Translation of poem by EVGENY EVTUSHENKO, Евгений Евтушенко, "Тайны," "MYSTERIES"

 

Евгений Евтушенко

(1933-2017)

Тайны

Тают отроческие тайны,
как туманы на берегах…
Были тайнами — Тони, Тани,
даже с цыпками на ногах.

Были тайнами звёзды, звери,
под осинами стайки опят,
и скрипели таинственно двери —
только в детстве так двери скрипят.

Возникали загадки мира,
словно шарики изо рта
обольстительного факира,
обольщающего неспроста.

Оволшебленные снежинки

опускались в полях и лесах.

Оволшебленные смешинки

У девчонок плясали в глазах.

 

Мы таинственно что-то шептали
на таинственном льду катка,
и пугливо, как тайна к тайне,
прикасалась к руке рука…

Но пришла неожиданно взрослость.
Износивший свой фрак до дыр,
в чьё-то детство, как в дальнюю область,
гастролировать убыл факир.

Мы, как взрослые, им забыты.
Эх, факир, ты плохой человек.
Нетаинственно до обиды
нам на плечи падает снег.

Где вы, шарики колдовские?
Нетаинственно мы грустим.
Нетаинственны нам другие,
да и мы нетаинственны им.

Ну, а если рука случайно
прикасается, гладя слегка,
это только рука, а не тайна,
понимаете — только рука!

Дайте тайну простую-простую,
тайну — робость и тишину,
тайну худенькую, босую…
Дайте тайну — хотя бы одну!

1960

d

Literal Translation

Mysteries

Adolescent mysteries are melting,

Like mists on riverbanks . . .

There were mysteries—Tonyas, Tanyas,

Even with chilblains on their legs.

 

The stars, the wild animals were mysteries,

Under the aspens the clusters of honey agaric mushrooms,

And mysteriously doors would creak—

Only in childhood do doors so creak.

 

Enigmas of the world emerged,

Like little balls from out of the mouth

Of a seductive conjuror,

Who seduces to some devious end.

 

Enchanted snowflakes

Drifted down on the fields and the woods.

Enchanted specks of laughter

Danced in the eyes of the girls.

 

Mysteriously we whispered something

On the mysterious ice of the rink,

And timidly, like a mystery to a mystery,

We touched hand to hand . . .

 

But suddenly (unexpectantly) adulthood came.

Having worn down his frockcoat to tatters,

The conjurer absconded, went off on a gig

Into someone else’s childhood, as if to a far-off province.

 

We, as grownups are forgotten by him.

Hey, conjuror, you’re a bad guy.

Non-mysteriously to a fault

The snow falls on our shoulders.

 

Where are you, little magic balls?

Un-mysteriously we grieve.

Others are not a mystery to us,

And we are no mystery to them.

 

And if by chance a hand touches,

Lightly caressing another hand,

That’s only a hand, and not a mystery,

You understand? Only a hand!

 

Give me a garden-variety mystery,

A mystery—shyness and silence,

A puny, barefoot little one . . .

Give me a mystery—at least just one!

 

 

d

 

Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

 

Mysteries

 

They liquesce, mist away, the secrets of youth,

Like riverbank haze in late sun’s twilight . . .

Lasses mysterious—Tashas and Ruths,

Chilblains on their legs and a slight overbite.

 

Some of the secrets were stars or wild beasts,

Or agaric mushrooms in clusters ’neath aspens,

And O so mysterious were the door-creaks,

In childhood only do doors make such raspings.  

 

This world’s secret riddles were all put on show,

The spheroids he juggled with legerdemain,

That spellbinding wizard whose act reeked of faux,

His wizardry tasting of fake frangipane.

 

Soft clumps of snow steeped in rapturous sigh

Floated, alighted on woodlands and prairies.   

Enraptured specks of laughs danced by

In eyes of girls, our contemporaries.  

 

On reticent ice at mysterious rinks

We whispered our secretive soft billet-douxs,

And timidly, miming its cryptic lip syncs,

A hand touched a hand with sheer mystery suffused.  

