The mystery of one famous poem by Heinrich Heine

We will talk about one poem known to everyone from school, translated by M.Yu. Lermontov

“In the wild north...”
One day I discovered on the Internet an interesting humorous translation of the famous
Poems by Heinrich Heine:

Heinrich Heine Mikhail Lermontov Fedor Tyutchev

Western Wall and Dome of the Rock Mosque in Jerusalem

"Daniel Kogan
Heinrich Heine.
Fichtenbaum (free translation)
This is, in fact, my very first translation, if it can be called a translation at all. Completed about 15 years ago. I had just started learning German then.
For those who don’t know German at all, I’ll explain: “Fichtenbaum” is German for “pine”, and the word is masculine. So Mikhail Yuryevich made a big mess with his “Sosna”. So I decided to help him.
Fichtenbaum stands sad
On the northern wild peak.
He is young, handsome and impudent,
What else does a man need?
He dreams of the beautiful Palm
Under the furious sun of Sinai,
Which is just as sad and passionate
He looks north, fading.
That’s exactly how I read Heine, that’s how I understood this poem. This is my very reading that I translated, in my opinion, it turned out funny. At least, more or less logical. You see, at least I was able to convey this understanding to you, which means that my efforts were not in vain.
It’s hard to say what Heine meant, but, in my opinion, it’s about the same as what I mean. But I still don’t understand what Lermontov meant. Why does a pine tree dream of a palm tree? Heine didn’t seem to talk about sexual Mensheviks.
Next. Where exactly does Palm grow? Heine - in a country called Morgenland. This word is translated from German unambiguously: Middle East. Near, you understand, and not distant at all, not at all the Land of the Rising Sun, like Lermontov. Where do you think a person with the surname Fichtenbaum and with such a pedigree as Heine should have strived for, what country should he dream of? Not about Japan, like Lermontov.
What do you think of this passage: “And she slumbers, rocking, and is dressed in loose snow like a robe”? Sorry, one of three things: either the pine tree is dormant without swaying, or the snow is not loose, but sticky, or it is not dressed in snow as a chasuble.
No, no matter what you say, Lermontov was still a useless translator. Or, let’s just say, this translation didn’t work out for him.
Actually, Lermontov simply did not need to translate anything, since a long time ago there was a magnificent folk translation of this poem - the song “Why are you standing swaying, thin rowan.”

As you know, there is some truth in every joke. Let's try to understand this issue.
It was Heinrich Heine who came up with the aphorism that
No matter whose translations you read,
They are the likeness of a wife:
If they are true, they are ugly,
If they are beautiful, they are unfaithful.
(translation by M.K.)
To begin with, let us recall the biography of G. Heine.

HEINE Heinrich (originally Chaim, also Harry; Heine, Christian Johann Heinrich; 1797, Düsseldorf - 1856, Paris), German poet, prose writer, publicist. He grew up in a family imbued with freethinking and deism, but observing Jewish traditions, and in a city where laws on equal rights for Jews, adopted during the French Revolution, were in effect. Heine's father Samson (1764-1828), an unsuccessful merchant, had little influence on the children's upbringing, which was supervised by their mother, the educated and domineering Betty (Peyra, née van Geldern; 1771-1859). She took Heine from a private Jewish school and sent him to a school at a Franciscan monastery, and in 1808 to a French lyceum. The poet's freedom-loving character and oppositional sentiments were formed under the sign of admiration for the ideals of the French Revolution and for Napoleon, whom Heine for many years considered a disseminator of her ideas (“Book of Legrand”, 1827). Heine first encountered the lack of rights of Jews in Frankfurt, where his father sent him in 1815, trying to introduce him to commercial activities. The attempt was unsuccessful, like the subsequent ones undertaken in 1816-19. Heine's uncle Solomon (1767-1844), a wealthy Hamburg banker. During these years, Heine created the first cycles of lyric poems. Having decided to make his nephew a lawyer, his uncle subsidized Heine’s studies at the law faculties of the universities of Bonn, Berlin and Göttingen (in 1819-25), where the poet even received a doctorate in law. However, A. W. Schlegel's lectures on the history of literature at the University of Bonn (1819-20) and the philosophy courses of G. W. F. Hegel at the Berlin University (1821-23) occupied Heine more than jurisprudence. In Berlin, in the salon of Rachel Farnhagen von Enze (née Lewin; 1771-1833), Heine became close to L. Börne and other future leaders of the Young Germany literary movement. In 1821, the poet published the first collection of lyrics. At the same time he became a member of the Society for Jewish Culture and Science (founded in 1819 by E. Hans /1798-1839/, L. Zunz and others), which pursued educational and reformist goals. However, in travel notes about Poland in 1822, Heine argued that the Orthodox Jews of Eastern Europe were more worthy of respect than their reformist Western compatriots. During these years, he began writing the story “The Bacharach Rabbi” (graduated in 1840) about the life of the Jewish community in the 13th century, struggling with the blood libel.
In 1825, Heine converted to Lutheranism in the hope of gaining access to government or university service. Apostasy became a source of remorse and grief for Heine throughout his life; immediately after baptism, he wrote: “I wish all renegades a mood similar to mine.” Having become a Christian, Heine continued to remain primarily a radical for the German authorities and was never allowed to hold any position. Since 1826, Heine devoted himself entirely to literary creativity. His innovative Book of Songs (1827) and Travel Pictures (vols. 1-4, 1826-31) aroused the admiration of readers and had a significant influence on European literature. Heine's poems affirmed in poetry a deep feeling instead of the fashionable sensitivity of the epigones of romanticism. Romantic irony, sometimes even mockery, aimed at one’s own feelings and experiences, deprived them of their halo and made them even more humanly understandable. Heine gave German verse the melodiousness of a folk song, rhythmic energy and epigrammaticity, and introduced into it the intonations and turns of everyday speech. In the prose of "Travel Pictures" the lightness and ease of language was combined with the significance of thought, the improvisational nature of descriptions was combined with the caustic accuracy of the characteristics of the political life of Germany, Italy, England and with the breadth of social generalizations. The poet identifies his personal deprivation with the social injustice reigning in the world (“the world was split in two, and a crack passed through the poet’s heart”), and he sees the path to equality and freedom in the fight against any form of political, economic and spiritual oppression.
The rampant German reaction after the July Revolution of 1830 in France, the persecution of censorship and the threat to personal freedom forced Heine to emigrate in 1831. Until the end of his days he lived in Paris, from where only twice (in 1843 and 1844) he traveled briefly to Hamburg. Heine became close to the most prominent French writers, inspired the struggle of German radicals for democratic freedom, and became interested in socialist teachings, especially Saint-Simonism. F. Lassalle, K. Marx and others are seeking his friendship. With his appearances in the German and French press, Heine gained fame as a publicist on a European scale and the creator, along with L. Börne, of the German feuilleton genre. Heine’s articles and essays formed books that played a huge role in the cultural and ideological exchange between France and Germany, despite the ban on all of Heine’s works by the all-German Union Assembly (Diet) in 1835. Heine’s political poems of these years (“Modern Poems”, 1843- 44, poem “Atta Troll”,
1843, and “Germany, a Winter's Tale”, 1844) - a caustic satire that denounces philistinism, the Prussian military, German nationalism, and the selfish aspirations of false revolutionaries. In the pamphlet “Ludwig Börne” (1840), Heine exposes the limited views of the leader of Young Germany (which caused the break of most of its representatives with the poet). During these years, the antithesis of “Hellenes” and “Nazarenes”, characteristic of Heine, was finally formed, an artistic generalization of the opposing forces, according to the poet, in world history. An ardent enemy of all dogmas, religious and party, Heine classifies Judaism and Christianity, political sectarianism and egalitarian ideals as “Nazareneism,” and attributes his unbiased and broad perception of life to the “Hellenism” inherent in his nature. At the same time, Heine recognizes the important historical role of Judaism in developing the principles of justice and freedom. He states: “The Greeks are only handsome youths. Jews have always been men, powerful, unyielding..."
Heine is not only contradictory in this regard. He is a defender of the disadvantaged, an “armed drummer of the revolution” - and an aristocrat of spirit, aesthetically appreciating life and avoiding contact with rough everyday life; he is an adherent of socialist teachings and revolutionary movements - and a thinker who foresees in the victory of communism “the captivity of our entire new civilization” and the death after the revolution of the best of its Jewish participants. Equally complex is Heine’s attitude towards Judaism and his own Jewishness. A convinced atheist, then a pantheist, he hated all religion, rejected Judaism, especially because Christianity emerged from its depths, which the poet regarded with disgust. But his aphorisms are full of pride: “The Bible is the portable fatherland of the Jew”; “The Jews are made of the same stuff that gods are made of.” Heine also wrote: “If pride in origin befitted a warrior of the revolution and did not contradict my democratic convictions, I would be proud that my ancestors came from the noble house of Israel...” He peculiarly connected his struggle with the fate of the Jews: “At the same time I am persecuted by Christians and Jews; the latter are angry with me because I do not join the battle for their equality in Baden, Nassau and other holes. O myopic ones! Only at the gates of Rome can Carthage be defended.” The Damascus affair prompted Heine to speak out directly in defense of Jewish rights. In Lutetia (1840-47) he exposes French intrigues in Syria and condemns the Jews of France for their indifference to the fate of their fellows. And towards the end of his life he recognizes Moses as a “great artist” who “built pyramids and erected obelisks not from basalt or granite, like the Egyptians, but from people; he took a poor sprout and created from it... a great, eternal, holy people... capable of serving as a prototype for all humanity..."
In 1848, a serious illness confined Heine to his bed—a “mattress grave.” But his creative spirit was not broken. During these years, he turned from adogmatic pantheism to faith in “a real personal God, existing outside of nature and the human spirit.” And although he writes about this with a grin, as well as about his transition from “Hellenism” to “Nazareneism” (“Confessions”, 1853-54), these changes reflect not only Heine’s grief at the small fruits of the revolutions, but also his search for a more lasting spiritual support. Among the poems of these years, “Jewish Melodies” (the title is borrowed from Byron) stands out with its unusual seriousness and warmth of tone. This cycle of poems, included in the book "Romancero" (1851), includes, along with the tragicomic "Disputation", such deeply lyrical works as "Princess Shabbat" and "Yehuda ben Halevi", in which Jewry is glorified as a high good and source moral strength. In one of his poems, Heine writes with bitterness that the Kaddish will not be sounded on the day of his death.
Heine's Jewishness, which he, unlike L. Börne, always felt keenly, can serve as an explanation for many features of his work. His skepticism opened the way to bold thought and independent judgment; nihilistic denial of generally accepted values ​​and caustic sarcasm destroyed conventional wisdom. Having penetrated, like no other contemporaries, into the very essence of German social, political, spiritual life, sincerely rooting for the fate of Germany, Heine nevertheless perceived German events from the standpoint of universal humanism and measured them by a universal human measure. This is perhaps one of the reasons for the enormous influence of his work on world poetry, while German literature itself adopted mainly Heine’s discoveries in the field of form. And although some of his poems became folk songs (“Lorelei” and others), his works least of all represent the embodiment of German national character or spirit. Anti-Semites of all times understood this: from the liberal poet A. von Platen, who called Heine “that little Jew,” to the Nazis, who removed Heine’s books from libraries and burned them in order to erase even the memory of him. They all saw in him first of all a Jew, and only then a poet.
Heine's works have been translated into almost all languages ​​of the world. A number of editions of his complete works have been published in Russian. Among the translators of Heine's poems are M. Lermontov, F. Tyutchev, A. Blok, P. Weinberg, L. Ginzburg, Yu. Tynyanov, S. Marshak. Heine's poems were translated into Hebrew by D. Frishman and I. Katsenelson, and prose by Sh. Perlman (1887-1958). The world's greatest composers (R. Schumann, F. Schubert, F. Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, E. Grieg, A. Rubinstein and many others) wrote music to Heine's poems.

Next, we will get acquainted with the opinion of scientists about the poem that interests us.
Academician L.V. Shcherba
Experiments in linguistic interpretation of poems. “Pine” by Lermontov in comparison with its German prototype (Soviet linguistics, Vol. II, Leningrad Scientific Research Institute of Linguistics, 1936).

...Lermontov’s poem, put in the subtitle, was chosen by me because it is a translation of Heine’s poem “Ein Fichtenbaum stellt einsam”. Thanks to the presence of a term for comparison, the expressive means of both languages ​​are thus much easier to detect, which confirms my other, also repeatedly expressed, idea about the importance of knowledge of foreign languages ​​for a better understanding of the native language. Only, of course, not the intuitive knowledge obtained from governesses, but the conscious knowledge obtained as a result of persistent reading of texts under the guidance of an experienced and intelligent teacher.
Duchesne calls Lermontov's translation accurate, and indeed, from a formal point of view, it can be called quite accurate. In the future, through a detailed linguistic analysis, I will try to show that Lermontov’s poem, although beautiful, is a completely independent play, very far from its quasi-original.
Ein Fichtenbaum steht einsam In the wild north it stands alone
Im Norden auf kahler Höh! There's a pine tree on the bare top
Ihn schläfert, mit weisser Decke And dozes, rocking, and falling snow
Umhüllen ihn Eis und Schnee. She is dressed like a robe.
Er träumt von einer Palme, And she has a dream that in a distant desert,
Die fern im Morgenland In the land where the sun rises,
Einsam und schwelgend trauert Alone and sad on a fuel cliff
Auf brennender Felsenwand. A beautiful palm tree is growing.
Fichtenbaum, which means “fir,” was translated by Lermontov as pine. This is not surprising, since in the Russian-German dictionary tradition Fichte is still translated through pine, just like the word Kiefer and vice versa - fir and pine are translated through Fichte, Fihtenbaum (cf. “Russian with German and French translations , dictionary" Nordstet, 1780-82). In Germany itself, the word Fichte in many places is used in the sense of “pine,” and, in all likelihood, Heine meant “pine” by Fichtenbaum. For the image created by Lermontov, pine, as we will see later, is not entirely suitable, while for Heine the botanical type of tree is completely unimportant, which is proven, by the way, by the fact that other Russian translators translated Fichtenbaum with cedar (Tyutchev, Fet, Maikov) , and others even oak (Weinberg). But it is already quite obvious from these translations that the masculine gender (Fichtenbaum, and not Fichte) is not accidental and that in its opposition to the feminine gender Palme it will create an image of male unsatisfied love for a distant, and therefore inaccessible woman, Lermontov with the feminine gender of pine took away all of the image his love aspiration and turned strong man's love into beautiful dreams. Almost all other digressions in the Russian translation stand in connection with this.
In German, the psychological and grammatical subject is the first-place Fichtenbaum, which is thus the hero of the play. In Russian, pine is made a psychological predicate and, standing at the end of the phrase, seems to answer the question: “Who stands alone?” The answer is of little substance, since it does not explain anything to us; but now for us this does not matter - it is only important to emphasize that in Lermontov the pine is deprived of the effective individuality that it has in the German original as a subject.
Further, in Russian, in contrast to German, the adverbial words in the wild north are brought forward, thanks to which, instead of the restrained business tone of the German original, the tone is epic, the tone of a complacent story.
In lexical terms, nothing significant can be objected to Lermontov's translation. The addition of the epithet wild is quite acceptable, since it reveals the word north from exactly the right angle, emphasizing loneliness. The transfer to auf kahler Höh through on the bare top is completely legal, contrary to Duchenne, who thought that it was necessary to transfer on the bald top. After all, we say bare skull, bare tree, bare rocks, bare terrain, etc. (cf. “Dictionary of the Russian Language of the Academy of Sciences” of 1895),
Steht einsam would perhaps be better and more accurately translated stands alone or stands alone in order to more emphasize the formal nature of the verb stehen and put forward the idea of ​​loneliness as the main feature; however, Lermontov’s translation still does not distort the original in any way.
And he slumbers, swinging, as the translation of ihn schläfert at first glance, is also not too much of a departure, for swinging is introduced by natural associations with slumbering: as for the material side of the image, auf kahler Höh it is more than natural to assume the wind. Dozing instead of literally sleeping does not give the state an overly active character, since the very concept of “dozing” is devoid of this activity. However, the idea of ​​external forces causing drowsiness, forces indicated by the German impersonal form, still disappears in the Russian text; and this is due to the addition of the word swaying, directing the thought to the image of lulling, sweet slumber, which is absolutely not present in the original: ihn schläfert it would be better to translate it sleep, and this dream is not necessarily sweet. It is interesting to note that Tyutchev, even more than Lermontov, developed the idea of ​​sweet sleep and the idea of ​​wind (this latter not without some internal contradiction, as Sharov pointed out):

