Макбет, акт V, сцена 5

[aptsvet]

Написать вот так - и застрелиться, потому что это уже на пределе возможного.

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Перевести вот так - и застрелиться от позора. А за "оказывается" воскреснуть и застрелиться повторно.

Мы дни за днями шепчем: "Завтра, завтра"
Так тихими шагами жизнь ползет
К последней недописанной странице.
Оказывается, что все "вчера"
Нам сзади освещали путь к могиле.
Конец, конец, огарок догорел!
Жизнь - только тень, она - актер на сцене.
Сыграл свой час, побегал, пошумел -
И был таков. Жизнь - сказка в пересказе
Глупца. Она полна трескучих слов
И ничего не значит.

ПыСы: Хорошо еще, что название романа Фолкнера не перевели как "Трескучие слова" - красивенько бы вышло.

Comments

bowing before the great man with trepidation, but...

[polborta.livejournal.com]

...учитывая контекст - может быть все же "ловец"?

Re: bowing before the great man with trepidation, but...

[aptsvet.livejournal.com]

Сейчас в Китсе пороюсь...

[avva.livejournal.com]

Вы правы совершенно насчёт перевода Пастернака, по-моему.

Но к постскрипту позвольте придраться: слова о пропасти взяты прямо из текста романа, где также специально оговаривается тот факт, что название является искажённой версией стиха из Бернса. У Бернса нет и ловушки никакой тоже:

Она была права. Там действительно "Если кто-то звал кого-то вечером
во ржи". Честно говоря, я забыл.
- Мне казалось, что там "ловил кого-то вечером во ржи", - говорю. -
Понимаешь, я себе представил, как маленькие ребятишки играют вечером в
огромном поле, во ржи. Тысячи малышей, и кругом - ни души, ни одного
взрослого, кроме меня. А я стою на самом краю скалы, над пропастью,
понимаешь? И мое дело - ловить ребятишек, чтобы они не сорвались в
пропасть. Понимаешь, они играют и не видят, куда бегут, а тут я подбегаю и
ловлю их, чтобы они не сорвались. Вот и вся моя работа. Стеречь ребят над
пропастью во ржи. Знаю, это глупости, но это единственное, чего мне
хочется по-настоящему. Наверно, я дурак."

Но в определённой степени здесь тоже есть загрязнение другим переводом. Ведь у Бернса в оригинале - "gin [if] a body meet a body coming thro' the rye". У Сэлинджера в оригинале
это процитировано - "if a body meet a body coming through the rye", a Холден вместо этого помнит "if a body catch a body coming through the rye", и на этом строит свой образ. В русском же переводе meet заменили на "звал", под влиянием перевода Маршака, очевидно. Но на название книги это не влияет.

[aptsvet.livejournal.com]

Вы правы, и предыдущий постер тоже. Я это лучше уберу, чтоб не замутило главную мысль.

[avva.livejournal.com]

Конечно. Мои комментарии можно удалить, если они мешают главной мысли.

thank you for an incisive lesson

[larvatus.livejournal.com]

    Translation is an ethical discipline. Your admirable reminder is a boon to every writer.
    I am also reminded of your comments on the comparative advantages of Russian and English as poetic media. It occurred to me then, that for all its victorious acclaim, Russian poetry never contributed universal phenomena comparable to Italian, in Dante and Petrarch, English, in Shakespeare and Milton, or French, in Baudelaire and Mallarmé. No Russian poet has had a comparable effect on global culture. It cannot be due to Russian literature arriving as a latecomer on the stage, as witness German upstarts with their Goethe. Nor can it be due to some cultural deficiency, as witness the universal impact of Russian novels and theater. Yet the disparity is manifest. I would be very grateful for your thoughts on this matter.

Re: thank you for an incisive lesson

[aptsvet.livejournal.com]

Your observations are quite correct, and I think Homer and Virgil should be added to your list. There are very good reasons why Russian poetry could never really compete on the international scene, unlike Russian prose and playwriting.

