Kinship Closer Than Kin: Translating Russian-language Poetry of Witness by Yana Kane
I will weep for the stranger as human,
for the kinship that’s closer than kin.
Alexander Shchedrinskiy,
Odessa, Ukraine
If the language of your childhood is used to justify bloodshed and destruction, how do you talk to your memories? If love for the literature you grew up with becomes a pretext for unconscionable cruelty, what poems and stories do you turn to for comfort?
I grew up in what is now Russia during the waning years of the Soviet Union. I was a verbal kid—words and books mattered to me greatly. From the start, my relationship with my first language, Russian, was a conflicted mixture of love and hurt, attachment and rejection. As a young child, I was aware that because I was Jewish, not Russian, I was perceived as “other.” I was sometimes kindly tolerated and even accepted, and sometimes harshly stigmatized by the people around me. I also understood quite early that the state regarded “my kind” with suspicion and marked us for scapegoating and discrimination; and that this was a deeply-rooted attitude, inherited by the Soviet regime from the tsarist Russia of my grandparents’ childhoods. These attitudes were transmitted to me not only by how I and my family were treated in everyday life, but also by the language and the culture—through the slurs, euphemisms, and circumlocutions I heard, as well as by how we were reflected in (or erased from) the literature and other arts.
My family got out of the Soviet Union in 1978. A few months later, we arrived in the United States as refugees. As I settled into my new life, the English language and its literature, especially American literature, became my chosen cultural home.
And yet, to this day, when I wake up to dawn light filtering through ribbons of freshly-fallen snow on the birch twigs outside my window, the delight of the winter morning speaks to me with the joyful iambic tetrameter of Pushkin’s Moroz ee solnce, den’ chudesnyj… (“Frost and sun, a glorious day…”). When I see an old mirror, the reflections in it soft and dim, as if floating in the mist of time long past, I recall Anna Akhmatova’s “Poem without a Hero”: zerkalo zerkalu snitsya, tishina tishinu storozhit. (“a mirror dreams of a mirror, silence guards silence.”) When I walk up a long, steep flight of stairs, I set the pace by reciting a nursery rhyme in Russian.
I gradually made peace with my contradictory feelings, defining myself as a bilingual American. I perceived my relationship with the language of my childhood as my own version of the nearly universal human predicament. We are attached to our early experiences, even though some of them are painful.
But recently this calm acceptance of my predicament crumbled.
Starting in 2021, the government of Russia abandoned all pretense of running a civilized society. The country’s authoritarian regime moved closer and closer to a totalitarian state. In February 2022, Russia escalated its aggression against its neighbor, Ukraine, into a full-blown war. State propaganda declared that this was done for the sake of defending Russian civilization within Russia from pollution by alien cultural influences, protecting the linguistic and cultural rights of the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine, and punishing the disrespect supposedly shown to Russian culture by Western nations.
Month after month, the news is filled with an ever-growing litany of horrors perpetrated against the people of Ukraine and against those Russian citizens who dare protest their government’s actions. It is especially grotesque to see such barbarism advance under the banner of defending a language and a culture.
My way of dealing with this shock and anguish has been to immerse myself in the stream of Russian-language poetry of witness that is pouring from Ukraine, Russia, and the Russian-language diaspora, and to translate some of those poems from Russian into English.
The poetry presented here in my translation has appeared in “Tochka.Zreniya” (“View.Point”), an online Russian-language literary journal (litpoint.org). The literary association that founded “View.Point” was organized over twenty years ago in Russia by a Moscow-based poet and musician, Alexey Karakovski. The mission of “View.Point” is “to publish original literary works in a variety of forms and styles, including song lyrics, that are relevant to the current moment in history.”
Before I go on, I want to assert that all the views in this essay about the content of “View.Point”, as well as the interpretations of the meanings of specific poems, represent my own opinion. I want to emphasize this point because in Russia, artists, and poets in particular, are currently being criminally prosecuted, or otherwise threatened and brutalized, for expressing views the government perceives as dissent.
“View.Point” publishes a wide range of content, including literary criticism essays and interviews. But poetry is the primary focus of the journal. Since February 2022, “View.Point” has been devoted to publishing poetry of witness stemming from the tragic events unfolding in Ukraine and in Russia.
Each day, the site publishes a set of poems written by a single poet. Some of the featured authors live in Russia, some in Ukraine, and some are part of the worldwide Russian-speaking diaspora. The poetry is written in Russian. A number of the pieces have English translations. Recently, translations into additional languages—German, Hebrew and Ukrainian—have been added.
The reason some of the poetry created in Ukraine is written in Russian, rather than in Ukrainian, is that many citizens of that country use the Russian language both for everyday life and for literary expression, For a sizable minority of the population—approximately 30% as of the latest (2001) census—Russian is their mother tongue.
Some texts are deeply rooted in the traditions of Russian classic literature, and some push the envelope of the latest trends; some are inflected by the literature of other languages and cultures; some of the authors are well-recognized writers, and for some, publication in “View.Point” is their debut.
I do not have a systematic process for selecting which poems I translate. I am not able to come at all close to translating all the poetry that speaks to me and moves me deeply. There is simply too much of it. Besides, many poems I love cannot be translated (at least, I see no way to render them in English in a way that does them justice). I have not set for myself a goal of creating a representative sample of the poetry published in this journal in terms of the content, the form, or the author’s location. It feels to me as though a poem chooses me as its translator, as opposed to the other way around.
I discern a common thread connecting the poems I’ve translated. These texts all grapple with questions that are sides of the same coin: What is the nature of the evil, of the darkness that has gradually welled up in Russia during the last twenty years? And what is the nature of the forces that are defying this darkness, that are helping us move toward the light?
Considering the nature of the evil depicted in the poems, I am struck by the contrast between the magnitude of its horrific consequences, and the absurd pettiness of its character.
This poetry witnesses the deep suffering and the cataclysmic destruction wreaked by the war on the people of Ukraine. In particular, many of the poems written by the Ukrainian authors speak about the devastating bombings that Russia’s army has been inflicting on the people living in Ukrainian cities such as Kharkiv, Kiev, and Odessa.
Dmitry Blizniuk lives in Kharkiv, Ukraine. In his poem “a periwinkle volkswagen,” the souls of slaughtered schoolchildren still dwell above the ruins of their school, still follow the mundane routine of “dutifully brushing their teeth” every morning. It is as if these souls are unable to believe that bombs fell on their school and tore them away from the world of the living.
In “Kharkiv,” a poem by Andrej Kostinsky, who also lives in Kharkiv, the heart of the city itself is removed from its chest and lies on the operating table, its heartbeat slowing down, hovering just above a flat line. The very order of the solar system is shattered:
now I hear
the sun moaning
when it feels the sharp fragments
of buildings shattered by rockets and bombs
While the brunt of the suffering and of the work of resisting Russia’s relentless attacks falls on the people of Ukraine, a worldwide chorus witnesses Ukraine’s tragedy and raises its voice in lamentation of its suffering and in praise of its heroes. The poet Olga Agour is part of this collective of sympathetic and involved observers. Agour emigrated from the former Soviet Union and currently lives in Israel. A psychotherapist by profession, she volunteers her time on a psychological help hotline used by people in Ukraine, and by refugees fleeing both the war in Ukraine and the totalitarian regime in Russia. Her poem “July” presents a panorama of suffering and destruction. It describes “Cities ground down / Villages uprooted from the soil”, their railroad stations packed with refugees, and their apartment buildings turned into improvised bomb shelters:
Basements with no water
Basements with no bread
Basements with no one left alive
The atrocities committed by the invaders are vast in scale. They cause profound grief and rage, and will continues to shape history for decades and centuries to come. But the self-serving motivations of the people who order and perpetrate these crimes, and the ridiculous justifications they offer, provoke derision rather than awe. Anastasia Shakirova, who lives in Kiev, Ukraine, speaks with contempt about those who invaded her country and attacked her city. In “we were taught something else” Shakirova portrays the mindless inhumanity of the real-life evil these attackers :
real evil knows no hesitation—its face is blank.
when it locks its eyes on a target, it does not blink.
whatever gets in the way is a mere obstacle—junk—even if it is living
(especially if it is living).
