Valery Brusov (1873-1924), Leader of Russian Symbolism

Михаил Александрович Врубель

Третьяковская галерея, Москва

1906

His contemporary literary fate was much happier than in posterity. A leader of Russian symbolist movement, Brusov became an imposing figure for his generation. Yet, he suffered a scathing re-appraisal of his literary significance, starting from a mean-spirited and unjust essay by Marina Zvetaeva (which could be recorded during her bouts with insanity), which largely defined his image for later generations. I cannot attribute the universal posthumous hatred inspired by Brusov to anything specific rather than his class origins. Certainly, he was not politically correct: a Nietschean and ostentatiously atheistic in an Orthodox country; he was close during the First World War to the Russian People’s Union, a proto-fascist party, only to join the Communists after the Revolution. He whored, wrote pornography and died from an overdose of morphine.

But other Russian literary figures were hardly averse to different kinds of inebriation. Morphine addiction brought no infamy neither to Michael Bulgakov, nor to Count Alexei K. Tolstoy, XIX^th century historic playwright, who also died of the habit. Fellow symbolists Balmont and Blok drank tirelessly, as did Venedict Yerofeev, the greatest Russian novelist of the second half of the XX^th century. Brusov’s own amorous misadventures were no match for Blok’s. Pushkin’s and Lermontov’s atheism in the early XIX^th century was much more scandalous. Rabid anti-Semite, gluttonous, alcoholic, card-carrying Communist and self-proclaimed Count, Alexei N. Tolstoy was a veritable monster, and a Stalin’s crony. Yet, he was never despised to a degree, to which Brusov was condemned in posterity.

            What distinguished him were his humble class origins. Sons and daughters of the Silver Age, who by birth either belonged to nobility (Akhmatova, Gumilyov), or to academic elite of the highest caliber (Blok, Zvetaeva, Pasernak) probably could not excuse Brusov, the head of the Symbolist movement, his origins of a son of a prosperous lumber or clothing merchant.  Higher circles of St. Petersburg intellectual elite, usually tolerant to commoners as long as they pretended to be country bumpkins, simply could not stand Brusov who challenged their intellectual superiority on their own ground. Their revulsion stuck.

            Yet, the whole poetic development of the XXth century would be impossible without him. Generation after generation, Russian poets (with remarkable exclusion of Esenin, who was himself of the peasant stock) were afraid to recognize Brusov’s influence on their work, so he remains a Darwinian ape of Russian poetry in search of literary re-discovery by more sympathetic commentators.  

Cover

Your

Pale Legs.

From “The Departments of Delirium”

II

Magic Mirror

All was going very-very normal

The houses stood up like hats or clouds,

The tram banged like a horse-cart of old

To scare away the pedestrians,

And the snowy-blizzard rush

Beat, before our very eyes, a speed record.

But mine eyes of the fifty-something

Are too old to follow the Party line.

From the books, museums and stage, the driblets (despite all my votes “Yeah”),

Like a mirror shards from the fairy tale by Andersen

Are in my eyes again, sore. 

Over greenish-yellow lotus columns

Over dynasties of Nineveh,

Finally rises gold and ebony

Of the Grecian Zeus.

And on the edges of Moscow streets—zebu,

Small, caught in binoculars “Zeiss”.

Why then the verse shouldn’t stutter

Between Prick-or-Treaties of Versailles,

If the Mars perihelion (oh, science!)

Comes only once in fifteen years!

Cannot one go to an ancient travel agent

And book a trip to the Aegean?

What would be the poet’s advice?

Bare one’s thoughts to the bone,

Live by the counts of one’s own pulse:

One, twenty and forty.

Even if according to some learned calculus

Party will issue another orders.

Till now—even if you are unplugged and rewired,

Let’s go and collect some sap

On the shores of Global Amazon—

Where the Revolution just wakes up

The Humanity. I blubber—

Gather the golden rubber. 

Волшебное зеркало

Все шло—точь-в-точь обыкновенное;

            были дома нахлобучены;

Трамвай созвонен с телегой,

            прохожим наперекор;

И дождь мокроснежьего бега

            Пред нами ставил рекорд.

