tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-57210934208787414202024-03-13T07:57:46.651-07:00The Flaxen WaveOn Poetry, Translation, and East European CulturesJamie Olsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17524484538967246768noreply@blogger.comBlogger90125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721093420878741420.post-56815264072954835122022-02-24T11:28:00.001-08:002024-01-10T13:12:56.894-08:00"What Do Sheep Talk About?" by Irina Yevsa<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEisV8CDgAEhuYnGZY2CAj3xH8gT5okfcFtt9Fsd1kBzT9m7pDqUD3Rx-GmC6q6GDSWT0jDiaNVm2tMrQ_gCYlvKfPUo4bg5JruE3QxcdY8OnsLakZldsScYjBEwcIXyhCbIDbGL6mC2kpPEp0Urzo7x5fLSCu7Z9Yss9SyG9haxrPJYeACxIw8O4y4=s1024" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="710" data-original-width="1024" height="222" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEisV8CDgAEhuYnGZY2CAj3xH8gT5okfcFtt9Fsd1kBzT9m7pDqUD3Rx-GmC6q6GDSWT0jDiaNVm2tMrQ_gCYlvKfPUo4bg5JruE3QxcdY8OnsLakZldsScYjBEwcIXyhCbIDbGL6mC2kpPEp0Urzo7x5fLSCu7Z9Yss9SyG9haxrPJYeACxIw8O4y4=s320" width="320"></a></div><i><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Site of shelling in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on Feb. 24, 2022 / <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/24/world/europe/kharkiv-russia.html">Photo </a>by Vyacheslav Madiyevskyy (Reuters)</span></i></div></i><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><p></p><p>Today, Russian troops invaded Ukraine. There have been reports of explosions in Kharkiv, the largest city in the northeast. Kharkiv is the home of Irina Yevsa, the author of this 2017 poem. </p><p>As a veteran and advocate for peace, my heart goes out to the people of Ukraine and to the soldiers on both sides who will suffer and even die in this war.</p><p>Who runs the slaughterhouse? (We know the answer, of course.)</p><p><br></p><p>* * *</p><p class="MsoNormal">What do sheep talk about,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">mindless amid the rabble,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">as they head to the
slaughter?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">To the left and right of
them,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">a detail of stern sheepdogs<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">keeps order in the ranks.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">On the front line, the rams<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">bleat triumphantly, “Glory<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">to those who provide food!”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A mad chorus of voices<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">responds, “Slice up the traitors!<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Enemies—into the pot!”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Above, the vault of heaven.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Behind, the landscape of
home.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Ahead, the slaughterhouse
gates.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The bravest march straight
in,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">while others get a horn<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">in the flank. As everyone<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">is knocked about, some shout,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“Man the battering ram!”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But the last of them soils<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">the grass and strains his
throat<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">as he lets out an awful<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">shriek, “I’m a veteran!”<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;"><i><span>Translated by Jamie Olson</span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span><span></span></span></p><a href="http://flaxenwave.blogspot.com/2022/02/what-do-sheep-talk-about-by-irina-yevsa.html#more">Read more »</a>Jamie Olsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17524484538967246768noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721093420878741420.post-895819019995346162020-12-25T14:51:00.006-08:002020-12-26T10:54:00.429-08:00Brodsky's "Flight": A Nativity Poem<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0fgBo2Azx9g/X-ZrOrmb3RI/AAAAAAAAA58/QK-b-EnAA4ILZOMKUXYnZ2iFNuif-ioAwCLcBGAsYHQ/s480/flight_into_egypt_1305.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="472" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0fgBo2Azx9g/X-ZrOrmb3RI/AAAAAAAAA58/QK-b-EnAA4ILZOMKUXYnZ2iFNuif-ioAwCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/flight_into_egypt_1305.jpg"></a></div><p style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Giotto di Bondone, "The Flight into Egypt" / Courtesy of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Flight_into_Egypt_-_Capella_dei_Scrovegni_-_Padua_2016.jpg" target="_blank">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></i></p><p style="text-align: center;"><br></p><p><b>Flight into Egypt</b></p><p> by Joseph Brodsky</p><p><br></p><p> …nobody knew where the herdsman had come from.</p><p><br></p><p>Out there in a desert chosen by the sky for</p><p>the miracle, they stopped for the night and kindled</p><p>a campfire, echoing the star. Without sensing</p><p>the role he would play, in a snow-laden shelter</p><p>the child lay asleep amid a golden halo</p><p>of hair, which had already taken on the habit</p><p>of radiance—not just for this dark-haired empire</p><p>at this moment, but, truly akin to the star, for </p><p>as long as the earth exists: everywhere.</p><p><br></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;">December 25, 1988</p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Translated from the Russian by Jamie Olson</i></span></p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><p><br></p><p><b><span></span></b></p><a href="http://flaxenwave.blogspot.com/2020/12/brodskys-flight.html#more">Read more »</a>Jamie Olsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17524484538967246768noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721093420878741420.post-1833997245339341952019-09-20T12:07:00.003-07:002020-12-26T21:44:22.096-08:00Kibirov's Poplar<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7IzAIdnJAa4/XYUdav7kGyI/AAAAAAAAA0I/VIE6vdA4jdM2ORvP6ysF-K8E-xwtvUZ6wCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/PNW_logo1.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="121" data-original-width="466" height="83" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7IzAIdnJAa4/XYUdav7kGyI/AAAAAAAAA0I/VIE6vdA4jdM2ORvP6ysF-K8E-xwtvUZ6wCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/PNW_logo1.png" width="320"></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Image courtesy of <u><a href="https://www.poetrynw.org/">Poetry Northwest</a></u></span></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br></div>
I've clearly been doing a terrible job of keeping up this blog, but here's a <a href="https://www.poetrynw.org/timur-kibirov-from-romances-of-the-cheryomushki-district-translation-by-jamie-olson/">belated link</a> to my translation of a poem by Timur Kibirov, which I was very happy to place with the venerable journal <i>Poetry Northwest</i>. If the gods are kind to me, there will be plenty more of his poems showing up in English in the coming years. They're piling up in my notebooks, desk drawers, and on hard drives...<br>
<br>
The poem also appeared in Russia in the 2016 anthology <a href="https://www.ozon.ru/context/detail/id/140150786/"><i>100 Poems about Moscow</i> / <i>100 стихотворений о Москве</i></a>, edited by Maxim Amelin with much help wrangling translators from Anne O. Fisher—or Annie, as we in the translation crowd know her.<br>
<br>
Here are the opening two stanzas, with the Russian below the fold:<br>
<br>
<br>
<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><b>from the cycle “Romances of the Cheryomushki District”</b><br>
On valor, on heroism, on the glory<br>
of the Communist Party on the bitter earth,<br>
on Ligachev and Okudzhava,<br>
on the poplar that rustles in the mist.<br>
On the poplar by my window, on you and<br>
your warm body, on the poplar right here,<br>
on how we’ve barely left the cradle,<br>
the grave awaits, and nothing is clear.</blockquote>
<br><br>(You can read the full poem and my translator's note <a href="https://www.poetrynw.org/timur-kibirov-from-romances-of-the-cheryomushki-district-translation-by-jamie-olson/">here</a>.)<div><br>
</div><a href="http://flaxenwave.blogspot.com/2019/09/kibirovs-poplar.html#more">Read more »</a>Jamie Olsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17524484538967246768noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721093420878741420.post-79937149216450213902018-12-25T00:01:00.000-08:002019-03-27T14:15:18.965-07:00A Nativity Poem by Konstantin Vaginov<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3EJTBOn-XvM/XCHalxTNS9I/AAAAAAAAAvw/rgpt0ZFjW14sAvXaGGz9M24gyN9lKBAbgCLcBGAs/s1600/vaginov.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="599" data-original-width="429" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3EJTBOn-XvM/XCHalxTNS9I/AAAAAAAAAvw/rgpt0ZFjW14sAvXaGGz9M24gyN9lKBAbgCLcBGAs/s320/vaginov.jpg" width="228"></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Konstantin Vaginov (unknown photographer, circa 1920) / Image courtesy of <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Konstantin_Vaginov.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></i><br>
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><br></b>
<br>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">My Finger Gleams Like
the Star of Bethlehem</b></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> by </span>Konstantin Vaginov</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My finger gleams like the star of Bethlehem:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
the garden looms within it, a stream sighs.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now Jesus comes, drifts off beneath a fig tree,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and plays dreary old songs on a Greek lyre.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I had walked with care around a house doomed</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
to fall, and then took twelve soft, shaky steps</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and set off through the Haymarket to hear the star</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
smoldering above black snow and icy streets.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;">
From “Petersburg Nights,” 1919-1923<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;">
<br></div>
<div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Translated from the Russian by Jamie Olson</i></div>
<div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><br></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<a href="http://flaxenwave.blogspot.com/2018/12/a-nativity-poem-by-konstantin-vaginov.html#more">Read more »</a>Jamie Olsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17524484538967246768noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721093420878741420.post-84746483118246710662017-12-25T14:32:00.000-08:002018-01-30T10:38:55.684-08:00Lenin’s Christmas: A Nativity Poem<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://www.e-reading.club/illustrations/7/7418-i_010.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JjlRibBf5eQ/WmfxsoycN2I/AAAAAAAAAsw/kRKKZ2yGDTsdotUBo-fOJ8__UEU4BSwNACLcBGAs/s1600/lenin_w_kids.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="645" data-original-width="488" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JjlRibBf5eQ/WmfxsoycN2I/AAAAAAAAAsw/kRKKZ2yGDTsdotUBo-fOJ8__UEU4BSwNACLcBGAs/s320/lenin_w_kids.jpg" width="241"></a></div>
