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XI
Poor Lensky! where the tomb is bounded
by dull eternity's purlieus,
was the sad poet not confounded
at this betrayal's fateful news?
Or, as by Lethe's bank he slumbered,
perhaps no more sensations lumbered
the lucky bard, and as he dozed
the earth for him grew dumb and closed?...
On such indifference, such forgetting
beyond the grave we all must build --
foes, friends and loves, their voice is stilled.
Only the estate provides a setting
for angry heirs, as one, to fall
into an unbecoming brawl.
{182}
XII
Presently Olga's ringing answer
inside the Larins' house fell mute.
Back to his regiment the Lancer,
slave of the service, was en route.
Weltered in tears, and sorely smarting,
the old dame wept her daughter's parting,
and in her grief seemed fit to die;
but Tanya found she couldn't cry:
only the pallor of heart-breaking
covered her face. When all came out
onto the porch, and fussed about
over the business of leave-taking,
Tatyana went with them, and sped
the carriage of the newly-wed.
XIII
And long, as if through mists that spurted,
Tanya pursued them with her gaze...
So there she stood, forlorn, deserted!
The comrade of so many days,
oh! her young dove, the natural hearer
of secrets, like a friend but dearer,
had been for ever borne off far
and parted from her by their star.
Shade-like, in purposeless obsession
she roams the empty garden-plot...
in everything she sees there's not
a grain of gladness; tears' repression
allows no comfort to come through --
Tatyana's heart is rent in two.
{183}
XIV
Her passion burns with stronger powder
now she's bereft, and just the same
her heart speaks to her even louder
of far-away Onegin's name.
She'll not see him, her obligation
must be to hold in detestation
the man who laid her brother low.
The poet's dead... already though
no one recalls him or his verses;
by now his bride-to-be has wed
another, and his memory's fled
as smoke in azure sky disperses.
Two hearts there are perhaps that keep
a tear for him... but what's to weep?
XV
Evening, and darkening sky, and waters
in quiet flood. A beetle whirred.
The choirs of dancers sought their quarters.
Beyond the stream there smoked and stirred
a fisher's fire. Through country gleaming
silver with moonlight, in her dreaming
profoundly sunk, Tatyana stalked
for hours alone; she walked and walked...
Suddenly, from a crest, she sighted
a house, a village, and a wood
below a hill; a garden stood
above a stream the moon had lighted.
She looked across, felt in her heart
a faster, stronger pulsing start.
{184}
XVI
She hesitates, and doubts beset her:
forward or back? it's true that he
has left, and no one here has met her...
``The house, the park... I'll go and see!''
So down came Tanya, hardly daring
to draw a breath, around her staring
with puzzled and confused regard...
She entered the deserted yard.
Dogs, howling, rushed in her direction...
Her frightened cry brought running out
the household boys in noisy rout;
giving the lady their protection,
by dint of cuff and kick and smack
they managed to disperse the pack.
XVII
``Could I just see the house, I wonder?''
Tatyana asked. The children all
rushed to Anisia's room, to plunder
the keys that opened up the hall.
At once Anisia came to greet her,
the doorway opened wide to meet her,
she went inside the empty shell
in which our hero used to dwell.
She looks: forgotten past all chalking
on billiard-table rests a cue,
and on the crumpled sofa too
a riding whip. Tanya keeps walking...
``And here's the hearth,'' explains the crone,
``where master used to sit alone.
{185}
XVIII
``Here in the winter he'd have dinner
with neighbour Lensky, the deceased.
Please follow me. And here's the inner
study where he would sleep and feast
on cups of coffee, and then later
he'd listen to the administrator;
in morning time he'd read a book...
And just here, in the window-nook,
is where old master took up station,
and put his glasses on to see
his Sunday game of cards with me.
I pray God grant his soul salvation,
and rest his dear bones in the tomb,
down in our damp earth-mother's womb!''
XIX
Tatyana in a deep emotion
gazes at all the scene around;
she drinks it like a priceless potion;
it stirs her drooping soul to bound
in fashion that's half-glad, half-anguished:
that table where the lamp has languished,
beside the window-sill, that bed
on which a carpet has been spread,
piled books, and through the pane the sable
moonscape, the half-light overall,
Lord Byron's portrait on the wall,
the iron figure3 on the table,
the hat, the scowling brow, the chest
where folded arms are tightly pressed.
{186}
XX
Longtime inside this modish cloister,
as if spellbound, Tatyana stands.
It's late. A breeze begins to roister,
the valley's dark. The forest lands
round the dim river sleep; the curtain
of hills has hid the moon; for certain
the time to go has long since passed
for the young pilgrim. So at last
Tatyana, hiding her condition,
and not without a sigh, perforce
sets out upon her homeward course;
before she goes, she seeks permission
to come back to the hall alone
and read the books there on her own.
XXI
Outside the gate Tatyana parted
with old Anisia. The next day
at earliest morning out she started,
to the empty homestead made her way,
then in the study's quiet setting,
at last alone, and quite forgetting
the world and all its works, she wept
and sat there as the minutes crept;
the books then underwent inspection...
at first she had no heart to range;
but then she found their choice was strange.
To reading from this odd collection
Tatyana turned with thirsting soul:
and watched a different world unroll.
{187}
XXII
Though long since Eugene's disapproval
had ruled out reading, in their place
and still exempted from removal
a few books had escaped disgrace:
Don Juan's and the Giaour's creator,
two or three novels where our later
epoch's portrayed, survived the ban,
works where contemporary man
is represented rather truly,
that soul without a moral tie,
all egoistical and dry,
to dreaming given up unduly,
and that embittered mind which boils
in empty deeds and futile toils.
XXIII
There many pages keep the impression
where a sharp nail has made a dent.
On these, with something like obsession,
the girl's attentive eyes are bent.
Tatyana sees with trepidation
what kind of thought, what observation,
had drawn Eugene's especial heed
and where he'd silently agreed.
Her eyes along the margin flitting
pursue his pencil. Everywhere
Onegin's soul encountered there
declares itself in ways unwitting --
terse words or crosses in the book,
or else a query's wondering hook.
{188}
XXIV
And so, at last, feature by feature,
Tanya begins to understand
more thoroughly, thank God, the creature
for whom her passion has been planned
by fate's decree: this freakish stranger,
who walks with sorrow, and with danger,
whether from heaven or from hell,
this angel, this proud devil, tell,
what is he? Just an apparition,
a shadow, null and meaningless,
a Muscovite in Harold's dress,
a modish second-hand edition,
a glossary of smart argot...
a parodistic raree-show?
XXV
Can she have found the enigma's setting?
is this the riddle's missing clue?
Time races, and she's been forgetting
her journey home is overdue.
Some neighbours there have come together;
they talk of her, of how and whether:
``Tanya's no child -- it's past a joke,''
says the old lady in a croak:
``why, Olga's younger, and she's bedded.
It's time she went. But what can I
do with her when a flat reply
always comes back: I'll not be wedded.
And then she broods and mopes for good,
and trails alone around the wood.''
{189}
XXVI
``She's not in love?'' ``There's no one, ever.
Buyánov tried -- got flea in ear.
And Ivan Petushkóv; no, never.
Pikhtín, of the Hussars, was here;
he found Tatyana so attractive,
bestirred himself, was devilish active!
I thought, she'll go this time, perhaps;
far from it! just one more collapse.''
``You don't see what to do? that's funny:
Moscow's the place, the marriage-fair!
There's vacancies in plenty there.''
``My dear good sir, I'm short of money.''
``One winter's worth, you've surely got;
or borrow, say, from me, if not.''
XXVII
The old dame had no thought of scouring
such good and sensible advice;
accounts were done, a winter outing
to Moscow settled in a trice.
Then Tanya hears of the decision.
To face society's derision
with the unmistakeable sideview
of a provincial ingénue,
to expose to Moscow fops and Circes
her out-of-fashion turns of phrase,
parade before their mocking gaze
her out-of-fashion clothes!... oh, mercies!
no, forests are the sole retreat
where her security's complete.
{190}
XXVIII
Risen with earliest rays of dawning,
Tanya today goes hurrying out
into the fields, surveys the morning,
with deep emotion looks about
and says: ``Farewell, you vales and fountains!
farewell you too, familiar mountains!
Farewell, familiar woods! Farewell,
beauty with all its heavenly spell,
gay nature and its sparkling distance!
This dear, still world I must forswear
for vanity, and din, and glare!...
Farewell to you, my free existence!
whither does all my yearning tend?
my fate, it leads me to what end?''
XXIX
She wanders on without direction.
Often she halts against her will,
arrested by the sheer perfection
she finds in river and in hill.
As with old friends, she craves diversion
in gossip's rambling and discursion
with her own forests and her meads...
But the swift summer-time proceeds --
now golden autumn's just arriving.
Now Nature's tremulous, pale effect
suggests a victim richly decked...
The north wind blows, the clouds are driving --
amidst the howling and the blast
sorceress-winter's here at last.
{191}
XXX
She's here, she spreads abroad; she stipples
the branches of the oak with flock;
lies in a coverlet that ripples
across the fields, round hill and rock;
the bank, the immobile stream are levelled
beneath a shroud that's all dishevelled;
frost gleams. We watch with gleeful thanks
old mother winter at her pranks.