 

But all of a sudden we came out adults.

His frockcoat worn down to threadbareness,

Absconded the wizard, from our world avulsed,

Went off on a new gig, left us unawareness.

 

Now that we’re grown he’s a show-biz no-show.

Hey, wizard, you mean scalawag!

Insipid are flakes of derapturized snow,

On our shoulders trite snow, what a drag.

 

Little spheroids of magic, where are you?

Shed of mystery our pale facial features.

The creatures around us no mysteries accrue,

And we’re no more mystery to creatures.

 

A hand comes in contact with some hand perchance,

Say, touches that other hand, stroking;

That’s only a hand, not a sweet circumstance,

You get me? Pedestrian poking!

 

So bring me a volatile mystery, you hear?

Send me one secret, clandestine and diffident,

Just a puny and furtive one, barefoot, austere,

Small potatoes but somehow munificent!

 

 

PUTTING FEET IN FRONT OF FEET: The Octogenarian's Prayer

 

Bobby Goosey

 

The Octogenarian’s Prayer

Dear Lord, help me to go on forward in Life, putting one foot in front of the other as I walk. And when the time comes to stop putting feet in front of feet, please send me a quick and painless Death. Amen.

Putting Feet in Front of Feet in the Age of Covid: Tightrope Walker in a Dream

                                                                 Tallulah Gorge in Autumn

What The Age of Covid Feels Like

In the Time of the Great Plague of 2020 we have all begun feeling like tightrope walkers in a dream, say, Wallenda, making his slow perilous way, step by tiny step, over Tallulah Gorge, leaning slightly left, then slightly right, stopping to readjust the tilt of the pole we carry, stepping out once more, one step, two step, right step, left step—when suddenly, halfway across, high up over the churning whitewater far, far below, we realize we’re naked, we’ve left our pants at home, and all the spectators are laughing and pointing at our grotesque danglers—the testicles that just do not hang down in a proper way—and, worst of all, we’ve forgotten, utterly and irrevocably forgotten, how to put one foot in front of the other.

 

Reminds me of my days in U.S. Army basic training, Ft. Jackson, South Carolina, spring of 1963. Large numbers of my fellow recruits could never learn to march, unable as they were to distinguish right foot from left.

 

Concentrate on Your Feet and All Will Be Well

Pascal says what people need is “a violent and vigorous occupation to take their minds off themselves.” This is especially good advice in the year 2020. “When dancing,” opines Pascal, “you must think where to put your feet.”

                                                                Blaise Pascal, Penseés

[excerpt from the book by U.R. Bowie, Here We Be. Where Be We?]

                                                                         Max Ernst

"Gogol-Mogol’s Ogre" Mandelstam Poem Freely Translated and Updated to the Year 2022

                                                       Illustration to Gogol story "Вий"

Osip Mandelstam

(1891-1938)

 

Как по улицам Киева-Вия

Ищет мужа не знаю чья жинка,

И на щеки ее восковые

Ни одна не скатилась слезинка.

 

Не гадают цыганочки кралям,

Не играют в Купеческом скрипки,

На Крещатике лошади пали,

Пахнут смертью господские Липки.

 

Уходили с последним трамваем

Прямо за город красноармейцы,

И шинель прокричала сырая:

"Мы вернемся еще - разумейте..."

 

May, 1937. Voronezh

d

 

Literal Translation

(The Russian original is rhymed and metered, all feminine rhymes a/b/a/b)

As along the streets of Kiev-Vij

Some wifey, I don’t know whose, searches for her husband,

And onto her waxen cheeks

Not a single tear flowed down.

 

The gypsy lassies aren’t telling fortunes for the floozies,

The fiddles aren’t playing in the Kupechesky Gardens,

On Kreshchatik Street horses have fallen,

And affluent Lipki smells of death.

 

They’ve departed along with the last tram car,

The Red Army soldiers have absconded from the city,

And a damp greatcoat screamed out:

“We’ll be back again; count on that.”

