In 1901, no one could criticise the Tsar directly and hope to escape unhappy fate. "Aesopian language" of a fable, which had been developed into a form of art by earlier writers such as Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, was not infrequently used by the critics of the regime. Maxim Gorky wrote "The Song of the Storm Petrel" in March 1901 in Nizhny Novgorod. It is believed that originally the text was part of a larger piece, called "Spring Melodies" and subtitled "Fantasy". In this "fantasy", the author overhears a conversation of birds outside his window on a late-winter day: a crow, a raven, and a bullfinch representing the monarchist establishment; sparrows, "lesser people"; and anti-establishment siskins. As the birds discussing the approach of the spring, it is one of the siskins who sings to his comrades "the Song of the Stormy Petrel, which he had overheard somewhere", which appears as the "fantasy's" finale. In the "Song", the action takes place on an ocean coast, far from the streets of a central Russian town; the language calling for revolution is coded—the proud stormy petrel, unafraid of the storm, as all other birds cower. The publication of this parody of the Russian society was disallowed by the censors; however, apparently because of a censor's mistake, the siskin's "Song" was allowed to be published as a separate piece. The entire "fantasy" was published in Berlin in 1902. The "Song" was first published in the Zhizn magazine in April 1901. Gorky was arrested for publishing "The Song", but released shortly thereafter. The poem was later referred to as "the battle anthem of the revolution", and the epithetBurevestnik Revolyutsii soon became attached to Gorky himself. According to Nadezhda Krupskaya, "The Song" became one of Lenin's favorite works by Gorky.
As a poet, Gorky would not pay too much attention to precisely identifying the birds species appearing in his "Song". The Russian word burevestnik is applied to a number of species in the families Procellariidae and Pelecanoididae. According to Vladimir Dal's Dal's Dictionary, Russia's favorite dictionary in Maxim Gorky's time, burevestnik could be understood as a generic word for all Procellariidae. This Russian word is not, however, used to specifically name the species properly known in English as storm-petrel, or any other individual species from its family. However, since the Russian burevestnik can be literally parsed by the speaker as 'the announcer of the storm', it was only appropriate for most translators into English to translate the title of the poem as "Stormy Petrel". Other avian characters of the poem are generic seagulls, loons, and a penguin. While North Hemisphere loons and south hemisphere penguins are not likely to meet in the wild, their joint participation in the poem is a legitimate example of a poetic license. Or the penguin might refer to the extinct great auk, genus Pinguinus, once known commonly as "penguins".
Translations
The Song was translated into many languages, including German, Japanese, and Hebrew.
The text of the poem
The text in original Russian and English translation follows.
Commemoration
The popularity of the poem in Russia's revolutionary circles, and the later "canonization" of Gorky as a preeminent classic of the "proletarian literature" ensured the wide spreading of the image of the Burevestnik in the Soviet propaganda imagery. A variety of institutions, products, and publications would bear the name "Burevestnik", including a national sports club, a series of hydrofoil boats, an air base in the Kuril Islands, a labor-union resort on the Gorky Reservoir, a Moscow-Nizhny Novgorod express train, and even a brand of candy. . Naturally, Burevestnik-themed names were especially popular in Gorky Oblast. Maxim Gorky himself would be referred to with the epithet "the Stormy Petrel of the Revolution" ; monuments, posters, postage stamps and commemorative coins depicting the writer would often be decorated with the image of a soaring aquatic bird.
