“In retranslating Tsvetaeva’s Lorca translations, I have tried to keep in mind who Lorca was for readers in the Soviet Union. In 1936 near the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, he had been murdered by nationalists though probably not Falangists. In the struggle with fascism, he became a martyr,
“Star of the Nativity” is one of six gospel poems in the longer lyric sequence that Pasternak published as the last chapter of Doctor Zhivago. Five of the six poems revolve around the Passion. “Star of the Nativity”is the one exception. Its aesthetic reminds me of a Roublev icon–painting as annunciation, as Pavel Florensky says – a likeness for an invisible, spiritual energy for which it is the leading wave. (Florensky is thinking by analogy of Jesus through whom God, although imageless, approaches in
Three Photographs Can a photograph tell the truth? Roland Barthes recalls the amazement he could still feel when he looked at a portrait of Jérôme Bonaparte: “Quite some time ago I happened on a photograph of Napoleon’s youngest brother, Jérôme, taken in 1852. And I realized then, with an amazement
If you want to know the people around you, find out what they read.– Stalin on reading [I]t is nothing but an illusion, but its laws are dictated by life.– Stalin on performance In the 1930s, while a political exile in Kazakhstan – during what Anna Akhmatova might have called a vegetarian, rather
But listen to the end… Then nothing more… It changes its meaning. (Thomas Mann, Doctor Faustus) Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon… (Wallace Stevens) For me Charon’s Ferry, Bruce Berlind’s beautiful translations of Gyula Illyés’ poetry, is also a remarkable selection of last poems. Why call them “last poems”
There is a Moment in every Day that Satan cannot find,Nor can his Watch Fiends find it; but the Industrious findThis Moment & it multiply: & when it once is found It renovates every Moment of the Day if rightly placed. William Blake …and where death, if shed,Presumes no carnage,
“[W]HY THE BACK BROKE” One Woman in the War: Hungary 1944–1945, by Alaine Polcz, translated by Albert Tezla1 Two years ago Fiona Duff Kahn, an editor unknown to me, wrote from New York, inviting me to write brief personal essays for a pocket reader on books forgotten or neglected. The
HUNGARIAN REVIEW is
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