Kozlov's translations of two English romantic poems (1).

Ober, Kenneth H. ; Ober, Warren U.

The paragon of nineteenth-century Russian poet-translators was Vasilij Andreevic Zukovskij (1783-1852), but he was by no means the only Russian poet of the time who was a brilliant translator. Karamzin (1766-1823), Gnedic (1784-1833), and Batjuskov (1787-1855), for example, as well as Lermontov (1814-41) and Puskin himself (1799-1837), produced translations that live. And Zukovskij's friend and protege Ivan Ivanovic Kozlov (1779-1840), though mainly popular among his contemporaries for his verse-tale Cernec (The Monk), is remembered in the twentieth century for translations of two poems long believed by Russians to be the work of Lord Byron but actually written by two Irishmen, both products of Trinity College, Dublin: "The Burial of Sir John Moore at Corunna" by Charles Wolfe (1791-1823) and "Those Evening Bells" by Thomas Moore (1779-1852). (2)

Of Kozlov, his mentor Zukovskij wrote, "Misfortune made him a poet." Like other young aristocrats of his day, he completed a few years' military service in an elite regiment, then lived a somewhat dissipated and aimless life until he began to lose his sight in 1819. By 1821 he was totally blind. Having squandered his inheritance, he then turned to literature for his livelihood, and in 1825 his immensely popular The Monk appeared. The same date is assigned by N. M. Gajdenkov to Kozlov's translation of Charles Wolfe's "The Burial of Sir John Moore at Corunna." Gajdenkov assigns a date of 1828 to Kozlov's second great translation, his version of Thomas Moore's "Those Evening Bells." Collected editions of Kozlov's poetry appeared in 1828, 1833, 1834, and (posthumously under the editorship of Zukovskij) 1840. During his last years the blind Kozlov lost his speech and hearing as well. (3) It is scarcely possible to overstate the extent of Kozlov's indebtedness to Zukovskij and of Zukovskij's influence over him. According to Irina Semenko, "Kozlov followed Zhukovsky in his lyrical 'sadness' and 'thoughtfulness,' as well as in his deliberately 'poeticizing' style. He differed from Zhukovsky in the greater intensity of his plaints and the dominance of lamentation." For Kozlov, "Zhukovsky's poetry was ... the source of his strength and support in personal misfortune...." Zukovskij, in short, according to Semenko, was Kozlov's "teacher and model in the fullest sense of the word." (4)

D. S. Mirsky describes Kozlov's translation of "The Burial of Sir John Moore at Corunna" as "an exceptionally faithful translation and a beautiful piece of Russian verse." (5) The original poem, the only work by Charles Wolfe that is read today, survived an early fugitive existence. Published, on April 19, 1817, in an Irish provincial newspaper, The Newry Telegraph, Wolfe's lines on the burial of General Moore came to the attention of the world of letters when they were republished, without attribution of authorship, in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine for June 1817. (6)

Sir John Moore, like Charles Wolfe, is virtually forgotten today, eclipsed by the Duke of Wellington, his successor as commander of British forces in the Iberian Peninsula during the Napoleonic wars, but the Dictionary of National Biography asserts that "no British commander was ever more popular with his officers, none have left a more lasting impress on the troops trained under them." The DNB also quotes Napoleon's own assessment, in which Moore's great adversary during the Peninsular Campaign says of him: "His talents and firmness alone saved the British army [in Spain] from destruction; he was a brave soldier, an excellent officer, and a man of talent. He made a few mistakes, which were probably inseparable from the difficulties with which he was surrounded, and caused perhaps by his information having misled him." (7)

