Zukovskij and Southey's ballads: the translator as rival (1).

Ober, Kenneth H. ; Ober, Warren U.

Vasilij Andreevic Zukovskij (1783-1852), whom his contemporary Lord Byron called "the Russian nightingale," has more recently been described as the "most original translator in world literature," (2) and his translation of Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" in 1802 has been said to mark the birthday of Russian poetry. Zukovskij, son of a Russian gentleman and a captive Turkish girl, grew up to become tutor to the future Czar Alexander II and the acknowledged patriarch of the Russian Golden Age of Poetry. The bulk of his work consisted of his translations from the poetry of the Western World, particularly Germany (his German favorites were Uhland and Schiller) and Great Britain. The masterpiece of his old age, however, was a brilliant translation of The Odyssey based on a word-for-word German translation, since he did not know Greek. (3)

Zukovskij said of his own work, "Almost everything I have is someone else's, and yet everything is my own." And his comment on another poet stands as a gloss to the statement about himself: "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." (4) Zukovskij's epoch-making translation of Gray's "Elegy" was followed by his translation, in part, of Oliver Goldsmith's "The Deserted Village" in 1805 and then by his versions of poems by John Dryden, Alexander Pope, James Thomson, Goldsmith again, and David Mallet. Southey's "Rudiger" in 1813, Zukovskij's first translation of a poem from the English Romantic Movement, was followed the next year by his translations of Southey's "Lord William" and "The Old Woman of Berkeley." Then, apparently surfeited with Southey, he turned to other writers: "It's always either devils or coffins," he said. "Don't think that I want to be carried down to posterity on devils alone." (5) During the years before his interest in Southey's devils and coffins was revived, he translated works by Lord Byron, Thomas Moore, and Sir Walter Scott, and alter leaving Southey a second time in 1831 he translated a poem by Thomas Campbell and, finally, in 1839, Gray's "Elegy" once again.

Thus Zukovskij, a poet whose translations have won an honored place in Russian literature as poems in their own right, chose to translate three of Robert Southey's ballads relatively early in his career, and he returned nearly two decades later to Southey to translate five more of his ballads. We have elsewhere written about Zukovskij's early translations of Southey's ballads, (6) and it is our purpose here to discuss his 1831 translations of "God's Judgment on a Bishop," "Donica," "Queen Orraca and the Five Martyrs of Morocco," "Mary, the Maid of the Inn," and "Jaspar." These ballads of Southey's, it seems to us, deserve attention in their own right. At his best Southey is unerring in his use of such techniques as dry matter-of-factness in treatment of the supernatural, laconic understatement, and superbly timed use of what in our day has come to be known as the throwaway line. It is true that a too-frequent failure to come up with the sharp, precise image, coupled with a willingness to settle for a blurred abstraction, often mars his work. Sometimes, however, perhaps in part because of his almost invariable habit of culling the plot for a ballad from some obscure chronicler or out-of-the-way annotator of ages past, Southey's ballads do manage to capture the authentic flavor of the folk ballad, with its context of unquestioning belief and piety and of awe in the face of the mysteries of sin and punishment, of life and death, of heaven and hell. In this paper it is our intention to look at the five ballads both in the original and in translation. We will consider, suggestively rather than exhaustively, what Zukovskij does or does not do for, to, and with the originals. We believe that even such a relatively sketchy study as ours of what these ballads become under Zukovskij's hand should be of interest, first, because of what it may reveal about the relationship of Southey and his ballads to the work of this particular pioneer of Russia's Golden Age of Poetry and, more importantly, because of what it may suggest about the workings of the imagination of a master poet-translator.

One of Robert Southey's deservedly popular works is his ballad "God's Judgment on a Bishop." (7) Based primarily on a passage in Coryat's Crudities (except that Southey, as he says, follows "other authors" in making the avengers rats rather than mice), Southey's ballad, along with its sources, does a great injustice to the historical Hatto I, bishop of Mainz (d. 913), who was by no means the devil that legend makes him out to be. Be that as it may, "God's Judgment on a Bishop" is a masterpiece of terse understatement. The point that the Bishop is a monster whose deeds cry out for retribution is made economically and without editorializing. The unvarnished account of these deeds becomes a powerful sermon based on the two texts: "Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap," and "Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord." As the ballad develops, the reader has no reason to expect that Bishop Hatto will react in any other way than as a good Christian to the plight of the poor. In a period of famine the starving poor seek out the Bishop, for his granaries are full of last year's grain. The Bishop "appointed a day/To quiet the poor without delay,/ He bade them to his great Barn repair,/ And they should have food for the winter there." Then when he saw it could hold no more, Bishop Hatto he made last the door; And while for mercy on Christ they call, He set fire to the Barn and burnt them all. "I' faith 'tis an excellent bonfire!" quoth he, "And the country is greatly obliged to me, For ridding it in these times forlorn Of Rats that only consume the corn."

