House
of Cards: The Poetry of Lev Rubinstein
by
Douglas Messerli
Lev
Rubinstein Compleat Catalogue of Comedic
Novelties, translated from the Russian by Philip Metres and Tatiana
Tulchinsky (Brooklyn, New York: Ugly Duckling Presse, 2014)
Russian
poet Lev Rubinstein (b. 1947) is generally described as a conceptualist artist,
and is associated, as a founding member, with the group called the Moscow
Conceptualists. But before we begin to categorize his poetry, it is helpful to
perceive that Russian conceptualism, at least as Rubinstein and others practice
it, is not focused on a shell into which content is purposefully or
accidentally “poured,” but is best conceived as a literary form into which very
specific, even if quite disjunctive content is shaped by the poet into a more
abstract expression of ideas.
If conceptualists from the United States (Kenneth Goldsmith, for example) might begin with an overriding construct such as a single daily issue of The New York Times or a series of radio weather or traffic reports (as in Day of 2003, Weather of 2005, and Traffic of 2007), allowing the content to be defined by the form, Rubinstein focuses upon fixed units of content which function together in a manner converging upon a more abstract whole.
If the medium determines the message (or, at least, determines the structure of the message) in works such as Goldsmith’s or Vanessa Place’s, one might argue that the message essentially determines the medium for the Moscow Conceptualists, a message which, sometimes upon reflection, is transformed into something more abstract or conceptual. And in connection with this, if the audience of US conceptualist works reperceives the message because of its new context (through the reading of newspaper articles embedded within a bound book, for example, instead of in newsprint, an aural weather or traffic report within the format of a printed page), in Rubinstein’s works the associations actually help to determine not only the meaning but to redefine the actual construct of the work—forcing him or her to ask is this “drama,” “film,” “fiction,” “aphorism,” “19th-century parody?” etc.
Similarly, while Rubinstein’s poetry seems
to have a great deal in common with the works of the Fluxus poets of the
earlier generation in the US such as Jackson Mac Low and others, like John
Cage, who used chance-generated systems, there are significant differences.
Having worked as a librarian, Rubinstein uses library file cards to define what
might be described as stanzas, lines, or other units of his poems. The cards
are not shuffled or presented in random order, but represent fixed components,
which the skilled translators of this work, Philip Metres and Tatiana
Tulchinsky, describe as something akin to units of breath, created by the
pauses within the sequence of cards. In book form these read, given the limits
of space, as stanzas—most often numbered—which might arguably be better represented
by separate pages—although I would argue that to do so would isolate them in a
manner that does not match the performative experience.
Certainly some of Rubinstein’s works, in
their patterned series of linguistic abstractions, remind one, at times, of Mac
Low’s work. One hears in the narrative directions of Rubinstein’s “Farther and
Farther On” (1984), for example, echoes of Mac Low’s The Pronouns” of two decades earlier.*
Rubinstein:
7
Here, the sharpest bout of
nostalgia grips you.
How it comes about is unknown..
8
Here, one shouldn’t stay for too
long. Later it will probably become
clear why.
9
Here each has his own floor and
ceiling.
Each has her own borders of falling
and soaring.
And not just here.
10
Here, everything reminds you of
something, points of something,
refers to something.
But as soon as you start to
understand what’s what, it’s time to leave.
Mac Low:
He makes himself comfortable
& matches parcels.
Then he makes glass boil
while having political material get
in
& coming by.
Soon after, he’s giving gold
cushions or seeming to do so,
taking opinions,
shocking,
pointing to a fact that seems to be
an error & showing it to be
other than it seems,
& presently paining by going or
having waves.
Then after doing some waiting,
he disgusts someone
& names things.
