The Onegin Live site offers a free download of Pushkin's 'Eugene Onegin' read by Stephen Fry. But there is also a brief historical bibliography of over forty translations of the great Russian novel in verse.
Much of it would be known to those who have an interest in Pushkin, but still I found this snippet thoroughly enjoyable. Nabokov and Edmund Wilson falling out over whose translation is best:
In 1963, Walter Arndt published a verse translation of Eugene Onegin preserving the rhyme schemes and metrical structure of Pushkin’s text. Vladimir Nabokov reviewed Arndt’s work in an essay entitled “On Translating Pushkin Pounding the Clavichord” that was published in The New York Review of Books. Nabokov furiously criticised Arndt’s translation; according to him, the attempt to preserve the original iambic tetrameter resulted in Arndt’s defacing Pushkin’s spirit and the literal meaning of the novel. Arndt replied with a letter “Goading the pony” that was followed by an article “The strange case of Pushkin and Nabokov” by Edmund Wilson, a critic who rose to Arndt’s defence and thus ruptured his close friendship with Nabokov.
In this clip Nabokov reads Pushkin's testament 'Exegi Monumentum' (1836) -
The Tapestry is a new poem by John Lott, which didn't quite make it into his latest poetry volume 'Winter Beach' (2017, WebVivant Press). Perhaps, a 'Summer Beach' poetry is in the works and 'The Tapestry' will fit well in there. John's poems are written to be heard as well as read. In fact, he records and releases them on discs.
From all points of the compass, They come to the Plaza, The hub and the heart of the city. Here they meet, mix and mingle, In a kaleidoscope of colour. Pacing medieval, marble flagstones Bearing the ghostly footprints of long-forgotten fashions. They are embraced by structures hallowed by history And architecture mellowed by time. Through the centuries, they have come To see, to sell, to learn and to love And the square has become a microcosm of the known universe. Where the complexities of cultures, colours and creeds Combine as one. In their wake, each draws a thread. A thread coloured by their origin, their ethnicity Their aspirations, needs and fears And as their paths cross, so do their threads, Creating a warp and a weft which weaves the tapestry That we call Humanity. 'The Winter Beach' by John Lott is available on major book selling sites and on the publisher's site WebVivant Press. John Lott's profile is also on WebVivant Press website.
Evgeny Yevtushenko, a leading Russian poet of the 60-s generation, died on 1 April 2017, aged 84.
He was a prominent voice of his generation and a controversial, much spoken of figure of later years. Much is being said about his personality and political face. Tetradki want to let you simply listen to him reciting his own poetry.
Here he is, in the 1965 film "I am Twenty" by Marlen Khutsiev (Wikipedia about the film). It is a long semi-documentary sequence of a poetry reading in the Moscow Polytechnic Museum lecture hall, a popular venue for intelligentsia gatherings at the time. (Yevtushenko is the first reader in the episode)
In case you missed it, 'Eugene Onegin', the great Russian novel in verse by Alexander Pushkin, is now available in audio book format. Stephen Fry (the voice of Harry Potter) reads it in James Falen's translation (1995). To download the full audio book go to Fry Reads Onegin. Here is sonnet (stanza) 6 from Chapter 1 of 'Eugene Onegin': 6.
Cardinal Points Journal is holding their Arseny Tarkovsky translations awards ceremony and readings in New York this Saturday (Poets House, at 4 pm.). Cardinal Points has had Russian poetry translation contests for several years now, each devoted to one particular poet. Last year's contest was dedicated to Arseny Tarkovsky, father of the film director Andrey. (wikipedia about Arseny and a portrait gallery of him.)
Winning translations will appear on the Cardinal Points website and in the 5th volume of the almanac scheduled to come out in a few months.
Cardinal Points website is here and direct link to Tarkovsky contest page is here, for additional information mail Compass (compass at StoSvet dot net) or go to their facebook page.
This translation by Laurence Bogoslaw (USA) won the first prize.
In autumn’s final weeks, on the decline
Of bitter life,
Filled to the brim with wistfulness, I walked
Into a leafless, nameless wood.
It was engulfed from edge to edge in milk-
White fog like frosted glass. Its hoary branches
Dripped tears distilled like those
That only trees weep on the eve
Of winter that drains everything of color.
And then a miracle occurred: at sunset
Out of a raincloud peeked a gleam of blue,
A ray of light broke through, as bright as June,
A weightless spear of birdsong cast
From future days back to my past.
And now the trees stood weeping on the eve
Of noble works and festive offerings
Of cheerful whirlwinds luffing in the azure;
And bluebirds started dancing in a ring
Like hands upon a keyboard, rising measures
From earth to the highest notes the air can sing.
