NOTES TO EUGENE ONEGIN
1. Written in Bessarabia.
2. Dandy [Eng.], a fop.
3. Hat à la Bolivar.
4. Well-known restaurateur.
5. A trait of chilled sentiment worthy of Childe Harold. The ballets of Mr. Didelot are full of liveliness of fancy and extraordinary charm. One of our romantic writers found in them much more poetry than in the whole of French literature.
6. “Tout le monde sut qu'il mettoit du blanc, et moi qui n'en croyois rien je commençai de le croire, non seulement par l'embellissement de son teint, et pour avoir trouvé des tasses de blanc sur sa toilette, mais sur ce qu'entrant un matin dans sa chambre, je le trouvai brossant ses ongles avec une petite vergette faite exprès, ouvrage qu'il continua fi+èrement devant moi. Je jugeai qu'un homme qui passe deux heures tous les matins à brosser ses ongles peut bien passer quelques instans à remplir de blanc les creux de sa peau.”
(Les Confessions de Jean-Jacques Rousseau.)
Grimm was ahead of his age: nowadays people all over enlightened Europe clean their nails with a special brush.
7. The whole of this ironical stanza is nothing but a subtle compliment to our fair compatriots. Thus Boileau, under the guise of disapprobation, eulogizes Louis XIV. Our ladies combine enlightenment with amiability, and strict purity of morals with the Oriental charm that so captivated Mme de Staël
(Dix ans d'exil).
8. Readers remember the charming description of a Petersburg night in Gnedich's idyl:
Muravyov, “To the Goddess of the Neva.”
10. Written in Odessa.
11. See the first edition of Eugene Onegin.
Dneprovskaya Rusalka.
13. The most euphonious Greek names, such as, for instance, Agathon, Philetus, Theodora, Thecla, and so forth, are used with us only among the common people.
14. Grandison and Lovelace, the heroes of two famous novels.
15. “Si j'avais la folie de croire encore au bonheur, je le chercherais dans l'habitude.” Chateaubriand.
16. Poor Yorick! — Hamlet's exclamation over the skull of the fool (see Shakespeare and Sterne).
17. A misprint in the earlier edition [of the chapter] altered “homeward they fly” to “in winter they fly” (which did not make any sense whatsoever). Reviewers, not realizing this, saw an anachronism in the following stanzas. We venture to assert that, in our novel, the chronology has been worked out calendrically.
18. Julie Wolmar, the New Héloïse; Malek-Adhel, hero of a mediocre romance by Mme Cottin; Gustave de Linar, hero of a charming short novel by Baroness Krüdener.
19. The Vampyre, a short novel incorrectly attributed to Lord Byron; Melmoth, a work of genius, by Maturin; the well-known romance by Charles Nodier.
20. Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate. Our modest author has translated only the first part of the famous verse.
21. A periodical that used to be conducted by the late A. Izmaylov rather negligently. He once apologized in print to the public, saying that during the holidays he had “caroused.”
22. E. A. Baratïnski.
23. Reviewers wondered how one could call a simple peasant girl “maiden” when, a little further, genteel misses are called “young things.”
24. “This signifies,” remarks one of our critics, “that the urchins are skating.” Right.
“Epistle to L. P.”)
26. August Lafontaine, author of numerous family novels.
27. See “First Snow,” a poem by Prince Vyazemski.
28. See the descriptions of the Finnish winter in Baratïnski's “Eda.”
The presage of a wedding; the first song foretells death.
30. In this manner one finds out the name of one's future fiancé.
31. Reviewers condemned the words hlop [clap], molv' [parle], and top [stamp] as indifferent neologisms. These words are fundamentally Russian. “Bova stepped out of the tent for some fresh air and heard in the open country the parle of man and the stamp of steed” (“The Tale of Bova the Prince”). Hlop and ship are used in plain-folk speech instead of hlópanie shipénie [hissing]:
(Ancient Russian Poems).
One should not interfere with the freedom of our rich and beautiful language.
32. One of our critics, it would seem, finds in these lines an indecency incomprehensible to us.
33. Divinatory books in our country come out under the imprint of Martin Zadeck — a worthy person who never wrote divinatory books, as B. M. Fyodorov observes.
34. A parody of Lomonosov's well-known lines:
(
36. Our critics, faithful admirers of the fair sex, strongly blamed the indecorum of this verse.
37. Parisian restaurateur.
38. Griboedov's line.
39. A famous arms fabricator.
XLVII
41. Lyovshin, author of numerous works on rural econ omy.
(The Station, by Prince Vyazemski)
43. A simile borrowed from K., so well known for the playfulness of his fancy. K. related that, being one day sent as courier by Prince Potyomkin to the Empress, he drove so fast that his épée, one end of which stuck out of his carriage, rattled against the verstposts as along a palisade.
tolpa].