undated entry from 2000

got hooked on Russian literature while reading on World War II & the Stalinist era in sec 2. First encountered Pushkin, Solzhenitsyn & Blok in 'Within the Whirlwind' by Eugenia Semyonovna Ginzburg (1896 - 1977), on her life in the Kolyma gulags.


The Flower
A flower shrivelled, lacking fragance,
Forgotten in a book I see,
And instantly my soul awakens,
Filled with a curious reverie:

When did it bloom? Last spring? Or earlier?
And for how long? Where plucked? By whom?
By fingers alien? Familiar?
And why put here, as in a tomb?

To mark a tender meeting by it?
A parting with a precious one?
Or just a walk, alone & quiet,
In forests' shade? In meadows' sun?

Is she alive? Is he still with her?
Where is their haven at this hour?
Or did they both already wither,
Like this unfathomable flower?

- Pushkin

(transl. Genia Gurarie)


I want, I want madly to live
To immortalize all else that lives,
Make human all that is faceless,
Make real again dreams that have faded...

- Aleksandr Blok


Whether I Wander Along Noisy Streets
Whether I wander along noisy streets
Or step into a temple dense with people,
Or sit among fervescent youth,
I give myself over to my fancies.
I say: the years will flash by,
And, as many of us as are to be seen here,
We will descend beneath the eternal vaults -
And someone's hour is already near.

As I gaze upon a solitary oak,
I muse: the patriarch of the woods
Will outlive my forgotten age,
As it outlived my fathers' age.

When I caress a dear young child,
I am already thinking: farewell!
I yield my place to you:
It is time for me to wither, for you to flower.

Each day, each year
I have come to usher out in fancy,
Of my approaching death the anniversary
Intent to guess among them.

And where will fate send me death
In battle, while roving, in the waves?
Or will the neighbouring vale
Receive my dust frown-cold?

And though to the unfeeling body
It is all one where it decays,
Yet near as may be to the dear environs
I would still like to lie at rest.

And at the grave's portals,
May young life play,
And indifferent nature
Shine with everlasting beauty

- Pushkin


e last 4 lines of e last verse, which Ginzburg quoted in her book, was what made me hunt down e full poem - life goes on.

[ filed under: art1 + 9_lives_2000 ]