How (not) to translate Pushkin
I am strongly convinced that a fairly high degree of conceit is required of anyone to put pen to paper. The double notion that you have something worth saying in and of itself and that other people will find interest (and maybe even enjoyment) in what you extract from your emotional innards is not for the meek and shy. So do not believe any person with a creative bent who claims he does not want his art to be regarded and understood. Any protestation to the contrary is some kind of pretense. Sure, poets can be chicken and not have the guts to share their creation with the world, but that does not change the fact that the desire is always there. Every creative (and especially semi creative) spirit comes with a healthy dollop of vanity.
A dear friend, a contender for my (heaven help me) unqualified devotion, pointed to a particular poem of mine to be her favorite. I published it n an abridged form on my Salon blog some time ago. The poem was written in English and as such stands on its own with no need for any additional commentary, especially by myself. As with all poetry, the motivation for the creation was and remains private and should be no one’s business or concern. The poem itself is public and is there to be (hopefully) enjoyed by all who read it to the degree of their ability and individual way in which they interact with the poem – which is their business (and no one else’s). But – there is always a “but.” The privacy or the creative process is the poet’s prerogative, but the literary and cultural backdrop presupposes immediate recognition on the part of the reader. In the case of this particular poem there is a bit of a disconnect between an obvious reference in (or rather of) the poem and the language in which it was written. As I said before, the poem was written in English, for English speaking audience. Nevertheless, for the longest part of the poem, the one titled “Theme,” I chose to completely duplicate the structure as well as to make constant reference to the content of a famous poem that Alexander Pushkin wrote in 1822 and titled “The lay of the prophetic Oleg.” The reference to the Pushkin poem will be immediately apparent to any junior high school educated Russian reader, there is no subtlety there. Unless one is a Russian speaking student of Russian poetry there is no reason whatsoever for an English speaker to recognize the reference. Since the fact of the reference is part of the sum totality of the poem, I chose to place it here again along with a literal translation of the Russian to give the English reader as accurate a picture of the content as possible, along with a phonetic rendition of the original Russian. Please feel free to skip right to the poems. For those who are interested, I will offer some thoughts regarding translation of poetry in general and that of Pushkin in particular.
Whenever I speak of poetry translation I get a bit frothy at the mouth, talking about the contemporary tradition in the English speaking world to do away with a poem’s rhyme and meter and to simply provide a literal rendition of the poem’s words. When people defended this approach to me, the argument has invariably been that by focusing on the words, the translator retains the original meaning, which would invariably be twisted if the translator were to attempt to maintain beat, rhyme and meter. The failure to realize that an incredible amount of a poem’s meaning is contained within the very rhyme and meter does not stop to amaze me. By dropping the structural elements of a poem, its rendition cannot be called “a translation,” since a poem’s sensual effect is completely lost, and that sensual effect is part and parcel of what the poet created. I find that a much more effective translation is one that does its best to maintain both– the reader gets the feeling that is generated from the music of the poem as well as a glimpse of the words that intertwined in the music (or the music that was intertwined in the words, but either way, the reader gets both).
