Classical Receptions Journal Vol 7. Iss. 2 (2015) pp.

223–241

A ‘Homeric’ hymn to Stalin: performing

safe criticism in ancient Greek?1
Han Baltussen*

This article offers an analysis of an unusual ‘Hymn to Stalin’, written in Homeric

Greek, but found in a twentieth-century Czech novel. The examination of the style and
context of the Ode reveals the allusive use of language, which illustrates how veiled
criticism in a fictional account can inform us about historical events, even if it has an

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autobiographical origin. The analysis shows how the author, the Czech Václav
Pinkava (pseudonym Jan Křesadlo), skilfully appropriates the hymnal style of both
Stalinist and ancient Greek precedents, and argues that the use of Homeric
vocabulary ingeniously transfers shades of meaning from the original Homeric
context into the modern context (‘cracking the code’). The elaborate framing of the
poem (authored by the protagonist in the novel, which is published under a
pseudonym) also contributes to the overall impression that Pinkava used this format
both as a send-up of the Stalinist literature of praise and as an example of ‘safe
criticism’ or ‘Aesopian language’ — the subversive strategy of criticizing an
oppressive regime by way of a cleverly constructed literary work for a knowing reader.

Literary subversion under Stalin

The way in which oppressive regimes can lead to creative literary defiance is re-
flected in the anti-Stalin literature from the 1930s to the 1950s. Osip Mandelstam’s
famous ‘Stalin Epigram’ (poem no. 286, October/November 1933) is an excellent
example:2

We live, not feeling the ground under our feet,

No one hears us more than a dozen steps away,

And when there’s enough for half a small chat—

ah, we remember the Kremlin mountaineer:

* Correspondence: Classics DX 650 114, North Terrace, University of Adelaide, SA 5005,

Australia. Email: han.baltussen@adelaide.edu.au
1 The article is part of a larger project studying the dynamics of censorship in Antiquity. I
gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Australian Research Council (ARC-
DP 110100915). My title is a deliberate reference to Fred Ahl’s pioneering article from
1984.
2 Trans. Raffel and Burago (1973: 228). As the rich literature on Mandelstam is mostly in
Russian and exceeds the scope of this article, I only refer to a few items relevant to this
poem. This ‘Stalin Epigram’ (not to be confused with the ‘Ode to Stalin’, 1937) is a more
personal attack, see Gasparov 2001 and Bernstein 2009. On tolerance see Coetzee (1996).

ß The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com
doi:10.1093/crj/clu008
 HAN BALTUSSEN

Thick fingers, fat like worms, greasy,

words solid as iron weights,

Huge cockroach whiskers laughing,

boot-tops beaming.

And all-around him a rabble of thin-necked captains,

he toys with the sweat of half-men.

Some whistle, some meow, some snivel,

he is the only one looking, jabbing.

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He forges decrees like horseshoes—decrees and decrees:
This one gets it in the balls, that one in the forehead, him right between
the eyes.

Whenever he’s got a victim, he glows like a broad chested

Georgian munching a raspberry.3

Mandelstam composed this poem, also known as ‘The Kremlin Highlander’, in

1933, but, significantly, did not commit it to paper. He recited it to friends on
several occasions and had them memorize it (Coetzee 1991: 72; Gasparov 2001).
It is one of many examples of the ways in which Russian authors composed
subversive poems rich in allusive as well as blunt commentary.4 Although Stalin
is not mentioned by name, the paraphrastic allusions to the Kremlin and his ethnic
background (from the Caucasus; ‘Georgian munching a raspberry’ = an Ossetian)5
leave no doubt that it is about him; his non-Russian background was often the
focus of satire and disdain. Calling Stalin an Ossetian and a highlander could
be interpreted as a double-insult, especially if we take into consideration the
disdain Georgians had for Ossetian ‘highlanders’.6 Writing such poetic works
criticizing Stalin was a dangerous activity. In the case of Mandelstam a tempor-
ary reprieve ensued, but he would eventually end up dying en route to a

3 According to Jane Gary Harris (1988: 149, n. 9) the last stanza was added later (1936).
There are also different versions of it, see Brown and Merwin (1973: 69–70) and Meares
(1977: 57, whose translation is more free and poetic).
4 For satirical attacks on Stalin by Russian authors see esp. K. L. Ryan (2009).
5 See Monas in Raffel and Burago (1973: 332, note to poem 286): ‘Ossetians are Moslem
tribesmen of Georgia, of legendary ferocity, said to celebrate an enemy’s death by
munching a raspberry’.
6 (I am grateful to one of the referees for rightly insisting on this point). See also Ryan
(2009: 9): ‘Satirical works that treat Stalin often emphasise his foreignness, his non-
Russian characteristics.’ (followed by useful comments on alterity, polarity and the
‘Manichean world view’ of Russian politics, society and literature, 9–12).

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 A ‘HOMERIC’ HYMN TO STALIN

correction camp for another poem, ‘An Ode to Stalin’, which was also thought to
have survived only in oral form (until recovered later in the KGB archives).7
Many other authors were more circumspect, producing texts which encoded or
veiled their critical message — in other words, they performed safe criticism. This
came to be known as ‘Aesopian language’ or ‘Aesop’, a subtle form of satire hidden in
seemingly harmless literary form.8 In this article I would like to consider a different
short poem, ‘To Stalin’, in order to explore the question how literary works written
under oppressive regimes can inform us about the dynamics of censorship. Literary
works have always played a significant but complex role in the debate about how
writers deal with censorship. How fiction relates to reality is a question that bedevils
discourses in historical research and literary criticism. And among the different self-

