Maria Stepanova, one of Russia's greatest living poets, comes to America
poetryfoundation.org
poetryfoundation.org
Утреннее солнце восходит утром –
Столько соблазнительных вероятий!
Что же ты, девка, ходишь по квартире,
Тапками стуча, пятки печатая?
Что тебе, голубка моя лебёдка?
Поворотись-ка, сними последнее,
В золотое зеркало полюбуйся,
Это и то вперёд выдвигая.
И чу! Я слышу глухое биенье.
Тепло бокам и шея удлинилась.
Ноги не радуют, но белым перьям
Многие подруги позавидуют.
Достаточно сделать движенье крылом –
В животе ухает; паркет остался
Далеко внизу; родные, простите,
Пишите мне до востребования.
– Бессмертная, навеки бессмертна я,
Стиксу не быть для меня преградою!
What to Submit On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
And the third question is, how is she on the front page? Are there that many readers of Hacker News who are interested in contemporary Russian poetry?
It's completely up to the authorities to define great writers?
I'll add to your point that 'stars and badges' (from a source I trust) on something I don't like can be a signal that there is something more there, outside my understanding, and that's often the most fruitful thing to read.
She is the founder of Colta, the only independent crowd-funded source of information in Russia. The high-traffic online publication has been called a Russian Huffington Post in format and style, and has also been compared to The New York Review of Books for the scope and depth of its long essays.
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/mad-russia-hurt-me-into-...
The website is also mentioned in the OP article.
How about Russian branch of Wikipedia?
Hm, I had to read the lines three times, slowly, to reconstruct the image the author tried to convey. And this was the first layer. Apparently there is another one inside, but I presume this second layer resembles a Rorschach test: everybody is welcome to see what ever she/he wants to see. That's quite an achievement for those who care about pumping up readers' self-esteem. Especially if the readers see poetry as gymnastics for brain.
This is ascribing meaning to something that most likely doesn't have the ascribed meaning.
Personally I think of art as programming using symbols that have been previously uploaded into the audience. Incidentally, this is why sometimes it is easy for art to cross language and culture boundaries, and sometimes very hard: it just depends on whether the symbols are something universal for all humanity or specific to a particular culture.
In Russia in particular there is a common view that poetry should: - rhyme - have a flowing rhythm - be very literal/descriptive
and there is certainly a lot of good poetry like that. But sometimes artists break rules for fun. Stepanova to Pushkin is what Aphex Twin is to Mozart. Just have some fun with it and don't worry if it fits into preconceived notions of what is good poetry.
In the spirit of fun: have you noticed that there are two sets of sentence breaks in the poem, one on the line breaks and one at the punctuation? This actually changes word association and the imagery. Think this was an accident?
So yes, this style actually could be a coincidence: anything from subconsciously or consciously emulating a style to just stumbling into this form to being a bad poet to having too much fun with punctuation to...
Also, in this particular case there are literally only two sentences that don't break at punctuation point, and I do think this is not entirely intentional. Call this a feeling :)
> In Russia in particular there is a common view that poetry should: - rhyme - have a flowing rhythm - be very literal/descriptive
This is definitely true. Free verse is a relatively rare beast. Here's an example from Alexander Blok [1]. And look, it also has break at both punctuation and in the middle of a sentence hmmmm ;)
A poet once said, 'The whole universe is in a glass of wine.' We will probably never know in what sense he meant it, for poets do not write to be understood.
A single sentence like that is rarely good poetry, and it doesn't make me feel all that much. But it wouldn't be any more interesting rewritten as "All of the laws of physics are expressed in a glass of wine just as much as in the rest of the universe", if that's what was "meant". It's just vapid.
But if it stuck in Feynman's mind, and yours, it means the poet was on to something. That's the important part. The poet said a thing and it connected, just as Feynman's nude drawings connected with him. They don't need to "mean" anything more than exactly what they are.
