Half-light and Other Poems
Page 9
so dear to memory, where I hoped to meet
visions of bygone days flocking to greet me.
In vain! now nothing held the water back
from flowing far beyond its bed,
the place was overgrown with matted grasses
where bees had found a home; faintly the path
went wandering off before my eyes, and nothing
was left to me of all I knew so well!
Then suddenly, as in the days of old,
a steep track led me boldly through the woodlands
down into a ravine; I halted
and sadly scanned this unexpected hollow,
perplexed and searching for another pathway.
I went on down – a summerhouse
was rotting, pillars crumbling round it
and age decaying the bridge’s timber.
And you, majestic grotto, in those days
weighty with stone, have fallen victim
to ruin, and the shady vaults that once
gave shelter from the summer heat, are falling.
Well, let the past be past, a fleeting vision!
You are still fair, weed-grown Elysium,
and with a mighty fascination
you speak to my receptive soul.
Not mean of thought nor cold of heart the man
who, thirsty for a deep contentment,
first drew the plan for these capricious paths,
and listening to the dreamy music
of oaks and maples, felt his soul expand
to thoughts in sympathy with theirs.
For years his name has not been spoken near me,
a distant grave contains his ashes,
no image holds his memory for me,
but here I still can feel his living spirit,
a lover of nature and of dreams,
here I can come to know him fully:
he stirs within me like an inspiration,
commanding me to praise the woods, the waters,
the forests, and he tells me of a land
where I shall inherit an unending spring,
where there will be no traces of destruction,
where I shall meet beneath the undying oaks’
sweet shade, beside unfailing rivers
the man who is for me a sacred shade.
НА ПОСЕВ ЛЕСА
Опять весна; опять смеется луг,
И весел лес своей младой одеждой,
И поселян неутомимый плуг
Браздит поля с покорством и надеждой.
Но нет уже весны в душе моей,
Но нет уже в душе моей надежды,
Уж дольный мир уходит от очей,
Пред вечным днем я опускаю вежды.
Уж та зима главу мою сребрит,
Что греет сев для будущего мира,
Но праг земли не перешел пиит, –
К ее сынам еще взывает лира.
Велик Господь! Он милосерд, но прав:
Нет на земле ничтожного мгновенья;
Прощает он безумию забав,
Но никогда пирам злоумышленья.
Кого измял души моей порыв,
Тот вызвать мог меня на бой кровавый;
Но подо мной, сокрытый ров изрыв,
Свои рога венчал он падшей славой!
Летел душой я к новым племенам,
Любил, ласкал их пустоцветный колос;
Я дни извел, стучась к людским сердцам,
Всех чувств благих я подавал им голос.
Ответа нет! Отвергнул струны я,
Да хрящ другой мне будет плодоносен!
И вот ему несет рука моя
Зародыши елей, дубов и сосен.
И пусть! Простяся с лирою моей,
Я верую: ее заменят эти,
Поэзии таинственных скорбей
Могучие и сумрачные дети.
ON PLANTING A WOOD
Spring’s here again; again the meadows laugh,
the wood rejoices in its girlish green,
the indefatigable farmer’s plough
again in humble hope furrows the fields.
But spring no longer sets my soul alight,
and hope no longer charms my weary way,
the world is already slipping from my sight,
my eyelids sinking before eternal day.
My head is already silvered by the winter
that warms the seed-corn for a future life,
but the bard has not yet crossed the fatal frontier –
his lyre can still be heard by those on earth.
Great is the Lord! compassionate, but just:
nothing that happens here escapes his sight;
He can forgive our follies, but not the feasts
where evil words are born of evil thought.
If someone was wounded by my hasty words,
he could have clashed with me in open battle;
but they dug a hidden trap deep in the woods
and decked their horns with my reputation’s tatters.
My soul reached out to embrace new generations,
I loved, I cherished their still barren fields,
I tried in vain to wake the hearts of mortals
and teach them how to speak the good we feel.
No answer! I have thrown away my lyre –
let a fresh patch of ground bear better fruit!
I carry in my hands the nursery
from which great oaks and pines and firs will shoot.
So may it be! Setting my strings aside,
I put my faith instead in these young trees,
mighty and twilight beings, each a child
of the mysterious griefs of poetry.
