Ночь темна… (The Night Is Dark) by Yury Galanskov

The night is dark.
There is a moon.
She is, of course, not alone,
And I am absolutely not lonely,
And just now – the bell rings.
I hear a prearranged knock on the door,
jump up, grasp the handshake,
put on a raincoat,
and we go out
almost
in a downpour of rain.
We go out,
and, it is to be supposed,
we are going to overthrow someone.

by Yury Galanskov
1955 (?)
translated by Albert C. Todd

Ночь темна

Ночь темна.
Луна.
Она, конечно, не одна.
И я совсем не одинок,
вот-вот — и прозвенит звонок.
Услышу в дверь условный стук,
вскочу, схвачу пожатье рук,
надену плащ,
и мы уйдем
почти
под проливным дождем.
Уйдем,
и надо полагать —
идем кого-то низвергать.

Additional information: Ю́рий Тимофе́евич Галанско́в (Yuri Timofeyevich Galanskov); 19 June 1939 – 4 November 1972) was a Russian poet, historian, human rights activist and dissident. For his political activities, such as founding and editing samizdat almanac Phoenix, he was incarcerated in prisons, camps and forced treatment psychiatric hospitals (Psikhushkas). He died in a labor camp.

Galanskov’s father was a common worker. He studied briefly at Moscow University but was expelled in his second semester for “the independence of his views.” In 1961, as one of the first human rights activists, he helped found the underground journal Feniks (Phoenix), where, in the first number, his own poetry first appeared. The second number, Feniks 66, he published on his own. He was arrested in 1967 and sentenced with Aleksandr Ginzburg to seven years in a severe-regimen camp for assisting in the production of the White Book about the trial of Andrey Sinyavsky and Yuly Daniel. Beginning in 1969 he was in and out of prison hospitals for treatment of ulcers. He died tragically at the martyr’s age of thrity-three from a blood infection following an ulcer operation.

Galanskov was an unusually courageous, uncompromising enemy of the violence, vulgarity, and hypocrisy of the Soviet system; none of his poetry or essays was ever published in the official Soviet press during his lifetime.

Biographical information about Galanskov, p.954, ‘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).

Равнодушие (Indifference) by Dmitry Bobyshev

Indifference –
A house
Packed with ice,
Full of snow.
Indifference –
A house
For freezing,
Not for living.
A vault. A plush crypt.
Indifference. A house.
Moldy bread and boxes.
Peels, dead birds, combings, scrapings.
Peer closely – here are also people,
Two-humped people – freaks!
And they kick off from boredom.
And people!
O people are camels!
And virgins are whores.
Peer closely.
But try to enter in,
Only try!
I am like a physician,
I tear out an eye, knock out teeth,
But I will give back!
Indifference.
The coffin. Dead flesh.
House of the dead. Bird feathers.
Broken claws.
Indifference. A house. Indifference.

by Дмитрий Васильевич Бобышев
(Dmitry Vasilyevich Bobyshev)
translated by Albert C. Todd

Равнодушие

Равнодушие —
Набитый льдом,
Наполненный снегом дом.
Равнодушие —
Не для жилья,
Для замораживанья дом.
Погреб. Плюшевый склеп.
Равнодушие. Дом.
Пыльный хлеб и коробки.
Корки, мертвые птицы, очески, поскребыши.
Загляни — здесь и люди,
Двугорбые люди — уроды!
И подохнут со скуки.
И люди!
О люди — верблюды!
И девки — о потаскухи.
Загляни.
Но попробуй зайди —
Лишь попробуй!
Я уподоблюсь врачу.
Вырву глаз, выбью зубы,
А возвращу!
Равнодушие.
Гроб. Мертвечина.
Муравьи и мышиный помет на полу.
Мертвечина.
Мертвый дом. Птичьи перья. Разбитые клешни.
Равнодушие. Дом. Равнодушие.

Additional information: Dmitry Vasilyevich Bobyshev (Дми́трий Васи́льевич Бо́бышев), born 11 April 1936, Mariupol, is a Soviet poet, translator and literary critic.

Bobyshev grew up in Leningrad, where his father died during the blockade in World War II. In 1959 he completed studies at the Leningrad Technological Institute as a chemical engineer and worked in the fiend of chemical weapons. At the end of the 1960s he began working as an editor in the technical division of Leningrad television.

Bobyshev began to write poetry in the 1950s and was first published in the samizdat journal Sintaksis (Syntax) in 1959 and 1960 and then later briefly in Iunost’ (Youth) and Leningrad almanacs. His first collection, Ziianiia (Hiatus), appeared in Paris in 1979, the year he succeeded in immigrating to the United States. His resolution to be a poet was significantly affected by his meeting with Anna Akhmatova, who dedicated the poem “Piataia roza” (The Fifth Rose) to him, though he considers the poetry of Rilke to be his literary wellspring.

Biographical information about Bobyshev, p.862, ‘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).

