Ilya Semenenko-Basin
“You are not Alone” – Collage
Russia
Ilya Semenenko-Basin was born in 1966 in Moscow. He graduated from Moscow State University and has a Ph.D. in History and Religious Studies. He is currently a professor at the Center of Religious Studies at the University of Humanities and a prominent scholar in the field of history of the Russian Orthodox Church. He began writing poetry very early in his adolescent years, but his first book of poetry, By the Streams of Silver, was published only in 2012. It was shortlisted for the Russian Gulliver’s Poetry Prize in 2014. His book of micro-prose, Nachalo Veka, was published in Moscow in 2015. It describes the particular circumstances of the beginning of the 21st century in Russia and other countries, but with attention to the past.
Semenenko-Basin’s poetry is often laconic, but full of philosophical insight. His verses are characterized by short, sometimes one-phrase lines, almost like maxims. It is always a thought clothed in the verse form, sometimes a sketch of the world around him – momentary and concise, a miniature in itself. The poet’s immersion into his inner world projects dramatic events from the Russian past on the contemporary world around him.
Semenenko-Basin defined his new book The Lire for the Wild Animals (Lira dlya dikih zverey. Moscow: 2016) with the words of Andrei Bely; he “wrote what the air uttered to consciousness.” And indeed, with the clear view of the scholar, he sees the spiritual dissociation of society as one of the central problems in the post-modern world. His poetic talent, however, suggests his own vision of the way out of human alienation, where the poetic voice is like an “Orpheum lire,” which influences the depths of human consciousness. As a hundred years before, poetry could help the individual to overcome desolation and connect to the world. Paraphrasing Joseph Brodsky’s famous words, if it could not change the world to be a better, happier, and sunnier place, it “could still save the individual”.
Several translated poems from The Lire for the Wild Animals open a window into the poet’s vision of the world around him and also appeal to the reader’s imagination. These verses bring with them the sharp austerity of the 21st century minimalist poetry and its refined psychological messages.
* * *
there’s a point on the horizon,
that I’m interested in
or rather, it’s interested in me
and perhaps I’m not the center of the universe
and maybe the center is not here, where I’m standing
but at this point on the horizon
in that hardly visible dot
is the center that attracts me
* * *
where were we going?
* * *
Morning coffee
in the one thousand nine hundred thirty ninth year
my grandfather wrote to his relatives
“With great satisfaction I now drink my morning coffee
every day since I received that one small tin of condensed coffee in the mail.”
the letter was sent from the nine hundred fourth kilometer
of the Northern railroad
the first sector
fourth division
of the Onega gulag
* * *
“Our grandfathers heard: the war has begun,
They quit their jobs, got ready for battle… “
Old wartime song
In the steppe, armored vehicles are moving
uniformly alternated.
they move
like thoughts, gripping the three-dimensional air.
In the ole’ ancestors’ song the brave man
raised his right hand like a hero:
the undefeated
no-winner
* * *
In the twilight we were walking on the bridge
in the village where the old ladies swear like sailors
all the babushkas there swear
but not your grandmother
not your granny, Zhenya,
the decrepit bridge did not collapse behind us
you glanced behind you
to see it was still there
* * *
I listen and watch
Linguists proclaim:
God is sound and the word of God is hiding
Dikt rampages like a round street light
it burns behind the apple grove
on its heels it crouches in the snow
* * *
the sun
curled up on your ring like a snake
the moon watched
giving away days and months and ages
how well you were saying the sound er
* * *
For more information about the artist, check out: https://iuoma-network.ning.com/profile/IlyaSemenenkoBasin
