Yuri Kazarnovsky’s Final Stroll

(Henri Cartier-Bresson. Gorky Park, Moscow, USSR, 1954)

A little over a month ago I shared a link to my translation of Yuri Kazarnovsky’s rollicking poem “The Tram,” which inspired an insightful and deeply moving post on Patrick Kurp’s incomparable literary blog Anecdotal Evidence. Today I’d like to share another of Kazarnovsky’s poems, which he sent to Ilya Selvinsky (1899-1968) in 1956. Selvinsky was, by then, a grand old man of Soviet letters, while Kazarnovsky was living hand to mouth. This late poem, titled “The Stroll,” bears few traces of the many unthinkable indignities the poet had suffered throughout his life. Instead it playfully captures the minor indignity of an old man’s hopeless infatuation with a young woman.

In its thematic universality, stylistic elegance, and wistfully stoic tone, “The Stroll” reminds me of certain Elizabethan masterpieces, like Ben Jonson’s “My Picture Left in Scotland.” The better-known Soviet poet Nikolai Zabolotsky (1903-1958) also adopted a “plain style” after his term in the camps; all filigree had been burnt away. (Two poems from Zabolotsky’s cycle “Last Love” — on a similar theme, treated more seriously — are included in The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry.)

The Stroll

Yes, I remember… And the shadow
of someone else’s grief descends:
A blindman met us in the morning —
but couldn’t meet your lovely glance.

I gaze at you… And blindly trust
that muteness is more frightening yet:
A mute man who sat down beside us
could offer you no compliment.

A streak of smoke… Whine of a motor…
I marvel, can’t believe it’s true:
A pilot flies his jet — a hero…
He flies so fast… And not to you?

A car darts by, clashing with wind.
Its driver is as pale as chalk:
His is the pallor of deep pain —
because he couldn’t whisk you off.

Chopin… And wreaths… And through your lashes
the sadness of huge eyes shines blue…
Oh, how I pity the poor soldier
who died for anyone but you.

Still, I’m unhappier than others —
the poet is a bit too old…
Where can I find you magic glasses
that would remove ten years or so?

---

Прогулка

Припомнил все… И сразу снова
Чужого горя сумрак лег:
Мы, утром, встретили слепого,
И он — увидеть вас не мог.

Смотрю на вас… И слепо верю,
Что немота страшнее мглы:
Немой, сидевший с нами в сквере,
Не мог сказать — как вы милы.

Полоска дыма… Стон мотора…
Дивлюсь, глазам не веря сам,
Геройству летчика — который
Летит так быстро… И — не к вам.

Вот ЗИМ промчался, с ветром споря,
Мелькнул седок, бледней чем мел:
Он бледен так — конечно, с горя,
Что увезти вас не сумел.

Шопен… Венки… Сквозь ваши веки
Синеет грусть огромных глаз…
И — очень жаль мне человека,
Который умер не за вас.

Но я несчастней, чем другие, —
Немного стар уже поэт…
Где вам найти очки такие,
Чтоб стекла минус десять лет?

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Bloody Sunday: Peter Yakubovich (1860-1911) and “Red Snow”

On January 9, 1905 (according to the “Old Style” Julian Calendar), soldiers of the Russian Imperial Guard opened fire on peaceful demonstrators marching toward the Winder Palace in St. Petersburg. Led by Father Georgy Gapon, the protestors — striking workers and their families — intended to present a petition demanding an eight-hour workday, higher wages, and better working conditions. Some 1,000 people were killed or injured — either shot or trampled by the terrified crowd. The events of what came to be known as “Bloody Sunday” sparked Russia’s first mass uprising of the twentieth century, the Revolution of 1905, and inspired a number of fervent poetic responses. Among these is Peter Yakubovich’s “Red Snow.” Yakubovich (1860-1911) was a lifelong revolutionary who had spent three years imprisoned at the Peter and Paul Fortress and another twelve years in Siberian exile, an experience he chronicled in a roman à clef titled In the World of the Outcasts, published under the name “L. Melshin.” In 1899, Chekhov wrote to Lydia Avilova: “Melshin […] is a major, unappreciated writer — an intelligent, powerful writer.” And in 1911, in a letter addressed to a group of prisoners, Maxim Gorky offered the following words of encouragement: “I only wish to remind you that they throw plain people into the penal camps in Siberia, but what they get back are Dostoyevskys, Korolenkos, Melshins — dozens, hundreds of beautifully tempered souls!” In the World of the Outcasts is indeed a classic work of prison prose, and while Yakubovich’s poetry doesn’t rise to the same standard, it did succeed in stirring passions and strengthening revolutionary commitments. Here, then, is “Red Snow.”

