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The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova

Mary Jane White
Published online: 29 Aug 2012.

To cite this article: Mary Jane White (1990) The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova, Translation Review, 32-33:1, 56-57, DOI:
10.1080/07374836.1990.10523489

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07374836.1990.10523489

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 extraordinary beauty. Franzen's erudite and vigorous inter-
pretations of these poetic treasures will not only expand their
influence in the Western World but enrich our cultural
landscape as well.
THE COMPLETE POEMS OF ANNA
AKHMATOVA
Judith Hemschemeyer, trans. The Complete Poems ofAnna
Ahhmatova. Edited and Introduced by Roberta Reeder.
Two Volumes. Somerville, Mass.: Zephyr Press, 1990.
By MaryJane White
T udith Hemschemeyer has done Anna Akhmatova and her
"fnglish-speaking readers a monumental service by making
this comprehensive and thoroughly trustworthy translation.
Akhmatova is now accessible in English.
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I can think of no recent volumes that come so welcome to
my personal library. Certainly I wish this translation had been
in the college and university libraries available to me as I
struggled to learn Russian.
In her translator's preface Hemschemeyer discloses her
simple reason for undertaking a formidable task:
"In 1973 I read a few ofAkhmatova's poems in translation
in the American Poetry Review and was so struck by one of them
that I decided to learn Russian in order to read them all."
To my mind, this is the truest translator's motivation. It is
a poet's motive, really, first and foremost-to read.
Translation has always seemed to me to be the carefully
written record of someone else's dedicated reading in a
foreign language. Here we are privileged to read Akhmatova
along behind Hemschemeyer, over her bent shoulder as it
were, while taking hardly any of the trouble for ourselves.
Of course, Hemschemeyer admits obliquely to the other
great motive to translate-reading translations unsatisfactory
to oneself:
"Three years later, when I could read the Russian and
compare the existing, 'selected Akhmatova' translations with
the originals, I became convinced that Akhmatova's poems
should be translated in the entirety, and by a woman poet, and
that I was that person."
This statement, so confidently made, seems an appropriate
echo of Akhmatova's own confidence standing in the prison
lines of Leningrad when she answered a whisper, "Can you
describe it?" unhesitatingly with her answer, "Yes, I can."
If Akhmatova reports then that "something that looked
like a smile" passed over what had once been the face of her
questioner, so too, something like a smile ofabsurd satisfaction
passed over the face greened with more than a little envy-
mine-as I read through these two spectacularly fat volumes.
The most outstanding virtue of Hemschemeyer's transla-
tions in my view is that they remain utterly literal and trot-like
in their accuracy. They are very nearly line-for-line translations,
56
so the pace ofthe translation keeps faithfully to the pace of the
original.
To the extent that the emotional tone of the speaking voice
of the original depends upon strict attention to the pacing of
literal content (and in myview it does, most heavily), such line-
for-line translations best convey those qualities that are essen-
tial always, and that are particularly essential to translating
Akhmatova. Much of the new ground Akhmatova breaks as a
woman writing about her relationships, and about her late
sorrows, depends absolutely upon perfectly timed mimicry of
her voice.
In large measure Hemschemeyer's translations are free of
added literariness: those excrescences of translator-taste, those
unwelcome demonstrations of the translator's self-perceived
ability to write finer poetry than her poet, those half-lines of
added matter clumsily introduced for the sake of some truly
unremarkable English rhyme. There is none of that irritating
erasure of detail and particular by heavy-handed application
of translator conclusion. Facts found in the Russian language
are simply testified to; conclusion rnercifu lIyleft to the English
reader.
There is none ofthe interpreter, none of the teacher, none
of the waterer-downer, the spoonful of sugar, none of the
improver in Hemschemeyer's English voice, which she lends
directly to Akhmatova. In the best sense, her translations are
selfless service. As a child learning to read may demand of her
mother, "What is this word? What docs it mean?" and the
mother answer, "That word is 'grass.' You have seen it; it is
green and grows on the ground," so, for the new student of
Russian, all the frustration of reading Akhmatova is as simply
lifted by glancing from the Russian to the English page.
Asjust such a frustrated student, I remember, for instance,
first encountering Akhmatova in the Markov-Sparks transla-
tions in Modern Russian Poetry, published by Babbs Merrill in
1966. This volume was the winner of the P.E.N. award, surely
a well-deserved accolade. Bu t for me, knowing so little Russian,
what a labor it was to read just these twelve lines:
I
MHe HH K qeMy O,AHqeCKHe para
H npenecrs 3JIerHQeCKHX 3aTeA:.
no MHe, B craxax BCe 6b1Tb ,AOJI>KHO HeKCTaTH,
He TaK, KaK y JIIO,AeA.
Korna 6 Bbi 3HaJIH,~.U3 xaxoro copa
Pacryr CTHXH, He aeaaa CTbI,Aa,
KaK >KeJITblA: O,AYBaHIIHK y saeopa,
KaK JIOnyxH H JIe6e,Aa.
Cep,AHTblH OKpHK, ,AerTS{ sanax CBe>KHA,
TaHHCTBeHHaSl nneceas aa CTeHe..•
H CTHX y>Ke 3ByllHT, 3a,AOpeH, He>KeH,
Ha pa,AOCTb BaM H MHe.
21 IIHSapll 1940
 which Markov-Sparks translates as: or:

I have no use for elegiac passion Waiting for him gives me more pleasure
Or for the grandeur of a classic ode. Than feasting with another.
In verse put things in some free, inapt fashion
And not by custom's code. I enjoy the rhyme and half-rhyme without worrying where it
If you but knew from what trivial nonsense came from.
Our poems grew...not knowing any shame. Entire poems like this one sound as if they might have been
Like yellow dandelions lining the fence, written yesterday, in English, by Hemschemeyer:
Like burdock, goosefoot...Thus, they came.
A mad shout, the fresh smell of tar, mysterious If everyone in the world
Mildew upon the walLAnd poetry Who has asked me for emotional help,
Already sounds in lines--tender, delirious, All the holy fools and the mutes,
Ajoy to you and me. The cripples and discarded wives,
The convicts and the suicides
Only the faintest clues buried in the translation of the Would send me a kopek apiecc-
second stanza sent me wading through the dictionary for the I would be richer than all of Egypt,
then necessary hours--the idea, immediately recognizable to As the late Kuzmin used to say.
me as poet, that poetry comes from the least of nothing, and But they didn't send me kopeks,
the lovely particulars of Akhmatova's list: yellow dandelion, Instead, they shared their strength with me.
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burdock, goosefoot. And I became the strongest one in the world,

This is how Hemschemeyer translates the same poem: So that even this is not difficult for me.

I don't need martial hosts arrayed in odes while remaining just as obviously written by Akhmatova thirty
And the charm of ornamental elegies. years ago.
For me, everything in poetry should be out of place, Hemscherneyer's translations are generously supported by
Not what people think it is. photographs that turn up here and there throughout, and by
If only you knew from what rubbish introductions and essays that convey biographical in formation
Poetry grows, knowing no shame. and information about how and with whose help the transla-
Like a yellow dandelion by the fence, tions were made. The reader not well-acquainted with
Like burdock and goosefoot. Akhmatova who is momentarily stumped by references to
An angry cry, fresh smell of tar, places and persons, or hard passages, is immediately gratified
Mysterious mold on the wall ... by flipping to the extensive notes. So is the bettcr-acquain ted
And suddenly a line rings out, lively, tender, reader who may be curious about variant texts or the original
To my delight and yours. arrangements of Akhmatova's several collections.

Well, now we hea., Akhmatova's voice, the intimacy and

irritation that open a space in the world of etiquette, some
smaller setting where Akhmatova can say her piece without A FORCEWHICH RAISES VAMPIRES:
seeming pompous. Even the intriguing Markov-Sparks second LYNN HOGGARD'S TRANSlATION
stanza is better. In the original Russian it is not ou., poems; it
is not even dandelions, it really is only one; the dandelion is
OF VALERY'S "EBAUCHE D'UN
simply by the fence, Akhmatova does not see dandelions lining SERPENT"
the fence, that is not her focus; nor is she originally responsible
for the clumsy verbal gesture, "Thus, they came." Lynn Hoggard, trans. Ebauche d'un serpent, by Paul Valery. Austin,
TX, Thorpe Springs Press, 1987.
When I read these translations, I read them with a double
confidence. They are literal and faithful; they were written by
an American poet.
By Michael Adams
I can re-read around at leisure in the English for bits I
PaUl Valery's "Ebauche d'un serpent," which Yvor Winters
especially like:
calls "the greatest poem which I have ever read," is a poem
about the nature and dilemma of consciousness, the ambiva-
Was this why I kissed you?
lence of being trapped between our revelry in the Ilcsh and
Was this why I tormented myself, loving?
our longing for the spiri t-a sta te a th in ki ng person m igh t call
To remember you now, calmly and wearily,
evil, created by the Godhead Nothingncss because he was
With loathing?
bored with his own perfection. Told by a disabused and

57