<i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;">Unattributed illustration from Bonch-Bruyevich’s <u>Lenin and the Children</u> (1975) / Image courtesy of <a href="https://www.e-reading.club/chapter.php/7418/3/Bonch-Bruevich_-_Lenin_i_deti.html">e-Reading</a></span></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"><br></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: inherit;">From “Christmas” (1985)</span></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">by Timur Kibirov</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>7</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> … Yet the Son slept</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">a sweet sleep, and over His brow</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">streamed the light from last night’s</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>8</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Star, blending with the radiance</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">of the scarlet dawn.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Free from anger or sadness,</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">bubbles formed on</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">those Lips that yet again would</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">give the Good News, that would</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">grimace and spit blood</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">and praise the merciful Lord…</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>9</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">But the news spread, and rumor</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">filled the world.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">At last it reached the Kremlin,</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">our Russian stronghold.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> And the tall blue firs rustled!</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The cannon fired for the first time!</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">A watchman recoiled in terror!</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">And then from the mausoleum</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>10</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">he came. He climbed into the car.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Iron Felix sat beside him.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Behind the wheel was the “Sailor,”<span style="font-size: xx-small;">*</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">staring down anyone they passed.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">They flew faster than the wind.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">They drove up. They knocked.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">A smile beamed</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">from the face of Ilyich.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">He had come with New Year’s gifts:</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">the Peace Decree, saccharin,</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">a copy of the Great Initiative,</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">the log he’d hauled at the work party,</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>11</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">first-rate provisions, and a bouquet</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">of white paper roses,</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">just as alluring and bright</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">as our poet Blok evoked them.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">A bust of Marx, a pioneer scarf,</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">a packet of blank arrest forms,</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">the 3rd Congress of the Komsomol,</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">and a bayonet from the Red Guard.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>12</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">They left the Sailor standing</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">at the door. They went in.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">No sooner had they seen Him</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">than they became bewildered</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">and backed away in terror.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Their faces grew pale. They trembled</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">and dissolved in the air… The Sailor</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">instantly toppled off the porch</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">and sprawled out like a worm.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">But listen! Already, the horns</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>13</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">of battle have begun to sound</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">from far off in the distance.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Our armor is strong! Our hand</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">is firm! Our fury is righteous!</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The sky quakes with thunder —</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">propeller, sing your furious song!</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">And now an NKVD squad</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">has got the place surrounded</span>…</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"><br></span></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"><i>Translated from the Russian by Jamie Olson</i></span><br>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"><i><br></i></span>
<br>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;">______________</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"><br></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;">* Anatoly Grigoryevich Zheleznyakov (1895-1919), also known as “Sailor Zheleznyak,” was an anarchist, seaman in the Baltic fleet, and one of the leaders of the Bolshevik revolution in 1917. During the Russian Civil War, he commanded a brigade of armored trains and died from a chest wound sustained in a battle against White army troops in Ukraine.</span></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"><br></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"></span></div>
<a href="http://flaxenwave.blogspot.com/2017/12/lenins-christmas-nativity-poem.html#more">Read more »</a>Jamie Olsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17524484538967246768noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721093420878741420.post-79280362591292971592017-12-01T17:00:00.000-08:002017-12-01T22:17:28.580-08:00What's That Smell?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5jvuLE-_ajE/WiH4Bg-TMbI/AAAAAAAAApY/AjUuFaFxelstRcVH9iOlO5XwbBa9WW5fwCEwYBhgL/s1600/shashlyk.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="493" data-original-width="745" height="211" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5jvuLE-_ajE/WiH4Bg-TMbI/AAAAAAAAApY/AjUuFaFxelstRcVH9iOlO5XwbBa9WW5fwCEwYBhgL/s320/shashlyk.jpg" width="320"></a></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Kebabs,
a.k.a. shashlyk / Image courtesy of </span><span lang="RU"><a href="https://sxodim.com/almaty/news/best-shashlik-in-almaty/">Давай сходим!</a><i><o:p></o:p></i></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br></span>
</span><br>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="RU" style="color: black; font-family: "times"; mso-ansi-language: RU; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt;">For a few years now, the Russian contingent of the <span style="color: blue; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><a href="http://literarytranslators.org/">American Literary Translators Association</a></span> has
organized a workshop for translators working in either direction with our two
languages: Russian and English. The discussions at these workshops are
completely fascinating and have become – for me – one of the highlights of the
ALTA conference. In a sense, those discussions amount to a kind of
crowdsourcing, with seasoned and novice translators alike all pitching in their
ideas to solve problems. Anyone can bring a handout with translation
conundrums, and all who attend are welcome to take part in the conversation.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="RU" style="color: black; font-family: "times"; mso-ansi-language: RU; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt;">This year, the theme of the workshop – organized by Shelley Fairweather-Vega
and Annie Fisher – was </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt;">“Only in
Russia,” in which our aim was to “discuss translating concepts, objects, or
practices that are specific to Russophone culture (or that have no easily
identifiable equivalent in Anglophone culture).” My own approach was to
highlight a handful of completely mundane but ubiquitous words and phrases that
I took from poems by Boris Slutsky, Irina Yevsa, and Linor Goralik. Each of my
examples involved objects or concepts, especially from the Soviet period, that
any native speaker of Russian would instantly understand but that translators
might find tricky to capture in English.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "times"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt;">For instance, nearly every
Soviet kid strove to become an </span><span lang="RU" style="color: black; font-family: "times"; mso-ansi-language: RU; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt;">«октябрёнок»</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt;">, but how
does one import into English the whole context of Young Pioneers and their age
gradations? (My solution: the kid became a “Pioneer Cub,” on the model of the
Boy Scouts and their younger comrades, the Cub Scouts.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "times"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt;">And what to do with a poem
that has its characters playing </span><span lang="RU" style="color: black; font-family: "times"; mso-ansi-language: RU; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt;">«в города»</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt;">? Should
the word game even be mentioned? Won’t it distract from the action of the poem?
(My solution: they played “I Spy” instead.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "times"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt;">But my prime example –
which, in the event, we didn’t have time to discuss – was something I brought
in to demonstrate what I deemed untranslatable: the opening lines of a book by
Timur Kibirov in which he catalogs the characteristic odors of his Soviet life.
How can you translate scent, that most immediately specific, memory-bound, and
place-based of the senses? I thought it couldn't be done. I didn’t even want to
bother trying.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br>
</div></div></div><a href="http://flaxenwave.blogspot.com/2017/12/whats-that-smell.html#more">Read more »</a>Jamie Olsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17524484538967246768noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721093420878741420.post-37035607612034839242016-12-24T10:00:00.000-08:002016-12-24T15:54:00.071-08:00A Nativity Poem by Valentin Berestov<div style="text-align: center;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3u9ilEKTqKk/WF3LvlI4dyI/AAAAAAAAAmg/hc_IeB7ppgk2N7gR3DiQxHDQDsYhqd1OACLcB/s1600/berestov.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3u9ilEKTqKk/WF3LvlI4dyI/AAAAAAAAAmg/hc_IeB7ppgk2N7gR3DiQxHDQDsYhqd1OACLcB/s320/berestov.jpg" width="284"></a></div>
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>Valentin Berestov (undated photograph) / Image courtesy of Pskov's <a href="http://bibliopskov.ru/archaeologist.htm"><span id="goog_938696022"></span>Centralized Library System<span id="goog_938696023"></span></a></i></span></div>
<i><br>[NOTE: As I have done <a href="http://flaxenwave.blogspot.com/search/label/Nativity%20poems">in previous years</a>, I'm posting a nativity poem for the Christmas season. Enjoy!]</i><br>
<br>
* * *<br>
<br>
<b>Yuletide</b><br>
by <a href="http://berestov.org/?page_id=75">Valentin Berestov</a><br>
<br>
Every year, when Christ is born, <br>
beauty comes into the world. <br>
<br>
January icicles<br>
flood with light. <br>
January ice-crust <br>
holds your weight.<br>
<br>
January snow grants you speed. <br>
It glitters and blushes at noon, <br>
it gleams in the half-light of the moon.<br>
And every January day<br>
outstretches its own yesterday.<br>
And each night feels just the time <br>
for feasting, revelry, and wine.<br>
<div>
<br></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<i>1985</i></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br></span></i></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Translated from the Russian by Jamie Olson</span></i></div>
<div>
<br></div>
<div>
<div>
______________________</div>
<div>
<br></div>
<div>
<b>Translator’s note:</b> Russian Orthodox Christians, who follow the Julian calendar for all church holidays, celebrate Christmas on January 7, not December 25.</div>
</div>
<div>
<br>
<br>
* * *<br>
<br>
</div><a href="http://flaxenwave.blogspot.com/2016/12/a-nativity-poem-by-valentin-berestov_24.html#more">Read more »</a>Jamie Olsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17524484538967246768noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721093420878741420.post-78277196320757847102016-01-28T22:55:00.001-08:002016-01-28T22:55:26.403-08:00Slutsky's Gaze<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-RnH7KsouAak/VqsLKkx6WUI/AAAAAAAAAlA/EXl1MWC_-YY/s1600/slutsky.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="242" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-RnH7KsouAak/VqsLKkx6WUI/AAAAAAAAAlA/EXl1MWC_-YY/s320/slutsky.jpg" width="320"></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Boris Slutsky (1963) / Image courtesy of <a href="http://www.svoboda.org/content/article/1741761.html">Radio Svoboda</a></span></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Holding a Gaze</b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
by Boris Slutsky</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
An honest man</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
should look others straight in the eye.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We don’t know why.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What if the honest man</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
has watery, bloodshot eyes? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What if the dishonest one </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
has terrific eyesight?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Somehow, those who served as safe-keepers </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
in every time and place </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
