Boris Pasternak
Note on ‘Salangane swallows’
Note on ‘Salangane swallows’, mentioned by Pasternak in the following paragraph from ‘A Safe-Conduct'(1930), part 2, chapter 18:
“I loved the living essence of historical symbolism, in other words that instinct with whose help, like salangane swallows, we have built the world: a vast nest, glued together from earth and sky, life and death, and two kinds of time, present and absent. I understood that what prevents it from falling apart is the force of cohesion contained in the figurativeness permeating all its particles.”
/transl. A.Livingstone/ Read more…
Returning to “Okhrannaia gramota” (“A SafeConduct”)
Returning to Pasternak after some years of writing about the work of Andrei Platonov, I find myself wondering about two main differences between the two writers (about whose few but striking affinities I have published an essay in Lazar Fleishman’s “V krugu D-ra Zhivago”(2000), and written another, entitled “Hamlet, Dvanov, Zhivago”). Read more…
Marina Tsvetaeva
The Pleasure of Translating
While I was translating Marina Tsvetaeva’s 1927 verse-drama Phaedra, and three long poems of hers to go in the same book, I found myself reflecting that very often, when translating poetry, especially if it is difficult, I feel a pleasure which is not like any other and which outsurges all the surgings of despair. Read more…
Pronouncing her name
A Note for English-speakers on how to pronounce the name ‘Tsvetaeva’ Read more…
A note on translating Tsvetaeva’s title Krysolov (Крысолов)
The title of Marina Tsvetaeva’s 1925 “Lyrical Satire” is rightly translated as The Ratcatcher. The word “krysolov” consists of ‘krys’ [=rat] plus ‘lov’ [=catch[er]]. It is quite wrong to substitute the title of Robert Browning’s poem, “The Pied Piper”. Read more…
Andrei Platonov
Report on September 2000 Platonov Conference
Report on the Neo-Formalist Conference ‘A Hundred Years of Andrei Platonov’ Read more…
Other
Tatyana
My visit to Tatyana Kazakevich in Yaroslavl’, June 1996
Down metal steps from the road bridge over the River Kotorosl’. Then the three of us make our way through tall grass, buttercups and cow-parsley to one of the most beautiful churches in Russia and the one with the highest number of depicted figures in the world, ten thousand of them: the Tolchkovskaya church of John the Baptist. Read more…
Professor Stanley Mitchell, 1932-2011
The death of Stanley Mitchell on October 16th is a great loss to the world of intellect and poetry, most especially to English-speakers’ understanding of Russian literature. It is also a sad event in the history of Essex University, in whose early development Stanley was so creative a participant. Read more…
Investiture at Buckingham Palace
A crowd gazes in at the Palace through the long line of high railings.
Entering the forecourt means, for us, showing to remarkably pleasant policemen not only our invitations but our passports.
Inside, in the long and lofty entrance hall, discreet pink sofas line the walls, eight of them, each about ten feet wide. But in every alcove and doorway stand – no, not statues, live guards in medieval military garb, absolutely motionless. Read more…