Импровизация

Improvisation

Boris Leonidovich Pasternak

“Doctor Zhivago” is a famous Russian novel which was praised and awarded with the literature Nobel Prize in 1958. The brilliant mind behind that amazing literary creation was the Russian poet Boris Leonidovich Pasternak. He was born in the big city of Moscow in 1890.

His father was a famous painter and his mother a good concert pianist. He was an official translator of the English writer Shakespeare and the German Goethe. His stunning anthology named “My Sister Life” is the most influential literary work. In 1958, he was sentenced to external exile and died in the city of Peredelkino.

Poems in Russian

Импровизация


Я клавишей стаю кормил с руки
Под хлопанье крыльев, плеск и клекот.
Я вытянул руки, я встал на носки,
Рукав завернулся, ночь терлась о локоть.


И было темно. И это был пруд
И волны.- И птиц из породы люблю вас,
Казалось, скорей умертвят, чем умрут
Крикливые, черные, крепкие клювы.


И это был пруд. И было темно.
Пылали кубышки с полуночным дегтем.
И было волною обглодано дно
У лодки. И грызлися птицы у локтя.

И ночь полоскалась в гортанях запруд,
Казалось, покамест птенец не накормлен,
И самки скорей умертвят, чем умрут
Рулады в крикливом, искривленном горле.

Boris Leonidovich Pasternak

Improvisation


I fed a flock
Of keys from my hand
To the beating of wings, splashing and screeching.
I stretched out my hands; I stood on my toes,

My sleeve crept up, night rubbed my elbow.
And it was dark. And there was a pond
And waves. And the screaming, black, strong beaks of the birds
of the breed I-love-you would sooner murder, it seems, than die.

And there was a pond. And it was dark.
The vessels of midnight tar blazed.
And a wave bit into the bottom
Of the boat. And the birds squabbled at my elbow.

And night splashed in the throats of the weirs.
It seemed that the fledgling had not yet been fed,
And the mother birds would sooner murder than let
The trills in the screaming, twisted throat die.

Boris Leonidovich Pasternak


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