“Board the Troika of the Past”: Alexander Voloshin Rings in the New Year

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The New Year has always been a merry holiday in my family, even in the worst of times. A decade ago, when I was still editing the Los Angeles Review of Books (which celebrates its fifteenth anniversary this year!), I invited my Belarusian friend Sasha Razor and the brilliant scholar of Soviet media David MacFadyen onto the journal’s Radio Hour to speak about the special significance of the New Year for those who lived under Soviet rule. Do listen to the episode, if the season’s spirit moves you—but to make a long story short, what Christmas, Hanukkah, Yule, Kwanza, and other religious and cultural days of wintertime revelry are for those who celebrate them around the world, New Year’s was for the denizens of the staunchly secular USSR. All the markers of Christmas especially (from the tree to the jolly bearded bestower of gifts in the night) were displaced onto New Year’s and became a beloved part of the lives even of those who otherwise, sometimes at great risk, retained their Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, or other officially repressed faith.

Of course, the significance of New Year for the East Slavic lands predates 1917, as Alexander Voloshin makes clear in a sparkling, bittersweet chapter of Sidetracked: Exile in Hollywood. I revisited the chapter this morning, and noted that it was written as 1939 turned into 1940—that is, as the world was rapidly descending into chaos. Today, as 2025 turns into 2026, it is hard for many of us to celebrate without a sense of trepidation, even of dread. Millions of people around the world will spend the evening of December 31 out in the bitter cold, or in bomb shelters. What comfort can we find in Voloshin’s words below? Only the knowledge that we aren’t the first generation to spend what should be a joyous night under dark clouds, and, with that knowledge, the suggestion that the clouds will eventually part.

Among the people to whom I’ll be raising a flute of “foamy Mumm” (or, more likely, Veuve…) tomorrow evening is Voloshin himself, whose poem, so long neglected, will once again appear in print in 2026!


Before we tasted of this woe,
we didn’t greet the New Year so . . .
We weren’t afraid and heavy-hearted . . .
Of course, the life with which we’ve parted
always seems sweet in retrospect.
Be honest, would you not elect
to board the Troika of the Past
and ditch these cars, however fast?

We’ve access now to aeroplanes,
but they are no cure for the pains
of hearts removed from native places . . .
I’d stake my life on this: The case is
that those of us older than forty
are sick at soul. However sturdy
we may appear, it’s just for show—
we’re always worried, always low.
We miss familiar hills and rivers,
and often we are seized with shivers
as we recall those distant bells,
those shepherd’s pipes . . . No, nothing quells
our longing or holds back our tears
when we dredge up those sunken years . . .
Frost-covered spruce and pine trees—all
that we had deemed “worn out,” “banal,”
“provincial” now seems rare and precious,
the only thing that might refresh us . . .

Indeed, it’s painful to admit
that disillusionment has hit
us Russians hard . . . For there were times
when we’d head south, to warmer climes—
Sorrento, Monte Carlo, Nice,
Capri . . . We’d follow our caprice . . .
And there we’d ring in the New Year,
lifting a loud and joyous cheer!
How sweet it was to float at night
in gondolas—a pure delight
to say, “Isn’t it nice and warm?
Back home it’s freezing—a big storm . . .”
While roses bloomed, we thought of snow
and of our luck; how could we know
that we would someday feel so haunted,
that snow would be all that we wanted . . .

We only love, only hold dear
the scenes that vanish, disappear . . .
Now at our temples we may find
frost of a rather different kind . . .

But let’s not dwell on that—instead
we should recall, lest we forget,
a proper Russian New Year’s Eve!
One had to live it to believe . . .

Moscow! Such merry revelries!
The snow is piled up to our knees!
How will we reach the village now?
In our swift troika—speed the plow!
Bring on the friendly toasts and drinks,
the season’s heartwarming high jinks!
Khodynka Field now lies outspread
like an enormous snow-white bed
by which we race along, pell-mell,
to the Kremlin’s chiming bells . . .

Where to now? Off to the Yar,
to hear Sokolov’s guitar,
Shishkin’s famous Roma choir . . .
What a crowd—and all afire!
Ah, no guest will ever want
for vodka at this restaurant . . .
Silver clanging, crystal ringing,
piano playing, people singing . . .
Men in tailcoats . . . Cavaliers,
grenadiers, and cuirassiers . . .
Strapping Cossacks from the Don,
merchants with their caftans on . . .
Rubies, diamonds, emeralds glitter
as the ladies smile and titter . . .
Noise and laughter everywhere—
happiness beyond compare!
Corks are popping! Here they come:
countless flutes of foamy Mumm,
Aÿ-Champagne, Abrau-Durso,
and, bien sûr, la Veuve Clicquot . . .

Twelve has struck! The maestro stands,
as the trumpets in the band
greet the New Year—all is right
with the world! The future’s bright!
So it was throughout the land,
from St. Pete to Samarkand—
but Old Russia is wiped out . . .
There, they live under the knout,
while we roam and curse our fate—
now for twenty-three years straight . . .

1939 is gone—
and good riddance . . . Moving on . . .
Oh, it left a bitter sting.
What will 1940 bring?

