Fra Filippo Lippi's "Assumption"
Александр Блок
(1880-1921)
Успение
Ее спеленутое тело
Сложили в молодом лесу.
Оно от мук помолодело,
Вернув бывалую красу.
Уже не шумный и не ярый,
С волненьем, в сжатые персты
В последний раз архангел старый
Влагает белые цветы.
Златит далекие вершины
Прощальным отблеском заря,
И над туманами долины
Встают усопших три царя.
Их привела, как в дни былые,
Другая, поздняя звезда.
И пастухи, уже седые,
Как встарь, сгоняют с гор стада.
И стражей вечному покою
Долины заступила мгла.
Лишь меж звездою и зарею
Златятся нимбы без числа.
А выше, по крутым оврагам
Поет ручей, цветет миндаль,
И над открытым саркофагом
Могильный ангел смотрит в даль.
June 4, 1909. Spoleto
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Literary
Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie
Dormition
Her body in swaddling, unsung,
They placed in a wood of sheer
loveliness.
The torments had made her look young,
Restored to her erstwhile comeliness.
For the last time came Gabriel in
twilight,
Old now, the archangel, much lessened
his powers,
Put into her fingers clenched tight
A bouquet of fragrant white flowers.
The faraway mountains were gilden
With dusk’s valedictory glow,
And over the valley haze silken
Three kings arose, dead long ago.
Guided they were, as before,
By a star, this one new and austere;
Wizened gray shepherds, as in days of
yore,
Came down with their sheep—to her
bier.
Patron and warder of endless repose,
Darkness embraced the earth’s umber.
Between star and dusk o’er the meadows
Glistened halos of gold without
number.
Higher up steep ravines, hillocks sloping,
Burbling stream and an almond in bloom;
Standing guard by sarcophagus open,
An angel looked on distant gloom.
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Translator’s
Note
According to an annotation in a
one-volume collection of Blok’s poetry, this poem—part of Blok’s series of
Italian Verses—was inspired by a fresco of the Italian painter Fra Filippo
Lippi (c. 1406-1469), in the cathedral altar of the city of Spoleto, Italy.
This is one of several Scenes from the Life of the Virgin Mary that Lippi painted
as frescoes in the Spoleto Cathedral: Nativity, Annunciation, Coronation, Assumption.
Between 1467 and
1469 Fra Filippo Lippi began and largely executed the fresco cycle with scenes
from the life of the Virgin in the main chapel of Spoleto cathedral; the series
was completed by Fra Diamante with the assistance of Lippi's still very young
son, Filippino. Fra Filippo died in Spoleto and was buried in the cathedral.
Very few of the
details in the Blok poem match those of the Lippi painting, and, quite
possibly, a compendium of Assumption/Dormition paintings, viewed by the poet both
abroad and in Russia, inspired these verses. The detail of the swaddled Mother
of God (first stanza) is not, as far as I know, typical of Italian Renaissance
paintings, but is widespread in Eastern Orthodox icons of the Dormition.
Frequently there are two images of the God Mother in one icon painting: one of
the demised Virgin on her bier, the other, that of a baby or child, swaddled in
white and held by Christ. Given such a detail in Blok’s poem, I have used the
Eastern Orthodox term, Dormition, for the title, rather than the term
preferred in Western Christianity, Assumption.
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