а оставался – «хорошим европейцем».
Глава 9. Стихотворения Иосифа Бродского в переводе Джорджа Л. Клайна
Elegy for John Donne
John Donne has sunk in sleep… All things beside
are sleeping too: walls, bed, and floor – all sleep.
The table, pictures, carpets, hooks and bolts,
clothes-closets, cupboards, candles, curtain – all
now sleep: the washbowl, bottle, tumbler, bread,
breadknife and china, crystal, pots and pans,
bed-sheets and nightlamp, chests of drawers, a clock,
a mirror, stairway, doors. Night everywhere,
night in all things: in corners, in men’s eyes,
in bed-sheets, in the papers on a desk,
in the worm-eaten words of sterile speech,
in logs and fire-tongs, in the blackened coals
of a dead fireplace – in each thing.
In undershirts, boots, stockings, shadows, shades
behind the mirror; in the backs of chairs,
in bed and washbowl, in the crucifix,
in linen, in the broom beside the door,
in slippers. All these things have sunk in sleep.
Yes, all things sleep. The window. Snow beyond.
A roof-slope, whiter than a tablecloth,
the roof ’s high ridge. A neighborhood in snow,
carved to the quick by this sharp windowframe.
Arches and walls and windows – all asleep.
Wood paving-blocks, stone cobbles, gardens, grills.
No light will flare, no turning wheel will creak…
Chains, walled enclosures, ornaments, and curbs.
Doors with their rings, knobs, hooks are all asleep —
their locks and bars, their bolts and cunning keys.
One hears no whisper, rustle, thump, or thud.
Only the snow creaks. All men sleep. Dawn comes
not soon. All jails and locks have lapsed in sleep.
The iron weights in the fish-shop are asleep.
The carcasses of pigs sleep too. Backyards
and houses. Watch-dogs in their chains lie cold.
In cellars sleeping cats hold up their ears.
Mice sleep, and men. And London soundly sleeps.
A schooner nods at anchor. The salt sea
talks in its sleep with snow beneath her hull,
and melts into the distant sleeping sky.
John Donne has sunk in sleep, with him the sea.
Chalk cliffs now tower in sleep above the sands.
This island sleeps, embraced by lonely dreams,
and every garden now is triple-barred.
Pines, maples, birches, firs, and spruce – all sleep.
On mountain slopes steep mountain-streams and paths
now sleep. Foxes and wolves. Bears in their dens.
The snow drifts high at burrow-entrances.
All the birds sleep. Their songs are heard no more.
Nor is the crow’s hoarse caw. At night the owl’s
dark hollow laugh is quenched. The open fields
of England now are stilled. A clear star flames.
The mice are penitent. All creatures sleep.
The dead lie calmly in their graves and dream.
The living, in the oceans of their gowns,
sleep – each alone – within their beds. Or two
by two. Hills, woods, and rivers sleep. All birds
and beasts now sleep – nature alive and dead.
But still the snow spins white from the black sky.
There, high above men’s heads, all are asleep.
The angels sleep. Saints – to their saintly shame —
have quite forgotten this our anxious world.
Dark Hell-fires sleep, and glorious Paradise.
No one goes forth from home at this bleak hour.
Even God has gone to sleep. Earth is estranged.
Eyes do not see, and ears perceive no sound.
The Devil sleeps. Harsh enmity has fallen
asleep with him on snowy English fields.
All horsemen sleep[199]. And the Archangel, with
his trumpet. Horses, softly swaying, sleep.
And all the cherubim, in one great host
embracing, doze beneath St. Paul’s high dome.
John Donne has sunk in sleep. His verses sleep.
His images, his rhymes, and his strong lines
fade out of view. Anxiety and sin,
alike grown slack, sleep in his syllables.
And each verse whispers to its next of kin,
‘Move on a bit.’ But each stands so remote
from Heaven’s Gates, so poor, so pure and dense,
that all seems one. All are asleep. The vault
austere of iambs soars in sleep. Like guards,
the trochees stand and nod to left and right.
The vision of Lethean waters sleeps.
The poet’s fame sleeps soundly at its side.
All trials, all sufferings, are sunk in sleep.
And vices sleep. Good lies in Evil’s arms.
The prophets sleep. The bleaching snow seeks out,
through endless space, the last unwhitened spot.
