Now that it’s November, the Western Hemisphere is witnessing the apparent death of nature — and in the Catholic Church, we are also observing a month of prayer for the dead. So it seemed apt to choose, as my next prose poem translation, Turgenev’s “Старик” (“The Old Man”), a reflection on aging and eventual death.
This prose poem is far less intense than “The Crone” or “The End of the World,” and it is more tender than “The Monk.” Since Turgenev himself was aging and infirm at the time he wrote this — and would die within five years — I wondered as I translated if he was writing to himself.
Russian original of “Старик”:
Настали темные, тяжелые дни…
Свои болезни, недуги людей милых, холод и мрак старости… Всё, что ты любил, чему отдавался безвозвратно, — никнет и разрушается. Под гору пошла дорога.
Что же делать? Скорбеть? Горевать? Ни себе, ни другим ты этим не поможешь.
На засыхающем, покоробленном дереве лист мельче и реже — но зелень его та же.
Сожмись и ты, уйди в себя, в свои воспоминания, — и там, глубоко-глубоко, на самом дне сосредоточенной души, твоя прежняя, тебе одному доступная жизнь блеснет перед тобою своей пахучей, всё еще свежей зеленью и лаской и силой весны!
Но будь осторожен… не гляди вперед, бедный старик!
My English translation of “The Old Man”:
Dark, heavy days have come…
Your own illnesses, the ailments of loved ones, the cold and murk of old age… Everything that you loved, that you gave yourself to irrevocably, wilts and molders away. The road has gone under the mountain.
What can you do? Mourn? Grieve? You’ll help neither yourself nor others with that.
On the withering, warped tree, the leaf is smaller and sparser — but it has just the same green.
Curl up, now, and withdraw into yourself, into your memories — and there, deep, deep within, at the very bottom of your recollected soul, your former life — available only to you — shines before you with its fragrant, ever fresh greenery and the affection and strength of spring!
But be careful… don’t look ahead, poor old man!