And the blizzard cherishes his sleep.
But Fet was more restrained and closer to the original:
He sleeps sternly covered
And snow and ice cover.
Also Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky (“Issues of the psychology of creativity” 1902, p. 142):
And dozes, and with a white cover
She was dressed in snow and ice.
It is also interesting to note that in both known rough drafts of the poem we are interested in, the word swinging appears: obviously, it was very suitable for Lermontov’s idea (see below).
The following phrase represents perhaps the central point for understanding the German poem, a place that Lermontov radically changed in connection with his mentality. In German, the cover (Decke) of pine trees forms ice and snow; in Russian - loose snow. It is obvious that the first constrains, and the second lies softly and can only contribute to the impression of a fairy tale, introduced by the words and dozing, swinging and aggravated by the robe that Decke has turned into, obviously sparkling in the sun. Lermontov is not embarrassed by either the wind, which is implied by his own insertion of the word swaying and from which the snow should fly away, or the pine tree, on which the loose snow does not stick in any way - he needs a beautiful poetic image that destroys the tragedy of the German original, and he paints it for all of us the familiar, delightful, albeit somewhat melancholy, appearance of a spruce tree, thickly sprinkled with light snow that sparkles in the sun
That for Heine the images of Eis und Schnee were more important than the weisse Decke is clear from the word order, from the fact that he made the grammatical subject Eis und Schnee a psychological predicate (cf. Der neue Direktor kommt heute and Heute kommt der neue Direktor): “ “ice and snow cover it with a white cover” sounds an accurate, more or less guessed by Fet and Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky (see above) translation, which shows unequivocally that Fichtenbaum is not only alone, but also in severe confinement, deprived of his ability to act ( cf. impersonal form - ihn schläfert).
In the second stanza, almost all translators I know understand er träumt as “she dreams” or “sees in a dream” (only Maykov translates dormant and sees), that is, they translate a personal construction - impersonal and do not want to understand träumen as “dream.” Meanwhile, the presence of this meaning in German is undoubtedly (cf. Goethe, W. Meist., 6; Mein geschäftiger Geist konnte weder schlafen noch träumen; in Schiller, HofEnung: Es reden and träumen die Menschen viel von besseren künftiger Tagen (Heyne, Deutsches Wörterbuch). It should be noted that this meaning is expressed exclusively by a personal form, while the meaning of “dreaming” can be expressed both personally and impersonally (for examples, see Heyne, Deutsches Wörterbuch). I believe that the personal use of the verb träumen is in the sense of “. to see in a dream,” and in connection with this the very meaning of “dream” developed not without the influence of the French rêver: both apparently date back to the 18th century. In French rêver tr between the meaning of “voit en rêve pendant le sommeil” and the meaning of “imaginer comme dans un rêve” (see Hatzfeld, Darmesteter, Thomas, Dictionnaire Général) there is no such gap as in Russian between “see in a dream” and “dream”. I believe that there is none in German either (see). . Heyne, Deutsches Wörterbuch; “In freierer Bed. von Gedanken und Einbildung, wie im Traume: “ich träume nicht, ich wähne nicht”, Goethe, Werther, II”) and that therefore personal träumen, as opposed to impersonal, is not always possible. see translation in a dream; it actually has a more general undifferentiated meaning “to dream, imagine (in a dream or in reality)”, being realized in different ways depending on the context. In this case, in view of the ihn schläfert of the previous stanza, er träumt, apparently, is realized in the sense of “dreaming half asleep, in oblivion” or “dreaming,” as Sharov translates.
In any case, the translation dreams of its impersonal form, emphasizing the independence of action from personal will, is incorrect and distorts the image of Heine in the same direction in which it is distorted by replacing Fichtenbaum with pine, that is, depriving it of a strong-willed orientation. This continues further in that the original's precise reference to the immediate object of dreams (von einer Palme) is replaced by a long subordinate clause about finding a “beautiful palm tree” somewhere. It would be more accurate in this case, if it is not correct that he dreams of one palm tree, then at least she dreams of one palm tree, almost as we find in one of the draft versions, but from which Lermontov, apparently, deliberately retreated in the final edition.
Fern translated in the distant desert. Since the palm tree is generally associated for us with the desert, and since auf brennender Felsenwand really gives reason to talk about some kind of sultry, menacing desert, this increase is generally quite legitimate. However, Lermontov did everything to not only neutralize this desert, but even turn it into the service of his idea: he provided it with the epithet distant, thus turning the real desert into a legendary fairy-tale and desirable country, and further developed the whole expression in the land where the sun sunrise, an expression that translates the laconic German im Morgenland and which, in its verbosity, also resembles a fairy-tale style. Therefore, the translation in one of the draft versions of the distant eastern land undoubtedly not only more literally, but also more accurately conveys the dry and poor associations of fern im Morgenland of the original, although in this version, the transformation of the independent German fern into an epithet far to the eastern land weakens the impression. The fact is that the German adverb fern, apparently, does not have that romantic halo, does not evoke those sweet feelings that are associated with the Russian distant (and perhaps with the German adjective fern, cf. examples in Heyne, Deutsches Wörterbuch) . As for Lermontov's final version, it is undoubtedly made in an epic, fairy-tale tone and, apparently, quite deliberately creates a complacent mood.
That in the last two verses of trauert is conveyed through the descriptive verbal expression sad is growing, there is, of course, absolutely nothing wrong with this; but to be sad is a bad translation for trauern: Russian sadness has a lot of sweetness, which is not at all in German trauern. Heyne ("Deutsches Worterbuch") explains the word Traner this way: "tiefe Betrübnis um ein Unglück, niedergedrückte Gemütsstimnmng", and the verb trauern: "Trauer tragen, niedergedrückt sein". Consequently, again we see a weakening of the impression, the destruction of the tragic concept of the original.
Further, although schweigend remained without translation not without some reason (since in einsam und schweigend one cannot help but see hen dia duoin and since loneliness, of course, implies silence), however, in this impoverishment of expression one again has to see a weakening of the tragic inherent in German to the original. The arbitrary addition of the epithet beautiful to the palm tree works in the same direction, which is not justified in any way in the German text and enhances, like the spruce sparkling with snow, the fabulousness and poetry of Lermontov’s images.
The translation of auf brennender Felsenwani through on the rock inflammable evokes, on the one hand, a fabulous impression of this folklore combustible, and on the other hand, weakens the German brennend - “flaming” by many degrees. The fact is that the living meaning of the word flammable is “capable of burning, easily flammable.” The combination we use, combustible tears, is sometimes interpreted as bitter tears (see “Dictionary of the Russian Language of the Academy of Sciences,” 1895), and only philological education gives us an understanding of the word combustible as “hot, hot.” Our natural etymological instinct leads us rather to the verb to grieve, grieving, which, of course, is only an emerging Volksethymologie, which, however, takes away all effectiveness from the word. It was hardly different in Lermontov's time. In any case, neither the “Russian Dictionary of the Academy of Sciences” of 1848, nor Dal gives the meaning of “hot, hot”, which appears only in Grot in the “Russian Dictionary of the Academy of Sciences” of 1895, but, obviously, not as a living word.
Further, cliff, as in general, of course, the correct translation of the German Felsenwand, actually destroys the internal form of the German word: Wand, as the second part of a compound word, is applied to absolutely vertical cliffs (cf. Eigerwand in Switzerland, near Interlaken). Thus, Heine speaks of an impregnable rock, heated by the sun, and the whole image of Palme, die auf brennender Felsenwand trauert is revealed as the image of a dejected woman in severe confinement, in severe captivity. That in the German text the center of gravity lies precisely in the words auf brennender Felsenwand is clear from the fact that these words are placed after the verb, contrary to the formal rule, which would require the following word order; die auf brennender Fetsenwand einsam und schweigend trauert. But this is even more clear from the rhythm: the fact is that the syntactically closely related trauert and auf brennender Felsenwand are torn apart by the verse division and that the resulting enjambement highlights both elements, especially the last, which concludes the entire poem. And that the internal form of the original was not suitable for Lermontov can be seen from the fact that he replaced his rough sketches on a hot rock and on a wild and sultry wall with fuel in the final edition.
From the linguistic analysis carried out, it follows completely unambiguously that the essence of Heine’s poem boils down to the fact that a certain man, shackled hand and foot by external circumstances, strives for a woman inaccessible to him and also in heavy confinement, and the essence of Lermontov’s poem is that that some lonely creature complacently dreams of some distant, beautiful and also lonely creature.
As a non-specialist, I will not delve into a historical and literary analysis of the ideas of both poems, but I cannot help but express some considerations. Heine's play is usually classified, together with all the poems "Lyrisches Intermezzo" in which it is included, as love lyrics inspired by Heine's unhappy love for his cousin Amalia. However, unlike the earlier cycle "Junge Leiden", where this love is reflected in a more personal form, "Lyrisches Intermezzo" can be characterized as the artistic translation of the personal into a more general and objective one (see Jules Legras, Henri Heine poete, 1897, p. 34-35). This is especially true in relation to our poem, since in it the palm tree is depicted as suffering, which in no way corresponded to the real state of affairs. Consequently, his idea cannot be considered simply as a motive for unhappy love in general, but rather one must see in it the tragic idea of ​​fatal constraint, which does not allow loving hearts to unite, “expression très générale et très vague de l"amour linpossible et lointain,” as Jules says Legras.
It remains unclear to me where the emphasis lies - on the idea of ​​fate, which fundamentally condemns a person to loneliness, or on the idea of ​​constraint, which ultimately allows for liberation from shackles. The first is one of the motifs of romanticism, to which Heine paid tribute in his youth. Apparently, this is how this poem was perceived by contemporaries and immediate descendants, and probably in connection with this is the curious fact that until 1885 it was set to music 77 times. It was translated into Russian 39 times, even without parodies. Heine himself, however, undoubtedly sharply ridiculed this idea in his “Der weisse Elephant”, and in a milder form, perhaps, in “Lotosblume”, where, however, other motives dominate.
The idea of ​​constraint is undoubtedly evident in our poem, but to what extent social protest is connected with it also remains unclear to me. Captivated by the contrast with Lermontov, who, as we have seen, carefully erased everything tragic in his translation, for a long time I saw real revolutionary pathos in Heine’s play. But it goes without saying that the contrast, convincing for Lermontov, says nothing about Heine: Heine’s “Pine” cannot be considered as the opposite of Lermontov’s “Pine,” and the most that can be seen in Heine is potential revolutionism, potential protest against social system, not fully realized, and therefore not clearly expressed, but which determined a certain perception of things.
Returning to Lermontov, we see, therefore, that the motive for human constraint is completely absent from him. The motif of loneliness, so characteristic of Lermontov’s poetry, is undoubtedly present, but it is not developed and, in any case, does not stand in the foreground; but a completely new motive appears: dreams of something distant and beautiful, but absolutely and fundamentally inaccessible, dreams that are therefore devoid of any effectiveness. This motif is widespread in Lermontov’s poetry. It is enough to point to the poem “Angel”, where he appears in his pure form. But it constantly sounds in different variations in a wide variety of things: it dominates in the poem “Sky and Stars”, it is heard in the phrase “It babbles to me a mysterious saga about the peaceful land from which it rushes” from the famous poem “When the yellowing field is agitated”, etc. . d. Various consequences from the same motive unfold differently in “Both Bored and Sad...”, and in “Sail”, and in “Clouds”.
Be that as it may, Lermontov’s conscious departure from the original in ideological terms seems to me, on the basis of a comparative linguistic analysis of both plays, undeniable; in particular, the replacement of the tragic tone of the original with beautiful romance also seems completely obvious to me. In this regard, I would also like to draw attention to some stylistic features of both works and their rhythm. Heine's poem is distinguished by extreme restraint of language: not a single superfluous word, which is why each word acquires amazing significance, which is connected with some of these rhythms (about which see below).
In Lermontov, on the contrary, we see the accumulation of epithets that are absent in the original: wild, rocking, free-flowing, distant, combustible. Although the word “far” corresponds to the word “fern” in the original, however, in Heine it is not an epithet. The word combustible is answered by the German brennend; however, this last, again, is not an epithet, but a very important definition, whereas Lermontov made a traditional folklore epithet out of it. Finally, Lermontov expanded the German Morgenland into a whole line in the region where the sun rises, in which, of course, the words where the sun rises is not an epithet, but gives the same impression as the accumulation of epithets, emphasizing in a single representation a whole series of its features Duchenne saw The drawback is this accumulation of epithets, and this is true from the point of view of translation, but it is completely incorrect from the point of view of Lermontov’s original poem, which should be considered his “Pine”. Indeed, it is precisely these epithets that create that fabulous charm that captivates us in the poem in connection with its main theme about the fabulously beautiful “far away”.
Let us draw attention in the article by Academician Shcherba to the fact that Duchesne believed that the correct translation should be not “naked”, but “ bald."