Or, maybe, not "to hide"? If it is an attempt to hide, then it would be a failed attempt. Maybe she had some other goals in her mind when wrote this?
Yeah, just checked them. Much better.
[1] https://old.dmitriid.com/projects/literary.html See "Абстрактизация", or even "В огОроде" (or anything else :)) )
Я поэт, зовусь я Цветик
От меня вам балалайка
Opened the article, wasn't disappointed. My guess was 100% correct.
I also laughed at mention of "independent TV channel Dozhd". Independent, really? It's funded by British government to disseminate anti-Russian propaganda and create a dissent among population of Russia.
I've never heard about Maria, but now I'm pretty sure that's her only literary achievement is critics of Russia present and past. It's the only thing that interests the West now and sells well on the West.
–Vladimir Nabokov. But of course he's being his usual contrarian self here; make of it what you will.
[1] Examples of essay topics: http://velikayakultura.ru/temy-shkolnyh-sochineniy/temyi-f-m...
(citating from my answer here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26910442)
I think this one is especially highly overrated. When you read the poem of someone you willingly or unwillingly trying to read his mind and vision of the world. When I read this one I am simply disgusted. I have the feeling that he is just cold and cynical to the level that I can't stand it! And the general feeling of fakeness in his writings is to the level of realising that this human being simply doesn't understand a few concepts about this life. The same feeling you have when you are listening to some primitive music and you feel that author simply 'doesn't get it' in the first place.
I also can't help but notice some cheap/dirty tricks in his poetry when rhythm doesn't work. Even when I write some 'poetry' as a joke to entertain my friends even I manage to avoid such cheap tricks and then I think that surely some great poet must be able to do it too? Isn't it? I mean small kids when they are missing words to express their thoughts use those tricks to make some rhythm to work. In the poem 'Evgeny Onegin' I've counted a few of those and then I had to stop counting in order to somehow finish the poem.
Surely like any author he has something in his poems but I do have a feeling that this author is highly overrated.
There're many books that become much better or much worse after translation.
As of me: I've heard several times that Pushkin is overrated, but I always liked his poems and prose. I like Chekhov. I somewhat like Tolstoy. Never understood Dostoyevsky, but I think I've tried to read his books too early, maybe it's time to read them again.
But even if you were using exclusively it would mean you thought that everyone after Pushkin was highly overrated. Are the people who were averagely rated to be rated poorly then? It seems unlikely to me that so much of a vast nation's literature, for so long, can be so overrated.
vastness implies lots of writers and resources.
As you can see I was using the phrase of the parent comment which starts with 'A fairly substantial portion of the big names'... So I was referring to this "fairly substantial portion" while eexpressing my opinion that they are highly overrated.
>so what you said strongly implies that you also think Pushkin is highly overrated?
Yes. I think this one is especially highly overrated. When you read the poem of someone you willingly or unwillingly trying to read his mind and vision of the world. When I read this one I am simply disgusted. I have the feeling that he is just cold and cynical to the level that I can't stand it! And the general feeling of fakeness in his writings is to the level of realising that this human being simply doesn't understand a few concepts about this life. The same feeling you have when you are listening to some primitive music and you feel that author simply 'doesn't get it' in the first place.
I also can't help but notice some cheap/dirty tricks in his poetry when rhythm doesn't work. Even when I write some 'poetry' as a joke to entertain my friends even I manage to avoid such cheap tricks and then I think that surely some great poet must be able to do it too? Isn't it? I mean small kids when they are missing words to express their thoughts use those tricks to make some rhythm to work. In the poem 'Evgeny Onegin' I've counted a few of those and then I had to stop counting in order to somehow finish the poem.
Surely like any author he has something in his poems but I do have a feeling that this author is highly overrated.
>It seems unlikely to me that so much of a vast nation's literature, for so long, can be so overrated.
