Eugene Onegin

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Eugene Onegin Page 7

by Alexander Pushkin


  The bubbling brook’s tranquillity,

  The oak wood’s leafy cool and shadows,

  Appeared to him a novelty;

  The third day he could no more muster

  Delight in grove or hill or pasture;

  Already they put him to sleep;

  Clearly he saw he could not keep

  Out boredom in a country setting,

  Though not a palace, street or ball

  Or cards or verse were there at all.

  Khandra was there, on guard and waiting,

  And dogged him like a faithful wife

  Or shadow fixed to him for life.

  55

  But I was born for peaceful pleasures,

  For country quiet: there I thrive:

  There sounds the lyre with clearer measures.

  Creative dreams are more alive.

  In innocent pursuits I wander,

  By a deserted lake I ponder

  And far niente is my law.

  I wake each morning ready for

  Sweet comfort and a free existence:

  I sleep a great deal, little read,

  To wanton glory pay no heed.

  Casting my mind into the distance,

  Did I not spend my happiest days

  In idleness and shaded ways?

  56

  O flowers, country, love, inaction,

  O fields! I am your devotee!

  I always note with satisfaction

  Onegin’s difference from me,

  Lest somewhere a sarcastic reader

  Or publisher or such-like breeder

  Of complicated calumny

  Discerns my physiognomy

  And shamelessly repeats the fable

  That I have crudely versified

  Myself like Byron, bard of pride,

  As if we were no longer able

  To write a poem and discuss

  A subject not concerning us.

  57

  Poets, I’ll note, in this connection

  Are friends of amorous reverie.

  It used to be my predilection

  To dream of objects dear to me;

  My soul retained their secret image

  Until the Muse gave them a language:

  Carefree, I’d sing of my ideal,

  Maid of the mountains, and of all

  The captive maids of Salgir’s65 waters.

  Now, friends, I hear you put to me,

  The question not infrequently:

  For whom among these jealous daughters

  Sighs most your lyre? To which of these

  Did you devote its melodies?

  58

  ‘Whose gaze, exciting inspiration,

  Rewarded with caressing eyes

  Your pensive song and adoration?

  Whom did your verses idolize?’

  Friends, not a single one, believe me!

  Love’s mad alarms will not deceive me,

  I’ve been through them with little joy.

  Happy is he who can alloy

  Them with a fevered rhyme: he doubles

  The poet’s sacred frenzy, strides

  In Petrarch’s footsteps, and besides

  Relieves the heart of all its troubles,

  And captures glory’s palm to boot;

  But I, in love, was stupid, mute.

  59

  Love passed, the Muse resumed dominion

  And cleared the darkness from my mind,

  Free now, I seek again the union

  Of feelings, thoughts and magic sound.

  I write, my heart’s no longer pining,

  My pen no longer wanders, making

  Sketches of female heads or feet

  Alongside verses incomplete.

  Dead ashes cannot be replenished,

  I’m sad still, but the tears are gone,

  And soon, soon when the storm is done

  And in my soul all trace has vanished,

  Then will I start a poem – oh,

  In cantos, twenty-five or so.

  60

  I have a plan already for it,

  And how the hero will be known;

  But for the moment I’ll ignore it,

  Having completed Chapter One.

  I’ve scrutinized it all for any

  Discrepancies – and there are many,

  But I’ve no wish to change them yet;

  I’ll pay the censorship my debt;

  My labour’s fruits I shall deliver

  To the reviewers to devour;

  Depart then, newborn work this hour,

  Off to the banks of Nevsky river

  And earn for me the prize of fame:

  Falsification, noise and blame!

  CHAPTER II

  O rus!

  Horace

  O Rus’!

  I

  The country place where Eugene suffered

  Was a delightful little spot;

  The innocent might there have offered

  Blessings to heaven for their lot.

  The manor house stood in seclusion,

  Screened by a hill from wind’s intrusion,

  Above a stream. Far off, there stretched

  Meadows and golden cornfields, patched

  With dazzling, multi-coloured flowers;

  Small hamlets could be glimpsed around,

  Herds wandered through the meadow ground,

  And, in its thick, entangled bowers

  A vast, neglected garden nursed

  Dryads, in pensive mood immersed.

  2

  The noble castle was constructed

  As castles should be: solid-based,

  Designed for comfort, unaffected,

  In sensible and ancient taste,

  With lofty rooms throughout the dwelling

  A salon damasked floor to ceiling,

  Portraits of Tsars upon the walls

  And stoves with multi-coloured tiles.