In my view, which I am sure would be violently disputed by many of my Russian peers, there are just two Russian poets that are, at least in theory, fit to enlist in this competition: Pushkin and Mandelshtam, both heavily handicapped. Please, note that the majority in your list are epic poets, much more easily exported than their lyrical counterparts. So was Pushkin, at least to a large extent, his best oevres being Eugene Onegin and The Bronze Horseman. But Pushkin was heavily indebted to Byron who, for many reasons, is not read or even readable anymore, yet there is no way to render Onegin in English without bringing Byron in. In any case, the time when Onegin could have any impact at all is long past.

As to Mandelshtam, he is so intensely lyrical and so invlolved in his language that any attempts to render him in a different language are doomed. Apart from Baudelaire and Mallarme in your list, I could mention Sapho and Catullus. But Sapho today, with so little left of her, is basically just a mythical figure, whereas Catullus was heavily boosted by his language which, until quite recently, was universal in the West. And so, by the way, were both Baudelaire and Mallarme.

The only peer that Mandelshtam really has is Rilke who is much more successful universally. But Rilke, as everybody who read him in the original knows, is crystal clear - quite the opposite of Mandelshtam.

In my view, Russian literature, a late comer, deserves amazement for the attention it was able to attract to itself in the short period of its supernova brilliance. But not every genre was lucky enough to get a share in this triumph. And one must keep in mind that at the zenith of this triumh Russian poetry basically went into hibernation, for half a century or so.

All the more reason for me to try and build an escape chute.

Re: thank you for an incisive lesson

[volkutov.livejournal.com]

Russian poetry very strongly depends on music of words rather than their conventional meaning. It allows native speakers to find new meanings of the words and helps to remember lines by heart, but it also prevent all others from participation in this game (sorry for interference:)

Re: thank you for an incisive lesson

[larvatus.livejournal.com]

Writers as disparate as Tertz and Galkovsky have made similar observations in less flattering terms. Pushkin continues to be vastly overrated at home as a consequence of his outstanding talent for fitting the right words in the right places, in the context of lacking anything of value to express therewith. His most significant predecessor in this regard is not Byron, whose star has declined more in consequence of provisional fluctuations in fashion, than through an irreversible response to the inexorable march of History. It is admittedly Parny, capturing the right blend of provocative servility in an Academic corpus ossified in its rightful place on the scale of literary merit. Reciprocally, Lermontov has been more influential worldwide than Pushkin. If Pechorin could serve as Ian Fleming’s inspiration for James Bond, there is no reason for Onegin to give up his futilitarian quest for recognition.

Re: thank you for an incisive lesson

[aptsvet.livejournal.com]

Actually, I agree to an extent with your Parny - Pushkin derivation, and I certainly understand that Byron deserves something better then the current oblivion. I am, nevertheless still able to reread occasionally Eugene Onegin while any attempt to struggle through Chylde Harold provokes a bout of narcolepcy. Besides, I believe that fitting the right words in the right places is to a large extent what poetry is about.

the right words in the right places

[larvatus.livejournal.com]

    I am not satisfied by definitions limited to a large extent of the definiendum. What happened to poets as the unacknowledged legislators of the World? You may have no qualms about buttressing the distinction between philosophers and poets, which Shelley sought to bridge. But the Philosopher’s designation of the ancient quarrel (παλαιὰ διαφορὰ) between philosophy and poetry rests on the term that in the hands of his ablest disciple and interpreter was already purged of adversarial connotations. This development was already implicit in Plato’s own account of their connection:

Go and tell Lysias (Λυσίας) that you and I came down to the fountain and sacred place of the nymphs, and heard words which they told us to repeat to Lysias and anyone else who composed speeches, and to Homer (Ὅμηρος) or any other who has composed poetry with or without musical accompaniment, and third to Solon (Σόλων) and whoever has written political compositions which he calls laws: If he has composed his writings with knowledge of the truth, and is able to support them by discussion of that which he has written, and has the power to show by his own speech that the written words are of little worth, such a man ought not to derive his title from such writings, but from the serious pursuit which underlies them.
―Phaedrus, 278b8-d1, translated by Harold N. Fowler