The poetry of Alexander Pushkin is the exception that proves the rule. Pushkin lived a short life – he was born in 1799 and died from a duel wound in 1836, when he was only 37. In his short life Pushkin completely redefined the Russian literary language. An unapologetic sympathizer of Western culture and the French language – like all the urban nobility of his generation Pushkin was completely fluent in French – he was incredibly attuned to the speech and tradition of the rustic common people. Pushkin managed to combine the refined urban tradition with its heavy influx of French vocabulary and the “authentic” Russian idiom. For all intents and purposes Russian poetry and literature began with Pushkin, especially poetry. To a Russian, Pushkin’s poetry soars like a prima ballerina for whom the force of gravity is an optional law on nature, to be dismissed at will. The infinite lightness and ease of Pushkin’s stanzas are combined with a perfect ability to turn a phrase and position the words in a fashion that renders the entire enterprise sublime. To a Russian, Pushkin’s work comes across as a metaphysical necessity – his poems HAD to be and the only way for them to be was the way in which he wrote them. I am struggling for words here since I cannot bring an equivalent in English in terms of poetry. Shakespeare’s plays are the closest thing to my knowledge that achieves the same effect. I repeatedly say that all these wonderful effects exist for a Russian. For some reason, translations of Pushkin’s poetry into English come across as completely conventional – all magic is lost. I think that the reason is that Pushkin’s magic is embedded in the deep structure of the Russian language rather than in the surface level words or even the poetic tropes that are used in their rendition. In that sense we can say that Pushkin is world famous in Russia – his appeal is universal to those who are native or have a native sensibility of the Russian language. Pushkin speaks to us on the subliminal level where language is formed in the first years of our existence. That relationship makes Pushkin infinitely fresh and pertinent, his language evokes the most vivid sense of childhood experiences (rather than necessarily the experiences themselves). Pushkin has taken the Russian psyche and linguistic sense of self and rendered it as an art form. Although roughly a contemporary of Poe, his language feels completely modern and fresh to the Russian. The great Slavic scholar Roman Jakobson confirmed my understanding to a degree. Jakobson is world famous in the narrow world of Slavic academe. The similarity with Pushkin ends there. Jakobson was a scholar, emphatically not a poet. Reading Jakobson is akin to administering to oneself a colonoscopy without anesthesia – the insights are amazing but the pain is unbearable. The specific essay I am referring to (the title eludes me) started with Jakobson’s recollection of trying to teach his students Russian poetry, where he translated a number of Pushkin’s poems. Frustrated at his failure to convey the beauty of the original Jakobson applied himself to analyzing the mechanics of the Russian vis-à-vis English. Pushkin’s beauty came through the nature of the case structure of the Russian noun, which is completely absent in the English. So, it was the nature of the language, and Pushkin’s operation within it that created the original beauty and precluded any chance for achieving the same effect in English.
Vladimir Nabokov, the author of Lolita, was confronted with the same problem. He taught Russian literature in Cornell, Harvard and Wellesley, and would try to make his own translations, especially of Pushkin, for his students. He was consistently unsatisfied with what he was producing, but rather than write an insightful but mind numbing essay on why one could not translate Pushkin into English, he found a way around the problem. Pushkin’s masterpiece, “Eugene Onegin” is a novel in verse. The work carries within itself not only the sheer beauty of the Russian language and poetic composition, but also the sense of Imperial Russian in the late 20’s and 30’s of the 19th century. Nabokov realized that he could not repeat Pushkin’s feat in English while rendering its original Russian beauty. To sacrifice any of it would have been a sacrilege. Existing translations of Eugene Onegin took Pushkin’s divine ballerina and forced her to repeat the same leaps and pirouettes with the additional grotesque requirement to hold an enema in her backside. Naturally, the attempt failed with a gross and noisome effect on audience in the first row. That is evil. The beauty of Pushkin’s poetry (and prose for that matter) is in its economy. The least number of words is always used to convey the maximum amount of impressions and information. That is what Nabokov had to give up to maintain everything else. Nabokov took the unified impression that was created by Eugene Onegin and created three separate works. To convey the beauty of the Russian tongue, he published the original Russian transcribed in phonetic English. To provide the English reader with the actual meaning of the words, Nabokov created a careful literal translation of the original, maintaining neither rhyme nor meter. But to create the impression, the sense and meaning of what the poem conveyed, which could not have been achieved by the English reader by listening to the beautiful but meaningless Russian gibberish, or by the meaningful and lackluster English rendition, Nabokov wrote commentary that told the English reader what he would feel were he to read to work in the original Russian while having at his disposal the knowledge and sensibility someone like Nabokov. Only the combination of the three could be viewed as a single translation of the original.