In the first video, Arseny Tarkovsky reads First Encounters ("Первые свидания") in Andrey Tarkovsky's The Mirror. It is this poem that ends with the haunting lines: 'When fate was stalking us like madman, with razor blade in hand.' In the second video Arseny Tarkovsky reads 'Blurring Sight' ("Меркнет зрение"):
I am not sure if it's poetry but we've had a lovely April day with a bit of light rain. It is warm and a bit of sun. I was standing by the window and looking at the old apple tree. She has just started sprouting blossom.
The day Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, 22 June, Sunday, can never go out of Russian memory, the feeling of catastrophe, universal suffering, separation, the Armageddon, — and in the end, the Victory.
Konstantin Simonov, the famous Russian poet, novelist and editor, reads the poem 'Wiat for Me' that he wrote in 1941 when so many men went missing, so many families got separated, that desperation was settling in.
'Wait for me, don't believe those who sit down and drink to my memory, I will come back,' millions repeated after him. This recording is from 1977.
Bard (бард) is the Russian term for singer-songwriter, a folk singer who writes their own lyrics and sings, usually to acoustic guitar. I understand that the English word bard is now archaic and never used to describe a modern singer or poet. In Russian it is still in circulation. (Wikipedia on bardy, with a list of the best known names.)
The term appeared in late 1950s - 1960s at the same time as Russian poetry was having a phenomenal renaissance that coincided with the folk-song revival in the US. Another Russian name for this genre is author's song (авторская песня).
Bards (барды) often performed on stage alongside 'proper' poets to packed audiences, including full stadiums. They sometimes became well-known and had their songs sung all over the Soviet Union, in tiny kitchens and by the bon-fires, well before their songs were broadcast, released on records or published.
The new striking feature of the bards' output was the Bob Dylan-like blend of the deeply personal with that of 'great social and political import.' Some of them were fiercely patriotic, others were anti-regime dissidents.
One poet singer stands out in that great generation — Novella Matveyeva (Новелла Матвеева, wiki about her), whose piercing romanticism and inimitable child-like voice I can only roughly compare to Kate Bush. She started writing and singing in the 50s and her songs were all over the country with people not even knowing who the author was. Her first LP record only came out in 1966. She now has dozens of records and poetry collections behind her.
Matveyeva, who will be eighty next year, is still working. It is reported that she is preparing her version of Shakespeare's sonnets in Russian.
One of her best known songs is the ballad 'A Girl from the Tavern' ("Девушка из таверны"), better known for its opening line "Любви моей ты боялся зря" ('You shouldn't have been scared of my love' .) The music is a slightly changed Greensleeves tune. The first stanza practically goes as a quote from Greensleeves but on the second the melody scatters and stumbles in a typically 1960s folk-song manner. И если ты уходил к другой, she starts, and then continues или просто был неизвестно где as though it is one extended line that disregards the rhythm.
The lyrics is a reverse version of Greensleeves, it's not a song of a man's longing but a young girl's bitter but contented lament about the man who she loved and who apparently ignored her.
'And when you left to see someone else, or simply were no one knows where,
For me, it was enough that your raincoat hang on the nail.'
Then he leaves for good and
'I was just happy to see the nail in the wall where your raincoat used to hang.'
This is not the end,
'Something terrible happened at home, they pulled out that nail.
Well, I was just happy that from the nail a small mark was left there.'
These lines are simply heart-breaking. (My literal translation)
Full Russian and English texts of the song are here. I am publishing extracts below the video. It is not clear who translated the ballad into English. Matveyeva's lyrics are all over the internet but I am not sure about the copyright, so I put only two opening stanzas and the last one here.
In the first YouTube clip Matveyeva sings 'A Girl from the Tavern.' And in the next is a 1965 video of her singing another popular ballad 'Once There Was a Little Boat' ("Жил кораблик")
Organisers of the poetry translation contest in memory of the Soviet poet Maria Petrovykh have announced that submissions deadline is extended to 15 July 2013. Details of the contests (there is a fee) on the Compass Translation Award 2013 website. Read more about Petrovykh and the contest in this Tetradki article in Russian.
Vikenty Veresayev Portrait by Sergey Malyutin, 1919.
Sappho's 'Equal to gods' is one of my all time favourite poems in Russian.
The polymath Vikenty Veresayev (1867-1945, wiki here) fell in love with Greece in 1910, when he travelled there. By that time he was an established realist writer and a practising doctor.
Veresayev isn't widely read these days but his name is well known, not least because quotes from his novels and essays are frequently used in Russian language text books. So precise, if not stylistically exiting, was his language.
Translated by Willis Barnstone (first version, 1965)
There has been a long argument about the last bit. One school of scholars says that it may not even belong to the poem. Others insist that it is a wonderfully integral part of it, indispensable.
Another great lover of Greek poetry and symbolism was of course the great poet Osip Mandelstam who started writing at the same time as Veresayev was falling in love with Greece. Veresayev's translations of Sappho came up in a super-thread on Languagehat two years ago.
