Joyce, Nora

A few words

With Nora Barnakl, the Maid Dublin Hotel Finn's (Ay, Finnegans Wake !), James Joyce meets June 16, 1904. It is this day, as you know, that will be chosen by Joyce as the time of the Ulysses, and subsequently will worldwide be celebrated by fans of the novel as Bloomsday . In the same year, Joyce with Nora (Barnacle - “Stuck” (English)) move to Trieste, where they spend for about 10 years. In 1931, 27 years later, they marry. After the death of Joyce (1941), Nora remains in Zurich until his death (1951).

And then, in Trieste (about which Joyce will say how Gogol about Italy: my soul is), they move from an apartment to an apartment, he teaches English at Berlitz’s school, live poorly, sleeps on a narrow bunk, he sings a junction, is friends with a local bohemian, corresponds to an ezra of a pound, wanders around the city with Leopold Blum (his friend Blum (his friend And the student of Ettore Schmits, the future writer Italo Svevo), writes Dublinsev, Portrait of the artist in his youth (in the initial edition - “Stephen Hero”), conceived and begins “Ulysses”. Nora gives birth to the first-born-Georgio, then-in the ward for the poor-a hatch, which, at the age of 27, on the basis of an unrequited feeling for Becket (in those years-the Joyce Secretary) goes crazy and spends the rest of his life in a psychiatric clinic, where he dies in 1982 (Joyce, who loved her, considered it reckoning Ulysses).

In 1909, Joyce was leaving for Dublin for a short while - to open the first synematographer in Ireland and during December exchanged two dozen letters with a hole. These scandalously known (until recent sale of them at an auction for half a million dollars), in yellow everyday life called “pornographic”, letters have about the same attitude to pornography as the Ulysses accused of it once. Well, maybe I exaggerated a little. But in fact.

Here is the disposition. Joyce that year is 27, Nora - 25. Being in forced separation and not wanting, contrary to the circumstances, to lose tactile connection, they agree to maintain physical intimacy - in open, in no way restraining themselves - in letters, in words, delegating the maximum degree of freedom. And in this sense, the text is no longer quite Nora and Joyce, but their provocative imaginary projections, experiencing their addresses for strength, to nakedness. Where are the limits of shame between two loving? What are "borders of decency" for passion? Hahany questions. In this capacity, they do not stand in front of them. Despite the fact that in the yard - 1909, Puritan Ireland (“Fear those who work under innocence or deep grief”, “Ulysses”).

Joyce leads in these letters, although he is trying in every possible way to condemn the initiative Nora. Which seems to be unnecessary: ​​she can’t occupy her emancipation (her answers are not preserved, but in part it can be judged by Joyce’s reaction). These letters are fulfilled by passions, radiation, with large plans, in all the details and “perversions”, smells, travesty, games, irony, obscene vocabulary, tenderness, jealousy, but - first of all, unbearable love. Both are sweet, to stupor, they harass each other with these verbal lovers, spongering, living their intimacy up to orgasm - not virtual.

January 2, Joyce returns to Trieste, in front of the Nora in the letter: there is no greater happiness than days and nights just sit with you in our poor cuisine, smoke, read, watch how you cook, feel that the hearth, children, and speak, speak, talk to you ... God is heavenly!

What can move to the translation of these letters, despite the seemingly clear taboo of private correspondence, and extremely special? The occasion was the case thanks to which I and my companion were in Trieste for several days. They wandered around the places of Joyce, read, drank, ate, loved in the rain and peered into this growing sense of strange consonant, as if not two of us, but four and even slightly more. Then the text “Dreams of Trieste” appeared - about this. As a kind of approach to translations, entrance. And fluctuations at the entrance. And the challenge, temporarily obscuring ethical fluctuations. As Pushkin noted in the fields of the manuscript of Vyazemsky: “Poetry is higher than morality” - although he added: “In any case, a completely different matter.”

Yes, proximity by nature shunes words. Otherwise - dolls on the sheets, and God went out the window. Exceptions are rare. In Russian literature in particular. The letters of Joyce (even a century after with sexual and other revolutions) cause a fragment of more or less chaste and uncomfortable feelings of hardened ones. More precisely, they could call. If you take the Ulysse author to the bracket, it may have just been left by Jim - a sensual male, mighty and weak, passionately and “dirty” taking his beloved. Not Jim there, but James Joyce, a writer who has reached “to the end of English” (if not at all), the author of the Babylonian tower of the letter (by the way, among the 20 languages, Joyce knew Russian). More precisely, both Jim and James.

