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

Text of Translations with Original Russian of Pushkin, Mayakovsky, Gumiliev, and Tarkovsky in South Florida Poetry Journal

Larissa Shmailo  4 Russian translations
​

Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin

I loved you once, and this love still, it may be,
Is not extinguished fully in my soul;
But let’s no longer have this love dismay you:
To trouble you is not my wish at all.
I loved you once quite wordlessly, without hope,
Tortured shyness, jealous rage I bore.
I loved you once so gently and sincerely:
God grant another love you thus once more 
​
Я вас любил: любовь еще, быть может,
В душе моей угасла не совсем;
Но пусть она вас больше не тревожит;
Я не хочу печалить вас ничем.
Я вас любил безмолвно, безнадежно,
То робостью, то ревностью томим;
Я вас любил так искренно, так нежно,
Как дай вам бог любимой быть другим.

 

June 25, 1939
Arseny Tarkovsky

It's frightening to die, and such a shame to leave
This captivating riffraff that enchants me,
The stuff so dear to poets, so very lovely,
I never celebrated; it somehow wasn't to be.
I loved to come back home at the break of dawn
And shift my things around in half an hour.
I loved the white windowsill, and also the flower,
The carved faceted glass, and also the water,
And the heavens, greenish-azure in their color--
And that I was a poet and a wicked man.
And when every June came with my birthday again
I'd idolize that holiday, bustling
With verses by friends and congratulations from women,
With crystal laughter, and gay glasses clinking
And the lock of that hair, unique, individual
And that kiss, so entirely inevitable.
But now at home it’s all set up differently;
It's June and I no longer have that homesickness.
In this way, life is teaching me patience,
And turbid, my blood now is stirring this birthday,
And a secret anxiety is tormenting me--
What have I done with my great destiny,
Oh my God, what have I done with me!


25 июня 1939 года
Арсений Тарковский

И страшно умереть, и жаль оставить
Всю шушеру пленительную эту,
Всю чепуху, столь милую поэту,
Которую не удалось прославить
Я так любил домой прийти к рассвету,
И в полчаса все вещи переставить,
Еще любил я белый подоконник,
Цветок и воду, и стакан граненый,
И небосвод голубизны зеленой,
И то, что я — поэт и беззаконник.
А если был июнь и день рожденья
Боготворил я праздник суетливый,
Стихи друзей и женщин поздравленья,
Хрустальный смех и звон стекла счастливый,
И завиток волос неповторимый,
И этот поцелуй неотвратимый
Расставлено все в доме по-другому,
Июнь пришел, я не томлюсь по дому,
В котором жизнь меня терпенью учит
И кровь моя мутится в день рожденья,
И тайная меня тревога мучит,--
Что сделал я с высокою судьбою,
О боже мой, что сделал я с собою!

Vladimir Mayakovsky’s Last Poem

Vladimir Mayakovsky's (July 19,1893 – April 14, 1930) final poem before his suicide. The Oka mentioned is a tributary of the Volga.

It's after one. You've likely gone to sleep.
The Milkway streams silver, an Oka through the night.
I don't hurry, I don't need to wake you
Or bother you with lightning telegrams.
Like they say, the incident is cloved.
Love's little boat has crashed on daily life.
We're even, you and I. No need to account
For mutual sorrows, mutual pains and wrongs.
Look: How quiet the world is.
Night cloaks the sky with the tribute of the stars.
At times like these, you can rise, stand, and speak
To history, eternity, and all creation.

Уже второй. Должно быть, ты легла.
В ночи Млечпуть серебряной Окою.
Я не спешу, и молниями телеграмм
мне незачем тебя будить и беспокоить.
Как говорят, инцидент исперчен.
Любовная лодка разбилась о быт.
С тобой мы в расчете. И не к чему перечень
взаимных болей, бед и обид.
Ты посмотри, какая в мире тишь.
Ночь обложила небо звездной данью.
В такие вот часы встаешь и говоришь
векам, истории и мирозданью

Acrostic poem on the name of Nikolai Gumilev’s wife, Anna Akhmatova. Translation received honorable mention in the Compass Award competition on Gumilyev, 2011.