The Bishop has indeed "quieted the poor without delay," but in dismissing his victims as rats he has determined the shape of his own fate, for an army of rats eats all his corn and besieges him in his tower on the Rhine. Inexorably the rats seek him out: And in at the windows and in at the door, And through the walls by thousands they pour, And down from the ceiling and up through the floor, From the right and the left, from behind and before, From within and without, from above and below, And all at once to the Bishop they go. They have whetted their teeth against the stones, And now they pick the Bishop's bones, They gnaw'd the flesh from every limb, For they were sent to do judgment on him!

Southey's restraint and unemotional objectivity throughout the poem enhance the impact of the denouement when it comes. This is the primary source of the ballad's power.

Zukovskij's translation of "God's Judgment on a Bishop" is faithful to the original except for one significant departure. (8) For the sake of provoking outrage and horror in the reader from the beginning, Zukovskij deliberately sacrifices whatever advantage lies in Southey's use of monotone and understatement. We are told in Zukovskij's second stanza that the Bishop's granaries were overflowing through "the grace of heaven." In stanza three we learn that "Bishop Gatton" was "miserly and cruel" and that "by the general misfortune he was not touched." In the next stanza we are informed that "he decided on a frightful thing." Then we are told that the "invited guests," the poor, are "pale, sickly, skin and bones." Though the reader is thus fully prepared for what follows in the next stanza, Zukovskij, especially in his use of question and answer, manages to achieve almost the same impact that Southey himself produces: Now under the roof of the barn have already thronged All the arrivals from the surrounding area ... How did Bishop Gatton receive them? He burned down the barn with the guests.

Zukovskij, unlike Southey, follows Coryat in having his Bishop joke about ridding the country of "greedy mice" and, hence, in using mice rather than rats as the avengers. Throughout the ballad Zukovskij moralizes and editorializes: "God will punish you for yesterday's deed!" a voice thunders in the Bishop's ears. Zukovskij is also interested more than Southey in specific details: Zukovskij's Bishop, in fleeing to the Rhine tower, makes use of an underground passage, reaches the tower in a boat, and races up granite stairs--all of which are details not found in Southey. The Russian poet's account of the arrival of the mice is wholly his own: Now already a short distance away he Hears them climbing with a murmuring and squeaking; Hears their paws scratching the wall; Hears their teeth gnawing the stone.

And as the mice burst in upon the Bishop, Zukovskij-as-narrator addresses a question to him: "What did you feel now, Bishop?" Zukovskij's version, like the original, concludes as the rodents tear the Bishop apart. Instead of Southey's final moral: "For they were sent to do judgment on him," Zukovskij provides an even balder version, completely in keeping with his repeated authorial observations: "Thus was punished Bishop Gatton."

Southey's ballad "Donica," suggested by and adapted from passages in the notes to Thomas Heywood's The Hierarchies of the Blessed Angels (1635), concerns a beautiful maiden, the only child of the lord of the castle of Arlinkow in Finland. (Arlinkow and Donica, incidentally, do not appear to be Finnish names.) While walking on the shore of the nearby lake, Donica and Eberhard, her betrothed, hear from its depths the music that always foretells a death at Arlinkow Castle. Donica falls lifeless, only to revive and return with Eberhard to the castle. Yet never to Donica's cheek Return'd the lively hue; Her cheeks were deathy white and wan, Her lips a livid blue.

At Eberhard's insistence, arrangements are made for their immediate marriage, in spite of Donica's drastically altered demeanor and appearance: And when the Youth with holy warmth Her hand in his did hold, Sudden he felt Donica's hand Grow deadly damp and cold. And loudly did he shriek, for lo! A Spirit met his view, And Eberhard in the angel form His own Donica knew. That instant from her earthly frame Howling the Daemon fled, And at the side of Eberhard The livid form tell dead.

Southey's "Donica" is a somewhat plodding treatment of a situation--one that he also uses in Thalaba, The Destroyer--in which a demon takes over and animates the lifeless body of a girl, turning it into a kind of vampire. Zukovskij's version differs from Southey's only in minor details. The Russian poet does not refer to Finland in his translation, and his reference to icons in the church would encourage his readers to infer that the ballad has a Russian locale, without requiring such an assumption. Zukovskij also converts the warning music that issues from the lake into a prophetic voice. Although Southey does not give the name of Donica's father, Zukovskij borrows the name of Romual'd from Southey's companion ballad "St. Romuald" and assigns it to Donica's father. He also gives an elided transliteration of the fiance's name: "Evrar." Otherwise, Zukovskij contents himself with adding, from time to time, a concrete detail or trying occasionally to etch more sharply an image left blurred by Southey. For example, where Southey says the "castled shade/Darken'd the lake below," Zukovskij speaks of the castle's "huge dark bulk"; where Southey's cattle are "parch'd with thirst," Zukovskij's herd is "dying of thirst"; where Southey speaks of "the calm dead lake," the translator's lake is "calmer than glass." Southey says somewhat vaguely, "Donica's little dog ran on/And gamboll'd at her side." Zukovskij adds the vivid touch: "Only the barking of Donika's dog/ Frightened the birds in the bushes." Where Southey speaks of "the lifeless maid," Zukovskij says, "Her eyes are shut, her face is dead." Southey says, "Yet never to Donica's cheek/Return'd the lively hue": Zukovskij says, "And from that time, her cheeks were/Not fresher than the rose in beauty." Southey describes Donica's hand as being "deadly damp and cold": his translator says that her hand "is as cold as ice." Finally, lest his readers remain in the slightest doubt about the source of the reanimation of Donica's body, Zukovskij explains that the "Daemon" that flees from her corpse is a "dark devil, placed in her by hell."

In "Queen Orraca and the Five Martyrs of Morocco" Southey adapts a legend which he says "is related in the Chronicle of Affonso II., and in the Historia Serafica of Fr. Manoel da Esperanca." King Afonso II and his wife Queen Urraca (as the names are frequently spelled) were historical personages, thirteenth-century sovereigns of Portugal.

Southey opens his poem with a fine abruptness: The friars five have girt their loins, And taken staff in hand; And never shall those friars again Hear mass in Christian land.

The friars visit Queen Orraca and prophesy that they will be martyred in Morocco, their bodies will be returned to Coimbra, "And when unto that place of rest Our bodies shall draw nigh, Who sees us first, the King or you, That one that night must die. "Fare thee well, Queen Orraca; For thy soul a mass we will say, Every day while we do live, And on thy dying day."

This prophecy is mentioned once and looms menacingly over Queen Orraca during the remainder of the poem, staying in the forefront of the reader's (and, obviously, Queen Orraca's) consciousness all the while.

News is brought to King Affonso of the death of the five friars at the hands of the Moorish leader, Miramamolin, of the miracles which follow the infidel's attempt to dishonor their bodies, and of the imminent return of the bodies to be enshrined at Coimbra. Queen Orraca, pleading a severe headache and heart trouble as well, resists King Affonso's urgings that they go to meet the procession accompanying the relics of the martyrs to Coimbra. Reluctantly she rides out with her husband and then sends him on ahead, protesting her need to rest and recover from her illness. The king and his knights spur ahead but are tempted from their path by a wild boar and return from the chase after the reluctant queen has already seen the relics. At the midnight hour Queen Orraca's father confessor is visited by a ghostly band, the souls of friars, among them the five martyrs: "We are come hither to perform Our promise to the Queen; Go thou to King Affonso, And say what thou hast seen." There was loud knocking at the door, As the heavenly vision fled; And the porter called to the confessor, To tell him the Queen was dead.

Prince D.S. Mirsky, the distinguished historian of Russian literature, says that Southey's "Queen Orraca" (along with certain other poems that he identifies) has "both relatively and absolutely a higher place" in Russian poetry than it has in English poetry (Mirsky, p. 78). In view of the fact that Zukovskij's translation is in the main a faithful rendition of the original, there is perhaps a special interest in noting in detail just what Zukovskij did to earn for "Queen Orraca" Mirsky's comment. Except for certain miscellaneous minor changes, Zukovskij's departures from the original are designed to add concreteness and vividness, or to elaborate, clarify, or make explicit.

