"The Sail" by Mikhail Lermontov

One white and lonely sail out there,

amidst the fog and the ocean’s blue!

What does it seek in distant lands?

What was amiss in the one it knew?

Waves leap up into whistling wind;

the tall mast bends, and the rigging strains.

This is no flight from happiness,

but nor will happiness be its aim.

Before him spreads an azure path,

as though golden suns would never cease,

but he, rebellious, seeks the storm,

as if only in storms were there peace.

Mikhail Lermontov
Translation by Frank Beck

Mikhail Lermontov (1814-41) made his name at the age of 23 with a poem about the tragic death of Pushkin in a duel. Lermontov was part Russian and part Scot, the descendant of George Learmont, a Scottish officer who joined the Russian army in the 1600s.

Lermontov's poem was an outraged cry against the code of conduct that had led to Pushkin's death, yet Lermontov himself died the same way, challenged by a friend he had offended with his cutting remarks. The early deaths of these two poets made them legendary figures--much like Shelley and Keats in the English tradition.

Russian speakers still read Lermontov's prose--in particular A Hero of Our Time--as well as his poetry. Like much Russian verse, the poetry is difficult to translate, because its meaning is conveyed largely through the use of rhyme. English has far fewer rhyming possibilities than Russian does, so whether Russian rhymes can be reproduced in English is largely a matter of luck.

Lermontov in 1837

Boris Pasternak's "My Sister, Life," written during Russia's 
tumultuous year of 1917, is dedicated to Lermontov. "What was he to me, in the summer of 1917?" Paternak later wrote. "The personification of creative adventure and discovery--the principle of everyday, free, poetical statement."

That dedication forms a link between Russian Romanticism and Russian Modernism, as if Eliot's "The Waste Land" has been dedicated to Shelley or Keats. 

(The image at the top is a detail from "Seascape," a 1910 painting by Nikolai Dubovskoy.)

• AUDIO: Hear the poem in Russian
• Lermontov's poem in Russian
  
• A Russian view of Lermontov's life and work
• AUDIO: "Winter Night" by Boris Pasternak (from Doctor Zhivago)

"Tiflis" (Tblisi), painted by Lermontov at the age of 23 in 1837

Sparrow Hills

View of Moscow from Sparrow Hills (A. Kuindzhi, 1882)

A breast kissed wet, as though under a shower!

But summer streams do not flow forever,

And we cannot stay on here night after night,

Raising dust to the accordion’s low drone.

I’ve heard about old age—a frightening prediction!

No crashing wave will lift its hands to the stars.

And imagine: they say there's no face in the fields,

no heart in the pond and, in the forest, no God.

Let your soul break free! The day bubbles like surf.

It's noontime in the world. Where are your eyes?

Look: high in the treetops, thought is a simmering mix

Of woodpeckers, pine cones, heat, needles and clouds.

Here the track of the city trolley ends.

Machines are barred; pine trees will have to do.

From here on, it’s Sunday—a parting of branches,

A dash through the meadow and a slide on the grass.

Weaving our steps with sunlight and Whitsunday,

The woods insist the world is always like this.

The trees believe it; the meadow understands;

It pours down from the sky across our laps.

Воробьёвы горы from My Sister, Life, 1917
Boris Pasternak; translation by Frank Beck

Imagine trying to translate Dylan Thomas into Russian. Bringing a Pasternak poem into English isn't much easier, but I tackled this one because I think the existing versions don't do justice to the poet's unique voice. Many English-language translators seem put off by Pasternak's exuberance--those three exclamation marks in the first nine lines of "Sparrow Hills" are his, not some addition of mine.

The biggest problem for a translator of this particular poem is the crucial role its rhymes play: they cannot be replicated in another language. There's also the challenge of recreating Pasternak's mix of the lyrical and the mundane. For example, the poem's first line refers to a rukomoinik--the kind of wall-mounted water tank many Russians once used for bathing. This word has often been translated as "spigot" or "pitcher", but the connotations of the Russian word are at once more domestic and more erotic. "Shower" is a closer counterpart, I think.

Pasternak in 1916

While I could not reproduce Pasternak’s rhymes, I have preserved many of his cadences and mirrored the way he builds meaning, line-by-line. In place of his end-rhyme, I used assonance and alliteration to create a closely patterned sound structure similar to his. Throughout the translation, I tried to convey the force of Pasternak’s charged language and the sheer delight of his imaginative leaps.

Pasternak's poems have been recorded by any number of Russian actors, and some have been set to music. I've included a link to readings of "Sparrow Hills" and the title poem from My Sister, Life, so you can hear two of them in Pasternak's own language. I've also provided a translation of the book's title poem by Phillip C. Flayderman.

• Pasternak's poem in Russian
• AUDIO: Yevgeny Sidorov reads "Sparrow Hills"
• AUDIO: Victor Zozulin reads "My Sister Life"
• "My Sister Life" translated by Phillip C. Flayderman
• Olga Carlisle interviews Pasternak for the Paris Review
• A virtual tour of Pasternak's home in Peredelkino