Pushkin: The Talisman (From Russian)

This poem is hard for me to fully appreciate because of the racism. In the most blatantly fetishistic manner imaginable, Pushkin employs the stereotype of the (Ottoman/Muslim) Oriental man as an effete lust-driven satyr and of the Oriental woman as a mysterious, alluring odalisque who is just waiting for some EuRomeo to come by and rescue her with his white dick. It is good as a poem, but unfortunately I have to struggle to remind myself of that, faced as I am with the fact that its author was a racist, and a misogynist. Though, given his upbringing and the times and place in which he lived, it would almost be surprising if he were otherwise. Then again, even by the standards of his own time, Pushkin was pretty much a tool. 

The Talisman
By Alexander Pushkin
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
Click to hear me recite the original Russian

Where the sea forever splashes
On a desolate rock face,
Where the moon more warmly sparkles
In sweet hours of evening haze,
Where the harems do their service
To the lax Mohammedan,
An enchantress, with caresses,
Handed me a Talisman.

With caresses there she bade me:
“Guard this Talisman aright.
Secret power it possesses.
Love Himself has deemed it yours tonight.
Neither plague nor grave nor aging
My beloved, will it ban,
Nor shall you survive the blizzard
Aided by my Talisman,

Neither will it help you gather
Pearls from Oriental seas,
Nor persuade the Prophet's faithful
To pledge you their loyalties,
Nor to arms of love and friendship
From this sad and foreign land
Shall you journey north and homeward
Driven by my Talisman.

But, should traitor eyes entrap you,
Darling, in a sudden spell,
Or if lips in dark of evening
Love you not but kiss too well,
Then, my love, from every evil
Wound that would your heart unman,
From oblivion, from betrayal,
Be your shield my Talisman."

The Original

Талисман
Александр Пушкин

Там, где море вечно плещет
На пустынные скалы,
Где луна теплее блещет
В сладкий час вечерней мглы,
Где, в гаремах наслаждаясь,
Дни проводит мусульман,
Там волшебница, ласкаясь,
Мне вручила талисман.

И, ласкаясь, говорила:
"Сохрани мой талисман:
В нем таинственная сила!
Он тебе любовью дан.
От недуга, от могилы,
В бурю, в грозный ураган,
Головы твоей, мой милый,
Не спасет мой талисман.

И богатствами Востока
Он тебя не одарит,
И поклонников пророка
Он тебе не покорит;
И тебя на лоно друга,
От печальных чуждых стран,
В край родной на север с юга
Не умчит мой талисман...

Но когда коварны очи
Очаруют вдруг тебя,
Иль уста во мраке ночи
Поцелуют не любя -
Милый друг! от преступленья,
От сердечных новых paн,
От измены, от забвенья
Сохранит мои талисман!"

Jean-Yves Masson: The Angel (From French)

The Angel
By Jean-Yves Masson
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
Click to hear me recite the original French

The angel was saying “Now to the terrace where the wind turns,
Come. Draw near my mystery.
I am the moment reuniting all the dead.
You must struggle against me. No greatness
Is given him who would keep his word if he does not throw
Down a shadow gauntlet to time that binds him by its law.”
Approaching angel, I know you as the sea,
As the gravity of temples and the youth of doves.
I shall stand against you. I shall be strong.
And how small my defeat if I come to the future garden
Bearing in my hands a load of burgeoning fruits

The Original:

L'Ange Disait

L'ange disait :"Sur la terrasse où le vent tourne,
viens maintenant, approche-toi de mon mystère,
je suis l'instant qui réunit tous les morts.
Tu devras lutter contre moi. Nulle grandeur
n'est donnée à qui veut tenir parole, s'il ne lance
un défi d'ombre au temps qui le tient sous sa loi. "
Ange qui viens, je te connais comme la mer,
comme la gravité des temples et la jeunesse des colombes,
je me dresserai contre toi. Je serai fort.
Et peu m'importe ma défaite si je viens
au jardin d'avenir, les bras chargés de fruits naissants.

Ronsard: "When you are old" (From Middle French)

There is an abundance of information about how Middle French was pronounced, but as far as I can determine there are no audio samples of it anywhere on the internet. Included is my small way of fixing that.

Sonnet to Helen
By Pierre de Ronsard (mid 16th cent)
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
Click to hear me recite the original in reconstructed late Middle French pronunciation
Click to hear me recite it in Modern French

When you sit aging under evening's star
By hearth and candle, spinning yarns and wool,
You'll sing my verse in awe and say "Ronsard
Wrought song of me when I was beautiful"

Hearing such words, your serving-maid that night,
Though half-asleep from drudging, all the same
Will wake at my name's sound and stand upright
Hailing the deathless praises of your name.