War, a raging hurricane . . .
The whole world has gone insane . . .
Yet faith smolders in our souls
like a mound of stubborn coals.
After all, the Russians broke
from the Tatar-Mongol yoke,
made it through the Time of Troubles
with their empire redoubled,
and watched Peter’s city rise
from the swamp before their eyes.
It was there that they first saw
culture, science, and the law—
but then darkness came again . . .
Sacrificing many men,
even Moscow, they still won,
chasing out Napoleon!

My fellow émigrés, today
there’s just one thing I wish to say:
We’re waiting . . . We have waited long . . .
But we will get there—do stay strong!
Don’t give in to your despair.
We’ve suffered much that was unfair,
barely escaped our foe’s Red wrath,
and traveled exile’s flinty path,
but I believe our time will come—
we’ll rest, revive ourselves at home,
with all our children, all our kin,
and then our New Year will begin!

Face to Face with Alexander Voloshin

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A woman recently reached out to me after finding the snippets of my translation of Alexander Voloshin’s Sidetracked: Exile in Hollywood. Attached to her email was the photo above.

Her parents, who had gone through German DP camps and settled in Los Angeles in 1949, befriended Voloshin and his wife, Helen, in the ’50s, frequently hosting the couple at their home. I had, until that day, never encountered anyone who had seen Voloshin in the flesh—not for lack of trying. Voloshin died in 1960, his wife in 1962. I’d asked every Angeleno émigré I could find whether they had known the man, even in passing. None had: it was too long ago.

After years of posting pieces of his poem, I finally drew out a witness, made a living connection—just in time. The photo was taken in the last year of Voloshin’s life. I had found other photos of him—a headshot from the ’30s, a professional portrait from the ’50s—and I include them in the book, together with frames from his films. But I had never seen a photograph so intimate, so poignant.

He’s the dark, diminutive figure on the right. He looks ill, unhappy. I wish I could tell him that, 75 years after his poem appeared in a small émigré edition, Paul Dry Books would bring it back to life in English. Do the old man a solid, pre-order now, and have yourself a ball in April!

From Mandelstam to Mr. Peanut: Another Hollywood Émigré Journey

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This week Paul Dry Books made me a very happy man.  My translation of Alexander Voloshin’s mock epic Sidetracked: Exile in Hollywood, which will officially appear in April of next year, now has a cover, blurbs from four of my idols in disparate fields, and a foothold on Amazon.  The people I approached, with faint hope, to endorse the book were the soulful and exquisitely subtle American poet Henri Cole, the eminent Hollywood historian Anthony Slide, the pioneer of Russophone pop culture studies Jeffrey Brooks, and screenwriter, novelist, and bad boy-turned-mensch Jerry Stahl.  All four agreed, and all four delivered far more than I could ever have dreamed of.

Now that My Hollywood and Other Poems, Vernon Duke’s Passport to Paris and Los Angeles Poems, and Voloshin’s Sidetracked are a wrap, as it were, I feel like a major part of my life’s work is behind me.  Long ago I set out to resurrect the major poetic voices of Hollywood’s Russophone past—and this loose trilogy is tangible evidence, if not of my success, then of my passionate commitment to that goal.  Of course, as any fan of Hollywood cinema knows, trilogies beget trilogies, spawning sequels and prequels never-ending…

So, am I done resurrecting Russophone Hollywood?  How could I be?  I mean, Alex Woloshin (Voloshin’s stage name) isn’t even the only fascinating émigré bit player named Alex to pass through the studio gates.  We’ll start this story, appropriately enough, on the set of Edwin Carewe’s 1931 adaptation of Tolstoy’s Resurrection, starring the tragic Mexican spitfire Lupe Vélez as Katyusha Maslova.  Reporting on the slew of “White Russian” extras brought in to lend the film an authentic atmosphere, Dan Thomas notes that one “Alex Novinsky once had his slightest command obeyed almost before it had passed his lips. Now he sits quietly in the jury box awaiting commands from Carewe and his assistants.”

As we know from Voloshin’s poem, there was no shortage of impostors and self-aggrandizers among the émigrés, but, at least in this case, the reporter had not been hoodwinked.  Alexander Alexandrovich Novinsky (1878-1960) had indeed been a staff officer (captain 2nd rank) in the Russian Imperial Navy, and, after joining the White forces in the Civil War, continued to serve as the harbor master of the Crimean port of Feodosia—about as responsible a position as one could occupy in the years before total Bolshevik victory. I would describe Novinsky for you, but I would rather offer this paragraph of prose from Osip Mandelstam, whom Novinsky treated most kindly during the great, highly erratic poet’s troubled stay on the peninsula in the summer of 1920:

The starched white tunic inherited from the old regime made him look miraculously younger and reconciled him with himself: the freshness of a gymnasium student and the brisk cheerfulness of an executive—a combination of qualities which he prized in himself and feared to lose. He conceived of the entire Crimea as one blinding, stiffly starched geographical tunic. On the other side of Perekop was night. There beyond the salt marshes there was no longer any starch, there were no washerwomen, no glad subordination, and it would be impossible there to have that springy step, as after a swim, that permanent excitement: the blended sense of well-bought currency, of clear government service, and, at the age of forty, the feeling of having passed one’s exams.

