?, ????? ???? ?, ? ???????? ???? ??????,
???????? ????? ????, ??????, ???? ?????????,
??????? ????????? ????? ?????? ?????
?? ?????? ???????? ? ????? ?????????;
???? ?????????, ????, ????? ?? ??????,
?????? ? ????? ???????? ???????,
?????? ???? ????? ?????????? ?????
? ??????, ??????? ??????????? ??;
??????? ? ?????????? ????? ?????????
????? ???? ? ?????, ??????????? ????????,
? ? ?????????, ????????? ???,
???????? ?????? ?????? ?????? ????.

Oh, I will spend long moments,
in the mysterious silence of the night,
driving from my mind thoughts of
your insidious chatter,
your smile, your gaze, a casual look,
the hair that obeyed your fingers,
the thick locks of your hair,
and summoning them back again,
whispering and correcting
words once uttered
in conversations 1 had with you
which were awkward, full of shyness,
and rending the darkness with the cherished name,
intoxicated, blind to reason.
Oh, I will spend long moments,
in the mysterious silence of the night,
rending the darkness with the cherished name.

–Afanasi Afanas’yevich Fet, ? ???????? ???? ??????
(1844)

Listen to a setting of the poem by Sergei Rachmaninoff from his opus 4 song cycle (1890), one of his earliest works, here in a centennial recital in 1990 by Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Oleg Boshnyakovich plays the piano:

<object width=”480″ height=”385″><param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/WygjEJ6pFdA?fs=1&hl=en_US”> <embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/WygjEJ6pFdA?fs=1&hl=en_US” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowscriptaccess=”always” allowfullscreen=”true” width=”480″ height=”385″></embed></object></p>