I'll be a fleshless phantom, resting sound
Amid the shadowy myrtle¹ underground.
You, by the hearth, a crone bent low in sorrow
For your proud scorn that willed my love away.
Live now, I beg of you. Wait not the morrow.
Gather the roses of your life today.

Note
¹-Resting with the shady myrtle tree often denotes peace, and its greenness suggests immortality. That myrtle leaves were an emblem of Venus also implies that Ronsard has that goddess on his side in his poetic headspace. (c.f. Horace 1.25.) Note, however, that this is not the only classical connotation of myrtle. See for example Virgil (Aeneid VI 440-4):

Not far from here, splayed all about, there lie
The Plains of Weeping. That is the name they bear
For here those whom brutal love has drained and ravaged
Hide on clandestine paths and under cover
Of myrtle bowers. Even here in death
Their yearnings have no mercy.

Nec procul hinc partem fusi monstrantur in omnem
Lugentes campi; sic illos nomine dicunt.
hic quos durus amor crudeli tabe peredit
secreti celant calles et myrtea circum
silva tegit; curae non ipsa in morte relinquunt.

The Original:

Sonnet à Hélène

Quand vous serez bien vieille, au soir à la chandelle,
Assise aupres du feu, devidant et filant,
Direz, chantant mes vers, en vous esmerveillant:
« Ronsard me celebroit du temps que j'estois belle ! »

Lors vous n'aurez servante oyant telle nouvelle,
Desja sous le labeur à demy sommeillant,
Qui au bruit de mon nom ne s'aille resveillant,
Benissant¹ vostre nom de louange immortelle.

Je seroy sous la terre, et fantaume sans os ;
Par les ombres Myrtheux je prendray mon repos.
Vous serez au fouyer une vieille accroupie,
Regrettant mon amour, et vostre fier desdain.
Vivez, si m'en croyez², n'attendez à demain :
Cueillez dés aujourd'huy les roses de la vie.

Notes on the French text:
¹- Benir qqn. de qqch. in Middle French meant "congratulate/commend" (someone for something), which makes more sense contextually here than the more commonly presumed "bless with."
²- si m'en croyez in Middle French meant something more like "I implore you."

John Milton: Sur Sa Cécité

Sur sa Cécité
Par John Milton
Traduit par A.Z. Foreman

À mesurer que ma lumière est épuisée
Dans ce monde assombri bien avant mon midi,
Et qu'un talent qui meurt en demeurant enfoui
S'enlise en moi, alors que l'âme s'est penchée

Pour servir mieux mon Maître, et présenter d'emblée
Mon compte, de peur qu'Il ne me tienne en mépris
"Dieu veut-Il du labeur quotidien dans ma nuit?"
Dis-je. Mais pieusement la Patience zélée

Répond pour prévenir cette tourmente: "Dieu
N'exige ni le fait ni l'obole. Qui mieux
Le sert ne croule pas sous Son aimable joug.

Il règne. Sans répit, des milliers pour Lui plaire
Franchissent l'océan et se hâtent sur terre.
Bons serviteurs aussi qui attendent, debout."


The Original:

On His Blindness

When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide,
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent

To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he, returning, chide:
Doth God exact day labour, light denied?
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent

That murmur, soon replies: God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts. Who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state

Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed
And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait.

Rexa Zoelfman: Waking (From Laisaluga)

Here's a sonnet I have loved for years, translated from a language whose poets so rarely employ the sonnet form, unfortunately. 

Waking

By Rexa Zoelfman

Translated by A.Z. Foreman

Click to hear me recite the original in Laisaluga

Hearing a sound that ought to be your sleep

I reach and set my heart on your left hand

But find the window: winter, ankle-deep

In autumn, hates the pathways of the land.

But snow is slowly stepping down the tree

Where morning tried to speak, but mused in rain.

I lie back, wondering if you also see

What dreams we are begetting in my brain:

Years roll along our faces and we cling

To bedsheets and each other. In cold light

Snow melts between our bodies. Everything

We do shall stake our claim to all the night.

I turn against your ceiling with our cry

As if to look for kinship with the sky.

The Original:

Meréxo

Rexa Zoelfman

Xomé takai talonti vitrok sün

Momú kai latri mik kor vitrok sin

Ma trewu qo ferfatai: Herazün

Pedlunge xi qibranai doro xin.

Ma nolge newu peto dendriné

Txa motro paulet pürka txü plük fal.

El rebaskú kai pregu hek vit vé

Mai rezui est txü nitrok tetmonal.

Hai hokorú figaiper kai txelú

En nitrakón, en loqfarín, en pai.

