[Carl Copeland]

Hi, Glenn. Cameron infected me with his love for Mandelstam, and there was a spate of translations in the year before you showed up. Not this one, though.

I’m intrigued by the Russian meter, which is regular, except for the final quatrain, but also unusual: iamb, anapest, iamb + 2 unstressed syllables at the end of every other line—like an imitation of a classical meter. Mikhail Gasparov calls it a “three-ictus dolnik with an amphibrachic anacrusis and dactylic and masculine endings”! Did you consider trying that? I probably would have, though I’m not confident I would have pulled it off. Gasparov, btw, sees this as one of a pair of “star-hating poems,” along with “I hate the light of the monotonous stars” (1912). M’s poems often came in pairs.

Here are some first thoughts:

I tremble from the cold,
wanting to say nothing!

You’ve lost the connection between “cold” and “mute/numb.” The direct sense is that he’s ordered to sing, though he’d rather not, but there’s also, I think, a sense of wanting to be too numb to shiver. A translation can’t capture everything, of course.

Languish, fearful musician,
love, remember, bawl,

“Languish” seems too passive, though the verb (with its Romantic-era feel) does often mean that. He’s already languishing—losing strength—from the cold, but the stars are demanding that he actively feel, remember, cry. That’s my take, anyway.

“Fearful” is a plausible interpretation, though the crib’s “anxious” would be more literal. His anxiety could indeed be fear of living more fully.

“Bawl” seems too colloquial to my ear. Could you rhyme “ball” with “recall”?

and from a planet, dim, forgotten,
pick up the soft-thrown ball!

I think what you want is “catch” rather than “pick up,” especially since “брошенный” doesn’t refer to the planet, but to the “thrown” ball.

I like “soft-thrown,” though literally it’s the ball that’s soft. Americans will get the sense of “being thrown a softball,” but I can’t claim that’s misleading, as I have no idea why M used this descriptor.

So here it is — a certain
link to the world so weird!

Would “So this is it” express a little more surprise? The sense, I think, is one of sudden realization.

The second “so” is a little fillery, but that can’t always be avoided.

“Weird” seems either too commonplace or too creepy for the crib’s “mysterious” world.

what trouble has occurred!

There’s a mistake in the Russian here—“стряслось” should be “стряслась”—but that doesn’t affect your translation. The phrase is apparently quoted from a 1906 play by Blok.

What if over a chic shop
twinkling ever apart
suddenly a star would drop
a stiletto into my heart.

I was going to suggest ending the first two lines with commas, but I see you’re following M’s own minimal punctuation in this stanza. He apparently added the commas when he corrected these lines in the manuscript 25 years later:

Что, если, вздрогнув неправильно,
Мерцающая всегда,
Своей булавкой заржавленной
Достанет меня звезда?

M didn’t publish the later version (couldn’t have in 1937), and the one you translated has always been the best known, so I see no problem with that.

I like the dramatic “stiletto,” though “hatpin,” as someone else translated it, fits in nicely with “chic shop.” (Ok, stiletto heels, but I just don’t see those in a chic shop of the time.)

Thoroughly enjoyed, Glenn!