A trick that heaven plays on earth?
Bewitched he sat, as if in fable,
240As if he too were made of marble,
Immobile. And on every quarter
All he sees is water, water!
And high above the invaded land,
Above the raging of the flood,
With back to him, and outstretched hand
In overmastering command,
The bronzen mounted idol stood.
Part Two
But now, well wearied with destruction,
The Neva rests its sated maw,
250And having relished insurrection,
Begins to settle down once more,
Dropping its prey. A band of robbers
Thus takes a village, slashes, clobbers,
Smashes, wrecks and seizes; howls,
Violence, terror, oaths and wails! …
The robbers tire; weighed down by spoils,
They fear pursuit and disappear,
With booty scattered in their rear.
The waters fell, the thoroughfares
260Opened again; Yevgeny hastened,
Clinging to hope, but full of fears,
Towards the river scarcely chastened.
Filled with the flush of victory,
The waves still boiled maliciously,
As if on top of smouldering fires,
Capped still with foam from shore to shore;
The Neva breathed with heavy sighs,
Spent as a steed returned from war.
Yevgeny looks about: he spies
270A boat; at once his spirits rise;
He hails a boatman heaven-sent –
The boatman names a modest fee
And launches off audaciously
Into the fearsome element.
The oarsman, skilled through many a year,
Struggles with the turbulence;
And he is ready more than once,
With daring strokes, to disappear
Between the billows deep and sheer –
At last he makes the shore.
280Poor soul!
Down the street Yevgeny hastens,
Seeking out familiar places
But recognising none at all.
Dreadful sight! The street is shattered,
Everything is strewn and battered:
The houses stand there crooked, many
Collapsed, some vanished; unconcealed,
As upon a battlefield
Bodies lie all around. Yevgeny,
290Tormented, trembling in his shoes,
Utterly oblivious,
Still hurries headlong to the place
Where fate awaits him with its news,
Like an unopened letter. Here –
The settlement, the gulf, he’s near
The house … But what is this?
He stops.
And back he turns; retraces steps.
He looks … walks on … another look.
Here’s where it was, the little nook,
300And there’s the willow. But the gate –
Has it been torn off in the spate?
And where’s the house? In deepest slough
Round and round he walks and walks
And loudly to himself he talks –
Suddenly he strikes his brow
And laughs out loud.
Darkness lies deep
Upon a city all in fear;
Its people do not try to sleep,
The talk is ceaseless everywhere
310Of what has come to pass this day.
From tired, pale clouds the morning ray
Shone on the silent capital
And found no traces of disaster,
The ill work crimson-covered. All
Was as before. The streets now free
Saw no concern or sympathy.
Clerks, work-bound, left their night’s abode;
The intrepid trader, undismayed,
Opened his cellar robbed by flood,
320Hoping to win back losses made
From fellow traders. Many a boat
Appeared from courtyards.
Count Khvostòv,
Poet beloved of heaven above,
Began to sing in timeless verse
The Neva settlements’ distress.
But poor, my poor Yevgeny … He,
Troubled, alas, in heart and mind,
Could not withstand catastrophe.
The fury of the waves and wind
330Roared in his ears. He roamed aghast,
Consumed by wordless thoughts of doom;
He was bedevilled by a dream.
Days, and soon a week went past –
A month, and he did not go home.
His term was up, the landlord let
The empty niche to some poor poet.
Yevgeny did not come to fetch
His few belongings there. Poor wretch,
An alien to society,
340He went about all day on foot,
And slept upon the embankment; food
Was offered him in charity
On window-sills. His tattered clothing
Rotted away on him; with loathing
Children pelted him with pebbles.
The coachman’s whip would often find him –
He never looked ahead, behind him,
Deaf with the din of inner troubles.
And so his miserable span
350Was dragged out, neither beast nor man;
Not an inhabitant of earth
And not a phantom from the dead,
Not one and not the other …
Berth
One night he found to lay his head
Above the Neva. Autumn breathed
Its wind. Frustrated waters seethed
Against the embankment, beat its steps
Like a petitioner who raps
Despairingly upon the door
360Of deaf officials of the law.
Rain began; Yevgeny woke.
Wind howled, and in the distant dark
A sentinel exchanged his call
With it … He started to recall
The horror that had passed. He rose,
And quickly walked about … and froze –
It was as if his end was nigh.
He stood beneath the columned arch
Of that great mansion, on the porch
370A pair of marble lions on watch,
Each with raised paw, as if alive,
And on a palisaded rock
The bronzen idol, hand held high,
Rode above him in the dark.
