It's that time of year again

Yesterday during the rainstorm I was in the library to pick up a book, as I often am, and was browsing the poetry section looking for Pushkin. See, I read yuki_onna ’s new book Deathless a few days ago, and while it’s pretty stark for her (which would be linguistically lush and layered for anyone else), I ate it up, and it’s making me remember a big book of Russian fairy tales I had as a child. (Yeah, there pretty much always WAS an Ivan.) And I wanted to check out some Pushkin, since he features so strongly in Deathless. I didn’t find anything about Koschei, but I did find this:


Sleep I cannot find, nor light:
Everywhere is dark and slumber,
Only weary tickings number
The slow hours of the night.
Parca, jabbering, woman-fashion,
Sleeping night, without compassion,
Life, who stirs like rustling mice,
Why encage me in thy vise?
Why the whispering insistence,—
Art thou but the pale persistence
Of a day departed twice?
What black failures dost thou reckon?
Dost thou prophesy or beckon?
I would know whence thou art sprung,
I would study thy dark tongue…


(“Verses Written During a Sleepless Night.” Deutsch and Yarmolinsky, comps. Modern Russian Poetry, 1921. I tell you, if my nights were sleepless then at least I wouldn't be having dreams about being a thoroughly useless human being.)

I quite like it, even if my own recent attempts at Catullus (98, rendered clumsily by me as “Victus the Stinkbreath”) have thrown me into despair and convinced me that I should just learn all languages ever and read things in the original, because many accurate translations are terrible poetry, and many decent poems are not at all accurate translations.

...Russian only has one alphabet, right? How hard can it be?

Happy Poetry Month.

It's that time of year again

Yesterday during the rainstorm I was in the library to pick up a book, as I often am, and was browsing the poetry section looking for Pushkin. See, I read yuki_onna ’s new book Deathless a few days ago, and while it’s pretty stark for her (which would be linguistically lush and layered for anyone else), I ate it up, and it’s making me remember a big book of Russian fairy tales I had as a child. (Yeah, there pretty much always WAS an Ivan.) And I wanted to check out some Pushkin, since he features so strongly in Deathless. I didn’t find anything about Koschei, but I did find this:


Sleep I cannot find, nor light:
Everywhere is dark and slumber,
Only weary tickings number
The slow hours of the night.
Parca, jabbering, woman-fashion,
Sleeping night, without compassion,
Life, who stirs like rustling mice,
Why encage me in thy vise?
Why the whispering insistence,—
Art thou but the pale persistence
Of a day departed twice?
What black failures dost thou reckon?
Dost thou prophesy or beckon?
I would know whence thou art sprung,
I would study thy dark tongue…


(“Verses Written During a Sleepless Night.” Deutsch and Yarmolinsky, comps. Modern Russian Poetry, 1921. I tell you, if my nights were sleepless then at least I wouldn't be having dreams about being a thoroughly useless human being.)

I quite like it, even if my own recent attempts at Catullus (98, rendered clumsily by me as “Victus the Stinkbreath”) have thrown me into despair and convinced me that I should just learn all languages ever and read things in the original, because many accurate translations are terrible poetry, and many decent poems are not at all accurate translations.

...Russian only has one alphabet, right? How hard can it be?

Happy Poetry Month.