A Feast in Time of Plague [excerpt] by Alexander Pushkin

There is joy in battle,

poised on a chasm’s edge,

and in black ocean’s rage –

that whirl of darkening wind and wave –

in an Arabian sandstorm,

and in a breath of plague.

 

Within each breath of death

lives joy, lives secret joy

for mortal hearts, a pledge,

perhaps, of immortality,

and blessed is he who, storm-tossed,

can see and seize this joy.

 

by Александр Сергеевич Пушкин (Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin)

a.k.a. Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin

(1830)

translated by Robert Chandler

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Fun Facts: This is one of Pushkin’s ‘Little Tragedies’, an adaption of part of a play by a Scottish writer, John Wilson. The song this excerpt is from is of Pushkin’s own original composition though.

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Fragment (Before Death I Have Felt The Dark Of Death) by Wilhelm Küchelbecker

Before death I have felt the dark of death;

I thought: like Ossian I shall lose my way

in mist by the grave’s edge and blindly stare

from wild moors down through the dim precipice

of dawnless night and see no trees, no fields

of freedom, no soft grass, no azure skies,

and no sun rising like a miracle.

Yet with the soul’s eye I shall see you, shades

of prophets, friends too soon flown out of sight,

and I shall hear the blessed poet’s song

and know each voice and recognize each face.

 

by Вильгельм Карлович Кюхельбекер (Wilhelm Karlovich Küchelbecker)

(1845)

translated by Peter France

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Fun fact: This was written after he went blind about a year before his death.

Памятник (The Monument) by Vladislav Khodasevich

I am an end and a beginning.

So little spun from all my spinning!

I’ve been a firm link nonetheless;

with that good fortune I’ve been blessed.

 

New Russia enters on her greatness;

they’ll carve my head two-faced, like Janus,

at crossroads, looking down both ways,

where wind and sand, and many days…

 

by Владислав Фелицианович Ходасевич (Vladislav Felitsianovich Khodasevich)

translated by Michael Frayn

‘I Hear The Oriole’s Always Grieving Voice…’ by Anna Akhmatova

I hear the oriole’s always grieving voice,

And the rich summer’s welcome loss I hear

In the sickle’s serpentine hiss

Cutting the corn’s ear tightly pressed to ear.

 

And the short skirts on the slim reapers

Fly in the wind like holiday pennants,

The clash of joyful cymbals, and creeping

From under dusty lashes, the long glance.

 

I don’t expect love’s tender flatteries,

In premonition of some dark event,

But come, come and see this paradise

Where together we were blessed and innocent.

 

– by Анна Ахматова (Anna Akhmatova) (Summer, 1917)

– from Подорожник (Plantain/Wayside Grass, 1921) translation by D. M. Thomas