Wednesday Poem

Wislawa Szymborska (1923 - 2012)

The End and the Beginning

 

After every war
someone has to tidy up.
Things won't pick
themselves up, after all.

 

Someone has to shove
the rubble to the roadsides
so the carts loaded with corpses
can get by.

 

Someone has to trudge
through sludge and ashes,
through the sofa springs,
the shards of glass,
the bloody rags.

 

Someone has to lug the post
to prop the wall,
someone has to glaze the window,
set the door in its frame.

 

No sound bites, no photo opportunities,
and it takes years.
All the cameras have gone
to other wars.

 

The bridges need to be rebuilt,
the railroad stations, too.
Shirtsleeves will be rolled
to shreds.

 

Someone, broom in hand,
still remembers how it was.
Someone else listens, nodding
his unshattered head.

 

But others are bound to be bustling nearby
who'll find all that
a little boring.

 

From time to time someone still must
dig up a rusted argument
from underneath a bush
and haul it off to the dump.

 

Those who knew
what this was all about
must make way for those
who know little.
And less than that.
And at last nothing less than nothing.

 

Someone has to lie there
in the grass that covers up
the causes and effects
with a cornstalk in his teeth,
gawking at clouds.

 

 

 

Wislawa Szymborska was a Polish poet, essayist and translator, and the recipient of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature. She lived most of her life in Krakow, Poland. She died in February 2012.

Wednesday poem

E. E. Cummings (1894 - 1962)

 

In The Rain-

 

in the rain-
darkness,     the sunset
being sheathed i sit and
think of you

the holy
city which is your face
your little cheeks the streets
of smiles

your eyes half-
thrush
half-angel and your drowsy
lips where float flowers of kiss

and
there is the sweet shy pirouette
your hair
and then

your dancesong
soul.     rarely-beloved
a single star is
uttered,and i

think
       of you

 

 

New Russian poets

While looking for contemporary female Russian writers to include in the Summer 2013 issue of Chtenia, which I'll be guest-curating in June, I came across one of the best poets I've read in a while: Polina Barskova. Originally from St. Petersburg, she lives and works in the United States, as a professor of Russian literature at Hampshire College.

She calls St. Petersburg "the home that I have left, the home that is absolutely impossible to leave." I like that a lot. It's how I feel about Moscow. She also studied abroad in Prague as a graduate student at Berkeley (she talks about her experience here). I like that too, for reasons everyone who knows me, knows.

Barskova has been publishing poetry since she was nine, and is acknowledged as one of the best contemporary Russian poet under the age of 40. Many of her works appear in English translation, but the best, in my opinion, remain untapped by the English audience. I hope to change that just a little with the upcoming issue.

For now, I'll share a video of Barskova reading a Russian poem by Vsevolod Zelchenko, another young(ish) poet of incredible talent. It's called "Ballada," or "Ballad," and in it the astute listener will hear allusions to many of my favorite works: to Bob Dylan's winding songs, to T.S. Eliot's "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," and even the first line of Nabokov's autobiography.

Just listening to her read the poem is an experience in itself. She's not merely reading the words; she's savoring them out loud. I'm starting to think that the best way to learn how to read poetry is to listen to another poet do it.

The enigma of Anna Karenina

All average books are alike; each great book is great in its own way.

Anna Karenina, the crowning jewel of Leo Tolstoy's work, is without a doubt one of the great books of our time. Spanning well over 800 pages, it is great not only in size but in the scope of its moral and intellectual reaches. It has been described as a "flawless" work of art by Dostoevsky and by the notoriously dismissive Nabokov. Faulkner called it the "best ever written." In a 2007 Time magazine poll of leading contemporary authors, Anna Karenina was declared the greatest novel of all time.

Keira Knightley as Anna Karenina in the 2012 British adaptation.

What is it about this book that has conquered continents and generations of readers? Hundreds of critics have been unable to pin it down. To me, it's precisely the elusiveness of that something that has made this book so great. And that elusiveness flows from Anna herself. She is the queen, the namesake of the novel; we feel her presence in every scene, regardless of whether she is there. "He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun. But he saw her, like the sun, even without looking."

By his own accounts, Tolstoy set out to write a moralistic novel about a ravishing woman who has everything she wants in life but who knowingly brings about her own downfall by renouncing the societal conventions of her time. As the novel developed, however, he found that his attitude toward the sinful heroine was changing; just as she was gradually winning over the other characters in the book, Anna was simultaneously putting a spell on Tolstoy. Eventually, as the translator Richard Pevear writes in his introduction, Tolstoy "lost sight of her...as he drew closer to her, and finally became one with her." The mystery and force of Anna's character, so bewitching to those who encounter her within the novel, also defies the preconceived notions of the reader and the moral convictions of the author himself. She was borne of Tolstoy, but escaped his grasp, fluttering out of life before he could understand her completely. The need to understand her--the mystery inside an enigma that is Anna--is what keeps readers returning to the novel time and time again.

Other adaptations:

Greta Garbo in a 1935 American adaptation.

Vivien Leigh, 1948.

Tatiana Samoilova in the 1967 Soviet adaption.

Anna Karenina has been brought to life  in more than 10 film adaptations, from the 1935 American version starring Greta Garbo, to the faithful 1967 Soviet version (my personal favorite, with the actress's dark coiffure and exotic eyes), to the 2012 rendition by a divine Keira Knightley. But despite these well-executed roles, it's the invisible Anna in the novel who remains the most memorable, the most alive.

French actress Sophie Marceau in the first American version filmed entirely in Russia, 1997.

 
When it comes to this book, there is no substitute for reading, and re-reading, its luxurious words. A Russian acquaintance of mine who is well into her 60s recently told me she's read the book seven times. I myself am currently on my second reading, marveling at all the ways the novel--or is it me?--has changed since the time I first picked it up. It is a book that keeps developing with you. You don't just read it; you live with it for several weeks. This is what a great book should be.

As a preview, you can listen to an in-depth discussion of Anna Karenina on the Slate Audio Book Club podcast here.