Tribute to the 17th United Nations Chinese Language Day
Portrait of Confucius
On the 17th United Nations Chinese Language Day we celebrate the timeless charm of Chinese characters a carrier of thousands of years of Eastern wisdom poetry and cultural heritage
Five years ago during the 12th UN Chinese Language Day one of the three core thematic lectures selected by the United Nations “The Mysterious Dongba Hieroglyphs” was solemnly held at our Dongba Culture Academy My respected master the 17th-generation Grand Dongba Priest Aheng Dongta appeared on the front page of the official United Nations website As a wise man of the Naxi people and the soul inheritor of Dongba culture he brought the world’s only living pictographic script to the global stage letting the wisdom of Dongba culture and the brilliance of Eastern civilization shine on the international stage
Dongba hieroglyphs are the living fossil of Naxi civilization a cultural code spanning millennia and a spiritual bridge connecting the past and present and linking civilizations As the sole female inheritor and international communicator of the Dongba culture of the UNESCO Memory of the World I will always stay true to my mission as a cultural messenger delving into the translation and research of Dongba ancient books to let this precious human cultural heritage revitalize in the new era Taking language as a bond I will promote dialogue and mutual learning among different civilizations injecting oriental energy into world peace and cultural prosperity
“Scene from “Midsummer Night’s Dream” by The Joffrey Ballet. (Photo: Cheryl Mann)”
Midsummer Night’s Dream
The Joffrey Ballet
Zellerbach Theater
Berkeley, California
Midsummer Madness
“We had this beautiful summer house in the Swedish countryside. My favorite thing was to run in the field in front of the house and pick seven different flowers to put them under my pillow. Tradition says that if you put these flowers under your pillow before you go to bed, you will dream of your future love.”—Anna von Hausswolff
When you go to see a performance titled “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” even when warned ahead of time it will be set in the pale summer night of Sweden, you can be forgiven for expecting a dependably Shakespearian outing, though this time with maybe a Scandinavian Oberon and Titania and a regiment of local gnomes, a confusion of misguided romantics bounding through an Arctic midnight forest, and maybe a donkey-headed Svenska Bottom and his rude mechanicals defying the stagy and the stage-struck and a teasing trickster of a northern Puck declaring while displaying to all the world: “What fools these mortals be!”
And you might even be forgiven if, in the opening moments of the performance, you feel slightly disappointed that, no, this is not quite what you are about to be graced with this chilly spring evening.
But then, if you have always loved a surprise, especially when it is packaged as a bonbon and then explodes into a party, your expectations are turned on their head and go leaping in cartwheels across the stage, as if the whole theater had been turned into a circus expressly for your entertainment, and you find yourself with little alternative but to let yourself be blissfully carried away for the rest of the enchanted evening. There are a lot worse disappointments! And it’s easy enough to imagine Puck roaring with laughter up his gossamer sleeve.
Such, anyway, was this viewer’s experience when Cal Performances brought The Joffrey Ballet to the Zellerbach Theater on the UC Berkeley campus over a weekend this April. I’m still sorting out all the chaos of revelries that made it one of the most memorable evenings of a season that has had, frankly, a lot of competition.
The dance was divided into two parts, the first running a little under, the second a little over an hour, but who’s counting? The proof of any wonder is how fast it seems to fill any pocket of time with riches, and yet how brief it all seems in the end.
The first half opens, with deceptive minimalism, with a buffed up young man (a fine Dylan Gutierrez, who served as our point of contact for the evening; it’s his dream, after all, that we’re sharing) as he tries, unsuccessfully, to go to sleep in the glaring Scandinavian midsummer night. His bed stands in front of the stage curtain on which random sayings are projected, immediately dissolving: “Pick some strawberries!” “Meet me in the meadow,” “Sven is drunk,” “I prefer Christmas,” “Do you still love me?” . . .
A graceful young woman (the excellent Victoria Jaiani, who will be our main point of romance for the evening) bearing a sheaf of hay, dances down the aisle and up to the stage, waking the young man and then whisking him away through a crack in the curtain, which opens up to a wild, choppy confusion of dozens of dancers thrashing and dashing and flailing across a stage blanketed with golden hay like a vast field at the height of harvest season. From here on, we are far from the forest of Arden, but never far from magic.
The first act unfolds as a kind of bacchantic fertility rite, a revelry of farm workers dancing and playing, not only in, but with the hay, at the foot of a tall, mask-like pagan symbol, integrating a cross, an arrow, and two eye-like wreaths, erected above them.
