[As this volume goes to press, a new and substantial translation of Baratynsky’s poems and essays by Rawley Grau is announced from Ugly Duckling Presse, New York, under the title A Science not for the Earth. Clearly, Baratynsky’s moment has arrived for the English-speaking world.]
Half-light (Сумерки), which is given here in its entirety, seems to me the best introduction to Baratynsky’s verse, containing a full range of his different forms (except for narrative verse) and styles. As noted above, he presented it as a coherent book of lyric verse – a novelty in Russia in 1842. The title, which might also be translated as ‘Twilight’ or ‘Dusk’ (though the Russian word could also refer to the period before dawn) can be read as a reference to the poet’s own position, forgotten and out of fashion. Equally, it evokes the state of Russian poetry after the setting of its sun (Pushkin’s death in a duel, which is alluded to indirectly in the closing stanzas of ‘Autumn’, itself a response to Pushkin’s poem of the same name), and more generally the gloomy situation of Russia under the repressive rule of Nicholas I. This central collection is followed here by a selection of Baratynsky’s other poems; most of these come from the period 1822-1833, but the last two are from the last years of his life.
Jill Higgs’s volume of translations from Baratynsky carries this declaration of intention: ‘to follow the metrical and rhyme schemes as closely as possible, believing that a poet’s message resides in the sound and cadence of his verse as well as in the individual words.’ It’s impossible not to agree with a belief in the significance of sound in poetry (as indeed in all writing), but one can question whether it need oblige one to imitate as faithfully as possible the prosody of the original – as Brodsky famously believed was the duty of the translator of poetry. Metre and rhyme have a specific function within a given poetic tradition that may well not translate into a different culture – witness the fate of the Homeric hexameter in English. It’s a pity that so many theorists of translation, from Schleiermacher to Nabokov or Brodsky, have felt the need – sometimes in defence of their own practice – to proclaim the one true method of translation.
The translations offered here are ‘close’ rather than ‘free’. I have tried to convey the details of Baratynsky’s meaning, the meaning his poems had for his contemporaries. But I haven’t attempted a period rendering, either in vocabulary or in syntax; I have avoided poetic inversions, for instance, and the constructions and expressions used here all seem to me to be readily usable in our own time, though they may in some cases also belong to Baratynsky’s British contemporaries. I don’t, of course, follow Baratynsky word for word, nor indeed line for line, though there are generally the same number of lines here as in the originals. In some cases, the metre is close to that of the original, even if the alternation of masculine and feminine endings is sometimes sacrificed. Elsewhere, the prosody has been changed, though never drastically and always with the intention of producing the same kind of effect – I have tried to echo what I hear (subjectively, no doubt) as the poet’s voice rather than the precise form that embodies it. For instance, the alternation of rhymed ‘strophe’ and unrhymed ‘antistrophe’ in ‘The Last Poet’ is mine rather than Baratynsky’s; he sets the rhymed iambic pentameters of the odd stanzas against the equally rhymed trochaic tetrameters of the even ones.
In all cases, though, I have aimed for a definite, if sometimes irregularly executed, metrical structure; this seems to me an essential constituent in the poised clarity which ‘contains’ Baratynsky’s disturbing vision. Rhyme is more problematic; its importance for Baratynsky is evident in the poem he devotes to it (rhyme as a consolation for lost harmony), and all the poems of Half-light, with the exception of three short hexameter pieces, are fully rhymed. Like almost all translators of poetry today, I baulk at the idea of reflecting all the regular rhymes of the Russian, but have aimed to preserve the rhyming principle with a variety of slant rhymes, alliterations, assonances and the like.
Baratynsky occupies a special place in Russian literature, and I think he may be an acquired taste – I have certainly grown increasingly attached to his writing as I have translated it over the years. He was a contemporary of the Romantics, and one whose characteristic themes are typical of the period, but who avoided the self-indulgence of much Romanticism, looking back rather to the strong impersonality of the eighteenth-century ode. The poems of Half-light are of different kinds, from a playful compaint in unrhymed hexameters to a troublesome fly (‘A Grumble’) to the elaborate stanzas of the classical odes ‘To Autumn’ and ‘The Last Poet’. Only rarely do they respond openly to particular situations – virtually no annotation is needed. They are lyrics which express, directly or indirectly, personal reactions, emotions, and ideas, but the tone is frequently impersonal, and the poems confront profound issues of human psychology and historical destiny, often contrasting nineteenth-century scientific rationalism with the lost wholeness of an earlier world.
