MartinBidney - The Beloving Imaginer - Episode 46 Poe in Russia, “The Bells”

The Be-Loving Imaginer

The Beloving Imaginer Episode 46

Poe in Russia, “The Bells”

You’ve heard, maybe too often, about what may be “lost in translation,” but my reading tonight is designed to show that translation may also offer huge dividends, windfall profits. That’s what happened when Konstantin Dmitrievich Balmont made a Russian version of Edgar Allan Poe’s experimental poem, “The Bells,” a rendering which I, in turn, translate for you from the Russian.

Poe’s inspired design, which so attracted Balmont, was to write a four-part narrative lyric showing how the four stages in the life of a human being may be correlated with the kinds of bells that are heard in the four eras of our life.

Childhood = jingle bells. Adolescence and adulthood = wedding bells. Continuing life with its conflicts and crises = fire alarm bells. Final goodbye = funeral bells.

Balmont’s exciting expansion and extensive elaboration of the Poe idea excited Sergei Rachmaninoff, who used it as the libretto for a grand vocal symphony, an orchestral cantata with solo singers and chorus. It is one of the most memorable works of one of the world’s musical masters. Bruce Borton, conductor of the Binghamton University-Community Chorus (where I sang tenor for 15 years), which performed the Rachmaninoff Bells in Russian, asked me to do a form-faithful and accurate translation of the text to be included in the piano reduction score he was preparing for Musica Russica, a firm specializing in choral works by Russian composers. I complied gladly and my singable English rendering, included in this published book, can be conveniently used by any chorus performing Bells