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Obituary；Sergei Mikhalkov；
讣告；谢尔盖·米哈尔科夫；
Sergei Mikhalkov, the Kremlin's court poet, died on August 27th, aged 96；
克里姆林宫的宫廷诗人谢尔盖·米哈尔科夫于8月27日辞世，享年96岁；
Talent without flexibility was a dangerous thing in the Soviet Union, as thousands found to their cost. Sergei Mikhalkov had talent aplenty, as a poet, playwright, children's writer and satirist. But, more important, he was flexible.
光有才能却不懂变通，这在苏联是危险的。成千上万的人明白这一点时已经付出了代价。谢尔盖·米哈尔科夫才华横溢，既是诗人，也是剧作家，还是儿童文学和讽刺文学作家。不过更重要的还是他懂得变通。
Mr Mikhalkov penned the words to two versions of the Soviet national anthem, one glorifying Stalin and one ignoring him. After Russia shrugged off communism he wrote a third version, to the same tune. In between he denounced two of the country's greatest writers, Boris Pasternak and Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Every regime he served gave him medals.
米哈尔科夫先生为两个版本的苏联国歌作过词，其中一个版本赞美斯大林，另一个将其忽略。俄罗斯抛弃共产主义之后，他又写了第三个版本，还是同一个曲子。在上述这些事情之间的岁月里，他谴责过两位最伟大的俄国作家――伯里斯·帕斯杰尔纳克和亚历山大·索尔仁尼琴。每一个他为之效力的政权都给他颁发过奖章。
Servility towards power is a ubiquitous phenomenon. An 18th-century English song, “The Vicar of Bray”, tells of a country clergyman who changed his allegiance with the times, Romish under James II, strongly Protestant under the Hanoverians, through every other point of the ecclesiological compass. The chorus runs:
对权力奴颜卑膝是普天下皆有的现象。一首名为“布雷的牧师”的18世纪英国歌曲讲述了一个乡村的神职人员如何随着时代的变化改换他效忠的对象：在詹姆士二世时他忠于天主教，汉诺威王室统治时他又成了坚定的新教教徒，直到他前后效忠了基督教里所有的教派。合唱部分是这样唱的：
And this is Law I will maintain
这就是我要保守的规条
Until my Dying Day, Sir.
直到我咽气的那日，大人。
That whatsoever King may reign,
不管哪样的国王当道
I will be the Vicar of Bray, Sir!
我都将是布雷的牧师，大人！
Mr Mikhalkov offered a Soviet version of the theme.
米哈尔科夫先生为这个主题提供了一个苏联版本。
He was born in the Russian empire to a noble family, with admirals and princes among his forebears. Many of that breed fled from the Red Terror that followed the Bolshevik revolution; those that stayed behind had their lives blighted, or ended, by the communist hatred of “class enemies”. But young Sergei slipped through that net, working humbly in a Moscow loom factory and writing poetry on the side. That was his ticket to the new aristocracy of proletarian cultural workers. He remained, at heart, a courtier and a cynic.
他在帝俄时期出生于一个贵族家庭，先祖中不乏海军元帅和王子。这类人纷纷逃离布尔什维克革命之后随之而来的红色恐怖；他们中间留下来的或者是被共产党对“阶级敌人”的仇恨毁掉了余生，或者干脆就因为这种阶级仇恨丢了性命。但年轻的谢尔盖成了漏网之鱼。他在莫斯科一家织机厂干着卑微的工作，业余写点诗歌。那成了他藉以跻身无产阶级文化工作者这一新贵阶层的门票。在心底里，他其实仍然是一名侍臣，同时也玩世不恭。
He gained his first success with a children's verse fable about the exploits of a very tall policeman, “Uncle Steeple” (Dyadya Styopa). Given what the real-life police were doing in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, it should probably be classed as escapist fiction. A little later, he wrote a poem praising—he claimed—a girl with a dark-blond plait whom he had met at the House of Writers. Her name was Svetlana. Since that was also the name of Stalin's daughter, the poem brought the tall, tinny-voiced, stuttering young man to the dictator's notice.
使他首获成功的是他为儿童写的一个诗歌体童话，讲述的是一个名叫“教堂尖顶叔叔”的高个警察的英雄行为。考虑到二十世纪三十年代真实生活中的警察都在苏联干了些什么，该作品大概应该归入逃避现实的虚构作品一类。其后不久，他写了一首诗赞美他在作者之家遇到的一名梳着暗金色发辫的女孩――反正他是这样声称的。她的名字是丝薇特拉娜。因为那也是斯大林女儿的名字，所以这首诗让独裁者注意到了这位身材高大，说话蚊子般哼哼，同时有些结巴的年轻人。
In 1944 he was commissioned, along with Gabriel El-Registan, a Soviet Armenian poet, to write the words for a new national anthem to replace the “Internationale”. The rousing hymn of the international workers' movement—freedom thundering against oppression, starvelings rising to end the age of cant—was felt not to fit the needs of the contemporary Soviet Union.
