CREDITS AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Several translations included in this volume have been previously published. Among them are three translations by Sibelan Forrester. The poem “The morning sun arises in the morning” originally appeared in Contemporary Russian Poetry: An Anthology, edited by E. Bunimovich and J. Kates (Dalkey Archive Press, 2008); that translation was revised for publication in this volume. The poem “As Danaë, prone in the incarce-chamber” was included in an anthology, Twenty-first Century Russian Poetry, edited by Larissa Shmailo, which appeared in issue 17 (2013) of an online magazine Big Bridge (https://bigbridge.org/BB17/toc.html). The essay “Conversations in the Realm of the Dead” was first published in The Massachusetts Review, vol. LVI, no. 3 (2015); that translation also appears in this volume in a revised version.
Two other translations, the poems “Saturday and Sunday burn like stars” (trans. Dmitry Manin) and “The Women’s Locker Room at Planet Fitness” (trans. Zachary Murphy King), earned first and second prizes respectively in the 2017 Compass Translation Award competition dedicated to the poetry of Maria Stepanova; they originally appeared in vol. 8 (2018) of Cardinal Points Literary Journal, a project of the Slavic Studies Department of Brown University and StoSvet (www.stosvet.org), edited by Boris Dralyuk and Irina Mashinski. The translation of “The Women’s Locker Room” was substantially revised for publication in this volume.
Finally, by permission of Bloodaxe Books, as specified on the copyright page, we have included eight translations by Sasha Dugdale from her forthcoming book of translations of Maria Stepanova’s poetry, War of the Beasts and the Animals. The translation of the title poem from this book, along with the translator’s note, was first published in Modern Poetry in Translation, no. 3 (2017), and it was revised for the book. The poem “Bus Stop: Israelitischer Friedhof” appeared in Other Countries: Contemporary Poets Rewiring History (2014). Spolia was published in PN Review, vol. 46, no. 4 (2020).
As the editor of this volume, I would like to thank, first and foremost, the extraordinary team of translators whose dedicated work made this project come true: Alexandra Berlina, Sasha Dugdale, Sibelan Forrester, Amelia Glaser, Zachary Murphy King, Dmitry Manin, Ainsley Morse, Eugene Ostashevsky, Andrew Reynolds, and Maria Vassileva. I am particularly indebted to Ainsley Morse and Eugene Ostashevsky for their help at the early stages of planning for this volume and for their advice on several occasions in the course of my work. My spouse and colleague, Karen Evans-Romaine, provided invaluable editorial advice on poetry translations, as did Megan Kennedy, who also copyedited a draft of my introduction. Commentaries by three anonymous reviewers solicited by Columbia University Press were very helpful at the final stage of my work. I am grateful to these reviewers as well as to the members of the editorial board of the Russian Library series for their support of this project. The editorial staff at Columbia University Press, especially Christine Dunbar and Christian Winting, offered unfailing support throughout the process. This process would be entirely impossible without Maria Stepanova’s involvement at all stages of preparation of this volume.
TRANSLITERATION AND STYLE
This volume uses the Library of Congress (LC) system of transliteration of the Cyrillic alphabet (without diacritics) in bibliographic references as well as in transliterations of titles of Russian sources. A modified LC system is used in the text for personal names and some proper nouns to ensure easier readability.
All omissions in quoted sources are designated with ellipses in square brackets to distinguish them from suspension points as a punctuation mark used by authors of quoted sources.
BIBLIOGRAPHIC NOTE
Maria Stepanova’s poems included in this volume come from the following books of poetry: O bliznetsakh (On twins, 2001), Tut-svet (The here-world, 2001), Pesni severnykh iuzhan (Songs of the northern southerners, 2001), Schast’e (Happiness, 2003), Fiziologiia i malaia istoriia (Physiology and private history, 2005), Lirika, golos (The lyric, the voice, 2010), Kireevskii (Kireevsky, 2012), and Spolia (2015). With the exception of Spolia, these collections are available on the website of the Vavilon Project: http://www.vavilon.ru/texts/stepanova0.html.
The cycle O, from which one poem is included, appeared in Stikhi i proza v odnom tome (Poetry and prose in one volume, 2010). This volume of collected poems, among other works, reproduces Songs of the Northern Southerners and Physiology and Private History from the above list. Stepanova’s more recent volume of collected poems, Protiv liriki (Against lyric, 2017), reproduces all other books of poetry from that list.
Essays included in parts II and IV of this volume come from the collection Odin, ne odin, ne ia (Alone, not alone, not me, 2014). The first three essays included in part III were published together in Tri stat’i po povodu (Three essays regarding, 2015); the last essay in that part appeared on Colta.ru on November 11, 2016.
Seven of the included essays were also reprinted in Stepanova’s most recent collection of essays, Protiv neliubvi (Against non-love, 2019): these are the first and third essays in part III and all but the last essay in part IV.
INTRODUCTION
“Speaking in Voices”: On Maria Stepanova’s Literary Creation
BY IRINA SHEVELENKO
“Occupying oneself with poetry presumes a chain of greater and lesser deaths, each putting in doubt the possibility of continued existence. Poems move forward in gigantic leaps, rip themselves loose from familiar and fertile soil, rejecting (shaking off) the very soil they were only just clinging to. Poetry seems to preserve itself by way of disruptions, renouncing what only a moment ago comprised an inalienable part of it, and sometimes its very essence.”
▶ Maria Stepanova, “Displaced Person”
“Stepanova’s début was distinguished by brilliant poetic technique and a purity of style,” Dmitry Kuzmin, poet and publisher, wrote fifteen years ago. “Progress along this route would virtually have assured Stepanova of success with the reading public and with the critics, but she chose another and far riskier strategy,” he remarked. It was the ever expanding vocal range that became a hallmark of Stepanova’s development: “At times she engaged in a dialogue with the Russian tradition, with the archaic language and poetry of the eighteenth century; at others she introduced casual contemporary diction, close to slang, into a classical stanza reminiscent of Catullus. At one time, in a lyric miniature, she reached the heights of estrangement, observing the sufferings of the spirit and the body from some point of passionless elevation; at another, a sonnet cycle looked like total parody.”1