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.

[(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