by Victor Serge
that nothing yet is lost.
Mex[ico City], April [19]45
After that splendid Notre Dame …
For L.
“Don’t be sad …”
After that splendid Notre Dame inverted
in a Seine pure of the clochards’ remorse,
after that trembling rose window abloom in the dark water
where the stars spin out their inconceivable threads
across profiles of sea horses and foliage as real as mirages,
what remains, oh my madly reasonable spirit,
what still remains inaccessible to the wide-awake sleeper
who follows down these dark quays, from one Commune to the next,
the hope-filled cortege of his executed brothers?
Paris, 1938
It’s salt water that quenches …
It’s salt water that quenches the thirst for blood, oh bitter war!
Handsome faces and dirty mugs are made for the same wounds,
brave hearts and cowardly souls are made for the same tortures,
and all their eyes will be put out, and all their bellies ripped open, and all their sexes torn apart
by the fine teeth of machines that glitter like galaxies.
All the cities I have known, all the unknown cities
drift, cracked ice floes, toward the most barren dawns.
Will they survive, will we? Oh world entire, desirable world,
our vessel so dismasted, world of turbines and panthers,
world of decapitated ideas, will we survive, will they?
Trinitrotoluene explodes into nebulas in the brain,
the song of blood on metals turns into a dazzling word,
there are smiles beneath the helmets, smiles as hard as knives
—all the moorings will be cut, the wounds of the dead will be washed,
that is as sure as the darkness.
We only need patience! The song of the veins, that is patience.
Let bitter fruit ripen, nourished on sand and venom.
The survivors’ burning throats! We will gladly drink
the darkest saps! Those of exhausting punishments, of obsessions, of rancors …
The blind nights are powerful, and we are their patience.
Mexico City, [19]43.
III. Mains/Hands
Mains
Terre cuite d’un artiste italien du XVIe siècle, parfois attribuée à Michel-Ange – Musée de Londres.
Quel contact étonnant, vieil homme, établissent tes mains avec les nôtres!
Que les siècles de mort sont vains devant tes mains …
L’artiste sans nom comme toi les a surprises dans un mouvement de prise
dont on ne sait s’il vibre encore ou s’il vient de s’éteindre,
Les veines battent, ce sont des vieilles veines durcies par le chant du sang,
ah, que prennent-elles, tes mains de vigueur finissante,
s’agrippent-elles à la terre, s’agrippent-elles à la chair,
la dernière ou l’avant-dernière fois,
ramassent-elles le cristal qui contient la pureté,
caressent-elles l’ombre vivante qui contient la fécondité,
sont-elles de patience,
sont-elles d’acharnement, d’ardeur, de résistance,
sont-elles secrètement de défaillance?
Le certain, c’est leur fierté.
Les veines de tes mains, vieil homme, expriment la prière,
la prière de ton sang, vieil homme, l’avant-dernière prière,
non la prière verbale, non la prière cléricale,
mais celle de l’ardeur pensante,
puissante—impuissante.
Leur présence confronte le monde avec lui-même,
elle l’interroge comme on interroge ce qu’on aime
définitivement
sans que la réponse soit possible.
Hands
Terra-cotta by a sixteenth-century Italian artist, sometimes attributed to Michelangelo – London Museum.
What astonishing contact, old man, your hands establish with our own!
How vain the centuries of death next to your hands …
The artist, nameless like you, surprised them in the act of grasping
—who knows whether the gesture still quivers or has just now died away,
The veins throb, they are old veins toughened by the song of the blood,
ah, but what are they grasping, your hands with their failing strength,
are they clinging to the earth, are they clinging to flesh,
for the last or the next-to-last time,
are they picking up the crystal that contains purity,
are they caressing the living shadow that contains fecundity,
are they hands of patience,
are they hands of determination, fervor, resistance,
are they secretly hands of weakness?
The only thing certain is their pride.
The veins of your hands, old man, express prayer,
the prayer of your blood, old man, the next-to-last prayer,
not verbal prayer, not clerical prayer,
but the prayer of reasoning fervor,
powerful—powerless.
