Is Lyubóv truthful? No, she ain’t.
You’ll find that Auntie Pelagéya
Still friends with Finemouche (gentilhomme),
Still has a husband, and a pom.
He’s still a clubman, a long-stayer,
Still henpecked, deaf and someone who
Still eats and drinks enough for two.
46
Their girls greet Tanya with embraces,
But, there being much they want to know,
Silently these young Moscow Graces
Examine her from top to toe.
They find her rather odd, provincial,
With mannerisms strangely mincing,
A little thin and pale withal—
Though otherwise not bad at all.
But nature will prevail—with passion
They make friends, entertain her, and
They kiss her often, squeezing hands,
Fluffing her curls in the new fashion.
With girlish giggles they impart
The secrets of their girlish hearts—
47
Details of conquests, theirs and others’,
Their hopes and schemes, daydreams and such,
Flowing in guileless chat that buzzes
With scandal (though not all that much).
Then in return for all this chatter
They lean on Tanya, getting at her
To tell the stories of her heart,
But dreamily she stands apart.
She hears things but forgets soon after,
For nothing heard makes any sense.
Her feelings, private and intense,
Her secret thoughts, her tears and laughter
She keeps unspoken, for herself
And shareable with no one else.
48
Tatyana is quite keen to listen
To what they’re saying, but, alas,
The room is swamped with the transmission
Of incoherent, vulgar trash.
It’s so banal and so insipid;
Even the scandal’s far from gripping.
In the dry desert of their views,
Their queries, slurs and bits of news,
Days pass with nothing thought-provoking,
No twist of fate or happenstance
To set the weary mind a-dance,
Nothing heart-lifting, nothing jokey,
No silly fun to be enjoyed
Anywhere in this social void.
49
Young men with sinecures look at her
In priggish, condescending ways,
Then walk off to discuss the matter
With nothing very nice to say.
Among them one pathetic jester
Found her “ideal” as he assessed her,
And now he leans against the door
To pen an ode. Guess who it’s for.
Once Vyázemsky sat down beside her
When she was at a boring aunt’s
And captivated her, by chance.
An old man, looking on, espied her,
And curiously began to dig,
While neatly straightening his wig.
50
But in the halls, where raging Tragedy
Is still performed in one long wail,
With spangled mantles wielded, waggling,
At the full house (to no avail),
Where Comedy lies gently napping
And sleeps through even friendly clapping,
Where the young public is entranced
By nothing but the Muse of Dance—
That’s how it was in former ages
When you and I were in our prime—
Tanya was cut dead all the time
By the lorgnettes of jealous ladies
And the eye-tubes of strutting beaux
In boxes or the lower rows.
51
She’s taken on to the Assembly,
With all its crowds, excitement, heat,
The blaring band, the candles trembling
As pairs sweep by with flashing feet.
The lovely girls arrayed in flimsy,
The galleries with their gaudy whimsy,
And nubile girls in one wide arc—
All this struck her and made its mark.
Made manifest by dazzling dandies,
Bravado gleams, and waistcoats too,
Eyeglasses spurned but kept in view,
Hussars on leave, fine and upstanding,
Leap to the fore, gallop and stamp,
Delight the eye, and then decamp.
52
The night has many stars, resplendent,
Moscow has lovely girls on view,
Yet of these friends the moon ascendant
Outshines them all in the deep blue.
And she… (I wouldn’t dare upset her;
To mute my lyre would be far better…)
Gives off her splendour, casting shade
On every mother, every maid.
With heavenly poise and proud composure
She deigns to tread the earth, and breathes
Profound bliss as her bosom heaves.
Her eyes shine, wondrously ambrosial.
But stop, stop. That’s enough from you.
To folly you have paid your due.
53
They shout, laugh, bow and charge through dances—
Mazurka, gallop, waltz—all night,
But Tanya stands there with two aunties
Behind a pillar out of sight.
She watches things, uncomprehending,
Repelled by this world and its frenzy.
