Brodsky Translating Brodsky: Poetry in Self-Translation 9781623561734, 9781628927054, 9781623566586

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Brodsky Translating Brodsky

Brodsky Translating Brodsky Poetry in Self-Translation Alexandra Berlina

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc

1385 Broadway New York NY 10018 USA

50 Bedford Square London WC1B 3DP UK

www.bloomsbury.com Bloomsbury is a registered trade mark of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2014 Paperback edition first published 2015 © Alexandra Berlina 2014 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-Publication Data Berlina, Alexandra, author. Brodsky translating Brodsky : poetry in self-­translation / Alexandra Berlina. pages cm Includes poems in Russian, with parallel translations into English. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-62356-173-4 (hardback : alk. paper)  1. Brodsky, Joseph, 1940-1996— Translations into English—History and criticism.  2. Russian poetry—20th century— Translations into English.  3. Russian language—Translating into English.  4. Translating and interpreting. I. Title. PG3479.4.R64Z566 2014 891.71’44—dc23 2013045464 ISBN: HB: 978-1-6235-6173-4 PB: 978-1-5013-1428-5 ePub: 978-1-6235-6696-8 ePDF: 978-1-6235-6658-6 Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk, UK

Contents List of Figures Acknowledgments Foreword: Post-Modernist Chants, Robert Chandler Notes on the Text

vii ix xi xiv

1

What is it All About?

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2

“December in Florence” 2.1 The matter of meter and the force of form 2.2 “The doors take in air, exhale steam; you, however, won’t . . .” 2.3 “Sunk in raw twilight, the pupil blinks but gulps . . .” 2.4 “Cats check at noon under benches . . .” 2.5 “A man gets reduced to pen’s rustle on paper . . .” 2.6 “Quays resemble stalled trains . . .” 2.7 “In a dusty café, in the shade of your cap . . .” 2.8 “Taking in air, exhaling steam . . .” 2.9 “The stone nest resounds with a piercing squeal . . .” 2.10 “There are cities one won’t see again . . .”

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9 12 19 22 24 28 32 35 38 41

Three Nativity Poems 3.1 “Star of the Nativity” 3.2 “Nativity” 3.3 “Lullaby” 3.4 A delicate balance: Brodsky’s Nativity poetry

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Poèmes à Clef: M.B.’s Birthday 4.1 “The Polar Explorer” 4.2 “Minefield Revisited”

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Elegies 5.1 “In Memoriam” 5.2 “In Memory of my Father: Australia” 5.3 “August Rain” 5.4 “To a Friend: In Memoriam”

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48 54 58 65

67 73

79 90 96 102

Contents

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Beyond Translation: “Centaurs” and Other Hybrids 6.1 Wordplay in translation and the Centauric self-portrait 6.2 “Centaurs” 6.3 A matter of (con-)sequence 6.4 Beyond translation: “Epitaph for a Centaur”

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Further Beyond Translation: “Sextet” and Other Excavations 7.1 “An eyelid is twitching . . .” 7.2 “Sometimes in the desert you hear a voice” 7.3 “For thirty-­six years I’ve stared at fire” 7.4 “Where’s that?” 7.5 “Was the word ever uttered?” 7.6 “And I dread my petals’ joining the crowned knot” 7.7 “Letter to an Archaeologist” and the Translation-Creation-Continuum

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Themes Taking Root in Translation and Other Tendencies 8.1 Wet dreams 8.2 Hurtful horizons 8.3 More tendencies in translation

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Bibliography Index

117 121 148 150

153 157 161 164 169 172 177

185 192 198 205 215

List of Figures 6.1  Self-­portrait as a centaur 7.1  Only connect

117 184

Acknowledgments I would like to thank Prof. Josef Raab for his support, both scholarly and human, as well as Prof. Jens Gurr. Many thanks to Ann Kjellberg, literary executor of the Brodsky Estate, for permission to reproduce the materials used in this book. I am very grateful to Jenefer Coates for editing the manuscript. Special thanks are also due to my parents for emigrating from Russia to Germany when I was twelve and thus helping me discover the joy of bilingual editions. Using them first just to learn a new language, I soon found incomparable pleasure in comparing, in reading simultaneously two very similar yet fascinatingly different texts. Soon I was gathering together as many versions as possible and I recall lying on the floor with maybe a dozen print-­outs of a single poem’s many incarnations spread out around me, having discovered that parallel reading is most fun with poetry. If I like a text, I re-­read it in another language. If I love a text, I re-­read it in two languages. If there is no translation, I translate for myself. This quirk to a large degree defines me as a reader. And “me as a reader” to a large degree defines me. I eventually encountered an explanation for my fascination—a fascination that has resulted in this book—when stumbling upon Marilyn Gaddis Rose’s Translation and Literary Criticism: “A translation challenges readers with a boundary. But in setting a provisional boundary, it also establishes an interliminal space of sound, allusion and meaning where readers must collaborate, criticize and rewrite, thereby enriching their experience in literature. From this perspective, literature can only gain in translation.”

Foreword Post-­modernist chants By Robert Chandler

Joseph Brodsky performed many roles during the fifty-­six years of his life. Between the ages of fifteen and twenty-­two he worked in a morgue, a lighthouse and a crystallography laboratory and as a hospital attendant, a milling-­machine operator, a stoker in a ship’s boiler room and an assistant on geological expeditions. At the same time, he was beginning what would turn out to be a lifelong career as a cultural ambassador; he was learning Polish and English, and reading and translating W. H. Auden and the English Metaphysicals. To be translating such poets was, albeit in a small way, a revolutionary act. The Soviet canon of Anglo-American poetry was limited and strangely arbitrary; for many decades, little attention had been given to anyone other than Shakespeare, Burns and Byron, Oscar Wilde and Dylan Thomas. John Donne, on the other hand, was hardly known. Brodsky continued, throughout his life, to work at bringing to the Russian poetic tradition something of Auden’s humane scepticism and the Metaphysicals’ intellectual brilliance. But after being deported in 1972 and settling in the USA, he was faced with new priorities. Like it or not, he was now an ambassador working in the other direction—an unofficial ambassador for the Russian cultural tradition. And he was well aware that the greatest difference between modern Russian and modern American poetry was with regard to the use of traditional form. Throughout his years in America, Brodsky was a determined champion of metre and rhyme; he seems never to have seen the move towards free verse as anything but a loss. * Lyric poetry springs from prayers, charms and magic spells; narrative poetry from the need to preserve important myths in a memorable form. In most of Europe, the decline of a magical or religious worldview, together with the invention of print, has made poetry come to seem less important. It has also made poetry tend to adopt many of the values we more readily associate with prose. Russia, however, has never seen the full emergence of a rational and secular culture—the official ethos of the Soviet era was supremely irrational—and poetry has, throughout most of the last two hundred years, retained its importance. Almost all Russians see Pushkin, rather than Tolstoy or Dostoevsky, as their greatest writer. Only for a single brief period—the second half of the nineteenth century, as a Russian middle class began to emerge—did Russian poetry become secondary to

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prose. Early twentieth-­century Europe, however, saw a general collapse of belief in reason and progress, and in Russia, this was more sudden, and more complete, than elsewhere. The realistic novel came to seem oddly unreal. Poetry again became dominant, and most of the poets of this “Silver Age” held to a magical view of the world. A poet’s business was to listen to the music of other worlds—not to interpret this world. The poetry of Alexander Blok and his fellow Symbolists is often incantatory; rhyme and rhythm draw still more attention to themselves than in the work of his predecessors. A friend, an extremely well-­read publisher, once told me how astonished he had been to discover, many years after first reading him, that Mayakovsky—the “Poet of the Revolution”—wrote in metre and rhyme. All the English translations my friend had seen were in free verse; and he had taken it for granted that a revolutionary poet would want to be free of the constraints of traditional form. What my friend may not have realised was how important it was to Mayakovsky that his poems should be memorable, in the most literal sense of the word. As for Osip Mandelstam and other poets who found themselves out of favour with the regime, they were soon living in what Akhmatova called a “pre-Gutenberg” age. They could no longer publish and it was often dangerous for them to write their work down. Lydia Chukovskaya, Akhmatova’s closest confidante, has described how Akhmatova would write out a poem on a scrap of paper. A visitor would read it—and Akhmatova would burn the paper. “It was,” according to Chukovskaya, “like a ritual. Hands, matches, an ashtray. A ritual beautiful and bitter.”i Mandelstam himself died in a prison camp in 1938. It was over three decades before his work was published again in the Soviet Union. Had his handling of rhyme, metre and other formal devices been less perfect, his widow might have been unable to preserve his work in her memory and much of it might have been lost. Again and again, Russian poetry has been forced to return to its oral origins. The poet and ethnographer, Nina Gagen-Torn, has written how, after being arrested in 1937, she and a cellmate were between them able to recite most of Nikolay Nekrasov’s Russian Women, a poem of at least two thousand lines. Ten years later, imprisoned for a second time, Gagen-Torn recited Blok, Pushkin, Nekrasov, Mandelstam, Gumilyov and Tyutchev. Every day her cellmates would ask her to recite more. Afterwards, it was “as if someone had cleaned the dust from the window with a damp sponge—everybody’s eyes looked clearer.” In her memoir, she reflects on the importance of rhythm: “The shamans knew that rhythm gives one power over spirits. He who had power over rhythm in the magic dance would become a shaman, that is, an intermediary between spirits and people; he who lacked this power would fly head over heels into madness. Poetry, like the shaman’s bells, leads people into the spaces of ‘the seventh sky.’ ”ii Even during the post-Stalin decades, poetry retained an importance that is hard for Westerners to imagine. Poems by Boris Slutsky circulated anonymously, as oral folklore. In the 1960s and 1970s poets and singer-­songwriters performed to enthusiastic Lidiya Chukovskaya, “Vmesto predisloviya (1966)”, in Zapiski ob Anne Akhmatovoy, vol. 1, 1938–1941(Moscow: Vremia, 2013), 12 N. I. Gagen-Torn (1994), Memoria. Moscow: Vozvrashchenie, p.109



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audiences in Soviet football stadiums. In a world governed by official lies, poetry was seen as something to live by. And a poem’s formal integrity—its being able to stand on its own poetic feet and so stay in someone’s memory—seemed to many, and certainly to Joseph Brodsky—to be linked to its ethical integrity. * Brodsky was never a believer in compromise. He was often scornful of poets such as Yevgeny Yevtushenko whom he saw as over-­ready to come to terms with the Soviet authorities. And he was no less absolute in his championing of metre and rhyme. This absolutism appears to have engendered a similar absolutism among admirers and detractors of Brodsky’s self-­translations. Some poets and critics (mostly Russian) praise him for what they see as a courageous defence of tradition; others (mostly English and American) damn him for what they see as crude violations of English idiom. The ferocity of the argument has made it difficult to approach these translations from other standpoints; few people before Alexandra Berlina seem to have realized what an extraordinary resource they constitute for anyone wishing to understand almost any aspect of Brodsky’s work. Not only can they tell us a great deal about Brodsky’s attitudes to Anglo-American culture but they also provide a detailed commentary on the original Russian poems. And it may be easier to see these things if one does not rush to take sides in the controversy these translations have generated. Berlina writes even-­handedly and with attention to detail. She summarizes almost all the previous scholarship and provides many invaluable insights of her own. Her book is not only a fascinating study of the difficulties and potentials of translation but also one of the most reliable introductions to Brodsky’s work as a whole. A particularly revealing anecdote she tells is of some Soviet admirers of Brodsky being denounced by a neighbour who had overheard them listening to a tape-­recording of Brodsky reading his poetry. This neighbour denounced them not for listening to the work of a dissident poet but for listening to a priest chanting prayers. Russian poets do, in general, read in a more incantatory style than English or American poets, but Brodsky’s readings were unusually incantatory even by Russian standards. What Brodsky inherited from the Russian tradition was a belief in poetry as a sacrament; what he inherited from the Anglo-American tradition was an enjoyment of poetry as a space for the free play of the intellect. No one has written as clearly and comprehensively as Berlina about Brodsky’s successes and failures in his attempt to integrate these traditions.

Notes on the Text Unless stated otherwise, the source of all Russian poems by Brodsky is the 2011 collection Stikhotvoreniya i poemy edited by Lev Loseff. Brodsky’s poems in English and self-translations are taken from his 2002 Collected Poems in English edited by Ann Kjellberg. Each Russian poem is presented in Cyrillic, followed first by my literal translation in italics, then by Brodsky’s own English version. In the literal translations, asterisks point to neologisms and puns, while slashes indicate passages that self-containedly correspond to their Russian counterparts (in most cases, these are single lines, but sometimes the English syntax necessitates longer units). Some poems are presented as a whole, some stanza by stanza, depending on analytical necessity and the reader’s comfort. When quoting short passages from the poems, the BGN/PCGN Romanization system (British Standard) is used. The bibliography follows whichever system is used in the published title. In the discussion, words or phrases taken from my literal translations of Brodsky’s poems are left in italics. For some poems, the original rhyme words are presented between slashes alongside the Russian text, using BGN/PCGN Romanization to approximate their pronunciation (and not their spelling) in order to help readers unfamiliar with Cyrillic or phonetic alphabets to imagine certain phonetic effects. All translations of secondary texts are mine, unless stated otherwise. The first words of untitled poems are used as headings (in square brackets); subsequently, they function as titles. Some titles are abbreviated in the discussion: for instance, “Dekabr’ ” stands for “Dekabr’ vo Florentsii.” Authors’ names can appear under different spellings if their work has been published in both English and Russian. Losev and Loseff, for example, are one and the same person—as are, of course, Brodsky and Brodskii.

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What is it All About?

To read is to translate, for no two persons’ experiences are the same.

W. H. Auden

This book deals with Joseph Brodsky’s translations of his own poems—or, one might argue, of poems by Iosif Brodskii, a slightly different person and poet. This differentiation is tempting, but misleading. Firstly, the idea of linguistic relativity, fascinating as it is, has been somewhat overstated, and it would be naïve to assume that cultural differences between the US and the USSR affected Brodsky when writing in English but not when writing in Russian. Secondly, Iosif Brodskii became known as Joseph Brodsky gradually. Moving to the States neither started nor finished this process; already enamored with America, he had begun jokily signing his letters to friends “Joseph” in his early twenties, and he never stopped being a Russian poet. Thirdly, Brodsky the translator is deeply engaged with both languages and cultures, and creating a third mixed persona—Iosif Brodsky? Joseph Brodskii?—would constitute a rather confusing enterprise. And finally, this book’s conclusions speak against differentiating between a Russian and an American self. (You may, at your own risk, peek into the final pages.) Apart from Joseph Brodsky (born in Leningrad in 1940, died in New York in 1996), this book features two further protagonists: the Anglo-American and the Russian poetic traditions, as Brodsky knew them—the former born in the late sixteenth century and somewhat weary of traditional forms, the latter born in the late eighteenth century and fond of strict meters and rich rhymes. Material on Brodsky’s life is easy enough to find. An excellent biography, written by a close friend and a perceptive scholar, has recently appeared in English translation—Joseph Brodsky: A Literary Life (Loseff 2012). As its title suggests, it does not merely describe the poet’s biography but also provides insights into his writing, traces influences and discusses how his poetry was received in English. A very helpful introduction to the context of Brodsky translating Brodsky is available online (Ishov 2008: 14–132). If you don’t have these sources handy, the following is a summary. What is astonishing about Brodsky translating his own poetry into English is that he started learning the language late in life. He was born not into an aristocratic family with an English nanny, like Nabokov, but into a poor Soviet one. A self-­identified Russian Jew is bicultural by definition; like many (anti-)Soviet people of his generation, Brodsky also felt a strong connection to Western culture (or what he imagined it to be): “. . . we took all those papier-­mâché, cardboard Hollywood props for real, and our sense

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of Europe, of the West, of history, if you will, always owed a great deal to those images for us” (Brodsky 1995: 9–10). Elsewhere, characteristically personifying a mundane, everyday object, he writes, “I remember the roar produced by the then newly opened . . . American-­made laundromat in Leningrad when I threw my first blue jeans into a machine. There was a joy of recognition in that roar; the entire queue heard it . . . we recognized something in the West, in the civilization, as our own” (Brodsky 1995: 21). Nominally, Brodsky learned English at school but neither he nor his teachers were much good at it. All he knew about the sound of the language came from jazz records and American movies. He loved both: “When we were twelve . . . the joints of our highly in hibite d Russi an f rames harkened to ‘sw ing’ . . . The Tarzan s er ies a lone, I d ares ay, did more for de-Stalinization than all Khrushchev’s speeches” (Brodsky 1995: 6–8). Between 1963 and 1965, Brodsky served eighteen months of hard labor in the arctic Archangelsk region for “social parasitism” (he changed jobs too often, and writing poetry did not count as work; the real reasons for his arrest are probably more closely connected to the workings of KGB bureaucracy than to the political danger of the virtually unknown young poet). On several occasions, Brodsky called this the happiest time of his life—not merely because he enjoyed surprising the interviewer. Brodsky spent the nights in a Northern village with a dictionary and an anthology of English and American poetry. He ended up knowing a hundred Anglophone poems by heart at the age of twenty-­five, pronouncing them in a rather exotic way. What he understood of Auden’s poetry was an epiphany to him. The suggestion that time “Worships language and forgives / Everyone by whom it lives” (later recanted by Auden) became and remained Brodsky’s most important conviction. Later, he stated that he had begun writing in English only so as to use Auden’s language (“To Please a Shadow” in Brodsky 1986). While this claim should be taken with a pinch of salt, it does contain more than a grain of truth. As entertainment in the evenings after days of hard labor, Brodsky set himself an astonishing task—he translated the first and the last line of an English poem as best he could with the help of a dictionary, counted the lines in between and then wrote a middle part, trying to guess what it might be like in the original. He was not always correct in translating the two lines, and, of course, his guesses bore little similarity to the originals. This is how several of his own poems came about (Sergeev 1997: 432). As The Poetry Lesson puts it (only half in jest), the first three muses of poetry are “1. Mishearing; 2. Misunderstanding; 3. Mistranslating” (Codrescu 2010: 11). Brodsky also tried his hand at more conventional translation; his scope was impressive, stretching as it did from John Donne to John Lennon (he produced a perfectly singable Russian version of “Yellow Submarine”). Brodsky was exiled in 1972 and after staying with Auden in Vienna for his first two weeks, he traveled around Europe. The young poet had been delighted to listen to his idol—however, he felt that his own English was not yet good enough, particularly because of his strong accent. He soon found himself in the States, and (thanks to the support of Auden, Proffer, Viereck and others) almost immediately started teaching literature at different universities. His students found him very demanding, charming and exasperating by turns, and, in the first years, difficult to understand. Well-­known translators and poets volunteered to render his verse into English—but as soon as

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Brodsky could explain himself, he began criticizing their attempts, particularly the loss of rhyme and meter. Conflict-­laden collaboration eventually led to the co-­translators giving up and clearing the field for Brodsky himself. In 1980, eight years after his arrival in the States, he chose a long and formally challenging poem for his first self-­translation. Having introduced semantic traits of his favorite Anglophone poets (such as John Donne’s juxtaposition of sexuality and philosophy) into Russian, he went on to inject formal aspects of Russian poetics into English—first in self-­translations, and then in original poems. Soon he became the main translator of his own poetry and also began to write in English, trying—first unconsciously, and then deliberately—to accommodate Russian poetics within the foreign language. A seasoned dealer in cultural import and export, Brodsky would answer the question “Are you American or Russian?”—often posed to him by journalists—thus: “A Russian poet, an English essayist—and, of course, an American citizen.” His essays were the most critically acclaimed part of his Anglophone output. Yet despite his becoming Poet Laureate of the United States in 1991, his poetry does not seem to feature on the critical map. His name does not appear in The Art of Twentieth Century American Poetry (Altieri 2009), Twentieth-Century American Poetry (MacGowan 2004), The Cambridge Introduction to Twentieth-Century American Poetry (Beach 2003), or Twentieth-Century American Poetics (Gioia, Mason, and Schoerke 2003). Only A Concise Companion to Twentieth-Century American Poetry (Fredman 2005), concise as it is, does mention Brodsky, albeit in just one sentence. True, Brodsky wrote more poems in Russian than in English, but the quantitative difference is much smaller than the scholarly imbalance warrants. This would make sense if most Brodsky scholars were Slavists—which, as it happens, almost all of them are. Though being affiliated with one department or another is not the decisive factor in research, a point of view proceeding from Brodsky’s work in English can prove fruitful, especially if the focus of analysis is his own translations. Such a perspective can help overcome an impulse that is entirely natural in a reader but not productive for research—to concentrate on the original and read the translation only to find fault. The terms original and translation, as well as source text and target text, are not unproblematic. In the chapter “Beyond Translation,” we shall see that they belong in a continuum; nevertheless, I still use them, as it would be too tiresome to talk of what-­seems-to-­be-closer-­to-translation and of what-­seems-to-­be-closer-­to-composition. My own approach has been to search the two texts for differences and attempt to explain their causes and effects. While trying to be descriptive, I have still been unable, however, to avoid covertly congratulating Brodsky on many of his solutions: having spent years studying his translations, I may as well admit that I’m not exactly impartial. Putting Brodsky on the map of American Studies is one of my aims. Discussing particular poems is another. My third goal is to advertise translation studies as a method of close reading. When comparing a given text with its translation, one may notice things about both texts, as well as their languages and cultures, that might otherwise be missed. I certainly do, and for all that a group of twenty is worth in terms of a representative experiment, so did the students on whom I conducted some modest field research. These poor souls were attending my class on poetry out of duty; their

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first attempts at close reading mostly consisted of silence or a blank sheet of paper.1 However, when asked to compare a poem with its translation or to attempt a translation of their own, they immediately became much more active. They were mostly counting losses; yet when they asked themselves “What feels wrong about this line in translation?” many for the first time noticed what felt right in the original (the idea that it might also be the other way around, though, was disturbing to most). It was not that my wondrous pedagogical talent made these students better readers in just a couple of weeks— confronted with the task of interpreting a poem without a translation as a source for comparison, most of them once again had little to say. It was not that a text in German, their native language in this case, was merely more understandable than the original, or at least not only this—most of their observations concerned the English originals. It was simply that this task was more fruitful. “Contrast and compare”—the idea is anything but new. Like “close reading,” it smacks of school. Still, it can be fruitful and fun. Dealing with very similar texts is often much more productive than contrasting vastly different ones; this applies to many disciplines. Limited as my experience is, translation analysis has led me into three fields of research. It played a supportive role in an article on genre studies (Berlina 2009), showing how Anglophone readers can take Soviet realia to be magical elements. An article on sexuality in translation (Berlina 2012) was closer to sociology than to literary studies. And now, finally, I am using translation studies within a framework which is dearest to my heart: poetics. Despite my concentration on close reading and poetic devices, I remain aware that literary translation is a form of cultural transfer. It is a great pity that comparative literature and cultural studies seem to compete more than they connect today. While this, to some degree, is the case in the West (see Raab and Thies 2008: 11), in Russia, the two disciplines are truly at war (see Berlina and Tötösy de Zepetnek 2013: 339). Translation studies as a shared tool might help unite them. This tool is immensely versatile. What translating does is to help us to get inside literature. . . . We can do this directly, by putting into our own language the literature we are studying, or indirectly, by comparing translations. . . . No matter how extensively we have studied any great writer, translation will give us new spaces for thinking about them. Rose 1997: 12–13

I am deeply indebted to Rose’s Translation as Analysis; however, there are also some points of disagreement. Firstly, my approach is not based on “Benjamin’s belief that the poet is the first translator and that many a translation is needed in order to render even with partial completeness the original inspiration” (Rose 1997: 49). Those of my readers who deal in translation studies might sigh in awe or exasperation at the name of Benjamin; those from other disciplines probably need a word of explanation. Though I am sorry if this sounds disdainful; I usually enjoy seminars immensely and have learned much from my students. This particular group, though, did not want to read poetry—but still found some pleasure in it thanks to translation.

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it has become a seminal text in translation theory, Benjamin’s famous “The Task of the Translator” always seemed to me first and foremost an exercise in Cabbalistic mysticism. The idea that a text has to be translated again and again to become “real” and “whole” (not unlike a Platonic idea) is a fascinating thought experiment, but it has little to do with the practice of translation and provides no tools for concrete text analysis. Secondly, Rose uses the term “stereoscopic reading” to designate the comparison of originals and translations. This phrase was very appealing when I first encountered it: however, it also suggests a somewhat esoteric view. It is as if a text was incomplete without a translation; as if two (and not, say, forty-­two) texts made up a three-­ dimensional whole. Rose and other translation scholars who use the term probably do not take it this literally; still, inaccurate metaphors may lead to inaccurate thinking. In regard to self-­translation, the image makes somewhat more sense—texts can be “read stereoscopically, the similarities signify[ing] as instantiations of a singular poetics in dual discourse” (Hokenson, Munson, and McMurran 2006: 206). Still, I’d rather speak of parallel or multi-­version reading to describe what happens in the present book. What I argue for is not the dominance of translation studies as a discipline but the use of translation studies as a tool. Translation analysis is an interesting way of studying literature (or culture), not the other way around. Translation studies happen to be one of the most fashionable disciplines in the humanities today, even though its proponents keep stating its marginality; the field is growing fast, establishing Ph.D. programs and taking up volumes in attempts to define itself. Theory seems to dominate over practice in translation studies. It is not my intention to jump on this train; the near-­absence of translation theory (or, rather, “Theory”) in this book is a matter of design, not an oversight. The (in-)famous attempt to épater l’académie by calling comparative literature—in a companion to this very subject—moribund and soon to be replaced by translation studies (Bassnett 1993) has been recanted (Bassnett 2006): the disciplines are now invited to go hand in hand. I would go even further. Translation studies is a form of comparative literature, and all understanding is, ultimately, comparative. Thinking means comparing something with the rest of our experience. In literary studies, comparativism can be explicit. We can compare texts sharing a language, a culture, a genre, an epoch, a theme, or an author; we can compare a text with non-­literary metatexts: historical documents, film adaptations, illustrations . . . Mostly, however, the comparison is implicit: we compare aspects of the text with each other; we compare the text to the sum of our knowledge about language, the world, the human mind. Switching from implicit to explicit comparison often makes the analysis clearer and more intellectually honest. Every translation is a metatext that can enrich the understanding of both source and target text, of their languages and cultures. Brilliant solutions can be as illuminating as misunderstandings; stylistic, psychological and sociological approaches can all be gratifying. Comparison reveals aspects of both the original and the translation that might have otherwise gone unnoticed. To me, translations are the most fruitful objects of comparison. However, there are many alternatives: studying different versions of a text, visual art and ekphrasis, novels and their film adaptations . . . Not only is translation merely one among many metatexts, its definition is also blurry. Where does translation

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start and end? Are non-­native speakers translating themselves when they write in a foreign language? Nabokov, Andrei Makine, Olga Grushin, and, for that matter, Brodsky sometimes calque Russian idioms and grammatical constructions when their Russian protagonists speak English or French. Are these phrases grains of self-­translation in the textual field? Was Brodsky’s first-­plus-last-­line method translation? Are images migrating from a Russian poem into an English one and vice versa instances of translation? The penultimate chapter of this book will examine some mixed forms that go beyond the usual definition of translation. Poetry translation and self-­translation are, to my mind, the most fascinating parts of this creative continuum, all the more alluring when combined. What fascinates me about the recreation of poetic form is what Willis Barnstone calls its “obligatory freedom”: “In the case of rhyme . . . or any formal stricture, the exigencies of the poem save the translator from the obvious and force him or her into the obligatory freedom of imaginative leaps” (Barnstone 1993: 50). In Douglas R. Hofstadter’s words, “the merging of translation with poetry gives rise to such a rich mesh of interlocking constraints that the mind goes a bit berserk in a mixture of frustration and delight” (Hofstadter 1998: xix). As regards self-­translation, it “escapes the categories of text theory, for the text is twinned” (Hokenson, Munson, and McMurran 2006: 2); its psychological aspects are intriguing: “. . . you are yourself alive when you translate, though you are translating the results of a past creative moment . . . who is translating whom in self-­translation?” (Robinson 2010: 166). The recent monograph The Bilingual Text proclaims self-­translation to be a cruelly neglected field. This is a slight overstatement: while the phenomenon itself is not very frequent, a number of self-­ translators have attracted attention. Brodsky has recently become the object of such research (for an overview of the relevant publications, see Berlina 2014). However, the studies of, say, Brodsky, Beckett and Nabokov which are not specifically dedicated to this topic rarely mention the existence of self-­translations, even when taking them into consideration would be crucial. When self-­translation is the main issue, the discussion is usually restricted to translation quality. Recently, the popular radio station Svoboda (Pomerantsev 2013) dedicated twenty minutes of a primetime show to Brodsky in English. The Brodsky broadcast claimed that the self-­translations follow the originals “word for word, including even alliterations,” rather puzzlingly marrying semantic literalism to formal recreation, and listed the Anglo-American critics’ objections. How and why the poems change in translation remained unmentioned. Still, a beginning has been made: apparently, a wide circle of listeners can be interested in the issue of self-­translation. The discussion of merit is not the most promising research topic, but some of Brodsky’s critics have been so aggressive that a lover of his poetry feels bound to swing the battle axe. I’ll refrain from quoting the slashing reviews, whose motivation was partly personal. However, even a perceptive paper whose aim was not to judge a Brodskian self-­translation but to analyze it—in fact, the first paper to do so in English— begins with several unreflected assumptions. It states that a self-­translator has “the right denied the ordinary translator of altering the original” (Molnar 1995: 333) and proceeds to express admiration for “the fact that Brodsky has the self-­restraint to take

What is it All About?

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relatively little advantage of his legitimate privilege, and has, in all, managed to subordinate the poet to the translator” (Molnar 1995: 336). Three premises are regarded as self-­evident: firstly, the “ordinary” translator has no right to “alter the original” (sic; “depart from the original semantically” is the intended meaning); secondly, the self-­ translator by definition has more rights than an “ordinary” translator; thirdly, it is better not to make use of these rights. I cannot agree with any of these. Many other critics believe that Brodsky sounds “unnatural” in English. I am no native speaker of English myself and cannot presume to judge this. However, several questions beg to be asked. Firstly, would this English be deemed awkward or interestingly unusual if it was assumed to come from a native speaker? Emily Dickinson is one such example; Brodsky’s unidiomatic turns of phrase have much in common with hers. Secondly, what would the bilingual readers’ impression be if they believed the English versions to be originals and the Russian versions to be translations? The effect is probably partly preconditioned by the a priori inferior status of translation in most minds. Thirdly, is “sounding unnatural” always a bad thing? Isn’t estrangement one goal of poetry? Dealing with such questions, the study of self-­translation can pave the way from a biographic to a text-­oriented approach. This would be very welcome in regard to Brodsky: a disproportionate amount of research is dedicated to his biography, with many publications being little more than hagiographies, denunciations or collections of anecdotal gossip. The authors of Bilingual Text find stylistics “an appropriate avenue into modern self-­translations” (Hokenson, Munson, and McMurran 2006: 166); I could not agree more. It might be added that self-­translation can be an appropriate avenue into stylistics. But before we take that route, here are some tidbits from Brodsky’s essays: What translation has in common with censorship is that both operate on the basis of the “what’s possible” principle, and it must be noted that linguistic barriers can be as high as those erected by the state. Brodsky 1986: 47–8 By lapsing inevitably into a different tonality, translation—because of its explanatory nature—somehow catches up with the original by clarifying those things which could be regarded by the author as self-­evident and thus elude the native reader. . . . Poetry after all in itself is a translation, . . . one of the aspects of the psyche rendered in language. Brodsky 1986: 99; 104 One doesn’t choose one’s meter; it’s the other way around, for meters have been longer around than any poet. They start to hum in one’s head—partly because they have been used by somebody one has just read; mostly, however, because they are themselves equivalents of certain mental states. Brodsky 1986: 325–6

And, perhaps most crucially:

8

Brodsky Translating Brodsky Civilization is the sum total of different cultures animated by a common spiritual numerator, and its main vehicle—speaking both metaphorically and literally—is translation. The wandering of a Greek portico into the latitude of the tundra is a translation. . . . The formal aspects of Mandelstam’s verse are . . . columns of this portico. To remove them . . . is to lie about what the poet has lived and died for. . . . [Meters] cannot be replaced even by each other, let alone by free verse. Differences in meters are differences in breath and heartbeat. Differences in rhyming pattern are those of brain functions. The cavalier treatment of either is at best a sacrilege, at worst a mutilation or a murder. . . . As for the readers, they buy a lie. Brodsky 1986: 139–40

Putting the last two quotations together, one might wonder whether identical meters and rhyme schemes provoke identical psychological states or associations in Russian and English. The answer is probably no—but if so, what would constitute functional equivalence? Unless some as yet undiscovered scientific method or poetic intuition tell you that, say, four-­foot Russian anapest emotionally equals five-­foot English iamb, there seem to be three ways. One, rendering poetry as prose. Two, picking a form on some external basis: word lengths and stresses in the target language, or your current mood, or just by flipping a coin. Three, recreating the original form. This third way is impossible for many language combinations, but it can be done between Russian and English, and Brodsky chose to do it (sometimes with minor alterations). If the meter and rhyme scheme are recreated, what differences remain to compare? Mostly semantic ones. Imagery, allusions, wordplay: the body (of text) whose heart beats in meters and whose brain functions in rhymes—a poem.

2

“December in Florence” 2.1  The matter of meter and the force of form There are good reasons to begin with “December in Florence.” Firstly, it was the first self-­translation Brodsky accomplished on his own. Secondly, its formal virtuosity provides rich food for analysis. Thirdly, its academic popularity allows much of the critical apparatus to be mapped out in the first chapter. Most importantly, both the Russian poem and its English counterpart are fascinating texts. In early 1980, having spent almost eight years in the US, Brodsky decided to translate one of his own poems into English, abandoning three versions by four native speakers.1 His choice was immensely Brodskian. He did not pick his most recent poem: “Dekabr’ vo Florentsii” (“December in Florence”) had been written in 1976, and was over three years old. Nor did he choose an easy text—that is, one devoid of rhyme, rhythm and realia, the three aspects which usually create the most translation difficulties. On the contrary: with its aaa tercets (often including compound rhymes) and other intricate forms of sound play,2 this poem was one of the most technically difficult objects Brodsky could possibly have chosen; it also abounds in allusions. Moreover, Brodsky opted for work least likely to be appreciated: by 1980, both rhyming triplets and compound rhymes had long been regarded as too playful for “serious” poetry by most Anglophone poets and critics. Having by then spent several years in American literary academia, Brodsky was at least theoretically aware of this. Whether he chose to ignore this opinion in the belief that unbiased readers would not share it, whether he loved rhymes in general and the poem in particular too much to care, or whether he decided upon a rhyme-­juggling tour de force out of spite, is open to discussion. My guess is that all those explanations play a role. Brodsky’s compound rhymes are a trademark feature of his poetry. One of the first scholars of his work, Kreps, points out their most striking and innovative feature: the

Brodsky was not happy with Daniel Weissbort’s translation; then Robert Lowell gave it a try (based on Barry Rubin’s interlinear). Though Brodsky admired Lowell as a friend, a poet and a connoisseur of Dante (crucial expertise in the context of this poem), he dismissed his version, too. The traces of Weissbort’s and Lowell’s work in the end result are weak; their translations remain unpublished and have only recently been unearthed (Ishov 2012). English and Kline, too, have cooperated on a translation.  2 “Sound play” is used as shorthand for all phonetic devices such as alliteration, assonance, consonance and rhyme.  1

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rhyming of function words. Brodsky did not introduce compound rhymes into Russian poetry but he naturalized them: For the first time in the entire history of Russian poetry [the compound rhyme] ceased to be regarded as an alien element. . . . the interesting thing about Brodsky’s compound rhyme is that it is uninteresting, it has nothing of its sisters’ dashing, stunning quality, for it is organic and unobtrusive—simply one of the possibilities among a dozen others . . . it works and appears natural because it deals not with word roots, but with conjunctions and prepositions. It can be said without doubt that no such rhymes have been used before Brodsky, with extremely few chance exceptions. Kreps 1984: 8,10,190

Kreps would have been even more exact if he mentioned the term “function words”—a category in which conjunctions and prepositions are only two examples. Other closed word categories in Russian include pronouns and particles; Brodsky uses both. An analytical language, English offers two additional categories: determiners and auxiliaries (modal verbs carry too much lexical meaning to count here). Brodsky makes use of these new possibilities: in “December in Florence,” “won’t,” “are” and “an” end the lines I.1, III.1 and VI.5 respectively. Overall, this self-­translation features exactly as many rhyming function words as the original. However, two of them appear in more prominent positions: “won’t” is the first rhyme word, “thence” the final one. Two years after Kreps, another Russian scholar took the step of finding the right linguistic term. The fact that his article was written without any hope of gaining academic prestige tempts me to quote it at some length. It appeared anonymously in an essay collection published in the US in Russian. At that time, publishing an article about Brodsky was not yet politically safe in the USSR. One could, however, get hold of most of his poems and study them. Vasiutochkin was the first to observe that phrases usually considered empty—“predstav’ ” (imagine), “ya dumayu” (I think), “skazhu tebe” (I tell you) etc.3—play an important role in Brodsky’s work. Vasiutochkin connects this phenomenon with Brodsky’s unusual rhyming: If parenthetical phrases at times control the narrative flow, why shouldn’t function words, those faceless lackeys, raise their heads? This is exactly what happens. For a long time and, it seems, consciously, Brodsky has had a soft spot for them. He lets them parade in full view, makes them demand attention. Which position is most active in a poetic line? The rhyming position, of course. . . . What other poet has such an abundance of function words in his rhymes? Vasiutochkin 1986: 25 [my translation here—as for all secondary Russian sources throughout, unless stated otherwise] The Translator in the Text (May 1994) analyzes the function of such seemingly empty words in Russian fiction and its translations.

 3

“December in Florence”

11

In the same volume, Sherr comments upon both the scheme and the character of rhymes in “Dekabr’ ”: One of Brodsky’s most unusual long stanzas is a 9-lined one with three rhyming triplets (AAABBBCCC), which he has employed only once yet, in “December in Florence” . . . such a rhyme scheme demands attention in itself; moreover, Brodsky stresses line endings by using types of enjambment—prepositional or conjunctional—more characteristic for English than for Russian poetry. Sherr 1986: 105

In another article, he suggests that “extreme instances of enjambment led to some highly original rhymes” (Sherr 1990: 177). Kreps seems more convincing in terms of genesis: “It was not . . . the decision in favor of enjambments that led [Brodsky] to compound rhymes including conjunctions, but the rhyming conjunctions made enjambment necessary” (Kreps 1984: 191). Twenty years later, Losev (2006: 243) remarked that Brodsky’s penchant for rhyming triplets (which he prefers over terza rima in his most Dantesque poem) is inspired by Anglophone poetry. And indeed, aaa tercets have been more frequent in English than in Russian. They constitute, for instance, Hardy’s “The Convergence of the Twain,” one of Brodsky’s favorite poems. Asked about the most interesting young American poetry, Brodsky named two texts: Schnackenberg’s poem “Supernatural Love” and Green’s collection The Squanicook Eclogues (Hammer and Daub 2002: 162). The former rhymes aaabbb throughout; the latter does so occasionally. Brodsky was also in all probability familiar with Hardy’s “Albuera,” “He Did Not Know Me,” “Tolerance” and “In the Moonlight,” with Tennyson’s “The Eagle,” Larkin’s “As Bad as a Mile” and other rhyming triplets in English.4 Most Anglophone poets in whose work Brodsky was interested have used tripartite structures, be it aaa, terza rima (sometimes in villanelles) or unrhymed tercets. Auden’s “In Memory of Ernst Toller” rhymes in triplets; other tercets appear, for instance, in “The Sea and the Mirror,” “But I Can’t,” “Archaeology,” “One Circumlocution” and “A Thanksgiving.” To combine Sherr’s and Losev’s observations: the three most striking formal features of “Dekabr’ ”—nine-­line stanzas, tercets, rhyming function words—are more typical of Anglophone than of Russian poetry. Does this mean that translation would transplant it back into its native soil, that it would sound more “natural” in English? This depends on the audience, and in 1980, most would say no: just like today, most considered formal versification passé. Brodsky does not quite fit in anywhere. He rejuvenates Russian poetry by infusing it with innovations from the US and the UK, and translates the result back into English—where its formal features appear dated to most readers.

The statement that aaa rhymes are unavoidably comical in English (Losev 2006: 243) is an exaggeration based on the misunderstanding of an interview with Derek Walcott which Losev read in translation (in Polukhina 1997: 303): what Losev takes to refer to rhyming triplets, is Walcott’s opinion about triple (dactylic) rhymes.

 4

Brodsky Translating Brodsky

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He remains alien, be it in cultural space or in time. The idea that rhyming function words produce defamiliarization (Venclova and Miller 1990: 128) is intriguing in this context. As for the rhyme scheme—Brodsky called the triplets total terzines (in Vaĭl 1995: 174): a distillation of Dante’s terza rima. Presently, we shall turn to the poem, and the role of Dante will become obvious.

2.2  “The doors take in air, exhale steam; you, however, won’t . . .” December in Florence Stanza I brodsky: russian Декабрь во Флоренции (Dekabr’ vo Florentsii, 1976) “Этот, уходя, не оглянулся . . .” Анна Ахматова rhymes Двери вдыхают воздух и выдыхают пар; но /par no/ = steam, but ты не вернешься сюда, где, разбившись попарно, /paparna/ = into pairs населенье гуляет над обмелевшим Арно, /arna/ or /arno/ = Arno напоминая новых четвероногих. Двери /dveri/ = doors хлопают, на мостовую выходят звери. /zveri/ = beasts Что-то вправду от леса имеется в атмосфере /atmasferi/ = atmosphere этого города. Это – красивый город, /gorat/ = city где в известном возрасте просто отводишь взор от /atvodish’ vzor at5/   = avert gaze from человека и поднимаешь ворот. /padnimaish’ vorat/   = raise collar literal translation December in Florence “This one, going away, did not look back . . .” Anna Akhmatova Doors inhale air and exhale steam, but/ you will not return here, where, divided into pairs,/ the public is strolling above the shallowed Arno,/ resembling new quadrupeds. Doors/ slam, beasts step onto the pavement./ There is really something forest-­like in the atmosphere/ of this city. It is a beautiful city,/ where at a certain age you simply avert [your] gaze from/ a/the human and raise [your] collar./

“December in Florence”

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brodsky: self-­translation December in Florence (1980) “He’s not returned to his old Florence, even after having died.” Anna Akhmatova The doors take in air, exhale steam; you, however, won’t be back to the shallowed Arno where, like a new kind of quadruped, idle couples follow the river bend. Doors bang, beasts hit the slabs. Indeed, the atmosphere of this city retains a bit of the dark forest. It is a beautiful city where at certain age one simply raises the collar to disengage from passing humans and dulls the gaze.

In both versions, the epigraph is taken from the opening quatrain of Akhmatova’s poem “Dante.” Brodsky heard Dante for the first time when Akhmatova recited his poetry in Italian (Volkov 1998: 138). There is hardly any need to point out the most obvious parallel between Dante and Brodsky: that of exile. Florence, Dante’s home city, keeps appearing in his poetry until his death in Ravenna; the Arno is a frequent image in the Divine Comedy. As Dante is guided by Virgil in the underworld, Brodsky is guided by Dante’s shadow in Florence. This is true even in the most mundane terms— the poem mirrors a thematic tour through the city, including a visit to the Dante museum and to his statue. Kreps, who was the first to explain Dante’s relationship to that particular poem in some detail, observes that “Florence, for Brodsky, is first of all the home of a great poet, seen with his eyes long before the real visit” (Kreps 1984: 180–5) and that “Brodsky might have experienced [Akhmatova’s] poem more keenly as he himself became an exile” (Kreps 1984: 183). Here is its first stanza: russian transliteration Anna Akhmatova, “Dante” On i posle smerti ne vernulsya V staruyu Florentsiyu svoyu. Etot, ukhodya, ne oglyanulsya, Etomu ya pesn’ poyu.

literal translation Anna Akhmatova, “Dante” Even after his death he has not returned To his old Florence. This one, going away, did not look back, It is for this one that I sing this song.

The Russian reader of Brodsky is presented with the third line as the epigraph, which is rather puzzling standing on its own. In English, in Brodsky’s own translation, which is neither metrical nor quite literal, the first two lines are used instead. Had he stayed closer to Akhmatova’s original, “Florence” would have been the epigraph’s final word— not unbefitting a poem which, at least at first sight, seems to be about Florence. However, Brodsky changes the word order to bring “died” into a more prominent Phonetically, [vzorat] would be just as justified; the pause between the two words is minimal. The same is true for [fonari i], [cherny li] and most other compound rhymes.

 5

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Brodsky Translating Brodsky

position—for which stanza seven might offer an explanation. The concept of not looking back is replaced by that of not coming back in translation; in regard to Dante and Brodsky, it is more relevant—after all, neither does come back, and both continue to look back. Switching to the first two lines of Akhmatova’s “Dante” clarifies the reference to its title hero, thus to some degree counterbalancing the fact that very few Anglophone readers will be familiar with the source of the epigraph. Russian readers who do not know their Akhmatova only learn that the poem might deal with going away and not looking back. For those who do recognize the quotation, the poem has a whole web of allusions in store. The English version is more straight-­forward and less suggestive; the city of Florence is mentioned directly. Brodsky likes his references veiled; in neither version does he disclose that Akhmatova’s poem is called “Dante.” As we shall see soon, there are enough allusions in the body of the text to point to the creator of the Divine Comedy. Even so, why does Brodsky pick the third line with its puzzling “etot” (this one) for his Russian epigraph? Does he hope to inspire readers to familiarize themselves with Akhmatova’s complete works by being so mysterious? Considering that he gave his students a reading list of about three hundred titles ranging from Gilgamesh to Ulysses, this does not seem altogether far-­fetched. However, there is also a better reason. The Russian pronouns “on” (he) and “etot” (this one) mean that Akhmatova refers not only to Dante, but also to somebody else. Kreps has been wondering about the object in his pioneering study of Brodsky’s work: “ ‘for this one I sing my song’ sounds like a poetic code; maybe it implies an unknown addressee through the prism of Dante’s image” (Kreps 1984: 183). Ten years later, Bethea has convincingly argued that the addressee is Osip Mandelstam— another exiled Russian poet. Though he died shortly before Brodsky’s birth, they had a friend in common: Akhmatova. Mandelstam was one of the five “shades” whom Brodsky named at the beginning of his Nobel speech—one of the five poets he admired most. Friends called both poets “Osya” (a short form of both “Osip” and “Iosif ” in Russian); Mandelstam’s widow dubbed Brodsky “the second Osya.” Dante meant as much to the older Osya as Auden did to the younger; all of Mandelstam’s late poetry has been called a “tormented meditation” on the Divine Comedy (Glazova 1984); Mandelstam’s passionate essay “Razgovor o Dante” (Conversation about Dante) was familiar to Brodsky. Brodsky’s connections to Mandelstam and Dante have been observed by many scholars; to quote but one: What does it mean to be a new Dante in Brodsky’s sense . . .? [it] means first and foremost taking on board and . . . surpassing Mandelstam’s . . . figuration of Dante (and himself) as a copyist-­translator, “bent over in the pose of scribe” and writing to the “dictation” of “the breathing of all ages.” Eskin 2008: 94

In the English “December in Florence,” the reference to Mandelstam is obliterated. This sacrifice was hardly avoidable: even if Brodsky explicitly dedicated the poem to Dante and Mandelstam, the latter name would say little to those Anglo-American readers who do not happen to be Slavists. While Mandelstam disappears, the references to

“December in Florence”

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Dante become more pronounced—not only in the epigraph, but also in lines 5–7 of the first stanza. In Russian, Florence merely resembles some unspecified forest; the English version provides several additions (as it often happens, partly in order to recreate the line length despite the relative shortness of English words): “Indeed, / the atmosphere of this city retains a bit / of the dark forest” [my italics]. The introductory phrase suggests agreement with somebody who had compared Florence to a forest before. The verb and the definite article indicate a particular forest. On one level, this is a reference to pre-­civilized times, when Florence was covered in woodland; the addition of the adjective “dark,” however, makes an educated reader think of the selva oscura in which Dante finds himself at the beginning of his journey into hell—and then maybe of the several times he compares Florence to a wood in the Divine Comedy. Apart from the wintry scarcity of light (the next stanza mentions lighted streetlamps), the word “dark” might suggest obscurity, secretiveness, sadness and a trace of evil. “At a certain age,” moved to the rhyming position in English, is a crucial hint—after all, it is “nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita” (halfway along our life’s path) that Dante’s poetic persona finds himself in the dark wood. Dante was thirty-­five when he wrote these lines, half of the Biblical life span of seventy. Bethea has observed the connection, wondering “whether the poem refers to a visit in December 1975 (recalled the next year) or December 1976 . . . In any event, Brodsky was close enough to Dante’s age” (Bethea 1994: 266). By now, the answer has been established by Losev—Brodsky visited Florence for the first time in December 1975, at the age of thirty-­five. Knowing Brodsky, it is not improbable that exactly this coincidence in age and place moved him to write a Dantesque poem. Despite his professed disbelief in benchmarked biographies (Brodsky 1986; 17), he did pay attention to dates. Again and again, Christmas day and the birthday of his (ex-)girl-­friend Marina Basmanova moved him to writing. Age was an obsession with him; he proposed printing in bold on the cover of each and every book how old its author was when writing it (Genis 2009b: 231–2). Moreover, he had an almost fetishistic joy in matching aspects of his life to those of his favorite poets— despite his heart condition, he even switched to “L&M,” Auden’s brand of cigarettes, from the lighter “Kent” (Pleshakov 2001; Reĭn 2004). Brodsky had medical reasons to assume that he would not live long. He perceived himself as old. Aged twenty-­four, Brodsky wrote “Ya staryy chelovek, a ne filosof ” (I am an old man, and not a philosopher) in the untranslated poem “Otryvok” (An Excerpt). In Brodsky’s perspective, turning thirty-­five signaled the ultimate arrival of old age, which he greeted in “1972 god” (The year 1972) with “Aging! Hail to thee, senility” (self-­ translation with Alan Myers). The approaching fortieth birthday meant that his life had been surprisingly long (“Ya vkhodil vmesto . . .” / “May 24, 1980”). Three weeks before he turned forty, “December in Florence” was published in English. Soon after, Brodsky wrote “Ekloga IV: Zimnyaya”: a poem about old age which states that “V opredelennom vozraste vremya goda / sovpadayet s sud’boy” / “At a certain age, the time of year, the season / coincides with fate” (“Eclogue IV: Winter,” self-­translation). For Brodsky, thirty-­five or forty is not the summer of life, not even its golden autumn—it is winter. The idea of premature old age is a poetic pose and motif, at least as old as Byron and Pushkin, but it is also personal, a reflection of Brodsky’s state of mind and health.

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Like many poets before him (including Russian ones from the 19th century on), Brodsky used Dante’s exile as a “constant poetic code for describing his own fate” (Ranchin 1998a). Two years after “December” appeared in English, Brodsky again alludes to the Divine Comedy: “V seredine zhizni, v gustom lesu, / cheloveku svoistvenno oglyadyvat’sya—kak begletsu / ili prestupniku” (“Kellomäki”) / “In mid-­life’s thick forest, in that dark wood, / man, like a runaway or, better still, a hood, / tends to glance backward” (“Kellomäki,” self-­translation). This time, the reference is clearer; the connection to looking back is expressed not in an epigraph, but in the body of the text. The Russian has only one general word for a large area covered with trees—“les” (along with many specific terms for different kinds of wood). A translator into English has to choose between “wood” and “forest.” In “Kellomäki,” Brodsky uses both—perhaps in order to make up for the lacking syllables without adding any extraneous content, or to stress the image via repetition, or to avoid choosing between “wood” and “forest.” In “December,” he picks the latter. Its two syllables, with stress on the first one, allow the general rhythmic flow to be preserved. Brodsky draws attention to “the dark forest” by drastically shortening the line (to six syllables, as opposed to the original fourteen) and adding a dramatically placed caesura—immediately before the line’s last syllable. The decision also matters semantically. To most English speakers, a forest is larger and denser than a wood. More importantly, “forest” is phonetically very similar to “Florence.” Brodsky first read the Divine Comedy in Russian, but his readers’ perception depends on the Anglophone version of the Inferno with which they are familiar. There is no consensus between translators regarding the choice between “wood” or “forest,” though the former appears somewhat more frequently. This being one of Dante’s most memorable phrases, many translators must have been tempted to choose “wood” if the currently best-­known or the most recent translation has “forest” and vice versa. Here are some examples in order of appearance: “I found myself within a forest dark” “I found me in a gloomy wood, astray” “I found myself in gloomy forest dell” “I woke to find myself in a dark wood” “I . . . woke to find myself / alone in a dark wood” “I found myself within a shadowed forest” “I found myself astray in a dark wood” “I found myself / In dark woods, the right road lost” “I came to myself in a dark wood”

(Longfellow 1867) (Cary 1888) (Plumptre 1891) (Sayers 1949) (Ciardi 1954) (Mandelbaum 1980) (Heaney 1993) (Pinsky 1996) (Hollander and Hollander 2002)

The 1993 volume Dante’s Inferno: Translations by 20 Contemporary Poets (Halpern 1993) also features both “wood” and “forest.” The formal features of “Dekabr’ ” which recall Dante are recreated in self-­translation: not only are the triplets reminiscent of terza rima, the nine nine-­lined strophes also recall the nine circles of hell and the nine spheres of heaven. The only aspect to disappear is the rhymes’ femininity—a feature which would have gone unnoticed by most readers, being of little importance in

“December in Florence”

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Anglophone prosody. (In Russian, an unmotivated mixture of masculine and feminine rhymes is regarded as a fault.) The original includes two compound rhymes: “par, no” and “vzor ot,” containing “no” (but) and “ot” (from). In English, the only rhyming function word is “it,” less unusual than a conjunction or preposition at the end of a line. The rhyme “certain age” / “disengage” arguably manages to avoid showiness, even though it consists of content words (the words are quite content to rhyme, Brodsky might have quipped). The English version contains many slant rhymes, some of which seem exact to a Russian ear. “Indeed” and “bit”/“it” are one example: in Russian, a final “d” sounds like a “t”; moreover, there is no such concept as long vs. short vowels, so that /i:/ and /i/ are experienced as one phoneme. Brodsky surely had theoretical knowledge of the differences by 1980; still, he might well have been hearing “-eed” and “it” as almost identical; he pronounces these sounds very similarly when giving interviews and readings in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In regard to rhymes, Brodsky, rather typically, fails to follow his own theoretical maxim. In 1978, he wrote to Weissbort commenting upon his translation of “Shorokh akatsii” (“Acacia’s rustle”), which also rhymes aaabbb: “if you are going to use a half-­rhyme, do it in the second line of the triplet. Never in the first or in the third” (Weissbort 1989: 225). In the first stanza of “December,” each triplet has an inexact rhyme in the first or the last line, or both: “won’t,” “kind,” “bend” / “indeed,” “bit,” “it” / “certain age,” “disengage,” “dulls the gaze.” Brodsky called the rhymes in the original poem “rather remarkable. I remember, when I had written it, I was absolutely delighted with myself, with my rhymes” (in Vaĭl 1995: 174). He always appreciated compound rhymes; still, such lavish self-­praise is unusual for him. What is so special about the Russian rhymes? In the first stanza, all are exact except for the first two; their final vowels are /o/ and /a/ respectively. These endings are united by Arno—its name is pronounced somewhere between /arna/ and /arno/ in Russian. Rhyming an Italian toponym with two Russian words is tricky in itself; strengthening their phonetic connection while doing so is quite a feat. It remains to be seen whether the other stanzas offer anything similar. It has been suggested that “The reflections on the Arno change people into four-­ legged predators . . . here it is the law of the jungle that obtains” (Bethea 1994: 64). However, a reflection cannot turn two legs into four; this does not work visually. It is not the river which transforms people into quadrupeds, but the fact that they walk in twos. Moreover, these creatures are not necessarily predatory (unlike in canto XIV of Purgatory, where Dante calls Florentines “wolves”). Though Bethea is talking about the original here, he might be influenced by the self-­translation: the slangy “beasts hit the slabs” is both phonetically and semantically more aggressive than the original. Among Brodsky’s reasons for choosing “beasts” over “animals” might be the parallel to the Shakespearean “beasts with two backs.” Another reference that comes to mind is Plato’s idea of four-­legged, four-­armed pre-­humans who have been separated, and of love as an attempt to re-­unite these halves. The words “poparno” / “couples” are relevant here: in Russian, “sparivat’sya” (copulate)—derived from “para” (pair)—is the most frequent word for animal coitus. In English, the word “couples” can be used as a verb and is both etymologically and phonetically connected to “copulation.” The themes of coalescence

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and four-­legged humans, as well as animalistic romance reappear in “Kentavry” / “Centaurs.” In translation, the attribute “idle” is added to the description of the couples. Though Brodsky professed to share the belief of many writers—the fewer adjectives, the better (Brodsky 1986: 314)—he often adds some in translation. Often, they serve as metrical fillers, but there is mostly more to it. “Follow the river bend,” for instance, does not capture the original leisurely “gulyayet” (stroll) without “idle.” Moreover, the adjective reappears in stanza seven, in the poignant “your idle fears / of dying.” The stanza begins with “Taking in air, exhaling steam, the doors / slam shut in Florence” and deals with the theme of love; the re-­appearance of the word “idle” creates an additional parallel. Other adjectives added in the English version of the first stanza also have semantic functions: “dark” points to Dante; “passing beauty” might be read not only in its primary sense of “a beautiful woman who is walking past” but also as “the state of beauty which is temporary,” as opposed to the two-­thousand-year-­old city. This city is the poem’s most obvious and most constant topic. Poetry written in and about Italian cities abounds in Western poetry, especially since Goethe’s famous journey. In the two-­ hundred-year-­long tradition of poets visiting Italy, it was almost universally eulogized. What about this poem—is Florence beautiful here? The speaker bluntly states that it is. Kreps (1984: 185) regards the phrase “eto–krasivyi gorod,”—which Brodsky renders into English quite literally as “it / is a beautiful city,”—as “unbelievably unpoetic” and hence ironic, if not downright sarcastic. To Kreps, the city in the poem is repellent. The inhabitants of Florence, he believes, “seem animal-­like to the Russian poet, hence the juxtaposition ‘people-­beasts’ and then the transition to a forest as their location” (Kreps 1984: 184). Though this is the sequence in which the similes appear in the poem, it seems more probable that their logic developed in the opposite order. By referring to Brodsky’s Russianness, Kreps suggests that Italians appear less human to the poet than his compatriots—this is certainly not the case. If emotional reasons played any role in the animalization of Florentines, the most probable one is jealousy: Brodsky was without a second pair of legs, without a lover, alone. Brodsky’s book-­length essay Watermark illustrates how much his ability to enjoy a city depended on the human element. Quite mundanely and simply, you can observe beauty without enjoying it if you are wet, cold and lonely, as Brodsky was during that visit to Florence (see Vaĭl 1995: 175). Moreover, animalistic imagery connects the poem to Dante. To Kreps, the city and its inhabitants seem disgusting; to Bethea, they are dangerous: “The doors in Florence open and close with the rhythms of a sinister living body . . . These hinged orifices conjure up the gates of Hell” (Bethea 1994: 64). The Bosch-­like vision of mouths spitting out new quadrupeds is not traditionally pretty, but Hell is not the only possible association: Könönen (2003: 280) calls Brodsky’s Florence a “Paradise lost.” The perception of the city is as varied as that of the rhyme scheme: one scholar believes that tercets are “lacking . . . natural symmetry” and hence “inherently unsettling to the reader” (William Baer 2006: 128), while another compares them to three-­legged stools, stating that they are “more stable” than quatrains and couplets (Davies 2006). The statements having been made in the same year, this is not a matter of perception

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changing over time. In the end, it is not the chosen rhyme scheme which determines the degree of (in-)stability, it is what you do with it.

2.3  “Sunk in raw twilight, the pupil blinks but gulps . . .” December in Florence Stanza II brodsky: russian Глаз, мигая, заглатывает, погружаясь в сырые сумерки, как таблетки от памяти, фонари; и твой подъезд в двух минутах от Синьории намекает глухо, спустя века, на причину изгнанья: вблизи вулкана невозможно жить, не показывая кулака; но и нельзя разжать его, умирая, потому что смерть – это всегда вторая Флоренция с архитектурой Рая

rhymes /syryi/ = damp/raw /fanari i/ = streetlamps and /sin’orii/ or /sin’arii/ = Signoria /veka na/ = centuries to /vulkana/ = volcano /kulka no/ = fist but /umiraya/ = dying /vtaraya/ = second /raya/ = Paradise

literal translation An/the eye, blinking, swallows, immersing itself into the damp/raw/ dusk, like pills against memory, streetlamps; and/ your doorway two minutes away from the Signoria/ voicelessly hints, centuries later, at/ the cause of exile: near a/the volcano/ it is impossible to live without showing a/the fist; but/ neither can one unclench it when dying,/ because death is always a/the second/ Florence with the architecture of Paradise./ brodsky: self-­translation Sunk in raw twilight, the pupil blinks but gulps the memory-­numbing pills of opaque streetlamps. Yards off from where the Signoria looms, the doorway, centuries later, suggests the best cause of expulsion: one can’t exist by a volcano and show no fist, though it won’t unclench when its owner dies. For death is always a second Florence in terms of size and its architecture of Paradise.