The dancing workers whisk about, flail and harvest and roll the hay up into tub-like bundles which as used as little stages for couples dancing for love and delight, and they finally cast it all back into a long, luxurious play on the eternal idea of a sweetly innocent roll in the hay, quite literally.
A long table is then rolled out, and the hay is swept gaily off the stage, and the host of workers gather and celebrate the harvest in a traditional banquet. A solitary singer (the magical Anna von Hausswolff, who will appear at especially mysterious and lyrical moments) comes out and sings of the peace and joy of the long festival of summer in these cold and northern climes.
Then the revelry resumes, leading up to a long, strange, mysterious moment, when all the dancers, arranged in an almost intimidating phalanx stretching from end to end of the stage, approach the edge and, wreathed in enigmatic smiles, stare at the audience as if waiting for us to . . . do what?
There was nervous laughter, nervous applause, a little bout of rhythmic clapping, tense silence, and childlike wonder at what it all meant, as the dancers gazed silent as the midsummer sun on the puzzled mortals beneath them, then, just as mysteriously, dissolved back into seemingly random reveling.
The first act ended with one of the evening’s most magical moments, as the dancers moved up and down the long banquet table, bearing candelabras, until they stepped down to and across the darkened stage, off the stage, into the audience and up the aisles, with candelabras still aloft, until they froze, staring at the audience with mad charm.
The first half had many such marvels of enchantment. But it provided nothing to prepare us for what we would see in the second: a fever earthquake, tidal wave of inventions without end, technique without boundaries, a pagan unleashing in a teeming, ecstatic nightmare – for what would a dance about a dream be without the challenge of a nightmare? And everybody rose to meet it, conquered, and conquered again and again for the rest of a dream no one wanted, honestly, to wake from.
Because when was a nightmare ever more turbulent, tumultuous, tumacious, titillating, terrifying fun? Not only did the choreography raise its game to undreamed of heights, and the dancers follow, ever braver and more victorious than the last, but so did the set, the lighting, the props; nor forget the brilliance of music and musicians, never left behind, indeed often leading, including, later, in a soft passage after the seemingly endless rolling frieze of thrills of the opening, the already mentioned singer, who capped many a manic moment with a soft, still climax.
Did I forget the humor? Unforgivable! Because this was a production that, in its deeply romantic and pagan heart, knows how to laugh, out of pure high spirits and unshackled joy. I will mention only the giant Max Ernst fishes landing at unexpected moments or parading enormously across the boards, and the gleeful gigglers prancing in the odd corner at the odd moment, and the tutu-refined would-be swanners undermined in their earnest pliés by the gleeful gigglers and snarky bystanders, and the dueling immaculately haberdashed duo of headless gentlemen (Edson Barbarosa and Aaron Reneteria) bouncing around the stage with arms flailing and trading slaps at each other’s invisible heads, and the half-naked chef (danced with elegant insouciance by Fernando Duarte) parading around en pointe and buff-butted for much of the act in a chef’s hat and apron – and nothing else, my friend. He was, no doubt, a stand-in for the chef of this spectacular banquet of a production, the choreographer (and set designer) Alexander Ekman, as fine a magician of dance and stage as, I believe after this evening, we now have among us.
The music, a heady combination of contemporary and classical, pop, experimental and traditional Swedish folk music, and played live by a sextet of strings, piano and percussion, was by Michael Karlsson. The ingenious lighting design was originally created by Linus Fellbrom and re-created, not least the ribbons of lights hanging above the audience in the image of a circus tent, for the Zellerbach performance by Chris Maravich.
I think the fairies of Arden would have mightily approved.
_____
Christopher Bernard is an award-winning poet, novelist, playwright, and essayist. His most recent book is the poetry collection The Beauty of Matter: A Pagan’s Verses for a Mystic Idler.
First, some announcements. Tao Yucheng invites the winners of the poetry contest he hosted earlier this year to contact him at taoyucheng921129@proton.me. He’ll send out the prize money this month. He also announces that no one person won the Honorable Mention (there was a tie among multiple pieces) so he will automatically enter those pieces in the next competition, which will be at a yet-to-be-determined date this summer.
Also, contributor Mykyta Ryzhykh has a new book out, Tombboy, from Lost Telegram Press.
