‘Though we have parted, on my breast’ by Mikhail Lermontov

Though we have parted, on my breast

your likeness as of old I wear.

It brings my spirit joy and rest,

pale phantom of a happier year.

To other passions now I thrill,

yet cannot leave this love of mine.

A cast-down idol – god-like still,

a shrine abandoned, yet a shrine.

 

by Михаил Юрьевич Лермонтов (Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov)

(1837)

translated by Avril Pyman

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Epic Motifs [extract] by Anna Akhmatova

I would gaze anxiously, as if into a mirror,

at the grey canvas, and with every week

my likeness to my new depiction grew

more strange and bitter…

 

by Анна Ахматова (Anna Akhmatova)

(1914-1916)

translation by Boris Dralyuk and Margo Shohl Rosen

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This extract is about a well known potrait of Akhmatova by Nathan Altman (1914) presented above for ease of reference. Nathan Isaevich Altman was a Jewish-Russian, Soviet, avant-garde artist, Cubist painter, stage designer and book illustrator.