Talk:On the Independence of Ukraine

Poem text

It will be extremely difficult for a non-native Russian speaker (or even for a native speaker, but born after 1992) to understand and hence judge the text. To me the whole insult in the poem is like a teenager says "Fuck you, bitch, you will be sorry" after a girlfriend breaks up with him. Of course, it is extremely insulting and the girl has the rights to be insulted with this, and she may even reply "Fuck you too, you abusive self-centered domineering son of a bitch". As such, this is hardly a great feat of poetry, but rather the poet's way to express his feelings. Obviously, the poet did not work on laboriously polishing the text, leaving it as it was. Staszek Lem (talk) 19:00, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

P.S. I noticed one critic accused Brodsky of misattributing "show Kuzma's mother" expression to Stalin. In fact this is an artifact of an unauthorized transcription of the poem. In fact, Stalin's apocryphal saying circulated by neo-Stalinists is "Time will Show" ("время покажет"), which in the poem is followed with a brief ironic list of what exactly "time will show": — "Kuzma's mother, ruins, and bones of the postmortem joy with the aftertaste of Ukraine" (that's what Google Translate say :-).

Therefore please do not add this into our article as part of criticism. Staszek Lem (talk) 19:00, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

PPS. I care not to expand the article further, but I will watch it against Ukrainian neo-Nazis attempts to put something in Brodsky's mouth. It seems that fake news and rewriting history is their favorite pastime. Staszek Lem (talk) 19:03, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

Reverts by

Hi @Staszek Lem:! Why were my edits reverted by you? Your text was not neutral and did not convey the summary of analysis on what the poem was symbolizing (based on the very references provided in the article, e.g. works that studied this poem by Irena Grudzińska-Gross, Olga Bertelsen etc.). On the talk page of author I've described these symbols in details - you can familiarize yourself with them here. So in summary, I would appreciate if you could bring my edits back since they convey the "messaging" of the poem better than how you said it previously. Thanks.--Piznajko (talk) 20:33, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

This point of view may be discussed, but you edit added nothing new: Ukraininan Independence was mentioned in the previous sentence. My text was based in ref by GEssen: lamenting the splitting-off of Ukraine from Russia, also "А что до слезы из глаза—нет на нее указа, ждать до другого раза" cited there. Please explain why my text was not neutral. See also my section above. Staszek Lem (talk) 20:38, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

P.S. For non-English wikipedians: The translation of the cited line in the Gessen's article is completely incorrect. Correct "As for the tear from my eye - it cannot be controlled, wait for another occasion." Staszek Lem (talk) 20:46, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

P.P.S. Yes I did see the fight in the poet's talk page and in fact talked there as well, that's why I wrote a separate article, to demonstrate the notability of the subject regardless the rest of Brodsky's work. Staszek Lem (talk) 20:59, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

@Staszek Lem: I did not understand what you meant by quoting a translation of the poem in Gessen's article - there seems to be no WP:RELEVANCE of this to the point of discussion here. Your previous version of that sentenced (which I corrected before your revert) has NPV issues, because it seriously skewed the messaging of the poem, as summarized by sources provided in this very articles such as Irena Grudzińska-Gross and Olga Bertelsen, and ended up providing an incorrect summary In the poem, Brodsky, in angry and insulting words expressed his grief for the breach between the Ukrainian and Russian peoples instead of a more NPOV version I gave (based on Grudzińska-Gross and Olga Bertelsen and other researchers) In the poem, Brodsky, in angry and insulting words expressed his disapproval of the Declaration of Independence of Ukraine. Again, please self-revert and return my version as the one that is in line with NPOV guidelines.--Piznajko (talk) 16:07, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

@Piznajko: In case you didn't notice, I have already replaced "his grief" with a neutral word (i.e., with no opinion implied): "his feelings" . "Declaration of Independence" was already mentioned it the previous sentence. My sentence clarifies: Brodsky sees the Declaration as a breach between two fraternal peoples. I am not discussing whether they were fraternal or not, but this is how he saw them. Staszek Lem (talk) 19:03, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

Vertukhai

The word "vertukhai" doesn't mean "criminal". On the contrary it's slang nickname for guards in GULAG : https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/вертухай 89.113.138.194 (talk) 16:46, 14 August 2023 (UTC)