Suffering Horses in Russian Literature MAYAKOVSKY, "Treating Horsies Nice"

Vladimir Mayakovsky
(1893-1930)

Хорошее отношение к лошадям 

Били копыта.
Пели будто:
- Гриб.
Грабь.
Гроб.
Груб.-

Ветром опита,
льдом обута,
улица скользила.
Лошадь на круп
грохнулась,
и сразу
за зевакой зевака,
штаны пришедшие Кузнецким клешить,
сгрудились,
смех зазвенел и зазвякал!
- Лошадь упала!
- Упала лошадь!-
Смеялся Кузнецкий.
Лишь один я
голос свой не вмешивал в вой ему.
Подошел
и вижу
глаза лошадиные...
Улица опрокинулась,
течет по-своему...

Подошел и вижу -
за каплищей каплища
по морде катится,
прячется в шерсти...

И какая-то общая
звериная тоска
плеща вылилась из меня
и расплылась в шелесте.
"Лошадь, не надо.
Лошадь, слушайте -
чего вы думаете, что вы их плоше?
Деточка,
все мы немножко лошади,
каждый из нас по-своему лошадь".
Может быть,
- старая -
и не нуждалась в няньке,
может быть, и мысль ей моя казалась пошла,
только
лошадь
рванулась,
встала нa ноги,
ржанула
и пошла.
Хвостом помахивала.
Рыжий ребенок.
Пришла веселая,
стала в стойло.
И все ей казалось -
она жеребенок,
и стоило жить,
и работать стоило.

1918 

Literal Translation (U.R.Bowie)

A Good Attitude Toward Horses (Treating Horses Well)

Horseshoes were pounding,

Seeming to sing:

Mushroom.

Plunder.

Coffin.

Coarse.

Drunk on the wind,

Shod in ice,

The street skidded.

Onto his croup

Came crashing

A horse,

And immediately,

One gaper after another,

Their trousers walking in to bell-bottom Kuznetsky [Kuznetsky Most, major street in Moscow],

They came in throngs,

Their laughter rang and clattered.

“A horse has fallen;

“A horse is down,”

Laughed Kuznetsky.

I alone

Did not blend my voice into that howl of his.

I walked up

And I saw

Equine eyes…

The street tipped over,

Flowed along on its own… [street as if reflected upside down in the horse’s eyes]

I walked up and saw:

One huge drop, then another huge drop

Down the snout dripping,

Hiding itself in the hair…

And some kind of universal

Animal anguish,

Splashing, flowed out of me

And went running and rustling.

“Horse, now don’t.

Horse, listen [using the polite ‘you’ in addressing the animal].

Why do you think that you’re worse than them? [substandard: How come you think you’re worsen…]

Kiddo,

We’re all at least a little bit horses;

Each of us is in his own way a horse.”

Maybe

She was old

And did not need a nanny;

Maybe my very thought she took as vulgar,

Only

The horse

Lurched,

Got up on her feet,

Whinnied,

And set off.

Swishing her tail,

A red-headed kid.

Merrily she arrived,

Stood in her stall.

And all the time it seemed to her

That she was a colt,

That life was worth living,

And work was worth working.

â

Translation by Andrey Kneller                                   Kindness to Horses The hooves stomped faster, singing as they trod: --Grip. Grab. Rob. Grub. - Wind-fostered, ice-shod, the street skidded. Onto its side, a horse toppled, and immediately, the loafers gathered, as crowds of trousers assembled up close on the Kuznetsky, and laughter snickered and spluttered. --“A horse tumbled!” --“It tumbled -- that horse!” The Kuznetsky cackled, and only I did not mix my voice with the hooting. I came up and looked into the horse’s eye... The street, up-turned, continued moving. I came up and saw tears, -- huge and passionate, rolling down the face, vanishing in its coat... and some kind of a universal, animal anguish spilled out of me and splashing, it flowed. “Horse, there’s no need for this! Horse, listen,-- look at them all, - who has it worse? Child, we are all, to some extent, horses,-- everyone here is a bit of a horse.” Perhaps she was old and didn’t want to be nursed, or maybe, she took in my speech with a scoff, but the horse, out of nowhere, suddenly burst, heaved to its feet, and neighing, walked off. Wiggling its tail, with its mane shining gold, It returned to the stall, full of joyful feelings. She imagined once more that she was a colt, and work was worth doing and life was worth living.

                                                               TRANSLATION BY U.R.BOWIE

Translator’s Note

My translations of poetry from the Russian are far from literal. I often go to the opposite extreme, and this Mayakovsky translation is one of the freest that I’ve done. It’s an original poem in English, based on the themes of Mayakovsky’s poem, on his rhythms, rhymes, his neologisms. Although I sometimes change lines, even add things on, I don’t think that I traduce Mayakovsky. If anything, my poem remains truer to the spirit of his than other, more literal, and—on the surface—more “faithful” translations.

