"The Jewish Cemetery in Leningrad"

VENICE. I have not been there, but Joseph's Venice and even his Petersburg are familiar urban landscapes. Even if Joseph made little of it, perhaps his Jewishness was also in evidence. A sense of doom, of endurable disaster; of self-depreciation as well, alienation, although he managed to combine this with a kind of assertiveness, so that it never turned into Jewish selbsthass. In a way, the Jewishness was a given. Indeed, it was better not stated, since it could so easily lead to identification with victimhood. That may be why he never, so far as I know, re-printed the early "The Jewish Cemetery in Leningrad", another poem that I translated, also because of its overtly Jewish content, unique in his work. The poem may not be written from the point of view of a victim, but the Jew as victim or scapegoat features in it. Oddly - or not so oddly - this somewhat juvenile work was mentioned in an article entitled "A Literary Drone" in Vechernii Leningrad (Evening Leningrad) in November 1963, a sort of prologue to the famous trial in February. Casting around for evidence in his writings of "Jewish nationalism", which even so late in the history of the Soviet Union was still a heinous sin, all his accusers could come up with was this poem (friends of Joseph were also named, Vladimir Shveigolts, Anatoly Geikh- man, Leonid Aronzon, all typically Jewish names):

The Jewish cemetery near Leningrad.
A crooked fence of rotten plywood.
And behind it, lying side by side,
lawyers, merchants, musicians, revolutionaries.

They sang for themselves.
They accumulated money for themselves.
They died for others.

But in the first place they paid their taxes, and
respected the law,
and in this hopelessly material world,
they interpreted the Talmud, remaining idealists.

Perhaps they saw more.
Perhaps they believed blindly.
But they taught their children to be patient
and to stick to things.
And they did not plant any seeds.
They never planted seeds.
They simply lay themselves down
in the cold earth, like grain.
And they fell asleep forever.
And after, they were covered with earth,
candles were lit for them,
and on the Day of Atonement
hungry old men with piping voices,
gasping with cold, wailed about peace.

And they got it.
As dissolution of matter.

Remembering nothing.
Forgetting nothing.
Behind the crooked fence of rotting plywood,
four miles from the tramway terminus.

"Cemetery", as this poem is called in the article, is uncharacteristic, not only on account of the subject but prosodically as well. The first stanza is rhymed, but thereafter the poem resolves itself into vers libre. I know of no other poem like it in Joseph's published oeuvre. Indeed, were it not that he never denied writing it, one might almost have thought it was by someone else. In a sense, perhaps it was.
    I never discussed it with Joseph, since we didn't talk about our Jewishness, or even Judaism as such, though I may have mentioned my own ambivalence. While it is sometimes suggested or claimed that Joseph had rejected Judaism, as far as I know he neither embraced it nor denied it. I think that his attitude did not really change. He was a Jew of the assimilated, Russified kind, a "bad Jew", as he put it, and not much interested in adopting or reclaiming the tradition; in short, he was no "refusenik". On the other hand, for instance, Anthony Rudolf, co-editor of the international anthology Voices Within the Ark: The Modern Jewish Poets (1980) tells me that when asked if he would be willing to be included in the book, Joseph replied that he wanted to be in it. And when, for instance, he was asked at a press conference in Stockholm, in December 1987, at the Nobel ceremonies, how he would describe himself, he answered: "I feel myself a Jew, although I never learnt Jewish traditions." He added, however: "But as for my own language, I undoubtedly regard myself as Russian."
    Being a Jew, like being an exile, has certain advantages, in that (anywhere other than in Israel, perhaps New York, or wherever Jewish ghettos survive) it situates one on the margins, rather than at the centre of society. Jews tend to take on the colour of their surroundings. Jewish history, as a whole - and even "bad" Jews are heirs to that history - gives the individual Jew a claim, however tenuous, on a variety of cultural or linguistic territories. This is a source of strength, but also of weakness, in that he may feel that he truly belongs to none. Of course, Joseph did live in New York, but he was frequently on the road, in the States or abroad, and had another home in New England. Further- more, his exceptionally wide, international circle of friends and acquaintances far transcended the Jewish cultural world, assuming that there is such a thing.

