Maximilian Voloshin - The Ways of Cain

The Ways of Cain*
(Tragedy of Material Culture)

I. REBELLION

1.
There was Rebellion in the beginning -
The one aimed at God.
And God himself was a rebellion;
And everything that exists
Has been born through rebellion.

2.
Out of the whirls and contradictions
Our Earth appeared;
The tangible and steady equilibriums
Emerged and condensed into matter.
But nature sentenced soon
This crafty-cruel world
To death.

3.
To save it from decay
A forging fire appeared.
It is smothering in "I" -
That is why,
The world is powerless to seize and stifle it.
Fire brought life -
That is why,
In every corner of the world
There's breathing, beating, burning.
Not life and death - 
But death and resurrection are the products
Of a throbbing fire.

4.
The world's a staircase Man has tried to climb:
Beasts, stars, the slag of flesh... -­
They served him as ascending steps
While he clutched high
Along the path
Of his rebellious mind.


5.
Rebellion or adaptation ?
From these two ways
That creatures earnestly beseech,
The former is sheer madness
(for nature never yields);
Yet, who can stop a madman from
His craze ?
Some've choosen adaptation - thus
They're hushed forever on a trodden step.
The beast is fit for nature's bends,
But man rows stubbornly to chaos:
He worships war,
Creates through doubt,
And gains a firm hold through negation.
He is an architect,
But chisel he employs is death,
His clay - capricious mind inside him.


6.
Once, in the ancient dark,
A shaggy beast
Went out of mind,
And turned into a Man -
Most evil and perilous beast on Earth,
Insane with logic,
And obsessed by faith;
Intelligence became a cursing of Creation.
Man left his stains across the way:
Dissected life and put it into numbers,
Laid bare the nature's roots,
And probed the substance;
Like a parasite,
He sucked the earth
Until it suffered inextinguishable pain;
He searched the keys for sacred truths,
Released the titans, dressed them into iron,
He harnessed them for an exhausting work;
He changed the world but could not change himself;
He's gotten lost in his own caves,
He's turned into a slave of his own servants.

7.
The time has come for new rebellions
And madness, catastrophes and falls.
The prudent ones, "Return to flock!"
The rebels, "Re-create your being!"
25 January 1923



II. FIRE

1.
Man's flesh's a roll where
All Creation dates are written.

2.
He left behind as landmarks
All his brothers:
The trees, the animals and birds;
He laid across the path of fire.
Blood is a sign of earthly riot,
A torch - another sign,
Enhanced by wind.

3.
At first, the Earth was froth;
And in its smoking womb,
A knot of life appeared, 
Entangled and engrossed,
With breathing flesh.
The planet cooled while species thrived;
Our ancestor pulled out his fishy bones
Onto the shore. And suddenly
The  ocean, heat and salt,
Turned into human blood,
And rushed in human veins.

4.
As monstrous beasts were breeding on the sands,
The Master-sculptor washed the dirt away
And made new forms.
Man was not seen
Amongst this early herd,
But when the glaciers streamed
From poles and fell on valleys
Swarming with life-forms, -
The campfires sparkled and heralded
The Coming of a Man.
 

5.
Two fires exist: a handy fire of home,
The kitchen fire, the fire of stove,
The fire of icon-lamp and sacrifice,
The fire of furnaces,
The fire of hearts, invisible and dark,
Set in the bowels of the subterranean lava.
And yet there is another type of fire:
The arsons and the conflagration,
Steppe fire of nomads,  fire of witches' minds,
The fire of leaders, alchemists and prophets,
The frenzied fire of rebels, revolutions,
Prometheus' indomitable torch ,
Initiated from a thunder.


6.
The campfire carved a Man out of a beast,
And fused first family. 
The cave became a temple,
Meals - a sacrament,
The fire-place served an altar,
And the household
Took sacred meaning of a service.
Man fed and multiplied,
Fearful of God. 
Thus, family, religion and the state
Were cast in ovens, 
Like a bronze.


7.
Millennia have passed
Since Man built roof
O'er fire-bird's nest.
Accompanied by Vedic melodies
He used a pistil in the wooden hole,
He rolled it awkwardly with venous string
Until he recognized Prometheus
In him. He saw himself as fire
In flesh.
26 January 1923



III. MAGIC         

1.
Upon the sands of the Unknown sea
Sindbad-wayfarer
Picked a bottle, sealed by Solomon;
And, having open it,
Became o'erpowered
by a forceful Jinn.
(One easily releases
slumb'ring forces -
Not knowing how to make them hush)

2.
When Man was sucking sleepingly from nature,
His rosy dreams replaced the real world,
A ploughman narrow'd eyes
Lest he should miss a faun;
God  frequented the roads quite often,
And a ploughman tuned his ear
To catch the Prophet's voice.
The hidden forces would
Agree to help him keep the fire
And pulled his wheel,
And  healed his broken limb;
He had a pact with undines, salamanders,
And learned how to restrain his ills.
 
   
3.
Then he awoke from timeless dreams
To day-time,
And, being blinded by the light,
Lost all his gift of clairvoyance;
He did not see that nature still was able
To suppress his will,
The elements that he besought
Were too unshaken to surrender.


4.
Meanwhile, in the transfigured world,
They lived:
The  greedy cobolds melted steel and ore,
The salamanders glow'd in the fires,
And dancing elves
Were gliding on the wires;
The desert  demons
Burst in hurricanes,
And river nymphs were toiling
In turbines.
 
5.
But Man ignored familiar faces -
He did fancy
To be the only ruler of the world;
He did not see that on the markets,
Behind the phantom curtains of the stocks,
The old debate between him and the spirits
Was still in force;
He did not see that
Having spoiled the balance,
He had become a plaything
In their hands.

6.
With every human blow on nature
Life protested,
And taught us, pups,
And rubbed our nose
In blood,
Until we turned the hatred into knowledge,
And substance tried  to poise with love.
We had to master magic,
That is, science, or sacred art,
that conquers mind.

