One of the first poems I ever translated from Bahdanovič — indeed, for that matter, from Belarusian, was "Słuckija Tkačychi." As far as I can recall, some thirty or more years after the event, I made this translation after a March 25 celebration, when — after the formal proceedings were over — there was an informal singsong, which included the Kulikovič setting of this poem... Someone — I cannot now remember who — scribbled down the words for me from memory, and I made my translation that same evening. This was, of course, the first version of the poem, which appeared in Naša Niva in 1912.
Shortly afterwards, a Belarusian friend presented me with a book of Bahdanovič's works, and I realized that there was a second version of the poem (subtitled the "Author's final redaction"). But it did not, at that time, occur to me to try to translate it. Insofar as I thought about it at all, it seemed to me that the differences between the two versions would be virtually ironed out by the translation process. And there was so much else to translate — the whole wealth of Belarusian poetry was before me. When the commission came from UNESCO to translate the anthology that eventually became Like Water, Like Fire,(1) it was the first, Naša Niva, version of the poem which was required.
Glad of anything which would save time in what threatened to be a Herculean task, I simply took the existing version out of my file, and copied it into the UNESCO manuscript. Then, fourteen years later, when Professor Arnold McMillin produced The Images Swarm Free,(2)) he simply compiled it out of existing published versions, or my draft manuscrips deposited in the Francis Skaryna Belarusian Library in London. I had virtually nothing to do with the production of this book — I was up to my ears in journalistic and human rights activities at the time (it was the time of Sakharov's exile and the academic boycott of the Soviet Union — to say nothing of Martial Law in Poland), and did not even see the proofs(3) let alone have time to revise any of the texts!
Only in 1991, when I was preparing a literary evening in honour of the centenary of Bahdanovič's birth did I turn back to my version of this poem. During a visit to Miensk a few months earlier, I had spoken hopefully of translating the entire corpus of Bahdanovič's poetry — it is, after all, only one fairly slim volume — into English. This is still my aim, though, owing to matters unconnected with poetry, it is taking longer than I had hoped. My first task, of course, was to revise and put in order all my existing versions of Bahdanovič. My second, if I really wanted to go for a "complete" works, was to attack all the poems I had not yet translated. And, if I really wanted to be ultra-conscientious and "complete" — then I would have to tackle the "final redaction" of "Słuckija Tkačychi."
In translating from Belarusian poetry into English, as I have observed on a number of occasions, one starts with certain bonuses. The two languages are — albeit somewhat distant kin — both members of the Indo-European group. Although Belarusian words tend to be longer than their English equivalents, and although Belarusian still possesses the inflexional endings which English has largely lost, one does not have to wrestle with the huge concatenations of syllables characteristic of some agglutinative tongues.
Furthermore, modern Belarusian metres, like English, are stress-based. Read aloud to a monoglot English-speaker, therefore, Belarusian poetry, albeit incomprehensible, will be recognizable as verse in a way that, for example, French poetry, with its syllabic metre, will not. In retaining the rhythm of the original I am therefore, for the most part translating into my own native metrical idiom, (I have, on occasion, translated from other metrical idioms — syllabic, alliterative — but the techniques required are very different — as different, let us say, as between painting nad mosaic-making, or between playing the violin and the piano). "Słuckija Tkačychi," for example, is written in iambic tetrameter quatrains, rhyming abab, where the a lines have feminine, and b lines have masculine rhymes — a familiar English metre.
A third bonus is that of geography — Belarus lies in the northern hemisphere, so our times and seasons match, while her landscape, although very different from the townscapes and countryside of twentieth century England, nevertheless shares much with the landscapes of our literary past, and, in particular, our folk-lore and fairy-tales, with their wolves, their storks, and their dark, mysterious forests. But much of our flora and fauna are identical, and Bahdanovič's cornflowers and swallows are more familiar to us than, say, the olive-trees and hoopoes of Mediterranean poetry.
An additional bonus, as regards Bahdanovič's poetry, are his dates (1891-1917). For centuries, it was permissible in English poetry to invert the natural word-order of speech — provided that this did not distort the sense. But this possibility, like so much of our poetic tradition — was rejected by the modernists of the 1920s, and now cannot be used in serious poetry — except to create a special (e. g., archaic) effect. The possibility of such inversions make the translator's task considerably easier, since it opens up more options for satisfying the demands of rhythm and rhyme.
