"Problems," from Bobby Goosey's Nonsense Verse for Kids

 

Translation of Poem by Fyodor Tyutchev, "Mal'aria," ("Miasmas")

 

Fyodor Tyutchev

(1803-1873)

 

Mal’aria

Люблю сей Божий гнев! Люблю сие, незримо
Во всем разлитое, таинственное Зло —
В цветах, в источнике прозрачном, как стекло,
И в радужных лучах и в самом небе Рима.
Все та ж высокая, безоблачная твердь,
Все так же грудь твоя легко и сладко дышит —
Все тот же теплый ветр верхи дерев колышет —
Все тот же запах роз, и это все есть Смерть!..

Как ведать, может быть, и есть в природе звуки,
Благоухания, цвета и голоса,
Предвестники для нас последнего часа
И усладители последней нашей муки —
И ими-то Судеб посланник роковой,
Когда сынов Земли из жизни вызывает,
Как тканью легкою свой образ прикрывает,
Да утаит от них приход ужасный свой!..

 1830

                                                                                 d

 

Literal Translation

 

Mal’aria

 

I love this wrath of God! I love this something, invisibly

Poured out into everything, this mysterious Evil—

In blossoms, in a wellspring transparent as glass,

And in rainbow rays and in the very sky of Rome.

Still the same is that high cloudless firmament,

Still the same your breast lightly and sweetly breathes—

Still the same warm breeze makes sway the crowns of trees—

Still the same is the smell of roses, and all of this is Death!

 

How can we know, could be nature also has sounds,

Fragrances, flowers and voices,

Harbingers for us of the final hour

And mitigators of our final torments—

By means of which the fateful envoy of Destiny,

When calling forth from life the sons of Earth,

Screens, as with a gauzy fabric, his image

And conceals from them his hideous arrival!

 

 

d

Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

 

Miasmas

 I love this wrath of God! I love the thing unseen,

Which flows, envelops all, this enigmatic Evil,

In flowers’ blooms, in wellsprings crystalline, primeval,

In rainbow rays and in the very Roman sky serene.

That high cloudless firmament still breathes the same breath,

Your breast heaves the same way, so tenderly, soft,

The same lovely freshet makes trees sway aloft,  

Aroma of roses is always the same; and all of this is Death!

 

Are nature’s emollients designed to placate,

With fragrances, flowers and voices demure,

The heralds foretelling that last hour obscure,

Our final afflictions are they meant to abate?

So that Fate when she sends the envoy we abhor,

To summon from life flesh on earth’s progeny,

As with gossamer fabric She drapes what we see,

Conceals from us the dread ghoul at our door!

 

 

Translator’s Notes

 

Tyutchev’s title, the Italian “Mal’aria,” means, literally “bad or foul air.” The name of the disease, malaria, came later, based on the erroneous notion that the fevers of the illness were a direct consequence of breathing bad air.

 According to a note in the two-volume Tyutchev collection (Moscow: Nauka Publications, 1965, I, 353), this poem was inspired by a passage in a novel published in 1807 by Madame de Staël, Corinne, ou l’Italie (V, 3):

 “Unhealthy air is the scourge of the inhabitants of Rome. Its deleterious influence is not manifested by any external signs. You breathe in air that seems pure and, in fact, very pleasant; the earth is flourishing and fecund; the marvelous cool of the evenings refreshes you after the searing heat of the day. But meanwhile all of this is death. ‘I love,’ said Oswald to Corinne, ‘this mysterious, invisible danger, a danger hidden beneath an exterior of charm. If death, as I am convinced, is merely a summons to a more happy existence, then why would the fragrance of flowers, the shade of lovely trees, the cool breath of evening not be for us harbingers of that beatitude?’” [translated here from the Russian translation of the original French]

 

a

Translation by Frank Jude

 

Infected Air

I love God’s wrath, this Evil!
Invisible, mysterious, poured through everything:
in the flowers, in the glass-clear stream,
in the rainbow-rays, in the very sky of Rome.
The same high, cloudless sky,
your breast's same sweet breath,
the same warm wind rustling tree-tops,
the same scent of roses.... All of this is death!

Who knows, perhaps nature has her sounds,
aromas, colours, voices
presaging our final hour,
sweetening our final torment,
and as the fates encroach
and call earth's sons from this life,
perhaps their messenger uses them,
weaving a veil to hide his face
and his fearsome approach!

