translated by Jane Kenyon (with Vera Sandomirsky Dunham)
1985 • Nineties Press & Ally Press
53 pages / 0915408309 (paperback)
It was something of a miracle - or perhaps only a result of the arbitrary - that Anna Akhmatova survived condemnation for 'polluting' the minds of Russians with her poetry. Akhmatova, despite being one of the very first artists torn up by the USSR cultural wing, somehow avoided a prison sentence and execution to live until age 76, a witness to ongoing hardships but increasingly famous.
Though she did not live to fully experience it, Akhmatova is now recognized worldwide for lyric poetry that she struggled to make public. Her fame is in spite of blacklisting by the Central Committee of the Communist Party for a thirty-year stretch and the humiliation of Andrei Zhdanov's 'nun and harlot' essay that smeared her as a human being in 1946. Her work easily ranks in esteem with a group of female poets that includes Sappho, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and her contemporary Marina Tsvetayeva.
American poet Jane Kenyon's translations of Akhmatova were popular in literary circles for several years. Though Akhmatova's reputation was secure long before the translations were published as a book in 1985, the English-speaking world was still trying to absorb her legacy and wasn't yet receiving the total picture from her home country. Her famous war tribute Requiem, in fact, had still not been printed in its entirety by the Soviet publishing houses and other controversial pieces were limited to circulation in samizdat. In supplying twenty translations of Akhmatova's poems with their original texts and a helpful introductory essay, Kenyon gave English readers a new doorway to the poetess's work.Twenty Poems of Anna Akhmatova selects from the few books she published early in her career and the various poems written in later decades. Kenyon, who is respected for poetry of a similar concision, has focused on Akhmatova's shorter lyrics, which are known for their vivid imagery and sharp glimpses into the interior world of the narrator. At first, Kenyon seems an ideal match for Akhmatova in the translation game, since their styles complement one another and their presence as women helps to channel ideas.
Kenyon collaborated with literary scholar Vera Sandomirsky Dunham of Columbia University and put forth a valiant effort in bringing Akhmatova's poetry to the West. But Kenyon's work, for its good intentions, stifled the delicate and often ecstatic music that Akhmatova conveys in Russian. Kenyon's rendering of her verse seems toned down and far too relaxed to convince us that Akhmatova's words have gone unadulterated.
There has always existed a tall barrier in converting Russian ideas to English, a problem that Kenyon acknowledges in her introduction. English does not offer as many idea-encompassing words as Russian and severely limits the possibilities in maintaining Akhmatova's form. Kenyon tries to overcome this by changing Akhmatova's nuanced meter and rhyme to free verse with the hope of preserving image. At times, she is compelled to reorganize ideas or shift text in order to maintain flow and prevent further distortion.
Those with at least working knowledge of Russian may be stunned that Akhmatova's scansion and rhyme - both essential to her poetry - have been mostly dropped. One of her exceptional poems from the collection Plantain, for example, uses highly melodic and alternating couplets; the first stanza alone rhymes ponedelnik (Monday) with bezdelnik (good-for-nothing) and miglyeh (darkness) with zemlyeh (earth). Kenyon, who no doubt had great challenges when translating this, creates a very dignified stanza that gives something of Akhmatova's original but is still below the Russian poetess's standards:
Twenty-first. Night. Monday.Kenyon does have moderate success in poems such as 'Evening hours at the desk' and 'Tale of the Black Ring,' a poem which took Ahkmatova years to complete, but too much of Akhmatova has been lost in dropping her musicality.
Silhouette of the capitol in darkness.
Some good-for-nothing -- who knows why --
made up the tale that love exists on earth.
As independent pieces of writing, Kenyon's translations are above-average in quality and nothing particularly great. Akhmatova's work catches aflame only at moments as her words are separated by two considerably different languages, two largely different societies, and two vastly different eras. This volume begs the question: is poetry of this sensitivity, this vividness, translatable into English at all or should we all break out some Russian textbooks and learn the language?
Kenyon's Twenty Poems must be respected for its ambition and role in bringing Akhmatova to more of the English-speaking world, but other translators such as Stanley Kunitz, Judith Hemschemeyer, and Roberta Reeder serve as good comparisons for the paths that Russian to English translation can take. Kenyon's selection, co-published by Robert Bly's Nineties Press and Ally Press in Minnesota, is still frequently discussed and can be found in libraries or for purchase on the Web. The translations are also included in Kenyon's posthumous collection A Hundred White Daffodils, published by Graywolf Press in 2000.
