Today The Guardian published my translation, which condenses the original’s fifth and sixth stanzas into one, ending the poem with the quietly devastating line, “it isn’t people but whole worlds that perish.” The publication functions as an epitaph, and I felt that this line — solemn and cosmic — struck the right concluding note.
But the Russian poem does go on, rising to a half-stifled cry of agony, which Jennifer [Croft] captured, better than I ever could, in her translation of the final stanza. Below is our joint translation.
Today The Guardian published my translation, which condenses the original’s fifth and sixth stanzas into one, ending the poem with the quietly devastating line, “it isn’t people but whole worlds that perish.” The publication functions as an epitaph, and I felt that this line — solemn and cosmic — struck the right concluding note.
ReplyDeleteBut the Russian poem does go on, rising to a half-stifled cry of agony, which Jennifer [Croft] captured, better than I ever could, in her translation of the final stanza. Below is our joint translation.
From:
Yevgeny Yevtushenko (1932-2017) by Boris Dralyuk