 

Prayers

 

“Remove, let’s say, prayers from actual existence in the world; make it so that my tongue, my mind has unlearned the words and the very act of praying—so that I could not, and people could not pray anymore. And I would run goggle-eyed and with hideous shrieks out of the house and would run and run until I dropped. Without prayer life is totally impossible . . . Without prayer life’s all madness and horror.”

Vas. Vas. Rozanov, Solitaria

 

A Prayer of Healing and Last Rites Prayer

Lord, gaze with eyes of compassion, during this, the Time of the Great Plague, upon thy servant [name], grant unto him/her the healing of the mind, the healing of the body, the healing of the spirit. Restore unto her/him [name] the fullness and the wholeness as it was when he/she was created.

 May the Lord bless you and keep you, may the Lord let his face shine upon you and be gracious unto you. May the Lord look upon you with kindness and beneficence, may the Lord grant you peace. As the Lord didst heal the sick by touch, so do I, the acolyte of the Lord, now lay hands upon you [name], anointing you with the oil of rejoicing for the healing of your mind, body, spirit, soul.

 And if such healing is not to be, I anoint you [name] with the oil of rejoicing in a life now lived through, and with the oil of acceptance of the end of that life and the beginning of a new existence for [name], in that place where we all once were before coming into being, and whither we all must return. Amen.

 

PRAYERS ON THE SUBJECT OF BEING AND NONBEING

Prayer of Gratefulness Before Conception

Thank you, Lord, for conjuring the forces that will propel me, for a brief time of being, into being. And thank you for the hallowed nonbeing in which I’ve been and will be again.

 Prayer of Gratefulness While Alive

Thank you, Lord, for letting me be, for the time being, in being.

Prayer of Gratefulness After Death

Thank you, Lord, for having let me be, for a brief time being, in being. And thank you for the blessed nonbeing into which I’ve returned.

Prayer of Gratefulness By Creatures Never To Be Conceived

(And Therefore Never to Be)

Thank you, Lord, for letting me be in nonbeing, for being in nonbeing is simply a different way of being in being. The beatitude of nonbeing, in fact, may well be a better place to be.

Prayer of Supplication By Creatures Who Suffer Overmuch From Being

Take me, Lord. Take me back into the pullulating succor of nonbeing.

d

[All passages above excerpted from the book, Here We Be. Where Be We?]

Stalin's Double

 

Stalin’s Double

In 1935, so the story goes, Joe Stalin decided he needed a double. They found (how?) a man named Evsej Lubitsky living in the town of Vinnitsa, Ukraine, where he worked as a book keeper. Evsej was separated, forcibly, from his family—they all were later murdered—and taken to a dacha outside Moscow, where cosmetologists, hairdressers worked him over, tailors and gypsy voodooers. He made his first appearance at a big meet-and-greet with visiting Scottish milliners, exemplary workers. No one, apparently, noticed that he was not Stalin.

 Evsej, it seems, kept his mouth shut most of the time, so that nobody could detect the absence of a Georgian accent in his speech. He made appearances in the Stalin loge at the Bolshoj Theatre, and on some festive occasions he even waved from the top of the Lenin Mausoleum on Red Square. Among Soviet leaders only Molotov, Kaganovich and Malenkov were said to be in on the joke.

 Sometimes Stalin had his double meet with the big brass in the Kremlin—Khrushchev, Beria, Yezhov—seated in Stalin’s own armchair, saying absolutely nothing but staring hard, staring hard, while the bigwigs sweated profusely (What kind of trick is he pulling now?). Watching them sweat from an adjoining room, through a special peephole, the real Stalin chuckled into his mustache. Once the two Stalins walked into a drawing room replete with top generals and communist officials—they made their appearance from opposite directions, and the befuddled guests were left to figure out which Stalin to kiss up to. Just to be on the safe side, they kissed up to both.

 In 1952 Evsej was arrested and probably would have been shot, had not Stalin himself died a year later. He was freed under the condition that he go live in Central Asia and tell no one of his role as double. He spent the rest of his life in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, dying there in 1981.

 Evsej Lubitsky was one of at least four men who, ostensibly, worked, at one time or another, as Stalin’s doubles. One of them, Felix Dadaev, recently died at age 88. He had requested permission, of Putin, to publish his autobiography, and it appeared in 2008.

 (excerpted from the book by U.R. Bowie, Here We Be. Where Be We?)

