Ryan Hardy
on translating Valeriya Krutova
In our correspondence, Krutova told me a bit about the poem. In a dream, she saw a house with shutters, shrouded in fog. She noted how unnerving and scary the dream was and wanted to convey this in words. When she woke up, she jotted down the first line. Upon sitting with the dream further, she wanted to break away from this unnervedness and leaned into the poem’s intimacy.
Krutova’s focus on repetition and the sound of words in their delivery is clear in the poem. The original’s repetition of дом дом (dom dom) or “house house” throughout creates a rhythmic motif which Krutova returns to frequently. I translated дом to the more logically rhythmic “home” and, instead, opted for “house” to preserve the more tangible nature of the building Krutova describes. In sticking with “house,” I often chose to add the articles “a” and “the,” both of which are absent in Russian, to better space the poem’s meter. Towards the end of the poem, as the its intimacy builds, I shifted to “home” to emphasize the emotional aspects of a home instead of a house’s physical structure.
Translating “House house” was an exercise in delivery. Much of the original’s lyrical strength comes from the way it builds the meter’s momentum and creates an elliptical rhythm. At several points in my translation, I deviated from the original to maintain the meter’s momentum. For instance, I omitted some instances of parallelism, such as that of “Trees haven’t existed for 90% of the planet’s existence. You haven’t existed for 90% of my existence.” To preserve a sense of building metrical momentum leading into the next section and prevent the lingering meter of “existence,” I ended this line with “existed for 90% of mine.”
I’d like to extend special thanks to Maria Glukhova and Connor Hardy for their feedback on this translation and their presence in my life. You make each day a bit brighter.
about the author
Valeriya Krutova, a native of Shymkent, Qazaqstan, is a writer of short prose and poetry. In her verse, Krutova focuses on the influence of word’s repetition as she delivers them in meter. She is particularly interested in the elliptical nature this repetition adds to her work.
Krutova serves as coordinator of the Open Literary School of Almaty, as well as the first Central Asian residency for writers, the Almaty Writing Residence, a collaborative project with the Iowa International Writing Program. She is an advocate for the popularization of Qazaq literature both nationally and internationally. With over fifty current publications in various journals, magazines, and projects, including Лиterraтура, Angime, ФтаройБэ, and “От пяти и до без конца.” She is currently in the process of writing a book. Krutova lives in Almaty, Qazaqstan.
about the translator
Ryan Hardy is an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania, pursuing a degree in Russian and Eastern European studies, and holds various writing and editing positions for the School of Russian and Asian Studies, Pomona College Vestnik, and Doublespeak Magazine. Ryan’s research interests lie at the intersections of historical memory, identity-based conflict, and Soviet and Post-Soviet countercultural movements in Eurasia. Most recently, Ryan’s work focuses on the Leningrad Rock and Siberian Punk undergrounds of the 1980s and 90s, as well as gender and performance in Eastern European pop culture. Ryan enjoys reading, climbing, and getting lost on walks. Ryan plans to continue learning languages, most recently discovering a new passion in Czech and planning future study of Kyrgyz. Ryan translates across genres, ranging from poetry and prose to memoir and articles from Russian civil society.
photo by Katherine Rozsypalek
