bills.
“C’est curieux, c’est tres curieux”, say the elderly tailcoat-clad boyfriends, who have become thin and hollow-cheeked at once, and throw the unbelievable fur-mantles on their ladies’ shoulders.
The boulevards are silent. The high Windmill is lit with red and blue irritating lights no longer. It is waiting for the next night, waiting for the warm wind of the human… no, Parisian lust. The roundabouts turn no longer. The rosy boars, which the happy screaming people rode the night long, now are covered and keeping silence.
The gaunt, sallow-faced conductor of the last metro takes tickets of the not numerous passengers. The carts full of vegetables move slowly along the desert streets. There is the soft-green cart full of cresses; and over there is the orange one, full of carrots. A Parisian doesn’t look at the carts. It’s for tomorrow. And tonight it’s time to go to bed. All in good time; and days must be harmonious--a sleep after a spree. The harmony of the world is a great thing!
That’s true. So what? Nothing special. I don’t draw a conclusion. I just take a photograph.

The End

The young Zinaida Gippius:

null