At the Grave of Joseph Brodsky

[Francoise Rosset]

 From the poem as a whole, it seems to me that much of it it is about 
the ephemeral and about variability and the search for substance. For 
Motion, Brodsky was one of those "alive" "voracious" people who 
provided reality in a changing "rootless" world, and yet Brodsky's own 
fate and life were elusive.
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/article529206.ece

Hence the undisputed stone.
The stone represents Brodsky's final, substantive reality -- one that 
cannot be disputed and was reached only in his death. Just mho.

That said, I have no useful translation to provide
(maybe the stone should be "neobkhodimaia/oe" -- not a great solution)

I think KK's translation is beautiful.
I'm not sure "surovyj" gets the full import of the "tense" in "tense 
lagoon" though, and if this is a reference to Venice, is there a word 
for lagoon that is more specific to Venice than "proliv".. ?
  


On Tue, 3 Feb 2009 16:17:23 -0600
  Konstantin Kustanovich <k.kustanovich at VANDERBILT.EDU> wrote:
> What can be "undisputed" about Brodsky? His poetic fame — undisputed 
>fame —
> неоспоримая слава, hence неоспоримое надгробье.
> 
> Something like this:
> 
> Я приближаюсь к твоему
> неоспоримому надгробью
> и в прошлое на двадцать лет
> через пролив скольжу суровый.
> 
> Konstantin Kustanovich
> 
> On 2/3/09 2:47 PM, "Vadim Besprozvany" <vbesproz at UMICH.EDU> wrote:
> 
>> Very odd. But everything in the poem (and around it) confirms that
>> this is Brodsky's grave. I guess that "несомненный камень" would be
>> quite unusual phrase for Motion's more or less traditional poetic
>> vocabulary.
>> 
>> Thank you,
>> 
>> VB
>> 
>>> An odd collocation.  Is there any reason to doubt that this is
>>> Brodsky's grave?  How about несомненный камень?  with the line
>>> reading у несомненного камня вашего
>>> 
>>> On Feb 3, 2009, at 3:19 PM, Vadim Besprozvany wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Dear SEELANGers,
>>>> 
>>>> I'm struggling to translate into Russian "At the Grave of Joseph
>>>> Brodsky" by Andrew Motion. There is one phrase in the poem that 
>>>>gives
>>>> me real trouble: "your undisputed stone." Here is the whole stanza:
>>>> 
>>>> The instant I arrive
>>>> At your undisputed stone
>>>> I slip back twenty years
>>>> Across the tense lagoon
>>>> [etc.]
>>>> 
>>>> Besides Russian translation of the phrase, I will really appreciate
>>>> any explanations, synonymic constructions, etc. Fiction and/or
>>>> non-fiction intertexts would be especially welcomed.
>>>> 
>>>> Thank you in advance!
>>>> 
>>>> Vadim Besprozvany
>>>> 
>>>> PS: I'm familiar with Russian translation of the poem, but my friend
>>>> and colleague, who asked me to do this project, is not very happy 
>>>>with
>>>> this variant:)
>>>> 
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>>> 
>>> Gerald Janecek
>>> gjanecek at email.uky.edu
>>> Dept. of Modern & Classical Languages
>>> University of Kentucky
>>> Lexington, KY 40506
>>> 
>>> Editor, Slavic & East European Journal
>>> seej at uky.edu
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
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Francoise Rosset, Associate Professor
Chair, Russian and Russian Studies
Coordinator, German and Russian
Wheaton College
Norton, Massachusetts 02766
Office: (508) 285-3696
FAX:   (508) 286-3640

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