Poem translated: “The Devil’s Voice” by Konstantin Balmont

Man is a rebellious creature. This is the meaning of the metaphor of original sin. The transgression in the Garden of Eden was man’s first revolutionary act; in scope and consequence, it was also his greatest and most daring. He’s been at it ever since. “Bogoborchestvo,” the Russian word for theomachy, literally means “God-fighting,” and it is well represented in the poetry of Konstantin Balmont, a Symbolist poet and one of the major exponents of the Russian Silver Age. Balmont himself was anything but docile. Born in 1867, he was endowed with a tempestuous and – common among poets – mentally erratic nature. His involvement in seditious activities led to his dismissal from university; more than a decade later, his departure from tsarist Russia. He greeted the Bolshevik Revolution with enthusiasm when it came but, sure enough, found the Bolsheviks were not much of an improvement on the tsar. He eventually had to emigrate. 

Balmont also rebelled against the metaphysical order. The apparent starting point was a suicide attempt in the 1890s. Already at a low ebb, Balmont had decided to end his life after reading The Kreutzer Sonata, one of the few Tolstoy works one should never read, above all when one is at a low ebb. Balmont jumped out of a third-floor window but survived, spending a year in bed and the rest of his life with a limp. He would never repeat the performance, but his restive spirit went on to leave its mark on his art, though with the levity particular to the Silver Age. The poem “The Devil’s Voice” (1903) was one such foray into metaphysical insurgency. It is an outburst against Christianity but an inconsequential one. Despite its bitterness and cynicism, it is a little too conscious of the audience. The poem appeared in a collection called Danses Macabres, a rather impish name for a theistic cri de coeur, and as an expression of the author’s worldview it should perhaps not be taken too seriously. Balmont was not a philosopher but a poet, and a thespian one at that. In fact, with his red mane of hair and pointy Mephistophelean beard, he was something of a poseur. This is not a slur – he was simply at one with the epoch. The Russian philosopher Fyodor Stepun, who experienced the Silver Age first-hand, wrote later that it was flighty and irresponsible. The times lacked sobriety, gravitas, and reflection. The peaks that the spiritual elites and cultural Brahmins of the Silver Age wanted to scale weren’t mountain summits but so many inchoate clouds drifting in the sky; instead of using maps and compasses, those sleepwalkers followed the stars. Everyone was having too much fun. 

All that intoxication ended in disaster and a protracted hangover. No one was spared, neither great nations nor great poets. Following the Bolshevik Revolution, Balmont settled in France, where, in the obscurity of the Russian émigré community, he slowly faded away as a relic of bygone times, a castaway who had been thrown off Mayakovsky’s “ship of modernity.” He died in 1942, when France was administered by the Nazis and people had other worries on their minds than unfashionable Russian poets. Few bothered to show up at his funeral. It rained heavily that day, and the grave got flooded. According to witnesses, a pole had to be used to keep the coffin from floating while the grave was filled in. For the author of “The Devil’s Voice,” that lightheaded flirtation with the prince of darkness, this was anticlimactic. But death always is. 

Stylistically “The Devil’s Voice” is not flawless, but it is mischievously delightful in its own way and is certainly worth a new translation. Given the number of existing English renderings of this poem, mine will hardly cause a traffic jam. The original Russian text can be found at the end.

I passionately loathe all saints,
Their torturous preoccupation
With any lowly thought that taints
Their privileged, unique salvation.

For purity of soul they ache;
Oneiric depths fill them with terror;
They execute the subtle Snake
Without remorse or fear of error.

I’d hate the thought of Paradise
Where fleeting shadows contemplate
With timid smiles the time that flies,
The endless life that is one vernal fete.

I would not live in Paradise
Which puts the Serpent’s wiles on trial,
Wiles I’ve enjoyed much like a vice
Or lovely paintings that beguile.

I would not live in Paradise,
Surrounded by righteous bores;
The demon in me sings and dies
Among lush dreams that sin adores.

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Я ненавижу всех святых, –
Они заботятся мучительно
О жалких помыслах своих,
Себя спасают исключительно.

За душу страшно им свою,
Им страшны пропасти мечтания,
И ядовитую Змею
Они казнят без сострадания.

Мне ненавистен был бы Рай
Среди теней с улыбкой кроткою,
Где вечный праздник, вечный май
Идёт размеренной походкою.

Я не хотел бы жить в Раю,
Казня находчивость змеиную.
От детских дней люблю Змею,
И ей любуюсь, как картиною.

Я не хотел бы жить в Раю,
Меж тупоумцев экстатических.
Я гибну, гибну, – и пою,
Безумный демон снов лирических.