timeripple (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeripple) wrote2012-04-29 07:10 pm
timeripple) wrote2012-04-29 07:10 pm
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but more tender than a sister
O poetry month, wherefore art thou so soon ended? Here is my favorite translation of one of my favorite poems by Anna Akhmatova. I suspect it is not the most accurate version--some of the word choices are downright puzzling--but I am particularly fond of the last stanza as rendered by this translator.
A log bridge blackened and twisted.
The burdocks stand as high as a man.
The thick nettle forests sing that
the scythe will not flash through them.
In the evening over the lake a sigh is heard,
rough moss has crawled over the walls.
There I was
twenty-one.
The black, stifling honey
was sweet to the lips.
The twigs tore
my white silk dress,
the nightingale sang unceasingly
on the crooked pine.
At a given call
he came out of hiding,
like a wild wood-spirit,
but more tender than a sister.
Run over the plain,
swim across the river,
then afterwards,
I will not say leave me.
(1917. Tr. Richard McKane. p. 56, Anna Akhmatova: Selected Poems. London: Oxford University Press, 1969. Originally published in Anno Domini.)
A log bridge blackened and twisted.
The burdocks stand as high as a man.
The thick nettle forests sing that
the scythe will not flash through them.
In the evening over the lake a sigh is heard,
rough moss has crawled over the walls.
There I was
twenty-one.
The black, stifling honey
was sweet to the lips.
The twigs tore
my white silk dress,
the nightingale sang unceasingly
on the crooked pine.
At a given call
he came out of hiding,
like a wild wood-spirit,
but more tender than a sister.
Run over the plain,
swim across the river,
then afterwards,
I will not say leave me.
(1917. Tr. Richard McKane. p. 56, Anna Akhmatova: Selected Poems. London: Oxford University Press, 1969. Originally published in Anno Domini.)
no subject
no subject
The only word that really perplexes me is "stifling". I've seen it elsewhere as "sultry," which I have to admit makes more sense but is less nostalgically quirky. Also various translators treat the last stanza differently; I like it very much as it is here, a command with an implied condition: a whole fairy tale quest in four lines.