Страница:
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.
--------
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
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.
--------
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