tre tozzi di Pushkin per affamati di poesia

A.S. Pushkin

And today we have Pushkin's internalized racism on display. Pushkin spent his life thinking he was ugly for being one eighth African. (His great-grandfather from his mother's side, who was kidnapped from modern-day Eritrea by the Ottoman Empire and then ransomed as a slave to the Russian Empire.) He also devoted much in conversation to how he blamed the impulsive and uncivilized aspect he perceived in his personality on his own non-European heritage.
George Dawe was an English portrait-artist who had the habit of doing spontaneous pencil sketches of people he met.

To Dawe Esq.
Translated by A.Z. Foreman

Why would your sublime pencil draw
The features of my negroid face?
Though meant for future eyes, the devil
Has advocates for its disgrace.

Draw Miss Olénina instead.
When inspiration fires the heart,
Nothing but youth and beauty ever
Should summon genius to art.

a Dawe Esq.

A che il tratto sublime traccerebbe

le forme della mia faccia negroide?

Pur se per occhi futuri, il diavolo

molti ha avvocati per la sua disgrazia.

Disegna al mio posto dama Olénina.

quando l’ispirazione infiamma il cuore,

mai altro che giovinezza e bellezza

dovrebbe richiamare il genio all’arte.

*

The Invocation
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
Click to hear me recite the original Russian

Oh if it's true that in the night

When living souls repose abed

And fallen beams of lunar light

Slide onto headstones of the dead...

Oh if it's true that then till day

The graves are opened in the earth,

I call the shade of Layla forth!

Come back, my dear! This way! This way

Beloved shade, appear and rise

As once you were before we parted,

As pale and chill as winter skies,

By final agony contorted. 

Come as a distant star, a ray,

As a light sound, a breath, a scent,

Or as a ghastly revenant

I care not how! This way! This way!

I do not call you to reprove

Or take revenge on those whose spite

Ended the life of her I love,

Nor to spy out the grave's dark rite,

Nor yet because I writhe as prey

To doubt… But, anguishing above you,

I want to say that I still love you

And am still yours! This way! This way!

Invocazione

Oh se è vero che nella notte

nel riposo delle anime viventi,

raggi caduti di luce lunare

toccano le pietre tombali dei morti…

oh se è vero che poi sino a giorno

i sepolcri in terra sono aperti,

io invoco l’ombra di Layla via di là!

Ritorna, cara! Per di qua! Per di qua!

Amata ombra, appari e risorgi

come tu fosti prima dell’addio,

pallido gelo come cieli invernali,

dall’agonia finale rattrappita.

Vieni come un lontano raggio, o stella,

come un lieve suono, un respiro, odore,

o come uno spirito fantasima

non bado a come! Per di qua! Per di qua!

Io non ti chiamo per rimproverarti

o vendicarmi di chi il cui disprezzo

sfinì la vita di colei che amai,

né spiare di tombe oscuro rito,

né ancora per mio agonizzare in preda

ai dubbi…ma angosciato per via di te,

io voglio dire che ancora ti amo

tuo sono ancora! Per di qua! Per di qua!

*

This poem, describing a somewhat remorseful white night in St. Petersburg, reflects the poet's state of mind after his exile and before his marriage. It was a turbulent period. Nicholas the First had brought him back from exile but was making demands on the poet that he could not fulfill with a clear conscience. Though he was for many reasons unable (though probably not unwilling) to actually be a Decembrist and stand against the Tsar, he still felt he was betraying his Decembrist friends. Despair drove him to dissipation: he lost huge sums at cards, had three affairs with married women, and incidentally contracted an STD from a prostitute a month before he wrote this poem. 

Remembrance
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
Click to hear me recite the original Russian

When din of day for mortals softly ends
         And onto the mute city squares
The thin penumbra of the night descends
         With slumber, balm of daylong cares,
Then, in the still for me the hours wring
         Exhausting wakeful pains anew.
Searing in blank of night, the serpent's sting
         Venoms my heart with acid rue.
Black fancies seethe. An overflow of thought
         Aghast, builds in the angst-strained soul;
Remembrance wordlessly and out of naught 
         Unwinds its long unholy scroll.
Then reading with disgust the writ of years
         I tremble, damn my every day,
Bawl bitter plaints, and bitterly shed tears
         But wipe not one sad line away. 

Rimembranza

Quando per i mortali dolce è l’ora

e sulle piazze di città silenti

scende sottile la penombra a notte

balsamo di diuturne cure, il sonno,

me allora nel silenzio l’ora attorce

da capo a dolore che mi esaurisce.

Nel mezzo della notte ustiona aculeo

il mio cuore con acida afflizione.

Nere fantasie. Un carico di pensiero

orribile nell’anima angosciata;

rimembro senza parole e dal nulla

empia ne srotola la lunghezza.

Leggo con disgusto il decreto di anni

tremo, danno ogni mio singolo giorno,

pianti amari e amaramente spargo

ma non cancello una sola riga.