learned to judge truthfulness </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
by firmness of gaze.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Did the spies who protected,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
say, Sulla really have the right</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
to sort dishonest from honest?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And was Tamerlane’s secret service,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
for instance, really</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
made up of moralists?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Everyone who sees has the right</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
to run their eyes madly up and down</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and be judged not by their gaze,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
not by scent or sound, </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
but by word and deed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Translated by Jamie Olson<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="RU" style="mso-ansi-language: RU;"></span></b></div>
<a href="http://flaxenwave.blogspot.com/2016/01/slutskys-gaze.html#more">Read more »</a>Jamie Olsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17524484538967246768noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721093420878741420.post-54008550003655414042016-01-01T00:01:00.000-08:002016-01-03T22:36:22.993-08:00Pineapples in champagne!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JmTofYE2TEs/VodsYGaPiEI/AAAAAAAAAko/lLYQ1G112wQ/s1600/ananasy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JmTofYE2TEs/VodsYGaPiEI/AAAAAAAAAko/lLYQ1G112wQ/s320/ananasy.jpg" width="225"></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>First edition of Severyanin's <u>Pineapples</u> (1915) / Image courtesy of <a href="http://all-pix.com/ananasy-v-shampanskom-severyanin">allpix.com</a></i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Overture<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Igor Severyanin</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Pineapples in champagne! Pineapples in champagne!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Spectacularly sparkling—tasty and zesty!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I dive into Norway, I’m swimming in Spain!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
With a mind-bolt of vision, I jump for my pencil!<span lang="RU" style="mso-ansi-language: RU;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The whirr of airplanes! The buzz of racecars!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Wing-beats from iceboats! Wind-claps from train cars! </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Hey, someone got beat up! Whoa, someone got kissed! </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Pineapples in champagne—the nighttime’s own pulse!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
With nervous girls, in a crowd of tough dames,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’ll change life’s tragedy to dreamlike farce…</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Pineapples in champagne! Pineapples in champagne!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
From Moscow to Nagasaki! From New York to Mars!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">January 1915</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Petrograd</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 2.5in; text-align: right;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Translated from the Russian by Jamie Olson</span><o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 2.5in;">
<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 2.5in;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<a href="http://flaxenwave.blogspot.com/2016/01/pineapples-in-champagne.html#more">Read more »</a>Jamie Olsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17524484538967246768noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721093420878741420.post-76899346241247606322015-12-24T12:00:00.000-08:002015-12-24T12:00:02.299-08:00Christmas at the "Dacha"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6Z_hjI0f6fA/VnuEoqseLgI/AAAAAAAAAkY/6bHxLZmnUbQ/s1600/kashchenko.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="232" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6Z_hjI0f6fA/VnuEoqseLgI/AAAAAAAAAkY/6bHxLZmnUbQ/s320/kashchenko.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Moscow Clinical Psychiatric Hospital No. 1 (undated photo) / Image courtesy of <a href="http://liveinmsk.ru/places/a-653.html">liveinmsk.ru</a></span></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This Christmas, in place of my usual translation of a
nativity poem by a Russian poet, I’m posting an excerpt from an <a href="http://magazines.russ.ru/neva/2012/1/a18.html">article</a> by
Yelena Aizenshtein (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Neva</i>, #<span lang="RU" style="mso-ansi-language: RU;">1</span>, 2012). In this passage, she
comments on a <a href="http://scanpoetry.ru/poetry/12005">lesser-known Christmas poem</a> by Joseph Brodsky, written on the eve
of his famous trial and internal exile to the village of Norenskaya for “social
parasitism” (<span lang="RU" style="mso-ansi-language: RU;">тунеядство)</span>. I
considered simply translating the poem that Aizenshtein describes, but I think her
commentary sheds necessary light on parts of the text that could otherwise
remain murky. Here is what she has to say:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
In 1964, Brodsky spent the New Year
holiday in a psychiatric hospital in Moscow: there had been a “war council” at
the Ardovs on December 27, 1963, with the participation of Akhmatova.<span style="mso-ansi-language: RU;"> </span>It was decided that he could avoid arrest
if he got treatment with the help of some psychiatrists they knew at the
Kashchenko Mental Hospital and then received a certificate of his “mental
instability.” On January 8, 1964, the day after Orthodox Christmas, the
newspaper <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Evening Leningrad </i>published
a selection of indignant “readers’ letters” demanding harsh punishment for the
“social parasite Brodsky.” That January, Brodsky wrote the poem “New Year’s at
the Kanatchikovo Dacha.”*
He paints his lines in gloomy tones. The poet sees the absence of traditional
Christmas images as omens of an unlucky year and its coming calamities:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0in;">
No magi, no donkey,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0in;">
no star, no blizzard</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0in;">
to save the child from death—</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0in;">
they disperse like circles</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0in;">
at the strike of an oar.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
The poem is structured on the model
of a lullaby for oneself, sung from the sixth ward—this is the Chekhovian “Ward
No. 6,” and it is a terrible billet, “a land where insulin is king,” where
Brodsky ended up “in clouds of bed sheets,” instead of in the sky of free
thought. The poet sees himself as a Christmas goose devoured by the power of
the state.<span lang="RU" style="mso-ansi-language: RU;"> The lullaby helps the </span>speaker
of the poem not to fear his fate: “Sleep, Christmas goose. / Fall quickly
asleep.”<span style="mso-ansi-language: RU;"> </span>Another image that stands in
for the speaker is a cricket singing from behind the baseboard (was Brodsky
thinking of Pushkin’s nickname?), whose song corresponds to the song of a large
violin bow, somehow contrary to the violence of the institute:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0in;">
The song sung by a cricket</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0in;">
here in the red baseboard</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0in;">
is like the song of a great bow,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0in;">
since sounds always grow,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0in;">
like the glint of your pupil</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0in;">
through the great institute.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
The Christmas motif is made
invisible in the USSR, like a “double winter” that has lasted two thousand
years: only the blizzard and the winter landscape remind us of Christmas. The author
cunningly structures the text as not quite “normal,” as unwell: the theme of
fear is made urgently relevant, with white as an analogue for the hospital,
lifelessness, death, unfreedom.<span style="mso-ansi-language: RU;"> </span>But
the poem contains the author’s ruefully ironic view on what is happening: “the
night turns white with a key / split fifty-fifty with the head doctor.” It
concludes with a tercet in which the rhyme words are ‘hospitals’, ‘eye-sockets’,
and ‘birds’ [<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bol</i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><i>'</i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">nitsy, glaznitsy, ptitsy</i>],
images of the author’s existence in the psychiatric hospital, and his sense of
dread at the endured moment:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0in;">
bodies’ terror – of hospitals,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0in;">
clouds’ terror – of eye-sockets,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0in;">
insects’ terror – of birds.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">[Translation mine]<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p>* * *</o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p><br /></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’m sure some will find the content of this post a tad
gloomy for the holiday season, but if Brodsky’s experience is any indicator,
Christmas is not always sugarplums dancing in our heads. Anyway, I find some
solace in the mere fact of his turning that experience into art—and going on to
write his nativity poems for decades to come.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Merry Christmas?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">__________________</i></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span lang="RU">* </span>“Kanatchikovo Dacha” is a well-known nickname for the Kashchenko Mental Hospital,
whose official name is actually Moscow Clinical Psychiatric Hospital No. 1. Until 1994, the hospital was named for Pyotr Kashchenko (1858-1920), a noted Russian psychiatrist, and since then has been named for Nikolai Alekseyev (1852-1893), the Moscow city leader who founded the hospital in 1894. The hospital is located in the Kanatchikovo district of Moscow.</span></div>
Jamie Olsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17524484538967246768noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721093420878741420.post-12154566024500500302015-10-16T00:50:00.001-07:002015-10-22T22:08:09.320-07:00Chudakov, Word-Plyer<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-b1CENUa58Y4/ViCnPMuo7II/AAAAAAAAAjU/pallOy4PRUQ/s1600/chudakov.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="210" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-b1CENUa58Y4/ViCnPMuo7II/AAAAAAAAAjU/pallOy4PRUQ/s320/chudakov.jpg" width="320"></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Photo of Sergei Chudakov by Roman Prygunov (1988) / Image
courtesy of </span><a href="http://galchi.livejournal.com/1429730.html" style="font-size: x-small;">galchi</a></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This month, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Znamia </i>published
a recently <a href="http://magazines.russ.ru/znamia/2015/10/10ch.html">rediscovered cycle</a> of poems by <a href="http://rvb.ru/np/publication/01text/08/02chudakov.htm">Sergei Chudakov</a> (1937-1997), the
Moscow underground poet who was famously—if prematurely—elegized by Joseph
Brodsky in “To a Friend: In Memoriam” (<span lang="RU" style="mso-ansi-language: RU;">«На смерть друга», 1973</span>). In his own poem, Brodsky called Chudakov
“a word-plyer, a liar … a white-fanged little snake in the tarpaulin-boot
colonnade of gendarmes,” and something of that blend of poetic
inventiveness and misfit presence comes through loud and clear in these newly
published poems. They function like a time capsule into a place where you can finally hear the voices you weren’t supposed to hear.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Chudakov wrote his cycle of 30 poems in the summer of 1965,
and editor Vladimir Orlov tells us that they were inspired by Lev Eidlin’s
translations of classical Chinese poet Bai Juyi. Appropriately enough, Chudakov’s
poems appear in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Znamia</i> under the
title “Stuck in Moscow for the Summer, I Imitate a Chinese Author.” (Funny, I
can think of a few American writers who were doing the same thing at the same
time… Snyder, anyone? I guess cultural cooptation was all the rage on both sides of
the curtain back then.)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Bai Juyi, who lived during the Tang Dynasty, wrote his poems
in four-line <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulated_verse">regulated verse</a>, which translator Eidlin then modified by
breaking each line into two, with a caesura after the second beat, thus
creating a new and exotic form: the Russified eight-line pseudo-Chinese poemlet.
