Translations of Poems by Viktor Bokov

Translations of Poems by Viktor Bokov Edward Jamosky University ofNorthern Iowa Biographical material on Viktor Bokov is scant. The best source available is George Reavey's The New Russian Poets, 1953-66, but this is limited to one page. Viktor Bokov was born in 1914 to a peasant family in Yazvitsa, a small village twelve miles east of Zagorsk (Moscow Province). There were six children, three sons and three daughters. As a youth, Bokov worked at many trades, one of them being that of a lathe operator . From 1934-38, he attended the Gorky Literary Institute, after which he worked on a newspaper. In 1942, he joined the Russian army and went to the front. After the war, he traveled extensively in Russia. While doing this, he collected chastushki (ditties ). In the course of his lifetime, he collected about 10,000 of them. In 1956, Bokov was published in one of the Russian literary magazines . In 1958, his first book of poems, Steep-Intoxication, came out. Bokov is a poet of the countryside, something like Esenin, but without the tragic undertones of the latter. But some of Bokov's poems have a strong meditative-philosophical quality which reflects his friendship and long association with Boris Pasternak. Bokov is rather conventional in comparison to Voznesensky, Rozhdestvensky, or Evtushenko. Most of his poems do not depart from traditional nineteenth-century poetry in their rhyme and meter. Bokov's introduction to his Selected Works (Moscow, Publishing House of Artistic Literature, 1970) provides further biographical information . This seven-page sketch is titled "About Myself." It is largely anecdotal. The author relates amusing episodes from his childhood and tells of his relationships with the people in the village where he lived. It is limited to Bokov's growing-up period and does not say much about his career as a poet. However, this autobiographical information is valuable in that it gives the reader a good concept of the influences which were to form the poet's later years. One of Bokov's influences was his grandmother, Agrafena, who lived to the age of 104. Agrafena told many fairy tales, mostly about people who lived in the deep forest near the village; these had a great deal to do with shaping the tone and character of Bokov's poetry . People with remarkable personalities lived in the deep forest. One of them was "Gregory the Bandit," who had his hideout there. 31 32Rocky Mountain Review Another was called the "Sleepy One." He was a village peasant who napped at weddings and large gatherings, and even managed to sleep while riding his horse. Going down a hill one day, he fell asleep. The horse, without the rider knowing it, broke into a gallop. The rider was carrying a scythe which fell off of the horse in such a way that it severed the horse's jugular vein. The horse died, and thus the "Sleepy One" lost his most valuable possession. Bokov's mother was not literate, but she was a very gifted woman. Her greatest talent was singing. She had a beautiful voice and an ear for music and became the leader of groups of women singing wherever they gathered. They would sing coming back from meadows, conducting a round dance, and at numerous weddings which took place in the village. Like the bards and storytellers of former Russian times, Bokov's mother could sing from an enormous memorized repertoire. Bokov stated that his mother was a poet even though she had not written a single line of poetry. Bokov's father was literate—that is, he completed two grades of the country school. He did not stay in school any longer because one day his father (Viktor's grandfather) came to the classroom and said, "Enough of this playing the fool, let's go out and plow!" Later, when Bokov's father saw that his son Viktor was writing and publishing , he wanted to write and publish. Accordingly, he produced a biography. However, no newspaper would publish it. Then he decided to try writing verses. But no newspaper would publish these either. He found that his writing talents did not measure up to those ofhis son. On...