The Voice Over

The author provided significant input on the composition and structure of this volume. Poetry translators chose individual poems from a list compiled by the editor or made their own selections from suggested collections and cycles. Both the editor and the author reviewed drafts of poetry translations, most of which went through several rounds of revisions. The editor read drafts of essay translations, suggested revisions, and closely collaborated with translators throughout the revision process. Near-final versions of essay translations were then reviewed by the author.

Unless stated otherwise, notes to poems and essays were added by the editor, including bibliographic citations for passages quoted in essays; these citations are not part of the original Russian text.

NOTE ON POETRY TRANSLATIONS

Translators of Stepanova’s poetry face many challenges, some of which are common for translations of Russian experimental poetry into English in general. Metric organization, rhythmic expressiveness, and rhyme remain key elements of poetic form in much of contemporary Russian poetry, particularly in Stepanova’s poetry. Some of these prosodic patterns are not necessarily associated with contemporary poetic idioms for an Anglophone reader, yet their complete obliteration in translation would change the essence of many poems. Stepanova’s complex syntax, lexical and morphological inventions, and disjointed diction complement prosodic challenges, as does the high degree of allusiveness of her works.

Among the short poems included in parts I and II, only a small number are not rhymed in the original: all the poems from Happiness, the first part of “July 3rd, 2004” from Physiology and Private History, poems from the second cycle in Kireevsky, and the first three poems from the Four Operas cycle (the second of them is partially rhymed, however). Whether rhymed or not, the vast majority of poems are metric (syllabotonic or accentual), though often consisting of polymetric segments; only a few clearly gravitate toward free verse, such as the last two poems from Happiness and the third poem in Four Operas. In part III, Spolia and War of the Beasts and the Animals combine free verse and polymetric sections, both rhymed and unrhymed.

One aspect of prosody that most translators tried to retain was the rhythmic contour of poems. In some cases, the meter of the original was reproduced with a great degree of precision; in others it was relaxed or slightly modified. Rhymes were preserved with substantial accuracy in some translations, but in the majority of them rhyming is less systematic to allow for greater semantic proximity to the original and to avoid an impression of forced rhymes. Among translations of metric rhymed poems, prosodic qualities of the original are most closely conveyed in “The Pilot,” the second part of “July 3rd, 2004,” in poems from The Lyric, the Voice and from the cycle Underground Pathephone in Kireevsky.

Eugene Ostashevsky’s translations from the first cycle of Kireevsky constitute an exception to this general approach of rhythmic faithfulness; thus, a note addressing his choices as translator opens the cycle. Sasha Dugdale’s note to her translation of War of the Beasts and the Animals explains in particular how she handled the high degree of allusiveness of this text; this note could apply equally well to her translation of Spolia.

CREDITS AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Several translations included in this volume have been previously published. Among them are three translations by Sibelan Forrester. The poem “The morning sun arises in the morning” originally appeared in Contemporary Russian Poetry: An Anthology, edited by E. Bunimovich and J. Kates (Dalkey Archive Press, 2008); that translation was revised for publication in this volume. The poem “As Danaë, prone in the incarce-chamber” was included in an anthology, Twenty-first Century Russian Poetry, edited by Larissa Shmailo, which appeared in issue 17 (2013) of an online magazine Big Bridge (https://bigbridge.org/BB17/toc.html). The essay “Conversations in the Realm of the Dead” was first published in The Massachusetts Review, vol. LVI, no. 3 (2015); that translation also appears in this volume in a revised version.