Russisk vuggevise på engelsk til danskerne på jordkloden i aften

Eugene Ostashevsky

Funny, I was asked twice in the space of two days about my translation of a lullaby by Vvedensky, which I never got around publishing, and then pretty much forgot about. Here it is:

Lullaby

I will now begin to count:
One, two, three, and four, and five.
When I reach the number five,
Everybody fall asleep!

Sleep, it walks around the roads,
One, two, three, and four, and piat’.
Orders everyone around:
Sleep. Sleep. Sleep. Spat’.

Sleep, it walks along the street.
There it sees a Pussycat
Walking on almost five feet.
Sleep says, Pussy, fall asleep!
One, two, three, chetyre, piat’.
Sleep. Sleep. Spat’. Spat’.

Who is still awake? The Dolls.
As Sleep walks in their room
The Dolls let their eyelids close,
Teddy Bear falls asleep.
One, two, tri, chetyre, piat’.
Sleep. Spat’. Spat’. Spat’.

Sleep, it walks up to your bed,
And it yawns and whispers still:
Trees and Bushes have retired,
Fall asleep, my tired Child.
One, dva, tri, chetyre, piat’.
Spat’. Spat’. Spat’. Spat’.

I will count once again:
Raz, dva, tri, chetyre, piat’.
Spat’.



 - Alexander Vvedensky (1904-1941)

Uglen og missekatten får os til sidst

Fra interview med den fine russsisk-amerikanske digter og oversætter Eugene Ostahevsky:

"Your top five authors:

I love Rabelais because he has no idea what he is going to write when he starts writing. He makes stuff up as he goes along. He is perfectly fine with inconsistencies in characters and plot. I've learned from him that, if one of my characters drops dead and then reappears two poems later with no explanation, it's fine. I love Shakespeare and John Webster even more, but who doesn't? In general my tastes are still very Russian. Rabelais's Gargantua and Pantagruel was a children's book in Russia, the same with Don Quixote. But they were also touted by the Russian avant-garde because they did not conform to the conventions of psychological realism. So the Russian writers I value most and that I translated--Daniil Kharms, Alexander Vvedensky, Nikolai Zabolotsky--that's the kind of material they admired, and Zabolotsky even translated Rabelais. The world is nonlinear, why should literature be linear?

Book that changed your life:

I can talk about a poem that changed my life. One day in my 20s, I was lying in my parents' basement and leafing through an old Oxford Book of English Verse, compiled by Helen Gardner. And there I came across Edward Lear's "The Owl and the Pussycat."* I didn't know it as a child because it hadn't been translated. It was a shock. I read it over and over. It felt like the only real poem in there, the only poem completely devoid of verbiage. And I'm including Milton and Donne and so on in the comparison. Today "The Owl and the Pussycat" could become anthemic, like "The Road Not Taken," because it talks about love without imposing gender stereotypes or even differences. But it has the word "pussy." Americans get really nervous if they have to say "pussy" around children. They think they will be thought perverts. My mom bought my daughter Una a bowl with the text of "The Owl and the Pussycat" printed around the rim, but they excised "O lovely pussy, o pussy my love!/ What a beautiful pussy you are." They just left it out. They were scared. We own a bowdlerized bowl.

Favorite line from a book:

Una keeps asking me to tell her stories, so one day I just started retelling her the Divine Comedy--I teach it, so it's in my head, but also she was born in Florence. The Divine Comedy is great for children. It can be told in installments, and it also lends itself to adaptation into, basically, "Dante and his Friend Virgil go to the Center of the Earth and Play with Dead People." And I alter details to make it more relevant to her. So when the Dante of the original crosses the frozen lake at the bottom of hell, he comes across two brothers who fought each other, and are now encased in ice with other people who betrayed family members. But I had Dante and Virgil go skating on the ice, and the dysfunctional siblings whose heads they stumbled over are Anna and Elsa from Frozen. I also tell her about how little Dante first met little Beatrice outside the gelateria off Ponte Santa Trinita, and the kind of gelato they ate--she had nine scoops!"

*The Owl and the Pussy-Cat

By Edward Lear

 

I

The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea

   In a beautiful pea-green boat,

They took some honey, and plenty of money,

   Wrapped up in a five-pound note.

The Owl looked up to the stars above,

   And sang to a small guitar,

"O lovely Pussy! O Pussy, my love,

    What a beautiful Pussy you are,

         You are,

         You are!

What a beautiful Pussy you are!"

II

Pussy said to the Owl, "You elegant fowl!

   How charmingly sweet you sing!

O let us be married! too long we have tarried:

   But what shall we do for a ring?"

They sailed away, for a year and a day,

   To the land where the Bong-Tree grows

And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood

   With a ring at the end of his nose,

             His nose,

             His nose,

   With a ring at the end of his nose.

III

"Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling

   Your ring?" Said the Piggy, "I will."

So they took it away, and were married next day

   By the Turkey who lives on the hill.

