web analytics

Author: Julia Shuvalova

Julia Shuvalova is the author of Los Cuadernos de Julia blog. She is an author of several books, a translator, and a Foreign Languages tutor. She lives and works in Moscow, Russia.

Boris Pasternak – It Is Not Seemly to Be Famous

Boris Pasternak – It Is Not Seemly to Be Famous reads as an artist’s manifesto of the importance of inner growth over the public fame

5157
An autograph of Boris Pasternak’s poem

These were the thoughts running through Pasternak’s mind in 1956, two years before when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature that he had to decline due to political outrage it caused in the Soviet Union. It quite runs against the grain of “personal branding” concept and “overnight fame” culture of the recent years, widely propagated thanks to the Internet. Even today Boris Pasternak – It Is Not Seemly to Be Famous reads as a manifesto of the artist’s task to focus on his inner growth instead of making a public image.

It is also interesting to note some parallels between Pasternak’s poem and Rainer Maria Rilke’s Der Schauende that Pasternak translated into Russian. The central theme of Rilke’s poem is the futility of a man’s pursuit of worldly fame in favour of the more superiour gifts from God. Likewise, Pasternak beseeches an artist to lead such life that makes him “loved by wide expanses and hear the call of future years“.  “But you yourself must not distinguish Your victory from your defeat” is another debt to Rilke’s poem, its latter part where the German poet compares the artist’s true quest to an Old Testament’s image of Angel of God who wins over a person in order to help the person grow. We need to submit ourselves to the force that better knows out potential, otherwise we cannot grow. Pasternak, in his turn, refines the point by reminding that a man, especially an artist, should not indulge in his achievements and remember that every victory may have a defeat lurking underneath, and vice versa.

You may find interesting:

Boris Pasternak at Academy of American Poets

Boris Pasternak’s Poetry at RuVerses

Boris Pasternak – It is not seemly to be famous… (1956)

It is not seemly to be famous:
Celebrity does not exalt;
There is no need to hoard your writings
And to preserve them in a vault.

To give your all-this is creation,
And not-to deafen and eclipse.
How shameful, when you have no meaning,
To be on everybody’s lips!

Try not to live as a pretender,
But so to manage your affairs
That you are loved by wide expanses,
And hear the call of future years.

Leave blanks in life, not in your papers,
And do not ever hesitate
To pencil out whole chunks, whole chapters
Of your existence, of your fate.

Into obscurity retiring
Try your development to hide,
As autumn mist on early mornings
Conceals the dreaming countryside.

Another, step by step, will follow
The living imprint of your feet;
But you yourself must not distinguish
Your victory from your defeat.

And never for a single moment
Betray your credo or pretend,
But be alive-this only matters-
Alive and burning to the end.

Translated by Lydia Pasternak Slater

More posts in Literature and Poetry

Russian Elections 2012: Fashion and Donkeys

There is my poetic translation of Omar Khayyam at the end of the post. 

–Fashion–

Fashion Icon, Russia, 2012

Farewell to the days when Liberty led the Revolution and didn’t care for its look. This is how Delacroix depicted the French Liberté: no make-up, bare-chested, in rattles, with a flag in her hand.

E. Delacroix, La Liberté guidant le peuple (1830)

The painting by Delacroix commemorated the July 1830 Revolution in Paris. It’s winter in Moscow, so one may say it’s enough that women get out of their houses at all, never mind baring chests. However, the Tatler Club glamour has left a profound impact on politically minded ladies and fashion bloggers. So profound it is that a new blog has started, and it’s called Fashion Protest. Set up by a young designer who has had a chance to create several unique dresses for the high-end clientele, the blog features “looks” seen in the crowds of protesters since December 2011, including some celebrities. Frankly speaking, the photo of a girl that apparently collected many “likes” across various social networds freaks me out. Wearing flourescent glasses, a fox fur coat, and a shawl, a girl, with her half-open rouge pout, clinges on to a wooden poster wand. Maybe this is how Yulia Timoshenko would look like, had the Orange Revolution happened in January. I suspect, though, that the look would inspire Gogol, Wodehouse, or Burgess to write a pretty satyrical piece on the political tastes of women.

–Donkeys–

Until 2012, it was normally people only who backed the elections. Singers, actors, writers, film directors… Fast forward to March 2012, and here comes a donkey. A pretty ordinary creature, except that some time ago it was given as a present to Vladimir Zhirinovsky, an eccentric Russian politician, leader of the Liberal-Democratic Party who is currently running for presidency.

