Many years ago I read the opinion that when it comes to music bands, the album you hear the first often remains your favourite even if later you realise it’s not their best one. The same can probably apply to books and films.
My love for Imagine Dragons began with the release of Evolve in the summer of 2017. Now it’s mostly about certain feelings and memories that the album evokes, as well as references to other prominent bands that I’ve detected in some of the songs over time, both in terms of music and lyrics. And the first track on the second release of the album is still one of my favourites – it’s a beautiful love song called Next to Me, which the frontman Dan Reynolds dedicated to his wife.
Some time later by pure chance I came across Lermontov’s poem entitled Dodo, dedicated to a lady who was called so by her close family and friends. There was a phrase which reminded me of Next to Me, which can be loosely translated as follows: ‘You are carefree and light like the sail of a boat over a rebellious abyss’. In Next to Me there are the following words: ‘There’s something about the way that you always see the pretty view/ Overlook the blooded mess, always lookin’ effortless’.
The image of a woman praised by Baratynsky in the poem Muse is rather different. It makes me think of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 141 (my Grandma Tatiana’s favourite) and of Pushkin’s Tatiana Larina. This literary character has been special to me since my schooldays, and it’s not just in the name. While doing my master’s I studied several English translations of Eugene Onegin for my Translation Studies essay, and a few years later I was happy to discover an audioversion of my favourite translation performed by Stephen Fry.
Speaking of films, there is a reference to Baratynsky’s poetry in a beautiful Soviet film about secondary school called ‘We’ll Live Till Monday’. It helped and inspired me towards the beginning of my teaching career, which feels like many years ago already.
01/12/2021
/Picture taken by me at the Imagine Dragons concert at Moscow Luzhniki Stadium in August 2018/