But, (again, except for special effects), I do not consider it proper to use inversions, nor other outmoded stylistic tropes (notably, the second person singular, and contracted forms such as e'er, 'twas, 'neath), in translating poetry written after the modernists took over in English. Such forms and inversions, I feel, are only permissible if they would have been permissible in English of the poet's own day. But Bahdanovič's work was all written before 1917, when poets of the "Georgian" school were still making judicious use of such forms. They are not popular today — so I try to use them sparingly, but at least with Bahdanovič I can translate, the fourth line of "Słuckija Tkačychi," as
"Girdles of woven gold to make",
without offending my sense of what is and is not stylistically congruent.
Nevertheless, not all is easy. In particular, in "Słuckija Tkačychi", one has to deal with the lack of what I call intransitive verbs of state of colour. English does possesses a few transitive verbs of colour: one may black one's boots, whiten one's tennis shoes, redden one's lips, gild the lily — or even "green" one's politics. It has also some intransitive verbs of change of colour: one can redden with anger, or whiten with fear, while one's hair greys, and one's manuscripts yellow with age. But there are no verbs which, in a single word, indicates that something is of a specific (and usually conspicuous) colour. Either one has to use the verb "to be" plus a colour adjective, as in Masefield's:
"The young corn is green, brother, where the rabbits run",
or else a more forceful verb appropriate to that colour: "gleam white", "shine gold", "loom dark", and so on.
Belarusian, on the other hand, is well supplied with such verbs, and Bahdanovič, whose work shows a great sensitivity to colour, makes telling use of them.
And here, in "Słuckija Tkačychi":
Dzie blišča zbožžá ŭ jasnaj dali,
Siniejuć miła vasilki,
Chałodnym srebram źziajuc chvali
Miž hor lijučajsia raki;
Ciamnieje kraj zubčaty boru...The problem with these verbs is that, to my ear, they are considerably "stronger" than the corresponding adjectives. (This may, of course, be partly a subjective reaction; my first studies in philology were in Old English, a language in which, for the purposes of prosody, the relative "strengths" of the parts of speech are clearly defined, with the verbs in the first, strongest place, and adjectives ranking only fourth). To say simply that cornflowers "are blue", in particular, seems so weak as to be tautologous; cornflowers — the wild variety at any rate — come in no other colour. (To say, in the line quoted above, that the light of the kerosene lamp "is red" has a certain validity, since such a lamp, in good working order, gives out a yellow light. Either this particular lamp has a red shade, or else its chimney-glass needs cleaning!)
But when, in "Słuckija Tkačychi", Bahdanovič uses two "colour" verbs within four lines, he seems to be saying more than that the cornflowers "are" blue, or the woods "are" dark. Let us look at the context more closely:
This is a poem which makes great play of the dichotomy between "outside" and "inside", between the broad expanses of the Belarusian landscape, and confined space of the weaving sheds. It begins "outside"
Ad rodnych niŭ, ad rodnaj chaty
but immediately, "tracks in" to the "lord's grange" and the work of "weaving"
U panski dvor, dziela krasy,
Jany, biazdolnyja uziaty
Tkać...But there is no "colour" in the description of the lost outside world from which the women have come; it is a memory of the past, (they have, as we shall learn later, had to forget their "girlish dreams"). The reality of their lives is the girdles on which they work, and, with the mention of these girdles, we have the first "colour" word, an adjective: załatyja. The second quatrain tells us more about the weaving: the "long hours" the women must spend at their task, and the stress on the "Persian" designs — suggesting both complexity and unfamiliarity, and hence, the need for careful concentration.
