Egzotyczne ptaki i rośliny

Саме так виглядає обкладинка "польської" збірки "Екзотичні птахи і рослини" (Biuro Literackie, 2007) Юрія Андруховича. Усі вірші, що ввійшли у збірку, переклав польський поет і есеїст Яцек Подсядло.

Пьотр Вайль (1949-2009)

Учора ввечері в одній із празьких лікарень на шістдесят першому році життя помер Пьотр Вайль, чудовий російський письменник і журналіст, головний редактор Російської служби "Радіо Свобода" у Празі. Якщо мене не зраджує пам'ять, то два роки тому Вайль приїжджав на Міжнарожний літературний фестиваль у Львів. Відтак його перекладний текст мав би бути вміщений у тогорічному Альманасі. Найбільше враження і вплив на мене мали дві його книги: "Стихи про меня" і "Гений места". Остання залишається для мене ледь чи не ідеальною книжкою, написаною в жанрі "подорожувальна література" (travel literature).

Secondhand bookshop nearby Paris

It's a photography of secondhand bookstore taken by Alexandre Duret-Lutz. In a comment to the photography, he writes: "La caverne aux livres is a secondhand bookshop in Auvers-sur-Oise (30km to the North of Paris). The entrance of the bookshop is an ancient railway hangar, but from there you'll quickly find yourself in an old postal train whose cars have been reconverted into giant bookshelves." Click on the picture if you want it to be enlarged.

Yuri Andrukhovych | "(Dungeons)"

Linden-trees stand golden and soundless in their

time of blossoming.

"There were few dungeons here", - Neborak

said. Oh, the echo of former cellars

with the names that girls or wineries have,

"Dorotka", "Under the Angel", and the most ferocious one -

"Tatarnia" where eyes died first,

and light hid under an armpit,

into tongueless mouths!

This silence doesn't matter any more. This isn't even a

memorial. And this isn't a river that had been driven into pipes.

Though every one of us could have said:

"Linden-trees in their time of blossoming - withering stars.

Trams overcrowded with girls."

Translated from Ukrainian by Ostap Kin

*

Another poem from Yuri Andrukhovych's cycle "Notes of Traveller in July" which appeared in his collections of poems Exotic Birds and Plants (Ivano-Frankivsk, 1997).

*

Yuri Andrukhovych is Ukrainian poet, writer, essayist and translator. He lives in Ivano-Frankivsk.

Valzhyna Mort's workplace

My colleague Lev Hrytsyuk inspired me to create this post. He created two different posts with two interesting pictures: Beckett’s bookshelves and the workplace of Schemas Heaney , Nobel Prize laureate. Recently I’ve been surfing through the Internet, and I accidentally found a picture of Valzhyna Mort’s workplace. It’s fairly exciting to see the workplace of litterateur whom you translate.

Yuri Andrukhovych | "(Rib)"

I'd donate my rib

to the anatomy room.

The enormous hearts of butchers and paramours are there,

the flabby and puffed up lungs of smokers,

trumpeners and glass-blowers,

a forlorn drunkard's guts,

the tatooed badge of a hero (right above the nipple)

and the hands of the last executioner

after a twelth conviction...

Not a word mentioned about other products.

I'd donate my rib.

Perhaps something would come out of it -

a certain fish,

or a woman,

or a branch

of a forgotten tree

a ginkgo.

Translated from Ukrainian by Ostap Kin

*

The poem (Rib) is part of Yuri Andrukhovych's cycle "The Notes of Traveler in July", which is included into his collection of poems Exotic Birds and Plants (Ivano-Frankivsk, 1997).

*

I have translated all seven poems which form this cycle. Does anyone know a literary magazine which would be interested in translated Ukrainian poetry and where it is possible to publish all seven poems?

*

Yuri Andrukhovych is a poet, writer, essayist and translator. His latest book in English is The Moscoviad (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2008), translated from Ukrainian by Vitaly Chernetsky.

Viktor Neborak reads at Penn State University

Viktor Neborak reads a poem out of his bilingual collections of poems The Flying Head and Other Poems which was published four years ago in Lviv, Ukraine by Sribne Slovo Publishing House. The poems were translated by Michael M. Naydan.