Acrostic

Addis Ababa, city of roses.
Near the bank of transparent streams,
No earthly devas brought you here,
A diamond, amidst gloomy gorges.

Armidin garden … There a pilgrim
Keeps his oath of obscure love
(Mind, we all bow before him),
And the roses cloy, the roses red.

There, full of deceit and venom,
Ogles some gaze into the soul,
Via forests of tall sycamores,
And alleyways of dusky planes.

Акростих
 
Аддис-Абеба, город роз.        
На берегу ручьёв прозрачных,
Небесный див тебя принес,
Алмазной, средь ущелий мрачных.

Армидин сад… Там пилигрим
Хранит обет любви неясной
(Мы все склоняемся пред ним),
А розы душны, розы красны.

Там смотрит в душу чей-то взор,
Отравы полный и обманов,
В садах высоких сикомор,
Аллеях сумрачных платанов.


LARISSA SHMAILO’S work appears in Measure for Measure (Everyman's Library / Penguin Random House), Words for the Wedding (Perigee / Penguin Putnam), and Contemporary Russian Poetry (Dalkey Archive Press). Her poetry collections are #Medusa’s Country (forthcoming from MadHat Press), #specialcharacters (Unlikely Books), In Paran (BlazeVOX [books]), and the chapbooks A Cure for Suicide (Červená Barva Press) and Fib Sequence (Argotist Ebooks). Her poetry CDs are The No-Net World and Exorcism (SongCrew); tracks are available from Spotify, iTunes, Muze, and Amazon. Larissa edited the anthology Twenty-first Century Russian Poetry (Big Bridge Press) and translated Victory over the Sun for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's celebrated reconstruction of the first Futurist opera; the libretto has been used for productions at Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Smithsonian, and the Garage Museum of Moscow. Shmailo has also been a translator on the Russian Bible for the American Bible Society. Her novel, Patient Women, is now available from Amazon, BN.com, and BlazeVOX [books]. Visit her website at www.larissashmailo.com 
​

Tarkovsky, Kline, Cassian, and the Spiritual Value of Translation - Review of the 4th Annual Compass Award Ceremony

(Published in the Russian American Cultural Center newsletter)

Now in its fourth year, The Compass Award for best translation of a Russian poet has quickly become one of the most prestigious awards in translation. Under the auspices of the noted journal Stosvet/Cardinal Points (co-published by MadHat) and with a distinguished panel of judges and supporting institutions, the Compass competition invites and receives sparkling English-language translations of Russian poetry from around the world. Competitions have focused on well-known poets such as Marina Tsvetaeva, and others less known in the United States, such as Nikolai Gumilyov, husband of the renowned Anna Akhmatova, who met his untimely death at the end of a Cheka firing squad in 1921; Maria Petrovykh, beloved of the great Osip Mandelstam; and Arseny Tarkovsky, friend and fellow student of Petrovych’s and father of the famous filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky.

This year’s Compass Award and launch of Issue 4 of Cardinal Points, celebrated at Poets House (New York), was dedicated to the translation of poems by Tarkovsky, whose earthy and spiritual verse is popular in Russia but little known among English readers. Although he began writing in the 1920s, Tarkovsky’s first collection, Before the Snow, did not appear until 1962, when it was praised by Akhmatova as “an unexpected and precious present to the reader.” Critics consider Tarkovsky an essential bridge between the Russian Silver Age (from the late 19th to early 20th century) and the post-Stalin Thaw under Nikita Khrushchev. (Unlike Gumilyov, Tarkovsky managed to escape execution for penning an acrostic poem about Lenin in 1921).


Mastering Tarkovsky’s rhythmic and mesmerizing verse were this year’s winners, Laurence Bogoslaw (United States), who took first prize, nonagenarian Nora Krouk (Australia), who took second place and was an honorable mention winner in the Petrovych competition, and Igor Mazin (United States), who took third place, as well as Misha Semenov and Eugene Serebryany (both United States) who became  honorable mention recipients. The award ceremony also included a reading by celebrated Russian, American, and international poets and translators. Introduced by National Endowment Translation Award winner Alex Cigale, the poets and translators included Cigale, Polina Barskova, Sibelan Forrester, myself, and Alexander Veytsman, Compass Director.

