From Gnedich (1) MARIA RYBAKOVA (Translated by Elena Dimov) Song 1 The rage that killed so many, the wretched rage of Achilles who knew that he would perish, that he would perish young, yet he, Gnedich, will die lonely and will probably also die young. (It is better—because otherwise: lonely old age— they say it is worse than lonely youth, even though then you had nothing to eat and sat alone every evening, and even when you did have money and went to the brothel, women shied away but then grew accustomed to you because you were kind and sad—and life was passing by, where every day was death.) Homer says: youth is always frightening and the memory of it is the scariest. Sing, goddess—it is your amusement to sing our sorrows, our pain is your glory, “but when you come to me pretending to be an actress I agree to suffer,” said Gnedich, and looked in the mirror with one eye. In the dark hole of glass he saw either Cyclops or the hero-lover, then Homer, then suddenly no one really, just furniture and the sickly candle arion 20.3 winter 2013 (there was not even the hand that held it), myri’ algea, woes unnumbered, thousand sorrows, much grief, algos is pain, algeo—I suffer, but in Greek even suffering is good, and in Russian—it is nothing but pain. The pain is etched upon me (Gnedich says) and now everyone reads: don’t come to him, don’t love him, but take pity on him. Even though he does not need your pity. He hurled many strong souls into the invisible world . . . Who? Achilles. Let us not be distracted (the sound of hoofs outside the window, the piercing scream of the tradeswomen) into the gloom of Hades—god and place—an invisible god, for the invisible one is dead, as one who is afraid to be looked at, one at whom they are afraid to look, one whose reflection even the mirror prefers to blink away as a tear so it won’t not obscure the world, perfect and everlasting. He hurled souls to Hades and bodies to dogs and to hungry vultures so we will be divided after death like a butcher does at the marketplace: souls there, bodies here (and both are gloomy), my face was beautiful, Gnedich says, and then became ugly, but as to my soul, I don’t know. I suspect that it is invisible, FROM gnedich (1) 108 and probably also dead, herein Jove’s will is accomplished my life is counted, my death is assigned. I did not get love. I did not have glory. Only words I got—Greek— to bind them with the Russian ones. He often thinks about the daughter of Chryses, unnamed. Her father came for her and she disappeared, following her father without a word and would not be seen with any heroes anymore. This virgin without a name belongs to her father, and he belongs to Apollo, and all of them are in the transparent sphere, where only devotion exists, only awe, only prayer. She, having descended from the ship, dissolves in the hands of her father as the wallpaper fades, as the walls crumble, as the moisture evaporates, without passion, without a name. If he could also erase himself from the horizon without pain . . . But no, he is retraced, scratched out, he is cut in the marble like the letters. To bring myself to the mirror to try to read it, but nothing is clear, there are no chroniclers for me (he smiles and ties his silk scarf around his neck). The elder walks at the edge of the bustling sea, polyphloisbos, where the waves accrue on the sand with a splash, with the foam, with the thunder—and crawl back with a hiss; he, speechless, is walking on the shore Maria Rybakova 109 in the never-ending noise of the abyss. The sea does not listen to man, but man thinks that he understands the language in which the water talks to him. Every time they brought a note from her he searched for the word “yours.” God of...
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Sep 1, 2012
Zdeněk Kučera + 2
Open Access
