The Voice Over

CONTENTS

Preface

Bibliographic Note

Introduction. “Speaking in Voices”: On Maria Stepanova’s Literary Creation, by Irina Shevelenko

PART I: THE HERE-WORLD

from On Twins

A Gypski, a Polsk I, a Jewski, a Russki

The North of sleep. Head’s in a pillow cradle

from The Here-World

Adieu, until one branched floor higher

Ahoy! Beyond the azure’s tempest

For you, but the voice of the straitened Muse

from Songs of the Northern Southerners

The Bride

The Pilot

from Happiness

The morning sun arises in the morning

As Danaë, prone in the incarce-chamber

It is certainly time to stop

Even bluer than the toilet tiles

(a birthday on the train)

(half an hour on foot)

from Physiology and Private History

July 3rd, 2004

1. I’ll now make a couple of

2. Doctors, lectors and actors, young widows

The Women’s Locker Room at Planet Fitness

Sarah on the Barricades

1. The year nineteen-oh-five

2. Of all those lying in the earth, foreheads tossed back

The Desire to Be a Rib

1. Me and myself, we’re uneasy, like a lady with her pitbull

2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Bus Stop: Israelitischer Friedhof

from O

Zoo, Woman, Monkey

PART II: DISPLACED PERSON

from The Lyric, the Voice

And a vo-vo-voice arose

In the festive sky, impassivable, tinfurled

Saturday and Sunday burn like stars

In every little park, in every little square

from Kireevsky

from the cycle Young Maids Sing

Translator’s Note by Eugene Ostashevsky

Mom-pop didn’t know him

Mama, what janitor

A train is riding over Russia

Ordnance was weeping in the open

The A went past, Tram-Traum

Well I don’t sing Kupitye papirosn

from the cycle Kireevsky

The light swells and pulses at the garden gate

In the village, in the field, in the forest

A deer, a deer stood in that place

The last songs are assembling

from the cycle Underground Pathephone

My dear, my little Liberty

There he lies in his new bed, a band of paper round his head

Don’t wait for us, my darling

Don’t strain your sight

Four Operas

1. Carmen

2. Aida

3. Fidelio

4. Iphigenia in Aulis

Essays

In Unheard-of Simplicity

Displaced Person

PART III: SPOLIA

Spolia

War of the Beasts and the Animals

Translator’s Note by Sasha Dugdale

War of the Beasts and the Animals

Essays

Today Before Yesterday (excerpt)

After the Dead Water

Intending to Live

At the Door of a Notnew Age

PART IV: OVER VENERABLE GRAVES

Essays

The Maximum Cost of Living (Marina Tsvetaeva)

Conversations in the Realm of the Dead (Lyubov Shaporina)

What Alice Found There (Alisa Poret)

The Last Hero (Susan Sontag)

From That Side: Notes on Sebald

Over Venerable Graves

Notes