Dear all,
I am doing all I can to draw attention to Antony Wood’s outstanding new translation of Pushkin: SELECTED POETRY (Penguin Classics)
Here is an article of mine just published in the Financial Times
https://www.ft.com/content/337f7190-7350-11ea-90ce-5fb6c07a27f2
It’ll be in the printed edition tomorrow.
I had hoped that they would also include this extract, but it seems they decided against it.
from THE BRONZE HORSEMAN
Yevgeny trembled. In his mind
All was dreadfully defined.
How could he not recognise
Where he had seen the grim waves spill,
The waters in rebellion rise,
The lions, the square, while stark and still
He whose indomitable will
Had raised a city from the sea
Towered in bronze above it – He,
Fearsome from the gloom below!
What thoughts are pressing on that brow!
Within him, what unbounded force!
What fire comes flashing from that horse!
Where, proud stallion, are you bound,
Where will your hooves put down to ground?
Destiny’s great lord and master!
Was it not exactly thus
Your iron bridle reared up Russia
Upon the brink of the abyss?
******
An earlier version of my article included the following:
'To show how natural Wood’s Pushkin sounds in English – and how vividly Pushkin can write even about what is dull and prosaic – here are a few lines from “Winter. The country. What to do?”
We lose two hares; at last, at some late hour,
Reach home. What fun in store! A blizzard whines;
Dim candles burn; the heart contracts and pines;
I take that poison, boredom, drop by drop.
I try to read; the letters fade; I stop,
My thoughts are far away . . . I close the book
And take a pen, and settle in a nook:
My drowsy muse finds random words, and line
Will not fit line; I lose control of rhyme,
My giddy-minded handmaid…
All the best, Robert
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