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Posted on Friday, June 04, 2010 at 12:16 AM
Music and poetry tribute to multi-culturalism's great exemplar, Alexei Kondratiev
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The sacred tree of our old Celtic traditions lived magnificently in the mind of Alexei Kondratiev whose death last week has sent shudders across the endangered planet. He was a respectful student and teacher of some of the world's most precious and marginalized ways of musing. He was a beloved and learned scholar who understood old-mind cultures with the intimacy and respect of a sachem. His death is like the loss of a rare species. He nurtured languages, as many as 64, in real life, with acquisitional powers more believably attributed to mythological beings, but his wide array of friendships across language groups bespeaks how special a man he was. He will be remembered with a sense of magic conjured in the cauldrons of many cultures. Alexei and I have talked in Gaeilge briste about how he was to me the mythological poet Fénius Farsaid who worked with his son Gaelic Glas and a team of other poets, to collect the languages of the earth when the Tower of Babel was knocked down. I idolized him in such bursts of association, and he carefully knew just the corrections or encouragements to respond with. As my Irish got better, he respected me more, and my confidence to debate him grew. He was a Chief motivator to me in New York and a person of genius whom I could talk to, who did one better than respect Irish Gaelic civilization, he understood it, and sincerely wanted Irish Americans to learn to respect with scholarship their rich--no joke--culture, starting with the language.
Alexei lived in an apocalyptic world replete with tumbling towers, but also spiritually threatening, because he saw and felt personally the death of ancient-minded cultures, dying by language-shift in terribly false reasoning. He assumed the Olympic race across the ages, and helped to carry Celtic consciousness and Algonquin consciousness and so many alternative thought modes into the modern age. He never did it for blood. He did it for mind. Celtic languages live in the mind of anyone who can take up the claiḋeaṁ soluis, the burning sword, and pierce through neurons like brain electricity to make those new connections that become the tree of fluent language in a good student's mind. Kondratiev taught heroism--with literature and language--at the Irish Arts Center, which is named An Claiḋeaṁ Soluis, after an important emblem, like the harp, of Gaelic Irish culture. He retold tales of the Fiannaíocht, stories pre-náire, like Ó Riordáin looked-to, pre-Kinsale, to a time when the Irish had the dignity of selfhood. Irish Americans, myself included, were not normally the great champions Kondratiev hoped to inspire.
We failed him, though our poor little Arts Center employed him for more than two decades--a small income, but a needed one. We failed him in that we did not take up his passion in proper numbers, to become heroic acquirers of the language. We threw away the Claiḋeaṁ Soluis and took up the Black & Decker instead to cut down the quince tree growing somewhere in our ancestral memory. Alexei nurtured my love of the Ní Dhomhnaill poem--the last he ever read to me--and to which I am alluding.
The last time I saw Alexei was at Elaine Ní Bhraonáin's ciorcal comhrá. He and I read from Pharaoh's Daughter. I first picked the poem he had wanted to read coincidentally--An Fáth Nár Phós Bríd Riamh. We laughed about picking the same poem. I read An Fáth. He then read An Chrann. Other renditions were performed by others as well. A lovely poem was spoken as if by posession in good blas by a regular ciorcal maintainer. Crann is the Irish word for tree. Every Irish letter refers to a tree. This was among Kondratiev's favorite poems. I have heard him read it many times before. He was a druid, from that learnéd group who crafted an alphabet from trees, that grow in language systems of neatly knotted knowledge in the mind.
I have some audio clips of Alexei I want to share, and will with all my audio clips related to him below at the end of this article, below the dán I composed in his ómós. It includes a clip of him teaching me the nuances of Irish poem vocabulary, and recitations of poems he made himself.
I only delayed the bi-lingual interview we were planning so that I could impress him with my blas and fluency I have been working at especially so to impress him. I could put off my learning, because I never ever ever considered that Alexei, mo ghiolla mear, would die. I would walk with him after class or conversation circle eastward to the train, and we would have a few long city blocks to talk in broken Irish, and patient Irish, about things like the significance of direction in old Irish spirituality.
Deiseal, deiseal, deiseal.
I am beside myself walking lost in a cemetery where Alexei is not buried, missed the funeral, with only my loneliness and the Pharaoh's Daughter to cuir sólás orm. I am talking to him in broken Irish as was ever my achievement with him, but for some reason the left-hand side of the bi-lingual book, the sinister side, is faoi bláth dom, and I feel Irish is becoming a language for me to use.
