Translation of Poem by VLADISLAV KHODASEVICH, "Весенний лепет не разнежит," "If Verses' Teeth Are Tightly Clenched"

Владислав Ходасевич
(1886-1939)

Весенний лепет не разнежит
Сурово стиснутых стихов.
Я полюбил железный скрежет
Какофонических миров.

В зиянии разверстых гласных
Дышу легко и вольно я.
Мне чудится в толпе согласных —
Льдин взгроможденных толчея.

Мне мил — из оловянной тучи
Удар изломанной стрелы,
Люблю певучий и визгучий
Лязг электрической пилы.

И в этой жизни мне дороже
Всех гармонических красот —
Дрожь, побежавшая по коже,
Иль ужаса холодный пот,

Иль сон, где некогда единый,-
Взрываясь, разлетаюсь я,
Как грязь, разбрызганная шиной
По чуждым сферам бытия.

March 24-27, 1923, Saarow

Literal Translation

The babble of Spring will not make tender

One’s severely clenched verses.

I’ve come to love the iron-like grinding

Of cacophonous worlds.

In the gaping of yawning-wide vowels

I breathe lightly and freely.

In crowds of consonants I sense

The crush of piled-up blocks of ice.

It’s dear to me when, out of a tin cloud

Comes the blow [lightning strike] of a broken arrow,

I love the melodious and squealing

Whine of an electric saw.

And in this life more dear to me

Then all the harmonious beauties

Is the tremor that runs across my skin,

Or the cold sweat of horror,

Or a dream, in which I, once whole,

Have exploded and fly asunder in bits,

Like mud spattered by a tire

Across the alien spheres of existence.

 Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

If verses’ teeth are tightly clenched

Spring babbles won’t render them tender.

Steely-rasped grating is lovely, tight-wrenched

When worlds in Cacophonous show off their splendor.

If vowels with their mouths opened wide are agape

I suspirate lightly and feel at my ease.

When masses of consonants grimace and scrape,

I see ice-floes in April that abrogate freeze.

How precious to me when a tin-tinctured cloud

Sends down booms and a frazzle of lightning;

I love the whines when, travailed but unbowed,

A buzz saw in pain goes on fighting.

And more dear, more entrancing than peace on this earth,

Than all of bright harmony’s blooms

Is the tremor of gooseflesh so empty of mirth,

Or the cold sweat when Hideous looms, 

Or that dream in which I, once an integral whole,

Blow to pieces and fly off asunder,

Like mud-spattered bits from a passing tire’s roll,

That blast into nescience and fadeaway wonder. 

                                                   Lentulov, "Red Church," 1916-1917