Thus Plato envisions philosophy subsuming three different types of written logoi, the writing of speeches, poetry, and laws. He gives three concrete embodiments of these types in the figures of the forensic orator, the epic poet, and the constitutional legislator. (Cf. Phaedrus, 278e1-2.) In contrast to their written expression, philosophical discourse enters his analysis in the use of words that are heard (ἠκούσαμεν λόγων). (Phaedrus, 278b9.) Plato establishes the conditions (εἰ μὲν ... ἀποδεῖξαι) on the basis of which a poet, a speech writer, or a law writer can be converted into a philosopher, and so renamed. He must know “how truth holds” (ᾗ τὸ ἀληθὲς ἔχει). He must have composed his writings with this knowledge. He must be able to support them by discussion of that which he has written (καὶ ... ἀποδεῖξαι).
    Thus the orator, the poet, and the legislator join forces with the philosopher in his search of a true verbal expression of the innermost reality of things. No complete understanding of poetry can fail to account for this outcome.

Re: thank you for an incisive lesson

[aptsvet.livejournal.com]

I. e., I do not see Catullus plotting the life-story of Lesbia's sparrow from birth to death. It's just words.

everything that rises must converge

[larvatus.livejournal.com]

    It’s words standing for things, aliquid stat pro aliquo. Surely you need not be reminded of the phallic connotations in modern Italian passero and passera being plausibly retrojected onto Catullus’ passer at 2 and 3, as measured by Martial against passerem Catulli at 11.6.16?

Re: everything that rises must converge

[aptsvet.livejournal.com]

Well, indeed I needed that reminder, and you are sending me back to my Martial. But Freud would argue that Catullus did not have to weigh the matter consciously, and that much authority I yield to him.

Thanks a lot for the line-up, it helped me to wrap up the whole story quite tidily.

narsty by design

[larvatus.livejournal.com]

    I protest against your Catullean contumely. There is no room for the slightest of parapraxes in matters oragenital: one slip of the tongue, and you are in deep shit. Additionally, see The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Chapter XII, constraining these shortcomings in our psychical functioning to momentary and temporary disturbances. In other words, let us show some respect for our elders. “On n’est jamais excusable d’être méchant, mais il y a quelque mérite à savoir qu’on l’est ; et le plus irréparable des vices est de faire le mal par bêtise.”

Re: everything that rises must converge

[aptsvet.livejournal.com]

Well, I've looked at Hexter's paper. I guess the battle is yours, but not the war.

hexter is a fuckwit

[larvatus.livejournal.com]

    Nonetheless, the records of our sparrows’ receptions speak for themselves. Or so we hope.

Re: thank you for an incisive lesson

[larvatus.livejournal.com]

