Отчаянье (Despair) by Andrey Bely

To Z. N. Gippius

Enough’s enough: don’t wait, don’t hope;
My wretched people, scatter!
Fall into space and shatter,
Year upon tormented year.

Beggarly, will-less age.
Permit me, oh my motherland,
To sob in your damp fatuous freedom
To weep amid your empty steppes: –

There along the hunching plain –
Where flocks of lush green oaks stand,
Rippling, raised up in a cone
To the swarthy leaden clouds above.

Where panic snarls across the steppe,
Rising like a one-armed bush,
And whistles loud into the wind
Through its ragged branches.

Where from the night there stare into my soul,
Looming over chains of hills,
The cruel yellow eyes
Of your mindless tavern lights –

Where the angry rut of deaths and plagues
And waves of sickness have passed by –
Hasten thither, Russia, disappear,
Be swallowed up in the abyss.

by Андрей Белый (Andrei Bely)
a.k.a. Бори́с Никола́евич Буга́ев (Boris Nikolaevich Bugaev)
(July 1908)
translated by Bernard Meares

Отчаянье

З. Н. Гиппиус

Довольно: не жди, не надейся –
Рассейся, мой бедный народ!
В пространство пади и разбейся
За годом мучительный год!

Века нищеты и безволья.
Позволь же, о родина мать,
В сырое, в пустое раздолье,
В раздолье твое прорыдать:–

Туда, на равнине горбатой,–
Где стая зеленых дубов
Волнуется купой подъятой,
В косматый свинец облаков,

Где по полю Оторопь рыщет,
Восстав сухоруким кустом,
И в ветер пронзительно свищет
Ветвистым своим лоскутом,

Где в душу мне смотрят из ночи,
Поднявшись над сетью бугров,
Жестокие, желтые очи
Безумных твоих кабаков,–

Туда,– где смертей и болезней
Лихая прошла колея,–
Исчезни в пространство, исчезни,
Россия, Россия моя!

Июль 1908

Additional information: Бори́с Никола́евич Буга́ев (Boris Nikolaevich Bugaev) better known by the pen name Андрей Белый (Andrei Bely or just Biely) was a Russian novelist, Symbolist poet, theorist and literary critic. He was a committed anthroposophist and follower of Rudolf Steiner. His novel Petersburg (1913/1922) was regarded by Vladimir Nabokov as the third-greatest masterpiece of modernist literature. The Andrei Bely Prize (Премия Андрея Белого), one of the most important prizes in Russian literature, was named after him.

The poem is dedicated to Зинаида Николаевна Гиппиус (Zinaida Nikolayevna Gippius). a Russian poet, playwright, novelist, editor and religious thinker, one of the major figures in Russian symbolism. The story of her marriage to Dmitry Merezhkovsky, which lasted 52 years, is described in her unfinished book Dmitry Merezhkovsky (Paris, 1951; Moscow, 1991).

Bely, who changed his name from Bugayev, was a distinguished theorist and a leading writer in the Symbolist movement. The son of a professor of mathematics at Moscow University, he graduated there himself in mathematics in 1903. Bely’s intellectual interests ranged from mathematics to German philosophy and literature, to Dostoyevsky, to music, to the anthroposophy of Rudolph Steiner, to the mystical clash between Western civilization and the occult forced of the East. A disciple of both Nietzsche and the Russian philosopher Vladimir Solovyov, he was the author of the extraordinary, innovative novel Petersburg (which has been translated into many languages), numerous prose works, collections of poems, and a celebrated trilogy of memoirs that is a primary document of the intellectual life of the Silver Age. For his imaginative experimentation with the Russian language he is comparable only to James Joyce in English.

Without the impetuous, contradictory, provocative figure of Bely it would be impossible to imagine the intellectual atmosphere of the pre-Revolution times. Together with Aleksandr Blok he summoned the Revolution as a retribution for the collapsing tsarist regime; when it took place, he first perceived it as the beginning of the spiritual and religious renaissance of all humankind. He possessed an unusually brilliant gift for improvisation and innovation, but this led sometimes to a glibness in his writing. Most of Bely’s verse has not stood the test of time. In his sometimes childlike and naïve outbursts, combined capriciously with profound erudition, Bely was defenselessly sincere and appears like Pushkin’s (echoing Cervantes’s) “knight of sorrowful countenance” in the literature of his time.

