Headless Horseman being on Antiterra
a poem by Pushkin, rather than Captain Mayne Reid's novel, one is reminded not
only of Pushkin's The Bronze Horsman, but also of his poem "The
Delibash" (1829). Here it is, followed by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi's
English version. The translator seems to believe that the Cossack is
unmounted, while actually he is also a horseman, like
the krasnyi (red) delibash who kills him and is killed by him. In
her translation, Ms. Bianchi omits the epithet pertaining to the color
of delibash's garment, while making the Cossacks "hot" (for the
rhyme's sake) and "free-born".
ДЕЛИБАШ
Перестрелка за холмами;
Смотрит лагерь их и наш;
На холме пред казаками
Вьётся красный
делибаш.
Делибаш! не суйся к лаве,
Пожалей своё житьё;
Вмиг аминь лихой забаве:
Попадешься на
копьё.
Эй, казак! не рвися к бою:
Делибаш на
всем скаку
Срежет саблею кривою
С плеч удалую башку.
Мчатся, сшиблись в
общем крике...
Посмотрите! каковы?..
Делибаш уже на пике,
А казак
без головы
THE DELIBASH
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!
Delibash is the Turkish synonym for Hotspur.
Whatever garment Pushkin's delibash is wearing, it
is probably not the beshmet of Caucasian tribesmen; all
the same, one recalls krasnyi beshmet mentioned in a discarded
variant of Lermontov's "Mtsyri":
И под кольчугою надет
На каждом красный был
бешмет.
(And everybody was wearing a red
beshmet
Under his shirt of mail)
Beshmet is also mentioned in Ada
(1.42): "A smiling old Tartar, incongruously but somehow
assuagingly wearing American blue-jeans with his beshmet, was squatting
at his [Percy de Prey's] side".
Alexey
Sklyarenko