Sean Wayman: The Museum of Socialist Art, Sofia

The Museum of Socialist Art, Sofia

 

If it were not for the sculpture garden,

who would ever come out to this dismal place,

where long-poured concrete has been left to harden

as parking lots and unleased office space?

Yet come we do, hoping to unearth

a brilliant gleam amidst the ashen waste,

to prise out that object of uncommon worth—

the relic that will brighten understanding.

Yet should this dream-goal prove too demanding,

 

experience, close and coarse-grained, may suffice;

we buy our tickets and head towards the yard.

Set by the gate, as if to advertise

some new brand or fad, is a huge, red-starred

finial, the former stickpin of Party House.

It stands now in a state of disregard,

atoning for the passions it had once aroused.

Beyond wait the statues, each on its plinth,

surrounded by spring grass, as green as absinthe.

 

We follow a path down the gentle slope

towards the collection of statues and busts—

an assembly of astonishing scope.

The restless eye, drawn here and there, entrusts

itself to no one form. These shifts portend

awareness of how violently this garden thrusts

all of its sculptures together, close-penned.

Each was designed to command a single space

(a public square or a glass display case),

 

like a shrine image set on its pedestal.

Then every passing eye was raised

to meet its image, grave and terrible,

the stern ideal that the sculptor had phrased.

Though it cannot return to that prominence—

that hilltop from which it had been displaced—

we could still view it singly, at close distance,

spurning the yard-penned agglomeration.

We make a start, fixing concentration

 

on a woman fighter, carved in high relief.

Stout and thick-legged, she surges forward,

her jaw clenched in adamantine belief;

behind her back, she wields a heavy sword.

Who knows what injustices shall be slayed

on the crowless battlefield she moves toward?

Next along is a portrait of Lenin, portrayed

as a tradesman in a flat cloth cap.

Chin jutted forward, ready for a scrap,

 

he strikes an insurrectionary pose.

Next is another Lenin—this one capless

yet otherwise alike. Again it shows

him as protector of the hapless;

the tidy moustache and close-trimmed goatee

project a manly strength. Not for him the sapless

waiting of the bourgeoisie. A devotee

of immediate action, he discerns

how slowly justice progresses and yearns

 

to give it a shove. There are some other heads,

but all of them defenders of the Cause.

There’s one of Marx; deep thought threads

two parallel lines in his brow. By force

of comradeship, or glamour, Che Guevara

has also earned a place. We briefly pause

to catch his famed beret. Doctor Mara

Maleeva-Zhikova’s next—a surprise

in that she’s a woman. At first we surmise

 

that hers is a tokenistic presence,

but then, further along the way, we meet

her again, learning that she was the President’s

wife. Head held erect, she’s ready to greet

the people—her smile of royal condescension

affixed. Yet whether in bronze or concrete,

no other figure gains half the attention

that’s granted here to Lenin. That’s him, seated

this time. In all else the sculpture’s repeated

 

the now-familiar motifs: the prideful nose;

the facial hair; the steady gaze, intent

on confrontation. As we draw close,

to study the iconography, dissent

begins to rouse within. With a start,

I see what should long have been apparent:

these “realist” sculptures are religious art.

This statue before us is a Russian icon;

by choice of pose, the sculptor seems to liken

 

the Leader to the Virgin Mary, enthroned.

Though he wears no halo, nor is he flanked

by seraphim, the baby Jesus disowned

most of all, for dignity he isn’t outranked

by the Empress-Virgin in a lapis robe.

In the centre of the park, its sacrosanct

core, there’s a whole icon-gallery to probe.

The figures here are the most monumental.

Of course, it can’t be coincidental

 

that these are the Soviet leadership,

along with their local franchisees.

A religiously-minded readership

would’ve turned their gaze, attentive, on these

and seen Christ Pantocrator, Ruler of All.

Not even standing as high as his knees,

we look up at Lenin. Of supernatural

height, he surveys the entire yard,

his gaze never shutting, no detail disbarred

 

from his notice. In the park hereabouts

all his acolytes rise, their bearing

as erect as a cross. Still, we have our doubts

about the local brass, these trenchcoat-wearing

saints. Take, for instance, Georgi Dimitrov:

he’s shown here, tall and martial, commandeering

Stalin’s moustache. Yet it hasn’t brought off

the intended effect (or at least

not to the fullest degree). The creased,

 

baggy pants and his oversized coat

look like somebody’s hand-me-downs.

There’s something about his figure now, remote

from power and consequence, which sounds

a note of melancholy. And so we leave him,

heading towards the edge of the grounds.

On the way, we pass statues of workers—slim

in both stature and quantity. Two, peasant

women, hurry fieldwards, as if a present

 

awaited them there. Going barefoot

and shouldering hoes, they thrust out each stride

devotedly. A few steps on, they’re put

up against the tableau of the giants behind,

the colossi of this Communist Thebes;

the apparatchiks have been deified,

the workers depicted as antlike plebes.

And then we reach the foot of the yard.

A block of flats with a pale, grey facade

 

juts up beyond the boundary fence.

Blank of expression, it looks out across

the sculpture garden’s unpeopled expanse.

Turning around, I’m forcibly struck (at a loss

to see how it took so long) that the garden

is empty, apart from us. There is no gloss

to be put on it, no ready pardon

to be granted now; for locals, this place

is where spectres walk, the sacred space

 

of a vanished cult. Whatever bleak rites

were practised once in the veneration

of its concrete gods, this mirthless scene indicts

them all. Yet what then of their penetration

through every city and town in the land?

What of their ceaseless reiteration

through all the years the dream-realm spanned?

This empty scene, it answers this too—

more volubly, it seems, than any statue.

 

The locals have built a park-sized cage

for the idols of this toppled cult,

like pieces of bone from a saint or sage,

locked in a subterranean vault.

But the faith is dead. The grass is untrampled,

the paths untrod. No follower will now exult

in the mysteries that these forms exampled.

It’s thus, we defect from the pieties

of the surging, just-sworded deities.

Sean Wayman