“Here!
Here it is!
Help me carry my load!”
When they saw
such a bulk sobbing and wailing -
through snow
and through mud
running,
in fright,
all the ladies
quickly
scurried away from me:
“That’s too much…
we just wanted a tango tonight.”
I can do it no more -
and yet, I carry this burden.
I want to throw it away -
but I won’t,
that’s for certain!
I walked on, enduring the pain in my chest.
My ribcage was trembling under the stress.
Ты
Пришла —
деловито,
за рыком,
за ростом,
взглянув,
разглядела просто мальчика.
Взяла,
отобрала сердце
и просто
пошла играть —
как девочка мячиком.
И каждая —
чудо будто видится —
где дама вкопалась,
а где девица.
«Такого любить?
Да этакий ринется!
Должно, укротительница.
Должно, из зверинца!»
А я ликую.
Нет его —
ига!
От радости себя не помня,
скакал,
индейцем свадебным прыгал,
так было весело,
было легко мне.
You
You came -
attracted
by my roar
and my height,
but looked closer
and saw there, merely a boy.
You
took my heart away,
like it was all right,
and went on playing, -
just a girl with her toy.
And everyone
stood there, rather bewildered.
Ladies and maidens
were gaping at you.
“Love such a fellow?
Why, one day, he’ll kill you!
She must be a tamer.
Straight out of the zoo!”
But I felt unyoked,
triumphant
and proud!
and I was oblivious in my delight!
Like a bride-happy Indian,
I leapt all about.
I felt so elated,
so elated and light.
Невозможно
Один не смогу —
не снесу рояля
(тем более —
несгораемый шкаф).
А если не шкаф,
не рояль,
то я ли
сердце снес бы, обратно взяв.
Банкиры знают:
«Богаты без края мы.
Карманов не хватит —
кладем в несгораемый».
Любовь
в тебя —
богатством в железо —
запрятал,
хожу
и радуюсь Крезом.
И разве,
если захочется очень,
улыбку возьму,
пол-улыбки
и мельче,
с другими кутя,
протрачу в полночи
рублей пятнадцать лирической мелочи.
Impossible
I can’t lift the grand piano
all on my own,
(the steel safe
is unliftable too)
But if not the safe
or piano,
alone,
how could I carry my heart back from you?
Bankers know:
“In money, we bathe.
If the pockets are full -
place it all in the safe.”
I’ve hid
all my love
into you
like riches in steel
and walked on, like Croesus,57
but wealthier still.
And,
if desire really demands it,
I’ll take out a smile
or whatever
the cost,
and party all night
with all of my friends there
spending some fifteen lyrics at most.
Так и со мной
Флоты — и то стекаются в гавани.
Поезд — и то к вокзалу гонит.
Ну а меня к тебе и подавней —
я же люблю!—
тянет и клонит.
Скупой спускается пушкинский рыцарь
подвалом своим любоваться и рыться.
Так я
к тебе возвращаюсь, любимая.
Мое это сердце,
любуюсь моим я.
Домой возвращаетесь радостно.
Грязь вы
с себя соскребаете, бреясь и моясь.
Так я
к тебе возвращаюсь,—
разве,
к тебе идя,
не иду домой я?!
Земных принимает земное лоно.
К конечной мы возвращаемся цели.
Так я
к тебе
тянусь неуклонно,
еле расстались,
развиделись еле.
It's the same with me
Fleets! Even fleets rush to the port.
The train - even the train speeds to the station.
But I’m being pulled to you all the more
since I love you! -
without reservations.
Pushkin’s knight58 goes down into his vault
to marvel and joyfully gape at it all.
It is thus,
I return to you,
my beloved.
To stare at my heart,
for I know that you’ll have it.
When people come home,
they feel happy and free
to wash the dirt off their hands and shave.
Don’t you know
it’s exactly the same
with me -
when returning to you,
I come home, all the same!
The earthy man is laid into earth.
In the end, we have to return to our ends.
Thus I
reach back for you with all of my verve,
just as soon as we part,
separating our hands.
Вывод
Не смоют любовь
ни ссоры,
ни вёрсты.
Продумана,
выверена,
проверена.
Подъемля торжественно стих строкопёрстый,
клянусь —
люблю
неизменно и верно!
1922
Outcome
Neither miles
nor quarrels
can make love perish.
Thought out
and tested
all t
hrough.