Biographical information about Bely, p.89-90, ‘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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Dŵr by Mike Jenkins

Clouds –
whole valleys-sides covered in berries
ripe and ready for the picking,
a steep rock-face with overgrown heather,
a flock of black sheep running
to be rounded up and sheared by the wind:
water with its roots in the sky.

Rain –
the drizzly seeds of droplets sown,
the slanting sea-strewn westerlies
which turn clothing into blotting paper,
the aching storms which gravel
into bones, making you shrink and cower.

Valleys –
scooped and scoured out by laws,
people cleared away like shanty-dwellers
bossed by bulldozers, memories
left to night-writers, to bells
tolled by feeding streams and rivers,
to drought and dereliction exposed.

Reservoirs –
acid funnels of the conifers
press down soil to stop it slipping;
to trippers they seem like mirrors,
but they balance water on scales
tapping mountains for its wealth.

Pipelines –
over the border, moving like a train
with trucks of coal, like iron and steel
liquid and molten, like the feet
of all those who had to leave
muttering ‘Money, money…’ forced
against the gradient, longing for sea.

Chemicals –
a layer of aluminium the surface sheen,
the weight of lead its depths
and those substances meant to purify
unseen in a clear glass, lurking like radiation.

Houses –
the old person whose grasp of time
runs through knotted fingers and down the drain,
children whose minds become stagnant;
families knowing when it’s cut off
water’s precious as air when they choke
on the stench of their own cack,
as germs breed with cockroaches and rats.

Dŵr –
they’ve stolen the word, those safe-lock faces,
mispronounced it ‘Door’, reinforced and vaulted
below reservoirs where they’ve counted
profits from broken bones of village walls,
from a thirst which opens mouths
in fledging questions to the clouds.

By Mike Jenkins
from This Houses, My Ghetto

Additional information: Dŵr is the Welsh word for water. The line referring to it being mispronounced as ‘door’ regards a common mistake people make when first learning how to say it if unfamiliar with Welsh pronunciation. the elongated ‘oo’ sound of dŵr is ‘oohr’ not ‘or’. To approximate the pronunciation think of the word sounding like ‘dew-er’ but don’t stress the second syllable so it becomes ‘dewr’.

Since I’m speaking about Welsh pronunciation I might as well note how amusing it is to read in every Russian-English dictionary the explanation that the Cyrillic letter ‘Ч’ “… sounds like the ‘ch’ in the Scottish word ‘loch’…” since that sound exists in the Brythonic language of Welsh e.g. Chwarae (ch-wah-rye) which means ‘play’ as in the popular Welsh phrase ‘chwarae teg‘ (teg = ‘teh-guh’) meaning ‘fair play’.

Y Gwynt (The Wind) by Dafydd ap Gwilym

Masterly wind of the sky
Striding with mighty outcry –
Ah, what a man, unheeding
And harsh, without foot or wing
Given out from the pantry
Of the sky – how can it be?
How is your pace so nimble
Now, across the highest hill?
No need of horse for transport
Or, on river, bridge or boat –
You’ll not drown, you’ve been promised!
Angleless, go where you list,
Take nest, strip leaves – there’s no one
Arrests with accusation,
No posse, captain or corps,
Blue blade or flood or downpour.
Thresher of treetop plumage,
You nor king nor troop can cage,
Nor mother’s son foully kill,
Fire burn, nor trick enfeeble.
Though none see you in your den,
Nest of rains, thousands harken,
Cloud-calligrapher, vaulter
Over nine lands wild and bare.
You’re on the world God’s favour,
High oaktops’ tired-cracking roar;
Dry, for you tread prudently
The clouds in your great journey;
Archer of snow on highlands,
Useless chaff, swept into mounds –
Tell me where, constant credo,
Northwind of the vale, you go?
Tempest on the ocean, you’re
A wanton lad on seashore,
Eloquent author, wizard,
Sower, and tilt at leaf horde,
Laughter on hills, you harry
Wild masts on white-breasted sea.

