“no, of course, these aren’t the new middle ages”

Danila Davydov

translated from russian by Anton Relin

no, of course, these aren’t the new middle ages
in the middle ages, we operated by the principle of analogy
it would be good to return to this principle
so that simulacrum and balanced equations
would show the essence of things
so that microcosm and macrocosm
would coincide

but, no, there is no analogy anymore
the monsters around us
look like charming people
and the weather is nothing like hell

only maybe words
speak their distorted essence
only in passing
only by chance

нет, конечно, никакое не новое средневековье
в средние века действовал принцип аналогии
хотелось бы вернуться к нему
чтобы подобие и равенство соотношений
демонстрировали бы суть вещей
чтобы микрокосм и макрокосм совпадали

но нет, нет никаких аналогий
чудовища вокруг
похожи на очаровательных людей
и погода ничем не аналогична аду

только разве слова
проговаривают свою искаженную суть
и то между делом,
случайно

Danila Davydov was born in Moscow in 1977. From 1999-2004 he was the head of the Babylon union of young writers, as well as the co-editor of their newsletter. He is an associate Professor at the State Academic University of the Humanities and the author of numerous articles and reviews about Russian literature of the 20th and 21st centuries. He is a Candidate of Philological Sciences and his dissertation title was “Russian Naive and Primitivist Poetry: Genesis, Evolution, and Poetics”. He participated in the compilation of the Nine Dimensions anthology of modern Russian poetry. He has published multiple books of poetry including Grasshopper, Good, Today, No, Yesterday, March of the Cannibals, and Unreliable Narrator. He is also the author of the books of prose Experiments in Heartlessness, and Not a Fish. He is a laureate of the Andrei Bely Prize. His poems and prose have been translated into over a dozen languages.

Anton Relin is Russian-Jewish-American language engineer, translator, and editor of Pocket Samovar. He has previously translated Church Slavonic manuscripts and for Homintern. He holds BAs in Slavic and Eastern European Studies and Linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania.