Стихотворения

Набоков Владимир Владимирович

428. THE BALLAD OF LONGWOOD GLEN ^{*}

That Sunday morning, at half past ten, Two cars crossed the creek and entered the glen. In the first was Art Longwood, a local florist, With his children and wife (now Mrs. Deforest). In the one that followed, a ranger saw Art's father, stepfather and father-in-law. The three old men walked off to the cove. Through tinkling weeds Art slowly drove. Fair was the morning, with bright clouds afar. Children and comics emerged from the car. Silent Art, who could state at a thing all day, Watched a bug climb a stalk and fly away. Pauline had asthma, Paul used a crutch. They were cute little rascals but could not run much. «I wish», said his mother to crippled Paul, «Some man would teach you to pitch that ball». Silent Art took the ball and tossed it high. It stuck in a tree that was passing by. And the grave green pilgrim turned and stopped. The children waited, but no ball dropped. «I never climbed trees in my timid prime», Thought Art; and forthwith started to climb. Now and then his elbow or knee could be seen In a jigsaw puzzle of blue and green. Up and up Art Longwood swarmed and shinned, And the leaves said yesto the questioning wind. What tiaras of gardens! What torrents of light! How accessible ether! How easy flight! His family circled the tree all day. Pauline concluded:

«Dad climbed away». None saw the delirious celestial crowds Greet the hero from earth in the snow of the clouds. Mrs. Longwood was getting a little concerned. He never came down. He never returned. She found some change at the foot of the tree. The children grew bored. Paul was stung by a bee. The old men walked over and stood looking up, Each holding five cards and a paper cup. Cars on the highway stopped, backed, and then Up a rutted road waddled into the glen. And the tree was suddenly full of noise, Conventioners, fishermen, freckled boys. Anacondas and pumas were mentioned by some, And all kinds of humans continued to come: Tree surgeons, detectives, the fire brigade. An ambulance parked in the dancing shade. A drunken rogue with a rope and a gun Arrived on the scene to see justice done. Explorers, dendrologists — all were there; And a strange pale girl with gypsy hair. And from Cape Fear to Cape Flattery Every paper had: Man Lost in Tree. And the sky-bound oak (where owls had perched And the moon dripped gold) was felled and searched. They discovered some inchworms, a red-cheeked gall, And an ancient nest with a new-laid ball. They varnished the stump, put up railings and signs. Restrooms nestled in roses and vines. Mrs. Longwood, retouched, when the children died, Became a photographer's dreamy bride. And now the Deforests, with fourold men, Like regular tourists visit the glen; Munch their lunches, look up and down, Wash their hands, and drive back to town. 1953–1957

СТИХОТВОРЕНИЯ НА АНГЛИЙСКОМ, НЕ ВОШЕДШИЕ В ПРИЖИЗНЕННЫЕ СБОРНИКИ

429. REMEMBRANCE ^{*}

Like silent ships we two in darkness met, And when some day the poet's careless fame Shall breathe to you a half-forgotten name — Soul of my song, I want you to regret. For you had Love. Out of my life you tore One shining page. I want, if we must part, Remembrance pale to quiver in your heart Like moonlit foam upon a windy shore. <Ноябрь 1920>

430. HOME ^{*}

Music of windy woods, an endless song Rippling in gleaming glades of Long Ago, You follow me on tiptoe, swift and slow, Through many a dreary year.... Ah, it was wrong To wound those gentle trees! I dream and roam O'er sun-tormented plains, from brook to brook, And thence by stone grey thundering cities. Home, My home magnificent is but a word On a withered page in an old, dusty book. Oh, wistful birch trees! I remember days Of beauty: ferns; a green and golden mare; A toadstool like a giant lady bird; A fairy path; bells, tinkling bells, and sighs; Whimsical orioles; white-rimmed butterflies Fanning their velvet wings on velvet silver stems.... All is dead. Who cares, who understands? Not even God.... I saw mysterious lands And sailed to nowhere with blue-winged waves Whirling around me. I have roved and raved In southern harbours among drunken knaves, And passed by narrow streets, scented and paved With moonlight pale. There have I called and kissed Veiled women swaying in a rhythmic mist, But lonesome was my soul, and cold the night.... And if sometimes, when in the fading light Chance friends would chatter, suddenly I grew Restless and then quite still, — Ah, it was Music of you, windy woods! <Ноябрь 1920>

431. THE RUSSIAN SONG ^{*}

I dream of simple tender things: a moonlit road and tinkling bells. Ah, drearly the coachboy sings, but sadness into beauty swells; swells, and is lost in moonlight dim… the singer sighs, and then the moon full gently passes back to him the quivering, unfinished tune. In distant lands, on hill and plain, thus do I dream, when nights are long, — and memory gives back again the whisper of that long-lost song. <1923>