“In his book, as in books of poems written in poetic forms and free verse, language moves through a pattern, and the basic organizing unit is the line. In tombboy, the line may be a syllable, a sign, an image, or even a dot… Readers may rightfully assume that many, even all the poems in tombboy are anti-war poems… yet it would be inaccurate to infer these concrete poems are doctrinaire, or purely political. Nor are they autobiographical. But they are personal, intuitive, original, and memorable, each with something to show…” – Peter Mladinic, author of House Sitting, Knives on the Table and many other books
“tombboy is filled with an experimental spirit, combining fearless phrasing with satirical madness. The result is a fascinating examination of the human condition… it seems there are no limits to his masterful creativity. Each page of this book will grab your attention. tombboy deserves a prominent spot on your bookshelf.” – Roberta Beach Jacobson, editor of Five Fleas Itchy Poetry and smols poetry journal
Welcome to Synchronized Chaos’ mid-April issue: A Chorus at the Threshold. This issue presents a chorus of voices singing, speaking, sometimes whispering, at different types of thresholds. People of different ages and backgrounds come together in this issue, each sharing thoughts, observations, and feelings at points of shifting and transformation.
Some of these thresholds are deeply interior. Adalat Gafarov Izzet oglu’s poetry is contemplative and reverent, with a focus on spirituality and the search for meaning. John Edward Culp speaks to self-discovery, love, and finding one’s own rhythm in life. Duane Vorhees’ poetry forms a cohesive meditation on struggle, distance, and the human effort to bridge impossible gaps—whether spiritual, emotional, or existential. Mesfakus Salahin’s piece highlights self-exploration in times of solitude, as Maja Milojkovic laments the increasing unwanted loneliness caused by the setup of much of modern life. Mahbub Alam probes the highs and lows and capacities of human nature, highlighting the need for empathy and compassion. Prasanna Kumar Dalai’s poetry is romantic and melancholic, expressing deep emotions and longing. Poet and physician Anwer Ghani suggests that despite our attempts to conceal our emotions, they can still be sensed and felt.
J.J. Campbell’s writing touches on his inner shadows: feelings of isolation, the desire for a simple, authentic life, and the pain of his loneliness and inner demons. Ana May likewise writes from the doorway between suffering and transformation, insisting that pain must be faced if it is ever to yield meaning. Fhen M.’s eerie poem recollects the legend of G. Bragolin’s Crying Boy painting surviving house fires, meditating on trauma and memory. Thi Lan Anh Tran depicts the complex, multilayered social and psychological effects of both romantic love and war. Amina Kasim Muhammad’s poem illuminates how people rebuild after the loss of a loved one, growing around rather than overcoming grief. In David Sapp’s vignettes and Eva Lianou Petropoulou’s scenes of personal and public tragedy, ordinary life itself becomes a threshold where loss is transfigured through memory and grief into reverence.
Other voices gather at the threshold between childhood and adulthood. Yeon Myeong-ji and Hamdamova Dilzodaxon Halimjon qizi craft scenes of family love, care, and loss. Their work, and Jacques Fleury’s return to his father and their childhood treehouse, all stand in that tender doorway between then and now. Sarvinoz Bakhtiyorova depicts the impact of remembering one’s past and how that can shape one’s identity. Here, affection survives distance and the past remains startlingly alive.
Nature, too, shifts throughout this issue, with pieces about seasons and the liminal spaces between dreams and reality. In Stephen Jarrell Williams’s idyllic vision, the act of learning to fly becomes an awakening into another mode of being. Elaine Murray’s visionary reflections on natural landscapes, Charos Ismoilova’s gratitude for the sunrise, Ananya Guha’s pensive thoughts on seasonal time, Graciela Noemi Villaverde’s vision of a world where humans protect and care for the natural world, Joseph Ogbonna’s song to a nightingale, and Brian Barbeito’s dream journey scenes of birds, constellations, and moonlight all invite us to the threshold between the visible and the unseen. Sayani Mukherjee’s luminous piece on the sacred mystery of existence completes this movement, reminding us that existence itself is a continual process of change.
History and heritage form another vital threshold in these pages—the place where inheritance meets the present moment. Dr. Jihane El Feghali’s tribute to Lebanon, radiant with resilience and memory, stands beside Ilya Ganpantsura’s portrait of Pushkin, writing in a nation poised between autocracy and intellectual freedom. Abdulaxilova Sevara’s meditation on Yusuf and Zulayha reveals divine and human love, earthly devotion blended with spiritual transcendence. Eva Lianou Petropoulou shares the tale of miraculous holy fire burning the day before Easter in Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Lan Xin acknowledges the shared humanity and commonalities within the heritage of the world’s people, finding harmony within global religious teachings, and Bhagirath Chowdhary echoes that sentiment in his poem. Mohizoda Xurshiq qizi Roziqova discusses Uzbekistan’s legacy of teacher-apprentice training in the trades as Shokhida Nazirova highlights the Uzbek government’s investment in youth education, athletics, and personal development. The works rooted in Uzbek heritage further remind us that culture survives through crossings: hand to hand, teacher to student, voice to voice.
