While there is earth. Selected poems and translations. Markova V.N.

Vera Nikolaevna Markova (1907-1995) is known primarily as a philologist-Japonist, a researcher of Japanese literature, an outstanding translator from Japanese (Sei-Synagon, Matsuo Basyo, Akutagawa Ryunoske, etc.) and from English (Emily Dikinson) of languages. But all her life Vera Markova wrote poetry - and never printed them. Their first publications appeared in the "New World" at the sunset of Soviet power, in 1989, when the author was eighty-two years old, and the first and only lifetime collection-"The Moon rises twice"-in 1992, when it was eighty-five.

Markovo's poems are written in addition to modern Soviet poetry. They speak in another language, belong to the parallel - secret, deep - layer of Russian literary history of the 20th century, which continues to open today. The influence of translation work on Markova’s own poems can be called the liberating: the translations expanded both the range of intonations and the horizons of vision.