"Ты жива еще, моя старушка?" is translated too literally as "Are you still alive, my dear granny?". Granny means more grandmother while in Russian it means more old woman, not just necessarily grandmother. So the translation from OP's link is better: "Are you still alive, my dear old one?"
Re:A tribute to the Russian poet Sergey Yesenin
by fivre on Friday January 08, 2016 @07:15PM
(#10869330)
You may be interested, if you're not familiar, with The Retuses, a Moscow-area band that has used Esenin's poems as the basis for several songs. Unfortunately, they were never recorded as part of an album, but many recordings are present on Youtube. Some are better than others, and the recording for Письмо к женщине is particularly well done: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYgcUfMXJLw&t=2m30s
Re:A tribute to the Russian poet Sergey Yesenin
by kushti on Saturday January 09, 2016 @03:28AM
(#10870539)
I think HNers would also like Velimir Khlebnikov / Igor Severyanin / Vladimir Kamensky / Vladimir Mayakovsky and other Russian futurists of early 20th century.
I didn't see Russian on site (just English and Croatian). I found this with Russian versions, not with too many ads:
http://samlib.ru/w/wagapow_a/yesen.shtml
but the English translation is off. For example in "Letter To Mother":
http://samlib.ru/w/wagapow_a/yesen.shtml#a_letter_to_mother
"Ты жива еще, моя старушка?" is translated too literally as "Are you still alive, my dear granny?". Granny means more grandmother while in Russian it means more old woman, not just necessarily grandmother. So the translation from OP's link is better: "Are you still alive, my dear old one?"
Not sure what happened to it though.
Шаганэ: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8NYyVB_QyI Though I like this cover of it more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEN3Zugtqgs
Пой же, пой. На проклятой гитаре: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ME_Kxc9VlFw though I've sadly never found a better recording.