Eugene Onegin: A Novel in Verse (Oxford World's Classics) Page 14

  He felt it break with desperate grieving.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ She peered at him, intent.

  ‘It’s nothing.’ And away he went.

  20

  On coming home, the youth inspected

  His pistols; then he put them back.

  Undressed, by candle he selected

  A book of Schiller’s from the rack;

  But only one bright image holds him,

  One thought within his heart enfolds him:

  He sees before him, wondrous fair,

  His incandescent Olga there.

  He shuts the book and, with decision,

  Takes up his pen…. His verses ring

  With all the nonsense lovers sing;

  And feverish with lyric vision,

  He reads them out like one possessed,

  Like drunken Delvig* at a fest!

  2l

  By chance those verses haven’t vanished;

  I have them, and I quote them here:

  ‘Ah, whither, whither are ye banished,

  My springtime’s golden days so dear?

  What fate will morning bring my lyre?

  In vain my searching eyes enquire,

  For all lies veiled in misty dust.

  No matter; fate’s decree is just;

  And whether, pierced, I fall anointed,

  Or arrow passes by—all’s right:

  The hours of waking and of night

  Come each in turn as they’re appointed;

  And blest with all its cares the day,

  And blest the dark that comes to stay!

  22

  ‘The morning star will gleam tomorrow,

  And brilliant day begin to bloom;

  While I, perhaps, descend in sorrow

  The secret refuge of the tomb….

  Slow Lethe, then, with grim insistence,

  Will drown my memory’s brief existence;

  Of me the world shall soon grow dumb;

  But thou, fair maiden, wilt thou come!

  To shed a tear in desolation

  And think at my untimely grave:

  He loved me and for me he gave

  His mournful life in consecration! …

  Beloved friend, sweet friend, I wait,

  Oh, come, Oh, come, I am thy mate!’

  23

  He wrote thus—limply and obscurely.

  (We say ‘romantically’—although,

  That’s not romanticism, surely;

  And if it is, who wants to know?)

  But then at last, as it was dawning,

  With drooping head and frequent yawning,

  Upon the modish word ‘ideal’

  Vladimir gently dozed for real;

  But sleep had hardly come to take him

  Off to be charmed by dreams and cheered,

  When in that silent room appeared

  His neighbour, calling out to wake him:

  ‘It’s time to rise! Past six … come on!

  I’ll bet Onegin woke at dawn.’

  24

  But he was wrong; that idle sinner

  Was sleeping soundly even then.

  But now the shades of night grow thinner,

  The cock hails Vesper once again;

  Yet still Onegin slumbers deeply.

  But now the sun climbs heaven steeply,

  And gusting snowflakes flash and spin,

  But still Onegin lies within

  And hasn’t stirred; still slumber hovers

  Above his bed and holds him fast.

  But now he slowly wakes at last,

  Draws back the curtains and his covers,

  Looks out—and sees with some dismay,

  He’d better leave without delay.

  25

  He rings in haste and, with a racket,

  His French valet, Guillot, runs in—

  With slippers and a dressing jacket,

  And fresh new linen from the bin.

  Onegin, dressing in a flurry,

  Instructs his man as well to hurry:

  They’re leaving for the duelling place,

  Guillot’s to fetch the pistol case.

  The sleigh’s prepared; his pacing ceases;

  He climbs aboard and off they go.

  They reach the mill. He bids Guillot

  To bring Lepage’s deadly pieces;*

  Then has the horses, on command,

  Removed to where two oaklings stand.

  26

  Impatient, but in no great panic,

  Vladimir waited near the dam;

  Meanwhile Zaretsky, born mechanic,

  Was carping at the millstone’s cam.

  Onegin, late, made explanation.

  Zaretsky frowned in consternation:

  ‘Good God, man, where’s your second? Where?’

  In duels a purist doctrinaire,

  Zaretsky favoured stout reliance

  On proper form; he’d not allow

  Dispatching chaps just anyhow,

  But called for strict and full compliance

  With rules, traditions, ancient ways

  (Which we, of course, in him should praise).

  27

  ‘My second?’ said Eugene directly.

  ‘Why here he is: Monsieur Guillot,

  A friend of mine, whom you …correctly!

  Will be quite pleased to greet, I know;

  Though he’s unknown and lives obscurely,

  He’s still an honest chap, most surely.’

  Zaretsky bit his lip, well vexed.

  Onegin turned to Lensky next:

  ‘Shall we begin?’—‘At my insistence.’

  Behind the mill, without a word.

  And while the ‘honest chap’ conferred

  With our Zaretsky at a distance

  And sealed the solemn compact fast,

  The foes stood by with eyes downcast.

  28

  The foes! How long has bloodlust parted

  And so estranged these former friends?

  How long ago did they, warmhearted,

  Share meals and pastimes, thoughts and ends?

  And now, malignant in intention,

  Like ancient foes in mad dissension,

  As in a dreadful senseless dream,

  They glower coldly as they scheme

  In silence to destroy each other….

  Should they not laugh while yet there’s time,

  Before their hands are stained with crime?