Only from Tanya's heart, no cheering --
for her, no joy from winter-time,
she won't inhale the powdered rime,
nor from the bath-house roof be clearing
first snow for shoulders, breast and head:
for Tanya, winter's ways are dread.
XXXI
Departure date's long overtaken;
at last the final hours arrive.
A sledded coach, for years forsaken,
relined and strengthened for the drive;
three carts -- traditional procession --
with every sort of home possession:
pans, mattresses, and trunks, and chairs,
and jam in jars, and household wares,
and feather-beds, and birds in cages,
with pots and basins out of mind,
and useful goods of every kind.
There's din of parting now that rages,
with tears, in quarters of the maids:
and, in the yard, stand eighteen jades.
{192}
XXXII
Horses and coach are spliced in marriage;
the cooks prepare the midday meal;
mountains are piled on every carriage,
and coachmen swear, and women squeal.
The bearded outrider is sitting
his spindly, shaggy nag. As fitting,
to wave farewell the household waits
for the two ladies at the gates.
They're settled in; and crawling, sliding,
the grand barouche is on its way.
``Farewell, you realms that own the sway
of solitude, and peace abiding!
shall I see you?'' As Tanya speaks
the tears in stream pour down her cheeks.
XXXIII
When progress and amelioration
have pushed their frontiers further out,
in time (to quote the calculation
of philosophic brains, about
five hundred years) for sure our byways
will blossom into splendid highways:
paved roads will traverse Russia's length
bringing her unity and strength;
and iron bridges will go arching
over the waters in a sweep;
mountains will part; below the deep,
audacious tunnels will be marching:
Godfearing folk will institute
an inn at each stage of the route.
{193}
XXXIV
But now our roads are bad, the ages
have gnawed our bridges, and the flea
and bedbug that infest the stages
allow no rest to you or me;
inns don't exist; but in a freezing
log cabin a pretentious-teasing
menu, hung up for show, excites
all sorts of hopeless appetites;
meanwhile the local Cyclops, aiming
a Russian hammer-blow, repairs
Europe's most finely chiselled wares
before a fire too slowly flaming,
and blesses the unrivalled brand
of ruts that grace our fatherland.
XXXV
By contrast, in the frozen season,
how pleasantly the stages pass.
Like modish rhymes that lack all reason,
the winter's ways are smooth as glass.
Then our Automedons are flashing,
our troikas effortlessly dashing,
and mileposts grip the idle sense
by flickering past us like a fence.
Worse luck, Larina crawled; the employment
of her own horses, not the post,
spared her the expense she dreaded most --
and gave our heroine enjoyment
of traveller's tedium at its peak:
their journey took them a full week.
{194}
XXXVI
But now they're near. Already gleaming
before their eyes they see unfold
the towers of whitestone Moscow beaming
with fire from every cross of gold.
Friends, how my heart would leap with pleasure
when suddenly I saw this treasure
of spires and belfries, in a cup
with parks and mansions, open up.
How often would I fall to musing
of Moscow in the mournful days
of absence on my wandering ways!
Moscow... how many strains are fusing
in that one sound, for Russian hearts!
what store of riches it imparts!
XXXVII
Here stands, with shady park surrounded,
Petrovsky Castle; and the fame
in which so lately it abounded
rings proudly in that sombre name.
Napoleon here, intoxicated
with recent fortune, vainly waited
till Moscow, meekly on its knees,
gave up the ancient Kremlin-keys:
but no, my Moscow never stumbled
nor crawled in suppliant attire.
No feast, no welcome-gifts -- with fire
the impatient conqueror was humbled!
From here, deep-sunk in pensive woe,
he gazed out on the threatening glow.
{195}
XXXVIII
Farewell, Petrovsky Castle, glimmer
of fallen glory. Well! don't wait,
drive on! And now we see a-shimmer
the pillars of the turnpike-gate;
along Tverskaya Street already
the potholes make the coach unsteady.
Street lamps go flashing by, and stalls,
boys, country women, stately halls,
parks, monasteries, towers and ledges,
Bokharans, orchards, merchants, shacks,
boulevards, chemists, and Cossacks,
peasants, and fashion-shops, and sledges,
lions adorning gateway posts
and, on the crosses, jackdaw hosts.
(XXXIX,2) XL
This wearisome perambulation
takes up an hour or two; at last
the coach has reached its destination;
after Saint Chariton's gone past
a mansion stands just round a turning.
On an old aunt, who's long been burning
with a consumption, they've relied.
And now the door is opened wide,
a grizzled Calmuck stands to meet them,
bespectacled, in tattered dress;
and from the salon the princess,
stretched on a sofa, calls to greet them.
The two old ladies kiss and cry;
thickly the exclamations fly.
{196}
XLI
``Princess, mon ange!'' ``Pachette!'' ``Alina!''
``Who would have thought it?'' ``What an age!''
``How long can you... ?'' ``Dearest kuzina!''
``Sit down! how strange! it's like the stage
or else a novel.'' ``And my daughter
Tatyana's here, you know I've brought her...''
``Ah, Tanya, come to me, it seems
I'm wandering in a world of dreams...
Grandison, cousin, d'you remember?''
``What, Grandison? oh, Grandison!
I do, I do. Well, where's he gone?''
``Here, near Saint Simeon; in December,
on Christmas Eve, he wished me joy:
lately he married off his boy.''
XLII
``As for the other one... tomorrow
we'll talk, and talk, and then we'll show
Tanya to all her kin. My sorrow
is that my feet lack strength to go
outside the house. But you'll be aching
after your drive, it's quite back-breaking;
let's go together, take a rest...
Oh, I've no strength... I'm tired, my chest...
These days I'm finding even gladness,
not only pain, too much to meet...
I'm good for nothing now, my sweet...
you age, and life's just grief and sadness...''
With that, in tears, and quite worn out,
she burst into a coughing-bout.
{197}
XLIII
The invalid's glad salutation,
her kindness, move Tatyana; yet
the strangeness of her habitation,
after her own room, makes her fret.
No sleep, beneath that silken curtain,
in that new couch, no sleep for certain;
the early pealing of the bells
lifts her from bed as it foretells
the occupations of the morning.
She sits down by the window-sill.
The darkness thins away; but still
no vision of her fields is dawning.
An unknown yard, she sees from thence,
a stall, a kitchen and a fence.
XLIV
The kinsfolk in concerted action
ask Tanya out to dine, and they
present her languor and distraction
to fresh grandparents every day.
For cousins from afar, on meeting
there never fails a kindly greeting,
and exclamations, and good cheer.
``How Tanya's grown! I pulled your ear
just yesterday.'' ``And since your christening
how long is it?'' ``And since I fed
you in my arms on gingerbread?''
And all grandmothers who are listening
in unison repeat the cry:
``My goodness, how the years do fly!''
{198}
XLV
Their look, though, shows no change upon it --
they all still keep their old impress:
still made of tulle, the self-same bonnet
adorns Aunt Helen, the princess;
still powdered is Lukérya Lvovna,
a liar still, Lyubóv Petrovna,
Iván Petróvich still is dumb,
Semyón Petróvich, mean and glum,
and then old cousin Pelagéya
still has Monsieur Finemouche for friend,
same Pom, same husband to the end;
he's at the club, a real stayer,
still meek, still deaf as howd'youdo,
still eats and drinks enough for two.
XLVI
And in their daughters' close embraces
Tanya is gripped. No comment's made
at first by Moscow's youthful graces
while she's from top to toe surveyed;
they find her somewhat unexpected,
a bit provincial and affected,
too pale, too thin, but on the whole
not bad at all; and then each soul
gives way to nature's normal passion:
she's their great friend, asked in, caressed,
her hands affectionately pressed;
they fluff her curls out in the fashion,
and in a singsong voice confide
the inmost thoughts that girls can hide.
{199}
XLVII
Each others' and their own successes,
their hopes, their pranks, their dreams at night --
and so the harmless chat progresses
coated with a thin layer of spite.
Then in return for all this twaddle,
from her they strive to coax and coddle
a full confession of the heart.
Tatyana hears but takes no part;
as if she'd been profoundly sleeping,
there's not a word she's understood;
she guards, in silence and for good,
her sacred store of bliss and weeping
as something not to be declared,
a treasure never to be shared.
XLVIII
To talk, to general conversation
Tatyana seeks to attune her ear,
but the salon's preoccupation
is with dull trash that can't cohere:
everything's dim and unenthusing;
even the scandal's not amusing;
in talk, so fruitless and so stale,
in question, gossip, news and tale,
not once a day a thought will quiver,
not even by chance, once in a while,
will the benighted reason smile,
even in joke the heart won't shiver.
This world's so vacuous that it's got
no spark of fun in all its rot!
{200}
XLIX
In swarms around Tatyana ranging,
the modish Record Office clerks
stare hard at her before exchanging
some disagreeable remarks.
One melancholy fop, declaring
that she's ``ideal'', begins preparing
an elegy to her address,
propped in the door among the press.
