Child & Rose Pa

by Aygi,Gennady

• ISBN13: 9780811215367
• ISBN10: 0811215369
• Edition: 00
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-04-17
• Publisher: New Directions

Summary

A remarkable poetic account of a man and his daughter. Though relatively unpublished in the Soviet Union until the late 1980s, Gennady Aygi's work has been translated into some twenty languages, and has received major acclaim through many parts of the world. Child-and-Rose is a unique collection of poems and prose chosen and arranged by the author and translator. Taking as its central themes childhood, sleep, and silence in relation to poetic creation, the book is divided into five sections"Veronica's Book," "Sleep-and-Poetry," "Before and After the Book," "Silvia's World," and "Poetry-as-Silence"all written between 1972 and 2002. In this collection, each poem is a carefully crafted space of language that surfaces from the heart of a poetic consciousness at "the limits of intelligibility," as the translator notes. Images of Aygi's Chuvash homelandbirches, oaks, snow, roses, fieldsmix with a disrupted syntax, astonishing turns, gaps, and suspensions that all speak to a quiet stillness of being.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Bei Dao
Foreword by the Translator	xiii
VERONICA'S BOOK	3	(78)
Foreword	5	(4)
Dedication	9	(1)
In Place of a Preface	10	(1)
Two Epigraphs	11	(1)
Prologue: Chant -- Fatherhoodland	12	(1)
On the Day of First Meeting	13	(1)
My Daughter's First Week	14	(1)
Heaven-Gramophone	15	(1)
Or -- Who Loves to Me	16	(1)
Appearance in a Smile	17	(1)
On Days of Illness	18	(1)
Beginning of the ``Period of Likenesses''	19	(1)
And: Not Touching	20	(1)
Continuation of the ``Period of Likenesses''	21	(1)
Tranquility of a Vowel	22	(1)
Now	23	(1)
Again -- A Smile	24	(1)
Quietness	25	(1)
Bed Time	26	(1)
Urszula and the Wild Rose	27	(1)
A Lost Page (Or: Snow in the Garden)	28	(1)
In the Fourth Month: Attempts at Singing	29	(1)
Song from the Days of Your Forefathers	30	(2)
And: At Five Months	32	(1)
Little Tatar Song	33	(1)
Tea Rose -- The Only One in the Neighborhood	34	(1)
Note -- After Rocking	34	(1)
Story of the Level-Crossing Gate and the Crossing Keeper's Cabin	35	(1)
Purer than a Tear	36	(1)
Roses of Eteri Aged Three	37	(1)
Recognition of the Name	38	(1)
Story of Harlequin Grown Old	39	(1)
Smile (Meaning ``Beloved'')	40	(1)
Mouse Gone	41	(1)
Again: Rocking You	42	(1)
Tops of the Birches -- From Childhood and till Now	43	(1)
Again -- Something from the ``Period of Likenesses''	44	(1)
And: She Sleeps (in a Pram) by the Sea	45	(1)
Song of Sounds	46	(1)
In Days of Illness -- Dream Image	47	(1)
Written in the Fields	48	(1)
Chuvash Song for a Girl Your Age	49	(1)
Still Remembering the Same Temple	50	(1)
Long Walk	50	(1)
And: Somewhere a Little Boy is Sleeping	51	(1)
Vision: A Young Girl	52	(1)
Phloxes in Town	53	(1)
Lullaby? It is Yours	54	(1)
Ex-Libris -- For You -- In Verse	55	(1)
Something -- Again about a Boy	56	(1)
Your First Sea with Me	57	(1)
Again -- Trying to Catch Expressions	58	(1)
Little Song for You -- About your Father	59	(1)
Written Down While Sitting with You on the Balcony	60	(1)
Pause in my Daughter's ``Book''	61	(2)
Often Five-Year-Old Asya Comes to See Us	63	(1)
Field Dream	64	(1)
Continuation	65	(1)
Playing Finger Games	66	(1)
And: Oats in Flower Beyond the Meadow	67	(1)
Singing and Silence	68	(1)
Again -- The Third Grasshopper (Now -- For You)	69	(1)
To a Friend -- Instead of a Letter	70	(1)
First Words	71	(1)
Again -- Closeness of Roses	72	(1)
Vision: A Girl	73	(1)
Again -- She Sleeps	74	(1)
About This	75	(1)
Something Precious	76	(1)
And: The First Half Year	76	(1)
Child-And-Rose	77	(1)
Epilogue: Lullaby-Suwalkie	78	(1)
And: Farewell to the Book	79	(1)
A Last Word from the Author	80	(1)
SLEEP-AND-POETRY	81	(18)
BEFORE AND AFTER THE BOOK	99	(42)
Roses in Town	101	(1)
Mozart: ``Cassation I''	102	(1)
Now there are Always Snows	103	(2)
About This	105	(1)
Snow -- In an ``Old'' District of Moscow	106	(1)
Among Oaks	107	(1)
Leaf-Fall and Silence	108	(1)
Again: Appearance of a Bluetit	109	(1)
Snow At Midday	110	(1)
And -- Strangely: ``Somewhere'' -- My Daughter	111	(1)
Two Little Songs for the Two of Us	112	(1)
Again: Air in the Tops -- Of Birches	113	(1)
My Daughter's Autumn Walk	114	(2)
Now Such a One Also	116	(1)
House -- In the Grove of the World	117	(1)
This August's Phloxes	118	(1)
Supper: House Outside Town	119	(1)
Gift -- A Birch Grove	120	(1)
Awaiting a Friend	121	(1)
House in the Field	122	(1)
Together	123	(1)
Quietness with a Happening	124	(1)
Drawing Long Ago	125	(1)
Phloxes at Night in Berlin	126	(1)
Two Epilogues	127	(1)
Daughter in a Clearing	128	(1)
Birch at Noon	129	(1)
During a Friend's Illness	130	(1)
Fields of this Summer	131	(2)
Drawing for Peter France	133	(1)
With an Ancient Memory	134	(1)
From Lines in A Dream	135	(1)
Day -- Towards Evening	136	(1)
Long Ago	137	(1)
Beginning from the Field	138	(1)
The People Are A Temple	138	(1)
From ``Long Parting''	139	(2)
Silvia's World	141	(14)
Poetry-as-Silence	155

