Ilya’s post below about intellectuals and inventors who left Soviet Russia for the U.S. reminded me of this poem by Bulat Okudzhava [UPDATE: Link fixed, sorry about the error]. It’s unfortunately only accessible to Russian speakers, but we have a few of those among our readers, so this post is for their benefit. (My attempts to try to capture it in English failed, but if some of you want to try a hand either at translating it or even at just explaining it, please do so.)
Ilya Somin says:
Eugene,
I think the link to the poem just leads back to my post.
December 8, 2009, 3:20 amAbdul says:
My Russian is pretty bad, but the first line is something about a man from Nantucket.
December 8, 2009, 7:41 amSasha Volokh says:
I think Eugene meant the one at the top-left of this site.
December 8, 2009, 8:51 amSasha Volokh says:
By the way, a very rough literal translation of this poem (written in 1979!) would be:
How good that Zworykin left
And invented TV over there!
If he hadn’t left the country,
He would have gone up to Calvary like everyone else.
And we wouldn’t be sitting at the screen,
And we wouldn’t be trying to understand the time,
And the revelations of previous lies
Would again be inaccessible to us.
How good that Nabokov left,
December 8, 2009, 9:08 amNot sharing the mysteries of parting with anyone!
What luck! But how many prophets
Weren’t spared by our native land!
Malvolio says:
[With apologies to Mr Okudzhava]
To Cyril Pomerantsevu
How wonderful that Zworykin emigrated
and invented television overseas.
If he’d stayed,
He would have been drafted like everybody else.
And we wouldn’t be glued to the screen,
trying to understand,
and we wouldn’t know
we’d been lied to again.
How wonderful that Nabokov emigrated,
he knew how to escape from thieves.
How lucky! And how many prophets
weren’t spared their native land!
Notes:
December 8, 2009, 9:27 amVladimir Kozmich Zworykin emigrated in 1918; living the US, he made vital contributions to the development of television.
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov emigrated in 1919; after writing nine novels in Russian, he became one of the greatest English-language novelists of the twentiest century.
I’m struggling to understand the second line of the last stanza. What is “кем не деля” supposed to mean, “those who don’t share”?
Sasha Volokh says:
Malvolio: “ни с кем” means “with nobody.” “не деля” is a gerund, “not sharing.” “тайны разлуки” is “the mysteries of parting” or “the mysteries of separation.”
Note also that the dedication is to “Cyril Pomerantsev” (the “у” at the end is part of the dative ending).
December 8, 2009, 9:33 amSasha Volokh says:
Oh yeah, there are those three other stanzas afterwards.
December 8, 2009, 9:50 amMalvolio says:
But what does it mean? The rest of the (quoted) poem is so accessible, even in translation; this line is completely opaque. My theory is that it is a reference to something in Nabokov.
Yeah, I was wondering about that. “Pomerantsevu” didn’t sound very Russian, I thought it might be Georgian.
Not as good, in my (very very inexpert) opinion.
December 8, 2009, 10:45 amA. Zarkov says:
Zworykin didn’t need to come to the US to invent television, he could have done for any number of places. Ditto for Nabokov.
December 8, 2009, 12:20 pmys says:
But Zworykin needed to leave to survive and US was the best destination choice. Ditto for Nabokov (who tried a couple of other destinations before finding one where he made his biggest mark).
December 8, 2009, 12:37 pmboris kupershmidt says:
Eugene,
December 8, 2009, 1:05 pmthe poem is untranslable,
except in very rough and
approximate terms,
with all the poetry gone.
BK
ys says:
The literal translation of this line is very clear:
“тайны разлуки ни с кем не деля”
“not sharing the secret of his separation with anybody”
(“mystery” is not the right mapping here; “separation” is also not the perfect translation, but there is no good one word match for it in English; similarly, there is no perfect equivalent for German “Sehnsucht” which in a famed Lied by Tchaikovski is translated into Russian as “thirst for rendez-vous” [very nice] and into English as “sadness” [very lame])
But the real meaning of what Okudzhava was trying to say here is indeed a bit obscure. Did he mean that Nabokov kept to himself his nostalgia for the environment of his youth? Not exactly true but I am not sure what else to think here.
December 8, 2009, 1:09 pmys says:
That could be said about any poetry translation. The question is, how high a ceiling could be achieved for translations from Russian to English. In skillful hands that ceiling would be very high. You seem to follow Nabokov’s own line here on “Eugene Onegin”, but while his “translation” is indispensable, very successful attempts were made to do a real translation with flavors preserved. Now, if you were to translate classic Chinese poetry, that ceiling would be much lower for a whole number of reasons.
December 8, 2009, 1:35 pmOperationCounterstrike says:
I met him (Bulat Okudzhava) in Moscow. Very nice guy!
Hey Eugene, did you know professor Vladimir Frumkin of Oberlin? He used to go around lecturing on Okudzhava and singing his songs at universities.
December 8, 2009, 1:37 pmBZ says:
With apologies to Vladimir and Olga, my first and latest Russian professors, who taught me about the tsars and the avtomat, respectively, I would translate this much less literally, in keeping with Nabokov’s English style as: “without telling anyone how he did it.” I would take it as a wry comment, since he effusively told everyone how he did other things.
December 8, 2009, 3:37 pmGil Gilliam says:
BZ,
Was your first Russian professor Vladimir Tolstoy? If so Bravo Zulu, he was my first (and last) also.
Regards,
Gil
December 9, 2009, 5:54 pm