Language: Russian
Poet: Roman Osminkin
Translator: Helena Kernan
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diabolical laughter offstage
Exercises from the cycle “Uncreative Writing” by Roman Osminkin, translated by Helena Kernan
Roman Osminkin (b. 1979) is a Saint Petersburg-based poet, performer, and video artist. He has become known as a member of the group Laboratory of Poetical Actionism, founder of Techno-Poetry, author of poetry books Comrade-Thing and Comrad
Helena Kernan is a translator and researcher working on contemporary poetry, biopolitics and the documentary mode in the post-Soviet space. She holds an MA degree from the University of Cambridge and is currently a scholar at UC Berkeley. Her translations from Russian have been published by Modern Poetry in Translation, Words Without Borders, Ugly Duckling Presse and Isolarii, and she was chosen as the inaugural Translator in Residence at the Pushkin House/University of Oxford Contemporary Russian Poetry in Translation Residency.
* * *
У настоящего проклятого художника
может быть лишь одно железное алиби:
если в рынок и канон он был включен
посмертно
(закадровый инфернальный смех)
* * *
Perhaps a true accursed artist has only one rock-solid
alibi:
when he is admitted to the market and the canon
after his death
(diabolical laughter off-stage)
* * *
у кого не замазано/заклеено надкусанное
яблоко на apple лэптопе – тот не
современный художник*.
* – те художники, у кого нету
эйпловского лэптопа просто не
проходят дресс-код в middle class
contemporary art club
* * *
you can’t be a contemporary artist* unless you’ve
taped over the half-bitten apple on your apple
laptop.
* artists without an apple laptop will be barred for
not following the dress code at the middle class
contemporary art club
* * *
закалённое в долгом пути кx
литературному Олимпуx
самомнение
позволяло этомуx
ангажированному поэту
видеть причину попадания вx
качестве объекта
исследования в диссертации
славистов всего мира
не в достоинствах
собственного творчества,
а в удачной политической
конъюнктуре,
выбрасывающей авторов
подобных ему на гребень
актуальности столь же
быстро,
как и погребающих их под
своими завалами
* * *
arrogance tempered on the long road to a
literary Olympus
allowed this politically-motivated poet
to understand why he became the research
focus of dissertations of Slavicists the world
over
not by virtue of his own works
but in a fortuitous political environment that
throws artists like him onto the crest of the
zeitgeist just as quickly
as it buries them under its rubble
* * *
характерной чертой прекария
является приготовление и
поедание буржуазного
завтрака с пролетарской
скоростью
другой характерной чертой
прекария является
приготовление и
поедание пролетарского
ужина с буржуазным
самолюбованием
* * *
a defining characteristic of precarity is
preparing and consuming a bourgeois
breakfast with proletarian speed
another defining characteristic of precarity is
preparing and consuming a proletarian
dinner with bourgeois narcissism
