Khodasevich’s “Ballada” or “Orpheus”: A Study of Figurative Language, Phonosemantics,
Orpheism, and Prophetic Masochism
Vladislav Khodasevich did not belong to any formal poetic movement, although he started out as a symbolist. He was born in 1886 and left Russia for Europe in 1921. He was a poet, journalist, translator, writer of memoirs, and literary critic. In 1939, Vladimir Nabokov wrote in Khodasevich’s necrology that he is "the greatest Russian poet of our time" and "shall remain the pride of Russian poetry as long as its last memory lives." Of "Ballada", Nabokov said that in it Khodasevich attained "the limits of poetic skill." (Nabokov “On Hodasevich" [sic] 223) Briusov, the father of Russian symbolism, wrote, “Khodasevich has … the keenness of the feeling experience.” (Internet Resource: Kolker “Aidesskaya Prokhlada”)
This study examines figurative language in Khodasevich’s poem “Ballada” or “Orpheus”, and how this language creates a phonosemantic picture. It also discusses the myth of Orpheus, and introduces the hypothetical concept of Prophetic Masochism, which is peculiar to Russian culture. Inductive reasoning will be my method of discourse, allowing me to focus on some specifics and to culminate in a general conclusion. The Appendix section of this paper provides the original poem, “Ballada” in Russian, written by Vladislav Khodasevich in 1921 and the literal translation by Professor David Bethea (with my additions). Two verse translations of the significantly re-titled poem, “Orpheus”, a translation of “Ballada” by Vladimir Nabokov (The famous writer of Lolita) and my translation of the poem, “Orpheus” as well, will be used for comparison and contrast to the literal translation. In “Ballada” or “Orpheus”, the speaker undergoes a metamorphosis from a human being into the Greek mythological hero, Orpheus.
According to W.C.Guthrie and other sources, Orpheus was the son of either Apollo or Oiagros (a Thracian river god) and Calliope, a Muse. (Guthrie 27). Orpheus is described as a physical weakling, a man of gentle ways who possessed a gift of prophesies. Vladislav Khodasevich likewise was not a man of good physical health, and was recovering from an illness at the time of writing the poem. Orpheus was also endowed with the magic power of verse and song; his skill with the lyre was powerful enough to move Argo (Argonauts’ ship) out of its moorings. His prayers to Dioskuroi, the god of mariners, saved the Argonauts from destruction during a storm.
When Orpheus’ wife Eurydice suffers a tragic death, his grief is so deep that he descends into Hades to the realm of Pluto, the god of the underworld, to rescue her. Orpheus’ playing and singing is of such quality that Pluto grants his wish, but Eurydice is not wholly returned to him. Pluto places a taboo on Orpheus that he must not turn around to look at Eurydice until they both are back on the Earth’s surface. In his excitement upon reaching the light, Orpheus turns around and calls out to his wife, breaking the taboo. Eurydice is returned to Hades, and when he tries to re-enter Hades again, Orpheus finds his way “barred by Charon” (Guthrie 31) (Charon is the ferryman who carries dead souls to Hades across the river Styx.) During his period of mourning afterwards, Orpheus ministers to animals, plants, and rocks, which anthropomorphically are deeply “moved” by his verse and music. Shakespeare describes this anthropomorphism in “Orpheus with his lute made trees // And the mountain tops that freeze// Bow themselves when he did sing… Every thing that heard him play, // Even the billows of the sea, // Hung their heads and then lay by.” (Quiller-Couch: William Shakespeare 143). Orpheus also shuns the company of the women of Thrace, possibly even “seducing” their men. He continues to worship the Sun-god Apollo, thus angering Dionysus, who sends the savage women converts, Maenads, after Orpheus. They tear the poet and singer limb from limb, severing his head. Orpheus thus becomes one of the first “tortured poets” (not to be confused with “poetes maudis”- the French Symbolists), first in the metaphorical sense, because he acquires the ability to create such deep and beautiful poetry after the death of his beloved, Eurydice. It could be argued, that it is the sacrifice of Eurydice, his inability to bring her back, that serves as a catalyst for his proselytizing a philosophical teaching to the male Thracians and moving his poetry and music to the realm closest to the gods, thus angering Dionysus. Orpheus is also a “tortured poet” in the physical sense - at the hands of the Maenads. His severed head and lyre float in the river Hebros towards the island of Lesbos, the lyre “sings” and the head murmurs and chants. On Lesbos, the severed head continues to prophesy and convey oracles. The God Apollo eventually appears and tells the head to “Cease from the things that are mine, for I have borne enough with thy singing” (quoted in various articles by Kern, Lucien, and the writings of Philostratus). At the suggestion of Apollo, the lyre is lifted either by Zeus’ eagle or by Zeus himself into the heavens as the constellation Lyra to eternally commemorate the great poet and singer (IR: Orpheus. Jane Ellen Harrison).
