Translations: The Bestest of the Best, TWENTY-SIX, Afanasy Fet, А. А. Фет, "Был чудный майский день в Москве," A WONDROUS MOSCOW DAY IN MAY

 

А. А. Фет
(1820-1892)

 

Был чудный майский день в Москве;
Кресты церквей сверкали,
Вились касатки под окном
И звонко щебетали.

Я под окном сидел, влюблен,
Душой и юн и болен.
Как пчелы, звуки вдалеке
Жужжали с колоколен.

Вдруг звуки стройно, как орган,
Запели в отдаленьи;
Невольно дрогнула душа
При этом стройном пеньи.

И шел и рос поющий хор, —
И непонятной силой
В душе сливался лик небес
С безмолвною могилой.

И шел и рос поющий хор, —
И черною грядою
Тянулся набожно народ
С открытой головою.

И миновал поющий хор,
Его я минул взором,
И гробик розовый прошел
За громогласным хором.

Струился теплый ветерок,
Покровы колыхая,
И мне казалось, что душа
Парила молодая.

Весенний блеск, весенний шум,
Молитвы стройной звуки —
Всё тихим веяло крылом
Над грустию разлуки.

За гробом шла, шатаясь, мать.
Надгробное рыданье! —
Но мне казалось, что легко
И самое страданье.

 

1857

---

 

                           Literal Translation

It was a marvelous day of May in Moscow,
The crosses on churches were sparkling,
Swallows outside my window were wheeling,
Venting their clear chirps.
 
I sat in love beside the window,
My soul both young and ill.
Distant sounds, like bees,
Were buzzing from [church] bell towers.
 
Suddenly [other] sounds, harmonious, like an organ,
Sang out in the distance;
My soul involuntarily shuddered,
Upon hearing that harmonious singing.
 
Walking and growing was a singing choir,
And with ineffable power
In my soul were melded heaven’s visage
And the quietude of the grave.
 
And walked on, growing, the singing choir,
And a long black line of people
Stretched out, bare-headed,
Steeped in piety.
 
The singing choir went past,
I followed it with my gaze,
And a small, rose-colored coffin went by,
After the resonant sounds of the choir.
 
A warm breeze wafted up,
Ruffling the cerement cloths [on top of the coffin],
And it seemed to me that
The young soul was faintly respiring.
 
The gleam of spring, the vernal hum,
The harmonious sounds of prayers—
Everything spread its quiet wing
Over the sorrow of parting.
 
Staggering behind the coffin, the mother walked,
Voicing her funereal lamentations!
But to me the very thing of suffering,
Seemed easy, light and airy.
 
d
 
                                            Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie
 
A wondrous Moscow day in May,
Each cross on church aglitter,
Outside the swallows roundelay,
Their gurgle-chirp and twitter.
 
By window seated in love’s sway,
My young soul sick, besotted,
The belfies’ bee-buzz far away
The air with droning slarted.  
 
Then suddenly came one more sound,
Harmonic, distant, soulful,
I sensed the core of me resound
With music sweet and doleful.  
 
Drew near a marching, surging choir,
I felt the sounds my heart engrave
With blend of heaven’s blessèd fire
And dire corruption of the grave.
 
The surging choir sang on and marched,
Behind it, hatless, trudged along
Black line of mourners, bleak, soul-parched, 
But pious, fortified by song.
 
The choir went by, I watched it go,
And next in line, to death in thrall,
Behind the songs, the mourning flow,
A coffin passed, rose-colored, small.
 
A freshet-breeze arose just then,
Puffed up the pall on coffin’s top, 
As if that young soul breathed, “Amen,”
Respired out its last full stop.
 
The gleam of spring, the vernal hum,
The flow of prayers, the soothing tune,
All life spread wide its winged humdrum
O’er valediction’s murk and gloom.
 
Behind the coffin walked the mother,
She stumbled as she wailed her plaint,
But I perceived all pain as other;
My heart felt light, void of constraint.  
 

Translations: The Bestest of the Best, TWENTY-FIVE, Владислав Ходасевич, Vladislav Khodasevich, "Ласточки," SWALLOWS

 

Владислав Ходасевич
(1886-1939)

Ласточки

Имей глаза — сквозь день увидишь ночь,
Не озаренную тем воспаленным диском.
Две ласточки напрасно рвутся прочь,
Перед окном шныряя с тонким писком.

 

Вон ту прозрачную, но прочную плеву
Не прободать крылом остроугольным,
Не выпорхнуть туда, за синеву,
Ни птичьим крылышком, ни сердцем подневольным.

 

Пока вся кровь не выступит из пор,
Пока не выплачешь земные очи —
Не станешь духом. Жди, смотря в упор,
Как брызжет свет, не застилая ночи.

                                                                      June 18-24, 1921

 

 

d

 

                                                                    Literal Translation
 
                                    Swallows

Have the eyes—through day you’ll see the night,
Not illumined by that fiery disc.
Two swallows in vain go exploding away,
Darting in front of the window with a faint chirp.
 
That transparent but firm membrane up there
Cannot be punctured by an acute-angled wing,
You can’t flit off there, beyond the blue,
Neither by way of an avian wing, nor a subdued heart.
 
Until all the blood has overflowed your pores,
Until you’ve cried out your earthly eyes—
You won’t become a spirit. Wait, looking point blank
At how the light spurts forth, without obscuring the night.
 
d
 
                                                Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie
 
                                   Swallows
 
Know how to look—and night you’ll spy through day,
Though night is lacking light from sun-disc’s fire.
Two swallows rupture air in their vain way,
Dart by my window, chirp, and then retire.  
 
No sharply angled wing can puncture through
That membrane tough, transparent but secure; 
By way of birdie’s wing, by way of heart demure,
No one can flit-swoop off beyond the blue.
 
Until you’ve bled with all your bloody might, 
Until you’ve cried all tears from earthly eyes,
You won’t become pure spirit; wait, surmise,
Stare at the light that spatters forth sidewise,
The kind of light that does not smother night.

 

 

 

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.
 

 

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.

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

Translations: The Bestest of the Best, TWENTY-ONE, Vladislav Khodasevich, "Так бывает почему-то," SO IT HAPPENS; WHO KNOWS WHY?

 

Vladislav Khodasevich

(1886-1939)

 

Так бывает почему-то:
Ночью, чуть забрезжат сны —
Сердце словно вдруг откуда-то
Упадает с вышины.

Ах!—и я в постели. Только
Сердце бьется невпопад.
В полутьме с ночного столика
Смутно смотрит циферблат.

Только ощущеньем кручи
Ты еще трепещешь вся —
Легкая моя, падучая,
Милая душа моя!

25 сентября 1920

d

Literal Translation

For some reason it happens that way:

In the night dreams faintly glimmer—

Your heart, as if suddenly from somewhere,

Falls from the heights.

 

Ahh! So then I’m in bed. Only

My heart is beating irregularly.

In the half darkness from the night table

Gazes dimly the face of the clock.

 

From only the sensation of a precipice

You’re still trembling all over,

My light, my falling,

My dear soul!

 

 

d

 

 

Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

 

So it happens; who knows why?

Dead of night, the faint dreams gleaming;

When, wham! as if from somewhere high

Your heart’s in freefall silently screaming . . .

 

Ahhh . . . awaken! . . . So I’m in bed,

With heartbeats pounding out of sync now . . .

Through half-dark murk the clock’s thick head

Peers dimly at me, seems to wink now.

 

From that chimera of a swoon

You tremble still in rigmarole;

You lie and shudder, bay at moon,

My dear, collapsing, fragile soul!