The reading also honored the departed literary giants, poet, translator, journalist, and film critic Nina Cassian, and scholar, translator and Compass judge George Kline, who is considered responsible for bringing Nobel laureate Joseph Brodsky to the attention of the English-speaking world. Cassian’s life and contributions to international letters were honored by a talk and reading of her work by her husband Maurice Edward. It was my honor to speak about George Kline, with whom I had the privilege of corresponding at the end of his life. Despite his continued dedication at the age of 93 to the translation of Brodsky’s work, Kline took the time to review my translation of Alexander Pushkin’s “Ia vas liubil” (“I loved you once”) and to school me on Russian prosody. In his final e-mail to me, he wrote of the spiritual value (dukhovnaia tsennost’) of a poem’s meter for the translator, a value honored by the Compass Award ceremony on this unforgettable afternoon.

The evening was hosted by poet Irina Mashinski, the StoSvet/Cardinal Points editor-in-chief, Alexander Veytsman, the Compass Award Director, and Regina Khidekel, the director of the Russian American Cultural Center. It was co-sponsored by the Russian-American Cultural Center, the Cardinal Points Journal, and Cardinal Points’  co-publisher MadHat Press.

Information: compass@StoSvet.net | Websites: www.StoSvet.net | www.StoSvet.net/Compass

 on Facebook:  Compass Translation Award: Russian Poetry in English

Stanford Universuty | Book Haven Slavic - memorial for George Kline

Translations up at National Translation Month website

An excerpt from my translation of Aleksei Kruchenych's Victory over the Sun and Arseny Tarkovsky's "June 25, 1939" are up at the National Translation month website today!



http://nationaltranslationmonth.com/new-translations-from-the-russian-by-larissa-shmailo-2/

Text of Tarkovsky translation of "June 25, 1939" with Russian

June 25, 1939
Arseny Tarkovsky
Tr. L. Shmailo

It's frightening to die, and such a shame to leave
This captivating riffraff that enchants me,
The stuff so dear to poets, so very lovely,
I never celebrated; it somehow wasn't to be.
I loved to come back home at the break of dawn
And shift my things around in half an hour.
I loved the white windowsill, and also the flower,
The carved faceted glass, and also the water,
And the heavens, greenish-azure in their color—
And that I was a poet and a wicked man.
And when every June came with my birthday again
I'd idolize that holiday, bustling
With verses by friends and congratulations from women,
With crystal laughter, and gay glasses clinking
And the lock of that hair, unique, individual
And that kiss, so entirely inevitable.
But now at home it’s all set up differently;
It's June and I no longer have that homesickness.
In this way, life is teaching me patience,
And turbid, my blood now is stirring this birthday,
And a secret anxiety is tormenting me—
What have I done with my great destiny,
Oh my God, what have I done with me!

25 июня 1939 года
Арсений Тарковский
И страшно умереть, и жаль оставить
Всю шушеру пленительную эту,
Всю чепуху, столь милую поэту,
Которую не удалось прославить
Я так любил домой прийти к рассвету,
И в полчаса все вещи переставить,
Еще любил я белый подоконник,
Цветок и воду, и стакан граненый,
И небосвод голубизны зеленой,
И то, что я — поэт и беззаконник.
А если был июнь и день рожденья
Боготворил я праздник суетливый,
Стихи друзей и женщин поздравленья,
Хрустальный смех и звон стекла счастливый,
И завиток волос неповторимый,
И этот поцелуй неотвратимый
. Расставлено все в доме по-другому,
Июнь пришел, я не томлюсь по дому,
В котором жизнь меня терпенью учит
И кровь моя мутится в день рожденья,
И тайная меня тревога мучит,—
Что сделал я с высокою судьбою,
О боже мой, что сделал я с собою!

New translation of Arseny Tarkovsky and poems by Alexander Skidan up at TRUCK

I have a spanking brand new translation of "June 25, 1939" by Arseny Tarkovsky and several poems by Alexander Skidan translated by me and the author up at Halvard Johnson's TRUCK today. Thanks to "driver," poet and translator Anny Ballardini, for including me! http://halvard-johnson.blogspot.it/2014/11/larissa-shmailo_13.html?showComment=1415892154893