A Lecture / Лекция

Gerry Smith, Lev Loseff, Barry Scherr, The Russian Department, Dartmouth College, Summer 2008

photograph by Catherine Ciepiela

A Lecture*

Karenina is not to blame.

It’s James Watt and his kettle game;

causality; the pointsman; Count Tolstoi;

the patriarchal order—that’s the boy.

That old bloke speaking French but peasant-garbed?

Her husband? Or that oyster at the English Club?

The unseeing locomotive? Poor Frou-Frou?

Neurosis, then? It’s none of the above.

A guardsman’s gob was all it took;

little Serezha’s mater, you forsook

the sacred dues that motherhood must pay.

Your silk turned scarlet, and that’s why.

Old I’ll Repay willed, all the same,

to drive that overdriven dame

not up to heaven, but down to hell.

(Watt’s pot’s to blame, of course, as well.)

 * From Russian 36: ‘Tolstoi and the Problem of Death’

(Translation © G.S. Smith)

Лекция*

Каренина не виновата!

Виновен чайник Джеймса Ватта,

причинность, стрелочник, Толстой,

патриархальный строй.

Франкоязычный дед в тулупе?

Муж? Устрица в Английском клубе?

Незрячий паровоз? Фру-Фру?

Невроз? Нет, вру.

Ведь ради офицерской рожи

сама забыла мать Сережи

священный материнский долг,

и обагрился шелк.

На то, знать, воля Азвоздама,

что перееханная дама

отправилась не в рай, но в ад.

(Но чайник тоже виноват.)

* Из курса Russian 36: ‛Tolstoi and the Problem of Death’.

Lev Loseff, Polina Barskova, Barry Scherr, The Russian Department, Dartmouth College, Summer 2008

photograph by Catherine Ciepiela