Wednesday, 11. June 2008, 23:02:15
olesha, russian, prose, translation
An ultramarine vase with a long narrow neck stands within our field of vision. Although it isn't a vase either, if a bit above the blue neck you can also make out a little crown.
The tail is still furled. He'll unfurl it when he's ready. He almost waits for us to ask him to unfurl it. Sometimes he doesn't unfurl it at all. He drags it behind like a rather dry and unprepossessing bundle of twigs, although some of those twigs are thick, thicker than his blue neck with its irridescent blue scales.
He struts on wide feet.
The ancient world was filled with admiration for the peacock. Kings, queens, generals, and senators gazed at him. Now he's lost significance as one of life's adornments. In Europe, by the way, his role was and still is performed by the swan. I like the peacock less than I do the swan. My northern European soul shuns the peacock, which somehow seems hot to it. I get a migraine of the soul whenever I see one.
The peacock is the East. It's just as nakedly without shade, without twilight, as are the buildings of the Alhambra, the ornamental designs of the Registan, the verses of the Eastern poets, or the precise and mistless Eastern fountains, whose streams evoke more a sense of precious stones than of water.
The swan swimming away into a greenish penumbra of ooze and willow is mysterious; the peacock stands in the midst of sunlight - clear, docile, yet harsh like the rule of a tyrant.
Yury Olesha, No Day without a Line: From Notebooks (1998), p. 196.
(Translation Judson Rosengrant)
Wednesday, 8. August 2007, 20:50:20
olesha, russian, prose, translation
Birches are truly very beautiful trees. But just because I was born in the south I used to look at them somewhat cautiously and mockingly, rather thinking of literary birches, which bored me, than of real ones.
Some birches are very tall and voluminous. A white trunk and translucent, bright leaves. The black crosswise grooves resemble steamboats, hammers, figures out of diagrams. In the leavage little siskins sit, small and green of themselves and resembling the leaves. One was sitting on a little hill looking at me like a woman who has swept back the borders of her shawl from her face.
I must write a book about the parting from the world.
Yuri Olesha, [autobiographical notes], 1950s.
Monday, 12. March 2007, 13:03:17
translation, tsvetaeva, poetry, russian
After a sleepless night the body gets weaker,
It becomes dear and not yours - and nobody's.
Just like a seraph you smile to people
And arrows moan in the slow arteries.
After a sleepless night the arms get weaker
And deeply equal to you are the friend and foe.
Smells like Florence in the frost, and in each
Sudden sound is the whole rainbow.
Tenderly light the lips, and the shadow's golden
Near the sunken eyes. Here the night has sparked
This brilliant likeness - and from the dark night
Only just one thing - the eyes - are growing dark.- Marina Tsvetaeva, 'Insomnia', from: Psyche (1923), translation Ilya Shambat.
Thursday, 22. February 2007, 23:10:05
russian, olesha, prose
"I used to think there was no inner world," he mused. "I thought that my sight and my hearing governed all objects. I thought the world would cease to exist when I ceased to exist. But here it is… I see how everything is leaving me, even though I haven’t died yet. I am alive. Why then have objects ceased to exist for me? I thought it was my brain alone that gave them form, weight and colour – but here they have left me, and only their names – useless names that have lost their masters – are swarming in my brain. What use are these names to me?"
Sadly Ponomarev watched the child. The little boy could walk about. Objects rushed to meet him. He smiled at them, not knowing the name of a single one. He walked away and the sumptuous train of objects hurried after him.1929
Saturday, 13. January 2007, 17:22:28
prose, russian, tolstoy
That same night, Rostov was with a platoon on skirmishing duty in front of Bagration's detachment. His hussars were placed along the line in couples and he himself rode along the line trying to master the sleepiness that kept coming over him. An enormous space, with our army's campfires dimly glowing in the fog, could be seen behind him; in front of him was misty darkness. Rostov could see nothing, peer as he would into that foggy distance: now something gleamed gray, now there was something black, now little lights seemed to glimmer where the enemy ought to be, now he fancied it was only something in his own eyes. His eyes kept closing, and in his fancy appeared- now the Emperor, now Denisov, and now Moscow memories- and he again hurriedly opened his eyes and saw close before him the head and ears of the horse he was riding, and sometimes, when he came within six paces of them, the black figures of hussars, but in the distance was still the same misty darkness. "Why not?... It might easily happen," thought Rostov, "that the Emperor will meet me and give me an order as he would to any other officer; he'll say: 'Go and find out what's there.' There are many stories of his getting to know an officer in just such a chance way and attaching him to himself! What if he gave me a place near him? Oh, how I would guard him, how I would tell him the truth, how I would unmask his deceivers!" And in order to realize vividly his love devotion to the sovereign, Rostov pictured to himself an enemy or a deceitful German, whom he would not only kill with pleasure but whom he would slap in the face before the Emperor. Suddenly a distant shout aroused him. He started and opened his eyes.
"Where am I? Oh yes, in the skirmishing line... pass and watchword- shaft, Olmutz. What a nuisance that our squadron will be in reserve tomorrow," he thought. "I'll ask leave to go to the front, this may be my only chance of seeing the Emperor. It won't be long now before I am off duty. I'll take another turn and when I get back I'll go to the general and ask him." He readjusted himself in the saddle and touched up his horse to ride once more round his hussars. It seemed to him that it was getting lighter. To the left he saw a sloping descent lit up, and facing it a black knoll that seemed as steep as a wall. On this knoll there was a white patch that Rostov could not at all make out: was it a glade in the wood lit up by the moon, or some unmelted snow, or some white houses? He even thought something moved on that white spot. "I expect it's snow... that spot... a spot- une tache," he thought. "There now... it's not a tache... Natasha... sister, black eyes... Na... tasha... (Won't she be surprised when I tell her how I've seen the Emperor?) Natasha... take my sabretache..."- "Keep to the right, your honor, there are bushes here," came the voice of an hussar, past whom Rostov was riding in the act of falling asleep. Rostov lifted his head that had sunk almost to his horse's mane and pulled up beside the hussar. He was succumbing to irresistible, youthful, childish drowsiness. "But what was I thinking? I mustn't forget. How shall I speak to the Emperor? No, that's not it- that's tomorrow. Oh yes! Natasha... sabretache... saber them...Whom? The hussars... Ah, the hussars with mustaches. Along the Tverskaya Street rode the hussar with mustaches... I thought about him too, just opposite Guryev's house... Old Guryev.... Oh, but Denisov's a fine fellow. But that's all nonsense. The chief thing is that the Emperor is here. How he looked at me and wished to say something, but dared not.... No, it was I who dared not. But that's nonsense, the chief thing is not to forget the important thing I was thinking of. Yes, Na-tasha, sabretache, oh, yes, yes! That's right!" And his head once more sank to his horse's neck.[Book Three, Chapter XIII]
WIDGETIZE