So opens, in Clarence Brown’s translation, “The Harbor Master,” a sketch dedicated to Novinsky in Mandelstam’s The Egyptian Stamp (1924).  It makes for a most charming portrait of the slight, energetic, dignified officer.  And it isn’t the only piece of literature Novinsky inspired.  Maximilian Voloshin (1877-1932, no relation to the author of Sidetracked)—whom Mandelstam had been visiting in Koktebel in 1920, and with whom he had a tremendously silly falling out—was a close friend of Novinsky’s and dedicated a very fine and fiery poem to him in 1917.

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Imagine, for a moment, how odd a time the first half of the 20th century was, how dizzying its noise, to borrow an image from Mandelstam.  A distinguished officer who, in the 1910s, made a lasting impression on two literary giants was, by 1938, appearing as “Professor Von Stupor” in the Three Stooges short “Violent Is the World of Curly.”  Better that than the alternative, of course.  By the end of 1938, Mandelstam lay dead under the ice in a transit camp near Vladivostok.

Novinsky followed the same path to Hollywood that his namesake Alex Voloshin chronicles in Sidetracked: first Constantinople, then New York, then California.  He arrived stateside in 1923 and became a citizen in 1930.  His son Roman, who had been born in 1902, Americanized the family’s name further, becoming Roman Novins.  He, too, appeared in a few films, but also briefly owned a bookshop, and, for most of his career, taught Russian at Caltech.  Roman Novins died in 1981 and is buried, like his father, at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

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A true Hollywood ending—but wait, remember what I said about sequels.  Roman’s daughter, the artist Phyllis Novins Cairns (1938-2021), went on to build a career in what is, after film, the most American of industries: advertising.  According to her obituary, “[I]n the 1960s, she redesigned Mr. Peanut into the iconic form that we recognize today.”  The original design for the dapper corporate legume was made by Antonio Gentile (1903-1939), the son of immigrants from Italy.  What would US culture—high, low, and middle—be without its émigrés?

“No Victors Here”: Alexander Voloshin in the Hollywood Bowl

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I find it hard to remain cheerful this summer, though I have one or two good reasons to celebrate—not counting the three named Jenny, Nina, and Charlie. One development worth toasting is the appearance of Vernon Duke’s Passport to Paris and Los Angeles Poems, a book packed with such gaiety that I can hardly keep from smiling at the sight of it. On July 15, its official publication date, the great jazz historian and cultural critic Ted Gioia shared my intro to the volume with his many loyal readers at The Honest Broker. Go over and read it—I tried to keep it light and breezy, à la Duke himself.

The other cause for celebration is intimately related to the first. If My Hollywood and Other Poems was, in part, a love letter to LA’s émigré past and present, then Duke’s Passport is an expression of continued love. Both were stamped and delivered by the wonderful people at Paul Dry Books, who—and here’s the news—will also bring out the third missive, my translation of Alexander Voloshin’s Sidetracked: Exile in Hollywood, in April 2026.

With so much to revel in, why am I so down? It’s the state of the world, I’m afraid… Over three years after the launch of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, my native country is still under attack—soldiers dying at the front, civilians hunted by drones and targeted by missiles. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s most powerful ally, the United States, wavers in its support. Meanwhile, here in the US, my adoptive home, migrants are hunted in the streets and thrown into camps. And this barely scratches the surface of the world’s woes. Innocent men, women, and children suffer and die in Palestine. War and famine rage in Sudan. Ours is an era of genocidal violence.

I reflect with some bitterness and no small amount of irony on the fact that this makes the reappearance of Voloshin’s poem all the more timely. Over the past few years I have shared excerpts of the poem touching on war in Ukraine, on the struggle of refugees to obtain entry to the US, on their hard but hopeful lives in their adoptive country, and on their fear—rooted in painful memories—of another war, another wave of expulsions. Voloshin began his poem in the late 1930s and finished it shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Not long ago I learned that, around the time he was penning lines about Europe’s descent into fascism, he appeared on the stage of the Hollywood Bowl, wearing his military uniform and decorations from the Russian Imperial Army, along with representatives of other Allied nations. The photo below was published by the Los Angeles Times on September 19, 1938, alongside headlines and subheads like the following: “Promotion of World Peace Stressed at Breakfast Meeting.”

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No one knew better than Voloshin how elusive peace was, or how fickle allies could be. You can see it in the expression on his face; he is the fourth man from the left, slightly stooped, with the moustache. On the very day the photo was published, representatives of the French and British in Prague presented a proposal to allow Nazi Germany to annex the Sudetenland. Voloshin stood in the Bowl with veterans from Italy and Japan, which would soon be Axis powers. And he still remembered how the victorious Allies of the Great War had treated the soldiers and officers of the White Army, who had fought on their side until 1918, after peace had been declared in the West.

