Снег (Snow) by Innokenty Annensky

I could have loved the winter,
But the burden is heavy.
Even smoke cannot
Escape into the clouds.

The sharply etched lives,
The unweildly flight,
The pauperish blue
Of the tear-swollen ice.

But I love snow, weakened
By the easy life above,
Sometimes glistening white,
Sometimes purple lilac…

And particularly thawing,
When, revealing the peaks,
It settles down weary
On a sliding precipice.

Immaculate dreams,
Like cattle in the mist,
On the agonizing brink
On spring’s holocaust.

by Иннокентий Фёдорович Анненский
(Innokenty Fedorovich Annensky)
(1909)
translated by Lubov Yakovleva and Daniel Weissbort

Снег

Полюбил бы я зиму,
Да обуза тяжка…
От нее даже дыму
Не уйти в облака.

Эта резанность линий,
Этот грузный полет,
Этот нищенский синий
И заплаканный лед!

Но люблю ослабелый
От заоблачных нег —
То сверкающе белый,
То сиреневый снег…

И особенно талый,
Когда, выси открыв,
Он ложится усталый
На скользящий обрыв,

Точно стада в тумане
Непорочные сны —
На томительной грани
Всесожженья весны.

Annensky, renowned for his great learning, was the director of the lycee in Tsarskoye Selo near St. Petersburg where many poets from Aleksandr Pushkin to Anna Akhmatova were educated. His poems are refined and somewhat cold recalling the autumnal severity of that town and reflecting themes of weariness and futility, conquerable only through ove or art. Though Annensky was not celebrated in his own time, his lack of mysticism and his clarity of expression, which became important to the Acmeists (in contrast to the reigning Symbolists), influenced many Russian poets, in particular Vladislav Khodasevich and to some extent Boris Pasternak.

Biographical information about Annensky, p.6, ‘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).

Берегись… (Beware) by Marina Tsvetaeva

But for two, even mornings’
Joy is too small.
As you draw inside
Turn your face to the wall

(For the Spirit’s a pilgrim,
Walks alone its way),
Let your hearing drop
To the primal clay.

Adam, listen hard
Over the sources,
Hear what rivers’ veins
Are telling their shores.

You are the way and the end,
The path and the house.
By two no new lands
Can be opened out.

To the brows’ lofty camp
You are bridge and breach.
(God is a despot,
Jealous of each).

Adam, listen hard
Over the source,
Hear what rivers’ veins
Are telling their shores:

‘Beware of your servant:
When the proud trump plays
Don’t appear in our Father’s house
Fettered, a slave.

Beware of your wife:
Casting off mortal things,
When the naked trump sounds
Don’t appear wearing rings.’

Adam, listen hard
Over the source,
Hear what rivers’ veins
Are telling their shore:

‘Beware. Don’t build towers
On closeness and kin.
(Far more firm than her
In our hearts is Him.)

Don’t be tempted be eagles.
King David still cries
To this day for his son
Who fell into the skies.’

Adam, listen hard
Above the source,
Hear what rivers’ veins
Are telling their shores:

‘Beware of graves,
More ravenous than whores.
The dead rot, they are gone,
Beware sepulchures.

From yesterday’s truths
Remain filth and stench.
Give up to the winds
Your earthly ash.’

Adam, listen hard
Over the source,
Hear what rivers’ veins
Are telling their shores:

‘Beware.’

by Marina Tsvetaeva
(8 August 1922)
by David McDuff

Берегись…

Но тесна вдвоём
Даже радость утр.
Оттолкнувшись лбом
И подавшись внутрь,

(Ибо странник — Дух,
И идёт один),
До начальных глин
Потупляя слух —

Над источником,
Слушай-слушай, Адам,
Что́ проточные
Жилы рек — берегам:

— Ты и путь и цель,
Ты и след и дом.
Никаких земель
Не открыть вдвоём.

В горний лагерь лбов
Ты и мост и взрыв.
(Самовластен — Бог
И меж всех ревнив).

Над источником
Слушай-слушай, Адам,
Что́ проточные
Жилы рек — берегам:

— Берегись слуги,
Дабы в отчий дом
В гордый час трубы
Не предстать рабом.

Берегись жёны,
Дабы, сбросив прах,
В голый час трубы
Не предстать в перстнях.

Над источником
Слушай-слушай, Адам,
Что́ проточные
Жилы рек — берегам:

— Берегись! Не строй
На родстве высот.
(Ибо крепче — той
В нашем сердце — тот).

Говорю, не льстись
На орла, — скорбит
Об упавшем ввысь
По сей день — Давид!

Над источником
Слушай-слушай, Адам,
Что́ проточные
Жилы рек — берегам:

— Берегись могил:
Голодней блудниц!
Мёртвый был и сгнил:
Берегись гробниц!