First, the miscellaneous changes: Zukovskij removes the middle syllable from the name of the Moorish leader. The tongue-twisting "Miramamolin" becomes "Miramolin," and again for the sake of his audience Zukovskij calls him "Tsar Miramolin." In a rare display of apparent squeamishness, Zukovskij translates Southey's "That on a dunghill they should rot,/The bloody Moor decreed" as "The ferocious Moor wanted their bodies/To rot without honorable burial." Whereas Southey's Queen Orraca pleads both headache and heart disease in her futile attempt to assure that her husband will be the first to see the martyrs' relics, Zukovskij has the queen say that she feels "the burden of a grave illness." Possibly Zukovskij was uncomfortable with the bathos of the queen's excuse and hence generalized her feigned illness. The catalogue of Zukovskij's miscellaneous changes may be closed with his handling of the report of the death of the five martyrs. Southey says, "They have fought the fight, O Queen!/They have run the race." Southey's lines are an echo of a passage in Paul's Second Letter to Timothy: "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith" (4:7). One supposes that if Zukovskij had recognized the allusion he would have retained it. His revised passage is as follows: "Their great work is done:/They have entered into the door of heaven."

Certain other changes are made by Zukovskij for the sake of making a scene more memorable through more sharply etched details or of concretizing a blurred image. For example, where Southey has his friars say, "We shall shed our blood," Zukovskij's friars say, "we ... with our blood/Will soak the ground." More significant than this, however, is Zukovskij's translation of the passage describing the preparations made in Coimbra for the reception of the martyrs' bones. First, Southey's original: Every altar in Coimbra Is drest for the festival day; All the people in Coimbra Are dight in their richest array. Every bell in Coimbra Doth merrily, merrily ring; The clergy and the knights await, To go forth with the Queen and the King.

Zukovskij's version: All of Coimbra's altars with flowers And rich hangings are brilliant; All of Coimbra's streets seethe With noisy, merry crowds. They are ringing bells, bunting incense, singing; The priests and knights are gathered; All is ready to begin the celebration, They wait only for the king and queen.

Though Zukovskij's version is a faithful translation, there is no doubt that it is more vivid and concrete. Perhaps here we have one clue to the relative importance of the two versions in their separate literatures.

Zukovskij's other changes seem to be calculated to elaborate upon or make more explicit the details of the action. For instance, at the beginning of Southey's ballad, the five martyrs-to-be prophesy to Queen Orraca that "Who sees us first, the King or you,/That one that night must die." Zukovskij's version of the prophecy thrusts the point home by restating it: And the one who first meets our coffins Of you two, the king or you, will die That same night: in the morning a new day will dawn, But his eyes it will no more illuminate.

Southey's treatment of the passages in which Queen Orraca realizes that, despite her various ruses, she is to be the victim of the friars' prophecy instead of King Affonso is not so clear as it might be: The friars of Alanquer came first, And next the relics past; ... Queen Orraca look'd to see The King and his knights come last. She heard the horses tramp behind: At that she turn'd her face: King Affonso and his knights came up All panting from the chase.

Only in Southey's next stanza, as the queen calls on the Virgin, does the situation become clear, but Zukovskij's version of the passage just quoted, though it consists of only one stanza, makes absolutely explicit the queen's plight and her sudden horrified awareness of it: But where is the king? ... Alas! Uraka weeps: The prophecy will be fulfilled on her! And now, she looks ... with his retinue, Finishing the hunt, King Al'fonzo gallops.

Similarly, at the end of the ballad when the "saintly company" appear to her confessor to discharge the promise to Queen Orraca to say a mass for her soul "on [her] dying day," Zukovskij has them add a clarifying statement not in the original: "The earth is now receiving her." In the penultimate stanza of Southey's original, the martyrs direct the confessor to report to King Affonso what he has seen. In the last stanza, however, there is no indication that he acts on these orders: There was loud knocking at the door, As the heavenly vision fled; And the porter called to the confessor, To tell him the Queen was dead.

In a significant change Zukovskij's final stanza has the confessor hurry from the church to report to Affonso and substitutes the ringing of the funeral bells for the knocking of the porter: And everything disappeared ... Leaving the church, the friar Hurries to Al'fonzo with the sad news ... Suddenly resounded heavily the funeral ringing: It announced the queen's death.