A.S. Pushkin, To the sea

(tr. Yours truly)

To woods, to hushful wastes, away
bring I, imbued anew with you,
your gleam and shadow, cliff and bay,
your waves' deep rumour and dear blue.

 

Al mare

(tr. Vs. fedele)

     

A boschi, a distese silenti, porto,

di nuovo imbevuto di te, splendore

e ombra, picchi rocciosi e baie,

il tuo mugghiare di onde e il caro blu.

n. epigrafe a un art. che verrà.

noblesse oblige e Pushkin può

Exegi monumentum

Translated by A.Z. Foreman
Click to hear me recite the original Russian

We heard him say, "I will destroy this temple that is made by hand, and within three days I will build another made not by hand."

-Mark 14:58

I've raised a monument made not by human hands.

The public path to it cannot be overgrown.

With splendid head unbowed far loftier it stands

               than Alexander's unswept stone.

No, I shall not all die. My soul in hallowed berth

of art shall brave decay and from my dust take wing,

and I shall be renowned whilst on this mortal earth

               even one poet lives to sing.

Tidings of me shall spread through all the realm of Rus

and every tribe in Her shall name me as they speak:

the haughty western Pole, the east's untamed Tungus,

               north Finns and the south steppe's Kalmyk.

And long shall I be dear in all a people's eyes

for how my kindling lyre bid kindly feelings grow.

For in my tyrant age I sang of freedom's rise,

               and mercy to the men laid low.

To God and his commands pay Thou good heed, O Muse.

To praise and slander both be nonchalant and cool.

Demand no laureate's wreath, think nothing of abuse,

               and never argue with a fool.

Exegi monumentum

Lo ascoltammo dire, “ distruggerò questo tempio costruito a mano e in tre giorni ne edificherò uno non costruito a mano.” (Marco,14.-58)

Alzai un monumento non costruito da manoumana.

La pubblica via ad esso non si può coprire di vegetazione.

La splendida testa non china sta molto più alto

della pietra non pianta di Alessandro.

No, non morirò del tutto. Su altare venerato di arte

l’anima  contrasterà il declino e  dalla polvere prenderà le ali,

così sarò conosciuto finchè su questa terra mortale

a un solo poeta piacerà cantare.

Notizia di me si spargerà in tutto il reame di Rus

ogni tribù in Essa mi nominerà col dire:

alto Polo occidentale, indomito Tungus dell’est,

finnico del nord e steppa a sud di Kalmyk.

A lungo sarò caro agli occhi di tutto un popolo

per l’accattivante lira che accrebbe accattivanti sentimenti.

Nella mia epoca tiranna cantai l’avvento della libertà,

e grazia a chi fu abbassato.

A Dio ed al suo ordine fai tu molta attenzione, o Musa.

Sia apprezzare che diffamare, sii nonchalant e distaccata.

Non domandare onore di laureati, fregatene di abuso,

e non discutere mai con un cretino.

A.S. Pushkin

Advancing from the Rear
A.S. Pushkin
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
Click to hear me recite the original Russian

Beside Istómina the dancer,
Lay naked general Orlóv.
When things got hot, this man in action
Was not much to take notice of.
Meaning no insult, that hetaera
Got out her magnifying glass
And said "Er, love...I'd really like to
See what you use to fuck my ass."

In avanzata dalle retrovie

A fianco a Istòmina la ballerina,

giaceva nudo il generale Orlòv.

Cose scottanti, quest’uomo in azione

non era un gran che per farsi notare.

Lungi dall’insulto, quella etèra

sporse la sua lente d’ingrandimento

e disse: eh amore…vorrei davvero

vedere cosa usi per fottermi.

sublimeosceno: il vagone della vita, Pushkin

Pushkin: The Wagon of Life (From Russian)

The ability to employ both "high" and "low" registers of language to contrastive effect is a feature not only of Pushkin's art but also his way of thinking and, to judge from the accounts of those who knew him, his personality as well. 
A woman who knew him, Alexandra Smirnova, remarked that he was quite the "lover of the obscene" (любитель непристойного). The diplomat Nikolai Kiselev, another of his acquaintances, (to whom Smirnova had made this remark about Pushkin) said "Unfortunately, I know as much, and have never been able to find an explanation for his incongruous way of shifting between the obscene and the sublime." (к несчастью, я это знаю и никогда не  мог  себе  объяснить  эту антитезу перехода от непристойного к возвышенному.)  
As Alyssa Gillespie noted in her article "Bawdy and Soul: Pushkin's Poetics of Obscenity"  

Both obscenity and sublimity involve the transcendence of mundane verbal formulas and meaningless clichés and both, therefore, serve Pushkin's uplifting poetic purpose of liberating human thought and self-expression 

Moreover as Gillespie, whose above-quoted article may be found in the excellent collection Taboo Pushkin, is well aware, this aspect of Pushkin's poetics and thought-processes has been neglected much by the scholarly community both Russian and non-Russian, and is generally unappreciated and unacknowledged as much by the translator as by the Russophone casual reader. Few indeed are the Russians who, in praising their national poet, would care to mention or be informed of the fact that he was fond of making jokes in verse about the size of somebody's dick one day, and write of angels and demons the next.
The poem translated here is an awesome example of Pushkin's willingness to blend the sublime/lofty and the obscene/vulgar, foregrounding an oft-neglected (and oft-avoided) aspect of the great poet's aesthetic. The poem is almost always censored in Russian print editions (I include the Russian text unbowdlerized and in the form in which Pushkin circulated it in manuscript), and when translated into English, German and French has had the profanity and colloquialism airbrushed out of it by translators and/or editors who lacked Pushkin's appreciation for linguistic variation. 