Then comes the third quatrain, and the view from the window. Bahdanovič never says in so many words that it is dark inside the weaving shed. But the poem comes from the cycle "Old Belarus", and factually, must be set in the first half of the nineteenth century, since the workshop of the Radziwiłł princes at Shick was closed down in 1844. Whatever lighting was available within the sheds would have been — by modern standards, or even the standards of Bahdanovičs day — fairly poor.(6) And, indeed, this is what the third quatrain implies. For the view from the window is brilliant, with that concentrated radiance one perceives when looking from a dim room at a sunlit scene outside. Here, all the radiance — apart from the one noun "srebram" and the one adjective "jasnaj", and the contrasting shadow of the forest is expressed by verbs:
A za ścianoj śmiajecca pole,
Zijaje nieba z-za akna, —
i dumki mknucca mimavoli
Tudy, dzie raścvila viasna;
Dzie blišča zbožža ŭ jasnaj dali
Siniejuć miła vasilki,
Chałodnym srebram źziajuć chvali
Miž hor lijučajsia raki;
Ciamnieje kraj zubčaty boru...To reproduce this effect in English is not easy. Elsewhere in Bahdanovič, I rendered the present participle of siniec by the corresponding participle of a non-existent English intransitive verb "to blue":
The moist moon from on high is shedding
A shaft transparent and aglow,
And with silver cloaks is spreading
The blueing acres of the snow.(7)But in this passage, there is at least a sense of the snow becoming (temporarily) blue — to the common observer (as opposed to the artist or poet) snow is, after all, white — and verbs of becoming a particular colour, as we have observed, can exist in English(8) There is, however, no way in which cornflowers can be said to be in a state of "becoming blue". What Bahdanovič is saying, in effect, is that when the women glance out of the windows, the blueness of the cornflowers becomes piercingly and poignantly apparent. The cornflowers not simply "are" blue, they are, as it were, shouting their blueness to high heaven. But the exigencies of the verse form demand that this be said in one or two syllables. In Like Water, Like Fire, I rendered this as
There by the rye, in the far distance
the cornflowers shine with azure still.and I have since revised this to
There by the rye, in the far distance,
Are cornflowers, shining azure still...At the same time, to enhance the effect of the cornflowers I revised my translation of line 10,
Zijaje nieba z-za akna.
In the published versions, I rendered this by
The blue sky gleams beyond the pane.
There is, of course, no "blue" in the original. But "sky" is a monosyllable, and the rhythm demands a disyllabic. One could, technically speaking, say
The heavens gleam beyond the pane
or even (archaically)
The welkin gleams beyond the pane.
But both of these words carry the wrong overtones. They are far too self-consciously "poetic" to be used here. "Sky" is, in effect, the only word which fits the atmosphere of this poem. But we still are short of a syllable. "Blue" is a valid, (though somewhat trite) filler with "sky", in most cases, when the poem obviously refers to a sunny day — but its use here (and, morever, in a stressed syllable) weakens the later impact of the cornflowers. Hence, I have now revised this line to:
The sky gleams fair beyond the pane.
The verb ciamnieje evokes similar considerations. The edge of the forest not only "is" dark — in contrast with the brilliant, sunlit scene, its darkness is intense. In a similar context, in virtually any other poem, I would render it by "looms dark", since the verb "to loom" carries the same sense of the darkness making itself intrusively apparent. But in this particular poem, such a rendering is impossible. For in rendering the final three lines of the poem
I tče, zabyŭšysia, ruka,
Zamiž persickaha uzoru,
Ćviatok radzimy vasilka,and seeking the necessary masculine rhyme for the antepenultimate and final syllables, I could not resist the possibilities of "loom" in its other, homophonic variant — the noun meaning a weaving-frame. True, Bahdanovič does not use the word krosny. But by introducing "loom" into the English version, the concept of "weaving" can be kept in the antepenultimate line, without wrenching English word-order, leaving the verb itself to follow in the last line. Furthermore, although, frequently, I have to resort to less-than-perfect rhymes in the body of a poem ("distance/glisten" and "verdure/Persia", for example, in the current poem), it is important, wherever possible, to make the final rhyme of the poem a perfect one. And "loom/bloom" is, indeed, a perfect rhyme. Another word, therefore, must be found to render ciamnieje.
In Like Water, Like Fire, I tried to get round the problem by omitting the verb altogether:
Edge of an oak-wood, dark in verdure.
This, however, loses the strength of the verb-form. Moreover, alas, we have an error. Either I misread zubčaty as dubčaty — or possibly there was an error in the handwritten text. It was, after all, transcribed hastily during a national day celebration!
