Falling out over Pushkin.

The Onegin Live site offers a free download of Pushkin's 'Eugene Onegin' read by Stephen Fry. But there is also a brief historical bibliography of over forty translations of the great Russian novel in verse. 

Much of it would be known to those who have an interest in Pushkin, but still I found this snippet thoroughly enjoyable. Nabokov and Edmund Wilson falling out over whose translation is best:

In 1963, Walter Arndt published a verse translation of Eugene Onegin preserving the rhyme schemes and metrical structure of Pushkin’s text. Vladimir Nabokov reviewed Arndt’s work in an essay entitled “On Translating Pushkin Pounding the Clavichord” that was published in The New York Review of Books. Nabokov furiously criticised Arndt’s translation; according to him, the attempt to preserve the original iambic tetrameter resulted in Arndt’s defacing Pushkin’s spirit and the literal meaning of the novel. Arndt replied with a letter “Goading the pony” that was followed by an article “The strange case of Pushkin and Nabokov” by Edmund Wilson, a critic who rose to Arndt’s defence and thus ruptured his close friendship with Nabokov.

In this clip Nabokov reads Pushkin's testament 'Exegi Monumentum' (1836) -

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The Tale of Putin and the Pike.

(Russian cultural references).

Fisherman and the Golden Fish.
Illustration by Ivan Bilibin.

President Putin's most recent outdoor exploit in Southern Siberia when he caught a 20 kilogamm pike caused disbelief and widely circulated jokes.

Putin, accompanied by the Prime-Minister Medvedev and the Minister of Defence Shoigu, was fishing on a lake in Tuva, a Russian Federation republic on the border with Mongolia. In one of the photos with his pike, Putin seems to be talking to the fish or kissing her.

Some claimed that the pike in photos shouldn't have been more than 12 kg. The Kremlin insisted that the weighing was genuine. The long-standing British record for a pike is 21 kg 234 g.

Others simply rolled their eyes — no, not another one! Putin previously flew on a micro-light with a flock of  storks, chased whales on a speedboat, shot a Siberian tiger with a tranquiliser, and, most hilariously, 'discovered' a cache of Greek amphoras while diving in the Black Sea.

The pike episode is special in that it evokes numerous cultural references in Russia. All of them derisive.

One is the popular folk tale of The Simpleton Yemelya and the Pike (a version in English here and in Russian here). Yemelya, the lazy third son of a peasant, refuses to do any work at home or in the fields except when bribed by 'presents'. One Winter, he goes to fetch some water in an ice-hole on the river and catches a pike in his bucket there. The pike, being a magical creature, asks him to let her (or him in some versions) go, and promises that any of Yemelya's wish will be fulfilled if he adds to it a short incantation: "по щучьему велению, по моему хотению" — 'on the pike's behest and on my request.' Yemelya goes on to marry the tsar's daughter and later on becomes the tsar himself.

The 'moral' of the tale seems strange or absent at first, but only if you forget that many folk tales have a reverse message, that is they tell you what not to do or not to expect to happen. In Russian language, the phrase 'on pike's behest' is often used to mock wishful thinking or empty boastfulness.

The second reference is to Pushkin's tale in verse "Сказка о рыбаке и рыбке" (The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish, Robert Chandler's version in English here and in Russian here, wiki about the tale). The tale uses the plot of the Brothers Grimm Vom Fischer und seiner Frau (in Russian here) but while many of the Grimms' tales are well-known in Russia this one is better known  in Pushkin's rendition.

The old fisherman lives in a mud hut by the sea with his wife whose only possession is a разбитое корыто (broken trough). One day her goes to the sea and catches a goldfish who talks to him in human language and, again, as in the tale about Yemelya, asks him to let her go. The old man, charmed by the beauty and gentleness of the sea creature, lets her go. But the fish-wife scolds him and makes him go back to the sea to ask the goldfish for a log cabin. The fish, who turns out to be the Queen of the Sea, turns the mud hut into a log cabin. The fish-wife wants more and more with all her demands granted. Until one day when she is deciding that she wants to rule the Sea herself. After which the Goldfish has had enough and everything returns to where it was, the mud hut and the broken trough.

Остаться у разбитого корыта — to be left by the broken trough became an idiom which means to be no better off than before, to be left with nothing, or to be back where one started.

And the third reference is "Бриллиантовая рука" (The Diamond Arm, wiki here), Leonid Gaidai's 1969 comedy. If it isn't a number one then it certainly is in the top ten of the most loved Russian/Soviet films. Every Russian-speaking person knows it practically by heart and almost every line went into the language as an idiom.