    Among the classics, Hesiod belongs next to Homer, controverting your proposal that poetry has nothing to do with labor conferring a universal eligibility to be noble. Lost Greek lyric poetry is still felt through Horace and his successors. I am happy to agree that Catullus is a seminal figure, despite his conventional placement among les petits maîtres. Beyond that, the Greeks set the tone for drama and comedy, just as the Jews do for worship.
    None of this excuses us from reckoning the moderns. Dante and Petrarch inaugurate historical modernity. Baudelaire and Mallarmé define its aesthetic counterpart. The distinction in genres is a red herring. Lyricism never prevented translation. I grant that formal involvement in language impedes foreign rendition. It can even impede native understanding of provincial poets invested into their dialects, in contrast with their official competitors comprehensible to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But the majority of authors in my list are lyrical poets. Only Dante and Milton authored true epics. The sweep of King Lear and Faust might serve as a metaphorical pass into the epic genre. But the sonnets of Shakespeare and the lieder of Goethe resonate on the world stage, if not nearly as much as their dramatic productions. Petrarch is the quintessential modern lyricist of the old school, heir to Horace, Ovid, and Catullus in every relevant sense. Whereas Baudelaire and Mallarmé preempt the poetic obstruction postulated by Theodore Adorno in the wake of Auschwitz. In their aftermath, it is no longer necessary to associate lyric poetry with the lyre used to flatter a king or woo a wench. Their differences are telling. On one end of the spectrum reside “hypocrite lecteur” and “mon enfant, ma sœur,” as familiar to a middlebrow frog as “ripeness is all” and “sound and fury” are to his limey and yank counterparts. On the other end subsist exquisitely wrought puzzles far more forbidding to the reader expecting instant gratification in his native tongue, than they might be to an educated foreigner accustomed to defamiliarization from surface meanings. The disparity in influence reflects this distinction. What French poetic successor of note escaped an imprint of Les Fleurs du mal? Whereas just in the Anglophone realm, of William Butler Yeats, T.S. Eliot, and Wallace Stevens, each easily measures up to Paul Valéry in his capacity as the greatest French epigone of Mallarmé.
    My explanation of my prophet lacking honor in his own country supports the claim for his profound universality. Carlo Ginzburg (“Making Things Strange: The Prehistory of a Literary Device,” Representations 56, Fall 1996, pp. 8-28, reprinted in Wooden Eyes) traces Shklovsky’s defamiliarization via Leo Tolstoy to the writings of Marcus Aurelius. A more obvious trace connects it via Roman Jakobson to the riddles of Mallarmé. International acclaim of Russian formalism should have enabled it to propagate Russian poetry in the West. Its failure to do so is telling. For now, I wish all the best for your effort to try and build an escape chute, especially for want of any such passage in Russian poetry between the imperial encomia of Lomonosov and the products of the Evil Empire.

Re: thank you for an incisive lesson

[evg81.livejournal.com]

Поэзии, которую можно перевести на все индоевропейские языки, я предпочту поэзию, которая практически непереводима. И тогда окажется, что Мандельштам превосходит Шекспира)) Вероятно, в этом разница между пониманием поэзии на западе и у нас. При переводе Мандельштама ускользнет именно смысл - потому что содержание его поэзии от формы неотделимо.

Re: thank you for an incisive lesson

[larvatus.livejournal.com]

    You are categorically welcome to your preference. But if it is to have any persuasive force, it must be complemented by a logos. You offer nothing of the sort. In the event, the recipient of your message faces the alternative between blind acceptance of your boundaries between us and the West, along with your collective rootedness therein, and surmising the causes that seem to compel and reasons that might justify your position, as best he can.
    For my part, I see it as a noisome legacy of the mid-XIXth century Slavophile reaction against the historically discredited doctrine of the poet’s sacred mission, itself a Western import rightly identified by our gracious host as Byronic. While the West has followed Baudelaire and Mallarmé in their exploration and celebration of the ensuing Void, its Russian consequence consigns poetry in its most fundamental sense, as the quintessential productive (ποιητικός) discipline, to sterile preoccupations with individual fortunes and desires, framed as hifalutin elaborations of sentiments ranging from the pitch of a prostitute to the plaint of a social retard. Having failed to elevate himself into a force of nature, your poet contents himself with remaining a tempest in a teacup. Still, his conscience may be assuaged by the standard of Russian literary culture, upheld by novelists and playwrights, as the practitioners of speculative (θεωρητικός) art, whose excellence is nowise impeded, and perhaps even promoted, by self-reverential specializations that your doctrine elevates into the defining characteristics of national culture.

[patashinsky.livejournal.com]

Назавтра, и назавтра, и назавтра,
Укромной перебежкой день за днем,
В последний отзвук остановленного мига;
Былое наше осветило дуракам
путь в скуку смерти. Истлевай, пустой огарок!
Не жить ходячей тенью; жалким лицедеем,
Ужимки, дрожь его на час на сцене,
Не скажем более: ведь это байка,
поведанная идиотом, звучно, гневно,
Предсказанная чепуха.