And the second point that I already spoke about: these letters, in my opinion, are irreducible only to the biographical plane, but are, as it were, between two realities - life and fiction (text), in the field of mutual transformations. In this sense, in the same field, although with a different degree of “play”, are both Molly as the image of a hole and Joyce as Stephen-Jacobo-Bloom (Joyce’s children called him that: Stephen). Which prompted the path that should go in these translations, shifting the territory of the letter from literal, with slightly enhanced imagery and assumption of that slightly ironic travesty and carnivalization, which is more than in the spirit of Joyce himself.

And, finally, another challenge is the language: the translation into Russian hardly translated (both in relation to content and in the sense of abundance of obscene vocabulary, which, being translated literally, did not promise anything fruitful in artistic plan).

I chose a shaky trajectory - to draw a text between three “gravitational fields”: letters, Joyce prose and my own perception. Trying to hold on the middle voltage line between them.

Translation is the dynamics of duality and gap, a pure provocation for a new work, when the text gives a fork, throwing out subsequent forms, ”says Alexei Parshchikov, considering a literal approach in this case a protocol nightmare in his article. And further - about cases of indeliosity similar to ours: such “impossibility” is the goal of meditation. And he calls them Carbon Translation , explaining: Carbon is a chemical term, carbon, representing inter-sample darkness, which is little philologist about, but in this natural, according to the association, the figurative stream, not stopped by the word, not long-term speech, the naked stream of the artist, is active in the Mandelstam vulture.

Formally - to recording this dynamics of duality and gap - I chose a transformation into an irregular verse, slightly clarified tonality.

As for the explanation for ethics - yes, the question remains. This is not the first time a creative gesture is not divided without a trace of an ethical background.

“The feeling of beauty compensates us from the ways of the righteous” - Joyce.

“He loved Lviv very much. He will be pleased to hear their growl ” - Nora (about Joyce's grave).

In the same place, in Zurich, near the zoo, she was also rested. Like a flower curly on the fence.

The translation was made according to the publication : “Selected letters of James Joyce”, Faber & Faber, London, 1975.

Letters

2.12.1909. Dublin

Forgive me for yesterday.
I wrote him, looking at your letter,
In words: to their orgy - merciless -
between two.
Native,
My wild flower
Walking on the fence.
Yes, my heavenly, drinking rain, flower!
But the palms followed, her light - to you
The beast of lust rises
to every span of yours.
all your secluded corners, drooping,
Snuffing to shame and secret.
Yes, my love prays
For this ghost of imperishable beauty
in the meek eyes of your and, praying,
falls on your stomach
and covers like a boar, reveling
this sweetly caustic wave
aroma, from the bowels of your outgoing
Enjoys your shame
Between the hustling of clothes
and some kind of almost children's rates,
and moves off the wheels
In your tangled hair strands
On a burning cheek,
And he gets your babble, with the whole body
repeating it.
Or, lying with a walet, one on the other,
Drink each other in a clog between the legs,
and suck the red to your fingered bosom,
And give yourself to your lips and fingers -
There and there, taking away, giving, penetrating ...
I taught you to remember
In my voice, singing your soul,
Only ardor and sadness, this is the sacrament of life,
for which it is not shame and not dirt even that
What lips taught yours, hands, tongue, even that,
what - you remember how you lay down under you
and looked, and you did it, and after
Even with a gaze with me I did not dare ... mine!
You are mine, you are love, these lines are my -
Only eclipse, hot sperm. And quiet
And it lights in the eyes and in the area coming into itself,
lights in words and in love - real and spicy,
To you. My flesh is also insatiable, blinded
From the last sharp “yes!”, He will still start,
Swaying, already in the light, in the void. In the void?
This in the heart is an open leak floods already
quiet tenderness everything that you are, what I am,
My hole, my clear -eyed schoolgirl,
shkodnitsa, whore, my wild, beloved, be the same
mine - forever as you want, mine
rain, blue, on the heavenly fence
Running, flowering my pitch!

12.12.1909. Dublin

You turn me in the beast. You, you,
Shamelessly entailing. This is your hand
the first (where was it? - in the Ringsend, right? -
The ring rolled out) touched - there - me.
This is your penetrated, slightly pulling off the shirt,
long, light, tender unbearable,
Yes, like a flower by hedge, like a dump
and took it slowly, exhausting and raising it,
Looking into my eyes, meek and holy,
When I spent through your fingers,
Until I went out all. These are your lips
The first to bite the apple -
The word was uttered - what at the beginning ...
Where was it? Is a pool, floor? Hollow
North, bed, Slavs, rumps-love.
Where is it? - Remember, you were lying under me,
as before spring, under the snow, in quiet warmth,
And suddenly - you are above me, on me, and a veil
your thin shirt, torn, falls,
falls. Come on, come on ... Come on! - Whispering
Throwing away and settling, as if my horn is small,
Mal for you, awakened and shameless:
Well, Fuck up, Love ! Fuck up, love ! Darling...
And you will jump, jump, a lier, a pool ...
Let me, Nora, ask ... I am so tormented,
After all, like a palm, he was in renounced you, opened,
answer me honestly - for the truth is the truth -
That is your causal, sorry, burialist,
that centica, Vincent Kosgrave, he only touched
You ... outside? And if not, how far it
Going in? Hand - under the skirts? And the fingers (two?)
Getting into the mink? Nora! He touched the nose
He found him? And the back also touched you?
He finished, Nora? Did you help? Hand, lips?
Did he ask you? Where, tell me, he poured out?
On the chest, in the face? From the hip (how long?)
Did you wipe it? And the smell, Nora? And the feeling? OK.
Another question (yes, exhaust, there is still strength). I know,
That I was the first, that you are mine, my creation.
But did you know that trembling - even a trembling -
Until the days of the Creation? Yes? But with whom? That guy
That Misha Bodkin, who was loved to you, no?
Tell me, Nora, honor for honor, for the darkness -
Damn - he? And your fingers are quiet, like mice
In a loophole, slightly through in his pants, they made their way
No? And did not slip down, and there, in the scrotum
His shaggy, did not freeze, did not whisper, right?
Your mouse, Nora ... darkness, this passion is such,
what even if you (oh no! - Tell me, tell me!)
lips - these - their own, from which do not tear me away,
I would say that the whole village of redheads in the county of Galway
I was spinning ... I would die for you. And survived -
I want you so much!

12.12.1909. Dublin

Let me, dear, ask you
so that you are divided into those pantalons
With bows and frills. No, not school
with their wretched ribbons, and those so that I drown
In them with a muddy gaze, like your body
On the other side, they are buried. In lace and frills,
with a raspberry bow and a foul of a light perfume,
with a thrill impossible for a look between the legs,
so that your flesh is in this ragless bazaar,
Sharing it, I harassed me when you, swinging away,
you conjure an invisible hand there, and I'm on the lips
I read your hand, closer to you, and break it,
Turning away, an unearthly oster heap from you,
And, having lifted your legs, I dig into the darkness of a kiss,
In this pale darkness of hemispheres, exposed and sweet,
And I wand down from two aromas, not counting your Pantalon.

You have not taken aback, dear, from these confessions?
Maybe you think this love is an angel with a mud?
This is true. In a sense, at other moments. Sometimes
I imagine you the most vulgar wrist, so
What, until I see, I can’t say. My Ulysses is on the alert
He reads your coveted wet letters, captive
He reads your pantalons, excited from each sign,
From the spot, smell, sound, rises and lays down from the sound
by surprise and uterine, shameful, caustic aroma,
From the word that flew off your lips, shkodny, dissolved.
I am ready at such moments, as it seems to me, my mouth -
There is nowhere below, but there is also nowhere higher for you to exhaust me,
I used all the juices, so that I would exhilarate you in that hollow
Between the marvelous dairy hills and from there poured into the face -
On hot cheeks, eyes ... and then, under the sacrum,
Putting your fabulous cushion and scolding with you,
die. For Tonight, Just for Tonight ...

I hope you got my telegram
And I understood everything. Goodbye, my dear.
God is righteous, how can you love
Is this a monster, Nora? Goodbye. With impatience
I'm waiting for an answer, dear. Your Jim.

