Speaking of "Headless Horseman" (on Antiterra, a poem by
Pushkin that took ten-year-old Van less than twenty minutes to learn by
heart: 1.28), here is an English translation of Pushkin's poem The
Delibash* (1829) that I quoted in Nab-l last May:
With the hostile camp in
skirmish
Our men once were changing shot,
Pranced the Delibash his
charger
'Fore our ranks of Cossacks hot.
Trifle not with free-born
Cossacks!
Nor too o'er foolhardy be!
Thy mad mood thou wilt atone
for--
On his pike he'll skewer thee!
'Ware friend Cossack! Or at full
bound,
Off thy head, at lightning speed
With his scimitar he'll
sever
From thy trunk! He will indeed!
What confusion! What a
roaring!
Halt! thou devil's pack, have care!
On the pike is lanced the
horseman--
Headless stands** the Cossack there!
Note that "The Delibash" consists of sixteen lines, while "The
Bronze Horseman" has some 480 lines.
*Turk., daredevil; cf. sorvigolova, Russian for
"daredevil"
**The Cossack can not possibly "stand" because he, too, is on
horseback. Another detail lost in translation is the red color of the
delibash.
Alexey Sklyarenko