A.S.Pushkin. Eugene Onegin (tr.Ch.Johnston)
ðÕÛËÉÎ. å×ÇÅÎÉÊ ïÎÅÇÉÎ (ÐÅÒ. ÎÁ ÁÎÇÌ. þ. äÖÏÎÓÔÏÎÁ) *
Translation by Charles H. Johnston.
Penguin Books Ltd, Hannondsworth, Middlesex, England
Penguin Books, 625 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10022, U.S.A.
Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia
Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 2801 John Street, Markham, Ontario, Canada
L3R IB4
Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand
This translation first published 1977
Published with minor revisions and an Introduction in Penguin Classics
1979
Copyright © Charles Johnston, 1977, 1979
Introduction copyright © John Bayley, 1979
All rights reserved
Made and printed in Great Britain by Hazell Watson & Viney Ltd,
Aylesbury, Bucks
Set in Intertype Lectura
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to
the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,
re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior
consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is
published and without a similar condition including this condition being
imposed on the subsequent purchaser
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Contents
Introduction by John Bayley 9
Translator's Note 29
Eugene Onegin 35
Notes1 234
1 Notes are at end of each chapter.
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Translator's note
Few foreign masterpieces can have suffered more than Eugene Onegin from
the English translator's failure to convey anything more than -- at best --
the literal meaning. It is as if a sound-proof wall separated Pushkin's
poetic novel from the English-reading world. There is a whole magic which
goes by default: the touching lyrical beauty, the cynical wit of the poem;
the psychological insight, the devious narrative skill, the thrilling,
compulsive grip of the novel; the tremendous gusto and swing and panache of
the whole performance.
Vladimir Nabokov's rendering into unrhymed iambics reproduces the exact
meaning, but explicitly disclaims any further ambition. While Nabokov admits
that in losing its rhyme the work loses its ``bloom'' he argues,
irrefutably, that no rhyming version can be literally accurate. It can
however certainly strive for something else. It can attempt to produce some
substitute for the ``bloom'' of the original, without which the work is
completely dead. It can try to convey the poet's tone of voice, whether
world-weary or romantic, the sparkle of his jokes, the flavour of his
epigrams, the snap of his final couplets. None of these effects can emerge
from a purely literal unrhymed translation. In fact, to offset the
inevitable loss in verbal exactness, a rhyming version can aim at a
different sort of accuracy, an equivalence or parallelism conveying, however
faintly, the impact of the original.
Apart from the overall difficulty of his task, the translator with
ambitions of this type will find that Pushkin's work presents him with two
particular problems.
The brio of the Russian text partly depends on a lavish use not only of
French and other foreign words, but of slang and of audacious Byronic-type
rhymes. If the translator produces nothing comparable, he is emasculating
his original. If he attempts to follow suit, he must do all he can to avoid
the pitfalls of the embarrassing, the facetious and the arch. {29}
Secondly, he must be on his guard against the ludicrous effect that the
feminine ending (for instance the pleasure/measure rhyme, which is so much
derided by Nabokov) can all too easily produce in English. He must not sing,
like Prince Gremin in one English version of Chaykovsky's opera:
``I wouldn't be remotely human
Did I not love the Little Woman.''
(The libretto of the opera, which was written and first performed more
than forty years after Pushkin's death, is by Chaykovsky himself and
Konstantin Shilovsky, a minor poet of the time. It is nominally based on
Pushkin's text, but in fact the relationship is not very close.)
Anyway, it should be possible now, with the help of Nabokov's literal
translation and commentary, to produce a reasonably accurate rhyming version
of Pushkin's work which can at least be read with pleasure and
entertainment, and which, ideally, might even be able to stand on its own
feet as English. That, in all humility, is the aim of the present text.
Acknowledgements are due to Messrs. Routledge and Kegan Paul for
permission to quote from Vladimir Nabokov's notes in volumes 2 and 3 of his
edition of Eugene Onegin (London, 1964. Revised edition, 1976).
I am much indebted to my friends Sir Sacheverell Sitwell, for his
interest and support, and Sir John Balfour, for his searching and
constructive criticism of the translation; to Professor Gleb Struve, for
generously giving me the benefit of his unrivalled scholarship and insight;
above all, to my wife Natasha, for her loving encouragement.
C. H. J.
{30}
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x x x
Pétri de vanité, il avait encore plus de cette espèce d'orgueil qui
fait avouer avec la même indifférence les bonnes comme les mauvaises
actions, suite d'un sentiment de supériorité peut-être imaginaire.
(Tiré d'une lettre particulière)
{31} {32}
--------
x x x
To Peter Alexandrovich Pletnev
Heedless of the proud world's enjoyment,
I prize the attention of my friends,
and only wish that my employment
could have been turned to worthier ends --
worthier of you in the perfection
your soul displays, in holy dreams,
in simple but sublime reflection,
in limpid verse that lives and gleams.
But, as it is, this pied collection
begs your indulgence -- it's been spun
from threads both sad and humoristic,
themes popular or idealistic,
products of carefree hours, of fun,
of sleeplessness, faint inspirations,
of powers unripe, or on the wane,
of reason's icy intimations,
and records of a heart in pain.
{33} {34}
--------
Chapter One
To live, it hurries, and to feel it hastes.
Prince Vyazemsky
I
``My uncle -- high ideals inspire him;
but when past joking he fell sick,
he really forced one to admire him --
and never played a shrewder trick.
Let others learn from his example!
But God, how deadly dull to sample
sickroom attendance night and day
and never stir a foot away!
And the sly baseness, fit to throttle,
of entertaining the half-dead:
one smoothes the pillows down in bed,
and glumly serves the medicine bottle,
and sighs, and asks oneself all through:
"When will the devil come for you?"''
{35}
II
Such were a young rake's meditations --
by will of Zeus, the high and just,
the legatee of his relations --
as horses whirled him through the dust.
Friends of my Ruslan and Lyudmila,
without preliminary feeler
let me acquaint you on the nail
with this the hero of my tale:
Onegin, my good friend, was littered
and bred upon the Neva's brink,
where you were born as well, I think,
reader, or where you've shone and glittered!
There once I too strolled back and forth:
but I'm allergic to the North...1
III
After a fine career, his father
had only debts on which to live.
He gave three balls a year, and rather
promptly had nothing left to give.
Fate saved Evgeny from perdition:
at first Madame gave him tuition,
from her Monsieur took on the child.
He was sweet-natured, and yet wild.
Monsieur l'Abbé, the mediocre,
reluctant to exhaust the boy,
treated his lessons as a ploy.
No moralizing from this joker;
a mild rebuke was his worst mark,
and then a stroll in Letny Park.
{36}
IV
But when the hour of youthful passion
struck for Evgeny, with its play
of hope and gloom, romantic-fashion,
it was goodbye, Monsieur l'Abbé.
Eugene was free, and as a dresser
made London's dandy his professor.
His hair was fashionably curled,
and now at last he saw the World.
In French Onegin had perfected
proficiency to speak and write,
in the mazurka he was light,
his bow was wholly unaffected.
The World found this enough to treat
Eugene as clever, and quite sweet.
V
We all meandered through our schooling
haphazard; so, to God be thanks,
it's easy, without too much fooling,
to pass for cultured in our ranks.
Onegin was assessed by many
(critical judges, strict as any)
as well-read, though of pedant cast.
Unforced, as conversation passed,
he had the talent of saluting
felicitously every theme,
of listening like a judge-supreme
while serious topics were disputing,
or, with an epigram-surprise,
of kindling smiles in ladies' eyes.
{37}
VI
Now Latin's gone quite out of favour;
yet, truthfully and not in chaff,
Onegin knew enough to savour
the meaning of an epigraph,
make Juvenal his text, or better
add vale when he signed a letter;
stumblingly call to mind he did
two verses of the Aeneid.
He lacked the slightest predilection
for raking up historic dust
or stirring annalistic must;
but groomed an anecdote-collection
that stretched from Romulus in his prime
across the years to our own time.
VII
He was without that dithyrambic
frenzy which wrecks our lives for sound,
and telling trochee from iambic
was quite beyond his wit, we found.
He cursed Theocritus and Homer,
in Adam Smith was his diploma;
our deep economist had got
the gift of recognizing what
a nation's wealth is, what augments it,
and how a country lives, and why
it needs no gold if a supply
of simple product supplements it.
His father failed to understand
and took a mortgage on his land.
{38}
VIII
Evgeny's total store of knowledge
I have no leisure to recall;
where he was master of his college,
the art he'd studied best of all,
his young heyday's supreme employment,
its work, its torture, its enjoyment,
what occupied his chafing powers
throughout the boredom of the hours --
this was the science of that passion
which Ovid sang, for which the bard,
condemned to a lifetime of hard,
ended his wild career of fashion
deep in Moldavia the abhorred,
far, far from Italy, his adored.
(IX,2) X
How early he'd learnt to dissemble,
to hide a hope, to make a show
of jealousy, to seem to tremble
or pine, persuade of yes or no,
and act the humble or imperious,
the indifferent, or the deadly serious!
In languid silence, or the flame
of eloquence, and just the same
in casual letters of confession --
one thing inspired his breath, his heart,
and self-oblivion was his art!
How soft his glance, or at discretion
how bold or bashful there, and here
how brilliant with its instant tear!
{39}
XI
How well he donned new shapes and sizes --
startling the ingenuous with a jest,
frightening with all despair's disguises,
amusing, flattering with the best,
stalking the momentary weakness,
with passion and with shrewd obliqueness
swaying the artless, waiting on
for unmeant kindness -- how he shone!
then he'd implore a declaration,
and listen for the heart's first sound,
pursue his love -- and at one bound
secure a secret assignation,
then afterwards, alone, at ease,
impart such lessons as you please!
XII
How early on he learnt to trouble
the heart of the professional flirt!
When out to burst a rival's bubble,
how well he knew the way to hurt --
what traps he'd set him, with what malice
he'd pop the poison in his chalice!
