Portraits without Frames Read online

A friendly turn.

  His sense

  of this moment’s significance

  seeps into me.

  We drink tea.

  Splendor, tranquility.

  You cannot stay angry at Korney Ivanovich.

  He has rewarded you with a smile,

  a flick of the wrist, the manners of Oxford,

  with his authorship of The Crocodile

  and The Buzzer-Fly,‡

  with the cockroach mustaches of the Kremlin mountaineer,§

  with pine cones from the dacha,

  and with flocks of children,

  hurrying

  to the Chukovsky Library.

  1994

  Translated by Boris Dralyuk

  *One of Chukovsky’s imaginative children’s tales in verse, written in 1916.

  †The opening lines of another of Chukovsky’s tales, Wash ’Em Clean (1923).

  ‡Another of Chukovsky’s narrative poems for children, written in 1924.

  §A reference to a line in Osip Mandelstam’s so-called “Stalin Epigram” (1933). It may be that Mandelstam’s description of Stalin’s cockroach mustaches was inspired by Chukovsky’s poetic children’s tale The Big Bad Cockroach (1921).

  GEORGY SHENGELI (1894–1956) was a poet, translator, and theorist of poetics. He grew up in the provincial city of Kerch and moved to Moscow to make his name in poetry. Shengeli published a number of poetry collections as well as several prosody books for young poets and became quite influential, serving as the chairman of the All-Russian Union of Poets from 1925 to 1927. He is now chiefly remembered for his very public 1927 spat with Vladimir Mayakovsky (by that time, the official voice of the Revolution) about conservatism versus innovation in poetry, which quickly degenerated into a vicious round of attacks and counterattacks in the press. This ruined Shengeli’s reputation and made him a laughingstock and persona non grata in Soviet poetry.

  GEORGY ARKADIEVICH SHENGELI

  In the narrow hallway Akhmatova

  repeated what she had said

  in the room an hour earlier:

  “Do something for Shengeli,

  don’t forget about him,

  please reread his poems . . .”

  I knew a few lines

  from poems

  Shengeli had written long ago,

  I knew his translations

  and his books on prosody.

  Hot-blooded by nature,

  he had spent many a year

  wrestling with verse.

  But I didn’t know

  the full measure of his personality,

  the scope of his ambition,

  the unabated audacity

  that led him to challenge

  Mayakovsky himself—

  for which he was labeled

  an arrogant know-nothing,

  a pedant, a dogmatist, a muckworm,

  a trifler with pointless pyrrhics

  and hyperdactylic rhymes.

  In short: an egghead!

  His reputation was ruined,

  perhaps his own doing.

  But nothing in Russia lasts

  like a damaged reputation.

  A Tacitus of prosody,

  knocked off course by his enemies!

  Now known as “Professor,” he

  fell silent, withdrew into himself.

  There was aloofness

  in the way he walked,

  in the gaze of his dark eyes,

  wearied by intense southern hues,

  in his Crimean tan,

  neatly emphasized

  by his round horn-rimmed glasses,

  then newly in fashion.

  Once we were both caught by a rainstorm

  under an overhang at the entrance

  to the State Literature

  Publishing House.

  I recognized him at once.

  Freeze-frame:

  the rainstorm is having a ball—

  it slams raindrops into the pavement

  and hammers them flat as they fall.

  It takes wild swings, with gusto,

  and gladdens our hearts;

  then lays its head on the scaffold,

  ready now to depart.

  The rain slows its dance

  as the rivulets sing,

  and leaves behind one or two copper

  and one or two silver strings.

  I looked for a long time at Shengeli;

  he noticed, so I asked

  hesitantly: “You’re . . . Shengeli . . . aren’t you?”

  “Yes, you are not mistaken.”

  “I know some of your poetry

  by heart. Yes, I know your lines

  about the Romans.” “Really?”

  he answered—and his face lit up.

  “ ‘Friends! We are Romans.

  And there is no end to sorrow.

  The stirring golden rust of sunset’s glow

  seeping through the air of autumn

  above the stately Forum

  ceased flaming long ago.’

  I love those lines!” I exclaimed.

  “Ah!” he replied.

  It doesn’t take so very much

  to make another person happy.

  And he offered me his hand.

  “Well, now we’re acquainted,”

  he said, smiling.

  In his smile I sensed:

  joy, weariness, trust,

  exhausted vanity,

  the pride of obscurity,

  a desire to hear something

  akin to approval

  or simply to have someone

  just pay a little attention—

  to attend to him

  and to his calling.

  The rain was ending,

  its last rustle yielding

  to birdsong.

  The rain had finished its job,

  raptly disappearing.

  Shengeli was searching for something

  in his open briefcase—

  searching intensely

  for something that wasn’t there.

