Marina Eskina
trans. Ian Singleton
She eviscerated my dreams, the war —
Not of my mother or father anymore —
In my dreams, I lived a competing life,
Now I’ve got to give it up to that whore.
Don't even dream of my friend, what dreams,
It’s day in Ukraine during my night
No nostalgia—there’s sorrow and guilt
Filling my hat up to the brim.
I don’t talk the talk, don’t walk the walk,
I’m a snail on Mount Fuji’s slope.
There are plenty of razors other than Occam’s,
But the word was, “crawl,” when fate spoke.
I don’t need GPS or a weathervane
To know which way to move,
If I see evil cutting into my lane,
I edge heaven to outmaneuver,
To outplay evil at a sluggish pace,
Survive vozhd’* by the grace of God.
But it’s easy enough to squish a snail
On a sleepy morning after it rained.
*Note: вождь (vozhd’) is a word for chieftain that was often used to refer to Stalin and those who act in ways similar to him.
Сны мне выхолостила война –
Ни отец не снится, ни мать –
Параллельную жизнь, что во снах жила,
Этой шлюхе пришлось отдать.
Даже друг не снится, какие сны,
Когда ночью в Украйне день,
Никакой ностальгии – горя, вины
Шапка полная набекрень.
Не боец я словесных и прочих битв,
Я – улитка на склоне Фудзи.
Кроме Оккама, много есть разных бритв,
Но судьба сказала: ползи.
Мне не нужен ни флюгер, чтобы найти
Направленье, ни GPS,
Если зло окажется впереди,
Обойду по краю небес,
Обыграю тихим ходом его,
Даст Бог, переживу вождя.
Хоть улитку так раздавить легко
Тихим утром, после дождя.
On the Tu
Let’s go ahead and laugh and switch to the tu.
What kind of distance can there still be?
For twenty years it sufficed to be mute,
yet that all was said is a certainty.
Is it with a youthful longing I should long,
which a letter or a call can’t exhaust?
I learned to see me alongside you, sidelong,
in the window veiled in morning frost.
This poem dramatizes a linguistic feature of Russian and many other languages that is nonetheless missing in contemporary English (which, perhaps tragically, no longer has the informal "thou" and only the formerly formal "you"). While using the French tu and vous in English to signify the ты and вы is not novel (see the Louise and Aylmer Maude translation of Lev Tolstoy’s “Семейное счастье”), translators often give up on making this distinction even today. The result of such capitulation about this issue can be disastrous such as when it issues a blind spot to Antisemitism such as that of Russian writer Zakhar Prilepin. The response should not be a refusal to depict this linguistic feature. Such giving up might be a result of how English translations and translators favor rendering a text in a way that seems to erase its foreign origin (see Lawrence Venuti's The Task of the Translator for more on this phenomenon). However, other tendencies (such as Jennifer Croft's Open Letter to Credit Translators) suggest that our culture is moving beyond this erasure of a text's foreignness. What does this change mean for Marina Eskina’s "On the Tu"? It means that using a language closer to English than Russian, French, and its informal/formal second-person feature is a way of rendering the meaning behind this switch in English. Thus this English translation is a translingual text, conscious of its origin in a language other than English and using French to aid with its meaning.
Давай посмеемся и перейдем на ты,
каких еще дистанций недостает,
за двадцать лет хватило нам немоты,
а слов осталось точно наперечет,
Хочу ли тосковать молодой тоской,
Не утоляемой письмом и звонком,
я научилась видеть себя с тобой,
в стекле, с утра подернутом холодком.
A Dialogue
One says,
“I had a lot of men, always,
starting in kindergarten.
Kostya taught me to whistle,
Mitya offered sweets,
was funny but pesky.
As if it was necessary…
To show me home
they lined up. I
toyed with them though,
teased to their face,
for whatever...zits,
less often I’d embrace;
it’s when I wanted
I let some in my bed.
Don’t get me wrong.
Four times
wed, I
picked the best
of the best.
He turned out like the rest.
Now that ship sailed.”
Another says,
“I had a lot of love,
starting in kindergarten.
I gave sweets to Sasha,
and to Galya some fruit,
loved my teachers too.
But they were too
out of reach.
Marat Street I loved,
a cousin once removed,
from Minsk,
trees in Pavlovsk.
I fell in love with a boy
in fourth grade
secretly, solemnly.
But, of course, everybody knew
as you do…
it took my breath away,
like a swing can.
