Улетай · a Borodin companion

Borodin Prince Igor a Russian companion for music lovers

Улетай

oo‑lye‑TIE  ·  “Fly away”

The chorus inside the Polovtsian Dances — and the Russian inside the chorus.

This page keeps one promise. At the top, you can’t read a word of Russian. At the bottom, you’ll read fifteen lines of it — aloud, in Cyrillic, understanding everything — and they happen to be among the most beautiful lines ever set to music. There are no lessons on the way down. There is only a story, and the story does the rest.

КНЯЗЬ ИГОРЬ

A theatre poster, St Petersburg, 1890. You can’t read it yet. You will — and you won’t notice learning to.

Begin the story Hear the music first

The thin gold line at the top of your screen fills as you scroll. It is keeping score so you never have to.

One thing before we set out: nothing on this page will test you, drill you, or ask you to memorise anything. The idea is borrowed from the linguist Stephen Krashen, who spent a career showing that languages are not learned from tables but absorbed from messages you understand — each one half a step beyond the last. So every Russian thing below arrives at the exact moment you can understand it, inside a sentence that is busy doing ordinary sentence work. If a word slips your mind, it will come back around; that is the design, not your failure. And since Russian has no words for a or the, you already command exactly as much article-grammar as a native speaker. That was the grammar section. It’s over now. One more pleasure before we go: anything in Russian on this page — a word, a line, a whole verse — can be tapped, and your browser will say it aloud for you.

Chapter one

The Chemist and the Cats

Alexander Borodin spent his weekdays in a laboratory in St Petersburg and his Sundays writing some of the most ravishing music of the nineteenth century. The weekdays were not a cover story. He was among the most respected chemists in Russia — there is a reaction in the textbooks named after him to this day, a small immortality earned one атом at a time. And yes: you just read a Russian word. атом is simply atom in a fur hat — all four of its letters look like ours and sound like ours. Cyrillic plays this trick far more often than its reputation admits, and this page intends to exploit that without mercy. One house rule, effective immediately: once a letter has introduced itself, it is allowed to wander back into the English whenever it likes. Keep an eye out.

His домdom — his house was famous chaos. (There is your first genuinely new letter: д, a little hut on stilts — fittingly, since it begins the word for house.) Lodgers, students, relatives convalescing in every room, dinner at no fixed hour, science at miдnight — there it is already, wandering into the English exactly as threatened — and cats. Cats at the table, cats on the manuscripts; Rimsky-Korsakov, trying to talk through an opera over dinner, recalled a котkot — a tomcat marching across the table while his host, mid-sentence about harmony, absently lifted the teacup out of its path. The к is exactly the k you тooк it for. (So is the т.)

He called himself a Sunday composer and apologised for it to nobody. “Science is my work,” he liked to say, “and music is my fun.” The fun was rationed. A symphony could sit untouched for a year while he attended to his aldehydes and his students; every нотаNO‑ta — a note of music was written in time stolen from the bench. (Look at н closely: it is our n with its crossbar gone slack.) His frieнds nagged him, year after year, to finish what he sтarтed. Did he? Нетnyet — no. There you have the most famous word in Russian — the е says “ye” — and Borodin’s circle heard it, in effect, for eighteen years.

That circle matters to our story. Borodin belonged to a band of five friends — Balakirev, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Cui, and himself — self-taught, opinionated, and convinced that Russian music should stop curtseying to Europe. The conservatories of St Petersburg and Москваmask‑VAH — Moscow taught composition the approved European way; the Five taught themselves at night around one another’s pianos, on tea and conвiction. (In Москва you have just met the alphabet’s two great impostors at once: с, which says “s”, and в, which says “v”. Neither will ever apologise.) Their instrument was the оркестрar‑KYESTR — orchestra — sound it out once and enjoy it: orchestra with the dust shaken off, the р rolling like a Spanish r. Their battlefield was the операO‑pye‑ra — the п is the Greek letter pi, standing at attention — because oпera could hold everything they loved at once: hiсtory, folk сong, spectacle, and above all the хорkhor — the chorus, with х rasping like the end of Scottish loch. Italy sings in arias; Russia sings in хoruses.

