Here follow some fragments from my collection of poetry “Demiurge”, published in Moscow in 1993. Strictly speaking this is not just a translation but presentation of invariant reflections of metaphors in various periods of my life. The English version may be treated as an experiment, an attempt to widen sense and style, to broaden the dynamics of poetry using more comprehensive potentialities of Anglo-Russian bilinguals.
I express deep gratitude to my colleagues in the New Millennium – to Umut Kemelbokova and Igor Kolossov for their assistance and confidence in me and my ability to achieve a possible stylistic enrichment of metaphoric energy at the expense of the “Third party” (maybe even unknown to the author) unexpectedly for the author revealing itself as a kind of strong inspiring factor.
Our planet is a thinking living entity; it belongs to every manifestation of life and thought. The research of cross-cultural parallels is vital for human self-identification and survival. The metaphoric systems are immanent parts of the planetary civilization and culture. They are spiritual bridges between historical ancient eidetic and modern imagery. They tend to spiritualize probabilities, to attribute soul to a multitude of possibilities.
This correlation is typical for poetry of the Ancient Greece, China, Iran/Persia, England, Germany, Russia, Spain, France, Portugal and Japan. Every poetry-lover knows various examples of the interaction of traditional and innovatory models.
At the beginning of the XX century a prominent Russian researcher of thinking processes P.D.Uspenskiy wrote: “A short poem can live for centuries and preserve its life inspiring quality. It can contribute to the life of hundreds of people. Pay attention how much potential energy could be found in a small poem by Pushkin or Lermontov. This energy affects not only people’s feelings but also its very existence affects their will. …It is obvious that each poet’s thought contains a great amount of potential energy, similar to the potential of a piece of coal and a living cell. But the former is incomparably finer, lighter and more powerful. This wonderful correlation of the phenomena means that the further the phenomenon is from all visual and tangible, i.e. the further it is from matter, the more implied power the phenomenon possesses, the greater amount of energy it can free and the less it depends on time”. (Uspenskiy P.D. Tertium organum. S.Peterburg 1911, p. 101) This Uspenskiy formula can be applied to poetry as such, especially if compared to other sub-systems of classical culture.
Cultural poetry addresses both conscience and subconscious. According to these criteria poetry is akin to mythic-prophetic, hymnic, philosophical self-expression that centers on ethical and aesthetic imperative. It is the way of Plato in the philosophy of dialogue. It is the way of Dante, Shakespeare and Goethe in poetry as such.
Poetry unites eidos, images of science and humanities through gnoseological metaphors. A good example of this is Leonardo da Vinci.
In modern epoch of spiritual-planetarian civilization this tendency finds expression through the language, and nowadays the English language appears as the universal medium or intermediary of international metaphoric energies, as the language of fundamental science, technology and communication.
As a poet and philosopher dealing with the technology of expression I embrace eidetic symbolism of English through Shakespeare and esoteric romanticism of Edgar Poe, and I am aware of the specific interrelationship of the English and Russian languages, their association and belonging to the life of the Universe.
«Созвездий зов – мистическая весть…»
Созвездий зов – мистическая весть,
веленье мысли, мчащее над сводом…
Всю нашу жизнь – сравню я с переводом,
а подлинник – его нам не прочесть.
Раскачивают древо города,
вся мощь Земли в стремительном их росте,
и Божество, играющее в кости,
дает нам шанс у смертного одра.
Но будущность – как гений на помосте,
и палачей бесчисленна орда.
В безлюдный мрак над вымершей равниной
пылала высь тоской невыносимой.
Appeal
The stars appeal is magic information,
With what examples one could it compare?
All our life the poet must repair
In cosmic style of its translation?
And “Orbi, urbi”, are the prophet’s signs,
The Devil’s guards are hindering the rhymes
In their strength to cut the heartfelt cords
By dissonance in th’ Universe accords.
Through mortal anguish of the sentenced world
The saving sky spreads th’ harmony foretold!
«Клубился первозданно океан…»
Клубился первозданно океан,
и твердь дымилась огненною серой,
свиваясь в смерче с жуткой атмосферой.
И в шуме затаившихся лесов
все тот же гул, все тот же ураган,
смиренный ритмом солнечных часов.
Путь осенен. Но смысл его не дан.
О, ясность мысли, контуры программ!
Пред выбором чей мозг не изнемог,
когда так мал отпущенного срок!
Но случай слеп, а замысел упрям.
Так не похож пугающий итог
на вдохновенье изначальных строк!..
Путь высвечен. Но смысл его не дан.
The Earhly Way
The water steamed as preconditioned powers,
The land was playing with a dreaming ocean.
The Spirit Lord that’s Universe of ours
Was seeking cosmogonical emotion.
The sacral scales of animals and flowers,
Where are you streaming, hills and heaven’s rivers,
Mysterious