These translations are born out of a fascination with Nikolaj Reber's poetry that began about ten years ago when I discovered his verses online at some Russian literary sites. Since then we've been in touch on and off. He is, in my opinion, one of the most interesting postmodern Russian poets. His voice is immediately recognizable, and my goal was to be as faithful to the original as possible in order to preserve his unique style and imagery. The two poems featured here, originally published in Going to downtown (2006), represent the aesthetics of Nikolaj Reber's poetry only to a certain degree, but I believe they give readers in English a good introduction.
- Boris Kokotov
In 1938 and 1939, Marina Tsvetaeva was living in Paris with her son; her husband, Sergei Efron, who had fought with the White Army during the Civil War, had returned to the Soviet Union as an NKVD agent. Tsvetaeva and her son would follow Efron back to the Soviet Union in 1939, where it seems Tsvetaeva knew she was unlikely to survive, and where she would die in 1941. Tsvetaeva’s years in Paris were marked by almost complete isolation, these last years even more so, and it seems that at this time she knew she would not publish again.
It was within this context that Tsvetaeva wrote “Poems to Czechoslovakia,” a sustained sequence responding to the Munich Agreement of September 1938 and the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia in March 1939. The cycle is an impassioned outcry, condemning fascism and affirming the resilience and promise of human life and collective human struggle. It is also grounded in personal experience, political events, and an awareness of Czech history, landscape, and culture: Tsvetaeva had lived in Czechoslovakia during the first years of her exile (her son was born there in 1925), and her poems convey a sense of identification with this country so often marked by country-less-ness. The poems draw on images of the Czech national revival movement and the Czech national anthem, and often address specific political events, sometimes including quotes from newspaper articles or references to news photographs, such as the photograph taken of Hitler in a window of Prague Castle. “Poems to Czechoslovakia” is one of Tsvetaeva’s greatest works, varied yet integrated in tone and formal approach, speaking both to a particular historical moment and to larger questions of freedom, belonging, and survival.
Curiously, most significant translations of Tsvetaeva’s work, such as those by Elaine Feinstein or the recent edition by Ilya Kaminsky and Jean Valentine, include just a few poems from the cycle. These translations also remove Tsvetaeva’s references to specific events; for instance, both Feinstein and Kaminsky/Valentine remove the quote from a newspaper article (“The Czechs came up to the Germans and spat”), with which Tsvetaeva prefaces “Took,” the sixth poem in the second half of the sequence. These elisions take the poems out of their context, but they also obscure the fact that Tsvetaeva was not just writing passionate poems of protest; she was also and deliberately grounding her poems in real events as they occurred.
As a translator my intention has been to correct these redactions, by considering the sequence as a whole and staying as true to the original as possible, including notes where historical and cultural references might present confusion. This translation is part of a larger project to bring Tsvetaeva’s politically oriented poems into English at a moment when the sharpness of her perceptions, and the fierceness of her reply, are acutely relevant.
- Margaree Little
Russia | Russian | Short Fiction
July, 2017In a recent interview, Russian writer Igor Sakhnovsky relayed what could be taken as the author’s literary credo: “Life’s cornucopia of nonfictional material renders fantasy unnecessary.” His short story “The Jealous God of Chance” puts this precept into practice. Sakhnovsky’s peculiar breed of realism evolves out of his own life. In each of the six parts of the story, the narrator (the author’s alter ego) reflects on an autobiographical episode and imagines what could have happened along with what actually did. Rather than lamenting what might have been, Sakhnovsky relates these events in wry, staccato prose, full of irony and self-reproach. Each vignette explores a decisive moment of action, inaction, or, as the title suggests, chance. They include a near-death experience in the narrator’s childhood, a hasty marriage proposal in his early adulthood, and a fateful encounter with a Russian mobster in middle age. The last episode finds the narrator in the present, sitting at his desk, contemplating an offer from a stranger he’s been chatting with on the Internet which concerns whether or not the two should spend the rest of their lives together. An ambiguous final paragraph seems to suggest that the God of Chance is, as the narrator suggests, a jealous one.
- Michael Gluck
Novel (excerpt) | Russia | Russian
July, 2015Let the question asked and answered by one German critic stand as introduction to Vasilii Golovanov's "documentary novel" The Island (Original Russian title: остров or Ostrov):
"A travelogue, a novel, an ethnographic report, a historical narrative, a cautionary tale, an autobiography, or a collection of stories and myths? It is all of this and more. It is the kind of book that only appears a handful of times in a century."
Now it's my turn. I say The Island is a transcendently beautiful book, both formally innovative and emotionally charged, possibly the first deep engagement with the extremes of the Russian Far North that is truly post-Soviet. And by "post-Soviet" I mean it is less concerned with bearing witness to great suffering and great crimes, and more concerned with the allure of the north (although Golovanov acknowledges crimes visited upon living beings and living land).