Ex lumper kaxnu newu. Heimarú

Ie vitrok maka tolu honter lai.

Vitrok metonper kansu kailaséq

Kehapesú kedrán xo kuxmonéq.

Paul Van Ostaijen: Mythos (From Dutch)

Mythos
By Paul Van Ostaijen
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
Click to hear me recite the Dutch

A tall hand juts in the night
And it juts before the night
for the night alone is yonder blueness
at the endpoint of my eyes
and before the blue night there slides the dive of one white dove
If a white hare should slide before your eyes
Over the street, beware
It takes your life on over
From the one scale to the other
And you do not know
What this all signifies.

The Original:

Mythos
Paul Van Ostaijen

Een hoge hand steekt in de nacht
en zij steekt vóór de nacht
omdat de nacht alleen is gene blauwheid
aan 't einde van mijn ogen
en vóór de blauwe nacht schuift éen witte duif
zo een witte haas schuift voor uw ogen
over de straat neem u in acht
hij draagt uw leven over
van d'ene schaal naar d'andere
en gij weet niet
wat dit beduidt

Pushkin: Remembrance (From Russian)

This poem, describing a somewhat remorseful white night in St. Petersburg, reflects the poet's state of mind after his exile and before his marriage. It was a turbulent period. Nicholas I had brought him back from exile but was making demands on the poet that he could not fulfill with a clear conscience. Though far too cowardly to actually be a Decembrist, he felt he was betraying his Decembrist friends. Despair drove him to dissipation: he lost huge sums at cards, had three affairs with married women, and contracted an STD from a prostitute a month before he wrote this poem. The first 16 lines are the ones that were printed, and are the "canonical" version of the poem that is usually quoted. The rest of the poem exists only in Pushkin's draft manuscript and has not, as far as I know, ever been translated into English as verse. (The poem in its published form has been translated numerous times, almost all of which suffer from several misreadings of the original, often in the last line. The original leaves it ambiguous whether the poet is merely unable or actually unwilling to erase the past. Most translators presume that it is the former, whereas the latter not only seems more likely but also makes the poem much richer.) Pushkin probably omitted the ending either because he believed the ending was incriminating, or because he felt that the shorter version was a stronger work artistically. The end, though, seems worth reading. One interesting point of comparison for English-speakers is Shakespeare's Sonnet 30 (Pushkin had just enough English to be able to parse Shakespeare with the help of a French crib.) 

Remembrance
By A.S. Pushkin
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
Click to hear me recite the original Russian

When din of day for mortals softly ends
         And onto the mute city squares
The thin penumbra of the night descends
         With slumber, balm of daylong cares,
Then, in the still for me the hours wring
         Exhausting wakeful pains anew.
Searing in blank of night, the serpent's sting
         Venoms my heart with acid rue.
Black fancies seethe. An overflow of thought
         Aghast, builds in the angst-strained soul;
Remembrance wordlessly and out of naught 
         Unwinds its long unholy scroll.
Then reading with disgust the writ of years
         I tremble, damn my every day,
Bawl bitter plaints, and bitterly shed tears
         But wipe not one sad line away. 
            *      *      *
In raucous revelry, in idleness,
        In deadly liberty, in tears
In chains, in exile, in chill wilderness,
       I see my many squandered years
And have no comfort. Slow and silently
       Two youthful phantoms in the cold
Arise, two dear shades, angels given me
       By fate itself in days of old.
These two with wings, these two with swords ablaze
       Shall guard me, shall avenge my doom
These two speak, with dead tongues, the secret ways
       Of happiness, and of the tomb.

The Original:

Воспоминание
А.С. Пушкин

Когда для смертного умолкнет шумный день,
         И на немые стогны града
Полупрозрачная наляжет ночи тень
         И сон, дневных трудов награда,
В то время для меня влачатся в тишине
         Часы томительного бденья:
В бесдействии ночном живей горят во мне
         Змеи сердечной угрызенья;
Мечты кипят, в уме подавленном тоской,
         Теснится тяжких дум избыток;
Воспоминание безмолвно предо мной
         Свой длинный развивает свиток;
И с отвращением читая жизнь мою,
         Я трепещу и проклинаю,
И горько жалуюсь, и горько слезы лью,
         Но строк печальных не смываю.
                    *      *     *
Я вижу в праздности, в неистовых пирах,
         В безумстве гибельной свободы,
В неволе, бедности, изгнании, в степях
         Мои утраченные годы.
И нет отрады мне — и тихо предо мной
         Встают два призрака младые,
Две тени милые,— два данные судьбой
         Мне ангела во дни былые;
Но оба с крыльями и с пламенным мечом.
         И стерегут… и мстят мне оба.
И оба говорят мне мёртвым языком
         О тайнах счастия и гроба.

