An Audience of the Liberated: A Transliteration of Yevgeny Vuchetich's Narrative Bas-Reliefs and Statuary at the Soviet World War II Memorial In Treptower Park, East Berlin

Abstract

This piece documents the memorial and cemetery dedicated to Soviet soldiers killed in the Battle of Berlin at the closing of the second World War. The monument was unveiled to the public on May 8, 1949. Brown's text, completed after a year of observation in 2011, is interested in achieving the purest translation of Mr. Vuchetich's bas-reliefs possible, though it is in some sense an ekphrasis, a dramatic textual recreation of another art form. The resulting idiosyncrasies in speaker/subject are some of the crucial relics of this process, as are gaps in narrative arc and the surprising absence of place-names and overtly Soviet content. The text covers all 16 bas-reliefs as well as the monumental bronze figure at the architectural and ideological center of the monument. The text lacks essayistic or historical contextualization and hopes to convey through narrative something of the paradoxes and subtleties of the monument for wider audiences.