Pushkin's "To The Sea" (Or away from the sea, as it were) I have been given to understand that

many of those who signed up for this lecture are studying Russian, others know Russian, others know one or more other Slavic languages, and others none of the above but are interested in literature or even linguistics. As I was asked to prepare a poem's discussion in a way that ministers unto all of these sundry needs, I have tried, and no doubt epically failed at points, to include information that will be of interest to as many as possible. Those who have no slavic languages at all will be at a disadvantage, (as those who know Russian thoroughly will find themselves being told what they already know full well thank me very much), but I will try to keep things somewhat entertaining nonetheless, focusing especially, as is my wont, on the ways in which the two languages involved in our poetic perigrination are not translatable into one another, and try to triangulate via paraphrase and circumlocution the semantic range of the words for which English has no exact equivalent. For those who do not know cyrillic, yet may know other slavic languages, I have opted for a transcription that should be more or less transparent. For those who know Russian and hate reading poetry in transliteration, I have included the text in cyrillic. I will read the Russian when we convene. A literalized translation of each stanza is included. As a throwaway, my verse-translation of the whole megilla is found at the end. I understand from Prof. Steiner that Q&A is greatly preferred. So you may consider this packet, which I hope has made an early enough landing in your hands and harddrives, a pre-lecture on its own, and the in-person lecture itself will be mainly devoted to Q&A time where we can go further in any direction desired, be it Pushkin, Russian literature, Russian poetry, Slavic lang&lit or this poem in specific. All's fair game. As Pushkin said mne vsyo rovn syud, syud! "It's all the same to me. hither! Hither!" (And as Eminem said "I am whatever you say I am") If this format works as well as I flatter myself that it may, I will repeat it for the other three podium-powows on Russian poetry I am tentatively scheduled to hold with you. , ! . Fare thee well, free element. For the last time, before me Thou rollest (thy) azure waves And shinest in proud beauty/splendor. Stikhya means "element" specifically in the sense of "a force of nature." It is resonent with the word stikh "verse", and double entendres in the language abound like cocaine on Paris Hilton's pancakes. The first line suggests an expanding, swelling freedom forceful that, to put it oxymoronical, dominates with liberation. Proy, svobdnaya stikhya! V posldniy raz perdo mnoy Ty kti vlny golubie I ble grdoyu krasy.

The word kras "beauty" (here in the instrumental krasy "with beauty") has a hint of "splendor" to it in the modern language even in set-phrases. For example vo vsey svoyy kras "in all its glory". Goluby (here seen in the plural nominative golubie) means "light blue, azure" but is a basic color word in Russian. Goluby describes every Anglophone blue from light cyan to just before solid blue which is where sniy begins and continues throughout all the darker deeper Anglophone blues. DIGRESSION ON COLOR BEGINS HERE This color in Russian is a primary distinction, like English "pink" (Anglophones have no "light red") or "orange" (most anglophones have no "reddish yellow"), and not a secondary distinction like English "Azure" (for Anglophones do have "light blue".) Just so in e.g. Danish there is no basic word for "pink" but one must say lyserd "light red", and as in classical Chinese there was no basic distinction between "blue" and "green" but qng a word that encompassed parts of both hues and had some brightness and glossiness connotations to it as well (for hue and saturation are not the only axes on which colors can be described and many societies like the medieval Chinese have had color-schemes that are almost unfathomable to modern Europeans, as many of you are aware), so too does English construe as secondary what Russian construes as primary. Modern Russian is one of a very few languages which not only have words for what anglophones call "color" but actually have more basic color-words (the hitherto attested maximum of 12) than Modern English's 11. (More than twice the color-inventory of around a third of the world's colorcoding languages, with some languages like Pirah having no color-related words at all beyond dark and light.) Apart from Modern Russian, languages that split English "blue" into two different basic colors (though not the same exact range of shades) include Modern Turkish, Thai, Mongolian and Standard Italian. If you have studied Italian, then you've probably guessed by now that goluby and sniy are translatable, very roughly, as azzurro and blu, though some studies suggest that another way of looking at Italian is to say that the basal level of blue for Italian speakers is just lighter than for anglophones and that blu is a subset of azzurro. My suspicion is that this is regional in Italy, but as I am far more familiar with Italian in its written form than its spoken form(s), I may not be the best judge on this point, anymore than I have reason to keep digressing. HERE ENDETH THE DIGRESSION The two words in Russian also have very different connotations. Just as English pink suggests, broadly, the feminine, the pleasant, the light, the gentle, the saccharine whereas red suggests blood, strength, power, carnage, so too "classical" Russian of the early 19th century, during which this color became a basic one in the language, the sea is typically sniy more often than goluby, whereas the paradigmatic thing which is goluby but not sniy is the sky. Sniy (originally meaning "dark" in Medieval Russian) had vague overtones of mystical, numinous, oceanic, odd, deviant, black magic, tenebrific, unpredictable. Whereas you get a "black eye" in English, you get a sinyk ("a blueboo") in Russian. Goluby was a positive term, associated first and foremost with the celestial azurity, but also with dreaminess, fantasy, beauty and white magic. As sniy is Sauronian, so goluby is Gandalfish. For Pushkin to refer to the sea as goluby is a slightly transgressive act in the Russian of his time (albeit one that presages later usage,) one that

