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Dei cei mai muli experi consider c nceputul real al acestei epoci este determinat de apariia n 1904 a volumului

de poezii (Versuri pentru o femeie frumoas) al lui Aleksandr Blok, unii cercettori au extins perioada astfel nct s includ i alte lucrri cum sunt (n lumina contiinei) publicat de Nikolai Minski n 1890, tratatul (Despre motivele decderii literaturii contemporane ruse), publicat de Dmitri Merejkovski n 1893, i culegerea (Simboliti rui), publicat de Valeri Briusov n 1899, dei aceti autori sunt de cele mai multe ori considerai precursori ai epocii de argint. Epoca de argint s-a terminat dup rzboiul civil din Uniunea Sovietic. Elementele care marcheaz sfritul acestei ere sunt mpucarea lui Nikolai Gumiliov n 1921 i apariia volumului lui Boris Pasternak (Sora mea este viaa).

Dei epoca de argint a fost dominat de micri literare ca simbolismul rus, acmeismul i futurismul rus, au nflorit o multitudine de alte curente, printre care anarhismul mistic. Au fost i poei ca Ivan Bunin i Marina vetaeva care au refuzat s se alinieze cu oricare din aceste micri. Poetul Aleksandr Blok a dominat epoca de argint, fiind respectat practic de ntreaga lume literar. Dintre ceilali poei care si-au nceput cariera n aceast perioad, dei au lucrat pentru muli ani dup aceea, cei mai remarcabili sunt Anna Ahmatova, Boris Pasternak i Osip Mandeltam.

nc de la nceput am tiut totul despre versuri- scria cndva despre sine Anna Ahmatova. La 23 iunie s-au mplinit 120 de ani de la naterea acestei mari poete, simbolul ctorva epoci n cultura rus.

Impuntoare, majestuas, inaccesibil- aa a descris-o pe Anna Ahmatova fiecare persoan, care a avut posibilitatea s-o vad n tineree i la btrnee. Fiina ei impresiona ntotdeauna prin mbinarea feminitii, forei interioare i nsuirii de a domina. De remarcat c Annei Ahmatova nu i-a plcut niciodat cuvntul poet, ea i spunea numai poet. Nu putem fi de acord cu aceast corectare, consider Serghei Kormilov, specialist n istoria literaturii.

"Ahmatova spunea, c n dragoste femeie este participant n proporie de 50%. Ea considera c n toate trebuie s existe o egalitate deplin n drepturi, iar cuvntul poet este prea neobinuit i poate chiar njositor pentru tradiia literar. Probabil c aa este, deoarece n sec-XIX nu existau poete, care s poat fi considerate la acelai nivel cu Ahmatova".

Anna Ahmatova a intrat n poezia rus la nceputul sec.XX , n epoca Secolului de argint ca unul din principalii exponeni ai acestei perioade, deosebit de bogat n diverse curente artistice. De altfel, nsi expresia Secolul de argint a nceput s fie folosit larg n cultura rus, dup ce a aprut n una din poeziile Annei Ahmatova. n anii aceia, idealul Annei Ahmatova era Pukin, etalon al claritii i profunzimii clasice, descendente din veacul de aur al culturii ruse.

n creaia sa, Ahmatova a rmas credincioas acestui ideal toat viaa ei. Iar viaa n-a fost deloc uoar, ca de altfel i pentru poporul Rusiei, n numele cruia a nceput s vorbeasc Anna Ahmatova. Ea a trecut prin dou rzboaie mondiale, inclusiv prin ororile blocadei fasciste a Leningradului, a fost martor la represiunile staliniste, crora le-au czut jertf muli prieteni, chiar i fiul ei.

n opera sa , n care nainte vreme se vorbea att de mult despre dragostea neferict, i-a fcut apariia patosul mnios i subtextul politic evident. Nu trebuie s ne mirm c ideologii sovietici au ters-o pe Ahmatova de pe lista autorilor tiprii, au supus-o unei prigoane njositoare i au exclus-o oficial din Uniunea scriitorilor- singura asociaie a scriitorilor din URSS.

