Translation of Poem by FYODOR TYUTCHEV, "Hearken at the river swift," "Смотри, как на речном просторе"

 

Fyodor Tyutchev

(1803-1873)

 

Смотри, как на речном просторе,

По склону вновь оживших вод,

Во всеобъемлющее море

За льдиной льдина вслед плывет.

 

На солнце ль радужно блистая,

Иль ночью в поздней темноте,

Но все, неизбежимо тая,

Они плывут к одной мете.

 

Все вместе - малые, большие,

Утратив прежний образ свой,

Все — безразличны, как стихия,-

Сольются с бездной роковой!..

 

О нашей мысли обольщенье,

Ты, человеческое Я,

Не таково ль твое значенье,

Не такова ль судьба твоя?

 

1851 г.

Ф.И.Тютчев. Полное собрание стихотворений.
Ленинград, "Советский писатель", 1957.

 

 

 

Literal Translation

Look at how on the expanse of the river,

Along the sloping waters having come to life anew,

Into the all-embracing sea,

One after another, blocks of ice are floating.

 

Whether cheerfully gleaming in the sun,

Or at night in a late darkness,

But all, inevitably melting,

Drift toward the same goal.

 

Each of them together—the small, the large,

Having lost its former shape,

All—as oblivious as the force of nature’s elements—

Will merge with the fatal abyss!

 

The seductive delusion of our thoughts,

You, the human Ego,

Isn’t your significance just the same,

Isn’t your destiny just the same?

 

 

d

 

Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

 

Hearken at the river swift,

At waters newly come alive,

Where, one by one, the ice-floes drift,

Toward ocean’s succor on they strive.

 

In iridescent sun they gleam,

Or in nocturnal murk’s dark guise,

But each of them melts in the stream,

For all drift toward the same demise.

 

Yes, each of them, the large, the small,

Its former shape and form will shed, 

Indifferent, apathetic, all

Will merge with nature’s chasm dread!

 

Despite the way we cherish you,

The precious “I” we gently tend,

Are you not like that ice-floe queue,

Is not your fate to melt and blend?