A Science Not for the Earth (Eastern European Poets Series)

Product Description

Poetry. Letters. Translated from the Russian by Rawley Grau. Edited by Ilya Bernstein. It is only in the past quarter-century or so that Yevgeny Abramovich Baratynsky (1800-1844) has gained wide recognition in Russia as one of the great poets of the 19th century. While the psychologically acute love elegies and meditations he wrote in the early 1820s earned him fame during his lifetime, his later lyric verse was ignored or misunderstood by most of his contemporaries. Yet it is this body of work in particular, where he explores fundamental questions about the meaning of existence from an analytical epistemological perspective, that today seems remarkably modern. The poet’s radical skepticism, as well as his increasing sense of isolation from the literary world, is reflected most profoundly in his lyric masterpiece, the book
Dusk (
Sumerki, 1842)–translated in its entirety in this volume–a work that is notable, among other things, for being the first collection of poems published in Russia as a coherent literary cycle (a practice that would become standard only 60 years later).

Featuring some 85 poems, from the early elegies to poems from his final years, A SCIENCE NOT FOR THE EARTH will be the first representative collection of the Baratynsky’s lyric verse in English. The translations by Rawley Grau aim to be as semantically close to the original as possible while still conveying a strong sense of the formal aspects of the verse. 

A large selection of Baratynsky’s letters, more than 160, reflecting his critical thoughts on writing as well as his personal struggles, is also included. The book is guest-edited by Russian-American poet Ilya Bernstein.

From Publishers Weekly

Baratynsky, a 19th-century Russian poet and friend of Pushkin who approached his art as a means of understanding the world, looked toward nature and the ways that it is reflected in the imperfections and passions of mankind. “I now am hungering, O Ocean, for your storms!” he writes. “So toss and churn, rise up against your stony borders:/ your wild and terrible roar fills me with joy.” His lyrics and selected letters expose him as a captivating figure whose work also functions as a commentary on the futility of writing project itself. “I am not dazzled by my muse—nobody/ would ever say that she is beautiful,” Baratynsky writes in “My Muse,” before asserting that “sometimes the world is struck, for just a moment,/ by the uncommon expression of her face,/ the peaceful simplicity of her words.” Baratynsky bridged the Enlightenment and modernity, and was at his core a humanistic investigator and consummate observer. In a letter to Pushkin, he writes acutely of the writerly struggle: “Our marvelous language is capable of everything—I feel this although I am unable to bring it to fruition.” Baratynsky has long been admired in Russia; Grau’s fine translation reveals him to the wider world. (Dec.)n

Review

[Translator Rawley] Grau explains in his introduction that, while he attempted to follow the meter and rhyme scheme of the poetry wherever possible, his primary concern was in conveying the precise meaning. In the latter he has succeeded admirably: by and large, the translations are some of the best I have seen for conveying Baratynsky’s meaning into English. … As for the translations as English-language poems, they range from quite readable examples of blank or free verse to … genuinely inspired pieces of poetry, managing to combine the conventions of rhymed verse with a contemporary sound. … The translations are overall an excellent example of balance between faithfulness and originality and can be read with pleasure in their own right. …
 
With its mixture of thorough research of Russian-language sources and accessible presentation of the material in English, this book will be useful both to those carrying out specialized research on Baratynsky and those wishing to teach his poetry in classes for non-Russian speake