Translation of Poem by Nikolai Zabolotsky, Николай Заболоцкий, "Уступи мне, скворец, уголок," "LET ME LODGE, STARLING BIRD, IN YOUR BIRDHOUSE COLUMBARY"

Starling Murmuration in Ireland, James Crombie Photo

Nikolai Zabolotsky

(1903-1958)

 

                         Уступи мне, скворец, уголок

Уступи мне, скворец, уголок,
Посели меня в старом скворешнике.
Отдаю тебе душу в залог
За твои голубые подснежники.

 

И свистит и бормочет весна.
По колено затоплены тополи.
Пробуждаются клены от сна,
Чтоб, как бабочки, листья захлопали.

И такой на полях кавардак,
И такая ручьев околесица,
Что попробуй, покинув чердак,
Сломя голову в рощу не броситься!

Начинай серенаду, скворец!
Сквозь литавры и бубны истории
Ты — наш первый весенний певец
Из березовой консерватории.

Открывай представленье, свистун!
Запрокинься головкою розовой,
Разрывая сияние струн
В самом горле у рощи березовой.

Я и сам бы стараться горазд,
Да шепнула мне бабочка-странница:
«Кто бывает весною горласт,
Тот без голоса к лету останется».

 

А весна хороша, хороша!
Охватило всю душу сиренями.
Поднимай же скворешню, душа,
Над твоими садами весенними.

 

Поселись на высоком шесте,
Полыхая по небу восторгами,
Прилепись паутинкой к звезде
Вместе с птичьими скороговорками.

Повернись к мирозданью лицом,
Голубые подснежники чествуя,
С потерявшим сознанье скворцом
По весенним полям путешествуя.

 1946

                                                                                  d

 

Literal Translation

Let me have, starling, a little corner,

Lodge me in your old starling bird-house.

I’ll put down my soul as collateral

In exchange for your sky-blue snowdrops.

 

Spring is whistling, murmuring.

The poplar trees are up to their knees in water.

The maples are awakening from their sleep,

In order to flap their leaves like butterflies.

 

And there’s such hurly-burly in the fields,

And the brooks are in such a rigmarole,

That just try abandoning your garret room

And not rushing headlong out into the grove!

 

Begin the serenade, starling!

Through the kettledrums and tambourines of history

You are our first spring singer

From the birch tree conservatory.

 

Open the performance, whistler!

Throw back your rosy little head,

Ripping asunder the glitter of strings

In the very throat of the birch grove.

 

I’d be inclined to give it a shot myself,

But a little pilgrim-butterfly whispered to me:

“He who gets loud-mouthed in the springtime

By summer finds himself without a voice.”

 

But the spring is fine, so fine!

All of my soul feels enveloped in lilacs.

Raise high your birdhouse, soul,

Over your springtime gardens.

 

Settle in on the top of a high pole,

Spread coruscations of bliss over the sky,

Attach yourself by a spiderweb to a star

Together with tongue-twister cries of the birds.

 

Turn your head and face the world,

Paying honor to the sky-blue snowdrops,

With the starling who has lost consciousness

Sojourning across the vernal fields.

 

                                                             James Crombie Photo

d

 

Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

 

Let me lodge, starling-bird, in your birdhouse columbary.

Move me in, lock and stock, to your starling hidey-hole.

Bring me some snowdrops sky-blue, don’t be wary.

You can have a lien-note on my introverted soul.

 

Spring whistles and mutters its murmurings vernal.

Poplar trees are standing in the water up to knees.

Maples yawn and stretch awake from sleepy-time hibernal;

They flap their leaves like butterflies in breeze.

And the fields writhe in such a zealous spring commotion,

And the brooks are babbling total wacko balderdash;

Can I sit all cooped up inside and not succumb to motion?

No! Breakneck to the birch groves I must dash.

Serenade me, feathered fowl, commence to singing, starling!

Let the tambourines and drumbeats ding and pound;

You’re the first spring warbler in the woodsy choir, darling,

Summa cum alumnus of the birch-school in the round.

 

Birdie songster, launch your vernal chirp-and-cheep routine!

