Translation of Poem by Boris Pasternak, Борис Пастернак, "Единственные дни," THE DAYS OF ONE AND ONLY

 

Борис Пастернак
(1890-1960)

                                                                Единственные дни
На протяженье многих зим
Я помню дни солнцеворота,
И каждый был неповторим
И повторялся вновь без счета.
 
И целая их череда
Составилась мало-помалу —
Тех дней единственных, когда
Нам кажется, что время стало.
 
Я помню их наперечет:
Зима подходит к середине,
Дороги мокнут, с крыш течет
И солнце греется на льдине.
 
И любящие, как во сне,
Друг к другу тянутся поспешней,
И на деревьях в вышине
Потеют от тепла скворешни.
 
И полусонным стрелкам лень
Ворочаться на циферблате,
И дольше века длится день,
И не кончается объятье.
 
1959 г.

d

Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

                                                  The Days Of One and Only

Over the course of winters galore
In memory the solar days tend all to blend,
Yet each one was always unique, evermore,
But repeated, for all that, anew without end.
 
And taken as a whole their sequence
Came little by little to make up, comprise
The days one and only when in sheer obsequence,
Time, so it seemed, had stood still in surprise.
 
I recall equinoxes in March, every one:
As winter approaches its midpoint brief doze,
The roofs dripping water, the wet roadways dun, 
The sun goes sunbathing on frigid ice-floes.
 
And as if in a dreamscape all lovers and spouses
Are quicker to reach out and touch one another,
And up in the trees, even higher than houses,
Dovecotes are sweating in warmth-suffused smother.
 
And lethargy hampers the hands on the clock,
Half-asleep, they neglect to click through by and by,  
So that one day lasts longer than igneous rock,
And embraces go on for all ever and aye. 

 

d

 

Translator’s Note

 In the first stanza I use the generic term “solar days” for the four principal days that mark important changes in the solar calendar: winter solstice and summer solstice, fall equinox and spring equinox. Pasternak here uses the word солнцеворот, which I associate most commonly with the winter solstice, but, later on in the poem, descriptions of what the weather is doing (the dovecotes sweating in warmth, roofs dripping water, the sun sunbathing on ice-floes) suggest the spring equinox (always around March 21). The internet informs me that this year (2026) the spring (vernal) equinox in the Northern Hemisphere occurred on March 20 at 10:46 a.m. ET.

 

 

Translation of Poem by Boris Pasternak, БОРИС ПАСТЕРНАК, "Памяти Марины Цветаевой," IN MEMORY OF MARINA TSVETAEVA

 

БОРИС ПАСТЕРНАК

(1890-1960)

         Памяти Марины Цветаевой
 
Хмуро тянется день непогожий.
Безутешно струятся ручьи
По крыльцу перед дверью прихожей
И в открытые окна мои.
 
За оградою вдоль по дороге
Затопляет общественный сад.
Развалившись, как звери в берлоге,
Облака в беспорядке лежат.
 
Мне в ненастьи мерещится книга
О земле и ее красоте.
Я рисую лесную шишигу
Для тебя на заглавном листе.
 
Ах, Марина, давно уже время,
Да и труд не такой уж ахти,
Твой заброшенный прах в реквиеме
Из Елабуги перенести.
 
1942/43
 
d
 
                                        Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie
 
            In Memory of Marina Tsvetaeva
 
Somberly drags on the bad-weather day.
Rivulets stream inconsolably, soddenly
Past porch leading up to my cottage doorway;
Mist blows into my window despondency. 
 
Surging down roads like the rivers they’d rather be,
Streaming waters submerge the municipal park.
Sprawled out anyhow like some beasts in menagerie,
The clouds in the sky lie haphazard and dark.
 
Beneath storm clouds I daydream, imagine a book
For you, about God’s blessed earth ever glistening,
And a wood demon lass by a fairyland brook
I sketch on the title page, doodling and scribbling.
 
Ah, Marina, you know that it’s long past high time—
And how easy the effort, you’re light as fresh loam—
The forsaken ashes, as bells toll and chime,
To bring back from far-flung Yelabuga home.

Translator’s Note

 I’ve seen this poem published in several different variants. I translate the shortest of these here. The longer form has a second part, much lengthier. The shorter form is sometimes published with one additional stanza, but I prefer the variant that omits it. For the reader’s interest that extra final stanza is this:

 

Торжество твоего переноса
Я задумывал в прошлом году
Над снегами пустынного плеса,
Где зимуют баркасы во льду.
 