The “Ballada” or “Orpheus” is not only rich in its use of figurative language and imagery; it also uses sound as metaphor – i.e. phonosemantics. I analyzed the original poem using a computer program developed from the methodology of professor A.P. Zhuravlyov. The results are presented in Table 1 of the Appendix, p.21. This method compares the “sound-letters” (contrast with phonemes explained in Appendix) of the poem to very large corpora of spoken and written texts and calculates the relative frequency of occurrence as compared to the corpora. An overall positive rating indicates that a poetic device is being used, such as alliteration or assonance. Since the program calculates an overall pattern, some alliteration or assonance might be missed if the consonant or vowel is frequent in Russian (i.e., “k” did not receive a ”+” or a “*”, even though in some stanzas Khodasevich alliterates on “k”). Why is it important to use this program? The computer finds whether an occurrence of some less common consonant or vowel is prominent, i.e., it identifies all prominent phonetic features of the text, whether they can be spotted by the “naked eye” or not. For the following discussion, B -# - refers to a line from the Bethea translation, D-# to the Dhaliwal translation, Kh- # to the original, and N-# to the Nabokov translation respectively.
The good translator, according to Nabokov, “…must possess the gift of mimicry and be able to act, as it were, the real author’s part by impersonating his tricks and demeanor and speech, his ways and his mind, with the utmost degree of verisimilitude.” (Nabokov 319). This means to preserve not only the scansion, but the sound metaphor as well. It is interesting to note the chant-like, mantra-like, spell-like quality of the first five stanzas of the original Russian poem (Appendix Kh-1 through Kh-20). Is their sound quality in any way related to the myth of Orpheus? The most striking and disturbing detail of the myth is the chanting, murmuring severed head. From the semantic perspective, the poem’s imagery of the round room, severed from the outside world, with its windows – the eyes - covered up with frost patterns metaphorically suggests a head, with the murmuring, chanting voice of the speaker as the rooms’ (heads’) mouthpiece.
The most commonly occurring sounds of stanzas 1 through 5, according to the program and personal observation, are the s, k, and “u” (as in book), “ts” as in pizza, “zh”, “sh”, “ñh”, “ye”, “h”, “a” (as in cat), “iu” and “ya”, (Appendix, Table 1 and Table 2, pp.21-22). The primary, dull, consonant sounds subliminally remind the reader knowledgeable in Greek mythology of the chanting, prophesying head of Orpheus. Do the translations represent this sound metaphor adequately? From Tables 2 and 3 of the Appendix, we note that the verse translations provide a more accurate representation of the sound signature of the original than does the literal translation. This is especially true of the alliterated sounds “s, k, ”u”. As pointed out by David Bethea, this sound signature phonosemantically foreshadows the word “ñêóäíîñòü” (skoodnost’) “paltriness”, that appears on the semantic level in the ninth line of the original (I provide translation of the Russian words inside the quote in square brackets, [ ]):
“The first four stanzas, therefore, suggest themselves a separate, enclosed semantic unit; it is in them that both the sound and sense of limitation, banality, “paltriness” – the persistent phonetic rehearsing” of skudnost’ combined with its meaning – lead to a sort of impasse whose ultimate naming in the fourth stanza is an ending as well as a recognition of failure. One by one the items in the speaker’s phenomenal world (“komnata”[-room], “solntze”[-sun], “stool’ya”[-chairs], are drawn into this phonetic/semantic force field, each ironically adding to the sense of decrement.” (Bethea 245 )
In both verse translations, the “s”, “k”, “u” pattern is repeated as well. In Nabokov’s line 10 and 12, the “u” appears in both bloom and room, while in my translation it appears in D-10 and D-12 as a hint of the “u” phoneme in “flower” and “hours”. The “iu” sound, being a close relative of the “u”, is in N-12 “circular” and in D-9 “futile”. There are three “s” sounds in N-11 and 12 and five “s” sounds in D-11 and 12. In the literal translation by Bethea, there is one “u” in “sound”, only two “k” sounds and three “s”, the “iu” sound is not present. Thus the literal translation does a poorer job of following through with the sound metaphor.
In the seventh stanza, the speaker’s metamorphosis into Orpheus commences with the sound signature of “z” in “muzyka”(music) and “uzkoye”(narrow) and “lezvi-ye”(blade). The parallelism of the repeats creates a lilting sound, suggesting and foreshadowing the lyre that will be handed to Orpheus. Also, to a Russian reader the “z” sound is reminiscent of music itself and the sound of the blade striking a surface. I would call this stanza, the focal point of “Ballada” or “Orpheus”.
The murmuring sounds of “sh” and “ch” become less prevalent and the bright sound of the “z” is accentuated by Khodasevich by shifting the stress of the word “lEzviye”, to an irregular stress, “lezviYO”. Although a stress shift is considered a faux pas in the poetry of today, in the early 20th century it was still common practice. The Russian poet, Blok, also engages in shifting the accent on “lEzviye” to “lezviYO” to create an interesting sound effect in his poem Rus’ (“Russia”), “È äåâóøêà íà çëîãî äðóãà //Ïîä ñíåãîì òî÷èò ëåçâèå.” (And young lady for a mean boyfriend // Sharpens the blade under the snow.) (IR: Stikhya) The literal translation of David Bethea, even though it does not follow the original scansion or rhyme pattern, in this instance, provides a better sound picture with six “z” sounds in lines 25 through 28. There are eight “z”s in the original, four “z”s in my translation and three in the Nabokov one. This blade is a very important factor in the poem and we will return to it later.