 

d

 

U.R. Bowie

Mandelstam’s Poem Freely Translated and Updated to the Year 2022

Gogol-Mogol’s Ogre

In Kiev-town, now Vyiv monstrous,

Where Gogol-Mogol’s ogre reigns,

Some little wifey, don’t know whose,

In search of hubby wanders lost.

While down her cheeks, her waxy cheeks,

Trickles not one tiny teary wetly.

 

No more floozies getting fortunes told from gypsies.

No more fiddles twanging tunes around Kupechesky.

On the main drag of Kreshchatik fallen horses,

In environs what was tanks is now scrap-metal; rusting.

There’s a smell where rich folks live in Lipki:

Of Death.

 

Russian soldiers blew their campaign to take Kyiv.

They’re making tracks for some spot nearer Mother Rus,

While a greatcoat that came straight from Gogolmogol Land,

Rumpled up and soaked with kerosene,

Shrieks:

“Make no mistake, you Ukies; we’ll be back!”

 

d

 

Translator’s Notes

Place names. The Kupechesky Gardens is now Kreshchaty Park. Kreshchatik (now spelled Kreshchatyk by Ukrainians) is the main street of Kiev (Kyiv). On Lipki (Lypky) from Wikipedia:

Lypky (Ukrainian: Липки) is a historic neighborhood of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv located in the administrative Pecherskyi District. The name is derived from a lime tree (linden tree, Lypa). Lypky is the de facto government quarter of Ukraine, hosting the buildings of the Verkhovna Rada (Parliament), Presidential Administration and Government. In the nineteenth century Lypky was already known as an elite district. Geographically Lypky is considered to be part of Pechersk, yet it is located between the Old Kyiv neighborhood (bordering by Khreshchatyk) and the Pechersk neighborhood across the Klov descent and Mechnikov Street. The streets of Lypky were the scenes of the most bloody episodes of the Euromaidan revolution (2013-2014).

d

Nikolai Gogol is the most famous Ukrainian firmly ensconced in Russian literature. In the first line of Mandelstam’s poem Vij—often spelled Viy in English translations—is the monster in Gogol’s ghost story of that title. The greatcoat in the final stanza is another allusion to Gogol, to his most famous story of all: the phantasmagoric tale “The Greatcoat,” sometimes translated as “The Overcoat.”

This poem, apparently the last written during Mandelstam’s exile in Voronezh, describes what was going on during the Civil War—in Kiev in 1919—when he was in the city with his future wife Nadezhda. In her memoir, Hope Abandoned, she describes the situation as follows. “One day, just before we left, when they were shooting hostages, we looked out of the window . . . and saw a cart piled with naked corpses. Some matting had been carelessly thrown on top of them, but limbs were sticking out in all directions.”

In his memoir, People, Years, Life, the writer Ilya Ehrenburg, writes, “I saw him on that day (in 1919) when the Red Army was evacuating Kiev (later he was to write about how ‘no more floozies were getting fortunes told by gypsy women . . .’). Together with him I survived a pogrom one night.”

Mandelstam and Nadezhda made it out of Kiev safely in 1919, but a perilous future awaited them. He was an “internal émigré” almost from the very beginning of Soviet times. In 1934, after someone denounced him for his poem criticizing Stalin—an act so reckless that Pasternak called it suicidal—Mandelstam was arrested for the first time. After his release the brutal interrogations had so unsettled his psyche that he twice attempted suicide.

A three-year exile in Voronezh ended in May, 1937—Nadezhda was still with him. He had only a year and a half to live. Re-arrested in May, 1938, he was sentenced to five years in a concentration camp. He died in December of 1938 at a transit camp in the Far East, near Vladivostok.

d

Now, in the year 2022, when we were naïve enough to think that such horror, violence and repression of innocents would never happen again in Russia or Ukraine, this, and even worse, is happening all over again. It’s almost as if the Deity above had sent down some decree: Russian and Ukrainian history will be, perpetually, drenched in gore and blood. Or is it, rather, human history?