Southey, in a headnote to "Mary, the Maid of the Inn," traces the idea back to a story he learned as a schoolboy involving an incident supposed to have occurred at an abbey in the north of England. He expresses the opinion that the story derived ultimately from a roughly parallel episode described in Plot's History of Staffordshire. The poet begins by contrasting "yonder poor Maniac," Mary, with the Mary that was: "No damsel so lovely, no damsel so gay,/As Mary the Maid of the Inn." Very much in love with the worthless Richard and always cheerful and happy with the guests, she is plunged into madness one night when she fearlessly visits the ruins of a nearby abbey, in order to oblige a customer who has bet a dinner that she will walk there in the darkness. She hears footsteps, and, when the clouds part briefly, she sees two murderers carrying a corpse. When one of the ruffians loses his hat, she seizes it and runs back to the inn. Ere yet her pale lips could the story impart, For a moment the hat met her view;-Her eyes from that object convulsively start, For ... what a cold horror then thrill'd through her heart When the name of her Richard she knew! Where the old Abbey stands, on the common hard by, His gibbet is now to be seen; His irons you still from the road may espy, The traveller beholds them and thinks with a sigh Of poor Mary the Maid of the Inn.

In "Jaspar," another ballad with an English locale, Southey tells the story of a man who turns highwayman through natural inclination and the pressure of need. One evening the ruffian, Jaspar, takes his station beside a quiet stream that crosses a lonely road, waits until a passer-by approaches, clubs him to death, robs the body, and throws it into the river. There was no human eye had seen The blood the murderer spilt, And Jaspar's conscience never knew The avenging goad of guilt.

Years later in an alehouse he meets Jonathan, an honest man who has lost everything and whose wife is very ill. Jaspar tempts him into waylaying his landlord, who has just seized Jonathan's last bit of property. Together they wait for the landlord beside the stream where years before Jaspar murdered his earlier victim. Jonathan, his conscience stirred by the beauty of the natural scene, changes his mind, and Jaspar's protestations that the dark night and the deep river will protect them from discovery do not reassure him: "What matters that," said Jonathan, Whose blood began to freeze, "When there is One above whose eye "The deeds of darkness sees!" "We are sate enough," said Jaspar then, "If that be all thy fear! "Nor eye below, nor eye above, "Can pierce the darkness here." That instant as the murderer spake There came a sudden light; Strong as the mid-day sun it shone, Though all around was night: It hung upon the willow tree, It hung upon the flood, It gave to view the poplar isle, And all the scene of blood.

Jaspar thereupon goes mad, and the poet tells how he dwells unsheltered on the bank: The summer suns, the winter storms, O'er him unheeded roll, For heavy is the weight of blood Upon the maniac's soul!

In his translations of "God's Judgment on a Bishop," "Donica," and "Queen Orraca," it is obvious that Zukovskij, with the various qualifications already noted, generally defers to his original author where theme, motivation, and characterization are concerned. Strictly speaking, he is equally faithful in his treatments of "Mary, the Maid of the Inn" and "Jaspar." There is, however, one crucial difference in his treatment of these two latter poems: Zukovskij presents them within the context of a longer work which is his own invention. This poem, entitled "There Were Two and One More," provides a frame of Zukovskij's own devising which incorporates Southey's two poems and a third work, the German writer Johann Peter Hebel's "Kannitverstan." The action of the frame takes place in an idyllic German landscape along the Rhine River. A grandfather serenely smokes his pipe and indulgently contemplates his several grandchildren, some of whom are industriously at work at the spinning wheel and one or two of whom are lazily playing with their dog. Suddenly one of the children begs Grandfather for a fairy tale. He somewhat grumpily promises to tell them, not one fairy tale, but two true stories. These two "true" stories eventually prove to be Southey's "Mary, the Maid of the Inn" and "Jaspar." Before turning to the stories, however, Grandfather, in one of the most memorable passages in the poems now under consideration, draws the children's attention to the almost Arcadian scene around them: Children, look how everything before us is beautiful; how the sun, Slowly sinking from the sky, showers everything with rays; The Rhine is suffused with gold; the grain harvest is like a calm sea; The green hills glow in the evening light; along the roads Noise and movement; raising sails, the loaded barks Run quickly on the waters; and our parish church ... Its windows like fires shine among the dark lindens; Around, the crosses in the cemetery flash, and in the warm air The birds hover, the midges flash in a glittering dust; It is all lull of speech, singing, buzzing ... beautiful Is the Lord's world! the heart is so happy, sweet, and free! You will say: where in this beautiful world of the Lord's would There be unhappiness? But no! and not only unhappiness villainy Finds a place in it. Do you see there, on the high hillock, The castle in ruins? Now on the walls blooms the green Ivy, and the sun gilds it, and a resounding song, carefree, Sitting in the grass, a shepherd is playing on his horn there. And in the Rhine Do you see the small island? A young maple Grove has burgeoned on it: under its shade, having spread His nets, the fisherman is preparing his supper, and the smoke in a blue Stream winds against the dark greenery. Look, it is such a beautiful Paradise. But listen: very recently there, on the hillock, Near the ruins of the castle, stood an inn--a clean, Light, spacious house, under the sign of the Black Boar. In this inn every passer-by at that time could see Poor Emi.

