I
In those days when in the Lyceum's gardens
I bloomed serenely,
would eagerly read Apuleius,
in those days, in mysterious valleys,
in springtime, to the calls of swans,
near waters shining in the stillness,
8 the Muse began to visit me.
My student cell was all at once
radiant with light: in it the Muse
opened a banquet of young fancies,
12 sang childish gaieties,
and glory of our ancientry,
and the heart's tremulous dreams.
II
And with a smile the world received her;
the aged Derzhavin noticed us — and blessed us
4 as he descended to the grave.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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12 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
III
And I, setting myself for law
only the arbitrary will of passions,
sharing emotions with the crowd,
4 I led my frisky Muse into the hubbub
of feasts and turbulent discussions —
the terror of midnight patrols;
and to them, in mad feasts,
and like a little bacchante frisked,
over the bowl sang for the guests;
and the young people of past days
12 would turbulently dangle after her;
and I was proud 'mong friends
of my volatile mistress.
IV
But I dropped out of their alliance —
and fled afar... she followed me.
How often the caressive Muse
4 for me would sweeten the mute way
with the bewitchment of a secret tale!
How often on Caucasia's crags,
Lenorelike, by the moon,
8 with me she'd gallop on a steed!
How often on the shores of Tauris
she in the gloom of night
led me to listen the sound of the sea,
12 Nereid's unceasing murmur,
the deep eternal chorus of the billows,
V
And the far capital's glitter and noisy feasts
having forgotten in the wilds
of sad Moldavia,
4 she visited the humble tents
of wandering tribes;
and among them grew savage, and forgot
the language of the gods
8 for scant, strange tongues,
for songs of the steppe dear to her.
Suddenly everything around
changed, and lo! in my garden she appeared
with a sad thought in her eyes, with a French
book in her hands.
VI
And now my Muse for the first time
I'm taking to a high-life rout;
44 at her steppe charms
4 with jealous apprehensiveness I look.
Through a dense series of aristocrats,
and haughty dames, she glides; now quietly
8 she has sat down and looks, admiring
the noisy crush,
the flickering of dress and speech,
the apparition of slow guests
12 in front of the young hostess,
and the dark frame of men
around ladies, as about pictures.
VII
She likes the stately order
of oligarchic colloquies,
and the chill of calm pride,
4 and this mixture of ranks and years.
But who's that standing in the chosen throng,
silent and nebulous?
To everyone he seems a stranger.
8 Before him faces come and go
like a series of tedious specters.
What is it — spleen or smarting morgue
upon his face? Why is he here?
He, really? So, 'tis he, indeed.
— Since when has he been blown our way?
VIII
Is he the same, or grown more peaceful?
Or does he still play the eccentric?
Say, in what guise has he returned?
4 What will he stage for us meanwhile?
As what will he appear now? As a Melmoth?
a cosmopolitan? a patriot?
a Harold? a Quaker? a bigot?
8 Or will he sport some other mask?
Or else be simply a good fellow
like you and me, like the whole world?
At least here's my advice:
12 to drop an antiquated fashion.
Sufficiently he's gulled the world...
— You know him? — Yes and no.
IX
— Why so unfavorably then
do you report on him?
Because we indefatigably
Because of fiery souls the rashness
to smug nonentity is either
insulting or absurd?
8 Because, by liking room, wit cramps?
Because too often conversations
we're glad to take for deeds,
because stupidity is volatile and wicked?
12 Because to grave men grave are trifles,
and mediocrity alone
is to our measure and not odd?
X
Blest who was youthful in his youth;
blest who matured at the right time;
who, with the years, the chill of life
4 was gradually able to withstand;
who never was addicted to strange dreams;
who did not shun the fashionable rabble;
who was at twenty fop or dasher,
8 and then at thirty, profitably married;
who rid himself at fifty
who gained repute, money, and rank
about whom lifelong one kept saying:
N. N. is an excellent man.
XI
But it is sad to think that youth
was given us in vain,
that we betrayed it every hour,
that our best aspirations,
that our fresh dreamings,
in quick succession have decayed
8 like leaves in putrid autumn.
It is unbearable to see before one
only of dinners a long series,
to look on life as on a rite,
12 and in the wake of the decorous crowd
to go, not sharing with it either
the general opinions or the passions.
XII
When one becomes the subject
(you will agree) to pass among
4 sensible people for a feigned eccentric
or a sad crackbrain,
or a satanic monster,
or even for my Demon.