“The Jewish Cemetery in Leningrad" is not a good poem; it may even be a bad poem. And my reasons for translating it may not have been praiseworthy either. The poem seemed to me even then somewhat jejune. Those interred in Leningrad's Jewish cemetery were cut off ("sang for themselves "), landless ("they never planted seeds, only themselves") and superstitious, imprisoned by tradition ("hungry old men with piping voices"). Their hopes or beliefs were illusory: the peace they prayed for came to them as "dissolution of matter". There is no light; there is not even a "nobody in a raincoat". And that's partly the trouble. The poem is programmatic, its theme too large, given the means at the young poet's disposal. It is as if he simply did not know what to do with the material. But this in itself interested me, particularly in view of the extraordinary sureness of his hand in all the other poems I'd looked at, even from that early period. It may have been the first of the few poems by Joseph that I translated. For me it was a place of meeting with him, this having nothing, I suppose, to do with its literary worth.
    When I asked Joseph if I might reprint my version, his response was: "Do what you like, Danny!" So, either he didn't give a damn, or he was disposed to indulge me. Perhaps both. Might he have responded differently, had I put it differently, viz. "Would you rather I didn't use it, Joseph?" After all, he had not said anything about his inclusion in the original Yevtushenko anthology, until Max Hayward gave him the opportunity to refuse, whereupon he did refuse!

 

Cuốn sách về Brodsky này, như lời Bạt cho thấy, có cùng tuổi [hải ngoại] của Gấu, 1997, hay đúng hơn, kém Gấu ba tuổi.
Gấu làm quen Brodsky thời gian này, nhân đọc Coetzee viết về những tiểu luận của ông, trên tờ NYRB; bài tưởng niệm khi ông mất, của Tolstaya...
Trong cuốn này, có nhắc tới bài viết, Gấu chôm, xen với những kỷ niệm về Joseph Huỳnh Văn, trong bài “Ai cho phép mi là thi sĩ”
Post ở đây, rảnh rang lèm bèm sau.
Thú nhất câu: "Hãy nhớ Gấu, và quên số mệnh cà chớn của Gấu"!
"Remember me, but ah! Forget my fate!"

Postface

Monday, 19 May, 1997

WHEN I BEGAN this writing almost a year and a half ago, I intended ...
    Well, I intended nothing. Rather, I was dealing, as best I could, with a persistent grief. And that led me to revisit our various times together. And that, in its turn, led me back to his writing, or one might say led me to it for the first time, because - as he put it: "all that is left of a man is a part of speech." I tried to separate the strands of our understandings and misunderstandings. The journal became as much a self-interrogation as an interrogation of our friendship. I found myself moving, quite confusingly, between private and public, between affinities, issues of friendship, and problems of translation. Of course, the journal is also about translation. It is a confession, too, although I have tried to limit that aspect of it, and not only because I know how much Joseph disliked confessionalism.
    While writing, I have talked to others. I have been made aware of many different points of view, which not surprisingly are often conflicting. From these I have taken what seemed to illuminate my own perceptions and ignored, or left for others to explore or not explore, those which it seemed impertinent to work with. It has not been hard for me to steer clear of his "private life", since I was hardly privy to it. Quite a few of my remarks are speculative. But I have tried, in general, not to over- indulge myself in what at worst is simply fiction-making.
    As I looked at one or two of Joseph's translations and, again, at many of his Russian poems, I was once more brought up against my ignorance, my over-dependency on intuition, my inability to pick up allusions. I also became aware - as I hardly was before - of the scale of the Russian tragedy, the truly heroic grandeur of the life, say, of Akhmatova. And Brodsky.
    I have been listening to Purcell's Dido and Aeneas. And were I not convinced that it would come across as sentimental, I would re-name thjs manuscript "Remember Me". Dido cries: "Remember me, but ah! forget my fate!" In a letter to Brodsky probably 10 July I965; for an English translation, see Anna Akhmatova, My Half Century, Selected Prose, 1992) Akhmatova writes: "I'm at the hut. The well creaks, the ravens caw. I'm listening to the Purcell (Dido and Aeneas) that was brought on your recommendation. It is so powerful that it's impossible to talk about it." In an earlier letter (20 October I964) she had written: "Promise me one thing - that you will stay perfectly healthy, there's nothing on earth worse than hot-water bottles, shots, and high blood pressure - and the worse thing is that it's irreversible. And if you are healthy, golden paths, happiness, and that divine communion with nature, which so captivates all those who read your poetry,may await you." Alas, he was unable to heed her advice, but the reciprocal nature of their relationship, in spite of the age difference, is evident. One understands, he observed, walking beside Akhmatova, why Russia was sometimes ruled by empresses. But he did walk beside her.