[aptsvet.livejournal.com]

Нет. Расползается. Пятистопный ямб Шекспира - чрезвычайно эффективный размер, позволяющий самый широкий спектр интонаций: от пафоса приведенных здесь строк до почти разговорной интонации. А у Вас здесь почти александрийский стих Расина - совершенно другая история. И вряд ли даже намеренно, потому что строки разностопные.

[volkutov.livejournal.com]

Вольность пастернаковских переводов - общее место, не требующее доказательств. Но если оценивать их (в том числе данный отрывок) как самостоятельные стихи - кроме позорного "оказывается" все звучит более чем талантливо... Также известно, что переводами Б.Л. зарабатывал на жизнь себе и не только себе, из чего можно сделать два вывода, эстетитеский (халтура такого уровня вызывает уважение) и нравственный (зарабатывать деньги всегда нравственнее, чем брать их у других - конечно, "при прочих равных").

Он и она

[larvatus.livejournal.com]

Так красивенько написал Антон Павлович Чехов:

Газетчики занимают стулья, ближайшие к ее стулу. Они почти все пьяны и держат себя весьма развязно, как будто бы они знакомы с ней уже сто лет. Возьми они градусом выше, дело дошло бы до фамильярности. Они громко острят, пьют, перебивают друг друга (причем не забывают сказать: «pardon!»), произносят трескучие тосты и, видимо, не боятся сглупить; некоторые, джентльменски переваливаясь через угол стола, целуют ее ручку.

Причём написал за полста лет до Пастернака.

Заразили ;)

[druid77.livejournal.com]

Все эти наши "завтра, завтра, завтра" -
бессмысленные робкие шажки
к последней букве в книге бытия.
А все "вчера" нам, глупым, освещают
лишь пыльный смертный путь. Сгорай, свеча!
Жизнь - это тень; она - плохой актёр:
час покривлялся и - долой со сцены.
Жизнь - повесть в перессказе идиота,
нешуточные страсти в ней бушуют,
а смысла нет.

Re: Заразили ;)

[aptsvet.livejournal.com]

Третья строка недурна - интересный поворот. Но "повесть в пересказе идиота" плохо - нет никакой повести, которую идиот пересказывает, потому что тогда был некий изначальный смысл. Это собственная повесть идиота.

Re: Заразили ;)

[druid77.livejournal.com]

Да, действительно. Кроме того, вижу пару неудачных эпитетов. "Робкие" лучше заменить на "мелкие", "нешуточные" тоже бы заменить на чего-нибудь.

[dopechatnik.livejournal.com]

Вот да-да-да!! Когда мы ставили Макбета, мы тоже очень споткнулиь о Пастернака на этом месте.
Надо, кстати, сказать, что вообще сам этот кусочек у Шекспира немного больше всей остальной сцены, он в ней уместен как изумруд на зубной щетке - он... чужероден, Макбету уже такого не сказать, это голос за кадром, но Пастернак даже не разбавил, а просто выплеснул две трети того, что там есть. Пришлось кряхтеть самим :) Что получилось, я, к сожалению, уже не помню.

С другой стороны, мы часто прохаживались по Пастернаку за его избегание "неприличного". "А ведь это чудная мысль - лежать у девушки между ног" - нет-нет (думали мы), говорит Пастернак, это нехорошо, где же тут искусство, где высокое! Нет, лучше - "у ног девушки".
А потом как-то до нас дошло - это ведь Борис Леонидович не сам по себе писал и печатал, он приносил свой текст в издательство, редактору, и почему мы так уверены, что виной тут внутренняя цензура Пастернака, а не внешняя - этого самого редактора? Это неприлично - переделайте. Это никому не понятно - переделайте.
Так что не знаю, сколько тут пастернаковской злой воли или неумения и непонимания.

[aptsvet.livejournal.com]

Я не знаю, смотрели ли Вы на последующие посты и на мою попытку перевода. В общем-то из наличного Лозинский лучше всего.