 

Treating Horsies Nice

Hoofbeats were pounding out,

Seeming to sing:

Grip

Grab

Rude

Rip.

Shit-faced on wind,

Brogans in ice,

The street lost its grip

On the ground.

Down on his rump

Came crashing a horse.

Their trousers bell-bottomous

Sweeping the street,
Gapers and lollygags
Gathered around.

Guffawers, hehawers,

Jack-assèd grin-jawers:

“What a lark!

It’s a gas!

A horse done fell down

On his ass!”

I was the onliest beast in the pack

Who eschewed sneeriness,

Lewd smirks and leeriness.

Strolls up, does I,

Takes a look in the eye

Of Horsiemus fallimus…

The street in that eye

Upside-down rolled awry.

Walked up, does I

And I seen:

Horsie-tears, big and hot,

Down the snout dribbly-drop,

Damping the horsie-hair wet…

And some sort of generalized

Animal anguish

Came rustling and

Splashing

From out of my

Sanguinished

Soul:

“Listen now, horsie,

Kiddo, don’t cry.

You’ll have your neigh

At the sky by and by.

How could you think

Your life’s badder than theirs?
Horsiekins, all of us

Have in us dorkiness;

Humanness often is worsen

Than horsiness.”

Could be he was old,

And in need of no nanny,

Could be that my plea

Was insulting to he.

Anyways.

The horsie

Lurched up and

Stood tall

On his leggywegs,

Whinnied out sweet

And set off down the street.

Swishing his tail, well!

Don’t he look swell!

Happily made it home,

Stood in his stall,

Forgotten the fall,

Feeling a colt again,

Crunching his oats again:

“Ain’t life a ball

In spite of it all?”

June, 2018

Note on Mayakovsky

Written one hundred years ago, on the eve of the Soviet Era, this poem about the fallen horse in some odd way foreshadows Vladimir Mayakovsky’s suicide in 1930. A founder of the Futurist movement in Russian poetry, known before the Revolution for his wild antics and hooliganism, Mayakovsky accepted the new Soviet Union with alacrity, became its best spokesman. He is still known largely for his thunderous declamations of revolutionary poetry, with his macho-man stance, and his condemnation of the whole lyrical tradition in Russian literature.

But somewhere beneath all the bluster there was a truly lyrical poet, a “cloud in trousers” with a sensitive soul and a love for animals. He wrote poems in which he portrayed himself as a kind of freak, an animal tormented by the crudity of humankind. His letters to his mistress, Lilya Brik, are full of his childlike adoration of animals, and he signed off with drawings of small creatures, including himself as “puppy dog.”

Despite his position as champion of the U.S.S.R. and the new socialist life, he could not have failed to notice that the workers and peasants exalted in the age of the “New Man” were no less crass and cruel, no less ignorant than they had ever been. His famous play, “The Bedbug,” makes that point clearly. Critics have surmised that Mayakovsky actually witnessed the scene on Kuznetsky Most, described in the poem, and that he took the side of the horse, as does the poet/narrator.

See here for some recent commentary on Mayakovsky's poem:

https://dianasenechal.wordpress.com/tag/vladimir-mayakovsky/

Declamation of "Treating Horsies Nice" by six-year-old Elizaveta Bugulova, Moscow

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FA4nx_nfyfc

Notes on Dostoevsky's CRIME AND PUNISHMENT. Beaten Horses

Poster with Painting of Raskolnikov, for an Exhibition on The 150th Anniversary of "Crime and Punishment"

                             M. Shemyakin, Raskolnikov's Dream of the Beaten Mare

The scene describing drunken peasants beating a mare to death in Part One of Crime and Punishment is one of the most famous scenes in all of Russian literature. It is the scene that Dostoevsky often chose to read in his public readings of the novel. Coming early in the action, before Raskolnikov commits murder, it foreshadows that murder, while illustrating all the horror of the act in the divided mind of the main hero, and presenting the conflict between good and evil that is at the center of the book.

In the dream Raskolnikov sees himself as a seven-year-old boy, who is much immersed in the Russian Orthodox tradition that becomes so important later in the novel. He is on the way to the graveyard with his father, to visit the graves of his grandmother and little brother.

The mare dream is a kind of preview of the act of violence that Raskolnikov is soon to carry out. In its hideous detail and the horrible effect that it produces on his distraught mind, it is a warning to him to give up his misguided idea. The dream also demonstrates the conflict within him, since he is, in effect, playing two roles in the action. He is the little boy--who defends the beaten horse and cries over it, kissing its muzzle after it is dead--and he is the brutal peasant Mikolka, the murderer, who, as he beats his horse to death, keeps screaming, "My property."