Translaton of Poem by Fyodor Tyutchev, "Тени сизые смесились," "Blended were the shadows dove-blue"

                                                                           Nathan Altman

Федор Тютчев

(1803-1873)

 

Тени сизые смесились,
Цвет поблекнул, звук уснул —
Жизнь, движенье разрешились
В сумрак зыбкий, в дальний гул…
Мотылька полет незримый
Слышен в воздухе ночном…
Час тоски невыразимой!..
Всё во мне, и я во всем!..

Сумрак тихий, сумрак сонный,
Лейся в глубь моей души,
Тихий, томный, благовонный,
Все залей и утиши —
Чувства мглой самозабвенья
Переполни через край!..
Дай вкусить уничтоженья,
С миром дремлющим смешай!

1830s

 

Literal Translation

Dove-blue shadows blended,

The blossom faded, sound went to sleep.

Life, movement were resolved

Into a quavering twilight, a faraway hum…

The unseen flight of a moth

Could be heard in the night air…

The hour of ineffable anguish!

Everything is in me, and I am in everything!

 

Twilight silent, twilight sleepy,

Flow into the depths of my soul,

Silent, languid, fragrant,

Wash over everything and quiet it.

With the murk of self-forgetfulness

Fill up my feelings over the brim!

Give me to taste annihilation,

Blend [me] with the drowsing world!

 

 

Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

 Blended were the shadows dove-blue,

Blossoms faded, sounds sleep sought.

Stilled life, pure motion hitherto,

In gloaming quailed, droned on distraught.

A moth unseen in flight hummed by,

Cast o’er the night his grievous pall.

An anguish untold, gloom’s soft sigh,

And all in me, and I in all!

 

Gloaming silent, twilight sleepy,

Into my soul’s deep sanctum flow,

Silent, languid, fragrant deeply,

Wash and soothe the wear and woe.

With abnegation’s murk the cup

Of feelings fill to apogee.

Extinction’s honeydew I’ll sup,

With somnolence commingle me!

 

d

Translation by Vladimir Nabokov

 Dusk

Now the ashen shadows mingle,

Tints are faded, sounds remote.

Life has dwindled to a single

Vague reverberating note.

In the dusk I hear the humming

Of a moth I cannot see.

Whence is this oppression coming?

I’m in all, and all’s in me.

 

Gloom so dreamy, gloom so lulling,

Flow into my deepest deep,

Flow, ambrosial and dulling,

Steeping everything in sleep.

With oblivion’s obscuration

Fill my senses to the brim,

Make me taste obliteration,

In this dimness let me dim.

Dates of translation: 1941-1944

From Vladimir Nabokov, Verses and Versions (edited by Brian Boyd and Stanislav Shvabrin), Harcourt, 2008, p. 251.

                                                                 Note on Tolstoy and Tyutchev

Lev Tolstoy loved reading and re-reading Tyutchev's verse; he learned many of the poems by heart, including this one. In his diary (December 7, 1899) A.B. Goldenweiser writes how Tolstoy told him how much he loved "Blended were the shadows dove-blue" ("Dusk"), how he could not read it without weeping. Then he recited the poem aloud for Goldenweiser, "almost in a whisper, gasping and crying." See the two-volume Soviet collection of Tyutchev's verse (Moscow: Nauka, 1965), I, 366.

Consciously, or subconsciously, Tolstoy quoted from Tyutchev's poem in War and Peace, Vol. 4, Part 2, end of Ch. 14, lending the words to the imagination of Pierre Bezukhov, who is among Russian captives marching along with the retreating French army:

"The enormous, endless bivouac, noisy earlier with the loud crackling of campfires and the conversation of men, was growing still; the red flames of the campfires were dying out and turning pale. The full moon hung high in the bright sky. Invisible earlier past the bounds of the camp, forests and fields now opened out in the distance. And farther on, beyond these forests and fields, was the bright, wavering, endless distance calling one to blend with itself. Pierre looked into the sky, into the depths of the retreating, scintillating stars. 'And all of this is mine, and all of this is in me, and all of this is me!' thought Pierre. 'And all of this they've caught and stuck in a shed and boarded it up!' He smiled and went off to join his comrades, to lie down and sleep."