Но глаза! Глаза в полстолетие

            партдисциплине не обучены:

От книг из музеев со сцены—

            Осколки (как ни голосуй!)

Словно от зеркала Г. Х. Андерсена,  

            Засели в глазу.

Над жёлто-зелеными лотос-колоннами,

над всякими Ассурбанипалами,—

Вновь хмурился золото-эбур,

            Фидиев Zeus,

И на крае Неглинной—зебу,

            Малы как в цейс.

Как же тут стиху не запутаться,

            между Муданиями и Рапаллами,

Если оппозиции Марса (о наука!)―

            раз в пятнадцать лет,

И в Эгейю у старого Кука

            взять невозможно билет!

Поэту что ж посоветовать?—

            настежь, до нéголо помыслы!

Отсчитывай пульс по минутам:

            сорок, восемьдесят, сто!

Хотя бы по линзам, выгнутым и вогнутым,

            иначе постановило СТО.

Доныне,—пусть проволоки перепутаны,—

            мы—охотники по-смóлы!

Где Октябрь загудел впросонки

            Человечества я учу—

Собирать вдоль мировой Амазонки

            Золотой каучук.

19 ноября 1922

Cited according to: Валерий Брюсов. Избранные стихотворения. ОГИЗ, Гослитиздат 1945.
Wherever it is possible by the Blogger.com format, I try to preserve the authors' original orthography and placement of lines on the page.

Alexander Kushner (b. 1936)

Александр Кушнер

Alexander Kushner (b. 1936) as the senior member of the "Leningrad circle" of the poets, blessed by the Silver Age priestess Anna Akhmatova was somewhat overshadowed by the Nobelist Brodsky. Other Golden Age (first third of XIX c.) Russian poets including Baratynsky, were overshadowed by the genius of Alexander Pushkin, in the similarity, which Brodsky himself never forgot to mention. But, as a lyrical poet, Kushner is hardly inferior to Brodsky and it will be only fair to include him in this anthology despite mostly "classicist" inclinations of this poet.

A. Kushner

If only Peter’s Realm stood by the Black Sea Coast,

If only were the Straits seized by the melancholic Tsar,

We would have fled our boredom and boast

By mercy of the Fates, born under lucky Stars.

Lagoon that now hides this ugly dreary creature

In icy waters, could be bathing nymphs.

We could sleep well; nightmares never reach us,

The heroes and the gods would contemplate their hymns.

This City which as if the wine is sliding

Through marble-clad staircases to the cuddly waves,

Would be possessed by no ogre of Bronze Rider,

Who gallops over bodies of his slaves.

There would be no ax, Raskolnikov’s, nor coat,

From Gogol, Venice would be in our sights,

In dreams of emerald that our eyelids soak

By Hercules’ might, by Icarus’ flight. 

Сергей Гандлевский. Фото Дмитрия Белякова (1995) 

Sergey Gandlevsky (b. 1952) is a classicist by his style. However, he is certainly a member of the Russian avant-garde according to his social contacts and the time of his appearance on the literary scene (mid-80s, the perestroika time). None, since Yesenin, his namesake, expressed alcoholic microcosm of the Soviet society with such literary power. 

Sergey Gandlevsky

Stanzas (fragment) 

                                                                      To the memory of my mother 

Speak. What you want to declare? Not whence,

River barges cross the city by the way of sun tracks,

Or through two-thirds of June, till the Solstice,

On the toes, summer has reached to the light.

Or the spirit of Lindenblum in the heat of the plazas,

Or the thunder from all corners of Earth in July,

That the narrative needs some idea in stanzas,

Some definite reason—but that is a lie.

Listen, watermelons rot in some grocery store,

Down the street corner bang empty wooden box-sieves,

The wind brings the exchange of the trains from the suburbs

And the pavement archives yesterday’s leaves.

Throw the Rubik’s cube on asphalt—not worth a damn,

All calculations in vain, eat your grapes in the rain.

At your quiet backyard you’ll observe then

What will happen to you on the peaks in the abyss of Hell.

Go, as always you went. When your nightly existence,

Sometimes during the rain will be touched by a branch

Through the glass, darkly, by Judah’s tree which persistently

Peeks through the window sill, washed by proverbial mother.

