26 April 2022
what I’m doing during wartime
I’m translating an English novel from the nineteenth century
a maximally escapist activity
but then I used to do such things even in peacetime
they say that if the things you used to do have lost their meaning they never had any to start with
what I’m doing during wartime
I’m sitting in a tidy little house in a tidy German village
next to the city in which the philosopher Ernst Bloch was born here people talk about culture a lot
they say that few people know about our events there should be more press coverage
the lilac’s in bloom people are walking around outside sitting in cafes I jump when I hear the noise of a plane
next to the house is the Rhine vineyards life
25 June 2022
we haven’t yet answered the question can one write poetry after Bucha
during the virus I saw comments no now’s not the time for poetry a maximally unpoetic era
when could there be a time for poetry could it be that there’s never been one or it’s always time just we don’t notice
two years ago we didn’t know about the bombs that would explode next to our homes
we were scared to leave home because of the microbes everywhere
but you being at home doesn’t mean your home won’t be hit by a bomb
even when we played battleships at school it was easier to guess where the bomb would hit
we were standing next to the bomb shelter they kept exploding somewhere nearby I remember that bomb shelter
our school had a very similar one all those buildings from the 1980s
back then we were told that there would be no green parks in our neighbourhood because the roots of the trees would reach a sandy layer and not grow any further
back then no one told us that bombs would explode in our neighbourhood and I would stand next to the bomb shelter remembering the gauze bandages
we used to sew for war practice during arts and crafts
27 June 2022
now I think that I’m finding it hard being an emigrant because I’m talking to people I don’t know all the time
I’m talking to people I don’t know who ask me what I’m writing what writers there are in Ukraine
they ask me what writers I’ve read why I like Nietzsche why I don’t have children no Germany’s a tolerant country and yet I was asked whether I wanted children in the town hall they looked at my passport warily and said you aren’t married
as if in the town hall of the village of Waldsee it could possibly matter whether I’m married or not perhaps they are worried about some insurance I don’t know
it’s funny that I’m talking to strangers who ask me whether I want children whether I want money
yes of course I want the second of course yes I tell mum I saw a film I thought this was surrealism my mum says this is reality
13 July 2022
when we finished university we couldn’t find work without work experience
now I can say that my work experience didn’t do me any good
in a hundred years they will say that we were the fourth wave of emigration
we stayed with Facebook friends or simply with people who wanted to help
at literary residencies
at the Rhine that reminded us of the Dnipro so much
just that the factories are on the other bank barges are going back and forth all the time industry’s up and running
when I finished university I got an offer to work for free for the experience
now I’m working for free because there must be some meaning no it’s not that the war’s drawn this line
it’s just that I used to think that everything with meaning had already been done we were living in a dead museum
in a dead museum of everyday achievements
in a dead museum of war who died and here are his letters
here are his letters and then cross the Dnipro
no all our experience was useless as if life passed us by
generals are always preparing for a past war a well-known saying
my brother said in March this is my first war I still need to figure it out
the first one not out of a textbook not out of a museum of war
19 July 2022
humans are silly creatures—when there’s a war they think about love
or it’s because I live by a lake where all I can do is sit in a cafe or walk along the shore
there’s nothing else here to entertain yourself with—only love affairs
today I dreamed I was having a passionate affair with a well-known writer
in my dream it even gave me pangs of conscience because really I shouldn’t
I woke up and thought I had to read his books because I couldn’t remember whether I’d read them that’s what my memory’s like
as if life was a dream with only one way out
perhaps that’s why people start wars
no that’s no justification of course but many people have no other way of feeling alive it seems
and I used to think that everything had already been written I could only read texts written by others
but I myself wouldn’t write anything that’s worthy of love
26 August 2022
the future has come and it turns out it has your eyes
the eyes of murdered children does life have time to flash before your eyes
before the rocket explodes
what do we remember about lightning—thunder reaches us later
the future has come where do you see yourself at our company in five years' time
at some point I didn’t get a job at an oil and gas company
they had read my CV on a website invited me for interview but I wasn’t thinking about a job at an oil and gas company
I was thinking I was worthy of those boots for eight thousand in the shop window
I was thinking that if such boots are for sale somebody probably buys them
and that means I too can make that much money in percentage correlation (I mean I wouldn’t spend all my salary on boots after all only some part)
the future has come and I don’t see myself at any of the companies
I’m looking at a lake in Berlin a regatta’s going on
as if a rocket exploded and we found ourselves on the other side of the mirror
as a child I was most curious about things on the other side of the mirror
I’d look into it and wonder how I could possibly get in there now I’ve ended up here
Six Poems about War
Olga Bragina
translated from the Russian by Josephine von Zitzewitz
Listen to the poem “we haven’t yet answered the question can one write poetry after Bucha” read in the original Russian by the poet:
Olga Bragina, a poet, prose writer and translator from Kyiv who mostly writes in Russian, was forced to leave her hometown shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022. Since then, she has been attending literary residencies in Poland, Germany and other European countries and contributing to many events designed to make the voice of Ukrainian culture heard. The poems offered here are meditations on the impact of war and displacement on a writer, in unadorned language that never ceases to question itself. They are part of the ongoing struggle to define what happens to literary language in the face of atrocity (see Poem 2).
