PROBLEMS OF TRANSLATION
511
pagnie
of Tatar origin, or what is more likely--despite Marie's own
memoirs--Countess Elise Vorontzov, Pushkin's mistress in Odessa,
or, most likely;, a retrospective combination of reflected ladies), the
only relevant fact here is that these waves come from Lafontaine
through Bogdanovich. I refer to
((L'onde pour toucher .
..
[Venus]
Ii
longs flots s'entrepousse et d'une egale ardeur chaque flot
Ii
son tour
s'en vient baiser les pieds de la mere d'Amour
(Jean de la Fontaine,
((Les Amours de Psiche et de Cupidon,"
1669) and to a close para–
phrase of this by Ippolit Bogdanovich, in
his
"Sweet Psyche"
(Du–
shen'ka,
1783-1799) which in English should read "the waves that
pursue her jostle jealously to fall humbly at her feet."
Without introducing various changes, there is no possibility
whatsoever to make of Pushkin's four lines an alternately-rhymed
tetrametric quatrain in English, even if only masculine rhymes be
used. The key words are:
collect, sea, storm, envied, waves, ran,
turbulent, succession, lie, feet, love;
and to these eleven not a single
addition can
be
made without betray,al. For instance, if we
try
to
end the first line in "before"-/
recollect the sea before
(followed by
a crude enjambement) - and graft the rhyme "shore" to the end
of the third line
(the
something
waves that storm the shore),
this
one concession would involve us in a number of other changes com–
pletely breaking up the original sense and all its literary associations.
In other words, the translator should constantly bear in mind not
only the essential pattern of the text but also the borrowings with
which that pattern is interwoven. Nor can anything be added for the
sake of rhyme or meter. One thinks of some of those task problems
in chess tourneys to the composition of which special restrictive rules
are ,applied, such as the stipulation that only certain pieces may
be
used. In the marvelous economy! of an
Onegin
stanza, the usable
pieces are likewise strictly limited
in
number and kind: they may
be
shifted around by the translator but no additional men may
be
used
for padding or filling up the gaps that impair a unique solution.
VII
To translate an
Onegin
stanza does not mean to rig up
fourteen lines with alternate beats and affix to them seven jingle
rhymes starting with pleasure-Iove-Ieisure-dove. Granted that rhymes
