Selected Poetry (Penguin) Page 18

  A trick that heaven plays on earth?

  Bewitched he sat, as if in fable,

  240As if he too were made of marble,

  Immobile. And on every quarter

  All he sees is water, water!

  And high above the invaded land,

  Above the raging of the flood,

  With back to him, and outstretched hand

  In overmastering command,

  The bronzen mounted idol stood.

  Part Two

  But now, well wearied with destruction,

  The Neva rests its sated maw,

  250And having relished insurrection,

  Begins to settle down once more,

  Dropping its prey. A band of robbers

  Thus takes a village, slashes, clobbers,

  Smashes, wrecks and seizes; howls,

  Violence, terror, oaths and wails! …

  The robbers tire; weighed down by spoils,

  They fear pursuit and disappear,

  With booty scattered in their rear.

  The waters fell, the thoroughfares

  260Opened again; Yevgeny hastened,

  Clinging to hope, but full of fears,

  Towards the river scarcely chastened.

  Filled with the flush of victory,

  The waves still boiled maliciously,

  As if on top of smouldering fires,

  Capped still with foam from shore to shore;

  The Neva breathed with heavy sighs,

  Spent as a steed returned from war.

  Yevgeny looks about: he spies

  270A boat; at once his spirits rise;

  He hails a boatman heaven-sent –

  The boatman names a modest fee

  And launches off audaciously

  Into the fearsome element.

  The oarsman, skilled through many a year,

  Struggles with the turbulence;

  And he is ready more than once,

  With daring strokes, to disappear

  Between the billows deep and sheer –

  At last he makes the shore.

  280Poor soul!

  Down the street Yevgeny hastens,

  Seeking out familiar places

  But recognising none at all.

  Dreadful sight! The street is shattered,

  Everything is strewn and battered:

  The houses stand there crooked, many

  Collapsed, some vanished; unconcealed,

  As upon a battlefield

  Bodies lie all around. Yevgeny,

  290Tormented, trembling in his shoes,

  Utterly oblivious,

  Still hurries headlong to the place

  Where fate awaits him with its news,

  Like an unopened letter. Here –

  The settlement, the gulf, he’s near

  The house … But what is this?

  He stops.

  And back he turns; retraces steps.

  He looks … walks on … another look.

  Here’s where it was, the little nook,

  300And there’s the willow. But the gate –

  Has it been torn off in the spate?

  And where’s the house? In deepest slough

  Round and round he walks and walks

  And loudly to himself he talks –

  Suddenly he strikes his brow

  And laughs out loud.

  Darkness lies deep

  Upon a city all in fear;

  Its people do not try to sleep,

  The talk is ceaseless everywhere

  310Of what has come to pass this day.

  From tired, pale clouds the morning ray

  Shone on the silent capital

  And found no traces of disaster,

  The ill work crimson-covered. All

  Was as before. The streets now free

  Saw no concern or sympathy.

  Clerks, work-bound, left their night’s abode;

  The intrepid trader, undismayed,

  Opened his cellar robbed by flood,

  320Hoping to win back losses made

  From fellow traders. Many a boat

  Appeared from courtyards.

  Count Khvostòv,

  Poet beloved of heaven above,

  Began to sing in timeless verse

  The Neva settlements’ distress.

  But poor, my poor Yevgeny … He,

  Troubled, alas, in heart and mind,

  Could not withstand catastrophe.

  The fury of the waves and wind

  330Roared in his ears. He roamed aghast,

  Consumed by wordless thoughts of doom;

  He was bedevilled by a dream.

  Days, and soon a week went past –

  A month, and he did not go home.

  His term was up, the landlord let

  The empty niche to some poor poet.

  Yevgeny did not come to fetch

  His few belongings there. Poor wretch,

  An alien to society,

  340He went about all day on foot,

  And slept upon the embankment; food

  Was offered him in charity

  On window-sills. His tattered clothing

  Rotted away on him; with loathing

  Children pelted him with pebbles.

  The coachman’s whip would often find him –

  He never looked ahead, behind him,

  Deaf with the din of inner troubles.

  And so his miserable span

  350Was dragged out, neither beast nor man;

  Not an inhabitant of earth

  And not a phantom from the dead,

  Not one and not the other …

  Berth

  One night he found to lay his head

  Above the Neva. Autumn breathed

  Its wind. Frustrated waters seethed

  Against the embankment, beat its steps

  Like a petitioner who raps

  Despairingly upon the door

  360Of deaf officials of the law.

  Rain began; Yevgeny woke.

  Wind howled, and in the distant dark

  A sentinel exchanged his call

  With it … He started to recall

  The horror that had passed. He rose,

  And quickly walked about … and froze –

  It was as if his end was nigh.