The Wagon of Life

By A.S. Pushkin

Translated by A.Z. Foreman
Click to hear me recite the original Russian

Whatever heavy load it carries,

The wagon's light on steppe and street.

Grey Time, the coachman, never wearies
And never leaves the driver's seat.

At dawn we jump inside the wagon.
Happy to break our necks like glass,
We scorn life's hedonistic languor,

And yell "Man, fuck it! Just haul ass!"

By noon we've lost that daring folly,

Being jerked around. We're wagon-sick

Afraid of every hill and gully,

And yell "Slow down, you lunatic!"

But on we rush round every bend.

We're used to it, come evening's yawn.

Heading to night, to journey's end,

We doze. Time drives the horses on. 

Notes:

L7 and 8- Line 7 in the original Russian reads i preziráia len' i négu "and, disdaining indolence and sensuousness." The term nega "sensuousness", suggestive of creature comforts, leisure and sexual allure all at once, is one of those words that is curiously hard to render from Russian into English (as "disillusionment" and "privacy" are difficult to render into Russian.) As Nabokov puts it in his Onegin commentary:

Nega, with its emphasis on otiose euphoria and associations with softness, luxuriousness, tenderness is not exactly synonymous with sladostrastie "sweet passion" or volupté "volupty" where the erotic element predominates. In using nega, Pushkin and his constellation were trying to render the French poetical formulasparesse voluptueuse, mollesse, molles délices, etc. which the English Arcadians had already turned into "soft delights."

I have approached the problem by drumming into service the modern American semantic range of the word "hedonistic." 

Line 8 in the original Russian in Pushkin's manuscript reads kričim: valiái iebióna mat' ("we cry: 'move it, motherfucker!'") At some point valiái "move it" got mauled in publication to pošól "get going." Normally, Russian print editions of Pushkin's work censor this line further and bowdlerize it to kričím: pošól... ("We cry 'Get going...'") leaving the savvy reader to supply the iebióna mat' "motherfucker" on the basis of rhyme and metrical space. Even when Pushkin's use of profanity is being discussed by scholars and the line's actual content needs to be specified, the most editors will allow is kričím: pošól, ie.... m... ("we cry: 'get going, m****rf***er.'") 
Lines 7 and 8 function juxtapositionally. The high-register néga and the adverbial participle preziráia "disdaining" are followed by the quite literally unprintable low-register iebióna mat' "motherfucker." The phrase preziráia len' "disdaining idleness" is a cliché-subversion of the idiom preziráia lest' "disdaining flattery" i.e. the attitude of one who does not deign to humor the ego of others.  The use of obscenity therefore carries a sense of defiance of normal social order. The switch in the following stanza to a non-obscene duraléi is likewise significant, as Pushkin did regard profanity as befitting juvenile circumstances, and was less foul-mouthed as he got older.

Vagone della vita

Quale che porti carico pesante,

il carro è leggero su steppe e strade.

Tempogrigio, il cocchiere, non si stanca

né lascia mai il posto a cassetta.

All’alba noi il carro lo assaltiamo.

Felici di romperci il collo, vetro,

sprezziamo le mollezze della vita

e urliamo: cazzo incula fottimadre!

Per mezzodì s’è persa la pazzia

strattonati in giro. Abbiamo nausea,

terrorizzati da colline e fossi

e urliamo: vai piano sei lunatico!

Ma continua la corsa nella fretta,

si fa il callo e lo sbadiglio a sera.

Verso la notte la fine del viaggio

si sonnecchia. Il tempo guida i cavalli.

