Creative Poetry - RUSSIAN POETS: THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR

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Hannah

POETIC RECORD OF THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR

Vsevolod BAGRITSKY

Vsevolod Bagritsky was born in 1922 in Odessa. His father was Edward Bagritsky, the well-known Soviet poet. Vsevolod was only a boy when he first began writing verse. Some of his earliest efforts appeared in a hand- written school magazine the students put out. In 1939-40 Vsevolod was active in a youth theatre run by Alexei Arbuzov and Valentin Plucheck. He was one of the authors of the play "City at Dawn", and in collaboration with two of his friends from the theatre, wrote another play called "The Duel".
Then the war broke out, and Vsevolod had no thought for anything but to be among those who were fighting for their country.
At the very end of 1941, he was assigned to the staff of the news- paper of the Second Army which was being rushed in from the south to aid besieged Leningrad.
Vsevolod Bagritsky was fallen by an enemy bullet while jotting down some facts passed on to him by one of the men. This was on February 26, 1942, in the village of Dubovik, the Leningrad Region.

ODESSA, CITY MINE!

We rose at dawn,
When night crept close to day.
The wind that blew was fresh and light
and fitful,

A little briny and a little bitter.
As on an open palm the sea before us lay,
With fishing boats its surface strewn,
the advent

Of morning marking....
Under foam-washed boulders
(Quite large they were and black and sleek
and shiny),

Beneath dark sea-weed, butter-soft and slimy,
The bullheads moved their bulky tops, and twisted
Their narrow tails.
The ship to the horizon
Was firmly glued.
The sparkle of the rising
Sun hurt the eyes.
The contours of the misty
Shores were a trifle vague and undefined.
We`ll not surrender you, Odessa, city mine!
Let death walk every street;
With hoarse and choking sound,
Let homes in flame go up and topple to the ground.

Let acrid smoke eat at our eyes, let bread
Give off the smell of powder and of lead -
Odessa, city mine,
My friend and comrade true,
Odessa, city mine,
We`ll not surrender you!

1941 Translated by Irina Zheleznova

Boris BOGATKOV

Boris Andreyevich Bogatkov was born in September 1922, in Achinsk (Krasnoyarsk Territory). Both his father and mother were teachers. Boris's mother died when he was ten years old and he was raised by an aunt. Bogatkov studied in Achinsk, Krasnoyarsk and Novosibirsk. Even as a child he had a passion for poetry and drawing. He was well acquainted with the verse of Pushkin, Lermontov, Mayakovsky, Bagritsky and Aseyev. Bogatkov came to Moscow in 1940. He worked as a drifter during the construction of the Metro and attended evening classes at the Gorky Literary Institute.
Bogatkov joined the army at the very start of the Great Patriotic War. During a nazi air raid he was shell- shocked and was demobilised on grounds of health. In 1942 he returned to Novosibirsk, where he wrote satirical verse for TASS display windows, and published poems in local newspapers. He stubbornly insisted on being returned to the acting army. In the end Bogatkov was signed up in the Siberian Volunteer Division. At the front, while commanding a platoon of submachine gunners, Senior Sergeant Bogatkov continued to write verses and composed an anthem for the division.
On August 11,1943, in the battle for Gnezdilovskaya Hill (in the region of Smolensk and Yelnya) Bogatkov and his submachine gunners stormed the enemy trenches. In this battle Boris Bogatkov died a hero's death. His name has been recorded for posterity in the annals of the division; his submachine gun was given to the best marksmen in the platoon.

AT LAST

A suitcase maybe a yard in length,
A mug, a spoon, a knife, a mess-tin - all
These things I bought and stored up in advance
So that I would be ready when they called.

How eagerly I waited! At last
I had the longed-for papers in my hands!
My childhood days flew by so fast
Spent in school and summer camps.

With hands as tender as a girl's our youth
Caressed us softly, took us in her arms,
But now our youth glints with the steel
Of its cold bayonets across the lines of war.

Our youth has ordered us into the fire
To fight for everything that we hold dear.
And I, too, hasten to be with my comrades,
Those who have attained their manhood here!

