Saturday, November 9, 2024

Translation of Poem by Robert Rozhdestvensky, Р. Рождественский, "Человеку надо мало," NOT TOO MUCH

 


Р. Рождественский
 
Robert Rozhdestvensky
(1932-1994)
 
 
Человеку надо мало:
чтоб искал
и находил.
Чтоб имелись для начала
Друг -
один
и враг -
один...
 
Человеку надо мало:
чтоб тропинка вдаль вела.
Чтоб жила на свете
мама.
Сколько нужно ей -
жила..
 
Человеку надо мало:
после грома -
тишину.
Голубой клочок тумана.
Жизнь -
одну.
И смерть -
одну.

Утром свежую газету -
с Человечеством родство.
И всего одну планету:
Землю!
Только и всего.
 
И -
межзвездную дорогу
да мечту о скоростях.
Это, в сущности,-
немного.
Это, в общем-то,- пустяк.
Невеликая награда.
Невысокий пьедестал.

Человеку
мало
надо.
Лишь бы дома кто-то
ждал.
 
1973
 
 
d
 
                                            Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie
 
         Not Too Much
 
What does man need?
Not too much.
He needs to seek
and needs to find.
He needs to have
for starters, this:
a friend
(one friend)
a foe
(just one) . . . 
 
What does man need?
Not too much.
A path that ranges far afield,
a momma living on this earth,
may she live on
as long as need be.
 
 
What does man need?
Not too much.
After thunder
he needs silence,
a light-blue wisp of haziness.
A life: one,
and a death: just one.
 
A morning paper he can read,
and a kinship with Humanity,
and one blue planet, only one:
Earth!
That’s all.
 
And:
an interstellar path toward the stars
and dreams of speeding
light-years
on toward Glory!
That, in essence,
is not too much,
that, in fact,
is triflingly small.
 
A negligible, teetoncey
reward for his troubles,
a pedestal pitiful,
none too tall.
 
What does man need?
Not too much.
He needs
someone
who at home
is waiting
for him.

 



Thursday, November 7, 2024

Translation of Poem by Boris Pasternak, БОРИС ПАСТЕРНАК, "Памяти Марины Цветаевой," IN MEMORY OF MARINA TSVETAEVA

 




БОРИС ПАСТЕРНАК
(1890-1960)

         Памяти Марины Цветаевой
 
Хмуро тянется день непогожий.
Безутешно струятся ручьи
По крыльцу перед дверью прихожей
И в открытые окна мои.
 
За оградою вдоль по дороге
Затопляет общественный сад.
Развалившись, как звери в берлоге,
Облака в беспорядке лежат.
 
Мне в ненастьи мерещится книга
О земле и ее красоте.
Я рисую лесную шишигу
Для тебя на заглавном листе.
 
Ах, Марина, давно уже время,
Да и труд не такой уж ахти,
Твой заброшенный прах в реквиеме
Из Елабуги перенести.
 
1942/43
 
d
 
                                        Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie
 
            In Memory of Marina Tsvetaeva
 
Somberly drags on the bad-weather day.
Rivulets stream inconsolably, soddenly
Past porch leading up to my cottage doorway;
Mist blows into my window despondency. 
 
Surging down roads like the rivers they’d rather be,
Streaming waters submerge the municipal park.
Sprawled out anyhow like some beasts in menagerie,
The clouds in the sky lie haphazard and dark.
 
Beneath storm clouds I daydream, imagine a book
For you, about God’s blessed earth ever glistening,
And a wood demon lass by a fairyland brook
I sketch on the title page, doodling and scribbling.
 
Ah, Marina, you know that it’s long past high time—
And how easy the effort, you’re light as fresh loam—
The forsaken ashes, as bells toll and chime,
To bring back from far-flung Yelabuga home.


Translator’s Note

 I’ve seen this poem published in several different variants. I translate the shortest of these here. The longer form has a second part, much lengthier. The shorter form is sometimes published with one additional stanza, but I prefer the variant that omits it. For the reader’s interest that extra final stanza is this:

 

Торжество твоего переноса
Я задумывал в прошлом году
Над снегами пустынного плеса,
Где зимуют баркасы во льду.
 
Your triumphant return to the streets of Moscow
Last year I planned out and described in
My notebook while watching the bleak fields of snow,
Where the barges spend winter days iced-in.
 

d

 Yelabuga—city on the Kama River, near Kazan, to where Marina Tsvetaeva was evacuated during WW II. There she succumbed to despair and hanged herself on Aug. 31, 1941. She was buried in the Petropavlovskoe Cemetery in Yelabuga on Sept. 2, 1941. Pasternak never realized his intention to bring her remains back home. When he wrote the above poem he apparently was unaware that the exact location of her burial place was unknown. It was never definitively established. In 1970 a granite gravestone was erected (see photograph), and in the early years of the twenty-first century this spot was declared Marina’s official gravesite. But the exact location of her remains is still undetermined.




Translation of Poem by Anna Akhmatova, Анна Ахматова, "Муза," THE MUSE

 


Анна Ахматова
(1889-1966)
 
                           Муза

Когда я ночью жду ее прихода,
Жизнь, кажется, висит на волоске.
Что почести, что юность, что свобода
Пред милой гостьей с дудочкой в руке.
 
И вот вошла. Откинув покрывало,
Внимательно взглянула на меня.
Ей говорю: «Ты ль Данту диктовала
Страницы АдаОтвечает: «Я».
 
1924

d

                                      Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

                           The Muse

In midnight hours as I await her advent,
Life, so it seems, is hanging by a thread.
What’s youth to me, what’s freedom, fame liquescent,  
When this dear guest with reed pipe haunts my bed?
 
So in she comes; draws coverlet aside andante,
Then stares at me as I gape back besotted.
I say, “Are you the one who dictated to Dante
The pages of Inferno?” She answers me, “You got it.”
 


Sunday, November 3, 2024

Translation (with Revision) of Poem by Boris Slutsky, БОРИС СЛУЦКИЙ, "ЛОШАДИ В ОКЕАНЕ," "Horsies at Sea and on Land"

 


                                                            ЛОШАДИ В ОКЕАНЕ

БОРИС СЛУЦКИЙ
(1919-1986)
 
И. Эренбургу

Лошади умеют плавать,
Но — не хорошо. Недалеко.
«Глория» — по-русски — значит «Слава», -
Это вам запомнится легко.

Шёл корабль, своим названьем гордый,
Океан стараясь превозмочь.
В трюме, добрыми мотая мордами,
Тыща лощадей топталась день и ночь.

Тыща лошадей! Подков четыре тыщи!
Счастья все ж они не принесли.
Мина кораблю пробила днище
Далеко-далёко от земли.

Люди сели в лодки, в шлюпки влезли.
Лошади поплыли просто так.
Что ж им было делать, бедным, если
Нету мест на лодках и плотах?

Плыл по океану рыжий остров.
В море в синем остров плыл гнедой.
И сперва казалось — плавать просто,
Океан казался им рекой.

Но не видно у реки той края,
На исходе лошадиных сил
Вдруг заржали кони, возражая
Тем, кто в океане их топил.

Кони шли на дно и ржали, ржали,
Все на дно покуда не пошли.
Вот и всё. А всё-таки мне жаль их —
Рыжих, не увидевших земли.

1951 г. (first published 1956)

d

Literary Translation/Adaptation/Revision by U.R. Bowie

Horsies at Sea and on Land
                                                                                 For Ilya Ehrenburg

Horsies can swim,
but not well, not too far.
 
“Glory” in Russian is “Slava;”
not hard to remember,
like “Tar” or “Polar Star”
(but this particular ship
was called GLORY).
 
A ship (this particular one)
steamed along,
proud name on its hull,
striving to conquer
the billowing waves.
 
Shaking their muzzles
most kindly and long,
clomping their hooves
to the beat of a song,
in the hold galloped (in place)
one thousand horsies.
 
A thousand, mind you!
Count up all the horseshoes:
Four thousand! Clomping away!
And not a shred of happiness
in all those clomps.
 
Far removed from the dry land they preferred,
the horsies clomped on clankily,
feeling just a little bit absurd,
when BAM and then BAM-BAM:
a big ole mine blew away
the ship’s weak undergird.
 
The crew climbed into lifeboats,
soon were off and sailing;
the horsies started swimming,
some were wailing (neighing).
 
Poor horsies, what on earth (at sea)
were they to do?
The places in the boats
were mighty few,
the horsies were,
in one French word,
beaucoup (a thousand!).
 
Upon that ocean’s blue seas
was a russet-colored island;
the horsies galloped swimming,
neighing hopefully,
toward its pleasant,
green-hued, land-based
haven.
 
At first the swimming galloped
free and easy,
the sea that day was calm,
in no way queasy,  
the isle, so they thought,
would surely save ’em
(rhymes with “haven”).
 
But the horsies’ hopes
were turning
somewhat sour;
they were running low,
it seemed,
on horsiepower.
 
The horses neighed out curses
dire and dour
at whomever sought
to drown them,
at the men or gods
in power.
 
But—TRANSLATOR’S NOTE: WE INTERRUPT THIS POEM BY BORIS SLUTSKY TO BRING YOU A BETTER ENDING, FOR SLUTSKY’S ENDING HAS THE SWIMMING HORSES WHINNYING FOR HELP AS THEY RUN OUT OF HORSEPOWER; THEY STOP THEIR GALLOPING/SWIMMING, GIVE UP HOPING TO SURVIVE, THEN SINK GASPING TO THE BOTTOM OF THE DEEP BLUE SEA. AND DROWN. HUH?
 
NEW ENDING:

God was feeling merciful;
He looked down from the sky,
saw the swimming horsies
and said, My, oh my, oh my!
 
Sent a different island down,
put the horsies on it.
There they live this very day,
(all thousand of them!),
whinnying and chomping hay,
galloping toward distant bay,
singing songs and yelling “Yay!”
 
Not swimming anymore.
For horsies, you see, can swim,
but not too well at all . . .
and not that far, oh, none too far,
 
SO: moral of the story.
If you’re a writer writing horsies,
treat your horsies nice; and
be sure to keep your blessed horsies
on DRY LAND!
 
 



Sunday, October 27, 2024

Translation of Poem by Bella Akhmadulina, Белла Ахмадулина, "Из глубины моих невзгод," "From out of the depths of my miseries"

 



Белла Ахмадулина
(1937-2010)
 
Из глубины моих невзгод
молюсь о милом человеке.
Пусть будет счастлив в этот год,
и в следующий, и вовеки.
 
Я, не сумевшая постичь
простого таинства удачи,
беду к нему не допустить
стараюсь так или иначе.
 
И не на радость же себе,
загородив его плечами,
ему и всей его семье
желаю миновать печали.
 
Пусть будет счастлив и богат.
Под бременем наград высоких
пусть подымает свой бокал
во здравие гостей веселых,
 
не ведая, как наугад
я билась головою оземь,
молясь о нем — средь неудач,
мне отведенных в эту осень.
 
1960 г

d

                                        Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie
 
From out of the depths of my miseries
I pray for one most dear to me, mine.
May he be relieved of his pain, his worries,
this year, and the next, and then on for all time.
 
I who have never been able to fathom
the simplistic secrets of luck’s every whim,
keep striving and trying past pitfall and chasm
to ward off misfortunes impinging on him.
 
And ever alert all distress to divert,
neglecting my megrims and own private woes,
I stand and all hardship and danger avert
from him and his family, may they find repose.  
 
Let him be contented, and happy and rich.
Under fame’s yoke which oft tends to destroy us,
may he raise a glass—to avoidance of kitsch,
and to health of all comrades most happy and joyous,
 
unaware in his bliss how in a blind fury
I lie pounding my head on the ground,
while praying for him amidst agonized worry
that plagues all my ramshackle psyche unsound.  
 