The island in the Rhine marks the scene of Jaspar's crime and his madness; the castle--Southey's abbey metamorphosed and the Black Boar Inn figure in Zukovskij's version of "Mary, the Maid of the Inn." "Poor Emi" is Southey's Mary who, like Southey's Jaspar (Kaspar, in Zukovskij's version), is driven mad by her experience. Zukovskij's editor says that the frame belongs to Zukovskij himself, and there is no reason to doubt that statement (Zukovskij, II, 479). However, the situation resembles that of Southey's "The Battle of Blenheim," in which a German grandfather, "Old Kaspar," tries repeatedly and without marked success to explain to his grandchildren how and why Blenheim was "a famous victory." Zukovskij's substitution of the name Kaspar for Jaspar in his version of Southey's ballad adds plausibility to the suggestion that he might have remembered Southey's "Blenheim" when he devised the frame for "There Were Two and One More."

Zukovskij, as we have noted, did not find it necessary to make any essential changes in Southey's two ballads, least of all in the plots. Both ballads in the original, however, are examples of Southey's objective, understated ballad style: in both the author maintains a certain distance from his subject and from his reader. Zukovskij, in fitting them into the frame, in which the old grandfather tells his adoring grandchildren "true" stories, forfeits the advantages of Southey's low-keyed approach for the sake of his larger purpose.

Southey's ballad "Mary, the Maid of the Inn" is ostensibly occasioned by the narrator's catching sight of Mary, "yonder poor Maniac," whose present plight is pictured and then contrasted briefly with her earlier carefree state. But Zukovskij's Grandfather tells the story of Emi, who, driven mad by her experience in the castle ruins, is granted the boon of death: The merciful Lord did not give her long to suffer On the earth: they carried her off to the cemetery.... Everything has disappeared now, and the inn is no longer: only the grave Of poor Emi blooms as it has bloomed....

Where Southey contents himself with a general observation about Mary's gaiety and loveliness in her days as maid at the inn, Zukovskij's Grandfather speaks at length on her excellent qualities: Who was always so neatly and properly dressed? Whom did our priest Set as an example for all the girls? Who, noisy as a frisky child At games, was so piously quiet at prayer? In a word: who was a friend to the poor, cared for the sick, wept with the distressed, With children played, like a child? Always Emi, always Emi.

And he speculates about the reasons for her unfortunate love for the murderer (named Brand in the translation): Whether by some sort of sorcery he made Emi love him, Whether the Lord himself wanted to send her a test on earth, So that her soul, purified here in sufferings, directly Crossed over to paradise--I don't know....

Southey's ballad, in addition to being presented for its own sake, is used by Zukovskij for developing and establishing the character of the old man in the frame and for illustrating the old man's sentimental and moralistic outlook and point of view.

Like Mary-Emi, Jaspar-Kaspar, as we have seen, is finally driven mad by his experience. (Needless to say, this is probably the only similarity between the two characters.) Zukovskij's handling of the concluding passage of this part of "There Were Two and One More" is truly a bravura performance. As Kaspar and Ven'jamin (the translator's name for Southey's Jonathan) lie in wait for the grasping landlord, Ven'jamin's better nature begins to reassert itself, as in the original. When Kaspar assures him that darkness and the river will conceal their crime, Ven'jamin, like Jonathan, protests that there is a witness in heaven. As Kaspar scoffs, Ven'jamin runs away. (One presumes that Jonathan in the original also makes his escape, but Southey does not say). And at this moment The dark sky was split by a bright, frightful ray; Everything around was wrapped in the darkness of the tomb; only at that Place, where Kaspar thought to hide, it was bright as clear Noontime. And now before his eyes was repeated Everything that he had once committed here in the darkness of deep Night alone: he heard the noise of the corpse falling into the water; He saw the black corpse on the illuminated waves; The waves parted, the corpse sank in them, and everything grew dark.

