The Very International Internationale (Ch. 18)
Dear cherished readers, both old and new,
I extend a warm welcome to the many new readers who have chosen to wander through the labyrinthine dispatches of this humble scribe. Your arrival at this secluded corner of the internet is as perplexing as it is delightful, and I hope these musings resonate, enticing you to linger and stick around.
To the steadfast companions who continue to read these long-winded letters even after 1.5 years, thank you. I’m humbled by your enduring patience and apologetic for these pangs of my intermittent silence. But, as the Soviet classical film motto goes: Time, Forward!
Last week, I found myself in the vibrant city of Medellín, Colombia for a research conference. As I ate a dinner of the local specialty (a rich seafood casserole) at a streetside stall in the sleepy alleys of the old town, a moment of serendipity occurred. A familiar melody, hummed by the cook, caressed my ears, causing me to look up from my book. After a moment of ponderous reflection, realization dawned – it was the strains of 'The Internationale'!
This anthem, a mosaic of hope and unity, has always intrigued me with its sheer geographic reach, ideological scale, and linguistic scope. It is a symphony of solidarity that has echoed through streets and hearts across the globe. In this edition of Ink-uilab, I seek to explore and unpack the layers of ‘The Internationale’, as a political anthem, a linguistic experiment, and a unique historical moment.
So, strap in, dear reader, for Chapter 18. Should you wish to continue receiving these monthly parcels of ponderings, do subscribe:
From Truck Drivers to Tokyo Tourists
For the uninitiated, “The Internationale” resonates as a global anthem, a sonorous staple among myriad political sects, predominantly those from the left, including a veritable whose-who of anarchists, communists, trade-unionists, democratic-socialists, and social democrats. In fact, I’d posit that The Internationale might just be one of the few things that the schism-hungry leftist political groups might agree on. The anthem has been the pulsating heart of the socialist movement since the late 19th century, sanctified by the Second International as its official canticle. The anthem's genesis is traced back to the “First International,” a congregation of labor's finest in 1864, attended by Eugène Pottier, the anarchist author of the anthem's lyrics. Pottier's prose, peppered with potent one-liners and seasoned with slogans, seared themselves into the collective consciousness of the class struggle.
Pottier's prose was later harmonized with the melodies of Pierre De Geyter, a Marxist composer whose notes were first sung by ‘La Lyre des Travailleurs’ of the French Worker's Party in Lille, 1888. Yet, beneath its unifying chorus lies a narrative of secrecy and sacrifice. Pierre De Geyter, in a bid to shield his identity and livelihood as a woodcarver, shrouded his contributions in anonymity. This anthem is more than a melody; it's a mosaic of powerful one-liners and slogans, with lines like “Ni Dieu, ni César, ni tribun” (trans. ‘Neither God, nor Caesar, nor tribune’) already echoing in the corridors of the workers' movement. Its success is intertwined with the Second International's reach and resonance, its simplistic yet stirring composition reflecting the very essence of its audience. For those interested, this wonderful documentary by Peter Miller traces the song’s origins through interviews.
The song’s truly global reach is best exemplified in a short story, actually one of my favorites, Dilip Simeon’s “O.K. TATA: Mobiloil Change and World Revolution.” The story first appeared in Civil Lines, the Indian literary journal, five issues of which came out between 1987 and 2001. As Chandrahas Choudhury puts it, “The magazine’s idiosyncrasies of taste, irregularity of publication, somewhat cliquish circle of contributors and lack of either a precise editorial manifesto or a market ambition were all repeatedly explained by the editors as a symbol of their devotion to no other deity but quality.”
Here’s an excerpt from the story that features The Internationale. The only context you need to enjoy it is that Hardip Singh is a truck driver in Northern India, and Partap is his apprentice (and as he later learns a college-educated Delhi Marxist immersing himself into the life of a proletarian):
“What really impressed Hardip Singh was an incident involving a Japanese cyclist. One afternoon, about eight hours’ drive away from Calcutta, they came across a strange sight. A smooth-skinned youngster of indeterminable age was riding a bicycle intently down the Grand Trunk Road in the opposite direction. Hardip, ever curious, jammed his brakes and asked his cleaner to see who the hell this was.
Where are you going? asked Partap, leaping out of his door and running the few paces to the startled cyclist. His lightweight vehicle had two canvas bags hanging from the sides of the back wheel, and a little aluminium rack on the handlebar, on which there was perched a map, which was the object he had been staring at with such concentration when he had first come into view.