8 Onegin (let me take him up again),
having in single combat killed his friend,
having without a goal, without exertions,
lived to the age of twenty-six,
12 irked by the inactivity of leisure,
without employment, wife, or occupation,
could think of nothing to take up.
XIII
A restlessness took hold of him,
the inclination to a change of places
(a most excruciating property,
4 a cross that few deliberately bear).
He left his countryseat,
the solitude of woods and fields,
where an ensanguined shade
and started upon travels without aim,
accessible to one sensation;
and to him journeys,
12 like everything on earth,
grew boring. He returned and found himself,
like Chatski, come from boat to ball.
XIV
But lo! the throng has undulated,
a murmur through the hall has run....
Toward the hostess there advanced a lady,
4 followed by an imposing general.
She was unhurried,
not cold, not talkative,
without a flouting gaze for everyone,
8 without pretensions to success,
without those little mannerisms,
without mimetic artifices....
All about her was quiet, simple.
12 She seemed a faithful reproduction
du comme il faut
I do not know how to translate.)
XV
Closer to her the ladies moved;
old women smiled to her;
the men bowed lower, sought
maidens before her passed more quietly
across the room; and higher
than anyone lifted his nose and shoulders
8 the general who had come in with her.
None could have called her
a beauty; but from head to foot
none could have found in her
12 what is by autocratic fashion
in the high London circle
called “vulgar.” (I'm unable —
XVI
— of that word I am very fond,
but am unable to translate it; in our midst
for the time being it is new
4 and hardly bound to be in favor;
But to our lady let me turn.)
Winsome with carefree charm,
with brilliant Nina Voronskóy,
that Cleopatra of the Neva;
and, surely, you would have agreed
12 that Nina with her marble beauty
could not — though dazzling —
eclipse her neighbor.
XVII
“Can it be possible?” thinks Eugene.
“Can it be she?... But really... No...
What! From outback steppe villages...”
4 and a tenacious quizzing glass
he keeps directing every minute
at her whose aspect vaguely has
recalled to him forgotten features.
8 “Tell me, Prince, you don't know
who is it there in the framboise beret
”
The prince looks at Onegin:
12 “Aha! Indeed, long have you not been in the
monde.
Wait, I'll present you.”
“But who is she?” “My wife.”
XVIII
“So you are married! Didn't know before.
How long?” “About two years.”
“To whom?” “The Larin girl.” “Tatiana!”
4 “She knows you?” “I'm their neighbor.”
“Oh, then, come on.” The prince goes up
to his wife and leads up to her
his kin and friend.
8 The princess looks at him... and whatsoever
troubled her soul,
however greatly
she was surprised, astounded,
her ton
her bow was just as quiet.
XIX
Forsooth! It was not merely that she didn't
flinch, or blanch suddenly, or flush —
she simply never moved an eyebrow,
4 did not even compress her lips.
Though he looked with the utmost care,
not even traces of the old Tatiana could
Onegin find.
8 With her he wished to start a conversation —
and... and could not. She asked: How long
had he been there? And whence came he —
from their own parts, maybe?
12 Then on her spouse she turned a look
of lassitude; glided away....
And moveless he remained.
XX
Could it be that the same Tatiana
to whom, alone with her,
at the beginning of our novel
4 back in a stagnant, distant region,
precepts he once had preached;
the one from whom a letter he preserves
8 where the heart speaks,
where all is out, all unrestrained;
that little girl — or is he dreaming? —
that little girl whom in her humble state
12 he had passed over — could it be that now
she had been so indifferent,
so bold with him?
XXI
He leaves the close-packed rout,
he drives home, pensive; by a fancy —
now sad, now charming,
4 his first sleep is disturbed.
He wakes; is brought
a letter: Prince N. begs the honor of his presence
at a soiree. Good God — to her?
8 I will, I will! And rapidly a courteous
reply he scrawls. What is the matter
with him? In what strange daze is he?
Vexation? Vanity? Or once again
youth's worry — love?
XXII
Once more Onegin counts the hours,
once more he can't wait for the day to end.
But ten strikes: he drives off,
4 he has flown forth, he's at the porch;
with tremor he goes in to the princess:
he finds Tatiana
alone, and for some minutes
8 they sit together. From Onegin's lips
the words come not. Ill-humored,
awkward, he barely, barely
replies to her. His head
12 is full of a persistent thought.
Persistently he looks: she sits
easy and free.
XXIII
The husband comes. He interrupts
this painful tête-à-tête;
4 the pranks, the jests of former years.
They laugh. Guests enter.