But despite low level of your measured IQ,

I have noticed through vessel with a teen-weenie hole,

How, the sand pours with memorial “phew”,

Hourglass is a simple device but endless in its melancholy.

Kick the floor, waste your rage as a sage, you rascal,

Wasted creep with immutable three-legged railing.

The transparent ghost jet fire breathed in the sky,

Atmospheric ozone penetrates through the roof of my dwelling.

Static stings from the furniture—once—and again,

Speak! As if under torture, neither script, nor the stages,

If you hireling-schmireling, keep such acclaim

For these squeaky times and God-forsaken places.

……

Стансы.

                                                                        Памяти матери

I

Говори. Что ты хочешь сказать? Не о том ли, как шла

Городскою рекою баржá по закатному следу,

Как две трети июня, до двадцать второго числа,

Встав на цыпочки, лето старательно тянется к свету.

Как дыхание липы сквозит в духоте площадей,

Как со всех четырех сторон света гремело в июле?

А что речи нужна позарез подоплека идей

И нешуточный повод ^_ так это тебя обманули.

II

Слышишь: гнилью арбузной пахнул овощной магазин,

За углом в подворотне грохочет порожняя тара

Ветерок из предместья донес перекличку дрезин,

И архивной листвою покрылся асфальт тротуара.

Урони кубик Рубика наземь, не стоит труда,

Все расчеты насмарку, поешь на дожде винограда,

Сидя в тихом дворе, и воочью увидишь тогда,

Что приходит на память в горах и расщелинах ада.

III

И иди куда шел. Но как в бытность твою по ночам,

И особенно в дождь, будет голою веткой упрямо,

Осязая оконные стекла, программный анчар

Трогать раму, что мыла в согласии с азбукой мама.

И хоть уровень школьных познаний моих невысок,

Вижу как наяву: сверху вниз сквозь отверстие в колбе

С приснопамятным шелестом сыпался мелкий песокю

Немудрящий прибор, но какое раздолье для скорби!

IV

Об пол злостью, как тростью, ударь, шельмовства не тая,

Испитой шарлатан с неизменною шаткой треногой,

Чтоб прозрачная призрачная распустилась струя

И озоном запахло под жековской кровлей убогой.

Локтевым электричеством мебель ужалит и вновь

Говори, как под пыткой без школы и без манифеста,

Раз тебе, недобитку, внушают такую любовь

Это гиблое время и Богом забытое место.

V

В это время вдовец Айзенштадт, сорока семи лет,

Колобродит по кухне и негде достать пипольфена.

Есть ли смысл веселиться, приятель, я думаю нет,

Даже если он в траурных черных трусах до колена.

В этом месте, веселье которого есть питие,

За порожнею тарой видавшие виды ребята

За Серегу Есенина или Андрюху Шенье

По традиции пропили очередную зарплату[.]

VI

После смерти я выйду за город который люблю,

И подняв к небу морду, рога запрокинув на плечи,

Одержимый печалью в последний простор протрублю

То на что не хватило мне слов человеческой речи.

Как баржа уплывала за поздним закатным лучом

Как скворчало железное время на левом запястье,

Как заветную дверь отпирали английским ключом…

Говори. Ничего не поделаешь с этой напастью.

                                                                        1987

Alexander Blok

Александр Блок. С рисунка К. Сомова (1907)

Alexander Blok (1880-1921)

His poetic activity was, as was his life, evenly divided between 19^th and 20^th centuries. Many of his works belong to 19^th century Symbolist movement, which he abandoned for Chekhovian melancholic realism. In later life, he defied this description with resolutely futuristic “The Twelve” where he described marauding revolutionaries as apostles led by the bloodied Christ. Brilliant, bibulous and a compulsive womanizer, he died of anorexic dystrophy in post-revolutionary Petrograd. A cult-inspiring figure in his lifetime, Blok is now submitted to more critical examination. Yet, he defined poetic standards for the generations of Russian poets to come. 

Night. Street. Street lamp. A drugstore.

Light, which is senseless and dim.

To live here quarter a century more,

It all be the same, it seems.

Die and begin a life brand new,

Yet, it will all repeat.

Street, and a drugstore. Lamps, a few.

