Над Невой (Over The Neva) by Wilgelm Zorgenfrey

Late night over the Neva.
There, where they are keeping watch,
A siren sends up its vicious howl,
Acetylene flares, a pillar of fire.

It’s quiet again, and dark once more.
The storm has swept the great square clean.

The winged angel on the column
Holds aloft its misty cross and gazes down
On forgotten palaces,
Broken pavements.

The frost bites deeper, the wind grows angry,
Water flows beneath the ice.

Upon the ice bonfires glow.
The sentry goes on duty.
Telegraph wires hum above:
All hail to thee, Petrograd!

In the dark recess of a palace wall
A phantom corpse has taken shape,
And the dead capital
Stares into its ghostly eyes.

Atop the granite by the bonfire
The Specter of the last Peter
Hides its eyes, trembles,
And sobs bitter tears in denial.

Foghorns wail piteously.
Wind whistles along the river.

Darkness melts. Dawn awakes.
Steam rises from the yellow ice floes,
Yellow light glints through the pane.
Citizen calls to
Citizen:
“What’s for dinner, citizen,
Today?
Have you registered, citizen,
Or not?”
“Today, citizen. I
Got no sleep:
Swapped my soul for a pint
Of Kerosene”

A sharp squall blows in from the bay
Hurries to build a snowy rampart-
So that all might be quieter still and darker
So that the souls of the dead might rest.

by Вильгельм Александрович Зоргенфрей
(Wilgelm Aleksandrovich Zorgenfrey)
a.k.a. Wilhelm Zorgenfrey
(1920)
translated by Sophie Lund

Над Невой

Поздней ночью над Невой
В полосе сторожевой
Взвыла злобная сирена,
Вспыхнул сноп ацетилена.

Снова тишь и снова мгла.
Вьюга площадь замела.

Крест вздымая над колонной,
Смотрит ангел окрыленный
На забытые дворцы,
На разбитые торцы.

Стужа крепнет. Ветер злится.
Подо льдом вода струится.

Надо льдом костры горят,
Караул идет в наряд.
Провода вверху гудят:
Славен город Петроград!

В нише темного дворца
Вырос призрак мертвеца,
И погибшая столица
В очи призраку глядится.

А над камнем, у костра,
Тень последнего Петра –
Взоры прячет, содрогаясь,
Горько плачет, отрекаясь.

Ноют жалобно гудки.
Ветер свищет вдоль реки.

Сумрак тает. Рассветает.
Пар встает от желтых льдин,
Желтый свет в окне мелькает.
Гражданина окликает
Гражданин:

– Что сегодня, гражданин,
На обед?
Прикреплялись, гражданин,
Или нет?

– Я сегодня, гражданин,
Плохо спал!
Душу я на керосин
Обменял.

От залива налетает резвый шквал,
Торопливо наметает снежный вал
Чтобы глуше еще было и темней,
Чтобы души не щемило у теней.

Additional information: You could more directly transliterate his first name from Cyrillic as Vilgyelm but it’s most likely a case of German to Russian transliteration of the name Wilhelm. When trying to find information about him is it ‘Wilhelm Zorgenfrey‘ which gained a few, rare, results.

Here is an account of his attendance of the funeral of Alexander Blok with his contempories including Bely and Akhmatova.

Zorgenfrey, the son of an army doctor, began to publish his poetry in 1905, but his one and only collection, Strastnaia subbota (Passion Saturday), was not published until 1922. Zorgenfrey had all the markings of a great poet, as the selection here indicates. At one time this poem made an enormous impression on the strict, sometimes implacable Aleksandr Blok, with whom Zorgenfrey developed a personal and professional relationship, and other contemporaries. In general Zorgenfrey’s themes and imagery are close to Blok’s.

Zorgenfrey was a prolific translator of major German writers, including Goethe, Herder, and Heine, and the editor of the translations of Heinrich von Kleist, Novalis, and Thomas Mann. He was arrested during Stalin’s terror and vanished in the gulag. Even just one or two of his remarkable poems are an inalienable part of Russian literature and history.

Biographical information about Zorgenfrey, p.108, ‘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).

Во все века (In All Ages…) by Yuliya Drunina

In all ages, always, everywhere, and everywhere
It repeats itself, the cruel dream –
The inexplicable kiss of Judas
And the ring of the accursed silver.