In the previous stanza, “gaze” has moved to the final position, balancing out the fact that “glaz” (eye) does not open the second stanza in English. Instead, the word “pupil”

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Brodsky Translating Brodsky

appears in the middle of the first line; the opposite switch takes place in stanza 8: “zrachok” (pupil) is rendered as “eye.” A literalist might complain that a pupil does not blink; however, it does expand in the dark and contract in reaction to light—this motion is similar to “gulping,” in which the mouth opens, lets the food in, and closes again. Streetlamps can look like large yellowish capsules; visually, the image of “memory-­numbing pills” works. Their exact function is a matter of interpretation: does the light prevent the speaker from mistaking Florence for Leningrad6 with its similarities in weather and architecture? In any case, as Könönen (2003: 119) perceptively observes, “the pills of the streetlamps by the river Arno assume the role of the river Lethe.” “Syryye” can be translated as “raw” or “damp”/“moist.” The latter versions appear more relevant: “damp dusk”—sure, but “raw dusk”? Besides, dampness parallels the steam in the poem’s first line. There is no metrical reason to prefer “raw,” either. Still, it is this adjective that Brodsky picks7—probably because of its ambiguity. A meaning of “raw” which is immediately connected to the context is listed in Webster’s: “disagreeably damp or cold ‘a raw winter day.’ ” In addition, “twilight” can be associated with “raw” in the sense of “unready”—the dusk as a raw form of night. Cold weather and the gulping of pills suggest another form of rawness: a sore throat. Thus, Brodsky finds a match for the original semantic plurality. Bethea (1994: 70) suggests that “pod’ezd” (doorway, entrance) is a Sovietism which points to Leningrad, the poem’s true location. In the light of the final stanza this suggestion is understandable; however, “pod’ezd” is a neutral Russian word which existed both before and after the USSR, used by anti-Soviet and pre-Soviet authors from Nabokov to Nekrasov; it can be applied to buildings anywhere in the world. There really is, however, a Russianism in this stanza: “show [no] fist” is calqued; in English, one shakes one’s fist at somebody. In this case, the object of the empty threat, the “volcano,” is the Signoria (near which Dante actually lived) as a metonym for power— here housed the Senate which finally expelled the poet, though perhaps not quite as violently as a volcano expels lava. The volcano can also function as a means to descend towards the inside of the Earth, or the Netherworld. As regards location pointers, the English version of the third line creates an unexpected connection to the US or the UK—neither Russians nor Italians measure distances in yards. A similar phenomenon arises in “Brise Marine,” when foods craved by the addressee (exotic but available in Soviet Russia) become the impossible “curry and dates from Senegal” in translation—it appears that Brodsky thinks in terms of the language in which is he working, not of the culture about which he is talking. “Death is always a second Florence” refers to a scene in the Divine Comedy in which a Florentine church appears in the eighth sphere of heaven (Kreps 1984: 185). The change of the epigraph to “He has not returned to his old Florence, even after having died” in translation contrasts with this phrase and makes it more poignant. In Russian, it sounds very didactic, largely because of the copula metaphor: the formula “something This book will call the city Leningrad when referring to the period when that was its name; otherwise, or if the time is unclear or unimportant, it will be called St. Petersburg. He repeats this decision in “Folk Tune,” where damp also seems a more “natural” choice.

 6

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is something” is rare in Russian poetry; Brodsky uses it atypically often (Polukhina 1986). In the original, the statement is supported by sound: /raya/ (Paradise) is contained both in /umiraya/ (dying) and /vtaraya/ (second). In English, the tone of finality is strengthened by the introduction of a period after line seven; the two final lines form a separate sentence beginning with an antiquated “for.” It has been stated that “the most obvious reminiscences of the St. Petersburg city-­scape are in Section One, where the city is described as вторая Флоренция [second Florence]” (Könönen 2003: 98). Even putting aside the fact that Könönen is actually quoting section two, this statement is far from being obvious, unless St. Petersburg equals death. Both Bethea and Könönen strive to prove that the city described in this poem actually is Brodsky’s home city, and this preconception sometimes stands in the way of analysis. To return to sound—the rhyme “syryye” (raw/moist) / “Sin’orii” (Signoria) is striking. A foreign and euphonic word is juxtaposed to what is commonly regarded as the most Asian and the least agreeable of all Russian phonemes. The deep-­throated “ы”—a mixture of “u” and “i,” fittingly enough rendered as grave-­like “i–”in the International Phonetic Alphabet—is experienced as painfully ugly by many native speakers. Brodsky is no exception; he dedicates this vowel to the title heroine of his “Portret tragedii” / “Portrait of a Tragedy”: “Iz glasnykh, idushchikh gorlom, / vyberi ‘ы,’ pridumannoe mongolom./ Sdelay yego sushchestvitel’nym, sdelay yego glagolom, / narechy’em i mezhdometiem.” / “Among our vowels, / pick out the yi, born in the Mongol bowels, / and turn it, ripping our gushing ovals, / into a noun, a verb, an adjective!” (Brodsky’s self-­translation). There are good reasons (Losev 2006: 283) to believe that Brodsky was familiar with Batiushkov’s 1811 letter on the Russian language: “This is a rather bad language, rather coarse, it has a Tatar stink. What is that Ы . . .?” (Batiushkov 1985: 252). “Ы” is never used in words derived from Latin, Greek and modern Western languages. It is very strange to see /syryi/—a short word with two /y/, a rarity in itself—rhyme with the name of an Italian building. Is it a rhyme at all, if the vowels are so different? Brodsky makes it work, as the remaining phonemes in /syryi/ do correspond to those of /sin’orii/, and the two /i/ are as close as a foreign word can come to two /y/. The middle part of the triplet is /fanari i/, one of this stanza’s three compound rhymes. Again, the central vowel in the Russian pronunciation of the foreign word is ambiguous (between /a/ and /o/). Here, just as in the previous stanza, the first triplet contains a compound rhyme and, as its final word, an Italian proper name.

2.4  “Cats check at noon under benches . . .” December in Florence Stanza III rhymes В полдень кошки заглядывают под скамейки,   проверяя, черны ли /cherny li/ = whether black тени. На Старом Мосту – теперь его починили – /pachinili/ = repaired

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Brodsky Translating Brodsky где бюстует на фоне синих холмов Челлини, /chelini/ or /chilini/ = Cellini /branzuletkay/ = junk jewelry бойко торгуют всяческой бранзулеткой; /za vetkay/ = after sprig волны перебирают ветку, журча, за веткой. И золотые пряди склоняющейся за редкой /za retkay/ = for rare /karobak/ = boxes вещью красавицы, роющейся меж коробок под несытыми взглядами молодых торговок, /targovak/ = vendors кажутся следом ангела в державе черноголовых. /chernagalovykh/   = blackheaded literal translation At noon cats take a look under benches, checking whether the shadows are black. On the Old Bridge—now repaired—,/ where Cellini is *being a bust* against the background of blue hills,/ [they] briskly trade in all kinds of junk jewelry;/ waves look over sprig, warbling, after sprig./ And a/the beauty’s golden hair strands when she is leaning down towards a rare thing, rummaging among boxes/ under the unsated gazes of young market women/ seem like the trace of an angel in a/the empire of the blackheaded./ brodsky: self-­translation Cats check at noon under benches to see if the shadows are black, while the Old Bridge (new after repair), where Cellini is peering at the hills’ blue glare, buzzes with heavy trading in bric-­a-brac. Flotsam is combed by the arching brick. And the passing beauty’s loose golden lock, as she rummages through the hawkers’ herd, flares up suddenly under the arcade like an angelic vestige in the kingdom of the dark-­haired.

Here, unlike in the first two stanzas, the target language grammar does not allow the meaning of each line to be contained within a corresponding English line. In the absence of Russian constructions like *And golden hair strands of leaning down for rare thing beauty, the sentence structure becomes more dynamic, supporting the substitute of the swift and active “flares up suddenly” for the passive “kazhutsya” (seem). Another construction simplified in self-­translation is the one that I have rendered as “look over sprig, warbling, after sprig”; it is as unidiomatic in Russian. The English version of this particular stanza sounds less “foreign” than the original; Brodsky neutralizes the strangeness of this phrase along with “byustuyet.” This neologism (first coined by Brodsky in a 1971 rhymed letter to Golyshev) differs in only one letter/sound from “bastuyet” (is on strike) and is derived from “byust” (bust). The word sounds ironic; this effect is supported by “na fone” (against the background of)—Cellini, a mannerist, seems to have deliberately found a flattering backdrop. On its own, the neologism

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could be taken to mean “being a bust” or “making a bust.” The latter meaning might play a role, Cellini being a sculptor, but the former is the obvious reading, as the line refers to Cellini’s bronze bust on the Ponte Vecchio. Posing as his own bronze copy becomes Cellini’s afterlife. What can a translator do about a neologism? Brodsky could hardly have rendered the new verb as “busting,” as a homonym exists. “Statueing” or “monumenting” might have been tried, but these lengthy approximations are much clumsier than the original and would be difficult to fit into the meter. An alternative translation by Maurice English and George Kline does not include a neologism, either, but offers an interesting solution in which not the bust, but the bridge becomes active: “the Ponte Vecchio, rebuilt again, and thrusting / Cellini’s bust against the blue hills yonder” (English 1982: 20). English and Kline began to work at this translation before Brodsky decided to take the matter into his own hands; however, it was published in 1982, after the self-­ translation. This is a rare case—unfortunately. One of the few downsides to self-­ translation is that it takes a very brave poet-­translator (and a rather unconventional publisher) for a new attempt to follow it. While major literary works are usually retranslated, sometimes more than once by each generation, the presence of an authorial version presents a major “translator’s block” (Nabokov’s Russian Lolita is one example). Instead, multiple translations could be the blocks of which a poem’s perception outside its country is built. Even if the self-­translation happens to be superior overall (which is not automatically the case), a poem still consists of details; even a single interesting solution (like the thrusting bridge) makes the reading of an alternative version worthwhile. The esoteric idea that a growing multitude of translations literally constitutes the after-­life of a literary text chimes in nicely with the image of Cellini’s bust as his posthumous self; Walter Benjamin’s religious implications aside, I myself believe that every additional translation is a bonus.8 But let us return to the poem. Like Beatrice leading Dante to a beatific vision, the blond woman appears “like an angelic vestige.” The original “sled” could be translated as “trace” or “footstep”; the choice of “vestige” adds the connotation of a vestigial organ, a rudiment—as if people were descended from angels and halo-­like golden hair was something akin to a tail. This ironic twist is in tune with the mundanity of the angelic creature rummaging among cheap jewels while cats search for shadow. In a 1995 interview, Brodsky, a great lover of cats, said: “A cat, especially in Italy, . . . is an abridged lion [sic; the original choice of adjective is unusual]. The same as us, abridged Christians, While welcoming English and Kline’s brave publication, I cannot desist from pointing out the most problematic aspect of their version—the rhyme scheme. A translation can decide to depart from the original, but hardly without a reason. The first three stanzas by English and Kline are convincing in their choice: instead of triplets, they use terza rima. This option is easier, of course, but it is also justified by the Dantesque theme. Then, however, the scheme disintegrates; in stanza four, for instance, the rhyme words read “letters / work / consider / word / instead / blood / splattered / way / paper.” With slant rhymes, definition is a matter of argument, but even a generous one would result in abcbddaef—interesting, but not terza rima. Kline’s ideas of what constitutes a rhyme are somewhat unusual: “withering/thing,” for instance, is to him “an exact rhyme” (Kline 1989, 101), as if identical endings were the key, even if only one of them is stressed. A haphazard scheme takes away too much from what constitutes the essence of “Dekabr’ ”

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yes; Christians in miniature” (Reĭn 1995). Both cats and an “abridged angel” appear in this stanza. Apart from “vestige,” another aspect of the self-­translation questions the vision’s divinity, if taken metaphorically: a “passing beauty” is the opposite of eternal beauty; the swiftness and suddenness added in English conspire with this reading. Once the blond angel makes her appearance, the rhymes slacken in Russian: they are not merely slant, but partly owe their existence to grammatical endings. Like most Russian poets, Brodsky professed to disdain such rhymes. In English, the final “arcade” (or rather “under the arcade,” with its supporting /d/) forms an unusual and beautiful rhyme with “dark-­haired.” It is almost the opposite of an eye-­rhyme: while letters (“c” / “k”) or at least their order (“de” / “ed”) differ, phonetically the words are relatively close. To my (and perhaps Brodsky’s?) Russian eye and ear, at least, the idiosyncratic spelling peculiar to the English language makes such rhymes more interesting. In Russian, the relationship between sound and written form is much less erratic, and such rhymes are hard to find. More importantly, in the first three stanzas, the first triplet’s final rhyme word is an Italian proper name: Arno, Signoria, Cellini—a river, a building, a person. Just like /arno/ or /arna/, as well as /sin’arii/ or /sin’orii/, the name in stanza three can be pronounced as /chilini/ or /chelini/, closer to /pachinili/ and /cherny li/ respectively. Thus, in all three stanzas the Italian word includes a vowel whose sound shifts between those of the two Russian rhyme words, connecting and complementing them. This is also the case in stanza VI with /larentsa/ or /larentso/. This pattern domesticates the foreign and foreignizes the Russian, foreshadowing the relationship between Florence and Leningrad to be revealed in the final stanza.

2.5  “A man gets reduced to pen’s rustle on paper . . .” December in Florence Stanza IV brodsky: russian Человек превращается в шорох пера на бумаге,   в кольца, петли, клинышки букв и, потому что скользко, в запятые и точки. Только подумать, сколько раз, обнаружив “м” в заурядном слове, перо спотыкалось и выводило брови! То есть, чернила честнее крови, и лицо в потемках, словами наружу – благо так куда быстрей просыхает влага – смеется, как скомканная бумага.

rhymes /kol’tsa/ = rings /skol’zka/ = slippery /skol’ka/ = how many /slove/ or /slovi/ = word /brovi/ = eyebrows /krovi/ = blood /blaga/ = luckily /vlaga/ = moisture /bumaga/ = paper

literal translation A/the human is being transformed into a/the quill’s rustle on paper, into rings,/ loops, little wedges of letters, and also, because it’s slippery,/

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into commas and periods. Just to imagine, how often,/ discovering an “м” in an ordinary word,/ the quill stumbled and drew eyebrows!/ This is to say, ink is more honest than blood,/ and a/the face in the dark, words [inside] out—luckily,/ this way moisture dries much quicker—/ laughs like crumpled paper./ brodsky: self-­translation A man gets reduced to pen’s rustle on paper, to wedges, ringlets of letters, and also, due to the slippery surface, to commas and periods. True, often, in some common word, the unwitting pen strays into drawing—while tackling an “M”—some eyebrows: ink is more honest than blood. And a face, with moist words inside out to dry what has just been said, smirks like the crumpled paper absorbed by shade.

A man becomes a letter. Or: the man becomes a letter? Or: a man becomes the letter? This stanza often forces the translator to choose an article: a or the (hu-)man, face, pen, paper? Interestingly, writing implements become more concrete than references to humans in translation. “A man gets reduced” and “the unwitting pen” are to some degree demanded by the original context and the target language. The other two decisions are more unexpected: the final line becomes “smirks like the crumpled paper”; “litso” is translated as “a face” even though it appears in the previous sentence. The face’s anonymity in translation is supported by the addition of “some” to “eyebrows”; this qualification almost denies that they belong to a face: “some eyebrows” could refer to any number of solitary eyebrows. Brodsky might have missed this surreal touch— after all, he had spent fewer than eight years in the US when translating—or else he might have consciously introduced this element of estrangement. In any case, “some” tones down the importance of these particular eyebrows; so does the switch from an exclamation mark to a colon. In general, exclamation marks appear less frequently in English than in Russian texts. Brodsky could have curbed his use of exclamation marks in all self-­translations to suit target language conventions— but he did not, as demonstrated by other poems (particularly “Lithuanian Nocturne”). Brodsky’s poetry became calmer as years went by, but the difference between 1976 and 1980 is hardly significant enough. Instead, there appears to be a connection to “eyebrows” sliding away from the rhyming position into the next line. This change, prompted by considerations of rhythm or rhyme, might have led to a readjustment of emphasis. Or else, these alterations might have both resulted from a wish to make the stanza sound more like deliberation, less like surprised confession. The letter-­turning-into-­face image is very Brodskian: “There are any number of instances in Brodsky’s poetry where an object coincides with either its name or an

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aspect of language” (Murphy 2004: 108). As Brodsky (1980: 151) explains, this particular image is an allusion to the medieval concept, mentioned in the Divine Comedy, according to which facial features represent the letters of the word OMO (human) in the phrase OMO DEI. The exact point of reference is Purgatorio, XXIII: 31–33: “Parean occhiaie anella sanza gemme; / chi nel viso delli uomini legge ‘omo’ / ben avria quivi conosciuta l’emme” / “He who reads ‘omo’ / in men’s faces would have easily made out the ‘m.’ ” (Dante; Hollander 2004). The M is spread over the eyes of the O’s, like this: ^°^° . Perhaps Brodsky did draw a face around the letter “M” while writing; he had a penchant for doodling. Szymak-Reiferowa (1993: 212) supposes that “M” might allude to Brodsky’s life-­long passion Marina Basmanova.9 The image of straying into drawing your ex-­lover’s face, reminded by a mere letter of her name, is compelling, especially considering that Basmanova’s eyebrows were prominent both in her face and in Brodsky’s poems. Moreover, a fourth rhyme word comes to mind when considering the central triplet: /lyubovi/ (love) rhymes with /slovi/, /brovi/ and /krovi/. The theme of love does not appear in the stanza directly, but the association is strong, as after an /-ovi/ in rhyming position a Russian reader is prone to expect /lyubovi/. Later, it has been proposed, for instance, that the letter might refer to Mandelstam; this idea takes into consideration that “in Mandel’shtam’s lyrics ‘eyebrows’ is a recurrent motif, related often to architectonic forms and patterns, to cupolas and arches” (Könönen 2003: 112). Two aspects of the Anglophone publication lessen the reader’s inclination to ask whose face this might be: “some” is added; the authorial comment appended to the publication explains the reference to OMO and thus discourages any further search. The image becomes more general. It is this general meaning which features most prominently in Brodsky’s Nobel lecture: “Into the little zeros with which the champions of the common good and the rulers of the masses tend to operate, art introduces a ‘period, period, comma, and a minus’, transforming each zero into a tiny human, albeit not always pretty, face.” (Brodsky 1987) To my knowledge, the parallel to “December” has not been observed before, though it is striking: apart from Dante and his own experience, the fourth stanza’s key image might well have been inspired by the Russian nursery rhyme Brodsky quotes in his speech (and also in his long poem “Predstavlenie”). The relevant lines are “tochka, tochka, zapiataia—vyshla rozhitsa krivaia” (period, period, comma—[they] make up a crooked little physiognomy). In “Dekabr’,” the process is both repeated and reversed: the writing person is turned into periods and commas; then a letter gives birth to a face. In the Nobel lecture—his most important public statement—Brodsky quotes a children’s poem while making the crucial point. However, this self-­irony is only accessible to Russian readers and listeners; it would have been hard to accommodate a footnote in a speech, and Rubin, whose translation was used during the Nobel ceremony, renders the quotation into English without any further comment. The Anglophone audience might or might not guess that two periods, like the two O’s in OMO, stand for eyes, that a comma denotes a nose, and a minus (added by Brodsky to A year later, Bethea (1994: 72), apparently unaware of the Polish article, also discovers the possible romantic reference.

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the classic version of the nursery rhyme) a mouth. At least, these marks are identical in English and Russian. But most letters differ. How, then, do you translate a letter? Brodsky solves this unusual task by means of capitalization—the Roman minuscule “m” differs from the Cyrillic “м,” but the capital “M” is identical. A curious synthesis takes place in translation: the “M” in OMO is Roman; the “м” in “Dekabr’ ” is Cyrillic; the “M” in “December” could be either. A similar threefold process constitutes the key metaphor of the stanza—a human becomes written text; a part of the text becomes a human face; the face resembles paper. Though much attention has been paid to this image, this astounding taking back and restating of the transformation has not yet been mentioned. With “text” and “human” referring to the respective word fields, in this stanza, human becomes text becomes human becomes text. Arguably, the laughing face is not only the one drawn around the “M” but also that of the anonymized third person protagonist.10 If so, human becomes text becomes human, and simultaneously human becomes and remains text. The whole stanza forms a single shifting human-­as-text image, and this image is affected by every detail changing in translation. The ungendered “chelovek” (human) becomes “a man,” bringing the protagonist somewhat closer to the author. The word “pero,” whose primary meaning is “feather,” suggests a quill in the context of writing. However, it is possible for a Russian reader to imagine a more modern implement, as a fountain pen can be called “vechnoye pero” (eternal feather). This expression has poetic appeal, especially since already in the 1970s it was sufficiently outdated to make the literal meaning more salient. The Russian word for pen, “ruchka,” can refer to a fountain pen—Brodsky preferred them to ballpoints— but not to a quill. The word used in English, “pen,” can mean both. If a reader sees Brodsky or Dante as this stanza’s protagonist, this detail is important: Dante used a quill, Brodsky a fountain pen. The ambiguity is crucial, and hence in both Russian and English, a hypernym is chosen; neither is quite symmetrical. In Russian, it is closer to “quill” and thus to Dante; in English, closer to modern writing equipment and thus to Brodsky. The word “pero” appears again in this stanza and later; fulfilling the demand of continuity, it is again rendered as “pen”—with additional interesting side-­effects, as we shall see later. The emotionally neutral “prevrashchayetsya” (is transformed) becomes “gets reduced.” This has two implications. Firstly, “text” is less than “human”—but less is not necessarily negative. Considering that Brodsky professed to regard himself as a means for language to come into being as poetry, “reduced” can well mean “distilled.” Secondly, “text” (language) is inherently present in “human,” writing merely materializes this presence. The English version is closer to “Chast’ rechi” / “Part of Speech” with its “ostaetsya chast’ / rechi” / “What gets left of a man amounts / to a part . . . of speech”. The moral drawn from Most critics disregard the latter possibility; Loseff (1991: 37) seems unaware of the former. Among the students in my class, about half saw the crumpled face as a drawing, another half as a poetic persona; nobody has suggested both meanings. Not only does this stanza deal with multiple transformations; it also contains an ambiguity of which most readers are unaware: somewhat like the Rubin vase/profile illusion, most only see one of the meanings at any one time. Another ambiguity is added in translation: “to dry what has just been said” can suggest both taking back the words and the opposite, making them permanent.

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the transformation—“ink is more honest than / blood”—is, even in the original, grammatically closer to “blood is thicker than water” than to its Russian equivalent, “krov’ ne voda/voditsa” (blood is not water). Both sayings stress the strength of family bonds, but only the English one contains explicit comparison. Ink and blood are the only liquids explicitly named in this stanza, but is there not also a hint of tears? We are now turning to the final triplet. Kumakhova (2006: 264) sees the changes in translation as a means of clarification: “Not only does the English text have the insertion moist, it also explains, by using the paraphrase what has been said, that it is words that will dry.” But is it not rather curious that the translation introduces speech into the image of solitary writing? This phrase is not to be taken literally; spoken words cannot dry. The Russian version with its ambiguous “vlaga” (moisture), combined with the self-­translation, can fashion an explanation—when the words are out, tears dry quicker; talking can keep one from crying. This reading smacks of pop-­psychology, but it explains the incongruity of “what has been said” and agrees with suggestion of crying in stanza VIII. The English version adds an allusion to the expression “to turn one’s words inside out.” The pun is supported by the enjambment—is a “face with moist words inside” hung “out to dry,” or should “inside out” be read in one go, despite the line break? The idea of duplicity is developed further with the transformation of the neutral “smeyetsya” (laughs) into “smirks.” For metrical reasons, the circular neatness of the original could not be recreated. In Russian, the stanza’s first word is “chelovek” (human), the last “bumaga” (paper); the central image is condensed in two words. Brodsky’s favorite exercise comes to mind—“translating” a poem while familiar only with its first and its final line; given the beginning and the end of this stanza, one could almost guess at the middle. In English, the last word is “shade.” It interacts with the beginning of the previous stanza and adds yet another progression—while paper absorbs words, shade absorbs paper.

2.6  “Quays resemble stalled trains . . .” December in Florence Stanza V brodsky: russian rhymes Набережные напоминают оцепеневший поезд. /poist/ = train Дома стоят на земле, видимы лишь по пояс. /poyas/ = waist Тело в плаще, ныряя в сырую полость /polast’/ = cavity рта подворотни, по ломаным, обветшалым /obvetshalym/ = decrepit плоским зубам поднимается мелким шагом /melkim shagam/ = small   steps к воспаленному небу с его шершавым /shirshavym/ = rough/coarse неизменным “16”; пугающий безголосьем, /bisgalos’em/ = voicelessness звонок порождает в итоге скрипучее “просим,   просим”: /prosim/ = welcome в прихожей вас обступают две старые цифры “8.” /vosim’/ = eight

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literal translation Quays resemble a/the petrified train./ Houses stand on the earth, visible only from the waist up./ A/the body in a coat, diving into the raw/damp cavity/ of a/the gateway’s mouth, mounts the broken, decrepit,/ flat teeth with small steps/ toward the inflamed palate with its coarse/ invariable “16”; frighteningly voiceless,/ a/the bell in the end gives birth to a rasping “welcome, welcome”:/ in the hallway, you are surrounded by two old figures “8.”/ brodsky: self-­translation Quays resemble stalled trains. The damp yellow palazzi are sunk in the earth waist-­down. A shape in an overcoat braves the dank mouth of a gateway, mounts the decrepit, flat, worn-­out molars toward their red, inflamed palate with its sure-­as-fate number 16. Voiceless, instilling fright, a little bell in the end prompts a rasping “Wait!” Two old crones let you in, each looks like the figure 8.

The doors-­as-mouths image from the very beginning of the poem is fleshed out here. This particular orifice belongs to the Dante museum which Brodsky visited during his stay in December 1985. The image is ungainly—the teeth are bad, the palate inflamed; the poem’s weather is certainly conductive to colds. As in stanza II, Brodsky picks the less obvious of the two possible translations for “syruyu.” When the context seemed to require “damp,” the choice was “raw”; here, we enter a “dank mouth.” The English language offered Brodsky a word denoting not as much humidity as unpleasantness— an opportunity to strengthen the clammy atmosphere in translation. Moreover, “damp” is added in the first line, in rhyming position. On the other hand, “nyryayet” (diving; “plunging” in English and Kline’s version) is rendered as “braves,” negating watery connotations such as running inside a house to shelter from rain. The representation of the house is reminiscent of Mandelstam’s “i tesnye doma— zubov molochnykh ryad / na desnakh starcheskikh kak bliznetsy stoyat” (“Yazyk bulyzhnika . . .”): “and cramped houses—a row of milk teeth / stand on gerontic gums like twins” (“The language of the stone”); the earlier poet compares houses to single teeth, not to mouths (Zholkovskiĭ 1986: 589). The similarity is indeed striking, considering the importance of Mandelstam for this poem: the dental image is just as unpleasant, and this unpleasantness is just as unusual—after all, Mandelstam is talking about Paris. The US made Brodsky aware of the state of his own teeth; to judge by the abundant references to them in his poetry, he could well be identifying with the decrepit house. The 1972 “V ozernom krayu” (In the Lake District), for instance, opens with the words “V te vremena v strane zubnykh vrachey” (In those times, in the country

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of dentists [the US]) and proceeds to this self-­description: “Ya, pryachushchiy vo rtu / razvaliny pochishche Parfenona” (“I, hiding in my mouth / Parthenon-­like ruins”). Terms from a dentist’s lexicon appear in both versions of “December”—in Russian, it is “polost’ ” (cavity), in English “molars” (instead of unspecific “zuby,” teeth). In the original, the teeth are described as “lomanye” (broken). Könönen (2003: 124) points out that this adjective can be used in reference to speech: “broken language . . . suggests that one is not in one’s own linguistic environment.” The steps in Dante’s house are surrounded by their native Italian; however, the image of teeth often carries autobiographical implications in Brodsky’s poetry. The more obvious autobiographical persona is, of course, “telo v plashche” / “[a] shape in an overcoat.” Loseff (1991: 37) observes that the pronoun “I” rarely appears in poems staged outside Russia, and that “Dekabr’ ” goes a step further than “Laguna” (Lagoon) and “Temza v Chelsi” (The Thames in Chelsea) which both speak of “chelovek v plashche” (human in an overcoat). Depersonalization in a foreign city had long become a Brodskian signature by 1988, when he was talking to his friend Evgenii Reĭn: Brodsky: If I find myself somewhere new, I always try to kind of live there, not to do sight-­seeing. The last thing I do is going to a museum . . . [in a foreign city] you are a comma in some gigantic book . . . [you are] nobody Reĭn: A man in an overcoat . . . Brodsky: A man in an overcoat, yes . . . Reĭn 1996

Brodsky did go to a museum in Florence, but his Dantesque tour is arguably closer to a pilgrimage than to sight-­seeing. Interestingly, the poet talks of himself as a comma in the context of travelling—Brodsky’s propensity to see foreign cities as texts (of which he temporarily forms a minuscule part) might be yet another reason for the eyebrows-M image. These texts are detailed but simultaneously blurry. “At the heart of the way Brodsky describes the West lies a paradoxical, oxymoronic combination of concreteness and extreme . . . formlessness,” writes Loseff (1991: 36). In what he regards as the two most prominent examples of this phenomenon, a third person (self-)portrait in an overcoat appears: Here . . . are the . . . epithets that mount up in the elegy ‘Temza v Chelsi’: dingy, grey, endless, brown, . . . grey, colourless, colourless . . . Even on the dry land in Florence in the centre of the compositon is the river, the embankment, a bridge, and the colouring is dampness, greyness: the doors of the houses ‘vydykhaiut par’, ‘syrye sumerki’, the dank cavity of a gateway, a dusty coffee-­house’s dirty marble. Loseff 1991: 37

Several reservations are possible: firstly, the increasing prevalence of somebody instead of I as the protagonist of poems playing in foreign cities might be a correlation— a trademark of the mature Brodsky, who happened to find himself in, and write about, alien cities. Secondly, the dullness and indistinctness Loseff observes in the

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depictions of foreign cities are the quintessential qualities of St. Petersburg. Ghost-­like, unreal, washed-­out—this is exactly how Brodsky’s native city has been depicted in Russian literature for centuries; see, for instance, three recent conference volumes on the phenomenon of St. Petersburg (Bespiatykh 2000-2005). The final stanza will show how relevant St. Petersburg is for “Dekabr’ ”; one might argue that Brodsky often chooses to write about cities that remind him of his home. Rivers are often at the heart of his city poems (the Neva is traditionally regarded as the essence of St. Petersburg). December was Brodsky’s favorite month for visiting Italy; correspondingly, it often either rains or snows in his poems. Könönen (2003: 106) observes that in terms of the atmospheric conditions this Florence corresponds to all the usual St. Petersburg associations—moist, cold and dusky with rare and sudden splashes of sunshine. Moreover, foreign cities do not always appear as watery and gray in Brodsky’s poetry: “Rimskiye Elegii” (“Roman Elegies,” 1981), for instance, presents a city awash in sunlight. Still, Loseff is certainly right in that a third person protagonist often coincides with “washed-­out” foreign cities. Kovaleva offers a list of poems in which the poetic persona is depersonalized as “chelovek” (“human being”) or the like (Kovaleva 2001). Strikingly, all of them include foreign locations in their titles. Two were written immediately before “Dekabr’ ”: “Barbizon Terras” (Barbizon Terrace, 1974) and “Kolybel’naya Treskovogo Mysa” (Lullaby of Cape Cod, 1975). They feature a human being; “Dekabr’ ” mentions a body; the English “December” goes a step further in terms of depersonalization and indistinctness—“a shape in an overcoat.” A body is something solid; a shape is almost a shadow: the self-­translation deepens the ghost-­like quality (though the change might have been made for metrical reasons). As it happens, “The Overcoat” is the usual English title of a classic St. Petersburg text. Its Russian title is “Shinel’ ”; Brodsky’s alter ego appears in his poems wearing a “pal’to.” Both words can be translated into English as “greatcoat or overcoat”; in Russian, the garments are perceived as distinctly different. While the original does not make one think of Gogol, “overcoat” creates an association with the novella, and hence another link to St. Petersburg. Thus, the English version connects the poem to a Russian text. Brodsky makes the ending more accessible for the Anglophone reader: instead of the original you are surrounded by two old number 8, “Two old crones let you in, each looks like the figure 8.” A metaphor with an unstated tenor becomes a simile. But this simplification does not explain why the image is there in the first place. Of course, it might have been prompted by rhyme, or else the museum might really have employed two elderly ladies whose figures were less stout around the middle. Besides, Brodsky loved numbers and used them frequently in poetry and essays (see, for instance, Butenko 2010: 176). Still, the prominent position of the number as the stanza’s final word (in both versions) suggests that there is more to the image. Firstly, two eights make up sixteen. The old women appear to be a part of the museum, a materialized version of its “sure-­as-fate / number 16” (actually, the house carries the number 14; Brodsky is either misremembering or using poetic license). Secondly, the eight is abundant in Brodsky’s poetry, where it suggests both infinity and emptiness. I will quote only the earliest and latest example (with my literal translations):

Brodsky Translating Brodsky

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delit . . . popolam, / kak nozhnitsy vos’merku na nuli (“Shum livnia . . .”), 1963 halves . . .,/ the way scissors [halve] an/the eight into zeros (“Rustle of Rain”) vos’merka—rodnaya doch’ / beskonechnosti (“Mollusk”), 1994 the eight—infinity’s own daughter (“Mollusk”)

It is the form, not the numeric value, of the eight which makes it so suggestive: it looks like an infinity sign turned 90 degrees, and also like two conjoined zeros. The English word “figure” can mean both “number” and “form,” providing a clue to the eight’s possible connotations. Moreover, there are sixteen teeth in each human jaw, eight on the left and eight on the right: the numbers seal the mouth metaphor.

2.7  “In a dusty café, in the shade of your cap . . .” December in Florence Stanza VI brodsky: russian rhymes В пыльной кофейне глаз в полумраке кепки /kepki/ = cap привыкает к нимфам плафона, к амурам, к лепке; /lepki/ = sculptures ощущая нехватку в терцинах, в клетке /kletki/ = cage дряхлый щегол выводит свои коленца. /kalentsa/ = trills Солнечный луч, разбившийся о дворец, о /dvarets o/ = palace by купол собора, в котором лежит Лоренцо, /larentsa/ or /larentso/   = Lorenzo проникает сквозь штору и согревает вены /veny/ = veins грязного мрамора, кадку с цветком вербены; /virbeny/ = verbena и щегол разливается в центре проволочной. /raveny/ = Ravenna   Равенны literal translation In a/the dusty café an/the eye in the semi-­darkness of a/the cap/ is getting used to the nymphs of the ceiling lamp, to sculptures;/ feeling a/the shortage of terza-­rima, in a/the cage,/ a/the seedy goldfinch is trilling./ A/the ray of sunlight, splattered by the palace, by/ the dome of the cathedral where lies Lorenzo,/ pierces the stores and warms the veins/ of dirty marble, a/the tub with a/the flowering verbena;/ and a/the goldfinch is overflowing/resounding in the center of a/the wire Ravenna./ brodsky: self-­translation In a dusty café, in the shade of your cap,

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eyes pick out frescoes, nymphs, cupids on their way up. In a cage, making up for the sour terza-­rima crop, a seedy goldfinch juggles his sharp cadenza. A chance ray of sunlight splattering the palazzo and the sacristy where lies Lorenzo pierces thick blinds and titillates the veinous filthy marble, tubs of snow-­white verbena; and the bird’s ablaze within his wire Ravenna.

The rhymes are arguably the most striking feature of this stanza’s self-­translation. Six rhyme-­sounds are identical to the original ones; in the final four lines, the rhyme words themselves mirror the Russian ones. It is their international quality which enabled this amazing trick: two are Italian proper names; the other two are words which both English and Russian derive from Latin. “Lorenzo,” “Ravenna” and “verbena” differ only in script—their translation amounts to substituting Latin letters for the Cyrillic ones. In the case of “veinous,” a slight alteration from the noun “veny” (veins) to an adjective preserves the word stem and much of the sound. A semantically relevant enjambment follows—one expects the protagonist’s veins to be basking in the winter sunshine, but it is merely the marble which is touched by the rays. Luckily, in both languages veins can mean both blood vessels and wavy lines in marble. The combination of “titillating” (instead of warms), “veinous” and “filthy” adds a hint of double entendre. The final words of lines four and five are not etymologically connected in Russian and English, but very similar both in sound and meaning: /kalenza/ vs. cadenza; /dvarez o/ vs. palazzo. Like the phonetic English versions of Catullus’ poems (Zukofsky 1969), Brodsky’s translation of the rhyme words manages to sound like the original. Unlike the Zukofsky experiment, however, it also remains semantically close. Even Nabokov rarely manages such a feat; in her delightful Nabokov Translated, Jane Grayson (1977: 177) finds only very few examples of both semantic and phonetic similarity recreated in his self-­translated novels. In terms of rhyme—and, thanks to the loose dolnik,11 also of rhythm—the lines of the two versions become interchangeable. Each line is translated in such a self-­contained way that an addition of a single “i” (and) suffices to make them flow into each other. A text like the following pastiche of English and Russian lines sounds like a poem and will be understood by any speaker of the two languages: . . . dryakhlyy shchegol vyvodit svoi kalentsa. A chance ray of sunlight splattering the palazzo [i] kupol sobora, v kotorom lezhit Lorenzo, pierces thick blinds and titillates the veinous

The dolnik is a specifically Russian poetic meter, though it has analogs in other prosodies. It lies between the syllabotonic and the tonic systems of versification; its rhythm is created by the alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables. The length of the intervals between ictuses varies, usually from one to two syllables. In Brodsky’s loose dolnik, the intervals can vary from zero to four syllables.

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Brodsky Translating Brodsky gryaznogo mramora, kadku s tsvetkom verbeny; and the bird’s ablaze within his wire Ravenna.

Apart from the obvious association of birdsong and poetry in general, the goldfinch is a frequent image in Mandelstam’s work. As this poet died in a prison camp—in the month of December, as it happens—the wire of the cage could refer to barbed wire (Bethea 1994: 70). The goldfinch in Florence is hardly coincidental—in an essay written a couple of months after “Dekabr’, ” Brodsky states that Mandelstam’s poems were “not a bardlike but a birdlike song . . . something like a goldfinch tremolo” (Brodsky 1986: 134). Loseff ’s brilliant essay on “Dekabr’ ” deserves to be quoted at some length: In December 1936, Mandelstam . . . wrote four “goldfinch poems.” In the complex, highly idiosyncratic metaphorical system of late Mandelstam, goldfinch,“disobedient, intelligent bird,” is his double. In two of these poems Mandelstam mentions his own birdlike manner of tossing back his head. When Akhmatova and . . . Mandelstam’s widow first met Brodsky, both were struck by his physical resemblance to Mandelstam. Even in the manner of throwing his head back when laughing or reciting poetry, young Joseph resembled his namesake . . . “A seedy goldfinch” . . . appears in the sixth stanza, i.e. at the gold section of the poem. Ever architectonically minded, Brodsky is especially concerned about the structure of the Dantean poem. Loseff 2003a: 5

Bethea (1994: 68–70) elaborates on the goldfinch as an allusion to Dante, which is made quite explicit by the mention of terza rima in both versions. In English, the word “crop” additionally interplays with “seedy”—goldfinches usually eat seeds, this one lives on terza rima; more details on the goldfinch in connection to Dante are provided by Ranchin (1998b: 39–40). The cage, too, has more than one function: “When George Kline was translating December in Florence . . . he was reminded by the author that the statue of Dante in Ravenna is surrounded by cast-­iron grillwork strongly reminiscent of a cage” (Bethea 1994: 266). I must admit that my literal translation fails with this stanza, as both expressions used for singing cannot be translated into readable English word for word. The first one, “vyvodit . . . kolenza,” is a somewhat antiquated phrase used for exceptionally beautiful birdsong. “Juggles his sharp cadenza” is, unlike the original expression, a vivid image—the up and down movement of sounds in a tremolo is not unlike juggling. The pronoun “his” humanizes the goldfinch. A bird, when it is personified, tends to be a “he” in English—in Yeats’ “Leda and the Swan,” Poe’s “The Raven”, for example, and those translations of Baudelaire’s “L’Albatros” which use a pronoun (by Geoffrey Wagner, Roy Campbell and William Aggeler). Otherwise, birds are mostly “it”—for instance, in Auden’s “Their Lonely Betters.” Brodsky was most certainly familiar with the lines “A robin with no Christian name ran through / the robin anthem which was all it knew.” His goldfinch does seem to have a name—probably Dante, or Osip; or possibly Joseph. The final line also describes the goldfinch’s song. In Russian, the verb “razlivaetsya” (lit. overflows) appears; it is relatively commonly used in regard to music, especially to

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birdsong. Here, it joins an intricate web of imagery connected to water and wetness. English and Kline preserve the association, rendering the line as “the goldfinch’s voice flows out from its cage in Ravenna.” In Brodsky’s self-­translation water turns into fire— the bird is “ablaze.” Instead of expanding the poem’s water world, the bird now presents an opposition to it—after all, he is as symbolic of song as fish are symbolic of silence. The fiery metaphor is not coined by Brodsky; still, it is somewhat less idiomatic (and thus more original) than the Russian one. It forms a connection to several mythological birds—the Russian “zhar-­ptitsa” (firebird), the Persian simurgh, and, of course, the phoenix (is it Mandelstam reborn?). Finally, verbena merits some consideration. Könönen pays much attention to this flower; unfortunately, one of her ideas is based in insufficient Russian competence. She connects verbena’s old Russian name, “zheleznyak” (derived from “zhelezo,” iron) to Mandelstam’s “detskikh pripukhshikh zhelez” from a canonic St. Petersburg poem, which she translates as “childish swollen iron,” explaining “that one had to take [it] when young, in order to prevent anemia” (2003: 120). In reality, “zhelez” is the genitive plural of “zheleza” (gland) and has nothing to do with “zhelezo” (iron). Könönen’s other considerations are informed and illuminating: “the attribute ‘snow-­white’ . . . links the flower not only to the Northern winter, but also to the [Divine Comedy] . . . Dante mentions the lily, symbolizing the just and invincible city of Florence” (Könönen 2003: 120); moreover, “verbena” is phonetically similar to “verbum” (Könönen 2003: 121). Both remarks make more sense in regard to the English version. The similarity to “verbum”—and hence also to the English “verb”—becomes apparent when “verbena” appears in Roman letters; “snow-­white” has been added in translation. Thus, in the final two lines of this stanza’s self-­translation, the atmosphere of grayness and wetness receives two contrasts— brilliant whiteness and fiery song. The “cold, damp and, above all, dark city” (Loseff 2003b: 1) becomes somewhat warmer and brighter in English.

2.8  “Taking in air, exhaling steam . . .” December in Florence Stanza VII brodsky: russian Выдыхая пары, вдыхая воздух, двери хлопают во Флоренции. Одну ли, две ли проживаешь жизни, смотря по вере, вечером в первой осознаешь: неправда, что любовь движет звезды (Луну – подавно), ибо она делит все вещи на два – даже деньги во сне. Даже, в часы досуга, мысли о смерти. Если бы звезды Юга двигались ею, то – в стороны друг от друга.

rhymes /dveri/ = doors /dve li/ = or two /veri/ = faith /nipravda/ = untrue /padavna/ = even less /na dva/ = in two /dasuga/ = spare hours /yuga/ = South /druga/ = another

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Brodsky Translating Brodsky literal translation Exhaling couples/*steams*, inhaling air, doors/ slam in Florence. Whether it is one or two/ lives that you live, depending on faith,/ some evening in [or: in the evening of] the first you realize: [it is]untrue/ that love moves stars (even less, the Moon),/ for it divides all things in two—/ even money in dreams. Even, in [your] spare hours,/ thoughts about/of death. If the stars of the South/ were moved by it, then [they would move] away from each other./ brodsky: self-­translation Taking in air, exhaling steam, the doors slam shut in Florence. One or two lives one yearns for (which is up to that faith of yours)— some night in the first one you learn that love doesn’t move the stars, (or the moon) enough. For it divides things in two, in half. Like the cash in your dreams. Like your idle fears of dying. If love were to shift the gears of the southern stars, they’d run to their virgin spheres.

In Russian, “par” (steam) and “pary” (pairs) differ in only one letter; this pun is lost in translation. The substitution of “yearns” for “prozhivayesh’ ” (live), probably demanded by rhyme, suggests that even the single life one does have is not quite real, that there is a desire for a different life. The original, on the other hand, seems to suggest that beliefs are self-­fulfilling. Whether “up to that faith of yours” is deliberately insinuating is an open question; it certainly is more colloquial than the original. Ending the fourth line in “love,” Brodsky sets himself the challenge of finding a rhyme for it, or rather two rhymes. Doing so, especially in one’s first self-­translation (and hence one’s first poem in English), is risky—avoiding kitsch is difficult and all-­important, as Brodsky was well aware. He has spent two pages of his essay on Auden’s “September 1, 1939” expressing his admiration for the rhyme “love” / “Diaghilev” (Brodsky 1986: 345). His own solutions are not as innovative as this, but he does avoid the most clichéd possibilities, by using slant rhymes which sound exact to a Russian ear. The central triplet is summed up in its rhyme words in English: “love” / “[is not] enough” / “[it divides] in half,” similarly to the feat Brodsky (1986: 346) admired in Auden: “The rhyme scheme itself becomes a statement: ‘Diaghilev-­have-love’ or rather, ‘Diaghilev cannot have love.’ ” The original “vecherom v pervoy” is ambiguous: it can mean both “some evening of the first [life]” and “in the evening . .,” i.e. late in life, “nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita.” In English, a choice had to be made, and Brodsky picked the more concrete meaning, the moment of realization: “some night in the first one you learn that love / doesn’t move the stars (or the moon) enough.” This last word relativizes the negation of Dante’s “L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stele” (Paradiso XXXIII, line 145); there is an

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additional connotation of moving emotionally. Conventionally and in the first stanza of this very poem, love is seen as a unifying force; “in half ” stresses the idea that love makes one incomplete and provides a clue as to the reason. A person unhappily in love is “less than one,” to quote Brodsky’s favorite expression. As in Plato’s idea of the separation of primordial double-­creatures into human beings, a lover is merely a half when alone—and alone he shall be, as the very love makes separation unavoidable. This paradox of the final lines is reminiscent of “Niotkuda s liubov’iu . . .” / “From nowhere with love . . .”: “I loved you better than angels and Him Himself / and am farther off due to that from you than I am from both / of them now” (translated by Brodsky with Weissbort). Lovers move “to their virgin spheres”—alluding to the Virgo constellation, the self-­translation stresses the motion away from romantic love. The phrase “For it divides things in two, in half ” stands on its own in English—it takes up a line and constitutes a sentence. A period is added both immediately before and after it; the shorter phrases suit the theme of separation. The previous two stanzas also contain more periods in translation. Perhaps the “logical” (as Brodsky saw it) or, rather, analytical essence of English is responsible for separating the meditative flow into single statements; or else the process of translation itself—no matter what the source and target language—is conducive to clarification and simplification. The change in punctuation makes the next sentence elliptical: “Like the cash in your dreams.”; this creates a colloquial tone supported by the substitution of “cash” for the neutral “den’gi” (money). “Den’gi vo sne” (money in your dream/sleep) re-­appears in the untranslated Russian 1987 poem “Bagatelle,” where it is compared to autumn leaves disappearing from trees. It is quite probable that Brodsky did have recurrent dreams of disappearing money; in several interviews (for instance, with Cavalieri 2002: 150), he said that he used material from his dreams and even tried to jot them down regularly, following Auden’s advice. Like in stanza V, a metaphor becomes a simile here: “[divides] like the cash in your dreams” is substituted for [divides] even the money in dreams. “The most death-­obsessed Russian poet since Annenskii” (Bethea 1994: 93) translates “v chasy dosuga, mysli o smerti” (in your idle hours, thoughts of death) as “your idle fears of dying.” Each word merits discussion here. In the self-­translation of this stanza, “your” is added thrice (mostly demanded by English grammar); this makes it sound more intimate. The “you,” which is very much an “I,” experiences “idle fears / of dying.” Not only does the self-­translation semantically differ from the original here, it also appears to be illogical—in the phrase “idle fears” the adjective usually suggests that there is no reason to be scared; but what fear could be more justified than the fear of death? However, it is “idle” (unconstructive) to indulge in fear if its object is unavoidable. The word “fears” reveals an emotional reaction which is merely implicit in the original; “dying”—instead of death—suits the shift. Brodsky’s obsession with death was twofold—death as the key to life was important to Brodsky in philosophical terms; he also was afflicted by frequent and intense spells of thanatophobia. The abstract phenomenon of death might be something to meditate on; the physical process of dying is something to be afraid of. The themes of both love and death appear explicitly only in this stanza—which becomes more personal and emotional in translation.

Brodsky Translating Brodsky

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2.9  “The stone nest resounds with a piercing squeal . . .” December in Florence Stanza VIII brodsky: russian Каменное гнездо оглашаемо громким визгом тормозов; мостовую пересекаешь с риском быть за(п/к)леванным насмерть.   В декабрьском низком небе громада яйца, снесенного Брунеллески, вызывает слезу в зрачке, наторевшем в блеске куполов. Полицейский на перекрестке машет руками, как буква “ж,” ни вниз, ни вверх; репродукторы лают о дороговизне. О, неизбежность “ы” в правописаньи “жизни”!

rhymes /vizgam/ = squeal /riskam/ = risk /niskam/ = low /bruneleski/ = Brunelleschi /bleski/ = shine /perekriostki/ = crossing /vniz ni/ = down nor /daragavizni/ = high prices /zhyzni/ = life

literal translation A/the stone nest resounds with a/the loud squeal/ of brakes; you cross the pavement, risking/ to be pecked/bespat to death. In the low December/ sky the colossus of the egg laid by Brunelleschi/ summons a tear from an/the eye experienced in the shine/ of domes. A policeman on a/the crossing/ waves his arms / hands like a/the letter “ж,” neither down, nor/ up; loudspeakers bark about high prices./ Oh, the unavoidability of “ы” in the orthography of “life”!/ brodsky: self-­translation The stone nest resounds with a piercing squeal of brakes. Intersections scare your skull like crossed bones. In the low December sky the gigantic egg laid there by Brunelleschi jerks a tear from an eye experienced in the blessed domes. A traffic policeman briskly throws his hand in the air like a letter X. Loudspeakers bark about rising tax. Oh, the obstinate leaving that “living” masks!

In this stanza, Cyrillic letters—“п,” “к,” and, more importantly, “ж” and “ы”—play prominent roles, presenting a fascinating translational challenge. While the former two roughly correspond to the Roman “p” and “k,” the latter have no immediate equivalents in English; their functions need to be discussed in context. The very first words of this stanza introduce the image of a stone nest, all the more surprising in English because

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of the definite article. “The” is justified not by any preceding or immediately following information, but by a sentence three lines later—the city is a nest for an “egg laid there by Brunelleschi,” the dome of the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore. It is gigantic indeed, but it does not shine—its dome, the largest in the world, is made of bricks. The original is deliberately misleading. By referring to the shine of domes and by using the expression “vyzyvaet slezu” (summons a tear), which usually denotes shedding a tear for a physical reason (such as strong light), the sentence suggests eyes watering because of a golden gleam. One is reminded of “V Italii” / “In Italy”: “And the world’s best lagoon with its golden pigeon / coop gleams sharply enough to make the pupil run” in Brodsky’s self-­translation (the double pun of the final two words is unintentional; such are the tricks translation can play on a text). A re-­reader, especially one familiar with the Florentine dome, can assume that Brodsky is talking about nostalgic tears. As Könönen (2003: 115) puts it, “Brunelleschi’s cupola . . . conceals the golden domes of St. Petersburg.” One can even wager a guess at which golden domes are implied— perhaps those of the Transfiguration Cathedral? Brodsky saw it out of his bedroom window throughout his life in Leningrad. In translation, the ambiguity is dropped: the shine is gone; “jerks a tear” refers to emotion. In Russian, the image of an egg gives rise to wordplay. There is a difference of only one letter between “zaklevannym” (pecked, conceivably by the “bird” who laid the egg of a dome) and “zaplevannym” (bespat, possibly in reference to being splashed by cars). In translation, the words “skull” and “crossbones” appear in the same sentence, evoking the sign for danger. The peril signaled by abrupt braking is supported by shorter sentences in English. As noted before, this self-­translation generally employs more periods than the original; the one added after “brakes” virtually functions as a brake. Kumakhova writes: In the English text, Brodsky refers to the danger sign of skull and crossbones, which is very often seen in Russia, especially on the doors of oscillators. . . . The sign of skull and crossbones is familiar to English-­speaking audience [sic] most likely from pirate movies and as a common sign for poison. It is less familiar as the danger sign in the streets of the City. Kumakhova 2006: 231

In the next stanza, the poem appears to move from Florence to Leningrad; Kumakhova seems to suggest that the transformation begins here. The place seems more Italian than Russian to me: there are no Brunelleschi domes and no “polizeyskiy” (policeman) in Leningrad (a Soviet policeman went by the name of “militsioner”), and the danger sign only appears indirectly. Still, there does seem to be some slight shift in the setting, be it local or temporal. In this stanza, the city more emphatically belongs to the twentieth century with its loudspeakers and aggressive cars. An Anglophone reader is more prepared for their appearance, having encountered the image “if love were to shift the gears” in the previous stanza. Crossing a street could be dangerous in both Florence and Leningrad. What about the loudspeakers—do they point to a location? There were no loudspeakers mounted in the streets of Florence in the 1970s. Brodsky’s Leningrad sported many, but those never mentioned high prices—instead,

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Brodsky Translating Brodsky

they congratulated the citizens on Soviet holidays and played music. In answer to my question, Andrei Utkin expressed two intriguing hypotheses as to the nature of the loudspeakers. There are some in the Florentine central station, regularly admonishing the passengers that dodging the fare might be expensive: “Viaggiare senza biglietto o con biglietto irregolare può costare caro.” Tempting as this idea is, there are two counterarguments—at the risk of taking the poem too literally, it is worth observing that the protagonist’s journey through Florence does not lead him near the station; moreover, the text fits the original “dorogovizna” (high prices), but not the “rising tax” in self-­translation. Utkin’s second suggestion is more promising: in late 1975, Italian socialists were very active, demonstrating under the slogan “Lotta contra il carovita” (the fight against the price increase). Brodsky might well have seen a picket with protests against “carovita” resounding from loudspeakers in Florence in December 1975; Utkin conjectures that “vita” in “carovita” could have provided inspiration for the final line. “Carovita” suits both the high prices and “rising tax.” If this hypothesis is true—and this is our best guess, unless we resort to stating that the penultimate line bears no connection to any concrete realia—then on the primary level the setting is Florence, but leftist rhetoric links it to Brodsky’s home city. To Kreps’ mind, the uglification of Florence finds its apotheosis in this stanza; he regards the tear provoked by the dome as an expression of disappointment (Kreps 1984: 184–8; 189 specifically on the tear). Könönen (2003: 280), on the other hand, sees Florence in this poem as paradise lost. In my perception, the city of the poem is neither disgusting nor divine, but very much like what Brodsky experienced during his stay in Florence: It really was cold and damp. I walked around, looked at things. When you write about some place, you write as if you lived there—I don’t know whether I did so consciously . . . when the poem is written, you go on living in this place, even if you left it. It’s not so much that you make a place your home but that you become this place. I always wanted to write not as an overwhelmed traveler, but as a traveler dragging himself along . . . You run to the Uffizi Gallery, look at this and that, at the Signoria, you enter the Casa di Dante, but most importantly—you drag your bones along the Arno. . . . You don’t know what’s going to happen next, and you’re freezing. Brodsky in Vaĭl 1995: 174–5

Despite this absence of glorification, in 1995 Brodsky was to enter the Signoria in order to receive the “Fiorino d’Oro” medal when he was made an honorary citizen of Florence. The phonetics of the stanza are striking in English. The sounds /sk/ are present in the first four rhyme words; the final four feature /sk/ or /ks/. Moreover, /s/ and /k/ appear both together and on their own throughout the stanza more often than chance would permit; the very last word completes the scheme with its final /sks/. The squeal is indeed piercing. The original offers nothing to compare with this onomatopoetic feast of consonance; the adjective itself, “gromkim” (loud), is less expressive than “piercing.” The English version of the stanza rhymes almost throughout, with “Brunelleschi” creating a strong bond between the first and the second triplet. In English, the letter “X” becomes significant phonetically, while almost recreating the graphic image of the original “ж”

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(/zh/). The Russian letter has no meaning of its own; “X” suggests something unknown. Könönen establishes a connection to stanza four: “we witness an opposite transformation . . . a letter is turned into a person” (Könönen 2003: 109). “X” has four extremities; “ж” has six. If they are to refer to the legs, arms and head, something in between would be closest visually— . Taken together, the original and the self-­translation approach this invented letter. The image paves the way for the stanza’s final line, in which single letters are crucial. In Russian, “zhizn’ ” (life) is indeed pronounced as if it featured “ы” (/y/); however, one of the very first orthographical rules learned by every schoolchild is that this word is written with “и” (/i/) instead. Hence, the image suggests a mistake. It also evokes disgust and suffering; see the discussion of “ы” in connection to the second stanza. Bethea (Bethea 1994: 72) offers yet another reason for the appearance of “ы”: “Its inevitability in the spelling of жизни is due to the fact that ы is written separately, while и is written together in one stroke.” Akhapkin (Akhapkin 2009: 33) suggests that it refers to “the split in life . . . in the context of exile.” The disconnection is only true for typing, not for handwriting, to which the poem refers in stanza IV. Still, to judge by the self-­translation, separation is indeed an issue: “Oh, the obstinate leaving that ‘living’ masks!” With a Russian accent, “leaving” and “living” are indeed indistinguishable. English and Kline’s solution is also excellent: “How urgent the need for an ‘I’ in the words ‘to live’ and ‘to die’!” (English 1982: 21). The temptation to try one’s hand at this line is difficult to resist; some possibilities are “Oh, the superfluous ‘f ’ in ‘life’!” or “Oh, the need for a ‘y’ in ‘life’!” The former version strays far away from the original with its suggestion that life is a lie; the latter is close phonetically and technically, but the reader might miss the implied need for a “why.” In conversation, Alexandr Shapiro has suggested “Oh, inevitable ‘if ’ in ‘life’!,” a congenial version, even though “life” includes “if ” only in writing. The re-­creation of the key word “life” or a cognate was a high priority for all translators; Brodsky’s shift from “life” to “living” mirrors the shift from death to dying in the previous stanza—the English version is more dynamic.

2.10  “There are cities one won’t see again . . .” December in Florence Stanza IX brodsky: russian Eсть города, в которые нет возврата. Солнце бьется в их окна, как в гладкие зеркала. То есть, в них не проникнешь ни за какое злато. Там всегда протекает река под шестью мостами. Там есть места, где припадал устами тоже к устам и пером к листам. И там рябит от аркад, колоннад, от чугунных пугал; там толпа говорит, осаждая трамвайный угол, на языке человека, который убыл.

rhymes /vazvrata/ = return /zerkala to/ = mirrors which /zlata/ = gold /mastami/ = bridges /ustami/ = mouth /listam i/ = paper and /pugal/ = scarecrows /ugal/ = corner /ubyl/ = departed

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Brodsky Translating Brodsky literal translation There are cities to which one cannot return./ The sun is beating against their windows as if against smooth mirrors. Which/ is to say, you cannot enter them for any [amount of] gold./ There, a/the river always flows under six bridges./ There are places where [one/you/I] pressed mouth/ against another mouth and quill against sheets. And/ there arcades, colonnades, cast iron scarecrows flicker [before one’s eyes]; there a/the crowd speaks, beleaguering a/the tram corner,/ in the tongue of a/the human who has departed./ brodsky: self-­translation There are cities one won’t see again. The sun throws its gold at their frozen windows. But all the same there is no entry, no proper sum. There are always six bridges spanning the sluggish river. There are places where lips touched lips for the first time ever, or pen pressed paper with real fervor. There are arcades, colonnades, iron idols that blur your lens. There the streetcar’s multitudes, jostling, dense, speak in the tongue of a man who’s departed thence.

Kumakhova chides Brodsky for departing from fact at this point: In “December in Florence,” Brodsky introduces some changes that alter the meaning of the English version so that it is inconsistent with facts . . . to the phrase describing physical love, he adds for the first time ever, which suggests novelty . . . the image of writing . . . bears the idea of novelty and inexperience, which is not present in the Russian text. Brodsky when he visited Florence was not a novice poet. Kumakhova 2006: 294

“Physical love” is a somewhat overstated description of kissing; “for the first time” does not refer to writing. However, another problem is more important here: Kumakhova only seems to be familiar with a single scholarly text mentioning this poem, namely Polukhina’s Joseph Brodsky: a Poet for Our Time, and hence assumes that this stanza deals only with Florence, even though dozens of scholars have mentioned that Leningrad is at least as present in it as the Italian city. Far from being “inconsistent with facts,” the self-­translation is closer to the facts of Brodsky’s youth. Kreps (1984: 189) was the first to observe that “Leningrad is shining through Florentine landscapes”; Soloviev (1992: 148) wrote that, to judge by Brodsky’s poetry, he had never really left Leningrad, quoting “Dekabr’ ” as an example. The most extensive analysis of Florence as Leningrad has been provided by Könönen. Shcherbinina (2007) writes:

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In emigration, the poet never calls his home city by name in his poems, commemorating it instead by canals, bridges, monuments, single recognizable details . . . You need to pull away—mentally or physically—in order to call; if something is always with you, in you, you do not need to call, do you? A lover talks about his beloved not mentioning her name . . . A child doesn’t call its mother by name, but says “mama.” Shcherbinina 2007

Though lovers and children might use names, it is true that Brodsky’s late poetry never directly mentions his home city but often alludes to it via bridges. As “in this longish poem Brodsky only once points to a physical similarity between Florence and St. Petersburg” (Loseff 2003b: 3), the substantiality of this similarity is worth investigating. Kline (1990: 73) states that both medieval Florence and twentieth century St. Petersburg had six bridges. The implications are tempting, but neither statement is actually correct.12 Why does Brodsky suggest this parallel if it is not strictly true? He might well have been genuinely mistaken, but what led him to seek a common denominator in the first place? In general, he was prone to see similarities between Russian and Western cities, finding “equivalents” for specific areas—the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris seemed very much like the “Letnii Sad” (Summer Garden) in St. Petersburg (Vaĭl 1995: 166); the bay at the end of Morton Street, New York reminded him of certain places along the Malaia Neva and Nevka rivers with their old ships and breezes (Losev 2006: 205). It was a question of perspective: “If you look at a bit of the Broadway—from the 80th or 90th to the 116th street, say—that’s really very much like Moscow, some kind of Okhotnyi Riad . . . when I went out to the Hudson river—that was Malaya Okhta, absolutely” (Brodsky in Reĭn 1995). The backs of photos sent to his parents were often inscribed in this vein: “That’s Dublin, the Liffey river, as wide as Fontanka,” “That’s the main street, their Nevsky prospect” (Murav’eva 1998: 254). Recognizing the East in the West means also recognizing the West in the East. Brodsky called Westernized Russians of his generation “the real Westerners, perhaps the only ones . . . more American than the Americans themselves” (Brodsky 1995: 13). As Genis (2009a: 219) put it, Brodsky “took his own West, one that required powers of imagination rather than of observation, along [when emigrating] and managed to interbreed it with the surrounding [West].” Brodsky seems to have this in common with the protagonist of Vaginov’s “Kozlinaia Pesn’ ” (Goat Song), one of his favorite novels (according to Losev 2006: 26): “Everything in/ about the city seemed Western to him—the houses, the temples, the garden, and even the poor girl Lida seemed to him like an English Anna” (Vaginov 2008)—is there any need to say that the novel takes place in St. Petersburg?