But you, blest husbands, to the end
you kept your friendship with our friend:
the subtle spouse was just as loyal --
Faublas'3 disciple for an age --
as was the old suspicious sage,
and the majestic, antlered royal,
always contented with his life,
and with his dinner, and his wife.
{40}
(XIII, XIV,) XV
Some days he's still in bed, and drowses,
when little notes come on a tray.
What? Invitations? Yes, three houses
have each asked him to a soirée:
a ball here, there a children's party;
where shall he go, my rogue, my hearty?
Which one comes first? It's just the same
to do them all is easy game.
Meanwhile, attired for morning strolling
complete with broad-brimmed bolivar,
Eugene attends the boulevard,
and there at large he goes patrolling
until Bréguet's unsleeping chime
advises him of dinner-time.
XVI
He mounts the sledge, with daylight fading:
``Make way, make way,'' goes up the shout;
his collar in its beaver braiding
glitters with hoar-frost all about.
He's flown to Talon's,4 calculating
that there his friend Kavérin's5 waiting;
he arrives -- the cork goes flying up,
wine of the Comet6 fills the cup;
before him roast beef, red and gory,
and truffles, which have ever been
youth's choice, the flower of French cuisine:
and pâté, Strasbourg's deathless glory,
sits with Limburg's vivacious cheese
and ananas, the gold of trees.
{41}
XVII
More wine, he calls, to drench the flaming
fire of the cutlets' scalding fat,
when Bréguet's chime is heard proclaiming
the new ballet he should be at.
He's off -- this ruthless legislator
for the footlights, this fickle traitor
to all the most adored actrices,
this denizen of the coulisses
that world where every man's a critic
who'll clap an entrechat, or scoff
at Cleopatra, hiss her off,
boo Phaedra out as paralytic,
encore Moëna,7 -- and rejoice
to know the audience hears his voice.
XVIII
Enchanted land! There like a lampion
that king of the satiric scene,
Fonvizin8 sparkled, freedom's champion,
and the derivative Knyazhnín:8
there Ózerov8 shared the unwilling
tribute of tears, applause's shrilling,
with young Semyónova,9 and there
our friend Katénin8 brought to bear
once more Corneille's majestic story;
there caustic Shakhovskóy8 came in
with comedies of swarm and din;
there Didelot10 crowned himself with glory:
there, where the coulisse entrance went,
that's where my years of youth were spent.
{42}
XIX
My goddesses! Where are you banished?
lend ears to my lugubrious tone:
have other maidens, since you vanished,
taken your place, though not your throne?
your chorus, is it dead for ever?
Russia's Terpsichore, shall never
again I see your soulful flight?
shall my sad gaze no more alight
on features known, but to that dreary,
that alien scene must I now turn
my disillusioned glass, and yearn,
bored with hilarity, and weary,
and yawn in silence at the stage
as I recall a bygone age?
XX
The house is packed out; scintillating,
the boxes; boiling, pit and stalls;
the gallery claps -- it's bored with waiting --
and up the rustling curtain crawls.
Then with a half-ethereal splendour,
bound where the magic bow will send her,
Istómina,11 thronged all around
by Naiads, one foot on the ground,
twirls the other slowly as she pleases,
then suddenly she's off, and there
she's up and flying through the air
like fluff before Aeolian breezes;
she'll spin this way and that, and beat
against each other swift, small feet.
{43}
XXI
Applause. Onegin enters -- passes
across the public's toes; he steers
straight to his stall, then turns his glasses
on unknown ladies in the tiers;
he's viewed the boxes without passion,
he's seen it all; with looks and fashion
he's dreadfully dissatisfied;
to gentlemen on every side
he's bowed politely; his attention
wanders in a distracted way
across the stage; he yawns: ``Ballet --
they all have richly earned a pension;''
he turns away: ``I've had enough --
now even Didelot's tedious stuff.''
XXII
Still tumbling, devil, snake and Cupid
on stage are thumping without cease;
Still in the porch, exhausted-stupid,
the footmen sleep on the pelisses;
the audience still is busy stamping,
still coughing, hissing, clapping, champing;
still everywhere the lamps are bright;
outside and in they star the night;
still shivering in the bitter weather
the horses fidget worse and worse;
the coachmen ring the fire, and curse
their lords, and thwack their palms together;
but Eugene's out from din and press:
by now he's driving home to dress.
{44}
XXIII
Shall I depict with expert knowledge
the cabinet behind the door
where the prize-boy of fashion's college
is dressed, undressed, and dressed once more?
Whatever for caprice of spending
ingenious London has been sending
across the Baltic in exchange
for wood and tallow; all the range
of useful objects that the curious
Parisian taste invents for one --
for friends of languor, or of fun,
or for the modishly luxurious --
all this, at eighteen years of age,
adorned the sanctum of our sage.
XXIV
Porcelain and bronzes on the table,
with amber pipes from Tsaregrad;12
such crystalled scents as best are able
to drive the swooning senses mad;
with combs, and steel utensils serving
as files, and scissors straight and curving,
brushes on thirty different scales;
brushes for teeth, brushes for nails.
Rousseau (forgive a short distraction)
could not conceive how solemn Grimm13
dared clean his nails in front of him,
the brilliant crackpot: this reaction
shows freedom's advocate, that strong
champion of rights, as in the wrong.
{45}
XXV
A man who's active and incisive
can yet keep nail-care much in mind:
why fight what's known to be decisive?
custom is despot of mankind.
Dressed like -- --,14 duly dreading
the barbs that envy's always spreading,
Eugene's a pedant in his dress,
in fact a thorough fop, no less.
Three whole hours, at the least accounting,
he'll spend before the looking-glass,
then from his cabinet he'll pass
giddy as Venus when she's mounting
a masculine disguise to aid
her progress at the masquerade.
XXVI
Your curiosity is burning
to hear what latest modes require,
and so, before the world of learning,
I could describe here his attire;
and though to do so would be daring,
it's my profession; he was wearing --
but pantaloons, waistcoat, and frock,
these words are not of Russian stock:
I know (and seek your exculpation)
that even so my wretched style
already tends too much to smile
on words of foreign derivation,
though years ago I used to look
at the Academic Diction-book.
{46}
XXVII
That isn't our immediate worry:
we'd better hasten to the ball,
where, in a cab, and furious hurry,
Onegin has outrun us all.
Along the fronts of darkened houses,
along the street where slumber drowses,
twin lamps of serried coupés throw
a cheerful glimmer on the snow
and radiate a rainbow: blazing
with lampions studded all about
the sumptuous palais shines out;
shadows that flit behind the glazing
project in silhouette the tops
of ladies and of freakish fops.
XXVIII
Up to the porch our hero's driven:
in, past concierge, up marble stair
flown like an arrow, then he's given
a deft arrangement to his hair,
and entered. Ballroom overflowing...
and band already tired of blowing,
while a mazurka holds the crowd;
and everything is cramped and loud;
spurs of Chevalier Gardes are clinking,
dear ladies' feet fly past like hail,
and on their captivating trail
incendiary looks are slinking,
while roar of violins contrives
to drown the hiss of modish wives.
{47}
XXIX
In days of carefree aspirations,
the ballroom drove me off my head:
the safest place for declarations,
and where most surely notes are sped.
You husbands, deeply I respect you!
I'm at your service to protect you;
now pay attention, I beseech,
and take due warning from my speech.
You too, mamas, I pray attend it,
and watch your daughters closer yet,
yes, focus on them your lorgnette,
or else... or else, may God forfend it!
I only write like this, you know,
since I stopped sinning years ago.
XXX
Alas, on pleasure's wild variety
I've wasted too much life away!
But, did they not corrupt society,
I'd still like dances to this day:
the atmosphere of youth and madness,
the crush, the glitter and the gladness,
the ladies' calculated dress;
I love their feet -- though I confess
that all of Russia can't contribute
three pairs of handsome ones -- yet there
exists for me one special pair!
one pair! I pay them memory's tribute
though cold I am and sad; in sleep
the heartache that they bring lies deep.
{48}
XXXI
Oh, when, and to what desert banished,
madman, can you forget their print?
my little feet, where have you vanished,
what flowers of spring display your dint?
Nursed in the orient's languid weakness,
across our snows of northern bleakness
you left no steps that could be tracked:
you loved the opulent contact
of rugs, and carpets' rich refinement.
Was it for you that I became
long since unstirred by praise and fame
and fatherland and grim confinement?
The happiness of youth is dead,
just like, on turf, your fleeting tread.
XXXII
Diana's breast, the cheeks of Flora,
all these are charming! but to put
it frankly, I'm a firm adorer
of the Terpsichorean foot.
It fascinates by its assurance
of recompense beyond endurance,
and fastens, like a term of art,
the wilful fancies of the heart.
My love for it is just as tender,
under the table's linen shield,
on springtime grasses of the field,
in winter, on the cast-iron fender,
on ballroom's looking-glass parquet
or on the granite of the bay.
{49}
XXXIII
On the seashore, with storm impending,
how envious was I of the waves
each in tumultuous turn descending
to lie down at her feet like slaves!
I longed, like every breaker hissing,
to smother her dear feet with kissing.
No, never in the hottest fire
of boiling youth did I desire
with any torture so exquisite
to kiss Armida's lips, or seek
the flaming roses of a cheek,
or languid bosoms; and no visit
of raging passion's surge and roll
ever so roughly rocked my soul!
XXXIV
Another page of recollection:
sometimes, in reverie's sacred land,
I grasp a stirrup with affection,
I feel a small foot in my hand;
fancies once more are hotly bubbling,
once more that touch is fiercely troubling
the blood within my withered heart,
once more the love, once more the smart...
But, now I've praised the queens of fashion,
enough of my loquacious lyre:
they don't deserve what they inspire
in terms of poetry or passion --
their looks and language in deceit
are just as nimble as their feet.
{50}
XXXV
And Eugene? half-awake, half-drowsing,
from ball to bed behold him come;
while Petersburg's already rousing,
untirable, at sound of drum:
the merchant's up, the cabman's walking
towards his stall, the pedlar's hawking;
see with their jugs the milk-girls go
and crisply crunch the morning snow.
