Selected Poetry (Penguin) Read online

  Around the carts. All sound has ceased,

  The fields are resting in the night;

  420Leaving the stars’ uncertain light,

  The moon has disappeared in mist;

  Faintly showing in the dew

  A track meanders out of view

  Beyond the mounds; without delay

  He follows the ill-fated way.

  Far off before him in the night,

  Beside the track, a grave shows white …

  A sense of dread possesses him;

  Weak and tired in every limb

  430He walks towards … what, some chimera?

  All at once two shadows loom,

  And whispering, as he comes nearer,

  Sounds from the desecrated tomb.

  FIRST VOICE

  It’s time to go now …

  SECOND VOICE

  No …

  FIRST VOICE

  It’s time

  My love.

  SECOND VOICE

  No, no, stay here. Be mine

  Till dawn.

  FIRST VOICE

  It’s late.

  SECOND VOICE

  You love so coyly.

  One minute more!

  FIRST VOICE

  You will destroy me.

  SECOND VOICE

  One minute!

  FIRST VOICE

  If my husband wakes

  And finds that I’m not there?

  ALEKO

  I have.

  440Where are you going? For both your sakes

  You’d better stay beside this grave.

  ZEMFIRA

  Run, run, my love!

  ALEKO

  No, stop!

  ZEMFIRA

  My dear!

  ALEKO

  Not so fast, my lad! Stay here!

  (Plunges his knife into him.)

  ZEMFIRA

  Aleko!

  YOUNG GYPSY

  I am dying …

  ZEMFIRA

  Aleko!

  You’ll kill him! Look – you’re smeared with blood!

  What have you done?

  ALEKO

  Now taste his love.

  ZEMFIRA

  I hate you, despise you – I am above

  All threats from you: the Devil take you,

  You murderer …

  ALEKO

  So, well and good –

  You die too!

  (Stabs her.)

  ZEMFIRA

  450… die for my love …

  *

  Brightly the eastern heavens shone:

  Blood-steeped, and with knife in hand,

  Out in the steppe beyond the mound

  Aleko sat upon the stone.

  Before him on the bloody ground

  Two corpses lay; the murderer

  Was dreadful to behold. All round

  The stricken gypsies were astir.

  Off to one side they dug a grave.

  460The women, each with covered head,

  Kissed the eyelids of the dead.

  The old man, by himself, his gaze

  Fastened upon his daughter’s form,

  Sat immobile and forlorn.

  They took the corpses, in the bare

  Earth’s bosom laid the youthful pair.

  Aleko looked on from afar …

  And when the grave was filled at last,

  Slowly, as if unaware,

  470Lowered himself upon the grass.

  Now the old man stood up, came near,

  And spoke: ‘Proud man, be gone from here!

  We are untamed, we have no laws.

  We do not torture, execute –

  Our way is not with groans or blood –

  We cannot live with murderers …

  Not for freedom were you born,

  You want it for yourself alone;

  Your voice is dreadful to our ears:

  480We are shy and good at heart,

  You are bold and bad – depart,

  Farewell to you, may you find peace.’

  Thus the old man; the roaming band

  Was thereupon in noisy flight

  From the disaster of the night,

  Leaving a deserted land

  But for a solitary cart,

  Covered with a wretched hide,

  Resting on the fateful sward.

  490Thus, out of the autumnal mist

  A tardy flock of cranes at dawn

  Will rise and call, going south – one, pierced

  By lead, will stay behind, forlorn,

  Trailing its wounded wing. Night came:

  No one lit a cheering flame

  Inside the cart; beneath its awning

  No one slept until the morning.

  EPILOGUE

  Thus by the magic power of song,

  Out of my memory’s slumbering haze

  500Visions spring to life and throng,

  Sometimes of bright, sometimes dark days.

  In that far land where war’s alarm

  For long years never ceased to toll,

  Where Russia stretched her mighty arm

  And showed her frontiers to Stamboul,

  And where our double-headed eagle

  Still proudly flies without an equal,

  There on the steppe I used to meet them,

  The gypsies, as their wagons rolled

  510Across the lines of camps of old,

  Children of a humble freedom.

  Often I roamed the wilderness

  Behind their easy-going press,

  And shared with them their simple fare

  And fell asleep before their fire.

  How grateful to my ears on long

  Slow journeys was their cheerful song,

  And to my lips there often came,

  Unbidden, Mariyula’s name.

  520But even amongst you innocents

  There is no lasting happiness! …

  Inside your worn and tattered tents

  Surge dreams of violence and distress,

  Within your shelters on the steppe

  Catastrophe in hiding waits,

  Dark passions everywhere run deep,

  There is no refuge from the Fates.

  1824

  The Bridegroom

  Many of Pushkin’s two dozen ballads are free translations or adaptations of foreign originals. Written in 1825, The Bridegroom is his original in all but metre. It stands at the convergence of three national cultures. First, ‘Lenore’ (1774), by the German Romantic poet Gottfried Bürger, which won enormous popularity throughout Europe. Its story, based on the brief Scottish ballad ‘Sweet William’s Ghost’, is of a girl’s immoderate and blasphemous grief at the death in the Seven Years War of her lover, whose ghost appears and takes her on a nocturnal ride to his graveyard, where she falls dead. Bürger makes powerful use of the sonic resources of the German language, and especially of popular words. Following William Taylor’s and Walter Scott’s versions of ‘Lenore’ (both 1797), Vasily Zhukovsky published two free versions of Bürger’s ballad in 1808 and a closer translation in 1831.

  Pushkin wrote his own ballad, transforming the storyline of a tale by the Grimms (see Introduction under ‘Narrative Poems’) and using Bürger’s metre, the only instance of Pushkin’s use of it (preserved in the present translation). This eight-line stanza, a combination of iambic tetrameter and trimeter, is dynamic in the extreme, constantly on edge and changing rhythm. It perfectly suits Pushkin’s intentions as he pitches the reader headlong into a ballad that appears to be in German Romantic mode and gives way to uncertainty and suspense as to what exactly is happening until the sinister truth is revealed at the end. As in his other ballads, Pushkin combines popular idiom with the most sophisticated effects, from dazzling onomatopoeia – the sound of wind-tossed fir-tree tops, the escalating din of a wedding feast – to subtle repetitions and even occasional rhythms and diction drawn from Bürger.

  The Bridegroom was first published in the Moscow Herald in 1827 an
d reprinted in Pushkin’s second collection of short verse in 1829.

  For three whole days the merchant’s daughter

  Natasha disappeared;

  The third night came: in wild disorder

  Natasha reappeared.

  Mother and father plied their questions,

  Tried to bring about confessions.

  Natasha doesn’t hear,

  She scarcely breathes for fear.

  Her mother grieved, her father grieved,

  10Long did they catechise her,

  But when at last she was reprieved

  They still were none the wiser.

  Natasha won back cheer and health,

  Soon she was her former self,

  Back with her sisters late

  Outside the shingle-gate.

  There she is with her companions

  Beside the gate one day,

  The merchant’s girl, when all at once

  20A troika gallops by.

  Its young and dashing driver tugs

  The reins of horses wrapped in rugs;

  Up he stands in his sleigh

  And woe to all in his way.

  He glances at her while he drives,

  Natasha glances back,

  On like the wind he whirls, he leaves

  Natasha thunderstruck.

  Back to the house headlong she flies.

  30‘I recognised him – him!’ she cries –

  ‘I know that it was him!

  Stop him, save me from him!’

  Shaking their heads, the family gather

  And listen full of gloom;

  ‘Daughter dear,’ begins the father,

  ‘Tell me the truth now, come:

  If someone has offended you,

  A sign from you, and that will do.’

  Natasha doesn’t speak.

  40All she can do is weep.

  A matchmaker has seen Natasha:

  Next day she’s in the parlour.

  She utters praises for Natasha,

  Then turns towards the father:

  ‘We’re buying – you’ve the goods for us,

  And handsome is as handsome does:

  The lad has strength and style,

  He has no guile or bile.

  ‘He’s wealthy, and he’s also clever,

  50He doesn’t touch his cap,

  Lives like a boyar, lacked he’s never,

  Luck falls into his lap;

  He’ll have a mind to give the girl

  A coat of silver fox, a pearl,

  Gold rings and necklaces,

  A fine brocaded dress.

  ‘He saw her sitting by your gate;

  He isn’t one that dithers;

  So let’s to church – why should we wait?

  60And take the icons with us?’

  She sits and eats a plate of pie,

  She talks with sighs and slanted eye,

  And what the poor bride hears

  Has roused her deepest fears.

  ‘It’s settled, then,’ agrees the father,

  ‘Aren’t you the lucky one?

  My dear Natasha, to the altar!

  It’s dull to sit alone.

  To go through life unwed is wrong,

  70The swallow has to leave off song,

  It’s time to build a nest,

  Have children and be blest.’

  Natasha leans against the wall,

  She tries to speak – instead

  Begins to sob, and shake and wail,

  Laugh as though off her head.

  The matchmaker, in the disorder,

  Runs to her with a flask of water

  To offer a drink – then splash a

  80Dash of it on Natasha.

  A family in calamity …

  Natasha now comes to:

  ‘Your will is sacred, I shall be

  Obedient to you.

  Call my bridegroom to the feast,

  Bake for a hundred guests at least,

  Make mead that’s good and strong,

  And bring the law along.’

  ‘We shall now, angel of my heart!

  90I place your happiness

  Above my life!’ Forthwith they start

  To cook and bake their best.

  At last the worthy guests assemble,

  And now the bride is led to table;

  The bridesmaids weep and sing –

  A sleigh comes galloping.

  The groom! Now everyone is found.

  The goblets clash and clink,

  The loving-cup goes round and round;

  100Guests take their fill of drink.

  BRIDEGROOM:

  ‘Dear friends, I must be satisfied:

  Why does my own and fairest bride

  Not drink, nor eat, nor serve?

  Why does my fair bride grieve?’

  ‘I’ll tell you all I have to tell,’

  For answer spoke the bride.

  ‘My life is now a life in hell,

  I weep all day and night.

  An evil dream oppresses me.’

  110The father: ‘What can this dream be?

  Dear daughter, if you please,

  Put our minds at ease.’

  ‘This was my dream,’ came clear and loud:

  ‘I wandered in a wood

  At night; behind a bank of cloud

  A half-moon dimly stood;

  I’d lost my path, and all around

  No living soul, no living sound,

  Only the fir-trees stirred,

  120And that was all I heard.

  ‘And suddenly, as if I woke,

  I saw, close by, a hut.

  I knocked – no answer. Then I spoke –

  The door stayed firmly shut.

  I opened it, I went inside,

  I prayed, and there in candlelight –

  Gold, silver, everywhere …

  All shining, precious ware.’

  BRIDEGROOM:

  ‘How is your dream an evil one,

  130Foretelling wealth untold?’

  BRIDE:

  ‘Wait, sir, till my account is done.

  On silver and on gold,

  And cloths and carpets and brocade,

  And silken stuffs from Novgorod –

  On marvels heaven-sent

  I gazed in wonderment.

  ‘Soon I heard shouts, and clop clop clop …

  Up to the porch they drove.

  I slammed the door – in one quick hop

  140I hid behind the stove.

  Then I heard voices once again …

  Into the hut tramped twelve young men,

  And with them was a maiden,

  A pure and lovely maiden.

  ‘They entered in a noisy horde,

  And none took off his hat;

  To table, icons quite ignored,

  Without saying grace they sat,

  The eldest brother at their head,

  150The youngest brother on his right,

  And on his left the maiden,

  The pure and lovely maiden.

  ‘Laughter and clamour, singing, yelling,

  Unbridled merriment …’

  BRIDEGROOM:

  ‘How can your dream be bad, foretelling

  Good fortune and content?’

  BRIDE:

  ‘Wait, sir, till my account is done.

  The din and revelry went on,

  The merriment was mad,

  160Only the maid was sad.

  ‘She spoke no word, she sat in grief,

  Would take no food, no mead.

  The eldest brother grasped his knife

  And, whistling, whetted it;

  He glanced towards the lovely maid,

  He gripped her swiftly by her braid,

  The villain killed her and

  Cut off her right hand.’

  The bridegroom, with a shrug, replied:

  170‘But this is downright drivel!

  You mustn’t grieve, beloved bride,


  Your dream cannot mean evil.’

  The bride is swift to answer him:

  ‘Whose hand does it come from, then, this ring?’ –

  Looks him full in the face;

  Each guest starts from his place.

  The ring rolls clinking on the floor,

  The bridegroom has turned pale;

  All is confusion. – Speaks the law:

  180‘Bind the criminal!’

  Fettered, the villain was condemned

  Without delay and met his end.

  Natasha’s was the glory!

  And that is all our story.

  1825

  Count Nulin

  Pushkin describes in a note published posthumously (see Wolff, pp. 272–3) how he came to write Count Nulin, conceived as a parody of Shakespeare’s narrative poem The Rape of Lucrece, an elaboration of Livy’s semi-legendary account of the rape of the renowned beauty Lucretia by Sextus, son of Tarquin, king of Rome (r. 535–509 BC), a scandal that led to the overthrow of the kingdom and the advent of the Republic. Pushkin was working on the fourth chapter of Eugene Onegin when he wrote the poem – ‘in two mornings’ (Wolff, p. 273), he tells us in his note (13 and 14 December 1825) – and as John Bayley observes (p. 291), the latter is ‘virtually a comic transposition of the Lucrece situation into the world of the Larins [in Onegin]: we can imagine the heroine and her husband [a small landowner and his bored young wife, hungry for social contact] attending [the Larins’ daughter] Tatyana’s name-day feast’. The name Sextus Tarquinius is whittled down to Nulin, for nul’, ‘nought’. While Shakespeare’s Tarquin ‘throw[s] his mantle rudely o’er his arm’ (line 170 of his poem), Count Nulin puts on a ‘striped silk dressing-gown’ (line 235 in this translation). Tarquin becomes a travelling dandy who spends a jolly evening in the house of the young country housewife whose husband is away hunting and fumbles his way into her room after everyone has retired to bed. Earlier narrative poems by Pushkin in varying degrees partake of the Byronic Romantic mode. Count Nulin’s modernity of language, sensibility and characterisation had immediate appeal. Reviewers found its story, despite its origins, outrageously indecent; the public loved it.