Гильотина… (The Guillotine’s…) by Boris Savinkov a.k.a. V. Ropshin

The guillotine’s
Sharp blade?
Well then, just what?
I’m not afraid of the guillotine,
I laugh at the executioner,
At his steel blade.
The guillotine is my life,
Every day they execute me…
Every day two gentlemen
In old-fashioned frock coats
Sit with me as guests.
And then they lea me through the door,
They take my hands firmly
And lay me under the sharp blade.
My life passes this way…
And on Sundays people go
To an execution, as to a low farce.
The guillotine?
A sharp blade?
Well then, just what?
I’ll drink the glass down now…
Let them lead me out to execution.

By Борис Викторович Савинков
(Boris Viktorovich Savinkov)
a.k.a. В. Ропшин (V. Ropshin) (his literary pseudonym)
Translated by Albert C. Todd

Гильотина…

Гильотина —
Острый нож?
Ну так что ж?
Не боюсь я гильотины,
Я смеюсь над палачом,
Над его стальным ножом.
Гильотина — жизнь моя,
Каждый день казнят меня…
Каждый день два господина
В старомодных сюртуках
У меня сидят в гостях,
А потом за дверь выводят,
Крепко за руки берут
И под острый нож кладут.
В этом жизнь моя проходит…
И на казнь, как в балаган,
В воскресенье люди ходят.
Гильотина —
Острый нож?
Ну так что ж?
Я сейчас допью стакан…
Пусть на казнь меня выводят.

Additional information: Boris Viktorovich Savinkov (Борис Викторович Савинков) (31 January 1879 – 7 May 1925) was a Russian Empire writer and revolutionary. As one of the leaders of the Fighting Organisation, the paramilitary wing of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, Savinkov was involved in the assassinations of several high-ranking imperial officials in 1904 and 1905. After the February Revolution of 1917, he became Assistant Minister of War (in office from July to August 1917) in the Provisional Government. After the October Revolution of the same year he organized armed resistance against the ruling Bolsheviks. Savinkov emigrated from Soviet Russia in 1920, but in 1924 the OGPU lured him back via Operation Trust to the Soviet Union and arrested him. He was either killed or committed suicide, by throwing himself out of a window, at Lubyanka prison.

He wrote a number of books under the pseudonym V. Ropshin and the poetry anthology I reference referred to him by that name rather than by his real name. I’ve put both surnames in the reference below so those who need it can choose which they feel is more fitting.

Ropshin (Boris Viktorovich Savinkov), born into the family of a public prosecutor under the Tsar, became a legendary figure, a kind of Count of Monte Cristo of Russian revolutionary terrorism. After studying law for two years at St. Petersburg University, he was expelled for political activity and completed his education in Heidelberg. He quickly became one of the leaders of the Russian Socialist Revolutionary party and took part in assassination attempts on members of the tsarist government, in particular against Vyacheslav Plehve, the minister of the interior and chief of the gendarmes. In 1917 Ropshin became a commissar in the Provisional Government in the headquarters of the supreme commander and then a comrade to the minister of war. He fought against the Bolsheviks and then emigrated to Paris by way of Shanghai in 1920. In Warsaw in 1920 Ropshin headed the Russian Political Committee for the Struggle Against Bolshevism and took part in fighting along the Dnepr. In 1924 he returned illegally to Soviet Russia to conduct clandestine operations and was captured and thrown to his death from a window of Lubyanka prison.

Ropshin’s poetry, like his novels Pale Horse, What Never Was and Black Horse, records the phenomenal experiences of this fatalist of almost pathological daring, whose superhuman actions were entangled with a sentimental romanticism characteristic of Russian terrorists of his time. A single book of poetry was published in 1931 in an edition of one hundred copies.

Biographical information about V. Ropshin (Savinkov), p.43, ‘Twentieth Century Russian Poetry’ (1993), compiled by Yevgeny Yevtushenko (ed. Albert C. Todd and Max Hayward) , published by Fourth Estate Limited by arrangement with Doubleday of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group Inc. (transcribed as found in the original text).

