Translations. From English poetry. Translations of Pushkin's poems by French writers and M. Tsvetaeva
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| collection site
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| Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva
| Translations
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Who told us that everything disappears?
The bird you hurt
Who knows? – will her flight remain?
And maybe stems of hugs
They outlive us, their soil.
It's not a gesture that lasts,
But the gesture clothes you in armor,
Gold - from chest to knees.
And the battle was so pure,
That an angel is carrying her after her.
Captain, gunner and boatswain -
The navigator too, although gray, -
Maggie, Maud, Marion and Molly -
Everyone was loved - except Kat.
They won't honor this girl
Neither a smile nor a blasphemy, -
For it is weighed down by tar,
Black disdains resin.
Having lost my balance,
The navigator directed the ship towards her.
And she answered: “Hang yourself!”
But things have been going on for a long time,
What a lame little tailor is sweaty -
Where does the soul still sit? -
There she itches, where it tickles,
It tickles where it itches.
Kat for his services
Pays with the best of coins...
- At sea, at sea, at sea, friends!
And to the gallows - Kat!
Twelve months a year.
If you don't believe it, count it.
But all twelve miles
Happy month of May.
Happy people, happy goose, happy dog...
An old woman is standing on the way,
All wrinkled from tears.
- What's new, old woman? - Sir,
We have bad news!
Today to three young shooters
The hour of death has been announced.
- Apparently, they slaughtered saints
Did they burn fathers and churches?
Did you seduce the maidens? Or from drunken eyes
Did you lie down with someone else's wife?
- They didn’t kill their fathers
Saints, don't burn churches,
Don't steal girls and sleep
Each one went with his own.
- Why, why is the evil sheriff
Did he condemn them to death?
– We met a deer in the forest...
The forest was royal.
– One day I’m at your house
Ate like the king himself.
Don't cry, old woman! Road
I need old bread and salt.
Robin Hood walked, walked to Nottingham, -
Green maple, green oak, green elm...
Looks: in bags and bundles
The gray-haired pilgrim.
– What news, old man?
- Oh sir, there’s nothing sadder:
Today three young shooters
Executed in the prime of life.
- Old man, take off your outfit,
And you yourself will go in mine.
Here's forty shillings in the palm of your hand
Chased silver.
– Yours – the month of May newer,
There are many winters...
Oh sir! Nowhere and never
Don't laugh at the gray haired man!
- If you don’t want silver,
I'm ready for gold.
Here's a purse of gold for you,
To drink to the shooters!
He put on the old man's hat, -
A little lower than the roofs.
- Even though you are in over your head,
And you'll be the first to fly!
And he put a cloak on the old people,
Tails and flaps.
Apparently, its owner drove
Bustle Tips!
He fit into the old man's pants.
- Well, grandfather, it’s okay to joke!
I swear on my soul that these are not pants
On me, and the shadow of the pants!
He fit into old people's stockings.
- Admit it, pilgrim,
That your grandparents and great-grandfathers
They wore them to Jerusalem!
I put on two shoes: one -
A little alive, the other - full of holes.
- “Clothes make masters.”
Ready.
I'm not a bad count!
March, Robin Hood! March to Nottingham!
Robin, gip! Robin, gap! Robin, hon! -
Along the city wall the sheriff
Walking goiter.
- Oh, come down, good sir,
Until the request of my lips!
What will you give me, good sir,
Shall I hang up all three?
- First of all, I’ll give you three new clothes.
From a distant shoulder,
I'll give you thirteen pence too
And the title of executioner.
Robin, having run around the sheriff,
Jump! and jump onto the stone!
- Sign up to be an executioner!
You are a smart old man!
– I have not been an executioner in my life;
Dream of my nights:
A hundred gallows in my garden -
And all for the executioners!
I have four bags:
That's malt, that's grain
I carry, this one contains meat, this one contains flour, -
And they're all empty.
But there is one more bag:
Look - they are swollen like a mountain!
There is a horn in it, and this horn
Robin Hood gave it to me.
- Blow, blow, Robin's friend,
Blow Robin's horn!
Yes, so that your eyes get out of the pits,
Get your cheekbones out of your cheeks!
There was the first call of the horns, like thunder!
And - with lightning to him -
One Hundred Robinhood Men
Appeared on the hill.
There was the next call - then the army
Robin Hood is calling.
From all sides, at full speed
Robinhood's people are rushing.
- But who are you? - asked the sheriff,
Barely alive. - Where did you come from?
- They are mine, and I am Robin,
And you, sheriff, pray!
The evil sheriff is on the gallows
Hanging. The hemp is strong.
Under the gallows, on the meadow,
Three shooters are dancing.
Tell you, friends, how daredevil Robin Hood is -
The scourge of bishops and rich people, -
With a certain Little John in the deep forest
Did you say hello across the stream?
Even though people called that John little,
He was like a good bear in body!
You can’t embrace the width, you can’t reach the height, -
The guy was something to behold!
How Robin confessed this to the little one,
I’ll tell you, friends, without lies.
Just open your ears: that’s all the work for you! -
If you know better, tell me yourself.
Robin Hood says to his good shooters:
“I’m ruining my youth with you for nothing!”
There are many trees in the thicket, and miracles in the hollows,
And if trouble comes, I will sound the trumpet.
I haven’t lowered my bowstring for fourteen days,
I have no use for lying down.
When the forest is quiet, Robin wins
And if you hear the horn, be on time.
I shook hands with all of them and walked away,
Having fun at every step.
He sees: a stormy stream, a bridge across the water,
The stranger is on the other side.
- Make way, bear! - You yourself will give me the way! -
The bridge is small, the forest is small for two.
- Since you still have a bride, a bear, -
Know that the bride's groom has disappeared!
Robin Hood takes an arrow from his quiver:
– What do you bequeath to your relatives?
“Just touch the bowstring,” the stranger told him, “
You'll instantly meet Vodyanoy!
- You speak like a fool, - to a stranger, Robin, -
You talk like a brainless boar!
You still won’t have time to raise your hands,
How the hell will I send you to the clan!
“You threaten like a coward,” the stranger replied, “
Who has arrows and a bow.
I have nothing but a stick in my hands,
Nothing but a stick and hands!
“I don’t even need a bow to defeat you.”
I'll make do with a simple baton.
But, having matched you in arms, I’ll see,
How can you compare with me, you coward!
Robin Hood ran into the deepest thicket,
Hewed his saber to length
And he rushed back, shouting from afar:
- Well, will the bridge be yours or mine?
So, without leaving the bridge, without sparing nature,
We will fight, at least until the morning.
Who fell - lost, survived - won,
That's the game in Nottingham.
- I'll smash you to dust! – a stranger in our hearts, -
The hares of the groves will laugh at you!
In the middle of the bridge two young men collided,
The batons came as often as the rain.
Robin struck like thunder:
He hit it so hard that the oak tree shook!
The stranger, boasting: - I don’t need your gift,
I never owed anyone any money!
Like a crowbar blow was someone else’s blow, -
He hit it so hard that the valley began to hum!
Robin laughed: “Do you want two for one?”
All my life I gave away what I had!
The stranger went wild and blood sprayed out!
Robin was generous - he gave twice as much!
Became a proud man, well done, well done
Threshing is like oats on the threshing floor!
There was a blow from Robin - a leaf flew off the linden tree!
There was someone else's blow - the treasure clinked!
Over thick crowns, over empty heads
The batons clattered like hail.
The bridge walks under the game, the tree walks under your foot,
Even the fish ran away!
The stranger contrived and with one blow
Knocked Robin into a running stream.
Leaning across the bridge: “Where are you, brave fighter?”
Has trouble befallen you?
- I'm in cold water, - Robin answers, -
And I’m floating – I don’t know where!
But I know one thing: you are dry as a nut,
Unfortunately, I am wetter than a beaver.
Whoever is at the top has won, whoever is below has lost,
So our game is over.
Half wade, half swim, half dead, half alive,
He got out - wet, poor thing, through and through!
He put the horn to his lips - well, hey, he didn’t blow it
There are even moose in the Scottish forests!
The echo sound carried along the green oak forests,
Scattered all over Scotland,
And he came to the call - a forest of fine shooters,
The clothes are greener than grass.
-What's going on here? - said William Stutley
Why do you have scales?
- Because the scales are that this good father
He combined me with the Maiden of the Brook.
- This man is dead! - the army shouted menacingly,
Moving en masse towards one.
- This man is mine! - Robin shouted menacingly,
And don’t touch him with your little finger!
Meet my fellow countryman! These guys are shooters
Robinhood's forest brothers.
There were seventy of them minus one,
Exactly seventy will be with you.
You will have: a cloak the color of spring grass,
Crossbow hitting the target
There will be a goose in the skies and a deer in the forests.
Do you agree to join the artel with Robin Hood?
– God knows, I’m ready! - the daredevil beamed. -
Who wouldn't trade a club for a bow?
People called me Little John
But I know where is north and where is south.
– John Little – such a fine fellow?!
Call back! - said William Stutley. -
Robinhood's army - here is the godmother,
Well, I’ll be the godfather myself.
They brought the arrows of two fat deer,
The beer was rolled out - no need to drink it!
Became a strong drinker under a green bush
John's new faith baptize.
There were only seven feet in length,
And just a mouth full of teeth!
If only I didn’t drink vodka and shave my beard -
It would be the most ordinary baby!
The oaks and rowan trees are still talking,
I haven't forgotten the forest path,
Stump - and he did not forget, like the brave Robin himself
I read over the baby for the priest.
That prayer is behind him, the people of Nottingham are behind him,
They repeated after him at the top of their lungs.
Adoptive father, stately William Stutley
I christened him like this:
- You were Little John until this day,
Today there is a tribute to old John,
For from this day until the day of death
You have become Little John. Amen.
A thunderous hurray - the mountain would resound! -
The baptismal ceremony was completed.
They began to drink and pour, wishing the baby to grow:
– Try your best, our Little John!
The diligent Robin took the strong baby.
I unwrapped it in an instant and put it on right away
The lord is not dressed like that in emerald corduroy! -
And he handed him a crossbow:
- You will be a sharp shooter, a fine fellow, like myself,
You will perform green service,
You will live like in paradise while in our land
There are boars and bishops.
Even if we have not a foot of all Scottish land,
Not a brick - except prison,
We eat like squires and look like lords.
Who are the owners of Scotland? - We!
Having danced one last time, following the red sun
We wandered along the stream willows
To those cave dwellings, behind Robin - William...
They sleep... And Little John sleeps with them.
So under this name through the forest slums
He lived and lived and grew old.
And how the whole heavenly army began to die
She called him: “Little John!”
Begins
The guitar's cry
Breaks
Cup of the morning.
Begins
Guitar cry.
