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metamorphesque · 3 months

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"Poems are not written...", Andrey Voznesensky (translated by metamorphesque)

#my translations #quotes #literature #poetry #poems #on writing #russian literature #russian poetry #translated literature #andrey voznesensky

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deadpoet-skull · 2 months

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" It was a wonderful night, such a night as is only possible when we are young, dear reader. "

- Fyodor Dostoevsky, White Nights

#dark academia #poetry #sad poetry #poets on tumblr #dead poetry #romantic academia #white nights #fydor dostoevsky #russian poetry #russian literature

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flowersforfrancis · 7 months

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Forgive me - I am gloomy and boring.

— Anna Akhmatova, Latest Letter.

#quotes #literature quotes #books and literature #souls #academia #aesthetic #dark romantica #classic academia #dark academia #chaotic academia #romanticism #Writing #russian literature #russian poetry #poets #poetry

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arsanimarum · 1 year

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[Except for your eyes, / no blade can control me, / no sharpened knife.]

Vladimir Mayakovsky, Lilichka

#vladimir mayakovsky #bibliophile #literature #poetry #upload #quotes #poem #lit #russian literature #russian poetry #russian poem #russian classics #russian writers #mayakovsky #lilichka

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hacked-wtsdz · 5 months

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Modern poetry often doesn’t seem like poetry to me. If you take away the structure and write it down into a normal one-paragraph text, it takes nothing away from the poem. The author could have said it in prose better than in poetry, even. And I know that poetry is a very subjective art, with its edges blurred, with many styles and ways to express oneself. You have haikus and different kinds of rhyming poetry and blank verse. But I’ve seen many poems, and blank verse isn’t the same as putting prose in poetry format.

To me, poetry is allegory. Poetry is symbolism. Poetry is metaphor. Poetry is the ‘wine-dark sea’. You read Whitman or Margaret Atwood or Richard Siken or Mary Oliver or Anna Akhmatova, and you know that if the structure is taken away, you are left with something nearly nonsensical. You think that you’re reading, when in reality you’re looking at a painting and listening to a symphony and watching geese fly to the south.

You read Nikita Gill and think ‘yes, I agree. I agree but I don’t feel anything. You could’ve written for journals, and your talent wouldn’t have gone to waste’.

Not to upset any Nikita Gill fans but i am tired of calling something that only looks like poetry to me poetry.

#poetry #poems #modern poetry #Margaret Atwood #anna akhmatova #richard siken #walt whitman #mary oliver #contemporary poetry #also as someone raised on Russian poetry #which almost always rhymes and is always filled with metaphors and allegories and symbols #it’s hard to find things that would live up to this sort of artistry #russian poetry

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elffiw · 5 months

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Dostoevsky knew a lot, but not everything. For example, he thought that if you kill a person, you will become Raskolnikov. And we now know that you can kill five, ten, a hundred people and go to the theater in the evening.

Anna Akhmatova

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maribellablack · 6 months

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"My tenderness, my happiness, what words can I write for you? How strange that although my life’s work is moving a pen over paper, I don’t know how to tell you how I love, how I desire you. Such agitation — and such divine peace: melting clouds immersed in sunshine — mounds of happiness. And I am floating with you, in you, aflame and melting — and a whole life with you is like the movement of clouds, their airy, quiet falls, their lightness and smoothness, and the heavenly variety of outline and tint — my inexplicable love. I cannot express these cirrus-cumulus sensations."

- Vladimir Nabokov's love letter to his wife, Véra ❤️

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hiyutekivigil · 3 months

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anna akhmatova

#hiyutekivigil #anna akhmatova #we don't know how to say goodbye #poem #poetry #lit #literature #words #academia #academia aesthetic #dead poets #dead poets society #russian literature #russian poetry

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lionofchaeronea · 3 months

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In each blessed noon One fateful star trembles, Hinting at the depth of night. --Osip Mandelstam (1891-1938), trans. Clarence Brown and W.S. Merwin

#quote #quotes #poetry #literature #Russian poetry #Russian literature #Osip Mandelstam

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duskofastraeus · 4 months

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The 2024 dostoyevsky-official challenge:

January: ‘I Loved You – And Maybe Love…’ by Alexander Pushkin

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metamorphesque · 2 months

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"Saga (I won't forget you when I'm gone)", Andrei Voznesensky (translated by metamorphesque)

#my translations #poetry #literature #classic literature #quotes #translated literature #poems #love poems #russian literature #russian poetry #andrei voznesensky

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princessmacabre · 4 months

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#booklover #books & libraries #books and writing #studyblr #book blog #student life #study blog #studygram #bookblr #student #anna akhmatova #russian literature #russian poetry #completed work #poem #poetry #poetry blog #female poets

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emiliasilverova · 10 months

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I drink to our ruined home, To the evil of my life, To our loneliness together, And I drink to you— To the lying lips that betrayed us, To the dead-cold eyes, And to the harsh realities; That the world is brutal and coarse, That God did not save us. —Anna Akhmatova, ‘The Last Toast’

To kick off Fest, I bring you a Bondalec moodboard, hehe. Is it a foreshadowing of what to expect from me this July? Possibly, yes 👀

The concept of the moodboard comes from ideas I had during @mi6-cafe's Moodboard March, specifically for the prompt ‘reflection’.

