Река текла как дождь, лежащий на боку… (The river flowed like rain, lying on its side…) by Novella Matveyeva

The river flowed like rain

Lying on its side,

And the rain fell like a vertical river.

And the bridge bobbed under like a float.

With the flood pouring over it.

It was like a sword slipping from someone’s grasp,

The water

Now shielding it, now withdrawing…

The rain finished what it had to say,

But all night the river

Carried on

Its watery talk.

Let’s call in on the night…

The burdock is soaked,

You can’t make it out in the dark, but you can touch it and recall

The prickly blue-green beaded leaf –

Eglantine reddening as though it has been bitten…

The garden

Whistles with freshness, like a thread tweaked from a canvas,

Lilac in checkerboard beds scents the air,

Jasmine glimmers palely in the mealy half-dark

Under the damp vague trees.

I shall go down to the river: has the bridge drowned yet?

Trees dispute in the dark.

Thousands of black leaves hobnob with the stars,

Like crowds of paper mannikins.

Black on black. High up in the darkness

They prance, dance, weave, fight,

Drink, tumble… But near the water

They part, like cards being dealt out.

.

by Новелла Николаевна Матвеева (Novella Nikolayevna Matveyeva)

(1965)

translated by Daniel Weissbort

.

Beneath is the original Russian Cyrillic version of the poem.

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Река текла как дождь, лежащий на боку…

Река текла как дождь, лежащий на боку,
А дождик шел, как речка в вертикали,
И мост подныривал подобно поплавку,
Когда струи по нем перетекали.

Казалось: из руки выскальзывает меч;
Волна то прятала настил, то обнажала…
Дождь высказался, смолк, но дождевую речь
Всю ночь река вела и продолжала.

Пойти проведать ночь? Лопух водой налит.
Во мгле не разглядишь, но тронешь и припомнишь
В зубцах и в капельках зелено-синий лист –
Прикушенно-алеющий шиповник…

Сад свищет свежестью, как нитка в полотне,
Сирень ноздрится в шахматных деленьях,
Жасмин белеется в мучнистой полутьме
Из-под сырых расплывчатых деревьев.

Сойду к реке: не захлебнулся ль мост?
Деревья пререкаются во мраке,
Тьмы черных листьев трутся между звезд,
Как толпы человечков из бумаги.

Из черной же. Высоко в темноте.
Они гарцуют, пляшут, шьют, дерутся,
Пьют, валятся с коней… Но в близости к воде
Расступятся, как карты разберутся.

.

Extra information: Matveyeva was born on 7 October 1934 in Pushkin, Saint Petersburg (then Leningrad). She suffered the fate of so many war children and was brought up in children’s homes and, later, apparently spent much of her time in hospitals. She was a Russian bard, poet, writer, screenwriter, dramatist, and literary scientist. Novella was also the cousin of poet Ivan Matveyev (Elagin). Her first poetry collection, Lyrics, was published in 1961 which was the same year she was admitted to the Union of Soviet Writers. From the end of the 1950s on Matveyeva composed songs to her poetry and performed them, accompanying herself on a seven-string guitar. The element of fantasy and the dreamlike atmosphere of much of her poetry is unusual in the Soviet context. In 1998 Matveyeva received the Russian State Pushkin Prize in poetry, and in 2002, she received the Russian Federation State Prize in Literature and Arts for her poetry collection Jasmine. Matveyeva died on 4 September 2016 at the age of 81 in Moscow Oblast.

‘Вооруженный зреньем узких ос’ (‘Armed with wasp-vision. With the vision of wasps…’ by Osip Mandelstam

Armed with wasp-vision, with the vision of wasps
that suck, suck, suck the earth's axis,
I'm filled by the whole deep vein of my life
and hold it here in my heart
and in vain.
 
And I don't draw, don't sing,
don't draw a black-voiced bow over strings:
I only drink, drink, drink in life and I love
to envy wasp-
waisted wasps their mighty cunning.
 
O if I too
could be impelled past sleep, past death,
stung by the summer's cheer and chir,
by this new air
to hear earth's axis, axis, axis.
 

by Осип Эмильевич Мандельштам (Osip Emilyevich Mandelshtam.)
His surname is commonly latinised as Mandelstam)
(8 February 1937)
translated by Robert Chandler 

the poem read by Stanislav Komardin

Below is the original Russian Cyrillic version of the poem.

Вооруженный зреньем узких ос, 
Сосущих ось земную, ось земную, 
Я чую всё, с чем свидеться пришлось, 
И вспоминаю наизусть и всуе. 

И не рисую я, и не пою, 
И не вожу смычком черпоголосым, 
Я только в жизнь впиваюсь и люблю 
Завидовать могучим, хитрым осам. 

О, если б и меня когда-нибудь могло 
Заставить, сон и смерть минуя, 
Стрекало Еоздуха и летнее тепло 
Услышать ось земную, ось земную.  

Extra information: The wasp-waist was a fashion regarding a women’s fashion silhouette, produced by a style of corset and girdle, that has experienced various periods of popularity in the 19th and 20th centuries. Its primary feature is the abrupt transition from a natural-width rib cage to an exceedingly small waist, with the hips curving out below. It takes its name from its similarity to a wasp’s segmented body. The sharply cinched waistline also exaggerates the hips and bust.

To put it bluntly Mandelstam is talking about admiring women, at least in part, in this poem.

Mandelstam was said to have had an affair with the poet Anna Akhmatova. She insisted throughout her life that their relationship had always been a very deep friendship, rather than a sexual affair. In the 1910s, he was in love, secretly and unrequitedly, with a Georgian princess and St. Petersburg socialite Salomea Andronikova, to whom Mandelstam dedicated his poem “Solominka” (1916).

