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Leopold Staff – The Moment

I was writing something completely different (about German Expressionist poets) when I found a website of the poet and translator Leo Yankevich. And there was this beautiful poem by the Polish Leopold Staff, translated into English by Yankevich. The poet contemplates the fleeting nature of a moment that is as difficult to grasp as the impression of a cloudy masterpiece in the sky – and just as precious.

Leopold Staff – The Moment

(transl. by Leo Yankevich)
 
What matter that it’s passing? That it passes?

Moments exist if only to pass by,Hardly mine, no longer anyone else’s,Like cloudy masterpieces in the sky.
And moments are replaced by moments waiting,
Always in lakes among the masterpieces
Either stars or pretty girls are bathing.
Though everything perpetually changes,

 

One of My Favourite Poems (‘IF’ by R. Kipling)

Original post from 26/01/2007

The first time I read this poem, I was at school, and I remember well we were preparing to either a quiz or a matinee, so we had to learn an English poem by heart. I believe this was about 13-14 years ago. I also remember that at first I took it simply as a poem by Rudyard Kipling, and only much later – when I was already a student at the University – did I begin to realise that this poem means much more to me. Effectively, with another couple of poems and a few quotations, these lines summarise my approach to things in life.

I shall also give a link to the Russian translation of this poem, by Mikhail Lozinsky. As far as I am concerned, Lozinsky was one of the best ever Russian translators. At the turn of 1930-40s, battling a deadly illness, he had been working on the Russian translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy. Among his other translations, one of my favourite is definitely Shakespeare’s Hamlet. And, of course, Kipling’s If.

So, enjoy the poem, and if you have got any thoughts or memories about it, do post a comment about these. 🙂

(For Russian translation (“Заповедь”), please follow the link. The text comes after a poem by Coleridge).

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master,
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings – nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!

William Shakespeare Sonnets Recited And Filmed Throughout New York

To celebrate another of William Shakespeare’s “round dates” in 2014, NY Shakespeare Exchange has called on directors and actors to participate in a ground-breaking project. The Sonnet Project fuses urban settings of New York’s five boroughs with new technology and approach to film making and Shakespeare’s verse.
More from organisers:
Each sonnet video will be filmed in a unique location throughout the five boroughs of New York City, the birthplace of American cinema. From the iconic to the forgotten, we’ve chosen locations with deep cultural significance. In this way, we juxtapose the poetry of the city with the poetry of the Bard, and find a deep contemporary relevance for Shakespeare’s sometimes elusive language.
The project will span one full year, launching on Shakespeare’s 449th birthday and culminating on his 450th. Throughout the year we will release a new sonnet video every 2-3 days. The videos and all supporting materials will be available free of charge to anyone in any sector of the population and foster an unprecedented level of access to Shakespearean performance.
So, if you live in the U.S. or may be able to travel to America, grab yourself a sonnet (those untaken are currently in black) and move on to submitting a form.

CREATIVE PARAMETERS FOR THE SONNET PROJECT:

  • The “starring roles” in each video are Shakespeare’s language, the specific NYC location, and the director’s interpretation.
  • Director is responsible for equipment needs.
  • New York Shakespeare Exchange will assign the sonnet location.
  • Each film should contain only one actor. A highly skilled classical actor from the files of NYSX will be cast based on each particular sonnet. Director requests for basic actor type (e.g., gender, age-range, etc.) will be taken into consideration when possible. Requests to work with a specific actor will be taken on a case-by-case basis.
  • An NYSX text coach will work with each actor on interpreting the language, and will be present “on set” to assist with rhetorical technique and clarity of Shakespearean thought. The text coach will also be available to the director for any textual analysis questions.
  • Video length must be 120 seconds or less.
  • Submitted footage must be fully edited and in an “audience ready” form. NY Shakespeare Exchange will provide logos and specifications for titles and credits.
  • The delivery format is 1080 HD 23.98P with sync sound.
  • Video must be delivered no later than April 30, 2013.*
A director may take on a secondary video, having submitted the first one. The deadline for the secondary video is July 31, 2013.
A submission form asks you to list the filming and editing software you intend to use, and whatever qualifications, links, and the names of collaborators you would like to share. If your application is successful, a formal Work for Hire Agreement will be signed between you as a director and the NY Shakespeare Exchange.
If you decide to participate, having read the information on Shakespeare in Translation, please kindly consider mentioning us as a source of information. Thanks!

Poetry of Geoffrey Chaucer (To the Purse and Counsel)

Geoffrey Chaucer

To the majority of readers Geoffrey Chaucer is known as the author The Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Cressida. But there were smaller poems he composed, and here come the two of them. In the first, Chaucer addressed his purse; the second he was said to have written on his deathbed, “lying in anguish”.