7.
But human mind is weak.
Therefore, the laws are written
Not in books or bibles -
But on blades;
The weapons of destruction
Are the teachers - they teach the careless
humans to restrain.
       30 January 1923



IV.       FIST

1.
A fist gave birth to brotherhood:
Cain first
Discovered decent gesture  for
his feelings.
He recognized the words of other day:
"A stranger would be more a brother
Than the kin". 

2.
Cain hated blood, for he was born a peasant;
To please his God,
He'd bring his gift - the fruits -
But Yahveh did not like it.
To please God more, he killed a nomad
strayed in crops.
"What now, my Lord, this fits you well?"
Cried and off he went
With an eternal stigma:
"He'll be punished seven times
Who troubles Cain".


3.
He broke his blood relations
And at once,
He sensed acute seclusion,
Bitterness of  freedom.
A builder of the cities -
He introduced the jails;
A forger of the ploughshare -
He introduced the knife; 
Inventor of the music -
He carved the flute and fiddle;
A catcher of the bisons -
He put them on the walls.


4.
Thus he became a father of the rogues,
The heresies, the artists and the science.


5.
Five fingers form a fist -
A metacarpus fit
For club,  and stick, and stone.
But it's the Cain's main point.

6.
The right of fist gave birth
To laws
More gentle than the guns,
Or powder, or a bomb;
These laws kept muscles strong,
Contracted  or reposed;
They bestowed equipoise
Of nature and a Man.

7.
When  bloody flag heaves high
in revolutions,
With "Liberty, Fraternity, or Death!",
Its  flagstaff's  clutched in your fist, Cain,
The murderer, the rebel.
1 March 1922


V.    SWORD

1.
Sword swore to justice.

2.
Forged by a violence,
And sharpened for revenge,
It's soaked with blood
Of saints and sinners both;
A handle has become the ark
of their relics,
( to kiss a blade - a martial salutation !).
In this, a sword resembles cross -
A pillory,
Transformed into a sign of love.

3.
The steel exposed the words of prayers and convictions.
"We worship Virgin Mary, our Savior !",
"Don't  use me without need,
 Don"t hide me without honor!"
"In te, o Domine, speravi!"
Were mottoes written on medieval blades.
Swords played a part
In sacred rites,
And acted as baptizers.
The uttered name of "Durandal"
Blazed like a blow;
And like the fairies,
The swords were worshipped by
The pious monks.

4.
Thus out of a highway robber
A sword made quite a decent knight.
His face and flesh  were kept in steel,
His spirit hardened by the oaths,
For heart he had a Seraph's sword -
It punished and revenged,
Dissected good from evil;
"Si ! Si! No! No!"
Proclaimed the sword of
Cid Campeador.


5.
When other forces hit the world
Man was transformed again,
His sword turned into rapier.
(A lancet for a flaming  pride).
A sword became an oracle
For public, kind of judgement.
'Til finally the butchers buried swords
In Germany. Those who dissected
Ninety-nine.


6.
A surgeon, a philanthropist
Reformed the penalty
By using a machine;
That is, he introduced an industry
Into a death domain.
It  turned into a teaching, a doctrine:
It took the image of Saint Just
And Robespierre,
The guillotine,
The product of Cain's mind.


7.
O, Justice,
holding  scales and sword!
Did you not throw into the world,
"vae victus", let the losers fall?
Did you not say  that, first of all,
The people must be killed?
Did you not multiply the dead,
The murders, one by one,
An evil follow evil?
Didn't he who brought  "the sword, not peace"
Inflate the fire that stings our spirit
Unless all grasp a mystery:
"The vengeance is all mine
And I shall  render evil?"

1 February 1922



VI.  GUNPOWDER

1.
The civil rights were brought by fist,
While sword
Was rendered as a state affair :
Gunpowder did erase them both
Creating service regulations.

2.
Invention of a fallen monk -
Gunpowder -
Showed a smoky face,
And swept away the armours
Of the knights
Like needless rust.

3.
 "Haul swords to smiths,
 Employ the guns!
The honor, strength, and bravery
Are senseless. From now on,
Last coward is akin to knight".
"O how blessed was the age
That did not know the gun !",
Exclaimed Roland and Don Quichotte,
The last swords of the noble.
   
4.
Accustomed to a sleep
In cosy depth of slothfulness,
Powder made into guns,
And now could spit the death into a face
Of everyone,
Specific of the moment.

5.
Erasing man's  creations, homes and domes,
Destroying stone and brick,
It forced the armies into closer contacts,
It concentrated for a prick.
The gun received its power,
The solders  got their lines,
The barrel got its bullets
The marshals - discipline;
Having bound knots in darkened souls, 
It staggered many and united some;
It piled the barricades,
And mould new slaves
Of free entrepreneurship.

6.
It  made the army and the barracks prosper,
The service regulations quite the norm,
Unquestioning, exactness, distance
Replaced the humans
And their souls. 
It  made the helmets, swords,
The  decorations  useless,
Eliminated all the glory
Of medieval scenes;
It painted  the corroded roads
And crumpled fields brown-green;
It turned all things into the color
Of excrements and vomit  to deceive
Our enemies,
That is, our former friends.

7.
But even more commanding force
Approached us,
As we became
Enshrouded by the night;
The images of monstrous  nameless shadows 
Were eager to take care of our life;
Not only Age of Sword,
But God of Fire himself 
Was summoned to surrender,
And the whirls
Of monster bomb, a dynamite,
Were prophesied
The coming  of  New Storm.

28 January 1923



VII. STEAM

1.
Steam trickled over
While the ox pulled plough,
The horses - carriage,
It did tinkle in vain.
Once covered by a lid,
It hissed to draw
Someone's attention.

2.
An age ago the engineer
Invented pot,
And  bolt it to a cart.
Steam pushed the plunger out,
And locomotive, gasping,
Set out in motion. Dragging
caravan of people and the things.

