In an attempt to escape my doubts & excerpts from the cycle "Pebbles"
by Vasyl Stus
Translated from the Ukrainian by Bohdan Tokarsky and Julius Kochan
FROM THE CYCLE “PEBBLES” (1960s)
*
When after the thousands of years
of travelling
the stars reach Earth —
I don’t envy them.
*
If your heart hurts —
you are lucky, my friend.
*
I vote with both hands
for all of the resolutions of the Party —
for at least fifty years in advance.
*
It is not very humble to shout
about the immortality of our ancestors.
For we know full well
what they would do
without us.
*
When humanity develops
planet-wide patriotism
will chauvinism be no more?
*
In the era of the extensive
construction of communism
we are being watched by
Mesozoic stars.
*
If someone had given Stalin’s moustache
a timely shaving
then the genius would’ve looked like
a weasel.
If light
travelled at the speed of
300 000 kilometres per second
every beam
would look like a morning glory.
*
It is easier to walk around
the Botanical Gardens in Kyiv
than around oneself —
from head to toe.
*
If people carry on writing books
for another couple of centuries
then what will our descendants do?
*
What taught people to sharpen knives
was screams.
*
Houses are philosophers!
The wisest philosophers.
Always silent.
*
They say: coal is black gold.
That is if you forget
about pollution
and sciatica.
*
Every hangman
loves a glass of red wine
warmed up to 36°.
“IN AN ATTEMPT TO ESCAPE MY DOUBTS”
In an attempt to escape my doubts,
I tap out a telegram to myself:
attheverytimewhenallthesovietpeople
andallprogressivehumanityaregettingproperlyready
forthenextcongressofthecommunistpartyoftheussr
I wish you the greatest of successes
I sincerely envy that for more than thirty years now
you have been living in the happiest country in the world.
And yet my disappointment does not go away.
So then I make myself remember
that the international situation today
is more complicated than ever,
and I feel calmer.
Vasyl Stus (1938-1985) was one of Ukraine’s most significant twentieth-century poets, a prose writer, essayist and prolific translator from several languages. As a Ukrainian dissident in the Soviet Union, he spent the last thirteen years of his life in the Gulag, where he wrote his magnum opus collection Palimpsests (1980). His other poetry collections include Winter Trees (1970), Joyful Cemetery (1970), and Time of Creativity/Dichtenszeit (1972).
Bohdan Tokarsky is a literary scholar and translator specializing in Ukraine’s twentieth-century and contemporary literature, currently based at the University of Potsdam (EUTIM project). He completed his PhD on the works of Vasyl Stus at the University of Cambridge and is currently finishing his monograph on Stus’s poetry. His translations have appeared in literary magazines such as Asymptote and Los Angeles Review of Books.
Julius Kochan is a PhD student in Contemporary Chinese Literature and Culture at the University of Oxford. His academic background is in Slavonic Studies, and he is interested in parallels between the arts, cultures, and histories of the Slavonic and Sinophone worlds. Alongside this, he is a translator of literary and academic texts.