Then disaster struck in spring —
1920 was to bring
great misfortune to the Whites,
send us tumbling from the heights…

[…]

In Crimea, we held fast
for another half a year,
yet we lived in constant fear:
Communists, auxiliaries —
Latvian, even Chinese, —
all came bearing down in force,
primed to kill without remorse…
This would be our final trial…

Where was Europe all the while?
There were promises, but no
so-called “allies” ever showed. 
Our defeat now seemed assured and
we were nothing but a burden…
They had won! No victors here…
Without us to interfere,
and ignoring all our pain,
they were splitting our domain!

They were feasting in Versailles,
settling the old disputes,
but, mid fearsome gun salutes,
one could hear a mournful sigh…

Us? We simply weren’t invited…
No one even tried to hide it.
Why pay heed to the complaint
of some disempowered state?
What did they, in Europe, care
about bloodshed over there,
in Crimea, Perekop —
about us, who still had hope,
who remained naively loyal?
Once, when fighting on their soil,
we were heroes to them… Now,
we were useless, disavowed…

The Paul Dry edition of Voloshin’s will include several photos of Voloshin, but not the one from the Times. It is a bit too sad, I think.

“I Stroll Quietly Among the Graves”: Viktoria Yankovskaya’s “Will and Testament”

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Viktoria Yankovskaya (1909-1996) was born in Vladivostok, in the Russian Far East, to the family of famed Machurian tiger hunter and, later, Korean resort owner, Yuri Yankovsky (1879-1956). Like his father, the Polish naturalist Michał Jankowski (1841-1912), Yuri had an ambivalent attitude towards Russia, speaking the language but never fully identifying with the culture. The family first settled in the Far East involuntarily. Michał had been imprisoned in Siberia for taking part in the January Uprising of 1863, which sought to free part of Poland from Russian rule, but his love of the flora and fauna of the region inspired him to put down roots first in Irkutsk, then farther east in Primorye. After the death of his first wife, he married a Buryat woman, with whom he had five children, including Yuri.

The younger Yankovsky was practically born on horseback with a rifle in his hands. After returning from his studies of agricultural practices in Texas and Illinois, he took over the management of the family estate, marrying the daughter of an important shipbuilder and fathering five children, including Viktoria. During the Civil War, the family fled to northern Korea. They established a resort for émigrés, where Yul Brynner—then a little boy—spent his summers. When Soviet troops entered Korea in 1945, Yuri was arrested for having supplied meat to the Japanese army. He died in the camps.

Yuri’s son Valery (1911-2010) was also arrested and sentenced to a twenty-year term in the camps, but he survived and was released in 1957. Viktoria too was detained by the NKVD, but since she had only recently given birth to her son, she was spared. Instead of being sent to the camps, she was ordered to organize a collective farm. She did as she was commanded and continued to work on the farm until 1953, when she was able to escape to Hong Kong and, from there, to Chile. In 1961, she immigrated to California, settling near the Russian River, where she lived out the rest of her days.

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Viktoria’s collection of stories of life in the wild, titled It Happened in Korea, appeared to critical acclaim in 1935. Although she had written poems from early childhood, she only gathered a handful for publication in 1978, titling the collection Across the Lands of Dispersion. This volume was reprinted, with additional poems and a selection of stories, in Vladivostok in 1993. “Will and Testament” is the last of the poems in that later book—a final statement by an irrepressible spirit descended from a long line of adventurers.

Will and Testament

I remember our farewells in China,
feeling we would never meet again.
We were flying from Hong Kong to Chile,
you were sailing off to other lands.

Decades passed, and now, in San Francisco,
I stroll quietly among the graves,
gazing at the markers—how I wish to
lay my eyes upon familiar names…

There they are: to my left and right,
all those crosses, all those dates and dashes.
The earth’s womb embraces, holds them tight.
Hopes and dreams, long journeys… Dust and ashes…

No, I will not join them. I’ve decided
that my son will scatter my remains
in the ocean. I cannot abide it—
resting here, eternally mislain.

I dream my ashes, blending with the fog,
will be lifted to the clouds, will soar…
Let a wave on the Pacific catch them,
carry them to my beloved shore…

Завещание

Я помню, как прощались все в Китае,
И встретиться не собирались никогда:
Мы из Гонконга в Чили улетали,—
А вы в другие страны плыли навсегда.

Десятки лет прошли. Я—в Сан-Франциско
На Сербском кладбище тихонечко бреду:
Смотрю на памятники, обелиски—
Грущу, тоскую и какой-то встречи жду…

И вот, нашла: направо и налево
Знакомый ряд имён на мраморных крестах:
Всех приняло в себя земное чрево:
Мечты, надежды, дальний путь… и тут ваш прах…

Нет! Я не лягу тут. Уже решила,
Что кинет сын мой прах в Великий Океан.
Я не хочу заброшенной могилы—
Мне тесен ряд давно забытых могикан.

Хочу мечтать, что прах взлетит в тумане
И распылится, поднимаясь к облакам…
Пускай волна на Тихом океане
Подхватит и умчит к любимым берегам.

“The Dybbuk” and “The Whole Shebang”

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It’s not every month that a poet—let alone a simple versifier like yours truly—gets to see his work in print in not one, but two major journals of thought. Yet this is the precisely the catbird seat on which I have alighted.