And Chudakov, it seems, loved it. (You can read an example of Eidlin’s work, in
Russian, on <a href="http://wikilivres.ru/%D0%A1%D0%BD%D0%B5%D0%B6%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B9_%D0%BD%D0%BE%D1%87%D1%8C%D1%8E_%D0%B2_%D0%B4%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%BD%D0%B5_(%D0%91%D0%BE_%D0%A6%D0%B7%D1%8E%D0%B9-%D0%B8/%D0%AD%D0%B9%D0%B4%D0%BB%D0%B8%D0%BD)">Wikilivres</a>.)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The key thing to notice about Chudakov’s poems, especially
in this cycle—really, the thing you can’t help but notice—is the casual, gritty
style. Unlikely as it may seem to anyone who knows midcentury Russian poetry, Chudakov
writes in the colloquial, banal, autobiographical vein familiar to those who have read the poets of the New
York School. These are <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lunch Poems </i>for
Moscow. Not much happens in them, but the voice is irresistible. My favorite of
the bunch is the third one, “On How I Nearly Became Amphibian-Man,” which
seems to me to present the very image of the “unofficial” poet of the period:
apart from the crowd, amid the detritus of Soviet life, powerless:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
The water is 18ºC. I swim.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I
watch the riverbank.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
I keep a close eye on my pants.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I
don’t have another pair.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
If someone makes off with them,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I’ll
have to swim forever</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
in the middle of the river<span lang="RU" style="mso-ansi-language: RU;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>among
cigarette butts and oil slicks.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br></div>
<div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-align: right;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">[All translations mine]</i></span></div>
<a href="http://flaxenwave.blogspot.com/2015/10/chudakov-word-plyer.html#more">Read more »</a>Jamie Olsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17524484538967246768noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721093420878741420.post-21207048085460261732015-09-25T12:14:00.001-07:002015-11-05T13:25:30.391-08:00Into Primordial Emptiness<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-BB1QZbmFrtk/VgWUnRqXoEI/AAAAAAAAAb8/OMBCw29V-qg/s1600/little_golden_america.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-BB1QZbmFrtk/VgWUnRqXoEI/AAAAAAAAAb8/OMBCw29V-qg/s320/little_golden_america.jpg" width="196" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>First U.S. edition of Ilf & Petrov's travelogue (Farrar & Rinehart, 1937) / Image courtesy of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Little-Golden-America-Eugene-Petrov/dp/B000LWK7H8">Amazon</a></i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="RU" style="mso-ansi-language: RU;">In a recent
postscript to his weekly <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">American Hour</i>
(<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Американский час</i>) on Radio Svoboda, </span>Alexander
Genis articulated a conclusion he’d come to that struck me as remarkable in its
insightfulness. The theme of the segment was “<a href="http://www.svoboda.org/content/transcript/27124645.html">America through the Eyes of Russian Writers</a>,” and special emphasis was placed on Ilf and Petrov’s 1935 travelogue <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">One-Story America </i>(<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="RU" style="mso-ansi-language: RU;">Одноэтажная Америка</span></i>),
named for the predominance of houses with just one floor here. Previous
episodes had focused on Maxim Gorky, Sergei Yesenin, and Vladimir Mayakovsky, each
of whom had also visited and written about the United States in the early part of the twentieth century. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Genis, a brilliant essayist, concluded the series by
throwing in his own two cents on the subject, extrapolating outward from the commentary
by correspondent Vladimir Abarinov and his guest Nikolai Rudensky. That’s when
my interest was piqued.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
First, a quick tangent: note that Ilf and Petrov’s book was published
in English the first time, cleverly, as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/little-golden-america-two-famous-soviet-humorists-survey-these-united-states/oclc/943755">Little Golden America</a></i> (trans. Charles Malamuth, 1937) and more recently as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://www.papress.com/html/book.details.page.tpl?isbn=9781616892524">Ilf and Petrov’s American Road Trip</a></i> (edited
by Erika Wolf & translated by Anne O. Fisher, 2007), in an edition that
includes the photographs Ilya Ilf took for the Soviet magazine <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogoniok">Ogonyok</a></i>. I recommend the newer book;
it’s great fun to flip through!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now, back to Genis and his insight on Russians in America.
I’ll let him speak for himself:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
…Vladimir Abarinov has to admit
that our fellow Russian writers who visited this country didn’t like it—not
Gorky, not Yesenin, not Mayakovsky, and not Ilf or Petrov (to these names, one
might add Pilnyak, Ehrenburg, and many others).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
Why? Perhaps because they had all
come to the New World for new impressions. From dilapidated Europe, the
traveler arrived in the land of the machine, where, as Yesenin put it, “every
cigarette butt grew into a smokestack.” Not noticing the machine in America was
as hard as not finding the Eiffel Tower in Paris.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
…<span lang="RU" style="mso-ansi-language: RU;">Ilf and Petrov</span>’<span lang="RU" style="mso-ansi-language: RU;">s true
heroes are highways, gas pumps, </span>assembly lines, automobiles, dams,
electricity, and of course, a bridge (this time in San Francisco). They wanted
to wrap it all up and haul it home so they could get to the bright future more
quickly.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span lang="RU" style="mso-ansi-language: RU;">As for </span>“one-story” America, the two authors, like many other Russian
travelers, came to an unpleasant conclusion: this great country is populated by
a small people—mercantile, greedy, narrow-minded, and not worthy of America’s
technological might.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
And now it’s time to pose a
question: why is the machine, which was inevitably found in America by Russian
writers, absent from the work of American writers? Without technology, all of
them managed to get by: Hemingway, Faulkner, Salinger, Steinbeck, Henry Miller,
and—stepping further into the past—Jack London, Mark Twain, Melville, Emerson,
and Henry David Thoreau. Why weren’t Americans themselves captivated by their
technological civilization? Why didn’t the industrial novel spring up here?
Why, as Ilf and Petrov asked, didn’t the engineer become a national hero?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
Because America is not principally
an urban nation. And that’s what the outsiders from the Old World didn’t
notice. They looked for America somewhere other than where it prefers to live.
Cities in America are the exception that proves the rule…</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span lang="RU" style="mso-ansi-language: RU;">Setting skyscrapers aside for offices and </span>visitors, Americans
themselves have always preferred to live on the first floor of their own home,
a little further away from the excesses of technology. Having traded
civilization for geography, nature for culture, and artificial landscapes for a
natural one, America came out ahead. But you can only evaluate this deal when
you learn to travel like an American.<span lang="RU" style="mso-ansi-language: RU;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
The secret of that art lies right on
the surface: it’s in the road, which is an end in itself. Greedily covering
mile after mile, the wayfarer dissolves himself into primordial emptiness, vast
reserves of which the New World still contains within its shores. Beneath the
wheels of the automobile, space takes on<span style="mso-ansi-language: RU;"> </span>an
almost physical palpability. The map comes to life, tears away from the page,
and moves from two-dimensional abstraction into real life.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span lang="RU" style="mso-ansi-language: RU;">America can only be understood on the move.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; tab-stops: 328.1pt;">
<span lang="RU"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-align: right;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="RU"><span style="font-size: x-small;">[Translation mine]<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 141.75pt;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Fascinating! And to my mind, mostly on the mark. It’s nothing
new to say that wilderness and the open road loom large in the American
imagination, but it does seem to be true that many visitors from Russia have
somehow missed that key point. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Not surprisingly, though, two Russian writers who
don’t fit the city-centric New World pattern are Nabokov and Brodsky: the
former wrote one of the classic American road novels, and the latter set some
of his finest poems in the woods of New England and small towns of the Midwest.
They got the lay of the land better than their machine-head compatriots did.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Leave it to exiles to complicate things!</div>
Jamie Olsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17524484538967246768noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721093420878741420.post-87072374870394909682015-09-18T21:41:00.000-07:002015-10-08T10:25:01.855-07:00They Can't Get Us Here<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-c6128p9rNBs/VfzjKgEbRSI/AAAAAAAAAbk/vpYzuWCdYco/s1600/%25D1%2581%25D0%25B5%25D0%25B2_%25D0%25BF%25D0%25BE%25D0%25BB%25D1%258E%25D1%2581_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-c6128p9rNBs/VfzjKgEbRSI/AAAAAAAAAbk/vpYzuWCdYco/s320/%25D1%2581%25D0%25B5%25D0%25B2_%25D0%25BF%25D0%25BE%25D0%25BB%25D1%258E%25D1%2581_1.jpg" width="320"></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span lang="RU" style="mso-ansi-language: RU;">Ivan Papanin
(left) at the arctic drift station «Северный полюс-1» (1937)
/ </span>Image courtesy of <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:North_Pole-1_station.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Like just about everyone who translates Russian poetry into
English, I keep my eye on the <a href="http://www.stosvet.net/compass/">Compass Award</a>, which is given each year for a
translation of a single poem by a Russian writer. Early in the spring, we all wait
to see which writer the Compass committee will choose for us—typically one who
is underrepresented in English—and then we dash off to our computers and
bookshelves to find a poem that suits us. (The committee selects the poet; the
translator picks the poem.)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At least, that’s the way it should work. In truth, though, I’m
lazy. I wish I could say I’ve sent in something to the contest each summer, but
as I look back over the roster of previous poets—Nikolai Gumilev, Marina
Tsvetaeva, Maria Petrovykh, and Arseny Tarkovsky—I realize I’ve only submitted
a translation once before this year. Somehow, life has a knack for getting in
the way of my good intentions.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This year, though, when <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Slutsky">Boris Slutsky</a> (1919-1986) was
identified as the Compass poet, I wasn’t about to let the summer pass without making
time to choose, translate, and submit a poem for the contest. Not that I’m
going to share my translation in this post! No, no, it’s a secret. I’m too
superstitious to reveal it—at least until after the Slutsky winners have been
announced. But I will talk about what I learned in the process of translating
him.<br>
<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<a href="http://flaxenwave.blogspot.com/2015/09/they-cant-get-us-here.html#more">Read more »</a>Jamie Olsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17524484538967246768noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721093420878741420.post-54715881776383012752015-06-02T17:50:00.001-07:002016-12-24T00:04:33.456-08:00J.B.’s Jubilee<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1y0Ro7r7FgU/VW5KrzOK8dI/AAAAAAAAAa8/2IOHkOMDNe0/s1600/at_home.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="296" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1y0Ro7r7FgU/VW5KrzOK8dI/AAAAAAAAAa8/2IOHkOMDNe0/s320/at_home.png" width="320"></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;">Brodsky on his balcony at Muruzi House (date unknown) / Image courtesy of <a href="http://www.brodskymuseum.com/">brodskymuseum.com</a></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If Joseph Brodsky were still alive, he would have turned
seventy-five on Sunday, May 24th, so the web has been awash with Brodskiana. Everybody
and his brother, it seems, have got something to say about the man. Me too: I
wanted to post something in his honor on the jubilant day itself, but at the
time—unfortunately yet quite appropriately—I was hard at work on my Brodsky
contribution to a new volume entitled <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.salempress.com/press_titles.html?book=460">American Writers in Exile</a></i>. (To learn how he fits into that category, read my essay
when the book comes out.)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
First off, in the biggest news, it looks as though the
Brodsky <a href="http://www.brodskymuseum.com/">apartment museum</a> in Saint Petersburg is finally opening after years of fundraising,
bureaucratic hoop-jumping, negotiations, and logistical troubles (including a battle
against 32 types of mold). This is the space that Brodsky wrote about in his
essay “In a Room and a Half,” located in the Muruzi House at the intersection
