Wczoraj była rocznica śmierci W. H. Audena, a dziś jest dzień tłumacza. W związku (a właściwie zupełnie bez związku) z tym cytat z tego pierwszego ku przestodze temu drugiemu.

Co zawsze podziwiam u Audena, sama wypowiedź jest doskonałą ilustracją tego, o czym mówi - wystarczy spróbować ją przetłumaczyć. Ja poległam.

Whatever else it may or may not be, I want every poem I write to be a hymn in praise of the English language: hence my fascination with certain speech-rhythms which can only occur in an uninflected language rich in monosyllables, my fondness for peculiar words with no equivalents in other tongues, and my deliberate avoidance of that kind of visual imagery which has no basis in verbal experience and can therefore be translated without loss.

Cytat pochodzi z książki Edwarda Mendelsona Later Auden, którą wypożyczyłam na stronie archive.org - bardzo spodobała mi się taka forma udostępniania książek. Gdybym miała możliwość jej ściągnięcia, to nieprędko sięgnęłabym po nią, natomiast  świadomość, że dostęp jest oganiczony czasowo działa mobilizująco.

Из писем Ариадны Эфрон

Письмо Е. Я. Эфрон, Таруса, 11.04.1961

[...] Всех нас загрызает суета, но есть минуты, часы, дни, когда каждый из нас расправляется, счастливый велиим в малом и малым в великом. Потому что нарушения нашего "Я" - не внутри нас, а вне - нарушение, ускорение бега времени, нарушение каких-то норм поведения, быта и т.д. И вот мы устаем, отстаем, сами себя догоняем, но это мы, все те же мы, которые до самой смерти не утратим эластичности внутренней пружины: то сплющимся, то развернемся! А вот когда суета проникла внутрь - это гибель, распад. Так вот у И. А с нами ничего не случится, что бы не случилось!

Я вот думаю о чем: детство - это открытие мира. Юность - открытие себя в мире. Зрелые годы - открытие того, что ты не для мира, а мир - не для тебя (или то, что ты - для него, а он - для тебя - что м.б. чаще бывает) - успокаиваешься. Когда ты внутренне спокоен - суета тебя охватывает, одолевает физически, а душа не тонет...[...]

Письмо И.Г. Эренбургу, 08.11.1961

О Глиноедском: имени-отчества его я не помню, мы все звали его товарищ Глиноедский. Не знала и его жены. Человек он был замечательный и очень мне запомнился. Офицер белой армии, а до этого - участник первой империалистической; попал в немецкий плен, раненый. Бежал из госпиталя, спрятавшись в корзине с гразным, окровавленным бельем, ежедневно вывозившимся в прачечную. Познакомилась с ним в "Союзе Возвращения"; вел он там какой-то кружок - политграмоты ли, политэкономии - не помню. Неприятно выделялся среди прочих преувеличенной подтянутостью, выутюженностью, выбритостью; был холодноват в обращении, distant, distingue. Говорил литературнейшим языком, без малейшей примеси французских обрусевших словечек и оборотов, хоть французский язык знал отлично. Так и вижу его - выше среднего роста, худощавый, даже худой, гладко причесанные, светлые, негустые волосы, лицо "с волчинкой", жесткое, и, как бывает, прелестная, какая-то стыдливая улыбка. Черный костюм, безукоризненно отглаженный, белоснежный воротничок, начищенные ботинки. А кругом - шоферы, рабочие, в плохонькой, но какой-то живой одёжке, лица чаще всего небритые, руки - немытые, табачный дым, гам. Устроили в Союзе дешевую столовую, кормили по себестоимости, за гроши - щи да каша. Длинные столы, скамьи, алюминиевые миски, ложки - серый хлеб большими ломтями - вкусно было и весело, ели да похваливали - шутили, шумели. А Глиноедский не ел, а кушал, и хлеб отламывал кусочками, а не хватал от ломтя. Мы - тогда молодежь - втайне подтрунивали над ним, над разутуженностью его и отчужденностью, но на занятиях сидели смирно: человек он был эрудированный - и строгий по существу своему. Один раз опоздал он на занятия, я сбегала за ним, жил он в том же здании на rue de Buci (странный громадный престарый черный грязный дом) - в мансарде. Постучала. Не отвечают. Толкнула дверь - открылась. Никого - и - ничего. Крохотная клетушка, по диагонали срезанная крышей, где-то там мерцает тюремное окошечко размером в печную дверцу.Страшная железная - какая-то смертная - койка с матрасиком-блином, а из-под матраса видны те самые черные "безукоризненные" брюки - так вот и отглаживаются. На спине кровати - та самая - единственная белая рубашка. На косой табуретке в изголовье - керосиновая лампа, два тома Ленина. Всё. Нищета кромешная; уж ко всяким эмгрантским интерьерам привыкла, а эта в сердце саданула, по сей день помню. Я всё поняла. Поняла, какой страшной ценой нищий человек сохранял свое человеческое достоинство. Поняла, чтó для него значил белый воротничок, и начищенная обувь, и железная складка на брюках, чистые руки и бритые щеки. Поняла его худобу и сдержанность в еде (кормили один раз в день). У меня даже кровь от сердца отхлынула и ударила в пятки ("душа в пятки" ушла!). Я (всё это уже к делу не относится) заплакала так, как в детстве от сильного ушиба - слезы вдруг хлынут без предупреждения, и пошла тихонечко вниз - вдруг прозрев и увидев страшноту этого дома, липкие сырые пузатые стены, корытообразные стоптанные ступени, бесцветность света, еле пробивающегося сквозь от века грязные стекла.[...]


