Translations: The Bestest of the Best, TWENTY-FOUR, Osip Mandelstam, THE STALIN EPIGRAM

                                                                   Stalin Mugshot, 1911

Father of the Soviet People, 1936

Осип Мандельштам
(1891-1938)

 

Мы живем, под собою не чуя страны,
Наши речи за десять шагов не слышны,
А где хватит на полразговорца,
Там припомнят кремлёвского горца.

Его толстые пальцы, как черви, жирны,
А слова, как пудовые гири, верны,
Тараканьи смеются усища,
И сияют его голенища.

 

А вокруг него сброд тонкошеих вождей,
Он играет услугами полулюдей.
Кто свистит, кто мяучит, кто хнычет,
Он один лишь бабачит и тычет,

 

Как подкову, кует за указом указ —
Кому в пах, кому в лоб, кому в бровь, кому в глаз.
Что ни казнь у него — то малина
И широкая грудь осетина.

 1933 г.

 

d

                                             Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie
 
                                                 Soso

Underfoot all’s a-tremble, for our country’s gone blurred, 
Ten steps from us none of our words can be heard;
When we find enough speech to converse, a half schmeer,
We mention the Kremlin’s renowned mountaineer.
 
His fingers are fat, and like worms, squirmy-greasy,
And his words are like true-blue barbells from Tbilisi;
His handlebar cockroach-style moustaches laughing,
And his boot tops are gleaming and ever so dashing.
 
Around him swirl bureaucrats, vermin thin-necked,
He plays with this half-human sycophant sect.
One whistles, one meows, one whimpers, one kids,
He alone clonks on noggins and jabs hard at ribs.
 
One decree, then another, he forges like horseshoes—
A groin-kick, eye-poke for you, yours and youse—
Lopping off heads is just part of the deal
For this broad-chested guy made of Ossetian steel.  

 

d

 

Translator’s Note

 The “Stalin Epigram,” one of the most famous/notorious poems of twentieth-century Russian literature, was written in November of 1933. The poem of course could not be published, but Mandelstam read it to some twelve persons—at least one of whom denounced him to the authorities. When he read it to Boris Pasternak, his fellow poet responded as follows: “То, что вы мне прочли, не имеет никакого отношения к литературе, поэзии. Это не литературный факт, но акт самоубийства, который я не одобряю и в котором не хочу принимать участия. Вы мне ничего не читали, я ничего не слышал, и прошу вас не читать их никому другому. Translation: What you’ve just read to me has nothing to do with literature or poetry. This is not a literary artifact, but an act of suicide, which I do not approve of and do not want to participate in. You read me nothing, I heard nothing, and I beg you not to read it to anyone else.”

The only surprising thing is that Mandelstam was not arrested and executed as soon as the poem came to light. But Stalin himself—who had a dark sense of humor—was rumored to have liked it. He allowed the poet to go on living, in various places of exile, until 1938, when he was arrested and died in a transit camp in Vladivostok, on his way to the Gulag.

 

Words Used and What They Allude To (most info here is from Wikipedia)

Soso: the poem is not titled in the original; I have given it this title in my translation. Soso was Stalin’s nickname in his Georgian childhood. He originally was Ioseb [Joseph] (“Soso”) Jughashvilli (sometimes spelled Dzhugashvilli). Stalin (“Man of Steel”) is a nom de guerre, like Lenin, a revolutionary name.

First stanza: The mountaineer (горец) alludes to Stalin’s origins in Georgia and the Caucasus Mountains.

Second stanza: “His fingers are fat . . .” In her reminiscences Nadezhda Mandelstam describes how the poet Demyan Bednyj “was careless enough to write in his diary that he did not like lending books to Stalin, because the latter left on the white pages smudges from his greasy fingers.”

Tbilisi: capital of Georgia, Stalin’s homeland, now the independent Georgian Republic. The word is not in the original, but presented itself as the perfect rhyme for greasy in my translation.

Third stanza: “clonks on noggins . . .” Reminiscences of Stalin emphasize how he liked to play around with his confederates, leaders of the Politburo. In meetings at his dacha he made them dance with one another. He enjoyed humiliating them, bonking them on the head, pulling them by an ear, or poking them in the ribs.

Fourth stanza: in this poem the word raspberries (малина) has nothing to do with raspberries. I’ve looked at the some dozen translations of this poem into English on the website ruverses.com, and it appears that not a single translator figured this out. Most of them just ignore the word, not knowing what the hell it’s doing there; a few make lame attempts to get some raspberries into the translation.

Малина in the jargon of the criminal underworld means a scheme or endeavor (“the job”—a caper, theft, robbery, or other criminal plan or act). E.g., “Он испортил всю малину” (literally, “He spoiled all the raspberries”) means “He put the quietus on the whole deal.” See Kratkij slovar’ sovremennogo russkogo zhargona (A Brief Lexicon of Modern Russian Jargon), compiled by M.M. and B.P. Krestinsky (Posev: 1965), p. 16. The next to last line in the poem means roughly that executions are part and parcel of Stalin’s criminal machinations. Using a slang word current among criminals could be an allusion to his revolutionary youth when he was known as Koba. Among other felonious activities, he participated in kidnappings for ransom, protection rackets, and robbing banks.

