Afanasy Fet, "БАБОЧКА" ("BUTTERFLY") Translation of the Poem into English

Afanasy Fet

(1820-1892)

Бабочка

Ты прав. Одним воздушным очертаньем
            Я так мила.
Весь бархат мой с его живым миганьем -
            Лишь два крыла.

Не спрашивай: откуда появилась?
            Куда спешу?
Здесь на цветок я легкий опустилась
            И вот - дышу.

Надолго ли, без цели, без усилья,
            Дышать хочу?
Вот-вот сейчас, сверкнув, раскину крылья
            И улечу.

(written no later than Oct. 25, 1884)

LITERAL TRANSLATION

You’re right [butterfly narrator speaks to the poet]. It’s just that one outline I trace in the air

That makes me so dear (precious).

All of my velvet with its live (vivacious) twinkling (blinking)

Is just two wings.

Don’t ask from where I have appeared,

Where I’m rushing off to.

Here on this soft (light) bloom I have alighted

And now I breathe.

Is it for long that I aimlessly, effortlessly

Wish to breathe?

Any second now, with a flash, I’ll spread wide my wings

And fly away.

TRANSLATION BY ALEKSANDR POKIDOV

Butterfly

Yes, right you are! Alone for outlines airy

I am so fine.

All velvet mine with all its twinkle merry—

Two wings of mine.

O, never ask me, wherefrom I appear

Or whither flit!

Upon a flow’r I have alighted here

To breathe and sit.

How long, without an effort, aim or worry

Am I to stay?

Just see, now I will flash my spread wings glory

And fly away.

                

                                                TRANSLATION BY U.R. BOWIE

Babochka

(Butterfly)

Look now: one bright flit in the air

And I flaunt my precious bling.

All of this velvet with its flicker-flair

Is only a wing, plus a wing.

Don’t ask from whence I’ve come,

Or whither I’m bound when I leave.

Here on this flower in blithe slumberdom

I perch, and breathe.

Is it for long, in aimless bliss, astride

My bloom I wish to suspirate?

Just watch: in no time now I’ll flash-flip wide

My wings, fly off,

And dissipate.

                

In translating only four lines of this poem, Vladimir Nabokov, the lepidopterist, does a nice job of capturing the nineteenth-century feel of the style, what he calls "Fet's 'Butterfly' soliloquizing":

Whence have I come and whither am I hasting
Do not inquire;
Now on a graceful flower I have settled
And now respire.

(in Speak, Memory, p. 129)

Russian schoolgirl, Elizaveta Chudinova, age 10, from Evpatorija, Crimea, declaims Fet's "Babochka"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUyCuuuhrVU