Brodsky Translating Brodsky: Poetry in Self-Translation

Alexandra Berlina is Postdoctoral Researcher in Literary Studies at the University of Erfurt, Germany. Her translations of Brodsky's poems "Dido and Aeneas" and "You can't tell a gnat..." have won awards from the 'Willis Barnstone Translation Prize' and the 'The Joseph Brodsky/Stephen Spender Prize'.Robert Chandler is an award-winning poet and translator from Russian, French, and Greek. Among the writers he has translated from Russian are Alexander Pushkin, Nikolay Leskov, Vasily Grossman and Andrey Platonov. He is the co-editor of the Penguin Classics anthology Russian Poetry from Pushkin to Brodsky (2014). Penguin have also published his anthologies of Russian short stories and of Russian magic tales.

The author’s sensitive and insightful readings of Brodsky’s poems both in the Russian original and in English translation—to the point where it becomes unclear which one is the original and which one the translation in any given case, and whether the neat distinction between original and translation ought to be taken for granted more generally—illuminate Brodsky’s poetics and technique to an unprecedented degree by laying bare their semantic, grammatical, syntactical, and phonological workings.

• AcknowledgmentsNote on the Text Foreword: Post-Modernist Chants, Robert Chandler1. What Is It All About? 2. “December in Florence” 2.1. The Matter of Meter and the Force of Form 2.2. “The doors take in air, exhale steam; you, however, won’t…” 2.3 “Sunk in raw twilight, the pupil blinks but gulps…” 2.4. “Cats check at noon under benches …”2.5. “A man gets reduced to pen’s rustle on paper…” 2.6. “Quays resemble stalled trains…” 2.7. “In a dusty café, in the shade of your cap…” 2.8. “Taking in air, exhaling steam…” 2.9. “The stone nest resounds with a piercing squeal…” 2.10 “There are cities one won’t see again…” 3. Three Nativity Poems 3.1. “Star of the Nativity” 3.2. “Nativity” 3.3. “Lullaby” 3.4. A Delicate Balance: Brodsky’s Nativity Poetry 4. Poems à Clef: M.B.’s Birthday 4.1. “The Polar Explorer” 4.2. “Minefield Revisited” 5. Elegies 5.1. “In Memoriam” 5.2. “In Memory of my Father: Australia,” “August Rain” 5.3. “To a Friend: In Memoriam” 6. Beyond Translation: “Centaurs” and Other Hybrids 6.1. Word Play in Translation and the Centauric Self-Portrait 6.2. “Centaurs” 6.3. A Matter of (Con-)Sequence 6.4. Beyond Translation: “Epitaph for a Centaur” 7. Further Beyond Translation: “Sextet” and Other Excavations 7.1. “An eyelid is twitching...” 7.2. “Sometimes in the desert you hear a voice” 7.2. “For thirty-six years I’ve stared at fire” 7.3. “Where’s that?” 7.4. “Was the word ever uttered?” 7.5. “And I dread my petals’ joining the crowned knot” 7.6. “Letter to an Archeologist” and the Translation-Creation-Continuum 8. Themes Taking Root in Translation and Other Tendencies 8.1. Wet Dreams 8.2. Hurtful Horizons 8.3. More Tendencies in Translation Bibliography Index