The plot turns around a gang of smugglers whose latest shipment of gold and diamonds from abroad has, by accident, landed in the cast on the supposedly broken arm of an unintended man, Semyon Semyonovich (played by the famous comedian Yuri Nikulin). Nikulin reports the incident to the police, and they decide to use him as live bait to catch the criminals.  The crooks, one of whom befriends Nikulin, didn't realise that Nikulin saw the treasure being hidden inside the cast, and go on trying, unsuccessfully,  to lure him into a series of traps to get the cast off him. Now, in one such attempt, Nikulin and his 'friend' go on a fishing trip to a remote place. Nikulin, an experienced angler, doesn't believe there's fish there, but is promised that "клёв будет такой, что ты забудешь всё на свете" (the fish will be biting so much that уou'll forget everything). Because another, scuba diving crook, is sitting at the bottom of the sea with a netful of live fish and hooking them on as soon as Nikulin throws in the line.

The staged fishing success that makes the fisherman 'forget everything in the world' is being remembered now and repeated in connection with Putin's pike, genuine or not.

There's the triple counter-punch for you, fire the PR.

The Diamond Arm with English subtitles. The fishing episode comes at 44th minute into the film.



In this 1957 Soviet cartoon version of Yemelya and the Pike there is an added motive of Yemelya beating the foreign princes, defeating an invading army and the tsar deciding to emigrate abroad. (bad syncing)


  

'Virgin Mary Won't Allow This'

Yurodiviy

Russian cultural references

In connection with the Pussy Riot case, the phrase 'Bogoroditsa ne velit' has often been quoted.

The feminist punk band used as a refrain in their performance the words 'Virgin Mother, get rid of Putin'. While it has been widely quoted in Western press, the link, which is obvious to any Russian, may have been lost on the Western reader.

In fact it comes from Alexander Pushkin's epic historical drama 'Boris Godunov' (1831).

Boris was Ivan the Terrible's lieutenant. When Ivan died in 1584 leaving a weak son, Feodor, on the throne, Godunov became a de-facto ruler. And after Feodor died in 1598 Godunov was crowned as the new tsar.

He was an efficient administrator and reformer, but persistent rumours of his involvement in the alleged murder of Ivan's other son from his seventh marriage, tsarevitch Dimitriy. The rumours were, apparently, stirred by Godunov's enemies. Soon after Godunov died in 1605 his young son and widow were murdered. This marked the advent of 'the Time of Troubles', when effective rule was non-existent, the Poles invaded Russia and put their stooge, the False Dimitriy on the throne of Moscow. A popular uprising ensued and eventually the first of the Romanov's, Mikhail was selected as tsar.

Russia had to wait another hundred years for a successful reformer, Peter the Great.

Godunov's personality and the Time of Troubles have long fascinated Russian writers. To Russia, Godunov and tsarevitch Dimitriy in historical and literary terms is what Richard and the Princes in the Tower is to England.

The clip below is from Mussorgsky's classic opera 'Boris Godunov' (1868-73), based on Pushkin's poem. Tsar Boris is challenged by the city's Simpleton (Yurodiviy), here sung by Ivan Kozlovsky, to have the street boys, who had stolen a kopeck from him, to be slaughtered 'like you slaughtered tsarevitch Dimitriy.'

The tsar recoils and his aides want to arrest the Simpleton. Boris stops them and asks the Simpleton to pray for him. But the Simpletion says 'No, I can't, Virgin Mary, Mother of God (Bogoroditsa) does not allow this'.

The 'aaa-aaa' note in the Simpleton's aria is one of the most beautiful in Russian opera.



Illustration: detail of the painting by Vassily Surikov 'The Boyarinya Morozova', 1887, o/c, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

The Pushkin Quote Mystery.

Pushkin monument in St.Petersburg

Today is Alexander Pushkin's birthday, widely marked in Russia as the day of national culture.


EU-Russia summit was held in Saint-Petersburg. President of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso made a short statement (text) at the joint press-conference at the end of the summit. In the statement he quoted from Pushkin, generating pleased murmur in the audience. This is the phrase from Barroso's statement:

As the most famous Russian poet, Alexander Pushkin, who studied, lived and died in Saint Petersburg, once wrote: “we can try and fail, but we should not fail to try”.

Barroso

The quote, nice as it is, looks suspiciously like one of the modern 'motivational slogans.' And indeed, when I googled it, it turned up on many 'inspirational' sites. While attributing the words to Pushkin, none of the sites give the work from where it is taken. I searched and searched, in English and in various back translations into Russian and couldn't find it.