In stanzas eight and nine, we hear the consonants “zh”, “sh” (as in share), and “sh’ ” (as in shire) foreshadowing the hissing of the snake. This linguistic iconicity (“A natural resemblance or analogy of form between a word (the signifier) and an object it refers to (the signified).” (Preminger, Brogan 552) ) is especially pronounced in line 32 and 33, and the snake appears and even hisses for us in “neschastnye veshi”. The Bethea literal translation does not do very well in either foreshadowing the snake in “with” and “stars” in line 32, nor with hearing this serpent in line 36 – “wretched things”. The Nabokov translation does a better job with foreshadowing in lines 31 and 32, i.e., the sounds are more suggestive of actual hissing: “ankles”, “galaxies”. The snake appears and hisses in lines 35 and 36 through “watching”, “helpless expression”, “things”, and “listen”. My translation foreshadows the snake in lines 31 and 32 in “hell’s flames”, “stars dance and spin”. The snake hisses through “wretched”, “surroundings”, “which hear songs” in line 36. Figuratively, as professor Goebler points out, “…the snake here symbolizes wisdom, and not malice.” (Goebler 3) What makes “Ballada”, alluding to Nabokov, a poem where Khodasevich attained the apex of his skill as a poet, is not only a rich sound texture, but also the masterful use of figurative language.
The world where the speaker of Khodasevich’s “Ballada” resides is a stark, bleak, sparse city apartment in the winter. It consists of a round room (in reality his one room apartment was semi-circular (Bethea 241) ); a plaster “sky” (the ceiling) illuminated by a “sun” of 16 candelas – a 55 watt light bulb (translated as a 60 watt light bulb in English); table and chairs; and the bed. It is interesting that Nabokov uses “circular” to describe the room, probably to invoke empathy in the reader towards the speaker, who is a living, breathing intellectual being, and the man-made, phenomenological, lifeless environment in which the speaker is “imprisoned”. Because of the use of “round” in the original poem and the connection of parallelism between the roundness of the room and the roundness of Orpheus’ severed head (elaborated upon earlier), I chose the original’s “my round room” for my translation. The speaker within the room, i.e., the mouthpiece of the room, appears to chant through the sound metaphor (described earlier), even before we hear the lilting “i muzika, muzika, muzika” (“and music, music, music”). Are there any sounds of life that occur on the outside, the crunch of the snow as the people return home, the voices of the nursemaids calling the children for dinner? No. The speaker is severed from the outside world by the “palm trees” that “flower” on the windowpanes because of the cold and is sealed off from the outside world. The image of the noiseless frost patterns on windows as palm trees is an oxymoron, because, normally, the act of flowering does not proceed noiselessly – there are bees buzzing and pollinating the flowers, butterflies and dragon flies touching the flowers with their wings. Monkeys and loud birds live among growing palm trees.
In the romantic poem, “The Prisoner”, written in 1837 by Mikhail Yurievich Lermontov, a famous metaphor for time appears:
“Alone I am – there is no beloved
The walls are bare all around
Meager is the ray shining from the lamp
It shines with a dying fire.
The only thing that is heard behind the doors
Are the measured goose-steps
In the quiet of the night
Of the un-answering guard.” (Lermontov on IR: Stikhya)
The “un-answering guard” is of course not only a real human, whose footsteps measure time, but the metaphor for Time itself. The “watch with its metallic sound, which runs in my vest pocket”, is an analogy to Lermontov’s guard, yet it is a metaphor of modern times. Ironically, time is not measured by the song of a cricket behind a stove, and not by the human footsteps; (however cold, but nonetheless – companionship) instead we hear the cold clicks of the mechanical watch, underscoring the artificiality of modern time.
It is very interesting to compare this first half of “Ballada” with a poem written by Gumilev as a part of his book, “The Quiver”, published in 1915. His poem is called “The Sick Man”. Here is my literal translation:
“In my fever, just one persistent thing torments me  ìî¸ì áðåäó îäíà ìåíÿ òîìèò
The infinity of some kind of sharp lines Êàêèõ-òî ï¸ñòðûõ ëèíèé áåñêîíå÷íîñòü
And ceaselessly the bell tolls, È íåïðåðûâíî êîëîêîë çâîíèò,
The chiming of the clocks would chime “Eternity”. Êàê áîé ÷àñîâ îòçâàíèâàë áû âå÷íîñòü.
I think, that after death we have a way Ìíå êàæåòñÿ, ÷òî ïîñëå ñìåðòè òàê
Of an uncertain, tormenting hope of resurrection. Ñ ìó÷èòåëüíîé íàäåæäîé âîñêðåñåíüÿ
The eyes fix their gaze into the ãëàçà âïåðÿþòñÿ â îêðåñòíûé ìðàê.
Surrounding darkness (gloom). Èùà äàâíî çíàêîìûå âèäåíüÿ.
