Translations of Pushkin's "I LOVED YOU," ПУШКИН, "Я вас любил," THE IMPOSSIBLE TASK

 

Aleksandr Pushkin

(1799-1837)

 

Я вас любил: любовь еще, быть может,
В душе моей угасла не совсем;
Но пусть она вас больше не тревожит;
Я не хочу печалить вас ничем.
Я вас любил безмолвно, безнадежно,
То робостью, то ревностью томим;
Я вас любил так искренно, так нежно,
Как дай вам Бог любимой быть другим.

                                                                                                    1829

 

Literal Translation

 

I loved you; love still, perhaps,

Has in my soul died out not altogether;

But let it not trouble you anymore;

I don’t want to sadden you in any way.

I loved you silently, hopelessly,

At times by timidity, at times by jealousy tormented;

I loved you so sincerely, so tenderly,

As may God grant you to be loved by another.

 

 

Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie (1)

 

I loved you; love may still be so inclined

To fester in my soul amidst the rue;

But this need not prey on your peace of mind;

I would not wish to vex or sadden you. 

 

In silence, without hope did I adore you,

At times so jealous, diffident, in pain;

My love for you was fervent, tender-true,

As by God’s grace may you be loved again.

 

                                                                (2)

I loved you; love may still be so inclined

To fester in my soul, with rue commingling.

But this need not prey on your peace of mind,

I won’t distress you with vexations lingering.

 

In silence, without hope did I adore you,

Aggrieved by jealousy or diffidence.

My love for you was fervent, tender-true,

Bestowed on me by God’s munificence. 

 

 

 

d

Translator’s Note

(U.R. Bowie)

 Pushkin wrote this renowned lyric poem in 1829. Every Russian knows it by heart. Many have attempted to determine who the woman in question was, but does that really matter now? The lines of the poem are deceptively simple in the original Russian, and that is part of its appeal.

 The meter is binary, one of the most common in Russian poetry (iambic pentameter), and the rhyme scheme (a, b, a, b) is also so frequently encountered as to be almost trite. The rhymes alternate between masculine and feminine. The miracle of the poem (in Russian) is that despite all the tendencies toward utter simplicity and triteness, it ends up being a powerful and highly emotive lyric.

 In a poem of only eight lines, the words “I loved you” appear in three of those lines. The effect, of course, is to suggest that “I love you” might be more appropriate. The poet admits as much at the very beginning. He starts out with “I loved you,” then immediately qualifies that: “could be love has still not died out in my soul.” The second line, in its Russian syntax, has a nice effect of saying something, then immediately walking it back: literally, “[love] in my soul has died out . . . [then] not altogether.”

 Trying to be matter-of-fact and restrained, the poet reins in his emotions in the first four lines, especially in lines three and four. He says, in effect, “but don’t let it bother you anymore; I wouldn’t want you to get upset over what I’m telling you.” If we read the poem as a whole, however, the implication is just the opposite: “this is serious stuff I’m telling you, and yes, I would like it to affect you emotionally.”

 Beginning with line number five—literally, “I loved you silently, hopelessly”—the poet drops, or loses, the offhand tone altogether, his attempt to hold in his feelings and even be, possibly, a bit ironic about the whole business. The last four lines pour out the emotion. The poet’s love was hopeless, and he never could bring himself to declare it to her. He was shy, jealous, he suffered mightily (apparently still does). His love was/is so sincere, so tender, he can only wish, magnanimously—although he probably does not really wish this at all—that she might find another man who can love her as much as he has/does.

 

d

 Now about the translations. Scads of translators, over a period of many years, have attempted to get this famous poem into English. Into German, French, Spanish, etc., etc., as well, but we need not speak of their futile efforts here. We are concerned with the futile efforts only of the English-speakers. Frankly, most of the translations of “I Loved You” are, at best, mediocre. Practically none of them—or dare I say absolutely none?—have managed a poem in English that recreates the power of the original.

 Why is getting this eight-line poem into English so backbreakingly difficult? First of all, the brevity of the poem means that you have no space to make even the smallest misstep. Every line must be near perfect in English. Let’s say you’re a literalist; literalism in translating poetry is much in vogue these days. Or you’re a modern poet who sees rhyme and meter as old-fashioned. Sure, with little effort you can put this poem into literal English, eschewing rhyme and meter. What will the result be? You won’t have a poem anymore; you’ll have a succession of flat words in English.

 So you really need to use meter and rhyme, as does the original Pushkin poem, and in so doing you set yourself up for all sorts of problems. The imperative to rhyme is a tyrannical taskmaster. In searching for rhymes, the translator often distorts the meaning of the original or creates awkwardness: clumsy lines in English. Quite often a word hangs out in space, not even there in the original but forced into the line and crying out, “I’m here only because I rhyme.”

 Some translators try a mixed bag: they use some rhymes but do not rhyme consistently. Or they keep the meter when it’s convenient. That won’t do. If you go for rhymes and meter you must go all in. All in all, to translate this poem successfully you must be as a wordsmith the equal to the best acrobat in the circus—except you perform your acrobatics with the English language.