The chorus also rises at the threshold leading to justice.
Sim Wooki confronts racism and colonial power, while Patricia Doyne and Manik Chakraborty write from the brink where historical violence and oppression not only cast a shadow upon the present, but continues to this day. Alan Catlin and Stephen House stand at the moral threshold of witness, asking what it means to remain human before scenes of suffering, ecological damage, and collective harm. These are works that refuse the comfort of distance. They ask us not merely to observe, but to consider the ethics of paying attention.
Jernail S. Anand looks at compassion, care and the consequences of individual actions. Mykyta Ryzhykh highlights the dissonance between our ideals of gentleness and innocence and abusive human behavior that falls short of these ideals. Asalbonu Otamurodova’s reflections on boundaries offer another kind of threshold: the necessary line where care for others must meet care for the self.
Art itself becomes another form of threshold, creating space for various ideas and sensibilities to meet and overlap. Noah Berlatsky considers how even a weathered, broken artwork can convey meaning, how the breakage can become part of the work. Doug Hawley and Bill Tope’s joint short story humorously compares an ordinary couple with historically famous idealized sculptures of people, finding in favor of the average, imperfect, but real, married couple. To’lquinay Ubukulova points out creative people’s current dependence on technology of various sorts. Jerrice J. Baptiste’s poems and paintings of women highlight their individuality, strength of character, and connection to the natural world. Juraeva Aziza Rakhmatovna interviews Croatian writer and poet Ankica Anchia, illuminating her love for her nation and birthplace as creative inspiration.
Ummusalma Nasir Mukhtar celebrates the power of writers to move society forward through their creativity, as Bill Tope explores his personal literary motivations. Ri Hossain analyzes themes in his own poetry, highlighting his combination of materialism and surrealism and how he renders urban realities through free verse. Gionni Valentin’s fragmented thoughts, images, and reflections explore themes of creativity, self-discovery, and the human condition. Kandy Fontaine describes post-Beat poetics, defined by inclusivity, community, focus on embodied and lived experience with living writers, and rejection of hierarchies and trophies. Patrick Sweeney’s tiny poetic fragments touch on art, identity, nature, history, and relationships. Joshua Martin’s poems combine lexical debris, media fragments, bureaucratic residue, and historical ruin, while Mark Young’s fragmented transmissions emerge from different frequencies of reality.
What binds these many works is not sameness, but shared arrival. Each piece stands at some edge—of understanding, of memory, of identity, of survival—and from that edge it calls out. The result is a true chorus: not a single melody, but many voices meeting in resonance.
Chorus at the Threshold sums up this collection because every page invites crossing. Between sorrow and wonder. Between history and dream. Between the self we have been and the self we are still becoming. Yet, many of these doors remain open, so that the thoughts and impressions in one “room” carry forward along one’s journey or can be remembered.
May you enter these pages with openness, attentiveness, and the quiet recognition that something in you may emerge changed.
One day, a girl noticed an old box covered in dust in the corner of her house. Inside it, she found a yellowed sheet of paper with folded corners. She carefully opened the letter. The ink had faded, but as soon as she read the first lines, her heart began to race: “Hello… If you’re reading this, it means time has passed…”
The girl was stunned. She couldn’t remember who had written the letter, yet the words felt familiar—almost as if she had written them herself. They reflected the very feelings she carried inside. The letter spoke of small dreams, fears, and plans that never came true. The last lines tightened her chest:
“How are you living now? Do you remember those dreams?”
The girl fell silent. She once longed for something deeply, but time and noise had pushed those wishes aside. Tears welled up in her eyes. The letter confronted her with her past and present—forgotten and remembered dreams, emotions, and hidden memories. She inhaled slowly. Her heart felt a little lighter. Because she realized: even if time has passed, feelings don’t disappear. There will always be words that remind you of them. You just need to be ready to listen and to feel. Remembering one’s past helps strengthen the emotions within.
Sarvinoz Bakhtiyorova (born in 2011) is considered one of the talented and creative young students of the Ogahiy Creative School. From an early age, she developed a love for literature and has been actively creating works in both prose and poetry. Her interest in poetry emerged early in her life, and her talent began to show during her school years. In particular, while studying in the 5th grade, her first poem titled “Navruz” was published in a collective anthology called “Yangiariq Gulshani,” marking an important step in her creative journey.
Currently, she is studying at the Ogahiy Creative School, where she continues to work on herself consistently, deeply learning the art and intricacies of literature and creative writing. Through her dedication and creative efforts, she is developing into a promising young talent who is expected to achieve even greater success in the future.
