JM: Yah pom-new
chewed-no-yay mg-no-vain-yay - Please, could a fellow Nabler inform me about the lines
copied above? V.Nabokov mentioned the first lines of one of Pushkin's famous
poems but he didn't inform which one it was [LRL, The Art of
Translation]
C. Kunin: Odd transliteration - ja pomnyu (I
recall) chevo'dnoye mgnove'neye (a wonderful moment).[
]
Koen
Vanherwegen: It is, in normal transcription "Ja pomnyu chudnoye
mgnovenya" which translates as something like "I remember a wonderful
moment"
Alex Bews ("this is the first line of "K***", one of the
most famous Pushkin's poems, wirtten in 1825, dedicated to his great love, Anna
Kern)
Jansy Mello: Thank you, Carolyn, Koen,
Alex and Victor (off line).Your information was wonderfully
complementary.
I couldn't find its translation by VN in "Verses and
Versions" (Victor sent me a link with an attempt at translation by someone else
: http://www.pushkins-poems.com/push03.htm ). Curiously, this special and famous poem, among the
various translations of Pushkin's poems, his EO, letters and
short-stories to the Portuguese, remains
untranslated.
V.Nabokov's observations, in LRL (The Art of
Translation), illustrate part of the difficulty that any translator has to
surmount to reach a satisfactory result and his final paragraph is
tauntingly evasive: "'I was confronted for instance
with the following opening line of one of Pushkin's most prodigious poems:
Yah pom-new chewed-no-yay mg-no-vain-yay
I have rendered the syllables by
the nearest English sounds I could find; their mimetic disguise makes them look
rather ugly; but never mind; the "chew" and the "vain" are associated
phonetically with other Russian words meaning beautiful and important things,
and the melody of the line with the plump, golden-ripe "chewed-no-yay" right in
the middle and the "m's" and "n's" balancing each other on both sides, is to the
Russian ear most exciting and soothing — a paradoxical combination that any
artist will understand.
Now, if you take a dictionary and look
up those four words you will obtain the following foolish, flat and familiar
statement: "I remember a wonderful moment." What is to be done with this bird
you have shot down only to find that it is not a bird of paradise, but an
escaped parrot, still screeching its idiotic message as it flaps on the ground?
For no stretch of the imagination can persuade an English reader that "I
remember a wonderful moment" is the perfect beginning of a perfect poem. The
first thing I discovered was that the expression "a literal translation" is more
or less nonsense. "Yah pom- new" is a deeper and smoother plunge into the past
than "I remember," which falls flat on its belly like an inexperienced diver;
"chewed-no-yay" has a lovely Russian "monster" in it, and a whispered "listen,
"and the dative ending of a "sunbeam, "and many other fair relations among
Russian words. It belongs phonetically and mentally to a certain series of
words, and this Russian series does not correspond to the English series in
which "I remember" is found. And inversely, "remember, "though it clashes with
the corresponding "pom-new" series, is connected with an English series of its
own whenever real poets do use it. And the central word in Housman's "What are
those blue remembered hills?" becomes in
Russian "vspom-neev-she-yes-yah," a
horrible straggly thing, all humps and horns, which cannot fuse into any inner
connection with "blue," as it does so smoothly in English, because the Russian
sense of blueness belongs to a different series than the Russian "remember"
does.
This interrelation of words and non-correspondence of verbal series in
different tongues suggests yet another rule, namely, that the three main words
of the line draw one another out, and add something which none of them would
have had separately or in any other combination. What makes this exchange of
secret values possible is not only the mere contact between the words, but their
exact position in regard both to the rhythm of the line and to one another. This
must be taken into account by the translator.
Finally, there is the
problem of the rhyme. "Mg-no-vain-yay" has over two thousand Jack-in-the-box
rhymes popping out at the slightest pressure, whereas I cannot think of one to
"moment." The position of "mg-no-vain-yay" at the end of the line is not
negligible either, due as it is to Pushkin's more or less consciously knowing
that he would not have to hunt for its mate. But the position of "moment" in the
English line implies no such security; on the contrary he would be a singularly
reckless
fellow who placed it there. Thus I was confronted by that
opening line, so full of Pushkin, so individual and harmonious; and after
examining it gingerly from the various angles here suggested, I tackled it. The
tackling process lasted the worst part of the night. I did translate it at last;
but to give my version at this point might lead the reader to doubt that
perfection be attainable by merely following a few perfect rules."