Eugene Onegin: A Novel in Verse (Oxford World's Classics)
Page 15
Sweet wilderness in which I spent
Impassioned days and idle hours,
And filled my soul with dreams, content.
And you, my youthful inspiration,
Come stir the bleak imagination,
Enrich the slumbering heart’s dull load,
More often visit my abode;
Let not the poet’s soul grow bitter
Or harden and congeal alone,
To turn at last to lifeless stone
Amid this world’s deceptive glitter,
This swirling swamp in which we lie
And wallow, friends, both you and I!
Chapter 7
Moscow! Russia’s favourite daughter!
Where is your equal to be found!
Dmitriev
Can one not love our native Moscow?
Baratynsky
‘Speak ill of Moscow! So this is what it means to see the world! Where is it better, then?’ ‘Where we are not.’
Griboedov
1
Spring rays at last begin to muster
And chase from nearby hills the snow,
Whose turbid streams flow down and cluster
To inundate the fields below.
And drowsy nature, smiling lightly,
Now greets the dawning season brightly.
The heavens sparkle now with blue;
The still transparent woods renew
Their downy green and start to thicken.
The bee flies out from waxen cell
To claim its meed from field and dell.
The vales grow dry and colours quicken;
The cattle low; and by the moon
The nightingale pours forth its tune.
2
How sad I find your apparition,
O spring! … O time of love’s unrest!
What sombre echoes of ambition
Then stir my blood and fill my breast!
What tender and oppressive yearning
Possesses me on spring’s returning,
When in some quiet rural place
I feel her breath upon my face!
Or am I now inured to gladness;
And all that quickens and excites,
That sparkles, triumphs, and delights
Casts only spleen and languid sadness
On one whose heart has long been dead,
For whom but darkness lies ahead?
3
Or saddened by the re-emergence
Of leaves that perished in the fall,
We heed the rustling wood’s resurgence,
As bitter losses we recall;
Or do we mark with lamentation
How nature’s lively renovation
Compares with our own fading youth,
For which no spring will come, in truth?
Perhaps in thought we reassemble,
Within a dream to which we cling,
Some other and more ancient spring,
That sets the aching heart atremble
With visions of some distant place,
A magic night, the moon’s embrace.…
4
Now is the time, you hibernators,
You epicures and sages, you;
You fortunate procrastinators,
You fledglings from our Lyóvshin’s crew,*
You rustic Priams from the cities,
And you, my sentimental pretties—
Spring calls you to your country seat;
It’s time for flowers, labours, heat,
Those heady walks for which you’re thirsting,
And soft seductive nights as well.
Into the fields, my friends, pell-mell!
Load up your carriages to bursting,
Bring out your own or rent a horse,
And far from town now set your course!
5
You too, indulgent reader, hurry
In your imported coach, I pray,
To leave the city with its flurry,
Where you spent wintertime in play;
And with my wilful Muse let’s hustle
To where the leafy woodlands rustle—
A nameless river’s placid scene,
The country place where my Eugene,
That idle and reclusive schemer,
But recently this winter stayed,
Not far from our unhappy maid,
Young Tanya, my enchanted dreamer;
But where he now no longer reigns …
Where only his sad trace remains.
6
Where hills half circle round a valley,
Let’s trace a winding brooklet’s flow
Through greening fields, and watch it dally
Beside a spot where lindens grow.
And there the nightingale, spring’s lover,
Sings out till dawn; a crimson cover
Of briar blooms, and freshets sound.
There too a tombstone can be found
Beneath two pine trees, old for ages.
Its legend lets the stranger know:
‘Vladimir Lensky lies below.
He died too soon … his death courageous,
At such an age, in such a year.
Repose in peace, young poet, here!’
7
There was a time when breezes playing
Among the pines would gently turn
A secret wreath that hung there swaying
Upon a bough above that urn;
And sometimes in the evening hours
Two maidens used to come with flowers,
And by the moonlit grave they kept
Their vigil and, embracing, wept.
But now the monument stands dreary
And quite forgot. Its pathway now—
All weeds. No wreath is on the bough;
Alone the shepherd, grey and weary,
Beneath it sings as in the past
and plaits his simple shoes of bast.
