Las Meninas
Павел Антокольский
(1896-1978)
Портрет Инфанты
Художник
был горяч, приветлив, чист, умен.
Он знал, что розовый застенчивый ребенок
Давно уж сух и желт, как выжатый лимон;
Что в пульсе этих вен — сны многих погребенных;
Что не брабантские бесценны кружева,
А верно, ни в каких Болоньях иль Сорбоннах
Не сосчитать смертей, которыми жива
Десятилетняя.
Тлел перед ним
осколок
Издерганной семьи. Ублюдок божества.
Тихоня. Лакомка. Страсть карликов бесполых
И бич духовников. Он видел в ней итог
Истории страны. Пред ним метался полог
Безжизненной души. Был пуст ее чертог.
Дуэньи
шли гурьбой, как овцы. И смотрелись
В портрет, как в зеркало. Он услыхал поток
Витиеватых фраз. Тонуло слово «прелесть»
Под длинным титулом в двенадцать ступеней.
У короля-отца отваливалась челюсть.
Оскалив черный рот и став еще бледней,
Он проскрипел: «Внизу накормят вас, Веласкец».
И тот, откланявшись, пошел мечтать о ней.
Дни и
года его летели в адской пляске.
Все было. Золото. Забвение. Запой
Бессонного труда. Не подлежит огласке
Душа художника. Она была собой.
Ей мало юности. Но быстро постареть ей.
Ей мало зоркости. И все же стать слепой.
Потом
прошли века. Один. Другой, И третий.
И смотрит мимо глаз, как он ей приказал,
Инфанта-девочка на пасмурном портрете.
Пред ней пустынный Лувр. Седой музейный зал.
Паркетный лоск. И тишь, как в дни Эскуриала.
И ясно девочке по всем людским глазам,
Что ничего с тех пор она не потеряла —
Ни карликов, ни царств, ни кукол, ни святых;
Что сделан целый мир из тех же матерьялов,
От века данных ей. Мир отсветов златых,
В зазубринах резьбы, в подобье звона где-то
На бронзовых часах. И снова — звон затих.
И в тот
же тяжкий шелк безжалостно одета,
Безмозгла, как божок, бесспорна, как трава
Во рвах кладбищенских, старей отца и деда,-
Смеется девочка. Сильна тем, что мертва.
1928
Literal Translation
Portrait
of the Infanta
He knew that the timid, rosy
[-cheeked] child
Was long since desiccate and
sallow, like a squeezed lemon;
That the pulse beating in those
veins contained the dreams of many who were buried;
That the laces of Brabant are not
what is priceless,
And that most likely in no
Bolognas or no Sorbonnes
Could be tallied up the deaths
that had to die for her to live,
This ten-year-old girl.
Decaying
before his eyes was a fragment
Of a degenerate family, a god now
mongrelized.
A quiet one, a sweet tooth. The
passion of sexless dwarfs
And the scourge of confessors. He
saw in her the culmination
Of the country’s history. Before
him fluttered the drapery
Of a lifeless soul. Her palace was
empty.
In herds, like sheep, the duennas
walked past. They looked
At themselves in the portrait, as
if into a mirror. He heard a torrent
Of florid phrases. The word
“charming” was drowning
Beneath a lengthy title of twelve
steps.
The jaw of the king, her father,
sagged down.
His black mouth in a grimace, his
face paler than ever,
He hissed, “You’ll be fed down
beneath the stairs, Velázquez.”
And he, the artist, with a bow and
scrape, went off to dream of her.
In a dance of devils his days and
years flew by.
He had everything. Gold. Oblivion.
The fervor
Of sleepless toil. The artist’s
soul
Is not on public view. It simply is.
It has youth, but not enough. Then
it ages quickly.
It has keenness of vision, but not
enough. And all the same it goes blind.
Then centuries passed. One.
Another. And a third.
The girl-child Infanta in the
gloomy portrait
Looks past all the eyes, as he had
ordered her.
