My spirit is old; and some black lot awaits me On my long road. Some dream accurst, inveterate, suffocates me Still with its load. So young – yet hosts of dreadful thoughts appal me, Sick and opprest. Come! and from shadowy phantoms disenthral me, Friend.
"My Spirit is Old" (1899); translation from Oliver EltonVerse from Pushkin and Others (London: E. Arnold, 1935) p. 175.
When rowan leaves are dank and rusting And rowan berries red as blood, When in my palm the hangman's thrusting The final nail with bony thud, When, over the foul flooding river, Upon the wet grey height, I toss Before my land's grim looks, and shiver As I swing here upon the cross, Then, through the blood and weeping, stretches My dying sight to space remote; I see upon the river’s reaches Christ sailing to me in a boat.
"Autumn Love" (1907); translation from C. M. Bowra (ed.)A Book of Russian Verse (London: Macmillan, 1943) p. 99.
O, my Russia! O, wife! The long road is clear to us to the point of pain. Our road – like a Tatar arrow of ancient will has pierced our breast.
"On Kulikovo Field" (1908); translation from Sarah PrattNikolai Zabolotsky (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2000) p. 53.
What message, years of conflagration, have you: madness or hope? On thin cheeks strained by war and liberation bloody reflections still remain.
"Those Born in Years of Stagnation" (1914); translation from Jon Stallworthy and Peter France (trans.)The Twelve, and Other Poems (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970) p. 139.
Grip your gun like a man, brother! Let's have a crack at Holy Russia, Mother Russia with her big, fat arse! Freedom, freedom! Down with the cross!
The Twelve (1918); translation from Jon Stallworthy and Peter France (trans.)The Twelve, and Other Poems (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970) p. 146.
Hell and damnation, life is such fun with a ragged greatcoat and a Jerry gun!
The Twelve (1918); translation from Jon Stallworthy and Peter France (trans.)The Twelve, and Other Poems (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970) p. 147.
So they march with sovereign tread… Behind them limps the hungry dog, and wrapped in wild snow at their head carrying a blood-red flag soft-footed where the blizzard swirls, invulnerable where bullets crossed – crowned with a crown of snowflake pearls, a flowery diadem of frost, ahead of them goes Jesus Christ.
The Twelve (1918); translation from Jon Stallworthy and Peter France (trans.)The Twelve, and Other Poems (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970) p. 160.
Blok was probably the greatest Russian poet sincePushkin; although internationally less well known thanRilke andValéry, he is of their stature and importance. He revolutionized Russian versification by making use of a purely accentual technique. He knew, as so few now know, that only the poetry of suffering – whether it is a poetry of joy or not – can be great. His own poetry, for which he burnt himself out, demonstrates this.