The May 29 issue of The New York Review of Books carries “The Dybbuk,” a poem dedicated to Delmore Schwartz, whose pained work I carried with me in my late teenage years like a vade mecum. I’m glad I didn’t follow his example through to the end, but he clearly continues to haunt me.

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A poem somewhat different in tone, the first I’ve written on the subject of fatherhood, appears in the June issue of The New Republic. The title and one of the rhyme phrases, “The Whole Shebang,” belongs—now, at least—to the dedicatee, Nina.

Kazimiera Iłłakowiczówna and the Light of Childhood

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I’ve let many weeks slip by without posting here, but that doesn’t mean I’ve been idle. What I wouldn’t give for a stretch of idleness just about now… Teaching at the University of Tulsa has been wonderfully rewarding and inspiring, but between preparations for class, childcare, and an occasional conference—even an energizing one, like the Hayes Translation Festival at the College of William & Mary—I’ve had little time for anything else. Still, I’ve managed to translate a few poems from Ukrainian and Russian, write a couple of poems of my own (more on that next month), and review a few books for the TLS, including Julian Evans’s Undefeatable: Odesa in Love and War and a timely new selection of Zbigniew Herbert’s poems.

In my piece on the great Polish poet, I describe the tones of his verse as “ranging from the crisply classical [to] looser, more conversational,” and add that “this most subtle of craftsmen was able to wrest those tones from what seem to be the plainest materials: strings of direct statement, mostly in lower case, entirely devoid of punctu­ation.” His is a kind of poetry I admire immensely, a kind from which I derive a great deal of pleasure and wisdom, but it is not the kind I myself write or am compelled to render. Among the Poles, I am more frequently drawn to gentler, tastefully rueful voices like those of Leopold Staff (1878-1957) and Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska (1891-1945). I had the chance to discuss these two poets and read my versions of their work a few months ago with two great critics, Jaroslaw Anders and Małgorzata Pośpiech:

This past week I found myself immersed in the delicate lyrics of Kazimiera Iłłakowiczówna (1892-1983), who was part of the same literary scene. Born in Vilnius, Iłłakowiczówna was educated at the University of Oxford and the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, served as a nurse assistant in the Imperial Russian Army during the First World War, and, in the 1920s and ’30s, became both the secretary to Marshal Józef Piłsudski and an important literary figure in Warsaw. The poems she published at that time are varied in terms both of subject matter and style, but the ones I love most echo the mood of Staff’s early verse, looking back, with warm nostalgia, on the rich imaginative and emotional landscapes of childhood. Here is a shining example, in my translation:

A Lamp from Childhood

A white lamp with a landscape on its base—
it rang, and warmed, and had the power to soothe…
A moon glowed bright above a country house,
a wisp of smoke curled upward from the roof.

Smugglers sought shelter among fir trees in the hills,
a long procession, snaking up the ridge.
A stream flowed from the pass like spilled white milk,
joining a rushing river neath a bridge.

O lampshade, lampshade, ringing soft and deep,
two little fists in chocolate from a tart,
a mother’s hands, her breath upon the cheek,
and nightlong joy upon the beating heart…

1926

And another, translated with far greater sensitivity and skill by Anita Jones Dębska, can be found here.

Lampa z dziecinnych lat

Była biała lampa z wytłoczonym krajobrazem,
grzała, usypiała i dzwoniła zarazem;
świecił na niej księżyc, domek z jasnym okienkiem,
dym ulatywał u góry pasmem takim cienkim.

Przemytnicy szli, jodły gór im sprzyjały,
padał z przełęczy w przepaść potok jak mleko biały;
przemytnicy szli długim, długim jak wąż korowodem,
most przez rzekę leżał, woda świeciła pod spodem.

O, dzwonie, dzwonie lampy, o, głębokie przeciągłe dudnienie,
o, matczyne na włosach ręce, na szyi, na policzkach tchnienie,
sucharek z lukrem przy twarzy, w czekoladzie dwie małe pięście
i przez całą noc na sercu bijącym szczęście, skrzydlate szczęście.

1926

“Here You’ll Find a Few Ukrainians”: Anatol Yourinyak and LA’s Ukrainian Culture Center

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I don’t suppose there’s any need to explain why this year’s anniversary of the start of Russia’s unprovoked full-scale invasion of Ukraine felt especially painful and bitter for me, a proud US citizen born in Ukraine. As my readers know, when my spirits sink, I tend to look to my fellow Angeleno émigrés for inspiration. This week I looked to the work of Anatol Yourinyak (1902-1996), who was born in Western Ukraine, lived through the German occupation first as a theater critic and editor, then as a manual laborer, and, after several years in DP camps, immigrated to the US in 1949. From the 1950s on, he made his home in Los Angeles, where he taught Ukrainian language and culture and wrote a number of well-received works of literary criticism, fiction, and poetry. It was one of his lighter poems, which skewers the fractious ways of immigrant enclaves, that offered me solace as I reflected on the bubbling beauty of the American melting pot—a beauty that no corrupt administration can fully destroy, however hard it tries. The poem’s occasion is the dedication of the Ukrainian Culture Center at Melrose Avenue and Heliotrope Drive in East Hollywood. The Center is housed in a glorious building theater constructed in 1924. It was purchased by Los Angeles’s Ukrainian community in 1959, opened in February 1961, and is still very much active in the 2020s—perhaps more active than ever, as it serves the community as a “hub of resistance.” I sure am glad its founders put their squabbling back in the early ’60s aside and did the heavy lifting!

