POEMS
BY
ALEXANDER PUSHKIN
Translated from the Russian, with Introduction and Notes
BY IVAN PANIN
BOSTON
CUPPLES AND HURD
94 BOYLSTON STREET
1888
TO
MRS. JOHN L. GARDNER,
WHO WAS THE FIRST TO RECOGNIZE HELPFULLY
WHATEVER MERIT THERE IS IN
THIS BOOK.
CONTENTS
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE
Introduction.
I. POETIC IDEAL
II. INNER LIFE
III. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS
Autobiographical Poems.
MON PORTRAIT
MY PEDIGREE
MY MONUMENT
MY MUSE
MY DEMON
REGRET
REMINISCENCE
ELEGY
RESURRECTION
THE PROPHET
Narrative Poems.
THE OUTCAST
THE BLACK SHAWL
THE ROUSSALKA
THE COSSAK
THE DROWNED
Poems of Nature.
THE BIRDLET
THE CLOUD
THE NORTH WIND
WINTER MORNING
WINTER EVENING
THE WINTER-ROAD
Poems of Love.
THE STORM-MAID
THE BARD
SPANISH LOVE-SONG
LOVE
JEALOUSY
IN AN ALBUM
THE AWAKING
ELEGY
FIRST LOVE
ELEGY
THE BURNT LETTER
"SING NOT, BEAUTY"
SIGNS
A PRESENTIMENT
"IN VAIN, DEAR FRIEND"
LOVE'S DEBT
INVOCATION
ELEGY
SORROW
DESPAIR
A WISH
RESIGNED LOVE
LOVE AND FREEDOM
NOT AT ALL
INSPIRING LOVE
THE GRACES
Miscellaneous Poems.
THE BIRDLET
THE NIGHTINGALE
THE FLOWERET
THE HORSE
TO A BABE
THE POET
TO THE POET
THE THREE SPRINGS
THE TASK
SLEEPLESSNESS
QUESTIONINGS
CONSOLATION
FRIENDSHIP
FAME
THE ANGEL
HOME-SICKNESS
INSANITY
DEATH-THOUGHTS
RIGHTS
THE GYPSIES
THE DELIBASH
NOTES
Preface: Bibliographical.
1. The text I have used for the following translations is that of the
edition of the complete works of Pushkin in ten volumes, 16mo., by
Suvorin, St. Petersburg, 1887. The poems form Volumes III. and IV.
of that edition. Accordingly, I have designated after each heading,
volume, and page where the poem is to be found in the original. Thus,
for example, "My Muse, IV. 1," means that this poem is found in Volume
IV. of the above edition, page 1.
2. I have translated Pushkin literally word for word, line for line. I
do not believe there are as many as five examples of deviation from the
literalness of the text. Once only, I believe, have I transposed two
lines for convenience of translation; the other deviations are (_if_
they are such) a substitution of an _and_ for a comma in order to make
now and then the reading of a line musical. With these exceptions, I
have sacrified _everything_ to faithfulness of rendering. My object was
to make Pushkin himself, without a prompter, speak to English readers.
To make him thus speak in a foreign tongue was indeed to place him
at a disadvantage; and music and rhythm and harmony are indeed fine
things, but truth is finer still. I wished to present not what Pushkin
would have said, or should have said, if he had written in English,
but what he does say in Russian. That, stripped from all ornament of
his wonderful melody and grace of form, as he is in a translation, he
still, even in the hard English tongue, soothes and stirs, is in itself
a sign that through the individual soul of Pushkin sings that universal
soul whose strains appeal forever to man, in whatever clime, under
whatever sky.
3. I ask, therefore, no forgiveness, no indulgence even, from the
reader for the crudeness and even harshness of the translation,
which, I dare say, will be found in abundance by those who _look_ for
something to blame. Nothing of the kind is necessary. I have done the
only thing there was to be done. Nothing more _could_ be done (I mean
by me, of course), and if critics still demand more, they must settle
it not with me, but with the Lord Almighty, who in his grim, yet arch
way, long before critics appeared on the stage, hath ordained that it
shall be impossible for a thing to be and not to be at the same time.
4. I have therefore tried neither for measure nor for rhyme. What I
have done was this: I first translated each line word for word, and
then by reading it aloud let mine ear arrange for me the words in such
a way as to make some kind of rhythm. Where this could be done, I was
indeed glad; where this could not be done, I was not sorry. It is idle
to regret the impossible.
5. That the reader, however, may see for himself what he has been
spared by my abstinence from attempting the impossible, I give
one stanza of a metrical translation by the side of the literal
rendering:--
LITERAL:
The moment wondrous I remember
Thou before me didst appear,
Like a flashing apparition,
Like a spirit of beauty pure.
METRICAL:[1]
Yes! I remember well our meeting,
When first thou dawnedst on my sight,
Like some fair phantom past me fleeting,
Some nymph of purity and light.
Observe, Pushkin the real does not appear before the reader with a
solemn affirmation, Yes, or No, nor that he remembers it _well_. He
tells the story in such a way that the reader knows without being told
that he does indeed remember it well! Nor does he weaken the effect by
saying that he remembers the _meeting_, which is too extended, but the
_moment_, which is concentrated. And Pushkin's imagination was moreover
too pure to let a _fleeting_ phantom _dawn_ upon his sight. To have
tried for a rendering which necessitated from its very limitations
_such_ falsities, would have been not only to libel poor Pushkin, but
also to give the reader poor poetry besides.
