While свет means light, gleam emphasizes the reflection that happens when light bounces off of shiny objects. This word hints at the disorientation that reflected light might provoke in the moth's field of vision.

Image Credit: "Solstice light reflections" by jaisril is licensed under CC-BY-NC-ND 2.0 and falls under fair use.

The first three letters in the Russian name Лукас spell the word лук, meaning onion. Additionally, this name is derived from the Latin word lux, which is frequently translated as light, world, or life. Phonetically and etymologically, this name makes the fox into a mediator between the forest floor, which is a space of organic growth and decay, and the sun.

References: Crane, Gregory R. "Lux." Perseus Digital Library. Tufts University. Last modified 2013. https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/.

Image Credit: This image is in the public domain.

The word xурма, when read on its own, means persimmon. When read next to the word королек, the words refer to the "kinglet persimmon," which is a particular species. To capture this reference and its attendant associations with scientific classification and mythology, the word order must be shifted in translation.

References: "Persimmon." University of Colorado – Boulder. https://creative.colorado.edu/~hayu7527/web/persimmonwiki.html.

Image Credit: "Kinglet" by Авшарян Герасим is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 and falls under fair use.

The standard Russian grammatical structure applied to naming becomes meaningful here, as the literal translation of (Лиса зовут Лукас) – They call the fox Lucas – emphasizes that Lucas’s identity comes into existence through the voice of the collective.

While the expression нет-нет и means sometimes, in this text it also invokes the idea of negation. Нет, meaning no, is repeated twice to form this phrase, which may be read as part of a sequence of doubling initiated by the камушек хризолит line preceding it. Of course, камушек and хризолит do not begin with the exact same letter, but their sounds are similar, and they are visually set apart from the other lines of the poem. In this way, Nemirovskaya reinforces the aesthetic and conceptual reflections of the text.

Note the absence of a patronymic – a Russian naming convention derived from the father's first name. As a result, Lucas does not belong to a specific patrilineal line of descent.

References: "Russian Names." RusslandJournal. https://www.russlandjournal.de/en/learn-russian/russian-names/.

There is a long tradition of moth and butterfly imagery in Russian literature. According to the Russian émigré writer and lepidopterist Vladimir Nabokov, "in the works of major Russian poets I can discover only two lepidopteral images of genuinely sensuous quality: [Ivan] Bunin's impeccable evocation of what is certainly a Tortoiseshell and [Afanasy] Fet's 'Butterfly' soliloquizing."

References: Nabokov, Vladimir. Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited. Vintage Books: New York, 2012.

Image Credit: This image is in the public domain.

Shapeshifting implies a certain degree of reciprocity between lifeforms, while transformation (an alternative translation) necessitates a total break with one's previous self. In this poem, identities and lifeforms are not discrete. Instead, they are part of cycles of growth and decay, calling for a translation that reflects this structure.

I opted for this translation instead of something like "almost," because it implies a physical precipice/boundary, which is also delineated by the space of the forest.

Image Credit: This image is in the public domain.

While речь is often translated as speech or address, in this poem, it is important to convey the lack of trustworthiness associated with the raven's language. For this reason, I translated the word as lines so as to show that the raven's voice is not reliable.

Image Credit: "Raven" by Pete Beard is licensed under CC BY 2.0 and falls under fair use.

Russian grammar specifies gender, which is not captured in the translation of this poem. It is clear from the original that the speaker is female – the fox's mother.

In its position at the margins of the poem, this line deviates from the path dictated by the rest of the text. Like other gems, peridot absorbs all of the wavelengths of light except for its own color, green, which it reflects back at the viewer. The word next to peridot is pebble, which can be opaque instead of transparent and reflective. However, peridot gleams as it filters light, much as the words themselves filter meanings

References: Arem, Joel. "Gemstone Properties." International Gem Society. https://www.gemsociety.org/article/optics-gemology/.

Image Credit: This image is in the public domain.

Crêpe de chine is a silk-based fabric, which became popular in the Soviet garment industry. It is also a loan word from French. This word invokes the imagery of silk and silkworms, compelling us to consider how natural processes of production are commercialized, coopted, and incorporated into the machinations of empire

References: Strizhenova, Tatiana. “The Soviet Garment Industry in the 1930s.” The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts, vol. 5 (1987): 160–75.

Image Credit: "Silkworm in Chinese silk plant" by Anubis85 KH is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 and falls under fair use.

In the Russian, this word means "tongue" and "language." This sense of physicality/embodied language is important to the poem.

Annotate

This poem celebrates the microscopic, including the "tiny person" marked by the diminutive in the original Russian. The word sprout helps to preserve the grammatical implications of the diminutive, but it also suggests that the human, like all of the other creatures, is on the verge of growth and transformation.

A literal translation of the original would be simple men, but this translation draws on the infantilizing associations of the English man-child. Additionally, men-children rhymes with the first line, helping to preserve the sound that is lost by not ending on the word глаза (eyes).

The beady eyes of the pigeon link it to traditional art forms, while the eyes of the fish align it with demons and associated mythologies. There is only one letter of difference separating these two words for beads and demons in the original Russian. As such, processes of creation and destruction are intertwined and embodied in these creatures.

To convey the sense of conversation implied by the use of the imperative уймись in the original, I translated болит голова as my head hurts.

Emphasizing the gender of both winter and the raven is key to communicating the power dynamics at stake in this poem. The poem constructs a relationship between growth and decay – the raven reaches the detritus from the last year, held in the "body" of winter – but it also reflects the violence, hierarchies, and pleasures that are modeled by nature.

Peep invokes the idea of speech and growth at the same time. This relationship is central to the poem, as the beings grow when they verbalize the changes taking place around them.