More on malina--note in a e-mail from Andrei Filippov, which I add below, with thanks to him: 

Только что прочитал ваш перевод стихотворения О. Мандельштама с примечаниями. Позвольте небольшое уточнение. На фене, русском блатном жаргоне, слово "малина", насколько мне известно, означает место проживания или сбора группы, место хранения добычи и место проведения свободного времени. Это может быть дом, квартира, ресторан и т. д. То есть это географическая точка, а не сама группа. Я могу ошибаться, но за свои 60 с лишним лет я не встречал другого определения.

The gist in English: "as far as I know the word "malina" signifies the place where a criminal gang, lives, hangs out or keeps its booty. That can be a house, apartment, restaurant, etc. In other words, it's a geographical place, and the word does not refer to the gang itself. I may be mistaken, but . . . I've never heard another definition of the word.

Ossetian: Stalin was a Georgian, not an Ossetian, but his hometown of Gori was located near Southern Ossetia.

d

In the original variant of the poem the first stanza went like this:

Мы живём, под собою не чуя страны,
Наши речи за десять шагов не слышны,
Только слышно кремлёвского горца —
Душегубца и мужикоборца.

Literal translation:

We live, not sensing the country beneath us,
What we say is not heard ten steps away from us,
Only audible [are the words of] the Kremlin mountaineer:
A murderer and oppressor of peasants.
 

 

Прыгуны (Leapers) OSIP AND NADEZHDA MANDELSTAM

                                                                     Khlysty Radenie

 

Прыгуны (Leapers)

 

In her reminiscences titled in English Hope Against Hope, Nadezhda Mandelstam (NM) wife of Osip Mandelstam (M)—widely regarded as the best Russian poet of the twentieth century—describes in detail the excruciating life of herself and her husband in exile, after his first arrest in 1934.

While the two were eking out a living for three years in the provincial city of Voronezh, M was fascinated with the Southern Russian speech spoken there (bordering on Ukrainian). The Mandelstams had occasion to visit the nearby village of Nikolskoye, where they encountered sectarians known as Jumpers. According to NM, they “composed religious ballads of a traditional type about their unsuccessful attempts to leap up to heaven. Not long before we visited it, the village had been the scene of dramatic events. The sectarians had fixed a day on which they would take off for heaven, and, convinced that by next morning they would no longer be of this world, they gave away all their property to their earthbound neighbors. Coming to their senses when they fell to the ground, they rushed to retrieve their belongings, and a terrible fight broke out” (English translation of Hope Against Hope by Max Hayward, 1970; above citation is from the paperback Modern Library Edition, 1999, p. 143-44).

As far as I can determine, the author here proves herself to be almost as wonderful a fiction writer as her poet husband. What information I can find about the Jumpers describes the sectarians as having much in common with other Russian religious sects still operative in the nineteen and twentieth centuries (e.g., the more notorious Khlysty and Skoptsy, the Whippers and Castrates), and even with modern Pentecostals. True, I have made only a cursory check of internet sources, and what I have found affirms that the rituals of the Jumpers involved a lot of ecstatic, frenetic activity (dancing, jumping around). But nothing that I can find claims that they made attempts to leap from this earth directly to heaven.

This does make, however, for an irresistible tale of fiction. Just imagine all the Jumpers of the village up in trees and on rooftops on the Judgment Day. At a signal from their leader, they bend down into squats, then leap out with all their might into the air, flapping their arms like wings. But nobody makes it to heaven; all the would-be avians fall heavily back down to earth. Coming to their senses, they pick themselves up, dust themselves off. Muttering curses, they immediately go in search of the wheelbarrows and spades they had given away to non-Jumper neighbors. A great fight breaks out. End of fiction.

d

This bizarre tale of the Jumpers has a certain congruence with the broad theme of Nadezhda Mandelstam’s whole book. After the poet composed his epigram on Stalin he, of course, could not publish the poem, but he read it to several friends and acquaintances. Then one of them secretly denounced him. Boris Pasternak pronounced the poem “an act of suicide,” which, given the temperament of the Stalinist times, it certainly was. M. was arrested in 1934 and interrogated at the notorious Lubyanka Prison in Moscow, where they showed him copies of the unpublished poem mocking Stalin. Then, in what seemed like a miracle—but was apparently the result of Stalin’s personal intervention—M was released and, along with his wife, sent into exile. The order that came down from above was “isolate, but preserve.”

Upon their arrival in the provincial town of Cherdyn—first stop in their four-year odyssey of exile—M, still in something of a psychotic state after his stay in Lubyanka, attempted suicide by jumping from a hospital window. This episode is described in a chapter titled “The Leap.” The result was a dislocated shoulder, but after this the psychosis seemed to dissipate. A few years later, after three years of exile in Voronezh, the couple, prohibited from living in Moscow, survived by finding shelter in various villages surrounding the capital city and begging for money from friends. During these desperate days NM once awoke to find her husband standing and looking out an open window of an apartment on an upper story. At this point he suggested it was time for the two of them to jump. Normally it was NM who brought up the possibility of committing joint suicide, but this time she refused to make the leap.

After he was arrested for a second time in 1938, M was sentenced to five years for “counter-revolutionary activity.” He ended up in a transit camp in Vladivostok, on his way to a concentration camp. This, apparently, is where he finally made his preordained leap into the next world. NM’s account (in the first volume of her memoir) ends with her still expressing doubts about exactly where, when, and how her husband perished. In June, 1940, his brother Aleksandr was provided a death certificate at the Registry Office in the Bauman District, Moscow, with instructions to pass it on to NM. “M’s age was given as forty-seven, and the date of his death as December 27, 1938. The cause was listed as ‘heart failure’” (Hope Against Hope, p. 381). Providing a death certificate in such circumstances was a highly unusual act; most relatives of those who perished in the maw of Stalinist oppression never received any notice of their demise. Still hounded by Soviet authorities for most of the rest of her life, NM continued on her itinerant path for years, moving from one provincial town to another. She survived M by forty-two years, dying only in 1980.

Translation of Poem by Vladislav Khodasevich, ВЛАДИСЛАВ ХОДАСЕВИЧ, "К психее," TO PSYCHE

 

ВЛАДИСЛАВ ХОДАСЕВИЧ
(1886-1939)

                                                                          К психее
Душа! Любовь моя! Ты дышишь
Такою чистой высотой,
Ты крылья тонкие колышешь
В такой лазури, что порой,
 
Вдруг, не стерпя счастливой муки,
Лелея наш святой союз,
Я сам себе целую руки,
Сам на себя не нагляжусь.
 
И как мне не любить себя,
Сосуд непрочный, некрасивый,
Но драгоценный и счастливый
Тем, что вмещает он – тебя?

13 мая — 18 июня 1920

d

                                            Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

                      To Psyche

O soul! My love! You breathe-respire
The purest air of celestial dreams,
Your slender wings pulsate with fire,
In such azure it sometimes seems
 
That I can’t get enough of just looking at me, 
And aloft in the sanctity of our conjugal banns,
The bliss of my torment seeks its apogee,
And I find myself kissing my own profane hands.
 
But how can I not love my physical self,
A cabinet built cockeyed and twisted askew,
But precious for all that, a happy half shelf,
Since I know that inside it contains sheerest you?

 

 

                                                        Psyche, Greek Goddess of the Soul

 

The 1960s and Now

 

Aging Flower Children

You wonder how many California flower children of the sixties—the ones who marched around with flowers in their hair, chanting about worldwide love, flashing the peace sign—still believe today that sensible social engineering and human goodwill can deliver humankind from its miseries. And from its propensity to act against all reason and behave in beastly ways. Probably not many. Right on, man!

[excerpted from the book by U.R. Bowie, Here We Be. Where Be We?]

Translation of Poem by Nikolay Zabolotsky, Николай Заболоцкий, "Поприщин," POPRISHCHIN

                                                                  Painting by Ilya Repin

Николай Заболоцкий
(1903-1958)

Поприщин

Когда замерзают дороги
И ветер шатает кресты,
Безумными пальцами Гоголь
Выводит горбатые сны.

 

И вот, костенея от стужи,
От непобедимой тоски,
Качается каменный ужас,
А ветер стреляет в виски,
А ветер крылатку срывает.
Взрывает седые снега
И вдруг, по суставам спадая,
Ложится — покорный — к ногам.

Откуда такое величье?
И вот уж не демон, а тот —
Бровями взлетает Поприщин,
Лицо поднимает вперед.

Крутись в департаментах, ветер,
Разбрызгивай перья в поток,
Раскрыв перламутровый веер,

Испания встанет у ног.
Лиловой червонной мантильей

Взмахнет на родные поля,

И шумная выйдет Севилья

Встречать своего короля.

А он — исхудалый и тонкий,
В сиянье страдальческих глаз,
Поднимется...
...Снова потемки,
Кровать, сторожа, матрас,
Рубаха под мышками режет,
Скулит, надрывается Меджи,
И брезжит в окошке рассвет.

Хлещи в департаментах, ветер,
Взметай по проспекту снега,
Вали под сугробы карету
Сиятельного седока.
По окнам, колоннам, подъездам,
По аркам бетонных свай
Срывай генеральские звезды,
В сугробы мосты зарывай.

Он вытянул руки, несется.
Ревет в ледяную трубу,
За ним снеговые уродцы,
Свернувшись, по крышам бегут.
Хватаются
За колокольни,
Врываются
В колокола,
Ложатся в кирпичные бойни
И снова летят из угла
Туда, где в последней отваге,
Встречая слепой ураган,—
Качается в белой рубахе
И с мертвым лицом —
Фердинанд.