ПИРОСКАФ
Дикою, грозною ласкою полны,
Бьют в наш корабль средиземные волны.
Вот над кормою стал капитан.
Визгнул свисток его. Братствуя с паром,
Ветру наш парус раздался недаром:
Пенясь, глубоко вздохнул океан!
Мчимся. Колеса могучей машины
Роют волнистое лоно пучины.
Парус надулся. Берег исчез.
Наедине мы с морскими волнами,
Только что чайка вьется за нами
Белая, рея меж вод и небес.
Только вдали, океана жилица,
Чайке подобна, вод его птица,
Парус развив, как большое крыло,
С бурной стихией в томительном споре,
Лодка рыбачья качается в море, –
С брегом набрежное скрылось, ушло!
Много земе
ль я оставил за мною;
Вынес я много смятенной душою
Радостей ложных, истинных зол;
Много мятежных решил я вопросов,
Прежде чем руки марсельских матросов
Подняли якорь, надежды символ!
С детства влекла меня сердца тренога
В область свободную влажного бога;
Жадные длани я к ней простирал,
Темную страсть мою днесь награждая,
Кротко щадит меня немочь морская:
Пеною здравья брызжет мне вал!
Нужды нет, близко ль, далеко ль до брега!
В сердце к нему приготовлена нега.
Вижу Фетиду; мне жребий благой
Емлет она из лазоревой урны:
Завтра увижу я башни Ливурны,
Завтра увижу Элизий земной!
STEAMSHIP
Swollen with savage, terrible affection,
they batter us, the Mediterranean waves.
Then high above our stern we see the captain.
A blast from his whistle, and suddenly our sail
flings open to the wind, joins hands with steam:
ocean’s deep sighing scatters into foam.
We hurtle on. The mighty engine’s wheels
tear at the billowing bosom of the deep.
The sail swells out. The shore has disappeared.
We are alone among the warring waves;
only a seagull circling in our wake
skims white between the water and the sky.
Only, far off, a dweller of the seas,
bird of the waves, a sister of the gull,
spreading its sail like a wide-stretching wing,
wearily struggling in the turbulent flow,
a fishing boat is rocking on the ocean –
both land and shoreline are clean gone from vision.
I have left many countries in my wake;
my soul, confused by contrary directions,
has suffered both false joys and genuine woes;
I had confronted many perplexing questions
before the sailors of Marseille hauled up
the anchor, emblem of a new-found hope.
From childhood my tumultuous heart has carried me
over the free realms of the watery god;
I greedily stretched out my hands to it.
And as a reward for my dark passion here
the sea’s distemper gently strokes my head,
the breakers splash me with the foam of health.
What does it matter if the shore is far or near!
The heart already warms to its delight.
I gaze on Thetis, she draws out for me
a happy destiny from her azure urn.
Tomorrow I see the towers of Leghorn.
Tomorrow I see Elysium on earth!
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
YEVGENY BARATYNSKY was born in 1840 to a gentry family in the Tambov region of central Russia. He was educated at the elite St. Petersburg School of Pages, but was expelled for his part in a youthful robbery. After a spell of suicidal depression, he enlisted as a soldier and served for some years in Finland. During this period, he wrote many poems; he is now recognized (together with Pushkin and others) as a member of the gifted ‘Pléiade’ of Russia’s Golden Age. In 1825 he was pardoned and promoted to officer rank, whereupon he retired, married Nastasya Engelgardt and settled in the country near Moscow. There he lived a happily married and outwardly uneventful life, publishing poetic collections in 1827 and 1835, followed by his masterpiece Half-light in 1842. The following year he made his first visit to western Europe, spending a winter in Paris, then moving to Naples, where he died unexpectedly in 1844.
PETER FRANCE was born in Northern Ireland of Welsh parents and has lived at various places in England, France and Canada. He is now based in Edinburgh, where he was professor of French from 1980 to 2000. He has written many studies of French and Russian literature (including Poets of Modern Russia, 1982), and is the editor of the Oxford Guide to Literature in English Translation and general editor of the five-volume Oxford History of Literary Translation in English. He has translated French and Russian prose texts as well as several volumes of Russian poetry – Blok and Pasternak (both with Jon Stallworthy), Mayakovsky, Lermontov, Mandelstam, and in particular Gennady Aygi. He is married to the historian and translator Siân Reynolds.