Gennadi Aygi (1934-2006)
The sad news in this morning that the great Chuvash poet Gennadi Aygi died in Moscow yesterday. There are two worthwhile on-line obits in the German-language newspapers this morning: the Frankfurter Rundschau and the Neue Zuricher Zeitung. The NZZ calls him the “happy hermeticist,” a rather lovely description of Aygi. Last month I wrote about Aygi on this blog, reprinting some texts I ahd translated for the “99 poets” issue of Boundary2, and appealing for donations, given the great & pressing need for money to cover medical costs. (Aygi once joked that he had made 2000 rubles for 25 years of work. Clearly that situation didn’t improve much under the post-Soviet system). I do hope that he was able to spend his last days in a minimum of physical and medical comfort. Grandson of a practicing shaman, I am sure that he knew how to climb that world-tree & move into the next realm. Travel well, Gennady!
Again — Whisperings-and-Rustlings
1
and the cuckoo’s voice a dim coal
patiently hollowing a pit in the forest
its dampness reaching the heart
and the heart slumbers and does not wake me2
and later (slumbering by day)
in children’s play is less and less light
and their noise is the stuff of death
(and ever more sadly disappearing
in calamity – as in rubbish – I feel comfort)3
and this is that time of Self-Dying
4
and sleep snowstorm like a white cload
armour of non-active youth
(and not “struggle” my friend but living –
lingeringly – unto-death in the stillness)5
And its true name rustles – Lifedeath.
1993
“Todesguge/Deathfugue”
“Interglacial Narrows (Poems 1915-2021)”
“Always the Many, Never the One: Conversations In-between, with Florent Toniello”
“Conversations in the Pyrenees”
“A Voice Full of Cities: The Collected Essays of Robert Kelly.” Edited by Pierre Joris & Peter Cockelbergh
“An American Suite” (Poems) —Inpatient Press
“Arabia (not so) Deserta” : Essays on Maghrebi & Mashreqi Writing & Culture
“Barzakh” (Poems 2000-2012)
“Fox-trails, -tales & -trots”
“The Agony of I.B.” — A play. Editions PHI & TNL 2016
“The Book of U / Le livre des cormorans”
“Memory Rose Into Threshold Speech: The Collected Earlier Poetry of Paul Celan”
“Paul Celan, Microliths They Are, Little Stones”
“Paul Celan: Breathturn into Timestead-The Collected Later Poetry.” Translated & with commentary by Pierre Joris. Farrar, Straus & Giroux