Once Vyázemsky,4 who chanced to find her
at some dull aunt's, sat down and knew
how to engage in talk that drew
her soul's attention; just behind her
an old man saw her as she came,
straightened his wig, and asked her name.
L
But where, mid tragic storms that rend her,
Melpomene wails long and loud,
and brandishes her tinsel splendour
before a cold, indifferent crowd,
and where Thalia, gently napping,
ignores approval's friendly clapping,
and where Terpsichore alone
moves the young watcher (as was known
to happen long ago, dear readers,
in our first ages), from no place
did any glasses seek her face,
lorgnettes of jealous fashion-leaders,
or quizzing-glasses of know-alls
in boxes or the rows of stalls.
{201}
LI
They take her too to the Assembly.
The crush, the heat, as music blares,
the blaze of candles, and the trembly
flicker of swiftly twirling pairs,
the beauties in their flimsy dresses,
the swarm, the glittering mob that presses,
the ring of marriageable girls --
bludgeon the sense; it faints and whirls.
Here insolent prize-dandies wither
all others with a waistcoat's set
and an insouciant lorgnette.
Hussars on leave are racing hither
to boom, to flash across the sky,
to captivate, and then to fly.
LII
The night has many stars that glitter,
Moscow has beauties and to spare:
but brighter than the heavenly litter,
the moon in its azure of air.
And yet that goddess whom I'd never
importune with my lyre, whenever
like a majestic moon, she drives
among the maidens and the wives,
how proudly, how divinely gleaming,
she treads our earth, and how her breast
is in voluptuous languor dressed,
how sensuously her eyes are dreaming!
Enough, I tell you, that will do --
you've paid insanity its due.
{202}
LIII
Noise, laughter, bowing, helter-skelter
galop, mazurka, waltz... Meanwhile
between two aunts, in pillared shelter,
unnoticed, in unseeing style,
Tanya looks on; her own indictment
condemns the monde and its excitement;
she finds it stifling here... she strains
in dream toward the woods and plains,
the country cottages and hovels,
and to that far and lonely nook
where flows a little glittering brook,
to her flower-garden, to her novels, --
to where he came to her that time
in twilight of allées of lime.
LIV
But while she roams in thought, not caring
for dance, and din, and worldly ways,
a general of majestic bearing
has fixed on her a steady gaze.
The aunts exchanged a look, they fluttered,
they nudged Tatyana, and each muttered
at the same moment in her ear:
``Look quickly to the left, d'you hear?''
``Look to the left? where? what's the matter?''
``There, just in front of all that swarm,
you see the two in uniform...
just look, and never mind the chatter...
he's moved... you see him from the side.''
``Who? that fat general?'' Tanya cried.
{203}
LV
But here, with our congratulation
on her conquest, we leave my sweet;
I'm altering my destination
lest in forgetfulness complete
I drop my hero... I'll be truthful:
``It is a friend I sing, a youthful
amateur of caprice and quirk.
Muse of the epic, bless my work!
in my long task, be my upholder,
put a strong staff into my hand,
don't let me stray in paths unplanned.''
Enough. The load is off my shoulder!
I've paid my due to classic art:
it may be late, but it's a start.
{204}
Notes to Chapter Seven
1 Vasily Levshin (1746-1826), writer on gardening and agriculture.
2 Stanzas VIII and IX and XXXIX were discarded by Pushkin.
3 A statuette of Napoleon.
4 See note 1 to Chapter Five.
--------
Fare thee well, and if for ever,
Still for ever, fare thee well.
Byron
Days when I came to flower serenely
in Lycée gardens long ago,
and read my Apuleius keenly,
but spared no glance for Cicero;
yes, in that spring-time, in low-lying
secluded vales, where swans were crying,
by waters that were still and clear,
for the first time the Muse came near.
And suddenly her radiance lighted
my student cell: she opened up
the joys of youth, that festal cup,
she sang of childhood's fun, indited
Russia's old glories and their gleams,
the heart and all its fragile dreams.
{205}
II
And with a smile the world caressed us:
what wings our first successes gave!
aged Derzhávin1 saw and blessed us
as he descended to the grave.
... ...
III
The arbitrary rules of passion
were all the law that I would use;
sharing her in promiscuous fashion,
I introduced my saucy Muse
to roar of banquets, din of brawling,
when night patrol's a perilous calling;
to each and every raving feast
she brought her talents, never ceased,
Bacchante-like, her flighty prancing;
sang for the guests above the wine;
the youth of those past days in line
behind her followed wildly dancing;
among my friends, in all that crowd
my giddy mistress made me proud.
{206}
IV
When I defected from their union
and ran far off... the Muse came too.
How often, with her sweet communion,
she'd cheer my wordless way, and do
her secret work of magic suasion!
How often on the steep Caucasian
ranges, Lenora2-like, she'd ride
breakneck by moonlight at my side!
How oft she'd lead me, by the Tauric
seacoast, to hear in dark of night
the murmuring Nereids recite,
and the deep-throated billows' choric
hymnal as, endlessly unfurled,
they praise the Father of the world.
V
But then, oblivious of the city,
its glaring feasts, and shrill events,
in far Moldavia, fit for pity,
she visited the humble tents
of wandering tribesmen; while the ravage
of their society turned her savage,
she lost the language of the gods
for the bleak tongue of boorish clods --
she loved the steppe-land and its singing,
then quickly something changed all this:
look here, as a provincial miss
she's turned up in my garden, bringing
sad meditations in her look,
and, in her hand, a small French book.
{207}
VI
Now for the first time she's escorted
into the social whirlabout;
jealously, shyly, I've imported
her steppeland charms into a rout.3
Through the tight ranks -- aristocratic,
military-foppish, diplomatic --
past the grand ladies, see her glide;
she sits down calmly on one side,
admires the tumult and the pressing,
the flickering tones of dress and speech,
the young hostess, towards whom each
new guest is gradually progressing,
while men, all sombre, all the same,
set off the ladies like a frame.
VII
She enjoys the stately orchestration
of oligarchical converse,
pride's icy calm, the combination
of ranks and ages so diverse.
But who stands there, in this selected
assembly, silent and dejected?
All who behold him find him strange.
Faces before him flash and change
like irksome phantoms, null as zero.
Is spleen his trouble, or the dumb
torment of pride? And why's he come?
Who on earth is he? not... our hero?
No doubt about it, it's Eugene.
``How long has he been on the scene?
{208}
VIII
Still as he was? has he stopped prancing?
does he still pose, and play the freak?
Now he's returned, what role's he dancing?
what play will he present this week?
For what charade is he apparelled?
Is he a Melmoth, a Childe Harold,
a patriot, a cosmopolite,
bigot or prude? or has he quite
a different mask? is he becoming
someone like you and me, just nice?
At least I'll give him some advice:
to drop all that old-fashioned mumming;
too long he's hoaxed us high and low...''
``You know him, do you?'' ``Yes and no.''
IX
However has he earned so vicious,
so unforgiving a report?
Is it that we've become officious
and prone to censure in our thought;
that fiery souls' headstrong enthusing
appears offensive or amusing
to the complacent and the null;
that wit embarrasses the dull;
that we enjoy equating chatter
with deeds; that dunces now and then
take wing on spite; that serious men
find, in the trivial, serious matter;
that mediocre dress alone
fits us as if it were our own?
{209}
X
Blest he who in his youth was truly
youthful, who ripened in his time,
and, as the years went by, who duly
grew hardened to life's frosty clime;
who never learnt how dreamers babble;
who never scorned the social rabble;
at twenty, was a fop inbred,
at thirty, lucratively wed;
at fifty, would prolong the story
by clearing every sort of debt;
who, in good time, would calmly get
fortune, and dignity, and glory,
who all his life would garner praise
as the perfection of our days!
XI
Alas, our youth was what we made it,
something to fritter and to burn,
when hourly we ourselves betrayed it,
and it deceived us in return;
when our sublimest aspiration,
and all our fresh imagination,
swiftly decayed beyond recall
like foliage in the rotting fall.
It's agony to watch the hollow
sequence of dinners stretch away,
to see life as a ritual play,
and with the decorous throng to follow
although one in no manner shares
its views, its passions, or its cares!
{210}
XII
To be a butt for the malicious
is agony, if I may speak,
and in the eyes of the judicious
to pass for an affected freak,
or for a lamentable manic,
a monster of the gens Satanic,
or for that Demon4 of my dream.
Onegin -- now once more my theme --
had killed his best friend in a duel;
without a goal on which to fix,
lived to the age of twenty-six;
was finding leisure's vacuum cruel;
and with no post, no work, no wife,
had nothing to employ his life.
XIII
He was the slave of a tenacious,
a restless urge for change of place
(an attribute that's quite vexatious,
though some support it with good grace).
He's gone away and left his village,
the solitude of woods and tillage,
where every day a bloodstained shade
had come to him in field and glade;
started a life of pointless roaming,
dogged by one feeling, only one --
and soon his travels had begun,
as all things did, to bore him; homing,
like Chatsky,5 he arrived to fall
direct from shipboard into ball.
{211}
XIV
There came a murmur, for a fleeting
moment the assembly seemed to shake...
that lady the hostess was greeting,
with the grand general in her wake --
she was unhurried, unobtrusive,
not cold, but also not effusive,
no haughty stare around the press,
no proud pretentions to success,
no mannerism, no affectation,
no artifices of the vain...