[Footnote 1: Blackwood's Magazine, lviii. 35, July, 1845.]
6. The translation being literal, I have been able to retain even the
punctuation of Pushkin, and especially his dots, of which he makes
such frequent use. They are part of his art; they express by what
they withhold. I call especial attention to these, as Pushkin is as
powerful in what he indicates as in what he shows, in what he suggests
as in what he actually says. The finest example of the highest poetry
of his _silence_ (indicated by his dots) is the poem I have entitled
"Jealousy," to which the reader is particularly requested to turn with
this commentary of mine (p. 114). The poet is melted with tenderness at
the thought of his beloved all alone, far-off, weeping. The fiendish
doubt suddenly overpowers him, that after all, perhaps his beloved is
at that moment not alone, weeping for him, but in the arms of another:--
Alone ... to lips of none she is yielding
Her shoulders, nor moist lips, nor snow-white fingers.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
None is worthy of her heavenly love.
Is it not so? Thou art alone.... Thou weepest....
And I at peace? . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
But if . . . . . . .
One must be all vibration in order to appreciate the matchless power of
the dots here. The poem here ends. I know not the like of this in all
literature.
7. Wherever I could ascertain the date of a poem, I have placed it at
the end. The reader will thus at a glance find at least one of the
proper relations of the poems to the poet's soul. For this purpose
these two dates should be borne constantly in mind: Pushkin was born in
1799; he died in 1837.
8. To many of his poems Pushkin has given no name. To such, for the
reader's convenience I have supplied names, but have put them in
brackets, which accordingly are to be taken as indication that the name
they enclose is not Pushkin's. Many of his most beautiful poems were
addressed to individuals, and they appear in the original as "Lines
to ------." The gem of this collection, for instance, to which I have
supplied the title, "Inspiring Love"--inadequate enough, alas!--appears
in the original as "To A. P. Kern." As none of these poems have any
_intrinsic_ bond with the personages addressed, their very greatness
lying in their universality, I have supplied my own titles to such
pieces, giving the original title in a note.
9. It was my original intention to make a life of the poet part of this
volume. But so varied was Pushkin's life, and so instructive withal,
that only an extended account could be of value. What is worth doing at
all is worth doing well. A mere sketch would here, for various reasons,
be worse than useless. Critics, who always know better what an author
ought to do than he himself, must kindly take this assertion of mine,
for the present at least, on trust, and assume that I, who have done
some thinking on the subject, am likely to know whereof I speak better
than those whose only claim to an opinion is that they have done no
thinking on the subject, resembling in this respect our modest friends,
the agnostics, who set themselves up as the true, knowing solvers of
the problems of life, because, forsooth, they know nothing.... Anyhow,
even at the risk of offending critics, I have decided to misstate
myself by not giving the life of Pushkin rather than to misstate poor
Pushkin by giving an attenuated, vapid thing, which passes under
the name of a "Sketch." The world judges a man by what is known of
him, forgetting that underneath the thin film of the known lies the
immeasurable abyss of the unknown, and that the true explanation of the
man is found not in what is visible of him, but in what is invisible
of him. Unless, therefore, I could present what is known of Pushkin
in such a manner as to suggest the unknown (just as a study of nature
should only help us to trust that what we do _not_ know of God is
likewise good!) I have no business to tell of his life. But to tell of
it in such a way that it shall represent Pushkin, and not misrepresent
him, is possible only in an extended life. Otherwise, I should be
telling not how he was living, but how he was starving, dying; and this
is not an edifying task, either for the writer or for the reader.
10. Such a life is now well-nigh writ, but it is too long to make part
of this volume.
I. POETIC IDEAL.
1. Pushkin was emphatically a subjective writer. Of intense
sensibility, which is _the_ indispensable condition of creative
genius, he was first of all a feeler with an Æolian attachment. He
did not even have to take the trouble of looking into his heart in
order to write. So full of feeling was his heart that at the slightest
vibration it poured itself out; and so deep was its feeling that what
is poured out is already melted, fused, shaped, and his poems come
forth, like Minerva from Jupiter's head, fully armed. There is a
perfection about them which is self-attesting in its unstudiedness and
artlessness; it is the perfection of the child, touching the hearts of
its beholders all the more tenderly because of its unconsciousness,
effortlessness; it is the perfection which Jesus had in mind when he
uttered that sentence so profound and so little followed because of
its very profundity: "Unless ye be like little children." So calm and
poiseful is Pushkin's poetry that in spite of all his pathos his soul
is a work of architecture,--a piece of frozen music in the highest
sense. Even through his bitterest agony,--and pathos is the one chord
which is never absent from Pushkin's song, as it is ever present in
Chopin's strains, ay, as it ever must be present in any soul that
truly _lives,_--there runneth a peace, a simplicity which makes the
reader exclaim on reading him: Why, I could have done the self-same
thing myself,--an observation which is made at the sight of Raphael's
Madonna, at the oratory of a Phillips, at the reading of "The Vicar of
Wakefield," at the acting of a Booth. Such art is of the highest, and
is reached only through one road: Spontaneity, complete abandonment
of self. The verse I have to think over I had better not write. Man
is to become only a pipe through which the Spirit shall flow; and the
Spirit _shall_ flow only where the resistance is least. Ope the door,
and the god shall enter! Seek not, pray not! To pray is to will, and to
will is to obstruct. The virtue which Emerson praises so highly in a
pipe--that it is smooth and hollow--is the very virtue which makes him
like Nature, an ever open, yet ever sealed book. Bring to him _your_
theories, _your_ preconceived notions, and Emerson, like the great soul
of which he is but a voice, becomes unintelligible, confusing, chaotic.