This, incidentally, is one of the pitfalls of translation. Once one has produced and published a version which is effective as a poem in its own right, and recited it, parhaps, at a number of commemorative literary evenings, it becomes "canonized" in one's memory, and one is apt to lose track of the original text. It can come as a shock, therefore, to find, sometimes years later, that one has let an error or infelicity slip through. My one defence is that, although a number of readers of both Like Water, Like Fire and The Images Swarm Free wrote to enquire politely if there was, perhaps, a misprint in the first line of this poem in the latter publication (there was — "tillage" had accidentally been printed as "village"!), no one seems to have spotted this particular error — even though The Images Swarm Free is bilingual, with original and translation on facing pages.
Let us look at the poem again. Apart from the forest, the whole scene is bright and sunlit. The field, Bahdanovič says, "smiles": śmiajecca pole. The darkness of the forest must therefore contrast with this "smiling". Hence the final quatrain of the poem becomes, in its current version:
Dark frowns the foresťs jagged verdure...
And hands, forgetful at the loom,
Instead of the designs of Persia,
Weave in the native cornflower bloom.Making these revisions, however, posed no special technical problems. Throughout both translation and revision, I was able to treat the poem as, to to speak, an independent work, unconnected with any other, and the only problem was to choose the most apposite word from the wide range of near-synonyms usually available in English. So, I emended, for example, in line 3, the "lord's court" of the published versions to the "lord's grange" (which, I now feel, is closer to the "flavour" of the original) and, in line 4, changed the published
Girdles of gold to weave and make.
to
Girdles of woven gold to make.
— an emendation which entailed some juggling with parts of speech — adjective becoming noun and verb becoming participle, but which removed the clumsy verbal repetition of the earlier version.
When it came to the "final redaction", however, the technical difficulties were considerable. For, in order to make any sense at all of publishing the two versions together, as I intended to do, I would have to craft my version in such a way that everything that remained unchanged in Bahdanovič's text remained unchanged in my version, and that all changes were reproduced. My first task, therefore, was to write out the Belarusian text of the "final redaction", keying the changes, thus (the bold text indicates new material, italics indicate material transposed from its original position):
Im nie pabačyć rodnaj chaty,
Nia ŭćuć im dzietak hałasy,
Jany u panski dvor uziaty
Tkać załatyja pajasy.
I ciaham doŭhija časiny,
Ab ščaści ŭžo zabyŭsy sny,
Svaje šyrokija tkaniny
Na ład piersicki tkuć jany,
A za scianoj šlachi ŭ pole,
Šumić čaremcha la vakna —
I dumki mknucca mimavoli
Tudy, dzie raścvila viasna.
Tam tak viasioła i pryhoža:
Zijajuć srebram ručajki,
I u zialonych chvalach zbožža
Zakrasavali vasilki.
Tam ščyry bor sumić suvora...
Ty tčeš, biazvolnaja ruka,
Zamiž piersickaha uzora,
Ćviatok radzimy vasilka.Why Bahdanovič was unhappy with his original version is unclear. Certainly, it is the earlier version, not the revision, which the Belarusian people have taken to their hearts and made into a folksong. For the most part, it is not a matter of eliminating infelicities or phrasing or versification. Like all Bahdanovič's work, the original is well-crafted.
There is, perhaps, one awkwardness, the expression dziela krasy — "for beauty's sake", in line 2. This has always struck me as somewhat artificial, and liable to cause ambiguity. Coming to the poem soon after a couple of years intensive work on Shevchenko, I could not help feeling that, when one speaks of a young woman being taken from her home to the lord's grange "for beauty's sake" — it is her beauty, rather than that of her handiwork, which is required. Bahdanovič may, of course, have intended this double entendre, implying that to recruit these women into factory work was a kind of spiritual or cultural rape. But I suspect that the expression may have been simply a prosodic "prop", to provide a rhyme for pajasy. If so, I would reconstruct the process of revision of the first quatrain as follows:
Bahdanovič first decides to replace the awkward phrase dziela krasy with a new rhyme-word hałasy, so that the second version, line becomes, eventually, Nie ŭčuć im dzietak hałasy.
This eliminates the awkwardness, but forces a revision of the first line which now becomes "Im nie pabačyć rodnaj chaty."
The revision of line 2 has, however, lost the significant phrase u panski dvor, so this is transferred to line 3, and the adjective biazdolnyja dropped to accommodate it. The fourth line then is carried over unchanged.