The story at hand is a good case of how to overestimate people’s ability to grasp the subtle meaning of a metaphor. Zhirinovsky put a harness on a donkey and then delivered a short speech on Russia’s degradation. There used to be magnificent horses who took the country to unprecedented heights. Now there are only stupid donkeys who cannot get going until you give them a punch. Naturally a good actor, the donkey stood, unmovable. And then, to showcase the effort he puts into Russia’s awakening, Zhirinovsky began to whip the donkey. Those who watched the video attest to a rather cruel way of dealing with an animal, even for “creative” purposes.

PETA and WSPA were not amused and demanded the withdrawal of a campaign’s video.

The staff of Zhirinovsky’s electoral campaign stated that the donkey was previously given to the politician as a present. The candidate himself claims that he did not cruelly deal with an animal, and had no intention to do so in future. Zhirinovsky went on to say: “In my house this donkey lives better than very many people out there, but if someone is so concerned for his well-being, they can take him and look after him“. According to Russian media, the donkey indeed stays at Zhirinovsky’s country house, safe and sound.

The Central Electoral Committee confirmed that there have been no restrictions on using animals in electoral campaigns.

One could end it here, but here comes a bit of “use of English”. After all, it is good that Zhirinovsky had a donkey. What if instead of a donkey there was a monkey? “Don’t beat your ass” is colloquial, but OK. It could be “don’t beat your monkey”, and that would be a totally different story…

–What would a poet say–

Two weeks ago on my way home, while on the tube, I translated what is believed to be one of the quatrains by Omar Khayyam. I found it in a Russian collection, so whether it was really by Khayyam or not, I am not sure. However, the meaning is clear, and I thought it would be a good ending to the story surrounding Russian elections in 2012.

One Taurus sits high in celestial block;
Another’s back supports the worldly stock;
And now between the two – behold and wonder! –
How many asses there in Allah’s flock.

And a Russian text:

Один Телец висит высоко в небесах,
Другой своим хребтом поддерживает прах,
А меж обоими тельцами – поглядите! –
Какое множество ослов пасет Аллах.

Monday Verses: William Blake – The Little Black Boy

Jack, the first Black Boy in Wales

The poem below is part of Blake’s cycle of poems, Songs of Innocence and of Experience, shewing the two contrary states of the human soul. To judge by an article by Lisa Kozlowski, The Little Black Boy is one of the most commented and yet least easy-to-understand works by William Blake. I recommend you read the article. Unfortunately, I have little idea of how the criticism progressed after 1995.

“Little Black Boys” were no strange thing in Britain in Blake’s time. In fact, a lovely pub in Caernarfon is called “The Black Boy” and is said to commemorate the first Negro on the Welsh shore. His name was Jack, he was brought from Africa to Wales in 18th c., eventually married a Welsh girl and fathered 7 children. A plaque on the wall narrates the story, and the guest house and pub are just a short walk away from the entrance to Caernarfon Castle.

P. P. Rubens, Four studies for a head of a Negro

The first stanza of Blake’s poem, perhaps unintentionally, harks back to the 16-17th cc. discourse about whether or not native Americans or Negroes had had a soul. By Blake’s time, of course, the existence of soul was proved, and hence the poet indicates that, whatever the colour of skin, the soul is always white. And yet it is the white English child who certainly appears to possess a soul, whereas a black boy seems “bereaved of light”.

The idea is further explored in mother’s lines, where the colour of skin is called “a cloud”. Technically, whereas for a black boy and his black mother “a cloud” serves as “a shady grove”, it has a deeper meaning, too: it is a cloak that conceals the true, “white” substance of a person, his or her soul.

Albrecht Durer, Head of a Negro (1508)

Still, the little English boy is not so well prepared “to bear the beams of love“, and our black boy plans to shield him until he learns “to lean in joy upon our Father’s knee“. The last two lines, however, unambiguously suggest that presently the little black boy is disliked by the English boy. His wish, therefore, is to get to that moment in Paradise when the two meet, and the English boy can see that both of them are “white”, and will then love the black boy.

I guess my question regarding the discussion of the poem would concern the “colour” of scholarship. If we propose that a grown-up “English boy” knows his cultural context and can place the poem in it, how about a grown-up “little Black boy”? What would be his agenda for analysing this poem of William Blake?

William Blake – The Little Black Boy (from Songs of Innocence)

 

A Negro Minstrel (1720s), Erddig Hall, Wrexham

 

 

 

 

 

 

My mother bore me in the southern wild,

And I am black, but O! my soul is white;
Whilst as an angel is the English child,
But I am black, as if bereav’d of light.

My mother taught me underneath a tree,
And, sitting down before the heat of day,
She took me on her lap and kissed me,
And, pointing to the east, began to say:

‘Look on the rising sun, – there God does live,
And gives His light, and gives his Heat away;
And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive
Comfort in morning, joy in the noonday.

‘And we are put on earth a little space,

Francis Williams, A Negro Scholar of Jamaica (1754)

That we may learn to bear the beams of love;
And these black bodies and the sunburnt face
Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove.

‘For when our souls have learn’d the heat to bear,
The cloud will vanish; we shall hear His voice,
Saying: “Come out from the grove, My love and care,
And round My golden tent like lambs rejoice”.’

Thus did my mother say, and kissed me;
And thus I say to little English boy.
When I from black and he from white could free,
And round the tent of God like lambs we joy,

I’ll shade him from the heat, till he can bear
To lean in joy upon our Father’s knee;
And then I’ll stand and stroke his silver hair,
And be like him, and he will then love me.

Poetry Reading: Edna St Vincent Millay

 

Edna St Vincent Millay

I shall forget you presently, my dear,

 

So make the most of this, your little day,

 

Your little month, your little half a year,
Ere I forget, or die, or move away,
And we are done forever; by and by
I shall forget you, as I said, but now,
If you entreat me with your loveliest lie
I will protest you with my favorite vow.
I would indeed that love were longer-lived,
And oaths were not so brittle as they are,
But so it is, and nature has contrived
To struggle on without a break thus far,—
Whether or not we find what we are seeking
Is idle, biologically speaking.
Edna St Vincent Millay

Colloquialisms and Salutations: A German Headmistress Bans “Hallo”

Image: DPA via Spiegel.de

To maintain my languages, I try to listen to the radio and read the press. The Internet access means that I can dedicate as little as 15 minutes every day to this. So, this Sunday I read a story in Spiegel.de about a headmistress  from Passau, Bavaria who banned “Hallo” and “Tschüs” in her school. From hereon students must use “Grüß Gott” and “Auf Wiedersehen” in their daily exchanges.

The peers of Petra Seibert generally support her, stating that her decision has sense, pedagogically. However, whether or not school students can abide by this decision, and what impact it may have regionally, remains to be seen. As far as Spiegel’s online readership goes, majority didn’t find the idea amusing: “Tschüs, Frau Rektorin! Sie sind unhaltbar” gained most votes (“Tschüs, Frau Headmistress! You are intolerable”).

Naturally, I wonder if anything like this could happen in a Russian school. I don’t contemplate English schools, simply because I never knew British students exchanging the French “Salut!” or the Russian “Privet!” In Russia, the situation similar to that in Passau in Northern Bavaria is quite possible, if only because the Russians are good at picking up various foreign words. I know for a fact that in 1980s “salut” (with all letters pronounced) was very wide-spread, as was “ciao”. Now “hello” or “hi” is most commonly used, sometimes augmented by a typically Russian diminutive suffix, “-yushk-” or “-ushk-“: “helloushki”, “hiyushki”.

So, could a Russian headmistress ban “hello” from being used as a salutation? I think so, yet, as in Passau, it’d remain to be seen how long the measure would stay for.

Ben Gazzara Dies at 81; Peter Bogdanovich Remembers

Image: IndieWire

Ben Gazzara died on February 3, 2012 at the age of 81 from pancreatic cancer. IndieWire called Peter Bogdanovich who was Gazzara’s close friend and directed him in several films. You can read the full interview; and in the opinion of Bogdanovich, “they don’t make actors like Ben anymore“.

In his 60-year career as an actor, Gazzara also had a part in 1992 adaptation of Quiet Flows the Don by Sergei Bondarchuk, he played General Sekretov. You know that I have supported the film, even as it appeared on the Russian screens as a TV mini-series. But I’ll soon have the chance to watch the English version, and I’m really looking forward to that. Either way, I’m afraid the Russian audience was even more oblivious of Gazzara than it was of either Rupert Everett or F. Murray Abraham. Which is a shame.

Monday Verses: Translator’s Notes on Robert Burns’s Sonnet Upon Sonnets

R. Burns, A Sonnet upon Sonnets (courtesy of NBC).

Today is a wonderful day in my life, all about translations. I have received a permission to publish my translation of a 20th c. poet’s work from their descendant. On the way back home I did a strange thing of translating a Russian version of Omar Khayyam’s short poem into English. I’d need to check the translations of The Rubaiyat, to see if the poem is actually there.