She cannot breathe… And, starry-eyed,
She floats back to the countryside,
Back to the poor folk in their hovels,
To distant parts, secluded nooks
Busy with sparkling, babbling brooks,
Back to her flowers and her novels,
To lines of lime trees dark and grim,
Where she had once encountered him.
54
But as her thoughts depart, dispersing
Beyond the guests, the noisy ball,
She is the target of one person,
A most impressive general.
The aunts wink at each other, touching
Tatyana with their elbows, nudging
Her, both of them, and hissing low,
“Look to your left… Quick… There you go.”
“Where on my left? What’s all this bother?”
“Oh, never mind… Across there, that’s
The one, leading that group. Two chaps
In uniform… and he’s the other…
He’s off… He stood there, sideways on.”
“That tubby general who’s just gone?”
55
Congratulations on your victory,
Lovely Tatyana, dear young thing!…
But we must change direction quickly
And turn to him of whom I sing…
A subject that’s worth going into:
I sing an old friend, whom I cling to,
With all his idiosyncrasies.
Bless this, my work, long as it is,
O Muse, thou mother of the epic!
Entrust me with thy rod and staff,
And stand me steady on my path.
Enough. My burden falls. I let it…
For every classic it seems fit
To pen a Prologue. This is it.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Fare thee well! and if for ever—
Still for ever, fare thee well.
BYRON
1
Long since, when young and at my gayest,
Through the school gardens I would go,
Lost in the lines of Apuleius,
Having no time for Cicero.
In spring I strolled secluded valleys,
Where swimming swans sang out their challenge
And waters glistened placidly.
’Twas then the Muse first came
to me.
She lit my cell and made it precious,
Spreading before me one great feast
Of youthful fancies new-released,
Singing of boyhood and its pleasures,
Of Russia’s glory, and the art
Of building dreams to thrill the heart.
2
The world smiled, finding her disarming.
We soared on wings of young success,
And pleased the elderly Derzhávin,
Who blessed us just before his death.
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3
Submitting to a special token—
The laws of passion and of whim—
I threw my feelings widely open,
And took my bright Muse where I’d been:
To rowdy feasts and noisy quarrels,
Midnight patrols enforcing morals—
And to these wild, outlandish dos
She brought her talents as a muse.
Revelling like a young bacchante,
She drank with us, sang with good cheer,
And the young bloods of yesteryear
Chased after her, raucous and frantic,
While I turned to my friends with pride,
With this bright mistress at my side.
4
But soon I called off all our meetings,
And fled afar… But she came too.
A ministering muse, she sweetened
The lonely journey I came through
With magic in her secret stories.
She was what Bürger’s young Lenore is.
She galloped the Caucasian heights
Along with me in the moonlight.
On the Crimean seashore, roaming,
I knew with her the evening mist,
And heard the sea, the whispered hiss
Of nereids once known to Homer,
The waves with their eternal skirl,
Hymning the Father of the World.
5
The capital fell from her favour
(All glitz and raucous merriment)
And in the sadness of Moldavia
She visited the humble tents
Of wandering tribesmen close to nature,
Where she became a savage creature,
Leaving the language of the gods
For tongues that sounded poor and odd,
And songs the lovely steppe had taught her…
But all of this she soon forgot,
Becoming, in my garden plot,
A rural landowner’s young daughter
With sadness in her eyes, intense,
Holding a novelette in French.
6
Now for the first time let us summon
My muse to a smart party. Here,
The charms of this wild-country woman
I watch with jealous pride and fear.
As diplomats crowd through the entry
With soldiers brave and landed gentry,
She glides in past proud party queens
And looks on, sitting there serene,
Enjoying all the crush and clamour,
The gorgeous clothes, the clever talk,
The shuffling guests, queueing to walk
By the young hostess in her glamour,
Ladies with men ranged at their back—
A pretty picture framed in black.
7
She loves the oligarchic order
Which fixes all the verbiage,
The cold conceit in every corner,
The blending in of rank and age.
But who is this among the chosen,
Standing in hazy silence, frozen?
He’s like a stranger with no grasp
Of any faces that go past
Like tedious phantoms come to visit.
