I
“My uncle has most honest principles:
when he was taken gravely ill,
he forced one to respect him
4 and nothing better could invent.
To others his example is a lesson;
but, good God, what a bore to sit
by a sick person day and night, not stirring
What base perfidiousness
to entertain one half-alive,
adjust for him his pillows,
12 sadly serve him his medicine,
sigh — and think inwardly
when will the devil take you?”
II
as with post horses in the dust he flew,
by the most lofty will of Zeus
4 the heir of all his kin.
Friends of Lyudmila and Ruslan!
The hero of my novel,
without preambles, forthwith,
8 I'd like to have you meet:
Onegin, a good pal of mine,
was born upon the Neva's banks,
where maybe you were born,
12 or used to shine, my reader!
There formerly I too promenaded —
but harmful is the North to me.
1
III
Having served excellently, nobly,
his father lived by means of debts;
gave three balls yearly
4 and squandered everything at last.
Fate guarded Eugene:
at first, Madame looked after him;
8 The child was boisterous but charming.
Monsieur l'Abbé, a poor wretch of a Frenchman,
not to wear out the infant,
taught him all things in play,
12 bothered him not with stern moralization,
scolded him slightly for his pranks,
and to the Letniy Sad took him for walks.
IV
Then, when the season of tumultuous youth
for Eugene came,
season of hopes and tender melancholy,
4 Monsieur was ousted from the place.
Now my Onegin is at large:
hair cut after the latest fashion,
dressed like a London Dandy
2 —
8 and finally he saw the World.
In French impeccably
he could express himself and write,
danced the mazurka lightly, and
what would you more? The World decided
that he was clever and most charming.
V
All of us had a bit of schooling
in something and somehow:
hence in our midst it is not hard,
4 thank God, to flaunt one's education.
Onegin was, in the opinion
of many (judges resolute and stern),
a learned fellow but a pedant.
8 He had the happy talent,
without constraint, in conversation
slightly to touch on everything,
keep silent, with an expert's learned air,
12 during a grave discussion, and provoke
the smiles of ladies with the fire
of unexpected epigrams.
VI
Latin has gone at present out of fashion;
still, to tell you the truth,
he had enough knowledge of Latin
expatiate on Juvenal,
put at the bottom of a letter vale,
and he remembered, though not without fault,
8 two lines from the
Aeneid.
He had no inclination
to rummage in the chronological
dust of the earth's historiography,
12 but anecdotes of days gone by,
from Romulus to our days,
he did keep in his memory.
VII
Lacking the lofty passion not to spare
life for the sake of sounds,
an iamb from a trochee —
4 no matter how we strove — he could not tell apart.
Theocritus and Homer he disparaged,
but read, in compensation, Adam Smith,
and was a deep economist:
8 that is, he could assess the way
what it subsists upon, and why
it needs not gold
12 when it has got the simple product.
His father could not understand him,
and mortgaged his lands.
VIII
All Eugene knew besides
I have no leisure to recount;
but where he was a veritable genius,
4 what he more firmly knew than all the arts,
what since his prime had been to him
toil, torment, and delight,
what occupied the livelong day
8 his fretting indolence —
was the art of soft passion
which Naso sang,
wherefore a sufferer
12 his brilliant and unruly span
he ended, in Moldavia,
deep in the steppes, far from his Italy.
IX.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
X
How early he was able to dissemble,
conceal a hope, show jealousy,
shake one's belief, make one believe,
4 seem gloomy, pine away,
appear proud and obedient,
attentive or indifferent!
How languorously he was silent,
in letters of the heart, how casual!
With one thing breathing, one thing loving,
how self-oblivious he could be!
12 How quick and tender was his gaze,
bashful and daring, while at times
it shone with an obedient tear!
XI
How he was able to seem new,
in jest astonish innocence,
alarm with ready desperation,
capture the minute of softheartedness;
the prejudices of innocent years
conquer by means of wits and passion,
8 wait for involuntary favors,
beg or demand avowals,
eavesdrop upon a heart's first sound,
pursue love — and all of a sudden
12 obtain a secret assignation,
and afterward, alone with her,
amid the stillness give her lessons!
XII
How early he already could disturb
the hearts of the professed coquettes!
Or when he wanted to annihilate
how bitingly he'd tattle!
What snares prepare for them!
But you, blest husbands,
8 you remained friends with him:
him petted the sly spouse,
and the distrustful oldster,
12 and the majestical cornuto,
always pleased with himself,
his dinner, and his wife.
XIII. XIV.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
XV
It happened, he'd be still in bed
when little billets would be brought him.