Their presence confronts the world with itself,
their presence questions it as one questions what one loves
definitively
with no possible response.
Suis-je seul, moi sourd, moi tellement séparé de toi,
moi tellement détaché de moi,
suis-je seul à savoir comme tu es seul,
moi seul à cet instant et si tendu vers toi
dans le temps?
Ou sommes-nous seuls ensemble
parmi tous ceux dans la durée qui sont seuls avec nous,
formant le chœur unique qui murmure dans nos veines communes,
nos veines chantantes?
J’ai pensé à te dire, vieil homme, une chose émouvante,
émue,
fraternelle,
à trouver pour toi, au nom de tous les autres, une parole nue
d’aurore boréale
de lueur sur les glaciers,
une parole simple, intime et loyale.
Toi, tu ne savais pas
que les veines des tempes des électrocutés
bouillonnent comme des nœuds de sang révolté
sous la peau ruisselante d’une sueur plus atroce que la sueur du Christ sur la croix.
Quelqu’un m’a dit qu’il pensa en voyant ça
à une mouche proie d’une étrange araignée
et la mouche était une âme pardonnée.
Ah, que pourrais-je, ah que pourrais-je pour soulager tes veines,
moi qui sais les supplices, toi qui sais les supplices,
il faut pourtant que nous puissions l’un pour l’autre,
d’un bout du temps à l’autre,
jeter dans les balances inexorables de l’univers
au moins la fragilité d’une pensée, d’un signe, d’un vers
Am I alone, deaf as I am and so far removed from you,
so detached as I am from myself,
am I alone in knowing how alone you are,
I so alone at this moment and reaching out to you
through time?
Or are we alone together
with all those who in the course of time are alone with us,
forming the unique chorus that murmurs in our shared veins,
our singing veins?
I thought of telling you, old man, something moving,
moved,
fraternal,
of finding for you, in the name of all the others, a naked word
of the northern lights,
of the glow on the glaciers,
a simple, intimate, loyal word.
But you did not know
that the veins in the temples of the electrocuted
boil like knots of rebellious blood
/> under the skin running with sweat more appalling than the sweat of Christ on the cross.
Someone told me the sight reminded him
of a fly stalked by a strange spider
and the fly was a forgiven soul.
What could I do, ah, what could I do to soothe your veins,
I who know torments, you who know torments,
and yet we must be capable each of us for the other,
from one end of time to the other,
of throwing onto the inexorable scales of the universe
at least the fragility of a thought, a sign, a line of verse
qui n’a peut-être ni substance ni radiance mais qui est,
aussi réel que les veines implorantes de ta main,
que les veines des miennes si peu différentes …
Que la dernière lueur de la dernière aurore,
que la dernière étoile intermittente,
que la dernière détresse de la dernière attente,
que la dernière sourire du masque rasséréné,
soient sur les veines de ta main, vieil homme rencontré.
Une goutte de sang tombe d’un ciel à l’autre,
éblouissante.
Nos mains sont d’inconscience, de dureté, d’ascension, de conscience,
de plain-chant, de souffrance ravie,
clouées aux arcs-en-ciel.
Ensemble, ensemble, unies,
voici qu’elles ont saisi
l’inespéré.
Et nous ne savions pas
que nous tenions ensemble
cet éblouissement.
Une goute de sang—
un seul trait de lumière tombe d’une main à l’autre,
éblouissant.
Mexico, novembre 1947.
that has perhaps neither substance nor radiance yet exists,
as real as the imploring veins of your hand,
as real as the veins of mine so little different …
Let the final glow of the final dawn,
let the final intermittent star,
let the final distress in the final waiting,
let the final smile on the serene mask
fall on the veins of your hand, old man whom I have just found.
A drop of blood falls from one sky to another,
dazzling.
Our hands are made of unconsciousness, of hardness, of ascension, of consciousness,
of plainchant, of ravished suffering,
our hands nailed to rainbows.
Together, joined together,
here they have laid hold of
the unhoped-for.
And we did not know
that together we held
this dazzling thing.
