On “Unity” (of the Scatological Sort)

Russian toilet used in Mir space station / Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

The State Historical Museum in Moscow has a curious exhibit running until October 3 called “Where the King Walked” (as opposed to where he “rode” or “was carried”). So where did the king walk? To the toilet, of course. That accounts for the exhibit’s subtitle: “Hygiene in Historical Context.” And the historical context that the curators have in mind runs from classical antiquity to the present day, with stops along the way at medieval Asian chamber pots, urine collection bags from the Mir space station, and brand new toilet bowls that can quickly analyze what you put into them and give you timely updates on your health. Russian readers can have a look at a full description of the exhibit here.

A Russian Journal Goes English

For the first time, the New York journal Cardinal Points (Стороны света) has published an issue in English. In fact, it's a double issue, and it's packed with great stuff. Compiled under the guest editorship of Robert Chandler, the new issue includes translations of works by Marina Tsvetaeva, Andrei Platonov, Varlam Shalamov, and Vasily Grossman, along with original poems by Chandler, Glyn Maxwell, and Ilya Kaminsky, among others. There is enough excellent writing here to keep you occupied for many days. Valentina Polukhina, for example, has an interview here with David Bethea about Joseph Brodsky, whom Bethea calls "the last poet in the Russian heroic tradition." And Chandler gives us his own essay on Platonov and Shalamov to accompany their stories.

But my favorite section of the new issue is the one called "The Art of Translation." This is a big section, with contributions by the likes of Daniel Weissbort, Sasha Dugdale, Elaine Feinstein, and Sibelan Forrester. As I see it, the must-read essay in this section is Stanley Mitchell's recollection of the work he did - and depression he suffered - while translating Pushkin's Eugene Onegin. There's no question but that any Onegin translation is a Sisyphean task, and Mitchell's took its toll on him. In the end, though, he turned out something to be proud of: "Repeating Pushkin’s self-congratulation on finishing a piece of work, I said of mine: ‘Well done, you son-of-a-bitch!’"

For a glance at the older issues, go to the journal's Russian-language page.

Good News for Those Who Read Russian

The chaos of the new semester has kept me from doing much with this blog lately, but I thought it necessary to put up a quick message: OpenSpace.ru is up and running again! They were on hiatus for several months, but now they're back online doing their usual excellent work. For Russian readers who are interested in culture (music, literature, art, theater), this site is among the best resources out there.

Ryan on Translation

Image courtesy of Jeff Birkenstein

As I was leafing through Kay Ryan's The Best of It again this morning, I rediscovered a little poem of hers that offers a metaphor on poetic translation which seems to me neither dismissive of the endeavor nor blind to its faults. In the poem, fittingly enough called "Poetry in Translation," Ryan describes an animal skin spread on the floor in such a way that it comes out shaped like the U.S.:

     One meditates
     upon a
     Florida-like flap—
     a forward leg
     which ran
     the Russian steppe
     perhaps?

Translation and the Laureateship

W. S. Merwin / Image courtesy of inkywretch

As I learned last week (perhaps belatedly) from the Poetry Foundation’s podcast Poetry Off the Shelf, W.S. Merwin has been named as the next U.S. Poet Laureate. He’ll take up the post this fall. At one point in the interview portion of the podcast, Merwin says that poetry is something we should naturally enjoy reading and hearing:

I really believe … that everybody really loves poetry. And if they don’t think they do, it’s because something has happened to deprive them of it. I think that just as children love to draw and to dance and to sing and do all those things, they also love poetry.

I hope he’s right. In fact, that hope is what keeps me teaching and translating poetry. And students who take my poetry courses often tell me they are pleasantly surprised that studying poetry isn’t as painful as they expected it would be. So there’s reason to be hopeful.

American readers of Russian poetry also know Merwin through the translations of Osip Mandelstam that he produced in the early 1970s with Clarence Brown. Like most Russian poets, even those writing nowadays, Mandelstam wrote formal poetry, but Brown and Merwin translated his poems into free verse. As a translator myself, I probably wouldn’t have made the same choice, but I don’t see it as an error. On the contrary, their versions of Mandelstam are marvelous. Brown and Merwin’s free verse (and I suspect we can credit Merwin alone with the sound of the poems) comes alive in English in a completely singular way. As an example, consider the last few lines of Mandelstam’s  1915 poem “Insomnia. Homer. Taut sails…” («Бессонница...»), whose literal meaning would be something like this:

… And behold, Homer is silent,

and the Black Sea, orating, groans

and with a terrible din approaches the headboard.

(… И вот, Гомер молчит, / И море черное, витийствуя, шумит / И с тяжким грохотом подxодит к изголовью.)

Brodskiana: A Tractor Driver Named Bulov (Not Burov)

Brodsky in Norenskaya / Image courtesy of Музей Иосифа Бродского в Интернете

Just as I was about to skip town and put this blog on hold for a month and a half, a curious little article appeared in Ex Libris, the literary supplement to the newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta. The idea behind the article, called “Brodsky’s Grandmother” («Бабушка Бродского»), was simple: the writer of the piece, an film actor who calls himself Yandané, would visit the village where Joseph Brodsky was exiled in the 1960s and talk to the locals about him. The results that Yandané’s experiment yielded were rather interesting. But more about that in a minute.

This episode of Brodsky’s life has become a key component of the personal mythology that influences how readers approach his poetry: after being put on trial in 1964 for tuneyadstvo, or “social parasitism”—basically, freeloading—Brodsky was exiled to the tiny village of Norenskaya in Arkhangelsk province, where he stayed for a year and a half. (The original sentence was five years.) This was the first of Brodsky’s two exiles—the second one was more permanent—and the alienation that an outcast suffers is central to Brodsky’s poetics. But even before he was sent to Norenskaya, the “exile” theme appeared in his work. Take, for example, this poem (in my translation), written in 1961:

You’re finally coming home again. So what?

Just take a look around and see who needs you.

Yes, take a look: who now might be your friend?

(Воротишься на родину. Ну что ж. / Гляди вокруг, кому еще ты нужен, / кому теперь в друзья ты попадешь?)

Blogus Interruptus

Sidewalk in Petrozavodsk / Image courtesy of Christian

Here I've just begun this blog, and now I'm off to spend five weeks in provincial Russia. Expect a new post in late July!