A river in midnight sleet.

Ночь улица фонарь аптека

Бессмыссленный и тусклый свет

Живи еще хоть четверть века

Все будет так—исхода нет.

Умрешь начнешь опять сначала

И повторится все как встарь

Ночь ледяная рябь канала

Аптека улица фонарь 

Alexander Blok throughout his life was considered a visionary and certainly, many of his insights were ahead of his time. Unlike most symbolist mystics like Belyi these were informed not by his alleged trips to "the other side" but, similarly to Kafka, a keen interest in modern politics and technology. Here is his Aviator (1910-1912). 

Авиатор
Летун отпущен на свободу,
Качнув две лопасти свои,
Как чудище морское — в воду,
Скользнул в воздушные струи.

Его винты поют, .как струны...
Смотри: недрогнувший пилот
К слепому солнцу над трибуной
Стремит свой винтовой полет...

Уж в вышине недостижимой
Сияет двигателя медь...
Там, еле слышный и незримый,
Пропеллер продолжает петь...

Потом — напрасно ищет око;
На небе не найдешь следа:
В бинокле, вскинутом высоко,
Лишь воздух — ясный, как вода...

А здесь, в колеблющемся зное,
В курящейся над лугом мгле,
Ангары, люди, всё земное —
Как бы придавлено к земле...

Но снова в золотом тумане
Как будто — неземной аккорд...
Он близок, миг рукоплесканий
И жалкий мировой рекорд!

Всё ниже спуск винтообразный,
Всё круче лопастей извив,
И вдруг... нелепый, безобразный
В однообразьи перерыв...

И зверь с умолкшими винтами
Повис пугающим углом...
Ищи отцветшими глазами
Опоры в воздухе... пустом!

Уж поздно: на траве равнины
Крыла измятая дуга...
В сплетеньи проволок машины
Рука — мертвее рычага...

Зачем ты в небе был, отважный,
В свой первый и последний раз?
Чтоб львице светской и продажной
Поднять к тебе фиалки глаз?

Или восторг самозабвенья
Губительный изведал ты,
Безумно возалкал паденья
И сам остановил винты?

Иль отравил твой мозг несчастный
Грядущих войн ужасный вид:
Ночной летун, во мгле ненастной
Земле несущий динамит?

1910 — январь 1912

Aviator 



The flyer left for free to rumble 
By the gyrations of two blades, 
As the sea monster into abyss 
He slipped to ether's subtle waves. 

Propellers sing like strings of basses;
The pilot, blind by Sun in sight, 
Unfazed, and over bleachers passing,
He fasts his airscrew-driven flight... 

And so, on the high, in heavens,
Shines is the engine's clear brass...
We, hardly hear, and lose our vision
In quiet aria of props... 

And then our eyes are vainly looking
In heavens there are no tracks, 
Binoculars raised up to zenith 
Shew a clear air-- as ocean waves.   

And here, in the balm of summer 
O'er greenish plain a-smoking hearth,  
The hangars, people, lowly beings--
Are pressed to their Mother Earth. 

But once anew in golden mazes 
As if--a heavenly accord--
They're close, the moment of his glory 
And measly record of the climb. 

Ascension spiral now's lower,
Sharp is the shining blades whirlwind,  
But suddenly... absurd and sullen
The interruption into rhythm.  

The flying beast with stopped propellers
Has hanged his profile angular...
You now search by eyes that blossomed
The foundations... in thin air! 

Tis' late, alas, on grass of valley--
The arc of wing is rumpled thin.  
His hand, more dead than steering lever 
Is weaved in wires of the machine. 

...Why have you soared, brave explorer,
In your disastrous maiden flight,
That lioness, debauched and haughty,
Would raise to you her violets-eyes?

Or the riotous ecstasy 
You had imbibed with deadly flair,  
You craved for fall from sky--Icarus' 
And stopped propellers in midair? 

Or your demented brain was poisoned
By future wars a ghastly sight:
A nightly pilot in pitch darkness
Who brings to earth her dynamite?

Boris Grebenschikov, bard and guru

Boris Grebenschikov (b. 1953)

The crisis of Russian poetry in the 1970s with hardening of censorship and increasing encroachment of social criticism on the Samizdat poetry at the expense of the literary values was broken by the bard Boris Grebenschikov. He started peddling nonsensical texts devoid of any social-critical or moral meaning. In this, his Mr. Goatsucker was as revolutionary as the famous Pale Legs by the father of Russian symbolism Valery Brusov (see below) was almost a century ago.

О закрой свои бледные ноги

                        В. Брюсов

Oh

Drape

Your

Pale

Legs

                        V. Brusov

Старик Козлодоев

Б. Н. Гребенщиков

Сползает по крыше // Старик Козлодоев,

Пронырливый как коростель.

В окошко стремится пролезть // Козлодоев

Какой-нибудь бабе в постель.

А время бывало // Гулял Козлодоев

Глаза его были пусты,

И криком всех женщин сзывал // Козлодоев

Заняться любовью в кусты.

Занятие это // Любил Козлодоев,

И дюжину враз ублажал,

Кумиром народным // Служил Козлодоев,

И всякий его уважал.

А ныне, а ныне // Попрятались суки

В окошки отдельных квартир.

Ползет Козлодоев // Мокры его брюки.

Он стар. Он желает в сортир.

Mr. Goatsucker

This hopeless romantic, old man Goatsucker,

Slides slowly over rooftop.

Through windowsill he attempts, Goatsucker,

To land on some broad, hip-hop.

The happier times are now behind him,

His empty eyes lost their push,

Before he exclaimed to the girls: “Here I’m,”

And made love with them in the bush.

He liked, Goatsucker, his life’s own station,

With thousands women he slept.

A popular hero he was to the nation

And everyone paid his respect.

And here, and now, the bitches are screwy

They made into castle their home,

He slides, Goatsucker, his pants are all gooey,

He’s old. He misses his john.  

Song of the Red October

March to the drum, ye bold and steady troop,

Sons of a gun and grandsons of Chernobyl,

We must reform around the red banner,

And let the brackish water pass the noise.

The iron sky has hardened overhead,

Lost ship has sunk in weed without egress. 

Rise up and come, beseech you, prison guards,

Or else our souls will be stolen by a waitress.

Had fallen our drunken regiment

And kicked the bucket sly intelligencers,

We have abandoned hammers, sickles and pincers,

Stark naked broads are flying in the sky.

Their breasts are covered in a French perfume,

They are robust as shameless crocodiles,

You must not cease to burn, my ready censer,

Or they will gobble up us all alive.

Московская Октябрьская

Вперед, вперед, плешивые стада;

Дети полка и внуки саркофага,

Сплотимся гордо вкруг родного стяга,

И пусть кипит утекшая вода.

Застыл чугун над буйной головой,

Ушел в бурьян корабль без капитана...

Ну, что ж ты спишь —проснись, проснись охрана;

А то мне в душу влезет половой.

Сошел на нет всегда бухой отряд,

И как назло разведка перемерла;

Покрылись мхом штыки, болты и сверла—

А в небе бабы голые летят.

На их грудях блестит французский крем;

Они снуют с бесстыдством крокодила…

Гори, гори мое паникадило,

А то они склюют меня совсем.

From the album ‘Kostroma, mon amour’ (1994). Quoted according to www.aquarium.ru/discography. Note the affinity of the strophes 3-4 to the last bi-line in the  Sadistic Quatrains. 

This blog displays my translations of Russian poetry usually qualified as "modernistic" either by stylistic or social criteria. The project was launched about a decade ago, when I decided to update the titanic anthology of Joris and Rothenberg Poems for the Millennium: The University of California Book of Modern & Postmodern Poetry, (University of California Press) in its Russian Department. Since then, I proceeded in fits and starts encumbered by the loss of many computers. Yet, I keep recovering disparate notes, which I will post on this site.
The author is not a professional translator (see my parallel oldpossumsbookreview) and I will be glad if others take shot at translating these important works of art. All the translations and explanations unless otherwise noted belong to the author (A. S. Bliokh). Under the "creative commons" concept they can be used for non-profit purposes if adequately referenced to the author.


Note: I presume that the Russian original texts posted on this site are covered by the "fair use" doctrine for they are posted exclusively for comparison with my translation for bilingual readers.