Poem Translated: “A Memory” by Nikolay Zabolotsky
Though Nikolay Zabolotsky was not yet fifty when he wrote “A Memory” in 1952, he was already a broken man. One of the founders of the Oberiu group, Zabolotsky had started as an avant-guard poet before moving in a more classical direction. Although no dissident, by the late 1930s he’d predictably ended up on the authorities’ black list. Following his arrest, Zabolotsky was tortured to the point where his mind slipped into a mental twilight and he began to hallucinate. Paradoxically, this might have saved him from the death penalty, since the authorities were prepared to show “leniency” to those deemed mentally unsound. Zabolotsky was sent to a Siberian camp and later exiled to equally inhospitable climes. Still, he survived and was allowed to return to Moscow after almost eight years of penal servitude and exile. His heart would continue to beat, despite one heart attack, until 1958, when the second heart attack finally claimed him. He had outlived Stalin, the country’s chief tormentor, by five years. Whether that can be called luck, is hard to say. In totalitarian regimes, physical extinction is not the only kind of death, nor did the years spent in the crosshairs of the regime fail to leave their mark on Zabolotsky’s health. “A Memory” is a poignant meditation on the wintry sunset of one poet’s life. As always, I made every effort not to stray too far from the meaning while preserving the poem’s rhyme. The original text in Russian follows my translation further below.
Long months of torpor have descended;
Perhaps my life has run its course;
It tarries long after the day has ended,
Reflecting on its finished chores.
Its mouth rejects a loaded platter;
There is no wine it can abide;
It listens to the rowan’s chatter
And to the goldfinch’s song outside.
The song’s about a distant place,
Where in the blizzard one makes out
A lonely grave in the embrace
Of a crystal, snow-laced shroud.
Where stands a silent birch that lost
Its roots to gelid, frozen earth;
Where high above, within a disc of frost,
A crimson, bloodied moon sails forth.
***
Наступили месяцы дремоты…
То ли жизнь действительно прошла,
То ль она, закончив все работы,
Поздней гостьей села у стола.
Хочет пить — не нравятся ей вина,
Хочет есть — кусок не лезет в рот.
Слушает, как шепчется рябина,
Как щегол за окнами поет.
Он поет о той стране далекой,
Где едва заметен сквозь пургу
Бугорок могилы одинокой
В белом кристаллическом снегу.
Там в ответ не шепчется береза,
Корневищем вправленная в лёд.
Там над нею в обруче мороза
Месяц окровавленный плывёт.
The Writings of Scriptor Adorans 