Vyacheslav Ivanov and C.M. Bowra: a ... - UCL Discovery

Уединенная душа. 26
A close comparison of the translation with the original reveals that Bowra was
remarkably successful; although the second quatrain differs in some respects from the
original, as a whole his translation captures the spirit of Ivanov's poem, while preserving
its iambic metre and alternating feminine-masculine rhymes. In this way, through the
prism of another language and another culture, Bowra provided a faithful echo of
Ivanov's poignant cry on the loneliness of the soul, some thirty-five years after its first
publication.
The second example, ‘The Road to Emmaus’, has been chosen because this
poem was evidently a particular favourite of Bowra’s. We have already noted that it was
marked by him in his copy of the anthology Russkii Parnass; more significantly,
perhaps, it is the only work by Ivanov to be included in a bound collection of typed
poems, assembled by Bowra towards the end of his life and recently discovered in
Wadham College. 27
The Road to Emmaus
Now has the third day’s red sail come
To haven on its westering way;
In the soul – Golgotha, the tomb,
Dispute, and riot, and dismay.
26 Ivanov, Sobranie sochinenii, II, 370.
27 In 2004 two bound books of poems collected by Bowra were discovered by Cliff Davies in the library of
Wadham College, Oxford, and added to Bowra’s papers. The first manuscript book (undated), bound in
black leather with gold edges, contains a wide range of poems in different languages (Greek, Latin,
English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Russian), written out by Bowra in black ink.
Russian poets include A. Tolstoi, Pushkin, Lermontov, Fet, Tyutchev, Akhmatova, and Blok; the first two
Russian poems are copied out in transliterated Russian; later poems are copied out in Cyrillic (first in the
old, then in the new orthography, with some minor errors). The latest date of a poet’s death recorded in this
book is 1939. The second typescript book (undated), bound in a Bramptons Instantaneous Binder, contains
a similar range of poems in different languages; Ivanov’s ‘Put’ v Emmaus’ (typed with a few minor errors)
appears alongside works by other Russian poets, bound in alphabetical order (Annenskii, Bal’mont,
Gumilev, Esenin, Ivanov, Kazin, Lermontov, Mandel’shtam, Mayakovskii, Pasternak, Pushkin, A. Tolstoi,
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