The Visitor (1930)
Vladimir Korvin-Piotrovsky wrote this poem in Berlin in 1930; it was published in Rul in January 1931. Although the Russian Poetry Club, created in 1928, was active, with Piotrovsky and Vladimir Nabokov among its leading members, Berlin’s Russian society was by then very much diminished. The Visitor, written in the first person, communicates the émigré poet’s disconnectedness, apathy and resignation.
“What am I reading? Does not matter.
I won’t understand this book;
I won’t accept this life;
This memory is not mine.”
The poet’s room, probably in a pension (boarding house), is drafty and infested with mice. The sounds of Berlin in winter are distinctly not Russian: there are no sleigh bells, no knocking of the wooden shutters, no creaking of snow-laden fir trees. The house is empty; the city outside the window is quiet; the poet’s thoughts slowly turn to suicide... Meanwhile, a dear visitor is on their way, navigating the city amid the ringing of the tram bells.
Газета «Руль», 18 января 1931 г.
••• Other Russian poems on the 1920s Berlin •••