I have read somewhere that a defining characteristic of post modernity is the experience of multiple realities all on top of each other, the unloading into the world of millions of symbols, images and meanings. The presence, and in mass culture the use, of dozens of different aesthetics all at once with disregard for the need or even the idea of context. Look, a telephone cut from a magazine stuck on top of a photograph of an interior. Look, a historic building in London peeking through a gap between two sky scrapers. Look, a young woman in Istanbul wearing a headscarf talking on an iPhone, a rural migrant in Nairobi sending money by mobile phone to the mother who has never seen anything beyond her village. Post modernity is in other words the constant sensation of low-level irony.
More than this though, post modernity might yet be about something else. Perhaps this is simply a scene of kitsch, causing “two tears to flow in quick succession,” as Milan Kundera had it. “The first tear says: How nice to see children running on the grass! The second tear says: How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass! It is the second tear that makes kitsch kitsch." This criticism, the doubt that wracks me, is something else postmodern. Irony even in our observations of irony. The critical gaze of a culture that has turned in upon itself.
Tomorrow is Victory Day, the 9th May, and Palace Square is being prepared for the celebrations. Parallel with the Winter Palace, on the same side of the square, three blocks of temporary seating have been erected in front of huge red banners. 1941 – 1945. CCCP. A hammer and sickle. On the opposite side, in front of the triumphal arch that divides the two wings of the General Staff Building, a team is putting the finishing touches to a huge stage. On the front of it they are building a fake colonnade in a shade of green to match the palace, a heavy piece of classical fibreglass. At the back of the stage there is a big computer screen. Mostly it is black or bears a vague repeating pattern of indistinct shapes, but occasionally you see a mouse moving on it and icons appearing and being clicked on as they test everything for tomorrow.
In the middle of the square is the Alexander Column, a single red granite block on top of which stands an angel with the face of Emperor Alexander I. “From a grateful Russia.” A bas-relief around the column base sprinkles symbols of Russian glory; Nevsky’s helmet, Prince Oleg’s shield, Alexander’s breastplate, Stalin’s moustache. I may have fabricated something. Other symbols of something or other are scattered through the square, not always deliberately. Temporary fencing has been put up around the base, wider still than the original iron railings removed by the communists, then restored by the 90s gangster capitalists. On this second layer of distance two policemen are leaning, talking about something or other. To the east, where the square partly opens towards the Moiki canal, around fifty dark green Soviet military vehicles are gathered. Mostly jeeps, a couple of trucks, and soldiers milling around them, waiting for the parade.
Hundreds of tourists, groups and individuals, wander through the square. Cameras are held out in front and take the place of eyes. Wealthy Russian teenagers pose and take pictures of each other. One of the girls ♥s NY. Men in 18th century costumes offer themselves as photo opportunities. Fake antique carriages clatter around, circling the square - or squaring the circle. Look, Saint Petersburg is lots of places at once.
The sun is shining, it is a beautiful day in May. When I come out into the square from the Hermitage, the speakers by the stage are blasting out white noise that sounds like a jet engine. Indeed, I think at first this is a simulated test for a fly past, an invisible feat of aeronautical daring. Just as it becomes painful, it stops and they put on some music. I don’t know the tune but the opening lines are “sonny, sonny…”, or maybe it is “sunny, sunny…”
Just as Bruce Springsteen was foolish to write “redemption” into the lyrics of Thunder Road, a song about redemption, I must resist the urge to try to explain how this is making me feel. As Baudelaire said, when words are too precise, music is the art that expresses most perfectly the emotions. “Sunny…the dark times are gone, the bright days are here.” Three teenagers lie flat on their backs near me, close their eyes, and smoke. A group of soldiers, three men and one woman, chase each other through the square, horsing around. For a moment they gather into a circle and, no word of a lie, one of them dances while the others sing Kalinka.
