И. А. БУНИН (1870-1953) ПОСЛЕДНИЕ СЛЕЗЫ, Ivan Bunin, Translation of Poem, "Belated Tears."

 

И. А. БУНИН

(1870-1953)

ПОСЛЕДНИЕ СЛЕЗЫ

Изнемогла, в качалке задремала
Под дачный смех. Синели небеса.
Зажглась звезда. Потом свежее стало.
Взошла луна — и смолкли голоса.

Текла и млела в море полоса.
Стекло балконной двери заблистало.
И вот она проснулась и устало
Поправила сухие волоса.

Подумала. Полюбовалась далью.
Взяла ручное зеркальце с окна —
И зеркальце сверкнуло синей сталью.
Ну да, виски белеют: седина.

Бровь поднята, измучена печалью.
Светло глядит холодная луна.

<1906—1908>

d

 

Literal Translation

Last Tears

 

Enervated, she dozed off in a rocker

To the background laughter of the dacha. The skies went dark blue.

A star sparkled. Then [the air] grew fresher.

The moon came up—and the voices went silent.

 

Strips [of moonlight] flowed on, languishing in the sea.

The glass on the door of the balcony gleamed.

And that’s when she awoke and wearily

Began straightening her dry hair.

 

She mused. She admired the distant view.

Took a hand mirror from the windowsill—

And the mirror shone a blue steel.

Well, yes, a whitening on the temples: gray hair.

 

Her brow was furrowed, tormented by sorrow.

Brightly gazed down the cold moon.

 

d

 

Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

 

Belated Tears

 

Exhausted, limp, she dozed in chair of wicker

While dacha guests laughed on; the sky shone blue.

The air grew crisp, a single star went flicker.

Arose the moon—the voices silent grew.  

 

In strips of languor on the sea flowed moonlight.

The glass on terrace gleamed with mute allure.

She woke up drained; her guests had bid good night. 

She touched and patted at her dry coiffure.

 

She pondered, mused. Admired the seascape splendor.

From windowsill she took a looking glass—

That mirror glistened steel-blue and tender.

Well, yes, gray on the temples, aging fast.

 

A furrowed brow, the torment life had sent her.

The cold moon gazed on tears welled up at last.

 

d

 

“Bunin’s sonnets are the best in Russian poetry. His unusual eyesight notices the edge of a black shadow on a moonlit street, the special density of blue sky through leaves, the spots of sun slipping like lace across the backs of horses.”

Vladimir Nabokov

 

[from a review in Russian (1929) of Ivan Bunin, Selected Poems. Translated into English in Vladimir Nabokov, Think, Write Speak: Uncollected Essays, Reviews, Interviews (edited by Brian Boyd and Anastasia Tolstoy), New York: Knopf, 2019, p. 84-87.]

 

Translation of Poem by Marina Tsvetaeva, Марина Цветаева, "Так," CAUSE

 

Марина Цветаева

(1892-1941)

Так

Почему ты плачешь? — Так. —
Плакать так смешно и глупо.
Зареветь, не кончив супа!
Отними от глаз кулак!

Если плачешь, есть причина.
Я отец, и я не враг.
Почему ты плачешь? — Так. —
Ну какой же ты мужчина?

Отними от глаз кулак!
Что за нрав такой? Откуда?
Рассержусь, и будет худо!
Почему ты плачешь? — Так.

d

 

Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

 

Cause

 

Why you crying? “Just because.”

Crying just because is stupid. 

Eat your soup, stop bawling now,

Dry your eyes and sit up straight!

 

If you’re crying there’s a reason;

I’m your father, you can tell me.

Why you crying? “Just because.”

Suck it up and be a man!

 Dry your eyes and sit up straight!

Where’d you learn to be a pussy?

I’ll get mad and you’ll be sorry!

Tell me why you’re crying. “Cause.”

 

 

 recitation on YouTube by Vladimir Glazunov:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rnj7rVEbjyU

Bobby Lee Goosey, THE RUTABAGA RUNNER

 

Bobby Lee Goosey

 

The Rutabaga Runner

I am the rutabaga runner. I run rutabagas in the dark of the night by the light of the moon through the streets of the cloistered metropolis. Why? Because I love rutabagas, with their purplish-white skin and their luscious light-yellow insides. They go just right with mashed potatoes, mashed up along with the mashed potatoes (and then add a dollop of butter): yum.

I grow rutabagas in my garden. Masses of them. Too many for me alone to eat, even though I consume scads and scads and scads of rutabagas. For years I tried to share my extra rutabagas with friends and acquaintances. But there is an ancient stigma attached to liking rutabagas, rutabagas are something one is not supposed to like, and nobody would admit to liking the taste of rutabagas. Not by the light of day. So, even though they all loved, deep down in their viscera, the piquant taste of the luscious yellow insides of the ambrosial rutabaga, friends and acquaintances screwed up fastidious noses at my offer, turned away in disgust. No one would admit, by the light of the day, to wanting, craving rutabagas.

But now I have found a way to provide people with the rutabagas they crave, but minus the stigma. I set my alarm for three. I arise and don my purple velour track suit and running shoes. Under each arm I place a paper bag teeming with the succulent roots, the gift of the gods to humankind. Then I run. I run sequestered by darkness, I run in the dark of the night by the light of the moon through the streets of the cloistered metropolis. Upon the doorstep of a house picked at random I lay my purplish-white (outside) and light-yellow (inside) gifts, and I run to the next house, and then the next; I run, now unburdened and exultant, back in the dark of the night by the light of the moon to my own humble cloistered abode.

I sleep once more and in my dreams I see the loveliness of rutabagas. I see people opening the front doors of their houses by the light of the dawn and the now pallid moon on the streets of the cloistered metropolis. I hear their hushed exclamations of astonished joy:

“John, o John, come quickly. Look. The rutabaga runner has been here! Now we shall have for breakfast mashed potatoes, commingled with the luscious mushy-yellow mashed-up insides of the ambrosial rutabaga. With a big dollop of butter on top. We need not fear the stigma, for no one will see, no one will know. God bless him, God bless the rutabaga runner!”

I sleep on and smile in my dreams. I have found true meaning in life. I am the rutabaga runner.

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

Translation of Poem by Ivan Bunin, Иван Бунин, "Не видно птиц…" BIRDLESS

                           Illustration to the Bunin Poem, "Birdless," by Gennadi Novozhilov

 

 

Иван Бунин

(1870-1953)

Не видно птиц…

Не видно птиц. Покорно чахнет
Лес, опустевший и больной.
Грибы сошли, но крепко пахнет
В оврагах сыростью грибной.

Глушь стала ниже и светлее,
В кустах свалялася трава,
И, под дождем осенним тлея,
Чернеет тёмная листва.

А в поле ветер. День холодный
Угрюм и свеж — и целый день
Скитаюсь я в степи свободной,
Вдали от сел и деревень.

И, убаюкан шагом конным,
С отрадной грустью внемлю я,
Как ветер звоном однотонным,
Гудит-поет в стволы ружья.

1889 г.

d

Literal Translation

No birds can be seen. Meekly languishes

The forest, now deserted and sick.

The mushrooms are gone, but in the ravines

There is the stringent smell of fungal dampness.

 

The wilds now grow lower and brighter,

Grass has piled up under bushes,

And rotting beneath the autumn rain,

Lies the darkness of leaves.

 

It’s windy in the fields. The day is cold

Morose and crisp—and all day long

I wander in the open steppeland,

Far from villages and hamlets.

 

And lulled by the footfalls of my horse,

With exultant gloom I hearken to

The sounds of the wind as it blows on monotonous,

Whines and sings in the barrels of my gun.

 

d

 

Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

 

Birdless

 

No birds in sight. Meek in its languishing

Lies the bleak forest, bare, vacant and ill.

Mushrooms are gone, but the air reeks of anguish in

Fungal damp smells that are stringent and shrill.

 

The wilds have a look that is lower and brighter,

Grass bent and crushed piles up under bush,

Beneath the fall rain under skies ever lighter,

Leaves on the rot lie in darkening blush.

 

Cold is the day and windblown is the landscape,

Damp is the air playing sullen refrains,

All day I ride through the steppe’s weary dreamscape,

Far from the settlements, heart unrestrained.  

 

Lulled by the footfalls of equine stark prosody,  

Rapt in my sadness, I heed the wind’s long

Whines of implacable callous monotony;

In my shotgun’s barrels they drone their drear song.

 

d

Translator’s Note

 

Bunin was only nineteen years old when he wrote this poem. Published in the journal “God’s World,” St. Petersburg, Oct., 1898, it attracted notice. In his reminiscences of Tolstoy, Maksim Gorky describes one “morose, autumn day” in the rain when he and Lev Tolstoy went out for a walk in the birch forest. He describes Tolstoy “jumping over ditches and puddles like a young man, shaking drops of rainwater off branches onto his head, and marvelously relating how Shenshin [the poet Fet, landowner neighbor of Tolstoy] explained Schopenhauer to him in that very birch grove.

 “Lovingly stroking the dampish, silken trunks of the birches with a tender hand,” Tolstoy said, ’Somewhere I recently read these lines’ [third and fourth lines of the first stanza of Bunin’s poem]:

Грибы сошли, но крепко пахнет

В оврагах сыростью грибной.

‘That’s really good, and really true,’ said Tolstoy.”

 [cited from Gorky’s Collected Works in the nine-volume collection of Bunin (1965): I, 527]

                                   Bunin's Shotgun on Display at the Bunin Museum in Elets

Translation of Poem by Ivan Bunin, Иван Бунин, "Эпитафия," EPITAPH

                                 Gennadi Novozhilov Illustration to Bunin's Poem "Epitaph"

Иван Бунин

(1870-1953)

 

Эпитафия

 

Я девушкой, невестой умерла.

Он говорил, что я была прекрасна,

Но о любви я лишь мечтала страстно, -

Я краткими надеждами жила.

 

В апрельский день я от людей ушла,

Ушла навек покорно и безгласно –

И все ж была я в жизни не напрасно:

Я для его любви не умерла.

 

Здесь,  в тишине  кладбищенской аллеи,

Где только ветер веет в полусне,

Все говорит о счастье и весне.

 

Сонет любви на старом мавзолее

Звучит бессмертной грустью обо мне,

И небеса синеют вдоль аллеи.

 

1902

 

d

 

 

Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

 

Epitaph

 

I died while still a girl, one just betrothed.

He called me lovely, his consummate wife.

Of love I did but dream, of passion oft,

Short were the hopes by which I lived my life.

 

 One day in April this world I departed.

I left forever, meekly, without plaint.

E’en so my life was worthy and truehearted,

For him our love still lives, free of all taint.

 

Here in the silence of this graveyard arbor,

Where wind doth waft one’s ship as in safe harbor,

All speaks of happiness, of vernal ardor.

 

This sonnet of pure love on wall of tomb

Sounds sempiternal grief for me, my doom,

While grounds and arbor skies of blue illume.