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regulating strategies normally employed in literary works, veiled speech (or dissimi-
lation) has a long history, while Aesopian language is a device that pervades Russian
literature and politics.9 Literary, historical and philosophical authors may resort to
allegory (Orwell’s Animal Farm), or coded narration (Virgil’s Aeneid).10 But there is
perhaps another kind. The short poem I want to use as a case study, entitled ‘To
Stalin’ (EIS SSALIMA), is a most unusual work: found in a Czech novel and
written in Homeric Greek, it appropriates the genre of the ancient hymn to present a
satirical and scathing image of Stalin and his destructive impact on his subjects. It is

7 ‘Many years later when Vitaly Shentalinsky discovered the manuscript of the ‘‘Epigram
Against Stalin’’ in the KGB archives, he found no variation at all from the samizdat
version that had circulated across the USSR. The poem had etched itself faithfully in the
memories of those who heard it recited in the distant year of 1934’ (Prieto 2010). Coetzee
(1991: 72–3) gives more detail on its reception and notes that it was published in full for
the first time in 1976.
8 Named after the Greek writer Aesop, the method developed beyond the simple fable
format and became a broader style of narrative characterized by meanings and references
easily understood by a knowing reader. An important study of this aspect of Russian
literature is Loseff’s On the Beneficence of Censorship: Aesopian Language in Russian
Literature (PhD Michigan 1981; Eng. trans. 1984). Loseff (1984: 221) sums up the central
subject of Russian Aesopian works as follows: ‘. . . the power of the State in all its mani-
festations. Propaganda defends this power, Aesopian literature attacks it.’ [I owe this
reference to one of the referees]. Loseff suggests that ‘Aesopian language’ does not just
concern satire and it also involves ‘the encoding of ideas and rearing of an Aesopian
reader’ (17). Helpful reviews in Friedberg 1986 and Nakhimovsky 1986.
9 See Parry 1950; Loseff 1984 (esp. x: ‘a special literary system one whose structure allows
interaction between author and reader at the same time that it conceals inadmissable
content from the censor’).
10 In other words, in both prose and poetic form. Putnam (1966, 2000) and the so-called
‘Harvard school’ represent the position that the Aeneid contains anti-Augustan senti-
ments, as opposed to those who see the work as pure panegyric of empire; others have
looked for a middle ground in interpreting Virgil’s attitude towards Augustus
(e.g. Williams 1967).

225
 HAN BALTUSSEN

a skilled (though not flawless) piece of writing in Homeric style, and forms an
intriguing example of Aesopian language, illustrating how the boundaries of free
speech can be explored. Here is a taste of the first few lines (trans. mine):

1 StRlin 4nax, 4gama0 s"
s1 l"ukol0 qN "*n1 Jr"#mlN

2 e‘z0m"no” krat"#"i” p0ntwn R
& Þsswn Sat0rwn t"
3 ka1 poll8n "*qn8n 2m"nhn8n kr0twn.
4 2 Erpont"” kon0 : s" q"1n 6” "2sor0wsin.

Stalin, lord, I revere you: you, seated in the white-stoned Kremlin,

rule over all Russians and Tartars
and many powerless peoples,

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who drag their feet in the dust and gaze upon you as a god.

Anyone familiar with Greek hymns will appreciate the phrasing of these lines as
largely conventional and formulaic: it contains praise of a ‘god’, ascribing awe-
inspiring properties worthy of admiration and reverence. And several words and
phrases have clear parallels in Homer. For instance in line 1, 4nax, is a phrase said of
Agamemnon forty-four times in the form 4nax 2ndr8n ‘ruler of men’ (Il. 1.172 etc.).
Once we realize the phrase’s emphatic presence in Homer, the parallel to
Agamemnon can easily evoke an image of an authoritarian and violent leader who
holds power over many (here labelled ‘weak’, 2m"n–no”, also said of the dead, Od.
10.521) and is bent on getting his way against better judgment, as for instance in his
fight with Achilles over Briseis (Iliad 1). The phrases s" 4gama0 (Od. 6.168) and q"1n
6” "2sor0wsin (Od. 7.71) both relate to the famous episode of the Phaeaceans, the
first, when a weather-beaten and naked Odysseus is forced to charm the princess into
helping him and to show off his skills of flattery (is its disingenuous nature also
transferred?); the second, as the description of Alcinous’ wife and how much the
Phaeaceans worship her, that is, treat a human like a god. There are also clever
neologisms: for example, the non-Homeric l"ukol0 qN ‘white-stoned’ is no doubt a
(metrically convenient) analogue to l"ukÞl"no” ‘white-armed’, found thirty-nine
times in Homer, for example, Il. 1.55, Od. 6.239 (calling the Kremlin ‘white-stoned’
is perhaps unexpected, since in the modern imagination it is red-stoned; but it
was not always so).11 He may also include ironic uses of words and phrases

11 Moskow is still known as ‘white-stoned Moskva’, but the adjective might also refer to the
original fourteenth-century walls around the Kremlin built from white limestones, upon
which the later walls are built. The Kremlin’s official website speaks of original white
walls (www.kreml.ru/en/history/ kremlin). Paintings from the eighteenth and nine-
teenth centuries testify to this idea of white walls at the Kremlin (see e.g. www.artlebe-
dev.ru/kovodstvo/sections/174 and compare http://www.kreml.ru/en-Us/museums-
moscow-kremlin/ [consulted 5/4/14]. I am grateful to Ana Silkatcheva for assistance
with this material.

