Byronic
Gavin Ewart
Choiseul and Talleyrand Charles Johnston (The Bodley Head £5.25) CharlCharles Johnston now has four recent es of verse to his credit — Poems and Journeys (1979), Rivers and Fireworks (1980), Talk of the Last Poet (1981), as well as this one. All of these combine transla- tions with his own original poems. He is also the author of a universally praised translation of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin. As a translator, he favours late Latin writers and Russian Romantics (Pushkin and Lermontov). To enjoy the translation of Paulinus, in the penultimate book, you have to be very fond of history and geography — the kind of person who likes, family trees and the more boring genealogical bits of Shakespeare's plays. But 'The Bronze Horseman' is a very dif- ferent matter. Johnston has completely mastered the Byronic (Don Juan) style, light, free and easy, but very expressive (the flooding of Petrograd is as fine a descrip- tion as that of the shipwreck in Don Juan). Randomly rhyming, not stanzaic, the translation uses at times, not inappropriate- ly, the vocabulary of romantic pbetry ('rai- ment', 'pellucid') — though the rhyming of `retching' with 'stretching' is not happy. The verse moves well, with great vitality, and this is a splendid achievement. We still listen to lengthy 19th-century symphonies, but we don't read verse narratives; more's the pity.
The present book, Choiseul and Talleyrand, contains two classical haikus translated from the Japanese and an elegiac original piece, 'The Pilot':
They found him in his Spitfire some days ago and buried him with honour. He was nineteen, an only son. His parents are dead long since, but on my cheek their tears still run hot.
This is the 'Greek' epigram, well handled. `Choiseul' is a longish 'historical novella' of
600 lines or so, based on Choiseul's own posthumously published memoirs, at times a little verbose and pedestrian (`Now peace was cobbled up at Aix-la-Chapelle' is a line with muted undertones of 1066 and All That) but not without interest — you learn something new every day, particularly if it's French 18th-century history. This is palace intrigue, concerning Choiseul's brush with la Pompadour, not without humour 'We/ parted with promises of secrecy/ which neither of us kept'. `Talleyrand' is a pendant, the commentary on these events of the old diplomat, after the revolution, when he is the French ambassador and liv- ing in Portland Place.
`Ammian' is a dramatic monologue in blankish verse, purporting to come from the pen of the 4th-century historian Am- mianus Marcellinus, miles quondath et Graecus, one of Gibbon's sources. The poem is good on imperial magnificence and conspicuous consumption (the entry of Constantius 11 into Rome a little like `The barge she sat in . . .' in feeling). Another ex- ample of this descriptive richness:
Sometimes, at dinner parties, scales are called for, to weigh up fish and fowl, yes, even dormice, their weights are constantly repeated, praised as records, while thirty secretaries or so attend complete with pen-cases and waxen notebooks to take down the particulars.
Like Jacobean dramatic verse (and the Cena Trimalchionis). But who are these `unspeakable Alans'? Ross, Coren,Brown- john, Jenkins?
After what is ponderous, what is jolly. His fine rhyming translation of Pushkin's Graf Nulin is, again, Byronic and beautiful- ly done. `Tarquin' and `win' are uneasy rhymes, because the stress comes on the first syllable of Tarquin. But such minor blemishes are not important:
Natalya Pavlovna at last rises: 'Good night! our beds are waiting.
Sleep well!' He stands up, quite upset, our Count, with half-lovelorn regret kisses her hand. And on my honour (whatever next?) that wicked tease may the good Lord have mercy on her - silently gives his hand a squeeze.
This is light verse of a very high standard (Prior as much as Byron).
`Mozart and Salieri' is less impressive, a translation of Pushkin's verse duologue; but this too is worth having, as one of the best known versions of the apocryphal story of the poisoning. On this evidence, this dramatic poem is not the equal of Pushkin's best work. But certainly, in the case of `The Bronze Horseman' and Eugene Onegin (and `Count Nulin' too), we must be overwhelmingly in the translator's debt. He obviously has real sympathy with Pushkin; at once the verse becomes lively, and his ability to do justice to the original is plain.
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