But in the ocean of the primordial haze Íî à îêåàíå ïåðâîçäàííîé ìãëû
There are no voices and no green grass Íåò ãîëîñîâ è íåò òðàâû çåë¸íîé,
But only cubes, rhombi, and corners, À òîëüêî êóáû, ðîìáû, äà óãëû,
And mean, unending toll of the bells. Äà çëûå, íåñêîí÷àåìûå çâîíû.
Oh, if sleep would descend on me soon! Î, õîòü áû ñîí íàñòèã ìåíÿ ñêîðåé!
If I could, like for a holiday of Reconciliation* Óéòè áû, êàê íà ïðàçäíèê ïðèìèðåíüÿ,
Leave and go the yellow sands of Íà æ¸ëòûå ïåñêè ñåäûõ ìîðåé
The gray-haired seas. Ñ÷èòàòü áîëüøèå áóðûå êàìåíüÿ.
To count the large roan boulders.”
(* Reconciliation is a traditional Russian holiday. Gumilev on IR: Stikhya)
Khodasevich was recovering from an illness when he wrote “Ballada”. The phonosemantic computer analysis of his poem shows a difficult and painful process, manifested in the lack of positive valuation for the more common consonants and vowels in the “Ballada”. Gumilev in his poem, “The Sick Man”, shows the reader a typical sick man’s response to an illness, i.e., the desire to escape to a better place – the seashore. The conclusions of both poems with the “boulders” are also similar. Yet, the drastic difference between this poem and “Ballada” or “Orpheus” is the ability to overcome the oppressive banality of the modern world, the transformation into Orpheus. This palingenesis begins with the chanting in line 21 of Ballada: “unconnected, passionate speeches, which no one can understand”. The underlined phrases are an example of tautology (“A needless repetition of an idea, statement or word” (Webster 1208)). However, as professor Lotman, the father of Russian Semiotics School, points out, “In common speech and in poetry tautological statements are known for their energy, they carry the intonation of a final conclusion, exclude the possibility of an objection.” (Lotman 819, my translation) This underscoring of an idea of a move from the prosaic to the poetic environment, allows the reader of “Ballada” an easy transition that “Sound is truer than sense (or meaning)” and that “Word is the strongest of all” (B-23,24). In my opinion, these are Khodasevich’s epithets for “Poetry (the combination of sound and meaning) is the ultimate art form”. Nabokov conveys “no one can understand” as “lacking any intelligent plan”, which sounds antipoetic, rather like a failed geography expedition gone awry. Also his use of the phrase “may be” in lines N-23 and N-24, especially, “Word may be stronger than man”, is in dissonance with the original that places the philosophical and phonosemantic accent on “All”, i.e., “VsegO”. I translate this, in an attempt to faithfully convey the original, “Where sound is more candid than meaning // And word – more tenacious than all”.
Returning to the blade imagery, it was accented by a shift in standard pronunciation so that the “z” sound is pronounced with more force in Russian. Is this blade that pierces the speaker of “Ballada” a new metaphor, or a concept germane to Russian poetry? In Pushkin’s poem, “The Prophet”, a six winged seraphim appears, cuts open the speaker’s chest and places a blazing coal inside it while admonishing the speaker “…to go and with the verb burn the hearts of men” (IR: Stikhya: Pushkin). This “verb” here is an archaic form of the word, “word”, and the metaphor suggests to go and inspire the populace with the poetic word. Blok in an essay of 1910 uses a “…dagger piercing the heart.” (as quoted in Goebler 4) For Pushkin, Blok and the symbolists as a whole, “Pain, which accompanies a transformation, is an unconditional attribute of the poetic gift, when it is a true vocation.” (Goebler 4) As Mayakovsky puts it, “…with nails I am beaten into the paper”. Marina Tsvetaeva says “Opened my veins, it [poetry] is unstoppable”. Vysotsky, the singer, poet, and actor writes, “The poets walk with their naked heels on the blade of the knife and bloody their bare souls”. Brodsky, the American poet laureate, writes in Russian, “… my poems, while being finished in blood, landed on earth with a dull noise.” (Quotes from the internet site Stikhya in my translation) While for the Western mind, accustomed to the poet experiencing and describing mental anguish, these images are masochistic and raw, they are normal state of things for the educated Russian. For some poets such as Kluyev, who castrated himself to be closer to his Muse, and for Esenin, who slit his wrist, wrote his last poem, “Goodbye, my friend, goodbye”, in blood and then hung himself, these raw metaphors became reality. I would propose to call this the concept of Prophetic Masochism in Russian poetry and to explore it in further research.
