Anniversary Run

 

All Souls Day

November 2, 2026

November 2, 1956

SEVENTY YEARS

Harper-Shepherd Field, Winter Park, Florida

NINETY YARD RUN WITH INTERCEPTED PASS

Translation of Poem by Marina Tsvetaeva, МАРИНА ЦВЕТАЕВА, "Я бы хотела жить с Вами," I WOULD LIKE TO LIVE WITH YOU

 

МАРИНА ЦВЕТАЕВА

 

Marina Tsvetaeva
(1892-1941)

 

…Я бы хотела жить с Вами
В маленьком городе,
Где вечные сумерки
И вечные колокола.
И в маленькой деревенской гостинице —
Тонкий звон
Старинных часов — как капельки времени.
И иногда, по вечерам, из какой-нибудь мансарды —
Флейта,
И сам флейтист в окне.
И большие тюльпаны на окнах.
И может быть, Вы бы даже меня любили…

 

*  *  *

Посреди комнаты — огромная изразцовая печка,
На каждом изразце — картинка:
Роза — сердце — корабль. —
А в единственном окне —
Снег, снег, снег.

Вы бы лежали — каким я Вас люблю: ленивый,
Равнодушный, беспечный.
Изредка резкий треск
Спички.

 

Папироса горит и гаснет,
И долго-долго дрожит на ее краю
Серым коротким столбиком — пепел.
Вам даже лень его стряхивать —
И вся папироса летит в огонь.

 

10 декабря 1916

---

 

 

                                             Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie
 
I would like to live with you,
in some provincial town,
where the twilight is eternal,
where bells ring out perpetually.
In a smalltime, rustic hotel,
with the faint ding-sound
of an ancient clock—
like droplets of time ticking off.
And once in a while in the evenings,
from some attic loft,
a flute,
with the flautist himself in the window,
and great big tulips on the sill.
And maybe you would even love me . . .
 
In the middle of the room
an enormous porcelain stove,
and on each square of tile a picture:
a rose, a heart, a sailing ship,
and looking out the only window,
we see snow, and more snow, and more snow.
 
You’d be lying there, the way I like you lying:
Lazy-dazy, insouciant, carefree.
Every once in a while
the resonant crackle
of a match being lit.
 
The cigarette flares up, goes out,
and for the longest time ever
stays trembling on its tip,
in a small grayish clumplet—the ash.
You’re even too lazy to shake it off,
until, finally, the whole fag
flies away into the hearth.

Recitation by Masha Matvejchuk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdYzLppjHus

 

 

                                                     Image by Klimkin on Pixabay

 

Feeling Good (On Ian McEwan)

Feeling Good

Like a writer on a good day, when inspiration is high, who feels he can write like Ian McEwan can. Until the next day, after the inspiration has faded, and he realizes that he cannot.

“He felt purified and redeemed, like a penitent in the perfect penitentiary, like an elated medieval flagellant with a freshly flayed back.”

Ian McEwan, Solar

Translation of Shakespeare Sonnet 66 from Marshak's Russian Back Into English

 

УИЛЬЯМ ШЕКСПИР
Сонет 66
Перевод Самуила Яковлевича Маршака

 

                         Сонет 66

Зову я смерть. Мне видеть невтерпёж
Достоинство, что просит подаянья,
Над простотой глумящуюся ложь,
Ничтожество в роскошном одеяньи,
И совершенству ложный приговор,
И девственность, поруганную грубо,
И неуместной почести позор,
И мощь в плену у немощи беззубой,
И прямоту, что глупостью слывёт,
И глупость в маске мудреца, пророка,
И вдохновения зажатый рот,
И праведность на службе у порока.
Всё мерзостно, что вижу я вокруг…
Но как тебя покинуть, милый друг!

 <1590-е годы>, 1947

---

d

Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

                                  Sonnet 66
 
Come take me, death. I cannot bear the bleakness 
Of dignity reduced to beg for alms,
Of lies that sneer at unassuming meekness,
Nonentity in vestments grand sans qualms,
False judgments made against sublime perfection,
Pure chastity defamed by crude vile slurs,
And misplaced honor rendered to abjection,
And power captive held by toothless curs,
And rectitude that comes to be called folly,
And folly playing sage, while tossing dice,
And inspiration’s mouth clamped, melancholy,
And righteousness in service to stark vice.
All’s odious, despicable, below me and above,
But can I leave you on your own, dear love!

 

d
 
William Shakespeare

                        Sonnet 66
 
Tired with all these, for restful death I cry,
As, to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity,
And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
And gilded honour shamefully misplaced,
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,
And strength by limping sway disabled,
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly doctor-like controlling skill,
And simple truth miscall'd simplicity,
And captive good attending captain ill:
Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,
Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.

 

d
 
From Website “No Sweat Shakespeare,” Sonnet 66 in Modern English
 
Exhausted with the following things I cry out for releasing death:
for example, seeing a deserving person who has been born into poverty;
and an undeserving one dressed in the finest clothes;
and someone who shows trustworthiness wretchedly betrayed;
and public honour shamefully bestowed on the unfit;
and unblemished goodness forced into bad ways;
and genuine perfection unjustly disgraced;
and conviction crippled by corruption;
and skill suppressed by those with the power to do it;
and stupidity restraining the advance of knowledge;
and simple truth being dismissed as simplistic;
and good taking orders from evil.
Exhausted with all these things I want to escape,
except that by dying I would be abandoning my love.
 

d

Translator’s Note One
(U.R. Bowie: On the Translation Back Into English)
 

I’ve already done several of Shakespeare’s sonnets from Russian translations back into English. Primarily it’s a sort of game, to see what I come up with and then look at the original and see how far I’ve departed from Shakespeare’s text. The distance between the Bard’s version and mine, of course, is astounding. Part of this may be attributed to the fact that we are writing in two different variants of English (see next note, below). Then again, I follow the Russian text, which has already taken a lot of liberties with the original, and when I render that text into modern English I myself take some liberties. One thing that I do not do is sneak around behind Marshak’s back to look at the original, then ask the Bard for help in making my translation stay closer to what he has. I don’t look at the original until I’m finished translating Marshak—since my aim is to go from modern Russian into modern English, not from an older English into modern English.

To take just one example (there are many I could choose), in consulting the original, line 8 (“And strength by limping sway disabled”)—after checking one more time the annotations to see what the hell this line even means—I notice that Marshak uses imagery not there in Shakespeare. His line 8, translated literally, reads, “And power in captivity to toothless unpower [weakness, powerlessness].” There is, of course, nothing in the Bard’s line here suggesting toothless old men in authority. My line, by the way, comes out as, “And power captive held by toothless curs.” Those curs who come barking, sans teeth, into my text, you might note, aren’t there either in Marshak or in Shakespeare. I need them for a rhyme with my line 6, “Pure chastity defamed by crude vile slurs.” Rhyme, treacherous rhyme, makes for a plethora of traducements.

Shakespeare has trumpeting out quite the nice line here, “And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted.” But when was the last time anyone was “strumpeted” in the English language? A long time ago. The annotators of text in my paperback leave this line alone. I can only assume that Shakespeare took a word for whore in his time (strumpet), which in his time was also used as a verb. He applied that verb in his sonnet as a past participle. If Marshak wanted to get really creative here he could try something like, “И девственность, облядованную грубо.”
 
d
 
Translator’s Note Two
(U.R. Bowie: On the Peculiarities of Reading Shakespeare Five Hundred Years After His Time)
 

You wonder to what extent any Russian reading a translation of Shakespeare into Russian believes he is reading Shakespeare. First comes the problem of any literary translation, especially of a poem in which the translator attempts to keep the rhyme and meter. All sorts of manipulations of the original text are necessary, finaglings around. So that, to put it mildly, the meanings of words in the original have to be bent, changed, even traduced. Modern literalist translators attempt to solve this problem by giving up on the meter and rhyme, but this creates other problems. The “pony” translation they come up with is, most often, barely a poem at all in the target language, and the problem of inexactness remains, since words from one language can be rendered over into a different language with various degrees of inexactitude—but most of the time not with complete exactitude.

Shakespeare’s Sonnet 66 is quite simple and comprehensible in its theme. The poet is chagrined by the workings of the world he lives in, disillusioned by the hypocrisy and corruption that he sees all around him. In a word, he’s fed up with the behavior of his fellow man. He feels depressed enough at the start to even beckon for healing death, but in the final line he changes his mind, since he realizes that if he dies he must leave his loved one behind alone. Marshak manages to make a serviceable poem out of this theme, doing a lot of the finagling mentioned above. His poem is written in twentieth-century Russian. My translation of his translation—with the usual manipulations and traducements to keep the rhyme and meter—is also written in a modern language, today’s English.

But what is most distinctive about Shakespeare’s sonnet? Surely not the theme, which is little more than pedestrian. What is distinctive is Shakespeare’s language, his style, which is anchored in sixteenth-century English, the way English was spoken and written in England five hundred years ago. No matter how well-educated we modern native speakers of English, we cannot read this sonnet without the help of notes that elucidate the lines, some of which are totally incomprehensible. This makes for a unique experience for the reader, almost as if reading a poem in a completely different language. Today’s Russian reader of the translations of Shakespeare by Marshak, or Pasternak, or anyone else, does not have that experience of muddling his/her way through difficult text.

But no Russian translator—as far as I’m aware—has attempted providing the modern Russian reader with a translation truly indicative of what Shakespeare sounds like. To do this the translator would have to come up with a poem written in the Russian spoken and written in the time of Ivan the Terrible (1530-1584). Is anyone competent to make such an attempt? Probably not. There are sixteen-century texts—some written by Tsar Ivan himself—so that examples of the Russian used five hundred years ago are available. Surely there are linguists who specialize in Old Russian, even the Russian of the sixteenth century. But who has the facility to work in a language that he/she does not use actively and barely knows? Nobody.

It would be interesting, however, to see someone make the attempt. Notes could be provided along with the text, the same elucidations that Shakespeare scholars provide modern English-speaking readers of the Bard. Such a translation would get the Russian reader, for the first time, much closer to Shakespeare. But, of course, not all the way to Shakespeare. For that the reader would have to go to the original Sonnet 66, as written by the master. And, of course, to the explications of the text.

I defy anyone not a Shakespeare scholar to tell me what line 8 means: “And strength by limping sway disabled.” The annotator in my paperback explains that “limping sway” here means “incompetent authority,” and No Sweat Shakespeare says the line means “and conviction crippled by corruption.” Okay. Marshak (see note above) has taken that obscure line and clarified it in the modern Russian he uses. He makes the obscure Bard into a Bard writing with total clarity. So give me a translator who can take that line, work with it, then render it into an equally obscure, nebulous but aesthetically pleasing line in Russian.

 

 

The Bestest of the Best, THIRTY-TWO, Olga Tabachnikova, Ольга Табачникова, "Когда кончается болезненная нега," THE BLISS AND MORBID TORPOR EVANESCE

                                                                     Natan Altman

 

Ольга Табачникова

Olga Tabachnikova
(born 1967)
 
Когда кончается болезненная нега,
мечту сменяет долгая печаль.
На подоконнике при виде снега
цветок задумался и медленно зачах.
 
Река замёрзла, и рука застыла
на спинке стула, как на кромке льда,
безжизненная... Что однажды было,
то медленная память унесла.
Затихла рыба, понимая ясно: 
всесилен лёд – его не проломить...
 
Но странному движению подвластно,
что не сбылось – не прекращает быть,
не убывает, не теряет в силе,
замкнувшись внутрь от горя и потерь...
 
Так наша страсть запискою в бутыли
качается на вечности теперь.
                                                    
Март 2013
 
[from the poetry collection titled Половинка яблока (Apple Sliced in Half)]
 
           d
 
                                     Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie
 
 
The bliss and morbid torpor evanesce,
and dreams give way to lengthy bouts of anguish.
When snowflakes touch a window, coalesce, 
the house plant sees, and knows it’s time to languish. 
 