@chad

A.S. Pushkin, Foreman went nuts with notes

A.S. Pushkin

This poem is Pushkin's imitation of Horace's Ode 3.30 (which I have translated here) or, rather more directly, Pushkin's riff on (and in some ways gentle parody of) his elder Derzhavin's Russian imitation of Horace's ode. The Russian text of Pushkin's poem is untitled, and the words Exegi Monumentum used as epigraph. For various reasons, I felt it would work better in English to make Exegi Monumentum the title and give a different epigraph that brought out a different facet of the same idea. I have also gone nuts with the notes to the poem, barreling into digressions and taking a few casual strolls beside the point. The digressions are in blue, for those who wish to be able to skip (or focus on) them.
The original poem is in a metrical and stanzaic form which is found nowhere else in Pushkin's poetry. The stanzas consist of three lines in accentual alexandrines (iambic hexameter with a caesura after the 6th syllable which must bear actual stress), followed by one of iambic tetrameter, with alternating masculine and feminine rhymes.
Pushkin's metrical and formal decisions were never arbitrary. A number of studies have shown that formal and metrical choices were, for Pushkin, semantically and pragmatically motivated. i.e. trochaics are more likely to be found in poems with certain kinds of content or a certain set of moods, and iambics in others, for example. It is therefore significant that this poem's form is unique in Pushkin's corpus and, moreover, occurs in a text which functions in relation to, and imitation of, other poems -mainly Derzhavin's ode (whose form is similar, being in alternating masculine and feminine rhymes but in Derzhavin the alexandrines are maintained throughout.) 
In order to make this poem stand out metrically, musically and rhythmically from what one normally finds in English verse (as the original itself stands out in Pushkin's corpus) I have therefore decided to duplicate the meter of the original Russian as closely as possible, sacrificing only the alternation of masculine and feminine rhymes, even though iambic hexameters  are not commonly employed in English (the usual practice of translators of Russian or French poetry is to transform alexandrines into iambic pentameter,) and formal features such as the post-tonic caesura after the sixth syllable are almost never encountered in any significant quantity in the major works of the English literary tradition. (Hell even translators like Edna St. Vincent Millay and George Dillon in their rendering of Baudelaire's Fleurs du Mal, who frequently turned Baudelaire's alexandrines into iambic hexameters, did not try to duplicate this feature.)

Exegi monumentum

A.S. Pushkin

Translated by A.Z. Foreman
Click to hear me recite the original Russian

We heard him say, "I will destroy this temple that is made by hand, and within three days I will build another made not by hand."

-Mark 14:58

I've raised a monument made not by human hands.

The public path to it cannot be overgrown.

With splendid head unbowed far loftier it stands

               than Alexander's unswept stone.

No, I shall not all die. My soul in hallowed berth

of art shall brave decay and from my dust take wing,

and I shall be renowned whilst on this mortal earth

               even one poet lives to sing.

Tidings of me shall spread through all the realm of Rus

and every tribe in Her shall name me as they speak:

the haughty western Pole, the east's untamed Tungus,

               north Finns and the south steppe's Kalmyk.

And long shall I be dear in all a people's eyes

for how my kindling lyre bid kindly feelings grow.

For in my tyrant age I sang of freedom's rise,

               and mercy to the men laid low.

To God and his commands pay Thou good heed, O Muse.

To praise and slander both be nonchalant and cool.

Demand no laureate's wreath, think nothing of abuse,

               and never argue with a fool.

Notes:

L1- The word here used in the Russian, нерукотворный "not made by hand" is one that rarely occurs in poetry, and indeed this is the only time in the Pushkinian corpus that it appears. It is ordinarily associated with sacred things. C.f. Mark 14:58 which I have made the epigraph of the English translation, in which Jesus' promise to build a church for humanity is being relayed and misunderstood by one of his slanderers (note the phrasing of the Russian Мы слышали, как Он говорил: Я разрушу храм сей рукотворный, и через три дня воздвигну другой,нерукотворный.) Indeed, in the Bible translation that Pushkin would have used, the verb corresponding to "build" in that passage is the same verb found in this poem. On a different note, the word is often used in conjunction with icons, particularly those depicting the face of Jesus.

L2- The point here is that the path is spiritual, not physical, and therefore cannot be overgrown. (Not that people will constantly walk on it.)

L4- This line has been a pain in the Russianist's ass for many an age. The Russian words here Aleksandríiskogo stolpá are rather tricky. In Russian, Aleksandríiskii actually means "Alexandrian, Of Alexandria." It is possible that this is a gallicism formed from the name Alexander, but the normal way to say Alexander Column is Aleksándrovskaia Kolónna. Stolp is an archaic equivalent of the more unaffected Kolónna. This 25 meter high column, a monument to Czar Alexander, was completed in 1834. (Pushkin intentionally absented himself from the capital to avoid having to witness the unveiling ceremonies.) At the time, it was the highest structure in Petersburg, making it an unavoidable subject of comparison, particularly since the Alexander Column was built specifically so as to answer, and be bigger than, the Colonne Vendôme in Paris (erected by Napoleon in his own honor.) European court society being an environment where men were always in competition with one another, and the issue of which man's column was biggest would naturally play some sort of role. This isn't strictly necessary to appreciate the poem. I just think the image of Pushkin bragging that his dick will be bigger in death than the Czar's is its own reward. Clio, the Muse of History, has always been a bit of a size-queen. In any event, if the word really connotes Alexandria, it would suggest the Diocletian Column in Alexandria built in 297, measuring 26 meters (which is one inch longer...I mean one meter taller than Czar Alexander's column.) That said, it is clear that Pushkin's contemporaries were likely to read it as a reference to the Czar. When Zhukovski prepared the first publication of this poem after Pushkin's death, he changed the line to Napoleónova stolpá "than Napoleon's column" i.e. the Colonne Vendôme.