As the transformation occurs, the speaker of “Ballada” begins to outgrow himself and to grow to God-like, gigantic proportions. This, as remarked by Professor Lakoff in “Metaphors We Live By”, is reflective of our concept of orientational metaphor, specifically, “More is Up” and “Good is Up.” (Lakoff 15,16) Notice how to his “…wild singing//hearken my wretched things…the room moves rhythmically” is an example of anthropomorphism. The simple phenomenological things, i.e., table, bed, room have assumed human-like qualities resembling the beasts and the rocks in the myth of Orpheus. As we proceed further, with the transformation, there are two occurrences of a visual pun in lines 31 and 44, as observed by professor Bethea. The Russian word “stOpy” is an archaic word for “feet”. “The physical feet – stopY and the metrical feet, i.e., verses – stOpy have different stresses.” (Bethea “Following in Orpheus’ Footsteps” 70) Thus Orpheus = the speaker is not only places his physical feet into the subterranean flames (perhaps an allusion to Dr. Faustus), but also onto the “smooth black boulders”. At that time Khodasevich was a Pushkin scholar and in the future, the author of a book on the Russian neo-classicist, Derzhavin. The “smooth black boulders” may be an allusion that his metric feet are steeped in the classics of Russian poetry.
The lyre, handed to the speaker through the wind, is another many faceted concept. Why, exactly, is this lyre “heavy”? In the legend of Orpheus, the lyre stayed in the river for a very long time, thus its wood became wet and heavy, even though (it is a myth after all) the lyre continued to make music. The heavy lyre in the traditional Russian literature represents the depth and difficulty of the poetic experience. Also, the entire world surrounding Khodasevich changed in 1917, after the Revolution. David Bethea says that the lyre becomes heavy because it has been lifted “…from the dross of modern world.” (Bethea “Following in Orpheus’ Footsteps” 63) Khodasevich was known as a master conversationalist, and as one can observe in the “Ballada” with the “feet” and in “The Way of the Grain”, an earlier poetry collection, “ÏðîÕÎÄèò ÑEÿòåëü ïî ðîâíûì áîðîçäàì” (Khod se), creates a pun on his last name. (Bethea “Following in Orpheus’ Footsteps” 55) To the modern astute observer, the “Heavy Lyre” or “Heavy Lyra” and the “wind” are puns as well. In “Ballada”, the brow of the speaker points into “the fleeting stars”. The Lyra constellation, which is the Lyra of Orpheus placed in the sky by Zeus, is indeed quite massive or “heavy”. First of all, the famous Russian astronomer Struve, whose distant ancestor was a friend and later the editor of Khodasevich in Europe, discovered double and quadruple stars in the Lyra constellation in the 1800s. The doubles - Sheliak and the quadruples are massive; also the star HD 179281 is “a massive G type star” in Lyra. “Until about 1600 years ago it was a red hypergiant – a highly evolved star that shed its outer layers at a fantastic rate of one solar mass per 3000 years.” (IR: “Information on Constellations and HD 179281”)
The wind, through which the lyre is handed, is a metaphorical as well, since space is a vacuum. The only wind possible is that of cosmic particles and “solar wind”. Thus the wind could be interpreted on the metaphorical level as the wind of the Revolution, as in Blok’s poem “The Twelve” (IR: Stikhya: Blok). Yet in the Lyra constellation, there is a beautiful phenomenon of a solar wind, the Ring Nebula, which “appears like a little smoke ring wafting through the starry night.” Whether these were intended puns by Khodasevich, remains the subject of future research.
This paper demonstrates that the poem “Ballada” or “Orpheus” does not merely have a reference to the mythical figure of Orpheus in the final stanzas, but is phonosemantically and semantically intertwined with the myth of Orpheus throughout. Khodasevich’s figurative language, his philosophical maturity, and phonosemantics require a careful and analytical translator to render his poetic oeuvre into the English language. The hypothetical theory of Prophetic Masochism in Russian poetry and author intent by Khodasevich in some of the puns of “Orpheus” (or lack thereof) need to be investigated and substantiated by further research.
Bibliography
Bethea, David. “Following in Orpheus’ Footsteps: A Reading of Xodasevic’s ‘Ballada’ .“ Slavic and East European Journal . Volume 25, Number 3, Fall 1981. 54-70.
Bethea, David. Khodasevich – His Life and Art . Princeton, New Jersey : Princeton University Press, 1983.
Goebler, Frank. “Wladislaw Chodassewitch. ‘Ballada’. ” Die Russische Lyrik. Ed. Bodo Zelinsky, Koln Weimar. Wien: 2002. 215 –222. (In German) Translated to Russian on <lit.1september.ru/2002/29/2.htm.> p.1-7. 11 November 2003.
Guthrie, William Keith Chambers. Orpheus and Greek Religion . Princeton,
New Jersey : Princeton University Press, 1993.
Khodasevich, Vladislav. Sobraniye Sochinenii v Chetyrioh Tomah. Moskva: Soglasie, 1996 (In Russian)
Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. Metaphors We Live By . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980.
Lotman, Uri Mikhailovich. O Poetah i Poezii . Sankt-Peterburg: Iskusstvo SPB, 2001. (In Russian)
Nabokov Vladimir. "On Hodasevich." originally published in Sovremennye zapiski LIX Paris: 1939, reprinted in Strong Opinions. New York: Vintage, 1990. 223.
Nabokov Vladimir. Lectures on Russian Literature . Ed. Fredson Bowers. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981.
Preminger, Brogan. The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics . New York: MJF Books, 1993
Quiller-Couch, Arthur. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900, William Shakespeare, 143. “Orpheus”, ed. 1919
Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary . Merriam-Webster Inc. Springfield, Massachusetts. 1991.
