Robert Browning (1812–1889) The Confessional [spain.]

IIt is a lie–their Priests, their Pope,Their Saints, their ... all they fear or hopeAre lies, and lies–there! through my doorAnd ceiling, there! and walls and floor,There, lies, they lie–shall still be hurledTill spite of them I reach the world!

IIYou think Priests just and holy men!Before they put me in this denI was a human creature too,With flesh and blood like one of you,A girl that laughed in beauty’s prideLike lilies in your world outside.

IIII had a lover–shame avaunt!This poor wrenched body, grim and gaunt,Was kissed all over till it burned,By lips the truest, love e’er turnedHis heart’s own tint: one night they kissedMy soul out in a burning mist.

IVSo, next day when the accustomed trainOf things grew round my sense again,”That is a sin,” I said: and slowWith downcast eyes to church I go,And pass to the confession-chair,And tell the old mild father there.

VBut when I falter Beltran’s name,”Ha?” quoth the father; “much I blame”The sin; yet wherefore idly grieve?”Despair not–strenuously retrieve!”Nay, I will turn this love of thine”To lawful love, almost divine;

VI”For he is young, and led astray,”This Beltran, and he schemes, men say,”To change the laws of church and state”So, thine shall be an angel’s fate,”Who, ere the thunder breaks, should roll”Its cloud away and save his soul.

VII”For, when he lies upon thy breast,”Thou mayst demand and be possessed”Of all his plans, and next day steal”To me, and all those plans reveal,”That I and every priest, to purge”His soul, may fast and use the scourge.”

VIIIThat father’s beard was long and white,With love and truth his brow seemed bright;I went back, all on fire with joy,And, that same evening, bade the boyTell me, as lovers should, heart-free,Something to prove his love of me.

IXHe told me what he would not tellFor hope of heaven or fear of hell;And I lay listening in such pride!And, soon as he had left my side,Tripped to the church by morning-lightTo save his soul in his despite.

XI told the father all his schemes,Who were his comrades, what their dreams;”And now make haste,” I said, “to pray”The one spot from his soul away;”To-night he comes, but not the same”Will look!” At night he never came.

XINor next night: on the after-morn,I went forth with a strength new-born.The church was empty; something drewMy steps into the street; I knewIt led me to the market-place:Where, lo, on high, the father’s face!

XIIThat horrible black scaffold dressed,That stapled block ... God sink the rest!That head strapped back, that blinding vest,Those knotted hands and naked breast,Till near one busy hangman pressed,And, on the neck these arms caressed ...

XIII.No part in aught they hope or fear!No heaven with them, no hell!–and here,No earth, not so much space as pensMy body in their worst of densBut shall bear God and man my cry,Lies–lies, again–and still, they lie!

Тема 13. Американская поэзия XIX века

Венедиктова Т. Д. Обретение голоса: Американская национальная поэтическая традиция. М., 1994.

История литературы США. М., 2000. Т. 3. (С. 195–208 [Об Э. По]; 274–306 [о Г. Лонгфелло].

Ковалев Ю. В. Эдгар Аллан По. Новеллист и поэт. Л., 1984.

Нестерова Е. К. Ранняя поэзия Э. По // Науч. тр. Кубанского гос. ун-та. 1977. Вып. 234. С. 15–31.

Шор Ю. В. Интонационно-стилистические особенности подлинника и перевода лирики Э. По // Анализ стилей зарубежной художественной и научной литературы. Л., 1985. Вып. 4. С.126–135.

The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe.

Литературная история Соединенных Штатов Америки. М., 1978. Т. 2. С.117–129 [о Г. Лонгфелло].

Новиков В.И. «Песнь о Гайавате» Лонгфелло и романтическая поэтика эпоса // Некоторые филологические аспекты современной американистики. М., 1978. С. 216–234.

Пронько С.А. Язык и стиль Г. Лонгфелло в американских и английских исследованиях // Стилистический анализ художественного текста. Смоленск, 1988. С. 65–71

Венедиктова Т.Д. Поэзия У.Уитмена. М., 1982.

Мендельсон М. Жизнь и творчество Уитмена. М., 1969.

EDGAR ALLAN POE (1809–1849)

The Sleeper

At midnight, in the month of June,

I stand beneath the mystic moon.

An opiate vapor, dewy, dim,

Exhales from out her golden rim,

And, softly dripping, drop by drop,

Upon the quiet mountain top,

Steals drowsily and musically

Into the universal valley.