От вчерашних правд
В доме — смрад и хлам.
Даже самый прах
Подари ветрам!

Над источником
Слушай-слушай, Адам,
Что́ проточные
Жилы рек — берегам:

— Берегись…

Последнею усталостью устав (Filled with the final weariness…) by Boris Slutsky

Filled with the final weariness
Seized with the exhaustion before dying
His big hands limply spread
A soldier lies.
He could lie differently –
Could lie beside his wife, in his own bed,
Not tearing at the mosses drenched with blood.
But could he? Could he?
No, he could not.
The Ministry sent him his call-up notice,
Officers were with him, marched beside him.
The court-martial’s typewriters clattered in the rear.
But even without them, could he?
Hardly.
Without a call-up, he’d have gone himself.
And not from fear: from conscience, and for honor.
Weltering in his blood, the soldier lying
Has no complaint, and no thought of complaining.

by Борис Абрамович Слуцкий
(Boris Abramovich Slutsky)
translated by J. R. Rowland

Последнею усталостью устав

Последнею усталостью устав,
Предсмертным умиранием охвачен,
Большие руки вяло распластав,
Лежит солдат.
Он мог лежать иначе,
Он мог лежать с женой в своей постели,
Он мог не рвать намокший кровью мох,
Он мог…
Да мог ли? Будто? Неужели?
Нет, он не мог.
Ему военкомат повестки слал.
С ним рядом офицеры шли, шагали.
В тылу стучал машинкой трибунал.
А если б не стучал, он мог?
Едва ли.
Он без повесток, он бы сам пошел.
И не за страх — за совесть и за почесть.
Лежит солдат — в крови лежит, в большой,
А жаловаться ни на что не хочет.

Additional information: Бори́с Абра́мович Слу́цкий (Boris Slutsky) (7 May 1919 in Slovyansk, Ukraine – 23 February 1986 in Tula) was a Soviet poet of the Russian language.

Slutsky’s father was a white-collar worker and his mother a teacher. He went to school in Kharkov and from 1937 he studied in Moscow, first in law school and then at the Gorky Literary Institute. During World War II he made friends with many of the poets who were to die in the war and was himself severely wounded. Though he published some poetry in 1941, he did not publish again until after Stalin’s death in 1953. Ilya Ehrenburg wrote an article in 1956 adovicating that a collection of Slutsky’s work be published. He created a sensation by quoting many unknown poems. Discussings Slutsky’s poetry, Mikhail Svetlov said, “Of one thing I am sure – here is a poet who writes better than we all do.”

Slutsky’s first collection, Pamiat’ (Memory) (1957), immediately established his reputation as a poet. His most celebrated poems are “Kelnskaia iama” (The Pit of Cologne) and “Loshadi v okeane” (Horses in the Sea). His poems “Bog” (God) and “Khozain” (The Boss) sharply criticized Stalin even before the Twentieth Party Congress in 1956.

Slutsky’s poetry is deliberately coarse, prosaic, and always distinctive. He evoked many imitators and much ridicule, but he also taught many of the postwar generation of poets. During the scandalous attacks on Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago in 1959, Slutsky unexpectedly came out against Pasternak. It was a crucial error. Many of his admirers turned their backs on him, but, more important, he never forgave himself. When he died, he left so much poetry unpublished that almost every month for several years new poems appeared in magazines and newspapers.

Biographical information about Slutsky, p.689, ‘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).

“Ты, меня любивший фальшью…” (You, who loved me) by Marina Tsvetaeva

You, who loved me with the deceptions
Of truth – and the truth of lies,
You, who loved me – beyond all distance!
– Beyond boundaries!

You, who loved me longer
Than time – your right hand soars! –
You don’t love me any more:
That’s the truth in six words.

by Марина Ивановна Цветаева
(Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva)
(12 December 1923)
from Uncollected Poems
translated by David McDuff

Ты, меня любивший фальшью…

Ты, меня любивший фальшью
Истины – и правдой лжи,
Ты, меня любивший – дальше
Некуда! – За рубежи!

Ты, меня любивший дольше
Времени. – Десницы взмах!
Ты меня не любишь больше:
Истина в пяти словах.

The poem recited by the Russian actress Alla Demidova

Additional information: The final line translates more accurately as ‘(the) truth in five words’. ‘You, who loved me – don’t’ is as close as I can, clumsily, get to five words (although you could use ‘anymore’ instead of ‘any more’ too) for the penultimate line while maintaining the structural consistency of the translator’s preceding lines. Then again it’s easy to be a critic. This is David McDuff‘s professional translation so ignore my amateur criticisms – I just found some of the translation choices he made unusual.