The Complaint Of Chaucer To His Purse
To you, my purse, and to none other wight,
Complain I, for ye be my lady dear!
I am sorry now that ye be so light,
For certes ye now make me heavy cheer;
Me were as lief be laid upon my bier.
For which unto your mercy thus I cry,
Be heavy again, or elles must I die!
Now vouchesafe this day, ere it be night,
That I of you the blissful sound may hear,
Or see your colour like the sunne bright,
That of yellowness hadde peer.Ye be my life!
Ye be my hearte’s steer! rudder
Queen of comfort and of good company!
Be heavy again, or elles must I die!
Now, purse! that art to me my life’s light
And savour, as down in this worlde here,
Out of this towne help me through your might,
Since that you will not be my treasurere;
For I am shave as nigh as any frere.
But now I pray unto your courtesy,
Be heavy again, or elles must I die!
Chaucer’s Envoy to the King.
O conqueror of Brute’s Albion,
Which by lineage and free election
Be very king, this song to you I send;
And ye which may all mine harm amend,
Have mind upon my supplication!
Good Counsel Of Chaucer
Flee from the press, and dwell with soothfastness;
Suffice thee thy good, though it be small;
For hoard hath hate, and climbing tickleness,
Press hath envy, and weal is blent o’er all,
Savour no more than thee behove shall;
And truth thee shall deliver, it is no dread.
Paine thee not each crooked to redress,
In trust of her that turneth as a ball;
Great rest standeth in little business:
Beware also to spurn against a nail;
Strive not as doth a crocke with a wall;
Deeme thyself that deemest others’ deed,
And truth thee shall deliver, it is no dread.
What thee is sent, receive in buxomness;
The wrestling of this world asketh a fall;
Here is no home, here is but wilderness.
Forth, pilgrim! Forthe beast, out of thy stall!
Look up on high, and thank thy God of all!
Weive thy lust, and let thy ghost thee lead,
And truth thee shall deliver, it is no dread.

Louis Untermeyer – Einstein Among the Coffee Cups

Einstein with a coffee mug
(courtesy of Elevatorbob)

A poem Einstein Among the Coffee Cups by Louis Untermeyer (1885-1976) was included in his Collected Parodies (1926). An American poet, translator, parodist, critic and a children’s author, Untermeyer took on a no small work by parodying T.S.Eliot. Given that in 1948 Eliot was to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, one can say that Untermeyer had made a good choice.

In this poem Untermeyer parodies the sophisticated air of Eliot’s poems, his associations and a special fondness of Biblical and mythological allusions. The parody was inspired by such poems by T.S.Eliot as Preludes, Burbank with a Baedeker, Sweeney Erect, A Cooking Egg, Whispers of Immortality, Sweeney Among the Nightingales.

Deflective rhythms under seas
Where Sappho tuned the snarling air;
A shifting of the spectral lines
Grown red with gravity and wear.

New systems of coordinates
Disturb the Sunday table-cloth.
Celestine yawns. Sir Oliver
Hints of the jaguar and sloth.

A chord of the eleventh shrieks
And slips beyond the portico.
The night contracts. A warp in space
Has rumours of Correggio.

Lights. Mrs. Blumenthal expands;
Calories beyond control.
The rector brightens. Tea is served:
Euclid supplanted by the sole.

Poetry: Those Sleepless Nights

Those sleepless nights when ceiling is like a sky,
Heavy with floods of never ending thoughts,
Hiding the long-forgotten thunderbolts
Of memories and regrets that never die –

Those sleepless nights, with feelings running high,
When you’re but forced to re-enlist your faults;
When Fear creeps under the dingy vaults
Of splendid palace of your passing Time, –

Let those nights be blessed with your pain
And every loss, untimely and vain –
To err is human, have you never known?

Let rain pour down and flood your corridors,
Let thunder break the windows, walls and doors,
So you rebuild all that was overthrown.

Julia Shuvalova 2013

Elizabeth Barrett Browning – How Do I Love Thee?

This is the poem I shall be working on translating, most likely, in 2013. 2012 has resulted in a few good translations of poems, as well as some prose pieces. Among them – translations from Robert Burns, George Orwell, Vita Sackville-West, Omar Khayyam, and W. H. Auden, and a poem by contemporary poet and author Adrian Slatcher.

http://poemflow.com/bin/flowWidget.swf

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.

I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.

I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Marshak of the Soviet Union: To Samuil Marshak’s 125th Anniversary

The famous Russian poet and translator Samuil Marshak was born on November 3, 1887. This year marks his 125th anniversary. He is particularly known to the Western audience and scholars as a translator who made Shakespeare’s sonnets and Robert Burns’s poetry available to the Russian readers. What is less known is his contribution to the tradition of children’s poetry in Russia, and this post will look at precisely this.