Like a mighty torrent,
The people came in waves —
Forward, forward, forward,
With a child’s pure faith.

To beat the foe of freedom
In a noblе fight,
Their one and only weapon
Was simply being right…

Snow lay all about them,
White and undefiled;
The chilly air of winter
Was windless, almost mild.

Suddenly… a volley!
Oh, they had aimed well;
Like leaves caught in a flurry,
Piles of bodies fell!

Staring, stupefied,
At the carmine snow,
We stood without a word…
How long? It’s hard to know.

‘Cain, what have you wrought?!
How can you believe
That you’ll conceal your mark,
Hiding like a thief?

Know this: till the last drop
Of blood spills from our veins,
Vengeance — holy vengeance —
Is our only aim!

At the throne of God,
In blissful paradise,
Red snow — bloody red —
Will stand before our eyes!’

1905

---

Красный снег

Как прилив могучий,
Шел и шел народ,
С детски ясной верой,
Все вперед, вперед.

Чтоб врага свободы
Поразить в бою,
Нес одно оружье —
Правоту свою…

Белый, непорочный
Снег кругом лежал;
Воздух, чуть морозный,
Еле трепетал…

Вдруг… ряд залпов грянул!
Меток был прицел;
Как под бурей листья,
Пали груды тел!

Тупо взор уставя
В обагренный снег,
Мы стояли молча…
Миг один, иль век?

— Каин, что ты сделал?!
Прячась, словно тать,
Божьего проклятья
Скроешь ли печать?

Знай: покамест в жилах
Капля крови есть,
Мысль одну мы держим —
Про святую месть!

У престола бога,
В утро райских нег,
Все мы видеть станем
Красный, красный снег!

1905

Zoshchenko and Benchley

On this, the first day of 2018, I’d like to share a couple of blasts from the past. The short clips below feature two of the top humorists of the early 20th century. The first, from 1933, shows Mikhail Zoshchenko reading his story “The Receipt (Raspiska)” (1929), which concerns a mustachioed dandy’s savvy plan — a makeshift prenup — to avoid responsibility for any child that might ensue from his relationship with a certain young lady. Sure enough, a child ensues, and the young lady takes the dandy to court, where the judge declares that “Soviet law is on the side of the child, and it is the child’s interests that it protects. And in the given case the child should not be held responsible or made to suffer on account of his father being a pretty damned clever son of a bitch.” Of course, it isn’t the moral of the story that gives us pleasure, it’s Zoshchenko delightful delivery — rhythmic, nasal, drawling — of his exaggeratedly colloquial narrative. This is the only recording of Zoshchenko in existence, an invaluable point of reference for anyone who wants to hear his prose as he heard it himself.

But the recording is, of course, in Russian, and though it may still be of use to anglophone readers, a little more context might help. With that in mind, I offer Robert Benchley’s Pathé short “The Causes of the Depression” (1931), in which the great Algonquin wit pokes fun at the alleged economic experts who cheerfully proclaimed, in the depths of the Great Depression, that prosperity was “just around the corner.”

Some of the devices Benchley uses to conjure his character — a cliché-abusing know-nothing economist — are strikingly similar to the devices Zoshchenko uses to create Kolenkorov, the narrator of his Sentimental Tales. Early in the clip, Benchley rattles off “the primary causes of the Depression, as we called it”:

Overproduction, maladjustments in gold distribution, overproduction, deflation, too little thyroid secretion — or Platt’s disease — too much vermouth, overproduction, and, by the same token, underproduction.