Pushkin famously said of Baratynsky: ‘He is an exception among us, because he thinks’, and this has given rise to the standard view of Baratynsky as a ‘philosopher poet’. He thought, of course, as did Pushkin and all his contemporaries, but he was not a devotee of ‘sovereign reason’. On the contrary, as a poem like ‘Thought, yet more thought’ makes painfully clear, he saw rational thinking as a curse rather than an achievement. The reader does well to bear in mind the words of one of his most eloquent modern champions, the poet and critic Ilya Kutik: ‘As a poet Baratynsky was neither a philosopher nor a thinker. He was a fearless, dispassionate spectator of himself and his actions, seen in an epic light.’
Peter France
СУМЕРКИ
HALF-LIGHT
КНЯЗЮ ПЕТРУ АНДРЕЕВИЧУ ВЯЗЕМСКОМУ
Как жизни общие призывы,
Как увлеченья суеты,
Понятны вам страстей порывы
И обаяния мечты;
Понятны вам все дуновенья,
Которым в море бытия
Послушна наша ладия.
Вам приношу я песнопенья,
Где отразилась жизнь моя,
Исполнена тоски глубокой,
Противоречий, слепоты,
И между тем любви высокой,
Любви добра и красоты.
Счастливый сын уединенья,
Где сердца ветреные сны
И мысли праздные стремленья
Разумно мной усыплены;
Где, другу мира и свободы,
Ни до фортуны, ни до моды,
Ни до молвы мне нужды нет;
Где я простил безумству, злобе
И позабыл, как бы во гробе,
Но добровольно, шумный свет, –
Еще порою покидаю
Я Лету, созданную мной,
И степи мира облетаю
С тоскою жаркой и живой.
Ищу я вас; гляжу: что с вами?
Куда вы брошены судьбами,
Вы, озарявшие меня
И дружбы кроткими лучами
И светом высшего огня?
Что вам дарует провиденье?
Чем испытует небо вас?
И возношу молящий глас:
Да длится ваше упоенье,
Да скоро минет скорбный час!
Звезда разрозненной плеяды!
Так из глуши моей стремлю
Я к вам заботливые взгляды,
Вам высшей благости молю,
От вас отвлечь судьбы суровой
Удары грозные хочу,
Хотя вам прозою почтовой
Лениво дань мою плачу.
TO PRINCE PYOTR ANDREEVICH VYAZEMSKY
You know not just the calls to action
and the petty frets that fill our days,
but equally the surge of passion,
and all the blandishments of dream;
you understand the wayward winds
that on the ocean of existence
can beach our vessel on the sands.
To you I give this book of verses –
it bears the imprint of my life,
filled as it is with melancholy,
blind compulsions and inward strife,
but also with an exalted love
for all that is beautiful and good.
The happy child of solitude,
where with the soothing voice of reason
I calm the heart’s unsteady dreams
and the mind’s idle agitation;
where, as a friend of peace and freedom,
I have no time for wealth and fame;
where I forgive unreason, anger,
and willingly, a distant stranger,
forget the world’s discordant games, –
I still from time to time abandon
the Lethe I have made, and I
fly over the world’s barren garden
with burning longing and desire.
I search for you, to know your fortune:
where can destiny have brought you,
you who once lit my youthful way
with friendship’s unassuming candle
and with a high poetic flame?
What gifts has providence reserved you?
How has heaven tried your heart?
I raise my voice in supplication:
Long may your inward fire burn brightly!
Soon may your grieving time be past!
Star of our scattered constellation!
Out from my hermitage I gaze
with anxious, fond anticipation,
and wish you bright, unclouded days,
and pray kind heaven to protect you
from the savage blows of sullen fate,
though when it comes to writing letters,
I lazily procrastinate.
