Hyperallergic and Douglas Messerli Introduce Arseny Tarkovsky's Poetry

At Hyperallergic, Douglas Messerli considers why Arseny Tarkovsky, ("real poet" according to Anna Akhmatova) has been overlooked, and why a translation by Philip Metres and Dmitri Psurtsev might change all that. More:

Although long recognized in the Soviet Union and later Russia as a great poet continuing in the tradition of Osip Mandelstam, Arseny Tarkovsky — father to renowned film director Andrei — has been little known to Western readers, and almost entirely unknown in English. The close friend to early 20th century Soviet greats such as Marina Tsvetaeva (who sought out a romantic relationship with Tarkovsky before committing suicide), Anna Akhmatova, and numerous others, few Americans might have imagined that Tarkovsky, as Akhmatova described him, was perceived by many as the one “real poet” in the Soviet Union:

[…]of all contemporary poets Tarkovsky alone is completely his own self, completely independent. He possesses the mostcimportant feature of a poet, which I’d call the birthright.

There are numerous reasons for the oversight. Although recognized as a war hero for his actions in World War II as a correspondent for the Soviet Army publication Battle Alarm, during which time he was seriously wounded, his leg eventually sacrificed to gangrene, Tarkovsky came of age after Central Committee secretary Andrei Zhdanov’s ideological attack on the works of Akhmatova and Mikhail Zoshchenko, and, accordingly, Tarkovsky’s own 1946 book, although accepted for publication, was withdrawn. It was not until 1962 that the poet was able to publish his first volume, Before the Snow, when he was 55 years of age. Although his work did gain some fame in the West through his son’s films Mirror (1974) and Stalker (1979), which included quotations from a few of his poems, his writing is nearly impossible to convey into English, based as it is on the long Russian traditions of end rhyme and meter. Tarkovsky died in 1989, just prior to the fall of the Soviet Union.

Finally, in Philip Metres and Dimitri Psurtsev’s I Burned at the Feast: Selected Poems of Arseny Tarkovsky we get a fair idea of what Tarkovsky’s work might sound like in Russian. If the poetry that results sometimes seems to lack the excitement of other major Russian poets of the day, the translators are certainly to be commended for their brave attempts to render a completely “other” poetic tradition into a language that makes sense to the American ear.

Indeed, one of the most important aspects of this book is just how much it reveals the difficulties any translator faces. The afterword by Philip Metres, presented as 25 Propositions about the process of translating, is worth the price of the book.

Rather than presenting these concerns as an academic exercise, Metres, often with humor and always with intelligence, outlines some of the basic impossibilities of translating an “authentic” poetry. The fact that Tarkovsky was a noted translator of numerous languages into Russian who well knew of the translator’s difficulties may have provided Metres and Psurtsev a tacit feeling of support. [...]

Continue at Hyperallergic for more insights into this overlooked master and for many excerpts from the new book.