And tell me, please, what pattern
inspired this scene?
It seems to me you are
a protean creature,
whose markings mask a feature
of face, or stone, or star.
Who was the jeweler,
brow uncontracted,
who from our world extracted
your miniature —
a world where madness brings
us low, and lower,
where we are things, while you are
the thought of things?
Why were these lovely shapes
and colors given
for your one day of life in
this land of lakes?
– a land whose dappled mir-
rors have one merit:
reflecting space, they store it.
Such brief existence tore
away your chance
to be captured, delivered,
within cupped hands to quiver —
the hunter’s eye entrance.
You shun every response —
but not from shyness
or wickedness or slyness,
and not because
you’re dead. Dead or alive,
to God’s least creature
is given voice for speech, or
for song – a sign
that it has found a way
to bind together,
and stretch life’s limits, whether
an hour or day.
But you lack even this:
the means to utter
a word. Yet, probe the matter;
it’s better thus.
You’re not in heaven’s debt,
on heaven’s ledger.
It’s not a curse, I pledge you,
that your small weight
and span rob you of tongue.
Sound’s burden, too, is grievous.
And you’re more speechless,
less fleshed, than time.
Living too brief an hour
for fear or trembling,
you spin, motelike, ascending
above this bed of flowers,
beyond the prison space
where past and future
combine to break, or batter,
our lives, and thus
when your path leads you far
to open meadows,
your pulsing wings bring shadows
and shapes to air.
So, too, the sliding pen
which inks a surface
has no sense of the purpose
of any line
or that the whole will end
as an amalgam
of heresy and wisdom;
it therefore trusts the hand
whose silent speech incites
fingers to throbbing —
whose spasm reaps no pollen,
but eases hearts.
Such beauty, set beside
so brief a season,
suggests to our stunned reason
this bleak surmise:
the world was made to hold
no end or telos,
and if – as some would tell us —
there is a goal,
it’s not ourselves.
No butterfly collector
can trap light or detect where
the darkness dwells.
Should I bid you farewell
as to a day that’s over?
Men’s memories may wither,
grow thin, and fall
like hair. The trouble is,
behind their backs are:
not double beds for lovers,
hard sleep, the past,
or days in shrinking files
backstretched – but, rather,
huge clouds, circling together,
of butterflies.
You’re better than No-thing.
That is, you’re nearer,
more reachable, and clearer.
Yet you’re akin
to nothingness —
like it, you’re wholly empty.
And if, in your life’s venture,
No-thing takes flesh,
that flesh will die.
Yet while you live you offer
a frail and shifting buffer,
dividing it from me.
Глава 10. Томас Венцлова, «In Memory of a Poet: Variation on a Theme»[202] (перевод Джорджа Л. Клайна)
В Петербурге мы сойдемся снова.
Did you regain this promised place, revisit
This skeleton, this bare map, of a city?
The Admiralty spire sinks through the blizzard[204];
The geometric paint on level squares
Turns pale.
Electric power is disconnected,
A shade emerges from its icy spectrum;
Behind Izmailov Boulevard a specter
Of rusty locomotives looms and stares
This streetcar is the same, this threadbare topcoat…
A scrap of paper spins above the asphalt,
The nineteenth century’s enormous icefloe
Blocks off the station’s stream.
The roaring sky
Slams shut. The decades fade and lose their features,
The clouded cities blow past like bad weather;
There is a kind of gift in echoed gestures[205],
But no man’s ever born a second time.
He draws back to the February morning
Which grips this slow and sluggish northern Rome, and
Moves off to test a different horizon,
Whose rhythms reproduce the beat of snow.
He’s called to wolf-caves where the tense walls glisten,
To mental hospitals, to dirt, to prison,
To Petersburg’s bleak, black familiar vision,
At which his words were pointed long ago.
There’s no rebirth of harmony or measure.
But time has kindled, in the world’s wide brazier,
A fire of ticking logs; still its own treasure[206]
Lies lower, in a timeless hearth, which warms
And focuses our fate with clean-edged lenses
That bring to light a web of happy chances
And sometimes make our doings strong events, as
Finite extensions of eternal forms[207].
Reality – not mirrored, interrupted —
An island that has rivered, foamed, erupted,
To take the place of Paradise Disrupted[208],
And batter through the shell of living speech.
Against a flood of clouds above the ark’s bow
White doves describe a giant circle, doubtful
Of their own power to pick out, or to vouch for,
Mount Ararat among its neighbor peeks.
Cast off from shore! Set sail! The hour’s upon us.
Stones split; the lie runs out. We have among us
But one remaining witness: art alone is
A light to break our midnight winterdrift[209].
Black ice is overwhelmed by blessed grasses,
Dark rivers rub the sea with their wet noses,
A meaningless, unweighted, lost word splashes —
A word almost as meaningless as death.
Глава 11. Стихи на случай. Джордж Клайн, Иосиф Бродский
И Иосифу Бродскому, и Джорджу Клайну нравилось отмечать дни рождения. Вот письмо, отправленное 23 апреля 1970 года по некоему списку рассылки в связи с днем рождения (24 мая) Бродского, жившего тогда в Ленинграде:
Друзьям и доброжелателям Иосифа Бродского:
24 мая 1970 года Джозеф (Иосиф) отпразднует свое тридцатилетие. Я знаю, что весточки от зарубежных друзей и поклонников будут для него очень много значить.
Осмелюсь подать вам идею: отправьте ему поздравление телеграммой, открыткой или письмом (учитывая, что из Европы авиапочта доходит за две недели, а из США – за три недели) по нижеуказанному адресу:
Mr. Joseph Brodsky
24 Liteiny Prospekt, Apt. 28
Leningrad D-28
USSR
CCCP
Ленинград Д-28
Литейный проспект, д. 24, кв. 28
Бродскому И. A.
Это напоминание я отправляю только дюжине или полутора десяткам адресатов; призываю всех вас не разглашать этот адрес.
С совершенным почтением, Джордж Л. Клайн
Год спустя (и за год до отъезда Бродского в эмиграцию), 23 мая 1971 года, Клайн отправил из Ардмора, штат Пенсильвания, телеграмму:
КОГДА ВАМ БЫЛ ГОД, Я БЫЛ В ДВАДЦАТЬ РАЗ СТАРШЕ ВАС, НО ТЕПЕРЬ, КОГДА ВАМ 31, ВСЕГО В 1,6 РАЗА. Я ЯВНО СТАНОВЛЮСЬ МЛАДШЕ МЕЖ ТЕМ, КАК ВЫ СТАНОВИТЕСЬ СТАРШЕ. С ЛЮБОВЬЮ, ДЖОРДЖ
Бродский часто проводил рождественские праздники в Италии. В 1975 году Клайн отправил ему в Венецию фототелеграммой нижеследующее поздравление с праздником:
According to the New York Times,
Wet Venice has been saved from sinking.
So let your spirits with her climb,
While light heads banish heavy thinking.
Affectionate wishes for Christmas and New Years
George[210]
Ниже мы приводим стихотворение Клайна, написанное в 1990 году к пятидесятилетию Бродского.
S liubovʼiu
If we take years to be the way
a life is measured, then – ok —
yours now stands firm at piat’desiat.
But if it’s months we’re looking at,