The river’s frozen; one hand immobilized
on chairback halts, as if at edge of ice,
anticipatory . . . What once had life is fossilized,
to memory’s slow workings a grim sacrifice.
Time to come to terms with ice, the fish decides,
knowing fins can’t swim in chilled nonbeing . . .  
 
But subject to the strange in-outs of tides, 
the thing that could not be retains some being,
does not diminish, does not lose its force,
while hunkered in its shell of loss dismaying . . .
 
So now our passion—
a note in a bottle,
writ in rue and remorse—
on Sea of Evermore
goes bobbing, swaying. 

 

Translation of Poem by Marina Tsvetaeva, Марина Цветаева, "По ночам все комнаты черны," IN THE WEE SMALL HOURS

 

Марина Цветаева
(1892-1941)

Marina Tsvetaeva

По ночам все комнаты черны,
Каждый голос тёмен. По ночам
Все красавицы земной страны
Одинаково — невинно — неверны.

И ведут друг с другом разговоры
По ночам красавицы и воры.

Мимо дома своего пойдёшь —

И не тот уж дом твой по ночам!

И сосед твой — странно-непохож,

И за каждою спиною — нож.

И шатаются в бессильном гневе
Чёрные огромные деревья.
 

Ох, узка подземная кровать
По ночам, по чёрным, по ночам!
Ох, боюсь, что буду я вставать,
И шептать, и в губы целовать…

— Помолитесь, дорогие дети,
За меня в час первый и в час третий.

 December 17, 1916

d

                                               Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie
In the wee small hours
all rooms are pitch black,
and every voice is dark;
in hours wee, oblivious
all beautiful women fastidious, 
are equally—guilelessly—
lascivious.
 
And each the other in talk misperceives,
in the wee hours beauties and thieves.
 
You walk past your own house, you stagger,
for that house seems not yours in wee hours!
And your neighbor looks strange to you, glowers,
and behind every back there’s a dagger. 
 
And in impotent rage they swish-rustle,
enormous black trees full of bustle.
 
O so narrow, that underground bed,
in the wee hours, dark hours, black!
I’m afraid I’ll arise from bedstead
and whisper and lips kiss, hold back . . .
 
My dear children, please pray, pray for me,
in the midnight hours one, two or three.

BOO. Roz Chast Cartoon and GOGOL'S HEAD

 

Gogol’s Head

I was intrigued by Roz Chast’s hilarious cartoon tale “Boo” (The New Yorker Sketchbook, Oct. 12, 2026), in which she treats the phenomenon of Taphophobia, fear of being buried alive. Chast writes that in the 18^th and 19^th centuries there was even such a thing as a safety coffin, equipped with “spring-loaded lids, air hoses, viewing panels, and bells or flares to signal cemetery workers.” 

The Russian/Ukrainian writer Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852)—the greatest comic genius in all of Russian literature—is the author of such bizarre fictional works as “The Nose,” featuring a schnoz that escapes from a man’s face and goes about living an independent life. Among Gogol’s many personal eccentricities, he was also terrified of being buried alive. He left written instructions to those in charge of undertaking, “Make sure that my corpse is really, truly dead before you bury me.” 

When Gogol died in 1809 he was buried at the Danilov Monastery in Moscow. In June, 1931, Soviet authorities exhumed and opened his coffin, at which time the skeleton was said to be turned on its side and there were scratches on the inside of the coffin lid. Gogol’s head (skull) was also missing. Somebody made up the story about the scratches and the skeleton, but the thing about the missing head is true.

Translation of Two Poems by Lidia Chukovskaya, Лидия Чуковская, "В один прекрасный день я все долги отдам," (COME ONE SWEET LOVELY DAY), and "Cчастье" (HAPPINESS)

                                                             Max Ernst, "La Fuite," 1940

Лидия Чуковская
(1907-1996)

В один прекрасный день я все долги отдам,
Все письма напишу, на все звонки отвечу,
Все дыры зачиню и все работы сдам —
И медленно пойду к тебе навстречу.
Там будет мост — дорога из дорог —
Цветущая большими фонарями.
И на перилах снег. И кто б подумать мог?
Зима и тишина, и звёздный хор над нами!

