topics: |  poetry | russian | translation

These translations are far superior to most others - e.g. those that you
may find on the web.  The introduction alone is a solid contribution. 

Excerpts

Swifts p.55

At twilight the swifts have no way 
Of stemming the cool blue cascade. 
It bursts from clamouring throats, 
A torrent that cannot be stayed. 

At twilight the swifts have no way 
Of holding back, high overhead, 
Their clarion shouting: Oh triumph, 
Look, look, how the earth has fled! 

As steam billows up from a kettle,
The furious stream hisses by — 
Look, look — there's no room for the earth 
Between the ravine and the sky.
			1914-1916

Hamlet p. 125

	The buzz subsides.  I have come on stage.
	Leaning in an open door
	I try to  detect from the echo
	What the future has in store.

	A thousand opera glasses level
	The dark, point-blank, at me.
	Abba, Father, if it be possible
	Let this cup pass from me.

	I love your preordained design
	And am ready to play this role.
	But this play being acted is not mine.
	For this once let me go.

	But the order of the act is planned,
	The end of the road already revealed,
	Alone among the Pharisees I stand,
	Life is not a stroll across a field.
	 				1946 

Alternate version

 "Hamlet" (tr. Dennis Barnes)
		A hush descends,
		I step out on the boards,
		And leaning on the door-frame,
		I endeavor
		To perceive what the future holds in store,
		Divining it amidst the distant echoes.

		Darkness, thousand-fold, is focused on me
		Down the axis of each opera glass.
		If it may be, I pray Thee, Abba, Father,
		Grant it: let this chalice from me pass.

		I love and cherish it,
		Thy stubborn purpose,
		And am content to play my allotted role,
		But now another drama is in progress.
		I beg Thee, leave me this time uninvolved.

		But alas, there is no turning from the road.
		The order of the action has been settled.
		The Pharisee claims all, and I'm alone.
		This life is not a stroll across the meadow.

Hops p.130

	Beneath the willow, wound round with ivy,
	We take cover from the worst
	Of the storm, with a greatcoat round
	Our shoulders and my hands around your waist

	I've got it wrong.  That isn't ivy
	Entwined in the bushes round
	The wood, but hops.  You intoxicate me!
	Let's spread the greatcoat on the ground.
		 			1953 

	Personally, this is one of the poems that I really found to be very
	touching.  However, I found this comment by Christopher Barnes:

		The title of the poem "Intoxication" is "Khmel'" in Russian,
		which both means the state of intoxication and denotes the
		hop-plant whose fermentation leads to this state; the main
		conceit of the poem is in fact built around this ambiguity,
		impossible to reproduce neatly in English. The poem is also
		one of the weaker items in the cycle. Anna Akhmatova tartly
		commented that Pasternak should have known better at his age
		than to write verse of such juvenile eroticism.

	It is true that at the point when this poem was published, Pasternak
	was 63.  But when was it really written?  And can age be a bar to
	such thoughts?  Anyhow, it works for me!

	Incidentally, many others like this poem a lot.

Author bio: Art in the Soviet world

In 1956, Doctor Zhivago was rejected by the journal Novy Mir with the
accusation that "it represented in a libelous manner the October
Revolution, the people who made it, and social construction in the
Soviet Union."  Meanwhile a representative of the Italian Communist
Party was given a copy of the novel and took it to Italy.  In November
1957 it was published in Russian by Feltrinelli of Milan, who refused
to return the manuscript "for revisions."  By 1958, the year of its
English edition, the book had been translated into 18 languages.

In October 1958, Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature;
this was taken as a recognition of the value and importance of Doctor
Zhivago, and it immediately started an offical witchhunt against him
in the Soviet Union.  He was threatened at the very least with
expulsion from the country, but thanks to the intervention of Pandit
Nehru, this threat was averted.

Death as rebellion

He died [of lung cancer] on the evening of 30 May 1960.

The authorities tried their best to play down his death - only a small
notice appeared in the Literary Gazette.  But in spite of official
silence and disapproval, many thousands of people travelled out from
Moscow to his funeral in the village of Perdelkino where he had
lived.  Volunteers carried his open coffin to his burial place and
those who were present recited from memory the banned poem 'Hamlet'.
Since that day his beautiful grave has been a place of pilgrimage.