Raising the sheet of verses,
my cherished, -
I swear that my love is both,
constant and true!
1922
Notes
1. Neva: A river flowing through St. Petersburg, connecting Lake Ladoga with the Gulf of Finland, an inlet of the Baltic Sea.
2. Kuznetsky Most: one of Moscow’s most fashionable streets.
3. A. Kruchenykh: (1886-1970) a contemporary poet of Vladimir Mayakovsky, one of the leaders of the futurism movement.
4. “…take my own life…”: Vladimir Mayakovsky did take his own life when he shot himself in his Moscow apartment on April 14, 1930.
5. Render Unto God: See Matt. 22:15-22; Mark 12:13-17; or Luke 20:20-26
6. Goliath: in the Bible, a giant of Gath, who challenged the Israelites.
7. H. Heine: (1797-1856), a German romantic poet.
8. Oka: A river in the western Russia.
9. Nice: a city on the French Riviera, a popular tourist destination, famous for its flower market.
10. Maria: refers to a girl that Vladimir Mayakovsky had met while he was in Odessa. The “Maria” in Part IV is quite another person.
11. Take it: A title of one of Mayakovsky’s poems.
12. La Gioconda: Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa”, was stolen from the Louvre in 1911.
13. Lusitania: a British liner, sunk off the Irish coast by a German submarine on May 7, 1915. The incident contributed largely to the rise of American sentiment for the entry of the United States into World War I.
14. Babel: in the Bible, place where Noah's descendants (who spoke one language) tried to build a tower reaching up to heaven to make a name for themselves. For this presumption the speech of the builders was confused, thus ending the project.
15. Krupps: the German munitions-makers.
16. Mephistopheles: The name of the devil in Faust legend.
17. Golden-mouthed: This expression was used to describe articulate and expressive preachers in the Russian Orthodox Church.
18. Zarathustra: c.628 BC-c.551 BC, religious teacher and prophet of ancient Persia, founder of Zoroastrianism.
19. “This led to my Golgotha in the auditoriums…” Here, Mayakovsky alludes to his travels around Russian at the end of the year 1913, when his presentations were harshly criticized and bashed by the press.
20. His precursor: An allusion to St. John the Baptist.
21. D. Burlyuk: (1887-1967) A painter, a poet, one of the leaders of the futurist movement and a close friend of Vladimir Mayakovsky. Burlyuk was blind in one eye.
22. “Good!”: title of one of Mayakovsky’s poems.
23. Yellow sweater: Mayakovsky’s famous futurist garb.
24. “Drink Cocoa -- Van Houten!” According to the story that was covered by the media at the time, before his execution, a man yelled out the commercial slogan, “Drink Cocoa- Van Houten!” For this advertisement, the company Van Houten promised a large sum of money to support the man’s family.
25. I. Severyanin: (1887-1941) A contemporary poet of Mayakovsky, considered cheap and superfluous by his colleagues.
26. G. de Galliffet: (1830-1909) A French General, whose cruel suppression of the Commune of Paris in 1871 won him a reputation as a strong man and the enduring enmity of the political left.
27. Rothschild: A famous banking family, known for their wealth.
28. Mamai: Khan of the Golden Horde at the end of the fourteenth century, during the Tartar domination of Russia. In reality, it wasn’t Mamai, but the warlords of Jenghiz Khan era, who practiced the ritual of feasting while sitting on wooden boards placed on the bodies of the prisoners.
29. E. Azef: (1869-1918) The notorious agent provocateur who played a double game, engineering the assignations of imperial ministers and betraying revolutionaries to the czarist police.
30. Barabbas: A bandit held in jail at the time of Jesus' arrest. Pontius Pilate, who, according to the Gospels, annually released a prisoner at Passover, offered to release Jesus, but the people demanded his death and Barabbas' delivery.
31. Thirteenth Apostle: The original title of the poem, rejected by the czarist censors.
32. Maria: A Moscow painter and a writer with whom Mayakovsky was involved at the time.
33. Presnya: A street (and a district) where Mayakovsky lived.
34. Tiana: A character in the poem by I. Severyanin.
35. Salome: In the New Testament, she is the daughter of Herod Philip and Herodias, who danced to obtain the head of John the Baptist.
36. Ki-ka-pu: An exotic dance that was popular at the Russian night clubs at the time.
37. “All the torture of Sevres…”: Vases from the well known factory in Sevre, France.
