Ян Пробштейн Ian Probstein - The Lemon Seller

Ян Пробштейн Ian Probstein - The Lemon Seller:

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Dear friends!

I was overjoyed by your interest to the poetry of Roald Mandelstam today while watching the documentary THE LEMON SELLER by Maxim Yakubson.  I am especially grateful to those who do not know Russian and, therefore, my modest translations of this highly gifted poet contributed to your appreciation of subtle matters that make us more human.  Due to some glitches in the schedule, you were to watch the movie I WILL FORGET THIS DAY by the director Rudnitskaya. My dear friends from the Bronx Science High School! Welcome to the world of adults. Unlike a feature movie, a documentary is said to help us change our life. Now you know the hard choices a woman makes because of economic and political constraints, not just because we are pro choice or against it.  Whether they do not have money to support the family, or a girl’s young boyfriend is drafted into the compulsory military service, women of 43 or just 20 have to make tough choices.  I think you must all be grateful to your parents for not having to face this cruel problems before.  However, what makes us still more human and subtle, refining both our sensitivities and minds is literature, in particular poetry. In his “Defense of Poetry”, the English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley claimed that “the poets are unacknowledged legislators of the world” alluding to the time when prophets were poets and poets were prophets. Today we consider it a far-fetched metaphor. However, can we imagine the world without poetry, belles lettres, which is fiction, or music?

Now, as I promised, I will post links to my essay in English and published translations of a gifted poet Roald Mandelstam (1932–1961) who died without seeing a single line of his poetry published but had an unbreakable spirit.

Lemon-seller

[published in the Metamorphoses Vol. 20, issue 1 (Spring 2012): 48-51]

—Moon lemons!

Brazen lemons!

Ringing sermons —

                                    buy them,

Scatter them all around,

Moon lemons —

They will fill the room

                                    with a lemon moonlight.

—Dazzling lemons!

Ringing lemons!

If your night

is dull and dark,

Buy moonshine  —

Moon lemons,

Bronze lemons! —

                                    Gold mine!

Translated by Ian Probstein Here is a link: an essay in English http://nourjahad.livejournal.com/63589.html

Translations of Roald Mandelstam’s poetry into English:

http://intranslation.brooklynrail.org/russian/poems-by-roald-mandelstam