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…

Отчаянье (Despair) by Andrey Bely

To Z. N. Gippius

Enough’s enough: don’t wait, don’t hope;
My wretched people, scatter!
Fall into space and shatter,
Year upon tormented year.

Beggarly, will-less age.
Permit me, oh my motherland,
To sob in your damp fatuous freedom
To weep amid your empty steppes: –

There along the hunching plain –
Where flocks of lush green oaks stand,
Rippling, raised up in a cone
To the swarthy leaden clouds above.

Where panic snarls across the steppe,
Rising like a one-armed bush,
And whistles loud into the wind
Through its ragged branches.

Where from the night there stare into my soul,
Looming over chains of hills,
The cruel yellow eyes
Of your mindless tavern lights –

Where the angry rut of deaths and plagues
And waves of sickness have passed by –
Hasten thither, Russia, disappear,
Be swallowed up in the abyss.

by Андрей Белый (Andrei Bely)
a.k.a. Бори́с Никола́евич Буга́ев (Boris Nikolaevich Bugaev)
(July 1908)
translated by Bernard Meares

Отчаянье

З. Н. Гиппиус

Довольно: не жди, не надейся –
Рассейся, мой бедный народ!
В пространство пади и разбейся
За годом мучительный год!

Века нищеты и безволья.
Позволь же, о родина мать,
В сырое, в пустое раздолье,
В раздолье твое прорыдать:–

Туда, на равнине горбатой,–
Где стая зеленых дубов
Волнуется купой подъятой,
В косматый свинец облаков,

Где по полю Оторопь рыщет,
Восстав сухоруким кустом,
И в ветер пронзительно свищет
Ветвистым своим лоскутом,

Где в душу мне смотрят из ночи,
Поднявшись над сетью бугров,
Жестокие, желтые очи
Безумных твоих кабаков,–

Туда,– где смертей и болезней
Лихая прошла колея,–
Исчезни в пространство, исчезни,
Россия, Россия моя!

Июль 1908

Additional information: Бори́с Никола́евич Буга́ев (Boris Nikolaevich Bugaev) better known by the pen name Андрей Белый (Andrei Bely or just Biely) was a Russian novelist, Symbolist poet, theorist and literary critic. He was a committed anthroposophist and follower of Rudolf Steiner. His novel Petersburg (1913/1922) was regarded by Vladimir Nabokov as the third-greatest masterpiece of modernist literature. The Andrei Bely Prize (Премия Андрея Белого), one of the most important prizes in Russian literature, was named after him.

The poem is dedicated to Зинаида Николаевна Гиппиус (Zinaida Nikolayevna Gippius). a Russian poet, playwright, novelist, editor and religious thinker, one of the major figures in Russian symbolism. The story of her marriage to Dmitry Merezhkovsky, which lasted 52 years, is described in her unfinished book Dmitry Merezhkovsky (Paris, 1951; Moscow, 1991).

Bely, who changed his name from Bugayev, was a distinguished theorist and a leading writer in the Symbolist movement. The son of a professor of mathematics at Moscow University, he graduated there himself in mathematics in 1903. Bely’s intellectual interests ranged from mathematics to German philosophy and literature, to Dostoyevsky, to music, to the anthroposophy of Rudolph Steiner, to the mystical clash between Western civilization and the occult forced of the East. A disciple of both Nietzsche and the Russian philosopher Vladimir Solovyov, he was the author of the extraordinary, innovative novel Petersburg (which has been translated into many languages), numerous prose works, collections of poems, and a celebrated trilogy of memoirs that is a primary document of the intellectual life of the Silver Age. For his imaginative experimentation with the Russian language he is comparable only to James Joyce in English.

Without the impetuous, contradictory, provocative figure of Bely it would be impossible to imagine the intellectual atmosphere of the pre-Revolution times. Together with Aleksandr Blok he summoned the Revolution as a retribution for the collapsing tsarist regime; when it took place, he first perceived it as the beginning of the spiritual and religious renaissance of all humankind. He possessed an unusually brilliant gift for improvisation and innovation, but this led sometimes to a glibness in his writing. Most of Bely’s verse has not stood the test of time. In his sometimes childlike and naïve outbursts, combined capriciously with profound erudition, Bely was defenselessly sincere and appears like Pushkin’s (echoing Cervantes’s) “knight of sorrowful countenance” in the literature of his time.

Biographical information about Bely, p.89-90, ‘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.