[Carl Copeland]

This poem has similarities to one written seven years earlier: https://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showthread.php?t=35458. Pushkin may be comparing the burial site of his dear friend Anton Delvig outside St. Petersburg with the monastery graveyard in Pskov Province where his mother had been buried a few months before. He would be buried near her six months later. It’s interesting to consider that public cemeteries—not in churchyards—were a relatively new invention.


When, wandering beyond the city’s bounds,
I find myself in public burial grounds—
the fancy tombs and fences topping all
the rotting corpses of the capital,
crowded haphazardly in a morass,
like guests all grasping at a poor repast,
the merchants’ and officials’ sepulchers,
a third-rate chisel’s graceless twists and swirls,
inscriptions telling, both in prose and verses,
of virtues, titles and official service;
a cuckold’s widow amorously weeping;
the urns unscrewed by pilferers, the seeping
of mucky graves left yawning on the day
before their residents move in to stay—
it’s all so troubling and engulfs my mind
in such black desolation that I find
I want to spit and flee …
                                   But oh, how fond
I am of an ancestral burial ground
on quiet autumn evenings, where I sense
the peaceful dignity of those at rest.
The graves there, unadorned, have ample room;
at night, pale thieves won’t desecrate a tomb;
a passing villager, with prayers and sighs,
regards the headstones’ mossy yellow sides;
instead of urns, small pyramids and faces
of noseless spirits and bedraggled Graces,
an oak spreads out above the stately graves
and rustles as it sways …


Crib

When, pensive, I roam outside the city
and stop in a public cemetery,
the fences, headstones, [and] fancy graves
beneath which rot all the dead of the capital,
haphazardly crowded side-by-side in a swamp,
like famished/greedy guests at a beggarly table,
mausoleums of deceased merchants, officials,
the outlandish fancies of a cheap chisel,
[and] above them, inscriptions in prose and verses
on virtues, on [state] service and ranks;
a widow’s amorous lament for an old cuckold;
urns unscrewed from headstones by thieves,
slimy graves that are also here,
yawning, wait for tenants in the morning—
it all brings on for me such troubling thoughts
that foul/evil despair comes over me.
One wants to spit and flee ...
                                          But how pleasing for me
in autumn, in the quiet of evening
in the country, to visit an ancestral graveyard,
where the dead slumber in stately peace.
There the unadorned graves have room;
a pale thief won’t disturb them on a dark night;
near the age-old stones covered with yellow moss,
a villager passes with a prayer and a sigh;
in place of empty urns and small pyramids,
noseless geniuses, [and] bedraggled Graces,
an oak broadly stands over the dignified/important graves,
swaying and making sound ...


Original

Когда за городом, задумчив, я брожу
И на публичное кладбище захожу,
Решетки, столбики, нарядные гробницы,
Под коими гниют все мертвецы столицы,
В болоте коё-как стесненные рядком,
Как гости жадные за нищенским столом,
Купцов, чиновников усопших мавзолеи,
Дешевого резца нелепые затеи,
Над ними надписи и в прозе и в стихах
О добродетелях, о службе и чинах;
По старом рогаче вдовицы плач амурный;
Ворами со столбов отвинченные урны,
Могилы склизкие, которы также тут,
Зеваючи, жильцов к себе на утро ждут, —
Такие смутные мне мысли все наводит,
Что злое на меня уныние находит.
Хоть плюнуть да бежать...
                                        Но как же любо мне
Осеннею порой, в вечерней тишине,
В деревне посещать кладбище родовое,
Где дремлют мертвые в торжественном покое.
Там неукрашенным могилам есть простор;
К ним ночью темною не лезет бледный вор;
Близ камней вековых, покрытых желтым мохом,
Проходит селянин с молитвой и со вздохом;
На место праздных урн и мелких пирамид,
Безносых гениев, растрепанных харит
Стоит широко дуб над важными гробами,
Колеблясь и шумя...

[Glenn Wright]

Hi, Carl

Your translation is very faithful to the original in meaning, form, rhythm, and rhyme. I wondered if the public cemetery near St. Petersburg was actually located in a swampy area.
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, many cities had to deal with the problem of disposing of the dead, since churchyards were overflowing and with the steep increase in urban populations, the resulting sanitation problems were becoming serious. Anyone who is familiar with Hamlet knows that consecrated ground for burials was recycled even before Shakespeare’s day. Most people are familiar with the catacombs in Rome and Paris. I just found out that Odesa has extensive catacombs as well. My hometown of San Francisco, with limited space, got rid of almost all of its cemeteries in the late nineteenth century and moved the remains of thousands of people from the city limits, relocating them in a necropolis in Colma, south of the city. Because of the Catholic prohibition of cremation, only lifted in 1963, this option was unavailable in Western Europe. I don’t know the Orthodox policy on cremation.

The Dance of Death is a recurring motif in medieval and early Renaissance literature and art of Western Europe. It often presents members of all classes of society, made equal by their journey to the same destination, in a humorous way. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales is representative of it. Pushkin’s “cuckold’s widow amorously weeping” reminded me of the Wife of Bath. The grave robbers who steal the urns (for flowers, I suppose?), the careless work of the stonecarvers, and the hastily pre-dug graves all merit Pushkin’s disapproval of the new, secular cemetery. He places the old, church-sponsored graveyard in an idealized setting in autumn, which you pointed out was Pushkin’s favorite season.

I wondered if the ellipsis at the end of the last line meant that the poem continued, but I looked it up and this is the complete poem. I wonder why Pushkin ended with an ellipsis.

Beautiful job, Carl! You captured every nuance!

Glenn

[Carl Copeland]

Thank you, Glenn!

