We missed
Lenin. Until the year 1991 we could have met him in Sofia, towering above the
intersection of Maria Louisa Blvd. and Todor Alexandrov Blvd. in the commercial
heart of the city. But finally we found him, near the metro station G. M.
Dimitrov, named after his colleague Georgi Dimitrov, a theorist of capitalism and
Bulgaria´s first communist leader. There they are resting together, in the Museum
of Socialist Art. Embodied as giant statues, larger than life, never looking
down, but looking severely to that point of horizon wherefrom … Accompanied by
their “comrades”, the workers, imaged as titans with Hulk-bodies but the look
of Greek philosophers. Scaryland of ideology, I think. And wondering through
this park of squeezed out “art”, I think about the sculptor of Lenin and what
may he have thought, while shaping Lenin´s monstrous moustache. And about all
these Lenins with their moustaches, spread all over the world and all the hands
by which they have been formed. And what these hands looked like. If they were clapping,
clenched to fists, or crossing their fingers. When they are old now and wrinkled
and stiff, do they wave dismissively or are they folded in prayer. I think about
my hands. And that they should shake all those previous hands, for not working
on a moustache with a Lenin anymore, for the blessing of being born late. For mercy.
Cause from wisdom, I am afraid we are more than just years away.
Wisdom
came in 2000, as a 24m-high monument. Lenin has been replaced by none other
than Saint Sofia, standing on top of a column, holding the wreath of victory in
her right hand and balancing an owl on her left arm. The personification of wisdom and fate made of copper and bronze.
No comments:
Post a Comment