Translation of Poem by Vladislav Khodasevich, "Обезьяна," "The Monkey"

 

Vladislav Khodasevich

(1886-1939)

Обезьяна

 
Была жара. Леса горели. Нудно
Тянулось время. На соседней даче
Кричал петух. Я вышел за калитку.
Там, прислонясь к забору, на скамейке
Дремал бродячий серб, худой и черный.

Серебряный тяжелый крест висел
На груди полуголой. Капли пота
По ней катились. Выше, на заборе,
Сидела обезьяна в красной юбке
И пыльные листы сирени
Жевала жадно. Кожаный ошейник,
Оттянутый назад тяжелой цепью,
Давил ей горло. Серб, меня заслышав,
Очнулся, вытер пот и попросил, чтоб дал я
Воды ему. Но чуть ее пригубив, –
Не холодна ли, – блюдце на скамейку
Поставил он, и тотчас обезьяна,
Макая пальцы в воду, ухватила
Двумя руками блюдце.

Она пила, на четвереньках стоя,
Локтями опираясь на скамью.
Досок почти касался подбородок,
Над теменем лысеющим спина
Высоко выгибалась. Так, должно быть,
Стоял когда-то Дарий, припадая
К дорожной луже, в день, когда бежал он
Пред мощною фалангой Александра.

 

Всю воду выпив, обезьяна блюдце
Долой смахнула со скамьи, привстала
И – этот миг забуду ли когда? –
Мне черную, мозолистую руку,
Еще прохладную от влаги, протянула…

Я руки жал красавицам, поэтам,
Вождям народа – ни одна рука
Такого благородства очертаний
Не заключала! Ни одна рука
Моей руки так братски не коснулась!
И видит Бог, никто в мои глаза
Не заглянул так мудро и глубоко,
Воистину – до дна души моей.

Глубокой древности сладчайшие преданья
Тот нищий зверь мне в сердце оживил,
И в этот миг мне жизнь явилась полной,
И мнилось – хор светил и волн морских,
Ветров и сфер мне музыкой органной
Ворвался в уши, загремел, как прежде,
В иные, незапамятные дни.

 

И серб ушел, постукивая в бубен.
Присев ему на левое плечо,
Покачивалась мерно обезьяна,
Как на слоне индийский магараджа.
Огромное малиновое солнце,
Лишенное лучей,
В опаловом дыму висело. Изливался
Безгромный зной на чахлую пшеницу.

 

В тот день была объявлена война.

 

June 7, 1918; Feb. 20, 1919
 

 

Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

 

Searing heat. The woods were all afire.

Time dragged along. At the dacha next door to mine

A rooster crowed. I walked out though the garden gate.

On a bench there, propped against the fence,

Drowsed a gaunt and swarthy Serb.

 

Upon his half-bare chest, down which

Sweat drops dribbled, there hung

A heavy silver cross. Above him, on the fence,

Sat a monkey in a red skirt,

Gnawing away, ravenous, at dusty leaves

That hung from a lilac bush. A leathern collar,

Pulled back by heavy chain, dug deep

Into his neck. My passing woke the Serb,

Who, mopping at his sweat, asked

For a drink of water.

 

Barely sipping at the liquid—

To check if it was cold—he placed a saucer

On the bench, and straightaway the monk,

Dipping fingers in water, snatched

The saucer up with two hands.

 

On his haunches, with elbows propped

Against the bench, the monkey drank,

His chin almost touching

The wood of the boards.

His back, above a balding pate, was

Hunched up high. So it was, could be,

That harried Darius once crouched,

Faced off with a puddle in the road,

On the day he fled in terror from

The mighty phalanx of Alexander the Great.

The monkey drank the water up, then

Slapped the saucer off the bench, arose,

And—what happened next I’ll never in my life forget—

Held out to me a black and calloused hand,

A hand that in my grasp was moist and cool . . .

 

I’ve pressed the hands of beautiful women,

I’ve shaken hands with poets, rulers of nations,

But never had a hand possessed that nobility of form,

Nor ever had I touched a hand so steeped

In a spirit of brotherhood!