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 A ‘HOMERIC’ HYMN TO STALIN

(e.g. qaNma 4d"sqai, 11).12 Such are the first clues as to how we might decode the
author’s use of the Homeric language. As we will see, a dramatic change occurs in
line 5.
What makes the poem’s interpretation a complex enterprise is its appearance in a
novel written many years after the Stalinist regime. Its author was the Czech, Václav
Pinkava (b. Prague 1926 – d. Colchester 1995), using the pseudonym of Jan
Křesadlo.13 The hymn is not only a quirky parody of the real-life communist lit-
erature of the Stalin era, but also a crucial plot device to show the risks of committing
subversive ideas to paper. It is my contention that we need to take the author’s claim
that the poem is an important plot device of the novel very seriously (§3), but only
after we have placed the work in its historical context (§2) in order to understand

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fully what Pinkava was trying to achieve, and especially what his choice of ‘code’
(ancient Greek) might signify. Along the way I shall also comment on the poem’s
hymnal features to ascertain how close they are to the Homeric hymns (but without
claiming to be comprehensive). I will further assess the author’s imitative style and
its intended effect. The contextualized approach distinguishes between the poem’s
status as created by Pinkava as a young man, and the poem’s role in the novel,
written much later. In addition, it will be crucial to differentiate the author’s
voice from the persona of his pseudonym and the main character’s first person
account. Specific comments on the language are meant to complement the useful
short commentary in Weise (n. 12).

The author, his work and the literary and political context14
Apart from his main occupation as a clinical psychologist, Pinkava had a remarkably
broad range of skills: a real Renaissance man, he produced original work in math-
ematics, linguistics, and literature. He grew up during the war and a period of ‘false
freedom up to 1948’ (Součková 1970: xi). In his early years he had got himself into
trouble at school for refusing to take German during Nazi occupation (he was
expelled from his grammar school),15 and in 1948, when Czechoslovakia was
annexed by the USSR, he was accused of being complicit in organizing an armed
uprising while at university.16 Levy (2000) recounts how the delay in arrival of

12 Weise (2010: 442–5) has commented on the Greek text, offering helpful observations on
the linguistic and literary aspects. l"ukol0 qo” does occur in epigraphic texts. For full text
see Appendix.
13 Křesadlo 1984, the name roughly translates as ‘flint’, pur"8a (Weise 2010: 449). We might
translate the full name as ‘John Tinderbox’ [with thanks to D. Dzino].
14 There is no comprehensive biography of Pinkava. The limited number of printed pub-
lications in English on Pinkava forced me to use several online resources (online news-
paper articles, blogs), none of which were central to the main argument.
15 Kocourek [n.d.] ‘Obituary’. His love for the classical languages is noted in biographical
sketches (next note).
16 A short biography appears at www.xantypa.cz/archive/cislo-11-10/1460-3/jan-kresa
dlo-a-jeho-potomci [with thanks to Ana Silkatcheva for translating the Czech].

227
 HAN BALTUSSEN

communist judges probably saved Pinkava’s life, since he was released with a warn-
ing. Upon graduation in 1954, Pinkava took a job in the university psychiatric
teaching hospital’s clinic for sexual deviations — no doubt a choice others had
managed to resist. But his youthful errors came back to haunt him: he was denied
promotions, first, for his ‘wrong’ past, then for refusing to join the Communist
Party. In the thaw preceding the dawn of the 1968 Prague Spring of reform, how-
ever, he was allowed to defend his doctoral thesis and to publish. But when the
Soviet tanks came that August, he fled to England with his wife, daughter, and three
sons. Settling in Colchester, he eventually became the head of psychology at
Severalls Hospital.17
He retired in 1982 at the age of fifty-six to write novels.18 The novel under

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consideration here, Mrchopěvci (Gravelarks), follows the life of a young man who
earns a living as a singer of dirges at funerals (hence ‘Gravelarks’, also sometimes
comically translated as ‘stiff-singers’). The novel gives an impression of the last few
years in Czechoslovakia under Stalin before his death (1952–54). That the work
contains autobiographical elements needs no argument (P. had been a ‘gravelark’
himself briefly — see n. 41), although it is not always easy to establish which parts
match up with his own life.19 The short hymn of some twenty-one lines is a pastiche
of the classical hymn, an art form which was also pressed into the service of the
‘rampant personality cult’ at the time of Stalin’s regime (Coetzee 1991: 73). Many
odes and hymns were written in Stalin’s honour.20 Famously, Osip Mandelstam was
ordered to compose an ode in praise of Stalin, a request one could not refuse
(Coetzee 1991: 73). Stalin saw the role of writers as subservient to the state: in his
view authors should be the ‘engineers of the soul’, pointing the people in the right
direction politically and morally.21
Pinkava no doubt disagreed. The novel is clearly written to denounce communist
rule and the ode mocks Stalin’s leadership by combining cynical political comments
with a good splash of Aristophanic humour. As we will see, the fictional account, and
the poem especially, can assist in understanding Pinkava’s response to oppression
and how literature may play a role in creating a space for ‘free speech’. This requires

17 For a history of the institution see Gittins (1998). Remarkably Pinkava’s name does not
occur in the book. Only p. 125 mentions the hiring of non-British doctors (‘Several
European doctors were also appointed’), again no names are given (was he ‘airbrushed’
out of the hospital’s history?). The author only mentions the British directors, some
nurses and patients by name.
18 He also wrote a 6,500 lines Greek epic in the style of Homer’s Odyssey with the title
Astronautilia (as yet not translated into English).
19 See Weise (2010: 448–49) for further suggestions on this point.
20 By Avidenko and others (see Avidenko in bibliography). See also Wright (1995).
21 Westerman (2011: 34). Westerman (2011: 301) reveals his source for this statement: a
meeting of authors with Stalin at Gorky’s house was recorded by several of those at-
tending. The source is an archive of the notes of Kornelus Zelinsky (Russian Archive of
Literature and Art [RGALI], folder 1604).