Here's another interesting scientific opinion:
Bulletin of Moscow University. Series 7. Philosophy. No. 6. 2006. pp. 42-55.
B.C. Khaziev
HERMENEUTICAL EXERCISES ON HEINE’S POEM “FICHTENBAUM”
1
The study of foreign literature faces two main difficulties - the accuracy of the translation of the text and the adequacy of its understanding. Familiarity with native literature automatically removes the first difficulty, but leaves room for the second, especially since one can argue for a long time about whether an unambiguous interpretation of the content (meanings, ideas) of a work of art is even possible. It is probably correct to strive to find out and consider all possible versions of the translation, from which the reader can choose the one that is closer to his spirit.
If the transfer is made genius poets and writers, then this is no longer a translation in the literal sense, but an independent work on the same topic and plot, only written in a different language.
For example, these are, in my opinion, the translations of M.Yu. Lermontov and F.I. Tyutchev's poem by G. Heine “Fichtenbaum” (“Spruce”). Let us immediately note that the translation also allows for any variant coniferous tree- pine, cedar, fir, juniper, etc. - which creates the possibility of maneuvering with grammatical genders in translations, which Lermontov and Tyutchev took advantage of, referring respectively to the concepts of “pine” and “cedar”. Mikhail Yuryevich’s poem is called “In the Wild North,” and Fyodor Ivanovich’s is called “From the Other Side.” In other collections of Tyutchev’s poems, its title is given at the beginning of the first line: “In the gloomy north...”. Even from the translations of the titles it is clear that the two poets achieve something completely different. And like any truly artistic works, these “wild north” and “gloomy north” evoke purely Russian associations and themes.
Of course, the accuracy of the translation also depends on the work being translated. Translating this poem is difficult because of its deep, varied, symbolic and metaphorical philosophical meaning, which requires sophisticated hermeneutic art, philosophical training and everyday maturity of the translator. If the work is descriptive and empirical in nature, then a transfer of the idea, form and content of the translated material close to the original is possible. In this sense, the translation by V. Levik, A. Blok and S. Marshak of another work by Heine, “Lorelei” (“Lorelei”), is indicative, where artistic differences do not distort the essence and content of the poem.
Let's consider how two brilliant Russian poets felt and translated Heine's famous poem.
Let's look at the source.
Note the lack of a title. No north - neither “wild” nor “gloomy”. If the title is given, as is customary, according to the first line of the poem, then we are talking about a single character. The indefinite “ein” further emphasizes the reference to a single subject. As we will see, this moment is significant for the accuracy of understanding Heine’s text. We are talking about one character, and not two, as is traditionally believed in Russian translations, although formally the text contains both a pine (cedar) and a palm tree, i.e. two things, but it may turn out that we are not talking about two separate objects, but, for example, about two states of the same thing.
Let's consider the option of M.Yu. Lermontov.
And the words and feelings of the German and Russian poets are very close. At first glance, this poem, like Heine’s, is about the love of a northern pine for a southern palm tree, which is also languishing in love’s sadness. This is also suggested by the fact that in German the word “Fichtenbaum” is masculine, and “Palma” is feminine. But in Lermontov’s version, if we remain with this opinion, there was a discrepancy: pine and palm are feminine nouns. If we give this poem the meaning of love flirtation in dreams, then we have to attribute the lesbian connotation to some verbal roughness and to the imperfection of the text by M.Yu. Lermontov. But this is naivety! Lermontov, I think, saw this “shortcoming” of the Russian translation very well. And if he wanted, he could easily find the Russian verbal equivalent of the masculine gender of the German “Fichtenbaum”. We believe that the Russian poet deliberately preserved this discrepancy in order to emphasize a different, deeper meaning of Heine Heine’s poem, more accurate, but hidden behind a metaphorical external form.
If we abandon this seemingly simple meaning of the plot, then Lermontov is talking about the sad thoughts of a lonely northern pine tree, about a sad eastern palm tree, about the kinship of lonely souls scattered around the world, some in the wild north, some in the desert. The “bare peak” and the “distant desert” are equally deserted. The pain and tragedy of loneliness - this is Heine’s idea, which M.Yu. felt. Lermontov, which apparently attracted his attention to this work. Then for him, the fact that “pine” and “palm” are both feminine only emphasizes that we are not talking about lyrical love sadness, but about the same fate of the “extra people” of society. Whatever their gender, they are equally rejected, doomed to loneliness in the crowd of rabble. This second version, in our opinion, more adequately reflects the content of the German original. But to understand this, it is necessary to clearly distinguish two layers in the text - external, superficial, ordinary, everyday, and internal, semantic, ideological, philosophical, which do not coincide.
The metaphorical nature of the text creates a single poetic field from two completely independent semantic plots.
F.I. Tyutchev decided to correct the flaw in the love (first) version of the translation and replaced “pine” with “cedar”. This translation turned out to be even more convincing.

FROM ANOTHER SIDE
In the gloomy north, on a wild rock
The lonely cedar turns white under the snow,
And he fell asleep sweetly in the frosty darkness,
And the blizzard cherishes his sleep.
He dreams about the young palm tree,
What is in the far reaches of the East,
Under a fiery sky, on a sultry hill
Stands and blooms alone...
Beautiful poems too. But the translation of the formal text is also not unambiguous, although it seems that Tyutchev sought precisely to limit the content of Heine’s poem to only the external love version.
Now it turned out very well. Tyutchev's poems could be taken as a refined translation of Lermontov's poem, if both works were not written in Russian, or one might think that Tyutchev did not know the original and proceeded from Lermontov's version. But with all this, there is a nuance. A northern romantic knight dreams of a young oriental beauty. “Gloomy” is perceived as a dark starry and moonlit night, and “wild rock” is full of romanticism. Where else, if not on a rock, and on a dark night under the stars and the moon, can romantics from the North dream about the sultry southern beauties of the East, who also dream about romantic knights from distant northern countries? The sadness of waiting for romantic love is the idea of ​​F.I.’s poem. Tyutcheva. Read it carefully and you will feel that Tyutchev’s version turned out softer, warmer, lighter, more tender, more soulful. This version satisfies the most demanding requirements of love lyrics. Look at the beauty of the lines, listen to the melody of the words, and it will become clear that Fyodor Ivanovich is talking about youth, about a young man who dreams of his wonderful future - about a fairy-tale princess. He still has everything ahead, his life is still snow-white, like a blank sheet. Life has not yet scratched its cruel truths of everyday life on it, has not had time to inspire apathy, unbelief and pessimism. In these dreams there is still no place for despair and lack of will. He still feels like a hero, capable of finding and saving his palm tree from the loneliness of existence, and humanity from injustice and troubles. Youth is always right, because there is still no evidence that it is wrong. They will accumulate later. Youth is beautiful and strong in hopes, in the belief that everything will come true sooner or later.
But the translation turned out to be removed from the deep meaning towards the external layer, everyday interpretation and perception of the text. The literal meaning clearly increased, but the feeling of pain, inspired by some vague premonitions, weakened. But in Tyutchev’s poem there is some kind of inconsistency, something is wrong, as evidenced by the element of tragedy that has not been completely eliminated. Lermontov had “roughness” in conveying the literal meaning of the text, while in Tyutchev “roughness” arises in connection with the internal, hidden meaning. First of all, this is the incompatibility of heavy words with unctuously sweet ones. In the first row are “gloomy”, “wild”, “lonely”. They should be smoothed under the “sweet dream”, “frost haze”, “young palm tree”, “distant limits”, “fiery sky”, “sultry hill” and “blooms”. It would turn out very, very cheesy, but logical. And so, as in Heine and Lermontov, another, secondary interlinear meaning appears, which is impossible to get rid of. Just like in the original, in Mikhail Yuryevich, in Fyodor Ivanovich, a certain tragedy shines through the outer shell of love. Lermontov emphasized this point with the “unsuccessful” selection of the gender of nouns, while in Tyutchev it arises due to the “conflict” of light and dark epithets. In our opinion, this is reflected in this
In this case, the “stubbornness” of the metaphorical nature of the original text directly suggests the need to see clearly unexpressed feelings underneath the external plot.
Another nuance that suggests that F.I. Tyutchev did not improve Lermontov’s version of the translation of Heine’s poem, but translated from the original. At the same time, like M.Yu. Lermontov, he knew exactly the true meaning of the original, but he was consciously more sympathetic to the love version, and not the tragic one, like Lermontov. This is evident from the title “From the Other Side,” which does not fit in with the erotic-lyrical version. Who or what is on the other side? Tyutchev made it clear that he knows the essence of Heine’s text, but he, the Russian poet, likes the version about love, and not about loneliness, about separation. This will become clear when we try to reconstruct the content that Heine himself put into this poem.
People always dream about what is inaccessible to them. They are characterized by romantic sadness about a beautiful unfulfilled life, about what did not work out, did not come true, did not take place, did not succeed, did not happen, did not come or passed by. Longing for an ideal that does not exist in the real flow of everyday life, which remains forever a beautiful, but unrealizable and illusory dream, remains a thing of the past, a thing of the past. There may be palm trees somewhere, but they are not about our honor. There are dreams, and there are also empty hopeless projections. They do not evoke sadness, but cause burning heartburn, like desires for the impossible. Heine could not return to his homeland physically, Lermontov could not return to the secular court society spiritually.
In both Russian translations, what I don’t like most is the pronoun “everyone”. I don’t know why, but this “everything” is annoying. There is no “everything” there, just as there is no “beautiful” palm tree that “blooms.” She is alone and silently “trauert”. What kind of “blooming” and “beautiful!” Palm tree in mourning! Who looks beautiful and blooms in sadness and grief? Yes, everything is wrong!
Let's look at the text. In the north, on a cold peak, a tree sleeps (“ihn schläfert”), exactly like that: in a passive-passive form, and not “it sleeps” or “it falls asleep.” It is no longer awake, it begins to fall asleep, the contours of reality are blurred, real outlines are shrouded in the dull fog of drowsiness, the outlines of things and people float away and become blurred, there is no clarity, external concreteness begins to get confused with visions and imaginary images. Gradually the real world mixes with the illusory world. The objective is mixed with the subjective, the conscious with the unconscious. “Ihn schläfert” means leaving this world, immersion in the world of unrealities, illusions, imaginary images, dreams, perhaps delirium.
And “north” is not written with a capital letter, because according to the context we are not talking about the spatial side of the world. In German, all nouns are written with a capital letter, whereas in Russian, “sever” may not be “North”.
"Ihn schläfert." Something is being done to him, perhaps against his will, perhaps out of necessity, something inevitable, inexorable, merciless. Outwardly (symbolically) it looks like wrapping a cedar tree in a white blanket with ice and snow, wrapping it and freezing it in transparent bark. The German language allows Heine to write that the culprits of the cedar’s trouble are Ice (Eis) and Snow (Schnee). That is, those whose names are usually not only written, but also pronounced “with capital letters", i.e. with special intonation and emphasis on significance. At the very least, these are proper names, and perhaps also the names of the rulers of this cold peak, where this Fichtenbaum ended up to his misfortune, perhaps to his destruction and death.
Ice and Snow wrap the tortured, unconscious Fichtenbaum in a white shroud, while he “traumt,” which could be translated either as “dreaming” or “having a dream.” But dreams are different: both prophetic, like insight, and painfully delusional.
Firstly, certainly not as she “dreams” (in Lermontov) and not as “he dreams” (in Tyutchev). Here Heine has just the active form - “er träumt”. Something happens to the character not due to someone’s external will, force or necessity. What happens here is due to internal reasons for one’s own state. Secondly, look at how Heine balances: “Er traumt”, and at the same time synchronously “Palme... trauert”. It is unlikely that dreams and dreams can generate an event for the mourning mood of a palm tree. This “träumt” is neither a dream nor a dream, but the dying delirium of a dying person (either a cedar, a pine tree, or someone else). The character here is a masculine object. In the German language there is an excellent correspondence between “man” as a particle denoting an indefinite personal noun, and “Man” - a person. (Why “Fichtenbaum” and not oak, for example, and not maple, or even better “man” - in German you can also find the name of other masculine trees, but this is a topic for a separate discussion.) What is important here is that Fichtenbaum got into an alien world (“Im Norden auf kähler Höh”), whose rulers Ice and Snow bound him (“umhüllen inn”). Here at the present time in foreign cold lands he (maybe a man named Fichtenbaum? After all, we have nothing strange man, whether a consultant or a historian, for some reason most often it is either a German or a Jew) who finds himself in mortal trouble, captured by an unusually harsh or even cruel force, surrounded and captured.
It is at this moment of analysis of the German text that some thought begins to arise somewhere in the depths of consciousness. Vague guesses turn into vague suspicions about the fact that there are two characters of rulers here - ice and snow. Isn't this old age with death? The same indissoluble couple. Some still unclear theme begins to weave into the current picture. She is still in the background and barely audible. Rather, it is not even a thought, but some kind of premonition of an unexpected turn of thought. Having stabbed in the heart, it goes away, and the mind returns to its previous track.
Fichtenbaum is surrounded by snow and ice. We don’t know what happened. Before us is the last act of the ongoing tragedy. The sentence has probably already been announced and carried out. We saw just a little of the ending—the final execution of the sentence. And we can only guess that this Fichtenbaum should not have strived for cold heights (“kähler Höh”)... Strangers are not welcome everywhere, or rather, they are not welcome anywhere. It is difficult for newcomers to make a career, especially at the top. A stranger always risks breaking his neck, ending up in solitary confinement under gloomy or whitish vaults (“weißer Decke” - an icy ceiling, of course, not white vaults at all) - a very real prospect for Fichtenbaums seeking happiness in foreign lands. Instead of a warm embrace at the peaks to which everyone strives, you can meet a very cold reception, you can even be wrapped (“umhüllen ihn”) in a shroud blanket (“weißer Decke”) of cold rejection and misunderstanding. You can even suffer innocently due to a miscarriage of justice or find yourself a victim of tyranny and despotism, and there will be no one to stand up for a foreigner who is looking for who knows what in foreign lands, among strangers.
The first four lines describe the eventual, external side of what is happening. The next four are dedicated to the internal state of a dying man, wrapped in an icy snow-white shroud. Again, two layers - external and internal, which again tell the reader the true semantic structure of the work, hidden behind the metaphorical opposition of what happens to the pine tree and what he thinks about it.
What will be the last wish of a dying person is not difficult to guess. Apparently, like normal people, the desire to see their native land at least for a moment at dawn, when the sun rises, when the light drives away the darkness, the desire to return at least for a moment to where everything is familiar, close and warm, to touch at least for a moment the very native and to a dear person, to someone who will be in pain, who will feel the same deadly loneliness when the news of your death comes, to someone who, in mourning, barefoot and in tears, will run beyond the outskirts, not noticing neither the hot sand of his native land under his feet, nor the blinding sultry sun on the vast blue vault of the sky. Repentance, belated regrets, a feeling of irreparable misfortune, the last “sorry”...
This semantic layer of Heine’s work is manifested in the fact that a lonely cedar, wrapped in a dense white shroud of ice and snow, slowly freezes in the white endless desert. And in his mortal sleep he sees a vision of a sad widow palm tree standing in black mourning on the hot sand in the brilliance of the sparkling and blinding eastern sun. And the image of the most precious thing in life appears. On his deathbed, the cedar thinks not about himself, but about the pain that his death will cause to the palm tree he loves when she is informed that she is a widow. And the physical pain recedes before the mental anguish from the thought that he hurt his dearest and most beloved person. He almost tangibly feels her pain, how she will suffer, not feeling either the hot sand with her bare feet, or the blinding brightness of the sun to the point of tears, burning not only her body, but also all her spiritual strength. These thoughts and feelings still hold the cedar at the threshold of death, warm it, for only love is stronger than death. Thousands of other meanings and nuances, associations and feelings, compassion and empathy are carried in the metaphorical nature of Heine Heine’s poem. This is how a dialogue arises with the essence of the poem and the essence of existence that is hidden in Heine’s words is revealed. The general tone of the outer layer of the poem is clear: the suffering of a loving heart from the incomprehensible accidents of fate. Why was he carried to this icy north, what did he lose there, instead of sitting at home where the sun rises... Isn’t this what the palm tree is crying about and reproaching him, cursing the incomprehensible element of fate and man’s inexplicable craving for wandering through the eternal and the endless expanses of existence. Now the unexpected title of Tyutchev’s translation becomes clear: “From the Other Side.” Cedar came from the wrong side and suffered from the tyranny of Ice and Snow. And on his deathbed, he remembers his widowed beloved, and visions come of how she will mourn for him.