 

                                                               Aleksei Aronov

 

List of BOOK REVIEW ARTICLES, posted on blog "U.R. Bowie on Russian Literature" and on Dactyl Review website

 

Book Review Articles by U.R. Bowie

(Posted on blog “U.R. Bowie on Russian Literature” and on Dactyl Review Website)

[As of end of June, 2021]

 

Lee K. Abbott, ALL THINGS ALL AT ONCE

Julian Barnes, THE SENSE OF AN ENDING

Elif Batuman, THE IDIOT

David Bezmozgis, THE FREE WORLD

David Bezmozgis, THE BETRAYERS

Italo Calvino, If on a winter's night a traveler

J.M. Coetzee, THE MASTER OF PETERSBURG

Don DeLillo, LIBRA

Jeffrey Eugenides, THE VIRGIN SUICIDES

Penelope Fitzgerald, THE BEGINNING OF SPRING

Ford Madox Ford, THE GOOD SOLDIER

Michael Frayn, THE TRICK OF IT

Paul Fung, DOSTOEVSKY AND THE EPILEPTIC MODE OF BEING

Lauren Groff, FLORIDA

Aleksandar Hemon, THE MAKING OF ZOMBIE WARS

Aleksandar Hemon, LOVE AND OBSTACLES

Kazuo Ishiguro, A PALE VIEW OF HILLS

Cormac McCarthy, THE ROAD

Ian McEwan, NUTSHELL

Ian McEwan, ENDURING LOVE

Vladimir Nabokov, LETTERS TO VERA

Viet Thanh Nguyen, THE SYMPATHIZER

Edna O’Brien, NIGHT

Tim O'Brien, THE THINGS THEY CARRIED

Tea Obreht, THE TIGER'S WIFE

Sarah Quigley, THE CONDUCTOR

George Saunders, CIVILWARLAND in BAD DECLINE

George Saunders, TENTH OF DECEMBER

George Saunders, LINCOLN IN THE BARDO

Marian Schwartz Translation of ANNA KARENINA

W.G. Sebald, AUSTERLITZ

Maxim D. Shrayer, LEAVING RUSSIA: A JEWISH STORY

Maxim D. Shrayer, BUNIN AND NABOKOV

Olga Tokarczuk, FLIGHTS

Meg Wolitzer (editor), THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES, 2017

 

Miscellaneous Articles Posted on Blog by U.R. Bowie

THE GREAT BOONDOGGLE OF THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY

A Personal and Critical Essay on FLANNERY O'CONNOR

THE DANCING BEAR IN THE GRAND RUSSIAN ROUND AND ROUND

Russian Attitudes toward Humor and Irony: NIKOLAI GOGOL

The Onomastics of the Russian Leaders (The History of Surnames)

On the Russian "Narod" (Common Man) and On Playing Games of Make Believe

THE TATAR YOKE AND THE CHECHEN WARS

ON LITERARY TRANSLATION. Translating Substandard Speech (просторечие), IVAN BUNIN

ON LITERARY TRANSLATION: "Sympathy for the Traitor"

MAX ERNST and The Transgressive Nature of Looking

 

 

 

 

 

WEED PEASE PORRIDGE, from Bobby Goosey's Nonsense Verse for Kids

 

List of Translations of Russian Poetry Posted on Blog, "U.R. Bowie on Russian Literature"

 

Complete List of All Poems Translated into English on Blog, as of the End of June, 2021

Translations of Russian Poetry into English

Posted on Blog, “U.R. Bowie on Russian Literature”

 

 

Anna Akhmatova:

“Vse raskhishcheno, predano, prodano” (“Everything’s plundered, betrayed, in ruin’s jaws”)

“My ne umeem proshchat’sja” (“We don’t know how to say goodbye”)

“A ty dumal ja tozhe takaja” (“So you took me for some kind of wifey lightweight”)

“Ja nauchilas’ prosto, mudro zhit’” (“Now I’ve learned simply and wisely to live”)

“Iul’ 1914” (“July, 1914”)

“Bezhetsk”

 

Nikolai Aseev:

“Khor vershin” (“Choirs in the Heights”)

 

Eduard Bagritsky:

“Ja sladko iznemog ot tishiny i snov” (“So sweetly enervated I, by silence and by dreams”)

“Arbuz” (“The Watermelon”)

 

K.D. Balmont:

Translation of Shelly sonnet “Ozymandias” (“Ozimandija”)

 

Aleksandr Blok:

“O doblestjakh, o podvigakh, o slave” (“While that chaste picture frame”)

“Noch’, Ulitsa, Fonar’, Apteka” (“Night. Street. Lamplight. Pharmacy”)

“Devushka pela v tserkovnom khore” (“In the choir of a church a young girl was singing”)

 

Ivan Bunin:

“Na rasput’e” (“Where Paths Diverge”)

