Rilke, Blaue Hortensie

Перевела сегодня Rilke's Blaue Hortensie, но к сожалению опять нелады с рифмой - кажется, что либо рифму, либо смысл нужно приносить в жертву.


Голубая Гортензия

Сухие, тусклые, шершавые, как остатки зеленого
В скляночке краски, эти листья
За зонтиками цветов, что голубой не носят
На себе, а лишь издалека отражают.

Они отражают его заплаканно, неясно,
Как будто и вовсе хотят потерять,
В них желтизна, как в голубой бумаге
Старых писем, и серо-фиолетового след;

Полинялость, как в детском переднике,
Давно не ношенном, с которым уж не будет ничего:
Как чувствуется краткость жизни малой.

Но вдруг как будто обноволся голубой
В одном из тех соцветий, и кажется, что
Нежная голубизна зеленому обрадовалась цвету.

Rilke, Blaue Hortensie

So wie das letzte Grün in Farbentiegeln
sind diese Blätter, trocken, stumpf und rauh,
hinter den Blütendolden, die ein Blau
nicht auf sich tragen, nur von ferne spiegeln.

Sie spiegeln es verweint und ungenau,
als wollten sie es wiederum verlieren,
und wie in alten blauen Briefpapieren
ist Gelb in ihnen, Violett und Grau;

Verwaschenes wie an einer Kinderschürze,
Nichtmehrgetragenes, dem nichts mehr geschieht:
wie fühlt man eines kleinen Lebens Kürze.

Doch plötzlich scheint das Blau sich zu verneuen
in einer von den Dolden, und man sieht
ein rührend Blaues sich vor Grünem freuen.

Muteness == true

It is decidedly peculiar, the muteness that overtakes one after days of programming. The sensation is just as disturbing as when one begins to forget his native language while living amid foreigners in a strange land. Just as the strange land begins to feel much more like home than the land of one's origin, so the avid programmer forgets the smooth pathways of verbal interaction and resorts instead to if-else statements (E.g. a phone message: "You haven't picked up, which means that either you are sleeping or busy. If you are sleeping, then Good Night. If you are busy, then call me back before you go to bed. If that will be in the next half hour, I will be in the subway, so leave a message or send me SMS. I hope to hear from you.").

In some cases, muteness of the mind ensues as well. It is a state in which the programmer dreams of primarily two themes, where:
1) he/she is a data structure.
2) he/she is compelled to chop the corpses of his loved ones or hated ones into little pieces and hide them, and after this receives enlightenment from a caterpillar enrobed in divine radiance.
The inability to find even remotely interesting conversation topics is endemic to this condition.

Now, despite the severity of this repetitive stress syndrome of the brain, the cure is surprisingly simple and requires little but the force of will to stop programming for a week and do one or all of the following:
1) Read 3 classic fiction novels.
2) Read a historical account of anarchism.
3) Draw an angry ink blot using cadmium red oil paint.
4) Write 20 blogs about muteness.

My will is faltering. I think I will go program now...

Butterfly in the Sidewalk

There was a wheelcheer moving in front of me in the sunshine, and after it passed through a puddle there was a swallowtail butterfly balancing in its center. Its wings were glued together and it didn't wish to move, so I thought it injured. I lifted it by its wings and took it to the grass, so that no one would tread on it. There the beautiful yellow wings spread and the butterfly limped in air around the puddle, touching the asphalt and limping again in hesitation. Then it lowered itself in the middle of the puddle and put its wings together.

a Mountain Man

The T was not very full, but you still had to squeeze in next to a stranger in order to sit. A cheery, perfect-looking family stood by a vertical hand rail. The father, lightweight lad with glasses, had a baby back-pack with a 1.5-year-old in it. From the eyes of the boy starved overexcitement stared. The T stopped and a blue-shirted mountain of a man treaded within. He stood across from the family, unshakable and mute as the T surged forward. Suddenly, his heavy gaze found the boy, and he smiled, lifting his lips with heaviness, as if they were, indeed, made of rock. The boy smiled back and hit the edge of the backpack with impatient and awkward hand. At this, the mountain-man felt a rocking impulse to shake of his silence, and his eyes faced the father as he addressed him with a smile and a mumble. Father did not expect the address, and watched incredulously, as words were born from the mumble of a stranger:
- It is like, like he has to smile, you know, - the stranger said.
The wife and mother in law looked at the mountain man cautiously, nodded and looked away. The mountain man felt the discrepancy between his words and that which stirred him to speak. He looked at the smiling boy again and mumbled a little more, as a mountain rumbles, compelled by fire from within.
- He just like, just has to smile, - he said and hesitated, - even the eyes are smiling.
The father nodded and produced a "yeah"-like noise. The family considered the matter concluded, but the mountain still looked at them and at the boy.
- There is a fire in them, - he said finally.
And the mountain stopped rumbling, feeling, perhaps, that it has reached the summit of eloquence. It stepped uneasily from one foot to the other, looked at the boy for one last time and at the unseeing parents and shuffled to the other end of the train.

