Translation of Poem by Fedor Tyutchev, Федор Тютчев, "Песок сыпучий по колени…" "Up to our axles in crumbly sand . . . "

 

Федор Тютчев

(1803-1873)

 

Песок сыпучий по колени…
Мы едем — поздно — меркнет день,
И сосен, по дороге, тени
Уже в одну слилися тень.

Черней и чаще бор глубокий —
Какие грустные места!
Ночь хмурая, как зверь стоокий,
Глядит из каждого куста!

1830

 

Literal Translation

Friable sand up to the knees . . .

We drive—it’s late—the day grows dark,

And by the roadside the shadows of pines

Have now merged into one shadow.

 

Ever darker and denser is the deep coniferous forest . . .

How sombre these regions are! . . .

The sullen night, like a hundred-eyed beast,

Peers out from every bush.

 

Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

 Up to our axles in crumbly sand . . .

We push on—late now—gloamings fade, 

And roadside pine-tree shadows stand,

All melded now in one vast shade.

 

The tree-line grove grows dark, bedight

With dismalness, such gloom and haze!

Like a hundred-eyed beast the sullen night

From each bush glares and bodes malaise.

 

d

 

Translator’s Notes

From annotations in the two-volume collection of Tyutchev’s verse, Moscow (Nauka Publishers, 1965), p. 350.

 

This poem was written in 1830, apparently in October, while the poet was on his way back to Munich from St. Petersburg. The verses have been much appreciated by other writers. Nekrasov praised the last two lines, compared them to a passage in Lermontov and found them superior to Lermontov’s lines. According to the annotator, both the Lermontov passage—which describes “a million dark eyes peering out in the darkness through the branches of every bush”—and Tyutchev’s lines here have their origins in a poem by Goethe, in which he refers to “a hundred black eyes in the darkness, peering out of the bushes.” Tolstoy placed a letter K (for “красота—beauty”) on his copy of the poem.

 

d

 These Tyutchev verses apparently haunted Vladimir Nabokov the translator, as he made numerous attempts over the years to render the poem into English. This, of course, was before he gave up altogether on translating poetry, declaring true poetic translation impossible—after he tried it with Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin and failed. Here are three of his attempts with Tyutchev’s poem:

 

1

The Journey

Knee-deep, this powdery sand . . . We ride

                late in the murky day.

 

Shadows cast by the pines now merged to form

                one shadow across our way.

 

Blacker and denser the wildwood grows.

                What a comfortless neighborhood!

 

Moody night peers like a hundred-eyed beast

                out of every bush in the wood.

1941-1944

 

 

2

The Journey

Soft sand comes up to our horses’ shanks

                as we ride in the darkening day

and the shadows of pines have closed their ranks:

                all is shadow along our way.

 

In denser masses the black trees rise.

                What a comfortless neighborhood!

Grim night like a beast with a hundred eyes

                Peers out of the underwood.

1941-1944

 

 

3

(Untitled, As in Original)

The crumbly sand is knee-high.

We’re driving late. The day is darkening,

And on the road the shadows of the pines

Into one shadow have already fused.

 

Blacker and denser is the deep pine wood.

What melancholy country!

Grim night like a hundred-eyed beast

Looks out of every bush.

1951-1957

 

See Vladimir Nabokov, Verses and Versions, Edited by Brian Boyd and Stanislav Shvabrin (Harcourt, 2008), p. 244-47.

 

Commentary by U.R. Bowie

 

Nabokov had trouble deciding what kind of sand the poet—plus whoever was with him, probably the driver of the carriage—was struggling through knee-deep. He couldn’t find the perfect word in English: friable, powdery, soft, crumbly; maybe there is no perfect word for sypuchij.

 Between Variant One above and Variant Two, he apparently discovered a problem that Tyutchev’s description had created. The first line suggests walking, knee-deep in sand, but the second line says they were driving or riding—the Russian verb can refer to riding on horseback or riding in a vehicle, but not to walking. And a horse cannot be “knee-deep,” since a horse has no knees. So in Variant Two Nabokov gave up on knees and described the sand up to the horses’ shanks. Now that’s some really high sand. A translator has to make one of two choices: giving up on the knees or giving up on the riding. In my translation I measured the sand up to the axles of the carriage.

 Nabokov came up with some good lines in English. I like especially, “Grim night like a beast with a hundred eyes.” But it’s understandable why he never published these translations in his lifetime. Especially weak is the line—which shows up in two variants: “What a comfortless neighborhood!” Comfortless, indeed, and “neighborhood,” suggests the environment of a city, rather than somewhere in the country. He finally discarded this discomfort only in Variant Three, in which he seems to be approaching the totally literal method that he finally decided on with Eugene Onegin—giving up for the most part on artistic effects.

 

After mapping out the literal translation above, it took me roughly twenty minutes to come up with my  literary translation/adaptation, which of course—in thrall to meter and rhyme—departs somewhat from the original meanings of words. My aim is not to get the exact words, but to achieve at least an approximation of the gist and the lyrical tone of the original. And to create a good poem in English.