By "post-Soviet" I also mean a work that is not explicitly political (and much of the fiction we call "post-Soviet" continues to identify itself in terms of its stance toward the power of the state). In The Island, the state is marginal, marginalized. The focus is on the individual, his environment, and whatever informs him--past traumas, personal history, education and engagement with the world around him--and as such is liberating, for any reader, not just the Russian reader.
The Island details a number of journeys Golovanov made during the nineties to the island of Kolguev, a "tiny planet" in the Barents Sea. Golovanov claims these sojourns were a therapeutic response to a personal and professional crisis brought on by his work as a war correspondent. Over time, his involvement with Kolguev broadened into a meditation on the Russian Far North, its inhabitants, its natural beauty, and its tragedy; along the way, the work he produced to document this engagement deepened into an exploration as to the meaning of travel itself.
Formally, it may be the first Russian nonfiction novel (it is billed as such). It is certainly the first Russian work I know that mixes a wide variety of genres, and puts them all at the service of a rhapsody. It is a cut-and-paste picaresque, filled with lengthy discursive asides on flora, fauna, indigenous inhabitants, earlier encounters with the landscape (by Scottish explorers, by Soviet scientists, by other late-20th-century dreamers and refugees), myths, legends, personal stories, and the vast Russian literary tradition to which Golovanov lays claim, from Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Aksakov, Platonov (to whom he consciously acknowledges a deep debt), and even the Babel of Red Cavalry. The theme of the book, or its impetus, is that of flight--and for the first time in Russian literary history this flight takes place within the vastness of Russia, because of Russia and not in spite of it, constituting challenge, possibility, and opportunity--for redemption, for self-discovery, for a deeper understanding of what it means to go to extremes.
- Adam Siegel
Elena Andreyevna Shvarts (1948-2010), a legendary Russian poet, until 1989 was published in samizdat (self-publishing) and abroad (New York, Paris, Ann Arbor). Born in Leningrad, where she lived her entire life, Shvarts attended the University of Tartu, where her first poems were published in the university newspaper in 1973. After that, however, she did not publish for another decade in her own country; her work began to appear in émigré journals in 1978, and she published two collections of poetry (Tantsuyushchii David and Stikhi) and a novel in verse (Trudy i dni Lavinii) abroad before a collection (Storony sveta) was allowed to be published in the Soviet Union. Birdsong escaping from a cage is a metaphor running though her work. Shvarts was awarded many prizes: in 1979, the Andrey Bely prize; in 1999, the Northern Palmira (Severnaya Palmira); in 2003, the Triumph, and others. In 2002–2008, a four-volume edition of her work was published in Saint Petersburg.
- Ian Probstein
Roald Mandelstam (1932-1961), who died of tuberculosis and intestinal hemorrhage at the age of twenty-eight, was a gifted and singular poet who unfortunately was not published in his short lifetime. He called himself “the last poet on earth” in his last poem, entitled “Epilogue.” In fact, he was perhaps the last romantic poet, a sparkling splinter of the Russian Silver Age. There is an evident affinity between the poetry of R. Mandelstam with the poetry of the Silver Age—first and foremost, with the poetry of Blok, Gumilev and Osip Mandelstam, but Roald Mandelstam's work differs from theirs due to his unique syncretic imagery, vision, and intonation. Moreover, he is an existential poet and, as such, he continued the highest traditions of the Russian poetry from Derzhavin and Tiutchev to Gumilev and O. Mandelstam. He was one of the first postwar underground poets in Leningrad, a forerunner of the brilliant constellation of poets that included the so-called Leningrad Philological School, Leonid Aronson, Vladimir Uflyand, and Joseph Brodsky, as well as the poets of his circle, Victor Krivulin, Elena Shvarts, and many more.
In his review of Mandelstam's third posthumously published book, Kirill Medvedev compares his poetry to the French les poètes maudits. True, such poems as “My Friends,” “A Grim Guest,” or “Junkman” are akin to Rimbaud’s poems and Corbière’s “Night Paris.” There is an evident trace of antagonism and protest against the totalitarian system, against those who accept their slavery, but the rebel-poet calls his fellow citizens to revolt. Even alluding to Roman history, Roald Mandelstam draws parallels with his contemporary life. Mandelstam’s lack of agony, decadence, and narcissism distinguishes him from the French les poètes maudits, however. Among other distinctive features of Mandelstam’s poetry are his artistic vision in images and syncretic imagery revealing all five senses. As V. Kreyd mentioned in his essay of 1984, in Mandelstam's poetry “nature is spiritualized; there is no borderline between human nature, organic and inorganic nature" (Kreyd 22).*
He was rediscovered by Mikhail Shemiakin, who published Mandelstam’s poetry in the almanac Apollon-77, and by K. Kuz’minskii, who published selected works in the anthology U Goluboi Laguny (At the Blue Lagoon). From 1982 to 1997, four books of Mandelstam's poetry were published in Israel and Russia, including Complete Poems (St. Petersburg: Ivan Limbakh Publishing, 2006), which was compiled and edited by the poet’s sister, Mrs. Helene Petrov-Mandelstam. She and I are currently compiling a bilingual English-Russian edition of Roald Mandelstam’s Selected Poetry.
