I
At nightfall my demon’s right here
In payment for my past.
Memories of depravity
Come and suck at my heart,
Of when, a slave of men’s fancies,
I was a bedeviled fool,
And the street was my only shelter.
A few minutes remain,
And then comes sepulchral silence.
But, before they pass,
Having reached the brink, I take
My life and smash it before you
Like an alabaster vessel.
Oh, where would I be now,
My teacher and my Savior,
If eternity had not been waiting
By night at the table for me,
Like a new client, lured
Into the nets of my profession?
But explain to me what sin means,
Death, hell, and flaming brimstone,
When, before the eyes of all,
I’ve grown into you like a graft on a tree
In my immeasurable anguish.
When I rest your feet, Jesus,
Upon my knees, it may be
That I am learning to embrace
The four-square beam of the cross
And, feeling faint, strain towards your body,
Preparing you for burial.
24
Magdalene
II
People are tidying up before the feast.
Away from all that fuss,
I wash your most pure feet
With myrrh from a little flask.
I feel for and do not find your sandals.
I can see nothing for my tears.
Loosened strands of hair
Fall over my eyes like a veil.
I rested your feet on my skirt
And poured tears over them, Jesus,
I wound them in a necklace of beads,
Buried them in the burnous of my hair.
I see the future in such detail
As if you had made it stop.
I am now able to predict
With a sybil’s prophetic clairvoyance.
Tomorrow the veil in the temple
Will fall, we will huddle in a circle
To one side, and the earth will sway underfoot,
Perhaps out of pity for me.
The ranks of the convoy will reform,
The cavalry will begin their departure.
Like a whirlwind in a storm, this cross
Will tear into the sky overhead.
I’ll throw myself at the foot of the crucifix,
Go numb and bite my lip.
For the embrace of all too many
You have spread your arms wide on the cross.
For whom on earth is there so much breadth,
So much torment and such power?
Are there so many souls and lives in the world?
So many villages, rivers, and groves?
But three such days will go by
And push me down into such emptiness,
That in this terrible interval
I’ll grow up to the Resurrection.
25
The Garden of Gethsemane
The bend of the road was lighted up
By the indifferent glitter of distant stars.
The road went around the Mount of Olives,
Down below it flowed the Kedron.
The little meadow broke off halfway,
Beyond it the Milky Way began.
The gray, silvery olive trees tried
To step on air into the distance.
At the end was someone’s garden plot.
Leaving his disciples outside the wall,
He said, “My soul is sorrowful unto death,
Tarry here and watch with me.”
He renounced without a struggle,
As things merely borrowed for a time,
His miracle-working and omnipotence,
And was now like mortals, like us all.
Now night’s distance seemed the verge
Of annihilation and nonbeing.
The expanse of the universe was uninhabited,
And the garden only was the place for life.
And, peering into those dark gulfs,
Empty, without beginning or end,
And sweating blood, he prayed to his Father
That this cup of death might pass.
Having eased his mortal anguish with prayer,
He went back out. There, on the ground,
His disciples, overcome with sleep,
Lay about among the roadside weeds.
He woke them: “The Lord has granted you
To live in my days, but you lie sprawling.
The hour of the Son of Man has struck.
He will give himself into the hands of sinners.”
He had barely said it when, who knows from where,
A crowd of slaves and vagabonds appeared,
Torches, swords, and at their head—Judas,
With a treacherous kiss upon his lips.
Peter rushed the cutthroats with his sword
And lopped off the ear of one. He hears:
“Disputes can never be resolved with iron.
Put your sword back in its place, man.
“Could my Father not provide me
With hosts of winged legions? Then,
Having touched not a hair upon my head,
My enemies would scatter without a trace.
“But the book of life has reached a page
Dearer than all that’s sacred.
What has been written must now be fulfilled.
Then let it be fulfilled. Amen.
“For the course of the ages is like a parable,
And can catch fire in its course.
In the name of its awful grandeur, I shall go
In voluntary suffering to the grave.
“I shall go to the grave, and on the third day rise,
And, just as rafts float down a river,
To me for judgment, like a caravan of barges,
The centuries will come floating from the darkness.”
NOTES
The notes that follow are indebted to the commentaries by E. B. Pasternak and E. V. Pasternak in volume 4 of the Complete Collected Works in eleven volumes published by Slovo (Moscow, 2004). Biblical quotations, unless otherwise specified, are from the Revised Standard Version.
Book One
PART ONE
1. Memory Eternaclass="underline" The chanted prayer of “Memory Eternal” (Vechnaya Pamyat), asking God to remember the deceased, concludes the Orthodox funeral or memorial service (panikhida) and the burial service. Pasternak places it here to introduce the central theme of the novel. Psalm 24:1 (“The earth is the Lord’s …”) and the prayer “With the souls of the righteous dead, give rest, O Savior, to the soul of thy servant” come at the end of the burial service.
2. The Protection: Dating events by church feasts was customary in Russia (as elsewhere) until the early twentieth century, and even later. Pasternak alternates throughout the novel between civil and religious calendars. The feast of the Protective Veil (or Protection) of the Mother of God falls on October 1. The Russian Orthodox Church, and the Russian state until 1917, followed the Julian rather than the Gregorian calendar, which have a difference of thirteen days between them. Thus October 1 by the Julian calendar is October 14 by the Gregorian calendar, and the October revolution of 1917 actually broke out on November 7.