The expression in Russian is "Мое добро." Another meaning for the word "добро (dobro)" is "good," so that Mikolka is also saying, in a way, "My good." This suggests one of  Raskolnikov's professed motives for committing his crime. He will kill the old lady, but then he will use the stolen money to alleviate social ills, thereby "doing good."

The name "Mikolka" (a peasant nickname for Nikolai/Nicholas) is significant here, since it is also the name of the fanatical Russian peasant who confesses to the murder later in the novel and whose religious zealotry is the complement to Raskolnikov's atheistic fanaticism. Both Mikolkas are something of doubles, mirror images of Raskolnikov himself. The second Mikolka is used to propagate Dostoevsky's religious idea--that one must accept suffering in order to reunite oneself with one's fellow human beings.

Ruth Mortimer has suggested that the mare dream also is connected with one of the big social issues of the Russian 1860s, the so-called "woman question. The dream relates directly to the suffering of female characters in C and P. We recall that just previous to the scene of the mare dream Raskolnikov had received a letter from his mother, describing how his sister Dunya is, in effect, about to prostitute herself, by making a marriage with the despicable Luzhin.

Dunya is soon to become as much the "property" of Luzhin as that poor mare is the property of Mikolka. The eternally suffering Sonya is also the "property" of all the men who use her for sexual satisfaction. Therefore, it is not by accident that the beaten horse is a female. Raskolnikov himself is soon to murder two helpless females, one of them, Lizaveta, who is much the same saintly suffering type as Sonya is.





The famous dream of the mare has links to events in Dostoevsky's childhood and to his own reading of Russian writers. 

A poem by N.A. Nekrasov, "Do sumerek (Before Twilight)" describes a peasant beating a disabled horse on its "weeping, gentle eyes."

As a sixteen-year-old boy, Dostoevsky witnessed something similar, as described in this semi-fictional scene:

Man Beating Man Beating Horse

(May, 1837)

It was a glorious time for the two Dostoevsky brothers, Mikhail and Fyodor. Before leaving home they had gone to seek the blessing of the Iverskaya Mother of God, in her famous little chapel in downtown Moscow. She had not provided them with any coherent and tangible sign, but they felt that She, as always, was with them. Now, their brains stuffed with glorious Romantic dreams, they were riding with their father, the dour Mikhail Andreevich, military physician, in a droshky (light, four-wheeled carriage), on their way from Moscow to St. Petersburg. Only recently their beloved mother had passed on to her reward. Their father had big plans for the boys. They would be enrolled in a boarding school, where they would prepare to take entrance examinations for the Academy of Military Engineers, which would prepare them for a career steeped in bourgeois respectability. Unbeknownst to MA, however, neither of the brothers had any intention of becoming an engineer. They were aloft in visions of literary splendor, steeped in “the beautiful and sublime.” Mikhail wrote poetry throughout the journey, while Fyodor composed in his mind a novel of Venetian life.

They depended on the same horses for the whole trip, which would take a week. The roads were muddy, barely passable at points. In other words, they were Russian roads in spring. The puddles were enormous, as only puddles in Russia can be, but the weather that day was glorious, sunny. The boy Fyodor, sixteen years old, looked up from his lucubrations over Venice to watch the jackdaws and magpies that circled the droshky, cawing out their odes to vernal rejuvenation. Sticky little green leaves were poking out on wayside birches, and he feasted on the shrill green and the stickiness of those leaves, as the sun shone on what could only be the future happiness of him and his older brother.

            The marvelous Aleksandr Pushkin, poet supreme, had died in a duel only four months ago. The brothers planned a pilgrimage to the spot outside the city where the duel was held, then to the apartment where he breathed his last. They cherished his verses, repeated them aloud, especially his paean to the magnificence of St. Petersburg. “That young city of the northern lands, from dank of forests and damp of bogs, rose up in all its grandeur and pride. Today ships swarm from all earth’s ends to that rich port. Neva has clothed herself in vestments of stone, bridges span her waters, her isles are blanketed in groves dark-green, and now before this young and puissant capital, old Moscow dims and fades, as if before the new Tsarina, Great Peter’s bride.”

            Somewhere in Tver Province the simple droshky in which the brothers rode pulled up at a wayside posting station. The brothers and their father climbed out, and, stepping around the huge puddle at the doorway, they went into the inn to drink tea. Their spirits were high, the tea delicious, all was well in their world. Looking out the window they saw a government courier come galloping up to the inn in a three-horse brichka (one-seater carriage, resembling a European calash). The courier was on official business, basking in his own self-importance. At this posting station he would get fresh horses before continuing on his whirl of a journey.