Zwielicht, Joseph von Eichendorff

Кто бы мог подумать, что немецкая лирика может быть такой чуткой и живой? Тем не менее, это именно так, и по счастливой случайности я писала сочинение о стихотворении «Zwielicht», написанном Eichendorff. Оно показалось мне несколько утрированным, - почти издевательством над романтическими страхами и волнениеями, порождаемыми природой. Однако, по прослушивании Liederkreis (op. 39) у Schumann, понятно, что стихотворение это, пожалуй, даже и не о сумерках, и намного трагичнее, чем кажется с первого взгляда. Вот моя попытка художественного перевода на русский и само стихотворение в орининале.

Сумерки

Расправил крылья полумрак,
Жутко движутся деревья,
Сном тяжелым бредут тучи -
Что означает этот страх?

Коль имеешь лань любимую,
Не пускай ее пастись одну,
В лесу трубя бредут охотники,
Замолкают и дальше бредут.

Коль имеешь друга близкого,
В этот час не верь ему,
За взглядом ласковым и голосом
Готовит войну он в коварной тиши.

Что сегодня усталое клонится
Новорожденным завтра встает,
В ночи многое обронится,
Прячься, бодрствуй и будь готов!

Zwielicht, Joseph von Eichendorff

Dämmrung will die Flügel spreiten,
Schaurig rühren sich die Bäume,
Wolken ziehn wie schwere Träume -
Was will dieses Graun bedeuten?

Hast ein Reh du lieb vor andern,
Laß es nicht alleine grasen,
Jäger ziehn im Wald und blasen,
Stimmen hin und wider wandern.

Hast du einen Freund hienieden,
Trau ihm nicht zu dieser Stunde,
Freundlich wohl mit Aug und Munde,
Sinnt er Krieg im tückschen Frieden.

Was heut müde gehet unter,
Hebt sich morgen neugeboren.
Manches bleibt in Nacht verloren -
Hüte dich, bleib wach und munter!

On the Prowl

"Surely," I said, "not much wildlife remains in the city." Gees and squirrels don't count in Boston, of course. Nature, indignant, was swift with its rebuff.
At two in the morning that day I fancied a walk around my neighborhood. When I was lost in the contemplation of the ghostly light effects in the foliage and the swaying of an occasional passerby, my companion safeguarded me against running into a fluffy-tailed skunk. Luckily, the beast was concerned with his own affairs. A block or two later we stopped to look for a source of sudden bid-like chattering and with a surprise discovered a pair of raccoon eyes accosting us from the bushes. She walked out, a plump svelte body pivoted on delicate pale feet, and impassively walked away down the street. Yet, the sound did not seize, and we noticed a little creature in distress pacing the balustrade of the nearest house. "Rak-tak-tak-tak-tak. Mommy, Mommy," - he called more and more desperately, as he scrambled along back and forth and made an occasionally pass to come down.
Though the mother seemed determined to instill some independence into the youngster, tonight was not the night. His courage was not up to par, and she was forced to return and stop the undignified racket. Out of nowhere, a slick shadow appeared on the roof and slid down a drain pipe onto the balustrade: it was her with a stern and condescending look of a woman with arms akimbo. To her dismay, she found the youngster stuck in the railing, and fumbled him for some 5 minutes. We came as close and looked from below at the face of the creature, wild but unabashed, as it met, as we all do, the annoyances of its daily routine.

Review: Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 100 Years of Solitude

Where are the braids of my great-grandmother, the bread loaves shaped by my great-great-grandfather's hands in his backery 150 years ago, where do I find the string, on which the generations are strung like beads? Perhaps the beads have turned to dust with the decades of wear, as the smiles of my great aunts circled like fall leaves in the streets of the post-war years and disappeared under the tires of soviet automobiles and the many identical soles of soviet citizens, unidelized back into reality by the length of the milk lines. Or maybe somewhere, under the trunk of my subconscious, the dainty dust bunnies of faded generations are hiding still, holding their grudge against the moderns and their computers.
But they are almost as good as forgotten, as we, schoolchildren, learn to write the same mistakes in grammar school, and decide for the same reasons and out of the same greed to wage different wars, where the prison camps will have toilets as bad as in 1945 (see Guenter Eich, "Latrine"). But the murmuring denizens of the reality called the Past will keep haunting us just a little bit, even through the din of the city and the plastic shells of ear-phones. And reality it is, this Past, by the virtue of having existed sometime. Yes, there is still Soviet Russia, there is still Ghengis Khan and the Beligan colonization of the Congo. And the people who have given rise to us almost anawares, exist somewhere as a part of the Everything that is known. Only we, who are fortuitously living in the present, forget to remember them.

This is what "100 Years of Solitude" speaks and murmurs about in one's ear. The history repeats and mirrors itself with a mocking smile in different decades on different faces, and the past, no matter how forgotten, is a part of the long chain with only one link in the present. As the names repeat, so personalities repeat, with subtle variations, with hereditary memory and hereditary forgetfulness. It is not only the tale about the cycle of time and history doomed to forgetfulness. It is a tale of real people with real bones existing almost independently from the history that bore them and suffering their own passions and tragedies as people do. To all of this add flying carpets, insomnia plagues and levitating priests, fueled by hot chocolate, and the light of truth will reveal itself before your eyes. Wonderful book to read, and reread when turning older and less foolish.