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La Poesie: The Kiss

I’ve sometimes written poems that were inspired by a piece of music or by a painting. One may appropriately call such poems impressions, the consequences of reflection or meditation on a subject. But sometimes a poem was written “independently” from the influence of another work of art, yet it may still be possible to find a parallel to it in cinema or painting.

In the case with this poem, I didn’t have any work of art to inspire me. And I didn’t conspire to write a poem on the subject of a kiss. It was one of those occasions (quite usual with me) when the idea, together with the interpretations, has simply descended. On such occasions I usually don’t work on a poem – it arrives in the exact form.

One thing I was consciously trying to do was to write the poem “neutrally”. The beauty of the English language to me is in the fact that it generally doesn’t distinguish grammatically between the masculine and the feminine, which is the case of other European languages, including Russian. My love for this grammatical “neutrality” is naturally connected to my regular pounding on the necessity to shrug off the “categories” and “identities”. The story of an act of a kiss is told in the first person, and I wrote it in such way that it contains no indication of a gender, so both a man and a woman can read it. In this regard neither of the authors of playcasts for this poem succeeded at following my vision: both images have a male figure as an active partner, whereas my idea was to allow women, who evidently do kiss men, to play the leading part, providing they dare read the poem aloud. I don’t mention same-sex couples, since my idea was to write a poem that could be read by everyone and for everyone.

After I’ve written it, however, I read it over and over again, and suddenly I realised that, without actually planning to do so, I wrote a verbal illustration to Roland Penrose’s painting Winged Domino. Portrait of Valentine. At once a painting that can potentially instill someone with awe or even disgust has become romantic.

I must admit that I still couldn’t translate the poem, so as to give the full idea of its meter and rhythm; I will include the English verbatim translation in the parentheses for the time being.

Поцелуй. Winged Domino. Portrait of Valentine (R. Penrose).

Как бабочка порхает над цветком,
Его бесценной красотой любуясь,
Так я касаюсь робко языком
Губ-лепестков твоих; а ты, волнуясь,

Мне отдаешь божественный нектар;
И, превозмогши головокруженье,
Я вижу сквозь пыльцу цветочных чар
В твоих глазах – мое изображенье.

© Юлия Шувалова 2006

(The Kiss. Winged Domino. Portrait of Valentine (R. Penrose)

Just like the butterfly flutters around the flower
Adoring its precious beauty,
So I hesitantly touch your lips
With my tongue; and you, excited,

Return to me a divine nectar;
And, having overcome my vertigo,
I see, through the pollen of flowery charms,
My reflection – in your eyes.

© Julia Shuvalova 2007)

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