Zhuravlyov A.P. “Phoneticheskoye Znachenie.” Leningrad: 1972. (In Russian)
Internet Resources (IR)
Athena. A site of my poetry in Russian an English and translations. 11 November 2003.
< http://www.stihi.ru/author.html?Athena >
300 Let Astronomii v Peterburge. Struve Vasily Yakovlevich. Dinastya Struve. Spravochnik Personalii. (In Russian) 11 November 2003.
Information on Constellations and HD 179281. “A Pre-Supernova Takes Shape”. 11 November 2003.< www.skypub.com >
Kolker, Uri. “Aidesskaya Prohlada.” Paris: La Presse Libre, 1983. (In Russian)
11 November 2003. <http://kolker-on-khod.narod.ru/ >
Leonov, Sokolov. Zvyozdnye Puti. 1971. (In Russian) The painting depicts the b of the Lyra Star and the gas spiral surrounding the two stars. 11 November 2003.
<http://scifiart.narod.ru/Albums/7/7_346.htm>
Lyra. A site on the Lyra Constellation. 11 November 2003.
< http: // homepage.mac.com/
Kvmagruder /bcp/aster/constellations/ Lyr.htm
Massivnaya Giganstkaya Zvezda HD 179281. Information on HD 179281 in Russian. 11 November 2003. < http://citadel.pioner-samara.ru/distance/hd179281.html >
Orpheus. Jane Ellen Harrison. 11 November 2003.
< http: easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~orpheus/Harrison.htm >
Sozvezdiye Lira. A site on the Lyra Constellation in Russian. 11 November 2003.
< http:/astrometric.sau.msu.ru/stump/constell/lyr.htm >
Stikhya. A site with certified and checked collections of Russian poetry. 11 November 2003.
(In Russian)
< http://www.litera.ru/stixiya/ >
APPENDIX
A-1. “ÁÀËËÀÄÀ” Âëàäèñëàâ Õîäàñåâè÷ (Khodasevich 241)
1 Ñèæó, îñâåùàåìûé ñâåðõó,
2 ß â êîìíàòå êðóãëîé ìîåé.
3 Ñìîòðþ â øòóêàòóðíîå íåáî
4 Íà ñîëíöå â øåñòíàäöàòü ñâå÷åé.
5 Êðóãîì -- îñâåùåííûå òîæå,
6 È ñòóëüÿ, è ñòîë. è êðîâàòü.
7 Ñèæó -- è â ñìóùåíüè íå çíàþ,
8 Êóäà áû ìíå ðóêè äåâàòü.
9 Ìîðîçíûå áåëûå ïàëüìû
10 Íà ñòåêëàõ áåççâó÷íî öâåòóò.
11 ×àñû ñ ìåòàëëè÷åñêèì øóìîì
12 Â æèëåòíîì êàðìàíå èäóò.
13 Î, êîñíàÿ, íèùàÿ ñêóäîñòü
14 Áåçâûõîäíîé æèçíè ìîåé!
15 Êîìó ìíå ïîâåäàòü, êàê æàëêî
16 Ñåáÿ è âñåõ ýòèõ âåùåé?
17 È ÿ íà÷èíàþ êà÷àòüñÿ,
18 Êîëåíè îáíÿâøè ñâîè,
19 È âäðóã íà÷èíàþ ñòèõàìè
20 Ñ ñîáîé ãîâîðèòü â çàáûòüè.
21 Áåññâÿçíûå, ñòðàñòíûå ðå÷è!
22 Íåëüçÿ â íèõ ïîíÿòü íè÷åãî,
23 Íî çâóêè ïðàâäèâåå ñìûñëà
24 È ñëîâî ñèëüíåå âñåãî.
25 È ìóçûêà, ìóçûêà, ìóçûêà
26 Âïëåòàåòñÿ â ïåíüå ìî¸,
27 È óçêîå, óçêîå, óçêîå
28 Ïðîíçàåò ìåíÿ ëåçâè¸.
29 ß ñàì íàä ñîáîé âûðàñòàþ,
30 Íàä ìåðòâûì âñòàþ áûòèåì,
31 Ñòîïàìè â ïîäçåìíîå ïëàìÿ,
32  òåêó÷èå çâåçäû ÷åëîì.
33 È âèæó áîëüøèìè ãëàçàìè --
34 Ãëàçàìè, áûòü ìîæåò, çìåè, --
35 Êàê ïåíèþ äèêîìó âíåìëþò
36 Íåñ÷àñòíûå âåùè ìîè.
37 È â ïëàâíûé, âðàùàòåëüíûé òàíåö
38 Âñÿ êîìíàòà ìåðíî èäåò,
39 È êòî-òî òÿæåëóþ ëèðó
40 Ìíå â ðóêè ñêâîçü âåòåð äàåò.
41 È íåò øòóêàòóðíîãî íåáà
42 È ñîëíöà â øåñòíàäöàòü ñâå÷åé:
43 Íà ãëàäêèå ÷åðíûå ñêàëû
44 Ñòîïû îïèðàåò -- Îðôåé.