Письмо В. Н. Орлову, 17.11.1961

[...] С Буниным - живым - я простилась в 1936 г., на Лазурном побережье, в нестерпимо жаркий июльский день, в белом от зноя дворике маленького, похожего на саклю и так же прилепившегося в горе - домика, купленного на "нобелевские" деньги. Под пальмой - от которой тени не больше, чем от дюжины ножей. Невысокий, мускулистый, жилистый, сухощавый старик (солько ему лет тогда было? Не  так уж много...) с серебряной, коротко стриженной головой, крупным носом, брезгливой губой, светлыми, острыми глазами - поразительными, добела раскаленными! одетый в холщовую белую рубашку, парусиновые белые штаны, обутый в "эспадрильи" на босу ногу (а оставался щеголеватым и в этой одежке!), говорил мне: "Ну куда ты, дура, едешь? Ну зачем? Ах, Россия? А ты знаешь Россию? Куда тебя несет? Дура, будешь работать на макаронной фабрике... ("почему именно на макаронной, Иван Алексеевич?!") - на ма-ка-ронной. Потом тебя посадят... ("меня? за что?") - а вот увидишь. Найдут за что. Косу остригут. Будешь ходить босиком и набьешь себе верблюжьи пятки!.. ("Я?! верблюжьи?!") ... Да. Знаешь, что надо? Знаешь? Знаешь? Знаешь? Выйти замуж за хорошего - только чтобы не молодой! не сопляк! - человека и... поехать с ним в Венецию, а? В Венецию". И потом долго и безнадежно говорил про Венецию - я отвечала, а он не слушал, а смотрел сквозь меня, в свое прошлое и в мое будущее; потом встал с каменной скамейки, легко вздохнул, сказал - "ну что ж, Христос с тобой!" и перекрестил, крепко вжимая этот крест в лоб мне, и в грудь, и в плечи. Поцеловал горько и сухо, блеснул глазами, улыбнулся: "Если бы мне - было - столько - лет, сколько тебе,  - пешком бы пошел в Россию, не то, что поехал бы - и пропади оно все пропадом!"

Это "все пропадом" - была "неповторимая панорама" сказочного городка Канны, там, внизу, - и эмалевое Средиземное море, и сердоликовые горы вдали, и потрясающей чистоты и пустынности небо, и воздух, душный от запаха цветов (неподалёку були громаднейшие цветочные плантации фирмы "Коти").

Да, да. И пошла я, и поехала - и все было, кроме "макаронной фабрики", если не считать мою работу в "Жургазобъединении" под руководством Кольцова именно выпусканием в свет макаронных изделий? - и кроме Венеции. Был и "верблюжьи пятки", и голова, стриженная под машнку в тифу, - и даже муж был - такой, который даруется единожды в жизни, да и то не всякой! Его расстреляли в последние дни Бериевского царствования, накануне падения всех этих колоссов на глиняных ногах... [...]

Ambition, Distraction, Uglification and Derision

Ten wiersz Brodskiego został przytozony przez kogoś z okazji amerykańskich wyborów, ale zamieszczam go tu z czystego zachwytu. Jak każdy dobry wiersz, jest wielopłaszczyznowy i wielopoziomowy. I na którymś poziomie jest Bóg ojciec siedzący pod drzewem poznania dobra i zła w Edenie i zapowiedź wcielenia i krzyża. I badzo ludzki (właściwie, męski) sposób tworzenia - mnożenie (i stąd lustro, którego nie zabierzesz do grobu) i niewiedza i strach, co z tego pozostanie, i czy pozostanie cokolwiek (ach, te plemniki... zmazy nocne... words, words, words...).

A epigraf niech będzie z "Alicji w Krainie Czarów":

"Ah! Then yours wasn't a really good school," said the Mock Turtle in a tone of great relief. "Now, at ours, they had, at the end of the bill, 'French, music and washing - extra'."

"You couldn't have wanted it much," said Alice; "living at the bottom of the sea."

"I couldn't afford to learn it," said the Mock Turtle with a sigh. "I only took the regular course."

"What was it?" inquired Alice.

"Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with," the Mock Turtle replied; "and then the different branches of Arithmetic - Ambition, Distraction, Uglification and Derision."

"I never heard of 'Uglification'," Alice ventured to say. "What is it?"

The Gryphon lifted up both its paws in surprise. "Never heard of uglifying!" - it exclaimed. "You know what to beautify is, I suppose"

"Yes," said Alice doubtfully: "It means - to-make-anything-prettier."

"Well, then," the Gryphon went on, "if you don't know what to uglify is, you are a simpleton."

I 

Ветреный летний день.
Прижавшееся к стене
дерево и его тень.
И тень интересней мне.
Тропа, получив плетей,
убегает к пруду.
Я смотрю на детей,
бегающих в саду.

II

Свирепость их резвых игр,
их безутешный плач
смутили б грядущий мир,
если бы он был зряч.
Но порок слепоты
время приобрело
в результате лапты,
в которую нам везло.

III

Остекленелый кирпич
царапает голубой
купол как паралич
нашей мечты собой
пространство одушевить;
внешность этих громад
может вас пришибить,
мозгу поставить мат.

IV

Новый пчелиный рой
эти улья займет,
производя живой,
электрический мед.
Дети вытеснят нас
в пригородные сады
памяти -- тешить глаз
формами пустоты.

V

Природа научит их
тому, что сама в нужде
зазубрила, как стих:
времени и т. д.
Они снабдят цифру "100"
завитками плюща,
если не вечность, то
постоянство ища.

VI

Ежедневная ложь
и жужжание мух
будут им невтерпеж,
но разовьют их слух.
Зуб отличит им медь
от серебра. Листва
их научит шуметь
голосом большинства.

VII

После нас -- не потоп,
где довольно весла,
но наважденье толп,
множественного числа.
Пусть торжество икры
над рыбой еще не грех,
но ангелы -- не комары,
и их не хватит на всех.

VIII

Ветреный летний день.
Запахи нечистот
затмевают сирень.
Брюзжа, я брюзжу как тот,
кому застать повезло
уходящий во тьму
мир, где, делая зло,
мы знали еще -- кому.