 3.
Thus, Age of Steam began.
In course of time, the iron ox
Turned into Minotauvre:
Steam sent the workers to the mines -
To dig out ore and coal;
To marshes - fill them with the mould,
To deserts - build the roads;
It locked the workers in the shops,
And smeared the sky with soot.
It strangled cities with a smog,
And made us mute.

4.
Steam shortened distance,
Narrowed the earth;
It stretched the hills, the trees, the huts
into a blurred landscape.
It closed the space for travelers;
It  robbed the heels of roads,
The eyes - of new horizons,
The hands - of  sprightly staff,
And nostrils - of fresh wind.

5.
The road became a distance, a short route.
It rushed into the cities and
Disturbed
The sacred labyrinths;
It cleaved the streets
And turned them into gutters
Of frenzied speed;
It drove away
Pedestrians to trenches, bridges,
And  hitched up viaducts.

6.
The crashing, clanging, clicking 
Jammed a human speech,
And made the meditations 
Obsolete,
A triumph of the wheels.
 

7.
Admittedly, God chiseled Adam
By his own form,
But steam thought nakedness
Impudent for a man.
So it re-shaped him
Into its own image:
A shrouded livery,
A chimney on his head,
Imprisoned legs,
And all the colors changed
Into the shades of mud;
It took man's soul 
And breathed a steam,
Instead.
8 February 1922
 




VIII. MACHINE

1.
As there was no inventor of machines
Who would not think to do
A favour to all humans,
So there was no machine,
That  would not bring extreme
Mishap and slavery to all.

2.
While humans pushed a lever with a hand
And waters
Drove a mill,
Their forces did not violate
The balance of the hills.
But,  having fitted keys to nature's doors,
They set out jinns.

3.
Steam, electricity and powder
Built their own gorgeous flesh;
They won
Man's consciousness and passions,
Developed bodies for themselves;
Concordant with their inner nature,
They turned into the blasting ones,
Dynamo-motors, and turbines.

4.
Men  summoned  demons
But could not control
Their  spurt,
The frenzy of machines, 
The levers, wheels, and belts...
The steely bellies, shuddering in spasms,
Began to spit monotonous
Produce (like  cars and
Gramophones, and collars),
Overtaking cities, villages,
The earth,
Creating  markets,
Building the empires;
And no one ever could appease their craze,
Or tame unbridled slaves.

5.
Machine won victory:
It needed slaves
To mop its sweat,
To oil perinea,
To feed it with the coal,
To clear away the waste.
So it employed
A clot of muscles,
Raised in discipline  -
The greedy louts,
Who sell their souls for
HM Comfort.


6.
Machine taught men
To reasonably think.
It proved
That mind
Is nothing but a substance,
That man
Is nothing but machine;
That starry cosmos
Works like a contrivance
To manufacture time;
The thought  -
A product of digestion;   
That  matter
Nurtures  mind,
And genius - degeneration.
It taught  that man's ideal's wealth,
The only god alive -
World's stomach.
 
7.
The humming telegraphs, antennas and the poles,
The myriads of sounds and the words;
Decrees of governments, police and market data;
But not a single thought
Creeps into lines;
The endless spitting  of printouts,
Newspapers manufacturing the truth -
The one and only, fit for everyone,
But not a single word
About a man,
An ancient little creature;
The markets effluent with viands,
The restaurants with dishes;
But not a single crust
For hungry, countless beggars;
The liners on the waves,
Propellers overhead -
No place to hide away,
Man's haunted everywhere.
Meantime,
The theatres invite the crowd,
The squares are full of those
Who call for
Brotherhood of tribes;
While beggar,
With a gelded mind,
Enjoys the culture boom.

1 March 1922    



IX.  REBEL

1.
I am a voice in wilderness -
I swarm in rushing crowds,
In city streets, in terminals, 
The most forlorn of the deserts -

2.
I'm told: Go to the markets,
Speak to an every slave,
But do not rage a truth -
Blow up
The torpid balance!
Let truth ascends as flame
From down their souls !
Beware not  to convince
The fools,
For  those who take the truth
On trust will soon be blind;
The teacher whips a herd
Of  those raped by truth
(for violence of truth
Is  foulest of all);
You, seeking  fury,
Sow the contradictions!
You, seeking freedom,
Tempt, entice!
Set fire, poison,
Be a stinging gadfly
To madden sluggish minds!

3.
You, prisoners of  labyrinths !
You, corpses of  the dead!
You, throwing bombs
In parliaments and places, -
You're plotting to destroy
What grows within your souls!
I'm calling you
To the last phase:
Abandon humans,
Re-create your face.
 
4.
Who wrote these blood-stained words,
"Fraternity or Death" ?
There is no freedom -
Only liberation.
The only worthy place
For slaves is jail.
No brotherhood exists except of Cain's.
Who's tied up more than victim
And a hangman?
There's no equality -
Just counterweight;
Thus, falling walls require a vault.   
Do you believe in culture
As a goal?
In wealth as an ideal?
No! It is suffering
That chisels man;
It is the death
That fuels revolution.

5.
There's no law - just sheer compulsion;
All crime is born out of the law.
Those, who refuse to live cooped up,
Are labeled  "criminals",
They're not to be convicted,
Nor shall you punish them.   
The State itself is guilty
for its convicts.
Don't cut excessive force, but lay the ground
For an extra force.
Perceive  the essence
Of the evil,
Don't oppose the bad.
Accept the evil and transform it.   
Instead, you've built the dungeons, prohibitions;
Court stifles passions, government -  revolt,
The doctors cancel life, the priests -
Your inspiration.
Enough with "don't" commandments;
Burn! Incite! 
Search neither skies nor earth;
Check outer world and see:
Its laws are lifeless creatures!
The source of  Love is you!
Love that consumes
And nurtures
All that's bad or good,
A  flow of repercussions
Of blossom and decay.
The passions are all blossoms,
Sterility can slay. 