Thus, as my aim is for any reader of my poem to derive the maximum enjoyment from it, obscurity does not serve any purpose. I am therefore presenting the original Russian as well as the English translation for the fullness of the experience. Just one more thing, so that there is no misunderstanding; my poem is in no way a parody on the original. A parody is a tricky thing. To be good, a parody has to be worthy of the original, to be in the same league with it. Almost by definition, no writer in Russian (let alone another language) can be in the same league with Pushkin. Besides his genius, Pushkin was greatly responsible for the nature of subsequent Russian literature. To be in the same league, a parody needs to create its own tradition while still closely resembling Pushkin’s work – a logical impossibility. On the other hand, any Russian poem is a tribute to Pushkin, by the very fact of its existence. While not primarily intended as such, this poem is a tribute to that unequaled genius who single handed brought together the great potential of my mother tongue into a resounding tradition that has conditioned the way people have been thinking in Russian for the last 175 years or so.
OVERTURE
The clouds were nearly limpid,
The truths that were occluded once were thus occluded well;
He grazed upon a field of poppies –
The gentle soporific went down well,
Nourishing the clouds.
The lightning struck without too much fanfare;
Through the ensuing intermittent rains
He stood agape, with moisture running down
His eyes, his lips, his forehead and his chin.
The clarity of those blue eyes returned,
Just to be mocked.
The verities that were revealed to him were not so new.
The lips, the teeth, the gaze, or rather its interior,
Were glimpsed before.
The knowledge was therefore Platonic.
The single star that shone through cloud and rain
Was uninhabited.
Its light illuminated tall wild oats (half-sawn),
Birch bark, the battered copy of a pea green book,
A quill.
The beasts were marching head to toe; the beasts were rather wise;
It lasted for a while, and then he slept.
THE DREAM
On a morning bright and clear
We will swim in brooks eternal,
Laved by tears without a fear,
Munch upon a favorite pen pal.
In a chain-mail made of doubt,
Shouts will stifle earnest grief;
Whiffs of pungent lust will scout
Failing sight into relief.
Raise a goblet to her lips,
Shroud her shoulders with a cape,
Pour Styx water on her head,
Send her sauntering, agape.
LEITMOTIFF
The mountain chain was new to all his tribe.
No sheep yet grazed upon their slopes.
No tents or abode houses were littering their sides.
No innocence was lost within their crags,
With shards of stone leaving their marks
Upon a willing buttock.
The path was slippery, due to the rain.
The pains he went through to screw up his courage
Would screw him in the end.
The trusty wedges he affixed upon the rock
Had had their fix already –
Their joints burned out,
His simply creaked.
THEME
As now, he ascended the treacherous slope
To carry revenge on the muses,
Whose fury frustrated his timorous hope,
With light that beguiles and confuses.
Clad in his conviction, from earlobe to toe,
With nothing but lyrics and language in tow.
Then lo, from behind a fiery bush
Emerges a sage, wise and ancient,
Who spread Viram’s orgies from Cartage to Kush,
Whose guts are prophetic and sentient.
Our hero approaches, a curious mind,
Not knowing the path he is leaving behind.
“Pray tell me, oh ancient one, when will I bellow,
What strike, or what venomous quill
Will silence my anapest’s violoncello,
Force my amphibrach to stand still?
Fear not, I’ll extol you with words, of which praise
Will lengthen forever your languishing days.”
“My fear emanates not from she-goats like you,
Whose words, isomorphic to meaning,
Create an Esherian-Dalian stew,
Whose views have Panglossian leanings.
Neither limpidity, nor talent’s mist
Could shake my conviction’s theogenous gist.”
“The quills of true bards will be mounted on doors
Of those who were moved by their singing;
Their souls will be carried by diligent storks
To cribs wherefrom readers are springing.
Fear not others’ poisonous shafts of bon mots,
But yours, you pugnacious, libidinous putz.”
He listened to this, then peered slowly behind
Where predicates frolicked with nouns,
And shy dental fricatives – what a rare find –
Went plosive with vocative frowns.
A gerund was fondling synecdoche’s foot,
And ablative forms conjugated a root.
“Farewell, my sweet darlings, I send you away
To graze upon pastures of tenses
Thy memory lives; in your swaggering sway
I’ll carry my swords and defenses,
To strike through the ones who molested us so,
I’ll reap that which they would only half sow.”