A drop of blood—
a single shaft of light falls from one hand to the other,
dazzling.
Mexico City, November 1947.
Notes to the Poems
Many of the notes are based on Jean Rière’s notes in his edition of the poems: Victor Serge, Pour un brasier dans un désert (Bassac [Charente], France: Plein Chant, 1998), although with selection, condensation, and sometimes extension; these notes are marked (JR). Unattributed notes are by the translator. Some notes reference and quote from Serge’s notebooks: Carnets (1936–1947), édition établie par Claudio Albertani et Claude Rioux (Marseille: Agone, 2012). The transliteration of personal names usually conforms to that in Serge’s Memoirs of a Revolutionary, Peter Sedgwick with George Paizis, trans. (New York: New York Review Books, 2012), which is a major source for notes. For more on Serge’s son, Vladimir Kibalchich Russakov, called Vlady (1920–2005), see the rich documentation on Jean-Guy Rens’s site at http://www.vlady.org.
I. Resistance
Résistance was first published as an issue of Les Humbles, nos. 11–12 (Paris, 1938), in a limited edition; this collection was reprinted as Pour un brasier dans un désert (Paris: François Maspéro, 1972) and as Résistance: Poèmes (Geneva: Éditions Héros-Limite, 2016). The original manuscript was confiscated by the secret police as Serge left the Soviet Union after being freed from deportation (1933–1936) in Orenburg, on the Ural River near the Russia–Kazakhstan border. (Other manuscripts that were confiscated and not found again in the state archives include the novels Les Hommes perdus [The Fallen], about the anarchist milieu before the First World War, and La Tourmente [The Storm], about the Russian Civil War.) After his arrival in the West, Serge recreated some of the poems from memory; other poems had been mailed to friends and published in journals abroad.
All the dedicatees were in the anti-Stalin Opposition and died either in the camps or during the Moscow Trials, which had begun soon after Serge’s release. Boris Mikhailovich Eltsin (1875–1936?), a Bolshevik since 1903, was an old comrade of Lenin’s; Chanaan Markovich Pevzner was a Muscovite worker in the Opposition in 1927–1928; Vassily Mikhailovich Chernykh was a former Red Army commissar; Yakov Belenky (1885–1938) was a history professor; Ivan Byk was a Ukrainian tanner and Trotskyist; Boris Ilyich Lakovitski was an Oppositionist tailor from Minsk; Alexei Semionovich Santalov, a turner from Leningrad, was arrested for calling Stalin “this gravedigger of the Revolution” in a workers’ club (Memoirs, 361); Lydia Svalova was a courageous young worker from Perm; and Fayna Upstein, from Odessa, was in the 1927 Opposition. Nesterov, the former chief of staff of the president of the Council of People’s Commissars, was a cellmate of Serge’s in 1933, shortly before Serge was deported to Orenburg (Memoirs, 343). No information is available on Yegorich. Serge’s novel Midnight in the Century captures the “spiritual atmosphere” of the deportation (Richard Greeman, trans. [New York: New York Review Books, 2015]). The epigraph is from Charles Péguy’s Eve. (JR) Rière’s sources, which sometimes differ on details, include Serge’s “Les déportés d’Orenbourg [1936],” Cahiers Léon Trotsky, nos. 7–8 (Paris, 1981): 221–228; Destin d’une Révolution (1937), in Russia Twenty Years After, Max Schachtman, trans. (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1996), 107–110; and Memoirs, 356–361.
Frontier, p. 31
Sent by Serge to his friend Henry Poulaille on 25 September 1934. First published in Le Rouge et le Noir, no. 222 (Brussels, 12 December 1934). Published by Poulaille in the literary weekly Les Feuillets bleus, no. 295 (Paris, 15 May 1935): 627, a special issue dedicated to Serge. (JR)
Henry Poulaille (1896–1980) was a French writer who furthered the cause of what he called proletarian literature, in opposition to socialist realism, through the many journals he edited and published. A key organizer of the international campaign for Serge’s release from captivity in the Soviet Union, Poulaille was later a member of the Committee for Inquiry into the Moscow Trials and the Defense of Free Speech in the Revolution. Serge praised Poulaille as “a true son of the workers’ suburbs who did not mince his words” (Memoirs, 370).
yet not so high as the pursuit plane: At the time of Serge’s deportation, Orenburg was the site of an air base.
