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

[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.