6.
The state is based not on the rights,
But their  deprivation.
You're looking for reward?
Naive!
Nor crime, nor the creative work
Can earnestly be paid:
Be like a tree - shed fruits and
Stretch the leafs
For  alms and rain.
Delivered?  Sold?
Presented or acquired? 
Cleared off a debt?
You, tradesmen !
You,  inventors of the bribes! 
You caught the good  and nipped it in the bud !
Return not to a giver,
Pass  to others, so your alms 
Will touch the souls and rise.
You fight for equity?
But who owns what?
The owner keeps the things,
Or things command the man?
You only own the gifts
You're willing to present;
You're rich as you let go,
You're slave of all  regrets.

7.
We carry only things
Which we refuse to own.
Can you  preserve the trash
Of your possessive mind?
Seems, you were once a slime
Abiding in the sea;
It still dictates your being,
It still is in your mind:
In favor of a comfort,
You wasted nature's ways;
For demolition purpose
You traded nature's  flame,
You liberated atom,
But jailed yourself instead!
Your flame immured in chaos,
Your torch  thrown into bomb;
A self-explosive planet,
Explode ! Explode and burn!
Or will you wait until the Earth
Falls into lumps of mud?
25 January 1923

X.  WAR

1.
Peace lasted long. The nations  prospered
And were extremely satisfied.
Yet, now and then,
After exchanging glances,
They'd pounce upon the weakest,
And devoured;
Then move back, growling.
Overall,
The world was rolling normal:
Trillions of wheels rotated hammers,
Guns were being machined;
The chemists worked to get more toxic matter;
The scientists were busy with machines
Of mass destruction;
Politicians crept
Over maps for colonizing markets;
The thinkers praised eternal peace on earth,
While women swayed in pliant tangos
Displaying powdered flesh; it seemed,
The cultural manometer attained
Its apogee.

2.
Then, from the space,
A voice was heard,  proclaiming:
"Time to sharpen out the hatred
Of  the  war!
Because men mounted the thrones,
Empowered demons,
Released the hidden fire to the world;
Because men briddled the neutrality of  heaven,
Because the freedom of the air was spoiled,
Because the greediness was turned into the profit,
I free the demons from obedience to men,
And chaos of the substance -
From the music!
I order them  to be the masters of the world
Until the people conquer them again,
By  overcoming arrogance and hatred ..."


3.
Now Demon scorned and laughed
And  Babylon damnation
Disaffirmed,
So languages cohered into a common,
But hopelessly distorted speech,
The meaning was confused.
The war was chosen as the means
To cope with cruelty;
The martyrs multiplied
The lie with their truths;
And Wisdom, shamefully undressed,
Like whore, caressed the soldiers.
Reason swam in blood,
So nothing left to do for men
But kill.

4.
I saw it all: the heaven's door flung open
In Lion constellation,
And the demons
Rushed to the Earth,
Forsaking their homes;
The people crowded the river valleys,
Depicting States.
They dug the trenches for the snakes,
They pastured monsters,
Being at a time,
The pastors and the meal.
 
5.
Time seemed to topple over,
As the world
Sank into dark
Oblivion of the Past;
Huge vermins crept from slime,
The iron spiders swarmed,
The serpents swallowed lightnings,
And the dragons
Belched shafts of fire;
In the seas, the fish
Was spawning deadly roe;
While in the sky,
The wingy lizards
Blocked shining sun,
The monstrous  bugs
Left larva in men's bodies:
The hordes of devil's fiends
Equipped with hatred, anger,
Derived from men,
Stung, clawed and chewed;
While cities spun,
And milled  selected grains of firstings
For Demon's meal;
And nations danced in ruins  -
The world has never seen such frenzied
Dance of Death.

6.
More! More! All seemed to crave for more...
Then  new  call was proclaimed:
"Down with  the war of tribes, the armies and the fronts:
Long live  the civic war!"
And armies mixed their ranks, and kissed
The enemies; then rushed 
Onto civilians whom they chopped,
Beat, shot, hung, tortured, took the scalps,
Carved  belts, polluted churches,
Ruined the stocks,
Spoiled ploughs, cattle, and the wheat,
Deserted  villages and  ate
The flesh of children hunger-stricken.
The plague arrived at last...


7.
The sightless times began.
Earth seemed  a wide and spacious place,
But yet there was no room
For people in the deserts;
They were conspiring new machines
To start a war again;
Thus nothing had been learned
From massacres
Of  passing generations.
29 January 1923



XI. COSMOS

1.
A face, lit up with constellations, rose
Over chaos
And reflected in the sea;
Two eyes awoke from sleep  -
And there was Light:
Two fiery rays were summed
And formed a hexagram.
The silent lips diverged,
And Word
Ascended from the chasm of dumbness.
Throngs of spirits flared from
This first breath;
The right hand raised the land,
The left apportioned waters.
From loins all earthly  creatures fell,
From sinew - plants,
From bones - the stones,
And  twins -
The Heaven and the Earth -
Adjoined their wettish heels.
God  breathed on nether regions -
The perfect Man arose.
The world was Adam,
Adam was the world.
He thought through sky,
He pondered through the clouds,
He  grew like trees,
He stiffened like a stone,
He  saw the Sun, he dreamed  about the Moon
He  heard the planets' roll
And breathed with cosmic ether.
And all - from heaven to the soil  -
Was  full of highest meaning.


2.
The timeless time collapsed and ages rained.
The cone of world lay firmly on  its basement,
As from the highest towers, Cain
Examined Constellations. 
The sky was swarming with the beasts,
The  heavens reeled, the bronze arcs strained
And spheres were moving in a complicated manner.
Men listened to the music of the worlds,
And could foretell the fate
Of earthly kingdoms;   
All mysteries could be
Disclosed from stars.
 

