Translation of Poem by Nikolai Aseev, "Хор вершин," "CHOIRS IN THE HEIGHTS"

 

Levitan, "Spring in the Alps," 1897

NIKOLAI ASEEV

Николай Асеев

(1889-1963)

 

Хор вершин

 

Широкие плечи гор –

Вершин онемелый хор,

Крутые отроги

У самой дороги –

Времен замолчавший хор.

 

Высокие тени гор . . .

С беспамятно давних пор

Стоят недотроги

У самой дороги –

Затихший внезапно спор.

 

Когтистые ребра круч,

Катящие шумный ключ.

Туманные кряжи

Завеяны в пряже

Вот здесь же

Рожденных туч.

 

Что каменных гряд полоса,

Должна быть и песен краса,

Чтоб в небо вздымались,

Как каменный палец,

Один за другим голоса.

 

Source: The Penguin Book of Russian Verse, edited by Dimitri Obolensky, 1967, p. 328-29.

 

d

 

 

Literal Translation

 

Choir in the Heights

 

The broad shoulders of mountains.

The gone-mute choir of summits,

The steep escarpments

Right by the roadside.

The fallen-silent choir of times.

 

The tall shadows of mountains . . .

From time immemorial

Stand touch-me-not

Right by the roadside,

Abruptly hushing their argument.

 

The clawed ribs of slopes,

Which pour forth a noisy spring,

The hazy ridges

Are wrapped in the yarn

Of rain clouds that are born

Right here on this spot.

 

That the strip of rocky ridges

Must be also the beauty of songs,

So that like a stone finger

They soar up into the sky,

The voices, one after the other.

 

 

d

 

 

Literary Translation/Imitation by U.R. Bowie

 

Choirs in the Heights

 

Mountains so broad in the shoulders,

Choirs of summits gone mute in their boulders.

Escarpments that rise up way high on the steep,

Right by the roadside they loom there in sleep,

The choirs of time that won’t sing in their boulders.

 

Shadows of mountains stand tall and refined,

They’ve stretched high, they loom there from time out of mind.

They cringe back, they’re shy and eschew touchy-feely,

Right by the road they play touch-me-not-really,

Then hush and fall silent, to strife disinclined.

 

The ribs of the slopes that at hazy sky claw,

They urp out a spring that flows burbly-guffaw.

Right here in this heaven dark rainclouds are born,

They blow through the ridges in mistness adorned,

And winnow escarpments all fleece and scrimshaw.

 

The stripes and the strips of the ridges in rockiness

Sing out their pure rhythms, excelling in cockiness;

So steeped in pure beauty, the voice of those songs

Soars high up in sky, where it hovers and longs

For the stone-finger ridges, scaberulous pockiness.

 

 

                                                                            Nikolai Aseev