В.С. Стус. Обрані вірші англійською. Переклад В.С. Ржевської
(тобто мій)
З оригіналів наводяться лише назви або перші рядки (оригінали іноді мають великий обсяг)
Джерела оригіналів: Стус: Палімпсести. - Українська поетична антологія. А-Ба-Ба-Га-Ла-Ма- Га. 2021.
Стус В. Крізь сотні сумнівів я йду до тебе.../ Васииль Стус; упоряд., передмова Д.В. Стуса; худож. оформлення С.В. Вдовиченко. = Харків: Фоліо, 2024. - 137 с. - (100 поезій).
Минає час моїх дитячих вір
The time of my childish faiths is over, it is to become past.
And following this time I also go,
I won't be found then. And I don't know,
if I would be able to recognize my old coast as the time lasts,
if would know it when sailing on a new boat.
For I am alone, I'm taken away from my pains,
and sailing after myself, after time, after days.
on a boat that's new, the one that I've just got.
Neither those in heaven, nor the whistle of grasses,
nor the play of the waves - nothing tells
anything of your return. Nothing declares
the answer to your questions:
is it enough or let us start,
for the time passes...
You're sailing alone, taken away from yourself,
And you're watching a wave, rising after a wave.
21.04.2026
This verse in the original has the form or sonnet, which I tried to preserve in this translation. The past participle відринутий is translated as 'taken away'.
Мистецтва він не знав. Він знав життя єдине
He didn't know art. He knew life only.
He was profound, thoughtful, and a dreamer,
And a wise man. No, he was a dreamer first!
But what as to the end: why did you feel it?
Why did you predict it? Why did you cry: let it rise?
You were furious in grief. When grief came, you didn't speak.
You were like a tytan, that had conquered
his fear in the heaviest deed of sacrifice,
and shook away the curse on hot days.
You called, and your call was: Love.
But among the dear ones that become
cold when losing fire the purpose is -
they receive the ends of pain.
They receive the ends of shout -
and you are full of anger yourself.
A wise man or a dreamer? Youth, stop now,
fall in the kind eyes and give yourself to dream,
and bow before him, as before a miracle.
21.04.2026
Скажи, що прологом ночі
Say that a trembling evening
may be a prologue to the night,
and make the day lose its light. I'll add:
let this night be ours.
21.04.2026.
Осінь крилами в груди б'є
Autumn beats my breast with its wings.
Oh, my Ukraine of autumn!
I'd like to make your heart more cheerful, not mornful.
Why do I lack skills for this?!
21.04.2026.
Один лиш час і має совість
Nothing but time has conscience,
it flows and flows like Dnipro.
I don't know if it's evil or it's good.
this mysterious unknown
is now in a hurry to be over.
And it's absolutely all the same
whether to die or to live,
God, it's all the same.
You or not, we'll die in a strange land,
after we've searched for the doorstep of the fatherly home.
21.04.2026.
У цьому полі синьому, як льон.
It was in this field that was so blue, so like blue flax,
that you were alone and not a soul beside you.
You saw them there, and you became depressed:
you saw a hundred shadows wandering there with no way.
That was in the field that was so like blue flax.
You were setnenced there to simple loneliness
to know your fate as your repentance
in the field that was so blue, so like blue flax.
The hundred black shadows there were becoming taller, they were growing,
and moving forward, like a forest of spruce,
where each tree was growing like a babe,
and they were coming closer. So, should you escape?
Should you let your own way to be rolled up, like wires, and be turning?
No, no. Withstand. Withstand. And more -
you should stand. And here only,
in this field that is so like blue flax.
And you should get to know your loss of freedom,
here, in your estranged motherland.
Here, in this field that is so blue,
so like blue flax.
You have an adversary, you have a hundred adversaries.
And each of them feels grief, once and again.
And each of them will throw a curse as a stone,
with no resraint: there are no prohibitions known.
The stones will fall, and no matter what each of these curses takes,
for your loneliness made each of those curses hotter.
Your soul has become wild, and doesn't see your body any longer.
It's in this field that is so blue, so like blue flax.
02, 04. 04.2026.
Наснилися мені мої кохані
I slept and saw all my loves in a dream
and each of them was a stranger and not mine,
and each of them was washing away the stone of my faith
as a cold stream would do this.