Sure, it seemed unlikely for me too in the beginning. But the more you read and explore the more likely it becomes. Especially when you explore nation's history. You discover a lot of fake there and then you realise that each and every Russian author has to deal with those lies somehow. And if such author wish to preserve some level of sincerely in this writings he has has very painful dilemma. Unresolvable for most of them if you ask me as long as they keep calling themselves 'Russians'. Because if you dig into the history enough you discover that the very term , well , has some ambiguity in it to say the least. One basic thing to notice: How 'Russians' end up being in Moscow while 'Rus' was known to be in Kiev? Thus they are culturally as related to the 'Rus' as 'Saw (some one)' related to 'Saw (as a tool)'. Thus I would also say that the whole 'culture' in my opinion is highly overrated because it is based on primitive fakes, lies, violence and very poor moral standards. Moral standards represent certain understanding of life and Rissian moral standards are not well developed to this very day because they lie and lie and lie. If you ask me 'why?' I would suggest that the enormous efforts to create "much of a vast nation's literature, for so long" were mostly wasted so far because most of the authors simply failed to understand or deliver certain basic concepts and I can't point out even one modern author that does! I wish that someone would show me this one because I would be happy to be wrong and surprised but I doubt it.
How do you know it's "correct"? Another hypothesis that fits is that you don't change your opinion when you get more information, you stick with your first instinct. Do others ever disagree with your assessments? What makes you right and them wrong?
>What makes you right and them wrong?
Nothing makes me right. I am just satisfied with the results of this experimental technique so far .
I don't know if Maria is a good poet. I'm not a big fan of poetry. Opened a couple of her old poems (on stihi.ru) and wasn't impressed.
But since almost half of the article is devoted to how it is important to be in opposition to the current Russian government and how it's a good thing to vilify Russian past (especially Soviet past), I tend to assume that she's an ordinary poet (maybe not bad but definitely not exceptional like the article claims) that is just being used as an ideological weapon against Russia.
When Boris Pasternak, under fire from Soviet authorities, turned down a Nobel Prize. - https://lithub.com/when-boris-pasternak-under-fire-from-sovi...
Maybe other people liked it, even if you didn't?
Never saw anyone who liked it. Everybody I asked about Doctor Zhivago, said it is graphomania (I don't know if it is customary to call bad books by this name in English, but we usually use this word).
Great word! And as someone who knows a bit about English literature, I've never heard it before.
It's a common trope about widely respected, intellectual works, 'nobody really likes them'. (The following is not about you; I don't know you at all, of course:) Frankly, I think people can find them difficult, naturally, and an anti-intellectual response is an easy cover story that they know will be socially accepted. Lots of people like these works, including Dr Zhivago and Maria Stepanova. As I've grown older I've learned that if I don't like it then usually there's something I'm missing, which an opportunity for me to learn. As I've grown more sophisticated, I've learned why they are so admired - I just lacked the background to grasp it before. Certainly, reading these works in school was often impractical. Now, I'm sorry I don't have the time to read them all.
But Mikhail Sholokov was in good odor with the Soviet government, and he got the prize for literature in 1965.
Just like propaganda uses lies mixed up with truths to be less evident.
But if you're a Russian poet/writer and you write about how you hate current and past Russian government, how it "oppresses" everyone around, you have a non-zero chance to receive awards and grants from western funds. Your works would be also promoted worldwide for free. I guess it is the main source of motivation for such authors.
And it's not just rhyme or rhythm that I am talking about, Stepanova herself is criticised for following the traditions of Russian poetry. Dulce et Decorum est by Wilfred Owen has a stumbling rhythm, the lines desperately trying to catch up to the expected rhyme. And yet it's a pleasure to read, while Stepanova's poetry is a chore.
The second part is often forgotten nowadays.
That doesn't mean that people shouldn't hack out new territory, it's just that very little of it is of lasting value.
When I go to art museums and see an abstract piece that looks like garbage and I can't pull any meaning out of it, I try to see if there's something technical behind it (technique or material used, usually) that would explain its significance.
I didn't get Andy Warhol's soup cans for the longest time til I realized that was how screen printing became popularized.