Mikhail Zenkevich, “The sky, like someone’s udder …”
 

I discovered this 1912 poem and the poet too because of the mysterious “red breath” in L20, which Mandelstam used, just as mysteriously, in his 1932 poem “Lamarck.” At the time of writing, Mikhail Zenkevich (1886-1973) was allied with the Acmeists, a disparate group including Gumilev, Akhmatova and Mandelstam. In the Soviet period, he published mainly translations, especially of American poetry.


The sky, a swollen udder, squirts
forth its burning noonday yield
into fissures in dry fields,
beating down in flaming spurts.
Till their ears are ringing loud
and their noses start to bleed,
boys keep splashing in the reeds
where the river widens out.
Tending to the oven, crones,
heedless of the graveyard’s call,
climb inside it, whisks and all,
and on ashes steam their bones.
Apprehensive ears are pricked—
trained on fiery liquid peace—
for the ghostly fumes’ next trick:
if the oven overheats,
then the stew of crones will stick;
or a boy out of his depth,
turned cadaver blue, will bloat;
or, from dusty bells, red breath
will utter an alarming note.


Edits
L1: like someone’s > a swollen
L7: kids > boys
L8: deepens > widens
L18: kids > boys


Crib

The sky, like someone’s/something’s udder,
pours its noonday yield
into cracks in the dry earth
in fiery streams.
And until, ears ringing,
blood starts dripping from the nose,
kids keep splashing in the rushes
by a deep stretch in the river.
And old ladies, forgetting
to lie down in the churchyard,
climb into the oven with whisks/besoms*
to steam their bones on the ashes.
And anxiously the hearing catches (listens for),
in the liquid, fiery peace/stillness,
how the carbon monoxide spirit will act up:
the stew of baked old ladies
will burn on the bottom;
or, taking a dip, one of the kids
will swell into a blue corpse.
Or an alarm will sound, with its red breath,
on a dusty bell.

* Bathers in Russian banyas and Finnish saunas thrash each other with whisks of leafy birch branches as a fragrant massage.


Original

Небо, словно чье-то вымя,
В трещины земли сухой
Свой полуденный удой
Льет струями огневыми.
И пока, звеня в ушах,
Не закаплет кровь из носа,
Все полощатся у плеса
Ребятишки в камышах.
А старухи, на погосте
Позабывшие залечь,
Лезут с вениками в печь
На золе распарить кости.
И тревожно ловит слух —
В жидком огненном покое
Чем чудит угарный дух:
Пригорит в печи жаркое
Из запекшихся старух;
Иль, купаясь, кто распухнет
В синий трупик из ребят.
Иль дыханьем красным ухнет
В пыльный колокол набат.


https://www.ablemuse.com/erato/attac...1&d=1718900977

A 1913 pencil sketch by Sergei Gorodetsky of a Poet’s Workshop (Acmeist) meeting. Pictured are Nikolai Klyuev, Mikhail Lozinsky, Anna Akhmatova and Mikhail Zenkevich.

Hi Carl—

As always you do an excellent job of preserving the meter and rhyme scheme, as well as the faintly eerie ambiance of this poem.

Are all of Zenkevich’s poems untitled? I had some difficulty deciding whether the characters in the poem are alive (the old women enjoying the баня and the kids splashing by the river) or dead (their bodies in the churchyard while the church bell tolls). I also had trouble visualizing the line, Все полощатся в плеса. Are the kids in the water splashing water onto the shore? Where are the reeds? In the water or on the shore? I’m not familiar with the word плес, but I thought it might be related to пляж. I also don’t know what to make of the “red breath.” How did Mandelstam use it? Was one poet deliberately giving homage to the other? Could it refer to the Pentecostal fires from heaven that will announce the Second Coming? I thought maybe I was picking up some references to Baptism and Purgatory. Was Zenkevich Christian? He seems to have been one of the few poets who remained on good terms with the Soviet authorities.

I love the drawing of the Acmeists. They all look so серьезные.

Thanks for introducing me to this fascinating poem.

Glenn

Thanks, Glenn!

No, some have titles, while others, like nearly all of Mandelstam’s, are untitled.

Both start out alive, I think. The old women forget to go to their graves and instead climb into an oven, as if it were a banya, and end up cooked in a stew. One of the kids is apparently drowned.

They seem to be splashing around, having fun, in the reeds at the river’s edge.

The word—unfamiliar to me too—is defined as a section of a river or lake that’s wider and deeper than neighboring sections. There’s apparently no relation to пляж, which of course is a borrowing from French.