The inserted phrase, “or Platt’s disease,” is a masterstroke — as if the official name of the condition in question (false, at that) makes the absurd diagnosis any more sound. It’s a desperate grasp at authoritativeness. Well, here’s Zoshchenko’s Kolenkorov, waxing poetic over the physical attributes of Apollo Perepenchuk, the tragic male protagonist of his first tale, “Apollo and Tamara”:

Even his Adam’s apple, his plain old Adam’s apple — or, as it’s sometimes called, the laryngeal prominence — which, when glimpsed on other men, is apt to trigger disgust or laughter, looked noble on Apollo Perepenchuk, whose head was invariably thrown proudly back. There was something Greek about that prominence.

You can survey that Greek prominence for yourselves this coming summer. May 2018 bring us all plenty of laughs and a little perspective, even if prosperity isn’t just around the corner!

Yuri Kazarnovsky at BODY

The venerable Prague-based literary journal B O D Y has published my translation of “The Tram,” a sprightly poem by Yuri Kazarnovsky, a victim of oppression whose spirit, despite all odds, remained unbroken — at least in verse. Introducing the poem, I write:

The Russian poet Yuri Kazarnovsky (1905 – ca. 1960) was born in Rostov-on-Don. In 1927 he was arrested, along with 11 other students, for participating in a subversive literary circle; he spent four years in the Solovki prison camp (1928 – 1931), where he contributed poems to the camp’s literary journal, and another year working on the construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal. He was released in 1932 and published one collection of poems in 1936, but was arrested again in 1937. Kazarnovsky may have been one of the last people to see Osip Mandelstam alive; the poets were housed in the same barracks at a transit camp near Vladivostok. After serving another four years in Kolyma (1938 – 1942), he was sent to work as a health inspector at the camps in Mariinsk, Siberia. Two years later he moved to Tashkent, where he descended into drug addiction. He was presumed to have died around 1956, but it was recently established that he lived at least another four years in Moscow, in abject poverty, and exchanged a number of letters with one of the major Soviet poets, Ilya Selvinsky (1899 – 1968). “The Tram” is drawn from Kazarnovsky’s 1936 collection. It reverberates with wit and the joy of invention. The poem’s lightness and brightness seem so incongruous with the cruel facts of Kazarnovsky’s life, but might in fact explain how he managed to withstand those facts.

August 1929

You can learn a bit more about Kazarnovsky at the fascinating virtual exhibit Beauty in Hell: Culture in the Gulag, curated by Dr. Andrea Gullotta of the University of Glasgow. And here is “The Tram” in Russian:

Трамвай

Он везёт
         одиннадцать свиданий,
Две разлуки,
         сумочку в руке,
Семь портфелей,
         восемь опозданий,
И жука
         на чьем-то пиджаке.
Он спешит.
         И множит громыханье,
Режет вечер,
         молод и жесток.
Он звонит —
         и тотчас расстоянье
Без оглядки
         мчится на звонок.
Он везёт
         закутанное пенье,
В серых брюках
         едущий доклад.
Пьяный нос
         (в обратном направлении),
Женских глаз
         лукавый виноград.
Он везёт
         намотанное время
Всех часов —
         карманных и ручных,
Он спешит
         в гудящей теореме
Доказать
         величие прямых.
Наступили
         летчику на ногу,
Как обидно
         другу облаков.
Пролагая
         торную дорогу,
Прётся танком
         шар семи пудов.
А трамвай
         быстрее режет вечер.
Хорошо
         и мчаться и звенеть, —
И углы,
         и улицы навстречу
Подбегают
         ближе посмотреть.
Он везёт
         толстовку на собранье,
Двух влюбленных —
         в марево луны.
Мне влезает
         на ноги, как зданье,
Существо
         трехспальной ширины.
За подножку
         уцепилось лето
И роняет
         звезды от толчков…
— Дайте мне, кондуктор,
         два билета:
Для меня
         и для моих стихов.

1932

Countdown to Zoshchenko

I was as pleased as Punch to see my translation of Mikhail Zoshchenko’s Sentimental Tales appear on Amazon (US and UK), with its inspired cover. To my mind, the starch-collared pencil is the perfect visual metaphor for the cycle’s narrator, Kolenkorov, who is a transparent literary creation — a ghostly emanation of Zoshchenko’s style. And since that style is intentionally (and expertly) broken, so is the pencil.