Before her is the deserted Louvre.
A hoary museum gallery.
The sheen of the parquetry. And
silence, as in the days of the Escorial.
And the little girl sees clearly,
from reading the people’s eyes,
That she has lost nothing from
those bygone times—
Neither dwarfs, nor kingdoms, nor
dolls, nor saints;
That a whole world is made of the
very same materials
That she was made of way back
when. A world of golden reflections,
In serrations of the fretwork, resembling
something like a chime somewhere
On a bronze clock. And once again
the chime has faded away into silence.
And dressed pitilessly in that
same heavy silk,
Brainless as an idol,
incontrovertible as grass
That grows in cemetery ditches,
older than her father, grandfather,
The little girl is laughing. Her
strength lies in her death [she’s strong because she’s dead].
d
Literary
Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie
A Portrait of the
Infanta
The artist was gracious, ardent,
clever and pure.
He knew that this timid and
rosy-cheeked child
Was a lemon squeezed dry,
sallow-faced and demure;
That her pulse beat with dreams
the demised once beguiled,
That the laces of Brabant have
meagre allure,
And the scholars at Sorbonne,
though coaxed and reviled,
Could not tally the numbers of
dead and immured
Whose lives were bedeviled,
harassed and defiled
So that life for one ten-year-old girl
was assured.
What his eyes now beheld was a
fragment, a bit
Of a dynasty now in decay,
mongrelized.
She was sweet-toothed, subdued,
slow of wit,
But the darling of androgyne dwarfs,
the pintsized,
And the scourge of confessors, the
embodiment, she,
Of the country’s whole history,
the furbelow-flounce
On a comatose soul; of emptiness epitome.
In swarms the duennas like sheep flocks
bleat by,
As if in a mirror at the portrait
they peer.
With torrents of praise, with a
hue and a cry,
They coo out, “the charm of it, precious,
sincere!”
But the king’s look betokens
outrage and dismay.
With black mouth contorted, whey-faced,
he avers,
“With the menials, Velázquez,
you’ll dine from this day.”
He bowed and he scraped, but he dreamed on of
her.
Days and whole years in a mad
danse macabre rushed past.
He had gold, and oblivion, and
toil’s sleepless grind,
For the soul of an artist lies at
depths broad and vast.
He dwells in discreteness, all
alone, much maligned;
He craves youth, but grows old at
a pace all too fast.
Craving keen sight, he finds, in
the end, that he’s blind.
Then centuries on swift wings flew
by. One. Another. Then one more.
She looks, as he’d ordered, past
all looking eyes,
That portrait Infanta steeped in wretchedness
dour.
The Louvre deserted, the gallery
in desuetude lies,
All parquetry sheen, and hushed as
the air of Escorial.
Through reading looks in lookers’
eyes, the girl now knows
That nothing has faded in her
art’s bedrock,
Not a dwarf, nor a kingdom, not
one doll, saint, primrose;
That her world still consists of the
same substance-stock
That made up her essence back when
she was made:
Reflections all gilded, and
fretwork serrations and somewhere
A bronze-tinted clock’s serenade;
But then the chime fades into
silent sheer air.
And still garbed without pity in that
heavy silk dress,
Brainless as an idol, unassailable
as weeds
That grow wild in graveyards,
profuse to excess,
Older than her father, and of all fatherly
deeds,
The little girl is laughing, loud
and long.
In death, so it turns out, she’s strong.
d
Translator’s Notes
Degenerate family—the Spanish Hapsburgs, from whose line the
Infanta Margarita Theresa came, had supposedly sullied their bloodlines through
extensive interbreeding (consanguinity).