I didn't originally intend to include a poem, btw—but @prismatic-bell suggested I add a title or caption as a finishing touch, and xe were quite right, the moodboard's better with it.

Lastly, the translation of the poem is technically by me. I liked this one and this one, but combining them (and also checking the original Russian for tweaks) sounded a lot better to me. I mean, I've come across a whole bloody thesis online arguing that translating this particular poem is homicide... so might as well make the crime scene look good😼(<- is it clear I'm team villains this year? lol)

#007 Fest #007 Fest 2023 #TeamBondVillains #james bond #007 #goldeneye #brosnan bond #alec trevelyan #006 #janus #james bond/alec trevelyan #bondalec #hello angst #moodboard #poem #russian poetry

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arsanimarum · 1 year

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[Against my will, I'll yield this song / To mockery and curses, / Because my soul can't stand the pain / Of love's silences.]

Anna Andreevna Akhmatova

#anna akhmatova #bibliophile #poetry #quotes #poem #literature #upload #literary #russian literature #russian classics #russian poem #russian writers #russian poetry

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ohsalome · 1 year

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youtube

Here is famous jewish-russian poet Iosyf Brodsky reading poem dedicated to Ukrainian proclaimation of independence (translated by Artem Serebrennikov, but without his commentary).

Brodsky is considered one of the geniuses of modern russian poetry. He has a number of awards (including the Nobel Prize), and he had to flee from the Soviet Union due to the fear of state presecution. So, you know, a classic russian liberal.

Dear Charles XII, the Poltava battle*

Has been fortunately lost. To quote Lenin’s burring rattle,

“Time will show you Kuzka’s mother”*, ruins along the waste,

Bones of post-mortem bliss with a Ukrainian aftertaste.

It’s not the green flag, eaten by the isotope*,

It’s the yellow-and-blue flying over Konotop*,

Made out of canvas – must be a gift from Toronto* –

Alas, it bears no cross, but the Khokhly* don’t want to.

Oh, rushnyks* and roubles*, sunflowers in summer season!

We Katsapy* have no right to charge them with treason.

With icons and vodka, for seventy years we’ve bungled,

In our Ryazan we’ve lived like Tarzan in the jungle.

We’ll tell them, filling the pause with a loud “your mom”:

Away with you, Khokhly, and may your journey be calm!

Wear your zhupans*, or uniforms, which is even better,

Go to all four points of the compass and all the four letters.

It’s over now. Now hurry back to your huts

To be gang-banged by Krauts and Polacks right in your guts.

It’s been fun hanging together from the same gallows loop,

But when you’re alone, you can eat all that sweet beetroot soup.

Good riddance, Khokhly, it’s over for better or worse,

I’ll go spit in the Dnieper, perhaps it’ll flow in reverse,

Like a proud bullet train looking at us askance,

Stuffed with leathery seats and ages-old grievance.

Don’t speak ill of us. Your bread and wheat we don’t need,

Nor your sky, may we all choke on sunflower seed.

No need for bad blood or gestures of fury ham-fisted,

Seems that our love is up, if it at all existed.

Why should we plow our broken roots with our verbs?

You were born out of earth, its podzolic soils and its herbs.

Quit flexing your rights and laying all the blame on us,

It is your bloody soil that has become your onus.

Oh, gardens and grasslands and steppes, varenyks filled with honey!

We’ve had greater losses before, lost more people than money.

We’ll get by somehow. And if you want teary eyes –

Wait ‘til next time, guys, this provision no longer applies.

God rest ye merry Cossacks, hetmans*, and gulag guards!

But mark: when it’s your turn to be dragged to graveyards,

You’ll whisper and wheeze, your deathbed mattress a-pushing,

Not Shevchenko’s* bullshit but poetry lines from Pushkin*.