Shining City in the Valley

Just a short drive from the ocean,
with a great view of the mountains,
sits a city, big as any,
taking up a giant valley,
picture-perfect, glamorous,
beautiful Los Angeles!

In addition to the palm trees
and the flowers (poets’ favorites),
there’s the traffic — quite the slog —
and its partner, Mr. Smog.

Here you’ll find a few Ukrainians,
not exactly chockablock.
Once a week, on Sunday morning,
they can have a proper talk…

Ah, but therein lies the trouble!
All they do is gripe and grumble:
“That guy looked at me and grimaced —
like he thought I wouldn’t notice…”
“That guy never will look past
my not bowing from the waist…”

Some complaints are far more serious,
drive us nearly to despair —
though the city may be lovely,
we’ve got grief and woe to spare.
For example, there’s the hunger
that our younger people feel…
Oh, the older folks cook plenty —
but the taste doesn’t appeal…

Nights of “culture”? Deathly boredom…
You can’t dance the hopak there,
nor will you find anybody
with a decent joke to share…

But I hear big things are coming…
“Move that curtain, will you, brother?
What we need here is a column —
here’s a fine place for another.
One thing we Ukrainians know:
how to put on a good show!”

Now we have our Center, yes —
just one question, then, I guess…
Much as I admire the plan
(honestly, I am a fan),
all this moving, all this shifting:
who will do the heavy lifting?

Los Angeles, 1962

Сяйне місто у долині

Недалеко океану
В гір чудовій панорамі
Місто велет простяглось,
На ім’я — Лос Анджелес:

Сяйне місто у долині,
Барв, кольорів — як в картині!
Опріч пальм, чудових квітів
(Цих улюбленців піїтів),
Є й пепроханий тут гість —
Зветься «смог» він, очі їсть.

Позатим є українці —
Геть розкидані у кінці:
Лиш в неділю, в тиждень раз
Побалакаєш гаразд!

Та ось лихо: у розмовах
Чути скарги і обмови:
«Той на мене подивився
Вчора скоса, ще й скривився».
«Цей згадав, що я колись,
Мимо йшовши, не вклонивсь».

(Може бути, бо не бачив —
Та хіба тобі пробачать?)
Той словамі обіцяє,
Та чи зробіть — лідько знає!

Та бувають і доречі
Міркування тут статечні.
Бож проблем є куна всюди,
Де в громаді наші люди!
Ось наприклад: справжній голод
Почува тут наша молодь.
Старші їжу хочуть дать —
Та смаку ніяк добрать

Не потраплять молодятам,
Нашим хлопцям та дівчатам.
З цього жаль великий, сум —
Чола зриті геть від дум!

Aкaдeмiї? Це скучно:
В них не втулиш гопака.
«Віців» теж давать незручно 
Ось морока тут яка…

Але чути — є вже плян:
«Це ж заслона шкодить нам!
Пересунути заслону,
Десь поставить там колону, —
І виставу вже як грім
Має наш Народній Дім!»

Алеж — Боже мій коханий!
Плян звичайно не поганий —
Та питання головне
(Ніби трохи і чудне!):
Хто ж це має все зробити,
Сцену нам переробити?!

Лос Анджелес, 1962

“I Felt I’d Paid Fat Cupid Plenty”: Vernon Duke Falls in Love

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A new year has begun and, despite the many tragedies unfolding across the globe, I cannot help but be hopeful. One future prospect buoying my spirits is the publication of Vernon Duke‘s Passport to Paris and Los Angeles Poems by Paul Dry Books. Already available for pre-order, the volume brings together Duke‘s lively memoir — in which he recounts, in his own delightfully idiomatic English, his charmed childhood in Ukraine, his early exile in Constantinople, his musical triumphs in Paris, London, and New York, and his move to California — and a selection, in my translation, of the poems he wrote in Russian during the last happy decade of his life. I’ve shared a number of those poems here, including one the composer dedicated to his wife, Kay. This past week, as I reflected on my own lucky union with Jenny, who has had a difficult year filled with grief and illness, I decided to translate one of Duke’s earlier poems for Kay, in which he revisits their courtship in Santa Barbara. What Duke says to Kay, I say to Jenny: “Though I may fall at any moment, I pledge my love and life to you.” Here‘s to love and life in 2025!

Letter to My Wife

What shall I wish for you, dear Kay?
October’s scent is in the air
and we’re still here, a happy pair,
four years after our wedding day.
Scenes from our courtship seem to grow
ever more vivid — I recall
first seeing you: a chorus girl
in Lotte Lehmann’s Figaro.
Beneath the light layer of cosmetics
I saw your features, your pure face —
felt young, ridiculous, romantic —
such silliness, so out of place…
After the curtain, idle banter,
a smile, a nod, an argument.
“The girl is Scottish, from Montana,”
said the conductor with a wink.
“A lovely voice, quite musical…
And look at her… she’s a Renoir.”
My tartan girl, dressed for the ball,
came up to us. “How young you are!”
slipped from my lips, a careless comment,
and then another compliment.
Nothing unique. Not for a moment
did I believe that we were meant
to be together. We were colleagues.
Why hope in vain, why self-deceive?

