It Happened One Night
New Year and the Christmas season have offered us an opportunity to take a closer look at the way television entertains us and to acquaint ourselves with the treasures of art that Kyiv and Moscow television studios have prepared for us. The general and by no means exclusive impression is grayness, the feeble and even ridiculous pretensions of merrymaking, and inability to think up at least something. Only two factors offer some solace. First are the Ukrainian carols, which can never be excessive or be stripped of their poetry, charming na О vet О and aroma of hoary antiquity by even an inept performance or arrangement. The second result, rather than inspiring pride, malicious result of the broadcast vigil was confidence that “they” on Moscow television also have difficulty, as do we, getting talented actors, pretty highbrow faces, and noble gaiety. There were the same old familiar, now older, heroes with the same old jokes; especially pathetic were the attempts to breath a new life into or repeat the old popular holiday genres. Let me dwell a little on two small appearances from Ukraine and Moscow.
I will begin, of course, with the domestic one: the customary apocalyptic sermon by Dmytro Korchynsky, master of an original genre who, it seems to me, likes to appear onscreen with the sole purpose of astounding. His artistic palette includes paradoxes, historical comparisons, and generalizations most often devoid of either logic or truth. This, however, is unimportant because Mr. Korchynsky has no opponents in the studio, so he is always right. Over the holidays, our master of paradox attempted to assure the viewers that the third millennium will pass under the sign of universal Ukrainian hegemony, with the world having to unite into some future organizations like NATO to protect itself. This program was followed by a small debate among us, for some of my friends rejected as astounding the motive force of such utterances. They tried to prove that the author is a conspiratorial mole, a hand of Moscow sent in to stir up Ukrainophobia in (not only) Ukrainian society. Who knows? It sometimes happens that people unconsciously serve the very idea they are trying to overcome consciously and by all means fair or foul.
Another gala number, which the channel-switching roulette threw by chance onto the screen, was an appearance of the much-respected stand-up comedian Roman Kartsev. He told, among other things, a little Odesa joke that one evening had the whole audience at the Opera House almost dying of laughter. Bizet’s opera Carmen was on, and Jose happened to be singing in Italian, the toreador in Russian, and Carmen in Ukrainian. This is really funny. In general, an opera, even a tragic one, often provokes a smile and makes the spectator merry with its traditional conventionalities. However, this does not prevent true opera devotees from relishing the music, no matter what language it is played in, if only the voices are good. But, as it soon became clear, the gist of the joke was not at all in the Babel of languages but in the poor Carmen having to sing in Ukrainian. “Well, this language won’t go with music,” Mr. Kartsev desperately outstretched his arms, as if apologizing for our language lacking and melodious qualities.
This situation is banal rather than new, and I perhaps should not have dwelled upon it, but it is difficult to keep silent because very many ostensibly classical things are mixed up here. What is striking, as usual, is that these words were said by not a Russian but by a person who in Soviet times suffered quite a bit because of his ethnicity (it is common knowledge what the proverbial fifth column meant Jews) and might seem to be able to put himself in the shoes of other outcasts. What a burr of great power chauvinism: Russian goes but Ukrainian does not.
There is one more facet to the Odesa opera joke. I presume that Mr. Kartsev does not know Italian (like most of us); but it is only by knowing Italian that an opera fan can really feel discomfort over the translation. Moreover, the humorist somehow forgot that Carmen is a French, not Italian, opera based on a story by French writer Prosper M О rim О e. This is why only the French would have the right to shout about what fails to go with what to all the three singers at the Odesa theater. But what can one do? It is truly regrettable that this good performer, who usually speaks in public like a decent person, should entertain the audience with this kind of story.
Forgive me, good people, folks, for telling you what I saw on television instead of a story of my own. On to further holidays!