The city's early sounds awake her;
shutters are opened and the soft
blue smoke of chimneys goes aloft,
and more than once the German baker,
punctilious in his cotton cap,
has opened up his serving-trap.
XXXVI
Exhausted by the ballroom's clamour,
converting morning to midnight,
he sleeps, away from glare and glamour,
this child of luxury and delight.
Then, after midday he'll be waking;
his life till dawn's already making,
always monotonously gay,
tomorrow just like yesterday.
But was it happy, his employment,
his freedom, in his youth's first flower,
with brilliant conquests by the shower,
and every day its own enjoyment?
Was it to no effect that he,
at feasts, was strong and fancy-free?
{51}
XXXVII
No, early on his heart was cooling
and he was bored with social noise;
no, not for long were belles the ruling
objective of his thoughts and joys:
soon, infidelity proved cloying,
and friends and friendship, soul-destroying;
not every day could he wash down
his beefsteak with champagne, or drown
his Strasbourg pie, or point a moral,
full of his usual pith and wit,
with cranium aching fit to split;
and though he liked a fiery quarrel --
yet he fell out of love at last
with sabre's slash, and bullet's blast.
XXXVIII
The illness with which he'd been smitten
should have been analysed when caught,
something like spleen, that scourge of Britain,
or Russia's chondria, for short;
it mastered him in slow gradation;
thank God, he had no inclination
to blow his brains out, but in stead
to life grew colder than the dead.
So, like Childe Harold, glum, unpleasing,
he stalked the drawing-rooms, remote
from Boston's cloth or gossip's quote;
no glance so sweet, no sigh so teasing,
no, nothing caused his heart to stir,
and nothing pierced his senses' blur.
{52}
(XXXIX, XL, XLI,) XLII
Capricious belles of grand Society!
you were the first ones he forswore;
for in our time, beyond dubiety,
the highest circles are a bore.
It's true, I'll not misrepresent them,
some ladies preach from Say and Bentham,
but by and large their talk's a hash
of the most harmless, hopeless trash.
And what's more, they're so supercilious,
so pure, so spotless through and through,
so pious, and so clever too,
so circumspect, and so punctilious,
so virtuous that, no sooner seen,
at once they give a man the spleen.
XLIII
You too, prime beauties in your flower
who late at night are whirled away
by drozhkies jaunting at full power
over the Petersburg pavé --
he ended even your employment;
and in retreat from all enjoyment
locked himself up inside his den
and with a yawn took up his pen,
and tried to write, but a hard session
of work made him feel sick, and still
no word came flowing from his quill;
he failed to join that sharp profession
which I myself won't praise or blame
since I'm a member of the same.
{53}
XLIV
Idle again by dedication,
oppressed by emptiness of soul,
he strove to achieve the appropriation
of other's thought -- a splendid goal;
with shelves of books deployed for action,
he read, and read -- no satisfaction:
here's boredom, madness or pretence,
here there's no conscience, here no sense;
they're all chained up in different fetters,
the ancients have gone stiff and cold,
the moderns rage against the old.
He'd given up girls -- now gave up letters,
and hid the bookshelf's dusty stack
in taffeta of mourning black.
XLV
Escaped from social rhyme and reason,
retired, as he, from fashion's stream,
I was Onegin's friend that season.
I liked his quality, the dream
which held him silently subjected,
his strangeness, wholly unaffected,
his mind, so cold and so precise.
The bitterness was mine -- the ice
was his; we'd both drunk passion's chalice:
our lives were flat, and what had fired
both hearts to blaze had now expired;
there waited for us both the malice
of blind Fortuna and of men
in lives that were just dawning then.
{54}
XLVI
He who has lived and thought is certain
to scorn the men with whom he deals;
days that are lost behind the curtain,
ghostlike, must trouble him who feels --
for him all sham has found rejection,
he's gnawed by serpent Recollection,
and by Repentance. All this lends,
on most occasions between friends,
a great attraction to conversing.
At first Onegin's tongue produced
a haze in me, but I grew used
to his disputing and his cursing;
his virulence that made you smile,
his epigrams topped up with bile.
XLVII
How often, when the sky was glowing,
by Neva, on a summer night,
and when its waters were not showing,
in their gay glass, the borrowed light
of Dian's visage, in our fancies
recalling earlier time's romances,
recalling earlier loves, did we,
now sensitive, and now carefree,
drink in the midnight benediction,
the silence when our talk had ceased!
Like convicts in a dream released
from gaol to greenwood, by such fiction
we were swept off, in reverie's haze,
to the beginning of our days.
{55}
XLVIII
Evgeny stood, with soul regretful,
and leant upon the granite shelf;
he stood there, pensive and forgetful,
just as the Poet15 paints himself.
Silence was everywhere enthralling;
just sentries to each other calling,
and then a drozhky's clopping sound
from Million Street16 came floating round;
and then a boat, with oars a-swinging,
swam on the river's dreaming face,
and then, with an enchanting grace,
came distant horns, and gallant singing.
Yet sweeter far, at such a time,
the strain of Tasso's octave-rhyme!
XLIX
O Adrian waves, my invocation;
O Brenta, I'll see you in dream;
hear, once more filled with inspiration,
the magic voices of your stream,
sacred to children of Apollo!
Proud Albion's lyre is what I follow,
through it they're known to me, and kin.
Italian nights, when I'll drink in
your molten gold, your charmed infusion;
with a Venetian maiden who
can chatter, and be silent too,
I'll float in gondola's seclusion;
from her my lips will learn and mark
the tongue of love and of Petrarch.
{56}
L
When comes my moment to untether?
``it's time!'' and freedom hears my hail.
I walk the shore,17 I watch the weather,
I signal to each passing sail.
Beneath storm's vestment, on the seaway,
battling along that watery freeway,
when shall I start on my escape?
It's time to drop astern the shape
of the dull shores of my disfavour,
and there, beneath your noonday sky,
my Africa,18 where waves break high,
to mourn for Russia's gloomy savour,
land where I learned to love and weep,
land where my heart is buried deep.
LI
Eugene would willingly have started
with me to see an alien strand;
but soon the ways we trod were parted
for quite a while by fortune's hand.
His father died; and (as expected)
before Onegin there collected
the usurers' voracious tribe.
To private tastes we each subscribe:
Evgeny, hating litigation,
and satisfied with what he'd got,
made over to them his whole lot,
finding in that no deprivation --
or else, from far off, he could see
old Uncle's end was soon to be.
{57}
LII
In fact one day a note came flying
from the agent, with this tale to tell:
Uncle, in bed, and near to dying,
wished him to come and say farewell.
Evgeny read the sad epistle
and set off prompter than a whistle
as fast as post-horses could go,
already yawned before the show,
exercised, under lucre's banner,
in sighs and boredom and deceits
(my tale's beginning here repeats);
but, when he'd rushed to Uncle's manor,
a corpse on boards was all he found,
an offering ready for the ground.
LIII
The yard was bursting with dependants;
there gathered at the coffin-side
friends, foes, priests, guests, inured attendants
of every funeral far and wide;
they buried Uncle, congregated
to eat and drink, then separated
with grave goodbyes to the bereaved,
as if some goal had been achieved.
Eugene turned countryman. He tasted
the total ownership of woods,
mills, lands and waters -- he whose goods
till then had been dispersed and wasted --
and glad he was he'd thus arranged
for his old courses to be changed.
{58}
LIV
It all seemed new -- for two days only --
the coolness of the sombre glade,
the expanse of fields, so wide, so lonely,
the murmur where the streamlet played...
the third day, wood and hill and grazing
gripped him no more; soon they were raising
an urge to sleep; soon, clear as clear,
he saw that, as in cities, here
boredom has just as sure an entry,
although there are no streets, no cards,
no mansions, no ballrooms, no bards.
Yes, spleen was waiting like a sentry,
and dutifully shared his life
just like a shadow, or a wife.
LV
No, I was born for peace abounding
and country stillness: there the lyre
has voices that are more resounding,
poetic dreams, a brighter fire.
To harmless idleness devoted,
on waves of far niente floated,
I roam by the secluded lake.
And every morning I awake
to freedom, softness and enjoyment:
sleep much, read little, and put down
the thought of volatile renown.
Was it not in such sweet employment
such shadowy and leisured ways,
that once I spent my happiest days?
{59}
LVI
O flowers, and love, and rustic leisure,
o fields -- to you I'm vowed at heart.
I regularly take much pleasure
in showing how to tell apart
myself and Eugene, lest a reader
of mocking turn, or else a breeder
of calculated slander should,
spying my features, as he could,
put back the libel on the table
that, like proud Byron, I can draw
self-portraits only -- furthermore
the charge that poets are unable
to sing of others must imply
the poet's only theme is ``I.''
LVII
Poets, I'll say in this connection,
adore the love that comes in dream.
In time past, objects of affection
peopled my sleep, and to their theme
my soul in secret gave survival;
then from the Muse there came revival:
my carefree song would thus reveal
the mountain maiden,19 my ideal,
and captive girls, by Salgir20 lying.
And now, my friends, I hear from you
a frequent question: ``tell me who
inspires your lute to sounds of sighing?
To whom do you, from all the train
of jealous girls, devote its strain?
{60}
LVIII
``Whose glance, provoking inspiration,
rewards the music of your mind
with fond caress? whose adoration
is in your poetry enshrined?''
No one's, I swear by God! in sadness
I suffered once from all the madness
of love's anxiety. Blessed is he
who can combine it with the free
fever of rhyme: thereby he's doubled
poetry's sacred frenzy, made
a stride on Petrarch's path, allayed
the pangs with which his heart was troubled,
and, with it, forced renown to come --
but I, in love, was dull and dumb.