3.
Then  slits  of heaven closed
And world became a place,
Palestra  for the  games.
Beneath the ethered dome,
The athletes threw the bronze
Onto the sun, the poets
Drew blazing rhymes,
The theorems evolved. 
But no indigo distances, no ways
Into the magic. Tangibly and near   
The spirit ruled the flesh
As hands were pugging clay and mind examined earth;
The thrusts of cypress columns,
The odour of  incense,
The faded statues' marble,
The sticky altars' case,
And  rust, and gilded eaves;
The earth replaced
The heaven  -
The mind forgot the space.   
The souls sank into blankness,
The clenched arms and the trunks
Would prompt Aeschylus writings,
The world conformed to humans,
A measure of all things.

4.
The night condensed. The sepulchers
Revealed the bones 
Of Adam and of Cain;
In clouds' gap, a hill was seen,
With crosses on the top -
The Calvary -
The humans' final hope.
The darkened Earth,
With seven skies encircled,
And stars and primal force were seen -
In hands of the Divine,
Below - a pathway to the centre -
Where the evil dwells.
God was a circle,
Devil in the centre.
Man strived to leave the Earth:
So he erected portals, churches,
Climbed constellations
Over Bible's stones -
Ten ages of contention:
Heresies, invading mongols, huns,
Incursions, interdicts,
One hundred forty popes and sixty monarchs,
Tsars, emperors, and many other plagues...
And in the blur of heraldry,
The bugle and
The blackened ray of Calvary
Were shinning crust.


5.
Liturgically beautiful were Ages
That Galileo spoiled.
He hurdled Earth into a whirl,
Proportions changed,
The Galaxies unrolled.
And only God was lacking his own place.
A searching quest  of Thomas stated clear:
"I wouldn't know unless my fingers know!":
He verified the evident through numbers,
The colours, sounds checked by touch,
He weighed light, he measured sunny ray;
He turned the sacred dogmas into physics
And matter took its throne
And reigned in life. The Providence
Became the gravitation;
Laplace and Newton did compute the world,
And made a clockwork synthesis of spirit,
Parabolas, ellipsis and the spheres
Were claimed to be new gods,
The atheism -
The apex of all teachings.
Around him the substance tossed
And swarmed bestricken. Beasts
Were writhing in remorse;
The Universe reversed:
Non-Being was all white,
Existence hid in dark;
This was a picture drawn
By self-perceived Machine.


6.
But man's unbridled mind 
Would further probe the  world:
What is the madness, knowledge?
The truth now lives not long  -
Its age -  that of a jade.
We were in the pursuit
Of the comforting numbers,
But left ignorant in the midst:
Capacities, inductance,
Orbits ЁC are still beyond our grasp.
The substance vanished,
Firmness yields to tension,
An atom -- to electric field
(A whirl of little "no's" around  big "Yes").
No density, no weight, no size -
Only the function, difference in pressures,
Potentials, mass, charges, and the like;
Time flows unevenly,
Space has variety of forms.
Not one but many maths exist;
Creation ended,  all is being wasted:
Light, electricity and heat -
The forms of entropy,
A man ЁC bacteria at best;
The universe  - not a construction,
But a crowd,
The Sun - an accidental speck
In  cosmic streams.
Eternity will soon abide
As suns extinguish heat.
The life phenomena - a fleeting episode
In all-out death.
The consciousness - a lightning,
A trail of aerolite,
A passing of a bird which pierced
Through flames of fire,
To disappear again
Into a snowy storm.
 
7.
When eyes imposed perspective
On the world
Of  airy distances and cloudy  curtains -
And  brought the parallels  towards horizon line,
Thus making picture logical and  strict -
The mind amid the chaos of events
Assigned causality  and space,
And  tightened them with vaults of numbers.
We have erected domes of science
As a base,
Alas! We put  the borders of ignorance
Into base;
The systems of the world  are but the moulds
Of ancient souls,
A mirrored  raving of the subject and the world.
No exit from the labyrinth of knowledge,
Unless man lives according to his faith.
So think yourself  divine and everlasting!
Create the Universe and mould the space!
Be daring architect of  Babylon and Thebes!
You, conjurer of chimeras and sphinx!
                12 July 1923


XII. TANOB

1.
I read Lestvichnik just the other day,
And here's  what recollections I have found:
"I visited  Tanob and saw these convicts chaste.
They tortured their flesh,
They languished their spirit.
Some stood all night
Not giving way to sleep, some
Suffered heat, some cold extreme;
Some sipping water,
Others pinching bread,
But  then recoiled with anger, saying
That  having lived their life like pigs,
They don't deserve  the meal.
Some mourned their souls
Some kept the  tears,
But losing patience, screamed.
Some tossed their heads and  roared like lions,
Some prayed for leprosy and fits
Lest not be put in hell.
They shouted grief, their eyes were dim,
The eyelids lost  the  lashes,
The faces looked like deadly green,
The breasts were wheezing, tongues were sick,
The bloody  moistness  at their  lips,
As if of dogs...
And dark, and dirt and dirges".

2.
The soul was stung by Christian faith.
It tossed 
And fiercely tried to strip the flesh -
A Heraclean tunic.
While living clay was baking in the fire,
The soul exchanged the pagan joys
For pangs - such was the fear   
Of heaven's punishment.
The fires redeemed the souls
From heresies, Dominicans
Extinguished sins,
While universities specifically
Looked for witches;
Yet Satan was most shrewd:
For Nature took revenge, the flesh opposed -
Although the lust was sealed, it sought a liberation :
The muffled monk indulged in masturbation,
While praying Mother Mary. Nuns,
In ecstasy, gave up themselves to  bridegroom,
And in the final spasm
could not discern the face
Of  Jesus from the Satan's.
World seemed a mighty hell:
The Sun - a sinners' furnace,
And Saviour -
An executioner, indeed.


