Puskin and Southey: Russia's greatest poet translates England's Poet Laureate (1).

Ober, Kenneth H. ; Ober, Warren U.

In his truly pioneering achievement in editing the recently published history of Russian literary translation through the eighteenth century, (2) Jurij D. Levin has presided over a project of inestimable value to Russian literary scholarship. Literary translation in Russia throughout its modern history has occupied a position of vital importance probably unique among the major Western literatures, although political ideology has controlled it and officially minimized its importance. Respect for translated works can be traced back to the time of Peter the Great, who recognized the backwardness of Russian technology and industry and initiated a flood of translations of Western technical works. Through diligent and accurate translations of foreign models, Russian literature, in spite of its late beginnings (compared to English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish literatures, for example), has managed to introduce into Russia the literary movements and genres of the West and to compress them, and thus in the nineteenth century to overtake Western literatures in development. The most apt quotation Levin could find to introduce his history of translation project was one from 1857 by the much-cited social and literary critic Nikolaj Gavrilovic Cernysevskij (1828-89):

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("Translated literature in every new nation has had a very important share in the development of national self-consciousness or [...] in the development of enlightenment and esthetic taste. For this reason works of literary history will no longer suffer from harmful one-sidedness only when much more attention is paid to translated literature than is the case now.") (3) As Levin points out, this statement still applied to Russia up to the publication of his own project. Repeatedly, when a writer was muzzled by the authorities, he or she turned to literary translations in order to remain creatively--and sometimes physically--alive. From Zukovskij (4) to Axmatova and Pasternak, the leading literary artists have produced translations equal in polish and beauty to their own original productions; moreover, at times their translations of their models have even been esthetically superior to the foreign originals. In contrast to Western creative writers in general, Russians have not considered their translation as inferior to their original work.

The outstanding Russian literary translator of the early nineteenth century --and perhaps of all time--was unquestionably the great poet Vasilij Andreevic Zukovskij (1783-1852), but he was by no means the only noted translator of his time. Among others, his protege, Aleksandr Sergeevic Puskin (1799-1837) also made noteworthy poetic translations, though translation never occupied him to the extent that it did Zukovskij. For several years Puskin, like Zukovskij, was interested in the works of the English Poet Laureate Robert Southey (1774-1843), and eventually made several partial translations from the works of that poet. These translations have until now largely escaped scholarly notice. (5)

Zukovskij apparently introduced Puskin to Southey's name as early as 1822, probably in conversation, since Puskin spelled his name "Sauvey." Puskin at first evidently did not approve of Zukovskij's spending time translating Southey, for on 27 June 1822 (dates of all letters are according to the old style), he wrote a letter to Nikolaj Ivanovic Gnedic (1784-1833), a poet and himself a noted translator, in which he airily deprecated Zukovskij's choice of works for translation, among which he included those of Southey:

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("... Incidentally, I think it is vexing that he [Zukovskij] translates, and translates in fragments. Tasso, Ariosto, and Homer are one thing, and the songs of Matthison and the deformed tales of Moore are another. Once he spoke to me of Southey's poem 'Roderick;' give him my request that he leave it in peace, notwithstanding the request of a certain charming lady.") (6)

Curiously, however, it was precisely Southey to whom Puskin himself was to turn in the last few years of his life, and it was precisely "Roderick," among Southey's works, to which Puskin was to devote the greatest attention. During the following years, Puskin continued to mention Southey's name explicitly in his correspondence--for example, in a letter to the poet, critic, and translator Aleksandr Aleksandrovic Bestuzev (1797-1837), ca. 1 June 1825. On 26 March 1831 he wrote to the poet and critic Petr Aleksandrovic Pletnev (1792-1865) asking to have "Crabbe, Wodsworth [sic], Southey [and] Schakspear [sic]" sent to him by a Saint Petersburg bookseller. (7) On 11 June 1831, he wrote to Prince Petr Andreevic Vjazemsky (poet, critic, and translator, 1792-1878), mentioning that Zukovskij was translating some ballads of Southey. (8) And he obliquely mentioned Zukovskij's translations of Southey's ballads several times in other letters.

Although Puskin's command of English has often been scoffed at, and although his command of spoken English was indeed evidently minimal, the presence of these and other English books in his library--particularly three books of Southey's in English (as well as one in French)--definitely indicates that he was able to read English well. Tatiana Wolff notes that, by early 1831, "Pushkin's English had improved and he no longer had to rely on French translations," (9) although he almost certainly used French translations of Southey as a crutch. His library contained the following books by Southey: Essays Moral and Political, by Robert Southey, Esq. LL.D. Poet Laureate, &c (now first collected in two volumes, London, M.DCCC.XXII); The Poetical Works of Robert Southey (complete in one volume, Paris, 1829); (Euvres poetiques de Robert Southey, traduites de l'anglais par M.B. de S. [prose translation by Antoine-Andre Bruguiere, Baron de Sorsum]--Roderick, le dernier des Goths, Poeme (Paris, 1820); and The Life of Nelson, by Robert Southey, Esq. LL.D. Poet Laureate, etc. (London, M.DCCC.XXX.) (10)

Puskin eventually translated fragments of several of Southey's poems, but none were published during his lifetime. The longest, a partial translation of "Roderick, the Last of the Goths: A Tragic Poem" (1814), "Na Ispaniju rodnuju," which Puskin had apparently written in 1835, was published by Zukovskij in 1841 in the posthumous edition of Puskin's works (Vol. 9, pp. 177-82). His partial translation of "Hymn to the Penates" (1797)--"Esce odnoj vysokoj, vaznoj pesni"--written in 1829, was printed in Russkaja starina (November 1884, pp. 351-52). The translated fragment of Part I of "Madoc" (1805)--"Medok"--written in 1829, first appeared in the August (1884) number of Russkaja starina (p. 320). Another presumed fragment of "Roderick" (but see below)--"Rodrig"--long thought to have been written between 1830 and 1836 and to have been cut out of the longer translation, was published in Russkij Archiv (1881, No. 1, p. 452). (11)