You fly the wide world over,
Weather of slopes, tonight there,
Man, go high to Uwch Aeron
with clarity, with clear tone.
Don’t falter, frightened fellow,
For fear of the Little Bow,
That querulously jealous man!
Her country is my prison.
Too grave a love I’ve given
To my gold girl, Morfudd, when
My own land’s made my thraldom –
O speed high towards her home!
Beat, till they loose the doorway,
Messenger, before the day:
Find her, if you can, and bring
My sighs to her, my mourning.
You of the glorious Zodiac,
Tell her bounty of my lack.
I’m her true lover always
While the quick life in me stays.
Without her, I go lovelorn –
If it’s true she’s not foresworn.
Go up, till she’s in prospect
Under you, the sky’s elect,
Find her, the slim gold damsel –
Good of the sky, come back hale!

By Dafydd ap Gwilym

translated by Tony Conran

Additional information: “The Wind” (Welsh: Y Gwynt) is a 64-line love poem in the form of a cywydd (one of the most important metrical forms in traditional Welsh poetry but most often referring to a long lined couplet) by the 14th-century Welsh poet Dafydd ap Gwilym. Dafydd is widely seen as the greatest of the Welsh poets.

The Litte Bow (Y Bwa Back) was Dafydd’s nickname for Morfudd’s husband.

Uwch Aeron was historically recorded as one of Cardiganshire’s (Welsh: Sir Aberteifi or Ceredigion) three cantrefs in the Middle Ages. The cantref was divided into three commotes: Mefenydd, Anhuniog and Pennardd.

However there is also another Aeron which was a kingdom of the Brythonic-speaking Hen Ogledd (English: Old North), presumed to have been located in the region of the River Ayr in what is now southwestern Scotland. It existed during the post-Roman era, perhaps earlier, and disappeared before or during the 7th-century conquest of the region by the ascendant Kingdom of Northumbria.

Aeron is incidentally mentioned in the Book of Taliesin in poems of praise to Urien of Rheged. It is the homeland of several heroes in the Book of Aneirin. The families of several of these heroes also appear in royal genealogies associated with the genealogies of the better-known kings of Alt Clut who lived in southwestern Scotland. This, taken together with the phonetic similarity of Aeron and Ayr, suggests the location of Aeron.

There are no historical records confirming its history or even its existence, only literary references combined with circumstantially consistent genealogies and incidentally relevant historical records. Though Aeron may have been located within the territory of modern Scotland, as a part of Yr Hen Ogledd it is also an intrinsic part of Welsh history, as both the Welsh and the Men of the North (Welsh: Gwŷr y Gogledd) were self-perceived as a single people, collectively referred to in modern Welsh as Cymry.

Below is the poem in its original Middle Welsh form.

Y Gwynt

Yr wybrwynt, helynt hylaw,
Agwrdd drwst a gerdda draw,
Gŵr eres wyd garw ei sain,
Drud byd heb droed heb adain.
Uthr yw mor eres y’th roed
O bantri wybr heb untroed,
A buaned y rhedy
Yr awr hon dros y fron fry.

Dywaid ym, diwyd emyn,
Dy hynt, di ogleddwynt glyn.
Hydoedd y byd a hedy,
Hin y fron, bydd heno fry,
Och ŵr, a dos Uwch Aeron
Yn glaer deg, yn eglur dôn.
Nac aro di, nac eiriach,
Nac ofna er Bwa Bach,
Cyhuddgwyn wenwyn weini.
Caeth yw’r wlad a’i maeth i mi.

Nythod ddwyn, cyd nithud ddail
Ni’th dditia neb, ni’th etail
Na llu rhugl, na llaw rhaglaw,
Na llafn glas na llif na glaw.
Ni’th ladd mab mam, gam gymwyll,
Ni’th lysg tân, ni’th lesga twyll.
Ni boddy, neu’th rybuddiwyd,
Nid ei ynglŷn, diongl wyd.
Nid rhaid march buan danad,
Neu bont ar aber, na bad.
Ni’th ddeil swyddog na theulu
I’th ddydd, nithydd blaenwydd blu.
Ni’th wŷl drem, noethwal dramawr,
Neu’th glyw mil, nyth y glaw mawr.