(from “lst Dance—Making Things New—6
February 1965”)
Yet,
as critic Michael Epstein hints,** there are elements of what has been
described as “the new sentimentality,” an aesthetics of nostalgia and detached
meta-realism in Rubinstein’s work that one would never encounter in poems by
Mac Low or Cage. And even if, through the influence of Rubinstein’s fellow poet
Dmitry Prigov, he redirected his poetry
from sentiment to what is characterized as a “new sincerity,” parodying models
of Soviet ideology,*** Rubinstein’s works are filled, as Epstein notes of
another post-Soviet poet, Timur Kibirov (addressing Rubinstein in his own
poem), with words such as “soul,” “tear,” “angel,” beauty,” “truth,” etc., that
would be unthinkable in either current US conceptualism or in works by Fluxus
writers or those influenced by Cage.
Rubinstein’s work, moreover, is absolutely
stuffed with numerous nods to other genres and filled with older literary
references, theatrical characterizations, narrative dramatic conventions,
fustian references to figures out of Tolstoy, Pushkin, Chekov, and Lermotov,
and, even more surprising for the US reader, moralistic aphorisms and
proclamations. As Epstein convincingly argues, words “which even the 19th century found overly pompous and old-fashioned…having become haughty and stiff
through centuries of traditional, official usage,” are reused in Russian
conceptualism not only as subjects of “carnivalesque derision,” but “are now returning
to a transcendental transparency and lightness, as if they were not of this
world.” Accordingly, even if Rubinstein’s audience is conscious of the banality
and triteness of many of his phrases (laughing along with the poet, so to
speak), Rubinstein also uses them in a way that somehow reinfuses them with new
meaning.
Clearly Rubinstein’s early conceptualist
work, most notably the 1975 poem “The Regular Program,” which outlines a
process of poetic writing as it actualized before the reader’s eyes, contained
no such language:
paragraph
nine.
Grants
the real possibility oriented in the newly outlined circle of concepts;
paragraph
ten.
Where
there is time to think;
paragraph
twelve.
Points to the deficiency of the
existing cosmogony;
paragraph
thirteen.
Points
to the necessity of defining the circle of alternative concepts;
paragraph
fourteen.
For
the first time urges one to concentrate and think;
(“The Regular
Program,” [1975], pp. 177-178)
But
within a decade Rubinstein had already moved to a comic, yet oddly sincere,
dramatic ode to a nightingale in what almost might translated as “A Little
Night Music,” titled by Metres and Tulchinksy as “A Little Night Serenade”:
8
Hark! Here next to branches’ veil
The heart skips for nightingale!
9
Mischief-maker nightingale
Sings away in the shady veil!
10
From the secret shade of
leaf-veils
He watches us, the nightingale!
11
The angel of night, nightingale,
Whistles for it amid branches’
veil!
12
In the moonlit shack of branches’
veil
He has settled, O nightingale!
13
The muses’ captive,
nightingale,
In the secret shade of leaf-veils:
14
He sits amid the branches’ veil—
The muses’ darling, nightingale!
15
A lonely man and nightingale—
Together in the leafy veil!
16
(Applause.)
17
—I wonder if premonitions come
true or not.
18
—What premonitions?
19
—Well, there are certain
premonitions…
20
—About what?
(from “A
Little Night Serenade” [1986])
Obviously, we comprehend that Rubinstein is
purposely evoking the dead moralistic world of 19th century poetry,
in which, as he later writes in the poem, “A man is not a real man / If he’s
really not a real man.” But his is not an either/or world, and it is
intentionally difficult at moments to determine what are the absurd maxims and
what are the genuine sentiments of the poet and poem:
68
A man must sing a song
If his heart demands it!
69
A man must love
Or he’s no man!
70
A man must come to suffer—
That’s how he cleanses himself!
71
A man must sleep—
His head is aching!
72
A man needs all
He cannot do without!
73
A man must live
If he’s a man!
If
this is ironic, we cannot quite separate these somewhat absurdly prescriptive
definitions of a man from at least a moment’s truthful commentary; and if these
comments have any element of truth behind them, then might not the singing,
sleeping, sighing nightingale of the first part be seen as also representing
some elements of truth?
