Photograph of Fyodor Tyutchev by Andrei Denier (1864) / Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
I don’t often translate nineteenth-century Russian poetry, but since the Tyutchev poem that follows is one of two key intertexts for Timur Kibirov’s “Historical Cento” («Исторический центон»), from a 2009 book I’ve been translating, I decided I needed to make my own English version of it. That way, I could lift the pertinent pieces from Tyutchev for my Kibirov translation.
‘Cento’, by the way, is a term that was new to me but which I learned that Dr. Johnson defined as a “composition formed by joining scraps from other authors.” So says the OED, which also gives the more general definition for ‘cento’ of a “piece of patchwork; a patched garment.” Kibirov’s other patches, besides the lines from Tyutchev, come from Blok’s infamous revolutionary romp “The Twelve.” Quite a pairing!
Anyway, if you’re going to make patches, you’ve got to have cloth to cut from. Here’s one of mine:
With your impoverished settlements
by
Fyodor Tyutchev
With
your impoverished settlements,
With
your most meager natural gifts,
My
native realm of sufferance,
You are
the realm where Russia lives!
You
can’t be grasped or noticed by
The
proud outsider’s fleeting gaze:
It
misses hidden lights that shine
Within
your humble naked scapes.
All over
you, my native land,
Bearing
the burden of His cross
In
peasant’s rags, our holy King
Meandered,
blessing all He saw.
August 13, 1855
Translated from the Russian by Jamie Olson
In case you’re curious, here are the first two stanzas of my translation of Kibirov’s cento, which might give you a sense of where he’s going with his ostensibly post-Christian pastiche:
All over
you, my native land,
blessing
each place, dressed in white,
a crown
of roses on his head,
walked,
I’m sad to say, not Christ.
No.
Christ, of course, also wandered
through
this Russian hell of ours,
but—never
doubting for a second—
we said,
“He doesn’t meet the standard!
He’s much too crucified for us!”
So who, you might ask, is not too crucified for Russia? I’ll give you a hint: he doesn’t wear white, but waves a red flag.
Yep, you guessed it.