What? Invitations? Yes, indeed,
4 to a soiree three houses bid him:
here, there will be a ball; elsewhere, a children's fete.
So whither is my scamp to scurry?
Whom will he start with? Never mind:
8 'tis simple to get everywhere in time.
Meanwhile, in morning dress,
having donned a broad bolivar
3,
Onegin drives to the boulevard
till vigilant Bréguet
to him chimes dinner.
XVI
'Tis dark by now. He gets into a sleigh.
The cry “Way, way!” resounds.
With frostdust silvers
To Talon's
4 he has dashed off: he is certain
that there already waits for him [Kavérin];
has entered — and the cork goes ceilingward,
8 the flow of comet wine spurts forth,
a bloody roast beef is before him,
and truffles, luxury of youthful years,
the best flower of French cookery,
12 and a decayless Strasbourg pie
between a living Limburg cheese
and a golden ananas.
XVII
Thirst is still clamoring for beakers
to drown the hot fat of the cutlets;
éguet's chime reports to them
4 that a new ballet has begun.
The theater's unkind
lawgiver; the inconstant
adorer of enchanting actresses;
8 an honorary citizen of the coulisses,
Onegin has flown to the theater,
where, breathing criticism,
each is prepared to clap an entrechat,
12 hiss Phaedra, Cleopatra,
call out Moëna — for the purpose
merely of being heard.
XVIII
A magic region! There in olden years
the sovereign of courageous satire,
sparkled Fonvízin, freedom's friend,
4 and imitational Knyazhnín;
there Ózerov involuntary tributes
of public tears, of plaudits
shared with the young Semyónova;
Corneille's majestic genius;
there caustic Shahovskóy brought forth the noisy
swarm of his comedies;
12 there, too, Didelot did crown himself with glory;
there, there, beneath the shelter of coulisses,
my young days sped.
XIX
My goddesses! What has become of you?
Where are you? Hearken to my woeful voice:
Are all of you the same? Have other maidens
4 taken your place without replacing you?
Am I to hear again your choruses?
Am I to see Russian Terpsichore's
soulful volation?
8 Or will the mournful gaze not find
familiar faces on the dreary stage,
and at an alien world having directed
a disenchanted lorgnette,
12 shall I, indifferent spectator
of merriment, yawn wordlessly
XX
By now the house is full; the boxes blaze;
parterre and stalls — all seethes;
in the top gallery impatiently they clap,
4 and, soaring up, the curtain swishes.
Resplendent, half ethereal,
obedient to the magic bow,
surrounded by a throng of nymphs,
while touching with one foot the floor,
gyrates the other slowly,
and lo! a leap, and lo! she flies,
12 she flies like fluff from Eol's lips,
now twines and now untwines her waist
and beats one swift small foot against the other.
XXI
All clap as one. Onegin enters:
he walks — on people's toes — between the stalls;
askance, his double lorgnette trains
4 upon the loges of strange ladies;
he has scanned all the tiers;
he's dreadfully displeased;
he has exchanged salutes; then at the stage
in great abstraction he has glanced,
has turned away, and yawned,
12 and uttered: “Time all were replaced;
ballets I long have suffered,
but even of Didelot I've had enough.”
5
XXII
Amors, diaboli, and dragons
still on the stage jump and make noise;
still at the carriage porch the weary footmen
4 on the pelisses are asleep;
still people have not ceased to stamp,
blow noses, cough, hiss, clap;
still, outside and inside,
8 lamps glitter everywhere;
still, chilled, the horses fidget,
bored with their harness,
and round the fires the coachmen curse their masters
and yet Onegin has already left;
he's driving home to dress.
XXIII
Shall I present a faithful picture
of the secluded cabinet,
where fashions' model pupil
4 is dressed, undressed, and dressed again?
Whatever, for the lavish whim,
London the trinkleter deals in
and o'er the Baltic waves to us
8 ships in exchange for timber and for tallow;
whatever hungry taste in Paris,
choosing a useful trade,
invents for pastimes,
12 for luxury, for modish mollitude;
all this adorned the cabinet
of a philosopher at eighteen years of age.
XXIV
Amber on Tsargrad's pipes,
porcelain and bronzes on a table,
and — joyance of the pampered senses —
combs, little files of steel,
straight scissors, curvate ones, and brushes
of thirty kinds —
8 these for the nails, those for the teeth.
Rousseau (I shall observe in passing) was unable
to understand how the dignified Grimm
dared clean his nails in front of him,
12 the eloquent crackbrain.