432. SOFTEST OF TONGUES ^{*}

To many things I've said the word that cheats the lips and leaves them parted (thus: prash-chai which means «good-bye») — to furnished flats, to streets, to milk-white letters melting in the sky; to drab designs that habit seldom sees, to novels interrupted by the din of tunnels, annotated by quick trees, abandoned with a squashed banana skin; to a dim waiter in a dimmer town, to cuts that healed and to a thumbless glove; also to things of lyrical renown perhaps more universal, such as love. Thus life has been an endless line of land receding endlessly.... And so that's that, you say under your breath, and wave your hand, and then your handkerchief, and then your hat. To all these things I've said the fatal word, using a tongue I had so tuned and tamed that — like some ancient sonneteer — I heard its echoes by posterity acclaimed. But now thou too must go; just here we part, softest of tongues, my true one, all my own.... And I am left to grope for heart and art and start anew with clumsy tools of stone. <21 октября 1941>; Уэлсли, Macc.

433. EXILE ^{*}

He happens to be a French poet, that thin, book-carrying man with a bristly gray chin; you meet him wherever you go across the bright campus, past ivy-clad walls. The wind which is driving him mad (this recalls a rather good line in Hugo), keeps making blue holes in the waterproof gloss of college-bred poplars that rustle and toss their slippery shadows at pied young beauties, all legs, as they bicycle through his shoulder, his armpit, his heart, and the two big books that are hurting his side. Verlaine had been also a teacher. Somewhere in England. And what about great Baudelaire, alone in his Belgian hell? This ivy resembles the eyes of the deaf. Come, leaf, name a country beginning with «f»; for instance, «forget» or «farewell». Thus dimly he muses and dreamily heeds his eavesdropping self as his body recedes, dissolving in sun-shattered shade. L'Envoi:Those poor chairs in the Bois, one of which legs up, stuck half-drowned in the slime of a ditch while others were grouped in a glade. <13 сентября> 1942

434. A POEM ^{*}

When he was small, when he would fall, on sand or carpet he would lie quite flat and still until he knew what he would do: get up or cry. After the battle, flat and still upon a hillside now he lies — but there is nothing to decide, for he can neither cry nor rise. 11 ноября 1942; Сент Пол, Миннесота

435. DREAM ^{*}

«Now it is coming, and the sooner the better», said my swooning soul — and in the sudden blinding lunar landscape, out of a howling hole a one-legged child that howled with laughter hopped and went hopping hopping after a bloody and bewildered bone, a limb that walked away alone. Perhaps the window shade had billowed and slapped the darkness on the face; but when I had picked up and pillowed the book of sleep and found the place, I saw him haltingly returning out of the dust, back to the burning hole of his three-walled home — that boy hugging a new, a nameless toy. <16 августа 1944>; Кембридж, Масс.

436. DANDELIONS ^{*}

Moons on the lawn replace the suns that mowers happily had missed. Where age would stoop, a babe will squat and rise with star-fluff in its first. 30 мая 1950; Итака, Нью-Йорк

437. LUNAR LINES ^{*}

Spell «night». Spell «pebbles»: Pebbles in the Night. Peep, crated chicks on lonely station! This Is now the ABC of the abyss, The Desperanto we must learn to write. <28 апреля 1966>

ПЕРЕВОДЫ НА АНГЛИЙСКИЙ ^{*}

Александр Пушкин

438–439. FROM «MOZART AND SALIERI» ^{*}

SCENE I. A ROOM

Salieri

They say there is no justice on the earth. I know now there is none in Heaven. Plain as seven simple notes! I have loved the art from birth; when I was but a little child in our old church and the organ boomed sublimely, I listened and was lost — shedding delicious involuntary tears. I turned away from foolish pastimes early; found repellent all studies foreign to my music — ay, from all I turned with obstinate disdain, determined thence to dedicate myself to music, music only. The start is hard, the first steps make dull going. I surmounted the initial obstacles; I grounded firmly that craft that makes the pedestal for art; a craftsman I became: I trained my fingers to dry obedient proficiency, brought sureness to my ear. Stunning the sounds, I cut up music like a corpse; I tested the laws of harmony by mathematics. Then only, rich in learning, dared I yield to blandishments of sweet creative fancy. I dared compose — but silently, in secret, nor could I venture yet to dream of glory. How often, in my solitary cell, having toiled for days, having sat unbroken hours, forgetting food and sleep, and having tasted the rapture and the tears of inspiration, I'd burn my work and coldly watch the flame as my own melodies and meditations flared up and smoked a little and were gone. Nay, even more: when the great Gluck appeared, when he unveiled to us new marvels, deep enchanting marvels — did I not forsake all I had known, and loved so well and trusted? Did I not follow him with eager stride, obedient as one who'd lost his way and met a passerby who knew the turning? By dint of stubborn steadfast perseverance upon the endless mountainside of art I reached at last a lofty level. Fame smiled on me; and I found in others' hearts responses to the sounds I had assembled. Came happy days: in quiet I enjoyed Work and success and fame — enjoying also the works and the successes of my friends, my comrades in that art divine we served. Oh, never did I envy know. Nay, never! Not even when Piccini found a way to captivate the ears of savage Paris — not even when I heard for the first time the plangent opening strains of «Iphigenia». Is there a man alive who'll say Salieri has ever stooped to envy — played the snake that, trampled underfoot, still writhes and bites the gravel and the dust in helpless spite? Not one!.. Yet now — I needs must say it — now I am an envious man. I envy — deeply, to agony, I envy. — Tell me, Heaven! where now is justice when the holiest gift, when genius and its immortality, come not as a reward for fervent love, for abnegation, prayer and dogged labor — but lights its radiance in the head of folly, of idle wantonness? …Oh, Mozart, Mozart!

