Pushkin's за

Аpril 25, 2010

Он за тобой

Pushkin, like all classical poets, was best at expressing deep emotion with grace and restraint, or with irony, with an epigram; with fewer words rather than more. He often took recourse to grammar to do this. In one famous lyric, addressed to a former girl friend whom he loved and lost, his vocabulary, at the beginning very stylized, veils the strength of his feelings.

Для берегов отчизны дальной
Ты покидала край чужой;
В час незабвенный, в час печальный
Я долго плакал пред тобой.

For the shores of a remote fatherland / You were leaving an alien place;
In an unforgettable hour, in that sad hour / I wept long before you.

Sounds silly in English. Note the sudden extrametric stress on час in the third line, first syllable. This prolongs the third line and makes it depart from the regular three-ict stresses of the iambic tetrameter in lines 1 and 2: для берегов отчизны дальной is - - / - ´/ - ´/ - ´/ - but the third line is ´- / - ´/ - [] ´/ - ´/ - .

The speaker tries to hold on to her and not let her go, to prolong their farewell kiss. O moment, stay!

Но ты от горького лобзанья
Свои уста оторвала;
Из края мрачного изгнанья
Ты в край иной меня звала.

But you pulled away your lips / from this bitter kiss;
From the gloomy land of exile / you called me to another land.

She is calling him to visit her in her own land, leaving the exile where he, Pushkin, finds himself, exiled from Petersburg and now also from her love.

Ты говорила: "В день свиданья
Под небом вечно голубым,
В тени олив, любви лобзанья
Мы вновь, мой друг, соединим

You said: “When we meet again / Under a sky eternally blue
In the shade of olive trees, we will again, my friend, unite our kisses of love.”

Но там, увы, где неба своды
Сияют в блеске голубом,
Где тень олив легла на воды,
Заснула ты последним сном.

But there, alas, where the arches of heaven / shine in a light-blue glimmer,
Where the shade of the olives lay upon the waters, / You slept your final sleep.

So she has died. An old story, told over again and again in the annals of love. But here comes the burst of feeling which makes this story unique and personal, with the stamp of Pushkin alone.

Твоя краса, твои страданья
Исчезли в урне гробовой -
А с ними поцелуй свиданья...
Но жду его; он за тобой...

Your beauty, your sufferings / Vanished in the sepulchral urn,
And with them, the kiss of greeting;
But I wait for it; you owe it me.

First note that the Slavonic лобзание ‘kiss’, has been replaced by an ordinary everyday Russian поцелуй, which is of course the normal word today. “I am waiting for it (поцелуй);” it is on your account, you promised it to me and you must give it.

The last line, where all the feeling rushes to the surface, is the most ordinary in its vocabulary. Note за with the instrumental here (see previous blog); it stands behind you, you are responsible for it, you answer for it, you ‘have’ it in your control.

gmc