Oh don't expect it from her
Silence,
Don't ask her
Silence!
The guitar is crying
Like water on slopes - it cries,
Like the winds over the snow - she cries,
Don't beg her
Oh silence!
So the sunset cries for the dawn,
So an arrow without a target cries,
So the hot sand cries
About the cool beauty of camellias,
This is how a bird says goodbye to life
Under threat of a snake's sting.
Oh guitar
Poor victim
Five agile daggers!
Olive Plain
Opens the fan.
Above the oilseed shoots
The sky has bowed low
And pour down like a dark shower
Cold luminaries.
On the bank of the canal
The reeds and darkness tremble,
And the third is the gray wind.
The olives are full
Sad bird cries.
Oh, the flock of poor captives!
The darkness of the night plays
Their long tails.
On the crown of the mountain,
Naked on the crown -
Chapel.
Into pearly waters
A century will disappear
Olives.
People in raincoats disperse,
And on the tower
The weather vane rotates,
Rotates day by day
Rotates at night
Spins forever.
Oh, somewhere a lost village
In my Andalusia
Tearful...
Burrowed by time
Labyrinths -
Disappeared.
Desert -
I stayed.
Unsilent heart -
Source of desires -
It's dried up.
Desert -
I stayed.
Sunset haze
And kisses
Gone.
Desert -
I stayed.
It fell silent, died out,
It has cooled down, dried up,
Disappeared.
Desert -
I stayed.
From the cave - sigh after sigh,
Hundreds of sighs, hosts of sighs,
Purple on red.
The gypsy's throat resurrects
Countries that have sunk into eternity
Towers built into the sky
Foreigners full of mystery...
Lime cave
It makes me shiver. The cave is shaking
Gold. There lies a cave -
In glitter - white on red -
Pavoi...
– The cave is flowing
Tears: white on red...
Who did not eat bread while crying,
Who, weeping as we saw off the luminary,
I didn’t meet him with tears,
He didn’t know you, heavenly powers!
You lure us into the garden,
Where are the seductions and enchantments;
Then you cast us into hell:
There is no sin without punishment!
Alas for him who has done evil
Aurora seems like hell!
And cool off the guilty brow
There is not a drop of moisture in all the seas of the universe!
What are you my love -
It's time to know.
Come at midnight
Tell me what to call.
Come at midnight
To the midnight fight.
Mother and father are sleeping,
I should sleep with you.
Knock on the door with your hand!
To this knock
The mother will say in her sleep:
- Spruce branch!
And get to the mountain quickly!
Hurry to bed!
I'll wrap my shoes around you,
Than ivy and hops.
What are you my love -
It's time to know.
Come at midnight
Tell me what to call.
- How can I recognize your house?
Tell me, my wise woman!
- Walk around the streets,
That's how you'll find out where my home is.
Silence! keep quiet!
Hold your tongue!
- I’ll slip past the dog,
Tell me, my wise woman!
- Throw a kind word to the dog,
And he'll take up the bone again.
Silence! keep quiet!
Hold your tongue!
- How can I climb the ladder?
Tell me, my wise woman!
- Put the boots on your hands -
Not a single step will creak.
Silence! keep quiet!
Hold your tongue!
- How can I find your door?
Tell me, my wise woman!
- Feel for the ring on the door...
They'll think it's a tree
Knocking... Silence!
Hold your tongue!
- As soon as I enter your little hill,
Tell me, my wise woman!
- Rough the wall with your hand,
And you will be the key-keeper.
Silence! keep quiet!
Hold your tongue!
- How will I get into your bed?
Tell me, my wise woman!
- There is a tall chest under the window,
I sleep lightly in that chest...
Silence! keep quiet!
Hold your tongue!
- What should I do in the morning?
Tell me, my wise woman!
- Put on what you took off, forget what you knew...
The light is white everywhere, and the world is not small!
Who told us that everything disappears?
The bird you hurt
Who knows? – will her flight remain?
And maybe stems of hugs
They outlive us, their soil.
It's not a gesture that lasts,
But the gesture clothes you in armor,
Gold - from chest to knees.
And the battle was so pure,
That an angel is carrying her after her.
FROM ENGLISH POETRY
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
STEPHANO'S SONG
from the second act of the drama “The Tempest”
Captain, gunner and boatswain -
The navigator too, although gray, -
Maggie, Maud, Marion and Molly -
Everyone was loved - except Kat.
They won't honor this girl
Neither a smile nor a blasphemy, -
For it is weighed down by tar,
Black disdains resin.
Having lost my balance,
The navigator directed the ship towards her.
And she answered: “Hang yourself!”
But things have been going on for a long time,
What a lame little tailor is sweaty -
Where does the soul still sit? -
There she itches, where it tickles,
It tickles where it itches.
Kat for his services
Pays with the best of coins...
- At sea, at sea, at sea, friends!
And to the gallows - Kat!
FOLK BALLADS
ROBIN HOOD SAVES THREE SHOOTERS
Twelve months a year.
If you don't believe it, count it.
But all twelve miles
Happy month of May.
Happy people, happy goose, happy dog...
An old woman is standing on the way,
All wrinkled from tears.
- What's new, old woman? - Sir,
We have bad news!
Today to three young shooters
The hour of death has been announced.
– Apparently, they slaughtered saints
Did they burn fathers and churches?
Did you seduce the maidens? Or from drunken eyes
Did you lie down with someone else's wife?
- They didn’t kill their fathers
Saints, don't burn churches,
Don't steal girls and sleep
Each one went with his own.
- Why, why is the evil sheriff
Did he condemn them to death?
– We met a deer in the forest...
The forest was royal.
– One day I’m at your house
Ate like the king himself.
Don't cry, old woman! Dear A
I need old bread and salt.
Robin Hood walked, walked to Nottingham, -
Green maple, green oak, green elm...
Looks: in bags and bundles
The gray-haired pilgrim.
– What news, old man?
- Oh sir, there’s nothing sadder:
Today three young shooters
Executed in the prime of life.
- Old man, take off your outfit,
And you yourself will go in mine.
Here's forty shillings in the palm of your hand
Chased silver.
– Yours – the month of May newer,
There are so many winters...
Oh sir! Nowhere and never
Don't laugh at the gray haired man!
- If you don’t want silver,
I'm ready for gold.
Here's a purse of gold for you,
To drink to the shooters!
He put on the old man's hat, -
A little lower than the roofs.
- Even though you are in over your head,
And you'll be the first to fly!
And he put a cloak on the old people,
Tails and flaps.
Apparently, its owner drove
Bustle Tips!
He fit into the old man's pants.
- Well, grandfather, it’s okay to joke!
I swear on my soul that these are not pants
On me, and the shadow of the pants!
He fit into old people's stockings.
- Admit it, pilgrim,
That your grandparents and great-grandfathers
They wore them to Jerusalem!
I put on two shoes: one -
A little alive, the other - full of holes.
- “Clothes make masters.”
Ready. I'm not a bad count!
March, Robin Hood! March to Nottingham!
Robin, gip! Robin, gap! Robin, hon! -
Along the city wall the sheriff
Walking goiter.
- Oh, come down, good sir,
Until the request of my lips!
What will you give me, good sir,
Shall I hang up all three?
- First of all, I’ll give you three new clothes.
From a distant shoulder,
I'll give you thirteen pence too
And the title of executioner.
Robin, having run around the sheriff,
Jump! and jump onto the stone!
- Sign up to be an executioner!
You are a smart old man!
– I have not been an executioner in my life;
Dream of my nights:
A hundred gallows in my garden -
And all for the executioners!
I have four bags:
That's malt, that's grain
I carry, this one contains meat, this one contains flour, -
And they're all empty.
But there is one more bag:
Look - they are swollen like a mountain!
There is a horn in it, and this horn
Robin Hood gave it to me.
- Blow, blow, Robin's friend,
Blow Robin's horn!
Yes, so that your eyes get out of the pits,
Get your cheekbones out of your cheeks!
There was the first call of the horns, like thunder!
And - with lightning to him -
One Hundred Robinhood Men
Appeared on the hill.
There was the next call - then the army
Robin Hood is calling.
From all sides, at full speed
Robinhood's people are rushing.
- But who are you? - asked the sheriff,
Barely alive. - Where did you come from?
- They are mine, and I am Robin,
And you, sheriff, pray!
The evil sheriff is on the gallows
Hanging. The hemp is strong.
Under the gallows, on the meadow,
Three shooters are dancing.
ROBIN HOOD AND LITTLE JOHN
Tell you, friends, how daredevil Robin Hood is -
The scourge of bishops and rich people, -
With a certain Little John in the deep forest
Did you say hello across the stream?
Even though people called that John little,
He was like a good bear in body!
You can’t embrace the width, you can’t reach the height, -
The guy was something to behold!
How Robin confessed this to the little one,
I’ll tell you, friends, without lies.
Just open your ears: that’s all the work for you! -
If you know better, tell me yourself.
Robin Hood says to his good shooters:
“I’m ruining my youth with you for nothing!”
There are many trees in the thicket, and miracles in the hollows,
And if trouble comes, I will sound the trumpet.
I haven’t lowered my bowstring for fourteen days,
I have no use for lying down.
When the forest is quiet, Robin wins
And if you hear the horn, be on time.
I shook hands with all of them and walked away,
Having fun at every step.
He sees: a stormy stream, a bridge across the water,
The stranger is on the other side.
- Make way, bear! - You yourself will give me the way! -
The bridge is small, the forest is small for two.
- Since you still have a bride, a bear, -
Know that the bride's groom has disappeared!
Robin Hood takes an arrow from his quiver:
– What do you bequeath to your relatives?
“Just touch the bowstring,” the stranger told him, “
FROM AUSTRIAN POETRY
RAINER MARIA RILKE
1875–1926
"Who told us that everything disappears..."
Who told us that everything disappears?
The bird you hurt
Who knows? – will her flight remain?
And maybe stems of hugs
They outlive us, their soil.
It's not a gesture that lasts,
But the gesture clothes you in armor,
Gold - from chest to knees.
And the battle was so pure,
That an angel is carrying her after her.
FROM ENGLISH POETRY
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
1564–1616
STEPHANO'S SONG
from the second act of the drama “The Tempest”
Captain, gunner and boatswain -
The navigator too, although gray, -
Maggie, Maud, Marion and Molly -
Everyone was loved - except Kat.
They won't honor this girl
Neither a smile nor a blasphemy, -
For it is weighed down by tar,
Black disdains resin.
Having lost my balance,
The navigator directed the ship towards her.
And she answered: “Hang yourself!”
But things have been going on for a long time,
What a lame little tailor is sweaty -
Where does the soul still sit? -
There she itches, where it tickles,
It tickles where it itches.
Kat for his services
Pays with the best of coins...
- At sea, at sea, at sea, friends!
And to the gallows - Kat!
FOLK BALLADS
ROBIN HOOD SAVES THREE SHOOTERS
Twelve months a year.
If you don't believe it, count it.
But all twelve miles
Happy month of May.
Happy people, happy goose, happy dog...
An old woman is standing on the way,
All wrinkled from tears.
- What's new, old woman? - Sir,
We have bad news!
Today to three young shooters
The hour of death has been announced.
– Apparently, they slaughtered saints
Did they burn fathers and churches?
Did you seduce the maidens? Or from drunken eyes
Did you lie down with someone else's wife?
- They didn’t kill their fathers
Saints, don't burn churches,
Don't steal girls and sleep
Each one went with his own.
- Why, why is the evil sheriff
Did he condemn them to death?
– We met a deer in the forest...
The forest was royal.
– One day I’m at your house
Ate like the king himself.
Don't cry, old woman! Dear A
I need old bread and salt.
Robin Hood walked, walked to Nottingham, -
Green maple, green oak, green elm...
Looks: in bags and bundles
The gray-haired pilgrim.
– What news, old man?
- Oh sir, there’s nothing sadder:
Today three young shooters
Executed in the prime of life.
- Old man, take off your outfit,
And you yourself will go in mine.
Here's forty shillings in the palm of your hand
Chased silver.
– Yours – the month of May newer,
There are many winters...
Oh sir! Nowhere and never
Don't laugh at the gray haired man!
- If you don’t want silver,
I'm ready for gold.
Here's a purse of gold for you,
To drink to the shooters!
He put on the old man's hat, -
A little lower than the roofs.
- Even though you are in over your head,
And you'll be the first to fly!
And he put a cloak on the old people,
Tails and flaps.
Apparently, its owner drove
Bustle Tips!
He fit into the old man's pants.
- Well, grandfather, it’s okay to joke!
I swear on my soul that these are not pants
On me, and the shadow of the pants!
He fit into old people's stockings.
- Admit it, pilgrim,
That your grandparents and great-grandfathers
They wore them to Jerusalem!
I put on two shoes: one -
A little alive, the other - full of holes.
- “Clothes make masters.”
Ready. I'm not a bad count!
March, Robin Hood! March to Nottingham!
Robin, gip! Robin, gap! Robin, hon! -
Along the city wall the sheriff
Walking goiter.
- Oh, come down, good sir,
Until the request of my lips!
What will you give me, good sir,
Shall I hang up all three?
- First of all, I’ll give you three new clothes.
From a distant shoulder,
I'll give you thirteen pence too
And the title of executioner.
Robin, having run around the sheriff,
Jump! and jump onto the stone!
- Sign up to be an executioner!
You are a smart old man!
– I have not been an executioner in my life;
Dream of my nights:
A hundred gallows in my garden -
And all for the executioners!
I have four bags:
That's malt, that's grain
I carry, this one contains meat, this one contains flour, -
And they're all empty.
But there is one more bag:
Look - they are swollen like a mountain!
There is a horn in it, and this horn
Robin Hood gave it to me.
- Blow, blow, Robin's friend,
Blow Robin's horn!
Yes, so that your eyes get out of the pits,
Get your cheekbones out of your cheeks!
There was the first call of the horns, like thunder!
And - with lightning to him -
One Hundred Robinhood Men
Appeared on the hill.
There was the next call - then the army
Robin Hood is calling.
From all sides, at full speed
Robinhood's people are rushing.
- But who are you? - asked the sheriff,
Barely alive. - Where did you come from?
- They are mine, and I am Robin,
And you, sheriff, pray!
The evil sheriff is on the gallows
Hanging. The hemp is strong.
Under the gallows, on the meadow,
Three shooters are dancing.
ROBIN HOOD AND LITTLE JOHN
Tell you, friends, how daredevil Robin Hood is -
The scourge of bishops and rich people, -
With a certain Little John in the deep forest
Did you say hello across the stream?
Even though people called that John little,
He was like a good bear in body!
You can’t embrace the width, you can’t reach the height, -
The guy was something to behold!
How Robin confessed this to the little one,
I’ll tell you, friends, without lies.
Just open your ears: that’s all the work for you! -
If you know better, tell me yourself.
Robin Hood says to his good shooters:
“I’m ruining my youth with you for nothing!”
There are many trees in the thicket, and miracles in the hollows,
And if trouble comes, I will sound the trumpet.
I haven’t lowered my bowstring for fourteen days,
I have no use for lying down.
When the forest is quiet, Robin wins
And if you hear the horn, be on time.
I shook hands with all of them and walked away,
Having fun at every step.
He sees: a stormy stream, a bridge across the water,
The stranger is on the other side.
- Make way, bear! - You yourself will give me the way! -
The bridge is small, the forest is small for two.
- Since you still have a bride, a bear, -
Know that the bride's groom has disappeared!
Robin Hood takes an arrow from his quiver:
– What do you bequeath to your relatives?
“Just touch the bowstring,” the stranger told him, “
You'll make acquaintance with Vodyany in no time!
- You speak like a fool, - to a stranger, Robin, -
You talk like a brainless boar!
You still won’t have time to raise your hands,
How the hell will I send you to the clan!
“You threaten like a coward,” the stranger replied, “
Who has arrows and a bow.
I have nothing but a stick in my hands,
Nothing but a stick and hands!
“I don’t even need a bow to defeat you.”
I'll make do with a simple baton.
But, having matched you in arms, I’ll see,
How can you compare with me, you coward!
Robin Hood ran into the deepest thicket,
Hewed his saber to length
And he rushed back, shouting from afar:
- Well, will the bridge be yours or mine?
So, without leaving the bridge, without sparing nature,
We will fight, at least until the morning.
Who fell - lost, survived - won,
That's the game in Nottingham.
- I'll smash you to dust! – a stranger in our hearts, -
The hares of the groves will laugh at you!
In the middle of the bridge two young men collided,
The batons came as often as the rain.
Robin struck like thunder:
He hit it so hard that the oak tree shook!
The stranger, boasting: - I don’t need your gift,
I never owed anyone any money!
Like a crowbar blow was someone else’s blow, -
He hit it so hard that the valley began to hum!
Robin laughed: “Do you want two for one?”
All my life I gave away what I had!
The stranger went wild and blood sprayed out!
Robin was generous - he gave twice as much!
Became a proud man, well done, well done
Threshing is like oats on the threshing floor!
There was a blow from Robin - a leaf flew off the linden tree!
There was someone else's blow - the treasure clinked!
Over thick crowns, over empty heads
The batons clattered like hail.
The bridge walks under the game, the tree walks under your foot,
Even the fish ran away!
The stranger contrived and with one blow
Knocked Robin into a running stream.
Leaning across the bridge: “Where are you, brave fighter?”
Has trouble befallen you?
“I’m in cold water,” Robin answers, “
And I’m floating – I don’t know where!
But I know one thing: you are dry as a nut,
Unfortunately, I am wetter than a beaver.
Those at the top have won, those at the bottom have lost,
So our game is over.
Half wade, half swim, half dead, half alive,
He got out - wet, poor thing, through and through!
He put the horn to his lips - well, hey, he didn’t blow it
There are even moose in the Scottish forests!
The echo sound carried along the green oak forests,
Scattered all over Scotland,
And he came to the call - a forest of fine shooters,
The clothes are greener than grass.
-What's going on here? - said William Stutley
Why do you have scales?
- Because the scales are that this good father
He combined me with the Virgin of the Brook.
- This man is dead! - the army shouted menacingly,
Moving en masse towards one.
- This man is mine! - Robin shouted menacingly,
And don’t touch him with your little finger!
Meet my fellow countryman! These guys are shooters
Robinhood's forest brothers.
There were seventy of them minus one,
Exactly seventy will be with you.
You will have: a cloak the color of spring grass,
Crossbow hitting the target
There will be a goose in the skies and a deer in the forests.
Do you agree to join the artel with Robin Hood?
– God knows, I’m ready! - the daredevil beamed. -
Who wouldn't trade a club for a bow?
People called me Little John
But I know where is north and where is south.
– John Little – such a fine fellow?!
Call back! - said William Stutley. -
Robinhood's army - here is the godmother,
Well, I’ll be the godfather myself.
They brought the arrows of two fat deer,
The beer was rolled out - no need to drink it!
Became a strong drinker under a green bush
Baptize John into the new faith.
There were only seven feet in length,
And just a mouth full of teeth!
If only I didn’t drink vodka and shave my beard -
It would be the most ordinary baby!
The oaks and rowan trees are still talking,
I haven't forgotten the forest path,
Stump - and he did not forget, like the brave Robin himself
I read over the baby for the priest.
That prayer is behind him, the people of Nottingham are behind him,
They repeated after him at the top of their lungs.
Adoptive father, stately William Stutley
I christened him like this:
- You were Little John until this day,
Today there is a tribute to old John,
For from this day until the day of death
You have become Little John. Amen.
A thunderous hurray - the mountain would resound! -
The baptismal ceremony was completed.
They began to drink and pour, wishing the baby to grow:
– Try your best, our Little John!
The diligent Robin took the strong baby.
I unwrapped it in an instant and put it on right away
The lord is not dressed like that in emerald corduroy! -
And he handed him a crossbow:
- You will be a sharp shooter, a fine fellow, like myself,
You will perform green service,
You will live like in paradise while in our land
There are boars and bishops.
Even if we have not a foot of all Scottish land,
Not a brick - except prison,
We eat like squires and look like lords.
Who are the owners of Scotland? - We!
Having danced one last time, following the red sun
We wandered along the stream willows
To those cave dwellings, behind Robin - William...
They sleep... And Little John sleeps with them.
So under this name through the forest slums
He lived and lived and grew old.
And how the whole heavenly army began to die
She called him: “Little John!”
FROM SPANISH POETRY
FREDERICO GARCIA LORCA
1898–1936
GUITAR
Begins
The guitar's cry
Breaks
Cup of the morning.
Begins
Guitar cry.
Oh don't expect it from her
Silence,
Don't ask her
Silence!
The guitar is crying
Like water on slopes - it cries,
Like the winds over the snow - she cries,
Don't beg her
Oh silence!
So the sunset cries for the dawn,
So an arrow without a target cries,
So the hot sand cries
About the cool beauty of camellias,
This is how a bird says goodbye to life
Under threat of a snake's sting.
Oh guitar
Poor victim
Five agile daggers!
SCENERY
Olive Plain
Opens the fan.
Above the oilseed shoots
The sky has bowed low
And pour down like a dark shower
Cold luminaries.
On the bank of the canal
The reeds and darkness tremble,
And the third is the gray wind.
The olives are full
Sad bird cries.
Oh, the flock of poor captives!
The darkness of the night plays
Their long tails.
VILLAGE
On the crown of the mountain,
Naked on the crown -
Into pearly waters
A century will disappear
People in raincoats disperse,
And on the tower
The weather vane rotates,
Rotates day by day
Rotates at night
Spins forever.
Oh, somewhere a lost village
In my Andalusia
Tearful...
DESERT
Burrowed by time
Labyrinths -
Desert -
I stayed.
Unsilent heart -
Source of desires -
Desert -
I stayed.
Sunset haze
And kisses
Desert -
I stayed.
It fell silent, died out,
It has cooled down, dried up,
Desert -
I stayed.
CAVE
From the cave - sigh after sigh,
Hundreds of sighs, hosts of sighs,
Purple on red.
The gypsy's throat resurrects
Countries that have sunk into eternity
Towers built into the sky
Foreigners full of mystery...
Eyebrow - black on red.
Lime cave
It makes me shiver. The cave is shaking
Gold. There lies a cave -
In glitter - white on red -
– The cave is flowing
Tears: white on red...
FROM GERMAN POETRY
JOHANN WOLFGANG GOETHE
1749–1832
“Whoever has not eaten bread while weeping...”
Who did not eat bread while crying,
Who, weeping as we saw off the luminary,
I didn’t meet him with tears,
He didn’t know you, heavenly powers!
You lure us into the garden,
Where are the seductions and enchantments;
Then you cast us into hell:
There is no sin without punishment!
Alas for him who has done evil
Aurora seems like hell!
And cool off the guilty brow
There is not a drop of moisture in all the seas of the universe!
FOLK SONGS
1. "Why are you my love..."
What are you my love -
It's time to know.
Come at midnight
Tell me what to call.
Come at midnight
To the midnight fight.
Mother and father are sleeping,
I should sleep with you.
Knock on the door with your hand!
To this knock
The mother will say in her sleep:
- Spruce branch!
And get to the mountain quickly!
Hurry to bed!
I'll wrap my shoes around you,
Than ivy and hops.
What are you my love -
It's time to know.
Come at midnight
Mikhail LERMONTOV
in translations
Marina TSVETAEVA
“It seems good,” Marina Tsvetaeva wrote under her French translation of the classic “I go out alone on the road...”
This note at the bottom of the sheet was made in Bolshevo on July 29, 1939, forty days after returning from Paris to Moscow. And two days before the translation was completed, in Lermontov’s original source, in the line “I am looking for freedom and peace,” she highlighted two semantic words: “NB. I! MC". Assessing the quality of the translated text, she still did not know—perhaps she refused to believe—how prophetic the title words of the original source would turn out to be. It was then that the fortunes of the Tsvetaev-Efron family turned their wheel from a dramatic to a tragic form - “I go out alone on the road...”
In another month, Molotov and Ribbentrop will sign a historical pact in Moscow that will unleash fascist Germany and hands to the Soviet Union. At the same time, on the night of August 27, Ariadne’s daughter will be arrested in Bolshevo. And on October 10 – and husband Sergei Efron. In despair, Tsvetaeva will be left alone with her fourteen-year-old son Moore - both of them, each in their own way, will find themselves helpless under Soviet conditions.
A collection of her poems proposed in 1940 to Goslitizdat will be condemned to non-publication by the critic Cornelius Zelinsky, who will call Tsvetaeva’s poems “formalistic in literally this word, i.e. meaningless." Perhaps Marina Ivanovna herself did not read the damning review of her latest book, but knew it only in the retelling of her friends who spared her. But on the typescript of the collection stored in RGALI, Tsvetaeva wrote: “P.S. A person who could certify such verses as formalism is simply unscrupulous. I’m speaking from the future.”
Ahead of her are war, evacuation, the threat of unemployment and lack of food, even greater despair - with the final loop in Yelabuga.
The next archival film festival “Il Cinema Ritrovato”, held in 1999, which is traditionally prepared by the City Cineteca of Bologna, if it promised sensations, it was purely workshop, intra-cinematic, interesting exclusively to historians and film archivists.
However, a sensation occurred in Bologna that no one noticed there. These were its components.
The film "Madonna of Sleeping Cars" (1927) was shown at the festival. novel of the same name Maurice Decobra, directed by Marco de Gastin and Maurice Glaize. This is a banal film based on the material of the Russian revolution and the fate of its exiles. “Madonna of Sleeping Cars” had nothing in common either with the French avant-garde, with its keen attention to formal searches, or with the masterpieces of the last decade of the Great Mute.
The judgment about the tabloid French fiction writer of the 20s of the last century, Maurice Decobras (real name Maurice Tessier, 1885–1975) was formed under the direct influence of the sarcastic (even mocking) remarks of Sergei Eisenstein in his “Autobiographical Notes”, which now comprise two volumes of “Memoirs” . The classic called the now-forgotten author the “madonna of sleeping cars,” who writes his “imperishable book” on letter paper stolen from hotels, moving from city to city.
True, Don Aminado’s very benevolent testimonies about the same Maurice Decobras, who actively helped the poor Russian emigrants of the first wave, were also recalled orally.
I am willing to readily believe in the noble human deeds of Maurice Decobre, but the level of his artistic creativity was quite consistent with the literature of the boulevards, and his “feuilletons,” novels with sequels, were the kind of reading that was willingly and easily consumed, in particular, by the film industry of the era.
A certain curiosity in the film adaptation of “Madonna of Sleeping Cars” could only be aroused by the name of the Russian actor Vladimir Gaidarov and the Russian surnames among the characters: Irina Muravyova, Ivanov, Chapinsky, Varyshkin.
The plot of the film, which unfolded in the early 20s in London and Berlin, as well as in Batum, already under the Soviets, is quite banal.
The extravagant, successful and charming lady Diana Winan, nicknamed the “Madonna of Sleeping Cars” due to her frequent trips to Europe, is on the verge of ruin. Her secretary Gerard, aka Prince Seliman, intends to save her from disaster. Having secured the support of Soviet representative Varyshkin, he goes to Batum to negotiate oil concessions owned by Lady Diana Winan. Varyshkin's mistress Irina Muravyova suspects that her lover himself is making plans to marry Lady Diana. She starts an intricate intrigue, as a result of which, upon arrival in Batum, Gerard is arrested and faces execution, which the security officers are about to carry out. Saved at the last moment, Gerard returns to Lady Diana Uinen's yacht, and through the efforts of Varyshkin, the intriguer Irina Muravyova is neutralized.
So, neither the plot of the book nor its on-screen development could arouse much interest. Both the author of the novel, Maurice Decobras, and the co-directors of the film, Marco de Gastin and Maurice Glaize, have long since sunk into oblivion.
The only thing worthy of attention was the high level of restoration of the film by the Cinémathèque Française, as a result of which, in fact, it was presented at the festival.
All of the above not only did not predispose to extra-archival sensation, but also excluded it by definition. For the hero of the sensation was not known by sight in the Apennines, and in Moscow they did not know about the existence of the film itself.
Here I must admit that, as a representative of the State Film Fund of Russia at the IFF “Rediscovered Cinema” in Bologna, formally I had to watch the film program of the festival, but I was free not to go, studying in the library, in the cinema itself, visiting city museums and so on. However, in the stone Bolognese sack in July there was incredible heat, and the only salvation was the festival cinema hall with air conditioning, which even at midday lulled you to sleep no worse than a sleeping pill.
I confess that I dozed off during this boring film, missing the plot intricacies and twists of intrigue. But something made me not lose sight of the single microplot. True, it deserves the attention of exclusively Russian viewers.
The hero's cellmate in the Batumi prison introduces the arrested Gerard to the local customs and, in particular, the conventional language adopted here: if the guards unlock another cell at night and announce to the prisoner that it is his turn to go for a walk, this means execution. Together with his fellow sufferer, the hero listens to what is happening behind the prison partition, in the next cell, where the guards have shown up.
What follows is a tiny episode in which a prisoner sitting on the dirt floor, for whom the euphemism about “a walk into the city” is more than transparent, is dragged out of solitary confinement by guards. Next, special noise units are turned on, designed to drown out the sound of a gunshot in the prison catacombs.
For some reason, still half-following the plot, a completely uncontrollable analogy occurred to me: fourteen years later (the film, I repeat, was made in 1927) they dragged Sergei Efron out of the Lubyanka cell in the same way.
The relay instantly closed, it was as if an electric current had pierced me, I immediately woke up from my slumber, and... the episode was over!
It was absolutely impossible to make a mistake or get it wrong. A narrow, “sword-like” face, so familiar from numerous Koktebel and Moscow photographs of the 10s, flashed by. Even in emigration, it retained Efron’s characteristic lip line, drooping eyes, and the graphic profile of Sergei Yakovlevich, recognizable even from rapid angles.
The short, almost instantaneous episode on the screen was more than eloquent. The consumptive beauty of the youthful chosen one and only husband of Marina Tsvetaeva did not fade even after the war, the revolution and the White Campaign, after the Czech Republic and in France, but only transformed with age. Expressiveness of plasticity, sharpness in turns of the head and shoulders, long hands of expressive hands - sometimes in prayer, sometimes in despair before the inevitable... And special thinness - sunken cheeks, thin neck, sharp knees of a man sitting on the earthen floor!.. And the nervousness and nervousness of the measured and movements closed in a casemate!..
Were they measured only by the task of the role?! And would another Russian emigrant, some amateur actor who lived at that time somewhere in the Parisian Passy, in his own house, like the Merezhkovskys, have played such a microscopic role? Philosophers, for example? Did he need it?! With all the same general Russian emigrant poverty?..
But Efron and the entire Tsvetaeva family, with their inescapable nomadism, with eternal homelessness and lack of money, had one, and what another! It is worth re-reading the letters of Marina Ivanovna and Sergei Yakovlevich from that distant year. Efron - to the sisters in Moscow, Tsvetaeva - to whoever. In one of them, to her Czech friend Anna Teskova in Prague, dated October 20, 1927, she writes: “With<ергей>I<ковлевич>...loses... last health. Earnings from 5 ½ am to 7-8 pm<ера>... acting as a figure in a movie for 40 francs<анков>per day, from to<ото>free 5 francs<анков>go to the road and 7 francs<анков>for lunch - total for 28 francs<анков>in a day. And there are many such days – if 2 a week...”
Yes, this is no longer Passy, but the Parisian settlements - Issy-les-Moulineaux, Meudon, Bellevue, Clamart, Vanves - with the mendicant Tsvetaevs, Andreevs, Elchaninovs and countless others.
Sergei Efron, as usual, swaggers around in his letters to Moscow, talking about his cinematic successes. So, in a letter dated June 30, 1927 to E.Ya. He writes to Efron (to his beloved sister Lila): “In the morning I went to get hired for a movie shoot. In a week I will be filming again with jumping into the water, in the Seine. The most despicable of my earnings, but the easiest and most profitable... In all likelihood, I will still act in Jeanne D’Arc. I'm going to negotiations tomorrow. I get more from one shoot than I get from a week of lessons.”
How could the daily extra Sergei Efron, who was involved in “The Passion of Joan of Arc” (1927), a French film by the Dane Carl Theodor Dreyer, know that the conflict in it was based on a psychological combat between Jeanne, the actress Falconetti, and the judges, in one of which immediately, but one can recognize the aspiring actor Michel Simon. And throughout the entire film, the fight between them was decided exclusively in close-ups. Only in the final scene of the peasant revolt, where guards with chains on the bridge disperse the rioters, under a layer of exaggerated makeup one can assume that one of the peasants is a flashing extra Efron. No more.
Irma Kudrova in her book “Versts, Dali...” Marina Tsvetaeva: 1922–1939” (M.: Sovetskaya Rossiya, 1991. – P. 198) reports that, in addition to “Joan of Arc,” Efron then starred in "Casanova." However, this message has not been confirmed. In the film of the same name by Alexander Volkov, Efron is not among the background characters. There was no point in taking the unknown person involved on an expedition to Venice, where most of the production was filmed and where unemployed Italian extras cost much less than forty francs.
But Efron himself, as was almost always characteristic of him, did not lose hope even in those cases when there was no hope left. On November 9 of the same 1927, he informs E.Ya. Efron: “...There’s nothing to write about myself. All this time I was filming films - I got up at 5, came at 8. And in the evening there were more classes. Now the shooting is over - I’m looking for new ones...”
Later, in 1931, he would make plans to become a film reporter and even a cameraman, subscribing through his sister from Moscow for film literature published there. Attends Pathé's technical courses and tries to film on his own. However, as we know, Efron did not succeed as a cinematographer in any capacity: neither as an actor, nor as a reporter, nor as a cameraman.
Having played few roles in films, Sergei Efron played his own fate in a fatal and completely inexplicable way.
Having agreed to the role offered in “Madonna of Sleeping Cars” - did he have a choice? - a death row prisoner in a Batumi prison, extras Sergei Efron anticipated the ending of his own life - execution in the Lubyanka casemates in October 1941.
It is unlikely that he felt this cinematic bonus that befell him as a tragic sign. It is also unlikely that he was reminded of Russian roulette, its deadly vicious circle. However, neither then nor later was it possible for anyone to know this.
We don’t know whether Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva, who loved to visit Parisian and suburban cinemas (if, of course, she had money for a ticket), saw “Madonna of Sleeping Cars.” In any case, this name does not appear in any of the published documents of the emigrant period.
But let us admit that after the film was released on French screens after its premiere on April 28, 1928, she still watched this picture. Extremely responsive to earthly signs, seeing in many coincidences a non-random connection (if not the finger of fate), did she not withdraw into silence because of this - so fatal! - about? Sergei Yakovlevich, having played his own role on the screen, no matter what, plunged further into literary affairs by publishing an emigrant magazine. And Tsvetaeva remained silent throughout the following years with the Efron-esque trajectory that followed - from the “Homecoming Union” to making a firm decision to return to the USSR (with intelligence cooperation with the NKVD in the interim). Were these twelve last seconds of the life of her beloved husband – and what if the whole family – standing before her eyes, etched in her memory? - upon return? It is not without reason that it was in 1928–1929 that Tsvetaeva read sources and collected materials about the tragic death of the imperial family, and since 1930 she has been working on the “Poem about Royal family", subsequently lost! And wasn’t all this, if not the reason, then a component of her firm desire not to return to such a beloved and such a terrible homeland?! As you know, both the husband, the daughter, and the growing son were burning with the desire to return and realize themselves in the socialist reorganization of the fatherland. Tsvetaeva, in her Protestantism, which everyone considered obscurantism, remained alone here too. She stayed until the very last moment.
The noose inevitably began to tighten ahead of time. Here is the failed terrorist attack of the Soviet authorities in Switzerland to kill Ignatius Reis (Ludwig Poretsky), the Soviet resident in Western Europe. And the insight of Reis himself, which serves not the world revolution, but bloody Stalinism. And surveillance of the renegade Sergei Efron. And the latter’s feverish flight to Moscow under the wing of the Soviet embassy, when the police discovered the body of a murdered former resident. And interrogations at the police commissariat of Tsvetaeva, who remained in Paris together with the minor Mur. Daughter Ariadne returned to the USSR first - the first and will be arrested. Around Tsvetaeva, as if around a leper, a ring of emigrant curse will close, which will differ little from the subsequent Soviet one.
However, they no longer had any choice... And in the last letter before Moscow to Anna Teskova, dated June 12, 1939, Tsvetaeva wrote while the train was moving: “Now it’s not hard anymore, now it’s fate...”
The tragedy of the Tsvetaeva family in the USSR, as is known, more than surpassed the darkest fears.
But Marina Tsvetaeva, who knew everything, will not have a chance to find out about the last blow of fate: two months after the fatal Elabuga loop, her beloved Sergei Efron will face the fatal outcome that scared her so much - the same one that he played in twelve seconds on the screen in “Madonna of Sleeping Cars” in that distant and, as Anna Akhmatova used to say on another occasion, “vegetarian” 1927.
And at the turn of the 20th–21st centuries, in a book that would be published after the author’s death, “Your moment, your day, your century.” The Life of Marina Tsvetaeva" (M.: AGRAF, 2002), the first Russian biographer and researcher of the life and work of the poet Anna Saakyants will write after watching "Madonna of Sleeping Cars", when a copy of the film is sent from the French Cinematheque to Moscow:
“Not even a voice survived from Marina Tsvetaeva.
From her daughter and son too.
And only now, by the will of the Great Chance - one in hundreds of thousands, Sergei Yakovlevich Efron, who came to life on the screen, sends us his silent and instant greetings through the thickness of times and destinies.”
My acquaintance with Anna Alexandrovna Sahakyants happened ten years before this discovery. It was then that, at my first call, Sahakyants and Maria Ivanovna Belkina, the author of perhaps the best book about Tsvetaeva in Russia, “Crossing of Fates,” came to the State Film Fund. Checking the (later unconfirmed) version of Irma Kudrova, we watched “The Passion of Joan of Arc” and “Casanova”, and reviewed the last part of “The Passion” with a mass scene of the guards dispersing a peasant revolt on the editing table. De visu we didn’t see Efron there.
But ten years later, at the end of 2000, at the Gosfilmofond representative office in Moscow, on Maly Gnezdnikovsky Lane, Anna Aleksandrovna Saakyants wrote about the “Madonna of Sleeping Cars” she had just seen with Sergei Efron:
“I asked to play these shots several times, but it was still not enough.
My shock is beyond words - I won’t even try to find them...”
This was the beginning of our friendship, which replaced the casual acquaintance of previous years - a friendship that lasted the last few months of her life: Anna Alexandrovna passed away on January 28, 2002.
During one of my infrequent visits to Anna Alexandrovna in her small one-room apartment in Sokolniki, on Rusakovskaya Street, the conversation turned to Tsvetaev’s translations from Pushkin into French, which had no place in the seven-volume edition of the author of the Ellis Lak publishing house (1994–1995), in the fifth volume of the first collected works of the poet, partially reserved for translations. On the title of the first volume of the copy of the collected works that belongs to me, it is written in Anna Alexandrovna’s hand: “To Valery Bosenko - as a keepsake from the compilers. A. Sahakyants, L. Mnukhin. 6.9.1997. VDNKh". It was there, at the autumn All-Union Book Fair, that we met Lev Abramovich Mnukhin.
I believed that Tsvetaeva’s Pushkin translations into French were not included in the seven-volume edition due to the fact that the archive of M.I. Tsvetaeva was closed by her daughter Ariadna Sergeevna Efron until 2000. However, Sahakyants objected to me with disarming directness:
- No, here they are. I just don't know French. And since you are on an easy footing with the French, then you hold the cards. Take it and publish it. – And she held out a small red book of half a sheet of paper.
It was a bound typescript of eleven poems by A.S. Pushkin and twelve poems by M.Yu. Lermontov in a translation into French for the centennial anniversary of the death of Russian geniuses, made shortly and on the eve of her own death. Pushkin's translations began in the second half of 1936 near Paris, and Lermontov's were compiled and completed near Moscow, in Bolshevo and beyond - everywhere, as places changed, in 1939-1941.
My reaction to the gift was comparable only to Pasternak’s first response to the Nobel Prize: “... grateful, touched, proud, surprised, embarrassed.” But, unlike Boris Leonidovich, circumstances were favorable for me to accept this gift.
Anna Alexandrovna, of course, exaggerated, saying that she was ignorant of the language and did not know this material. In the book “Marina Tsvetaeva. Life and Creativity” (M.: Ellis Luck, 1997), she wrote about her heroine: “Now she was enthusiastically working on translating Pushkin’s poems into French - for the upcoming anniversary of his death in February next year. There were no monetary interests behind this work; Marina Ivanovna intended to publish part of it in “Journal de Poet” by Shakhovskaya, and also to compile for the French a collection of translations of her favorite poems (she translated fourteen in total). In essence, the entire second half of 1936 was spent on this hellish work, which, according to Tsvetaeva herself, amounted to two draft notebooks “of two hundred pages each - up to fourteen versions of some poems.” She pursued the highest creative task: internally, to follow Pushkin as closely as possible, without falling into slavish dependence on him, running away from blind imitation. Alas, these translations, like everything French by Tsvetaeva, suffered the same fateful fate: only a small part of them saw the light of day...”
Unfortunately, by a fatal coincidence - by the very location of the stars above the world! - neither Paris nor Moscow needed these poems.
In his book “On Poets and Poetry”, in the chapter “Tsvetaeva - to Elabuga” (Paris, 1973), cultural historian and philologist Vladimir Veidle writes: “...On my recommendation, the magazine of the Dominicans from the street Latour-Maubourg (“La Vie Intellectuelle” ) published several of Pushkin’s poems translated by her (the Chairman’s Song was among them). I wanted to arrange them in the “Nouvelle Revue Française”, but I did not succeed. The fact is that Tsvetaeva unwittingly replaced French metrics with Russian ones. For the Russian ear, these translations are wonderful, but as soon as I rearranged mine into French, I myself noticed that they would not sound good to the French. I didn’t tell Tsvetaeva about this, or about the failure at N.R.F. didn't report. She had enough grievances already. Life was difficult for her both in Paris and in Russian Paris...”
Tsvetaeva was aware of another publication, which she pointed out in Moscow in a conversation with the poet and collector Alexei Kruchenykh, who later collected Tsvetaeva’s French translations from Pushkin and Lermontov. Marina Ivanovna informed him that her Song of the Chairman from “A Feast in the Time of Plague” and “To the Nanny” was published in some magazine published in Palestine. In the preface to her typescript of translations from both poets, Kruchenykh notes that Tsvetaeva, having forgotten, instead of the first poem, also named Pushkin’s “Demons” that she translated.
Apparently, Tsvetaeva herself did not delude herself about the reaction of native speakers to her translations. As if anticipating them, they are purely phonetic - not semantic! - claims, Tsvetaeva, without waiting for an attack, as was always characteristic of her, was eager to be the first to fight. Thus, in a conversation with Nadezhda Gorodetskaya (“Visiting Marina Tsvetaeva”; published in the newspaper “Renaissance”, Paris, 1931, March 7), she herself challenges the French ear:
“Here is one of the basic rules of French versification, you will find in every grammar: it is impossible for two vowels to meet, so, for example, you cannot write “tu es”.
Please tell me why “tuer” is possible, but “tu es” - the word with which God affirmed man: you are - cannot be said? I don't take this into account. I write as I hear.”
In Tsvetaeva’s homeland, her two French translations from Pushkin were one of the first to be published by Vyacheslav Vs. Ivanov in the collection “The Craft of Translation - 1966”, in his article “On Tsvetaev’s translations of songs from “The Feast in the Time of Plague” and “Demons” by Pushkin.”
Comparing Tsvetaeva’s translation of the first of Pushkin’s poems with its translation into French made by Louis Aragon, Vyacheslav Ivanov rightly notes: “Comparison of Aragon’s translation, which is outwardly very close to the original, with Tsvetaeva’s, seemingly far from the original, reveals how deceiving the similarities and unreliable difference. What Aragon gains in conveying individual lines, he loses in conveying a whole that is greater than individual lines.”
For, in addition to the fidelity of each of the translators to their national tradition of versification, they, being contemporaries, are guided in many ways by different value systems: Tsvetaeva - on the Pushkin tradition and the Russian 19th century in poetry, and Aragon, with his rich experience of poetic surrealism in his youth, - on achievements of modernism in the twentieth century (while remaining literally nailed to the interlinear translation, probably made by his wife, Elsa Triolet).
Based on this comparison, Vyach. Sun. Ivanov makes the right conclusion: “Translating the poem as a single whole, Tsvetaeva considered it possible to move its component parts from one stanza to another. But she was concerned about preserving her inner musical unity poems." And further: “In art, as in modern science, there are no unique solutions. One can be amazed at the virtuosity of the line-by-line (and sometimes word-by-word) correct translation of Aragon, its ingenuity and harmony. But even more striking is the miracle of Tsvetaev’s handling of the original, free and at the same time penetrating to the very essence of Pushkin’s poem.”
Vyach. Sun. Ivanov, as one of the first publishers of Tsvetaeva’s translations from Pushkin in his homeland, is absolutely fair when he defines these texts as “an experience in recreating Pushkin’s voices of the elements,” which are her “Demons”: “Tsvetaeva managed to convey both the dancing trochaic rhythm of this poem and its swift images transforming into each other, which she absorbed from early childhood.<…>That’s why Tsvetaeva’s translation of “Demons” into French was written from the inside, like poetry about what became her flesh and blood.”
If Tsvetaeva’s Song of the Chairman from “A Feast during the Plague” is stunning, then her “Demons” mesmerize from the very first stanza:
Les nuages fuient en foule
Sous la lune qui s'enfuit.
Les nuages fument et roulent.
Trouble ciel et trouble nuit.
This riot of alliteration, the lacy ligature of euphony distinguishes, as a rule, the original poetic text and only in the rarest cases - the translated one. But it is precisely this colorfulness and rhythmic richness that characterize Tsvetaev’s “Demons.” And therefore, all sorts of other reasons that were sometimes attached to its translations look unconvincing, if not ridiculous.
So, in particular, according to the assurances of the Parisians who heard this translation, the French ear cannot perceive Tsvetaeva’s metaphor from “Demons”:
C'est un loup aux yeux-flambeaux!..
(...This is a wolf with torch eyes!..)
In French, one must say that this is a “wolf with burning eyes,” that is, a noun requires an adjective and nothing more, but not an application in the form of another noun. You can say something - what not to say?! - but it immediately ceases to be poetry in the Russian sound and in the Russian understanding! "The Wolf with Burning Eyes" in best case scenario I'm drawn to a newspaper ad! And Tsvetaeva understood this better than anyone, feeling such a replacement as a substitution.
For, even “writing in French,” she was guided not by the French ear, but by the Russian poetic tradition in its creative, dynamic refraction.
The exact number of Tsvetaev's translations from Pushkin has not yet been established.
Tsvetaeva's translations from Lermontov were much less fortunate. Only three of them saw the light on the eve of the war, when they were clearly not at home - “Prediction”, “Both boring and sad...”, “No, I’m not Byron...”. The remaining nine translations were destined to be forgotten in Russia for seventy years, until the 21st century.
Tsvetaeva’s completed Lermontov translations received a review from literary critic-linguist, graduate of St. Petersburg University, professor at Leningrad University, former OPOYAZ member Boris Kazansky. In contrast to Cornelius Zelinsky’s cowardly opportunistic internal review of Tsvetaev’s collection of 1940, unpublished and bound in a typewritten collection by Alexei Kruchenykh, Boris Kazansky’s review was, in any case, purely linguistic and objectivist. A classical philologist, he assessed Tsvetaeva’s translations not from the standpoint of the poetic tradition in its development and refraction, but exclusively from the point of view of the usability of a particular word, term or concept in French or Russian. And without any condescension, almost mercilessly gives examples of the sins Tsvetaeva committed against the norms and rules literary language. At the same time, having listed the successful discoveries in Tsvetaeva’s translations at the end of his review, he comes to the conclusion that in her dozen of French translations she “to a large extent re-composes Lermontov.”
What then can we say about the volumes of translations by Boris Pasternak, who re-composed Shakespeare, Calderon, Goethe, Schiller, Kleist, Petofi, Slovaksky and many others so much so that their verse became a phenomenon of the Russian language?! Undoubtedly, Tsvetaev's translations from Pushkin and Lermontov did not become a fact of the French language, but they became and remain a phenomenon of Russian poetry in the adjacent linguistic territory!
Incomparably more objective and fair was the judgment expressed half a century later by Anna Saakyants, who, unlike the classical philologist, did not know French, about Lermontov’s translations of Tsvetaeva: “The great poet was her secret interlocutor; With his poems, Tsvetaeva confided to him her pain, which permeated her soul. She strictly observed the size, to some detriment to the French translation, and sometimes rethought it in her own way, bringing it even closer to herself.
She conveys Lermontov’s “I would like to forget myself and fall asleep” in French as follows:
Ah, m’evanouir – mourire – dormir!
(“Ah, forget yourself - die - fall asleep,” while Lermontov does not have the word “die”...) In “Cossack Lullaby,” she translated the lines “You will be a hero in appearance / And a Cossack in soul”:
Par le coeur et par la taille
Vrai enfant du Don,
(literally: “Heart and body – a true child of the Don”). Yes, she remained faithful to Don and his sons for the rest of her life.”
On the other hand, on the musical and artistic side, Tsvetaeva, translating Lermontov, compared the melody of her translation with the canonical melodies of “Cossack Lullaby Song” and “I Go Out Alone on the Road...”, which are still extremely popular and often performed in Russia.
In the already quoted old interview, when asked by interviewer Nadezhda Gorodetskaya whether the poet tests his poems by ear, Tsvetaeva replies: “How could it be otherwise? Once upon a time they were sung. When you like a line, you definitely say it out loud. And even if you read poetry to yourself, you still pronounce it internally..."
But in general, responding and responding to the expanded images of various elements in Pushkin - the Plague, the Buran, the Sea, Marina Tsvetaeva perceived them through the element of language, either native or foreign, as her own. She translated “Free Element” from Pushkin’s “To the Sea” as “Espace des Espaces” - “space of spaces”, “element of elements”. For this is exactly how I felt language – not only as a poet, but also as a language creator! Contrary to all the purists, scribes and Pharisees...
Tsvetaev’s inner circle closed to the point of disastrous – in Paris, then in Moscow, in Chistopol and in Elabuga.
In 1937, in Paris, after Sergei Efron fled to red Moscow, the Azhans interrogated her precisely as a political suspect. Suspected by the police of a similar crime - the kidnapping of General E. Miller - the Russian singer Nadezhda Plevitskaya had not yet served half of the fifteen-year sentence of French hard labor for her husband, General N. Skoblin, in which she would die. Not without reason, Tsvetaeva imagined the same future.
After the Moscow troubles and disasters, her future will be even worse. In Chistopol, as cursed by everyone, they won’t even hire her as a dishwasher in the canteen of the evacuated Writers’ Union. And the nail, which she had been looking for and looking for for herself for a year, in the Brodelshchikovs’ house in Yelabuga, where she and Moore settled down, would turn out to be reliable, strong...
And yet, despite everything, which was as obvious as it was unbearable... “But she will lick the ink from her wet fingers” and will write under her translation, which was not commissioned by anyone, which she “translated for herself / and for Lermontov /”:
"Seems good."
Valery BOSENKO
* * *
Je suis un autre que Byron,
Nouveau sur cette terre ronde.
Comme Byron haï du monde
Mai s Russe jusqu'à mon tréfonds.
* * *
No, I'm not Byron, I'm different
A still unknown chosen one,
Like him, a wanderer driven by the world,
But only with a Russian soul.
SUR LA MORT DU POETE
Sous une vile calomnie
Tombé, l'esclave de l'honneur!
Plein de vengeance inassouvie,
Du plomb au sein, la haine au cœur.
Ne put souffrir ce cœur unique
Les viles trames d'ici-bas,
Il se dressa contre la clique.
Seul il vécut – seul il tomba.
Tué! No larmes, no louanges
Ne ressucitent du tombeau.
Tous vos regrets – plus rien n’y change,
Pour lui le grand débat est clos.
Un noble don vous pourchassâtes –
Unique sous le firmament,
Incendiaires qui soufflâtes
Sans trêve sur le feu dormant.
Tu as vaincu, humaine lie!
Triomphe! Ton succès est beau.
A terre le divin génie,
A terre le divin flambeau!
Son assassin avec aisance
Visa – et le destin fut là.
Le vide cњur bat en cadence
Et l'arme ne bronchera pas.
Qui est-ce? Un maître de l'astuce,
Pas autre chose qu'un fuyard,
Chercheur de titre, par hasard
Il est venu en terre russe.
Est plein d'un souriant dédain
Pour nos statuts et nos coutumes.
Qu'a-t-il compris à sa victime?
A-t-il compris quelle sublime
Merveille detruisait sa main?
.............................................
Et vous, seigneurs à l'âme basse,
De tristes pères tristes rejetons,
Vous dont les bottes insolemment terrassent
Les nobles au grand cњur, les pauvres au grand nom,
Vous, foule de mendiants sur l'escalier du trône,
Serviles assassins et orgueilleux valets,
La loi vous couvre, la rumeur vous prône,
Tout tremble devant vous, tout ploie et tout se tait.
DEATH OF POET
The Poet is dead! - slave of honor -
Fell, slandered by rumor,
With lead in my chest and a thirst for revenge,
Hanging his proud head!..
The Poet's soul couldn't bear it
The shame of petty grievances,
He rebelled against the opinions of the world
Alone, as before... and killed!
Killed!.. why sobs now,
Empty praise unnecessary chorus
And the pathetic babble of excuses?
Fate has reached its conclusion!
Weren't you the one who persecuted me so viciously at first?
His free, bold gift
And they inflated it for fun
A slightly hidden fire?
Well? have fun... he's tormenting
I couldn't stand the last ones:
The wondrous genius has faded away like a torch,
The ceremonial wreath has faded.
His killer in cold blood
Strike... there is no escape:
An empty heart beats evenly,
The pistol did not waver in his hand.
And what a miracle?.. from afar,
Like hundreds of fugitives
To catch happiness and ranks
Thrown to us by the will of fate;
Laughing, he boldly despised
The land has a foreign language and customs;
He could not spare our glory;
I couldn’t understand at this bloody moment,
What did he raise his hand to!..
ENNUI ET TRISTESSE
Ennui et tristesse... A qui donnerai-je la main
A l'heure où plus rien ne nous leurre?
Desirs? A quoi bon désirer constamment et en vain?
Et l'heure s'en va - la meilleure.
Aimer – mais qui donc? A quoi bon – ces amours pour un jour?
Que dure l'amour le plus tendre?
Je sonde mon cњur. Ce qui fut, est parti sans retour,
Et tout ce qui est n'est que cendre.
Je vois mes passions, sous la faux de la froide raison
Gisant – comme tiges éparses.
Oh, vie! Soupirs et plaisirs et retour des saisons –
Oh, vie, tu n’es qu’une farce.
AND BORING AND SAD
And it’s boring and sad, and there’s no one to give a hand to
In a moment of spiritual adversity...
Desires!.. what good is it to wish in vain and forever?..
And the years pass - all the best years!
To love... but who?.. for a while is not worth the trouble,
And it is impossible to love forever.
Will you look into yourself? - there is no trace of the past:
And joy, and torment, and everything there is insignificant...
What are passions? - after all, sooner or later their sweet illness
Disappears at the word of reason;
And life, as you look at it coldly attention around, –
Such an empty and stupid joke...
* * *
Adieu, pays mange des puces!
Pays de serfs, pays de grands!
Adieu, gendarmes bleu de Prusse,
Adieu, esclaves-paysans!
Peut-être que ces monts de glace
Me cacheront à tes pachas,
A leur regard qui tout embrasse,
A leur pouvoir au trop long bras.
* * *
Goodbye, unwashed Russia,
Country of slaves, country of masters,
And you, blue uniforms,
And you, their devoted people.
Perhaps behind the wall of the Caucasus
I'll hide from your pashas,
From their all-seeing eye,
From their all-hearing ears.
UN REVE
Blessé à mort, par un midi de flamme,
Je reposais. Mon corps rendait mon âme.
En lentes gouttes s'écoulait mon sang.
Abandonne aux serres des rapaces,
Seul je gisais au pied des fauves monts
Et le soleil brûlait ma pâle face
Sans m'éveiller de mon sommeil de plomb.
Et je rêvais: illuminé de cierges
Un gai festin là-bas, à la maison,
Et sur les lèvres de ces belles vierges
Avec des rires revenait mon nom.
Mais entre toutes il en était une:
De la belle heure negligeant la loi,
Elle rêvait, penchant sa tête brune,
Dieu sait à quoi rêvait, Dieu sait pourquoi.
Elle rêvait: du plomb dans la poitrine,
Dans un vallon du sombre Daguestan
Je reposais. En gouttes purpurines
Sur l'herbe sèche s'écoulait mon sang.
DREAM
Midday heat in the valley of Dagestan
With lead in my chest I lay motionless;
The deep wound was still smoking,
Drop by drop my blood flowed.
I lay alone on the sand of the valley;
Rock ledges crowded around,
And the sun burned their yellow tops
And it burned me - but I slept like a dead sleep.
And I dreamed of shining lights
Evening feast in the native land.
Between young wives crowned with flowers,
There was a cheerful conversation about me.
But without entering into a cheerful conversation,
I sat there alone, thoughtfully,
And in a sad dream her young soul
God knows what she was immersed in;
And she dreamed of the valley of Dagestan;
A familiar corpse lay in that valley;
There was a black wound in his chest, smoking,
And the blood flowed in a cooling stream.
BERCEUSE COSAQUE
Dors, mon bel enfant! Silence!
Clos tes doux beaux yeux.
Sous la lune se balance
Ton berceau d'osier.
Je te conterai des contes,
Chanterai des chants;
A qui dort la nuit est prompte.
Dors, mon bel enfant.
Vagues roulent, perles pleuvent.
Tout velu, tout noir,
Un Tchetchène sort du fleuve,
Tât e son poignard.
Mais ton père ni Tchetchène
Ni démon ne craint.
Dors, mon bel enfant des plaines,
Dors, ma fleur de lin.
Oh, que vite le temps passe
De son pas égal!
Te voilà, riant d'audace
Sur un grand cheval.
Que ta selle sera belle,
Toute en perles d'or!
Dors, mon ange, sous mon aile,
Dors, mon doux trésor!
Par le cњur et par la taille
Vrai enfant du Don,
Partiras pour la bataille
Sans tourner le front.
Que de larmes mes deux manches
Essuieront ce jour!
Sous la haute lune blanche
Dors, mon bel amour!
Feuilles viennent, feuilles partent,
Le jour prierai,
La nuit tirerai les cartes,
Toujours pleurerai,
Me disant que tu t'ennuies
Chez les mécréants –
Chere vie de ma vie,
Dors, mon bel enfant.
Tu emporteras en guerre
Ce bijou bé nit,
C'est du Don la Bonne Mère,
Prie-la, petit!
Et au pire de l'attaque
Pense à ta maman.
Dors, mon bel enfant cosaque,
Dors, mon bel enfant!
COSSACK LULLABY SONG
Sleep, my beautiful baby,
Baiushki bye.
The clear moon looks quietly
To your cradle.
I will tell fairy tales
I'll sing a song;
You were dozing with your eyes closed,
Baiushki bye.
The Terek flows over the stones,
A muddy wave splashes;
An angry Chechen crawls to the shore,
Sharpening his dagger;
But your father is an old warrior,
Battle Hardened:
Sleep, little one, be calm,
Baiushki bye.
You will find out for yourself, there will be time,
Abusive life;
Feel free to put your foot in the stirrup
And take the gun.
I am a fighting saddle
I'll spread it with silk...
Sleep, my dear child,
Baiushki bye.
You'll be a hero in sight
And a Cossack at heart.
I'll go out to see you off -
You wave your hand...
How many bitter tears stealthily
I'll spill it that night!..
Sleep, my angel, quietly, sweetly,
Baiushki bye.
I will begin to languish with longing,
It's inconsolable to wait;
I will pray all day long,
At night, guessing;
I'll start to think that you miss me
You are in a foreign land...
Sleep until you have no worries,
Baiushki bye.
I'll give you some for the road
Icon of a saint;
You pray to God,
Set it before yourself;
Yes, preparing for a dangerous battle,
Remember your mother...
Sleep, my beautiful baby,
Baiushki bye.
L'AMOUR DU MORT
Qu'importe que la tombe blême
Prive mon corps?
Toujours, toujours mon âme t'aime,
Toujours, encor!
Oh, rêve qui m'ôte la vie!
Cloué, bandé,
Au froid pays où tout s’oublie
Je t'ai garde.
Dans cette souterraine ville
Aux toits si lourds
J'ai espéré dormir tranquille,
Et c'est l'amour!
J'ai vu les hôtes de l'espace
Et j'ai pleure
Car nul d'entre eux n'avait ta grâce,
Etre adore!
Helas! Que sais-je des délices
Du paradis,
Si tous mes amoureux supplices
M'y ont suivi!
Et me voici, ô jeune femme,
A tes genoux!
Toujours en pleurs, toujours en flamme,
Toujours jaloux!
Enfant! Quand un démon effleure
Ta joue en fleur
Mon âme d'homme qui demeure
Repand des pleurs,
Et lorsqu'on t'endormant tu nommes
Un homme heureux
Mon cњur qui fut celui d'un homme
Refond au feu –
N'en aimera jamais un autre,
La tombe voit!
Par l'âpre amour qui fut le notre,
Tu es à moi.
Malgré les messes mortuaires
Et le froment
Le pauvre mort dans son suaire
Reste un amant.
DEAD MAN'S LOVE
Let the cold earth
I'm falling asleep
O friend! Always, everywhere with you
My soul
Love of mad languor,
Dweller of the graves
In the land of peace and oblivion
I haven't forgotten.
Without fear in the hour of final torment
Leaving the world
I was waiting for consolation from separation -
There is no separation.
I saw the beauty of the incorporeal
And I was sad
What is your image in the heavenly features
I didn't recognize it.
What is the radiance of God's power to me?
And holy heaven?
I have endured earthly passions
Take it there with you.
I caress my dear dream
One everywhere;
I wish, I cry and I am jealous
Just like in the old days.
Will someone else's breath touch you?
Your cheeks,
My soul is in silent suffering
Everything will tremble.
Will it happen, you whisper falling asleep
You're talking about something else
Your words flow flamingly
Fire for me.
You shouldn't love someone else
No, I shouldn't
You are a dead man, the shrine of the word,
Engaged
Alas, your fear, your prayers,
What are they for?
You know, peace and oblivion
I do not need!
(Sur O. Senkovski)
C'est un intrus parmi vous autres Russes,
Et rien n'y changera jamais:
A ses jurons l’on reconnaît la Prusse
Et quand il loue, c'est un Polonais.
EPIGRAM
On O.I. Senkovsky
Under the company of a foreign foreigner
Didn’t hide himself in any way -
The swearing is vulgar: clearly a German;
He will praise: it is clear that he is Pole.
Et l’an viendra – l’an noir de mon pays –
Quand le pouvoir aux Tzars sera ravi...
PREDICTION
The year will come, Russia's black year,
When the crown of kings falls...
* * * Toujours le Polonais se lève
Pour la divine liberté
Et tombent sous son ronge glaive
Les defenseurs des Majestes.
* * *
Again you proud ones have risen
For the independence of the country,
And again they fell before you
Sons of autocracy.
PATRIE
Je sius a toi, patrie bienaimee!
Mai quel amour mystérieux.
Ni ta tonnante renommée,
Ni ton repos confiant et orgueilleux,
Ne ton passé, chanté par nos nourrices,
Ne m'attendrissent, ni ne me ravissent.
Mais je chéris, si tu savais comment!
Tes vastes champs dans leur neigeux silence,
Tes sombres bois qu'un rude vent balance,
Tes fleuves, larges comme l'Océan.
Dans un bruyant chariot j'aime courir les routes
Guetter les rouges feux de tes villages gris
J'aime ta route qui chemine,
Tes charretiers et tes chevaux,
Et quelque part sur la colline
Ce pale couple de bouleaux.
Profondément jusqu'aux entrailles
J'aime l'ennui de tes relais,
Et ton isba au toit de paille,
Et la fenêtre aux gais volets.
Et que de fois dans la nuit noire
J'ai oublié tous mes tourments
En regardant danser et boire
Tes doux et simples paysans.
HOMELAND
I love my fatherland, but with a strange love!
My reason will not defeat her.
Nor glory bought with blood,
Nor the peace full of proud trust,
Nor the dark old treasured legends
No joyful dreams stir within me.
But I love - for what, I don’t know myself -
Its steppes are coldly silent,
Her boundless forests sway,
The floods of its rivers are like seas;
On a country road I like to ride in a cart
And, with a slow gaze piercing the shadow of the night,
Meet on the sides, sighing for an overnight stay,
The trembling lights of sad villages;
I love the smoke of burnt stubble,
A nomadic convoy in the steppe
And on a hill in the middle of a yellow field
A couple of white birches.
With joy unknown to many,
I see a complete threshing floor
A hut covered with straw
Window with carved shutters;
And on a holiday, on a dewy evening,
Ready to watch until midnight
To dance with stomping and whistling
Under the talk of drunken men.
At the end of 1940, Marina Tsvetaeva translated two poems by Adam Mickiewicz - “Ode to Youth” and “Romance” - for the Polish poet, who was preparing for “The Chosen One” at Goslitizdat. The editors rejected Tsvetaeva's translations, and they were not included in the book published in 1943.
The translation of “Romance,” preserved in Tsvetaeva’s archive at RGALI, was recently published by E.B. Korkina on the website of the Moscow Tsvetaeva House Museum, along with a transcript of the discussion of Mitskevich’s translations in Goslitizdat: http://www.dommuseum.ru/?m=archbub
From the afterword by E.B. Korkina:
“Ode to Youth” by A. Mickiewicz translated by M. Tsvetaeva, despite repeated searches, was never found.
By the end of 1940, while working on translations of Ivan Franko’s poems, Tsvetaeva began using thin school notebooks of twelve sheets for drafts, sparing her last Paris notebook for this work. Not a single one of these notebooks was preserved in Tsvetaeva’s archive; apparently, they were all left in a room on Pokrovsky Boulevard and disappeared during the war.
“After Franco there was an Ode to Mickiewicz’s youth - a common place with a temperament - with the exception of one non-common, but at least non-existent in nature: “You see a reptile (option: a mollusk) hunting for its own (smaller) brothers...” This is on the surface the sea! (For Mitskevich points - from the sky). And what kind of hunter mollusk is this? Oyster? - Hm...
They gave another Mickiewicz: “Romanticism” - appreciate this ticity - why not: - Cuteness? Selfishness? etc. - spoiled topic: a girl speaking in public to dead loved ones. Gretchen... Ophelia... (such a girl, etwas irr [a little crazy - German] …) OK.
In the meantime, the Polish text will be available tomorrow - a little bit of my long-suffering Baudelaire.”
Tsvetaeva's second translation survived due to luck. Visiting E.B. and E.E. Tagerov Tsvetaeva forgot the draft notebook in which on December 7 she began work on translating this ballad. The notebook remained with the Tagers, and is now kept in RGALI as part of their personal fund.
Before getting acquainted with Tsvetaeva’s translation, we need to say a little about Mickiewicz’s ballad itself. This programmatic poem was written by a 23-year-old poet in 1821 and opened the first collection of his poems, “Ballads and Romances.” Tsvetaeva is ironic about the name “Romanticism,” but Polish Romantyczność in the time of Mickiewicz sounded completely different from how it sounds now in Russian. “Romanticism” (more often translated: “Romance”, “Romanticism”) is a new artistic method, born from the opposition to classicism. The Romantics gave preference to living feeling and intuition over exact scientific knowledge, hence their interest in folk legends, fairy tales, and beliefs. The idol of the romantics was Shakespeare, and it is with a quote from Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” that Mickiewicz’s poem opens: “It seems to me that I see him,” says the Danish prince about his dead father. - “Where, prince?” - "In the eyes of my soul, Horatio."
Mickiewicz's poem has echoes of both Hamlet and Burger's "cult" romantic ballad "Lenore" (the appearance of a dead groom). The action takes place on a city street. The poet sees a local girl, Ophelia, distraught with grief, who in broad daylight talks with the ghost of her deceased lover Yas. A crowd gathers near the girl. People, gripped by superstitious awe, suggest that Yasya’s soul really wanders somewhere nearby, and begin to read prayers. Then a scientist appears with a piece of glass in his eye and ridicules the superstitions of the crowd, explaining that no spirits exist, and the girl is simply delirious. But the poet takes the side of the crowd, not the scientist, believing that the beliefs of the common people are closer to nature than the dry rationalism of the man of the Enlightenment.
The prototype of the scientist was the mathematician Jan Sniadecki, a professor at Vilna University, and the poem itself is a polemic with his article published in January 1819 in the journal Dziennik Wilenski, where Sniadecki opposed romanticism.
Here is the original text of Mickiewicz's ballad and an interlinear translation.
Adam Mickiewicz. From pastels by V. Vankovich. 1823.
ROMANTYCZNOŚĆ Methinks I see... Zdaje mi się, że widzę... Gdzie? Słuchaj, dzieweczko! To jak martwa opoka - “Tyżeś to w nocy? to you, Jasieńku! — "Niech sobie słyszy... już niema ciebie, "Ty już umarłeś? Ah! ja się boję!... "I sam ty biały jak chusta, "Ach, jak tam zimno musi być w grobie! »Źle mnie w złych ludzi tłumie: »Śród dnia przyjdź kiedy...to może we śnie? "Mój Boże! kur się odzywa, So się dziewczyna z kochankiem pieści, »Mówcie pacierze! — krzyczy prostota — I ja to słyszę, i ja tak wierzę, — “Słuchaj, dzieweczko!” — krzyknie środ zgiełku »Duchy karczemnej tworem gawiedzi, — »Dziewczyna czuje, — odpowiadam skromnie, »Martwe znasz prawdy, nieznane dla ludu, Widzisz świat w proszku, w każdej gwiazd iskierce; |
ROMANTICISM Methinks I see... I think I see... Where? Listen, girl! It's like a block of stone, - “Is that you in the night? It's you, Yasenko! - “Let him hear... you’re no longer there, “Are you already dead? Oh, I'm afraid!.. “And you yourself are white as a sheet, “Oh, how cold it must be in the grave! “I feel bad among evil people: “Come in the middle of the day, when... Maybe it’s a dream? So a maiden clings to her lover, “Read your prayers! - they shout in simplicity - And I hear it, and I believe it, - “Listen, girl! - exclaimed through the noise “Perfume is an invention of the tavern mob, “The girl feels,” I answer modestly, “You know the dead truth, unknown to people, |
ROMANCE
Translation by Marina Tsvetaeva
- Listen, girl! - Does not hear.
- It's white day now. Under the maple
Do you recognize your original roof?
You are alone. Bows to whom?
Not a living soul, but you beckon,
Are you tender with your gaze, are you reaching for your hands?
It's more motionless than granite
He keeps his eyelids on his cheeks,
It stinks all around,
What is she dreaming about? What does she think?
A moment - and closed her eyelashes again -
It will crumble into tears,
Immediately he bursts into laughter...
- Are you, my light? Are you, my Yas?
Oh, and the coffin didn’t separate us!
Hush, my guest! Hush, my Yas!
Beware of your stepmother's wiles!
However, what do we care! However - what am I!
You've been under the needles for a long time...
Yasik is dead! Oh, I'm afraid!
Why am I afraid of Yasya?
Light-eyed, light-mustached
Am I in a mortal white cassock?
God, the snow is colder
Hands that burned like fire!
Give me, with your hands and lips
I'll warm it up, I'll warm it up.
That's right - will you tremble underground?
You lie underground for two summers!
Take me with you!
I don't like daylight!
There is no one more unhappy in the world than me!
Tears flow for fun!
Maybe it really is just nonsense?
No! Your palm is in the palm of your hand!
Yas, this is not the time! Yes, slow down!
Look, it’s dark in the sky!
God! rooster's voice,
The light of dawn in the window... Where are you going?
Oh, I left it! Ah, he left!
Ah, melted away without return!
With all your might for your dear friend
She rushed and was seriously injured.
In an expanding circle
People stood around the poor thing...
The gray-haired peasant says:
- I’m not surprised at all.
Yas loved his Karusya,
So he rose from under the cross!
Merging with simple souls,
I cry with them, I believe with them.
- Listen! - said dryly
An old man with a bald head. —
Here's an eye glass for you -
There are no spirits in sight!
Only in nanny's beliefs
The dead change places.
This one is delusional, these ones believe,
And they go crazy together.
“This one loves,” I answer,
And they deeply believe.
I prefer faith's eyes
I love any glasses in the world.
Don't judge the common people!
Your impudent mind has failed.
Life is a true miracle
Known only by the heart.
My two Mitskevichs - Ode to Youth and Romance - turned out to be program poetry, and I convinced the Polish literary critic to transfer them to some other translator, better acquainted with programs, one or another, etc. I’m only familiar with poetry. I never received a fee for Romance (about 70 pages) - and I won’t get it again - since they don’t charge.”
In the book “Favorites” of 1943, “Romance” was published in the translation of Tatiana Shchepkina-Kupernik. This is not the first time that Shchepkina-Kupernik “crossed the path” of Tsvetaeva. In her youth, Tsvetaeva tried to translate “The Eaglet” by Rostand, but Shchepkina-Kupernik did it earlier and better.
“Romance” by Mickiewicz exists in Russian in several other translations: E. Blaginina, L. Martynov, A. Revich and others.
