cover image Time of Gratitude

Time of Gratitude

Gennady Aygi, trans. from the Russian by Peter France. New Directions, $16.95 trade paper (144p) ISBN 978-0-8112-2719-3

A collection of essays and poems inspired by a life in art, Aygi’s work is impressive in its international scope and deep devotion to the ideal of a poetry that translator France describes as “essentially communication, creating... communities of people who could share a vision.” Born in the small Soviet republic of Chuvashia, the young poet was educated in Moscow, where he had to make the difficult choice between writing in Russian or in his native Chuvashian. There he befriended the writer Boris Pasternak, “the Poet... the older Friend, the Teacher, the unparalleled Interlocutor,” whose positions Aygi records respectfully: “My ‘individuality’ causes me to diverge somewhat from Pasternak, but at the same time I marvel at his incredible daring, courage and responsibility towards the Word.” Likewise admiring without obsequiousness are the shorter, commemorative pieces on the Russian poets Velimir Khlebnikov, Aleksei Kruchoeykh, and Vladimir Mayakovsky. And although literature in the U.S.S.R. was largely cut off from world developments, Aygi writes with passion and insight about European writers including Franz Kafka, Paul Celan, and Tomas Tranströmer, whose poetry is “a kind of ‘discipline’ for the spirit... communicative without condescension.” His own included poems are both simple and striking, a “god-pyre—this open field / letting all things pass through,” showing that he belongs in the company of the authors about whom he writes. [em](Dec.) [/em]