Total n00b, how to create poetry in Tex with cyrillic characters?

Question

Sorry for idiotic question. I want to create .tex file from this poem

Везилка


Везилке, кажи како да се роди

проста и строга македонска песна

од ова срце што со себе води

разговор ноќен во тревога бесна.



Два конца парај од срцето, драги,

едниот црн е, а другиот црвен,

едниот буди морничави таги,

другиот копнеж и светол и стрвен.



Па со нив вези еднолична низа,

песна од копнеж и песна од мака,

ко јас што везам на ленена риза

ракав за бела невестинска рака.



Судбинско нешто се плело за века

од двете нишки, два созвучни збора,

едната буди темница што штрека,

другата буди вкрвавена зора.

I wish to use Windows fonts. I try

\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[TS1,T2A, T1]{fontenc}%
\usepackage{heuristica}%
\usepackage[russian, english]{babel}
\usepackage{poetrytex}
\usepackage[paperwidth=140mm,paperheight=210mm]{geometry}
\newcommand*\English{\selectlanguage{english}}

\begin{document}

\thispagestyle{empty}%
\renewcommand{\poetryheadings}{\pagestyle{myheadings} \markboth{}{}}
\begin{poem}{Title}{Author\\2014}
{\Russian Мороз и солнце, день чудесный} \\
{\itshape
The sea is calm to-night.}\\
\end{poem}

\end{document}

and its work fine. But when I change \begin{poem}{Title}{Author\\2014} to \begin{poem}{Везилка}{Конески\\2014} I receive error. Can someone, please give me an example how to achieve this.

Thank you!

Answer 1

Apparently, the main language is Russian and not English.

\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T2A, T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{heuristica}
\usepackage[main=russian, english]{babel}
\usepackage{poetrytex}
\usepackage[paperwidth=140mm,paperheight=210mm]{geometry}

\newcommand*\English[1]{\foreignlanguage{english}{#1}}

\renewcommand{\poetryheadings}{\pagestyle{myheadings}\markboth{}{}}

\begin{document}

\thispagestyle{empty}


\begin{poem}{Везилка}{Конески\\2014}
Мороз и солнце, день чудесный \\
\English{\itshape The sea is calm to-night.}\\
\end{poem}

\end{document}

Note that \foreignlanguage is preferable to \selectlanguage here.

If the main language is English, change language before the poem:

\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T2A, T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{heuristica}
\usepackage[russian, english]{babel}
\usepackage{poetrytex}
\usepackage[paperwidth=140mm,paperheight=210mm]{geometry}

\newcommand*\English[1]{\foreignlanguage{english}{#1}}

\renewcommand{\poetryheadings}{\pagestyle{myheadings}\markboth{}{}}

\begin{document}

\thispagestyle{empty}

\begin{otherlanguage}{russian}
\begin{poem}{Везилка}{Конески\\2014}
Мороз и солнце, день чудесный \\
\English{\itshape The sea is calm to-night.}\\
\end{poem}
\end{otherlanguage}

\end{document}

Answer 2

Here’s an example that sets each verse and its translation in parallel. They will line up side by side. The poetrytex and paracol packages do not play too well together, so I removed the poem environment, but you can still change the formatting however you please.

You’d need to define them as some kind of section if you want them to appear in a table of contents and be linkable in hyperref, but I did not do that.

It uses the Lingusistics Pro extension of Utopia/Heuristica in LuaLaTeX.

\defaultfontfeatures{Scale=MatchLowercase, Ligatures=TeX }
\babelfont{rm}
          [Scale=1.0,
           Ligatures={Common, TeX}
          ]{Linguistics Pro} % A newer fork of Heuristica with several Cyrillic stylistic sets.

\columnratio{0.5,0.5}
\sloppy

\babeltags{russian=russian}
\babeltags{english=english}

\newcommand{\obverses}[2]{%
  \begin{leftcolumn*}\textrussian{#1}%
  \end{leftcolumn*}%
  \begin{rightcolumn}\textenglish{\itshape #2}%
  \end{rightcolumn}%
}

\begin{document}
%% Source: http://www.pushkins-poems.com/push03.htm
\thispagestyle{empty}%
\begin{center}
  {\huge\bfseries Я помню чудное мгновенье} \\
  Алекса́ндр Пу́шкин 
\end{center}

\bigskip
\setlength\columnsep{1em}
\begin{paracol}{2}
\begin{center}
\obverses%
  { К А. П. КЕРН}%
  {To A. P. Kern.}
\end{center}

\obverses%
  {Я помню чудное мгновенье:\\
    Передо мной явилась ты,\\
    Как мимолетное виденье,\\
    Как гений чистой красоты.}%
  {I remember a wonderful moment\\
   As before my eyes you appeared,\\
   Like a vision, fleeting, momentary,\\
   Like a spirit of the purest beauty. }

\obverses%
  {В томленьях грусти безнадежной,\\
   В тревогах шумной суеты,\\
   Звучал мне долго голос нежный,\\
   И снились милые черты. }%
  {In the torture of hopeless melancholy,\\
   In the bustle of the world's noisy hours,\\
   That voice rang out so tenderly,\\
   I dreamed of that lovely face of yours.}
\end{paracol}
\end{document}

Please forgive any errors in the Russian text I copied.