I sleep beside an old film where long-forgotten names come and go. Sleep folds away the faces I miss, soaked through with the tears of flowers.
In the place where past words were set loose, unshed cries are tangled, unable to be locked away.
When I dip an old brush, droplets open a path. A breath touches that distant landscape — in the place where hidden flowers bloom alone, there is the heart of the sea. Flowers blooming underwater sway yellow with a trembling grief.
Some springs must gather courage just to be used —
they must be wept through. Hands that had sunk heave up what they could not hold; eyes whose depths cannot be known even after sorrow has drained away. Days we once embraced lie arranged in quiet rows.
Spring returns carrying the word I’m sorry. On the anniversary we meet again, rolled up inside our unfinished speech. I’m sorry for leaving you behind.
봄을 어떻게 사용하느냐고 물었다
연명지
머리맡에 오래된 이름이 드나드는 낡은 필름을 두고 잔다 그리운 얼굴이 접혀 있는 잠은 꽃들의 눈물로 흥건하고
지나간 말을 부려놓은 곳에 잠그지 못한 울음들이 엉켜 있다
오래된 붓을 담그면 물방울들이 길을 연다 그 아득한 풍경에 닿아 있는 숨 혼자 숨어 핀 꽃들의 자리에 바다의 심장이 있다 물속에 핀 꽃들이 노랗게 울렁거린다
어떤 봄은 용기를 내서 울어야 사용 할 수 있다
가라앉은 손들이 울컥 게워놓은 슬픔마저 빠져나간 깊이를 알 수 없는 눈빛들 껴안았던 날들이 가지런히 놓여 있다
미안하다라는 말이 돌아오는 봄 기일에 만난 우리들 말 속으로 말아 올려지는 두고 와서 미안해
Mother’s Empty Room
By Yeon Myung Ji
When blood bloomed from her children’s fingers, Mother would grind cuttlefish bone to dust And cover our wounds.
In her final years, she was a map of tender pressure points; She placed a heavy boulder atop the eyelids of life. Leaving us—who once played beneath the shelter of her bones— She let go of the hands she held until the end, Taking not a single one with her as she went alone.
A certain someone, who wrote that we should rejoice In having something left to leave behind, Shed the tears of a bird. And her children, sinners before their mother, Stifled their tears, pressing them deep down. They hid them in haste So no one could ever find them.
Those who have buried a loved one in their hearts Know how to unlock and bolt the gates of grief. Though there is no scripture on how to mourn well, Lips that met for the first time wailed out loud. In three days, every trace of Mother Was summoned away by the wind. The woman who, in life, stayed only in her room, Now hides within the fringe tree branches, within the breeze.
If blood should ever seep from her children’s fingers, She seems ready to appear, clutching a piece of cuttlefish bone. Even in death, she is Mother; With that very word, “Mother,” she still cradles us.
엄마의 빈 방
Yeon Myung Ji
엄마는 새끼들 손가락에서 피가 나면 갑오징어 뼈를 갈아 상처를 덮어주었다.
늘그막의 엄마는 온통 압통점이어서 생의 눈꺼풀 위 묵직한 바위 하나 올려놓았다. 당신의 뼈 아래에서 놀던 우리를 남겨두고 마지막으로 잡았던 손들 하나도 데려가지 않고 혼자 갔다.
무언가 두고 갈 것이 있다는 걸 기뻐하라는 글을 남긴 어떤 이는 새의 눈물을 흘렸고 어미 앞에 죄인인 새끼들은 눈물을 꾹꾹 숨겼다. 누구도 눈물을 찾지 못하도록 바삐 숨겼다 누군가를 가슴에 묻어본 사람들은 눈물을 열고 잠그는 방법을 안다.
잘 울어야 한다는 교리가 있는 것도 아닌데 처음 본 입술은 깔깔 울었다. 엄마의 흔적은 사흘 만에 바람으로 불려갔고 살아서는 방에만 있던 엄마는 이팝나무 가지에, 바람 속에 숨어 있다.
새끼들 손가락에 피가 나면 얼른 오징어 뼈를 들고 나타날 것만 같은 엄마는, 죽어서도 엄마 그 엄마라는 말로 여전히 우리를 다독인다
Profile
Poet Yeon Myeong-ji began her literary career in 2013 with the poetry collection 『Gashibi』, published in the Minerva Poetry Series.
Her published works include the poetry collections 『Sitting Like an Apple』 and 『Where would the House of the Sorry’ be? 』 the e-poetry collection 『Seventeen Marco Polos,』 and the travel essay 『Step by Step, Walking the Camino.』
She has received the Tolstoy Literary Award, the Homi Literary Award, the Cheongsong Gaekju Literary Award, and the Aviation Literary Award. In 2025, she was awarded the Bronze Prize in Poetry at the Literature Asia Awards.