L8- "this mortal earth." The original Russian here has v podlúnnom míre "in the sublunary world, in the world underneath the moon." This is a Gallicism, calqued off of French le monde sublunaire. It refers essentially to "that which is terrestrial, changeable, timebound instead of timeless," the idea being that the heavenly bodies, of which the moon was ostensibly the nearest to earth, were changeless and eternal - therefore only that which was "under the moon" or sublunar was subject to the entropic phenomena of decay, death, rise and fall.
There are, as I see it, two ways to read this verse at face value. Either (a) Pushkin is suggesting that every poet to the last will remember him with admiration or (b) if any poet survives into posterity on the lips of the earthwalkers, it will be him. Both are at best hyperbolic in a way that shades from grandeur into grandiosity, and may suggest that Pushkin intends some amount of self-deflating irony.
The fact that Pushkin uses the exclusively poetic dokól' "whilst" (a poetic shortening of the already archaic and high-flown dokóle) rather than the more unaffected (and metrically equivalent) poká also requires some thought. Poká would actually make for better sound-effects in the line. Note the repetition of the /a/ and the /po/ which would have ensued had he written "I sláven búdu ya poka v podlúnnom míre.) One might say that he is deliberately trying to give the impression of high bombast that takes itself a bit too seriously.

L9- Rus' - an archaic word for Russia.
 Rus was originally the name of a group of Varangian Norsemen that plundered and exploited the East Slavs as well as Finns, Balts and others in what is today northern Russia, and eventually conquered them and superimposed themselves on them as a ruling class in a conglomeration of city states known as the Rus Khaganate. They were eventually expelled as rulers, with a number of them assimilated linguistically and ethnically by their far more numerous (mostly slavic) subjects, but not before their name Rus had become the new ethnonym of the peoples who had been under their dominion. The name survives also as Ruotsi, the Finnish word for Sweden. This fact does not sit will with a number of Russian nationalist historians and linguists who engage themselves in valiant acts of logical and scholarly gymnastics in order to find a way to derive the Rus ethnonym from "pure" Slavic, rather than admit that a foreign pollutant had so fundamental a role in shaping East Slavic nationhood. 
It is nonetheless a well-documented form of ethnogenesis. The typology is distinct: the conquerors establish themselves as a ruling class over a given group which may or may not have a pre-existing sense of ethnic belonging, and in so doing cause their various subjects to see themselves with time as an ethnos defined by the conqueror's dominion. Thus they all start defining themselves as "The people under (insert name of conquering group)" and eventually simply the conquering group's name is seen as theirs as well. In Europe this has occurred several times. It is how the French got their name (Romance-speakers ruled by a Frankish elite whose "Frankland" was "Francia" -> France. c.f. German Frankreich) as did the Bulgarians (Slavic-speakers under the dominion of the Turkic-speaking Bulgars who were eventually assimilated by the former), the Greeks for a time in the Middle Ages (the Greek word for "Greek people" until the beginning of the second millennium was Ρωμαίοι Rhōmaíoi "Romans") and possibly the Croatians as well in pre-history, though the specifics are uncertain. 

L10- the word rendered here by "tribes" is iazýk. The normal, and indeed original meaning, of iazýk is "tongue, language" but it also had the meaning "ethnos, nation" in archaic language. Pushkin is here clearly playing with both meanings, since he is also referring to the various nations/tongues as performing a speech-act.
That "tongue, language" is the original meaning can be inferred from the fact that the word descends from Proto-Slavic *jȩzykǔ. This latter is the descendant of Proto-Indo-European *dn̥ǵʰwéh₂s, which also developed into Sanskritjihvā, Welsh tafod, Persian zabān (from Middle Persian *uzwān), Armenian lezu, Classical Latin lingua (from Old Latin dingua), and our own English tongue - all of which can mean "tongue", though they have varying other possible meanings (the Welsh word, for example, can only refer to the literal bodily tongue and not to language, whereas the Armenian word can refer not only to the literal tongue and to language but also can mean "edge" and -like the Slavic word- is used to mean "ethnos, nation" in Old Armenian.) Whether the agreement in the latter respect between Slavic and Armenian is a shared innovation, a semantic borrowing, a case of independent development or an inheritance of Indo-European semantics that was simply lost by all other IE languages is unknown, at least to me. 
Anyway, язык appears to have been used regularly, in the earliest attested texts in Slavic languages, with the sense of "Nation" alongside "Language, tongue." It is used, for example, to translate Greek "ethnos" in Old Slavonic. Note Matthew 24:14 "And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations." (И проповестся сие евангелие царствия по всей вселенней, во свидетельство всем языком.)
Interestingly, in one of the earliest Slavonic texts, Constantine's prologue to the translation of the Gospels (which is incidentally the earliest extant poem in a Slavic language) the meanings "nation" and "language" are both employed to poetic effect, as in the following passage where all instances of the word ѩзꙑкъ jȩzykǔ "language/nation" are bolded in the translation and in the original Old Slavonic.