And each of them was wearing marriage garments,
and carrying a sad bunch of flowers,
that was as thick as joy,
and as bright as pain.
That was the pain that the harder to sustain it grows, the more attractive it becomes.
We went to visit someone all together,
and fear made that someone's eyes all round,
for someone didn't expect to meet so many friends,
so he was standing pale, and sad, and with no hat.
Oh, that was not in vain that this parade
looked like a funeral. And I am sad,
for I don't know which of my roses to present,
whether a red one or a black one,
so that I wouldn't provoke sadness by my present.
It looks like a hundred deaths took me by my hands,
and made me perish among them. It has been a day quite recently,
and sleep has hardly touched my eyes at the time.
06.04.2016
Чи витримаєш ти найтяжчий іспит
My love, you are to have the hardest test.
How will you manage? Will you or you won't?
What I'm imagening now is your sad lips,
and the all pure cheecks of Our Lady,
that are covered by the night tears. And I see the hand -
lacking defense, so thin, so lonely,
it's writing the long parting on the wall.
And I imagine that you wait no longer
for any good that would come from your doorstep.
And you're not calling the one who was put to towers
and left you striken by grief and all alone
with the trouble as big as the whole world,
as giants are shown.
06.04.2016.
Ось ось воно, блаженство самоти
That is the blesing of my loneliness
and the pomp of calmness - covering the whole planet.
There is so much strength added to my fasting,
I have so many thoughts and so much highness!
Say now - have you desired it when you were close to the lake,
where stars were hanging in spruces?
Was it in the dead sea that your soul was becoming clearer?
Have you desired it, you, madman?
Now carry your desires, that haven't become ripe yet,
through the adit of deception.
And do not ask your gods,
who have been deceiving you for all your life,
for anything more.
06.04.2026.
Летять на мене сто людських жалів
A hundred human griefs are flying on me -
these are the arrows with thin voices - and
my parents, my wife, my son and my sister
all hurt my soul. My loves, my soul
has suffered for you so much, having received
one and the most burning tear, the one given by your black trouble
and by the days of our immeasuruble leaving apart!
I am walking in a most sickly manner
as if I were walking by stubs,
and each step of mine is really crying,
and each recollection of mine does hurt my heart.
And what's my sin? It is the one that I still have a soul,
which has its pains received from the pains of the whole Universe.
So I thank God for my rest that is waiting in my future.
It doesn't matter, what kind of rest it is.
Do not complain that you've had a small harvest.
It was a heavy one. As heavy as the funeral wheat.
14.04.2026
Ці яблука тримала у руках
My wife... she held these apples in her hands.
Three or four days before today, maybe. And a wrinkle
of pain appeared on her suffering lips.
Some years that have passed were too sincere for us.
Six years, I think? Six years and a month
belonging to the seventh year. The world has leaned over
the woodside that is all watched by the spruces,
where winds are saying their "U-hu-hu-hu!", -
without anyone to stop them or protect them.
Forgive me, love, the passion that I have
for martyrs - those, that exist, and those, that are gone,
for those who are poor, and for the insulted, and for the paupers,
for everyone who having got acquainted with their grief,
presented me the human trouble that had been lasting
for several centuries. It seems to me, that the present has happened yesterday.
14.04.2026
It happened later on, in several years. The imprisoned Poet was not given the package with apples from his wife which was allowed to be sent quite rarely, and the delay was deliberate. The package was received only when each apple had become black.
Господи, гніву пречистого
My God, I pray You, don't believe that the all pure anger
is any evil. Wherever I ever stand,
I will withstand whatever comes. I thank you,
I thank you for the fact that our life's short
although my hope makes it as long as centuries are.
And I destroy my missing with my thinking,
for me to remain forever like the one
to whom his life was given by my mother,
and whom she blessed to go to the worlds.
And that's fine that she could not save me from the trouble.
That's fine, as it shows.
14.04.2026
Ти тут. Ти тут. Вся біла, як свіча.
You're here. You're here. You are as white as a candle -
your burning is so bright and also thin.
You are expressing the torn frankness
and ceasing to cry behind the shoulder.
You're here. You're here. As in the dream that I have been longing for,
you're wrinkling the headscarf with your fingers,
and I, judging by your looks and passionate moves,imagine you as a ghost. And then - there is a river!