“Skazka o koze” (“The Tale of the Goat”)

“L’et bez konsta. V lesu tuman” (“My Dear Lord God [“Endless rain, and forest fog”])

“Ritm” (“Rhythm”)

“Portret” (“The Portrait”)

“Temdzhid”

“Les shumit nevnjatnym, rovnim shumom” (“An even, hazy hum runs through the glade”)

“Parus” (“The Sail”)

“Shestikrylyj” (“The Six-Winged Seraph”)

“Khudozhnik” (“The Artist”)

“Spokojnyj vzor, podobnyj vzoru lani” (“The tranquil gaze, your eyes so like a doe’s”)

“Val’s” (“The Waltz”)

“Nastanet den’, ischeznu ja” (“The day will come, I’ll disappear”)

 

Igor Chinnov:

“Disney World”

“Kazhdyj sgniet (i gnienem ochistitsja)” (“Each of us rots, and through rotting is cleansed”)

“Zhil da byl Ivan Ivanych” (“There walked this earth one Clyde B. Wright”)

“Ne kazhetsja li tebe” (“Don’t you feel”)

“Serdtse sozhmetsja, ispugannyj ezhik” (“Our hearts will cower, frightened hedgehogs”)

 

Sergei Esenin:

“My teper’ ukhodim ponemnogu” (“One by one we all are now departing”)

 

A.A. Fet:

“Ne vorchi, moj kot murlyka” (“Stop your purring, grumbler cat”)

“Eshe vesny dushistoj nega” (“In rapture steeped, sweet fragrant spring”)

“Burja na nebe vechernem” (“Storm in the sky of the gloaming”)

“Ja prishel k tebe s privetom” (“I come to you at break of day”)

“Kakaja kholodnaja osen’” (“How cold are the woods in the fall”)

“Lastochki” (“Swallows”)

“Byl chudnyj majskij den’ v Moskve” (“A wondrous Moscow day in May”)

“Shopot, robkoe dykhan’e” (“Whispering and Timid Breathing”)

“Tol’ko v mire i est’, chto tenistyj” (“Distinctive on earth of all things that exist”)

“Chuja vnushennyj drugimi otvet” (“Sensing that loved ones have told you, ‘Say no’ [Portents])”

“Babochka” (“Butterfly”)

 

Zinaida Gippius:

“Neljubov’” (“Unlove”)

 

Nikolai Gumilyov:

“Ja i Vy” (“I and You”)

“Voin Agamemnona” (“Agamemnon’s Warrior”)

 

Georgi Ivanov:

“S bezchelovechnoju sud’boj” (“In any polemic with inhuman fate”)

 

Vladislav Khodasevich:

“Pered zerkalom” (“Standing in front of a mirror”)

“Vesennij lepet ne razlezhit” (“If verses’ teeth are tightly clenched”)

 

Mikhail Lermontov:

“Parus” (“The Sail”)

“Predskazanie” (“A Portent of Calamity”)

“Angel” (“The Angel”)

“Nebo i zvezdy” (“Sky and Stars”)

“Gornye vershiny” (“Alpine peaks quiescent”)

 

Osip Mandelstam:

“Skripachka” (“Violinist”)

“Na strashnoj vysote bluzhdajushchij ogon’” (“Petropolis Dying”)

“Mne kholodno. Prozrachnaja vesna” (“I’m cold. The season of transparence”)

“V Petropole prozrachnom my umrem” (“In transparent Petropolis we all will die”)

 

Samuil Marshak:

Translation of Robert Burns, “Honest Poverty” (“Chestnaja bednost’”)

Translation of Shakespeare Sonnet No. 116, “To part the meld of two hearts intermingled” (“Meshat’ soedinen’ju dvukh serdets”)

Translation of Robert Burns, “Coming Through the Rye” (“Probirajas’ do kalitki”)

 

Vladimir Mayakovsky:

“Rossii” (“To Russia [The Overseas Ostrich]”)

“Khoroshee otnoshenie k loshadjam” (“Treating Horsies Nice”)

 

Boris Pasternak:

“Gefsimanskij sad” (“The Garden of Gethsemane”)

“V bol’nitse” (“In the Hospital”)

 

Aleksandr Pushkin:

“Pora, moj drug, pora” (“Now is the time, my friend”)

“Vospominanie” (“Remembrance”)

“Otsy pustynnyki i zheny neporochny” (“The anchorites in deserts and the women pious, chaste”)

