Julian Henry Lowenfeld, translator and playright, has a lifelong love for Alexander Pushkin, Russia's all-time favorite poet. His landmark translation of poems by Pushkin, entitled, My Talisman, drew the attention of Pushkin admirers in both Russia and America. At the unveiling of a new monument to Alexander Pushkin in Howell, New Jersey, Julian was asked to give a speech.
Фонтан любви, фонтан живой! Fountain of love, Fountain alive!
Принеся в дар тебе две розы As gift to you I’ve brought two roses.
Above
all else in life we must be grateful. Pushkin once
wrote to Zhukovsky: call me crazy, call me eccentric,
but just don’t ever call me ungrateful.”
We essentially lose what we have when we forget to be
grateful for it. I therefore wish to thank Alexander
Bondarev and the Russian Cultural Center
“Rodina” for working so tirelessly to
have this monument erected. I also wish to take this
opportunity to publicly thank my marvelous Russian
teacher Nadyezhda Semyonovna Braginskaya, whose
birthday today is. God is my witness how much she did
for me, and with what love, affection, and patience,
she gave of herself in teaching this wayward and
unruly “Mowgli” as she sometimes used to
call me, teaching me to love the Russian culture with
all my heart.
Nadyezhda Semyonovna was unable to come today, but requested that I pass along to you not just that “Pushkin is our all”, and the shining lodestar of Russian literature, but he was and still remains the Russian people’s poet, though he was an aristocrat of very ancient lineage. He combined within himself the honor, brilliance, and dignity of the Russian nobility with that unfathomable “universal sympathy of the Russian soul”. His harmony is ever full of our faith’s core values: warmth and compassion, for which we must ever strive with dedicated astonishment.
These days, unfortunately, we not all of us strive towards that warmth. When “producers” have supplanted artists, and “ratings” have replaced aesthetics, when on the boob tube the wine of poetry is ever transmuted into the intellectual Coca-Cola of cheap thrills, as thoughts of money and money only cheapen the very meaning of art, naturally more and more you hear the doubts: “Does Pushkin really matter anymore?”
Нас мало избранных, счастливцев праздных, So we’re but few, we chosen, happy idlers,
Пренебрегающих презренной
ползой, Who
of mere “use” neglectful and
disdainful
Единого прекрасного
жрецов,
Are high priests of the One, the Beautiful.
I will not stoop to justifying the relevance and “usefulness” of beauty. Pythagorean high priests of the One, the Beautiful used to heal the sick not just with herbs, but with verse, believing in the curative power of holy poetry. Pushkin was the very greatest of such healers. Pushkin remains the Gospel in verse. He is our enduring spiritual antidote against the poisons of vulgarity and cynicism and depression that surround us everywhere. Here is how Pushkin defined himself:
Небесного земли
свидетель,
Of heaven’s realm on Earth a witness
Воспламененною
душой,
With all within my soul on fire
Я пел на троне
добродетель
I sang before the throne of goodness
С ее приветною
красой.
That warmth and beauty did inspire.
Любовь и тайная
свобода
And love and secret inner freedom
Внушали сердцу гимн
простой
Taught my heart hymns
and honest tales.
И неподкупный голос
мой
My voice, which never was for sale,
Был эхо русского
народа.
Expressed the Russian people’s yearning.
Pushkin is the sunshine of Russian poetry and the poet of the Russian soul, because his voice was a vessel of love:
Печаль моя светла;
My melancholy’s light;
Печаль моя полна тобою,
My
melancholy’s full entirely
Тобой, одной тобой... Унынья моего
Of
you and just of you... This gloominess of
mine
Ничто не мучит, не тревожит,
Nothing’s tormenting, nothing’s
moving.
И сердце вновь горит и любит - оттого,
My
heart again burns up with loving, because -
why?
Что не любить оно не
может.
It simply cannot not be
loving.
“There is no Truth, where there’s no love,” Pushkin said. Thus, there is no love, where there is no Freedom. This is why:
Мы ждем с томленьем
упованья
We wait each minute, longing, longing,
Минуты вольности
святой,
For Freedom's sacred fleeting bliss
Как ждет любовник
молодой
The way young lovers fret while counting
Минуты верного
свиданья.
The minutes to a secret tryst.
These lines sound as though they were written yesterday. But today we have gathered by a monument, at whose pedestal, God grant, both in searing heat and in bitter cold there will always be fresh flowers. This monument, like the more famous monument on Tverskaya Street in Moscow, symbolizes the unbreakable dedication of the Russian people to their great national bard. Yet the main monument to the poet must not be out on the street, but must remain here within our hearts.
Pushkin’s poem “The Monument” is in its way his improvisation on a theme by Horace in his great XXXth ode, “Exegi Monumentum.” Horace wrote:
Non omnis moriar; multaque pars
mei Not
all of me will die; much of me shall
Vitabit Libitinam ; usque ego
postera Escape
the Temple of the Dead, through and through
Crescam laude recens, dum
Capitolium
Growing in fresh praise, as long as the Pontiff
shall
Scandet cum tacita virgine
pontifex.
Ascend the Capitol with silent Vestal in tow.
Pushkin replied
Нет, весь я не умру - душа в заветной
лире
No, I won’t fully die. My soul in sacred lyre
Мой прах переживет и тленья убежит
-
Will yet survive my dust, and, despite with’ring,
thrive.
И славен буду я, доколь в подлунном
мире
I’ll glorious be, as long’s in moonlit world
entire,
Жив будет хоть один
пиит.
A single poet’s still alive.
Pushkin’s glory does not depend on the tinsel of temporal political power, but Poetry itself, like a consoling angel, guards it. And “while our hearts there still lives honor” within that most important monument to the poet which we keep within our soul, may there ever be two roses: Love, and secret inner Freedom.