Ночная песня пьяницы (A Drunkard’s Nocturnes) by Sasha Chorny

It’s dark…
The bastard street lamp’s run away
And wine
Has, like a sea squall, made my frail ship sway.
In the dark
I grab at a telegraph pole for support.
I feel fine
But something’s gone wrong with my leg.
It’s all
Unsteady and dancing around in a jig
And the wall
Keeps walking into my guts.
You slob!
Who dares call me a slob? What a creep
to call me,
The noblest soul on earth, a drunken pig.
I’ll kill
Yer. But never mind, feller
I’ll first fill
My glass because the stars have said
I must.
Oh, I feel weak and my legs are giving way…
I think I’ll just
Lie on the roadside and snore
Or roar…
I’m forty years old. I’m a fool, and I’m poor
But before
I die I’d like my old soak’s body
To be sure
It will be buried deep and dwell
On the shore
For Charon’s boat’s already borne me off to hell.
Farewell.
Let me sleep. I’ll sleep like a log.

by Саша Чёрный a.k.a Алекса́ндр Миха́йлович Гли́кберг
(Sasha Chorny a.k.a. Aleksandr Mikhailovich Glikberg)
(1909)
translated by Bernard Meare

Ночная песня пьяницы

Темно…
Фонарь куда-то к черту убежал!
Вино
Качает толстый мой фрегат, как в шквал…
Впотьмах
За телеграфный столб держусь рукой.
Но, ах!
Нет вовсе сладу с правою ногой:
Она
Вокруг меня танцует – вот и вот…
Стена
Всё время лезет прямо на живот.
Свинья!!
Меня назвать свиньею? Ах, злодей!
Меня,
Который благородней всех людей?!
Убью!
А, впрочем, милый малый, бог с тобой –
Я пью,
Но так уж предназначено судьбой.
Ослаб…
Дрожат мои колени – не могу!
Как раб,
Лежу на мостовой и ни гу-гу…
Реву…
Мне нынче сорок лет – я нищ и глуп.
В траву
Заройте наспиртованный мой труп.
В ладье
Уже к чертям повез меня Харон…
Adieu!
Я сплю, я сплю, я сплю со всех сторон…

1909

Chorny (Aleksandr Mikhailovich Glikberg) was the son of a provincial pharmacist. His poetry, which appeared in the magazine Satyrikon from 1908 to 1911, displays a brilliant satirical gift and is bitingly contemptuous of the hypocrisy of bourgeois society. Clearly, Vladimir Mayakovsky learned much from him; some of their poems are similar, not only in intonation, but even in form.

In 1920 Chorny emigrated to Vilnius and then to Berlin and Paris, where he continued to write and engage in publishing. He died after straining his heart while helping his neighbours put out a fire.

Chorny’s poetry was not published in the USSR from 1925 to 1960, with the exception of some of his collection of poems for children. His greatest posthumous recognition came through Dmitri Shostakovich’s composition Satires (1960) for soprano voice and piano, which wss based on a cycle of five of his poems. We recognize some intonations and reflections of Chorny in the post-perestroika generation, full of bitter irony and scepticism.

Biographical information about Chorny, p.84, ‘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).

Additional information: Alexander Mikhailovich Glikberg (Алекса́ндр Миха́йлович Гли́кберг; 13 October [O.S. 1 October] 1880 – 5 July 1932), better known as Sasha Chorny or Cherny (Са́ша Чёрный), was a Russian poet, satirist and children’s writer.

Всё по-старому (The Same Old Way) by Igor Severyanin

“Everything’s the same old way,” she said tenderly:
“The same old way.”
But I gazed hopelessly into her eyes,
The same old way.

Smiling, she kissed me softly
The same old way,
But something still was missing there,
The same old way.

by Игорь Северянин (Игор Васильевич Лотарёв)
(Igor Severyanin a.ka. Igor Vasilevich Lotaryov)
(Myza-Ivanovka, July 1909)
translated by Bernard Meares

Всё по-старому

— Всё по-старому…— сказала нежно.—
‎Всё по-старому…
Но смотрел я в очи безнадежно —
‎Всё по-старому…

Улыбалась, мягко целовала —
‎Всё по-старому.
Но чего-то всё недоставало —
‎Всё по-старому!

Снег (Snow) by Innokenty Annensky

I could have loved the winter,
But the burden is heavy.
Even smoke cannot
Escape into the clouds.

The sharply etched lives,
The unweildly flight,
The pauperish blue
Of the tear-swollen ice.

But I love snow, weakened
By the easy life above,
Sometimes glistening white,
Sometimes purple lilac…

And particularly thawing,
When, revealing the peaks,
It settles down weary
On a sliding precipice.

Immaculate dreams,
Like cattle in the mist,
On the agonizing brink
On spring’s holocaust.

by Иннокентий Фёдорович Анненский
(Innokenty Fedorovich Annensky)
(1909)
translated by Lubov Yakovleva and Daniel Weissbort

Снег

Полюбил бы я зиму,
Да обуза тяжка…
От нее даже дыму
Не уйти в облака.

Эта резанность линий,
Этот грузный полет,
Этот нищенский синий
И заплаканный лед!

Но люблю ослабелый
От заоблачных нег —
То сверкающе белый,
То сиреневый снег…

И особенно талый,
Когда, выси открыв,
Он ложится усталый
На скользящий обрыв,

Точно стада в тумане
Непорочные сны —
На томительной грани
Всесожженья весны.

Annensky, renowned for his great learning, was the director of the lycee in Tsarskoye Selo near St. Petersburg where many poets from Aleksandr Pushkin to Anna Akhmatova were educated. His poems are refined and somewhat cold recalling the autumnal severity of that town and reflecting themes of weariness and futility, conquerable only through ove or art. Though Annensky was not celebrated in his own time, his lack of mysticism and his clarity of expression, which became important to the Acmeists (in contrast to the reigning Symbolists), influenced many Russian poets, in particular Vladislav Khodasevich and to some extent Boris Pasternak.

Biographical information about Annensky, p.6, ‘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).

‘Newly Reaped Ears Of Early Wheat’ by Osip Mandelstam

Newly reaped ears of early wheat

lie in level rows;

fingertips tremble, pressed against

fingers fragile as themselves.

 

by Осип Эмильевич Мандельштам (Osip Emilyevich Mandelshtam. His surname is commonly latinised as Mandelstam)

(1909)

translated by James Greene

The Pillow’s Just As Hot by Anna Akhmatova

The pillow’s just as hot

when I turn it over.

And now a second candle

is guttering, and crows

are cawing louder than ever.

Not a wink… And it’s too late

even to think of sleep.

White, blindingly white –

a blind on a white window.

Good morning!

 

by Анна Ахматова (Anna Akhmatova)

(1909)

from Вечер (Evening, 1912)

translation by Robert Chandler

---

An alternate version of the same poem as D. M. Thomas’ translation The Pillow Hot…