The immediate inspiration of Wolfe's poem was Robert Southey's account in The Annual Register ... for ... 1809. Having conducted a brilliant campaign preparatory to evacuating his troops from the port of Coruna, Sir John, according to Southey, was in the act of ordering up the guards to support the brave Highlanders [of Bentinck's brigade], when he received his death wound by a cannon ball on the shoulder, and was conveyed from the field, in a blanket, by six soldiers of the 42d.... He was so sensible of his approaching dissolution, that he said to the surgeons who offered their assistance, "You can be of no service to me: go to the soldiers, to whom you may be useful.--You know," said he to his friend Colonel Anderson, "that I have always wished to die this way. I hope the people of England will be satisfied: I hope my country will do me justice." The remainder of his moments were consecrated to tender remembrances, and enquiries about the fate of his friends. He was buried in his uniform upon the ramparts of Corunna. (8)

Wolfe's contemporaries immediately recognized his poem for the splendid work it is, and to this day it appears regularly in period anthologies. The poem's greatness lies in its authentic portrayal of intense emotion rigidly held in check but constantly threatening to burst forth. Wolfe achieves such distanced and controlled intensity through the use of the plural first-person pronoun as the subject and the unmodified singular third-person pronoun as the object: "we buried him"; "we laid him down"; "we left him alone." The narrative voice is a surrogate for the general's bereaved men; Moore himself, after being named in the title and being identified once as "our hero" in the first stanza, is thenceforth spoken of as "he," "him," or "his." The insistent drum roll of the dominant anapestic foot, relieved by the occasional iamb or trochee, enhances the tone, and the brilliant sixth stanza, Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that's gone, And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him, But nothing he'll reck, if they let him sleep on In a grave where a Briton has laid him, (9)

represents the poem's only departure from the past tense. The future tense of this stanza serves to fix the assumed present as perhaps the moment of embarkation after the burial and before the enemy's occupation of Coruna. The stanza also makes the point that "a Briton"--perhaps the narrator himself--has laid the hero in his grave. The final stanza is eloquent in its simplicity: Slowly and sadly we laid him down, From the field of his fame fresh and gory: We carved not a line, we raised not a stone, But we left him alone with his glory. (10)

The hero requires no tombstone, no eulogy. The grief of his men, "his fame," and "his glory" are a sufficient memorial. "Glory," the last word in the poem, refers primarily to the hero's exalted reputation, but the poet here is glancing also at the secondary meaning of the word: the nimbus or halo of a saint.

Even a cursory reading of Kozlov's poem reveals that it is a workmanlike translation, but Kozlov's seeming unawareness of Wolfe's careful handling of point of view mars an otherwise effective treatment of his original. The steely control evident in Wolfe's poem, obviously achieved at terrific cost, is lost by Kozlov, who fails to note the crucial significance of Wolfe's disciplined and consistent use of the first-person plural and third-person singular. Kozlov does utilize these ("we buried the chief' ["my vozdja xoronili"]; "we into the bosom of the earth lowered" "the corpse" ["trup ... my v nedra zemli opustili"]), but he also somewhat disturbingly addresses the dead hero directly ("The insolent enemy ... / will not respect you, comrade ..." ["vrag derzkij ... / tebja ne uvazit, tovarisc ..."]; "Your solitary couch" ["Tvoj odr odinokij"]; "Farewell, comrade!" ["Prosti ze, tovarisc"]; "we are leaving you alone / With your immortal glory" ["my ostavljaem tebja odnogo / s tvoeju bessmertnoju slavoj"]) and hence risks the bathos that Wolfe brilliantly avoids through his detachment. Moreover, Kozlov departs from the first-person plural, so consistently used by Wolfe, and thus tends to isolate his narrator, however fleetingly, from Moore's bereaved men. Furthermore, Kozlov, unlike Wolfe, occasionally resorts to a cliched metaphor ("bosom of the earth" or "solitary couch" for "grave"; "board prison" ([v doscatoj nevole"] for "coffin") or adds an embarrassingly banal touch of his own ("shroud of the deceased" ["usopsix pokrov grobovoj"]). Occasionally Wolfe's restraint and understatement are lost in Kozlov's translation: Perhaps, on the morrow suddenly appearing, The insolent enemy, filled with arrogance, Will not respect you, comrade, but us Will dash away the unreturning waves. (11)

Wolfe's laconic reference to the foe in his own fifth stanza implies the sort of respect for the enemy that is evident in Napoleon's tribute to Moore, but Kozlov's shrillness protests too much. Finally, although Kozlov's generalized "hands of my people" ("rodimye ruki"), as a translation and amplification of Wolfe's singular "a Briton," may be a laudable attempt to universalize a poem originally addressed to Britons alone, any universality achieved fails to compensate for the loss of concreteness and immediacy.

