I might be a specialist in twentieth-century American poetry, but in my spare time late at night I have been translating Russian verse.  Since neither the TV nor the cat care, this blog has provided a welcome outlet for sharing my discoveries.  My current fixation is the poet Afanasii Fet (1820-1892).

In previous posts I have discussed some of his oddly impersonal love poems.  Reading them, you learn nothing about the lovers' background or their identity.  Frequently, you don't even know their genders.  His indirection is sometimes so extreme that you only get the barest glimpses of the couple, a single hand or a stray eyelash.

One could explain this reticence as an exaggerated show of modesty.  The word robkii, meaning timid, is common in Fet's poetry, and lyrics such as "Eshche akatsia odna" ("One more acacia") (1859) feature lovers so shy that they cannot speak to each other as long as a bird or another animal might be listening.  When Fet does celebrate female beauty, as in "Diana" (1847), one of his most famous poems, he does so at a remarkable remove.  The blestiashchaia nagota, the "shining nakedness," of a woman's body is viewable only via a sculpture's image reflected in turbid water.

Modesty, though, cannot explain why Fet depopulates other landscapes.  A particularly haunting example is "Iarkim solnstem v lesu plameneet koster" ("Like a bright sun the bonfire flares up in the forest") (1859):

Ярким солнцем в лесу пламенеет костер,
И, сжимаясь, трещит можжевельник;
Точно пьяных гигантов столпившийся хор,
Раскрасневшись, шатается ельник.

Я и думать забыл про холодную ночь, —
До костей и до сердца прогрело;
Что смущало, колеблясь умчалося прочь,
Будто искры в дыму улетело.

Пусть на зорьке, все ниже спускаясь, дымок
Над золою замрет сиротливо;
Долго-долго, до поздней поры огонек
Будет теплиться скупо, лениво.

И лениво и скупо мерцающий день
Ничего не укажет в тумане;
У холодной золы изогнувшийся пень
Прочернеет один на поляне.

Но нахмурится ночь — разгорится костер,
И, виясь, затрещит можжевельник,
И, как пьяных гигантов столпившийся хор,
Покраснев, зашатается ельник.

* * * * * * *

Iarkim solntsem v lesu plameneet koster,
I, szhimaias', treshchit mozhzhevel'nik;
Tochno p'ianykh gigantov stolpivshiisia khor,
Raskrasnevshis', shataetsia el'nik.

Ia i dumat' zabyl pro kholodnuiu noch', --
Do kostei i do serdtsa progrelo;
Chto smushchalo, koleblias' umchalosia proch',
Budto iskry v dymu uletelo.

Pust' na zor'ke, vse nizhe spuskaias', dymok
Nad zoloiu zamret sirotlivo;
Dolgo-dolgo, do pozdnei pory ogonek
Budet teplit'sia skupo, lenivo.

I lenivo i skupo mertsaiushchii den'
Nichego ne ukazhet v tumane;
U kholodnoi zoly izognuvshiisia pen'
Procherneet odin na poliane.

No nakhmuritsia noch'--razgoritsia koster,
I, viias', zatreshchit mozhzhevel'nik,
I, kak p'ianykh gigantov stolpivshiisia khor,
Pokrasnev, zashataetsia el'nik.

* * * * * * *

Like a bright sun a bonfire flares up in the forest,
And, contracting, the juniper creaks;
Like a crowded choir of drunken giants,
The fir-grove, reddened, sways.

I forgot to think about the cold night,--
I was warmed to the very bone and heart;
My troubles wavered then vanished
Like sparks flying off into smoke.

At dawn, everything having died down, let
A smoke-puff linger lonely over the ashes.
For a long time, until the last moment,
A small flame will glimmer stingily, lazily.

Lazily, stingily glimmering day
Will reveal nothing in the mist;
Near the cold ashes a bent stump
Alone in the clearing will grow blacker.

But when night lowers, the fire will blaze,
And, twisting, the juniper will creak,
And, like a crowded choir of drunken giants,
The fir-grove, grown red, will sway.

Translating this poem, I was initially rather confused.  What's going on here?  A bonfire "flares up," dies out, and "will blaze" again.  Who sets the fire?  The speaker?  He or she comes to the fire out of the cold night, as if after wandering in or hiking through the wilderness.  It's like a scene out of a skazka, a Russian fairy tale.  We witness mysterious nocturnal revelry involving a "choir of drunken giants" and dancing junipers and firs.  Rural Russians, like American Puritans, used to consider the deep dark forest to be a place full of devils, witches, and murderous pagans; Fet could almost be recounting a scene from Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown" (1835), minus the demonic dramatis personae.

Then I wondered if I was on the wrong track.  Could this be an elaborate metaphorical way of talking about sunset?  Its red light nightly ignites, if you will, a blaze in a forest.  The speaker is "warmed" not by its heat but by its sublimity.  The "small flame" could be dawn itself, which, after a "stingy lazy" beginning, brightens into full "day."

A few Google searches later, I came up with a reference to this poem as an example of Fet's "gypsy theme."  That cinched it.  He is talking about a Romani camp (tabor).  Knowing that, one can infer the missing plot.  Every night, Roma gather together, light a bonfire, play music, sing, dance, and do all the things they stereotypically do in nineteenth-century European literature.  By daylight, however, everyone disperses, leaving only "cold ashes" and a few still-smoldering remnants, such as a "bent stump."  On at least one occasion the speaker journeys into the forest and joins in the revels; not only the fire, then, but also the conviviality cause everything that bothers him or her (chto smuschchalo) to "vanish."

Fet's lyric works metonymically.  That is, he presents not the Roma and their doings but instead things associated with them:  the bonfire, the flickering light that makes trees seem to "sway," the warmth and heat generated by the fire and all the activity.  Actions that happen in the firelight--drinking, singing, bodies pressing together--are displaced or reassigned to the forest that encircles the clearing ("a crowded choir of drunken giants").

Why do so?  Well, for one, Fet doesn't descend into caricature or cliches.  No embarrassing passages à la Anne Radcliffe.  He also heightens the impression of sorcery and strangeness--without breaking with verisimilitude, an impressive achievement.  The whole poem is, as already said, haunted and haunting--it presents a landscape where people should be but aren't, where voices should speak but don't.  He thereby renders both memorable and extraordinary a scene all-too-common in blah romantic-era writing.

The poem also ultimately tells us something important about poetry.  It can't give us the thing itself, the emotion itself, the glorious moment that originally provided a poet with inspiration.  It can only give us what's left behind--words, mere "cold ashes."  Every time we read a lyric, the unrecapturable past "flares up," it might even strike us "to the very bone and heart," but that brief optimistic sense of connection and revelation quickly sputters out "like sparks," leaving "smoke-puffs" and dying embers and impenetrable "mist."  The past stays past. 

Oh to be in a mysterious romantic forest late at night, far from an administrator's duties, paper grading, dirty dishes, and deadlines . . . but I can only hear about such wonders second-hand, and even then they are reflected or refracted or redirected, not fully properly real.  Poetry, Fet suggests, can only indirectly give any access at all to the blestiashchaia nagota, the shining nakedness, of the true object of one's desire.