Translation of Poem by IVAN BUNIN, "ПОРТРЕТ," "THE PORTRAIT"

         150 ЛЕТ СО ДНЯ РОЖДЕНИЯ ИВАНА АЛЕКСЕЕВИЧА БУНИНА: 1870-2020

И. А. БУНИН

(1870-1953)

ПОРТРЕТ

Погост, часовенка над склепом,
Венки, лампадки, образа
И в раме, перевитой крепом, —
Большие ясные глаза.

Сквозь пыль на стеклах, жарким светом
Внутри часовенка горит.
«Зачем я в склепе, в полдень, летом?» —
Незримый кто-то говорит.

Кокетливо-проста прическа
И пелеринка на плечах...
А тут повсюду — капли воска
И банты крепа на свечах,

Венки, лампадки, пахнет тленьем...
И только этот милый взор
Глядит с веселым изумленьем
На этот погребальный вздор.

Март, 1903?

d

Literal Translation

The Portrait

A graveyard, a small chapel over a crypt,

Wreaths, votive lamps, icons,

And in a frame intertwined with crape—

The large clear eyes.

The interior of the chapel burns with a hot light

Through the dust on its glass.

“Why am I in a crypt, at noon, in summer?”

An invisible someone says.

The hairstyle coquettish and plain,

And a pelerine on the shoulders . . .

And all over there are drops of wax

And crape bows on candles,

The wreaths, votive lamps, the smell of decay . . .

And only that dear gaze

That looks with joyous amazement

On that sepulchral nonsense.

March, 1903 (?)

Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

The Portrait

A graveyard chapel and a crypt,   

With wreaths and icons, windows glazed,

And from a frame wound round with crape—

The large clear eyes peer out amazed.

The votive candles walls illume,

Through dust on glass the chapel glows.

“In crypt I lie, midsummer, noon?”

A soft voice vents sepulchral woes.

Coiffure coquettish, simple, plain,

Her shoulders draped with mantelet . . .

The spattered wax on walls and pane,

And crape bows on the wax rosette.

The lamps and wreaths, a scent of rot . . .

And nothing more but those dear eyes

That startled, joyful, stare at naught

But dregs and lees steeped in demise.

d

Translator’s Notes

Generally acknowledged as the best short story Bunin ever wrote is his «Легкое дыхание» (“Light Breathing”), published in 1916. Here is how it begins [my translation in the book, Ivan Bunin, Night of Denial: Stories and Novellas, translated, with notes and critical afterword, by Robert Bowie, Northwestern University Press, 2006, p. 507]:

In the graveyard, above a fresh clay mound, stands a new cross made of oak, sturdy, ponderous, smooth.

                April, gray days. The tombstones here, in this spacious provincial graveyard, can be seen from afar through the bare trees, and a cold wind keeps dangling and rattling the porcelain wreath at the foot of the cross.

                There is a large convex porcelain medallion set into the cross, and the medallion contains a photographic portrait of a schoolgirl with joyous, strikingly living eyes.

                This is Olya Mesherskaya.

In Bunin’s note on the origins of this story [see  Bunin, Sob. soch. 9: 369] he describes how one winter, while strolling around a small cemetery on the Isle of Capri, he came upon a cross containing a photograph of a young girl with uncommonly vivacious, joyful eyes. Back in Russia, in March of 1916, he was asked to contribute a story to the Easter issue of the journal “Russian Word.” He immediately recalled the girl’s photograph from the cemetery in Capri and made this girl into Olya in his imagination; he wrote the story with that ‘exquisite rapidity’ that characterized the happiest moments of his writing life. For more on “Light Breathing” see my notes in the above collection, p. 611-15, and discussion of the story in my afterword, p. 689-98.

The poem translated above, “The Portrait,” written apparently in 1903 and first published in 1906, is something like an early draft for the material that was to become “Light Breathing.”

                                                               

                                                                  Portraits of Ivan Bunin

Artist: Bukovetsky

Photograph, 1905

Artist: L.S. Bakst, Paris, 1921