38. E. T. A. Hoffmann: (1776-1822) A German writer, composer, and painter. He is well known for his short stories in which supernatural characters reveal people's hidden secrets.
39. Nevsky Prospect: A busy avenue in the heart of St. Petersburg.
40. On a crag: Here, Vladimir Mayakovsky compares himself to Prometheus, who was punished by Zeus for
bestowing the secret element of fire on mortals and chained to a mountain.
41. Bacchus: Vladimir Mayakovsky uses the Greek God of Wine and Drinking to personify the “drunken battle.”
42. Strelka: An island resort near St. Petersburg, on the Gulf of Finland. Sokol’niki: A public park in Moscow.
43. St. Helena: an island in the Mediterranean Sea, where Napoleon was detained after the war.
44. Lily: Here, Vladimir Mayakovsky refers to Lily Brik. (see the poem “Lilichka!” on page 10)
45. Pyrrhus: According a Greek legend, Pyrrhus was a hero of the Trojan War. The expression “victory of Pyrrhus” means “a costly victory.”
46. C. Byalik: (1873-1934) a Hebrew poet, whose works often dealt with ancient Jewish lore.
47. King Albert: (1875-1934)King Albert I of Belgium during World War I, when Belgium was occupied by the Germans.
48. Rion: a river in Georgia near the village of Baghdadi, Mayakovsky’s birthplace.
49. Butyrkis: The Butyrki jail in Moscow, where Mayakovsky served a sentence from 1909-1910 for organizing worker movements.
50. Cell 103: The prison cell where Mayakovsky served his sentence.
51. D. I. Ilovayskiy: (1832-1920) the author of Russian history textbooks.
52. Frederick Barbarossa: (1123-90), Holy Roman emperor and king of Germany (1152-90), king of Italy (1155-90), and as Frederick III, duke of Swabia (1147-52, 1167-68). The name literally means “red-bearded.”
53. N. A Dobrolubov: (1836-1861) radical Russian utilitarian critic who rejected traditional and Romantic literature. The name literally means “the lover of good.”
54. Sadovaya: several boulevards in Moscow that come together to form a circle.
55. Strasnaya Square: A square in Moscow, named after the Monastery of Christ’s Passion.
56. Guy de Maupassant: (1850-1893), French novelist and short-story writer. Mayakovsky makes a reference to “An Idyll,” a short story, in which a mother breastfeeds a hungry peasant boy.
57. Croesus: reigned about 560-546 BC, last king of Lydia, an ancient country of Asia Minor, well-known for his wealth.
58. Pushkin’s Knight: refers to A. S. Pushkin’s play, “The Covetous Knight.”
Vladimir Mayakovsky (July 19, 1893 - April 14, 1930) is one of the most recognized and celebrated poets of the Russian canon. One of the leaders of the Russian Futurism movement, which sought to capture the wonder of the fast-paced modern world and renounced the static art of the past, Mayakovsky completely bent the boundaries of language and introduced an entirely different style of poetry. His irregular line-breaks, his use of internal rhyme, his control of meter and his sense of rhythm combined together to form his unique style. His imagery is overflowing with allusions, metaphors and hyperboles. His major works, "A Cloud in Trousers," "Backbone Flute," and "I Love," sparkle with wit, wisdom and originality. These sa
me qualities that make his work unforgettable, also make it incredibly difficult to translate and for this reason his work remains largely unknown in the west.
Thank you for taking the time to read my work. Translation is a labor of love. Over time, what I’ve learned is that you often get back what you put into it. I enjoy every minute of it as it allows me to not only delve deeper into the poetry I love, but to also share this love with you, my readers.
My hope is that this book will lead you to explore my other books of Russian poetry translations. For a full-list of my books, see the following page.
If you enjoyed my work and have a moment to spare, I would really appreciate a short review. Your help in spreading the word is gratefully received.
Also, I would like to invite you to visit my new website dedicated to Russian poetry translations: Discernible Sound. As always don’t hesitate to contact me with any questions and/or comments.
Sincerely,
Andrey Kneller
Also by Andrey Kneller:
Evening: Poetry of Anna Akhmatova
Rosary: Poetry of Anna Akhmatova
White Flock: Poetry of Anna Akhmatova
Final Meeting: Selected Poetry of Anna Akhmatova
Wondrous Moment: Selected Poetry of Alexander Pushkin
My Poems: Selected Poetry of Marina Tsvetaeva
Backbone Flute Page 9