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 A ‘HOMERIC’ HYMN TO STALIN

us to do some ‘decoding’, with a focus on the clues in his use of Homeric language
and his reframing of the original poem written in his youth within a new narrative,
while we try to understand the overall symbolism of its satirical character.
I will start with a few broad observations on the ode. Although the target and
message of the hymn may look straightforward — after all the title is ‘To Stalin’ —
the poem is not a simple act of defiance: by hiding it away in a novel and making one
of the characters its author, Pinkava has created two special precautionary measures
to deflect criticism and censorship. But in doing so he draws attention to the risks of
writing such pieces, which in this case also illustrates the bleak circumstances of a
young man and his wife in Czechoslovakia during the last years of Stalinist oppres-
sion. For a novel written thirty years later, the conceit is no doubt to make clear that

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such measures were necessary to avoid arrest or worse. The post-war period had in
the first instance given rise to a new Czech generation averse to ‘false heroics and to
self-deception’, but the new world of political sterility soon came, a ‘new Dark Age’
for literature, because the ‘language, literature, and traditions were the one unifying
element of the Czech people, the kernel of their resistance’ (French 1982: 39, cf. 19).
Authors had to go underground and a lively book trade developed which often
blossomed in and around book shops.22 It is a salient detail that Pinkava had already
written this Greek ‘hymn’ in 1948, long before he integrated it into the novel.23
What began as a harmless prank, now becomes a serious tool for subversion. Czech
literature at the time was judged to have strong ideological features, either because
authors made a deliberate effort to express subversive views or because the
Communist party chose to interpret what was written as subversive (often a clear
act of mis-interpretation). In other words, authors had to be cautious about intended
and non-intended breaches of the party line.
Thus, Pinkava’s autobiographical ‘fingerprint’ on the story is clear from several
elements in the novel. While Pinkava inserts ancient Greek at several different
points of the plot, the hymn ‘To Stalin’ is by far the longest and most interesting
specimen of Greek text (Weise 2010: 445).24 It will be useful to examine text and
offer a translation (§3 and Appendix 1), not only because there is no accurate English
translation, as far as I am aware, but also because it will make it easier to appreciate
the humour and playfulness of Pinkava’s wry look at Stalin and the impact of

22 Šmejkalová (2001: 92) observes that ‘state intervention in publishing was not merely a
Communist invention and was present already in the period of the democratic independ-
ent Czechoslavakia’, and (Šmejkalová 2001: 93) ‘the post-1945 intervention in book
production followed the principles of the restrictive concept of censorship of World
War II with one major difference: it tried to limit the spread of the ‘‘low’’ literary culture
in the name of promoting a vision of a national ‘‘high quality’’ canon [. . .]. This basic
strategy dominated book production until 1989’. See also Šmejkalová 1999. On post-war
Czech-Russian relations see also Součková (1970).
23 Weise (2010: 239, n. 12). Also see my nn. 19, 29.
24 The first four lines also appear in Latin in a dream (Křesadlo 1999: 68).

229
 HAN BALTUSSEN

his rule.25 A few things should be said for a fuller understanding of its force and
intent. The novel’s plot provides one reason for the use of Greek: the main char-
acter, Zderad, has been learning the ancient languages and he writes the hymn in a
moment of youthful bravado, after having drunk some home-made wine at his
friend’s house (Křesadlo 1999: 61; cf. Weise 2010: 446). His choice of topic is in
fact a very foolish and dangerous one: it was no secret that in Stalin’s Russia ‘telling
the wrong joke could land a man in the Gulag’.26 He comes to regret it, when a
stranger shows up years later with a copy of the poem, intent on blackmailing him.27
Thus, the poem, playing out at the height of Stalin’s regime (early 1950s), also
becomes a central plot device in Pinkava’s story of ‘cynical blackmail’ (Iggers
1985). In his attempt to escape from this horrible situation, Zderad finds out who

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the blackmailer is: an academic and former priest, Dr Julius Skomelny, who teaches
Marxism at the University.28 Skomelny, in the novel nicknamed ‘the monster’, has
somehow got hold of the irreverent depiction of Stalin and forces Zderad to engage
in sexual acts — a powerful illustration of how individuals might acquire power over
others under a regime which is repressive and creates both fear and the danger of
betrayal. Even when Stalin dies, the ‘monster’ continues to threaten Zderad, whose
resulting desperation convinces him that the only way out is to commit suicide with
his family. However, his wife has other plans: she wants a separation in order to
marry a Party member who is trying to pressure her father into the collective en-
terprise. This development clearly illustrates how the system and the party aimed to
coerce and coopt people (Weise 2010: 447). Only when Zderad tells her about his
problems, do they decide to confront Skomelny and kill him, after which they escape
to the West.
A further striking feature in the book is the fact that the protagonist knows many
languages (Russian, Hungarian, Sudetendeutsch, French, Greek, and Latin).29 It
appears that Pinkava assumed a liberal education as something to be taken for
granted in his intended audience (Iggers 1985). He himself had learned many lan-
guages, including the classical languages (see n. 15). But by using an ancient lan-
guage the author signals that he wants to convey his message in a very particular way.
Even if we are to assume that the character aims to escape censorship (wide-spread
knowledge of the Greek language seems to be assumed as unlikely, perhaps a

25 There is an English translation of the whole novel, Mrchopěvci / GraveLarks (Small Press
Distribution, 2000) which is out of print; I have used the edition with illustrations by the
author’s son (1999, MATA Press). A brief summary and excerpts at http://seraillon.
blogspot.com/2011/06/jan-kresadlo-gravelarks.html.
26 Chamberlain (2006: 53). It was ‘practically a death certificate for its creator’ (Křesadlo
1999: 38).
27 It is likely that there is a suggestion of sexual deviancy here, which ‘was Václav Pinkava’s
specialisation in his field of clinical psychology’ (Kocourek, online review).
28 On the real-life situation in universities during these years, see esp. Connelly (2000).
29 Weise (2010: 445) omits Greek, since he has mentioned it earlier.