If Brodsky assumed that Leningrad and Florence had six bridges, he was erring on both counts (Loseff 2003b: 3). Loseff goes on to say that there are nine bridges over the Arno in modern Florence, and seven over the Neva in St. Petersburg. In Brodsky’s childhood and early youth, there really were seven; an eighth was built when he turned twenty-­five; there are nine bridges now. Akhapkin (2009: 34) adds that Florence had not seven, but four bridges in Dante’s time.

12

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Brodsky Translating Brodsky With typical self-­irony and telling references to Dante, Brodsky observes: A writer in exile is . . . a retrospective and retroactive being. . . . Like the false prophets of Dante’s Inferno, his head is forever turned backward and his tears, or saliva, are running down between his shoulder blades . . . even having actually done some traveling, he will stick in his writing to the familiar material of his past, producing . . . sequels to his previous works. Approached on this subject, an exiled writer will most likely evoke Ovid’s Rome [and] Dante’s Florence. Brodsky 1995: 27

Derek Walcott regards Brodsky’s talent for imaginary return as an asset of emigration: “[Coming] back to make the final link in the circle . . . can be done without physical presence. . . . the reaffirmation . . . is stronger and stronger in Joseph Brodsky’s poetry, and it’s not just nostalgia” (Baer 1996: 88). To say it with Proust, “the only paradise is paradise lost.” For Brodsky, cities that reminded him of his home often had the memory-­enhancing function of a madeleine. Brodsky said that he loved Venice because it reminded him of St. Petersburg (in Birkerts 2002: 90); it has been observed that gradually “Venice replaces the Russian city” in his work (MacFadyen 1998, 129). But Venice does have much in common with St. Petersburg (architecture, canals etc.); Florence is not so obviously similar. So why is there “no sense of foreignness and not belonging,” why does “the poet feel . . . at home, albeit unhappy, in the cold streets of Florence” (Loseff 2003b: 2)? The following supposition is convincing: “Brodsky equates Florence to his native city because even before visiting it, he had made his home there vicariously through strong identification with some other poets who wrote about it” (Loseff 2003b, 3). This to say, mainly with Dante. Brodsky agrees with Dante “in defining exile as a condition where one is left with oneself and with one’s own language. For him exile is primarily a linguistic event. An exiled writer retreats into his mother tongue” (Könönen 2003: 110). Herlth (2004: 211) sees “dramatization and elevation of his own fate” in the references to Dante, unfavorably comparing it to Brodsky’s late essay “Homage to Marcus Aurelius” in which St. Petersburg and Rome are similarly interchangeable; there, the narrator equates himself not with Marcus Aurelius, but with his dog. However, Brodsky does not necessarily turn into Dante here—he can just as well be seen in the goldfinch, in the old museum whose mouth is in a state similar to his own, or in the wet and cold city itself. Herlth is not the only critic to regard the parallel to Dante as immodest: “The last two lines assert a bold— perhaps overstated—parallel between the way Dante shaped the Italian literary language, and the way Brodsky has shaped the contemporary Russian literary language” (Kline 1990: 73). However, this is only the case in Kline’s own translation which he proceeds to quote, never mentioning that his version departs from the original, or that a self-­ translation exists: “There the crowds besieging trolley stops are speaking / in the language of a poet who has been long gone” (Kline 1990: 73, my italics).13 There are no formal reasons for choosing “a poet” over “a man”; “one” would have been actually more felicitous rhythmically. Throughout the article, Kline had been quoting his co-­translation with Maurice English; in this single line, he resorts to a “revised edition” which supports his argument.

13

“December in Florence”

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The self-­translation preserves the original ambiguities: “ubyl” / “gone” can refer both to Dante and to Brodsky; “na iazyke cheloveka” / “in the tongue of a man” can mean that the language belongs to or is created by the man, or merely that the man speaks the language. Both Russian and English allow such constructions grammatically—if one’s eyes are the color of tea (“tsveta chaya”), for instance, this does not mean that tea was used to color them. The final line is not as immodest and clear-­cut as Kline presents it; however, it is also possible to see the man in question as the language’s originator. To quote one of Brodsky’s interviews given within a year after the self-­translation was completed: “When people accept what a poet has done, they begin to speak his language, and not that of the state. Today’s Italians, for instance, speak a language which owes more to Dante than to all those Guelphs and Gibbelines” (Brodsky in Volkov 1998: 98). Losev (2006: 195–6) observes a parallel between the crowd beleaguering the tram corner at the end of this December poem and the beginning of another. While “Dekabr’ ” closes the Russian collection “Chast’ rechi” (Part of Speech), “24 dekabrya 1971 goda” (“24 December 1971”) opens it. It pictures Christmas in Leningrad, where a crowd “proizvodit osadu prilavka” (is beleaguering the counter). In the translation by Brodsky and Alan Myers, the similarity is less obvious, “Where a tin of halvah, coffee-­flavored, / is the cause of a human assault-­wave / by a crowd heavy-­laden with parcels.” Beleaguering disappears from both English versions; the collection is also structured differently, so that the reader is less prone to look for connections between the two December poems. The cover of the first Russian volume of poems written in exile featured not a symbol of Russia or the US, but a lion sculpture from Italy, pointedly similar to a lion sculpture from St. Petersburg. Similarly, “Dekabr’ ”—a poem referring to an Italian poet and taking place neither in Russia nor in the States, but in Florence, a Western city reminiscent of St. Petersburg—was the first to be translated by Brodsky. Having mentally recreated his home city in the West, he translates the experience into Russian and then English verse. There are cities to which one always returns . . . “The sun / throws its gold at their frozen windows. But all the same / there is no entry.” In translation,“frozen” replaces “gladkiye” (smooth), suggesting ice and thus establishing a connection to the river. Sound play—the alliteration of “pen pressed paper,” the double assonance of “iron idols”—is added in English. Along with arcades and colonnades, the idols “blur your lens.” This expression suggests not only the original “ryabit” (flicker), but also crying, thus calling to mind the previous stanza. Similarly, automobile imagery connects stanzas VII and VIII in English; “shadows” in stanza III interplay with “shade” in stanzas IV and VI (in Russian, three unconnected words are used); “leaving” in stanza VIII forms a link to the ending. While the links to Russian poems, whether by Mandelstam or Brodsky himself, are more accessible to the Russian reader, intratextual connections become more pronounced in self-­translation.

3

Three Nativity Poems

An article on Christmas verse commissioned by the Academy of American Poets in 2010 (AAP 2010) mentions only five poets: the disputed author of “A Visit from Saint Nicholas,” Milton, Auden, Doty—and Brodsky. Another exiled (anti-)Soviet Nobel prize laureate, to whose taste Brodsky was too “cold” and analytical, wrote that “the theme of Nativity stands apart [in Brodsky’s work] like a warmly lit square” (Solzhenitsyn 1999: 190). From his early twenties on, Brodsky “tried to write a poem for every Christmas—as a sort of birthday greeting” (Brodsky 2002a: 103). Frost’s Christmas chapbooks come to mind—but most of Brodsky’s seasonal poems had no apparent addressee (apart from their own author and maybe their protagonist). There was a gap of almost a dozen years after Brodsky settled in the US, but from 1984 until his death the tradition remained unbroken. It makes sense to differentiate between the early (1962–1973) and the late (1985–1995) poems (cf. Benchich 2007)—Brodsky’s interest turned from the celebration of Christmas to Nativity per se. The three poems which we are about to approach all belong to the late period. Apart from the sheer perseverance involved, two aspects of this self-­imposed custom are remarkable. Firstly, Brodsky chose a Christian (not a Jewish) religious topic; secondly, even while living in Russia, he wrote his Christmas poems around December 25th, not January 7th—that is, in the Western Christian tradition instead of the Russian one. Brodsky’s own explanation of the last fact “is simple. The tradition of celebrating Christmas is much more diverse and developed in the Roman church than it is in the Russian Orthodox” (Brodsky 2002a: 106). He was keenly interested in depictions of the Nativity by Western artists. Had Brodsky been interested in the Eastern-European brand of Christianity, he might have concentrated on another holiday altogether: the most important day in the Orthodox calendar is not Christmas but Easter. Brodsky declared that he did not want to exploit “the pathos of tears [which is] the main idea of Easter” (Brodsky 2002a: 108), preferring “the pure joy of the Nativity” (Brodsky 2002a: 109). But why should he write about a Christian holiday at all? Brodsky perceived himself as Jewish but did not see any contradiction to this self-­understanding in his interest in the Nativity. This is not unusual: the USSR defined Jewishness as a nationality, not as a religion. There are two words for Jew in Russian—“iudey” and “yevrey.” The former signifies religious affiliation; the latter should, strictly speaking, be translated as “Hebrew” (“evrei” and “Hebrew” have a common etymology, just as “iudey” and “Jew”), but as this English word is mostly used to refer to the ancient people of Canaan, Brodsky always said “Jew” for “evrey.” Russian Jews, despite (or because of) the pervasive anti-Semitism, generally

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shared the view that their nationality is not Russian. Only very few were religious, not only because of Soviet policy—many people of Jewish origin belonged to the agnostic/ atheist branch of the Russian intelligentsia before the revolution. Brodsky’s parents were not religious; virtually none of his young Jewish contemporaries adhered to Kashrut or celebrated Shabbat, but many of their parents and grandparents would sometimes sing Yiddish songs or cook gefilte fish, so that a sense of Jewishness was not only enforced by the hostile environment, but also connected to a positive cultural self-­identification. In his early twenties, Brodsky was looking for some sort of spirituality, reading every non-­materialist text he could put his hands on. First he managed to obtain the Mahabharata and some other Hindu and Buddhist texts, and only later the Bible, so that he fully realized the existence of various alternatives to Christianity. This should not be taken for granted—religious knowledge was scarce in the USSR; Brodsky was an autodidact who left school at fifteen and read widely, but very chaotically. He “realized that the metaphysical horizons offered by Christianity are less substantial than the Hinduist ones,” but preferred the “Christian ideals,” stressing that “one should use the term Jewish-Christian more often, as the one is unthinkable without the other” (Brodsky in Amurskiĭi 1990: 115). After perestroika, many well-­educated adult Jews were baptized, but Brodsky had left Russia in 1972, long before this conversion boom, which he mocks in “Predstavleniye” (A Performance): “I tseluyut obraza / s plachem zhertvy obreza . . .”—“Kissing icons with a sigh, humbly kneel the circumci . . .” in my forthcoming translation (Chandler 2015). Brodsky never became a Christian believer, but was very interested in Christianity as a cultural phenomenon, preferring Catholicism and Protestantism to Russian Orthodoxy—the Western forms fitted his aesthetics better. But what happens to a Western motif when it travels back into a Western target culture?

3.1  “Star of the Nativity” Brodsky rendered three of his Christmas poems into English, completing all three translations shortly after the Russian originals and publishing them in English on the following Christmas day, exactly one year after their originals: “Star of the Nativity,” (1988); “Nativity” (1991) and “Lullaby” (1993). All three are explicitly concerned with the Nativity (which is only the case for seven poems in all by Brodsky, many more mentioning the holiday but not its origin: the collection Nativity Poems has a somewhat misleading title). Apart from the topic, the three poems chosen for translation share a metaphor—the star of Bethlehem signifying the gaze of God. The star is never depicted as the light which leads the Magi; it is deprived of the function it fulfills in the Bible and innumerable later texts, including American poems such as Longfellow’s “Three Kings.” Instead, it becomes a means of wordless communication between Jesus and his divine Father. What is more, the star is God the Father and—though this level of the metaphor is less explicit—simultaneously the newborn Messiah. The clearest manifestation of this trinity concept (the third part of the unity being the actual star; the text offers no support for its equation with the Holy Spirit) can be found in “Star of the Nativity,” in the final line of the second stanza:

Three Nativity Poems Star of the Nativity brodsky: russian Рождественская звезда (Rozhdestvenskaya zvezda, 1987) В холодную пору, в местности, привычной скорей к жаре, чем к холоду, к плоской поверхности более, чем к горе, младенец родился в пещере, чтоб мир спасти; мело, как только в пустыне может зимой мести. Ему все казалось огромным: грудь матери, желтый пар из воловьих ноздрей, волхвы – Балтазар, Гаспар, Мельхиор; их подарки, втащенные сюда. Он был всего лишь точкой. И точкой была звезда. Внимательно, не мигая, сквозь редкие облака, на лежащего в яслях ребенка, издалека, из глубины Вселенной, с другого ее конца, звезда смотрела в пещеру. И это был взгляд Отца. literal translation Nativity star In the cold season, in a locality accustomed rather more to heat/ than to cold, to a/the horizontal plane more than to a/the mountain,/ a/the baby was born in a/the cave in order to save the world;/ it blew as only in deserts it can blow in winter./ He regarded everything as enormous: the mother’s breast, yellow steam/ from an/the ox’s nostrils, the magi—Balthazar, Caspar,/ Melchior; their presents which have been dragged in here./ He was only a/the dot, and a/the dot was a/the star./ Attentively, without blinking, through stray clouds/ upon the child lying in the manger, from far away,/ from the depth of the Universe, from its other end,/ a/the star was looking into the cave. And that was the gaze of the/his Father./ brodsky: self-­translation Star of the Nativity (1988) In the cold season, in a locality accustomed to heat more than to cold, to horizontality more than to a mountain, a child was born in a cave in order to save the world; it blew as only in deserts in winter it blows, athwart. To Him, all things seemed enormous: His mother’s breast, the steam out of the ox’s nostrils, Caspar, Balthazar, Melchior—the team

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Brodsky Translating Brodsky of Magi, their presents heaped by the door, ajar. He was but a dot, and a dot was the star. Keenly, without blinking, through pallid, stray clouds, upon the child in the manger, from far away— from the depth of the universe, from the opposite end—the star was looking into the cave. And this was the Father’s stare. [English equivalents of the original rhyme-­words have been italicized]

The star and the child are reduced to a common denominator—their smallness. In English, all words in this line are very short, one syllable each—words do not get much closer to dots. A baby is small; so is a star when seen from below. In line eight, the second “tochkoy” can be rendered both as “a dot” and “the dot”: the reader may see two similar, but separate points of light, or interpret their transitive relation as a fusion—if star equals dot and Jesus equals dot, then star equals Jesus. With God watching his human self, the Nativity scene becomes a moment of divine self-­contemplation bordering on the narcissistic. In English, Brodsky is forced to use an article. He chooses the indefinite one, making the reader less likely to identify the star with the child. “Tochka” is not only grammatically but also semantically ambiguous. It can mean a dot (and, figuratively, anything small or remote) as well as a period—significantly in the context of Brodsky’s fondness for punctuation metaphors. “On byl vsego lish’ tochkoy.” (He was only a/the dot/period.) ends in a period. In English, this play on words would be less obvious, but still perceivable. Brodsky, however, eliminates it by using a comma. Another meaning of “tochka” lost in translation is “point,” including most connotations “point” has in English—the star is the starting point of the newborn’s self-­understanding and the central point of his world as well as of the poem. Another Russian expression is “vysshaya tochka” (highest point)—zenith, climax. Literally, the star is the highest point of the Nativity scene. The word “zvezda” (star) appears in the title and concludes the middle quatrain. In translation, Brodsky not only recreates this effect, but also moves “star” to the rhyming position of the poem’s penultimate line. English equivalents of all original rhyme-­words appear in translation (italicized by me), with the exception of “syuda” (here). Once in each stanza, the rhyming position is recreated. No other self-­translation by Brodsky is as close to the original semantically while recreating the form. The rhythm and the line length must be partly responsible for this feat—the loose dolnik of up to eighteen syllables (sixteen in the original) leaves room for changes in word order and the introduction of near-­synonyms whose length and stress differ widely from their original counterparts. Both “child” and “cave,” for instance, consist of one syllable instead of the original three; nevertheless, the line containing these words is a possible literal translation of the Russian one. Ishov (2008: 175; 201) states that one of Brodsky’s main goals in translation was the preservation of rhyme words. His examples are convincing; it might be added that a Swedish translator had been asked by Brodsky whether he had managed to end his translation of

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“Rozhdestvenskaya zvezda” in a word for “father.” He had not and half-­expected a rebuke, but Brodsky was understanding—he himself had not succeeded, either (Iangfel’dt 2010). Rhymes certainly were of great importance to Brodsky, but I would like to qualify Ishov’s statement—the ultimate motivation appears to be different. What mattered was placing key words in key positions, stressing them and providing new connections by the means of rhymes which “lend . . . a sense of inevitability to the poet’s statement” (Brodsky 1986: 98–9). If a crucial word rhymes in Russian, Brodsky tries to achieve the same effect in translation. But if the opportunity arises to substitute an original rhyme word for one of greater significance, he makes use of it—as he does by placing “star” in rhyming position in the penultimate line. The overall phonetic exactness of rhymes is similar in the two versions; Weissbort observes that, in Brodsky’s pronunciation, “world” and “athwart” were full-­fledged rhymes. He goes on to comment on the “un-English word order” of the adjectives “pallid” and “stray” (Weissbort 2004: 153–4). However, the difference between possible word orders is more a matter of subtle semantic difference than of “good English”—are the stray clouds pallid or are the pallid clouds stray? Brodsky makes “stray” the defining characteristic, suggesting the absence of home and hence unease. It might be the comma between the two adjectives which makes the phrase look unidiomatic to Weissbort. He also objects to the word order in lines four and seven—but not without noticing the parallelism of their final qualifiers, “athwart” and “ajar.” Weissbort assumes that they make their appearance only for rhymes’ sake. However, they are also relevant semantically. “Athwart” suggests opposition and ill will (as in “thwart”), while “ajar” introduces an important change, allowing the star and the child to look at each other. Divine creatures might be able to see through walls and ceilings (though the baby is described in very human terms), but the reader is helped to visualize the scene by the addition of “ajar.” The implications of eye contact change in translation. The original “vzglyad” (gaze) is an emotionally neutral word; the expression could be paternal, maternal even— “zvezda” (star) is female. “Stare,” especially in the final position, has an ominous undertone. As a verb, it is defined as “to gaze fixedly, usually with the eyes open wide, as from admiration, fear, or insolence” (Webster 2003: 1244). Likewise, the noun “stare” is described as a “steady, fixed gaze with wide-­open eyes.” In English poetry, a fixed gaze had been attributed to this scene over three hundred years before by Milton in “On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity”: “The stars, with deep amaze, / Stand fixed in steadfast gaze.” However, a stare is not merely steadfast. The word implies an absence of communication and understanding; often surprise, sometimes aggression—or, as mentioned in the dictionary, fear. These implications are supported by the translation of “ottsa” as “the Father’s” and not “his Father’s” (both versions are equally justified by the original): the image becomes less intimate. The attribute “keenly” is close to the original “vnimatel’no” (attentively), but a suggestion of sharpness is added, along with an allusion to mourning—keening. “Without blinking” is a literal translation from Russian, but the intensity becomes disturbing in combination with “stare.” This effect might appear out of place in the nativity scene, but it could hint at the onlooker’s knowledge of the future crucifixion. This allusion is unambiguously present in

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“Lullaby”: “one can tell for miles a mountain / by a cross.” The mountain in the second line of “ Star of the Nativity” may also signify Calvary. The preference for “a dot” over “the dot” fits this reading: if the object and the subject of the stare are not identical, the star can know something tragic of which the child is still ignorant. The unblinking gaze, the mountain (in rhyming position) and a storm are present in both versions. Still, to most critics, the original poem’s ending appears entirely positive; comments such as the following are typical: “the womb-­like coziness of the cave and the father’s gaze were juxtaposed to the cosmic cold” (Faradzhev 2000); “the light of the star of the Nativity is energy of goodness in pure form” (Losev 2006: 222). However, there are other views, as well. Without mentioning the anti-­idyllic aspects of the poem discussed here, Lekmanov (2000) draws a parallel to Mandelstam’s “Oda Stalinu” (“Ode to Stalin”). Brodsky, untypically for the Russian intelligentsia, considered the ode a great poem, regardless of its ideology (which, in spite of its title, is not entirely unambiguous). Mandelstam’s speaker looks Stalin in the eye and recognizes him as his/ the father; the speaker refers to himself as “tochka” (dot); geometrical metaphors are used (cf. “horizontality”). Tempting as these parallels are, a reading of Brodsky’s poem as an interpretation of Mandelstam’s ‘Ode’ seems somewhat overstated. Brodsky would hardly make the dictator a divinity; more importantly, the Father-­star gazing at the baby is Brodsky’s most crucial Nativity image—to be consistent, one would have to claim that all his Christmas poems are inspired by the Ode. Still, Lekmanov’s suggestion that here, “the Son realizes, when looking into [his] Father’s eyes, that he is doomed to death” coincides with my impression. The original poem contains a grain of gloom that grows into “stare” in translation. Brodsky does not quite exchange a plus for a minus in the poem’s very last word, but rather activates a shade of meaning potentially present in the original. The semantics are closely connected to rhythm; restlessness increases in translation. Both in English and Russian, the meter is a loose dolnik. However, in the original, the lines are 13 to 16 syllables long; in English, the variation span is significantly wider: 10 to 18 syllables. The first two lines of a poem are normally used to establish a rhythm, but in self-­translation they are the most difficult ones metrically. The dactylic internal rhyme—/mesnasti/ and /paverkhnasti/—is not only recreated in English but promoted from slant to full. However, far from helping to structure the reading (as it does in Russian), in translation it tends to confuse: the emerging pattern is an additional incentive to accentuate “than” instead of “more” and to stress the last syllable in “mountain.” The rest of the stanza does not require such strain. The semantics changes accordingly: after the Latinate “locality” and “horizontality” along with the formal “accustomed” in the first couplet, the third line consists only of the most basic words, all but one of them a single syllable long. The scene becomes concrete and palpable; consonance (“child” / “world”) and an internal rhyme (“cave” / “save”) create a dense sound pattern. Every word in this line is so short and unaffected that the task of saving the world loses its pathos. This line is a forerunner of a later development towards simplicity. In the three years thereafter, Brodsky has composed three Nativity poems in classic four-­foot amphibrach. One of the reasons he did not use it in “Rozhdestvenskaya zvezda” could be the fact that Pasternak had employed it in his poem of the very same

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name—Brodsky might have wanted to avoid an additional similarity. He realized that this poem lacks the steady narrative flow which marks his later work on the same topic. “Anyone with some experience in composing verse knows that verse meter is the equivalent of a certain psychological state” (Brodsky 1986; 208), and Brodsky considered the monotony and simplicity of the amphibrach ideally fit for the theme of Nativity: dealing with it, “one doesn’t need to show off. . . . the reader . . . should not find this text particularly difficult.” (Brodsky 2002a: 104) Why, then, does he make this self-­ translation so difficult right from the beginning? The desire to prevent it sounding too serene might well be one reason; “stare” appears to have this function. Stars are often ambiguous in Brodsky’s oeuvre; Konönen (2003: 118) goes as far as to write that “Brodsky shares Mandelshtam’s negative view on the heavenly light. Stars are either indifferent to man’s desires, or, worse still, they seem to emanate anxiety and pain.” This statement is somewhat too categorical (“Taps” is an example to the contrary), but often it does hold. In “Primechaniya paporotnika” (self-­ translated as “North of Delphi”), written in 1988—the year “Rozhdestvenskaya zvezda” was translated—stars signify cruelty. In the original, looking is not mentioned; in the self-­translation “glare” appears, an even more menacing verb than “stare”: brodsky: russian Po sile prezrenya dogadyvaesh’sya: novye vremena. Po sverkan’yu zvezdy – chto zhalost’ otmenena. literal translation From the strength of contempt you guess: new times./ From the sparkle of a/the star—that pity has been abolished. brodsky: self-­translation The strength of contempt tells you new times won’t wait. The glare of a star—that pity is rendered void,

In both self-­translations, stars appear more ominous. This might well be intentional— or else, the menace of “stare” might be a side-­effect of Brodsky’s fondness for rhyming it with “star,” just as the appearance of “glare” in “North of Delphi” might be partly due to his keen foreigner’s ears detecting glitter and glimmer—equivalents for the original “sverkan’yu”—in “glare.” In “Star of the Nativity,” Brodsky could have rhymed “gaze” with stellar “rays” or the clouds’ “haze,” but the opportunity of placing “star” in the final position and its striking similarity to “stare” and to “stray”—the three rhyme-­words in the final stanza are almost anagrams—were too fruitful to be rejected. This choice meant a change in atmosphere. The new intonation is internally coherent; the translation adds to the hints of uneasiness present in the original, both rhythmically and semantically. Apart from these shifts, the translation is very close to the original in form and content thanks to the relative flexibility of rhythm and the increased use of slant rhymes and enjambments in English. Brodsky not only attempts re-­creation in self-­translation, he also uses new opportunities offered by the target language—for

Brodsky Translating Brodsky

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instance, a rhyme sealing the connection between two crucial words. Here, English provided two words which sum up the poem’s key image while differing in only one letter: “star” and “stare.”

3.2  “Nativity” In “Nativity,” five rhyme-­words out of sixteen are exact translations of their Russian counterparts. Their rhyme partners differ in meaning from the Russian ones—it is extremely rare that two words which rhyme in one language happen also to rhyme in another (unless both words are derived from a third language, as in “December in Florence”). Brodsky probably first translated a line whose final word particularly mattered to him, and having recreated that line, went on to translate the rhyming line. The process is in principle little different from original composition, but one can speculate about the genesis with somewhat greater certainty since the original suggests which lines were created first in the translation. To begin with the first stanza: Nativity Stanza I brodsky: russian [Ne vazhno, chto bylo vokrug . . .] 1990 Не важно, что было вокруг, и не важно, о чем там пурга завывала протяжно, что тесно им было в пастушьей квартире, что места другого им не было в мире. literal translation No matter, what was around, and no matter,/ what(ever) the snowstorm was howling about plangently,/ that the shepherd’s quarters were crowded,/ that they had no other place in the world./ brodsky: self-­translation Nativity (1991) No matter what went on around them; no matter what message the snowstorm was straining to utter; or how crowded they thought that wooden affair; or that there was nothing for them anywhere.

“No matter,” an exact metric and semantic equivalent of the original “ne vazhno,” prompts the rhyme “utter.” Along with “message” and “straining,” this word suggests that the storm has something ominous to say: is it trying to warn the child, to tell him of the suffering to come? In Russian, the reader is more inclined to believe that the

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utterance does not matter, especially as “tam” (hesitantly translated as “ever” in my literal version) suggests unimportance. The original first line calls to mind Pushkin’s “Zimniy vecher,” in which the storm howls like an animal and cries like a child; the plaintive sound carries no message. In English, the most prominent association is Frost’s “Storm Fear,” which alludes to the Nativity, and in which the storm does speak. A shift in the next stanza supports the uneasiness: Nativity Stanza II brodsky: russian Морозное небо над ихним привалом с привычкой большого склоняться над малым сверкало звездою – и некуда деться ей было отныне от взгляда младенца. literal translation The frosty sky above their encampment/ with the habitude of the big leaning over the little/ was gleaming with/like a/the star—and nowhere could it get away/ from now on from the gaze of a/the baby./ brodsky: self-­translation Above their encampment, the sky, cold and idle, and leaning as big things will do over little, was burning a star, which from this very instant had no place to go, save the gaze of the infant.

“Burning a star” is unidiomatic; the original phrasing is only marginally less unusual. A slant rhyme for “infant” is achieved without considerable changes. “Little,” however, leads to the appearance of “idle”1 which receives additional support from “cold”—unlike the Russian adjective “moroznoye” (frosty), it suggests emotional frigidity. The original “privychkoy” and its translation, “as . . . things do,” imply a lack of genuine interest; the effect is intensified in translation. Granted, it is not the star itself which appears uninterested, but the sky in which it gleams—but if it is actively “burning a star,” it suggests God. If the divine parent does not care, at least the earthly couple does:

The lilting “idle” was one of Brodsky’s pet words in English. Its appeal, phonetic and probably also semantic, together with Brodsky’s tendency to regard most human pursuits as idle, was so great that it appears as a rhyme-­word in four self-­translations: “Nativity,” “The Residence,” “In Memoriam” and “So Forth.” In none of these cases does it have an exact correspondent in the original.

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56 Nativity Stanza III

brodsky: russian Во-первых, они были вместе. Второе, и главное, было, что их было трое, и всe, что творилось, варилось, дарилось отныне, как минимум, на три делилось. literal translation Firstly, they were together. Secondly/ and most importantly, they were three,/ and everything which was happening/created, cooked, given [as a gift]/ would be divided, from now on, at least, into three./ brodsky: self-­translation First, they were together. And—most of all—second, they now were a threesome. Whatever was reckoned— the stuff they were brewing, accruing, receiving— was bound to be split into three, like this evening.

“Second” is the most likely reason for the appearance of “reckoned.” In the original, too, semantics can follow sound. “Tvorilos’ ” means both “happened” and “was being created”; this Biblical verb was hardly chosen by chance; the next one, “varilo’ ” (was cooked), was probably prompted, however, by phonetics. The third verb, “darilos’ ” (was given), completes the trinity phonetically; it also refers to the gifts of the Magi. The arguably accidental second verb does not disappear in English. Rendered as “brewing,” it prompts the next word, “accruing,” which is semantically connected to “receiving,” which is phonetically connected to “reckoned.” “Reckoned” and also the seemingly dismissive “stuff ” can sound out of place: “Nativity” is one of the self-­ translations that led many critics to believe Brodsky lacked awareness of register in English. However, the Russian version contains the demotic pronoun “ikhniy” which is just as grating to a Russian ear. Brodsky did not believe in the unsuitability of certain dictions for certain topics—whatever the effects of this conviction, they are probably not accidental.2 The colloquial tone is in line with his interpretation of the trinity concept: here, it refers to Mary and Joseph and the child. To judge by the commas, the original “kak minimum” (at least) refers to time—the couple might have started feeling like a family of three even before the child was born. However, it is very easy to misread the line as meaning “divided into three—or

Which is not to say that Brodsky never makes mistakes: “most of all—second” might well be unintentionally unidiomatic; the suggestiveness of “threesome” also seems to have been ignored.

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four, or five.” This sounds not unlike the weapons of the Spanish Inquisition, as listed by the Monty Pythons. Moreover, both versions appear to suggest, somewhat comically, that the presents are to be split between the members of the family—gold for Mary, frankincense for Joseph, and myrrh for baby Jesus? In translation, the deictic “like this evening” provides immediacy. As in the original, this phrase is ambiguous—however, in English, the ambiguity is enriching. The more obvious meaning is the same as in Russian, but the line also suggests that the evening—time itself—was split into three. In the final couplet, too, a parenthetical phrase is changed: Nativity Stanza IV brodsky: russian Костер полыхал, но полено кончалось; все спали. Звезда от других отличалась сильней, чем свеченьем, казавшимся лишним, способностью дальнего смешивать с ближним. literal translation The fire flared but the log was burning down;/ everybody slept. The star differed from others/ more than by [its] light, which seemed superfluous,/ by its ability to confuse [the] far-­away [person] with [the] near/neighbor./ brodsky: self-­translation The campfire flared on its very last ember. They all were asleep now. The star would resemble no other, because of its knack, at its nadir, for taking an alien for its neighbor.

“Blizhnim” means “closest,” “nearest”; most Russian versions of the Bible use it wherever English ones use “neighbor.” The final “blizhnim” / “neighbor” is crucial; the rhyme words “lishnim” and “nadir” owe their existence in the poem to it. In Russian, the poem’s final lines end in adjectives, though Brodsky professed to regard such rhymes as unacceptable. In English, the solution is arguably more elegant phonetically, especially as “nadir” shares the first two phonemes with “knack.” Moreover, “nadir” adds an interesting twist to the message. Whether Brodsky confused astronomical terms or intended the paradox, this word suggests that the star and the humans cannot see each other. Blindly, the star does not differentiate between aliens and neighbors (is it as undiscriminating at its zenith?). To Brodsky it seemed unlikely “that in human consciousness two more divergent concepts exist than ‘homeland’ (read ‘earth’) and ‘star’ ” (Brodsky 1986: 218). The scenes of Nativity in his poetry unite them.

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3.3  “Lullaby” Lullaby brodsky: russian Колыбельная (Kolybel’naya, 1992) Родила тебя в пустыне я не зря. Потому что нет в помине в ней царя. В ней искать тебя напрасно. В ней зимой стужи больше, чем пространства в ней самой. У одних – игрушки, мячик, дом высок. У тебя для игр ребячьих – весь песок. Привыкай, сынок, к пустыне как к судьбе. Где б ты ни был, жить отныне в ней тебе. Я тебя кормила грудью. А она приучила взгляд к безлюдью, им полна. Той звезде, на расстояньи страшном, в ней твоего чела сиянье, знать видней. Привыкай, сынок, к пустыне. Под ногой, окромя нее, твердыни нет другой. В ней судьба открыта взору за версту. В ней легко узнаешь гору по кресту.

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Не людские, знать, в ней тропы! Велика и безлюдна она, чтобы шли века. Привыкай, сынок, к пустыне, как щепоть к ветру, чувствуя, что ты не только плоть. Привыкай жить с этой тайной: чувства те пригодятся, знать, в бескрайней пустоте. Не хужей она, чем эта: лишь длинней, и любовь к тебе – примета места в ней. Привыкай к пустыне, милый, и к звезде, льющей свет с такою силой в ней везде, точно лампу жжет, о Сыне в поздний час вспомнив, Тот, Кто сам в пустыне дольше нас. literal translation Lullaby

brodsky: self-­translation Lullaby (1993)

Birth I gave you in a/the desert/ not in vain,/ because in it, there is no trace/ of a tsar./

Birth I gave you in a desert not by chance, for no king would ever hazard.

Seeking you in it is useless./ In winter, it has/ more cold than space/ [in itself]./

Seeking you in it, I figure, won’t be wise since its winter cold is bigger than its size.

Others have toys, a ball,/ a high house./

As you suck my breast, this vastness, all this width,

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Brodsky Translating Brodsky You have for [your] childish games/ nothing but sand./3

feeds your gaze the human absence it’s filled with.

Get used to the desert, sonny,/ as to fate,/ wherever you are, from now on you’ll be living in it./

Grow accustomed to the desert as to fate, lest you find it omnipresent much too late.

I fed you at my breast,/ and it [the desert]/ accustomed [your] gaze to the peoplelessness/ it is filled with./

Some get toys, in piles and layers, wrapped or bound. You, my baby, have to play with all the sand.

That star, terrifyingly far away, can see the radiance of your brow better in it [the desert], it seems./

See that star, at terrifying height, aglow? Say, this void just helps it, eyeing you below.

Get used to the desert, sonny./ Underfoot/ there is nothing firm but it./

Grow accustomed to the desert. Uniform underfoot, for all it isn’t, it’s most firm.

In it, fate is open to sight/ for a verst./ In it, you can easily recognize a mountain/ by a cross./

In it, fate rejects a phantom faint or gross: one can tell for miles a mountain by a cross.

It seems that paths in it are not human!/ [It is] big/ and humanless, in order for/ centuries to pass./

Paths one sees here are not really human paths but the centuries’ which freely through it pass.

Get used to the desert, sonny,/ like a/the pinch/4

Grow accustomed to the desert: flesh is not—

Stanzas 3 and 5 are interchanged in self-­translation. This is one of several alterations not “required” by either target language or culture—more on this in the final chapter.  4 The word “shchepot’,” rendered here as “pinch” (as in “a pinch of salt”) is unidiomatically used in the original: it is missing an object. This non-­standard usage highlights the original meaning of “shchepot’”—three fingers brought together. This is not only a position useful for taking small quantities of dry matter (such as dust or sand: if you open your hand, the wind will disperse it), but it is also the way Eastern Orthodox Christians hold their right hand to make the sign of the cross. The thumb, index, and middle finger are brought to a point, symbolizing the Trinity; the remaining two fingers represent the human and divine natures of Jesus Christ: cf. the ending of stanza ten.  3

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to the wind, feeling that you are not/ as the speck would sigh, only flesh./   wind-­pestered— all you’ve got. Get used to living with this secret:/ these feelings/ will be useful, it seems, in the boundless/ emptiness./

Keep this secret, child, for later. That, I guess, may just help you in a greater emptiness.

It is not worse than this one:/ only longer,/ and love for you [is] a/the sign/ of a/the place/space in it./

Which is like this one, just everlasting; and in it love for you shows where it might end.

Get used to the desert, darling,/ and to the star,/ pouring its light with such strength/ everywhere in it,/

Grow accustomed to the desert and the star pouring down its incandescent rays, which are

as if the One who is in the desert longer than us was lighting a lamp, remembering his Son at a late hour./

just a lamp to guide the treasured child who’s late, lit by someone whom that desert taught to wait.

Brodsky wrote that many of his Christmas poems are “crudely speaking, an imitation of folklore” (Brodsky 2002a: 104). This is certainly true for “Kolybel’naya.” What has been said about another Biblically-­themed Brodskian poem can also be applied to it: “Nunc Dimittis” is constructed on the basis of “minusdevices” (to use Iury Lotman’s term). There are no lengthy digressions here, no complicated stanzaic forms, virtuoso rhymes, and much else that is typical of almost any other mature work by Brodsky. Also, there are none of Brodsky’s beloved juxtapositions of elevated style with slang—this poem sustains a restrained . . . tone throughout. The formal structure is simple and monotonous. Venclova 2002: 12–13

In translation, simplicity is preserved in the meter and the (highly un-Brodskian) shortness of the structural units: in both Russian and English, the stanzas are short and close with a period, with the exception of the penultimate one; the odd lines consist of eight syllables,5 the even ones of merely three. The poem is

The exception, “in it love for you shows where,” is in all probability unintentional: like most Russians whose English was not accent-­free, Brodsky pronounced “where” as two syllables.

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trochaic,6 as are many children’s rhymes and lullabies in both languages. The similarity to one of the best-­known Russian cradle-­songs is striking: as in “Lullaby,” in Lermontov’s “Spi, mladenets moy prekrasnyy” (Sleep, my beautiful baby) four-­foot trochaic lines are concluded by feminine rhymes and alternate with shorter lines ending in masculine rhymes. The mother in Lermontov’s song prefigures her son’s dangerous life as a warrior and asks him to pray to God; in Brodsky, Mary, anticipating her son’s loneliness and his crucifixion, asks him to “grow accustomed to the desert and the star,” the latter being an emanation of God. Both mothers regard their children’s tragic future as inescapable. In Russian, the diction is as folksy as in Lermontov’s lullaby thanks to the repetitions of the diminutive “synok” (“sonny”) and the demotic expression “znat’” (it seems) as well as the grammatically substandard “khuzhey” (worse) and the antiquated “stuzhi” (cold). Only line three in stanza six departs from the folksy: “tvoyego chela siyan’ye” (the radiance of your brow) does not quite fit with the diction of a lullaby. These are ancient Russian words, though; they sound solemn today but not formal or academic. In translation, the diction changes. It does not shun Latinisms (“omnipresent,” “incandescent”), compounds (“wind-­pestered,” “everlasting”) and wordplay (“Keep this secret, child, for later” combines “keep a secret” and “keep for later”). The first stanza sets the tone: “for no king would ever hazard / its expanse” is far from everyday speech. The refrain line, “Grow accustomed to the desert,” sounds rather formal in English. “Znat’” is translated as “I guess” and “I figure,” transforming Mary into a twentieth-­century American woman; the mention of “miles” supports this impression. However, there is a similar side-­effect in Russian: demotic language and the use of the measure unit “versta” (verst) make her sound like a Russian peasant. Both vernaculars prove to be too closely associated with certain spaces different from the poem’s setting—namely, the desert. The desert is the key image of “Kolybel’naya” / “Lullaby.” The English poem begins with the words: “Birth I gave you in a desert.” Whether or not Brodsky realized how difficult such an inversion is to reconcile with English grammar, he certainly knew that his poem failed to correspond to the canonical view semantically: Bethlehem is not far from the Negev, but the desert as such appears in the Biblical account only after Christ’s birth. As in several other Brodsky poems, here it is presented as his birthplace. Brodsky acknowledges the fear of Herod as a reason for the flight, but in his version, it happens before the birth. The first stanza explicitly states why Jesus had to be born in the desert; on closer examination, most of the poem becomes an explanation for this (the numbers in brackets refer to the stanzas in English): the desert is inaccessible (1), cold (2), empty of people (3), omnipresent (4), without worldly pleasures (5); it is a place which allows God to see Jesus (6); it is uniform and firm (7); it foretells Jesus’ future fate (8); it suggests infinity (9)—and Jesus must grow accustomed to all of the above (4/7/10/13). Brodsky found the image of a single small family in the midst of a desert more moving

In Russian, the first line of each stanza begins with an anapaestic foot, but this might be just as well described as pyrrhic substitution.

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and solemn than the idea of the same family in a small, but nevertheless crowded and lively Middle-Eastern town (the inn in Bethlehem was booked up, after all): “When the backdrop is nature, the phenomenon becomes more. . . . eternal, I suppose” (Brodsky 2002a: 107). The word “pustynya” (desert) appears in the poem six times; in five cases, it is in rhyming position. The translation trumps this feat: in it, “desert” rhymes in all six instances (though more rhymes are slant).7 This was unavoidable because of the English refrain’s greater rigidity. In Russian “Privykay, synok, k pustyne” (Get used, sonny, to the desert) is once exchanged for “privykay k pustyne, milyy” (Get used to the desert, dear). The English equivalent of the imperative is longer, leaving no space for affectionate addresses or variation: “Grow accustomed to the desert.” This diminishes the original tenderness (though Brodsky does manage to include “my baby” and “child” in other lines), but increases the weight of this key line. In English, a slant rhyme seals the message: “desert” / “omnipresent.” In Russian, the corresponding lines end in “pustyne” / “ty ne” (you not), providing more phonetic similarity but less semantic impact. The English version has more terms concerning the desert’s magnitude in rhyming position—“expanse,” “width,” “size”; in the original, there is only “prostranstvo” (space). Omnipresence/magnitude and emptiness/solitude are the desert’s two main features. In English, the former receives an additional stress; in Russian, the latter: the words for “desert” and “emptiness” are related—“pustynya,” “pustota.” A deserted space is not quite the right connotation, desolation is closer; but even without etymological support, a desert is associated with emptiness. This association is made explicit in stanza ten; the desert must make Jesus realize that he is more than flesh—both in reference to the traditional body/spirit opposition and to his divine/human nature. He will need this knowledge: Keep this secret, child, for later. That, I guess, may just help you in a greater emptiness. Which is like this one, just everlasting; and in it love for you shows where it might end.

Why is it—in both versions—not “your love,” but “love for you”? Who loves? A possible answer is: God the Father; in the following stanza the star transforms into a lamp lit by a loving parent. God’s eternal solitude is the emptiness which might end thanks to his

The rhyming position of other key words—“krestu”/“cross,” “zvezde”/“star”—is also recreated. “Desert” moves into rhyming position (with “measured”) in the self-­translation “Near Alexandria.”

 7

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love for Jesus.8 The Russian “primeta mesta v nei” (a sign of a place in it) appears to signify the opposite of “where it might end” on first sight. However, it can be read to mean the same as “where it might end”: “mesto” (place, spot) is an opposite of boundless empty space; to find a spot of love means to show where the emptiness might end. In Russian, the emptiness is infinite in terms of space but not in terms of time; in English, “everlasting” is substituted for “beskrayney” (boundless). This reading, to which the self-­ translation has led, seems more coherent than the bleak enigma of love as a source of emptiness. Though still difficult to process and paradoxical (“everlasting” / “might end”), in translation the image seems clearer than in the original. Several allusions and images are also easier to grasp in English. “Tsar’ ” (tsar), for instance, becomes “king.” The desert’s inaccessibility for kings, while mainly indicating safety from Herod (a tsar in Russian), also implies that the Magi would not be able to find their way to the newborn. The Russian “net tsarya” (no tsar) was probably intended to have the same two meanings, as “tsar’ ” often signifies one of the Magi in Brodsky’s Christmas poems. However, a Russian reader unfamiliar with these is likely to miss the ambiguity: outside Brodsky’s oeuvre, the Magi (volkhvy) are very rarely called “tsari,” whereas in English, “kings” can be more easily recognized as a reference to the Three Wise Men. Moreover, the next lines provide an additional hint which has no equivalent in Russian: “Seeking you in it, I figure, / won’t be wise” [my italics]. An allusion to the absence of gifts follows: “Some get toys, in piles and layers, / wrapped or bound. / You, my baby, have to play with / all the sand.”9 Admittedly, gifts more suitable for a child than myrrh, gold and frankincense are described here; but the act of giving is mentioned, unlike in Russian: “U odnikh—igrushki, myachik, / dom vysok” (others have toys, a ball / a high house). Another image is also clarified in translation: literal translation I fed you at my breast. And it 10 accustomed [your] gaze to the   peoplelessness it is filled with.

brodsky: self-­translation As you suck my breast, this vastness, all this width, feeds your gaze the human absence it’s filled with.

Within this reading, when the height of the star is called “terrifying,” it implies not so much Mary’s fear but her realization that God is afraid of his own inaccessibility (the inaccessibility of the desert being its reflection and presage) and hopes that Jesus would save him from loneliness.  9 In both versions, “песок” / “sand” is in the final position, provoking reflection as to how a child might play with it. Water is scarce in the desert, so there would be no sand castles; rather, one imagines the boy letting sand pour through his fingers, studying the nature of time and infinity. As in all four preceding stanzas the final vowels of the second and the fourth lines correspond to each other, the reader is surprised by the assonance “bound” / “sand” instead of a rhyme, and tempted to read the last word as “sound.” This makes Jesus’ “toys” immaterial and linking back to the poem’s title: instead of playthings, there is the sound of the lullaby. 10 The pronoun, rather unfortunately, makes the reader wonder for a moment whether “ona” (“it”; grammatically “she”) could possibly refer to the breast (instead of the desert from the previous stanza).  8

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In English, the simultaneity (“as”) makes the reader imagine a baby at the breast, gazing into emptiness; the present tense makes the image more immediate. The verb “feeds” connects Mary’s and the desert’s actions, transforming the emptiness into paradoxical (“filled with . . . absence”) metaphysical milk. Numerous associations are contrasted: softness vs. firmness, warmth vs. cold, roundness vs. flatness, palpability vs. abstractness, affection vs. loneliness, nourishment vs. emptiness. This collection of antitheses matches the poem’s tendency towards duality: chance is opposed to fate, the life of flesh to eternity; in the second stanza there is even a comparison of such seemingly incommensurable things as size and temperature . . . Both oppositions and parallels are easier to detect in English: literal translation Get used to the desert, darling, and to the star, pouring its light with such strength everywhere in it,

brodsky: self-­translation Grow accustomed to the desert and the star pouring down its incandescent rays, which are

as if the One who is in the desert longer than us was lighting a lamp, remembering his Son at a late hour.

just a lamp to guide the treasured child who’s late, lit by someone whom that desert taught to wait.

This image of a star as a lamp, though banal in itself, is as unusual for Brodsky’s poetry as the length of the phrase is for “Lullaby”: the two final stanzas form one sentence. In English, “guide,” “rays” and the enjambment enhance the parallel between meaning and structure—the star is connected to the child by the rays; the two stanzas featuring the star and the child are connected by the clause “which are / just a lamp.” In Russian, the interstanzaic enjambment could also be linked with the theme, but the parallel is less apparent, as the light does not necessarily imply guidance (a parent might simply remain awake, waiting). In English, the words “guide” and “treasured” are added, and the star/lamp simile becomes a metaphor. This increase in hope and help fits in with the clearer suggestion of love as the end of emptiness. The poem tends toward greater optimism, intensity and clarity in English, while much of the original simplicity is lost.

3.4  A delicate balance: Brodsky’s Nativity poetry A suggestion of care and tenderness extended towards the baby is juxtaposed with a premonition of suffering and solitude: this tension is a crucial feature of all three Nativity poems that Brodsky undertook to translate. In each of the translations, the balance between these two forces shifts. Some alterations are due to formal concerns (such as providing a key word with a rhyme); once a shift takes place, additional changes are often made to support it. After all, translation is a process in which every decision influences subsequent ones (Levý 1966), and the writing of poetry works

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likewise. In “Star of the Nativity,” the very last word activates the ominousness latently present in the original. In “Nativity,” the storm knows more and the sky cares less than in the original. In “Lullaby,” on the other hand, the change is for the positive. The original deals with solitude and suffering; there are two glimmers of hope: in mid-­ poem and in the final stanza. In translation, the former is rendered unambiguous, and the latter intensified and formally enhanced. To save recurrent images (the child, the star, the storm, the desert) from repetitiveness, the nativity scene needs some space for variation. The area of tension between idyll and tragedy provides such a space. Translating, Brodsky repositions the poem between these extremes—and thus gains the freedom to enhance his imagery, making use of the opportunities offered by the target language.

4

Poèmes à Clef: M.B.’s Birthday

The two poems to follow are dedicated to Marina Basmanova,1 the object of Brodsky’s life-­long and, in the opinion of many biographers, life-­wrecking passion. Brodsky was 21 and she 23 when they met in 1962; a complicated on and off relationship ensued. In 1964, Brodsky at least once attempted suicide, cutting his wrists when he learned of M.B.’s affair with his close friend. M.B. and Brodsky had a son, but she left the poet for good soon after the child was born (Losev 2006: 71–2). Brodsky continued to write poems for and about M.B. for decades. Birthdays always mattered to Brodsky. He dates two poems July 22, 1978. The date is a constituent part of these texts: it is the day that M.B.turned forty. Both poems are dedicated to her. Whether Brodsky really wrote both on this day or merely used the date as a form of dedication, these texts are poèmes à clef. The reference to a woman is far from obvious—one appears to portray a dying man, the other to describe a thing. The key is the dedication along with the date. Brodsky translated both poems into English; in both translations, he deletes the dedication but keeps the date, hiding the key even further. This does not mean, of course, that the poems cannot be read fruitfully without considering M.B.—in fact, exactly this will be attempted in most of this chapter, before returning to the issue of dedication.

4.1  “The Polar Explorer” The Polar Explorer brodsky: russian Полярный исследователь (Polyarnyy issledovatel’, 1978) М.Б. Все собаки съедены. В дневнике не осталось чистой страницы. И бисер слов покрывает фото супруги, к ее щеке мушку даты сомнительной приколов.

For the sake of brevity and despite this appellation’s melodrama, I will follow Brodsky in calling the lady “M.B.”

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Дальше – снимок сестры. Он не щадит сестру: речь идет о достигнутой широте! И гангрена, чернея, взбирается по бедру, как чулок девицы из варьете. 22 июля 1978 literal translation A/the polar explorer to M.B. All dogs have been eaten. In the diary/ no clean page is left. And the [small] beads of words/ cover the spouse’s photo, to her cheek/ having pinned the beauty spot of a/the dubious date./ After it—a/the picture of the sister. He does not spare the sister:/ this is about the reached latitude!/ And gangrene, [growing] black, climbs up the hip/ like the stocking of a/the vaudeville girl./ July 22, 1978 brodsky: self-­translation The Polar Explorer (1980) All the huskies are eaten. There is no space left in the diary. And the beads of quick words scatter over his spouse’s sepia-­shaded face adding the date in question like a mole to her lovely cheek. Next, the snapshot of his sister. He doesn’t spare his kin: what’s been reached is the highest possible latitude! And, like the silk stocking of a burlesque half-­nude queen, it climbs up his thigh: gangrene. July 22, 1978

“The Polar Explorer” is a title rich in both assonance and consonance. The original equivalent, “Polyarnyy issledovatel’,” is phonetically inconspicuous. It is solely by chance that density of sound is gained in translation; both titles are current collocations. This may serve as a reminder of what language can do on its own. When describing poetic effects and multiple semantic layers, I do not always imply authorial or translatorial intention. The title points to a location—the Arctic or Antarctica. This setting is stressed in the first line of the English version: “sobaki” (“dogs”) are specified as “huskies.” This has been explained as follows: “Evidently, huskies is chosen because it is a longer word than dogs and better fits the rhythm.” (Kumakhova 2006: 117). But evidence actually points to the contrary: “All the dogs are eaten. There is no space” has ten syllables and three main stresses [in bold here], distributed exactly as in the original. “Huskies” has been chosen despite the additional syllable. The specification of the breed stresses that the

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protagonist is not only starving, but also deprived of any hope of getting away. The breed reappears in Brodsky’s long poem “History of the Twentieth Century,” originally written in English. Amundsen, one of its protagonists, proudly proclaims: “There are neither doubts nor a question mark: / it’s the tails of your huskies which pull and bark.”2 Here, the huskies’ tails have the form of question marks; in “The Polar Explorer,” they are only indirectly connected to writing—is “Vse sobaki s’yedeny” / “All the huskies are eaten” a sentence that the explorer writes in his diary? And who is this explorer; did Brodsky have a specific figure in mind? The drama of self-­sacrificing fanaticism is universal, but Brodsky was particularly interested in this form. He had participated in several geological expeditions in his youth; Amundsen’s monologue in “History . . .” is also proof of the poet’s interest in polar exploration. The Antarctic race was carried out with sleds and huskies (and not with boats and planes); among its victims there is one who resembles the poem’s protagonist most—Captain Oates, a member of the ill-­fated British Terra Nova Expedition under Scott. He carried a diary, photographs and pounds of minerals until he went off to die of gangrene, heroically letting his two companions go on (to their own deaths). By using the English language, the translation brings the protagonist closer to a possible prototype. The jocular expression “s’est’ sobaku” (to be experienced, literally to have eaten a/the dog) resonates in Russian, putting the extreme experience in an ironic light; the bureaucratically stilted word “supruga” (spouse) also sounds comical. As Derek Mahon put it in his villanelle “Antarctica,” unambiguously dedicated to Oates, “at the heart of the ridiculous, the sublime.” Or rather, in this case, at the heart of the tragic, the comical. As the similarly formal “spouse” is also used in English, the effect was apparently intended. “Supruga” and “spouse” participate in a web of alliterations beginning with an unvoiced /s/. In Russian, there are “sobaki s’yedeny” (dogs eaten) and “snimok sestry” (sister’s photo). In English, the hissing, menacing alliteration intensifies—“snapshot of his sister,” “scatter over his spouse’s sepia-­shaded face,” “silk stocking,” all in a poem merely eight lines long. The act of writing forms the bulk of the poem, framed by two pieces of sinister information—the dogs’ destiny and the deathly diagnosis. In English, the first enjambment effectively illustrates that “There is no space / left in the diary” (or in the line). The original “biser slov” (small beads of words) suggests that the handwriting is minute. While the Russian version stresses the scarcity of space, the English one  refers to the scarcity of time—the adjective “quick” is added. It rhymes with “cheek”— whether Brodsky failed to hear the difference in vowel length or chose this slant rhyme deliberately, the contrast to /i:/ stresses the quickness of “quick.” Moreover, “quick” can also mean “alive.” Stressed by its rhyming position, this word captures a contrast essential to much of Brodsky’s poetry: death = whiteness = paper vs life = blackness =

In the same poem, Captain Scott “stares at ice, thinks of his family, prays and dies”: his last thoughts are of his family, while the present poem’s polar explorer negates his family for the sake of the high latitude.

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writing (cf. Ranchin 1993: 4). Here, as in several other poems, snow forms part of the first cluster. Exceptionally for Brodsky’s work, blackness means not life but death here. In “The Polar Explorer,” words survive, while people and feelings die (Zholkovskiĭ 1986: 51). Having eaten up the diary, words proceed to devour human faces. The English version has more internal tension—words are “quick,” alive, but they bring death. Lotman’s excellent article on the original poem comes to a similar conclusion: “There is only one thing left to do: writing, the creation of new black spots. It is of immense importance that death is doing exactly the same thing here. At the end, whiteness will swallow both the blackness of the gangrene, and the traces of writing . . . Still, writing is the ultimate borderline of being” (Lotman 1998: 204). Kuznetsov (2010) observes a parallel and crucial difference to “Novyy Zhyul’ Vern” (“New Jules Verne”), in which a sailor writes to his beloved from inside a gigantic octopus: “A miracle, but the stationery and your picture survived” in self-­translation. Here, a photograph is complemented by stationery; the sailor is looking at a picture of his addressee while writing. In “The Polar Explorer,” a photograph mutates into stationery, covered in “biser slov” (small beads of words). In Russian, this phrase might remind one of “casting pearls before swine”—in most translations of the Bible, “biser” is used in this expression. Brodsky was well aware of this; in the 1978 poem “Strofy” the image of “biser” as writing appears alongside a reference to pigs; it is followed by a juxtaposition of black letters to emptiness: “Strofy” brodsky: russian Vidno, sil’no prevysil svoyu rol’ svinopas, chey netronutyy biser perezhivet vsekh nas. . . . Pravo, chem gushche rossyp’ chernogo na liste, tem bezrazlichney osob’ k proshlomu, k pustote v budushchem. literal translation It seems that the swineherd has strongly exaggerated his role, his untouched beads will outlast us all. . . . Really, the thicker the scatter of black on the sheet,

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the less the specimen cares for the past, for emptiness in future. translation by david mcduff and brodsky The swineherd exaggerated, obviously, his role; his pearl, lying there unheeded, will outlast us all. . . . True, the more the white’s covered with the scatter of black, the less the species cares for its past, for its blank future.

Here, “biser” is rendered as “pearl.” “Pearls” could have been accommodated in “A Polar Explorer” metrically—but not semantically. Pearls are white, and blackness matters; pearls are valuable, and this writing might well be futile. In English, the act of writing on a photograph becomes somewhat less explicit, though “sepia-­shaded face” is easy enough to decode. The image moves closer to physical destruction—it is his wife’s face, not merely a piece of paper, which the explorer covers with letters and words. For the Russian reader, the idea of creating a palimpsest for lack of space echoes one of Akhmatova’s most famous lines, “A tak kak mne bumagi ne khvatilo, / Ya na tvoyem pishu chernovike” (And as I did not have enough paper / I am writing on your draft). Akhmatova’s poem engages in a dialogue with the imaginary draft even while deleting it. The explorer cannot help but see the faces of the two women he is about to disfigure (foreshadowing the disfiguring to be wrought by crying at the news of his death)—but there is no dialogue. The Russian verb, “pokryvayet” (covers), stresses erasure; the English one, “scatter,” evokes invasion. The adverb “cherneya” means “appearing black” and also “gradually becoming black.” While this ambiguity is lost, the simile is enhanced in English—“silk” and “half-­nude” are added; the final line becomes significantly shorter than all others. More importantly, the internal rhyme “queen / gangrene” stresses the contrast between Eros and Thanatos, between sensual dance and slow death. The word “queen” can (and could at the time of translation) refer to travesty, stressing the grotesque balance between obliterating female images and transforming oneself into a burlesque queen whose ornament is rotting flesh. Brodsky might well have read Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin (1956), in which a grotesque transvestite appears to the protagonist as a messenger of death and destruction: the novel was translated into Russian by Brodsky’s friend Gennadii Shmakov. Kuznetsov (2010) observes that “the image of a ‘vaudeville girl’ probably points to the ‘indecency’ of death.” As evidence, he cites Brodsky’s play Mramor (Marble; punningly pluralized as “Marbles” in the English version by Alan Myers and Brodsky), in which the spectacle of dying is called “samaya

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bol’shaya pornografiya” (the biggest porn of all), albeit by a rather dislikeable protagonist (Brodskiĭ 2011). “Portret tragedii” / “Portrait of a Tragedy” can be added to this argument. In it, suffering (and, ultimately, death), are disgustingly sexual: Let’s tumble into her arms with a lecher’s ardor! Let’s drown in her flabby rubble; yes, let’s go under. Let’s burrow through her and make mattress fodder. Brodsky: self-­translation

Apart from the wife, the sister and the dancer, the poem has another covert female protagonist, M.B. To leave no doubt of this, Brodsky added an explanation by hand under the date in the copy of K Uranii he gave to Evgenii Rein—“M.B.’s birthday” (Reĭn 1998: 143). M.B. is born; the poem’s protagonist is dying. In translation, the (pseudo-) erotic aspect of the fatal disease is increased. “Queen” suggests female power; four years before “Polyarnyy issledovatel’,” Brodsky had compared M.B. to a queen in “Dvadtsat’ sonetov k Marii Styuart” (Twenty sonnets for Mary Stuart). In “The Polar Explorer,” the relationship of gender and power is ambiguous—the explorer is symbolically destroying female faces, while being literally destroyed and symbolically feminized. In Russian, “gangrena” (gangrene) and “smert’” (death) are feminine words. Rein was a close friend of Brodsky, and usually a very astute interpreter. In this case, despite all evidence to the contrary, he states that there is no relationship whatsoever between the dedication, the date and the poem (Reĭn 1998: 143). It seems that he is speaking more as a friend than as a literary scholar. The connection is hard to admit—in the light of an ex-­lover’s fortieth birthday, “The Polar Explorer” becomes a rather cruel poem. Indeed, some of Brodsky’s poems dedicated to M.B. were so harsh that his editor asked him whether he really wanted them published. Yes, he said, he did (Gorbanevskaia 1991: 4). If M.B. appears in “The Polar Explorer,” she is at best a wife’s face to be effaced with writing; at worst, she is the Queen of Gangrene. “Daty somnitel’noy” (dubious date) has at least three possible points of reference—a date in the explorer’s world, the date of the poem’s composition, and M.B.’s birthday (the latter two might or might not really coincide). “Somnitel’noy” can mean both “questionable” and “suspicious.” In translation, the corresponding phrase is “the date in question.” The shift is fortunate in regard to the character’s credibility3—polar exploration was a race, and dates were crucial. But another meaning of “daty somnitel’noy” disappears in English—a date which is, but should not be, regarded as an occasion for celebration. In the two years that had passed between composition and self-­translation, Brodsky could have lost some of the bitterness which led him to suggest, covertly, that he wished M.B. had never been born. Another ambiguity, perhaps unintentional, also disappears in translation. In the two final lines of the original,

The alteration could be due to simple calquing error, as the Russian “data pod voprosom” (lit. date under question) signifies an uncertain date—but the effect does not depend on the intention.

