The Voice Over

Two other translations, the poems “Saturday and Sunday burn like stars” (trans. Dmitry Manin) and “The Women’s Locker Room at Planet Fitness” (trans. Zachary Murphy King), earned first and second prizes respectively in the 2017 Compass Translation Award competition dedicated to the poetry of Maria Stepanova; they originally appeared in vol. 8 (2018) of Cardinal Points Literary Journal, a project of the Slavic Studies Department of Brown University and StoSvet (www.stosvet.org), edited by Boris Dralyuk and Irina Mashinski. The translation of “The Women’s Locker Room” was substantially revised for publication in this volume.

Finally, by permission of Bloodaxe Books, as specified on the copyright page, we have included eight translations by Sasha Dugdale from her forthcoming book of translations of Maria Stepanova’s poetry, War of the Beasts and the Animals. The translation of the title poem from this book, along with the translator’s note, was first published in Modern Poetry in Translation, no. 3 (2017), and it was revised for the book. The poem “Bus Stop: Israelitischer Friedhof” appeared in Other Countries: Contemporary Poets Rewiring History (2014). Spolia was published in PN Review, vol. 46, no. 4 (2020).

As the editor of this volume, I would like to thank, first and foremost, the extraordinary team of translators whose dedicated work made this project come true: Alexandra Berlina, Sasha Dugdale, Sibelan Forrester, Amelia Glaser, Zachary Murphy King, Dmitry Manin, Ainsley Morse, Eugene Ostashevsky, Andrew Reynolds, and Maria Vassileva. I am particularly indebted to Ainsley Morse and Eugene Ostashevsky for their help at the early stages of planning for this volume and for their advice on several occasions in the course of my work. My spouse and colleague, Karen Evans-Romaine, provided invaluable editorial advice on poetry translations, as did Megan Kennedy, who also copyedited a draft of my introduction. Commentaries by three anonymous reviewers solicited by Columbia University Press were very helpful at the final stage of my work. I am grateful to these reviewers as well as to the members of the editorial board of the Russian Library series for their support of this project. The editorial staff at Columbia University Press, especially Christine Dunbar and Christian Winting, offered unfailing support throughout the process. This process would be entirely impossible without Maria Stepanova’s involvement at all stages of preparation of this volume.

TRANSLITERATION AND STYLE

This volume uses the Library of Congress (LC) system of transliteration of the Cyrillic alphabet (without diacritics) in bibliographic references as well as in transliterations of titles of Russian sources. A modified LC system is used in the text for personal names and some proper nouns to ensure easier readability.

All omissions in quoted sources are designated with ellipses in square brackets to distinguish them from suspension points as a punctuation mark used by authors of quoted sources.

BIBLIOGRAPHIC NOTE

Maria Stepanova’s poems included in this volume come from the following books of poetry: O bliznetsakh (On twins, 2001), Tut-svet (The here-world, 2001), Pesni severnykh iuzhan (Songs of the northern southerners, 2001), Schast’e (Happiness, 2003), Fiziologiia i malaia istoriia (Physiology and private history, 2005), Lirika, golos (The lyric, the voice, 2010), Kireevskii (Kireevsky, 2012), and Spolia (2015). With the exception of Spolia, these collections are available on the website of the Vavilon Project: http://www.vavilon.ru/texts/stepanova0.html.

The cycle O, from which one poem is included, appeared in Stikhi i proza v odnom tome (Poetry and prose in one volume, 2010). This volume of collected poems, among other works, reproduces Songs of the Northern Southerners and Physiology and Private History from the above list. Stepanova’s more recent volume of collected poems, Protiv liriki (Against lyric, 2017), reproduces all other books of poetry from that list.

Essays included in parts II and IV of this volume come from the collection Odin, ne odin, ne ia (Alone, not alone, not me, 2014). The first three essays included in part III were published together in Tri stat’i po povodu (Three essays regarding, 2015); the last essay in that part appeared on Colta.ru on November 11, 2016.