LIX
Love passed, the Muse appeared, the weather
of mind got clarity new-found;
now free, I once more weave together
emotion, thought, and magic sound;
I write, my heart has ceased its pining,
my thoughtless pen has stopped designing,
beside unfinished lines, a suite
of ladies' heads, and ladies' feet;
dead ash sets no more sparks a-flying;
I'm grieving still, but no more tears,
and soon, oh soon the storm's arrears
will in my soul be hushed and dying.
That's when I'll sit down to compose
an ode in twenty-five cantos.
{61}
LX
I've drawn a plan and a projection,
the hero's name's decided too.
Meanwhile my novel's opening section
is finished, and I've looked it through
meticulously; in my fiction
there's far too much of contradiction,
but I refuse to chop or change.
The censor's tribute, I'll arrange:
I'll feed the journalists for dinner
fruits of my labour and my ink...
So now be off to Neva's brink,
you newborn work, and like a winner
earn for me the rewards of fame --
misunderstanding, noise, and blame!
{62}
Notes to Chapter One
1 ``Written in Bessarabia.'' Pushkin's note.
2 Stanzas IX, XIII, XIV, XXXIX, XL and XLI were omitted by Pushkin.
3 Hero of Louvet's novel about betrayed husbands.
4 ``Well-known restaurateur.'' Pushkin's note.
5 Hussar and friend of Pushkin.
6 Vintage 1811, the year of the Comet.
7 Heroine of Ozerov's tragedy Fingal.
8 Playwrights of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
9 Actress in tragedy.
10 Dancer and choreographer.
11 Ballerina, once courted by Pushkin.
12 Constantinople.
13 French encyclopedist.
14 Pushkin leaves blank the name of Onegin's model dandy.
15 A mocking reference to Mikhail Muraviev's poem ``To the Goddess of
the Neva.''
16 Millyonaya, a street parallel to the Neva, and one block away from
it.
17 ``Written at Odessa.'' Pushkin's note.
18 ``The author, on his mother's side, is of African descent...''
Pushkin's note.
19 Refers to the Circassian girl in Pushkin's poem The Caucasian
Prisoner.
20 River in the Crimea. The reference is to the harem girls in
Pushkin's poem The Fountain of Bakhchisarai.
--------
Chapter Two
O rus!
Horace
O Russia!
I
The place where Eugene loathed his leisure
was an enchanting country nook:
there any friend of harmless pleasure
would bless the form his fortune took.
The manor house, in deep seclusion,
screened by a hill from storm's intrusion,
looked on a river: far away
before it was the golden play
of light that flowering fields reflected:
villages flickered far and near,
and cattle roamed the plain, and here
a park, enormous and neglected,
spread out its shadow all around --
the pensive Dryads' hiding-ground.
{63}
II
The château was of a construction
befitting such a noble pile:
it stood, defiant of destruction
in sensible old-fashioned style.
High ceilings everywhere abounded;
in the saloon, brocade-surrounded,
ancestral1 portraits met the view
and stoves with tiles of various hue.
All this has now gone out of fashion,
I don't know why, but for my friend
interior décor in the end
excited not a hint of passion:
a modish taste, a dowdy touch --
both set him yawning just as much.
III
The rustic sage, in that apartment,
forty years long would criticise
his housekeeper and her department
look through the pane, and squash the flies.
Oak-floored, and simple as a stable:
two cupboards, one divan, a table,
no trace of ink, no spots, no stains.
And of the cupboards, one contains
a book of household calculations,
the other, jugs of applejack,
fruit liqueurs and an Almanack
for 1808: his obligations
had left the squire no time to look
at any other sort of book.
{64}
IV
Alone amid all his possessions,
to pass the time was Eugene's theme:
it led him, in these early sessions,
to institute a new regime.
A thinker in a desert mission,
he changed the corvée of tradition
into a small quit-rent -- and got
his serfs rejoicing at their lot.
But, in a fearful huff, his thrifty
neighbour was sure, from this would flow
consequences of hideous woe;
another's grin was sly and shifty,
but all concurred that, truth to speak,
he was a menace, and a freak.
V
At first they called; but on perceiving
invariably, as time went on,
that from the backdoor he'd be leaving
on a fast stallion from the Don,
once on the highway he'd detected
the noise their rustic wheels projected --
they took offence at this, and broke
relations off, and never spoke.
``The man's a boor; his brain is missing,
he's a freemason too; for him,
red wine in tumblers to the brim --
but ladies' hands are not for kissing;
it's yes or no, but never sir.''
The vote was passed without demur.
{65}
VI
Meanwhile another new landowner
came driving to his country seat,
and, in the district, this persona
drew scrutiny no less complete --
Vladimir Lensky, whose creator
was Göttingen, his alma mater,
good-looking, in the flower of age,
a poet, and a Kantian sage.
He'd brought back all the fruits of learning
from German realms of mist and steam,
freedom's enthusiastic dream,
a spirit strange, a spirit burning,
an eloquence of fevered strength,
and raven curls of shoulder-length.
VII
He was too young to have been blighted
by the cold world's corrupt finesse;
his soul still blossomed out, and lighted
at a friend's word, a girl's caress.
In heart's affairs, a sweet beginner,
he fed on hope's deceptive dinner;
the world's éclat, its thunder-roll,
still captivated his young soul.
He sweetened up with fancy's icing
the uncertainties within his heart;
for him, the objective on life's chart
was still mysterious and enticing --
something to rack his brains about,
suspecting wonders would come out.
{66}
VIII
He was convinced, a kindred creature
would be allied to him by fate;
that, meanwhile, pinched and glum of feature,
from day to day she could but wait;
and he believed his friends were ready
to put on chains for him, and steady
their hand to grapple slander's cup,
in his defence, and smash it up;
< that there existed, for the indulgence
of human friendship, holy men,
immortals picked by fate for when,
with irresistible refulgence,
their breed would (some years after this)
shine out and bring the world to bliss. >2
IX
Compassion, yes, and indignation,
honest devotion to the good,
bitter-sweet glory's inspiration,
already stirred him as they should.
He roamed the world, his lyre behind him;
Schiller and Goethe had refined him,
and theirs was the poetic flame
that fired his soul, to burn the same;
the Muses' lofty arts and fashions,
fortunate one, he'd not disgrace;
but in his songs kept pride of place
for the sublime, and for the passions
of virgin fancy, and again
the charm of what was grave and plain.
{67}
X
He sang of love, to love subjected,
his song was limpid in its tune
as infant sleep, or the unaffected
thoughts of a girl, or as the moon
through heaven's expanse serenely flying,
that queen of secrets and of sighing.
He sang of grief and parting-time,
of something vague, some misty clime;
roses romantically blowing;
of many distant lands he sang
where in the heart of silence rang
his sobs, where his live tears were flowing;
he sang of lifetime's yellowed page --
when not quite eighteen years of age.
XI
But in that desert his attainments
only to Eugene showed their worth;
Lensky disliked the entertainments
of neighbouring owners of the earth --
he fled from their resounding chatter!
Their talk, so sound on every matter,
on liquor, and on hay brought in,
on kennels, and on kith and kin,
it had no sparkle of sensation,
it lacked, of course, poetic heart,
sharpness of wit, and social art,
and logic; yet the conversation
upon the side of the distaff --
that was less clever still by half.
{68}
XII
Vladimir, wealthy and good-looking,
was asked around as quite a catch --
such is the usual country cooking;
and all the neighbours planned a match
between their girls and this half-Russian.
As soon as he appears, discussion
touches obliquely, but with speed,
on the dull life that bachelors lead;
and then it's tea that comes to mention,
and Dunya works the samovar;
and soon they bring her... a guitar
and whisper ``Dunya, pay attention!''
then, help me God, she caterwauls:
``Come to me in my golden halls.''
XIII
Lensky of course was quite untainted
by any itch for marriage ties;
instead the chance to get acquainted
with Eugene proved a tempting prize.
So, verse and prose, they came together.
No ice and flame, no stormy weather
and granite, were so far apart.
At first, disparity of heart
rendered them tedious to each other;
then liking grew, then every day
they met on horseback; quickly they
became like brother knit to brother.
Friendship, as I must own to you,
blooms when there's nothing else to do.
{69}
XIV
But friendship, as between our heroes,
can't really be: for we've outgrown
old prejudice; all men are zeros,
the units are ourselves alone.
Napoleon's our sole inspiration;
the millions of two-legged creation
for us are instruments and tools;
feeling is quaint, and fit for fools.
More tolerant in his conception
than most. Evgeny, though he knew
and scorned his fellows through and through,
yet, as each rule has its exception,
people there were he glorified,
feelings he valued -- from outside.
XV
He smiled as Lensky talked: the heady
perfervid language of the bard,
his mind, in judgement still unsteady,
and always the inspired regard --
to Eugene all was new and thrilling;
he struggled to bite back the chilling
word on his lips, and thought: it's sheer
folly for me to interfere
with such a blissful, brief infection --
even without me it will sink;
but meanwhile let him live, and think
the universe is all perfection;
youth is a fever; we must spare
its natural right to rave and flare.
{70}
XVI
Between them, every topic started
reflection or provoked dispute:
treaties of nations long departed,
and good and ill, and learning's fruit,
the prejudices of the ages,
the secrets of the grave, the pages
of fate, and life, each in its turn
became their scrutiny's concern.
In the white heat of some dissension
the abstracted poet would bring forth
fragments of poems from the North,
which, listening with some condescension,
the tolerant Evgeny heard --
but scarcely understood a word.
XVII
But it was passion that preempted
the thoughts of my two anchorites.
From that rough spell at last exempted,
Onegin spoke about its flights
with sighs unconsciously regretful.
Happy is he who's known its fretful
empire, and fled it; happier still
is he who's never felt its will,
he who has cooled down love with parting,
and hate with malice; he whose life
is yawned away with friends and wife
untouched by envy's bitter smarting,
who on a deuce, that famous cheat,
has never staked his family seat.