I produced this learner's poem dedicated to Alexei Kondratiev, the vocabulary and spirit of which I am gleaning from Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill's book, from marginalia I made while learning the language she wrote, and it's also the book from the last moment Alexei and I ever shared.
FAN AMHÁIN AIR
ómós Alexei Kondratiev
Can, a éinín, dom
trasna na naoi dtonnta
do ghuth ar foluain
as an gceo modardhorcha.
Níl mé sásta--
ní dhóthain dom--
cuimhneacháin a dhéanamh
ort ar an ghaoithe;
Mar sin táim ag éisteach
ón tír thiar
do chuid fhocail cheilteacha
a thuiscint
mar cheoil
ag seinneadh trín oíche.
Táim suas an chrann dara
ar oileán uaigins
ag fan trí tráth
anseo sa saol seo
faoi clúmh dubh lachan
faighte, ag cogaint
ar an fuil na sméara dúchais
agus ar an feoil na méireanna fhéin
ag éisteach
ar guth an gaoth, asat, mo chroí.
Tar dom, a éinín,
faoi láthair
súile gan solas go dtí
an bharr seo ar an chrann seo
i lár an cruinne sin
go bhfuil ionatsa chomh maith
i dtús agus ar dheireadh
táim ag éisteach
amháin, duit,
gan Black & Decker.
Seo chiúneas duit,
ionam, ina timpeall m'fhéin,
ag fanacht liom
mar síol ins a chré
amuigh faoi fhad láimhe
don ghrian
toircheas gan máthair
saol gan beo
duine gan cara
ach go dtaga tú
dom arís
ar sciatháin.
Play the poem here: at the same time as the fiddle rendition below:
You can play this clip of me performing An Cúilfhionn, at the same time as the poem above:
OTHER AUDIO CLIPS
This is a clip of Alexei correcting my Irish vocabulary about poetry. First I ask him "An bhfuil yogurt agat?" And you can hear him laugh. He was Buddha when he laughed, he was such a lovely man. Then I say "Bhí mé ag léamh do filíocht." I was speaking to Mark Grant. Alexei interjected most helpfully (I always thanked him for his corrections) "cuid filíochta" and then proceeded to explain that a "dán" is one poem written by a "file" or poet (+) whose "saothar" ("work" as would relate to art) would be "cuid filíochta" or poems. I love that I have this clip. He taught me the word "saothar" as to differentiate from "obair." It's wonderful that Irish has such distinctions, sophisticated distinctions, and Alexei could and would confirm to me, non-ethnocentrically, that yes indeed, Irish is not debased, Irish was once a civilization that revered poetry, and has a body of native composition valued and that demands high standards.
This is a clip of Alexei reading poetry with Úna Ní Fhátharta, whom he remembered as a child when he lived on Árainn bliain ó shin. He explains the sean-nós aisling poem in this first clip:
This is a clip of Alexei reading two Ní Dhomhnaill poems which he explains to the audience at the Irish Arts Center's tribute honoring the Consulate's Breandán Ó Caollaí a couple of months ago:
11 Comments
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Posted by WoundedKnee on Jun 16, 2010, 08:32 PM EDT
He deserved to be honored in life by the Irish government for his work on behalf of Irish language and culture, but I have the impression he wouldn't have cared much about honors. Still, shameful indifference on the part of the Dublin government.
Posted by Sheilah on Jun 10, 2010, 10:10 PM EDT
Very lovely & moving tribute Brendan to our mutual muinteoir, Alexei. I,too,was at Elaine's last Tae & Comhra of the semester at the Irish Arts Center. Alexei joined us afterwards for dinner, a pleasant surprise,as he usually did not "hang out" with his macleinn. How fitting that it was Druids where we ate, for Alexei was all about Druids and the ancient even pagan cultures of the Celts. He chatted merrily with us as he shared a Harp & lobster ravioli. I sat right across the table from him and got to ask him about the number of languages he spoke (he lost count long ago he said) The discussions went on from: Bartok,the Mets,a students upcoming marriage in Ireland and Elaine's explaining the difference btwn Irish & American wedding traditions to next semester. I finally got to know him outside of the classroom and planned to take his Celtic Mythology class in the fall. We left Druids about midnight. What a shock to hear that he died about that time the very next evening. I'm glad a few of us got to raise a toast to him and praise his teaching skills that night. I've been marveling at the many tributes to him and only just learning of all the endeavors he was involved in from language, myth, music,symbolism, videos, even comic books! Beannachti, Alexei, we hardly knew ye!
