V O L
& G DO L F N O E E W W T BE S A S
HA
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ted a l ns r T ra ande lex wski A la by gus o B
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Notes of a Binging Hunter
The Hoopoe approaches the lame, Or rather, one-legged gnome, Blind and mute, hunchbacked, and tame, And keeps honing his lone figure skate. Just look—and pass by, heed this lesson: Someone’s grief is not a true grief. Even more, ’cause no one can lessen Pains of those whom fate so distresses That the scorching sun can’t impress them, Hence, no deluge can bring them relief. Darkness falls. Irked by fate’s treason, Like a hungry Gorgon would do, The leaf fall’s whispering season Stalks the verb-herd servile and sleazy, But—sees no rhyme and no reason, And the actual herd—is gone too.
NOTE V O C TO B E R
Is it really October? Such a balmy air That if not for the rustling of leaf fall, One could simply forget about everything And for hours stare into farnowheres.
And smell sagebrush. But one has to live, to act, to go on, Worry about the presence of kindling, One has to sew new squirrel slip-ons, Stockpile mushrooms and go hunting. Inasmuch as winter is certain. Carelessly showing the white of face, Here I am; I’d like to listen to the Hoopoe. Go on, rattle, cuckoo, my dear hooting whoop, Tiny toy, trifle, trinket, true treasure. Who knows where and for what reason Someone with a drum roams the copses; Spindlewort, fusoria, fusanum, Scarletberry, snakeberry, solanum. With a glow of roll-ups, Fragments of vulgar phrases, A part of speech known by the name of cough, And with the moaning of rowlocks Resembling the mallard’s call, Approaches a gaggle of ragged freeshooters. It’s beginning.
Notes of a Binging Hunter
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PRAISE FOR BETWEEN DOG AND WOLF “A masterful feat. Alexander Boguslawski has created a discourse, or literary style, that captures Sokolov’s at once folksy and fanciful, verbally playful, punning speech and is remarkably faithful to the subtleties of Sokolov’s language.” —OLGA M AT ICH, University of California, Berkeley “Sokolov’s Between Dog and Wolf, delivered in Boguslawski’s masterful translation, comprises a daring act of immersion into the depths of language that results in semantic spasms of the great Russian literary body. The highly experimental novel, which unquestionably belongs to the highest literary ranks, announces the twilight of the novelistic tradition, but already eagerly awaits its imminent dawn.” —NARIMA N S KA KOV, Stanford University
P RA I S E F O R S A S H A S O KO L OV : “Sokolov is one of those rare novelists whose primary concern is the praise and exploration of a language rather than the development of a position. In this, he is in the line of Gogol, Lermontov, Nabokov.”—David Remnick, Washington Post “One of the great living Russian writers.”—Flavorwire Russian Library Columbia University Press / New York cup.columbia.edu Printed in the U.S.A.