This year at Cambridge I founded a small Russian poetry translation group. Unlike my German poetry translation group, which never made it beyond a Facebook group chat, I can call the Russian one a success. We have yet to meet in person, but already we have seen each other over Zoom a few times. This poem, by Nikolai Ogarev, was the first poem I translated specifically for the group.
I came across it while flicking through an anthology of Russian religious poetry that I have. Much as with Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, which I wrote about last week, I enjoy religious poetry because it makes people’s beliefs accessible and stamps them with an individual’s personality. We often come away from religious poetry believing in belief, even if we don’t get any further.
As for why I translated Ogarev’s poem instead of any of the hundred others included, the answer is rather more simple – it is nice and short! “The Wanderer” is the only poem of his included, so there was lots of white space around it, which gave me a place to begin the translation.
Anyway, here’s the poem:
The Wanderer
Misty lies our dreary vale,
Clouds conceal the sky.
Sadly blows each mournful gale,
Sadly looks each eye.
Though you wander, have no fear,
Though this life is hard -
Peace and prayer are always near,
Safe within your heart!
I enjoyed translating this poem, just as I enjoyed reading the original. One of the advantages of translating a poem (and poet) which is not too well known is that it is far easier than something from a “Great” poet. Both because the poet has inevitably been translated many times already (and certainly better than you could), but also because it’s nice to feel a certain degree of equality to your quarry. It is certainly presumption on my part, but there you go. I don’t feel, from the original, that Ogarev is a fantastic artist, but I felt he was one I was good enough to be able to translate. A similar train of thought is how I explain my success with Theodor Storm’s poetry in German.
I don’t feel the poem itself needs much explanation. It’s the kind of optimistic call for self-reliance that is always necessary for a revolutionary (and most of the rest of us). But I like it. It’s a nice little credo, the sort of thing that perhaps really can be mumbled before bed.
My surprisingly neat attempts at translating “The Wanderer”. Generally it is much worse – I feel particularly sorry for my copy of Fet’s poems.
Nikolai Ogarev is best known now for his association with Alexander Herzen, a major Russian radical who lived for much of his adult life in exile in London. Together they printed the newspaper “The Bell”, which was smuggled into Russia and provided a far more liberal outlook than could be found in most Russian papers because of tsarist censorship. Today there is a website with the same name, run from America (in English and Russian), which gives an interesting look on Russian affairs. The spirit of criticism lives on, even though there is little else that links the two.
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)
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.
Why build a small church when something like this is only a stone’s throw away?
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.
I came to the Austrian German poet Trakl depressed and didn’t leave any happier. His short oeuvre, written in the final years before the first world war, is not for the faint of heart. There is very little joy to be found here, and what beauty there is in his poems is tainted by an overwhelming sense of decay. But what Trakl does offer, above and beyond his despair and endless talk of decline, is a unique view of the world, and a unique language of symbols for appreciating it. Each of his poems is a mysterious mood-piece, filled with images whose interpretations are never definite. Rilke’s view, that reading Trakl is like being “an outsider pressed against panes of glass”, looking into a space of experience which “like the space in a mirror, cannot be entered”, hits the mark.
Georg Trakl. Intensely sad, his poems reflect a sensibility that felt deeply the spiritual turbulence of his age. A turbulence that continues into our own and leaves his poetry mysterious and fresh even now.
Trakl is a strange poet, but he is also one whose work is tragically beautiful, and I hope to show that in these few translations below. His concerns seem perfect for our own age. The empty spiritual gulf left by religion’s decline, the feeling of foreboding as the world enters a new era without any ballast or sense that we are prepared for its challenges, and even the loss of a deep understanding of and connection to the natural world – all these are just as relevant now as they were as the First World War erupted. To face Trakl’s dark world is to be given a way of visualising the darkness of our own. So let’s begin.
The Poems
Trakl’s poems are made up of short and simple sentences, that are nonetheless often hard to understand. There’s a lot of ambiguity due to the syntax and punctuation, and whenever I’ve met something unclear, I’ve aimed to convey that same uncertainty in the English. After all, I’m trying to translate a mood and an atmosphere, not a technical document. If I have managed that, then I can be happy with how these have turned out. Following the poems is a bit about Trakl’s life and a conclusion.
Dark breath in green twigs. Blue blossoms float around the face Of the lonely one, his golden step Dying under the olive tree. The night is filled with the fluttering of drunk wings. So quietly bleeds out humility, Dew, which slowly drips from the blossoming thorn. The mercy of shining arms Embraces a breaking heart.
This painting (Starry Night), by Edvard Munch, strikes me as a good representation of my feeling as I read the final two stanzas of “Spiritual Twilight.” Munch was working at about the same time as Trakl and I feel like both of them are often similar in tone and image.