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* Kreyd, V. Zametki o poezii Roal’da Mandel’stama. (Notes on Roald Mandelstam’s poetry). Strelets 4 (1984): 22-24.
- Ian Probstein
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Temptations of Translation
It is virtually impossible to render one's visions in poetry, let alone in translating it. Ezra Pound wrote in ABC of Reading, "Poetry...is the most concentrated form of verbal expression." The task gets even more difficult if we take into consideration that Georgy Ivanov's later poetry is marked with a minimalist economy of means. One has to sacrifice something without losing what the great Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva once defined as "points of anguish" (bolevyie tochki), that is, the points of tension in the poem. In the first poem featured here, I changed the line that reads "I do not care what is going to be afterwards" into "I don't care if after me there's the deluge." But I believe I preserved the unexpected hit of the last line "There is, finally, suicide." In the second poem, I deemed it necessary to combine two perspectives: the poet's rather skeptical view of life and his restrained and even estranged view of himself.
- Ian Probstein
Russia | Russian | Short Fiction
July, 2013Anatoly Gavrilov is a contemporary Russian writer of short stories. Born in Ukraine, and a graduate of the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute, Gavrilov now lives in Vladimir and works as a postman. His work was not published in the USSR until 1989. A writer of modest output, Gavrilov's laconic style and experimental narratives have left their mark on modern Russian prose, particularly the so-called "new prose" movement. The mood of his works is pessimistic. His heroes are despondent and confounded by unexpected twists of fate. His basic theme is the futility of the little man's existence--the writer has little faith in his heroes' attempts to change the world. His artistic approach is one of unwavering authenticity and specificity.
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Editor's Foreword
As noted in the previously released Pierre Menard versions of the Alexander Blok lyric "A Girl Sang in a Church Choir," the famous Quixote translator, having relocated to Bexley, in Greater London--the date of this move is unclear, though it was certainly after the summer of 1913, which he spent in Nimes--returned to the study of Russian, a lifelong pursuit, and, not unsurprisingly, turned his attention to the translation of some of the remarkable poetry then being published in Russia and, subsequently, the incipient USSR... (continued in post)
Novel-in-Verse | Russia | Russian
August, 2012Gnedich (Vremya, Moscow, 2012) is a novel-in-verse about the first Russian translator of the Iliad, the romantic poet and librarian Nikolai Gnedich (1784-1833), who was also the author of the first Russian Gothic fiction. His brilliant translation, still the standard one in Russia, was both highly praised and mocked by Alexander Pushkin. Gnedich has been awarded the Anthologia prize and the Russian Prize (II category), was the finalist for the NoS and the Andrei Bely literary awards, and is currently nominated for the Bunin prize. Since Gnedich spent almost his entire life translating Homer's epic poem, Maria Rybakova (usually a writer of prose) has chosen verse as the most appropriate stylistic means in recreating his life. To the English-speaking world, this genre of poetic biography is best exemplified by Ruth Padel's Darwin: A Life in Poems. Gnedich consists of 12 songs (cantos). The novel depicts the lives of Gnedich and his best friend, Batyushkov, who is slowly losing his sanity, among the motifs from their poetry and the archaic imagery of the Homeric world. The space of the novel extends from St. Petersburg and Vologda to Paris and Naples, and from the boudoir of the famous actress (and Gnedich's unrequited love) Semyonova to the Petersburg public library and the cubbyhole of Gnedich's superstitious maidservant. The novel culminates in Batyushkov's final breakdown in the lunatic asylum in Pirna (later a Nazi killing center) and Gnedich's ruminations on the future tragic fate of Russia. Two excerpts of the novel have appeared on the Contemporary Russian Literature at the University of Virginia website.
The Brooklyn Rail welcomes you to our web-exclusive section InTranslation, where we feature unpublished translations of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and dramatic writing. Published since April 2007, InTranslation is a venue for outstanding work in translation and a resource for translators, authors, editors, and publishers seeking to collaborate.
We seek exceptional unpublished English translations from all languages.
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