This wonderful person was once called “Marshak of the Soviet Union”. Indeed, together with Kornei Chukovsky, Agniya Barto, and Sergei Mikhalkov, he was the main children’s poet, and it would be hard to single out any one of the four. Possibly, Marshak and Chukovsky would stand apart since they had not merely drawn inspiration from the everyday life of Soviet children, but also from the endless well of world literature. And still Marshak stands out in his own right with his beautiful, melodic poems and plays in verses in which he reconstructed a magical world of childhood.

So below are links to the previous posts on this blog where Marshak work featured, as well as several books from my home library.

Samuil Marshak – In the Van (Translated into English by Margaret Wettlin)

Samuil Marshak – In the Vanhttp://www.scribd.com/embeds/112006657/content?start_page=1&view_mode=book&access_key=key-ers0x51nvdfhbimrcwm

Marshak’s translation of Love and Poverty poem by Robert Burns that became a famous song in the Soviet adaptation of Charley’s Aunt by Brandon Thomas.

Another translation of Robert Burns, this time The Little Black Boy.

Samuil Marshak – Cat’s House (in Russian)
A beautiful fairy tale about the feline couple who once declined taking two orphaned kittens in the house. Then their house burnt down, and they had to look for shelter which they found with the kittens. A story of compassion, friendship, and the need of the family.

Samuil Marshak – Cat’s Househttp://www.scribd.com/embeds/112003690/content?start_page=1&view_mode=book&access_key=key-23svg11wypfstk1r6vlv

Samuil Marshak – The Tale of a Hero Nobody Knows (English translation by Peter Tempest)
A poetisation of the Soviet youth: a “hero” is a guy who acts according to circumstances, saving people, and shuns recognition.

Samuil Marshak – The Tale of a Hero Nobody Knowshttp://www.scribd.com/embeds/109381612/content?start_page=1&view_mode=book&access_key=key-23wg5v69dcb3cntk2xa7

Samuil Marshak – Petits d’animaux derriere les barreaux (French translation by Catherine Emery) 
Short poems about animal cubs.

Samuil Marchak – Petits d’animaux derriere les barreauxhttp://www.scribd.com/embeds/106628764/content?start_page=1&view_mode=book&access_key=key-23nd2yiojs9xoi4nxxe

 

Mikhail Lermontov – I Come Out To the Path, Alone…

On July 27, 1841 the great Russian Romanticist poet Mikhail Lermontov had been killed at the duel in Pyatigorsk. In his short lifetime, filled with romance, military service, and bitterness, he composed numerous poems, several long poems (Demon, Valerik) and ballads, plays (The Masquerade), short stories, and a novel The Hero Of Our Time that has long been in Russian school curriculum.

The poem “I Come Out To the Path, Alone” was composed in 1841 – the year Lermontov died, and prophetically carries the gloom of predestination. It successfully marries Russian melancholy with the Romanticist fighting spirit. The disillusioned protagonist foresees his death but wishes it would lead to eternal life where he could join and enjoy the Nature.

The poem was put to music and has long been a popular romance. It also featured in The Life of Klim Samgin becoming the epitome of the spiritual searches and disillusionment of all Gorky’s characters, caught up in the ever changing Russian life at the turn of the 19-20th cc.

The song in the extract is performed by Marina (Natalia Gundareva) and Kutuzov (Andrejs Zagars). The poem was translated into English in 1995 by Yevgeny Bonver.

I come out to the path, alone,
Night and wildness are referred to God,
Through the mist, the road gleams with stone,
Stars are speaking in the shinning lot.

There is grave and wonderful in heaven;
Earth is sleeping in a pale-blue light…
Why is then my heart such pined and heavy?
Is it waiting or regretting plight?

I expect that nothing more goes,
And for past I do not have regret,
I wish only freedom and repose,
I would fall asleep and all forget…

I would like to fall asleep forever,
But without cold sleep of death:
Let my breast be full of dozing fervor
For the life, and heave in gentle breath;

So that enchanting voice would ready
Day and night to sing to me of love,
And the oak, evergreen and shady,
Would decline to me and rustle above.

A Russian Literature Reading List – Where to Start

Russian Literature reading list helps you to discover the beauty and wealth of Russian literature beyond Master and Margarita

Some time ago on Reddit someone asked where they could start with Fyodor Dostoevsky, or Russian Literature in general. Good advice was given even before I joined, and obviously I added my two pence. I thought I’d share my recommendations with you, in case you also want to start on your Russian Literature reading list. I’m sure you know it anyway, but recommendations are based on my personal reading experience.