Puskin clearly did not consider the translated fragments ready for the press, although the longer translation of "Roderick" was apparently finished except for polishing, and he would presumably have continued working on them had he lived. Drafts they may be, but they already exhibit Puskin's characteristics of masterful brevity, conciseness, and crystal-like clarity of expression. Treating Zukovskij's translations--and Zukovskij was unexcelled in his art--is vastly different from analyzing Puskin's. The latter does not hesitate drastically to abridge, refocus, and sharpen his foreign original. While Puskin's work is still clearly a translation rather than a deliberate adaptation, the translator's hand is, as Puskin intended, much more obvious than in Zukovskij's work.

Puskin's work on Southey's "Hymn to the Penates" is limited to the first 32 lines (Puskin has 37 lines), and is obviously an unfinished draft, though not a first draft, as the various line emendations in his surviving notes attest. Puskin's translation is a virtual line-by-line equivalent of Southey's lines, and breaks off abruptly, no attempt having been made to round it off. This strongly suggests that Puskin at one time intended to proceed with the translation, in contrast to his treatment of "Roderick." Here Puskin has also imitated Southey's meter closely. There are one or two changes in Puskin's translation, where he may have misread or misunderstood the English; these errors--if indeed they are errors--would probably have been caught and corrected as the work progressed. One such apparent error occurs in Southey's second line: "Yet one Song more! one high and solemn strain / Ere, Phoebus! on thy temple's ruin'd wall / I hang the silent harp [...]." Puskin's otherwise flawless rendering of these lines: "One more lofty, grand song / Hear, o Phoebus, and the silenced lyre / In your ruined sanctuary / I will hang" ("Esce odnoj vysokoj, vaznoj pesni / Vnemli, o Feb, i smolknuvsuju liru / V razrusennom svjatilisce tvoem / Povesu ja ..."), evidently confuses "ere" with "hear," an error probably caused by Southey's own "hear" in line 6.

Another such apparent error occurs in the translation of Southey's lines 10-11: "[...] and in your holy train / Jove proudly ranks, and Juno, whitearm'd Queen," where Puskin has "And after you solemnly follow / The great Zeus with his whiteheaded [i.e., fair-haired] spouse" ("I sledujut torzestvenno za vami / Velikoj Zevs s suprugoj beloglavoj"). This change, however, was perhaps deliberate on Puskin's part, as "white-arm'd" would not have been a poetic or folkloristic image in Russian, while "fair-haired" ("beloglavaja" > "belokuraja") was. A third possible error is Puskin's translation of Southey's "Venerable Powers" in line 13, where Puskin has "mysterious powers" ("tainstvennye sily"), but this is probably Puskin's intended improvement--and it may well be a stronger and more fitting expression.

Otherwise, Puskin's versions of these first few lines of "Hymn to the Penates" are exact parallels of the originals. In his partial translation of "Roderick," as we shall see, Puskin demonstrated that he, with complete understanding of an English original, could deliberately reshape and transform it; in his translation of part of "Hymn to the Penates," he clearly proved that he could remain completely faithful to an English original and produce a Russian poem at least equal to his model.

Puskin's next choice for a translation from Southey was the formidable "Madoc" (1805). The entire work, consisting of 27 sections, takes up almost 150 pages; Puskin's surviving draft is a translation of only the first 25 lines of Part I, "Madoc in Wales," section I, "The Return to Wales." Puskin's meter is iambic pentameter. A comparison of the first few lines will again show Puskin's ability--no less than Zukovskij's to remain rigorously faithful, line by line, to an original while producing great poetry in Russian. Southey: Puskin: Fair blows the wind, [...] the Fair blows the wind.--The ship vessel drives along, moves,-- Her streamers fluttering at their Flags are unfurled to full length, length, all sails her sails All full [...] Have filled [...]

("Poputnyj veet vetr.--Idet korabl',--/Vo vsju dlinu razvity flagi, vzdulis' / Vetrila vse [...]. ")

In the next line Puskin has an error; it probably lies in his ignorance of marine vocabulary in Russian, rather than his misunderstanding the English original, however. Southey's lines are "[...] she drives along, and round her prow / Scatters the ocean spray." Puskin here unwittingly introduces a nonsense line: "[...] it goes, and before the stern / The seafoam scattered" "[...] idet, i pred komaoj / Morskaja pena razdaetsja." One assumes that the error would have been caught before publication.

A juxtaposition of the concluding lines of Puskin's draft with the original will sufficiently demonstrate Puskin's artistry as a translator--artistry equalling that of Vasilij Andreevic Zukovskij. No greater compliment can be paid. Southey: Fair smiled the evening, and the favouring gale Sung in the shrouds, and swift the steady bark Rush'd roaring through the waves. The sun goes down. Puskin: The evening is beautiful, and the favoring wind Resounds in the lines; and the trusty vessel quickly Runs, noisily, between the waves. The sun is setting.

("Prekrasen vecer, i poputnyj vetr / Zvucit mez vervej, i korabl' nadeznyj / Bezit, sumja, mez voln. / Saditsja solnce.")

