It’s been a while since the last Turgenev translation, but we’re back in business! “The Threshold” was one of the first prose poems in the Senilia collection that I read and understood, so it has a special place in my heart alongside “The Skulls.” You’ll notice that this one has no commentary attached. That’s because … Read more
Now that it’s November, the Western Hemisphere is witnessing the apparent death of nature — and in the Catholic Church, we are also observing a month of prayer for the dead. So it seemed apt to choose, as my next prose poem translation, Turgenev’s “Старик” (“The Old Man”), a reflection on aging and eventual death. … Read more
Since it’s still spooky season (happy Halloween!), here’s another of the creepier prose poems in Turgenev’s Senilia collection! Meet “The End of the World,” which is as dark as it sounds — or rather darker, since “the end of the world” is a phrase that has come to be used with comic melodrama. I read … Read more
What can I say about this one? It’s a shorter prose poem, one published toward the end of this book and written later than most of the others, in November 1879. I chose this one to translate next because it was quick, and the language was fairly accessible…but the content was rather deep and complex, … Read more
Y’all, I know it’s been a while since my last translation. But I’m easing back into it (and back into writing in general, I suppose) after a busyness- and pandemic-induced hiatus by beginning with some prose poems! For years I’ve had a dual-language copy of Ivan Turgenev’s prose poems — in the original Russian with … Read more