Tomas Venclova, the esteemed poet, scholar, and translator, has just released his third collection of poetry in English translation. So in addition to Winter Dialogue (1997, Northwestern University Press, tr. Diana Senechal) and The Junction (2008, Bloodaxe Books, tr. Senechal and Ellen Hinsey), we now have The Grove of the Eumenides. This time, I had the honor of joining his previous translators in conveying his dense, allusive, and musical poems into English. Whereas his previous English-language books covered his output for most of the twentieth century, this book selects mostly from his twenty-first-century poems (see below for exceptions). The book contains an introduction by the editor, Ellen Hinsey, that contextualizes his work, pointing out his debt to classicism as well as the Eastern European poet’s struggle with History. The subject matter and settings for the poems are cosmopolitan, ranging from Poussin’s Landscape with Polyphemus to the emigrant shores of the New World, from the Azovstal Steel Works of Ukraine to the Gurdich Gate of Montenegro, from the remnants of Ancient Greece to the layered remains of Vilnius’s multi-ethnic past, from contemporary Krakow to Akhmatova’s husband fighting in WWI, from poems that meditate on history and time and fate, to poems of love and veneration. The book is a work of Western civilization (though a trip to China provides contrast) and intends that to mean something: a set of values and achievements worth fighting for, a set of values and achievements that the author did fight for as part of the Soviet Union’s dissident Helsinki Group. Expulsion from the Soviet Union in the ’70s was followed by years of exile in New Haven, an exile softened by a professorial post at Yale University and the presence of his fellow poet-friends-in-exile Joseph Brodsky and Czesław Miłosz. After retirement, the call of home was too strong to resist, and the great man of Lithuanian letters returned to Vilnius. It is both intimidating and a thrill for me to sit with him. What can I say to one who has been friends with Akhmatova, Brodsky, Miłosz, Szymborska, and so many more of the canonical poets of the last century? Perhaps the questions matter less than the fact that this poet, well into his ninth decade, having lived through so much historical upheaval, is still with us and speaking. It is a gift for us to listen.
Rimas Uzgiris
Vilnius University
Department of Translation Studies
RU: Firstly, what do you think of your new book in English? Are these your best twenty-first-century poems? Or does this book span a larger time frame? Are there poems you wish were included but were untranslated or left out?
TV: Bloodaxe Books publishes English translations of numerous non-English contemporary authors, including some Lithuanians (e.g., Gintaras Grajauskas). This is my second poetry book by Bloodaxe (The Junction appeared in 2008). It contains poems from the collection Už Onos ir Bernardinų (Beyond St. Anne’s and the Bernardines, 2023), but also many earlier works, say, “Chinese Impressions” (1996) and even “Let the time you no longer remember,” written as early as 1961, when I was at the age of twenty-three or twenty-four. I am quite fond of Bloodaxe, which does a careful editorial job and provides beautiful, virtually bibliophilic volumes. I believe every poem I considered worthy of including was translated and printed in the book.
RU: Could you explain the title? The Eumenides are often referred to as the Erinyes of Furies. They only became “the gracious ones” when Athena replaced vengeance with justice in the Athenian polis (as per Aeschylus). Given the amount of historical “fury” you have witnessed in your life and work, are you making a point with the name you have chosen?
TV: According to the myth, the Erinyes (the furious ones) were transformed into the Eumenides (the gracious ones) – see the tragedy by Aeschylus you have mentioned. In their grove, in the Athenian suburb of Colonus, Oedipus ended his days (nobody knows what happened to him). That, in turn, was described by Sophocles. The grove is still there (I have been there once), even if in a rather degraded state. Thus, the title hints at a farewell to the complicated life and a hope for redemption.
RU: How would you characterize your chief preoccupations in poetry? Are there certain subjects that you like to return to? Are there certain forms of styles of writing that you prefer?
TV: My topics are diversified. They include mythological, religious, and historical ones. I have also written love poems, elegies, ekphrastic, landscape, and everyday experience poems, etc., etc. More frequently than not, these subjects join and coalesce in a particular work which becomes a sort of meditation. My main poetic preoccupation is time and its consequences (I believe any serious poet deals primarily with this). I also do not shrink from political themes, such as the Ukrainian war. In my opinion, poetry has to provide an answer to our difficult era, though usually it does this in a very indirect way. I often employ traditional verse with echoes of the Baroque and Classicism (perhaps my way of writing is a bit anachronistic) but also use vers libre – it depends on my goals or just on my mood.
RU: What inspires you to write a new poem? Or do you just sit down at certain times and start?
TV: There should be a strong emotional or intellectual impression which compels me to produce a poem, but usually several months pass between it and a start of poetic work. When I feel that it has somewhat matured inside my brain (and when I have time), I sit at my desk in the morning and leave it around, say, three o’clock. It usually takes several days, sometimes a week or more until the poem is finished – it’s a hard job for me. Much later, I look through the poem and edit it, though rarely in a substantial way.
RU: How would you characterize your method of working with translators? Do you request many changes?
