Leonardo da Vinci
Perugia Griffin Clawing at Calf
Aleksandr Blok
(1880-1921)
Благовещение
С детских лет — видения и
грезы,
Умбрии ласкающая мгла.
На оградах вспыхивают розы,
Тонкие поют колокола.
Слишком резвы милые
подруги,
Слишком дерзок их открытый взор.
Лишь она одна в предвечном круге
Ткет и ткет свой шелковый узор.
Робкие томят ее надежды,
Грезятся несбыточные сны.
И внезапно — красные одежды
Дрогнули на золоте стены.
Всем лицом
склонилась над шелками,
Но везде — сквозь золото ресниц —
Вихрь ли с многоцветными крылами,
Или ангел, распростертый ниц…
Темноликий ангел с
дерзкой ветвью
Молвит: «Здравствуй! Ты полна красы!»
И она дрожит пред страстной вестью,
С плеч упали тяжких две косы…
Он поет и шепчет — ближе, ближе,
Уж над ней — шумящих крыл шатер…
И она без сил склоняет ниже
Потемневший, помутневший взор…
Трепеща, не
верит: «Я ли, я ли?»
И рукою закрывает грудь…
Но чернеют пламенные дали —
Не уйти, не встать и не вздохнуть…
И тогда — незнаемою
болью
Озарился светлый круг лица…
А над ними — символ
своеволья —
Перуджийский гриф когтит тельца.
Лишь художник, занавесью
скрытый, —
Он провидит страстной муки крест
И твердит: «Profani, procul
ite,
Hic amoris locus sacer est».
Май — июнь 1909
Perugia — Spoleto
d
Literal Translation
Annunciation (The
Good News)
From her childhood years—visions and reveries,
The caressing haze of Umbria.
Along the fences sparks of roses are flashing,
The faint dinning of bells.
Too sportive were the dear girls around
her,
Too bold were their open gazes.
Only she alone in that sempiternal
circle
Went on weaving, weaving at her silken
pattern.
She languished in timid hopes
Dreaming unrealizable dreams.
And suddenly—red vestments
Were quivering on the gold of the walls.
She bent down the whole of her face
over the silks,
But everywhere—through the gold of her
eyelashes—
Was it a vortex with multicolored
wings,
Or an angel lying prostrate?
A dark-visaged angel with his insolent
twig
Exclaimed: “Greetings! Thou art full of
loveliness!”
And she trembled at the news full of passion,
From her shoulders two heavy braids fell.
He sang and whispered, closer, come closer,
Now above her there was a canopy of
rustling wings . . .
And weakly she inclined still more
Her darkened clouded gaze . . .
Quavering, she cannot believe it: “Me,
is it me?”
And covers her breast with a hand . .
.
But the fiery distant vistas are
blackening—
She cannot leave, can’t get up, cannot
sigh . . .
And then—with a pain not recognized,
The bright oval of her face lit up . .
.
And above them—symbol of willfulness—
Was the Perugian gryphon clawing at a
calf.
Only the artist, hidden by a curtain—
He foresees the cross of passionate
torment
And repeats the words: “Profani,
procul ite,
Hic amoris locus sacer est.”
Literary Translation/Adaptation
by U.R. Bowie
Since childhood years the visions,
vague effulgence
Caressing misty Umbria’s breezeways;
Roses scintillate along the fencing,
And dinning bells sound faintly
through the haze.
The girls, dear playmates all too sportive were,
Audacious were their eyes, sans
abnegations;
She alone amidst that girlish blur
Did needlework in silken
tessellations.
All languid with her timid wants, all
quavers,
Her dreams of things that had no hope
to be.
Then all at once a reddish vestment wavers
On walls by gilded cloth of her
settee.
She bends down low her face above silk
stitching,
But through the golden lashes of her
eyes
An iridescent whirl of wings
bewitching:
An angel at her feet prostrated lies.
A brazen twig that dark-faced angel
waving:
“Hail, favored one, the Lord above is
with thee!”
She trembles at the news impassioned,
scathing,
Two marriage braids most heavily fall
free.
He sings and whispers, “Closer now,
come closer,”
A canopy of rustling wings above her
head . . .
Devoid of strength, she bends her gaze
still lower,
Her eyes gone dark and clouded, hands
dispread.
A-tremor, disbelieving: “Me? Not me,
oh gracious.”
Trembling palm upon her breast she
places . . .
Distant blazing vistas darken, growing
nigh,
She can’t get up, withdraw, or even
sigh.
Then pain assails her, sharp, without
surceaseance,
Her facial features glow, her radiant
eyes . . .
Above this scene, symbolic of sheer puissance,
Perugia’s gryphon claws at calf that
helpless lies.
Lone witness, the artist, by arras hid
away,
Foresees the Passion’s cross, the
torment blessed,
And utters, “Profani, procul ite,
Hic amoris locus sacer est.”
d
A lot of secondary sources exist, literary interpretations, some of them
available online.
Part of Blok’s cycle of Italian Poems (1909), this one uses for its title the Russian word for the Annunciation, Благовещение, literally “The Good News,” but concentrates on Italian Renaissance paintings depicting the Biblical event—not on the many Russian or Eastern Orthodox icons of the Annunciation. That’s why I have chosen the Italian title for my translation. Blok’s poem is set in the city of Perugia, capital city of the province of Umbria.
Perhaps the most famous depiction of the Annunziazione
is by Leonard da Vinci. Annotations to Russian publications of Blok’s poem,
however, inform us that it was written under the influence of a fresco of the
Annunciation by Giannicola di Paolo (1460-1544), which Blok viewed in the
cathedral of Perugia. This painting, which dates to the mid 1490s, is now held in
London. Here is a description of it from the catalog of the National Gallery:
“The scene shows the Annunciation, when the Archangel Gabriel
told the Virgin Mary that she would conceive a son, Jesus Christ, through the
Holy Ghost. Gabriel holds a lily, a traditional symbol of the Virgin’s purity,
and points upwards to the golden rays which are directed towards Mary. These
rays originally emanated from a dove, a symbol of the Holy Ghost, which is no
longer visible as the picture was cut down before it entered the National
Gallery’s collection.”
The di Paolo painting, obviously, lacks much of the specific
imagery featured in the Blok poem. Emblematic of the city of Perugia, the
gryphon clawing at a calf, is not in the painting, nor is the artist depicted
hidden behind a curtain. Italian Renaissance painters often painted themselves
into a corner of their painting, as implied witnesses, or even participants in
the action. The “distant fiery vistas” of the seventh stanza are missing as
well. I doubt that there is one Italian Renaissance painting that includes all
of Blok’s details.
Many critics have commented on the possible sacrilegious
nature of the poem, comparing it to Pushkin’s openly blasphemous “Gavriliada.”
Something resembling a rape is in fact depicted, and the artist figure behind
the arras seems complicit in the rape. His words, quoted in Latin in the
concluding stanza, translate as “Begone, ye profane ones; for here is the locus
of a sacred love.” I have not been able to locate the source of the Latin
citation.
In the fifth stanza the mention of two heavy braids falling from her
shoulders is apparently an allusion to Russian folklore. In Russian peasant tradition
girls wore a single braid as maidens, but re-braided their hair into two braids
at the time of their marriage.