  Today all this is antiquated,

  I really cannot fathom why;

  My friend, however, walked right by,

  Unable to appreciate it,

  Since he would yawn, indifferent to

  An old interior or a new.

  3

  Into that very room he settled,

  Where, forty years, till his demise,

  With housekeeper the old man battled,

  Looked through the window, swatted flies.

  All was quite simple; oaken floorboards,

  Table, divan of down, two cupboards,

  And not an ink stain anywhere;

  He opened up the cupboards there:

  The first housed an expenses manual,

  The second rows of fruit liqueurs

  And eau-de-pomme in jugs and jars

  Beside an 1808 annual:

  The old man, by much work perplexed,

  Consulted not another text.

  4

  Alone among his acquisitions,

  Merely to while away the time,

  At first, our Eugene made provisions

  To introduce a new regime.

  A sage in rural isolation,

  He eased the peasant yoke, replacing

  The old corvée with light quit-rent;

  The serf blessed fate for what it sent.

  But Eugene’s thrifty neighbour, flurried,

  Sat sulking; in his corner he

  Envisaged some catastrophe;

  Another slyly smiled, unworried,

  But they were all unanimous:

  Here was a crank most dangerous.

  5

  At first, they all rode up to greet him;

  But at the back porch every day

  A stallion from the Don would meet him

  As soon as on the carriage way

  Their country carts could be detected,

  When off he’d gallop, undeflected.

  Outraged by this behaviour, they

  Withdrew their friendship straightaway.

  ‘Our neighbour is
a boor, as mad as

  A freemason, a crack-brained ass;

  Drinks only red wine by the glass;

  Won’t stoop to kiss the hands of ladies;

  It’s “yes” and “no”, not “yes, sir”, “no,

  sir”.’ All agreed this was de trop.

  6

  A new landowner, at that moment,

  Had driven down to his estate

  And offered equal cause for comment

  And stringent neighbourhood debate.

  By name Vladimir Lensky, wholly

  Endowed with Göttingenian soul,1 he

  Was handsome, in his youthful prime,

  A devotee of Kant2 and rhyme.

  He brought with him the fruits of learning

  From mist-enveloped Germany:

  Those dreams extolling liberty,

  That fervent spirit, oddly yearning,

  That language with its ardent flair

  And curling, shoulder-length black hair.

  7

  By chill corruption not yet blighted,

  Not having fallen yet from grace,

  In friendly greetings he delighted

  And in a maiden’s sweet embrace.

  Of heart’s affairs he had no knowledge,

  Hope nursed his feelings, gave him courage,

  And worldly noise and glitter still

  Lent his young mind a novel thrill.

  With a sweet fancy he would cradle

  His doubting heart’s uncertainty;

  For him our life and destiny

  Appeared as an enticing riddle,

  To solve which he would rack his mind,

  Suspecting wonders of mankind.

  8

  He thought that he should be united

  With a congenial soul, that she

  Would pine, whenever he departed,

  And keep awaiting him each day;

  He thought that friends would, in like manner,

  Don fetters to defend his honour,

  And that their hands would never spare

  The vessel3 of his slanderer;

  That there were some whom fate had chosen,

  Blest comrades of humanity;

  That their immortal family

  Would in a future time emblazon

  Us all with overwhelming rays

  And grace the world with blissful days.

  9

  Compassion, righteous indignation,

  Pure love directed to the good,

  And fame’s sweet pain, inebriation

  Had stirred from early days his blood.

  He with his lyre roamed ever further;

  Beneath the sky of Schiller, Goethe,4

  In sudden flame his soul burst forth,

  Kindled at their poetic hearth,

  And, happy one, without degrading

  The art’s exalted Muses, he

  Nursed proudly in his poetry

  Exalted feelings, never fading,

  Surges of virgin reverie,

  And charms of grave simplicity.

  10

  He sang of love, to love obedient,

  His song possessed the clarity

  Of simple maidens’ thoughts, of infant

  Slumber and of the moon, when she

  Shines in the sky’s untroubled spaces,

  Goddess of sighs and secret places;

  He sang of parting and despond,

  Of something and the dim beyond,

  He sang, too, of romantic roses;

  He sang of distant lands, those spheres

  Where he had long shed living tears,

  Where silently the world reposes;

  He sang of life’s decaying scene,

  While he was not yet quite eighteen.