Unul din elevii Annei Ahmatova, poetul Anatoli Naiman, povestea n ultimii ani ai vieii ei:

Soarta ngrozitoare i foarte grea pentru existen a contribuit la faptul c, pe lng altele, Ahmatova a devenit i un simbol al rezistenei. i ntr-adevr: regimul totalitar avea la dispoziie armata, flota naval i aerian, organele depresive, etc, iar ea nu avea absolut nimic, ns Ahmatova a rmas, iar regimul a disprut.

n ara sa natal, Annei Ahmatova i se spunea uneori Regina surghiunit. Mult timp n-a avut nici mcar o locuin proprie- ea tria la prieteni. ns acest fapt n-a moiedicat-o deloc s-i pstreze inuta mejestuoas i firete, s se ocupe de creaie, n fine apreciat pe deplin i n Rusia i peste hotare. Ce se citete astzi n versurile Anneim Ahmatova? Iat ce rspunde la aceast ntrebare Serghei Bogdanov, profesor la Universitatea din Petersburg.

n poezia Annei Ahmatova exist ceea, ce am dori s ne-nsoeasc ntotdeauna. Ea i nva pe oameni s fie fericii i s-i fac i pe ali oameni fericii.

La 23 iunie, cnd se mplinesc 120 de ani de la naterea Annei Ahmatova, versurile ei rsun n Rusia la o mulime de seri literare i nainte de toate la Petersburg, pe care Ahmatova l-a numit Oraul ei. ns e puin probabil c cineva va reui s repete intonaia regal i vrjitoreasc, cu care poetul Anna Ahmatova citea propriile sale versuri:

Am nceput atunci s neleg ritmul uor al sunetelor, iar versurile dictate se atern n caietul alb ca zpada.

Marina Tsvetaeva - Biography

Marina Tsvetaeva was born on 1892 in Moscow, Russia. She was a well-known poet in Russian, considered as one of the greatest and most original Silver Age poets of the 20th Century, even though her work did not gain international visibility.

Tsvetaeva spent her childhood and early youth in Moscow where her mother discouraged her early efforts in poetry and wanted Tsvetaeva to become a pianist instead. After her mother's death, at the age of 16, she went to Paris to study literary history at the Sorbonne. Her first poetry book, Evening Album, came out in 1910 and attracted the attention of Maximilian Voloshin, a Russian critic and poet that later became her mentor and friend. It was in Voloshin's home, in the Black Sea, that she met her future husband Sergei Yakovlevich Efron, at the age of 19. They married in 1912 and from then on Tsvetaeva is known to have had plenty of affairs including fellow poets Osip Mandelstam and Sofia Parnok, affairs that inspired her writings as in the collection Milepost (in relation to Osip) and a cycle of poems entitled initially The Girlfriend and later The Mistake (in relation to Sofia).

The times of the Russian Revolution were troublesome for Tsvetaeva, her husband Efron and their two daughters. Efron volunteered to the front in 1914 and after the revolution, joined the White Army. Tsvetaeva was trapped in Moscow and thrown into extreme poverty for five years. She even sent one of her daughters to a state orphanage hoping for a better life condition but her daughter starved to death. After this tragedy she decided to emigrate to Berlin where she published the poem The Tsar Maiden and

the collections Poems to Blok and Separation. From Belin they went to Prague where once again they struggled to survive and where Tsvetaeva had an affair with a former military named Konstantin Rozdevitch, an affair which became known through the emigr circles and even by Efron himself, who was devastated by it. The end of this affair was most likely her inspiration for The Poem of the End, one of her greatest works. After moving to the suburbs, Tsvetaeva had yet another child, a boy this time, that proved to be a very difficult child.

In 1925, after 6 years of moving about, the family finally settled in Paris, where they stayed for the following 14 years. At this time Tsvetaeva started writing prose as well, in an attempt to make a bit more money out of her work, and Efron contracted tuberculosis. In Paris her work was not very well received in the emigr circle for it was seen as not enough anti-Soviet despite her support for the White Army during the revolution. She had difficulties getting her works published but kept a lively correspondence with other writers including Rainer Maria Rilke, Boris Pasternak and Aleksandr Bakhrakh. In 1937 Efron and their daughter returned to the Soviet Union as Efron was working as a spy for the NKVD and has been charged with murder by the french police in Paris. Tsvetaeva was questioned about the murder but seemed not to understand what the questioning was about and instead read some french translations of her works to the bewildered police officers. She seemed not to have known much about her husband's activities but was nevertheless further excluded from the Parisian emigr circle and felt she had no other choice but to return to the Soviet Union.