Solar Loneliness by Strannik a.k.a John (Shahovskoy) of San Francisco

here’s so much room in this world, even now,
Above the azure sea, beneath the arch of clouds.
And Everest’s blue peaks are as yet free,
And not so far invaded by vast crowds.

Yet still he flies toward the solar fire,
A tiny speck, lost in the endless blue,
An Icarus, condemned to heights unknown,
Man of our time, the loner who is new.

by Strannik (Странник)
also known as:
Archbishop John (Shahovskoy) of San Francisco
Ioann Shakhovskoy (Иоанн Шаховской)
Dmitriy Alekseyevich Shakhovskoy
(Дмитрий Алексеевич Шаховской)
translated by April FitzLyon

Additional information: I don’t know by which name and title he is most common referred to so forgive me for listing so many variations. It seems his surname is most often written as Shahovskoy although I usually see the Cyrillic ‘х‘ transliterated as ‘kh‘ elsewhere. Importantly, if somewhat obvious hopefully, he is not to be confused with St John of Shanghai and San Francisco.

Also, despite finding others, I could not find the Russian version of this poem. If you happen to know then please add a link, or copy/paste it, in the comments for others to find. Many thanks.

Archbishop John (Архиепископ Иоанн) of San Francisco was also known as prince Dmitriy Alekseyevich Shahovskoy (князь Дмитрий Алексеевич Шаховской), (1902–1989) during his lifetime. He was an officer of the White Army, wrote under the pseudonym “Strannik” (which means ‘wanderer’ in Russian), was an editor of an emigre literary journal in Paris, a Russian Orthodox monk (later archbishop of San Francisco and the West) in the Orthodox Church in America.

John (Shahovskoy), Archbishop of San Francisco was one of the many émigrés from the Russian civil war who entered a monastic life in the Orthodox Church and became a diocesan bishop in the United States. After first being consecrated Bishop of Brooklyn in the American Metropolia, he was elected Bishop of San Francisco and Western America and Archbishop in 1961, a position he held until his retirement in 1973.

There is a site showing the location of his grave with a photo of it.

The nom de plume Strannik (Russian for “Wanderer”) hints at the extraordinary breadth of the life of this child of the old aristocracy, Prince Ioann Shakhovskoy, who became a much-loved spiritual leader – the Russian Orthodox archbishop in faraway San Francisco – and a serious poet of transparent lyricism. Once in 1966 he invited the compiler on this anthology to lunch at a restaurant on the top of a hill in San Francisco. Full of self-respect and dignity he drove slowly as he bombarded the visiting Soviet poet with questions about the younger poetic generation, which he clearly admired. A strange symphony of sound grew around us and finally turned into an incessant blare. The road behind was jammed with cars forced to crawl at turtle speed because this frocked chauffeur paid no attention to the traffic around him as he kept telling over and over again of the fortune and happiness of loving poetry and the misfortune of not. (The idea of this anthology began to grow from that time).

Bishop John was not a man detached from the world; he had a lively interest in all things, from literature to politics. Poetry, however, was always the inner-most sacrament, the secret cell of his soul.

Biographical information about Strannik, p.416, ‘Twentieth Century Russian Poetry’ (1993), compiled by Yevgeny Yevtushenko (ed. Albert C. Todd and Max Hayward) , published by Fourth Estate Limited by arrangement with Doubleday of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group Inc. (transcribed as found in the original text).

Снег идет (Snow Is Falling) by Boris Pasternak

Snow is falling, snow is falling.
Reaching for the storm’s white stars,
Petals of geraniums stretch
Beyond the window bars.

Snow is falling, all is chaos,
Everything is in the air,
The angle of the crossroads,
The steps of the back stair.

Snow is falling, not like flakes
But as if the firmament
In a coat with many patches
Were making its descent.

As if, from the upper landing,
Looking like a lunatic,
Creeping, playing hide-and-seek,
The sky stole from the attic.

Because life does not wait,
Turn, and you find Christmas here.
And a moment after that
It’s suddenly New Year.