6
The advocate of liberty and rights
was in the present case not right at all.
XXV
One can be an efficient man —
and mind the beauty of one's nails:
why vainly argue with the age?
4 Custom is despot among men.
My Eugene, a second [Chadáev],
being afraid of jealous censures,
was in his dress a pedant
8 and what we've called a fop.
Three hours, at least,
and from his dressing room came forth
when, having donned a masculine attire,
the goddess drives to a masqued ball.
XXVI
With toilette in the latest taste
having engaged your curious glance,
I might before the learned world
4 describe here his attire;
this would, no doubt, be daring;
however, 'tis my business to describe;
but “dress coat,” “waistcoat,” “pantaloons” —
8 in Russian all these words are not;
in fact, I see (my guilt I lay before you)
that my poor idiom as it is
might be diversified much less
12 with words of foreign stock,
though I did erstwhile dip
into the Academic Dictionary.
XXVII
Not this is our concern at present:
whither headlong in a hack coach
4 already my Onegin has sped off.
In front of darkened houses,
alongst the sleeping street in rows
the twin lamps of coupés
8 pour forth a cheerful light
and project rainbows on the snow.
Studded around with lampions,
glitters a splendid house;
12 across its whole-glassed windows shadows move:
there come and go the profiled heads
of ladies and of modish quizzes.
XXVIII
Up to the porch our hero now has driven;
past the hall porter, like a dart,
he has flown up the marble steps,
4 has run his fingers through his hair,
has entered. The ballroom is full of people;
the music has already tired of dinning;
8 there's all around both noise and squeeze;
there clink the cavalier guard's spurs;
the little feet of winsome ladies flit;
upon their captivating tracks
and by the roar of violins is drowned
the jealous whispering of fashionable women.
XXIX
In days of gaieties and desires
I was mad about balls:
there is no safer spot for declarations
4 and for the handing of a letter.
O you, respected husbands!
I'll offer you my services;
pray, mark my speech:
You too, mammas: most strictly
follow your daughters with your eyes;
hold up your lorgnettes straight!
12 Or else... else — God forbid!
I have long ceased to sin.
XXX
Alas, on various pastimes I have wasted
a lot of life!
But to this day, if morals did not suffer,
I like riotous youth,
the crush, the glitter, and the gladness,
and the considered dresses of the ladies;
8 I like their little feet; but then 'tis doubtful
that in all Russia you will find
three pairs of shapely feminine feet.
Ah me, I long could not forget
12 two little feet!... Despondent, fervorless,
I still remember them, and in sleep they
disturb my heart.
XXXI
So when and where, in what desert, will you
forget them, madman? Little feet,
ah, little feet! Where are you now?
4 Where do you trample vernant blooms?
on the Northern sad snow
you left no prints:
8 you liked the sumptuous contact
of yielding rugs.
Is it long since I would forget for you
the thirst for fame and praises,
12 the country of my fathers, and confinement?
The happiness of youthful years has vanished
as on the meadows your light trace.
XXXII
Diana's bosom, Flora's cheeks, are charming,
dear friends! Nevertheless, for me
something about it makes more charming
4 the small foot of Terpsichore.
By prophesying to the gaze
an unpriced recompense,
with token beauty it attracts the willful
I like it, dear Elvina,
beneath the long napery of tables,
12 in winter on the hearth's cast iron,
on mirrory parquet of halls,
by the sea on granite of rocks.
XXXIII
I recollect the sea before a tempest:
how I envied the waves
running in turbulent succession
4 with love to lie down at her feet!
How much I wished then with the waves
to touch the dear feet with my lips!
No, never midst the fiery days
did I long with such anguish
to kiss the lips of young Armidas,
or the roses of flaming cheeks,
12 or bosoms full of languor —
no, never did the surge of passions
thus rive my soul!
XXXIV
I have remembrance of another time:
I hold the happy stirrup
4 and feel a small foot in my hand.
Again imagination seethes,
again that touch has kindled
the blood within my withered heart,
8 again the ache, again the love!
But 'tis enough extolling haughty ones
with my loquacious lyre:
they are not worth either the passions
12 or songs by them inspired;
the words and gaze of the said charmers
are as deceptive as their little feet.
XXXV
And my Onegin? Half asleep,
he drives from ball to bed,
while indefatigable Petersburg
4 is roused already by the drum.
The merchant's up, the hawker's out,
the cabby to the hack stand drags,
the Okhta girl hastes with her jug,
Morn's pleasant hubbub has awoken,
unclosed are shutters, chimney smoke
ascends in a blue column, and the baker,
12 a punctual German in a cotton cap,
has more than once already
opened his vasisdas.