Къто можетъ притъче вьсѥ рещи, обличаѭщѧ без книгъ ѩзꙑкꙑ, въ съмꙑсльнѣ гласѣ не глаголѭще. Ни аще вьсѩ ѩзꙑкꙑ ѹмѣѥтъ, можетъ съказати немощь сихъ. Обаче своѭ притъчѭ да приставлѭ, мъногъ ѹмъ въ малѣ рѣчи кажѧ. Нази бо вьси без книгъ ѩзꙑци не могѫще сѧ брати без орѫжіꙗ съ противьникомь дꙋшь нашихъ готови мѫкꙑ вѣчьнꙑѩ въ плѣнъ. Иже бо врага, ѩзꙑци, не любите...

Who can tell all the parables Denouncing nations without their own books Who do not resort to a sense-making voice? Even one potent in all tongues Would lack the power to tell their impotence. Yet I would add a parable of my own Condensing much sense into few words Naked indeed are all those nations without books Who being without arms cannot fight The Adversary of our souls And are ripe for the dungeon of eternal torments. Therefore, ye nations whose love is not for the enemy...

L11-12- The original Russian literally says "The Slav's proud scion, the finn, the yet-untamed Tungus and the Kalmyk, companion of the steppes." In choosing the nationalities he does, Pushkin is emphasizing the geographical breadth of the Russian empire- the Eastern Tungus, the Southern Kalmyk and the Northern Finn (Finland at the time belonged to Russia after a war in 1808 during which Tsar Alexander swiped it from Sweden.) For this reason I am inclined to see the górdyi vnuk slavián "proud scion/grandson of the Slavs" as a reference not to Slavs in general, but to Poles specifically (poles were the westernmost Slavic people subject to the Russian Imperium.) Górdyi "proud" is a term with negative associations in Pushkin's usage, and he often uses it to describe the Poles in e.g. Boris Godunov and in his nauseatingly patriotic, somewhat condescending poems against the Polish struggle for nationhood. The use of vnuk  "nephew, granson, scion, heir" is a reference to the fraternal slavic relationship between Russia and Poland.

L14- kindly feelings may be inspired by an incident with the man upstairs. When Tsar Alexander was trying to figure out what sort of subversive verse was making Pushkin so famous, he was shown the poem Derévnia "The Village" in which Pushkin wrote of the horrors of serfdom, thereby suggesting that the serfs should be freed. Tsar Alexander, who was still in his liberal phase before he turned to the dark side, actually approved. The surviving memoirs and other sources differ on what precisely the Tsar's response was. It was either Faites remercier Pouchkine des bons  sentiments que ses vers inspirent, "Have Pushkin thanked for the good feelings his verses inspire" or Remerciez Pouchkine des nobles sentiments qui inspirent ses vers "Thank Pushkin for the noble/kindly feelings which inspire his verses."

L15- A draft version of this stanza includes, in place of this line, the words Čto v sled Radiščevu vosslávil ia svobódu ("That following Radishchev I sang the praises of freedom.") This reference to a banned author would have been doubtless censored, yet it is not altogether clear to me that Pushkin would have left the line as it is had censorship not been an issue. The stanza as it is is certainly stronger. In any case, it is clear from the draft that this line, in draft and in final form, refers to his own early poem Vól'nost': Oda "Liberty: an Ode" (which can be found here in my translation) since Radishchev had also written an ode by that same name.  Pushkin may also have Radishchev's Slóvo o Lomonósove "A Laud for Lomonosov" on his mind (found in the final chapter of his Putešéstviie iz Peterrbúrga v Moskvú "Journey from Petersburg to Moscow" a book which was banned by the Tsar's censors and well-known to Pushkin) e.g. the following passage 

Не столп, воздвигнутый над тлением твоим,  сохранит  память твою в дальнейшее потомство. Не камень со иссечением имени  твоего  пренесет славу твою в будущие столетия. Слово твое, живущее присно и вовеки в творениях твоих, слово российского племени, тобою в  языке  нашем обновленное, прелетит в устах народных  за  необозримый  горизонт  столетий. Пускай стихии, свирепствуя сложенно,  разверзнут  земную  хлябь  и  поглотят великолепный сей град, откуда громкое твое пение раздавалося  во  все  концы обширныя  России;  пускай  яростный  некий  завоеватель  истребит  даже  имя любезного твоего отечества сего: но доколе слово российское ударять  будет  слух, ты жив будешь и не умрешь. Если умолкнет  оно,  то  и  слава  твоя  угаснет. О Лестно,  лестно  так  умрети. 

No column raised over thy decaying flesh shall it be that preserves thy memory for distant posterity, no stone with thy name inscribed that bears thy glory forth to future centuries. Thy words, alive evermore in thy creations, the words of the Russian nation which thou hast renewed in our tongue, shall take flight on public lips beyond the boundless horizon of the centuries. Let the mightily raging elements gape an abysmal maw in the earth and swallow up all this magnificent city whence thy ringing song sounded forth unto all ends of Russia's vastness. Yea let some fierce conqueror annihilate even the very name of this thy dear fatherland: but while Russian words yet strike at living ears, thou shalt yet live undying. If it too fall silent, then so shall thy glory be extinguished. O flattery, flattery it were to die thus!