1947

Come one sweet lovely day I’ll pay off all my debts,
I’ll finish all the letter-writing, answer all phone calls,
I’ll mend the holes in my best socks, I’ll cancel all regrets,
Then slowly wend my way to you, to meet you by the falls.
 
There’ll be a little bridge there, a road and pathways many,
The whole of it will be abloom with lanterns gleaming blithely,
And snow on railings of the bridge, and who’d imagine? Plenty
Of quietude above our heads, choirs of angels, singing nicely!

* * *

А счастье — это голоса
Любимых в комнате соседней.
В последний раз иль в предпоследний
Моих любимых голоса.

 

What’s happiness? The voices
Of loved ones in the room next door.
The last time you hear them or the time right before:
Beloved ones’ voices next door making noises.

Literary Translations/Adaptations by U.R. Bowie

Translation of Poem by Lidia Chukovskaya, Лидия Чуковская, "Маленькая, немощная лира," A TINY LITTLE, FEEBLE LITTLE, PUNY LITTLE LYRE

 

Лидия Чуковская
(1907-1996)

Маленькая, немощная лира.
Вроде блюдца или скалки, что ли.
И на ней сыграть печали мира!
Голосом её кричать от боли.
Неприметный голос, неказистый,
Еле слышный, сброшенный со счёта.
Ну и что же! Был бы только чистый.
Остальное не моя забота.

1968

d

                                           Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie
 
A tiny little, feeble little, puny little lyre.
Something like a rolling pin, a saucer, candy cane.
And you play on it—imagine that!—the world’s stark anguish dire.
In its scant voice you wail and shriek the whole of all your pain.
 
A voice that’s not remarkable, a voice unprepossessing,
Barely audible it be, a nocount voice,
Of no use nary, nowhere.
Well yeah, so what! As long as it’s
Still pure in tone
And ever effervescing.
The rest is none of my bloody affair.

Translation of Poem by Ivan Bunin, Иван БУНИН, "НА ПРУДЕ," ON THE POND

 

Иван БУНИН
(1870-1953)
 
                                                                   НА ПРУДЕ

Ясным утром на тихом пруде
     Резво ласточки реют кругом,
Опускаются к самой воде,
     Чуть касаются влаги крылом.
 
На лету они звонко поют,
     А вокруг зеленеют луга,
И стоит, словно зеркало, пруд,
     Отражая свои берега.
 
И, как в зеркале, меж тростников,
     С берегов опрокинулся лес,
И уходит узор облаков
     В глубину отраженных небес.
 
Облака там нежней и белей,
     Глубина – бесконечна, светла...
И доносится мерно с полей
     Над водой тихий звон из села.
 
1887г.
 
d

                                          Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie
 
                              On the Pond
 
Clear is the morning on pond’s quietude,
Swallows in flutters flaunt briskly their bling, 
Descending in broad swoops toward wet plenitude, 
Dipping just barely in moisture one wing.
 
They warble and twitter high-pitched on the fly,
All around in shrill greenness the meadows abound,
While the pond stands, a mirror-smooth sigh,
Reflecting its banks, in sheer rapture spellbound.
 
And as if in a mirror, amidst reeds and debris,
From the banks topples over a forest slantwise,
And drowned are the wisps of the clouds’ filigree
In the depths of reflected blue skies.
 
What’s left of the clouds is whiter and flimsy,
The deeps of the waters are endless and bright . . .
From the fields sounds a droning o’er aqueous whimsy, 
The matin bells peal from the church out of sight.
 

                                                            Levitan, "Evening Bells"

French Folk Ditty "Frère Jacques" in Russian, German and English

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4H9MgzC88w

French Folk Ditty Frère Jacques in Russian, German and English

 (Online on website livejournal.com)

I learned this ditty at school in the 1940s, in Florida, in English and French. The French original apparently concerns a lazy monk who sleeps through the morning church services and must be awakened. I wonder how many millions of children have learned it (are still learning it?) in various languages in schools all over the world.

