In Memoriam N.G. & R.D.

 Portrait of Regina Derieva by Dennis Creffield / Image courtesy of The Regina Derieva Web Site

In the past month, we lost two important Russian poets, both of them expatriates: Natalya Gorbanevskaya in Paris on November 29, and Regina Derieva 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 Corinthian Copper, translated by Jim Kates, and Gorbanevskaya’s Selected Poems, translated by Daniel Weissbort—who died just twelve days before she did.

*     *     *

[…where rivers flow purer than silver]

by Natalya Gorbanevskaya

…where rivers flow purer than silver,

not polluted by heavy oil and grease,

where God has not abandoned us and bright

is the Admiralty spire, where on straw

lies the Infant and the bull makes utterances

wiser than the wise man, having eaten its fill of celandine,

where the Russian has long ago had enough of victories

and war, staying within his native bound,

where beneath the cover of a starry cloak

the state’s robbers do not creep up on us,

where, rinsing the syllables for a long time in their throat,

but not contemplating whether it’s to the point or not,

like a fairy tale, retelling something that really happened,

the real events of the past, past pain, past love,

you are transformed into dusty feathergrass,

and I show white in the wind, like a dandelion.

Translated by Gerald S. Smith

*     *     *

Beyond Siberia again Siberia

by Regina Derieva

Beyond Siberia again Siberia,

beyond impenetrable forest again forest.

And beyond it waste ground,

where a blizzard of snow breaks loose.

The blizzard has handcuffs, and the snow-

storm has a knife which kills at once…

I will die, pay a debt

for others who lives somewhere,

out of spite, out of fear and terror,

out of pain, out of a nameless grave…

Beyond the wall another wall,

on the wall stopped dead one sentinel.

Translated by Kevin Carey

Russian (Women) Poets

Detail from cover of An Anthology of Contemporary Russian Women Poets

Image courtesy of Carcanet Press

Recently, I’ve been enjoying reading a collection of Russian poetry whose very existence many of its contributors seem to object to: Daniel Weissbort and Valentina Polukhina’s Anthology of Contemporary Russian Women Poets. Actually, the anthology began its life as an issue of Modern Poetry in Translation (no. 20, 2002) and only later came out as a stand-alone book; the version I have is the journal issue. Reading between the lines as I moved through it, I got the distinct sense that the poets and critics involved on the Russian side were mystified by the Western editors’ desire to segregate the women from the men. (Polukhina, though Russian, lives and works in England. She is married to Weissbort.)

In one of the issue’s several prefatory pieces, Tatyana Voltskaya reminds readers that medieval theologians would often debate whether women even had souls, and she takes the demand for anthologies of women’s writing as evidence that the issue of sexism has not yet been settled, even if the writers themselves find it irrelevant: “I cannot escape the feeling that the shadow of that accursed question, formulated by pedantic theologians, still hangs over us, like the smile of the Cheshire Cat.” The anthologists’ urge to respond (“They do have souls!”) is especially perplexing when you realize, she says, that “if one ignores the very summit (Brodsky, in particular), women-poets in Russia, in recent decades, have been better writers.” There may be no injustice, she implies, that needs to be remedied. Likewise, Aleksei Alekhin, another preface writer, finds the need for such an anthology baffling: “It has always seemed to me that divisions according to gender should apply only to changing-rooms and public toilets—because of natural bashfulness. In poetry, there is nothing to be ashamed of.”