Tag: silver age poetry translations

“Oh, tiles that ring the air…” – A. Lozina-Lozinsky

Russian Silver Age poetry translation series, 46/?
Alexei Lozina-Lozinsky (lo-ZEEN-uh-lo-ZEEN-ski) (1886-1916) was a man with a deeply unfortunate life. The critic M. L. Gasparov described him as “someone who was less well-remembered by his contemporaries for his poetry than for his likeness and for his death, and was cleanly forgotten by their descendants. He worked out his original style, with its grim-disjoined bravado, only in the last years of his short life.”
 
Descended from the nobility of the Podolsky governorate, Alexei’s full legal surname was not just double-barrelled but quadruple-barrelled: Lubich-Yarmolovich-Lozina-Lozinsky. His mother died of typhus when he was two. At the age of nineteen, he lost his leg: while hunting, he carelessly tossed his loaded gun into a boat, and it discharged into his knee, destroying it and  leading to amputation. He was a student rebel who took part in revolutionary movements and was arrested three times. But he also struggled with depression, and twice attempted suicide by shooting himself in the chest.
 
His third suicide attempt, on November 5, 1916, was successful. He gave himself a fatal dose of morphine, and, accompanied by a volume of Paul Verlaine’s poetry, he took notes on his sensations until the very end. He was not yet thirty years old.
 
Probably due to the efforts of his brother Vladimir, a high-ranking priest (protoiereus) in the Russian Orthodox Church, who would later be canonized as a saint, he did receive a Christian burial. 
 
This short poem, written less than a year before his death, speaks of his depression, but also of the power of music. I took the liberty of using an eye-rhyme rather than a true rhyme in the last verse. 
* * *
Oh, tiles that ring the air
In that long moonlit hall!
I lay down dying there,
In a silent broken fall,
Severe so were the sounds
The darkened organ played,
So many the old wounds
I had as there I lay.
Alexei Lozina-Lozinsky, December 1915; translation by Tamara Vardomskaya, September 9, 2019.
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“We proudly despise those around…” – V. Bryusov

Russian Silver Age poetry translation series, 45/?
This is a short poem by Valery Bryusov, not included in any collection. I find the meter of the original a little off: seemingly amphibrachic trimeter, it faults that meter in the second, sixth and seventh lines. I have no idea whether this was intentional (as Bryusov was a good enough poet to be aware of it) or if this was a hastily written poem Bryusov meant to polish later, and did not.
 
I like its observations on human nature, though.
***
We proudly despise those around,
Our wishes are law on our side,
And we suffer torment without bound,
But love our torment in our pride
And if sacred urges beguile
Our heart to take part in their ploy,
We’re boundlessly joyful a while
And we feel ashamed of this joy.
Valery Bryusov, August 13, 1897; translation by Tamara Vardomskaya, September 9, 2019.
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Sea Roses – K. Balmont

Russian Silver Age poetry translation series, 44/?

I have just been picking poems by browsing through the Wikisource list of eight-line Russian poems, and stopping at ones that I both like and see a way into translating. (I admit that this is a creative outlet I can do in downtime at work when I am bored.) However, people will doubtless point out to me that the this is the third one in a row to mention or feature storms, on sea or land, and my subconscious is trying to tell me something.

I am not sure what. I do like Konstantin Balmont a lot, and I liked the central image of this poem.

Sea Roses

Sea roses are the whitest roses.
When gales toss the sea, they bloom
When furious breakers in opposing
Torture the turquoise with their boom

And beat and fling it up in rumbling,
Upset it with the thunder’s roars,
And with dead laughter, for a flash they bring
The splendour of a full white rose.

Konstantin Balmont, 1908; translation by Tamara Vardomskaya, September 6, 2019

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“Thunder coming…” – M. Lokhvitskaya

Russian Silver Age poetry translation series, 43/?

I was looking through short poems on Wikisource today, and stumbled upon this one by Mirra Lokhvitskaya, whom I had translated before. (https://vardomskaya.com/2016/08/04/some-wait-for-joy-some-seek-ovations-m-lokhvitskaya/ ) Again, this is quick and sensual, but I love the details she describes, that a hundred and twenty years later still occur before summer storms.

***

Thunder coming soon! I know it
In the poplars’ quivering tight,
In the alleys’ stifling gloam,
In the heavy wet half-light,
In the strength of white-hot glows
Clouds conceal in the skies,
In the weary dragging closed
Of your so-beloved eyes.

1896-1898; translation by Tamara Vardomskaya, September 5, 2019

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Morning – A. Bely

Russian Silver Age poetry translation series, 42/?