Proudly raise your pinkish head and sing out raucously;

Rip and tear the sinews from the chords that glitter-gleam

In the lusty throat of every birch grove bird that be.

 

Thought I’d like myself to maybe try to have a go,

But a passing butterfly lit on my ear and shushed:

“He who chirps and twitters loud in any spring meadow,

Come the summer finds his voice is hoarse and sadly hushed.”  

 

But spring’s a ball, a fest held high on eagle’s lofty aerie,

My soul is floating free, exulting, fully lilac-swathed.

Raise up, dear soul, to heaven’s heights your brilliant columbary,

O’er gardens that in vernal mist are gently, softly bathed.

 

Make your home, breath of life, on a tall pole far-bizarre,

Spreading spangled bliss and rapture through the skies;

Cast out a gossamer, latch on a polestar,

You and your gibble-and-gabble bird cries.

 

Turn your head now, face to face with universe and nation, 

Say a prayer for snowdrops, to their sky-blue bow and scrape,

Join the starling birdie as he swoons in murmuration, 

Take a swoop-ride with the swarm o’er lustrous spring landscape.

 

 

d

 

Translator’s Notes

 

Commentary in Russian below is from the Website stikhi-rus.ru; here, in English, are some of the most salient points:

 

Nikolai Zabolotsky (1903-1958) fell into the maw of the Stalinist terror, spending some seven years in concentration camps and exile. In 1946, thanks to the influence of Aleksandr Fadeev, head of the Soviet Writers Union, he was allowed to return to Moscow, but had no roof over his head. The writer V.P. Ilenkov, a man of magnanimous and generous character, offered Zabolotsky his dacha at the writers’ colony of Peredelkino. As Nikolai Chukovsky recalls, “the birch grove had an ineffable charm, teeming with birds, and it extended right up to Ilenkov’s dacha.” One can only imagine with what exultation Zabolotsky, newly freed from his ordeal, contemplated the meadows and birds, when he wrote the exuberant poem about starlings, snowdrops and birches in the spring of 1946.

 

Stalin, however, still had seven years to live, and once having experienced Stalinist repression, one does not soon forget. Zabolotsky’s son mentions how the poet revised the sixth stanza, “softening its too autobiographical tone.” Here’s how the original read:

 

Я и сам бы стараться горазд,
Да облезли от холода перышки.
Если смолоду будешь горласт,
Перехватит дыхание в горлышке –

 

Literal Translation:

Thought I’d like myself to have a go,

But my feathers have thinned out in the cold.

If you get too loudmouthed in your youth

Your breath tends to catch in your throat.

 

d

Анализ стихотворения.

В 1946 году благодаря заступничеству Фадеева поэт Николай Заболоцкий вернулся из ссылки. Страдания семи долгих лагерных и ссыльных лет были наконец-то позади. Не было только крыши над головой. Писатель
В.П. Ильенков - человек отважного и великодушного характера - любезно предоставил Заболоцким свою дачу в Переделкине.
Николай Чуковский вспоминает: "березовая роща неизъяснимой прелести, полная птиц, подступала к самой даче Ильенкова". Об этой березовой роще в 1946 году поэт напишет дважды:

Открывай представленье, свистун!
Запрокинься головкою розовой,
Разрывая сияние струн
В самом горле у рощи березовой.
("Уступи мне, скворец, уголок").

Многочисленные аллитерации ("Уступи мне, скворец, уголок, / Посели меня
в старом скворечнике..."), и повторы глаголов ("Уступи...",
"Посели...", "Начинай...", "Открывай...", "Запрокинься...",
"Поднимай...", "Поселись...", "Прилепись...", "Повернись..."),
рифмующихся по горизонтали и вертикали.

И не случайно на этом звуковом фоне в стихотворении "Уступи мне, скворец, уголок" возникает ряд "музыкальных метафор": здесь и "серенада", и "литавры", и "бубны", и "Березовая консерватория", и "струны".

Уступи мне, скворец, уголок,
Посели меня в старом скворечнике.
Отдаю тебе душу в залог
За твои голубые подснежники...
Повернись к мирозданью лицом,
Голубые подснежники чествуя,
С потерявшим сознанье скворцом
По весенним полям путешествую.