of Liteyny Prospect and Pestel Street, where he lived with his parents for
almost two decades. Tatyana Voltskaya <a href="http://www.svoboda.org/content/article/27034138.html">notes</a> that the famous room and
a half was open last month, fittingly, for a day and a half: several hours for journalists
on May 22, plus a full day for the birthday festivities on May 24. Now it’s closed again, with plans to reopen for good after renovations wrap up sometime
this winter. The museum doesn’t have much of a web presence yet, especially in
English, but when the apartment finally opens and stays open, it should
obviously land at the top of the must-do list for all Brodsky enthusiasts. I
certainly plan to visit the next time I’m in Petersburg.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Back in April, another domicile-museum opened in the
village of Norinskaya (or Norenskaya), in the Arkhangelsk region, where Brodsky served out his
internal exile in 1964 and 1965 for “social parasitism”—that is, freeloading (<span lang="RU" style="mso-ansi-language: RU;">тунеядство)</span>. During his time there,
he wrote and translated poems, published occasionally in the local paper<span lang="RU" style="mso-ansi-language: RU;"> («Призыв»)</span>, and worked on a collective
farm. Ironically, Brodsky later called it one of the happiest times of his
life. The museum is situated inside a peasant house formerly owned by the
Pesterev family, with whom Brodsky stayed during his sentence. According to
<a href="http://lenta.ru/news/2015/04/09/brodski/">Lenta.ru</a>, the exhibit includes “things that Brodsky used: a chair, a table, a
couch, a kerosene lamp, a tank for developing photographs, and the plywood
cover from a package sent to Brodsky by his father in Leningrad, which was
found during the restoration of the house.”</div>
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Interestingly, both new museums have met with
opposition from a certain hyperpatriotic element in the Russian crowd, despite the poet’s
growing popularity of late. (Just last month, in fact, Alexander Genis and
Solomon Volkov were <a href="http://www.svoboda.mobi/a/27022654.html">discussing</a> Brodsky’s transformation from “esoteric” to
“popular” poet in Russia.) In Norinskaya, a group of locals balked at the
five-million ruble price tag and <a href="http://snob.ru/selected/entry/90892">filed a suit</a> demanding that the museum be
closed and the regional governor be punished for supporting it: </div>
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<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
[Brodsky] was exiled to our region
for social parasitism. But instead of thanking the leadership of the USSR for
his early release, he emigrated to the U.S., took a passport there under the
name ‘Joseph Brodsky’ [spelled Джозеф Бродски, as opposed to Иосиф Бродский], and began
to slander the Soviet people.</div>
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<br></div>
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The suit also asks for a hundred thousand rubles in
compensation for the “moral harm” the plaintiffs experienced. This whole
episode reminds me of an article I <a href="http://flaxenwave.blogspot.com/2010/07/brodskiana-tractor-driver-named-bulov.html">posted</a> about a few years ago, when another Norinskaya
resident and loyal communist said the following: </div>
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<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
And just who is Brodsky? A
parasite, a freeloader! … How could they have given him the Lenin Prize, that
lazy good-for-nothing?! … He was a smart bastard. But Russia is a fool! Gave
him a prize… America, America! He’s a leech, and they put up a fucking plaque
for him!</div>
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<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The two gentlemen quoted above are indeed different people,
but they’re clearly kindred spirits.<br>
<br></div>
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</div>
<a href="http://flaxenwave.blogspot.com/2015/06/jbs-jubilee.html#more">Read more »</a>Jamie Olsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17524484538967246768noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721093420878741420.post-86761804804526965472015-05-15T13:31:00.000-07:002015-05-15T14:16:35.106-07:00Ehrenburg's Traveler<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zn3O26pGXsQ/VVZWb6RIg9I/AAAAAAAAAaY/zkipDl__czo/s1600/erenburg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zn3O26pGXsQ/VVZWb6RIg9I/AAAAAAAAAaY/zkipDl__czo/s320/erenburg.jpg" width="212"></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>Ilya Ehrenburg in the 1910s / Image courtesy of <a href="http://chtoby-pomnili.com/page.php?id=1094">Чтобы помнили</a></i></span></div>
<b><br></b>
<b>In the Train Car</b><br>
by <a href="http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4636/the-art-of-fiction-no-26-ilya-ehrenburg">Ilya Ehrenburg</a><br>
<br>
The gentleman swayed and dozed in his cabin, swaying<br>
to the right, to the left, and back again.<br>
He swayed alone, restless.<br>
He swayed away from life and what he’d lived.<br>
My friend, you are on your way as well,<br>
but where will we be bound tomorrow?<br>
Believe me: these feeble faces,<br>
the darkness, suitcases, and parcels,<br>
the dawn that silently steams<br>
among charred peasant houses<br>
under a white sky, fleeing aimlessly,<br>
shaking off and then absorbing<br>
sleep, half-sleep—<br>
everything lusts, flags, and maddens at last<br>
for its one and only end.<br>
<br>
<i>April 1915</i><br>
<br>
<a href="http://flaxenwave.blogspot.com/2015/05/ehrenburgs-traveler.html#more">Read more »</a>Jamie Olsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17524484538967246768noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721093420878741420.post-87067301391778422672015-03-06T23:50:00.000-08:002015-03-07T10:19:36.608-08:00Where the Black Sea Breaks Its Back<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5P1r0Yoe_x0/VPqrqRfOTzI/AAAAAAAAAZ4/uaA_zTgmncU/s1600/kolonna.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5P1r0Yoe_x0/VPqrqRfOTzI/AAAAAAAAAZ4/uaA_zTgmncU/s1600/kolonna.jpg" height="251" width="320"></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">Column of White ships fleeing to Constantinople (1920) /
Image courtesy of <a href="http://www.segodnya.ua/ukraine/ictorii-ot-olecja-buziny-konets-beloj-roccii.html"><span lang="RU" style="mso-ansi-language: RU;">Сегодня</span>.ua</a></span></div>
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<br></div>
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Much has been made of the way that Vasily Aksyonov’s 1979
Sci-Fi novel “The Island of Crimea” predicted Russia’s takeover of Crimea last
year (for instance, in <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-novel-that-predicts-russias-invasion-of-crimea">this <i>New Yorker</i> piece</a>), but a <a href="http://www.ng.ru/ng_exlibris/2015-02-26/5_epsh.html">new essay</a> in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="RU" style="mso-ansi-language: RU;">НГ </span>Ex Libris</i> claims that one can find
similarly prophetic moments in poetry too.<span style="mso-ansi-language: RU;"> </span><a href="http://mikhail-epstein.livejournal.com/">Mikhail Epstein</a>, the author of the essay, focuses on two Crimea-themed poems—one by Osip
Mandelstam and one by Andrei Voznesensky. Mandelstam’s untitled 1916 poem describes
a visionary moment during a walk he took with Marina Tsvetaeva in the
Alexandrov Kremlin, the fortress from which Ivan the Terrible ruled Russia and
where he killed his own son:</div>
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<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
Doubting the miracle of the resurrection,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
we strolled in the cemetery.<span lang="RU" style="mso-ansi-language: RU;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
– You know, the land all around us</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
reminds me of those hills.<span lang="RU" style="mso-ansi-language: RU;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
………………………….</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
………………………….</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
Where Russia breaks away</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
above a black and silent sea.</div>
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<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">(Не веря воскресенья чуду, /
На кладбище гуляли мы. / – Ты знаешь, мне земля повсюду / Напоминает те холмы.
/ …………………………. / …………………………. / Где обрывается Россия / Над морем черным и
глухим.)</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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The reference to Crimea in the last two lines is so clear
that Mandelstam struck from his draft the two previous ones, whose outright naming of the peninsula
he must have felt too obvious and unnecessary. Epstein even thinks that the
long ellipses are better than the missing lines, since they “demonstrate more
vividly than any words the blackness and silence into which the country breaks
away.”</div>
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Epstein says that what unifies Crimea and the cemetery in
the poem is “the presentiment of death.” After all, Russia was about to begin killing
its own sons in a civil war, and the Crimean peninsula would play a key role: in
1920, just a few years after the poem was written, the last White forces left
from Crimean ports, taking 100,000 refugees with them. Somehow, Mandelstam had
foreseen his country’s violent end in that place. “There,” Epstein writes,
“pre-Soviet history broke away. But where and when will post-Soviet history break away?”</div>
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</div>
<a href="http://flaxenwave.blogspot.com/2015/03/where-black-sea-breaks-its-back.html#more">Read more »</a>Jamie Olsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17524484538967246768noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721093420878741420.post-2980871588808095912015-02-05T22:57:00.000-08:002015-02-23T20:53:43.467-08:00Patchwork with Tyutchev<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-mreCm85CiG8/VNRcBlpoGcI/AAAAAAAAAZY/ZGr2k8IdGDI/s1600/tyutchev_1864.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-mreCm85CiG8/VNRcBlpoGcI/AAAAAAAAAZY/ZGr2k8IdGDI/s1600/tyutchev_1864.jpg" height="320" width="212"></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Photograph of Fyodor Tyutchev by Andrei Denier (1864) / Image courtesy of <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tutchev_F_by_Denier_1864.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></i></div>
<br>
I don’t often translate nineteenth-century Russian poetry, but since the Tyutchev poem that follows is one of two key intertexts for Timur Kibirov’s “Historical Cento” («Исторический центон»), from a 2009 book I’ve been translating, I decided I needed to make my own English version of it. That way, I could lift the pertinent pieces from Tyutchev for my Kibirov translation.<br>
<br>
‘Cento’, by the way, is a term that was new to me but which I learned that Dr. Johnson defined as a “composition formed by joining scraps from other authors.” So says the OED, which also gives the more general definition for ‘cento’ of a “piece of patchwork; a patched garment.” Kibirov’s other patches, besides the lines from Tyutchev, come from Blok’s infamous revolutionary romp “<a href="http://russiasgreatwar.org/media/culture/twelve.shtml">The Twelve</a>.” Quite a pairing!<br>
<br>
<span style="color: black;">Anyway, if you</span>’re going to make
patches, you’ve got to have cloth to cut from. Here’s one of mine:<br>
<br>
<div style="margin-left: .5in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black;">With your impoverished settlements</span></b><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">by
Fyodor Tyutchev<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br></div>
<div style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">With
your impoverished settlements,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">With
your most meager natural gifts,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">My
native realm of sufferance,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">You are
the realm where Russia lives!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br></div>
<div style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">You
can’t be grasped or noticed by<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">The
proud outsider’s fleeting gaze:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">It
misses hidden lights that shine<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Within
your humble naked scapes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br></div>
<div style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">All over
you, my native land,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Bearing
the burden of His cross<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">In
peasant’s rags, our holy King<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Meandered,
blessing all He saw.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<br></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">August 13, 1855<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: x-small;"><i></i></span><br>
<span style="color: black; font-size: x-small;"><i>Translated from the Russian by Jamie Olson</i></span></div>
</div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<br></div>
<span style="color: black;">(See <a href="http://flaxenwave.blogspot.com/2015/02/patchwork-with-tyutchev.html#more">below</a> for Tyutchev’s Russian
original.)<o:p></o:p></span><br>
<br>
<span style="color: black;">In case you’re curious, here are the first two stanzas of my translation of Kibirov’s cento, which might give you a sense of where he’s going with his ostensibly
post-Christian pastiche:<o:p></o:p></span><br>
<br>
<div style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">All over
you, my native land,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">blessing
each place, dressed in white,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">a crown
of roses on his head,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">walked,
I’m sad to say, not Christ.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br></div>
<div style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">No.
