Experiment in Reverse Translation, Translating from Samuil Marshak's Russian Robert Burns Back Into English, "COMING THROUGH THE RYE"

                                                                            S.Ya. Marshak

                                  "Coming Through the Rye," Drawing by William Bell Scott

Note: this is an experiment in reverse translation. Marshak translates Robert Burns into Russian, and I translate Marshak’s Russian poem back into English, then compare it with the original. I try not to look at the original in advance, so as not to be influenced by it. But the poem, for all that, is probably one that I’ve read at some time in my life, and it may have left residual rhythms and words somewhere deep in my brain.

                                                                        U.R. Bowie

 

Samuil Marshak

(1887-1964)

 

Из Роберта Бернса

From Robert Burns

(Coming Through the Rye)

Пробираясь до калитки

Полем вдоль межи,

Дженни вымокла до нитки

Вечером во ржи.

 

Очень холодно девчонке,

Бьет девчонку дрожь:

Замочила все юбчонки,

Идя через рожь.

 

Если кто–то звал кого–то

Сквозь густую рожь

И кого–то обнял кто–то,

Что с него возьмешь!

 

И какая вам забота,

Если у межи

Целовался с кем–то кто–то

Вечером во ржи!..

 

 

Literal Translation

Making her way to the wicket gate,

Through the field alongside the verge,

Jenny got drenched all through,

In the evening in the rye.

 

The girl was very cold,

The girl was shivering:

She got her skirts all wet,

Coming through the rye.

 

If someone called out to someone

Through the thick rye,

And someone embraced someone,

What’s to make of that!

 

And what’s for you to be concerned,

If by the boundary verge

Someone kissed another someone

In the evening in the rye!

 

 

Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

 

Coming Through the Rye

 

Making for the wicket gate,

Through fields whose verge was nigh,

Dripping wet, went Jenny Thwaight,

That evening in the rye.

 

Sodden, chilled, the girl did fret,

She shivered, moaned a sigh,

She got her skirt all sopping wet,

While coming through the rye.

 

If some someone called to someone,

Through the thick, soaked rye,

And someone embraced a someone,

So? What care you and I!

 

And why should you go glower-glum,

If there where verge is nigh,

Kissed someone some other someone,

Some evening in the rye!

 

d

 

Original Words and Commentary from Wikipedia

 

Origin and meaning

G. W. Napier, in an 1876 Notes and Queries, wrote that,

The original words of "Comin' thro' the rye" cannot be satisfactorily traced. There are many different versions of the song. The version which is now to be found in the Works of Burns is the one given in Johnson's Museum, which passed through the hands of Burns; but the song itself, in some form or other, was known long before Burns.^[1]

The protagonist, "Jenny", is not further identified, but there has been reference to a "Jenny from Dalry" and a longstanding legend in the Drakemyre suburb of the town of Dalry, North Ayrshire, holds that "comin thro' the rye" describes crossing a ford through the Rye Water at Drakemyre to the north of the town, downstream from Ryefield House and not far from the confluence of the Rye with the River Garnock.^[2][3] When this story appeared in the Glasgow Herald in 1867, it was soon disputed with the assertion that everyone understood the rye to be a field of rye, wet with dew, which also fits better with other stanzas that substitute "wheat" and "grain" for "rye".^[4] An alternative suggestion is that "the rye" was a long narrow cobblestone paved lane, prone to puddles of water.^[2]

While the original poem is already full of sexual imagery, an alternative version makes this more explicit. It has a different chorus, referring to a phallic "staun o' staunin' graith" (roughly "an erection of astonishing size"), "kiss" is replaced by "fuck", and Jenny's "thing" in stanza four is identified as her "cunt".^[5][6][7]

Burns' Lyrics

O, Jenny's a' weet,^[A] poor body,
Jenny's seldom dry:
She draigl't^[B] a' her petticoatie,
Comin thro' the rye!

Chorus:
Comin thro' the rye, poor body,
Comin thro' the rye,
She draigl't a' her petticoatie,
Comin thro' the rye!