In 1922, Mandelstam married Nadezhda Khazina in Kiev, Ukraine, where she lived with her family. He continued to be attracted to other women, sometimes seriously. Their marriage was threatened by his falling in love with other women, notably Olga Vaksel in 1924-25 and Mariya Petrovykh in 1933-34.

During Mandelstam’s years of imprisonment, 1934–38, Nadezhda accompanied him into exile. Given the real danger that all copies of Osip’s poetry would be destroyed, she worked to memorize his entire corpus, as well as to hide and preserve select paper manuscripts, all the while dodging her own arrest. In the 1960s and 1970s, as the political climate thawed, she was largely responsible for arranging clandestine republication of Mandelstam’s poetry.

На берегу (On the Bank) by Arseny Tarkovsky

He was sitting by the river, among reeds

that peasants had been scything for their thatch.

And it was quiet there, and in his soul

it was quieter and stiller still.

He kicked off his boots and put

his feet into the water, and the water

began talking to him, not knowing

he didn't know its language.

He had thought that water is deaf-mute,

that the home of sleepy fish is without words,

that blue dragonflies hover over water

and catch mosquitoes or horseflies,

that you wash if you want to wash, and drink

if you want to drink, and that's all there is

to water. But in all truth

the water's language was a wonder,

a story of some kind about some thing,

some unchanging thing that seemed

like starlight, like the swift flash of mica,

like a divination of disaster.

And in it was something from childhood,

from not being used to counting life in years,

from what is nameless

and comes at night before you dream,

from the terrible, vegetable

sense of self

of your first season.


That's how the water was that day,

and its speech was without rhyme or reason.


by Арсений Александрович Тарковский
(Arseny Alexandrovich Tarkovsky)
(1954)
translated by Robert Chandler

Arseny was the father of the famous and highly influential film director Andrei Tarkovsky. His poetry was often quoted in his son’s films.

Beneath is the original version of the poem.

На берегу

Он у реки сидел на камыше, 
Накошенном крестьянами на крыши, 
И тихо было там, а на душе 
Еще того спокойнее и тише. 
И сапоги он скинул. И когда 
Он в воду ноги опустил, вода 
Заговорила с ним, не понимая, 
Что он не знает языка ее. 
Он думал, что вода - глухонемая 
И бессловесно сонных рыб жилье, 
Что реют над водою коромысла 
И ловят комаров или слепней, 
Что хочешь мыться - мойся, хочешь - 
     пей, 
И что в воде другого нету смысла.

И вправду чуден был язык воды, 
Рассказ какой-то про одно и то же, 
На свет звезды, на беглый блеск слюды, 
На предсказание беды похожий. 
И что-то было в ней от детских лет, 
От непривычки мерить жизнь годами, 
И от того, чему названья нет, 
Что по ночам приходит перед снами, 
От грозного, как в ранние года, 
Растительного самоощущенья.

Вот какова была в тот день вода 
И речь ее - без смысла и значенья. 

Foghorns by Gillian Clarke

When Catrin was a small child

She thought the foghorn moaning

Far out at sea was the sad

Solitary voice of the moon

Journeying to England.

She heard it warn “Moon, Moon”,

As it worked the Channel, trading

Weather like rags and bones.

 

Tonight, after the still sun

And the silent heat, as haze

Became rain and weighed glistening

In brimful leaves, and the last bus

Splashes and fades with a soft

Wave-sound, the foghorns moan, moon –

Lonely and the dry lawns drink.

This dimmed moon, calling still,

Hauls sea-rags through the streets.

 

by Gillian Clarke

from The Sundial (Gwasg Gomer, 1978)

Молчание (Silentium) by Fyodor Tyutchev

Be silent, hide away and let

your thoughts and longings rise and set

in the deep places of your heart.

 

Let dreams move silently as stars,

in wonder more than you can tell.

Let them fulfil you – and be still.

 

What heart can ever speak its mind?

How can some other understand

the hidden pole that turns your life?

A thought, once spoken, is a lie.

Don’t cloud the water in your well;

drink from this wellspring – and be still.

 

Live in yourself. There is a whole

deep world of being in your soul,

burdened with mystery and thought.

The noise outside will snuff it out.

Day’s clear light can break the spell.

Hear your own singing – and be still.

 

by Фёдор Иванович Тютчев (Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev)

(1829 – early 1830s)

translated by Robert Chandler

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Fun fact: Counted amongst the admirers of Tyutchev’s works were Dostoevsky and Tolstoy along with Nekrasov and Fet. Then later Osip Mandelstam who, in a passage approved of by Shalamov, believed that a Russian poet should not have copy of Tyutchev in his personal library – he should know all of Tyutchev off by heart.

A recital of the poem in the original Russian:

The original Russian Cyrillic text:

Молчи, скрывайся и таи
И чувства и мечты свои –
Пускай в душевной глубине
И всходят и зайдут оне
Как звезды ясные в ночи-
Любуйся ими – и молчи.

Как сердцу высказать себя?
Другому как понять тебя?
Поймёт ли он, чем ты живёшь?
Мысль изречённая есть ложь.
Взрывая, возмутишь ключи,-
Питайся ими – и молчи.

Лишь жить в себе самом умей –
Есть целый мир в душе твоей
Таинственно-волшебных дум;
Их заглушит наружный шум,
Дневные ослепят лучи,-
Внимай их пенью – и молчи!..

An English recital of the poem in an alternate translation: