Fedor Sologub

The painful genius, great Shakespeare,
You never trusted in deceitful tales –
In all your Hamlets, Calibans, Macbeths,
And lighted inside me the fire, I’m to bear.

And I behave like King Lear of the old:
I will endow, with my ‘lands and waters’, 
Regan and Goneril – my evil daughters,
Scorning true gift, Cornelia had brought.

Inside my body of the working fellow,
Your heroes’ crowd is forever locked,
And I’ll be duped, ingenuous Othello,
And I’ll be pale, revengeful Shylock.

And I’ll await my final stroke here – 
Over eternal fancies of Shakespeare.


Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, April, 2001