XXXVI
But by the tumult of the ball fatigued,
and turning morning into midnight,
sleeps peacefully in blissful shade
4 the child of pastimes and of luxury.
He will awake past midday, and again
till morn his life will be prepared,
monotonous and motley, and tomorrow
8 'twill be the same as yesterday.
But was my Eugene happy —
free, in the bloom of the best years,
amidst resplendent conquests,
12 amidst delights of every day?
midst banquets to be rash and hale?
XXXVII
No, feelings early cooled in him.
Tedious to him became the social hum.
The fairs remained not long
4 the object of his customary thoughts.
Betrayals had time to fatigue him. Friends
and friendship palled,
since plainly not always could he
8 beefsteaks and Strasbourg pie
sluice with a champagne bottle
and scatter piquant sayings when
he had the headache;
12 and though he was a fiery scapegrace,
he lost at last his liking
for strife, saber and lead.
XXXVIII
A malady, the cause of which
'tis high time were discovered,
“spleen” —
4 in short, the Russian “chondria” —
possessed him by degrees.
To shoot himself, thank God,
he did not care to try,
8 but toward life became quite cold.
He like Childe Harold, gloomy, languid,
appeared in drawing rooms;
neither the gossip of the monde nor boston,
12 neither a winsome glance nor an immodest sigh,
nothing touched him;
he noticed nothing.
XXXIX. XL. XLI.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
XLII
Capricious belles of the grand monde!
and it is true that in our years
4 the upper
ton is rather tedious.
Although, perhaps, this or that dame
interprets Say and Bentham,
in general their conversation
8 is insupportable, though harmless tosh.
On top of that they are so pure,
so stately, so intelligent,
so full of piety,
12 so circumspect, so scrupulous,
so inaccessible to men,
that the mere sight of them begets the spleen.
7
XLIII
And you, young beauties, whom
at a late hour daredevil droshkies
carry away over the pavement
you also were abandoned by my Eugene.
Apostate from the turbulent delights,
8 yawning, took up a pen;
wanted to write; but persevering toil
to him was loathsome: nothing
from his pen issued, and he did not get
12 into the cocky guild of people
on whom I pass no judgment — for the reason
that I belong to them.
XLIV
And once again to idleness consigned,
oppressed by emptiness of soul,
he settled down with the laudable aim
4 to make his own another's mind;
he crammed a shelf with an array of books,
and read, and read — and all for nothing:
here there was dullness; there, deceit and raving;
8 this one lacked conscience; that one, sense;
on all of them were different fetters;
and outworn was the old, and the new raved
about the old.
12 As he'd left women, he left books
with funerary taffeta he curtained.
XLV
Having cast off the burden of the monde's conventions,
having, as he, from vain pursuits desisted,
with him I made friends at that time.
to dreams the involuntary addiction,
nonimitative oddity,
and sharp, chilled mind;
8 I was embittered, he was gloomy;
the play of passions we knew both;
on both, life weighed;
in both, the heart's glow had gone out;
12 for both, there was in store the rancor
of blind Fortuna and of men
at the very morn of our days.
XLVI
He who has lived and thought
cannot help in his soul despising men;
him who has felt disturbs
for him there are no more enchantments;
him does the snake of memories,
him does repentance gnaw.
great charm to conversation.
At first, Onegin's language
would disconcert me; but I grew
12 accustomed to his biting argument
and banter blent halfwise with bile
and virulence of somber epigrams.
XLVII
How oft in summertide, when limpid
and luminous is the nocturnal sky
above the Neva,
8 and the gay
does not reflect Diana's visage —
rememorating intrigues of past years,
rememorating a past love,
8 impressible, carefree again,
we mutely quaffed!
As to the greenwood from a prison
12 a slumbering clogged convict is transferred,
so we'd be carried off in fancy
to the beginning of young life.
XLVIII
With soul full of regrets,
and leaning on the granite,
Eugene stood pensive — as himself
4 the Poet
9 has described.
'Twas stillness all; only night sentries
to one another called,
and the far clip-clop of some droshky
8 resounded suddenly from Million Street;
only a boat, oars swinging,
swam on the dozing river,
and, in the distance, captivated us
12 a horn and a brave song.
is the strain of Torquato's octaves.
XLIX
Adrian waves,
O Brenta! Nay, I'll see you
and, filled anew with inspiration,
4 I'll hear your magic voice!
'Tis sacred to Apollo's nephews;
through the proud lyre of Albion
to me 'tis known, to me 'tis kindred.
