Translations: THE BESTEST OF THE BEST: Eleven, Ivan Bunin, "Настанет день — исчезну я," THE DAY WILL COME

                                                        Image by Jorg Hempel: Tortoiseshell

[Note: I am reposting the very best of my translations of Russian poetry, URB]

Ivan Bunin

(1870-1953)

 

Настанет день — исчезну я,

А в этой комнате пустой

Все то же будет: стол, скамья

Да образ, древний и простой.

 

И так же будет залетать

Цветная бабочка в шелку —

Порхать, шуршать и трепетать

По голубому потолку.

 

И так же будет неба дно

Смотреть в открытое окно

И море ровной синевой

Манить в простор пустынный свой.

 

                                                     August 10, 1916

 

f

 

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

Upon its first publication the poem had a title: “Без меня (Without Me).” In his Speak, Memory (p. 128), Vladimir Nabokov mentions “Bunin’s impeccable evocation of what is certainly a Tortoiseshell.” Nabokov translates the second stanza literally as follows:

And there will fly into the room
A colored butterfly in silk
To flutter, rustle and pit-pat
On the blue ceiling . . .

 

LITERAL TRANSLATION
(by U.R. Bowie)
 
The day will come; I will disappear,
And in this empty room
Everything will be the same: the table, bench,
The icon, ancient and stark.
 
And in just the same way will fly in
That colored butterfly in silk,
To flit, to rustle, to pitter-pat
Against the light-blue ceiling.
 
And in just the same way will the bottom of the sky
Gaze into the open window,
And the steady blue of the sea
Will beckon into its empty expanse.

 

d
 
                                                  Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

The day will come; I’ll disappear,
While in this selfsame empty room,
That table, bench, icon austere
The same contours of space consume.
 
And just as now will flutter in
That silken butterfly serene,
To rustle, palpitate and ding
Against the ceiling’s bluish-green.
 
And the sky’s horizon, cerulean glow
Will peer in, gaze through this window,
While the steady unruffled blue of the sea
Beckons toward emptiness: “Come. Follow me.”
 

A Few Thoughts About Nots

 

 

The Not Things

In the Time of the Great Plague of 2020 many critics of our government are critical not of what has been done, but of what should have been done and was not. “For what was there none cared a jot; but all were wroth with what was not.”

Our leader, Bozo the Clown should have seen it coming, should have done something to stop the plague. But Bozo did nothing. “Why blame me,” says Bozo. “Name me one President in American history who ever saw a plague coming.”

 Bozo’s response to Covid-19: “It is what it is.”

 “Nobody expected the Spanish Inquisition.”

Monty Python

 

Meeting Not to Drink

Hoping to please the old man when they once met, the young writer Ivan Bunin told Tolstoy, “The sobriety societies are doing great things these days.” The old man snorted. “You mean when people get together not to drink? There’s something fake and unnatural about that. When people get together they naturally are going to drink. Getting together not to drink won’t do.”

                                             Ivan Bunin, The Liberation of Tolstoy

 

Thoughts for the Pro Lifers and Pro Choicers: If You Are Not, Are You Not Unhappy?

In Anna Karenina Dolly and Anna discuss the issue of contraception. Anna says, “What is reason given to me for if I am not to use it to avoid bringing unhappy creatures into the world? . . . I should always feel I had wronged these unhappy children . . . If they are not [if they don’t exist], at any rate they are not unhappy.” The original reads, “Если их нет, то они не несчастны по крайней мере, а если они несчастны, то я одна в этом виновата.” Literally: “If they are not, then they are at least not unhappy, but if they are unhappy, then I alone am to blame for that.”

 

Non-Events With Consequences

You use contraceptives. Your lovely baby girl—little Rachel with the curly ringlets and bright blue eyes—is never born. Consequently, you are lonely, sad, disillusioned with life. Meanwhile, Rachel is not unhappy, because she is not.

You miss an important phone call. The bell on the phone downstairs does not ring anymore. It started doing it (not) just this week.

In Anna Karenina Sergei Ivanovich wants to propose to Varenka and she wants him to. But they each are of two minds about this. Something deep inside each of them does not want the proposal to happen. In a scene in which they are out together gathering mushrooms, Sergei almost proposes, then does not. It almost happens, then does not. Later “the grownups sat by the balcony and talked as though nothing had happened, though they all, especially Sergei Ivanovich and Varenka, were very well aware that there had happened an event which, though negative, was of very great importance.” Or to put it in other words: a non-event of great importance had not happened.

[excerpted from the book by U.R. Bowie: Here We Be. Where Be We?]

