Eugene Onegin

by Alexander Pushkin

  10. 36: Stanza 36 was published only in the separate edition of Chapters IV and V.

  11. Gulnare: Byron. Gulnare is the heroine of The Corsair.

  12. Then drank… dressed: Omitted in the final text. After ‘And dressed’ there follows in Pushkin’s fair copy: but you’d not care to don/The article that he put on’.

  13. (You’ve guessed… ‘petals’: Pushkin parodies a hackneyed rhyme which he himself used elsewhere: morozy/rozy, frosts/roses. The suggestion is perhaps reddening of the cheeks in the cold. The rhyme is irreproducible. Having used settles/petals before, in Chapter 1, stanza 16, I decided to use it again here, hoping that the reader might remember it. In neither case is it a hackneyed rhyme, but in both cases the context is frost. Compare a similar rhyme in Chapter IV, stanza 44, where Pushkin rhymes sladost’ with mladost’, sweetness/youth: Dreams, dreams! Where is your sweetness?/Where is its stock rhyme, youth?’ which I have translated, this time more successfully, I think, as: Where are my dreams, the dreams I cherished?/What rhyme now follows, if not perished’ since cherished’ and perished’ have a more hackneyed ring in English. I have used the same rhyme in Chapter VII, stanza 28. What Pushkin is getting at in both cases is the paucity of rhymes in the Russian poetry of his time.

  14. Pradt and Scott: Dominique de Pradt (1759–1837), French political writer and priest to Napoleon; later a liberal under the Restoration. Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832), Scottish poet and father of the historical novel, who influenced Pushkin in the writing of his own historical novel The Captain’s Daughter (1836). Pushkin read Scott in French translations.

  15. Aï: Aï or Ay is the name of a town in the Marne Department of Northern France, where this champagne originates.

  16. ‘Between the wolf and dog’: A translation of entre chien et loup, meaning dusk or the time of day when it is too dark for a shepherd to distinguish his dog from a wolf.

  17. Lafontaine: Not the fabulist Jean de Lafontaine, but August Lafontaine (1759–1831), a mediocre German writer, ‘author of numerous family novels’ (Pushkin’s note), popular in Russia at the end of the eighteenth century.

  CHAPTER V

  1. Never know… Zhukovsky: Epigraph from concluding lines of Zhukovsky’s ballad Svetlana (1812), which was considered a model of Romantic poetry based on folklore. Svetlana shadows Tatiana in this chapter.

  2. kibitka: A hooded carriage.

  3. One poet: In a note Pushkin refers to Vyazemsky and his poem ‘The First Snow’ (1819). The epigraph from Chapter I is likewise taken from Vyazemsky’s poem.

  4. Finnish Maid: A reference to a fragment of Baratynsky’s poem Eda (1825).

  5. With curious gaze… tomcat chants: Dish-divining took place at Yuletide and Twelfth Night. Divining times were divided between ‘holy evenings’ (25–31 December) and ‘fearful evenings’ (1–6 January). Tatiana chose the second period. Girls and women dropped rings into a dish containing water that was then covered with a cloth. As each is removed, a song is sung. The one sung for Tatiana predicts unhappiness and death. Tomcat songs foretell marriage, as Pushkin remarks in a note. In these the tomcat invites the she-cat to join him on his comfortable stove.

  6. training a mirror on the moon: Another method of divination whereby a future husband was supposed to appear in the mirror’s reflection.

  7. Agafon: In this context a comical peasant’s name, derived from the Greek Agathon. As Pushkin points out in his note 13 to Chapter II, concerning his choice of Tatiana’s name, sweet-sounding’ Greek names are only used by the common people. Asking the name of the first pedestrian Tatiana comes across is another ritual for discovering the name of her future intended.

  8. fear assailed Tatiana… Felt fear as well: In her dream Svetlana, heroine of Zhukovsky’s ballad (see above), conjures up her lover only to be carried off by him to his grave. This reference presages Tatiana’s nightmare.

  9. We won’t tell fortunes all night through: See Chapter IV, note 6 on the two-rhyme octet in Italian sonnets.

  10. Her silken girdle she unknotted: Unknotting her girdle is a magical act like taking off a crucifix. It is an invitation to the secret world of superstition. Russians would often wear a belt in the bathhouse to ward off evil spirits.

  11. Lel: Artificial god of love derived by eighteenth-century writers from chants and cries associated with wedding ceremonies (lyuli, lel’, lelyo).