{71}
XVIII
When we've retreated to the banner
of calm and reason, when the flame
of passion's out, and its whole manner
become a joke to us, its game,
its wayward tricks, its violent surging,
its echoes, its belated urging,
reduced to sense, not without pain --
we sometimes like to hear again
passion's rough language talked by others,
and feel once more emotion's ban.
So a disabled soldier-man,
retired, forgotten by his brothers,
in his small shack, will listen well
to tales that young moustachios tell.
XIX
But it's the talent for concealing
that ardent youth entirely lacks;
hate, love, joy, sorrow -- every feeling,
it blabs, and spills them in its tracks.
As, lovingly, in his confession,
the poet's heart found full expression,
Eugene, with solemn face, paid heed,
and felt himself love's invalide.
Lensky ingenuously related
his conscience's record, and so
Onegin swiftly came to know
his tale of youthful love, narrated
with deep emotion through and through,
to us, though, not exactly new.
{72}
XX
Ah, he had loved a love that never
is known today; only a soul
that raves with poetry can ever
be doomed to feel it: there's one goal
perpetually, one goal for dreaming,
one customary object gleaming,
one customary grief each hour!
not separation's chilling power,
no years of absence past returning,
no beauties of a foreign clime,
no noise of gaiety, no time
devoted to the Muse, or learning,
nothing could alter or could tire
this soul that glowed with virgin fire.
XXI
Since earliest boyhood he had doted
on Olga; from heart's ache still spared,
with tenderness he'd watched and noted
her girlhood games; in them he'd shared,
by deep and shady woods protected;
the crown of marriage was projected
for them by fathers who, as friends
and neighbours, followed the same ends.
Away inside that unassuming
homestead, before her parents' gaze,
she blossomed in the graceful ways
of innocence: a lily blooming
in deepest grasses, quite alone,
to bee and butterfly unknown.
{73}
XXII
And our young poet -- Olga fired him
in his first dream of passion's fruit,
and thoughts of her were what inspired him
to the first meanings of his flute.
Farewell the games of golden childhood!
he fell in love with darkest wildwood,
solitude, stillness and the night,
the stars, the moon -- celestial light
to which so oft we've dedicated
those walks amid the gloom and calm
of evening, and those tears, the balm
of secret pain... but it's now rated
by judgement of the modern camp
almost as good as a dim lamp.
XXIII
Full of obedience and demureness,
as gay as morning and as clear,
poetic in her simple pureness,
sweet as a lover's kiss, and dear,
in Olga everything expresses --
the skyblue eyes, the flaxen tresses,
smile, voice and movements, little waist --
take any novel, clearly traced
you're sure to find her portrait in it:
a portrait with a charming touch;
once I too liked it very much;
but now it bores me every minute.
Reader, the elder sister now
must be my theme, if you'll allow.
{74}
XXIV
Tatyana3 was her name... I own it,
self-willed it may be just the same;
but it's the first time you'll have known it,
a novel graced with such a name.
What of it? it's euphonious, pleasant,
and yet inseparably present,
I know it, in the thoughts of all
are old times, and the servants' hall.
We must confess that taste deserts us
even in our names (and how much worse
when we begin to talk of verse);
culture, so far from healing, hurts us;
what it's transported to our shore
is mincing manners -- nothing more.
XXV
So she was called Tatyana. Truly
she lacked her sister's beauty, lacked
the rosy bloom that glowed so newly
to catch the eye and to attract.
Shy as a savage, silent, tearful,
wild as a forest deer, and fearful,
Tatyana had a changeling look
in her own home. She never took
to kissing or caressing father
or mother; and in all the play
of children, though as young as they,
she never joined, or skipped, but rather
in silence all day she'd remain
ensconced beside the window-pane.
{75}
XXVI
Reflection was her friend and pleasure
right from the cradle of her days;
it touched with reverie her leisure,
adorning all its country ways.
Her tender touch had never fingered
the needle, never had she lingered
to liven with a silk atour
the linen stretched on the tambour.
Sign of the urge for domination:
in play with her obedient doll
the child prepares for protocol --
that corps of social legislation --
and to it, with a grave import,
repeats what her mama has taught.
XXVII
Tatyana had no dolls to dandle,
not even in her earliest age;
she'd never tell them news or scandal
or novelties from fashion's page.
Tatyana never knew the attraction
of childish pranks: a chilled reaction
to horror-stories told at night
in winter was her heart's delight.
Whenever nyanya had collected
for Olga, on the spreading lawn,
her little friends, Tatyana'd yawn,
she'd never join the game selected,
for she was bored by laughs and noise
and by the sound of silly joys.
{76}
XXVIII
She loved the balcony, the session
of waiting for the dawn to blush,
when, in pale sky, the stars' procession
fades from the view, and in the hush
earth's rim grows light, and a forewarning
whisper of breeze announces morning,
and slowly day begins to climb.
In winter, when for longer time
the shades of night within their keeping
hold half the world still unreleased,
and when, by misty moon, the east
is softly, indolently sleeping,
wakened at the same hour of night
Tatyana'd rise by candlelight.
XXIX
From early on she loved romances,
they were her only food... and so
she fell in love with all the fancies
of Richardson and of Rousseau.
Her father, kindly, well-regarded,
but in an earlier age retarded,
could see no harm in books; himself
he never took one from the shelf,
thought them a pointless peccadillo;
and cared not what his daughter kept
by way of secret tome that slept
until the dawn beneath her pillow.
His wife, just like Tatyana, had
on Richardson gone raving mad.
{77}
XXX
And not because she'd read him, either,
and not because she'd once preferred
Lovelace, or Grandison, or neither;
but in the old days she had heard
about them -- nineteen to the dozen --
so often from her Moscow cousin
Princess Alina. She was still
engaged then -- but against her will;
loved someone else, not her intended,
someone towards whose heart and mind
her feelings were far more inclined --
this Grandison of hers was splendid,
a fop, a punter on the cards,
and junior Ensign in the Guards.
XXXI
She was like him and always sported
the latest fashions of the town;
but, without asking, they transported
her to the altar and the crown.
The better to dispel her sorrow
her clever husband on the morrow
took her to his estate, where she,
at first, with God knows whom to see,
in tears and violent tossing vented
her grief, and nearly ran away.
Then, plunged in the housekeeper's day,
she grew accustomed, and contented.
In stead of happiness, say I,
custom's bestowed us from on high.
{78}
XXXII
For it was custom that consoled her
in grief that nothing else could mend;
soon a great truth came to enfold her
and give her comfort to the end:
she found, in labours and in leisure,
the secret of her husband's measure,
and ruled him like an autocrat --
so all went smoothly after that.
Mushrooms in brine, for winter eating,
fieldwork directed from the path,
accounts, shaved forelocks,4 Sunday bath;
meantime she'd give the maids a beating
if her cross mood was at its worst --
but never asked her husband first.
XXXIII
No, soon she changed her old demeanour:
girls' albums, signed in blood for choice;
Praskovya re-baptized ``Polina'';
conversing in a singsong voice;
lacing her stays up very tightly;
pronouncing through her nose politely
the Russian N, like N in French;
soon all that went without a wrench:
album and stays, Princess Alina,
sentiment, notebook, verses, all
she quite forgot -- began to call
``Akulka'' the onetime Selina,
and introduced, for the last lap,
a quilted chamber-robe and cap.
{79}
XXXIV
Her loving spouse with approbation
left her to follow her own line,
trusted her without hesitation,
and wore his dressing-gown to dine.
His life went sailing in calm weather;
sometimes the evening brought together
neighbours and friends in kindly group,
a plain, unceremonious troop,
for grumbling, gossiping and swearing
and for a chuckle or a smile.
The evening passes, and meanwhile
here's tea that Olga's been preparing;
after that, supper's served, and so
bed-time, and time for guests to go.
XXXV
Throughout their life, so calm, so peaceful,
sweet old tradition was preserved:
for them, in Butterweek5 the greaseful,
Russian pancakes were always served;
< ...
... >2
they needed kvas like air; at table
their guests, for all they ate and drank,
were served in order of their rank.
{80}
XXXVI
And so they lived, two ageing mortals,
till he at last was summoned down
into the tomb's wide open portals,
and once again received a crown.
Just before dinner, from his labours
he rested -- wept for by his neighbours,
his children and his faithful wife,
far more than most who leave this life.
He was a good and simple barin;6
above the dust of his remains
the funeral monument explains:
``A humble sinner, Dimitry Larin,
beneath the stone reposes here,
servant of God, and Brigadier.''
XXXVII
Lensky, restored to his manorial
penates, came to cast an eye
over his neighbour's plain memorial,
and offer to that ash a sigh;
sadly he mourned for the departed.
``Poor Yorick,'' said he, broken-hearted:
``he dandled me as a small boy.
How many times I made a toy
of his Ochákov7 decoration!
He destined Olga's hand for me,
kept asking: "shall I live to see"...''
so, full of heart-felt tribulation,
Lensky composed in autograph
a madrigal for epitaph.
{81}
XXXVIII
There too, he honoured, hotly weeping,
his parents' patriarchal dust
with lines to mark where they were sleeping...
Alas! the generations must,
as fate's mysterious purpose burrows,
reap a brief harvest on their furrows;
they rise and ripen and fall dead:
others will follow where they tread...
and thus our race, so fluctuating,
grows, surges, boils, for lack of room
presses its forebears to the tomb.
We too shall find our hour is waiting;
it will be our descendants who
out of this world will crowd us too.
XXXIX
So glut yourselves until you're sated
on this unstable life, my friends!
its nullity I've always hated,
I know too surely how it ends.
I'm blind to every apparition;
and yet a distant admonition
of hope sometimes disturbs my heart;
it would be painful to depart
and leave no faint footprint of glory...
I never lived or wrote for praise;
yet how I wish that I might raise
to high renown my doleful story,
that there be just one voice which came,
like a true friend, to speak my name.
{82}
XL
And someone's heart will feel a quiver,
for maybe fortune will have saved
from drowning's death in Lethe river
the strophe over which I slaved;
perhaps -- for flattering hope will linger --
some future dunce will point a finger
at my famed portrait and will say:
he was a poet in his day.
