Notes on the Text
The details of the events surrounding the nuclear accident
at Chernobyl are adapted here directly from public records. I have drawn on the
comparative statistics from scientific journals to maintain the integrity of
the narrative, although I have avoided the use of analytical tables where the
evidence can be presented by other means.
In 1986, Lyubov Sirota was living with her young son Alex
(called ‘Sasha’) in the city of Pripyat in Soviet Ukraine. On the night of 26
April, while sitting at the open window of her house, she witnessed the
explosion of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor, only 1.5 kilometres distant. They
were among the tens of thousands evacuated from the area in the following
hours. In the months and years following
the events of that night, she and her son suffered the effects of radiation
exposure, and came to share the same problematic medical histories as the other
citizens of Pripyat and the surrounding region.
In the late 1980s, she published, in Kiev, a small book
of ‘Chernobyl’ poems under the title Burden.
The poems were first ‘transliterated’ into English by Birgitta Ingemanson, and later translated into English by
Elisavietta Ritchie and Leonid Levin, through the auspices of Professor Paul
Brians in the United States.
A small-press edition of the poems has been published in
the United States, and particular poems have appeared in anthologies linked to
scientific or medical studies and to anti-nuclear debate. The poems in
“Resurrection Suite” are adapted from the Russian-English versions. Their use
in this present context precludes the replication of individual titles, where
the presentational sequence of the poems heightens the dramatic narrative
within the confines of the historical record. It is fair to say that the poetry
here is version rather than translation, although I have tried to maintain the
thematic focus of the poems, which is inevitably affected in any case, through
the revolutions of text from the original Russian.
The Soviet authorities originally denied the details of
the accident, and the extent of the effects of radiation on the rescue teams
and on the population in the surrounding area.
To this day, Pripyat remains an abandoned city.
No comments:
Post a Comment