“Her death is like a short breath-stop” is a line from Serbian poet Vasko Popa’s elegy/eulogy to his English translator Anne Pennington. In his poem he achieves a wonderful reversal of meaning by juxtaposing “last breath” with “enlarges” – something narrowing with something widening – and “a short breath-stop” with “lime trees” – something abruptly ending with something yielding and lasting (etymologically “Lime” comes from Old English and Germanic languages lind, linde “lenient, yielding”). The emphasis of the ceasing of Anne Pennington’s breath at the beginning and the end of the poem paradoxically ensures her enduring presence in his life and the lives of all that knew her.
Anne Pennington
Until her last breath she enlarges
Her Oxford house
Built in Slavonic
Vowels and consonants
She polishes the corner-stones
Until their Anglo-Saxon shine
Begins to sing
Her death is like a short breath-stop
In the distant lime trees of her friends.
Vasko Popa
Anne Elizabeth Pennington (1934-81) read Russian at Lady Margaret Hall and taught Russian and Slavonic Philology there as a Tutorial Fellow from 1959 to 1980, when she was elected to the Chair in Comparative Slavonic Philology. Her scholarly activities ranged from the study of 17th-century Russian language, to which she made a major contribution with her commentated editionof Grigorij Kotošixin’s description of Muscovy, to music manuscripts from medieval Moldavia; she was the prime mover in producing a catalogue of Cyrillic manuscripts in British and Irish collections, which was published a few years after her untimely death in 1981. She had a particular interest in the languages and traditions of south-eastern Europe, and drew on her knowledge in this area to produce acclaimed translations of folk poetry and of modern poets such as Vasko Popa and Blaže Koneski, in collaboration with Peter Levi, Andrew Harvey and Ted Hughes. Her collected letters to Vasko Popa were published in 2010.
Sources:
– Vasko Popa, Complete Poems, Anvil Press, 1997
– Anne Pennington Memorial Appeal.pdf