Posted by gaeilgesdamhsa on Jun 09, 2010, 10:47 AM EDT
Bravo arís! Tá sé seo ar fheabhas. All posts on your blog are beautifully written. This one is exceptional. Gach beannacht!
Posted by OliverGogarty on Jun 08, 2010, 03:54 PM EDT
Bravo, a Bhreandan, as ucht d'ómós iontach, corraitheach, agus scríofa go hálainn, do Alexei. Along with the rest of the IAC ciorcal comhrá, I had dinner with Alexei at Druid's the night before he died. I'm sorry you missed us that night, Brendan, Wednesday May 27. I sat next to Alexei and he and I carried on a lively conversation throughout the meal about languages, music, and other subjects. I wrote down everything he said that evening at dinner. I can't squeeze all of it into a blogpost, but I'd like to share a few random tidbits with Alexei's friends and your readers (agus leithscéal a gabhail, a Alexei, as mo bhotúin cuimhní....)
Posted by OliverGogarty on Jun 08, 2010, 03:54 PM EDT
He talked about the similarities and differences in writing and sound between Danish and Swedish; how his aural comprehension of Mandarin Chinese is telling him that Mandarin is elbowing out Cantonese in his neighborhood of Flushing; about the Cantonese of Hong Kong and the Taiwanese dialect of Taiwan. I asked him if there were any Gaeilge monoglots left and he said there were elderly monoglots in the 1960s when he was in the Aran Islands but not now. Is it true that the Celtic languages were the oldest languages in Europe, I asked him? "Except for the languages that were spoken before them, which we don't know" Alexei replied. He added, more with amusement than disapproval, that today's some of today's younger Gaeilgeoirí often don't even bother learning the genitive case. What was the most difficult language he had ever attempted to learn? He gave the names of two Pacific Northwest Indian tribal languages and said that they were very remote in expressive pattern from almost any other language he had studied. He said he was currently teaching himself new African languages (I didn't ask him which ones) and asked me if I had ever seen the film of the opera Carmen sung entirely in Xhosa, the South African language (I never even heard of it).
Posted by OliverGogarty on Jun 08, 2010, 03:52 PM EDT
Brendan, you mention my Irish poems/songs, and I was careful to tell Alexei they were "obair ar siúl," fearing his judgment. Some of you probably don't know that among his many hats, Alexei was also a composer (as I am). We both took courses at the Mannes School of Music in the 1970s. He recounted at Druid's an incident in a class with the teacher David Tcimpidis there in which Tcimpidis told a composing student, "You've just destroyed the history of Western Music in two bars!" (Alexei laughed heartily recalling this). "What is your music like?" Alexei asked me. I said I can never answer that question. He said he had the same trouble describing his own, but then described it as kind of Bartok with an edge (I'm probably garbling his exact words here, and one doesn't want to garble the precise language of a master linguist...)
Posted by OliverGogarty on Jun 08, 2010, 03:52 PM EDT
Although I never got to know Alexei well, I think I'm on safe ground in saying he lived richly for the life of the mind. If the pursuit of knowledge through languages and cultures were capital, Alexei would have been a billionaire. In previous eras, brilliant autodidacts like Alexei were more typical. He was a throwback. Today we have doctorates, scholarly peer review, and micro-niche specialists. I don't think they could have contained Alexei's mind. Sitting next to me only a little over a week ago, he was actually fidgeting with energy. I couldn't imagine such a mighty, active mind suddenly expiring– it would be like the engines of a jumbo jet suddenly expiring in mid-flight at 600 mph. My sense of him that evening was that he felt he still had much yet to do, more books to read in their original languages, more languages to learn. He clearly expected to go on to scale new peaks. I think that's one reason– among others (his kindly, gentle manner) –
that people find his sudden death so sad and unfair. How could such an irreplaceable resource as Alexei ever disappear?
Slán abhaile, a Alexei, and, if I may use an expression from another language which Alexei also knew and taught, Ave atque vale!
Mark Grant
Posted by fuerte181 on Jun 08, 2010, 10:54 AM EDT
Terrific article for a great man.
Posted by MizLee9 on Jun 07, 2010, 07:19 PM EDT
Brendan Patrick Keane - Some of Alexei's students and friends are planning a website where we intend to post his writings, as well as video and audio recordings of his lectures. If you would like to be involved, contact toelainelee@verizon.net
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