Mihai Eminescu: For The Star (From Romanian)

“Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars - mere globs of gas atoms. I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination - stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one - million - year - old light. A vast pattern - of which I am a part... What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it. Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?” 
― Richard P. Feynman

Well, Richard Feynman, meet Mihai Eminescu who meditates on love in terms of some light that has travelled for thousands of years at a speed of 186,000 miles per second from a distant star to the Earth.  You two will get along well. Science, no less than religion, can make for good poetry.

For the Star
By Mihai Eminescu
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
Click to hear me recite the original Romanian

It's been a long way for that star
Now rising in our skies:
Its light has trekked a thousand years
To reach our earthborn eyes.

It may have long ago burned out
Amid the blue of space
Yet only now its ray has come
To set our sights ablaze.

That icon of a perished star
Climbs heaven's canopy:
We who saw not the light that was
Now see what's ceased to be.

It's ever thus when our desires
Go, spent, into the night.
Our love still follows after us
With an extinguished light.

The Original:

La Steaua

La steaua care-a răsărit
E-o cale-atât de lungă,
Că mii de ani i-au trebuit
Luminii să ne-ajungă.

Poate de mult s-a stins în drum
În depărtări albastre,
Iar raza ei abia acum
Luci vederii noastre,

Icoana stelei ce-a murit
Încet pe cer se suie:
Era pe când nu s-a zărit,
Azi o vedem, şi nu e.

Tot astfel când al nostru dor
Pieri în noapte-adâncă,
Lumina stinsului amor
Ne urmăreşte încă.

Pouchkine: Je vous aimais (Du Russe)

Je Vous Aimais
Par A.S. Pouchkine
Traduit du Russe par A.Z. Foreman
Cliquez ici pour m'entendre lire le texte d'origine à haute voix

Je vous aimais: et mon amour, peut-être,
N'est point au fond de l'âme encore éteint
Mais plus sa peine en vous ne doit renaître.
Je ne voudrais vous faire aucun chagrin.
Je vous aimais sans bruit, sans rien attendre
Jaloux et puis farouche en mon tourment,
Je vous aimais d'un coeur si pur, si tendre.
Qu'un autre, priez Dieu, vous aime autant.



Texte D'Origine: 

Я Вас Любил

Я вас любил: любовь еще, быть может,
В душе моей угасла не совсем;
Но пусть она вас больше не тревожит;
Я не хочу печалить вас ничем.
Я вас любил безмолвно, безнадежно,
То робостью, то ревностью томим;
Я вас любил так искренно, так нежно,
Как дай вам бог любимой быть другим.

Shakespeare: Le Soliloque d'Hamlet (De l'Anglais)

Le Soliloque d'Hamlet
Par William Shakespeare
Traduit par A.Z. Foreman

Voici la question: d'être ou de ne pas être.
Dans l’âme serait-il noble de me soumettre
A la fronde et les dards d’un destin altier
Ou contre tout un flot de misères m’armer
Dans une insurrection, afin de les détruire?
Mourir et donc dormir....rien davantage, et dire
Que ce sommeil met terme aux angoisses du cœur,
Et ce legs corporel d'un terrestre douleur...
Telle terminaison tenterait l’âme avide:
Dormir...et puis rêver. Mais le rêve intimide.
Car le rêve qui vienne en ce sommeil des morts
Aux esprits dépouillés de la coque du corps
Nous donne à reflechir. Voilà la réticence
Dont naît l’adversité d’une longue existence.
Car qui supporterait le fouet, le dédain
D’un monde médisant, la haine du hautain,
L’oppression du tyran, de l’amour la souffrance,
Les lenteurs de la loi, l’altière inexpérience
De chaque grand en place, et l’avilissement
Que l’indigne refile au mérite patient
Alors que de ce monde il pourrait bien s’absoudre
Avec un poignard nu qui devrait tout résoudre?
Qui en effet pourrait porter un poids pesant,
Sous la vie accablante en geignant, en suant,
Sans être épouvanté par l’au-délà, la terre
Dont nul n’a jamais pu repasser la frontière,
Qui trouble le dessein en nous faisant souffrir
Les maux que nous avons plutôt que de les fuir
Vers un mal inconnu? Ainsi la conscience
Fait de nous des poltrons. Ainsi l’homme qui pense
Change les teints natifs de la résolution
En malade pâleur avec sa reflexion,
Et ainsi des projets d’une haute volée
Se détournent toujours du cours à cette idée,
Perdant le nom d’"action".



To be, or not to be--that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep--
No more--and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep--
To sleep--perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th' unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprise of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action.