A painful longing for the homeland of a person who finds himself in a foreign land by the will of fate or fate. The poet Heine, expelled from his beloved Germany and yearning for his homeland, like a true great artist, through the images of a lonely pine (cedar) and palm tree in mourning, expressed his everyday misfortune, his grief, his pain, the suffering of an exile. The feeling of loneliness took the minted form of a work of art about those who (be it a northern pine tree or a southern palm tree) found themselves a lonely exile in life. And their pain is the same, as is their fate.
This is roughly how this poem reads in the original. A brilliant poem in its simplicity of form and depth of content!
M.Yu. Lermontov caught this note of the life tragedy of a person thrown out of his native social environment. And he gave it his own sound. Although he was not an exile in the literal, “diplomatic” sense, he felt like an exile, a stranger among the secular mob. Loneliness occurs not only in a foreign land, as in Heine, but also in the homeland, as in Lermontov. Outwardly, different destinies are essentially consonant, because the suffering is the same. M.Yu. Lermontov seems to be saying with his poem: “We are different, but only externally, empirically, but the metaphysics of our destinies are identical, related.” Pine and palm trees are same-sex not only by genus, but, more importantly, by tragic fate. This is where the duality (binary) meaning of the poem, hidden in the metaphorical nature, stems from both G. Heine and M.Yu. Lermontov, and F.I. Tyutcheva. The simplicity of an artistic form is a material for expressing an idea, but this material can at the same time veil the essence, the isolation of which therefore requires, as we have seen, some hermeneutic effort.
I am not a poet, but the desire “without a veil” to express in Russian the tragic power of Heinrich Heine’s little poem has haunted me for decades. I wanted to eliminate what, in my opinion, is a misleading love context, lyrical verbal props. I wanted to do for the second layer what I did for the first F.I. Tyutchev. How many versions have I composed, starting with self-confident youthful ones and ending with sluggish and whiny old ones! None have satisfied and still do not satisfy.
My version, which is absolutely imperfect in poetic terms, more accurately conveys the meaning. This is how it seemed to me for several decades:
Enveloped in snow and ice, at the top
A lonely pine sleeps.
And I dream, perhaps, the last thing in my life -
Who will keep her memory alive?
And a palm tree is seen in white mourning,
She is sad and in tears.
The sand of the East, even the burning one, is powerless
Before the coldness of sadness in hearts.
For many years I nurtured this understanding as a more accurate and adequate interpretation of the idea, content and plot of Heine’s poem, without asking myself why I needed it. But my translation is not poetry, but a rhymed scientific treatise, because it is precisely the metaphorical quality that is missing that makes the simple verbal forms of a poem the property of high poetry. The poet does not convey the meaning, but paints a picture, as was done by Heine, Lermontov, and Tyutchev. The poet works with the first layer, leaving the second to the reader. This is the essence and difference between art and science. Through the images of pine (cedar) and palm trees, poets conveyed tender feelings of love and the tragedy of a soul suffering from loneliness. Real poetry should be so binary - simplicity of form and depth of content.
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It just so happens that the first reader and critic of almost all my works is my youngest daughter Natalya. When I read to her what I had written above, she listened with interest, thought for a while, and suddenly expressed something that had been a thorn in my brain for many years. Pine (cedar) and palm tree, ice and snow - two characters. There is something left unsaid in this. Something not entirely clear, incomprehensible, painful, metaphorical. This happens when you forget the right word, which is on the tip of your tongue, but is not pronounced. The fresh gaze of a new person, who has not yet drowned in the verbal quagmire of the text, sometimes makes what Epicurus called a “throw of thought”: he simply and clearly sees what corresponds to the essence. Natalya’s version is so simple and elegant that now I am haunted by the feeling of a life lived as a gift, of the uselessness of those long years during which I suffered over these lines.
In any version, there was something felt very, very close, but not understood, or rather, understood, but not expressed in the logic of concepts, understood metaphorically. Such an understanding of the essence is perceived as internal tension, as dissatisfaction, as a feeling of guilt for something imperfect, unfinished, unsaid, as some kind of dishonesty, as a feeling of unfulfilled duty, as deception, causing both shame and pain.
M.Yu. Lermontov and F.I. Tyutchev each read their half of G. Heine’s poem. They placed emphasis differently: one on tragedy, the other on lyricism.
But something third remained outside the brackets of both translation and understanding of the great poets. Heine presents not only the longing of an exile for his homeland, not only the pain of lonely people in any region and in any social environment. Heine writes about something else about himself, about something very, very personal; in order to understand it, you need to read this poem, looking with it not to the sides, but inward, into the soul of the poet himself. Such an understanding was glimmering in my brain, but it came to my daughter’s mind in a clear verbal form. Maybe because she is 36 years younger than me? Maybe in order to understand the true meaning of this poem, it was precisely the dialogue between old age and youth that was needed? I don’t know, but that’s the essence of it.
She grasped something that I could not reflect on, although a vague guess wandered. Heine is a poet, and he writes about himself, like all poets. He is tormented by some bitter thought about his fate, but not about its external circumstances, but about something internal, even more painful and tragic than emigration. I, like the poets, was led astray by these “Fichtenbaum” and “Palma”; it seemed to me that we were talking about two characters, although there was something awkward and incomplete about it. In Lermontov, this awkwardness is clearly visible: the pine tree is feminine, and it seems somehow indecent for her to fall in love with a palm tree. Why should a northern girl dream of an eastern beauty? In Russian this point is even clearer than in German, since both “pine” and “palm” are feminine. Tyutchev felt this and tried to correct the matter by replacing “pine” with the name of a masculine coniferous tree. But “cedar” and “palm” further hid the true meaning. The result was a full-fledged romantic dialogue between two lovers. Lermontov and Tyutchev also fell for this linguistic bait. I suppose they intuitively felt it too: there is something artificial in this text.
Natalya got the point. We are really talking about one character, although there are two terms. He is one, but there are two states. And to be honest, it seems that this option is the most successful of all, even if Heine never thought of anything like that. A poet shouldn’t have to think through everything discursively; that’s why he’s a poet, not a scientist. Intention, deep feeling, and subjective acuteness of feelings are enough for him. And the simplicity of genius lies in the fact that it now seems that Heine wanted to express exactly this and could not think of anything else. Natalia’s version is that ice and snow are illnesses and old age. A cedar dying of old age and disease remembers how beautiful and strong it was in its youth. The palm tree is a metaphor for our youth, when the sun of life is just rising, when there is not even a thought that fate can drive us into loneliness, from the cliff of which there is no longer any way down, back to the foundation of life, to the beginning of existence. We bask in the rays of hope for which there is no
quantitative or qualitative - the limit, even death in youth is perceived only as one of the possible options for solving life's problems.
But the poem is dual not because the poet intended to structure his work this way, but because in the poem he describes real life, which itself is binary, dual, where the external and internal form a metaphorical unity. In the morning of our life, at that time, when everything around (that annoying “everything”!) is still bright and beautiful, we are already in mourning, we have already taken the first steps towards old age and death, we have begun to collect this tragic harvest, but before from time to time we don’t notice or feel it. We must reach the heights of life, when cold old age envelops our heads in white, gray hair, in order to understand what we do not understand in our youth: we are all mortal from the moment of our birth, and most importantly, the distance to it is tiny. The sunrise announces the inexorable evening and inevitable sunset, followed by eternal darkness. Instead of the heat of the day, the coolness of the evening will come, and then the cold of the night. The darkness of the coming night is born along with the morning sun. Existence does not arise from non-existence, for they are born together, and over time they only change places. Youth and life are the most important metaphors, hidden within themselves their opposites - old age and death. The poem is metaphorical because life is metaphorical. Lermontov read the poem through the eyes of old age, and Tyutchev - through youth. They accurately translated different halves of the same poem, which could be called “Life and Death” or “Youth and Old Age”, and translated as follows:
Enveloped in snow and ice, lonely
There is a pine tree on top.
And fierce winds whistle over her,
And the abyss lies beneath it.
Sending a prayer to heaven, he wishes
To repeat that life at least for a moment,
Where the beautiful palm tree lived, that it does not know
Snow-covered mourning slabs.
It would seem that now everything has been said about the poem of only some eight lines. But...
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Let us draw attention to one more circumstance that must be taken into account when translating the meaning of this poem. If “Fichtenbaum” is decomposed into its component parts, realizing some artificiality of such an operation, into “fichte” and “Baum”, then “ficht” is a form of “fechten”, from the verb that forms the basis for both the word “swordsman” and the words "tramp" ("Fechtbruder"), as well as for the words "fight", "beat", "fight", "struggle" and ("fechtengehen") for the word "to wander". There are people who can’t sit at home: they were there in Antiquity, in the Middle Ages, and in modern times, and they still exist today. They strive to look beyond the horizon of the earth, and knowledge, and feelings, and reality, and time. This is the whole Western culture, which is directed forward, constantly chasing the receding horizon of progress. It is no coincidence that Europeans came to colonize the East, and not vice versa, although in the 15th century. China was the most powerful power in all respects - economic, political, military, maritime, scientific, etc. But oriental culture introverted, self-centered. Western culture is extroverted - it is directed outward in both spatial and temporal, cognitive, and practical senses. Returning to Heine’s poem, it becomes clear why the East did not colonize the West, but vice versa, although it had more opportunities. The Eastern merchant (traveller, vagabond, Fichtenbaum) felt uncomfortable in the cold West; he died here, yearning for his habitually furnished Eastern home. Here it was necessary to rush forward, and not be content with traditions. The West broke with the past in order to find itself in the future as the essence of culture itself, the essence of its soul. This is unacceptable for the East, for it it is death, it is a rejection of the human in man. The East prefers to be at home, where it is warm, light and calm. The West is looking for a storm and victory, without which it also feels dead, having lost the humanity in man. Heine expressed through his own feelings the essence of Western man, rushing forward, tragic in his essence, repenting at the threshold of death, which, however, cannot stop him.
In a small poem, Heine also felt what awaits the East if it accepts the culture of the West. In our opinion, he was wrong. But only in time. This may have been the case in Heine’s time, but not in the 20th century. In our century, the East has come to the West, mastered its technologies and is moving forward, because it has managed to preserve its traditional culture. The modern East has become Eurasianism (again a binary metaphor!), uniting both world cultures, while the West remains the same - one-sided and one-sided.
This is what Heine's poem is about - about the eternal and cruel confrontation between West and East, Youth and Old Age, Life and Death, Being and Non-Being, and not about the lyrical sentiments of a couple in love, although it is precisely this seemingly superficial layer of existence that attracts most people in life and in art.