Now with the large-grained salt of high-life malice
the conversation starts to be enlivened.
8 Before the lady of the house, light nonsense
flashed without stupid affectation,
and meantime interrupted it
sensible talk, without trite topics,
12 eternal truths, or pedantry,
nor did its free vivacity
shock anybody's ears.
XXIV
Yet here was the flower of the capital,
both high nobility and paragons of fashion;
the faces one meets everywhere,
4 the fools one cannot go without;
here were, in mobcaps and in roses,
elderly ladies, wicked-looking;
here were several maidens —
of state affairs;
here was, with fragrant hoary hair,
12 an old man in the old way joking —
with eminent subtility and wit,
which is somewhat absurd today!
XXV
Here was, to epigrams addicted
a gentleman cross with everything:
with the too-sweet tea of the hostess,
4 the ladies' platitudes, the
ton of men,
the comments on a foggy novel,
the badge two sisters had been granted,
the falsehoods in reviews, the war,
8 the snow, and his own wife.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
12 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
XXVI
Here was […], who had gained
distinction by the baseness of his soul
and blunted in all albums,
4 Saint-P[riest], your pencils;
in the doorway another ball dictator
stood like a fashion plate,
as rosy as a Palm Week cherub,
8 tight-coated, mute and motionless;
and a far-flung traveler,
an overstarched jackanapes,
provoked a smile among the guests
12 by his studied deportment,
and an exchange of silent glances was
his universal condemnation.
XXVII
But my Onegin the whole evening heeds
only Tatiana:
not the shy little maiden,
4 enamored, poor and simple —
but the indifferent princess,
goddess of the luxurious, queenly Neva.
8 O humans! All of you resemble
ancestress Eve:
what's given to you does not lure,
incessantly the serpent calls you
12 to him, to the mysterious tree:
you must have the forbidden fruit supplied to you,
for paradise without that is no paradise to you.
XXVIII
How changed Tatiana is!
Into her role how firmly she has entered!
The ways of a constricting rank
4 how fast she has adopted!
Who'd dare to seek the tender little lass
in this majestic,
this careless legislatrix of salons?
8 And he had stirred her heart!
About him in the dark of night,
time was, she virginally brooded,
12 raised to the moon a dying eye,
dreaming that someday she might make
with him life's humble journey!
XXIX
All ages are to love submissive;
but to young virgin hearts
its impulses are beneficial
4 as are spring storms to fields.
They freshen in the rain of passions,
and renovate themselves, and ripen,
and vigorous life gives
8 both rich bloom and sweet fruit.
But at a late and barren age,
at the turn of our years,
sad is the trace of a dead passion....
12 Thus storms of the cold autumn
into a marsh transform the meadow
and strip the woods around.
XXX
There is no doubt: alas! Eugene
In throes of amorous designs
4 he spends both day and night.
Not harking to the mind's stern protests,
up to her porch, glass vestibule,
daily he drives.
8 He chases like a shadow after her;
he's happy if he casts
the fluffy boa on her shoulders,
or touches torridly
12 her hand, or if he parts in front of her
the motley host of liveries, or picks up
her handkerchief.
XXXI
She does not notice him,
no matter how he strives — even to death;
receives him freely at her house; at those
4 of others says two or three words to him;
sometimes welcomes with a mere bow,
sometimes does not take any notice:
there's not a drop of coquetry in her,
Onegin is beginning to grow pale;
she does not see or does not care;
Onegin wastes away:
12 he's practically phthisical.
All send Onegin to physicians;
in chorus these send him to spas.
XXXII
Yet he's not going. He beforehand
is ready to his forefathers to write
of an impending meeting; yet Tatiana
4 cares not one bit (such is their sex).
But he is stubborn, won't desist,
still hopes, bestirs himself;
a sick man bolder than one hale,
8 he with a weak hand to the princess
writes an impassioned missive.
Though generally little sense in letters
he saw, not without reason;
12 but evidently torment of the heart
had now passed his endurance.
Onegin'S Letter To Tatiana
I foresee everything: the explanation
of a sad secret will offend you.
What bitter scorn
4 your proud glance will express!
What do I want? What is my object
in opening my soul to you?
What wicked merriment
8 perhaps I give occasion to!
Chancing to meet you once,
noting in you a spark of tenderness,
I did not venture to believe in it:
12 did not give way to a sweet habit;
my tedious freedom
I did not wish to lose. Another thing
yet separated us:
16 a hapless victim Lenski fell.
From all that to the heart is dear
then did I tear my heart away;
20 I thought: liberty and peace are
a substitute for happiness. Good God!