I’m in the process of making ready a project dedicated to Russian children’s books, tales, poetry, illustrations. What I’m finishing is just a preliminary stage, and ahead lies a wonderful opportunity for everyone to get a glimpse of Soviet/Russian childhood through the words and images. But for now let’s see what can be there on the Russian Literature reading list.

So, first come the advice for those who are interested in Fyodor Dostoevsky:

“my suggestion re: Dostoyevsky would be to try his shorter stories first: Nevsky Prospect, Belye Nochi, Netochka Nezvanova. From there I’d go to The Idiot, this is the work that is most often cited, studied and mentioned by Western writers.

Crime and Punishment is on Russian school curriculum, but it might require a bit of acquaintance with Russian philosophy of the time. Dostoyevsky was a spokesperson for “pochvennichestvo”, a current in philosophical thought after 1860 that invested Russian people with a messianic role in saving the mankind from the rotten bourgeois morals, and instructed intelligentsia to embrace the masses through religion and ethics. I’m not discarding C&P, just saying that it contains some very specific ideas.

Also, Dostoyevsky had a soft spot for gambling, and he actually earned some of his money through that. He narrated his entire experience in a novel The Gambler.

One last thing about Dostoyevsky: he’s mostly read as a very serious writer, very concerned with the harsh reality of life. But I tend to agree with those critics who say he’s often very ironic, and that even very serious things could be written with tongue in cheek”.

Speaking of the latter passage, about Dostoevsky’s humour: I recently read a collection of his unfinished work, all short stories. One of them tells a very peculiar story of a Russian civil servant who got swallowed by a crocodile.

And now,

Russian Literature reading list:

  • Alexander Pushkin, The Little Tragedies (Mozart and Salieri and Boris Godunov)
  • Mikhail Saltykov-Schedrin, The History of a Town (a bitterly satyrical take on Russian history)
  • Leonid Andreev, Judas of Iskariot (the story was written long before The Last Temptation of Christ or Jesus Christ Superstar, but has certain similarities)
  • Maxim Gorky, The Life of Klim Samgin (the story of Russian intelligentsia from the end of 19th c. through the first two Revolutions)
  • Nikolai Gogol, The Government Inspector (a play about the pervasive corruption, deceit, and bureaucracy)
  • Alexander Griboyedov, Woe from Wit (a play in verses; good if you can read Le Misanthrope by Moliere before this one, then you can compare)
  • Anton Chekhov, short stories and plays (Seagull is best-known, so try Ivanov, Uncle Vanya and The Cherry Orchard)
  • Ivan Goncharov, Oblomov (a novel about a mid-19th c. Russian landowner)
  • Ivan Bunin, The Cursed Days (a diary of the build-up to the October Revolution and a few years after, until Bunin’s emigration)
  • Mikhail Bulgakov, Ivan Vassilievich Changes the Occupation (a play, it was turned into a brilliant film)
  • Mikhail Bulgakov, The Days of the Turbines (a play, adapted to screen)
  • Mikhail Bulgakov, The Flight (a play, adapted to screen, starring Mikhail Ulyanov and Alexei Batalov)
  • Mikhail Bulgakov, The Heart of a Dog (a short novel, adapted to screen)
  • Isaac Babel, Konarmia (a short novel about a Jewish journalist (Babel) accompanying and narrating the accomplishments of the Red Army in Poland and Ukraine during the Civil War of 1918-1922)
  • Vladimir Mayakovsky, My Discovery of America (notes on the voyage to America, 1925-1926)
  • Andrei Platonov, Chevengur (I don’t know if it’s translated; if you manage to find it, it’s a kind of continuation of WE by Zamyatin, in the sense that Chevengur is a dream communist place where things sadly don’t go as “communist” as they should; quite a surrealist story)
  • Mikhail Sholokhov, The Fate of a Man (a WW2 story, adapted to screen, directed by and starring Sergei Bondarchuk)
  • Mikhail Sholokhov, Quiet Flows the Don (the life of cossacks from approx. 1912 through the Civil War; adapted to screen 4 times!)
  • Boris Vassilyev, Tomorrow Was the War (WW2, adapted to screen)
  • Boris Vassilyev, The Dawn Is Silent Here (WW2, adapted to screen)
  • Alexander Kuprin, The Garnet Bracelet (a short story about fated love for)
  • Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons (a mid-19th c. intelligentsia torn between love and reason)
  • Leo Tolstoy, Kreutzer Sonata (a short novel studies the position of a man and a woman in the society; a Russian Symbolist poet Konstatin Balmont was unhappily married when he read this Tolstoy’s novel, and it impacted him so that he tried to commit suicide; he survived and went on to become a really great lyrical poet).

As I said on Reddit, I have hard time enjoying contemporary Russian Literature, however, Andrei Bitov, Anatoly Rybakov, Grigory Gorin, Joseph Brodsky, Andrei Voznesensky are a must.

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