Happy Belated Birthday, Boris!

Saturday was the birthday of Boris Pasternak (Борис Леонидович Пастернак), who was born in Moscow in 1890. Although he had begun as a supporter of the Revolution, he later - after colliding with reality - became a quiet dissident. He ceased writing original work but supported himself as a translator. But towards the end of WWII he began to work in secret on his masterpiece, Doctor Zhivago. It took him approximately a decade, and when he was done he smuggled it out of the Soviet Union to a publisher in Italy. The novel came out in 1957. It was immediately banned in the Soviet Union, but it became an international best-seller, selling 7 million copies worldwide. The next year, Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, but he was forced to refuse it. He died without ever having seen his novel in print - but he felt it was worth it.

What most Americans don't know is that he was a poet - quite celebrated in Russia, especially for his influential first collection, My Sister Life, written in 1917 and published in 1921. He wrote two other collections of poetry before the purges of the early 30s silenced his pen.

Here are a few - the first is from My Sister Life. (They're an interesting look at translating poetry, too, if you read Russian):

Не трогать

"Не трогать, свежевыкрашен", -
Душа не береглась,
И память - в пятнах икр и щек,
И рук, и губ, и глаз.

Я больше всех удач и бед
За то тебя любил,
Что пожелтелый белый свет
С тобой - белей белил.

И мгла моя, мой друг, божусь,
Он станет как-нибудь
Белей, чем бред, чем абажур,
Чем белый бинт на лбу!

(Wet Paint

'Look out! Wet paint.' My soul was blind,
I have to pay the price,
All marked with stains of calves and cheeks
And hands and lips and eyes.

I loved you more than luck or grief
Because with you in sight
The old and yellowed world became
As white as painters' white.

I swear my friend, my gloom-it will
One day still whiter gleam
Than lampshades, than a bandaged brow,
Than a delirious dream.)

****

Мчались звезды. В море мылись мысы.
Слепла соль. И слезы высыхали.
Были темны спальни. Мчались мысли,
И прислушивался сфинкс к Сахаре.

Плыли свечи. И казалось, стынет
Кровь колосса. Заплывали губы
Голубой улыбкою пустыни.
В час отлива ночь пошла на убыль.

Море тронул ветерок с Марокко.
Шел самум. Храпел в снегах Архангельск.
Плыли свечи. Черновик "Пророка"
Просыхал, и брезжил день на Ганге.

1918

(Stars were racing; waves were washing headlands.
Salt went blind, and tears were slowly drying.
Darkened were the bedrooms; thoughts were racing,
And the Sphinx was listening to the desert.

Candles swam. It seemed that the Colossus'
Blood grew cold; upon his lips was spreading
The blue shadow smile of the Sahara.
With the turning tide the night was waning.

Sea-breeze from Morocco touched the water.
Simooms blew. In snowdrifts snored Archangel.
Candles swam; the rough draft of 'The Prophet'
Slowly dried, and dawn broke on the Ganges.)

****

О, знал бы я, что так бывает,
Когда пускался на дебют,
Что строчки с кровью ≈ убивают,
Нахлынут горлом и убьют!

От шуток с этой подоплекой
Я б отказался наотрез.
Начало было так далеко,
Так робок первый интерес.

Но старость ≈ это Рим, который
Взамен турусов и колес
Не читки требует с актера,
А полной гибели всерьез.

Когда строку диктует чувство,
Оно на сцену шлет раба,
И тут кончается искусство,
И дышат почва и судьба.

1930 -1931

(O had I known that thus it happens,
When first I started, that at will
Your lines with blood in them destroy you,
Roll up into your throat and kill,

My answer to this kind of joking
Had been a most decisive 'no'.
So distant was the start, so timid
The first approach-what could one know?

But older age is Rome, demanding
From actors not a gaudy blend
Of props and reading, but in earnest
A tragedy, with tragic end.

A slave is sent to the arena
When feeling has produced a line.
Tnen breathing soil and fate take over
And art has done and must resign.)

****

Здесь будет облик гор в покое,
Обман безмолвья; гул во рву;
Их тишь: стесненное, крутое
Волненье первых рандеву.

Светало. За Владикавказом
Чернело что-то. Тяжело
Шли тучи. Рассвело не разом.
Светало, но не рассвело.

Верст на шесть чувствовалась тяжесть
Обвившей выси темноты,
Хоть некоторые, куражась,
Старались скинуть хомуты.

Каким-то сном несло оттуда.
Как в печку вмазанный казан,
Горшком отравленного блюда
Внутри дымился Дагестан.

Он к нам катил свои вершины
И, - черный сверху до подошв,
Так и рвался принять машину
Не в лязг кинжалов, так под дождь.

В горах заваривалась каша.
За исполином исполин,
Один другого злей и краше,
Спирали выход из долин.


(Here will be echoes in the mountains,
The distant landslides' rumbling boom,
The rocks, the dwellings in the village,
The sorry little inn, the gloom

Of something black beyond the Terek,
Clouds moving heavily. Up there
The day was breaking very slowly;
It dawned, but light was nowhere near.

One sensed the heaviness of darkness
For miles ahead around Kazbek
Wound on the heights: though some were trying
To throw the halter from their neck.

As if cemented in an oven,
In the strange substance of a dream,
A pot of poisoned food, the region
Of Daghestan there slowly steamed.

Its towering peaks towards us rolling,
All black from top to foot, it strained
To meet our car, if not with clashing
Of daggers, then with pouring rain.

The mountains were preparing trouble.
The handsome giants, fierce and black,
Each one more evil than the other
Were closing down upon our track.)

Translated by Lydia Pasternak Slater