At first glance, it is puzzling that Puskin translated Southey's "Roderick, the Last of the Goths," since he had tried to dissuade Zukovskij from doing it. However, as Elisabeth Frenzel has shown in a comprehensive and authoritative review of the origin and development of the Roderick-Julian myth, (12) the twin tragedies of Roderick, Visigothic king of Spain, and his nemesis, Count Julian, and their respective reactions and responses to the Moorish invaders, have engaged the Western consciousness since the eighth century, as the early chronicle accounts have been embellished, reshaped, and expanded over the years according to changing beliefs, tastes, and attitudes. Nineteenth-century English Romantics, especially (with their American cousin Washington Irving), were preoccupied with aspects of the narratives. Walter Scott, in his poem, "The Vision of Don Roderick" (1811), vouchsafes Roderick not only a vision of his own defeat at the hands of the Moors but also one in which, bizarrely, he sees the conquest of the Iberian Peninsula by Napoleon Bonaparte and its liberation by the British. (13) A year later Walter Savage Landor's tragedy Count Julian appeared. (14) In this closet drama Landor describes the treasonous vengeance taken by the Count after Roderick's violation of Julian's daughter. In 1823 John Gibson Lockhart, Scott's son-in-law, published his translations of Ancient Spanish Ballads, including "The Lamentation of Don Roderick" (in which Roderick gives voice to his grief following his crushing defeat by the Arabs) and "The Penitence of Don Roderick" (in which "the good Rodrigo," truly repenting of his act of rape, dies after he encourages an adder to "rend" "the part that was most sinning," and "[w]ashed from offence his spirit hence to God" then takes its flight). (15) Washington Irving's "The Legend of Don Roderick" in his Legends of the Conquest of Spain (1835)--an edition of which (Paris, 1836) Puskin had in his library (16)--is a readable, comprehensive, and coherent retelling of the legend based on two Spanish works, a fifteenth-century chronicle and a sixteenth-century novel.

Puskin obviously had become convinced that this popular Western myth merited introduction into Russian literature, and so it is perhaps understandable that, despite his admonition to his friend Zukovskij to "leave it in peace," the version he chose was Robert Southey's massive "Roderick, the Last of the Goths"; for every now and then Southey's poem rises to an epic grandeur that must have been very appealing to Puskin. In Southey's "Roderick," after his crushing defeat by the Moors, a dazed Roderick finds refuge with an aged monk, Romano, under whose tutelage he dedicates himself to God. After Romano's death, Roderick, as "Father Maccabee," has an interview with Julian's daughter, Florinda--perhaps the finest episode of the poem--in which he receives her confession and hears her words of forgiveness for himself. He then persuades his cousin Pelayo to accept the kingship of Spain and, afterwards, seeks out Count Julian, from whom he receives, and to whom he grants, forgiveness before Julian's death. Roderick disappears after leading the Spanish forces to a great victory over the Moors: Days, months, and years, and generations pass'd, And centuries held their course, before, far off Within a hermitage near Viseu's walls A humble tomb was found, which bore inscribed In ancient characters King Roderick's name.

When Puskin started to work at the task of translation, he began by literally attacking his raw material. He managed to condense 552 lines of Parts I and II of Southey's monumental work (of 25 sections, some 130 pages) into 112 lines, neatly divided into 28 four-line stanzas; each of Southey's lines is shortened by a metric foot. At the very beginning of Southey's poem, Puskin condenses Southey's two inflated introductory lines into one, while carefully following Southey in introducing "Spain" in the first line. Still being true to Southey's priorities, Puskin introduces Julian in the second line, retaining his title of Count. He has distilled nine of Southey's lines into a four-line stanza, while omitting nothing essential to the narrative. Puskin's second stanza includes only Southey's lines 9-12, but he introduces the line "Dishonored the ancient line" ("Obescestil drevnij rod"), adding dignity, absent in Southey, to Julian's traitorous act. Southey's image of the "cloud of locusts" descending on the Spanish "shore" apparently jarred on Puskin's poetic sensibilities, and he, retaining the "shore," completed that image by making his Moors "pour like a torrent / On the Spanish shores" ("chlynuli potokom / Na ispanskie brega"). Then some 36 of Southey's lines are omitted before Puskin can close his third stanza with his equivalent of Southey's "Then fell the kingdom of the Goths," personalizing it with "And from the throne Rodrik fell" ("I s prestola pal Rodrik"). Southey's lines 54-55 ("[...] Yet the sceptre from their hands / Pass'd not away inglorious [...]") are paralleled by Puskin's lines 13-14 ("The Goths fell not ingloriously: / Bravely they fought": "Gotfy pali ne besslavno: / Chrabro bilis' oni"); then, however, Puskin inserts his own humanizing touch: "For a long time the Moors doubted / Who was conquering whom" ("Dolgo mavry somnevalis', / Odoleet kto kogo"). Of Southey's "Eight summer days, from morn till latest eve, / The fatal fight endured, till perfidy / Prevailing to their overthrow [...]" Puskin retains the eight days, but discards the season as unnecessary, and omits the "from [...] eve" as redundant: "Eight days the battle continued; / The quarrel was finally decided" ("Vosem' dnej srazen'e dlilos'; / Spor resen byl nakonec"). Roderick's "battle-horse Orelio" in Southey "was found," while in Puskin, though without a name, he "was caught on the battlefield" and is "the king's favorite horse" ("Byl na pole bitvy pojman / Kon' ljubimyj korolja"). "Caught" rather than "was found"--i.e., dynamic vs. static--imparts a dramatic quality missing in the original.