            Shouting something at his driver, the courier strode the edges of the puddle—taking tiptoe steps, trying not to muddy his magnificent spit-shined boots—and made his way into the inn. Mikhail Andreevich, as usual, was off somewhere in his gloomy thoughts, but the brothers exchanged glances, looking with admiration at this model of masculine strength. He was a large red-faced man, dressed in full military uniform, which included a black three-cornered hat with plumes. Seating himself at a nearby table, removing his hat, he called out in a peremptory voice for a hundred grams of vodka. When the waiter delivered the carafe he quickly poured it into the dram glass, downed it in one gulp and banged the glass on the table. Then, taking a sniff at a hunk of black bread, he bit off one corner. He arose and threw down a coin on the table for payment. Slowly chewing the bread, he got up and made his way to the exit, walking with head held high and shoulders squared, as the brothers looked on, fascinated.     

Outside the fresh horses were ready, hitched to a new troika. The brawny courier leaped into the back and sat down. No sooner was he seated than he rose halfway to his feet and began beating the driver, a young peasant lad with curly blond hair, on the back of his head. Frantically applying his whip to the horses, the driver flinched, squirmed in his seat—trying, failing to soften the blows to his neck and head. The three horses lurched forward, anxious to please, hoping in their dim equine brains that the whipping would soon stop.

            --Papa, look, look what he’s doing (cried Fyodor)! He’s beating the man on the head!

            Mikhail Andreevich put on a still more somber frown and turned away.

            --Don’t look at that, boys (he said). Best not to watch such a spectacle.

            He spit on the floor in disgust.

The white, yellow and green plumes on the three-cornered hat of the courier were waving in the wind, while the troika rushed off out of the courtyard. As the brichka vanished in the distance, the brothers could still see the courier’s arm working its way up and down, while the driver’s whip rose and fell, rose and fell.

Years later, after he had become a renowned writer, Fyodor Dostoevsky looked back on that scene with repugnance and abhorrence. He saw it somehow as a metaphor for all that was wrong with his country. He even imagined an extension of the scene. The peasant driver Yakim Ponomar, arrives home after the journey, bruises and scratches all over the back of his neck and head. He drowns his humiliation in drink, then shouts at his wife Agashka. She responds with a few choice words, and soon he is beating her, taking relish in smacking her face, punching her ribs. Russia: the beatings, the beat being beat, the beat perpetuating the beating by beating others—kicking dogs, lashing horses, striking loved ones. Russia. My sad, hopeless homeland.

            In his maturity as a writer, the boy in the inn, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (FMD) was to formulate a creed. Jesus loves us, yes. He never doubted that. But life is not just reveries of brotherhood and faith in the Lord, not all magpies in sunshine and little sticky green leaves. Life is brutality and squalor as well, and you, reader, do not have the right not to look at people beating people or people beating a horse.

Just before he goes to commit murder in Crime and Punishment, the protagonist Raskolnikov dreams a horrible dream. Drunken peasants are beating a mare to death, while a little boy looks on in horror. FMD takes the reader by the hair and pushes his nose down into the vomit. There, see? Take a sniff of that, reader. That’s life on this God’s green earth of ours.

            “I’ll make her gallop, she’ll gallop all right,” and Mikolka took the whip, enjoying the thought of beating the old mare. They all clamored into his wagon, cracking jokes and roaring with laughter. There were six of them, with room for still more. They took up with them a fat, red-faced peasant woman in red cotton, in a headdress trimmed with beads. She was cracking nuts and laughing. Who could help laughing at the idea that a sorry nag like that was about to pull such a load, and at a gallop?

            “Get in, everybody, get in,” yelled Mikolka. “She’ll pull you all,” and he lashed away in a frenzy, hardly aware of his actions.

            “Papa, papa,” cried the boy, “look what they’re doing. They’re beating the poor horse!”

            Two men in the crowd got whips, ran up to the mare, one on each side, and began to lash at her ribs.

            “Hit her on the nose and across the eyes, beat her on the eyes!” yelled Mikolka. The fat young peasant woman went on cracking nuts and giggling.

            
           And so on, and so on. Take a look at it, reader. Have a sniff.

[from U.R. Bowie, unpublished semi-fictional biography of Dostoevsky]

In his notebooks for Crime and Punishment Dostoevsky's recalls this episode and remarks, "My first personal insult; the horse, the courier."

See Joseph Frank, Dostoevsky: The Miraculous Years, 1865-1871, p.106 footnote.

Illustrations to "Crime and Punishment" by Fritz Eichenberg, 1938

IVAN BUNIN, Translation into English of Poem, "Настанет день, исчезну я" ("The Day Will Come; I'll Disappear")

Переводчик Бунина, Роберт Буи, сидит на коленях мастера. Автор смотрит искоса, "А кто же этот типчик?"

Translator of Ivan Bunin, U.R. Bowie, Sitting in the Lap of Bunin, While the Author Looks Askance (Who is this guy, anyway?)