  He stood beneath the columned arch

  Of that great mansion, on the porch

  370A pair of marble lions on watch,

  Each with raised paw, as if alive,

  And on a palisaded rock

  The bronzen idol, hand held high,

  Rode above him in the dark.

  Yevgeny trembled. In his mind

  All was dreadfully defined.

  How could he not recognise

  Where he had seen the grim waves spill,

  The waters in rebellion rise,

  380The lions, the square, while stark and still

  He whose indomitable will

  Had raised a city from the sea

  Towered in bronze above it – He,

  Fearsome from the gloom below!

  What thoughts are pressing on that brow!

  Within him, what unbounded force!

  What fire comes flashing from that horse!

  Where, proud stallion, are you bound,

  Where will your hooves put down to ground?

  390Destiny’s great lord and master!

  Was it not exactly thus

  Your iron bridle reared up Russia

  Upon the brink of the abyss?

  Around the idol’s pedestal

  The madman had begun to pace;

  His poor wild eyes saw face-to-face

  The ruler over half the world.

  His chest was tight. He pressed his brow

  Against cold railings; fire ran through

  400His heart, his blood was boiling over;

  His gaze was visionless in mist.

  Before the mighty image, sombre

  He stood, and clenching teeth an
d fist –

  As if possessed by some dark power –

  ‘Miracle builder! – Now!’ he hissed,

  ‘Just you wait …!’ The awesome tsar,

  It seemed, had slowly turned his head,

  In mounting rage begun to glare …

  Headlong across the empty square

  410He ran, behind him as he fled,

  Like rumbling thunder, hooves resounding

  Upon the shaken thoroughfare.

  And all night long, astride his bounding

  Steed the Horseman, hand held high,

  Outstretched beneath the moonlit sky,

  Followed Yevgeny, and no matter

  Whither the poor madman bent

  His steps, with heavy, echoing clatter

  After him the Horseman went.

  420Whenever next he chanced to pass

  That square, he would be overtaken

  By inner turmoil; he would press

  His heart as if to ease its aching,

  Take off his threadbare cap; his gaze

  He could not bring himself to raise;

  He kept his distance.

  Off the shore

  A tiny islet can be seen.

  There a fisherman will moor,

  Out fishing late, bring in his seine

  430And cook his meagre supper; or

  A clerk will of a Sunday row

  To that place where no blade will grow.

  The flood had borne there, in its sport,

  A time-worn little house. Above

  The waves, like some black bush, it stood.

  Last spring, a wherry took it off,

  Empty and ruined. They discovered

  My madman on its threshold; there

  Upon that spot his corpse was covered

  440And was committed to God’s care.

  1833

  III

  * * *

  FAIRY TALES

  (SKAZKI)

  The Tale of Tsar Saltan, His Son the Mighty and Renowned Prince Guidon Saltanovich and the Fair Swan-Princess

  This second of Pushkin’s five completed skazki was written in friendly rivalry with Vasily Zhukovsky, who was working on a skazka of his own (The Tale of Tsar Benderey). In quarantine in Tsarskoye Selo in August 1831 during the cholera epidemic that had confined him the previous year at Boldino and had now reached St Petersburg, Pushkin dashed off this fairy tale based on two variant synopses of a folk tale he had noted down some years earlier (see Introduction under ‘Fairy Tales’), developing his prose notation into rhyming couplets. The tsar’s name, Saltan, and that of his son, the young prince Guidon, are taken from a medieval romance of French origin, which as Bova Korolevich became very popular in Russia from the seventeenth century (there is a fourteenth-century English version titled Bevis of Hampton). The long subtitle of Pushkin’s skazka is in the style of the booklets of folk and fairy tales illustrated with popular prints (lubki) that were widespread in Russia from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. His title includes the word bogatyr as part of the designation of Guidon, a term normally denoting the giant mounted warrior-heroes of folk legend; this word is here untranslated since Guidon is a distinctly more domesticated figure. In the title of The Tale of the Dead Princess and the Seven Champions, as translated in this book, another variation may be found for the term.

  The trochaic tetrameter is Pushkin’s vehicle for three of his five completed skazki, including this one; it has a more stylised effect in the original than in iambic translation. Pushkin published this poem in his third verse collection in 1832.

  Three sisters sat up late and spun

  Before their window. Thus spoke one:

  ‘If ever I became Tsaritsa’ –

  This one was the eldest sister –

  ‘I would cook a splendid feast,

  I’d have ten thousand guests at least.’

  ‘If ever I, though, were Tsaritsa’ –

  She had her say, the second sister –

  ‘Single-handed I would weave

  10Rich cloth for all – no make-believe.’

  ‘If ever, though, I were Tsaritsa,’

  Now the third and youngest sister,

  ‘I would give the Father-Tsar

  A mighty hero-warrior.’