transforms the Neptunian deeps (or as he had earlier called it drvnyi duegbets "that ancient soulwrecker") into that soul-nourishing glorious Byronical sea (that happily rhymes with "me" and "free" and "glee.") perdo "before" is poetick for normal pred grdoyu "proud (inst.)" is poetick for normal grdoy , , . Like a friend's doleful mutter/mumble Like his call at the hour of leavetaking Thy sad sound, thine inviting sound Have I heard for the last time. Kak drga rpot zaunvnyi Kak zov yev v proal'nyi s Tvoy grstnyi um tvoy um prizvnyi Uslal ya v posldniy raz.

Zaunvnyi (here rendered by "doleful") means mournful or dismal in general. When it is used to describe e.g. singing it may best be understood in the sense of "plaintive", or perhaps "plangent" When Galadriel in Lorien sings the song "I sang of leaves, of leaves of gold" in the LOTR series, one could described the song, and its setting, as quite a zaunvnyi one. Note that zov "hail, call" and prizvnyi "summoning (adj.)"share a morphological root in Russian zov yev v proal'nyi as "his hail at the leavetaking hour" would seem to refer to someone saying "goodbye" for quite a while in context. Yet it could, and may, also suggest a much shorter goodbye, like at the end of a party. This is certainly how Tsvetaeva understood the stanza. Witness the way this stanza is rendered in her French translation, verging on Lowellesque imitation, of the poem:
Telle une fte qui s'achve, Supplique d'une chre voixTa grave voix, ta voix de rve, J'entends pour la dernire fois. (Like a party coming to a close, the calling of a dear voice, your solemn sad voice, your voice of dream, I hear for the last time)

Indeed Tsvetaeva's rendering of this poem of Pushkin's, like her renderings of others (perhaps best accessible in Efim Etkind's Alexandre Pouchekine: uvres Potiques published in 2 volumes by L'ge d'Homme.), functions as modernist palimpsestic commentary on a classical work. It would require a whole nother lecture to cover. um is like English "sound" in that it can be used to describe natural phenomena to suggest whatever sound that phenomenon is known for. um bya is "the din of battle", um les is "the murmur of the forest" and um lst'yev is "the rustle of leaves". Here its aural characteristics are used suggestively in phonetic context to suggest the hum of the waves as they soundingly swash

the shore. Unlike the English word it means also noise, clamor, hubbub. um v ukh doesn't mean just noise in the ears, but is tinnitus. When one says podnyt' bol'y um it means not "make lots of sound" but rather "to make a racket, to kick up a fuss, to cause quite a stir." Mngo ma iz niev is not "Much sound from naught" but rather a Russian rendering of "Much Ado About Nothing." ! , ! Moyy du predl elnnyi Kak sto po bregm tvom Brodl ya tkhiy i tumnnyi, Zavtnym myslom tomm!