I thank him without reservation,
the peaceful Muses' devotee,
whose memory will preserve for me
the fleeting works of my creation,
whose kindly hand will ruffle down
the laurel in the old man's crown!
{83}
Notes to Chapter Two
1 Pushkin first wrote ``imperial portraits''; but this he later altered
``for reasons of censorship'' because, as Nabokov explains, ``tsars were not
to be mentioned in so offhand a way''.
2 Lines discarded by Pushkin.
3 ``Sweet-sounding Greek names like Agathon... etc., are only current
in Russia among the common people.'' Pushkin's note.
4 Serfs chosen as recruits for the army had their forelock cut off.
5 The week before Lent.
6 Gentleman, squire.
7 Fortress captured from the Turks in 1788.
--------
Chapter Three
Elle était fille, elle était amoureuse.
Malfilâtre
``You're off? why, there's a poet for you!''
``Goodbye, Onegin, time I went.''
``Well, I won't hold you up or bore you;
but where are all your evenings spent?''
``At the Larins'!'' ``But how mysterious.
For goodness' sake, you can't be serious
killing each evening off like that?''
``You're wrong.'' ``But what I wonder at
is this -- one sees from here the party:
in first place -- listen, am I right? --
a simple Russian family night:
the guests are feasted, good and hearty,
on jam, and speeches in regard
to rains, and flax, and the stockyard.''
{84}
II
``I don't see what's so bad about it.''
``Boredom, that's what so bad, my friend.''
``Your modish world, I'll do without it;
give me the homely hearth, and lend...''
``You pile one eclogue on another!
for God's sake, that will do. But, brother,
you're really going? Well, I'm sad.
Now, Lensky, would it be so bad
for me to glimpse this Phyllis ever
with whom your thoughts are so obsessed --
pen, tears, and rhymes, and all the rest?
Present me, please.'' ``You're joking.'' ``Never.''
``Gladly.'' ``So when?'' ``Why not tonight?
They will receive us with delight.''
III
``Let's go.'' The friends, all haste and vigour,
drive there, and with formality
are treated to the fullest rigour
of old-lime hospitality.
The protocol is all one wishes:
the jams appear in little dishes;
on a small table's oilcloth sheen
the jug of bilberry wine is seen.1
{85}
IV
And home was now their destination;
as by the shortest way they flew,
this was our heroes' conversation
secretly overheard by you.
``You yawn, Onegin?'' ``As I'm used to.''
``This time I think you've been reduced to
new depths of boredom.'' ``No, the same.
The fields are dark, since evening came.
Drive on, Andryushka! quicker, quicker!
the country's pretty stupid here!
oh, à propos: Larin's a dear
simple old lady; but the liquor --
I'm much afraid that bilberry wine
won't benefit these guts of mine.''
V
``But tell me, which one was Tatyana?''
``She was the one who looked as still
and melancholy as Svetlana,2
and sat down by the window-sill.''
``The one you love's the younger daughter?''
``Why not?'' ``I'd choose the other quarter
if I, like you, had been a bard.
Olga's no life in her regard:
the roundest face that you've set eyes on,
a pretty girl exactly like
any Madonna by Van Dyck:
a dumb moon, on a dumb horizon.''
Lensky had a curt word to say
and then sat silent all the way.
{86}
VI
Meanwhile the news of Eugene coming
to the Larins' had caused a spout
of gossip, and set comment humming
among the neighbours round about.
Conjecture found unending matter:
there was a general furtive chatter,
and jokes and spiteful gossip ran
claiming Tatyana'd found her man;
and some were even testifying
the marriage plans were all exact
but held up by the simple fact
that modish rings were still a-buying.
Of Lensky's fate they said no more --
they'd settled that some years before.
VII
Tatyana listened with vexation
to all this tattle, yet at heart
in indescribable elation,
despite herself, rehearsed the part:
the thought sank in, and penetrated:
she fell in love -- the hour was fated...
so fires of spring will bring to birth
a seedling fallen in the earth.
Her feelings in their weary session
had long been wasting and enslaved
by pain and languishment; she craved
the fateful diet; by depression
her heart had long been overrun:
her soul was waiting... for someone.
{87}
VIII
Tatyana now need wait no longer.
Her eyes were opened, and she said
``this is the one!'' Ah, ever stronger,
in sultry sleep, in lonely bed,
all day, all night, his presence fills her,
by magic everything instils her
with thoughts of him in ceaseless round.
She hates a friendly voice's sound,
or servants waiting on her pleasure.
Sunk in dejection, she won't hear
the talk of guests when they appear;
she calls down curses on their leisure,
and, when one's least prepared for it
their tendency to call, and sit.
IX
Now, she devours, with what attention,
delicious novels, laps them up;
and all their ravishing invention
with sheer enchantment fills her cup!
These figures from the world of seeming,
embodied by the power of dreaming,
the lover of Julie Wolmar,3
and Malek Adel,4 de Linar,5
and Werther, martyred and doom-laden,
and Grandison beyond compare,
who sets me snoring then and there --
all for our tender dreamy maiden
are coloured in a single tone,
all blend into Eugene alone.
{88}
X
Seeing herself as a creation --
Clarissa, Julie, or Delphine6 --
by writers of her admiration,
Tatyana, lonely heroine,
roamed the still forest like a ranger,
sought in her book, that text of danger
and found her dreams, her secret fire,
the full fruit of her heart's desire;
she sighed, and in a trance coopted
another's joy, another's breast,
whispered by heart a note addressed
to the hero that she'd adopted.
But ours, whatever he might be,
ours was no Grandison -- not he.
XI
Lending his tone a grave inflection,
the ardent author of the past
showed one a pattern of perfection
in which his hero's mould was cast.
He gave this figure -- loved with passion,
wronged always in disgraceful fashion --
a soul of sympathy and grace,
and brains, and an attractive face.
Always our fervid hero tended
pure passion's flame, and in a trice
would launch into self-sacrifice;
always before the volume ended
due punishment was handed down
to vice, while virtue got its crown.
{89}
XII
Today a mental fog enwraps us,
each moral puts us in a doze,
even in novels, vice entraps us,
yes, even there its triumph grows.
Now that the British Muse is able
to wreck a maiden's sleep with fable,
the idol that she'll most admire
is either the distrait Vampire,
Melmoth,7 whose roaming never ceases,
Sbogar,8 mysterious through and through,
the Corsair, or the Wandering Jew.
Lord Byron, with his shrewd caprices,
dressed up a desperate egoism
to look like sad romanticism.
XIII
In this, dear reader, if you know it,
show me the sense. Divine decree
may wind up my career as poet;
perhaps, though Phoebus warns, I'll see
installed in me a different devil,
and sink to prose's humble level:
a novel on the established line
may then amuse my glad decline.
No secret crimes, and no perditions,
shall make my story grim as hell;
no, quite naively I'll retell
a Russian family's old traditions;
love's melting dreams shall fill my rhyme,
and manners of an earlier time.
{90}
XIV
I'll catalogue each simple saying
in father's or old uncle's book,
and tell of children's plighted playing
by ancient limes, or by a brook;
and after jealousy's grim weather
I'll part them, bring them back together;
I'll make them spar another round,
then to the altar, to be crowned.
I'll conjure up that swooning fashion
of ardent speech, that aching flow
of language which, so long ago,
facing a belle I loved with passion,
my tongue kept drawing from the heart --
but now I've rather lost the art.
XV
Tatyana dear, with you I'm weeping:
for you have, at this early date,
into a modish tyrant's keeping
resigned disposal of your fate.
Dear Tanya, you're condemned to perish;
but first, the dreams that hope can cherish
evoke for you a sombre bliss;
you learn life's sweetness, and with this
you drink the magic draught of yearning,
that poison brew; and in your mind
reverie hounds you, and you find
shelter for trysts at every turning;
in front of you, on every hand,
you see your fated tempter stand.
{91}
XVI
Tatyana, hunted by love's anguish,
has made the park her brooding-place,
suddenly lowering eyes that languish,
too faint to stir a further pace:
her bosom heaves, her cheeks are staring
scarlet with passion's instant flaring,
upon her lips the breathing dies,
noise in her ears, glare in her eyes...
then night comes on; the moon's patrolling
far-distant heaven's vaulted room;
a nightingale, in forest gloom,
sets a sonorous cadence rolling --
Tatyana, sleepless in the dark,
makes to her nurse low-voiced remark:
XVII
``I can't sleep, nyanya: it's so stifling!
open the window, sit down near.''
``Why, Tanya, what...?'' ``All's dull and trifling.
The olden days, I want to hear...''
``What of them, Tanya? I was able,
years back, to call up many a fable;
I kept in mind an ancient store
of tales of girls, and ghosts, and lore:
but now my brain is darkened, Tanya:
now I've forgotten all I knew.
A sorry state of things, it's true!
My mind is fuddled.'' ``Tell me, nyanya,
your early life, unlock your tongue:
were you in love when you were young?''
{92}
XVIII
``What nonsense, Tanya! in those other
ages we'd never heard of love:
why, at the thought, my husband's mother
had chased me to the world above.''
``How did you come to marry, nyanya?''
``I reckon, by God's will. My Vanya
was younger still, but at that stage
I was just thirteen years of age.
Two weeks the matchmaker was plying
to see my kin, and in the end
my father blessed me. So I'd spend
my hours in fear and bitter crying.
Then, crying, they untwined my plait,
and sang me to the altar-mat.
XIX
``So to strange kinsfolk I was taken...
but you're not paying any heed.''
``Oh nurse, I'm sad, I'm sad, I'm shaken,
I'm sick, my dear, I'm sick indeed.
I'm near to sobbing, near to weeping!...''
``You're ill, God have you in his keeping,
the Lord have mercy on us all!
whatever you may need, just call...
I'll sprinkle you with holy water,
you're all in fever... heavens above.''
``Nurse, I'm not ill; I... I'm in love.''