If Kozlov's translation of Wolfe's poem is inferior to the original in the respects noted above, Kozlov's version of Thomas Moore's "Those Evening Bells" is clearly an improvement over the original. It should be recognized at the outset, however, that Moore's "Those Evening Bells," while perhaps not readily comparable with Wolfe's "The Burial of Sir John Moore at Corunna," is clearly inferior to the latter poem and hence offers a greater opportunity for improvement.

When Moore published "Those Evening Bells" as one of his National Airs (1818-27) (12) he was the lionized author of the popular Irish Melodies. An expatriate Irishman, Moore had already become the darling of the English literary establishment. If one may adapt a term usually applied to certain nineteenth-century French dramatists, Moore was the master of the "well-made" lyric, and he repeatedly put the rhyming stanzas of Irish Melodies and National Airs through their paces as expertly as a circus ring-master. "Oft, in the Stilly Night," "Hark! The Vesper Hymn Is Stealing," "The Harp That Once Through Tara's Halls," "Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms," and "The Time I've Lost in Wooing" are some of these songs that have not faded with time, but most have been forgotten.

Moore's "Those Evening Bells," with its sure-fire ubi sunt motif and sentimental nostalgia, coupled with its parenthetical subtitle "Air--The Bells of St. Petersburgh," would have been likely to pique the interest of a Russian fancier of contemporary English popular poetry such as Kozlov and his master Zukovskij proved themselves to be. Moore's narrator speaks wistfully of "those evening bells," which tell "Of youth, and home, and that sweet time, / When last I heard their soothing chime." (13) Kozlov adds substance to Moore's rather pallid lines by having the narrator speak of his "native land" ("v kraju rodnom") as a place "where I loved" ("gde ja ljubil") and where "I, taking leave of it forever, / There heard the bells for the last time!" ("... Ja, s nim navek prostjas' / Tam slusal zvon v poslednij raz"). Kozlov's use of detail--his narrator's memories of his lost love and of his final leavetaking--adds a specificness and concreteness worthy of Zukovskij himself. (14)

Whereas Moore continues his poem in traditional elegiac fashion by having his narrator observe that "within the tomb now darkly dwells" "many a heart, that then was gay," Kozlov adds an all-too-human note of bitterness when he speaks of his narrator's "deceptive spring" ("...vesny obmancivoj")--deceptive because it is followed inexorably by the autumn of the narrator's present and, ultimately, death's winter. While Moore speaks abstractly of "that tuneful peal" which "will still ring on" "when I am gone," Kozlov's narrator, with a shudder, foresees the time when he too "will lie in the damp earth!" ("lezat' i rune v zemle syroj")--a time when "the sad tune over me / In the valley the wind will disperse" ("napev unylyj nado mnoj / V doline veter razneset").

Though Moore's narrator in conclusion speaks with delicious sadness of "other bards" (in the plural) who "shall walk these dells, / And sing your praise, sweet evening bells!," Kozlov's speaker is pierced to the quick by the thought that "no longer I, but ["another bard"--in the singular] will / In meditation sing the evening bells!" ("i uz ne ja, a budet on [i. e., the "drugos pevec" of the line above] / Vrazdum'e pet' vecernij zvon!").

The basic difference between Moore's poem and Kozlov's translation, then, is that Kozlov's "Evening Bells" is not merely a sentimental exercise in nostalgia for the snows of yesteryear; his poem conveys the genuine anguish of a sensitive artist who faces oblivion but whose pain is alleviated by the bittersweet realization that some other--individual--singer will walk the valley even then.

