Tag Blok

Blok in the dialect of Brescia

At Language Hat‘s, a link to and discussion of Alexander Blok in Dialèt Bresà, a translation or “transplantation” of Alexander Blok’s famous poem, Night, Street, Lamp, Drugstore, into a Gallo-Italic language, by Valentina Gosetti. The language is her native dialect,…

Blok, 1903

Alexander Blok wrote this poem aged twenty-two, in 1903, two years before the start of the first Russian revolution. This is not a word-by-word translation but, I hope, one accurate enough, if thoroughly unpoetic. – Is everything quiet among the…

Nailed to a bar

Tom the Amateur Reader, the author of the Wuthering Expectations blog, quotes from the 1970 collection of translations from Alexander Blok by Jon Stallworthy and Peter France: I am nailed to a bar with liquor. It’s the first line of this…

Which century?

Say “the noise of time” to a Russianist or a literary-aware Russian, and the instant response will be: Mandelstam. This reaction is hardly universal. As Nikil Saval writes: Julian Barnes’s new novel, “The Noise of Time,” is about Shostakovich… The novel’s title…

A voice from the choir

From A Voice from the Choir, a poem (1910-1914) by Alexander Blok (1880-1921). And the last age — the most terrible of all —both you and I will see.Foul sin will conceal all the sky;on everybody’s lips, laughter will freeze…

Blok, “Nailed to the Bar”

I’m taking liberties with a 1908 poem by Alexander Blok. Nailed to the bar,dead drunk. What do I care?Ah look — my bliss there, on a sleighgone into silvery smoke. Flying on the sleigh, drowned in the snowof times, the…