Christ, of course, also wandered<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">through
this Russian hell of ours,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">but—never
doubting for a second—<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">we said,
“He doesn’t meet the standard!</span></div>
<div style="margin-left: .5in;">
He’s much too crucified for us!”</div>
<br>
<span style="color: black;">So who, you might ask, is <em>not</em> too crucified for
Russia? I’ll give you a hint: he doesn’t wear white, but waves a red flag. </span><br>
<span style="color: black;"><br></span>
<span style="color: black;">Yep, you guessed it.<o:p></o:p></span><br>
<br>
<a href="http://flaxenwave.blogspot.com/2015/02/patchwork-with-tyutchev.html#more">Read more »</a>Jamie Olsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17524484538967246768noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721093420878741420.post-80574829072454676292014-12-24T10:00:00.000-08:002014-12-27T21:14:48.034-08:00A Nativity Poem by Boris Pasternak<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-m_CFGqccxPE/VI_mF94WaxI/AAAAAAAAAZA/rP6cRa7p1Z0/s1600/zhivago_italian_edition.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-m_CFGqccxPE/VI_mF94WaxI/AAAAAAAAAZA/rP6cRa7p1Z0/s1600/zhivago_italian_edition.jpg" height="320" width="208"></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>Cover for the 1st Italian edition of Pasternak's </i>Doctor Zhivago<i> / Image courtesy of the </i><a href="http://www.hoover.org/slideshows/boris-pasternak" style="font-style: italic;">Hoover Institution</a></span></div>
<i><br>
[NOTE: As I have done <a href="http://flaxenwave.blogspot.com/search/label/Nativity%20poems">in previous years</a>, I'm posting a nativity poem for the Christmas season. I've translated <a href="http://www.vehi.net/pasternak/17.html">this one</a> (into a lazy vers libre) from the selection of Zhivago poems at the back of Boris Pasternak's 1957 novel.]</i><br>
<br>
* * *<br>
<br>
<b>Star of the Nativity</b><br>
by Boris Pasternak<br>
<br>
Winter had set in.<br>
Wind blew in from the steppe<br>
and the child was cold in a dark den<br>
on the slope of a hill.<br>
<br>
He was kept warm by an ox’s breath.<br>
Other beasts also<br>
stood in the cave.<br>
Above the manger floated a warm haze.<br>
<br>
After shaking bits of straw and millet<br>
from their thick furs,<br>
herdsmen gazed sleepily<br>
into the midnight distance from a cliff.<br>
<br>
Far off lay a snowfield and churchyard,<br>
fences and headstones,<br>
a plank in a snowdrift,<br>
and a sky full of stars above the graves.<br>
<br>
Nearby, unknown until that night,<br>
more timid than a candle<br>
in a watchman’s window,<br>
a star glimmered on the road to Bethlehem.<br>
<br>
It flared up like a dry hayrick, apart<br>
from God and heaven,<br>
like an arson’s gleam,<br>
like a farm and threshing-floor in flames.<br>
<br>
</div><a href="http://flaxenwave.blogspot.com/2014/12/a-nativity-poem-by-boris-pasternak.html#more">Read more »</a>Jamie Olsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17524484538967246768noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721093420878741420.post-29638820336664169512014-11-29T22:43:00.000-08:002014-12-06T00:00:14.042-08:00The Strain of Constant Contact<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-hIAmtUt01-A/VHq6zCsV2UI/AAAAAAAAAYU/lQ9szAtbrbM/s1600/vanya.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-hIAmtUt01-A/VHq6zCsV2UI/AAAAAAAAAYU/lQ9szAtbrbM/s1600/vanya.jpg" height="320" width="234" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Poster for the premiere of <u>Uncle Vanya</u> at the Moscow Art Theater (1899) / Image courtesy of <a href="http://apchekhov.ru/books/item/f00/s00/z0000025/st007.shtml">apchekhov.ru</a></span></i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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<i>[This fall, the theater program at Saint Martin’s University, headed by David Hlavsa, put on a </i><i>fantastic</i><i> <a href="http://www.stmartin.edu/whatsnew/MediaReleases/2014/20141028TheatreStudiesPresentsUncleVanya.aspx">production</a> of Chekhov’s <u>Uncle Vanya</u>. Now that the show has wrapped, I think it’s fair to share with readers of this blog the program note that I wrote in my capacity of “cultural advisor” to the play. Enjoy!]</i></div>
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<i>* * *</i></div>
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As a playwright, Chekhov’s aesthetic method was to toss his
characters into a pressure cooker and crank up the heat. In each of his major
plays, individuals from different backgrounds are assembled in a single household,
and gradually the strain of constant contact brings out the worst in them. (Really,
isn’t this a de<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_GoBack"></a>finition for all drama—a mix of characters
forced into view for a fixed span of time?) Even in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Uncle Vanya’s</i> subtitle, “Scenes from Country Life,” Chekhov
prepares us for his method of concentrated engagement: the countryside, unlike
the city, gives the characters nowhere else to go. Social interaction must occur
on an isolated estate.</div>
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In this play, two unwelcome outsiders, Professor Serebryakov
and his young wife Yelena, have come into the household and upset the status
quo. Early in the first act, Uncle Vanya and the servant Marina go right to the
crux of the problem: he complains that the old professor and Yelena have caused
things to go “topsy-turvy,” and Marina replies, “We used to have lunch at one
o’clock, like normal people… now we eat at six or seven.” Nothing is as it
should be. The samovar is set out for tea in the morning, but the professor
sleeps until noon. Astrov, the doctor, goes even further in his critique: “You
and your husband,” he scolds Yelena in the final act, “have infected us all
with your uselessness.” While their presence may in fact have stirred up his passions,
Astrov longs for their departure so that he can again annihilate his ego
through work. Like the others, he needs its diversion to get himself by.</div>
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The disruption of routine underscores the frustration of the
characters. No one is fulfilled. No one seems certain what his or her purpose
in life is. In this respect, Chekhov differs from Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and
others in the generation of Russian writers that preceded his, who would have offered
clear moral guidance for their audience. But in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Uncle Vanya</i>,<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>even those characters
who may have once felt a sense of purpose—for instance, Astrov with his forestry
projects—seem incapable of making real progress or changing much of anything. They
are ineffectual. So they drink. They drink out of a sense of futility. And they
drink the wrong thing at the wrong time: they should be sipping tea at the appointed
hour, but instead they rely on vodka to cope whenever they like. “When I’m
drunk,” says Vanya, “life seems more like life.”</div>
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Only in routine can these characters find solace—only in the
numbness of modern life, tediously doing the books to keep the estate afloat or
sleeplessly trudging about the countryside, treating an unending line of sick
patients. What is the meaning of these struggles and sacrifices? Why make them?