To understand such things is a task in vain.
Humanity conjectures once again:
Let him betray (when he cannot do else),
But why a kiss on the lips? …

By Юлия Владимировна Друнина
(Yulia Vladimirovna Drunina)
translated by Albert C. Todd

Во все века

Во все века,
Всегда, везде и всюду
Он повторяется,
Жестокий сон, —
Необъяснимый поцелуй Иуды
И тех проклятых сребреников звон.

Сие понять —
Напрасная задача.
Гадает человечество опять:
Пусть предал бы
(Когда не мог иначе!),
Но для чего же
В губы целовать?…

Кончусь, останусь жив ли… (I’ll Be Finished…) by Boris Chichibabin

I’ll be finished, if I’ll survive –
what kind of grass will grow over the gap?
On Prince Igor’s battlefield the grass faded.
The school corridors
are quiet, not ringing…
Eat your red tomatoes,
eat ’em without me.

How did I survive to such prose
with my bitter beaten head?
Each evening a convoy
leads me to interrogation.
Stairways, corridors,
cunning prison graffiti…
Eat your red tomatoes,
eat ’em without me.

By Борис Алексеевич Чичибабин (Boris Alekseyevich Chichibabin)
Born: Полушин (Polushin)
(1946)
translated by Albert C. Todd and Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Кончусь, останусь жив ли…

Кончусь, останусь жив ли, –
чем зарастёт провал?
В Игоревом Путивле
выгорела трава.

Школьные коридоры –
тихие, не звенят…
Красные помидоры
кушайте без меня.

Как я дожил до прозы
с горькою головой?
Вечером на допросы
водит меня конвой.

Лестницы, коридоры,
хитрые письмена…
Красные помидоры
кушайте без меня.

Additional information: Boris Alekseyevich Chichibabin (Russian: Бори́с Алексе́евич Чичиба́бин, Ukrainian: Бори́с Олексі́йович Чичиба́бін; 9 January 1923, Kremenchuk – 15 December 1994, Kharkiv; born Polushin, Russian: Полу́шин) was a Soviet poet and a laureat of the USSR State Prize (1990), who is typically regarded as one of the Sixtiers.

He lived in Kharkiv, and in the course of three decades became one of the most famous and best-loved members of the artistic intelligentsia of the city, i.e., from the 1950s to 1980s. From the end of the 1950s, his poetry was widely distributed throughout the Soviet Union as samizdat. Official recognition came only at the end of his life in the time of perestroika.

Chichibabin was imprisoned during Stalin’s time. Though released and rehabilitated he was “daring” enough in the Brexhnev era of stagnation to write a poem in 1971 in memory of Aleksandr Tvardovsky, who had been attacked by literary rivals until his death; the poem resulted in his expulsion from the Writers Union. He was not published for fifteen years and worked as a bookkeeper in a tram park. As time passed, the growing significance of his work became apparent.

Chichibabin’s character is very Russian, but at the same time he is blessed with the quality of compassion for the world. His poetry is filled with astonishing penetration into the pain of other nations and peoples, whether Tartar or Jews.

In 1990 the unheard-of happened: the State Prize for literature was awarded to a book of his poetry which he had published privately. He was reinstated into the Writers Union in 1986, a very shy, humble man who never dealt with politics, but with a humane conscience in the midst of moral degradation – a de facto political dissident.

Biographical information about Chichibabin, p.719, ‘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).

Мы под Колпиным скопом стоим… (We Are Huddled In A Crowd…) by Aleksandr Mezhirov

We are huddled in a crowd before Kolpino.
Under the fire of our own artillery.

It’s probably because our reconnaissance
Gave the wrong bearings.

Falling short, overshooting, falling short again…
Our own artillery is shooting us.

It wasn’t for nothing we took an oath,
Blew up the bridges behind us.

No one will escape from these trenches.
Our own artillery is shooting at us.

We’re lying in a heap before Kolpino.
We’re trembling, saturated with smoke.
They should be shooting at the enemy,
But instead they’re shooting at their own.

The commanders want to console us.
They say the motherland loves us.
The artillery is thrashing its own
They’re not making an omelette, but they’re breaking eggs.

by Александр Петрович Межиров
(Alexandr Petrovich Mezhirov)
translated by Deming Brown

Мы под Колпиным скопом стоим…

Мы под Колпином скопом стоим,
Артиллерия бьет по своим.
Это наша разведка, наверно,
Ориентир указала неверно.

Недолет. Перелет. Недолет.
По своим артиллерия бьет.

Мы недаром присягу давали.
За собою мосты подрывали,-
Из окопов никто не уйдет.
Недолет. Перелет. Недолет.

