it sheds new light on what I had thought of as the frozen Brezhnev regime.

This is an interesting point. Zastoy was something I could experience only through the lens of my parents' passionate hatred. But my sense was always that zastoy wasn't necessarily just about the sort of dreariness people associate with the American seventies. It was also about a very crushing co-option of radical Soviet intellectualism by stolid mainstream culture. (there is a TV channel in Russia called "Kultura" which broadcasts incredibly, violently boring versions of canonical plays and music, accompanied by equally stilted PBS-style interview shows)

My father, who is about as anti-Soviet as Russians can get, likes to say that the '60s were a time when communism still held possibilities for intelligent people, but Prague changed all that and exposed the gerontocracy for what it was. Part of zastoy for him, I think, was the sense that ideology ceased to matter, whether from a dissident or a bolshevik point of view. Mikhalkov might be a good example.

Do you know this page is now the fifth ghit for "zastoy"?

In Soviet Russia, power levels YOU.

Yesterday was Bunin's birthday! I translated a few of his poem (not a major effort on my part, too busy), but you might enjoy them anyway - the Russian's there, after all.

Ridger,

Excellent translations! A couple notes:

безмятежным сном doesn't really have connotations of unrebelliousness--I would translate it "untroubled."

кроткая печаль is "gentle grief," or "meek grief"--it's not one of those instances of vowel elision like "врата."

The last poem is especially well-rendered in your translation.

"The Muscovite Bon Mot," perhaps?

Yes, nice translations! More notes:

Before you get to the poems, in the biography you refer to his famous story as "Господин из Сан Франсиско, Gospodin iz San Fransisco"; it's actually Господин из Сан-Франциско (Gospodin iz San-Frantsisko). Also, "Сухдол (Sukhdol)" should be Суходол (Sukhodol).

In the first poem, you have "a quail's clear cries/ Can be heard from across the plain"; the Russian has multiple quail (перепела), and why "plain" rather than the accurate "steppe"? (The word for 'plain' is равнина.) In the second stanza, овсы are 'oats' ("corn" is misleading to an American and vague in general). A кобчик is a falcon, not a hawk, and specifically a merlin (or "red-footed falcon"). I know "hawk" goes nicely with "hillock," but Nabokov would not like your substituting a completely different bird!

In the second poem, you have "And far away lies the village," but again the Russian is plural (деревень); the implication that there is a particular village (the narrator's home, perhaps?) being referred to is misleading.

In the third poem, your "the grass/ With frosty dew grows pale" leaves out в лугах: the grass grows pale in the meadows. In the second stanza рать is not "row" but 'army.'

In the last poem, again you render степь as 'plain,' and стволы is 'barrels' (plural)—presumably the gun is a shotgun rather than a rifle.

Hope you don't mind the nitpicking; I wouldn't bother if I didn't like your translations enough to make it feel worthwhile!

"The Muscovite Bon Mot," perhaps?

But "bon mot" implies wit, whereas the Russian just implies pointedness, accuracy. I guess if I had to pick one I'd go with "The Pointed Moscow Word," for the rhythm.

I don't mind at all - thanks, in fact. Like I said, these were far from polished translations, and I shall steal all your suggestions and improve them. The translations, that is.

> Nikolai Gumilev and Osip Mandelstam were being reprinted and studied in schools

Frankly, I do not recall any of them being studied at the literature lessons in 1980s. Maybe, the names were mentioned, but their works not.

On the other hand, I didn't like the literature lessons and could easily miss them the day when they spoke about Gumilev and Mandelshtam :)

I would guess that Trifonov's anthology was meant for universities and other higher educational establishments, not high school students. The length of the introduction alone should be enough a clue ;)

Yeah, I'm sure it was, but the actual introduction is only a couple of pages long—I was talking about the first section of the book, including pieces by Gorky, Plekhanov, and others, including of course the great proletarian poet Demyan Bedny.

How could I be so foolish as to think that the actual introduction was 100 pages in length... Must have been the library air that did this to me ;)

Regarding the Brezhnev era - NZ recently had a whole special issue dedicated to the "long seventies". The current issue also has a whole section devoted to this subject. One of the things these articles highlighted for me was how it took some time for things to grind to a halt. Even in 1971, there was still some air of freedom as the spirit of the ottepel' still lived on. Of course, heads were already being chopped off left and right and editorial boards dismissed, but not everything was impossible. Especially with a bit of camouflage. For instance, in 1976, a book by V.V. Ivanov was published, entitled "Очерки по истории семиотики в СССР" ("Notes on the history of Semiotics in the USSR"); it was mostly about Sergey Eisenstein. Semiotics was in fashion at the time, whereas Eisenstein (I gather) was only "semi-legal".