3.
The priest had opened chasm
Before a withered soul -
And gaping of the hell appeared.
A sinner saw the blackish flame
And yonder writhing souls' convulsions.
He sensed the cinders, sulfur stink,
A blast of blasphemy and  curse,
The heat and holler, saliva and bile
choked up his mouth,­
He saw the copper Kremlin's  walls
And in the middle, on a throne,
The Tsar with monstrous  torpid face
Of solid gold. Around him, fallen
Were angels crawling, humans crept.
Such was the world where Devil
Reigned. And God, profaned and desecrated,
In his despair, professed new sight:
The pastures, olive-trees, and  gardens
The Kingdom of his Galilee,­
But most divine and fascinating
Was a sacred image of a girl
Who held a child, both flesh and substance,
Devoid of sin. The only Hope
For sinful earth.
She glowed like sunshine,
Canceled death. She was the earth
With all its creatures.  Humans  worshiped
And reached for Her
Like ocean waves.


4.
Dreams and deliriums
Within a dungeon!
But grates were shattered 
By a canonique
Copernicus,  the meekest,
Doors were smashed by frantic Galileo;
Firmament -  by Kepler.
The Dante's universe was
Turned upside by Newton,
The substance, sin, inertness -   
Formed new heaven,
The Universe had changed its face
Under the hand of Thomas, the apostle:
He groped the stars, and crucified the ray,
Through cracks in nebulas
Unfolded spectrum,
He saw the composition of the stars
And measured worlds' acceleration;
Breached atoms,
Weighed their radiation; 
The ancient world was broken at a glance
And built anew; the dungeon fell
The crystal firmament collapsed
And from unnecessary God
The heavens cleansed. 


5.
Curiosity of man was at its peak
When in the labs
He tried to torture secrets
Out of the living things,
He raped the life, 
Kept fingers, hearts, in formalin solutions
(The severed corpses pulsed with cut-out
things),
The nature, stupefied from pain,
Gave all her secrets;
Spirit was debased,
The dreams erased,
The brains deprived of faith.
Man put the prohibitions and taboos
On everything that could not be scientific:
The sacrament,  the ecstasy, the saints,­
He fenced his  mind with facts
And palisades of numbers,
While stretching his Tanob into
A space.


6. 
So poignant was his search
And pungent mind,
That matter oozed;
Realities gave way to
Entropy,  haphazard whirls,
And firmament collapsed.
The world would challenge  soon
The Laplace wheels,
And  Newton's springs,
And turn a Euclid's cube
Into a sphere of Rimann's:
It seemed than only yesterday
St. Thomas  used his foot
To measure universe; now, thrown away,
He could not get inside
The globe; his instruments did
Fail, the gravity was function of the
Space, and mind ran into walls;
The Bible serpent
Caught its tail, it seemed.
 

7.
Lost in the timeless waters
Of our "rules",
We're building new "tanobs".
The world perceived is
World deceived, 
Thus man is doomed to
Break the phantom crystals.
As time progressed,
The dogmas
Would explode and turn to dust.
Therefore, there is no freedom,
Only liberation, each time
Our spirit rises from the ash.
  16 May 1926


XIII. STATE

1.
From surplus aggregate
Of speed, machines and greed,
The State emerged.
The fortress, sword and law 
Made citizenship strong,
A huge and armored stomach
Where people played the role of
The digestive microbs. Here
All's based on benefits,
The profit, and the costs,
On fittest, the survival and the force.
Its moral - healthy egoism,
Its purpose - that of the digestion;
A measure of the culture  -
Clean latrines and
Full capacities of defecation.


2.
Most ancient state regalia:
Production of the blood.
A judge, resuming once again Cain's function,
Is rendered sinless and immune;
Competitors are murdered.


3.
Out of all violence created by a man,
The slaughter is the least.
The  gravest - education.
The rulers can't remove their heirs,
But  can destroy the fortunes of the latter.
Thus, every child is harshly tamed;
The purpose of upbringing -
Mutilation.
That's why, next to a hangman
Stand the schools,
Skilled at releasing
Disinfected,
Gelded children.

4.
Fisc is a fraud,
The ownership - a theft,
Because the robbery's the only
Legal form of asset acquisition.
State has monopoly
To issue forged cash. The profiles,
Arms on banknotes - fingertips
Of criminals?
Or receipts of their crime?
Yet hands of robbers stretch too long -
They keep their assets stolen.
They certainly deserve
To be the fathers
Of the States.


5.
When in our days we go to free elections -
We prove our own capacity for lying and for crime.
Therefore,
The leader of the Parliament,
By all  the rules,
Must be the most impudent man.
The politics is, really, filthy business;
It needs experienced and practical riffraff
Not squeamishing about the blood or corpses.
However, voters still believe
Three hundred rascals build an honest
Nation.

6.
There is much wisdom in the world,
Yet one truth towers:
A  trite and all-accepted one:
Prepared out of a dirt,
For any taste or brain;
It's served habitually
On the print-out  sheets;
It's swallowed in the trams, injected in the mornings,
So every one has firm convictions and beliefs.
Along with syphilis, tobacco, and the gin
Produced by State,
Comes Vaterland;
Of all patented drugs -
Newspaper is the worst
(And brings large profits,
By the way.)


7.
Two classes normally stay lawless in the state:
The criminals and rulers.
Under revolution,
They simply interchange their place -
Which, in effect, the same.
But those in power
Indulge in theft, and violence and shootings;
The massacres and revolutions
Eventually turn into court.
Thus revolutions overrun the war.
They deepen state
At each rebelious spasm
Of savage mass unrest,
The iron  barrels clench the gristled neck.
The loyalty, espionage, delations, censorship -
They all are revolutions' track.
13 April 1922


XIV.   LEVIATHAN

A Multitude,
United into one, is called Civitas.
Such is the origin of Leviathan,
or saying more politely,
this mortal god.
- Hobbs "Leviathan"

1.
To Job, rebellious in his arrogance,
Devoid of assets and of sons,
Stretched on a garbage dump
Of cities,
Our Lord  declared,
"Behold the King of kings ЁC the ultimate creation -
Leviathan! I open wide your sight
For you to see his perfect inner structures
And praise the glory and the wisdom
Of the Lord"

2.
So, like a continent
From foamy endless sea
The Beast appeared,
A monster multinomial.
Down in his depth my eyes observed
Machine, the heavy millstones grind,
A whirl of  lightning blades.