While we must be grateful to Prince Mirsky for drawing our attention to Kozlov's extraordinarily interesting translations of both of these noteworthy British Romantic lyrics, we must take issue with Mirsky's implied choice of Kozlov's "The Burial of Sir John Moore at Corunna" over his "Evening Bells" for special mention, as well as with G. R. V. Barratt's obiter dictum that "like Moore, [Kozlov in his translation of "Those Evening Bells"] is content to deal in banalities." (15) For, as we have tried to demonstrate, it is in his "Evening Bells" that Kozlov has most nearly realized his friend Zukovskij's wise pronouncement: "A poet-translator can be an original author, even though he has written nothing of his own. A translator in prose is a slave; a translator in verse is a rival." (16) Although Kozlov's translation of Wolfe's poem is uneven in its handling of point of view, his version of Moore's poem establishes Kozlov's claim to originality. In the last analysis, Kozlov's "The Burial of Sir John Moore at Corunna" is a competent but undistinguished translation of a truly great poem, and his "Evening Bells" is an extraordinarily fine translation of an undistinguished original.

KENNETH H. OBER

University of Illinois

WARREN U. OBER

University of Waterloo

Notes

(1) This article appears with kind permission of the editors of Germano-Slavica, where it first appeared in Germano-Slavica, 6 (1989): 209-17.

(2) D. S. Mirsky, A History of Russian Literature from its Beginnings to 1900, ed. Francis J. Whitfield (New York: Vintage, 1958), p. 103. G. R. V. Barratt notes that "for more than forty years Russians persisted in believing not only Kozlov's 'On the Burial of the English General Sir John Moore,' but also his version of Tom Moore's 'Those evening Bells...' ... to be translations from the English of Byron!" (G. R. V. Barratt, Ivan Kozlov: A Study and a Setting [Toronto: Hakkert, 1972], p. 175.)

(3) N. M. Gajdenkov, ed., Russkie Poety--XIX Veka. 3rd enlarged and rev. ed. (Moscow: Prosvescenie, 1964), pp. 335-36, 338-39.

(4) Irina M. Semenko, Vasily Zhukovsky, (Boston: Twayne, 1976), p. 83.

(5) Mirsky, p. 103.

(6) Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. 1 (June 1817): 277-78. The text of the poem follows: THE BURIAL OF SIR JOHN MOORE, Who fell at the Battle of Corunna, in 1808. Not a drum was heard, nor a funeral note, As his corse to the rampart we hurried; Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot O'er the grave where our hero we buried. We buried him darkly at dead of night, The sods with our bayonets turning, By the struggling moon-beam's misty light, And the lantern dimly burning. No useless coffin enclosed his breast, Nor in sheet nor in shroud we bound him, But he lay like a warrior taking his rest, With his martial cloak around him. Few and short were the prayers we said, And we spoke not a word of sorrow. But we stedfastly gazed on the face of the dead, And we bitterly thought of the morrow. We thought, as we hollowed his narrow bed, And smoothed down his lonely pillow, That the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his head, And we far away on the billow. Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that's gone, And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him, But nothing he'll reck, if they let him sleep on In the grave where a Briton has laid him. But half of our heavy task was done, When the clock tolled the hour for retiring; And we heard by the distant and random gun, That the foe was suddenly firing. Slowly and sadly we laid him down, From the field of his fame fresh and gory: We carved not a line, we raised not a stone, But we left him alone with his glory.

(7) DNB. compacted., I, 1411.

(8) "History of Europe," The Annual Register ... for ... 1809 (London: Otridge; Longman, 1811), pp. 21, 24.

(9) Blackwood's, p. 278.

(10) Blackwood's, p. 278.