 Frère Jacques, Frère Jacques,

Dormez-vous? Dormez-vous?

Sonnez les matines! Sonnez les matines!

Ding, dang, dong. Ding, dang, dong.

 

Братец Яков, братец Яков,

Спишь ли ты? Спишь ли ты?

Слышишь звон на башне? Слышишь звон на башне?

Динь-дон-дон. Динь-дон-дон.

 

Bruder Jakob, Bruder Jakob,

schläfst du noch, schläfst du noch?

Hörst du nicht die Glocken, hörst du nicht die Glocken?

Ding ding dong, ding ding dong.

 

Are you sleeping, are you sleeping,

Brother John, brother John?

Morning bells are ringing, morning bells are ringing.

Ding ding dong, ding ding dong.

 

A Variant in Russian:

Артишоки, артишоки

И миндаль, и миндаль

Не растут на ж..е, не растут на ж..е,

Очень жаль. Очень жаль.

 

Artichokes and artichokers,

Almonds too, red and blue,

On your butt they don’t grow,

On your butt they won’t grow,

Too bad too, too bad too.

 

Песенка французская по происхождению. Альтернативый перевод на немецкий Meister Jakob. Кстати, на страничке этой песенки в немецкой википедии есть куча переводов на разные языки.

 

 

Translation of Poem by Marina Tsvetaeva, Марина Цветаева, "Кабы нас с тобой да судьба свела," IF ONLY RANK DESTINY LINKED YOU AND ME

 

Марина Цветаева

Marina Tsvetaeva
(1892-1941)

 
Кабы нас с тобой да судьба свела —
Ох, веселые пошли бы по земле дела!
Не один бы нам поклонился град,
Ох мой родный, мой природный, мой безродный брат!
 
Как последний сгас на мосту фонарь —
Я кабацкая царица, ты кабацкий царь.
Присягай, народ, моему царю!
Присягай его царице, – всех собой дарю!
 
Кабы нас с тобой да судьба свела,
Поработали бы царские на нас колокола!
Поднялся бы звон по Москве-реке
О прекрасной самозванке и ее дружке.
 
Нагулявшись, наплясавшись на шальном пиру,
Покачались бы мы, братец, на ночном ветру...
И пылила бы дороженька – бела, бела, —
Кабы нас с тобой – да судьба свела!
 
25 октября 1916

d

                                               Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

If only rank destiny linked you and me,
How joyous our path through this lifetime would be!
They’d bow down to us, one town, then another,
O my dearly born, native-born, classless-act brother!
 
As the last torch burns out over bridge and wellspring,
I’m the queen of the lushes, you’re the reprobate-king.
Pledge your troth, O ye riffraff, to my liege and best brother!
Pledge the selfsame to queen-me, and I’ll rule like no other!
 
If only rank destiny linked you and me,
The royal bellringers would ring out in glee!
They’d peal out their clamor along Moscow River,
For the fake queen and liege they’d go ding-dong and blither.

We'd make raucous whoopie at a wild-ass last blast,

Then swing by a noose, hanging high at half-mast.

The roadway'd be dusted in clouds white and free,

If only rank destiny linked you and me!

 

Translation of Poem by Lidia Chukovskaya, Лидия Чуковская, "Куда они бросили тело твоё?" QUESTIONS FOR A LOVED ONE DEMISED

 

Лидия Чуковская
(1907-1996)

Куда они бросили тело твоё? В люк?
Где расстреливали? В подвале?
Слышал ли ты звук
Выстрела? Нет, едва ли.
Выстрел в затылок милосерд:
Вдребезги память.
Вспомнил ли ты тот рассвет? Нет.
Торопился падать.

 1956

Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

                                                 Questions for a Loved One Demised

Where did they throw your body?

In some ditch?

Where did they shoot you?

In some basement niche?

 

Did you hear the sound of the shot?

No, hardly, unlikely enough.

A shot in the occiput is merciful,

Shatters your brainwaves to flinders and fluff.