"He was created on the seventh day
By me", said Lord, "his functions
Perfectly agree, he has no conscience
But performs digestion".
Humanity is doomed to dwell on him
And drive his millstone heart;
And further down his  core,
The  hunger yawns with fright.
"The creatures similar to him I will create -
The humans -
And give them power devouring up
Themselves".


4.
And I did see the ocean's depth erupt,
A hungry monster
From the muddy waters showed,
And painted it bloody-red.
 I started cursing then the day
 I  first appeared .

5.
I pleaded,
"Why you gave me
Conscience in this timeless night,
Why breathed a living spirit in me?
Why you allowed me to be a slave
Of heartless interactions,
A slime of veins,
A ferment of digestion
In monster's sticky guts?"

6.
A thunderous angry voice came from above,
"How dare you critisize my  destinations?
All  dust and flesh - they turn to
Light when love will melt the soil,
And sluggishness and greed 
Will be consumed by fire.
I am confined in you, I suffer from
Your body. You blame the earth, like I blame you.
So, burn! Put in a coffin, live!
Is such a world acceptable for you?"

  7.
Accept...
1915-1924



XV. TRIAL

1.
Dust is for dust... I turned into a soil,
By me the flowers bloomed,
The suns evolved,
All that was flesh dispersed
As opalescent dream -
Alive but nameless.  Ever present.
And Ocean rolled its waves of age...

2.
When suddenly,
I heard Archangel's call,
A blazing brassy sound.
It shuttered Universe,
And I remembered me
By each small speck
Spread in the cosmos.

3.
The trumpet call
Made rotten bones alive,
Life shivered in
The earthly wombs.
Grass withered, trees went
All a-reeling,
And  sun grew cold.

4.
The silence  fell in tarnished fog,
The cemetery unfolded.
Like the brown boils,
The burial ground erupted,
Displaying sprouts of whitish flesh
And bones. Slim fingers
Stretched from soil; palms getting pink;
The arms and legs
Were shooting heavily,
The trunks arose, the muscles swelled
And rapidly ascended from the field,
All waving, rustling...

5.
And when  the tuber-dark,
With lumps of soil and tangled  hair
The Head did open,
And the dead eyes gaped,
The Heaven
Burst like curtain,
Time collapsed,
Space ended,
And ceased to be...

6.
And every one saw burning sun within his
Beastly core...

7.
...And  judged himself.
February 1915




Commentaries


 C a i n  (bibl) – Adam and Eve’s eldest son, who killed his brother Abel.
 “The first ever rebel against family was Cain” – written  by Voloshin.

F i r e.  Man’s flesh  is a roll ...”  “ Man is a book , whereby all history is written”  - reads one of Voloshin’s notes in 1907.  Agni -  God of fire in Vedic and Hindu mythology. Rigvedas -  one of Hindu sacred books  - a collection of hymns and worshipping formulas.

M a g i c. “Equilibrium between force and morality” – written in Voloshin’s notebook.
While God frequented the roads more  often than men...  A quotation from  ancient Roman writer Mark Terentium Varron ( 116 – 28 B.C.).  Undines -  according to medieval beliefs, the spirits governing the aquatic elements.  Salamanders -  spirits of fire. Cobolds – (germ.myth.) – a kind of dwarfs, living underground.  Elves -  spirits of air.

F i s t . “A stranger would be more a brother... Jesus Christ’s words (Mathew, 10, 35-36).
...other laws, more gentle..than those of power... – These thoughts ascend to an article published earlier by  M. Maeterlinck – “Praise of boxing”. Hammering the iron ... Cain is considered  the first smith, whereby his demoniac characteristic -primitive people were wary of  smith’s work, associating it  with  sorcery.

S w o r d.  A versification of the author’s article “ Demons of destruction and law”, with direct citation from M.Meterlinck’s “Praise of Sword” and “God of War”. Durandal – Roland’s sword. Cid’s sword – Cid Campeador (1043 – 1099), a castillio knight, a hero of Hispanic epic.
The sword gave up to machinery ... a hint  to the invention of guillotine. Antinomy – contradiction between  two opinions, equally valid. The theory of antinomy  was developed by great German philosopher Emmanuel Kant (1724-1804). “Woe to losers” -  words attributed to Gaelic leader Brenn, who conquered Rome. Did your followers ever come to a conclusion... This phrase points to Anatole France.  Sword, not peace – dictum of Jesus Christ (Mathew, 10, 34). “Revenge is mine ...” -  citation from the Bible  (Deuteronomy, 32,35; The Epistle of Paul to the Romans, 12, 19).

G u n p o w d e r.  The idea of the poem is partly borrowed from the above mentioned M.Meterlinck’s works and from the article of Paul De Saint-Victor “Museum of Artillery”. Criminal monk – here Voloshin implies Bertold Schwarz, a German monk, who accidentally invented gunpowder in 1330.  Furious Roland – a hero of  a poem by  Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1533).
     The images of monstrous and nameless shadows... – In the sketched article “Democratization of Art”, Voloshin  directly mentioned the danger of  “intra-atomic energy”. Among the sources on modern physics that he used,  we may quote Gustav Lebon “Evolution of matter and energy”.

S t e a m .  The idea of the poem was initially put forth in  the articles “Demonism of  the machine”, “Automobile” (not published), and in “Issues on Modern Esthetics” (Rus’ 1904, 15.VI).  Minotauvre  (Greek myth) – monster, devouring people.

M a c h i n e.  Some of the ideas were published earlier in Voloshin’s  article “Rebellion of Machines” (Mosk.gazetta, 1911.20.IX).  A sorcerer’s apprentice...  A Goethe’s ballad of  “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” (1797) is implied.