Интересное сравнение первоначального и окончательного вариантов шестой строфы в стихотворении "Уступи мне, скворец, уголок", написанного в 1946 году. Сталин проживет еще около семи лет, и Заболоцкий (лагерные воспоминания держали поэта в состоянии вечного страха) исправит, по свидетельству его сына Никиты Николаевича, шестую строфу, "смягчив слишком автобиографическое ее звучание". Первоначальный вариант строфы:

Я и сам бы стараться горазд,
Да облезли от холода перышки.
Если смолоду будешь горласт,
Перехватит дыхание в горлышке -

Преобразился (не став лучше!) таким образом:

Я и сам бы стараться горазд,
Да шепнула мне бабочка-странница:
"Кто бывает весною горласт,
Тот без голоса к лету останется".

У Заболоцкого своя манера повествования, философский взгляд на мир, на окружающую природу. Он видит, как все на земле взаимосвязано и хрупко. Поэт сознает себя составной частью этого прекрасного и гармоничного мира. В сознании поэта природа и человек неразрывно связаны. Они дополняют друг друга, порой вступают в конфликт, но не могут существовать один без другого. Произведения Заболоцкого, посвященные природе, различаются по своим настроениям, чувствам. Постоянным остается лишь одно -сознание величия природы, ее необходимости для человека, который является ее сыном и в то же время ее творцом.
Стихотворения поэта заставляют и нас задуматься, иначе взглянуть на окружающий мир.

 

 

 video presentation/reading on the YouTube website "Pink Lady":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZ4Zn0QPG4c&ab_channel=PinkLady

On Nonsense Verse, from the book "Here We Be. Where Be We?" Nonsense Poem: "The Year Nineteen Hundred and No One Knows"

 

Nonsense Becoming Sense Becoming Nonsense Sense

Probably the most underrated kind of literary writing is nonsense verse. People think it’s just silly and nothing else but silly. But great nonsense verse has a way of showing language on the verge of becoming nonsensical madness, which then, somehow, creeps up onto the verge of making sense, and then—if everything works out perfectly—crawls over into some higher realm of transcendent truth.

 

The Year Nineteen Hundred and No One Knows

In the year Nineteen Hundred and No One Knows

The stars may have frozen; the moon may have froze;

Do you know? Does he know? Do we know? Who knows

What life will be like in Nineteen No One Knows?

 

That poem was, obviously, written before the turn of the century and the turn of the millennium. For we’re now into the year 2020 + No One Knows.

In the year Nineteen Hundred and No One Knows

We may have departed for places one goes.

Do we know? Does anyone know? No. Who knows

Where we could all be in Nineteen No One Knows?

Does anyone know what it’s like where one goes,

If one doesn’t last till Nineteen No One Knows?

You mean no one but no one but nobody knows?

Then I think I’ll stay here with blue bows on my toes,

 

In the sun, wearing bows on my toes and no clothes,

Not no clothes but just bows on my big crooked toes,

And I’ll bask in the sun without worries or woes,

Till the year Twenty Hundred and Nobody Knows.

[Excerpt from the book by U.R. Bowie, HERE WE BE. WHERE BE WE? IN THE SHITSTORM YEAR OF 2020]

The Poetaster's Plaint, from "Bobby Goosey’s Compendium of Perfectly Sensible Nonsense"

 

 

 

 

 

The Poetaster’s Plaint

or

Sad Poem About What A Shame It Is When A Poet’s Poem Peters Out

 

I was rhyming along, going strong, had it made,

With a dash of panache and fierce rodomontade,

Persiflage, badinage in a two-car garage,

What a writer, such a rhymester, poetaster to a T!

Then my poem petered out on me . . .

 

Nothing left, half-assed rhymes, just a treacly metre.

No more dash of panache, but a pinch of saltpeter;

Yes, my poem petered out . . .

Ignominiously . . .

My poem petered out . . .

On me . . .

 

 From Bobby Goosey’s Compendium of Perfectly Sensible Nonsense

WAR, From "Bobby Goosey’s Compendium of Perfectly Sensible Nonsense"

 

War

 

An ox and some oxen were axing (swinging axes).