These are the questions that Chekhov poses to us. We may wonder whether our tribulations
have any purpose at all, but in the end we hope that they will move us, God
willing, closer to the ultimate “rest” invoked by Sonya in her final lines. </div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Jamie Olson<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Saint Martin</i><i style="text-align: left;">’</i><i>s University</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>* * *</i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<u>Postscript</u></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Besides wonderful performances by the actors, the SMU production also featured our family samovar, pictured here in an onstage photo by my wife Anna:</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pxmznRDfP3Y/VHq_cmRuqrI/AAAAAAAAAYg/X-IBYVu0__g/s1600/samovar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pxmznRDfP3Y/VHq_cmRuqrI/AAAAAAAAAYg/X-IBYVu0__g/s1600/samovar.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
As anyone who has seen or read the play knows, this was no bit part!</div>
</div>
</div>
Jamie Olsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17524484538967246768noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721093420878741420.post-3736069896538704082014-10-17T21:25:00.000-07:002014-10-17T21:37:24.931-07:00Three by Kibirov<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-faRl0vusOwQ/VEHjr0XLfUI/AAAAAAAAAYE/neC-tvXpZDM/s1600/asymptote.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-faRl0vusOwQ/VEHjr0XLfUI/AAAAAAAAAYE/neC-tvXpZDM/s1600/asymptote.png" height="269" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Image courtesy of <a href="http://www.asymptotejournal.com/index.php">Asymptote</a></span></i></div>
<i><br /></i>
I'm happy to report that the fall issue of <i>Asymptote </i>includes my translations of <a href="http://www.asymptotejournal.com/article.php?cat=Poetry&id=192&curr_index=16&curPage=current">three theological poems</a> by Timur Kibirov, along with the audio recordings of them that I made in his Moscow kitchen this summer. Have a look, have a listen! And don't miss the sound of Ossetian <i>plov </i>crackling on the stove in the background.<br />
<br />
The theme of the issue is mythology, and the editors have fit Kibirov neatly into it: "You'll find an aging Minotaur transplanted to Amsterdam's red-light district, Hamlet's Norse ancestor reincarnated in operatic form, and biblical vine-growers at a corporate event schmoozing up to their ultimate shareholder, God." (Yep, that last one is Kibirov's.)<br />
<br />
For those of a Slavic bent, highlights of the issue include a <a href="http://www.asymptotejournal.com/article.php?cat=Special_Feature&id=161&curr_index=30&curPage=current">profile</a> of Kharkiv poet Serhiy Zhadan, an <a href="http://www.asymptotejournal.com/article.php?cat=Interview&id=32&curr_index=38&curPage=current">interview</a> with Polish translator Danuta Borchardt, and an <a href="http://www.asymptotejournal.com/article.php?cat=Special_Feature&id=158&curr_index=29&curPage=current">essay</a> on Russian poetry by the ever-prolific Robert Chandler. Another item not to miss is Erik Langkjær's <a href="http://www.asymptotejournal.com/article.php?cat=Nonfiction&id=72&curr_index=21&curPage=current">reminiscence</a> of kissing a soft-lipped Flannery O'Connor, who was then suffering from lupus: "I hit her teeth with my kiss, and since then I've thought of it as a kiss of death."<br />
<br />
Lastly, I love how the editors have picked my favorite Kibirov line to excerpt on the issue's <a href="http://www.asymptotejournal.com/index.php">main page</a>: "Glory to God in the highest! Hee-haw, hee-haw!"</div>
Jamie Olsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17524484538967246768noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721093420878741420.post-91550720053343180342014-04-25T22:05:00.000-07:002014-04-25T23:57:42.049-07:00On Brodsky, Sweat, and Nosebleeds <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-RZX-ldMUFrg/U1tAw9AiGBI/AAAAAAAAAW8/n75QvyWS7Ck/s1600/brodsky_by_rothfjell.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-RZX-ldMUFrg/U1tAw9AiGBI/AAAAAAAAAW8/n75QvyWS7Ck/s1600/brodsky_by_rothfjell.jpg" height="320" width="240"></a></div>
<o:p><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">Undated photograph of Joseph Brodsky by Katarina E. Rothfjell / Image courtesy of the <a href="http://brbl-dl.library.yale.edu/vufind/Record/3522441">Beinecke Library</a><b> </b></span></i></o:p></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><o:p><br></o:p></b></div>
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Somewhere in the middle of <a href="http://www.svoboda.org/audio/audio/1120080.html">last week’s episode</a> of the American
hour<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>on Radio Svoboda, I heard this
fascinating exchange between program host Alexander Genis and Solomon Volkov—the
well-known musicologist, expert interviewer, and culture critic—about the poet Joseph Brodsky,
whom Volkov had interviewed over a fourteen-year period for his book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Conversations with Joseph Brodsky</i> (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="RU" style="mso-ansi-language: RU;"><a href="http://lib.ru/BRODSKIJ/wolkow.txt">Диалоги с Иосифом Бродским</a></span></i><span lang="RU" style="mso-ansi-language: RU;">)</span>:</div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Alexander Genis: </b>Who was the most difficult person for you to
interview? And who was the most interesting?</div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Solomon Volkov: </b>My most difficult interviewee was, of course,
Brodsky. Because he was the most difficult person to speak with—the most
complicated. You had to, as they say, meet him on his level, or attempt to do
so.</div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Alexander Genis: </b>To tell you the truth, whenever I’d talk with Brodsky,
I would always sweat. I just felt so uncomfortable. Due to the exertion of
thought, my forehead was wet the whole time.</div>
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<br></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Solomon Volkov:</b> Dovlatov and I once talked about this very same
thing.</div>
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<br></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Alexander Genis: </b>By the way, Dovlatov would sweat when he talked
with Brodsky too.</div>
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<br></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Solomon Volkov: </b>I told him that after a conversation with Brodsky I
would sometimes get a nosebleed. He said<span style="mso-ansi-language: RU;"> </span>with
relief, “And here I thought I was the only one who was such a weakling.”</div>
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<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Alexander Genis: </b>And who was the most interesting person to
interview?</div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Solomon Volkov: </b>The
most interesting was probably Brodsky too. Because he reasoned with such
focus, he would approach the conversation with a great sense of responsibility.
In the course of the conversation he would sometimes say what none of my other
interviewees would ever say. Specifically, he’d say, “Hold on, Solomon, let me
talk it through again. I want to say it in another way, more concise, better,
and so forth.” That is, he approached these sessions very responsibly, and to a
certain degree, I think, he was worn out by them just as much as I was.</div>
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Poor Dovlatov! Poor Genis and Volkov! You know you’ve
encountered a great one when you’re sweating and bleeding.</div>
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Speaking of Sergei Dovlatov, his 1983 novel <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://counterpointpress.com/products/pushkin-hills/">Pushkin Hills</a> </i>(<i>Заповедник</i>) has just been published by
Counterpoint Press in a translation by Katherine Dovlatov, the author’s
daughter, and earlier this month, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The New
Yorker</i>’s Page-Turner blog posted James Wood’s <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2014/04/sergei-dovlatov-and-the-hearsay-of-memory.html">afterword</a> to the book.
Counterpoint also reprinted Antonina Bouis’s translation of Dovlatov’s 1986
story collection <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Suitcase.html?id=IixV_xPDcDMC">The Suitcase</a> </i><span lang="RU" style="mso-ansi-language: RU;">(<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Чемодан</i>)</span>
just a few years back.</div>
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Long live émigré lit!<span lang="RU" style="mso-ansi-language: RU;"><o:p></o:p></span><br>
<br></div>
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</div><a href="http://flaxenwave.blogspot.com/2014/04/on-brodsky-sweat-and-nosebleeds.html#more">Read more »</a>Jamie Olsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17524484538967246768noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721093420878741420.post-78416706448092653542014-04-18T23:54:00.000-07:002015-11-05T13:39:32.604-08:00No Obvious Means for Transmission<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tHcpNTZgjVI/U1Ib_iDpunI/AAAAAAAAAWY/G9MK4Dl7Djk/s1600/endarkenment.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tHcpNTZgjVI/U1Ib_iDpunI/AAAAAAAAAWY/G9MK4Dl7Djk/s1600/endarkenment.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">Cover of Dragomoshchenko’s <u>Endarkenment</u> (2014) / Image courtesy of <a href="http://www.upne.com/0819573926.html">UPNE</a></span></i></div>
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A <a href="http://www.svoboda.org/audio/audio/1101035.html">program</a> that I heard on Radio Svoboda last month, Dmitry
Volchek’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Culture Log</i> (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="RU" style="mso-ansi-language: RU;"><a href="http://www.svoboda.org/archive/ru_bz_otb_vol/latest/896/209.html">Культурный дневник</a></span></i><span lang="RU" style="mso-ansi-language: RU;">)</span>, took up
a problem that has long preoccupied me—the different prosodic traditions of
Russian and American poetry—and helped me to see it in a new way. Nearly all of
the poets that I have translated over the years write formal poetry, not free
verse. When translating those poets, my trouble has always been what to do with
them in English, where rhymed and metered poems can seem fusty, juvenile, or
both. Do I scrap the rhymes and turn the poems into blank verse? Or do I scrap
everything and turn them into entirely free verse?</div>
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American poet, editor, and translator Eugene Ostashevsky,
who was the guest that day on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Culture Log</i>,
describes the problem this way: “If you take a completely classical line, the
accentual-syllabic line of the 19th century, I would say that in
contemporary American English there are no obvious means for its transmission.