L16- the "men laid low" refers to the thwarted Decembrists who had been sent to Siberia for plotting to do to the Tsar what the Egyptian people did to Mubarak.

L17-20  - this entire stanza is dramatically different in tone and import from the preceding four. From boasting about his fame as the fruit of his labors, the poet has turned to enjoining his Muse to simply not give a shit about what everybody else thinks and to be humble before God.
One can read this in a variety of ways, the most popular of them being that Pushkin is parodying the Horatian trope, most relevantly as expressed by Derzhavin but also generally common in European letters (c.f. Ronsard's Sonnet à Hélène which I have translated here, a good half dozen of Shakespeare's sonnets) of boasting about how enduringly remembered one's verse (and by extension the subject of one's verse) will be in ages to come. As Nabokov put it in his Onegin commentary:

In 1836, in one of the most subtle compositions in Russian literary history, Pushkin parodied Derzhavin's Monument stanza by stanza in exactly the same verse form. The first four have an ironic intonation, but under the mask of high mummery Pushkin smuggles in his private truth. The last quatrain is the artist's own grave voice repudiating the mimicked boast. His last line, although ostensibly referring to reviewers, slyly implies that only fools proclaim their immortality.

Notwithstanding the fact that Nabokov seems to have missed the obvious while searching for the subtle (Pushkin's poem is very much not in "exactly the same verse form" as Derzhavin's, since the latter is in hexameters throughout whereas Pushkin shortens every fourth line to a tetrameter), it is true that there are ironic twists throughout the first four stanzas.

We may also perceive a gradual change from hubris (I will not all die) to humility (Obey God, o Muse.) One may I personally see it as a complexification, but not negation, of the preceding stanzas' sentiments. After all, the poet is addressing his muse and enjoining her not to be swayed by or concerned with the vagaries of public or critical taste or what anyone wants or likes, whereas he himself apart from the muse appears aware of his future imperishable fame.

This may be read as a contrast between the poet's present circumstances (his critical star was waning at the time, and the world around him seemed hostile and inimical) in which he needs to remind himself to be as unimpressed by foolish praise as unfazed by idiotic condemnation, trusting that future generations will come to love him for who he was as a poet.

One might also hazard that he is proud of how famous and publicly beloved he will be, a destiny he will have achieved by making sure his muse remains unconcerned with said fame or public's love, the better to realize the poet's individual potential as craftsman and creator to inscribe his work with a self uncorrupted by the other, a self which will survive death all the more fully in what the poet has wrought. He has won the auctoritas every poet dreams of, triumphing over popular taste by refusing to surrender to it, and in so doing supplanting said taste with the universe of his own genius. By refusing to simply say what the masses want and love to hear, he induces them to hear and love what he has to say.

There are many more possibilities that Pushkinists have proposed to make sense of this poem's puzzling weave between hubris and humility, artistic utilitarianism and individualistic art for art's sake, confidence in his legacy and doubt as to whether people will praise him for the right reasons. Some such readings are more tendentious, and some more illuminating than others. Regardless, the fact that the poet seems to be suggesting plausibly a great many things at once, and even in a certain way mocking the reader as s/he tries to get a grip on what's really going on here, is a praiseworthy achievement in and of itself.

o� )i ` 8�� th negative associations in Pushkin's usage, and he often uses it to describe the Poles in e.g. Boris Godunov and in his nauseatingly patriotic, somewhat condescending poems against the Polish struggle for nationhood. The use of vnuk  "nephew, granson, scion, heir" is a reference to the fraternal slavic relationship between Russia and Poland.

L14- kindly feelings may be inspired by an incident with the man upstairs. When Tsar Alexander was trying to figure out what sort of subversive verse was making Pushkin so famous, he was shown the poem Derévnia "The Village" in which Pushkin wrote of the horrors of serfdom, thereby suggesting that the serfs should be freed. Tsar Alexander, who was still in his liberal phase before he turned to the dark side, actually approved. The surviving memoirs and other sources differ on what precisely the Tsar's response was. It was either Faites remercier Pouchkine des bons  sentiments que ses vers inspirent, "Have Pushkin thanked for the good feelings his verses inspire" or Remerciez Pouchkine des nobles sentiments qui inspirent ses vers "Thank Pushkin for the noble/kindly feelings which inspire his verses."