Another old, used-up Onegin
with sweet Tatiana — so naive…
Again the calls, again the meetings,
the midday laughs, the midnight sobs…
I felt I’d paid fat Cupid plenty —
he’d get no more, the little slob…
Alas, I felt from you a gentle
calm, childlike warmth: it seemed to me
that I could talk, or even prattle,
and all I said — you would believe.
That gullibility was touching.
I understood I couldn’t lie
to you, Madonna of Montana —
so it was best to sneak away,
make of my serenade a scherzo,
for peace and freedom lay ahead.
But suddenly my heart awakened
and whispered, “No you don’t — not yet…”
Weeks passed. The town of Santa Barbara,
where you then lived, became to me
the safest of all earthly harbors,
a source of electricity.
I was so grateful for those journeys,
my newfound ardor. With a grin,
I mocked himself: “You dirty scoundrel —
how dare you fall in love again?”
In truth, my dear, you were my first love.
I hadn’t known true love at all.
Love is a peaceful force of nature,
not a destructive sudden squall
that sweeps you up and sends you soaring,
only to throw you back on shore.
No, honest lovers do not hurry
and do not tease those they adore.
You had a roommate, a young woman,
but I, the former anchorite,
wanted a duo, not a trio,
when visiting your home at night.
In cramped conditions we would feed on
delightful music, without fail.
You would sing Schubert’s finest Lieder,
my Caledonian nightingale.
Your piano was beat-up, a goner —
at times it mewled, at times it squeaked.
Nor did I help things with my tenor
(admittedly a little weak).
We’d laugh, and swim, and kiss, and after…
No sense in sharing details here…
There was no talk of wedding altars:
such furniture can kill careers.
Yet I had hopes I could not bury,
which lent a sadness to our trysts —
for you had never wished to marry
and I would never dare insist.
Then I grew ill — with pills and pillows,
bandages, doctors, fever dreams…
Verdi inverted: you — Alfredo,
and I — the fallen girl, it seems…
One of those days you came to see me,
tears welling up in you big eyes,
and said, “I know now.” Was I dreaming?
Oh, what a fabulous surprise!
The weeks that followed were a whirlwind —
and then: your stunning turquoise dress,
my wan “best man,” your girlfriend singing
(alas, I wasn’t too impressed),
the pulpit looking like a scaffold,
the organ’s sticky marmalade,
you walking up, so shy and careful,
and I still nervous, still afraid…
But all the nerves quickly departed —
we took our vows, exchanged our rings,
made our way home after the party,
and felt, in autumn, warmest spring.
Since then, of all the things I’m sure of,
this one remains most firmly true:
though I may fall at any moment,
I pledge my love and life to you.
And when it comes, that fateful day
when I break off my earthly tune,
remind me please, my darling Kay,
of our enchanted honeymoon.

Autumn 1961

Послание к жене

Чего, Катюша, пожелать бы
Тебе? Запахло октябрём —
Четыре года после свадьбы,
И мы попрежнему вдвоём.
Роман был прост и безобиден,
Воспоминание — остро:
Я помню, я тебя увидел
Впервые в “Свадьбе Фигаро”,
У Лотты Леман. Средь хористок
Я рассмотрел, сквозь робкий грим,
Твои черты, твой облик чистый
И стал нелепо молодым.
Потом — кулисы. Меломаны.
Кивок кому-то, с кем-то спор.
“Она — шотландка из Монтаны” —
Шепнул развязный дирижёр.
“Премилый голос, музыкальна —
Займитесь. Это — Ренуар”.
Моя шотландка, в платье бальном,
К нам подошла: “How young are!”
Тебе сказал, швырнув небрежно
И комплимент очередной —
Всё это было безнадежно
И не блистало новизной.
Мы — музыканты, мы — коллеги:
К чему двойной самообман?