Her poems have been translated and published in local languages in India, Pakistan, Kosovo, Italy, Egypt, the United States, and Belgium.
Do not praise him. In our vile age Hoary Neptune is the earth’s ally. In every element man is — A tyrant, a traitor, or a prisoner.
— Pushkin, to Vyazemsky, 1826, regarding the death sentence imposed on the Decembrist Nikolai Turgenev.
Free-minded dissidents in the Soviet era — or today, in the climate of constrained freedoms in twenty-first-century Russia — may recall the stories of Chaadaev, Herzen, Pushkin: people who, too, confronted the oppression of thought. They may draw from their example strength for life and for resistance in the present. But how, in his turn, did Pushkin — the first great poet of Russia — find the strength to defend freedom? With what great image could he identify himself, in order to find respite from his inner contradictions?
Pushkin is rightly regarded as the first great poet of Russia. Such an opinion, for example, was expressed by the foremost literary critic of his time, Vissarion Belinsky. Yet this does not mean that Pushkin stood alone among unremarkable figures. On the contrary, he developed intellectually within a society with many people who could surpass him in education and in the courage to dissent from the realities of Russia at the turning point of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Many of the bold individuals who surrounded Pushkin would later join the Decembrist uprising against autocracy, supporting liberal ideas.
And although many of these brave men made history on the battlefields of 1812 and during the uprising on Senate Square, their destinies and that of Pushkin represent two opposite kinds of immortality: historical and mental. Here lies a paradox: the vast uprising of December 1825 — unshakable in the sincerity of its sacrifice — has been treated by history like an old monument overgrown with moss, defining not ideas or personality, but merely a date: December 14.
Pushkin, by contrast, who was neither a soldier nor a member of the Decembrists’ secret societies, left behind a creative legacy whose multiple levels — from the aesthetic to the semantic — contributed to the moral consciousness of his era. His influence is felt even today, at the level of a person’s existential experience.
Despite the authoritarianism and inherent lack of freedoms in Russia during the reigns of Alexander I and later Nicholas I, a politically conscious society formed. And despite the failure of the uprising, the tightening of censorship, and the atmosphere of suspicion, there remained within society a demand for dynamic political thought. Intellectuals began to develop this secretly in poetry. And Pushkin, as one of the first poets, was discussed more than anyone else in the attempt to discover a politically vital position. Here Pushkin offered not only a sense of freedom but also examined it from the sharpest moral angles.
In Pushkin’s life, the influence of the Decembrist circles to which he gravitated shaped his vocabulary with terms defining unfreedom and despotism. They formed his language of resistance. But he himself formed the vocabulary of his personal sensations from life in disgrace and exile. This feeling is unlike the monument of Peter I looming over St. Petersburg. It resembles someone walking almost just behind you — an invisible figure whom, when you turn around, you neither see nor hear, for like fear, he exists only in your mind. And in reality he is merely an unnoticed piece of clothing that strikes against you as you move, creating the sensation that someone is following.
And, illumined by the pale moon, Stretching forth his hand on high, Behind him rushes the Bronze Horseman On a loudly galloping steed;
Fear, as an experience, does not exist only for the active participants of the Decembrist movement. Nor does it exist merely for some abstract future. If you are a minor official living quietly, without active participation in public life, it is unrealistic to feel yourself at the sharp edge of repression and to worry as though you were a victim of the regime. Far more painful is the feeling of an incomplete life — a feeling that is all-consuming. And although many factors may produce such a sensation, we shall consider it here as the essence of living in an unfree and backward country — backward not for lack of thinkers, but because of authoritarianism.
It was precisely such a country that Russia was as it entered the nineteenth century and passed through the Napoleonic Wars. Throughout the nineteenth century, revolutionary and liberal ideas constantly arose within the empire. Hence it would be incorrect to imagine tsarist Russia as an iron cage of thought. One need only recall the publication of Chaadaev’s Philosophical Letters, for which he was declared insane. Or the open promotion of liberal ideas by Nikolai Ivanovich Turgenev in the literary salons and evenings of St. Petersburg — after which he wrote to his brother: “It was not for this that we embraced liberal ideas, in order to make concessions to boors.” And he, in turn, encountered what every person who opposes an authoritarian regime encounters — fear, misunderstanding, and condemnation from those around him. Often this fear was disguised as concern: “What are you saying? That’s dangerous.” But in reality it was less a condemnation of the other than an admission of one’s own unfreedom and dependence on limits and fear.
