Russian Silver Age poetry translation series, 56/?

This one was the longest of the poems that I translated for that Mirra Lokhvitskaya project application. It shows Lokhvitskaya’s religious devotion, and also her mysticism.

In the Noonday Hour

And Adam was tempted at the noonday hour, when the angels leave to worship God’s throne. 
— From the Apocalypse of Moses

Fear, fear the high road in the noonday hour
At that time the angels leave to bow before God’s power.
Spirits vile and human-hating, whose lot earth to roam is,
Turn the faithful’s eyes that hour from fair Heaven’s promise. 

I sat lonely by the window, my head hanging low.
Thunder was approaching and skies breathed a heavy glow.
Like a fiery moon the sun in the red haze was drifting.
Not expected, he stepped to me, silently and swiftly. 

Whispered he, “Come to the road, it’s the noonday hour,
At that time, the angels leave to bow before God’s power.
At that time we spirits free roam without a care
And we mock the truth and life and heaven bright and fair. 

The road lies, a boring stripe, grey and dull and pale,
But I’ll show you wonders there untold in any tale.”
And the stranger led me by the road and to a field,
And I followed and obeyed Satan’s will to yield. 

Clouds of dust curl on the high road to the heavy beat of
An endless chain of captives chained striking with their feet as
On it stretches without end, a snake of human races,
All are grim, all animal, all dull-brute the faces.

The Carthage temple’s gloomy halls await the prisoners’ bringing,
Dancing priestesses, their ecstasies, sweetness of their singing,
And inexorable priests, like gods coldly cruel,
And the fiery maw of the colossus scorching for its fuel. 

“To be priestess of Baal,” he whispered, “is that your desire?
Would you glorify the idol with the drum and lyre?
Burn him myrrh and cinnamon in a censer gleaming
And take pleasure in warm blood and the dying screaming?”

“Monsters, blasphemers,” said I, “get ye all behind!
“I surrender to the mercy of the Lord all-kind!”
And at once the vision vanished. Just the black cloud flows
Circled over, a dread legion of the carrion crows.

Fear, fear the high road at the noonday hour,
At that time the angels leave to bow before God’s power. 
And the devil’s armies then do such strength assemble
That even at heaven’s door faithful souls should tremble!

1899 ; translation by Tamara Vardomskaya, January 2020

Russian Silver Age poetry translation series, 55/?

In January 2020, I applied for a literary translation residency program at the Banff Centre, for a project to translate Mirra Lokhvitskaya’s poetry into English. I argued that this collection would show English readers a fascinating and brilliant woman who communicated her own emotional life as a woman, lover, wife, mother, and devout believer, rather than serving any ideology of masculine priorities, and who had been unjustly scorned and neglected for over a century. 

I did not get in. But then the entire residency program was cancelled because it was 2020, and my own life circumstances changed so much that I would be unlikely to attend a residency in the next few years. I am now adding the new poem translations I created for that application to my own website to share with the world.

This one, I like for its parallels with George Herbert’s “Love Bade Me Welcome.” I am not sure whether Lokhvitskaya was aware of that poem.

***

Saviour, I see Your mansion’s height,

With all Your glory its walls glitter.

But I lack dress proper and fit to

Enter it, so I have no right. 

Giver of light and of belief,

Enlighten this soul’s garb of mine,

And in Your kingdom’s glory shining

Save me from sorrow and from grief.

1893; translation by Tamara Vardomskaya, January 2020.