When arriving back in the Soviet Union in 1939 with her son, Tsvetaeva encountered a changed country. There was no longer space for anyone who had lived abroad as they were all suspects. Her poetry was not well taken by the Bolshevik regime either and she found no where to go, no work to do apart from few translations. In 1941 her husband was shot on the charged of espionage and her daughter sent to a labor camp. In the same year, with the evacuation of Moscow, Tsvetaeva was sent to Yelabuga (while most poets where sent to Chistopol) where she found herself once more desperately looking for work until her suicide on August 31, 1941. No one attended the funeral and the location of her grave is unknown. There are museums in her homage in Yelabuga, where her suicide note can be seen, and in Moscow, where a bronze monument was installed in 2007, commemorating her 115th anniversary.

Tsvetaeva is know for bridging two different and contradictory strands of Russian poetry namely Symbolism and Acmeism. While Symbolism was busy with getting away with real depictions of daily life in name of evoking feelings, Acmeism (coming from the greek acme meaning the best age of man) was busy with de-linking poetry from mysticism concentrating in craft and cultural continuity. Her poetry mostly developed around the world of female sexuality and emotions. Her writings are considered as very disciplined and eccentric in the use of language, and her themes as arousing from her troubled life and personality. She always dated her poems and constructed them in cycles which facilitates the study of her oeuvre. There are 10 collections of her lyric poetry and her uncollected poetry could as well fill

another 10 volumes. One of her best-known and exemplary poem is the 1922 The Tsar Maiden which is a long verse form of a fairy tale with the famous lines:

"I am nowhere. I've vanished in no land. Nobody catches up with me. Nothing will bring me back."

In her poetry, Tsvetaeva made use of completely different characters such as mythological, biblical, folkloric and historic ones. She became known for her ability to personify different characters within her poetry. Tsvetaeva constantly made use of paradoxes, inviting the reader to search through the uncertainties of truths. Her style is described as aphoristic and she is primarily seen as a lyrical poet. Her poetry is also known as very passionate with an almost obsessive quality when it came to her beloved ones. Since the 1960s her work started to reappear in new editions which brought her to light as one of the greatest Russian poets of the 20th Century. The long years of obscurity seemed to have been already foreseen by Tsvetaeva as in her lines:

"Amidst the dust of bookshops, wide dispersed And never purchased there by anyone, Yet similar to precious wines, my verses can wait Its time will come."

Tsvetaeva's work was cheered and admired by many poets of her time including Rainer Maria Rilke, Boris Pasternak, Osip Mandelstam, Valery Bryusov, and Maximilian Voloshin amongst others. One of the best and most famous descriptions of her work is the one given by the Russian-American poet and essayist Joseph Brodsky:

"Represented on a graph, Tsvetaeva's work would exhibit a curve - or rather, a straight line - rising at almost a right angle because of her constant effort to raise the pitch a note higher, an idea higher...She always carried everything she has to say to its conceivable and expressible end. In both her poetry and her prose, nothing remains hanging or leaves a feeling of ambivalence. Tsvetaeva is the unique case in

which the paramount spiritual experience of an epoch (for us, the sense of ambivalence, of contradictoriness in the nature of human existence) served not as the object of expression but as its means, by which it was transformed into the material of art."

The Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich composed Six Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva for piano and contralto, making use of poems from her whole career, emphasizing the cyclical character of her work. In 1982 a minor planet was named after her, 3511 Tsvetaeva, by the Soviet astronomer Lyudmila Georgievna Karachkina. Tsvetaeva picture was used for a stamp in the Soviet Union from 1992. In 2003 an opera based on Tsvetaeva's life and work was premiered in New York directed by Anne Bogart and with music by Deborah Drattell. It was called Marina: A Captive Spirit.