She contrasts this unalloyed evil with the “make-believe villains” whom she encountered as a child in the stories that she and other “bookish children” read or made up. Those stories, which turned out to be “fairy tales,” contained nuanced, tormented, vulnerable, even sympathy-provoking and potentially-redeemable villains, such as Scrooge. Her poem foretells a future when children will learn something very different from their elders: “evil is unmistakable, like rabies; flat like a bandage unrolled.”
When the catastrophe is examined by writers from Russia, the question many of them ask is: Why and how did this darkness arise and take hold in our birthplace?
Tatiana Voltskaya is a well-known poet and journalist from St. Petersburg, Russia. In 2021, she was branded a “foreign agent” by the Russian government for her outspoken criticism of its policies. In the spring of 2022, after the start of full-blown war against Ukraine, she had to leave Russia, and currently lives in the country of Georgia.
Similarly to Shakirova’s poem, Volstkaya’s “A louse appears” alludes to a classical book familiar to any well-read Russian-speaking child. Korney Chukovsky’s narrative poem “Tarakanische” (translated as “Monster Cockroach” or “Cock-the-Roach”) was written in 1921, shortly before Stalin consolidated his power and became dictator. The terrifying, tyrannical bewhiskered cockroach, whose bloodthirsty reign is depicted by Chukovsky, is closely associated with Stalin in the minds of generations of Russian readers. Voltskaya’s poem evokes Chukovsky’s use of playful rhythms and rhymes. As in Tarakanische, “A louse appears” portrays a tyrannical, monstrously bloated insect that started out as “just a small bug.” In Voltskaya’s poem an “everyman,” a member of the subjugated populace, is lying prostrate and groveling at the feet of the tyrant, who demands that his terrified victim surrender not only every shred of his former life, but also his children. This parallels a scene from Tarakanische in which the cockroach terrorizes the large animals and bullies them into giving up their cubs so he can have the baby animals for dinner. Voltskaya blames the tragedy she describes not only on the tyrant—that louse who started a war, “piled up dead bodies,” and infected the entire country with a fever-inducing disease—but also on the hapless everyman who spent years hiding in comfortable denial:
You kept warm and snug
At your dacha, your office, a piano bar;
Did not see how high that louse was reaching, how far.
Another text that examines the relationship between an arrogant, deceitful regime and the subjugated populace is “Lord God is Leaving This Country” by Igor Beliy from Moscow. Unlike Shakirova and Voltskaya, Beliy alludes not to the classical literature, but to well-known details of Russia’s recent history. For example, the remark “There is no God, but you hang tight,,” made in his poem by “a government bureaucrat / with the face of a cranky baby,” is an allusion to Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s infamous words “There is no money, but you hang tight,” his response in 2016 to an elderly Crimean woman who asked when Russia would deliver on the state pension increases promised during the 2014 annexation. Medvedev’s remark went viral in Russia. Against the backdrop of the well-known penchant that Russia’s rulers have for unimaginably costly luxuries, it had the same connotation as “Let them eat cake.” (In fact, a line of cakes decorated with Medvedev’s quote came out in Russia. Eventually these cakes attracted the attention of the government, and their production was banned.)
In this poem, too, there is the presence of everyday people. They sense that something has gone terribly amiss both with their country and with their church:
It seems as if nothing is changing—
The buildings with the crosses on top stay in place,
People enter their doors on the same schedule.
The woman next door sighs gloomily for a long while, then states:
“It wasn’t this hard before.
You go, say a prayer, and it eases up some.”
“And what about now?” I ask.
“Dunno. I feel like strangling somebody.”
Just as in Voltskaya’s poem, the nation portrayed in Beliy’s text is paralyzed, the individuals within it feeling helpless and crushed by the burden of hidden shame:
People try not to look at each other.