(8–9) 10
My poor, poor Lensky! Yes, she mourned him;
Although her tears were all too brief!
Alas! His fiancée has scorned him
And proved unfaithful to her grief.
Another captured her affection,
Another with his love’s perfection
Has lulled her wretchedness to sleep:
A lancer has enthralled her deep,
A lancer whom she loves with passion;
And at the altar by his side,
She stands beneath the crown a bride,
Her head bent down in modest fashion,
Her lowered eyes aflame the while,
And on her lips a slender smile.
11
Poor Lensky! In his place of resting,
In deaf eternity’s grim shade,
Did he, sad bard, awake protesting
The fateful news, he’d been betrayed?
Or lulled by Lethe, has he slumbered,
His blissful spirit unencumbered
By feelings and perturbed no more,
His world a closed and silent door?
Just so! The tomb that lies before us
Holds but oblivion in the end.
The voice of lover, foe, and friend
Falls silent fast. Alone the chorus
Of angry heirs in hot debate
Contests obscenely our estate.
12
Soon Olga’s happy voice and beauty
No longer cheered the family group.
A captive of his lot and duty,
Her lancer had to join his troop.
Dame Larin’s eyes began to water
As she embraced her younger daughter
And, scarce alive, cried out goodbye.
But Tanya found she couldn’t cry;
A deathly pallor merely covered
Her stricken face. When all came out
Onto the porch and fussed about
While taking leave, Tatyana hovered
Beside the couple’s coach below,
Then sadly saw the lovers go.
13
And long she watched the road they’d taken,
As through a mist of stifled tears….
Now Tanya is alone, forsaken!
Companion of so many years,
The darling sister whom she’d nourished,
The bosom friend she’d always cherished—
Now carried off by fate, a bride,
Forever parted from her side.
She roams in aimless desolation,
Now gazes at the vacant park….
But all seems joyless, bleak and dark;
There’s nothing offers consolation
Or brings her smothered tears relief;
Her heart is rent in two by grief.
14
And in the solitude her passion
Burns even stronger than before,
Her heart speaks out in urgent fashion
Of faraway Eugene the more.
She’ll never see him … and be grateful,
She finds a brother’s slayer hateful
And loathes the awful thing he’s done.
The poet’s gone … and hardly one
Remembers him; his bride’s devotion
Has flown to someone else instead;
His very memory now has fled
Like smoke across an azure ocean.
Two hearts, perhaps, remain forlorn
And mourn him yet…. But wherefore mourn?
15
‘Twas evening and the heavens darkled.
A beetle hummed. The peasant choirs
Were bound for home. Still waters sparkled.
Across the river, smoky fires
Of fishermen were dimly gleaming.
Tatyana walked, alone and dreaming,
Beneath the moonbeams’ silver light
And climbed a gentle hill by night.
She walked and walked … till with a shiver
She spied a distant hamlet’s glow,
A manor house and grove below,
A garden by the glinting river.
And as she gazed upon that place
Her pounding heart began to race.
16
Assailed by doubts, she grew dejected:
‘Should I go on, turn back, or what?
He isn’t here, I’m not expected….
I’ll glance at house and garden plot.’
And so, scarce breathing, down she hastened
And looked about, perplexed and chastened
To find herself at his estate….
She entered the deserted gate.
A pack of barking dogs chased round her;
And at her frightened cry a troop
Of household urchins with a whoop
Came rushing quickly to surround her.
They made the barking hounds obey,
Then led the lady, safe, away.
17
‘May I just see the house, I wonder?’
Asked Tanya … and the children leapt
To find Anísya and to plunder
The household keys she always kept.
Anísya came in just a second,
And soon the open doorway beckoned.
She stepped inside the empty shell
Where once our hero used to dwell.
She found a cue left unattended
Upon the table after play,
And on a rumpled sofa lay
His riding crop. And on she wended.
‘And here’s the hearth,’ spoke up the crone,
‘Where master used to sit alone.
18
‘Our neighbour Lensky, lately buried,
Would dine with him in winter here.
Come this way, please … but don’t feel hurried.
And here’s the master’s study, dear;
He slept, took coffee in these quarters,
Would hear the bailiff, give his orders,
And mornings read some book right through….