Snow is falling, thickly, thickly,
Keeping step, stride for stride,
No less quickly, nonchalantly,
Is that time, perhaps,
Passing in the street outside?

And perhaps year follows year
Like the snowflakes falling
Or the words that follow here?

Snow is falling, snow is falling,
Snow is falling, all is chaos:
The whitened ones who pass,
The angle of the crossroads,
The dazed plants by the glass.

By Бори́с Леони́дович Пастерна́к
(Boris Leonidovich Pasternak)
(1957)
from Когда разгуляется (When The Weather Clears)
translated by Jon Stallworthy and Peter France

Pasternak’s poem read by the actor Александр Феклистов (Aleksandr Vasilyevich Feklistov).

Снег идет

Снег идет, снег идет.
К белым звездочкам в буране
Тянутся цветы герани
За оконный переплет.

Снег идет, и всё в смятеньи,
Всё пускается в полет, –
Черной лестницы ступени,
Перекрестка поворот.

Снег идет, снег идет,
Словно падают не хлопья,
А в заплатанном салопе
Сходит наземь небосвод.

Словно с видом чудака,
С верхней лестничной площадки,
Крадучись, играя в прятки,
Сходит небо с чердака.

Потому что жизнь не ждет.
Не оглянешься — и святки.
Только промежуток краткий,
Смотришь, там и новый год.

Снег идет, густой-густой.
В ногу с ним, стопами теми,
В том же темпе, с ленью той
Или с той же быстротой,

Может быть, проходит время?
Может быть, за годом год
Следуют, как снег идет,
Или как слова в поэме?

Снег идет, снег идет,
Снег идет, и всё в смятеньи:
Убеленный пешеход,
Удивленные растенья,
Перекрестка поворот.

Кончусь, останусь жив ли… (I’ll Be Finished…) by Boris Chichibabin

I’ll be finished, if I’ll survive –
what kind of grass will grow over the gap?
On Prince Igor’s battlefield the grass faded.
The school corridors
are quiet, not ringing…
Eat your red tomatoes,
eat ’em without me.

How did I survive to such prose
with my bitter beaten head?
Each evening a convoy
leads me to interrogation.
Stairways, corridors,
cunning prison graffiti…
Eat your red tomatoes,
eat ’em without me.

By Борис Алексеевич Чичибабин (Boris Alekseyevich Chichibabin)
Born: Полушин (Polushin)
(1946)
translated by Albert C. Todd and Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Кончусь, останусь жив ли…

Кончусь, останусь жив ли, –
чем зарастёт провал?
В Игоревом Путивле
выгорела трава.

Школьные коридоры –
тихие, не звенят…
Красные помидоры
кушайте без меня.

Как я дожил до прозы
с горькою головой?
Вечером на допросы
водит меня конвой.

Лестницы, коридоры,
хитрые письмена…
Красные помидоры
кушайте без меня.

Additional information: Boris Alekseyevich Chichibabin (Russian: Бори́с Алексе́евич Чичиба́бин, Ukrainian: Бори́с Олексі́йович Чичиба́бін; 9 January 1923, Kremenchuk – 15 December 1994, Kharkiv; born Polushin, Russian: Полу́шин) was a Soviet poet and a laureat of the USSR State Prize (1990), who is typically regarded as one of the Sixtiers.

He lived in Kharkiv, and in the course of three decades became one of the most famous and best-loved members of the artistic intelligentsia of the city, i.e., from the 1950s to 1980s. From the end of the 1950s, his poetry was widely distributed throughout the Soviet Union as samizdat. Official recognition came only at the end of his life in the time of perestroika.

Chichibabin was imprisoned during Stalin’s time. Though released and rehabilitated he was “daring” enough in the Brexhnev era of stagnation to write a poem in 1971 in memory of Aleksandr Tvardovsky, who had been attacked by literary rivals until his death; the poem resulted in his expulsion from the Writers Union. He was not published for fifteen years and worked as a bookkeeper in a tram park. As time passed, the growing significance of his work became apparent.

Chichibabin’s character is very Russian, but at the same time he is blessed with the quality of compassion for the world. His poetry is filled with astonishing penetration into the pain of other nations and peoples, whether Tartar or Jews.