…
There is the need to run somewhere, scream, seek,
But without stirring, without making a sound
The current state of Russia’s populace has been shaped by decades of relentless propaganda that seeks to substitute scapegoating for critical thinking and jingoism for the desire for human connection. In their observations of Russia’s current regime, some poets satirize the absurdity of state propaganda, its utter dissociation from reality. An example is “A peaceable girl in a lavender sundress” by Dasha Polyakova, a poet who grew up in Moscow and currently resides in Denmark. The title character starts out as a girl in a pretty summer dress and ends up a ghoul in a burial shroud. This text parodies the romantic image of Russia that comes from classical poetry: a young, beautiful maiden—immortal, pure, unchanging, always prevailing over the dark forces that seek to destroy her. That idealized image has been appropriated by state propaganda. In Polyakova’s poem, the “peaceable girl” blithely spouts lies, while her situation becomes ever more dire. She denies that there is a war, and continues to insist that everything is fine, even as she is physically disintegrating:
No need for peacekeepers or observers, everything’s fine.
And from her back protrude the bare bones of her spine.
Her temples are charred, ashes drift from her hands to her clothes.
It will be great—she grins—we are close, so close.
The lyrics of Alexey Karakovski‘s song “The mannequin country” satirize the ideology (so-called “spiritual staples”) promoted by the state propaganda. It is a mishmash of consumerism, patriarchal “traditional family values,” celebration of militarism, and swaggering—sometimes sexualized—brutality aimed at those who are singled out as “other.”
The buses overflowed with all those people
Who couldn’t afford to get a Mercedes,
Each day they saved money to buy a car later;
Perhaps for them this was the meaning of life.
The mannequin country liked screwing and shafting
And gibbeting the raped in the streets and the squares—
It considered this practice essential
To serve as a warning, a caution to others.
…
The mannequin country liked to follow
The unfolding of gladiator battles…
So, what forces stand up to this evil? The poetry collected here offers no superhuman epic hero or supernatural force that can step in to defend Ukraine, or to grant the people of Russia the strength to denounce their government’s aggression and to seek their own civil rights. Instead, I hear in these poems the voices of vulnerable and, therefore, all the more courageous individuals—of human beings who find strength in speaking with honesty, in treating people around them with love and compassion. “Kids,” a poem by Alexander Lanin, who lives in Germany, describes a scene at a Western European railroad station where volunteers are receiving refugees from Ukraine. The poem is filled with tenderness for the refugee children. It glows with admiration for their ability to “sing and flow, even when they are silent and simply stand,” and for their power to “heal the pain, lift the fear.”
Tenderness is also the animating force in a poem by Inna Kvasivka, who lives in Odessa, a Ukrainian city that has been bombed repeatedly by the Russian forces. In her chant-like “Not a word,” she invokes a moment of quiet and gentle closeness with someone dear to her. That moment takes place against a backdrop of air-raid sirens and the expectation of imminent parting. Many people in Ukraine have had to leave their families and friends. They risk their lives as members of the army, or of one of the many professional and volunteer forces that are providing essential services to civilians under constant bombardment. Therefore, the parting the poet speaks of may take one or both of the characters in the poem into mortal danger. The silent mutual understanding is poignant:
Do not speak, let it come—
stillness vast, soft and calm,
let it sweep away sounds
without trace,
as though we are long dead,
as though all pain and dread
have departed and granted us
grace.
It is this tender intimacy that gives the narrator the strength to not break down even at the moment of parting from her beloved.
“Separation” by Moscow-based Alexandra Lastoverova, is filled with a different kind of love—what we might call “tough love.” This poem speaks in a fierce voice, as do many of the works that are written by poets who live in or come from Russia. Lastoverova’s text is a clear, almost clinical portrayal of a process of brain-washing that drives a young man in Russia to become a compliant pawn of pseudo-parental authority figures, ready to shed his own and other people’s blood for the sake of proving his loyalty to his motherland. The poet just as clearly insists that it is both possible and necessary for this person to break away from these domineering figures, and from their cult of bloodthirstiness, despite the threats of imprisonment and brutalization that are likely to follow. She calls out to the protagonist of her story:
… you are not your mother.