1941 Translated by Ronald Vroon1

Mussa JALIL

Mussa Jalilov (Mussa Jalil) was born in 1906 in the village of Mustafa, Orenburg Gubernia. He received his primary education in the village school, then studied at the "Husania" madrasah in Orenburg, then in Kazan at a Workers' Faculty (a course preparatory for higher school). He graduated from Moscow State University in 1931.
He took an active part in founding the Tatar State Theatre of Opera and Ballet and wrote two opera librettos for the company, "Altynchech" and "Ildar". He published several collections of verse. On the eve of the Great Patriotic War, Mussa Jalil was head of the Tatar Writers' Union.
Mussa Jalil joined the ranks of the army on the very first day of the war, and in June 1942 was seriously wounded and taken prisoner. He carried out active underground work in concentration camp, as a result of which he was thrown into the nazi gaol of Moabit. While in prison, Mussa Jalil wrote a cycle of poems whose fame has travelled far beyond the frontiers of the Soviet Union.
The poet was executed in 1944. His fellow-prisoners preserved his notebooks, one of which was handed over to Soviet representatives in Brussels by the Belgian anti-fascist Andre Timmermans, a cell-mate of Jalil`s in Maobit.
Mussa Djalil was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

THE HANDKERCHIEF

My true love pressed, in parting's token,
A handkerchief into my hand,
And now, to stop the bright blood flowing,
I press it to my open wound.

The little farewell gift she gave me
Is sodden now, and warm, and red;
But all the love that lay behind it
Has eased the pain and staunched the blood.

I braved death for our happiness,
I faced the foe and never quit,
And though my blood has stained that kerchief,
Yet I have not dishonoured it.

July 1942 Translated by Alex Miller

Nicolai MAYOROV

Nicolai Mayorov was born in 1919 into a worker`s family. Beginning with 1939, he attended a poetry seminar at the Gorky Literary Institute. In 1939 and 1940 Mayorov wrote his long poems. "The Sculptor" and "Family". Of these only a few excerpts survived, together with a small number of shorter pieces of the same period. The suitcase with books and papers which he left with a comrade at the outbreak of war, has not been recovered.
In summer 1941, together with other Moscow students, Mayorov dug antitank ditches near Yelnya. In October his application to join the Army was gratified. In February 1942 Nikolai Mayorov, political instructor of a machine-gun company, died in action in Smolensk Region.

It's not for us to calmly rot in graves.
We'll lie stretched out in our half-open coffins
And hear before the dawn the cannon coughing,
The regimental bugle calling gruffly
From highways which we trod, our land to save.

We know by heart all rules and regulations.
What's death to us? A thing that we despise.
Lined up in graves, our dead detachment lies
Awaiting orders. And let generations
To come, when talking of the dead, be wise;
Dead men have ears and eyes for truth and lies.

Translated by Dorian Rottenberg

Joseph UTKIN

Joseph Utkin was born in 1903 into the family of a railway worker in the Far East at Khingan station, Khabarovsk Region. He spent his childhood in Irkutsk and served in the Red Army from 1920 to 1922. In 1927, he graduated from the Moscow Institute of Journalism. His works began to be published in 1922. In 1941, he volunteered for active service. He was wounded in the autumn of 1941. After treatment, he went to the front as a newspaper correspondent. Utkin's wartime poems were lyrical and were easily set to music. He was killed in an air accident near Moscow in 1944 when returning from the Western Front. Collections of selected poems by Joseph Utkin have been published a number of times since the war.

YOU'RE WRITING A LETTER TO ME

It's midnight outside and the candle-flame's dying,
The stars glitter high in the sky.
You're writing a letter to me, and you`ll post it
To a war-town address far away.

How long you sit writing that letter, my love!
You'll finish, and then start again.
But I can be sure that a love true as yours
Will get through to the furthermost front line!

...We've long been away. Through the smoke-clouds
of battle
We can't ace home's lights any more.
But he is at home
Who is loved and remembered,
Though lost in the smoke-clouds of war!

Fond letters bring cheer to the heart of the soldier,
With each word that you read, you recall
The face of your true-love,
The sounds of your homeland
Like a voice coming through a thin wall

We'll soon be returning: I know and believe it.
The time will assuredly come
When partings and grief small be left far behind us.
But joy shall walk into the home.

One evening, perhaps very close to each other
We`ll sit on the sofa, we two,
And read through those letters as records of battles,
As diaries of all we went through.
1943 Translated by Alex Miller

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