8 In the voluptuousness of golden
Italy's nights at liberty I'll revel,
with a youthful Venetian,
now talkative, now mute,
12 swimming in a mysterious gondola;
with her my lips will find
the tongue of Petrarch and of love.
L
Will the hour of my freedom come?
'Tis time, 'tis time! To it I call;
I roam above the sea,
10 I wait for the right weather,
Under the cope of storms, with waves disputing,
on the free crossway of the sea
when shall I start on my free course?
8 'Tis time to leave the dull shore of an element
inimical to me,
and sigh, 'mid the meridian swell, beneath the
12 for somber Russia, where
I suffered, where I loved,
where I buried my heart.
LI
Onegin was prepared with me
to see strange lands;
but soon we were to be by fate
4 sundered for a long time.
'Twas then his father died.
Before Onegin there assembled
a greedy host of creditors.
8 Each has a mind and notion of his own.
Eugene, detesting litigations,
abandoned the inheritance to them,
12 perceiving no great loss therein,
or precognizing from afar
the demise of his aged uncle.
LII
All of a sudden he indeed
got from the steward
a report that his uncle was nigh death in bed
4 and would be glad to bid farewell to him.
Eugene, the sad epistle having read,
incontinently to the rendezvous
drove headlong, traveling post,
8 and yawned already in anticipation,
preparing, for the sake of money,
for sighs, boredom, and guile
(and 'tis with this that I began my novel);
12 but when he reached apace his uncle's manor,
he found him laid already on the table
as a prepared tribute to earth.
LIII
He found the grounds full of attendants;
came driving foes and friends,
4 enthusiasts for funerals.
The dead man was interred,
the priests and guests ate, drank,
and solemnly dispersed thereafter,
8 as though they had been sensibly engaged.
Now our Onegin is a rural dweller,
of workshops, waters, forests, lands,
absolute lord (while up to then he'd been
12 an enemy of order and a wastrel),
and very glad to have exchanged
his former course for something.
LIV
For two days new to him
seemed the secluded fields,
the coolness of the somber park,
4 the bubbling of the quiet brook;
by the third day, grove, hill, and field
did not engage him any more;
then somnolence already they induced;
that in the country, too, the boredom was the same,
although there were no streets, no palaces,
no cards, no balls, no verses.
12 The hyp was waiting for him on the watch,
and it kept running after him
like a shadow or faithful wife.
LV
I was born for the peaceful life,
for country quiet:
the lyre's voice in the wild is more resounding,
To harmless leisures consecrated,
I wander by a wasteful lake
and far niente
8 By every morn I am awakened
unto sweet mollitude and freedom;
little I read, a lot I sleep,
volatile fame do not pursue.
that in inaction, in the [shade],
I spent my happiest days?
LVI
Flowers, love, the country, idleness,
ye fields! my soul is vowed to you.
4 between Onegin and myself,
lest a sarcastic reader
or else some publisher
of complicated calumny,
repeat thereafter shamelessly
that I have scrawled my portrait
like Byron, the poet of pride
12 — as if we were no longer able
on any other subject than ourselves!
LVII
In this connection I'll observe: all poets
are friends of fancifying love.
It used to happen that dear objects
preserved their secret image;
the Muse revived them later:
thus I, carefree, would sing
8 a maiden of the mountains, my ideal,
From you, my friends, at present
not seldom do I hear the question:
12 “For whom does your lyre sigh?
To whom did you, among the throng
LVIII
Whose gaze, while stirring inspiration,
with a dewy caress rewarded
your pensive singing? Whom did your
Love's mad anxiety
I cheerlessly went through.
8 Happy who blent with it the fever
of rhymes: thereby the sacred frenzy
striding in Petrarch's tracks;
12 as to the heart's pangs, he allayed them
and meanwhile fame he captured too —
but I, when loving, was stupid and mute.
LIX
and the dark mind cleared up.
Once free, I seek again the concord
4 of magic sounds, feelings, and thoughts;
I write, and the heart does not pine;
next to unfinished lines,
8 feminine feet or heads;
extinguished ashes will not flare again;
I still feel sad; but there are no more tears,
12 will hush completely in my soul:
then I shall start to write a poem
in twenty-five cantos or so.
LX
I've thought already of a form of plan
Meantime, my novel's
4 first chapter I have finished;
all this I have looked over closely;
the inconsistencies are very many,
8 I shall pay censorship its due
and give away my labors' fruits
to the reviewers for devourment.
Be off, then, to the Neva's banks,
fame's tribute: false interpretations,
noise, and abuse!