From: ibshambat@gmail.com   
      
   Sometimes people tell me that my poetry and translations are useless. My   
   response is that some things are good whether or not they are useful. The   
   Yosemite Park is useless, but there is merit to it. The Sistine Chapel is   
   useless, but there is merit to it.   
    Same with Russian poetry translations.   
      
   Elvis Costello put out an album called “All this useless beauty.” Oscar   
   Wiled said that all art is quite useless. That may be the case. However maybe   
   utility is not all it is about. Useless or not, magnificent things have come   
   out of art, and they    
   are worthy of respect.   
      
   In case of nature, it has in it things of much greater richness and variety   
   than anything that people have created or can re-create. Which means that it   
   is wrong to see it as only resources. Until you can re-create the Amazonian   
   rainforest you have no    
   business burning it down. This is the case whether it is a creation of God or   
   a product of billions of years of evolution. In either case, it is full of   
   vast richness and beauty, and it is richness and beauty that people cannot at   
   this time re-create.   
      
   Once again, some things are good whether or not they are useful. Some things   
   possess an intrinsic value that make them valuable in themselves. This is the   
   case with Yosemite Park; this is the case with Sistine Chapel; this is the   
   case with the works of    
   Marina Tsvetayeva and Igor Severyanin.   
      
   Translating such works is far from useless. It is making available for   
   English-speaking audiences the treasures of Russian culture. It is making   
   one’s contribution to the civilization. And that is a task well done   
   whatever the degree of its usefulness.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)