Love
– Люблю
Based
on the lesser known poem " Love " by the Russian poet Anna
Akhmatova .For the time being this video is the last of a series of
videos belonging to the video project Anticipating You in
collaboration with theater group DFT STAGE
The
two other videos are Anticipating You and Night, Street, Lantern,
Pharmacy based on poems by Alexander Blok. However each of the three
videos has a different visual approach and style. Specially in this
video " Love "
Apparently
there is no match between the text and images. The text does mention
a snake and a dove, but in the visual part they do not occur at all.
Instead, the main part of the video shows a late-night trip with the
St.Petersburg Metro.
Anna
Akhmatova is the literary pseudonym of Anna Andreevna Gorenko (Odessa
1889 - Domodedevo 1966)
She
is regarded as one of the greatest Russian poets. Besides poetry,
which constitutes the main share of her literary legacy, she wrote
prose—primarily memoirs, autobiographical pieces, and literary
scholarship, including her outstanding essays on Aleksandr Sergeevich
Pushkin. She also produced many first-rate translations of Italian,
French, Armenian, and Korean poetry. In her lifetime she experienced
two different kinds of Russia, prerevolutionary and Soviet, yet her
verse protected the traditions of classical Russian culture from the
onslaught of avant-garde radicalism and formal experimentation, as
well as from the suffocating ideological strictures of socialist
realism. For all the restraint, femininity, and ostensible
apoliticism of her verse, her poetic persona perfectly embodied the
tragic spirit of twentieth-century Russia.
Now,
like a little snake, it curls into a ball,
Bewitching
your heart,
Then
for days it will coo like a dove
On
the little white windowsill.
Or
it will flash as bright frost,
Drowse
like a gillyflower . . .
But
surely and stealthily it will lead you away
From
joy and tranquility.
It
knows how to sob so sweetly
In
the prayer of a yearning violin,
And
how fearful to divine it
In
a still unfamiliar smile
