Zipping through wood s lot, trying to get through my blogroll so I can set to work on my editing job, I was stopped in my tracks by this:
Bruno SchulzSometimes I get a strong sense from a translation that I'll like the poet in the original, so I googled around and found the original, which I did indeed like (it's below the cut if you read Russian—I got it from here). There's more of Kates's Kruglov here; it's part of a section of Jacket devoted to "New Russian Poetry." It's always good to discover a new poet.
Sergei Kruglov
Tr. Vitaly ChernetskyThe sun outside the window, a redhead lilith
Laughing, devoured the names of the three angels.
But I’m but a child, and I won’t get scared,
Father! I’ll draw her,
An incantation: pencil, paper.
On a metallic branch outside the window sits that Stymphalian bird
The spring of 1942
Filled with melancholy yearning, begging for fleshYou know, father, if God really is
A rabbi from Drohobycz — then we are done for!
But if He is just G-d,
With the bleeding meaty emptiness of “o” (as if
They tore out, clinging tightly with crooked fingers
Eight pages right from the very middle
Of the dense, piquant, quivering moist-rose-like
Book) — then
It’s all right, perhaps we’ll somehow come back to life.
БРУНО ШУЛЬЦ
Солнце за окном — рыжая лилита,
Смеясь, имена трёх ангелов сожрала.
А я-то — ребёнок, а я не испугаюсь,
Отец! я её нарисую,
Заклятие: карандаш, бумага.
На металлической ветке за окном тоскует, просит плоти
Стимфалийская птица весна
Сорок второго года.
Знаешь, отец, ведь если Бог — и в самом деле
Раввин из Дрогобыча, то мы пропали!
Но если Он — просто Б-г,
С кровоточащей мясной пустотой «о» (словно
Вырвали, плотно скрюченными пальцами уцепившись,
Восемь страниц с рисунками из самой середины
Плотной, пряной, трепещущей, как влажная роза,
Книги) — то
Ничего, может, ещё оживём.
может, ещё оживём.
i read in the morning Texts for nothing 8-9-10, it was all about that
i didn't know what is msheloimstvo, something religious, staroobryadnoe/tserkovnoe?
Posted by: read at March 7, 2009 10:51 AMМшелоимство is new to me too; I guess "avarice" is the closest English word. It's from an old Church Slavic word мшел 'profit.'
Posted by: language hat at March 7, 2009 12:07 PMhere's his LJ: http://kruglov-s-g.livejournal.com/
Posted by: anna at March 7, 2009 03:17 PMread,
Here's a quote from the monastic statute of the Holy Trinity Monastery of Ryazan (source):
Монашествующим не должно заводить в келье лишних вещей, впадать в грех мшелоимства. Лучшим украшением иноческой кельи служат святые иконы и книги Священного Писания, а также творения Святых Отцов. Келья монаха содержит крайний минимум всего, без чего нельзя обойтись в ней. Келья должна быть красной не вещами, а духом веры и молитвы живущего в ней инока. Светские же и мирские вещи и принадлежности не должны находиться в келье.
The religious should not keep unnecessary things in their cell, [or] fall into msheloimstvo. Holy icons and the Holy Scripture, as well as the writings of the Holy Fathers, best decorate a monastic cell. A monk's cell contains a bare minimum of essentials. The cell's beauty must be, not in things, but in the spirit of faith and prayer of the monk who lives there. Worldly goods must not be present in the cell.
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Замшелый (zamshelyj) means 'overgrown with moss', and 'за-' is a prefix with the meaning, here, roughly equivalent to 'over-', so msheloimstvo is something along the lines of 'mossgrownhaving'...
Posted by: anna at March 7, 2009 03:37 PM> It's from an old Church Slavic word мшел 'profit.'
Hah! Thank you Hat. Serves me right for being too lazy to learn OCS...
Posted by: anna at March 7, 2009 03:39 PMgreat LJ, i wish i never knew about Gaidar's feats though, but this kind of disappointments are no news since perestroika, so shocking, i remember only thinking how he always looked so childish, the face, very open like
i liked more Dikaya sobaka Dingo, Povest' o Zoe and Shure, Molodaya Gvardia, a lot of great soviet children books, Tri berezu na kholme i remember, Zakhoder, Marshak, Chukovsky, and other names i don't remember from children's magazines, Murzilka
What a nice correspondence in the words for god! I'd never thought before about how not to write words in other languages. If this bit out of wikipedia's to be believed, it'd be hard to translate this into Spanish - no emptiness.
Posted by: parvomagnus at March 8, 2009 07:18 PMThe problem of how to not write words for "god" (as opposed to the name of the deity in a religion where the deity does have an actual name) seems restricted to a tiny section of society. Most people will never need consider the problem. But by analogy with the French instances given, it seems that all one would need to do in Spanish would be to remove the i of Dios.
Posted by: marie-lucie at March 8, 2009 10:35 PMWell, though I've got no problem with writing god, the 'g-d' in the poem works for me because I'm aware of the practice. If no one in Spain who'd want to write 'd-os' does that, but instead just adds a dash, then those two lines would, I think, seem puzzling, as the 'emptiness' of 'b-g' or 'g-d' isn't in 'd-ios'.
D-os gives added meaning to the concept of dualism, though.
Posted by: A.J. P. Tffo at March 9, 2009 03:45 AMparvomagnus: then one could also try di-s for Spanish.
Posted by: marie-lucie at March 9, 2009 07:44 AMone could also try di-s for Spanish.
D-s seems to be preferred. If you look at the last paragraph here:
los judíos se refieren a Dios con circunloquios o abreviaturas como Tetragramatón (Tetra=4, grama=letras), D-s, el Señor, etc.
I like the way the Russians, in order not to say the true name of {{!!GOD!!}} aloud, just insert the letter "sp": "gospod".
Thus leading to my joke about the dyslexic Russian cynic agnostic who had lost his faith in Dospog.
A joke which Hat has heard before.
Posted by: John Emerson at March 9, 2009 09:23 AM"the letters 'spo'"
Posted by: John Emerson at March 9, 2009 12:49 PMGospod' means "Lord", JE.
Posted by: solus rex at March 13, 2009 07:40 PMThat's why it's a joke, SR. You need to pick up a few grains of salt before you respond to JE.
Posted by: marie-lucie at March 13, 2009 08:46 PMJE rules.
Posted by: A.J.P. Exxon at March 14, 2009 06:46 AM