I really love this
singer, Dmitri Hvorostovsky, and what a beautiful, moving song! I will never
see a white crane again without thinking of those who have died, especially
Russian soldiers and people in WWII, and the Japanese at Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. The story of this song is so interesting, too.
We have to remember
amidst all of the drum rolls and harangues leading to a war with Russia, that
the outcome of WWII would have been quite different, if not for the Russians
who fought and died on the Eastern Front. And the terrible loss of civilian
life in Russia during WWII, too.
Are we a nation of
ingrates to even consider attacking such a staunch ally? It seems to me that we
should be on the warmest and friendliest terms with Russians, if there was any
appreciation whatsoever for their tremendous sacrifice in that war.
"America would
lose slightly more than 400,000 soldiers (killed or missing) and almost no
civilians during World War II and the USSR, depending on which historian you
believe, would lose at least 11,000,000 soldiers (killed and missing) as well
as somewhere between 7,000,000 and 20,000,000 million of its civilian ... The
Soviet Experience in World War II - Eisenhower Institute www.eisenhowerinstitute.org/about/living_history/wwii_soviet_experience.dot"
After reading Teilhard
de Chardin's, "Letters from the Trenches", I was deeply touched that
he wrote men were sacrificing their lives in the belief that WWII was the war
to end all wars. The sad truth is that war never brings lasting peace. Wars only
beget more wars.
When will we evolve to
break this cycle, and realize that humanity is a great experiment? We are going
to thrive and succeed when we come to the spiritual realization of our great
potential for learning to love each other.
Russia Insight
Published on Jun 30,
2017
Zhuravli (Russian:
«Журавли́»; Cranes), composed in 1968, is one of the most famous Russian songs
about World War II.
The Dagestani poet
Rasul Gamzatov, when visiting Hiroshima, was impressed by the Hiroshima Peace
Memorial Park and the monument to Sadako Sasaki. The memory of paper cranes
made by the girl haunted him for months and inspired him to write a poem
starting with the now famous lines:
"It seems to me
sometimes that our soldiers
Who were not to return
from fields of gore
Did not one day lie
down into our land
But turned into a
skein (wedge) of white cranes..."
The poem was
originally written in Avar language, with many versions surrounding the initial
wording. Its famous Russian translation was soon made by a Russian poet and
translator Naum Grebnyov, and was turned into a song in 1969, becoming one of
the best known Russian-language World War II ballads all over the world.
The poem's publication
in the journal Novy Mir caught the attention of the famous actor and crooner
Mark Bernes who revised the lyrics and asked Yan Frenkel to compose the music.
When Frenkel first played his new song, Bernes (who was ill with lung cancer)
cried because he felt that this song was about his own fate: "There is a
small empty spot in the crane wedge. Maybe it is reserved for me. One day I
will join them, and from the skies I will call on all of you whom I had left on
the Earth."
The song was recorded
from the first attempt on 9 July 1969. Bernes died a month after the recording
on 16 August 1969, and the record was played at his funeral. Later on,
"Zhuravli" would most often be performed by Joseph Kobzon.
In the aftermath,
white cranes have become associated with dead soldiers, so much so that a range
of World War II memorials in the former Soviet Union feature the image of
flying cranes and, in several instances, even the lines from the song.
Singer Dmitri
Hvorostovsky
