“One Against All, All Against One”: Alexander Voloshin, Rolfe Humphries, and the Quarrels of Émigrés

Reading Alexander Voloshin’s On the Tracks brings me the pleasure of recognition tinged with a sad frisson. Some things in the émigré experience never change… I admire his ability to coat his exilic disappointments in sweet humor, which doesn’t drain them of their essential bitterness, just makes them easier to stomach. In the passage below, written in the early 1930s, he bemoans the fractiousness of the diasporic community (a refrain in émigré writing), enumerating the strange political allegiances of certain desperate Hollywood Russians. Any movement that held out the faintest promise of return — the “legitimists” who backed Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich, the Italian fascists, even the Nazis — was good enough for some.

In Balta, Petersburg, and Tomsk,
Odessa, Vologda, and Omsk,
on Lake Baikal, the Dnieper River,
our countrymen huddled together —
then, from each corner of Great Russia,
our vast and varied band came rushing…
Somehow it seems that every road
led to provincial Hollywood!

Now that some fourteen years have passed,
what do we see?… Firm proof, alas,
that, though the days of war are gone,
we Russians still can’t get along!
Son versus father and grandfather —
they all devour one another!
It’s true that man is wolf to man,
but this is getting out of hand…

Anarchists feud with democrats
amid loud nationalist spats…
Some think Grand Duke Kirill’s our future…
Others (go figure!) like Il Duce…
Enthralled by wild Nazi orations,
some yearn for wars and occupations…
A few are willing to appease
the power-hungry Japanese!…
[…] Russians forget, in Hollywood,
of friendship, love, and brotherhood.

These verses reminded me of a more solemn, existential treatment of the same theme by the American poet and translator Rolfe Humphries (1894-1969), who was himself a committed leftist. Published towards the end of the global catastrophe that the Nazis had unleashed, the poem describes the life of political exiles but expands its focus to take in the whole of the human condition.

The Exiles

Lie in the darkened room and hear
The voices in the street at night
Beyond the open window, talk
In a foreign language, and a strange
Foreign cadence in the walk.

Or look at half a dozen coins
Counting them carefully and slow
To pay for magazines or meals;
This does not seem like money, though,
Nor feel the way real money feels.

Nor is it any longer true
They change the sky, but not the mind,
Who run across the sea, and live
Expatriated, fugitive,
Leaving their land behind.

For the mind changes more than sky,
Becomes infected, covets grief,
Craves, but rejects, the newer loam,
Still clinging to the old belief
Of some day going home.

The resolute, who used to form
Firm ranks against the old regime,
Move in a nightmare kind of dream
Where every comrade is a spy,
Each new report another lie.

And those most sensitive and tall,
By that same virtue, dwindle more;
Having a longer way to fall,
Become much worse than men who were
Below their worth before.

The nerves are bad, and tempers flare
In petty quarrels, mean intrigue:
Jealousy and suspicion leer,
Organization is undone,
One against all, all against one.

Talent becomes a show-off ape,
Honesty sickens, having had
No offer to betray the cause:
Why not? Corruption feeds the poor —
If poor enough, all men turn bad.

Demoralized by shattering fears,
Braced against pressure night and day,
The last collapse surprises most;
Disintegration makes the ghost
Even from himself an émigré.

This is what happens, not alone
To men from Germany and Spain
And other lands remoter far, —
We have this sickness, wish in vain
We were not exiles. But we are.

1944

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Из Вологды, Одессы, Томска,
Из Балты, Петербурга, Омска,
С Байкала и с Днепра-реки –
Сюда сбежались «земляки»…
Со всех сторон Руси Великой
Собрался табор многоликий, –
Как видно – все пути ведут
В «Уездный Город Холливуд»!

Годков четырнадцать промчалось…
И что-ж в итоге?… Оказалось,
Что даже после стольких лет, –
Средь русских – дружбы нет, как нет!…
Отцы и дети, внуки, деды –
Все оказались «людоеды», –
Волками злобными глядят,
Друг дружку поедом едят…

Тот – «демократ»… Те – «анархисты»…
Те – «нео-националисты»…
Тем люб Великий Князь Кирилл…
Тем – почему-то – «Дуче» мил!…
Те – признают одних лишь «наци»
И жаждут войн и оккупаций…
А есть такие чудаки,
Что ждут «японские штыки»!…
[…] В Холливуде
Российские забыли люди
О «дружбе, братстве и любви».

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