Ты думаешь в твоё жилище… (You think…) by Georgy Rayevsky

You think: wont fate tap
Like a walking stick at your dwelling?
And what is that beggar to you,
Who’s standing there on the street?
But we’re bound by a dreaful
Collective guarantee, and it’s not for
Some to be tormented with mortal anguish,
Others to drink wine with joy.
We are those who fall and moan
And those whose triumph is now.
We are that ship which is going down,
And the one who sank it.

by Георгий Авдеевич Раевский (Оцуп)
(Georgy Avdeevich Rayevsky) (Otsup)
translated by Albert C. Todd

Ты думаешь в твоё жилище…

Ты думаешь: в твоё жилище
Судьба клюкой не постучит?..
И что тебе до этой нищей,
Что там на улице стоит!

Но грозной круговой порукой
Мы связаны, и не дано
Одним томиться смертной мукой,
Другим пить радости вино.

Мы – те, кто падает и стонет,
И те, чьё нынче торжество;
Мы – тот корабль, который тонет,
И тот, что потопил его.

Additional information: Georgy Avdeevich Raevsky (Георгий Авдеевич Раевский) (real name Otsup; December 29, 1897, Tsarskoye Selo  – February 19, 1963, Stuttgart) was a Russian poet and prose writer and author of articles regarding the theater. He emigrated to Paris in the early 1920s and was a part of the Cross roads group. In order not to be confused with his brother, Nikolai Avdeevich Otsup, he took the name of Pushkin‘s friend Nikolai Raevsky as a pseudonym . He wrote poems, stories, articles about music, parodies and epigrams. On a side note the book I referenced, published in the 1990s, gives his dates as 1897 to 1962 but Wikipedia gives them as 17 December 1897 to 19 February 1963 which I assume to be more accurate.

Rayevsky, whose real surname was Otsup, was the brother of the poet Nikolai Otsup and the son of the photographer of the Imperial Court in St Petersburg. He emigrated to Paris in the early 1920s and joined the Perekriostki (Crossroads) group, which appeared in 1926, together with Yury Terapiano, Vladimir Smolensky, Dovid Knut, and Yury Mandelstam. His poetry regularly appeared in émigré journals and resulted in three collections: Strofy (Strofes) (1928), Novye stikhotvoreniia (New Poems) (1946), and Tret’ ia kniga (Third Book)(1953). In the serious, philosophical aspect of his poetry can be seen Rayevsky’s religious approach to the world and perhaps, as in the poem here, and expression of the tragedy of emigration.

Biographical information about Rayevsky, p.331-332, ‘Twentieth Century Russian Poetry’ (1993), compiled by Yevgeny Yevtushenko (ed. Albert C. Todd and Max Hayward) , published by Fourth Estate Limited by arrangement with Doubleday of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group Inc. (transcribed as found in the original text).

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Принесла случайная молва… (Random Talk…) by Raisa Blokh

Random talk has blown in
Dear unnecessary words:
The Summer Garden, Fontanka, and Neva.
Where are you flying to, words of passage?
Other people’s cities roar here.
Other people’s rivers plash.
You’re not to be taken, hidden, chased away.
But I must live – not simply reminisce.
So as not to feel pain again.
I will never go again over the snow to the river,
Hiding my cheeks in the Penza kerchief,
My mittened hand in Mother’s hand.
This was; it was and is no more.
What is gone, was swept away by the blizzard.
That’s why there is so much emptiness and light.

by Раиса Ноевна Блох
(Raisa Noevna Blokh)
(1901-1943)
translated by Nina Kossman

Принесла случайная молва…

Принесла случайная молва
Милые, ненужные слова:
Летний Сад, Фонтанка и Нева.

Вы, слова залетные, куда?
Здесь шумят чужие города
И чужая плещется вода.

Вас не взять, не спрятать, не прогнать.
Надо жить – не надо вспоминать,
Чтобы больно не было опять.