 

 1928

d

                                                     Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

                       Poprishchin

When winter’s ice freezes the roadways,
with shuddering crosses
on graves windblown gleamings, 
Gogol takes life
in his weird fingers edgeways
and conjures up
humpbackish dreamings.

And then, frozen stiff in the bones,
with a sense of unutterable  
grieving and longing,
to and fro swings
the dread midst tombstones,
while the wind blows
with spasmodic yawning, 
cracks your head, rips a wing
from a birdie who flies,
explodes the snowpiles
in fields ashen-gray,
then suddenly lies down,
abates and subsides,
submissively bows at your feet . . .  
goes away.
 
Where does it come from,
such splendor far-reaching?
not from some demon, you see;
on eyebrows he soars up,
the star-crossed Poprishchin,
his face searching where,
how to flee. 
 
Whirlwind, through government offices blow,
litter with quill-pens
the flow and the flux,
flaunting her pearl-handled
fan for pure show,
Spain will rise up in redux.
Her mantilla lilac
with heart-patterned rhinestones
she’ll brandish toward dear
homeward lands for a lark,
then boisterous Seville
will come out on her flagstones
to make welcome
her new-crowned monarch.
 
While he—thin and gangleshanked, frail,
his eyes glaring misery and torment,
rises up . . .
. . . to face darkness, travail,
his bed, and the orderlies, mattress,
a nightshirt in armpits cuts tightly,
while Madgie whines plaintively, whimpers,
and dawn gleams through window unsightly.
 
Whirlwind, through government offices rage,
snow-sweep the streets
and the avenues wide,
bury the carriage beneath snow’s rampage,
with bigwig who’s seated inside.
Blow past the columns,
the concrete that molders,
past entryways, arches, deep rifts,
rip off epaulettes from generals’ shoulders,
smother the bridges
in snowdrifts.
 
Extending his arms,  
reaching out, grasping,
he’s borne on in loftiness, soaring,
in horn made of ice blasts a tune;
pursuing him, snowfreaks are roaring,
rolling in rings
over rooftops ice-strewn. 
They grab on
and hold to
the campanile spires,
they burst into
bellringing cacophony,
they lie down and crackle
in slaughterhouse fires,
then fly off to precarity,
to the spot where he shudders
in last gasp of courage,
in nightshirt of white,
face to face with
the tempest at hand,
where he sways side to side
in his soul’s hinterland, 
his visage stone-dead,
Ferdinand.
 

d

 

Translator’s Note

 Aksenty Ivanovich Poprishchin is the protagonist of Nikolay Gogol’s short story, “Notes of a Madman.” Like Akaky Akakievich in the more well-known and more accomplished story, “The Overcoat,” Poprishchin works as a lowly copy clerk in a government office. The tale describes his rapid descent into insanity. At one point he believes he hears dogs talking and reads the letters of one dog to the other. One of the dogs, Madgie, is mentioned in the poem, and there are references to Spain. After concluding that he is really King Ferdinand of Spain, Gogol’s Poprishchin is committed to a madhouse.

 

 

Translations: The Bestest of the Best, TWENTY-THREE, Afanasy Fet, "Ласточки," SWALLOWS

 

Afanasy Fet
(1820-1892)

          Ласточки

Природы праздный соглядатай,
Люблю, забывши все кругом,
Следить за ласточкой стрельчатой
Над вечереющим прудом.
 
Вот понеслась и зачертила -
И страшно, чтобы гладь стекла
Стихией чуждой не схватила
Молниевидного крыла.
 
И снова то же дерзновенье
И та же темная струя,-
Не таково ли вдохновенье
И человеческого я?
 
Не так ли я, сосуд скудельный,
Дерзаю на запретный путь,
Стихии чуждой, запредельной,
Стремясь хоть каплю зачерпнуть?

1884

d

                                                                     Literal Translation
 
                                 Swallows
 
Nature’s idle spy,
I [the poet] love, forgetting all around me,
To follow the arrow-like [movements of a] swallow
Over a pond as twilight approaches.
 
There it went rushing, and sketched out its pattern,
And you fear that the smooth glassy surface,
With its elemental force, might seize
The lightning zig-zag of the wing.
 
Then once again comes the same daring [swoop]
And the same dark spurt [of flight].
Does not inspiration work like that
Within the human soul?
 
Do not I, a clay vessel, in the same way
Dare to venture onto a forbidden path,
With its elemental force, beyond the pale,
Striving to scoop up at least one small drop?
 
         d
 
                                             Literary Translation by Vladimir Nabokov
 
              The Swallow
 
When prying idly into Nature
I am particularly fond
Of watching the arrow of a swallow
Over the sunset of a pond.
 
See—there it goes, and skims, and glances:
The alien element, I fear,
Roused from its glassy sleep might capture
Black lightning quivering so near.
 