                               Illustration by Mikhail Mikeshin to the Gogol Story "Вий"

BOBBY GOOSEY, On The Prospective Acquisition of a Pet

 

Bobby Goosey

 

On The Prospective Acquisition of a Pet

or

Bobby Goosey Needs a Dog

 

Everybody’s got a doggie,

A bow-wow doggie,

A wow-bow,

Arf and arfing

Woofy-woof hound.

All the world’s got a doggie,

A bow-wow doggie;

But old Bobby ain’t no doggie don’t got.

 

Everybody and his buddy’s got

A tail-wagging doggie,

A smiley-eyed doggie,

A tongue-drooling doggie.

Bobby needs a smiley-eyed

Tail-flapping doggie;

Old Bobby ain’t no doggie

Don’t got.

 

Got to get old Bobby,

Smiley-eyed Bobby,

Wrinkle-butted Bobby,

Got to get old Bobby,

Creaky-boned Bobby,

A slobber-drooling doggie,

A barky-wark doggie,

A wow-bow doggie,

 

Got to get old Bobby,

Old tail-dragging Bobby,

Snaggle-toothed Bobby,

Slobber-drooling Bobby

The doggie that

Old Bobby don’t

Got.

Arf.

 

June 30, 2022

 

[from Bobby Goosey’s Compendium of Perfectly Sensible Nonsense]

Translation into Modern English of MARSHAK Translation into Modern Russian of SHAKESPEARE Sonnet No. 129

 

Samuil Marshak

(1887-1964)

 

Translation into Modern Russian of Shakespeare Sonnet No. 129

Издержки духа и стыда растрата -

Вот сладострастье в действии. Оно

Безжалостно, коварно, бесновато,

Жестоко, грубо, ярости полно.

 

Утолено, - влечет оно презренье,

В преследованье не жалеет сил.

И тот лишен покоя и забвенья,

Кто невзначай приманку проглотил.

 

Безумное, само с собой в раздоре,

Оно владеет иль владеют им.

В надежде - радость, в испытанье - горе,

А в прошлом - сон, растаявший, как дым.

 

Все это так. Но избежит ли грешный

Небесных врат, ведущих в ад кромешный?

 

d

 

Literal Translation

 

Expenditure of spirit and squandering of shame—

That’s lust [voluptuousness] in action. It is

Pitiless, crafty, devilish,

Cruel, rude, full of fury.

 

Once slaked, it entails [results in] contempt,

In pursuit [of one] it does not spare any effort.

And he who by chance swallows the bait

Is deprived of peace and forgetfulness.

 

Insane, at odds with its very self,

It either masters (possesses) [one] or is mastered.

Hoping [for it] is joy, putting it to the test [assaying it] is grief,

And once past it’s a dream that dissipates like smoke.

 

All of that is so. But can a sinner avoid

Those heavenly gates that lead to the pitch black of Hades?

d

 

Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

 

Disbursement of spirit and shame’s dissipation—

Those are the workings of unbridled lust,

Which is pitiless, crafty, devilish vexation,

Crude and uncouth, frenzied mayhem in musth.

 

Once slaked, leaving taste that’s abhorrent, derisible,

Lust spares no effort when sensing the spoor.

Deprived of all peace and on edge, sorely miserable

Is he who by happenstance swallows the lure.

 

One maddened with lust possesses tempestuously;

He’s insatiable, ravenous, avid always.  

He strives for it joyfully, suffers it grievously,

And when the deed’s done what was bliss is but haze.

 

All that is so. But can sinning souls shun

The heavenly lewdness that’s hell when it’s done?