Your triumphant return to the streets of Moscow
Last year I planned out and described in
My notebook while watching the bleak fields of snow,
Where the barges spend winter days iced-in.
 

d

 Yelabuga—city on the Kama River, near Kazan, to where Marina Tsvetaeva was evacuated during WW II. There she succumbed to despair and hanged herself on Aug. 31, 1941. She was buried in the Petropavlovskoe Cemetery in Yelabuga on Sept. 2, 1941. Pasternak never realized his intention to bring her remains back home. When he wrote the above poem he apparently was unaware that the exact location of her burial place was unknown. It was never definitively established. In 1970 a granite gravestone was erected (see photograph), and in the early years of the twenty-first century this spot was declared Marina’s official gravesite. But the exact location of her remains is still undetermined.

Translation of Poem by Boris Pasternak, Борис Пастернак, "Спасское," SPASSKOE

 

Борис Пастернак

(1890-1960)

 

 

                                                                             Спасское
 
Незабвенный сентябрь осыпается в Спасском.
Не сегодня ли с дачи съезжать вам пора?
За плетнем перекликнулось эхо с подпаском
И в лесу различило удар топора.
 
Этой ночью за парком знобило трясину.
Только солнце взошло, и опять – наутек.
Колокольчик не пьет костоломных росинок,
На березах несмытый лиловый отек.
 
Лес хандрит. И ему захотелось на отдых,
Под снега, в непробудную спячку берлог.
Да и то, меж стволов, в почерневших обводах
Парк зияет в столбцах, как сплошной некролог.
 
Березняк перестал ли линять и пятнаться,
Водянистую сень потуплять и редеть?
Этот – ропщет еще, и опять вам – пятнадцать,
И опять, – о дитя, о, куда нам их деть?
 
Их так много уже, что не все ж – куролесить.
Их – что птиц по кустам, что грибов за межой.
Ими свой кругозор уж случалось завесить,
Их туманом случалось застлать и чужой.
 
В ночь кончины от тифа сгорающий комик
Слышит гул: гомерический хохот райка.
Нынче в Спасском с дороги бревенчатый домик
Видит, галлюцинируя, та же тоска.
 
1918

Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie
              d
                                         

                                      Spasskoe 
 
An impressive September strews Spasskoe leaves.
Might not you today close the dacha for winter?
Beyond wattle fence sending goatherd soft pleas, 
An echo plays games with an axe-blow’s dull whimper.
 
With rheumatic fever the night swamp was stricken,
The sun barely rises—then attenuates.
The bluebell can’t digest the dewdrops hard-bitten,
On birchbark a lilac-tinged boil suppurates.
 
The woods have gone sulky; they need a good rest,
In den below snow, in a deep hibernation.
Between the tree boles, in nooks dark and recessed,
The park gapes like Necrologue’s dire proclamation.
 
Have the birches stopped moulting and stain-spotting bark,
Are their shades not so aqueous, slimness belittling?
That thing grumbles—again you’re fifteen in the dark,
O child, where to put them with all of their quibbling?
 
So many they are that now’s time to quit playing the fool.
They’re bird flocks in bushes and mushrooms in numbers galore.
Our perspectives they veil by sheer swarms of them single and dual,
Their mistiness clouds up the vistas of neighbors next door.
 
The burning-hot comic the night that he died of the typhus
Heard a roar: those Homeric hoots from the gallery’s cheap seats.
Hallucinatory today in fond Spasskoe—that same anguish
Peers from the road at the timber-built cottage at peace.   
 

 

Translation of Poem by Boris Pasternak, "Душа," THE SOUL

 

Boris Pasternak

(1890-1960)

Душа

Душа моя, печальница
О всех в кругу моем,
Ты стала усыпальницей
Замученных живьем.

Тела их бальзамируя,
Им посвящая стих,
Рыдающею лирою
Оплакивая их,

Ты в наше время шкурное
За совесть и за страх
Стоишь могильной урною,
Покоящей их прах.

Их муки совокупные
Тебя склонили ниц.
Ты пахнешь пылью трупною
Мертвецких и гробниц.

Душа моя, скудельница,
Всё, виденное здесь,
Перемолов, как мельница,
Ты превратила в смесь.

И дальше перемалывай
Всё бывшее со мной,
Как сорок лет без малого,
В погостный перегной.

1956

 

Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

 

The Soul

O soul of mine, who touchy-feels

For all my fellow bastardized;

You are the tomb in potter’s field

For those tormented, brutalized.

 

Their bodies lifeless you embalm,

In their name verses write;

With sobbing lyre their shades becalm,

Proclaim their memory bright. 

 

In our times venal, far from grand,

Upholding rectitude’s behest,

A funerary urn you stand

Wherein their ashes rest.