There—once again that fearless shadow
Over a frowning ripple ran.
Have we not here the living image
Of active poetry in man—
 
Of something leading me, banned mortal,
To venture where I dare not stop—
Striving to scoop from a forbidden
Mysterious element one drop?
 
Date of translation: 1943. From Vladimir Nabokov, Verses and Versions (compilation published by Harcourt, Inc., 2008), p. 307
 
d
 
 
                                                Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie
 
              Swallows
 
I love to play the idle spy,
And watch, oblivious to all,
A swoop-flit swallow on the fly,
O’er pond as evening nears nightfall.
 
Look there, see how she darts and skims
Along the lip of glazed-smooth mere;
I’m worried lest a ripple’s whims
Snatch up her blitzwing on the veer.
 
But she dares more exuberation,
Pursues her games of dark spurt-swoop;
Is this not much like lucubration,
Inspired poets’ loop-de-loop?
 
Is this not how I soar where banned,
O’er God’s wild seas with my tin cup,  
Illicit veers through barred dreamland,
In hopes one drop I can scoop up?
 
Date of translation: March 30, 2020
 

Translator’s Notes

 In the original (last stanza, first line), the poet refers to himself as “sosud skudel’nyj,” which is a Biblical phrase, meaning “earthen vessel” or “clay vessel.” Now archaic, the phrase appears in the works of many Russian writers of the nineteenth century, in reference to the limits on man, his transient nature; it is an allusion to human weakness in the face of universal forces.

 Fet’s first-person poet takes this “earthen vessel,” or “clay pot”—the embodiment of his mortal self—with him when inspiration sends him off on a flight like a swallow over a universal pond, or over the seas of God’s vast universe. He strives to scoop up at least a meager droplet of the liquid of Ultimate Reality, which he will turn into immortal art—somehow stepping on the toes of deities in his illegal quest. We are reminded of Prometheus. The best I could do with this phrase in translation was “tin cup.” After all, the poet on his quest flight needed something to do the scooping with. Also apparently stumped, in translating “sosud skudel’nyj,” Nabokov gave up on referring to any kind of vessel or container; he settled on “banned mortal,” a different paraphrase.

 But then, any attempt to translate rhymed and metered poetry, while retaining the meter and rhymes, amounts to paraphrase. When I go through the process, I hope to come up with a good new poem in English. I don’t pretend that my poem (translation/adaptation) is an exact, word-to-word transcription of the original in Russian. I do hope, however, that the new poem in English captures the gist and spirit of the original Russian poem.

 In 1943, when Nabokov translated this Fet poem, “Lastochki,” he was still trying to do the same thing I’m doing now. Later, after his struggles with translating Pushkin’s great narrative in verse, Evgeny Onegin, he gave up on this kind of translation altogether, stating in his usual peremptory way that such paraphrase is illegal, an affront to the original poem and poet. The best we can do with poetry, he said, is make a literal translation, such as the one I have provided for “Lastochki” above. Take a look at it. It’s not poetry, is it?

Or take a look at Nabokov’s translation of Eugene Onegin. That may be an accurate effort, but it’s not poetry either. Of course, his four-volume translation of Pushkin’s immortal work is magnificent, a genuine tour de force; not for the first volume (the pony translation), but for the remaining three, the voluminous scholarly notes and articles.

Translation of Poem by Nikolay Zabolotsky, Николай Заболоцкий, "О красоте человеческих лиц," ON THE BEAUTY OF THE HUMAN FACE

Николай Заболоцкий
(1903-1958)

О красоте человеческих лиц

 

Есть лица, подобные пышным порталам,
Где всюду великое чудится в малом.
Есть лица — подобия жалких лачуг,
Где варится печень и мокнет сычуг.

Иные холодные, мертвые лица
Закрыты решетками, словно темница.
Другие — как башни, в которых давно
Никто не живет и не смотрит в окно.

Но малую хижинку знал я когда-то,
Была неказиста она, небогата,
Зато из окошка ее на меня
Струилось дыханье весеннего дня.

Поистине мир и велик и чудесен!
Есть лица — подобья ликующих песен.
Из этих, как солнце, сияющих нот
Составлена песня небесных высот.

1955

c

Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

                                                     On the Beauty of the Human Face

Some faces are like unto lush entry-hall,
Where everything smacks of the great written small.
Some faces are like unto wretched grim hovel,
Where liver fries upon the stove
and cheese-curds moistly grovel.
 
Some of the faces are stone-dead and dour,
Dungeon-style barred as in dank oubliette,
Others resemble a derelict tower,
With no one to gaze
out the window lunette.
 
As for me I once lived in a small simple shack,
Nothing to brag on, my pad, that’s a fact,
But right through its window and humble entree
Flowed in the breeze
of each sweet vernal day.
 
Our world is a wonder, breathtaking indeed!
Without tongues some faces sing songs pedigreed,
Tunes that are jubilant, steeped in pure truth,
Angels on high sing those same notes forsooth.

