Osip Mandelstam. Translated by Naza Semoniff

Also in Translations:

1. Reflection by Odilon Redon
Odilon Redon "Reflection "
Osip Mandelstam. Translated by Naza Semoniff

 
Why is the soul so songful,

And the dear names so scarce,

And the instant rhythm – a mere windfall,

Aquilon by surprise?
 

A cloud of dust he will whirl,

Paper leafage will rustle,

And will never return – or

He will, but quite altered.
 

Oh, the Orpheus’ wind unabated,

To the edge of the sea you will fly,

Holding dear the world uncreated,

I forgot the unneeded “I”.
 

Through a toy-like grove I roamed

And a sky-blue cave I discovered…

Am I real any doubt beyond

And will death come without a doubt?
 

~ ~ ~

 
Отчего душа так певуча,

И так мало милых имен,

И мгновенный ритм – только случай,

Неожиданный Аквилон?
 

Он подымет облако пыли,

Зашумит бумажной листвой

И совсем не вернется – или

Он вернется совсем другой.
 

О, широкий ветер Орфея,

Ты уйдешь в морские края

И, несозданный мир лелея,

Я забыл ненужное «я».
 

Я блуждал в игрушечной чаще

И открыл лазоревый грот…

Неужели я настоящий

И действительно смерть придёт?
 
1911

About the Author:

Mandelshtam17 (2)
Osip Mandelstam
Russia/ The Soviet Union

Osip Mandelstam [Rus. Осип Мандельштам] (14 January 1891 – 27 December 1938) was one of the greatest Russian poets of the 20th century.  He was arrested in the 1930s and sent into internal exile with Nadezhda Mandelshtam, his wife. Given a reprieve of sorts, they moved to Voronezh in southwestern Russia. In 1938 Mandelstam was arrested again and sentenced to five years in a GULAG camp in the Soviet Far East. He died that year at a transit camp near Vladivostok.

About the Translator:

33. naza photo
Naza Semoniff
New York, USA

Naza Semoniff is a management consultant by day and a literary translator, poet, and writer by night. She holds an MBA and engineering degrees. Her published work includes edition, annotation, and translation of the original (1929) Kiki’s Memoirs by Kiki de Montparnasse from French and its original English (1930) translation, and translation of Mayakovsky by Elsa Triolet (1939) from French into Russian. Additionally, Naza has several essays and poems published in English and Russian.

Osip Mandestam Осип Мандельштам
Bookshelf
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.

by Nina Kossman

A collection of poems in Russian. Published by Khudozhestvennaya literatura (Художественная литература). Moscow, 1990.

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