In short, in Rubinstein’s work what might
at first appear to be simple doggerel is, at times, suddenly imbued with new
meaning. Perhaps that is also what happens, in some senses, in the U.S.
conceptualist works in which context changes our comprehension of the content,
but here the content itself is reenergized, and it is not only the difference
(Derrida’s la differance) that
matters, but the simultaneity of meanings and the sentiments behind them.
These maxims are banal and are still
somehow significant, representing a kind of “and/and” pattern that is very
different from American thinking. In a sense, through his library card units,
Rubinstein creates a kind of “house of cards” which, while subject to
demolishment at any moment, still provides a temporary domicile.
This pattern is particularly evident in a
poem such as “Elegy” (1983):
1
Sometimes you ask yourself, “Could
something else be possible?”
—and it seems at that moment that it
could.
2
Sometimes you think, “This will never
ever come to an end”
—and the end is indeed nowhere in
sight.
3
Sometimes you wonder whether it’s
worth it to inhabit natural
processes. And is it indeed?
4
Sometimes it wouldn’t hurt to point
out the fact that something
nevertheless is happening, isn’t it?
5
Sometimes it’s appropriate to note
that at present, everything is coming
Together and a kind of pattern, one
might say, is becoming visible.
****
35
Sometimes you rush hither and thither
in search of peace, but all you need
to do is wait and it will come.
36
Sometimes you seem to be approaching
something, but moves ever further
away.
37
Sometimes, approaching the forbidden
line, you’ll think for a minute
and then step over it.
38
Sometime you literally can’t afford to
lose a minute, but for some reason
You keep putting it off…
(from “Elegy”
[1983], pp. 274-279)
For Rubinstein, the negative can suddenly
become a positive and vice versa. Again and again throughout his work what
might be comic becomes serious or at least emotionally viable, a morally bad
choice can be represented as a possibly good one, or a positive moral choice
can just as easily be perceived to be a silly syllogism. Things change even
when they stay the same, as he expresses it in “From Beginning to End” (1981):
From the beginning, it’s the way it
usually is. At the same time, so that it’s as if
there was nothing before this, and
there will be nothing after.
Basically the same. At the same time, so that
it’s as if everything’s just begun.
Approximately the same. But so that
eh feeling of the first impulse is preserved
fully.
In the same spirit. But in such a
way that the feeling of freshness and novelty
does not weaken for a moment.
Everything the same. And at the same
time, so that the feeling of confidence gets
stronger and stronger.
As before. At the same time, so that
it’s completely clear everything is in order,
everything in its place.
****
The same. But so that emerging
doubts are either resolved by themselves or rejected
as far-fetched.
Same. But so that there is no place
for any doubts at all.
Same. Continue on the same
principle. But so that a constant recording of
positive states does not somehow
lead to negative results.
And so on, until the end. But in
such a way that a vague feeling remains that
There is also a real possibility of
something else.
(“From
Beginning to End” [1993], p. 296)
Similarly,
in “Melancholy Album” (1993)—in which, significantly, even a chicken sounds
like a nightingale—the central figure “gets lost” to “come back, against all
expectations.”
Just when all sense of self has been
obscured, when the past seems to be utterly meaningless and one’s own
significance in the world appears to be pointless, individuality (the “I”)
reappears again, repeating its existence over and over, almost like a mantra:
“Now, here I am!”
23
Now…
24
Now, here I am!
Could I have dreamed…
25
Not even in a dream…
26
…just yesterday…
27
(Repeat four times)
28
So...
29
So here I am! Hard to believe, and yet…
(“Here I
Am” [1994], p. 375)
If
this reminds one a bit of Stephen Sondheim’s “I’m Still Here,” we shouldn’t be
surprised, suggests Epstein in reiterating some of the purposeful
sentimentality of the Moscow Conceptualists, but, as we all recognize,
profundity can also exist in the simplest of expressions. Rubinstein’s world is
not one or the other, but both, a world in which even the tropes of simple
truisms can be somewhat restorative, depending, in part, upon the audience’s
acceptance of them.*
Throughout Rubinstein’s work there is
almost a sense of exhaustion from the attempts to make sense of a meaningless
past, and, accordingly, his narrator often cries out simply for a peace, a
rest, a time to contemplate and, perhaps, to restore patterns of meaning that
have previously proven to be useless:
15
Dear friend,
After a life of the rat race and
hurrying to catch trains, it would be great to
sleep for a long time, without dreams.
