Tatyana Tolstaya - The Slynx

"Lyovushka! Come over here. So, where were we?" asked Nikita Ivanich, wrapping his loins in a piece of Benedikt's vest. "I could use a clothespin. What lazy people… Can't even invent clothespins."

"A safety pin!" said Lev Lvovich reproachfully, running over. "I always said: a safety pin! A marvelous, civilized invention."

"There's no civilization, Golubchik. We have to do it ourselves, with our wood one."

"Now that's nationalist claptrap," cried Lev Lvovich. "That stinks of the newspaper Tomorrow. Vulgar spiritualism! It's not the first time I've noticed! It stinks!"

"Listen, Lyovushka, knock it off, will you? Let's retreat, let's soar above the sands. Shall we?"

"Let's!"

The Oldeners bent their knees, held hands, and began to rise in the air. They were both laughing-Lev Lvovich shrieked a bit, as though he were afraid to swim in cold water, and Nikita Ivanich laughed in a deep voice: ho-ho-ho. Nikita Ivanich brushed the soot from his feet-foot against foot, quickly-and dropped a little of it on Benedikt's face.

"Hey, What're you up to?" cried Benedikt, rubbing his eye.

"Nothing!" they answered from above.

"Why didn't you burn up?"

"Didn't feel like it! Just didn't feeeeel like it!"

"So you mean you didn't die? Huh? Or did you?"

"Figure it out as best you can!"

O joyless, painless moment!

The spirit rises, beggarly and bright,

A stubborn wind blows hard, and hastens

The cooling ash that follows it in flight.

Moscow , Princeton, Oxford, Tyree, Athens, Panormo, Fyodor-Kuzmichsk, Moscow

1986-2000

Translations by Jamey Gambrell. Most of the poems are untitled.

PAGE

16 Mountain summits: Mikhail Lermontov, translation from

Goethe Insomnia. Homer. Taut sails: Osip Mandelstam, "Insomnia"

17 Spikenard, cinnamon, and aloe: Alexander Pushkin O spring without end or borders!: Alexander Blok

25 Hiccup, Hiccup: based on Russian folk nonsense rhymes

27 On the black sky - words are inscribed: Marina Tsvetaeva

32 Life, you're but a mouse's scurry: Alexander Pushkin

33 The reed pipe sings upon the bridge: Alexander Blok

In the district where no feet have passed: Boris Pasternak

39 From the dawn a luxurious cold: Yakov Polonsky

63 Winter shows its anger still: Fyodor Tiutchev

76 The heart of a beauty!: Verdi, "La donna e mobile," from Rigoletto

86 Not because she shines so bright: Innokenty Annensky

87 The flame's ablaze, it doesn't smoke: Bulat Okudzhava

I want to be bold, I want to be a scoffer: Konstantin Balmont

88 No, I do not hold that stormy pleasure dear!: Alexander

Pushkin You lie in silence, heeding ne'er a sound: Alexander Pushkin

134 But the hand behind your back is stronger: Natalya Krandievskaya

189 O tender specter, happy chance: Natalya Krandievskaya

190 O city! O wind! O snowstorms and blizzards!: Alexander Blok

But is the world not all alike?: Natalya Krandievskaya

202 Bright thoughts ascend: Alexander Blok

206 From the threshold of the gate: Bulat Okudzhava

208 February! Grab the inks and cry!: Boris Pasternak

216 Oh, the moment, oh, the bitter fight: Alexei Khvostenko

223 Our eyes were glued to the tribune: anonymous Soviet poem, c. 1970s

231 Steppe and nothing else: Russian folk song

233 And where is that clearest of fires: Bulat Okudzhava

234 The lamplighter should have lit them, but sleeps: Bulat Okudzhava

241 Beneath a canopy of fetid thatch: Natalya Krandievskaya

242 In the stony cracks between the tiles: Nikolai Zabolotsky Life, you're but a mouse's scurry: Alexander Pushkin Neither fire nor darkened huts: Alexander Pushkin

245 O world, roll up into a single block: Nikolai Zabolotsky

246 Joy, thou beauteous godly lightning: Schiller, from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony

254 The trepidation of life, of all the centuries and races:

Maximilian Voloshin He who draws the darkest lot of chance: Alexander Blok What kind of East do you favor?: Vladimir Solovyov Is all quiet among our fair people?: Alexander Blok

255 Man suits all elements, every season: Alexander Pushkin

274 My steppe is burned, the grass is felled: Alexander Blok

275 O joyless, painless moment!: Natalya Krandievskaya

Tatyana Tolstaya was born in Leningrad in 1951 to an aristocratic family that includes the writers Leo and Alexei Tolstoy. After completing a degree in classics at Leningrad State University, Tolstaya worked for several years at a Moscow publishing house. In the mid-1980s, she began publishing short stories in literary magazines and her first story collection established her as one of the foremost writers of the Gorbachev era. She spent much of the late Eighties and Nineties living in the United States and teaching at several universities. Known for her acerbic essays on contemporary Russian life, Tolstaya has also been the co-host of the Russian cultural interview television program School for Scandal . Both her novel, The Slynx and her collection of stories, White Walls , are published by NYRB Classics.