Way Horde
artery that enters from the south in the heart of Moscow is called Ordynka Bol'šaja Ulica, Via the Great Horde, because it came from that direction, seven centuries ago, the Golden Horde, at best, the Mongols, led by the descendants of Genghis Khan, were charged by the Grand Duke of Moscow in the price of non- belligerence, in the worst raiding the city.
My walk starts from the square sull'Ordynka Dobryninskaja, in an area dominated by the skyscrapers of the Sixties and Seventies, on which even the monument to Lenin hoisted on a column in the nearby Piazza Okt'abr'skaja can spire.
As if to remind that this path is left for the more remote provinces of the empire, sull'Ordynka overlook some restaurants Georgians and Uzbeks, who are the Russians in terms of the exotic cuisine as it is for all European people the food that comes from their former colonies.
Along the Ordynka Tretjakovskaja there is the subway station, near the homonymous gallery, as in other parts of central Moscow, even here on the surface to the underground station is a small square surrounded by stalls selling beer, snacks, phones and flowers. In the late afternoon, leaving the job, the Muscovites, both men and women, gather and linger in these squares, standing or sitting on the steps of houses and kiosks. The empty beer bottles, each pint, add up quickly, first on the windowsills and then to earth, and every now and then a guy with a cart to go pick them up, with the aim, I suppose, to sell them.
I decide to do I like the Muscovites: I bought a bottle of beer and a loaf of bread stuffed with dried apricots and sit on a step to drink and people watch. Even the man sitting next to me is just a few minutes later and asks me, "British?", "No, I'm Italian," I say, and toast with our beer. I offer a piece of bread man, after introducing himself as Sergei began to speak in Russian about his work of dentists, the Italian football and the Portuguese, they play some players who played in the team for which his fans in Moscow. Another man is part of the conversation: his name is Nikolai and congratulated me for the success of the Italian national team. "And Russia?" I ask, in Italian, as each follows its own language. Nikolai says, with gestures, that the Russian team has disgusted to the point that he threw the TV from the balcony. Let us return then to speak of Italy and the forthcoming World Cup final against France and ask: "Watch the game?" I can not, "answered Nikolay," Why? "I insist. "Because I have the tv thrown from the balcony. "
Sergei changes the subject and tells of the woman who makes him suffer, his tone becomes wistful and wet eyes. He opens his briefcase, in which there are only four bottles of beer, uncork it gives me two and one. This time, toast, and we agree that those women in Moscow are the finest in the world. It is now nearly nine o'clock, and I salute Sergei and Nikolai sull'Ordynka way again.
Moskva river before the bridge that leads into the Red Square I stop in front of what remains of the hotel Rossiya. Built in Soviet times, was the largest hotel in the world, with more six thousand rooms. The Russians have always had a weakness for this kind of primate, and over the centuries have built, among other things, the bell, the brass cannon and outdoor pool, but heated, the largest in the world.
Rossiya is now being demolished, I assume to make room for new skyscrapers. Around the central tower, still intact, we see a huge construction site, a Russian view of the applicant in the urban landscape.
on Lubyanka Square is surrounded by buildings from the most diverse content and history: the building of the Ministry of Interior, which were ordered by the Stalinist purges, the seat KGB, the "Children's World," five floors of toys from all over the planet, and the museum dedicated to Mayakovsky. The latter occupies the entire building where the poet lived, even if only one room was that he actually lived. And it is a room with original furniture, orderly and almost bare, with a sofa-bed gray with wide armrests, a desk with a criminal, a library, a blue traveling trunk, a tiled stove recessed into the wall. All twelve square feet, the colors are soft and clear and there is a picture of Lenin hanging on a wall.
The layout of the museum, however, is based on the tilt of the axis everything that is on display, furniture, chairs, letters, photographs, posters, and some items were constructed specifically for this purpose, or rotated ninety degrees, or even enclosed in glass "bent" along several lines cross. The setting is shining, but it grants too much to the easy association between advanced art and chaos, as if the revolution consisted in throwing, crying, buckets of colored paint on the walls of the house. Only the room of Mayakovsky has a connection with the vanguard, that is, emancipation from all that, in art as in life, is imitation. One can sense the search for pure form, abstraction who wants to break away from the heavy and opaque material, the one that failed to reach the Malevich Black Square , who at the Novaya Galerija Tretyakov, I appeared as a relic to the believer.
Lubyanka Square makes me think back to the crescendo of a poem by Mayakovsky, Yet , Angelo Maria Ripellino translates these words:
I went out on the square
a mo 'wig of reddish
placed myself on the head a neighborhood burned.
The men are afraid because of my mouth
swings tripped a cry not chewed.
But without blame or insult,
sprinkle of flowers on my way, as before a prophet.
All these sunken noses know:
I am your poet.
As a tavern alarmed me your awesome review!
Only through the burning buildings,
prostitutes take me in his arms as a relic
to God for showing me their favor.
And God will break into tears over my little book!
Not words, but spasms pelleted;
and will race for the sky with my poems under his arm
to read them, panting, to his acquaintances.
0 comments:
Post a Comment