In 1869 a friend put into Borodin’s hands the subject he would carry for the rest of his life: a medieval epic about a prince who rides out, fails magnificently, and is taken captive on the southern grasslands. It was a good year for enormous Russian undertakings — Война и мирvai‑NAH ee MEER — War and Peace had just finished appearing in instalments. That title hands you two parting gifts: й is the “y” in boy, and the small и standing alone in the middle is the entire Russian word for and. One letter — the hardest-working word in the language.

He worked on his opera for eighteen years, out of order, in fragments, between lectures — and never finished it. On a February night in 1887, at a fancy-dress ball, dressed in Russian national costume and reportedly in roaring good spirits, he fell mid-conversation and was gone before he reached the floor. His friends gathered up the manuscripts from the хaos of his desk. Rimsky-Korsakov and the young Glazunov — who, the story goes, reconstructed the overture from memory, having heard its composer play it at the piano — assembled the oпera, and it reached the stage of the Mariinsky Theatre in 1890. When the curtain fell, the gallery shouted ура!oo‑RAH — hurrah for a man three years dead. (у always says “oo”, never “you”.)

And now — quietly, because you have earned the right to find it ordinary — read the composer’s name as Russia prints it:

Бородин

The б — a b with a green shoot at the top — is the only letter in it you haven’t already met. Six paragraphs in, and you read the byline.

Chapter two

The Prince on the Poster

South of the old Russian cities the land flattens, the trees give out, and the grass begins — grass to the horizon in every direction, an ocean with no far shore. Russians call it the степьstyep’, and English, borrowing the word, calls it the steppe. That last letter, ь, is the famous “soft sign”, and here is everything you will ever need to know about it: it has no sound of its own. It simply softens the letter before it — a whispered apostrophe. You will meet it often, and it will never once hurt you.

Across that grass, in the year 1185, rode a prince named ИгорьEE‑gar’ — and there is only one letter in his name you haven’t met: г, a plain hard “g” as in go. He was marching against the Polovtsy, the nomad horsemen of the степь, with a small army and outsized confidence. On the way the sky darkened in broad daylight — a solar eclipse, which every man in the column correctly understood to be a terrible omen, and which Игорь magnificently decided to ignore.

It went the way omens promise. His army was destroyed out on the гrasslands and the prince was taken alive — at which point the story stops behaving like a war story. His captor, Khan Konchak, turns out to be one of the great hosts in all of opera: he does not chain his prisoner, he throws him a party. He offers Игорь hawks, horses, treasure, his friendship, even an alliance. The prince — courteously, miserably — keeps refusing. The Khan, baffled and rather impressed, orders up the one thing no guest refuses: an evening of music.

Some unknown poet wrote the whole disaster down within a few years, and the result is the oldest masterpiece of Russian literature: the Слово о полку ИгоревеSLO‑va o pal‑KOO EE‑go‑rye‑vye — the Lay of Igor’s Campaign. Its first word, Слово, means “word” — and its second letter, л, is an l drawn like a little tent. This was the epic placed in Borodin’s hands in 1869. He knew at once what he had, and he kept it on his desk for eighteen лong years. A prince, in the old language of that epic, is a князьknyaz’ — and with this word the last two strangers of the chapter arrive together: я, which says “ya” and is so essential that it also serves as the entire word for I; and з, a z curled up like the figure 3.

So here is the poster that hung outside the Mariinsky Theatre in the autumn of 1890 — the one from the top of this page:

КНЯЗЬ ИГОРЬ

When you arrived it looked like a fence. Read it now — knyaz’ EE‑gar’ — Prince Igor. You did not memorise an alphabet to do that. You read a story, and the alphabet came along quietly, like the cats.

