Парус

ЛЕРМОНТОВ
Михаил Юрьевич
(1814 - 1841)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mec-_rTl2Ek

In his Eclesiastical History of the English People, written in 731, Bede told the story of Caedmon, an illiterate cow-herd who was awakened by an angel and sang an eloquent song about the creation of the earth. At first, Bede included only his own Latin translation of Caedmon’s words. Relenting in later editions, he reproduced the earliest known poem written in English. About his Latin translation of Caedmon’s song he commented:

“Hic est sensus, non autem ordo ipse verborum quae dormiens ille canebat; neque enim possunt carmina, quamvis optime composita, ex alia in aliam linguam ad verbum sine detrimento sui decoris ac dignitatis transferri.”

My translation is not literal. I have reproduced Lermontov’s rhythm (iambic quatrameter with alternating hard and soft line-endings) but retained only the b rhymes from his a-b, a-b scheme. I have tried to give some sense of the sonic drama in the poet’s final line, as its two hard “b” sounds resolve into a softer “p.” But кинул is more like reject than flee, and I couldn’t get in the repetition of счастия in lines 7 and 8. Of course my “he” sounds like artsy personification in English when it is only the gender appropriate pronoun for парус in Russian, placing the sail ambiguously between a “he” and an “it.”