Vyacheslav Ivanov and C.M. Bowra: a ... - UCL Discovery

(unchanged) in 1947 and then followed by A Second Book of Russian Verse (1948). In
this completely new sequel Bowra included a similar number of poems (one-hundred
and sixty) but almost doubled the number of poets (from twenty-seven to forty-nine),
adding several new authors from the pre-Pushkin and most recent periods. Ivanov was
represented by two further poems from the same sections of Cor Ardens as before. The
first poem, ‘Ulov’ (translated as ‘Now the golden leaves have been beggared...’),
combines great lyrical beauty with profound religious feeling; it likens an autumnal
wood, stripped of its leaves, to a stone cathedral, and presents the poet's song in this
context as a hymn to nature, which can only give partial witness to the presence of the
divine on earth. The second poem, ‘Simposion III. Pokhorony’ (translated as ‘Funerals’),
offers a more detached philosophical meditation on the relation between the funeral of
the soul's unrequited love and the resurrecting power of Eros. 14
Ivanov's poetry is renowned for its complexity, and one might well marvel at
Bowra's enterprise in undertaking these translations, particularly given his limited
knowledge of Russian. In the preface to The Heritage of Symbolism, dated October
1942, he confessed quite candidly: ‘I can make no pretence to have a good knowledge of
Russian and I may well have made mistakes.’ 15 Similarly, in the introduction to A
Book of Russian Verse, he noted: ‘I have no claims to be a Russian scholar.’ 16 In both
his anthologies of Russian poetry he made a point of underlining the considerable help
he had received from various quarters. In the preface to the first book, he thanks
Professor V. De S. Pinto, John Betjeman (‘in the intricacies of English composition’)
and S. Konovalov. In the preface to the second book the names change: ‘My own
14 For the translations, see C.M. Bowra (ed.), A Second Book of Russian Verse, tr. into English by various
hands (London: Macmillan, 1948), 58. According to Bowra’s preface, some of the translations included in
this anthology were first published in the journals Horizon, Orion, and Mandrake. For the original texts
from Cor Ardens, Part 1, Books 1 and 3, see Ivanov, Sobranie sochinenii, II, 280-1, 375-6.
15 Bowra, The Heritage of Symbolism, v.
16 Bowra (ed.), A Book of Russian Verse, v.
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