Certainly would be something, Max, to hear those voices chiming in, esp
with non-rhyming poems. Bit different from singalongs.
Bill
On Tuesday, 31 May 2016, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> The poems he [Benedict Anderson] memorized in his youth stayed with him
> always. In 2007, he was invited to Leningrad to assist with a class on
> nationalism for young teachers in Russian provincial universities.
> Addressing them, he remembered some Russian from his days at Eton and
> proceeded to recite the final stanza of a poem by Vladimir Mayakovsky, who
> perished, amid murky circumstances, in Moscow in 1930. To his astonishment,
> all of the students joined with him:
>
> Shine always,
> Shine everywhere,
> To the depth of the last day!
> Shine—
> And to hell with everything else!
> That’s my motto—
> And the sun’s!
>
> “I was in tears by the end,” recalls Anderson. “Some of the students, too.”
>
>
> http://www.thenation.com/article/benedict-andersons-view-of-nationalism/
>
>
> I sent the above to my old friend Alan in Dunedin.
> He replies (he once had a Russian tutor named Natasha) -
>
> Yes, it is astonishing, isn't it!
>
> And I doubt that it ever happens with English-language poets -
>
> have you ever come across that?
>
>
> I remember hearing (probably from Natasha Templeton)
>
> that another Russian (Voznezhensky? Pasternak?)
>
> at an infrequent reading (in Russian, of course) found that the entire
>
> darkened auditorium was filled with the voices of the audience,
>
> saying his lines with him. Brings a tear to my eye.
>
> Alan
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