16
Dear friend,
After the successful completion of yet
another campaign, let’s not prepare for
the next thing—let’s rest.
(“Friendly
Messages of 1983” [1983], p. 125)
Epstein describes these phenomena through
a slightly different lens:
It now becomes clear that all the
“banal” concepts have not simply been undermined and replaced: they have
gone through a profound metaphorphosis and are now returning from
another direction under the sign of “trans.” This applies not only to
Erofeev’s “trans-irony” and Prigov’s “trans-lyricism.” It also applies to
something that could be called “trans-Utopianism” This is a rebirth of
utopia after its own death, after subjection to Postmodernism’s severe
skepticism, relativism and its anti- or post-utopian consciousness.
Here is what several Moscow artists and art scholars of the
post-Conceptual wave have said about the subject: “It is crucial that the
problem of the universal be raised as a contemporary issue. I understand
that it is a utopia. It is done completely consciously, yes, utopia is dead, so
long live utopia. Utopia endows the individual with a more significant
and wider horizon” (Viktor Miziano).
In the end, Epstein argues, and I agree after reading Rubinstein’s works, that this new “sentimentality,” “shimmering aesthetics,” or new utopianism—whatever you want to call it—represents a new era in which the Postmodern, followed by a larger stage of Postmodernity, will surely take us in different directions than Postmodernism itself.
Hopefully, I argue, it might take us out
of a world in which, as Umberto Eco has posited, all values are necessarily
parenthesized, and we can once again speak of “love,” “nature,” “experience,”
even “reality” in a way that is once more meaningful and fresh. Parodying Pushkin,
Rubinstein again raises just such questions of how we can find value and
meaning in a world in which will end merely in our deaths:
9
Dmitry Alexandrovich, I couldn’t
agree more: there is still friendship
and love in the world...
10
Then why is happiness searching for
us, but still can’t find us? We are
somewhere around the corner…
11
Everything is new in the world. Yet
nothing is new. Everything
depends only on who you are...
12
This is how life is: the rivers
drain away, and the seas dry up, and we
Still live…
13
Everyone dies. And this one too. And
he’ll be buried…And forgotten
like all the rest.
14
This is how life is: you just can’t
make any plans. You’d better let
take its own course from the start.
(“The Poet
and the Crowd” [1985], p. 346)
Even
through a melancholic dialogic discussion from Pushkin, one can, after all,
glean truths that offer new meaning for life. In the simultaneous realities
that Rubinstein creates in his poems one can laugh at and learn from something
at the very same moment, as the message shimmers between poet and reader, the
poet and the crowd.
________
*Interestingly,
both of these works were adapted to other performative genres, Rubinstein’s
becoming an audio-video and performance piece, what Metres describes as a
“field installation”; and Mac Low’s poetic “instructions” were performed as a
dance.
**Michael
Epstein, from “On the Place of Postmodernism in Postmodernity,” Russian Postmodernism: New Perspectives on
Post-Soviet Culture (New York and Oxford: Berghan Books, 1999), pp.
456-468.
***Prigov
describes this also as “a shimmering aesthetics,” which creates a “shimmering
relationship between the author and the text” that occurs in the author’s “immersion in the text
and distance of the withdrawal from it.”
****What
might be fascinating, although I shall not purse it here, is to consider this
“and/and” perspective in light of the Russian government’s insistence on
promoting multiple false explanations of the truth of international and
internal events, such its explanations for events in Ukraine and other
conflicts.
Los Angeles,
January 19-20, 2015
Reprinted
from Hyperallegic Weekend (February
7, 2015).
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