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.
--------
Chapter Eight
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...
From all sweet things that gave me pleasure,
since then my heart was wrenched aside;
freedom and peace, in substitution
for happiness, I sought, and ranged
unloved, and friendless, and estranged.
What folly! and what retribution!
``No, every minute of my days,
to see you, faithfully to follow,
watch for your smile, and catch your gaze
with eyes of love, with greed to swallow
your words, and in my soul to explore
your matchlessness, to seek to capture
its image, then to swoon before
your feet, to pale and waste... what rapture!
{222}
``But I'm denied this: all for you
I drag my footsteps hither, yonder;
I count each hour the whole day through;
and yet in vain ennui I squander
the days that doom has measured out.
And how they weigh! I know about
my span, that fortune's jurisdiction
has fixed; but for my heart to beat
I must wake up with the conviction
that somehow that same day we'll meet...
``I dread your stern regard surmising
in my petition an approach,
a calculation past despising --
I hear the wrath of your reproach.
How fearful, in and out of season
to pine away from passion's thirst,
to burn -- and then by force of reason
to stem the bloodstream's wild outburst;
how fearful, too, is my obsession
to clasp your knees, and at your feet
to sob out prayer, complaint, confession,
and every plea that lips can treat;
meanwhile with a dissembler's duty
to cool my glances and my tongue,
to talk as if with heart unwrung,
and look serenely on your beauty!...
``But so it is: I'm in no state
to battle further with my passion;
I'm yours, in a predestined fashion,
and I surrender to my fate.''
{223}
XXXIII
No answer comes. Another letter
he sends, a second, then a third.
No answer comes. He goes, for better
or worse, to a soirée. Unheard
she appears before him, grim and frozen.
No look, no word for him: she's chosen
to encase herself inside a layer
of Twelfth Night's chillest, iciest air.
To batten down their indignation
is all those stubborn lips desire!
Onegin looks with eyes of fire:
where are distress, commiseration?
No tearstains, nothing. Wrath alone
is graven on that face of stone.
XXXIV
Perhaps some secret apprehension
lest signs of casual weakness drew
her husband's or the world's attention...
Ah, all that my Onegin knew...
No hope! no hope! He leaves the revel,
wishes his madness to the devil,
drives home -- and plunging deeper in,
once more renounces world and din.
And he remembers, in the quiet
of his own room, how cruel spleen
had once before, across the scene
of social buzz and modish riot,
tracked him, and put him in duress,
and locked him in a dark recess.
{224}
XXXV
Once more he turned to books, unchoosing,
devouring Gibbon and Rousseau,
Manzoni and Chamfort,12 perusing
Madame de Staël, Bichat,13 Tissot,14
Herder, and even at times a Russian --
nothing was barred beyond discussion --
he read of course the sceptic Bayle15
and all the works of Fontanelle16 --
almanacs, journals of reflection,
where admonitions are pronounced,
where nowadays I'm soundly trounced,
but where such hymns in my direction
were chanted, I remember when --
e sempre bene, gentlemen.
XXXVI
What happened? Though his eyes were reading,
his thoughts were on a distant goal:
desires and dreams and griefs were breeding
and swarming in his inmost soul.
Between the lines of text as printed,
his mind's eye focused on the hinted
purport of other lines; intense
was his absorption in their sense.
Legends, and mystical traditions,
drawn from a dim, warm-hearted past,
dreams of inconsequential cast,
rumours and threats and premonitions,
long, lively tales from wonderland,
or letters in a young girl's hand.
{225}
XXXVII
Then gradually upon sensation,
and thought, a sleepy numbness steals;
before his eyes, imagination
brings out its faro pack, and deals.
He sees: in slush, stretched out and keeping
motionless as one soundly sleeping
in bed, a young man, stiff and chilled;
he hears a voice; ``well, what? he's killed!''
And foes he sees, long-since forgotten,
a rogue, a slanderer, a poltroon,
young traitresses by the platoon,
comrades despised, and comrades rotten;
a country house -- and one who still
sits there beside the window-sill!
