Verses by Mihai Eminescu, translated by Julia Kalman
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In the laughter of the day’s ticking chain,
Are strung those black and silent,
Bearing in their souls mysteries of love,
Faded, sublime, in silence bound.
And the night, from the clouds,
On wings of shivers,
Touches gently, with thought,
The Earth.
Upon a horse that breathes fire through its nostrils,
From desolate and cold mist,
A youth on winds, with head in play,
With a moment, his thought surpasses.
And his horse, frenzied,
Flies ceaselessly,
Driven as if by the old fairy of fears,
The Elderly.
On wings of mountain and asphalt rocks,
The castle rises, frowning,
Its crest black and tall,
Wrinkled by clouds and years,
But today it’s alive,
And in a golden tone,
Resonates from the vast shadow,
A song.
In thousands of lights, the windows burn,
Through which passersby are seen,
Through the touch of the sublime bard’s song,
How they dance in light shadows,
How they dance lightly,
Sweet dreams of love,
The palace seemed in magic
Golden.
Like the deer that climbs the crest of rocks,
Followed by a burning arrow,
The horse that leaps over deep abysses,
In its powerful and vast flight,
With nostrils burning,
With mane in the wind,
Once again, the spur pricks it,
And it arrives.
And the youth easily jumps from it,
Beneath his cloak, carrying a mandolin,
With a heart full of faithful love,
With a mind full of dreams,
With iron grates,
My knight,
Advances singing on the window,
And astonishes.
Like pale thoughts from bright hours,
Dancing beings of white,
They seem like scents of delicate souls,
Carried by zephyrs from the gardens,
In choruses, nymphs sing at dances,
And moan in the gentle, sonorous lyres,
Hidden thoughts of yearning,
Pale and sad like a ghost,
Then, on citers, they tighten them,
And full and clear, slowly they sing
The voice of the past that brightens
The troubled mind full of thoughts.
On the river of longing, driven by winds,
Once upon a time,
On a boat with oars wet with song,
A serene emperor.
The king came to tread the valleys,
Singing for a sister,
Heroes reanimate, and women weep
For his love.
He stole the young echoes of the mountains,
The song of longing,
He kidnaps from the naive Venus’s lips
The word of love.
On mountains in the fog, on rocks of crimson,
He sought
A white virgin, to be his twin,
And he found you.
You are the twin sister of the songs,
Their soul,
The king of hearts must resemble you
Like a dream with longing.
In you, it’s visible that there is in heaven,
A god,
Wearing symmetry and its mystery
In his thought.
Hand giving the strings to each other,
Hand in hand.
For in your soul, it found no others
The Calm King.
He sings with mourning, spilling sorrows
When crying out of love,
Let the worlds believe, let the stars believe
That it’s their rhythm.
As angels fly from star to star,
Storks fly, fluttering through their sorrows;
From the long mixed dances,
Storks raise their manly voices.
The harps in songs seem to shatter
When they moan with their souls, or sound an alarm.
The music of the spheres: Seraphim adore
The hearts of the worlds that surround them,
Dictating in songs of happiness
The rhythm of their stars to inspire them.
And as the colors that blend
Give birth to the white light of the sun,
So through the resonant voices
Flows this mystical, sweet song:
Ondine,
With eyes of sweet light,
With curls enveloped in gold,
Treasure!
Idea,
Lost in a pale face
From the plan of Genesis, racing
The whole!
To revive the living
And the rock that time laughs at,
And all that is still in insensibility
In nature?
Come now,
For your eye is life and a shield,
And your soul, gentle magic
That revives.
To sing
What centuries were silent before,
And the high peaks of the mountains
To jump.
And from the blend of white dreams,
Among the dancing white beings,
It comes out like the song between sighs
The queen of the white queens of the night.
Her hair frames her face like gold,
The crown sneaks into its waves.
On a delicate and silvery lyre,
Her little hand tangles the strings lively,
And as from the days of the poetic, youth,
A miracle emerges,
Thus, through the notes of the love lyre,
Her voice trembles, sweetly light:
The lyre broken in the world,
The extinguished soul, soaked in a cloud,
Bitter mourning taken as a joke,
The truth a wizard,
It’s my trembling being
That passes into infinity,
Like a targetless lightning,
Like a head without zenith.
And from the torments that drown me,
I sip the pure wonder,
Like a swan bending
Above the frozen lake.
And with the deep death,
I exchanged the thoughts of life,
I was a vulture on a rock,
I am a cross on a grave.
What is the purpose of my life,
I ask my petrified soul?
My eye is dim, my lips are
Stained with the bruises of pain.
My cross seems thoughtful,
As if burning with the torch of my life,
And through the dark funeral veils,
I look at my dead face.
But when white fairies
Will gaze into my soul,
Ah! Think, think of me
That I once existed in the world.
A fairy murmur sadly unravels
In the serene silence of the hall,
Through the vault of the window, pompously arched,
The mandolin’s vibrating echo is heard,
And a light echo,
Thirsty for love,
Drowns in the strings of the mandolin,
Mad.
And his entire life, everything he gathered
From waves, mountains, and valleys,
All his youthful soul, all his precious heritage
He loses in his own strings.
Pouring it with longing,
Crying cheerfully,
He sings with honeyed lips
Sorrow:
“Why am I not a flower dried by the wind,
And pale like the forehead in death,
That pity loses through tomb crosses,
Crushed scent, without fate,
For then you would take me,
And count me
Think, how fleeting
A flower is.
But I am not, my child, but a love
Burning in a young heart,
A voice from lips ablaze with longing,
An empty, crazy mind,
And sweet incantation
On silver strings,
When my pale madness
Revives.
But I have a plain where flowers sway,
The field of my hopes.
There laughing dawns await you,
Weaving your crown of stars.
Bring through love
The thrill of life,
Into the field of hopes, come,
Ondine!”
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Julia Kalman 