Poet de geniu, varf al literaturii ruse alaturi de Anna Ahmatova, Marina Tvetaieva si Boris Pasternak, Osip Mandelstam (1891-1938) a murit in Gulag pentru ca a scris, in noiembrie 1933, o epigrama despre Stalin (de fapt una dintre cele mai importante poezii politice compuse vreodata). Desi poemul nu era menit sa circule, fiind invatat pe dinafara de Nadejda, sotia lui Mandelstam, si de prietena familiei si a Annei Ahmatova, Emma Gerstein, Osip nu s-a putut retine si l-a recitat in mai multe locuri. A fost o imprudenta fatala. Delatiunea nu a intarziat. In anii urmatori, pana la deportarea finala, Stalin s-a jucat cu Mandelstam precum pisica cu soarecele (a se citi rascolitoarele memorii ale vaduvei poetului aparute la Polirom in traducerea lui Nicolae Iliescu). Fusese candva protejat de Nikolai Buharin, ceea ce, in conditiile Marii Terori, era o circumstanta agravanta. Nici macar o penibila Oda lui Stalin nu mai avea cum sa rascumpere culpa de a-l fi sfidat pe tiran. Aureolat de toti ditirambii imaginabili, temut si detestat de acolitii sai, dictatorul sociopat stia ca de fapt adevarul despre el fusese rostit de poet. In ultimii ani de viata a dezvoltat o suspiciune paranoica in raport cu doctorii Kremlinlui, excrescenta a antisemitismului sau obsesiv. Cand a suferit hemoragia cerebrala la inceputul lunii martie 1953, valetii din Biroul Politic, diversii Beria, Malenkov, Kaganovici, Hrusciov, Bulganin, Molotov si Mikoian, terorizati de ideea aducerii unor doctori (asasini in halate albe) l-au lasat sa zaca vreme de 12 ore intr-o balta de urina. Au chemat in fine doctorii, era de-acum prea tarziu. Asa a sfarsit genialissimul generalissim. Are dreptate istoricul Simon Sebag Montefiore in articolul aparut in New York Timesdin 27 octombrie 2011 intitulat Dictators Get The Deaths They Deserve: He was not murdered, like Colonel Qaddafi, he was the author of his own destruction.

Mandelstam a fost oficial reabilitat in 1956, dar poeziile sale au intalnit in continuare obstacole pe drumul catre publicare. Bonzii Uniunii Scriitorilor l-au tratat in continuare drept un poet subversiv. In anii urmatori, Anna Ahmatova si Nadejda Mandelstam si-au facut o datorie de onoare din recuperarea publica a operei poetului. La fel, au cultivat memoria sa poetii din anturajul leningradean al Ahmatovei in anii 60, intre care Anatoli Neiman si Iosif Brodsky. Din pacate, multe texte au disparut in negura cumplitilor ani stalinisti. Cand scria cuvintele O, de stiam de la-nceput ca versul scris cu sange-omoara (citez din memorie traducerea lui Marin Sorescu), poate ca Boris Pasternak se gandea la destinul poetului acmeist, admiratorul lui Dante, pierit in malaxorul terorii pentru ca a refuzat sa renunte la ispravile cu-n dedesubt primejdios. Cel la care se gandea poate Marina Tvetaieva cand isi amintea de adolescentul cu sange cald, iudeu.

Iata, in traducerea lui Emil Iordache, cel numit de Radu Vancu un fel de Mircea Ivnescu al traducerilor din rus, poemul incendiar al lui Mandelstam, un text scris cu sange care avea sa-l coste viata:

Vieuim, dar sub noi ara tace mormnt. Cnd vorbim, nu se-aude mcar un cuvnt. Iar cnd vorbele par s se-nchege puin, Pomenesc de plieul urcat n Kremlin. Are degete groase i grele, Sunt cuvintele lui de ghiulele. Rd gndacii mustilor strmbe i-i lucesc a npast carmbii.

Are-o turm de sfetnici cu gturi subiri Semioameni slujindu-l umili Care uier, miaun, latr cinete, Numai el, fulgernd, hcuiete. Potcovar de ucazuri, forjeaz porunci:

Glon n ochi, glon n frunte i glon n rrunchi. Orice moarte-i desfat deplin Pieptu-i larg de cumplit osetin.

