Silentium

In Russian class today we read a poem by Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev, a lesser nineteenth century poet (he didn't manage to die in a duel, poor man, and thus could not be great).

And I got it. Okay, so first I looked up half the words, and then we dissected it line by line, but in the end I got it (though I'm not sure I agree...) and so I'm sharing it with you.

The style of this translation is more elevated than that of the original poem - and no wonder; it's Nabokov - but it's lovely and it rhymes.

Silentium
by Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev
translated by Vladimir Nabokov

Speak not, lie hidden, and conceal
the way you dream, the things you feel.
Deep in your spirit let them rise
akin to stars in crystal skies
that set before the night is blurred:
delight in them and speak no word.

How can a heart expression find?
How should another know your mind?
Will he discern what quickens you?
A thought once uttered is untrue.
Dimmed is the fountainhead when stirred:
drink at the source and speak no word.

Live in your inner self alone
within your soul a world has grown,
the magic of veiled thoughts that might
be blinded by the outer light,
drowned in the noise of day, unheard...
take in their song and speak no word.

A message from St. Nicholas

A very productive evening! I spent it reading through the Letterbox feature in old St. Nicholas magazines, January to August 1890.

St. Nicholas was the premier American children's magazine from 1873 until at least the 1920s, though it continued publication till the forties. The Letterbox has magazines from kids all over the world: lots from England and Scotland, one from Australia, one from Korea (but by an American) and one from Japan (by a Japanese boy), and one from a Finnish girl in Samarkand whose brother was a St. Petersburg cadet (for this was when Finland was part of Russia).

Most of the letters are from kids ten to fourteen years old, although occasionally a very literate six-year-old sneaks in. (One was studying long division in her kindergarten. Either the American educational system has declined precipitously, or she was a prodigy.) They're excellently written, and one wonders if they were edited; yet sometimes a letter riddled with errors sneaks in, so I don't know.

My Very Important historical insight: children in 1890 were obsessed with their pets. One had a white heron named Suds; another a hedgehog; another chipmunks, another thirty-two mice, and quite a lot had horses. One blood-thirsty young lady wrote of dropping a scorpion on an anthill and watching the ants rip it apart.

I think I'm going to have to modify my original plan of study. Occasionally the kids send in stories or drawings or descriptions of their games (May A. W. and her sister, girls after my own heart, made royal courts of roses and begonias, and beheaded the courtiers whenever they grew tiresome), but I'm not sure there will be enough to talk about Imagination and the Creative Drive - mostly it's pets and games.

Lastly: from the October 1890 issue, a photo by Wallace G. Levison, "Taken of the Fly." I thought it quite lovely.