Act Two of that opera: night in the Polovtsian camp. Konchak’s entertainment begins, and it begins not with the famous wild dancing but with the maidens of the camp — captives themselves, taken in other raids from another, southern country — who stand in the firelight and sing one of the most beautiful melodies on earth about a place none of them can return to. To understand what they are singing, you need about forty more words. Here they are — нot as a list, but as the eveнing itself.

Chapter three

An Evening in the Polovtsian Camp

Evening, then. The fires are lit, the grass goes violet, and over it, never resting, moves the ветерVYE‑tyer — the wind — the old wind of the steppe, which travels a thousand miles and meets nothing taller than a horse. Overhead the небоNYE‑ba — the sky deepens, enormous; and somewhere far to the south, past the edge of the world, lies the мореMO‑rye — the sea. Wind, sky, sea: ветер, небо, море. Notice what just happened — three words read, none taught. Every letter in them was already yours.

The maidens by the fire know all three by heart, because all three lie between this camp and home. Russian keeps a particular word for what home is to such people: роднойrad‑NOY — native, beloved, one’s own, folded into a single adjective. Their homeland is their край родной — their own dear крайkry — land, country. And what they will send back there tonight is the only thing in the camp that is still free to go: a песняPYES‑nya — a song. A song travels where a captive cannot. It is theirs — it is нашаNA‑sha — our, and in it stands ш, which says “sh”: three quiet prongs, a hush drawn as a picture. So when they address their song they call it родная песня наша — our own dear song. (Yes, родной changed its coat to родная: песня is a “she”, and Russian adjectives dress to match their company. You never need to do anything about this. Just wave as it goes by.)

What do they remember, when they sing of home? Тамtam — there — there, in the south — there are горыGO‑ry — mountains. The vowel ы is the one sound in this song English never made: say “ill” from somewhere down near your boots. It is the sound of distance. And the mountains of home do something wonderful: they дремлютDRYEM‑lyoot — they doze, they slumber — that new letter ю says “yu”, a little moon held on a stick — they slumber в облакахv ab‑la‑KAKH — in the clouds, where в, one letter, is the entire word for in, leaning on the next word like a tired traveller. Put it together: дремлют горы в облаках — the mountains slumber in the clouds. You have just read a whole line of Borodin’s chorus, in passing, in the middle of a paragraph. That is exactly how this is supposed to work.

Там the солнцеSON‑tse — the sun — ц says “ts”, and the л is silent, like the l in calm; the sun keeps one secret — светитSVYE‑tit — shines, and it shines яркоYAR‑ka — brightly. Там так ярко солнце светит: there the sun shines so brightly — pouring over the dear mountains, родные горы, flooding them with light: светом заливаяSVYE‑tam za‑lee‑VA‑ya — flooding with light. Catch the same root glowing through three windows: свет, light; светит, it shines; светом, with light. Families like this are why Russian words start recognising you after a while.

Below the mountains, in the долинахda‑LEE‑nakh — in the valleys, the розыRO‑zy — roses don’t merely bloom — they расцветаютras‑tsvye‑TA‑yoot — burst into flower, and they do it пышноPYSH‑na — lushly, lavishly, more than is strictly necessary. The homeland in this song does nothing in moderation.

Иee — and — the one-letter word from Война и мир, busy as ever — and in the green forests, в лесах зелёныхv lye‑SAKH zye‑LYO‑nykh, the соловьиsa‑lav‑YEE — the nightingales поютpa‑YOOT — sing. Those two dots make a new letter, ё — “yo” — and it comes with the most dependable fact in all of Russian: ё always, always carries the stress of its word. И the sweet grapes grow: и сладкийSLAT‑kee — sweet виноградvee‑na‑GRAT — the grapevine растётras‑TYOT — grows, leaning on its ё exactly as promised.

Even the air is different at home. The воздухVOZ‑dukh — the air is полонPO‑lan — full — full of негаNYE‑ga, a word Russian reserves for warm, honeyed, time-forgetting ease, and one of those words that makes translators sigh. Негой воздух полон: the air is full of bliss. All of it hangs подpod — under a hot southern sky — под знойным небом, under the sultry sky, where знойнымZNOY‑nym — scorching, sultry is heat you can lean against. And along the shore the sea keeps up its low talk: под говор моря — to the murmur of the sea, the говорGO‑var — murmur, low talk of the море. Now read the maidens’ second verse, which you have just walked through: Там, под знойным небом, негой воздух полон; там, под говор моря, дремлют горы в облаках. That was not an exercise. That was the song.

So the maidens turn to their песня and tell it what every exile has told every bird at every window. Тыty — you — you, little song — улетайoo‑lye‑TIE — fly away! The word this whole page is named for. Fly away on the wings of the wind: на крыльях ветраna KRYL‑yakh VYE‑tra — there are the крыльяKRYL‑ya — wings, and there is the ветер again, wearing its “of the” ending, ветра. Fly тудаtoo‑DAH — to there, гдеgdye — where мыmy — we sang you свободноsva‑BOD‑na — freely: туда, где мы тебя свободно пели — to the place where we sang you freely. Where it was — былоBY‑la — it was — so free and open for us: где было так привольно нам с тобою, with привольноpree‑VOL‑na a steppe word for the freedom of sheer open space, and с тобою — with you — because even a song is better company than none.

Now, with the English nearly gone. The maidens sing: улетай, родная песня наша, туда — туда, где горы, где море, где солнце, где розы и соловьи. Там you will be freer than we are — там тебе привольней — ты туда и улетай! If you understood that — and you did — you already understand the song. All that remains is to hear how Borodin sets it loose.

Chapter four

The Song Assembles Itself

Fifteen lines, four breaths. You have now met every word in them — most more than once, in sentences that were just sentences. Read each verse aloud, slowly, savouring it; the notes alongside tell you what the music is doing while you do. The panels underneath are there if you want them. The English confirms; it no longer teaches.

Verse I · The send-off

Улетай на крыльях ветра

Ты в край родной, родная песня наша,

Туда, где мы тебя свободно пели,

Где было так привольно нам с тобою.

Hear it in your head — the pronunciation

oo‑lye‑TIE na KRYL‑yakh VYE‑tra

ty f kry rad‑NOY, rad‑NA‑ya PYES‑nya NA‑sha

too‑DAH, gdye my tye‑BYA sva‑BOD‑na PYE‑lee

gdye BY‑la tak pree‑VOL‑na nam s ta‑BO‑yoo

Stressed syllables in capitals. The single-letter words в and с lean on the word after them.

Word by word
Улетайfly away!наonкрыльяхwingsветраof the wind Тыyouвtoкрайlandроднойnative, dearроднаяdearпесняsongнашаour Тудаto thereгдеwhereмыweтебяyou (object)свободноfreelyпелиsang Гдеwhereбылоit wasтакsoпривольноfree and openнамfor usсwithтобоюyou

Fly away, our song

This is the verse the whole world knows without knowing it — the melody Broadway later borrowed for “Stranger in Paradise”. In the opera, a single oboe sings it first over rocking harp, as if the tune itself were testing the wind; then the maidens take it up in unison, low and warm. The first word of the whole piece is the command you met by the campfire: улетай — fly away! — not a wish but an instruction, given tenderly to the only thing in the camp that is still free.

Listen for how the melody does what the words say: it rises on улетай and hangs there, then glides down in long steps like something carried on air. Borodin’s own stage direction calls this the gliding dance of the maidens. The words and the tune are one gesture.

Verse II · The remembered south

Там, под знойным небом,

Негой воздух полон,

Там под говор моря

Дремлют горы в облаках.