Frisco where the IWWs live: The San Francisco General Strike took place in July 1934, before the probable date of composition of “Frontier.” The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), a revolutionary union in the United States, flourished between 1905 and the end of the First World War.
People of the Ural, p. 34
First published in Almanach populaire, no. 1 (Paris, 1937): 279–280, an organ of the French Socialist Party. (JR)
“for in this world …”: Serge quotes (in English in the original) from memory this line of Oscar Wilde’s “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”: “Yet each man kills the thing he loves.” (JR)
Puvis’s gray landscape: Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, painter of The Poor Fisherman, to which Serge alludes here. (JR)
what is happening in Asturias: In October 1934, the miners of Asturias, Spain, took up arms against the right-wing government in what “one may regard … as the first battle of the Civil War,” which began in earnest two years later. The state repression that followed the fighting included thousands of sum
mary executions, many incidents of torture, and some 40,000 sent to prison (Gerald Brenan, The Spanish Labyrinth [London: Cambridge University Press, 1960], 284–289).
Old Woman, p. 37
Sent by Serge to Poulaille on 13 July 1934, who published it in his review À Contre courant, no. 1 (Paris, July 1935): 40; reprinted in Almanach populaire, no. 11 (Paris, 1938): 253. (JR)
Somewhere else …, p. 38
Published in Almanach populaire, no. 11 (Paris, 1938): 130. (JR)
Just Four Girls, p. 40
Sent by Serge to Poulaille on 11 September 1934; published in Révolution prolétarienne, no. 188 (Paris, 10 December 1934): 11–12; published by Poulaille in Les Feuillets bleus, no. 295 (Paris, 15 May 1935): 628. (JR)
where all is but “order …”: Serge quotes from memory from Charles Baudelaire’s “L’invitation au voyage”: “Là, tout n’est qu’ordre et beauté, / Luxe, calme et volupté.”
The Asphyxiated Man, p. 43
Sent by Serge to Poulaille on 13 July 1934. (JR)
with Chapayev, with Furmanov: Vassily Ivanovich Chapayev (1887–1919) was a peasant who became a leader of the Red Army and a hero of the Civil War. Dimitri Andreivich Furmanov (1891–1926) was political commissar of the Chapayev Division (1919–1921) and a novelist whose works include Chapayev (1923). (JR) A popular film based on the novel was released in 1934 (Mitchell Abidor, private communication).
Tiflis, p. 46
Rustaveli’s verses: Shota Rustaveli (1172–1216) was a Georgian poet, author of the national epic, The Knight in the Panther’s Skin. (JR)
Russian History, p. 49
On 11 September 1934, Serge sent parts I and II to Poulaille, who published them in Les Feuillets bleus, no. 295 (Paris, 15 May 1935); part I also appeared in Europe, no. 145 (Paris, 15 January 1935): 61–62. (JR)
I. Alexis Mikhaylovich
In this translation, the title of this part is restored from the table of contents of the original edition of Résistance (1938).
Czar Alexis Mikhaylovich (1629–1676), the second prince of the Romanovs, began his reign in 1645. In 1648, he married Mariya Miloslavskaya, by whom he had eight daughters and five sons, including Alexis Alekseyevich (1654–1670), Fydor Alekseyevich (1657–1682, czar under the name of Fydor III), and Ivan Alekseyevich (1666–1696, feebleminded). In 1671, he married Natalia Narychkina (1651–1694), by whom he had Pyotr (Peter) Alekseyevich (1672–1725). Ivan and Peter were named czars in 1682, under the tutelage of their sister Sophia Alekseyevna (1657–1704), who was regent until 1689, when Peter overthrew her and became Peter the Great. His son Alexis Petrovich (1690– 1718) opposed his reforms, so Peter had him arrested; he was left to die in prison. (JR)