In 1990 the unheard-of happened: the State Prize for literature was awarded to a book of his poetry which he had published privately. He was reinstated into the Writers Union in 1986, a very shy, humble man who never dealt with politics, but with a humane conscience in the midst of moral degradation – a de facto political dissident.

Biographical information about Chichibabin, p.719, ‘Twentieth Century Russian Poetry’ (1993), compiled by Yevgeny Yevtushenko (ed. Albert C. Todd and Max Hayward) , published by Fourth Estate Limited by arrangement with Doubleday of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group Inc. (transcribed as found in the original text).

Мы под Колпиным скопом стоим… (We Are Huddled In A Crowd…) by Aleksandr Mezhirov

We are huddled in a crowd before Kolpino.
Under the fire of our own artillery.

It’s probably because our reconnaissance
Gave the wrong bearings.

Falling short, overshooting, falling short again…
Our own artillery is shooting us.

It wasn’t for nothing we took an oath,
Blew up the bridges behind us.

No one will escape from these trenches.
Our own artillery is shooting at us.

We’re lying in a heap before Kolpino.
We’re trembling, saturated with smoke.
They should be shooting at the enemy,
But instead they’re shooting at their own.

The commanders want to console us.
They say the motherland loves us.
The artillery is thrashing its own
They’re not making an omelette, but they’re breaking eggs.

by Александр Петрович Межиров
(Alexandr Petrovich Mezhirov)
translated by Deming Brown

Мы под Колпиным скопом стоим…

Мы под Колпином скопом стоим,
Артиллерия бьет по своим.
Это наша разведка, наверно,
Ориентир указала неверно.

Недолет. Перелет. Недолет.
По своим артиллерия бьет.

Мы недаром присягу давали.
За собою мосты подрывали,-
Из окопов никто не уйдет.
Недолет. Перелет. Недолет.

Мы под Колпиным скопом лежим
И дрожим, прокопченные дымом.
Надо все-таки бить по чужим,
А она — по своим, по родимым.

Нас комбаты утешить хотят,
Нас, десантников, армия любит…
По своим артиллерия лупит,-
Лес не рубят, а щепки летят.

Recited by the Soviet and Russian actor Вениамин Борисович Смехов (Venyamin Borisovich Smekhov).

Additional information: Alexander Petrovich Mezhirov (Александр Петрович Межиров)(26 September 1923 – 22 May 2009) was a Soviet and Russian poet, translator and critic.

Born in Moscow, he was the son of an educated Jewish couple — his father a lawyer, his mother a German-language teacher, and one of his grandfathers was a rabbi. Drafted as a private in July 1941, he fought in World War II before a serious injury led to his demobilization in 1943 as a second lieutenant. That same year, he joined the Communist Party; after the war he attended the Maxim Gorky Literary Institute, graduating in 1948. He translated poetry from Georgian and Lithuanian poets.

Mezhirov was a prominent figure in the Soviet literary establishment, although his allegiances and associations were varied. At some points he was close to fellow Jewish-Russian Boris Yampolsky, Kazakh writer Olzhas Suleimenov, and Russian cultural ultranationalist and critic Vadim Kozhinov. Mezhirov associated with younger writers Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Tatyana Glushkova (known for her nationalist views in the mid-1980s, according to Shrayer) and Evgeny Reyn, who was censored in the Soviet Union until the mid-1980s.

Although Mezhirov had publicly stated that his patriotism for Russia was so intense that, unlike other Russian Jews, he could not emigrate, he suddenly left Russia for the United States in 1992, settling first in New York, then in Portland, Oregon. As of 2007, according to anthologist Maxim D. Shrayer, he had not revisited Russia. In March 2009 Mezhirov published a collection of new poems, two months before his death. According to the ITAR/TASS news service, his body was to be cremated in the United States, with the ashes to be buried in Peredelkino near Moscow.