No, all in her was calm and plain.
She struck one as the incarnation --
Shishkov,6 forgive me: I don't know
the Russian for le comme il faut.
XV
Ladies came over, crossed to meet her,
dowagers smiled as she went by;
and bending deeply down to greet her
men made their bows, and sought her eye;
girls as they passed her spoke less loudly,
and no one in the room so proudly
raised nose and shoulders high and wide
as did the general at her side.
You'd never class her as a beauty;
and yet in her you'd not detect --
rigorously though you'd inspect --
what London calls, with humble duty
to fashion's absolute dictate,
a vulgar touch. I can't translate.
{212}
XVI
And yet, although it's past conveying,
I really dote upon the word:
it's new to us, beyond gainsaying;
from the first moment it was heard
it had its epigram-potential7...
But let's return to our essential,
that lady whose engaging charm
so effortlessly can disarm.
She sits with Nina8 at a table --
bright Northern Cleopatra she:
but you'll undoubtedly agree
that marble Nina's proved unable
to steal away her neighbour's light
or dim her, dazzle as she might.
XVII
``Can it be she?'' Eugene in wonder
demanded. ``Yes, she looks... And yet...
from deepest backwood, furthest under...''
And every minute his lorgnette
stays fixed and focused on a vision
which has recalled, without precision,
forgotten features. ``Can you say,
prince, who in that dark-red béret,
just there, is talking to the Spanish
ambassador?'' In some surprise
the prince looks at him, and replies:
``Wait, I'll present you -- but you banish
yourself too long from social life.''
``But tell me who she is.'' ``My wife.''
{213}
XVIII
``You're married? No idea whatever...
Since when is this?'' ``Two years or more.''
``To...?'' ``Larina.'' ``Tatyana? never!''
``She knows you?'' ``Why, we lived next door.''
So to his wife for presentation
the prince bring up his own relation
and friend Evgeny. The princess
gazes at him... and nonetheless,
however much her soul has faltered,
however strongly she has been
moved and surprised, she stays serene,
and nothing in her look is altered:
her manner is no less contained;
her bow, as calm and as restrained.
XIX
I don't mean that she never shivered,
paled, flushed, or lost composure's grip --
no, even her eyebrow never quivered,
she never even bit her lip.
However closely he inspected,
there was no trace to be detected
of the old Tatyana. Eugene tried
to talk to her, but language died.
How long he'd been here, was her query,
and where had he arrived from, not
from their own country? Then she shot
across to her consort a weary
regard, and slipped away for good, ...
with Eugene frozen where he stood.
{214}
XX
Was she the Tanya he'd exhorted
in solitude, as at the start
of this our novel we reported,
in the far backwoods' deepest heart,
to whom, in a fine flow of preaching,
he had conveyed some moral teaching,
from whom he'd kept a letter, where
her heart had spoken, free as air,
untouched by trace of inhibition,
could it be she... or had he dreamed?
the girl he'd scorned in what he deemed
the modesty of her condition,
could it be she, who just had turned
away, so cool, so unconcerned?
XXI
Eugene forsakes the packed reception,
and home he drives, deep-sunk in thought.
By dreams now sad in their conception,
now sweet, his slumbers are distraught.
He wakes -- and who is this who writes him?
Prince N. respectfully invites him
to a soirée. ``My God! to her!...
I'll go, I'll go!'' -- and in a stir
a swift, polite reply is written.
What ails him? he's in some strange daze!
what moves along the hidden ways
in one so slothful, so hard-bitten?
vexation? vainness? heavens above,
it can't be youth's distemper -- love?
{215}
XXII
Once more he counts the hour-bells tolling,
once more he can't await the night;
now ten has struck, his wheels are rolling,
he drives there like a bird in flight,
he's up the steps, with heart a-quiver
led to the princess, all a-shiver,
finds her alone, and there they sit
some minutes long. The words won't fit
on Eugene's lips. In his dejection,
his awkwardness, he's hardly said
a single thing to her. His head
is lost in obstinate reflection;
and obstinate his look. But she
sits imperturbable, and free.
XXIII
Her husband enters, thus concluding
their unattractive tête-à-tête;
he and Onegin start alluding
to pranks and jokes of earlier date.
They laugh. The guests begin arriving.
Already now the talk was thriving
on modish malice, coarse of grain
but salt; near the princess a vein
of unaffectedly fantastic
invention sparkled, then gave way
to reasoned talk, no dull hearsay,
no deathless truths, nothing scholastic;
and no one's ear could take offence
at such vivacious, free good sense.
{216}
XXIV
High rank, of course, and fashion's glasses,
Saint Petersburg's fine flower was there --
the inevitable silly asses,
the faces met with everywhere;
ladies of riper years, delicious
in rose-trimmed bonnets, but malicious;
a girl or two, without a smile
to crack between them; for a while
one listened to a chief of mission
on state affairs; there was a wit,
a grey-haired, perfumed exquisite,
a joker in the old tradition,
acute and subtle -- in a word
all that today we find absurd.
XXV
There, with epigrammatic neatness,
was one who raged and raged again,
against the tea's excessive sweetness,
the boring wives, the ill-bred men,
a novel, vague and superficial,
two sisters who'd received the initial,9
the lies that in the press run rife,
the war, the snowfall, and his wife.
... ...
{217}
XXVI
There was -- --,10 so notorious
through baseness of the soul that he,
in albums, blunted the censorious
cartoonist-pencils of Saint-Priest;11
another of the ball-dictators,
a fashion-plate for illustrators,
stood in the door, cherubic, mute,
frozen in his tight-fitting suit;
a far-flung traveller who was creaking
with foppery and too much starch,
set the guests smiling at his arch,
affected pose -- and an unspeaking
unanimous exchange of looks
entered his sentence in the books.
XXVII
But my Eugene that night directed
his gaze at Tatyana alone --
not the plain, timorous, dejected
and lovelorn maiden whom he'd known,
but the unbending goddess-daughter
of Neva's proud imperial water,
the imperturbable princess.
We all resemble more or less
our Mother Eve: we're never falling
for what's been given us to take;
to his mysterious tree the snake
is calling us, for ever calling --
and once forbidden fruit is seen,
no paradise can stay serene.
{218}
XXVIII
In Tanya, what a transformation!
how well she'd studied her new role!
how soon the bounds of rank and station
had won her loyalty! What soul
would have divined the tender, shrinking
maiden in this superb, unthinking
lawgiver to the modish world?
Yet once for him her thoughts had whirled,
for him, at night, before the indulgence
of Morpheus had induced relief
she once had pined in girlish grief,
raised a dull eye to moon's refulgence,
and dreamt that she with him one day
jointly would tread life's humble way!
XXIX
Love tyrannises all the ages;
but youthful, virgin hearts derive
a blessing from its blasts and rages,
like fields in spring when storms arrive.
In passion's sluicing rain they freshen,
ripen, and find a new expression --
the vital force gives them the shoot
of sumptuous flowers and luscious fruit.
But when a later age has found us,
the climacteric of our life,
how sad the scar of passion's knife:
as when chill autumn rains surround us,
throw meadows into muddy rout,
and strip the forest round about.
{219}
XXX
Alas, Eugene beyond all query
is deep in love, just like a boy;
spends light and darkness in the dreary
brooding that is the lover's ploy.
Each day, despite the appeals of reason,
he drives up in and out of season
to her glass porch; pursues her round
close as a shadow on the ground;
and bliss for him is when he hotly
touches her hand, or throws a fur
around her neck, or when for her
he goes ahead and parts the motley
brigade of liveries in the hall,
or else lifts up a fallen shawl.
XXXI
But she refuses to perceive him,
even if he drops or pines away.
At home she'll equably receive him,
in others' houses she may say
a word or two, or stare unseeing,
or simply bow: within her being
coquettishness has got no trace --
the grand monde finds it out of place.
Meanwhile Onegin starts to languish:
she doesn't see, or doesn't mind;
Onegin wastes, you'd almost find
he's got consumption. In his anguish
some vote a doctor for the case,
others prescribe a watering-place.
{220}
XXXII
But go he won't: for him, a letter
fixing an early rendezvous
with his forefathers would seem better;
but she (for women, that's not new)
remains unmoved: still he's persistent,
active, and hopeful, and insistent:
his illness lends him courage and
to the princess, in his weak hand,
he sends a letter, penned with passion.
He deemed, in general, letters vain,
and rightly so, but now his pain
had gone in no uncertain fashion
past all endurance. You're referred
to Eugene's letter, word for word.
{221}
Onegin's Letter to Tatyana
``I know it all: my secret ache
will anger you in its confession.
What scorn I see in the expression
that your proud glance is sure to take!
What do I want? what am I after,
stripping my soul before your eyes!
I know to what malicious laughter
my declaration may give rise!
``I noticed once, at our chance meeting,
in you a tender pulse was beating,
yet dared not trust what I could see.
I gave no rein to sweet affection:
what held me was my predilection,
my tedious taste for feeling free.
And then, to part us in full measure,
Lensky, that tragic victim, died...
