English translation

A Star Called the Sun

• 1. I take these two lines to mean that the city is the quilt lying over the cracked Earth, if you want a definite imagery.
• 2. I feel like "the light of Heaven" is a better translation than "Divine light", though know that Heaven here does not refer concretely to the Christian conception of Heaven as such; it's a possible interpretation of the given translation, but not really of the original song.
• 3. Some of the other translators have said "the war" or "a war" which I think is quite wrong. Applying any article to the word gives it a degree of specificity which destroys the picture of the general futility of the action, and cheapens the imagery of the song. Remember - war without a purpose.
• 4. Probably the single cheapest line in the song on its own terms, but recall Homer, in the Illiad, chapter XXII: "It is entirely seemly for the young man, killed in battle, to lie, mangled by the bronze spear. Even in death, all things about him are beautiful."
• 5. Alive again as blood, that is. In the original it is written: "ОНА снова жива" "SHE is alive again" she referring to blood. Thus the line isn't to imply that grass and flowers are not alive; but that by the third hour they have become young blood again, ready to be spilled in fulfillment of the cycle. The pronoun has to be either changed to "it" or dropped entirely, there are arguments for both.
• 6. This is the point of greatest contention for me; many (most) of the other translators read this line as "Fate loves most the one" or something in that vein, which to me simply cannot be read into the grammar of the original. "Что Судьбою больше любим" "That Destiny(Instrumental) More Love(We)". The word любим quite unambiguously requires that the subject of the verb love is the speaker and listener (in fact it seems to me that the subject is all-inclusive) thus "That" "We love" "More" and since Судьбою is in the instrumental case, showing action with or by a particular noun, rather than in the accusative, Судьбую (admittedly similar as they are) it cannot be the direct object of the verb love, but rather, as it is, a circumstance in that love, that by or because of that Fate the love is made yet stronger. This gives the reading "That because of this fate we love yet more" There is my argument, at least.
• 7. As mentioned by the other translators, this line is particular poignant because of the young death of the singer.
• 8. "Помнит" literally "He will remember" which doesn't match English idiom. It sounds natural in the original, though.
• 9. "Это" "It" which is dreamt of here is the vain attempt to move beyond the Fate named earlier, "He who lives by other laws" tries "to reach out to the stars" and escape the cycle of war and death below. The reacher understands that all that goes on below is vanity, and in a vain attempt to surpass it, reaches out to the stars but falls, scorched, because he does not see that trying to reach out to the stars is merely a dream, and that the Fate is universal and inescapable.