Когда человек умирает… When A Man Dies… by Anna Akhmatova

When a man dies,
His portraits change.
His eyes gaze out differently, and his lips
Smile with a different smile.
I noticed that when I returned
From the funeral of a certain poet.
And since then I have tested it often
And my suspicions have been confirmed.

by Анна Андреевна Ахматова (Anna Andreyevna Akhmatova)
a.k.a. Анна Андреевна Горенко (Anna Andreyevna Gorenko)
(1940)
translated by Daniel Weissbort

Когда человек умирает…

Когда человек умирает,
Изменяются его портреты.
По-другому глаза глядят, и губы
Улыбаются другой улыбкой.
Я заметила это, вернувшись
С похорон одного поэта.
И с тех пор проверяла часто,
И моя догадка подтвердилась.

The poem read by А. Демидова (A. Demidova).

Akhmatova, whose real surname was Gorenko, is on of the two greatest women poets in the history of Russian poetry. The daughter of a merchant marine engineer, she spent much of her childhood in Tsarkoye Selo, the village outside St Petersburg where the Tsar’s summer palace was located. The regal nature of her work is perhaps in part attributed to this royal environment. Her first books of poetry, Vecher (Evening) (1912) and Chotki (Rosary) (1913; reissued eleven times), brought her critical acclaim. From 1910 to 1918 she was married to Nikolai Gumilyov.

Akhmatova’s poetry, with a few exceptions, is distinguished from that of Russia’s other preeminent woman poet, Marina Tsvetayeva, by its polished form, classical transparency, and thematic intimacy. She wrote comparatively few poems of a “civic” character and, unlike almost any other poet, little or nothing that could be called mediocre. Her poetry, has stood well the test of time, as evidenced by such works as “Mne golos byl…” (I heard a voice…), which repudiates immigration; the patriotic “Muzhestvo” (Courage), which appeared during/World War II; the remarkable “Rekviem” (Requiem); and others.

It is revealing that, despite the personal tragedy of her son’s arrest and persecution during Stalin’s worst purges in 1937-1938, she did not grow bitter but bore her pain with dignity and endurance. In 1946 Akhmatova, along with Mikhail Zoshchenko, fell prey to harsh and unjust criticism in a party resolution “About the Journals Zvezda and Leningrad” in a repressive persecution of the arts led by Andrey Zhdanov. She was not rehabilitated fully until the 1960s. In 1964 she was awarded the Italian Taormina Prize and in 1965 she received an honorary doctorate from Oxford University. At the time of her death Akhmatova was highly acclaimed both at home and abroad. Her funeral was a farewell to an entire literary epoch (more than half a century) of which she herself was the queen with a very heavy crown.

Biographical information about Akhmatova, p.170, ‘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).

Русский ум (The Russian Mind) by Vyacheslav Ivanov

A capricious, avaricious mind –
Like fire, the Russian mind is dire:
Irrepressible, lucidity for hire,
So gay – and gloom will always find.

Like an undeviating needle,
It sees the pole in ripples and murky still;
From abstract daydreams in life’s cradle
It shows the course for timorous will.

The way an eagle sees through fog
It examines all the valley’s dust,
I will reflect sensibly about the earth
While bathing in dark mystical must.

by Вячеслав Иванович Иванов
(Vyacheslav Ivanovich Ivanov)
(1890)
translated by Albert C. Todd

Русский ум

Своеначальный, жадный ум,-
Как пламень, русский ум опасен
Так он неудержим, так ясен,
Так весел он — и так угрюм.

Подобный стрелке неуклонной,
Он видит полюс в зыбь и муть,
Он в жизнь от грезы отвлеченной
Пугливой воле кажет путь.

Как чрез туманы взор орлиный
Обслеживает прах долины,
Он здраво мыслит о земле,
В мистической купаясь мгле.

A recital of the poem by Pavel Besedin which requires you to go to YouTube to hear.

Additional information: Vyacheslav Ivanovich Ivanov (Вячесла́в Ива́нович Ива́нов) who was born 28 February [O.S. 16 February] 1866 and died 16 July 1949 was a Russian poet and playwright associated with the Russian Symbolist movement. He was also a philosopher, translator, and literary critic.

Akhmatova had a dim view of him as, aside from trying to persuade her to leave her husband Nikolay Gumilyov, “…Akhmatova indignantly recalled that Ivanov would often weep as she recited her verse at the turreted house, but would later, “vehemently criticize,” the same poems at literary salons. Akhmatova would never forgive him for this. Her ultimate evaluation of her former patron was as follows, “Vyacheslav was neither grand nor magnificent (he thought this up himself) but a ‘catcher of men.'”

Extraordinarily erudite, Ivanov was educated in philology and history at the universities of Moscow, Berlin, and Paris. He wrote poems beginning in childhood and was first published in 1898. His first two collections, Kormchie zviozdy (Pilot Stars) (1903) and Prozrachnost’ (Transparence) (1904), were published while he was traveling in Greece, Egypt, and Palestine. He was immediately recognized as a leading Symbolist poet.

Ivanov’s poetry was majestic, solemn, and declamatory, more like the odes of the eighteenth century studded with erudite references to the classics. All of his writing was about art, whose purpose he saw as the creation of spiritual myths in a religious-mystical, collective activity.

