Translating Marshak's Translation of Shakespeare's Sonnet #81 Back Into English

 

Перевод Самуила Яковлевича Маршака

Samuil Marshak

(1887-1964)

Translation into Russian of Shakespeare’s Sonnet #81

 

Тебе ль меня придется хоронить
Иль мне тебя, - не знаю, друг мой милый.
Но пусть судьбы твоей прервется нить,
Твой образ не исчезнет за могилой.

Ты сохранишь и жизнь и красоту,
А от меня ничто не сохранится.
На кладбище покой я обрету,
А твой приют - открытая гробница.

Твой памятник - восторженный мой стих.
Кто не рожден еще, его услышит.
И мир повторит повесть дней твоих,
Когда умрут все те, кто ныне дышит.

Ты будешь жить, земной покинув прах,
Там, где живет дыханье, - на устах!

 

 

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Literal Translation of Modern Russian (Back into Modern English)

Will it be up to you to bury me

Or me to bury you? I don’t know, my dear friend.

But though the thread of your destiny be broken,

Your image will not disappear beyond the grave.

 

You’ll preserve both your life and your beauty,

While of me nothing will be preserved.

In graveyard I shall attain to peace,

While your refuge will be an open sepulchre.

 

Your monument is my ecstatic verse.

He not yet born will hear it.

And the world will repeat the tale of your days,

When all those who breathe today are dead.

 

You will live on, having left behind your earthly dust,

There where breath lives: on lips!

 

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Literary Translation/Adaptation (into Modern English) by U.R. Bowie

 

Will my lot be dear you, my friend, to bury,

Or will you be the one to me immure?

But though fate lead you but to naught and nary,

Beyond the grave your image will endure.

 

Your life and beauty both shall be sustained,

While of me void and emptiness persever.

In graveyard and at peace I’ll lie constrained,

But your tomb will be airy, open ever.

 

Your monument will be my verses’ glory,

He not yet born my poems will hear, esteem.

The world will tell and retell your life’s story,

When men who breathe today are mist and dream.

 

You’ll live on after flesh’s apocalypse,

Where breath dwells ever moistly, on men’s lips!

 

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Shakespeare, Sonnet No. 81

 

Or I shall live your epitaph to make
Or you survive when I in earth am rotten.
From hence your memory death cannot take,
Although in me each part will be forgotten.
Your name from hence immortal life shall have,
Though I, once gone, to all the world must die.
The Earth can yield me but a common grave,
When you entombèd in men’s eyes shall lie.
Your monument shall be my gentle verse,
Which eyes not yet created shall o’erread;
And tongues to be your being shall rehearse
When all the breathers of this world are dead.
You still shall live—such virtue hath my pen—
Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men.

 

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The 1609 Quarto Version

OR I fhall liue your Epitaph to make,
Or you ſuruiue when I in earth am rotten,
From hence your memory death cannot take,
Although in me each part will be forgotten.
Your name from hence immortall life ſhall haue,
Though I ( once gone) to all the world muſt dye,
The earth can yeeld me but a common graue,
When you intombed in mens eyes ſhall lye,
Your monument ſhall be my gentle verſe,
Which eyes not yet created ſhall ore-read,
And toungs to be, your beeing ſhall rehearſe,
When all the breathers of this world are dead,
You ſtill ſhal liue (ſuch vertue hath my Pen)
Where breath moſt breaths, euen in the mouths of men. 

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Translator’s Notes

Fearing being overinfluenced by the great, I avoided looking at Shakespeare’s masterpiece while translating Marshak’s Russian translation back into English. Of course, Marshak writes his translations in modern Russian, not attempting what would be for any modern writer a horrendously difficult feat: trying to translate 16^th century English into 16^th century Russian. In his acclaimed translations of Shakespeare’s plays Pasternak has taken the same approach. Given this initial premise, it is no surprise that what I come up with in my modern translation has a multitude of words not in common with the original Shakespeare poem.

Reading the original after completing my effort, chained to Marshak, I cannot help feeling jealous of so many wonderful lines. An interesting lacuna in Marshak; while Shakespeare has a trio of body parts yet to be born engaging in the glorification of his subject—eyes, tongues, mouths—Marshak settles for just one, and that one is a part of the body not specifically mentioned in the original: lips.

A few more points about the original. When reading Shakespeare I always find myself wondering how words were pronounced in his time. The rhymes here—those that are non-rhymes in modern English: have/grave; shall read/dead—provide clues. Judging by his other sonnets, the words love and move, e.g., probably rhymed back then. Maybe most fascinating of all is how many of the words in this poem, now four hundred years old, still retain essentially their same meaning and same pronunciation.

For the life of me I can’t get Shakespeare’s third line to scan metrically, in what is supposed to be iambic pentameter: “From hence your memory death cannot take.” Only way I can make it work is to assume pronunciations that change memory as well as death into two syllables: From hence your mem’ry de-ath cannot take (da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM). I suppose commentators have dealt with this issue somewhere, but in a cursory look at analyses of the poem online, I find no one addressing it. The last line won’t scan either, unless we pronounce even as e’en, which is probably how Shakespeare pronounced it.

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