This is my first experience sharing a translation, so please forgive my ignorance of the protocols and etiquette. I wanted to offer a tribute to the suffering of the Ukrainian people. This attempt translates the opening quatrain and the prose-poem in place of an introduction to Akhmatova’s long poem, “Requiem.” This poem was written between 1935 and 1961. She carried it with her as she moved around the Soviet Union, often on the run from the government. Although born in Odesa and ethnically Ukrainian, she wrote in Russian. In pre-Stalinist Russia, she enjoyed fame and praise, but she was condemned by the Stalinist authorities. Her husband was executed and her son imprisoned and sent to the Gulag. She was unable to publish her work, and this poem, often considered her masterpiece, was not published in Russia until long after her death. Like Alexey Navalny, Akhmatova chose to stay in Russia in spite of her persecution. The scene below in the prose-poem passage describes the seventeen months during which she waited outside at the prison in Leningrad just to get a glimpse of her son, who was detained there.
Requiem
by Anna Akhmatova
No, not under an alien heaven
nor a foreigner’s sheltering wing—
I was then among my people,
there, where my own were suffering.
1961
In Place of a Preface
In the terrifying years of the Great Purge, I spent
seventeen months in the prison waiting line
in Leningrad. One time someone singled me out.
Then a woman standing behind me with ice-blue lips,
who, of course, had never in her life heard my name,
roused herself from the inertia afflicting all of us and
asked with a whisper in my ear
(everyone there spoke in a whisper):
“Can you describe this?”
And I said:
“I can.”
Then something like a smile flickered across
what had once been her face.
April 1, 1957
Leningrad
ORIGINAL
Реквием
Анна Ахматова
Нет, и не под чуждым небосводом,
И не под защитой чуждых крыл,—
Я была тогда с моим народом,
Там где мой народ, к несчастью, был.
1961
Вместо предисловия
В страшные годы ежовщины я провела
семнадцать месяцев в тюремных очередях
в Ленинграде. Как-то раз кто-то <<опознал>> меня.
Тогда стоящая за мной женщина с голубыми губами,
которая, конечно, никогда в жизни не слыхала моего
имени, очнулась от свойственного нам всем
oцепенение и спросила меня на ухо
(там все говорили шепотом):
—А это вы можете описать?
И я сказала:
—Могу.
Тогда что-то вроде улыбки скользнуло по тому,
что некогда было её лицом.
1 апреля 1957
Ленинград
NOTES
небосвод = sky vault
Ежовщина = the time of Nikolai Yezhov, Stalin’s chief of the secret police (the NKVD); the “Yezhov Terror” or “The Great Purge” lasted from 1936-1938. Not to be confused with the Holodomor, the man-made famine engineered by Stalin in 1932-1933 in which millions starved to death in Ukraine and Kazakhstan as punishment for planning a suspected insurrection.
I used the online version of the poem at Пушкинская Карта from Культура РФ (a cultural program sponsored by the Russian Cultural Ministry).
———————-
Edits:
1. Added missing section to Russian original, prose section, lines 5-6:
. . . никогда в жизни не слыхала моего
имени, очнулась от . . .
2. Prose L5-7: who, of course, had never heard our name asked with an almost mute whisper in my ear > who, of course, had never before in her life heard my name, stirred herself from the muteness characteristic of all of us and asked with a whisper in my ear
3. Prose L2: prisoners’ > prison
4. Prose L3: recognized me > singled me out
5. Prose L9: Omit “So”
6. Prose L4: icy-blue > ice-blue
7. Quatrain L2: nor under a stranger’s sheltering wing > nor a foreigner’s sheltering wing
8. Prose L5: who, of course, had never before in her life heard my name > who, of course, had never in her life heard my name
9. Prose L6: stirred herself from the muteness characteristic of all of us and > roused herself from the inertia afflicting all of us and
10. Prose L7-8: . . .ear./(Everyone there spoke in a whisper.) > ear / (everyone there spoke in a whisper):