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Golden Journey to Samarkand

Flecker

In General readers of the 21st century know little about Flecker. Meanwhile, in due time, his verses and dramas, delicate and full of romantic exotic of the East, caused great interest and stormy literary disputes.

Flecker was born in London in 1884. He graduated from the boarding school in Cheltenam, where his father was a director. When the boy reached thirteen, he realized that feelings and dreams, thrilling through his heart, could be expressed only in verse. One of his first poems “Flakes” was published in the school almanac.

Having entered Oxford University, Flecker joined the young intellectuals, so-called bohemians. The new friends highly appreciated wittiness and delicate taste of James. Three years later, he received the bachelor’s degree and became a school teacher. However, teaching seemed not too interesting to the young man. James gave all his free time to the poetry and published the first book of poems “Bridge of fire” in 1907.

Having realized fully that a pedagogical career was not attractive to him, Flecker decided to switch to diplomatic service. He entered the Cambridge University to study the Turkish and Arabian languages.

Golden Journey to Samarkand

In 1910, he got his first post at the English consulate in Istanbul. Flecker, as well as the majority of Englishmen, imagined the East as the fantastic country promising exotic glamour and wonderful adventures. It seemed that Turkey answered his expectations. He wrote to the mother: “I can see Bosporus through the windows of my house. In the evenings, I usually observe how the brown walls of the castle turn gold, and the dark blue sea becomes white, while the sun is sinking, sliding down the sky, softly coloured in rose”.

Unfortunately, during the voyage to Turkey, James caught a cold. The disease lasted too long and the doctors diagnosed tuberculosis. The diplomatic service was interrupted. He had to undergo the cure at one of the English sanatoria. Flecker was transferred from Istanbul to the consulate of Great Britain in Izmir.

When Flecker was appointed the vice-consul to Beirut, he had already been seriously ill. He became indifferent towards the service. Literature remained the major occupation and connected Flecker with the intellectual world of England, which was a shelter for the weakening poet. He wrote to his family: “I have lost any hope again to see England, the house where I would be happy”.

In 1913, Flecker had to resign from the diplomatic service and to go to Switzerland. There, he wrote his best poem — “Golden journey to Samarkand”. In the foreword to the poem, he declared the creative credo: “Poet is not obliged to save the soul of a person, but to prepare it for saving”.

James Flecker had lived a short life, whose actual sense was in dreaming about the fantastic and wonderful East. His poems, written in free and a little casual style with dynamically developed plot, can be regarded as a sample of art perfection of the form. The poet affirmed a priority of beauty as supreme aesthetic value. Flecker, as a person and poet, represented a pure dreamer and romanticist.

Today, “golden road” still invites the travellers to minarets and azure domes of Samarkand and Bukhara.

Golden Journey to Samarkand

James Elroy Flecker


THE GOLDEN JOURNEY TO SAMARKAND

We are the Pilgrims, master; we shall go
Always a little further: it may be
Beyond that last blue mountain barred with snow,
Across that angry or that glimmering sea,

White on a throne or guarded in a cave
There lives a prophet who can understand
Why men were born: but surely we are brave,
Who take the Golden Road to Samarkand.

Sweet to ride forth at evening from the wells
When shadows pass gigantic on the sand,
And softly through the silence beat the bells
Along the Golden Road to Samarkand.

We travel not for trafficking alone;
By hotter winds our fiery hearts are fanned:
For lust of knowing what should not be known
We make the Golden Journey to Samarkand.

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