Poor Lensky! where the tomb is bounded
by dull eternity's purlieus,
was the sad poet not confounded
at this betrayal's fateful news?
Or, as by Lethe's bank he slumbered,
perhaps no more sensations lumbered
the lucky bard, and as he dozed
the earth for him grew dumb and closed?...
On such indifference, such forgetting
beyond the grave we all must build --
foes, friends and loves, their voice is stilled.
Only the estate provides a setting
for angry heirs, as one, to fall
into an unbecoming brawl.
{182}
XII
Presently Olga's ringing answer
inside the Larins' house fell mute.
Back to his regiment the Lancer,
slave of the service, was en route.
Weltered in tears, and sorely smarting,
the old dame wept her daughter's parting,
and in her grief seemed fit to die;
but Tanya found she couldn't cry:
only the pallor of heart-breaking
covered her face. When all came out
onto the porch, and fussed about
over the business of leave-taking,
Tatyana went with them, and sped
the carriage of the newly-wed.
XIII
And long, as if through mists that spurted,
Tanya pursued them with her gaze...
So there she stood, forlorn, deserted!
The comrade of so many days,
oh! her young dove, the natural hearer
of secrets, like a friend but dearer,
had been for ever borne off far
and parted from her by their star.
Shade-like, in purposeless obsession
she roams the empty garden-plot...
in everything she sees there's not
a grain of gladness; tears' repression
allows no comfort to come through --
Tatyana's heart is rent in two.
{183}
XIV
Her passion burns with stronger powder
now she's bereft, and just the same
her heart speaks to her even louder
of far-away Onegin's name.
She'll not see him, her obligation
must be to hold in detestation
the man who laid her brother low.
The poet's dead... already though
no one recalls him or his verses;
by now his bride-to-be has wed
another, and his memory's fled
as smoke in azure sky disperses.
Two hearts there are perhaps that keep
a tear for him... but what's to weep?
XV
Evening, and darkening sky, and waters
in quiet flood. A beetle whirred.
The choirs of dancers sought their quarters.
Beyond the stream there smoked and stirred
a fisher's fire. Through country gleaming
silver with moonlight, in her dreaming
profoundly sunk, Tatyana stalked
for hours alone; she walked and walked...
Suddenly, from a crest, she sighted
a house, a village, and a wood
below a hill; a garden stood
above a stream the moon had lighted.
She looked across, felt in her heart
a faster, stronger pulsing start.
{184}
XVI
She hesitates, and doubts beset her:
forward or back? it's true that he
has left, and no one here has met her...
``The house, the park... I'll go and see!''
So down came Tanya, hardly daring
to draw a breath, around her staring
with puzzled and confused regard...
She entered the deserted yard.
Dogs, howling, rushed in her direction...
Her frightened cry brought running out
the household boys in noisy rout;
giving the lady their protection,
by dint of cuff and kick and smack
they managed to disperse the pack.
XVII
``Could I just see the house, I wonder?''
Tatyana asked. The children all
rushed to Anisia's room, to plunder
the keys that opened up the hall.
At once Anisia came to greet her,
the doorway opened wide to meet her,
she went inside the empty shell
in which our hero used to dwell.
She looks: forgotten past all chalking
on billiard-table rests a cue,
and on the crumpled sofa too
a riding whip. Tanya keeps walking...
``And here's the hearth,'' explains the crone,
``where master used to sit alone.
{185}
XVIII
``Here in the winter he'd have dinner
with neighbour Lensky, the deceased.
Please follow me. And here's the inner
study where he would sleep and feast
on cups of coffee, and then later
he'd listen to the administrator;
in morning time he'd read a book...
And just here, in the window-nook,
is where old master took up station,
and put his glasses on to see
his Sunday game of cards with me.
I pray God grant his soul salvation,
and rest his dear bones in the tomb,
down in our damp earth-mother's womb!''
XIX
Tatyana in a deep emotion
gazes at all the scene around;
she drinks it like a priceless potion;
it stirs her drooping soul to bound
in fashion that's half-glad, half-anguished:
that table where the lamp has languished,
beside the window-sill, that bed
on which a carpet has been spread,
piled books, and through the pane the sable
moonscape, the half-light overall,
Lord Byron's portrait on the wall,
the iron figure3 on the table,
the hat, the scowling brow, the chest
where folded arms are tightly pressed.
{186}
XX
Longtime inside this modish cloister,
as if spellbound, Tatyana stands.
It's late. A breeze begins to roister,
the valley's dark. The forest lands
round the dim river sleep; the curtain
of hills has hid the moon; for certain
the time to go has long since passed
for the young pilgrim. So at last
Tatyana, hiding her condition,
and not without a sigh, perforce
sets out upon her homeward course;
before she goes, she seeks permission
to come back to the hall alone
and read the books there on her own.
XXI
Outside the gate Tatyana parted
with old Anisia. The next day
at earliest morning out she started,
to the empty homestead made her way,
then in the study's quiet setting,
at last alone, and quite forgetting
the world and all its works, she wept
and sat there as the minutes crept;
the books then underwent inspection...
at first she had no heart to range;
but then she found their choice was strange.
To reading from this odd collection
Tatyana turned with thirsting soul:
and watched a different world unroll.
{187}
XXII
Though long since Eugene's disapproval
had ruled out reading, in their place
and still exempted from removal
a few books had escaped disgrace:
Don Juan's and the Giaour's creator,
two or three novels where our later
epoch's portrayed, survived the ban,
works where contemporary man
is represented rather truly,
that soul without a moral tie,
all egoistical and dry,
to dreaming given up unduly,
and that embittered mind which boils
in empty deeds and futile toils.
XXIII
There many pages keep the impression
where a sharp nail has made a dent.
On these, with something like obsession,
the girl's attentive eyes are bent.
Tatyana sees with trepidation
what kind of thought, what observation,
had drawn Eugene's especial heed
and where he'd silently agreed.
Her eyes along the margin flitting
pursue his pencil. Everywhere
Onegin's soul encountered there
declares itself in ways unwitting --
terse words or crosses in the book,
or else a query's wondering hook.
{188}
XXIV
And so, at last, feature by feature,
Tanya begins to understand
more thoroughly, thank God, the creature
for whom her passion has been planned
by fate's decree: this freakish stranger,
who walks with sorrow, and with danger,
whether from heaven or from hell,
this angel, this proud devil, tell,
what is he? Just an apparition,
a shadow, null and meaningless,
a Muscovite in Harold's dress,
a modish second-hand edition,
a glossary of smart argot...
a parodistic raree-show?
XXV
Can she have found the enigma's setting?
is this the riddle's missing clue?
Time races, and she's been forgetting
her journey home is overdue.
Some neighbours there have come together;
they talk of her, of how and whether:
``Tanya's no child -- it's past a joke,''
says the old lady in a croak:
``why, Olga's younger, and she's bedded.
It's time she went. But what can I
do with her when a flat reply
always comes back: I'll not be wedded.
And then she broods and mopes for good,
and trails alone around the wood.''
{189}
XXVI
``She's not in love?'' ``There's no one, ever.
Buyánov tried -- got flea in ear.
And Ivan Petushkóv; no, never.
Pikhtín, of the Hussars, was here;
he found Tatyana so attractive,
bestirred himself, was devilish active!
I thought, she'll go this time, perhaps;
far from it! just one more collapse.''
``You don't see what to do? that's funny:
Moscow's the place, the marriage-fair!
There's vacancies in plenty there.''
``My dear good sir, I'm short of money.''
``One winter's worth, you've surely got;
or borrow, say, from me, if not.''
XXVII
The old dame had no thought of scouring
such good and sensible advice;
accounts were done, a winter outing
to Moscow settled in a trice.
Then Tanya hears of the decision.
To face society's derision
with the unmistakeable sideview
of a provincial ingénue,
to expose to Moscow fops and Circes
her out-of-fashion turns of phrase,
parade before their mocking gaze
her out-of-fashion clothes!... oh, mercies!
no, forests are the sole retreat
where her security's complete.
{190}
XXVIII
Risen with earliest rays of dawning,
Tanya today goes hurrying out
into the fields, surveys the morning,
with deep emotion looks about
and says: ``Farewell, you vales and fountains!
farewell you too, familiar mountains!
Farewell, familiar woods! Farewell,
beauty with all its heavenly spell,
gay nature and its sparkling distance!
This dear, still world I must forswear
for vanity, and din, and glare!...
Farewell to you, my free existence!
whither does all my yearning tend?
my fate, it leads me to what end?''
XXIX
She wanders on without direction.
Often she halts against her will,
arrested by the sheer perfection
she finds in river and in hill.
As with old friends, she craves diversion
in gossip's rambling and discursion
with her own forests and her meads...
But the swift summer-time proceeds --
now golden autumn's just arriving.
Now Nature's tremulous, pale effect
suggests a victim richly decked...
The north wind blows, the clouds are driving --
amidst the howling and the blast
sorceress-winter's here at last.
{191}
XXX
She's here, she spreads abroad; she stipples
the branches of the oak with flock;
lies in a coverlet that ripples
across the fields, round hill and rock;
the bank, the immobile stream are levelled
beneath a shroud that's all dishevelled;
frost gleams. We watch with gleeful thanks
old mother winter at her pranks.
