Human child: two versions - Wordsworth and Eliot

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He is young in his arms in his arms
For the world of sadness and tears.

M.Yu. Lermontov

This note, like many others, arose from translation practice. I propose to compare the two poetic versions of the initial pore of human life - the ode of William Wordsworth “Echoes of Immortality on the memoirs of early childhood” (1804-1815) and the poem by Ts. Eliota " Animula " (1929), written for a series of Christmas editions "Ariel". And there and there we are talking about the child, about the newborn soul, which, just “from God's hands”, falls into the real world and is in the so to speak. This is not a very ordinary topic for lyrics; I can’t recall the third poem on this topic (except for the Lermontov “Angel”), therefore it seems to me interesting to compare how Wordsworth and Eliot interpret this topic. It seems that the second version was composed with an eye on the first, as a kind of polemic commentary. At least my translation of “animula” was made with an eye on the translation of “echoes of immortality” [1] .

In the Wordsworth, emanating from the myth of precedence, the soul lives in heaven to his incarnation, in the angelic world. The born child is still illuminated by heavenly light, but this light fades away with its growing up.

Our birth is just oblivion;
The soul, which is given to us for the term of the earth,
Before his awakening

Lives in a different monastery;

But not in pitch darkness,
Not in pristine nudity,
And in the halo of fame we go

From the places of the saints, where our house was!

The child is illuminated by the radiance of God;
In the boy growing shadow of prison

Thickens with the current years,

But he knows how to see among darkness
Light of joy, heavenly light;
For the young man, only the reflection remains -

Like a guiding beam

Among the sunset clouds

Or like the light of a star from the bottom of the well ...

Thomas Eliot, his Animula , darling, also from birth falls into the foreign world, dies and languishes. But not because he misses paradise. She does not carry the memory of her precedence (if it). The just emerged from God's hands, she does not remember anything that was with her before. No transcendental, paradise light in it is warm. And she languishes here not because “the sounds of heaven could not replace her boring songs of the earth,” but simply because the world is not too comfortable for the soul, and she herself was ugly and unhappy.

In Wordsworth, even an adult still retains the reflection of God's radiance:

About the happiness that in the ruin of non -residential
The spirit of residential shelter is still stored,
That memory keeps under ash

Live sparks of the past!

Eliot is more and more prosperous - as well as in his version of the “wandering of the Magi”, a friend of a poem for the same series “Ariel”. There is no lumen into which the rays from there could get through.

We also note that there are no topics in the clothes of Wordsworth, there is only a topic of lost light and longing for a different world. Eliot has an end that closes the beginning, and thereby his unfortunate soul gets closer to the soul of the famous Latin poem “ Animula , Vagula , Blandula ” :

Darling, refugee, nonsense,
Druzhok and guest of thendry,
Where will you go now ... [2]

In the last part of the poem, Eliite uses the form of Catholic prayer to the Virgin: “Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death,” but he changes her as follows: “We pray for us now and at the hour of our birth”, as if erasing the difference between the beginning and the end of life, overshadowing the shadow of hopelessness the whole human path.

The ending of the poem is difficult for a translator due to its opacity and mystery. And the point is not so much in the names and fate of the characters that appear here, however, first of all, in the unknown of the addressee, to which the poet is asking for prayer: reader or holy maid Maria? Here, the author deliberately creates a feeling of mysterious ambiguity - what the ancients called de tripode dictum , that is, the said (from the tripod) Pythia, whose speech can be interpreted both this way and that.

T.S. Eliot

Animula

Here it is, right from God's hands, a simple soul,
Is in this noisy and bright, fierce world,
Warm, cold, windy, wet or dry.
Here she is, lost in the legs of a chair or table,
Falls, hurts - and runs in fright
To the mother's enclosing knees and hands.
Here it is, greedy to toys and caresses,
He looks with admiration
At sea, on a Christmas tree in lights,
The festive smell of needles and salts is inhaled by sea,
Studies sunny patterns on the floor,
Dance around a box with silver braid,
Mixes a dream with a reality and the truth with a dream,
Rejoices at the cards and kings,
Entrasses stories about fairies and gossipers.
The burden of growing up burns it,
Burns and torments day by day,
A month after a month torments and burdens more and more -
All these endless “can be” and “impossible”
These "hardly", like a cold shower on the head.
The torment of the existence and temptations of dreams
They are tuned to hide from everyone -
On the windowsill, where, holding the knees,
Tom British she fences off from the world of people.

Here it is, the pitomits of time, childish soul,
Self -loving, timid and unlucky,
Not capable of either giving up decisively, nor retreat;
She is scared of everything, not distinguishing the good from evil,
Scared to put a blot in a notebook,
Afraid of ghosts and his own shadow,
Leaves behind a ruin and a pile of dusty papers,
Only in the death hour gaining the desired peace.

Pray for us, the Virgin Most, for all of us -
For the yuyerres, obsessed with speed and height,
For Budoen, torn by a bomb, shreds,
For the one who managed to slowly put together capital,
And for the one who just lived, as he could,
For Floret, torn to a dog in a cypress grove;
Pray for us, sinners and newborn.

Animula

Issues from the hand of God, The Simple Soul,
To a Flat World of Changing Lights and Noise,
To Light, Dark, Dry, Damp, Chilly or Warm,
Moving Between The Legs of Tables and of Chairs
Rising or Falling,
Grasping at Kisses and Toys,
Advancing Boldly, Sudden to Take Alarm,
Retreating to the Corner of Arm and Knee,
Eager to be Reassured, Taking pleasure
In the Fragrant Brilliance of the Christmas Tree
Pleasure in the Wind, The SunLight and the Sea '
Studies The Sunlit Pattern on the Floor.
And Running Stays Around a Silver Tag:
Confounds The Actual and the Fanciful,
Content with Playing Cards and Kings and Queens,
What the Fairies do and What the Servants Say.
The Heavy Burden of the Growing Soul
Perplexes and Offends More, Day by Day,
Week by Week, Offends and Perplexes More.
With the Imperatives of "So it seems"
And May and May Not, Desire and Control.
The Pain of Living and the Drug of Dreams
Curl Up the Small Soul in the Window Seat
Behind the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Issues from the hand of time, The Simple Soul,
Irresolute and Selfish, Misshapen, Lame
Unable to Fare Forward or Retreat,
Fearing the Warm Reality, The Offered Good,
Denying the Importunity of the Blot,
Shadow of Its Own Shadow, Specter of Its Own Gloom,
Leaving Disordered Papers in A Dusty Room;
Living first in Silence after the viaticum,
Pray for Guiterriez, Avid of Speed ​​and Power
For Boudin, Blown to Pieces,
For this one, Who Made a Great Fortune
And That one Who His Own Way.
Pray for Floret by the Boorhound Slain Between Thes Trees,
Pray for us Now and at the Hour of Oour Birth.

1928

[1] Published in Interpoesia, 2010, No. 3 .

[2] The poem is attributed to the emperor Adrian. Translation by O. Sedakova.