12/18/1909. Dublin

I will and my delight, an impossible girl,
I did this - as you said in a letter:
I was in you twice as soon as I read it.
I am joyful for me to surrender in a way
Angelicly scatter, you love no less,
What is in love? Oh, still! I remember that night
It was the darkest that I could give you
And that you have doubly returned me. Yes, I remember
The palms are on your buttocks high,
I remember this sound - a gap them with my stomach
And the face in this twist - there, on the pillow, yours,
with a hot mouth, and a puntes cheek, and crazy
In the pupil, and in my eyes - the world is shaking.
And when I entered you, I remember your language
Each time broke through the lips, and what
I came in rude and deeper, the stronger and louder
You stuck them towards me - marvelous sounds,
From there, from your bowels, in the uterine Narechye,
Everything burst in you, broadcast and sang plaintively,
I got this paradise with my nose, this overlap stench,
You pouring you like horsetail, like a prana plant.
But how many of them were there, dear, friend
incense, dirty-angel, these are
heavenly, whom I expelled in you like spirits -
And windy dunes, and heavy matron, and Malyusek
funny, running from the storm in you, from the stream
escaping. How perfectly the occupation of love
With such a symphonic woman, Nora,
So that every touch responds so!
It seems to me that I would recognize you on the nyuh
In Duzymyannaya, of thousands of unrestrained women.
Your sound is not moist, like oily wives,
He is dry, and sudden, and dare, and no more dirty than that
which will let out for his pleasure glorious and impudent
Simple girl in the night. Hope,
My dear, someday you will do it right
In the face to me - and you will cover this wave of grace!
O cute fart, schoolgirl, skoda, my bastard, my bastard,
You write when I get back, you will drink me all,
And I imagine this night: I am in a dream, I'm dressed,
you steal your lips and fingers, slow quiet fire
In your sleepy eyes, one after another unbuttoned,
Closed, took and raised, and there he, in the cave,
Like a dervish, dancing until it clogs in ecstasy,
Slim and lie down. And pull it out, and palm
Tired muddy lips. Someday moonlit at night
I will surprise you too: I will carefully take your skirts,
I will spread a slightly wet doors with an entailing gap
under a dark bush, and a loud for a bush, and I will begin with a tongue
I, dear, lazily, will start slowly,
And you will sigh quietly, and I will continue you with your tongue,
Everything is faster, like a dog, I will lap you, and you, and you
wriggling, moisten, as if in a dream, and drop
These passionate sounds, whose smell, like an angel,
will be soaked for a long time ... well, good night,
My love, the bird of the bunch and the fuck.
And write me more about it, also cleaner.
Your Jim.

12/9/1909. Dublin

Here you have money on pants are the lowest, my bird,
Just choose more vide - my eyes
and then do not forget to sniff them with some rubbish
heavenly, go into them, get a little, bleach
Island, so that - like a little God or inhalation - is not read
He became. You seem to be hungry (yes, buy garters and stockings)
Impatience to find out what I think about your letter,
Saying that it will be worse than mine? What is my friend?
Well, yes, in two places you probably surpassed me:
with the tongue (but not where you exhaust me) and in a word -
Those, written large above a fat wavy feature.
Oh, how exciting is - from your chaste lips
It is heard, bastard! Write me a long one -
Like your diluted legs, a letter, so that his heels
On my sacrum, they converged. (You remember
Our blue narrow bunk, in which we slept with a walet,
Looking at each other's feet, a crossroads to crash?)
Do not write anything except these emphasized words -
There is nothing more beautiful and cleaner in the world than this
First -born shameless dirt: he, you see how a gopher,
He cares in a prayer before the sun ascending. Ask
He has: what is dirt? May her names be linked, he will answer.
And, I confess to you, I agree with him, Nora, and more
I’ll say: these minks in you are doubly nicer for me
What good they carry the news of irrigation and fertilizers!
God, Nora, I would have looked life in them, exhausting
From the imminent girls of your buttocks, from invisible ones,
but obvious to the smell and hearing, the yoke pricks of sound, cutting
aroma. They came to me a complete list of their wavy
Under each line. I will imagine how diligently
you echo with your lips on paper, like your body
After his lips, he picks himself up as a keepsake. I am eternity
I would only spend my eyes in you when my Mickey
так пылко в тебя не стремился под хвост твой. I'm happy
моя похотливая пташка, певунья моя!

Спи сладко, малютка, бай-бай, ненасытная сучка.
Пойду-ка прилягу и я — чуть подергаюсь, кончусь.
Пиши мне. Но крупно и мутно. Как солнце в дождя
панталонах. Пиши и целуй — чем грязнее, тем слаще —
веселые эти словечки. Но прежде чем слать их,
просунь, дорогая, под платье, овей их горячим и душным,
а хочешь — так сделай и больше. Потом отправляй,
любовь моя, пташка с коричневой попкой. Их ждет —
как весну соловей — не дождется
твой Джим.