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 A ‘HOMERIC’ HYMN TO STALIN

remnant of the ancient régime), the narrator also makes specific assumptions about
the reader’s capabilities; in other words, as an alien language ancient Greek could
create a sense of safety, intended to protect him from being identified as a dissident
who is disrespectful towards the ‘father of the nation’. I shall return to this point
later. Moreover, the framing of this satirical poem as the product of a fictional
character, a persona, creates a distance from this youthful act of rebellion.
However, since the protagonist, Zderad, is found out and blackmailed, this false
sense of safety is shattered, and the decision to write down the poem and choose
ancient Greek turns out to be a mistake; clearly it was very difficult to escape the
totalitarian system. Because the downward spiral into morally dubious behaviour
(the bullying of another individual and involuntary sexual acts) is presented to us

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from the first person perspective of the victim, the narrative makes a very oppressive
and immediate impression on the reader.30 The novel as a whole can therefore
rightly be seen as ‘an allegory on survival in Czechoslovakia’ (Iggers 1985).

Cracking the code

I would now like to examine the text in greater detail (the text I use is from Weise
(2010) with minor changes). I offer an empirical reading of the text with special
attention for connotations of the Homeric language. As we saw already, the hymn’s
four opening lines conform to the conventions of hymns in the way that they appeal
to a divine being and express reverence in admiring language. The text not only
relates to the ancient genre of the hymn (a song in praise of a god) but also to
standard panegyrics of the Stalinist period, when from 1934 onwards the literature
of praise became part of the personality cult of Stalin (Walker 2004) and socialist
realism programme, designed for all art to fit into the communist party ideology.
These four lines in particular set the reader up with an expectation of the kind of
adulation common in such works.31
But the initial sense of direction (hymnal praise) is subverted in line 5, when the
author launches into a tirade against Stalin and his comrades:

5 So1 d"; m"#ga” strat0” "*sti brotokt0no”, 6” t’ "*n1 cÞrai”

2llodap8n ’or"#"i g’ o2z1n ka1 k8ra m"#lainan

Andra”
! sul"0ousi bi0zousi t" guna8ka”,
3rol0gou” g1r kl"#ptousin to1” 4ndr"” 2gauo0
"*n karpo8” ’or"#ousi
t1 g1r m"#ga qaNma 2d"#sqai.

30 Cohn (2009) gives some very useful case studies of the moral decline under the Russian
communist rule, in particular marital infidelity and the Communist response to it.
Among the reasons he mentions ‘27 million Sovjet citizens died in the war, creating a
massive gender imbalance’ (Cohn 2009: 434).
31 It should be noted that the kind of praise normally aimed at ancient divinities is not quite
the same as that in Stalinist panegyrics in which the levels of sycophancy were quite
extreme [I am grateful to one of the readers for insisting on this point].

231
 HAN BALTUSSEN

10 Alloi
! g0r ø’ "*k0monto 2du0 :si prap0 d"ssin,
s1 d’ "*lq1n a3r"8”, 7ti toi kr0to” "*st1 m"#giston

5 You have a great man-murdering army, which carries

into foreign lands misery and black death:
they kill men and rape women,
they steal watches worn by valiant men
on their wrists; truly a great marvel to behold.
10 For others slaved away at these with great ingenuity,
but you appear and take them, because you have immense power.

The murderous military men of Stalin bring nothing but misery — one could not be

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further removed from any divine benefits a god might provide. What is more, the
reader who is familiar with Homeric Greek vocabulary can see a further dimension
by comparing the original use to the transferred use in the poem. The word
brotokt0no” (5), a hapax, cynically qualifies the opening words ‘great army’; its
composite form can easily be paralleled with analogues in ancient Greek, for ex-
ample, 2nqrwpokt0no” ‘man-killer’ (Eur. fr. 11b Snell), mhtrokt0no” ‘matricide’
(Eur. Electra 975), patrokt0no” ‘patricide’ (Plut. Romulus 22.5), turannokt0no”
‘tyrannicide’ (Plut. Mul. Virt. 256f). An even more obvious neologism is 3rol0gou”
in line 8 (‘watches’32), repeated in line 10, with the playful variation cronod"0 gmata
in line 13, ‘time-indicators’. The reference to stolen watches is in fact based on true
events documented in interviews with Russians soldiers.33 It is worth asking
whether this emphasis on time-pieces (lines 8–11) is meant to convey a further
message, perhaps to show the trivialization of human lives in exchange for a piece
of jewellery; or perhaps they symbolize the lives (life-times?) that are being taken
away. The following lines suggest the former, given the contrast between the ca-
pricious grab of property and the refined quality of the time-pieces (in Homer
2du0 :si prap0 d"ssin is used with reference to the skills of the artisan-god
Hephaistos, Il. 1.608; 18.380, 482; 20.12; Od. 7.92). But, we may ask, what is ‘a
great wonder to behold’: the watches or the watcher?34

32 Compare the French horloge, ‘clock’ (the French word for watch is montre which is closer
to cronod"0 gma).
33 Weise (2010: 443) is quoting A. Werth’s Russland im Krieg [= Russia at War 1964], 1965:
643–6. Weise also refers to another derogatory comment in a Greek passage in which the
Russian soldiers are maligned for their drinking (Weise 2010: 446).
34 The former seems the more obvious choice: qaNma 2d"#sqai is a common Homeric end-of-
line formula, as Weise (2010: 443) points out. It occurs eight times: Il. 5.725 (chariot of
Hera); 10.439 (chariot of king Rhesus); 18.83 (Achilles’ armour), 377 (Hephaistus’ crafts-
manship); Od. 6.306 (the house of Alcinous); 7.45 (the city of the Phaeaceans); 8.366
(clothing given to Odysseus on Paphos); 13.108 (cave of the Nymphs) [source: TLG-E
online]. Note that all cases represent objects, locations and creatures which are well-
crafted and belong to the supernatural realm.

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 A ‘HOMERIC’ HYMN TO STALIN

The violent acts described exist solely for the benefit of Stalin, the ‘lord of all’:

12 V "8ra” b"briq1” pamp0lloi” 3rol0goisin

e‘z0m"no” g’ 3r0a” cronod"0 gmata k0d"i ga0 wn.
P0nt"” d"idi0t"” kun"#ousi p0da” pug–n t",
15 A2t1” g1r krat""# i” ka0 g’ o4stina” o2k "’* 0 lhsa”,
p"#mya” S "ibir0 hnd’ "2” l0g"ra, M y0cwntai
d"smo8si stug"ro8si d"dhm"#noi 2"; q0nwsin.

