Recently I found myself wondering about the business of translation. I was reading Seamus Heaney’s partial, and posthumous, translation of Virgil, Aeneid Book VI, which I found lyrical and moving and all the rest, entirely in keeping with the ethos of the translator. But Heaney also had to contend with his source material.
Although the heart of the piece was pure Heaney — the meeting of Aeneas’ late father and the debt to memory and longing being honoured — there were aspects of Virgil’s work he had to wrestle and pin down. Namely, this included the long litany of ancestors and successors at the close of the piece — Virgil’s own debt to the propaganda of Augustus. In unskilled hands this could prove as metronomic, and unfeeling, as Biblical genealogy. Sonorous but without heart. Heaney solves the problem in his own way and the book works as intended. But its intentions are Heaney’s, not Virgil’s.
This came to mind when reading the Penguin edition of Pushkin’s novel in verse. I enjoyed it very much. But whose work, really, comprised the majority of my pleasure? I read it in English, and it was often the brisk quality of that English, written by Babette Deutsch, which gave character to my enjoyment.
Pushkin’s poem, though short, is quite notoriously complex — not syntactically, but in the way each word (the Russian and those imported from other languages) is laden with meaning. Nabokov’s translation of this slender poem is in several volumes.
One quickly risks disappearing into ontological absurdity here, so I will resign myself to this: Deutsch’s work is excellent, her translation is unpretentious. She writes to be read easily, and favours close rhymes. She keeps the ‘Pushkin stanza’ rather than going for prose, and this gives the poem a the momentum and slight corniness of something by Congreve. Her form is worn lightly and is flexible. It’s good fun when necessary, tragic when required.
‘He’s done with women, and it looks / As though he’s surely done with books’, versus the tragic: ‘There is the spot if you would know it: / Left of the village where the poet / Once dwelt, two pines are intertwined — / Below you see the river wind / That waters well the nearby valley. / The women mowing oft repair / To plunge their tinkling pitchers there. / And there the weary ploughmen dally. / Beside that stream with shadows laced / A simple monument is placed.’
I will not spell out the tragedy of the book, but it is a futile waste in much the same way that Pushkin’s own life was curtailed.
The books is also strikingly romantic, and it could not have been a tragedy without romance.
The changing nature of Onegin’s relationship with young Tatyana are perhaps best caught in two long verse letters written by the two of them. Tatyana first:
Not knowing you, I would not thus
Have learned how hearts can be tormented.
I might (who knows?) have grown contented.
My girlish dreams forever stilled.
And found a partner in another,
And been a faithful wife and mother,
And loved the duties well fulfilled.Another I ... No, my heart is given
To one forever, one alone!
It was decreed ... the will of Heaven
Ordained it so: I am your own.
All my past life has had one meaning—
That I should meet you. God on High
Has sent you, and I shall be leaning
On your protection till I die. ...
I saw you in my dreams; I’d waken
To know I loved you; long ago
I languished in your glance, and oh!
My soul, hearing your voice, was shaken.
Only a dream? It could not be!
The moment that I saw you coming,
I thrilled, my pulses started drumming.
And my heart whispered: it is he!
And later:
My mind’s awhirl;
Perhaps mere folly has created
These fancies of a simple girl
And quite another end is fated. ...
So be it! Now my destiny
Lies in your hands, for you to fashion;
Forgive the tears you wring from me,
I throw myself on your compassion. ...
Imagine: here I am alone,
With none to understand or cherish
My restless thoughts, and I must perish,
Stifled, in solitude, unknown.
I could have chosen to quote the letter entire.
Her love goes unanswered, and later, Onegin writes to her. He expresses the same thoughts, the same desperate love; but in a more formal, educated manner than the country girl overcome by rash emotion. It has the same effect.
Indeed what can I hope for, after
You know the truth? What is the use
Of speech? For what malicious laughter
Do I thus give you an excuse?We met by chance; I, though perceiving
Affection’s spark in you, believing
Myself mistaken, did not dare
To let the tender habit seize me;
Although my freedom did not please me.
The loss of it I could not bear.
And one thing more put us asunder —
Continuing:
No, to be with you constantly;
To follow you with deep devotion;
And with enamored eyes to see
Each smile of yours, each glance, each motion;
To listen to you, late and soon;
To know you: spirit tuned to spirit;
In torment at your feet to swoon —
Were bliss; and death? I should not fear it!It may not be: without relief,
I drag myself about; time’s hasting,
And it is precious, being brief:
Yet in vain boredom I am wasting
The hours allotted me by Fate,
And oh, they are a weary weight!
My days are counted: I’ve had warning;
But to endure 1 need one boon —
I must be certain in the morning
Of seeing you by afternoon, …
The English reader does not know who to thank for such beauty, the translator or the poet. But each deserve gratitude for their parts in its creation.