POUNDING THE CLAVICHORD
The author of a soon-to-be-published translation may find it awkward to criticize a justpublished version ot the same work, but in the present case I can, and should, master my embarrassment; for something must be done, some lone, hoarse voice must be raised, to defend both the helpless dead poet and the credulous college student from the kind of pitiless and irresponsible paraphrast whose product * I am about to discuss. [* Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin. A new translation in the Oucgui stanza with an introduction and notes by Waller Arndt. A Dutton paperback, New York, 1963.]
The task of twisting some five thousand Russian iambic tetrameters, with a rigid pattern of masculine and feminine rhymes, into an equal number of similarly rhymed English iambic tetrameters is a monstrous undertaking, and I who have limited my efforts to a plain, prosy, and rhymeless translation of Eugene Onegin feel a certain morbid admiration for Mr. Arndt's perseverance. A sympathetic reader, especially one who does not consult the original, may find in Mr. Arndt's version more or less sustained stretches of lulling poetastry and specious sense; but anybody with less benevolence and more knowledge will see how patchy the passable really is.
Let me, first of all, present side by side a literal translation of two stanzas (Six: xxxvixxxvii) and Mr. Arndt's version. It is a sample of one of those passages in his work that are free from howlers, and that llie passive reader (the pet of progressive educators) might accept as a tolerable translation:
1. My friends, you're sorry for the poet
My friends, you will lament for the poet
2. in the bloom of glad hopes,
Who, flowering with a happy gift
3. not having yet fulfilled them for the world,
Must wilt before he could bestow it
4. scarce out or infant clothes,
Upon the world, yet scarce adrift
5. withered! Where is the ardent stir
From boyhoods shore. Now he will never
6. the noble aspiration,
Seethe with that generous endeavor
7. of young emotions and young thoughts,
Audacious, — tender or bumane!
8. exalted, tender, bold?
Those storms of mind and heart again,
9. Where are love's turbulent desires,
Stilled now are love's unruly urges
10. the thirst for knowledges and work
The thirst for knowledge and for deeds
11. the dread of vice and shame,
Contempt for vice and what it breeds,
12. and you, fond musings.
And stilled you too, ethereal surges
13. you, token of unearthly fife,
Breath of a transcendental clime,
14. you, dreams of sacred poetry!
Dreams from the sacred realm of rhyme.
1. Perhaps, for the world's good
Perchance the world would have saluted
2. or, at least, for glory he was born;
In him a savior or a sage;
3. his silenced lyre might have aroused
His ly-ere, now forever muted,
4. a resonant, uninterrupted ringing
Might have resounded down the age
5. throughout the ages. There awaited
In ceaseless thunder, and have fated
6. the poet, on the stair-way of the world
Its bearer to be elevated
7. perhaps, a lofty stair.
To high rank on the worldly grade;
8. His martyred shade has carried
Or haply with his martyred shade
9. away with him, perhaps,
Some holy insight will they bury
10. a sacred mystery, and for us
A gem, perchance, of wisdom choice
11. dead is a life-creating voice,
Now perished with his vital
12. and to his shade beyond the tomb's confines
The hymn of ages will not carry
13. will not rush up the hymn of races
Deep into his sepulchral den
14. the blessing of the ages.
The benedictions of all men.
I have italicized such verbal gobbets as are not found, or found in another form, in Pushkin's text. Omissions, here and throughout the version, are too numerous and ingrained to be profitably catalogued. Passive readers will derive, no doubt, a casual illusion of sense from Arndt's actually nonsensical line 2 of xxxvi. They will hardly notice that the chancrous metaphor in lines 45 inflicted by a meretricious rhyme is not Pushkin's fault, nor wonder at the naive temerity a paraphrast has of throwing in his own tropes when he should know that the figure of speech is the main, sacred quiddity and eyespot of a poet's genius, and is the last thing that should be tampered with. In the second stanza presented here our passive readers may skim over some other added metaphors, such as the «buried insight», the «gem of wisdom», and the «sepulchral den» (which suggests a dead lion rather than a dead poet). They may also swallow the «high rank» (which implies the sort of favor a meek poet like Zhukovski received from the Tsar, and not at all the «lofty stair» which Pushkin invokes); but perhaps the «thunder-bearer» of lines 5 — 6 shall briefly cause them to stumble.
These, I repeat, are types of the least offensive among Mr. Arndt's stanzas. A closer examination of the actual technique of his various mistranslations brings out the following points:
1. Natural objects changing their species or genus: «flea» turns into «roach», «aspen» into «ash», «birch» and «lime» into «beech», «pine» (many times) into «fir», and «racemose bird cherry» (cheryomuha) into «alder» (the harmful drudges who compile Russian-English dictionaries have at least, under cheryomuha, «black alder», i.e. «alder buckthorn», which is wrong, but not as wrong as Arndt's tree).
2. Transformation of names: «Prince N», Tatiana's husband, turns into «Prince M»; Griboedov's hero «Chatski» into «Chaatsky» (possibly through hybridization with Pushkin's friend Chaadaev); Tatiana's aunt «Pelageya Nikolavna» into «Pelya», an insufferable diminutive; another aunt, «Princess Aline», into the ridiculous «Princess Nancy»; Onegin's housekeeper, «Anisia», into «Mistress Anna», and «Vanya», the husband of Tatiana's nurse, into «Larry».
3. Anachronisms: Triquet's «spectacles» are said to be «gold pince-nez»; the «jams in jars» taken by Mrs. Larin to Moscow become «cans of jelly», and a traveler is introduced as «fresh from the station».
4. Comic scansion: «... where ou-er hero lately dwelled»; «... and ou-er luckless damzel tasted» (many more «ouer»s throughout). The same with endings in «ire»; «fiere», «squiere», «desiere», and so on. «Business» is scanned in a Germanic trisyllabic way («no service, business or wife»), and, in another line, «egoism» is generously granted four syllables as if it were «egoisum».
5. Burlesque rhymes: Feeler-Lyudmila, capital-ball, binoculars — stars, char — Africa, family — me, thrillerspillows, invadersdays does; and rhymes based on dialect pronunciation: meadow-shadow, message-passage, tenor-manor, possession — fashion, bury — carry, and so on.
6. Crippled cliches and mongrel idioms: «my flesh is parched with thirst», «the mother streaming with tears», «the tears from Tania's lashes gush», «what ardor at her breast is found».