They dined on mince, and slices of quince,

   Which they ate with a runcible spoon;

And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,

   They danced by the light of the moon,

             The moon,

             The moon,

They danced by the light of the moon.

 

Gyngehest af ild

Fineste, dugfriske bog, købt og læst på min iPad - nu vi taler avangardistisk-opbyggelig børnelitteratur - The Fire Horse. Children's Poems by Mayakovsky + Mandelstam + Kharms, virtuost oversat af Eugene Ostahevsky, indeholdende tre børnebøger, Vladimir Majakovskis The Fire Horse, 1927, Osip Mandelstams Two Trams, 1925, og Daniil Kharms' Play (god, informativ anmeldelse her). Her er begyndelsen på Kharms' bog:

"Peter ran down the road
             down the road,
             along the pavement,
             Peter ran
             along the pavement,
             and he hollered
             "Ro-roo-roo!
I'm not Peter any longer!
             Everybody,
             move aside!

I'm not Peter any longer!
I'm on wheels, I'm a car!"

Vasco ran behind Peter,
            down the road,
            along the pavement,
            and he hollered
            "Doo-doo-doo!
I'm not Vasco any longer
            Out of the way,
            steer clear!
I'm not Vasco any longer!
I'm a steamboat for now on"

Mikey ran behind Vasco,
             down the road,
             along the pavement,
             Mikey ran
             along the pavement,
             and he hollered
             "Zoo-zoo-zoo!
I'm not Mikey any longer!
             Pay attention,
             Practice safety!
I'm not Mikey any longer!
I'm a Soviet airplane"

A cow was walking down the road
            down the road,
            along the pavement
            a cow was walking
           along the pavement
           it was mooing
          "Moo-moo-moo."
Just a real genuine cow
           with some real genuine
           horns,
walked towards them on the rad,
taking up the whole wide way.

"Hey you cow,
you milky-mooky,
don't walk here, milky-mooky,
don't walk here on the road,
don't walk here along the way!"
"Move aside!" shouted Peter.
"Steer clear! shouted Vasco.
"Pay attention!" shouted Mikey
and cow did move aside

The stopped running
at the finish,
by the bench
beside the gate:
steamboat,
car,
and Soviet Airplane,
airplane,
car,
and Soviet Steamboat

Peter jumped up on the bench,
Vasco jumped up on the bench,
Mikey jumped up on the bench,
on the bench beside the gate.
"I am parked!" shouted Peter.
"I cast anchor!" shoited Vasco.
"And I landed!" shouted Mikey.
Then they sat down to rest. "

Irreversible poet no. 1

- fra russisk-amerikanske (1968-fødte - ligesom mig) Eugene Ostashevskys lille chapbook - der kommer snart en KÆMPE bog, lod han os forstå - om papegøjen og The Pirate Who Does Not Know the Value of PI, som han læste op fra i ARK Books søndag (det var den kommende kæmpe-bog han med (for egen strube) nådesløs piratstemme læste op fra fredag), og som måske faktisk stadig kan købes for næsten ingen penge samme sted, ANBEFALET:

Like first-order and second-order logic are complete and incomplete in different ways
The difference between the pirate and the parrot never cease to amaze.

The Parrot has just spent a half-hour reding a sentence that says: "For whereas if it is impossible that both A and not-B (and similarily if it is necessary that B), that is is necessary that if A then B doet nos so obviously follow forem the calim that A is impossible (or B is necessary,"
But the pirate used to have a part-time job as a Mohelin-the Box who, when he jumps out of the box, breaks inti "its a long way to Tipperary!"

The pirate relaxes by playing with action figures depicting Einstein, Eisenstein, Gertrude Stein, Frankenstein and Wittgenstein,
But the parrot once stole Gertrude Stein, telling the pirate she emigrated to Palestine;

He dressed Einstein and Eisenstein in the costumes of Batstein and Robinstein,
And made Frankenstein wrestle Wittgenstein in the landscape of Liechtenstein (with speech bubbles saying "Ow, my hip!!" and "Your name still isn't Frankenstein" generously provided by Roy Lichtenstein).

The Parrot likes rhyme
But the pirate thinks no rhyme is no crime, as long as there's the Sublime!

Another time the pirate lost a regatta in a cutter that took on too much ricotta,
Which the parrot, trying to deballast, ate so much of that he had greater runs than a cantata or toccata.

And as he hung over the railings losing his insides like som kind of pinata,
The pirate didn't know wheteher to curse or laugh and so was suddenly struck by stupendous stutter,

And thereafter - like the old man of Alma-Aata who fell into a gutter after eating panna cotta while sexually molesting Harry Potter,
That Harry Potter who, with his spook tackles off, looked like an Eros - without errata -

The old man of Alma-Ata who, later lying in the gutter, got a urging to utter: "I feel so ashamed cause my wife, whose motto was Nothing in excess, has just died and I already forhot her
But managed to mutter only incoherencies and inconsistencies because his entire self was so nonneurotically aflutter -

 The pirate solved his speech impediment by urbbing his palate with almost liquid sticks of par(s)ley-sprinked butter
And the parrot sat on a stopper to stop his splutter

Og så er ultracool poesifestival i gang!