И. А. БУНИН (1870-1953) ПОСЛЕДНИЕ СЛЕЗЫ, Ivan Bunin, Translation of Poem, "Belated Tears."

 

И. А. БУНИН

(1870-1953)

ПОСЛЕДНИЕ СЛЕЗЫ

Изнемогла, в качалке задремала
Под дачный смех. Синели небеса.
Зажглась звезда. Потом свежее стало.
Взошла луна — и смолкли голоса.

Текла и млела в море полоса.
Стекло балконной двери заблистало.
И вот она проснулась и устало
Поправила сухие волоса.

Подумала. Полюбовалась далью.
Взяла ручное зеркальце с окна —
И зеркальце сверкнуло синей сталью.
Ну да, виски белеют: седина.

Бровь поднята, измучена печалью.
Светло глядит холодная луна.

<1906—1908>

d

 

Literal Translation

Last Tears

 

Enervated, she dozed off in a rocker

To the background laughter of the dacha. The skies went dark blue.

A star sparkled. Then [the air] grew fresher.

The moon came up—and the voices went silent.

 

Strips [of moonlight] flowed on, languishing in the sea.

The glass on the door of the balcony gleamed.

And that’s when she awoke and wearily

Began straightening her dry hair.

 

She mused. She admired the distant view.

Took a hand mirror from the windowsill—

And the mirror shone a blue steel.

Well, yes, a whitening on the temples: gray hair.

 

Her brow was furrowed, tormented by sorrow.

Brightly gazed down the cold moon.

 

d

 

Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

 

Belated Tears

 

Exhausted, limp, she dozed in chair of wicker

While dacha guests laughed on; the sky shone blue.

The air grew crisp, a single star went flicker.

Arose the moon—the voices silent grew.  

 

In strips of languor on the sea flowed moonlight.

The glass on terrace gleamed with mute allure.

She woke up drained; her guests had bid good night. 

She touched and patted at her dry coiffure.

 

She pondered, mused. Admired the seascape splendor.

From windowsill she took a looking glass—

That mirror glistened steel-blue and tender.

Well, yes, gray on the temples, aging fast.

 

A furrowed brow, the torment life had sent her.

The cold moon gazed on tears welled up at last.

 

d

 

“Bunin’s sonnets are the best in Russian poetry. His unusual eyesight notices the edge of a black shadow on a moonlit street, the special density of blue sky through leaves, the spots of sun slipping like lace across the backs of horses.”

Vladimir Nabokov

 

[from a review in Russian (1929) of Ivan Bunin, Selected Poems. Translated into English in Vladimir Nabokov, Think, Write Speak: Uncollected Essays, Reviews, Interviews (edited by Brian Boyd and Anastasia Tolstoy), New York: Knopf, 2019, p. 84-87.]

 

Translation of Poem by IVAN BUNIN, "My Dear Lord God (Endless Rain, and Forest Fog)"

 

Иван Бунин

(1870-1953)

Льёт без конца. В лесу туман...

Льёт без конца. В лесу туман.
Качают ёлки головою:
«Ах, боже мой!» Лес точно пьян,
Пресыщен влагой дождевою.

В сторожке тёмной у окна
Сидит и ложкой бьёт ребёнок.
Мать на печи, - всё спит она,
В сырых сенях мычит теленок.

В сторожке грусть, мушиный гуд…
— Зачем в лесу звенит овсянка,
Грибы растут, цветы цветут
И травы ярки, как медянка?

— Зачем под мерный шум дождя,
Томясь всем миром и сторожкой,
Большеголовое дитя
Долбит о подоконник ложкой?

Мычит теленок, как немой,
И клонят горестные ёлки
Свои зеленые иголки:
«Ах, боже мой! Ах, боже мой!»

May 10, 1923

 

d

 

Literal Translation

 

It [rain] pours endlessly. In the forest there is fog.

The firs trees shake their heads:

“Oh, my God,” The forest seems drunk,

Saturated with rainwater.

 

In the dark watchman’s lodge by the window

Sits a child and bangs with a spoon.

His mother lies on the stove, goes on sleeping,

While in the damp vestibule a calf is bleating.

In the lodge there is gloom, the buzz of flies . . .

“Why is the yellow bunting [yellow-hammer (bird)] singing in the forest?

[Why do] mushrooms grow, and flowers bloom

And the grass is bright as verdigris?

 

And why, to the steady din of the rain,

Tormented by all of the world and by the lodge,

Does that large-headed child

Keep pounding with a spoon on the windowsill?”

