Максимилиан Волошин
(1877-1932)
Святая Русь
Суздаль да Москва не для тебя
ли
По уделам землю собирали,
Да тугую золотом суму?
В рундуках приданое копили,
И тебя невестою растили
В расписном да тесном терему?
Не тебе ли на речных истоках
Плотник-Царь построил дом
широко –
Окнами на пять земных морей?
Из невест красой, да силой
бранной
Не была ль ты самою желанной
Для заморских княжих сыновей?
Но тебе сыздетства были любы –
По лесам глубоких скитов срубы,
По степям кочевья без дорог,
Вольные раздолья да вериги,
Самозванцы, воры да расстриги,
Соловьиный посвист да острог.
Быть Царевой ты не захотела –
Уж такое подвернулось дело:
Враг шептал: развей да расточи,
Ты отдай казну свою богатым,
Власть – холопам, силу – супостатам,
Смердам – честь, изменникам –
ключи.
Поддалась лихому подговору,
Отдалась разбойнику и вору,
Подожгла посады и хлеба,
Разорила древнее жилище,
И пошла поруганной и нищей,
И рабой последнего раба.
Я ль в тебя посмею бросить
камень?
Осужу ль страстной и буйный
пламень?
В грязь лицом тебе ль не
поклонюсь,
След босой ноги благословляя, –
Ты – бездомная, гулящая,
хмельная,
Во Христе юродивая Русь!
19 ноября 1917, Коктебель
Literal Translation
Maximillian Voloshin
(1877-1932)
Holy Rus
To A.M. Petrova
Was it not for you that Suzdal and Moscow
Kept adding on more land in appanages,
And moneybags tight with gold?
Did they not amass a dowry in coffers,
And raise you up to be a bride
In a frescoed and cramped tower home?
Was it not for you that the Carpenter Tsar
Built a capacious house at the source of rivers,
With windows facing out onto five earthly seas?
Did not your beauty and your shrewish strength
Make you the most desirable of them all
For the princely sons of foreign lands?
But from your very childhood you had a hankering
For roughhewn hermitages in woodland depths,
For trackless steppes where nomads roamed,
For open expanses feral-free and penitential chains,
Pretenders, thieves and unfrocked monks,
For the whistle of Nightingale the Robber, for dungeons.
To be a Tsar’s property you did not wish,
So here’s how things turned out for you:
The Evil One whispered: throw it to the winds, squander it,
Give your treasure horde to the rich,
Your authority to vassals, your strength to foes,
Your honor to rough peasants, your keys to traitors.
You yielded to evil incitements,
You gave yourself to the rogue and thief,
You burned your merchants’ quarters, your grain,
You laid waste to your ancient dwelling place,
And you set off both cursed and beggared,
The slave of the very meanest slave.
Am I one who dares to cast a stone at you?
Do I pass judgment on your passionate and intemperate flame?
Do I not bow down to you, my face in the mud,
Blessing the print of your bare foot,
You homeless, wanton, drunken
Holy Fool for-sake-of-Christ called Rus!
Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie
Holy Rus
To A.M. Petrova
They did it for you, did they not?
The princes whom Suzdal and Moscow begot
Scarfed up land in appanages, gold in flood tides,
Amassed in their coffers a dowry of opulence,
You they sequestered in cramped tower’s flocculence,
And groomed you to be the most peerless of brides.
Was it not all for you that the Carpenter Tsar
Built a home where the rivers converged from afar,
With windows that faced onto five earthly seas?
Did your beauty, your spunk not inspire great awe,
Your mansuetude, charms, were they not without flaw,
Such that no prince in Europe could you ever displease?
But you from the start had a yen for the wilds,
For hermits in huts built roughhewn woodsy style,
For steppeland all trackless, itinerant camps,
For free open spaces and chains penitential,
For monks now defrocked, and for nothing prudential,
Pretenders and dungeons, and outlaws and scamps.
Consort to the Tsar was a job not for you,
So here’s how things ended in impious rue:
The Evil One whispered: screw it all, let it go,
Give your wealth to the rich, to the lush and effete,
Give power to vassals, let rabblement bleat,
Copulate with base yokels, put pride in escrow.
To a low and vicious plot you lent an ever eager ear,
You tossed your kingdom’s keys to any brigand’s wiles drear,
You torched the merchant’s quarters, let the grain go up in
flames,
Then laid to waste on purpose your own precious family home,
And set off, cursed and beggared now, the good earth for to roam,
The kind of slave who slavery loves and kisses her own chains.
But I myself, do I dare cast a stone at hapless you?
Do I dare judge the passion, dissipation run askew?
Am I not bowing down right now, my face in muck profuse,
Do I not bless your bare footprint, left in the grime and rot,
You homeless, wanton, drunk and shameless, misbegotten sot,
You Holy Fool for sake of Christ, the blessed fool called Rus!
Nov. 19, 1917
Koktebel
Translator’s Notes
Title, Holy Rus. The word Rus (Русь, pronounced Roos) is
the ancient name for Russia (Россия). Both words are feminine in grammatical gender, making the embodiment
of Russia a female, as she is presented in this poem.