The video below is a musical version of the poem from the cult 1976 album by David Tukhmanov 'On the Wave of My Memory' (Russian wiki here: "По волне моей памяти"), sung by the vocal group of the Sovremennik (The Contemporary) orchestra. Solo by Natalia Kapustina.
The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath! is a two-part TV film that has been a New Year's must in Russia for over thirty years since it was first broadcast on New Year's Day in 1976.
"The comedy born by the director Eldar Ryazanov is the most loved film of all Russia, — writes Lurkmore.—It is also an object of unbridled adoration (~) of all who are nostalgic for everything Soviet and the Soviet way of life. Every New Year from the time of its release the film is shown on at least one and sometimes several TV channels [in Russia]. Anonimus remembers an occasion when the film was on on three main TV channels at the same time (but staggered, not synchronised.) On New Year's night, it has become a good tradition in true Russian families to contemplate this example of the art of cinema with vodka-heavy eyes and a mouthfuls of festive olivier salad (because it will be off the next day.) A whole generation of citizens has grown and matured who have been watching The Irony of Fate from age two. They can imagine the holiday without the film no more as without the chimes of the Kremlin clock tower, olivier and hellish hangover on the morning of the 1 January. And they successfully instill the beautiful tradition in their children."
Dialogues in the film are in a perfectly correct Russian, to the point of being bland. This makes it a good aid for language lessons.
The songs, all of which have become national hits, are to the poems by Yevgeniy Yevtushenko, Marina Tsvetayeva (two), Bella Akhmadulina, Boris Pasternak, Alexander Aronov, Vladimir Kirshon and Mikhail Lvovsky. They are sung by Alla Pugachyova and Sergei Nikitin.
Here is the film in full with English subtitles.
(Episode 1, from the official Mosfilm YouTube channel)
The quote is from here. Translation by Lenore Mayhew and William McNaughton. And here is the first stanza of the same 1934 untitled poem, in Jane Kenyon's translation:
Wild honey has the scent of freedom,
dust—of a ray of sun,
a girl's mouth—of a violet,
and gold—has no perfume.
Watery—the mignonette,
and like an apple—love,
but we have found out forever
that blood smells only of blood.
Love smells of apples? I love it, but where did she get it from?
Here is the stanza in Russian:
Привольем пахнет дикий мед,
Пыль – солнечным лучом,
Фиалкою – девичий рот,
А золото – ничем.
Водою пахнет резеда,
И яблоком – любовь.
Но мы узнали навсегда,
Что кровью пахнет только кровь...
There is a second stanza in the full version, see here. For more translations from Akhmatova look here and here.
On the Russian-language side of Tetradki I publish a video with Brodsky talking about Akhmatova. See here.
In this video Ludmila Barykina sings Akhmatova's Confusion ("Смятение", 1913) to David Tukhmanov's music, from the hit 1976 album On the Wave of My Memory ("По волне моей памяти"). Russian text below the cut.
The sinking of the Titanic a hundred years ago this week was a powerful blow to the prevailing self-assured mood of the time, the feeling that nature is finally conquered and the human is king. The largest man-made moving object, the unsinkable ship was destroyed by the forces of the unforgiving nature.
For many, it was also an omen for more tragedies to come in the new century. Two years later the first world war started and empires fell.
The feeling was shared by the great Russian poet of the time Nicolay Gumilev. In the middle of 1917, after the collapse of Russian monarchy but before the bolshevik takeover in October, he wrote this poem, sometimes published under the title 'The Omen'.
As we were leaving Southampton
The depths of the sea were blue.
But as we approached Le Havre
Its colours had darkened to black.
Oh yes, I believe in omens
As I do in waking dreams.
Lord, show mercy, save our souls.
Disaster, it's coming our way.
Translated by A.Anichkin
Gumilev took part in an officers' anti-Soviet conspiracy and was shot by the Bolsheviks in 1921. His wife, the poet Anna Akhmatova, and son, the historian Lev Gumilev survived. The poem was not published until 1950s but is now widely known in russophonia – the Russian-speaking world.
In Russian:
Предзнаменование
Мы покидали Соутгемптон,
И море было голубым,
Когда же мы пристали к Гавру,
То чёрным сделалось оно.
Я верю в предзнаменованья,
Как верю в утренние сны.
Господь, помилуй наши души:
Большая нам грозит беда.
Titanic actually sailed from Southampton to Cherbourg in France, not Le Havre, then to Queenstown in Ireland and then across the Atlantic.
Nobel Prize in literature went to Tomas Tranströmer of Sweden.
He is considered by Swedes as the national poet. They compare him in importance to Strindberg and Bergman. Tranströmer suffered a stroke in 1990 and has been unable to speak since, but has continued to write. Internationally he is one of the most widely translated contemporary poets, his work has appeared in over 60 languages.