It came from the ancient partings, and it caught,
it came, it rose, it caught us mercilessly.
A troubled wave moves so fast between the coasts,
that want to move as fast, as horses do.
Wait! The all pure one, let the rain
of all the memories of Svyatoshyn fall on us.
Oh, wait! And do not dare to go to the city
of that dull streets, circles and squares.
For you broke away, you went - the slow falling down in the mountains,
the lock, the destruction of a continent,
and the sudden movement, and lingering, and the shivering of hands,
and the silent trembling of eyelids.
You went - by a long tunnel - further -
to night - to darkness - snow - to the heather of the snow tempest,
your white lips became swollen with tears.
Farewell. Don't turn back. And don't call.
Farewell. Don't turn back. The anunciation
of our meeting in the other world
is given by the green star of evening.
The brittle ruvine heathered.
Say: let my boy live without me
for centuries.
Farewell. Don't look back. Look back!!!
06.04.2026.
Тільки тобою білий святиться світ
You are the only holiness in this world.
You are the only fulfillment of our sight.
You are the only warmness rising from the ground in the fields.
Yu are the only joy that a child knows, and that is right.
You are the only sweet song of a gueller-rose rising above the waters -
you are the only one, the only one. Know, that I know this!
You are the only one who makes my heart shout,
you are the only one making my body strong enough
to continue going in this world tempest.
You are the Only One, the Only One. Know, that I know this!
04.04.2026.
The line Know, that I know this! is absent in the original and was added for the sake of the rhyme. The translator believes that it reflects the main idea of the verse.
Дозволь мені сьогодні близько шостої
Let me appear today around 6 p.m.,
when evening comes around
and transport moves at pick hours.
I'll suddenly fall from missing, from the overspread sky,
from forgetness, from the parting with no limits,
made drunk by the long strain.
I'll suddenly fall to Brest-Lytovsk avenue,
to that forth proseka that has become estranged,
where only the mocking noise of the autotransport
will tell me that the beating of fear in one's heart
falls into the same tone with the native land.
I'll tear off the memory of forgotten days
that became a dream and a sad reality
as wounds all covered with a scar,
I'll tear it off from the human anthill and the gap of years.
Aren't you against that, love, aren't you against that?
Oh, don't be scared: I'll disappear, I'll dissolve, I'll get lost among the human crowd,
so that your frightened look won't happen
to strike my heart like a knife.
So don't be afraid: I'll pass like a shadow.
I'll enter that arch of torture as a shadow,
I'll touch you with the broken wings,
with the lips that became bare,
so that the corners of my lips would share your sadness.
And only when you come out a trum quietly,
and cross the street as a thoughtful girl,
who is guilty before the whole world
in the childish clearness of her look,
and in the weakness of her own maiden virtue,
when you cross the street to dive into
the crafted dusk of spruce that will be watching from above,
then I'll tear the heart for you,
being wounded on prickly shrubbery,
following your trace that lay over the whole world
from the brink of my heart.
I'll go along your steps, like a dog that turned mad,
I'll hide my shame, my fear, my insult and joy,
and desire, and the cruellest pain
within the gaps made by your feet.
I'll be but a shadow of a shadow of a shadow,
I'll lose my face, my experience, my age,
I'll fall from them, as the only veiny leaf of my heart,
I'll roll on under the wind of my own tempests.
Here's our porch. You are in front of the doors already,
You've pressed the belll's button - and you've opened
the heaviest gate of Heaven so easily. I hear the voice of our boy.
I'd like to shout. But I have no strengh enough for my voice to sound.
...The dream is over. The road to my yard crossed along by a noose was swaying on the wall. And the pricky wire
filled with the night was running by the frozen wall
as spiders. The deaf lampshade was throwing aside the prison soup of the night.
The dusk was hanging above the fence. The harsh sound of the bell as cork bate the mud of the new day away from the bottle of dreaming...
To die at the road of return is too sweet,
for God not to give us a headboard of our fate.
04. - 12.04.2026
12.04. - Великдень.
Ти хоре, слово.
Word, you are sick. Your sickness is really hard,
and who would ever envy, knowing how you exist?
For you may suit prayers or a poem only,
but you reject the everyday dullness of Svyatoshyn's life.
