(CONTINUED FROM FRONT FLAP)
University Press New York cup.columbia.edu Printed in the
“Maria Stepanova’s voice is a multipotent anthology of epic, lyric, and pure spell. She turns myth back into memory, heroes into humans, and her country’s rush from one catastrophe to another into language. No translator who reads Stepanova’s work thinks, ‘I can do this.’ This is a book prepared by people who believed in a poetic miracle, and this miracle happened—to the English language above all.” —Valzhyna Mort, author of Music for the Dead and Resurrected
U.S.A. Cover designed by Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich
OVER
With translations by: Alexandra Berlina, Sasha Dugdale, Sibelan Forrester, Amelia Glaser, Zachary Murphy King, Dmitry Manin, Ainsley Morse, Eugene Ostashevsky, Andrew Reynolds, and Maria Vassileva.
Columbia
S M E YS O P SA ES E H T
VOICE
IRINA SHEVE LENKO is professor of Russian in the Department of German, Nordic, and Slavic at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
“A volume of Maria Stepanova’s work in English translation is long overdue, but this one, rendered by a dream team of the best translators and poets working today, has been worth the wait. The Voice Over offers a worthy tribute to Stepanova’s multiple achievements: a rich selection of texts from Stepanova’s poetry and translations of Stepanova’s essays, both illuminated by Irina Shevelenko’s expert introduction and commentary, framing Stepanova’s writing with sophistication and insight.” —Kevin M. F. Platt, founder of Your Language My Ear translation symposium
THE VOICE OV ER
MARIA STE PANOVA is the author of over ten poetry collections as well as three books of essays and the documentary novel In Memory of Memory. She is the recipient of several Russian and international literary awards.
D N �
PR A I S E FO R T H E VO I C E OV E R
S T E PA N O VA
war songs are transposed into a new key, infused with foreign strains, and juxtaposed with unlikely neighbors. As an essayist, Stepanova engages deeply with writers who bore witness to devastation and dramatic social change, as seen in searching pieces on W. G. Sebald, Marina Tsvetaeva, and Susan Sontag. Including contributions from ten translators, The Voice Over shows Englishspeaking readers why Stepanova is one of Russia’s most acclaimed contemporary writers.
ST
ISBN: 978-0-231-19616-1
A I R A A M OV N A by EP n
ed o t i Ed lenk eve h aS
Iri COLUMBIA
M
aria Stepanova is one of the most powerful and distinctive voices of Russia’s first post-Soviet literary generation. An award-winning poet and prose writer, she also founded a major platform for independent journalism. Her verse blends formal mastery with a keen ear for the evolution of spoken language. As Russia’s political climate has turned increasingly repressive, Stepanova has responded with engaged writing that grapples with the persistence of violence in her country’s past and present. Some of her most remarkable recent work as a poet and essayist considers the conflict in Ukraine and the debasement of language that has always accompanied war. The Voice Over brings together two decades of Stepanova’s work, showcasing her range, virtuosity, and creative evolution. Stepanova’s poetic voice constantly sets out in search of new bodies to inhabit, taking established forms and styles and rendering them into something unexpected and strange. Recognizable patterns of ballads, elegies, and (CONTINUED ON BACK FLAP)
I
The Here-World Poems from books and cycles On Twins (2001) The Here-World (2001) Songs of the Northern Southerners (2001) Happiness (2003) Physiology and Private History (2005) O (2006)
from On Twins
A Gypski, a Polsk I, a Jewski, a Russki, All crowded round the festive table. A plaintive bead hangs round my neck, From the mountains, throat, some crystal. Unforeseen ancestors descend to play, Crash, like multi-stories, on the saucer. They swarm about your elbows like mosquitoes, And mere grandmas can’t push through to me. On the balcony with hand and heel To shove and push against these flying crowds— Let them hide and seek with someone else, Don’t sing to me, don’t flock into dark clouds! Breed or blood won’t drown us, though, like kittens, —they’ll have their fun as long as suits their fancy. Our Lyubka, led to market, gets stripped down: There, sizing up her muscles, gropes the muse, Assessing us, deciding which to ride. And every single birthday is a duel.
Translated by Sibelan Forrester , Amelia Glaser , Martha Kelly, Ainsley Morse, and Michael Wachtel*
* This translation was undertaken collectively, and with Stepanova’s participation, as part of the AATSEEL 2019 Translation Workshop.
The Here-World
\ 3
4 \
The Voice Over
The North of sleep. Head’s in a pillow cradle, And feet and toes are all pointing south. And I fly like a cabin boy on a cable, Spinning like a mace in battle’s wrath. Some time you will see me too in your dreams As a map smoothly laid out flat. Two polar explorers there, one tent, One hardtack biscuit and the post that’s last. No, if in your dream (some bedroom) I’d appear It will be as a magnitude unrecompensed: On the cheekbone—a permafrosted tear, Which, like a lamp, will light dispense.