 

 

Translation of Poem by Nikolay Zabolotsky, НИКОЛАЙ ЗАБОЛОЦКИЙ, "Во многом знании — немалая печаль," "In much wisdom lies much of vexation"

 

                                                                    Ecclesiastes, 2-3

НИКОЛАЙ ЗАБОЛОЦКИЙ
(1903-1958)
 
Во многом знании — немалая печаль,
Так говорил творец Экклезиаста.
Я вовсе не мудрец, но почему так часто
Мне жаль весь мир и человека жаль?
 
Природа хочет жить, и потому она
Миллионы зерен скармливает птицам,
Но из миллиона птиц к светилам и зарницам
Едва ли вырывается одна.
 
Вселенная шумит и просит красоты,
Кричат моря, обрызганные пеной,
Но на холмах земли, на кладбищах вселенной
Лишь избранные светятся цветы.
 
Я разве только я? Я — только краткий миг
Чужих существований. Боже правый,
Зачем ты создал мир и милый и кровавый,
И дал мне ум, чтоб я его постиг!
 
 
1957
 
d

                                                Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie
 
In much wisdom lies much of vexation,
So said the Preacher, Ecclesiastes.
I’m far from a sage, but why, alas, ease
Evades abject man in his dismal frustration?
 
Mother Nature nurtures Life, and that’s the reason
She feeds birds specks of grain in the millions, you see,
But of millions of birdies who swarm toward repletion
Scarcely a one breaks away and flies free.
 
The universe rumbles and calls out for splendor,
The seas rage and spume, all spattered with foam,
But on the earth’s hillocks and graveyards of loam
Few are the plants that lush flowers engender.
 
Could I be just naught but mere me?
Just a brief flare of doubt
Midst a host of earthly being.
Lord God most just,
 
Wherefore Thou made a world
out of dearest blood and lust, 
and gave me a mind
for to figure it out!
 

Translation of Poem by Nikolay Zabolotsky, Николай Заболоцкий, "Я трогал листы эвкалипта," EUCALYPTUS LEAVES I TOUCHED

                                                                  Adjara, Georgia

Николай Заболоцкий
(1903-1958)

Я трогал листы эвкалипта
И твердые перья агавы,
Мне пели вечернюю песню
Аджарии сладкие травы.
Магнолия в белом уборе
Склоняла туманное тело,
И синее-синее море
У берега бешено пело.

Но в яростном блеске природы
Мне снились московские рощи,
Где синее небо бледнее,
Растенья скромнее и проще.
Где нежная иволга стонет
Над светлым видением луга,
Где взоры печальные клонит
Моя дорогая подруга.

 

И вздрогнуло сердце от боли,
И светлые слезы печали
Упали на чаши растений,
Где белые птицы кричали.
А в небе, седые от пыли,
Стояли камфарные лавры
И в бледные трубы трубили,
И в медные били литавры.

 

1947

d

                                                Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

Eucalyptus leaves I touched,
Plumes of the adamantine agave,
The sweet herbs of Adzharia
Sung evensongs heart-throbby. 
Magnolia in her white headdress
Inclined her hazy-mist body,
And the blue-blue ocean, eschewing noblesse,
Sang by the seashore a tune lewd and bawdy.
 
But here in stark nature’s fierce shimmer
I dreamt of a copse in far Muscovy, 
Where the sky is pale-blue and much dimmer,
And the plants act more modest, less lustily.
Where the tender-voiced oriole sighs
As it soars over bright spectral lea,
Where she casts down her sorrowful eyes,
My own dear one who’s pining for me.
 
Then my heart with the pain of it shuddered,
And bright tears of sadness fell fast
On plants in their brazen pots cluttered,  
And gulls screeching whiteness amassed.
High and tall and all gray now with dust,
Camphor laurel trees blissful, euphoric,
Blasted out fanfares on trumpets robust,  
Pounding on kettledrums brassy, camphoric.

 

d

Translator’s Note

 Much of the imagery of this poem, especially the flora mentioned, comes from Zabolotsky’s time spent in what is now the Georgian Republic.  Mentioned in the first stanza, Adzharia (most often spelled Adjara) is located in the country’s southwestern section, bordering on the Black Sea.

 This is the first time I’ve ever seen mention of a camphor tree (also known as camphor laurel) in any work of Russian literature. On a personal note, I grew up in Florida, with camphor trees all around me. First introduced to the state in 1875, now widespread and flourishing in Florida, the camphor tree here is an invasive species.

 

                                                                        camphor tree

Specks and Spots

 

“There are persons who exist in the world not as objects, but as extraneous specks or spots on an object.”

Gogol, Dead Souls

 

In fact, most of us who are living, who have lived, and who will live in the future are precisely such specks. In further fact, all of us are.

 

If I had my choice I’d rather not be a dry speck or spot, but a tiny wet droplet of dew on a hydrangea leaf, on a cloudy day in May—and then the sun comes out and I can feel myself slowly evaporating into the sky above and into the resplendence that envelops God’s green earth. Ah, yes . . .