I am resuming this, because I was reading Andrei Bely this morning, and wanted to translate one of his shorter works.

This requires a great many interpretation decisions on my part, as Russian can omit possessives when they are of inalienable possessions like body parts or relatives. So in English, I have to make clear that the narrator is talking about his own body and that he is the object of the verbs in the last line, something that most interpreters of this poem agree is the case — that it narrates a subjective experience of fever or madness — but it is not actually in the Russian words. I also added some internal rhymes to try to preserve at least some of the internal rhymes in the original.

Morning

Flashes swarming. It’s morning: again I am free and at will.
Open the curtains: in diamonds, in amber, in fire
Are crossed steeples uphill. Am I ill? Oh no, I am not ill.
All silvered my hands from death-bed rising mountains higher.

Yonder purple the dawns, there are storms, there is purple-born storming.
See me, catch this: I’m risen, see, risen I am from the dead.
My coffin will float away, gold in the gold-azure dawning…

They caught me, brought me down, and laid a cold cloth on my head.

Andrei Bely, 1907; translation by Tamara Vardomskaya, September 3, 2019.

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“It’s not your love I’m asking for…” – A. Akhmatova

Russian Silver Age poetry translation series, 41/?
 
I am not so satisfied with this one, but today was a day I felt I had to get something done, and didn’t have the energy to do anything else I had planned, so I finished the partial translation I had sitting in my drafts folder for months.
 
Anna Akhmatova being spiteful.
 
***
 
It’s not your love I’m asking for.
It’s now locked up for safekeeping.
Believe that letters jealous, weeping,
I do not send to your bride’s door.
 
But take some wise advice of mine:
Let her read all my poetry;
Let her preserve portraits of me —
New bridegrooms are all so kind!
 
While those fool girls would rather claim
A full victorious sensation,
Than friendship’s sunlit conversations
Or memory of first tender days.
 
Then when you spend the farthing’s worth
Of joy given with your little dear
And to a soul once filled with mirth
Suddenly all so dull appears —
 
Then don’t come to my festive night.
I know not you nor your appeal.
How could I help, in any right?
Of happiness, I do not heal.
 
Anna Akhmatova, 1914; translation by Tamara Vardomskaya, 2016-January 2017.
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At Evening – A. Akhmatova

Russian Silver Age poetry translation series (occasional) – 40/?

Deciding to re-awaken this dormant series last night, with a short poem from Anna Akhmatova’s 1914 collection “The Rosary.” It took me some time to “wake up” the translation skills (which to me feel like a combination of writing poetry and solving sudoku or crosswords). I am still not quite happy with a few of the word choices I made while trying to keep the rhythm (and compromised the rhythm slightly — the middle lines of the first verse should have feminine rhymes). But Akhmatova’s poem captures a sentiment I’ve felt myself: “At last, for the first time, you are alone with the person you love” — and he turns out to be, well, not seeing you that way.

At Evening

The music rang midst orchard trees,
Laced with such sorrow unreleased.
On ice-lined plates, a oyster feast
Smelled fresh and sharply of the seas.

He told me, “I’m a loyal friend!”
And touched my dress’s silk and lacing.
How little like any embracing
Is touch when coming from that hand.

So one pets kittens, or a bird,
So does one look at riders dashing.
Under the light gilt of his lashes
His calm eyes only laughter hold.

While fiddles sing their mournful tune
Past the smoke spreading on the ground:
“Bless and thank heavens for the boon –
Time with your love alone you’ve found.”

Anna Akhmatova, 1913; translation by Tamara Vardomskaya,
October 2016.

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Don Juan – V. Bryusov

Russian Silver Age poetry translations (occasional), 39/?

Valery Bryusov (1873-1924) was one of the founders of Russian Symbolism. Raised in a family of freed serfs who were against all religion, so that he was “raised with principles of strict materialism and atheism” and read Darwin rather than fairy tales, he received an excellent education but was expelled from his first high school for promoting atheist ideas (he finished his second). He was fascinated by Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud, and translated them, as well as Edgar Allan Poe’s poetry (which translations I have read, and approve) and languages as far from Russian as Japanese: Wikisource has Bryusov’s translation of Matsui’s Basho’s famous “frogs in the old pond” haiku.

In his 1900 collection “Tertia vigilia” (The Third Watch; most of his collection titles were not in Russian), Bryusov had a cycle called “The Favourites of the Ages” in which he imagined poems either from the perspective of, or addressed to, famous historical and mythical figures: Essarhadon, Dante, Cleopatra, Mary Queen of Scots, Napoleon, Orpheus, Psyche… This poem is from the perspective of Don Juan. It is in the form of a Petrarchan sonnet, and this time I did succeed in having only two rhymes through the original eight lines. I took a few liberties with the wording (for example, the original mentions only “plateaus” but the double meaning of the word “defile” was too tempting to pass up).

