top of page

On translating “The Stalin” poem by Osip Mandelstam

Anatol Zukerman

 

 

As a bilingual poet I worked on translating this famous and fateful poem for several years. Certainly, no translation is ever perfect, but if the original poem is rhymed and metered then, in my opinion, a translator has a moral obligation to keep the original’s form and substance intact. Although my native tongue is Russian, I lived in the United States longer than in Russia and I worked hard on improving my second language. Below are the original poem and my English translation of it side by side. Please note that the original uses a simple, sometimes colloquial language and has eight perfectly rhymed couplets.  Click here to view the poem.

In God We Trust

Anatol Zukerman

 

Antelope In God We Trust I was sitting in the bar, nursing a headache, and a dollar whispered “In God we trust.” “Look who is talking!” I gagged, “You double-crossing slithering snake! God kicked you out of His good temple and you have a nerve to lie in His name!” “He threw me out,” admitted the dollar. “And for that he died on the cross. He’s up in the sky, I’m here on Earth - we work together just fine, thank you. People use me to steal and murder and him to repent and to do it again.”  Click here to view the poem.

bottom of page