The rosemary nods upon the grave;

The lily lolls upon the wave;

Wrapping the fog about its breast,

The ruin molders into rest;

Looking like Lethe, see! the lake

A conscious slumber seems to take,

And would not, for the world, awake.

All Beauty sleeps!– and lo! where lies

Irenë, with her Destinies!

O, lady bright! can it be right-

This window open to the night?

The wanton airs, from the tree-top,

Laughingly through the lattice drop–

The bodiless airs, a wizard rout,

Flit through thy chamber in and out,

And wave the curtain canopy

So fitfully – so fearfully –

Above the closed and fringed lid

‘Neath which thy slumb’ring soul lies hid,

That, o’er the floor and down the wall,

Like ghosts the shadows rise and fall!

Oh, lady dear, hast thou no fear?

Why and what art thou dreaming here?

Sure thou art come o’er far-off seas,

A wonder to these garden trees!

Strange is thy pallor! strange thy dress,

Strange, above all, thy length of tress,

And this all solemn silentness!

The lady sleeps! Oh, may her sleep,

Which is enduring, so be deep!

Heaven have her in its sacred keep!

This chamber changed for one more holy,

This bed for one more melancholy,

I pray to God that she may lie

For ever with unopened eye,

While the pale sheeted ghosts go by!

My love, she sleeps! Oh, may her sleep

As it is lasting, so be deep!

Soft may the worms about her creep!

Far in the forest, dim and old,

For her may some tall vault unfold –

Some vault that oft has flung its black

And winged panels fluttering back,

Triumphant, o’er the crested palls,

Of her grand family funerals -

Some sepulchre, remote, alone,

Against whose portal she hath thrown,

In childhood, many an idle stone -

Some tomb from out whose sounding door

She ne’er shall force an echo more,

Thrilling to think, poor child of sin!

It was the dead who groaned within.

HENRY LONGFELLOW (1807–1882)

The Jewish Cemetery at Newport

How strange it seems! These Hebrews in their graves,

Close by the street of this fair seaport town,

Silent beside the never-silent waves,

At rest in all this moving up and down!

The trees are white with dust, that o’er their sleep

Wave their broad curtains in the south-wind’s breath,

While underneath such leafy tents they keep

The long, mysterious Exodus of Death.

And these sepulchral stones, so old and brown,

That pave with level flags their burial-place,

Seem like the tablets of the Law, thrown down

And broken by Moses at the mountain’s base.

The very names recorded here are strange,

Of foreign accent, and of different climes;

Alvares and Rivera interchange

With Abraham and Jacob of old times.

“Blessed be God! for he created Death!”

The mourners said, “and Death is rest and peace”;

Then added, in the certainty of faith,

“And giveth Life that never more shall cease.”

Closed are the portals of their Synagogue,

No Psalms of David now the silence break,

No Rabbi reads the ancient Decalogue

In the grand dialect the Prophets spake.

Gone are the living, but the dead remain,

And not neglected; for a hand unseen,

Scattering its bounty, like a summer rain,

Still keeps their graves and their remembrance green.

How came they here? What burst of Christian hate,

What persecution, merciless and blind,

Drove o’er the sea–that desert desolate–

These Ishmaels and Hagars of mankind?

They lived in narrow streets and lanes obscure,

Ghetto and Judenstrass, in mirk and mire;

Taught in the school of patience to endure

The life of anguish and the death of fire.

All their lives long, with the unleavened bread

And bitter herbs of exile and its fears,

The wasting famine of the heart they fed,

And slaked its thirst with marah of their tears.

Anathema maranatha! was the cry

That rang from town to town, from street to street;

At every gate the accursed Mordecai

Was mocked and jeered, and spurned by Christian feet.

Pride and humiliation hand in hand

Walked with them through the world where’er they went;

Trampled and beaten were they as the sand,

And yet unshaken as the continent.

For in the background figures vague and vast

Of patriarchs and of prophets rose sublime,

And all the great traditions of the Past

They saw reflected in the coming time.

And thus forever with reverted look

The mystic volume of the world they read,

Spelling it backward, like a Hebrew book,

Till life became a Legend of the Dead.

But ah! what once has been shall be no more!

The groaning earth in travail and in pain

Brings forth its races, but does not restore,

And the dead nations never rise again.