Translation of Poem by Bella Akhmadulina, Белла Ахмадулина, "Сумерки," GLOAMING

 



Белла Ахмадулина
(1937-2010)


                        Сумерки
 
Есть в сумерках блаженная свобода
от явных чисел века, года, дня.
Когда? – Неважно. Вот открытость входа
в глубокий парк, в далекий мельк огня.
 
Ни в сырости, насытившей соцветья,
ни в деревах, исполненных любви,
нет доказательств этого столетья, –
бери себе другое – и живи.
 
Ошибкой зренья, заблужденьем духа
возвращена в аллеи старины,
бреду по ним. И встречная старуха,
словно признав, глядит со стороны.
 
Средь бела дня пустынно это место.
Но в сумерках мои глаза вольны
увидеть дом, где счастливо семейство,
где невпопад и пылко влюблены,
 
где вечно ждут гостей на именины –
шуметь, краснеть и руки целовать,
где и меня к себе рукой манили,
где никогда мне гостем не бывать.
 
Но коль дано их голосам беспечным
стать тишиною неба и воды, –
чьи пальчики по клавишам лепечут? –
Чьи кружева вступают в круг беды?
 
Как мне досталась милость их привета,
тот медленный, затеянный людьми,
старинный вальс, старинная примета
чужой печали и чужой любви?
 
Еще возможно для ума и слуха
вести игру, где действуют река,
пустое поле, дерево, старуха,
деревня в три незрячих огонька.
 
Души моей невнятная улыбка
блуждает там, в беспамятстве, вдали,
в той родине, чья странная ошибка
даст мне чужбину речи и земли.
 
Но темнотой испуганный рассудок
трезвеет, рыщет, снова хочет знать
живых вещей отчетливый рисунок,
мой век, мой час, мой стол, мою кровать.
 
Еще плутая в омуте росистом,
я слышу, как на диком языке
мне шлет свое проклятие транзистор,
зажатый в непреклонном кулаке.

1966

d


Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

                            Gloaming
 
In gloaming there’s a beatific freedom
from dates delineated: of century/year/day.
When? No matter. Look: an arboretum,
a distant flick of light, a clear pathway.
 
Not in succulence that saturates a floscule,
nor in trees, bees, bee-trees full of love
is there firm proof of our year, age, or tidepool;
so pick one for yourself—then live, my dove.
 
Some mote in eye, misapprehended lifeforce
returns me to walkways of times long gone by;
as I wander those allées an old woman perforce
must needs know me and give me the sober side-eye.
 
In daylight the place appears rife with resentment,
but in gloaming my gaze is set free
to look at a home of familial contentment,
where, beating the odds, ardent lovers find glee,
 
where festive occasions put out welcome mats
to parties all clamor and blushes, hand-kissing,
where look: they just waved, “Come right on in, lass;
have a drink, sing a song; you’re the only one missing!”
 
But if by fate destined that their voices tender
must fade in silent skies and waters’ flow,
whose fingers, then, will play the chords of splendor,
whose Mechlin lace will hang in drapes of woe?
 
Yet how was I to their warm welcome woken,
how could I hear the slow strains played above,
the ancient waltz, the ever-ancient token
of someone else’s sorrow, else’s love?
 
Still possible it is for mind and hearing
to join a game where enter into play
a river, empty field, that old crone leering,
a village with three purblind lights astray.
 
There my soul’s smile, equivocal-elusive,
goes wandering, oblivious, far off,
to that homeland whose ways and words effusive
by some mistake I’ll know, whose juice I’ll quaff. 
 
But, frightened by the darkness, my mind cowers,
abstemious becomes, meanders, wants to see
a distinct sketch of living things, trees, flowers,
my era, hour, table, bed, latchkey.
 
Still ranging through a dewy whirl of whisper,
I hear the foreign-language gibberish
voiced by some damn loud-of-mouth transistor
that’s clutched in some intransigent dumb fist.

 

 



Translation of Poem by Bella Akhmadulina, Белла Ахмадулина, ONCE, "Однажды, покачнувшись на краю"

 


Bella Akhmadulina

Белла Ахмадулина
(1937-2010)

 

Однажды, покачнувшись на краю
всего, что есть, я ощутила в теле
присутствие непоправимой тени,
куда-то прочь теснившей жизнь мою.