Spiritual Twilight (DE) Silence encounters at the forest’s hem Its dark quarry. On the hill the evening wind ends quietly,
The blackbird’s cries are stilled, And the soft flutes of autumn Go silent in their pipes.
On a black cloud You sail, drunk on the poppy, The ponds of the night,
The stars in the heavens. The sister’s lunar voice is always calling Through the spirit’s night.
The Sun (DE) Daily comes the yellow sun across the hill. The forest, the dark beast, man – hunter or shepherd – All are beautiful.
Reddish rises the fish in the green pond. Under the round heavens The fisherman quietly rows in his blue boat.
Slowly ripens the grape, the grain. When the day silently ends, A good and an evil is prepared.
When the world becomes night, The wanderer quietly lifts his heavy eyes; The sun breaks out of a gloomy chasm.
The Sun, also by Munch. I wonder if, had Trakl lived to grow older, he too would have found way of looking at and representing the world that moved beyond fear and anxiety.
In Spring (DE) Softly sank from dark steps the snow; In the shadow of the tree The lovers raise their rosy lids.
Star and night always follow The dark calls of the mariners; And the oars beat softly in time.
Soon on the ruined wall blooms The violet; The temples of the lonely one silently grow green.
Remembrance, a buried hope, Preserves this brown wood frame, Where dahlias hang above - An ever stiller homecoming; The ruined garden, the dark reflection Of childhood years, So that from blue lids the tears plunge Unstoppably. Now swim the glassy minutes Of gloom Over and into the night.
Who was Trakl? Biography and its Absence
Georg Trakl was born in 1887 and died towards the end of 1914, likely by his own hand. He was born in Salzburg to a family of not great financial means, but all the same this is where he was most happy. His relations with his sister Grete, herself a musical prodigy, may well have been incestuous. In his poems Trakl often writes about the “sister”, but it’s difficult to know what to make of that. What is more clear is that Trakl developed a drug addiction that he supported through becoming a pharmacist. Once war broke out Trakl joined the Austro-Hungarian army as a medical officer on the Eastern Front. By this point his mood was extremely unstable and the experience of the battle of Grodek, though it led to perhaps is most famous poem, also led to Trakl’s final breakdown and probable suicide of a cocaine overdose.
Yet all of this is almost irrelevant in the poems. As is clear above, Trakl hides himself from view. The experience of reading his work is rather like floating through a deep fog. There is nothing so solid as an “I”, even a lyrical “I”, to hold on to. The places of his life certainly make their appearances, including Grodek itself, but always more as symbols and maps of an internal world than as real settings, at least it seems that way to me.
The lovely German edition of Trakl’s work from Reclam which I’ve been reading also includes many of his letters. But these, too, are not of much use for understanding his poems. We can hear Trakl’s own voice, always in pain, and always suffering. It only caused me to feel a terrible and futile desire to help the poor man, but the poems remained – perhaps thankfully – impenetrable. “I was terribly sick for a few days, I think from a mourning that cannot be put into words”. Shortly before he dies he writes “I feel like I’ve already almost passed over into the beyond”. What I like about him so much is that his sensibility really does seem to belong to another world, no matter how much suffering seems to be involved.
“I feel like I’ve already almost passed over into the beyond.” The painting is Munch’s Self Portrait in Hell. Trakl’s work, like Munch’s, is filled with religious symbolism. Ultimately, any positive message in Trakl lurks within this Christian impulse.
Conclusion – Religion and the Poppy
Probably my favourite pieces here are the first two. The
image of the blackbird, of the innocent forced to suffer its way through the
world, lies at the heart of Trakl’s whole project, and the bird’s short and
brutal poem strikes me as being particularly beautiful. But it also contains
within it a rare hint at redemption. Trakl’s religious inclinations are, as
with so much else about him, not entirely clear. But for me at least, this poem
has a spiritual angle to it: the suggestion that for all our suffering there
may lurk at the end of the tunnel a kind of salvation. It’s not unlike
Dostoevsky, in its way.
As for “Spiritual Twilight”, I love its tone and sense of
mystery. For me it really conveys that world of abstract rumination we fall
into somewhere in the depths of our despair. It is a weightless poem, just as
we, in our thoughts, are weightless too. But one day we must open our eyes. And
that is where the challenge lies.
The last word on all this should go to Trakl himself. This
is how he describes himself, towards the end of his life: “Too little love, too
little justice and mercy, and always too little love; too much hardness, pride,
and all sorts of transgressions – this is me. I am certain that I only refrain
from evil out of cowardice and weakness and in doing so shame even that part of
me.”
I hope, having read a few of his poems, you have a sense that for all the mercy and love he did not receive himself, he was more than willing to give plenty of it out to those who needed it in his work. The strange thing is, for all his despair, I find myself feeling less alone for reading in his company. And that’s why I think he’s a fantastic poet.