XXXVIII
He got so used to this immersion,
he almost lost his mind, expired,
or joined us poets. His conversion
would have been all that we required!
It's true, the magnet-like attraction
of Russian verse, its force in action, --
my inept pupil, at that hour,
so nearly had them in his power.
Who could have looked the poet better,
as in the nook he'd sit alone
by blazing fireplace, and intone
Idol mio or Benedetta,
and on the flames let fall unseen
a slipper, or a magazine?
{226}
XXXIX
The days flew past; by now the season
in warmer airs was half dispersed.
He's neither died, nor lost his reason,
nor turned a poet. In the burst
of spring he lives, he's energetic;
he leaves one morning the hermetic
apartment where a double glaze
has kept him warm in chimney's blaze
while, marmot-like, he hibernated --
along the Neva in a sleigh,
past ice-blocks, blue and squared away,
he drives in brilliant sun; striated
along the street lies dirty snow;
and like an arrow from a bow
XL
over the slush, where is he chasing?
You've guessed before it all began:
to his Tatyana, yes, he's racing,
my strange, incorrigible man.
He goes inside, corpse-like of feature...
the hall's without a living creature,
the big room, further, not a cat.
He opens up a door. What's that
that strikes him with such force and meaning?
The princess, sitting peaked and wan,
alone, with no adornment on;
she holds a letter up, and leaning
cheek upon hand she softly cries
in a still stream that never dries.
{227}
XLI
Who in that flash could not have reckoned
her full account of voiceless pain?
Who in the princess for that second
would not have recognized again
our hapless Tanya! An emotion
of wild repentance and devotion
threw Eugene at her feet -- she stirred,
and looked at him without a word,
without surprise or rage... his laden,
his humbly suppliant approach,
his dull, sick look, his dumb reproach --
she sees it all. The simple maiden,
whose heart on dreams was wont to thrive,
in her once more has come alive.
XLII
Tatyana leaves Onegin kneeling,
looks at him with a steady gaze,
allows her hand, that's lost all feeling,
to meet his thirsty lips... What daze,
what dream accounts for her distraction?
A pause of silence and inaction,
then quietly at last says she:
``Enough, stand up. It's now for me
to give you honest explanation.
Onegin, d'you recall the day
when in the park, in the allée
where fate had fixed our confrontation,
humbly I heard your lesson out?
Today it's turn and turn about.
{228}
XLIII
``For then, Onegin, I was younger,
and also prettier, I'll be bound,
what's more, I loved you; but my hunger,
what was it in your heart it found
that could sustain it? Only grimness;
for you, I think, the humble dimness
of lovelorn girls was nothing new?
But now -- oh God! -- the thought of you,
your icy look, your stern dissuasion,
freezes my blood... Yet all the same,
nothing you did gave cause for blame:
you acted well, that dread occasion,
you took an honourable part --
I'm grateful now with all my heart.
XLIV
``Then, in the backwoods, far from rumour
and empty gossip, you'll allow,
I'd nothing to attract your humour...
Why then do you pursue me now?
What cause has won me your attention?
Could it not be that by convention
I move in the grand monde? that rank,
and riches, and the wish to thank
my husband for his wounds in battle
earn us the favour of the Court?
that, for all this, my shame's report
would cause widespread remark and tattle,
and so in the salons could make
a tempting plume for you to take?
{229}
XLV
``I weep... In case there still should linger
your Tanya's image in your mind,
then know that your reproving finger,
your cold discourse, were less unkind --
if I had power to choose your fashion --
than this humiliating passion
and than these letters, and these tears.
At least you then showed for my years
respect, and mercy for my dreaming.
But now! what brings you to my feet?
What trifling could be more complete?
What power enslaves you, with your seeming
advantages of heart and brain,
to all that's trivial and inane?
XLVI
``To me, Onegin, all this glory
is tinsel on a life I hate;
this modish whirl, this social story,
my house, my evenings, all that state --
what's in them? All this loud parading,
and all this flashy masquerading,
the glare, the fumes in which I live,
this very day I'd gladly give,
give for a bookshelf, a neglected
garden, a modest home, the place
of our first meeting face to face,
and the churchyard where, new-erected,
a humble cross, in woodland gloom,
stands over my poor nurse's tomb.