The words are there; the eyes see them. The dictionary is at hand,
but nought avails; of understanding there is none to be had. But once
abandon will, once abandon self, once abandon opinion (a much harder
abandonment this than either!), and Emerson is made of glass, just as
when I abandon _my_ logic, God becomes transparent enough.... And what
is true of Emerson is true of every great soul.
2. The highest art then is artlessness, unconsciousness. The true
artist is not the conceiver, the designer, the executor, but the
tool, the recorder, the reporter. He writes because write he must,
just as he breathes because breathe he must. And here too, Nature, as
elsewhere, hath indicated the true method. The most vital processes of
life are not the voluntary, the conscious, but the involuntary, the
unconscious. The blood circulates, the heart beats, the lungs fill,
the nerves vibrate; we digest, we fall asleep, we are stirred with
love, with awe, with reverence, without our will; and our highest
aspirations, our sweetest memories, our cheerfullest hopes, and alas!
also our bitterest self-reproaches, come ever like friends at the
feast,--uninvited. You can be happy, blest at will? Believe it not!
Happiness, blessedness _willed_ is not to be had in the market at any
quotation. It is not to be got. It comes. And it comes when least
willed. He is truly rich who has nought left to be deprived of, nought
left to ask for, nought left to will....
3. Pushkin, therefore, was incapable of giving an account of his own
poetry. Pushkin could not have given a theory of a single poem of his,
as Poe has given of his "Raven." Poe's account of the birth of "The
Raven" is indeed most delightful reading. "I told you so," is not
so much the voice of conceit, of "I knew better than thou!" but the
voice of the epicurean in us; it is ever a delight to most of us to
discover after the event that we knew it all before.... Delightful,
then, it is indeed, to read Poe's theory of his own "Raven;" but its
most delightful part is that the theory is a greater fiction than
the poem itself. It is the poem that has created the theory, not the
theory the poem. Neither could Pushkin do what Schiller has done: give
a theory of a drama of his own. The theory of Don Karlos as developed
in Schiller's letters on that play are writ not by Friedrich Schiller
the poet, the darling of the German land, the inspirer of the youth of
all lands, but by Herr von Schiller the professor; by Von Schiller the
Kantian metaphysician; by Von Schiller the critic; by another Schiller,
in short. Pushkin, however, unlike most of us, was not half a dozen
ancestors--God, beast, sage, fool--rolled into one, each for a time
claiming him as his own. Pushkin was essentially a unit, one voice; he
was a lyre, on which a _something, not he_--God!--invisibly played.
4. And this he unconsciously to himself expresses in the piece, "My
Muse."
"From mom till night in oak's dumb shadow
To the strange maid's teaching intent I listened;
And with sparing reward me gladdening,
Tossing back her curls from her forehead dear,
From my hands the flute herself she took.
Now filled the wood was with breath divine
And the heart with holy enchantment filled."
Before these lines Byelinsky, the great Russian critic, stands
awe-struck. And well he may; for in the Russian _such_ softness,
smoothness, simplicity, harmony, and above all sincerity, had not been
seen before Pushkin's day. And though in the translation everything
except the thought is lost, I too as I now read it over on this
blessed Sunday morn (and the bell calling men unto the worship of
the great God is still ringing!), I too feel that even before _this_
sun, shorn of its beams though it be, I am still in hallowed presence.
For the spirit is independent of tongue, independent of form; to
the god-filled soul the leaf is no less beautiful than the flower.
Discrimination, distinction, is only a sign that we are still detached
from the whole; that we are still only _half_; that we are still not
our own selves,--that we still, in short, miss the blessed ONE. To
the god-filled soul the grain of sand is no less beautiful than the
diamond; the spirit breaks through the crust (and words and forms are,
alas, only this!), and recognizes what is its where'er it finds it,
under whate'er disguise. The botanist prizes the weed as highly as the
flower, and with justice, because he seeks not the gratification of the
eye, but of the spirit. The eye is delighted with variety, the spirit
with unity. And the botanist seeks the unity, the whole, the godful in
the plant. And a fine perception it was,--that of Emerson: that a tree
is but a rooted man, a horse a running man, a fish a floating man, and
a bird a flying man. Logical, practical Supreme Court Justice, with one
eye in the back of his head, declares, indeed, such utterance insane,
and scornfully laughs, "I don't read Emerson; my garls do!"[2]but
the self-same decade brings a Darwin or a Heckel with his comparative
embryos; and at the sight of these, not even a lawyer, be he even Chief
Justice of Supreme Court, can distinguish between snake, fowl, dog, and
man.
[Footnote 2: Jeremiah Mason.]
5. In time, however, Pushkin does become objective to himself, as any
true soul that is obliged to reflect must sooner or later; and God ever
sees to it that the soul _be_ obliged to reflect if there be aught
within. For it is the essence of man's life that the soul struggle; it
is the essence of growth that it _push_ upward; it is the essence of
progress in walking that we _fall_ forward. Life is a battle,--battle
with the powers of darkness; battle with the diseases of doubt,
despair, self-will. And reflection is the symptom that the disease is
on the soul, that the battle is to go on.
6. Pushkin then does become in time objective, and contemplates
himself. Pushkin the man inspects Pushkin the soul, and in the poem,
"My Monument," he gives his own estimate of himself:--
"A monument not hand-made I have for me erected;
The path to it well-trodden, will not overgrow;
Risen higher has it with unbending head
Than the monument of Alexander.
No! not all of me shall die! my soul in hallowed lyre
Shall my dust survive, and escape destruction--
And famous be I shall, as long as on earth sublunar
One bard at least living shall remain.
"My name will travel over the whole of Russia great
And there pronounce my name shall every living tongue:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
And long to the nation I shall be dear."
Observe here the native nobility of the man. There is a heroic
consciousness of his own worth which puts to shame all gabble of
conceit and of self-consciousness being a vice, being immodest. Here
too, Emerson sets fine example in not hesitating to speak of his
own essays on Love and Friendship as "those fine lyric strains,"
needing some balance by coarser tones on Prudence and the like. This
is the same heroic consciousness of one's own worth which makes a
Socrates propose as true reward for his services to the State, free
entertainment at the Prytaneum. This is the same manliness which in
a Napoleon rebukes the genealogy-monger who makes him descend from
Charlemagne, with the remark, "I am my own pedigree." This, in fine, is
the same manliness which made Jesus declare boldly, "I am the Way, I am
the Life, I am the Light," regardless of the danger that the "Jerusalem
Advertiser" and the "Zion Nation" might brand him as "deliciously
conceited." This recognition of one's own worth is at bottom the
highest reverence before God; inasmuch as I esteem myself, not because
of my body, which I have in common with the brutes, but because of my
spirit, which I have in common with God; and wise men have ever sung,
on hearing their own merit extolled, Not unto us, not unto us! There is
no merit in the matter; the God is either there or he is not....
7. Pushkin, then, even with this in view, is not so much a conscious
will, as an unconscious voice. He is not so much an individual singer,
as a strain from the music of the spheres; and he is a person, an
original voice, only in so far as he has hitched his wagon to a star.
In his abandonment is his greatness; in his self-destruction, his
strength.
"The bidding of God, O Muse, obey.
Fear not insult, ask not crown:
Praise and blame take with indifference
And dispute not with the fool!"
"And dispute not with the fool!" The prophet never argues; it is
for him only to affirm. Argument is at bottom only a lack of trust
in my own truth. Caesar's wife must be above suspicion: and to bear
misunderstanding in silence,--this is to be great. Hence the noblest
moment in Kepler's life was not when he discovered the planet, but
when he discovered that if God could wait six thousand years for the
understanding by man of one of his starlets, _he_ surely could wait a
few brief years for _his_ recognition by his fellow-men. God is the
great misunderstood, and he--never argues. In living out my truth in
silence, without argument even though misunderstood, I not only show
my faith in it, but prove it by my very strength. If I am understood,
nothing more need be said; if I am not understood, nothing more can be
said. Pushkin, therefore, often weeps, sobs, groans. He at times even
searches, questions, doubts, despairs; but he never argues. Broad is
the back of Pegasus, and strong is his wing, but neither his back nor
his wings shall enable him to float the rhyming arguer. No sooner does
the logician mount the heavenly steed than its wings droop, and both
rider and steed quickly drop into the limbo of inanity. Melancholy,
indeed, is the sight of a dandy dressed for a party unexpectedly
drenched by the shower; sorrowful is the sight of statesman turned
politician before election; and pitiful is the spectacle of the
manufacturing versifier, who grinds out of himself his daily task of
one hundred lines, as the milkman squeezes out his daily can of milk
from the cow. But most pitiful of all, immeasurably pathetic to me, is
the sight of pettifogging logician forsaking his hair-splitting world,
and betaking himself to somersaulting verse. To much the bard is indeed
called, but surely not to that....
8. To affirm then the bard is called, and what in "My Monument" is but
hinted, becomes clear, emphatic utterance in Pushkin's "Sonnet to the
Poet."
"Poet, not popular applause shalt thou prize!
Of raptured praise shall pass the momentary noise;
The fool's judgment thou shalt hear, and the cold mob's laughter--
Calm stand, and firm be, and--sober!
"Thou art king: live alone. On the free road
Walk whither draws thee thy spirit free:
Ever the fruits of beloved thoughts ripening,
Never reward for noble deeds demanding.
"In thyself reward seek. Thine own highest court thou art;
Severest judge, thine own works canst measure.
Art thou content, O fastidious craftsman?
Content? Then let the mob scold,
And spit upon the altar, where blazes thy fire.
Thy tripod in childlike playfulness let it shake."
But because the bard is called to affirm, to inspire, to _serve_, he is
also called to be worn. To become the beautiful image, the marble must
be lopped and cut; the vine to bear sweeter fruit must be trimmed,
and the soul must go through a baptism of fire.... Growth, progress
is thus ever the casting off of an old self, and _Scheiden thut weh_.
Detachment hurts. A new birth can take place only amid throes of agony.
Hence the following lines of Pushkin on the poet:--
... No sooner the heavenly word
His keen ear hath reached,
Then up trembles the singer's soul
Like an awakened eagle.
"The world's pastimes now weary him
And mortals' gossip now he shuns.
. . . . . . . . . .
Wild and stem rushes he
Of tumult full and sound
To the shores of desert wave
Into the wildly whispering wood."
9. This is as yet only discernment that the bard must needs suffer;
by-and-by comes also the fulfilment, the recognition of the wisdom
of the sorrow, and with it its joyful acceptance in the poem of "The
Prophet."
"And out he tore my sinful tongue
. . . . . . . . . .
And ope he cut with sword my breast
And out he took my trembling heart
And a coal with gleaming blaze
Into the opened breast he shoved.
