Wi The Haill Voice

Wi The Haill Voice

 

25 poems by Vladimir Mayakovsky

translated into Scots with a glossary

by Edwin Morgan

Carcanet Press 1972

 

After writing about O’Hara I became intrigued by poets who influenced him and started to read a little Mayakovsky. This reading grew into another post, which I’m still working on. Part of the problem with writing about Mayakovsky is finding translations. I have at home a standard, and well-known one, the University of Indiana Press edition edited by Partricia Blake. I am an inveterate browser of the library where I work. I have not yet gone on line to track down what’s out there. But I have scoured the stacks for editions and came across 25 Poems by Vladimir Mayakovsky translated into Scots. I must confess to a weakness for Scot’s English. It probably, well, definitely, derives from Pound’s various lunatic anthologies, especially The ABC of Reading, where he declares that Gavin Douglas’s 16^th century Scots translation of Virgil’s Aeneid  to be superior.

 

(from Booke One of Virgil’s Aeneid, Gavin Douglas translation):

 

And al invane thus quhil Eneas carpit,

A blastrund bub out from the north brayng

Gan our the forschip in the baksaill dyng,

And to the sternys up the flude gan cast.

The aris, hechis and the takillis brast,

The shippis stevin frawart hyr went gan wryth

And turnyt hir braid side to the wallis swyth.

 

 

Others more scholarly than he or I have demurred, but let’s face it, this is how things get started. How many people have gone out and read Carl O. Saur’s  work on agriculture because Olson told them to do so? Or wandered into Skelton’s dark wood at the instigation of Robert Graves? Or read Bishop Berkeley’s treatise on Pine Tar because Blake annotated it? There is an obscure and widely scorned 16^th Century translation into English of four bookes of The Aeneid by the Irish alchemist and wanderer Richard Stanihurst . Thomas Nashe has this to say about it: “heroicall poetrie, infired … with an hexameter furie a patterne whereof I will propounde to your judgements. Then did he make heaven’s vault to rebounde, with rounce robble hobble Of ruffe raffe roaring, with thwick thwack thurlery bouncing.”

 

(from Stanihurst’s Thee First Book of Virgil His Aeneis):

 

This kyrye sad solfing, thee northen bluster aproching

Thee sayls tears tag rag, to the sky thee waves uphoysing.

The oares are cleene splintred, the helm is from ruther unhafted

Theire ships too larboord doo nod, seas monsterus haunt theym.

In typs of billows soom ships wyth danger ar hanging.

Soom sunk too bottoms, sulking the surges asunder:

Thee sands are mounted: thee southwynd merciless eager

Three gallant vessels on rocks gnawne craggye reposed,

[….]Lykewise three vessels the east blast ful mightelye whelmed

In sands quick souping (a sight to be deeply bewayled)

One ship that Lycius dyd shrowd with faythful Orontes

In sight of captayne was swasht wyth a roysterus heapeflud.

Downe the pilot tubleth wyth plash round soommoned headlong.

Thrise the gravel thumping in whirkpoole plunged is hooveld.

ETC.

 

This is a taste of Vladimir’s Ferlie, translated in the Indiana volume as An Extraordinary Adventure Which Befell Vladimir Mayakovsky In A Summer Cottage.

 

Vladimir’s Ferlie

 

An unco thing that involvit the makar at his simmer

ludgin, the Rumyantsev hoosie, Mt Akula, Pushkino,

eichteen mile alang the Yaroslav railway.

 

Twal-dizzen-sun-pooer gloamin-bang,

July ablow the wheels o simmer,

the lift skimmerin

the het day lang—

and on his hoalidays the rhymer.

Pushkino’s braes swalled up to meet

the humphy back o Mount Akula;

the clachan sprachlt

at their feet,

and curlit its dry bark-thackit hool. A

hole

gantit ayont the clachan and

withoot a word o a lie, richt in

yon hole the sun wid jouk, and land

hooly and quate at ilka nichtin.

Syne

on the morn’s morn

up it flees,

bluid-rid again, to drook the warld.

Day eftir day!

Aweel, thae ploys

Body o the sun!

It burst door, winnock, and winnock-frame:

it brasht and breesht

till it wan

its pech, it spaek fae the pit o its wame:

“Thon bleeze has never been retrackit

sae faur as this sin I was makkit!

Ye caad me, poet?

Whaur’s yir trackie?

I like my jeelie guid and tacky.”

My een were greetin’ wi the heat—

it nearly druv me mental but—

I muttert: “Samovar—“

and “Seat—

starn, sit ye doon, sir,

will ye nut?”

What deil had gied my harn a wrinch

to bawl at him unblate?

Strck dumb,

perched on the coarner o the binch,

fearin the worst was yit to come,

I’m—O, but an unco and preclair

licht cam streamin fae the sun

till

bit by bit

I forgot my fear,

fund my tongue, cam oot o my shill:

I talk to’m

aboot this and that;

near deaved, says I, wi my agitprop,

and the sun says:

“Grantit

but ye mun tak

the nicht be sweir

and want to snore

in a lang lie—

my licht’ll soar

wi aa its micht and answer for

anither ringin

day to daw.

To shine ay and shine aawhere, shine

to the end o endmaist days—

that’s aa!

This is the sun’s

slogan—and mine!

1920

 

Here are the first few lines in American English (George Reavey translation):

 

A hundred and forty suns in one sunset blaze,

and summer rolled into July;

it was so hot,

the heat swam in a haze—

and this was in the country.

 

I will have more to say about Mayakovsky, Whitman, Rimbaud and O’Hara in another post, if there are still computers and an internet next week or the week aftir.