  11

  Where only Eugene in their desert

  Could judge his gifts and quality,

  He had no appetite to hazard

  His neighbours’ hospitality;

  He fled their noisy conversations:

  Their sensible deliberations

  Regarding haymaking, the wine,

  The kennels and their kith and kind

  Were not, of course, lit up with feeling,

  Poetic fire, perceptive wit,

  Intelligence, nor with the art

  That made society appealing;

  The talk, though, of their spouses dear

  Was far less meaningful to hear.

  12

  Lensky, a wealthy youth and handsome,

  Was looked upon as marriageable;

  Such in the country was the custom;

  All daughters were eligible

  To court their semi-Russian neighbour;

  When he arrived, the guests would labour

  At once, by hinting, to deplore

  The dull life of a bachelor;

  The samovar’s inviting Lensky.

  And Dunya pours him out a cup,

  They whisper to her: ‘Watch, look up!’

  They bring in a guitar, too, then she

  Begins to shrill (good God!) and call:

  Oh come into my golden hall…

  13

  But Lensky, not, of course, intending

  To wear the ties of marriage yet,

  Looked forward warmly to befriending

  Onegin, whom he’d newly met.

  Not ice and flame, not stone and water,

  Not verse and prose are from each other

  So different as these men were.

  At first, since so dissimilar,

  They found each other dull, ill-suited;

  Then got to like each other; then

  Each day met riding. Soon the men

  Could simply not be separated.

  Thus (I’m the first one to confess)

  People are friends from idleness.

  14

  But friendship even of this order

  We cannot boast of. Having fought

  All prejudices, we consider

  Ourselves the ones, all others nought.

  We all aspire to be Napoleons;

  Two-legged creatures in their millions

  Are no more than a tool for us,

  Feelings we find ridiculous.

  While fairer in his preconceptions

  Than many, Eugene was inclined

  In toto to despise mankind,

  But (as each rule has its exceptions)

  Some individuals he spared,

  And feelings, too, by him unshared.

  15

  He heeded Lensky with indulgence.

  The poet’s fervent talk and mind,

  Still hesitant in forming judgements,

  His look of inspiration blind –

  All this was novel to Onegin;

  He tried to stop his lips from making

  A chilling comment, and he thought:

  I’d really be a fool to thwart

  His moment’s bliss with my rejection;

  His time, without me, will arrive;

  But for the moment let him thrive,

  Believing in the world’s perfection;

  Forgive the fever of the young,

  Their ardour and their raving tongue.

  16

  All things promoted disputations

  And led them to reflect: they would

  Discuss the pacts of vanished nations,

  The fruits of learning, evil, good,

  And centuries-old prejudices,

  The secrets of the grave’s abysses,

  And life and destiny in turn –

  All these were subjects of concern.

  The poet, heatedly contending,

  Recited in a reverie

  Fragments of Nordic balladry,

  And Eugene, gently condescending,

  While little grasping what he heard,

  Attended to his every word.

  17

  More often, though, it was the passions

  That occupied my anchorites.

  Free from their stormy depredations,

>   Onegin sighed with some regrets

  As he recounted their abatement.

  Happy who tasted their excitement

  And in the end could leave it, but

  Happier still who knew it not,

  Who cooled his love with separation,

  Hostility with calumny,

  Who yawned with wife and company,

  Immune to jealousy’s invasion,

  And who ensured he did not lose

  His fortune to a crafty deuce.

  18

  When to the banner we’ve foregathered

  Of sensible tranquillity,

  When passion’s flame at last is smothered,

  And we as an absurdity

  Consider its caprices, surges,

  Belated repetitions, urges –

  Resigned, but not without a tear,

  We sometimes like to lend an ear

  To tales of other people’s passions,

  And hearing them stirs up our heart.

  Thus an old soldier takes delight

  In eavesdropping on the confessions

  Of young, mustachioed blades who strut,

  While he’s forgotten in his hut.

  19

  But flaming youth is quite unable

  To hide a feeling or a thought

  And ever is prepared to babble

  Love, hatred, joy and sorrow out.

  Himself by passion invalided,

  With solemn mien Onegin heeded

  The poet who confessed his heart

  With love and using all his art;

  A simple soul, not seeking glory,

  He laid his trusting conscience bare.

  Eugene with ease discovered there

  The poet’s young, romantic story

  With its abundant feelings that

  To us have long since been old hat.

  20

  He loved, ah, as we cannot know it,

  Today such love’s anomalous,

  Only the mad soul of a poet

  Is still condemned to loving thus:

  Always and everywhere one vision,

  One customary, single mission,

  One customary, single grief.

  Not cooling distance’s relief,

 

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