Transfiguration Icon by Feofan Grek, Fifteenth Century
Boris Pasternak
(1890-1960)
Август
Как обещало, не обманывая,
Проникло солнце утром рано
Косою полосой шафрановою
От занавеси до дивана.
Оно покрыло жаркой
охрою
Соседний лес, дома поселка,
Мою постель, подушку мокрую
И край стены за книжной полкой.
Я вспомнил, по какому поводу
Слегка увлажнена подушка.
Мне снилось, что ко мне на проводы
Шли по лесу вы друг за дружкой.
Вы шли толпою, врозь и парами,
Вдруг кто-то вспомнил, что сегодня
Шестое августа по-старому,
Преображение господне.
Обыкновенно свет без
пламени
Исходит в этот день с Фавора,
И осень, ясная как знаменье,
К себе приковывает взоры.
И вы прошли сквозь
мелкий, нищенский,
Сквозной, трепещущий ольшаник
В имбирно-красный лес кладбищенский,
Горевший, как печатный пряник.
С притихшими его
вершинами
Соседствовало небо важно,
И голосами петушиными
Перекликалась даль протяжно.
В лесу казенной землемершею
Стояла смерть среди погоста,
Смотря в лицо мое умершее,
Чтоб вырыть яму мне по росту.
Был всеми ощутим физически
Спокойный голос чей-то рядом.
То прежний голос мой провидческий
Звучал, не тронутый распадом:
"Прощай, лазурь Преображенская
И золото второго Спаса.
Смягчи последней лаской женскою
Мне горечь рокового часа.
Прощайте, годы
безвременщины.
Простимся, бездне унижений
Бросающая вызов женщина!
Я - поле твоего сраженья.
Прощай, размах крыла
расправленный,
Полета вольное упорство,
И образ мира, в слове явленный,
И творчество, и чудотворство".
1953
d
Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R.
Bowie
August
With morn’s early glimmer the sun came spelunking;
Diagonal ribbon of saffron rays flitting
From curtain to sofa, all bad dreams debunking.
The huts in the village the woodlands abutting,
My bedding, the moistness on pillow soft-mellow,
The edge of the wall where the bookcase was jutting.
My pillow was dampened (slight moisture’s emission).
I’d seen in a dream: through the forest next door
You came for my funeral, my soul’s manumission.
Then one of you uttered a brief exclamation:
“Today is the sixth day of August (old style),
The day of the Holy Lord’s Transfiguration.”
From Tabor comes blazing in nacreous hues,
Then autumn, clear Sign from the Godmother stainless,
Rivets all gazes on reds, golds and blues.
Transparent thicket of alders, leaves flickering,
To the ginger-red woods of the graveyard lit vividly,
Hot as a spice cake fresh-baked and still dithering.
Loomed o’er the crowns of the alders now muted,
And sound of the cock crows, unnerving-portentous,
Far distant resounded in echoes diluted.
Stood Death in the churchyard, stifling a grin,
Peering hard at my person, so newly expired,
For to measure my height, dig a hole I’d fit in.
Someone’s voice of serenity then holding sway.
It rang out in tones that were prescient (prophetically),
My past voice in flesh, still untouched by decay:
Goodbye to the gold of the Second Christ bower.
With the final caress of a woman’s palpation,
Assuage please the wormwood of my fateful hour.
Goodbye to the woman whose gauntlet is thrown
In the face of abysses of mortification;
I am your battleground, your cornerstone.
To the dogged and freedom-steeped flight,
To the image of peace, in the word made incarnate,
And to creative art, and the conjuror’s sleight.”
d
Translator’s Notes
Transfiguration (Преображение)
On the
Transfiguration of Christ, which is celebrated in the Russian Orthodox Church
on August 6/19, see the New Testament, Mathew 17: 11-13; Mark 9: 2-9; Luke 9:
28-36. The feast day commemorates a Biblical tale of how Christ went up on Mt.
Tabor and was transfigured in front of three of his disciples. The Russian verb
from the same root, preobrazit’sja is also a high-style word for “to
die.”
The three holidays
of the Dormition Fast in the calendar of the Russian Orthodox Church:
Pervy Spas (First Saviour Day), falls on August 14
(new style) and marks the beginning of the Dormition Fast. Strict observers of
the fast eat only honey on this day, and for this reason it is sometimes called
Honey Saviour Day.
Vtoroj Spas (Second Saviour Day) falls on August 19
and is the Day of the Transfiguration. Traditionally on this day ripe apples
are harvested and it is sometimes called Apple Saviour Day. In the tenth stanza
of Pasternak’s poem (second line) he refers to Vtoroj Spas, which I have
translated as “Second Christ.”
The third day in this cycle is the Day of the Dormition of
the Mother of God, a major church holiday that falls on August 28 and marks the
end of the Dormition Fast.
d
The poem “August” is one of twenty-five poems presented in
the final chapter of the novel Dr. Zhivago, “The Poems of Yuri Zhivago,”
so that, at least fictitiously, it was not written by Pasternak at all, but by
his character Zhivago. Many of these poems have themes related to key Biblical
events in the life of Christ.
Note how in his poem Pasternak makes mention of the colors
featured most prominently in Russian icons of the Transfiguration: saffron,
ochre, gold, azure, ginger-red.
According to a posting online—in the Russian-language
website of the journal Foma (Thomas)—the Transfiguration holiday had
special meaning for Pasternak. In the summer of 1903, on Transfiguration Day,
the boy Pasternak fell from a horse and was seriously injured. Ten years later,
in 1913, Pasternak recalled the fall.
He acknowledged that this experience—his feeling of
helplessness and immobility—somehow inspired an awakening in his soul of “the
creative impulse.” His miraculous recovery on precisely that day, the Day of
Christ’s Transfiguration, he came to equate with his personal transfiguration,
a new birth, and the impulse that awakened his creative talent.
In his dream (or Zhivago’s) in the poem “August” Pasternak
visualized his own death, which was not to occur for another seven years. He
died, however, not on Transfiguration Day, but on May 30, 1960, a not
particularly important day in the church calendar. In the novel Dr. Zhivago
we learn in Ch. 12 that Yury Zhivago died in 1929, at the end of August. Or was
it on August 19?
Transfiguration by Raphael, About 1520
