Translation of Poem by ANNA AKHMATOVA, "А ты думал — я тоже такая," "So you took me for some sort of wifey lightweight"

Portrait of Akhmatova by Petrov-Vodkin, 1922

Anna Akhmatova
(1889-1966)

А ты думал — я тоже такая,
Что можно забыть меня,
И что брошусь, моля и рыдая,
Под копыта гнедого коня.

Или стану просить у знахарок
В наговорной воде корешок
И пришлю тебе странный подарок —
Мой заветный душистый платок.

Будь же проклят. Ни стоном, ни взглядом
Окаянной души не коснусь,
Но клянусь тебе ангельским садом,
Чудотворной иконой клянусь,
И ночей наших пламенным чадом —
Я к тебе никогда не вернусь.

July, 1921

Tsarskoe Selo

Literal Translation

And you thought I was also like that,

That you could forget me,

And that I’d throw myself, pleading and sobbing,

Under the hoofs of [your] bay steed.

Or I’d begin asking the conjure-women

To find me a buddy in their magical potions,

And I’d send you a strange gift:

My cherished perfumed kerchief.

May you be damned. Neither by moans, nor by a glance

Will I touch your cursed soul.

But I swear to you by the garden of angels,

By a wonder-working icon I swear,

By the fiery vapors of our nights [together]—

That I’ll never come back to you.

Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

So you took me for some sort of wifey lightweight;

You’d wend on your own way while I’d weep and I’d plead,

Then hurl myself, hectic-frenetic, prostrate,

Under the hoofs of your dashing bay steed.

Or I’d go to a psychic and ask her advice,

How to conjure a new lover boy for my bed,

And I’d send you a gift, something weird but still nice,

Say, a fragrance-spewed kerchief in hues of bright red.

Go to hell. No moans of mine, no glances caring

Will purge your soul of its dark affliction,

And by angel-blessed gardens I’ll go on swearing,

On sacrosanct icons, by hell’s pitchest black,

By fumes from our hot nights of love un-despairing,

I promise, I swear that I’ll never come back.

Translator’s Note:

A Poem Best Never Written

If we assume, as do most readers, that this poem is addressed to Akhmatova’s errant husband Nikolai Gumilyov (they were divorced in 1918), no poem in history could have been more inopportune. Only a month after this work is dated, in August of 1921, Gumilyov was arrested by the Bolsheviks, charged with participating in a monarchist conspiracy, and immediately shot.

I don’t know if Akhmatova ever commented on the irony: you condemn your ex-husband, you damn him to hell, you swear that you'll never return to him, and a month later he is dead, executed. I suspect that she wished, more than once, that she could have taken this poem back and burned it.

                                              Natan Altman Painting

                                   Max Ernst, The Fireside Angel, 1937

Masha Matvejchuk declaims the poem:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1Adx-qa0GI