Translated by Andrew Reynolds
from The Here-World
Adieu, until one branched floor higher, One flight up fir tree under windowsill, Where a bird darts like an adder, Beneath the heavens, as before an icon wall. It flits and flutters in my pupils, And I, bespectacled monkey from the fable,* Eyes for necessary vision framed, Do not get off scot-free. On an empty windowsill. Like Moses before the bush, so still. In a light of a particular composition. I could have become a bird, but didn’t.
Translated by Andrew Reynolds
* An allusion to Ivan Krylov’s fable “The Monkey and the Spectacles” (1815), in which the protagonist (the monkey) acquires glasses but is unable to figure out how to properly use them for improving its vision.
The Here-World
\ 5
6 \
The Voice Over
Ahoy! Beyond the azure’s tempest, Of excess stars bereft— Glides non-dark side, the independent Eye of heavenly nests. Looking down, she throws light shades Above the paper sheets. We cultivate darkling beneath her sway A face’s eyes. And then we our breasts display For others’ eyes and thrills. Then, under a candle, as on a plate, Are buzzing with our quills. Then we ascend with silent steps The steamboat, in full stride. . . . and after palms have splashed with claps Of ebb and flow of tide, And having wolf-howled at this darling, Roaming with dealers in kills, And having bayed with hounds a-lapping Her from puddles bright as rills, I give her up, don’t give a toss, (Sound the all-clear, Trumpet, do!) For an hour in a moonless fosse With you, with you.
Translated by Andrew Reynolds
For you, but the voice of the straitened Muse Isn’t right for an ear without ears, Nor for an ear the size of heaven’s sphere, Nor for a body that’s not in use. So, black earth must have a dweller. So here’s black earth, but where’s she who dwelt there? And there’s the air—it swirls as you, And you calm the air down too. Recognize, if nothing else, the seeing That is stitching together the book’s cover, Leaping in lilacs like a swing Into here-world—and there-.
Translated by Andrew Reynolds
The Here-World
\ 7
(CONTINUED FROM FRONT FLAP)
University Press New York cup.columbia.edu Printed in the
“Maria Stepanova’s voice is a multipotent anthology of epic, lyric, and pure spell. She turns myth back into memory, heroes into humans, and her country’s rush from one catastrophe to another into language. No translator who reads Stepanova’s work thinks, ‘I can do this.’ This is a book prepared by people who believed in a poetic miracle, and this miracle happened—to the English language above all.” —Valzhyna Mort, author of Music for the Dead and Resurrected
U.S.A. Cover designed by Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich
OVER
With translations by: Alexandra Berlina, Sasha Dugdale, Sibelan Forrester, Amelia Glaser, Zachary Murphy King, Dmitry Manin, Ainsley Morse, Eugene Ostashevsky, Andrew Reynolds, and Maria Vassileva.
Columbia
S M E YS O P SA ES E H T
VOICE
IRINA SHEVE LENKO is professor of Russian in the Department of German, Nordic, and Slavic at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
“A volume of Maria Stepanova’s work in English translation is long overdue, but this one, rendered by a dream team of the best translators and poets working today, has been worth the wait. The Voice Over offers a worthy tribute to Stepanova’s multiple achievements: a rich selection of texts from Stepanova’s poetry and translations of Stepanova’s essays, both illuminated by Irina Shevelenko’s expert introduction and commentary, framing Stepanova’s writing with sophistication and insight.” —Kevin M. F. Platt, founder of Your Language My Ear translation symposium
THE VOICE OV ER
MARIA STE PANOVA is the author of over ten poetry collections as well as three books of essays and the documentary novel In Memory of Memory. She is the recipient of several Russian and international literary awards.
D N �
PR A I S E FO R T H E VO I C E OV E R
S T E PA N O VA
war songs are transposed into a new key, infused with foreign strains, and juxtaposed with unlikely neighbors. As an essayist, Stepanova engages deeply with writers who bore witness to devastation and dramatic social change, as seen in searching pieces on W. G. Sebald, Marina Tsvetaeva, and Susan Sontag. Including contributions from ten translators, The Voice Over shows Englishspeaking readers why Stepanova is one of Russia’s most acclaimed contemporary writers.
ST
ISBN: 978-0-231-19616-1
A I R A A M OV N A by EP n
ed o t i Ed lenk eve h aS
Iri COLUMBIA
M
aria Stepanova is one of the most powerful and distinctive voices of Russia’s first post-Soviet literary generation. An award-winning poet and prose writer, she also founded a major platform for independent journalism. Her verse blends formal mastery with a keen ear for the evolution of spoken language. As Russia’s political climate has turned increasingly repressive, Stepanova has responded with engaged writing that grapples with the persistence of violence in her country’s past and present. Some of her most remarkable recent work as a poet and essayist considers the conflict in Ukraine and the debasement of language that has always accompanied war. The Voice Over brings together two decades of Stepanova’s work, showcasing her range, virtuosity, and creative evolution. Stepanova’s poetic voice constantly sets out in search of new bodies to inhabit, taking established forms and styles and rendering them into something unexpected and strange. Recognizable patterns of ballads, elegies, and (CONTINUED ON BACK FLAP)