The Red Horse Song

[igenlode]

Here is my best attempt at a literal rendition of the "Рыжий конь" lyric:

The taut strip of the straight motorway,
And I, down the concrete noisy string,
Fly in a ferrous growling vehicle
Where my great-grandfather drove a chestnut horse.

CHORUS
I hurry somewhere or other all the day long,
And all the same all the day long
In a hundred most-important places all the day long
At the same time I am late...
But at night I dream of a horse
To me there comes a chestnut horse
In my face there breathes a chestnut horse
Looks sidelong with lilac eyes!


Great-grandfather smelt of chamomile and mint -
I smell of a blue petrol flame...
I have a hundred and twelve horsepower hidden under the bonnet -
But Great-Grandfather managed to get everywhere with one!

CHORUS
I hurry somewhere or other all the day long [...]


Only don't consider me to be out of my mind -
Neither that century again will return, nor horse...
I suggest to you merely to take off your shoes, -
Across the meadow, like Great-Grandfather, to walk barefoot!

CHORUS (x2)
I hurry somewhere or other all the day long [...]

Here is Boyarsky -- who as 'Soviet D'Artagnan' had of course learned to ride, and ride one-handed, for sword-wielding purposes! (Note also that Soviet Woman comes to the rescue of the struggling menfolk in matters of automotive mechanics :-p)

Watch on YouTube

And this is my 'singing translation':

The motorway stretches as taut as a bow-string
And over the concrete the tyres thrum their song
I race down the road in my roaring steel motor
Where Great-Grandpa's chestnut went trotting along.

CHORUS:
I'm in a rush the whole day long
But all the same the whole day long
I fail to reach, the whole day long
A hundred vital places...
At night I dream about a horse
It comes to me, a chestnut horse
I feel its breath, that chestnut horse
With lilac eyes it gazes!

Great-Grandfather's scent was all minty and herbal
While I leave a reeking blue haze of exhaust -
I've nine dozen horsepower under my bonnet,
But Great-Grandpa managed with only one horse!

CHORUS:
I'm in a rush the whole day long [...]

But please don't conclude that I'm out of my senses -
That horse and that era have both gone for good.
Just take off your shoes, that is all I'm suggesting -
Go barefoot on grass as Great-Grandfather would!

CHORUS (x2):
I'm in a rush the whole day long
But all the same the whole day long
I fail to reach the whole day long
A hundred vital places...
At night I dream about a horse
It comes to me, a chestnut horse
I feel its breath, that chestnut horse
With lilac eyes it gazes!

Notes:

• The Russian idiom is unhelpfully unspecific as to whether Great-Grandfather was riding his horse or driving it :-p
  I happen to think that given the implicit comparison of vehicles he was probably driving it (the French translation has him riding, but that is at least probably partly for poetic/scansion purposes), but I took great care to fudge the question...
  
• I was strongly tempted to omit the bizarre lilac colouration and simply render the final line as "with *sidelong* eyes it gazes", since I didn't have room for both elements, and it makes much more sense for a horse to roll its eyes sideways than for it to have mauve eyes! But the red horse with lilac eyes really is iconic, to the extent that Russians post on Q&A sites asking "Why did the horse squint with lilac eyes?", to receive, alas, only various facetious replies (I wanted to know too!) The most logical answer provided was 'because it is Boyarsky's dream', and dreams don't have to make sense :-p
  I do wonder why on earth that element was used in the lyric in the first place, though, because it is *not* done for rhyming purposes; the eyes could have been any colour, or any other adjectival quality provided it scanned, so presumably the lyricist actively wanted that very arresting image for the dream-horse...
  
• The car has been reduced from 112 horsepower down to 108 for scansion purposes: "nine dozen" is a *lot* easier to fit into the melody than "a hundred and twelve". (I note that the French translation likewise cut it to "a hundred horsepower", undoubtedly for similar reasons!) The original measurement does seem oddly specific; I wasted a bit of time trying to find out for the sake of curiosity what make of Soviet car would have been known to have a 112hp engine, but failed. The Russian idiom literally reads "a hundred dozen", prompting a YouTube commenter to joke: "1200 horsepower -- what was he driving, a tank?" :-D
  
• As noted previously, I have no idea what it is about Russians and running barefoot through the grass -- exactly the same idiom is used for Aramis' opening couplets in the Король и Шут 'Musketeers'!