Text 04

О, как на склоне наших лет

Нежней мы любим и суеверней...

Сияй, сияй, прощальный свет

Любви последней, зари вечерней!

Полнеба обхватила тень,

Лишь там, на западе, бродит сиянье, -

Помедли, помедли, вечерний день,

Продлись, продлись, очарованье.

Пускай скудеет в жилах кровь,

Но в сердце не скудеет нежность...

О ты, последняя любовь!

Ты и блаженство, и безнадежность.

How superstitously we love,

How tenderly towards our days declining...

Beam brightly, brightly, farewell light of love,

Of our last love, in evening heavens shining.

Now half the shadowed sky is cloaked in night,

And only in the west a fitful gleaming

Still holds, still holds the spell of evening light...

Ah, linger, linger yet, enchanting evening.

What if the blood runs poorer in the veins,

The heart is no less rich in tenderness...

Ah, my last love! Thou art both bliss and pain

And joy – and hopelessness.

Love at the closing of our days

Is apprehensive and very tender.

Glow brighter, brighter, farewell rays

Of one last love in its evening splendor.

Blue shade takes half the world away:

Through western clouds alone some light is slanted.

О tarry, О tarry, declining day,

Enchantement, let me stay enchanted.

The blood runs thinner, yet the heart

Remains as ever deep and tender.

О last belated love, thou art

A blend of joy and of hopeless surrender.

No calculation is needed, of lines or stresses, to be able to judge wisely on the two translations above. The first is the work of a literary craftsman. It looks like a diamond in the rough. To make it a real diamond, a good deal of immaculate cutting is required.

The second translation is a diamond of the first water. It is a masterfully made translation, and in no way is it inferior to the original. Aha, some Intelligent Reader would exclaim, but the translator is no other than Vladimir Nabokov the Maestro. He was at an advantage having learned his English earlier than Russian. Well, that may be true but it only explains one tiny fraction of the whole enigma.

The thing is that anyone who attempts poetic translation should know a thing or two about poetry. Writes Boris Pasternak: «Вместе со многими я думаю, что дословная точность и соответствие формы не обеспечивают переводу истинной близости. Как сходство изображения и изображаемого, так и сходство перевода с подлинником достигается живостью и естественностью языка. Подобно оригиналу, перевод должен производить впечатление жизни, а не словесности».

English teachers posing as Poeteachers are supposed to be translaters ex officio. Since not all the translations made professionally are perfect, there is no such thing as Translation-Having-No-Flies-On-Itself. There is always a fly in every translational ointment. The most famous of poetical flies will come in handy (Text 05).