Опять — подержаный Онегин
С наивнейшей из всех Татьян!
Опять звонки, опять свиданья,
Полдневный смех, полночный стон —
Долой! Отдал сторицей дань я
Тебе, обрюзгший Купидон.
И всё же, маленькую малость
Спокойной детской теплоты
Я ощутил: мне показалось,
Что ни скажу — поверишь ты.
Твоей доверчивостью тронут,
Я понял — мне не обмануть
Сию шотландскую Мадонну.
Пожалуй, лучше ускользнуть,
Из серенады сделать скерцо;
Покой, свобода — впереди.
И вдруг моё проснулось сердце
И подсказало: “Подожди”…
Недели шли. Мне, постепенно,
Святой Варвары городок,
Где ты жила, стал неизменным
Убежищем, — и тёплый ток
Оттуда шёл. Благословлял я
Свои поездки, новый пыл
И над собой трунил: “Каналья!
Неужто снова полюбил?”
Но полюбил-то я впервые
И этого ещё не знал.
Любовь — спокойная стихия;
Внезапно набежавший шквал
Совсем не то: он взбаламутит,
Подбросит — а потом тебя
Назад на берег: так не шутят,
По-настоящему любя.
Ты в домике жила с подругой,
Но я — былой анахорет —
Приехав, в маленькой лачуге
Искал не трио, а дуэт.
Мы, в тесноте, да не в обиде,
Кормились музыкой с тобой —
Ты пела Шубертовы Lieder,
Шотландский жаворонок мой.
Рояль был скверный — не поправишь —
Он то мяукал, то визжал,
И я, едва касаясь клавиш,
Подыгрывал и подпевал.
Над этим много мы смеялись —
Нет шарма в теноре моём —
Потом купались, целовались,
Потом… известно, что потом.
О браке не было и речи —
Карьере вреден Гименей —
Но почему я, каждый вечер,
Мечтал о близости твоей?
Себе не находил я места —
Таков любовников удел:
Ты не хотела стать невестой,
А я настаивать не смел.
Я заболел — пилюли, вата,
Подушки, доктор, жар и бред.
Хотя, по Верди, Травиата
Больна — и ездит к ней Альфред —
Мы поменялися ролями —
Пришла, сказала: “Now I know”,
Своими оросив слезами
Моей подушки полотно.
Мы обнялись. Завет начальный
В реку забвения уплыл —
И в церковке Епископальной
Священник нас соединил.
Катюша в платье подвенечном
(Ты помнишь платье? Бирюза!),
И вздох о счастьи быстротечном,
И торопливая слеза.
Старательной подруги пенье,
Её полуоткрытый рот;
“Best man” похож на привиденье,
Амвон похож на эшафот.
Ты, от смущенья расцветая,
Впилась глазами в аналой.
Моя ль невеста, иль чужая?
С тобой жених — чужой, чужой…
Всё это нас тогда пугало —
Подумай — нас-то под венец! —
Чего-то странное начало,
Чему-то, будто бы, конец.
Тягучий мармелад органа,
Разъезд щебечущей родни;
О где, Монтанская Татьяна,
Весны твоей златые дни?
Приём. Хозяин — рыбье рыло —
Сулил нам счастья много лет;
Старуха-снобка подхватила
Невестой брошенный букет.
И вот мы дома — вот и пристань;
Глубокой осенью — весна.
С тех пор, из всех знакомых истин,
Одна лишь истина ясна:
Что я тебе крупицу счастья
В платок поклялся завязать,
Что, может быть, способен пасть я,
Но должен жизнь тебе отдать.
Когда гармонию нарушит
Последний день, последний срок,
Свечу последнюю потушат —
Напомни мне, моя Катюша,
Святой Варвары городок.

Осень 1961 г.

Voloshin Speaks!

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Over a month has passed since my last post here, and you can blame that on the pleasures of my “day job” at the University of Tulsa. I’ve greatly enjoyed being back in the classroom, and even had the opportunity to do a little academic traveling, giving a couple of lectures in Paris on translation and poetry. I could go on recounting the perks of my trade, but I’d rather share a discovery that brought tears of joy to my eyes.

Those of you who have read a passage or two of my translation of Alexander Voloshin’s mock-epic of the Hollywood émigré scene, Sidetracked, on this blog, know that his long, uphill struggle to make a living at the studios was rewarded with many barely-there, uncredited, silent appearances. However, as I found last week, at least one role allowed him to speak. That’s right — after several years of getting to know and inhabit Voloshin’s voice on the page, I finally got to hear the man’s own gentle baritone.

Appropriately enough, the film in which Voloshin talks centers on an experience very close to his own. Directed by French emigré Robert Florey (1900-1979), the 1937 B-film Daughter of Shanghai stars Anna May Wong, whose character pursues a gang of violent, exploitative people smugglers who have killed her father. In a scene in which Wong first spies on the smugglers going about its heartless business, we see — and hear — Voloshin, one of the exploited refugees, take a stand against the gang boss, only to get knocked out. The language he speaks? Not English, not Russian, but Ukrainian—the language his father, a Ukrainian ethnographer, worked so hard to preserve. It is a rare thing to hear Ukrainian spoken in Hollywood cinema, and hearing the words come from Voloshin moved me deeply. You can watch the scene here, thanks to Turner Classic Movies.

It’s no accident that Florey gave Voloshin his big break in the talkies. An émigré himself, he was keenly sensitive to the plight of Hollywood’s lower social strata, especially of the extras. In 1928, a decade before Nathanael West and Horace McCoy turned their attention to the town’s bottom-feeders, Florey and the Serbian-American pioneer of montage, Slavko Vorkapich (1894-1976), shot, on a budget of $97, an extraordinary expressionistic short film titled The Life and Death of 9413: a Hollywood Extra, which you can watch in its entirety here.

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I suspect Florey and Voloshin recognized each other as kindred spirits from the very start. Indeed, Florey first gave Voloshin a role in 1927, in an another expressionistic short, Johann the Coffin Maker. That film is now lost, but Voloshin’s voice survives, both in Daughters of Shanghai and, more fully, in his marvelous poem.