O desired limit/region of my soul/spirit! How oft on thy shores I would go silent and darkling/in a haze/somber Fraught/possessed by my innermost design. The first line here has "desired limit/region of my soul/spirit." In Russian this works by subverting the clich predl zhelnniy "limit of desires" (meaning roughly "the heart's greatest wish" in English) and turning it into predl zhelnnyi "desired limit" thereby giving a new twist to something that is on its own already a familiar and well established semantic concatenation. It allows the semantic load of "the limits of the heart's desires" to spill over into the "desired limit/region." Moreover, Russian predl means not only "limit" but also "region, area" a bit like "reaches" in English perhaps. Note also that in literary russian du "soul" has something of the semantic load that "heart" has in English in the aristotelian sense (a usage borrowed in part by the Francophiles of the 1800s from the semantics of French me) perhaps with a bit of what "fancy" was for the English romantics. Line 3 has tkhiy "silent, quiet" as well as tumnnyi "somber, misty, foggy" referring to the speaker, since it is in the nominative. The latter in particular is evocative since it is normally a meteorological term, but can sometimes figuratively describe people. In this context, where one would expect such terms to refer to the environment of the seascape, it has a particularly strong effect by its referent, thereby feeding into what is this poem's ultimate force in the eyes of Russophone critics, the penetration of the boundary between self and environment. Line 4 has zavtnyi which means "hidden, secret" but also "sacred", and can often be used to speak of one's concealed state of mind. It is closely linked to sokrovnnyi "the innermost." mysel (here in the instrumental myslom ) means "design" in the sense of "scheme, plot". It translates "intent" in the English phrase "criminal intent." It usually has overtones of the illicit and clandestine. zlym myslom, for example, is "with malice aforethought." The design in question is a reference to Pushkin's plan (which came within a hare's hop of realization) to escape Russia and head for western Europe from Odessa (to which Pushkin had been exiled and where he wrote this poem.) The whole affair seems to have been planned, and supplies procured, and his friends to have aided him in preparation. But at the eleventh stage of the eleventh hour of the night of his escape, Pushkin himself, as much a combination of the pusillanimous and the impulsive as ever a genius was, got ice-cold feet and couldn't bring himself to do it. Why this is so we may never know. The reasons may have been amatory. The ever-mutable feelings of the poet,

young weathervane in the hurricane of groin-stirrings that he was, had at that time been blushingly blustered in the direction of one Elizaveta Vorontsova, and two the Countess Vyazemskaya. Both women were a decade older than Pushkin, and the latter was married. Pushkin as a young man could scace resist pretty faces, or corsetted curves, of any stripe. But he had an especial fondness for older women, and married women. After all, feeling is falling is fouling is filling. So a Milfish Missus like the Countess was especially difficult to turn down even when he was smitten with Elizaveta. The relevant correspondences suggest that Vyazemskaya was especially saddened by the thought of losing him, and Vorontsova was harder to get and thus more enticing to him. On the escape itself, the following is an excerpt translated from Yuri Druzhnikov's znik Rossyi "Prisoner of Russia", where the event is reconstructed:
On the night of July 31, the escape, as Pushkin underlined in his diary, was supposed to have taken placeprecisely how and what occurred that night is little known, since all the parties to the operation for obvious reasons remained silent not only in those days for years after. Hints and tales related from third parties have come down to us from people wholistened to the stories of the participants The master of such operations, Pushkin's friend Ali, was involved.Ali held talks with the captain of a bring that in 5 days was to sail for Constantinople.the ship would then proceed to Genoa, or perhaps straight therevia Ali, Pushkin got to know the captain. The escape plan was hatched jointlyAli was to escort Pushkin at nightfall to an unpeopled spot on the shoreAll three confederates agreed that a more unwatched spot could not be found for the approach of a boat from the brigUnder cover of darkness Pushkin was to be taken by boat and delivered aboard the ship. He would then be hidden in the hold for five daysthen the brig would head for open sea. Pushkin turned up at the cavern long before the appointed hour. Among the necessities taken with him was a Koran, the detailed description ofthe Islamic lands where he would arrive. The escapee became agitated, sat, red, and jumpted up and started wandering among the stone blocks, clashing by turns around the sea and the neighboring shore. The breeze changed to seaward. Waves were crashing on the stones Suddenly Pushkin heard the sounds of music and merrymakingthe revelry was going full blast and Pushkin and Ali found themselves in the thick of a booze fest.Likely, Pushkin spent the remainder of that tense night with the kind Vera who kept him company...