My former master lived here too;
On Sundays at his window station,
His glasses on, he’d deign to play
Some cards with me to pass the day.
God grant his mortal soul salvation,
And may his dear old bones be blest
In Mother Earth where he’s at rest.’
19
Tatyana looks in melting pleasure
At everything around the room;
She finds it all a priceless treasure,
A painful joy that lifts her gloom
And leaves her languid soul ignited:
The desk, the lamp that stands unlighted,
The heap of books, the carpet spread
Before the window on the bed,
That semi-light, so pale and solemn,
The view outdoors—the lunar pall,
Lord Byron’s portrait on the wall,
The iron bust* upon its column—
With clouded brow beneath a hat,
The arms compressed and folded flat.
20
And long she stood, bewitched and glowing,
Inside that modish bachelor cell.
But now it’s late. The winds are blowing,
It’s cold and dark within the dell.
The grove’s asleep above the river,
Behind the hill the moon’s a sliver;
And now it’s time, indeed long past,
That our young pilgrim leave at last.
Concealing her wrought-up condition,
Though not without a heartfelt sigh,
Tatyana turns to say goodbye,
But, taking leave, requests permission
To see the vacant house alone
And read the books he’d called his own.
21
Outside the gate Tatyana parted
From old Anísya. Next day then,
She rose at dawn and off she started
To see the empty house again;
And once inside that silent study,
Sealed off at last from everybody,
The world for just a time forgot,
Tatyana wept and mourned her lot…
Then turned to see the books he’d favoured.
At first she didn’t wish to read,
The choice of books seemed strange indeed;
But soon her thirsting spirit savoured
The mystery that those pages told—
And watched a different world unfold.
22
Although Onegin’s inclination
For books had vanished, as we know,
He did exempt from condemnation
Some works and authors even so:
The bard of Juan and the Giaour,*
And some few novels done with power,
In which our age is well displayed
And modern man himself portrayed
With something of his true complexion—
With his immoral soul disclosed,
His arid vanity exposed,
His endless bent for deep reflection,
His cold, embittered mind that seems
To waste itself in empty schemes.
23
Some pages still preserved the traces
Where fingernails had sharply pressed;
The girl’s attentive eye embraces
These lines more quickly than the rest.
And Tanya sees with trepidation
The kind of thought or observation
To which Eugene paid special heed,
Or where he’d tacitly agreed.
And in the margins she inspected
His pencil marks with special care;
And on those pages everywhere
She found Onegin’s soul reflected—
In crosses or a jotted note,
Or in the question mark he wrote.
24
And so, in slow but growing fashion
My Tanya starts to understand
More clearly now—thank God—her passion
/> And him for whom, by fate’s command,
She’d been condemned to feel desire:
That dangerous and sad pariah,
That work of heaven or of hell,
That angel… and proud fiend as well.
What was he then? An imitation?
An empty phantom or a joke,
A Muscovite in Harold’s cloak,
Compendium of affectation,
A lexicon of words in vogue …
Mere parody and just a rogue?
25
Can she have solved the riddle’s power?
Can she have found the final clue?
She hardly notes how late the hour,
And back at home she’s overdue—
Where two old friends in conversation
Speak out on Tanya’s situation:
‘What can I do? Tatyana’s grown,’
Dame Larin muttered with a moan.
‘Her younger sister married neatly;
It’s time that she were settled too,
I swear I don’t know what to do;
She turns all offers down completely,
Just says: “I can’t”, then broods away,
And wanders through those woods all day.’
26
‘Is she in love?’—‘With whom, I wonder?
Buyánov tried: she turned him down.
And Petushkóv as well went under.
Pykhtín the lancer came from town
To stay with us and seemed transported;
My word, that little devil courted!
I thought she might accept him then;
But no! the deal fell through again.’
‘Why, my dear lady, what’s the bother?
To Moscow and the marriage mart!
They’ve vacancies galore … take heart!’
‘But I’ve so little income, father.’
‘Sufficient for one winter’s stay;
Or borrow then—from me, let’s say.’
27
The good old lady was delighted
To hear such sensible advice;
She checked her funds and then decided,
A Moscow winter would be nice.