RTÉ, Binghamton, Bergelson, and the TLS

On Saturday, November 4, RTÉ Radio 1’s The Book Show, presented by Sinead Gleeson, broadcast a stellar episode on the Russian Revolution, which featured some readings from 1917 and my Babel translations, as well as from Teffi’s Subtly Worded. It was especially thrilling to hear one of my favorite American authors, George Saunders, discuss Babel’s influence on his work. The other guests were Maria Alyokhina of Pussy Riot, comedian and writer Viv Groskop, and Maria Stillmark of Trinity College Dublin.

Yesterday I gave a talk and taught a class at Binghamton University on the 1917 anthology, exactly one hundred years to the day (November 7, according to the Gregorian calendar) after the Bolshevik takeover. Many thanks to Sidney Dement for the invitation and for all the kindness he showed me during my stay! It was a bittersweet experience — probably the last of my 1917-related events.

While at Binghamton, I received an exceedingly generous review of the book from Max Cairnduff, who runs the indispensable literary blog Pechorin’s Journal. A comradely salute, Max!

I should also note that a major work by one of the authors I included in 1917, David Bergelson, has just been translated from Yiddish into English. Judgment (1926-29) is a gripping expressionistic novel set in a shtetl on the Ukrainian-Polish border during the Russian Civil War; Harriet Murav and Sasha Senderovich’s rendition is very effective indeed. I was asked to review it for In geveb, a terrific journal of Yiddish studies, by its equally terrific Editor-in-Chief, Madeleine Cohen.

And, of course, general interest in Russian literature won’t wane after the anniversary year closes. Some Russian names are here to stay. Case in point: this week’s TLS carries my longish piece on Joseph Brodsky and Vladimir Nabokov.

Dartmouth and Leonid Kannegiesser (1896-1918)

On October 27 I’ll be giving a talk at Dartmouth College, as part of their exciting 1917 Centennial Series: The Year that Shook the Arts.

One of the poems I plan to present appears in the latest issue of Cardinal Points, in an electrifying translation by James Manteith. Its author is Leonid Kannegiesser (or Kannegisser). James provides a succinct sketch of the poet’s tragically short life:

Leonid Kannegiesser (1896-1918) was a poet and military cadet, and an active participant in the literary and political bohemia of Silver Age St. Petersburg. An advocate of socialist democracy and an admirer of Alexander Kerensky, the head of the Provisional Government, he sided with anti-Bolsheviks after the October Revolution and carried out the revenge killing of the local head of the state security police, Moisei Uritsky (1873-1918), an act that helped unleash the Red Terror and Civil War. A decade after Kannegiesser’s execution, émigré writer Mark Aldanov published a collection of the poet’s surviving body of work (Paris, 1928).

The poem, titled “On Review,” manifests Kannegiesser’s naive, unshakable patriotism and faith in Kerensky’s leadership.

In sunlight, with bayonets gleaming —
foot-soldiers. Beyond, in the deep —
Don Cossacks. In front of the legions —
Kerensky upon a white steed.

His weary eyelids are lifted.
He’s making a speech. No one stirs.
O voice! To remember for ages:
Russia. Liberty. War.

Then hearts become fire and iron,
the spirit — an oak green with life,
and the Marseillaise eagle comes flying,
ascending from silvery pipes.

To battle! — we’ll beat back the devils,
and through the dark pall of the sky,
Archangels will gaze down,
jealous to see us rejoice as we die.

And if, staggering, aching,
I fall upon you, mother earth,
to lie in a field, forsaken,
with a bullet hole near my heart,

on the verge of the blessed gateway,
in my jubilant dying dream,
I’ll recall it — Russia, Liberty,
Kerensky upon a white steed.

June 27, 1917, Pavlovsk

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Смотр

На солнце, сверкая штыками —
Пехота. За ней, в глубине, —
Донцы-казаки. Пред полками —
Керенский на белом коне.

Он поднял усталые веки,
Он речь говорит. Тишина.
О, голос! Запомнить навеки:
Россия. Свобода. Война.

