Шведская музыка

К. Х.
 

Когда снег заметает море и скрип сосны  

[...]

 

 © The Estate of Joseph Brodsky / Wylie Agency London

Schwedische Musik
Translated by Felix Philipp Ingold

 

für K. Ch.

Wenn Schnee das Meer fegt [...]

Svensk musik
Translated by Bengt Jangfeldt
 
Till C. H.
 
När snön sopar igen havet och knaket från en tall
 
lämnar djupare spår i luften än slädens medar,
 
hur blått kan ett öga då bli? Hur kall
 
kan en röst då bli som är oengagerad?
 
Världen utanför försvinner och är spårlöst borta,
 
gör det bleka ansiktet till sin gisslan.
 
Så fosforescerar en mollusk på havets botten,
 
så förvandlas ljudets hela hastighet till tystnad,
 
så är en tändsticka nog för att få
 
eld i en spis, så fortsätter uret, som slagen
 
hos hjärtat, sedan det stannat här, att gå
 
på den andra sidan av havet. 
 
© The Estate of Joseph Brodsky / Wylie Agency London
 


  • Country in which the text is set
    Sweden
  • Featured locations
    Sweden
  • Impact
    The poem is connected with Brodsky’s first visit to Sweden in 1975. The title “Swedish music” might be inspired by a line in a poem by S. Krasovitsky published in Samizdat in the 1970s.
    Brodsky’s aesthetical views were formed in Leningrad in the 1940s and 1950s. Neoclassical architecture, which was badly damaged by bombs during the 900-days siege of Leningrad during the WW II, infinite perspectives of the city’s suburbs, the multiplication of reflections on the water – those are the motives immanently present in his poetry and interwoven by impressions of his childhood and youth.
  • Balticness
    It is a short piece referring to Brodsky’s first visit to Sweden and experience of being for the first time after his emigration on the shore “of the same sea” (the Baltic sea with Leningrad left forever being on the other side of the sea). The painfulness of the feeling is almost physical as Brodsky describes how the clock on the wall repeats the heart beat, which stops on this side of the sea, and goes on on the other side.

    Polina Lisovskaya

     

  • Bibliographic information

    Journal “Continent” (Континент) no. 18, 1978

    Published without dedication

  • Translations
    Language Year Translator
    English    
    German 1994  Felix Philipp Ingold 
    Swedish  1989  Bengt Jangfeldt 
  • Year of first publication
    1975
  • Place of first publication
    New York