Pushkin understood this with remarkable clarity. In his works he described precisely the psychology of society, without descending into theatrical generalizations. He diagnosed the age not by merely observing its symptoms, but, like a true philosopher, he struck at the cause. And for him the cause was not the ruler but an eternal dilemma of human nature: anxiety before unfreedom and the impossibility of fully realizing oneself.
But whatever happened, Pushkin wrote for people, and his characters, for the sake of deeper understanding, also had to be human. In the Boldino autumn of 1833, Pushkin composed the epic poem The Bronze Horseman. After its publication, this would become the name by which the sculpture of Peter I on horseback in St. Petersburg — mentioned by Pushkin — came to be known.
In the poem, St. Petersburg is devastated by a flood, and the Emperor of All Russia, Alexander I, justifies himself before the people for his helplessness in the face of catastrophe. Then he steps away from the balcony and weeps, now justifying his powerlessness to himself. He had a throne, authority, and the image of a reformer. But he lacked either resolve or talent. He possessed the image of a sovereign, yet in reality he was merely a hero. And over every hero fate holds dominion:
The late Tsar still ruled Russia With glory. Onto the balcony, Sad and troubled, he stepped forth And said: “Against God’s elements Even Tsars cannot contend.”
Pushkin subconsciously anticipated this shame. As a lyceum student of the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum, he had been personally acquainted with the emperor in his youth. Evidence of this is the “Ode to Liberty,” in which the theme of the murder of Paul I is addressed. And although the ode contained no evaluative positions, the mere mention of this event unsettled the Tsar. This is clearly seen in Pushkin’s reflections from his personal diary titled “An Imaginary Conversation with Alexander I,” in which Pushkin writes the following remark on behalf of the Tsar:
“Of course, you acted unwisely… I have noticed that you are trying to discredit me in the eyes of the people by spreading absurd slander;”
Pushkin deliberately places into the mouth of Alexander I a phrase in which the emperor speaks of his mission in the plural: “Against God’s elements even Tsars cannot contend.” He says Tsars, not a Tsar, although in Russia he alone is the sovereign with a single word of authority. Here one senses the psychology of an incomplete man — that same anxiety before unfreedom mentioned above. If in an ordinary person it manifests as fear of failing to conform to a totalitarian society, then in the Tsar a similar problem arises from the absence of genuine subjectivity — the very quality that ought to belong to a sovereign.
The tragedy of history: Alexander I was not allowed to realize himself. Even his father, Emperor Paul I — killed as the result of a palace coup — possessed the courage to pursue his own, albeit contradictory, policy. Alexander I was granted power and a voice. Yet it seems that neither a single individual nor the elites alone but an entire epoch closed before him the path to the true realization of the ideas that had long formed within his soul. Fate placed him upon the throne of real authority burdened with ambition and with the confidence that he had already triumphed over his father, with whom he had a competitive relationship. Yet fear of angering the elites again, and guilt over his complicity in the murder of his own father, drained his strength and limited his power.
The people in this poem drift like tin soldiers, watching the catastrophe and the death of the city. They are like figures on parade, marching in formation at the front, but in times of crisis losing their shape and, in fear and without finding themselves, being carried away by the storm.
A universal characteristic of the human being deprived of genuine culture is inward isolation. An uncultivated person has no true communion with others. A paternalistic, authoritarian regime, in order to control people, sets before them the goal of the state — for example, duty to the motherland. The ordinary person must identify with it in order to find belonging. Yet in moments of crisis, when the state can no longer unite society around this sense of duty, a whirlpool of events begins in which people can drift only as victims. For without an identity rooted in duty to the state, and in the absence of culture, they close themselves off inwardly and at best become passive observers. At worst — like hungry predators infected with petty ideas — they turn against culture itself.
The tragedy of Alexander I is the tragedy of every Russian of that era. And if we generalize politically, we arrive at a characterization of autocracy and authoritarianism in two words: constraint and incompleteness. In contrast stands the idea of independent philosophical thought, which unites people with views opposed to the regime and allows them to move together through crisis without the constraints of fear of conforming to it.
His dream… Or in a dream Does he behold it? Or is all our life Nothing but an empty dream, Heaven’s mockery of the earth?
In studying Pushkin’s biography, we must boldly acknowledge: Pushkin was not a combat machine for the reform and liberalization of Russia. He had a relationship with Emperor Alexander I. And deep within, he judged him as more than merely “a ruler who failed to meet expectations.” Pushkin also owned several hundred serfs. And unlike some of his Decembrist friends — for example, the Turgenev brothers — he did not receive a foreign education.