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“gangrena” (gangrene) can be read as a metaphor for writing: a black line crawling not over the explorer’s leg but over the sister’s full length photo. This is made possible by the word’s unstressed position, the absence of a possessive pronoun before “bedru” (hip) as well as by “i” (and) linking “gangrena” back to “on ne shchadit sestru” (he does not spare the sister). In English, the gangrene is clearly real. It is placed in the most prominent position possible—as the poem’s final word, it “climbs up his thigh,” and instead of a connecting conjunction there is a separating colon. Even if read literally, in Russian the death sentence is mentioned in passing. In English, it is pronounced with fanfare. One may see this shock effect as either inferior or superior to the quiet horror of the unobtrusive Russian ending; but in any case, Brodsky is no slave to form. If he insists that meter and rhyme scheme are to be recreated, this is because they fit the poem’s mood and images. If the form is to change, the content is to follow, and vice versa. Changing the emotional effect of the ending, Brodsky goes against his proclaimed principles and also changes the rhyme scheme. The first quatrain retains the original pattern, but the second switches from cross- to envelope-­rhyming. The Anglophone reader, disappointed in the expectation of finding a rhyme for “kin” in the penultimate line, now awaits one all the more eagerly: “gangrene” thus gains greater impact. As a result, the Russian version offers “English” understatement, while the English one provides “Russian” emotional intensity.

4.2  “Minefield Revisited” An internally coherent change in mood also takes place in another poem whose dedication to M.B.’s birthday is quite unambiguous. Minefield Revisited brodsky: russian [Ty, gitaroobraznaya veshch’ . . .] 1978 М.Б. Ты, гитарообразная вещь со спутанной паутиной струн, продолжающая коричневеть в гостиной, белеть а-ля Казимир на выстиранном просторе, темнеть, особенно вечером, в коридоре, спой мне песню о том, как шуршит портьера, как включается, чтоб оглушить полтела, тень, как лиловая муха сползает с карты и закат в саду за окном точно дым эскадры, от которой осталась одна матроска, позабытая в детской. И как расческа в кулаке дрессировщика-турка, как рыбку – леской, возвышает болонку над Ковалевской до счастливого случая тявкнуть сорок

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раз в день рожденья, – и мокрый порох гасит звезды салюта, громко шипя, в стакане, и стоят графины кремлем на ткани. 22 июля 1978 literal translation to M.B. You, guitar-­like thing with an entangled web/ of chords, continuing to [appear] brown in the living room,/ to [appear] white à la Kazimir on the laundered expanse,/ to [appear] dark, especially in the evening, in the hallway,/ sing me a/the song of how a/the drapery rustles,/ how a shadow is turned on, knocking senseless half the body,/ how a lilac-­colored fly creeps down a/the map/card/ and the sunset in a/the garden is like the smoke of a squadron,/ of which only a middy blouse remains,/ forgotten in a/the nursery. And like a/the comb/ in the fist of a/the Turkish animal trainer, like a/the [fish] line [elevating] a/the fish,/ elevates a/the lap dog above Kovalevska,/ to the happy chance of yelping forty/ times on a/the birthday,—and the wet gunpowder/ quenches firework stars, hissing loudly, in a/the glass,/ and carafes stand kremlin-­like on the cloth./ July 22, 1978 brodsky: self-­translation Minefield Revisited (1988) You, guitar-­shaped affair with tousled squalor of chords, who keep looming brown in an empty parlor, or snow-­white against laundered expanses, or dark—at dusk especially—in the corridor4 strum me a tune of how drapery makes its cloudy rustle, how a flipped-­up switch ravages half a body with shadow, how a fly prowls the atlas, how in the garden outside, the sunset echoes a steaming squadron of which there survived only a middy blouse in the nursery, how hidden in the satin trousers the comb of a Turkish dog trainer, when played, elevates his poodle

The word “corridor” is calqued from Russian, including the stress on the ultimate syllable. To a reader who speaks Russian, this seems like an intrusion of the original language into the English text, calling to mind the long “koridory” (the word “hallway” does not quite suffice) of Leningrad’s communal flats.

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beyond Kovalevska, beyond its idol to a happy occasion: that is, to yelping forty times at some birthday, while wet and frothy firework stars fizz and fade in the foggy trembling glass, and carafes on a tablecloth feign the Kremlin.

The differences begin with the title. Brodsky’s original has none. His translation is entitled “Minefield Revisited.” While the speaker’s steps on the minefield take him from one seemingly unconnected image to another, the author is leading him to the mine. However, the mine can only be recognized as such by a reader able to connect the date beneath the poem with the final image and to read the celebration as M.B.’s birthday. Just as in “The Polar Explorer,” the dedication is deleted in English, but the date underneath remains, a final vague hint. “Sorok”/“forty” is a rhyme-­word in both English and Russian; this hints at the importance of the number. The ending, unlike in “The Polar Explorer,” is more deflating than sinister, especially in view of a circus dog’s appearance. The English title, too, is ironic—ones does not usually (re-)visit a minefield. It reminds one of Brideshead Revisited, in which war leads the protagonist to the place where he had been in love. In the poem, thinking of a past love is comparable to warfare. However, there is no explosion, but only a firework dwindling down to the fizz of champagne. Considering the guitar and Brodsky’s love for puns, the title might be a musical reference—its two words start with “Mi” and “Re.” Moreover, it might refer to the act of self-­translation. If writing the poem meant visiting a minefield, re-­writing is re-­visiting. The first line addresses a “veshch’” (thing)—a key word in Brodsky’s poetics. The title of his essay on Thomas Hardy, “Wooing the Inanimate,” (Brodsky 1995: 313–75), could just as well be applied to his own work. The first article dedicated to this concept in Brodsky’s poetry (Lotman and Lotman 1993) convincingly argues that for Brodsky, the word “veshch’” (thing) often denotes something close to a Platonic idea. The poem “Posvyashchaetsya stulu” (Dedicated to a chair), for instance, ends with the words “materiya konechna. No ne veshch’.” (Matter is finite. But not a/the thing). Moreover, when the material thing is no more, its “thinginess” is all the more present: “The more invisible something is,/ the more certain it’s been around, /and the more obviously it’s everywhere” (“Roman Elegies,” self-­translation). In “Minefield Revisited,” Brodsky renders “veshch’” not as “thing,” but as “affair.” This choice suggests “love affair” and signals complexity. The affair is complex indeed. What or who is the addressee? The original has an unspecified resemblance to a guitar, while in English, the reference to shape is clear. Still, what does it mean? Is “guitar-­shaped affair” a disconcertingly complicated way of saying “guitar”? After all, the object has chords, it is supposed to sing, it is a brown thing in the parlor. But then it changes location and, more strangely, color. The idea of a guitar, in various incarnations? But the chords are not really chords after all, or at least not attached to a guitar—they are an entangled web. Is the “guitar” a woman? “Guitar-­ shaped” might evoke the image of female curves, and the “tousled squalor of chords” could become hair. M.B.? In the context of “Shum livnya . . .” (The noise of rain), written

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25 years earlier, the answer seems to be yes: “U zaderzhavshey na gitare vzglyad / puchok volos napominayet grif” (the tuft of hair of the [female] one, whose look is resting on the guitar, resembles a/the [guitar] neck). Still, elusiveness is the most definitive feature of this “thing”/“affair.” In English, it becomes more alive and more dislikable. In Russian, there is no grammatical indication of animateness; in English, the “affair” is a “who.”5 A menacing “keep looming” is added in translation. The speaker appears to wish the addressee away, while the original merely suggests a continued presence after something or someone else has disappeared (the speaker? love? a child in a middy blouse?). In translation, two similes disappear—“kak rybku—leskoy” (the dog is elevated to a pseudo-­mathematical feat like a fish by a fishing line) and “à la Kazimir.” The whiteness of the “veshch’” (“thing”) is compared to Kazimir Malevich’s White Square, suggesting that the elusive object does not always have the form of a guitar. The allusion is connected to M.B., who was a painter and whose teachers had in their turn been taught by Malevich (Losev 2006: 76). M.B.’s verbal portrait is reminiscent of a cubist still life, especially of Braque; Losev (2011: 6424) lists several Russian poems comparing female silhouettes to guitars. Western sources, both in poetry and painting, can be added to the list—for instance, Man Ray’s Le Violon d’Ingres, Erich Kästner’s “Abendlied des Kammervirtuosen,” and several poems by Arthur Symons. A metaphor is simplified in translation—“How a flipped-­up switch ravages half a body / with shadow,” with its reference to a light switch, explains the original “Kak vklyuchayetsya, chtob oglushit’ poltela, / ten’” (how a shadow is turned on, to deafen half of a/the body). On the other hand, another image is less clear in English. “I zakat v sadu za oknom—tochno dym eskadry” (and the sunset in the garden behind the window—like the smoke of a squadron) suggests a smoky color with an echo of fire. In English, the same effect is probably intended, but it is barely graspable in “the sunset echoes a steaming squadron.” The object of comparison seems to be the squadron itself; steam— unlike smoke—is associated neither with shooting nor with fire. There is a synesthetic (and thus potentially disorienting) reference to hearing in lieu of vision in the Russian version of the first image, and in the English version of the second one—“echoes” and “oglushit’ ” (deafen) respectively. The poem’s images leak into each other; things are not what they seem. This is partly achieved by comparisons and metaphors in which x equals y equals z. The reader has hardly had time to process the sunset-­as-smoke (or, with more difficulty, as a squadron) simile, when it is expanded and simultaneously deconstructed: “of which there survived only a middy blouse / in the nursery” (this line is remarkably close to the original). A boy’s garment might refer to M.B.’s and Brodsky’s son. A firework, rather traditionally linked to stars, turns out to be itself a metaphor vehicle—champagne bubbles are the tenor. This, unless an actual firework is mirrored in glasses. Or are these Kremlin stars? The meaning is elusive not because it is hidden, but because elusiveness is the meaning. This effect is more pronounced in translation. One might argue that the shift from “spoy” (sing) to “strum” works against animation; however, a guitar’s singing is such a traditional formula in Russian that it hardly works as personification anymore.

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“Spoy mne pesnyu” (sing me a song) is reassuringly traditional—it is a verbatim Pushkin quote and a common motif in folk and folk-­like poetry and songs. In English, attributes are added to suggest fuzziness and instability—the rustle of a drapery becomes “cloudy,” the glass “foggy” and “trembling.” In Russian, it is the speaker who ironically compares a trained dog’s abilities to Kovalevska’s mathematical achievements. In English, the poodle is not quite a poodle—Kovalevska becomes “its idol,” the dog consciously strives to perform the feat of “yelping forty.”6 Forty, for Brodsky, was old age. Was he trying to convince himself that the object of his passion has become a mundane mature woman, nothing like the enigmatic girl he had loved? Is the poem’s sarcasm a screen for suffering? The “trembling glass” evokes the biblical “cup of trembling” and supports the impression of instability. The onomatopoeic champagne orgy of fizzing f-­alliterations (“frothy,” “firework,” “fizz,” “fade,” “foggy”) not only makes the mention of hissing superfluous, but also supports the mood. The original “v den’ rozhden’ya” is closer to “on the birthday” than to “on a birthday” in context; it has none of the translation’s dismissive “at some birthday” (this intonation is supported by “affair” and “squalor”). This shift creates a tension between the author and the speaker—the former has a specific birthday in mind and informs the reader of it by stating the date. If the date forms part of the poem, the speaker, failing to acknowledge its importance, is unreliable.7 In Russian, the celebration is viewed ironically, but only the English version suggests that it is fake, unreal. The original ends with an innocent still life, though the final metaphor has the same tenor and vehicle. The translation closes with “carafes on a tablecloth feign the Kremlin”; the verb suggests a malicious intention. Additionally stressed by the unusual slant rhyme “trembling” and connected to “forty” by the list of f-­alliterations, the final phrase—“feign the Kremlin”—throws a shadow over the whole celebration. Champagne bubbles can signify both glee and transience; “feign” tips the balance in favor of the latter. The ending, the title and the half dozen subtle shifts between them suffice to make the poem’s tone more ironically dismissive and its matter more elusive.

Dogs appear in both “birthday poems.” Is this coincidence or code? In this, the poem is similar to “Niotkuda s lyubov’yu” / “From nowhere with Love” with its pretended indifference and forgetting, whose addressee is also M.B.

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Elegies 5.1  “In Memoriam” “Brodsky wrote more about death than any other Russian poet” (Gordin 2009). Few American poets could compete, either. After elegies to relationships, we now turn to elegies in the proper sense—to poems inspired by the loss of the author’s mother and father. Brodsky last saw his parents in 1972; after he left the country, neither he nor they were allowed to visit. His mother died in 1983, his father in 1984. In 1985, Brodsky commemorated his mother’s death in a poem in Russian and composed an essay about his parents, “In a Room and a Half.” One of the reasons for writing it in English was perhaps the estranging effect of a foreign language; (over-)generalization can also make the personal less so: “Every child feels guilty towards his parents, for somehow he knows that they will die before him” (Brodsky 1986: 478). Puns are another means of accommodating tragedy: “Should I brace myself then, thinking that I am hugging my mother and father?” (Brodsky 1986: 479). We shall see that paronomasia becomes a crucial device in the self-­translation of the poem on the mother’s death. In Brodsky’s oeuvre, puns are not reserved for light verse. The first article on Brodsky’s self-­translations dealt with “In Memoriam,” concluding that the English version had become closer in tone to Auden and Eliot; Brodsky, it was claimed, exhibits “an English mindset” in self-­translation (Babanina and Milovidov 1991). It is the seeming coldness, the estranged tone of the poem, that is dubbed “English” here. Estrangement is both a literary device and a psychological necessity; Brodsky wrote “Mysl’ o tebe . . .” two years after his mother’s death and translated it another two years later. The original is not an immediate reaction to the tragic event; the experience is removed even further temporally (and linguistically) in English. The translation recreates the flow of the free dolnik with its enjambments. In Memoriam Stanzas I–III brodsky: russian [Mysl o tebe . . .] 1985 Мысль о тебе удаляется, как разжалованная прислуга, нет! как платформа с вывеской “Вырица” или “Тарту.” Но надвигаются лица, не знающие друг друга,

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The poem opens with a strikingly unsentimental, seemingly degrading image. In his illuminating book, Akhapkin (2009: 93) traces it back to Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu, namely to Sodome et Gomorrhe, in which a dead grandmother appears in a dream, looking like a servant who has been given notice, and humbly asks the protagonist not to forget her. Oblivion is a frequent topic in Brodsky’s poems; pretended

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forgetting is often used to mask painful remembering. The best-­known example is probably “chert litsa, govorya / otkrovenno, ne vspomnit’” (“Niotkuda s lyubov’yu . . .,” 1975), translated by Brodsky and Weissbort as “memory won’t restore / features” (“From Nowhere with Love . . .”). The poem’s final words belie this claim: “v temnote vsem telom tvoi cherty, / kak bezumnoye zerkalo povtoryaya” (in darkness your features with my whole body / repeating like an insane mirror).1 There is also an elegy starting quite simply with the words “Ya pozabyl tebya” (“I have forgotten you”)—its title being, paradoxically, “Pamyati N. N.” (“In Memory of N. N.”). “Dorogaya, ya vyshel . . .” / “Brise Marine” states that the addressee is long forgotten and goes on to promise her immortality in Brodsky’s poems. Elegies are usually meant to prolong memory. Brodsky often appears to subvert the genre; but to say “I have forgotten” means to remember, and to say that a thought is receding means to call it back. The image of a fired domestic suggests that the thought goes unwillingly, insulted by the dismissal. In translation, this comparison is emphatically rejected (in pain? in shame?) by the “No!” in the next line; the next simile is no less strange. In Russian, “Vyritsa” has an unpleasant sound reminiscent of “vyt’” (howl), “vyrvat’” (tear out, vomit) and “vyryt’” (dig out). This sound is impossible to recreate in an English word; instead, the unfamiliarity of “DVINSK” and “TATRAS” provides estrangement, enhanced by virtue of the block letters. This graphic solution is reminiscent of writing on a gravestone; as Brodsky’s Anglophone poem “Seaward” puts it, “block letters care how misfortune spells.” Not only does Brodsky use block letters, he also says that he does. This verbal explication of a visible textual feature is typical—some examples are “napisav ‘kuda’, / ne stavlyu voprositel’nogo znaka” (Having written “where,” / I put no question mark) in “Pochti elegiya” (Almost an elegy) and “Imperatora ubrat’ / (na sleduyushchey strochke) s mednykh deneg” (remove the Emperor / (on the next line) from copper money) in “Post aetatem nostrum.” Brodsky translated none of the Russian texts in which this feature appears; instead, he recreates it here, thus allowing not only readers, but also listeners to his recitations to appreciate the grave meaning of the block-­lettered city names. “TATRAS” has yet another connection to death: like the original “Tartu,” it reminds one of the underworld, Tartarus. There is also a connection to Brodsky’s mother, strengthened in English by the change in the city name—she was born in Dvinsk. Thus, block letters trace her way from a Latvian place of birth to a mythical place of death. In Russian, there is no such metaphorical journey, and the connection to the first “station” is more tenuous: Brodsky’s mother spent most of her life in Leningrad; Vyritsa is a small village nearby. Neither the Estonian Tartu nor the Polish-Slovac Tatras seem to be biographically relevant, but both remain in a Slavic context.2 There is a station called “Tartu,” but

The translation by Brodsky and Weissbort does not make the repudiation quite as clear, as it fails to repeat the word “features”: “with my limbs in the dark playing your double like /an insanity-­stricken mirror.”  2 This seems to be intentional: instead, Brodsky could have used the French Tartas or the Syrian Tartus to achieve a closer resemblance to Tartarus.  1

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no railway platform could welcome a traveler with the word “TATRAS”—these are mountains, not a city. The image becomes more ominously fantastic in translation, an effect increased by the addition of “shivering and enormous.” The English version is more dream-­like, more surreal. However, it also conveys less doubt as to the reality of the vision—the qualifiers “tochno” (here: as if) and “vidimo” (apparently) disappear. The Kafkaesque imagery of the first stanza is supported by the notion of a human being turning into a statue: “nikomu iz / nas ne sdelat’sya pamyatnikom” (none of / us is to become a monument).3 Immobility and hardness evoke longevity, memorability—and simultaneously death. Both meanings are captured in the word “pamyatnik” (monument in my literal version). Like “pamyatniki,” monuments are associated with sculptures of “generals” and “great philosophers” as well as with an afterlife in art in the tradition of Horace’s “Exegi monumentum.” However, “monument” fails to capture two features of the original word: it is derived from “pamyat’” (memory) and it reminds one of graveyards—the Russian for “tombstone” is “nadgrobnyy pamyatnik” (lit. above-­grave memory-­nik). The suffix “-nik” is familiar to English speakers from words such as “sputnik.” Combined with “pamyat-,” it means “something which helps to remember”; however, Brodsky makes it mean also “somebody who is remembered” and “somebody who remembers.” In the monumental domain, the source language appears to be richer: while many word field neighbors need no translation as long as they are transliterated— “statuya,” “memorial,” “monument,” “skul’ptura,” “byust”—there is also this additional term that lacks an equivalent. Brodsky could hardly have re-­created the link to memory by using “memorials”—even if the word was made to fit the target poem rhythmically, it would still be inappropriate semantically. Instead, the added title makes up for the lost reference. Moreover, the paronomastic potential of “statues” is explored—“for the status of statues” is preceded by an enjambment and followed by a caesura; this metrical marking and the consonance with “suited” attract attention to the pun. In Russian, the word “izvest’” (lime) closely resembles “izvestnost’” (fame). English lacks such an association, but the suggestion of fame is increased by “her son’s progress” taking the place of “zhzn’yu” (life). In the context of veins, “izvest’” also calls to mind Mandelstam’s “1 yanvarya 1924” (January 1st, 1924), in which “Izvestkovyy sloy v krovi bol’nogo syna / tverdeet” (The layer of lime in the blood of the sick son / hardens). In English, the primary literary association with lime is Auden’s “In Praise of Limestone,” which brings to mind the connection between lime and water. Consisting of ancient marine organisms’ shells, limestone is connected to death and to the sea, which in Brodsky’s poetics equals time. The implications of both longevity and death are developed further in “Vidimo, v nashikh venakh / nedostatochno izvesti.” (Apparently, in

Weststeijn (1999: 181) forms his interpretation on the basis of a rather loose interlinear translation, in which this line reads “for none of us, / will be erected a statue.”He (178) misses a crucial point as the crib does not capture the metamorphosis. It also features many minor mistakes and misunderstandings. The self-­translation as such cannot prove the interlinear version wrong; still, if Weststeijn chose to have a closer look at Brodsky’s own version, of whose existence he was aware (187), he might have wondered about the validity of his reading.

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our veins / there is not enough lime.) / Probably our blood vessels / lacked in hardening lime. The metaphor is clarified by the addition of “hardening.” The adjective might seem surprising at first sight, as limestone is known as one of the softest minerals; it has, however, survived for over 4,600 years in the form of the Great Pyramid of Giza and is certainly harder than blood. Brodsky suffered—and was to die—from ischemia, accompanied by the narrowing and calcification of blood vessels. In Russian, calcification is called “obyzvestvleniye” (literally, limeification). Lime has the same double function as marble in the final words of “Korneliyu Dolabelle” (to Cornelius Dolabella), one of Brodsky’s last poems—“I mramor suzhayet moyu aortu.” (And marble narrows my aorta.)—it refers both to illness and fame. The untranslated 1968 poem “Podsvechnik” (Candle holder) also deserves mention in this context. Hardening has sexual connotations here, but it also refers both to being remembered after death and for becoming lifeless while living: Nas zhdet ne smert’, a novaya sreda. Ot fotografiy bronzovykh vreda satiru net. Shagnuv za Rubikon, on zatverdel ot peys do genitaliy. It is not death that awaits us but a new environment. / Bronze photographs would not harm / a/the satyr. Having made a step over the Rubicon, / he hardened from his side-­locks down to his genitals. /

In Brodsky’s translation of “In Memoriam”, no actual transformation is mentioned, but the past tense is substituted for future—“None of us was well suited / for the status of statues.” Applying the verb “was” to himself, the speaker suggests that he has already died, or else become a statue. Having switched to the past tense, the translation goes on with “lacked.” The temporal shift has no metrical motivation; the explanation must be semantic. The poem appears to imply that the speaker’s blood now contains enough lime for turning him into a corpse and/or a monument. Several events between the original composition in 1985 and the self-­translation in 1987 fit in with this change (the following data are based on Losev 2006). Brodsky survived two heart attacks (both in December 1985) and two operations on the heart (in December 1985 and March 1987). As to fame, in 1986 alone, he received an honorary doctorate of literature from the University of Oxford, an Award of Excellence from the International Center in New York and the National Book Critics Award for Criticism (for his volume of essays, Less Than One); he heard rumors about a possible Nobel prize early in 1987, and on October 22nd of that year, learned with certainty that he would be awarded it. Moreover, in 1987 some of his poems were officially published for the first time in the Soviet Union. Brodsky was becoming a statue in both senses. In the mother’s explanation for the family’s non-­monumentality, “count our blessings” takes the place of “agitated.” The tone is changed; there is more information about her attitude, though it remains ambiguous—the remark could be read as ironical,

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straightforward or anything in between. This phrase also suggests an Anglophone speaker: there is no equivalent expression in Russian. The essay offers a possible reason for making his mother speak as if she lived in the States: I write this in English because I want to grant [my parents] a margin of freedom: the margin whose width depends on the number of those who may be willing to read this. I want Maria Volpert4 and Alexander Brodsky to acquire reality under ‘a foreign code of conscience,’ I want English verbs of motion to describe their movements. This won’t resurrect them, but English grammar may at least prove to be a better escape route from the chimneys of the state crematorium than the Russian. Brodsky 1986: 460

While quoting Auden’s phrase, Brodsky uses “a foreign code of conscience” to describe not so much morals as mental states: Anglophone readers will now be aware that there have been a Maria Volpert and an Alexander Brodsky. Other reasons for writing about his parents in English are certainly imaginable (from the mundane aspiration to become an American essayist to the welcome estranging effect of writing about an emotional subject in a foreign language), but this one should not be discounted. “Pamyati ottsa: Avstraliya” / “In Memory of My Father: Australia” even transports the dedicatee (in a dream) to an Anglophone country where Brodsky has never been himself. “Verbs of motion” (ironically, this linguistic term is normally applied to Russian grammar, not to English) appear in the poem dedicated to Brodsky’s father, but not in the one to his mother. Still, it is not the immobility of a statue he wishes for his parents, but the fluid afterlife of language. Language is the only remaining repository for memory; water—and hence time— has been overburdened with monumentality and won’t accept a statue. The kind of monument the river is made to reflect was as abhorred by Brodsky as by Andrews in Dos Passos’ Three Soldiers: “His delight redoubled in rubbing shoulders with the people whose effigies would never appear astride ramping-­eared horses in squares built to commemorate victories” (Dos Passos 2004). As it happens, it is one of his novels that Brodsky remembers reading while his mother is busy in the kitchen: “I would not move from my book unless told to do so . . . ‘Are you reading your Dos Passos again?’ she would remark, setting the table.” (Brodsky 1986: 456). A point on which all memoirs about Brodsky agree is that his mother was indeed often busy in the kitchen. Apart from corresponding to biographical facts, the mention of cooking utensils fulfills a crucial function—the mundane becomes poignant when death is lurking nearby. In an essay, Brodsky admiringly quotes Walcott’s lines: “how profound is the folding of a napkin / by a woman whose hair will go white” (Brodsky 1986: 172). In the English version, the neologism “mediogres” is coined for the mediocre ogres mirrored in the Neva. Brodsky was so fond of this portmanteau that he repeated and explained it six years later in his rhymed foreword to Peter Viereck’s Tide and Continuities, preserving even the rhyme: Brodsky’s mother kept her maiden name, as married women relatively often do in Russia.

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the ogres turning mediogres – such is the nature of our progress Brodsky in Viereck 1995: xiii

In “Fin de Siècle,” too, the mediocrity of evil is described as a modern phenomenon: “Tiran uzhe ne zlodey, / no posredstvennost’” (A tyrant is not an evildoer anymore / but a mediocrity) / “A tyrant’s no longer a bugaboo / but a plain mediocrity” (self-­translation). Both “bugaboo” and “ogre” are creatures which can frighten only a child; neither has an equivalent in the original. The context of statues adds another aspect to “mediogres,” albeit one decipherable only to a Russian-­speaking reader—“med’” (copper; “medi” in the genitive case) is a material associated with sculpture in Russia. The Bronze Horseman (Peter the Great on horseback, the best-­known monument in St. Petersburg) is known as “Mednyy Vsadnik” (The Copper Horseman) in his native country, even though actually made of bronze; in Pushkin’s long poem of the same name the statue comes alive as a revenger in a madman’s dream. Being cheap and common, copper is also associated with mediocrity and banality. Hannah Arendt’s phrase “the banality of evil” has been overused in recent decades, but it is hardly avoidable at this point—Brodsky not only believes that great evil can be done by an ordinary person; to his mind, banality and a herd mentality are necessary preconditions for evil in the modern age: The surest defense against evil is extreme individualism, originality of thinking, whimsicality—even if you will, eccentricity . . . Evil is a sucker for solidarity. It always goes for big numbers, for confident granite, for ideological purity, for drilled armies and balance sheets. Brodsky 1986: 385

Granite and even the lighter limestone burden the Neva with symbols of “drilled armies” and “ideological purity.” The former are represented by “voennykh” (military men) / “generals.”5 The latter is in all probability the intended implication of “great philosophers”—“velikiye mysliteli” (great thinkers) is what Lenin, Marx and other members of the ideological pantheon were habitually called in the Soviet Union, as observed by Kumakhova (Kumakhova 2006: 174). This reference is not obvious to modern Russian readers and entirely lost upon the Anglophone ones. However, the pun and “count our blessings” signal that the alleged “greatness” is not to be taken literally. Brodsky was prone to combine word-­play with political topics: privately, he called the seminar “Poets under Stalin and Hitler,” which he taught with Peter Viereck, “Rhyme and Punishment” (Weissbort 2001: 236). The English language, along with the English tradition of portmanteau punning,6 provided Brodsky with an opportunity to put one of his most fervent beliefs into a single word. The translation is more biographically exact: Brodsky’s family did produce military men but indeed no generals.  6 Portmanteaus are not unknown to Russian literature, but rare; for most Russians, a translation of “bread-­and-butter-­fly” in Through the Looking Glass provides the first encounter with this form of wordplay.  5

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“In Memoriam” continues with a reference to marble, developing the theme of statues: In Memoriam Stanzas IV–V brodsky: russian То-то же снег, этот мрамор для бедных, за неименьем тела тает, ссылаясь на неспособность клеток – то есть, извилин! – вспомнить, как ты хотела, пудря щеку, выглядеть напоследок. Остается, затылок от взгляда прикрыв руками, бормотать на ходу “умерла, умерла,” покуда города рвут сырую сетчатку из грубой ткани, дребезжа, как сдаваемая посуда. literal translation This is why snow, this poor people’s marble, in the absence of a body / melts, referring to the inability of cells— / that is, convolutions!—to remember how you wanted, / powdering [your] cheek, to look in the end. / It remains, covering the back of the head from a/the look with hands, / to mumble “you have/she has died, you have/she has died” on the way, while / cities tear7 the moist/raw retina of rough fabric, / clanging, like glassware being returned. / brodsky: self-­translation That’s why the snow, this poor man’s marble, devoid of muscle power, melts, blaming empty brain cells for their not so clever locks, for their failure to keep the fashion in which you, by putting powder on your cheek, had meant to look forever. What is left is to shield the skull, with raised arms, against idle glances, and the throat, with the lips’ nonstop “She has died, she has died,” while endless cities rip the retinal sacs with lances clanging loud like returning empties.

The image in the penultimate stanza’s first line had been used by Brodsky before, in “Vtoroe Rozhdestvo na beregu” (A Second Christmas by the Shore, 1971): “ya paltsami cherchu / tvoye litso na mramore dlya bednykh” (with my fingers, I draw / your face on No wordplay in Russian; the verb “rvat’” (to tear) is not connected to the noun “sleza” (a tear). Such involuntary puns occur more often in translation from Russian into English than the other way around, English being richer in homonyms. This is one of the reasons for the higher level of paronomasia in Brodsky’s self-­translation.

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poor people’s marble). First coined as an occasional kenning, the image grows in significance in “Mysl’ o tebe . . .”: snow and marble, linked by their whiteness and coldness, are both suggestive of death. In English, the adjective “poor” becomes more meaningful: used in the singular, unlike in Russian, “poor man” can suggest the speaker, with the adjective referring to suffering and not a lack of money. “Poor memory” also comes to mind; in Russian, the adjective “bednyy” (poor) is not used in this context. The motif of guilt becomes more pronounced: “blaming” is substituted for “ssylayas’” (referring), “failure” for “nesposobnost’” (inability); a pun is introduced to support the self-­accusation: the speaker’s brain cells are badly locked.8 The failure feels all the greater in English as the expectation is higher: he forgets how his mother “had meant to look forever” [my italics]. She hardly could have expected literal immortality; the final word makes more sense if one adds “in her son’s memory, as long as he lives.” While the original describes how the mother wanted to look in the last moment 9 (in biographical terms, this seems to refer to the moment of separation from her emigrating son rather than to the moment before her death), the English version suggests that the speaker owes his mother eternal memory. Combined with “forever” and substantivized, “powder” reveals its closeness to lime and marble: white— the only kind available to Soviet women—it constitutes an attempt to guarantee a memorial afterlife. Like snow, it fails. In Brodsky’s poetry, this failure is necessary to preserve humanity. Melting, a statue becomes mortal—and human. This happens to the title hero of Brodsky’s “Vertumn” (1990)/ “Vertumnus (1991),” a statue of the god of time: “Knee-­deep in snow, you loomed there: white, moreover naked, . . . / in your part-­time capacity as an expert / on low temperatures.” Gradually, Vertumnus begins to respond to the human speaker: “the lower part of your oval / sort of melted, and your lips were slowly set in motion” (the self-­translation is very close to the original here). Vertumnus, first associated with snow and coldness, becomes warm and alive; the poem ends with his death. A statue can become human; a human must resist the transformation into a statue—this is the topic of Brodsky’s only venture into drama, a play reminiscent of Beckett and Stoppard. Its title states the theme: “Mramor” (Marble). Its two protagonists are imprisoned for life in a cell decorated with marble busts, to whose longevity and immutability their talk returns again and again. The final mention of statues occurs when one of the characters is slightly wounded and declines to let the scratch be dressed: “pust’ sochitsya. Po krayney mere, dokazyvayet, chto—eshchye ne statuya. Ne iz mramora.” (let [the blood] drip. It proves, at least, that [I am] not yet a statue. Not made of marble.) Here, the invulnerability of marble suggests the spiritual death of an imprisoned man whom nothing can move anymore. “Natyurmort” (Nature morte, 1971), a poem whose theme—as the title suggests—is dying, was written at a time when Brodsky suffered This pun is possible in Russian: “kletka” means both “cage” and “biological cell.” Brodsky uses it in the final line of “Tol’ko pepel znaeyet . . .” (Only ashes know . . .), but not in the present poem. Brain cells are compared to rooms in two other Brodskian elegies: “Pamyati N. N.” (“In Memory of N. N.”) and “Elegiya” (“Elegy”).  9 Weststeijn misses the difference, translating the original “naposledok” (“in the last moment”) as “forever.”  8

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from low blood pressure, which made him cold and slow-­moving: “Ya nepodvizhen. Dva / bedra kholodny, kak led. / Venoznaya sineva / mramorom otdayet” (I am immobile. Two / hips are cold like ice. / The blueness of veins / smacks of marble). While in other poems by Brodsky the comparison of marble to ice and snow stresses the similarity (in temperature and/or color), in “Mysl’ o tebe . . .,” the contrast is crucial: unlike marble, the snow melts; the brain cells are empty; memory is inadequate. Losev (2006: 141) observes how “in Brodsky’s poetry, the brain often substitutes the conventionally poetic ‘heart’ of the past”—“mozg” (brain) appears 73 times in his poetry (as opposed to 6 times each in Pushkin’s and Mandelstam’s verse), “serdtse” (heart) is used 102 times. It remains to be added that among these 102 instances only a few are examples of conventional use; they appear mostly in his juvenilia. In Brodsky’s later work, the heart is often connected to fragility and illness (the biographical reasons are apparent); the seat of thought and feeling is more often the brain.10 In his essays, too, “brain” is a prominent key-­word. Brodsky anticipates scientific discoveries: “The brain is not an autonomous entity: it functions only in concert with the rest of our physiological system” (Brodsky 1995: 307). Neuroscience has only recently started regarding chemical processes in the whole body as part of what is experienced as thinking and feeling (cf. Lehrer 2007: 1-24). No Russian poet before Brodsky uses the word “brain” so often. An American one does, though: “The brain within its groove / Runs evenly and true,” “That woman and her boy / Pass back and forth before my brain,” “The brain has corridors surpassing / Material place,” “I felt a clearing in my mind /As if my brain had split,” “Your breath has time to straighten, / Your brain to bubble cool,” “I felt a funeral in my brain” and, probably most famously, “The brain is wider than the sky / . . . The brain is deeper than the sea / . . . The brain is just the weight of God” (Emily Dickinson 2004). The parallels in Brodsky’s and Dickinson’s poetry have, to my knowledge, never been discussed, though the two have much in common: both are prone to sound unidiomatic (Dickinson, however, has the privilege of being a native speaker); both are keenly interested in English metaphysical poetry; both have a penchant for puns (see Martin 2007); both have written self-­elegies; last but not least, both often refer to the brain. The comparative frequency of the word “brain” increases in self-­translation. The shortness of English words and maybe also what Brodsky perceives as the clinical accuracy of the language move him to specify “brain cells” for “kletki” (cells) in “In Memoriam.” The same shift takes place in the self-­translation “Via Funari.” In “Folk Tune,” “brain cells” is substituted for “mysli” (thoughts); in “Constancy,” “brain-­cell” is used instead of “izvilin” (convolutions); in “Fin de Siècle,” the poetic “mysl’ chela” (thought of the brow) is replaced by the medical “thalamus” (a part of the brain involved in dreaming and waking). Finally, in “An Admonition” (translated with George L. Kline), “brain” takes the place of “sebe” (self). The organ of thought appears in about Brodsky does not quite break with Romantic traditions for the sake of physiology: “dusha” (“soul”) appears more prominently in his work than in that of any of his Russian contemporaries. At the time when he first introduced it into his poetry, it was rather revolutionary: for about forty years (from the early 1920s to the early 1960s) hardly any major Russian poet living in the Soviet Union dared use it (see Loseff 2002: 2).

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15 per cent of all poems Brodsky composed in English: “Dutch Mistress” (1983), “Letter to an Archaeologist” (1985), “Ex Voto” (1987), “The History of the 20th Century” (1992) and “At a Lecture” (1995). In “Ex Voto”, it constitutes the ultimate word and—as in “In Memoriam”—is connected to melting: “An aimless iceberg resents bad press: / it suffers a meltdown, and forms a brain.” Melting snow suggests not only lost memories (supported by an expression shared by Russian and English, “proshlogodniy sneg” / “snows of yesteryear”) but also tears. This suggestion is developed in “the retinal sacs” ripped “with lances.” The original “setchatku” (retina) is phonetically and etymologically connected to “set’” (net), while “tkan’” means both “biological tissue” and “fabric.” “Retinal sacs” re-­capture the image; however, this term is very rare. “Tear sacs” could have been used instead, but this would require rhythmic adjustments; the reference to crying would become obvious. Apart from crying, suffering is expressed by the self-­addressed repetition of the final fact and a gesture—hands pressed not to the heart, but to the head. In English, this image links back to “brain cells”: the speaker seemingly tries to protect the remainder of his memory. Another possible meaning of this gesture is lost in translation: shielding the back of one’s head against “vzglyada” (a/the look) might refer not only to “idle glances” but also to a spectator above, to divine or motherly eyes.11 The singular (substituted by plural “glances” in English) makes the latter reading dominant: Ranchin (1993: 6), for instance, states that the speaker’s head is “transparent for his late mother’s eyes.” Yet another ambiguity could not be preserved in the analytic target language: “umerla” can mean both “she has died” and “you (fem.) have died”; the latter version appears more coherent, as the poem directly addresses the mother. The Russian reader might be reminded of “Pamyati T. B.” (In Memory of T. B.), an untranslated poem about forgetting, in which Brodsky makes use of his native language’s synthetic nature. Only one word is needed to express a phrase: “sam ya sshchitat’ ne nachnu edva li, / budto tebya ‘umerla’ i zvali.” (I myself will almost begin to believe / that “you have died / she has died” was your actual name). Instead of this reference to another poem, an additional internal connection arises in the Anglophone “In Memoriam”: both the gesture and the words are the speaker’s attempts to “shield” himself.12 In both versions this scene is recalled in the essay “In a Room and a Half ”: [Émigrés] know what it is like not to be allowed to see their mothers and fathers on their deathbed . . . And then it’s too late, and a man or woman puts the receiver down and walks out of the door into the foreign afternoon feeling something neither language has words for, and for which no howl will suffice, either . . . . Brodsky 1986: 461

Cf. Brodsky’s Nativity Poems (2001); Weststeijn (1999: 178) disregards both meanings: in his interlinear translation, the line is rendered “burying your head in your hands.” 12 The poem does not specify what the throat is being shielded from: possibly from howling? After all, “addressing the dead is the only way of preventing speech from slipping into a howl” (Brodsky 1986: 49). Unlike the Russian version, this speaker does not address his mother at this moment. 11

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The poem’s final word is richer in both intra- and interpoetic connections in English: “empties” link back to the “vacuum” of thought and to the “empty brain cells.” “Endless” rhymes with “empties,” sealing the poem with a final suggestion of endless emptiness, eternal oblivion. Both rhyme words are more significant than those in the original. “Endless” brings to mind “Kolybel’naya” / “Lullaby,” in which “beskrayney pustote” (endless emptiness; “greater emptiness” in self-­translation) can be read as death or afterlife. Emptiness signifies death in several other poems. “Pesnya nevinnosti . . .” states that “pustota veroyatney i huzhe ada” (emptiness is more probable and worse than hell). “Pokhorony Bobo” repeats this statement: “Ya veryu v pustotu. / V ney kak v Adu, no boleye kherovo.” (I believe in emptiness. / In it, it’s like in Hell, but shittier).13 In “Fin de Siècle” (written in English), the parallel to the English version of “In Memoriam” is more pronounced: And somehow your hanky, bypassing your nose more and more often, leaps to your organ of sight, trained on rustling leaves, taking personally the least new gap in their emptiness-­shielding fence, the letters ed heralding the past tense,

There is a reference to emptiness, to crying and to the attempt to shield oneself from death. Here, it is primarily the speaker himself to whom the past tense would soon be applicable, not unlike in “None of us was well suited” and “Probably our blood vessels / lacked”—the speaker of “In Memoriam” appears less than alive. Feeling empty, he keeps repeating “she has died”—the cities, too, are empty of his mother and of her memory; this very emptiness creates a noise. These metaphorical implications might have been at least partly intended in Russian; however, they are difficult to notice. Translating his poem into English, Brodsky was lucky: “empties” happens to be the closest equivalent of the original “posuda” (rendered as glassware in the literal translation to show that the word is not connected to emptiness in Russian). The adjective “empty,” added in translation, stresses the implication of “empties.” While a pun like “mediogres” can seal a crucial concept in a single word, this final image, poised between paronomasia and metaphor, juxtaposes the richness of poetic language and the emptiness of non-­being.

5.2  “In Memory of my Father: Australia” In Memory of my Father: Australia brodsky: russian Памяти отца: Австралия (Pamyati ottsa: Avstraliya, 1989) Ты ожил, снилось мне, и уехал в Австралию. Голос с трехкратным эхом I have borrowed Richard Wilbur’s rendition of the final adjective.

13

Elegies окликал и жаловался на климат и наcчет квартиры, никак не снимут, жаль, не в центре, но около океана, третий этаж без лифта, зато есть ванна, пухнут ноги, а тапочки я оставил, прозвучавшее внятно и деловито; и внезапно в трубке завыло «Аделаида, Аделаида, » загремело, захлопало, точно ставень бился о стенку, готовый сорваться с петель. Все-таки это лучше, чем мягкий пепел крематория в банке, ее залога – эти обрывки голоса, монолога и попытки прикинуться нелюдимом в первый раз с той поры, как ты обернулся дымом. literal translation In memory of [my] father: Australia You came alive, I dreamt, and left/ for Australia. A/the voice with a triple echo,/ called and complained about climate/ and about a/the flat, [they] still could not rent one,/ unfortunately, not in the city but near the ocean,/ third floor without an elevator but there’s a bathtub,/ feet/legs are swelling, I’ve left my slippers,/ [this] sounded clear and business-­like./ and suddenly [something in] the receiver started howling “Adelaida, Adelaida,”/ rattling and slapping like a/the shutter/ pounding a/the wall, ready to break free of the hinges./ Still, better this than soft ashes/ from a/the crematorium in a/the can, its/their [the can’s/ ashes’] deposit—/ these snatches of a/the voice, of a/the monologue/ and of attempts to pretend to be a recluse/ for the first time since you turned into smoke./ brodsky: self-­translation In Memory of my Father: Australia (1990) You arose—I dreamt so last night—and left for Australia. The voice, with a triple echo, ebbed and flowed, complaining about climate,

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Brodsky Translating Brodsky grime, that the deal with the flat is stymied, pity it’s not downtown, though near the ocean, no elevator but the bathtub’s indeed an option, ankles keep swelling. “Looks like I’ve lost my slippers” came through rapt yet clear via satellite. And at once the receiver burst into howling “Adelaide! Adelaide!”— into rattling and crackling, as if a shutter, ripped off its hinges, were pounding the wall with inhuman power. Still, better this than the silky powder canned by the crematorium, than the voucher— better these snatches of voice, this patchwork monologue of a recluse trying to play a genie for the first time since you formed a cloud above a chimney.

The two poems on the deaths of Brodsky’s parents have much in common. Both were translated by their author. Both feature dreams: the first stanza of “In Memoriam” does so implicitly; “Australia” begins with an explicit reference. Both lament the parent’s allegedly insufficient presence in the speaker’s mind: this time, “In Memoriam” is explicit; the ending of “Australia” suggests that the speaker regrets not to have been visited by his father in a dream before. Both contain a toponym which can suggest the underworld: “Tartu” / “Tatras” suggests Tartarus; in Russian, “Adelaida” resembles “ad” (hell) and “Aid” (Hades). Both address the dead parent directly, using the second person pronoun in the first line. Both mention countries in the first stanza—neither Russia nor the States, but mysterious unknown territories. “In Memoriam” leaves them unnamed; “Australia” features a country in its very title which neither Brodsky nor his father had ever seen, and which embodies exoticism.14 As we shall see, both refer to foreign (neither Russian nor Anglophone) literature. Alien elements are abundant in the two poems whose topic is intimate and tragic; the self-­translation seems like the next logical stage of estrangement. Two excellent comments on this poem both deserve lengthy quotations at this point: Brodsky said . . . that the poem describes a dream which he had really dreamt. The dream transforms the idea of Brodsky’s parents emigrating to the West, a topic Brodsky constantly discussed with his parents . . . . As regards the dream’s geography, once, when invited by the writer of this comment to visit Australia or

For the exotic appeal, see recent novels playing in Australia, for instance, A Fraction of the Whole and His Illegal Self: “She had no idea of what Australia even was. She would not have imagined a tomato would grow in Australia, or a cucumber. She could not have named a single work of Australian literature” (Carey 2008: 80); “You don’t hear about Australia . . . It’s strange. No one knows anything about us” (Toltz 2008: 146).

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New Zealand, he replied that this would be the total “end of the world” for him . . . A dream of Australia as a kind of afterworld is mentioned in Kuzmin’s poem “The end of volume two” (1922) . . . . Doubtlessly, Brodsky must have been aware that the name Adelaide is derived from the Greek “adelos”—“invisible,” “unclear”; a rather fitting semantic overtone here. Losev 2011: 433–4

The following article by John Givens appeared long before Losev, a close friend of Brodsky, published his own comment. Givens could not know that, according to Brodsky, the poem is based on an actual dream (which might or might not be, in its turn, inspired by another Russian poem), and assumes that choosing Australia as his father’s posthumous destination was a conscious strategy on Brodsky’s part (as it might well have been, even if simultaneously a whim of Morpheus). Regardless of the genesis, the appearance of Australia serves many functions: If we are to take seriously the notion that English is a sanctuary for the memory of his parents . . . how was Brodsky to keep his Russian elegy about his father from “furthering his captivity” . . .? . . . By removing his father to Australia, Brodsky achieves several important things. First, he moves him out of the reach of . . . the Soviet state . . . by locating his father in the most remote of possible emigration destinies for Soviet citizens: Australia. Beyond Australia, there is almost no further place to go, except to the grave . . . Second, Brodsky preserves the sense of separation and distance he needs in order to capture the essence of his post-­exile relationship with his father . . . Third, by locating his father at the bottom of the world, Brodsky hints at the backward or topsy-­turvy nature of historical change and political reality that forced him into exile. Givens 1998: 243–4

In both poems, Brodsky’s parents are only concerned with the most mundane matters; while this depiction has a biographical basis (Losev 2010), death makes the everyday poignant. The first line in “Australia” is arguably more effective in English—the deictic “last night” provides immediacy; “arose,” combined with “triple” in the next line, evokes the theme of resurrection. Here, it is not a divine son but a very human father who comes back to life. (In Russian, the biblical “arose” translates as “voskres”; in the poem, Brodsky uses the verb “ozhil” (came alive) which is not associated with Christianity.) In the first two lines, both rhyme words are recreated (with the preposition moving to line one). Compound rhymes with function words, a Brodskian trademark, allow him to reinstall the word “echo” in English, which sounds very much like the cognate Russian “ekho” at the end of the second line. The words “climate” and “ocean,” too, are close relatives of “klimat” and “okean.” Placing three words derived from Greek in rhyming positions in both Russian and English, Brodsky creates a curious effect. For a bilingual reader, the similarity of the two languages is pointed out; Russian and English lines begin to sound almost interchangeable. The translation also transplants the poem into a territory where it is,

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in a sense, at home: the dream vision, a rarity in Russian, is a venerable genre in Anglophone poetry. (As it happens, the dream-­like quality also increases in translation of “In Memoriam.”) Russian poems also very rarely mention the authors’ fathers. American poets, on the other hand, are especially good at writing about fathers —says Brodsky, naming three examples: Sylvia Plath’s “Lazarus,” Schnackenberg’s “Supernatural Love” and Melissa Green’s The Squanicook Eclogues (Brodsky in Hammer and Daub 2002: 162). Thus, “Pamyati ottsa: Avstraliya” is arguably written in an AngloAmerican vein; moreover, it moves Brodsky’s father to an English-­speaking country. It seems only fair, then, that the father is given a voice in English. This voice is more fluid than the Russian one: the neutral “oklikal” (called) turns into “ebbed and flowed,” connecting the line to the bathtub and the ocean. The original complaint “kvartiry, nikak ne snimut” (a/the flat, [they] still could not rent one) clashes with the context—there does seem to be a flat, even though its location is objectionable. In an earlier version lines three and four read, even more strangely, “zhalovalsya na klimat / i oboi: kvartiru nikak ne snimut” (complaining about the climate / and the wallpaper: they still couldn’t rent a flat). As the poem goes on, it becomes clear that the wallpaper of some flat is implied (and not, for instance, a hotel). Perhaps Brodsky became aware of the contradiction: he made it less striking in a second Russian version, and then got rid of it altogether in the phrase “the deal with the flat is stymied.”15 Dreams have their own logic, which can be self-­contradictory—especially, it seems, in Russian. In English, “one cannot speak illogically” (Brodsky in Volkov (1998: 136); later, he abandoned this belief). As with “count our blessings” (“In Memoriam”), Brodsky appears to quote his father speaking English—the translation uses quotation marks for “I lost my slippers,” which makes it sound more authoritative than the original. Moreover, the slippers move to the final position. This detail matters more than one might assume: My mother strongly objected to the men in the family, me in particular, walking around with our socks on. She insisted on us wearing shoes or slippers at all times. Admonishing me about this matter, she would evoke an old Russian superstition; it is an ill omen, she would say, it may bode a death in the family Brodsky 1986: 447

Brodsky’s father is dead; he has lost his slippers. The essay was written and published in English; the slippers appear more prominently in English—an Anglophone reader Kumakhova (2006: 246) believes that the desirability of the ocean increases in translation and links this idea to differences between Russian and American mentalities: “father, as all Russians, would prefer to live downtown. It also implies that an ocean location is not as desirable (conjunction ‘a’ opposes downtown to near the ocean).” One look at the Brighton Beach in New York is enough to show that the reference to “all Russians” is overstated; in fact, an overwhelming majority of Russian emigrants settles along the coast. Moreover, Kumakhova uses the early Russian version which features the conjunction “?” instead of “no.” Both are usually rendered into English as “but”; however, they suggest different kinds of opposition: in the earlier version, it is purely local—it is not downtown but near the ocean; the latter one strongly suggests consolation: it is not downtown but [at least] it is near the ocean.

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stands a better chance of recognizing the parallel, as did Givens (1998: 245). The peaceful if somewhat crabby monologue is interrupted by ghastly (ghostly?) sounds: “Adelaida!” / “Adelaide!” This is a reference not only to an Australian city but possibly also to hell / Hades (“ad” and “Aid” respectively in Russian) and to the rock song “Zvezda Adelaida” (The Star Adelaida), which was very popular in the 1980s (Obukhova 2008). The singer-­ songwriter Boris Grebenshikov, one of the most innovative Russian musicians at the time, integrated a cacophony of noise into this song—not unlike the one produced by the telephone in the dream. Brodsky was also familiar with Beethoven’s song “Adelaide.” Written by the Romantic poet Matthison, it ends in a prophecy of death: Einst, o Wunder! entblüht auf meinem Grabe, Eine Blume der Asche meines Herzens Deutlich schimmert auf jedem Purpurblättchen: Adelaïde! Once, o wonder! there will bloom upon my grave a flower from/of the ashes of my heart [It] shimmers clearly on each purple blossom: Adelaïde!

Both poems mention ashes—one as a Romantic motif, the other as a realistic detail. In self-­translation, concreteness increases: the adjective “silky” is more evocative than the original “myagkiy” (soft, a very frequent adjective). The texture of human ashes is a taboo topic, which makes its tragic sensory appeal all the greater. Brodsky has never touched his parents’ burnt remains, but his poetic persona conveys the sensation. In Matthison’s poem, “Adelaide” stands for undying romantic love and memory; in Brodsky’s, the memory is filial and less than perfect. While in German the word stands out “deutlich” (clearly), in Brodsky’s elegy it is a howling disturbance, a contrast to what came “clear through the satellite” before. After “Adelaide! Adelaide!” interrupts the monologue, the English version proceeds with an unrhymed line. This is the translation’s only departure from the original rhyme scheme—it is changed from aabbccdeedf fggh h to aabbccdeefg ghhi i. To balance out, an internal slant rhyme is added: “snatches” / “patchwork.” In both versions, disrupted communication is symbolized by unusual interlinear separations: the penultimate stanza is not a unity in terms of rhyme; the final line stands on its own. In English, the effect is increased—the speaker expects to hear more from his father but hears the sound of a shutter; the reader expects a rhyme but hears the word “shutter.” An interesting change takes place in the penultimate line: “prikinut’sya nelyudimom” (trying to play a recluse) becomes “a recluse trying to play a genie.” In the English version, the father is what he pretends to be in Russian and pretends to be something else. This is partly dictated by the necessity of finding a rhyme for the final “chimney.”16 However, I “Smoke” and “cloud” could be considered as alternative final words, but neither rhymes with “recluse”—or, for that matter, “hermit” or “anchoret.”

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believe that the self-­translation also illuminates a possible reading inherent in the original. The noun “nelyudim” (recluse) sounds close to “nelyud’” (lit. un-­human: monster, ghost, bogey—at a stretch also genie). The verb “obernulsya” (turned into) in the final line is strongly suggestive of fairy tales and myths. Hence, the translation can be said to bifurcate the original double meaning. The parallel between the poem and Brodsky’s descriptions of his phone conversations with his parents—“mostly about weather or health . . . the main thing was hearing each other’s voice, assuring ourselves in this animal way of our respective existences” (Brodsky 1986: 495–6) has been observed by Givens (Givens 1998: 244), who goes on to remark that this everyday conversation is accompanied by a complete lack of tropes, which is rare for Brodsky (Givens 1998: 245). It is a pity that the author of a later article is unfamiliar with Givens’ research; she regards a single essay by Brodsky—a semi-­ fictional text—as a source of ultimate biographical truth17: After the essay “In a Room and a Half,” in which the psychological portrait of the father has been delineated neatly and clearly, one can easily understand that the mundane senile babbling which takes up about a third of the poem could impossibly have been produced by Alexandr Ivanovich Brodskii. Obukhova 2008

In reality, such “babbling” was quite typical of Alexandr Ivanovich. He disapproved of his son’s poetry (Voskov 2011: 112), and “the young Joseph appeared to be irritated by his father’s mundanity and his lack of spiritual/intellectual interests. He disliked his father’s babbling and once . . . told me bleakly: ‘He’s vegetating”’ (Losev 2010). Losev goes on to quote an unpublished, unfinished poem Brodsky dedicated to his father: “i rot, chya rech’ uzhe davnym-­davno / chuzhdaetsya lyubykh glubin dushevnykh” (and a mouth whose speech has for a long, long time / been shying away from all spiritual depth).

5.3  “August Rain” There is also another poem in which Brodsky makes his father speak about the weather. His comment upon the rain constitutes the final words of “Dozhd’ v avguste”; in translation, rain is changed to “climate,” linking “In Memory of my Father: Australia”

This is such a common tendency that it makes sense to provide the facts here, even though this book does not aim at biographical research. Brodsky’s relationship to his parents was often troubled; one exceptionally candid interview mentioning constant reproaches and a looming father figure with a belt in his hand (Brodsky 1981) presents a stark contrast to the idyllic picture painted by “In A Room and a Half.” Immortalizing the “room and a half ” as the place of his childhood and youth, Brodsky never mentions that his parents lived separately for most of the time. Brodsky’s first memory of seeing his father is when he was eight (Volkov 1998: 23). From his teenage years on, Brodsky had been trying to move out of the “room and a half ” which was to be turned into something of a sanctuary in his essay. By the time he wrote the essay and the poem, he had not seen his parents for thirteen years: the trope of forgetting, significant in both texts, is no affectation. After all, “what memory has in common with art is the knack for selection” (Brodsky 1986: 489).

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and “August Rain” even more closely than their originals. Weather was a topic Brodsky strongly associated with his father. A newspaper photographer, Alexandr Brodskii sometimes also composed pieces himself: “As he wrote mostly for small dailies that are never read anyway, most of his articles would start with ‘Heavy, storm-­laden clouds hang over the Baltic . . .”’ (Brodsky 1986: 461). “August Rain” addresses Brodsky’s father more obliquely than “Australia.” Still, the identity of the “you” in the final lines can hardly be denied. August Rain brodsky: russian Дождь в августе (Dozhd’ v avguste, 1988) Среди бела дня начинает стремглав смеркаться, и кучевое пальто норовит обернуться шубой с неземного плеча. Под напором дождя акация   становится слишком шумной. Не иголка, не нитка, но нечто бесспорно швейное, фирмы Зингер почти с примесью ржавой лейки, слышится в этом стрекоте; и герань обнажает шейные   позвонки белошвейки. Как семейно шуршанье дождя! как хорошо заштопаны им прорехи в пейзаже изношенном, будь то выпас или междудеревье, околица, лужа—чтоб они   зренью не дали выпасть из пространства. Дождь! двигатель близорукости, летописец вне кельи, жадный до пищи постной, испещряющий суглинок, точно перо без рукописи,   клинописью и оспой. Повернуться спиной к окну и увидеть шинель с погонами на коричневой вешалке, чернобурку на спинке кресла, бахрому желтой скатерти, что, совладав с законами   тяготенья, воскресла и накрыла обеденный стол, за которым втроем за ужином мы сидим поздно вечером, и ты говоришь сонливым, совершенно моим, но дальностью лет приглушенным   голосом: “Ну и ливень.” literal translation Rain in August In broad daylight it begins to grow dusky headlong, and /

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Brodsky Translating Brodsky a/the cumulous cloak tries to transform itself into a/the fur coat/ from a/the unearthly shoulder. Under the pressure of rain, an/the acacia/            becomes too noisy./ Neither needle nor thread, but something unarguably connected to sewing,/ almost made by Singer, mixed with a rusty watering can / Leica,/ is heard in this chirping, and a/the geranium bares the cervical/           vertebrae of a/the seamstress./ How familial is the rustling of rain! how well it darns/ the holes in the worn-­out landscape, be that a pasture,/ some *inbetweentreesness,18 some outskirts, a puddle,—preventing them/   from letting eyesight fall/ out of space. Rain! vehicle of nearsightedness,/ scribe outside of a/the cell, greedy for Lenten food,/ mottling the loam, like a/the quill without a/the manuscript,/   with cuneiform and smallpox./ To turn away from the window and to see a/the greatcoat with epaulets/ on a/the brown rack, a/the silver fox [coat] on the back of a/the armchair,/ the fringe of a/the yellow tablecloth which, having conquered the laws/   of gravity, has arisen/ and covered the lunch table where the three of us are having supper/ late in the evening, and you [are] say[ing] in a sleepy,/ absolutely my own but muted by the years’ distance—/   voice: “It’s pouring.”/ brodsky: self-­translation August Rain (1991) In broad daylight it starts to get dark with breathless speed, and a cumulous cloak grows into an uneasy fur coat off some astral back. An acacia, under the pressure         of rain, becomes too noisy. Neither thread nor needle, but something to do with sewing, almost Singer-­made, mixed with a rusty cistern’s spurt, is heard in this chirr, and a geranium bares the sinewed         vertebrae of a seamstress.

The neologism “mezhduderev’ye” (*inbetweentreesness) plays on “mezhdurech’ye” (interfluves / Mesopotamia; lit. *inbetweenriversness). Here, as elsewhere, an asterisk points to the impossibility of “literal” translation.

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How familial is the rustling of rain! how well it darns and stitches rents in a worn-­out landscape, be that a pasture, alleyway, puddles, tree-­intervals—to foil one’s eyesight, which is            capable of departure from its range. Rain! vehicle of nearsightedness, a scribe without his cell, greedy for Lenten fare, mottling the loamy parchment with his cuneiform brand of silence,           with his smallpox care. To turn away from the window! to behold a greatcoat with epaulets on the brown varnished rack, a red fox on the chair, neglected, the fringe of a yellow cloth which, having mastered the shibboleths              of gravity, has resurrected itself and covered the table where late at night, a threesome, we sit for supper, and you say in your drowsy, quiet —almost my own but muted by years’ vast distance—              baritone: What a climate.

