The Milkmaid

Milkmaid (1962) by Aleksandr Deyneka

Lyrics

The figure of the young milkmaid Is full of live plasticity The picture of the young milkmaid Is full of virtuosity

The rhythm of patient work is there — It's in her arms, her legs, her waist The look is guarded and severe In her clean young open face

See what her snow-white smock reveals Stretched by her blooming young body; She lifts her heavy milking pails — But she's cultured — not just anybody

She's radiant with happiness And content with her fulfilled life; She's beautiful and so graceful; She would make someone a good wife

And we can sense in her movements Rhythmic devices: she'll master Technological improvement That makes progress happen faster

The picture of the young milkmaid Is made only of mosaic But it's a monumental work Healthy, joyful and heroic

Chronology

• Kangaroo?
  • Lora Logic - vocals, saxophone
  • C81 compilation
  • An Old Man's Dream
  • Singles

Retrospectives

Description in the liner notes to C81

Art & Language, 1981

The Milkmaid is a monstrosity of detente. It is also didactic. It refers to a real picture, a wall mosaic in the USSR.

The language of the song refers to the language of those who would claim that the picture is both socialist and realist. It is the rhapsodic language of bureaucratic lyricism.

The music of the song refers to some Western formulae of romantic innocence and sensitivity: cabaret pastorale.

The performance of the song is a didactic act by agents estranged from the materials of which it is composed.

A resolution of this monstrosity is possible only as a consequence of an inquiry which seeks to explain the mechanisms of these genetic materials. The contradictions of the present are such as to make such an inquiry only partly thinkable.

Art & Language, 1981

In 'The Milkmaid', the conjunction of knowing western cabaret pastorale music with the bureaucratic lyricism of Soviet Socalist Realist art appreciation is by no means obviously a conjunction of contrasts. At the same time the discourses of which they are severally composed are putatively oppositional. The puzzle for the listener is finally to make sense of the song on the basis of the discovery that they are stalked by hiatus.

Interpretations

• In 2020, Mayo Thompson made a painting titled Milk, based on Vermeer's The Milkmaid

Various artists compilations

• 1981: NME / Rough Trade C81 (UK)
• 1981: Best/Rough Trade (France)
• 1983: Clear Cut 4: Flower Pot (Japan)