I have been thinking about this poem by the Russian poet, Evgeniy Baratynsky, for a while now. I remember coming across a translation, perhaps the one by Peter France which I link to below, just as I was getting onto a flight back to the UK a few years ago. After finding the original poem online, I spent much of that flight comparing the two. Baratynsky’s language is cold, dry, and rational. Though he was a contemporary of Pushkin, I need to turn to a dictionary far more often when I read him than his fellow poet. Reading the original poem then I was struck both by its tortured syntax and by its lack of beauty. It seemed to say almost nothing, and say it poorly. The translation was much more impressive.
My Russian is far better now than it was at that time. And I have also come to appreciate Baratynsky. Indeed, I’ve translated a few of his poems here already. Today I return to the poem with fresh eyes and a greater willingness to engage with the original. I hope this translation can give a sense of its quiet intensity.
“My talent’s poor, my voice has little weight…”
My talent's poor, my voice has little weight,
But still I live, and on this earth my life
May yet to others give a kind of joy.
Those still to come will find my heart and voice
Within my verse. How can I know? My soul
Will meet with theirs and make a new connection,
And as I found my friends in my own life,
I'll find a reader in posterity.
(1828)
Russian Version here.
An alternative translation by Peter France.
I don’t have altogether much to say about the poem. When I read it now, it gives me a sense of purpose in my own writing. It is a reminder that whatever success or failure we may have in our own lives, there is something magical and redemptive about the thought that one day someone will turn to our writings, discovering us by accident, and consider themselves lucky for it. Baratynsky these days is less well known than other Russian poets of the 19th century – Fet, Tyutchev, Pushkin, et al. He is almost my secret – a poet who is entirely mine, one claimed by no reading list.
Of course, I love the Great writers too, as much as anyone else and probably more than most. Yet it’s hard to imagine that they love me in return – they have too many admirers, and too little time for us all. In a way, the poem reminds me of a story I heard while on the island of Kizhi in Karelia, in the north of Russia. Baratynsky, it’s worth mentioning in passing, had a great love for the region. On this island there are a great many preserved wooden churches (it’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site), some of them gigantic, being part of the island’s central complex, and some of them tiny. I took part in a tour, and one question the guide asked us was why bother making a tiny church when you can see, perhaps a ten-minute walk away at most, a huge church which is far richer and more beautiful.
The answer turned out to be simple. Back in those days, the peasants believed that God would be less likely to hear their prayers if they went where everyone else did. They were worried their concerns would be drowned out among those of so many others. And so they built their own smaller churches and chapels. Here, they hoped that God would listen to them.
In the same way, the lesser writers, though they may have less power and talent, may offer us in their own writings a kind of cosy warmth, and a feeling that our reading of them is not in vain. Through us they live again, and the magic of their literature passes on into a new generation. In me, Baratynsky has indeed found “a reader in posterity”.
Osip Mandelshtam on Baratynsky’s Poem
Osip Mandel’shtam is one of the major Russian poets of the 20th century. I have never enjoyed his poems much, perhaps because I had to study them for my exams, rather than read them for pleasure. One day I hope to return to him and try again, but not just yet. Anyway, in one of his essays (“Concerning an Interlocutor”), he has some comments on Baratynsky’s poem. I thought these were worth translating too. Perhaps you’ll find them interesting.
“Every one of us has friends. Why shouldn’t the poet turn to his own friends, to those people who are naturally close to him? A seafarer in a critical moment throws into the ocean waves a sealed bottle with his name and a record of his fate. Many years later, wandering among the dunes, I find it in the sand, read the letter, learn the date of the event and the final moments of the one who has passed away. I had the right to do this. I did not print a private letter. The letter sealed within the bottle was addressed to whoever found it. I did just that. That means I am the secret addressee.
“Reading Baratynsky’s poem I experience the same feeling. It’s as if such a bottle has fallen into my hands. The ocean, with all its massive power, decided to help it in its journey, and the feeling that you get when you find such a bottle is that Providence itself has had a hand in delivering the message to you. In the casting of a bottle into the waves and in Baratynsky’s poem there is the same clearly-expressed idea. The letter and the poem are both addressed to nobody in particular. But nevertheless both of them have an addressee: the letter’s is that person who stumbled upon the bottle in the sand, while the poem’s is “a reader in posterity”. I would like to know who among those who have come across this line of Baratynsky’s has done so without a quiver of joy and a terrible shudder, such as when someone unexpectedly calls out their name.”
I hope you have enjoyed my translation. If you have any questions or thoughts, do leave a comment below.
A very interesting piece. It seems to me, that as with Pushkin, the rhyme and metre are pretty key to the original poem, and in recreating something of at least the latter, you’ve done a better job than France – although as you say, his translation is powerful in its own right.
The most difficult part seems to be ‘как знать?’, which in my much inferior understanding of Russian idiom seems to mean ‘How can I know?’, as you indeed translate it, but in the context of the poem makes more sense as France’s ‘who knows?’, which avoids the flip-flopping between uncertainty and conviction.
I have to add, I chime much more with your experience of bringing the author to life again than with Mandel’shtam’s feeling as the specific addressee of the verse. It seems to me like the poem is a call into the void of the future, and it is personal because the reader finds it rather than because it was ordained that they would.