Translation of Poem by ANNA AKHMATOVA, "BEZHETSK"

N.S. Gumilyov, Lev Gumilyov, Anna Akhmatova, 1915

Anna Akhmatova

(1889-1966)

Бежецк

Там белые церкви и звонкий, светящийся лёд,
Там милого сына цветут васильковые очи.
Над городом древним алмазные русские ночи
И серп поднебесный желтее чем липовый мёд.

Там вьюги сухие взлетают с заречных полей,
И люди, как ангелы, Божьему празднику рады,
Прибрали светлицу, зажгли у киота лампады,
И Книга Благая лежит на дубовом столе.

Там строгая память, такая скупая теперь,
Свои терема мне открыла с глубоким поклоном;
Но я не вошла, я захлопнула страшную дверь;
И город был полон весёлым рождественским звоном.

Dec. 26, 1921

Literal Translation

Bezhetsk

There are white churches there and resonant, sparkling ice,

There blossom the cornflower blue eyes of my dear son.

Suspended above the ancient town are diamond-specked Russian nights

And the heavenly crescent (sickle) is more yellow than linden honey.

There desiccate blizzards blow in from fields beyond the river,

And people, like angels, rejoice at God’s holy day,

They’ve tidied the front room, they’ve lit all the icon lamps,

And on an oaken table the Good Book lies.

There it was that stern memory, which is so parsimonious now,

Bowed deeply and opened her tower chambers to me;

But I did not go in, I slammed shut that terrible door,

And the town was full of the merry ringing of Christmas bells.

Bezhetsk

White churches stand tall and there’s resonant, glistening ice,

And the cornflower-blue is abloom in my son’s precious gaze.

Nights strung with diamonds hang high on the ancient town’s heights,

More yellow than linden-flower honey the sickle-moon’s rays.  

Dry blizzards blow in from the fields past the faraway river,

And people, like angels, rejoice in the Lord’s Holy Day.

They’ve tidied the parlor, lit icon lamps, flames all aquiver;

They’ve placed the Good Book on a table of oak, and they pray.

There dour-faced memory, forthrightness now apt to abhor,

Did open her sanctum sanctorum and bowed low to me;

But I ventured not in, and I slammed shut the hideous door,

While the town was suffused with the bells of Nativity’s glee.

Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin
Bogomater Umilenie Zlykh Serdets

Translator’s Notes

Anna Akhmatova’s husband, the poet N.S. Gumilyov, first introduced her to the region near the city of Tver’ (between Moscow and St. Petersburg). There she spent many happy days— in the years between 1911 and 1918—in two ancient towns, Bezhetsk and Slepnyova. After 1918—the year in which Gumilyov and Akhmatova were divorced—she visited only Bezhetsk; she was there for the last time in 1925. In an unpublished autobiographical text titled My Half Century, she repeatedly emphasizes the importance of these towns in her life and literary work. Born in 1912, her son Lev (Leo) spent his childhood years in Bezhetsk. Today there is a monument in the city, featuring sculptures of Akhmatova, Gumilyov, and Lev (L.N. Gumilyov).

The poem “Bezhetsk” is frequently published with the middle stanza missing. It can be found in this form on various internet sites, and one YouTube video features a romance—the poem set to music but missing four lines. I’m not sure when Akhmatova published the expurgated variant, but certainly in the Soviet Union—where the state religion was atheism—it would have been impossible to include the strong Christian message in the middle of the poem.

Written in 1921, before the U.S.S.R. was firmly established in what had once been Russia, the poem embodies a feeling of ancient Rus. Christianity is still a vital part of Russian culture, and two words for rooms in people’s homes are archaic: (1) svetlitsa—the bright front room, or main room; (2) terem—living quarters in the upstairs part of a house, or a house in the shape of a tower. But one sharp word (serp), describing the crescent moon as a sickle, seems to slice through the world of Rus and predict the Soviet hammer and sickle years that are soon to come.

The final stanza describes some past time when stern memory—who has become stingy in present time—once opened her doors wide and invited the poet in. But the poet declined that invitation, even slammed shut the horrible door. The poem was written only a few months after the execution of Nikolai Gumilyov (August, 1921), charged with what was probably a nonexistent monarchist conspiracy against the Bolsheviks. The past memory that the poet here refuses to look at may be the memory of that execution.

This last stanza, so full of foreboding, takes a leap into the past tense, after the present tense of the first two stanzas. But the Christmas bells of the final line seem to hearken back to the present-tense scene of the beginning stanzas. The poet’s refusal to look at memories may also hint at a refusal to consider her more than ominous future. The execution of her ex-husband, father of her child, threw a pall over the rest of her life, and her son’s. Oppressed constantly by the Soviet authorities, viewed as traitors to the Socialist state, both Akhmatova and Lev Gumilyov would suffer for the remainder of their lives.  

Akhmatova Statue in Bezhetsk