Элегия
Безумных лет угасшее веселье
Мне тяжело, как смутное похмелье.
Но, как вино — печаль минувших дней
В моей душе чем старе, тем
сильней.
Мой путь уныл. Сулит мне труд и горе
Грядущего волнуемое море.
Но не хочу, о други, умирать;
Я жить хочу, чтоб мыслить и страдать;
И ведаю, мне будут
наслажденья
Меж горестей, забот и треволненья:
Порой опять гармонией упьюсь,
Над вымыслом слезами обольюсь,
И может быть — на мой закат печальный
Блеснет любовь улыбкою прощальной.
1830 г.
Literal Translation
Elegy
The burnt-out gaiety of
[my] crazy years
Oppresses me, like some
dull hangover.
But, like wine, the
sadness of bygone days
Grows more potent in my
soul as it ages.
Woeful is my path. The
raging sea of the future
Foretokens toil and
grief.
But, O friends, I do not
wish to die;
I want to live on, in
order to think and suffer [work];
I know that I shall find
pleasures
Amidst the sorrows,
cares and tribulations.
Sometimes once more I’ll
feel the raptures of harmony,
I’ll shed tears over the
creative fancies of my mind,
And perhaps, as my sad
sunset wanes,
Love will flash at me
its parting smile.
d
Literary
Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie
An Elegy
My madcap years, one burnt-out
useless spree,
Their crapulence weighs
heavy-hard on me.
But like fine wine the miseries
of the past,
While sorrowful, grow yearly
more steadfast.
Thorns strew my path. A
sea of roiling rage
Foretokens future toil
and grief with age.
But no, my friends, I have
no wish to die;
I want to live, to
suffer, think and sigh.
I know that joys are yet
to be my lot,
Amidst the cares with
tribulations fraught.
Once more I’ll bask in rhapsodies
of art,
Pure tears I’ll shed
when fancy grips the heart.
Mayhap, through waning
sunset of my day,
True love will flash a
parting smile this way.
d
Translator’s Note
It strikes one as odd that Pushkin, at
age thirty, writes an elegy about himself—that he, in other words, seems
already to anticipate his imminent death. But, after all, he lived only seven
more years, dying in a duel in 1837. Here he bemoans the profligacy of his
youth, the drinking, wenching and playing of cards. He anticipates his future
as full of toil and grief, but the toil part will bring him his greatest
satisfactions. He can bask in artistic creativity and shed pure tears at his
own imaginative powers: “Над вымыслом слезами обольюсь (I’ll shed tears over the
creative fancies of my mind).”
This short lyric poem contains several of Pushkin’s most
memorable lines, familiar to practically any Russian. One is that just quoted
in the previous paragraph. Or take the first two lines of the second stanza:
Но не хочу, о други, умирать;
Я жить хочу,
чтоб мыслить и страдать;
(But I don’t wish, O
friends, to die;
I want to live, to think
and suffer;)
For today’s reader that
“о други (O friends)” has an almost
comic touch. The modern plural for friend is друзья, not други, and in reading that “O
droogie,” I’m always reminded of Little Alex in Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange,
speaking of his fellow gang members, whom he calls his “droogies.”
As frequently occurs in
Pushkin’s verse, the meanings of words as he wrote them in the early 19th
century may differ somewhat from their present meaning. The most common meaning
of the word страдать in
today’s Russian is “to suffer.” As we learn in Vladimir Dal’s monumental
4-volume dictionary of Russian—published in the mid-19th century—the
word already had the modern connotation then.
But страдать had/has a secondary meaning:
“to work, toil, labor,” especially in reference to peasant labor in the fields
to bring in the harvest. Although the idea of suffering is present in that
Pushkin line, he also asserts here that he wanted to live on in order to use
his creative talents, to think and work. The idea is reinforced two
lines later when he mentions basking in the rhapsodies of art and shedding
tears over the power of his own creative imagination.
