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Photo © N. Sharymova

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Exhausted by rage and/or boredom,

I laid myself down in the sun,

with the back of my head supported

on my Velemir—thick, weighty tome.

Little insects started assailing,

it was hot, it was bolkonskyoid,

then a grasshopper left on my eyelid

a letter, written in gold. 

The pull from one text to the other,

the urge that they have to blend,

sends a charge through my viscous-dough matter,

so it burgeons and starts to ferment.

(Translation © 2016 G.S. Smith)

[From Тайный советник (Privy Councillor), 1987]

The poem plays with one of the most famous short poems in Russian, ‘Kuznechik’ (‘The Grasshopper’), by Velemir Khlebnikov (1885-1922), written in 1908 or 1909 and published in 1912; bristling with neologisms and onomatopeic effects, it exists in several versions, and has been extensively analysed. A reading of it by Khlebnikov’s friend Roman Jakobson may be heard at http://avantgarde.narod.ru/voices/rja_kuzn.mp3

[«Кузнечик»/Крылышкуя золотописьмом/Тончайших жил,/Кузнечик в кузов пуза/уложил/Прибрежных много трав и вер./«Пинь, пинь, пинь!» — тарарахнул зинзивер./О, лебедиво!/О, озари! A very approximate translation (ignoring rhyme) would be: ‘The Grasshopper. Winglinging the goldwriting/of its most delicate veins/A grasshopper’s laid away in its paunch-hopper/Many shoreline grasses and faiths./‘Peen! peen! peen! rat-tat-tatted a great tit./O, swanaculous!/O, illumine!’]

Professor Robin Milner-Gulland has pointed out (private communication, for which I am most indebted) that a more disguised, but perhaps equally important text lying behind Loseff’s poem is Nikolai Zabolotsky’s ‘Vsё, chto bylo v dushe’ (1936), which begins: ‘Everything I had in my heart, seemed again to be lost,/I lay in the grass, tormented by sadness and boredom,/and the beautiful body of a flower stood over me,/and a grasshopper, like a little watchman, stood before.’ [‘Всё, что было в душе, всё как будто опять потерялось,/И лежал я в траве, и печалью и скукой томим,/И прекрасное тело цветка надо мной поднималось,/И кузнечик, как маленький сторож, стоял перед ним.’]

‘bolkonskyoid’ refers to the scene in War and Peace where Andrei Bolkonsky lies delirious on the field of Austerlitz after the battle.

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Утомленный то скукой, то злостью,

я на солнце улегся пластом,

упираясь затылочной костью 

в Велемира увесистый том.

Совершали букашки набеги,

было жарко и болконскиймо,

и тогда мне кузнечик на веки

положил золотое письмо.

Притяжение текста и текста,

их стремление слиться в одно

гонит токи сквозь вязкое тесто,

и вспухает, и бродит оно.