12 Your hands laden with many watches

you sit and admire your time-measurers, exulting in glory.
All kiss your feet and butt in fear,

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15 for you yourself rule and, whomever you have a dislike for,
you send to Siberia to a camp; here they freeze
bound in miserable chains or [just] die.

After the incriminatory claims about Stalin’s army ravaging the land and killing the
population, we see typical responses of the Russian people: fear and flattery under
the threat of exile and imprisonment in Siberia. Stalin’s ruthless character is re-
vealed with regard to his erratic behaviour and self-indulgence. The image of him,
again seated (e‘z0m"no”, in the Kremlin?) and holding multiple watches in his hands
is curious and suggestive: the participle b"briq1”, ‘laden/overloaded with’,
‘weighed down’, is used in Homer of fruit weighing down a branch (Il. 18.561
[grapes], cf. Od. 19.11235) and may well emphasize how such brutal acts lead to a
futile result: after all, who needs more than one watch to tell time? This goes clearly
beyond need. But Pinkava also hints at the more satirical side by mentioning ‘butt-
kissing’ (with added emphasis by alliteration of p- in p0da” pug–n t"36) and by
describing Stalin as ‘admiring his time-measurers’, which also makes the standard
end-of-line formula (k0d"i ga0 wn, ‘exulting in glory’37) look awkward and out of
place. The suggestion seems to be that Stalin is a country boy, a bumpkin,
mesmerized by this hoard of shiny, well-crafted time-pieces. The Polish and
Czech regarded the Russians as uncivilized and boorish (no doubt true for the
soldiers they encountered) and knew of their obsession with watches, a luxury not
widespread in the USSR. Stalin was not even Russian, so that his portayal here
revisits both his otherness and his lack of urban sophistication (above ‘Stalin
Epigram’, lines 4, 17).

35 Could karpo8” in line 9 hint at an ambiguity between ‘fruit’ and ‘wrist’?

36 Is this a case of irreverent reverence, sycophancy or both? My translation attempts to
create a sound effect by replacing the plosives of the p’s with words ending in -t: ‘feet and
butt’.
37 Noted by Weise (2010: 445). The passages are worth listing: Il. 1.405 said of Briareus in
relation to Zeus; 5.906 of Ares on Zeus; 8.51 of Zeus on himself; 11.81 of Zeus ‘son of
Cronos, lord of dark clouds’). In other words, in Homer all occurrences relate to Zeus.

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 HAN BALTUSSEN

But Stalin is not just a crude ‘mountain man’: the repeated use of krat"#"i” (15, cf.
line 2; see also kr0to” in 11) is a reminder of his power. In line 2 Pinkava described
Stalin as ‘ruler over Russians, Tartars and many other peoples’. It is worth asking
whether the verb krat""# i” also should remind us of Od. 11.485, where the same verb
form (but with dative) is used of Hades, lord of the Underworld, who has great
power over the dead (m"#ga krat""# i” n"k0"ssin)? We saw an earlier phrase expressing
a possible hint that Stalin’s power was connected to the dead in line 3 (2m"nhn8n
kr0twn). But perhaps Il. 1.79, 288 and Od. 15.274 are closer parallels (krat""# in with
genitive as in the ode)? By now nothing prevents us from allowing all these Homeric
usages to play a part in the evocative description of power in the ode.38
In the last four lines Pinkava prepares to deliver the final blow when he ends the

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ode with a startling combination of hymnal praise and coarse humour:

&Rwssiak8” ga0 h” p0nt"” ø’ 4ndr"” t" guna8k"”,

"2c0m"noi stug"#ousin, "*p"1 q"0” "*ssi m"#gisto”

20 *H "#lion d’ a2t0n ’asin s0n t’ e!mm"nai 5mma
ka1 St0lino” p0rdhn ’asi yol0"nta k"raun0n.

All men and women of the Russian land

hate you and pray (to you), because you are a mighty god.
20 The Sun itself, they say, is your eye
and Stalin’s fart, they say, the smouldering thunderbolt.

In a deceptive last move these final lines briefly return to the hymnal convention of
reverence and prayer ("2c0m"noi; q"0”), but by now we are aware that conventional
words carry added meaning and need to be read in a different light. The awesome
power of Stalin, already referenced in lines 2 and 15 (krat""# i”), in 7 (killing and rape)
and 11 (toi kr0to” "*st1 m"#giston) is now reinforced by a notion of inescapable fate,
because — much like Zeus — he affects all (p0nt"” d"idi0t"”, 12; p0nt"” ø’ 4ndr"” t"
guna8k"”, 18) and is a mighty god (q"0” m"#gisto”, 19). Even the idea that the Sun, a
common feature of Stalinist literature, is his eye can be read as an allusion to the ‘all-
seeing eye in the sky’, which we may compare to the [Homeric] Hymn to Demeter in
which the Sun is the only one who has seen Persephone’s abduction (Hymn. Dem.
62–70). Thus the almighty ‘god’ of Russia becomes described in the language of
Greek gods, but their benevolence turns into the sinister and inescapable oppression
of a dictator. The final line nicely saves the coup de grace for last: Stalin’s thunder is
not what we thought (an awesome force of nature), but the result of processes he
cannot control (his digestive tract). The final words do what a good spoof ought to
do, ridicule the subject in comedic style. The unexpected low-brow ending has been
compared to Aristophanes Clouds 392–4 where thunder (the link to Zeus) and
breaking wind are put on a par (Weise 2010: 445). One could also think — perhaps

38 The word l0g"ra may be connected to ‘Gulag’, as Weise suggests, but can also be a
calque on the German word for ‘camp’, das Lager; see Weise (2010: 444).