  The moment after she had spoken,

  A gentle creak – the door was open;

  And there before them who should stand

  But the ruler of the land.

  He’d overheard their conference

  20Listening from behind the fence;

  The last to speak of those fair three

  Delighted him enormously,

  And heartily he greeted her

  As fitting partner for a tsar.

  ‘You shall bear,’ said he, ‘my son

  Before the winter has begun.

  And you, good maidens, make your home

  With me and your dear sister, come –

  For also, in this pretty nook,

  30I’ve found a weaver and a cook.’

  The Father-Tsar strode from the house

  And off for the exchange of vows.

  That same evening they were married,

  For he was not a tsar who tarried.

  A feast of splendour set the scene

  For honoured guests to meet the queen;

  Then to an ivory marriage bed

  The newly wedded pair were led.

  The cook took on a face of doom,

  40The weaver whimpered at her loom;

  Both were jealous of the life

  Enjoyed by Tsar Saltan’s new wife.

  The young tsaritsa, keen enough

  Not to put her duty off,

  That very night became with child.

  That was a time when war ran wild.

  The Tsar made ready his good steed

  And told the queen to take good heed,

  And love him always.

  Far away

  50The Tsar saw battle every day.

  Meanwhile, at home, the queen’s time came:

  A long-limbed son God gave to them.

  Like a mother-eagle, bent

  Above her young, the queen now sent

  The swiftest, trustiest messenger

  With the glad news to cheer the Tsar.

  But then the two, the cook and weaver

  And Widow Baba Babarikha,

  Determined to undo the queen,

  60Removed the rider from the scene

  And sent another in his stead.

  This is what their message said:

  ‘This night the queen has given birth

  To something quite unknown on earth,

  Not quite a mouse, and not a frog –

  Who could imagine … What a shock!’

  When the Father-Tsar heard this

  How he began to rage and hiss,

  He seized the messenger and swore

  70That courier would live no more;

  But then relenting just this once,

  He was minded to announce:

  He’d act according to the law

  When he came home and not before.

  The messenger rode hard and fast

  And bore this message back at last.

  But then those two, the cook and weaver

  With Widow Baba Babarikha,

  A moment after they had learned

  80The messenger had just returned,

  Refreshed him with a drop too far,

  Seized the message from the Tsar

  And put another in its place;

  The rider read it flushed of face:

  ‘The Tsar pronounces this decree:

  The queen and her new spawn must be –

  Without delay, in secrecy –

  Cast to the bottom of the sea.’

  The nobles of the realm were seen

  90Thronging the chamber of the queen;

  They grieved for tsar and queen and son,

  But there was nothing to be done.

  They rea
d to the Tsaritsa what

  Would be her own, her son’s sad lot;

  Then put her, still in full apparel,

  With her son inside a barrel,

  Tarred it and rolled it to the sea,

  Following the Tsar’s decree.

  From dark blue sky the bright stars shone,

  100In dark blue sea the waves beat on;

  Above the sea a stormcloud ran,

  Below, the laden barrel swam.

  The queen, with none to share her fears,

  Shed, as if widowed, bitter tears;

  The infant was a rapid grower,

  Not day to day but hour by hour

  He grew. Time passed. His mother wailed …

  The boy, however, loudly hailed

  A wave: ‘You waves, you splash and play!

  110You splash all night, you splash all day!

  You can do anything you wish;

  You carve the rocks and carry ships,

  You topple cliffs and swallow sand –

  So save us, splash us to dry land!’

  There and then the wave obeyed,

  And gently, gently it conveyed

  The precious barrel to a shore,

  Then it withdrew and splashed no more.

  The pair, thus spared a watery fate,

  120Felt firm ground beneath their feet.

  But now they wondered who would take them

  Out of their cask – would God forget them?

  The son stretched up and pressed his head

  Against the barrel-top. He said:

  ‘We need a window on the world’,

  Knocked through the top, and out he rolled.

  The mother and her son were free;

  They walked beside the dark blue sea.

  Not far off, upon a rise,

  130A broad green oak-tree met their eyes.

  The son had one thought: ‘What we need

  Most now is something good to eat,’

  And from the oak broke off a bough

  From which he made a good strong bow,

  And on the oaken bow he strung

  The cord on which his cross had hung.

  He took a twig, and then with care

  Shaped an arrow light as air,

  And off along the shore he strode

  140To see what he could find for food.

  He was only a moment gone

  When he was startled by a groan …

  He looked, and in the swirling sea

  There was an evil sight to see:

  A swan was struggling in the water,

  A big black kite was diving at her;

  The wretched creature splashed and splashed,

  The sea all round was churned and lashed …

  The kite’s great claws were at the ready,

  150Its beak was razor-sharp and bloody …

  But all at once an arrow whirred;

  It struck the neck of that dread bird –