Poetry

[Nastya]

Poetry!

I've decided to create this topic for I can't imagine Russian literature without its significant part - poetry.
I for one would be glad to discuss the poems and works of the famous poets. Poets. Let's see... Pushkin (nothing begins in Russia without him), Lermontov, Tutchev, Fet, Nekrasov and etc. for the 19th century.
Can't help mentioning The Silver Century - Ahmatova, Cvetaeva, Gippius, Mandelshtam, Hodasevich, Sologub, Brusov, Balmont, Annenskiy, Gumilev, Mereshkovskiy, Esenin, Blok, Mayakovskiy, Pasternak, Kluev, Severyanin, Beliy, Cherniy and etc.
And 60s - Voznesenskiy, Evtushenko, Ahmadulina, Poshdestvenskiy, Okudshava, Visotskiy and many, many others, who escaped my memory this very moment.. if anyone would like to add someone, you are welcome!

H.  

[Golyadkin]

H.   ?

I thought your name was Nastya.

Oh, and I haven't read any Russian poetry, but a poet that I really like is John Keats (obviously NOT Russian, but a poet just the same). He, like F.D., has a website under his name: www.john-keats.com.
I think you'd like some of his "Ode to..." works.

B.  

[axon]

this is off topic, but I think Keats is an OK poet as for my taste. Favorite all time poem by him is "Ode on a Grecian urn". Other then that, I much prefer Mathew Arnold or Robert Frost. But the one who tops them all is Rainer Maria Rilke - a book of his letters, entitled: "Letters to a Young Poet" is the one single piece of literature that has inspired me the most.

What do you guys think of semi contemporary (20th century) poets? my favorites include Pablo Neruda (especially his love poetry) and Octavio Paz - really good stuff.

No back to the topic at hand: I really don't like Russian Poetry, well maybe Lermontov...I much prefer Ukrainian poets such as Gogol and especially Taras Shevchenko, some of the latter's poems could be found here: http://www.infoukes.com/shevchenkomuseum/poetry/.
But as it goes, Russian/Ukrainian poetry is poor IMO compared to that of Britain and United States.

[Nastya]

No back to the topic at hand: I really don't like Russian Poetry, well maybe Lermontov...I much prefer Ukrainian poets such as Gogol and especially Taras Shevchenko,

Gogol? a poet? Nikolai Vasil'evich? If i'm not mistaken  he burned (like the second tome of Dead Souls) his first and last poem..

And still I'm used to think of him as a Russian one, rather than Ukrainian, even if they got a his museum over there....
 or maybe there were TWO Gogols.. well, russian lit-ra knows three Tolstoy's after all

H.  

[Nastya]

H.   ?

I thought your name was Nastya.

Oh, and I haven't read any Russian poetry, but a poet that I really like is John Keats (obviously NOT Russian, but a poet just the same).

yes, it is my name.. just i'm used to signing as 'H.', you see, russian alphabet differs from the latin one (i'm sure you knew that ), and the first letter of my name is - H, only it pronounced like N.. confusing, isn't it?  

thanks for the link, i'll remember to check it

H.

[axon]

LOL...I'm not sure why I wrote Gogol....beats me.

as for:

>>And still I'm used to think of him as a Russian one, rather than Ukrainian, even if they got a his museum over there....

are you Russian perhaps? hehe...here is a snippet of his bio from classicreader.com

Nikolay Gogol was born in Sorochintsi, Ukraine, and grew up on his parent's country estate. His real surname was Ianovskii, but the writer's grandfather had taken the name 'Gogol' to claim a nobel Cossack ancestry. Gogol's father was an educated and gifted man, who wrote plays, poems, and sketches in Ukrainian. Gogol started write while in high school. He attended Poltava boarding school (1819-21) and Nezhin high school (1821-28). In 1829 he settled in St. Petersburg, with a certificate attesting his right to 'the rank of the 14th class'. Gogol worked at minor governmental jobs and wrote occasionally for periodicals. His early narrative poem, Hans Küchelgarten (1829), turned out to be a disaster. Between the years 1831 and 1834 he taught history at the Patriotic Institute and worked as a private tutor.

so yes....he was body and soul Ukrainian.

[Nastya]

I'm Russian, yes, and we study Gogol as our writer, devoting to him a lot of our time, while on Urkaine he is studied as a foreign writer now.. why, i cannot understand!

The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition.  2001.

Gogol, Nikolai Vasilyevich   
1809?52, Russian short-story writer, novelist, and playwright, sometimes considered the father of Russian realism. Of Ukrainian origin, he first won literary success with fanciful and romantic tales of his native Ukraine in Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka (1831?32)......

Nikolai Gogol - 1809-52, Russian writer. Famous for the drama The Inspector-General (1836) and the novel Dead Souls (1842). (biography-dictionary.com)

'Brevity is the sister of the talent' as Chehov once said..

H.

[Mitya]

I actually haven't read any Russian poetry at all. Can someone recommend some for a beginner? Preferably that translates well into English, ie, retains the rhythms that make poetry bearable for me.

[Nastya]

I actually haven't read any Russian poetry at all. Can someone recommend some for a beginner? Preferably that translates well into English, ie, retains the rhythms that make poetry bearable for me.

My favourite -

Silentium. Fyodor Tyutchev (translated by Vladimir Nabokov)


Speak not, lie hidden, and conceal
the way you dream, the things you feel.
Deep in your spirit let them rise
akin to stars in crystal skies
that set before the night is blurred:
delight in them and speak no word.

How can a heart expression find?
How should another know your mind?
Will he discern what quickens you?
A thought once uttered is untrue.
Dimmed is the fountainhead when stirred:
drink at the source and speak no word.

Live in your inner self alone
within your soul a world has grown,
the magic of veiled thoughts that might
be blinded by the outer light,
drowned in the noise of day, unheard...
take in their song and speak no word.

***

i'll try to find something else.. hope you will like it.

H.

[Mitya]

Oh, I do like it. It's wonderful. Thanks for the quick response, as well.

[Nastya]

Oh, I do like it. It's wonderful. Thanks for the quick response, as well.

welcome, though now i'm afraid i have to get going.. 24.00! and i haven't done my homework yet.. what a lazy girl, i know )

tomorrow i'll find something interesting and hopefully well translated

H.

[Golyadkin]

H.   ?

I thought your name was Nastya.

Oh, and I haven't read any Russian poetry, but a poet that I really like is John Keats (obviously NOT Russian, but a poet just the same).

yes, it is my name.. just i'm used to signing as 'H.', you see, russian alphabet differs from the latin one (i'm sure you knew that ), and the first letter of my name is - H, only it pronounced like N.. confusing, isn't it?  

thanks for the link, i'll remember to check it

H.

Oh, okay.

[Nastya]

another one, of Tutchev.. i just love him! but for anyone interested, just tell me your preferences (in topics) for if you won't say a word, such a hopeless romantic like I, would post only love poems.. I know it's not everybody's cup of tea.. so you have to speak up!

My last love  
How superstitiously we love,
How tenderly towards aur days declining.....
Beam brightly, brightly, farewell light of love,
Of our last love, in evening heavens shining.

Now half the shadowed sky is cloaked in night,
And only in the West a fitful gleaming
Still holds, still holds the spell of evening light.....
Ah, linger, linger yet, enchanting evening.

What if the blood runs poorer in the veins,
The heart is no less rich in tenderness.....
Ah, my last love! Thou art both bliss and pain.
And joy - and hopelessness.

Fyodor Tyutchev

[Nastya]

Lermontov was mentioned, I noticed.. now, one of his works -


   CLOUDS  

Clouds in the skies above, heavenly wanderers,
Long strings of snowy pearls stretched over azure plains!
Exiles like I, you rush farther and farther on,
Leaving my dear North, go distances measureless.

What drives you southward? Is't envy that covertly
Prods you or malice whose arrows strike openly?
Destiny is it? A crime hanging over you?
Or friendship's honeyed but poisonous calumny?

No! O'er those barren wastes heedlessly journeying,
Passion you know not or anguish or punishment;
Feeling you lack, you are free - free eternally,
You have no homeland, for you there's no banishment.

1840

[axon]

Nastya, I've noticed on another thread you mentioning that you like MM better then any of Dostoevsky's works, and I have no problem with that, but I do have a question, followed by an observation: what do you think about Nabokov?

now the observation: I've never met a true Russian whose favorite author was D (just as a side note I have many Russian friends; I'm originally from Poland and now live in Chicago ) I could, for the most part, understand this view from the older, soviet generation, but even the people of today find writers such as Nabokov better, even though he didn't write mainly in Russian. Do you agree with this observation?

oh and BTW, my girlfriend's sister is named Anastasia as well, but she hates it when I call her Nastya...haha...I love teasing her though