Poetry and Film: Artistic Kinship Between Arsenii and Andrei Tarkovsky

by Kitty Hunter Blair

Overview

One of the most significant filmmakers of modern times (Ivan’s Childhood, Andrei Rublev, Solaris, The Mirror, and Stalker), Andrei Tarkovsky (1932–1986) was hugely influenced by the poems of his father, Arsenii (1907–1989). Rendered here for the first time in English, the poems echo through many of the films and illuminate the creative relationship between father and son. While his son’s place in film history is acknowledged worldwide, Arsenii, who fell afoul of Soviet censorship, is still little-known outside Russia. The 148 poems translated here explore universal themes such as love, nature, family, aging, war, and memory, and place the poetry within the context of the father/son and poet/filmmaker relationship that so dominates the Tarkovsky story.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781849762496
Publisher:	Tate Publishing & Enterprises, L.L.C.
Publication date:	05/05/2015
Edition description:	Critical ed.
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Kitty Hunter-Blair taught Russian language and literature at Cambridge for 20 years and is a trustee of London’s Pushkin House.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements and Image Credits 10

Note on transliteration and pronunciation 11

Introduction 13

I Affinities 13

II The Poet's Voice 35

Notes to the Introduction 68

Selected Poems

Just Before Leaf-fall 78

The Cradle 78

'Sugakleia river runs away into the reeds' 79

'Dew swells on the grass's heart' 79

Ignat'evo Forest 80

'When the bathing woman with heavy braided hair' 81

The Portrait 81

'Yesterday from early on I waited' 81

The Skiff 82

'Opening my notebook I studied the grass' 82

The Steppe 83

Become Yourself 84

Joan of Arc's Tree 85

'You who lived in this world before me' 87

Socrates 87

Karlovy Vary 88

Angelo Secchi 88

'May Vincent van Gogh forgive me' 89

The Translator 90

'Sometimes as you walk through town' 91

This Earth 92

'Around the threshold of the Lord' 92

'Put my St Nicholas into my hand' 93

'I call - there is no answer, Marina's sleep is sound' 94

'There was nothing you would not do' 95

Song Under Fire 96

'In the unpeopled steppe an eagle rests' 97

'The gun emplacement was just here behind the hill' 97

Field Hospital 98

Butterfly in a Hospital Garden 99

Ivan's Willow 100

After the War 101

Warning 102

Titania 103

'Life has taught me gradually' 104

'Its yellow flame twinkling' 107

'Let us quietly make ready' 107

T said "Hullo!" and my heart contracted' 108

'The table has been set for six' 108

'Fire like a golden bird' 109

'Rooms were low-ceilinged' 110

'Some black day I'll dream' 111

The Wind 112

Song 113

Eurydice 114

First Meetings 115

'Just like forty years ago' (1) 117

'Just like forty years ago' (2) 117

'Praise - for their light and tears' 118

The Iurodivy in 1918 119

Lines from Childhood Notebook 119

Photography 121

In the Middle of the World 121

Riddle and Answer 122

On the Riverbank 123

The Forester's Hut 123

The Manuscript 124

Poets 125

Verses in Notebooks 125

Aeschylus 126

Stone on the Path 126

The Poet 127

From an Old Notebook 128

In Memory of Marina Tsvetaeva

'Where is your thundering wave' 129

'I can hear, I'm not asleep, you're calling me, Marina' 129

'Lovers of truth, friends, masters' 130

Washing 131

As It Was Twenty-two Years Ago 131

Twenty-two Years On 132

Komitas 133

The Steppe Reed Pipe

I 'They lived, they waged war, they went hungry' 134

II 'Every sound on earth has its own echo' 134

III 'Where Ovid translated' 134

IV 'The bitter, parched earth of the steppe' 135

'Oh, could I but move, come round, wake up' 136

World and Language 136

Inscription in a Book (I) 137

At Right Angles 137

Daghestan 138

Transformation 139

The Bull, Orion and the Great Dog 140

Snowy Night in Vienna 141

In Winter 141

Navigation Ended 142

Life, Life 142

Dreams 144

Insomnia 144

Kore 146

'Dove-grey evening wings' 146

Olive Trees 147

The Actor 148

The Blue Ray 149

Paul Klee 150

Ward 4 151

'And I come from nowhere' 152

'When nature and lexis launch into dispute' 153

'From a volume of stone I learn language that is beyond time' 153

'War with Germany had not yet broken out' 153

'A ghost, an empty sound' 154

'As a child I once fell ill' 155

Swallows 156

The White Day 156

'Now summer is gone' 157

Azov 158

'A star dances before stars' 158

'In the universe our happy reason' 159

'Our blood does not yearn after home' 159

'Still from above on to time and space' 159

In Memory of Anna Akhmatova

'I made up a bed of snow' 160

'At St Nikola by Sea' 160

'Home, home, home' 161

'Over ice, over snow, over jasmine' 162

'White pine trees' 162

'And this shade too I saw along the road' 163

'When like a bonded slave beneath the pines' 164

'And I have dreamed of this, and this is what I dream' 164

Theophanes 165

Pushkin Epigraphs

I 'Will you tell me why, my sister' 166

II Tike that prisoner in his pit' 167

III 'I have worked out the conundrum' 168

IV 'I was given short change in the shop' 169

Grigorii Skovoroda 170

'Where burial mounds, face down in grass' 170

'Thunder and clanging still fill our ears' 172

Once Upon a Time 173

'Damp, earthy smells were borne through the window' 174

'Sight is fading - my power' 175

'The body is waking' 176

'In the last month of autumn' 176

'What a mass of leaves. They are our trees' lungs' 177

'Moths laugh as if they've lost their wits' 177

T was not killed in the war' 178

To the Memory of Friends 179

'For my daily bread, for every drop of water' 179

Testament 180

The Olive Grove 184

Medem 186

'From out in his yard the dog stares into the window' 187

'A town stands on the river' 18s 'Easter chimes floated down the Volga from lurovets' 189

Invitation to a Journey 190

Inscription in a Book (2) 191

Doorbell in the Night 191

'Air heavy with iron and rotting potatoes' 192

'Like Jesus crucified upon the cross' 193

To Youth 194

Psyche 195

To a Notebook of Poems 196

'I'm going to don an iron ring' 196

'You were such bitter stuff, so blind' 197

Notes to the Poems 199

Appendix I Pushkin Poems 225

Appendix II The Process of Translation 228

Bibliography 231

Arsenii Tarkovsky: significant biographical dates 234

Index 235