Translation of Poem by Anna Akhmatova, Анна Ахматова, "Привольем пахнет дикий мед," WILD HONEY REEKS OF WANTON ABANDON

                                       Tintoretto, "Christ Before Pilate," Sixteenth Century

Анна Ахматова
(1889-1966)

Привольем пахнет дикий мед,
Пыль — солнечным лучом,
Фиалкою — девичий рот,
А золото — ничем.
Водою пахнет резеда,
И яблоком — любовь.
Но мы узнали навсегда,
Что кровью пахнет только кровь...

И напрасно наместник Рима
Мыл руки пред всем народом,
Под зловещие крики черни;
И шотландская королева
Напрасно с узких ладоней
Стирала красные брызги
В душном мраке царского дома...

 1933

d

                                                Literal Translation by Judith Hemschemeyer
                                                    (with slight amendations by URB)
 

Wild honey smells like freedom, [the Russian word here means more than just freedom; it    connotes the kind of freedom of wide-open spaces, wild unbridled license]
Dust — like a ray of sun.
Like violets — a young maid’s mouth,
And gold — like nothing.
The flowers of the mignonette smell like water,
And like an apple — love.
But we [have] learned once and for all [all too well]
That blood smells only like blood...

 

And in vain the vice-regent of Rome
Washed his hands before all the people,
Urged on by the ominous shouts of the rabble;
And the Scottish queen
In vain washed the spattered red drops
From her slender palms
In the stifling gloom of the king’s [Thane of Cawdor’s] home...

 

d
 
                                               Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie
 
Wild honey reeks of wanton abandon,
While dust has the smell that a sunbeam ought,
A small girl’s mouth of violets picked at random,
And gold smells like what? Like naught.
Aqueous is the tang of the flower mignonette,
While love has the scent of apple or spud,
But to our chagrin we have learned with regret
That blood smells like nothing on earth but blood.
 
And in vain did the Roman prefect
wash his hands in front of the hoi polloi,
to the sinister hoots of the rabble;
and the Scottish queen,
in vain as well,
from her slender palms,
in the stifling murk
of her own royal home,
blotches of red
rinsed away . . .
 
d
 
                                                                 Translator’s Note
While Akhmatova uses standard rhyming schemes and meter in the first stanza (first eight lines) of this poem, in the second stanza (last seven lines) the rhyming scheme falls almost completely apart, as if to illustrate that spattered blotches of blood can rend rhyming useless and moot.