#NPM2020 Day 8: Colours, by Yevgeny Yevtushenko
Colours, originally published in Russian, is the first poem wherein I can remember being really struck by the impact a translation has on a work. Across the internet, you can find a couple different versions; for example, compare the following two lines in their respective translations:
- “the only thing I understood at first / was how meager were all my possessions”; vs
- “at first I understood / only the poverty of what I have”.
Perhaps this is obvious to folks who speak more than one language. I’ve mentioned before in this series that I only speak English, and so I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I was very nearly an adult before understanding the impact of a particular translation on language—neatly underscoring that reading, poetry and literature in general, is one of the quickest ways I know to understand how very narrow any one world-view necessarily is.
It leads to an interesting question: while I certainly don’t believe we should restrict our readings to those originally written in languages we can speak, what else, beyond personal taste, can we fall back on to determine the best translation of a work we can’t read in its original form? Even when considering works with a ton of discourse around the quality of their translations, the answer usually comes down to “it depends”, no matter how dearly individuals hold their own opinions (to respond directly to that link, I can remember Robert Fagles’ translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey being presented to me in 2006 as the definitive best, but time, experience, and — most importantly — those with much more expert opinions than mine have since shown me that this is all but definitive).
Precisely because I am not an expert, I get to present this to you as “an interesting question” and then throw my hands up and declare that the answer to this question is WHO COULD KNOW and then present you with my own favorite translation, based on none other than… personal taste.
Colours, by Yegveny Yevtushenko
When your face
appeared over my crumpled life
at first I understood
only the poverty of what I have.
Then its particular light
on woods, on rivers, on the sea,
became my beginning in the coloured world
in which I had not yet had my beginning.
I am so frightened, I am so frightened,
of the unexpected sunrise finishing,
of revelations
and tears and the excitement finishing.
I don’t fight it, my love is this fear,
I nourish it who can nourish nothing,
love’s slipshod watchman.
Fear hems me in.
I am conscious that these minutes are short
and that the colours in my eyes will vanish
when your face sets.
From Selected Poems by Yevgeny Yevtushenko, published by The Penguin Group, Inc. © 1962.
Because this poem sparked so many thoughts about translations, and because I am trying to keep the introductory “essays” for each poem I share this month to a couple paragraphs, one thing we haven’t touched on at all is the amount of political and historical significance of a Soviet writer ballooning in popularity globally in the wake of the Khrushchev Thaw. There’s a lot to unpack there, and many folks with a better historical foundation than I have have covered it already, so today the title’s outbound link is to an accessible volume (many bookstores and libraries will carry it, in addition to the $8.99 e-book price linked above) with a detailed introduction that touches on this.
(This is also the volume that I checked out of a library in college and which introduced me to this poem. Searching for it later on the internet after I’d returned the book already is what led me to my realization of the wild importance of translations — an idea which my high school English teacher had attempted to impress upon me while we covered Homer, but which really really did not take at the time. Our brains take in what they’re ready for when they’re ready for it.)
