Федор Тютчев
(1803-1873)
Песок
сыпучий по колени…
Мы едем — поздно — меркнет день,
И сосен, по дороге, тени
Уже в одну слилися тень.
Черней
и чаще бор глубокий —
Какие грустные места!
Ночь хмурая, как зверь стоокий,
Глядит из каждого куста!
1830
Literal
Translation
Friable sand up to the knees . .
.
We drive—it’s late—the day grows
dark,
And by the roadside the shadows
of pines
Have now merged into one shadow.
Ever darker and denser is the
deep coniferous forest . . .
How sombre these regions are! .
. .
The sullen night, like a
hundred-eyed beast,
Peers out from every bush.
Literary
Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie
We push on—late now—gloamings
fade,
And roadside pine-tree shadows
stand,
All melded now in one vast
shade.
The tree-line grove grows dark, bedight
With dismalness, such gloom and
haze!
Like a hundred-eyed beast the
sullen night
From each bush glares and bodes malaise.
d
Translator’s
Notes
From
annotations in the two-volume collection of Tyutchev’s verse, Moscow (Nauka
Publishers, 1965), p. 350.
This poem was written in 1830, apparently in October, while the poet was on his way back to Munich from St. Petersburg. The verses have been much appreciated by other writers. Nekrasov praised the last two lines, compared them to a passage in Lermontov and found them superior to Lermontov’s lines. According to the annotator, both the Lermontov passage—which describes “a million dark eyes peering out in the darkness through the branches of every bush”—and Tyutchev’s lines here have their origins in a poem by Goethe, in which he refers to “a hundred black eyes in the darkness, peering out of the bushes.” Tolstoy placed a letter K (for “красота—beauty”) on his copy of the poem.
d
1
The
Journey
Knee-deep, this powdery sand . .
. We ride
late
in the murky day.
Shadows cast by the pines now
merged to form
one
shadow across our way.
Blacker and denser the wildwood
grows.
What
a comfortless neighborhood!
Moody night peers like a
hundred-eyed beast
out
of every bush in the wood.
1941-1944
2
The
Journey
Soft sand comes up to our
horses’ shanks
as
we ride in the darkening day
and the shadows of pines have
closed their ranks:
all
is shadow along our way.
In denser masses the black trees
rise.
What
a comfortless neighborhood!
Grim night like a beast with a
hundred eyes
Peers
out of the underwood.
1941-1944
3
(Untitled,
As in Original)
The crumbly sand is knee-high.
We’re driving late. The day is
darkening,
And on the road the shadows of
the pines
Into one shadow have already
fused.
Blacker and denser is the deep
pine wood.
What melancholy country!
Grim night like a hundred-eyed
beast
Looks out of every bush.
1951-1957
See Vladimir Nabokov, Verses
and Versions, Edited by Brian Boyd and Stanislav Shvabrin (Harcourt, 2008),
p. 244-47.
Commentary
by U.R. Bowie
Nabokov had trouble deciding
what kind of sand the poet—plus whoever was with him, probably the driver of
the carriage—was struggling through knee-deep. He couldn’t find the perfect
word in English: friable, powdery, soft, crumbly;
maybe there is no perfect word for sypuchij.
After mapping out the literal
translation above, it took me roughly twenty minutes to come up with my literary translation/adaptation, which of
course—in thrall to meter and rhyme—departs somewhat from the original meanings
of words. My aim is not to get the exact words, but to achieve at least an approximation
of the gist and the lyrical tone of the original. And to create a good poem in
English.
