Category arts

Just so notes

I only started to appreciate Pasternak’s work a short while ago, but there are a few poems I have always enjoyed, one of them — On the Steamboat (1916) ending like this: ‘Twas a chilly morning. Jaws got cramped,And the…

Quote of the what?

And all plants press themselves To the glue-like window-glass And with astonishment observe The grave of people’s reason. Zabolotsky, 1933

Black as a Toast

There’s one poem by Akhmatova that keeps getting translated into English over and over; it’s about drinking, of course. I’ve dug up a few links — English versions by Eric Gillan, William Minor, and Judith Hemschemeyer — the (sub)Standard Version…

[Lermontov’s Thanksgiving]

Thanksgiving For all, for all I thank you: For the secret pangs of passions, For the bitterness of tears, for the poison of the kiss, For the revenge of enemies and the calumny of friends; For my soul’s ardor wasted…

[A lane in the factory quarters]

A lane in the factory quarters O dreadful children of abandoned courtyardsMurderers of pallid womanhoodHeeding a call of heartCome to their wretched mateTo the Penia of the streets, her orphan breast,Already half-alive from hands insatiable And now, when taken as…

Georgy Ivanov revisited

I’ve stumbled upon the ending and dating of this poem. It’s even more radical considering a Russian émigré penned it down in France in 1949. Here’s a rhythmically irregular (deliberately so) translation. I am for war and foreign intervention;I’m for…

[A poem by Sergei Stratanovsky]

A Sociological Treatise in Verse on the Phenomenon of Alcoholism This 1971 poem by Sergei Stratanovsky, one of the best living Russian poets in my opinion, ends somewhat like this: And the man down the pavement Creeps with a sodden…

Lenin highly esteemed True Buddhism,

or, To those who have read Buddha’s Little Finger by Victor Pelevin, and those who have not Baron Jungern’s “protagonist” is, in an uncanny sense, Baron Ungern-Sternberg, the White commander who captured the capital of Mongolia in 1921, driving out…

Love and oblivion

Tonight was the first time I’d seen McDonald’s’s “I’m lovin’ it” translated into Russian — it’s already evaporated from my memory, which means the translation wasn’t catchy enough. Until then, I thought Ronald had given up on Russian: McD paper…

Khodasevich again

While I’m pondering upon Political Philosophie, here’s a translation attempt. [Edited in 2017.] The original poem dates back to the early 1920s. A half-forgotten comfort, The blessing of a night carouse! A sip — and you need nothing, A sip…

Red

A piece of Soviet wit, to keep us entertained. A contaminated stanza from a Soviet children’s poem: Don’t be ashamed, o drunkard,Of your nose,For it is of the same colorAs our red banner. Perhaps I should write about Soviet “black”…