 

You kiss the ground, lie prostrate, weep

For all of their agonies aggregate;

You reek of the stench of a putrid slagheap,

Of the dust of the dead ones concatenate.  

 

O soul of mine, you graveyard of dreams,

You took what you saw on this vale of tears

And ground it all up like a gristmill meseems,

Made a mishmash of tearstained arrears. 

 

So go on with your grinding and pulping of all,

For what’s been my being is grist to your mill;

My forty-year grind o’er this earth’s squalid sprawl,

Blend it all with the stench of the grave and sour swill.

 

 

 

 

Translation of Poem by Boris Pasternak, "Никого не будет в доме," THE HOUSE WILL BE EMPTY

 

Boris Pasternak

(1890-1960)

 

Никого не будет в доме,
Кроме сумерек. Один
Зимний день в сквозном проёме
Незадёрнутых гардин.

Только белых мокрых комьев
Быстрый промельк маховой.
Только крыши, снег и, кроме
Крыш и снега, — никого.

 

И опять зачертит иней,
И опять завертит мной
Прошлогоднее унынье
И дела зимы иной.

И опять кольнут доныне
Неотпущенной виной,
И окно по крестовине
Сдавит голод дровяной.

Но нежданно по портьере
Пробежит вторженья дрожь.
Тишину шагами меря,
Ты, как будущность, войдёшь.

Ты появишься у двери
В чём-то белом, без причуд,
В чём-то впрямь из тех материй,
Из которых хлопья шьют.

 

June, 1931

 

 

 

Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

 
The house will be empty, no one there besides
The eventide gloaming as it presses on. 
Just a brisk winter’s day as if viewed from inside,
Through a fissure in curtains someone left undrawn.
 
Clumps of snow falling, white-moist and so slumbrous,
Their flicks and their glimmer alive in the gloam.
Only roofs, and the snow, drifting slowly and cumbrous,
Just the roofs and the snow—for there’s no one at home.  

Rime frost once again pencil-sketches on panes,
As once more remembered, still poignant past spleen
Torments my soul: with the heart-rending strains
Of winter last year and its dead futile schemes.
 
And once more the old wounds are stinging and throbbing,
With guilt ever harbored, remorse unreleased,
Along the crosspiece of the window still prodding,
Stark hunger of wood that remains unappeased.
 
But then all at once through the drapes there will run
Irruptions of quaking, a shiver austere.
Appraising the silence in footsteps finespun,
Like impending time you’ll appear.

You’ll show up at the door in a plain pinafore,
Something white, lacking style, with a cheap furbelow,
Something sewn of exactly the same chintz velour
Used to make cornflakes or clumps of moist snow.
 

 

Translation of Poem by Boris Pasternak, "Во всем мне хочется дойти," DELVING TO THE GIST

 

Boris Pasternak

(1890-1960)

 

Во всем мне хочется дойти
До самой сути.
В работе, в поисках пути,
В сердечной смуте.

До сущности протекших дней,
До их причины,
До оснований, до корней,
До сердцевины.

 

Все время схватывая нить
Судеб, событий,
Жить, думать, чувствовать, любить,
Свершать открытья.

О, если бы я только мог
Хотя отчасти,
Я написал бы восемь строк
О свойствах страсти.

О беззаконьях, о грехах,
Бегах, погонях,
Нечаянностях впопыхах,
Локтях, ладонях.

Я вывел бы ее закон,
Ее начало,
И повторял ее имен
Инициалы.

Я б разбивал стихи, как сад.
Всей дрожью жилок
Цвели бы липы в них подряд,
Гуськом, в затылок.

В стихи б я внес дыханье роз,
Дыханье мяты,
Луга, осоку, сенокос,
Грозы раскаты.

 

Так некогда Шопен вложил
Живое чудо
Фольварков, парков, рощ, могил
В свои этюды.

Достигнутого торжества
Игра и мука
Натянутая тетива
Тугого лука.

 

1956

 

d

 

Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

 

Delving to the Gist

 

In all that I do to delve I seek
To the very crux of the matter.
In toil, in treading my paths oblique,
In what roilings of heartstrings bespatter. 
 
To the essence of days as each passes in turn,
To the reasons why each has its being,
To all the foundations, each upturn/downturn,
To the root-core, shortsighted/farseeing. 
 
I’d catch the thin thread of time out of mind,
Of destinies, justifications,
To live, think, love with feelings streamlined,
To discover anew, to fulfill aspirations.

O, if only I could find the right way,
Though partly at least, in my fashion,
I’d write several stanzas no one could gainsay
About all of the features of passion,

About lawlessness, transgressions, sins,
About running of races and chases,
Mistakes unintended, too hurried-up things,
Sharp elbows and palms and sweet faces.
 