  He said quietly, in parting,

  “I wanted to give you my book,

  but, alas, I can’t find it.

  But I’m sure there’ll be another chance

  for me to give you my book,

  maybe even a book

  with more poems in it,

  a new one.”

  We never met again.

  I read everything of his

  that I came across.

  I read it with attention—

  with deep interest.

  I understood: obscurity

  is an injustice. Time passed,

  moving on and on, irrevocably;

  it passed by in silence,

  filled with other,

  newer names.

  On one of her visits to Moscow,

  Anna Akhmatova stayed at a building

  on broad Prospekt Mira—

  Peace Avenue—

  in the apartment of Nina Leontievna—

  poet and translator and widow

  of Georgy Arkadievich

  Shengeli, with whom I once spoke.

  I saw his apartment

  filled with books and albums,

  the setting in which

  he created and suffered.

  Akhmatova and I

  talked of many things,

  including the villainy of Fate

  and her many tricks, both big and small.

  She and I talked of many things

  and, as we said goodbye,

  she reminded me

  with quiet insistence,

  just as she had

  once before:

  “Don’t forget Georgy Arkadievich!”

  July 9, 1994, Krasnovidovo

  Translated by Maria Bloshteyn

  MIKHAIL SVETLOV (né Sheynkman, 1903–1964) was a tremendously popular poet of the 1920s, whose verse, by turns poignant and playful, is the very archetype of “revolutionary romanticism.” The
following lines from “Granada”—a ballad about the death of a peasant soldier who’d dreamt of liberating his brethren in the eponymous Spanish region, the name of which he’d once come across in a book— distill the spirit of this romanticism:

  We rambled on, dreaming

  We’d learn in the clamor

  the language of cannon,

  the battle’s hard grammar.

  The sun swung above us,

  the sun sank again,

  and the galloping horses

  drooped under the strain.

  But the squadron played always

  the old “Apple” rhyme

  with the bows of suffering

  on violins of time.

  Where now is your song, lad?

  And where has it flown?

  Granada, Granada,

  Granada my own.

  Translated by Jack Lindsay

  Svetlov was born into a poor Jewish family in Yekaterinoslav (now Dnipro), Ukraine, and made his literary debut in 1917. He was an enthusiastic communist and voluntarily enlisted in the Red Army during the Civil War. He escaped persecution during the 1930s (perhaps thanks precisely to the method Ozerov describes in his portrait) and served as a frontline correspondent during the Second World War.

  MIKHAIL ARKADIEVICH SVETLOV

  A waning crescent melting in the sky—

  the profile of Svetlov, the poet.

  The tips of his forehead and chin

  reach for each other;

  between them nests the clever smile

  of a man from the city

  once known as Yekaterinoslav.

  Stooping, Svetlov

  carries his leanness with dignity.

  “I live among shadows.

  They surround me—the friends

  of my youth. Everyone else has gone.

  What’s death?”

  he asked.

  Then answered,

  “Just joining the majority.”

  He was sitting at a table

  in a noisy cocktail lounge,

  which he called the boiler room.

  A born melancholic,

  he took it upon himself

  to amuse people,

  and he gained fame as a joker—

  as the Nasreddin Hodja

  of our poetry. He raised

  his cocktail to his lips,

  lit a cigarette,

  and asked another question:

  “Another name for half a liter?”

  Then answered,

  “One big drop.”

  Svetlov had not been a drinker,

  but he became one. He found

  it hard to believe the turn

  his life had taken,

  this sharp-witted mourner.

  “All of a sudden, back in ’28

  they summoned me—up there”

  (a gesture with his index finger)

  “and this is how they put it:

  ‘We know you—

  “Granada,” “Merrymaking”—

  so please get to know us,

  help us flush out

  these Trotskyists.’

  ‘But I’m a Trotskyist myself,’

  I blurted out.

  ‘We know, that’s why we want you

  to help us find them.’ ”

  (A pause—a whistling descent

  from a high promontory into an abyss.)

  “ ‘Call round tomorrow, same time—

  we await your answer.’

  And so I went home from the Lubyanka.

  It was agony, it was torture . . . I didn’t

  know what to do with myself.

  Went to bed—couldn’t sleep,

  sat down—couldn’t sit,

  got up—couldn’t stand.

  What could I do?

  I made it through the night

  with difficulty.

  Then, early in the morning,

  came a ring at the door.

  A fellow from back home,

  a friend of my youth.

  And not alone—but with a bottle.

  Not just a bottle—

  but with plenty of food too.

  We drank—and I felt better.

  We had another—I felt good.

  One more—and I was flying high.

  Then lunch—and life was swell,

  couldn’t have been better, in this fine land of ours.

