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

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                                            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.