(Re-)creating his father in poetry and then again in translation, Brodsky never presents him as a living being. Instead, the father is a dream, an apparition. Brodsky is no Hamlet, though—he receives no instructions from the ghost, not even a plea to remember (as opposed to his mother’s specter). It is not the words but the voice which matters, as in the first line of an unnamed and untranslated love elegy Brodsky wrote in 1993: “Ya slyshu ne to, chto ty mne govorish’, a golos” (I hear not what you are telling me but [your] voice). Both “August Rain” and “Australia” feature a voice complaining about climate and a transformation. One opens with a cloud as an ill-­fitting celestial garment;19 the other closes with a human being becoming a cloud of smoke. This mirror symmetry (cloud as the object/subject of transformation; beginning/ending) is hardly a matter of conscious planning; yet these two poems and their translations— four texts written in close succession—are intertwined in many ways. The Russian versions both use the demotic verb “obernut’sya” (to turn into something); “popytka” (attempt) and “norovit” (tries) leave open whether the transformation takes place or fails. In “August Rain,” the attempt is more successful than in the original counterpart— “a cumulous cloak” does not merely try but “grows into an uneasy / fur coat,” as if linguistic transformation encouraged other forms of shape-­shifting. On the other hand, two notions of failure appear or become more pronounced in the English version of “August Rain” . Firstly, “foil one’s eyesight, which is / capable of departure / from its range” takes the place of “chtob oni / zren’yu ne dali vypast’ / iz prostranstva” (preventing them / from letting eyesight fall out of / space). The Russian phrase is enigmatic but suggests an avoided danger. The English sounds more like a potential accomplishment which has not been achieved. Secondly, while in the original The original alludes to the expression “s chuzhogo plecha” (someone else’s, lit. from someone else’s shoulder), which suggests discomfort.

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the rain merely lacks a manuscript, in English its writing becomes a “cuneiform brand of silence” [my italics]. The rain does not speak, although it is noisy.20 In both versions, the first stanza sounds almost as if the acacia was tortured by the rain into giving away some secret; however, the rustling has no content. Or has it? This particular tree, an acacia, might well have been chosen for phonetic reasons or in reference to a real view out of the window, but it also has associative value. In Russian, it calls to mind the song “Beloi akatsii grozd’ya dushistyye” (“Sweet-­scented bunches of white acacia”) which deals, in a rather corny way, with memory and loss. In both languages, “acacia” recalls “Akaky,” the protagonist of Gogol’s The Overcoat. Derek Walcott, Brodsky’s close friend and an admirer of his work, recently wrote a poem called “The Acacia Trees” in which acacias are connected to writing and to death; it also happens to mention Russia. These hazy parallels are not necessarily the result of a conscious desire to echo Brodsky; still, the poem is worth quoting: “the acacias that print those tiny yellow flowers / (blank, printless beaches are part of my trade) / . . . when you’re gone like my other friends, not to Thailand / or Russia, but wherever it is loved friends go / with their different beliefs” (Walcott 2010). The main raison d’être of “akatsiya” (acacia) in Russian might well be the elegant compound rhyme it provides with “smerkat’sya i” (grow dusky and). In self-­translation, a compound rhyme with a function word is located differently: “stitches” / “which is” appears in the second stanza. This would have been the third stanza in Russian: the stanzaic arrangement is changed in several Brodskian self-­translations, though such alterations are not “demanded” by the target language or culture. Perhaps eight-­line stanzas seemed like thematically more logical units here: (1) the sound of rain; (2) the visual and literary aspects of rain; and (3) the vision of the family. The tripartite structure also stresses the image of a nuclear family, a trinity; fittingly, the word “threesome” (which Brodsky also used in the self-­translation of a Nativity poem) shifts to the final position. The words “semeino” / “familial” hint that the poem might be dealing with a relative. The first indirect reference to Brodsky’s father appears in the first stanza: “leyka” normally denotes a watering can, but it can also refer to the camera brand name “Leica.” In “Rimskiye elegii,” self-­translated as “Roman Elegies,” it is combined with the theme of dreams: brodsky: russian Tak zadremyvayut v obnimku s “leykoy,” chtob, prelomlyaya v linze sny, sebya opoznat’ po snimku, ochnuvshis’ v boleye dlinnoy zhizni.

It does communicate a vision, though: “The rain transforms the landscape by linking objects that otherwise have no contact. Analogously, the language fashions and re-­fashions the poet’s memories by connecting thoughts and ideas that could have had nothing in common in real life” (Rulyova 2002: 78).

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literal translation Thus one falls into a slumber, hugging a “leica,” in order to refract dreams in the lens and so to recognize oneself in a photo, having woken up in a life grown longer. brodsky: english Thus some fall asleep while hugging a Leica, in order to take a picture of the dream, to make themselves out, having awakened in a developed future.

Brodsky’s father was a photographer. This mattered to Brodsky, who used the expression “photographic imagery” as a compliment with regard to poetry. Contrary to the fictional mother’s statement in “Mysl’ o tebe,” Brodsky’s father was a military man of sorts. He worked as an official photographer for the Soviet Navy—hence “a greatcoat with epaulets.” According to several memoirs, the father liked to display his military insignia; as Brodsky puts it in an unfinished poem (Losev 2010): “Ty, sokhranivshiy k starosti svoyey / pochten’ye k ordenam” (You, who have preserved into old age / a reverence for military decorations). In English, “epaulets” join “shibboleths” in a slant rhyme. Thus, the English version refers to linguistic and cultural difference as a matter of life and death. Curiously, the religiously connoted verbs “voskresla” / “resurrected” (unlike “arose” in “Australia”) refer to the tablecloth and not directly to the parents.21 Still, it is they who come alive in the poem. The protagonist can be pictured looking out of the window, being reminded of quiet evenings with his parents by the sound of rain and the darkness it brings about,22 and imagining turning around and seeing them, alive. In English, “To turn away from the window!” is a separate exclamatory sentence—the moment of imaginary resurrection becomes more emotional. The rain enables this illusion; it is a “vehicle of nearsightedness.” The English language grants the phrase a bonus—the metaphor is now couched in meta-­metaphoric terms. The rain blurs the vision and leaves smears on the window—and simultaneously enables the speaker to perceive a vision of his parents, sight of those who are near to him.23 The rain is indeed a vehicle, one with a paradoxical tenor.

This is, unless one assumes an ellipsed “ты” (you) addressed to Brodsky’s mother. An interlinear translation, then, would read “to turn away from the window and to see . . . / the fringe of a/the yellow tablecloth and that you have conquered the laws / of gravity, have arisen / and laid the lunch table.” However, this reading is absent from the self-­translation and difficult to reconcile with the original final line (which addresses the father and not the mother). 22 This is how midday is transformed into the vision of an evening. In the original, the closeness of “obedennyy stol” (lit. lunch table) and “uzhinom” (supper), is somewhat confusing. In translation, there is no such tension: yet again, English appears to be more logical. 23 The original “blizorukosti” (nearsightedness) also includes “bliz-” (near); one’s nearest and dearest can be called “blizkie.” 21

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Let us now move on to the baritone. The voice of the apparition is described as absolutely or almost (in Russian and English respectively) identical to the voice of the poetic persona. “The years’ vast distance” can signify both the age difference between father and son and the distance in time since their last conversation. In both versions, the usual formula is subverted: it is not the son whose voice is like his father’s, but the other way around. After all, it is the son who creates his father in a vision and a poem. The reversal calls to mind a passage from Foer’s novel Everything is Illuminated: an inhabitant of Trachimbrod, a shtetl on the river Brod, dies, and his body is bronzed as a present to his wife. People touch the figure for luck so often that it has to be rebronzed every month; its appearance changes: For each recasting, the craftsmen modeled the Dial’s face after the faces of his male descendants—reverse heredity. (So when my grandfather thought he saw that he was growing to look like his great-­great-­great-­grandfather, what he saw was that his great-great-great-­grandfather was beginning to look like him. His revelation was how much like himself he looked.) Foer 2002: 141

Brodsky’s last name may well derive from a shtetl called Brod or Brody; the themes of monumentality and reversed family resemblance make him something of a “Trachimbrodsky.”

5.4  “To a Friend: In Memoriam” In 1973, Brodsky heard that his friend Sergei Chudakov had died. Having composed an elegy, Brodsky then learned that the rumor was false (Losev 2011: 582). Despite his vagabond lifestyle, Chudakov actually survived Brodsky by four years, dying in 2000. Knowing that the poem’s subject was actually alive did not prevent Brodsky from publishing it or composing an English version. Indeed, why should it? A poem can do quite well without a factual basis; moreover, the addressee’s anonymity is a crucial point of the poem. The nameless addressee could indeed be considered dead and gone—the young Chudakov, or, as some critics suggest, the young Brodsky, or some more abstract entity embodying a sensual and logocentric youth spent in the Soviet Union. To a Friend: In Memoriam brodsky: russian На смерть друга (Na smert’ druga, 1973) Имяреку, тебе, – потому что не станет за труд из-под камня тебя раздобыть, – от меня, анонима, как по тем же делам: потому что и с камня сотрут, так и в силу того, что я сверху и, камня помимо,

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чересчур далеко, чтоб тебе различать голоса – на эзоповой фене в отечестве белых головок, где на ощупь и слух наколол ты свои полюса в мокром космосе злых корольков и визгливых сиповок; имяреку, тебе, сыну вдовой кондукторши от то ли Духа Святого, то ль поднятой пыли дворовой, похитителю книг, сочинителю лучшей из од на паденье А.С. в кружева и к ногам Гончаровой, слововержцу, лжецу, пожирателю мелкой слезы, обожателю Энгра, трамвайных звонков, асфоделей, белозубой змее в колоннаде жандармской кирзы, одинокому сердцу и телу бессчетных постелей – да лежится тебе, как в большом оренбургском платке, в нашей бурой земле, местных труб проходимцу и дыма, понимавшему жизнь, как пчела на горячем цветке, и замерзшему насмерть в параднике Третьего Рима. Может, лучшей и нету на свете калитки в Ничто. Человек мостовой, ты сказал бы, что лучшей не надо, вниз по темной реке уплывая в бесцветном пальто, чьи застежки одни и спасали тебя от распада. Тщетно драхму во рту твоем ищет угрюмый Харон, тщетно некто трубит наверху в свою дудку протяжно. Посылаю тебе безымянный прощальный поклон с берегов неизвестно каких. Да тебе и неважно. literal translation On the death of a/the friend24 [To] Anon., [to] you,—because it will not be [much] work/ to drag you out from under a/the stone—from me, anonymous,/ as to the same affairs: because [they] would erase you also/even from a/the stone,/ but also due to the fact that I am above and, apart from a/the stone,/ too far away for you to deduce voices—/ in Aesopian criminal slang in the fatherland of [little] white heads,/ where to/on the touch and hearing you have tattooed your poles/ in a/the wet cosmos of evil/angry kinglets and squeaky flutes;/ [to] Anon., [to] you, the son of a widowed [train] conductress from/ either the Holy Ghost or the raised courtyard dust,/ [to] a/the book thief, the composer of the best ode/ Line three features an unidiomatic phrase which I have rendered as “as to the same affairs”; it seems to imply “for the same reasons” but is not usually used this way in Russian. Lines five to eight are as puzzling to an uninformed Russian reader, as my attempted literal translation seems in English. Let us preserve the similarity of effect for the moment; explanation will follow. The intricate pun in line eighteen, one of whose layers is rendered as “vagabond of local chimneys and smoke,” will also be explained. For some lines, more detailed interlinear translations will be provided.

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on the fall of A.S. into the lace and at the feet of Goncharova,/ [to] a/the *word-­thrower, a/the liar, a/the gulper of small tears,/ [to]a/the admirer of Ingres, of ringing trams, asphodels,/ [to]a/the white-­toothed snake in a/the colonnade of gendarmes’ tarpaulin,/ [to]a/the and a/the body of countless beds—/ may you lie, as if in a big Orenburg shawl,/ in our dirty-­brown earth, you vagabond of local chimneys and smoke/ who understood life like a bee on a hot flower/ and who froze to death in a Third Rome doorway./ Maybe the world has no better gate into Nothing./ A/the man of the sidewalk, you’d say that you don’t need a better one,/ swimming down a/the dark river in a/the colorless coat/ whose buttons alone had been saving you from disintegration./ Gloomy Charon seeks in vain a/the drachma in your mouth,/ someone blows a pipe high above, plangently and in vain./ I am sending you an anonymous farewell bow/ from unknown shores. Which ones, does not matter to you./ brodsky: self-­translation To a Friend: In Memoriam (1985) It’s for you whose name’s better omitted—since for them it’s no arduous task to produce you from under the slab—from one more inconnu: me, well, partly for the same earthly reasons, since they’ll scrub you as well off the cask, and because I’m up here and, frankly, apart from this paltry talk of slabs, am too distant for you to distinguish a voice, an Aesopian chant, in that homeland of bottle-­struck livers, where you fingered your course to the pole in the moist universe of mean, blabbering squinchers and whispering, innocent beavers; it’s for you, name omitted, the offspring of a widowed conductress, begot by the Holy Ghost or by brick courtyard’s soot circling all over, an abductor of books, the sharp pen of the most smashing ode on the fall of the bard at the feet of the laced Goncharova, a word-­plyer, a liar, a gulper of bright, measly tears, an adorer of Ingres, of clangoring streetcars, of asphodels’ slumbers, a white-­fanged little snake in the tarpaulin-­boot colonnade of gendarmes in full gear, a monogamous heart and a torso of countless bedchambers – may you lie, as though wrapped in an Orenburg shawl, in our dry, brownish mud, you, a tramper through hell and high water and the meaningless sentence, who took life like a bumblebee touching a sun-­heated bud but instead froze to death in the Third Rome’s cold-­piss-reeking entrance. Maybe Nothing has no better gateway indeed than this smelly shortcut. Man of sidewalks, you’d say, “This will do,” adding, “for the duration,” as you drifted along the dark river in your ancient gray, drab overcoat whose few buttons alone were what kept you from disintegration.

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Gloomy Charon in vain seeks the coin in your tightly shut shell, someone’s pipe blows in vain its small tune far above heavy, cumulous curtains. With a bow, I bid you this anonymous, muted farewell from the shores—who knows which? Though for you now it has no importance.

“Na smert’ druga” has been considered “one of the best-­known poems written in 5-foot anapest” (Soshkin 2010) in all of Russian poetry. Soshkin provides an impressive list of in memoriam poems, particularly those on the death of a poet—a sub-­genre in its own right in the Russian tradition—written in this meter following (and probably under the influence of) “Na smert’ druga.” Before Brodsky, too, the meter was often used in Russian elegies. Losev (Losev 2006: 192) argues that, throughout his work, Brodsky avoids the danger of sentimentality associated with the 5-foot anapest by introducing slight metrical changes. This holds true for “Na smert’ druga”: every other line ends in an extra unstressed syllable; the result sounds melancholy but not too monotonous. Untypically, Brodsky does not recreate the meter in translation. This seems deliberate, as he adds content in translation which makes the lines longer than in the original. He might have felt that, in English, the poem fares better with longer lines. Or else, the added play with words, sounds and motifs was worth the loss of formal equivalence. Be this as it may, the English poem has 332 words in lieu of 217—an increase of over 50 per cent. The first sentence alone consists of 233 words as opposed to the original 154. One might assume that the English language necessitates the additions. However, only a small part of the changes can be accounted for by articles and prepositions. We are not talking about padding here, either, as the lines actually are longer than the original ones. The average word length in an English text is 1.4 syllables, as opposed to 3.0 syllables in Russian (see Levý 1974: 247); in Brodsky’s own opinion, “the average length of a Russian word is three to four syllables” (Brodsky 1986: 160). However, the difference in word length does not imply that a Russian text tends to be twice as long as its English semantic equivalent: being synthetic, it has no articles and can do without most of the prepositions and auxiliaries needed in English. These short functional words are, in fact, also partly responsible for the low average word length in English texts. A large part of “Na smert’ druga” is a list of nouns in the dative case; where giving, or an indirect object, is implied, the English translation requires a preposition. In this sense, each of the twelve words used to describe the addressee should, strictly speaking, be rendered as “to/for + article + noun.” This would eliminate any need for padding— and make the poem insufferably monotonous. Luckily, in “Na smert’ druga” the dative case has two different functions. It is connected not only to “ot menya” (from me), but also to “pust’ lezhitsya tebe” (may you lie, lit. let lying be to/for you); the latter function needs no preposition in English. Brodsky explicitly opts for the first meaning only in lines one and nine. The first two words of the Russian poem expand in translation into a phrase of nine words that forms half of the first line—and destabilizes the meter: It’s for you whose name’s better omitted—since for them it’s no arduous task to produce you from under the slab—from one more inconnu: me, well, partly

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Here, the vowels are italicized, with those stressed set in bold. In Russian, the two corresponding lines are flawlessly anapestic, as are those that follow. All odd lines end in masculine rhymes, all even lines in feminine ones. Brodsky re-­creates this arrangement throughout the self-­translation, despite feminine rhymes being far more difficult to find in English. The meter, however, can hardly be called anapest anymore.25 The meter could have been recreated easily with only minor changes to Brodsky’s version (no need for new rhyme words or grammatical restructuring). Like this, for instance: It’s for you, inconnu—since it would be no arduous task to produce you from under the slab—from a nameless one, partly

This attempt is closer to the original not only metrically, but also semantically: nothing corresponds to “for them” in Russian, and “inconnu” is more similar to “imyareku” than the circumscription employed in self-­translation. To sum up, the three most frequent reasons for increase in word count in poetry translation—namely: (1) grammatical differences; (2) metrical necessity; and (3) lexical deficiency of the target language—do not fully explain this case (the first reason is responsible for a minor part of the additions, the other two do not apply). The English language and prosody are not directly responsible for Brodsky’s semantic additions. What about his smoother syntax? Here, one change does stem from the nature of the target language. As mentioned, the nouns in dative—including the first word, “imyareku” (hesitantly translated as Anon. for the moment)—have two referents. The second, “da lezhitsya tebe” (may you lie), only appears in line seventeen.26 Due to this connection, which is impossible to recreate in English, the first twenty lines need to be processed as one unit in Russian. In English, the first sentence can be neatly separated into three parts—lines one to eight, nine to sixteen and seventeen to twenty—merely by substituting periods for a semicolon and a dash. Moreover, the translation has fewer ellipses. Though, strictly speaking, the target language demands no semantic addition, and only in one case requires syntactical simplification, it might well have indirectly provoked the shifts: Brodsky regards the English language as logical, striving for clarity. The addressee of the original was known to be alive by the time of publication and translation. Since he had, in effect, been produced from under the slab, it was better not

On the assumption that the meter was to be recreated (with an additional foot or two) I have read “name’s better,” even though naturally the stress would fall on “name.” “Since for them” can be regarded as a silent foot if one starts counting anew after the caesura. Two more silent feet follow in the next line: “you from un . . .” and “from one more.” But “me” is impossible not to stress: at this point it seems more sensible to accept that this is no anapest. 26 The connection can be missed by non-­native speakers: Olson (2009: 198), for instance, apparently ignores the second meaning. The distance between “imyareku” (Anon.) and “lezhit’sya” (lie) calls to mind Mark Twain’s “Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.” Having crossed the Atlantic, the literary Russian had to shorten the dive. 25

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to mention his name while describing his asocial(ist) behavior. These considerations apart, “you whose name is better omitted” resembles the invocation of a being whose real name has magical properties; the original “imyarek” carries no connotation of unspeakability. It can be rendered as “Anon.”, “so-­and-so” or “inconnu”; however, this does not capture all its implications. Brodsky was familiar with the work of the philosopher Berdyaev (see Sinkevich 2009), who responded to Hegel’s and Kant’s “an sich” and “für sich” by using “imyarek” to refer to a human who is able to understand existence from within—not unlike the poem’s protagonist “ponimavshemu zhizn’, kak pchela na goryachem tsvetke” (who understood life like a/the bee on a/the hot flower). In English, the line grows more direct and sensual: “who took life like a bumblebee touching a sun-­heated bud”; this shift is supported by euphony. The notion of understanding disappears along with Berdyaev’s term. The etymology of “imyarek” may also play role; it derives from the Slavic “imya rek” (spoke a/the name). As it is used in the dative case, a space suffices to turn it into “imya reku” (I speak a/the name; antiquated, but understandable to any educated Russian). A non-­name sounds like the act of naming—this paradox of its very first word mirrors the whole poem’s effect. As in Brodsky’s commemorating-­by-claiming-­to-forget trope, the elegy is pointedly not naming the addressee—but thanks to it, Chudakov is remembered. Not even the trumpet of Judgment Day can resurrect the addressee (“someone’s pipe blows in vain”)—but a poem can. His name has been “produce[d] from under the slab” by Brodsky scholars. This “slab” can be read as a metatextual reference—in its rectangular density, a poem is a “slab of text.”27 “This paltry / talk of slabs” is unequivocally metatextual; “the meaningless sentence” can also be seen as self-­referential. On one level, this phrase refers to the addressee’s “word-­ply[ing],” but it can also apply to him as the poem’s protagonist, tramping through Brodsky’s meandering sentence. The simultaneous addition of “paltry” and “meaningless” in translation suggests self-­criticism, a poem making an apology for itself. This might refer to the fact that the object is alive, making the poem meaningless as an elegy. “Paltry” and “meaningless” flank another disparaging adjective, “measly,” both spatially and phonetically.28 All three qualifications suggest insignificance; connotations of trash (“paltry”) and disease (“measly”) might also come to mind. “Measly” corresponds to the original “melkoy” (small, petty), but only in English does it become part of a whole (self-)deprecatory complex, with “paltry” referring to the poem, “measly” to an attribute of the addressee, and “meaningless” to the addressee as well as, arguably, the poem itself. The poem, however, is anything but meaningless. In fact, many of its phrases have to carry more than one meaning. “For the same earthly reasons,” for instance,

The original “kamen’” (stone) has no such connotations; there is no equivalent for “the meaningless sentence,” either. 28 “Measly” and “meaningless” (my italics); “paltry” and “measly” share the number of syllables, the stress and the ending. 27

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suggests both the reasons’ practicality and their connection to the grave.29 Even if still walking the earth (as he indeed was), the addressee would be “too distant . . . to distinguish a voice, / an Aesopian chant, in that homeland of bottle-­struck livers.” In Russian, the corresponding phrase ends in “na ezopovoi fene v otechestve belykh golovok” (in Aesopian fenya in the fatherland of [little] white heads). “White heads” refer to vodka bottles which carried white caps in the USSR of the 1950s (Kreps 1984: 23). “Fenya” is a kind of Russian criminal slang, an instance of “social realia”—an aspect of the source culture unfamiliar to the target culture. “Belaya golovka” (white head) is a realia-­based fixed phrase; both terms resist “literal” translation. They are closely connected to each other and to Russia: “fatherland of white heads” is an example of “Aesopian fenya.” It is Aesopian as it uses kenning-­like paraphrase instead of naming the country. Strictly speaking, it is not an example of “fenya,” but few non-­linguists distinguish between different shades of slang.30 Though derived from a Greek fabulist, the term “Aesopian language” is strongly associated with (anti-)Soviet literature.31 “Fenya” can only refer to Russian, but if it was rendered into English as “Russian slang,” the poem’s self-­description would become untrue in translation. Although both expressions had to be cancelled, Brodsky’s English version of line six is as intricate as the original. Instead of the metatextual “fenya,” the potentially meta-­ performative “chant” appears, to be activated if Brodsky himself reads the poem aloud. His manner has often and rightly been described as chanting.32 Besides, “chant,” as in “chant of lamentation for the dead,” suits the elegy. “Aesopian” is retained as it still applies: the translation, too, presents Russia (or the USSR—the kenning has the additional advantage of making it unnecessary to decide which) as the country of vodka. In English, the charade is more playful: “bottle-­struck livers” primarily refer to cirrhosis, but also to drunken fights. The additional reference to human physiology is typical of Brodsky’s self-­translations. The next two lines are all the more indecent for being followed by a mention of the Holy Ghost, which jokily transforms the sexual adventurer into a Jesus figure:

The corresponding original phrase, “po tem zhe delam,” contains no reference to earthliness. It can mean “for the same business”; it also echoes the Biblical “po delam (ego)” (according to (one’s) works): “po delam (svoim).” In the context, the phrase seems to mean “for the same reasons,” but this is a highly unidiomatic way to put it. “Kak” (how, like, as) only finds an explanation in the next line: “tak i v silu togo” (as also due to); it is rare for a whole clause to stand between “kak” and “tak.” Despite an added layer of meaning, the English version is much easier to understand. 30 Brodsky claimed to be glad of his stay in prison because it enriched his vocabulary with criminal lingo (Brodsky 1986: 24). However, he uses the term “fenya” very loosely (Volkov 1998). 31 Lev Loseff ’s monograph on this topic (1985) offers a helpful overview as well as examples from Brodsky’s oeuvre. 32 To give a few examples: “relentless chant” (Safer 2002: 191); “a kind of liturgical chant, the recitation of each line governed by strict rules of rhythm with definite places for rising and falling stresses, that are impartial to the content of the words” (Forest 1992). Brodsky’s reading was also said to sound like an incantation (Shtern 2001: 91), like a prayer (Lamont 1974: 557), and like singing in the synagogue (Heaney 1999: 261). On one occasion, when some (anti-)Soviet admirers of Brodsky gathered to listen to a tape of his poetry readings, a neighbor informed on them—but not because he recognized a dissident poet. What he heard was “the sound of prayer” (Alloi 2008: 74). The truth can easily be tested today: many of Brodsky’s readings are now accessible online. 29

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gde na oshchup’ i slukh nakolol ty svoi polyusa v mokrom kosmose zlykh korol’kov i vizglivykh sipovok; where to/on the touch and hearing you have tattooed/pricked your poles in the wet cosmos of evil/angry korol’ki* and squeaky sipovki;** * vaginas; literally: kinglet; blood orange ** vaginas; literally: wooden flute (an old Russian folk instrument) where you fingered your course to the pole in the moist universe of mean, blabbering squinchers and whispering, innocent beavers;

The initial literal version corresponds to most Russians’ first reading; this second one, however, is more exact. Brodsky uses two different words for the female sex organ that are undecipherable to most modern Russian readers. The word “readers” (as opposed to all Russians) is used here precisely: people familiar with these terms and people who read poetry constitute two groups whose overlap tends to be small. It was probably somewhat larger in the early 1970s when the poem was composed, but even at that time most readers were puzzled. This line might seem charmingly eerie to the unsuspecting reader, suggesting a fairy-­tale cosmos of evil kinglets and squeaky flutes. Like the English “kinglet,” “korolek” can mean both “little king” or a kind of bird (in addition, it denotes a blood orange); the word “sipovka” is as rare in the sense of a musical instrument as in the sexual sense. Unfamiliar with either meaning (as I was on first reading), one might well presume it to be another bird alongside the kinglet. However, “mokrom” (wet) gives the game away, prompting further search for meaning. The topic of sexuality and its development in translation reveals several interesting features in Brodsky’s work, and the chapter “Wet Dreams” will deal with some of them. As regards these particular lines—they seem to have caused such scholarly embarrassment that most discussions of this poem tactfully pass over them in silence. Kreps (1984: 191) describes the reaction of the average Russian reader as: “Why did he have to go and spoil the poem ‘Na smert’ druga’ with ‘sipovki’ and ‘korol’ki’?” Yet while not sharing this opinion, he offers no further comment beyond the observation that Brodsky’s poetry unites the obscene and the philosophical. The attacks against Brodsky’s alleged “smuttiness” were more numerous than the mentions of sexuality in his poetry; most appeared in the Soviet press alongside other accusations. There are, however, also several competent and largely laudatory articles which mention Brodsky’s “improprieties” as his main or only fault. One article voices exactly the opinion of Kreps’s hypothetical average reader (without being aware of the unwitting quotation): perfectly good poems are “isporcheny” (spoiled) by references to genitalia (Kolker 1991: 119). The notion of spoiling suggests that impolite language is an external blot and not an organic element in the poem. Few scholars discuss the function of sexuality in Brodsky’s poetry in any detail. Two pioneering studies appeared in 1995 in a special issue of Russian Literature dedicated to Brodsky: Losev’s “Iosif Brodskij: Erotika” (Losev: 1995) and Pilshchikov’s “Coitus as a cross-­genre motif in Brodsky’s

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poetry” (Pilshchikov: 1995). In 2011, Lalo’s “Sexuality and Eroticism in Joseph Brodsky’s Poetry” appeared; it deals with “Na smert’ druga” (On the death of a friend . . .) in some detail (Lalo: 2011). Losev believes that Eros and physiology do not go together in Brodsky’s work: “While the erotic is always suggestive, the anti-­erotic character of sexual themes . . . is stressed by the usage of a special sexual terminology borrowed from slang with its anatomically unfounded . . . classification of female sex organs” (Losev 1995: 295). I share his impression that this technicality is intentionally anti-­erotic—but why does Brodsky use this device in this particular poem? Perhaps he wanted to lead the naïve reader astray with fairy-­tale “evil kinglets” and “squeaky flutes”; to judge by the attributed squeakiness, Brodsky was aware of the homonymous musical instrument. But another reason might lie in Chudakov’s own verse, the majority of which feature sexual themes. In 2007, his poems were published for the first time. In all probability, it was Brodsky’s elegy which saved him from the fate of countless dead unpublished poets. Now that Chudakov’s work is accessible, the relationship of Eros and Thanatos clearly stands out as its most prominent theme. Here is an untitled four-­liner by Chudakov to illustrate that pornographic lingo is an appropriate device in a poem on his alleged demise: To, chto ty menya beresh’ Rozovym drozhashchim rtom, Ne zakroyet etu bresh’ Zhdushchuyu menya potom. (Chudakov 2007) You taking me/ In your pink trembling mouth/ Will not close the breach/ That awaits me afterwards./

Lalo could not disagree more with Losev; to his mind, the usage of obscene terminology forms part of a hymn to sexuality. His analysis of “Na smert’ druga” culminates in the vision of Brodsky’s alternative world—or, as it were, an underworld—of sensuality and eroticism, deliberately posited at the border of high poetry with the obscene and the lowbrow: poetry becomes an intellectual loophole into this scrupulously ordered universe. Surprisingly for a Russian poet, Brodsky’s fictional world is not only devoid of sexophobia: it is, in fact, constructed around a profoundly sympathetic, laudatory vision of sexuality. Lalo 2011: 64

Whether sensuality and bawdiness do or do not go together in Brodsky’s work, is to some degree a matter of taste. The previous page in the same article by Lalo suggests

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another reading, less optimistic (and, to my mind, more intriguing, although the metaphor in question appears more metaphysical than political to me): “For Brodsky, this ordered universe of female genitals might also mean a symbolic and highly ironic extension of a well-­known metaphor . . . ‘we are all in the cunt’—meaning that the Soviet Union’s ‘endless deadlock’ is truly hopeless” (Lalo 2011: 63). Lalo strongly disapproves of the self-­translation: The translation, however, does not appear as complex and intricate as the Russian original . . . fenya has nothing to do with chanting whatsoever . . . What we observe here is a rude distortion of the Russian original. Whose fault is it? On the one hand, Brodsky had never studied the English language systematically and it is not surprising that he could confuse chant with cant and be in general not the best translator of his own work. Furthermore, in the 12 intervening years between writing and translating the poem Brodsky might well have forgotten what these fenya terms represented (it is often difficult for an emigrant to remember such minor details). Lalo 2011: 61–3

The sarcastic remark in brackets and the accusing tone are hardly justified. While “chant” might conceivably be a typo for “cant” (in the sense of “jargon”), we have also seen that it gives the poem a self-­referential twist. Lalo, however, is not interested in the effect of the word “chant” in the English version; by definition, he does not grant poetic translation the right of semantic change. This is not the only aspect in which this article would profit from awareness of what constitutes literary translation. Its main issue, the comparison of Brodsky and Catullus, is based on what is perceived as their usage of the same key words (Lalo 2011: 57). However, since the article is dealing with Brodsky in Russian and Catullus in English translation, its claims are poorly substantiated. The second point of Lalo’s article, however, is valid: Brodsky’s Russian is indeed sometimes an amalgam of “a neoclassicist high style and the extremely profane language of part of the Russian intelligentsia, which had to, or chose to, absorb Russian prison and gulag jargon in all its variety” (Lalo 2011: 51). In “Na smert’ druga,” this amalgam is enriched by an intricate grammatical pun: the expression “na oshchup’” means “to the touch,” but the word “*oshchup’” is never used on its own. Brodsky estranges this expression by connecting it to the verb “nakolol” (tattooed), but in English, he finds no such solutions, making use of the suffix “-er” to create the neologism “squincher” and using the relatively unusual words “gulper” and “tramper.” He translates “oshchup’” as “fingered”; this appears particularly expressive to a Russian, since the Russian language does not have an equivalent verb containing a reference to hands or fingers. Brodsky introduces his neologism “squincher” in the next line of the translation. As observed by Prof. Andrew Kahn (personal communication), who knew Brodsky, he tended to use references to female anatomy unidiomatically in English. “Squincher” seems to denote something or somebody that squinches— “screw[s] up (the eyes or face),” “make[s smth.] more compact” (Merriam-Webster). With some imagination, these definitions might be connected to the original meaning,

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but no such fanciful connection explains why—even though a metrically fitting synonym could have been found—“squincher” should be used to mean “vagina.” The reason seems to lie in the etymology of the noun “squinch” upon which Brodsky, an avid reader of dictionaries, might have stumbled: “back part of the side of an opening” (Merriam-Webster). This sounds improbable, yet the meanings of “korolek” and “sipovka” are just as strangely exact: according to an article on sexual slang (Loginov 1999) they denote upper and lower vaginal openings, with “squincher” corresponding to “sipovka,” whose Russian attribute (“vizglivykh”: squeaking) it phonetically mimics. Why this exact meaning should be important to Brodsky in translation, I cannot guess. The simple wish to be true to the original does not quite explain this phenomenon—usually, the meter mattered more to him than semantics; here, he changes the form and goes to some lengths to translate a particular word, perhaps for the sport of it or to rival, say, Nabokov in sexual matters. A scholar more knowledgeable in sexual symbolism will, one hopes, make more sense of this. In the meantime, several interconnected shifts in translation can be observed. Anatomical antonyms are replaced by another opposition: although women are still reduced to their sexual organs, only one category has repellent characteristics, the other is “innocent, whispering.” (Admittedly, this sounds involuntarily funny, especially if the word “beaver” prompts the image of an actual dam-­building rodent.) The lessening of misogyny parallels a change in the attribute of quite a different body part—the addressee’s “odinokoye serdtse” (lonely heart) becomes a “monogamous heart.” Moreover, the original plural “polyusa” (the poles corresponding to “korolek” and “sipovka”) become a single pole in English, a destination. The addressee in English appears to be searching for love while switching sexual partners, while in the original he seems unable to experience love. The sexual adventurer has intellectual interests, too. In the original, his attitude towards books is as unchivalrous as towards women. Ranchin (2006) writes that the expression “pokhititel’ knig” (book thief) “begs to be read as a metaphor, but it is no trope at all . . . Sergei Chudakov, the addressee of these lines, really did steal library books.” Another scholar (Ratnikov 1999: 148) sees it as metaphor for entering the world of poetry.33 The temptation to read the phrase metaphorically grows in translation: “pokhititel’” (a rather dramatic word for “thief ”) can suggest kidnapping but also the stealing of objects; the English “abductor” can only refer to the illegal appropriation of human beings, and thus animates the books. They seem to have a closer relationship with the addressee in English (can books develop Stockholm syndrome?), especially as personification is complemented by the opposite metaphor in the same line: the addressee turns into a writing implement, “the sharp pen of the most smashing ode.” His improved relations with both women and books make him somewhat more

A factual reference can certainly lend additional allusive meanings, but Ratnikov appears to imply that Brodsky could have only intended the phrase as a metaphor. He also states that the poem is addressed to Gennadii Shmakov (Ratnikov 1999: 147). The mistake is all the more strange as Shmakov was openly gay—did Ratnikov fail to grasp the meaning of the wet cosmos?

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likeable. In English, the elegy is still no eulogy, but the addressee’s disreputable features are moderated, and the positive ones gain in expressiveness. “Smashing” is echoed in the next line, with the bard falling with a smash; this is a substitution for the rather inexpressive “luchshey” (best). “Pen,” too, is more vivid than the original “sochinitelyu” (composer). The zeugma does not fare well in Russian– English translation. The device appears twice in the poem: “na oshchup’ i slukh’ nakolol” (where to/on the touch and hearing you have tattooed) and “paden’ye A. S. v kruzheva i k nogam Goncharovoy” (the fall of A. S. into the lace and at the feet of Goncharova); neither phrase is recreated. Instead, there is a gain in rhythmic density: “on the fall of the bard at the feet of the laced Goncharova.” All things English—short words, articles and prepositions—conspire to enhance this phrase. The procession of “on the” / “of the” / “at the” / “of the” seems (to my mind, at least) not clumsy but intentional here; separated by stressed one-­syllable words and concluded by the long feminine name, it illustrates the appeal of the anapest. A. S. stands for Alexander Sergeevich—for Pushkin. For any educated Russian reader, this is quite transparent, especially since his wife is named directly; Brodsky always alluded to Pushkin by his first name and patronymic (VaĬl 1998: 26)—but still, to some degree this, too, is Aesopian language. In translation, Brodsky opts for “the bard,” a term reserved for Shakespeare in English. “Goncharova” makes clear that it is not the Elizabethan poet who is implied here, but tension still arises between the author’s and the readers’ understanding of who deserves the appellation. The reader (if informed about the point of reference—for instance, by an endnote in the volume Collected Poems in English) is thus reminded of cultural relativity, and made to realize that Pushkin enjoys the same status in Russia as Shakespeare in the Anglophone world. In both Russian and English, the addressee’s talent with words is expressed in a compound neologism; in both versions, one of its two roots is “slovo” / “word.” This meta-­word-creation is further stressed by the concentrated sound play produced in interaction with the next word, which in both languages means “liar.” “Lzhetsu” shares most sounds with the following “slovoverzhtsu.” Being a liar thus is a part of being a poet, or, as the Russian text has it, a word-­thrower. “Gromoverzhets”—“grom” (thunder) plus “vergat’” (hurl, archaic)—is an epithet of Zeus; Brodsky substitutes word for thunder. Creating a neologism, Brodsky himself becomes a “slovoverzhets.” One of the attractions of translation studies is that, even without archive materials, guesses about the genesis can deserve the appellation of a hypothesis, with the original providing a point of departure.34 One can well imagine the scene: Brodsky mumbling “a word-­ something, a liar”; “word-­player” comes to mind; he does not leave it at that but transforms the initial idea into “word-­plyer.” Whether this really was the genesis or not, the solution is ingenious, a perfect illustration of poetry as compression—merely by deleting one letter, a neologism is coined that retains a clear echo of “word-­player” but gains layers of new meanings and produces a perfect rhyme for “liar.” The For instance, if for an original “sinizy sletelis na semena” (titmice flew down to the seeds), the self-­ translation reads “blackbirds borrowed my bread,” then we can assume that the alliteration mattered more to the author (at least while translating) than the particular kind of bird and food.

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online Merriam-Webster defines “to ply” (transitive) as: “(1) to use or wield diligently ‘busily plying his pen’; (2) to keep furnishing or supplying something.” The first definition is associated with writing but both fit, for in a poem, words are used diligently and supplied with new shades of meanings. Thunder is lost in translation, but music is gained instead. “Liar” is a homophone of “lyre”; as it shares all its sounds with the preceding word, /lī(-ә)r/ is sufficiently stressed to convey both meanings. The next line describes the addressee as a lover of asphodels. Considering Brodsky’s fondness for concrete details drawn from life, this preference might well refer to a biographical fact. In translation, it gains metaphorical weight, being transformed into “asphodels’ slumbers.” Apart from providing a rhyme for “bedchambers”,35 the addition makes the reader wonder why this flower should be slumbering. The answer suits a memorial poem: the asphodel is closely connected to the sleep of death. It is Persephone’s sacred plant, blooming in Hades and providing food for the dead; ancient Greeks often planted it near graves. The (re-)reader is encouraged to see an allusion to the mythical underworld here by the appearance of Charon later in the poem. The petals of the slumbering asphodels can be imagined as closed; this is connected to other shifts. Firstly, instead of “pchela na goryachem tsvetke” (a bee on a hot flower) the addressee is “a bumblebee touching a sun-­heated bud”: a bud is closed, no bee can drink from it. Secondly, his mouth turns into a “tightly shut shell.” It is the mouth of a dead man, closed forever, not unlike a coffin lid. A bud, too, is closed, but the connotations are quite different—a bud signals the beginning of life, youth, warmth. However, a bud offers no access to nectar; the suggested fullness and directness of the addressee’s life experience is thus questioned. Though this line is more sensual and concrete in English, a tension between meanings arises. A similar effect is produced when “Gloomy Charon in vain seeks the coin in your tightly shut shell” takes the place of “Tshchetno drakhmu vo rtu tvoyem ishchet ugryumyy Kharon” (Gloomy Charon seeks in vain a/the drachma in your mouth). The metaphorization of “mouth” in this otherwise very close translation is accompanied not only by alliteration (“shut shell”) but also by semantic dissonance: if the mouth is tightly shut, Charon can hardly extract his payment from it. In addition, “tightly shut” is in tension with the image of disintegration in the previous line. Greek mythology is international enough; metaphors inseparable from Russia(n) present greater translational challenges. The following two lines are a case in point: da lezhitsya tebe, kak v bol’shom orenburgskom platke v nashey buroy zemle, mestnykh trub prokhodimtsy i dyma

The mis-­stressing is probably influenced by Brodsky’s native language: in Russian compounds, the stress of the second word is usually retained.

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may you lie as if in a big Orenburg shawl/ in our dirty-­brown earth, vagabond of local pipes/tubes/chimneys and smoke may you lie, as though wrapped in an Orenburg shawl, in our dry, brownish mud you, a tramper through hell and high water and the meaningless sentence

The poem alludes to the expression “da budet zemlya [komu-­to] pukhom” (may [smb.] rest in peace, lit. may earth be downy-­soft [for someone]). Orenburg shawls are woven from fine goat-­hair; they are as soft as cashmere and most often gray. Due to their warmth and softness, and partly also because of the sentimental romance “Orenburgskiy pukhovyy platok” (Orenburg down shawl), they are associated with tenderness and care. They also are seen as distinctly Russian. To most Anglophone readers, “Orenburg shawl” sounds entirely unfamiliar and not even reminiscent of Russia (like St. Petersburg, Orenburg has a Western name). Still, the connotations of warmth and care are to some degree reproduced in English, thanks to the addition of “wrapped.” “May you lie” can be connected back to “liar”; whether intentionally or not, the wish is thus made ambiguous in English. As noted by Kumakhova (2006: 155), the pun “mestnykh trub prokhodimtsu i dyma” (lit. vagabond of local pipes/tubes/chimneys and smoke) is an allusion to the expression “proyti ogon’, vodu i mednye truby” (lit. to go through fire, water and copper pipes: to be experienced, especially in suffering). Like “*oshchup’” (touch), “prokhodimets” (vagabond) gains a new meaning in context. With a difference of one consonant, “mestnye” (local) is substituted for “mednye” (copper). The etymology of “prokhodimets” (vagabond, criminal adventurer) derives from “prokhodit’” (to pass through). “Tramper” has a similar effect, “as it, on the one hand, captures the meaning of moving, and, on the other, also brings to mind the word tramp” (Kumakhova 2006: 156). It remains to be added that “dym” (smoke) influences “trub” (pipes/chimneys: the latter meaning is activated here). The idea of passing through chimneys evokes both childishly fantastic, Christmas-­like, associations and tragic ones since, in the context of death, one might think of a crematorium (as in the final lines of “Australia”). Two metaphors are added to the final quatrain—“tightly shut shell” and “heavy, cumulous curtains.” In both cases, the tenor is not named. “Cumulous” clarifies the reference to clouds; to understand “shell” as “mouth,” one need only be familiar with Greek mythology—where else would Charon look for a coin? Even if decoding is easy, this increase in metaphors and allusions means that the English poem suits the self-­description as “Aesopian” better than the Russian one. This, in turn, makes it more self-­referential, as does the addition of “slab” and “meaningless.” The final quatrain also illustrates another feature of this self-­translation—each metaphor is accompanied by two attributes. Unlike in the Russian original, in “To a Friend,” most attributes come in twos. There are eight pairs: “mean, blabbering”; “whispering, innocent”; “bright, measly”; “white-­fanged little”; “dry, brownish”; “gray, drab”; “heavy, cumulous” and “anonymous, muted.” In Russian, there is only one such dyad—“bezymyannyy proshchal’nyy poklon” (nameless farewell bow). The translation also features four

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compound attributes: “bottle-­struck,” “white-­fanged,” “sun-­heated,” and, in contrast to the latter, “cold-­piss-reeking.”36 Probably, some of them originally appeared for metrical and/or semantic reasons; accumulating, they gain force as a poetic device, demanding more of their kind. The translation developed its own poetic dynamics.

The original has no equivalents for these compounds. There is “belozubyy” (white-­toothed), but it is so frequent as to be experienced as one semantic entity which has no need for a hyphen. The quantity of adjectives goes against Brodsky’s proclaimed principle: “In a poem, you should reduce the number of adjectives to a minimum” and, more specifically, “when a noun gets more than one adjective, especially on paper, we become slightly suspicious” (Brodsky 1986: 314). However, in the same essay he applauds Auden’s “low, dishonest decade”—the two adjectives sound “deliberately judgmental” and exhibit “physical gravity” (Brodsky 1986). The former effect might be ascribed to “mean, blabbering,” the latter to “heavy, cumulous.”

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Beyond Translation: “Centaurs” and Other Hybrids 6.1  Wordplay in translation and the Centauric self-­portrait In “Collector’s Item,” Brodsky speaks of himself in the third person, as he often does in his essays: “Who are you, the author asks himself in two languages, and gets startled no less than you would upon hearing his own voice muttering something that amounts to ‘Well, I don’t know’. A mongrel, then, ladies and gentlemen, this is a mongrel speaking. Or a centaur.” (Brodsky 1995: 150). From his early youth, Brodsky had a penchant for centaurs and identified himself with this walking internal conflict. He also had a passion for doodling. Several times, he drew a centaur with his own face. At least once, he did this absent-­mindedly while talking to a friend, who described the picture as follows: “There was nothing elegant in this antique being. A rough beast . . . without a human torso; a human head sat directly on the horse’s neck, bearing not a little similarity to this drawing’s author” (Khotimskiĭ 2003: 373). Here is one of these drawings:

Figure 6.1  Self-­portrait as a centaur

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This centaur does not correspond to its classical image. Is the torso perhaps left out in order to stress the contrast between matter (horse body) and mind (human head)? A tempting idea, although this contrast is ironically undermined by the trousers sported by the horse and especially by the piece of writing in its pocket.1 It is clearly a self-­portrait, close enough in looks to the young Brodsky and even more similar to his other depictions of himself, mostly unshaven, with a smoking cigarette in his mouth. Stalin, looking on from a painting (which, at first sight, could be taken for a window), is also smoking. The poet far from admired the dictator but he had, after all, been named after him (to make this point quite clear, his parents hung a picture of Stalin over their son’s bed); by pointing to the shared habit, Brodsky might be acknowledging this. The centaur’s nonchalant facial expression—despite the whip being depicted in action—is typical of Brodsky’s self-­idea(l): stoicism is its key feature. Long before emigration was in sight, Brodsky directed his centaur self towards the Anglophone West, represented here by the British lion and a bird flying freely in the American skies. Both Latin and Cyrillic characters are present in the drawing. The invitation to “be British” is extended by the lion in English; the carriage lists the names of its passengers in Russian—the musician Tishchenko, the painter Tselkov, the poets Rein and Naiman. These were fellow artists and friends—and then, there is “sud’ba” (destiny, fate), brandishing her whip at Brodsky; her name is also inscribed upon the carriage. In the East, a rather pleased-­looking devil is peering from behind Soviet symbols. The image seems clear: the East is evil, the West good; Brodsky is fated to go West and to carry modern Russian poetry, art and music with him. However, there is a small ironic incongruity—Khrushchev and Stalin are looking out from their portraits at a building (the Kremlin?) decorated with a Coca-Cola sign. An American symbol on a Soviet edifice ensures that the drawing does not resemble a manifesto. Even without Soviet Cola (red meets red, even though the drawing is black and white), it could hardly seem moralistic: its style drips with self-­irony. Similarly, in the poem “Collector’s Item,” recently quoted, the centaur image is comically played down by the reference to a mongrel; mythological pathos is thus minimized. As we shall see shortly, in poetry, too, Brodsky treats the centaur theme with humor. Brodsky’s friend Anatolii Naiman, who appears in the drawing and might well have been familiar with it, describes Brodsky’s bilingualism thus: Who is it that wins a race—the horse or the rider? . . . everything which language represents for Brodsky is partly himself. A centaur, a rider on horseback. Brodsky really is this kind of centaur. . . . Joseph would have liked this comparison in as far as I only see him as a poet from the waist up, everything from the waist down is given to a wild creature—to language. Naĭman 2006: 39

Whether language is the rider or the horse remains open to interpretation, but a centaur is certainly a befitting image for Brodsky. This mythical beast first appears in There is also a very similar drawing in which the Brodsky-­centaur carries Pushkin; in it, too, the horse is wearing trousers.

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his poetry as the final word of the 1964 poem “Prishla zima . . .” (“Winter has come . . .”). It also concludes the first canto of the 1978 “Polden’ v komnate” (Midday in a room) and a part of the 1975  “Chast rechi” (“A Part of Speech”). The latter was translated by Brodsky and Weissbort; Brodsky’s participation was so active that Weissbort later withdrew his own name from the translation. In this poem, a gesture as simple as leaning your head on your hand—or rather, the act of talking—makes you a centaur: brodsky: russian . . . Inogda golova s rukoyu slivayutsya, ne stanovyas’ strokoyu, no pod sobstvennyy golos, perekatyvayushchiysya kartavo, podstavlyaya ukho, kak chast’ kentavra. literal translation Sometimes a/the head and a/the hand/ are united without turning into a line,/ but letting the own voice with its rolling burr/ enter the year, like a part of a centaur./ brodsky: self-­translation . . . On occasion the head combines its existence with that of a hand, not to fetch more lines but to cup an ear under the pouring slur of their common voice. Like a new centaur.

The centaur is listening to his own voice. He might be reciting poetry: “Reading poetry is hearing yourself, listening to yourself,” Brodsky told his students (Lamont 1974: 558). In Russian, the act of transformation is mentioned directly, though in negated form: the head and the hand do not, on this occasion, become a line. “Kartavo” describes a particular gutteral pronunciation of /r/—a non-­standard feature of Brodsky’s own spoken Russian. Siding with a Russian prejudice, Brodsky himself describes this phonetic particularity as a “Jewish accent”: is the centaur a Russian Jew? Is he Brodsky? “Rolling burr” is a close English translation of the phrase; it would fit in exactly as well as “pouring slur” in terms of rhyme and meter. Brodsky, however, makes the translation less personal. The word “centaur” closes the poem and is thus strongly stressed, especially in English where it is constitutes the head of a separate phrase. The centaur is a key image in Brodsky’s oeuvre, and in the cycle “Kentavry” / “Centaurs” the implications of this image are developed in detail. In the following, special attention will be paid to wordplay and neologisms. The study of their role in Brodsky’s work would bear better fruit if more attention was paid to self-­translations. For instance, a monograph published in German in 2007 aims to explain why Brodsky never uses neologisms, concluding that he “integrates all subsystems into his poetic language—with the exception of neologisms. He wishes not to renew poetic language but to stretch its borders” (Wittschen 2007: 180). These are

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the closing words of the interim conclusion, or “Zwischenfazit,” and the book’s entire argument is built around this statement. Though Brodsky was not the most active word-­maker among Russian poets, he actually coined dozens of neologisms. A look at Brodsky’s self-­translations, in which neologisms are more prominent, might have helped. As it happens, the same year saw the publication of a thesis that demonstrates the opposite tendency: among the twenty-­nine verbs that are listed as Brodsky’s occasional neologisms (Samoilova 2007: 109–11), only seven (arguably eight) have actually been coined by Brodsky; most are merely unusual—archaic or slangy, scientific or demotic. Sometimes, words are treated as if they belonged to a different grammatical category: using nouns as verbs, for instance, Brodsky makes Russian do what English can. Often, he uses neologisms and semi-­neologisms in conjunction with other kinds of wordplay. One of Brodsky’s favorite devices, paronomasia is a game played with at least two meanings. The word “knightmare,” for instance, creates a nightmarish combination of knight and mare, human and horse—in short, puns are centaurs. Research on wordplay in translation usually proceeds from the source text, dealing with the possible methods of re-­creation. It tends to come to the conclusion that re-­creation is, strictly speaking, impossible: to preserve the effect of a pun or neologism, part of the semantics must be changed or left out. That is, unless a pun is based on shared names/roots, as in Brodsky’s bitter quip about Poland suffering under Soviet “tanki” (tanks) and Western “banki” (banks), which was quoted by Susan Sontag (in Cockburn and Ridgeway 1982), or unless the translator happens to be very lucky, as Nabokov claimed to be with the following story which he mentions in several essays and, quoted here, in Pale Fire: A newspaper account of a Russian tsar’s coronation had, instead of korona (crown), the misprint vorona (crow), and when next day this was apologetically “corrected,” it got misprinted a second time as korova (cow). The artistic correlation between the crown-­crow-cow series and the Russian korona-­vorona-korova series is something that would have, I am sure, enraptured my poet. I have seen nothing like it on lexical playfields and the odds against the double coincidence defy computation. Nabokov 2007: Kinbote’s comments on line 8032

While such anecdotes are amusing, it might be even more interesting to ask: “What effect do puns have in translation?” This question is especially interesting in terms of reader response, for it can produce opposite reactions. On the one hand, when encountering wordplay, one is more inclined to assume that the text is not the result of translation than when reading a stylistically neutral text. On the other hand, if one comes across puns in a text one knows to be a translation, one is much more aware of its translativity; each recognized pun begs the question: “What did the original say?” Thus, wordplay in translation throws a new light on the old issue of domesticating/

Here and elsewhere: if many editions are available, and if there is a convenient way of identifying a particular passage of text without naming a page, I will do so.

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covert vs foreignizing/overt translation. Paradoxically, overtness can be achieved through domestication. In Russian the “Centaurs” cycle is already rich in wordplay, and it grows still more playful in translation. This phenomenon is rare (but not unique: Nabokov’s and Romain Gary’s self-­translations exhibit the same tendency), and thus there is understandably almost no research on wordplay and the neologisms added in translation.3 In his poems and especially in self-­translations, Brodsky sometimes employs puns that only he himself and bilingual readers can appreciate. He seems to be moved not so much by a desire to demonstrate his talent for paronomasia but by the fascination of playing with language—or better still, with two languages. In part IX of the self-­ translated “Roman Elegies,” for instance, the following phrase appears: “ringlets of fleece: for effects, and for causes also.” The interplay of “effects” and “causes” is suggestive but puzzling. It makes more sense if one knows that “prichinnoye mesto” (literally, a place which causes) is a Russian euphemism for genitals. Brodsky’s delight in coded references might well be connected to his experience as an (anti-)Soviet translator of Western poetry—since censorship was somewhat easier to circumvent in translation and children’s books, these were the cultural spaces for covert criticism. “Literary translators in the Soviet period became adept at encoding resistance for a select intelligentsia audience” (Brian James Baer 2006: 537), which fostered the Aesopian language mentioned in “Na smert’ druga.” While most double entendres were political, sexual innuendo and personal allusions were also part of the game.

6.2  “Centaurs” In self-­translation, parts of the cycle have switched places. This book will deal with “Centaurs I” (orig. “Kentavry II”) followed by “Centaurs II” (orig. “Kentavry I”) etc. The effects of this changed sequence on the cycle as a whole is discussed at the end of the present chapter. The date 1988 is used in all Russian and American book publications; however, some of the poems appeared in the Russian-­speaking Western press earlier, in 1983 and 1987. The cycle as a whole was probably completed in 1988 (see: Nikolaev 2010: 64).

6.2.1  “They briskly bounce out of the future . . .” The first quatrain of “Centaurs I” is much richer in sound play than its Russian counterpart, and the desire to highlight this phonetic tour de force might have been one of Brodsky’s reasons for granting this poem the opening position in the English version of the cycle:

This topic was raised by me in the discussion of the loss of wordplay in translation at the conference “Translating Beyond East and West” in Prague in 2009 to the puzzlement of both the speaker and the audience. The consensus was that such a phenomenon does not exist.

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Centaurs I / Kentavry II Stanza I brodsky: russian Кентавры II (Kentavry II, 1988) Они выбегают из будущего и, прокричав “напрасно!”, тотчас в него возвращаются; вы слышите их чечетку. На ветку садятся птицы, большие, чем пространство, в них – ни пера, ни пуха, а только к черту, к черту. literal translation Centaurs II They run out of the future and having cried “to no avail!”/ immediately return into it; you hear their tap-­dance./ Birds land on a/the branch, bigger than space,/ in them—neither feather nor down, but only to the devil, to the devil./ brodsky: self-­translation Centaurs I (1988) They briskly bounce out of the future and having cried “Futile!” immediately thud back up to its cloud-­clad summit. A branch bends, burdened with birds larger than space—new style, stuffed not with dawn or feathers but only with “Damn it, damn it.”

“Future” and “futile” are close translations of the original words, but only in English do they share the first three letters. The translation is rich in alliteration;4 “cloud-­clad,” a compound whose parts differ only in one vowel, is especially interesting. Without in fact describing a sound, it is almost onomatopoetic, appearing as it does in the context of galloping centaurs and closely resembling the sound of hooves (or at least its conventional imitation in English). In the original, Brodsky attracts attention to the onomatopoeic nature of the word “chechotka” (“tap-­dance”) by preceding it with “vy shlyshite” (you hear). The second-­person pronoun does not appear in the English version; this and “summit” make the centaurs seem further away—the future is a mountain. In the context of myth, Mount Olympus comes to mind, or else Mount Pelion and Mount Pholoe, where centaurs dwell. “Branch bends, burdened with birds” alliterates strikingly enough to create a link back to “briskly bounce” and exhibits an additional intricate pattern of consonance. This attracts attention, giving the reader a better chance to discover a pun added in translation— “burdened” seems specifically to refer to, even to arise from, “bird”; it is almost as if the text said “birdened.”

The only alliteration in the original first stanza is not an authorial creation—Brodsky quotes the expression “ni pukha, ni pera” (neither down nor feathers), reversing the word order

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“New style” is described by Rulyova (2002: 127) as “adding padding for rhyme purposes” (whether the charming rhyming in her own text is intentional, we do not know). However, it also has another function: it calls to mind Dante’s “dolce stil novo” (“sweet new style”). A reference to Dante makes sense in a line that precedes an indirect reference to hell: “Damn it, damn it!” “New style” might also allude to the Gregorian calendar and hence to time. Rulyova tends to interpret imagery in biographical terms: In Russian, Brodsky . . . create[s] the image of a huge hollow and hostile space . . . possibly as a reference to his expulsion from the USSR and the last hostile scene at the Sheremet’evo airport . . . In this line, the repetition of “к черту” in line 4 reveals an air of hostility around the theme of leaving, departing, crossing boundaries, that is exile. Rulyova 2002: 126

The theme of exile in the most general sense can be reasonably connected to almost any poem by Brodsky, as loneliness is one of his most persistent motifs; however, the attempt to find concrete biographical ties is somewhat less plausible here. Firstly, emigration was the opposite of a brief visit; it was characterized by the (political and later emotional) impossibility of return, while the centaurs “immediately thud back.” Secondly, Brodsky could not possibly identify the Soviet Union with a cloud-­clad summit of future. The original’s “ni pera, ni pukha” (neither feather nor down) plays on the Russian tradition of ostensibly wishing somebody (originally a hunter) ill—not unlike the theatrical “Break a leg!”—with its ritual answer “To the devil!”, it is supposed to provide good luck. In self-­translation, Brodsky does something extremely unusual: he first translates the line literally, thus preserving the Russian pun for readers who can translate it back, and then proceeds to add paronomasia in English. The difference between “down” and “dawn” is as slight in writing as it is in pronunciation. Even if unaware of the original wordplay, an Anglophone reader may realize that “dawn” plays on “down”—the proximity of “feathers” suffices as a hint. The pun draws attention to “dawn”; its absence in the ominous birds might suggest hopelessness, as sunrise is usually associated with a new beginning. Rulyova (2002: 126–7) sees a parallel between this poem and Poe’s “Raven”: they share a reference to birds along with the themes of loneliness and loss. The latter are only implicit in Brodsky’s poem; nevertheless, the idea that an allusion to American literature takes the place of a reference to Russian phraseology is intriguing. MacFadyen (1998: 144), on whose work Rulyova largely builds, discovers an additional link to Greek mythology, convincingly arguing that the birds may be the Harpies who attacked Phineus for having prophesied the future. He proceeds to remark that centaurs and harpies can be found together in the Divine Comedy. Even to readers closely familiar with mythology, a bird stuffed with “damn it, damn it” must be extremely puzzling if they do not speak Russian and hence cannot know that the strange image is based on a fixed phrase. Arguably this makes it more suggestive—the original motivation being unclear, one has more incentive to look for

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possible meanings—and suggestiveness is this surrealist image’s main strength. The birds do not seem to be a metaphor for anything concrete, neither are they easy to visualize: what dimensional trick allows them to find a place on a branch despite being larger than space? Are they Möbius birds? Are these birds possibly words? The line is more ominous in English. The pun is concealed; the birds are not only immense, but also heavy and apparently (un-)dead. Apart from suggesting fullness and thus supporting the increase in weight, the addition of “stuffed” makes them either a dish or a hunter’s trophy. This brings us back to the origins of “ni pera, ni pukha”—a connection only a bilingual can appreciate. The next stanza is also rich in wordplay, even more so in translation than in Russian: Centaurs I / Kentavry II Stanza II brodsky: russian Горизонтальное море, крашенное закатом. Зимний вечер, устав от его заочной синевы, поигрывает, как атом накануне распада и проч., цепочкой от часов. literal translation A/the horizontal sea, painted with sunset./ A/the winter evening, tired of its extramural/absent/beyond-­the-eyes/ blueness, is playing, like a/the atom/ on the eve of splitting et cet., with the chain/ of a/the watch / the hours./ brodsky: self-­translation A horizontal mare stained with sunset. A winter evening, tired of its eye-­batting blueness, fondles like a witless atom on the eve of being split the remaining hours’ golden chain.

