The Muse strikes when she strikes...

[alexpgp]

In my particular case, the blow fell while I was listening to U.S. flight controllers natter on and on about GNC MDMs, as I sat ready to interpret for Sergei G. in his communications with the capcom.

Things got a little slow, so I started reading some files on my laptop. Among them is a collection of poems by Lermontov, and this was the result:

* * *

Расстались мы, но твой портрет
Я на груди моей храню:
Как бледный призрак лучших лет,
Он душу радует мою.

И новым преданный страстям,
Я разлюбить его не мог:
Так храм оставленный - все храм,
Кумир поверженный - все бог!

(М.Ю. Лермонтов, 1827)

We parted ways. Your portrait, though,
I keep close by, upon my breast,
A pallid ghost of better years,
It fills my soul with joy confess'd.

Despite new passions in my life,
My love for it I could not kill:
Forsaken temples yet are temples,
And idols fallen, deities still!

(AlexPGP, 2002)

Cheers...

UPDATE OF 12/22/2011 (!):

I posted the translation elsewhere nine years ago, on 12/22/02. Three days later, the following comment appeared:

Just few of us have read your work...
I hope you hold no grudge.
Yet it would take a crazy dork
To think one's good enough to judge
A pen that keen, a skill that fine...
So I would better toe the line.

FWIW.

Comments

[nichevo.livejournal.com]

I have always loved Lermontov. He's so overwrought and almost corny, but the work is still lovely in it's own way.

[alexpgp.livejournal.com]

I find there are things of his that defy description. Take a gander at Бородино, for instance.

Cheers...