God as my witness, no one had ever gazed

Into my eyes so deeply, with such wisdom,

Had truly looked me

Through and through,

Down to the depths of my soul.

 

The very sweetest legends of the days of yore

That abject simian beast awakened in my heart,

And all at once my life felt full, complete,

And my ears were assailed, so it seemed,

By organ music of the winds and of angelic spheres,

By choirs of luminaries and by crashing ocean billows,

And all of this sounded

And resounded as before,

In other days, in long-gone realms

From time far out of mind.

 

Tapping at his tambourine, the Serb went ambling off.

On his left shoulder perched the monkey,

Swaying with a steady rhythm, side to side,

Like a Hindu maharajah mounted on a pachyderm.

A huge crimson sun,

Drained of all rays,

Hung in the opaline smoke.

A quiet heat haze

Flowed out over

The stunted wheat.

 

On that very day the Great War was declared.

1919

 

Note from Wikipedia

Darius III, King of Persia, reigning from 336 BC to his death in 330 BC. Known for having been defeated by the forces of Alexander the Great, who invaded the Persian Empire and destroyed the capital city of Persopolis.

 

Darius did not take the field against Alexander's army until a year and a half after Granicus, at the Battle of Issus in 333 BC. His forces outnumbered Alexander's soldiers by at least a 2 to 1 ratio, but Darius was still outflanked, defeated, and forced to flee. It is told by Arrian that at the Battle of Issus the moment the Persian left went to pieces under Alexander's attack and Darius, in his war-chariot, saw that it was cut off, he incontinently fled – indeed, he led the race for safety. On the way, he left behind his chariot, his bow, and his royal mantle, all of which were later picked up by Alexander.

Greek sources such as Diodorus Siculus' Library of History and Justin's Epitoma Historiarum Philippicarum recount that Darius fled out of fear at the Battle of Issus and again two years later at the Battle of Gaugamela despite commanding a larger force in a defensive position each time. At the Battle of Issus, Darius III even caught Alexander by surprise and failed to defeat Alexander's forces. Darius fled so far so fast that Alexander was able to capture Darius’ headquarters and take Darius’ family as prisoners in the process. Darius petitioned to Alexander through letters several times to get his family back, but Alexander refused to do so unless Darius would acknowledge him as the new emperor of Persia.

 

Translator’s Commentary

(U.R. Bowie)

 See the poem by Ivan Bunin (translated on this blog): "With the Monkey." Critics have made much of how Khodasevich, apparently, “plagiarized” his monkey from the Bunin poem of 1906-1907, Berberova, his wife, is said to have asserted—years later—that neither she nor Khodasevich had ever read the Bunin poem. Khodasevich himself, no great fan of Bunin’s poetry, seems never to have said anything for the record about “With the Monkey.” Details in common suggest that he probably had read the Bunin poem and that, even if he forgot it later, certain images remained in his subconscious when he came to write his own poem.

But even if Khodasevich had read the Bunin prototype, or a similar prose description of a monkey and his handler in Bunin’s short story, “The Cup of Life,” the idea of plagiarism is moot here. He has written an entirely different poem about a monkey, a poem based, as he once asserted, on something that actually occurred: “All of this actually happened, in 1914, in Tomilin.”

Furthermore, the Khodasevich poem, in literary quality and scope, far surpasses what Bunin wrote. Bunin’s poem is about an itinerant Croat, wandering with his monkey around the dachas near Odessa and being homesick for Zagreb. Khodasevich’s poem is about an itinerant Serb wandering with his monkey around the dachas near Moscow, but it is also about much more: about what was going on at that very moment in Sarajevo, which is to suggest warfare, which is to suggest Alexander the Great and his invasion of Persia, and abject Darius, who, in fleeing from Alexander, is equated to a miserable beast. The poem is—maybe most importantly—also about an epiphany involving human beastliness and human and beastly brotherhood: the handshake.