Imagery in translation. Translating Robert Frost into Russian

POETRY UNIT 5:

TRANSLATING ROBERT FROST INTO RUSSIAN

Introductory Notes

The American Robert Lee Frost (1874-1963), is one the most popular and prominent poets of the 20^th century. His f volumes of poetry, A Boy s Will and North of Boston, appearec England. Upon his return to New England in 1915 he settlec New Hampshire and lived the life of a poet and a farmer. Fa came to him after his collection of poems New Hampshire (191 which brought his first Pulitzer Prize and was followed by tw ty other volumes. The 1940s were especially productive, and published seven books of poetry within a decade. On the surfa his life may seem monotonous, uneventful like any other fai er's existence with its seasonal cycles, agricultural concerns; quiet evenings when all the family gather either on the porch round the fireplace, far from the noise and bustle of big cities, even the least attentive reader will easily feel the dramatic t sion and affectionate fire in his poetic lines.

Frost is one of those poets whose works first attract reader through their apparent simplicity and colloquial diet only to puzzle him later with the depth and sophisticated, alrr metaphysical logic of the verse. American and European reac admired him for the blend of colloquial and traditional. In gland he was considered a late Romantic, maybe, the last of line, while for Americans he is definitely a realist, truthful to smallest details of reality where the grass is green, and the sk blue, and the man lives his own ways. Yet beneath the com lore and wisdom lay a more troubled, rebellious spirit, and feeling of harmony became more complicated and less comj hensible. Frost wrote quite a few short poems with traditic

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iification, but his major contribution was the so called blank;e, traditional for English drama, which he "inherited" — and iernised — from as far back as Shakespeare. His most famous ms were written this way, including "The Death of the Hired n" (1914), "Birches" (1916), "Directive" (1947), and many;rs.

The predominant imagery in his poems is based on nature; e are trees, farms, pastures, forests, the sky, the snow, the rain the sun. Yet the image of nature is not the only content of his try. It is much more philosophical and contains a lot of allu-is to the great poetry of the past, as well as to contemporary nts and problems.

Quite frequently the cosmos itself appears in his magic lines be form of mysterious white spaces and endless paths beyond horizon. Those cosmic images may turn out to be very far n the warmth of human life:

And yet with neither love nor hate, Those stars like some snow-white Minerva's snow-white marble eyes Without the gift of sight.

Sometimes his vast landscape is invested with Demons, spir-elves and spells that bring something dark and dangerous into peaceful world, some evil, agony, danger and death. That dark r, loneliness, storms and -winds bring us back to those ancient is and times that existed "before the age of the fern." This dan-ous and passionate Frost lives side by side with the peaceful ner whose major concern is to complete the harvest in time.

Frost has been translated into Russian by many poets and dished since 1962 when he visited our country. To cite a fa-us poet and translator, Viktor Toporov, "Frost was translated those who should not have translated him,"¹ which means that nany cases some of the magic power of Frost's verse has been t in Russian. The poem under discussion, "Fire and Ice" (1920), been translated at least ten times. The first translation was

¹ Роберт Фрост. Неизбранная дорога. - СПб.: Кристалл, 2000.

Imagery in Translation

made by M. Zenkevich in 1936. It is one of those poems that have a dual, if not more sophisticated, structure. You can find everything in this laconic text with a clear-cut metre, regular rhyme and almost traditional metaphors. Some say that this poem re­veals "his troubled and at times destructive spirit," some look for expression of a vision of the coming catastrophe, some claim to feel the irony which shows itself in many Frost's poems.

The other poem by Frost included here for translation comes from one of his best collections, New Hampshire (\923), when he experimented with the so -called "gnomic poetry," that is, poetic maxims where lyrics and philosophy join to produce an image of both ethic and emotive power. The main translation problem with such poetry is to combine the laconism of the language with the simpliaty of the imagery wrapped in a clear form. In Nothing Gold Can Stay the consecutive pairs of rhymes connect words that are miniature maxims in themselves, which makes the task for translation still more complicated to reconstruct this function in the target text in Russian. To compare, in the translation by G. Kruzhkov the rhymes are not quite adequate, for example, the first intra-maxim gold — hold is represented in Russian by лист — золотист, which has less associative power than the source rhyme. Translating the poem, you should keep it in mind that the initial pattern of the poem included three stanzas, eight lines each. The resultant version numbers only eight lines altogether, but it is much more rich and expressive.

Task for comparison: Fire and Ice

FIRE AND ICE

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I've tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

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То say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

Перевод М. Зенкевича:

ОГОНЬ И ЛЕД

Кто говорит, мир от огня

Погибнет, кто от льда.

А что касается меня,

Я за огонь стою всегда.

Но если дважды гибель ждет

Наш мир земной, — ну что ж,

Тогда для разрушенья лед

Хорош,

И тоже подойдет.

Перевод В. Васильева:

ОГОНЬ И ЛЕД

Как мир погибнет? От огня Или от льда погибель ждет? Сомнений нету у меня: Огонь опаснее, чем лед. Но если мировой пожар Земной наш не погубит шар, То даст достаточно нам льда Холодная вражда.

Перевод И. Каш кипа:

ОГОНЬ И ЛЕД

Одни огня пророчат пасть. Другие льда покров. Я ко всему готов.

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