Yevgeny trembled. In his mind
All was dreadfully defined.
How could he not recognise
Where he had seen the grim waves spill,
The waters in rebellion rise,
380The lions, the square, while stark and still
He whose indomitable will
Had raised a city from the sea
Towered in bronze above it – He,
Fearsome from the gloom below!
What thoughts are pressing on that brow!
Within him, what unbounded force!
What fire comes flashing from that horse!
Where, proud stallion, are you bound,
Where will your hooves put down to ground?
390Destiny’s great lord and master!
Was it not exactly thus
Your iron bridle reared up Russia
Upon the brink of the abyss?
Around the idol’s pedestal
The madman had begun to pace;
His poor wild eyes saw face-to-face
The ruler over half the world.
His chest was tight. He pressed his brow
Against cold railings; fire ran through
400His heart, his blood was boiling over;
His gaze was visionless in mist.
Before the mighty image, sombre
He stood, and clenching teeth an
d fist –
As if possessed by some dark power –
‘Miracle builder! – Now!’ he hissed,
‘Just you wait …!’ The awesome tsar,
It seemed, had slowly turned his head,
In mounting rage begun to glare …
Headlong across the empty square
410He ran, behind him as he fled,
Like rumbling thunder, hooves resounding
Upon the shaken thoroughfare.
And all night long, astride his bounding
Steed the Horseman, hand held high,
Outstretched beneath the moonlit sky,
Followed Yevgeny, and no matter
Whither the poor madman bent
His steps, with heavy, echoing clatter
After him the Horseman went.
420Whenever next he chanced to pass
That square, he would be overtaken
By inner turmoil; he would press
His heart as if to ease its aching,
Take off his threadbare cap; his gaze
He could not bring himself to raise;
He kept his distance.
Off the shore
A tiny islet can be seen.
There a fisherman will moor,
Out fishing late, bring in his seine
430And cook his meagre supper; or
A clerk will of a Sunday row
To that place where no blade will grow.
The flood had borne there, in its sport,
A time-worn little house. Above
The waves, like some black bush, it stood.
Last spring, a wherry took it off,
Empty and ruined. They discovered
My madman on its threshold; there
Upon that spot his corpse was covered
440And was committed to God’s care.
1833
III
* * *
FAIRY TALES
(SKAZKI)
The Tale of Tsar Saltan, His Son the Mighty and Renowned Prince Guidon Saltanovich and the Fair Swan-Princess
This second of Pushkin’s five completed skazki was written in friendly rivalry with Vasily Zhukovsky, who was working on a skazka of his own (The Tale of Tsar Benderey). In quarantine in Tsarskoye Selo in August 1831 during the cholera epidemic that had confined him the previous year at Boldino and had now reached St Petersburg, Pushkin dashed off this fairy tale based on two variant synopses of a folk tale he had noted down some years earlier (see Introduction under ‘Fairy Tales’), developing his prose notation into rhyming couplets. The tsar’s name, Saltan, and that of his son, the young prince Guidon, are taken from a medieval romance of French origin, which as Bova Korolevich became very popular in Russia from the seventeenth century (there is a fourteenth-century English version titled Bevis of Hampton). The long subtitle of Pushkin’s skazka is in the style of the booklets of folk and fairy tales illustrated with popular prints (lubki) that were widespread in Russia from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. His title includes the word bogatyr as part of the designation of Guidon, a term normally denoting the giant mounted warrior-heroes of folk legend; this word is here untranslated since Guidon is a distinctly more domesticated figure. In the title of The Tale of the Dead Princess and the Seven Champions, as translated in this book, another variation may be found for the term.
The trochaic tetrameter is Pushkin’s vehicle for three of his five completed skazki, including this one; it has a more stylised effect in the original than in iambic translation. Pushkin published this poem in his third verse collection in 1832.
Three sisters sat up late and spun
Before their window. Thus spoke one:
‘If ever I became Tsaritsa’ –
This one was the eldest sister –
‘I would cook a splendid feast,
I’d have ten thousand guests at least.’
‘If ever I, though, were Tsaritsa’ –
She had her say, the second sister –
‘Single-handed I would weave
10Rich cloth for all – no make-believe.’
‘If ever, though, I were Tsaritsa,’
Now the third and youngest sister,
‘I would give the Father-Tsar
A mighty hero-warrior.’