Не идти ведь по снегу к реке,
Пряча щеки в пензенском платке,
Рукавица в маминой руке.

Это было, было и прошло.
Что прошло, то вьюгой замело.
Оттого так пусто и светло.

Additional information: Raisa Noevna Blokh (Раиса Ноевна Блох), 1899–1943, was a Russian poet. (The book I referenced stated her dates as 1901 – 1943 but the Wikipedia pages cite 1899-1943). She was born in the family of attorney at law Noy Lvovich Bloch (1850-1911) and Dora Yakovlevna Malkiel (from the well-known merchant family Malkiel) which meant she was of Jewish descent (but I cannot confirm if she practiced the faith).

She emigrated to Berlin in the 1920s where she was active in the Berlin Poets’ Club along with her husband Mikhail Gorlin. Blokh published her poetry in several Russian émigré literary journals including Sovremennye zapiski and Chisla.

The exact circumstances of Blokh‘s death remain unknown (although the Russian Wikipedia page claims it to be either Drancy or Auschwitz). But it is certain both she and Gorlin perished after being arrested by German forces during the Second World War.

Blokh’s lyric set to music (with a few additional lines) by Александр Вертинский (Aleksandr Vertinsky) in a piece titled Чужие города (Foreign Cities).

Little is known of Raisa Blokh’s life, but it is known that she died in one of Hitler’s concentration camps. While an émigré she developed her modest but unique poetic gifts, which combine the transparency of utter simplicity with subtle finesse. The enormously popular émigré poet-singer Vertinsky set her lyrics to music. Blokh’s work was first published in the Soviet Union in 1988 in the magazine Ogoniok.

Biographical information about Blokh, p.401, ‘Twentieth Century Russian Poetry’ (1993), compiled by Yevgeny Yevtushenko (ed. Albert C. Todd and Max Hayward) , published by Fourth Estate Limited by arrangement with Doubleday of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group Inc. (transcribed as found in the original text).

Editor’s note: A silly story possibly of mild interest. Just to double check things I put the poet’s name into Google Translate and Блох came out as ‘Bloch’, similar to the American author Robert Bloch, rather than ‘Blokh’. I only note it out of concern that this is a recent development in transliteration (rather than just Google Translate being it’s usual self) which will cause some confusion if the distinct Cyrillic letters ‘х’ (‘ch’ in the Scottish ‘loch’ as my dictionary describes it) and ‘ч’ (ch’ as in cheese) get conflated with each other by those trying to look her name up.

Знаю, не убьет меня злодей,… (I Know That A Gangster…) by Ivan Elagin

I know that a gangster will not murder me
In some dark alley,
But a bullet shall shatter my skull
In the name of somebody’s ideas.

And some individuals or other will
Administer my trial and verdict:
And they won’t simply seize and kill me, mind you,
They will bump me off for the sake of ideals.

I will yet be lying in a puddle,
Sniffing the stones by the roadside,
When instant beatitude and
Heavenly harmony will descend to earth,

As well as fruitful plenty,
Felicity, and justice for all –
All these things which I hindered
And desperately opposed while alive.

And then my fellow servant of the Muses,
Who likes to worry about Truth and Justice,
Will recall the eggs that have to be broken,
And recall the omlette which has to be made.

By Иван Венедиктович Елагин
(Ukrainian: Іван Венедиктович Єлагін)
Ivan Venediktovich Elagin
(a.k.a. Ivan Matveyev)
translated by Helen Matveyeff

Знаю, не убьет меня злодей,…

Знаю, не убьет меня злодей,
Где-нибудь впотьмах подкарауля,
А во имя чьих-нибудь идей
Мне затылок проломает пуля.

И расправу учинят, и суд
Надо мной какие-нибудь дяди,
И не просто схватят и убьют,
А прикончат идеалов ради.

Еще буду в луже я лежать,
Камни придорожные обнюхав,
А уже наступит благодать –
Благорастворение воздухов,

Изобилье всех плодов земных,
Благоденствие и справедливость,
То, чему я, будучи в живых,
Помешал, отчаянно противясь.