Beginning in 1905 his apartment in St. Petersburg, known as “The Tower,” was the center of communication for poets, artists, scholars, and scientists, who met every Wednesday for their celebrated gathering. An insight into his worldview can be gained by realizing that during the worst times of the terrible upheaval of the Civil War he could be found working on his dissertation about the cult of Dionysus, which he defended in Baku in 1921.

In 1924 Ivanov emigrated to Rome, where he remained for the rest of his life, aloof and disengaged from émigré life and politics.

Biographical information about Ivanov, p.14, ‘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).

Cирена (Siren) by Anna Prismanova

In that land we tried to speak
of thirst, unquenchable thirst,
of a mournful cry that pierced us in the dark
and was halted in mid-flight.

But in the silence there reaches out for us
a steamboat’s cry, the crying of its soul,
it pulls us in, inviting and in parting,
as it sails into the age-old twilight.

This high-flown, antediluvian howl,
that the head and insides both absorb,
that even soaks into the legs –
is the union of peace and anxiety.

The steamboat sails off into the darkness and the night.
But it’s as if the siren’s wail died long ago.
As in the time of crusades when knights
were blessed on their way by ringing church bells.

And we, my dear, will leave like this, exactly,
having spent our last small ounce of arrogance,
we’ll leave – moving restlessly into the night,
we’ll have taken little and won’t have weighed the consequences.

The siren awaits us at the end of the earth,
and I know already the torment that she bears:
she wants us all to follow in her footsteps,
and wishes too we’d leave her all alone.

And so the steamboat howls, and howls the darkness.
I’ve not the strength to counteract these howls.
It’s possible that I myself am howling
inside the funnel of just a boat as this.

by Анна Семёновна Присманова (Anna Semyonovna Prismanova)
a.k.a. Анна Симоновна Присман (Anna Simonovna Prisman)
(Date unknown – before 1953)
translated by Bradley Jordan
from the poetry collection Трубы (Trumpets/Tubes/Pipes)

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Additional information: There is a dedication in the Russian version, ‘В. Коpвин-Пиотpовcкому‘, omitted from the translation. This refers to Vladimir Lvovich Korvin-Piotrovsky (1891 -1966) who was a Russian poet, novelist and playwright.

I am unsure of the exact date of the poem but a Russian website listing the poetry collection it is from has an end note stating “The poem was included in the anthology In the West: An Anthology of Russian Foreign Poetry. Comp. Y.P.Ivask. New York. Ed. Chekhov. 1953. p. 226.” which refers to the book published in 1953, under the title Na zapade; antologiia russkoi zarubezhnoi poezii (In the West; an anthology of the Russian émigré poetry).

Prismanova is considered comparable to her contemporary, the American poet, Louise Bogan and challenged traditional ideas of femininity in her poetry.

Prismanova’s origins and early life are obscure. She appears in emigration in Paris in the mid-1920s, and her first published collection, Ten’ itelo (Shadow and Body) (1937), contains poems beginning in 1929. She and her poet husband, Aleksandr Ginger, remained in Paris during the Nazi occupation. Responding to the wave of patriotic feeling and longing for Russia that appeared among emigres after the war, they both accepted Soviet passports, though they continued to live in Paris.

Prismanova was best known in the emigre world for intimate lyrics that manifest her spiritual searching for real truth in herself, in language, and in literary form. Prismanova’s poem “Vera” (1960), about the heroic, revolutionary populist Vera Figner (1852-1942), amazed readers by its portrait of a figure so unlike the poet and her intimate lyrical themes. Overshadowed by the more vocal figures of emigration, she was nevertheless a highly intelligent, subtle, and sensitive poet.

Biographical information about Prismanova, p.342-343, ‘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.

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Cирена

В. Коpвин-Пиотpовcкому
Cтаpалиcь мы cказать на cей земле
о жажде и ее неутоленьи,
о кpике cкоpби, pвущем наc во мгле
и оcтановленном в cвоем cтpемленьи.
Но нам навcтpечу тянетcя в тиши
влекущий наc, пpизывный и пpощальный,
кpик паpоxода, кpик его души,
уже плывущей в cумpак изначальный.
Вбираемый нутpом и головой,
пpоcачивающийcя даже в ноги,
cей выcпpенний и допотопный вой
cлияние покоя и тpевоги.
Во мглу и в ночь уxодит паpоxод.
Но cтон cиpены как бы замеp в оном.
Так pыцаpи в кpеcтовый шли поxод,
напутcтвуемые цеpковным звоном.
И мы, душа моя, вот так, точь-в-точь,
утpатив до конца оcтаток cпеcи,
уйдем – вдвигаяcь неотcтупно в ночь,
немного взяв и ничего не взвеcив.
Cиpена ждет наc на конце земли,
и знаю я – томленье в ней какое:
ей xочетcя и чтоб за нею шли,
и чтоб ее оcтавили в покое…
Так воет паpоxод, и воет тьма.
Пpотиводейcтвовать такому вою
не в cилаx я. Я, может быть, cама
в тpубе такого паpоxода вою.