The poet Pyotr Andreevich Vyazemsky (1792-1878) was a member of an ancient noble family and a leading figure in the culture of Russia’s ’Golden Age’.
ПОСЛЕДНИЙ ПОЭТ
Век шествует путем своим железным,
В сердцах корысть, и общая мечта
Час от часу насущным и полезным
Отчетливей, бесстыдней занята.
Исчезнули при свете просвещенья
Поэзии ребяческие сны,
И не о ней хлопочут поколенья,
Промышленным заботам преданы.
Для ликующей свободы
Вновь Эллада ожила,
Собрала свои народы
И столицы подняла;
В ней опять цветут науки,
Носит понт торговли груз,
Но не слышны лиры звуки
В первобытном рае муз!
Блестит зима дряхлеющего мира,
Блестит! Суров и бледен человек;
Но зелены в отечестве Омира
Холмы, леса, брега лазурных рек.
Цветет Парнас! пред ним, как в оны годы,
Кастальский ключ живой струею бьет;
Нежданный сын последних сил природы –
Возник Поэт: идет он и поет.
Воспевает, простодушный,
Он любовь и красоту
И науки, им ослушной,
Пустоту и суету:
Мимолетные страданья
Легкомыслием целя,
Лучше, смертный, в дни незнанья
Радость чувствует земля.
Поклонникам Урании холодной
Поет, увы! он благодать страстей;
Как пажити Эол бурнопогодный,
Плодотворят они сердца людей;
Живительным дыханием развита,
Фантазия подъемлется от них,
Как некогда возникла Афродита
Из пенистой пучины вод морских.
И зачем не предадимся
Снам улыбчивым своим?
Бодрым сердцем покоримся
Думам робким, а не им!
Верьте сладким убежденьям
Вас ласкающих очес
И отрадным откровеньям
Сострадательных небес!
Суровый смех ему ответом; персты
Он на струнах своих остановил,
Сомкнул уста вещать полуотверсты,
Но гордыя главы не преклонил:
Стопы свои он в мыслях направляет
В немую глушь, в безлюдный край; но свет
Уж праздного вертепа не являет,
И на земле уединенья нет!
Человеку непокорно
Море синее одно,
И свободно, и просторно,
И приветливо оно;
И лица не изменило
С дня, в который Аполлон
Поднял вечное светило
В первый раз на небосклон.
Оно шумит перед скалой Левкада.
На ней певец, мятежной думы полн,
Стоит… в очах блеснула вдруг отрада:
Сия скала… тень Сафо!… песни волн…
Где погребла любовница Фаона
Отверженной любви несчастный жар,
Там погребет питомец Аполлона
Свои мечты, свой бесполезный дар!
И по-прежнему блистает
Хладной роскошию свет;
Серебрит и позлащает
Свой безжизненный скелет;
Но в смущение приводит
Человека вал морской,
И от шумных вод отходит
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Он с тоскующей душой!
THE LAST POET
It strides along its iron track, our century:
the people’s dream, as hearts succumb to greed,
with every hour more clearly, shamelessly
is swallowed in utility and need.
Enlightenment with her clarity dispels
the childish dreams by which the poet lives,
and generations, thirsting after wealth,
care nothing for the gifts the poet gives.
Hellas has sprung again,
jubilant in her freedom,
gathers her people together,
raises up cities;
knowledge flowers afresh,
rich cargoes ride the Aegean,
but the lyre lies low, unheard
in the paradise of the muses.
It shines, the winter of the decrepit world –
it shines! Humanity looks pale and grim,
but in the land of Homer green is unfurled
on hills and woods and banks of azure streams.
Parnassus flowers; as once upon a time,
Castalia’s water gushes at its base;
unlooked-for son of nature in decline,
the poet has risen – and lifts up his voice.
Simple-hearted he sings
songs of love and of beauty,
sings how science scorns them
in her empty fretting:
with insouciance healing
ephemeral suffering,
earth knows joy more fully
in the days of unknowing.
Half-light and Other Poems Page 2