Puskin's sixth stanza (lines 21-24) compresses Southey's lines 62-73, with nothing essential omitted. Where, in this section, Southey mentions only Roderick's "helm / Whose horns [...]," Puskin brings his sword forward from Southey's line 97 and appropriately adds it to the helmet: "The helmet and his heavy sword / Were found in the dust" ("Slem i mec ego tjazelyj / Byli najdeny v pyli"). While Southey uses lines 64-69 to express the same thought, Puskin tersely reports "The king was thought killed" ("Korolja porli ubitym") and Southey's " [...] they said no prayer for him, / For him no service sung, nor mourning made, / But charged their crimes upon his head and curs'd / His memory" becomes in Puskin the laconic "And nobody was sorry" ("I nikto ne pozalel"). In the first line of his next stanza (No. 7), Puskin summarizes: "But Rodrik remained among the living" ("No Rodrik v zivych ostalsja") and, now faithfully adhering to the meaning of Southey's "Bravely in that eight-days' fight / The King had strivenm, ... for victory first, while hope / Remain'd, then desperately in search of death," nevertheless concentrates and hones it: "He fought the entire eight days--/He at first wished for victory, / Then only death craved" ("Bilsja on vse vosem' dnej--/ On sperva chotel pobedy, / Tam uz smerti lis' alkal"). Southey's next three lines are almost literally reflected in Puskin's eighth stanza, but Puskin's action is much more vivid and dramatic: Southey's "The arrows pass'd him by to fight and left, / The spear-point pierced him not, the scymitar / Glanced from his helmet" is smoothly but more vigorously rendered by "And all around the arrows whistled, / Not touching him, / Past the javelins flew, / His helmet the sword did not cleave" ("I krugom svistali strely, / Ne kasajasja ego, / Mimo drotiki letali, / Slema mec ne rassekal"). Southey's following lines (77-94), which depict one of Roderick's religious ecstasies, are seamlessly omitted by Puskin, bridged over by "At last, exhausted [...]" ("Naposledok, utomivsis'"). Puskin then picks up Southey's "From his horse he dropt," but characteristically skips over the following "Whether with human impulse, or by Heaven / Struck down, he knew not" and resumes with Southey's "[...] loosen'd from his wrist / The sword-chain, and let fall the sword, whose hilt / Clung to his palm a moment ere it fell, / Glued there with Moorish gore": "Rodrik sprang from his horse, / The sword with dried blood / From his palm he unstuck" ("Soskocil s konja Rodrik / Mec s zapeksejusja krov'ju / Ot ladoni otkleil"). "The sword-chain" was evidently to Puskin--as to the present writers--an unfamiliar concept and thus omitted, but otherwise the passage is rendered faithfully, and more smoothly than the original. The translation of the following passage contains several strokes evidently typical of Puskin's translating instincts. Southey's "His homed helmet and enamell'd mail, / He cast aside, and taking from the dead / A peasant's garment, in those weeds involved / Stole, like a thief in darkness, from the field" through Puskin's filter becomes "He threw to the ground his plumed helmet / And his glittering armor. / And saved by the night's darkness / From the field of battle he departed" ("Brosil ob zem' slem pematyj / I blestjascuju bronju. / I spasennyj mrakom noci / S polja bitvy on usel"). First, to Puskin, the homed helmet apparently was not a stereotype of the image of the Goth, and the more contemporary plumes were more attractive, if less authentic. Second, for "enamell'd," although the meaning must have been clear to Puskin, he could find no satisfactory equivalent in Russian in this instance. Third, the image of the sneak thief clearly did not fit an epic hero in Puskin's eyes, and he excised it. Then Southey's "cast aside," implying that something will replace what has been discarded, is no longer apt, so Puskin inserts the more emphatic "threw to the ground." The result is in many ways starker, more concise, more pointed, and more esthetically pleasing than the original, and it creates a greater impact on the reader.

Puskin omits Southey's lines 103-32, which contain more of Roderick's religious visions and fantasies, and his own eleventh stanza opens with a two-line expansion of the last line of the preceding stanza as a transition, and his narrative resumes with Southey's line 132 "[...] wheresoe'er he went / The tidings of defeat had gone before," which Puskin translates precisely: "The king was outstripped / By the news of his downfall" ("Korolja operedila / Vest' o gibeli ego"). In Puskin's next stanza (No. 12) Southey's "And leaving their defenceless homes to seek / What shelter walls and battlements might yield, / Old men with feeble feet, and tottering babes, / And widows with their infants in their arms, / Hurried along" becomes "Old men and poor women / At the crossroads he sees; / All in a crowd run from the Moors / To the fortified towns" ("Starikov i bednych zenscin / Na rasput'jach vidit on; / Vse tolpoj begut ot mavrov / K ukreplennym gorodam"). Puskin's only addition is "he sees," emphasizing and making concrete the fact of Roderick's witnessing the whole scene. Puskin's next stanza (No. 13) has no parallel at this point in Southey's poem, but Puskin has taken Southey's much earlier passage, which he had rejected for his sixth stanza, "They said no prayer for him, / For him no service sung, nor mourning made, / But charged their crimes upon his head and curs'd / His memory," and has inserted the thought here, as being more appropriate and stronger in this position: "All, sobbing, pray to God / For the rescue of the Christians, / All curse Rodrik; / And the curses he hears" ("Vse, rydaja, moljat boga / O spasen'i christian, / Vse Rodrika proklinajut; / I prokljat'ja slysit on"). The final line is Puskin's innovation, leaving no doubt that Rodrik/Roderick is fully aware of their personally directed anathema. He personally "sees" the people's predicament and "hears" their curses.

For his stanza 14 Puskin takes Southey's lines 148-50, "[...] From the throng / He turn'd aside, unable to endure / This burthen of the general woe [...]" and reshapes them: "And with bowed head / Past them he hastens, /And dares not even speak" ("I s ponikseju glavoju / Mimo ich projti spesit, / I ne smeet daze molvit'"), and, suddenly addressing his reader(s) directly, he urges, with a second person imperative, "Pray for him" ("Pomolites' za nego"). This last line, unexpectedly breaking into the narrative, marks the place in Southey's work where Puskin discards a lengthy section describing Roderick's eight-day wandering and the resulting meeting with the monk Romano--in all, 127 lines (151-278) are omitted. Southey's occasionally strident religiosity seems to have embarrassed Puskin; perhaps he felt that the Orthodox censors would have objected to the intensity of Southey's religious rhetoric, or perhaps it simply repelled Puskin and was alien to his whole spartan, crisp poetic style.