Сердца из огня и железа,
А дух — зеленеющий дуб,
И песня-орёл, Марсельеза,
Летит из серебряных труб.

На битву! — и бесы отпрянут,
И сквозь потемневшую твердь
Архангелы с завистью глянут
На нашу весёлую смерть.

И если, шатаясь от боли,
К тебе припаду я, о, мать,
И буду в покинутом поле
С простреленной грудью лежать —

Тогда у блаженного входа
В предсмертном и радостном сне,
Я вспомню — Россия, Свобода,
Керенский на белом коне.

27 июня 1917, Павловск

2017 Compass Translation Award

My tireless co-editor, Irina Mashinski, has been updating the Cardinal Points website. It now features a call for submissions for this year’s Compass Translation Award, which is dedicated to the poetry of Maria Stepanova. (In June of this year I posted Cynthia Haven’s excellent interview with Stepanova, which appeared in LARB.) The Compass Award’s Director, Alexander Veytsman, writes:

Maria Stepanova is one of the most prominent and politically engaged Russian poets of our time. With more than a dozen poetry volumes to her name, she is also an accomplished journalist and a defender of the freedom of the press. Stepanova is the founder of Colta.ru, an online publication that is often likened to The New York Review of Books. She is the recipient of several Russian and international literary awards.

In 2017, Compass Award enters its seventh year, with prior competitions dedicated to Nikolay Gumilev, Marina Tsvetaeva, Maria Petrovykh, Arseny Tarkovsky, Boris Slutsky, and Bella Akhmadulina.

This year is the first time that we have honored a living poet. Unlike past Compass poets, Stepanova will have a chance to read the award winners’ translations of her work.

To learn more about the competition and to submit your entry, please visit the site.

The Revolutionary spiked review

October is upon us! Late last month, Tim Black, editor of the estimable spiked review, sent me a number of astonishingly penetrating questions about the 1917 anthology and writers’ responses to the revolution. The interview has just appeared online, in an issue dedicated to all things revolutionary, which also features Susan Weissman’s always stimulating thoughts on Victor Serge.

And I was also happy to see Andrew Stuttaford end his excellent, though decidedly right-of-center, survey of revolutionary books in last weekend’s The Wall Street Journal with two paragraphs about 1917:

Finally, 1917: Stories and Poems From the Russian Revolution (Pushkin Press, 236 pages, $14.95) is an anthology of literary responses to Bunin’s “damn year.” Neatly chosen by Boris Dralyuk, with room for the familiar (such as Boris Pasternak) and those known less well (the sardonic Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya, who wrote as Teffi), the volume is reasonably well balanced between the October revolution’s supporters and those appalled by it. Vladimir Mayakovsky catches the millenarian mood (“We’ll cleanse all the cities . . . with a flood even greater than Noah’s”) while in “The Twelve” Alexander Blok opts for a warmer purge: “We’ll . . . set the world on fire . . . give us Your blessing, Lord!”

 

History made fools of the cheerleaders of revolution, but the words of those who opposed it still haunt. Anna Akhmatova resolves to stay with her “nation, suicidal” and does so, her great chronicling of Stalinist terror still to come. Marina Tsvetaeva writes of the wine flowing down “every gutter” and a “Tsar’s statue—razed, black night in its place.” Zinaida Gippius mourns the death of long longed-for liberty: “The Bride appeared. And then the soldiers / drove bayonets through both her eyes . . . The royal axe and noose were cleaner / than these apes’ bloodied hands . . . Can’t live like this! Can’t live like this!” Both Gippius and Tsvetaeva went into exile. Tsvetaeva later returned to her homeland. She hanged herself in 1941.

David Samoylov’s “The Bandit Woman” on the WLT Blog

This morning the wonderful World Literature Today Blog posted my translation of a poem by David Samoylov. (Many thanks to WLT’s tireless Editor-in-Chief, the poet Daniel Simon!) Since the poem appears to be behind a (very affordable!) paywall, I’ll repost the material here, along with the original Russian and a handful of links. You can also find a Ukrainian translation at Olena Bilozerska’s blog.

David Samoylov in the Red Army in the 1940s.