  On legs of jelly

  I went off to the Lubyanka.

  ‘What’s this, Svetlov?

  Can’t even stand on your own two feet!

  We don’t need drunkards.

  Get out of here!’

  They sent me packing—

  what a present!

  I started off for home—my soul

  was singing,

  and I had no wish

  to play around with rhymes . . .

  The unresolvable can be resolved

  so unexpectedly,

  so accidentally

  by such a simple method.

  Moisture with degrees of proof,

  genuine, unfalsified proof . . .”

  Svetlov stalled forever

  on this simple, reliable,

  tried-and-tested method

  of answering the irrelevant

  and tactless questions

  posed by life . . .

  Svetlov sipped from his glass,

  lit up again—

  with relish, his head in the clouds.

  His silence lasted

  a long time. When he came to,

  he said, “Our talk today’s

  been much too dismal.

  My fault.

  Let’s take a break from all this wit.

  Let’s walk through Moscow,

  around the Boulevard Ring.

  We’ll go to the Neskuchny Garden—

  and let’s not think about

  who may be waiting around the corner,

  even

  if they well and truly are.”

  Translated by Boris Dralyuk

  VLADIMIR LUGOVSKOY (1901–1957) was a member of the Constructivist group, publishing his first book of poems in 1926. The wind is a recurrent image in his work; a well-known poem about the Civil War opens with the line, “And so, the song of the wind begins.” Late in life he wrote: “In my poems the word ‘wind’ became a synonym for revolution, for eternal forward movement, for spirited joy and strength.” In 1937 some of Lugovskoy’s poems were declared to be “politically harmful” and he was coerced into a statement of public repentance. A central theme of his last poems is that of each person’s responsibility for the world as a whole.

  VLADIMIR ALEXANDROVICH LUGOVSKOY

  And so, the song of the wind begins. . .

  As the day begins, as the day takes off.

  The song the wind sings to the soldiers

  plodding through gunfire.

  If you saw Lugovskoy

  in his prime,

  in his blossoming,

  his bass voice booming

  as he searched for the right,

  astonishing word,

  what you saw was a centaur,

  a battle-browed, armor-clad

  warrior of the word—

  a man of decision

  from head to toe

  who could checkmate you

  in three moves. Strong hands,

  true backbone, and a fondness

  for late-night phone calls

  and questions that floored you:

  “What do you make, my good man,

  of the international situation?

  How would you grade it?

  Five marks for excellent,

  one for catastrophic.

  Seems I’ve just woken you up.

  Never mind—you can catch

  up on your sleep sometime

  tomorrow.” “No idea,” I reply.

  “You’re lying. At a time like this

  honest people are not asleep.

  Come rou
nd. The sooner,

  the better. So . . .

  And I’ll pay for a taxi.”

  “Dear Uncle Volodya, can’t

  this wait till tomorrow?”

  The wind gets up—a furious gust.

  “Enough! Come at once!”

  I get to his apartment.

  He’s listening to the radio,

  eyebrows raised sternly,

  lightning

  flashing across his face.

  “Things are bad in Hungary.

  Very bad indeed, my friend.”

  Lugovskoy paces about,

  large, gray-haired, angular.

  “Listen, do you understand

  what’s going on in the world?

  Just think—I once sang

  a Revolution that was to bring

  freedom to the world.

  And now—just think

  what’s being done in Hungary,

  with our consent!”

  “No—it’s being done

  against our will,

  against your will and mine.”

  “Think before you speak.

  We answer for everything.”

  “No, not for everything.”

  “For everything.” Lugovskoy

  goes over to the sideboard

  and takes out a cut-glass decanter

  and two glasses. Maya

  comes into the room

  and a third glass is put ready.

  We need a bite to eat too.

  A bite to eat is brought through.

  “I once sang

  a Revolution that was to bring

  freedom to the world.”

  “It’s not you who’s to blame

  that freedom remains only a promise—

  what people call a utopia.”

  “I don’t need lectures, my friend.

  That’s not your business.” A few

  timid, wifely words from Maya,

  who is sweet and sleepy.

  Three glasses each. It grows

  light and we go out

  into Lavrushinsky Lane.

  The Tretyakov Gallery is turning

  quietly crimson, as it often does

  at dawn, enjoying a rest from visitors

  and their all-knowing guides.

  Lugovskoy flares his nostrils

  and breathes in noisily.

  His face comes alive,

  his breath whistles in

  as when he was young.

  There is spring in his lungs

  and iron in his blood,

  as his verse and his taut lips

  make clear. His beret covers his gray.

  Distant flickers of dawn

  grace the gold of Ivan the Great

  and the cupolas

  of the Kremlin churches. We part

  with a kiss. I say confidingly,