Centre for Romanian Studies

Poetry in Translation (CCXX): Aleksandr SOLZHENITSYN (1918-2008), Russian Poet, “Confession”, “Spovedanie”

Confession
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
(1918-2008)

How easy it is to live with You, O Lord.
How easy to believe in You.
When my spirit is overwhelmed within me,
When even the keenest see no further than the night,
And know not what to do tomorrow,
You bestow on me the certitude
That You exist and are mindful of me,
That all the paths of righteousness are not barred.
As I ascend in to the hill of earthly glory,
I turn back and gaze, astonished, on the road
That led me here beyond despair,
Where I too may reflect Your radiance upon mankind.
All that I may reflect, You shall accord me,
And appoint others where I shall fail.

Spovedanie
Aleksandr SOLZHENITSYN
(1918-2008)

Ce liniştit e să trăiesc lângă Tine, Doamne!
Ce minunat să cred în Tine.
Când duhul meu este copleşit în piept,
Când nici măcar ochiul aprig nu pătrunde bezna nopţii.
Neştiind să infrunte ziua de mâine,
Tu îmi dai încredere,
Căci Tu exişti să mă iei în paza Ta,
Să-mi deschizi cărările dreptăţii necurmate.
Şi cum mă urc pe creasta gloriei lumeşti
Să privesc înapoi, uimit de drumul străbătut,
Ce m-a-ndreptat spre Tine, învingând disperarea,
Atunci, la rându-mi, pot oglindi Omenirii lumina Ta.
Căci imi vei dărui tot ce voi oglindi,
Iar de voi greşi, mă vei alunga.

Rendered in Romanian by
Constantin ROMAN, London,
© 2013, Copyright Constantin ROMAN

Short Bio: Aleksandr SOLZHENITSYN (1918-2008). One of the Soviet Union’s most vocal dissidents, he authored the epic 300,000-word Gulag Archipelago, which captured the terrible cruelty that he and fellow prisoners endured as inmates of Soviet prison camps.

After his 1974 expulsion from the U.S.S.R., Solzhenitsyn fled to Europe and then the United States. Animated by a deeply spiritual and moral vision of the world, he was disappointed by the increasingly secular and commercial culture of the U.S. and in 1978, he gave a controversial commencement address at Harvard University in which he denounced both the East and West for their spiritual lacking. “We have placed too much hope in political and social reforms, only to find we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life. In the East, it is destroyed by the dealings and machinations of the ruling party. In the West, commercial interests tend to suffocate it. This is the real crisis.
(Extract from: “Dissent – A Quarterly of Politics and Culture”)