IX

Ветреный летний день.
Сад. Отдаленный рев
полицейских сирен,
как грядущее слов.
Птицы клюют из урн
мусор взамен пшена.
Голова, как Сатурн,
болью окружена.

X

Чем искреннее певец,
тем все реже, увы,
давешний бубенец
вибрирует от любви.
Пробовавшая огонь,
трогавшая топор,
сильно вспотев, ладонь
не потреплет вихор.

XI

Это -- не страх ножа
или новых тенет,
но того рубежа,
за каковым нас нет.
Так способен Луны
снимок насторожить:
жизнь как меру длины
не к чему приложить.

XII

Тысячелетье и век
сами идут к концу,
чтоб никто не прибег
к бомбе или к свинцу.
Дело столь многих рук
гибнет не от меча,
но от дешевых брюк,
скинутых сгоряча.

XIII

Будущее черно,
но от людей, а не
оттого, что оно
черным кажется мне.
Как бы беря взаймы,
дети уже сейчас
видят не то, что мы;
безусловно не нас.

XIV

Взор их неуловим.
Жилистый сорванец,
уличный херувим,
впившийся в леденец,
из рогатки в саду
целясь по воробью,
не думает -- "попаду",
но убежден -- "убью".

XV

Всякая зоркость суть
знак сиротства вещей,
не получивших грудь.
Апофеоз прыщей
вооружен зрачком,
вписываясь в чей круг,
видимый мир -- ничком
и стоймя -- близорук.

XVI

Данный эффект -- порок
только пространства, впрок
не запасшего клок.
Так глядит в потолок
падающий в кровать;
либо -- лишенный сна --
он же, чего скрывать,
забирается на.

XVII

Эта песнь без конца
есть результат родства,
серенада отца,
ария меньшинства,
петая сумме тел,
в просторечьи -- толпе,
наводнившей партер
под занавес и т. п.

XVIII

Ветреный летний день.
Детская беготня.
Дерево и его тень,
упавшая на меня.
Рваные хлопья туч.
Звонкий от оплеух
пруд. И отвесный луч
-- как липучка для мух.

XIX

Впитывая свой сок,
пачкая куст, тетрадь,
множась, точно песок,
в который легко играть,
дети смотрят в ту даль,
куда, точно грош в горсти,
зеркало, что Стендаль
брал с собой, не внести.

XX

Наши развив черты,
ухватки и голоса
(знак большой нищеты
природы на чудеса),
выпятив челюсть, зоб,
дети их исказят
собственной злостью -- чтоб
не отступить назад.

XXI

Так двигаются вперед,
за горизонт, за грань.
Так, продолжая род,
предает себя ткань.
Так, подмешавши дробь
в ноль, в лейкоциты -- грязь,
предает себя кровь,
свертыванья страшась.

XXII

В этом и есть, видать,
роль материи во
времени -- передать
все во власть ничего,
чтоб заселить верто-
град голубой мечты,
разменявши ничто
на собственные черты.

XXIII

Так в пустыне шатру
слышится тамбурин.
Так впопыхах икру
мечут в ультрамарин.
Так марают листы
запятая, словцо.
Так говорят "лишь ты",
заглядывая в лицо.

A liberating influence

Większość prac krytycznych poświęconych poezji Audena, na które trafiłam, budzi we mnie przemożne poczucie niezręczności, jak gdybym przyłapała autorów na tym, że nie za bardzo wiedzą, co napisać. Jak na razie chlubnym wyjątkiem była książka R. Victorii Arany W.H.Auden's Poerty: Mythos, Theory and Practice, a teraz mam przed sobą drugą budującą pozycję: Auden and After. The Liberation of Poetry 1930-1941 Francisa Scarfe'a. Esej napisany w 1941 roku może wydawać się zdezaktualizowany, przecież Auden wówczas nie napisał jeszcze swoich najważniejszych wierszy, ale mimo wszystkich ograniczeń i błędnych ścieżek, oraz "negatywizmu" (jak przyznaje sam autor), zawiera bardzo trafny obraz poezji Audena, do którego nikt, w moim odczuciu, nic istotnego nie dodał. Esej Scarfe'a potwierdza moją intuicję, że poeta, jak każdy człowiek, nie zmienia się w ciągu życia, tylko idzie swoją własną drogą, i ta droga jest od początku widoczna dla kochającego oka, jakim, niewątpliwie, było krytyczne oko Scarfe'a ("It adds a precious seeing to the eye; a lover's eyes will gaze an eagle blind", Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost).

Kilka cytatów, które wydają mi się szczególnie trafne, głębokie lub rozczulające:

He presents the bustle and humbug and smell of modern life by his capacity for mythological thinking, his feeling for all sorts of places, all sorts of people into whose life he has not penetrated but which he intuitively understands, his love of make-believe, his power for brutal generalization which gives point to many fragments of observation, and gives body to his personal beliefs. 

One of the most curious things about Auden is that in spite of his emphasis on psychology, on close examination his poetry is not particularly introspective [...] And it is also noticeable that while his poetry is "about chaps", there is very little about individual chaps and much more about people in general. 

The pseudopsychology, by which disease is represented purely as defense-mechanism and selfishness, leads Auden very often to treat suffering cruelly as though it were a joke. As for Freud, it is amusing to see that a poet who professes immense admiration for Dryden (that poet whom nobody reads, and who is out of the direct line of English poetry, and who, once again, was revived not by Auden but by Eliot, to whom he is better suited) - it is amusing to see this pseudo-classical poet, who is as different from Dryden as an octopus from a whale, holding a Freudian and ultra-romantic conception of the poet. 

Even Auden's Geography (which is one of his main assets: his poems carry us round the world in no time) is psychic, and it is his interpretation of places such as Dover, Iceland and Spain, which led me to use the term 'Psychic Geography'. 

Even his love poems seem to be about other people: he is a poet turned outwards. It is his being 'turned outwards' which accounts for much of his sermonizing. 