1921
A-2. A pony (literal) translation by David Bethea with my additions in [ ], (Bethea 239)
”Ballada” Vladislav Khodasevich
1 I sit, illumined from above,
2 in my round room.
3 I look into a plaster sky
4 at a sixty-watt sun.
5 Around me, illumined also,
6 are chairs, and a table, and a bed.
7 I sit, and in confusion have no idea
8 what to do with my hands.
9 Frozen white palms [palm trees]
10 bloom noiselessly on the windowpanes.
11 My watch with a metallic sound
12 runs in my vest pocket.
13 O, stale, beggared paltriness
14 of my hopelessly closed life!
15 Whom can I tell how much I pity
16 myself and all these things?
17 And, embracing my knees,
18 I begin to rock,
19 and all at once I begin in a daze
20 to talk with myself in verse.
21 Unconnected, passionate speeches!
22 You can't understand them at all,
23 but sounds are truer than sense
24 and the word is strongest of all.
25 And music, music, music
26 threads its way into my singing
27 and sharp, sharp, sharp [narrow, narrow, narrow]
28 is the blade that pierces me.
29 I begin to outgrow myself,
30 to rise above my dead being,
31 with steps into the subterranean flame,
32 with brow into the fleeting stars.
33 And I see with great eyes--
34 the eyes, perhaps, of a snake--
35 how to my wild song [now] harken
36 my wretched things.
37 And in a flowing, revolving dance
38 my entire room moves rhythmically,
39 and someone hands me
40 a heavy lyre through the wind.
41 And the plaster sky
42 and the sixty-watt sun are no more:
43 onto the smooth, black boulders
44 it is Orpheus planting his feet.
A-3. “Orpheus” Vladislav Khodasevich
Translated by Vladimir Nabokov (as quoted in Bethea 240)
1 Brightly lit from above I am sitting
2 in my circular room; this is I--
3 looking up at a sky made of stucco,
4 at a sixty-watt sun in that sky.
5 All around me, and also lit brightly,
6 all around me my furniture stands,
7 chair and table and bed--and I wonder
8 sitting there what to do with my hands.
9 Frost-engendered white feathery palmtrees
10 on the window-panes silently bloom;
11 loud and quick clicks the watch in my pocket
12 as I sit in my circular room.
13 Oh, the leaden, the beggarly bareness
14 of a life where no issue I see!
15 Whom on earth could I tell how I pity
16 my own self and the things around me?
17 And then clasping my knees I start slowly
18 to sway backwards and forwards, and soon
19 I am speaking in verse, I am crooning
20 to myself as I sway in a swoon.
21 What a vague, what a passionate murmur
22 lacking any intelligent plan;
23 but a sound may be truer than reason
24 and a word may be stronger than man.
25 And then melody, melody, melody
26 blends my accents and joins in their quest
27 and a delicate, delicate, delicate
28 pointed blade seems to enter my breast.
29 High above my own spirit I tower,
30 high above mortal matter I grow:
31 subterranean flames lick my ankles,
32 past my brow the cool galaxies flow.
33 With big eyes-as my singing grows wilder--
34 with the eyes of a serpent maybe,
35 I keep watching the helpless expression
36 of the poor things that listen to me.
37 And the room and the furniture slowly,
38 slowly start in a circle to sail,
39 and a great heavy lyre is from nowhere
40 handed me by a ghost through the gale.
41 And the sixty-watt sun has now vanished,
42 and away the false heavens are blown:
43 on the smoothness of glossy black boulders
44 this is Orpheus standing alone.
A-4. “Orpheus” Vladislav Khodasevich
Translated by Tatyana Dhaliwal
Published on < http://www.stihi.ru/author.html?Athena >
1 I sit in my room round and tiny
2 Awashed by the light from above,
3 Look up at the stuccoed skyline
4 Dawn-dusked by a sixty watt sun.
5 My things, lit as well, they surround me:
6 The chairs, the table, the bed.
7 I pause, hands confused, where to hide them?
8 My thoughts race, unravel like thread.
9 Frost bitten, white, graceful palm trees
10 On window panes silently flower.
11 My watch with its metallic ticking,
12 In vest pocket clicks, marks the hours.
13 Oh futile, beggarly bareness
14 Of hopeless, despairing life!
15 These things and I share in sadness,
16 Who’s there to tell of our strife?
17 And I begin slowly rocking,
18 While hugging my pointed knees,
19 And suddenly poetry flowers,
20 I’m dazed and verse flows with ease.
21 These jumbled, yet fiery speeches!
22 Ungrasped by the crowds - words fall,
23 Where sound is more candid than meaning,
24 And word - more tenacious than all.
25 And musical, musical, musical,
26 The melodies twirl into song.
27 A thin blade creeps silently, craftily
28 and piercing, cuts me along.
