Time of Gratitude

by Gennady Aygi, Peter France (Translator)

Overview

A collection of extraordinary essays by one of the seminal Russian poets of the twentieth century

Gennady Aygi’s longtime translator and friend Peter France has compiled this moving collection of tributes dedicated to some of the writers and artists who sustained him while living in the Moscow “underground.” Written in a quiet intensely expressive poetic style, Aygi’s inventive essays blend autobiography with literary criticism, social commentary, nature writing, and enlightening homage. He addresses such literary masters as Pasternak, Kafka, Mayakovsky, Celan, and Tomas Tranströmer, along with other writers from the Russian avant-garde and his native Chuvashia. Related poems by Aygi are also threaded between the essays. Reminiscent of Mandelstam’s elliptical travel musings and Kafka’s intensely spiritual jottings in his notebooks, Time of Gratitude glows with the love and humanity of a sacred vocation. “These leaves of paper," Aygi says, 'are swept up by the whirlwind of festivity; everything whirls—from Earth to Heaven—and perhaps the Universe too begins to swirl. Everything flows together in the rainbow colors and lights of the infinite world of Poetry.'

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780811227209
Publisher:	New Directions Publishing Corporation
Publication date:	12/12/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	144
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Gennady Aygi (1934–2006) was born in a village in the Chuvash Republic, a land with a Turkic language, and eventually became the Chuvash national poet, later moving to Moscow. Like Platonov, he couldn’t publish his work in the Soviet Union until the 1980s. New Directions publishes his books Child-And-Rose and Field-Russia.
Peter France  has published widely on French, Russian, and comparative literature, including the Oxford Guide to Literature in English Translation. New Directions publishes his translations of the Chuvash poet Gennady Aygi: Field-Russia and Child-And-Rose.

Table of Contents

Translator's Preface vii

I Chuvashia and Russia

A Snowdrop in the Storm: On Mikhail Sespel 3

Henceforth (by Mikhail Sespel) 10

Everyday Miracle: Meetings with Boris Pasternak (1956-58) 11

Requiem before Winter 40

Leaves - Into a Festive Wind 41

Yes, Kruchonykh Himself, or The Least Known of the Most Famous 56

Krch - 80 62

Mayakovsky 63

In Honor of a Master 67

Kazimir Malevich 68

Massacre of a Silk Flag: On the Portraits of Vladimir Yakovlev 70

Two Poems for Vladimir Yakovlev 72

An Evening with Shalamov 74

Degree: Of Stability 81

II The Wider World

O Yes: Light of Kafka 84

For a Conversation about K. - To Olga Mashkova 94

Reading Norwid 95

Baudelaire 100

O Yes: The Smile of Max Jacob 101

René Char 104

Field: In the Full Blaze of Winter 108

On the Poetry of Tomas Tranströmer 109

For a Long Time: Into Whisperings and Rustlings 112

The Last Ravine (Paul Celan) 115

Notes 117

Editorial Reviews

09/04/2017
A collection of essays and poems inspired by a life in art, Aygi’s work is impressive in its international scope and deep devotion to the ideal of a poetry that translator France describes as “essentially communication, creating... communities of people who could share a vision.” Born in the small Soviet republic of Chuvashia, the young poet was educated in Moscow, where he had to make the difficult choice between writing in Russian or in his native Chuvashian. There he befriended the writer Boris Pasternak, “the Poet... the older Friend, the Teacher, the unparalleled Interlocutor,” whose positions Aygi records respectfully: “My ‘individuality’ causes me to diverge somewhat from Pasternak, but at the same time I marvel at his incredible daring, courage and responsibility towards the Word.” Likewise admiring without obsequiousness are the shorter, commemorative pieces on the Russian poets Velimir Khlebnikov, Aleksei Kruchoeykh, and Vladimir Mayakovsky. And although literature in the U.S.S.R. was largely cut off from world developments, Aygi writes with passion and insight about European writers including Franz Kafka, Paul Celan, and Tomas Tranströmer, whose poetry is “a kind of ‘discipline’ for the spirit... communicative without condescension.” His own included poems are both simple and striking, a “god-pyre—this open field / letting all things pass through,” showing that he belongs in the company of the authors about whom he writes. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly

"Aygi's vision is essentially ecstatic, even slavific. It was Aygi who referred to the free-verse lyric as ‘a kind of unrepeatable temple.’ His verse constitutes an argument for aesthetic and affective scale, a lyric ripple or tremor in the fabric of the language and the sensual life: individual, collective, planetary...."

West Branch - G. C. Waldrep

"This collection of poetry and verse-infused prose from the celebrated Russian and Chuvash poet bows to the writers and artists who kept him creatively inspired during the Soviet era."

New & Noteworthy - New York Times Book Review - Bret Stephens

"Illuminating."

Artsfuse - Jim Kates

"The most original voice in contemporary Russian poetry."

Times Literary Supplement - Jacques Roubaud

2017-09-04
Warmth and passion infuse a collection of poetry and prose.The national poet of Chuvashia, "a remote non-Russian republic nearly 500 miles to the east of Moscow," Aygi (1934-2006) left the region to study at the Gorky Literary Institute and, encouraged by his mentor Boris Pasternak, began to write in Russian rather than his native Turkic. "Only writing in Russian will allow you to articulate fully everything that is happening within you," Pasternak told him. That decision changed the course of Aygi's career, making him accessible to a vastly larger—and international—readership. France, Aygi's longtime translator and friend, has collected 23 brief memoirs, interviews, poems, and sketches to reveal the poet's aesthetic inspirations and affinities. A helpful introduction contextualizes the pieces and identifies poets—e.g., Velimir Khlebnikov and Aleksey Kruchonykh—likely to be unfamiliar to most readers. The volume opens with an homage to Pasternak, written after the writer's death and more than three decades after his meeting with Aygi. The younger poet was awestruck by a man he worshipped as "the older Friend, the Teacher, the unparalleled Interlocutor." They discussed creativity, craft, literature, and the nature of existence. Pasternak, Aygi said, was capable of being enchanted "by all kinds of things and at any moment: a falling leaf, a child he met when out walking." The miracle of creation, he told Aygi, surrounds us: "When you read a text, you are communicating not with letters but with the spirit of the author." Just as the writer Vladimir Mayakovsky had led him to Pasternak, through Pasternak, Aygi discovered Baudelaire, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Kafka (a name "sacred to me"), and Max Jacob. Aygi pays homage to several of these writers and others, including the Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer and French poet René Char. Among avant-garde artists whose work Aygi knew well, Kazimir Malevich receives great adoration. A well-chosen introduction to the artistic and spiritual forces that shaped a poet.

Kirkus Reviews