Excerpts

VERONICA'S BOOK

MY DAUGHTER'S FIRST SIX MONTHS JANUARY - JULY 1983

TWO EPIGRAPHS Veronica, you are necessary ... Leonid Lavrov ... And Veronica's Hair, even here - I plaited, unplaited, I plait, unplait, I plait. Paul Celan PROLOGUE: CHANT - FATHERHOODLAND If we break this oath, may hops sink in the Volga and iron float up (from a treaty between the Bulgars and the Russians, 985 AD) if for you I have passed on then hops will sink. in-love-like-a-sea ( ay-iya-yur ) but when without me you pass by iron will float up from singing-like-a-sea ( ay-iya-yur ) 1983-1984 Moscow-Kaunas ON THE DAY OF FIRST MEETING

could of veneration this my slowed-down looking ... - and what self-recognition of another world circles - close by? ... - not a look - but untouched Word-Face: oh brief equality: One - it cannot be said! for the same Looks with the same silence (One - as the face - at the One) 18 January 1983 MY DAUGHTER'S FIRST WEEK

the quietness where the child is - seems uneven within limits - of fragile lightshadows: emptiness! - for the world Grows in her - to Listen to Itself in its Fullness 22 January 1983: HEAVEN-GRAMOPHONE

from the fields continuing out of pain soon my child there will be for you too a schubert: Always-Unvollendete somewhere above pain to be unending from the fields February 1983 OR - WHO LOVES TO ME with what then do I love? or - who loves to me? I do not know for - despite all my obscenity so often for the baby now I seem - without changing - sacredly-painfully (it turns in a circle) pure 4 March 1983

APPEARANCE IN A SMILE

and a flower opened - to smile on the face: made new (so much in solitude) the mother-come-again shuddered: oh this circle! turn me so: not to come to my senses or to visions: praise to Pity as to God - for this strange-and-only time: it narrowed - and flashed past! I know no beginning or end: only lightwhirl! (and so strangely including - me) 4 March 1983 ON DAYS OF ILLNESS

1 the baby's illness the trees' disquiet 2 in velvet of flowers I go to sleep tossing and turning with cheeks tossing and turning amid floods: like a dream made of clumsy circles: of belatedly-needless tears: as if for my mother ... or for whom then? clearly - all the more in this mish-mash - clearly: in any case - not for our Lord 3 and trees were once like brothers in mist-into their poverty Came God amid snowdrifts (Continuing my silence as work: with sorrow - amid the trees) 4 oh God the child's shudder 11-12 March 1983 BEGINNING OF THE "PERIOD OF LIKENESSES"

and the forces of the tribe are stirred - and they float and turn like wind-and-light - carrying over your face cloud after cloud: all expressions of vanished faces - to manifest to confirm - the "definitive" appearance - your own: with fire - standing firm in turbulence! - (is it not with this same heat that - peering - I shudder: as if - amid some singing? - pain - came in like the wind) March 1983 AND: NOT TOUCHING one should fear both children's fingers and tender leaves - of birdcherry: because: there is nothing and no-one terrible in the world only God (stronger than kindness! and remembering - keep quiet): and only: you know - you 22 April 1983 CONTINUATION OF THE "PERIOD OF LIKENESSES" a passing gleam: a shade? maternal? from what depths: from unspeaking time - forgotten treasure? dream and not dream: light - reaching the face: revelation of whom then deep down with the flash of a bond - that perhaps also raises white and dark of ancient field and wind? or is it grief - flickering - in the little face of father-wandering through unknown first-circle in attempts to find himself again in the rising storm of the tribe? you sleep ... - but it wakes - ever wider ever stronger - the common-shining: hammered out in pain where then is it hiding - your fresh-and-new-found appearance - among many others? April 1983 TRANQUILITY OF A VOWEL

a 21 February 1982 NOW to O.P. my friend oh mother-child the baby's face moves away to have strength to come closer shining-quiet to the circle features of the loved-and-loving (many separately One) 2 April 1983 AGAIN-A SMILE it gleams - without age - the soul of humanity: purified - by the heart of a child (by "work"-she too works! - or rather: by work - unknown - on her behalf) - revealed to the light - invisibly - "comprehensible:" oh, what-can-I-say! - to such a source: its name is "it-only-remains unique!" - but what then - just now - is happening? - I look - I forget - I look ... - forgetting looking April 1983 QUIETNESS

oh my quiet god repeating you like a senselikeness I seem long since in a steady calm: cool you flow without change ... - only once I glanced round: the cherries had already gone over ... - the child prolongs the smile ... - only such gurgles of yours including old heart's weakness ever more intimate (with a certain whisper) from time to time - barely - show forth the clarity of the treasure "my quiet god" April 1983

Excerpted from CHILD-AND-ROSE by GENNADY AYGI Copyright © 2002 by Gennady Aygi
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.