Hear it in your head — the pronunciation

tam, pod ZNOY‑nym NYE‑bam

NYE‑goy VOZ‑dukh PO‑lan

tam pod GO‑var MO‑rya

DRYEM‑lyoot GO‑ry v ab‑la‑KAKH

Word by word
Тамthereподunderзнойнымscorchingнебомsky Негойwith blissвоздухairполонis full Тамthereподto / beneathговорmurmurморяof the sea Дремлютslumberгорыmountainsвinоблакахclouds

There, under the scorching sky

Three lines in a row begin with the same small word — там, there. The maidens point at a place no one onstage can see, and keep pointing; by the third там the audience is homesick for a homeland that isn’t even theirs.

The verse closes on the line you read by the campfire without noticing the achievement: дремлют горы в облаках — the mountains slumber in the clouds. Say it aloud once more: the drowsy dryem-, the rolled р in горы, the long exhale of в облаках. Borodin gives these lines the same gliding melody as the first verse — memory repeating itself, the way memory does.

Verse III · The abundance

Там так ярко солнце светит,

Родные горы светом заливая,

В долинах пышно розы расцветают,

И соловьи поют в лесах зелёных,

И сладкий виноград растёт.

Hear it in your head — the pronunciation

tam tak YAR‑ka SON‑tse SVYE‑tit

rad‑NY‑ye GO‑ry SVYE‑tam za‑lee‑VA‑ya

v da‑LEE‑nakh PYSH‑na RO‑zy ras‑tsvye‑TA‑yoot

ee sa‑lav‑YEE pa‑YOOT v lye‑SAKH zye‑LYO‑nykh

ee SLAT‑kee vee‑na‑GRAT ras‑TYOT

Word by word
Тамthereтакsoяркоbrightlyсолнцеsunсветитshines Родныеthe dearгорыmountainsсветомwith lightзаливаяflooding Вinдолинахthe valleysпышноlushlyрозыrosesрасцветаютburst into bloom Иandсоловьиnightingalesпоютsingвinлесахforestsзелёныхgreen Иandсладкийsweetвиноградgrapesрастётgrow

Roses, nightingales, grapes

The catalogue of home. The свет family glows twice in two lines — солнце светит, the sun shines; светом заливая, flooding with light — and then abundance piles up on the smallest word you know: и the nightingales, и the sweet grapes, the way anyone lists the things they miss until the listing hurts.

Borodin was made for this verse. The man spent his weekdays among flasks and his Sundays writing the most perfumed music in Russia; here the orchestra turns up the warmth under each item in the list, and you can all but smell the розы. Note родные, too — your old friend родной in a third coat, dressed this time for the plural mountains.

Verse IV · The release

Там тебе привольней, песня,

Ты туда и улетай!

Hear it in your head — the pronunciation

tam tye‑BYE pree‑VOL‑nyey, PYES‑nya

ty too‑DAH ee oo‑lye‑TIE

Word by word
Тамthereтебеfor youпривольнейit is freerпесняsong Тыyouтудаto thereиthen, justулетайfly away!

Then fly away there

Two lines, and the circle closes: the song ends on the word it began with. Привольней is привольно — that steppe-freedom of sheer open space — turned into a comparison: it is freer for you there than it is for us here. Which is the quiet heartbreak of the whole chorus: the maidens cannot go home, so they release the one thing that can.

And the little и in the last line isn’t “and” this time — it’s a nudge, the Russian for go on, then: “You — to there — just fly.” An open hand, palm up.

The moment of truth

The Whole Chorus, Without Help

No glosses. No phonetics. Just the song, as a Russian singer sees it on the page. Read it aloud, slowly — gliding, like the dance. At the top of this page these were marks on a wall. Look at the gold line above: it is nearly full, and so are you.