Никто не знал, лишь белая тетрадь
заметила, что я задула свечи,
зажженные для сотворенья речи, –
без них я не желала умирать.

Так мучилась! Так близко подошла
к скончанью мук! Не молвила ни слова.
А это просто возраста иного
искала неокрепшая душа.

Я стала жить и долго проживу.
Но с той поры я мукою земною
зову лишь то, что не воспето мною,
всё прочее – блаженством я зову.

1960

d

Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie
                                

                                  Once

Once, while staggering and reeling on the brink
of all that is, I sensed, my inner spirit singeing,
the presence of a shade relentless and rose-pink
that pressed on me, upon my life impinging.
 
No one but my sketchpad pure white beheld
how I blew out the candle flames of yearning, 
the ones that watched my lucubrations swell;
I did not want to die with them still burning.
 
Agony! Quite near I came to putting end to torment,
but not a word I uttered, nothing, naught.   
A simple growing older, a change of age and ferment
my fledgling, still unwingéd soul then sought.
 
After that I started living, a long life’s yet to come,
but since that time what things are anguish-hued
I call just those that by me are unsung;
all else on earth I term beatitude.

 

 



Friday, October 25, 2024

On Russian Gestures, Тьфу, Тьфу, Тьфу!

 




Russian Gestures

Extend your right hand over the top of your head and scratch your left ear. This conveys the idea that someone does everything backwards, or needlessly complicates things, is incapable of doing anything in a direct way. Try this out on your American overcomplicator-friends. For extra effect stick your tongue out when performing the gesture.

 Spit over your left shoulder three times to ward off bad luck. Do this instead of knocking on wood. In fact, nowadays Russians do not actually spit over the shoulder; they make a spitting sound three times: Tfoo, tfoo, tfoo. A Russian acquaintance of mine, Tanya Gromova, once told me I was doing the sound wrong: instead of saying Tfoo, tfoo, tfoo over the shoulder, I was saying simply Foo, foo, foo. Incorrect spitting won’t work to keep the bad luck away.

 Try it then, Bobby. Тьфу, Тьфу, Тьфу! You got it!

 

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



Tuesday, October 8, 2024

On Gogol's "Dead Souls," МЕРТВЫЕ ДУШИ, Boots, ЛЕЙТМОТИВЫ: САПОГИ

 




ЛЕЙТМОТИВЫ: САПОГИ
LEITMOTIFS: BOOTS

 The boot leitmotif in DS may have autobiographical overtones and the veiled self-parody typical of Gogol’s works. He himself, apparently, was always interested in footwear, at least according to Ivan Yermakov, who published an extremely Freudian interpretation of “The Nose.” Remarking that “Gogol’s literary works are filled with descriptions of boots,” Yermakov cites passages from “Nevsky Prospect,” The Marriage, and Dead Souls. “One memoir tells how Gogol’s curious landlords, peering through the keyhole, observed him sitting for hours on end, the most serious expression on his face, inspecting the heel of his boot. It might seem that Gogol knew he was being watched, but even if that were the case, his choice of this particular form of joke—which seems accidental at first glance—reveals his keen interest in footwear.” In a footnote (!) Yermakov adds that “The symbolism of the boot and the heel is very common, as a fetish, among neurotics” (Yermakov in Gogol from the Twentieth Century, p. 171-173).

Here Yermakov does not identify the memoir in question, and you wonder if this tale is fabricated, based on the scene of the lieutenant from Riazan, who examines boot heels at the end of Ch. 7 of DS. Memoirs of Gogol’s friends and acquaintances frequently describe this sort of spying on Gogol as he worked—or, here, as he relaxed—apparently in an attempt to delve into the secrets of his creativity. Yermakov suggests that Gogol was aware of the spies, and enjoyed putting on something of a performance for them. Doubtful. But then, he was capable of such behavior. His whole life was highly performative.