 

The calf bleats like a mute person,

And the sorrowful firs bend down

Their green needles:

“Oh, my God! Oh, my God!”

 

May 10, 1923

 

d

 

 

Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

 

My Dear Lord God

Endless rain, and forest fog,

With tossing heads perplexed fir trees;

The woods seem drunk; my dear Lord God,

This soaked-wet world is ill at ease.

 

By windowsill in watchman’s shack

A child sits and taps a spoon.

His mother sleeps on stove soot-black,

A calf nearby bleats out of tune.

 

In gloomy shack the buzz of flies . . .

Outside the bunting trills her notes,

And mushrooms grow, I don’t know why,

And flowers bloom, and green grass gloats.

 

Why does he pound to the din of the rain?

Because life’s a malaise, with uneasiness strewn;

That boy with the large head, rain on his brain,

Taps on the windowsill, beats with his spoon.

 

Like some deaf-mute the calf grunts on,

The writhing firs, grief-stricken, awed,

Their needles green, bent, woebegone, 

Oh dear, my God, my dear Lord God!

May 10, 1923

 

 

 

 

 

Translation of Poem by IVAN BUNIN, "ПОРТРЕТ," "THE PORTRAIT"

         150 ЛЕТ СО ДНЯ РОЖДЕНИЯ ИВАНА АЛЕКСЕЕВИЧА БУНИНА: 1870-2020

И. А. БУНИН

(1870-1953)

ПОРТРЕТ

Погост, часовенка над склепом,
Венки, лампадки, образа
И в раме, перевитой крепом, —
Большие ясные глаза.

Сквозь пыль на стеклах, жарким светом
Внутри часовенка горит.
«Зачем я в склепе, в полдень, летом?» —
Незримый кто-то говорит.

Кокетливо-проста прическа
И пелеринка на плечах...
А тут повсюду — капли воска
И банты крепа на свечах,

Венки, лампадки, пахнет тленьем...
И только этот милый взор
Глядит с веселым изумленьем
На этот погребальный вздор.

Март, 1903?

d

Literal Translation

The Portrait

A graveyard, a small chapel over a crypt,

Wreaths, votive lamps, icons,

And in a frame intertwined with crape—

The large clear eyes.

The interior of the chapel burns with a hot light

Through the dust on its glass.

“Why am I in a crypt, at noon, in summer?”

An invisible someone says.

The hairstyle coquettish and plain,

And a pelerine on the shoulders . . .

And all over there are drops of wax

And crape bows on candles,

The wreaths, votive lamps, the smell of decay . . .

And only that dear gaze

That looks with joyous amazement

On that sepulchral nonsense.

March, 1903 (?)

Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

The Portrait

A graveyard chapel and a crypt,   

With wreaths and icons, windows glazed,

And from a frame wound round with crape—

The large clear eyes peer out amazed.

The votive candles walls illume,

Through dust on glass the chapel glows.

“In crypt I lie, midsummer, noon?”

A soft voice vents sepulchral woes.

Coiffure coquettish, simple, plain,

Her shoulders draped with mantelet . . .

The spattered wax on walls and pane,

And crape bows on the wax rosette.

The lamps and wreaths, a scent of rot . . .

And nothing more but those dear eyes

That startled, joyful, stare at naught

But dregs and lees steeped in demise.

d

Translator’s Notes

Generally acknowledged as the best short story Bunin ever wrote is his «Легкое дыхание» (“Light Breathing”), published in 1916. Here is how it begins [my translation in the book, Ivan Bunin, Night of Denial: Stories and Novellas, translated, with notes and critical afterword, by Robert Bowie, Northwestern University Press, 2006, p. 507]:

In the graveyard, above a fresh clay mound, stands a new cross made of oak, sturdy, ponderous, smooth.

                April, gray days. The tombstones here, in this spacious provincial graveyard, can be seen from afar through the bare trees, and a cold wind keeps dangling and rattling the porcelain wreath at the foot of the cross.

                There is a large convex porcelain medallion set into the cross, and the medallion contains a photographic portrait of a schoolgirl with joyous, strikingly living eyes.

                This is Olya Mesherskaya.

In Bunin’s note on the origins of this story [see  Bunin, Sob. soch. 9: 369] he describes how one winter, while strolling around a small cemetery on the Isle of Capri, he came upon a cross containing a photograph of a young girl with uncommonly vivacious, joyful eyes. Back in Russia, in March of 1916, he was asked to contribute a story to the Easter issue of the journal “Russian Word.” He immediately recalled the girl’s photograph from the cemetery in Capri and made this girl into Olya in his imagination; he wrote the story with that ‘exquisite rapidity’ that characterized the happiest moments of his writing life. For more on “Light Breathing” see my notes in the above collection, p. 611-15, and discussion of the story in my afterword, p. 689-98.