TV: In case of my English, Polish, and Russian translators (these languages I know on a native or near-native level), I can follow their work and correct errors or explain some nuances if necessary. Incidentally, it does not happen too often. I was generally lucky with my translators. Among the English ones, Diana Senechal and Rimas Užgiris know Lithuanian (for you, Rimas, it is a native language, and Diana has learned it to the degree that she knows some of my poems by heart in the original version). Ellen Hinsey does not speak Lithuanian and needs a literal translation (trot) with some explanations (which I provide), but she is a brilliant professional poet and a very conscientious person at that. Therefore, she does her work beyond any reproach. Some formal traits of the poems, such as rhymes, usually disappear in the English version, but one most likely cannot do anything here (when Joseph Brodsky attempted to translate his own work into English himself, rhyming and all, he was hardly successful). I cannot control the translations into Hungarian, Finnish, or Chinese (also, say, into Swedish or Dutch), but Eiko Sakurai, who is now preparing my book in Japanese, knows Lithuanian very well and asks for my advice frequently.
RU: This is your third poetry collection in English, yet this and the last one were published in Britain. Jason Gordy Walker wrote in a review of this latest book in Asymptote, saying, “Tomas Venclova has produced a steady stream of highly intellectual and humane works since being welcomed into the US literary scene.” Do you feel welcomed and/or understood in the US literary scene? Is it different in Britain?
TV: In both countries, I had numerous positive reviews and poetry readings which were, as a rule, successful. A poet in our times can count mainly on succès d’estime. I believe I have it: perhaps it is even more considerable than my work merits, but this is not for me to judge.
RU: How has your work been received in non-English-speaking countries?
TV: My poetry books have appeared in twenty or more languages, including exotic ones, such as Albanian. The exception among the world languages is Spanish (some poems have been published in it, but not a whole collection – seemingly it is being prepared at the present time). I know for sure that I have more than one attentive reader in all these countries, just as in the English-speaking world. The largest number of readers is presumably in Poland. I have also received several international poetry prizes.
RU: In what languages outside of Lithuanian do your poems sound the best? Why those?
TV: Alongside the English translations, the best are, in my opinion, Polish and Russian ones: these were done by world-class poets (Milosz, Brodsky, Gorbanevskaya) or by world-class translators (Baranczak) and sometimes sound – to my ear – better than the originals.
RU: You yourself are a prolific translator, having recently published translations into Lithuanian of Brodsky, Miłosz, and Szymborska. Of your contemporaries, would these three be the most important to you?
TV: Yes. Yet among the twentieth-century poets, I love many more, including Frost, Auden, Cavafy, Mandelstam, Akhmatova.
RU: In your translations, you always reproduce the formal structure of the original: the rhyme scheme and the meter. Do you find that you have to re-write parts of the text in order to do this consistently, or is Lithuanian an easier language to rhyme in, perhaps, than, say, English?
TV: I follow the so-called Eastern European school of translation (e.g., Lozinsky, Tuwim, and many others) who allowed themselves to re-write parts of the text in order to preserve strict formal patters. Of course, one must have some intuitive feeling of measure here (changes that destroy the original’s sense and/or poetics are impermissible). Rhyming in Lithuanian is, in my opinion, easier (in any case, less banal) than in English, due to the traits of Lithuanian grammar and different length of words.
RU: Were you ever tempted to write poetry in English like your friend Joseph Brodsky?
TV: No. My English, which I have learned indeed only in my middle age, in emigration, is definitely insufficient for that. I can produce an essay or a scholarly article in English, but it needs editing, to say nothing about the fact that it’s hard labor for me.
RU: Given your support of Ukraine, as evidenced by your powerful poem “Azovstal,” how do you explain Brodsky’s dismissal of Ukraine as an independent country with its own culture?
TV: Partly, it was a joke, but a rather unhappy joke, to put it mildly. When Brodsky read his “Ukrainian” poem to me, I told him it should not be published. And he never published it, but once or twice read it publicly. Therefore, it was taped and then printed, which was an unlucky occurrence.
RU: Are there English language poets whose work you feel close to?
TV: Many of them, starting with Shakespeare, Donne, Marvell, and George Herbert, but generally excluding the Romantics. As I have already said, I admire Frost and Auden, also Emily Dickinson, Wallace Stevens, and Conrad Aiken. It does not mean I feel “close” to their work, but it is somewhat necessary – or, in any case, very interesting – for me.
RU: The poems in this collection span the time from your life in New Haven to your return to Vilnius. There are themes of an immigrant’s and exile’s life among them – was the desire for home – for presence in the language, culture, and geography of your youth – central to your return?
TV: Well, it’s difficult to tell. I strongly prefer Europe to the US, and I love Vilnius’s landscape and architecture. Its history is incredibly convoluted and therefore spectacular, and its cultural life today looks as rich and inspiring as in any significant European capital. But I was never nostalgic.
RU: W. S. Merwin has said about living in Europe for years that “I wanted to get back to the States, and to life in the States and the language there.” Did you ever feel removed from your language while living in the States? Did you feel a disconnect?