Boots go tromping their way all through the narrative of DS. In Ch. 1 Chichikov calls upon nearly all the town officials, and he meets in passing some of the landowners whom he will later visit in search of dead souls to buy: Manilov, Sobakievich and Nozdryov. A burly bear-like man, Sobakievich begins their acquaintance by trodding on his foot. After Manilov invites Chichikov to visit his estate, “Sobakievich also said, rather laconically, ‘Come see me too,’ scraping one foot that was shod in a boot of such gigantic proportions that its equal was hardly to be found anywhere . . .”

Boots seem to be on everyone’s mind. Korobochka (Ch. 3) mentions to Chichikov that some three years back her sister brought some warm boots from Moscow for the children; “very solid stuff, it was, and still wearing well.” Upon Chichikov’s departure from her estate, Korobochka sends a little peasant girl, Pelageia, to ride a short ways on the britzka and point out the road to the highway. She is described as a girl of about eleven standing near the porch, in a homespun dress and “with bare feet that, from a distance, might have been thought shod in boots, so plastered with fresh mud were they.”

Bragging on his dead souls in Ch. 5, Sobakievich mentions “Maksim Teliatnikov, a bootmaker; he’d just run his awl through a piece of leather, and there was a pair of boots for you, and for every pair you’d want to thank him, and it wasn’t as if he ever took a single drop of spirits in his mouth.” In Ch. 6 the miserly Plewshkin makes one pair of communal boots do for all his menials:

“At last the door opened and in came Proshka, a lad of thirteen, in such large boots that at every step he took he all but stepped out of them. The reason why Proshka wore such large boots can be explained without delay: Plewshkin had for all his domestics, no matter how many of them might be in the house, but the one pair of boots, which always had to be left standing in the entry. Anyone summoned to the master’s chambers had to prance barefoot through the entire yard, and, upon reaching the entry, had to don these boots and appear in the room only when thus shod. On coming out of the room he had to leave the boots in the entry again and set off anew on his own soles. Had anyone glanced out the little window on an autumn day, and especially when slight hoarfrost set in of mornings, he would have seen all the domestics in the midst of such grand jetés of leaps as even the sprightliest of ballet dancers in theaters could hardly have hoped to perform.”  Plewshkin’s pile of assorted objects scarfed up at random on his daily walks includes “an old boot-sole.”

The tale of the communal boots in Plewshkin’s household strikes an odd note, given that it describes the exact opposite ritual from that which takes place in countless Russian modern households. Someone entering a house or apartment from outdoors will immediately remove dirty shoes or boots in the anteroom, donning slippers available there. But then, I suppose that Plewshkin’s ritual achieves the same purpose: keeping mud and dirt out of the inner rooms.

In Ch. 7 Chichikov is described as donning “morocco boots with fancy appliqués of variegated colors,” such as are to be found selling briskly in the town of Torzhok. Chichikov’s attire has been frequently described in detail earlier—especially his frockcoat of lingonberry red with sparkles. A strange lapse here: that the author waited seven chapters to tell us about his boots. Something else weird about this passage: Chichikov, in celebration of his having acquired almost four hundred dead souls, jumps out of bed, dons the boots, and does a little dance. Who on earth begins dressing right out of bed by putting on boots? More on the dance scene later in this book. A similar stylistic faux pas occurs in Ch. 11, when Chichikov, angry with Selifan, throws his sword down on the floor—"the sword that accompanied him on all his travels, to inspire appropriate awe wherever necessary.”  That’s odd, thinks the reader; we’re almost all the way through the book, and only now does this sword show up in Chichikov’s hands, or dangling at his side.

How does Gogol know that morocco boots are selling well in Torzhok? Probably because he saw them on sale there in October, 1839, when, traveling with members of the Aksakov family by stagecoach from Moscow to St. Petersburg, they stopped off in Torzhok (see U.R. Bowie, Gogol’s Head, p. 97-98). Aware that his main character in DS would need some nice boots, Gogol probably went ahead and bought him some then.

Among the weird ghostly characters who come crawling out of the woodwork in Ch. 9—aroused by the wild tsunami of rumors—are “the lie-abeds and sit-by-the-fires who had been lolling and vegetating at home in their dressing gowns for years, placing the blame for their indolence either upon the bungling bootmaker who had made their boots too tight, or on their worthless tailor, or on their drunkard of a coachman . . .”

In a (or the) climactic scene of the novel, at the ball (Ch. 8), the drunken Nozdryov reveals to all and sundry that Chichikov “trades in dead souls.” The boot theme marches into this episode as well. After the incident at the ball Chichikov feels awkward and ill at ease, “every whit as if he had stepped with brightly polished boot into a filthy, stinking puddle.”

Gogol’s letters sometimes make reference to boots, and the importance he personally attaches to them. In a letter to S.T. Aksakov from Vienna (July 7, 1840), e.g., Gogol asks Aksakov’s son, who will be travelling to Western Europe, to bring him several things, among them a volume of Shakespeare and editions of folk songs collected by Maksimovich. “And here’s the main thing: buy or get Mikhail Semenovich [Shchepkin] to buy some Petersburg tanned leather from the best bootmaker—the softest kind for making boots, i.e., only the upper leather (which is already cut out so that it won’t take up space and is easy to carry); two or three pairs. Had a bad thing happen: all the boots that Také made for me turned out to be too short. That stubborn German! I tried to tell him they’d be short, but he, the boot-tree, didn’t want to listen to me! And they’re so wide that my feet have swollen up. It would be good if you could get that leather to me: they make rather good boots here.”

ПОРУЧИК РЯЗАНЬ
P.S. ON BOOTS: LT. RIAZAN

The boot theme in DS finds its culmination at the end of Ch. 7, with the appearance of the lieutenant from Riazan—a character whom one of my students on an exam once described as “Lt. Riazan.” His rank in the Tsarist army is poruchik, which most approximates in the modern American army that of first lieutenant. This personage has already peeked into the novel near the end of Ch. 6, when the waiter at the inn informs Chichikov that “yesterday we had some kind of military lieutenant arrive; he’s taken Room 16 . . . Don’t know who he is; from Riazan; he’s got bay horses.”

Gogol ends several chapters by playing parodic games with the rather hackneyed device, especially in Romantic literature, of ending a chapter in a novel by putting the characters to sleep, then panning, say, outside for a beautiful description of a moonlit night. Ch. 6, we recall, concludes with Chichikov sleeping “that marvelous slumber known only to those fortunate beings who are bothered neither by hemorrhoids, nor fleas, nor over-developed intellectual faculties.” At the end of Ch. 7, instead of taking us outside to show us the full moon and the fluttering linden leaves, Gogol’s narrator takes us inside another room at the inn and shows us a scene verging on absurdity.

At the end of Ch. 7 Chichikov returns drunk to the inn from the party celebrating his purchase of the dead souls. He is at the acme of his good fortune in the novel, “never having felt so happy, already imagining himself a real landowner in Kherson.” He sleeps, and his menials, Petrushka and Selifan go off and get drunk together, then come back and fall, in their turn, into a deep sleep:

“They both fell asleep the same moment, raising a snore of unheard-of intensity, to which the master from next door responded with a high-pitched nasal whistle. . . Soon after the arrival of the two, everything grew quiet, and the inn was enveloped in profound sleep, save that in a single little window there was still a glimmer of light to be seen, coming from a room in which some lieutenant from Riazan was staying. Evidently he had a great weakness for boots, for he had already ordered four pairs and was now incessantly tying on a fifth. Several times he approached the bed, intending to take them off and lie down, but he just could not bring himself to do so; the boots were indeed well made, and for a long while yet he went on raising now this foot, and now the other, inspecting the deftly and wondrously turned heel of each boot.”

What we have here could well be a scene refracted through a dream by Chichikov. Often in our dreams the dream producers make use of incidental characters who have appeared in our waking moments. At least in his subconscious Chichikov may be pondering on this Lt. Riazan, whom the waiter has mentioned to him in Ch.6. Furthermore, there is something dreamlike about the way the scene is written, since in one skewed sentence Lt. Riazan seems to be, simultaneously, in his hotel room about to go to bed and in some shoe-shop trying on boots.

