An Anthology of Czechoslovak Literature/Smetana's Quartette "From My Life"
Smetana’s Quartette “From My Life”
I
Amid the bustle of the throng I staggered . . .
The seats clattered, and the lamp-bulbs muffled
Their bluish glimmer. Mingled fragrances
Floated above the jostle of living creatures
From shawls in which the ladies wrapped themselves . . .
Still in the practice-room the pizzicato
Of a violin sobbed tenderly near by
Beneath the player’s finger; he was flushed with
The tempest of applause; with toying lilt
Echoing laughter shook; a lackey’s voice
Was hoarsely raised; a girl’s voice cooed and chirped;
And a broad stream of townspeople suddenly
Began to surge along the corridors
With carpet-muffled gait . . .
The night was clear,
The azure frosty sky breathed on my face,
And piercing was the glisten of the snow.
There in a torrent from the staircase swayed,
Blurred masses of a motley city crowd.
Cabs clattered on and carriage doors were slammed,
Somewhere the ambling trot of horses faded,
Merged in bewildering hubbub of the streets.
O marvellous, O magical quartette,
Setting the soul astir as genius doth,
Urging the spirit on to manful endeavour!
The mighty breath of it is still with me;
Ardour, youth's tempest, blitheness, melancholy,
Laden with wistfulness and pondering,
Dreams of young escapades, and delicate,
Winsome musters of words that brim with love,
Placid noblesse and then harsh storms again
Singly the strains unloosen in my soul:
And then, that note that ends itself in horror,
As if it were left hanging on a height . . .
He quitted life with wise submissiveness,
When he had heard but this one lofty tone,
When voice of friends he caught not, nor could hear
The thunder of the orchestra , nor had heard
Even if earth were riven with a crash,—
He who heard not the tune of his own poor hands,
When the lights glowed above a marvelling throng,
He who heard not acclaim nor mockery,
But only with sorely ailing brain tracked all,
And to its time-beats let his baton swing
Above the busy giant orchestra,
And tracing out the agile and mute movements,
In sheer conception of the manifold strains,
He stood there in his dead, unmoving calm.
O master, master, this thy mighty song
Wherewith we go to trade in mighty marts,
With which we thrust our art upon a booth,
God's pity, is not completed, not completed,
In it is missing yet thy final outcry
Of one who in the midst of treacherous gloom
Is grappling with his dreadful malady,
And snatches convulsively at creative moods,
Snatches at moments in his soundless void,
Snatches at light in his dismantled brain,
And gropes for cadences, but on a sudden
They slink away like sullen, sneering lackeys,
Who pillage a palace, setting it aflame,
Abandon it and leave their master crazed
And in a fearful bankruptcy of mind
Stretched headlong in some room upon the floor. . . .
There is no whit of gibing at those dogs
Who dragged thee through their folly and abasement,
Setting a felon scal upon thy ruin,
It utters no rebukes on those by whom
Thou wert from Göteborg welcomed with affronts,
O master, in this deathless song of thine,
The dreadful end of thy benighted brain
That dashed itself against a madhouse wall,
The ending of the end is missing there,
’Tis missing there, ’tis missing there, O master,
My master, pardon, but ’tis missing there. . . .
A Shattered Soul (1896)
This work is a translation and has a separate copyright status to the applicable copyright protections of the original content.
| Original: |
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1931. The longest-living author of this work died in 1928, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 97 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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| Translation: |
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1931. The longest-living author of this work died in 1970, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 55 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse |
