Tag: Russian Poetry

“The Wanderer” by N. P. Ogarev (translation)

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.

A photo of the page in my anthology of Russian prayers where I translate Ogarev's "The Wanderer".
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.

Thanks for reading. For more Russian poetry, look at my translation of Baratynsky.

Evgeniy Baratynsky – “My talent’s poor, my voice has little weight…”

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.

A photo of a large church in the distance
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.

Evgeniy Baratynsky – Four Translations of his Poetry

Evgeny Baratynsky is one of the great poets of the Golden Age of Russian poetry, but he is generally overshadowed by A.S. Pushkin and M. Yu. Lermontov, both of whom are more accessible, in part because of their prose works, and in part because of their easily-digestible content. Baratynsky is a solitary figure compared to those others because of his pessimism, comparable to that of Leopardi in Italy. Where Lermontov might look sadly upon his generation, he nonetheless lived a life of action, of active revolt. Baratynsky often gives the impression he doesn’t think it’s worth even trying. He is bitter, but what makes him interesting is that he is also intellectual in vision, where other poets are more emotional. He is not always easy to read in Russian, but teasing out his meanings is a pleasant exercise. Each reading leaves you feeling you’re a little closer to understanding him.  

These translations are only my first attempts at trying to pin down the poet’s soul. I like Baratynsky enough that I can see myself returning to him later, but for now I’ve only prepared these four pieces. After each poem I’ll leave a few words, describing the poem and anything I found interesting about it.

A sketch of Evgeniy Baratynsky
Young and unhappy, as most of us these days are, Evgeniy Baratynsky spent some time in Finland as a soldier, married, then died in Italy at the age of 44, which is pretty old for a Russian poet.

The Poems

Prayer

Lord of Heaven, grant your peace
To a soul ill at ease.
For the errors I've seen
Send oblivion's dark screen;
And to rise to your height,
Give me strength to do right.

This is short and sweet, the kind of prayer that you really can mumble to yourself going to bed. Baratynsky doesn’t seem particularly interested in God – He’s rarely mentioned elsewhere – but I still like this poem. It seems a prayer for our own times, with its sense of anxiety and unease. The divided hopes of the poet – both for strength and for forgetting – reflect his ultimate lack of confidence. An alternative translation for comparison is here .

The unusual anapaestic “- – / – – /”meter and rhyme are the same as are used in the original.

“O thought…”

O thought, your fate’s that of the flower
Which calls the moth with every hour;
Draws in the golden bumblebee;
To whom the loving midge does cling
and whom the dragonfly does sing;
When you have seen your wonders flee
And in your turn have faded grey -
Where then those wings that blessed your day?
Forgotten by the host of flies -
Not one of them has need of you -
Just as your failing body dies
Your seeds bring forth another you.

Baratynsky here shows an interest in the nature of thought. However much an idea may hold interest, that interest often turns out only to be temporary. Ideas come in and out of fashion. But what those who look beneath the surface see is that even a brief contact with an idea can be enough to lead to the creation of a new one from out of the old, so that even apparently forgotten thoughts are never truly in vain.

To a Wise Man

Carefully between our lives’ storms and the cold of the grave, o philosopher,
Hope you to find a safe port - "Calm" is the name that you give it.
We, who are called from the void by the tremulous word of creation
- Our lives are worries alone: life and our worries are one.
He who’s escaped common turmoil will think up a care
For himself: palette or lyre or the words of a pen.
Infants, the world’s newest entrants, its laws as if sensing,
Cry in their cradle the instant they’re born.

This is probably my favourite of Baratynsky’s poems, but of course that doesn’t mean I’ve successfully translated it. The theme is the suffering of existence. We may try to find calm, but ultimately all of us will struggle, whether from our own minds or from the external world. That’s all there is to it, probably. The meter is weird and Classical though, which is cool.

Baratynsky spent a formative period in his youth up in Finland. The picture shows part of Karelia, now Russian but once partially Finnish. The landscape is the same on both sides of the border. I was there last week.

“What use to those enchained…”

What use to those enchained are dreams of being free?
Just look – the river flows, and uncomplainingly,
Within its given banks, according to its course;
The mighty fir is powerless before the force
That binds it where it stands. The stars above are caught
Within the paths an unknown hand believes they ought
To go. The roaming wind’s not free – for it a law
Dictates the lands in which its breath has right to soar.
And to the lot which is our own shall we submit –
Rebellious dreams accept as dreams or else forget.
We, reason’s slaves, must learn obediently to bind
Our deep desires to all those things fate has in mind –
Then happiness and peace shall demarcate our time.
What fools we are! Is it not boundless freedom’s sign
That gives us all our passions? Is it not freedom’s voice
We hear within their torrents? O how hard’s for us the choice
To live while feeling in our beating hearts the fire
That rages in the bounds set by our fate's desire!

Another particular favourite of mine. Baratynsky here does not argue for freedom, as do those rebellious Romantics. Instead, he sees us as failing to follow the subservient example of nature, which happily obeys the limits it has been assigned at birth. But are doomed to suffering precisely because this is something we cannot do. We have passion, which fights against our fate, leading us to our downfalls. This poem is fun because of its form and punctuation and whatnot.  Baratynsky shows how enchained nature is by controlling when he begins and ends the sentences, relative to the line.

Conclusion

Anyway, I like Baratynsky, just as I like Leopardi. Both of them went against the grain with their pessimism, but I like it as an antidote to the baseless optimism we sometimes encounter in our own days. There is a kind of glamour in despair that both capture, and though it is dangerous to wallow, there can certainly be some pleasure in spending time in the poets’ company.

Here are two articles providing more information about Baratynsky. This one includes a translation of Baratynsky’s awesome long poem, “Autumn”, which I could not possibly attempt to translate myself. The other, meanwhile, compares two recent book translations and gives some information about Baratynsky’s life.