The style of these poems is in some respect typical of Bragina’s work; we can find it, for example, in her 2020 collection Речь похожа на карманный фонарик (Speech is like a pocket torchlight). Her prosaic, deliberately “unpoetic” diction, the run-on lines that lack punctuation and the sparse imagery are the perfect vehicle for her war poems; they give an acute sense of the first-person narrator’s feeling of alienation in a newly disjointed world where most previous points of orientation have been destroyed.
Translating this kind of writing poses specific challenges. Bragina’s language is extremely laconic, and it has been my priority to preserve her register. Unlike Russian, English requires a verb in every sentence, a feature that often forces the translator to make a specific choice and also adds words to the target text. The lack of punctuation in Bragina’s poems renders some phrases ambiguous, and once again the need to add verbs and definite/indefinite articles, as well as the fixed syntax required in English, makes this effect difficult to convey fully.
The style of these poems is in some respect typical of Bragina’s work; we can find it, for example, in her 2020 collection Речь похожа на карманный фонарик (Speech is like a pocket torchlight). Her prosaic, deliberately “unpoetic” diction, the run-on lines that lack punctuation and the sparse imagery are the perfect vehicle for her war poems; they give an acute sense of the first-person narrator’s feeling of alienation in a newly disjointed world where most previous points of orientation have been destroyed.
Translating this kind of writing poses specific challenges. Bragina’s language is extremely laconic, and it has been my priority to preserve her register. Unlike Russian, English requires a verb in every sentence, a feature that often forces the translator to make a specific choice and also adds words to the target text. The lack of punctuation in Bragina’s poems renders some phrases ambiguous, and once again the need to add verbs and definite/indefinite articles, as well as the fixed syntax required in English, makes this effect difficult to convey fully.
Olga Bragina is a Ukrainian poet, prose writer and translator. She is the author of six books in Russian and Ukrainian: Аппликации (Applications; Lira, 2011), Неймдроппинг (Namedropping; Lira, 2012), Фоновый свет (Background Light; Kayala, 2018), Речь похожа на карманный фонарик (Speech Is Like a Flash Lamp; Gerda, 2020), Призмы плеромы (Prisms of Pleroma; UGAR, 2021), Пелікани (Pelicans; Kayala, 2021).
Bragina’s work has appeared in many prestigious literary journals in Ukraine and Russia. Translations have appeared in Spoke, Words Without Borders, AGNI, Springhouse Journal, South Florida Poetry Journal (USA), Eurolitkrant (Belgium), Wakat, Helikopter, Babiniec Literacki (Poland), Ravt, Revista Kametsa (Peru), Virus (Turkey), Med Andra Ord, Kultur (Sweden), and Inkroci (Italy), as well as in several anthologies: Ukraińska nadzieja (Poland, 2017), Przewodnik po zaminowanym terenie (Poland, 2021), Ukraine in the Work of International Poets (2022), Literary Waves Publishing, PoEzja London, Ukrainian Poems and Paintings from the Lines of Fire (Egypt, 2022), Invasion. Ukrainian Poems about the War (Ireland, 2022), O Tanatos Epxotan Pros to Mepos Moy Petontas (Greece, 2022), and Under Ukrainas Oppha Himmel (Sweden, 2022).
Josephine von Zitzewitz is an academic currently teaching Russian literature at New College, University of Oxford, UK. She is the author of two academic monographs on late Soviet samizdat literature, Poetry and the Leningrad Religious-Philosophical Seminar 1976-1980: Music for a Deaf Age (Legenda/MHRA and Routledge, 2016) and The Culture of Samizdat: Literature and Underground Networks in the Late Soviet Union (Bloomsbury, 2020), and numerous articles on late 20th-century and contemporary Russian poetry.
Her translations of Russian-language poetry have appeared in Modern Poetry in Translation, Dream Catcher and Tentacular (UK), The Notre Dame Review, Words without Borders and Circumference (USA); as well as 100 Poems about Moscow: An Anthology (BSG Press, 2016), winner of the 2017 Books of Russia Award in Poetry; and Poets of the Frontline: An Anthology of WWII Poems (BSG Press, 2020). She won the Cardinal Points Translation Award in 2013 and was a Translation Fellow at Hawthornden Castle (Scotland) in 2015. In February 2021, she co-edited the “Young Russophonia” issue of Words without Borders together with Hilah Kohen.