{230}
XLVII
``Bliss was so near, so altogether
attainable!... But now my lot
is firmly cast. I don't know whether
I acted thoughtlessly or not:
you see, with tears and incantation
mother implored me; my sad station
made all fates look the same... and so
I married. I beseech you, go;
I know your heart: it has a feeling
for honour, a straightforward pride.
I love you (what's the use to hide
behind deceit or double-dealing?)
but I've become another's wife --
and I'll be true to him, for life.''
XLVIII
She went -- and Eugene, all emotion,
stood thunder-struck. In what wild round
of tempests, in what raging ocean
his heart was plunged! A sudden sound,
the clink of rowels, met his hearing;
Tatyana's husband, now appearing...
But from the hero of my tale,
just at this crisis of his gale,
reader, we must be separating,
for long... for evermore. We've chased
him far enough through wild and waste.
Hurrah! let's start congratulating
ourselves on our landfall. It's true,
our vessel's long been overdue.
{231}
XLIX
Reader, I wish that, as we parted --
whoever you may be, a friend,
a foe -- our mood should be warm-hearted.
Goodbye, for now we make an end.
Whatever in this rough confection
you sought -- tumultuous recollection,
a rest from toil and all its aches,
or just grammatical mistakes,
a vivid brush, a witty rattle --
God grant that from this little book
for heart's delight, or fun, you took,
for dreams, or journalistic battle,
God grant you took at least a grain.
On this we'll part; goodbye again!
L
And my companion, so mysterious,
goodbye to you, my true ideal,
my task, so vivid and so serious
and yet so light. All that is real
and enviable for a poet,
in your pursuit I've come to know it:
oblivion of life's stormy ways,
sweet talk with friends. How many days
since, through the mist that dreams arise on,
young Tanya first appeared to me,
Onegin too -- and there to see,
a free romance's far horizon,
still dim, through crystal's magic glass,
before my gaze began to pass.
{232}
LI
Of those who heard my opening pages
in friendly gatherings where I read,
as Sadi17 sang in earlier ages,
``some are far distant, some are dead''.
They've missed Eugene's completed etching.
But she who modelled for the sketching
of Tanya's image... Ah, how great
the toll of those borne off by fate!
Blest he who's left the hurly-burly
of life's repast betimes, nor sought
to drain its beaker down, nor thought
of finishing its book, but early
has wished it an abrupt goodbye --
and, with my Eugene, so have I.
{233}
Notes to Chapter Eight
1 Gavrila Derzhávin (1745-1816), ``Russia's first outstanding poet''
(Nabokov). While still at the Lyceum in Tsarskoe Selo, in 1815, Pushkin read
some of his verses to him. The stanza was unfinished.
2 Lenore, romantic ballad by Gottfried August Bürger, 1773.
3 ``Rout (Eng.), an evening assembly without dancing; means properly
crowd.'' Pushkin's note.
4 Refers to Pushkin's poem The Demon, of 1823.
5 Hero of Griboedov's Woe from Wit, 1824.
6 Admiral Alexander Shishkov (1754-1841) championed the purity ot the
Russian language against the encroachment of foreign words.
7 Probably an allusion to Bulgárin, an unfriendly critic of Pushkin's
work.
8 Nina Voronskoy, imaginary belle of Petersburg society.
9 Court decoration given to the Empress's ladies-in-waiting. Stanza
unfinished.
10 Name left blank by Pushkin.
11 Count Emmanuel Sen-Pri (1806-1828) had a reputation as a cartoonist.
He was the son of the Comte de Saint-Priest, a French émigré.
12 Author of Maximes et Pensées, Paris, 1796.
13 Author of Recherches physiologiques sur la vie et la mort, Paris,
1799.
14 Author of De la santé des gens de lettres, Lausanne and Lyon, 1768.
15 Pierre Bayle, French philosopher.
16 Author of Dialogues des Morts, 1683.
17 Persian poet of the thirteenth century.