  12. Ladies’ Fashion: The full title is Journal of Ladies’ Fashions and refers to the French publication Journal des dames et des modes (1797–1838), which set the fashions throughout Europe. Tatiana, as Pushkin points out in Chapter III, stanza 26, line 6, did not read Russian journals, nor did a specific women’s fashion journal exist in Russia.

  13. Martin Zadek:A fictitious person probably invented in Switzerland in the eighteenth century. His book of prophecies and divinations, the impressive title of which is too long to reproduce here, was translated from German into Russian and published in three separate editions (1814, 1821, 1827).

  14. Malvina: A novel by Mme Cottin (1773–1807).

  15. Petriads: Pushkin gives this ironic, high-sounding name to the various mediocre poems on Peter the Great current at the time.

  16. Marmontel: Jean-Francois Marmontel (1723–99), French author; volume 3 of his complete works, all of which Pushkin possessed, contained his Contes moraux (Moral Tales).

  17. her crimson hands extending: Pushkin comments in his note 34: ‘A parody of well-known lines by Lomonosov: Dawn with crimson hand/From morning’s tranquil waters’. These are the opening lines of a Lomonosov ode celebrating Empress Elizabeth’s ascent to the throne. Pushkin’s parody recalls the discussion of the ode in Chapter IV, stanza 33 . Lomonosov’s ‘crimson hand’ derives from Homer’s ‘rosy-fingered dawn’.M. V. Lomonosov (1711–65) was a scientist, poet, creator of the modern literary language and founder of Moscow University.

  18. britska: A light carriage.

  19. Pustyakov: Most of the names in this stanza are farcical, largely deriving from the comedies of Fonvizin (see note 28 to Chapter I). Pustyakov means Trifle, Gvozdin Basher, Skotinin Brute, Petush-kov Rooster or Cockahoop. Buyanov (Rowdy) is the hero of a skittish poem The Dangerous Neighbour by Pushkin’s uncle Vasily Pushkin (1770–1830). This allows his nephew to introduce Buyanov here as his cousin.

  20. Kharlikov: Another comic name meaning Throttle’.

  21. Réveillez-vous, belle endormie: ‘Awake, sleeping beauty.’

  22. pie: The pie or pirog was either a meat or cabbage pie and traditional for a nameday feast.

  23. blanc-manger: Nabokov writes in his Commentary: ‘blanc-manger (pronounced as in French): This almond-milk jelly (an old French and English sweet, not to be confused with our modern ‘blancmange’) might be artificially coloured. Its presence (as well as the presence of Russian champagne) at Dame Larin’s festive table stressed both the old-world style of her household and a comparative meagreness of means.

  24. Tsimlyansky: A sparkling wine from Tsimlyanskaya Stanitsa, a Cossack settlement on the Don.

  25. Zizi: Zizi or Yevpraksia Vulf (1809–83) was the youngest daughter of the large Osipov family headed by Praskovia Osipov, widow of Nikolay Vulf and Ivan Osipov. The Osipovs were Pushkin’s nearest neightbours during his exile at Mikhailovskoye (1824–6). He courted fifteen-year-old Zizi and several other members of the clan. Later, in 1829, the two briefly became lovers.

  26. omber: A card game of Spanish origin, popular in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

  27. Albani: Francesco Albani (1578–1660), Italian painter popular in the eighteenth century.

  28. ‘I’ll go no more a-roving: I have allowed myself a quote from Lord Byron (1788–1824), since he is omnipresent in the text, from his poem So, we’ll go no more a-roving’.

  CHAPTER VI

  1. La, sotto… non dole: ‘There, where the days are cloudy and short, A race is born for whom death is not painful.’ A quotation from Petrarch’s In vita di Laura, Canzone XXVIII, which miss
es out the middle line: Nemica naturalmente di pace’ (‘By nature the enemy of peace’). The omission allows the quotation to refer more easily to Pushkin’s own generation.

  2. To die from him will be delightful: Love for a villain was a common theme in contemporary Romantic literature and folklore (cf. Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer).

  3. Hetman: Headman or captain, from the Polish hetman.

  4. He’s even honest… every stage: Quotations from Voltaire (1694–1778): ‘et même devint honnête homme’ (Candide, 1759); ‘… combien le siècle se perfectionne’ (opening of Canto 4 of Civil War in Geneva, 1768).

  5. Regulus: Roman general Marcus Atilius Regulus (d. c.250 BC), captured by the Carthaginians and sent to Rome with harsh terms of peace. Once there, he advised the Senate to continue the war and returned to Carthage, as he had promised, to face execution.