‘From Japan. Going round world in five years.’ This information was reported to the driver, who shouted, Ask him to come with us! Partap thought this excessive, given that the Japanese was going the other way. Tell him we’ll take him back to Delhi day after tomorrow, said Hardip. A brief conversation ensued with the cyclist, who looked flustered, but insisted that he was going to Delhi and was not about to get on to a truck headed towards Calcutta. The driver laughed, moved into first gear and started off, remarking on the strangeness of the times and the creatures one saw on the Grand Trunk Road these days.
…...
The next afternoon, some seventy miles further west from where they had first spotted him, they passed the Japanese youth again, looking down at his map and diligently pedal-pushing his way up the Indo-Gangetic. Hardip recognized him immediately and jammed his brakes once more.
‘Tell him to come with us,’ he instructed his cleaner, ‘unless he wants his smooth Japaani bhund buggered by dacoits … they’ll take his fancy cycle too.’ Convincing him was not difficult; the cyclist appeared to be tired and glad of a rest. Once he was inside the cabin Partap Singh, Cleaner, lost no time starting up a conversation— no fear of exposure this time.
“Where are you from?’
‘Tokyo.’
‘Kaio University?’
The Japanese stared at his interlocutor wide-eyed. ‘You know of Kaio University? How?’ The khalasi was enjoying himself and the feeling that this had to be too good to be true.
‘Yes … how are the Zengakuren?’
The globe-cycling Japanese nearly leapt out of his skin. How was it possible for drivers’ mates in India to have heard of radical students’ organizations in Japan?
‘ZENGAKUREN! Yes! I member! But HOW you know ZENGAKUREN?’
‘We Indians know a thing or two … have you smashed the Miamoto revisionist clique as yet?’
‘MIAMOTO?! Yes! they are velly bad! ZEN Gakuren! Vot you say?!’ He was blubbering with excitement and looked as if he had suddenly been served sushi on the Grand Trunk Road. The khalasi went into his routine about the Indian peasants’ armed revolution and the thoughts of Chairman Mao. The Japanese was eighteen years old and a student. His name sounded like Yomura, and he had participated in student demonstrations against imperialist war crimes in Vietnam. He spoke with relish of battles with the police, battles in which the comrades wore helmets and wielded chains. Zengakuren had even hijacked a plane to North Korea, he said, but Kim Il Sung didn’t allow them to land. That was too bad. The comrade cleaner made a mental note of this—it confirmed his suspicions about the treacherous tendencies of Kim Il Sung. They denounced the revisionist Communist Party led by Miamoto. He asked his new-found friend his opinion of Mishima and his hara-kiri, which impressed their passenger further, and was told that he was a “good poet but a fascist. That was also too bad, thought the cleaner, who wanted all good litterateurs to be like Lu Hsun, duly approved by the GGC-CPC. They rode some fifty miles chattering about the world revolution, and the comrade from Japan spent the night sleeping on the roof. The next morning, as they approached the crossing from where ‘Yomu’ wanted to branch off towards Agra and the Taj Mahal, they sang the Internationale, simultaneously, in Japanese and Hindi. Before riding into oblivion on his cycle, the Japanese cyclist and the Indian khalasi exchanged clenched-fist salutes.
Double-clutching his gears as he coaxed the truck into movement Hardip Singh gave his apprentice a fleeting glance of sincere esteem. ‘Vakayee yaar… maan gaye,’ he said, ‘It’s true … you fellows really have an international party.”
An Anthem for Babel
The sheer scale of The Internationale's translations is staggering, with an estimated translation in over 150 languages (if not more!). The anthem's translations, a testament to its "globalization from below," extend its reach far beyond its French origins. Not just a melody but a beacon of inclusivity, it stands shoulder to shoulder with few others, such as the Christmas carols, "Happy Birthday," and "Amazing Grace." Even in the realm of modern artists like Taylor Swift, celebrated for her widespread translations, The Internationale holds its ground with an impressive array of translations, a testament to its universal resonance. From the stirring Tuvan throat singing renditions, and Bengali chants, to the eerie notes of Shostakovich's theremin, it has embraced a myriad of musical forms, each infusing new life and context into its timeless lyrics
Historian Ian Christopher Fletcher traces the influence of the song through history: “It was sung simultaneously in many languages by Wobblies during the 1912 strike of immigrant textile workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and again by volun- teers of the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War. Serving for a time as the Soviet anthem after the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, “The Internationale” gradually lost its wider affiliation with the whole anarchist, socialist, and labor move- ment and became more narrowly associated with the communist movement. How- ever, its influence has been, and continues to be, felt in many not always recognized ways. For example, it furnished Frantz Fanon with the title of his great work of rev- olutionary, anticolonial theory, The Wretched of the Earth. The world was reminded of the power of the song when the students, without any sense of alienation, sang it in Tiananmen Square in 1989.”