The main question now is, why has Auden had such a penetrating influence on the younger writers? A painter recently said to me: 'If I can paint a circle and two splashes of red, and regard my work as complete, I owe that to Picasso.' The same applies to Auden: he has been a liberating influence who gave a younger writers a self-confidence which they might otherwise have had to fight for dearly. Auden broadened into a highway the path which had been hewn into convention and hypocrisy by Eliot, Pound, Owen and the verslibristes. But he did more. The preceding generation was composed largely of intellectual poets - Eliot, Pound, Graves, Riding, Read, the Sitwells - and it is Auden who broke down the new snobbery of intellectualism which was in danger of creating a minority-poetry. He also enlarged, quite definitely, the poetry-reading public. The most suggestible of poets we have had for a long time, he was able to synthesize in his work an enormous amount of the achievements and methods of past writers. Reacting to numerous influences, he was able to enlarge for younger writers the vocabulary, syntax, rhythm and imagery of poetry. That is why so many of the younger poets are accused of 'deriving' from Auden, when it is not the case. Most often they have observed his methods and have used them in their own way. The truth is that, in a sense, Auden has done all this at his own expense, almost to his own detriment. What has happened is that he has not created his own recognizable manner, as Eliot did. He has created 'style which is no style' [...].  

Auden has a host of manners, good and bad. I do not propose to examine them: the pretentious but effective telegraphese of the 'Paid on Both Sides' which passes into the impressionist manner of some of his poems; his 'cine-style' which is a circular view, as the French say, on a whole landscape, town or country in a few lines; that style which is artificially tough and resembles Hemingway; another style in which he heaps up a series of abstractions, culminating in some of his American poems which, with their personified passions, suggest that this writer is lapsing into the eighteenth century and forgetting what passion is; those obvious devices, internal rhyme, half-rhyme, assonance, sprung-rhythm, the omission of pronouns, verbs and other desirable parts of speech, his puns, his conceits, his incorrect and slipshod epithets which startle momentarily, and all types of slang and private jargon: most of these things have already been adequately reviewed by other critics. It is not the presence of these things which creates the particular climate of Auden's poetry; it is rather the co-existence of them. [...]  

Any one poem of Auden is likely to be as much a mixed bag as any one of his books, and his books, in their strange juxtaposition of subject and tone, are rather like a cinema crowd emerging, from the stalls, the boxes and the pit, in a confused and democratic mass through the same exit. [...] Eliot, already so unclassical by the purest standards, is a champagne to a cocktail when compared with Auden. 

What are the real qualities of Auden? One of them is certainly an imaginative interest in the way people live. Even if he misinterprets, as in the case of Honeyman, he is not far wrong in his background. [...] 

And he has also a realization of the vastness and oneness of the human scene. We have seen already that he has no one-track mind: he does not see Spain as an isolated phenomenon, but a symbol of the consciousness of the world, and he usually treats any subject, however small, in its broadest implications.[...]  

Thirdly, his naiveness, in spite of his sometimes heartless jibes and his intellectual leg-pulling, has remained unspoiled, and he is capable of expressing a primitive and pure feeling [...] 

Forthly, Auden has also the vast, living vocabulary which is essential to any poet who wants to be of his time and of the future. He is enabled by this to write on many levels. He is also sensitive (much more than many who have followed him) to the musical qualities of words, though he has shown a tendency to fall rhythmically into rather set patterns [...] 

The most important point about Auden's style is that, for good or ill, he has tried to write poetry very close to common speech, and that he has succeeded. Generally speaking, one might say that in his early poems he tried to express a fairly universal, and in any case a second-hand, subject-matter in an intensely personal style, and since then he has moved towards a more personal subject-matter and a more impersonal style. His ideas are being more and more imprinted with his own particular twist of mind, and one sees increasingly that he is quite incapable of orthodoxy of any kind.

The secret candour

(In Memoriam – June 1941, R. R.)

Friend, whose unnatural early death

In this year’s cold, chaotic Spring

Is like a clumsy wound that will not heal:

What can I say to you, now that your ears

Ae stoppered-up with distant soil?

Perhaps to speak at all is false; more true

Simply to sit at times alone and dumb

And with most pure intensity of thought

And concentrated inmost feeleng, reach

Towards your shadow on the years’ crumbling wall

I’ll say not any word in praise or blame

Of what you ended with the mere turn of a tap;

Nor to explain, deplore nor yet exploit

The latent pathos of your living years –

Hurried, confused and unfulfilled, -

That were the shiftless years of both our youths

Spent in the monstrous mountain-shadow of

Catastrophe that chilled you to the bone:

The certain imminence of which always pursued

You from your heritage of fields and sun...

I see your face in hostile sunlight, eyes

Wrinkled against its glare, behind the glass

Of a car’s windscreen, while you seek to lose

Yourself in swift devouring of white roads

Unwinding across Europe or America;

Taciturn at the wheel, wrapped in a blaze

Of restlessness that no fresh scene can quench;

In cities of brief sojourn that you pass

Through in your quest for respite, heavy drink

Alone enabling you to bear each hotel night,

Sex, Art and Politics: those poor

Expedients! You tried them each in turn,

With a wry secret smile of one resigned

To join in every complicated game

Adults affect to play. Yet girls you found

So prone to sentiment’s corruptions; and the joy

Of sensual satisfaction seemed so brief, and left

Only new need. It proved hard to remain

Convinced of the Word’s efficacity; or even quite

Certain of World-Salvation through ‘the Party Line’...

Cased in the careful armour that you wore

Of wit and nonchalance, through which

Few quizzed the concealed countenance of fear,

You waited daily for the sky to fall;

At moments wholly panic-stricken by

A sense of stifling in your brittle shell;

Seeing the world’s damnation week by week

Grow more and more inevitable; till

The conflagration broke out with a roar,

And from those flames you fled through whirling smoke,

To end at last in bankrupt exile in

That sordid city, scene of Ulysses; and there,

While War sowed all the lands with violent graves,

You finally succumbed to a black, wild

Incomprehensibility of fate that none could share...