Duennas—duenna, the Spanish word for an older woman,
acting as companion or governess of a young girl. One of the most renowned paintings
of Diego Velázquez
is “Las Meninas” [“The Ladies in Waiting,” menina is a girl from a noble
family brought up to serve in court], which Pavel Antonkol’sky may have had in
mind when writing his poem. The painting, which depicts most prominently two
duennas attendant upon a blonde little girl, the five-year-old Infanta, also
includes dwarfs, a nun, and the artist himself at work, painted into the
foreground and reflected in a mirror at the rear of the painting. The artist’s
gaze appears fixed upon the viewer, so that looker in the gallery looks into
the eyes of looker-artist.
Escorial—built between 1563 and 1584, the Escorial is a
building complex located in San Lorenzo de El Escorial, near Madrid. It is the
most important architectural monument of the Spanish Renaissance.
On the Infanta
Margarita Theresa
Daughter of the Spanish king
Phillipe IV and his wife Marianna. Born July 12, 1651, in Madrid. Said to be
fragile in health owing to the degeneracy of the line of Spanish Hapsburgs,
consequent upon years of interbreeding. At age fourteen or fifteen she was
given in marriage to a close relative, the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire
Leopold I. The children born to them died almost immediately; only one daughter
lived into adulthood, but she too died young. The Jews were blamed for the sad
fate of the children, and Margarita Theresa convinced her husband to drive them
out of Vienna. Margarita herself died young, at age 21, March 12, 1673.
Brief Biography of
Velázquez
Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez was born in Seville,
Spain, circa June 6, 1599. At the age of 11, he began a six-year apprenticeship
with local painter Francisco Pacheco. Velázquez's early works were of the
traditional religious themes favored by his master, but he also became
influenced by the naturalism of Italian painter Caravaggio.
Although his early paintings were religious-themed, he
became renowned for his realistic, complex portraits as a member of King Philip
IV's court. In his later years, the Spanish master produced a renowned portrait
of Pope Innocent X and the famed "Las Meninas."
In 1622, Velázquez moved to Madrid, where, thanks to his
father-in-law's connections, he earned the chance to paint a portrait of the
powerful Count-Duke of Olivares. The count-duke then recommended Velázquez's
services to King Philip IV; upon seeing a completed portrait, the young king of
Spain decided that no one else would paint him and appointed Velázquez one of
his court painters.
The move to the royal court gave Velázquez access to a vast
collection of works and brought him into contact with important artists such as
Flemish baroque master Peter Paul Reubens, who spent six months at the court in
1628. Among Velázquez's notable works from that period were "The Triumph
of Bacchus," in which a group of revelers falls under the powerful spell
of the Greek god of wine.
Velázquez traveled to Italy from June 1629 to January 1631,
where he was influenced by the region's great artists. After returning to
Madrid, he began a series of portraits that featured members of the royal
family on horseback. Velázquez also devoted time to painting the dwarves who
served in King Philip's court, taking care to depict them as complex,
intelligent beings. Along with his painting duties, Velázquez undertook
increasing responsibilities within the court, ranging from wardrobe assistant
to superintendent of palace works.
Velázquez made a second trip to Italy from 1649 to 1651.
During this time, he was given the opportunity to paint Pope Innocent X,
producing a work that is considered among the finest portraits ever rendered.
Velázquez also produced a portrait of his servant, Juan de Pareja, which is
admired for its striking realism, and the "Venus Rokeby," his only
surviving female nude.
Velázquez returned to his portraiture after rejoining the
Madrid court, his technique more assured than ever. In 1656, he produced
perhaps his most acclaimed work, "Las Meninas." In this snapshot-like
painting, two handmaidens dote on future empress Margarita Theresa while
Velázquez peers from behind a large easel, ostensibly studying the king and
queen, though his gaze meets the viewer's.
In 1658, Velázquez was made a knight of Santiago. After
being tasked with decoration responsibilities for the wedding of Maria Theresa
and Louis XIV, Velázquez became ill. He died in Madrid on August 6, 1660.
Velázquez is remembered as one of the great masters of
Western art. Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali are among the artists who
considered him a strong influence, while French Impressionist Édouard Manet
described the Spanish great as "the painter of painters."
Detail from Las Meninas
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