Памятник Бунину, Елец

Statue of Ivan Bunin by Sculptor Yury Grishko, in Yelets, Russia; Photo taken in Sept., 2000

                                                             Tortoiseshell Butterfly

Ivan Bunin

(1870-1953)

Настанет день — исчезну я,

А в этой комнате пустой

Все то же будет: стол, скамья

Да образ, древний и простой.

И так же будет залетать

Цветная бабочка в шелку —

Порхать, шуршать и трепетать

По голубому потолку.

И так же будет неба дно

Смотреть в открытое окно

И море ровной синевой

Манить в простор пустынный свой.

                                     August 10, 1916

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

Upon its first publication the poem had a title: “Без меня (Without Me).” In his Speak, Memory (p. 128), the lepidopterist Vladimir Nabokov mentions “Bunin’s impeccable evocation of what is certainly a Tortoiseshell [butterfly].” Nabokov translates the second stanza literally as follows:

And there will fly into the room

A colored butterfly in silk

To flutter, rustle and pit-pat

On the blue ceiling . . .

Here the poet Bunin, age forty-five, imagined his death by conceiving of the way things would be (exactly the same but with himself missing) in the same Russian room where he wrote the poem. 

In his wildest dreams he could not have imagined how his life was soon to change: the Russian Revolution and the Civil War; the establishment of the U.S.S.R., which embodied everything Bunin loathed. 

His forced emigration from Russia only a few short years after this poem was written, the long emigre life in France, where he would receive the Nobel Prize for Literature (1933), where he would die, in Paris, in 1953--in a room probably quite different from the one he conjures up in his poem, and most likely with different butterflies in attendance.

LITERAL TRANSLATION

(by U.R. Bowie)

The day will come; I will disappear,

And in this empty room

Everything will be the same: the table, bench,

The icon, ancient and stark.

And in just the same way will fly in

That colored butterfly in silk,

To flit, to rustle, to pitter-pat

Against the light-blue ceiling.

And in just the same way will the bottom of the sky

Gaze into the open window,

And the steady blue of the sea

Will beckon into its empty expanse.

                                         RHYMED AND METERED TRANSLATION

The day will come; I’ll disappear,

While in this selfsame empty room,

That table, bench, icon austere

The same contours of space consume.

And just as now will flutter in

That silken butterfly serene,

To rustle, palpitate and ding

Against the ceiling’s bluish-green.

And the sky’s horizon, cerulean glow

Will peer in, gaze through this window,

While the steady unruffled blue of the sea

Beckons toward emptiness: “Come. Follow me.”

(translated by U.R. Bowie, May, 2018)

Poem declaimed by Boris Vetrov; music by Rachel Portman:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSBBrEuXi_A

TRANSLATION OF POEM BY AFANASY FET: "Чуя внушенный другими ответ" ("Portents")

Afanasy Fet

(1820-1892)

Чуя внушенный другими ответ…

Чуя внушенный другими ответ,
Тихий в глазах прочитал я запрет,
Но мне понятней еще говорит
Этот правдивый румянец ланит,

Этот цветов обмирающих зов,
Этот теней набегающий кров,
Этот предательский шепот ручья,
Этот рассыпчатый клич соловья.

30 января 1890

Translator’s Note

(U.R. Bowie)

Sending this poem to the poet Polonsky, along with a letter on Jan. 31, 1890, Fet wrote as follows: “In one of his letters to me Tolstoy said it so well, ‘You can’t talk a stone into falling upward instead of down, in the direction gravity pulls it.’ But lately, not understanding Schopenhauer well, and primarily in his ‘Kreutzer Sonata’ [Tolstoy’s vehement polemic with human sexuality], Tolstoy tries to talk a stone into flying against the laws of gravity . . . . . . Although I never write on any specific themes, it seems to me that my latest poem, composed yesterday, could actually be on my part an objection to Tolstoy’s protest and hostility toward the mutual attraction of the sexes in his ‘Kreutzer Sonata.’”

In further correspondence with Polonsky, Fet mentions that the setting of the poem is an evening at the end of May. At one point Polonsky seems to be advocating for a happy ending: “You feel like finishing the thing off with an exclamation: ‘Everything is saying to me: I am yours and you are mine.’”

LITERAL TRANSLATION

(by U.R. Bowie)

Sensing an answer prompted by others,

I read in your eyes a silent interdiction,

But still more comprehensibly speaks to me

That truthful blush of the cheeks,

That call of the languishing flowers,

That rushing-in shelter of shadows,

That treacherous whisper of the brook,

That tremolo cry of the nightingale.

RHYMED AND METERED TRANSLATION BY ALEKSANDR POKIDOV

Suspecting not yours, but a prompted reply,

A silent forbiddance I’ve read in your eye,

But still! O how more understandably speaks

This genuine and elegant blush of the cheeks.

