Translation of Poem by Vladislav Khodasevich, "Баллада," "Orpheus Ascendant"

 

Vladislav Khodasevich

(1886-1939)

 

 

Баллада

 

Сижу, освещаемый сверху,
Я в комнате круглой моей.
Смотрю в штукатурное небо
На солнце в шестнадцать свечей.

Кругом — освещенные тоже,
И стулья, и стол. и кровать.
Сижу — и в смущеньи не знаю,
Куда бы мне руки девать.

Морозные белые пальмы
На стеклах беззвучно цветут.
Часы с металлическим шумом
В жилетном кармане идут.

О, косная, нищая скудость
Безвыходной жизни моей!
Кому мне поведать, как жалко
Себя и всех этих вещей?

И я начинаю качаться,
Колени обнявши свои,
И вдруг начинаю стихами
С собой говорить в забытьи.

 

Бессвязные, страстные речи!
Нельзя в них понять ничего,
Но звуки правдивее смысла
И слово сильнее всего.

 

И музыка, музыка, музыка
Вплетается в пенье мое,
И узкое, узкое, узкое
Пронзает меня лезвиё.

 

Я сам над собой вырастаю,
Над мертвым встаю бытием,
Стопами в подземное пламя,
В текучие звезды челом.

И вижу большими глазами —
Глазами, быть может, змей, —
Как пению дикому внемлют
Несчастные вещи мои.

 

И в плавный, вращательный танец
Вся комната мерно идет,
И кто-то тяжелую лиру
Мне в руки сквозь ветер дает.

 

И нет штукатурного неба
И солнца в шестнадцать свечей:
На гладкие черные скалы
Стопы опирает — Орфей.

 

9—22 декабря 1921

 

 

 

Literal Translation

A Ballad

I sit, illumined from above,

In my circular room.

I look at my stucco sky

At my sixteen-watt sun.

 

Everything all around me is illumined as well,

The armchairs, the table, the bed.

I sit, and I’m so confused that

I don’t know what to do with my hands.

 

The white palms of hoarfrost

On the windowpanes bloom silently.

The watch in my waistcoat pocket

Runs on with its metallic click.

 

O, the miserly, stagnant meagerness

Of my hopeless and desperate life!

Who is there for me to tell how sorry

I feel for myself and for all these things?

 

And I begin rocking to and fro,

Grasping my knees in my arms,

And suddenly, oblivious to all, 

I begin reciting verses with myself.

 

Incoherent passionate speeches!

One can make no sense of them,

But sounds are truer than sense

And the word is stronger than anything.

 

And the music, the music, the music

Weaves itself into my song,

And narrow, narrow, narrow

Is the blade that pierces me.

 

I grow out up above my very self,

Above the deadness of existence I rise up;

My verse-feet stand in subterranean flame,

My brow flows in the flowing of stars.

 

And I see with wide-open eyes—

With eyes of a serpent perhaps—

How my unfortunate things and objects

Hearken unto the feral song.

 

And the whole room gets into the rhythm

Of a smooth, revolving dance,

And through the wind someone puts

A cumbersome lyre in my hands.

 

And the stucco sky is no more,

Nor the sixteen-watt sun:

Against the smooth black crags

Of my verse-feet Orpheus is leaning.

 

d

Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

 

Orpheus Ascendant

 

Here I sit under lights from on high,

In my roundabout, circular room.

I peer at my stucco-bright sky,

At what sixty-watt sun-bulbs illume.

 

All around me illumined as well,

Are my armchairs, the table and bed.

Bewildered, I can’t seem to quell

How I wring hands and clutch at my head.

 

On my windowpanes silently bloom

The palm trees of whitish rime frost.

In my waistcoat, portentous of doom,

Ticking watch writhes in tempest time-tossed.

 

O the niggardly, loathsome disgust

Of my life’s hopeless, desperate way!

So pathetic, the furniture, dust,

How I pity these objects, my day.  

 

And hugging myself by the knees,

I rock back and forth, grief disperse,

And then in a stupor I freeze—

And begin with myself speaking verse.