For decades the conossieurs of russian culture has defended Brodsky and denied his authorship of the poem, until this video popped up in 2015. Oh but not russians tho, they don't deny it. They're proud of it! This particular translation I've found on an english website dedicated to popularisation of russian culture :) And of course it had a xenophobic comment expressing support of Brodsky and hatered towards ukrarinians ^)

So yeah, I think we have more than enough reasons to say that any person who claims that russian invasion of Ukraine came out of nowhere and/or that it was not motivated by xenophobia and imerialism towards ukrainians, is full of bullshit.

[context/references explained under the cut, buckle up for a long lecture]

Poltava battle was one of decisive clashes between Sweden and Russia during the Great Northern War. Initially Ukraine was fighting this war on the side of the russian empire as its vassal, but before the Poltava battle we switched sides. There were several reasons for this choice, among the most important - russian emperor breaking the treaty between the Hetmanate and Muscowy. Important context - the head of then ukrainian state, Ivan Mazepa, was very close to russian emperor - you could say, he was his father figure. Mazepa educated tzar Peter in European manner and helped him start the europeisation of the Muscowy. russians see this battle as a huge personal betrayal (the fact that Peter I betrated Mazepa first is always omitted, in russian culture, unlike ukrainian, the person higher than you on hierarchy doesn't owe you shit but has absoulte power over you). That was 300 years ago and russians are still salty about it. and Mazepa is probably the second most hated ukrainian historical figure after Bandera.

"Show you Kuzka's mother" - a phrase meaning "show them hell", famously used by the ussr general secretary Michael Khrushchev adressed to american politicians in 1959.

"Eaten by isotope" - reference to the Chornobyl nuclear disaster.

Konotop - a small city in Northern Ukraine, famous for the Konotop battle that happened between cossacks and muscowytes in 1659. In the modern russo-ukrainian war it became famous for witches that curse russian soldiers with erectile dysfunction. Interestingly enough, a "Konotop witch" has been a phenomena even before that, as refered in a short story of the same name by Hryhorii Kvitka-Osnovianenko, thus giving even more substance to the threat.

Toronto - canadian city, probably mentioned here due to the fact that many Ukrainians flead from the ussr to Canada, thus creating one of the biggest ukrainian diasporas in the world. Canadian ukrainians are known for being very politically active, publishing ukrainian literature at times when it was impossible to do so at home, and fighting soviet propaganda. As a result, Kremlin began a smear campaign painting all canadian ukrainians as nazis, which is effective till this day.

Khokhly - a common slur used against ukrainian. Most probably comes from old slavonic "xoxolъ" that means "bangs" and refers to the hairstyle typically worn by ukrainian men, that russians found funny.

Rushnyks - an embroidered decorative towel, used in home decor and some rituals [examples]

Roubles - russian currency.

Katsapy - common slur used against russians. They will want you to believe that the word comes from phrase "как цап" - "like a goat" and refers to the type of beard worn by russian men at old time, but this is purposeful misleading from the true origin of the word. Katsap comes from arabic "qassab", which means literally "butcher". A legend states that this comes from a single incedent when russian army, after promising to spare a city's residents if they surrendered peacefully, cut down every single person there. But different sources attribute this to different battles (some of which verifyably did not end with the city surrendering), so I don't think this can be bottled down to a single event.

Zhupans - a type of outer clothing popular in Ukraine and Poland [example, another example] Funny trivia - Word of Darkness tabletop universe used this word to describe a subtype of vampires from Eastern Europe, which is incredibly funny for me. Gimme mysterious british vampire warlocks called pullovers.

Hetmans - a military and political head-of-state in some medieval and Renaissance Eastern European countires, including Ukraine (known as Hetmanate back then).

Taras Shevchenko - perhaps the most influential ukrainian poet, artist, ethnografist and political figure, the metaphorical spiritual father of the country. His influence on the modern ukrainian culture is incomparable - half the things in Ukraine are named after him. He is also among the people who have the biggest number of monuments erected in the world - 1384. Taras Shevchenko's life story is extremely dramatic and deserves its own post - born in slavery, bought out of it thanks to his unique artistic talent, imprisoned for criticism of russian monarchy with an explicit ban on writing and painting, spent the second half of his life in exile. He wrote a lot about freedom and things we would call today anticolonialism and antiimperialism.

Alexander Pushkin - one of the "founding fathers" of russian literature, who is attributed with setting the standard of literary russian language. russians call him "our everything", but as far as I am aware he is hardly known outside the countries smeared by russian imperialism with the exception of some black classic literature fans due to being 1/4 black.

#russian culture #russian literature #russian poetry #poetry #brodsky #iosyf brodsky #xenophobia #imperialism #russian imperialism #rushism #rashism #Youtube

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elffiw · 5 months

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I was looking for happiness in this woman, and I accidentally found death.

Sergey Esenin

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