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 A ‘HOMERIC’ HYMN TO STALIN

more appropriately — of the [Homeric] Hymn to Hermes 295–6, where the young
Hermes ‘emitted an omen, an insolent servant of the belly, an unruly messenger’
when picked up by his brother Apollo.39 Pinkava combines the allusion to Zeus
(thunder and fart: Aristophanes) and the uncontrollable body function (baby
Hermes releasing an ‘insolent servant of the belly’: Homeric Hymn). Whether
‘Stalin’s fart’ is a good omen is not stated, but we can guess the answer to that
question.
The last line achieves a kind of ring composition by repeating Stalin’s name
(though in genitive case and second position rather than in nominative and first
position as in line 1), while the last phrase, ‘the smouldering thunderbolt’ (yol0"nta
k"raun0n) creates a double-edged ending in which both sound (p0rdhn as thunder)

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and lightning (k"raun0n) evoke forces of nature in a conveniently ambiguous way and
in stark contrast to the ‘high and mighty solar eye’ in the previous line.

Safe criticism in ancient Greek?

Now that we have reviewed the most important satirical elements of the ode, it is
important to remind ourselves of the poem’s crucial role in the novel’s plot; in fact,
Křesadlo himself called it the ‘main ingredient of the novel’.40 Significantly, the
discovery of the poem leads to the perverse extortion and eventually to murder.
Although a youthful transgression which could be considered a harmless and pas-
sing whim, the poem becomes a symbol of how the past can come back to haunt us
under such dire circumstances and how dangerous it is to write down what should
remain hidden. Was this a case of safe criticism? Or did Pinkava mean for Zderad’s
attempt at cloaking his whimsical ode in Aesopian language to fail? It would seem
that there is something deliberate in how the ploy to hide criticism of Stalin in
Homeric Greek did not go undetected. With a view to evaluating this aspect of the
plot, I will end by considering three points: (1) the role of a different language in
conveying a sensitive or potentially dangerous message, (2) the relation of fiction
(a novel) to political circumstances, and (3) the role of a Classical education in the
struggle against political oppression. I will take each of these points in turn.
First, Pinkava’s use of the Greek is an obvious attempt to encode his insulting
satire on Stalin; ancient Greek, perhaps a sign of a misdirected pre-occupation or
bourgeois interests, could in and of itself justify accusing him of treason against the
communist system (n. 26), but it also shows how he is trying get away with
criticizing Stalin, even if the ode may to some extent seem rather crude and juven-
ile (yet this too is quite in character, as it is written by a teenager who was a

39 I owe this reference to Dr Ioannis Ziogas. The translation is taken from Richardson
(2010: 19).
40 hlavnı́ ingredient románu, ‘the key part of the novel’; Weise (2010: 445) translates ‘ein
Hauptbestandteil des Romans’, based on the Introduction to Kresadlo’s Astronautilia
(1995: I).

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 HAN BALTUSSEN

little drunk).41 Such a use of ancient Greek resembles Cicero’s use of Greek in his
correspondence, when he wants to cover up ‘in-jokes’.42 The fact that the ruse does
not work reinforces this cautionary tale about the all-encompassing impact of
Stalinism on the lives of citizens. At the same time the language shows how
Pinkava can create a rich palette of allusions and hints which paint a picture of
Stalin the outsider (a judgment he shares with Mandelstam’s characterization of
Stalin as ‘mountain man’ from the Caucasus, see note 5), who only by brute force
manages to rule over Russians, Tartars, and many others. Pinkava’s use of Homeric
vocabulary highlights the importance of a special kind of knowledge, which serves as
a secret language. As we saw, the particular words and phrases discussed illustrate
that this ‘Homeric code’ can be read most profitably when we know the specific

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passages in the original text. It therefore has the potential to reach a specific audi-
ence: those who shared Pinkava’s refined level of education can pick up on such
things as the brutishness of Stalin (4nax 2ndr8n = Agamemnon), his disregard for
human lives (his power, krat""# i”/kr0to”, makes them powerless, 2m"n–no”, like
Hades and the dead), or the unusual worship of a human as a god in a phrase
used originally about a half-mythical queen (q"1n 6” "2sor0wsin), his abuse of
power (brotokt0no”; o4stina” o2k "’* 0 lhsa”, p"#mya” S "ibir0 hnd’ "2” l0g"ra), and
his lack of cultivation given his admiration for watches (3r0a” cronod"0 gmata k0d"i
ga0 wn). From this perspective the whole poem and its framing within the novel
ridicules the great leader and what he stands for at a much deeper level.
Moreover, the choice of genre is also significant. Hymns —‘songs of praise’ —
took up an important role in Soviet Russia as an integral part of the arts scene similar
to the manner in which visual art had become the vehicle of Stalinist ideology and
propaganda. Even in antiquity such poems existed, for instance Horace’s Carmen
Saeculare in which he tries to ingratiate himself with Augustus, or Pliny’s Panegyric
for Trajan — although scholars have been able to offer nuanced readings that un-
cover subversive elements in some of these works.43 In contrast, and unlike Osip
Mandelstam’s Stalin Epigram (the example I started with), the commissioned hymns
on Stalin’s achievements are mostly depressingly bad pieces of (self-)ingratiating
praise — much like those found in other ‘monarchic regimes’. Compositions such as

41 Pinkava himself had written hymns to the school leader and declaimed them in front of
the whole school. He even worked as a grave singer himself (Weise 2010: 448, n. 39).
Another possibility, suggested to me by Frederick Ahl in discussion, is that the choice of
Greek could draw international attention among scholars who understand the language.
42 Examples in Griffin (1999: 329 and 337).
43 For Pliny see W. Dominik (forthcoming). Horace’s Carmen has been interpreted posi-
tively (Putnam 2000) and negatively (Davis 2001). For another example of hymns to
Stalin created during his life time see http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/stalin-
worship.asp by A.O. Avidenko (P. Halsall, Modern History Sourcebook online). For
his role as ‘teacher’ in hymns see Walker (2004).