                                          SHAKESPEARE SONNET NO. 129

The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action: and till action, lust
Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;
Enjoyed no sooner but despised straight;
Past reason hunted; and no sooner had,
Past reason hated, as a swallowed bait,
On purpose laid to make the taker mad.
Mad in pursuit and in possession so;
Had, having, and in quest to have extreme;
A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe;
Before, a joy proposed; behind a dream.
All this the world well knows; yet none knows well
To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

d

Paraphrase in Modern English

(From the website No Sweat Shakespeare)

Squandering vital energy in a wasteland of moral decay is what satisfying one’s lust amounts to. And in the anticipation of it lust makes one dishonest, murderous, violent, blameworthy, savage, extreme, rude and not to be trusted. As soon as its goal has been achieved one despises it. It’s hunted beyond reason and as soon as it’s had it’s hated beyond reason, like an irresistible bait put in front of one on purpose to make the taker mad. One is crazy in the pursuit of sex, and during sex too: having had it, having it and hunting for it one goes to extremes. It’s blissful while it’s happening and a true sorrow afterwards – before an anticipated joy, afterwards nothing but a dream. Everyone knows this very well, yet no-one knows it well enough to avoid the heaven that leads men to this hell.

d

Translator’s Note

(U.R. Bowie)

My usual method in working on Shakespeare’s sonnets by way of Russian translations: I depend solely on the Russian version, not peeking in advance at the original in old English. One unfortunate consequence is that if the Russian translation contains serious inaccuracies I perpetuate these in my modern English translation.

 

Marshak’s translations of Shakespeare’s sonnets are wonderful, and one can only marvel at how he rendered all of them into Russian. His translation of #129 is, for the most part, faithful to the original; he comes up with some lovely lines. But it seems to me that in the first two lines of the third quatrain he goes far astray. Shakespeare’s text here has roughly the following meaning: [One afflicted with lust is] mad while pursuing his goal and remains mad while possessing it (engaged in copulation)/ [He is] extreme, a maximalist having had sexual concourse, while in the process of having it and in its quest to have it. The “having had” presents a problem, a contradiction in Shakespeare’s text. Why? Because the gist of the whole sonnet suggests that “having had” sex one is in for a letdown. Take, for just one example, Shakespeare’s line # 5: “Enjoyed no sooner but despisèd straight.”

 

How does Marshak render these first two lines of the third quatrain? Like this: [Lust is] mad, at odds with its very self/[Lust] either masters (possesses) one or is mastered itself. Here the meaning deviates radically from the original text. Shakespeare never says anything about how lust is at odds with itself. On the contrary. Lust always knows what it wants; lust rages on in a straight line toward its goal, intolerant of resistance and suffering no inner contradictions. It is the human being consumed by lust who is divided egregiously within him/herself. Shakespeare also says nothing about how lust either possesses one or is defeated (possessed, mastered). Again on the contrary. Nothing in the original suggests that one can master lust.

 

Given these radical deviations from the original, in translating Marshak’s poem I have done something I do not usually do. I have gone back to the original and tried to render in my variant something closer to the meaning of that original. Of course I do not capture perfectly the sense of the original either, but such is the nature of literary translation.

 

d

Online commentary quotes several pertinent passages, which suggest that the central idea of this poem—disillusionment with sexual intercourse—was already well-established long before Shakespeare’s time. One example is the folk proverb: “Omne animal post coitum triste est” (any animal after coitus feels sad).

 

Ben Jonson’s translation from the Latin of Petronius is contemporaneous with Shakespeare:

“Doing a filthy pleasure is, and short,

And done, we straight repent us of the sport.”

UNDER THE AUSPICES, from Bobby Goosey's Nonsense Verse for Kids

                                                                    Delo on Pixabay

Bobby Goosey

 

Under the Auspices

(An Invitation)

 

Come and join your colleagues for a red-hot fling and whing-ding,

With stinging and singing and whing-ding pinging,

With raspeses of haspeses and lots and lots of gaspeses,

Gaspeses that last and last, no lapseses in gaspeses,

With mobs of mopping mopseses and whirling topless topseses,

With bunny-rabbit hopseses and popcorn-popping popseses.

 

Join us here at Sapseses (see the enclosed mapseses).

Wear your whing-ding capseses with earlobe-flapping flapseses.

Come and sing and sting and ping,

Have a sting-ping singing fling!

This dance, held in aid of midnight-dripping tapseses,

Is under the auspices of ghosteses of waspeses.