29 And over my dead self I tower,
30 Rise up over "me" and the pale.
31 My feet make the hell’s flames cower,
32 And stars dance and spin in my hair.
33 My eyes grow large, pupils dilate
34 Like eyes of a serpent they stare
35 At wretched, attentive surroundings,
36 Which hear songs wild with flare.
37 And into the slow, round dance moves
38 The room and its furniture flow.
39 And someone, a heavy black lyre,
40 To me, through the gales, bestows.
41 The stuccoed sky disappears,
42 The sixty watt sun’s no more,
43 And onto the granite black boulders,
44 Young Orpheus steps on the shore.
Table 1. The computerized phonosemantic analysis of the poem. (Zhuravlyov )
Áàëëàäà
Òàáëèöà çíà÷èìûõ îòêëîíåíèé îò ñðåäíåé âñòðå÷àåìîñòè çâóêîáóêâ â ðå÷è.
+ - çàìåòíîå îòêëîíåíèå îò ñðåäíåé ÷àñòîòíîñòè, * - íàëè÷èå ñïåöèàëüíîãî ïðèåìà (àëëèòåðàöèè èëè àññîíàíñà)
Based on corpora of poetic and non-poetic and conversational speech. The program takes into account the dynamic phonological processes such as vowel reduction limited to stress and devoicing. For example, “Moskva”’s (Moscow) first “o” will be counted as “a” due to vowel reduction. Thus the “sound-letters” are counted and not phonemes.
if there’s a “+” - means the occurrence is more than ordinary. If there is a “*” – a definite alliteration or assonance
ÇÁ ÒÅÊÑÒ ÑÒÀÒ ÊÎË-ÂÎ G Y Ï
SL In poem In corpora Frequency Pronounced occurrence or “*” alliteration or assonance
à 9.22 9.5 98 0.009
á 1.69 1.8 18 0.004
â 5.55 3.9 59 0.006 + The sound v
ã 1.03 1.5 11 0.004
ä 1.98 3.7 21 0.006
å 12.14 8.9 129 0.009 + The sound “ye” as in “yeah”
æ 0.94 0.8 10 0.003 + The sound “zh”
ç 2.54 1.5 27 0.004 + The sound “z”
è 6.30 5.6 67 0.007 + The sound “e” as in “seek”
é 1.22 1.3 13 0.003
ê 3.29 3.3 35 0.005
ë 3.10 3.7 33 0.006
ì 4.89 3.2 52 0.005 + The sound “m”
í 5.64 6.4 60 0.008
î 7.90 10.4 84 0.009
ï 1.69 2.6 18 0.005
ð 2.63 3.8 28 0.006
ñ 4.99 4.9 53 0.007 + The sound “s”
ò 5.55 7.5 59 0.008
ó 4.99 2.9 53 0.005 + * The sound “u” - assonance
ô 0.09 0.3 1 0.002
õ 0.66 0.9 7 0.003
ö 0.66 0.4 7 0.002 + The sound “ts”
÷ 1.41 2.0 15 0.004
ø 1.03 1.2 11 0.003
ù 0.66 0.3 7 0.002 + * The sound “shch” as in “shire” - alliteration
û 3.01 1.6 32 0.004 + * The sound “i” as in “this” - alliteration
ý 0.19 0.5 2 0.002
þ 1.03 0.6 11 0.002 + * The sound “iu” as in “you” - assonance
ÿ 2.07 2.4 22 0.005
Àññîíàíñ íà ÓÛÞ, àëëèòåðàöèÿ íà Ù. Íåîáû÷íî äëÿ ïîýòè÷åñêîãî ïðîèçâåäåíèÿ – ìàëî àëëèòåðàöèé è âñå íåîáû÷íûå àññîíàíñû.
Ìåäëèòåëüíûé, ïàññèâíûé, òóñêëûé – îöåíêà òåêñòà íà îñíîâàíèè àíàëèçà ñîñòàâëÿþùèõ çâóêîáóêâ. Ïî ìåòîäèêå ïðîô.À.Ï.Æóðàâëåâà. (Æóðàâëåâ À.Ï.Ôîíåòè÷åñêîå çíà÷åíèå.-Ë., 1972)
Äâèæåíèå çâóêîâ ïî òåêñòó: The movements of sounds through the text.
1-2 ñòðîôû ÓÖÙ
3-4 – ÆÈÕÙÝÞß
6-7 –ÇÓÛß
8-9 –ÁÂÇÙÝÞ
10-11 – ÖÛ
Table 2. Brute Force Phonosemantic Analysis of the Poem and Translations
Sound Original Bethea Nabokov Dhaliwal Device
c 46 45 57 50 *
y 29 16 34 28 *
ê 32 19 26 25 *
ç 33 25 21 29 *
â 48 19 26 20
æ 8 1 0 0
è 55 56 72 45
ì 32 35 35 30
ù 7 0 0 0
å 71 0 0 0
û 21 6 10 10 *
þ 8 6 3 5
ø 7 0 3 4 *
Table 3 Brute Force Analysis of the First half of the Poem
Sound Khodasevich Nabokov Dhaliwal Bethea
“shch” “shire” and “sh” “share” 7 1 1 0
Ts as in “pizza” 2 0 0 0
“u” as in “book” 13 15 11 10
ch 25 2 2 2
s 23 27 26 17
“gh” “h” 4 2 6 4
zh 6 0 0 0
k 13 12 11 7