A chorus

[igenlode]

Having told myself that I was *not* going to go on and translate the 'other chorus' that had struck me on first watching "Twenty Years After", I almost immediately started copying out the lyrics for that one on blotchy paper (surface not 'sized' properly to take flowing ink, I think) at half-past three in the morning, just in case I should feel inspired to attempt it :-p

I put in the necessary work to more or less understand what the lyrics *actually* mean, as the translation on that Web page is pretty mangled.
"Where is my angel, my keeper lives" -- yes, Russian *does* omit the 'is' in sentences like "Where my angel?", but this one is not a question and simply means "the place where my guardian angel lives" :-p
"He monitors and no longer remembers himself/What for my salvation/Sometimes he performed miracles" -- "he watches over me and he himself no longer remembers/what miracles at times he performed to save me"; it's very noticeable that none of these 'translations' cope at all well in the cases where the meaning of a sentence bridges two lines, which is another reason why they look as if they have been auto-generated!

And over the course of a couple of days of carrying this around with me -- in lieu of my customary habit of carrying story manuscripts around with me -- I managed to evolve various partial couplets, and a potentially reasonable version of the chorus. This is actually not *quite* as difficult as Nasha chest', because although it's just as tightly rhymed, the metre is closer to 'normal' English iambics -- we get strong and weak line endings, but not those wretched dactyl endings with *two* unstressed syllables following the rhyme. (And some of those rhymes are extremely approximate in the original — lines five to eight rhyme "sèliu" with "sèn'ya" and "pomnit sàm" with "chudesà", which looks like no rhyme at all on the page but somehow sounds just as tight as the rest when sung!)

First attempt at chorus (including the weird 'suspended' four syllables at the start of the second line):

My long-sworn opponent
  afresh vows to try me
And grind me to dust, down to dust where I fell
My angel still watches —
  this too shall pass by me
And all in the end shall be well,
All manner of thing shall be well.

(Web-page translation: "The sworn and ancient enemy swears again
Grind me into powder
But the angel does not sleep, and everything will cost [!]
And everything will end well.

My best idea at what it *actually* says:

My sworn and ancient enemy swears anew
To grind me, grind me to grains of powder
But the angel watches/does not sleep, and all things will turn out all right
And everything will end well,
And everything will end well.)

I have obviously had to resort to introducing new elements at the end of the first two lines simply for the sake of the rhyme -- I haven't been able to find a way around that (how do you rhyme in a non-humorous way with "pass over"?)
And I made some very conscious changes to the end on the grounds that the original so very strongly chimed with Julian of Norwich with me from the first ("this too shall pass"/"all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well").

We shall see how I feel about it later on...

Comments

[watervole]

I like it. The Julian of Norwich feel works.

[igenlode]

The Julian of Norwich feel works.

That's a relief -- I was afraid it might simply come across as mangled grammar to any casual reader who didn't recognise the allusion. (Although let's not fool ourselves; this is not going to *receive* any passing casual readership!)

I have tweaked "afresh vows to try me" to "again vows to try me", which isn't *quite* the same thing as the literal "anew", but sounds less stilted, I feel...

[watervole]

I didn't recognise the allusion until you mentioned the source, but I've come across Julian before.

I liked it before I knew where it came from.

[igenlode]

Thanks!