Cover of Russian edition of Wordsworth and Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads (trans. Igor Melamed) / Image courtesy of РГГУ
One of the key
concerns of The Flaxen Wave, which is also a key concern for anyone
translating poems from Russian to English for an American audience, is bridging
the gap between Russian poetry, where strict rhyme and meter are the norm, and
American poetry, where free verse dominates. This problem often occupies my
mind, but I rarely know
how to take it on directly. American translators of Russian verse have batted
around the question of form for decades, and even though I don’t intend to enter into that debate at the
moment, I do sometimes find it helpful to consider Russian perspectives on the
matter.
Not long ago, I
read an interview in Ex Libris with
Russian poet and translator Igor Melamed, whose thoughts on form seem to me
more or less representative of the status quo in Russia. (Incidentally, this year Melamed
published a Russian translation of Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical
Ballads.) When asked why he doesn’t use free verse in his own
poetry, Melamed spoke of the “reckless creative freedom that dominates Western
poetry and has practically killed it.” Like Frost, he would never consider
playing tennis with the net down:
It turns out that the more libre you have, the less vers you end up with. Meter and rhyme are a welcome burden that keeps verse from falling apart and that, strange though it may seem, makes an impact on poetic thought as a whole. … Russian poetry has a viable enough rhythmic potential that we don’t need to hitch up our pants and go running after Eliot or Éluard.