Like a corpse I lay in the desert.
And God's Voice unto me called:
Arise, O prophet, and listen, and guide.
Be thou filled with my will
And going over land and sea
Fire with the word the hearts of men!"
"Be thou filled with my will!" His ideal began with abandonment of
self-will; it ended with complete surrender of self-will. When we have
done all the thinking and planning and weighing, and pride ourselves
upon _our_ wisdom, we are not yet wise. One more step remains to be
taken, without which we only may avoid the wrong; with which, however,
we shall surely come upon the right. We must still say, Teach us, Thou,
to merge our will in Thine....
II. INNER LIFE.
10. I have already stated that Pushkin is a subjective writer. The
great feelers must ever be thus, just as the great reasoners must ever
be objective, just as the great lookers can only be objective. For the
eye looks only on the outward thing; the reason looks only upon the
outward effect, the consequence; but the heart looks not only upon the
thing, but upon its reflection upon self,--upon its moral relation,
in short. Hence the subjectivity of a Tolstoy, a Byron, a Rousseau,
a Jean Paul, a Goethe, who does not become objective until he has
ceased to be a feeler, and becomes the comprehender, the understander,
the seer, the _poised_ Goethe. Marcus Aurelius, Pascal, Amiel, look
into their hearts and write; and Carlyle and Ruskin, even though the
former use "Thou" instead of "I," travel they never so far, still
find their old "I" smiling by their side. But the subjectivity of
Pushkin, unlike that of Walt Whitman, is not only not intrusive, but
it is even delight-giving,--for it paints not the Pushkin that is
different from all other men, but the Pushkin that is in fellowship
with all other men; he therefore, in reporting himself, voices the
very experience of his fellows, who, though feeling it deeply, were
yet unable to give it tongue. It is this which makes Pushkin the poet
in its original sense,--the maker, the sayer, the namer. And herein is
his greatness,--in expressing not what is his, in so far that it is
different from what is other men's, but what is his, _because_ it is
other men's likewise. Herein he is what makes him a man of genius. For
what does a genius do?
11. What is it that makes the water, when spouting forth in a smooth
stream from the hose, such a power? What is it that makes the beauty
of the stem and curve of the body of water, as it leaps out of the
fountain? It is the same water which a few yards back we can see
flowing aimless in stream or pond. Yes, but it is the concentration
of the loose elements into harmonious shape, whether for utility, as
in the case of the hose-spout, or for beauty, as in the case of the
fountain. Nought new is added to the _mass_ existing before. This is
precisely the case of genius. He adds nought to what has gone before
him. He merely arranges, formulates. A vast unorganized mass of
intelligence, of aspiration, of feeling, becomes diffused over mankind.
Soon it seeks organization. The poet, the prophet, the seer, cometh,
and lo, he becomes the magnet round which all spiritual force of the
time groups itself in visible shape, in formulated language.
12. Pushkin, then, is self-centred; but it is the self that is not
Pushkin, but man. His mood is others' mood; and in singing of his life,
he sings of the life of all men. The demon he sings of in the poem
called "My Demon" is not so much his demon alone as also yours, mine,
ours. It is his demon because it is all men's demon.
"A certain evil spirit then
Began in secret me to visit.
Grievous were our meetings,
His smile, and his wonderful glance,
His speeches, these so stinging,
Cold poison poured into my soul.
Providence with slander
Inexhaustible he tempted;
Of Beauty as a dream he spake
And inspiration he despised;
Nor love, nor freedom trusted he,
On life with scorn he looked--
And nought in all nature
To bless he ever wished."
And this demon--"the Spirit of Denial, the Spirit of Doubt"--of which
he sings afterwards so pathetically tormented him long. He began with
"Questionings:"--
"Useless gift, accidental gift,
Life, why art thou given me?
Or, why by fate mysterious
To torture art thou doomed?
"Who with hostile power me
Out has called from the nought?
Who my soul with passion thrilled,
Who my spirit with doubt has filled?..."
And he continues with "Sleeplessness:"--
"I cannot sleep, I have no light;
Darkness 'bout me, and sleep is slow;
The beat monotonous alone
Near me of the clock is heard
Of the Fates the womanish babble,
Of sleeping night the trembling,
Of life the mice-like running-about,--
Why disturbing me art thou?
What art thou, O tedious whisper?
The reproaches, or the murmur
Of the day by me misspent?
What from me wilt thou have?
Art thou calling or prophesying?
Thee I wish to understand,
Thy tongue obscure I study now."
13. And this demon gives him no rest, even long after he had found
the answer,--that the meaning of Life is in _Work_. Solve the problem
of life? _Live_, and you solve it; and to live means to do. But that
work was the solution of the problem of life he indeed discerned but
vaguely. It was with him not yet conscious fulfilment. He had not yet
formulated to himself the gospel he unconsciously obeyed. Hence the
wavering of the "Task:"--
"The longed-for moment here is. Ended is my long-yeared task.
Why then sadness strange me troubles secretly?
My task done, like needless hireling am I to stand,
My wage in hand, to other task a stranger?
Or my task regret I, of night companion silent mine,
Gold Aurora's friend, the friend of my sacred household gods?"
14. And for the same reason, when he had ceased to be a roamer and at
last settled down to quiet home-life, the memory of the days of yore
still gives him a pang; and at the sight of the gypsies, whose free and
easy life once occupied his thoughts seriously, not only to sing of
them, but to live with them, only a plaintive note bursts forth from
his soul:--
"Thee I greet, O happy race!
