The Angel, Mikhail Lermontov (translation) ~ Misha's Dream, Douglas Logan

Ангел

По небу полуночи ангел летел
И тихую песню он пел;
И месяц, и звёзды, и тучи толпой
Внимали той песне святой.
Он пел о блаженстве безгрешных духов
Под кущами райских садов;
О Боге великом он пел, и хвала
Его непритворна была.
Он душу младую в объятиях нёс
Для мира печали и слёз;
И звук его песни в душе молодой
Остался - без слов, но живой.
И долго на свете томилась она,
Желанием чудным полна;
И звуков небес заменить не могли
Ей скучные песни земли.

- Михаил Лермонтов

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 The Angel

Through the midnight sky an angel flew
And a quiet song he sang;
And the moon, and stars, and clouds gathered 'round
To hear his holy song.
He sang of the bliss of innocent spirits
Under the crest of the gardens of paradise;
Of the magnificent God he sang, and his praise
Was unpretended.
In his arms he carried an infant soul,
Bound for a world of sorrow and tears;
And within the young soul the sound of his songs
Remained, without words, but alive.
Long it languished in the world,
Filled with a marvelous craving,
While the tedious songs of earth could not
Replace for it the sounds of heaven.

- Mikhail Lermontov

translated by Douglas Logan

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Misha's Dream  (in response to Lermontov)

O mother,
I remember the leafy fronds
far overhead,
a canopy, and shade;
soft grass that smelled
so sweet and green, and
the powerful wing of a swan,

and all my friends around.
This very chair was there,
in perfect repair,
and this day, but even more blue --
and you.

I remember the great wing
curving over me, and
white feathers that were
so bright, a light that
filled my eyes but did not
make me shrink away,

as if I could see the light
of all time, and not merely
see, but have, and be.

I remember the warm night air,
the fast-rushing sky,
silver moon and nebulae,

and a sound that filled me,
the most perfect sound
that went on and on
and goes on still,
somewhere I cannot hear.

~~~~~~~~~~

Douglas Logan

This translation of 'The Angel' and 'Misha's Dream' also appear in Danse Macabre.

 

Comments

[Tim Murphy]

In a backwards way, this puts me in mind of my favorite James MacMurtry verse. It's from his song "Levelland."

Back before the central air
Mama used to roll her hair
We'd sit and watch the stars at night
She'd tell me to make a wish
I'd wish we both could fly
I don't think she's seen the sky
Since we got the satellite dish.

[DL]

Hey Arch --
You can find most international fonts in MS Word under Insert -> Symbol, or just switch the keyboard layout in Word to the language you want. The iPhone has a Cyrillic keyboard layout that's easier to toggle to, so I just use that in the Notes function, then email myself the file.
-- DL

[Arch]

Hey dude!
Where do you find your foreign fonts?
I lost my Old English fonts a couple or three (obsolete) computers ago. Now I can't find them in the far-famed "out there."

Padraig - yeah. Yeats rocks: "Did she put on his knowledge with his power / Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?"

[Doug Logan]

Ha!! Good get. I guess I was hoping that the soul's assumption that the wing was a swan's and not an angel's would acknowledge the myth, just as the chair reference acknowledges Plato, but that the reader, like the soul, would let those things flow by and return to an awareness of a remote, reattainable innocence. I think that's what Lermontov's original poem does so well.

[Padraig Murchadha]

The dream is perfectly Ledean. All it wants is a shudder in the loins.

[Gretchen]

Is not your perfect sound and Mikhail's song the same ? And the place your sound goes and his originates from real life.....not the one we are experiencing here and now?