Yet even in your obscure death I see

The secret candour of that lonely child

Who, lost in the storm-shaken castle-park,

Astride his crippled mastiff’s back was borne

Slowly away into the utmost dark.

David Gascoyne  

Adresatem tej elegii jest Roger Roughton, angielski poeta, zaliczany do surrealistów, wydawca (własnym sumptem) pisma literackiego Contemporary Poetry and Prose. Jemu też poświęcił Francis Scarfe swój zbiór esejów krytycznych Auden and After, o którym miałam pisać, ale zatrzymałam się na stronie z dedykacją. RR musiał mieć talent do przyjaźni. Do niego też, po części, jest adresowany Dedycatory Poem ze wspomnianego zbioru Scarfe'a:

To you, my friends

By my lamp in the evenings,

Whose words refresh

My nights, my mornings;

A doomed generation

Seized between wars,

Whose boyhood language 

Was hunger and loss:

Thanks for you verses

That enrich memory

Like smiling faces

Of women and children.

All I can say

Will do you less good

Than a peaceful day

In a summer wood:

All I can give

Is a prose love,

Locked in a book

My kindest look.

F. S.

Te wiersze oddają to, co jest piękne i żywe i pociągające w latach trzydziestych dla mnie. 

Ghost of a ghost...

(Ghost of a ghost, of you when young, you waken
In me my ghost when young, us both in Oxford.
You, the tow-haired undergraduate
With jaunty liftings of the head.
Angular forward stride, cross-questioning glance,
A Buster Keaton-faced pale gravitas
Saying aloud your poems whose letters bit
Ink-deep into my fingers when I set
Them up upon my five-pound printing press:

'An evening like a coloured photograph

A music stultified across the water

The heel upon the finishing blade of grass.')


Stephen Spender

Dobrodziejstwa Internetu-2

Nigdy nie przeczytałabym wierszy Roberta Horana (1922-1981), gdyby Auden nie wybrał ich do redagowanej przez siebie serii młodych poetów amerykańskich (The Yale Series of Younger Poets). Wydany w tej serii w 1948 roku tomik pozostał jedynym w dorobku Horana. Prawie nic poza tym o nim nie wiadomo. Nie obeszło się bez Hominternu (przyjaźnił się z kompozytorem Samuelem Barberem, który wykorzystał jego wiersz "The Queen's Face on the Summery Coin" w swoim cyklu 2 songs (op. 18) z 1942 roku*.)

Edward Mendelson zasugerował, że Auden wybrał wiersze Horana, "zmierzające w kierunku radosnego nonsensu", ponieważ "czuł się w obowązku znaleźć poetów zupełnie niepodobnych do niego samego" ("His next two choices were poets whose work tended towards rhapsodic nonsense; concievably he chose them out od a sense of obligation to find poets entirely unlike himself", E. Mendelson, Introduction to W. H. Auden, Prose, Volume III 1949-55). To przypuszczenie nie wydaje mi się trafne, jeżeli chodzi o Horana. Dla mnie jego wiersze brzmią zdecydowanie wczesnoaudenowsko, i mam mocne poczucie, że to podobieństwo ma swoje źródło nie tyle w zapatrzeniu się w Audenie, ile w patrzeniu w zbieżnym z nim kierunku**.

Robert Horan

Antiphonal Song

What is it eats the hunter's breath

as he picks through the thicket?

The blood that's bound to bleed to death

like a leak in  a bucket.

What is it tires the oarsman so

as he climbs the chaste water?

The love that he leaves and the winds that blow

him on green miles after.

What is it drains the drinker there

at the jumping fountain?

The desert he crossed that brought him there

and the next mountain.

The Queen's Face on the Summery Coin

The queen's face on the summery coin

was never golder nor more regal

than his body's bright and bursting

where once it walked between the the stripes of rain.

The birds swing in their appled cages

and the solid sun will walk

through straw houses where honey rages

churning the light to chalk.

The wind shines on the woody grove.

We live in a copper clock where, on the hour

a polished bell divides the stem and flower

and drains the ghost-built body of its love.

Like the deaf listening for a silence

that follows no sound,

or the sick swung in the balance

between wound and wound,

there is too much eye to see

all but the nearest disorder.

In the sable shadow of this harbor

he lies him down among the singing bees.

Sonnet X

When love is pity then it is perverse;

fed on a stolen fruit, will nourish none,

but, like lost sailors, swing from worse to worse,

whose waves no waters are, whose star's undone.

This coronation of a crippled king

will blacken statues and turn wax the flower;

he cannot kiss whose mouth's devouring

dust for bread and centuries for an hour.

This charity is cool that fools the arms

and set false fires in the dwindled night.

When love is pity, all the blood's alarms

should ring the sleeper from his dead delight.

Then, in red morning, he may see them move,

love and pity down each separate grove.

Kilka dygresji:

* Barber był partnerem życiowym i zawodowym włosko-amerykańskiego kompozytora Geana Carla Menottiego, organizatora festiwalu sztuk w Spoleto, gdzie zagrał jeden ze swoich słynnych koncertów Richter (całkiem urocza historia, jak do niego doszło, bardzo w stylu Richtera, jednak mam nadzieję, że mimo wszystko zapłacono mu za występ ;))

** Owszem, Horan należał do grupy Aktywistów (Activists) (swoją drogą, Auden był ich ojcem chrzestnym, jeżeli chodzi o nazwę, bo przyjęli ją oficjalnie po tym, jak użył tego określenia w przedmowie do wierszy innej poetki z tej grupy, Rosalie Moore) i brał udział w seminarium Lawrence'a Harta, (którego koncepcje Auden dość dokładnie przestawił w tejże przedmowie), jednak jego poezja nie jest jedynie realizacją hartowskiej idei intensywnego (aktywnego) języka poetyckiego, tak jak poezja Tadeusza Gajcego zdecydowanie wykracza poza ramy "katastrofizmu", w porównaniu, na przykład, do poezji Baczyńskiego (zresztą, wykracza w tę samą stronę - formalną, ale za formą w obydwu przypadkach niewątpliwie stoi własny ukształtowany światopogląd).

