https://litpoint.press/2023/02/22/galina-itskovich-anthology-disbelief-some-aspects-of-the-elephant/
There is much here that is wise, moving and memorable. Thank you, Galina Itzkovich. And thank you, Tatyana Vinogradova and Dmitri Manin, for the lines:
"we keep pouring from hand to hand
the cold inglorious water of love."
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I shall paste in just the last few paragraphs of this outstanding article:
"It is important to say a few words about the translators and the titanic work of the heart and mind that these texts demanded. The translations are made with the greatest care, preserving not only the form and style, but also the emotional component, with the precision of a tuning fork, allowing for the co-tuning of the entire book, so that it sounds like an orchestra. It is thanks to them that the English-speaking public will be able to fully empathize, grasp the scope of the, so far, unending catastrophe.
"Try to read them in order of appearance, page by page, and a feeling of overheard confession will creep in, so personal are the poems in this anthology. It is the autobiography in the making; each separate voice in the choir serves as the inner core on which the experience of war is built. We have yet to live and find the expressive means for what awaits us in the second year of the war, and to gather the moral strength for the next stage, the heroic one. And already the voice of hope appears out of shame and darkness:
while the war unfolds like a thunderstorm
we keep pouring from hand to hand
the cold inglorious water of love
we say to it:
sprout from the past
sketch the lines of our future
while the present’s eyes are poked out
while our heart has fallen
in a remote well, to its very bottom
and we have no way of reaching it
we keep pouring from hand to hand
the cold inglorious water of love
(Tatyana Vinogradova)
"As of today, great many are scarred and scattered. “Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture!” – this is a quote from Jeremiah, not from the anthology. Yet, going back to the collected poems, maybe something important, something that will survive the ruin of intellectual and emotional pastures, may hatch in this inanimate frozen-through water. Is it possible that this group effort to atone for the guilt of innocent language, a group cry for lost innocence, will open up certain apertures, cause a wave, a public outcry, and rock the silent? Could it be that the new Russian poetry will humanize Russians and stop the bloodshed? Don’t call me naïve. It’s imperative to hold on to the dream. Don’t we all need to do something?
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