His face shows pained conceit, or spleen.
Which is it, and what does this mean?
Who’s this? It’s not Yevgeny, is it?
Yevgeny? You’re not serious?
It is him, wafted back to us.
8
Is he the same man? Has he mellowed
Or is he the oddball of old?
What has he come back for, this fellow?
How will he play his future role?
Who will he be? Melmoth the wanderer?
Globetrotter? A pro-Russian thunderer?
Childe Harold? Quaker? Hypocrite?
What other likeness could he fit?
Or is he just a fine young person
Like all of us, and just as nice?
Well, anyway, here’s my advice:
Old styles call out to be converted.
He’s fooled us all since long ago.
So, do you know him? Yes and no.
9
Why are you so unsympathetic
Towards Onegin as a man?
Because we are so energetic
In criticizing all we can?
Charged minds are prone to indiscretion,
Which small, smug nobodies may question
As laughable, offensive smut.
Wit wanders, and will not stay put.
Small talk is cheap, and we too often
Take it for active interest.
Foolishness flaunts its silliness;
Top people thrive on what is rotten.
With mediocrity we blend,
Treating it as our closest friend.
10
Blest he who, as a youth, was youthful,
Blest he who in due time grows old
And steadily becomes more rueful
While finding out that life is cold,
Who entertains no idle fancies,
Who with the rabble takes his chances,
At twenty, dandified hothead,
At thirty profitably wed,
At fifty owing not a penny
To other people or the state,
And who has been prepared to wait
For reputation, rank and money,
Of whom they’ve said throughout his span
So-and-so’s such a lovely man.
11
It’s sad that youth turned out so useless,
So futile and perfidious.
How frequently we have traduced her,
And she has disappointed us.
To think we watched our strongest yearnings,
Our purest aspirations, turning
Successively to dark decay,
Like leaves on a wet autumn day.
Unbearable, the future beckons,
With life an endless dining club
With decent membership and grub,
Where others lead and we come second.
At odds with them, we tag along,
Though we share nothing with the throng.
12
Unbearable (you won’t deny it)
To suffer many a jibe and slur
From decent folk, who, on the quiet,
Call one an oddball, a poseur,
Or maybe a pathetic madman,
Or a Satanic beast, a bad man,
Even the demon that I drew.
Onegin, to begin anew,
Took off after the fatal duel
With no clear plan, living for kicks,
Until the age of twenty-six—
An idle life with no renewal
Nor anything to which to cling,
Sans work, sans wife, sans everything.
13
He felt a jo
lt, a sudden flurry,
A longing for a change of air
(The kind of agonizing worry
That few of us would want to bear).
He quitted his estate, thus losing
The woods, the meadows, the seclusion,
The places where a bleeding shade
Arose before him every day,
And set off on sporadic travels,
With one idea to travel for,
But travel soon became a bore—
For travel, like all things, unravels.
He’s back “like Chatsky” (someone wrote),
“Straight to the ballroom from the boat.”
14
But then the throng was stirred and furrowed,
A whisper shimmered through the hall.
A lady neared the hostess, followed
By an imposing general.
Serenely she came, not stand-offish,
Not talkative, not cold or snobbish,
Devoid of hauteur, not too grand,
Devoid of self-importance, and
Without a trace of facial grimace
Or any ingratiating glance…
Easy and calm in her advance,
She showed herself the very image
Du comme il faut. (Shishkóv, forgive!
I can’t translate the adjective.)
15
Ladies came up to her more closely,
The old ones smiled as she went by,
The men bowed lower to her, mostly
Endeavouring to catch her eye.
Girls up ahead lowered their voices.
Tallest of all, and much the haughtiest,
The general then followed her
With nose and shoulders in the air.
No one could say she was a beauty,
But nothing could have been applied
To her that might have been described,
Out of some fashionable duty,
By London’s loftiest citizen
As vulgar. (Here we go again…
16
This is a favourite expression
That I’m unable to translate.
Because it is quite new in Russia
Yevgeny Onegin (Pushkin Collection) Page 16