It would have been metrically possible to render the Russian “more” as sea, as dictionaries do. The decision to use “mare” instead has several effects. Firstly, it adds local color: the scene seems to be set in Italy, a place with links back to ancient Greece via the Roman Empire. Secondly, “mare” is etymologically related and phonetically similar to the original Russian “more”—another feature only a bilingual can appreciate. Thirdly, it might be regarded as a pun added in translation: though designated as a foreign word by italics, mare still can be read as English. “Sea” is the primary meaning; still, a horse—a mare—would appeal to a centaur, and the next stanza associates horizontality with procreation. “Centaurs I” immediately follows “Brise Marine” in the collection So Forth:

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thus, a French and an Italian word for sea appear on facing pages. This attracts fresh attention to “Marine”—perhaps inspiring an alternative reading as the Russian dative case for “Marina.” In Russian, the poem’s dedication to M.B. reads: “Marine Basmanovoy” (to Marina Basmanova). In English, although the dedication itself disappears, the title obliquely recreates it. This pun prepares an attentive reader for further paronomasia, especially in a sea-­related context: for instance, “a horizontal mare.” “Stained with sunset” as a version of “krashennoye zakatom” (colored by the sunset) is not only phonetically but also visually enhanced—the sea is not uniformly colored by the sun. “Zaochnoy” can only mean “extramural” or “in one’s absence” in modern Russian. However, Brodsky appears to use it the way Pushkin did in his 1836 poem “Ottsy pustynniki i zheny neporochny” (The Fathers-Hermits and the Sisters-Pure), where it means “beyond one’s power of sight.” The reader’s attention is drawn to the word’s etymology: “za” (behind, beyond) plus “ochi” (eyes, archaic). Instead of the literal “off-­site,” here “zaochnyy” suggests “off-­sight”: something so blue that truly seeing it is beyond human visual capacity, or a color so intense that eyes cannot stand it. The translation recreates both meanings (with greater stress on the latter) and the effect of etymological actualization. “Eye-­batting” blueness bats (beats) the eye: it hurts and/or defeats the sight; it also has a suggestion of flirtatiousness. This fits into the context of procreation that is to follow; the growing personification of the sea corresponds to the personification of the evening, which seems weary of the sea’s advances. “Chasov” can mean both “hours” and “clocks/watches”; “tsepochkoi” (chain) establishes the latter meaning. However, if the self-­translation is any indication, Brodsky hoped that the reader would also be conscious of the former. The inherent ambiguity of the original word is recreated as a metaphor in which tenor and vehicle take turns: the chain makes “hours” mean “pocket watch,” and this watch shows that few hours are left before the evening is over. The word “chain” also alludes to a chain reaction. “Remaining” clarifies the parallel to the atom about to split, while the “eve” echoing in “evening” supports it—the day is about to die. The image of the atom is connected to the explosion in the penultimate line. Another added adjective, “golden,” suits both a watch chain and the reflection of the sunset in the sea. Moreover, it plays on “golden hours”: for instance, as a photographic term for the last (and the first) hour of sunshine—Brodsky’s interest in photography has been mentioned before. The absence of punctuation marks before “like” and after “split” makes the sentence somewhat difficult to process in English, but the imagery is both clearer and richer. The evening dies, but something else is born. The hours’ chain is immediately followed by: Centaurs I / Kentavry II Stanzas III–IV brodsky: russian   Тело сгоревшей спички, голая статуя, безлюдная танцплощадка слишком реальны, слишком стереоскопичны, потому что им больше не во что превращаться.

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Только плоские вещи, как то: вода и рыба, слившись, в силах со временем дать вам ихтиозавра. Для возникшего в результате взрыва профиля не существует завтра. literal translation   The body of a/the burnt match,/ a/the naked statue, a/the deserted dance floor/ are too real, too stereoscopic,/ because there is nothing for them to turn themselves into anymore./ Only flat things, for instance: water and fish,/ fused, are able to give you in [due] time an ichthyosaurus./ For a profile that came to be as the result of an explosion, no tomorrow exists./ brodsky: self-­translation   A burnt matchstick’s residue, a myopic naked statue, a pergola looming wanly are excessively real, excessively stereoscopic since there’s nothing they can turn themselves into. Only horizontal properties, in their fusion, can spawn a monster with a substantial fallout or followup. For an explosion-­sponsored profile, there is no tomorrow.

In the self-­translation, a pergola is substituted for a dance floor,5 the statue becomes myopic (after all, statues often lack pupils), and the animation of the match—that is, if the comparison to a dead body can be called animation—is cancelled. The two lines about fusion are themselves fused into a single line; two enjambments—interlinear fusions—are added. “Slivshis”’ (“united”, lit. “poured together”) is an oblique reference to water; in English, “horizontal property” can be regarded as a pun: the sea belongs to the horizon. Neither ichthyosauri nor fish are mentioned, though the latter are suggested by “spawn.” MacFadyen’s reading of this poem is somewhat cryptic: he mentions “jovial centaurs . . . oscillating freely” between forms until “they find themselves caught in unstoppable physical changes” when “tomorrow comes” (MacFadyen 1998: 144–5). The cry of “Futile!” is not conventionally regarded as jovial;

The common denominator is that both are man-­made constructions intended for company. One of the reasons for the change might be Brodsky’s desire to use the verb “loom,” of which he is extremely fond. It appears in 12 out 55 self-­translated poems: apart from “Centaurs II,” these are “Vertumnus,” “Portrait of a Tragedy,” “December in Florence,” “In England,” “Lithuanian Nocturne,” “Minefield Revisited,” “Roman Elegies,” “In Memoriam,” “A Footnote to Weather Forecasts,” “So Forth” and “Eclogue IV: Winter.” The last also shares an adverb with “Centaurs I”: “arches and colonnades, in hundreds, . . . / looming wanly.”

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moreover, the poem appears to be saying that tomorrow does not come. A remark MacFadyen makes in a later book (MacFadyen 2000: 5), in no connection with the “Centaurs” cycle, seems more relevant: Brodsky, he observes, often has “recourse to evolutionary metaphors.” Some examples can be found in Ranchin (1994: 38): he analyzes the image of water as the cradle of all life in “Priliv” (High Tide) and “Triton” (Triton/Newt). Both poems remain untranslated. Dinosaurs appear in many poems by Brodsky, and his favorite was the ichthyosaurus. Once mentioned, it tends to make its way into another poem in the same year: “Kentavry II” and “Elegiya” (“Elegy”) appeared in 1988; “Morskiye manevry” (Marine maneuvers), “Zimnim vecherom v Yalte” (Winter evening in Yalta) and “Pamyati professora Braudo” (In memoriam Prof. Braudo) in 1969. In the latter, it rhymes with “nazavtra” (tomorrow). In “Kentavry II,” this rhyme is repeated; Ranchin (2001: 39) points out that it seals the motif of the future as the pre-­civilized past. In 1978, an almost identical rhyme (with the hypernym “dinozavra” instead of an ichthyosaurus) was employed in the poem “Strofy” (“Strophes”). The themes of time, love and language come together in this stanza [note: here and further on, my bold letters]: Neumestney, chem yashcher v filarmonii, vid nas vdvoem v nastoyashchem. Tem verney udivit obitateley zavtra razvedennaya zdes’ sil’nykh chuvstv dinozavra i kirillitsy smes’.

In David MacDuff ’s translation (revised with Brodsky), this stanza reads as follows: More out of place than a mammoth in a symphony den is the sight of us both smothered in the present. Good men of tomorrow will surely wonder at such a diluted mix: a dinosaur’s passions rendered here in the Cyrillic marks.

“Strofy” is dedicated to M.B., as was the 1982 “Elegiya,”6 an untranslated poem in which the meaningful rhyme appears again:

The dinosaur is a self-­image connected to the loss of M.B.; one might suppose that the “fusion” of “horizontal properties” refers to their relationship, and the catastrophe in “Centaurs II” to their separation, though I would not wish to reduce the poems to this reading alone.

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Brodsky: Russian   My—tol’ko chasti krupnogo tselogo, iz koego v’yetsya nit’ k nam, kak shnur telefona, ot dinozavra ostavlyaya prostoy pozvonochnik. No pozvonit’ po nemu bol’she nekuda, krome kak v poslezavtra, gde otkliknetsya lish’ invalid—zane poteryavshiy konechnost’, podrugu, dushu est’ produkt evolyutsii. I nabrat’ etot nomer mne kak vypolzti iz vody na sushu. Literal translation   We are but parts/ of a large whole, from which a string leads to us like a telephone wire, reducing a/the dinosaur to a simple vertebral column. But one cannot use it to ring7 anywhere anymore but in the day after tomorrow,/ where only a cripple will respond—for/ one who has lost a limb, a/the girl-­friend, a/the soul/ is an evolutionary product. And for me, to dial this number/ is like crawling out of the water onto earth. This passage is relevant not only for the present poem, but also for other parts of the “Centaurs” cycle. The idea of a post-­catastrophic future is developed in “Centaurs II,” while the image of a limbless cripple resounds with “Centaurs IV.” “Dinosaur” and “tomorrow” exhibit phonetic similarities in English (/or˙/); a compound slant rhyme of the kind favored by Brodsky—say, “dinosaur or” / “tomorrow”—could have been used in “Centaurs I.” Instead, Brodsky speaks of “a monster.” Considering the etymology of “dinosaur” (δεινός: “terrible”), one could argue that this is an equivalent, albeit a very loose one. Still, while a reference to evolution in general and dinosaurs in particular is lost, the result is a gain in ambiguity: “monster” can be interpreted as referring to centaurs. The word was “extended by late 14c. to imaginary animals composed of parts of creatures (centaur, griffin, etc.)” (Harper). Thus, the Anglophone poem’s imagery exhibits a closer internal connection, the final stanza referring back to the first one.

6.2.2  “Part ravishing beauty, part sofa . . .” Centaurs II / Kentavry I brodsky: russian Кентавры I (Kentavry I, 1988) Наполовину красавица, наполовину софа, в просторечьи – Софа, “Pozvonochnik” (vertebral column) resembles the verb “pozvonit’” (ring / call on the phone). As chance would have it, “string” and “ring” rhyme, just like the original “nit’” (string) and “pozvonit’.”

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Beyond Translation по вечерам оглашая улицу, чьи окна отчасти лица, стуком шести каблуков (в конце концов, катастрофа – то, в результате чего трудно не измениться) она спешит на свидание. Любовь состоит из тюля, волоса, крови, пружин, валика, счастья, родов. На две трети мужчина, на одну легковая – Муля – встречает ее рычанием холостых оборотов и увлекает в театр. В каждом бедре с пеленок сидит эта склонность мышцы к мебели, к выкрутасам красного дерева, к шкапу, у чьих филенок, в свою очередь, склонность к трем четвертям, к анфасам с отпечатками пальцев. Увлекает в театр, где, спрятавшись в пятый угол, наезжая впотьмах друг на дружку, меся колесом фанеру, они наслаждаются в паузах драмой из жизни кукол, чем мы и были, собственно, в нашу эру. literal translation Centaurs I Half beautiful [woman], half sofa, in the vernacular—Sofa,/ in the evenings resounding in a/the street, whose windows are partly faces,/ with the clatter of six heels (after all, a catastrophe/ is that as a/the result of which it is difficult not to change),/ she hurries to a/the rendezvous. Love consists of tulle,/ hair, blood, springs, a/the bolster, happiness, childbirth./ Two-­thirds a man, one[-third] a [passenger] car—Mulya—/ meets her with a/the growl/roar of a/the idling motor/ and leads he to a/the theatre. In every thigh, from the age of diapers/ there is this inclination of a/the muscle for furniture, for the antics/ of mahogany, for a/the wardrobe/armoire, whose paneling,/ in its turn, has an inclination for three-­quarters, full-­face [portraits]/ with fingerprints. Leads her to a/the theatre, where, hidden in the fifth corner,/ running each other over in the dark, kneading veneer with a/the wheel,/ they enjoy in the pauses a/the drama from the life of dolls/puppets,/ which we were, in fact, in our era./ brodsky: self-­translation Centaurs II (1988) Part ravishing beauty, part sofa, in the vernacular—Sophie after hours filling the street whose windows are partly faces with the clatter of her six heels (after all, a catastrophe is something that always ogles the guises a lull refuses), is rushing to a rendezvous. Love consists of tulle, horsehair, blood, bolsters, cushions, springs, happiness, births galore.

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Two-­thirds a caring male, one-­third a race car—Cary for short—greets her joyfully with his idling roar and whisks her off to a theater. Every thigh, from the age of swaddles, shows the craving of muscles for furniture, for the antics of mahogany armoires whose panels, in turn, show a subtle yen for two-­thirds, full-­face, profiles anxious for a slap. Whisks her off to a theater in whose murkiness—perspiring, panting, running each other over, kneading veneer with tire— they enjoy off and on a drama about the life of puppets which is what we were, frankly, in our era.8

Rulyova (2002: 64) believes that “the form of the original Russian poem is a result of a spontaneous act of the primary creative impulse, the intentional re-­constructing of it . . . restricts its freedom” [her italics]. However, how “free” is the poet in what is considered an original creation? Willingly playing by the rules of rhymed metrical poetry, Brodsky imposes the constraints on himself that are necessary for creation. Both versions have a cross-­rhyming scheme throughout; once Brodsky had decided on this in Russian, he would not have had the “freedom” to abandon it without an artistic reason, on a mere whim. Hence the quotation marks around “freedom”: what matters here is choosing one’s own constraints. True, Brodsky is more restricted semantically when translating than when first composing, though in “Centaurs II” he allows himself more changes than usual. With regard to the form, he is actually “freer” in English than in Russian in this particular case, having significantly loosened the rhymes to gain greater scope for variation. The rhyme scheme is abab. The following table presents the rhyme words in the two versions: lines 1 + 3: /sofa/ + /katastrofa/ lines 2 + 4: /litsa/ + /izminitsa/ lines 5 + 7: /tyulya/ + /Mulya/ lines 6 + 8: /rodaf/ + /abarotaf/ lines 9 + 11: /pilyonak/ + /filyonak/ lines 10 + 12: /vykrutasam/ + /anfasam/ lines 13 + 15: /ugal/ + /kukal/ lines 14 + 16: /faneru/ + /eru/

Sophie / catastrophe faces / refuses horsehair / Cary galore / roar swaddles / subtle antics / anxious panting / puppets tire / era

All the Russian rhymes are feminine; all but two are exact (the exceptions are found in lines 6/8 and 13/15, whose final syllables begin with voiced/unvoiced consonantal pairs). In English, some line endings are stressed and some unstressed; there is consonance and/or assonance at the end of each line but only one exact rhyme: galore/

The dash and, more significantly, the separation between the penultimate and the final line are instances of emphasis added in translation. A separate final line appears also in the self-­translation “Near Alexandria.”

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roar. This is the only poem in the cycle (indeed, one of very few poems translated by Brodsky) that does not attempt to match the Russian rhyming. A phonetically rather loose poem is sandwiched between two that rhyme more stringently, arguably freshening the overall effect and allowing Brodsky to concentrate on this poem’s most characteristic features: wordplay and aphoristic thinking. The “centaur” in this poem’s first line receives her name because of its similarity to a piece of furniture. This particular pun is banal enough and happens to be easy to recreate in English; it is the first quatrain’s final line in which a major change takes place: in translation, a catastrophe is defined not as something that changes you but as “something that always ogles the guises a lull refuses.” What does this mean? Is it easier to pretend in extreme circumstances? Is honesty impossible in times of a catastrophe? The relationship between the cryptic parenthetical observation and the rest of the text can be read as follows: a catastrophe had occurred; this is why both houses and people are changed (in Russian) or else disguised (in English). The notion of disguise, pretending, and play-­acting appears in several Brodskian self-­translations: “guise” in “Centaurs II” is comparable to “fake pyramids” in “Near Alexandria,” “carafes on a tablecloth feign the Kremlin” in “Minefield Revisited,” and “the moon overhead apes an emptied square” in “Roman Elegies”—none of the words that I have italicized has an equivalent in Russian. It is as if the English language or else the translated text was less “real” to Brodsky. The centauric nature of the houses, “whose windows are partly faces”, is recreated in English; the sofa pun is preserved. One association, however, is lost: Sofa is a traditionally Jewish name in Russian; this prompts the appellation of her counterpart—Mulya. The names chime with biographical interpretations: the “Jewish context . . . of Brodsky’s own background, where furniture and family were compressed in the same space” (MacFadyen 1998: 140). The names Sofa and Mulya are often used in Jewish and antiSemitic jokes; this adds to the comical quality of the image. However, another connotation might be more important in the poem’s context: both names imply mundanity. There is no suggestion of wisdom in Sofa; these are not the Biblical names Sofia and Samuil, but their provincial, banal, everyday forms, familial and cozy like a sofa. This aspect is to some degree recreated by the diminutives used in English—Sophie and Cary. Retaining “Mulya” in translation would make little sense: it evokes no associations whatsoever and is hard to recognize as a man’s name, while this centaur is emphatically male. In Russian, the male’s name produces no puns— unlike in English. His centauric essence is retained; a paronomastic parallel is added in translation. “Car” and “caring” both appear in the same line as “Cary” and resound in his name; moreover, he carries Sophie away. In Russian, the male is accompanied by wordplay based not on similarity of sound but on ambiguity of meaning. “Kholostykh” can mean not only “idling,” but also “bachelor.” Interestingly, Brodsky does not employ the word “mashina” (car), which sounds close to “muzhchina” (man), though he could have easily done so rhythmically. Instead, he goes for the less frequent “legkovaya” (passenger car). One might argue that he was sometimes more shy of puns in Russian. In “Centaurs II,” yet another pun is added by the target language itself: “antics” is a close translation

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of the original “vykrutasy” (antics, tricks); in the context, it also suggests antique furniture. Sofa’s centauric nature has been regarded as comically superficial: “some couches are called ‘sofa’ and some women are called ‘Sofa’, the couch has legs and the woman, too, ‘hence’, sofa and Sofa are the same” (Losev 2006: 32). Actually, there is more shared ground than that; Sofa’s essence is sex, procreation, family—these are associated with sofas. Moreover, as Kovaleva (2003: 205) points out, Sofa connects the themes of metamorphosis and time with another Brodskian leitmotif, the mythology of furniture. This connection is clearer in English. For Sophie, “love consists of tulle, horsehair, / blood, bolsters, cushions, springs, happiness, births galore.” This list is almost identical to the original one but for the substitution of “horsehair” for the more general “volosa” (hair). Apart from the two final items, the list can be regarded as metonymic, with tulle standing for a wedding dress or the frilly curtains of a home shared with Mulya/Cary, and blood referring to defloration and/or birth. But what does hair suggest? The filling of a sofa is the dominant interpretation in English. In Russian, it is less clear, though the intention was in all probability the same. Attributes of a sofa appear in both versions; the clearer reference to its main content stresses the hybrid image. More importantly, “horse” in the centaur-­word “horsehair” links Sofa, a modern centaur, to the mythical ones. In Russian, it is unclear whether the fingerprints are to be found on faces (suggesting a slap), or else on portraits or photographs (suggesting a keen interest in these pictures). In English, only the former meaning is active: “two-­thirds, full-­face, profiles anxious / for a slap.” The overall measure of aggression in the two versions is arguably similar, as two details in Russian suggest more violence than in English. Firstly, “running each other over,” while primarily suggesting harm, also hints at running one’s fingers over someone’s skin in the context of cinema hanky-­panky; the original “nayezzhat’” (to run smb. over; to confront aggressively) allows no such reading. Secondly, in the original, the groping happens in “pyatyy ugol” (the fifth corner). This is not only one of Brodsky’s many geometric images, but also a piece of Russian KGB/police jargon, as Loseff explains in reference to another poem, “Constancy”: “In an interrogation, four policemen would occupy the four corners of a room and invite the suspect to escape a beating by finding the fifth corner.” (Brodsky 2000: 526)9 Moreover, “pyat’ uglov” (“five corners”) is the unofficial name of an intersection in Petersburg, while Kalinin Square, also, has five corners and harbors a cinema. In “Centaurs II,” Brodsky substitutes “the fifth corner” with “perspiring, panting.” There is another poem in which Brodsky connects an odd space to sexuality, “Ekloga IV: Zimnyaya”— “neugomonnyy Terek zdes’ ishchet tretiy bereg” (the untiring Terek is searching for a third shore here) is a description of a wet dream. Just as in “Centaurs II,” this reference is substituted by a more obviously sexual phrase in translation: “in a narrow ravine torrid Terek’s splashes” (“Eclogue IV: Winter”).

In “Constancy,” Brodsky translates the term literally even though his Anglophone readers would certainly fail to understand the reference. Most Russians would not grasp it, either; the expression is not commonly known, though certainly familiar to Brodsky himself.

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In a letter, Brodsky compares Russian and English writing to a sofa (or an ottoman) and a car respectively: More and more, I tend towards the idea that the literature of the States and our domestic literature (the same holds true for the languages) are not so much phenomena of opposing cultures as the extremes of the same civilization . . . The difference is like the difference between a sofa/ottoman and a car, but the common denominator is the same; me, for instance. Sergeev 1997: 454–5

It is safe to assume that in this comparison the sofa corresponds to Russian language and literature, while the car stands for the English ones, even though their order in the letter seems to suggest the opposite. To judge by many interviews and essays, Brodsky associated softness and immobility with Russian and dynamism with English; indeed, in the same letter he writes: this difference is the difference between an analytic and a synthetic attitude towards reality. The former allows controlling it, sometimes sacrificing half of a/ the phenomenon; the latter develops perception (up to Lev Nikolaevich’s [Tolstoy’s] level), but at the cost of the ability to act. Sergeev 1997: 454 (my translation)

The terms “synthetic” and “analytic,” which apply to Russian and English grammar respectively, are used in their original philosophical meaning here. To Brodsky’s most fervently read modern philosopher, Lev Shestov, the expression “sinteticheskoye suzhdeniye” (synthetic reasoning) was almost a term of abuse. To Brodsky, both attitudes have their virtues and their shortcomings; their complementary features make Brodsky’s bilingualism and biculturalism especially valuable. Rulyova (2002: 63) observes the parallel between the poem and the letter, interpreting the centaurs as straightforward and intentional representations of the two languages: apart from defining languages through their linguistic qualities, he personifies and (en)genders them based on the conventional view of language: the more “intuitive” Russian language, the poet’s mother tongue, with its tendency to inflections, is represented as a female centaur; English . . . appears to Brodsky as masculine. As a female centaur, Russian is given a more submissive role, dominated by the masculinity of English. Rulyova 2002: 63–4

This certainly is an intriguing reading. However, there do not seem to be enough intratextual clues to justify a one-­to-one equation: both figures appear Russian-Jewish in Russian, and Anglo-American in English. Moreover, the letter was written on March 29, 1976, some ten years before the poem: it is questionable whether Brodsky remembered this chance comparison while composing “Kentavry I.” Besides, the idea

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of a “primary creative impulse” is mentioned in the same paragraph, thus providing a breach in internal logic—if the original poem is restricting and guiding Brodsky, should not the Russian language be deemed the dominant,“male” part? The relationship between languages, cultures and genders is more complex than the vision of a Russian centauress dominated by an English counterpart. The ironic detached tone of this particular poem(s) is more “English” than “Russian,” and, from a traditionalist perspective, more “male” than “female.” Together, the two texts constitute a fascinating bilingual transnational centaur, a beast with two backs and two voices.

6.2.3  “A marble-­white close-­up of the past-cum-future hybrid . . .” Centaurs III brodsky: russian Кентавры III (Kentavry III, 1988) Помесь прошлого с будущим, данная в камне, крупным планом. Развитым торсом и конским крупом. Либо – простым грамматическим “был” и “буду” в настоящем продолженном. Дать эту вещь как груду скушных подробностей, в голой избе на курьих ножках. Плюс нас, со стороны, на стульях. Или – слившихся с теми, кого любили в горизонтальной постели. Или в автомобиле, суть в плену перспективы, в рабстве у линий. Либо просто в мозгу. Дать это вслух, крикливо, мыслью о смерти – частой, саднящей, вещной. Дать это жизнью сейчас и вечной жизнью, в которой, как яйца в сетке, мы все одинаковы и страшны наседке, повторяющей средствами нашей эры шестикрылую помесь веры и стратосферы. literal translation Centaurs III A/the hybrid of past and future, given in stone, in close-/ up. [Given in] a/the well-­developed torso and a/the horse rump./ Or—[in] a/the simple grammatical “[I/he/you] was” and “[I] will”/ in the present continuous. To give this thing as a heap/ of boring details, in a naked izba on hen’s/ feet. Plus us, by the side, on chairs./ Or—merged with those whom we loved/ in a/the horizontal bed. Or in a/the automobile,/ meaning in a/the captivity of a/the perspective’s, in the lines’ enslavement. Or else/ simply in the brain. (To) give it out loud, clamorously,/ as a/the thought of/about death—frequent, painful, material./

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To give it as the life now and the eternal/ life, in which, like eggs in a net,/ we are all identical and frightening to the mother hen,/ who is repeating, by the means of our era,/ a/the six-­winged mixture of belief and [the] stratosphere./ brodsky: self-­translation Centaurs III (1988) A marble-­white close-­up of the past-cum-future hybrid, cast as a cross between muscular torso and horse’s ibid, or else as a simple grammatical “was” and “will” in the present continuous. Cast this thing as a million boring details! in the fairy tale’s hut on chicken feet! Plus, ourselves in its chairs—to cheapen the sight. Or merged with those whom we loved, or loved to merge with on horizontal sheets. Or in the nubile automobile, i.e., as a perspective’s captives. Or willy-­nilly in the brain’s gray recesses. Cast it out loud, shrilly, as a thought about death—frequent, tactile, aching. Cast it as life right now mixed with afterlife where, like eggs in a string bag, we all are alike and equally petrifying to the mother hen who, sparing its yolk the frying pan, flutters up by the means of our era the six-­winged mixture of faith and the stratosphere.

Most of the original poem consists of objects for the verb “dat’” (give) and its derivates. What this “giving” implies is established in the first sentence—the re-­creation of, to put it roughly, time. Its different guises, such as cinema and sculpture, form a very Brodskian long list, hinged on the gerund “dannaya.” It usually translates as “given.” But while “dannaya krupnym planom” (lit. given in close-­up) is a cinematographic expression, “dannaya v kamne” (given in stone) sounds rather strange. It calls to mind Lenin’s definition of matter, which every Russian of Brodsky’s generation had to learn by heart: “ob’yektivnaya real’nost’, dannaya nam v oshchushchenii” (objective reality given to us in sensation). This is not irrelevant in the poem’s context, but even if the verb was rendered as “given,” this would hardly make an Anglophone reader think of Leninism. Instead, Brodsky makes use of an opportunity he did not have in Russian: the English language has a verb that can be applied to the creation of both movies and statues, hence: “cast as a cross between muscular torso and horse’s ibid.” “Dat’” (give) has a very broad range of meanings. In the original poem, three sentences begin with “dat’” (in the rest, the verb is implied, but suppressed); a reader can easily forget the connection to statues, as the verb is not normally used in this context. In English, the references to both cinema and sculpture are activated every time “cast” is repeated. A formal parallelism is introduced in English—the first line features three hyphenated words: “marble-­white,” “close-­up,” and “past-cum-future.”

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Brodsky’s penchant for such “centauric” compounds suits the poem well. “Marble-­ white” alludes to sculpture, “close-­up” to cinema; the combination of these two is the poem’s key image. The latter suggests motion and repetition; the former signifies immobility and is a frequent and much-­analyzed motif in Brodsky’s work. The suggestion that “in Brodsky’s poetic world, the statue is almost always connected to death” (Ranchin 2010) is somewhat overstated. Almost as often, the statue suggests immortality (“Vertumnus” is the most prominent example). However, these contrary meanings are close to each other—in Brodsky’s poetics, both are opposed to life. In “Vertumnus,” a statue (or a god) states that only “the temporary—is capable of sensation,/ of happiness.” In “Centaurs III,” Brodsky renders “vechnaya zhizn’” (eternal life) as “afterlife.” Unlike statues, cinema imitates the mobility of life. This is not the first time that Brodsky combines the two motifs—the addressee of “Twenty Sonnets to Mary,” for instance, is not only a historical figure, but also her statue in a park and her character in a movie. In “Centaurs,” this combination illustrates the hybrid. Simultaneity is crucial. Contrary to Podrezova’s (2007: 112) statement, the poem does not open with a “description of a traditional half-­man-half-­horse.” This centaur does not have a lower and an upper half, but a torso which is both horse and human—both past and future, both statue and movie, both “will” and “was.” or else as a simple grammatical “was” and “will” in the present continuous. Cast this thing as a million boring details! in the fairy tale’s hut on chicken feet!

The original uses the word “izba.” Its transliteration is listed by most major English dictionaries as a term for a Russian village house, but Brodsky decides against exoticization. In Russian folklore, the “hut on chicken feet” is the dwelling of the witch Baba Yaga. The “present continuous” is an aspect of English grammar—there is no such tense in Russian (Brodsky’s original features the Russian translation of the English term). The co-­existence of these images within two lines is typical of Brodsky’s status as a wanderer between cultures. To the readers of the translation, the hut gains importance, as they are transported into it—“ourselves in its [the hut’s] chairs” takes place of “nas v storone” (us by the side). The only concession to Anglophone readers unfamiliar with Baba Yaga is the added explanatory “fairy tale’s,” which fails to suggest that this izba is a dangerous place. Conversely, the readers of the original have to make sense of the grammatical term as best they can. If they have never learned English, the word arguably becomes more suggestive, appearing like a philosophical concept coined by Brodsky. The English tense might allude to T. S. Eliot’s “Burnt Norton,” which Brodsky had attempted to translate (Akhapkin 2003: 35)—“Time present and time past / Are both perhaps present in time future, / And time future contained in time past./ If all time is eternally present / All time is unredeemable.” What Brodsky shares with Eliot is not moral philosophy but the fact that both play with the names of English tenses to describe the fluidity and omnipresence of time. For

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Brodsky, whose view of the relationship between language and thought was rather Sapir-Whorfian, the existence of a “present continuous” meant a new way of thinking about time. Grammatical terms are often more familiar to non-­native speakers;10 like all fixed phrases, they have a potential for estrangement. Here, the expression is deconstructed into its constituent parts—a continuous present, a continuous presence, eternity. In Russian, “nastoyashcheye” can mean “present” or “real.”11 Eight years after “Centaurs,” Brodsky was to write a poem in English which is mainly dedicated to playing with tenses, as the title—“Infinitive”—suggests. Its speaker is stranded on an island:     Islands are cruel enemies of tenses, except for the present one. . . .     In your eyes I am at the very least an island within an island. And anyhow, watching my every step, you know that I am not longing for the past participle or the past continuous —well, not any more than for that future perfect of yours deep in some humid cave

Here, time is connected to space. The speaker professes to have no nostalgia, no desire to continue the past or to strive for a perfect future (a potential change in word order is a crucial device here). This statement is questioned by the ambiguity of “the present one”— does it refer to the present tense, supporting the claim, or to the present island, refuting it?12 The temporal conundrum in “Infinitive” allows different readings; in “Centaurs III,” any reading is, strictly speaking, impossible: there is no such thing as “a simple grammatical ‘was’ and ‘will’ in the present continuous.” The poem creates an impossible tense, reminiscent of the odd space (the fifth corner) in “Kentavry I.” Time is closely connected to language in Brodsky’s poetics; no wonder that the latter, too, is alienated in “Kentavry III.” An irregularity of spelling—“skushnyy” instead of the standard “skuchnyy” (boring)— follows the way this word is pronounced in Moscow, as opposed to St. Petersburg. Thus, in his native Russian, Brodsky uses a word which is alien to him.

Soviet language teaching was especially heavy on theory—Brodsky probably had to learn the term “present continuous” long before he first said “I’m doing.” 11 Brodsky uses this in “V Anglii” (In England)—“v nastoyashchem proshedshem” (in the present past or else in the real past). There is no such tense as the present past in either Russian or English, but the phrase sounds like a grammatical term. All three poems by Brodsky which suggest a simultaneity of tenses were written after Brodsky’s departure to the US; the third one is “Kappadokiya” (1992): “orel, parya / v nastoyashchem, nevol’no parit v gryadushchem / i, estestvenno, v proshlom, v istorii”/ “an eagle soaring / in the present soars naturally in the future /and of course in the past” (“Cappadocia,” translated by Paul Graves and Brodsky). 12 Brodsky is careful not to reduce the poem to a metaphor for his emigration. In the first line, for instance—“Dear savages, though I’ve never mastered your tongue, free of pronouns and gerunds”— the speaker is denied knowledge of the imaginary island’s language, and the language itself is deprived of two features which exist in English. Other aspects, however, do point to the US, for instance, the phrase “Perhaps your ancestors also / ended up on this wonderful beach in a fashion similar / to mine.” An allusion to Russia is also detectable—“an island within an island” can point not only to John Donne’s “No man is an island” but also to Winston Churchill’s “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” 10

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The infinitive “dat’” (give) can function as a demand; in English, it is transformed into a full-­blown imperative—“cast . . . !” The added exclamation marks change the poem’s tone; in combination with the hyperbolic “millions,” it sounds almost like Mayakovski. This is typical. Brodsky’s affinities with Anglo-American poets are more pronounced in Russian, while the influence of several Russian poets becomes clearer in English—perhaps because the fear of epigonism lessens in a foreign language. Strangely, there is no exclamation mark in the phrase where it appears to fit best: “Cast it out loud, shrilly,” is a close equivalent of the original. The Russian phrase sounds unusual, but contains no puns. The translation is a portmanteau of “cast out” and “(cry) out loud,” supported by the relative resemblance of “cast” and “cry.” The verb is estranged and thus attracts attention: Or merged with those whom we loved, or loved to merge with on horizontal sheets. Or in the nubile automobile, i.e., as a perspective’s captives. Or willy-­nilly in the brain’s gray recesses. Cast it out loud, shrilly, as a thought about death—frequent, tactile, aching.

The original final adjective, “veshchnyy” (*thingish), is almost a neologism: it appears as one to most readers, though it probably was not one to the author. This adjective is based on “veshch’” (thing), a crucial word in Brodsky’s poetics, as has been mentioned in chapter 4.2. The adjective “veshchnyy” is not to be found in the major dictionaries (such as Dal’ and Ozhegov). It appears in law dictionaries as a juridical term, but this is not a context where Brodsky would have been likely to encounter it. Instead, its use by Russian philosophers, above all Berdyaev, is relevant. This chimes with the observation by Rulyova (2002: 127–8) on “sut’ v plenu perspektivy” (i.e. in the captivity of perspective): “sut’” can also be read as “essence,” creating “philosophical ambiguity, the suggestion that matter (’essence’) is subject (’captive’) to the future (’perspective’).” The closest English translation of “veshchnyy” is “material.” This is not too far away from “tactile” in the self-­translation; “sensory” is another possible alternative. However, the word is more ambiguous than this; as observed by Rulyova (2002: 107), it can designate a “relation to the inanimate.” Brodsky had used the equally multivalent cognate noun “veshchnost’” (*thingness) in the 1965–68 long poem “Gorbunov i Gorchakov”13: Molchan’ye—eto budushcheye slov, / uzhe pozhravshikh glasnymi vsyu veshchnost’ Silence is the future of words, / which have already devoured with their vowels all thingness There is a rich array of studies on the philosophical concept of “veshchnost’” (*thingness) in Brodsky’s oeuvre (Lotman and Lotman 1993; Ivanova 1994; Batkin 1996; Slavianskiĭ 1997; Stavitskiĭ 2000; Karamenov 2007; Grygiel 2000; Zaitseva 2010). This concept is crucial, and it is not by chance that the essay on Brodsky in the Twayne Companion to Contemporary World Literature is entitled “Words Devouring Things” (Monas 2003).

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“Veshchnost’” could mean “matter,” “materiality,” “reality”: Harry Thomas’ translation, “the stuff of things,” is a very good option. In “Kentavry III,” “veshchnost’” is not devoured, but expressed—cast out loud—by words. In several poems, this word rhymes with “vechnost’” (“eternity”); one of these Brodskian rhymes that are philosophical puns in themselves. In English, “horizontal sheets” link back to “Centaurs I,” where horizontality means merging together and procreation. Moreover, the opposition—“vertical sheets”— comes to mind. A writer usually places a sheet of paper so that its height is greater than its breadth; a cinema screen is a hanging sheet. The “nubile automobile” provides not only an internal eye rhyme but also a connection to “Kentavry I” / “Centaurs II,” which features a hybrid between a human and a car. The chiasmus of “merged with those whom we loved, or loved to merge with” serves two functions. Firstly, “merge”—a verb that sums up this poem and the whole “Centaurs” series—is stressed by repetition; secondly, the reality of love is being doubted. The internal slant rhyme “perspective’s captives” is surprisingly unforced—it is a literal translation of the original expression. Perspective is a frequent and crucial motif in Brodsky’s work; as luck would have it, he was able to stress it in English. The next lines feature “a thought about death” [my italics]. This is a possible translation of the original, but the dominant meaning in Russian is “the thought of death.”14 The indefinite article and the preposition “about” suggest not merely awareness, but some painful thought about death—perhaps the idea that even the afterlife might be as fragile as “eggs / in a string bag.”

6.2.4  “The instep-­shaped landscape, the shade of a jackboot . . .” In the fourth part, the cycle begins to move beyond what is usually regarded as translation. Brodsky started working on an English version of “Kentavry” immediately after—or even while—composing the original. This might partly explain the freedom he took in translating the final part of the cycle: the text was malleable, it had not yet hardened into a finished poem. The shift from self-­translation to original composition in the English version of the cycle is gradual, with more and more alterations appearing in every following part. Most readers would call “Centaurs I–III” translations, though the order of the parts is changed and the amount of added words and sound play is above even Brodsky’s average; “Centaurs IV” exhibits more semantic differences to its original than any other of his self-­translations. In every quatrain there is a line which presents no immediately recognizable parallel in Russian. This is Brodsky’s loosest—or freest—self-­translation: one of these adjectives sounds critical, the other approving; it is difficult to find terms that would not seem judgmental. In the modern Western literary world, a hybrid text such as “Centaurs IV” is most likely to be criticized, should its genesis be known, since by current standards, it is too different from the Russian

In “December,” the same phrase, “mysli o smerti,” is rendered as “fears of dying.” “Mysli o smerti” refer to the awareness of death in Brodsky’s poems “Otryvok” (“An Excerpt”), “Barbizon Terras” and “Kolybel’naya Treskovogo Mysa” (“Lullaby of Cape Cod”).

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“Kentavry IV” to be a translation and too similar to be an original English text. Similar words form slightly or completely different images; similar images exhibit different connections; the whole is transformed. Centaurs IV mtbrodsky: russian Кентавры IV (Kentavry IV, 1988) Местность цвета сапог, цвета сырой портянки. Совершенно не важно, который век или который год. На закате ревут, возвращаясь с полей, муу-танки: крупный единорогий скот. Все переходят друг в друга с помощью слова “вдруг” – реже во время войны, чем во время мира. Меч, стосковавшись по телу при перековке в плуг, выскальзывает из рук, как мыло. Без поводка от владельцев не отличить собак, в книге вторая буква выглядит слепком с первой; возле кинотеатра толпятся подростки, как белоголовки с замерзшей спермой. Лишь многорукость деревьев для ветерана мзда за одноногость, за черный квадрат окопа с ржавой водой, в который могла б звезда упасть, спасаясь от телескопа. literal translation Centaurs IV A/the locality the color of boots, the color of a/the damp foot wrap./ Entirely unimportant, which century or which year./ Moo-­tanks bellow/roar at dusk, returning from fields:/ large unihorned cattle./ Everybody merges into each other with the help of the word “suddenly”/ —more rarely during a/the war than in peacetime./ A/the sword that has come to miss the body while being beaten into a   ploughshare/ slides out of hands like soap./ Without a leash [you] cannot tell dogs from [their] owners,/ in a/the book the second letter looks like a cast/replica of the first;/ near the movie theater teenagers are crowded like/ whiteheads with frozen sperm./ Only the many-­armedness of trees is for a/the veteran a/the reward/ for one-­leggedness, for a/the black square of a/the trench/ with rusty water, into which a/the star could/ fall, fleeing from a/the telescope./

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brodsky: self-­translation Centaurs IV (1988) The instep-­shaped landscape, the shade of a jackboot, with nothing moving. The century’s serial number matches a rooster’s croak. At dusk, dappled mutanks repair from far fields, a-­mooing— a bulky unicorn flock. Only the seasons appear to know how to take a hint. Chasing her slippery soap, a hausfrau sheds a tear over her man’s failure to hold the hilt of his sword turning into a plowshare. Still, a framed watercolor depicts a storm; in a novel, the second letter is the previous one’s dead ringer. Near the cinema youngsters linger like tightly corked bottles with frozen sperm. The evening sky offers little to hope for, still less to cope with. And only a veteran can still recall the foreign name of a trench that a star has fallen into, escaping the telescope.

“Muu-­tanki” (moo-­tanks), the first and most obvious centauric image of this poem, is easily translatable. All three elements of the pun—war machines, cow sounds and the resulting “mutanty” (mutants)—are as close to being identical in the two languages as different alphabets and phonemes would allow. In Russian, the doubled vowel and the hyphen help to decipher the portmanteau. In English, “mutanks” is chosen over mootanks to stress mutation; to balance out, “a-­mooing” is added (the Russian verb revut can be applied to cows, but it has an aggressive note). The Russian word pole, just as its English equivalent, “field”, can signify both pasture and a field of battle, while the unicorn is “both a type of Russian cannon and a beast” (MacFadyen 1998: 146). In both cultures, the image of a unicorn is available as a visual parallel to a tank with its single horn (the gun barrel) but simultaneously for an associative contrast—in both the modern West and Russia, the mythical creature has lost its lion’s tail and cloven hooves and gained connotations of peace and beauty. Like a centaur, a unicorn is partly a horse. The image is thus triply hybrid: a unicorn mixed with a mutank, mixed with the titular centaur. If we imagine the mutank to be a bull-­like machine, this image also is connected to the most probable etymology of centaur: “kenteo” (goad) plus “tauros” (bull). In English, the ironic contrast between tanks and unicorns is supported by the strengthened pastoral connotations of home-­ bound cattle—“flock” takes place of “skot” (cattle), the archaic “repair” is used instead of the neutral “vozvrashchayas’” (returning). “Repair” could also be read as “re-­pair,” thus strengthening the hybrid theme. The ironic use of the bureaucratic expression “krupnyy rogatyy skot” (lit. large horned cattle) is not re-­created. A significant addition is “dappled,” which can refer to the coloring of both a cow and a tank. It can also be read as an ironic reference to Hopkin’s hymn “Pied Beauty” starting with “Glory be to God for dappled things—/For skies of couple-­colour as a brinded cow.” Brodsky, too, loved clouds; but

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his cows are “brinded” by camouflage paint and dust. In Brodsky’s “History of the Twentieth Century (A Roadshow),” written in English in 1986, a stanza is dedicated to camouflage. Its final line recreates the irony of “dappled mutanks”: I am what gentleman wear in the field when they are afraid that they may be killed. I am called camouflage. Sporting me, each creature feels both safer and close to Nature.

Apart from “mutanki,”“Kentavry IV” features another hybrid with a martial component: “belogolovki” combines “golovka” (lit. little head, often referring to the head of the penis), “belaya golovka” (white head, a slang term for a vodka bottle), and “boyegolovka” (warhead). “Belogolovka” is not, strictly speaking, a neologism: it was used as a short form of “belaya golovka” in reference to vodka bottles by writers before Brodsky; however, in context, the word gains sexual and martial connotations. In translation, the reference to drinking is stated directly—“tightly corked bottles with frozen sperm.”15 The martial component is gone, unless the impending release is read not only in terms of orgasm, but also in terms of explosives. The poem can be interpreted in concrete historical terms: “in 1988 . . . when it had been proclaimed that the Soviet troops will be removed from Afghanistan’s territory, Brodsky writes the poem ‘Kentavry IV’ in which the end of the war is described from the point of view of a veteran returning to peaceful life” (Glazunova 2005: 321). Her argument can be strengthened by a 1979 interview in which Brodsky speaks of agriculture as if it was a preliminary stage of warfare (hence “mutanks”) and proceeds to mention dinosaurs (which are relevant for his conception of centaurism as hybridity of time, see “Centaurs I”). It can be argued that, nine years after the interview, “Centaurs IV” was informed by these ideas: When I saw the first footage from Afghanistan on the TV screen years ago, it was very short. It was tanks rolling on a plateau. For thirty two hours non-­stop I was climbing the walls. . . . What I saw was basically a violation of the elements— because that plateau never saw a plough before let alone a tank. So, it was a kind of existential nightmare. . . . it is vile in a very primordial sense, partly because of tanks’ resemblance to dinosaurs. Brodsky in Birkerts 2002: 97 (my italics)

Brodsky was outraged by the war in Afghanistan; he composed two poems explicitly dealing with the topic: “Stikhi o zimney kampanii 1980 goda” (Poem on the winter campaign 1980, 1980) and “K peregovoram v Kabule” (On the negotiations in Kabul, 1992); both are untranslated. He was certainly not above political commentary in verse.

Brodsky had first sexualized the image of a tightly corked bottle in the 1970 poem “Debyut” (“Debut”); see also the chapter “Wet Dreams.”

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As he put it, “for a man whose mother tongue is Russian to speak about political evil is as natural as digestion” (Brodsky 1987). As so often, a counter-­quotation can easily be found among Brodsky’s semi-­aphorisms: “Politics and poetry have one thing in common—the letter p and the letter o” (Loseff and Miller 1990: 34).16 Despite the relevance of Afghanistan, the poem can also be read in more general—I would even dare to say “existential”—terms. The first quatrain is an exposition, a landscape in dark-­grey. The Russian reader is free to imagine it as filled with marching soldiers or as empty (until the tanks return in the evening). The English version explicitly states the latter: “The instep-­shaped landscape, the shade of a jackboot, with nothing moving.” “Portyanki,” the original equivalent of “jackboot,” are bands of cloth worn by Russian and later by Soviet soldiers wrapped around their feet in lieu of socks. Culturally specific, they are a potential argument for the Afghanistan reading, though the text merely compares the landscape to them in color. Other connotations of “portyanki” include squalor, disgust (especially in combination with dampness), and warfare. In English, “jackboots” also bring to mind the military—and, moreover, totalitarianism; particularly fascism, but possibly also the USSR. “Jackboots” have no exact equivalent in Russian; the word “sapogi” (boots) is not directly associated with war. While the original first line introduces a space the color of war, the landscape in translation is shaped by war, by marching steps. The repetition of “tsveta” (color) is substituted by the consonance and assonance of “shaped” and “shade.” “With nothing moving,” possibly rhyme-­inspired, suggests death and desolation, but also—considering the rest of the poem—the end of war. The reference to country-­specific footwear in Russian is counterbalanced by the pronouncement of temporal universality in the next line—that is, unless the reader chooses not to believe the suspiciously insistent “sovershenno ne vazhno, kotoryy vek” (entirely unimportant, which century). In English, the corresponding line is rather mysterious—“The century’s serial number matches a rooster’s croak.” Is this a Biblical allusion? Does the number make as little sense as “cock-­a-doodle-­do”? Does the rooster herald the end of the war, as if it were the end of the night? The self-­translated “Lithuanian Nocturne” merits comparison: in it, “the roosters’ ‘Time’s up’ ” chases off ghosts (the original has no mention of a rooster at this point). An unnamed and untranslated poem, written by Brodsky at the age of twenty-­two, begins with the sounds of boots and roosters proclaiming the beginning of a new century: brodsky: russian Zakrichat i zakhlopochut petukhi, zagrokhochut po prospektu sapogi, . . . v odnochasye sovremenniki umrut . . . . Tak nachnetsya dvadtsat’ pervyy, zolotoy

Brodsky originally produced this mot in Russian, hence the unmentioned letter “t” and the clumsy “one thing” followed by two letters.

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literal translation Roosters will cry out and bustle,/ boots will thunder on the boulevard . . ./ within an hour, [the]contemporaries will die. . . ./ Thus will start the twenty-­first one, the golden one/

The parallels are striking; soldiers, albeit metaphorical and invisible ones, are mentioned later in the poem. The tonalities of the poems, however, are quite different, and I do not believe that one can be used to interpret the other. Instead, it is interesting to observe how Brodsky associates certain images with each other, and how image clusters are “translated” into entirely new contexts. “Centaurs IV” shortens the beginning of stanza two by a line, and uses the gained space to elaborate the next centauric image: Centaurs IV Stanza II literal translation Everybody merges into each other with the help of the word “suddenly”/ – more rarely during a/the war than in peacetime./ A/the sword that has come to miss the body while being beaten into a ploughshare/ slides out of hands like soap./ brodsky: self-­translation Only the seasons appear to know how to take a hint. Chasing her slippery soap, a hausfrau sheds a tear over her man’s failure to hold the hilt of his sword turning into a plowshare.

The interplay of sounds is, depending on the reader’s judgment, less subtle or more striking—just like with allusions clarified in translation, it is difficult to stay descriptive. One might argue that sound play works more subtly if not observed consciously, or else that the sound of poetry is best enjoyed in full awareness. The explicatory nature of translation appears to apply to phonetics: the Russian reader might or might not appreciate the additional rhyme for “/vdruk/” and “/pluk/” hidden in the final line (“/ruk/”), or notice how “/pluk/” interplays with “/telu/.” In English, the assonance of “hold the hilt,” combined with the rhyme “hint,” is impossible to miss. But what does the holding of a hilt suggest? Glazunova (2005: 322) interprets this stanza as referring exclusively to the difficulties of an ex-­soldier suddenly forced to become a civilian. But the image has more to offer, especially in translation. In Russian, a sword slips out and simultaneously stops being a sword. The meaning is as slippery as soap; as it happens, “smysl” (meaning, sense) is quite similar to “mylo” (soap). In English, instead of a sword and a ploughshare united in one object, the process of transformation is depicted. Metamorphosis makes the object slippery; the image grows more visual. The sword is

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“turning” (and not “beaten”) into a ploughshare, in a variation upon the most common translation of the Biblical phrase. In Russian, the canonical version of this phrase (which, despite its Christian origin, occurred very frequently in Soviet rhetoric) uses an archaic term for ploughshare, “oralo.” Brodsky chooses the stylistically neutral “plug” (plough) instead. In English, the stanza’s sexual connotations become more pronounced, mostly due to personal pronouns, and they form a link to the next stanza. In Russian, the sliding sword might suggest male masturbation. In English, the phallic significance of “his sword” is stressed, but it is the woman who has to console herself on her own, “chasing her slippery soap,” compensating for the impotence of her man. In this context, “plowshare” might well call to mind the slang meaning of the verb “plow.” Rulyova writes that “a neutral abstract statement in Russian turns into a brief cultural and historical sketch, ironically underpinned by a reference to World War II” (Rulyova 2002: 87). In my view, any war could be implied, and the sketch is more sexually comical than culturally historical. The mention of a hausfrau (a word almost as English as “kindergarten”) is hardly enough to restrict the setting to Germany; it seems more interesting that “hausfrau” is another centauric word, a mixture of woman and house, not unlike the sofa-­woman in a previous poem in this cycle. In the next stanza, too, the first image is radically changed: Centaurs IV Stanza III literal translation Without a leash [you] cannot tell dogs from [their] owners,/ in a/the book the second letter looks like a cast/replica of the first;/ near the movie theater teenagers are crowded like/ whiteheads with frozen sperm./ brodsky: self-­translation Still, a framed watercolor depicts a storm; in a novel, the second letter is the previous one’s dead ringer. Near the cinema youngsters linger like tightly corked bottles with frozen sperm.

In Russian, the first image is centauric: animals and people merge into each other. After a war —in the absence of the artificial but clear separation of “us” and “the enemy”—everything is confusingly similar. The image is more peaceful in English: the potentially aggressive dog-­like people and the allusion to warheads disappear. The war is over; only a painting suggests danger. This resembles “Novaya zhizn’” (“New life”), written in 1988—the year “Kentavry” (“Centaurs”) was both written and translated. The translation by Brodsky and David MacFadyen is semantically very close to the original:

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Imagine that war is over, that peace has resumed its reign. . . . Life starts anew indeed like this—with a painted view of a volcanic eruption, of a dinghy high waves beleaguer. With the attendant feeling it’s only you who survey the disaster.

But how does the similarity of adjacent letters in a book connect to this image? Glazunova suggests the following reading: “returning to studies, interrupted by war, requires an immense effort,” tacitly narrowing down the original “kniga” (book) to “textbook” (Glazunova 2005). Brodsky himself picks a different hyponym in translation: “novel.” The self-­translation and Glazunova’s interpretation highlight different possibilities inherent in the original. However, her article claims to describe Brodsky’s intentions, and thus it would benefit from taking the self-­translation into account. The choice of “novel” as well as of the indefinite article before “veteran” might help to appreciate the ambiguities of the original. In translation, “Centaurs IV” becomes more universal: if the original poem had a concrete point of reference, the translation transcends it. After all, the theme of war is ancient, and has been fruitfully combined with the topos of hybridity before: “Dante’s descriptions of centaurs are seen by some as a memory of his days in the army” (MacFadyen 1998: 146). In the next stanza, the memories of a veteran becomes an explicit topic: Centaurs IV Stanza IV literal translation Only the many-­armedness of trees is for a/the veteran a/the reward/ for one-­leggedness, for a/the black square of a/the trench/ with rusty water, into which a/the star could/ fall, fleeing from a/the telescope./ brodsky: self-­translation The evening sky offers little to hope for, still less to cope with. And only a veteran can still recall the foreign name of a trench that a star has fallen into, escaping the telescope.

The final lines in Russian can be read as referring to the veteran, whose perspective informs the whole poem, or else to a veteran—merely another item in the succession of war-­connected images. In translation, Brodsky had to make a choice, and he chose the indefinite article. Other changes in translation further decrease the veteran’s significance. The war is all but forgotten. Instead of the supremacist nothingness of a black square (which might suggest Russia, given Malevich’s nationality), there is merely some “foreign name.” In English, the sense of resignation is supported by the time of

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day and by a visual effect introduced in translation: the final stanza narrows down line by line (so does the literal translation, as it happens—but not the original). One-­ leggedness can have symbolic value in Brodsky’s poetry, though this potential is not fully developed here. As we shall see shortly, this image leaks into a poem Brodsky wrote in English immediately after translating the “Centaurs” cycle. Likewise the switch from cross-­rhyme to envelope-­rhyme which—as in “The Polar Explorer”—takes place in the middle of the self-­translation. On first sight, the first lines of the English and the Russian final stanzas are entirely different. They do have one thing in common, though: both depict looking out, possibly through a window. In Russian, a/the veteran does the looking. In English, the onlooker is not specified—it could be an implicit poetic persona, the reader, or else the inhabitants of this landscape. The star might have fallen in Russian; in English, it has fallen. It can suggest a bomb or another missile, or else an epaulette. In Vysotsky’s “Zvezdy” (Stars), with which Brodsky was familiar, it is both. Brodsky’s best-­known self-­epitaph, “Menya uprekali . . .” / “Taps,” uses similar imagery: But soon, I’m told, I’ll lose my epaulets altogether and dwindle into a little star (Brodsky: self-­translation)

More generally, in Brodsky’s oeuvre, stars evoke an ambiguous complex of meanings centered on watching and being watched. The final position of “teleskop” / “telescope” in both versions stresses this aspect. Podrezova argues that this stanza refers to the contrast between emotional and intellectual knowledge: a veteran’s brain can preserve what no instrument can capture. Five years later, in “Vzglyani na derevyannyy dom” (Look at the wooden house), Brodsky alters the image. Instead of fleeing a telescope, a star becomes one: “Prostranstvo, v teleskop zvezdy / rassmatrivaya . . .” (Space, through a star’s telescope / contemplating . . .). The text of “Kentavry IV” quoted here was published in the 1992 four-­volume collection, and this is the text Brodsky translated in 1988. He rarely changed texts that were already published with his approval, but in this case he went on to alter the beginning of the final quatrain, making it more similar to the English version. In most subsequent editions (for instance, Brodskiĭ 2001: 47; Brodskiĭ 2009: 520) it appears as follows: Zagnannyye v tupik mnogiye poezda ulits goroda; i tol’ko v mozgu veterana cherneyet kvadrat okopa Many trains of the city’s streets are driven to a dead end, and only in a/the veteran’s brain, the square of the trench [appears] black/

More willingness to engage with multiple versions of a text, be they written in one language or two, could be of much use to Brodsky studies. The centauric cycle has been the object of much critical interest recently, but to my knowledge, all articles analyze

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either the earlier version (Glazunova 2005) or the later one (Rulyova 2002; Podrezova 2007; Karamenov 2007) without mentioning the existence of an alternative. In the case of Rulyova’s monograph, the omission of the original Russian original is especially problematic: the self-­translation is analyzed in phonetic and semantic detail as the product of a text which it actually partly precedes. In the new Russian version, the appearance of trains might be prompted by rhyme; the image of streets standing still because they have nowhere to go suggests bitter resignation. As in the English translation, the outside is presented immediately, and not from a veteran’s perspective. Again, as in English, nobody but the veteran remembers the war. Why Brodsky decided against the suggestive contrast of many-­armedness and one-­leggedness is a matter of speculation. Considering what we know of his ethics and poetics, the desire to avoid pathos seems a probable reason. Though Brodsky would probably have denied this, changes in translation apparently can be prompted by discontent with the original. In any case, we are dealing with a rare case of double self-­translation here: images have been transferred from the English version back to the revised Russian text.

6.3  A matter of (con-)sequence Rearranging the constituent elements of a cycle means introducing more shifts than the target language requires. Brodsky first did so in A Part of Speech. With its parts appearing in a different order, and with a quarter of all poems left out, the tone of the cycle is changed considerably. In Russian, the cycle opens with “Niotkuda s lyubov’yu . . .” In translation (by Brodsky and Weissbort), the poem begins with the words “From nowhere with love . . .” and ends as follows: “with my limbs in the dark playing your double like / an insanity-­stricken mirror.” This love poem’s speaker is self-­effacing, trying to morph into the addressee. In the first poem of the English cycle, on the other hand, the speaker introduces himself: “I was born and grew up in the Baltic marshland.” Both cycles end with the same poem, one that prompts an autobiographical reading. In Russian, this makes the whole a journey from “you” to “I”, but in English, the structure is circular. No volume of Brodsky’s poetry in English is identical in its contents to a Russian one. It makes little sense to draw a clear line between rearranging the cantos of a long poem, the parts of a cycle and the poems in a collection. In all cases, Brodsky’s motivation for change stems partly from the desire to begin and end with texts he regarded as most successful. In a collection, a new poem composed in English might turn out to be significant and programmatic enough to merit the privilege of page one, leading to rearrangement of the rest. “Infinitive,” with its ironic references to language and writing, is such a poem. It opens the volume So Forth. Here is its ending:        . . . I write this with my index finger    on the wet, glassy sand at sunset, being inspired perhaps by the view of the palm-­tree tops splayed against the platinum sky like some Chinese characters. Though I’ve never studied the language. Besides, the breeze tousles them all too fast for one to make out the message.

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An opening poem sets the tone for the whole collection. Even more so, this is the case for the first poem of a cycle. The internal logic is also of great importance in cycles; to my mind, “Centaurs” presents a more coherent development than “Kentavry.”17 In Russian, the two central parts deal with hybridity as the nature of time—a reader familiar with the crucial importance of time for Brodsky might wonder why one of those was not chosen to open the sequence. Indeed, this is what happens in English. Why, then, does he choose the poem about Sofa to open the Russian cycle? The most obvious change in translation concerns the protagonists’ names—does the reference to the dual identity of Russian Jews warrant assigning the original poem to the opening position? Perhaps, but Brodsky never professed much interest in this theme. It is imaginable that he had grouped the original poems together in the order in which they were written, and only arranged them consciously in English. Or else, the two poems about time form the core of the Russian sequence, flanked by texts with a social content (“mutanks” are made by humans, and so are sofas; Sofa’s hybridity is arguably a social construct). Still, Brodsky’s wonderfully absurd and quickly abandoned belief that the English language necessarily leads to logical thinking (Volkov 1998: 136) almost seems to make sense here. In translation, the centaurs of time are introduced in the first words of the first part: “They briskly bounce out of the future.” The explosion in the last stanza of “Centaurs I” can be connected to the catastrophe mentioned in the first stanza of “Centaurs II.” The final quatrain of “Centaurs II” is set in a cinema; “Centaurs III” deals with cinema and sculpture as means of expressing time. Even though parts three and four appear in the same order in both versions, a connection between them is created in English—the image of a six-­winged mother hen is taken up by “a rooster’s croak.” Thus, neighboring poems are more closely interconnected in self-­translation. As regards the development of the cycle as a whole, Brodsky gradually appropriates the image of the centaur in English. The first poem’s centaurs are very close to the classical myth (they live on a mountain; phonetically, the poem suggests the clopping of hooves). The ultimate poem is only indirectly connected to centaurs: mutanks are not human horses but bovine tanks. Or should we say “the penultimate poem”? In English, there is a fifth one. Its title is “Epitaph for a Centaur”: with its sixteen lines and its theme, and as it immediately follows the cycle in all publications, it could just as well be called “Centaurs V.” With this ending, the cycle’s structure becomes circular (the final hybrid is a “proper” centaur), and the overarching development is towards loneliness—to Brodsky, a defining characteristic of himself and of poets in general. While the first poem’s centaurs form a group whose members do not seem to have individual features, the addressee of the epitaph is the only being of its kind and entirely alone.

Podrezova (2007: 113) reads the original cycle as a form of social critique, citing the sequence as an argument—the first poem deals with a couple (a minimal social entity); the last one, she argues, with society as a whole. However, this does not explain the relative positions and the relevance of the two poems in the middle.

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6.4  Beyond translation: “Epitaph for a Centaur” Epitaph for a Centaur brodsky: english Epitaph for a Centaur (1988) To say that he was unhappy is either to say too much or too little: depending on who’s the audience. Still, the smell he’d give off was a bit too odious, and his canter was also quite hard to match. He said, They meant just a monument, but something went astray: the womb? the assembly line? the economy? Or else, the war never happened, they befriended the enemy, and he was left as it is, presumably to portray Intransigence, Incompatibility—that sort of thing which proves not so much one’s uniqueness or virtue, but probability. For years, resembling a cloud, he wandered in olive groves, marvelling at one-­leggedness, the mother of immobility. Learned to lie to himself, and turned it into an art for want of a better company, also to check his sanity. And he died fairly young—because his animal part turned out to be less durable than his humanity.