Having completely cut out the figure of Romano the monk, Puskin now must pick up the thread of the narrative again and carefully splice the broken ends. He does this masterfully, reforming Southey's lines 278-282: "The fourth week of their painful pilgrimage / Was full, when they arrived where from the land / A rocky hill, rising with steep ascent, / O'erhung the glittering beach; there on the top / A little lowly hermitage they found" to his own succinct stanza 15: "Finally to the shore of the sea / On the third day he arrives, / He sees a dark cave / On the desert shore" ("Nakonec na bereg morja / V tretij den' prichodit on, / Vidit temnuju pesceru / Na pustynnom beregu"). He has drastically shortened the time elapsed to cover the length of time Southey's Roderick has spent with the monk; he has expanded the hermitage into the more interesting cave--a concept immediately familiar to every Russian with a knowledge of early Russian religious history. Further, Puskin has changed the "glittering beach" to a setting more befitting the site of a hermit's cave, a "desert shore."

Southey's next lines, "And a rude Cross, and at its foot a grave, / Bearing no name, nor other monument" give Puskin the opening for introducing a new little dramatic episode of his own. He enlarges on this theme: "In that cave he finds / A cross and a spade--and in the corner / The corpse of the hermit and a pit, / Long ago dug by him" ("V toj pescere on nachodit / Krest i zastup--a v uglu / Trup otsel'nika i jamu, / Im izrytuju davno"); adding not only an unburied corpse and a prepared grave but also a practical touch--the spade. At this point, Puskin must combine two graves--that of Southey's already buried recluse and that of the now-expired monk Romano, whom Puskin has completely omitted.

Puskin's next stanza (No. 17) is his innovation; having introduced an unburied corpse, he must now dispose of it: "Decay has not touched the corpse, / He lies stiff, / Awaiting burial / And the prayers of Christians" ("Tlen'e trupu ne kosnulos', / On lezit okostenev, / Ozidaja pogreben'ja / I molitvy christian"). Not among Puskin's best and perhaps lacking his final touch, these lines do, however, bridge the gap left by the omission of much of the last twelve lines of Southey's first section and all of the first thirteen lines of his second section. Puskin's stanzas 18 and 19 combine the gist of several widely scattered lines of the original. For the first lines of No. 18, "The corpse of the hermit with prayer / The king buried" ("Trup otsel'nika s molitvoj / Schoronil korol'"), he goes forward to Southey's "Consign'd him earth to earth" (Section II, line 14), and for the following "And in the cave he settled / Over his grave" ("I v pescere poselilsja / Nad mogiloju ego"), Puskin plucks the thought from line 285 from Section I, "Where better could they rest than here [...]." Puskin's stanza 19 combines Southey's Section I, lines 289-90, "Behind them was the desert, offering fruit / And water for their need [...]" and Section II, lines 15-17, "Two graves are here, / And Roderick transverse at their feet began / To break the third [...]" into "He began to live on fruits / And spring water; / And dug a grave for himself, / Like his predecessor" ("On pitat'sja stal plodami / I vodoju kljucevoj; / I sebe mogilu vyryl, / Kak predsestvennik ego").

Next, Puskin omitted Southey's long passage (Section II, lines 23-61) describing Roderick's wretched mental and physical condition, presumably as tedious material utterly alien to his poetic sense. Southey's following lines (62-66), "[...] Such temptations troubled him / By day, and in the visions of the night; / And even in sleep he struggled with the thought, / And waking with the effort of his prayers / The dreams assail'd him still" are focused and made more specific in Puskin's version (stanza 20): "In his solitude the king / The Evil One began to tempt, / And by nocturnal visions / His short sleep to torment" ("Korolja v uedinen'i / Stal lukavyj iskusat', / I viden'jami nocnymi / Kratkij son ego mutit'"). Here again Puskin has taken Southey's material, but by introducing the devil in person he makes Roderick's condition more immediate, more terrible, and less abstract. For his stanza 21, Puskin has once again skipped over a long passage of the original (Southey's Section II, lines 67-101, dealing with Roderick's past life and sin) and seized upon Southey's lines 102-105, "[...] the Fiend / Tempted, deceived, and madden'd him; [...] but then / As at a new temptation would he start, / Shuddering beneath the intolerable shame." Puskin's rendering of these lines again is more urgent and direct than Southey's original: "He awakens with a shudder, / Filled with terror and shame; / The rapture of temptation / Shatters his spirit" ("On prosnetsja s sodrogan'em, / Polon stracha i styda; / Upoenie soblazna / Sokrusaet duch ego"). Puskin obviously had studied Southey's work extremely closely, and with an unerring instinct had selected widely separated but related lines and fused them into a poetic unit.

The remaining lines (106-256) of Southey's Section II for the most part have no line-by-line parallel in Puskin's version. As will be seen, this does not by any means imply that Puskin was growing tired of his material, but rather that he carefully read this section and condensed what he considered worthwhile and rendered impressions rather than lines. Ironically, Puskin's opening lines of his stanza 22, "He wants to pray to God / And cannot [...]" ("Chocet on molit'sja bogu / I ne mozet") bridge over Southey's lines 122-70, which form the content of precisely a long-winded prayer of Roderick. Since most of this prayer concerns narrative material omitted by Puskin and must in any case be left out, this terse statement presents an ideal poetic solution and at the same time makes a stronger, more forceful impact on the reader. The lines perhaps hark back to Southey's Section I, lines 189 ff., omitted by Puskin, where Roderick indeed tries to pray but cannot. The remainder of the stanza, "[...] The devil / Whispers in his ears the sounds of battle / Or passionate words" ("Bes emu / Sepcet v usi zvuki bitvy / Ili strastnye slova") continues the theme of satanic temptation not directly pursued by Southey. Puskin's stanza 23, "He in despondency passes / Days and nights motionless, / Directing his eyes to the sea, / Remembering former days" ("On v unynii provodit / Dni i noci nedvizim, / Ustremiv glaza na more, / Pominaja starinu"), while inventing Roderick's semi-comatose condition, grasps the image of the sea from Southey's scattered references to it, and the last line is a reflection of Southey's Section II, lines 67-101, dealing with Roderick's past, mentioned above and omitted by Puskin.