Skoro doszłam do Gajcego, to dodam, że nie przestaję się dziwić tej łatwości i szybkości, z którą przed IIWŚ rozpzestrzeniały się informacje i trendy kulturalne. Cwietajewa korespondowała z Rilkiem, Achmatowa pozowała dla Modiliani'ego, Auden w latach 20-ch czytał Kawafisa, Lawrence Hart już w latach 30-ch uczył swoich studentów na przykładach z Audena, a Aleksander Messing w 1940 roku w okupowanej Warszawie tłumaczył wierszy Stephena Spendera. Bardziej zadziwiające dla mnie było tylko to, że Brodski spotkał się z Audenem, a Rudolf Nurejev z Erikiem Bruhnem.

Cytat na koniec: "Hobbies," he said. "How did I get off onto hobbies?" (Zooey Glass)

O popularności Horacego w XVIII-wiecznej Anglii

One could encounter a volume of Horace almost everywhere. Young Mat Prior, for example, was seen by the Earl of Dorset reading Horace in the tavern in which he was employed and thereby gained a university education at that generous nobleman's expense. And Tobias Smollett's Roderick Random set out for London with various necessary articles and "a small edition of Horace" (I.vii). But perhaps the greatest praise should go to the gentleman of whom Lord Chesterfield wrote to his son in 1747 that he was "so good a manager of his time that he would not even lose that small portion of it which the call of nature obliged to pass in the necessary house... He bought a common edition of Horace, of which he tore off gradually a couple of pages, carried them with him to that necessary place, read them first and then sent them down as a sacrifice to Cloacina".

Arthur Sherbo, Introduction to Christopher Smart's verse translation of Horace's Odes.

W ten sposób dowiedziałam się, że pragmatyczni Rzymianie dla niezawodnej pracy kanalizacji wyposażyli ją w odpowiednie bóstwo - Cloacinę (znaną także jako Venus-Cloacina - Wenus Oczyszczająca). Widać, że Anglosasi dobrze przyswoili sobie tę część rzymskiego dziedzictwa, o czym świadczy sympatyczny czterowiersz przypisywany Byronowi:

O Cloacina, Goddess of this place,
Look on thy suppliants with a smiling face.
Soft, yet cohesive let their offerings flow,
Not rashly swift nor insolently slow.

Wracając do Horacego: oda XI w przekładzie Christophera Smarta, znanego głównie z wiersza Jubilate Agno, napisanego podczas pobytu autora w domu wariatów (wiersz zresztą świadczy o dużej jasności umysłu, doskonałej pamięci i znajomości Starego Testamentu), fragmenty którego tak pięknie wykorzystał Benjamin Britten dla swojego wokalnego cyklu Rejoice in the Lamb (Auden mu podsunął, swoją drogą). Tutaj można poczytać i posłuchać. Jestem pełna podziwu dla poetyckiego gustu i wyczucia Brittena i do tego, jak był na bieżąco z nowymi publikacjami.

Wracając ponownie do Horacego i jego ody XI do Leuconoe: przekład Smarta (rozwlókł, trzeba przyznać):

Seek not, what we're forbid to know, the date the Gods decree
To you, my fair Leuconoe, or what they fix for me.
Nor your Chaldean books consult, but cheerfully submit,
(How much a better thought it is!) to what the Gods think fit.
Whether more winters on our head they shall command to low'r
Or this the very last of all shall bring our final hour.
E'en this, whose rough tempestuous rage makes yon Tyrrhenian roar,
And all his foamy breakers dash upon the rocky shore.
Be wise and broach your mellow wine, which carefully decant,
And your desires proportionate to life's compendious grant.
E'en while we speak the moments fly, be greedy of to-day;
Nor trust another for those pranks which we may never play.

Dla kontrastu bardzo zwięzły przekład na polski Tadeusza Gajcego - najlepszy, jaki czytałam. Mam słabość do zawiłości składniowej.

Leukoneo, nie pytaj (po cóż), jaki los bogi
mnie i tobie przeznaczą. Babilońskich liczb matni
nie odczytuj. Lecz przyjmij, co się zdarzy. Da Jowisz
więcej zim do żywota albo da nam ostatnią,

którą teraz rozkrusza i w tyrreńskich wód gzebień
ciska skały. Bądź mądra, Leukoneo - cedź wino
i nadzieję umniejszaj. Bo gdy mówię do ciebie,
czas ucieka. Dzień chwytaj, nie wierz jutra godzinom.

Cat Jean Mansel La Fleur des histoirs... 1454 Paris, Bibliotheque de l'Arsenal Ms 5088 reserve fol. 257r

"...To gather and transmit the good light of understanding."

Swiatosław Richter i Oliver Sacks - o tłumaczeniu (all the others translate...).

Sir Philip Sidney, Ye Goat-herd Gods

Strephon. 

Ye Goatherd gods, that love the grassy mountains,
Ye nymphs which haunt the springs in pleasant valleys,
Ye satyrs joyed with free and quiet forests,
Vouchsafe your silent ears to plaining music,
Which to my woes gives still an early morning,
And draws the dolor on till weary evening. 

Klaius.  

O Mercury, foregoer to the evening,
O heavenly huntress of the savage mountains,
O lovely star, entitled of the morning
While that my voice doth fill these woeful valleys,
Vouchsafe your silent ears to plaining music,
Which oft hath Echo tired in secret forests. 

Strephon.  

I that was once free burgess of the forests,
Where shade from Sun, and sport I sought in evening,
I, that was once esteemed for pleasant music,
Am banished now among the monstrous mountains
Of huge despair, and foul affliction's valleys,
Am grown a screech-owl to myself each morning. 