And I have just finished working on translation of Robert Burns’s Sonnet upon Sonnets. Apparently, it was Burns’s first try at composing sonnets, so what seems to have happened – to judge by the last two lines – he burnt the midnight oil (“lucubrations“) to list the times the magic number “fourteen” lurks in our lives. And being Burns, he didn’t differentiate between the profane and high matters, starting with eggs and chickens, through “bright bumpers” (i.e. brimming glasses of drink), to the theme of Life and Death. Just as he ran out of his “lucubrations”, a sonnet was about to end.

It must be said that for the first attempt the sonnet came out very “good measured“, a Shakespearean sonnet (abab, cdcd, efef, gg). As the editors at the National Burns Collection note, “the meaning of this sonnet is focused on the form of sonnets, namely fourteen lines written in iambic pentameter coupled with a strong rhyme-scheme“. However, there is a subtler meaning here: a sonnet’s fourteen is such a powerful and omnipresent number, which means that Poetry is everywhere: you only have to look at “your hen” with “fourteen eggs beneath her wings“, and you can wrap it into a poetic form. A Sonnet upon Sonnets is a sublime manifestation of Burns’s genius.

I cannot say translating the poem was difficult, although certain lines did require a bit of thinking. It seems that the only reason Burns alludes to a jockey in the fifth line is because he’d made a connection between a jockey’s age and that of the horse in line 6, and he needed to introduce the jockey to the reader. So he found no better way of doing so than by using a jockey’s weight, in which 1 stone indeed contains 14 pounds. Without understanding this, one starts guessing all sorts of meanings behind “a jockey’s stone“.

National Burns Collection draws our attention to the fact that each line has a separate association. Thanks to the “jockey’s stone”, I’d suggest to think of the pairs of lines. 3rd and 4th lines are associated with hen, eggs, and chickens (= the origin of life); 5th and 6th – with the jockey, his horse, and their ages (= youth and senility); 7th and 8th – with the Poet’s impoverished life (= a nod to Burns himself); 9th and 10th – with the numbers 12, 13, and 14, the conflict between them and superiority of number 14 (= the theme of Power and power struggles); 11th and 12th – with Life received through a woman and Death that comes from men (= Life and Death).

Четырнадцать! Поэтом восхвалён,
Как много чудных тайн в тебе – не счесть!
Четырнадцать яиц у квочки под крылом, –
Четырнадцать цыплят взлетают на нашест.

Четырнадцать в жокейском стоуне мер;
Четырнадцать годин – уж старость для коняг;
Четырнадцать часов нередко Бард говел,
Не знает он восторг четырнадцати фляг!

Перед четырнадцатью дюжина не в счет;
Четырнадцати тринадцать не сильней;
В четырнадцать лет мать нас в мир ведет;
Уводят из него четырнадцать мужей.

Какой пример в ночи я б вспомнить мог?
Четырнадцать – в сонете стройных строк.

Translation © Julia Shuvalova, January 2012

Robert Burns – A Sonnet upon Sonnets (1788) 

Fourteen, a sonneteer thy praises sings;
What magic myst’ries in that number lie!
Your hen hath fourteen eggs beneath her wings
That fourteen chickens to the roost may fly.
Fourteen full pounds the jockey’s stone must be;
His age fourteen – a horse’s prime is past.
Fourteen long hours too oft the Bard must fast;
Fourteen bright bumpers – bliss he ne’er must see!
Before fourteen, a dozen yields the strife;
Before fourteen – e’en thirteen’s strength is vain.
Fourteen good years – a woman gives us life;
Fourteen good men – we lose that life again.
What lucubrations can be more upon it?
Fourteen good measur’d verses make a sonnet.

Пояснение на русском. 

Написанный в 1788 году, “Сонет о сонетах” считается первой попыткой Роберта Бёрнса использовать эту форму. Судя по употребленному в предпоследней строке слову “lucubrations” (“усердное размышление, протекающее ночью”), Бёрнс при свете ночной лампы перечислял все случаи, когда в нашей жизни встречается магическое число 14. В своих “штудиях” Бёрнс остается собой: он не делает разницы между “высокими” и “низкими” материями, идя от курицы с яйцами и цыплятами через “яркие фляги” до темы Жизни и Смерти. И ровно к моменту, как все “lucubrations” были исчерпаны, оказался закончен и сонет.