The worlds are being ruined, and dry land
replaces water. There's so much pain in my breast,
it is the variation of what's well known, of that eternal theme
that it is easier to die than to understand
the funeral singing. Good Lord, give me help,
give to the one struck by sickness the high help.
Let me find a way to perish as a man should do.
My native land appeares, shining brightly.
Do hear me! And answer, my Beloved!
Just don't recall me with a word lacking kindness.
05.04.2026.
Усе мов сон пропало й знебуло
Everything has passed rapidly as a dream
And now it is no longer. Fury, don't you suppress days?
A strange appearance is running over a tree,
and my forehead is being burnt again by the lack of faith.
And a shadow is running above the days that have passed,
And a blanket of fog is covering time.
Poetry, my beauty, my ornament,
in front of me or before me - am I alive? Tell me at last!
06,09.04.2026
Зими убогий маскарад
The winter's poor costume ball
has covered the life's sleep.
There are so many lies and truths... to answer them all
one return won't be enough, indeed.
There's the cross that's been composed and sown
of black wires,
and the eternity creates its eternal myth
of chorals, of masses, of cries.
06-07.04.2026.
The consequence in the last line of the original is of cries, of chorals, of masses. It was changed for the sake of the rhyme. The change becomes reflected upon the understanding of the line, for chorals and masses are more complicated, than cries. But one may argue that the whole line is written for the sake of mentioning cries not as a vocal janre only.
На тихі води і на ясні зорі
To the quiet waters and bright stars
a swan falls with her white bosom.
You, lightening, strike, and you, thunder, strike loud,
if one has so much grief that wings cannot be opened.
You, green villages and you, white cities,
And you, dark blue rivers, and blue valleys,
and you, Ukraine, as golden as a dream,
do wait to disappear! My land, wait!
Don't hurry to through me to the ways of death!
It happened where the hoofs of a black horse
throw bright sparks around. A road had been opened there once,
but it was torn over at the very aim.
07.04.2026.
... А пам'ять любої руки...
And what is turning the rolls of days
is the memory of beloved hand
that is so charming, so white, and so soft.
And so we'll have enough thought for centuries,
the one so dear, the one of gold.
04.04.2025.
Моя кохано ластівко жоно!
My love my swalow dear wife of mine!
I dream of you My dream is even hotter
then our love has been. I see it every night and every day.
It shows me a window filled with dusk
And you are shining there, you're as bright as a bee.
You're sad, caressed by summer, and so sweet.
And my desires rise in me as a hill,
I won't sustain this mass, it orders me to fall
with my head kept straight, it orders me to fall into a gap with no bottom...
So long is the dream, and so short's the time
that God has measured for us. I am flying
to fall on your white hands, as white as swans.
And I'm worried - when falling to them, I may miss them.
03.04.2026.
Кажи, акторе, де твої лаштунки?
Come, actor, speak, avail! Where is your curtain?
Because your part is over now. Where is your stage?
There are several high types of trouble bringing you presents,
bringing them in many hands, for you are perishing alive.
Say, actor, say, what kind of stage performance is this,
pushing us into black death like a nail?
What had been started by glory, was brought to the end by horror,
And horror is the lord with the supreme power.
Come, actor, speak, and say what kind of curse is this -
poetry, the biggest of all lies,
that takes us with the hand of love to put us behind the bars,
and then proceeds to our crucifiction?
03.04.2026.
Ти сам? Напризволяще? Тож існуй
You're alone? You have nobody? Do exist.
Do understand, that trouble does not know eternity.
When you'll come away, it will make you a company.
So let the world have your annunciation for this.
Be glad that all your hours will come to rest.
If joy is over, the end of trouble comes next.
The road's before you, you don't see its ending,
And when you're in the interaction of the new roads,
All what your hand has lost, and all what it preserves,
is certain to receive the transparent future's blessing.
07.04.2026.
Звільнися од чекання. Задарма.
Abandon waiting. Waiting leads to nothing.
You'll have it all - your sin, and your repentance,
you'll have acquaintance with most terrible suffering,
and get to know that there's nothing else.
Abandon waiting. Waiting leads to nothing.
You'll have it all - long nights and days,
and a long way - with neither end, nor rest,
when it seems that you would better lie in coffin,
than live, but live as a stranger in a strange land.
