Evening
Poetry of Anna Akhmatova
Translated by Andrey Kneller
Copyright Kneller, Boston, 2013
All rights reserved
For Len a and Sasha
Table of Contents
Preface to the collection “Evening” by M. Kuzmin
I
Love
In Tsarskoe Selo
I – “Down the alley the horses are led …”
II – “…And there, my double made of marble …”
III – “A swarthy youth once wandered here …”
“The boy there, on the bagpipes playing …”
“Love conquers, deceitful and slow …”
“Hands wrought under the dark veil …”
“In the heart, the memory of the sun fades …”
“High in the sky, the cloud grew grayer …”
“The door ajar …”
“…You want to know how this came to be? …”
Song of the final meeting
“As with a straw, you drink my soul from me …”
“Strange boy, I’ve gone mad at last …”
“My legs are useless at the present …”
II
Deception
I - “This morning’s drunk with sunny weather …”
II - “The wind is stifling and parching …”
III - “Dark blue evening. Winds abate ….”
IV - “I wrote the words that lately …”
“When you’re drunk, you’re so much fun …”
“My husband beat me with the plating …”
“Nothing chains a heart to heart …”
“By the early sunrise seized …”
“A loafer, wandering around …”
“I didn’t lock the door …”
“The threshing barn is stifling and hot …”
“Bury me, bury me, wind! …”
“Not the snake fangs, but the stinging …”
III
To the muse
Alisa
I - “She longs for the forgotten moment …”
II - “It’s late! I’m tired, I’m yawning …”
Masquerade in the park
Evening room
Grey-eyed king
The fisherman
He loved…
“No letter came for me today …”
Inscription on an unfinished portrait
“The smell of dark blue grapes is sweet …”
Imitation of I. F. Annensky
“The park was filled with a light haze …”
“I live, like a cuckoo in a clock …”
Funeral
Garden
Over the water
“Three times she tortured me like this …”
Added to later editions
“To the beam of light I pray…”
Two poems
Reading Hamlet
“And cursing each other with brute…”
First return
“I cried and I even repented…”
“At the new moon…”
“There’s an owl sewn…”
Preface to the collection “Evening”
In Alexandria, there existed a society whose members, for a more acute and intensive enjoyment of life, considered themselves doomed to death. Their every day, every hour was premortem. Although this premortem pastime in the given society boiled down to continuous orgies, it seems to us that the very thought of premortem sharpening of perception and sensitivity of the epidermis and feeling was more than justified. After all, poets especially have to possess a sharp memory of love and wide opened eyes to the whole dear, joyous and sorrowful world, to see their full share of it and drink its every minute for the final time. You yourself know that in the minutes of extreme dangers, when death is near, in one such second we remember so much more than can present itself even in the span of a long hour, when we are in the ordinary state of mind.
And these recollections come neither successive nor integral, but run against one another with a sharp and burning wave. From this wave, now glimmer the long forgotten eyes, now a cloud in the spring sky, now someone’s blue dress, now a voice of a stranger passerby. These trivialities, these specific fragments of our life torment and worry us to a greater extent that we would expect, and, as if unrelated to the matter at hand, lead us accurately and correctly to those minutes, to those places, where we loved, cried, laughed and grieved – where we lived.
It is possible to love things, like collectors love them, or like those people attached to the sensory affection, or in the sense of sentimental souvenirs, but this is an altogether different feeling of connection, incomprehensible and inescapable, revealing itself to us now in sorrowful, now in rejoicing delight, that we reference above. It seems to us that unlike other lovers of things, Anna Akhmatova possesses an ability to understand and love things exactly in their incomprehensible connection to the experienced minutes. She often accurately and specifically mentions some object (a glove on the table, a cloud like a squirrel pelt in the sky, yellow light in the bedroom, a three-cornered hat in the park of Tsarskoe Selo), appearing to have no relationship to the whole poem, left behind and forgotten, but precisely this mention makes the prick more tangible, the poison we feel more sweet. Had this squirrel pelt been omitted, and the whole poem, perhaps, would not have such a fragile poignancy that it has.
We don’t want to say that things mentioned by the author have such a special meaning every time: often they are no more than sentimental souvenirs or feelings transferred from a person onto things that belong to her. We say this not in reproach of the young poet, because it is already no small feat – to compel the reader to dream, and cry, and become angry together with you, even by the means of sentimental emotionality, - but especially value that first understanding of the sharp and incomprehensible meaning of things that we do not encounter very often. And it seems to us that Anna Akhmatova has that heightened perceptibility, to which aspired the doomed to death members of the society.
By this we do not wish to say that her ideas and mood always applied to death, but their intensity and sharpness is such. Let us conclude that she does not belong to the poets who are particularly merry, but to those who are always stinging.
It seems to us that she is alien to mannerism, which, if she has one, is somewhat homogenous with the mannerism of Laforgue, meaning a capricious child who is accustomed to always being heard and being admired. Among the very young poets, of course, there are others who strive for the delicate and, we would say, fragile poetry, but at the time, when some are searching for it in description of objects conventionally considered delicate: Sevres cups, fireplaces, harlequins, knights and madonnas (Ehrenburg), others in unusually refined analysis of deliberately-fanciful experiences (Mandelshtam), the third kind in ironic descriptions of intimate, somewhat demonstratively-everyday life (Marina Tsvetaeva), - it seems to us, that the poetry of Anna Akhmatova makes a sharp and fragile impression because its own perceptions are such, from herself the poet only adds a Lafoguesque, pleasant to our taste, mannerism.
Vyacheslav Ivanov once expressed the thought that original poets before anything else acquire their own manner, which subsequently they renounce for the sake of their “face,” which in turn is brought as sacrifice to their style. From the fact that in the given situation the poet already has an established mannerism, it is easy to conclude that this poet is original and that a new female voice, different from other and audible, despite the apparent, as if desired by its possessor, weakness of tone, has joined the general chorus of Russian poets.
We are not writing a critique, and our role is a rather mi
nor one: only to announce the name and somehow present the newly arrived. We can hint slightly at her origins, indicate certain signs and voice our conjectures, - which is what we are doing. And thus, ladies and gentlemen, she comes towards us, new and young, but having all the credentials necessary for becoming a real poet. And her name is – Anna Akhmatova.
1912
M. Kuzmin
I
Любовь
То змейкой, свернувшись клубком,
У самого сердца колдует,
То целые дни голубком
На белом окошке воркует,
То в инее ярком блеснёт,
Почудится в дреме левкоя...
Но верно и тайно ведёт
От радости и от покоя.
Умеет так сладко рыдать
В молитве тоскующей скрипки,
И страшно её угадать
В ещё незнакомой улыбке.
1911
Love
First as a serpent, it’ll cast its spell
Next to your heart, curled up.
Then it’ll come as a dove as well,
Cooing for days nonstop.
In the frost it’ll show itself curtly
Or in the drowsing field of carnations…
To escort you covertly and firmly
Away from all rest and elation.
In the prayer of a violin yearning,
So sweetly it’ll sob for a while,
And how frightening it is to discern it
In a yet unfamiliar smile.
1911
В Царском Селе
I
По аллее проводят лошадок
Длинны волны расчесанных грив.
О, пленительный город загадок,
Я печальна, тебя полюбив.
Странно вспомнить: душа тосковала,
Задыхалась в предсмертном бреду,
А теперь я игрушечной стала,
Как мой розовый друг какаду.
Грудь предчувствием боли не сжата,
Если хочешь, в глаза погляди.
Не люблю только час пред закатом,
Ветер с моря и слово «уйди».
22 февраля 1911
Царское Село
In Tsarskoe Selo
I
Down the alley the horses are led,
Their long wavy manes - all combed out,
A place full of riddles, how I lament,
Having fallen in love with this town.
It’s strange to recall: the soul pined for joy,
Only gasping for breath to pull through,
And now I’ve become a plaything, a toy,
Like my rose-colored friend cockatoo.