Klaius.  

I that was once delighted every morning
Hunting the wild inhabiters of forests,
I, that was once the music of these valleys
So darkened am, that all my day is evening,
Heart-broken so, that molehills seem high mountains,
And fill the vales with cries instead of music. 

Strephon.  

Long since alas, my deadly swannish music
Hath made itself a crier of the morning
And hath with wailing strength climbed highest mountains;
Long since my thoughts more desert be than forests,
Long since I see my joys come to their evening,
And state thrown down to over-trodden valleys. 

Klaius.  

Long since the happy dwellers of these valleys
Have prayed me leave my strange exclaiming music,
Which troubles their day's work, and joys of evening;
Long since I hate the night, more hate the morning;
Long since my thoughts chase me like beasts in forests,
And make me wish myself laid under mountains. 

Strephon.  

Meseems I see the high and stately mountains
Transform themselves to low dejected valleys;
Meseems I hear in these ill-changed forests
The nightingales do learn of owls their music;
Meseems I feel the comfort of the morning
Turned to the mortal serene of an evening. 

Klaius.  

Meseems I see a filthy cloudy evening
As soon as sun begins to climb the mountains;
Meseems I feel a noisome scent, the morning
When I do smell the flowers of these valleys;
Meseems I hear, when I do hear sweet music,
The dreadful cries of murdered men in forests. 

Strephon,  

I wish to fire the trees of all these forests;
I give the sun a last farewell each evening;
I curse the fiddling finders-out of music;
With envy I do hate the lofty mountains
And with despite despise the humble valleys;
I do detest night, evening, day, and morning. 

Klaius. 

Curse to myself my prayer is, the morning;
My fire is more than can be made with forests,
My state more base than are the basest valleys;
I wish no evenings more to see, each evening;
Shamed, I hate myself in sight of mountains
And stop mine ears, lest I grow mad with music. 

Strephon.  

For she, whose parts maintained a perfect music,
Whose beauties shined more than the blushing morning,
Who much did pass in state the stately mountains,
In straightness passed the cedars of the forests,
Hath cast me, wretch, into eternal evening
By taking her two suns from these dark valleys. 

Klaius.  

For she, with whom compared, the Alps are valleys,
She, whose least word brings from the spheres their music,
At whose approach the sun rose in the evening,
Who, where she went, bare in her forehead morning,
Is gone, is gone from these our spoiled forests,
Turning to deserts our best pastured mountains. 

Strephon. 

These mountains witness shall, so shall these valleys, 

Klaius  

These forests eke, made wretched by our music,
Our morning hymn this is, and song at evening.

Trzy listy

Dwie kołysanki

An adult lullaby (XIV cent.)

Lollay, lollay little child, why wepestou so sore?
Nedes mostou wepe - it was iyarked thee yore
Ever to lib in sorow, and sich and mourne evere,
As thine eldren did er this, whil hi alives were.
Lollay, lollay. little child, child, lollay, lullow,
Into uncuth world icommen so ertou.

Bestes, and thos foules, the fisses in the flode,
And euch shef alives, imaked of bone and blode,
Whan he commeth to the world, hi doth hamsilf sum gode,
All bot the wech brol that is of Adam blode.
Lollay, lollay little child, to car ertou bemette;
Thou nost noght this worldes wild before thee is isette.

Child, if betideth that thou shalt thrive and thee,
Thench thou wer ifoftred up thy moder kne:
Ever hab mund in thy hert of thos thinges thre,
Whan thou commest, what thou aer, and what shall com of thee.
Lollay, lollay, little child, child, lollay, lollay,
With sorow thou com into this world, with sorow shalt wend away.

Ne tristou to this world: it is thy ful fo.
The ich he maketh pouer, the pore rich also.
It turneth woe to wel, and ek wel to wo.
Ne trist no man to this world whil it turneth so,
Lollay, lollay, little child, the fote is in the whele:
Thou nost whoder turne, to wo other wele.

Child, thou ert a pilgrim in wikedness ibor:
Thou wandrest in this fals world - thou lok thee befor!
Deth shall come with a blast, ute of a well dom horre,
Adames kin dun to cast, himsilf hath ido befor.
Lollay, lollay, little child, so wo thee worp Adam,
In the lond of paradis, throgh wikedness od Satan.

Child, thou nert a pilgrim bot an uncuthe guest:
Thy dawes beth itold, thy jurneys beth icest.
Whoder thou shalt wend, north other est,
Deth thee shall betide with bitter bale in brest.
Lollay, lollay, little child, this wo Adan thee wroght,
Whan he of the apple ete and Eve it him betoght.


(Lollay, lollay little child, why do you cry so hard? You must needs cry - it was ordained for you of old to live for ever in sorrow and to sigh and mourn for ever, as your elders did before this, while they were alive. Lollay, lollay, little child, child, lollay, lullow, you have come into an alien world.

Beasts and birds, the fish in the river, and every living creature, made of blood and bone, when they come into the world do themselves some good, and except the wretched child descended from Adam. Lollay, lollay, little child, you are destined for trouble; you do not know the wilderness of this world is set before you.

Child, if it happens that you thrive and prosper, think you were brought up upon your mother's knee: always remember in your heart those three things, whence you have come, what you are and what shall become of you. Lollay, lollay, little child, child, lollay, lollay, with sorrow you came into this world, and with sorrow shall go away.

Put no trust in this world: it is your deadly enemy. It makes the rich poor and the poor rich as well. It turns pain to prosperity and also prosperity into pain. Let no man trust in this world while it turns so. Lollay, lollay, little child, your foot is on Fortune's wheel, and you do not know which  way it will turn, to pain or prosperity.

Child, you are a pilgrim born in sin: you wander in this treacherous world - look ahead! Death is bound to come out of a very dark door (?) with a gust to cast down the kin of Adam as he has done before (?). Lollay, lollay, little child, so Adam wove suffering for you in the land of paradise through Satan's wickedness.