TV: No. I preserved enough of Lithuanian inside me, and I always read much in Lithuanian, including early authors. Moreover, there are quite perceptible groups of Lithuanian speakers in almost any American city.
RU: What is your relation to the Lithuanian poetic tradition – whose poetry made you want to write and formed you as a poet?
TV: In school, I read all the usual stuff – Donelaitis, Baranauskas, Maironis, Mykolaitis-Putinas, Binkis, Nėris – and I liked it, as a rule. Secretly, I read also Brazdžionis, Aistis, Miškinis, and many others. But the poet I considered and still consider the best Lithuanian one in the twentieth century (perhaps the best Lithuanian poet of all times) was, for me, Henrikas Radauskas.
RU: Do you follow contemporary Lithuanian poetry? Is there a change in how Lithuanians write? Do you find any authors particularly intriguing?
TV: I do not follow it as closely as one may wish – I am just too old for that. Still, Jonynas, Marčėnas, Patackas, Grajauskas, and Burokas look intriguing enough. Some time ago, I was impressed by certain texts of Patricija Šmit, an idiosyncratic female author. Most of the younger poets, under the influence of Geda and Bložė, as well as of Western poetry, have totally renounced traditional forms. Sometimes I consider it a pity (e.g., in my opinion, it harms the translations of classical poetic works).
RU: Are you working on another book at the moment?
TV: I just finished Tomo Venclovos abėcėlė (The Alphabet of Tomas Venclova) – a book of essays about persons, places, and various phenomena significant for me, put in alphabetical order. It is approximately 200 pages long.
RU: Ah, I look forward to it! The only such book I’ve read is Miłosz’s ABCs. Was he the inspiration for this new project?
TV: Partly, it was. But there are also other books which belong to the “one’s alphabet” genre.
Poems from The Grove of the Eumenides
Before the Fort
Whatever else, speak. Verse hardly holds what is pressed
Over time into the hardening clay of consciousness.
There, we find contrasts of colors and fine detail,
The ocean’s gleam, shame, wonder, and our travail.
Maybe after death. But the plane rolls down the runway.
Maybe when you won’t exist. But a sentence has no fate.
Over the horizon’s line, by the switchback – a medley
Of roofs. The citadel casts its shadow by Gurdić Gate.
Greet the scorched grasses, whose dry clumps lock up
The stretch of bay where nameless towns of stone
Age and decay. Thunderstorms slip along the strand
On the other side of the well-burnished slope.
Clouds. An untamed motorboat stirs the current alone
And from bay bottom raises Mediterranean sand.
Now, in the darkening mirror, you don’t meet you.
A lamp, a keyboard, a dictionary. That much came true.
On the windward side of storms, at Europe’s deaf edge,
Where you’ve been taken by fate or divine caprice,
You will lodge in darkness, as others have found a place
Beyond horizon’s brushstroke or the switchback’s ledge.
The keyboard flickers, a presence hovers that you but feel.
The mirror fades. Age enfetters the fatigued body alive.
You can’t begin from the start, no matter how you strive.
Whatever else, now speak. There is nothing more real.
Variation on the Theme of Awakening
What echoes in the dark? Is it the wind of June
in the gardens by the lake? If so, the two of us
are in the summer house up high, still young,
having fallen asleep just before dawn.
A muffled engine? Then we’re in that dive
by the harbor, in a country where we’d prefer
not to linger, worn out, not by love, but by the journey
over a wind-swept bay. Or maybe it’s the chirping
of a decrepit, old-fashioned alarm clock
ineptly penetrating the parching air?
If so, then I know I’ve awakened in Tuscany,
but the name of the town escapes me.
The times are in a knot. Impossible to unravel
the nuances of years, places, sounds. A hand
remains, still pressed against my palm, and
a gentle sigh marking the passage of a dream
is more easily understood than one’s voice.
What has melded together will not melt apart.
Our children have grown and left us alone.
So many friends have passed away. Almost everyday,
faces float up from a fog of photographs –
faces we’ll never see again on this earth.
And in the concert hall, flanked by urban maples,
the doors of night are opened by draughts of sound.
The curtain sways. Beyond the window shutters
foliage fades into dim murmuration
while limpid silhouettes climb the walls.
By now it doesn’t matter if this is called
love or incorrigible fidelity: we share
a fathomless fear, as when the plane
carrying you home is late, or when
bloody traces stain the cotton pad
you try to hide from my sight.
Let’s go to sleep. Let’s imagine we don’t know
that one of us will be the first to go.
Better to vanish than to be left alone.
An echo once more. Clarifying to a bell.
From a church? A clock-tower? All the same.
From longing, disagreements, pain
a world is born belonging to two
which is shared like a gift
while the unknown beats its wings above.
We were fated to prune grape vines,
to build a roof from Lebanese cedar,
and to burn in undying flame.
It’s almost dawn. As ordered in the Book,
I will not wake you till you please.
I listen to the bell, my breath held tight.
Translated from the Lithuanian by Rimas Uzgiris