I was even a fan
of the tussle after class.
It would never last.
In a cafeteria, I ate doughnuts,
on a dark lip, sugary powder,
Daughters of Jerusalem.
I talked to myself,
words came in a throng,
Song of Songs,
tale of tales,
there was more to love
than all of the above.
Диалог
Одна говорит,
у меня было много мужчин
всегда,
начиная с детского сада,
Костя свистеть учил,
Митя совал мне яблоки, булочки,
смешно и досадно,
как будто мне было надо;
проводить меня
стояли в очереди,
я – темнила,
дразнила в глаза
просто так или за прыщи,
реже благоволила,
когда хотела
допускала к телу;
Ты не думай –
четыре раза
была замужем,
выбирала лучшего
из лучших,
потом наскучило,
теперь ищи свищи.
Другая говорит –
у меня было много любви,
начиная с детского сада,
булочки отдавала Саше,
яблоко подвигала Гале,
воспитательниц тоже
любила, но они были выше, недосягаемей,
любила улицу Марата,
троюродного брата
из Минска,
деревья в Павловске;
в мальчика влюбилась
в четвертом классе
скрытно, восторженно,
но, конечно, все всё знали,
разве иначе можно,
дух захватывало,
как на качелях,
радовалась даже
драке портфелями,
зная, что это ничем не кончится;
ела в столовой пончики –
сахарная пудра над смуглой губой,
дщери Иерусалимские –
говорила сама с собой,
слова сбегались гурьбой,
Песня Песней,
повесть повестей,
любви оказалось больше,
чем мужчин и детей.
Reading Tiutchev
“And thin strands of webbing
Glow on the idle furrow.”
-F. Tiutchev
To Galina A. Shabelskaya
I’ll read aloud some Tiutchev today.
I can't think of a better way
to do this than to read you poems about Fall.
At once, I see a flash of comprehension.
Together, we’re grasping the intention.
And who’s lucky here? Can we know at all?
I toss this lifebuoy savior into the depth,
where memories of parents drown,
memories of friends, teachers go down.
Even I sink in, when I catch a glance,
that doesn’t recognize me, only enhances
how awkwardly I ask about your pains.
But when what answers me is silentium* -
the soul comes through it, like a light from
the window. I read so that it won’t go out,
this thin strand of Tiutchev’s glowing web,
which, in place of a better ebb,
is all that connects us here and now.
*Note: “Silentium” is the title of another famous poem by Fyodor Tiutchev
И паутины тонкий волос
Блестит на праздной борозде.
Ф. Тютчев.
Г.А.Ш-ой
Почитаем-ка сегодня Тютчева,
Ничего мне не придумать лучшего,
Чем стихи об осени читать,
Сразу вижу отблеск понимания,
Вместе мы проходим испытание,
И кому здесь повезло, как знать?
Я бросаю этот круг спасительный,
В глубину, где память о родителях
Тонет, о друзьях, учителях,
В ней тону и я, когда не узнана
Взгляд ловлю, искусно и искуственно
О делах справляюсь, o болях.
Но когда silentium ответит мне –
А душа сквозь это, точно свет в окне –
Я читаю, чтобы не погас
Тонкий волос паутины тютчевской,
Он сейчас – замена лучшей участи –
Только и соединяет нас.
Marina Eskina is the author of four books of poetry in Russian and a book of children’s verse in English, Explanation of a Firefly. Her latest book Краденый воздух (The Stolen Air, 2017) includes original poems alongside translations of Elizabeth Bishop. Her texts and translations regularly appear in online publications and in print around the world. She is a member of the editorial board of the journal Интерпоэзия. In 1989 she emigrated from Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg), Russia, and currently lives in Boston, USA.
Ian Ross Singleton studied fiction writing as an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, where he was awarded a Hopwood Prize, and also as a graduate student at Emerson College. His first novel, Two Big Differences (MGraphics Books), came out in 2021 and is about the Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity and, specifically, Odesa, Ukraine in 2014. Ian is the founder of the Kritzler Writers Group, active from 2019-2020. He has written criticism about literature in journals such as Ploughshares, Fiction Writers Review, and The Los Angeles Review of Books. He is Nonfiction Editor at Asymptote. His fiction has appeared in journals such as New Madrid, Fiddleblack, and Midwestern Gothic. His translations have appeared in journals such as Café Review, St. Ann’s Review, Cardinal Points, Springhouse Journal, and EastWest Literary Forum.