First Stanza
Appanages . “Most historians since the nineteenth
century—Russian, Soviet, and Western—have used the phrase "appanage
era" to designate the period between the collapse of Kievan Russia and the emergence of a centralized
Russian state. It is dated from the Mongol conquest of Kievan Russia between
1237 and 1240 to either the accession of Ivan III (1462) or Basil III (1505), or to the beginning of the
reign of Ivan IV (1533). It was characterized by the emergence
of a multiplicity of independent principalities (udeli or
appanages).” (encyclopedia.com)
As certain princely states, such
as Suzdal and Moscow, became more powerful they annexed more and more
independent appanages to their own territory. Eventually all the independent
principalities were swallowed up by Muscovy.
Tower home (Russ., терем). In Ancient Rus the upper living quarters
in a house were often in the shape of a tower; these rooms were frequently
reserved for women or maidens, as a place where they would be protected from
intrusions.
Second Stanza
Carpenter Tsar. Peter the First (the Great), who opened “a
window on the West” when he founded the city of St. Petersburg at the beginning
of the 18th Century. He had a fondness for building things, such as
ships, with his own hands.
Third Stanza
Hermits in huts. There is a tradition in Eastern Orthodox
Christianity of hermit-ascetics, who live alone in the woods, castigating their
flesh and saving their souls.
Penitential chains (вериги). Worn most frequently by Holy Fools (see
below).
Pretenders. Throughout Russian history fake tsars have
appeared out of nowhere, pretending to be some tsar or royalty long dead
(usually murdered). This phenomenon continued right up to the end of the
Romanov dynasty, when, after the murder of the last tsar’s (Nicolas the First’s)
whole family in 1918, pretenders later appeared, claiming to be the dead daughter
Anastasia, or the Tsarevich heir.
The most famous of pretenders
were those who appeared in The Time of Troubles (early 17th Century,
1598-1613). Tsar Fyodor I died without leaving an heir, thereby ending the Rurik
dynasty; the country descended into chaos. Several pretenders materialized, claiming
to be Dmitry, the heir to the throne. The real Dmitry, son of Ivan the
Terrible, had been murdered—apparently by Boris Godunov—in the city of Uglich
in 1591.
Supported by the Polish state,
the First Pretender Dmitry (Grigory Otrepiev) invaded Russia with Polish and
Lithuanian forces. He made a triumphant entry into Moscow after Godunov’s death
in 1605 and was actually crowned tsar, accepted as the real Dmitry. His rule
was short-lived. On May 17, 1606, he was ousted from the Kremlin and killed by
an armed mob, which also killed or imprisoned many of his Polish advisors.
Another famous pretender was the
peasant Emelyan Pugachev, who led an armed rebellion (1773-1775) against
Catherine the Great, claiming to be Tsar Peter III. At the instigation of
Catherine, his wife, Tsar Peter had been murdered in 1762, after which
Catherine seized power.
Monks now defrocked. Grigory Otrepiev was the real name of the
First Pretender Dmitry. He was an unfrocked monk, who fled from a monastery
near Moscow and eventually made his way to Poland, where he presented himself
as the real Tsarevich Dmitry.
Sixth Stanza
Holy Fool for the sake of Christ.
Eastern Orthodox Christianity has a tradition of holy foolery that dates far,
far back in history. In Russia Holy Foolery had its heyday in the time of Ivan
the Terrible (16th century). The most famous holy fool of all, Basil
the Blessed (Vassily Blazhenny) lived in those times. The resplendent church on
Red Square in Moscow is unofficially named after him (St. Basil’s Cathedral),
and his relics resided in that church—in a silver sarcophagus with his
penitential chains on top—until the Russian Revolution of the twentieth
century.
Since Russia (Rus) is feminine, a
woman, Voloshin makes his holy fool in the poem a female. Women holy fools in
Russia are found much more infrequently than men. The most famous female holy
fool is Ksenija Blazhennaja (The Blessed Xenia) of St. Petersburg, who lived in
the 18th century. Her burial place in Smolensk Cemetery, where a
chapel has been built, is still visited by scores of pious Russian pilgrims.
The holy fools in Russia behaved
like insane people, always homeless, wandering the streets naked, wearing only
their chains, committing various pranks, such as throwing excrement on the
heads of passersby. For their behavior they were beaten, but accepted the
thrashings, even taking voluptuous pleasure in the pain. After all, was not
Christ scourged as well? The people beat them for their madcap antics, but
venerated them as holy, as individuals who supposedly had special insights,
through foolery, into the ways of God.
The Bible has several passages
that, ostensibly, explain and validate the behavior of holy fools. One passage
in First Corinthians goes as follows: “We are fools for Christ’s sake, but ye
are wise in Christ; we are weak, but ye are strong; ye are honorable, but we
are despised.” One main idea is that Christ endured mockery and humiliation in
his lifetime, was himself something of an eccentric, and that the fools act in
imitation of Him.
Some of the Russian fools were
canonized by the church. Although the Russian Orthodox Church venerates holy
fools as religious zealots, going mad in the name of Christ, the question
always arises: were these bizarre individuals genuine Christian zealots or were
they simply mentally ill?
Nesterov, "Na Rusi"
Ксения Блаженная
No comments:
Post a Comment