Losev (2011a: 428) observes that “Kentavry III” (Centaurs III) is constructed like the plan of another poem, a poem on incompatibility and death—and that “Epitaph to a Centaur” becomes exactly this poem. Concluding the meditations on time in previous parts of the cycle, the theme of death makes its first appearance here. Two motifs from “Kentavry IV” fail to appear in the Anglophone “centaurs IV,” but surface in “Epitaph for a Centaur.” Firstly, there is the suggestion that peace leads to more fusion than war. In “Kentavry IV,” “Vse perekhodyat drug v druga s pomoshch’yu slova ‘vdrug’ /— rezhe vo vremya voyny, chem vo vremya mira” (Everybody merges into each other with the help of the word “suddenly” / —more rarely during a/the war than in peacetime); the object of the epitaph supposes that peaceful times might be a reason for his centauric state. The second shared motif is expressed in equivalent words equally rare in Russian and English: “odnonogost’” (“Kentavry IV”, first version) / “one-­leggedness” (“Epitaph”). While in “Kentavry IV,” a veteran’s single limb is contrasted to the many arms of trees, here the roles are reversed—the centaur compares the single tree trunks to his own four legs, which make him a wanderer.18 The allusion to Wordsworth’s “I wandered lonely as a cloud” allows imagining the centaur as a poet. His gait, “canter,” resembles the word which best describes Brodsky’s way of reading poetry—chant. Rulyova (2002: 76) writes that “canter” also “sounds See also “Vertumnus,” where the image is based on similarity instead of contrast—a naked immobile statue finds itself “in the company of one-­legged, equally naked trees.”

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identical to ‘cantor’, which precariously echoes the Jewish origin of the author.” Though Brodsky never practiced Judaism, his manner of reading was indeed cantor-­like. Moreover, “canter” evokes poetry in yet another way—the definitions of gaits, like those of meters, are based on rhythm. To sum up, “canter” might call to mind at least four relevant words—“chant,” “cantor,” “centaur” and “canto.” The centaur “learned to lie to himself . . . for want of a better company”: this is reminiscent of the idea that “the real history of consciousness starts with one first lie” (Brodsky 1986: 7). Explicitly verbalizing the centaur’s loneliness is hardly necessary— the words “wandered” and “cloud” are suggestive enough. The only company he finds is that of olives, trees associated with Greek mythology; his death, too, is lonely. Like “Kvintet” / “Sextet” (to be discussed in the following), “Epitaph for a Centaur” is arguably a self-­elegy. Autobiographical or not, the protagonist of this poem invites compassion. Nikolaev believes that “without this image, suffused with positive characteristics of a ‘hero manqué’, Brodsky’s cycle would be incomplete, flawed, and his general concept less convincing” (Nikolaev 2010: 74). This belief seems indebted to the benefit of hindsight: would readers experience the cycle as incomplete without being aware of an additional poem? Of course, “Epitaph” does enrich the reading of the preceding cycle, just as its others parts enrich each other, and just like translations, critical comments and other metatexts can deepen the joy of reading. It raises, for instance, the following question—what does the contrast between immobile one-­legged trees and a running four-­legged centaur suggest for two-­legged creatures? Instead of being in the usual place at the top of the imaginary Darwinian ladder leading from plants to animals, humans appear like something between a tree and a horse—less rooted than the former, not quite as restless as the latter, not as durable as an olive, but more long-­lived than a horse19: And he died fairly young—because his animal part turned out to be less durable than his humanity.

The final lines are ambiguous in mood (“depending on who is the audience”?). One needs only to reverse the emphasis to arrive at “humanity is more durable than one’s animal part,” a suggestion that something human—be it a soul, literature or memory— remains. This theme also appears in another English poem Brodsky added to a self-­ translated cycle: “Sextet VI.” It ends with “When you are no more . . . / a fish . . . / will splash in a pond and repeat your oval.” An outline created by a splashing fish is one form of afterlife; poetry is another. Poetry lives on in translation in at least two senses. Firstly, more readers can appreciate one’s production; secondly, the process of creation is prolonged—sometimes far beyond the original. Let us now see how this happens in “Kvintet”/ “Sextet.”

Due to the topos of statues, immobility is associated with longevity in Brodsky’s work. Olive trees frequently grow for centuries; several have been proved to be over a thousand years old. Horses can live to be 25–30 years old.

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Further Beyond Translation: “Sextet” and Other Excavations 7.1  “An eyelid is twitching . . .” A Russian “Kvintet” (Quintet) becomes a “Sextet” in English. Despite its allusions and illusions, the original has provoked next to no scholarly interest. Its Anglophone offspring fared somewhat better. An article dedicated to “Sextet” and Mark Strand was published by Givens in 1995. Recently, Sanna Turoma has paid some attention to “Sextet” in her book Brodsky Abroad (Turoma 2010). My own interest in this poem is similar to Givens’: “Because Brodsky’s ‘Sextet’ is both an English translation . . . and . . . an original English composition by Brodsky, it serves as a particularly interesting glimpse into the workshop of the newly bilingual writer” (Givens 1995: 201). He goes on to say that “ ‘Kvintet’ cannot truly be . . . treated as a complete poem since it lacks the conclusion of its English counterpart.” The same status has been assigned to “Epitaph for a Centaur” in regard to “Kentavry.” But according to this logic, any text is incomplete in relation to any metatext—a later version, a translation, a critical comment. Ultimately, all texts are incomplete without all other texts. Fascinating as this notion is, it is not too helpful in a close reading. Still, Givens certainly is right that “Sextet” “falls into its own genre, a peripheral one that perfectly mirrors the marginalized position of the author” (Givens 1995: 201). I will deal with the poem stanza by stanza: Kvintet / Sextet Stanza I.1 brodsky: russian Квинтет I (Kvintet I, 1976) Марку Стрэнду Веко подергивается. Изо рта вырывается тишина. Европейские города настигают друг друга на станциях. Запах мыла выдает обитателю джунглей приближающегося врага. Там, где ступила твоя нога, возникают белые пятна на карте мира.

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literal translation Quintet I to Mark Strand   A/the eyelid is twitching. From a/the mouth/ escapes silence. European cities/ catch up with each other at stations. A/the smell of soap/ betrays an/the approaching enemy to a/the jungle inhabitant./ Where your foot has been set,/ white spots appear on the world map./ brodsky: self-­translation Sextet I (1984) to Mark Strand An eyelid is twitching. From the open mouth gushes silence. The cities of Europe mount each other at railroad stations. A pleasant odor of soap tells the jungle dweller of the approaching foe. Wherever you set your sole or toe, the world map develops blank spots, grows balder.

In English, the first word is a humble indefinite article, but it introduces a subtle defamiliarizing effect. Does the eyelid belong to the speaker,1 or to somebody else, or is it perhaps floating in space? The beginning is more ambiguous and surreal in translation, especially as the mouth has a definite article—unlike in Russian, the two features do not seem to belong to the same face. The word order of the second sentence is typical of Russian grammar and strange in English. In Russian, the mouth is merely silent; in English, the addition of “open” makes it seem to gasp for air, or struggle with speech, or silently scream (Munch’s painting comes to mind). The verb “gush” makes the phrase physically appalling, not unlike the grating “but until brown clay has been crammed down my larynx, / only gratitude will be gushing from it” in the self-­ translation “May 24, 1980.” This stanza is a veritable collection of tendencies typical of Brodsky’s self-­translations—apart from heightened surrealism and physicality of the images, unromantic sexual connotations are also added. The cities “mount[ing] each other at railroad stations” put the “sex” in “Sextet.” It has been claimed that this “reversal of the high imperial impetus of mapping the ‘blank spots’ of the non-European continents” (Turoma 2010: 48) expresses the “idea of the traveler’s presence having no impact on the space: it is equivalent to him not having been there” (Turoma 2010: 46). This is an understatement—Brodsky’s image is not one of neutrality but of a strikingly paradoxical effect. This effect implies a “decidedly Strandesque” notion of “necessarily destructive imposition of our consciousness upon

The protagonist? The addressee? The poem is shifty in this respect. The pronoun “ya” / “I” only appears in the third stanza; before, “ty” / “you” seems to function as a self-­address.

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the physical world” (Givens 1995: 211). Givens also observes that the refrain “an eyelid is twitching” refers to Mark Strand’s poetry collection Sleeping with One Eye Open; the nervous, morbid, surreal qualities of the poem pay homage to Strand’s early work (Givens 1995: 209). “Kvintet” / Sextet Stanza I.2 brodsky: russian В горле першит. Путешественник просит пить. Дети, которых надо бить, оглашают воздух пронзительным криком. Веко подергивается. Что до колонн, из-за них всегда появляется кто-нибудь. Даже прикрыв глаза, даже во сне вы видите человека. literal translation [There is] a tickle in a/the throat. The traveler asks for a drink./ Children, who should be beaten,/ fill the air with piercing shrieks. A/the eyelid/ twitches. As for columns, from behind/ them someone always emerges. Even with your eyes shut,/ even in your dream, you see a/the human./ brodsky: self-­translation A palate goes dry. The traveler’s seized by thirst. Children, to whom the worst should be done, fill the air with their shrieks. An eyelid twitches all the time. As for columns, from the thick of them someone always emerges. Even in your sweet dream, even with your eyes shut, you see human features.

This stanza, too, begins with estranging the protagonist from his body by preceding “palate” with an indefinite article. The second sentence loses in alliteration and gains in intensity. In the third one, the protagonist establishes himself as rather dislikeable.2 In Russian, he sounds merely like a grumpy neighbor, who, annoyed by loud children, advocates physical punishment. In English, the statement (if taken literally) becomes more sinister: “to whom the worst / should be done”; “worst” is stressed by its rhyming position preceding an enjambment. A more striking enjambment

Disagreeable protagonists are relatively rare in poetry. While Brodsky strains to keep verse apart from prose in terms of form, he often introduces themes which are more frequent in novels—for instance, in those by Nabokov.

2

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appears in line four—the rhyme word “from” mirrors the original “iz-­za” (from behind), giving the poem its signature function word rhyme. The attribute “sweet” is added in the penultimate line to “dreams,” ironically stressing the protagonist’s misanthropy. “Kvintet” / Sextet Stanza I.3 brodsky: russian И накапливается как плевок в груди: “Дай мне чернил и бумаги, а сам уйди прочь!” И веко подергивается. Невнятные причитанья за стеной (будто молятся) увеличивают тоску. Чудовищность творящегося в мозгу придает незнакомой комнате знакомые очертанья. literal translation And it congests like spittle in the breast:/ “Give me some ink and paper and get/ out of here!” And an/the eyelid is twitching. Indistinct lamentations/ behind the wall (as though they were praying) increase the ennui./ The monstrosity of what’s happening in your brain/ gives a/the unfamiliar room familiar features./ brodsky: self-­translation And it wells up in your throat like barf: “Give me ink and paper and, as for yourself, scram!” And an eyelid is twitching. Odd, funereal whinings—as though someone’s praying upstairs—poison the daily grind. The monstrosity of what’s happening in your mind makes unfamiliar premises look familiar.

The protagonist, now experiencing a rage-­induced déjà vu, appears to be suffering from nausea in its existentialist form—at least, in translation. In Russian, the word “toska” (longing, sorrow, ennui) is used. In English the protagonist’s feeling is specified as nausea—“barf ” is substituted for “plevok” (spittle). Like Sartre’s Antoine Roquentin, this figure is a traveler and a writer; more to the point, he is nauseated by life. Brodsky’s interest in Sartre might have been partly prompted by gratitude—the latter was the most prominent writer to compose a letter asking to free the young Brodsky from his Northern exile. Givens sees the ending of this part as a “recommendation of the only true refuge available from the nervous morbidity: writing” (Givens 1995: 212). Though Brodsky voices this idea in several essays, accepting it at face value as the poet’s own directive is precarious—after all, this speaker expresses many opinions which are not those of Brodsky himself. The demand for ink,

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paper and solitude can also call to mind the writing of a testament, especially in the context of “funereal whinings.”

7.2  “Sometimes in the desert you hear a voice” “Kvintet” / Sextet Stanza II.1 brodsky: russian Иногда в пустыне ты слышишь голос. Ты вытаскиваешь фотоаппарат запечатлеть черты. Но – темнеет. Присядь, перекинься шуткой с говорящей по-южному, нараспев, обезьянкой, что спрыгнула с пальмы и, не успев стать человеком, сделалась проституткой. literal translation Sometimes in a/the desert you hear a/the voice. You/ get out a/the camera to capture the features./ But—it darkens. Sit down, exchange a joke/ with a/the [little] monkey who talks in a Southern singsong,/ who had jumped from a/the palm tree, and, having hardly/not/ become human in time, turned into a prostitute./ brodsky: self-­translation Sometimes in the desert you hear a voice. You fetch a camera in order to catch the face. But—too dark. Sit down, then, release your hearing to the Southern lilt of a small monkey who left her palm tree but, having no leisure to become a human, went straight to whoring.

The Biblical voice in the desert resists being photographed; the “ty” / “you”—a solitary figure with a camera—is left hanging at the end of the line. In Russian, this enjambment produces a perfect though somewhat trite rhyme; in English, the internal rhyme “fetch” / “catch” connects “fetch” to “face.” “Prostitutka” (prostitute) is an effective unexpected final word; in English, a more emphatic near-­synonym is used in the final position— “whoring.” It interplays with “who,” suggesting that prostitution is the figure’s essence (-who? -whore).“The South” usually refers to different regions in Russian and English— the Southern Soviet republics like the Ukraine, and the Southern States of America respectively. As it happens, both comply with the phonetic specification: Russian Southern speech sounds like singsong to Northerners’ ears; the American Southern drawl could be called a lilt. Still, Africa is a more probable point of reference. Areas to

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the south of both the US and the USSR are associated with deserts, palm trees and monkeys. Moreover, in English (unlike in Russian), “too dark” can be read as referring to the color of the face that cannot be captured.3 Thus, the monkey business smacks of racism. Brodsky was no adherent to political correctness,4 but no racist, either. His protagonist, however, might well be. In “Novyy Zhyul’ Vern,” self-­translated as “The New Jules Verne,” another long poem written in 1976 (the same year as “Kvintet”), the word “obezyana” / “monkey” is used similarly: A naked monkey  with a scream leaps out of the naturalist’s hot cabin.

Brodsky’s translation is extremely close but for the addition of the adjective “hot.” The naked monkey here is, of course, a human; it might be the naturalist himself, but there are also sexual connotations. In “Sextet II,” a subtle pessimistic change takes place (provoked, perhaps, by metrical demands) in translation. In English, “having no leisure to / become a human, went straight to whoring” [my italics] suggests that “whoring” is the final evolutional destination of mankind. From a desert, the next stanza moves towards colder regions: “Kvintet” / Sextet Stanza II.2 brodsky: russian Лучше плыть пароходом, качающимся на волне, участвуя в географии, в голубизне, а не только в истории – этой коросте суши. Лучше Гренландию пересекать, скрипя лыжами, оставляя после себя айсберги и тюленьи туши. literal translation [It is] better to sail on/like a/the steamer, swaying on a/the wave,/ taking part in geography, in blueness, and not/ just in history—this dry land’s scabs./ Better to traverse Greenland, squeaking/ with [your/one’s] skis, leaving behind/ icebergs and seal carcasses./

Givens sees these words as a reference to Strand, “the quintessential American poet of the dark” and goes on to remark that the monkey might refer to the time Strand spent in South America (Givens 1995: 213–14).  4 Brodsky’s anti-Muslim sentiments were voiced, for instance, in “Rech’ o prolitom moloke” (Talking about spilled milk), and his risqué jokes provoked accusations of misogyny.  3

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brodsky: self-­translation Better sail by steamer, horizon’s ant, taking part in geography, in blueness, and not in history, this dry land’s scabies. Better trek across Greenland on skis and camp among the icebergs, among the plump walruses as they bathe their babies.

Instead of the infinitive, the English version features imperatives (possibly merely because Brodsky could not accommodate “to” metrically). The poem’s uniformity increases: in parts I and II, each stanza contains an addressee—either as a pronoun or as an imperative. Instead of the original dead seals, the English reader is presented with walruses which are not only alive but provided with a degree of cuteness unusual in the Western perception of this particular animal. To “dry land’s scabies,” recreated in the rhyming position, the translation adds another kenning: “horizon’s ant.” This image removes the speaker from the scene. While the original “kachayushchemsya na volne” (swaying on the wave) makes him experience the sea journey, in English he is observing travelers from far away. This fits in with the speaker’s outsider role. As will become clear in the next chapter, “horizon” is a key word in Brodsky’s poetics which gains importance in translation. The comparison of space and time is an even more important motif, and usually Brodsky’s meditations on this topic are resolved in favor of the latter. Here, academic disciplines change the balance—space (“geography”) becomes associated with fluidity, and time (“history”) with dry data. As observed by Givens (Givens 1995: 213), this theme reappears nine years later in the essay “Flight from Byzantium”: “I’m a traveler, a victim of geography. Not of history, be it noted, but of geography” (Brodsky 1986: 443–4). “Kvintet” / Sextet Stanza II.3 brodsky: russian Алфавит не даст позабыть тебе цель твоего путешествия – точку “Б.” Там вороне не сделаться вороном, как ни каркай; слышен лай дворняг, рожь заглушил сорняк; там, как над шкуркой зверька скорняк, офицеры Генштаба орудуют над порыжевшей картой. literal translation The alphabet won’t allow you to forget/ the aim of your journey—the point “B.”/ There a/the crow can never become a raven, however hard you caw;/ there the barking of mongrels is heard, rye is choked with weed;/ there, like a/the furriers above an animal pelt,/ Joint Staff officers handle a/the rusted map./

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brodsky: self-­translation The alphabet won’t allow your trip’s goal to be ever forgotten, that famed point B. There a crow caws hard, trying to play the raven; there a black sheep bleats, rye is choked with weeds; there the top brass, like furriers, shear out bits of the map’s faded pelt, so that they look even.

The first line suggests that writing keeps memory alive. The translation uses another alphabet, but the approximate phonetic value is preserved—the second letter of both the Latin and the Cyrillic alphabet roughly corresponds to the sound /b/; moreover, the letters look similar. In English, “B” equals “be” in terms of sound. Trite as this pun is, it stresses the existential necessity of a final destination, a “point B.” This allusion to schoolbooks appears also in “Pyataya Godovshchina” / “The Fifth Anniversary,” a desolate picture of Russia (the self-­translation will suffice here). Note the similarity in rhythm and the introductory deictic “there”: There frowning forests stand decked out in rags and tatters. Departing from point A, a train there bravely scatters its wheels toward point B. Which station hardly matters.

To return to “Sextet II”: in Russian, “vorona” (crow) differs from “voron” (raven) by only one letter: many ornithologically unenlightened Russians believe that these are the female and male of one species. In English, there is no phonetic resemblance. The line “a crow caws hard, trying to play the raven” works nevertheless since the two birds look relatively similar, and since both English and Russian speakers perceive the raven as more elegant and noble. In English, the word “raven” summons Poe’s poem: is the crow trying to cry out “nevermore”? Brodsky identifies with the crow. Comparing themselves to birds is an ancient pastime of poets, but few were ever interested in this humble species. Brodsky dedicates to it the 1993 poem “Poslesloviye k basne” (Afterword to a fable), where the crow appears as a sad Jewish bird. In “Shestviye” (Procession, parts 37 and 38), crows and ravens are both mentioned, the former presented as “severu verny” (true to the North), something Brodsky might have said of himself. The 1962 poem “Dialog” (Dialogue), arguably the first of Brodsky’s self-­epitaphs, closes with “ ‘Neuzhto on byl voronoy.’ / ‘Ptitsey, ptitsey on byl.’ ” (Was he really a crow. / He was a bird, a bird.) All these poems remain untranslated. The essay “In a Room and a Half ” links raven-­like crows to Brodsky’s parents: There are two crows in my backyard here in South Hadley. They are quite big, almost raven-­size . . . They appeared here one by one: the first, two years ago, when my mother died; the second, last year, right after my father died. Or else that’s the way I noticed their presence. Brodsky 1986: 468–9

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To continue with animal metaphors—in Russian, “the barking of mongrels” is mentioned. Due to his bilingualism, Brodsky also called himself a mongrel (Brodsky 1995: 150). However, the plural (“mongrels”) and the timing (“Kvintet” was written before bilingualism set in) lessen this parallel. It is more justifiable to see an ironic self-­ portrait in the respective line in English. Like the original, it features a domestic animal producing an unmelodic sound—“a black sheep bleats.” Brodsky certainly was an outsider and a Russian near-­equivalent of “black sheep” is, as it happens, “belaya vorona” (white crow). “Kvintet” / “Sextet” is far from being autobiographical throughout, but parts II and III feature several references to Brodsky himself—for instance, as we shall see, his age.

7.3  “For thirty-­six years I’ve stared at fire” “Kvintet” / Sextet Stanza III.1 brodsky: russian Тридцать семь лет я смотрю в огонь. Веко подергивается. Ладонь покрывается потом. Полицейский, взяв документы, выходит в другую комнату. Воздвигнутый впопыхах, обелиск кончается нехотя в облаках, как удар по Эвклиду, как след кометы. literal translation For thirty-­seven years I’ve been staring into [the] fire./ A/the eyelid is twitching. A/the palm/ becomes covered in sweat. A/the policemen, having taken the papers,/ goes out into another room. Constructed hastily,/ a/the obelisk ends against its will in the clouds,/ like a blow against Euclid, like a/the comet’s trace./ brodsky: self-­translation For thirty-­six years I’ve stared at fire. An eyelid is twitching. Both palms perspire: the cop leaves the room with your papers. Angst. Built to calm it, an obelisk, against its will, recedes in a cloud, amidst bright seeds, like an immobile comet.

After six stanzas featuring a “you” (perhaps as a form of self-­address), “I” now makes its appearance. This pronoun seems to refer to the author—he was thirty-­seven when composing the poem. At the point of translation, Brodsky was forty-­four—this is a

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metrical fit, but Brodsky keeps the number as close as metrically possible to the original instead of adjusting it biographically (perhaps in order to avoid the tongue-­twister “for forty-­four”). The added one-­word-sentence “Angst” contributes—well, yes, angst— while varying sentence length to greater emotional effect. The first and the last rhyming words in Russian and English correspond to each other exactly; both trail flames— “komety” / “comet” and “ogon’” / “fire.” The theme of fire reappears in English in “Sextet VI,” where it refers to T. S. Eliot and death, thus retrospectively enriching the allusive potential of the present stanza. It also becomes more adventurous formally in translation—a signature compound rhyme, “calm it” / “comet,” appears, and lines three to six recede like the obelisk they describe. “Kvintet” / Sextet Stanza III.2 brodsky: russian Ночь; дожив до седин, ужинаешь один, сам себе быдло, сам себе господин. Вобла лежит поперек крупно набранного сообщенья об изверженьи вулкана черт знает где, иными словами, в чужой среде, упираясь хвостом в “Последние Запрещенья.” literal translation Night; having lived to see your hair go gray, you dine alone,/ your own scum, your own master./ A/the roach [fish] lies across a report in block letters/ about a volcano erupting devil knows where,/ in other words, in an alien environment,/ leaning its tail against “[The] Latest Prohibitions.”/ brodsky: self-­translation Night. With your hair quite gone, you still dine alone, being your own grand master, your own black pawn. The kipper’s soiling a headline about striking rickshaws or a berserk volcano’s burps— God knows where, in other words— flitting its tail over “The New Restrictions.”

In both versions, the first rhyme word refers to solitude (“odin” / “alone”). As in the previous stanza, a one-­word-sentence—“Night.”—appears in English, introducing an expository tone. The addition of “still” in the first line makes the speaker permanently lonely, while the original might suggest a lost companion. Brodsky’s hair went gray early and then receded—the images in both versions can be read as autobiographical. “Vobla” (roach), a cheap dried fish often accompanying beer or vodka in Soviet Russia,

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is not popular in the States; besides, its ambiguous name might suggest insects. In the original, complete with a newspaper (which a lonely Russian man is traditionally supposed to use instead of a plate for his “vobla”), it suggests a Soviet setting and alcohol. A kipper is reasonably similar in terms of taste but has no comparable cultural connotations. The chess images, probably prompted by rhyme, have no equivalent in Russian. Givens points out that the version published in the New Yorker in 1984 simply ran “your own pawn” and suggests that the addition of “black” might be a reference to Strand’s dark poetics (Givens 1995: 213–14). “Black” also helps to patch the meter and stress the figure’s helplessness—a black pawn has no chance of moving first. The translation shows that antonymous concepts can be interchangeable in certain contexts: “chert znayet gde” (devil knows where) becomes “God knows where.” This fits in with the eschatological theory presented in the next stanza: “Kvintet” / Sextet Stanza III.3 brodsky: russian Я понимаю только жужжанье мух на восточных базарах! На тротуаре в двух шагах от гостиницы, рыбой, попавшей в сети, путешественник ловит воздух раскрытым ртом: сильная боль, на этом убив, на том продолжается свете. literal translation I understand only the buzz of flies/ in [the] Eastern bazaars! On the sidewalk, two/ steps away from a/the hotel, like a fish caught in a/the net,/ a/the traveler is catching air with his open mouth:/ severe pain, having killed in this [world], continues in the other world./ brodsky: self-­translation I comprehend only the buzz of flies in the Eastern bazaars! On the sidewalk, flat on his back, the traveler strains his sinews, catching the air with his busted gills. In the afterlife, the pain that kills here no doubt continues.

This, too, can be read autobiographically—angina pectoris often left Brodsky gasping for air on the sidewalk. In parallel to the vision of a fragile afterlife in “Kentavry III,” this poem suggests that life’s final experience continues forever. Very often (and in no connection to one’s moral virtues), this experience is pain; if suffering in this world

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only means more suffering in another, “God” and “Devil” can indeed become broadly synonymous. This is reminscent of the fragile afterlife in “Kentavry III” and of the state in “Mramor” / “Marbles,” a certain percentage of whose citizens is selected for imprisonment by lottery. As Frumkin puts it, in Brodsky’s philosophy, “Time is the true nature of existence post mortem; having died, a human being becomes one with pure time,” but simultaneously, “Time is the reason for death; time kills.” Combined, these two suppositions suggest that “after death, something murderous continues” (Frumkin 2003). The image of a dying fish is veiled in translation: the word “fish” does not appear, but “sinews” and “busted gills” do. Death is to become the poem’s main theme in the final stanza added in English; a fish, too, will appear in it. Here, the image and the theme are introduced—and then let go. A seemingly unconnected panorama follows.

7.4  “Where’s that?” “Kvintet” / Sextet Stanza IV.1 brodsky: russian “Где это?” – спрашивает, приглаживая вихор, племянник. И, пальцем блуждая по складкам гор, “Здесь” – говорит племянница. Поскрипывают качели в старом саду. На столе букет фиалок. Солнце слепит паркет. Из гостиной доносятся пассажи виолончели. literal translation “Where’s that?”—asks, smoothing down a forelock,/ the nephew. And, her fingers wandering along mountain folds,/ “Here,”—says the niece. Swings creak [slightly]/ in the old garden. On the table, a bouquet/ of violets. The sun’s blinding the parquet./ From the drawing room, cello passages resound./ brodsky: self-­translation “Where’s that?” asks the nephew, toying with his stray locks. And, fingering brown mountain folds, “Here,” pokes the niece. In the depths of the garden, yellow swings creak softly. The table dwarfs a bouquet of violets. The sun’s splattering the parquet floor. From the drawing room float twangs of a cello.

“Where’s that?” indeed. The appearance of the niece and nephew is rather unexpected, and Givens is puzzled as to its meaning:

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Equally odd is the introduction of the nephew and niece figures in part IV. In a poem in which all other autobiographical references are confirmable, these non-­existent relatives seem out of place . . . Certainly not all aspects of ‘Sextet’ are easily decipherable. Givens 1995: 214

I believe a solution can be found—this stanza refers to Nabokov’s Ada or Ardor: a Family Chronicle (Nabokov 2011). Brodsky was familiar with the novel (Bitov 2002; Kullė 1999).5 The details fit: Ada deals with the incestuous relationship of alleged cousins who are in reality brother and sister. They are often referred to as “nephew” and “niece” (in relation to their parents, instead of “son” and “daughter”). The mansion where they meet has an old garden (Part 9 in Ada / line 3 in “Sextet IV”), a parquet floor (Ada, Part 11 / lines 5–6), a sunny drawing room aka music room (part 16 / line 6) and creaking swings (Ada, Part 34 / line 4). Ada collects violets which she uses as food for larvae (Part 9 / lines 4–5). There are ancient maps in the house (Part 6 / line 2); the image is also used in a sexual context: “ ‘Relief map,’ said the primrose prig, ‘the rivers of Africa.’ Her index traced the blue Nile down into its jungle and traveled up again. ‘Now what’s this? The cap of the Red Bolete is not half as plushy” (Ada, Part 20). The parallels become more pronounced in English because of the shared language and the suggestive verbs “fingering” and “pokes.” It is only when reading the self-­translation that I realized the similarity. The oblique introduction of Ada and Van into Brodsky’s poem suits its tone well—they are as misanthropic and solipsistic (apart from their interest in each other) as the protagonist of the first part. The discovery is all the more satisfying as Brodsky and Nabokov are the two exemplary Russian-American literati; none of the many articles on Nabokov and Brodsky mentions this allusion. Unlike many others bilingual writers (say, Joseph Conrad), Brodsky and Nabokov wrote accomplished texts in both their native language and in English; they also translated their own work. Nabokov only once gave a cursory glance at Brodsky’s early poems but did not appear to deem them worthy of his attention, though he did send the young poet a pair of jeans via an acquaintance travelling to Leningrad. Brodsky, on the other hand, admired Nabokov’s prose and liked to talk about the importance of rhyme (in the broadest sense) as the key element in Nabokov’s oeuvre (Volkov 1998: 171): Lolita and its self-­translation, the different autobiographies, the bodies of his work in English and in Russian, his poetry and his prose, his protagonists and their doubles—in a way, they all “rhyme.” Ultimately, he observed, Nabokov wanted to be a poet, despite being a much better novelist. Though this theory is not entirely original, Brodsky appears to have come by it independently. Once, Brodsky was commissioned to translate into English a Russian poem by Nabokov that he believed inferior; he disliked the task at first but then enjoyed “improving” the text (see Kullė 1999). Considering Brodsky’s regard for Nabokov’s novels and certain

As it happens, after his emigration, Brodsky’s poems were published in Russian by Ardis Publishing, an American house specializing in Russian literature which owes its name to Ada.

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similarities between the two, it is almost odd that no one appears to have tried looking for allusions to him in Brodsky’s poetry. Apart from Nabokov, “Sextet” refers to Strand and, as we shall see later, T. S. Eliot—allusion seems to be one of this poem’s raisons d’être. Brodsky uses two of his English pet verbs in this stanza—“splatter” and “dwarf.” The former appears in two other self-­translations in reference to sunshine: “December in Florence” (“a chance ray of sunlight splattering the palazzo”) and “Vertumnus” (“sun-­ splattered mortal visage”). It is, perhaps, the alliteration which is so attractive.6 “Dwarf ” appears in Brodsky’s Anglophone poem “Seaward” (“the phones are whining, dwarfed by to-­no-avail”) and in “The Fifth Anniversary” (“your shadow dwarfs a palm in Palestine”).7 The Russian has no equivalent for “dwarf ” as a verb, apart from rather clumsy circumscriptions along the lines of “makes seem small”; this might be a reason for Brodsky’s fondness. Moreover, it is a one syllable verb requiring a direct object, which allows the placing of certain words in final position—in this case, “bouquet” and “parquet.” With both parts being of French origin, the rhyme “buket” / “parket” is transposable into the English text. The next stanza presents another seemingly disconnected scene (probably another allusion, not yet deciphered; perhaps to a painting?) ending in paronomasia: “Kvintet” / Sextet Stanza IV.2 brodsky: russian Ночью над плоскогорьем висит луна. От валуна отделяется тень слона. В серебре ручья нет никакой корысти. В одинокой комнате простыню комкает белое / смуглое / просто ню – жидопись неизвестной кисти. literal translation At night, the moon hangs above a/the plateau./ A/the elephant’s shadow separates itself from a/the boulder./ A/the brook’s silver does not seek profit./ In a/the lonely room, the sheets/ are rumpled by a white / swarthy / simply [some] nude—/ *a kike painted / written by an unknown/unfamiliar paint brush./

In Russian, Brodsky’s “solnze” (sun) also is often accompanied by alliterating verbs: it “slepit” (blinds) in “Kvintet” (Quintet) and “V Italii” (In Italy), or simply “svetit” (shines) in “V pis’me na yug” (Letter to the south) and “Osvoyeniye kosmosa” (Conquering cosmos).  7 This is one of several parallels between “The Fifth Anniversary” and “Sextet” arising in self-­ translations.  6

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brodsky: self-­translation At night, a plateau absorbs moonshine. A boulder shepherds its elephantine shadow. A brook’s silver change is spending itself in a gully. Clutched sheets in a room elude their milky / swarthy / abandoned nude— an anonymous painful painting.

The portmanteau in the final line consists of “zhid” (derogatory for Jew: kike or yid are the closest equivalents) and “zhivopis’” (painting, literally life writing). Brodsky wrote that he found the neutral word “yevrey” (Jew) more emotionally disturbing, whereas “zhid” (kike, yid) was “clearly offensive and thereby meaningless” (Brodsky 1986: 8). It is not clear whether the portmanteau was coined by Brodsky—today, Russian anti-Semites unfamiliar with Brodsky’s work use it in regard to what they perceive as Jewish art, so the expression might have well originated in such discourse. Brodsky uses a similar anti-Semitic pun in “Letter to an Archaeologist.” Written in English in 1983, it opens with a list of insults including the neologism “refujew.” In “Sextet,” Brodsky finds “pain” in “painting”—a reasonable equivalent, as being Jewish among anti-Semites equals suffering. The original pun invites biographical interpretation: Batkin (1996) even speaks of “offensive self-­disgust.” The English version is more universal, inviting interpretations such as the following: “This passage is about non-­existence; the nude is both milky and swarthy, by virtue of its not being there” (Givens 1995: 214). This reading is probably prompted in part by the verb “elude” that was added in translation. The scene is reminiscent of “Niotkuda s lyubovyu” / “From Nowhere with Love”, whose protagonist is writhing upon bed-­sheets in painful longing. Brodsky could well have heard the children’s riddle: “What is as big as an elephant but lighter than a feather?” The answer is, of course, “An elephant’s shadow.” In Russian, the poem’s first lines conjure up a real elephant leaning against a boulder and then walking away (along with his shado); the English version makes it clear that the boulder is merely being likened to an elephant. Nevertheless, this moonlit scene is rather surreal. The next stanza continues the panorama, sweeping over seasons and suggesting normality—up to the disconcerting image in the final sentences: “Kvintet” / Sextet Stanza IV.3 brodsky: russsian Весной в грязи копошится труженик-муравей, появляется грач, твари иных кровей; листва прикрывает ствол в месте его изгиба. Осенью ястреб дает круги над селеньем, считая цыплят. И на плечах слуги болтается белый пиджак сагиба . . .

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literal translation In spring, a/the ant, a toiler, crawls/potters about in dirt,/ a/the rook appears, [so do] creatures of other bloods;/ leafage covers the trunk where it bends./ In autumn, a/the hawk circles/ above a/the village, counting chickens. And on a/the servant’s shoulders/ the sahib’s white jacket is dangling . . ./ brodsky: self-­translation In spring, labor ants build their muddy coops; rooks show up; so do creatures with other groups of blood; a fresh leaf shelters the verging shame of two branches. In autumn, a sky hawk keeps counting villages’ chicklets; and the sahib’s white jacket is dangling from the servant’s shoulders.

Once again, the translation is slightly sexualized: the tree’s own foliage suggests a fig leaf, connecting this stanza with the previous one via an indirect reference to art. The final lines suggest a historical or literary allusion connected to India; I could not locate the source. The expression “tsyplyat po oseni schitayut” (chickens should be counted in autumn), with which Brodsky is playing here, has a close English equivalent— “don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched.” Kumakhova observes this and proceeds with the following interpretation: autumn is the opening word of the poem [sic; in reality, of the stanza]. . . . Now that you should be ready to . . . count chickens, it is not you, but the hawk that is counting them, and their end is near. This is an allegorical symbol of taking life. Life has played a bitter joke. All your expectations were futile. . . . In the English text the idea is the same. Kumakhova 2006: 142–3

In my view, the idea is not quite the same in translation: it receives an additional twist, since “sky hawk” calls to mind an airplane, such as the Cessna 172 Skyhawk or the military Douglas A-4 Skyhawk. The image thus vaguely suggests a war starting in autumn (as did WWII, and, perhaps more relevantly, the Vietnam War and the Yom Kippur War, both of which featured Skyhawks). Moreover, it is interesting that, two years before “Kvintet” (Quintet), Brodsky wrote the poem “Osenniy krik yastreba,” translated by Alan Myers and himself as “The Hawk’s Cry in Autumn,” whose title hero is dying tragically, having soared too high. It is not a given that Brodsky—or his readers—must identify with chickens and their owners rather than with the hawk or the plane.

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7.5  “Was the word ever uttered?” “Kvintet” / Sextet Stanza V.1 brodsky: russian Было ли сказано слово? И если да, – на каком языке? Был ли мальчик? И сколько льда нужно бросить в стакан, чтоб остановить Титаник мысли? Помнит ли целое роль частиц? Что способен подумать при виде птиц в аквариуме ботаник? literal translation Was a/the word ever said? And if yes—/ in what language? Has there[ever]been a boy? And how much ice/ should be thrown into a glass to stop a/the Titanic/ of thought? Does the whole remember the role of particles?/ What could a/the botanist think seeing   birds in an aquarium?/ brodsky: self-­translation Was the word ever uttered? And then—if yes— in what language? And where? And how much ice should be thrown into a glass to halt a Titanic of thought? Does the whole recall the neat shapes of parts? Would a botanist, suddenly facing birds in an aquarium, panic?

“Byl li mal’chik?” (was there (ever) a boy?) is a variation of a much-­quoted line from Maxim Gorkii’s The Life of Klim Samgin. Its eponymous protagonist sees two other children drown and is struck by a mistrustful question during the search for their bodies—a passer-­by doubts if the drowned boy ever existed. The venerable RussianEnglish Dictionary of Winged Words (Berkov and Walshe 1984: 67) says the phrase is “used to express extreme doubt.” This is indeed sometimes the case; however, at least as often it is employed ironically in regard to someone else’s doubt. Language itself is being doubted here. As Givens puts it: By raising language as an issue in both its Russian and English versions, Brodsky allows into the poem’s thematic the extra-­poetic encumbrance under which ‘Sextet’ is operating, that is, the problem raised by bilingualism, translation and the poet’s adjustment to a new, foreign literary milieu . . . one-­upping Strand’s own surrealism. Givens 1995: 215

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In English, the definite article is used for “word”—some particular utterance is being doubted. Does it refer to a word in some dialogue, or in this poem, or perhaps to the Biblical word which was at the beginning? The most puzzling details in this poem tend to have concrete points of reference. The image of birds in an aquarium might have been inspired by the 1920 Dadaist wood relief by Hans Arp called “Birds in an Aquarium.” It is exhibited in the New York Museum of Modern Art, which was often visited by Brodsky. It would not be the first case of Brodsky being inspired by visual art—the poem “Na vystavke Karla Veylinka” (At an/the exhibition by Carel Willink) is an exercise in ekphrasis; the influence of drawings by Daniel Mróz on Brodsky has been studied in detail (Losev 2006: 46). “Sextet” is as surreal as Willink’s and Mróz’s paintings; its absurdity is enhanced by the puzzled specialist’s profession—he is neither an ornithologist nor an ichthyologist but a botanist, as ignorant of birds as of fish. The image also connects with the fish and birds in the previous stanzas. There are other internal links here, too: the suggestion of alcohol in part III is followed here by the covert advice to drink in order to stop thinking. “Ice” simultaneously suggests ice cubes in a glass and, referring back to part II, an iceberg. If connecting these links is already quite a task for the reader, the one in the next stanza will be even more challenging: “Kvintet” / Sextet Stanza V.2 brodsky: russian Теперь представим себе абсолютную пустоту. Место без времени. Собственно воздух. В ту и в другую, и в третью сторону. Просто Мекка воздуха. Кислород, водород. И в нем мелко подергивается день за днем одинокое веко. literal translation Now let us imagine absolute emptiness./ [A] place without time. Air as such. In this/ and in that, and in the third direction. Simply a Mecca/ of air. Oxygen, hydrogen. And in it/ slightly twitches day after day/ a lonely eyelid./ brodsky: self-­translation Now let us imagine an absolute emptiness. A place without time. The air per se. In this, in that, and in the third direction—pure, simple, pallid air. A Mecca of it: oxygen, nitrogen. In which

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there’s really nothing except for the rapid twitching of a lonely eyelid.

Apart from increased scientific correctness (unlike hydrogen, nitrogen is an important component of air), the translation is remarkably close to the original, semantically. The enjambments are recreated, including two function word rhymes—“this” and “which” instead of “tu” (that) and “nem” (here: it). This is achieved by accepting slant rhymes (“emptiness” / “this,” “pallid” / “eyelid”) and by slicing “twitching” in two, thereby both illustrating its semantics and creating a rhyme word for “which.” As in several other stanzas of this poem (I.2, III.1, III.2, IV.1), the first and the last rhyme-­words are equivalents of their original counterparts, in this case “pustotu” (emptiness) and “veko” (eyelid). It has been observed that Brodsky “often equates air with space” (Minchenko 2001). He was keenly interested in describing the elements: “Of the four, only the earth yields a handful of adjectives. It’s worse with fire, desperate with water, and out of question with air” (Brodsky 1986: 334). He finds “shallowed” to accompany water in “December in Florence”; here, he tackles the allegedly impossible—air. In Russian, it is devoid of adjectives. The English version appears to prove that necessity is the mother of invention. The need to fill up space (in a line) creates three attributes for space (in its undiluted form)—“pure, simple, pallid.” The number of adjectives fits in nicely with the number of directions. These, strangely enough, are three instead of the usual four in both versions. This might suggest a mathematical interpretation of space (with directions referring to dimensions), or else the absence of one direction—a way forward, or more probably, a way back. It is a lonely eye, after all, whose perspective the stanza presents, and an eye cannot look back into the (absent?) head. The surrealism of an eyelid on its own is less surprising in English, where it links back to the beginning. The indefinite article preceding the word “eyelid” throughout the poem seems to be a well-­chosen device after all, not the result of a lack in competence in English. Instead of “twitch/ing,” the Russian version separates a word in two in the first line of the following stanza: “Kvintet” / Sextet Stanza V.3 brodsky: russian Это – записки натуралиста. Записки натуралиста. Капающая слеза падает в вакууме без всякого ускоренья. Вечнозеленое неврастение, слыша жжу це-це будущего, я дрожу, вцепившись ногтями в свои коренья. literal translation These are the notes of a/the naturalist. The no- [for /behind]/ tes [squeals] of a naturalist. A/the dropping tear/ falls in a/the vacuum without any acceleration./

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An evergreen *neurasthenic plant, hearing the zhzhu/ [of the] tsetse of future, I shiver,/ grabbing my roots with my fingernails./ brodsky: self-­translation These are the notes of a naturalist. The naughts on nature’s own list. Stained with flowerpots. A tear falls in a vacuum without acceleration. The last of hotbed neu-­roses, hearing the faint buzzing of time’s tsetse, I smell increasingly of isolation.

This stanza deals with the poem’s key themes—loneliness and fear of death—most openly. In both versions, it is rich in wordplay. In Russian, the word “zapiski” (notes) is transformed into “za piski” (for/behind squeals) in lines 1–2. In English, “notes” become “naughts.” Both squeals and naughts have a deprecating effect. The notion of nothingness links back to the previous stanza. In the next line of the translation, Brodsky outdoes himself, introducing—in lieu of mere repetition—a phonetic near-­twin of “naturalist”— “nature’s . . . list.” The Russian line four gives birth to the neologism “nevrasteniye,” which differs from “nevrasteniya” (neurasthenia) only in the final letter while also including the word “rasteniye” (plant). In English, Brodsky succeeds in producing a pun similar both in its components and its effect—“neu-­roses.” “Neu,” the German for “new,” upholds the theme, German being the native language of psychoanalysis. Brodsky provides an additional twist in English by adding “hotbed.” Roses can be planted in hotbeds, a hotbed evoking such phrases as “hotbed of sin” or “hotbed of vice.” Moreover, a frequent image in Brodsky’s poetry—and one connected to neuroses—is that of a lonely insomniac tossing and turning in his bed. Both versions stress the onomatopoeia of “tsetse.” Tsetse flies are a real source of lethal danger; besides, insects (especially flies) are connected to both life and literature. The phrase “smell of isolation” is not coined by Brodsky, but it gains in sensual effectiveness in the context of hotbeds and plants. “Isolation” would be a fitting final word—but it is not. In English, the poem goes on.

7.6  “And I dread my petals’ joining the crowned knot” In English translation, the quintet becomes a sextet, with its addition of an extra part. Each of these six parts consists of six-­line stanzas, the microstructure thus neatly mirroring the macrostructure. The dramatic monolog of part V seamlessly flows into the new section VI; “for the first, the second, / and the umpteenth time” mirrors the previous stanza’s “in this, / in that, and in the third direction”, and the theme of fire refers back to stanza II. The first rhyme-­words might well have been inspired by the preceding search for a suitable pun on “notes”—apart from “naught,” there is the possibility of “knot” and “not.” Having reached the new part, the text (quite unusually for Brodsky) explodes in exclamation marks, as if there had not been enough room in the original Russian:

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Sextet Stanza VI brodsky: english And I dread my petals’ joining the crowned knot of fire! Most resolutely not! Oh, but to know the place for the first, the second, and the umpteenth time! When everything comes to light, when you hear or utter the jewels like “When I was in the army” or “Change the record!” Petulant is the soul begging mercy from an invisible or dilated frame. Still, if it comes to the point where the blue acrylic dappled with cirrus suggests the Lord, say, “Give me strength to sustain the hurt,” and learn it by heart like a decent lyric. When you are no more, unlike the rest, the latter may think of themselves as blessed with the place so much safer thanks to the big withdrawal of what your conscience indeed amassed. And a fish that prophetically shines with rust will splash in a pond and repeat your oval.

The “crowned knot of fire” is borrowed from the penultimate line of Eliot’s “Little Gidding”: All manner of thing shall be well When the tongues of flame are in-­folded Into the crowned knot of fire And the fire and the rose are one.

Givens observes this allusion and concludes (Givens 1995: 216–20) that “part six completes Brodsky’s exploration of Strand’s poetics by resolving [ . . . its] peculiar anxiety . . . in favor of Eliot’s more optimistic Christian solution.” Brodsky would disagree. He called “Kvintet” an “anti-Eliot-­poem” (Reĭn 1998: 144).8 As regards the

Intriguingly, this is a comment on the original version. There might be allusions to Eliot in Russian, too; I hope that a scholar better versed in Eliot’s work will find them. The staring at fire in part III, perhaps? It certainly gains meaning in the context of the crowned knot in English. In any case, Brodsky’s statement makes clear that the quotations in “Sextet VI” have not landed there out of the blue but conclude a well-­hidden dialogue which began in the earlier parts.

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general outlook on life, arguably the only strong conviction Brodsky shared with Eliot was his love for cats. The author might be dead (in both senses) and far from identical with the speaker, but the text itself still resists being read as a pious poem in Eliot’s vein. It emphatically rejects Eliot’s Christian symbolism. Every sentence in the first stanza ends in an exclamation mark, screaming out against death. This poem is much closer to “Do not go gentle into that good night” than to “Little Gidding.” Though he detests repetition, the speaker is raging against the dying of the light. The unidiomatic “to know the place for the first, the second, / and the umpteenth time!” also alludes to “Little Gidding”: We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.

Again, Brodsky disagrees with Eliot: arriving back where one started is presented not as the ultimate revelation but as tedious repetition, almost as bad as dying. In another matter, however, Givens (1995: 220–1) provides an important insight. He believes that Eliot is added in part VI because of “the need (as [Brodsky] puts it in his Nobel lecture) ‘to avoid tautology’ . . . the final stanza composed in English seems purposefully to avoid Strand’s particular diction.” With “Kvintet,” Brodsky successfully “translated” Strand’s poetics into Russian: there was no need to translate them back into English. Even though Eliot is not “added” but rather revealed in the additional part, the observation still holds: a Strandesque poem is fine in Russian, but a version in Strand’s own language needs more original material and/or a fusion with another poet’s style and theme—in this case, those of Eliot. The two codas added in translation—“Epitaph” and “Sextet VI”—deal with death. So do two other hybrid texts: “A Postcard” (a poem written in English to accompany the self-­translation “A Photograph”) and “Tol’ko pepel” (a poem borrowing its key motifs from the English “Letter to an Archaeologist”). Bondarenko (2010: 485) believes that Brodsky, aware of his mortal illness, “was afraid to stop the line, because with the end of a line his life, too, might end.” (Bondarenko never mentions Brodsky’s self-­translations in his book, though “Sextet VI” offers more support for his thesis than any poem in Russian.) Losev makes a similar point: to his mind, Brodsky “was somewhat afraid of publication as of the final estrangement of the author from his text. Creating a poem is a cathartic experience that wants prolongation. Unpublished, poems are in a way unfinished; publication means a farewell forever” (Losev 2006: 131). Both scholars, the latter a close friend of Brodsky, speak of fear. Still, Brodsky was not Whitman; he did not spend his life editing and expanding a single collection. But he did find one way to reclaim finished and published poems—through translation, sometimes combined with creative prolongation beyond the Russian original. To go on writing meant “restructur[ing] time” (Brodsky 1986: 180) and thus

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to some degree resisting death—the poet’s best alternative to passively listening to its “tsetse,” dreading “the crowned knot / of fire.” It might be argued that Brodsky uses translation as a pretext for continuing to write. His manner of reading aloud comes to mind, as well: he did not stress endings, and the final lines remained hanging in the air, as if the poem might go on. Losev has dedicated an illuminating chapter of his literary biography to the theme of death in Brodsky’s poetry. However, as is typical for Brodsky scholarship, it hardly considers the self-­translations or English poems despite purporting to analyze the complete oeuvre. Texts in English are very often disregarded by Russian scholars even when they might support their claim; in this case, however, they offer a strong contradiction. The suggestion that “after 1965, the motif of the fear of death disappears from [Brodsky’s] poems” (Losev 2006: 281) is not strictly true for his Russian poetry, and “Kvintet” (Quintet) is a case in point; however, it is the Anglophone final part of “Sextet” that constitutes the most striking evidence to the contrary. Though obsessed with thanatophobia, Brodsky’s poetic persona also detests repetition (which is hardly avoidable in a long life): Oh, but to know the place for the first, the second, and the umpteenth time! When everything comes to light, when you hear or utter the jewels like “When I was in the army” or “Change the record!”

This fear of repetition reminds one of The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Kundera 1984) and Brodsky’s own untranslated 1982 poem “Elegiya: Do sikh por” (Elegy: Even now), which states that “iz dvukh / zol . . . bol’sheye: povtoren’ye / nekogda skazannogo” (out of two / evils . . . . the greater is the repetition / of what has once been said). This is not the only connection between these poems. At the end of “Sextet,” the speaker morphs into a plant. In the final lines of “Elegiya: Do sikh por,” he becomes a “produkt evolyutsii” (product of evolution) who has not yet managed “vypolzti iz vody na sushu” (to crawl out of the water onto land). Here we are approaching a shared image so specific that “Sextet” can be to some degree called a translation of “Elegiya: Do sikh por.” “Sextet” ends with a posthumous momentary resurrection: “a fish that prophetically shines with rust / will splash in a pond and repeat your oval.” “Elegiya: Do sikh por” offers a parallel to this prophecy. It concludes with a passage on things connected so closely that nature would do well to unite them, a list which includes the speaker and his addressee, as if in passing: brodsky: russian Znayesh’, na svete est’ veshchi, predmety, mezhdu soboy stol’ tesno svyazannyye, chto, norovya proslyt’ podlinno mater’yu i t.d. i t.p., priroda mogla by sdelat’ eshyo odin shag i slit’ ikh voedino: tum-­tum fokstrota

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s krepdeshinovoy yubkoy; muku i sakhar; nas v kraynem sluchaye. To est’ povysit’ v range dostizhen’ya Michurina. U shchuki uzhe seychas cheshuya tsveta konservnoy banki, tsveta vilki v ruke. literal translation You know, in the world, there are/ things, objects connected to each other so closely/ that, if she wished to be known/ as a true mother etc. etc., nature/ could have gone a step further and united/ them in one: the tum-­tum of a foxtrot/ with the crêpe-­de-chine skirt; flour with sugar; [the two of] us/ in the last resort. Thus raising the range/ of Michurin’s9 achievements. Now, the pike already has/ scales the color of a/the tin,/ the color of a/the fork in a/the hand./

Something will remain in nature after your death—circles on a pond’s surface will mirror your features: “oval” is a frequent substitute for “face” in Brodsky. If “rust” refers to the future of the fish, the transience of memory-­as-traces-­on-water is stressed—the creator of the traces will end up in a tin (or else a coffin). “Sextet VI” suggests an afterlife, but (despite the image of the fish, accompanied by the word “prophetically”) not in a traditionally Christian sense. It is an afterlife in transitory traces—and in translation. “To My Daughter,” written an English two years before Brodsky’s death, offers a parallel: Give me another life, and I’ll be singing in Café Rafaella. Or simply sitting there. Or standing there, as furniture in the corner, in case that life is a bit less generous than the former.

The theme of afterlife becomes meta-­poetic if we look at the relationship between “Elegiya: Do sikh por” and “Sextet”—several motifs from an untranslated poem surface, like circles in a pond, in the extended English version of quite a different Russian poem. It is a matter of speculation whether Brodsky consciously decided to recycle an image because he did not plan to translate “Elegiya: Do sikh por” or, the other way around, whether the Russian poem remained untranslated because its crucial images had been recreated in “Sextet” (or else, whether the non-­translation and the partial re-­creation simply coincided). Sextet was written two years after “Elegiya: Do sikh por.” We do not

Soviet botanist, practitioner of selection.

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know whether the short interval between the two poems’ composition was instrumental in connecting them or in how far Brodsky was aware of the similarities. Besides, the phenomenon of image recycling is not translation-­specific—Brodsky re-­uses some images from poems rejected as a whole. One thing is clear, though: the English poem grows out of at least two Russian ones. It continues “Kvintet” metrically and also, in the first lines, in terms of metaphor and mood. However, the mood changes later. Instead of raging against the dying of the light, a tone much more typical of Brodsky is established—that of an elegy, as in “Elegiya: Do sikh por.” In “Sextet VI,” Brodsky unites not only at least two Anglophone poets—Strand and Eliot—but also creates a synthesis between two Russian poems of his own. The next chapter will move even further beyond what is usually called translation.

7.7  “Letter to an Archaeologist” and the Translation-Creation-Continuum Translating and composing new poems are not two distinctive processes, but parts of a continuum whose two extremes are imaginary. “Pure” translation—transforming any text, but particularly a poem, into an identical one in another language—is impossible. “Pure” composition—writing a poem in English without using any of the motifs, images and patterns previously employed in his native language—is hardly feasible,10 especially for a poet with such a distinctive style and a large Russian oeuvre as Brodsky, even though to his mind “the most awful thing about service to the muses is precisely that it does not tolerate repetition—either of metaphor, subject, or device” (Brodsky 1986: 187). Between the theoretical poles of “one-­to-one translation” and “entirely new creation,” all Brodskian poetic output in English can be placed, with the most intriguing hybrids (such as “Centaurs VI” and “Sextet VI”) squarely in the middle. Why didn’t Brodsky stop once the translation was complete? Perhaps it was the rhythm which did not let Brodsky go. “The meter is somehow present from the very beginning, involuntarily,” he said (Gordin 2000: 137)—and to the very end. To judge by his interviews, essays and letters, Brodsky tended to write poetry rather like Winnie-­the-Pooh—humming a rhythm and inserting words into it. The words had to fit metrically and suit the mood: “. . . this hum has a certain psychological overlay” (Brodsky in Haven 2002: 55). The process of translation is not greatly different in principle, it just offers less freedom in filling the hum with semantics. Here, too, we are dealing with a continuum, from developing “content” directly through composition

This not only concerns self-­translation. Brodsky’s “Isaak i Avraam,” for instance, grew out of Robinson’s “Isaac and Archibald” (Sergeev 1997: 432). The question of how translating other people’s poetry leads to the creation of original pieces—particularly in regard to Umberto Saba’s influence upon Brodsky’s “Odissey Telemaku”—has been studied by Kullė (1995). Besides, sooner or later the repetition of motifs becomes unavoidable in the native language, as well. Still, Brodsky was more inclined to come back to motifs from his untranslated Russian verses in English—since he could assume they would be new to the reader.

10

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(letting meter and rhymes accelerate the thought process)—via putting into poetic language concepts, ideas and images pre-­meditated in prose11—to self-­translation. With the English version finished, but the hum still insistently present, what is there to do but to go on writing? As a friend put it in his elegy for Brodsky: Not worms, not worms in such a skull But rhythms, rhythms writhe and sting and crawl. Viereck 1995

Brodsky might also have felt that a translation did not exhaust the potential of the original, or perhaps that neither had fully exhausted the theme. Rhythms do not writhe naked—they appear as words, phrases. A new image or rhyme might come to mind while translating. Often Brodsky would integrate it into the translation; sometimes he used it in an unconnected poem; sometimes—as in “Epitaph for a Centaur” and “Sextet VI”—he continued the English version beyond the original. Several years before composing these poems, he claimed that he willingly ignored such found material: I have enough to do in Russian. And in English you have lots of terrific people alive. There is no point in my doing that. I wrote an elegy in English simply because I wanted to please the shadow. And when I finished Lowell, I had another poem coming in English. There were wonderful rhymes coming my way, and yet I told myself to stop. Because I don’t want to create for myself an extra reality. Also, I would have to compete with the people for whom English is the mother tongue, ya? Birkerts 2002: 98

Brodsky gave Birkerts this interview in 1979. Whether he ever really believed what he was saying or whether he was being coy, he certainly could not always resist the temptation to write in English. His explanation in the interview is almost identical to his essay “To Please a Shadow,” in which the shadow belongs to Auden instead of Eliot. The idea of pleasing a dead poet by writing in his native language is not an empty phrase: Brodsky was rather esoterically minded in regard to language. However, it is not to be taken at face value: his explanation for not writing about his parents in their native language (Brodsky 1986: 460) sounds just as convincing. Reasons such as the desire to reach an Anglophone readership probably also played a role in creating the first impulse for writing in English. Describing the next stage—the supposedly involuntary “I had another poem coming”—Brodsky makes a simple but crucial statement: one of the main inspirations for writing poetry is writing poetry. To judge by his own comments, this method was less frequent in Brodsky’s oeuvre. Still, especially in his earlier work, meticulously pre-­planned poems appeared. “Isaak i Avraam,” again, is a case in point; the young Brodsky explained the plan of his poem in great detail to a friend (Gorbanevskaia 2002: 16).

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Composition is a form of close reading; new ideas come while rereading one’s own lines; rhythms and rhymes live on. An experienced poet might well be more often inspired by his or her own writing than by other people’s texts, to say nothing of events or moods. This is the case with many poems written by Brodsky in the 1980s and 1990s. Several poems written by Brodsky in English are closely connected to Russian texts, even though they are not published as translations. One of Brodsky’s few children’s poems, “Ssora” (The fight), which becomes “Cabbage and Carrot” in English, is a case in point. This is undoubtedly a translation—an argument between a cabbage and a carrot is rendered in the same number of rhyming couplets, and the essence of the dialogue remains unchanged. The editors were apparently undecided about this text’s status, describing it as “written in English” (Brodsky 2000: 532), while pointing out its origin in the next sentence. “Cabbage and Carrot” was followed by “At the Helmet and Sword,” a children’s poem which has no equivalent in Russian. A similar development takes place when Brodsky translates an unnamed free verse poem about a country rather similar to Soviet Russia (“My zhili v gorode . . .”) as “A Photograph” and goes on to write a companion poem in English, “A Postcard.” Both are free verse poems on the topic of dictatorship; both share some elements with Brodsky’s autobiographical essays. The two poems are clearly intended as a diptych, as they were published together in the Times Literary Supplement in 1994 under complementary titles. “A Postcard” ends with the word “cemetery,” and, as in “Epitaph” and “Sextet VI,” the theme of death becomes prominent in a poem added in translation. These are examples of Anglophone texts inspired by the process of translating. What about the other direction—did Brodsky ever attempt translating his English poems into Russian? There are certainly no published examples designated as such. Translating any of the few Anglophone poems into Russian would suggest that they mattered to their author. Brodsky could hardly reconcile this with his insistent claim that he never took the poems he wrote in English seriously. According to him, they were merely an exercise, a game. Whether heart-­felt or not, this humility was certainly convenient for disarming critics. Nabokov, incidentally, adopted a similar position: his afterword to Lolita bemoans that “the obtaining of such local ingredients as would allow [him] to inject a modicum of average “reality” . . . into the brew of individual fancy, proved at fifty a much more difficult process than it had been in the Europe of [his] youth when receptiveness and retention were at their automatic best” (Nabokov 1997: 312), while the preface to his own translation into Russian expresses dismay at his native language grown rusty with disuse. Still, he did take the pains to translate one of his Anglophone texts into his native Russian, whereas Brodsky seemingly never did so. Brodsky claimed that he wrote poetry in Russian for himself, for the language and its prosody; the audience was not his primary concern. He translated into English and composed poetry in his second language partly for the same reasons, but to a lesser degree (though he insisted that his modest contribution had no value for the English language or Anglophone poetry). His main motivation, according to his own statements, was the desire to show his new fellow countrymen what his poems were like (Brodsky in Reĭn 1996: 88). When Brodsky translated Anglophone poetry into

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Russian, he did so for the joy of it, but also in order to enrich the Russian poetic language—and ultimately, his own prosody; to make an alien art accessible. There was no need to introduce “Joseph Brodsky” into the Russian language; he was close enough to “Iosif Brodskiy” in terms of poetic diction. Translating one’s own poetry is, intellectually and emotionally, a taxing task. As Akhmatova put it, “Translating is like eating your own brain” (Sergeev 1997: 432). Considering that Brodsky’s poetic oeuvre was a bilingual centaur with the Russian part already much bigger than the English one, there was arguably no need for translation in this direction. However, there is one poem, “Tol’ko pepel . . .” (Only ashes . . ., 1986), which so greatly resembles a prior Anglophone one, “Letter to an Archaeologist” (1985), that it almost becomes a unique thing: a Brodskian self-­translation into Russian. The two poems share the motif of an archaeologist discovering the remains of a rather disgusting settlement; both consist of four cross-­rhyming stanzas with alternating feminine and masculine rhymes. brodsky: english Letter to an Archaeologist (1985) Citizen, enemy, mama’s boy, sucker, utter garbage, panhandler, swine, refujew, verrucht; a scalp so often scalded with boiling water that the puny brain feels completely cooked. Yes, we have dwelt here: in this concrete, brick, wooden rubble which you now arrive to sift. All our wires were crossed, barbed, tangled, or interwoven. Also: we didn’t love our women, but they conceived. Sharp is the sound of pickax that hurts dead iron; still, it’s gentler that what we’ve been told or have said ourselves. Stranger! move carefully through our carrion: what seems carrion to you is freedom to our cells. Leave our names alone. Don’t reconstruct those vowels, consonants, and so forth: they won’t resemble larks but a demented bloodhound whose maw devours its own traces, feces, and barks, and barks. brodsky: russian [Tol’ko pepel . . .] 1986 Только пепел знает, что значит сгореть дотла. Но я тоже скажу, близоруко взглянув вперед: не все уносимо ветром, не все метла, широко забирая по двору, подберет. Мы останемся смятым окурком, плевком, в тени под скамьей, куда угол проникнуть лучу не даст. И слежимся в обнимку с грязью, считая дни, в перегной, в осадок, в культурный пласт.