“Dar naprasnyj, dar sluchajnyj” (Based on pure chance, a useless gift”)

 

Konstantin Sluchevsky:

“Posle kazni v Zheneve” (“An Execution in Geneva”)

 

Fedor Sologub:

“Vysoka luna gospodnja” (“High in the sky is God’s moon”)

 

Nikolai Tikhonov:

“Veter” (“The Wind”)

 

A.K Tolstoy:

“Ballada o kamergere Delarju” (“The Ballad of Chamberlain Delarue”)

“Tropar’” (“Troparion from  the Poem ‘John Damascene’”)

 

Fedor Tyutchev:

“Pesok sypuchij po koleni” (“Up to our axles in crumbly sand”)

“Silentium”

“Ot zhizni toj chto bushevala zdes’” (“The life that once in these parts teemed”)

“Nakanune godovshchiny 4 avgusta 1864 g.” (“On the Eve of the Anniversary of Aug. 4, 1864”)

“Slyzy ljudskie, o slyzy ljudskie” (“O tears of humanity”)

“Vesennjaja Groza” (“Spring Thunderstorm”)

 

Marina Tsvetaeva:

“Uzh skol’ko ikh upalo v etu bezdnu” (“So many have been swallowed up and perished”)

“Popytka revnosti” (“An Attempt at Jealousy”)

“Mne nravitsja, chto Vy bol’ny ne mnoj” (“I’m glad that you’re not indisposed with feelings steeped in me”)

 

Evgenij Vinokurov:

“Vesna” (“Spring”)

 

Maximillian Voloshin:

“Svyataja Rus’” (“Holy Rus”)

 

ROZANOV, VASILY VASILIEVICH, Introduction to "Solitaria" Васи́лий Васи́льевич Ро́занов, «Уединённое»

 

Where did I, U.R. Bowie, get the idea of putting together my latest book--HERE WE BE. WHERE BE WE?-- a book out of aphorisms, quotations, bits and pieces of wisdom and silliness, idle thoughts? From the Russian writer, philosopher, gadfly, eccentric, Vasily Vasilievich Rozanov (1856-1919), whom I first encountered in a graduate seminar at Vanderbilt University in 1969. In addition to his many works on philosophy and religion, Rozanov published several such small books of sententiae: Solitaria, Mortality, Fallen Leaves I, and Fallen Leaves II. In my novel Hard Mother I first used the form—see the sections titled “Ruminations of Ivanushka the Shoot”—and later in Sama Seeker in the Time of the End Times: the parts titled “Prof. Benson’s Ponderings.”

 Here are the opening lines from Vas. Vas. Rozanov’s Solitaria («Уединённое»):

                “The wind whistles at midnight and blows leaves about . . . So does life in the swiftness of time tear exclamations from our souls: sighs, half-thoughts, half-sensations . . . Which, in that they are acoustic fragments, are significant because they have ‘stepped straight out’ of our souls with no prior processing, with no aim, with no premeditation—devoid of anything extraneous . . . Simply, ‘the soul lives,’ i.e., ‘lived,’ once ‘breathed’ . . . For a long time now I for some reason have been fond of these ‘involuntary ejaculations.’ The fact is they flow within you incessantly, but you don’t manage (no paper is within reach) to write them down—and they die. Later on, you can’t for the life of you remember them. I have managed, however, to jot a thing or two down on paper. The stuff has accumulated now. So I’ve decided to rake up those fallen leaves.

                Why? Who needs them?

                Well, it’s just that I need them. Oh, my dear kind reader, it’s ages now that I’ve been writing ‘without a reader’—simply because I like to. And I’m not going to cry or get angry if a reader buys my book by mistake and then throws it in the trash (of course, it would be more to your advantage to take a look at it, leaf through it without cutting the pages, and then sell it at a discount of 50% to a used book store).

                Anyway, reader, I won’t stand on ceremony with you, and you can feel free not to stand on ceremony with me:

                --Screw it (you).

                --Screw it (you)!

                So then it’s au revoir until we meet again in the next world. Actually, with a reader it’s a lot more boring than writing alone. He’ll gawp open his mouth and stand waiting for you to put something in it. In such a case he looks like a mule right on the verge of braying. Not the most lovely spectacle imaginable . . . Well, the heck with him . . . I’ll write for some sort of ‘unknown friends,’ or even ‘not for nobody whatsoever’. . . .”

Excerpt from Here We Be. Where Be We: In the Shitstorm Year of 2020