In June 1944, David Samoylov (1920-1990), an important Russian-language poet who was then a soldier in the Red Army, was sent to Ukraine to help suppress the nationalist insurgents fighting against both Nazi and Soviet occupation. The poem below, written in 1946, is, on the surface, a loyal Soviet soldier’s account of eliminating a hostile element — in this case, a woman who has ambushed and killed one of his comrades. Still, the reader cannot but admire the dignity of this “bandit,” a follower of Stepan Bandera (1909-1959) and Taras Bulba-Borovets (1908-1981). Writing in the 1980s, Samoylov recalled this period in his life: “It seemed self-evident that anyone who didn’t fight on the side of the Red Army, whatever their reasons may have been, was our enemy, abetting the fascists. That was also my point of view. Yet my poem ‘Bandit Woman,’ which was written after the war, shows that my feelings were always truer and more honest than my thoughts.” The poem reflects, in bold terms, the complexity of Russian-Ukrainian relations then and now, as well as a commitment to understanding — or trying to understand — the other side of any conflict.

The Bandit Woman

I led a bandit out, to shoot her.
She didn’t beg, she didn’t plead —
Just glared at me with pride and anger.
Her pain was bad. She clenched her teeth.

And then she said: “Now listen, fella,
You’re gonna shoot me anyway.
Before you lay me down forever,
Just let me look at my Ukraine.

Across Ukraine our horses gallop
Under the banner of Bandera.
Across Ukraine we’re stashing weapons,
Searching for a faith to honor.

Green moonshine boils in whitewashed huts
Around Berezne, in the woods —
We grin and press our sawed-off guns
Against the Russkies’ drunken heads.

Time for the Pechenegs to raid!
High time that Russian women sobbed!
There’ll be no more Ukrainian bread
For the damned Russkies and the Swabs!

Don’t want them gorging on our lard,
Drinking our vodka, getting merry!
Your scribes, however hard they try,
Cannot co-opt our nation’s story!

Bulba’s men ride across the fields,
Their bridles jangling loud, like coins!
Let Commies realize their ideals
The way they want to back at home…

It’s them that came up with the kolkhoz
Where any bum can eat for free.
For us Ukrainians, what’s the difference —
Gestapo or NKVD?”

And then I said: “Come on, you fiend,
It’s time you got what you deserved.
Wasn’t it you who killed my friend,
Who knifed him dead without a word?

The world is full of scum like you.
There aren’t enough like him around.
No sense in waiting for tribunals —
You’ll soon be rotting in the ground.”

And on we went. The land was brutal.
A bird was crying in the trees.
I led a bandit out, to shoot her.
She didn’t beg, she didn’t plead.

1946

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Бандитка

Я вел расстреливать бандитку.
Она пощады не просила.
Смотрела гордо и сердито.
Платок от боли закусила.

Потом сказала: «Слушай, хлопец,
Я все равно от пули сгину.
Дай перед тем, как будешь хлопать,
Дай поглядеть на Украину.

На Украине кони скачут
Под стягом с именем Бандеры.
На Украине ружья прячут,
На Украине ищут веры.

Кипит зеленая горилка
В белёных хатах под Березно,
И пьяным москалям с ухмылкой
В затылки тычутся обрезы.

Пора пограбить печенегам!
Пора поплакать русским бабам!
Довольно украинским хлебом
Кормиться москалям и швабам!

Им не жиреть на нашем сале
И нашей водкой не обпиться!
Еще не начисто вписали
Хохлов в Россию летописцы!

Пускай уздечкой, как монистом,
Позвякает бульбаш по полю!
Нехай як хочут коммунисты
В своей Руси будуют волю…

Придуманы колхозы ими
Для ротозея и растяпы.
Нам все равно на Украине,
НКВД или гестапо».

И я сказал: «Пошли, гадюка,
Получишь то, что заслужила.
Не ты ль вчера ножом без звука
Дружка навеки уложила.

Таких, как ты, полно по свету,
Таких, как он, на свете мало.
Так помирать тебе в кювете,
Не ожидая трибунала».

Мы шли. А поле было дико.
В дубраве птица голосила.
Я вел расстреливать бандитку.
Она пощады не просила.

1946