The river floes break in spring... take 2

Alexander Blok

The river floes break in spring...

March 1902

translation by Greg Pavlik 

The river floes break in spring,
And for the dead I feel no sorrow -
Toward new summits I am rising,
Forgetting crevasses of past striving,
I see the blue horizon of tomorrow.

What regret, in fire and smoke,
the lament of the cross,
With each hour, with each stroke -
Or instead - the heavens’ gift stoked,
from the bush burnt without loss!

Original:

Весна в реке ломает льдины,
И милых мертвых мне не жаль:
Преодолев мои вершины,
Забыл я зимние теснины
И вижу голубую даль.

Что сожалеть в дыму пожара,
Что сокрушаться у креста,
Когда всечасно жду удара
Или божественного дара
Из Моисеева куста! 

Март 1902

Translators note: I updated this after some reflection. The original translation used the allegorical imagery that would have been common in patristic writing and hence Russian Orthodoxy. For example, I used the image of Aaron's rod in lieu of the word "cross", which appears in Russian (креста). The rod of Aaron was commonly understood to be a type of the cross in traditional readings of Old Testament Scriptures. Similarly, the final line of Blok's poem "Из Моисеева куста" literally translates to "from Moses's Bush". In my original translation, I rendered the final line "from the bush of Moses, the Mother of God". Since at least the 4th century, the burning bush was interpreted as a type of Mary, the Theotokos (or God-bearer) in the patristic literature (see for example, Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses). In Russian iconography there is even an icon type of the Mother of God called the Unburnt Bush. While the use of "rod" and "Mother of God" allowed me to maintain the rhyme pattern (rod/God in place of креста/куста) of the original poem, it created a awkward rhythm to the poem, especially in the final line. It also added explicit allusions to patristic images that are not explicitly present in the original poem, perhaps fundamentally altering the author's intention. A neat experiment but also one that I think ultimately failed.

The new translation returns to a more literal translation without allegory: "креста" means simply cross and that is how the poem now reads. The final line has been abbreviated from my original translation, though somewhat less literal - "Из Моисеева куста" is now rendered as "from the bush burnt without loss" rather than the literal "from Moses's bush" or the more awkward original translation "From the Bush of Moses, the Mother of God". The new translation I believe captures more closely the original meaning and manages to maintain at least the rhyme pattern of the original (now cross/loss in place of креста/куста). Overall, this is far from a perfect translation but I think it is an improvement.

One final comment about Blok himself that perhaps illustrates why I am still conflicted about the changes to final line: Blok was a master of the Symbolist movement in Russian poetry, wherein he worked unconventional rhythms and rhyming into his poetry. On that score, I feel somewhat more at liberty to ignore the meter of the original and attempt to express something of a musical quality in English. However, Blok was also deeply influenced by the great philosopher Vladimir Soloviev, a proponent of Sophiology in the Russian intellectual tradition. This led to him writing many of his early poetic compositions about the Fair Lady, Sophia the embodiment of Wisdom. It is with this in mind that I feel some regret at removing the reference to the Mother of God, a human embodiment/enhypostatization of Divine Wisdom.