Saturday Rave: Prologue to Ruslan and Ludmilla

 This is head-spinningly wonderful.

It's by Aleksandr Pushkin (1799 - 1837) and it's from the Prologue to Ruslan and Ludmilla.

This long poem tells a story of enchantment, young lovers, kidnap - and a siege of Kyiv.

It's hard to remember, sometimes, but things that are Russian are not always bad.

The story ends happily ever after.

There’s a green oak by the bay,

on the oak a chain of gold:

a learned cat, night and day,

walks round on that chain of old:

to the right – it spins a song,

to the left – a tale of wrong.

Marvels there: the wood-sprite rides,

in the leaves a mermaid hides:

on deep paths of mystery

unknown creatures leave their spoor:

huts on hen’s legs you can see,

with no window and no door.

Wood and valley vision-brimming:

there at dawn the waves come washing

over sands and silent shore,

and thirty noble knights appear

one by one, from waters clear,

attended there by their tutor:

a king’s son passing by

takes a fierce king prisoner:

a wizard carries through the sky

a knight, past all the people there,

over forests, seas they fly:

a princess in a prison pines,

whom a brown wolf serves with pride:

A mortar, Baba Yaga inside,

takes that old witch for a ride.

King Kaschey grows ill with gold.

It’s Russia! – Russian scents unfold!

And I was there and I drank mead,

I saw the green oak by the sea,

I sat there while the learned cat

told its stories – here’s one that

I remember, and I’ll unfurl,

a story now for all the world…

 

illustration from the first 1820 edition

Word To Use Today: vision. It's rather wonderful when the words for seeing real things and those not of our world are the same. A seer, for instance, sees things that others can't. 

The word vision comes from the Latin word vidēre, to see.