The rest of Southey's Section II, depicting Roderick's dream of his mother, which calls him back to active life as leader of his people, is compressed and reshaped in Puskin's concluding five stanzas. Roderick's mother must of necessity be replaced, since Roderick's history has largely been omitted by Puskin, and Southey's mention of Romano in lines 173 ff, "[...] Not if Heaven / Had opened, and Romano, visible / In his beatitude [...]," gives Puskin the impetus for his last stanzas, but since he has omitted Romano, he has to substitute the nameless anchorite whom he had buried: "But the anchorite, whose remains / He had zealously buried, / For him before the Most High / Had interceded in heaven. // In a heavenly dream / He appeared to the king, / Clad in a white chasuble / And surrounded by radiance. // And the king, filled with terror, / Prostrated himself before him, / And the saint prophesied to him: / 'Rise--and present yourself again to the world. // You have lost the royal crown, / But God to your hand / Will give victory over your enemies, / And peace to your soul'" ("No otsel'nik, c'i ostanki / On userdno schoronil, / Za nego pered vsevysnim / Zastupilsja v nebesach. // V snoviden'i blagodatnom / On javilsja korolju, / Beloj rizoju odejan / I sijan'em okruzen. // I korol', ob"jatyj strachom, / Nic povergsja pered nim,/ 1 vescal emu ugodnik: / 'Vstan'--i miru vnov' javis'. // Ty venec utratil carskoj, / No gospod' ruke tvoej / Dast pobedu nad vragami, / A duse tvoej pokoj'").

For his final stanza, Puskin gathered several scattered lines from Southey: "As his own effort burst the charm of sleep" (line 226); "The sudden impulse of such thoughts confirmed / That unacknowledged purpose, which till now / Vainly had sought its end" (lines 247-49); and (line 256), "[...] At long leave-taking, then began his way." Puskin then produced a fitting closing to a poem which, to paraphrase Zukovskij, was someone else's, and yet distinctly his own: "Awakening, God's will / With his heart he comprehended, / And, leaving the wildemess, / The king went on his way" ("Probudjas', gospodnju volju / Serdcem on urazumel, / I, s pustyneju rasstavsis', / V put' otpravilsja korol'").

Puskin almost certainly never intended to translate the entire text of Southey's voluminous "Roderick," since his translation of the fragment has a finished structure. He obviously considered the work worth a partial translation; the surviving manuscript corrections and discarded lines are ample proof that he expended considerable effort on the project. He probably did not consider his version yet quite ready for publication, but it was clearly approaching that stage. He read Southey's work with empathic comprehension, as is indicated by his ability to condense, rearrange, and reshape the text; while he was not reluctant to make drastic changes to fit his poetic scheme, the result is clearly still a translation, and he thought of it as such. It is probably unfair to compare the poet Southey to the poet Puskin; Puskin is nearly incomparable, not only in a national sense, but also in an absolute sense. Some of Zukovskij's translations are unquestionably superior to their originals; in a perhaps indefinable way his protege Puskin's art of translation is superior even to that of his mentor. In one other significant respect Puskin as translator differed from Zukovskij. Sometimes, as Jean Young Kim has suggested, Puskin "used translation as a preparatory step for further creative practice rather than as a self-contained end." (17)

The longer poem preserved among Puskin's discarded short scraps from his draft translation of "Roderick," misleadingly bearing at the bottom of the sheet of text the notation "Rodrig" Puskin regularly spelled the name "Rodrik"--is curious for a number of reasons. (18) Until now disregarded as a variant of a part of the translation rejected by Puskin himself, the poem demands closer attention. The 36-line work, in trochaic tetrameters, is apparently an elaboration on Puskin's own original stanza 25 (rather than inspired by lines in Southey's original): "In a heavenly dream / He appeared to the king, / Clad in a white chasuble / And surrounded by radiance." The first lines show a rhyme scheme abba, in contrast to his unrhymed translation from "Roderick;" this might possibly indicate that Puskin intended to impose that scheme on the entire poem, thus distancing it from the translation. Since this poem has no parallel in Southey's work, it would seem justified to class it as an original work by Puskin, an assumption strengthened by the shift in poetic voice--the opening lines are in the first person, the speaker apparently being Puskin himself: "A marvellous dream God sent me--/ With a long white beard, / In a white chasuble before me / Some old man appeared / And blessed me." The vision of the venerable man in a white chasuble ("v beloj rize") which Puskin had inserted into his translation of "Roderick" evidently caught his imagination, but instead of appearing to the king ("javilsja korolju") he now appears "before me," i.e., Puskin, "and blessed me."

The saintly figure now addresses "me" (Puskin), and nothing he now says can be applied to the figure of Roderick, but must refer to the poet or the poet's persona: "He said to me: 'Be calm, / Soon, soon on you will be conferred/The kingdom of heaven. /[Soon to your earthly wandering] (19) / The end will come. / Already the angel of death is preparing / For you the holy crown ... / Wayfarer, you will lie down in a lodging for the night, / Into a <harbor> <?>, sailor, you will enter, / [Poor] tired plowman, / You will unyoke the oxen from the plow / At the last furrow. / [...].'"

