I love a despairing peace:
chrysanthemum blossoms in fall,
lights adrift in a river of mist,
a sunset that has turned pale,
nameless graves, all the clichés
of a Symbolist ‘wordless romance’ –
what Annensky loved with such greed
and Gumilyov couldn’t stand.
by Георгий Владимирович Иванов (Georgii Vladimirovich Ivanov)
(1954)
translated by Robert Chandler
Spring exultation, nightingales, the moon
on southern seas – they make my poor head spin
with boredom. More than that. I disappear.
The real me lives elsewhere. Far to the north.
Berlin, poor Russian Paris, filthy Nice –
a dream from which I soon will find release.
Petersburg. Winter, Gumilyov and I
walk by an ice-bound Neva, bright with snow.
The river Lethe. Side by side, we walk
and talk as poets did, so long ago.
by Георгий Владимирович Иванов (Georgii Vladimirovich Ivanov)
(1958)
translated by Robert Chandler
Fun Fact: Gumilyov of course refers to the poet Nikolay Stepanovich Gumilyov (Николай Степанович Гумилёв) who was executed by the Petrograd Cheka in 1921. Neva to the river Neva which runs through St Petersburg (also known as Petrograd or Leningrad) while Lethe is one of the five rivers running through Hades, the underworld populated by the dead, in Greek mythology.
I was washing at night out in the yard,
the heavens glowing with rough stars,
a star-beam like salt upon an axe,
the water butt cold and brim full.
A padlock makes the gate secure,
and conscience gives sternness to the earth –
hard to find a standard anywhere
purer than the truth of new-made cloth.
A star melts in the water butt like salt,
cold water in the butt is blacker still,
death is more pure, disaster saltier
and earth more truthful and more terrible.
by Осип Эмильевич Мандельштам (Osip Emilyevich Mandelshtam. His surname is commonly latinised as Mandelstam)
(Tbilisi, 1921)
translated by Peter France
A poem written in respone to the news of Nikolay Gumilyov‘s execution.
Good is the wine that is in love with us,
and good is bread, our generous friend;
and good the woman who brings us torment
yet yields her sweetness to us in the end.
But what are we to do with sunset fires?
With joys that can’t be eaten, drunk or kissed?
And what are we to do with deathless verse?
We stand and watch – as mysteries slip past.
Just as some boy too young to know of love
will leave his play to gaze, his heart on fire,
at maidens swimming in a lake, and gaze
and gaze, tormented by obscure desire;
or as within the gloom of ancient jungle
some earthbound beast once slithered from its lair
with wing buds on its back, still tightly closed,
and let out cries of impotent despair;
so year on year – how long, Lord, must we wait? –
beneath the surgeon’s knife of art and nature,
our flesh is wasted and our spirit howls
as one more sense moves slowly to creation.
by Николай Степанович Гумилёв (Nikolay Stepanovich Gumilyov)
(1920)
translated by Robert Chandler
An influential Russian poet, literary critic, traveler, and military officer. He cofounded the Acmeist movement and was Anna Akhmatova’s husband who was arrested and executed by the Cheka, the secret Soviet police force, in 1921.
Rambling At The Bridge Head 