Albatrosses in Russian art?

[Ian Appleby]

Dear Colleagues

I am currently enjoying working on a series of pieces about V.E. Tatlin's
somewhat unlikely flying machine. It is, rather brilliantly, called
Letatlin in Russian; I am not quite sure that my attempt to render the name
in English as Levitatlin quite does it justice.

Anyway, one such piece is I. Rakhtanov's recollections of Tatlin and his
machine, in which the following line appears: "Nad publikoi kolykhalas'
shirokokrylaia ptitsa, napominavshaia al'batrosa s izvestnoi kartinki." I
confess that the painting in question is not sufficiently well-known to me,
nor do search engines seem to help. The encounter took place on April 5,
1932, and his recollections were - he claims - written shortly after, so we
can probably discount later works, although the edition I am working from
was apparently published in 1973. It is a throwaway line, not crucial to
the overall piece, but I must confess it has piqued my curiosity. I would
be very grateful for any suggestions as to what Rakhtanov may have had in
mind.

Best wishes

Ian

-- 
Dr Ian Appleby MCIL
Russian<>English Interpreter/Translator
устный и письменный перевод
русский и английский языки
mob/сот: +44 7517 414498
twitter/твиттер: @IanAppleby
www.ianappleby.net

*Captain of the
Steppe*<http://www.andotherstories.org/book/captain-of-the-steppe/>,
Oleg Pavlov: "An excellent translation by Ian
Appleby<http://wordswithoutborders.org/book-review/oleg-pavlovs-captain-of-the-steppe>
".
--

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