The ox was axing the oxen and

The oxen were axing the ox.

And while the oxen axed the ox,

And while the ox axed the oxen,

The oxen were asking,

“Why are we axing an ox?”

And the ox was asking,

“Why am I axing oxen?”

And they all went on asking,

The ox and all the oxen,

They all went on asking,

But they didn’t stop axing (swinging axes).

 

From Bobby Goosey’s Compendium of Perfectly Sensible Nonsense

A UKRAINIAN POEM, Translation of Poem by Anna and Fyodor Tyutchev, Федор Тютчев, "Святые горы, "The Holy Mountains"

 

Федор Тютчев (and Anna Tyutchev)

Святые горы

Тихо, мягко, над Украйной
Обаятельною тайной
Ночь июльская лежит —
Небо так ушло глубоко,
Звезды светят так высоко,
И Донец во тьме блестит.

Сладкий час успокоенья!
Звон, литии, псалмопенья
Святогорские молчат —
Под обительской стеною,
Озаренные луною,
Богомольцы мирно спят.

И громадою отвесной,
В белизне своей чудесной,
Над Донцом утес стоит,
К небу крест свой возвышая…
И, как стража вековая,
Богомольцев сторожит.

Говорят, в его утробе,
Затворившись, как во гробе,
Чудный инок обитал,
Много лет в искусе строгом
Сколько слез он перед Богом,
Сколько веры расточал!..

Оттого ночной порою
Силой и поднесь живою
Над Донцом утес стоит —
И молитв его святыней,
Благодатной и доныне,
Спящий мир животворит.

1862

 

d

 

Literal Translation

                                                         The Holy Mountains

 

Silently, softly over Ukraine

With a secret enchantment

Lies the July night.

The sky has departed into the depths,

The stars are shining so high,

And the Donets [River] gleams in the dark.

 

Sweet hour of tranquility!
Peal [of bells], liturgy for the dead, singing of psalms,

The residents of Sviatogorsk are silent.

Beneath the walls of the monastery,

Lit by the moon,

The pilgrims are sleeping peacefully.

 

And a mass of sheer cliff

In its wondrous whiteness,

Over the Donets a crag hangs,

Raising its cross toward the sky…

And like an eternal nightwatchman,

It keeps watch over the pilgrims.

 

They say that in its depths,

Shutting himself away as in a coffin,

A marvelous anchorite once dwelt,

For many years in strictest asceticism,

So many tears he shed before God,

So much faith he dissipated!

 

Consequently, in time of night,

To this very day powerful and alive

Above the Donets the crag still hangs.

And the prayers of this sacred place,

Still grace-giving as ever today,

Give new life to the sleeping world.

 

d

 

Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

 

The Holy Mountains

 

Rapt in some enchanted dream, 

Soft and silent o’er Ukraine

Lies July in night’s dim gleam.

Swathed in murky depths the sky,

Stars are glistening far on high,

Spangled Donets feels no pain. 

 

Tranquil time, sheer quietude,

Bell-peals, psalms sung, threnodies,

Sviatogorsk is still, subdued.

Neath the walls of monastery,

Bathed by lunar luminary,

Pilgrims sleep and dream at ease.

And a massive precipice,

Alabaster, heaven-blessed,

Looms o’er Donets that sheer cliff,

Raising high its cross toward sky,

Aged caretaker, keen of eye,

Vigil keeps as pilgrims rest.

 

Deep within its caves, they say,

Once there dwelt an anchorite,

Coffin-bound sequestered lay.

There he kept the strictest fast,

Supplications, tears amassed,

Was steadfast in his faith, contrite.

 

Still puissant to this day, in splendor,

O’er Donets that white crag looms;

Yet steeped in grace, the monk’s prayers render

Solacement to souls at sleep,

To folk who perforce breathe war’s fumes,  

Grant hope renewed to those who weep.  