As far as translation is concerned, I was only too happy to get rid of the awkwardness of dziela krasy. But the translation of the revised first quatrain posed its own difficulties. Let us look at the first version again:
Ad rodnych niŭ, ad rodnaj chaty
U panski dvor dziela krasy
Jany, biazdolnyja, uziaty
Tkać załatyja pajasy.This I render as:
From native home, from native tillage,
To the lord's grange for beauty's sake,
Luckless girls taken from their village,
Girdles of woven gold to make.Now the first line is an exact rendering of the Belarusian — save for one thing which, normaly would be of no consequence. For the sake of the rhythm, I have reversed the order, the "home" now comes before the "fields". I can see no other way to manage the necessary feminine rhyme in English. One could say, I suppose, "From native fields, from native cottage" — but then one has no other exact rhyme than "pottage", and although the rhyming dictionary lists a number of half-rhymes and assonances, they are all peculiarly inapposite. True, "tillage" forces the introduction of a rhyme — "village" in line 3, which is not in the original (although may be said to be implicit in it), but in general, the reversal of order in line one causes no problems — until one comes to deal with the revised version.
For, in the second version, the fields disappear, and only the home remains. Noting, threfore, that in this version, the rhyme-words chaty/uziaty are identical in the two versions, I have replaced "homes" the first line by "village", (justifiable since a village is, after all, made up of homes), moving what was the rhyme-word of line 3 into the rhyme-position of line 1, and then, since a new rhyme-word is needed for line 3, taking up the concept of reluctance implicit in uziaty, making a half-rhyme on "unwilling." (This means, of course, that I have fallen short of my ideal of preserving unchanged all that Bahdanovič left unchanged — but this is the best solution I have been able to come up with so far!) Since line 4 remains unchanged in the "fined redaction", I now need in line 2 a new rhyme-word for "make". The best match is "wake", as in the sense of "waking echoes", with the idea of children calling to each other at play. So we now have:
They see no more their native village,
Nor hear how children's voices wake,
Taken to the lord's grange unwilling,
Girdles of woven gold to make.The second quatrain, fortunately, caused no problems. In line 6, the "girlish" dreams become "happy" dreams without difficulty — at least as far as the prosody is concerned. (One wonders why, however, Bahdanovič" introduced this particular change. Did he, perhaps, on reflection, feel that "girlish" dreams implied the essentially unrealistic ideas which the women would, in all events, have forgotten with maturity and marriage, whereas "happy" dreams were something to which they should have been entitled throughout their lives?)
When we come to the vision of the outside world, however, we encounter major changes. Much of the light and colour has vanished. The tillage is no longer "smiling", the cornflowers no longer "shining azure", the forest no longer "frowns dark", the rivers, although still "silver", have shrank to ručajki and no longer flow "between the hills" nor possess "waves". The diminution of the rivers may simply have been made for the sake of topographical accuracy — it is noteworthy that the image of waves — no longer in a rhyming position, is transferred to the growing grain-crops, which are specifically said to be green.(9) Nevertheless, in spite of the line, carried over from the original version, Tudy dzie rascvila viasna, and the new line: Tam tak viasioła i pryhoža, it is a colder, less brilliant landscape.)
Instead of the missing colour, we have sound. Already, in the second line, we heard the lost voices of children. Now, outside the windows, there are the sounds of nature: "Bird-cherry murmurs at the pane" and the "true forest murmurs" (the same verb "sumic" is used for both). But this is all, surely, imaginary music.
It is highly unlikely that the women can hear the noise of the forest (which seems to have been some distance away) — or even the bird-cherry at the window pane. The looms needed to produce the Słuck girdles would have been relatively small (although Adam Mickiewicz, writing at a time when the factory was still in operation, describes them as requiring two operators — a man and a woman,(10) but even a fairly small loom can make a remarkable amount of noise. And with a number of them working at once, the chance of the noise of trees penetrating from outside is, to say the least, problematic.
What Bahdanovič seems to be saying, therefore, is that the women look through the window and imagine the sounds of the outside world. This seems to me a slightly strained concept, demanding of these ordinary village women the perception and sensitivity to sound of a poet or musician. And the message would have come over far more effectively if the imagined noise of the trees had been "framed" in an onomatapoeic attempt to reproduce the noise of the looms. But that, in effect, would have meant writing a new poem altogether.