Only from Tanya's heart, no cheering --
for her, no joy from winter-time,
she won't inhale the powdered rime,
nor from the bath-house roof be clearing
first snow for shoulders, breast and head:
for Tanya, winter's ways are dread.
XXXI
Departure date's long overtaken;
at last the final hours arrive.
A sledded coach, for years forsaken,
relined and strengthened for the drive;
three carts -- traditional procession --
with every sort of home possession:
pans, mattresses, and trunks, and chairs,
and jam in jars, and household wares,
and feather-beds, and birds in cages,
with pots and basins out of mind,
and useful goods of every kind.
There's din of parting now that rages,
with tears, in quarters of the maids:
and, in the yard, stand eighteen jades.
{192}
XXXII
Horses and coach are spliced in marriage;
the cooks prepare the midday meal;
mountains are piled on every carriage,
and coachmen swear, and women squeal.
The bearded outrider is sitting
his spindly, shaggy nag. As fitting,
to wave farewell the household waits
for the two ladies at the gates.
They're settled in; and crawling, sliding,
the grand barouche is on its way.
``Farewell, you realms that own the sway
of solitude, and peace abiding!
shall I see you?'' As Tanya speaks
the tears in stream pour down her cheeks.
XXXIII
When progress and amelioration
have pushed their frontiers further out,
in time (to quote the calculation
of philosophic brains, about
five hundred years) for sure our byways
will blossom into splendid highways:
paved roads will traverse Russia's length
bringing her unity and strength;
and iron bridges will go arching
over the waters in a sweep;
mountains will part; below the deep,
audacious tunnels will be marching:
Godfearing folk will institute
an inn at each stage of the route.
{193}
XXXIV
But now our roads are bad, the ages
have gnawed our bridges, and the flea
and bedbug that infest the stages
allow no rest to you or me;
inns don't exist; but in a freezing
log cabin a pretentious-teasing
menu, hung up for show, excites
all sorts of hopeless appetites;
meanwhile the local Cyclops, aiming
a Russian hammer-blow, repairs
Europe's most finely chiselled wares
before a fire too slowly flaming,
and blesses the unrivalled brand
of ruts that grace our fatherland.
XXXV
By contrast, in the frozen season,
how pleasantly the stages pass.
Like modish rhymes that lack all reason,
the winter's ways are smooth as glass.
Then our Automedons are flashing,
our troikas effortlessly dashing,
and mileposts grip the idle sense
by flickering past us like a fence.
Worse luck, Larina crawled; the employment
of her own horses, not the post,
spared her the expense she dreaded most --
and gave our heroine enjoyment
of traveller's tedium at its peak:
their journey took them a full week.
{194}
XXXVI
But now they're near. Already gleaming
before their eyes they see unfold
the towers of whitestone Moscow beaming
with fire from every cross of gold.
Friends, how my heart would leap with pleasure
when suddenly I saw this treasure
of spires and belfries, in a cup
with parks and mansions, open up.
How often would I fall to musing
of Moscow in the mournful days
of absence on my wandering ways!
Moscow... how many strains are fusing
in that one sound, for Russian hearts!
what store of riches it imparts!
XXXVII
Here stands, with shady park surrounded,
Petrovsky Castle; and the fame
in which so lately it abounded
rings proudly in that sombre name.
Napoleon here, intoxicated
with recent fortune, vainly waited
till Moscow, meekly on its knees,
gave up the ancient Kremlin-keys:
but no, my Moscow never stumbled
nor crawled in suppliant attire.
No feast, no welcome-gifts -- with fire
the impatient conqueror was humbled!
From here, deep-sunk in pensive woe,
he gazed out on the threatening glow.
{195}
XXXVIII
Farewell, Petrovsky Castle, glimmer
of fallen glory. Well! don't wait,
drive on! And now we see a-shimmer
the pillars of the turnpike-gate;
along Tverskaya Street already
the potholes make the coach unsteady.
Street lamps go flashing by, and stalls,
boys, country women, stately halls,
parks, monasteries, towers and ledges,
Bokharans, orchards, merchants, shacks,
boulevards, chemists, and Cossacks,
peasants, and fashion-shops, and sledges,
lions adorning gateway posts
and, on the crosses, jackdaw hosts.
(XXXIX,2) XL
This wearisome perambulation
takes up an hour or two; at last
the coach has reached its destination;
after Saint Chariton's gone past
a mansion stands just round a turning.
On an old aunt, who's long been burning
with a consumption, they've relied.
And now the door is opened wide,
a grizzled Calmuck stands to meet them,
bespectacled, in tattered dress;
and from the salon the princess,
stretched on a sofa, calls to greet them.
The two old ladies kiss and cry;
thickly the exclamations fly.
{196}
XLI
``Princess, mon ange!'' ``Pachette!'' ``Alina!''
``Who would have thought it?'' ``What an age!''
``How long can you... ?'' ``Dearest kuzina!''
``Sit down! how strange! it's like the stage
or else a novel.'' ``And my daughter
Tatyana's here, you know I've brought her...''
``Ah, Tanya, come to me, it seems
I'm wandering in a world of dreams...
Grandison, cousin, d'you remember?''
``What, Grandison? oh, Grandison!
I do, I do. Well, where's he gone?''
``Here, near Saint Simeon; in December,
on Christmas Eve, he wished me joy:
lately he married off his boy.''
XLII
``As for the other one... tomorrow
we'll talk, and talk, and then we'll show
Tanya to all her kin. My sorrow
is that my feet lack strength to go
outside the house. But you'll be aching
after your drive, it's quite back-breaking;
let's go together, take a rest...
Oh, I've no strength... I'm tired, my chest...
These days I'm finding even gladness,
not only pain, too much to meet...
I'm good for nothing now, my sweet...
you age, and life's just grief and sadness...''
With that, in tears, and quite worn out,
she burst into a coughing-bout.
{197}
XLIII
The invalid's glad salutation,
her kindness, move Tatyana; yet
the strangeness of her habitation,
after her own room, makes her fret.
No sleep, beneath that silken curtain,
in that new couch, no sleep for certain;
the early pealing of the bells
lifts her from bed as it foretells
the occupations of the morning.
She sits down by the window-sill.
The darkness thins away; but still
no vision of her fields is dawning.
An unknown yard, she sees from thence,
a stall, a kitchen and a fence.
XLIV
The kinsfolk in concerted action
ask Tanya out to dine, and they
present her languor and distraction
to fresh grandparents every day.
For cousins from afar, on meeting
there never fails a kindly greeting,
and exclamations, and good cheer.
``How Tanya's grown! I pulled your ear
just yesterday.'' ``And since your christening
how long is it?'' ``And since I fed
you in my arms on gingerbread?''
And all grandmothers who are listening
in unison repeat the cry:
``My goodness, how the years do fly!''
{198}
XLV
Their look, though, shows no change upon it --
they all still keep their old impress:
still made of tulle, the self-same bonnet
adorns Aunt Helen, the princess;
still powdered is Lukérya Lvovna,
a liar still, Lyubóv Petrovna,
Iván Petróvich still is dumb,
Semyón Petróvich, mean and glum,
and then old cousin Pelagéya
still has Monsieur Finemouche for friend,
same Pom, same husband to the end;
he's at the club, a real stayer,
still meek, still deaf as howd'youdo,
still eats and drinks enough for two.
XLVI
And in their daughters' close embraces
Tanya is gripped. No comment's made
at first by Moscow's youthful graces
while she's from top to toe surveyed;
they find her somewhat unexpected,
a bit provincial and affected,
too pale, too thin, but on the whole
not bad at all; and then each soul
gives way to nature's normal passion:
she's their great friend, asked in, caressed,
her hands affectionately pressed;
they fluff her curls out in the fashion,
and in a singsong voice confide
the inmost thoughts that girls can hide.
{199}
XLVII
Each others' and their own successes,
their hopes, their pranks, their dreams at night --
and so the harmless chat progresses
coated with a thin layer of spite.
Then in return for all this twaddle,
from her they strive to coax and coddle
a full confession of the heart.
Tatyana hears but takes no part;
as if she'd been profoundly sleeping,
there's not a word she's understood;
she guards, in silence and for good,
her sacred store of bliss and weeping
as something not to be declared,
a treasure never to be shared.
XLVIII
To talk, to general conversation
Tatyana seeks to attune her ear,
but the salon's preoccupation
is with dull trash that can't cohere:
everything's dim and unenthusing;
even the scandal's not amusing;
in talk, so fruitless and so stale,
in question, gossip, news and tale,
not once a day a thought will quiver,
not even by chance, once in a while,
will the benighted reason smile,
even in joke the heart won't shiver.
This world's so vacuous that it's got
no spark of fun in all its rot!
{200}
XLIX
In swarms around Tatyana ranging,
the modish Record Office clerks
stare hard at her before exchanging
some disagreeable remarks.
One melancholy fop, declaring
that she's ``ideal'', begins preparing
an elegy to her address,
propped in the door among the press.