I recognize thy blazes,
I myself at other times
These tents would have followed.
"With the early rays to-morrow
Shall disappear your freedom's trace,
Go you will--but not with you
Longer go shall the bard of you.
"He alas, the changing lodgings,
And the pranks of days of yore
Has forgot for rural comforts
And for the quiet of a home."
15. And this too when these same "rural comforts" he now regrets to
have taken in exchange for his wanderings were the very circumstances
he sighed for when he did lead the free life he now envies the gypsies
for. For this is what he then had been singing:
"Mayhap not long am destined I
In exile peaceful to remain,
Of dear days of yore to sigh
And rustic muse in quiet
With spirit calm to pursue.
"But even far, in a foreign land
In thought forever roam I shall
Around Trimountain mine:
By meadows, river, by its hills,
By garden, linden, nigh the house."
16. No wonder, therefore, that the demon, having unsettled the poet's
soul with restlessness, should now unsettle his reasoning powers
with regrets. For regret is at bottom a disease, an inability to
perceive that the best way to mend harm once done is not in lamenting
the past, but in struggling for a future; in which future much of
the past could be undone; or if it could not be undone, at least it
could be prevented from contaminating with its corpse the life of
the future. And his regret is bitter enough. In the first of the two
poems, "Regret" and "Reminiscence," the feeling again is as yet only
discernment; but in the second, the poison has already entered his
soul, and accordingly it no longer is a song, but a cry of agony....
At first it is is only--
"But where are ye, O moments tender
Of young my hopes, of heartfelt peace?
The former heat and grace of inspiration?
Come again, O ye, of spring my years!"
But later it becomes--
"Before me memory in silence
Its lengthy roll unfolds,
And with disgust my life I reading
Tremble I and curse it.
Bitterly I moan, and bitterly my tears I shed
But wash away the lines of grief I cannot.
In laziness, in senseless feasts,
In the madness of ruinous license,
In thraldom, poverty, and homeless deserts
My wasted years there I behold...."
17. Regret, in itself a disease, but only of the intellect,
soon changes into a more violent disease: into a disease of the
constitution, which is fear, fear of insanity. In ordinary minds such
disease takes the form of fear for the future, of worry for existence;
in extraordinary minds it takes more ghastly shapes,--distrust of
friends, and dread of the close embrace of what is already stretching
forth its claws after the soul,--insanity.
Hence,--
"God grant I grow not insane:
No, better the stick and beggar's bag;
No, better toil and hunger bear.
. . . . . . . . . .
If crazy once,
A fright thou art like pestilence,
And locked up now shalt thou be.
"To a chain thee, fool, they 'll fasten
And through the gate, a circus beast,
Thee to nettle the people come.
"And at night not hear shall I
Clear the voice of nightingale
Nor the forest's hollow sound,
"But cries alone of companions mine
And the scolding guards of night
And a whizzing, of chains a ringing."
18. That thoughts of death should now be his companions is only to be
expected. But here again his muse plainly sings itself out in both
stages,--the stage of discernment and the stage of fulfilment. In the
first of the two poems, "Elegy" and "Death-Thoughts" he only _thinks_
of death; in the second he already _longs_ for it.
In the first it is only--
"My wishes I have survived,
My ambition I have outgrown!
Left only is my smart,
The fruit of emptiness of heart.
"Under the storm of cruel Fate
Faded has my blooming crown!
Sad I live and lonely,
And wait: Is nigh my end?"
But in the second it already becomes--
"Whether I roam along the noisy streets
Whether I enter the peopled temple,
Whether I sit by thoughtless youth,
Haunt my thoughts me everywhere.
"I say, Swiftly go the years by:
However great our number now,
Must all descend the eternal vaults,--
Already struck has some one's hour.
. . . . . . . . . .
"Every year thus, every day
With death my thought I join
Of coming death the day
I seek among them to divine."
19. Pushkin died young; that he would have conquered his demon in time
there is every reason to believe, though the fact that he had not yet
conquered him at the age of thirty-eight must show the tremendous
force of bad blood, and still worse circumstance, which combined made
the demon of Pushkin. But already he shows signs of having seen the
promised land.
In the three poems, "Resurrection," "The Birdlet" (iv. 133), and
"Consolation," the first shows that he conquered his regret-disease;
the second, that he already found in Love _some_ consolation for
sorrow. And the third shows that he already felt his way at least to
_some_ peace, even though it be not yet _faith_ in the future, but only
hope. For hope is not yet knowledge; it only trusts that the future
will be good. Faith knows that the future _must_ be good, because it is
in the hands of God, the Good.
In the first it is--
"Thus my failings vanish too
From my wearied soul
And again within it visions rise
Of my early purer days."
In the second,--
"And now I too have consolation:
Wherefore murmur against my God
When at least to one living being
I could of freedom make a gift?"
And in the last,--
"In the future lives the heart:
Is the present sad indeed?
'T is but a moment, all will pass...."
This _is_ consoling utterance, but not yet of the highest; and the
loftiest _spiritual_ song, the song of the Psalmist, was not given unto
Pushkin to sing.
III. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS.
