Ivan Bunin

“Родина”

Here is have a short poem, just two stanzas, by Ivan Bunin (b. 1870, d. 1953) a Nobel Laureate for Literature who grew up in a noble family that had fallen on hard times, spent years in Russia as a wandering poet, and ended up emigrating to France in 1920, where he hid Jews from the Nazis during World War II.

Audio

Poem text

Под небом мертвенно-свинцовым
Угрюмо меркнет зимний день, 
И нет конца лесам сосновым, 
И далеко до деревень.

Один туман молочно-синий, 
Как чья-то кроткая печаль, 
Над этой снежною пустыней 
Смягчает сумрачную даль.

1896

Vocabulary and Grammar

Words

This poem is a great door to words for gloomy winter weather in Russian.

One of the more interesting words in this poem is сумрачный, which I translated here as gloomy. It can have other meanings, and other English words can be a better fit depending on context. It comes from сумрак (semidarkness), which is related to сумерки (twilight) and is derived from мрак (darkness), which is, in turn, related to the English word “murk”. The strange prefix су- apparently was productive a long time ago in Russian and added the meaning “incompleteness” to the word it was modifying.

I love words and reading dictionary entries, but I’m also very much a visual learner – maybe the flashcard exercise will be helpful to you, too.

Translation

Short and simple. This is a fairly literal translation; I flip-flopped the last two lines to observe English word order rules.

Под небом мертвенно-свинцовым Угрюмо меркнет зимний день, И нет конца лесам сосновым, И далеко до деревень.	Beneath a cadaverously-leaden sky the winter day sullenly darkens, And there is no end to the pine forest, And the towns are far away.
Один туман молочно-синий, Как чья-то кроткая печаль, Над этой снежною пустыней Смягчает сумрачную даль.	Only the milky-blue fog Like someone’s long-suffering grief, Softens the gloomy distance Above this snowy desert.