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Natalia Gorbanyevskaya's poems in English are Daniel
Weissbort's. Not entirely so, there was a bilingual selection translated by
Gerald S. Smith included in his Contemporary Russian Poetry, (Indiana University Press, 1993), but Weissbort's
were in Natalia Gorbanyevskaya, Poems
The Trial, Prison (Carcanet 1972), Poet-War Russian Poetry (Penguin, 1974), , in Twentieth-Century
Russian Poetry (edited with John Glad,
Weissbort's translations, University of Iowa Press, 1978, 2nd
ed.1992), and in Modern Poetry in Translation 20 (2002).
In his Introduction to the new book he says, "...it is hardly necessary
to point out yet again that translation is usually no better than an
approximation. I have taken a few liberties but, on the whole, have tried to
remin close to the literal rendering." He thanks Valentina Polukhina for
collaboration, saying this has made this book possible, and continues, "In
my renderings, Gorbanyevskaya [born Moscow, 1936] appears more of a
free-verse poet than she is, virtually all her poems being rigorously rhymed
and metrically regular. I have attempted to give some sense of this, but it
is hard to do so without gross distortion of normal English usages."
This is quite a caveat, and with a clear logic to it. On the other hand to
present 'literal rendering' as if it carries everything the poem is, has to
be queried.
I have listed the books, above, because his translations have developed over
the years, and one can track a tightening that is also a loosening (some
examples to follow), whereby fewer words make for a more pleasing flow.
Whether the personal sadness, sheer pain, revolutionary spirit, relentless
ache of the poems - and none of the Weissbort translations have the originals
for anyone who can read them - should make for what I am reading as a more
pleasing flow, I don't know.
In an undated but I imagine recent interview by Polukhina with
Gorbanyevskaya, in Paris, the poet's place of exile, she says that away from
one's own country and speech there is a confusion of tongues, as if one has
no language.
Now to trace Weissbort's variants through the editions by comparing those of
one poem, (few of the poems have titles), this one notes a time and place:
'July-September, 1970, Butyrskaya Prison':
The french
horn of the train sighs, weeps a little,
an
unattainable myth.
Through the
prison bars a match gleam trickles,
the whole
world is eclipsed.
The horn
takes wing, into the night it sweeps.
To flick
through tracks
like notes.
Oh how am I to reach
that rainy
platform!
Forsaken,
sleepless, deserted,
deserted
without me -
cloud tatters
like letters drift down
to your
concrete,
and
inscribing the puddles with full stops,
with hooks
and tails,
their treble
voices ring out after
the departed
train.
-----------
The train's
french horn sighs, sheds a few tears,
an unattainable
myth.
A match gleam
trickles through the prison bars,
the whole
world is eclipsed.
The horn
takes wing, into the night it sweeps.
To flick
through tracks
like notes.
Oh how am I to reachyou,
rainy
platform!
Forsaken,
sleepless, deserted,
deserted
without me ---
tatters of
clouds like letters drift down
to your
concrete,
and leaving a
trail across the puddles
of stops,
hooks, tails,
like treble
clefs they resound after
the departed train.
-----------------
The train's French
horn sweeps on,
an unattainable
myth.
A flame trickles
through the bars,
worlds eclipsed.
The horn sweeps
into the night,
playing the tracks.
How am I ever
to reach
that rainy
platform!
Sleepless,
deserted,
empty without
me
tattered
clouds settling, like letters,
onto your
concrete,
puddles with
full-stops:
hooks and
tails;
voices
ringing out
after the
departed train.
The first is from 1972, the second from the 1974 Penguin, the third from the
new Carcanet. There seems to me more melodrama about the first, while a
better flow and a tighter hold might describe the most recent, visually more
compact, less of it. Only one line, the second, comes intact through all
versions. The compactness is consistent in the new book.
For variety of voice, here is the opening of a poem with a title, 'Concerto
for orchestra':
Bart—k,
listen to what you've written!
Like beating
a rusty frying-pan: rat-tat-tat,
like
mountains mounting mountains,
rivers
circling themselves,
hands
lengthening into tinkling reeds,
long-muzzled
boats,
nudging white
landing stages.
But again, how might this be 'rigorously rhymed and metrically regular'?
It would seem that this is the most comprehensive collection of Natalia Gorbanyevskaya's
poems so far into English, and it is notable how even here every section is
listed as 'From....' this or that collection between 1956-66 to 2010. The
1972 book centred on her imprisonment: documents and poems; the new book in
context now is a looking back; the interview is a welcome addition as is a
not so recent address by the poet 'to the full editorial board meeting of
Kontinent, Munich, May 1983', enitled, 'The Language Problem of a Poet in
Exile.' There seems an agreement amongst editors and commentators that she
has not received due recognition, and this book bodes well for this to be
remedied somewhat. Who cares? There is a lot here worth caring about.
© David Hart 2011
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