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 A ‘HOMERIC’ HYMN TO STALIN

an ode on a new model fighter plane or even musical works, such as those by
Prokofiev and Ancerl, were intended to glorify Stalinism.44
It is not just the use of an ancient and scholarly language that helps to cover up the
outspoken criticism of the Russian leader in Pinkava’s poem, but also its framing
within a novel: Pinkava (writing under a pseudonym) uses the (not uncommon)
technique of shifting the authorial responsibility to the young protagonist, creating a
conceit of a youthful faux pas committed by a character in a novel. This provides
deniability, but also raises the issue of how fiction relates to reality. The poem in
praise of Stalin mimics existing works, both ancient and contemporary, but, as we
saw, fails to conform fully to the rules of the established practice. What is Pinkava
trying to suggest about the relation between literature and politics? The novel is a

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send-up of the literature of praise under Stalin. My earlier comments on Czech
literature and politics (see text to n. 22) make this plausible: with Alfred French we
can argue that the discussion about the role of literature among Czechs turned into a
‘battle of the books’ soon after the war; literature became a battle-ground for dog-
matists and progressives (27-8) about the freedom of speech. In our case the story
turns on the peculiar fact that knowledge of the ancient Greek language leads to a
terrible act of oppression of one individual by another. The complex and depressing
plot shows how even such an obscure and unlikely choice of code (an ancient lan-
guage) is detected and becomes the cause for immoral behaviour.
Third and last, the poem can perhaps inform us about the role of Classical edu-
cation in literary history and how it can contribute to the creative ways in which
imagined realities are not mere acts of escapism, but also acts of defiance and rela-
tively low-risk forms of criticism against oppressive regimes. Although an obscure
language may seem a very obvious choice for ‘encoding’ social criticism, in this case
an explanation is required beyond Pinkava’s (and his alter ego’s) facility with ancient
Greek. I have suggested it adds another layer to the conceit of dissimulation, which
would have been necessary when living under the regime. Thus we end up with a
kind of ‘Russian doll’ model of self-regulation or self-censorship, consisting of four
layers: the author’s pseudonym, the novel’s narrative, the character’s authorship,
and the ‘code’ of the parody.

Conclusion
This brief case study set out to illustrate the use of ‘veiled speech’ under a totali-
tarian regime. The specific example took the form of an ode composed in Homeric
Greek, found in a novel written by an emigrant Czech in England thirty years after
the narrated time of the plot (Russia c. 1948–54). My analysis of this unusual text
reveals two general and several specific points. First, subversive literary texts pro-
testing against the unacceptable oppression of the movements and free speech of

44 Some have recently been recorded again; but a critic described them as ‘second-rate,
propagandistic cantatas best forgotten’ (Ivry 2008). For ancient censorship see Speyer
(1981).

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 HAN BALTUSSEN

citizens (not necessarily written during the period of oppression) can inform us
about the consequences of writing down what should remain hidden. Although
the example of Mandelstam suggests that even oral poems are no guarantee for
safe criticism, Pinkava’s novel shows that a written message in an obscure code
may not always be safer. This raises some interesting questions regarding the au-
thor’s motives to write a novel on the depressing circumstances under the Stalinist
regime in Czechoslovakia. If books have a role to play in protesting against or sub-
verting rulers (and the tenacious hunt for such books by autocratic regimes suggests
they do), the framing of the hymn as written in an ancient language by a character in
a novel seems a rather belated and ineffective act of defiance. It makes it impossible
to see this work as part of an actual samizdat. The Czech cultural turn only happened

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after 1989, so that publication in 1983-4 in Canada shows how difficult it was to
publish Czech writings of this kind in Czechoslovakia. Perhaps we should rather see
it as a testimony or fictionalized eyewitness account of the suffering of individuals
under communist oppression, with ancient Greek at the centre of the plot, in which
it becomes a code for the understanding reader from a time when traditional edu-
cation offered a rich, and sometimes subversive, perspective on the world. In this
sense its Aesopian nature resembles that of its ancient predecessors, Aesop, whose
fables could be used as subversive medium, at least in the interpretation of
Phaedrus.45 Secondly, because of the biographical elements in the novel, we may
speculate that Pinkava also used this work as an outlet for his experiences in his
home country. Thus this case illustrates as least two important features of the lit-
erature it belongs to: subversive criticism by way of ingenious encoding of the message.
The significance of such a case study can be illustrated from a broader perspective
when we ask which kind of sources allow insight into the dynamics of censorship.
The case suggests that analysis of novels and their use of ‘codes’ help to understand
that censorship involves much more than the historical study of dictatorial regimes
clamping down on dissenters. The perspective of the oppressed (as it were ‘from
below’) strongly suggests the added value of the counter-movement and subversive
strategies, even if the texts need to be written ones, requiring us to decode it. In other
words, ancient and modern literary sources can offer interesting details to enhance
our understanding of interactions between oppressor and the oppressed —
which suggests that the dynamics of censorship can be usefully studied in fictional
prose.46

45 See, e.g., Rothwell 1995; 234–6 on servile protest (with extensive bibliography).
46 I am very grateful for helpful comments from referees, and from the audience at the 2013
‘Censorship and Subversion’ conference at Adelaide University, and especially to Peter J.
Davis, Frederick Ahl, Mark Davies, Aisha Mahmood for further discussion of the ar-
gument and wording of the paper, and to Ana Silkatcheva for several translations from
the Czech and Russian.

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 A ‘HOMERIC’ HYMN TO STALIN

Appendix 1 Greek text (Weise 2010, slightly adapted)

[N.B. Homeric words and phrases in bold; neologisms are underlined]

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N.B. Weise (2010: 440) wants to read d"; t" for g1r to remedy a missing ictus in
line 8.

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