The journey had ended some eons ago,
The pasture was sent out to porridge,
The muses defeated, left staring agog;
The trochees were put into storage.
Surrounded by morphemes as foreign to him
As manly compliance to feminine whim.
“Where are my old comrades?” He suddenly asked,
Remembering the ancient’s old warning;
“Do they still meander in transitive cascques
Upon verbal slopes in the morning?
Do take me to see them, I miss their sweet taste
My phonemes and calques are so vapid and chaste!”
Again he ascended the craggy old slope
Remembering old case and declension
Extinct participials, aorists’ trope
And datives too dated to mention.
He looked, but his semes were all spoken and gone
Like blasts from the shaft of a fairy tale gun.
“Mendacious old coot,” he bellowed in wrath,
Your prophecy never took hold
I had to relinquish my only true worth
To what your megila foretold.
My language is gone, and I’m still not dead,
Your words were wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong in the end.
Confusion has reigned in the troubadour’s lay
The losses were mixed in the violence.
That which he once grasped upon, he had to slay
And plunge into un-bardish silence.
The one with the sideburns predicted the death,
Whereas our seer, just the silence, in stealth.
DENOUEMENT
When finally the eyes were opened wide,
The sun streamed in through windshield and through window;
The radio spewed a memorable tune,
And clarity resumed.
The storm’s electric charge just showed a nether path,
Of which the revelation was a symptom,
Not a goal.
He smiled and cried, and let the limpid clouds return –
Remember now, Platonic!
The lay of the prophetic Oleg
As now the prophetic Oleg is setting forth
To avenge himself upon the wily Khozars,
For their ferocious raids, he has condemned their villages and fields
To fire and sword;
Clad in his Kingstown mail, along with his company,
The prince is riding in the field upon his trusty steed.
Out of the dark forest towards him
Walks an inspired sage,
Who obeys none but Perun,
A herald of the secrets of the future,
Who spent all his years in supplication and divination.
Oleg rode towards the wise old man.
“Tell me oh wizard, favorite of the Gods,
What will happen with me in my life?
How soon to the glee of my neighbors-enemies,
I will be covered by a grave’s soil?
Reveal the entire truth to me, do not fear me:
As a reward you may take any horse.”
“Seers do not fear the mighty rulers,
And they do not need princely gifts;
Their prophetic tongue is truthful and free
And is in close companionship with heaven’s will.
The forthcoming years hide in the darkness;
But I see your doom on your bright brow.
Mark my words today:
Glory is a great happiness to the warrior;
Your name is glorified by victory;
Your shield is on Kingstown’s gates;
Both the waves and the soil obey you;
The enemy is envious of such a wonderful fate.
The treacherous wave of the blue sea
During the hour of fateful poor weather,
And the sling, and the arrow and treacherous dagger
Have mercy upon the victor’s years…
You know no wounds underneath the wrathful mail;
An unseen protector has been given to the mighty.
Your horse does not fear dangerous labors;
When he feels his master’s will,
He at times stands still under the enemies’ arrows,
Or rushes on the battlefield.
Neither cold nor fighting bothers him…
But you will receive your death from your steed.”
Oleg chuckled, but his brow
And gaze were darkened with thought.
In silence, leaning with his hand on his saddle,
He dourly gets off his horse;
With a farewell touch he pets
The steep neck of his loyal companion.
“Farewell, my comrade, my loyal servant,
It is time for us to part;
Rest now, no foot will step
Into your golden stirrup.
Farewell, have comfort and remember me.
And you, friends-lads, take the horse,
Cover him with a wooly coverlet;
And take him by the reigns to my field;
Wash him, feed him with select grain,
And let him drink clear spring water.”
The lads immediately walked away with the steed,
And brought a new one to the prince.
Oleg is feasting with his company
To the merry ringing of glasses.
Their locks are white like the morning snow
Over the fine head of a mountain…
They are remembering former days
And the battles where they fought together…
“Where is my comrade? Uttered Oleg,
Tell me, where is my sprightly steed?
Is he well? Is his cantor still as light?
Is he as wild as playful as before?”