If after reading this poem, you too want Don Juan to get punched in the face, read the previous poem about Don Juan in this series, Alexander Blok’s The Strides of the Commendatore.

 

***

Don Juan

Yes, I’m a sailor! A wanderer of the seas,
In endless waves a seeker of strange isles.
I yearn for new hues in a different breeze,
New tongues and alien plateaus and defiles.

And women come to my passionate pleas
Obedient, with but begging in their smiles!
As painful veils drop off their souls at ease,
They give their all — their wonders and their trials.

In love, souls open to the farthest side,
And brighter grow their sacred depths so wide
Where all things are deliberate and rare.

Yes! I destroy! Like Vampyre, lives I drain!
But each soul offers a new world again,
And tempts anew with secrets undeclared.

Valery Bryusov, May 12 – July 25, 1900; translation by Tamara Vardomskaya, September 2016.

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Sonnet – A. Gertsyk

Russian Silver Age poetry translations (occasional), 38/?

Last Monday I introduced Adelaida Gertsyk to this series. Here is another interesting poem by her, just titled “Sonnet.” I don’t know whether it is referring to a specific person or event in Gertsyk’s life. She also turns out to have played a role in the life of Sophia Parnok, the poet we saw two days ago; it was at a party of Gertsyk’s that Parnok met Marina Tsvetaeva.

The sonnet is Petrarchan (8 + 6 lines, rather than the Shakespearean 4 + 4 + 4 + 2 which Pushkin later modified for the Onegin sonnet used for all stanzas of that novel), with the original rhyme scheme being ABBAABBA CCDEED. I couldn’t keep the eight lines consistent as just two rhyme endings, so I introduced a third, as well as tweaking a few constructions.

Sonnet

Measureless now is sorrow, good, and resignation.
Last night he told me, “Let’s again leave one another.
“We meet in lies. ‘Tis lie we’re like sister and brother.
With no forgetting, there’s but complication.”
Then up rose the familiar tormentation
As it pierced days and nights, again, again.
“I’m not yet free, the time has not come, then.
Maybe a year will bring the liberation…”

There are no years, few days left — he’d forgotten.
The last has come to this spirit downtrodden…
But then he suddenly knelt helpless by my feet
And his head touched my knees, as if in prayer.
And with no other words we long sat there
Blessing in silence this instant bittersweet.

Adelaida Gertsyk, April 1913, Moscow;
translation by Tamara Vardomskaya, September 2016.

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Unbreakably – P. Solovyova

Russian Silver Age poetry translations, 37/?

Polixena (or Poliksena) Solovyova (1867-1924) had the misfortune to be born sister to the much more famous poet, philosopher and theologian Vladimir Solovyov, one of the central founders of 20th-century Russian Christian philosophy. Thus, the younger Symbolists venerated her poetry more because they saw her as her brother’s spiritual sister than for its own merit. She herself apparently saw at least her early publications, in the 1880s, as weak, and was much more prominent as an artist and illustrator. Review of her poetry were compassionate and its technical weaknesses, claims Wikipedia, were not much pointed out. The exception was Alexander Blok, who disliked her poetry and refused to review it.

From 1905 to 1912 she was editor of a children’s magazine and children’s publishing house with her lesbian lover, the children’s author Natalia Manaseina (ironically, Blok’s mother volunteered as proofreader for it). There she published her translation of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” one of the earliest translations into Russian (I have not yet read it). After the Revolution, for several years she worked as a librarian and translator in Koktebel in the Crimea. She remained with Manaseina until the end of her life.

This poem is addressed to Zinaida Gippius, whom we have already encountered in this series. I can see that the criticism of Solovyova’s general technical weaknesses would apply to its over-repetition in the original of the words “passion” (three times) and “death” (also three times; I replaced one of them with “mortal”). I still find it an interesting poem as another example of women’s poetry in the Silver Age. I unfortunately have not yet found out what Solovyova’s relationship was to Gippius in order to contextualize this poem further.

Unbreakably

To Zinaida Gippius

The closer death breathes through its icy teeth,
The hotter scarlet kisses glow,
And in the graveside requiem, passion’s moans grow.
In earthly waters hardness gleams beneath.
And spring bloom would not draw such passioned breath
So sweetly, if that mortal stinging
Were not a threat to fruits autumn was bringing:
No passion without shade of death.

Polixena Solovyova, 1914; translation by Tamara Vardomskaya,
September 2016.

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