Pushkin’s Ache
He loved Her
I loved you — perhaps still —
for some of it yet lives in me, eerily lingering…
Let it not trouble you;
never wished it bring you sorrow.
I loved you silently, without hope, held back by shyness, torn by jealousy —
I loved you sincerely, tenderly, in my way.
May God grant you another just like me!
***
May he love you as I scorched for you,
quietly, without complains or asking anything in return;
May he make you understand what I could not say,
yet guard the tenderness I kept within me.
And though I still love you, let it fade without a sound —
let it not trouble you.
For what I felt was true,
and that, perhaps … is enough
To the One Who Wanted Pushkin to Burn
(Why I Added Verses to ‘I Loved You’)
Pushkin has long been a standard of Russian literature, yet even ‘I Loved You,’ one of his masterpieces, has not escaped your criticism. So I thought I would follow your argument to its logical conclusion.
What happens if I give the poem everything you say it lacks?
I wrote because I thought you had mistaken his silence for simplicity. I did not add words to Pushkin because Pushkin needed them. I added them because you thought he did.
You imagined that a candle would make daylight clearer. Very well. Let’s light one.
He said, ‘I loved you,’ and you heard only the words. You heard the farewell, the restraint, the blessing he gave her — and perhaps you thought that was all there was. There was more.
You called him restrained. You called him too gentle. You wondered where the jealousy was, where the burning was, where the wound was.
Fine. I will give you all of it. So I completed it:
May he love you as I scorched for you,
quietly, without complaint or asking anything in return;
May he make you understand what I could not say,
yet guard the tenderness I kept within me.
And though I still love you, let it fade without a sound—
let it not trouble you.
For what I felt was true.There was a man behind those words. A man burning where no one could see the flame, held back by shyness, jealous but unwilling to make his jealousy her burden, carrying a tenderness that had nowhere to go but inward.
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I wanted to defend that man — not because he needed my help, but because he deserved it. Not by giving him better words, but by letting the hidden things rise to the surface, to show what those few words could not contain.
He burned. He was jealous. He was shy. He was hopeless.
There. You wanted the words. But listen carefully!
They sound strangely cheap, don’t they?
That is the joke!
The man who could command the Russian language better than almost anyone becomes, before the woman he loves, an illiterate man. Not because he has no words, but because every additional word begins to explain what his silence already allows us to feel. Perhaps another man will come who speaks more easily. Perhaps he will know how to say what Pushkin could not.
Let him!
If he makes her understand the tenderness, he has not created anything new. He has only given a voice to what was already there. At best, he is a translator. He does not create the love. He translates it!
He tells her: This was his jealousy. This was his tenderness. This was his shyness. This was how deeply he suffered.
And she listens and thinks: Nothing new. How could I not have seen it? And then comes the terrible question: He never wished me ill?
That is what you missed!
You mistook his mercy for indifference.
You thought Pushkin was too gentle because he wished her happiness with another. You thought he had surrendered too easily. But you misunderstood the restraint. He did not lack the ache you wanted him to have. He simply refused to make her suffer for it. He had the jealousy. He had the pain. He had the desire to keep her. He simply refused to make his suffering her punishment. He lets her go while still loving her. He does not curse her. He does not ask for retribution. He does not demand that she understand him. He does not make his pain her debt.
He says: May you be loved.
And if another man someday speaks where Pushkin was silent, what has he really given her? A translation. Nothing more. He may make her understand what Pushkin could not say, but he cannot give her anything greater than what Pushkin already carried.
This is where I make my little mischief with Pushkin.
I have spent these extra lines explaining him. I have made him speak. I have supplied his jealousy, his burning, his tenderness, his helplessness, his silence. I have done what every critic and parodist demands: I filled the gaps. And now look. What have I added? Nothing essential. After all these words, we are still left with the same truth: He loved her. That is all Pushkin said. And perhaps that is all Pushkin needed to say.
The joke is that I have written an entire poem to prove that his poem was already complete. The defence becomes its own parody. The explanation becomes evidence against explanation. The translator proves the inadequacy of translation. And the ‘illiterate’ man turns out to be the greatest master of the language precisely because he knows when language has reached its limit.
You wanted more words?! I gave them to you! Now you can hear how empty they become when compared with the thing they are trying to carry?! If you did not hear the throbbing of his heart in three words, a thousand will not cure your deafness.
And so I return him to his silence: He loved her. He suffered. He let her go. He wished her no ill. What he felt was true. Perhaps — that is enough. I have written an entire poem to prove that Pushkin’s poem was already complete.
Perhaps he had said enough all along.
