“Translate me through Maidan” - a lyrical song written by the composer Sergei Nikitin on the translation of Yunna Moritz
Original by Vitaly Korotich:
Translation by G. M. Yunna Moritz:
The poem of Larisa Shushunova:
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Content
Creation History
The text of the famous song “Translate me through Maidan” was written in 1981 by the future editor of Ogonek magazine, and then by the young poet Vitaly Korotch in the Ukrainian language. According to some reports, the creation of the song is associated with the tragic death of the poet's twelve-year-old son in 1971. Initially, the poem was simply called “Maidan” with the subtitle “Ostann prokhannya old lyrnika” (“Last request of the old lyre”). These poems were read by the poetess Yunna Moritz and performed an artistic translation into Russian, and the famous composer and performer Sergey Nikitin wrote the music for the poem. Thus was born the song, known to us primarily performed by Tatiana and Sergei Nikitin .
Story
A blind lyric (a wandering singer playing a lyre) is walking along the Maidan (unpaved village square), where he can accidentally meet his former love, the mother of his son, from whom he left when he was blind. He left her because of his own misery, but he continues to love. He is afraid of a chance encounter with his son, who now also has become a roving singer (“sleeping on the Maidan”). Ukrainian writer Olga Chigirinskaya writes: “Maidan is a village square, at least on one side bounded not by houses, but by a field. Lirnik wants to die on the field, in silence, where the bees "groan dullly in buckwheat" - but he is blind and does not know that while he was blind, the town grew into the city, the field was built up, and he had nowhere to go. That's the tragedy of the ending - before the lyre could go into the field, into silence, and now he has nowhere to go even to die, and there is no one who would respond to his request - he goes through the square alone, and the people around do not even notice the blind ” . In the finale of the poem, the lyre dies right on the square.
Differences of translation from the original
According to the critics, the translation is metaphorically and phonetically more beautiful than the original, but in terms of meaning is inferior to the latter. Translation does not convey the full depth of human tragedy. There are a lot of poetic and beautiful images in him, but the psychological situation is not quite clear from him: why does the lyricum ask to transfer him across the square, what kind of relationship connects him with an abandoned woman. In the original, the lyric continues to love her with “unforgettable love,” and in translation, their relationship resembles an insignificant holiday romance. Nevertheless, critics agree that both texts have an independent value.
Artists
- Tatyana and Sergey Nikitin
- Galina Besedina
- Nikolay Noskov
- Alexander Malinin
- Denis Berezhnoy (in Ukrainian)
- Vyacheslav Marchuk (in Ukrainian)
- Alexander Pushnoy (cover)
Parodies and variations
In 1988, the KVN DSU team performed with the number “Transfer me to cost accounting ”, converted from the song of Nikitin - Korotich.
In 2004, when the first Orange Revolution broke out in Ukraine and a continuous rally was held on Independence Square (“Independence Square”) for about two months, the word “Maidan” acquired political significance. At the same time, the song to the poems of V. Korotich - Yu. Moritz became popular among the masses. There was a parody, the meaning of which was reduced to the following: it is worth going through Maidan, and there will be happiness and prosperity for everyone. A popular video was created for the parody text: a boy and a girl are going through the crowded Maidan Nezalezhnosti. A rally is being held on the square at that time, and each participant plays a solo part starting with the words “Transfer Me Through Maidan”, putting forward a whole new reason for the country's transition to a new civilizational path of development.
In 2014, in connection with the annexation of the Crimea to the Russian Federation and the civil war in the Donbass, Russian poetess Larisa Shushunova turned to the image of a wandering poet. Retaining the plot-shaped connection with the original by Korotich and the high style of Yunna Moritz, she introduced a new meaning to this theme - political and philosophical. The poem is permeated with humanistic pathos.
There is a poem and a song with the same name in Alexander Gorodnitsky .