The moment after she had spoken,
A gentle creak – the door was open;
And there before them who should stand
But the ruler of the land.
He’d overheard their conference
20Listening from behind the fence;
The last to speak of those fair three
Delighted him enormously,
And heartily he greeted her
As fitting partner for a tsar.
‘You shall bear,’ said he, ‘my son
Before the winter has begun.
And you, good maidens, make your home
With me and your dear sister, come –
For also, in this pretty nook,
30I’ve found a weaver and a cook.’
The Father-Tsar strode from the house
And off for the exchange of vows.
That same evening they were married,
For he was not a tsar who tarried.
A feast of splendour set the scene
For honoured guests to meet the queen;
Then to an ivory marriage bed
The newly wedded pair were led.
The cook took on a face of doom,
40The weaver whimpered at her loom;
Both were jealous of the life
Enjoyed by Tsar Saltan’s new wife.
The young tsaritsa, keen enough
Not to put her duty off,
That very night became with child.
That was a time when war ran wild.
The Tsar made ready his good steed
And told the queen to take good heed,
And love him always.
Far away
50The Tsar saw battle every day.
Meanwhile, at home, the queen’s time came:
A long-limbed son God gave to them.
Like a mother-eagle, bent
Above her young, the queen now sent
The swiftest, trustiest messenger
With the glad news to cheer the Tsar.
But then the two, the cook and weaver
And Widow Baba Babarikha,
Determined to undo the queen,
60Removed the rider from the scene
And sent another in his stead.
This is what their message said:
‘This night the queen has given birth
To something quite unknown on earth,
Not quite a mouse, and not a frog –
Who could imagine … What a shock!’
When the Father-Tsar heard this
How he began to rage and hiss,
He seized the messenger and swore
70That courier would live no more;
But then relenting just this once,
He was minded to announce:
He’d act according to the law
When he came home and not before.
The messenger rode hard and fast
And bore this message back at last.
But then those two, the cook and weaver
With Widow Baba Babarikha,
A moment after they had learned
80The messenger had just returned,
Refreshed him with a drop too far,
Seized the message from the Tsar
And put another in its place;
The rider read it flushed of face:
‘The Tsar pronounces this decree:
The queen and her new spawn must be –
Without delay, in secrecy –
Cast to the bottom of the sea.’
The nobles of the realm were seen
90Thronging the chamber of the queen;
They grieved for tsar and queen and son,
But there was nothing to be done.
They rea
d to the Tsaritsa what
Would be her own, her son’s sad lot;
Then put her, still in full apparel,
With her son inside a barrel,
Tarred it and rolled it to the sea,
Following the Tsar’s decree.
From dark blue sky the bright stars shone,
100In dark blue sea the waves beat on;
Above the sea a stormcloud ran,
Below, the laden barrel swam.
The queen, with none to share her fears,
Shed, as if widowed, bitter tears;
The infant was a rapid grower,
Not day to day but hour by hour
He grew. Time passed. His mother wailed …
The boy, however, loudly hailed
A wave: ‘You waves, you splash and play!
110You splash all night, you splash all day!
You can do anything you wish;
You carve the rocks and carry ships,
You topple cliffs and swallow sand –
So save us, splash us to dry land!’
There and then the wave obeyed,
And gently, gently it conveyed
The precious barrel to a shore,
Then it withdrew and splashed no more.
The pair, thus spared a watery fate,
120Felt firm ground beneath their feet.
But now they wondered who would take them
Out of their cask – would God forget them?
The son stretched up and pressed his head
Against the barrel-top. He said:
‘We need a window on the world’,
Knocked through the top, and out he rolled.
The mother and her son were free;
They walked beside the dark blue sea.
Not far off, upon a rise,
130A broad green oak-tree met their eyes.
The son had one thought: ‘What we need
Most now is something good to eat,’
And from the oak broke off a bough
From which he made a good strong bow,
And on the oaken bow he strung
The cord on which his cross had hung.
He took a twig, and then with care
Shaped an arrow light as air,
And off along the shore he strode
140To see what he could find for food.
He was only a moment gone
When he was startled by a groan …
He looked, and in the swirling sea
There was an evil sight to see:
A swan was struggling in the water,
A big black kite was diving at her;
The wretched creature splashed and splashed,
The sea all round was churned and lashed …
The kite’s great claws were at the ready,
150Its beak was razor-sharp and bloody …
But all at once an arrow whirred;
It struck the neck of that dread bird –
Selected Poetry (Penguin) Page 18