You'll have it all - you'll have long nights and days,
You'll have it all - you'll have your glory and your shame.
You'll have sweet meetings and your partings, too,
You'll have a birth, and you will have a death
as the loud sadness plays within a rain gutter.
Just don't allow it. Just be most attentive
(you will have all - your glory and your shame).
You go in vain. And you do wait - in vain.
It is like looking for your fate with a hungry heart.
Do learn to spend. Don't take a thing,
that is most carefully guarded.
If you go - go then. If you're stopped - do stand.
And if you die - do die. It gives no wisdom!
And when your faith falls down, like a powder -
then do be envious, and envy to the dead.
For it's the only way. The only way to have one spirit is this. The deadly calmness
lies over everything. So go, as far
as you're the one making present, and not a pauper,
who calls God for assistance. Do take all,
take all that has been written for you,
but add the eternal pain to touch your heart.
And when life takes you as its toy - play then!
07.04.2026
Крізь сотні сумнівів я йду до тебе
There are hundreds doubts to pass, yet I come to you,
I pass through them to you, the good and truth of the age.
I pass to you through a hundred disappointments.
My soul, that longes passionately for the sky,
directs the tempestous flight towards a poll
of high fire that comes under the light
of your desire only. You're flying to the place
where any human traces have been yet unknown,
from a stage to another, out of mortal limits
to human desires, out of the black voidness,
where there is neither happiness, nor trouble,
and your passion inclines you: do not stop, go on.
That is the true way. You are its forerunner.
Вечірнє сонце соснами погасне
The evening sun will lose its light as spruces,
pass like a bird and be burnt out close to a star.
And you'll know suddenly what is to live
(there is no future, there is only the present).
And you will also know that your son's small bed
is rising like the hill of the whole Earth,
and that Ukraine will live by it until its end,
and that it will live by its miraculous cold fire,
where the big orange with five fingers
lay above the frozen blue colour
so bright that it could make you blind,
and we all loved everything that we remembered,
and we remembered as long as we felt pain.
the evening sun that became cold in spruces
the scent of the frozen rags on the pole
and tears (the eyes are filled with them),
and oranges (like naked girls).
08.04.2026.
Моє життя, мій Києве, прощай!
My life my Kyiv farewell to you!
Forgive oh do forgive me this hard parting
I say good bye! I ask you for your hand
to take my deadly suffering all away
to give more strength to enter my weak heart.
My life my Kyiv What I need is faith
You are a city of white columns but
I saw you in my dream as multicoloured glass.
And now I have a road but have no way.
A gap that's deadly black is my direction.
The sun makes just some weаk moves where it's to go down here.
But there's a bird there becoming most beautiful
but when it's flying it is meant to fall.
03.04.2026
І знов Господь мене не остеріг
And Our Lord didnt't warn me once again,
He didn't give His grace,
and the road that is rolled out in front of me,
is mine.
Good bye then, till we meet again in space,
and good bye, till we see each other again in time.
08.04.2026.
В мені уже народжується Бог
I am becoming the birthplace of God
He is being born in me. He's half remembered,
and half forgotten. It is as if my grandchild
and my grandfather were waiting till I die, and were not in me.
It is as if this was happening next to death,
where the one alive can never enter.
I live together with Him. I exist together with Him,
when there is no one else. And trouble comes,
as loud as a cannonade. He is salvation,
and I say with my white lips: Good Lord, do save me.
Do save just for a moment,
and then I will awake and save myself,
with the ability of my own. I'll save myself.
He wants to come out of me. His desire is
to give me the final destruction, when saving me,
so that I'd leave myself, as if I were
a sword leaving its cover, when in the wind, in the tempest.
He wants to come out, for the candle of pain to stop burning,
For the darkness of obedience to save me
by another existence. By another life. By the name
that wouldn't be my proper one already:
you see, that is the one, the general case,
the one who's governed by that furious God,
who'd like to have his birthplace within me.
(And I will keep that candle burning on,
for it to help me to avoid the untimely dusk.
The black candle of the brightest hour
looks like achieving victory, but secretly).
08.04.2026
адреса: https://www.poetryclub.com.ua/getpoem.php?id=1062658
Рубрика: Лирика любви
дата надходження 19.05.2026
автор: Валентина Ржевская