Here Zukovskij takes a suggestion from the original, Southey's reference to "the scene of blood," and expands it magnificently, as Kaspar, suddenly overwhelmed by his guilt, witnesses the reenactment of his crime.

In his conclusion Southey describes in conventional terms Jaspar's ensuing madness and obsessive sense of guilt: "His cheek is pale, his eye is wild,/His look bespeaks despair"; "He thinks upon his untold crime,/And never dares to pray"; "For heavy is the weight of blood/Upon the maniac's soul!" Zukovskij, however, in a passage even too lavish of imagery, has the old grandfather describe with obvious zest the maniac's physical and mental state: He knew no shelter; He was ugly; a lace like bark, eyes like two coals, Hair in tufts, nails on his fingers like black claws, In place of clothing, rotting rags; thin, emaciated, Infirm, all his ribs showing, he in terror constantly pressed himself to the cliff, As if he wanted to hide in it, and constantly looked Vaguely around; but sometimes he would suddenly run out and, at the sky Wildly fixing his eyes, would whisper: "He sees, he sees."

In the closing lines of this passage the Russian poet powerfully conveys a sense of the intolerable burden of guilt carried by the madman, who knows at last that God sees the truth and that vengeance is His.

Zukovskij came to be regarded by his Russian contemporaries as, next to Puskin, the greatest poet of his time (Mirsky, p. 76). This man found the ballads of Robert Southey worthy of his attention as translator, first, at an early stage of his career and, finally, at a time when he was established as a mature and respected poet. A careful reading of the ballads reveals why they won and held Zukovskij's interest. A fascinating choice of subjects from various obscure sources and an economical, steady, and restrained treatment of them in a context of naivete tinged with irony enable Southey, at his best, to create ballads of which the old ballad writers would not have been ashamed.

A personal and immediate involvement with his themes and characters and a real talent for choosing the vivid image and the right supplementary detail to bring some aspect of the original poem into sharper focus enable Zukovskij, at his best, to translate Southey's ballads into poems which have taken their place in his own conntry's literature. As Zukovskij said: "Almost everything I have is someone else's, and yet everything is my own."

KENNETH H. OBER

University of Illinois

WARREN U. OBER

University of Waterloo

Notes

(1) This article is reprinted here with the kind permission of the editors of the The Wordsworth Circle, where it first appeared in The Wordsworth Circle, 5 (1974): 76-88.

(2) Lord Byron ill His Letters, ed. V. H. Collins (London: John Murray, 1927), p. 280; A. Bruckner, Geschichte der russischen Litteratur (Leipzig: Amelangs Verlag, 1905), p. 165.

(3) D. S. Mirsky, A History of Russian Literature from its Beginnings to 1900, ed. Francis J. Whitfield (New York: Vintage, 1958), pp. 75-79; further references are incorporated in the text.

(4) F. M. Golovencenko and S. M. Petrov, ed., Istorija russkoj literatury XIX veka, I (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe ucebno-pedagogiceskoc izdatel'stvo ministerstva prosvescenija RSFSR, 1960), p. 89.

(5) V. A. Zukovskij, Sobranie socinenij v cetyrex tomax, II (Moscow and Leningrad: GIXL, 1959), p. 456; further references are incorporated in the text.

(6) "Zukovskij's Early Translations of the Ballads of Robert Southey," Slavic and East European Journal, 9 (1965): 181-90. See also our "Zukovskij's First Translation of Gray's Elegy," SEEJ, 10 (1966): 167-72; "Zukovskij's Translation of Oliver Goldsmith's 'The Deserted Village,'" Germano-Slavica, I (1973): 19-28; and "Zukovskij's Translation of Byron's 'The Prisoner of Chillon,'" SEEJ, 17 (1973): 390-8.

(7) Quotations from the five ballads of Southey and his notes on the ballads are taken from The Minor Poems of Robert Southey (London; Longman, 1815), Vol. III.

(8) Quotations from Zukovskij's versions of the ballads of Southey are presented in a literal English translation prepared by the present writers, with no attempt being made to reproduce Zukovskij's versification. Quotations from Zukovskij's translations of Southey's ballads are taken from V.A. Zukovskij, Sobranie socinenij v cetyrex tomax, Vol. II (Moscow and Leningrad: GIXL, 1959).