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).

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Связует всех единый жребий (For All Of Us…) by Nikolai Stefanovich

For all of us destiny is undivided.
You only have to sprain your ankle,
and at that moment in Addis Ababa
someone will cry out in pain

by Николай Владимирович Стефанович
(Nikolai Vladimirovich Stefanovich)
(1912 – 1979)
written in Perm, 1943
translated by Albert C. Todd

Связует всех единый жребий

Связует всех единый жребий:
Лишь стоит ногу подвернуть –
И в тот же миг в Аддис-Абебе
От боли вскрикнет кто-нибудь.
Откуда взялся ужас оный,
Который вдруг во мне возник?
Не заблудился ли ребёнок
В лесу дремучем в этот миг?

Additional notes: The English translation by Todd omits the latter half of the poem. The untranslated lines, roughly in English, are ‘Where did that horror come from? / Which suddenly appeared in me? / Has the child gone astray? / In the dense forest at this moment?‘ or, as a native Russian speaking friend translated them ‘Where does the terror that suddenly arose in me come from? / Did a child get lost in thick woods at this moment?’

I couldn’t find any major source of English information about Stefanovich in English after an, admittedy brief, search. However the Russian Wikipedia page for Stefanovich is available for those who can read Russian or are happy to use a translator.

A brief summary of some information from Stefanovich’s Russian Wikipedia page: Soon after the start of the war in 1941, the theater, in which Stefanovich was on duty, was hit by an air raid bombshell. (He was, as a result, seriously shell-shocked and became disabled for the rest of his life). During the same year, together with the theater, he was evacuated to Perm. He rarely published his poems during his life time with the few exceptions include pieces in the Permian newspaper Zvezda during wartime and in two issues of Poetry Day in the 1970s.

According to information from a number of publications, in the mid 1930s and early 1940s, he wrote denunciations (or investigative testimony) against several people who were subsequently repressed because of this, in particular Daniil Leonidovich Andreyev (the son of the author Leonid Andreyev – though you probably noticed that from his patronymic), Natalia Danilovna Anufriev, Alexander Arkardievich Borin and Daniil Dmitrievich Zhukovsky.

Stefanovich was a bookbinder and little-known actor in the Vakhtangov Theater in Moscow who almost never managed to publish his poetry during his lifetime. Nevertheless he beautifully bound his manuscripts and circulated them personally. Only after his death did his verse begin to appear, attracting readers with its literary acuteness and capacity to say much in few words.

Biographical information about Stefanovich, p.604, ‘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).

Exhausted from depression… by Ilya Krichevsky

Exhausted from depression,
to the gravestone I went,
and beyond the gravestone
I saw not peace,
but an eternal battle
which we only dreamed of in life.

Without hesitation I leaped
into the gulf of greedy fire,
but here I begged the Lord:
“Give back to me, Lord, peace,
why eternal battle for me,
take me, I am yours, I am yours.”

…

All my life I’ve rushed,
between hell and heaven,
today the devil, and tomorrow God,
today exhausted, and tomorrow empowered,
today proud, and tomorrow I burn…
Stop.

By Илья Маратович Кричевский
(Ilya Maratovich Krichevsky)
(3 February 1963 – 21 August 1991)
translated by Albert C. Todd

Additional information: I believe this is a fragment or shortened version but I was unable to find a copy of the original Russian version online to check against. If anyone knows where to find it please leave a link in the comments or, if you feel like it, copy/paste it. Many thanks.

Во все века (In All Ages…) by Yuliya Drunina

In all ages, always, everywhere, and everywhere
It repeats itself, the cruel dream –
The inexplicable kiss of Judas
And the ring of the accursed silver.

To understand such things is a task in vain.
Humanity conjectures once again:
Let him betray (when he cannot do else),
But why a kiss on the lips? …

By Юлия Владимировна Друнина
(Yulia Vladimirovna Drunina)
translated by Albert C. Todd

Во все века

Во все века,
Всегда, везде и всюду
Он повторяется,
Жестокий сон, —
Необъяснимый поцелуй Иуды
И тех проклятых сребреников звон.

Сие понять —
Напрасная задача.
Гадает человечество опять:
Пусть предал бы
(Когда не мог иначе!),
Но для чего же
В губы целовать?…

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).