L15- A draft version of this stanza includes, in place of this line, the words Čto v sled Radiščevu vosslávil ia svobódu ("That following Radishchev I sang the praises of freedom.") This reference to a banned author would have been doubtless censored, yet it is not altogether clear to me that Pushkin would have left the line as it is had censorship not been an issue. The stanza as it is is certainly stronger. In any case, it is clear from the draft that this line, in draft and in final form, refers to his own early poem Vól'nost': Oda "Liberty: an Ode" (which can be found here in my translation) since Radishchev had also written an ode by that same name.  Pushkin may also have Radishchev's Slóvo o Lomonósove "A Laud for Lomonosov" on his mind (found in the final chapter of his Putešéstviie iz Peterrbúrga v Moskvú "Journey From Petersburg to Moscow" a book which was banned by the Tsar's censors and well-known to Pushkin) e.g. the following passage 

Не столп, воздвигнутый над тлением твоим,  сохранит  память твою в дальнейшее потомство. Не камень со иссечением имени  твоего  пренесет славу твою в будущие столетия. Слово твое, живущее присно и вовеки в творениях твоих, слово российского племени, тобою в  языке  нашем обновленное, прелетит в устах народных  за  необозримый  горизонт  столетий. Пускай стихии, свирепствуя сложенно,  разверзнут  земную  хлябь  и  поглотят великолепный сей град, откуда громкое твое пение раздавалося  во  все  концы обширныя  России;  пускай  яростный  некий  завоеватель  истребит  даже  имя любезного твоего отечества сего: но доколе слово российское ударять  будет  слух, ты жив будешь и не умрешь. Если умолкнет  оно,  то  и  слава  твоя  угаснет. О Лестно,  лестно  так  умрети. 

No column raised over thy decaying flesh shall it be that preserves thy memory for distant posterity, no stone with thy name inscribed that bears thy glory forth to future centuries. Thy words, alive evermore in thy creations, the words of the Russian nation which thou hast renewed in our tongue, shall take flight on public lips beyond the boundless horizon of the centuries. Let the mightily raging elements gape an abysmal maw in the earth and swallow up all this magnificent city whence thy ringing song sounded forth unto all ends of Russia's vastness. Yea let some fierce conqueror annihilate even the very name of this thy dear fatherland: but while Russian words yet strike at living ears, thou shalt yet live undying. If it too fall silent, then so shall thy glory be extinguished. O flattery, flattery it were to die thus!

L16- the "men laid low" refers to the thwarted Decembrists who had been sent to Siberia for plotting to do to the Tsar what the Egyptian people did to Mubarak.

L17-20  - this entire stanza is dramatically different in tone and import from the preceding four. From boasting about his fame as the fruit of his labors, the poet has turned to enjoining his Muse to simply not give a shit about what everybody else thinks and to be humble before God. 
One can read this in a variety of ways, the most popular of them being that Pushkin is parodying the Horatian trope, most relevantly as expressed by Derzhavin but also generally common in European letters (c.f. Ronsard's Sonnet à Hélène which I have translated here, a good half dozen of Shakespeare's sonnets) of boasting about how enduringly remembered one's verse (and by extension the subject of one's verse) will be in ages to come. As Nabokov put it in his Onegin commentary:

In 1836, in one of the most subtle compositions in Russian literary history, Pushkin parodied Derzhavin's Monument stanza by stanza in exactly the same verse form. The first four have an ironic intonation, but under the mask of high mummery Pushkin smuggles in his private truth. The last quatrain is the artist's own grave voice repudiating the mimicked boast. His last line, although ostensibly referring to reviewers, slyly implies that only fools proclaim their immortality.

Notwithstanding the fact that Nabokov seems to have missed the obvious while searching for the subtle (Pushkin's poem is very much not in "exactly the same verse form" as Derzhavin's, since the latter is in hexameters throughout whereas Pushkin shortens every fourth line to a tetrameter), it is true that there are ironic twists throughout the first four stanzas. 

We may also perceive a gradual change from hubris (I will not all die) to humility (Obey God, O Muse.) One may I personally see it as a complexification, but not negation, of the preceding stanzas' sentiments. After all, the poet is addressing his muse and enjoining her not to be swayed by or concerned with the vagaries of public or critical taste or what anyone wants or likes, whereas he himself apart from the muse appears aware of his future imperishable fame. 

This may be read as a contrast between the poet's present circumstances (his critical star was waning at the time, and the world around him seemed hostile and inimical) in which he needs to remind himself to be as unimpressed by foolish praise as unfazed by idiotic condemnation, trusting that future generations will come to love him for who he was as a poet.

One might also hazard that he is proud of how famous and publicly beloved he will be, a destiny he will have achieved by making sure his muse remains unconcerned with said fame or public's love, the better to realize the poet's individual potential as craftsman and creator to inscribe his work with a self uncorrupted by the other, a self which will survive death all the more fully in what the poet has wrought. He has won the auctoritas every poet dreams of, triumphing over popular taste by refusing to surrender to it, and in so doing supplanting said taste with the universe of his own genius. By refusing to simply say what the masses want and love to hear, he induces them to to hear and love what he has to say.  

There are many more possibilities that Pushkinists have proposed to make sense of this poem's puzzling weave between hubris and humility, artistic utilitarianism and individualistic art for art's sake, confidence in his legacy and doubt as to whether people will praise him for the right reasons. Some such readings are more tendentious, and some more illuminating than others. Regardless, the fact that the poet seems to be suggesting plausibly a great many things at once, and even in a certain way mocking the reader as s/he tries to get a grip on what's really going on here, is a praiseworthy achievement in and of itself.