Шведская музыка

К. Х.

Когда снег заметает море и скрип сосны

[...]

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.

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