Child, you are not a pilgrim, but an alien guest: your days are numbered, your travel planned. Which ever way you go, north or east, Death shall happen to you with bitter misery in your breast. Lollay, lollay, little child, this suffering Adam made for you when he ate the apple and Eve gave it to him.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9NqbAtdTRo


W. H. Auden
Lullaby

The din of work is subdued,
another day has westered
and mantling darkness arrived.
Peace! Peace! Devoid your portrait
of its vexations and rest.
Your daily round is done with,
you've gotten the garbage out,
answered some tiresome letters
and paid a bill by return,
all frettolosamente.
Now you have licence to lie,
naked, curled like a shrimplet,
jacent in bed, and enjoy
its cosy micro-climate:
Sing, Big Baby, sing lullay.

The old Greeks got it all wrong:
Narcissus is an oldie,
tamed by time, released at last
from lust for other bodies,
rational and reconciled.
For many years you envied
the hirsute, the he-man type.
No longer: now you fondle
your almost feminine flesh
with mettled satisfaction,
imaging that you are
sinless and all-sufficient,
snug in the den of yourself,
Madonna and Bambino:
Sing, Big Baby, sing lullay.

Let your last thinks all be thanks:
praise your parents wh gave you
A Super-Ego of strenght
that saves you so much bother,
digit friends and dear them all,
then pay fair attribution
to your age, to having been
born when you were. In boyhood
you were permitted to meet
beautiful old contraptions,
soon to be banished from earth,
saddle-tank loks, beam-engines
and over-shot waterwheels.
Yes, love, you have been lucky:
Sing, Big Baby, sing lullay.

Now for oblivion: let
the belly-mind take over
down below the diaphragm,
the domain of the Mothers,
They who guard the Sacred Gates,
without whose wordless warnings
soon the verbalising I
becomes a vicious despot,
lewd, incapable of love,
disdainful, status-hungry.
Should dreams haunt you, heed them not,
for all, both sweet and horrid,
are jokes in dubious taste,
to jejune to have truck with.
Sleep, Big Baby, sleep you fill.

Let your last thinks all be thanks

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/19/opinion/oliver-sacks-on-learning-he-has-terminal-cancer.html?_r=1

Barfield: The making of meaning

Każdy porządny drogowskaz powinien od czasu do czasu chodzić drogą, którą wskazuje.

In this chapter I have taken only one English word and one no richer in itself than a thousand others. Yet it serves well enough to show how the man of today, overburdened with self-consciousness, lonely, insulated from Reality by his shadowy, abstract thoughts, and ever on the verge of the awful maelstrom of his own fantastic dreams, has among his other compensations these lovely ancestral words, embalming the souls of many poets dead and gone and the souls of many common men. If he is a poet, he may rise for a moment on Shakespeare's shoulders - if he is a lover, then, certainly, there are no more philtres, but he has his four magical black squiggles wherein the past is bottled, like an Arabian Genie, in the dark. Let him only find the secret, and there, lying on the page, their printed silence will be green with moss; it will crumble slowly even while it whispers with the thunder of primeval avalanches. 'Le mot', murmured Victor Hugo... 'tantot comme un passant mysterieeux de l'ame, tantot comme un polype noir de l'ocean pense....'

Owen Barfield, Poetic diction: A study in meaning.

Williams: The place of the lion

He looked up at the sky and the strong afternoon sun - in that at least there was as yet no change. High above him some winged thing went through the air; he could not tell what it was but he felt comforted to see it. He was not entirely alone, it seemed; the pure balance of that distant flight entered into him as if it had been salvation. It was incredible that life should sustain itself by such equipoise, so lightly, so dangerously, but it did, and darted onward to its purpose so.

Charles Williams, The place of the lion.

Charles Williams, War in Heaven

Cytat z "War in Heaven" Charlesa Williamsa - jego charakterystyczny, paradoksalny styl. Opis okolicy, w której znajdowała się pewna podejrzana apteka.

It was not actually quite so respectable as Sir Giles had given him to understand. It had been once, no doubt, and was now half-way to another kind of respectability, being in the disreputable valley between two heights of decency. There were a sufficient number of sufficiently dirty children playing in the road to destroy privacy without achieving publicity: squalor was leering from the windows and not yet contending frankly and vainly with grossness. It was one of those sudden terraces of slime which hang over the pit of hell, and for which beastliness is too dignified a name. But the slime was still only oozing over it, and a thin cloud of musty pretence expanded over the depths below.   

November!

Thomas Hood

No sun - no moon!
No morn - no noon!
No dawn - no dusk - no proper time of day -
No sky - no earthly view -
No distance looking blue -

No road - no street -
No "t'other side the way" -
No end to any Row -
No indications where the Crescents go -

No top to any steeple -
No recognitions of familiar people -
No courtesies for showing 'em -
No knowing 'em!

No mail - no post -
No news  from any foreign coast -
No park - no ring - no afternoon gentility -
No company - no nobility -

No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member--
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds,
November!

W. H. Auden, The Martyr as Dramatic Hero

In Cranmer's case, his character, his life, his recantation in order to escape the stake, exclude the possibility of pride as a motive. The dramatic problem he presents is different. Had Becket died in his bed, he would now be remembered only by professional historians. Had Cranmer done the same, he would still be famous as the principal author of the Book of Common Prayer. He was, that is to say, both a man of action and an artist, a maker. A dramatist who takes him for his hero, cannot ignore his making, for it is an essential aspect of his life and character, but it is impossible to represent convincingly a man on the stage writing a book because of the time it takes. Williams shows Cranmer the maker, by indirect illustration; from time to time, he halts the action to let a choir sing appropriate passages from the Book of Common Prayer. This works for persons like myself who have been familiar with the words from childhood and know their source, but I fear that those who are less intimate with them may be irritated and feel that the choir is only there because this is a 'chirchy' play.

W. H. Auden, The Martyr as Dramatic Hero