Here's Vladimir Nabokov on that scene:

“Thus the chapter ends—and that lieutenant is still trying on his immortal jackboot, and the leather glistens, and the candle burns straight and bright in the only lighted window of a dead town in the depth of a star-dusted night. I know of no more lyrical description of nocturnal quiet than this Rhapsody of the Boots” (Nabokov, Nikolai Gogol, p. 83). Here Nabokov, with his usual deft use of description, not only praises Gogol’s chapter ending as beautifully lyrical, but, in so doing, also writes his own beautifully lyrical sentence, as if to say, “See there: I can do it too.” Nabokov’s book on Gogol, by the way, is especially notable (and welcome) in that it defies the standard professorial practice of writing literary criticism in a dense and ponderous, even sometimes opaque style—see, e.g., James B. Woodward’s lumbering, humorless monograph on DS. It’s worth noting as well that near the end of Ch. 8, after Chichikov’s disastrous encounter with Nozdryov at the ball, the whole town is described as sleeping, while perturbed Chichikov does not sleep a wink all night long.

As if Gogol were playing with the different ways to get sleepers (and anxious non-sleepers) in at the end of chapters, the ending of Ch. 8 also has its sui generis sleeping scene—this makes three chapters in a row with sleepers at the end. A long description of Korobochka’s ramshackle carriage entering the town concludes with two ancillary characters asleep: (1) a night watchman on the other end of town, awakened by the clamor of the carriage, cries out “Who goes there?” Hearing only “a distant rumble,” he captures an insect crawling over his collar and “executes” it on his fingernail, before going back to sleep; (2) upon arrival of the Korobochka carriage at the home of the priest’s wife, a threadbare lackey riding footman is “pulled down by his feet,” since he is “in a dead sleep.” From the carriage emerges Korobochka, who has spent “three sleepless nights,” worried that she has sold her souls to Chichikov at too low a price.

In his novel Pnin, which he was working on roughly at the same time that he wrote his book on Gogol, Nabokov himself toys with the device of ending chapters by putting the characters to sleep. He does this by way of playing games with the POV of the omniscient narrator. At the end of Ch. 3 Timofey Pnin, off in dreamland, is awakened by the return of the Clements’ daughter Isabel. At the end of the next chapter Pnin is afflicted with insomnia and bad dreams: “His back hurt. It was now past four. The rain had stopped.

“Pnin sighed a Russian ‘okh-okh-okh’ sigh, and sought a more comfortable position. Old Bill Sheppard trudged to the downstairs bathroom, brought down the house, then trudged back.

“Presently all were asleep again. It was a pity nobody saw the display in the empty street, where the auroral breeze wrinkled a large luminous puddle, making of the telephone wires reflected in it illegible lines of black zigzags” (Pnin, end of Ch. 4).

What else can we possibly make of the appearance of “Lt. Riazan” in the book? For one thing, in terms of the social and moral message of the novel, the lieutenant could be representative of the obsession with gross materialism characteristic of nearly everyone in DS. He is so devoid of spiritual qualities that he makes boots the principal thing in his life, an object of almost religious awe. One more dead soul, an empty-headed materialist, the lieutenant makes his appearance—possibly in Chichikov’s dream—right at the point where the novel’s hero has attained to his greatest success. He could present something of an omen, suggesting that one who chases the god of materialism, as does Chichikov, is due for a big fall. The rest of the novel, beginning with Ch. 8, shows the comeuppance of Chichikov in the town of N. The appearance of the boot-loving lieutenant could be seen as the climax of the book, or at least one high point/near climax. The biggest high point/climax comes with the ball scene in Ch. 8, and, especially, the moment that the drunk Nozdryov blurts out to one and all: “he trades in dead souls.”

[excerpted from the forthcoming book by U.R. Bowie: 

THE FUTILE SEARCH FOR A LIVING SOUL

[A NEW READING OF GOGOL’S DEAD SOULS (МЕРТВЫЕ ДУШИ)]