Let us pay attention to the fact that the word " Fichtenbaum" turns out cognate with words meaning " tramp", "fight", "beat", "fight", " fight».

Now let's judge for ourselves. Let's leave aside the gender of the trees - everything is clear with this question, all translators (except M.Yu. Lermontov) are unanimous: it is he and she, the majority translates as “cedar”. It also seems to me that “cedar” is most suitable for “Fichtenbaum”, because they, like Jews, come in southern (Lebanese) and northern (Siberian) varieties.
Much more interesting question with Morgenland. In all the translations I have encountered, except for D. Kogan, they simply write the East, and Lermontov even writes “in the region where the sun rises,” i.e. Far East. But this is precisely what we are talking about Middle East ! And this is no coincidence for Heine given it biography. True, D. Kogan, in my opinion, slightly missed the mark: “Fichtenbaum” dreams not about Sinai, but about Zion! Zion is the southwestern hill in Jerusalem on which the city fortress stood. Hebrew צִיּוֹן‎, Tsiyon; etymology unclear, perhaps "citadel" or "hill fortification". Jewish tradition, starting with the ancient prophets (Jeremiah 31:20), compared it with the concept of qiyun, Hebrew. צִיּוּן‎ - milestone, reference point for return. For the Jews, Zion became symbol of Jerusalem and of the entire Promised Land, to which Jewish people strived since the dispersion after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple. Not the entire Middle East attracts him, but specifically Eretz Israel! The description of the desert leaves no doubt about this: it is not sandy, not the Gobi, not the Sahara, but rocky - the Judean Desert. The palm tree is not on a dune, but on a rock.
As for the North, this, in my opinion, is not just the North, but the Far North - the Arctic, where even the cedar is a rare guest (it stands alone). And now it’s time to remember that the “bare peak” is “ Bald Mountain" What does she have to do with it? Do you remember the popular song with lyrics by Leonid Derbenev from the movie “Sorcerers” - The Witch is a River? Bald Mountain

The damn stone is lying there.