You are not your father.
You will not drink this anymore.
One of the most astonishing and moving aspects of the poetry of witness is that rage and revulsion toward the perpetrators of violence is sometimes able to co-exist with a recognition that they, too, are human. The humanity of the aggressors has been horribly, perhaps irreparably, mangled both by the conditions that shaped them and by their own actions. And yet, the people who stand firm against the barbarism of the invaders refuse to sink to their level, to lose the ability to experience pity even for an enemy once that enemy has been subdued.
The poem “what’s the nature of strife and of friendship?” by Odessa-based Ukrainian poet Alexander Shchedrinskiy is an example of a poem that articulates this combination of fury and pity. It starts with the desire to unhesitatingly mete out death to the “latter-day fascists / coming here to destroy and despoil.” Yet the poet transcends his vengefulness. He admits to himself that if he is ordered by his fatherland to shoot a vanquished, helpless enemy, he will not be able to carry out the command.
I will topple, and the snow red with sunset
will blend with hot tears on my skin.
I will weep for the stranger as human,
for the kinship that’s closer than kin.
I find in the humanism of this poem a source for hope and inspiration.
The View.Point project is a collective act of defying the inhumanity of war and the barbarism of suppressing human rights. By bringing together the voices of Russia’s citizens, the Russian-speaking citizens of Ukraine, and people (such as myself) who belong to other communities, but who preserve their connection to the Russian language, View.Point gives the lie to the claims made by Russia’s propaganda that the Russian government’s actions are undertaken on behalf of, and with the unanimous support of, those who love the Russian language and its literature. It is part of a larger worldwide mosaic of efforts by writers, musicians, and other artists to reclaim the Russian language, and the culture rooted in that language, from those who aim to use it as a pretext for violence and hatred. We believe that the Russian language, as any language, can and should be a vehicle for human connection, for poetry, for reaching toward the light.
Yana Kane holds a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Princeton University, and a PhD in Statistics from Cornell University. Having retired after a successful technical career, she is pursuing an MFA degree in Literary Translation and Poetry at Fairleigh Dickinson University.
Acknowledgment
I am grateful to Professor Minna Proctor for her attentive guidance, to Bruce Esrig for his perceptive and meticulous editing, and to Professor H. L. Hix for his insightful comments.
Notes
All poetry quotations in this essay are translated from the Russian by Yana Kane.
In September of 2022, the View.Point website was registered in the care of a German citizen. Thus, the project is now governed by German, rather than Russian, law.
The work of creating and curating the content of the View.Point journal and of managing and maintaining the site is done by unpaid volunteers.
The precise figure for the proportion of Ukrainian citizens who identify Russian as their mother tongue is 29.6% as of the 2001 census, according to Ukrainian census site (http://2001.ukrcensus.gov.ua/eng/results/general/language/).
List of Published Translations
The translation of “Kharkiv” by Andrej Kostinskywas was published in 128 LIT
The translation of “July” by Olga Agour was published in “Точка.Зрения” / “View.Point”
The translation of “we were taught something else” by Anastasia Shakirova was published in “Точка.Зрения” / “View.Point
The translation of “A louse appears” by Tatiana Voltskaya was published in “Точка.Зрения” / “View.Point”
The translation of “Lord God is Leaving This Country” by Igor Beliy was published in “Точка.Зрения” / “View.Point”
The translation of “A peaceable girl in a lavender sundress” by Dasha Polyakova was published in “Точка.Зрения” / “View.Point”
The translation of “The mannequin country” by Alexey Karakovski was published in EastWest Literary Forum
The translation of “Kids” by Alexander Lanin is featured on “Toronto Translators Seminar” site:
The translation of “Not a word” by Inna Kvasivka was published in “Точка.Зрения” / “View.Point”
The translation of “Separation” by Alexandra Lastoverova was published in “Точка.Зрения” / “View.Point
The translation of “what’s the nature of strife and of friendship?” by Alexander Shchedrinskiy was published in “Точка.Зрения” / “View.Point”
20 December 2023
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