Rhad Duw wyd ar hyd daear,
Rhuad blin doriad blaen dâr,
Noter wybr natur ebrwydd,
Neitiwr gwiw dros nawtir gŵydd,
Sych natur, creadur craff,
Seirniawg wybr, siwrnai gobraff,
Saethydd ar froydd eiry fry,
Seithug eisingrug songry’,
Drycin yn ymefin môr,
Drythyllfab ar draethellfor,
Hyawdr awdl heod ydwyd,
Hëwr, dyludwr dail wyd,
Hyrddwr, breiniol chwarddwr bryn,
Hwylbrenwyllt heli bronwyn.

Gwae fi pan roddais i serch
Gobrudd ar Forfudd, f’eurferch.
Rhiain a’m gwnaeth yn gaethwlad,
Rhed fry rhod a thŷ ei thad.
Cur y ddôr, par egori
Cyn y dydd i’m cennad i,
A chais ffordd ati, o chaid,
A chân lais fy uchenaid.
Deuy o’r sygnau diwael,
Dywaid hyn i’m diwyd hael:
Er hyd yn y byd y bwyf,
Corodyn cywir ydwyf.
Ys gwae fy wyneb hebddi,
Os gwir nad anghywir hi.
Dos fry, ti a wely wen,
Dos obry, dewis wybren.
Dos at Forfudd felenllwyd,
Debre’n iach, da wybren wyd.

Hawks by Vladimir Soloukhin

I walk in the woods.

By fallen trees,

I cross the woodland streams.

I build myself a shelter, light a bonfire,

(Even when it’s raining,

All I need is one match

To light a good fire)

And I camp out under the rustle of rain.

.

Sometimes I clamber up towards the clouds,

By way of the yellow pine branches

Covered with scaling bark.

The hawks

Are beginning their run,

Swooping like Messerschmidts.

I see their taloned feet, clasped,

Ready to sink into flesh with a deadly grip;

Into grey-hen’s flesh,

Into thrush’s flesh,

Into nightingale’s flesh,

Into quail’s –

So long as it is hot,

So long as the fresh blood spurts when

These talons sink into it,

Curved, hawk’s talons.

.

I see again the eyes too

Of the swooping hawks.

The fire that burns indistinguishably in them,

Lighting the animal darkness,

Lends me determination.

(With one hand I grasp the branches,

Holding a stick in the other,

To protect the eyes and head.)

Even like this, I manage to reach the nest,

Seize the dark, rough twigs,

Like a righteous, irate god

(Debris and birds’ droppings pour down on me, into my eyes,

And the pine

Sways smoothly, pleasantly, to right and left)

Until I dislodge the nest.

.

Splintering, breaking against the branches, it bumps downwards,

Lining,

Droppings,

Fledgelings and all,

For, strange as it may seem,

The pretty fledgelings

Grow into hawks again,

With talons tightly clasped,

Ready to sink into flesh…

That is why I climb the pine tree

Each time,

Whenever,

There’s a hawk nesting,

Right at the top.

.

.

By Владимир Алексеевич Солоухин

(Vladimir Alexeyevich Soloukhin)

translated by Daniel Weissbort

.

.

Additional information: Soloukhin lived from 1924 to 1997.

At the Moscow meeting of writers on October 31, 1958, he took part in the condemnation of the novel Doctor Zhivargo by Boris Pasternak. Soloukhin noted about the Nobel Prize laureate that Pasternak should become an emigrant:

“He will not be able to tell anything interesting there. And in a month he will be thrown out like an eaten egg, like a squeezed lemon. And then it will be a real execution for the betrayal that he committed ”

[Apologies for the rough translation. The original quote in Cyrillic is on Soloukhin’s Russian language Wikipedia page].

In his journalism of the late 1950s and early 1960s, the writer spoke out as a Russian patriot, pointed out the need to preserve national Russian traditions, and reflect on the development of Russian art.