Gin^[C] a body meet a body
Comin thro' the rye,
Gin a body kiss a body,
Need a body cry?^[D]

(chorus)

Gin a body meet a body
Comin thro' the glen
Gin a body kiss a body,
Need the warl'^[E] ken?^[F]

(chorus)

Gin a body meet a body
Comin thro' the grain;
Gin a body kiss a body,
The thing's a body's ain.^[G]

(chorus)

·         ^A weet – wet

·         ^B draigl't – draggled

·         ^C gin – given, in the sense of "if"

·         ^D cry – call out [for help]

·         ^E warl – world

·         ^F ken – know

·         ^G ain – own

Lyrics usually sung ("Ilka lassie")

Even the "cleaner" version of the Burns lyrics is quite bawdy, and it is this one, or an "Anglicized" version of it, that is most commonly "covered".

Gin a body meet a body
Comin' thro' the rye
Gin a body kiss a body
Need a body cry?

Chorus:
Ilka lassie has her laddie
Nane, they say, hae I
Yet a' the lads they smile at me
When comin' thro' the rye.

Gin a body meet a body
Comin' frae the town
Gin a body kiss a body
Need a body frown?

(Chorus)

Gin a body meet a body,
Comin' frae the well,
Gin a body kiss a body,
Need a body tell?

(Chorus)

'Mang the train there is a swain
I dearly lo'e myself
But what his name or whaur his hame
I dinna care to tell

(Chorus)

 

Translator’s Note

Don’t know where Marshak got his English verses for the Burns poem that he “translated.” I’m not one to advocate for literal translation—far from it. My free method of literary poetic translation—down, Nabokov, down big fella, easy there, easy—allows a lot of leeway to the translator, as long as the gist of the original poem is maintained, and the translator produces a genuine poem to translate a poem, not a simple pony.

But while retaining something of the Burns gist, Marshak seems to take huge liberties with the text. To be sure we would have to see the original text that he was working from. Did he have the lines we are provided in the article from Wikipedia? Or some other lines?

One thing he shied away from at the start: he made no attempt to come up with Russian dialect words to translate the Scottish dialect of Burns. That appears to be the most common approach when Russians translate dialect or archaic language.

The Russian translators of Shakespeare do not attempt to find sixteenth century Russian words to translate sixteenth century Shakespearian words. If anyone attempted such a Herculean task it’s doubtful he would have any chance of success. Then again, if you read Pasternak’s translations of Shakespeare’s plays into modern Russian you are certainly losing something very important to Shakespeare’s art: the archaic language.

                                                                            Robert Burns

Translation of Poem by MAXIMILLIAN VOLOSHIN, "Holy Rus"

Ilya Repin, Religous Procession in Kursk Province, 1880-1883

Максимилиан Волошин

(1877-1932)

Святая Русь

Суздаль да Москва не для тебя ли

По уделам землю собирали,

Да тугую золотом суму?

В рундуках приданое копили,

И тебя невестою растили

В расписном да тесном терему?

 

Не тебе ли на речных истоках

Плотник-Царь построил дом широко –

Окнами на пять земных морей?

Из невест красой, да силой бранной

Не была ль ты самою желанной

Для заморских княжих сыновей?

 

Но тебе сыздетства были любы –

По лесам глубоких скитов срубы,

По степям кочевья без дорог,

Вольные раздолья да вериги,

Самозванцы, воры да расстриги,

Соловьиный посвист да острог.

 

Быть Царевой ты не захотела –

Уж такое подвернулось дело:

Враг шептал: развей да расточи,

Ты отдай казну свою богатым,

Власть – холопам, силу – супостатам,

Смердам – честь, изменникам – ключи.

 

Поддалась лихому подговору,

Отдалась разбойнику и вору,

Подожгла посады и хлеба,

Разорила древнее жилище,

И пошла поруганной и нищей,

И рабой последнего раба.

 

Я ль в тебя посмею бросить камень?

Осужу ль страстной и буйный пламень?

В грязь лицом тебе ль не поклонюсь,

След босой ноги благословляя, –

Ты – бездомная, гулящая, хмельная,

Во Христе юродивая Русь!