How wrong I was, how I am punished!
No — every minute to see you; to follow
the smile of your lips, movement of your eyes,
to try to capture with enamored eyes;
to listen long to you, to comprehend
28 all your perfection with one's soul;
to melt in agonies before you,
grow pale and waste away... that's rapture!
And I'm deprived of that; for you
32 I drag myself at random everywhere;
to me each day is dear, each hour is dear,
while I in futile dullness squander
the days told off by fate — they are
36 sufficiently oppressive anyway.
I know: my span is well-nigh measured;
but that my life may be prolonged
40 of seeing you during the day.
I fear: in my meek plea
your severe gaze will see
the schemes of despicable cunning —
44 and I can hear your wrathful censure.
If you hut knew how terrible it is
to languish with the thirst of love,
burn — and by means of reason hourly
48 subdue the tumult in one's blood;
wish to embrace your knees
and, in a burst of sobbing, at your feet
pour out appeals, avowals, plaints,
52 all, all I could express,
and in the meantime with feigned coldness
arm speech and gaze,
maintain a placid conversation,
56 glance at you with a cheerful glance!...
But let it be: against myself
I've not the force to struggle any more;
60 and I surrender to my fate.
XXXIII
There is no answer. He sends a new missive.
To the second, to the third letter —
there is no answer. He drives out to some
4 reception. Hardly has he entered — there she is
coming in his direction. How severe!
He is not seen, to him no word is said.
Ugh! How surrounded she is now
How anxious are to hold back indignation
her stubborn lips!
Onegin peers with a keen eye:
12 where, where are discomposure, sympathy,
where the tearstains? None, none!
There's on that face but the imprint of wrath...
XXXIV
plus, possibly, a secret fear
lest husband or monde guess
4 all my Onegin knows....
There is no hope! He drives away,
curses his folly —
and, deeply plunged in it,
8 the
monde he once again renounces
and in his silent study comes to him
the recollection of the time
when cruel chondria
12 pursued him in the noisy
monde,
captured him, took him by the collar,
and shut him up in a dark hole.
XXXV
Again, without discrimination,
he started reading. He read Gibbon,
Rousseau, Manzoni, Herder,
4 Chamfort, Mme de Staël, Bichat, Tissot.
He read the skeptic Bayle,
he read some [authors] of our own,
8 without rejecting anything —
the “almanacs” and the reviews
where sermons into us are drummed,
where I'm today abused so much
12 but where
such madrigals addressed tome
I used to meet with now and then:
e sempre bene, gentlemen.
XXXVI
And lo — his eyes were reading, but his thoughts
were far away;
chimeras, desires, sorrows
4 kept crowding deep into his soul.
Between the printed lines
he with spiritual eyes
read other lines. It was in them
8 that he was utterly absorbed.
These were the secret legends of the heart's
dreams unconnected
12 with anything; threats, rumors, presages;
or the live tosh of a long tale,
or a young maiden's letters.
XXXVII
And by degrees into a lethargy
of feelings and of thoughts he falls,
while before him Imagination
4 deals out her motley faro deck.
Now he sees: on the melted snow,
as at a night's encampment sleeping,
stirless, a youth lies; and he hears
8 a voice: “Well, what — he's dead!”
Now he sees foes forgotten,
calumniators, and malicious cowards,
and a swarm of young traitresses,
12 and a circle of despicable comrades;
and now a country house, and by the window
sits she
XXXVIII
He grew so used to lose himself in this
that he almost went off his head
or else became a poet. (Frankly,
4 that would have been a boon, indeed!)
And true: by dint of magnetism,
the mechanism of Russian verses
my addleheaded pupil
8 at that time nearly grasped.
How much a poet he resembled
when in a corner he would sit alone,
and the hearth blazed in front of him,
12 and he hummed “Benedetta”
or “Idol mio,” and into the fire
dropped now a slipper, now his magazine!
XXXIX
Days rushed. In warmth-pervaded air
winter already was resolving;
and he did not become a poet,
4 he did not die, did not go mad.
his close-shut chambers, where he had
been hibernating like a marmot,
8 his double windows, inglenook —
he leaves on a bright morning,
he fleets in sleigh along the Neva's bank.
Upon blue blocks of hewn-out ice
12 the sun plays. In the streets
the furrowed snow thaws muddily:
whither, upon it, his fast course
XL
directs Onegin? You beforehand
have guessed already. Yes, exactly:
apace to her, to his Tatiana,
4 my unreformed eccentric comes.
