Она сидела на полу She was sitting on the floor
И груду писем разбирала, And went through a pile of letters
И, как остывшую золу, And, like cooled ash,
Брала их в руки и бросала. She took them in her hands and threw them.
Брала знакомые листы She took familiar sheets
И чудно так на них глядела, And looked at them so strangely
Как души смотрят с высоты Like souls look from the height
На ими брошенное тело… At the body that they abandoned…
О, сколько жизни было тут, Oh what life was there,
Невозвратимо пережитой! Irreversibly lived!
О, сколько горестных минут, Oh so many bitter moments,
Любви и радости убитой!.. So much love and murdered cheer!..
Стоял я молча в стороне I stood silently afar
И пасть готов был на колени,– And was ready to fall on my knees–
И страшно грустно стало мне, And I was becoming terribly pensive,
Как от присущей милой тени. As if in a presence of a dear shadow.
I love this poem by Fyodor Tyutchev. It was written in 1858. I always imagined a woman in a light, summer, plain, chintz dress with fairly dark hair, maybe dark strawberry blond, sitting with her back to me–a silent viewer. In Tyutchev’s poem the viewer, the I, is male (the gendered endings of the two words, a verb and an adjective, stoyal and gotov, ensure that), but in the English translation following closely the original in meaning (if not in rhyme or in the rhythm), the gender of the observer will be uncertain, as it is uncertain in my translation above.
Whenever I think about this plain but spectacular scene, I do take on the point of the observer in my imagination: I see a woman sitting on the wooden floor warm with summer rays that cross planks, rays falling askance from the window and leaving skewed parallelograms around her. She is in fact sitting in one of these parallelograms: a half of her hair and her right shoulder are lit, and her another shoulder is in the dark.