Амнистия (Amnesty) by Ivan Elagin

The man is still alive
Who shot my father
In Kiev in the summer of ’38.

Probably, he’s pensioned now,
Lives quietly,
And has given up his old job.

And if he has died,
Probably that one is still alive
Who just before the shooting
With a stout wire
Bound his arms
Behind his back.

Probably, he too is pensioned off.

And if he is dead,
Then probably
The one who questioned him still lives.
And that one no doubt
Has an extra good pension.

Perhaps the guard
Who took my father to be shot
Is still alive.

If I should want now
I could return to my native land.
For I have been told
That all these people
Have actually pardoned me.

By Иван Венедиктович Елагин
(Ukrainian: Іван Венедиктович Єлагін)
Ivan Venediktovich Elagin
(a.k.a. Ivan Matveyev)
translated by Bertram D. Wolfe

Амнистия

Еще жив человек,
Расстрелявший отца моего
Летом в Киеве, в тридцать восьмом.

Вероятно, на пенсию вышел.
Живет на покое
И дело привычное бросил.

Ну, а если он умер –
Наверное, жив человек,
Что пред самым расстрелом
Толстой
Проволокою
Закручивал
Руки
Отцу моему
За спиной.

Верно, тоже на пенсию вышел.

А если он умер,
То, наверное, жив человек,
Что пытал на допросах отца.

Этот, верно, на очень хорошую пенсию вышел.

Может быть, конвоир еще жив,
Что отца выводил на расстрел.

Если б я захотел,
Я на родину мог бы вернуться.

Я слышал,
Что все эти люди
Простили меня.

Additional information: Ivan Elagin (December 1, 1918 – February 8, 1987); Ukrainian: Іван Єлагін, Russian: Иван Венедиктович Елагин, real name Ivan Matveyev) was a Russian émigré poet born in Vladivostok. He was the husband of poet Olga Anstei (Ukrainian: Ольга Анстей), best remembered for writing about the Holocaust.

Elagin’s real surname was Matveyev; his father was the poet Venedikt Mart of Vladivostok, and he was himself the uncle of the Leningrad poet Novello Matveyeva. He was preparing to be a physician when his medical education was interrupted by World War II, and in 1943 he found himself as a forced labourer in Germany, working as a nurse in a German hospital. Knowing he would be arrested if he returned to the Soviet Union, he remained in Munich after the war and published her first books of poetry, Po doroge ottuda (The Road from There) in 1947 and Ty, moio stoletie (You Are My Century) in 1948.

In 1950 he emigrated to the United States to work as a proofreader for the New York Russian-language newspaper Novoe russkoe slovo. The earned a Ph.D. And taught Russian literature at the University of Pittsburgh, were he was surrounded by a few dedicated students. Elagin reportedly was held for a long time after World War II by American intelligence in a displaced-persons detention camp under the suspicion that he had been planted by Soviet Intelligence. Hence to some people his poetry seemed to have double directions and meaning.

Elagin was the most talented poet of postwar emigration from the Soviet Union. He related with great sympathy to the post-Stalin generation of poets, and his poetry bears a resemblance to the younger generation’s, with its resounding rhythms and alliterations, in spite of the difference in age and experience. Though he wished to visit his country he declined invitations because of the ideological conformity they would have required. He translated American poets into Russian, including a brilliant rendering of Stephen Vincent Benét’s monumental John Brown’s Body. Unfortunately, during his lifetime no American poet chose to translate him, and he remained unknown to Americans. Since 1988 his poetry has been returning to Russia.

Biographical information about Elagin, p.673, ‘Twentieth Century Russian Poetry’ (1993), compiled by Yevgeny Yevtushenko (ed. Albert C. Todd and Max Hayward) , published by Fourth Estate Limited by arrangement with Doubleday of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group Inc. (transcribed as found in the original text).