{"id":261916,"date":"2008-05-13T16:18:13","date_gmt":"2008-05-13T16:18:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2008\/05\/13\/red-shifting\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T17:32:12","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T17:32:12","slug":"red-shifting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2008\/05\/13\/red-shifting\/","title":{"rendered":"Red Shifting"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alexandr Skidan\u2019s mentor, Arkadii Dragomoshchenko, describes Red Shifting<\/em> as \u201c[s]omnambulistic.\u201d Indeed, Skidan creates dream-poems. What is at play in the dream-poem? Incest and GAS! The Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco. Bely and Blok. Vladivostok and St. Petersburg. In this exploration of the inside versus the outside, the reader must first accept being trapped in a dream. Next, the reader must become Daniel, deciphering the secrets and codes Skidan has hidden in his dream-poems \u201clike Nebuchadnezzar.\u201d<\/p>\n

In “Delirium”, Skidan\u2019s subject is the biblical story of Lot who God instructs to flee Sodom before the city is destroyed. Lot\u2019s wife is turned into a pillar of salt when she looks back at the destruction of the city. Lot flees to the desert, alone with his two daughters. Uncomprehending, the daughters believe it is the end of the world. That only procreation with their father will ensure the continuation of the human race. They get him drunk and seduce.<\/p>\n

\n

(\u2026) the fading of the annihilated echo. lot,
\n\tfalling like a stone in the oblivion of a sling,
\nconceives the unknown, led by
\nthe degree of \u201cfall;\u201d the daughter enters him and again \u2013
\nthe daughter, another. A daughterly darkness, cascading down,
\ncovers Israel;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

A self contained ellipsis ushers in this velvet destruction of the echo creating a vacuum of sound. Throughout the poem, the echo will reappear – \u201c[b]ut these dances by the fire fire.\u201d Dance implies music but the only music is Lot\u2019s drunkenness and incestuous sex. In the end, the annihilation of the echo will be complete. There will be no words in the last stanza, instead a series of dots representing words, lines left unspoken, silence.<\/p>\n

Skidan uses his intellect as reflective armor. Each poem contains a riddle in which he confesses through masque. In the world of Red Shifting<\/em>, characters from mythology, critical theory and literature coexist with Skidan\u2019s intimates from contemporary St. Petersburg. At times these friends, acquaintances and civilians are signified by a single letter, at times by entire first names. The title poem, Red Shifting, is possibly the most direct poem in the collection. It is a day in the life, where the poet shifts in and out of conversation with those around him while observing and contemplating everyone that he encounters. He desires the cool G as they smoke cigarettes.<\/p>\n

\n

(I take out a cigarette, and before my eyes are these two
\nphotographs; I want to forget them, want to see them, but in order
\nto forget them, I need to write about them, and in order to see
\nthem \u2013 I need the opposite: to be with G.)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The poet plays with repetition but does not literally repeat himself. Skidan\u2019s echo theme now plays out through doubling, or two-ness. Through the two photographs of the quote, then again in \u201cI have two dead people on my hands.\u201d Taking it further, Skidan introduces two-ness in love—Blok and Bely, both in love with Lyubov Dmitrievna, then The Sheltering Sky<\/em>. This bread crumb trail moves away from G to the absent A. A may return and this possible return rattles the poet and again the dream-poem ends in silence, \u201cThe thought which I didn\u2019t have the power to say out loud.\u201d <\/p>\n

In “Red Bridge”, and again in “Piercing of the Lower Lip”, it is San Francisco reflected across the Pacific Ocean as Vladivostok that the poet contemplates \u2013 \u201cI heard a pacific newspaper rustle in the wind, and standing at the far end of Golden Gate Bridge\u2026I saw Vladivostok.\u201d Through poetry, Skidan allows himself to exist in two places, at two points in time with the Pacific Ocean serving as an enormous mirror warped by distance. This writing from an intentionally distorted perspective is what Dragomoshchenko refers to as Skidan \u201cbuilding a backward mirror.\u201d But there is another mirror, the mirror of translation. Principal translator Genya Turovskaya, has successfully created a mirror image in English of Skidan\u2019s careful and intentional Russian language while preserving Skidan\u2019s uniquely erudite voice peppered with controlled bursts of vulgarity. Retaining Skidan\u2019s love of vocabulary rooted in Latin, Turovskaya\u2019s translations are astute echoes, clear reflections containing microscopic detail.<\/p>\n

Alexandr Skidan was awarded the St. Petersburg-based Andrei Bely Prize in 2006 for the Russian edition of<\/em> Red Shifting.<\/p>\n

Red Shifting<\/a>
\nBy Alexandr Skidan
\nTranslated by Genya Turovskaya
\nUgly Duckling Presse
\n170 pgs, $15.00<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alexandr Skidan\u2019s mentor, Arkadii Dragomoshchenko, describes Red Shifting as \u201c[s]omnambulistic.\u201d Indeed, Skidan creates dream-poems. What is at play in the dream-poem? Incest and GAS! The Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco. Bely and Blok. Vladivostok and St. Petersburg. In this exploration of the inside versus the outside, the reader must first accept being trapped in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67486],"tags":[11966,11976,11906,11296,11986],"class_list":["post-261916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-alexandr-skidan","tag-genya-turovskaya","tag-margarita-shalina","tag-poems","tag-russian"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261916"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261916\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":358186,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261916\/revisions\/358186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}