This call of the flowers that sweetly pervades,

This languid approach of the vespertine shades,

This treacherous prattle of the brook at our feet,

This song of the warbler in some green retreat.

RHYMED AND METERED TRANSLATION BY U.R. BOWIE

Portents

Sensing that loved ones have told you, “Say no,”

I read in your eyes what your answer bespeaks,

But even more lucid are signals that show

On the telltale opulent blush of your cheeks,

In the plaint of the flowers that languish and wilt,

In the solace of shade that has rushed in to help,

In the treacherous whispers of brooks spilling guilt,  

In the tremolo-trill of the nightingale’s yelp.  

FINAL VARIANT

(Combination of Pokidov and Bowie)

Here I (Bowie) have struggled with the usual problems that a translator has, when trying to maintain meter and rhyme in a translation. The imperative to rhyme, especially, sometimes makes for awkwardness and emendations that are superfluous.

Pokidov’s variant has its strong and weak points. His line, “The languid approach of the vespertine shades” is a near perfect embodiment of the lyricism of Fet, his poetry of the landed estate, with its nineteenth century Romantic effects. In Pokidov’s third line the meter breaks down completely: “But still! O how more understandably speaks.” A very weak line. In the first line of the second stanza, Pokidov stretches the usage of one word, “pervades,” in that he needs a rhyme for the next line’s “shades.” The word “pervades” is a transitive verb; it must be used with an object: pervades what? In his last line he makes Fet’s nightingale into a warbler. In my opinion, you simply cannot sacrifice the nightingale, so evocative in its Romantic overtones, and so frequent a guest in Fet’s lyric poetry set on the Russian manor, the country estate in spring and summer.

As for my own variant. Several of the lines are strong: “On the telltale opulent blush of your cheeks;” “In  the plaint of the flowers that languish and wilt;” “In the solace of shade that has rushed in to help.” Fet is big on pathetic fallacy, the lending of human emotions to inanimate objects and nature. In this poem certain aspects of nature seem to be on the poet’s side, as he awaits the verdict of his lover: the flowers that languish, the shade that rushes in to help. The brook, however, is inimical, “treacherous.” But then, the word “guilt” in the line about the brook is a stretch, an excrescence, stuck in there mostly because we need a rhyme with “wilt.” As for the nightingale, in Fet’s original this token bird of romance seems to be neutral, trilling away with no concern for the plight of the poet. If you stick in the jarring word “yelp,” you imply that the bird is in cahoots with the brook: inimical. Then again, nightingales don’t really yelp.

So here is my attempt to reconcile the best in Pokidov with the best in Bowie:

Portents

Suspecting not yours, but a prompted reply,

A silent rejection I read in your eye,

But even more lucidly, truthfully speaks

That telltale opulent blush of your cheeks,

That plaint of the flowers pervaded with anguish,

That vespertine cool of the shadows that languish,

That treacherous whisper and prattle of brook,

That tremolo-trill from the nightingale’s nook.

                                                                     May, 2018

                                         Isaac Levitan, "Moonlit Night. Village." 1888

Pithy Maxims on the Subject of Merde, Plus Apocryphal Citations (Flaubert, Tolstoy, Nabokov)

PITHY MAXIMS ON THE SUBJECT OF MERDE AND APOCRYPHAL CITATIONS: FLAUBERT, TOLSTOY, NABOKOV

In a recent letter to the London Review of Books (May 10, 2018), Galen Strawson, of the University of Texas, cites what he calls “a deeply characteristic comment from Flaubert’s letters”:

“De quelque côté qu’on pose les pieds on marche sur la merde” (from a letter to Louise Colet, Saturday, midnight, Croisset, 29-30 January 1853).

The editors of LRB translate this as follows: “However carefully you tread, you end up with shit on your shoes.” A variant translation: “Whichever way you direct your feet, you can’t help stepping in shit.”

This recalls a statement attributed to Lev Tolstoy: “Life is a tartine de merde [shit sandwich], which we all are obliged to eat, slowly.”

Checking this out online, I have found loads of citations on the subject of “shit sandwiches.” Take this one, for example: “Life is a shit sandwich, but the more bread you have the less shit you eat” (Anon.). I suspect that the image of the shit sandwich we eat is not of recent provenance.

On a French website I also have found, in a slightly different variant, the maxim attributed to Tolstoy: “La vie, c’est une tartine de merde et il faut que tu manges une bouchée tous les jours.” Translation: “Life is a shit sandwich, and you have to eat a mouthful every day.”

Then I started searching online for the original quote by Tolstoy and could not find it anywhere. Even when doing a search in Russian I was inevitably directed back to where I had heard the citation in the first place: Vladimir Nabokov’s collection of interviews, Strong Opinions.

Question: Tolstoy said, so they say [my emphasis; note that casual “so they say,” URB] that life was a tartine de merde, which one was obliged to eat slowly. Do you agree?

