(1803-1873)
Есть в осени первоначальной
Короткая, но дивная пора —
Весь день стоит как бы хрустальный,
И лучезарны вечера…
Где бодрый серп гулял и падал колос,
Теперь уж пусто всё — простор везде, —
Лишь паутины тонкий волос
Блестит на праздной борозде…
Но далеко ещё до первых зимних бурь —
И льётся чистая и тёплая лазурь
На отдыхающее поле…
1857 г.
(Aug. 22, 1857)
Comes one time steeped in brief elation;
The day is crystalline and clear,
And evening gleams with coruscation . . .
Now all is empty, bare—sheer spaciousness abides;
Naught but a gossamer web, a thin thread,
Gleams on a furrow now idle, misprized . . .
But winter snows are far-off still, not something vision seizes,
And a bluish haze descends on pure warm breezes,
O’er fields and steppe that lie in peace, at rest . . .
d
(On Ellipses)
In English style, at least in modern times, the most common reason for using three spaced dots (. . .) is to indicate that something has been omitted. Then there is the marking of a pause, a hesitation, or interruption on the part of the speaker: “I didn’t really . . . what I mean is . . .” The robot that answers all my questions online also suggests that ellipses may indicate an unfinished thought, or a speaker trailing off into silence: “Oh, if only she had . . . well, it doesn’t matter anyway . . .”
But ellipses (usually three unspaced dots: …) in Russian prose and poetry of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries often have none of the uses mentioned above. The dots are a kind of Romantic excrescence, indicating something like a pause for contemplation, or a sigh. The writer takes in a breath to contemplate the ethereal nature of existence on earth. Or to share briefly the profundity of it all with his reader. Other than that, one cannot come up with anything tangible to express the meaning of those trailing dots. From the modern perspective we might be better off if they were simply omitted.
Note that in printed versions of the Tyutchev poem above no one tries to retain the original punctuation by dots in the poet’s handwritten manuscript. Most of the dots are released to float off into the ether, where they properly belong. But Russian editors must feel bad about losing them altogether, so they stick in three unspaced dots at the end of each stanza. Indicating what? As explained above, indicating something like a sigh, or indicating the ineffable, or not much of anything.