Considered by many to be the greatest Russian poet of his generation, Joseph Brodsky (1940-1996) received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1987. By this time he was a fluent writer and speaker of English - yet when exiled from the Soviet Union in 1972 (after serving 18 months of a five-year sentence in a labour camp) he was practically restricted to his native tongue. Brodsky, like Nabokov, became that most rare and intriguing of writers - one who mastered English as a second creative language and re- invented himself in it.

Daniel Weissbort was closely associated with Brodsky as friend and translator. In addition to being a fascinating biographical (and autobiographical) study, From Russian with Love provides detailed discussion of the problems of Englishing Brodsky's poems. Iris a telling contribution to translation studies and a searching meditation on the nature of language itself.

Daniel Weissbort, born in I93S. co-founded with Ted Hughes the journal Modern Poetry in translation which he edited from 1965-1003. He directed the Translation Workshop at the University of Iowa for many years. His translations from Russian include the Selected Poems of Nikolai Zabolotsky and his most recent book of poems is Letters to Ted (Anvil. 2002).
He lives in London.

Bài tưởng niệm Brodsky của Tolstaya, mà Gấu chôm, viết về bạn không quí Joseph HV, cũng có tí kỷ niệm thú vị.
NTV khi đó chưa về xứ Mít ở luôn, ghé nhà chơi, lấy tờ NYRB có bài viết về đọc, than, mi lọc ăn hết thịt, chỉ cho độc giả tí xương, ra ý, bài viết thì còn nhiều chi tiết quá hay, Gấu đếch dịch!
Không phải vậy.
Cái phần Gấu giữ lại, là tính để dành, cho 1 dịp khác.
Sau đó, Gấu đưa vô bài viết về Đỗ Long Vân, bạn của Joseph Huỳnh Văn, và đưa vô bài thơ gửi cho… Gấu Cái, như 1 lời tạ lỗi, cả 1 đời, mi đâu có dành cho ta dù chỉ nửa phút, mà chạy theo hết con này đến con kia!

Tatyana Tolstaya, trong một bài tưởng niệm nhà thơ Joseph Brodsky, có nhắc đến một cổ tục của người dân Nga, khi trong nhà có người ra đi, họ lấy khăn phủ kín những tấm gương, sợ người thân còn nấn ná bịn rịn, sẽ đau lòng không còn nhìn thấy bóng mình ở trong đó; bà tự hỏi: làm sao phủ kín những con đuờng, những sông, những núi... nhà thơ vẫn thường soi bóng mình lên đó?