In this audio he gives a master class in English and reads one of his most famous poems Shubertiana.
The famous Russian singer Alla Pugacheva made several beautiful song versions of Shakespeare's sonnnets. In this musical excerpt from the Soviet film 'Love for Love' (1983) based on Much Ado About Nothing she sings Sonnet XL .
Shakespeare's text:
Take all my loves, my love, yea, take them all;
What hast thou then more than thou hadst before?
No love, my love, that thou mayst true love call;
All mine was thine before thou hadst this more.
Then if for my love thou my love receivest,
I cannot blame thee for my love thou usest;
But yet be blamed, if thou thyself deceivest
By wilful taste of what thyself refusest.
I do forgive thy robbery, gentle thief,
Although thou steal thee all my poverty;
And yet, love knows, it is a greater grief
To bear love's wrong than hate's known injury.
Lascivious grace, in whom all ill well shows,
Kill me with spites; yet we must not be foes.
In Russian canon Samuil Marshak's translations of the sonnets, the full cycle, are considered best and are rarely critically challenged.
There are several curious places in the Russian version.
Take, for example, the lines
But yet be blamed, if thou thyself deceivest
By wilful taste of what thyself refusest.
I do forgive thy robbery, gentle thief,
Although thou steal thee all my poverty;
There is no clear, grammatically expressed gender in English, but sonnet 40 belongs to the sequence addressed to the Fair Youth, not the the Dark Lady who appeared later, in sonnets 127-152. In Russian, where gender is shown through different endings of third person verbs in the past tense, Marshak gives them masculine gender:
Нет, я в одном тебя лишь упрекну,
Что пренебрёг любовью ты моею. ~ fem. пренебрегла
Ты нищего лишил его сумы. ~ fem. лишила
Но я простил пленительного вора. ~ fem. простила
The first two bolded words describe actions of the person to whom the sonnet is addressed, the third is Shakespeare talking about himself. So, in the Russian version a man addresses another man with a passionate, but forgiving rebuke.
Now, theories abound about Shakespeare's sexuality and who the Fair Youth of the sonnets might have been. The question is does Marshak refer to homosexuality here, or love in a broader sense, love as friendship and loyalty – betrayed? Perhaps it's the latter. The translation was published in 1948 during one of Stalin's last paranoid campaigns against 'enemies of the people' and when homosexuality was banned.
Henry Wriothesley, a possible Fair Youth
That is perhaps why 'lascivious grace' completely disappears from the sonnet's ending which is rendered as follows:
О ты, чье зло мне кажется добром.
Убей меня, но мне не будь врагом!
But how does Pugacheva deal with the man-to-man issue? She sings the sonnet from a woman's perspective, addressed to a man? That's clever: she changes the masculine third person past простил (forgave) to first person future прощу (will forgive) where gender is not morphologically shown. The whole piece becomes a consistent woman-to-man text. The line is sung at about 1:20 minutes into the clip.
The monetary prize is yet to be announced, but the panel and committee are quite impressive, and the prize itself (the compass) is good. Russian-English tandems are welcome and so are translations from literals.
This year marks 125 years since the birth of Nikolay Gumilyov, as well as the 90th anniversary of his execution by the bolsheviks in 1921. This year's contest is a part of the First International Gumilyov Festival.
The terms are as follows:
We would like to keep it simple: one poem only from each participant (participant's choice). The translation, along with the Russian original, should be sent via email both in the body of the message and as an attached Word file at the Compass Contest email address (compass@stosvet.net) with the words "Gumilyov Contest" in the subject line. Please write your name, mailing address, telephone number, and email address on all pages of the Word file. The contest entry fee is $15 securely paid online through the Cardinal Points donation page. If for any reason – political, geographical, or technical – you are not able to submit your entry fee, please send a request for a fee waiver to the same address.
The submission period starts on April 15th, 2011 (Gumilyov’s birthday) and ends on July 15th. The names of the winners will be announced at the end of August.
A Russian web-site dedicated to Gumilev with a huge collection of his poems is atgumilev.ru.
Read the Tetradki article 'All Creatures Great and Small' which includes Gumilev's rendering of Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
This is a Russian students' course project (Winter semester 2005-06). The video is based on Shakespeare's Sonnet 66, my favourite.
Don't know what to make of it, but the acting and cinematography are beautiful.
66.
Tired with all these, for restful death I cry,
As, to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity,
And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
And gilded honour shamefully misplaced,
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,
And strength by limping sway disabled,
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly doctor-like controlling skill,
And simple truth miscall'd simplicity,
And captive good attending captain ill:
Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,
Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.
The translation used is by Samuil Marchak, 1948, Russian text here.
Boris Pasternak's 1938 version is here.
