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translated from Russian by Sasha A. Palmer
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Prayer
God above, King divine!
Heal this spirit of mine!
Earthly lies drive away
Lest they lead me astray—
And for Thy heav’nly toll
Please give strength to my soul!
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Hopelessness
A zeal for happiness by gods was given to me;
I wanted happiness from heaven and from earth,
In vain its ghost I chased, it lured me from afar
Until I crossed my life’s road halfway,
But vagrancies of fate henceforth I serve no more:
Enjoying restfulness that’s happiness akin to,
From this frontier I gaze upon all my pursuits —
And passersby I greet most humbly.
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Original Russian
Молитва
Царь небес! успокой
Дух болезненный мой!
Заблуждений земли
Мне забвенье пошли —
И на строгий Твой рай
Силы сердцу подай!
Безнадежность
Желанье счастия в меня вдохнули боги;
Я требовал его от неба и земли
И вслед за призраком, манящим издали,
Жизнь перешёл до полдороги,
Но прихотям судьбы я боле не служу:
Счастливый отдыхом, на счастие похожим,
Отныне с рубежа на поприще гляжу —
И скромно кланяюсь прохожим.
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Sasha A. Palmer is a Russian-born writer and translator, who currently lives in Maryland. Sasha is the recipient of international awards in poetry and translation. Her work appeared in Writer’s Digest, Slovo/Word, Cardinal Points, and elsewhere.
I’m glad to see the original rhyme scheme in the prayer, which is short but far from trite. “Hopelessness” is a good choice to present Baratynsky’s characteristic idea that despair is valuable because it’s peaceful. Since this poet focuses on details of his process of thought, you have difficult syntax to manage. Still, the English makes sense except in line 4, where perhaps the Russian too is puzzling. In line 6, I think it would be better to choose English word order (“restfulness that resembles happiness”). Or do you find that this sacrifices a mental nuance about happiness? Fine effort to render works by this challenging poet!
Thank you for reading, Margaret, and I appreciate your comments. Line 4 is indeed tricky in the original: you understand what the poet means, but the word choice is unusual, it did make me stumble when I first read the poem. I tried to preserve the original somewhat unconventional metaphor faithfully. I did intend to make sense, though 🙂 I wonder if changing the word order would work better:
Led me to cross my lifetime halfway
Line 6, I believe, works, although, another variant that I had might be a better choice:
Enjoying restfulness that’s happiness akin to
Thank you again, I appreciate the time you took to read, and comment.
I’ve made changes to the lines that you pointed out, and I like the translation better now, thank you.
Hopelessness
A zeal for happiness by gods was given to me;
I wanted happiness from heaven and from earth,
In vain its ghost I chased, it lured me from afar,
Until I crossed my life’s road halfway,
But vagrancies of fate henceforth I serve no more:
Enjoying restfulness that’s happiness akin to,
From this frontier I gaze upon all my pursuits —
And passersby I greet most humbly.
A Hapless Note
by Alecsei Burdew
for Sasha A. Palmer, “Happy”
A zeal for happiness by gods was given unto me.
I wanted happiness from heaven and from earth to be.
In vain, I chased its ghosts, that lured me far away from home,
and led me through half of my life to wonder and to roam.
But now—no more—no longer do I serve the whims of fate,
enjoying happiness as if it were a holidate;
instead I push keen eyes upon its field, upon its sky,
and modestly bow to occasion’s latest passerby—
Yevgeny Baratynsky with his pessimystic tone,
his elegaic shift to hopelessness and hapless note.
Thank you. Although I don’t relate to this version, it’s always interesting to see different translations of the same poem.
as per Alecsei Burdew
Ms. Palmer is correct to not like this translation, as it is not a translation at all, nor is it a metaphrase or a paraphrase, as Dryden noted, but rather an imitation that builds a new work off some of the basic themes and structure of the original, or as Pound might have suggested, a vorticist ex-peri-cernment.
The poem was written in defer/refer/ence to Ms. Palmer’s excellent translation. (The English “slovo” I most admired was “zeal”.) But for one syllable, Alecsei Burdew took her L1. L2 and L3 were hardly altered, while L4 merely extended and transposed her words. The text and Ms. Palmer’s translation were only seriously altered in the second quatrain with pun, cadence, neologism and metaphor, with homage in the final couplet to the great Russian Romantic/Classicist. I did not follow Baratynsky’s rhyme scheme, his meter, or his remarkable diction, including his use of multi-syllabic words; but because I do not prefer to use first person, it was a chance to indulge. [As an aside, I did feel the word “for” was a little b-rash, and the epithet “Happy” over the top. So, if apologies are needed, that is where I would make them.]
Leave it to say, I know the difficulty of translations of Russian into English. I spent so much spirit on a translation of “Hamlet” by Pasternak into English, that I have resolved to never do so again, and I am thankful whenever another expends one’s energy upon such translations, as Sasha Palmer has done here, bringing Russian poetry to the English reader. I wonder if she is the NewMillennial’s best Russian translator.
Alecsei, everything’s fine, no apologies necessary 🙂 Thank you for the clarification, though: I did think it was a translation, and I was a bit confused by “Happy” (the nickname I got from posting to my blog The Happy Amateur.) Thank you for your kind words about my work. A cyber-wave to a fellow Russian-to-English translator!