The poem translated above, “The Portrait,” written apparently in 1903 and first published in 1906, is something like an early draft for the material that was to become “Light Breathing.”

                                                               

                                                                  Portraits of Ivan Bunin

Artist: Bukovetsky

Photograph, 1905

Artist: L.S. Bakst, Paris, 1921

Translation of Poem by IVAN BUNIN, "TEMDZHID" "Тэмджид"

Whirling Dervishes at the Walls of Bukhara

                                           Тяжела, темна стезя земная.

       150 ЛЕТ СО ДНЯ РОЖДЕНИЯ ИВАНА АЛЕКСЕЕВИЧА БУНИНА: 1870-2020

Ivan Bunin

(1870-1953)

Тэмджид

Он не спит, не дремлет.

Коран

В тихом старом городе Скутари,
Каждый раз, как только надлежит
Быть средине ночи, – раздается
Грустный и задумчивый Тэмджид.

На средине между ранним утром
И вечерним сумраком встают
Дервиши Джелвети и на башне
Древний гимн, святой Тэмджид поют.

Спят сады и спят гробницы в полночь,
Спит Скутари. Все, что спит, молчит.
Но под звездным небом с темной башни
Не для спящих этот гимн звучит:

Есть глаза, чей скорбный взгляд с тревогой,
С тайной мукой в сумрак устремлен,
Есть уста, что страстно и напрасно
Призывают благодатный сон.

Тяжела, темна стезя земная.
Но зачтется в небе каждый вздох:
Спите, спите! Он не спит, не дремлет,
Он вас помнит, милосердый бог.

<1905>

Literal Translation

Temdzhid

He sleeps not, drowses not.

The Koran

In the quiet old city of Skutari,

Each time, as soon as the night

Finds itself in its mid hours, rings out

The sad and pensive Temdzhid.

At the midpoint between early morning

And evening twilight the Halveti dervishes

Get up, and on the tower [minaret]

They sing the ancient hymn, the sacred Temdzhid.

The gardens sleep, the sepulchres sleep at midnight,

Skutari sleeps. All that sleeps is silent.

But beneath the starry sky from the dark tower

That hymn resounds for those not sleeping:

There are eyes whose sorrowing gaze with anxiousness,

With a secret torment is trained upon the murk,

And there are lips that passionately and in vain

Call out for blessed sleep.

Burdensome, dark is the earthly path.

But every sigh is taken account of in heaven:

Sleep, sleep! He does not sleep, does not drowse,

He remembers you, merciful God.

1905

d

Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

Temdzhid

He sleeps not, drowses not.

The Koran

In the placid ancient city of Skutari,

As evening wends its way into the night,

From minarets that loom o’er Dede Efendi,

Resounds the pensive music of Temdzhid.

At witching time midway twixt gloaming hour

And morning’s dawn the dervishes perform;

They stand and whirl on high Efendi’s tower,

And sing their ageless hymn, revered Temdzhid.

The sepulchres at midnight, the lovely gardens sleep,

Skutari sleeps in silence, its daylight cares dismissed, 

But under starry skies floats down from minaret

That hymn designed for those who turn and twist.

Their anxious eyes are fixed, intent on midnight murk,

They gaze in secret torment as the shadows slowly creep,

Their lips voice desperate cries, but all in vain,

They plead and whisper prayers for blessed sleep.

Dark and filled with pitfalls is this earthly road of life,

But every human sigh below is reckoned up on high,

Sleep on, O mortal, sleep! God sleeps not, drowses not,

He thinks of you, his mercy’s rife, He watches from the sky.

d

Translator’s Notes

In the original Russian the rhyme scheme is unusual: Bunin rhymes only two lines out of each four-line stanza. I have done the same in the translation.

Skutari is the Italian and English name for Üsküdar, a large and densely populated district of Istanbul, Turkey, located on the Anatolian shore of the Bosphorus. The Halveti-Jerrahi is an Islamic Sufi brotherhood, an order of dervishes. According to a note in Bunin’s Collected Works in Nine Volumes [Sob. soch. v 9-i tomakh, I, 546], in the tower of the Dede Efendi Monastery the Halveti dervishes year round performed the so-called Temdzhid at midnight. In other mosques this song was sung only during Ramadan. The dervishes at Efendi sang the song by way of sending out consolation to insomniacs.