 

19 ноября 1917, Коктебель

                                                                     Literal Translation

Maximillian Voloshin

(1877-1932)

Holy Rus

 To A.M. Petrova

 

Was it not for you that Suzdal and Moscow

Kept adding on more land in appanages,

And moneybags tight with gold?

Did they not amass a dowry in coffers,

And raise you up to be a bride

In a frescoed and cramped tower home?

 

Was it not for you that the Carpenter Tsar

Built a capacious house at the source of rivers,

With windows facing out onto five earthly seas?

Did not your beauty and your shrewish strength

Make you the most desirable of them all

For the princely sons of foreign lands?

 

But from your very childhood you had a hankering

For roughhewn hermitages in woodland depths,

For trackless steppes where nomads roamed,

For open expanses feral-free and penitential chains,

Pretenders, thieves and unfrocked monks,

For the whistle of Nightingale the Robber, for dungeons.

 

To be a Tsar’s property you did not wish,

So here’s how things turned out for you:

The Evil One whispered: throw it to the winds, squander it,

Give your treasure horde to the rich,

Your authority to vassals, your strength to foes,

Your honor to rough peasants, your keys to traitors.

 

You yielded to evil incitements,

You gave yourself to the rogue and thief,

You burned your merchants’ quarters, your grain,

You laid waste to your ancient dwelling place,

And you set off both cursed and beggared,

The slave of the very meanest slave.

 

Am I one who dares to cast a stone at you?

Do I pass judgment on your passionate and intemperate flame?

Do I not bow down to you, my face in the mud,

Blessing the print of your bare foot,

You homeless, wanton, drunken

Holy Fool for-sake-of-Christ called Rus!

 

                                                   Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie

Holy Rus

 To A.M. Petrova

 They did it for you, did they not?

The princes whom Suzdal and Moscow begot

Scarfed up land in appanages, gold in flood tides,

Amassed in their coffers a dowry of opulence, 

You they sequestered in cramped tower’s flocculence,

And groomed you to be the most peerless of brides.

 

Was it not all for you that the Carpenter Tsar

Built a home where the rivers converged from afar,

With windows that faced onto five earthly seas?

Did your beauty, your spunk not inspire great awe,

Your mansuetude, charms, were they not without flaw,

Such that no prince in Europe could you ever displease?

 

But you from the start had a yen for the wilds,

For hermits in huts built roughhewn woodsy style,

For steppeland all trackless, itinerant camps,

For free open spaces and chains penitential,

For monks now defrocked, and for nothing prudential,

Pretenders and dungeons, and outlaws and scamps.

 

Consort to the Tsar was a job not for you,

So here’s how things ended in impious rue:

The Evil One whispered: screw it all, let it go,

Give your wealth to the rich, to the lush and effete,

Give power to vassals, let rabblement bleat,

Copulate with base yokels, put pride in escrow. 

 

To a low and vicious plot you lent an ever eager ear,

You tossed your kingdom’s keys to any brigand’s wiles drear,

You torched the merchant’s quarters, let the grain go up in flames,

Then laid to waste on purpose your own precious family home,

And set off, cursed and beggared now, the good earth for to roam,

The kind of slave who slavery loves and kisses her own chains.

 

But I myself, do I dare cast a stone at hapless you?

Do I dare judge the passion, dissipation run askew?

Am I not bowing down right now, my face in muck profuse, 

Do I not bless your bare footprint, left in the grime and rot,

You homeless, wanton, drunk and shameless, misbegotten sot,

You Holy Fool for sake of Christ, the blessed fool called Rus!

 

Nov. 19, 1917

Koktebel

 

Translator’s Notes

 

Title, Holy Rus. The word Rus (Русь, pronounced Roos) is the ancient name for Russia (Россия). Both words are feminine in grammatical gender, making the embodiment of Russia a female, as she is presented in this poem.