Boris Pasternak The Poems of Doctor Zhivago

Translating the Zhivago Cycle

Pasternak's poetic style of various periods remains one of the most challenging to translate. At first sight it might seem that it is the complex earlier verse, based on a multitude of wordplays, that loses most in translation to other languages. Nevertheless, successful versions have been produced at various times by translators such as George Reavey, Robert Lowell, Lydia Pasternak Slater, Eugene Kayden, Peter France and John Stallworthy, who have given us English poetic renderings that in varying degrees balance the elements of "verbal music", rhythm, rhyme structure, and metaphor in Pasternak's early lyrics.

In his later verse, Pasternak consciously cultivated a more transparent poetic idiom, striving towards Pushkinian ideals, and pursuing a new and "unheard-of" simplicity". On the face of it, such writing ought to be more congenial to translation, offering the chance of closer equivalence in English and a clearer impression of the, in many cases, magnificent originals. Surprisingly, however, Pasternak's poetry of the 1930s, and of the World War 2 and postwar period (including the poems of Doctor Zhivago) has remained tantalizingly resistant to the efforts of English translators. There has been no shortage of translators - the above-named have been joined by such as Michael Harari, Donald Davie and Bernard Guilbert Guerney, and the present offerings are a further addition to this body of translated verse. The problem arising is similar to that facing translators of Pushkin, or Akhmatova among the moderns, or which, in the musical world, confronts interpreters of Mozart: the fluency, purity and simplicity of style seem to present so few technical problems, that a banality and blankness of expression can easily result, unwittingly reducing Pasternak to the level of John Betjeman or worse. It is for this reason that many readers and critics continue to prefer the simple prose renderings of the Zhivago poems, published in Max Hayward and Manya Harari's original translation of Doctor Zhivago, to other more elaborate attempts at "poetic" translation. There is also no denying the beauty of Guerney's more recent prose versions published in currently available North American editions of the novel, and which whose graceful and rounded expression offer a near-perfect version of the original's literal meaning, in itself so saturated that it partly compensates for a lack of other poetic qualities in these versions.

Nevertheless, Hayward, Harari, and Guerney notwithstanding, there still remains a temptation to translate the Zhivago poems in a way that reproduces, however partially, more of the elements of Pasternak's later verse style without major semantic concessions or distortions. It is on these grounds that one is bound to reject the versions by Robert Lowell and Donald Davie, which suffer from an inadequate understanding of Russian as well as a too obvious attempt to make "English poetry" out of Pasternak's poems. Clearly, to create fine English verse from a great Russian (or other foreign) original would require a poetic translator no less talented than the original author - but then this would be a new and inimitable work of original creativity, probably removed in spirit from the original as Pasternak's own Russian versions of Shakespeare and Goethe's Faust were. The ideal translation must therefore, in this second respect, be a compromise. Among Pasternak's translators Lydia Pasternak Slater, the poet's own sister, came nearer than most to the spirit of the Russian, producing verses that are, as she claimed, "close in their sound and general pattern to those of the Russian originals". She also sensibly realized the need to cultivate assonance rhyme and avoid the regular chime of alternating rhyme endings that are characteristic even of much modern Russian verse. The main defect of her versions arose probably from her non-native knowledge of English and a tendency to use inversions (of verb and object, noun and adjective) that sometimes gave her lines a dated rather than "modern" appearance.

It is easy, of course, for latecomers to quibble with the work of predecessors. I am well aware that translation is not an exact science, but an evolving, changing, and subjective art form. There can thus be no one single, ideal rendering and the present rhymed and rhythmic versions of the Zhivago cycle are just one contribution to the multiple versions that might partially capture the spirit of the Russian. Anyone familiar with the original Russian is bound to feel disappointed and deprived, and there are some features of even these late and simple poems by Pasternak that are bound to elude translation. The title of the poem "Intoxication" is "Khmel'" in Russian, which both means the state of intoxication and denotes the hop-plant whose fermentation leads to this state; the main conceit of the poem is in fact built around this ambiguity, impossible to reproduce neatly in English. The poem is also one of the weaker items in the cycle. Anna Akhmatova tartly commented that Pasternak should have known better at his age than to write verse of such juvenile eroticism. In other respects, however, the finest nature and religious poems in this cycle are among the best work Pasternak ever produced. Like much of Akhmatova, too, they deserve repeated translation and importation into other linguistic cultures. Hopefully, the nobility of the task may partly compensate for defects in its execution.

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