Максим Привезенцев - Шотландский ветер Лермонтова

Why try? They disappear without a mark.

Harrowing my entrails, bittersweet,

My journey’s end, at which extremity

The soul’s condemned to wander and to meet

Its kindred spirits; and where to be free.

But who has loved me, who my plaintive voice

Has heard and understood – and felt my joys?

I see that love, for me, is like a taint,

Which, from the weaker, could not bear restraint.

Many lovers do not trust the world

And so are happy; others feel desire

Engendered in their blood and outwards swirled

In brain disorder or creative fire.

Love, of all the passions, most divine;

Yet, a thing I never could define!

Seems a love can take but one sure course:

At fever pitch with all my psychic force!

But I could not be weaned from such deceptions;

My unimpassioned heart would throb in vain.

To its beat, amongst the lacerations,

Pipes there still love’s long-revered refrain;

As from dreary ruins springs a birch –

Youthful, spry, beguiling from her perch –

Like a ray of hope, she greens the rones

And titivates the melancholy stones.

And, for her fate, the nameless interloper

Mourns. Poor defenceless devotee!

Under sultry blasts and lack of hope

She wilts and withers, my tenacious tree;

But, from her spot, she will not be effaced

As whirlwinds surge, she’s sturdy at its base;

For, only in a broken heart, desire

Can burn with potent, everlasting fire.

The proud soul does not tire or yield to gloom

But bears its heavy load with resignation;

To its fate it will not yet succumb,

But still persists; in breath, its vindication.

Dueling with the Absolute, it fails;

But, may, in losing, and by such travails,

Inspire a thousand vassals to rebel.

Such a soul’s in heaven – or in hell.

I have always loved the empty places

Where the wind caresses naked hills,

Where the kite, ascending airy spaces,

Essence of the speckled steppe distils.

Here the skittish herd no yoke constrains,

And, frolicking, above the mottled plains,

The raptor rushes straight out of the blue,

Hoving between clouds and into view.

Colossus-like, eternity bestrides

Impermanence to strike the mind of man.

The boundless ocean of the steppe elides

Description, turning blue across its span,

Sounding universal harmony, and this,

For us, is suffering or bliss:

All becomes transparent, but this weight

Will count when we present ourselves to fate.

Who has ever sat among the peaks

In that hour when day holds precious light,

Gazed westwards, where the bright planet leaps

Into the sky, while shades of looming night

Gather in the east, the scarps, ravines, beams

Glinting all around the tops of loftiest extremes,

And where the weird crown of cloud ignites

After the storm, the rays glancing in the heights;

For him, a heavy heart, of former years

Full, and beating fiercely; this mad ideal

Breathes life into a skeleton, the same tears

And almost all the beauty of the real,

Just as the vain man’s hungry gaze retains

The image of his portrait, though not much remains

Of likeness to the eyes’ bright lustre on the board portrayed

And that long effaced by time as vital passions fade.

Is anything on earth more splendid than these pyramids

Of Nature, majestic snowy pinnacles,

Whose flanks may disappear amidst

The mist, but no man’s victories or miracles

Compare to what is seen there, where clouds seem

Like crowds and lightning wreathes the beam

Of light that tops the rocks; nothing imaginary is real

And he who has seen heaven need not fear the corporeal.

But the steppe, when unbounded, stirs unease

With its mile upon mile of waving feathergrass.

No purpose in the meandering north-east breeze

As it kicks up dust willy-nilly in its path;

And, where all around, how cruelly to the eye is lacking

The sight of two or three birch trees, backing

Into the distance under the bluish haze

And fading to black in the emptying of days.

And, when there’s no struggle, life’s a drag.

Having found a way in, the colour of the years

Starts to fade and vital spirits sag –

There’s little left now that the soul cheers.

So, each day I must perform some mighty work

Of which immortals would be proud, not shirk

An acting hero’s duties or comprehend

What it means to rest at the day’s end.

Something’s always churning in my mind,

Fermenting there. Desire and longing

In my breast forever grind –

But what of it? Life’s a half-written song.

I’m just afraid I won’t have time

To bring it to fruition, that no rhyme

Could ever ease this fearful ache –

And I could never live for another person’s sake.

There is a time when the quick mind freezes;

There is a gloaming of the soul, when tomorrow

Is another day and the mental logjam eases.

In the half-light between joy and sorrow,

The soul itself is constrained;

Life is hateful, but death is unexplained.

You’ll find the root of the torment in yourself –

And heaven cannot be blamed for anything else.

This state, to which I’m long resigned,

Cannot be expressed in any tongue,

Neither that of demons, nor divine:

No such cares or worries there among

Those for whom the terms are more refined.

Only in a man are they combined:

This fractious blend of sacred and profane,