 Even some very good translators, such as Irina Zheleznova, have not proven quite up to the task. Here’s her effort, which I’ve taken from the website ruverses.com, where a baker’s dozen other English translations of this poem are presented, as well as translations in scads of other languages. As in my second variant above, she keeps the original rhyme scheme (alternating feminine and masculine rhymes).

I loved you, and that love to die refusing,
May still — who knows! Be smoldering in my breast.
Pray, be not pained — believe me, of my choosing
I’d never have you troubled nor yet distressed.

I loved you mutely, hopelessly and truly,
With shy yet fervent tenderness aglow;
Mine was a jealous passion and unruly...
May Heaven grant another loves you so!

On the whole, not bad. In fact, this one is among the, maybe, five percent of translators’ efforts into English that are even worth reading. That leaves 95% that are not. I won’t profane Pushkin’s original masterpiece by citing any of the worst ones here. Irina, bless her heart, does quite well with the attempt to be calm in the first four lines. The meter breaks down only once, in line 4; omission of the word “yet” would solve that problem: “I’d never have you troubled or distressed.” Her last four lines are quite good as well. She takes a few liberties with the original words, usually in her effort—this is the hardest thing of all for a translator—to find rhymes that sound natural. “Unruly” of course doesn’t quite work, and is here mainly for its rhyme. But most of her rhymes are good, not forced.

In line seven she avoids the big rock of “sincerely,” which most translators crash right into: literally, “I loved you so sincerely, so tenderly.” What’s wrong with that line in English? In the Russian it’s a powerful line. But the word for “sincerely” in Russian (pronounced EEEES-krin-uh), in its very sound holds power. The word “sincere,” oddly enough, is not a very sincere word in English. We sign our letters “sincerely,” and the insincerity often shines through. The translator must find a better, more powerful word. Irina uses “fervent,” and that’s the word I chose as well.

Another shoal that most translators fail to navigate on their flimsy rowboats is the big hard crag called ADVERBS. As any instructor of creative writing will tell you, the adverb can be weak in English. Some instructors say use adverbs as little as possible, or not at all. Yet here we have Pushkin using two in a row. One reason he gets away with that is because of the sound of the words in Russian: I loved you “beez-MOLV-nuh, beez-na-DYEZH-nuh.” We could, in fact, analyze the whole Russian poem in terms of the orchestration of sounds of the words and lines. The FORM is what makes it great, not the ideas expressed, which, frankly, are pedestrian at best. At any rate, the translator should probably find a way to get around adverbial usage. I avoid adverbs in my translation, and so does Genia Gurarie:  

I loved you, and I probably still do,
And for a while the feeling may remain...
But let my love no longer trouble you,
I do not wish to cause you any pain.
I loved you; and the hopelessness I knew,
The jealousy, the shyness—though in vain—
Made up a love so tender and so true
As may God grant you to be loved again.

 

Here’s another well-known translation, that by Walter Arndt, in his book, Pushkin Threefold, with my commentary in brackets.

 I loved you: and the feeling, why deceive you,

May not be quite extinct within me yet;

But do not let it any longer grieve you; [problem: that “any longer” stuck in the wrong place makes the line somewhat awkward: an issue of syntax]

I would not ever have you grieve or fret. [we don’t want “grieve” in two successive lines]

I loved you not with words or hope, but merely [bad word, “merely,” stuck in here mainly to get a rhyme, and we don’t want any indication that the poet’s love had, or has anything “mere” about it]

By turns with bashful and with jealous pain; [Arndt is really starting to lose it now; ‘’by turns” is quite weak, as is the whole line; what is “bashful pain”? sounds somehow not right in English]

I loved you as devotedly, as dearly [adverbs]

As may God grant you to be loved again [last line, very powerful in the Russian, ends up somewhat awkward and flat in the English; Genia Gurarie goes with the same line]

 That last line produces vast complications for most translators, and few have come up with anything even close to the puissance of the original. Here the poet invokes the power of the Lord God Jehovah to provide his lady love with another man who might love her as much as he did/does. He throws out this line really as a kind of challenge to the woman of his dreams. The implication is: you could even have God’s help in finding another love as true and strong as mine, and even then you probably never will. In the original Russian he pounds this line into her head with three successive BAMS at the start: “Kak daj vam Bog . . .” The iambic meter is retained and yet somehow falls apart at the same time: BAM BAM BAM. You can get that effect in English using “by God’s grace”—pause to read it slowly, placing separate stress on each of the three words.

 On that “by God’s grace.” One of my students in Russian literature classes at Miami University many years ago, Douglas Boone—he later went on to be a missionary and Bible translator in Africa—made a valiant effort to translate “I Loved You.” For this final line he suggested, “As by God’s grace you may be loved again.” Not at all bad, and I have taken my own final line based on this suggestion. Thank you, Douglas! By God’s grace your effort came out well. But that line still doesn’t quite live up to the original. In my second variant above I gave up altogether on that hideously difficult final line and tried something altogether different.

 Summation: really, folks, you can’t read this poem with much profit in English. Learn Russian first, then read it.