``The Lord God be with you, my daughter!''
and, hands a-tremble, Nyanya prayed
and put a cross-sign on the maid.
{93}
XX
``I am in love,'' Tatyana's wailing
whisper repeated to the crone.
``My dearest heart, you're sick and ailing.''
``I am in love; leave me alone.''
And all the while the moon was shining
and with its feeble glow outlining
the girl's pale charms, her loosened hair,
her drops of tears, and seated there,
in quilted coat, where rays were gleaming
on a small bench by Tanya's bed,
the grey-haired nurse with kerchiefed head;
and everything around was dreaming,
in the deep stillness of the night,
bathed in the moon's inspiring light.
XXI
Tatyana watched the moon, and floated
through distant regions of the heart...
A thought was born, and quickly noted...
``Go, nurse, and leave me here apart.
Give me a pen and give me paper,
bring up a table, and a taper;
good night; I swear I'll lie down soon.''
She was alone, lit by the moon.
Elbow on table, spirit seething,
still filled with Eugene, Tanya wrote,
and in her unconsidered note
all a pure maiden's love was breathing.
She folds the page, lays down the plume.,
Tatyana! it's addressed... to whom?
{94}
XXII
I've known too many a haughty beauty,
cold, pure as ice, and as unkind,
inexorably wed to duty,
unfathomable to the mind;
shocked by their modish pride, and fleeing
the utter virtue of their being,
I've run a mile, I must avow,
having decyphered on their brow
hell's terrifying imprecation:
``Abandon hope for evermore.''9
Our love is what they most abhor;
our terror is their consolation.
Ladies of such a cast, I think,
you too have seen on Neva's brink.
XXIII
Thronged by adorers, I've detected
another, freakish one, who stays
quite self-absorbed and unaffected
by sighs of passion or by praise.
To my astonishment I've seen her,
having by her severe demeanour
frightened to death a timid love,
revive it with another shove --
at least by a regretful kindness;
at least her tone is sometimes found
more tender than it used to sound.
I've seen how, trustful in his blindness,
the youthful lover once again
runs after what is sweet, and vain.
{95}
XXIV
Why is Tatyana guiltier-seeming?
is it that she, poor simple sweet,
believes in her elected dreaming
and has no knowledge of deceit?
that, artless, and without concealing,
her love obeys the laws of feeling,
that she's so trustful, and imbued
by heaven with such an unsubdued
imagination, with such reason,
such stubborn brain, and vivid will,
and heart so tender, it can still
burst to a fiery blaze in season?
Such feckless passion -- as I live,
is this then what you can't forgive?
XXV
The flirt has reason's cool volition;
Tatyana's love is no by-play,
she yields to it without condition
like a sweet child. She'll never say:
``By virtue of procrastinating
we'll keep love's price appreciating,
we'll draw it deeper in our net;
first, we'll take vanity, and let
hope sting it, then we'll try deploying
doubts, to exhaust the heart, then fire
jealousy's flame, to light desire;
else, having found his pleasure cloying,
the cunning prisoner can quite well
at any hour escape his cell.''
{96}
XXVI
I see another problem looming:
to save the honour of our land
I must translate -- there's no presuming --
the letter from Tatyana's hand:
her Russian was as thin as vapour,
she never read a Russian paper,
our native speech had never sprung
unhesitating from her tongue,
she wrote in French... what a confession!
what can one do? as said above,
until this day, a lady's love
in Russian never found expression,
till now our language -- proud, God knows --
has hardly mastered postal prose.
XXVII
They should be forced to read in Russian,
I hear you say. But can you see
a lady -- what a grim discussion! --
with The Well-Meaner10 on her knee?
I ask you, each and every poet!
the darling objects -- don't you know it? --
for whom, to expiate your crimes,
you've made so many secret rhymes,
to whom your hearts are dedicated,
is it not true that Russian speech,
so sketchily possessed by each,
by all is sweetly mutilated,
and it's the foreign phrase that trips
like native idiom from their lips?
{97}
XXVIII
Protect me from such apparition
on dance-floor, at breakup of ball,
as bonneted Academician
or seminarist in yellow shawl!
To me, unsmiling lips bring terror,
however scarlet; free from error
of grammar, Russian language too.
Now, to my cost it may be true
that generations of new beauties,
heeding the press, will make us look
more closely at the grammar-book;
that verse will turn to useful duties;
on me, all this has no effect:
tradition still keeps my respect.
XXIX
No, incorrect and careless chatter,
words mispronounced, thoughts ill-expressed
evoke emotion's pitter-patter,
now as before, inside my breast;
too weak to change, I'm staying vicious,
I still find Gallicism delicious
as youthful sinning, or the strains
of Bogdanóvich's11 refrains.
But that's enough. My beauty's letter
must now employ my pen; somehow
I gave my word, alas, though now
a blank default would suit me better.
I own it: tender Parny's12 rhyme
is out of fashion in our time.
{98}
XXX
Bard13 of The Feasts, and heart's depression,
if you'd still been with me, dear friend,
I would have had the indiscretion
to ask of you that you transcend
in music's own bewitching fashion
the foreign words a maiden's passion
found for its utterance that night.
Where are you? come -- and my own right
with an obeisance I'll hand over...
But he, by sad and rocky ways,
with heart that's grown unused to praise,
on Finland's coast a lonely rover --
he doesn't hear when I address
his soul with murmurs of distress.
XXXI
Tatyana's letter, treasured ever
as sacred, lies before me still.
I read with secret pain, and never
can read enough to get my fill.
Who taught her an address so tender,
such careless language of surrender?
Who taught her all this mad, slapdash,
heartfelt, imploring, touching trash
fraught with enticement and disaster?
It baffles me. But I'll repeat
here a weak version, incomplete,
pale transcript of a vivid master,
or Freischütz as it might be played
by nervous hands of a schoolmaid:
{99}
Tatyana's Letter to Onegin
``I write to you -- no more confession
is needed, nothing's left to tell.
I know it's now in your discretion
with scorn to make my world a hell.
``But, if you've kept some faint impression
of pity for my wretched state,
you'll never leave me to my fate.
At first I thought it out of season
to speak; believe me: of my shame
you'd not so much as know the name,
if I'd possessed the slightest reason
to hope that even once a week
I might have seen you, heard you speak
on visits to us, and in greeting
I might have said a word, and then
thought, day and night, and thought again
about one thing, till our next meeting.
But you're not sociable, they say:
you find the country godforsaken;
though we... don't shine in any way,
our joy in you is warmly taken.
``Why did you visit us, but why?
Lost in our backwoods habitation
I'd not have known you, therefore I
would have been spared this laceration.
In time, who knows, the agitation
of inexperience would have passed,
I would have found a friend, another,
and in the role of virtuous mother
and faithful wife I'd have been cast.
{100}
``Another!... No, another never
in all the world could take my heart!
Decreed in highest court for ever...
heaven's will -- for you I'm set apart;
and my whole life has been directed
and pledged to you, and firmly planned:
I know, Godsent one, I'm protected
until the grave by your strong hand:
you'd made appearance in my dreaming;
unseen, already you were dear,
my soul had heard your voice ring clear,
stirred at your gaze, so strange, so gleaming,
long, long ago... no, that could be
no dream. You'd scarce arrived, I reckoned
to know you, swooned, and in a second
all in a blaze, I said: it's he!
``You know, it's true, how I attended,
drank in your words when all was still --
helping the poor, or while I mended
with balm of prayer my torn and rended
spirit that anguish had made ill.
At this midnight of my condition,
was it not you, dear apparition,
who in the dark came flashing through
and, on my bed-head gently leaning,
with love and comfort in your meaning,
spoke words of hope? But who are you:
the guardian angel of tradition,
or some vile agent of perdition
sent to seduce? Resolve my doubt.
Oh, this could all be false and vain,
a sham that trustful souls work out;
{101}
fate could be something else again..,
``So let it be! for you to keep
I trust my fate to your direction,
henceforth in front of you I weep,
I weep, and pray for your protection..,
Imagine it: quite on my own
I've no one here who comprehends me,
and now a swooning mind attends me,
dumb I must perish, and alone.
My heart awaits you: you can turn it
to life and hope with just a glance --
or else disturb my mournful trance
with censure -- I've done all to earn it!
``I close. I dread to read this page...
for shame and fear my wits are sliding...
and yet your honour is my gage
and in it boldly I'm confiding''...
{102}
XXXII
Now Tanya's groaning, now she's sighing;
the letter trembles in her grip;
the rosy sealing-wafer's drying
upon her feverish tongue; the slip
from off her charming shoulder's drooping,
and sideways her poor head is stooping.
But now the radiance of the moon
is dimmed. Down there the valley soon
comes clearer through the mists of dawning.
Down there, by slow degrees, the stream
has taken on a silvery gleam;
the herdsman's horn proclaimed the morning
and roused the village long ago:
to Tanya, all's an empty show.
XXXIII
She's paid the sunrise no attention,
she sits with head sunk on her breast,
over the note holds in suspension
her seal with its engraven crest.
Softly the door is opened, enter
grey Filatevna, to present her
with a small tray and a teacup.
``Get up, my child, it's time, get up!
Why, pretty one, you're up already!
My early bird! you know, last night
you gave me such a shocking fright!
but now, thank God, you're well and steady,
your night of fretting's left no trace!
fresh as a poppy-flower, your face.''
{103}
XXXIV
``Oh nurse, a favour, a petition...''
``Command me, darling, as you choose.''
``Now don't suppose... let no suspicion...
but, nurse, you see... Oh, don't refuse...''
``My sweet, God warrants me your debtor.''
``Then send your grandson with this letter
quickly to O... I mean to that...
the neighbour... you must tell the brat
that not a syllable be uttered
and not a mention of my name...''
``Which neighbour, dear? My head became
in these last years all mixed and fluttered.
We've many neighbours round about;
even to count them throws me out.''
XXXV
``How slow you are at guessing, nyanya!''
``My sweet, my dearest heart, I'm old,
I'm old, my mind is blunted, Tanya;
times were when I was sharp and bold:
times were, when master's least suggestion...''