Up to this point, the poet has been the passive recipient of the saintly figure's blessing and prophecy. Here, however, he suddenly becomes a participant in a holy act, as the dream figure continues his prophecy: "'Now that great sinner, / The prophecy about whom / You heard long ago--/The longawaited sinner / [At last will come] to you / To confess, / And will receive absolution, / And you will sleep the eternal sleep.'"

These lines present an unresolved mystery; the unidentified sinner must confess to the poet and be absolved, presumably by the poet, before the latter himself can rest in peace. Again, these lines seem to have nothing to do with Roderick, but must apply to the poet, who then comments on his dream: "A delightful, prophetic dream--/ The eager heart does not dare / Either to disbelieve or to believe. / Oh, can it really be / That I am near [to my end]? / I both fear and hope, / Eternal torment I fear, / Mercy I hope for: / Reassure me, Creator. / But Your will be done, / Not mine.--Who goes there? ..."

It would seem that Puskin, using as a springboard the appearance of the prophetic dream figure which he himself had introduced into his rendering of Southey's "Roderick," went on to create this curiously personal poem. What impelled him to do so cannot be known with absolute certainty. Although in matters of rhyme and, perhaps, meter the poem still seems to be in the process of becoming, structurally it is a finished whole, with the concluding "But Your will be done, / Not mine." The final enigmatic "Who goes there?" ("kto tam idet?") provides a strangely effective coda. There seems little doubt, then, that this poem, rather than a rejected scrap from a translation, is a previously unrecognized original work by Puskin.

We suggest that there are twin links between the "marvellous dream" of Puskin's own poem and the "heavenly dream" of his original contribution to his translation of Southey's "Roderick:" first, his earlier (1823-30) novel in verse, Evgenij Onegin, and, secondly, the unfolding tragedy of his own life. As Victor Terras has observed, Evgenij Onegin "accompanied Puskin through much of his adult life," (20) As J. Thomas Shaw mentions, "One of the interesting problems in Puskin criticism is whether his novel in verse, Evgennij Onegin, is a completed work." (21) In a poem of 1835, the first line of which is "V moi osennie dosugi" ("In my autumn leisure"), Puskin writes, "Vy mne sovetuete, drugi, / Roman zabytyj prodolzat'" ("You advise me, friends, / The forgotten novel to continue"), so it would appear that he was considering a continuation of it. (22)

At about the time Puskin was working on the "Rodrig" poem (presumably after laying aside his 1835 translation of Southey's "Roderick") his domestic life was about to fall apart, at the beginning of the tumultuous period leading up to his fatal duel with Georges d'Anthes. D'Anthes's scandalous courtship of Puskin's wife, Natalija, seems to have led to Puskin's being sent anonymously, on November 4, 1836, a "Diploma" of "the Most Serene Order of Cuckolds"--seven or eight copies were circulated--which led to Puskin's first abortive challenge to d'Anthes and ultimately to the confrontation on January 27, 1837, in which Puskin was mortally wounded. (23) Puskin's situation, as a poet having to challenge a dandy to a duel, provides an uncanny instance in which art has prefigured life. For Lenskij, the young poet of Evgenij Onegin, honour requires that he challenge Onegin over his attentions to Lenskij's sweetheart just as Puskin feels he has no alternative than to call d'Anthes to account. Both Evgenij and d'Anthes casually respond to the challenge and seemingly just as casually dispatch their opponents.

In 1828 Puskin had noted wryly that a reviewer of Evgenij Onegin says "young men usually shoot each other for serious matters and lovers are never roused to jealousy by trifles." (24) Puskin knew better. Tatiana Wolff writes: "In Evgenij Onegin Puskin had visualized the scene [of his duel with d'Anthes]: the snow, the measured paces, the signal to approach, the raised pistols, the death of a poet." The poet Lenskij's death, she says, is "hauntingly prophetic of Puskin's own death." (25)

It may not be too far-fetched, then, to suggest that this poem results from an actual dream of Puskin that, in the wayward fashion of the subconscious, becomes a kind of projection of the "heavenly dream" of the "Roderick" passage that he has lately composed. Puskin's own "marvellous dream" starkly conveys prophecies of his own imminent death while assuring him that "the angel of death is already preparing/For you a holy crown" in "The kingdom of heaven." First, though, according to our reading, the creator of Evgenij Onegin, Puskin the poet, is to receive the prodigal Evgenij to bless him. Evgenij, "[t]he long-awaited sinner/At last will come to you/To confess/ And will receive absolution,/and you [Puskin] will sleep the eternal sleep." Finally, the compassionate creator of Evgenij Onegin, sinner, turns, himself a sinner, to his own Creator. Fearing "Eternal torment" but praying for mercy, he surrenders himself to the Divine Will, echoing Jesus's words (Luke 22:42): "Reassure me, Creator./But Your will be done,/Not mine." The closeness of Puskin's wording and that of the Russian biblical passage is quite striking; the Bible: "[...] vprocem ne moja volja, no Tvoja da budet"; Puskin: "No tvoja da budet volja, / Ne moja." Then he concludes with the classic soldier's challenge: "Who goes there?", as he turns to confront Death.

When Puskin chooses to alter parts of the original, as in the case of "Roderick," his changes are invariably in the direction of making his version more dynamic, dramatic, focussed, vivid, and immediate. His lines are more specific and personalized, and have a more direct impact on the reader. When, on the other hand, his purpose is a close translation, he is capable of producing a flawless line-by-line equivalent in his matchless Russian poetic form. The only method of demonstrating the degree of mastery of translation is a painstaking, line-by-line comparison of the translation with the original, even though this process may at first seem tedious. Moreover, use of this method here has (for example) enabled us to identify a previously unrecognized original poem by Puskin, an intensely personal lyrical utterance: truly "further creative practice" prepared for by the act of translation. Such a close and sustained comparison, even though in this case the translations are obviously drafts, clearly confirms the unexcelled poet Puskin to have also been a supreme master of the translator's art.