Mezhirov was among what has been called a “middle generation” of Soviet poets that ignored themes of communist “world revolution” and instead focused on Soviet and Russian patriotism. Many of them specialized in patriotic lyrics, particularly its military aspects. According to G. S. Smith, Mezhirov and a number of other “middle generation” poets “were genuine poets whose testimony, however well-laundered, to the tribulations of their times will endure at least as long as their generation.” Some of Mezhirov‘s lyrical poems based on his wartime experience belong with the best Russian poetical works created in the Soviet 1950s-1960s.

Mezhirov had a “special gift” for absorbing the voices of his contemporaries and his predecessors from the 1900s–1930s, according to Maxim D. Shrayer, who notes the influences in Mezhirov‘s writing of Eduard Bagritsky, Erich Maria Remarque, Anna Akhmatova, Aleksandr Blok, Vladislav Khodasevich, Mikhail Kuzmin, Vladimir Lugovskoy, David Samoylov and Arseny Tarkovsky.

He was presented with the following awards (taken from the Russian language Wikipedia page):

• Order of the Red Banner of Labour (1983)
• Medal “For the Defense of Leningrad” (Act of the Field Administration 42 A of 18.6.1943 TsAMO: f.397, op.9272, d.124_t1).
• Order of the Patriotic War, 2nd art. (Jubilee card index: No. 71 of 6.4.1985 TsAMO: No entry 1516619411).
• Laureate of the USSR State Prize (1986) (For the book “Prose in Verse“)
• Laureate of the State Prize of the Georgian SSR (1987)
• Laureate of the Vazha-Pshavela Prize of the Independent Joint Venture of Georgia (1999).
• In 1994, the President of the United States of America Bill Clinton, at the White House presented him with an award for being “Imbued with the spirit of partnership and mutual assistance, a grateful Nation will never forget your incomparable personal contribution and sacrifice shown in World War II”.

Regarding the reference to Kolpino: With the onset of the Great Patriotic War, Kolpino factory workers formed the Izhora Battalion, part of the militia around 24 August – 4 September, 1941. The front line was held in the immediate vicinity of the plant, which was subjected to heavy enemy shelling. By 1944, only 327 of Kolpino’s 2183 houses remained intact. 140,939 shells and 436 aerial bombs fell in Kolpino’s neighborhoods and boulevards. According to incomplete data for the war, shelling and starvation in the Kolpino district killed 4,600 people, not counting the dead on the front. By 1 January, 1944 Kolpino had only 2196 inhabitants. After the lifting of the siege, people gradually came back from the evacuation and army. On 1 January, 1945 the population was 7404 and by the beginning of the next year numbered 8914 people.

Mezhirov is one of the finest poets of the World War II generation. His father, who was both a lawyer and physician, took great pains to ensure his son’s broad education. As a soldier in World War II, Mezhirov took part in the defense of Leningrad, where he was seriously wounded and discharged. He wrote poetry as a schoolboy and began to publish in 1941; from 1943 to 1948 he studied at the Gorky Literary Institute. His first collection, Doroga dalioka (The Road Is Long) (1947), spoke with youthful passion of the war and of the suffering and triumphs it entailed; the poetry was criticized for being “too personal.” His romantic poem “Kommunisty vperyod” (Forward Communists) was for several years the most widely read work in the Soviet Union, both from the stage and over the radio. However, the finest things he has written have always been emphatically independent and nonpartisan. Mezhirov’s poetry was criticized throughout his career, but he never bowed to the pressure; as a result of his steadfastness, the quality of his verse never suffered.

Mezhirov spent considerable time in Georgia and has translated much Georgian poetry. A highly sophisticated connoisseur of Russian poetry, his more recent work speaks out against the negative influences and lack of spirituality in the modern world, especially the tendencies to destruction and isolation he perceives in the young. Not only a great poet, Mezhirov is also the teacher of many younger poets, including the compiler of this anthology.

Biographical information about Mezhirov, p.721, ‘Twentieth Century Russian Poetry’ (1993), compiled by Yevgeny Yevtushenko (ed. Albert C. Todd and Max Hayward) , published by Fourth Estate Limited by arrangement with Doubleday of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group Inc. (transcribed as found in the original text).