Once Vyázemsky,4 who chanced to find her
at some dull aunt's, sat down and knew
how to engage in talk that drew
her soul's attention; just behind her
an old man saw her as she came,
straightened his wig, and asked her name.
L
But where, mid tragic storms that rend her,
Melpomene wails long and loud,
and brandishes her tinsel splendour
before a cold, indifferent crowd,
and where Thalia, gently napping,
ignores approval's friendly clapping,
and where Terpsichore alone
moves the young watcher (as was known
to happen long ago, dear readers,
in our first ages), from no place
did any glasses seek her face,
lorgnettes of jealous fashion-leaders,
or quizzing-glasses of know-alls
in boxes or the rows of stalls.
{201}
LI
They take her too to the Assembly.
The crush, the heat, as music blares,
the blaze of candles, and the trembly
flicker of swiftly twirling pairs,
the beauties in their flimsy dresses,
the swarm, the glittering mob that presses,
the ring of marriageable girls --
bludgeon the sense; it faints and whirls.
Here insolent prize-dandies wither
all others with a waistcoat's set
and an insouciant lorgnette.
Hussars on leave are racing hither
to boom, to flash across the sky,
to captivate, and then to fly.
LII
The night has many stars that glitter,
Moscow has beauties and to spare:
but brighter than the heavenly litter,
the moon in its azure of air.
And yet that goddess whom I'd never
importune with my lyre, whenever
like a majestic moon, she drives
among the maidens and the wives,
how proudly, how divinely gleaming,
she treads our earth, and how her breast
is in voluptuous languor dressed,
how sensuously her eyes are dreaming!
Enough, I tell you, that will do --
you've paid insanity its due.
{202}
LIII
Noise, laughter, bowing, helter-skelter
galop, mazurka, waltz... Meanwhile
between two aunts, in pillared shelter,
unnoticed, in unseeing style,
Tanya looks on; her own indictment
condemns the monde and its excitement;
she finds it stifling here... she strains
in dream toward the woods and plains,
the country cottages and hovels,
and to that far and lonely nook
where flows a little glittering brook,
to her flower-garden, to her novels, --
to where he came to her that time
in twilight of allées of lime.
LIV
But while she roams in thought, not caring
for dance, and din, and worldly ways,
a general of majestic bearing
has fixed on her a steady gaze.
The aunts exchanged a look, they fluttered,
they nudged Tatyana, and each muttered
at the same moment in her ear:
``Look quickly to the left, d'you hear?''
``Look to the left? where? what's the matter?''
``There, just in front of all that swarm,
you see the two in uniform...
just look, and never mind the chatter...
he's moved... you see him from the side.''
``Who? that fat general?'' Tanya cried.
{203}
LV
But here, with our congratulation
on her conquest, we leave my sweet;
I'm altering my destination
lest in forgetfulness complete
I drop my hero... I'll be truthful:
``It is a friend I sing, a youthful
amateur of caprice and quirk.
Muse of the epic, bless my work!
in my long task, be my upholder,
put a strong staff into my hand,
don't let me stray in paths unplanned.''
Enough. The load is off my shoulder!
I've paid my due to classic art:
it may be late, but it's a start.
{204}
Notes to Chapter Seven
1 Vasily Levshin (1746-1826), writer on gardening and agriculture.
2 Stanzas VIII and IX and XXXIX were discarded by Pushkin.
3 A statuette of Napoleon.
4 See note 1 to Chapter Five.
--------
Fare thee well, and if for ever,
Still for ever, fare thee well.
Byron
Days when I came to flower serenely
in Lycée gardens long ago,
and read my Apuleius keenly,
but spared no glance for Cicero;
yes, in that spring-time, in low-lying
secluded vales, where swans were crying,
by waters that were still and clear,
for the first time the Muse came near.
And suddenly her radiance lighted
my student cell: she opened up
the joys of youth, that festal cup,
she sang of childhood's fun, indited
Russia's old glories and their gleams,
the heart and all its fragile dreams.
{205}
II
And with a smile the world caressed us:
what wings our first successes gave!
aged Derzhávin1 saw and blessed us
as he descended to the grave.
... ...
III
The arbitrary rules of passion
were all the law that I would use;
sharing her in promiscuous fashion,
I introduced my saucy Muse
to roar of banquets, din of brawling,
when night patrol's a perilous calling;
to each and every raving feast
she brought her talents, never ceased,
Bacchante-like, her flighty prancing;
sang for the guests above the wine;
the youth of those past days in line
behind her followed wildly dancing;
among my friends, in all that crowd
my giddy mistress made me proud.
{206}
IV
When I defected from their union
and ran far off... the Muse came too.
How often, with her sweet communion,
she'd cheer my wordless way, and do
her secret work of magic suasion!
How often on the steep Caucasian
ranges, Lenora2-like, she'd ride
breakneck by moonlight at my side!
How oft she'd lead me, by the Tauric
seacoast, to hear in dark of night
the murmuring Nereids recite,
and the deep-throated billows' choric
hymnal as, endlessly unfurled,
they praise the Father of the world.
V
But then, oblivious of the city,
its glaring feasts, and shrill events,
in far Moldavia, fit for pity,
she visited the humble tents
of wandering tribesmen; while the ravage
of their society turned her savage,
she lost the language of the gods
for the bleak tongue of boorish clods --
she loved the steppe-land and its singing,
then quickly something changed all this:
look here, as a provincial miss
she's turned up in my garden, bringing
sad meditations in her look,
and, in her hand, a small French book.
{207}
VI
Now for the first time she's escorted
into the social whirlabout;
jealously, shyly, I've imported
her steppeland charms into a rout.3
Through the tight ranks -- aristocratic,
military-foppish, diplomatic --
past the grand ladies, see her glide;
she sits down calmly on one side,
admires the tumult and the pressing,
the flickering tones of dress and speech,
the young hostess, towards whom each
new guest is gradually progressing,
while men, all sombre, all the same,
set off the ladies like a frame.
VII
She enjoys the stately orchestration
of oligarchical converse,
pride's icy calm, the combination
of ranks and ages so diverse.
But who stands there, in this selected
assembly, silent and dejected?
All who behold him find him strange.
Faces before him flash and change
like irksome phantoms, null as zero.
Is spleen his trouble, or the dumb
torment of pride? And why's he come?
Who on earth is he? not... our hero?
No doubt about it, it's Eugene.
``How long has he been on the scene?
{208}
VIII
Still as he was? has he stopped prancing?
does he still pose, and play the freak?
Now he's returned, what role's he dancing?
what play will he present this week?
For what charade is he apparelled?
Is he a Melmoth, a Childe Harold,
a patriot, a cosmopolite,
bigot or prude? or has he quite
a different mask? is he becoming
someone like you and me, just nice?
At least I'll give him some advice:
to drop all that old-fashioned mumming;
too long he's hoaxed us high and low...''
``You know him, do you?'' ``Yes and no.''
IX
However has he earned so vicious,
so unforgiving a report?
Is it that we've become officious
and prone to censure in our thought;
that fiery souls' headstrong enthusing
appears offensive or amusing
to the complacent and the null;
that wit embarrasses the dull;
that we enjoy equating chatter
with deeds; that dunces now and then
take wing on spite; that serious men
find, in the trivial, serious matter;
that mediocre dress alone
fits us as if it were our own?
{209}
X
Blest he who in his youth was truly
youthful, who ripened in his time,
and, as the years went by, who duly
grew hardened to life's frosty clime;
who never learnt how dreamers babble;
who never scorned the social rabble;
at twenty, was a fop inbred,
at thirty, lucratively wed;
at fifty, would prolong the story
by clearing every sort of debt;
who, in good time, would calmly get
fortune, and dignity, and glory,
who all his life would garner praise
as the perfection of our days!
XI
Alas, our youth was what we made it,
something to fritter and to burn,
when hourly we ourselves betrayed it,
and it deceived us in return;
when our sublimest aspiration,
and all our fresh imagination,
swiftly decayed beyond recall
like foliage in the rotting fall.
It's agony to watch the hollow
sequence of dinners stretch away,
to see life as a ritual play,
and with the decorous throng to follow
although one in no manner shares
its views, its passions, or its cares!
{210}
XII
To be a butt for the malicious
is agony, if I may speak,
and in the eyes of the judicious
to pass for an affected freak,
or for a lamentable manic,
a monster of the gens Satanic,
or for that Demon4 of my dream.
Onegin -- now once more my theme --
had killed his best friend in a duel;
without a goal on which to fix,
lived to the age of twenty-six;
was finding leisure's vacuum cruel;
and with no post, no work, no wife,
had nothing to employ his life.
XIII
He was the slave of a tenacious,
a restless urge for change of place
(an attribute that's quite vexatious,
though some support it with good grace).
He's gone away and left his village,
the solitude of woods and tillage,
where every day a bloodstained shade
had come to him in field and glade;
started a life of pointless roaming,
dogged by one feeling, only one --
and soon his travels had begun,
as all things did, to bore him; homing,
like Chatsky,5 he arrived to fall
direct from shipboard into ball.
{211}
XIV
There came a murmur, for a fleeting
moment the assembly seemed to shake...
that lady the hostess was greeting,
with the grand general in her wake --
she was unhurried, unobtrusive,
not cold, but also not effusive,
no haughty stare around the press,
no proud pretentions to success,
no mannerism, no affectation,
no artifices of the vain...