It’s been suggested that Mandelstam was quoting Zenkevich, but that begs the question of what it meant to either poet. Mandelstam’s human narrator devolves, descending the evolutionary ladder down to reptiles, worms, insects and below. In the last stanza, Nature forgets to raise “the drawbridge … for those who have green graves, red breath and supple laughter.” This may mean that the N couldn’t return to the world of “higher” organisms who laugh, are buried and have circulatory systems. But the passage is murky.

Zenkevich outlived all his Acmeist colleagues, apparently by keeping a low profile and giving up poetry for translation. I’ve seen no indication that he was Christian, and he wrote some poems about prehistoric animals and humans that would probably have been perceived as atheistic. Even today, as far as I know, the Russian Orthodox Church dates the creation of the world to c. 5,500 B.C.

Carl's translation and a few 'other'
 

Carl,

Your translation is a fine piece of writing (poem). You seem to be on neutral ground a far as the crib goes, as per the way I understand your explanations. But I can't help feeling 'out of it' because of the preponderance to 'influence' the crib.

In other words, as many as may do the same translation would have a different crib. This seems far from 'literal'. I don't think 'literal' can really be attributed to cribs. I'm thinking that it would be best to use, let's say, Google translator as a crib may be more like it. In short, finding a translator that's closest to one's understanding of the original would make more sense to me.

I didn't know where to bring this up, but your approach may be the closest I have seen to stick to the original. I don't know if the effort to rhyme and stick to a form affects this, nor how much if it does.

Then, there's Borges, whose poems really should not deviate. For instance, he is known for his adjectives, of using, through time, certain adjectives, in a way all his own. This important part of his work (and personal habit) is lost if it is not respected. Soon, we have a poem, yes, but not quite Borges's. This saddens me hugely because I think the purpose of a translation is to bring for the author through his words, as close as possible. How else would a person who doesn't speak the original poem's language get acquainted when each translation reflects the translator's personal choices far more than the original author's.

Susan tries to stick to the original meaning and I think her translations of Rilke's poem are great. I think you do the same--I hope this is correct.

Oh, I changed my poem according to your comment on "the future makes new space .." to "opens space'. I don't want to bump the thread, but would be most thankful if you skipped over and let me know what you think. Or suggestions?

Thank you, thank you!
~mignon

Hi, Carl!

Disturbing and mysterious, in a chant-like way. Interesting.

I'm out of my depth, so let's see if I turn into a blue and bloated cadaver, heh.

If you changed "The sky, like someone's udder, squirts" into "The sky, a sort of udder, squirts," that might preserve the vague gesture of the original without the distraction of conjuring a bare-breasted, lactating woman. Having been one of those, and also having milked goats by hand for many years, I'm more inclined to see the latter here, with beams of light slanting through clouds, on a hot and muggy day in which the longed-for cooling rain won't come. Such an image suggests the single channel of milk streaming from each teat of a member of the Bovidae family, rather than the multiple channels of milk squirting out from each nipple of "someone" human. (Of course, what I'm picturing might not necessarily be the image that the poet intended, which is a constant danger.)

Since I am now a crone who often feels hotter and sweatier than I want to be, I can't imagine peri- or post-menopausal women choosing to climb into a literal sauna on such a day. Although the imagery of the sauna seems clear, I wonder if the crones are actually canning summer produce for the winter, using the water-bath method, and thus generating steam. Only the threat of future starvation could drive me into more heat on a hot day.

The mention of reeds makes me think that "wider" would be better than "deeper" at that point of the river, and poem. The drowned kid can still be out of his depth later.

I wonder if the diction of "kids," which I at first took to mean young goats rather than children, is a good fit.

I don't know if any of this is helpful, but it's offered in case it might be. And to express appreciation for what you've done with a difficult piece.

Thanks, Mignon. I’m so glad you enjoyed the translation and, if I did my job, the poet’s creation.

I try to do as neutral and literal a crib as possible, but you’re right that absolute literalism is impossible, and every crib, like every translation, will differ. I’m very impressed with the progress machine translators are making, but I just now tried Google Translate on this poem, and it makes some serious mistakes that I’d have to clean up, and then I’d be “influencing” again.

I hope so too. I do try to stay as close as possible to the original, while making it sound as if the poet could have written it in English. That’s my ideal. There are other, looser styles of translation, and some feel they have to find different words and forms to capture the “feel” of the original. But the result, as you suggest, will be half poet, half translator. That’s ok for a translator who’s also a great poet, but my half won’t pull its weight, so I try to minimize my share.

