Kopna means stook or haycock. Skird means rick. I'm looking up words in my trusty Russian-English dictionary, and things remain clear as mud. Sometimes translation from one language to another is only a prelude to figuring out what a text says.

I'm trying to read Evgenii Baratynskii's 160-line ode "Osen'" (Autumn) (1837). It's a famous poem--beloved by later writers such as Anna Akhmatova and Joseph Brodsky.

You see, although little known in the West, in Russia Baratynskii (1800-1844) is considered a major figure. The traditional comparison is to his friend Aleksandr Pushkin: whereas Pushkin was a natural, spontaneous genius who could write fluently on any topic, Baratynskii was a reflective, deeply philosophical writer, a "poet of thought."

"Osen'" certainly opens memorably. The first words--"I vot sentiabr!" ("And here's September!")--are unusually abrupt, a "whoomp there it is" approach to kicking things off, and they contrast well with the unfurling of the beautiful image that follows:

I vot sentiabr'! zamedlia svoi voskhod,
           Siian'em khladnym solntse bleshchet,
I luch ego v zertsale zybkom vod
          Nevernym zolotom trepeshchet.

* * * *

And here's September! Delaying its rising,
           The sun gleams with a chill shine,
And its rays shimmer like false gold
           On the rippling mirror of the waters.

The poem goes on to describe a seasonally-appropriate rural Russian landscape, including the laborers and villagers who populate it:

          Vot ekho v roshchakh obnazhennykh
Sekiroiu trevozhit drovosek
          I skoro, snegom ubelennykh,
Svoikh dubrov i kholmov zimnii vid
Zastylyi tok tumanno otrazit.

* * * *

          There! A wood-cutter disturbs with an axe
The echoing in the denuded groves.
          And soon, whitened with snow,
The congealed current hazily reflects
The winter-face of its oaks and hills.

Afterwards, the poem turns discursive. Baratynskii makes a comparison between autumn and the later years of a human life. That becomes an occasion to begin throwing around some heavy-duty abstractions:

Uvy! k mechtam, strastniam, trudam mirskim
          Toboi skoplennye prezren'ia
Iazvitel'nyi, neotrazimyi styd
Dushi tvoei obmanov i obid!

* * * *

Alas! The contempt you've amassed
          Toward your dreams, passions, mundane labors,
The caustic, irrefutable shame,
The deceptions and offenses to your soul!

I'm still coming to grips with these passages. I trust Akhmatova: there is wisdom here, but I am going to have to sit with them and let them sink in.

What's causing me trouble, though, are passages about nineteenth-century agriculture. I am at a loss trying to translate certain sections:

          Snopy stoiat v kopnakh blestiashchikh
Il' tianutsia vdol' zhnivy, na vozakh,
          Pod tiazhkoi nosheiu skrypiashchikh,
I khlebnykh skird zolotoverkhii grad
Pod"emletsia krugom krest'ianskikh khat.

* * * *

          Sheaves stand in shining stooks (?)
Or are carried along stubble-fields, in carts
          Creaking under their heavy burdens,
And the bread rick (?) raises a gold-topped city
Around the peasant huts.

At these moments, I'm reminded of Ludwig Wittgenstein's aphorism, "If a lion could talk, we wouldn't be able to understand it." Baratynskii is describing a mode of life utterly foreign to me. I grew up in central Kentucky; I know a little about raising thoroughbreds, and maybe something about farming burley tobacco. But harvesting grain? With hand scythes?

It only minimally helps to fire up Wikipedia and discover that stooks are made of bundled-together, upright-standing sheaves, or that one piles hay into a "rick" so that it might cure.

The problem here is phenomenological. Unlike Baratynskii's target audience, I have no first-hand experience of the tools, behaviors, or settings that he mentions. I can understand conceptually what he says, but it remains abstract and superficial knowledge.

"Osen'," as already pointed out, is a poem that depends on an analogy between the seasonal round and the course of a human life. It's not just any fall that it discusses, however; it's autumn as it fits into the annual rhythms of activity in an early nineteenth-century Russian selo (village). Insofar as Baratynskii generalizes based on socially, culturally, and historically specific meanings and beliefs that he assumes are shared by his target audience, I, as a twenty-first century city-dwelling crop-ignorant American, remain barred from fully appreciating the affective dimension to his verse, and I fail to perceive any number of subtleties and nuances.

A computer program can translate a sentence from another language. Understanding that sentence though--that can require years--and book-learning often isn't enough.