Chúng ta quá cách xa, những con đường, những sông, những núi, quá cách xa con người Đỗ Long Vân, khi ông còn cũng như khi ông đã mất. Qua một người quen, tôi được biết, những ngày sau 1975, ông sống lặng lẽ tại một căn hộ ở đường Hồ Biểu Chánh, đọc, phần lớn là khoa học giả tưởng, dịch bộ "Những Hệ Thống Mỹ Học" của Alain. Khi người bạn ngỏ ý mang đi, ra ngoài này in, ông ngẫm nghĩ rồi lắc đầu: Thôi để cho PKT ở đây, lo việc này giùm tôi.... (2)

NQT

GCC có đọc trên net, đâu đó, của 1 người, biết những ngày sau cùng, và cái chết đau buồn của DLV. Nó làm Gấu nhớ đến truyền thuyết về những con voi già, biết giờ chết của mình, bèn bò về nghĩa địa của loài voi…
Trong "Một Chủ Nhật Khác", TTT có nhắc tới giai thoại này, và cho biết thêm, cái tay kiếm ra Đà Lạt, và dựng nó thành 1 thành phố, là 1 trong những con voi, những cột trụ chống Trời, cho dân Mít.
Đâu có phải tự nhiên mà cuộc tình thần sầu chấm dứt cõi văn chương Ngụy thần sầu diễn ra ở Đà Lạt!
[Viết câu này là viết riêng cho Gấu, nhe!]

Ui chao, bạn DLV của GCC, lập lại y chang giai thoại, về tên Ngụy cuối cùng đó: Ta đếch đi đâu, cũng chẳng về nghĩa địa voi ở Đà Lạt, ta chọn 1 xó xỉnh nào của Sài Gòn, để chết.

 Hi vọng

Tặng em, như một lời tạ tội

Người Nga, khi người thân vĩnh biệt
Thường phủ kín những tấm gương
Để người đi không đau lòng, hoảng hốt
Hồn còn đây, bóng đã không còn

Người Việt thường dặn dò
Hồn đừng quên
Con đường trở lại làm trẻ thơ
Mỗi lần qua sông, qua biển

Anh mong có em ở bên
Bởi vì chẳng bao giờ anh tìm thấy
Hình bóng anh
Ở trong em

Nhưng biết đâu, vào giờ phút chót
Tuổi thơ của anh, của em
Nhập làm một

Em chẳng hằng mong
Đừng ai đi trước 

NQT

The Jewish cemetery near Leningrad.

The Jewish cemetery near Leningrad.
A crooked fence of rotten plywood.
And behind it, lying side by side,
lawyers, merchants, musicians, revolutionaries.

They sang for themselves.
They accumulated money for themselves.
They died for others.
But in the first place they paid their taxes, and
        respected the law,
and in this hopelessly material world,
they interpreted the Talmud, remaining idealists.

Perhaps they saw more.
Perhaps they believed blindly.
But they taught their children to be patient
and to stick to things.
And they did not plant any seeds.
They never planted seeds.
They simply lay themselves down
in the cold earth, like grain.
And they fell asleep forever.
And after, they were covered with earth,
candles were lit for them,
and on the Day of Atonement
hungry old men with piping voices,
gasping with cold, wailed about peace.

And they got it.
As dissolution of matter.
Remembering nothing.
Forgetting nothing.
Behind the crooked fence of rotting plywood,
four miles from the tramway terminus.

THE JEWISH CEMETERY

The Jewish Cemetery near Leningrad:
a lame fence of rotten planks
and lying behind it side by side
lawyers, businessmen, musicians, revolutionaries. 

They sang for themselves,
got rich "for themselves,
died for others.
But always paid their taxes first;
        heeded the constabulary,
and in this inescapably material world
studied the Talmud,
        remained idealists.
Maybe they saw something more,
maybe believed blindly.
In any case they taught their children
        tolerance. But
        obstinacy. They
sowed no wheat,
        never sowed wheat,
simply lay down in the earth
        like grain
and fell asleep forever.
Earth was heaped over them,
.andles were lit for them,
and on their day of the dead raw voices of famished
old men, the cold at their throats,
shrieked at them, “Eternal peace!”
Which they have found
        in the disintegration of matter,
remembering nothing
forgetting nothing

behind the lame fence of rotten planks
four kilometers past the streetcar terminal.

1967, translated with
Wladimir Weidlé

W.S. Merwin