20. I have translated the poems of Pushkin not so much because they
are masterpieces in the literature of Russia, as because I think the
English reading-public has much to learn from him. English literature
is already blessed with masterpieces, which, if readers would only
be content to study them for the sake of what they have to _impart_
(not amuse with!), would give enough employment as well as amusement
for all the time an ordinary reader can give to literature. So that
merely for the sake of making new beauty accessible to English readers,
it is hardly worth while to go out of English literature, and drag
over from beyond the Atlantic poor Pushkin as a new beast in a circus
for admiration. The craze for novelty has its place in human nature
but not as an end in itself. As a literary method, it might be found
commendable in a magazine editor, whose highest ambition is to follow
the standard of a public even he does not respect. It might be found
commendable in a gifted author to whom bread is dearer than _his_
genius, so that he is ready to sacrifice the one to the other; but an
inexperienced author, who has not yet learned wisdom (or is it prudence
merely?) from the bitter literary disappointments which are surely in
store for every earnest, aspiring soul,--such an author, I say,--must
not be expected to make _mere_ novelty his motive for serious work.
Nay, the conclusion at which Pascal arrived, at the age of twenty-six,
that there is really only _one_ book that to an earnest soul is
sufficient for a lifetime to read,--namely, the Bible,--extravagant
though this sound, I am ready, after many years of reflection on this
saying of Pascal, to subscribe to, even at an age when I have six
years of experience additional to his.... To read much, but not many
books, is old wisdom, yet ever new. A literary masterpiece is to be
read, not once, nor twice, nor thrice, but scores of times. A literary
masterpiece should, like true love, grow dearer with intercourse. A
literary masterpiece should be read and re-read until it has become
part of our flesh and circulates in our blood, until its purity, its
loftiness, its wisdom, utter itself in our every deed. It is this
devotion to one book that has made the Puritans of such heroic mould;
they _fed_ on one book until they talked and walked and lived out their
spiritual food. If any one think this estimate of the influence of one
great book exaggerated, let him try to live for one week in succession
wholly in the spirit of the one book that to him is _the_ book (I
will not quarrel with him if it be Smiles instead of St. Matthew, or
Malthus's Essay on Population instead of the Gospel of St. John, or
even our modern realistic Gospel of dirt), and let him see what will
come of it.
21. Shakespeare, Milton, Carlyle, Ruskin, Emerson, Scott, Goldsmith,
Irving, Johnson, Addison, furnish a library which is really enough for
the life-time of _any_ one who takes life seriously, and comes to these
masters, not as a conceited lord waiting for amusement,--as a judge,
in short,--but as a beggar, an humble learner, hoping to carry away
from them not the tickle of pleasure, but the life-giving sustenance.
To _make_ letters a source of amusement is but to dig for iron with a
spade of gold. Amusement is indeed often necessary, just as roasting
eggs is often necessary; but who would travel to a volcano for the
sake of roasting his eggs? No, the masters in letters are not sent to
us for our amusement; they are sent to us to give the one answer to
each of us, which at the peril of our lives we must sooner or later
receive,--the answer to the question: How shall we live to be worthy
of that spark from heaven which is given us in trust to keep alive for
the brief years of life on earth? The great masters, then, are the
inspirers; and God ever sees to it that there be enough inspirers, if
men but see to it that there be enough inspired.
22. But of the millions of the English-speaking readers, who to-day
_assimilates_ the masterpieces of English literature? Generations come,
and generations go. The classic writers keep their reputation; but do
they hold their readers? Do the readers hold to the masters? Not the
masters sway the public taste, not the writers of the first rank, not
the giants; but the pygmies, the minions, the men of the second, fifth,
twentieth rank. If any one think me extravagant, let him cast a glance
of his _open_ eyes at our monthly reviews and magazines, both here
and in England, especially those whose circulation reaches into the
hundreds of thousands....
23. Not, then, because _additional_ masterpieces are needed for rousing
our degenerate literary taste have I translated Pushkin. As long as the
literary editors (who, from the very fact of once having the ear of the
public, become the _stewards of the hungry_) insist on feeding it with
the Roes and the Crawfords and the Haggards and the Stevensons and the
rest of them, not only new masterpieces, but even the old ones will
remain unread. The Bible lies on parlor table (if it ever get there!)
unread; Milton lies indeed beautifully bound, but has to be dusted once
a week; and Emerson need not even be dusted,--he has not yet got as far
as to be the ornament of parlor table.
But I have translated Pushkin because I believe that even the masters
of English literature have defects which are part of the English
character; and as such they must reappear in its literature. And it is
against these that Pushkin's poems offer a healthy remedy.
24. For the first characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon race is that it is
a race of talkers; and the destinies of the two most advanced nations
of that race are to-day governed almost wholly by men whose strength
is neither in the head nor in the will nor in the heart, but in the
tongue. But the talker cares only for the effect of the moment. With
the great hereafter he has but little to do; hence he becomes, first of
all, a resounder, a thunderer, a sky-rockety dazzler. And once that,
the orator need not even care whether he persuade or not; if he merely
astound the ear, dazzle the eye, and overwhelm the hearer himself for
the moment,--if, in short, he but produce _an_ effect, even if it be
not _the_ effect desired,--it is well with him in his own estimation.