``Oh nyanya, nyanya, I don't question...
what have your wits to do with me?
Now here's a letter, as you see,
addressed to Onegin''... ...'Well, that's easy.
But don't be cross, my darling friend,
you know I'm hard to comprehend...
Why have you gone all pale and queasy?''
``It's nothing, nurse, nothing, I say...
just send your grandson on his way.''
{104}
XXXVI
Hours pass; no answer; waiting, waiting.
No word: another day goes by.
She's dressed since dawn, dead pale; debating,
demanding: when will he reply?
Olga's adorer comes a-wooing.
``Tell me, what's your companion doing?''
enquired the lady of the hall:
``it seems that he forgot us all.''
Tatyana flushed, and started shaking.
``Today he promised he'd be here,''
so Lensky answered the old dear:
``the mail explains the time he's taking.''
Tatyana lowered her regard
as at a censure that was hard.
XXXVII
Day faded; on the table, glowing,
the samovar of evening boiled,
and warmed the Chinese teapot; flowing
beneath it, vapour wreathed and coiled.
Already Olga's hand was gripping
the urn of perfumed tea, and tipping
into the cups its darkling stream --
meanwhile a hallboy handed cream;
before the window taking station,
plunged in reflection's deepest train,
Tatyana breathed on the cold pane,
and in the misted condensation
with charming forefinger she traced
``OE'' devotedly inlaced.
{105}
XXXVIII
Meanwhile with pain her soul was girdled,
and tears were drowning her regard.
A sudden clatter!... blood was curdled...
Now nearer... hooves... and in the yard
Evgeny! ``Ah!'' Tatyana, fleeting
light as a shadow, shuns a meeting,
through the back porch runs out and flies
down to the garden, and her eyes
daren't look behind her; fairly dashing --
beds, bridges, lawn, she never stops,
the allée to the lake, the copse;
breaking the lilac bushes, smashing
parterres, she runs to rivulet's brink,
to gasp, and on a bench to sink.
XXXIX
She dropped... ``It's he! Eugene arriving!
Oh God, what did he think!'' A dream
of hope is somehow still surviving
in her torn heart -- a fickle gleam;
she trembles, and with fever drumming
awaits him -- hears nobody coming.
Maidservants on the beds just now
were picking berries from the bough,
singing in chorus as directed
(on orders which of course presume
that thievish mouths cannot consume
their masters' berries undetected
so long as they're employed in song:
such rustic cunning can't be wrong!) --
{106}
The Song of the Girls
``Maidens, pretty maidens all,
dear companions, darling friends,
pretty maidens, romp away,
have your fill of revelry!
Strike the ditty up, my sweets,
ditty of our secret world,
and entice a fellow in
to the circle of our dance.
When we draw a fellow in,
when we see him from afar,
darlings, then we'll run away,
cherries then we'll throw at him,
cherries throw and raspberries
and redcurrants throw at him.
Never come and overhear
ditties of our secret world,
never come and like a spy
watch the games we maidens play.''
{107}
XL
They sing; unmoved by their sweet-sounding
choruses, Tanya can but wait,
listless, impatient, for the pounding
within her bosom to abate,
and for her cheeks to cease their blushing;
but wildly still her heart is rushing,
and on her cheeks the fever stays,
more and more brightly still they blaze.
So the poor butterfly will quiver
and beat a nacreous wing when caught
by some perverse schoolboy for sport;
and so in winter-fields will shiver
the hare who from afar has seen
a marksman crouching in the green.
XLI
But finally she heaved a yearning
sigh, and stood up, began to pace;
she walked, but just as she was turning
into the allée, face to face,
she found Evgeny, eyes a-glitter,
still as a shadow, grim and bitter;
seared as by fire, she stopped. Today
I lack the strength required to say
what came from this unlooked-for meeting;
my friends, I need to pause a spell,
and walk, and breathe, before I tell
a story that still wants completing;
I need to rest from all this rhyme:
I'll end my tale some other time.
{108}
Notes to Chapter Three
1 Stanza left incomplete by Pushkin.
2 Heroine of Zhukovsky's poem of the same name.
3 Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloise. by Rousseau, 1761.
4 Hero of Mathilde, by Sophie Cottin, 1805.
5 Lover of Valérie, by Madame de Krudener, 1803.
6 Delphine, by Madame de Staël, 1805.
7 Melmoth the Wanderer, by C. R. Mathurin, 1820.
8 Jean Sbogar, by Charles Nodier, 1818.
9 ``Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate. Our modest author has
translated only the first part of the famous verse.'' Pushkin's note.
10 Magazine (1818) edited by A. Izmaylov.
11 Russian poet and translator from the French.
12 French poet (1755-1814). Author of Poésies Erotiques.
13 Evgeny Baratynsky (1800-1844). Poet and friend of Pushkin.
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Chapter Four
La morale est dans la nature des choses.
Necker
(I, II, III, IV, V, VI,1) VII
With womankind, the less we love them,
the easier they become to charm,
the tighter we can stretch above them
enticing nets to do them harm.
There was a period when cold-blooded
debauchery was praised, and studied
as love's technique, when it would blare
its own perfection everywhere,
and heartless pleasure was up-graded;
yes, these were our forefathers' ways,
those monkeys of the good old days:
now Lovelace's renown has faded
as scarlet heels have lost their name
and stately periwigs, their fame.
{109}
VIII
How dull are acting and evasion,
diversely urging the same plea,
earnestly striving for persuasion
on points that all long since agree --
and always the self-same objection;
how dull to work for the correction
of prejudice that's never been
harboured by maidens of thirteen!
Who's not disgusted by cajoling,
threats, vows, and simulated fears,
by six-page letters, rings and tears,
gossip, and tricks, and the patrolling
of aunts and mothers, and the thrall
of husband's friendship -- worst of all!
IX
Evgeny thought in just this fashion.
From his first youth he'd known the force,
the sufferings of tempestuous passion;
its winds had blown him far off course.
Spoilt by the habit of indulgence,
now dazzled by one thing's effulgence,
now disenchanted with the next,
more and more bored by yearning's text,
bored by success' giddy trifle,
he heard in stillness and in din
a deathless murmur from within,
found that in laughter yawns could stifle:
he killed eight years in such a style,
and wasted life's fine flower meanwhile.
{110}
X
Though belles had lost his adoration,
he danced attendance with the best;
rebuffed, found instant consolation;
deceived, was overjoyed to rest.
He followed them without illusion,
lost them without regret's contusion,
scarcely recalled their love, their spite;
just like a casual guest who might
devote to whist an evening party,
who'd sit, and at the end of play
would say goodbye and drive away,
go off to sleep quite hale and hearty,
and in the morning wouldn't know
that self-same evening where he'd go.
XI
Yet Tanya's note made its impression
on Eugene, he was deeply stirred:
that virgin dream and its confession
filled him with thoughts that swarmed and whirred;
the flower-like pallor of the maiden,
her look, so sweetly sorrow-laden,
all plunged his soul deep in the stream
of a delicious, guiltless dream...
and though perhaps old fires were thrusting
and held him briefly in their sway,
Eugene had no wish to betray
a soul so innocent, so trusting.
But to the garden, to the scene
where Tanya now confronts Eugene.
{111}
XII
Moments of silence, quite unbroken;
then, stepping nearer, Eugene said:
``You wrote to me, and nothing spoken
can disavow that. I have read
those words where love, without condition,
pours out its guiltless frank admission,
and your sincerity of thought
is dear to me, for it has brought
feeling to what had long been heartless:
but I won't praise you -- let me join
and pay my debt in the same coin
with an avowal just as artless;
hear my confession as I stand
I leave the verdict in your hand.
XIII
``Could I be happy circumscribing
my life in a domestic plot;
had fortune blest me by prescribing
husband and father as my lot;
could I accept for just a minute
the homely scene, take pleasure in it --
then I'd have looked for you alone
to be the bride I'd call my own.
Without romance, or false insistence,
I'll say: with past ideals in view
I would have chosen none but you
as helpmeet in my sad existence,
as gage of all things that were good,
and been as happy... as I could!
{112}
XIV
``But I was simply not intended
for happiness -- that alien role.
Should your perfections be expended
in vain on my unworthy soul?
Believe (as conscience is my warrant),
wedlock for us would be abhorrent.
I'd love you, but inside a day,
with custom, love would fade away;
your tears would flow -- but your emotion,
your grief would fail to touch my heart,
they'd just enrage it with their dart.
What sort of roses, in your notion,
would Hymen bring us -- blooms that might
last many a day, and many a night!
XV
``What in the world is more distressing
than households where the wife must moan
the unworthy husband through depressing
daytimes and evenings passed alone?
and where the husband, recognizing
her worth (but anathematising
his destiny) without a smile
bursts with cold envy and with bile?
For such am I. When you were speaking
to me so simply, with the fires
and force that purity inspires,
is this the man that you were seeking?
can it be true you must await
from cruel fortune such a fate?
{113}
XVI
``I've dreams and years past resurrection;
a soul that nothing can renew...
I feel a brotherly affection,
or something tenderer still, for you.
Listen to me without resentment:
girls often change to their contentment
light dreams for new ones... so we see
each springtime, on the growing tree,
fresh leaves... for such is heaven's mandate.
You'll love again, but you must teach
your heart some self-restraint; for each
and every man won't understand it
as I have... learn from my belief
that inexperience leads to grief.''
XVII
So went his sermon. Almost dying,
blinded to everything about
by mist of tears, without replying
Tatyana heard Evgeny out.
He gave his arm. In sad abstraction,
by what's called machinal reaction,
without a word Tatyana leant
upon it, and with head down-bent
walked homeward round the kitchen garden;
together they arrived, and none
dreamt of reproving what they'd done:
by country freedom, rightful pardon
and happy licence are allowed,
as much as in Moscow the proud.
{114}
XVIII
Agree, the way Eugene proceeded
with our poor girl was kind and g