(1) Julia Wiener photo self
Julia Wiener
Julia Wiener. I forgive

 
I forgive

my father for conceiving me

my mother for bearing me

my brother for looking alike

my sister for not being

my husband for dying

my children for not being born

but myself I don’t forgive anything

(and I don’t ask for forgiveness)
 
I forgive

the Germans for killing me

the Jews for thinking I’m one of them

the Russians for not thinking I’m one of them

the Japanese, the English and the Swedes

for not being Jewish

the earth for putting up with us all

But God I don’t forgive anything

(most of all that he doesn’t exist)
 
Translated from Russian by Nina Kossman
 
 
The Original:
 
Я прощаю

отцу за то что он меня зачал

матери за что она меня носила

брату за то что мы похожи

сестре за то что её нету

мужу за то что он умер

детям за то что они не родились

себе не прощаю ничего

(да и не прошу прощенья)
 
я прощаю

немцам за то что они меня убили

евреям за то что они меня считают своею

русским за то что они меня своей не считают

японцам англичанам и прочим шведам

за то что они не евреи

земле за то что она всех нас терпит

богу не прощаю ничего

(главным образом то что его нету)
 

About the Author:

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Julia Wiener
Jerusalem, Israel

Julia Wiener (July 22, 1935, Moscow – February 13, 2022, Jerusalem) was a bilingual writer, poet, scriptwriter, and translator. She said about herself: “I had lived the first half of my life as a Jew in the USSR and the second half of it as a Russian in Israel.” In the USSR, she earned her living by scriptwriting for Moscow TV; later, later by doing literary translations. She emigrated to Israel in 1971. She wrote and published both poetry and prose. She translated poetry and fiction from Hebrew, English, French, German, Polish, and Dutch. She was married to Johannes Hendrik Fernhout (1913—1987), a Dutch filmmaker, until his death in 1987.

Titles of her books (in Russian): «Снег в Гефсиманском саду», «На воздушном шаре — туда и обратно», «Собака и её хозяйка», «Смерть в доме творчества», «Былое и выдумки», «Красный адамант», «О деньгах, о старости, о смерти», «Место для жизни. Квартирные рассказы».

Julia Wiener Юлия Винер
Bookshelf
by Aleksandr Kabanov

A book of wartime poems by Alexandr Kabanov, one of Ukraine’s major poets, fighting for the independence of his country by means at his disposal – words and rhymes.

by Mark Budman

Every character in these twenty-two interlinked stories is an immigrant from a place real or imaginary. (Magic realism/immigrant fiction.)

by Andrey Kneller

In this collection, Andrey Kneller has woven together his own poems with his translations of one of the most recognized and celebrated contemporary Russian poets, Vera Pavlova.

by Osip Mandelstam

This collection, compiled, translated, and edited by poet and scholar Ian Probstein, provides Anglophone audiences with a powerful selection of Mandelstam’s most beloved and haunting poems.

by Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry

Four teenagers grow inseparable in the last days of the Soviet Union—but not all of them will live to see the new world arrive in this powerful debut novel, loosely based on Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard.

 

by Victor Enyutin

A book of poems in Russian by Victor Enyutin (San Francisco, 1983). Victor  Enyutin is a Russian writer, poet, and sociologist who emigrated to the US from the Soviet Union in 1975.

Videos
Three Questions. A Documentary by Vita Shtivelman
Play Video
Poetry Reading in Honor of Brodsky’s 81st Birthday
Length: 1:35:40