Поэзия не нуждается в предисловиях, оправданиях и пояснениях. Кане – сложившийся поэт, сумевший из своей драмы сделать лирическую тему и превратить эту драму в факт литературы. А поскольку таким двойным бытием отягощены уже тысячи наших соотечественников, – бывших, или вернувшихся, или живущих на две страны, – эта книга будет востребована, прочитана и многим облегчит душу.
И это первый случай, когда я не жалею о том, что талантливый поэт уехал из России. Собственно, он эмигрировал в литературу, а это лучшее, что можно сделать с собой.
Дмитрий Быков
Yana Kane began to write poetry while still living in Russia. She was a student in Vyacheslav Leikin's poetry workshop in St. Petersburg. At the age of 16, she relocated to the United States, which was the right thing to do. Not because it is better in the States, but because the tradition of her poetry is American – it is metaphysical, and free verse comes naturally to her; although, as you will see, she has a mastery of rhymed verse. Russian poetry is burdened by the struggles of everyday life and by societal concerns. Kane prefers not to see all of this, or at least not to fixate upon it. She is interested in the subtle border between dreaming and lucidity, between agnosticism (not unbelief, of course) and faith, between poetry in Russian and poetry in English. Her poems in the two languages are clearly written by the same individual, though in two different states of mind. As she herself formulated:
In this language,
I converse, argue, and flirt with my husband,
Teach and amuse my daughter,
Stay in touch with friends from college,
Confer with my colleagues,
Report to the boss,
Say hello to the neighbors.
In that language,
I listen to the voices of ghosts.
Their unhurried conversation
Glides along its immutable orbit.
This, of course, underrates English somewhat. Nabokov wrote: “…the subtle understatements so peculiar to English, the poetry of thought, the instantaneous resonance between the most abstract concepts, the swarming of monosyllabic epithets – all this, and also all that is related to technology, fashion, sports, the natural sciences, and the unnatural passions – in Russian become clumsy (rough-hewn)”. But for Yana Kane, it is Russian that is the language of abstractions, of memory, of dark intuitions about God. Her English poems were written by an intelligent and insightful woman; the Russian ones were written by a woman who is attuned to a lot more than she wishes to reveal in English.