Originally Posted by Glenn Wright

I wondered if the public cemetery near St. Petersburg was actually located in a swampy area.

Pushkin is usually accurate, and St. Petersburg in general, like Washington D.C., was built on low-lying wetlands.

Originally Posted by Glenn Wright

Because of the Catholic prohibition of cremation, only lifted in 1963, this option was unavailable in Western Europe. I don’t know the Orthodox policy on cremation.

Until the Revolution, cremation was forbidden by state and church, which was essentially a branch of the state. Today the Russian Orthodox Church frowns on cremation, but doesn’t forbid it.

Originally Posted by Glenn Wright

I wondered if the ellipsis at the end of the last line meant that the poem continued, but I looked it up and this is the complete poem. I wonder why Pushkin ended with an ellipsis.

“From Pindemonte” also ended with a short line and an ellipsis. The “Romantic fragment” was fashionable in the early nineteenth century and used by Pushkin throughout his career. This 1824 poem is a rather extreme example: https://ru.wikisource.org/wiki/%D0%9...D0%B8%D 0%BD). Anne Janowitz writes:

“Coleridge’s Kubla Khan: or a Vision in a Dream. A Fragment, Keats’s Hyperion. A Fragment, Byron’s The Giaour, A Fragment of a Turkish Tale, are just a few of the most renowned of the many Romantic poems which were published as ‘fragments’ and which, taken together, can be recognized as a genre.”

It’s a central topic of Monika Greenleaf’s brilliant book Pushkin and Romantic Fashion: Fragment, Elegy, Orient, Irony.

BTW, Glenn, I meant to consult you as a Latin scholar. I found this definition of “гений” in the Словарь языка Пушкина: “Статуя, изображающая римское божество — хранителя человека, рода, местности.” Do you know of such statues appearing on headstones? I translated it as “spirits,” but another translator used “angels.”

[Glenn Wright]

Hi, Carl—

Originally Posted by Carl Copeland

I found this definition of “гений” in the Словарь языка Пушкина: “Статуя, изображающая римское божество — хранителя человека, рода, местности.” Do you know of such statues appearing on headstones? I translated it as “spirits,” but another translator used “angels.”

The ancient Roman had a very elaborated system for categorizing the spirits of the dead. The general term, manes was used to refer to the spirits of dead ancestors, who were invoked at funerals and addressed on gravestones by the initials D.M., for dis manibus, “to the spirits of the dead.” Unlike the Christian view, which regarded the soul as an integral, eternal part of the person, manes were, it seems, regarded as attendant, tutelary spirits guarding, as your definition says, people, families, and localities. Apuleius records his belief that the manes of good people become lares after the person’s death. These were dii familiares, household deities, depicted as dancing young men holding cornucopias or drinking horns (rhytons), honored often with complex rituals. Penates were spirits that guarded a specific place. In the Aeneid, Aeneas is granted special permission to bring his penates from Troy to Rome. Thus, in Bernini’s statue of Aeneas carrying his father Anchises and his son, Ascanius, from Troy, Anchises is holding a small statue.

https://francescacaruso.com/wp-conte...ero-meglio.jpg

The manes of bad people became lemures or larvae, evil spirits who had to be appeased with offerings of black beans thrown behind the house with averted gaze at midnight. Those neither good nor bad were simply called manes. Additionally, every Roman man had a genius and every Roman woman had a juno—something like a guardian angel—who also required appeasement. The Roman view of the world was that it was a place populated my myriad friendly and unfriendly spirts, requiring constant offerings, rituals, and pacification.

Well, you asked!
Glenn

[Carl Copeland]

Fascinating, Glenn, thank you. Pushkin uses the words genius and penates in a number of poems. What I really wanted to know was whether these “geniuses” had a place in European funerary sculpture, but I now see there’s something called a “funerary genius,” often a winged boy with an inverted torch. They can apparently be hard to distinguish from cherubs, putti and angels. I’m still thinking about whether I should change “spirits” to “cherubs” or “angels.”

[Glenn Wright]

Hi, Carl—

Pushkin sets up a sharp contrast between the swampy, crowded, hastily prepared public cemeteries and the green, spacious, elegant churchyard cemeteries. The “noseless geniuses” are a feature of the public cemeteries. I’m assuming that they are “noseless” because they have been vandalized, the irony being that the protective spirits set by the tombs to protect their contents can’t even protect their own noses from being stolen or destroyed. Similarly the “bedraggled Graces” who were intended to add an elegant orderliness to the grave merely add to the general sense of slovenly disorder. To make this clear, I would suggest using “noseless geniuses.” To keep the meter, you might use a line like: “of noseless geniuses and slutty Graces,” or some such. (“Slutty” might be too much. Rumpled? Tousled?) If you think “geniuses” is too technical and likely to be misunderstood, then I’d go with “angels” to at least suggest the protective function of the statuary.

Glenn

[David Callin]

I like the way this one skips along, Carl - although isn't that rather unseemly in a cemetery? - and you've made an enjoyable English poem (or poem in English) from the original.

I do, as a (sometimes) hard-line rhymer, wish you could have come up with closer rhymes for some of the more dubious ones, but I suspect you tried all the possible options and were left with what you have here.

Which is very acceptable.

Cheers

David

[Carl Copeland]

Thanks again, Glenn. Yeah, I think “geniuses” would need a note, and I’m avoiding that. I was leaning toward “cherubs,” since that seems closest to what Pushkin had in mind, but the irony you mention has me thinking …


Thanks, David. Verse translations are always a compromise between rhyme, meter and content, and rhyme is the first place I look for wiggle room. I can recall only one translation that I managed to rhyme perfectly, though the one I’ll post this week comes close.