bregm is Slavopoetick for beregm, and tomm "beset" is an archaism, shortened from tommyi Russian critics have not always read this poem in strict biographical mode, however. And perhaps they're right not to. The poem can, and for many, does stand on its own and have its own inner logic. The lines which I have spent nearly a page drowning in biographical ink may also be read in terms of the poet's communion with the sea. I'd expound, but perhaps this is best illustrated by example. Tsvetaeva gives us:
Refuge de mon cur sauvage! Combien de fois, fuyant le bal, Longeais-je tes dserts rivages Rong par je ne sais quel mal. (O refuge of my wildsome heart! How often from the ball I'd flee To wander your deserted banks With I know not what thing in me.)

 , , , , ! How I loved thy callbacks/responses Muffled sounds, the abyss' voice, The silence in the evening hour, And impulsive gusts/surges

Kak ya lyubl tvo otzvy Glukhye zvki, bzdny glas, I tiyn v verniy as, I svoyenrvnye porvy!

L2: glukhy is one of those adjectives, of which there are many in Russian, that is absolutely a pain to even explain in paraphrase. It means anything from "deaf" to "obscure" to "muffled" to "uncivilized, far from people, godforsaken" (also "voiceless" when speaking of consonants.) It is a word that can be applied to sounds, people and other things. In Romantic poetry it can be used (this was a favorite of Pushkin's) to speak of forests and landscape features in vaguely livening ways. The /r/ of svoyenrvnyie porvy and the vowel-sonorance generate a deep rumbling roar in the Russophone mouth , Smirnnyi prus rybary , Tvoyyu prkhot'yu khranmyi, : Skol'zt otvno sred' zyby: , ,No ty vzygrl, neodolmyi . I stya tnet korably. The submissive sail of fishers Protected by thy caprice Slides daringly amidst the breakers: But just grew rough (or "let playful whim seize thee"), indomitable (one), And a flock of ships founders The change in stanzaic form here may have many implications, and I should not like to limit the readings you wish to abstract from it. I would however like to draw attention to the contrast between smirnnyi "submissive, meek" and otvno "bold, daringly." The submissive sail is doing something daring. It is the tension between the nature of the sail and the nature of its actions that allows for the poetic. Ditto for prkhot' "caprice, whim" which is an inherently unstable notion, and the khranmyi "protected, kept safe" suggesting the opposite. It is part of Pushkin's genius that he builds complexity out of seeming transparency right under the readers' nose. Note too the use of the past in the penultimate line with a future sense. vzygrt' means "to grow rough" when one speaks of weather. But it also carries the root for "play", and suggests that the sea is sporting disastrously.

 Ne udals' navk ostvit' , , Mne sknyi, nepodvnyi breg, Teby vostrgami pozdrvit' I po khrebtm tvom naprvit' . Moy poeteskiy pobg I did not manage/contrive to leave forever The dull/boring, immobile/stirless/unmoving strand, (In order to) greet thee in surges of rapture And orient across thy crests/ridges My poetical escape udals' "it turned out" has a positive ring to it. When someone says mne ne udals' it means "it didn't come to pass (though I wished it had) that I" This is opposed to mne ne prils' meaning "it didn't happen (and I'm glad it didn't) that I (had to)" The "poetical escape" might be read as a reference to the Romantic-made-real nature of an escape from barren lands by dark of night. It may also be read as a "poetic flight of fantasy". This depends, again, on whether one is reading more biographically or literarily. Given the text as it stands, it may make more sense to see the poem as embodying an almost ritual-like relation between the sea and the self which creates an imaginary locus amnus of interaction, and not of escapism. , ... ; Ty dal, ty zvalya byl okvan; : Vot rvals' du moy. , Mogey strst'yu ocharvan, . U beregv ostlsya ya. Thou didst wait, thou didst call I was fettered ; In vain did my soul writhe/tear: By a mighty passion spellbound, At (thy) shores I (have) remained Line 2 The sinuous surfeit of sibilants and affricates in vote rvals' du plus that /rv/ cluster makes the line in Russian sound like what it means. rvt' of course means "to tear, rip, rend." In its reflexive form rvtsa "to roil, tear, writhe" (here seen in its imperfective past feminine rvals') it has overtones of straining, bursting. For example gde tnko tam i rvytsa "where it is fragile, there it will burst" is a rough equivalent of English "a chain is only as strong as its weakest link." When construed with a preposition it means "to be dying for, to long for, to be eager for, to be spoiling for," Examples: rvtsa na svobdu "to be dying to be free", rvtsa v drku "to be spoiling for a fight", rvtsa v boy "to go bursting into action, to go in with guns blazing." Whether the final verb of the stanza is to be understood as "I have remained" or "I remained" depends on the context one assumes. Modern Russian, having lost most of its tense-distinctions in the Middle Ages, does not distinguish between an event at a defined point in the past ("I went"),

and an event at an undefined point in the past conceived in terms of present relevance ("I have gone"). This in turn depends on whether one sees the "mighty passion" as a reference the inamorizing heart-tug of Vorontsova, the fickle Belle Dame Sans Souci who hath this poet by the balls in thrall, as it were, and made him stay behind, or whether something else is meant (such as the "love for the homeland" hallucinated by soviet critics out of a quite reasonable fear that their beloved homeland in the 20th century had so little to boast that many a man and woman of letters and lucidity was now embarking on escape, poetical and practical, from its stalinist maw.) To appreciate the poem in Russian, of course, it matters little. Taking the text as it stands one may also see the poetic persona aspiring to reach out to the object of his desire and instead remaining behind yet spellbound by passion for the sea itself. Again this is the way many sensitive russophone readers experience the lines. To illustrate I will quote Tsvetaeva's version, once again.
Tu m'appelais...semaines mornes.. En vain ce rve fut rv! Esclave d'un amour sans bornes Aux rives je restai riv. (You called to me...what bleak, bleak weaks... The dream had drawn a bitter blank. Slave of a love that knew no bounds I stayed, banked back upon this bank.)

? O om zhalt'? Kud by nne ? Ya put' bespnyi ustreml? Odn predmt v tvoyy pustne . Moy by du porazl. What is there to regret? Whither now Would I direct/turn/chart [my] reckless/carefree way/course? A single object in thy wilderness. Might have struck my (soul) fancy. Pustnya can refer to any desolate open area of nature. It could, and normally does in modern Russian, mean "deserts" but given that this word is used to the sea itself, I am inclined to read it as "Wildernesses" or perhaps "desolate vastness", especially since it is later used in the final stanza of this poem, and Pushkin's comfortable odyssey from this bracing seaside back into the Russian heartland was not the most arid or sunscorched jaunt, as few Odessan Odysseys would be expected to be. Porazt' means "Strike" in the literal and figurative sense. , ... : . One cliff, the gravestone/sepulcher of glory There were plunged in chill slumber Odn skalgrobntsa slvy Tam pogrulis' v khldnyi son Vospominnya velivy: Tam ugasl Napolen

