Lermontov: Sail (From Russian)

Sail
By Mikhail Lermontov
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
Click to hear me recite the Russian

A sail gleams white and on its own
Amid the light blue ocean haze.
What does it seek in distant country?
What made it leave its native bays?

The billows play. The winds are whistling
Down at the bending, creaking mast
Oh! This one seeks no happy ending
And does not flee a happy past.

Below, a brighter stream than azure.
Above, the golden sunray flows,
Yet this one, restive, quests for tempests
As if in tempests were repose.

Special thanks to: Robert Chandler, Boris Dralyuk and Irina Mashinsky for nudging me into nudging the last stanza into shape. 

The Original:

Парус
Михаил Юрьевич Лермонтов

Бѣлѣетъ парусъ одинокой

Въ туманѣ моря голубомъ…

Что ищетъ онъ въ странѣ далекой?

Что кинулъ онъ въ краю родномъ?

Играютъ волны, вѣтеръ свищетъ,

И мачта гнется и скрипитъ…

Увы! онъ счастія не ищетъ,

И не отъ счастія бѣжитъ!

Подъ нимъ струя свѣтлѣй лазури,

Надъ нимъ лучъ солнца золотой;

А онъ, мятежный, проситъ бури,

Какъ будто въ буряхъ есть покой!

Lermontov: The Dream (From Russian)

After pissing off Tsar Nicholas I with a poem, Lermontov was exiled and sent to serve as an officer in the mounted infantry in the Caucasus, during which period this poem was written.

The Dream
By Mikhail Lermontov
Translated by A.Z. Foreman

By noon heat in a dale in Dagestan,
A bullet in my breast, stirless I lay;
The wound was deep. The wound was steaming yet.
My blood was dripping drop by drop away.

I lay alone upon the valley sands.
Clustered above my head, the cliffs were steep,
Their tawny summits scorched beneath a sun
That scorched me too. But I was dead asleep.

And in my dream I saw a feast back home
With torches set for evening revelry,
And at that feast young women crowned with flowers
Busied themselves with merry talk of me.

But unconcerned by merry conversation,
One woman sat there in confounded thought,
One girl whose youthful spirit had been plunged
Deep in a grievous dream by God knows what.

Her dream was of a dale in Dagestan.
In that dale lay a corpse she had once met,
And in his breast a steaming wound went black
As blood ran in a cooling rivulet.

The Original

Сон
Михаил Лермонтов

В полдневный жар в долине Дагестана
С свинцом в груди лежал недвижим я;
Глубокая еще дымилась рана,
По капле кровь точилася моя.

Лежал один я на песке долины;
Уступы скал теснилися кругом,
И солнце жгло их желтые вершины
И жгло меня - но спал я мертвым сном.

И снился мне сияющий огнями
Вечерний пир в родимой стороне.
Меж юных жен, увенчанных цветами,
Шел разговор веселый обо мне.

Но, в разговор веселый не вступая,
Сидела там задумчиво одна,
И в грустный сон душа ее младая
Бог знает чем была погружена;

И снилась ей долина Дагестана;
Знакомый труп лежал в долине той;
В его груди, дымясь, чернела рана,
И кровь лилась хладеющей струей.