Having reached this conclusion, I have now begun to wonder whether I have not misread the first version and whether in fact the women do not glance out of the window at all, but simply imagine the outside world as they work.
But too great an insistence on literary accuracy may well kill poetry. It adds nothing to our enjoyment of Keats' "On first looking into Chapman's Homer" — indeed, it almost certainly detracts from it — if we make too great a pother about the historical fact that it was Balboa, and not (as Keats has it) "stout Cortez", who was the first Spaniard to cross the Central American isthmus. The anachronistic bound books and striking clock in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar need not necessarily detract from our response to that play. And it is likewise irrelevant to our response to "Słuckija Tkačychi" (in either version), to know that the title may be erroneous — that girdles of specifically "Persian" design seem to have been produced, in fact, not at Słuck, but at the other Radziwiłł workshop, some miles away, at Niasviž.(11)
My (self-imposed) task, however, is to produce English versions of Bahdanovič's poems that will carry over into English at least some quality of the original — not to carp over the literal meaning, nor point out — except in passing, and as a matter of scholarly interest, any apparent errors. That is the task, rather, for the critic and commentator. Nevertheless, in translating poetry, or indeed any work of belles-letters — unless one is simply a hack engaged in the production of students' "cribs" — one has to possess — or to try to cultivate — a kind of intuitive awareness of the writer's purpose. For this reason, I feel, therefore, that these few notes may provide a different slant on this double poem than will be found in the comments of conventional critics.
Notes
- Hence, alas, the large number of misprints, including the omission of a number of significant lines.
- "Zimoj", see Bahdanovič, Tvory and Like Water, Like Fire, loc. cit.
Appendix: The Two Variants in Their Current Rendering
Note: The following two versions of 'Słutzkiya Tkachykhi' are both earlier drafts of Ms. Rich's work. For the current, authorized translation, see: "The Weaver-Women of Słucak", by Maksim Bahdanovič.
The Weaver-Women of Słucak
(English translation from first Belarusian
version, originally published in Naša Niva
and the collection Vianok)
From native home, from native tillage,
To the lord's grange for beauty's sake,
Luckless girls taken from their village,
Girdles of woven gold to make.
Long hours of labour they endeavour,
Forgetful of their girlish dreams,
Toiling at the broad weaving ever,
Where the Persian pattern gleams.
Outside the walls, the smiling tillage,
The sky gleams fair beyond the pane,
And thoughts go wandering willy-nilly,
There where the spring's in flower again.
There by the rye, in the far distance,
Are cornflowers, shining azure still,
And waves of chilly silver glisten
Where rivers gush between the hills.
Dark frowns the forest's jagged verdure...
And hands, forgetful at the loom,
Instead of the designs of Persia,
Weave in the native cornflower bloom.
[1912]
The Weaver-Women of Słucak
("the author's final redaction")
They see no more their native village,
Nor hear how children's voices wake,
Taken to the lord's grange unwilling,
Girdles of woven gold to make.
Long hours of labour they endeavour,
Long-since forgetting happy dreams,
Toiling at the broad weaving ever,
Where the Persian pattern gleams.
Outside, a path leads to the tillage,
Bird-cherry murmurs at the pane,
And thoughts go wandering willy-nilly,
There where the spring's in flower again;
There all is merry and appealing:
Glistening silver flow small rills,
And in the grain's green billows swelling.
The cornflowers gleam in beauty still.
There sternly the true forest murmurs...
And hand, unbidden, on the loom,
Instead of the designs of Persia,
You weave the native cornflower bloom.
[19??]
Source: "'Słutzkiya Tkachykhi' ('The Weaver-Women of Słucak'): A Translator's View" by Vera Rich; Copyright © Vera Rich, 1996-2001, and Zapisy, print edition only, vol. 22 (BINIM, New York, 1996), pages 45-58. ]
Link to "The Weaver-Women of Słucak", by Maksim Bahdanovič [ Note: This link is to the most recent translation by Ms. Rich, and is based on the earlier version of Bahdanovič's poem. The two translations included in this essay are both earlier drafts. ]