And he is hearing the answer: upon a steep knoll
He has been sleeping for a long the eternal sleep.
The mighty Oleg lowers his head
And thinks “What about the prophecy?
Wizard, you are a mendacious mad old man!
I have contempt for your foretelling!
My steed would have been carrying me still.”
And he wants to see his horse’s bones.
Lo, the mighty Oleg is riding from his court,
Igor with him, along with the old guests,
And they see, upon the knoll, by the shores of the Dnieper,
The noble bones are lying;
They are washed by the rains, and are covered by dust,
And the wind is swaying the tall weeds above them.
The prince quietly stepped on the skull of the steed
And uttered “Sleep, my lonely friend!
Your old master outlived you:
Although his wake is not too far off
You won’t cover the tall weeds with red under a scimitar
And won’t let my dust drink your hot blood!
So this is where my doom was hiding!
The bone threatened me with death!”
Out of the dead head a deadly snake,
Was meanwhile emerging with a hiss;
Like a black ribbon warped itself ‘round the legs
And the suddenly bitten prince cried out.
The shared pitchers frothing and seething,
Upon Oleg's sad wake
Prince Igor and Olga are sitting on the knoll,
The company is feasting by the river bank;
The warriors are remembering former days
And the battles where they fought together.
A note on the phonetic rendition. I suggest the Russians stay away as they will get frustrated with me totally ignoring spelling rules. I tried to enable the reader to pronounce Russian, so putting a G where one would say V kind of defeats the point, although it approximates actual Russian spelling. A capitalized vowel indicates that the syllable with the vowel should be stressed. There are two general exceptions – I did capitalize the beginning of each line. If the first vowel is the one to be stressed then that’s okay. If it is not, the other vowel should be capitalized as well. The other exception is Oleg himself. The stress is on the E not the O, but he is still capitalized.
Pesn’ o veshem Olege
Kak nYne sbirAyetsa vEshy OlEg
Atmsteet nerazUmnym KhozAram,
Ikh syOly ee neevy za bUjnyj nabEg
Abr’Ok on mechAm ee pazhAram.
S druzhInoj svojEj, v tsaregrAdskoj branE,
Knjaz’ pO polju yEdet na vErnom kanE.
Iz tjOmnovo lEsa navstrEchu jemOO
Id’Ot vdakhnovEnnyj kudEsnik,
PakOrnyj PerOOnoo starEEk adnomOO,
ZavEtov grjadOOsheva vEstnik,
V malbAkh ee gadAn’jakh provEshij ves’ vEk.
Ee k mOOdramoo stArtsu pad’Ekhal Oleg.
“SkazhEE m’ne, kudEsnik, lubEEmets bagOv,
Chto sbOOdetsa v zhEEznee sa mnOju?
I skOro l’, na rAdost’ sasEdej-vragOv,
MogEEl’noj zasYpl’us’ zemlEju?
Atrkoj mne vsju prAvdu, ne bOj’sja menjA:
V nagrAdu l’ubOvo voz’mEsh ty konjA.”
“VolkhvY ne bajAtsja magOOchisk vladYk,
A knjAzheskij dar im ne nOOzhen;
PravdEEv I svobOden ikh vEshij jezYk
I svOlej nebEsnoju drOOzhen.
GrjadOOshie gOdy tajAtsa vo mgl’e;
No vEEzhu tvoj zhrEbij na svEtlom chel’E.
ZapOmni zhe nyne ty slOva majO:
VoEEtelju slAva – otrAda;
Pobedoj proslavleno imja tvojo;
Tvoj shEEt na vratAkh TsaregrAda;
Ee vOlny ee sOOsha pakOrny tebE;
ZavEEduet nEdrug stol’ dEEvnoj sud’bE.
EE sEEnevo mOrja obmAnchivij val
V chasY rakavOj nepagOdy,
I prash, I strelA, I lukAvyj kinzhAl
ShadjAt pabedEEtel’a gOdy…
Pod grOznoj bron’Oj ty ne vEdaesh ran;
NezrEEmyj khranEEtel’ mogOOshemu dan.
