Julia Nemirovskaya // Boris Dralyuk
Translator’s Introduction
The poems of Julia Nemirovskaya have been an oasis for me ever since I first discovered them a decade ago. I return to them whenever my own well runs dry. What they offer is refreshment of the profoundest kind: a thoroughgoing renewal of my imagination, my perception of the world. As I’ve written elsewhere, the key to Nemirovskaya’s process is a radical extension of empathy — to other humans, to inanimate objects, to anything her journeying eyes encounter. Her poems work their refreshing magic by awakening our impulse not only to see but to sympathize with the world around us, to feel the subtle energies coursing through it — an impulse that too often retreats and withers after childhood ends. Julia, like a number of other poets (Emily Dickinson and Stevie Smith come to mind, as does Walter de la Mare, the great eulogist of the childlike imagination), never allowed this impulse to wither within her; she found ways to keep it nourished, to embolden it, and, as we read her poems, we feel the impulse coming to life within us, too.
The last of the poems below, “[Inside the bakery],” dates back to Julia’s youth in Moscow, where she was born in 1962 and first entered the unofficial literary scene as part of the famed POETRY club in the 1980s. At that time, her first “little book” of poems — which would in fact be titled My Little Book — had not yet been published; it wouldn’t appear until 1998, by which point Julia had already been living in the United States for more than half a decade. She’s gone on to publish another collection of poems — Second Little Book (2014) — as well as the novel Lis (2017), and her third collection and second novel will both appear this year. Julia also teaches Russian literature and culture at the University of Oregon, and although I haven’t had the pleasure of sitting in on any of her classes, I imagine that her pedagogy, like her verse, is powerfully charged with empathy. The fourth and most recent poem below, “[Through wormholes I travel],” dramatizes her deep, unexpectedly intimate sense of connection with two of the greatest Russian poets of the 20th century, Osip Mandelstam and Marina Tsvetaeva. Here, as in her poems about ancient gods (“Ostankino Park”) and the descendants of Eve (“Eves”), Julia’s touch is heartbreakingly humanizing.
In Julia’s imaginative oasis, discarded objects and the subjects of myth all speak for themselves, humbly voicing their pains, pleasures, and desires. Their voices are haunting because we recognize them — we’ve all heard them, before we ceased to listen. Here we learn to listen closely again, to see, and to sympathize. “We look into the text,” as I wrote last year, “and walk away changed.”
Julia Nemirovskaya
The Quiet Chorus: Five Poems
Взглядом
Посмотрю на дуб с медовыми листьями
И стечёт он в меня, как сок.
Опустеет гора, на которой он выстоял
Тысячелетний срок.
Как в моря затягивает всё важное –
Корабль, коралл, алмаз –
Исчезают окрестности из-за жажды
Моих жадных горящих глаз.
Чтобы всё спасти, притворясь слепою
Я под ноги себе смотрю,
Я стараюсь быть не самой собою,
И живу как будто хитрю.
At a Glance
I glance at an oak, with its honeyed leaves,
and soak it right up.
The hill where it stood for a thousand years
I drain like a cup.
As the seas swallow ships with their masts
and gems without price,
whole landscapes succumb to the thirst
of my bright greedy eyes.
To safeguard the world, I look down at my feet,
pretend to be blind.
I try to be someone other than me,
to exist on the sly.
Останкино
Осенний парк пятнист от луж и статуй.
В нём неуютно мраморным богам.
Зато привольно мётлам и лопатам,
И рваным сапогам.
Грузовики гремят, привозят доски
Забить Ареса. Ветер. Что ещё?
Проходит день. Он матовый и плоский –
Аресово плечо.
И слышит ночь, как статуям под ноги
Ложится дождь, а в самый тёмный час
Их тихий хор: Как жили мы, о боги
В сердцах людей, любивших верить в нас!
Ostankino Park
In fall the park is flecked with statues, puddles.
The marble gods are ill at ease,
while tattered boots and brooms and shovels
do as they please.
The rattling trucks bring planks to box up Ares.
The wind grows colder.
The day goes by, as lusterless and bare as
Ares’s shoulder.
The night hears rain lay itself down beneath
the statues’ feet and, at the darkest hour,
their quiet chorus: O gods, we once lived
in hearts that trusted in our power…
Евы
Эти камни как будто бы плачут под нами,
Всем мы в тягость, и даже снегу.
Вот бы тихо бежать, не касаясь ногами
Земли, а собой – человеков.
Сверху будем мы просто как чёрные точки,
Божьи очи не засоряя,
И как черточки сбоку, и скажет Он: дочки
Зачем я вас выгнал из рая?
Eves
Underneath us the stones seem to weep.
We’re a burden to all, even snow.
Oh to run without touching the ground with our feet,
our selves never touching a soul.
Black specks from above and slim lines from the side:
we’ll be small – we won’t clog the Lord’s eyes.
And then He will say to us: Daughters, oh why
did I oust you from Paradise?
Кротовыми норами
назад лет на сто
несу дрова и вина и яства
Суп Цветаевой
Мандельштаму асти
Но мне говорят
Что ты
выбрось
вылей
Чтоб умерли мёртвые
и жили живые
Зачем тебе труп
в неведомой яме
Цветаевой суп
Асти Мандельштама
Вперяю взгляд
в безвидное поле
Тут – в прошлом –
нету свободы воли
Реку жалко
ивы да вербы
дальше свалка
а может быть Цербер
Вливаю
в собачьи
жадные пасти
Суп Цветаевой
Мандельштама асти
Through wormholes I travel
a century back
with a bundle of firewood,
with Asti for Mandelstam,
with soup for Tsvetaeva.
People tell me,
forget about
this food,
this wine,
so the living may live
and the dead may die.
Why care for a corpse
in some pit, they ask me,
for Tsvetaeva’s soup,
for Mandelstam’s Asti?
But I train my eyes
on the unseen field:
here, in the past,
there is no free will.
I pity the river,
the willows that shade it,
and beyond is a dump,
or the hound of Hades –
I pour
in its greedy
maws the tasty
soup for Tsvetaeva,
Mandelstam’s Asti.
В булочной-кондитерской
Народу набралось.
А где моё дитятко? –
Ещё не родилось.
А где моя книжечка? –
Не вышла она,
И кому моя книжечка
Окажется нужна?
А мне ваша булочка
Нужна позарез.
Несу её надкусанную,
Мокрую от слёз.
Inside the bakery –
a proper throng.
But where’s my baby?
Not yet born.
My little book, then?
Not out yet.
Will someone need it?
No, I bet.
Ah, but your roll –
I need it so:
nibbled and tear-stained,
can’t let it go.
//