No hint of pain can now make me cower,
Look in my eyes and you’ll see,
I dislike only the pre-sunset hour,
The word “leave” and wind from the sea.
February 22, 1911
Tsarskoe Selo
II
…А там мой мраморный двойник,
Поверженный под старым клёном,
Озёрным водам отдал лик,
Внимает шорохам зелёным.
И моют светлые дожди
Его запекшуюся рану…
Холодный, белый, подожди,
Я тоже мраморною стану.
1911
II
…And there, my double made of marble
Lies by the ancient maple tree,
His face onto the lake imparted,
He hears the rustling greenery.
Bright showers wash in a cascade
The clotted wound upon his torso…
O, cold one, white one, only wait
And I will turn to marble also.
1911
III
Смуглый отрок бродил по аллеям,
У озёрных грустил берегов,
И столетие мы лелеем
Еле слышный шелест шагов.
Иглы сосен густо и колко
Устилают низкие пни…
Здесь лежала его треуголка
И растрепанный том Парни.
24 февраля 1911
Царское Село
III
A swarthy youth once wandered here,
By the shores of the lake he sighed
And for a century now we revere
A barely audible rustling stride.
Pine needles’ dense and bristly mat
Covers the stumps of the trees…
Here lay his old three-cornered hat
And a worn, tattered book by Parny.
February 24, 1911
Tsarskoe Selo
***
И мальчик, что играет на волынке,
И девочка, что свой плетет венок,
И две в лесу скреcтившихся тропинки,
И в дальнем поле дальний огонек,—
Я вижу все. Я все запоминаю,
Любовно-кротко в сердце берегу.
Лишь одного я никогда не знаю
И даже вспомнить больше не могу.
Я не прошу ни мудрости, ни силы.
О, только дайте греться у огня!
Мне холодно! Крылатый иль бескрылый,
Веселый бог не посетит меня.
30 ноября 1911
Царское Село
***
The boy there on the bagpipes playing,
The girl who weaves herself a wreath,
Two forest paths that cross while straying,
A distant fire in the fields beneath -
I see all. I remember it and stow
Deep in my heart, affectionately gentle.
There’s one thing only that I never know
And cannot even tenuously remember.
I do not ask for wisdom or for might.
Only a bit of fire’s warmth! I’m cold!
Winged or wingless, in the day or night,
The merry god won’t visit me at all.
November 30, 1911
Tsarskoe Selo
***
Любовь покоряет обманно,
Напевом простым, неискусным.
Еще так недавно-странно
Ты не был седым и грустным.
И когда она улыбалась
В садах твоих, в доме, в поле
Повсюду тебе казалось,
Что вольный ты и на воле.
Был светел ты, взятый ею
И пивший ее отравы.
Ведь звезды были крупнее,
Ведь пахли иначе травы,
Осенние травы.
Осень 1911
Царское Село
***
Love conquers, deceitful and slow,
With a soft amateurish refrain.
So strange to think – not long ago
You weren’t
dejected and gray.
In the garden, at home, in the field,
Whenever she flashed her smile,
Wherever you were, you believed
You were free and out in the wild.
Once taken by her, you glowed
And you drank her poisons, content.
Because all the stars seemed to grow
And fields had a different scent,
Autumn fields.
Autumn 1911
Tsarskoe Selo
***
Сжала руки под тёмной вуалью...
"Отчего ты сегодня бледна?"
- Оттого, что я терпкой печалью
Напоила его допьяна.
Как забуду? Он вышел, шатаясь,
Искривился мучительно рот...
Я сбежала, перил не касаясь,
Я бежала за ним до ворот.
Задыхаясь, я крикнула: "Шутка
Всё, что было. Уйдешь, я умру."
Улыбнулся спокойно и жутко
И сказал мне: "Не стой на ветру."
1911
***
Hands wrought under the dark veil…
“What is it that makes you so pale and faint?”
- I’m afraid that I made him drunk with the ale
Of bitter anguish and torturous pain.
Evening: Poetry of Anna Akhmatova Page 1