Poetry

[pecunium]

I like poems. I've been known to write them. On really rare occaisions I've made attempts at translation:

One of the interesting things I discovered when studying French, and then again with Russian, is that poetry is easier than prose to understand, in a foriegn language.

I think this was because 1: I understood poetry in English. 2: We expect density of idea, evocative language, metaphor, and simile, in a poem. With the result that we are not tripped up in the same way we are when we encounter idiom, or colloquialism (imagine not speaking English and getting a passage of Dashiel Hammet, or George MacDonald Fraser's, Pvt McAuslan).

So in that regard we are more ready for the difficulties. It also seems to me that poetry is somehow more revealing of details of culture than prose. It tends to be more slowly changed, forms and tropes persist (the Japanese still write haiku, and the sonnet was a popular form until recently. I was made to write on in school. It was awful).

So here are a couple I really like, one from the Japanese, one from the Russian.

An Haiku

To pluck it is a pity
To leave it is a pity
Ah!, this violet

Issa

Я вас любил

Я вас любил: любовь еще, быть может
В душе моей угасла не совсем;
Но пусть она вас больше не тревожит;
Я не хочу печалить вас ничем.
Я вас любил безмолвно, безнадежно,
То робостью, то ревностью томим;
Я вас любил так искренно, так нежно,
Как дай вам бог любимой быть другим.

I loved you: perhaps I love you still
but forget this love which pressed on you
no tears, only laughter. I do not wish to cause you pain.
I loved you quietly, hopelessly, jealously; afraid
I loved you with tenderness, and sincerely
May God grant you love like this again.

Aleksandr Sergeyivich Pushkin
(trans. T. Karney 1995/2009)

[I am not really happy with the translation. I've wrestled with it several times. Layers of meaning are lost, which tease at me. It didn't help, last night, when I did this, that I have no dictionaries here, just a crib sheet for grammar.]

Comments

[kestrels-nest.livejournal.com]

Thank you for these; thank you as well for posting the Russian as well as your translation. As for missing some of the layers in the translation - I have found that in any attempt to translate poetry, whether from another language into English, or from the English of an earlier time so that it can be made somewhat more accessible to the modern ear (i.e. explaining Emily Dickinson to h.s. students), you lose some of the subtler meaning.

But since you gave me the Russian, I could read it for myself, which I appreciate as much as the translation.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

If I had the Japanese, I've have included that too.

If pressed, I think the Pushkin is probably my favorite poem, but that's such a hard call to make.

There's some really good Yevtushenko (the wordplay in the piece I recall as "freedom" is wonderful, and the sentiments too). Not to say I don't like English poetry. I don't know that some of my fondness for Russian poetry (I like french, but not so well) isn't that it has some parallels to the English meters and rhymes.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

The second line is the one which I look at and say, "I failed", because the sense is there (to me) but some of the content is lost, and I can't keep the sense of action/tension if I translate it more directly:

"but perhaps this love is not yet gone from me/my soul/my heart" is just too flabby.

The sense of hope, and no desire, that the subjects affections might allow the speaker to be the bearer of that (not yet deceased) love again is also hard to express.

Were I to be more direct (May god grant you love such a mine again) I am not sure it helps, or hurts.
But I am satisfied enough to publish it.

[kestrels-nest.livejournal.com]

Well, for the second line: "Perhaps this love is not yet gone from my essence"? to start with yours.

But I agree - there's something awkward about "most intimate self", which is how I'd translate the phrase giving difficulty. :)

"God grant thee love akin to mine again" is what comes to mind if I look for an alternative to the last line myself - which I wouldn't have, had you not mentioned it. What amazes me is how Pushkin manages to be both without desire and tenderly intimate at the same time.

I haven't tried my hand at poetic translation since I studied Spanish. I'll have to see what I can do with modern Hebrew to English, now you've given me the idea.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

"God grant thee love akin to mine again" is what comes to mind if I look for an alternative to the last line myself - which I wouldn't have, had you not mentioned it.

That made my day. I always worry, when someone who can read the original, sees a translation. That you didn't feel that was a broken/missing element is wonderful, to me.

What amazes me is how Pushkin manages to be both without desire and tenderly intimate at the same time.

Yes. That. It's what makes this such a powerful (and difficult to translate) poem. I don't know how many, horrid, translations of it I've seen. The keeping of the, technically, passive elements, the loss of the sense of... I don't know what to call it.

A sense of completeness. The speaker loves the subject, still. But completely, without strings. The desire if, present, is in abeyance.

But the desire is not forgotten.

[kestrels-nest.livejournal.com]

Terry, I no longer remember whose LJ I found you through. I owe them thanks, though.

What strikes me about this is to the speaker his love, and the beloved, are part of his own spirit now, and no more to be lost or excised than his own soul. If he never sees the beloved again doesn't matter; if the beloved no longer walked the green earth (though they do) wouldn't matter. The desire could be recalled and reawakened, but it is the love that has become an element of himself.

And if you don't read the Hebrew, my name is Alisa, and my nickname really is "Kestrel".

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I was doing some research, and so scrolling back through posts; looking at this one I notice the icon for this comment is really nice.

It looks like a dancing dryad.

[(Anonymous)]

I just thought I'd pop over here and say that I really like your translation of the Pushkin. (And why did I think it was Lermontov? Probably beciase I learnt some Lermontov at around the same time.) Why didn't I say so before? Well, the comment was already a bit unwiledy as it was.

Praisegod Baebones