He walks in, looking like a corpse.
There's not a soul in the front hall.
He enters the reception room. On! No one.
8 A door he opens.... What is it
that strikes him with such force?
The princess before him, alone,
and softly sheds a flood of tears,
her cheek propped on her hand.
XLI
Ah! Her mute sufferings —
in this swift instant who would not have read!
Who would not have the former Tanya,
4 poor Tanya, recognized now in the princess?
In throes of mad regrets,
Eugene falls at her feet;
she gives a start,
8 and is silent, and looks,
without surprise, without wrath, at Onegin....
His sick, extinguished gaze,
imploring aspect, mute reproof,
12 she takes in everything. The simple maid,
with the dreams, with the heart of former days
again in her has resurrected now.
XLII
She does not bid him rise
and, not taking her eyes off him,
4 her limp hand from his avid lips....
What is her dreaming now about?
A lengthy silence passes,
and finally she, softly:
8 “Enough; get up. I must
frankly explain myself to you.
Onegin, do you recollect that hour
when in the garden, in the avenue, fate brought us
12 together and so meekly
your lesson I heard out.
Today it is my turn.
XLIII
“Onegin, I was younger then,
I was, I daresay, better-looking,
and I loved you; and what then, what
4 did I find in your heart?
What answer? Mere severity.
There wasn't — was there? — novelty for you
in a meek little maiden's love?
8 Even today — good heavens! — my blood freezes
your cold glance and that sermon.... But I do not
accuse you; at that awful hour
you in regard to me were right,
to you with all my soul I'm grateful....
XLIV
“Then — is it not so? — in the wilderness,
far from vain Hearsay,
I was not to your liking.... Why, then, now
Why have you marked me out?
Might it not be because I must
now move in the grand monde;
8 because I have both wealth and rank;
because my husband has been maimed in battles;
because for that the Court is kind to us?
Might it not be because my disrepute
12 would be remarked by everybody now
scandalous honor?
XLV
“I'm crying.... If your Tanya
you've not forgotten yet,
then know: the sharpness of your blame,
if it were only in my power
I'd have preferred to an offensive passion,
and to these letters and tears.
8 For my infantine dreams
you had at least some pity then,
at least consideration for my age.
But now!... What to my feet
12 has brought you? What a trifle!
How, with your heart and mind,
be the slave of a trivial feeling?
XLVI
“But as to me, Onegin, this magnificence,
a wearisome life's tinsel, my successes
in the world's vortex,
what do I care for them?... At once I'd gladly
give all the frippery of this masquerade,
all this glitter, and noise, and fumes,
8 for a shelfful of books, for a wild garden,
for those haunts where for the first time,
Onegin, I saw you,
12 and for the humble churchyard where
there is a cross now and the shade
XLVII
“Yet happiness had been so possible,
so near!... But my fate is already
settled. Imprudently,
beseeched me. For poor Tanya
all lots were equal.
I pray you, leave me;
both pride and genuine honor.
12 I love you (why dissimulate?);
but to another I belong:
to him I shall be faithful all my life.”
She has gone. Eugene stands
as if by thunder struck.
In what a tempest of sensations
4 his heart is now immersed!
and there appears Tatiana's husband,
and here my hero,
8 at an unfortunate minute for him,
reader, we now shall leave
sufficiently along one path
12 we've roamed the world. Let us congratulate
each other on attaining land. Hurrah!
It long (is it not true?) was time.
XLIX
you be — friend, foe — I wish to part
with you at present as a pal.
4 Farewell. Whatever in these careless strophes
you might have looked for as you followed me —
relief from labors,
8 live images or witticisms,
or faults of grammar —
God grant that in this book, for recreation,
12 for jousts in journals,
you find at least a crumb.
Upon which, let us part, farewell!
L
You, too, farewell, my strange traveling companion,
and you, my live and constant,
4 though small, work. I have known with you
all that a poet covets:
obliviousness of life in the world's tempests,
8 Rushed by have many, many days
since young Tatiana, and with her
Onegin, in a blurry dream
appeared to me for the first time —
I through a magic crystal
still did not make out clearly.
LI
But those to whom at amicable meetings
its first strophes I read —
“Some are no more, others are distant,”
4 as erstwhiles Sadi said.
Without them was Onegin's picture finished.
And she from whom was fashioned
the dear ideal of “Tatiana”...
Blest who left life's feast early,
not having to the bottom drained
the goblet full of wine;
12 who never read life's novel to the end
as I with my Onegin.