Yet no one today has the right to condemn Pushkin for any aspect of his creation or life that at the time may have appeared complimentary to the authorities. In the twenty-first century, we cannot criticize Pushkin in the way his contemporaries did. He was a complex man in a complex epoch. Nikolai Turgenev once wrote: “it is not for him to judge progressive ideas.” But we cannot speak so. For in that case, it would amount to disrespect toward his biography and his efforts to navigate a fraught political situation.
Answering the central question of this essay: precisely because Pushkin was one of the first poets of Russia, it fell to him to be the first to look clearly at the political condition of the empire and hope for change. If in contemporary Russia a person seeks a freer form of life and relies on poets such as Pushkin, then in his own time Pushkin relied upon the hope of sustaining “encouraging impulses” within himself. And his hope was indeed justified: he didn’t transform the political system, but he did establish a tradition of thinking against and beyond a authoritarian regime. And that tradition, in turn, opens the way to defining new forms of community.
“Oh, how many wondrous discoveries Mind and Labor still prepare for us.”
— Pushkin, 1829.
This article was written with the aid of notes from lectures by Y. M. Lotman.
Post‑Beat Poetics: Breath, Lineage, and the Ethics of Community By Kandy Fontaine aka Alex S. Johnson
Post‑Beat poetics begins where institutional Beat revival ends. It is not concerned with titles, laureateships, or the pageantry of literary inheritance. Instead, it returns to the first principles that animated the original movement: breath, embodiment, community, and the sanctity of the outsider voice.
The Beats were never a monolith. They were a constellation of seekers, queers, mystics, addicts, pacifists, anarchists, and wanderers. Their lineage was never meant to be curated by committees or guarded by gatekeepers. It was meant to be lived.
Post‑Beat poetics recognizes that the breath that animated Ginsberg’s long lines and Whitman’s yawp now moves through bodies historically excluded from the center of literary culture. Disabled bodies. Fat bodies. Queer bodies. Neurodivergent bodies. Bodies marked by trauma, poverty, and social disadvantage. These bodies are not deviations from the lineage—they are the lineage.
To write in a post‑Beat mode is to reject the stale rooms where trophies gather dust. It is to open the windows, to let the air in, to remember that poetry is not a competition but a communion. It is to stand with the ancestors—not as icons, but as kindreds whose breath still moves through us.
Post‑Beat poetics is not a return. It is an expansion. It is the recognition that the movement’s future lies not in institutional validation but in the lived experience of those who continue to write from the margins, from the body, from the breath.
It is a poetics of presence, resistance, and remembrance.
It is a poetics of community over hierarchy, lineage over branding, breath over bureaucracy.
It is, simply, a poetics of the living.
"You don't need a weatherman to tell you where the wind is blowing"-Bob Dylan
How quickly we
pivot
From
ethical foundation to
foundations
without them
So we must remember
the breath
It has been carried by
lungs of
generations
The bellows of
lineage
The great in
spir
a
tion
of
Legions
Before
During
and
To come
The heart: the core
beating
alive
open
Tremendous seeking for
true
kindreds
The heart
a muscle of memory as much as
circulation
The ring of the ancestors
their eyes, their
hair, their fingernails
Their nostrils
their
Scents
Sometimes a little
funky
Carried on the breeze
snuffled
snorted
Carried on shoulders
backs
limbs of post mechanics
Disabled
socially disadvantaged
fat
maligned
Queer
Gatekept
Out of the
region
The stale rooms where
trophies are
kept must be
Aired
the
Fuck
Out the
Rigid
enclosures
Where a handful of
anonymous judges
Decide who to
validate
Flung apart with a
tornado of
Just indignation
The skin
is
Holy the
Cells are
holy the
microbes that
crawl in our
Dust are
Holy and I stand with'
Blake and Ginzie I stand
with the
lineage of
kindreds and with the eye of
On
History condemn
The small minded
sacrilege that
Sets arbitrarily
apart that
Poisons
community
The water of
bodies the
Massive up
swelling of
Uncontrolled
anger
Bitterness
BIG MY GATE ENERGY
BIG MEAN GIRL ENERGY
BIG REGINA GEORGE VIBES
MY MY MY MY
PRECIOUS
Awards
ME ME ME
egotism masquerading
As
Whitmanesque
Sovereignty and
Cosmic
Bray
This is not right
I
Speak not for the moment
not for
This time but for
Times
Before
Present and accounted for
For the exiles and the humble of spirit
within the tradition
Feet planted
firmly in the turf of
Consensual
Reality
Breathe
stand and
In that breath and breadth
Command
yourself.