It's quite possible that assistants found the quote for the President who wanted to strike a warm note with the hosts. He did, but I doubt that any of the Russians in the hall were able to recognize it as genuinely Pushkin's.

Can anyone help?



Photo of Barroso: eppjfficial.
Photo of the Pushkin monument in Arts Square (ploschad' Iskusstv) by George Shuklin.

Alexander Pushkin, Little Tragedies. A new translation by Alan Shaw.

Alan Shaw, an American translator and publisher of the linguistic blog prosoidia.com, is about to publish a new translation of Alexander Pushkin's mini-plays collectively known as Little Tragedies.

The book includes all four dramatic works of the Little Tragedies canon which are The Miserly Knight, Mozart and Salieri, The Stone Guest (Don Juan) and Feast in the Time of Plague (Feast During the Plague).

I read an advance copy of the book and I must say I was impressed with the quality of both, the poetry and the translation. It is not a rendition of the original work, but an accurate translation. A poetic translation that is as close to the music and rhythm of the great original as seems to be possible. A remarkable work.

In Russia and Russian-speaking countries Little Tragedies have long been regarded as a classic and remain popular. Though less known in the West than Pushkin's other poetic works, including his full scale historical drama Boris Godunov, and his novellas. Many lines from the plays have entered the language as proverbs and idioms. For example, 'proved harmony with algebra' from Salieri's monologue quoted below is used to describe a cold, calculating approach to somoething that needs passion and emotion. The plays have had numerous stage and screen versions, as well as operatic interpretations by the likes of Rimsky-Korsakov (Mozart and Salieri) and Rachmaninov (The Miserly Knight).

Here is what Alan Shaw writes about Little Tragedies:

In the autumn of 1830, with his impending wedding to Natalya Goncharova in Moscow postponed due to the death of his uncle, Alexander Pushkin set out for his remote family estate in Boldino, intending to use the delay to get some writing done. When he got there, travel restrictions were put into effect due to a cholera epidemic in the region, and it was three months before he was able to return to the capital. These months were the most poetically fruitful in his short life, and probably in all of Russian literature. A "Boldino autumn," in Russian literary parlance, has subsequently come to mean any extraordinary burst of creative accomplishment.

Among the flood of masterpieces that emerged from this brief period were the four playlets in verse known as the Little Tragedies. (Pushkin never used this title, though it is derived from references he made to them in letters). The genre of short plays or "dramatic scenes" in verse had a brief vogue in the early 19th century, notably in England, and Pushkin represented two of his own plays as adaptations from English originals. But in his hands they were something entirely new, highly concentrated studies of human obsession, tragedies of psychological epiphany more than of action. As poetry, their reputation has long been high. As drama, or more precisely as works for the stage, they have only gradually begun to come into their own.

There have been previous translations of Little Tragedies, notably by Nabokov. What makes Alan Shaw's translation stand out is that he did it with a view of actually performing them on stage. Mozart and Salieri, which he translated first nearly thirty yeas ago, in 1983, has since been performed in several countries and was used for subtitles for Rimsky-Korsakov's opera. In 1984 Shaw directed a stage reading of the mini-play at Ann Arbor.

Here is Salieri, Mozart's contemporary and himself a good composer, getting desperately envious at Mozart's light genius:

                        ...A pedestal 
To art I made out of facility, 
And facile I became: my fingers gained 
A dry obedient dexterity, 
My ear reliability. I deadened 
The sounds, dissected music like a corpse, 
Proved harmony by algebra. And then, 
Then only did I dare, with all my lore, 
Yield to the bliss of my creative fancy. 

One of the most difficult parts in the mini-plays is Mary's Song in the Feast During the Plague. Here are two opening quatrains of the song:

Time was, in our flourishing, 
When peace and plenty were abroad, 
Sunday would be sure to bring 
A full crowd to the house of God. 
Schoolyards echoed with the clash 
The voices of our children made, 
And the bright field saw the flash 
Of sickle and the scythe's quick blade.

Little Tragedies are published as an e-book, not a print edition. For details see Alan Shaw's web-site prosoidia.com/blog.


Update: the e-book is now available for purchase from Alan Shaw's site.

The Captain's Daughter, Robert Chandler's Essay on Pushkin

I have long thought that Alexander Pushkin's short novel 'The Captain's Daughter'  is the best in Russian literature. At least in the sense that it has, in concise form, everything that Russian writing is great for: passion, depth, characters, historical scale, structure and, of course, the language.