The main theme of Soloukhin‘s work is the Russian countryside, its present and future. His works strive to demonstrate the necessity of preserving the national traditions, and ponder the ways to further develop ethnic Russian art. Vladimir Soloukhin is considered to be a leading figure of the “village prose” group of writers. His journalistic expressions of opinion during the later years of perestroika idealized pre-revolutionary Russia.

In the early 1960s he became interested in Russian icons, became an advocate for respect and attention towards them, becoming a collector and specialist in the interpretation and technique of icon painting himself. His publications on this subject – “Letters from the Russian Museum” (1966), “Black Boards” (1968) received a wide public response.

Soloukhin‘s book “Searching for Icons in Russia” describes his hobby of collecting icons. He traveled throughout the countryside in the 1950s and 1960s searching for icons. In some instances he discovered beautiful 16th century icons underneath layers of grime and over-painting yet he also finds ancient icons chopped into bits and rotting away.

He was known for his campaign to preserve pre-revolutionary Russian art and architecture. Ilya Glazunov painted a portrait of him. Soloukhin died on 4 April 1997 in Moscow and was buried in his native village.

.

If you are able to find the Russian Cyrillic version of the above poem and direct me to it I would very much appreciated it.

На пороге ночи (Fall of Night) by Novella Matveyeva

In the evening the path

Is violet-grey,

A sulphuric, lilac shade.

And, like a nut

That ripens and

Comes loose from its own walls,

The moon comes away from the walls of the sky,

And from the moisture-filled clouds,

And sets out for the weightless firmament,

Lonely and cast adrift…

.

The gypsy shadows of the trees

Sweep the road with their curls…

Far off, aside, a desolate

Pond smokes and glitters,

Like the drowsy fire in a pipe,

Dull, quenched, half-dead,

Stuffed into the sleeve, under the damp fur

Of a sheepskin-coat.

.

From there, from that damp, sad place,

Into the dry-leafed coppice an owl bowls, head over heels,

Its wings bulky yet nimble –

Fluttering millstones.

It flies shaggily,

Ridiculously;

It flies like something sewn up in a grey sack,

With oblique slits for eyes.

Its clumsy dance in the fresh air

Is like a rudderless, compassless boat’s…

Be off, absurd creature, be off!

Beyond the ditch, black as an abyss,

Bushes shine glassily, like vessels filled with some

Medicinal infusion.

.

It is the prelude to night…

.

Night.

Like uprights and arcs,

Above the warm,

Lonely expanse

Are motionless sounds…

.

by Новелла Николаевна Матвеева

(Novella Nikolayevna Matveyeva)

(1965?)

translated by Daniel Weissbort

.

Beneath is the original Russian version of the poem in Cyrillic.

.

На пороге ночи

У тропки вечерней сиренево-серный
И серо-лиловый оттенок.
И, словно орех, который, созрев,
Отходит от собственных стенок,
Отходит луна от небес волокна,
От облачного потока,
И к легкому своду уходит она
Отколото, одиноко...

Деревьев цыганские тени кудрями дорогу метут...
Вдали, в запустенье, дымится и светится пруд,
Как жар, потухающий в трубке цыгана,
Мечтательно замерший наполовину,
Попав под рукав, под сырую овчину
Тумана...

Оттуда, из сырости грустной,
В лесок сухокудрый летит, кувыркаясь, сова:
Я слышу, я слышу крыла ее грузные,
О, эти порхающие жернова!
Летит она прозорливо и слепо, -
Движением тяжким и скорым, как шок.
Летит клочковато, летит нелепо,
Летит, как зашитая в серый мешок
С косыми прорезями для глаз...

Как пляска ладьи, где отшибло и руль и компас,
В воздухе свежем танец ее корявый...
Прочь, абсурдная,
Прочь!

...За черной, как пропасть, канавой
Стеклянно блистают кусты, как сосуды с целебным настоем, -
Это вступление в ночь...
Ночь.

Как столбики и как дуги,
Над теплым,
Над сиротливым простором
Стоят неподвижные звуки.