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,