Somehow I have taken for granted the beauty of Pushkin's prose. This is why I was surprised - and delighted - to read Robert Chandler's essay on translating 'The Captain's Daughter'. (Languagehat published a post about him and discussion continues there). Chandler looks at the poetic devices used in Pushkin's prose. This is what he says on Pushkin's soundwork:

 

Some of Pushkin’s effects of alliteration extend only the length of a single sentence. These leave a translator with little room to manoeuvre. Our original version of the first sentence of chapter nine, Pyotr’s account of the morning immediately after the fall of Belogorsk, was as follows: ‘Early in the morning I was woken by the sound of a drum.’ The Russian, however, is an unobtrusive but perfect example of onomatopoeia: 'Rano utrom razbudil menya baraban.’ We tried, naturally, to reproduce this effect, but we found there was little we could do. Our final version, ‘Around dawn I was woken by the sound of a drum’, has the merit of concision and contains some play on the sounds ‘D’, ‘N’ and ‘R’; nevertheless, it falls far short of the original.

Other examples of Pushkin’s sound play are more extended. Pyotr’s French tutor, Beaupré, carries with him his own sound world, centred on two of the consonants from his own name. Pushkin’s first description of him begins as follows: Beaupré v otechestve svoem byl parikmakherom, potom v Prussii soldatom, potom priekhal v Rossiyu pour être outchitel. This aura of ‘PR’ proved oddly easy to reproduce; for the main part, in fact, we reproduced it unwittingly, before I had even consciously noticed it in the original. Only after coming up with the word ‘pronouncing’ for a sentence about Beaupré’s love of vodka cordials – ‘even came to prefer them to the wines of his fatherland, pronouncing them incomparably better for the digestion’ – did I realize that at least part of the word's appropriateness came from the way it harmonized with such words as ‘Prussia’, ‘prefer’, ‘prod’, and above all with Savelich’s scornful repetition of Beaupré’s repeated requests to the housekeeper for vodka: ‘Madam, zhe vu pri, vodkoo’.

Here, I am not quite sure why vodka in the comical phrase 'мадам, же ву при, водкю' is rendered into English as 'vodkoo' which is the phonetic straightforward of Accusative (водку)? Does vodkyu or vodqueue not sound right in English?

Another thing that bothers me is the English title. Tranlsate The Captain's Daughter back into Russian and you get Капитанская дочь. Which is correct, but loses an important key in Pushkin's narrative - familiarity. Grinev's strength is in his family, Mironov, the commandant of the fortress treats him as one of his own family, Pugachev is on familiar terms with his 'court' - and with Grinev, and Masha talks to the Empress in a familiar, infromal situation. Is there no other way to express this in English? Arthur Ransome uses 'little' abundantly to convey Russian suffixes, but, I am told, if it were used in this case it would sound as if it meant a little girl of ten.

The Poet. What did you expect?

Poetry should be our beacon in life, we may be allowed to think. Not poets themselves, not necessarily.

If the scandal surrounding elections of the new Oxford professor of poetry surprised you, read this poem by Alexander Pushkin, a Russian great. It is probably the best explanation of how the split between the poet's work and their personality works.

The Poet

Until the poet hears Apollo's
Call to the hallowed sacrifice,
The petty cares of life he follows,
And sunk in them his spirit lies.
His holy lyre remains unsounded;
His spirit sleeps in numbing rest,
By an unworthy world surrounded,
Himself perhaps unworhtiest.

But once his ear, attentive, shakes
When the god-given word is stirring,
The poet's soul, its pinions whirring,
Is like an eagle that awakes.
Then wearied of all worldly playing,
He shuns the babble of the crowd;
The people's idol disobeying,
His haughty head remains unbowed.
He runs away, and wildly, proudly,
Comes full of riot, full of sound,
Where empty waters wash around
The shores and woods that echo loudly.

(1827)
Tr. C. M. Bowra


Ruth Padel, the first woman to be elected the Oxford professor of poetry, resigned on 25 May after holding the post, the most important academic role in poetry in Britain, for just nine days. It became known that she had sent emails to journalists about claims of sexual harassment which had been made against her rival for the post Derek Walcott. Walcott had withdrawn from the race.

The Poet in Russian:

ПОЭТ

Пока не требует поэта
К священной жертве Аполлон,
В заботах суетного света
Он малодушно погружен;
Молчит его святая лира;
Душа вкушает хладный сон,
И меж детей ничтожных мира,
Быть может, всех ничтожней он.

Но лишь божественный глагол
До слуха чуткого коснется,
Душа поэта встрепенется,
Как пробудившийся орел.
Тоскует он в забавах мира,
Людской чуждается молвы,
К ногам народного кумира
Не клонит гордой головы;
Бежит он, дикий и суровый,
И звуков и смятенья полн,
На берега пустынных волн,
В широкошумные дубровы...

15 августа 1827