The Rock or, A Third Anecdote about Wallace Stevens

COVER FEATURE The Rock or, A Third Anecdote about Wallace Stevens Grigory Kruzhkov 1 Stevens's tussle withHemingway, as weknow, endedbadly. Stevens was twenty yearsolder, fat, likeHamlet - andalsohadn'teaten: a pieceofsteakwouldhavedonehimgood. He returned toHartford with hishandina castandreported that he'dfallen from a ladder.Toobadhe didn'tspecify from which. Forinstance, itcouldhavebeentheladdertothealtar inMoneta'stemple - thesolepriestess (as thepoetcorrectly noted) "ofthisdesolation." He couldhavesaidhe'dfallen from a mountain - orfrom themoon, orevena pagoda. Andthat wouldhavebeentrue. Butthepagodaversion wouldn't havegoneover. He would'vehadtoexplain toElsiewhathe'd beendoingina pagoda andwhatinnocent maiden he'dbeenawaiting. 2 A soapbubble, ona deity's adjusted scales, outweighs a rock(as weknow).Andthat's a pity. Outofa senseoffairness andsquareness totherock Stevens extolled itinitspure,unalloyed form, having freed itfrom allsuppositions and makeweights from Sisyphus, whobathed itinhisstinking sweat, from woundedCuchulain, whotiedhimself onto a cliff inorder todiestanding, from Pygmalion, with a chiselinhishand anda fixed ideainhishead,andgenerally from any horseman orfootman, whowouldproclaim himself KingoftheHill. Therockiswhat'sleft, ifwewipeoff themouldleft torushandwheelabout as a stonefrom a sling. Immobile stones cannot exist. Andthat's theanecdote oftherock(soold,it's bearded). 3 Freshness, they say,isgoodfor sourcream. Whereas a poem,likeanicon, needs thesultriness ofbreath. Itshouldhangup a while, inscribe itself intosomefathomable context, andeven,ifyou'dlike, becomeaneyesore. Sucharethemetaphysics ofbeauty. Onemaylike them ornot, buttoargueaboutthem isfoolish. A poet without bonespickedcleancannot exist. Thereader won'tbelievehim, until hereaches hisfinger hither - intoananecdote. Translation from the Russian ByBoris Dralyuk Grigory Kruzhkov (b.1945) was trained in theoretical physics but abandoned the sciences for writing and translation. Hereceived a PhD inliterature from ColumbiaUniversity and currently lives inhis native Moscow, where heteaches English and American poetry atthe Moscow State University for the Humanities. Hehaspublished several collections ofpoetry and criticism aswell astranslations of Wyatt, Donne, Keats, Tennyson, Yeats, Joyce, Frost, Stevens, and Heaney. Boris Dralyuk holds a PhD from UCLA, andhis work has appeared inavariety ofliterary and academic journals. He isthe translator of Leo Tolstoy's How Much Land Does aMan Need (Calypso Editions, 2010) and co-translator ofPolina Barskova's The ZooinWinter: Selected Poems (Melville House, 201 1;seeWLT, July 2011,71). NovemberDecember 2011 159

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