REVERSE 

der allerede begyndte i går
og fortsætter i dag og i morgen
med mig som Nelly Jane, dvs. sprechstallmeister

Lørdagsprogram:

16.00 Readings
Josefine Graakjær Nielsen (DK)

Frøydis Sollid Simonsen (NO) 
Shadi Angelina Bazeghi (DK)
Cecilie Lind (DK)

17.15 Panel event / Multilingual poetry – 
Uljana Wolf (DE)
Cia Rinne (FIN) 

Eugene Ostashevsky (RUS)
Yoko Tawada (DE/JAP)
Caroline Bergvall (FR/NO)  
Moderator Martin Glaz Serup (DK)  

20.00 Readings
– Uljana Wolf (DE)

Cia Rinne (FIN)
Eugene Ostashevsky (RUS)
Yoko Tawada (DE/JAP) 
Caroline Bergvall (FR/NO)
 
21.45 – 22.45 

Readings
Maja Lee Langvad (DK) 
Mónica de la Torre (MEX/US) 
Elaine Feeney (IR)

23.00 Concert SPY IN THE MESS (DK) 24.00 DJ Diskantlyd

 TEXTER SOM LOKKEMAD: 

digt af Uljana Wolf:

V     [vase]
a vase is a vase is a vase und das gilt, scheints, für jedes wort das tiefer ist als breit. bereit? ornament is not a vase although it comes with one. word is some people come in what they think must be a vase, for they deflower it. what a lack of depth, and wit. ornament, ornament, i’m tired of your bored lament. you need a lover who would write a vase a letter: dear vessel, you’re not a word.

digt af Eugene Ostashevsky

DJ Spinoza Does Not Fight the Begriffon

Said DJ Spinoza to his friend MC Squared:

Let us go slay the Begriffon!
Frightful is the Begriffon and sharp are his claws,
He disobeys rules and cares nothing for laws,
He is full of effects but do they have a cause?
Let us go slay the Begriffon!

Said MC Squared to his friend DJ Spinoza:

Why should we add to the misery of the world?
Even the wicked have feelings!
They shout and they quarrel
Cause they’re anal and oral,
Problems make them immoral—
They’re wicked because they have feelings!

DJ Spinoza:

Well, what do you want to do then?
Do you want to watch TV? No!
Do you want to play cards? No!
Do you want to go get a beer? “I’m sick of beer, it’s so fattening!”
Let us go slay the Begriffon!

MC Squared:

Are you always so restless because you’re reckless
Or are you so reckless because you are restless?
Can’t you even for a moment
Think of how it’ll make you feel in the morning?
Tell me you won’t be a) whining; b) kvetching; c) moaning!
And besides—even the wicked have feelings!

So the two friends went off to slay the Begriffon. But when they were halfway to the House of Mostly Unlike, DJ Spinoza realized he forgot his sword at home—and you can’t slay the Begriffon with no sword! They had to return for the sword but by the time they did, it was already too late to do anything. They put slaying the Begriffon off for tomorrow and went to sleep extremely content with themselves.
 
digt af Monicá de la Torre (helt wack sat op): 

On Translation


Not to search for meaning, but to reedify a gesture, an intent. 

 As a translator, one grows attached to originals. Seldom are choices so purposeful. 

At midday, the translator meets with the poet at a café at the intersection where for decades whores and cross-dressers have lined up at night for passers-by to peruse. 

Not a monologue, but an implied conversation. The translator’s response is delayed. 

The translator asks, the poet answers unrestrictedly. Someone watches the hand movements that punctuate the flow of an incomprehensible dialogue. 

They’re speaking about the poet’s disillusionment with Freud. 

One after another, vivid descriptions of the poet’s dreams begin to pour out of his mouth. There’s no signal of irony in his voice. Nor a hint of astonishment, nor a suggestion of hidden meanings, rather a belief in the detritus theory. 

“Se me aparece un gato fosforescente. Lo sostengo en mis brazos sabiendo que no volveré a ser el mismo.” 

 “Estoy en una fiesta. De pronto veo que el diablo está sentado frente a mí. Viste de negro, lleva una barba puntiaguda y un tridente en la mano izquierda. Es tan amable que nadie se da cuenta de que no es un invitado como los otros.” 

“Anuncian en el radio que Octavio Paz leerá su poema más reciente: ‘Vaca . . . vaca . . . vaca . . . vaca . . . vaca . . . vaca . . . vaca . . .'" 

 “Entro a un laboratorio y percibo aromas inusitados. Aún los recuerdo.” 

The translator knows that nothing the poet has ever said or written reveals as much about him as the expression on his face when he was asked to pose for a picture. He greets posterity with a devilish grin. To the translator’s delight, he’s forced to repeat the gesture at least three or four times. The camera has no film.