 

Did you recall the dawn of that day?

No. You had pressing things to deal with:

Like Hurry up, fall,

Like passing away.

 

Translator’s Note

 

Matvei Bronshtein (1906-1938), an eminent physicist and Lidia Chukovskaya’s husband, was arrested in 1937, executed (shot) in 1938. The usual way of executing people in the years of Stalin’s Terror involved none of the niceties associated with this business in Western countries. No last meal. No last walk down the corridors of Death Row, priest at your elbow, bidding farewell to your fellow inmates. No final words to the world at large before they pulled the plug.

 

You were led out of your cell as if on the way to another session of interrogation. You had no idea that you were about to be shot. Your jailer, who walked, as usual, behind you, quietly took out a pistol and shot you in the back of the head. No one bothered to notify relatives, either that the execution was imminent, or afterward, when the deed had been done. The body was disposed of, most often in some common grave with other prisoners. Lidia Chukovskaya found out that her husband had been shot only in 1939. She was lucky. Many relatives of executed “enemies of the people” found out their fate only ten years after the fact, or even twenty.

 

Matvei Bronshtein

Translation of Poem by Evgeny Evtushenko, ЕВГЕНИЙ ЕВТУШЕНКО , "Ты спрашивала шепотом," THE YOU WHO WHISPERED

 

ЕВГЕНИЙ ЕВТУШЕНКО
(1932-2017)

 

Ты спрашивала шепотом:
«А что потом?
А что потом?»
Постель была расстелена,
и ты была растеряна...
Но вот идешь по городу,
несешь красиво голову,
надменность рыжей челочки,
и каблучки-иголочки.
В твоих глазах –
насмешливость,
и в них приказ –
не смешивать
тебя
с той самой,
бывшею,
любимой
и любившею.
Но это –
дело зряшное.
Ты для меня –
вчерашняя,
с беспомощно забывшейся
той челочкою сбившейся.
И как себя поставишь ты,
и как считать заставишь ты,
что там другая женщина
со мной лежала шепчуще
и спрашивала шепотом:
«А что потом?
А что потом?»

1957

d
 
                                               Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie
 
                                                             The You Who Whispered

You asked me—in a whisper now—
“So what comes next,
and when, and how?”
We made the bed,
arranged whatnot,
while you looked bad,
shook-up, distraught . . .
 
Today you trek the city street,
your head held high, demeanor sweet,
on heels high, stiletto-thin,
your ginger bangs all smug,
pert grin.
 
Your eyes agleam
with mockery,
they order, “Do not mix up
me
with that girl
on her back and meek,
the lovelorn lass,
all loving, weak.”
 
But that game won’t
play out with me,
you yesterday’s
the you I see,
shamefaced and helpless,  
nerves a mess,
bangs a-tangle,
hot, undressed. 
 
So how will you now present yourself?
How force me into that new view of you?
“That was a different woman back there,
the feverish one with the messy hair,
who lay with you and murmured true-blue,
who asked in a whisper,
(that pitiful cow),
‘So what comes next,
and when, and how?’”

 

                                      Note from Facebook Online (Best Verses of Favorite Poets)

Журнальная публикация этих стихов в 1959 году вызвала яростное шельмование в прессе. Эротические стихи бросали тень на суровое, безупречное и эталонно скучное "облико морале" советской молодёжи. Однако скандальная критика только подогревала интерес. При этом, не слишком дотошный читатель, не затрудняясь поисками оригинала , довольствовался ходившими по рукам искаженными, часто вульгарными, копиями.

Автору долгое время запрещалось включать эти стихи в сборники, или он вынужден был публиковать их в "причесанном" виде.

Достоевский, "БЕЛЫЕ НОЧИ," Dostoevsky's "White Nights" Runs Amuck

                                   Cheap Gimcrack Cover Art of White Nights Bestseller in Brazil

                                                             Illustrations by M. Dobuzhinsky

White Nights Runs Amuck in Brazil, Spain, England

Thanks apparently to an “influencer” in Brazil, Marcelo Nogueira, who has scads of followers on BookTok—the literary affiliate of TikTok—young readers all over the world have taken to Dostoevsky’s early novella (1848), «Белые ночи» (White Nights). Sales are over the top in at least the three countries mentioned above. In Russia itself, where even young readers may have already been familiar with this work, no such enthusiastic new readership appears to have developed.

