a site by John Cobley

a coppice gate

Poetry

Page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Pasternak: To the Memory of Marina Tsvetaeva

Pasternak poem translated into English

The grey day drags on,Rain streams cheerlesslyAcross the porch and front doorAnd into my open windows. Behind the fence along the roadThe public garden is flooded.Like beasts in their lair,The clouds sprawl about in disorder. In such bad weather I imagine A book about the beauty of the world.                      10I draw a wood nymph For you on the title page.  Marina, it’s been a long time,But it wouldn’t be that much troubleTo transfer your neglected ashes

Akhmatova: Her Tribute to Shostakovich

Russian poetry. Akhmatova's tribute to Shostakovich

Although the poet and the composer admired each other’s works, they were never friends. Their few encounters over the years were awkward; they were like chalk and cheese. “We were such different people,” Shostakovich told Solomon Volkov (Testimony, p. 274)  And he describes an arranged meeting between the two, where “we sat in silence. I was silent and Akhmatova was silent. We said nothing for a while and then parted.” This bizarre encounter is also documented from Akhmatova’s perspective by Zoya Tomashevskaya: “Anna Andreyevna Akmatova told me about her visit to Shostakovich: ‘Dmitri Dmitriyevich invited me to go to see him at Repino….We sat in silence for twenty minutes. It was wonderful.” (Elizabeth Wilson, Shostakovich: A Life Remembered 321).

Akhmatova: Poems to Three Friends

The Shade  What does one woman know about the hour of death?O. Mandel’shtam  Always the best dressed, rosiest and tallest,Why are you rising from the depths of long-gone years?Why does this predatory memory, your transparent profile,Sway before me in carriage windows?How we argued then—were you angel or bird?A poet called you “Straw.”The tender light of those Darial eyes Flowed over everyone through your dark eyelashes.O shade! Forgive me, beauty of 1913,But clear weather, Flaubert, insomnia

Akhmatova: Tributes to Writers

Seven tributes to Russian writers by Anna Akhmatova

To Aleksander Blok I went to visit the poet.Exactly at noon. On a Sunday.It was quiet in the spacious room, And there was frost outside the windows. And a raspberry sunAbove curls of blue-grey smoke…How serenely my taciturn hostSurveys me! He had the kind of eyesThat everyone remembers.I had to be careful not toEngage them at all.  But I’ll remember the conversation,The smoky noon, that SundayIn the tall grey houseBy the waterway of the Neva. 1914     TeacherIn memory of Innokenty Annensky

Tsvetaeva's "Trees" Sequence

Translation of nine-part sequence of "Trees" by Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva

The nine poems assembled under “Trees” are some of the most difficult in Tsvetaeva’s oeuvre. They were written in 1922-3, soon after she had left the USSR and settled in a rural area across the river from Prague. She was in a high state of excitement after escaping from Moscow, where she had suffered deeply from famine during the Revolution years. Additionally she was rejoining her husband Seryozha Efron after years of separation. This emotional high is evident throughout the nine poems of “Trees.”

Shostakovich: His Choice of Tsvetaeva's Poems for Op. 143

Shostakovich Opus 143: His Choice of Tsvetaeva's Poems

Like most educated Russians, Shostakovich was a regular reader of poetry. Throughout his life, he set many poems to music, not only Russian but also Japanese, Jewish, English, Italian, German and French. He covered some of the major Russian poets from Lermontov and Pushkin to Blok, Yevtushenko and Tsvetaeva. The very last of these Russian poets he worked on was Marina Tsvetaeva, whose poetry had become more accessible in the USSR since a major publication of her work in 1965.  Shostakovich wrote the music for Six Verses of Marina Tsvetaeva in just one week in August 1973, when he was vacationing in Estonia.  His health at this time was bad, and he already knew he had a terminal illness. His familiarity with Tsvetaeva’s work was increased in 1971 when he set to music Yevtushenko’s “Yelabuga Nail,” a poem about Tsvetaeva’s suicide. Soon after, he heard Tishenko’s “Three songs on Verses of Tsvetaeva” and subsequently ordered a copy (Fay 277)

Akhmatova: Northern Elegies

Introduction and translation of Akhmatova's Northern Elegies

This sequence of seven elegies was written over 40 years (1921-1964) and arranged just before Akhmatova’s passing in 1966. The elegies vary in length from 23 to 57 lines, averaging 40. Akhmatova often used this format of a small number of short poems under one title. It was also used by some of her contemporaries—Tsvetaeva, for example with “Poems on Moscow.” These seven elegies cover phases and aspects of her life. Elegies 1-4 cover specific periods, while the last three elegies are more generally retrospective: her “substitute life,” the trials of memory and her “silence” of 30 years.

Nabokov: An Evening in theWasteland

Translation from Russian of Nabokov's An Evening in the Wasteland

In memory of VDN Inspiration, a rosy sky,a black house with just one fiery window. Oh, that sky,swallowed up by the fiery window!Trash of uninhabited outskirts,a blade of grass with a teardrop,a skull of happiness, slender, longlike the skull of a borzoi.What’s with me?  I’m losing myself,I’m dissolving into the air, into the sunset;                10I mutter and feel faintin the evening’s wasteland.Never did I want so much to weep.Its here deep down in me. Slightly hazy, and so anxious

Henri Thomas: Gare Saint Lazare

Translation of French poem by Henri Thomas

Gare Saint Lazare some pull themselves togetherothers lose their way.there are those who seekthe key to the rumeurs*. From evening to nightthis is the thoroughfare;with weary wing beatsa little sleepdrifts and then settles. The manna of the eveningfeeds pell-mellthose who smilethose who are afraid,those who pursuea game without hope. I go into the night;alien spacestake hold of me, move meinto the meal of shadowsI look for my place. Henri Thomas, Le monde absent, 1947Translated by John Cobley

Lermontov's Wish to Be Buried Alive

Inquiry into Lermontov's dual nature

One of Mikhail Lermontov’s better known poems conveys the wish to be buried alive under an oak tree. Such a wish is unusual even for a Romantic poet. This untitled poem is dated 1841, the year of Lermontov’s death in a duel at 26. Alone, I step out on to the road;The stony track glistens through the mist. The night is still; Nature pays heed to God,And above, star is talking to star. The skies are solemn and wonderful!Earth sleeps in a pale blue radiance…Why then do I feel such pain and angst?

Page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6