 

d

 

Translator’s Notes

 

This poem is a joint effort. It was composed by Tyutchev’s eldest daughter, Anna Fyodorovna Tyutchev, in May, 1862. She sent it to her father, who promptly revised it to his own exacting standards. Apparently Anna had visited the region of the Holy Mountains and the monastery there, which was/is located in Eastern Ukraine, on the right bank of the Northern Donets River. The town nearby is Sviatogorsk (Holy Mount)—now spelled Sviatohirsk by Ukrainians. The city of Sloviansk is 30 km. away, and the largest city in the region, Kharkiv, is located to the NW of the Holy Mountains.  

 

In a letter to her sister Ekaterina, A.F. Tyutchev writes, “I’m sending you some new verses, which I wrote about the Holy Mountains and which papa revised in his own way. His poem, naturally, is incomparably better than mine, but he did not exactly capture my idea, the way I understood it” [original of the letter is in French]. Here is Anna’s poem:

 

СВЯТЫЕ ГОРЫ

  Тихо, мягко, ночь Украйны,

  Полна прелести и тайны,

  Над дубравою лежит.

  Темно небо так глубоко,

  Звезды светят так высоко,

  И во тьме Донец блестит.

  За обительской стеной

  Псалмопенье, звон святой

  До заутрени молчат;

  Под оградою толпой,

  Освещенные луной,

  Богомольцы мирно спят.

  И с крестом там на челе

  Белым призраком во тьме

  Над Донцом утес стоит.

  И, как дух минувших дней,

  Он молитвою своей

  Богомольцев сторожит.

  Во скале той священной

  Искони чернец смиренный

  Подвиг веры совершал

  И в духовном созерцанье

  Сколько слез и воздыханий

  Перед Богом изливал.

  Оттого, как дух блаженный,

  Величавый и смиренный

  Над Донцом утес стоит,

  И в тиши порой ночной

  Он молитвой вековой

  Спящий мир животворит.

 

[see Collection of Tyutchev’s poetry in two volumes (Moscow: Nauka Publishers, 1965), Vol. 2, p. 260-61, p. 426-27]

d

 

The Holy Mountains Monastery (Lavra) of the Dormition of the Mother of God

(from Wikipedia)

First written mention of the monastery dates from the seventeenth century, although it is likely that monks settled in the region as early as the 14^th or 15^th century. In 1679 the monastery was seized and plundered by Crimean Tatars. In 1787 Catherine the Great had the monastery closed. She secularized its lands and donated them to one of her favorites, the famous Prince Gregory Potemkin. Beginning in 1844, an heir of his, Aleksandr Potemkin, together with his wife Tatiana, returned the lands and financed a reestablishment of the monastery—supported by Tsar Nicholas I.

 During the Russian Revolution the Bolsheviks plundered and desecrated the monastery, beating and killing many of the monks; in 1922 they closed it down altogether and established on the grounds a resort/sanitorium for the workers of the Donbas. In 1991, after the fall of the Soviet Union, Ukraine became independent, and the monastery was restored. In 2004 it was granted the status of a Ukrainian Orthodox Church Lavra (lavra being at the highest level in the hierarchy of monasteries).

 Recently, in the turmoil of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, people evacuated from war zones in Eastern Ukraine took refuge at the monastery. On March 12, 2022, Russian aircraft attacked the bridge linking the right and left banks of the Northern Donets River, the Lavra and the city of Sviatogorsk. A bomb exploded, knocking out windows in buildings of the monastery and wounding several refugees. At the time of this posting (April 12, 2022), the city of Izyum, on the Donets River, just to the north of the Holy Mountains, had been seized by Russian forces; their next objective, apparently, was the nearby city of Sloviansk.

 The attached photographs show the bridge over the Donets, along with the chalk-white precipice that attracted Anna Tyutchev’s attention in 1862. The crosses behind the precipice are those of the St. Nicholas Church. Like the most famous Lavra in Ukraine, the Kiev-Cave Monastery, the Holy Mountains Lavra has caves in which ascetic monks dwell, practicing fasting, perpetual prayer, and mortification of the flesh. The caves are located within the chalk-white precipice. Here too is where the legendary monk/anchorite once dwelled, the one mentioned in the poem.

 

 YouTube video: Russian Orthodox Bells at the Holy Mount Monastery:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuuMgL8POKM

NY Times article, from June 6, 2022:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/06/world/europe/ukraine-monastery-orthodox-church-russia.html