Anna Karenina: #MeToo (recently published in KGBBarLit)

Note: Dmitry Merezhkovsky was a Russian thinker and critic.

Ah, Merezhkovsky: to you I was a mare
ridden badly by a man; and because of him,
his error, I had to be destroyed. And Lev, my dear:
You never gave me my own voice, you didn’t dare.
What did I talk about when I did talk, after all:
Abortion with Dolly? Every damn thing
Vronsky did, that I did better? The problem
was not that I was sexual (men, you
count on that). The problem was that
I was smart. But sexual women must be killed;
All the books attest to that.

Merezhkovsky permeates the consciousness
of Slavic scholars, is the Anna story, still,
but I fault you most, Lev. You knew, soon
that the problem was not one woman
and one man; it was all women, all men. You had
Vronsky climb in society, while I—damn, I even
knew more about horses than him!—I was
the scarlet woman, though our offence was the same.
Did I abandon my child? Or did a martinet
bar me from him? Ah, she holds Vronsky back!
Ah, the guilt!

Oh, there is no talking to you.
You sent me the dream
that haunted your ruling-class sleep,
a peasant with an iron,
the proletariat that said, fuck you
and your landlord’s way of life.
You killed me with the railroad that they built
for you. Because you “had to.”
Where was your Resurrection then?
You repudiated Karenina, it’s true,
but you abandoned me to my fate.
And so, Lev, I still struggle,
a century and a half later,
to have my story told.

Four Translations and a Poem of My Own in KGBBarLit

Thrilled to have four translations of Pushkin, Mayakovsky, Blok, and Tarkovsky, and a poem of my own, "Anna Karenina #metoo" in this brilliant KGB Lit issue, "Writing across Eastern Europe." Thanks to editor Olena Jennings for the pub!

FOUR TRANSLATIONS AND A POEM

Excerpt from Patient Women

Excerpt from Patient Women (Nora at 22)
When it was slow, Nora told Billy the plots of Russian novels. They had just finished The Brothers Karamazov, which Billy enjoyed, and were now starting Anna Karenina.
“Anna is a brilliant woman, “Nora told Billy, who was lying on the floor with a bottle of bourbon between her knees. “Most people don’t realize that. She can do anything, except speak up for herself.” Nora reached over and filled her tumbler from Billy’s bottle. “While she’s shacked up with Vronsky, she writes children’s books, she studies architecture, follows local politics; anything Count Vronsky does, she does too, and better. She even handles horses better.”
The phone rang. Billy sat up.
“Friends with Style”, Nora answered. She listened into the receiver for a few moments, then hung up. “Breather,” she told Billy. Billy lay back down.
“So, why can’t she talk about herself?” Billy asked.
Nora shrugged “Never learned. The men in the book do it for her. At one point, Dolly—that’s Stiva’s wife—tries to talk to her about what’s happening in her life and Anna just blanks. She starts to talk a little but then it gets onto abortion.”
“They had abortions then?” Billy asked.
“What do you think?” Nora replied. “Anna may have had one by this point in the novel, or may be planning to; it’s very strongly suggested. The thing is, she can’t talk about any of this stuff, not Vronsky, not leaving her husband; she just shuts down.”
“So what happened to her?” Billy asked.
Before Nora could answer, the doorbell rang.
“Coming,” Billy called gaily. She looked through the peep-hole.
But instead of a trick, a woman entered. She was about thirty years old, tall, big-boned and ungainly. She was wearing a plaid dress trimmed with lace and velvet; she had patent leather flats with bows on her too-large feet, with straps bracing the shoes. She looked, Nora thought, like a giant child going to a birthday party.
“I’m here for a job,” the woman said.
Billy and Nora exchanged looks.
“The ad said you needed models,” the woman insisted.
Nora sat her down to wait for the pimp and told her the rates: one hundred dollars for suck and fuck, two hundred for Greek, three hundred for dominance, no equipment. The women took half.
“I’m working now,” the woman interrupted. “I have a job now.” She was rocking slightly, as if she needed to pee.
“That’s nice,” Nora answered automatically.
The woman smiled. “I know how to work,” she said proudly.
“How much do you make now?” Nora asked, expecting her to double her take.
“Five dollars,” the woman replied.
“How much?” Nora asked in disbelief.
The woman rocked harder. “I know how to work,” she said. “I make two hundred dollars a day. Two hundred dollars a day.” She looked at Nora. “I know how to work,” she repeated, “I know how to work, I know how to work, I know how to work. I know how to work, I know how to work . . . .”
Patient Women on Amazon
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MY VRONSKY

He told me, repeatedly, that

people considered him

the most intelligent person

they’d met; that he was not

more successful was a conspiracy

of minorities, lesbians, blacks, and gays,

and a coterie of cliques

that sucked up all the grants.

He visits me; his handsome features,

now marred by fat, peer at me.

“What are you reading?” he asks.

(A hundred pages a day, to live.)

He is an expert on Nabokov,

international relations, modern art

David Foster Wallace, Heidegger,

and the poets I translate.

(And yet he never understood Karenina,

any more than Nabokov did,

as they focused on the crevices

in her carriage train,

in that foreshadowed bier,

but not on the abortions,

nor the Vronsky of her death.)

Before him,

I remember feeling beautiful,

and those times people said

I was the smartest woman they knew.

"My Vronsky" appeared in the St. Petersburg Review