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Замаравши совок, археолог разинет пасть отрыгнуть; но его открытие прогремит на весь мир, как зарытая в землю страсть, как обратная версия пирамид. “Падаль!” выдохнет он, обхватив живот, но окажется дальше от нас, чем земля от птиц, потому что падаль – свобода от клеток, свобода от целого: апофеоз частиц. literal translation Only ashes know what it means to have burned to the ground./ But I too will say, with a shortsighted look ahead:/ not all can be carried away by the wind, the broom will not/ pick up everything, making wide sweeps over the yard./ We’ll remain as a creased cigarette butt, a spit, in the shade/ under a bench, where the angle/corner won’t let a/the ray through./ We’ll clump together, embracing dirt, counting days,/ into humus, sediment, a/the cultural layer./ Having soiled the scoop, a/the archeologist will open his maw/ to regurgitate; but his discovery will resound/ through all the world like a/the passion, buried in the ground,/ like an inverted version of the pyramids./ “Carrion!”—he’ll breathe out, clasping his stomach,/ but he’ll find himself farther from us than the earth from birds,/ because carrion is the freedom from cells, the freedom from/ the whole: the apotheosis of particles./

Apart from the overall theme and the form, the two poems share many details. One of these is the mention of birds (larks in English) in opposition to (under-)earthly remains. Another is the aggression towards the “archeologist,” expressed descriptively in Russian, with words such as “past’ ” (maw) and references to bodily functions and pain. In English, the aggression is voiced as direct abuse by the we-­speaker. Curiously, the first of the nine apostrophes seems neutral—“citizen.” However, in Brodsky’s vocabulary, the word “citizen” is as abusive as can be: “It is the army that . . . makes a citizen out of you; without it you still have a chance . . . to remain a human being” (Brodsky 1986: 24). Though the speakers here are very different from Brodsky, they appear to share this semantic idiosyncrasy. In English, the speaker’s voice—or, rather, their voices—are those of a gray mass, of cheerless aggressive Soviet men (not women, who are mentioned but given no voice; unloved but forced to conceive). The speaker of the Russian poem seems similar in character but devoid of concrete localization—unless the word “sovok” (scoop) is read as a pun. “Sovok” became a deprecatory term for the Soviet Union while it still existed; it was popular by 1986, and Brodsky must have known it, given his contact with friends in Russia and his keen interest in slang. In this context, line nine of the Russian poem

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could refer to criticizing the Soviet Union, translating as: “having soiled the ‘Sovok’, the archeologist will open his maw.” This would make it a reference to Brodsky himself, especially to Brodsky as the author of “Letter to an Archaeologist,” his only poem in which Soviet reality is presented as unequivocally disgusting. The addressee of the “Letter,” too, can be regarded as Brodsky’s alter ego. In his youth, Brodsky participated in geological and archeological expeditions (hence such terms as “cultural layer”). More to the point, he is in the business of “reconstruct[ing . . .] vowels, / consonants, and so forth” (later, he was to name a collection of poetry So Forth). The anti-Semitic portmanteau “refujew” is also applicable to him. It was not coined by Brodsky himself: Oswald Mosley is reputed to have used it, and the term was certainly around in the 1930s (Tucker 1994). In the 1980s, “refujew” could suggest “refusenik” as well as “refugee” and “Jew.” In the third line of “Letter to an Archaeologist,” one of Brodsky’s earliest and most horrible childhood memories surfaces—“a scalp . . . scalded with boiling water” closely resembles a scene described in the autobiographical essay “Less than One,” published a year after the poem. The war has just ended; Iosif, five years old, is trying to climb into a train to Leningrad with his mother: . . . my eye caught sight of an old, bald, crippled man with a wooden leg who was trying to get into car after car, but each time was pushed away by the people who were already hanging on the footboards. The train started to move and the old man hopped along. At one point he manage to grab a handle of one of the cars, and then I saw a woman in the doorway lift a kettle and pour boiling water straight onto the old man’s bald crown. Brodsky 1986: 18–19

This parallel is especially interesting since the attribution of “a scalp . . . scalded with boiling water” is not quite clear. Separated from the list of swearwords by a semicolon, it could be another apostrophe, or else perhaps a self-­description by the we-­speaker. For this speaker, just as for the one in “Tol’ko pepel . . .,” death means ultimate liberty: what seems carrion to you is freedom to our cells (“Letter to an Archaeologist”) potomu chto padal’—svoboda ot kletok, svoboda ot tselogo: apofeoz chastits. (“Tol’ko pepel . . .”) because carrion is the freedom from cells, the freedom from/ the whole: the apotheosis of particles. (“Only ashes . . .”)

The Russian “padal’” is very close to “carrion”: it denotes dead (possibly rotting) animals and can be used as a term of abuse for human corpses. Carrion equals freedom. However, in English the freedom belongs to cells, while the Russian poem describes freedom from cells. These lines are otherwise almost identical. Such traces of translation can help inform another domain of Brodsky studies—his translations of other poets

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from English into Russian. As a rule, Brodsky translated his own poems into English and other people’s work into Russian. Any exception is potentially valuable material for research on poetry translation in general and self-­translation in particular, and it would be fascinating to study a collection of Brodskian translations from both Russian and English, of both his own and other poets’ work. This might throw light on the question of language- and prosody-­specific phenomena vs. specific features of self-­translation. The image of free particles, combined with the idea of death as ultimate freedom, reappears eight years later in a poem (“At a Lecture”) composed by Brodsky in English: the place will be reclaimed by elemental particles free from the rigidity of a particular human shape or type of assembly. Some particles are still free. It’s not all dust.

“At a Lecture,” in its turn, shows similarities to the 1989 Russian poem “Doklad dlya simpoziuma” (A Paper for a Symposium). The references to academia are not restricted to the title—in both poems, the speaker is a lecturer. Both are unrhymed philosophical deliberations on the (presumably posthumous) liberation of certain entities from the body as a whole. In “Doklad” (A Paper), an eye has gained the freedom to move on its own. With this lonely eye in space, the poem forms a link not only to “At a Lecture” and “Letter to an Archaeologist” / “Tol’ko pepel . . .,” but also to “Kvintet”/ “Sextet” with its nervous eyelid. Of course, such connections also exist in the work of monolingual poets—but self-­translation makes them more numerous and intricate. This is partly due to a lesser fear of repetition. Not only do the poems in two languages usually have different readerships; in Brodsky’s view, language itself desires innovation and does not want to be overburdened with the continuous refinement of similar motifs. More importantly, some ideas and images (and almost all sound effects) can only be born from a particular language; two languages make two sources for fruitful exchange. A relation of similarity, sometimes approaching translation, exists between many Brodskian poems. In the following attempt at a graphic representation, solid arrows stand for translation proper, dashed ones signify a “semi-­translation” (different languages, strong influence, very similar formal arrangements, shared images and themes, and so on), while dotted arrows suggest a marked similarity in images and/or themes but not in form (the distinctions are far from clear-­cut, of course):

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Figure 7.1  Only connect (copyright: Alexandra Berlina)

8

Themes Taking Root in Translation and Other Tendencies

Coming up with a conclusion for this book is tricky. I consider the parallel close readings to be its main concern, but summing up my findings would mean rewriting the whole text, the way Borges’ Pierre Menard did with Quixote. I would enjoy the process, but I have compassion for my readers. So instead, I am going to deal with the overall tendencies in Brodsky’s self-­translations. To begin with, there are two images that have become Brodskian leitmotifs in self-­translation: wet dreams and hard horizons.

8.1  Wet dreams When moving from Russian into English, texts often become more sexually explicit. This is true, for instance, for Nabokov’s self-­translations—see Nabokov Translated (Grayson 1977). Some reasons for this tendency are the target culture’s permissiveness and the target language’s larger sexual vocabulary. In Russian, there appears to be no expression for “to make love” which is not clinical, or offensive (often misogynic), or awkward, like the relatively recent “zanimat’sya lyubov’yu/seksom” (literally, to occupy oneself with love/sex). In an untitled 1971 poem, Brodsky points to this linguistic lacuna by stating that “lyubov’ kak akt lishena glagola” (love as an act lacks a verb/word). So did Brodsky jump at the chance to write about love as an act when the English language presented him with an opportunity to do so? Not quite. Co-­translations do indeed become generally more risqué in English than their originals. For instance,“1972 god,” as rendered by Alan Myers and Brodsky, ambiguously mentions the word “cherry” and features a girl who “guards her noble place” instead of the original “koftochku” (blouse). When Brodsky begins translating on his own, one particular motif gains in importance: wet dreams. As we shall see shortly, sex is not the only (and arguably not the main) point here. Brodsky was keenly interested in dreaming; he attempted to record his dreams in a special notebook (Murav’eva 1998: 253): originally a “Tetrad’ dlya zapisi slov” (vocabulary book), it was renamed via the change of a single letter and became a “Tetrad’ dlya zapisi snov” (notebook for dreams). Dreams abound in Brodsky’s poetry. So do liquids: water and other fluids form a sea of imagery throughout his oeuvre. Courtesy of the English language, he could unite these

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two themes in two words: “wet dreams.” In three self-­translations and in one original English poem, he uses or plays upon this expression. There is no analogue for the phrase “wet dreams” in Russian. Of course, this does not make the topic unapproachable; part VII of “Ekloga IV: Zimnyaya” (self-­translated as “Eclogue IV: Winter”) is dedicated to erotic dreams. Still, the English idiom allows Brodsky to intensify or add sexual connotations, and—arguably, much more importantly—to suggest a multitude of additional meanings and philosophical innuendos in merely three letters: “wet.” In Russian, similar suggestions take up more space: the long poem “Gorbunov i Gorchakov” to a large part consists of dreams discussed by two inmates of a mental home, and a whole canto is devoted to a recurrent dream of the sea. It could be read as sexual—“more—eto vse zhe / yest’ vpadina” (the sea—after all, it is a cavity), and certainly is connected to the creation of life, to evolution—“Da, eto more. Imenno ono. / Puchina bytiya, otkuda vse my, / kak vityazi, yavilis’ tak davno” (Yes, this is the sea. Exactly so. / The abyss of being, from where all of us, / like vityazi [here: magical heroes coming out of the sea] have appeared so long ago). The relationship between water and dreams is reciprocal: “I my v nego vpadaem, slovno reki” (And we fall into it [sleep/dreaming] like rivers). Losev draws a connection to the Jungian symbolism of the sea as the subconscious (Losev 2006: 302). It is easy to understand why Harry Thomas introduces an allusion to “wet dreams” into his translation: “‘I dreamed about the sea.’ ‘Oh hell!’ / ‘Let’s do without the wet stuff.”’ (“Gorbunov and Gorchakov,” 1987); Brodsky must have approved of the quip, since by that time, no translation appeared without his participation. The connection between water and time is a favorite topos with Brodsky. In numerous poems, he makes the same suggestion as in his lyrical essay on Venice: humans are “partly synonymous with water, which is fully synonymous with time” (Brodsky 2002b: 124). Brodsky has a penchant for connecting liquids. They flow into each other: “Evolving backward, a river / becomes a tear” (“Café Trieste”). They are compared: “Ink is more honest than blood” (“December”). They form clusters: “Debyut” (Debut), a poem dealing with defloration, does not mention blood directly but features a tightly corked bottle of red wine along with less obvious allusions—rain, tea and water in the bathtub. Such clusters can also have the form of a list whose members are partly interchangeable in self-­translation: brodsky: russian Zdes’, gde stol’ko / prolito semeni, slez vostorga / i vina “S natury,” 1995 literal translation Here, where so much seed, tears of delight and wine have been shed/spilled “From nature” brodsky: self-translation Here, where plenty / of saliva, rapturous tears, and even / seed has been shed. “In Front of Casa Marcello,” 1995

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In translation, “tears” remains the middle component; “seed” is stressed (by “even,” the phonetic interplay with “shed” and the transposition toward the end of the list); “saliva” takes the place of “wine.” In Brodsky’s oeuvre, saliva suggests not only speech—“moist words” (“December”) come to mind—but also literature: slovestnost’ . . . poka yest’ v gorle vlaga, / ne bez priyuta “P’yatstsa Mattei” literature . . . as long as there is moisture in the throat, / is not without an abode “Piazza Mattei”

Seawater, too, is connected to speech— More, madam, eto chya-­to rech’ “Pis’mo v butylke” The sea, madam, is someone’s speech “Letter in a bottle”

and also to sexuality— shimmering waves whose rather languid / mirror reflects things happening under the blanket “The New Jules Verne,” the self-­translation is close to the original here

In “Café Trieste,” the female addressee’s bed is called “linen waters,” in “Folk Tune”, it is a “basin.” There are more examples, but perhaps we should turn to the two pioneering studies on sexuality in Brodsky’s poetry at this point. Losev sets out to demonstrate “how erotic Brodsky’s poetry is as a whole, and how unerotic are the sexual motifs and images not infrequent in it” (Losev 1995: 189). And indeed, Brodsky’s oeuvre is sensual in as far as it strongly appeals to the senses, and erotic in as far as love is one of its main themes, but never titillating. Pilshchikov states that Brodsky’s “love discourse is clearly eroticized (‘spermaticized’, as Majakovskij would probably say) . . . it is amusing that Brodsky’s descriptions of his own sexual communion demonstrate the highest possible level of defamiliarization” (Pilshchikov 1995: 342). That the acts evoked by Brodsky in his poems equal “his own” is a rather careless assumption. Corrected, this statement brings us back to Losev’s observation: it is, in fact, rarely “love discourse” which is eroticized. While references to sexual acts (some of which do invite an autobiographical reading) are coded and estranged, “spermatized” discourse appears unconnected to love poetry. If it refers to human sexuality at all, it is the lonely sexuality of teenagehood—“youngsters linger / like tightly corked bottles with frozen sperm”

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(“Centaurs IV”);1 “in a brick malodorous dorm / boys awake awash in sperm” (“Reveille”)—or the aggressive sexuality of a “Spermatozaurus Rex” (“Fossil Unwound”). The last two poems are originally written in English, as is “Anti-Shenandoah,” in which the female speaker wants her partner and herself to be “nameless, the way we were when we were spermatozoa.” Out of the three dozen poems Brodsky composed in English, three contain a reference to sperm as a beginning—be it in the most direct sense (in “Anti-Shenandoah”) or via a reference to evolution or awakening, the beginning of the day. More often than in the context of sex, semen appears as a symbol in philosophical poetry, for instance, in a discussion of divine and human nature: “Gods leave no blotches / on the bedsheet, not to mention offspring” (“Vertumnus,” self-­translation). It can signify time, like any other liquid: “seven / years later and pints of semen / under the bridge” (“Exeter revisited,” English original). Semen forms part of a complex philosophic-­metaphorical web in “Kolybel’naya Treskovogo Mysa” (Lullaby of Cape Cod): Time is a woman, and Space is a man who has the human body for his penis; for sperm, he has a salty liquid which is simultaneously the sea and human tears; wet (“filthy”) dreams are also present.2 brodsky: russian Sostoya iz lyubvi, gryaznykh snov, strakha smerti, prakha, osyazaya khrupkost’ kosti, uyazvimost’ pakha, telo sluzhit v vidu okeana tsedyashchey semya krayney plot’yu prostranstva: slezoi skulu serebrya, chelovek yest’ konets samogo sebya i vdayetsya vo Vremya. literal translation Consisting of love, filthy dreams, fear of death, ashes,/ realizing how fragile a/the bone is, how vulnerable a/the groin,/ the body serves in view of the ocean as a semen-­drawing/ foreskin [lit.: utmost flesh] of space: silvering [his] cheekbone with a tear,/ man is his own end/penis/ and juts forth into Time./

In his monograph on Brodsky, Losev re-­states his claim about sexuality in Brodsky’s poetry, that “the sexual is not stylistically stressed in [Brodsky’s early love] poems . . .

The rhyme scheme is changed in translation, pairing “sperm” with “storm” and thus connecting it to the sea. Anthony Hecht’s translation is worth mentioning: “an erect / body at seaside is the foreskin of space, / letting semen through. His cheek tear-­silver-­flecked, / man juts forth into Time; man is his own end.” “End” forms another pun: in both languages the word suggests death, but in Russian it also means “penis” while in English it additionally signifies “aim.” The sexual connotation is re-­ established in the added “erect.”

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But when talking about unerotic sex, about ‘filthy dreams’, slang and also obscene terminology are used.” Many scholars appear to be unaware of these observations when they lament the “dryness” of some Brodskian poems and pointedly leave out all sexual aspects in their close readings of others. This is the case with the stanza cited above: its final two lines are often discussed without any mention of the phallic imagery. Sometimes “unseemly” references appear to go genuinely unnoticed. For instance, an article on “Byust Tiberiya” (Bust of Tiberius) discusses a statue’s ability to “acquire the gift of speech” (Ungarianu 1996; 177) not mentioning that the alleged lips are actually labia: (Te samyye usta! glagolyushchiye sladko i bessvyazno v podkladke togi.) (Those very lips!/ which talk sweetly and meaninglessly/ under the toga’s lining.)/

Such interpretational difficulties tend to arise because sexual references in “serious” poetry are highly unusual for Russian literature. Brodsky was well aware of this: Iosif is saying that only those who have given literature something new should be awarded the Nobel Prize. I, jocularly: “Now tread carefully, Iosif, you got it, after all. What new thing have you given Russian literature?” Iosif, after a moment’s thought, laughing: “Neprilichiye.” Iangfel’dt 2010

I have chosen to leave the final word untranslated here; it can be rendered as “indecency,” “immodesty,” “obscenity,” “impropriety” or “bawdiness.” In the Western world, sexuality and philosophy can be closely interconnected. A work of fiction famous for its innuendos can be an established classic, such as Tristram Shandy or Ulysses. Sexuality and philosophy are often united in John Donne’s work, which Brodsky loved. There is no comparable essay-writing, fiction or poetry in Russian; sex and high-­brow culture are expected to be clearly separated. The Western approach to sexuality and the idiom “wet dreams” prompted Brodsky to develop the topic in his self-­translations. But Brodsky also uses the expression “wet dreams” asexually: For dreams here aren’t bad: just wet with blood of one of your like who left his pad to ramble at will; and in his head dreams are replaced with lead. “The Berlin Wall Tune,” composed in English

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“Wet dreams” refer to both murder (blood) and, obliquely, to its opposite—creation, writing (“pad” evoking ink). An association with bloodshed arises also in “The Fifth Anniversary”: Tam muchayet okhrannik vo sne shtyka trekhgrannik. “Pyataya Gogovshchina” There, a guard tortures the trihedron of a/the bayonet in [his] sleep/dream “The Fifth Anniversary” A sleeping guard enjoys wet dreams and pulls the trigger. “The Fifth Anniversary”, self-­translation

In this context, “wet” can be read to refer to blood. Apart from murder, pulling the trigger suggests an orgasm; the change from “tortures” to “enjoys” supports the image of fulfillment. Wet dreams are associated with imprisonment in several poems. Despite Brodsky’s relative skepticism towards Freud,3 a possible explanation is offered in “Gorbunov i Gorchakov”: “Freid govorit, chto kazhdyy—plennik snov” (Freud says that everybody is a captive of [his] dreams). In “Ekloga V: Letnyaya” (“Elogue V: Summer”); “prokuror” (prosecutor) has an unambiguously juridical meaning; the North refers to (Brodsky’s?) Northern exile: A posle pod odeyalom melko drozhit, tusklo mertsaya, strelka novogo kompasa, opredelyaya Sever ne khuzhe, chem udalaya mysl’ prokurora. And later beneath the blanket in small motions/ trembles, dully glimmering, the needle/ of a/the new compass, establishing/ North not worse than the dashing/ thought of a /the [public] prosecutor./

Brodsky was not nearly as aggressive towards psychoanalysis as, for instance, Nabokov, though he believed that Freud overrated sexuality and misunderstood its relationship with creativity (see Brodskiĭ 2000: 567–8). Russian scholars tend to overrate Brodsky’s dislike for Freud as they take into account the early poem “Rech’ o prolitom moloke” (Talking of spilled milk), which is deprecatory about Freudians, but not the “History of the Twentieth Century,” written in English. In this long poem, he regards Freud with ironic interest: “Freud’s ‘Psychopathology of Everyday / Life’ that really [is] not to be missed!”; “Dear Dr. Freud, I will say good-­bye / to you who have managed, intuitively/ (yet somehow outside us), to throw a span /across the soul’s river from groin to brain.”

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The location (in bed) and the direction (North equals up) might point to sexual significance. In translation, the suggestion is subtly increased as “your” is added (with “brand-­new” possibly referring to boyhood): And later, beneath the covers, your brand-­new pocket compass’s needle quivers, gleaming dully yet pointing north not any less categorically than many a prosecutor. “Eclogue V: Summer,” translated by Brodsky and George L. Kline

The most famous of Brodsky’s lines to feature prison and wet dreams in English has no sexual connotations in the original: Ya vpustil v svoi sny voronenyy zrachok konvoya (“Ya vkhodil vmesto dikogo . . .”) I let into my dreams the convoy’s burnished steel pupil (“I have entered instead . . .”) I’ve admitted the sentries’ third eye into my wet and foul / dreams “May 24, 1980,” self-­translation

Here, “wet” can suggest water (cf. “twice have drowned” in the same poem), with all its implications; or sweat, or tears. A poem similar to “May 24, 1980” in tone (part manifesto, part self-­elegy), seems to have been waiting for Brodsky’s translation and the expression “wet dreams”: Tak shkol’nik, uvidev odnazhdy vo sne chernila, gotov k umnozhen’yu luchshe inykh tablits. “Menya obvinyali vo vsem . . .” Thus a pupil, having once seen ink in his dream,/ is better prepared for multiplication than some tables./ “I’ve been reproached . . .” Thus wetting his dream with the tumbled ink pot, a schoolboy can multiply as no tables will. “Taps,” self-­translation

Both versions can be read as depicting a boy who has started (1) to write and (2) to have erotic dreams. The image is more dynamic in English thanks to the “tumbled ink-­pot” and the active verb “multiply”; both layers of meaning—especially the latter— are more intensely present. In Russian, “tablitsa” can only mean a table made of rows and columns (and not of wood); in English, a desk is also suggested. In regard to

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sexuality, “wetting” is the most important change, but not the only one: “schoolboy,” unlike “shkol’nik,” includes the root “boy” which stresses that it is a young male. “Multiply” suggests both “be fruitful, and multiply” and the multiplication of words and realities in literature.4 The original version of “Taps” uses the word “umnozhen’yu” (multiplication) which evokes similar associations, but less clearly, as breeding has a different prefix: “razmnozheniye.” The translation allows Brodsky to express more vividly his belief that “art and sexuality . . . both are sublimations of one’s creative energy, and that denies them hierarchy” (Brodsky 1986: 45), while estranging and thus renewing an English expression.

8.2  Hurtful horizons The horizon as a source of pain, a hard or sharp thing, is one of Brodsky’s favorite images. “One always wants to reach one’s ideal, to embrace it, to sleep with it. [But] a true ideal is like the line of horizon, it is unreachable,” he said (in Polukhina 2009). In much of his poetry, though, the horizon can be reached, touched, even crossed—but always painfully. Losev disregards this when he states that Brodsky didn’t “realize that the paronomastic combination ‘see no difference between “gorizont” [horizon] and “gore” [grief]’ does not make any sense” (Losev 2006: 261). It seems that Losev is less perceptive than usual at this point because, to fully appreciate the image, one has to look at Brodsky’s oeuvre in English. In translation, the horizon motif is realized with greater intensity, as the following table of excerpts shows [my emphases in bold]: Russian poems and literal translations

English versions

“Zvezda Tsarey nad izgorod’yu porta”

“The Star of Kings above the sharp horizon”

(“Vtoroe Rozhdestvo na beregu . . . ,” 1971)

(“A second Christmas by the shore . . . ,” translated by G. L. Kline and Brodsky, 1977)

The Star of Kings above the harbor fence “More chetvertyy den’ glukho gudit u damby.”

“For the fourth day the sea hits the dike with its hard horizon.”

(“Oktyabr’skaya pesnya,” 1971)

(“October Tune,” translated by Brodsky, 1987)

The sea for the fourth day dully drones by the dike. “ne gorizont vizhu ya—znak minusa / k prozhitoy “it’s not a horizon I see but a minus sign / on my zhizni. Ostrey, chem mech ego, / lezviye eto” previous life. This line is clearly / keener than a hero’s sword” (“1972 god,” 1972) I see not a/the horizon I see but a minus sign on the life I lived. This blade is sharper than his sword.

(“The Year 1972,” translated by Alan Myers and Brodsky, 1979)

In “Pis’ma rimskomu drugu” (Letters to a/the Roman friend), a similar ambiguity is used: “slozhen’ye” means both addition and composition.

 4

Themes Taking Root in Translation and Other Tendencies “Na kruglyye glaza / vid gorizonta deystvuyet, kak nozh”

“To these round eyes, the view / of the bare horizon line is like a knife”

(“Pokhorony Bobo,” 1972)

(“The Funeral of Bobo,” translated by Richard Wilbur, 1975)5

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On round eyes, the view of a/the horizon has the effect of a knife “glaz, zasorennyy gorizontom, plachet”

“eyes, stung by sea horizons, / must weep”

(“Odissey Telemaku,” 1972)

(“Odysseus to Telemachus,” translated by George L. Kline and Brodsky, 1973)

the eye, soiled by the horizon, is crying “U vsego yest’ predel: / gorizont—u zrachka”

“Every thing has a limit: the horizon that splits / a round eye”

(“Litovskiy noktyurn,” 1974)

(“Lithuanian Nocturne,” translated by Brodsky, 1987)

everything has a limit:/ the horizon [is that] of the pupil “ya peresek druguyu—gorizonta, / ch’ye lezviye, “I cut across another line—whose edge / is sharper Mari, ostrey nozha.” than a knife blade: the horizon” (“Twenty Sonnets to Mary, Queen of Scots,” (“Dvadtsat’ sonetov k Marii Styuart,” 1974) translated by Peter France and Brodsky, 1988) I crossed another—[the line of] the horizon, whose blade, Mary, is sharper than a knife “s siney, rezhushchey glaz chertoy—/ gorizontom nulya” (“Polden’ v komnate,” 1978)

(no translation published)

with a [dark-]blue line that cuts the eye—/ the horizon of a zero. “sinyuyu ryab’, prodolzhayushyuyu uluchshat’ / liniyu gorizonta”

“the blue ripples perfecting their sharp-­as-­steel line of the horizon”

(“Novyy Zhyul’ Vern,” 1977)

(“The New Jules Verne,” translated by Brodsky, 1987)

blue ripples proceeding to improve / the horizon line “vysi i proch. brezgayut glad’yu kozhi” (“Rimskiye elegii,” 1981)

“pores are spurned by summits or sharp horizons”

the heights and such disdain the skin’s smoothness (“Roman Elegies,” translated by Brodsky, 1983) (poem originally written in English)

“Hence the horizon’s blade.” (“Seaward,” 1983)

It is unclear whether Brodsky participated in this translation. Carl R. Proffer’s preceding version reads “On rounded eyes / the sight of the horizon is like a knife.”

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This table does not include several other poems in which the horizon is associated with sadness or loss, but not with sharpness or hardness. Among the poems in the table, one (“Polden’ v komnate”) has never been translated from Russian and one was originally written in English (“Seaward”: the image forms the poem’s final words). This seems like a nicely symmetrical distribution; however, the image of a hard/sharp horizon is actually three times as frequent in English as in Russian. It appears in nine published translations, but only in three of their source poems. In three of the originals (“Oktyabr’skaya pesnya,” “Rimskiye elegii,” “Vtoroye Rozhdestvo na beregu . . .”) there is no mention of a horizon at all; in the other three cases (“Novyy Zhyul’ Vern,” “Litovskiy noktyurn,” “Odissey Telemaku”) it is only in English that the horizon becomes “sharp-­ as-­steel,” or stings the eye, or splits it. Out of the six translations in which the addition takes place, four are by Brodsky alone: “Lithuanian Nocturne,” “October Tune,”6 “The New Jules Verne” and “Roman Elegies.” All but the last one appeared within one year, 1987: we shall see shortly why this timing might be relevant. In the two other cases, the only translator acknowledged in print is George L. Kline. However, Brodsky played an active role in these translations: thanks to Zakhar Ishov’s studies of his correspondence with Kline, it has been established that Brodsky was responsible for “the sharp horizon” in “A second Christmas by the shore . . .” (Ishov 2008: 151). It is not improbable that “stung by sea horizons” in “Odysseus to Telemachus” was also initiated by Brodsky. Here, and in several other poems, the horizon appears in connection with the sea7—after all, where else is it as clearly visible? Most of Brodsky’s poems featuring a horizon invite a biographical reading and I will deal with them presently, temporarily adopting the following view: Because every work of art . . . is understandably a self-­portrait of its author, we won’t strain ourselves too hard trying to distinguish between the author’s persona and the poem’s poetic persona. . . . such distinctions are quite meaningless, if only because a poetic persona is invariably an author’s self-­projection. Brodsky 1986: 304

If this is so, the horizon belongs to the ocean between the US and Russia. “Odissey Telemaku” is one example. Brodsky’s son remained in Russia; when Odysseus addresses Telemachus, his “eyes, stung by sea horizons / must weep”—staring at the separating sea till it hurts, he will not see his son but only the line between water and sky. The original can also be read this way, but in translation the pain is more piercing: firstly, In “October Tune,” Brodskian signature features—references to time, sea and inanimate objects, the rhymed loose dolnik—are complemented by “hard horizon,” making the self-­translation more characteristic of the poet than the original. Originally one of Brodsky’s least ornate poems, short and lyrical, “Oktyabr’skaya pesnya” is changed in its very character in translation. Acquiring images that function intellectually rather than sensually, it loses simplicity—or else, gains metaphorical complexity, centering on the image of an aggressive horizon.  7 Sometimes the sea is explicitly present, sometimes suggested; in “Seaward,” for instance, through the title and the line “Only the liquid furniture cradles the dwindling figure”; in “Polden’ v komnate,” by the color blue. In “Odissey Telemaku” and “1972 god,” the horizon is seen by a hero of an antique myth which takes place on an island.  6

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the father seems to stare at the sea again and again (due to the plural of “horizons” in English, but singular in Russian); secondly, the line does not merely soil the eye but hurts it.8 In “Twenty Sonnets,” the horizon threatens the neck rather than the eye. The table above only quotes two lines; here is the missing context: brodsky: russian Vo izbezhan’ye rokovoi cherty, ya peresek druguyu—gorizonta, ch’ye lezviye, Mari, ostrey nozha. Nad etoy veshch’yu golovu derzha, ne kisloroda radi, no azota, burlyshchego v razduvshemsya zobu, gortan’. . . togo . . . blagodarit sud’bu. “Dvadtsat’ sonetov k Marii Styuart,” 1974 literal translation To avoid a/the fatal line,/ I crossed another—[the line of] the horizon,/ whose blade, Mary, is sharper than a knife./ Holding my head over this thing,/ not for oxygen but for nitrogen/ that blubbers in [my] distended Adam’s apple,/ the larynx . . . like . . . thanks destiny./ “Twenty sonnets to Mary Stuart” translation by peter france and brodsky To sidestep the straight line of destiny, I cut across another line—whose edge is sharper than a knife blade: the horizon, Mary. With neck above that thing outstretched — ­ not for the oxygen but the breathtaking poison that bursts my Adam’s apple with a squeal— the larynx’s sort of grateful for the deal. “Twenty Sonnets to Mary, Queen of Scots”

The poetic persona deliberately puts his neck above the horizon’s guillotine (after all, the poem is addressed to Mary Stuart) and is grateful to have avoided a greater danger. The mention of gratitude sounds almost sarcastic in translation; not so in Russian. The difference lies in the first and the last lines of the section quoted: the fatal line that has been escaped is more ominous than “the straight line of destiny”; “. . . togo Though not quite so badly as to remind one of the eye-­cutting scene in the film Un chien andalou, as do three other poems: “Pokhorony Bobo,” the English version of “Lithuanian Nocturne” and “Polden’ v komnate.”

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. . .” does not equal the skeptical “sort of ” but suggests difficulty in expressing oneself (maybe due to the lack of oxygen). Here, the horizon is not an imaginary line which by definition cannot be reached, but a “thing” / “veshch’ ” (a Brodskian key word, as we know) separating the speaker from his home country (and its dangers), a border that has been crossed. It cannot be crossed back. The Iron Curtain is an obstacle; Brodsky’s pleas to be allowed to attend his parents’ funerals were declined. Later, he could have visited (indeed, was very welcome to do so) but did not. By this point his exile became, to some degree, a self-­perpetuated myth (see Bethea 1994), but there was also a real and insurmountable border: Brodsky’s horizon exists not only in space, but in time. As he put it in an interview: “. . . for me that time [1960s] is the motherland” (in Reĭn 1996, italics in the original). In his poetry, water is often synonymous with time; a line cutting the former also cuts the latter. At this point, Ishov’s monograph merits a lengthy quotation, as he discovers and convincingly analyzes a change Brodsky introduces into Kline’s version of “A Second Christmas . . .” in the line before the “sharp horizon.” He substitutes “Pontus, which remains unfrozen” for “a sea whose mirror winter does not harden”: ‘[a sea] whose mirror winter does not harden’ . . . seems to be what one may call a “poetic” rendition of the original, which goes more or less like ‘unfreezing Pontus’. So why would then Brodsky want to change it? . . . time resides, according to Brodsky’s cosmology, in the sea. . . . Thus the sea that never freezes stands for time which likewise never stops flowing . . . The meaning of ‘unfreezing Pontus’ is not only the literal one, that of the Black Sea in winter, but also a metaphorical one— that of time which never stops flowing, never freezes. Kline’s translation . . . neglects (because of the word ‘winter’) the metaphorical component of time, which is more crucial in the context of the entire poem. Ishov 2008: 150

But water is not always required to connect the image of the horizon to time. Let us look at “1972 god” (again, the excerpt provided in the table lacks a context; here and further on, the English version is by Myers and Brodsky). A rather complex equation is established here: the horizon equals what is in front of oneself, which equals future, which equals the opposite of past, which equals a minus sign, which equals a sword. “1972 god”/ The year 1972 brodsky: russian Tochno Tesey iz peshchery Minosa, vyydya na vozdukh i shkuru vynesya, ne gorizont vizhu ya—znak minusa k prozhitoy zhizni. Ostrey, chem mech ego, lezviye eto, i im otrezana luchshaya chast’. “1972 god”, 1972

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literal translation Like Theseus out from Minos’ cave,/ having reached the outside and taken the pelt with him,/ it’s not a horizon I see—a minus sign/ on the life [I have] lived. It is sharper than his sword,/ this blade, and it has cut off/ the best part./ “The year 1972” translation by alan myers and brodsky Just like Theseus out from the lair in the Minos ring, coming up for air with the pelt of that menacing beast, it’s not a horizon I see but a minus sign on my previous life. This line is clearly keener than a hero’s sword, and shorn off by its cutting blade the dearest part. “1972,” 1979

The sea might well be implied (after all, the labyrinth—the “Minos ring”—is on an island, Crete), but it is not required for this equation. What is this dearest (in Russian, the best) part that is cut off? “The author’s youth in Russia” seems like a probable answer. “These categories—childhood, adulthood, maturity—seem to me very odd, and if I use them occasionally in conversation, I always regard them . . . as borrowed,” wrote Brodsky (1986: 16); the poem, however, speaks of a life clearly separated in two. For the prematurely old Brodsky, the age of thirty-­two was advanced enough for an irrevocable farewell to youth. It certainly was a farewell to Russia: 1972 is the year of Brodsky’s exile. Exile is implicitly mentioned in the poem; decrepitude is associated with the loss of his native language: “. . . here I’ll live out my days, losing gradually / hair, teeth, consonants, verbs, and suffixes.” To sum up: Brodsky introduces the image of a sharp horizon into three self-­ translations in 1987—the year when he receives his Nobel Prize, and when, due to perestroika, a visit to his native country becomes possible, an opportunity that Brodsky never takes. It is as if he was reminding himself that he could not return: even if he went back in space, he still could not go back in time. A crucial autobiographical image becomes more frequent in English9: this outlet is all the more necessary as Brodsky is not a nostalgic poet in his native language. His verses feature the words “toska” (yearning, longing) and “rodina” (motherland)—terms that go hand in hand in Russian—relatively often before his emigration: 70 and 34 times respectively. After leaving, however, he uses these terms not more often, as might be expected, but around ten times less frequently (Glazunova 2005: 8). This difference is too striking to be Awareness of the horizon trope would strongly support the argument of scholars discussing the therapeutic power of foreign language as a source of estrangement in Brodsky’s work (e.g. Beaujour 1989; Boym 1998; Kumakhova 2006).

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explained with a general gradual change in the poet’s vocabulary. Rather, Brodsky realized that these words, which tend to sound clichéd whatever the circumstances, are in much greater danger of sounding corny coming from an émigré. Brodsky avoids sentimental vocabulary and does not wallow in nostalgic reminiscences; he professes not to see exile (or anything else) as a turning point: “. . . because of some basic flaw of my mind or because of the fluid, amorphous nature of life, I have never been capable of distinguishing any landmark, let alone a buoy” (Brodsky 1986: 16). But despite his reluctance to exploit the theme of exile, despite his belief in the liquidity of existence, he does allow himself—especially in English—one reminder, one landmark (or, rather, watermark): the horizon.

8.3  More tendencies in translation So far, two leitmotifs intensified in translation have been described in some detail: the expression “wet dreams” allows Brodsky to connect several symbolic meanings of liquids to the notions of dreaming, sexuality and creativity; and the image of a horizon as a painful borderline, often closely connected to emigration, is three times as frequent in English as in Russian. This final chapter will describe tendencies of a more general nature. Strikingly often, Brosky’s self-­translations create or intensify an atmosphere of unreality. In each particular case, a host of different reasons might be proposed for the shift—the influence of Anglophone poets, the effect of a particular Russian phrase transposed literally into English, the dictate of rhyme and meter, and many others. These factors do matter; however, the quantity of the shifts suggests that the foreign language and/or the act of self-­translation as such tend to create estrangement. In “Sextet I,” the very first word, an article, has a defamiliarizing effect: “An eyelid is twitching.” Does the eyelid belong to the speaker, to somebody else, or does it float in space? The indefinite article preceding the word “eyelid” throughout the poem is a device of estrangement for which the Russian language has no parallel. In “December in Florence” (stanza IV), too, a grammatical qualifier estranges a near-­ocular facial feature—instead of “an eyelid,” here we have “some eyebrows” [my italics]. This phrase could refer to any number of solitary eyebrows devoid of a face. In the same poem, the English version of stanza VII suggests that life as such is not quite real. “Centaurs I” becomes strangely suggestive in translation, partly because Russian expressions are translated literally and left unexplained. “In Memoriam” is more dream-­like than its Russian counterpart; the mother’s portrait becomes surreal. Unlike the Russian source text, “Minefield” describes a celebration which seems fake. Attributes are added to suggest fuzziness and instability—the rustle of a drapery becomes “cloudy,” the glass “foggy” and “trembling.” The poem ends with the line “carafes on a tablecloth feign the Kremlin.” The notion of disguise, pretending, and play-­acting is added in several Brodskian self-­translations; some other examples are “masks” in “December,” “fake pyramids” in “Near Alexandria,” “the moon overhead apes an emptied square” in “Roman Elegies,” and “guise” in “Centaurs II.” In “Allenby Road,” written in English,

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“elms imitate a map.” It is as if Brodsky followed Touchstone’s advice in As You Like It—“the truest poetry is the most feigning.” Why does this happen? The act of self-­translation leads to self-­contemplation, and a touch of the surreal might appear as a side-­effect of distancing oneself from one’s own text. Alien elements are abundant in poems whose topic is intimate and tragic, but the need for distance is artistic and not merely therapeutic. A foreign language is a source of estrangement which can work unconsciously, semi- or fully consciously. One can ignore the fact that a turn of phrase sounds strange; one can be aware that a formulation is somewhat unidiomatic but misjudge the strength of the effect; or, finally, one can deliberately enjoy playing with a foreign language and creating surreal effects by breaking its rules. Roughly speaking, Brodsky proceeded from step one to step two to step three, taking poetic liberty further than most native speakers would. Almost paradoxically, Brodsky’s poems also tend to become more real in translation in regard to one particular domain—the body. His English texts are often more physical, or, rather, physiological. Most of these physiological additions refer to the organs of thought and speech. The brain, an organ Brodsky mentions unusually often in Russian, becomes an even more frequent presence in English. It replaces other words in six translations—“In Memoriam,” “Via Funari,” “Folk Tune,” “Constancy,” “An Admonition” and “Fin de Siècle” (in this last case, the term “thalamus” is used). In an interview (Eder 1979), Brodsky said that exile gives one “a more clinical notion of yourself.” In many cases, the heightened corporality is intended to provoke disgust. “May 24, 1980,” for instance, is much more physical than the original, to the point of nausea.10 The word “vomit” added; clay is “rammed down my larynx,” deeper than the original “mne rot . . . zabili” (crammed into my mouth). The line “only gratitude will be gushing from it” is phonetically grating; gushing, unlike the original “razdavat’sya” (“resound”), can also refer not only to speech but also to vomiting. The verb “gush” reappears in conjunction with nausea in the English “Sextet”—the poem’s second sentence is “from an open mouth / gushes silence”; “barf ” is substituted for “plevok” (spittle). In “To a Friend,” the image of “bottle-­struck livers” is added in translation, referring to both liver cirrhosis and drunken fights. Intratextual connections become more pronounced in several self-­translations— “December,” “In Memory of my Father” and “Centaurs I.” The whole “Centaurs” cycle arguably presents a more coherent development of its theme than “Kentavry.” A translation can develop its own stylistic dynamics; for instance, “To a Friend” accumulates a row of hyphenated attributes for which the original has no equivalents. In “Sextet,” “dry land’s scabies” is complemented by another kenning-­like metaphor— “horizon’s ant.” Moreover, it is only in translation that the poem, originally a quintet, becomes a “Sextet.” Its six parts consist of six-­line stanzas, the microstructure thus neatly mirroring the macrostructure in English. Several translations exhibit more internal coherence than the originals; a set of slight alterations can lead to a change in

A detailed discussion of this poem is, for reasons of space, not part of this book—please see “Self-Creation in Self-Translation: Brodsky’s May 24, 1980” (Berlina forthcoming).

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overall atmosphere and mood. “Minefield,” for instance, is more disdainful, while “To a Friend” is more laudatory. “Star of the Nativity” becomes ominous, while “Lullaby,” another Nativity poem, grows more serene. In both “Star” and “Lullaby,” as well as in several other poems, minimal shifts accumulate but the main change takes place in the ending. In “Star,” the neutral (or, arguably, tender) final words “eto byl vzglyad Ottsa” (that was the gaze of the/his Father) becomes “that was the Father’s stare.” The ending of “May 24, 1980” with its rhyme “vomit” / “from it” is more aggressive than the original one. The final line of “The Polar Explorer” advertises its deadly diagnosis with fanfare, while the original is quiet and understated. The phrase “feign the Kremlin” ends “Minefield,” completing the change in its mood. The tendency for the main change to occur in the ending can be explained in different ways—apart from the fact that such a change is perceived as especially important because it is in the ending. If translating a poem from the beginning, Brodsky might realize that the mood was subtly altered and decide to seal the change in the final line. Or else, if beginning the translation process with the last stanza, he might alter the rest to fit the new ending. These decision processes are not necessarily conscious. Besides, a new solution might be prompted by reasons unconnected to the intended emotional effect. In the case of “Star of the Nativity,” for instance, the meter did not allow the word “father” with its weak final syllable to end the poem (after all, Brodsky could have hardly used “Dad”), while “stare” presented a very tempting last word—its near-­identity with “star” allowed Brodsky to sum up the poem’s main metaphor in its final rhyme. An unusual development takes place in most Brodskian self-­translations—the number of poetic devices, especially word and sound play, increases. Research on puns and devices such as alliteration, assonance and consonance usually proceeds from the source text, dealing with the possible methods of re-­creation. But what happens if a translation adds such features? This is a rare effect, and a fascinating one. It can produce diametrically opposite reactions in readers. Poetic devices make readers more inclined to assume that they are dealing with an original text. But readers who already know a text to be a translation are reminded of this fact each time a pun or a phonetic embellishment draws attention to language. The most striking—almost onomatopoetic—examples of increased phonetic density (neither of which has a counterpart in the original poems) is perhaps the champagne orgy of fizzing alliterations (“frothy,” “firework,” “fizz,” “fade,” “foggy”) in “Minefield.” The “Centaurs” cycle, too, both re-­creates and adds word and sound play. After all, a pun—a mixture of at least two words and/or meanings—is a centaur of sorts. In “Centaurs I” (and also in “Roman Elegies,” “In Memoriam” and “Brise Marine”), some of the added puns involve both English and Russian. Puns can function as a means of accommodating tragedy. This works, not unlike writing in a foreign language, via estrangement. The two methods often come together, especially when Brodsky is writing about his deceased parents: “Should I brace myself then, thinking that I am hugging my mother and father?” (Brodsky 1986: 479). “In Memoriam,” a poem on the death of Brodsky’s mother, is devoid of puns in the original and features three in translation, two of which illustrate the poem’s theme: remembering and forgetting.

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“Translation [has an] explanatory nature” (Brodsky 1977: 36)—however, it is not the Russian connections that Brodsky tends to explain in translation, but the Western ones. References to Russian literature and cultural realia mostly remain puzzling, or are left out entirely, or else are substituted with Western analogues. These losses are inevitable. Short of adding footnotes, Brodsky could hardly have expected his Anglophone readers to recognize traces of Akhmatova or Mandelstam in his poems. Instead of explaining the original literary dialogues, he enhances references to sources which his readers are able to recognize. Allusions to Western literature are elaborated or added in several translations. “Centaurs I” is not only a phonetic and paronomastic tour de force; the translation also adds an allusion to Dante and clarifies a reference to T. S. Eliot’s “Burnt Norton.” “Epitaph” features a reference to Wordsworth’s “I wandered lonely as a cloud.” In “December,” the allusions to Mandelstam disappear, while those to Dante become more pronounced. One of the most dazzling examples of allusive richness is “Sextet.” It refers to Nabokov, Strand, T. S. Eliot and arguably also Sartre and Dylan Thomas. All these allusions intensify in translation. The parallels to Ada, or Ardor are especially elaborate: its misanthropic and solipsistic protagonists have much in common with the poem’s speaker. Religious motifs are also often clarified or added in translation. This is the case in “Elegy,” “North of Delphi,” “Folk Tune” and “Eclogue IV: Winter.” In this last poem, the Anglophone reader can more easily detect references to both Greek and Christian mythology. Christianity is arguably the most universal point of reference in Western culture, recognizable to Anglophone readers independently of their own religious beliefs. By stressing this aspect, Brodsky makes several of his poems less personal and more universal. A shift away from the personal domain can also be achieved by other means: “Folk Song,” “In Memoriam,” “Centaurs IV” and “Sextet” become more universal by virtue of readers’ unfamiliarity with Brodsky’s biography, but also because its protagonists are less concrete, often less Russian. A girl who writes on a “yellow pad” (“Folk Tune”), has a “middle name” and likes “curry and dates from Senegal” (“Brise Marine”) cannot be living in the Soviet Union. Hence, she is not M.B., not the real-­life object of Brodsky’s torments. While some of the most important people in Brodsky’s life are thus fictionalized, texts come alive. “August Rain” acquires a metatextual level seemingly by sheer luck—calling rain a “vehicle of nearsightedness,” the translation does not depart from the Russian version. In English, the image becomes a meta-­metaphor—if rain is the vehicle, what is the tenor? In “To a Friend,” the ambiguity of “slab” (of stone or text?) interplays with adjectives connected to writing that are added in translation. The postmodernist elegy has been convincingly described as a Brodskian key genre (Rigsbee 1996); in English, Brodsky’s elegies tend to become more “postmodern,” acquiring more allusions and self-­referential dimensions. I have not yet mentioned the most obvious point—the extreme importance of rhyme and meter for Brodsky. In translation, these features matter more to him than, for instance, imagery. Brodsky himself (and also his scholars, critics and co-­translators) have stressed this point often enough. I would merely like to point out that Brodsky is not enslaved to form for form’s sake. If he insists that meter and rhyme scheme are to be recreated, this is because they suit the poem. If the form is to change, the content is

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to follow, and vice versa. Rhymes certainly are of great importance to Brodsky, and he often succeeds in placing near-­equivalents of the original rhymes in rhyming position; however, his ultimate goal is to rhyme words that are crucial to the particular poem, “lending . . . a sense of inevitability to the poet’s statement” (Brodsky 1986: 98–9). If such a word rhymes in Russian, Brodsky tries to achieve the same effect in translation. But if the opportunity for a rhyme of greater significance arises in translation, he makes use of it. Compound rhymes including function words (conjunctions, prepositions, pronouns and particles) are perhaps Brodsky’s most recognizable peculiarity in Russian. An analytical language, English offers two additional categories—determiners and auxiliaries, and Brodsky makes ample use of them. Brodsky is also a great lover of enjambments; in English, these grow even more frequent. In “Star,” “Lullaby,” “October Tune,” “Elegy,” “The Polar Explorer,” “Sextet” and “May 24, 1980” enjambments added in English have semantic functions, creating meaningful pauses and stresses. The latter translation also features two other Brodskian signature features absent from the original “Ya vkhodil . . .”—switches in register and punning references to idioms. Many other features listed here—word and sound play, references to the brain, the anti-­erotic treatment of sexuality, the hurtful horizon—are also typical of Brodsky in Russian. With an increased concentration of his trademark devices, themes and motifs, Brodsky’s translations often become closer to his definition of poetry as “an art of references, allusions, linguistic and figurative parallels” (Brodsky 1986: 124). Many of the tendencies exhibited in self-­translation also appear in his monolingual self-­editing and/or in the development of his poetry over time: after all, it is always an older Brodsky who translates the work of a younger Brodsky. In short, Brodsky in English becomes more Brodskian. The perceived tendencies in translation might be due to mere chance, especially in poetry—after all, formal and linguistic reasons often lead to semantic change. The process of translation also develops its own dynamics, with every decision influencing the subsequent ones (see Levý 1966). The poems discussed here (or even a complete set of fifty-­five existing Brodskian self-­translations) are a modest sample. Still, they show shifts which seem to be more than mere statistical quirks. Why do they happen? The differences between the Russian and Anglo-American languages, cultures and especially prosodies and poetic traditions certainly play a role. Sometimes this role is paradoxical, as if Brodsky was partly motivated by spite. His passion for rhymed metrical poetry abundant in word and sound play seemed quaint to most American critics. Growing aware of the Anglo-American trend towards vers libre prompted Brodsky to become more—not less—“traditional” in his work. The quotation marks around “traditional” are necessary—at the time when Brodsky was translating his poetry into English, the tradition of free verse was dominant; a return to older forms was an experiment against the mainstream. If Brodsky had merely recreated his original poetic devices, it could be explained by his idea of a faithful translation. But he does more than that. His choice of poems to be rendered into English seems counter-­ intuitive. He ignores his stock of free verse (which would be easier to translate and more pleasing to most Anglophone readers) and picks out texts with the most intricate

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rhymes and metrical schemes. The very first poem he translates on his own is a case in point. With its aaa tercets—often including compound rhymes—and other intricate forms of sound play, “Dekabr’ ” is one of the most technically difficult translation objects Brodsky could have possibly chosen. Moreover, Brodsky often increases the amount of word and sound play in translation. Why? One might argue that paronomasia tends to sound less childish and naive in a foreign language: the emerging ability to play with new words is a delight to a quick mind—hence “a bright foreigner’s fondness for puns” (Nabokov 1989: 149). Brodsky’s favorite poet put it differently: “Good poets have a weakness for bad puns” (W. H. Auden, “The Truest Poetry is the Most Feigning”). In a way, all poets are foreigners: they estrange themselves from language by not using it automatically (Shklovsky 1991). Besides, punning is a way of thinking. John Donne and other representatives of the metaphysical school, which was so dear to Brodsky, liked to conflate meanings in a pun: the creation of puns and that of new ideas follow very similar patterns (see Koestler 1995). Brodsky the translator had two languages to play with, and he enjoyed this to the fullest. As regards rhyme and meter, Brodsky probably harbored an unacknowledged missionary ambition (Ishov 2008). Of course, he was not the only poet working with traditional forms in the American 1980s and 1990s, but he was part of a minority and keenly aware of it. Though he never would admit as much, he did wish to save the rhyme. After all, he believed that “a good rhyme is all that in the end saves poetry from becoming a demographic phenomenon” (Brodsky 1995: 313). Still, I don’t suggest that he was mainly moved by spite and missionary zeal. Nor do I think that the interlinguistic and intercultural differences along with translation-­ specific dynamics were responsible for all changes. Instead, I believe that many shifts are due simply to the fact that translation gave Brodsky a chance to rework his poems, albeit in a different language. Brodsky was usually shy of revisions; he altered only a few poems after they were published. He was neither Auden nor Whitman—he did not change his printed poems radically, neither did he spend his life editing and expanding a single collection. He largely agreed that the business of interpretation is handed over to readers once a text is finished. But when is it finished? Translation—and the creation of hybrid texts that go beyond the original final period—was his way of reclaiming published poems, of resurrecting himself from the death of the author.

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Index adjectives 15, 18, 20–1, 29–30, 37, 40, 55, 69, 83, 87, 90, 95, 107, 115–16, 125, 138–9, 158 Akhmatova, Anna xii, 13–14, 71, 180 alliteration see sound effects allusions see intertextuality (connections to other sources) ambiguity 20–1, 27–9, 33, 36–7, 39, 45, 50–2, 56–7, 64, 71–2, 75–7, 83, 89, 115, 125, 128, 131, 135, 137–8, 146–7, 151, 154, 163, 170, 185 American culture see Western culture and Anglo-American literature Anglo-American literature 1–3, 11, 15, 47, 55, 94, 102, 113, 141, 150, 189, 203; see also Auden, Dickinson, Donne, Eliot and Nabokov animals 17–18, 34–5, 68–9, 118, 122–7, 145, 150–1, 159–61, 163–4, 167–8, 170, 175, 181; see also cats and dogs assonance see sound effects attributes see adjectives Auden, W.H. 2, 11, 15, 34, 36–7, 82, 84, 203 Basmanova, Marina 26, 67, 72–7, 125, 127, 201 birds see animals body 29–30, 88, 108–10, 154–6, 199; see also sexuality and brain brain 8, 87–9, 138, 147, 156, 199 cats 23–4, 174 Christianity 23–4, 47–65, 77, 93, 108, 143, 145, 147, 170, 201 comparisons 3–5, 15, 17, 28–9, 37, 65, 72, 75–7, 88, 107, 126, 133, 143, 150, 159–60, 186 consonance see sound effects covert/overt translation 120–1, 200

Dante 13–17, 18, 20, 23, 26–7, 34–6, 44, 123, 146 death 15, 20–1, 37, 41, 52, 69–72, 79–84, 89–95, 100–1, 105, 107–8, 114–15, 138–9, 143, 150–1, 164, 168, 172–7, 179, 182–3, 203 defamiliarization see estrangement Dickinson, Emily 7, 88 dogs 68–9, 75–7, 144–5 dreams 37, 80, 84, 92–5, 99–101, 132, 156, 185–92 Eliot, T.S. 136, 162, 173–4 enjambment 11, 28, 33, 65, 69, 82, 126, 155–7, 171, 202 Eros and Thanatos see sexuality and death estrangement 7, 12, 25, 31, 79, 81–4, 92, 111, 123–4, 154–5, 137–8, 167–71, 187, 192, 198–9 existentialism 142–3, 156, 160 fish see animals and water forgetting see memory form see rhyme and rhythm gender 27, 71–2, 112, 133–4, 188; see also sexuality humor see irony and puns imagery see comparisons and metaphors intertextuality (connections to other sources) 13, 31, 55, 64, 69, 81, 95, 100, 110, 136, 141, 147, 150, 154–5, 165–6, 169, 175, 201 intertextuality (connections within Brodsky’s work) 37, 39, 45, 77, 81, 86–7, 89, 95–9, 127, 131, 137, 142–7, 151, 154, 158–60, 166–8, 174–202 irony 18, 22–3, 26, 44, 69, 75, 77, 83, 111, 118, 134, 141–2, 145, 148, 156, 161, 195

216

Index

Jewishness 47–8, 119, 131–3, 149–51, 167, 182 John Donne 3, 137, 189 Leningrad see St. Petersburg letters (Cyrillic and Roman) 25–7, 35–8, 40–1, 70–1, 81, 146, 160 liquids 27–8, 35, 65, 82–3, 142, 185–91; see also water love see Auden and Basmanova Mandelstam, Osip 8, 14, 26, 29, 34–5, 45, 52, 82 Marbles (Mramor) 71–2, 87, 164 memory 20, 44, 77, 80–4, 87–90, 92, 95, 100, 107, 151, 160, 176, 182, 200 metaphors 5, 8, 20, 24, 27, 31–2, 35, 37, 48, 50, 52, 65, 73, 76–7, 82–3, 89–90, 96, 101, 110–15, 124–7, 144, 161, 177, 188, 196, 199–201 metaphysical poetry 88, 203; see also John Donne meter see rhythm mood 51, 55, 61, 65–7, 72–3, 75–7, 83–4, 134, 138, 148–9, 151, 165, 177, 191, 198–200 mythology 20, 35, 92, 96, 113–15, 118–119, 122–3, 132, 141, 149, 201; see also Christianity Nabokov, Vladimir 1, 6, 23, 33, 112, 120–1, 165–6, 179, 185 neologisms 22–3, 84–5, 98, 111, 113–14, 119–21, 138, 142, 167, 172 numbers 15, 31–2, 75, 143, 162 onomatopoeia see sound effects paronomasia see puns Proust 44, 80 punctuation 25–6, 30, 37, 39, 50–1, 61, 73, 106, 125, 182 puns 28, 35–7, 39, 41, 75, 79, 82, 85–7, 90, 107–8, 111, 115, 120–4, 126, 131–2, 138–9, 141, 160, 166–7, 172, 181–2, 188, 192, 200, 203; see also neologisms Pushkin 15, 55, 77, 85, 113, 118, 125

realia 4, 40, 108, 163–4, 201 register 17, 36–7, 56, 61–2, 108–12, 120, 145, 189, 202 remembering see memory rhyme 1–3, 6–13, 16–19, 21, 24, 26–7, 31, 33–6, 40, 50–5, 61–3, 69, 71, 73, 75, 77, 90, 93, 95, 100–1, 113–14, 123, 127–8, 130–1, 139, 144, 147–8, 156–7, 162–3, 166, 171–2, 178–80, 188, 200–2 rhythm 7–8, 33, 50, 52–3, 61–2, 68, 82, 105–6, 108, 112–13, 151, 160, 177–9, 201 rivers see water Russian literature 31, 43, 62, 100, 110, 138, 169; see also Akhmatova, Mandelstam, Nabokov, Pushkin and Russian songs Russian songs 62, 95, 100, 147 sea see water self-elegy 88, 102, 151, 191, 197 sexuality 3–4, 17, 33, 71–2, 83, 109–12, 121, 132–3, 142–5, 154, 158, 165, 168, 171, 185–92, 201; see also gender sound effects 9, 21, 24, 40, 45, 52, 56–7, 64, 68–9, 77, 81–2, 113–14, 121–2, 130, 139–44, 155, 166, 172, 200; see also rhyme St. Petersburg 20–1, 24, 31, 35, 39, 42–5, 132 surrealism see estrangement and dreams tense (grammatical) see time time 15, 57, 64–5, 69, 82–4, 87, 90, 102, 122–3, 127–8, 132, 135–8, 142–3, 148–9, 150, 159, 164, 174, 176, 186, 188, 196–7; see also memory tone see mood translation, of Brodsky’s poetry, by others 2–3, 9, 17, 23, 29, 35, 41, 44, 119, 128, 186, 194–6 translation, of others’ poetry, by Brodsky 2, 13, 81, 165 water 17, 20, 28–9, 31, 35, 84, 126–7, 171, 176, 186, 196, 198; see also liquids and time

Index Western culture 1–2, 18, 30, 43, 47–8, 76, 118, 120, 159, 189, 201; see also Christianity and Dante women see gender, sexuality and Basmanova

217

word play see puns writing (as an image) 25–8, 41–2, 69–73, 81, 99–100, 107, 112–14, 118, 148–9, 156–7, 160; see also letters