Tvoj kon’ ne baEEts’a apAsnykh trudOv;
On, chOOja gaspOdskuju vOl’u,
To smEErnyj staEEt pod strelAmi vragOv,
To mchEEstsa pa brAnnomu pOl’u.
I khOlod I sEcha emOO nipach’Om…
No prEEmesh ty smert’ at kan’A svaevO.”
OlEg oosmekhnOOls’a, adnAka chelO
I vzor amrachnEElis’a dOOmaj,
V malchAn’je, rookOj opershEEs’ na sedlO,
S kanjA on slezAet oogrjOOmyj;
Ee vErnava drOOga prashAl’naj rookOj
Ee glAdit ee trEplet pa shEi krutOj.
“PrashAj, moj tavArish’, moj vErnyj sloogA,
RasstAtsa nastAla nam vrEm’a;
TepEr’ adykhAj! Uzh ne stOOpit nagA
V tvajO pozlashjOnnaje strEmja.
PrashAj, ooteshAj’sja, da pOmni menjA.
Vy, Otraki-drOOgi, vaz’mEEte kanjA,
ParkrOjte papOnaj, makhnAtym kavrOm;
V moj lug pad ooztsY atvedEEte;
KupAjte; karmEEte atbOrnym zernOm;
VadOj kl’uchevOju paEETe.”
Ee Otraki tOchas s kan’Om atashlEE,
A kn’Az’u doorgOva kan’A padvelEE.
PirOOjet s druzEEnoju vEshi OlEg
Pri zvOne vesj’Olam stakAna.
Ee kOOdri ikh bEly, kak OOtrennij sneg
Nad slAvnaj glavOju kurgAna…
AnEEi paminAjoot minOOvshije dni
Ee bEEtvy, gd’e vmEste roobEElees’ anEE…
“A gde moj tavArish? PramOlvil OlEg,
SkazhEEte, gde kon’ moj retEEvyj?
ZdarOv li? Vsjo tak zhe l’ legOk Evo beg?
Vsjo tot zhe l’ on bOOjnyj, eegrEEvyj?”
I vnEmlet atvEtoo: na khOlme krutOm
DavnO uzh pochEEl neprobOOdnym on snom.
MagOOchi OlEg galavOjoo panEEk
Ee dOOmajet: “Chto zhe gadAn’e?
KudEsnik, ty lzhEEvyj, bezdOOmnyj starEEk!
PrezrEt’ by tvajO predskazAn’e!
Moj kon’ ee donYne nasEEl by menjA.”
Ee kOhchet uvEEdet’ on kOsti kanjA.
Vot Edet magOOchij OlEg sa dvarA,
S neem EEgar’ ee stArye gOsti,
ee veed’at, na khOlme, oo brEga DneprA,
LezhAt blagarOdnye kOsti;
Eekh mOjoot dazhdEE, zasypAet eekh pyl’
I vEter valnOOet nad nEEmee kavYl’.
Knjaz’ tEEkha na chErep kan’A nastoopEEl
Ee mOlvil: “Spee, droog adeenOkoj!
Tvoj stAryj khaz’Ain teb’A perezhEEl:
Na trEEzne, uzhE nedal’Okojj,
Ne ty pad sekEEraj kavYl’ abagrEEsh
Ee zhArkoju krOv’ju moj prakh napaEEsh!
Tak vot gde taEElas’ pagEEbel’ majA!
Mne smErteejoo kost’ oograzhAla!”
Iz mjOrtvaj glavY grabAvaja zmijA
SheepjA, mEzhdu tem vypalzAla;
Kak chjOrnaja lEnta, vkrug nog abvilAs’
I fskrEEknul vnezApna oozhAlinyj knjAz’
KavshEE kroogavYje, zapEnjas; sheEEp’at
Na trEEzne plachevnaj Olega;
Knjaz’ EEgar’ ee Ol’ga na khOlme sid’At;
DroozhEEna pieerOOjet oo brEga;
BajtsEE paminAjoot minOOvsheeje dnee
Ee bEEtby, gde vmEste roobEElees’ anee.