Nabokov’s answer: I’ve never heard that story. The old boy was sometimes rather disgusting, wasn’t he? My own life is fresh bread with country butter and Alpine honey. (Strong Opinions, p. 152).

This comes from an interview with James Mossman, who submitted 58 questions to Nabokov on Sept. 8, 1969, for Review, BBC-2 (Oct. 4). Nabokov answered about 40 of the questions and put together a typescript of questions and answers. On Oct. 23, 1969, The Listener published this, but only in part (see Strong Opinions, p. 141).

Nabokov, who did not like doing live interviews—because of his tendency to hem and haw when speaking “off the Nabocuff”—had a policy of asking interviewers to submit written questions. Some he would choose not to answer, others he would revise before answering. At times he even made up his own questions and then answered them.

Note the clear attribution of Flaubert’s quote above. Galen Strawson tells us precisely when and where Gustave Flaubert wrote his maxim on merde. There can be no doubt that the great writer said this. On the other hand, it is much in doubt that Tolstoy actually made his statement on the shit sandwich that is life. Even if you search through the complete works of Tolstoy, published in Soviet times, you are highly unlikely to find that quote. Soviet publishers could be prudish, so even if he said it, you probably won’t find it there.

Did Tolstoy actually make the statement? I may be wrong, but probably not. Despite his assertion, “I’ve never heard that story,” it could well be that Nabokov himself made it up. Since I’ve retired from teaching Russian literature I have not kept up with Nabokov scholarship. Maybe serious Nabokovian scholars have already lucubrated over this business and have found the answer. Tolstoyan scholars could also be of help.

d

On another issue that I’ve wondered about. Among others, Nabokov has insisted that the main male protagonist of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina is Lyovin (Лёвин), not Levin (Левин). You cannot tell by the way the name is spelled in Russian, as it is common practice to use the Cyrillic letter ‘e’ without the diacritical mark even when it is pronounced ‘yo.’

 I have run across a citation from Tolstoy himself, something with slightly anti-Semitic overtones: “Да не Левин, а Лёвин. Левин, это зубной врач в Бердичеве (It’s not Levin, it’s Lyovin; Levin is a dentist in Berdichev).” The implication here is that Levin (or Levine) is clearly a Jewish name, and Tolstoy’s man of the landed gentry is of the Russian noble class. But then, I have my doubts that Tolstoy ever really made that statement. 

At any rate, most Russians you meet will tell you that the character is Levin, not Lyovin. Of all the translations of Anna Karenina into English, I’ve never seen a translator who opted for Lyovin.

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Afanasy Fet, "БАБОЧКА" ("BUTTERFLY") Translation of the Poem into English

Afanasy Fet

(1820-1892)

Бабочка

Ты прав. Одним воздушным очертаньем
            Я так мила.
Весь бархат мой с его живым миганьем -
            Лишь два крыла.

Не спрашивай: откуда появилась?
            Куда спешу?
Здесь на цветок я легкий опустилась
            И вот - дышу.

Надолго ли, без цели, без усилья,
            Дышать хочу?
Вот-вот сейчас, сверкнув, раскину крылья
            И улечу.

(written no later than Oct. 25, 1884)

LITERAL TRANSLATION

You’re right [butterfly narrator speaks to the poet]. It’s just that one outline I trace in the air

That makes me so dear (precious).

All of my velvet with its live (vivacious) twinkling (blinking)

Is just two wings.

Don’t ask from where I have appeared,

Where I’m rushing off to.

Here on this soft (light) bloom I have alighted

And now I breathe.

Is it for long that I aimlessly, effortlessly

Wish to breathe?

Any second now, with a flash, I’ll spread wide my wings

And fly away.

TRANSLATION BY ALEKSANDR POKIDOV

Butterfly

Yes, right you are! Alone for outlines airy

I am so fine.

All velvet mine with all its twinkle merry—

Two wings of mine.

O, never ask me, wherefrom I appear

Or whither flit!

Upon a flow’r I have alighted here

To breathe and sit.

How long, without an effort, aim or worry

Am I to stay?

Just see, now I will flash my spread wings glory

And fly away.

                

                                                TRANSLATION BY U.R. BOWIE

Babochka

(Butterfly)

Look now: one bright flit in the air

And I flaunt my precious bling.

All of this velvet with its flicker-flair

Is only a wing, plus a wing.

Don’t ask from whence I’ve come,

Or whither I’m bound when I leave.

Here on this flower in blithe slumberdom

I perch, and breathe.

Is it for long, in aimless bliss, astride

My bloom I wish to suspirate?

Just watch: in no time now I’ll flash-flip wide

My wings, fly off,

And dissipate.

