Well, as I said, better to wait for him on some peninsula of the spirit. Surely for one with patience he will happen by once in a while. It was the heart spoke. The mind, sceptical as always of the anthropomorphisms of the fancy, knew he must be put together like a poem or a composition in music, that what he conforms to is art. A promontory is a bare place; no God leans down out of the air to take the hand extended to him. The generations have watched there in vain. We are beginning to see now it is matter is the scaffolding of spirit; that the poem emerges from morphemes and phonemes; that as form in sculpture is the prisoner of the hard rock, so in everyday life it is the plain facts and natural happenings that conceal God and reveal him to us little by little under the mind’s tooling.
by Владимир Владимирович Маяковский Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky (1913) translation by Maria Enzensberger
Mayakovsky’s poem recited by Veniamin Borisovich Smekhov
Beneath is the original Russian version of the poem in Cyrillic.
А вы могли бы?
Я сразу смазал карту будня, плеснувши краску из стакана; я показал на блюде студня косые скулы океана. На чешуе жестяной рыбы прочел я зовы новых губ. А вы ноктюрн сыграть могли бы на флейте водосточных труб?
We all walked in god’s shadow we were there at his very side. He lived in no far-off heaven and appeared in the flesh sometimes. On the top of the Mausoleum. More clever and evil he was than the god he’d deposed named Jehovah, whom he had dashed down, murdered, turned into ash; though later he raised him up and gave him some corner table. We all walked in god’s shadow we were there at his very side. I was walking down Arbat once, when god was out in his five cars, and bent double with fear, his guards in their miserable mousey coats were trembling there at his side. Too late or too early: it was turning grey. Into morning light. His gaze was cruel and wise. All-seeing the glance of his eyes. We all walked in god’s shadow. We were almost there at his side.
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by Борис Абрамович Слуцкий (Boris Abramovich Slutsky) (19??) translated by Elaine Feinstein
The first stanza is recited from 1.11 onwards by Alla Demidova.
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Additional information: The poem is about the image of Lenin and mentions his mausoleum which still entombed him to this day just outside the walls of the Kremlin in Moscow.
The Arbat is is a pedestrian street about one kilometer long in the historical centre of Moscow, Russia since at least the 15th century, which makes it one of the oldest surviving streets of the Russian capital. It forms the heart of the Arbat District of Moscow.
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Beneath is the original Russian version of the poem in Cyrillic.
Бог
Мы все ходили под богом. У бога под самым боком. Он жил не в небесной дали, Его иногда видали Живого. На Мавзолее. Он был умнее и злее Того — иного, другого, По имени Иегова… Мы все ходили под богом. У бога под самым боком. Однажды я шел Арбатом, Бог ехал в пяти машинах. От страха почти горбата В своих пальтишках мышиных Рядом дрожала охрана. Было поздно и рано. Серело. Брезжило утро. Он глянул жестоко, — мудро Своим всевидящим оком, Всепроницающим взглядом.
Мы все ходили под богом. С богом почти что рядом. И срам, и ужас От ужаса, а не от страха, от срама, а не от стыда насквозь взмокала вдруг рубаха, шло пятнами лицо тогда. А страх и стыд привычны оба. Они вошли и в кровь, и в плоть. Их даже дня умеет злоба преодолеть и побороть. И жизнь являет, поднатужась, бесстрашным нам, бесстыдным нам не страх какой-нибудь, а ужас, не стыд какой-нибудь, а срам.
My master – he disliked me from the start. He never knew me, never saw or heard me, but all the same he feared me like the plague and hated me with all his dreary heart. When I bowed my head before him, it seemed to him I hid a smile. When he made me cry, he thought my tears were crocodile. And all my life I worked my heart out for him, each night I lay down late, and got up early. I loved him and was wounded for his sake. But nothing I could do would ever take. I took his portrait everywhere I went, I hung it up in every hut and tent, I looked and looked, and kept on looking, and slowly, as the years went past, his hatred hurt me less and less. And nowadays it hardly seems to matter: the age-old truth is men like me are always hated by their master.
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by Борис Абрамович Слуцкий (Boris Abramovich Slutsky) (1954) translated by Margo Shohl Rosen
Slutsky’s poem recited by the actor Veniamin Smekhov
Beneath is the original Russian language version of the poem in Cyrillic.
Хозяин
А мой хозяин не любил меня — Не знал меня, не слышал и не видел, А всё-таки боялся, как огня, И сумрачно, угрюмо ненавидел.
Когда меня он плакать заставлял, Ему казалось: я притворно плачу. Когда пред ним я голову склонял, Ему казалось: я усмешку прячу.
А я всю жизнь работал на него, Ложился поздно, поднимался рано, Любил его. И за него был ранен. Но мне не помогало ничего.
А я возил с собой его портрет. В землянке вешал и в палатке вешал — Смотрел, смотрел, не уставал смотреть. И с каждым годом мне всё реже, реже
Обидною казалась нелюбовь. И ныне настроенья мне не губит Тот явный факт, что испокон веков Таких, как я, хозяева не любят.
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