Rhyme and meter complicate things, but I believe form is inseparable from content. Maybe we should talk about form-content, as we do about space-time. I’m willing to compromise a little in the form direction here and the content direction there, but I try not to stray too far in either direction. It’s a continual balancing act.

Thanks for sending me back to that beautiful poem of yours. I prefer the version of that line that I suggested, but that’s hardly surprising, since it’s mine! I like your new version too.

Thanks, Julie. I always look forward to your comments.

I was worried about “someone’s,” which does sound more human than I’d like. The Russian is perfectly neutral, and I hoped “udder” was bovine enough to keep things ambiguous. I’m trying out a correction; see what you think.

I hope you weren’t put off by the word “crone.” I wouldn’t call you that if you were 103, but English doesn’t have a neutral word for “old lady,” and it seemed suitably folksy and weird for the poem.

You’re not the only one who seems to be missing the surrealism here. The sauna imagery is clearly there, but the old ladies aren’t climbing into a literal sauna, but into an oven, where they’re literally baked to a crisp. Is ”stew of crones” coming off as a stew cooked by crones?

Do you mean that a wide river is more likely to have shallow margins where reeds would grow? If so, I’ll make that change. I’m out of my depth in natural and farmyard surroundings, so I really need this kind of help. In fact, I’m out of my depth almost everywhere.

I haven’t been around animals the way you have, so young goats didn’t occur to me, but I did wonder about the register of “kids.” The only easy fix would be “boys.” Would you prefer that? (It would provide some nice alliteration and keep the girls out of danger.)

Thanks again, Julie. All good points. (So good, in fact, that I wish you’d have a quick look at my previous Zenkevich translation. You could respond here or by pm. Don’t bother saying anything good about it, just whether anything sounds off or doesn’t make sense.)

You guys are having so much fun!
The image of the sky as a full udder is grand. Why not more directly say,

The sky, a puffy udder OR The sky, a swollen udder, or something more direct that makes the image clear - it's an awesome one I wish I had thought of.. It's so good that I get the feeling I've encountered before, in someone else's poem.

I'm enjoying this thread.
~mignon

Addendum: Oops! And HA HA. I just saw you used 'swollen' - Yay!

Hi, Carl and mignon!

There is actually a scientific term that makes the connection between udders and a certain cloud formation, although I wouldn't advise using it in the poem because the register would be way off:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammatus_cloud
I think the new L1 is perfect.

I did not take offense at "crone," even if that term is often used pejoratively. This is poetry. Folksy and weird diction is totally appropriate.

I took both the sauna imagery and the "stew of crones" figuratively. I'm still puzzled as to how literal the description of them (plural) climbing into an oven is supposed to be, because the steam implied by both the sauna and the stew imagery; ovens seem dryer than that. To me, simply from the standpoint of how large their oven is likely to be, it seems more likely that multiple women would be congregating in a larger area like a kitchen, that is as hot as an oven, perhaps so they can perform some communal task like canning, as an opportunity to gossip. None of these musings should be taken as demands to change anything in the poem; the poet said what he said and you shouldn't steer the translation a certain way unless there's a very good reason for doing so. I'm just thinking with my mouth open (expressing all this mainly for my own benefit as I wrestle with the idea). My use of that expression was puzzling in another thread, but generally that's what my husband says when he's muttering to himself and I answer him — "Oh, sorry, I wasn't talking to you; I was just thinking with my mouth open."

If it's a kitchen and not an oven, I don't know what to do with the descriptions of ash, which do seem pretty literal. So I'm probably wrong.

Yes, I meant that reeds grow in shallows, not depths, and since "wider and deeper" were both mentioned in the definition, I thought "wider" would fit better.

Yes, I prefer "boys" to "kids."

Thanks again, Mignon and Julie!

I wouldn’t have thought of it in a million years, and that’s what I love about it.

Yeah, Julie convinced me a change was needed, and you and I must have come up with “swollen” at about the same time. We’re on the same wavelength, Mignon!

So the connection between udders and sky isn’t as farfetched as I though. Fascinating. I see that Russian, which doesn’t use much Latin, calls these “udder-shaped clouds.”

I take the crone stew in the oven as literal and absurd. You’re right that the oven and sauna imagery don’t mix perfectly, but if that’s a problem, it’s not mine, as you say.

Great, I’ve made both changes. As usual, you’ve really helped me polish this one, Julie! Thanks so much!