  6. chez Véry: Pushkin’s note 37: A Parisian restaurateur.

  7. Sed alia tempora: Latin: ‘But times are different.’

  8. Where bird cherry, acacia climb: Nabokov, with customary botanical expertise, translates ‘bird cherry’ as ‘racemosa’ and ‘acacia’ as ‘pea tree’. He finds ‘racemosa’ more exact than ‘bird cherry’ and points out that the acacia’ of northern Russia (where the story takes place) is imported from Asia, has yellow flowers and is therefore not a true acacia, but a ‘pea tree’. (The more familiar acacia of southern Russia has a white blossom.) Nabokov refers to the yellow’ epithet in the following couplet by Konstantin Batyushkov (1787–1855), which Pushkin is parodying:

  In the shade of milky racemosas

  And golden-glistening pea trees

  (Nabokov’s translation)

  He may be right, but I have preferred the more recognizable ‘bird cherries’ and ‘acacias’. Batyushkov (1787–1855) was one of Pushkin’s predecessors from whom he learned standards of harmony and precision.

  9. planting cabbages, like Horace: Planting cabbages’ is taken from the French planter des (ses) choux, meaning ‘to cultivate a rural life’, which Horace lauded on his withdrawal from Rome to a country estate given to him by Gaius Cilnius Maecenas, adviser to the emperor Augustus.

  10. cartel: A written challenge which the duellist’s second delivers to the former’s opponent. Lensky’s second is Zaretsky.

  11. And there it is – public opinion: Pushkin’s note 38: ‘A verse of Griboyedov’s.’ The verse comes from the comedy Woe from Wit (finished, but not published, in 1824) by Alexander Griboyedov (1795–1829) in which the hero, Chatsky, is hounded by the rumour that he is mad. Only fragments of the play were published during the author’s lifetime. The whole play, still with cuts, appeared posthumously in 1833. Pushkin knew it from manuscripts which were widely circulated. The fact that Pushkin has not italicized the quotation means that he has assimilated it to his own viewpoint rather than treating it as a comment from outside.

  12. A temple or a thigh to claim: The duellist would aim at his opponent’s leg if he wished to satisfy his honour with a simple wound. He would aim at his head if he wished to kill him.

  13. [15, 16]: The omitted stanzas, 15 and 16, deal with the theme of jealousy.

  14. Delvig: Baron Anton Delvig (1798–1831), a minor poet, one of Pushkin’s closest friends and a classmate at the lycée.

  15. his verse… ready for your gaze: Every phrase of Lensky’s poem is a stereotype of contemporary elegiac poetry, including Pushkin’s own early verse, and translations from French and German poetry. Nevertheless, as elsewhere in the novel, parody blends with genuine feeling. The arrow’ in line 9 is not a poetic synonym for ‘bullet’, but a conventional literary euphemism for death.

  16. Romantic: By ‘Romantic’ Pushkin meant something more full-blooded and realistic, as he explains in his preface to his historical drama Boris Godunov. Obscurely’ and limply’ are terms used by Pushkin’s friend the poet Wilhelm Kükhelbeker (1797–1846) in his attack on elegiac poetry.

  17. Lepage’s fatal tubes: Jean Lepage (1779–1822) was a Parisian gunsmith.

  18. The pistols… to the place: A Lepage pistol had six edges on the outside of the barrel; the inside was smooth. Powder was poured into the barrel through the opening and secured with a wad. The bullets were inserted with the help of a mallet and ramrod. The flint, which was held in place by a special screw, was raised and tiny grains of powder were poured on to the pan, a steel shelf near an opening in the breech. The powder would burst into flame when struck and ignite the powder charge inside the barrel, causing the bullet to be fired. One of the seconds would load the pistols, while the other observed him.

  19. To call his people: Presumably inaccuracy on the part of Pushkin, since Onegin has brought no men with him, only Guillot.

  20. [38]: This omitted stanza reinforces the previous one by suggesting that Lensky might have become a Kutuzov (the Russian general who defeated Napoleon), a Nelson, a Napoleon in exile or a Ryleyev (Pushkin’s Decembrist friend) executed by Nicholas I on the gallows.

  21. But, reader… monument is laid: This stanza is written in a traditional elegiac mode. Lensky is buried here because, as a duellist, his grave is not allowed in consecrated ground.

  22. And wonders: ‘How did Olga suffer?’: It is Pushkin who is doing the wondering, since the townswoman has no idea who Olga, Tatiana and Onegin are.