I can take iambic tetrameter and translate it as iambic tetrameter, but the
meaning of iambic tetrameter in English is entirely, entirely different.” In
part, this is why Russian-to-English translators of poetry often choose the
path of least resistance: they turn formal verse into free verse.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
(As a side note, I find it fascinating that Ostashevsky
folds together two kinds of distance here: temporal and cultural. The classical
line in his example is removed from American readers in time, but he wraps up
by implying, I think, that English iambic tetrameter signifies something
“entirely different” not from its past but from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Russian</i> iambic tetrameter. Therefore, while historical distance is not
much of a problem within Russian prosody, cultural distance is indeed a
major problem between contemporary English and Russian prosodies.)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But what to do if the Russian poet to be translated writes
free verse? That’s the relatively unusual situation described by Ostashevsky that
helped me to see the prosody problem in a new light. Ostashevsky is the editor
and contributing translator of a new posthumous collection of poetry by Arkadii
Dragomoshchenko called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.upne.com/0819573926.html">Endarkenment: Selected Poems</a></i>. For aficionados of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E</i>
poetry, Dragomoshchenko’s name may be a familiar one: he is sometimes described
as the school’s Russian “representative,” and he was especially close with Lyn
Hejinian, one of its foremost members. Their friendship was even the subject of
Jacki Ochs’ documentary <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://humanarts.org/projects/lettersnotaboutlove.html">Letters Not about Love</a> </i>(1997), which features a five-year correspondence between the two
writers. (Try out <a href="http://littlestarjournal.com/blog/features/the-trees-wintry-empire-thats-what-by-arkady-dragomoshchenko/">this translated poem</a> for a taste of his work.)</div>
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<br /></div>
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If you know anything about the Language poets, you know that
they don’t write formal poetry. Thus it was with Dragomoshchenko. Yet the
Language poets have been a major influence in contemporary American poetry,
where free verse is the norm, while Dragomoshchenko operated only at the
fringes of Russian poetic culture, with its strong central current of
formalism. So to translate him into free verse is to eliminate one key
element of his radical poetics—that’s what his example has helped me to
see. His translators have no other choice, but his existence in English
normalizes him in a way he isn’t normal in Russian, ironically making him more
popular among American readers than with his native audience. In America, Ostashevsky
explains, “among people who read avant-garde poetry—poetry of the Language
school, for example—he is really known and loved. And that includes a lot of
young people who read him.” This is certainly not the case in Russia. With a little luck, perhaps his culture will catch up with him a few decades down the road.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The problem of translating Dragomoshchenko may be the
opposite of the problem I usually encounter, but it makes me wonder, why do I
have to make things so hard for myself? Sure, some of the radicalism would get
lost along the way, but wouldn’t it be easier to translate free-verse poets? Alas, no, things are never so simple. As Ostashevsky noted on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Culture Log</i>, “In translating
Dragomoshchenko the problem is … that he very often works with alienated
language and alienated linguistic clichés. And these linguistic clichés don’t
exist in English. That is, it’s not entirely clear what he’s reacting to.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Darn it. Just when you think you’ve whacked them all,
another mole pops up its head.</div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
Jamie Olsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17524484538967246768noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721093420878741420.post-47944386866529350672014-02-11T22:47:00.000-08:002014-02-17T22:55:18.560-08:00Gandelsman, Pasternak, Poesy<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<o:p> </o:p><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zkTYaTzm-Sk/UvsXCjuKG5I/AAAAAAAAAVo/E88C_h5JdO4/s1600/bp.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zkTYaTzm-Sk/UvsXCjuKG5I/AAAAAAAAAVo/E88C_h5JdO4/s1600/bp.jpg"></a></div>
<br>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">Portrait of Boris
Pasternak by his father, Leonid Pasternak (1910) / Image courtesy of <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BORIS_BESIDE_THE_BALTIC_AT_MEREKULE,_1910_by_L.Pasternak.jpg?uselang=ru">Wikimedia Commons</a><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The latest issue of the New York literary magazine <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="RU" style="mso-ansi-language: RU;">Новый
журнал</span></i><span lang="RU" style="mso-ansi-language: RU;"> </span>(<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The New Review</i>) includes a small
selection of poems by Vladimir Gandelsman, a Russian-American poet I have
written about on this blog <a href="http://flaxenwave.blogspot.com/2011/06/counting-on-gandelsman.html">before</a>. What particularly caught my eye in this
recent batch was Gandelsman’s first poem, “Pasternak” (<span lang="RU" style="mso-ansi-language: RU;">«<a href="http://magazines.russ.ru/nj/2013/273/4g.html">Пастернак</a>»), where he muses on the great modern poet, novelist,
and Nobel laureate </span>– <span lang="RU" style="mso-ansi-language: RU;">whose birthday, it just so happens, was yesterday.</span> When one poet writes about another, of course, we
readers get a chance to eavesdrop on a conversation about poetics, one that often
reveals more about the writer than about his ostensible subject. In this case, the poet’s observations concern Pasternak’s
codependence with an anthropomorphized poetry, or as I like to think of her,
Poesy. (In Russian, <span lang="RU" style="mso-ansi-language: RU;">поэзия is
grammatically feminine and thus necessarily more human than</span><span lang="RU"> </span>a mere “it.”) </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Here is my rough-and-ready, free-verse
translation of the poem:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Pasternak<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
by Vladimir Gandelsman</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span lang="RU" style="mso-ansi-language: RU;">With her, he</span> i<span lang="RU" style="mso-ansi-language: RU;">s lonelier<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span lang="RU" style="mso-ansi-language: RU;">than when alone, yet with her<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span lang="RU" style="mso-ansi-language: RU;">the path to the pleasures <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span lang="RU" style="mso-ansi-language: RU;">of art is half as long. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
Stranger than a stranger, </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
she stands nevertheless</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
equal to him, familiar</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
as words suffered through.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
Only with her can he see </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
that certain slant of light</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
where his life outweighs</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
love. Which hardly exists.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
Love remains on the verge</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
of breakdown, since it allows<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
no rest for the mind at all</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
from its mindless madness.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
But his wide open spaces</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
contain memory, stillness, <span lang="RU" style="mso-ansi-language: RU;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
words that hurt, and depths </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
we all should seek to plumb.<span style="mso-ansi-language: RU;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
So, language of his suffering,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
with your line<span style="mso-ansi-language: RU;"> </span>ever sturdy,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
describe for us the stranger’s</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
familiar distant shores.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Translated from the Russian by Jamie Olson<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
</div><a href="http://flaxenwave.blogspot.com/2014/02/gandelsman-pasternak-poesy.html#more">Read more »</a>Jamie Olsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17524484538967246768noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721093420878741420.post-37184702200409352192013-12-31T13:13:00.000-08:002014-01-07T23:41:10.230-08:00In Memoriam N.G. & R.D.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-PNCIdgHXSD0/UsMv6jdtglI/AAAAAAAAASA/wOzMjTgjeAo/s1600/derieva.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-PNCIdgHXSD0/UsMv6jdtglI/AAAAAAAAASA/wOzMjTgjeAo/s320/derieva.jpg" height="320" width="213"></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">Portrait of Regina Derieva by Dennis Creffield / Image courtesy of <a href="http://derieva.com/main_en.html">The Regina Derieva Web Site</a></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the past month, we lost two important Russian poets, both
of them expatriates: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/02/world/europe/natalya-gorbanevskaya-soviet-dissident-and-poet-dies-at-77.html">Natalya Gorbanevskaya</a> in Paris on November 29, and <a href="http://derieva.com/main_en.html">Regina Derieva</a> in Stockholm on December 11. To honor their memory, I am posting a
favorite poem by each from anthologies on my shelf. Those keen to read more
from these two women would do well to turn to Derieva’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.marickpress.com/home/70/243-corinthian-copper-regina-derieva">Corinthian Copper</a></i>, translated by Jim Kates, and Gorbanevskaya’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9781847770851">Selected Poems</a></i>, translated by <a href="http://www.mptmagazine.com/article/daniel-weissbort-19352013-48/">Daniel Weissbort</a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px;">—</span>who died just twelve days before she did.</div>
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<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
*<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>*<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>*</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">[…where rivers flow
purer than silver]<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
by Natalya Gorbanevskaya</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
…where rivers flow purer than silver,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
not polluted by heavy oil and grease,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
where God has not abandoned us and bright</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
is the Admiralty spire, where on straw</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
lies the Infant and the bull makes utterances</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
wiser than the wise man, having eaten its fill of celandine,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
where the Russian has long ago had enough of victories</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and war, staying within his native bound,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
where beneath the cover of a starry cloak</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
the state’s robbers do not creep up on us,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
where, rinsing the syllables for a long time in their
throat, </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
but not contemplating whether it’s to the point or not,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
like a fairy tale, retelling something that really happened,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
the real events of the past, past pain, past love,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
you are transformed into dusty feathergrass,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and I show white in the wind, like a dandelion.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Translated by <a href="http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/product_info.php?products_id=20727">Gerald S. Smith</a></span><o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
*<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>*<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>*</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Beyond Siberia again
Siberia<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
by Regina Derieva</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Beyond Siberia again Siberia,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
beyond impenetrable forest again forest.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And beyond it waste ground,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
where a blizzard of snow breaks loose.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The blizzard has handcuffs, and the snow-</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
storm has a knife which kills at once…</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I will die, pay a debt</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
for others who lives somewhere,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
out of spite, out of fear and terror,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
out of pain, out of a nameless grave…</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Beyond the wall another wall,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
on the wall stopped dead one sentinel.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Translated by <a href="http://www.mptmagazine.com/product/mpt-20-contemporary-russian-women-poets-144/">Kevin Carey</a></span><o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
</div><a href="http://flaxenwave.blogspot.com/2013/12/in-memoriam-ng-rd.html#more">Read more »</a>Jamie Olsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17524484538967246768noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721093420878741420.post-78493650459017258632013-12-24T10:06:00.000-08:002015-01-11T21:20:00.472-08:00A Nativity Poem by Timur Kibirov<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8UAWs4adSuw/Uq89VCao74I/AAAAAAAAARs/pfwe06ArzsQ/s1600/TK4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8UAWs4adSuw/Uq89VCao74I/AAAAAAAAARs/pfwe06ArzsQ/s320/TK4.jpg" height="320" width="216"></span></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;">Timur Kibirov (2011) / Image courtesy of <a href="http://www.bogoslov.ru/text/2044230.html">Богослов.ru</a></span></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><i>NOTE: As I have done every Christmas Eve since starting this blog, I am posting a nativity poem to mark the holiday. This year</i><i>’s selection, by the Moscow poet Timur Kibirov, appears in </i>Greek and Roman Catholic Songs and Nursery Rhymes<i> (</i><a href="http://books.vremya.ru/index.php?newsid=973#.Uq86oShOje8">Греко- и римско-кафолические песенки и потешки</a><i>), a book that I am in the midst of translating. See the poems from previous years <a href="http://flaxenwave.blogspot.com/search/label/Nativity%20poems">here</a>. </i></span><br>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br></span></b><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">After Dorothy Sayers</span></b><br>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">by Timur Kibirov</span></div>
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In the night, the dumb ox lowed to the donkey:<br>
“Can you hear, brother, the sounds from the valley,<br>
the neighs and the horseshoes' clang?<br>
From magical lands, from the edge of the world,<br>
wise magi hasten and kings gallop toward us<br>
to bow to the King of Kings!<br>
But before all the rest of them, I—a silly,<br>
dawdling ox—bowed to Our Child!”<br>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">In the night, the lop-eared donkey cried out:</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">“Look at all the angels up there, brother ox,</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">who have lit up the midnight
darkness!</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">For this one and only time, this joyful time,</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">the Heavenly Powers have come together</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">in the sky to sing His praises.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">But before them all, I — a stubborn old ass —</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">have already praised Our Child!</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">“Glory to God in the highest! Ee-yaw, ee-yaw!</span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Glory, glory to the Child in the manger!”</span><br>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;">Translated from the Russian by Jamie Olson</span></i></div>
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</div><a href="http://flaxenwave.blogspot.com/2013/12/a-nativity-poem-by-timur-kibirov.html#more">Read more »</a>Jamie Olsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17524484538967246768noreply@blogger.com7