(11) Gajdenkov, p. 338. The text of the poem follows: NA POGREBENIE ANGLIISKOGO GENERALA SIRA DZHONA MURA (IZ CHARLZA VOL'FA) Ne bil baraban pered smutnym polkom, Kogda my vozhdia khoronili, I trup ne s ruzheinym proshchal'nym ognem My v nedra zemli opustili. I bednaia pochest' k nochi otdana; Shtykami mogilu kopali; Nam tusklo svetila v tumane luna, I fakely dymno sverkali. Na nem ne usopshikh pokrov grobovoi, Lezhit ne v doshchatoi nevole: Obernut v shirokii svoi plashch boevoi, Usnul on, kak ratniki v pole. Ne dolgo, no zharko molilas' tvortsu Druzhina ego udalaia I molcha smotrela v litso mertvetsu, O zavtrashnem dne pomyshliaia. Byt' mozhet, nautro vnezapno iavias', Vrag derzkii, nadmennosti polnyi, Tebia ne uvazhit, tovarishch, anas Umchat nevozvratnye volny. O net, ne kosnetsia v tainstvennom sne Do khrabrogo duma pechali! Tvoi odr odinokii v chuzhoi storone Rodimye ruki postlali. Eshche ne svershen byl obriad rokovoi, I chas nastupil razluchen'ia; I s valu udaril perun vestovoi, I nam on ne vestnik srazhen'ia. Prosti zhe, tovarishch! Zdes' net nichego Na pamiat' mogily krovavoi; I my ostavliaem tebia odnogo S tvoeiu bessmertnoiu slavoi.

(12) The first number of National Airs appeared in 1818, No. 2 in 1820, No. 3 in 1822, No. 4 also in 1822, No. 5 in 1826, and the sixth and final number in 1827. All of the National Airs were first collected in Volume IV of Moore's Poetical Works (1840-41). See Howard Mumford Jones, The Harp that Once--A Chronicle of the Life of Thomas Moore (New York: Holt, 1937), p. 202. According to Barratt, Moore's "Those Evening Bells" "was published no later than April, 1818." Barratt notes that, oddly enough, a Russian reviewer as late as 1831 described Moore's poem as "A Translation of a Poem by Kozlov into English by T. Moore" (Barratt, pp. 177-78).

(13) Thomas Moore, Poetical Works, Vol. 4 (London: Longman, 1841), p. 157. The text of the poem follows: THOSE EVENING BELLS. (Air.--The Bells of St. Petersburgh.) Those evening bells! those evening bells! How many a tale their music tells, Of youth, and home, and that sweet time, When last I heard their soothing chime. Those joyous hours are past away; And many a heart, that then was gay, Within the tomb now darkly dwells, And hears no more those evening bells. And so 'twill be when I am gone; That tuneful peal will still ring on, While other bards shall walk these dells, And sing your praise, sweet evening bells!

(14) Gajdenkov, p. 339. The text of the poem follows: VECHERNII ZVON (IZ T. MURA) T. S. VDMRV-oi Vechernii zvon, vechernii zvon! Kak mnogo dum navodit on O iunykh dniakh v kraiu rodnom, Gde ia liubil, gde otchii dom, I kak ia, s nim navek prostias', Tam slushal zvon v poslednii raz! Uzhe ne zret' nine svetlykh dnei Vesny obmanchivoi moei! I skol'ko net teper' v zhivykh Togda veselykh, molodykh! I krepok ikh mogil'nyi son,--Ne slyshen im vechernii zvon. Lezhat' i mne v zemle syroi! Napev unylyi nado mnoi V doline veter razneset; Drugoi pevets po nei proidet. I uzh ne ia, a budet on V razdum'e pet' vechernii zvon!

(15) Mirsky, p. 103; Barratt, p. 177.

(16) F. M. Golovencenko and S. M. Petrov, eds., Istorija russkoj literatury XIX veka, I (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe ucebnopedagogiceskoe izdatel'stvo ministerstva prosves-cenija RSFSR, 1960), p. 89.