 

First Stanza

Appanages . “Most historians since the nineteenth century—Russian, Soviet, and Western—have used the phrase "appanage era" to designate the period between the collapse of Kievan Russia and the emergence of a centralized Russian state. It is dated from the Mongol conquest of Kievan Russia between 1237 and 1240 to either the accession of Ivan III (1462) or Basil III (1505), or to the beginning of the reign of Ivan IV (1533). It was characterized by the emergence of a multiplicity of independent principalities (udeli or appanages).” (encyclopedia.com)

As certain princely states, such as Suzdal and Moscow, became more powerful they annexed more and more independent appanages to their own territory. Eventually all the independent principalities were swallowed up by Muscovy.

Tower home (Russ., терем). In Ancient Rus the upper living quarters in a house were often in the shape of a tower; these rooms were frequently reserved for women or maidens, as a place where they would be protected from intrusions.

 

Second Stanza

Carpenter Tsar. Peter the First (the Great), who opened “a window on the West” when he founded the city of St. Petersburg at the beginning of the 18^th Century. He had a fondness for building things, such as ships, with his own hands.

 

Third Stanza

Hermits in huts. There is a tradition in Eastern Orthodox Christianity of hermit-ascetics, who live alone in the woods, castigating their flesh and saving their souls.

Penitential chains (вериги). Worn most frequently by Holy Fools (see below).

Pretenders. Throughout Russian history fake tsars have appeared out of nowhere, pretending to be some tsar or royalty long dead (usually murdered). This phenomenon continued right up to the end of the Romanov dynasty, when, after the murder of the last tsar’s (Nicolas the First’s) whole family in 1918, pretenders later appeared, claiming to be the dead daughter Anastasia, or the Tsarevich heir.

The most famous of pretenders were those who appeared in The Time of Troubles (early 17^th Century, 1598-1613). Tsar Fyodor I died without leaving an heir, thereby ending the Rurik dynasty; the country descended into chaos. Several pretenders materialized, claiming to be Dmitry, the heir to the throne. The real Dmitry, son of Ivan the Terrible, had been murdered—apparently by Boris Godunov—in the city of Uglich in 1591.

Supported by the Polish state, the First Pretender Dmitry (Grigory Otrepiev) invaded Russia with Polish and Lithuanian forces. He made a triumphant entry into Moscow after Godunov’s death in 1605 and was actually crowned tsar, accepted as the real Dmitry. His rule was short-lived. On May 17, 1606, he was ousted from the Kremlin and killed by an armed mob, which also killed or imprisoned many of his Polish advisors.

Another famous pretender was the peasant Emelyan Pugachev, who led an armed rebellion (1773-1775) against Catherine the Great, claiming to be Tsar Peter III. At the instigation of Catherine, his wife, Tsar Peter had been murdered in 1762, after which Catherine seized power.

Monks now defrocked. Grigory Otrepiev was the real name of the First Pretender Dmitry. He was an unfrocked monk, who fled from a monastery near Moscow and eventually made his way to Poland, where he presented himself as the real Tsarevich Dmitry.

Sixth Stanza

Holy Fool for the sake of Christ. Eastern Orthodox Christianity has a tradition of holy foolery that dates far, far back in history. In Russia Holy Foolery had its heyday in the time of Ivan the Terrible (16^th century). The most famous holy fool of all, Basil the Blessed (Vassily Blazhenny) lived in those times. The resplendent church on Red Square in Moscow is unofficially named after him (St. Basil’s Cathedral), and his relics resided in that church—in a silver sarcophagus with his penitential chains on top—until the Russian Revolution of the twentieth century.

Since Russia (Rus) is feminine, a woman, Voloshin makes his holy fool in the poem a female. Women holy fools in Russia are found much more infrequently than men. The most famous female holy fool is Ksenija Blazhennaja (The Blessed Xenia) of St. Petersburg, who lived in the 18^th century. Her burial place in Smolensk Cemetery, where a chapel has been built, is still visited by scores of pious Russian pilgrims.

The holy fools in Russia behaved like insane people, always homeless, wandering the streets naked, wearing only their chains, committing various pranks, such as throwing excrement on the heads of passersby. For their behavior they were beaten, but accepted the thrashings, even taking voluptuous pleasure in the pain. After all, was not Christ scourged as well? The people beat them for their madcap antics, but venerated them as holy, as individuals who supposedly had special insights, through foolery, into the ways of God.