From under that stone

The witch runs the river.

http://video.mail.ru/mail/nolania/454/711.html

Bald Mountain is a pagan temple, an ominous witchcraft place where witches and other evil spirits gather for sabbaths, and the bewitched cedar ended up there. And Bald Mountain is opposed by some kind of red-hot rock. Logically An unclean place must be opposed to a holy place. First of all, let us remember that in the Torah God calls rock himself Abraham and myself God of Abraham among others, has the epithets tsur yisrael ( rock of israel) and Eben Israel (stone of Israel). Next, let's remember about Temple Mount. The Temple Mount is traditionally identified with Mount Moriah, the place given to Abraham by God to sacrifice Isaac (Sacrifice of Isaac). At this same place, later, forefather Jacob saw his famous dream.
Between the 10th century BC. e. and 1st century AD e. On the Temple Mount stood the Jerusalem Temple, built by King Solomon, who served the only one permitted place of sacrifice to the One God, and was also the center of the religious life of the Jewish people and the object of pilgrimage for all Jews three times a year (on Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot). From the Temple, only two ruins have survived to this day: the western supporting wall of Temple Square (the southern part of which is known as the “Wailing Wall,” which turned into a symbol of faith and hope for many generations of Jews) and the block-filled and built-up so-called. "Golden Gate" - former entrance arches in the eastern wall. It is stated that these gates will open by themselves at the coming of the Messiah.
The Temple Mount is the holiest place for Jews: religious Jews around the world face Israel when they pray, Jews in Israel face Jerusalem, and Jews in Jerusalem face the Temple Mount.
According to the promises of the Jewish prophets, after the coming of the Messiah, the last, Third Temple will be rebuilt on the Temple Mount, which will become the spiritual center for the Jewish people and all humanity. The expectation of the Last Judgment is also associated with the Temple Mount.
According to most halakhic authorities, particularly Maimonides, holiness Jerusalem and Temple Mount remain in force even after the destruction of the Temple.
Traditionally, the Temple is located in the place where it stands today Dome of the Rock mosque(Kubbet es-Sachra), the oldest of all mosques, built by Abd al-Malik in 691, the 3rd holiest shrine of Islam. Only Muslims are allowed to enter there. Supporters of this point of view rely on information from historical sources, according to which Qubbat al-Sakhra covered the remains of the Second Temple that stood here. This concept was presented most cogently and consistently by Professor Lin Rietmeyer. In the middle of the Dome of the Rock, a large rock 17.7 meters long and 13.5 meters wide. This stone It is considered sacred (supposedly the prophet Magomed rose to heaven from it) and is surrounded by a gilded lattice so that no one touches it. It is believed that this is that Even Ha-Shtiya (“ Foundation Stone" or " Cornerstone"), about which the Talmud says that with him the Lord began the Creation of the world and which placed in the Holy of Holies of the Jerusalem Temple, was on it Ark of the Covenant. So this is the rock we are talking about - the Center of the World - the Cornerstone-Altar of Abraham! This is what the palm tree is mourning! The temple was destroyed twice. All that's left is Wailing Wall. (In Lermontov’s original version, a palm tree grows on the wall). The shrine has been desecrated and Jewish access to it is prohibited. The country lies in ruins, turned into a stone desert. How to build the third Temple when there is a mosque in its place?

Now let us remember that the word “Fichtenbaum” has the same root as the words “tramp” and “struggle.” Over the past three millennia, the word “Israel” has meant both the Land of Israel (Hebrew: אֶרֶץ יִשְׂרָאֵל‎, Eretz Yisrael) and the entire Jewish people. The source of this name is the Book of Genesis, where the forefather Jacob, after wrestling with the angel of God, received the name Israel: “And the angel said: What is your name? He said: Jacob. And he said to him: From now on your name will not be Jacob, and Israel, because you have wrestled with God, and you will overcome men" (Gen. 32:27,28) .Are the Jewish people not vagabond wanderers, separated from the Land of Israel? Here are separated lovers, suffering in separation from each other! Here's something no one has noticed, secret allegory in the best biblical traditions, as, for example, the bride is Saturday, the queen is the Torah, as a religious interpretation of the Song of Songs. The lyrical love character and eroticism of this book make it difficult to understand it allegorically. However, many texts interpreting the Song of Songs begin with a curse on those who will take the book literally - as a love, erotic work. In the Jewish tradition, the main meaning of the Song of Songs is considered to be the relationship between God and the Jewish people.
Heine wrote a stunning, brilliant poem. Perfect in form. Mirror symmetry: He and She, North and South (for those living in Germany or the European part of Russia, the Middle East is South, and it is relatively “near”, close to the elbow, but you won’t bite!), Cold and Heat, Ice Desert and Desert Sultry, He is on a bare peak, She is on a hot rock, He is in an unclean - witchcraft place, She is in a Holy but desecrated place, Both are on the verge of perishing, Both dream of each other, Both need each other, Both suffer from loneliness. Here is another parallel-contrast: He is WHITE, in a crust of icy snow - crust, like in a shroud, She is BLACK, from the heat and grief, like a widow in mourning. The people of Israel and the Land of Israel - this is obvious! Why didn’t any of the numerous translators and literary critics understand this? And all this in 8 lines, and the lines are short!
Isn't this an anticipation of Theodor Herzl's Judenstadt? While reading, I had a strange feeling that Heine was writing about events that happened more than 100 years later. In the magazine "Roots", in the issue dedicated to Moses Teif, an excerpt from the book of memoirs by Ilya Golts "On the roads and potholes of life", Jerusalem, 2003 was published:
“I remember how our Jewish company decided to celebrate 1953, the fifth anniversary of our imprisonment in the camp. The venue for the party was a clothing store, which was managed by Teyf at that time. This was one of the safe places where the guards rarely looked. During the last week of December, we began to deliver to the kapterka everything that could be purchased from food in the camp stall or obtained “through connections” in the kitchen, at the potato and vegetable bases.
On December 31, after the evening check, we began to make our way to Teyf’s quarters one by one. As expected in such cases, the prologue of the holiday was an evening of poetry. Mikhail Baitalsky - in Russian, and Moses Teyf in Yiddish read their poems, specially written for this evening. After this came anti-Soviet jokes and memories of various idiotic types from the camp authorities. For us, these were constant themes of dark camp humor. As midnight approached, the traditional toasts and wishes began. And when 1953 came, we raised “glasses of shamanism” - tin mugs with bread kvass, which the collective farmer Rabkin made from crackers intended for a pig farm.
Although more than 30 years have passed, I still remember how Baitalsky read Lermontov’s poem “Tell me, branch of Palestine, where did you grow, where did you bloom...” It was very symbolic! It touched our souls and stirred up a wave of hopes to someday see the landscapes of distant Israel. When we left the barracks, such a powerful, enchanting, indescribably beautiful aurora was blazing in the sky on this New Year’s Eve, which we had not seen in many years of our stay in Vorkuta.”
Based on publication in the magazine “Roots” No. 22, July - September 2005, Moscow - Kyiv “Jewish World”.
Here they are - polar Fichtenbaums! And the paradox - they read Lermontov, however, another poem, where everything is said in plain text, i.e. Lermontov is aware of the problem and agrees, it doesn’t matter that at the end of the verse Christian symbolism is mentioned: an icon, a cross; and in the translation of Heine’s verse, he seems to cast a shadow on the fence - “in the region where the sun rises” - they say, they need not the Middle East, but the Far East, not Jerusalem, but Birobidzhan! Fantastic! In fact, the Zionists loved the work of M.Yu. Lermontov. I refer those interested to the interesting article by Nelly Portnova, “The Zionist Palm of Abram Idelson,” Lechaim magazine, April 2008.
To summarize: at first glance, the poem by Heinrich Heine is about two trees that are far from each other and dreaming of meeting, and for Lermontov their gender is not even important, his poem is about loneliness in general, with a deeper look it becomes clear that this is an allegory about separated lovers (obviously not homosexual) along the lines of “how can I get a rowan tree to an oak tree?”, and, finally, a thoughtful analysis reveals a deeper allegory about the tragedy of a wandering people dying in a foreign land, separated from their beloved native land, bequeathed to them by God, which without him turned from a country flowing with milk and honey into a stone desert.
I’m not sure that I was able to convey all these nuances in my version of the translation, but I never found a more approximate translation.
Here is my version of the translation, which does not pretend to be perfect:
The cedar on Bald Mountain stands alone,
In the Arctic, it is covered with infusion like a shroud.
All in dreams of the distant Middle East,
From the frost, like a corpse, numb, he sleeps.
The cedar dreams that where Abraham's rock is,
Numb, black from grief and heat,
An inconsolable widow on the ruins of the Temple
One palm tree withers from longing for him.

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