Mozart enters.

Mozart

Aha! you saw me! I was just preparing to take you by surprise — a little joke.

Salieri

You here? — When did you come?

Mozart

This very minute. I was on my way to you to show you something when, passing near a tavern, all at once I heard a fiddle.... Oh, my dear Salieri! You never in your life heard anything so funny.... Than blind fiddler in a pothouse playing Voi сhe sapete.Marvelous! I simply had to bring him here to have you enjoy his art. — Step in!

Enters a blind old man with a violin.

Some Mozart, please!

The old man plays the aria from «Don Giovanni»;

Mozart roars with laughter.

Salieri

And you can laugh?

Mozart

Oh, come, can't you?

Salieri

I cannot. I am not amused by miserable daubers who make a mess of Raphael's Madonna; I am not amused by despicable zanies whose parodies dishonor Alighieri. Be off, old man.

Mozart

Wait; here's some money for you — you'll drink my health.

The old man goes out.

It seems to me, Salieri, You're out of sorts to-day. I'll come to see you some other time.

Salieri

What have you brought?

Mozart

Oh, nothing — a trifle. My insomnia last night was troubling me, and one or two ideas entered my head. Today I dashed them down. I wanted your opinion; but just now you're in no mood for me.

Salieri

Ah, Mozart! Mozart! When is my mood averse to you? Sit down. I'm listening.

Mozart (at the piano)

I want you to imagine… Whom shall we say?… well, let's suppose myself a little younger — and in love — not deeply, but just a little — sitting with a damsel or with a bosom friend — yourself, let's say — I am merry.... All at once: a ghostly vision, a sudden gloom, or something of the sort.... Well, this is how it goes.

He plays.

Salieri

You were bringing this, and you could stop to linger at a tavern and listen to a blind man with a fiddle! Ah, Mozart, you are unworthy of yourself.

Mozart

You like it, do you?

Salieri

What profoundity! What daring and what grace! Why, you're a god, and do not know it; but Iknow, Iknow.

Mozart

What, really? Maybe so… If so His Godhead is getting to be hungry.

Salieri

Listen, Mozart: Let's dine together at the Golden Lion.

Mozart

A capital idea. But let me first go home a moment: I must tell my wife she's not to wait for me.

He goes

Salieri

Don't fail me now. — Nay, now can I no longer fight with fate: my destiny's to stop him — else we perish, we all, the priests, the ministers of music, not I alone with my dull-sounding fame.... What worth are we if Mozart lives and reaches new summits still? Will this exalt our art? Nay: art will sink so soon as he departs: he will leave us no successor — will have served no useful purpose. Like a seraph swooping, he brought us certain songs from Paradise, only to stab us, children of the dust, with helpless wingless longing, and fly off! — So fly away! — the sooner now, the better. Here's poison: the last gift of my Isora. For eighteen years I've kept it, let it season — and often life would seem to me a wound too bitter to be borne — I have often sat with some unwary enemy at table, yet never did that inward whisper win me; though I'm no coward and feel insult deeply, and care not much for life. Still did I tarry, tormented by the thirst for death, yet brooding: why should I die? Perchance the future yet holds unexpected benefits; perchance I may be visited by Orphic rapture, my night of inspiration and creation; perchance another Haydn may achieve some great new thing — and I shall live in him… While I was feasting with some hated guest, perchance, I'd muse, I'll find an enemy more hateful still; perchance a sharper insult may come to blast me from a prouder eminence — thenyou will not be lost, Isora's gift! And I was right! At last I have encountered my perfect enemy: another Haydn has made me taste divine delight!. The hour draws nigh at last. Most sacred gift of love: You'll pass to-night into the cup of friendship. <12 декабря 1940>