 

After all, that’s what we do, isn’t it? We live for a brief time, and then we evaporate.

Translations: The Bestest of the Best, TWENTY-TWO, Nikolay Zabolotsky, "Уступи мне, скворец, уголок," LET ME LODGE, STARLING-BIRD

                                  Starling Murmuration in Ireland, James Crombie Photo

Nikolai Zabolotsky

(1903-1958)

 

Уступи мне, скворец, уголок,
Посели меня в старом скворешнике.
Отдаю тебе душу в залог
За твои голубые подснежники.

И свистит и бормочет весна.
По колено затоплены тополи.
Пробуждаются клены от сна,
Чтоб, как бабочки, листья захлопали.

И такой на полях кавардак,
И такая ручьев околесица,
Что попробуй, покинув чердак,
Сломя голову в рощу не броситься!

Начинай серенаду, скворец!
Сквозь литавры и бубны истории
Ты — наш первый весенний певец
Из березовой консерватории.

Открывай представленье, свистун!
Запрокинься головкою розовой,
Разрывая сияние струн
В самом горле у рощи березовой.

Я и сам бы стараться горазд,
Да шепнула мне бабочка-странница:
«Кто бывает весною горласт,
Тот без голоса к лету останется».

А весна хороша, хороша!
Охватило всю душу сиренями.
Поднимай же скворешню, душа,
Над твоими садами весенними.

 

Поселись на высоком шесте,
Полыхая по небу восторгами,
Прилепись паутинкой к звезде
Вместе с птичьими скороговорками.

Повернись к мирозданью лицом,
Голубые подснежники чествуя,
С потерявшим сознанье скворцом
По весенним полям путешествуя.

 1946

 

 

d

 
                                                                      Literal Translation

Let me have, starling, a little corner,
Lodge me in your old starling bird-house.
I’ll put down my soul as collateral
In exchange for your sky-blue snowdrops.
 
Spring is whistling, murmuring.
The poplar trees are up to their knees in water.
The maples are awakening from their sleep,
In order to flap their leaves like butterflies.
 
And there’s such hurly-burly in the fields,
And the brooks are in such a rigmarole,
That just try abandoning your garret room
And not rushing headlong out into the grove!
 
Begin the serenade, starling!
Through the kettledrums and tambourines of history
You are our first spring singer
From the birch tree conservatory.
 
Open the performance, whistler!
Throw back your rosy little head,
Ripping asunder the glitter of strings
In the very throat of the birch grove.
 
I’d be inclined to give it a shot myself,
But a little pilgrim-butterfly whispered to me:
“He who gets loud-mouthed in the springtime
By summer finds himself without a voice.”
 
But the spring is fine, so fine!
All of my soul feels enveloped in lilacs.
Raise high your birdhouse, soul,
Over your springtime gardens.
 
Settle in on the top of a high pole,
Spread coruscations of bliss over the sky,
Attach yourself by a spiderweb to a star
Together with tongue-twister cries of the birds.
 
Turn your head and face the world,
Paying honor to the sky-blue snowdrops,
With the starling who has lost consciousness
Sojourning across the vernal fields.
 
d
 
                                                    Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie
 
Let me lodge, starling-bird, in your birdhouse columbary.
Move me in, lock and stock, to your starling hidey-hole.
Bring me some snowdrops sky-blue, don’t be wary,
You can have a lien-note on my introverted soul.
 
Spring whistles and mutters its murmurings vernal.
Poplar trees are standing in the water up to knees.
Maples yawn and stretch awake from sleepy-time hibernal;
They flap their leaves like butterflies in breeze.

And the fields writhe in such a zealous spring commotion,
And the brooks are babbling total wackadoodle balderdash;
Can I sit here cooped up inside and not succumb to motion?
No! Breakneck to the birch groves I must dash.

Serenade me, feathered fowl, commence to singing, starling!
Let the tambourines and drumbeats ding and pound;
You’re the first spring warbler in the woodsy choir, darling,
Summa cum alumnus of the birch-school in the round.
 
Birdie songster, launch your vernal chirp-and-cheep routine!
Proudly raise your pinkish head and sing out raucously;
Rip and tear the sinews from the chords that glitter-gleam
In lusty throat of every birch grove bird that sing and be.
 
Thought I’d like myself to maybe try to have a go,
But a passing butterfly lit on my ear and shushed:
“He who chirps and twitters loud in any spring meadow,
Come the summer finds his voice is hoarse and sadly hushed.” 
 
But spring’s a ball, a fest held high on eagle’s lofty aerie,
My soul is floating free, exulting, fully lilac-swathed.
Raise up, dear soul, to heaven’s heights your brilliant columbary,
O’er gardens that in vernal mist are gently, softly bathed.
 
Make your home, breath of life, on a tall pole far-bizarre,
Spreading spangled bliss and rapture through the lofty skies;
Cast out a gossamer, latch on a polestar,
You and your gibble-and-gabble bird cries.
 
