And so I keep going;
death remains close;
I carry my life
in a blue envelope.
The letter’s been ready
ever since autumn:
just one little word –
it couldn’t be shorter.
But I still don’t know
where I should send it;
if I had the address,
my life might have ended.
by Варлам Тихонович Шаламов (Varlam Tikhonovich Shalamov)
(1955?)
translated by Robert Chandler
I’m certainly not a Sibyl;
my life is clear as a stream.
I just don’t feel like singing
to the rattle of prison keys.
by Анна Ахматова (Anna Akhmatova)
(1930s)
translation by Robert Chandler
Fun fact: Here Akhmatova refutes a comparison being made of herself to an oracle when saying she is not a Sibyl. In doing so she is challenging any suggestion she speaks a bluntly stated truth about their society, as many of her close friends had in their works and suffered for it, through her poetry during the Soviet era – specifically the era this was written under Stalin’s reign. At the same time in this denial she acknowledges a certain level of cowardice, by in a way ‘going with the flow’, knowing she behaves as such to avoid imprisonment or exile – again as many of her contemporaries and loved ones were fated to suffer during this era.
The sibyls were women that the ancient Greeks believed were oracles. The earliest sibyls, according to legend, prophesied at holy sites. Their prophecies were influenced by divine inspiration from a deity; originally at Delphi and Pessinos, the deities were chthonic deities. In Late Antiquity, various writers attested to the existence of sibyls in Greece, Italy, the Levant, and Asia Minor.
The English word sibyl (/ˈsɪbəl/ or /ˈsɪbɪl/) comes — via the Old French sibile and the Latin sibylla — from the ancient Greek Σίβυλλα (Sibulla). Varro derived the name from theobule (“divine counsel”), but modern philologists mostly propose an Old Italic or alternatively a Semitic etymology.
I feel my life hang by a hair
as I wait at night for the Muse;
youth, freedom, fame melt into air
as my guest appears with her flute.
She enters, tosses back her shawl;
her half-closed eyes let nothing pass.
‘So it was you who sang of Hell
to Dante?’ ‘Yes,’ she says, ‘it was.’
by Анна Ахматова (Anna Akhmatova)
(1924)
from Тростник (Reed) / Из шести книг (From the Sixth Book) era
translation by Robert Chandler
Fun Fact: The exact muse from Greek mythology referred to here is Euterpe who in late Classical times was named muse of lyric poetry and was often depicted holding a flute. The Dante referred to here is of course Dante Alighieri and his epic poem the Divine Comedy, in particular the Inferno section. Calliope was usually considered the muse of epic poetry but of course Akhmatova herself wrote lyric poetry thus explaining why she, to her surprise, encounters Euterpe and not Calliope.
Rambling At The Bridge Head 