R e b e l.  The former title  of the chapter is “Prophet”.  There’s no freedom. Just liberation.  The thought of  Master Yanos from “Accel” by Villers de L’Isle-Adam.   All crime is born out of the law -  compare in the Old Testament: “Because the law worketh  wrath:  for where no law is, there is no transgression”.(Romans, 4,15). Enough with “don’t” commandments - we find in Voloshin writings: “All commandments which are from God and for the sake of God – assert: “Love”, “I am”. Those, coming from men, conversely,- prohibit and restrict  - “shalt not kill”, “shalt not  steal”, “shalt not commit adultery”. They are fit for social arrangement.” .  Only the charity is a recompense – In the sketches of an article called ‘ On God’s City”, Voloshin wrote: “The order of God’s city  will be such as to let everyone work for others without a thought for reward; all basic needs will be covered through  alms”.

W a r . The prototype poem was included in “Anno mundi ardentis”, under the title  “Apollion”.  Apollion   (Avvadon) – in the Bible: the angel of abyss, synonym of death. The narration in 2nd and 3rd  small chapters is conducted  on behalf of him. Liddite and melanite  - explosive substances. The curse of Babylon – according to Biblical myth, at attempt to build a  heaven-tall tower in Babylon was interrupted by God who “mixed languages” of builders, thus making them uncommunicated. (Genesis, 11, 1-9).

C o s m o s.  Voloshin defined the subject of the poem as the following: “ Evolution of Cosmogony from Cabbala up to the Theory of Relativity and Modern Physics”. The poet wrote about the impact he experienced  from Oswald Spengler’s “Europe’s Sunset” to Veresaev (15.VI.1923): The subject of portraying cultures – is very close to Spengler. I began writing “Cosmos” prior to knowing him; while finishing, I had almost read all of him.  But he turned to be useful only due to his few lines about Greece and about relativity of mathematical notions.  However, he  equipped me with a lot of inspiration and new thoughts...”.
A face, lit up with constellations...  In this small chapter, a narrative of the world creation  according to Cabbala (Zogar book) is given. Hexagram – a hexagon, - symbol of the world’s order.   The cone of world.  Here is a concept of the world as viewed in the ancient East: Mesopotamia and Egypt. Chaldean  astronomers -  Chaldeans – Semitic cattle-breeding tribes, living in the 1st Millennium B.C., between Tigris and Euphratis. Palestra – a gymnastic school in ancient Greece. Indigo – deep blue colour. All was tangible and near.  For example, Empedocle considered the distance between the Earth and heaven to be   less than the extension of the Earth itself.  Aeschylus  (525 – 442 BC) – ancient Greek writer of tragedies.
Phidias ( 5th century BC) – ancient Greek sculptor. Man was deemed a measure of all things – a  saying by Protagoras (Greek sophist, 5th century BC). The sepulchers revealed the bones of ancestors .. - according to a Christian myth, Patriarch Melchisedech had buried Adam’s head at the Calvary’s threshold.  At the instant of Christ’s death,  the rock cracked, revealing Adam’s head,  and Christ’s blood  washed the primal sin. The earth was an immovable  dark sphere... -  The earth in ancient times was regarded as a  fixed centre of the Universe;  Emperia – in ancient Greek philosophy:  upper, divine part of the sky. Interdict – in medieval R.C. Church,  to exclude a person from  certain  (religious)  duties as a punishment.  Galileo Galilei  (1564 – 1642) – Italian astronomer, one of the fathers of exact sciences. Thomas -  one of Christ’s apostles. Laplace (1749 – 1827), Newton (1643 – 1727)  – great astronomers, mathematicians, physicists. Aerolite – meteorite. Tanob –   a dungeon for repentant monks  in  Thebaide, an Egyptian desert; described in a treatise of John Lestvichnik (died between 650 and 680), a byzantine religious writer; Voloshin defined the subject of this poem as “ Asceticism of science”. In a letter to Veresaev, he further cleared his point: “Now, I’m working over  “Tanob” – asceticism religious, and scientific; in the end, justified as an inherent form of rebellion”.  The soul was stung by  Christianity...  “Christianity is a religion of love, not  pity” – Voloshin wrote in the summer of 1904, “ a religion of merciless love which is destroying and  humiliating”. He tried to explain his view with the following: “Christ’s fire,  working out a human soul, often had exposed love through anger”, “Christianity has replaced previous  social “don’ts” with commanding “love”, thereby  developing in human souls all the embarrassment and contradictions. Therefore, historic Christianity,  with its wars, inquisition, and intolerance, genuinely displays what  according to Divine Providence,  should, of course, have taken place... This is a natural reaction of active moral, having substituted  the passive and prohibitive one”.   

S t a t e .  Comprachicos (Sp)  - buyers and kidnappers of children in medieval Europe; they deformed them in order to sell as jesters to rich  houses or fairs’ booths. Fisc -  state treasury. Leviathan ( Bibl. myth) – sea monster, personifying  primal chaos, hostile to  Creator and once subdued by him.  Epigraph is taken  from the English writer Thomas  Hobbes (1588 – 1979) who compared  Leviathan to a state. In addition, Voloshin uses biblical “Book of Job” (Ch.41), and identifies  himself with its hero – a reaction to the First World War.

T r i a l .  Originally, this small chapter is called “Resurrection”.  Grass withered, trees were getting dry... –According to a biblical mythology , the Day of Judgement  is backed by the cosmic catastrophe: the Sun and the Moon are fading away, stars are falling, sky collapses as a roll, etc.  The beastly core .. – Apocalyptic beast, i.e. Antichrist ( John, 2,18).
    




_____________________________________________________
 * Maximilian Voloshin, the Ways of Cain. Tragedy of Material Culture. Translated by V.I. Postnikov  Drift Aweigh Press ISBN 1-896007-94-5
(C) V.I.Postnikov, 2001
(c) Revised 2008