                

In translating only four lines of this poem, Vladimir Nabokov, the lepidopterist, does a nice job of capturing the nineteenth-century feel of the style, what he calls "Fet's 'Butterfly' soliloquizing":

Whence have I come and whither am I hasting
Do not inquire;
Now on a graceful flower I have settled
And now respire.

(in Speak, Memory, p. 129)

Russian schoolgirl, Elizaveta Chudinova, age 10, from Evpatorija, Crimea, declaims Fet's "Babochka"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUyCuuuhrVU

Marina Tsvetaeva, "МНЕ НРАВИТСЯ, ЧТО ВЫ БОЛЬНЫ НЕ МНОЙ" English translation by U.R. Bowie: "I'm Glad That You're Not Indisposed"

Marina Tsvetaeva, 1913

Marina Tsvetaeva

Russian poet (1892-1941)

Мне нравится, что Вы больны не мной,
Мне нравится, что я больна не Вами,
Что никогда тяжелый шар земной
Не уплывет под нашими ногами.
Мне нравится, что можно быть смешной -
Распущенной - и не играть словами,
И не краснеть удушливой волной,
Слегка соприкоснувшись рукавами.

Мне нравится еще, что Вы при мне
Спокойно обнимаете другую,
Не прочите мне в адовом огне
Гореть за то, что я не Вас целую.
Что имя нежное мое, мой нежный, не
Упоминаете ни днем ни ночью - всуе...
Что никогда в церковной тишине
Не пропоют над нами: аллилуйя!

Спасибо Вам и сердцем и рукой
За то, что Вы меня - не зная сами! -
Так любите: за мой ночной покой,
За редкость встреч закатными часами,
За наши не-гулянья под луной,
За солнце не у нас над головами,
За то, что Вы больны - увы! - не мной,
За то, что я больна - увы! - не Вами.

3 мая 1915 

The Unjoys of Nonlove

I’m glad that you’re not indisposed with feelings steeped in me.

I’m glad that I’m not indisposed with feelings steeped in you.

That never will earth’s gravid sphere float free

Beneath our giddy footsteps specked with dew.

I’m glad that we can laugh capriciously,

Light-minded be, un-vexed by words we’d rue,

That when our sleeves might touch haphazardly,

We need not wince, emotions wrenched askew.

Glad too am I that you before my eyes

Can flirt, caress, arrange a rendezvous,

And wish me not in hell to agonize

If I throw kisses to the winds, but not a one to you.

My name, my tender name, O light of my tender eye,

Take not in vain, to our non-love be true,

I’m glad that never will a church hush solemnize

Our marriage vows, that lofty-soft and sanctified “I do.”

I thank you in my heart, effusively,

For—unbeknownst to you!—so loving me,

For my nocturnal calm, tranquility,

For oh-so-rare that seldomness of meetings secretly,

For non-walks under moonlight near the sea,

For sunshine never sparkling on our lea.

I’m glad (alas) that you’re not sick, with feelings steeped in me.

I’m glad that I’m not sick (alack), with feelings steeped in thee.

May 3, 1915

Translated from the Russian by U. R. Bowie.

                                                             Translator’s Note

This poem is dedicated to Mavriky Aleksandrovich Mints (1886-1917), an engineer from Poland, educated in European universities, who, very shortly after the poem was written, became the husband of Marina Tsvetaeva’s sister Anastasia. The poem, both metered (iambic pentameter) and rhymed, is untitled in the original; the title above is the translator’s. While true to the meaning of the original, the translation is free.

Judging by Anastasia’s reminiscences, her unofficial marriage to Mints, though short-lived, was full of joy and happiness. They never married legally, as he was Jewish and his mother insisted on his marrying a Jewish woman, but they began living together in the autumn of 1915. In the terrible year of 1917, when all was in turmoil over the war and the coming revolutions, Mints suddenly died of peritonitis, followed shortly by their only child, one-year-old Alyosha.

In the seventies Mikael Tariverdiev (1931-1996), a prominent Soviet composer of Armenian descent, set the words of the poem to music.

Performed in the Russian romantic comedy, “The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath” (“Ирония судьбы, или с легким паром”), the song became extremely popular in Russia. The film, perhaps the most beloved Soviet movie ever made, was released at the very end of the year 1975. It has now become a cult classic, shown on Russian television on December 31 every year and watched by the whole country.

Barbara Brylska, a Polish actress, lip-syncs the song in the film, and for years many assumed that she was singing it. But the voice behind the lip-sync is Alla Pugacheva, still young in 1975, but later to become one of the most renowned of Soviet pop singers. The song omits Tsvetaeva’s second stanza.

                                                                   Anastasia Tsvetaeva, 1911

MASHA MATVEJCHUK declaims the poem in Russian:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeeQqtrG4Ho

ALLA PUGACHEVA SINGS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRGgwQ2x8JE