2 Vorona

The Twa Corbies

As I was walking all alane
I heard twa corbies making a mane:
The tane unto the tither did say,
"Whar sall we gang and dine the day?"

"- In behint yon auld fail dyke
I wot there lies a new-slain knight;
And naebody kens that he lies there
But his hawk, his hound, and his lady fair.

"His hound is to the hunting gane,
His hawk to fetch the wild-fowl hame,
His lady's ta'en anither mate,
So we may mak our dinner sweet.

"Ye'll sit on his white hause-bane,
And I'll pike out his bonny blue e'en:
Wi'ae lock o' his gowden hair
We'll theek our nest when it grows bare.

"Mony a one for him maks mane,
But nane sall ken whar he is gane:
O'er his white banes, when they are bare,
The wind sall blaw for evermair."

Ворон к ворону летит,
Ворон ворону кричит:
Ворон! где б нам отобедать?
Как бы нам о том проведать?

Ворон ворону в ответ:
Знаю, будет нам обед;
В чистом поле под ракитой
Богатырь лежит убитый.

Кем убит и отчего,
Знает сокол лишь его,
Да кобылка вороная,
Да хозяйка молодая.

Сокол в рощу улетел,
На кобылку недруг сел,
А хозяйка ждет милого
Не убитого, живого.

see Russian text as image

Translated by Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837)

Briefly speaking Alexander Pushkin is the first and the best of Russian poets - so what he made with the translated text I consider as the right way of translating.

Let's see what is the difference between original text and translated one.

1) From 5 stanzas only 3 the first are transtlated and made 4 stanzas in Russian. Pushkin ignores 2 last ones in English where the birds have dinner. He does not care about birds-and-corpse relationships. He cares about knight-and-friends/lover relationships during the life and after death.

2) Pushkin cuts the first and the last syllable in the original line. The line becames shorter and more energetic. With shorter line 3 original stanzas became 4 ones in translation.

3) The hound disappeared, the horse appeared. By the way, where is the horse in the English text? For me, for Pushkin, for Russian reader the knight without horse is a nonsense. But to add new element means to overload the text. So Pushkin changes hound to horse.

I love the translation and I follow the translator as far as I can

Yakov Feldman