Eventually, we come to the version of The Internationale I am most familiar with, with lyrics by Billy Bragg written in the last decade:
Let no one build walls to divide us
Walls of hatred nor walls of stone
Come greet the dawn and stand beside us
We'll live together or we'll die alone
In our world poisoned by exploitation
Those who have taken, now they must give
And end the vanity of nations
We've one but one Earth on which to live
George Orwell, too, recognized its pervasive potency, and crafted a parody of the song in "Animal Farm." The Internationale also features on the David Rovics song ‘They All Sang the Internationale,’ which honors Katharina Jacob - a revolutionary with the German Resistance movement against the Nazis. The Italian maestro Toscanini also wrote an orchestration of The Internationale, which would later appear in the 1944 movie Hymn of the Nations. The song’s notes have even danced on the ethereal waves of the theremin (on a side note, I would very much love to learn how to play the Theremin), with Shostakovich weaving it into the film score for “Podrugi (The Girl Friends)”, a bizarre variation, and testament to the composer's daring to dance with dissonance and defiance. You can listen to it here.
A netizen has compiled excerpts of the song in 135 languages, which is such a wonderful example of the sheer geographic breadth of the anthem. Yet another kindred spirit has compiled a collection of 95 variations of this venerable verse, amassing nearly five hours of audio:
Each language has such a wonderfully distinct style and sound. Some of my favorite versions from the video above are Galician, Nepali, Breton, Northern Kurdish, and a very upbeat Urdu one! (*timestamped links*).
There is one rendition I’d argue that transcends the typical, transporting us to the expansive steppes and sunlit horizons of Tuva - on the Russo-Mongol border. Here, amidst the windswept plains and the silhouettes of distant mountains, the band Huun-Huur-Tu, whose name evokes the swirling “sunbeams” of their homeland, crafts a version of this venerable anthem through the mystic art of Tuvan throat singing. One of my favorite bands, their throat singing, a practice where the vocalist harmonizes multiple pitches simultaneously, transforms The Internationale into an experience that is both otherworldly and deeply rooted in the earth's primordial cadence. In Huun-Huur-Tu's hands, or more aptly, their voices, the song becomes a shocking, spectral symphony:
State-Building through Song
The song transcends beyond the mere boundaries of political movements to resonate as a national anthem, a symbol of sovereign identity and communal spirit. In its most illustrious adaptation, the anthem was translated into Russian, not once but twice, embodying the very soul of the Soviet Union until the ides of March in 1944. On this day, it gracefully ceded its place to The Hymn of the Soviet Union (Gimn Sovetskogo Soyuza), formerly referred to as the “Song of Stalin.”, marking a new era in Soviet symphonies.
This affiliation of the song to the Soviet Union would affect its perceptions (especially in the ‘West’). During the tempest of the Second World War, the BBC's Sunday evening radio broadcast, "National Anthems of the Allies," would play the national anthems of the United Kingdom's allies, a playlist expanding with each new country ensnared by Germany's grasp. However, an unexpected omission occurred following the initiation of Operation Barbarossa on 22 June 1941; The Internationale, then the Soviet Union's anthem, was conspicuously absent, not just on that day but in subsequent weeks as well. This was no oversight; Winston Churchill, a vehement anti-communist, had mandated through Anthony Eden that The Internationale must not resonate on the BBC's airwaves, a directive reflecting his ideological disdain. [To remind our readers, Churchill famously, defined Russia as "a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma."] On 13 July 1941, rather than the expected Soviet anthem, the BBC aired a lesser-known yet beautiful Soviet song, a move Ivan Maisky, the Soviet ambassador, decried as emblematic of British cowardice and folly. The continued exclusion of The Internationale from a programme dedicated to allies' anthems led to the BBC discontinuing the show, avoiding further diplomatic discomfort. Yet, by 22 January 1942, Churchill's stance softened, lifting the ban and allowing The Internationale to once again stir the airwaves during wartime broadcasts and public events. This change culminated in a grand 1943 performance at the Royal Albert Hall during the BBC's Salute to the Red Army, where the Royal Choral Society, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and military bands united in a mass rendition of "The Internationale" beneath the Soviet flag, following Anthony Eden's speech, marking a harmonious turn in the war's discordant symphony. Watch the performance here, thanks to the archivists at British Pathé:
The song is also a strikingly popular choice for anthems by micronations (each with debatable claims to sovereignty and independence). Consider the quaint realm of Sandus, a 12-citizen micronation, where The Internationale finds a home. Journey then to the dissolved Indokistan, nestled in Indonesia's folds, and the Democratic Republic of Sunda Raya, an alternate history entity in Southeast Asia. In these microcosms of sovereignty, The Internationale morphs, melding with local lore and aspiration, a symphony of socialist solidarity.