The orator thus soon becomes the mere rhetorician. And this rhetorical
quality, appealing as it does only to the superficial in man, and
coming as it does only from the surface of the man, is found nowhere
in such excess as in the poetry of the Anglo-Saxon race. Ornament,
metaphor, must be had, and if it cannot be had spontaneously from a
fervid imagination, which alone is the legitimate producer of metaphor,
recourse must be had to manufactured sound. Hence there is scarcely a
single poet in the English tongue whose style is not vitiated by false
metaphor; this is true of the greatest as well as of the least. The
member of Parliament who smelt a rat, and saw it brewing in the air
until it was in danger of becoming an apple of discord to the honorable
members of the House, could have been born only on British soil. To
take up arms against a sea of trouble, and to discover footprints in
the sands of time while sailing over life's solemn main (no less than
five false metaphors in this example from the Psalm of Life!) are feats
that can be accomplished by the imagination of even a Shakespeare or a
Longfellow solely because these are Anglo-Saxons. And I am yet to see
five consecutive pages of any Anglo-Saxon poet free from this literary
vice of false metaphor! I call this a vice because it is at bottom an
insincerity of imagination. The false metaphors are not pictures seen,
but pictures made up; they are not the spontaneous outbursts of an
overflowing imagination, but the ground-out product of pictureless will
for the sake of effect. And this I do not hesitate to call literary
insincerity even though the process of making them up be unconscious at
the time to the poet himself.
25. Now it is Pushkin's great virtue that his imagination is eminently
spontaneous. He seldom uses adjectives; but when he does use them,
he uses such only as do actually describe something. He seldom
uses similes or metaphors,--he prefers to sing of the subjects
themselves, not of what they resemble; but when he does use them,
the reader's imagination is able to _see_ the picture the poet had
in mind, which is not often true of the English bards. Examples for
comparison are innumerable; let a few suffice. Turn to Pushkin's
lines, "Regret." He there regrets the days of his youth, but first
tells by way of contrast what he does not regret; and his poem is
simple, straightforward. Byron, however, in his "Stanzas for Music,"
of which Canon Farrar thought well enough to insert them in his "With
the Poets," and Mr. Palgrave thinks good enough to be admitted into
his "Treasury of English Poetry," finds it necessary to preface it
with something like philosophical remarks, and then proceeds in this
fashion:--
"Then the few whose _spirits float above the wreck of happiness_
_Are driven o'er the shoals of guilt or ocean of excess:_
_The magnet of their course is gone, or only points in vain_
_The shore to which their shivered sail shall never stretch again_.
"Then _the mortal coldness of the soul_ till death itself comes down;
It cannot feel for other's woes, it dare not dream it's own.
_That heavy chill has frozen o'er the fountain of our tears_,
And though the eye may sparkle still, 't is where the ice appears,
"Oh, could I feel as I have felt, or be what I have been,
Or weep as I could once have wept o'er many a vanished scene,
As springs in deserts found seem sweet, all brackish though they be,
_So midst the withered waste of life,_ those tears would flow to me."
One must go to Shakespeare's Sonnets for poetry as false as this. Among
writers with the true poetic feeling, such as Byron truly had, I know
not the like of this except these. Of these twelve lines only the first
two of the last stanza are _true_, are _felt;_ the rest are _made._ How
are _we_, not Arabs but English-talking folk, to know the springs which
in deserts found seem (_do_ they?) sweet, brackish though they be? And
Byron _was_ a poet! But even a Byron cannot make a shivered sail or
a coldness of a soul which is mortal, or a chill that freezes over a
fountain of tears anything but mere verbiage, and verbiage moreover
which instead of the intended sadness is dangerously nigh raising
laughter....
26. Again, take Longfellow's "Hymn to Night:"--
"I heard the trailing garments of the night
Sweep through her marble halls!
I saw her sable skirts all fringed with light
From the celestial walls.
. . . . . . . . . .
From the cool cisterns of the midnight air,
My spirit drank repose."
For the like of this one can no longer go even to Shakespeare's
Sonnets. For Shakespeare was still a poet. One must now go to Mrs.
Deland, who is not even that. For observe:
Night has halls, and these halls are marble halls; and this
marble-hailed Night is unable to stay at home, and must go forth, and
accordingly she does go in full dress with her garments trailing with
a right gracious sweep. And the bard not only sees the sable skirts
which dangle about in fringes made phosphorescent by contact with
the celestial walls of such peculiar marble, but he even hears the
rustle.... And these halls with accommodating grace are changed into
cool, deep cisterns from which accordingly the bard's spirit with due
solemnity draws into his spirit's wide-opened mouth a draught of repose.
27. Turn from this "Hymn to Night" of thirty lines to the three lines
of Pushkin in his "Reminiscence," which alone he devotes to Night:--
"When noisy day to mortals quiet grows,
And upon the city's silent walls
_Night's shadow half-transparent lies."_
The marble halls and the trailing garments were _ground out_ from the
writer's fingers; the half-transparent shadow of the poet _came_ to the
poet....
28. After such examples of wretchedness from real giants such as Byron
and Longfellow indisputably are, I do not hesitate to ask the reader
for a last example to turn first to Pushkin's "Cloud," and then read
Shelley's poem on the same subject:--
"I bear light shade for the leaves _when laid
In their noonday dreams_. [Just _how_ are leaves thus laid?]
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one,
_When rocked to rest on their mother's breast_,
_As she dances about in the sun."_
(Oh, good, my Shelley! one _dances_ to and fro; one cannot dance in
a uniform, straightforward motion. Thy imagination never _saw_ THAT
picture! Spin, whirl, rush,--yes, but _dance_?)
"That orbèd maiden with white fire laden
Whom mortals call the Moon
_Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor_,
By the midnight breezes strewn;
_And wherever the beat of her unseen feet_
Which only the angels hear
May have broken the woof of my tent's roof,
The stars peep behind her and peer."
Who has not been stirred by the sight of the fleece-like, broken clouds
on a moonlight night? But who on looking up to that noble arch overhead
at such a moment could _see_ it as a _floor_?...