In the waning days of February, here are two translations that I did last year around this time, of Boris Pasternak’s February and Winter Night (Zimnya Noch). Pasternak is considered one of the greatest 20th Century Russian poets, and translating his poetry is not a task to be undertaken lightly. Still, I was so dissatisfied with what I could find on the internet that I figured I might as well throw my hat into the ring.
February
This is a famous Pasternak poem from 1912.
| 1 | Февраль. Достать чернил и плакать! | February. To get ink and cry! | |
| 2 | Писать о феврале навзрыд, | To write of February sobbing, | |
| 3 | Пока грохочащая слякоть | Just as the sleet thunderously | |
| 4 | Весною черною горит. | Is burning for the blackened spring. | |
| 5 | Достать пролетку. За шесть гривен | To get a cab. For half a dollar1, | |
| 6 | Чрез благовест, чрез клик колес | Past tolling bells, past clicking wheels, | |
| 7 | Перенестись туда, где ливень | To bring oneself to where the downpour | |
| 8 | Еще шумней чернил и слез. | Is noisier than ink or tears. | |
| 9 | Где, как обугленные груши, | Where, like pears rendered into charcoal, | |
| 10 | С деревьев тысячи грачей | From the trees, thousands of magpies 2 | |
| 11 | Сорвутся в лужи и обрушат | Will dive into the puddles, and pull | |
| 12 | Сухую грусть на дно очей. | Dry sorrow to the bottom of the eyes. | |
| 13 | Под ней проталины чернеют, | Beneath her, thawed spots turning blacker | |
| 14 | И ветер криками изрыт, | And wind cut up with cries is throbbing 3, | |
| 15 | И чем случайней, тем вернее | And the more aimlessly, the surer | |
| 16 | Слагаются стихи навзрыд. | The poems come together, sobbing. | |
I attempted to preserve meter and rhyme in this translation and by and large I succeeded. My philosophy is that an imperfect translation of the rhyme is better than none at all, since it gives a clearer picture of how the original poem would have read. I took two significant pieces of license: the first to translate the poet’s cab fare as “half a dollar” when in fact it is “six grivnas”, a grivna being the Russian equivalent of a dime. I don’t think the poem loses anything due to this substitution.
The other is to replace “rooks” with “magpies.” They are closely related bird species, though a magpie isn’t all black and wouldn’t look like a piece of charcoal. I couldn’t think of any other way to make the rhyme work without this substitution. The image to the right is a classic Russian painting depicting rooks on a tree, perhaps Pasternak used this painting for inspiration.
Winter Night
This famous poem was included in Pasternak’s Nobel Prize-winning novel Doctor Zhivago, among a number of poems attributed to the main character. Those who have seen the American film will remember the howling blizzards and endless snowy wastes in which Zhivago was often trapped. Though Zhivago’s poems are included at the end of the book, not interspersed with the story, I imagine he might have written this poem while staying with Lara in Yuriatin.
| 1 | Мело, мело по всей земле | It snowed1 and snowed on all the earth, | |
| 2 | Во все пределы. | To every limit. | |
| 3 | Свеча горела на столе, | A candle was lit on the desk, | |
| 4 | Свеча горела. | A candle was lit. | |
| 5 | Как летом роем мошкара | Like summer flies all in a swarm | |
| 6 | Летит на пламя, | Fly to the flame, | |
| 7 | Слетались хлопья со двора | Flakes from the yard together to | |
| 8 | К оконной раме. | The window frame. | |
| 9 | Метель лепила на стекле | The blizzard sculpted on the glass | |
| 10 | Кружки и стрелы. | Circles and arrows. | |
| 11 | Свеча горела на столе, | A candle was lit on the desk, | |
| 12 | Свеча горела. | A candle was lit. | |
| 13 | На озаренный потолок | On the illuminated ceiling | |
| 14 | Ложились тени, | Lay down the shadows, | |
| 15 | Скрещенья рук, скрещенья ног, | Crossings of arms, crossings of legs, | |
| 16 | Судьбы скрещенья. | Fate’s intersections. | |
| 17 | И падали два башмачка | And two small boots would fall at night | |
| 18 | Со стуком на пол. | On the floor knocking, | |
| 19 | И воск слезами с ночника | And wax in tears from the nightlight | |
| 20 | На платье капал. | On the dress dripping. | |
| 21 | И все терялось в снежной мгле | And all got lost in snowy dusk, | |
| 22 | Седой и белой. | All white and grizzled. | |
| 23 | Свеча горела на столе, | A candle was lit on the desk, | |
| 24 | Свеча горела. | A candle was lit. | |
| 25 | На свечку дуло из угла, | The candle flickered from the drafts, | |
| 26 | И жар соблазна | And hot temptation | |
| 27 | Вздымал, как ангел, два крыла | Rose like an angel with two wings | |
| 28 | Крестообразно. | Like crucifixion. | |
| 29 | Мело весь месяц в феврале, | It snowed all month in February, | |
| 30 | И то и дело | That’s all it did. | |
| 31 | Свеча горела на столе, | A candle was lit on the desk, | |
| 32 | Свеча горела. | A candle was lit. | |
| |||
I couldn’t replicate the ABAB rhyme scheme for all the verses and settled for rhyming the second and fourth line in most of them. The biggest question of translating the poem, I think, is how to translate melo, which literally means swept. I translated it as snowed, because that is least opaque to the English speaker. In Russian, the word for blizzard, metel’, has the same root as “to sweep” and so in Russian the “sweeping” obviously refers to snow.