  23. cherished… perished: Pushkin’s stock rhyme here is in Russian ‘sladost’/‘mladost’, ‘sweetness’/‘youth’ (he employs an archaic word for ‘youth’). I have substituted ‘cherish’/‘perish’ because these are hackneyed Romantic terms in English and are often used by Pushkin.

  24. my thirtieth year: Pushkin was twenty-eight when he wrote this stanza.

  25. In that intoxicating… together now: Pushkin points out in his note 40 that in the first edition of the novel the last two lines of stanza 46 were different and linked with another stanza, 47, all of which he quotes. This version reinforces the anger and satire of the previous stanza:

  Stanza 46, lines 13–14:

  Midst swaggerers bereft of soul,

  Midst fools who shine in very role,

  Stanza 47

  Midst children, crafty and faint-hearted,

  Spoiled and alive to every ruse,

  Ludicrous villains, dull, outsmarted

  And judges, captious and obtuse,

  Midst the coquettes, devout and fervent,

  Midst those who play the part of servant,

  Midst modish scenes that daily hail

  Polite, affectionate betrayal;

  Midst the forbidding dispensations

  Of cruel-hearted vanity,

  Midst the banal inanity

  Of schemes, of thoughts and conversations,

  In that intoxicating slough,

  Where, friends, we bathe together now.

  The last two lines are the same as the final couplet of the present stanza 46.

  CHAPTER VII

  1. Dmitriyev… Baratynsky… Griboyedov: The first epigraph is from Ivan Dmitriev’s (1760–1837) poem The Liberation of Moscow (1795), the second from Baratynsky’s The Feasts, the third from Griboyedov’s Woe from Wit. Dmitriev’s poem is an official ode. Baratynsky’s gives an ironic representation of private mores. Griboyedov’s play, banned by the censor, is a biting satire on Moscow social life. Together they symbolize three contradictory aspects of contemporary Moscow.

  2. Lyovshin: Vasily Lyovshin (1746–1826), a Tula landowner and prolific author of a vast range of subjects. Known in the 1820s for his books Flower Gardens and Vegetable Gardens and A Manual of Agriculture (1802–4). The school’s ‘fledglings’ are gentry and country landowners.

  3.Priam: Last king of Troy, a venerable and kind ruler.

  4. ‘tomfoolery’: A simple card game, played today in Russia mainly by children.

  5. a cast-iron statuette… hat: Certain to be Napoleon in classic pose.

  6. Juan and the Giaour: Poems by Byron.

  7. three novels of the hour: In a draft Pushkin refers to Melmoth
, René, Constant’s Adolphe’ as three novels which Onegin always took with him.

  8. Circe: Sorceress in Homer’s Odyssey who turns men into swine. Here the meaning is coquette’.

  9. philosophic measurement: The Russian has philosophic tables’, which is perhaps an ironic reference to Charles Dupin’s statistical tables’ showing the economic growth of European states including Russia in his book Forces productives et commerciales de la France (Paris, 1827), which was popular in Russia.

  10. automedons: Ironic reference to Achilles’ charioteer in the Iliad.

  11. Petrovsky Castle: Built in 1776, then rebuilt in 1840, the castle was roughly two miles from Moscow. Napoleon stopped here on his way to Moscow from St Petersburg. When the fire broke out in Moscow, he took up residence in the castle. The Larins followed the same route in their journey to Moscow, passing Petrovsky Castle on their left.

  12. turnpike pillars: The turnpike pillars belonged to a triumphal arch, celebrating victory over Napoleon, which was still unfinished when the Larins entered Moscow.

  13. street lamps: The streets were illumined by oil-lit lamps attached to striped pillars. These were lit at dusk and extinguished in the morning by a special staff. They gave out a dullish light.

  14. Bokharans: Originating in Bokhara, Central Asia, they sold Eastern goods in Russia. Their shawls were very popular among Russian women in the 1820s.

  15. Cossack messengers: Cossacks were employed to take errands by horse.

  16. gates where lions curl: Heraldic animals made of iron or alabaster and painted green with no connection to the sculpted lion, nor any necessary resemblance to a real one.

  17. Crosses where flocks of jackdaws swirl: According to the censor, the Metropolitan of Moscow took offence at Pushkin’s reference. The censor replied that, as far as he knew, jackdaws did indeed alight on church crosses, but that this was a matter for the Chief of Police, who allowed this to happen. The complaint went to the Tsar’s minister, Count Benkendorf, who politely advised the Metropolitan not to meddle in trivialities beneath his dignity.