I’d figure out zeal’s regulations,
I’d seek out her origins, source,
Repeat all her names, appellations,
Research her initials, her leanings retrorse.
 
I’d hoe at my poetry garden till miscible,
I’d have linden trees blooming in rows,
Lined up in my verses occipital,
With a flutter of leaves foliose.
 
I’d put in my lyrics the way roses breathe,
A mint’s suspiration, gustation,
Smell of sedges and meadows, a haymaking breeze,
A thunderstorm’s reverberation.

And such it once was that fond Chopin composed
A marvel in tune, pure phenomenal,
With parks/folwarks, with graves and groves
That made for études keen, canonical. 
 
The play and the agony, poetry’s thing,
Results in triumphant tableau:
The pulled-taut and able bowstring
Of a tightly strung delicate bow.
 

                                                      Portrait by Yury Annenkov, 1921

Translation of Poem by Boris Pasternak, Борис Пастернак, "WINTER NIGHT," "Зимняя ночь"

 

Борис Пастернак

(1890-1960)

Зимняя ночь

Мело, мело по всей земле
Во все пределы.
Свеча горела на столе,
Свеча горела.

 

Как летом роем мошкара
Летит на пламя,
Слетались хлопья со двора
К оконной раме.

 

Метель лепила на стекле
Кружки и стрелы.
Свеча горела на столе,
Свеча горела.

 

На озаренный потолок
Ложились тени,
Скрещенья рук, скрещенья ног,
Судьбы скрещенья.

 

И падали два башмачка
Со стуком на пол.
И воск слезами с ночника
На платье капал.

 

И все терялось в снежной мгле
Седой и белой.
Свеча горела на столе,
Свеча горела.

 

На свечку дуло из угла,
И жар соблазна
Вздымал, как ангел, два крыла
Крестообразно.

 

Мело весь месяц в феврале,
И то и дело
Свеча горела на столе,
Свеча горела.

 

 

d

 

Translator’s Note

This poem was first composed in Dec., 1946, as part of the text of the novel Doctor Zhivago, first published in 1958. Set to music many times and much analyzed, it is one of those poems that practically any Russian seems familiar with.

 

 

 

d

 

Literal Translation

 

Winter Night

 

Snow swept all across the earth

From end of earth to end.

A candle on a table burned,

A candle burned.

 

As a swarm of midges in summer

Flies into a flame,

Clumps of snow from the courtyard

Flew up against the window frame.

 

The blizzard sculpted on the glass

Circles and arrows.

The candle burned on the table,

The candle burned.

 

On the brightly lit ceiling

Shadows coalesced,

Hands interlaced [crossed], legs interlaced,

Fates interlaced.

 

And with a clunk fell

Two shoes to the floor.

And wax in tears from the nightlight

Dripped on the dress.

 

And everything was lost in snowy murk,

Gray and white.

The candle burned on the table,

The candle burned.

 

A draught blew on the candle from a corner,

And a heat of temptation

Raised up, like an angel, two wings

In the shape of a cross.

 

The whole month of February was swept with snow,

And now and again

The candle burned on the table,

The candle burned.

 

d

 

 

Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

 

Winter Night

 

O’er all the earth a snowstorm swirling,

Yearning snowflakes, endless whirling.

A candle on a table burning,

A candle burned.

 

As mayflies in a summer swarming

Fly toward a flamelet seeking warming,

Snowy floccules ascertain

How to paste a pane. 

 

Arrows, circles, frosted ferns

Blizzard-sculpted on cold glass.

The candle on the table burned,

The candle burned.

 

On the ceiling brightly lit

Shades and shadows blend and flit,

Legs and arms sheer interlacings,

Fates all interlaced.

 

Two shoes fall, one low, one hightop,

Clunk and flop, void of finesse.

Nightlight lamp in drips like teardrops

Dribbling wax on dress.

 

And all was lost in snowmist blurred,

Gray-white, unconcerned.

The candle on the table burned,

The candle burned.

 

A draught on candleflame, one waft,

In fever’s fervid firestorm,

Raised up two angel’s wings aloft,

To stand in trembling cruciform.

 

February whirled in snow,

While on and on through yearning,

A candle on the table burned,

The candle went on burning.

 

d

 

 

 

 

Читает Сергей Бехтерев:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOS80KyYMuY&ab_channel=%D0%A1%D1%82%D1%83%D0%B4%D0%B8%D1%8F%22%D0%A6%D0%B2%D0%B5%D1%82%22%D0%BC%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%B8%D0%B0%D1%86%D0%B5%D0%BD%D1%82%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%A1%D0%9F%D0%B1%D0%90%D0%9F%D0%9F%D0%9E