Zenkevich, “Petersburg Nightmares” (1912)
 

Petersburg Nightmares

Petersburg summers frighten me: long days
of loneliness and madness in the air.
Raskolnikov still rings the bell. A crazed
Rogozhin still is lurking on the stair.
Tormented by the acrid fumes at home
and clink of bricks, I drag myself to where
children are left to play in sand and roam
the boulevard near water. Even there,
a feeble body’s always on the rack:
the leaves’ green flicker is intensely bright;
the skirts of little girls, as they slip back,
expose bare knees and folds of lacy white.
What happens after that is all a blur …
Am I awake or in a trance? And soon,
with promises of dainty sweets, I lure
a girl up to a bare and dusty room.
Then spasms of rapacious bliss at last,
a cold and naked corpse is on the sheet,
and into the canal it’s I who cast
assorted blue and bloody cuts of meat …


Edits
L2: things past understanding > madness in the air
L4: lurks in shadows on the landing > still is lurking on the stair
L5: Worn to a frazzle by the > Worn to distraction by the > Tormented by the acrid
L18: body on > corpse is on
L20: a purple riding crop and bloody meat > assorted blue and bloody cuts of meat


Crib

Petersburg Nightmares

Summertime Petersburg is frightening for me. Possible
are all sorts of nonsense/delirium, and the spirit is so lonely,
and on staircase landings waits Rogozhin,
and Raskolnikov rings the bell.*
By the clink of bricks and acrid fumes/smoke
completely exhausted, I drag myself to where
children have been left on the boulevard
to play in the sand, and the water is near.
But everywhere is a torture chamber/prison cell for a flabby/feeble body:
the foliage flickers like green flame;
around the bare knees of little girls,
under their little frocks, lace shows white.
Everything has vanished … And I no longer sense
what is happening … [Am I] Awake? In delirium?
Up to an empty, dusty apartment
I lead one of them for sweets.
And after: a little corpse, naked and cold,
on the sheet, and spasms of greedy bliss,
and I, throwing into the Obvodny Canal,**
a bloody fillet and a dark blue riding crop …


* Raskolnikov and Rogozhin are characters in Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment and The Idiot, respectively. Raskolnikov rings the bell of an elderly pawnbroker before killing her with an axe, and Rogozhin waits on a hotel landing for Prince Myshkin, intending to stab him. Both episodes are set in summertime St. Petersburg.

** The Obvodny Canal marked the southern limit of St. Petersburg in the nineteenth century. From the latter part of the century, it served as a transport artery and wastewater sewer for the growing industrial district on its southern side.


Original

Петербургские кошмары

Мне страшен летний Петербург. Возможен
Здесь всякий бред, и дух так одинок,
И на площадках лестниц ждет Рогожин,
И дергает Раскольников звонок.
От стука кирпича и едкой гари
Совсем измученный, тащусь туда,
Где брошенные дети на бульваре
В песке играют и близка вода.
Но телу дряблому везде застенок:
Зеленым пламенем рябит листва,
У девочек вкруг голеньких коленок
Под платьицем белеют кружева.
Исчезло все… И я уже не чую,
Что делается… Наяву? В бреду?
Наверх, в квартиру пыльную пустую,
Одну из них за лакомством веду.
И после — трупик голый и холодный
На простыне, и спазмы жадных нег,
И я, бросающий в канал Обводный
И кровяной филей, и синий стек…

This is a horrific poem. Not that I know Russian, but the translation seems well done. Though I think this: And after: a little corpse, naked and cold - is more horrific, as it should be, than your translation. There are also some tired phrases you might want to make more bizarre:

things past understanding.
lurks in shadows
Worn to a frazzle

Hi, Carl! I can see why you were concerned about workshopping this one.

Trigger warning for child sexual victimization....

I'm struck by the narrator's admission of fright in the beginning, followed by the slow revelation that the narrator is probably frightened of his own disturbing fantasizes and/or behavior. The vividness of the disposal scenario after the blackout and bliss certainly suggests that it's not just fantasies going on.

I see the torture of a feeble/flabby body in the middle of the poem as the narrator's somewhat self-exonerating claim that the summertime glimpses of unsupervised little girls in short skirts torture him and his own weak flesh (Matthew 26:41) with tempting opportunities. As if he's the real victim here.

The final four lines of the poem have a different sequence and emphasis in the crib than in your verse version. To me, the implication of the original order is that the kid was murdered before the sexual stuff happened, possibly to reduce the risk of discovery (due to screaming).

Since riding crops are specifically designed to avoid tearing skin (usually with a wide, slapping tip), perhaps it was the handle was what was purpled, after being used penetratively. Oookay, not a thought I want to dwell on....

I wonder if the reader is supposed to recognize a particular literary or real-life villain in these oddly specific details. There's a certain ripped-from-the-headlines feel to the mention of the riding crop. M.A. Griffiths wrote at least two poems from the perspective of a child-murderer, which likewise mentioned specific paraphernalia from news stories.

Thanks, Mary. You don’t have to know Russian, and you don’t even have to look at the crib (though I’m glad you did). I’m very interested in knowing how my translations sound as English poems.

It’s such a disturbing poem that I almost thought better of translating it, but something drew me: the setting in summertime St. Petersburg, the nightmarish mood and the shock value. A year or so ago, I posted a translation of an early Mayakovsky poem, written at about the same time, that begins: “I love the sight of children dying.”

Now to your nits:

I’ve put in “corpse,” but not “little corpse.” In Russian it’s the word “corpse” with a diminutive ending (corpsey!).

If I give up “landing,” I could revert to an earlier version of the first quatrain:

Petersburg summers frighten me: long days
of loneliness and madness in the air.
Raskolnikov still rings the bell. A crazed
Rogozhin still is lurking on the stair.

“Stair” is close enough, I guess, and that gets rid of “in shadows,” which was pure filler anyway (though true to Dostoyevsky). But is “in the air” any less tired than “past understanding”?

I’m not sold on “Worn to a frazzle” either. I’m trying out “Worn to distraction.” UPDATE: It’s now “Tormented by the acrid fumes.”

Thanks, Julie.

Yeah, throughout the poem—from the opening lines, with their mention of strange occurrences, to the end, where he seems almost to be observing himself from the side—the N seems to feel that this is something happening to him.

You caught me. The sequence of the original does open up the possibility of necrophilia. I don’t think I’m up to that much of a rewrite, so I’ll have to defend myself by saying that the sequence of events can be muddled in a nightmare. (Though I agree with you that, within the context of the poem, this is a real event perceived as a nightmare.)

The color is actually “dark blue” (one word in Russian). I substituted “purple” because I needed two syllables, and “dark blue” sounds overly precise in English. In Russian there’s no word that covers both light and dark blue, and you have to choose.

That’s an intriguing possibility, but would probably take library research. Thanks to your suggestion, though, I did a bit of googling and came up with something else that needs research. When I showed the poem to a native speaker, he felt that the word “stek” (riding crop) should be “steik” (steak), another cut of meat to go with “fillet.” I had a different story in my head, and “steak” would be the only imperfect (though near) rhyme, but his feeling may have been truer than I thought. I found a footnote to an article on a different topic where a scholar asserts that the word in the poem should be “ssek” (loin, round). That would be a perfect rhyme. The poem was published posthumously, so the poet had no chance to correct it himself. I may try contacting the poet’s grandson, who is also a poet, translator and literary scholar. Fascinating.