Надо сказать, что для первой попытки у Бёрнса получился очень “стройный” шекспировский сонет (abab, cdcd, efef, gg). Однако при кажущемся “маньеризме” в сонете заложена очень глубокая идея: как “сонетное” число 14 можно найти в самых разных жизненных сюжетах, так и Поэзия присутствует повсюду. Достаточно увидеть квочку, у которой под крылом четырнадцать яиц, – и вот готовый поэтический образ. В “Сонете о сонетах” тончайшим образом проявляется гений Бёрнса.

На перевод у меня ушел целиком весь вечер, хотя над парой строчек пришлось поработать. Особенно это касается “jockey’s stone”. Осмелюсь предположить, что Бёрнс вначале написал строчку про коня, после чего, естественно, потребовалось представить публике и жокея. И он не нашел ничего лучше, чем провести аналогию с весом жокея: действительно, по британской системе мер и весов в 1 стоуне – 14 фунтов. Не поняв это, конечно, начинаешь искать “скрытые смыслы” выражения “a jockey’s stone”.

Ну, и продолжая и улучшая мысль редакторов Национальной Коллекции Роберта Бёрнса, я думаю, что Бёрнс не просто выделял одну строчку для одной ассоциации. Речь скорее нужно вести о парах строк. Таким образом, не считая двух первых и двух последних строк, получаем следующее: 3 и 4 строки – курица, яйца и цыплята (= зарождение жизни); 5 и 6 – жокей, его лошадь и их возраст (= тема молодости и старости); 7 и 8 – бедное существование поэта (= сам Бёрнс); 9 и 10 – конфликт чисел 12, 13 и 14 и превосходство 14-ти (=  власть и борьба за нее); 11 и 12 – Жизнь, получаемая от женщины, и Смерть, приходящая от мужей (= тема Жизни и Смерти).

My Most Musical Week

I suppose I could recall a week when I visited a few Art events, but I don’t remember a single week when I’d attend three musical events. On Monday I went to the Yauza Theatre, to listen to a program dedicated to the Four Seasons. The recordings included Il Inverno (Winter), Concerto no. 4 in F Minor, RV 297 by Antonio Vivaldi (the famous 1st movement), Winter in Buenos Aires by Astor Piazzola, a couple of extracts from Haydn’s Four Seasons oratory, which were followed by the witty commentary and brilliant performance of Tchaikovsky’s Four Seasons by a well-known pianist Alexei Skanavi.

The Yauza Theatre celebrates 100th anniversary next year. Erected in 1903, the building used to house the Mossovet Theatre when it was headed by Yuri Zavadsky. Then it changed the hands and for several decades belonged to the Electric Factory located in the vicinity. The legends of Russian rock music performed there, including Viktor Tsoi and Boris Grebenschikov, and the film director Sergei Solovyov filmed bits of ASSA movie there. In 1992 I visited this “house of culture” with my Dad on the occasion of celebrating Paul McCartney’s birthday. The event included a screening of Let It Be, followed by a concert. Towards the ends thereof a hard rock group jumped on stage, and die-hard Beatles fans moved outside, into a mellow summer evening, where young guys played and sang the songs, some of which I’d already known by heart. Obviously, being a child, I doubt I took much notice of the outside decor or interiors. This time it was different, and the best I could describe it to myself was a “working class Bolshoi Theatre”.

Yauza Theatre, facade
Yauza Theatre, detail

On Wednesday I went to Moscow’s oldest cinema, Khudozhestvenny (Artistic), near the Old and New Arbat Streets and Arbatskaya metro station. A young composer Arseny Trofim, originally from Nenets Autonomous Region and now based in St. Petersburg, has composed a new score to Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights.

Yauza Theatre, foyer

And on Saturday I went to the Armoury Chamber of the Moscow Kremlin, to listen to the first in a series of concerts by Alexei Skanavi. I came across this wonderful pianist in 2003. Apart from all the good things he does to promote classical music, I appreciate and enjoy his performance manner. The impression I often gather from pianists is that they’re trying either to destroy an instrument, or to showcase their “emotional integrity”. With Skanavi, there’s nothing like this, he doesn’t wriggle excessively at the piano, make faces, but produces the exact tempo and level of sound with seemingly little effort. Needless to say, a lot of hard graft remains behind the curtains, but each time his performance is pleasure to heart, ear, and eye. The first concert was focused on the music of the fin de siècle. Claude Debussy, Camille Saint-Sans, Sergei Prokofiev, Igor Stravinsky…

 

Yauza Theatre, ceiling
Yauza Theatre, hall

Next week promises to be slightly less eventful. From this, I took with me not just new music, but new ideas, a half translated book, and inspiration.

error: Sorry, no copying !!