Улетай на крыльях ветра

Хор половецких девушек — Chorus of the Polovtsian maidens

Улетай на крыльях ветра

Ты в край родной, родная песня наша,

Туда, где мы тебя свободно пели,

Где было так привольно нам с тобою.

Там, под знойным небом,

Негой воздух полон,

Там под говор моря

Дремлют горы в облаках.

Там так ярко солнце светит,

Родные горы светом заливая,

В долинах пышно розы расцветают,

И соловьи поют в лесах зелёных,

И сладкий виноград растёт.

Там тебе привольней, песня,

Ты туда и улетай!

Check yourself — the full translation, side by side
Улетай на крыльях ветраFly away on the wings of the wind,
Ты в край родной, родная песня наша,you, to your native land, our own dear song,
Туда, где мы тебя свободно пели,to that place where we sang you freely,
Где было так привольно нам с тобою.where life was so open and free for us, with you.
Там, под знойным небом,There, beneath the scorching sky,
Негой воздух полон,the air is full of bliss;
Там под говор моряthere, to the murmur of the sea,
Дремлют горы в облаках.the mountains slumber in the clouds.
Там так ярко солнце светит,There the sun shines so brightly,
Родные горы светом заливая,flooding the dear mountains with light;
В долинах пышно розы расцветают,in the valleys roses bloom in abundance,
И соловьи поют в лесах зелёных,and nightingales sing in the green forests,
И сладкий виноград растёт.and the sweet grapes grow.
Там тебе привольней, песня,There you will be freer, song —
Ты туда и улетай!then fly away there!

Chapter five

Now Hear What You Can Read

This is the payoff the whole page was built for. A few shimmering bars, an oboe with the tune — and then the maidens enter on «Улетай на крыльях ветра», and for the first time in your life you will hear those syllables as words. On a Russian programme, by the way, tonight’s piece is billed as Половецкие пляски — the Polovtsian Dances. You just read that too.

The melody’s second life

The chemist who won a Tony

The maidens’ tune did not stay in the opera house. In 1909 Diaghilev opened his first full Paris season of the Ballets Russes with the Polovtsian Dances, and the piece became a sensation of the age — the moment Europe decided Russian music was the most exciting thing it had ever heard. Then, in 1953, Broadway helped itself: the musical Kismet was built almost entirely out of Borodin’s melodies, and the gliding dance of the maidens became its hit ballad, “Stranger in Paradise”. The show took the 1954 Tony Award for Best Musical — a prize resting squarely on the Sunday work of a Russian professor of chemistry, sixty-six years after his death.

You, however, now hold something Broadway’s audiences never had: you know what the melody was actually saying. Not take my hand, I’m a stranger in paradise — but fly away, our song, to the land where we were free.

Coda

What you are carrying out of the camp

The gold line at the top of your screen is full now. Somewhere between then and now — without a single list, table, or test — you picked up twenty-seven Cyrillic letters, some forty-five Russian words from ветер to привольно, one line of grammar (there are no articles; that is still all of it), and fifteen lines of Borodin, readable aloud and understood. Scroll back to the very top, if you like, and look at the poster: КНЯЗЬ ИГОРЬ reads like a name now, not a fence. That is not “knowing Russian”. It is something better proportioned — one beautiful thing, known completely.

Two suggestions for keeping it. First, listen to the chorus again tomorrow, away from this page; the words will rise to meet the melody on their own, which is among the pleasantest sensations a language has to offer. Second, when the tune next ambushes you in a concert hall or an elevator playing “Stranger in Paradise”, lean over to whoever is next to you and translate the first line. You’ve earned that.

The letters this page slipped into your pocket, should you ever want the map

АБВГДЕЁЖЗИЙКЛМНОПРСТУФХЦЧШЩЪЫЬЭЮЯ

The six faded ones — ж, ф, ч, щ, ъ, э — never came up, because the song never needs them. They can wait for your second song.

Ты туда и улетай!

Programme notes

Credits & Sources