Influenced by the young Dostoevsky’s attraction to German Romantic fiction and the School of Sentimentality, this short work describes the ecstasies of a dreamer-narrator enthused by his fantastical reveries about brotherly bonding and romantic love. He meets by chance a young girl, Nastenka, and falls madly in love with her. She, however, has set her heart on a rival, who soon is to return to her. As one critic has written, everything in this story is “illumined by the gentle light of Petersburg’s white nights,” the long evenings of midsummer.

In fact, White Nights is probably the most gentle, the softest of all fictional works written by Dostoevsky. As Mochulsky has noted, it “strikes a chord of serene and joyful melody, a note of lightness and gentle irony that is simply not there in Dostoevsky’s later, most famous works.” In the late forties of the nineteenth century, when this story was written and published, the School of Realism—later to be embraced by such titans as Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky himself—was already on the horizon. With White Nights he may have been playing with an already outmoded literary genre, half parodying the sentimental novel of the eighteenth century.

It is not hard to imagine how this story of a lonely young dreamer, isolated from the world at large, could appeal to puerile readers of our own time. The work’s popularity can be attributed, at least in part, to its length. It is barely long enough to be called a novella, and could be viewed as a long story. As for the love relationship in White Nights, the dreamer-narrator is a romantic idealist, as is the girl Nastenka. Neither of these two main (practically only) characters is a sensualist, and erotic love is absent in the book. They meet in person only a few times, and if they had cell phones in those days, one could imagine their communicating with each other exclusively by text.

Nastenka is unlike hardly any other female character in Dostoevsky’s fictions. She is full of life and charm, a simple, but not stupid girl of seventeen. Her portrayal demonstrates that even in his earliest writings Dostoevsky had a subtle grasp of human psychology. But in his mature works the females are much more complicated, neurotic, dominated by pride, often, in fact, hysterical and irrational. They are deeply wounded by the way men use, or try to use them. Dostoevsky’s favorite theme—later thoroughly developed by Nabokov in Lolita—featuring old lechers in pursuit of very young girls, is foreshadowed in this book, in the scene where the Dreamer recues Nastenka from a lecherous old man. That theme, in fact, was adumbrated even in Dostoevsky’s first published fictional work, the epistolary novel Poor People.

You wonder if the young readers of White Nights these days will graduate up to the more profound works of this profoundly psychological and philosophical writer. White Nights leads us—if we wish to take the trip—directly to two more works featuring Petersburg dreamers. The first of these, published in 1864, is Notes from the Underground. The critic Victor Terras has written that the unnamed narrator of this novella, a disillusioned romantic dreamer of forty, is simply the young Dreamer of White Nights some twenty years later. But the Underground Man, one of the most perverse and deliberately paradoxical figures in all of world literature, has left behind all the softness, love of humanity, and gentle irony of his predecessor. The work is comic, yes, humorous, but in a deeply dark way. Typically, in fact (unlike White Nights), "Dostoevskian."

One step further and we come to Crime and Punishment, the first of Dostoevsky’s great broad-themed and lengthy novels, published in 1866. Its lonely dreamer protagonist, Raskolnikov, sits dazed, half-crazy, making big plans in his cramped, stuffy room, which resembles a coffin. He staggers his way through the grungy streets of St. Petersburg, disturbed enough to border frequently on insanity. Raskolnikov, among other things, is a murderer. The “Nastenka” character, the young girl Sonya of Crime and Punishment, is a tormented prostitute, and one of the subplots of the book involves her attempts to bring Raskolnikov to atone for his crime and return to Jesus.

In terms of artistic quality Dobuzhinsky's wonderful illustrations to White Nights, scenes of St. Petersburg on the Griboyedov Canal, are better than the novella itself.