The Bible has several passages that, ostensibly, explain and validate the behavior of holy fools. One passage in First Corinthians goes as follows: “We are fools for Christ’s sake, but ye are wise in Christ; we are weak, but ye are strong; ye are honorable, but we are despised.” One main idea is that Christ endured mockery and humiliation in his lifetime, was himself something of an eccentric, and that the fools act in imitation of Him.

Some of the Russian fools were canonized by the church. Although the Russian Orthodox Church venerates holy fools as religious zealots, going mad in the name of Christ, the question always arises: were these bizarre individuals genuine Christian zealots or were they simply mentally ill?

                                   Monument to the Carpenter Tsar, St. Petersburg, Russia

                                                              Nesterov, "Na Rusi"

                                                           

                                                              Ксения  Блаженная

Жорж Октавио читает "Святую Русь"

Максимилиан Волошин. Стихи. "Святая Русь". Чит. Жорж Октавио - YouTube

THERE'S A GOOD BOY, BILLY, from Bobby Goosey's Nonsense Verse for Kids

 

Notes on WAR AND PEACE Le Fil de La Vierge

                                              Josef Chelmonski, "Indian Summer" (1875)

Le Fil de la Vierge

Scenes of autumn. Glomps of spiderwebs, huge masses of feathery gossamer—their filament gleaming in the autumnal sunlight—blow through the air of Northern Russia, flying to God knows where or why. Little spiders are hitchhiking on the webs. They don’t where they’re going or why they’re going there. Sound familiar?

 I’ve lived in lots of places in the autumnal months, but only in Northern Russia—to be precise in Great Novgorod, the oldest city in Russia—did I view that spectacle of the glomps of flying gossamer. Don’t know what it was for, or if it was for anything, but it was beautiful.

 And just think: Aleksandr Nevsky saw those soaring spider webs too, in, say, October of 1237; the Tatars in 1240, mounted on dashing steeds, rapine on their minds, gazed at the autumnal sky and marveled at the loveliness of those gossamer glomps.

 One theory: the gossamers in the autumn skies over Great Novgorod, oldest city in Russia, are said to be the threads unravelling from the winding-sheet of the Mother of God, which golden gossamer trailed back to earth as She ascended into heaven on the Day of the Dormition. Tolstoy mentions the autumnal flights of spider webs in War and Peace (Epilogue, Part 1, Ch. 16). The context is a dream, in which young Nikolenka Bolkonsky, son of the now deceased Prince Andrei, comes out of a horrible nightmare.

 “A terrible dream had awakened him. In his dream he had seen himself and Pierre wearing helmets—the kind illustrated in his edition of Plutarch. He and Uncle Pierre were marching at the head of a huge army. This army consisted of slanting white lines that filled the air like the spiderwebs that fly about in the fall and that Dessales [his French tutor] called le fil de la Vierge [the thread of the Virgin]. Ahead was glory, just the same as these threads, only slightly denser. They—he and Pierre—were racing lightly and joyfully nearer and nearer to their goal. Suddenly the threads that moved them began to weaken, to tangle; the going became heavy. And Uncle Nikolai Ilyich [Rostov] stood before them in a stern and menacing pose.”

 This passage appears at the very end of Part 1 of the Epilogue, and with it we bid farewell to the major characters of War and Peace. Tolstoy concerns himself for the rest of the novel with his philosophical speculations on history. The implications of this dream at the end concern the coming Decembrist Revolt, only five years into the future (1825) from the time of the dream, but beyond the bounds of the novel’s action.

 Pierre Bezukhov is at the forefront of the liberal policies supported by the Decembrists, and the dream suggests that Nikolenka, who may well be a young officer in five years—inspired by Pierre’s liberalism, and by veneration for his dead father, who he assumes would stand with Pierre—may himself take part in the revolt. Nikolai Rostov, however, is of a more conservative bent, and he will oppose the Decembrists.

 Here’s the ending of Part 1 of the Epilogue. “He’s kind and good, I love him,” he thought of Dessales. “But Uncle Pierre! Oh, what a wonderful man!  And father? Father! Father! Yes, I’ll do something that even he would be pleased with . . .”