Мы под Колпиным скопом лежим
И дрожим, прокопченные дымом.
Надо все-таки бить по чужим,
А она — по своим, по родимым.

Нас комбаты утешить хотят,
Нас, десантников, армия любит…
По своим артиллерия лупит,-
Лес не рубят, а щепки летят.

Recited by the Soviet and Russian actor Вениамин Борисович Смехов (Venyamin Borisovich Smekhov).

Additional information: Alexander Petrovich Mezhirov (Александр Петрович Межиров)(26 September 1923 – 22 May 2009) was a Soviet and Russian poet, translator and critic.

Born in Moscow, he was the son of an educated Jewish couple — his father a lawyer, his mother a German-language teacher, and one of his grandfathers was a rabbi. Drafted as a private in July 1941, he fought in World War II before a serious injury led to his demobilization in 1943 as a second lieutenant. That same year, he joined the Communist Party; after the war he attended the Maxim Gorky Literary Institute, graduating in 1948. He translated poetry from Georgian and Lithuanian poets.

Mezhirov was a prominent figure in the Soviet literary establishment, although his allegiances and associations were varied. At some points he was close to fellow Jewish-Russian Boris Yampolsky, Kazakh writer Olzhas Suleimenov, and Russian cultural ultranationalist and critic Vadim Kozhinov. Mezhirov associated with younger writers Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Tatyana Glushkova (known for her nationalist views in the mid-1980s, according to Shrayer) and Evgeny Reyn, who was censored in the Soviet Union until the mid-1980s.

Although Mezhirov had publicly stated that his patriotism for Russia was so intense that, unlike other Russian Jews, he could not emigrate, he suddenly left Russia for the United States in 1992, settling first in New York, then in Portland, Oregon. As of 2007, according to anthologist Maxim D. Shrayer, he had not revisited Russia. In March 2009 Mezhirov published a collection of new poems, two months before his death. According to the ITAR/TASS news service, his body was to be cremated in the United States, with the ashes to be buried in Peredelkino near Moscow.

Mezhirov was among what has been called a “middle generation” of Soviet poets that ignored themes of communist “world revolution” and instead focused on Soviet and Russian patriotism. Many of them specialized in patriotic lyrics, particularly its military aspects. According to G. S. Smith, Mezhirov and a number of other “middle generation” poets “were genuine poets whose testimony, however well-laundered, to the tribulations of their times will endure at least as long as their generation.” Some of Mezhirov‘s lyrical poems based on his wartime experience belong with the best Russian poetical works created in the Soviet 1950s-1960s.

Mezhirov had a “special gift” for absorbing the voices of his contemporaries and his predecessors from the 1900s–1930s, according to Maxim D. Shrayer, who notes the influences in Mezhirov‘s writing of Eduard Bagritsky, Erich Maria Remarque, Anna Akhmatova, Aleksandr Blok, Vladislav Khodasevich, Mikhail Kuzmin, Vladimir Lugovskoy, David Samoylov and Arseny Tarkovsky.

He was presented with the following awards (taken from the Russian language Wikipedia page):

• Order of the Red Banner of Labour (1983)
• Medal “For the Defense of Leningrad” (Act of the Field Administration 42 A of 18.6.1943 TsAMO: f.397, op.9272, d.124_t1).
• Order of the Patriotic War, 2nd art. (Jubilee card index: No. 71 of 6.4.1985 TsAMO: No entry 1516619411).
• Laureate of the USSR State Prize (1986) (For the book “Prose in Verse“)
• Laureate of the State Prize of the Georgian SSR (1987)
• Laureate of the Vazha-Pshavela Prize of the Independent Joint Venture of Georgia (1999).
• In 1994, the President of the United States of America Bill Clinton, at the White House presented him with an award for being “Imbued with the spirit of partnership and mutual assistance, a grateful Nation will never forget your incomparable personal contribution and sacrifice shown in World War II”.

Regarding the reference to Kolpino: With the onset of the Great Patriotic War, Kolpino factory workers formed the Izhora Battalion, part of the militia around 24 August – 4 September, 1941. The front line was held in the immediate vicinity of the plant, which was subjected to heavy enemy shelling. By 1944, only 327 of Kolpino’s 2183 houses remained intact. 140,939 shells and 436 aerial bombs fell in Kolpino’s neighborhoods and boulevards. According to incomplete data for the war, shelling and starvation in the Kolpino district killed 4,600 people, not counting the dead on the front. By 1 January, 1944 Kolpino had only 2196 inhabitants. After the lifting of the siege, people gradually came back from the evacuation and army. On 1 January, 1945 the population was 7404 and by the beginning of the next year numbered 8914 people.

Mezhirov is one of the finest poets of the World War II generation. His father, who was both a lawyer and physician, took great pains to ensure his son’s broad education. As a soldier in World War II, Mezhirov took part in the defense of Leningrad, where he was seriously wounded and discharged. He wrote poetry as a schoolboy and began to publish in 1941; from 1943 to 1948 he studied at the Gorky Literary Institute. His first collection, Doroga dalioka (The Road Is Long) (1947), spoke with youthful passion of the war and of the suffering and triumphs it entailed; the poetry was criticized for being “too personal.” His romantic poem “Kommunisty vperyod” (Forward Communists) was for several years the most widely read work in the Soviet Union, both from the stage and over the radio. However, the finest things he has written have always been emphatically independent and nonpartisan. Mezhirov’s poetry was criticized throughout his career, but he never bowed to the pressure; as a result of his steadfastness, the quality of his verse never suffered.

Mezhirov spent considerable time in Georgia and has translated much Georgian poetry. A highly sophisticated connoisseur of Russian poetry, his more recent work speaks out against the negative influences and lack of spirituality in the modern world, especially the tendencies to destruction and isolation he perceives in the young. Not only a great poet, Mezhirov is also the teacher of many younger poets, including the compiler of this anthology.

Biographical information about Mezhirov, p.721, ‘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).

Нас хоронила артиллерия… (Artillery Was Burying Us…) by Konstantin Levin

Artillery was burying us.
At first it killed us.
But, with blatant hypocrisy,
Now swears that it loved us.

It broke open its muzzles,
But with all the charred nerves
In the overworked hands of the medics.
We didn’t readily believe it.

We could trust only morphine,
In the very last resort – bromide.
But those of us who were dead
Trusted the earth, and no one else.

Here everyone still crawls, laying mines
And receiving counterattacks.
But there – already illumining,
They draft memoirs…

And there, away from the destruction zone,
They scrape and polish parquet.
The Bolshoi Theater lofted on a quadrangle
Follows the celebration skyrocket.

Soldiers lay about. At night the mint showers
Them with regalia from time to time.
But machine guns belch them out
With explosive vomit.

One of them, accidentally surviving,
Came to Moscow in autumn.
He shuffled along the boulevard like a drunk,
And passed among the living like an echo.

With his artificial leg
He got in someone’s way in the trolley.
By a string of petty absurdities
He approached the Mausoleum.

He recalled the eroded hillocks,
Scraps of plywood along the roadways,
The soldier’s eyes, opened forever,
Shown in calm reproach.

Pilots fell down on them from the sky,
Bogged down in clouds of bones.
But courage does not grow scarce,
As sky doesn’t let one grow obsolete.

And the soldier knew that, for the Motherland,
Those who were swallowed by the war,
Are the equals of those who lie here buried
In the wall itself or beneath the wall.

by Константин Ильич Левин
(Konstantin Illyich Levin)
(1946)
translated by Albert C. Todd

Нас хоронила артиллерия…

Нас хоронила артиллерия.
Сначала нас она убила,
Но, не гнушаясь лицемерия,
Теперь клялась, что нас любила.

Она выламывалась жерлами,
Но мы не верили ей дружно
Всеми обрубленными нервами
В натруженных руках медслужбы.

Мы доверяли только морфию,
По самой крайней мере — брому.
А те из нас, что были мертвыми, —
Земле, и никому другому.

Тут всё ещё ползут, минируют
И принимают контрудары.
А там — уже иллюминируют,
Набрасывают мемуары…

И там, вдали от зоны гибельной,
Циклюют и вощат паркеты.
Большой театр квадригой вздыбленной
Следит салютную ракету.

И там, по мановенью Файеров,
Взлетают стаи Лепешинских,
И фары плавят плечи фраеров
И шубки женские в пушинках.

Бойцы лежат. Им льет регалии
Монетный двор порой ночною.
Но пулеметы обрыгали их
Блевотиною разрывною!

Но тех, кто получил полсажени,
Кого отпели суховеи,
Не надо путать с персонажами
Ремарка и Хемингуэя.

Один из них, случайно выживший,
В Москву осеннюю приехал.
Он по бульвару брел как выпивший
И средь живых прошел как эхо.

Кому-то он мешал в троллейбусе
Искусственной ногой своею.
Сквозь эти мелкие нелепости
Он приближался к Мавзолею.

