I love or I don’t – despair comes easily to me:
Though I may never be yours,
Nonetheless there’s such tenderness at times
In your eyes, as though I am loved.
Not by me you’ll live, not by me you’ll suffer,
And I will pass like the shadow of clouds;
But you will never forget me,
And my distant call will not die out in you.
We dreamt of mysterious joy,
And we knew in the dream that it was a dream…
But nevertheless there’s agonizing sweetness
For you even in this, that I’m not he.
by Дмитрий Сергеевич Мережковский
(Dmitry Sergeyevich Merezhkovsky)
translated by Albert C. Todd
Люблю иль нет
Люблю иль нет, — легка мне безнадежность:
Пусть никогда не буду я твоим,
А все-таки порой такая нежность
В твоих глазах, как будто я любим.
Не мною жить, не мной страдать ты будешь,
И я пройду как тень от облаков;
Но никогда меня ты не забудешь,
И не замрет в тебе мой дальний зов.
Приснилась нам неведомая радость,
И знали мы во сне, что это сон…
А все-таки мучительная сладость
Есть для тебя и в том, что я — не он.
Additional Information: Дмитрий Сергеевич Мережковский (Dmitry Sergeyevich Merezhkovsky) (August 14 [O.S. August 2] 1866 – December 9, 1941) was a Russian novelist, poet, religious thinker, and literary critic. A seminal figure of the Silver Age of Russian Poetry, regarded as a co-founder of the Symbolist movement, Merezhkovsky – with his wife, the poet Zinaida Gippius – was twice forced into political exile. During his second exile (1918–1941) he continued publishing successful novels and gained recognition as a critic of the Soviet Union. Known both as a self-styled religious prophet with his own slant on apocalyptic Christianity, and as the author of philosophical historical novels which combined fervent idealism with literary innovation, Merezhkovsky became a nine-time nominee for the Nobel Prize in literature, which he came closest to winning in 1933. However, because he was close to the Nazis, he was virtually forgotten after World War 2.
Merezhkovsky was born into the family of a minor Imperial Court official of the Ukrainian gentry and studied history in St Petersburg and Moscow universities. His poetry, first published in 1881, displays his unique religious-mystical views. While his first verse was influenced by Nadson, the popular poet of the 1880s, Merezhkovsky became one of the pioneers of Russian Symbolist poetics. In 1889 he married the poet Zinaida Gippius. Until the Revolution he often traveled to Greece and translated Greek tragedies.
By 1914 he had published a twenty-four-volume collection of his works, which included a religious-philosophical novel trilogy, Christ and Antichrist (1901-1905); a celebrated book of essays, Vechnyye sputniki (Eternal Companions) (1896); and a well-known literary study, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky (1901). In 1918 he wrote a novel of the 1825 Decemberist Revolt, The Fourteenth of December, composed in the light of what he perceived and the horrors of the October (1917) Revolution.
Mereshkovsky was a fierce enemy of the October Revolution and emigrated to Paris in 1919. He strongly believed that his emigration had a historical mission: to struggle against communism by any means necessary, which led him to place his hopes in Hitler’s war against Russia. Hence he was not published in the USSR from 1925 to 1985.
Biographical information about Merezhkovsky, p.13, ‘Twentieth Century Russian Poetry’ (1993), compiled by Yevgeny Yevtushenko (ed. Albert C. Todd and Max Hayward) , published by Fourth Estate Limited by arrangement with Doubleday of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group Inc. (transcribed as found in the original text).
Rambling At The Bridge Head 