15.12.1909. Dublin

Нет письма! Моя девочка-солнце в обиде на грязь.
Горе мне, пачкуну! Это всё за слова о твоих панталонах?
What nonsense! Они осиянны, чисты, незапятнанны, Нора,
как сердце твое! Я бы, милая, пал на колени в их храме
и благословенья молил, когда бы допущен был. Святы
They. Ну — прости богохульство — запачканы чуть. You know,
самую малость. И где — в голове моей, Нора, лишь в ней!
Ну прости мне ее, эту голову, так нестерпимо отрадно
ей там мазать тебя и слова подбирать погрязней
в этом поле пречистом! Ну хочешь, я стану твоим
бледным мальчиком-с-пальчик, и ты — с накладными
ногами и грудью восьмого размера — уложишь меня
на колени свои и мочеными розгами всласть отхлестаешь?
О Нора, какая мура, что я обмираю тебя доконать.
Хватает с меня одного лишь звучанья запретного слова,
одной только мысли, что эта красавица, скромница, руки
заводит за спину и медленно платье приподнимает,
нагнувшись, и этот мужлан, который так нравится ей,
уже со своим — с позволенья сказать — телеграфным
столбом проникает в нее. Ну ладно, со столбиком
высоковольтным. Как свежи, как девственно чутки снега!
Как местность дрожит в наготе и в размыве теряет
свои очертанья, вперед забегая и возвращаясь, вперед
и назад, туда и обратно, вперед и…
Я кончил. В штаны, дорогая. Я крайне измотан. I need
идти на почтамт. Я их должен сегодня отправить —
три важных письма. Но не в силах. Прощай, Нора mia !

16.12.1909. Dublin

Ну наконец ты мне пишешь, моя дорогая. How nice! -
бессвязней, чем тело твое после бурных затей.
Ты славно, видать, над собой потрудилась, малышка, —
настолько, что лыка не вяжут ни ноги, ни строки.
А что до меня, то я так измочален собою, что даже
боюсь на него и взглянуть — не уверен, что жив он,
я так его вымотал, что, полагаю, ему уж не встать.
И даже тебе, будь ты рядом, ухлопать пришлось бы
на этого лазаря битый часок твоих ангельских ласок.
Родная, когда я вернусь, пощади — не с порога
вали меня в счастье, давай хоть до ночи отсрочим,
поморим любовь — дай прийти мне в себя. И в тебя. But
прошу: осторожно, бери меня нежно — настолько
я мягок и мал, что, помимо тебя, ни одна бы, пожалуй,
не стала бы тратить усилий на этот гештальт безнадеги.
Люби меня так, как во сне, как себя, как ты хочешь, —
одетой люби в этой шляпке с вуалью и чуть покрасневшим
лицом от мороза, в сапожках, забрызганных грязью, люби,
на стуле меня оседлав в ездовых панталонах с хлыстом,
и в той (я надеюсь, она сохранилась) прозрачной сорочке
на голом полу, или голой на голом, с малиновым робким
цветочком в укромной ложбинке округлых твоих ягодиц,
люби меня вдоль, как мужчина, утюжа меж бедер, люби
над собой, на столе, под столом, уходя под меня с головой,
как под воду, люби меня сбоку с тем тыльным окошком
в твоих панталонах бесстыдно открытым, люби в темноте
на пыльных чердачных ступенях и в погребе дохлом.
И знаешь, люби меня как, дорогая? Как нянька — солдата:
заботливо, чутко и с толком, с целебной ладонью на сладкой
разбуженной ране, и дивные жгучие сказки на ухо шепча
про тайны девичьи, про ведьмины вишни внизу живота,
склоняясь все ниже, губами проникнув под полог рубахи
намокшей, играя с изнывшими, полными жизни, двумя
слепыми шарами в волшебном мешочке, и перебирая
рукою, как струны, округу, и все лепеча, лепеча, лепеча —
всем телом: и голосом жарким, и праной пахучей и дальней,
и дольнею этой несдержанной божьей росой… О милая,
баста, закончим на этом! Готовься к приезду. I see
охристый линолеум, ночь занавешена красною шторой,
два кресла — простых и удобных: вот кухня, ковчег наш.
Я знаю, ты справишься с этим. Безвылазно буду сидеть,
развалившись, читать и курить, наблюдая, как ты кашеваришь…
О бог мой небесный, как счастлив я буду! Огонь в очаге,
и чашечка кофе, и дети, и ты: говорить, говорить, говорить
с тобой, странноглазая жизнь и любовь моя, Нора, мой дикий,
напоенный влагой цветок, по незримой ограде бегущий.

Предисловие и перевод Сергея Соловьева