Он вспомнил холмики размытые,
Куски фанеры по дорогам,
Глаза солдат, навек открытые,
Спокойным светятся упреком.

На них пилоты с неба рушатся,
Костями в тучах застревают…
Но не оскудевает мужество,
Как небо не устаревает.

И знал солдат, равны для Родины
Те, что заглотаны войною,
И те, что тут лежат, схоронены
В самой стене и под стеною.

Read by Лаврентий Анатольевич Сорокин (Lavrenty Anatolyevich Sorokin) who was an Honored Artist of Russia and actor at the Globus theatre.

Included in the recital there is the following passage, as the third stanza, which is omitted from other versions I have sourced. Possibly it is due to the ‘improved’ version Yevtushenko states he requested be made by Levin briefly prior to his passing.

За нас молились леди Англии
И маркитантки полковые.
Нас интервьюировали б ангелы,
Когда бы были таковые.

Translated it reads as:

Ladies of England prayed for us.
And regimental vivandieres.
We’d be interviewed by angels
If they existed.

Additional information: It goes without saying but if you look up Konstanin Levin‘s name, for further information, in English you will probably come across page after page about the character of Konstantin ‘Kostya’ Levin from Lev Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina. For those who can read Russian or are willing to use Google translate there is the poet Levin‘s Wikipedia page but for everyone else I will share this biography from the Yad Vashem page about the poet and his wartime service they compiled as part of their ‘Jews in the Red Army, 1941–1945′ research project:

Konstantin Levin was born in 1924 in Ekaterinoslav (now Dnipro), Ukraine to a medical family. In 1941, following the family tradition, he entered a medical institute (medical university). A short time later, his institute was evacuated to Western Siberia. Having finished the first semester, Levin was drafted into the Red Army and sent to the Rostov School of Artillery (RSA), which specialized in anti-tank artillery. In 1942 the RSA was located not in Rostov-on-Don, which at this time was occupied by the enemy, but in the Urals. In the fall of 1943 Levin graduated from the RSA as a second lieutenant and was appointed the commander of a platoon of 45-mm cannons. These cannons were the most dangerous kind of artillery to operate: being ineffective against enemy tanks, after their first shot they became a good target for the enemy. Levin succeeded in surviving at the front for less than half a year.

In February 1944, while fighting in Ukraine, Levin was wounded for the first time, in the head. On April 29, 1944, participating in the battle of Târgu Frumos, in eastern Romania, Levin was hit by an enemy shell and he lost a leg. His former RSA comrade and a participant in the same operation Moisei Dorman noted: “At the end of April 1944, near Iaşi, a German tank crushed his cannon. A shell fragment cut Kostia’s leg right at the knee. The leg was hanging on by the tendons. Levin tried to cut it off with a penknife, but he was bleeding and did not have enough strength…. Almost fainting, he managed to get to his own side by crawling.” After this battle, Levin was awarded the Order of Patriotic War, 2nd Class. After his release from the Red Army, he was recommended for the Order of Patriotic War, 1st Class – for his fighting in Ukraine.

In 1945 after the war, Konstantin Levin entered the Literary Institute in Moscow. Although the admission committee found his poems depressing, he was admitted because he was a disabled veteran who had earned two military orders. He was a good student. Levin walked with a prosthesis, never using a cane or crutches. In 1946, after he wrote the poem “Artillery Buried Us,” he was almost expelled from the Institute. In the following year, he wrote a poem about himself, in which he let the reader know that he had been not simply a soldier, but a Jewish one. After that, poem Levin was, in fact, expelled from the Institute, and only the intervention of the Russian poet Aleksei Surkov helped him receive his diploma.

For the rest of his life Konstantin Levin earned his living by routine literary work. He died in 1984. The first collection of his poems was published posthumously in 1989.

https://www.yadvashem.org/research/research-projects/soldiers/konstantin-levin.html

The poem therefore appears to be autobiographical though Levin uses the third person when recounting the events of it when referring to himself as “one of them, accidentally surviving/…/with his artificial leg”.

Levin’s renowned poem “Artillery was burying us…” passed from hand to hand throughout literary Moscow in the years following World War II, along with Naum Korzhavin’s poems against Stalin. Levin worked as a literary consultant and never tried to publish his poetry. Just prior to his death the compiler of this anthology persuaded him to make a new, even better version of his masterpiece. Boris Slutsky considered him one of the finest poets in the front-line generation.

Biographical information about Levin, p.736, ‘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).