Memories majestic : There Napoleon was extinguished. Vospominnya velivy "Majestic memories" is as alliteratively suggestive as its literal translation. Son "sleep" suggests something less definitely soporific than sleep in English, largely because it does double duty as the normative word for "dream". Both meanings are well-entrenched residents in the language (as will be evident from the word's many derivations liks snitsa "to come in a dream" and snnyi "sleepy, somnolent") The phrase itself khldnyi son "chill slumber/dream" is well-loved by Romantic poets with either, or both, meanings of the last word being brought out. (Among pushkin's many unsung talents is his mastery of the art of palimpsest.) It occurse elsewhere in Pushkin's work in the line du vkuyet khldnyi son "his soul partakes of chill slumber/dream" to describe a poet suffering from a lull in inspiration, for example. DIGRESSION ON NAPOLEON The admiration for Napoleon may seem strange for a Russian, but Pushkin, who imbibed much of his romanticism in western garb, saw Napoleon as a Byronic hero who dared to have hubris. In his ode "Napoleon", written 3 years earlier, Pushkin spoke of the man as one who kickstarted Europe into gear, and woke Russia up from its complacency. Here are the first two of its fifteen stanzas, as they are most relevent for the lines we are considering here:
: . . , , . , , , , ... ! , , . A wondrous destiny is met. Extinguished, a majestic heart. In prison dark the day has set On the wroth age of Bonaparte. That lord convicted by his nation, Victory's fosterling, is gone. For him, the exile of creation Posterity has now begun. Thou man whose bold and bloodied story Shall long, long fill the world! Now, rest Thou in the shade of thine own glory 'Midst desolate billows in the west. The tomb of splendor manifest! Above thy dust, above thine urn, The tribal hatreds come to rest And rays of life unending burn.....

HERE ENDETH THE DIGRESSION

 . , , , . There he reposed amidst agonies/tribulations And after him, like noise of storm, Another genius has whirled from us, Another potentate of our thoughts.

Tam on pol sred muniy I vsled za nim, kak bri um, Drugy ot nas umlsya gniy, Drugy vlasttel' naikh dum.

This and the subsequent two stanzas is a reference to the poet Byron, who had died at Missolonghi earlier that year (1824.) The presence of Byron in this poem is, of course, not limited to deictic invocation. Pot' (here in the past masculine pol) means "to rest" and is very often used to speak euphemistically of the dead who Rest In Peace. Use of the word munia "torments, agonies, tribulations" alongside this creates contrast, for torment is seldom restful, and suggests indeed that the person is very much alive and feelingful. Use of sred "amid", however, makes it even more noteworthy, since this is not Napoleon merely "dying in agony" but rather "reposing amid agonies." One of Pushkin's better-acknowledged gifts is the ability to phrase an idea in such a way, and in such a context, that the Russophone reader somehow just feels that this is the natural way to say it. Much as Shakespeare constructed phrases (to thine own self be true, the fault is not in the stars, doth protest to much, to be or not to be, one fell swoop, star-crossed lovers etc.) that, by dint of talent and a hefty amount of luck, became part of the English semanticon, so too did Pushkin (perstmi lykhkimi kak son "with dreamlight fingertips" to describe a dainty touch, day vam bog lyubmym byt' drugy "Pray god you are loved by another" as a cruel breakup line or lyubv vse vzrasty pokrny "all ages are subjugated to love.") Such a phrase in this poem is vlasttel' dum "master of (one's) thoughts/ideas" which in modern Russian is now used to describe the dominant intellectual influence either on a person, movement, or age. Virgil, for example, might be called the vlasttel' dum of Dante. Noam Chomsky is the Vlasttel' dum of linguists who don't believe in data. , , . , : , , . (He) vanished, bewailed by Freedom, Leaving unto the world his garland. Roar! Be turmoiled with bad weather He was, O sea, thy singer. Isz oplkannyi svobdoy, Ostvya mru svoy vents. um! Vzvolnysya nepogdoy: On byl, o Mre, tvoy pevts.