Turn your head now, face to face with universe and nation,
Say a prayer for snowdrops, to their sky-blue bow and scrape,
Join the starling birdie as he swoons in murmuration,
Take a swoop-ride with the swarm o’er lustrous spring landscape.
 
 
                    d
 
                                                                   Translator’s Notes
 
Commentary in Russian below is from the Website stikhi-rus.ru; here, in English, are some of the most salient points:
 
Nikolai Zabolotsky (1903-1958) fell into the maw of the Stalinist terror, spending some seven years in concentration camps and exile. In 1946, thanks to the influence of Aleksandr Fadeev, head of the Soviet Writers Union, he was allowed to return to Moscow, but had no roof over his head. The writer V.P. Ilenkov, a man of magnanimous and generous character, offered Zabolotsky his cottage at the writers’ colony of Peredelkino. As Nikolai Chukovsky recalls, “the birch grove had an ineffable charm, teeming with birds, and it extended right up to Ilenkov’s dacha.” One can only imagine with what exultation Zabolotsky, newly freed from his ordeal, contemplated the meadows and birds, when he wrote, in the spring of 1946, the exuberant poem about starlings, snowdrops and birches.
 
Stalin, however, still had seven years to live, and once having experienced Stalinist repression, one does not soon forget. Zabolotsky’s son mentions how the poet revised the sixth stanza, “softening its too autobiographical tone.” Here’s how the original read:
 
Я и сам бы стараться горазд,
Да облезли от холода перышки.
Если смолоду будешь горласт,
Перехватит дыхание в горлышке –

Literal Translation:
Thought I’d like myself to have a go,
But my feathers have thinned out in the cold.
If you get too loudmouthed in your youth
Your breath tends to catch in your throat.
 
d
 
                                                           Анализ стихотворения

В 1946 году благодаря заступничеству Фадеева поэт Николай Заболоцкий вернулся из ссылки. Страдания семи долгих лагерных и ссыльных лет были наконец-то позади. Не было только крыши над головой. Писатель В.П. Ильенков - человек отважного и великодушного характера - любезно предоставил Заболоцким свою дачу в Переделкине. Николай Чуковский вспоминает: "березовая роща неизъяснимой прелести, полная птиц, подступала к самой даче Ильенкова". Об этой березовой роще в 1946 году поэт напишет дважды:

Открывай представленье, свистун!
Запрокинься головкою розовой,
Разрывая сияние струн
В самом горле у рощи березовой.
("Уступи мне, скворец, уголок").

Многочисленные аллитерации ("Уступи мне, скворец, уголок, / Посели меня
в старом скворечнике..."), и повторы глаголов ("Уступи...",
"Посели...", "Начинай...", "Открывай...", "Запрокинься...",
"Поднимай...", "Поселись...", "Прилепись...", "Повернись..."),
рифмующихся по горизонтали и вертикали.

И не случайно на этом звуковом фоне в стихотворении "Уступи мне, скворец, уголок" возникает ряд "музыкальных метафор": здесь и "серенада", и "литавры", и "бубны", и "Березовая консерватория", и "струны".

Уступи мне, скворец, уголок,
Посели меня в старом скворечнике.
Отдаю тебе душу в залог
За твои голубые подснежники...
Повернись к мирозданью лицом,
Голубые подснежники чествуя,
С потерявшим сознанье скворцом
По весенним полям путешествую.

Интересное сравнение первоначального и окончательного вариантов шестой строфы в стихотворении "Уступи мне, скворец, уголок", написанного в 1946 году. Сталин проживет еще около семи лет, и Заболоцкий (лагерные воспоминания держали поэта в состоянии вечного страха) исправит, по свидетельству его сына Никиты Николаевича, шестую строфу, "смягчив слишком автобиографическое ее звучание". Первоначальный вариант строфы:

Я и сам бы стараться горазд,
Да облезли от холода перышки.
Если смолоду будешь горласт,
Перехватит дыхание в горлышке -

Преобразился (не став лучше!) таким образом:

Я и сам бы стараться горазд,
Да шепнула мне бабочка-странница:
"Кто бывает весною горласт,
Тот без голоса к лету останется".

У Заболоцкого своя манера повествования, философский взгляд на мир, на окружающую природу. Он видит, как все на земле взаимосвязано и хрупко. Поэт сознает себя составной частью этого прекрасного и гармоничного мира. В сознании поэта природа и человек неразрывно связаны. Они дополняют друг друга, порой вступают в конфликт, но не могут существовать один без другого. Произведения Заболоцкого, посвященные природе, различаются по своим настроениям, чувствам. Постоянным остается лишь одно -сознание величия природы, ее необходимости для человека, который является ее сыном и в то же время ее творцом. Стихотворения поэта заставляют и нас задуматься, иначе взглянуть на окружающий мир.
 
 

                                                             James Crombie Photo