The role of the national anthem is unique - especially in the context of nation-building. As the erudite Terrell Carver and Matti Hyvärinen write in Interpreting the Political (1997):
In my view national anthems are—politically read or societally understood— simultaneously apodictical and epideictic speeches. They are apodictical, unlike the meaning in classical rhetoric, not because conclusions are deduced from syllogisms of indisputable premises, but because social convention and the law protect their numinous quality. The apodictical, the indisputable, also refers to the concrete act of staging, in which objections to iconic and numinous qualities of the Gemeinschaft are not permitted. But national anthems are also epideictic in that they are supposed to persuade. They persuade in the concrete act of nation-building, and they celebrate the Gemeinschaft.
Yet, amidst the careful crafting of these patriotic psalms, we stumble upon tales tinted with the hues of happenstance and humor. After all, not all nations are graced with the genius of a Tagore, whose melodic muses bestowed upon India "Jana Gana Mana" and Bangladesh "Amar Shonar Bangla." Even the Sri Lankan anthem (it seems) whispers the echoes of his inspiration.
A friend once shared with me a tale of the Malay national anthem that tickles the imagination. While the veracity of this story is difficult to confirm, with little reliable information available online, it serves as a fascinating narrative that is at best a wonderful piece of trivia and at worst an urban myth. Consider, if you will, the curious case of Malaysia's "Negaraku." As the lore unfurls, the Sultan of Malaysia found himself in a rather precarious position during a visit to London. Invited by the Queen, the Sultan's aide was asked for the tune of the Malaysian national anthem to grace his arrival.
In a moment of embarrassment, spurred by the absence of an official anthem, the aide hummed a melody from Seychelles, a tune as foreign to Malaysia as the shores from which it originated (the Sultan and his family were exiled to Seychelles for seventeen years as punishment for an alleged murder of the British Resident of Perak). Yet, in a twist of fate or a stroke of genius, this melody, born of necessity and quick thinking, transformed into the resounding "Negaraku," the anthem of modern-day Malaysia
Venture now to the vibrant vistas of Mexico, where the anthem's birth was no less a theatrical tableau. In 1853, President Antonio López de Santa Anna sought a symphony of patriotism and announced a contest to capture the nation's soul. Enter Francisco González Bocanegra, a poet who preferred romance to revolution. Yet, his fiancée, Guadalupe González del Pino — or Pili — played the muse of destiny. Through a ploy of passionate persuasion, she confined her beloved to a room adorned with symbols, motifs, and annals of Mexican heroism. In his crucible of creativity, Francisco's verses flowed, a poetic prisoner to love and country. Four hours later, ten verses slipped beneath the door, and a national anthem was born!
Lastly, in customary fashion, some verse in parting:
Again, by pure coincidence, we return to the realm of a physician-poet, a p phenomenon I discuss in Chapter 18). Here’s a poem by the illustrious William Carlos Williams. Born to an English father and a Puerto Rican mother of French, Dutch, Spanish, and Jewish descent, Williams's heritage was as richly woven as his verse.
A vanguard voice of the Imagist movement, alongside figures like Pound, Williams championed a poetry of precise imagery and crisp, clear language. For over four decades, he donned the dual mantle of doctor and poet, drawing inspiration from the American milieu and the vibrant tapestry of lives he encountered. His poetry, a distinctively American verse, was born from the confluence of his professional experiences, his ebullient imagination, and the pulsating life of his town’s citizens.
Until writing this chapter, I wasn’t familiar with the poet’s politics. Seemingly, Williams’ politics is hotly debated, but he seemingly found himself adrift to the left of America’s Communist Party A man of nuanced convictions, he declared, "I wasn’t a Communist," yet professed a staunch anti-capitalistic stance. His radicalism was not imported but homegrown, imbued with a deep-seated human sympathy and an instinctive internationalist outlook. As this essay on the poet puts it, “Williams’s poems, moroever, have proven radical and prophetic: grounded in the material specificities of their place and moment, even as they anticipate in outline the new paradigms of democratic (and ecological) imagining that are slowly replacing the dogmas and orthodoxies of conventional Leftist thought.”
And so, as we bid adieu, let us heed the words of Williams, a simple yet profound reminder of the fragile yet formidable nature of our endeavors. Here’s ‘A Foot-Note’ by William Carlos Williams
Walk on the delicate parts
of necessary mechanisms
and you will pretty soon have
neither food, clothing, nor
even Communism itself,
Comrades. Read good poetry!
Yours in perpetual pondering,
BM
(All errors are my own and a by-product of editing this on a transatlantic flight)