Volnovtsa (here seen in its perfective imperative form vzvolnysya) and which I have rendered with "be turmoiled with" means normally "to get agitated, to get disturbed, nervous, uneasy" when used to describe human beings (often construed, as here, with a noun in the instrumental case describing that "with" which one is agitated.) When describing a body of water it means "to get choppy, to grow rough, to surge, rise in billows." It can also mean "to be in unrest" when used to describe a disgruntled revolutionary populace. My girlfriend when I lived in Moscow used to say zam ty tak volnyesya "What's got you so worked up?" whenever something bothered my American sensibilities. Nepogda "bad weathr" is less prosaic than its English translation. Pevts has the normal semantic range of "singer" plus something like that of "bard" in literary language. , : , , , , . Tvoy braz byl na nym oznen, On dkhom szdan byl tvom: Kak ty, mogu, glubk i mren, Kak ty, nim neukrotm.

Thine image was marked out on/for him He was crafted by thy spirit Like thee, potent, deep and darkling Like thee, untamed/undaunted by aught. The adjective oznen could mean "imprinted, betokened" but when construed with the preposition na might also mean "earmarked for." But probably the former is intended, especially in archaizing registers such as poetry. The usage corresponds somewhat to the in-his-image-ism of e.g. Genesis 1:27 in the Church Slavonic and the Russian translations of the Bible. Likewise the word for "spirit" here dukh (here in the instrumental dkhom) is different from the word for soul du "soul, anima" (think French me) thus far used by the poet to describe himself (and which one might expect a poet to use in giving nature an animate persona.) Dukh "Spirit, Spiritus" (also "scent") is a more supernaturally resonant term, having as it does overtones of the spectral or, in this context, biblical (the "wind/spirit of God" is rendered by this word in the Slavonic and Russian bibles.) Mraen "gloomy, darkling" truly is usually reserved for meteorological use, and is derived from mrak "murk, gloom." There is no precise equivalent for this in English, but French finds an equivalent in tnbreux.

 ... , ? : , .

Mir opustlTepr' kud e Meny b ty vnes, Oken? Sud'b lyudy povsydu ta e: Gde kplya blga, tam na stre U prosvenye il' tirn.

The world is emptied (i.e. has become an empty place)Whither now Wouldst thou (have) take(n) me, Ocean(us)? The fate of people is the same everywhere: Where there is (but) a drop of virtue there (stands) guard (Either) enlightenment or the tyrant. "Ocean" vs "Oceanus" depends on whether one reads Oken as capitalized or not. Editions differ and Pushkin's manuscript for this poem would require a teamup of Diotima and Gandalf for it to be clear. Referring to a body of water as an ocean rather than as the sea may be rhyme-induced and no more than that. Or it may be another way of personnifying the waters. It is worth keeping in mind here that the Russian word for "Sea" like inter alia the Latin word is grammatically neuter (and at this point in time was semantically genderless as well, despite growing pressure from french Mer) and may be endowed with masculine or feminine or neuter traits as the poet wishes. There are masculinizing epithets and masculine metonyms one moment e.g. neodolmyi "insuperable one" (masc.) or oken "Ocean(us)" and masculine verb-endings such as ty dal "thou waitedst (masc)". Yet at other times there are feminizing terms such as as svobdnaya stikhya "free element (f.)". The image of the sea is transgressive, free of fixed semantic gender. Several important linguistic studies have shown over the past century or so that the concept and category of gender is underdeveloped and underspecified in Russian compared to, say, Spanish or even French or German. Neuter nouns like mre "sea" are especially favored for various playful purposes by Russian poets who want to create tension between the abstract and the personnified in the language. On the last line here: Pushkin was instantiating of the old Romantic idea that "enlightenment" often seen in western circles today as a herald of liberation was nothing more than tyranny in new garb. Pushkin's experience of this had to do with the way in which modernization and reform were being and had been implemented in Russia, being used to entrench power more often than to challenge it. This stanza and the last two were often omitted in publication in Pushkin's lifetime, largely because censors are, as a rule, major douchebags. (Tsvetaeva, tellingly, renders "enlightenment" with un tas de rustres) , ! , . So then Farewell. Sea! I shall not forget Thy festal beauty Proy e mre! Ne zabdu Tvoyy torstvennoy kras I dlgo, dlgo slat' bdu Tvoy gul v vernie as.

And long, long shall I hear Thy hum/buzz/boom in the evening hours Note: torstvennyi (here rendered with "festal") really means "solemn" but without the lugubrious sense latent in the English word. On the contrary this word suggests something festive with a cry of "gaudeamus!" It is endowed with senses of victory, and the exultation of triumph, and that specific solmnity inherent in a joy-bringing ceremony's observance. Gul means "hum, buzz" when speaking of voices (the indistinct sound of many voices hubbubbing together), "roar" when speaking of wind, "din" when speaking of machinery and generally on its own connotes "rumbling, booming" , , , , , , , . V les, v pustni molalvy Perenes, tobyu poln, Tvo skal, tvo zalvy, I blesk, i ten', i gvor voln.

Into (the) woods, into (the) taciturn wildernesses/deserts I shall take, (now that I am) replete with thee, Thy crags, thy coves, And (the) shine, and shade, and murmuration of (the) waves. Gvor voln "murmur of the waves" is another phrase that Pushkin was fond of using, and poln "replete" was something the poet often rhymed therewith. Tobyu poln "replete with thee", with its two stressed O-vowels is sonorously apposits. Pustni "desolate open spaces" are, as mentioned before "deserts" in normative Russian, though not quite the seared sahara conjured to mind by the English term. It makes scant sense to assume that barren sandswept parchlands are what pushkin literally had in mind here. Yet the word does have a hint of that, and the connotations of aridity and barrenness are germane. It reenforces what the context suggests, i.e. the precise absence of the water. The sea whence the poet is leaving. This is brought out in Tsvetaeva's paraphrase nicely, if egregiously. Dans mon dsert sans sources vives J'emporterai, empli de toi, Tes durs granists, tes belles rves, Tes jets, tes flots, ton bruit de voix...

An Englishing of the poem: Farewell! Free element that knew me! One final time I turn, O Sea To see you roll your skylike billows, And shine in beauteous majesty Like a good friend's regretful mutter, His call of fare you well through tears, Your rueful tone, your tone of summons Shall nevermore enthrall my ears. O reaches of my heart desired! How often up and down your strands Darkling and silent I would wander Tormented with clandestine plans! I loved the answers you would send: Dim primal sounds, the chasm's call, The silences of evenfall And your impulsive flights of wind. The fisherman's meek sail now slips Protected by your whim alone Boldly amid your watertips. But you rise rough, O Mighty One, Downing another fleet of ships. I could not leave behind the night Fallen on this dull stirless shore, To greet you, raptured into light, Embarking in poetic flight Across your crests forevermore. You called me, waiting. I was shackled. In vain my heart in irons tore. Bound by the spell of mighty passion I stayed behind upon this shore What is there to regret? Now whither Could I my reckless journey chart? One thing amid your wilds of water Could still have power to strike my heart. One cliff, .the sepulcher of glory. There did chill slumber whelm away A mighty memory majestic... There was Napoleon snuffed for aye. There amid agonies he rested Now in his wake - a roar of winds Another genius whirls from us Another captain of our minds.

Leaving the world his mortal laurel He vanished, mourned Liberty. Sound now! Blow wild in fits of tempest. This was your singer gone, O Sea. He was impressed with your own image By your own spirit was he wrought, Like you, was potent, deep and darkling, Like you, a power tamed by naught. The world goes empty. In that cold Where, Ocean, would you carry me? In every land one fate takes hold: Each drop of virtue is patrolled By tyrants, or technocracy. Farewell, now, Sea! I'll not forget Your regal beauty all my years. Long shall your tone at fall of evening Sound and resound within my ears. To woods, to bare and wordless wastes, Shall I translate these things of you: Your cliffs and coves, your gleam and shadow Your waves' palaver and your blue.