No, all in her was calm and plain.
She struck one as the incarnation --
Shishkov,6 forgive me: I don't know
the Russian for le comme il faut.
XV
Ladies came over, crossed to meet her,
dowagers smiled as she went by;
and bending deeply down to greet her
men made their bows, and sought her eye;
girls as they passed her spoke less loudly,
and no one in the room so proudly
raised nose and shoulders high and wide
as did the general at her side.
You'd never class her as a beauty;
and yet in her you'd not detect --
rigorously though you'd inspect --
what London calls, with humble duty
to fashion's absolute dictate,
a vulgar touch. I can't translate.
{212}
XVI
And yet, although it's past conveying,
I really dote upon the word:
it's new to us, beyond gainsaying;
from the first moment it was heard
it had its epigram-potential7...
But let's return to our essential,
that lady whose engaging charm
so effortlessly can disarm.
She sits with Nina8 at a table --
bright Northern Cleopatra she:
but you'll undoubtedly agree
that marble Nina's proved unable
to steal away her neighbour's light
or dim her, dazzle as she might.
XVII
``Can it be she?'' Eugene in wonder
demanded. ``Yes, she looks... And yet...
from deepest backwood, furthest under...''
And every minute his lorgnette
stays fixed and focused on a vision
which has recalled, without precision,
forgotten features. ``Can you say,
prince, who in that dark-red béret,
just there, is talking to the Spanish
ambassador?'' In some surprise
the prince looks at him, and replies:
``Wait, I'll present you -- but you banish
yourself too long from social life.''
``But tell me who she is.'' ``My wife.''
{213}
XVIII
``You're married? No idea whatever...
Since when is this?'' ``Two years or more.''
``To...?'' ``Larina.'' ``Tatyana? never!''
``She knows you?'' ``Why, we lived next door.''
So to his wife for presentation
the prince bring up his own relation
and friend Evgeny. The princess
gazes at him... and nonetheless,
however much her soul has faltered,
however strongly she has been
moved and surprised, she stays serene,
and nothing in her look is altered:
her manner is no less contained;
her bow, as calm and as restrained.
XIX
I don't mean that she never shivered,
paled, flushed, or lost composure's grip --
no, even her eyebrow never quivered,
she never even bit her lip.
However closely he inspected,
there was no trace to be detected
of the old Tatyana. Eugene tried
to talk to her, but language died.
How long he'd been here, was her query,
and where had he arrived from, not
from their own country? Then she shot
across to her consort a weary
regard, and slipped away for good, ...
with Eugene frozen where he stood.
{214}
XX
Was she the Tanya he'd exhorted
in solitude, as at the start
of this our novel we reported,
in the far backwoods' deepest heart,
to whom, in a fine flow of preaching,
he had conveyed some moral teaching,
from whom he'd kept a letter, where
her heart had spoken, free as air,
untouched by trace of inhibition,
could it be she... or had he dreamed?
the girl he'd scorned in what he deemed
the modesty of her condition,
could it be she, who just had turned
away, so cool, so unconcerned?
XXI
Eugene forsakes the packed reception,
and home he drives, deep-sunk in thought.
By dreams now sad in their conception,
now sweet, his slumbers are distraught.
He wakes -- and who is this who writes him?
Prince N. respectfully invites him
to a soirée. ``My God! to her!...
I'll go, I'll go!'' -- and in a stir
a swift, polite reply is written.
What ails him? he's in some strange daze!
what moves along the hidden ways
in one so slothful, so hard-bitten?
vexation? vainness? heavens above,
it can't be youth's distemper -- love?
{215}
XXII
Once more he counts the hour-bells tolling,
once more he can't await the night;
now ten has struck, his wheels are rolling,
he drives there like a bird in flight,
he's up the steps, with heart a-quiver
led to the princess, all a-shiver,
finds her alone, and there they sit
some minutes long. The words won't fit
on Eugene's lips. In his dejection,
his awkwardness, he's hardly said
a single thing to her. His head
is lost in obstinate reflection;
and obstinate his look. But she
sits imperturbable, and free.
XXIII
Her husband enters, thus concluding
their unattractive tête-à-tête;
he and Onegin start alluding
to pranks and jokes of earlier date.
They laugh. The guests begin arriving.
Already now the talk was thriving
on modish malice, coarse of grain
but salt; near the princess a vein
of unaffectedly fantastic
invention sparkled, then gave way
to reasoned talk, no dull hearsay,
no deathless truths, nothing scholastic;
and no one's ear could take offence
at such vivacious, free good sense.
{216}
XXIV
High rank, of course, and fashion's glasses,
Saint Petersburg's fine flower was there --
the inevitable silly asses,
the faces met with everywhere;
ladies of riper years, delicious
in rose-trimmed bonnets, but malicious;
a girl or two, without a smile
to crack between them; for a while
one listened to a chief of mission
on state affairs; there was a wit,
a grey-haired, perfumed exquisite,
a joker in the old tradition,
acute and subtle -- in a word
all that today we find absurd.
XXV
There, with epigrammatic neatness,
was one who raged and raged again,
against the tea's excessive sweetness,
the boring wives, the ill-bred men,
a novel, vague and superficial,
two sisters who'd received the initial,9
the lies that in the press run rife,
the war, the snowfall, and his wife.
... ...
{217}
XXVI
There was -- --,10 so notorious
through baseness of the soul that he,
in albums, blunted the censorious
cartoonist-pencils of Saint-Priest;11
another of the ball-dictators,
a fashion-plate for illustrators,
stood in the door, cherubic, mute,
frozen in his tight-fitting suit;
a far-flung traveller who was creaking
with foppery and too much starch,
set the guests smiling at his arch,
affected pose -- and an unspeaking
unanimous exchange of looks
entered his sentence in the books.
XXVII
But my Eugene that night directed
his gaze at Tatyana alone --
not the plain, timorous, dejected
and lovelorn maiden whom he'd known,
but the unbending goddess-daughter
of Neva's proud imperial water,
the imperturbable princess.
We all resemble more or less
our Mother Eve: we're never falling
for what's been given us to take;
to his mysterious tree the snake
is calling us, for ever calling --
and once forbidden fruit is seen,
no paradise can stay serene.
{218}
XXVIII
In Tanya, what a transformation!
how well she'd studied her new role!
how soon the bounds of rank and station
had won her loyalty! What soul
would have divined the tender, shrinking
maiden in this superb, unthinking
lawgiver to the modish world?
Yet once for him her thoughts had whirled,
for him, at night, before the indulgence
of Morpheus had induced relief
she once had pined in girlish grief,
raised a dull eye to moon's refulgence,
and dreamt that she with him one day
jointly would tread life's humble way!
XXIX
Love tyrannises all the ages;
but youthful, virgin hearts derive
a blessing from its blasts and rages,
like fields in spring when storms arrive.
In passion's sluicing rain they freshen,
ripen, and find a new expression --
the vital force gives them the shoot
of sumptuous flowers and luscious fruit.
But when a later age has found us,
the climacteric of our life,
how sad the scar of passion's knife:
as when chill autumn rains surround us,
throw meadows into muddy rout,
and strip the forest round about.
{219}
XXX
Alas, Eugene beyond all query
is deep in love, just like a boy;
spends light and darkness in the dreary
brooding that is the lover's ploy.
Each day, despite the appeals of reason,
he drives up in and out of season
to her glass porch; pursues her round
close as a shadow on the ground;
and bliss for him is when he hotly
touches her hand, or throws a fur
around her neck, or when for her
he goes ahead and parts the motley
brigade of liveries in the hall,
or else lifts up a fallen shawl.
XXXI
But she refuses to perceive him,
even if he drops or pines away.
At home she'll equably receive him,
in others' houses she may say
a word or two, or stare unseeing,
or simply bow: within her being
coquettishness has got no trace --
the grand monde finds it out of place.
Meanwhile Onegin starts to languish:
she doesn't see, or doesn't mind;
Onegin wastes, you'd almost find
he's got consumption. In his anguish
some vote a doctor for the case,
others prescribe a watering-place.
{220}
XXXII
But go he won't: for him, a letter
fixing an early rendezvous
with his forefathers would seem better;
but she (for women, that's not new)
remains unmoved: still he's persistent,
active, and hopeful, and insistent:
his illness lends him courage and
to the princess, in his weak hand,
he sends a letter, penned with passion.
He deemed, in general, letters vain,
and rightly so, but now his pain
had gone in no uncertain fashion
past all endurance. You're referred
to Eugene's letter, word for word.
{221}
Onegin's Letter to Tatyana
``I know it all: my secret ache
will anger you in its confession.
What scorn I see in the expression
that your proud glance is sure to take!
What do I want? what am I after,
stripping my soul before your eyes!
I know to what malicious laughter
my declaration may give rise!
``I noticed once, at our chance meeting,
in you a tender pulse was beating,
yet dared not trust what I could see.
I gave no rein to sweet affection:
what held me was my predilection,
my tedious taste for feeling free.
And then, to part us in full measure,
Lensky, that tragic victim, died...