KENNETH H. OBER

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

WARREN U. OBER

University of Waterloo, Ontario

Notes

(1) Reprinted from Russian Literature, Vol. 55 (2004), Kenneth H. Ober and Warren U. Ober, "Puskin and Southey: Russia's Greatest Poet Translates England's Poet Laureate," Pages 529-47, Copyright 2004, with permission from Elsevier.

(2) Ju. D. Levin, Istorija russkoj perevodnoj chudozestvennoj literatury. Drevnjaja Rus'. XVIII vek, 2 tt, Sankt-Peterburg, 1995-96.

(3) Polnoe sobranie socinenij v 15 [i.e., 16] tomach, t. 4, 1948, Moskva, 1939-53, p. 503. Rept. of the Akademija nauk edition (1937-59). Cited by Levin, Vol. 1, p. 7.

(4) Of the major eighteenth-century literary figures, Aleksandr P. Sumarokov (1718-77) was primarily an innovator and imitator, Michail V. Lomonosov (1711-65) a literary theorist, and Vasilij K. Trediakovskij (1703-69), while also a translator, more importantly a theorist of poetics.

(5) A partial exception is Rolf-Dietrich Keil in his recent biography of Puskin--Puschkin: Ein Dichterleben, Frankfurt/Main & Leipzig, 1999--but of Southey he briefly mentions only the "Roderick" translation (pp. 394-95), describing it as "[...] in reimlosen Trochaen sehr spanisch wirkenden Gedichts [genitive case]."

(6) Polnoe sobranie socinenij, t. 13, Moskva, 1994-97, p. 40. The English translation is from J. Thomas Shaw (Trans. and Ed.), The Letters of Alexander Pushkin. Three Volumes in One, Vol. 1, Madison, Milwaukee, & London, 1967, p. 94. Unless otherwise stated, all further translations are by the present writers.

(7) Puskin wrote the names in the Latin alphabet thus; see Pohloe sobranie socinenij, Vol. 14, 1996, p. 158; see also Shaw, Letters, Vol. 2, p. 482.

(8) Polnoe sobranie socinenij, Vol. 13, 1996, p. 177; Vol. 14, 1996, pp. 158 and 175, resp.

(9) Tatiana Wolff(Trans. and Ed.), Pushkin on Literature, London, 1971, p. 307.

(10) See B. L. Modzalevskij, Biblioteka A.S. Puskina, Sankt-Peterburg, 1910, p. 340, Nos. 1398-1401.

(11) The edition of Southey used in this paper is Poems of Robert Southey, Maurice H. Fitzgerald (Ed.), London, etc., 1909. The Russian texts used here are from the reprint of the Akademija nauk edition of Puskin's complete works, Polnoe sobranie socinenij, Vol. 3, 1995, pp. 383-86, 192-93, 179, and 445-46, resp.

(12) Elisabeth Frenzel, Stoffe der Weltliteratur: Ein Lexikon dichtungsgeschichtlicher Langsschnitte, Stuttgart, 1963, pp. 549-51.

(13) Sir Walter Scott, Poetical Works (Ed. J. Logie Robertson), London, 1904, pp. 590-618.

(14) Count Jalian: A Tragedy, in The Poetical Works of Walter Savage Landor, Vol. 1 (Ed. Stephen Wheeler), Oxford, 1937, pp. 161-224.

(15) The Spanish Ballads (Trans. J. G. Lockhart), and The Chronicle of the Cid by Robert Southey (one volume), London, n.d., pp. 19, 23.

(16) See Modzalevsky, 257 (item no. 1021); cited in Wolff, 504. See also Frenzel, 551. "The Legend of Don Roderick" is available in, e.g., Irving's Spanish Papers and Other Miscellanies, Vol. 1 (Ed. Pierre M. Irving), New York, 1866, pp. 7-104.

(17) Jean Young Kim, "Making Another's Voice Mine: Pushkin and the Poetics of Translation," doctoral diss., Yale University, 1992, p. 102.

(18) The complete Russian cyrillic text follows:

[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]

(19) The square and angular brackets, as well as the question mark, appear in the printed text; it is unclear what the difference in brackets signifies--reconstruction, illegibility in the original ms, or one of several variations. The ellipses are Puskin's own.

(20) Victor Tetras, A History of Russian Literature, New Haven, 1991, p. 212.

(21) Shaw, Letters, Vol. 3, p. 741.

(22) The single line found in Puskin's papers, "You advise me to continue Onegin, assuring me that I haven't finished it" ("Ty mne sovetues' prodolzat' Onegina, [uverjaja menja, cto ja ego ne koncil.]") was mistakenly supposed to be part of a draft of a letter to Pletnev, and was treated as such in the Akademija nauk edition of Puskin's Polnoe sobranie socinenij (see rept. of this ed., Vol. 16, Moskva, 1997, p. 431), and was included in Shaw's translations (Letters, Vol. 3, p. 723), but Shaw points out the mistake in a note (p. 741). As explained in a note in the rept. edition of Puskin's works (Vol. 19, p. 94), the line was actually a part of the unpublished draft of a variant section of the poem "V moi osennie dosugi," and reads "You advise me, dear Pletnev, / To continue [our] abandoned novel ..." ("Ty nine sovetues', Pletnev ljubeznyj, / Ostavlennyj roman [nag] prodolzat").

(23) See Walter N. Vickery, Alexander Pushkin, New York, 1970, pp. 133-37.

(24) Wolff, p. 225.

(25) Wolff, pp. 103, 479-80.