All things have lapsed in sleep. The swarms of books,
the streams of words, cloaked in oblivion’s ice,
sleep soundly. Every speech, each speech’s truth,
is sleeping. Linked chains, sleeping scarcely clank.
All soundly sleep: the saints, the Devil, God.
Their wicked and their faithful servants. Snow
alone sifts, rustling, on the darkened roads.
And there are no more sounds in all the world.
But hark! Do you not hear in the chill night
a sound of sobbing, whisperings of fear?
There someone stands, disclosed to winter’s blast,
and weeps. There someone stands in the dense gloom.
His voice is thin. His voice is needle-thin,
yet without tread. And he in solitude
swims through the falling snow – cloaked in cold mist
that stiches night to dawn. The lofty dawn.
‘Whose sobs are those? My angel, is it you?
Do you await my coming, there alone
beneath the snow? Walking – without my love —
in darkness home? Do you cry in the gloom?’
No answer. – ’Is it you, o cherubim,
whose muted tears put me in mind
of some sepulchral choir? Have you resolved
to quit my sleeping church? Is it not you?’
No answer. – ‘Is it you, o Paul? Your voice
most certainly is coarsened by stern speech.
Have you not bowed your grey head in the gloom
to weep?’ But only silence makes reply.
‘Is that the Hand which looms up everywhere
to shield a grieving glance in the deep dark?
Is it not thou, Lord? No, my thoughts run wild.
And yet how lofty is the voice that weeps.’
No answer. Silence. – ‘Gabriel, have you
not blown your trumpet to the roar of hounds?
Why did I stand alone with open eyes
while horsemen saddled their swift steeds? Yet each
thing sleeps. Enveloped in huge gloom, the Hounds
of Heaven race in packs. O Gabriel,
do you not sob, encompassèd about
by winter dark, alone, with your great horn?’
‘No, it is I, your soul, John Donne, who speaks.
I grieve alone upon the heights of Heaven,
because my labors did bring forth to life
feelings and thoughts as heavy as stark chains.
Bearing this burden, you could yet fly up
past those dark sins and passions, mounting higher.
You were a bird, your people did you see
in every place, as you did soar above
their sloping roofs. And you did glimpse the seas,
and distant lands, and Hell – first in your dreams,
then waking. You did see a jewelled Heaven
set in the wretched frame of men’s low lusts.
And you saw Life: your Island was its twin.
And you did face the ocean at its shores.
The howling dark stood close at every hand.
And you did soar past God, and then drop back,
for this harsh burden would not let you rise
to that high vantage point from which this world
seems naught but ribboned rivers and tall towers —
that point from which, to him who downward stares,
this dread Last Judgement seems no longer dread.
The radiance of that Country does not fade.
From there all here seems a faint, fevered dream.
From there our Lord is but a light that gleams,
through fog, in window of the farthest house.
The fields lie fallow, furrowed by no plough.
The years lie fallow, and the centuries.
Forests alone stand, like a steady wall.
Rain batters the high head of giant grass.
The first woodcutter – he whose withered mount,
in panic fear of thickets, blundered thence —
will climb a pine to catch a sudden glimpse
of fires in his own valley, far away.
All things are distant. What is near is dim.
The level glance slides from a roof remote.
All here is bright. No din of baying hound
or tolling bell disturbs the silent air.
And, sensing that all things are far away,
he’ll wheel his horse back quickly toward the woods.
And instantly, reins, sledge, night, his poor mount,
Himself – will melt into a Scriptural dream.
But here I stand and weep. The road is gone.
I am condemned to live among these stones.
I cannot fly up in my body’s flesh;
such flight at best will come to me through death
in the wet earth, when I’ve forgotten you,
my world, forgotten you once and for all.
I’ll follow, in the torment of desire,
to stitch this parting up with my own flesh.
But listen! While with weeping I disturb
your rest, the busy snow whirls through the dark,
not melting, as it stitches up this hurt —
its needles flying back and forth, back, forth!
It is not I who sob. It’s you, John Donne:
you lie alone. Your pans in cupboards sleep,
while snow builds drifts upon your sleeping house —
while snow sifts down to earth from highest Heaven.’
Like some great bird, he sleeps in his own nest,
his pure path and his thirst for purer life,
himself entrusting to that steady star