1944年他和葛布列·艾尔瑞杰斯坦一起被委托为一首新的国歌作词，以取代当时作为国歌的“国际歌”。这首国际工人运动的激昂战歌—自由斗士们对压迫发出雷鸣般的怒吼，饥寒交迫的人们起来结束伪善的时代――被认为不再适合当时苏联的需要。
Its replacement, set to a stirring tune composed by Alexander Alexandrov, was a sentimental and militaristic ditty that gave equal weight to Lenin and Stalin:
代替《国际歌》的是一首煽情和颇带铁血意味的歌谣，配以亚历山大·亚历山德罗夫所作的一支振奋人心的曲子。这首歌谣对列宁和斯大林给予了同等重要的地位：
Through days dark and stormy where Great Lenin led us
伟大的列宁领导我们穿越黑暗和风暴，
Our eyes saw the bright sun of freedom above
我们的双眼看到高天自由的太阳；
and Stalin our Leader, with faith in the People,
我们的领袖斯大林，以他对人民的信任
Inspired us to build up the land that we love.
激励我们在这片热土上建起高楼万丈。
Admittedly, national anthems rarely make great literature, and other Soviet poets, including on one occasion even the great Anna Akhmatova, found it expedient to put their pens at the service of the regime. But Mr Mikhalkov's loyalty was exceptional. A good example of his work is “I want to go home”, a 1948 propaganda play about post-war orphanages in Germany, in which sinister British officials try to brainwash and kidnap Soviet children to use them as spies and slaves in the imperialist cause. The plot is foiled by heroic and kindly Soviet officers. The truth was exactly the other way round: it was the Soviet secret police who organised ruthless repatriations, often dividing families.
诚然，极少有国歌能成为不朽的文学作品，而且其他的苏联诗人出于自身利益也曾用他们的笔杆为政权服务，即便是了不起的安娜·阿赫玛托娃也曾这样做过一次。 但是米哈尔科夫先生的忠诚罕有其匹。他的作品中一个颇好的例子是“我想回家”，这是1948年的一部关于战后德国孤儿院的宣传剧，在那部剧中阴险的英国官员试图对苏联儿童进行洗脑和绑架，以便在帝国主义大业中把他们当作间谍和奴隶来使用。该阴谋被英勇善良的苏联军官挫败了。事实恰恰相反：正是苏联秘密警察残酷地强制流散到苏联境外的人返回苏联，常常导致一家人骨肉分离。
Songs without words
无字之歌
Mr Mikhalkov's lyrics did not long survive Stalin's death in 1953. From then until 1977 the anthem was played without words, neatly illustrating the Soviet Union's ambiguous attitude to Stalinism. Mr Mikhalkov adapted to the times, becoming a pillar of the Soviet literary establishment and a notable enforcer of party discipline in its ranks. He wrote, in 1970, some new lyrics to the national anthem. To mark the introduction of the new Soviet constitution in 1977, the authorities adopted them. They ignored Stalin, praised Lenin and highlighted Russia's role in welding the “unbreakable union of free-born republics”.
米哈尔科夫先生的歌词在1953年斯大林死后不久也寿终正寝。从那时起直到1977年，苏联国歌在播放或演奏时都没有歌词，这贴切地显示出苏联对斯大林主义的暧昧态度。米哈尔科夫先生紧跟时代，成为了苏联文学当权派的重要成员，也成了在基层党员中维护党纪的著名人士。在1970年，他为苏联国歌填写了新词。为了庆祝1977年开始实行的新的苏联宪法，当局采用了这套歌词。新的歌词忽略了斯大林，赞美了列宁，并且强调了俄罗斯在缔造“自由共和国牢不可破的联盟”中所起的作用。
The union proved anything but. Given a whiff of freedom under Mikhail Gorbachev, the captive nations of the Soviet empire bolted for the exit. They found, or restored, their own songs. But Russia was tongue-tied. It dumped the Soviet anthem and adopted a resonant tune by Glinka, called simply “Patriotic Song”. It failed to catch on. In 2001 Vladimir Putin ordered the restoration of the Soviet tune—and it was Mr Mikhalkov's turn to write, once again, the words. The anodyne doggerel that resulted is no better (and certainly no worse) than other countries' national anthems. It praises Russia's uniqueness, mentions God, and concludes: “Thus it was, is, and always shall be!” Except that it isn't, and wasn't. Few knew that better than the wily Mr Mikhalkov.
后来发生的事情证明这个联盟唯一不具备的品质就是牢不可破。苏维埃帝国中被囚禁的诸国在呼吸了米哈伊尔·戈尔巴乔夫任职期间一丝自由的空气后，就纷纷拔腿跑向出口，脱离了联盟。它们有的找到了新的国歌，有的恢复了自己过去的国歌。但俄罗斯却变得张口结舌，不知所措。它丢弃了苏联国歌，转而采用了格林卡的一首洪亮的曲子，名字很简单，就叫“爱国之歌。”但是它没有被普遍接受。2001年时弗拉基米尔·普金下令国歌重新采用前苏联国歌的曲调――而为之填词的任务又一次落到了米哈尔科夫先生身上。米哈尔科夫先生因此所作的这首排忧解痛的打油诗并不比其它国家国歌的歌词更好（当然也并不比它们差）。它赞美了俄罗斯的独一无二，同时也提到了神。歌词结尾处写道：“俄罗斯曾经是这样，现在是这样，也将永远是这样！”。问题是它现在不是这样，过去也不曾这样。没有多少人比灵活善变的米哈尔科夫先生更清楚这一点。
