Читать книгу In Praise of Poetry - Ольга Седакова - Страница 67

10. NIGHT

Tristan and Isolde meet a hermit in the woods

Love, hunter of hearts,

is tightening its bow,

how oft it seemed to me

that life’s but a short sound:

it is like a worn sack

stuffed with fiery groats,

and a narrowing aim.

Through a hedge of roses reaching its hands again,

a story most beautiful nurtures such pain

whose sweetness is unrivaled: a weighty almandine

is rolling through the leaves, alone and not alone.

What excites our mind beyond its very limits?

That which promises the thing our mind prohibits:

the soul runs from itself and sees an example in you—

o never-resting Ahasver, the ever-wandering Jew.

Hiding from my one and only solace,

from the blood on the thorns of a mysterious fence:

it’s not pleasure I want: such things my mind ignores,

like that Eternal Jew, demanding something more . . .

But here we have a story where for all time

fateful pain is rustling, like an ancient lime.

With Mistress Death hidden under leaf

their vast night grows from day’s wreath,

it grows and says that life is not enough—

life longs for more and grips itself above