THE BOOK OF POEMS IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY ... - TopReferat

description is largely colored by negative images (замызганные деньги/soiled money,
черный день/black (rainy) day, духота/stuffiness, мрак/gloom), the people who once
lived in the house are portrayed with a similar balance. They both argue and are
reconciled with each other (ссорились, мирились, line 13), they both are born and die
(рождались, умирали, lines 18-19).
This reciprocal pattern of human activity, once hidden behind the solid walls of
the house, is now openly exposed to the casual passerby (все теперь/Прохожему
открыто, line 19). Over the course of the poem, the speaker will similarly reveal the
cycle of human existence—the path of the grain set out in the book’s title poem—to the
reader. Darkness will give way to light, death to rebirth and regeneration.
The first sign of this revelation comes with the speaker’s heightened, almost odic
tone in describing the wanderer who visits the house (lines 20-31):
О, блажен,
Чья вольная нога ступает бодро
На этот прах, чей посох равнодушный
В покинутые стены ударяет!
Чертоги ли великого Рамсеса,
Поденщика ль безвестного лачуга—
Для странника равны они: все той же
Он песенкою времени утешен;
Ряды ль колонн торжественных, иль дыры
Дверей вчерашних—путника все так же
Из пустоты одной ведут они в другую
Такую же…
O blessed is the one
Whose willful foot steps boldly
On this dust, whose indifferent staff
Strikes the abandoned walls!
The mansions of great Ramses,
Or the hovel of an unknown worker—
To the stranger they are all the same: always by the same
Song of time is he consoled;
Whether there are rows of ceremonial columns, or holes
Of yesterday's doors—all the same
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