 

The lines are all passion, pretense!

Not a smidgen of logic they hold,

But sounds ring much truer than sense,

And the word beats all else fifty-fold. 

 

Then the melody, music’s catharsis

Permeates and imbues my song’s whole,

Fine and slender and whetted to sharpness

Is the keen blade that impales my soul.

 

I expand into wraithlike domains,

Rise over life’s dead lifeless whirl,

My strophes in underground flames,

While my brow sports a starlit spit curl. 

 

And I watch with my goggling-wide specs,

Look with snake eyes that slither along,

At poor things all around me, objects,

As they hearken to my feral song.

 

All awash with untamed fluctuations,

The room in a smooth dance respires, 

And through the mad gusts of gyrations

Someone in my hands sticks a lyre.

 

And no more is my stucco-bright sky,

The sixty-watt sun-bulbs have dimmed.

On my smooth crags, on anapests’ sigh,  

Leans sly Orpheus proudly and grins.

 

d

Translation by Vladimir Nabokov

 

Orpheus

Brightly lit from above I am sitting
in my circular room; this is I —
looking up at a sky made of stucco,
at a sixty-watt sun in that sky.

All around me, and also lit brightly,
all around me my furniture stands,
chair and table and bed—and I wonder
sitting there what to do with my hands.

Frost-engendered white feathery palm trees
on the window-panes silently bloom;
loud and quick clicks the watch in my pocket
as I sit in my circular room.

Oh, the leaden, the beggarly bareness
of a life where no issue I see!
Whom on earth could I tell how I pity
my own self and the things around me?

And then clasping my knees I start slowly
to sway backwards and forwards, and soon
I am speaking in verse, I am crooning
to myself as I sway in a swoon.

What a vague, what a passionate murmur
lacking any intelligent plan;
but a sound may be truer than reason
and a word may be stronger than man.

And then melody, melody, melody
blends my accents and joins in their quest
and a delicate, delicate, delicate
pointed blade seems to enter my breast.

High above my own spirit I tower,
high above mortal matter I grow:
subterranean flames lick my ankles,
past my brow the cool galaxies flow.

With big eyes—as my singing grows wilder —
with the eyes of a serpent maybe,
I keep watching the helpless expression
of the poor things that listen to me.

And the room and the furniture slowly,
slowly start in a circle to sail,
and a great heavy lyre is from nowhere
handed me by a ghost through the gale.

And the sixty-watt sun has now vanished,
and away the false heavens are blown:
on the smoothness of glossy black boulders
this is Orpheus standing alone.

d

Translation by Peter Daniels

Ballad of the Heavy Lyre

I sit where the light is above me,
my circular room is my sphere;
I gaze at a plasterwork heaven
where the sun is an old chandelier.

And likewise illumined around me,
the chairs and the table and bed.
Should I sit with my hands in my pockets,
or where might I put them instead?

Silently, frost on the window
grows palm-trees and icy white flowers;
my watch ticks away in my waistcoat,
metallically counting the hours.

O my life is so worthless, a quagmire
where I'm stuck with no way to get free!
And who can I tell of my pity
for the things that I own, and for me?

And hugging my knees where I'm sitting,
I'm rocking, quite gently at first,
when out of the trance that I've entered
a chorus of verses has burst.

It's nothing but passionate nonsense!
Whatever it means, it's absurd,
but sound is more honest than meaning,
and strongest of all is a word.

And a music, the music of music
is twined in the song of my life,
and piercing me, piercing and piercing,
is the blade of the slenderest knife.

I find myself rising above me,
from where I exist but am dead;
my feet are in underground fire,
and a galaxy streams at my head.

I watch with my eyes ever wider —
how a serpent might see through the gloom —
I see my wild song is entrancing
the comfortless things in my room,

and the things begin dancing a measure,
with gracefully circling charms;
and somebody's heavy lyre comes
from out of the wind to my arms.

And there is no plasterwork heaven,
no chandelier sun any more;
but the blackness of slippery boulders
and Orpheus, his feet on the shore.