Translation of Poem by Aleksandr Blok, Александр Блок, "Когда ты загнан и забит," WHEN YOU'RE BELEAGURED, «Возмездие»

 

Александр Блок
(1880-1921)

 

Заключительная часть поэмы «Возмездие»

 

Когда ты загнан и забит
Людьми, заботой иль тоскою;
Когда под гробовой доскою
Все, что тебя пленяло, спит;
Когда по городской пустыне,
Отчаявшийся и больной,
Ты возвращаешься домой,
И тяжелит ресницы иней, -
Тогда — остановись на миг
Послушать тишину ночную:
Постигнешь слухом жизнь иную,
Которой днем ты не постиг;

По-новому окинешь взглядом
Даль снежных улиц, дым костра,
Ночь, тихо ждущую утра
Над белым запушенным садом,
И небо — книгу между книг;
Найдешь в душе опустошенной
Вновь образ матери склоненный,
И в этот несравненный миг –

Узоры на стекле фонарном,
Мороз, оледенивший кровь,
Твоя холодная любовь -
Все вспыхнет в сердце благодарном,
Ты все благословишь тогда,
Поняв, что жизнь — безмерно боле,
Чем quantum satis Бранда воли,
А мир — прекрасен, как всегда.

Январь 1911

d
 
                                            Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

When you’re beleaguered, fraught, encumbered
By fellow man, distress, torment;
When all you once found charming slumbers
In sleep sepulchral, gone, misspent;
 
When, having roamed streets’ desolation,
When gripped by anguish dire, outsize,
You stagger home to perturbation, 
And rimefrost on your lashes lies,
 
Then stop and pause one fleeting second,
Hark unto the nighttime hush;
You’ll hear and grasp a realm unreckoned
That gleams beyond day’s purview lush.

With gaze renewed you’ll contemplate
Snow-laden streets, distant flames, smokiness,
The morning’s approach as the night shades abate,
Above layers of white fluff in gardens all mist,
 
And the sky: one book amidst tomes wreathed in blue;
You’ll recall in your soul that’s gone flaccid with weakness
An image of mother as she bends over you,
And in that unique moment of languor and meekness,

Of filigreed patterns on glass of streetlight,
Of frost that solidifies marrow and blood,
It flares up and burns with a grateful heart’s might,
The amplitude of your cold, precious love,
 
And that’s when you’ll bless and beatify all,
Knowing that life is far more beyond measure
Then the quantum satis that has Brand in thrall,
That the world, as always, is as lovely as ever.

d

Translator’s Note

These are the concluding lines of Blok’s long poem, “Retribution,” written largely in the year 1911.

Brand is the hero of a play by Henrik Ibsen, and quantum satis is, apparently, Brand’s favorite saying. A quantity specification in medicine, pharmacology, and food safety regulations, quantum satis in modern usage means something like “just enough,” in regard to adding just enough of an ingredient to achieve the desired result, but not more. Judging by how Russian annotators of Blok’s poem translate this phrase (“в полную меру,” in full measure, or to the nth degree) and by the note below, the phrase as used in the play seems to mean something more like “all or nothing.”

 Here's the entry from Britannica online:

Brand, dramatic poem written in 1866 by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906). Its central figure is a dynamic rural pastor who undertakes his religious calling with a blazing sincerity that transcends not only all forms of compromise but all traces of human sympathy and warmth as well. Brand’s God demands of him all or nothing, and Brand makes that same demand of others. Both moral hero and monster, Brand is torn by the anguish that his moral program demands he inflict on his family. He never hesitates, never stoops to the level of the petty compromisers and spiritual sluggards around him. Yet in the last scene, when Brand stands alone before his God, a thundering voice from on high repudiates Brand’s moral stance, and he is crushed in an avalanche. Brand is both a denunciation of small-mindedness and a tragedy of the spirit that would transcend it.

                     Brand Lithograph by Maurice Dumont for 1895 Production of Ibsen's Play