Petr CHERNIAYEV, special to The Day from
Moscow
Only in Europe did the chansonnier changed his habitual Pierrot attire
and donned tails
Aleksandr Vertinsky, so very popular in the early 20th century, was
born in Kyiv 110 years ago.
He made his name wearing Pierrot's white mask and dark clothes, appearing
at the St. Petersburg's cabaret Pavilion de Paris in the 1910s.
He was a chansonnier never accepted by Konstantin Stanislavsky at the Maly
Theater (the latter did not like his French trilling of the letter "r").
He was young, had no stage experience, and his mask (as he would explain,
somewhat coquettishly) served to hide his stage-fright. Apart from that,
his image as a "long-suffering clown" was most welcome at the peak of Russian
symbolism. His image was that of a helpless martyr, unable to change anything
for the better, for him or for those close and dear to him. He seemed to
personify the instability of the times teetering between sybaritic benevolence
and foresight of imminent tragedy.
Critics accused him of conniving at the transient audience's tastes;
some said he had no talent, really, but these voices were drowned in the
public chorus of admiration. His "ariatiques" (the coinage devised for
his songs in the posters and ads) were heartwarming and he was soon Russia's
number one chansonnier. His every song was a little drama, perhaps even
a farce, but each won his viewers' hearts. He was dreamy and pathetic,
passionate and tender. He was naive, a little bit sarcastic and a born
actor. Vasily Kachalov said, "I have never seen another pair of such singing
hands."
Then came the Bolsheviks, and he fled Russia with a fake passport identifying
him as a Greek subject named Verditis (so he could avoid the usual immigration
red tape). He traveled far and wide, played in a number of motion pictures,
although he had previously scorned film-making as being neither a good
job nor art. He starred in a dozen silent movies at the turn of the century.
Among his roles were ones showing him as a naked angel struggling on his
way across a snow-covered desert (What People Live By), an unrecognized
actor (Stage Neurosis) or an enigmatic derelict (Uncrowned King).
He appeared in Soviet films after returning to Soviet Russia in 1943. Old-timers
remember his craftily squinting Venetian Doge (Skenderbeg, the Great
Albanian Warrior), the influential and cynical Russian prince (Order
of St. Anne), and a malicious hook-nosed cardinal (Plot of the Doomed).
One rumor has it that the singer was not purged because he was an NKVD
informer (a traditional allegation for the period, but the truth is that
Stalin was very fond of his songs and had a large private collection of
his records).
"His main muse was nostalgia," recalls Vertinsky's daughter Anastasia.
"It formed his art the same as with Nabokov. Vertinsky had all the literary
attributes of the past century. He idealized Mother Russia and sang abut
his being a vagabond and an actor, and that he was always lonely. Loss
of one's native land and homesickness were his key themes and driving creative
force. It took me awhile to understand his art. Step by step, as I grew
mature, meaning older, my father would increasingly become a part of my
life. I would return to his songs and verse, reread his works, trying to
understand him at every stage of my maturity. I dreamed of finding a treasure
so I would have enough money to restore his voice."







