Black as the pupil...
- Black as the pupil...
Black as the pupil of an eye, sucking at lightlike the pupil of an eye, I love you, far-sighted night.
Give me the voice to sing of you, godmother of every hymn,you in whose hand lie the bridles of the four winds.
Calling on you, extolling you, I am no more thana shell where the sea-swell goes on roaring.
Night! I have looked long enough into human eyes.Now, emblaze me, make ash of me, black-sun-night!
1916 [End Page 143]
Marina Tsvetaeva (1892–1941) was born in Moscow, although her family’s years abroad allowed her to learn Italian, French, and German. Among her translations are Russian versions of Goethe and Rilke, and French versions of Pushkin. Her affairs with the poet Sofia Parnok and with Konstantin Rodzevich inspired her two great cycles of love poems, “Poem of the Mountain” and “Poem of the End.” In addition to poetry, she wrote diaries, literary criticism, and verse dramas. Judged to be one of the most important writers of the era, she produced several celebrated collections, including Craft (1923) and After Russia (1928), as well as “The Ratcatcher” (1925), a satirical version of the Pied Piper legend in which Bolshevik rats gradually take on features of the German burghers they have ousted. After being evacuated from wartime Moscow, Tsvetaeva hanged herself. No one attended her funeral.
Robert Chandler is the author of Brief Lives: Alexander Pushkin (Hesperus Press, 2009). His translations of Vasily Grossman and co-translations of Andrey Platonov were published by NYRB classics. He has edited anthologies of Russian short stories and Russian magic tales for Penguin Classics. Together with Boris Dralyuk and Irina Mashinski, he has recently completed an Anthology of Russian Poetry from Pushkin to Brodsky (Penguin Classics, 2014). His translation of stories by Teffi will be published by Pushkin Press in summer 2014 in a collection entitled Subtly Worded.
