Friends recommended the new Polish film at the Academy in Oxford Street. So we joined the ever melancholy queue of cinemas. A wind blew faint suggestions of rain towards us, and an accordion. Later, uneasy, in the velvet dark we peered through the cut-out oblong window at the spotlit drama of our nightmares: images of Auschwitz almost authentic, the human obscenity in close-up. Certainly we could imagine the stench.
Resenting it, we forgot the barbed wire was but a prop, and could not scratch the eye: those striped victims merely actors like us. We saw the Camp orchestra assembled, we heard the solemn gaiety of Bach, scored by the loud arrival of an engine, its impotent cry, and its guttural trucks. We watched, as we munched milk chocolate, trustful children, no older than our own, strolling into the chambers without fuss, whilst smoke, black and curly, oozed from chimneys.
by Dannie Abse from A Small Desperation (1968)
Interesting fact: Dannie Abse was born in Cardiff, Wales, to a Jewish family. He was the younger brother of politician and reformer Leo Abse and the eminent psychoanalyst, Wilfred Abse. Unusually for a middle-class Jewish boy, Dannie Abse attended St Illtyd’s College, a working-class Catholic school in Splott.
O sacrifice to reckless thought, it seems you must have hoped your scanty blood had power enough to melt the eternal Pole. A puff of smoke, a silent flicker upon the age-old ice - and then a breath of iron winter extinguished every trace.
by Фёдор Иванович Тютчев (Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev) (14 December, 1825) translated by Robert Chandler
Fun fact: Counted amongst the admirers of Tyutchev’s works were Dostoevsky and Tolstoy along with Nekrasov and Fet. Then later Osip Mandelstam who, in a passage approved of by Shalamov, believed that a Russian poet should not have copy of Tyutchev in his personal library – he should know all of Tyutchev off by heart.
A video of the full poem being recited in Russian.
The full original Russian Cyrillic version:
14-ое ДЕКАБРЯ 1825
Декабристам
Вас развратило Самовластье, И меч его вас поразил,— И в неподкупном беспристрастье Сейприговор Закон скрепил. Народ, чуждаясь вероломства, Поносит ваши имена — Иваша память от потомства, Как труп вземле, схоронена.
О жертвы мысли безрассудной, Вы уповали, можетбыть, Что станет вашей крови скудной, Чтобвечный полюс растопить! Едва, дымясь,она сверкнула, На вековой громаде льдов, Зима железная дохнула — И неосталось и следов.
pseudonym of Давид Самуилович Кауфман (David Samuilovich Kaufman)
(1961)
translated by Boris Dralyuk
Additional information: David Samoylov (Давид Самойлов), pseudonym of David Samuilovich Kaufman ( Давид Самуилович Кауфман; 1 June 1920 in Moscow — 23 February 1990 in Tallinn) was a notable poet of the War generation of Russian poets, considered one of the most important Russian poets of the post-World War II era as well.
A recital of the poem in its original Russian:
The original Cyrillic Russian version of the poem:
Сороковые
Сороковые, роковые,
Военные и фронтовые,
Где извещенья похоронные
И перестуки эшелонные.
Гудят накатанные рельсы.
Просторно. Холодно. Высоко.
И погорельцы, погорельцы
Кочуют с запада к востоку…
А это я на полустанке
В своей замурзанной ушанке,
Где звездочка не уставная,
А вырезанная из банки.
Да, это я на белом свете,
Худой, веселый и задорный.
И у меня табак в кисете,
И у меня мундштук наборный.
И я с девчонкой балагурю,
И больше нужного хромаю,
И пайку надвое ломаю,
И все на свете понимаю.
Как это было! Как совпало –
Война, беда, мечта и юность!
И это все в меня запало
И лишь потом во мне очнулось!..
Сороковые, роковые,
Свинцовые, пороховые…
Война гуляет по России,
А мы такие молодые!
by Марина Ивановна Цветаева (Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva)
(18 September1921)
translated by Peter Oram
Fun facts: This poem is dedicated to Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky (Владимир Владимирович Маяковский) who was a Russian Soviet poet, playwright, artist, and actor.
During his early, pre-Revolution period leading into 1917, Mayakovsky became renowned as a prominent figure of the Russian Futurist movement. Though Mayakovsky’s work regularly demonstrated ideological and patriotic support for the ideology of the Communist Party and a strong admiration of Vladimir Lenin,Mayakovsky’s relationship with the Soviet state was always complex and often tumultuous. Mayakovsky often found himself engaged in confrontation with the increasing involvement of the Soviet State in cultural censorship and the development of the State doctrine of Socialist realism. In 1930 Mayakovsky committed suicide. Even after death his relationship with the Soviet state remained unsteady. Though Mayakovsky had previously been harshly criticized by Soviet governmental bodies like the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers (RAPP), Joseph Stalin posthumously declared Mayakovsky “the best and the most talented poet of our Soviet epoch.”
Original Russian Cyrillic version:
Маяковскому
Превыше крестов и труб,
Крещенный в огне и дыме,
Архангел-тяжелоступ -
Здорово, в веках Владимир!
Он возчик и он же конь,
Он прихоть и он же право.
Вздохнул, поплевал в ладонь:
- Держись, ломовая слава!
Певец площадных чудес -
Здорово, гордец чумазый,
Что камнем — тяжеловес
Избрал, не прельщась алмазом.
Здорово, булыжный гром!
Зевнул, козырнул и снова
Оглоблей гребет — крылом
Архангела ломового.
18 сентября 1921
Rambling At The Bridge Head 
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