{"id":2063,"date":"2010-08-01T19:24:12","date_gmt":"2010-08-01T19:24:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meeseeks:5080\/blog\/?p=2063"},"modified":"2010-08-01T19:24:12","modified_gmt":"2010-08-01T19:24:12","slug":"poem-mendelssohn-concerto","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/2010\/08\/poem-mendelssohn-concerto\/","title":{"rendered":"Poem: Mendelssohn Concerto"},"content":{"rendered":"

Following this salute to the Moscow Seven<\/a>, a poem by one of the seven, Vadim\u00a0Delone (1947-1983, pictured in Paris in 1982), written in 1965, presumably following a\u00a0performance of Mendelssohn’s E minor violin concerto\u00a0(translation my own, with help from a Russian-English dictionary, a strong coffee, and Google Translate):
\n\"\"<\/a>
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

Mendelssohn Concerto<\/em>
\nOutside indefinite and sleepy
\nAutumn rain rustled monotone.
\nThe wind howled and rushed in with a groan
\nAt the sound of a violin, a concerto of Mendelssohn.
\nI have long been used so painfully,
\nHow long I have not sat sleepless,
\nSo tired and so passive,
\nSince escaping to a concerto of Mendelssohn.
\nRunning a telephone wire,
\nVoice of my pain betrayed involuntarily,
\nYou asked me nervously –
\nWhat happened to you, what is it?
\nI could not have answered in monosyllables,
\nIf you even thus groan,
\nWhat sounded in the night anxiously
\nThe tempestuous strings of Mendelssohn.
\nMoscow 1965<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Notes and References (Updated 2010-08-08):<\/em>
\nAll poetry loses in translation.\u00a0 Working on this poem, I learn that the Russian word for violin, skripka<\/em>, is close to the word for creak or squeak or rasp, skrip<\/em>.\u00a0 In an earlier version, I translated the last line of the poem as “Fiddling passionate Mendelssohn”, but this does not capture the original’s double meaning of violin-playing<\/em> and rasping<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0 I am very grateful to violist Lev Zhurbin<\/a> for suggesting what is now the last line.\u00a0 With no folk violin tradition in Russia (unlike in Moldova or the Ukraine), there is no equivalent Russian word to the English word “fiddle”.
\nWebsites (in Russian) devoted to Delone\u00a0are here<\/a> and here<\/a>.
\nAnother poem about a violin, Joe Stickney’s This is the Violin<\/em>, is here<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Other posts in\u00a0this series are here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Following this salute to the Moscow Seven, a poem by one of the seven, Vadim\u00a0Delone (1947-1983, pictured in Paris in 1982), written in 1965, presumably following a\u00a0performance of Mendelssohn’s E minor violin concerto\u00a0(translation my own, with help from a Russian-English dictionary, a strong coffee, and Google Translate): Mendelssohn Concerto Outside indefinite and sleepy Autumn rain […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,63,83],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","category-poetry","category-violin","p1","y2010","m08","d01","h19"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2063\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}