  Should each not part once more as brother?…

  But enmity among their class

  Holds shame in savage dread, alas.

  29

  The gleaming pistols wake from drowsing.

  Against the ramrods mallets pound.

  The balls go in each bevelled housing.

  The first sharp hammer clicks resound.

  Now streams of greyish powder settle

  Inside the pans. Screwed fast to metal,

  The jagged flints are set to go.

  Behind a nearby stump Guillot

  Takes up his stand in indecision.

  The duellists shed their cloaks and wait.

  Zaretsky paces off their fate

  At thirty steps with fine precision,

  Then leads each man to where he’ll stand,

  And each takes pistol into hand.

  30

  ‘Approach at will!’ Advancing coldly,

  With quiet, firm, and measured tread,

  Not aiming yet, the foes took boldly

  The first four steps that lay ahead—

  Four fateful steps. The space decreasing,

  Onegin then, while still not ceasing

  His slow advance, was first to raise

  His pistol with a level gaze.

  Five paces more, while Lensky waited

  To close one eye and, only then,

  To take his aim…. And that was when

  Onegin fired! The hour fated

  Has struck at last: the poet stops

>   And silently his pistol drops.

  31

  He lays a hand, as in confusion,

  On breast and falls. His misted eyes

  Express not pain, but death’s intrusion.

  Thus, slowly, down a sloping rise,

  And sparkling in the sunlight’s shimmer,

  A clump of snow will fall and glimmer.

  Eugene, in sudden chill, despairs,

  Runs to the stricken youth … and stares!

  Calls out his name!—No earthly power

  Can bring him back: the singer’s gone,

  Cut down by fate at break of dawn!

  The storm has blown; the lovely flower

  Has withered with the rising sun;

  The altar fire is out and done! …

  32

  He lay quite still and past all feeling;

  His languid brow looked strange at rest.

  The steaming blood poured forth, revealing

  The gaping wound beneath his breast.

  One moment back—a breath’s duration—

  This heart still throbbed with inspiration;

  Its hatreds, hopes, and loves still beat,

  Its blood ran hot with life’s own heat.

  But now, as in a house deserted,

  Inside it—all is hushed and stark,

  Gone silent and forever dark.

  The window boards have been inserted,

  The panes chalked white. The owner’s fled;

  But where, God knows. All trace is dead.

  33

  With epigrams of spite and daring

  It’s pleasant to provoke a foe;

  It’s pleasant when you see him staring—

  His stubborn, thrusting horns held low—

  Unwillingly within the mirror,

  Ashamed to see himself the clearer;

  More pleasant yet, my friends, if he

  Shrieks out in stupid shock: that’s me!

  Still pleasanter is mute insistence

  On granting him his resting place

  By shooting at his pallid face

  From some quite gentlemanly distance.

  But once you’ve had your fatal fun,

  You won’t be pleased to see it done.

  34

  And what would be your own reaction

  If with your pistol you’d struck down

  A youthful friend for some infraction:

  A bold reply, too blunt a frown,

  Some bagatelle when you’d been drinking;

  Or what if he himself, not thinking,

  Had called you out in fiery pride?

  Well, tell me: what would you … inside

  Be thinking of… or merely feeling,

  Were your good friend before you now,

  Stretched out with death upon his brow,

  His blood by slow degrees congealing,

  Too deaf and still to make reply

  To your repeated, desperate cry?

  35

  In anguish, with his heart forsaken,

  The pistol in his hand like lead,

  Eugene stared down at Lensky, shaken.

  His neighbour spoke: ‘Well then, he’s dead.’

  The awful word, so lightly uttered,

  Was like a blow. Onegin shuddered,

  Then called his men and walked away.

  Zaretsky, carefully, then lay

  The frozen corpse on sleigh, preparing

  To drive the body home once more.

  Sensing the dreadful load they bore,

  The horses neighed, their nostrils flaring,

  And wet the metal bit with foam,

  Then swift as arrows raced for home.

  36

  You mourn the poet, friends … and rightly:

  Scarce out of infant clothes and killed!

  Those joyous hopes that bloomed so brightly

  Now doomed to wither unfulfilled!

  Where now the ardent agitation,

  The fine and noble aspiration

  Of youthful feeling, youthful thought,

  Exalted, tender, boldly wrought?

  And where are stormy love’s desires,

  The thirst for knowledge, work, and fame,

  The dread of vice, the fear of shame?

  And where are you, poetic fires,

  You cherished dreams of sacred worth

  And pledge of life beyond this earth!

  37

  It may be he was born to fire

  The world with good, or earn at least

  A gloried name; his silenced lyre

  Might well have raised, before it ceased,

  A call to ring throughout the ages.

  Perhaps, upon the world’s great stages,

  He might have scaled a lofty height.

  His martyred shade, condemned to night,

  Perhaps has carried off forever

  Some sacred truth, a living word,

  Now doomed by death to pass unheard;

  And in the tomb his shade shall never

  Receive our race’s hymns of praise,

  Nor hear the ages bless his days.

  (38) 39

  Or maybe he was merely fated

  To live amid the common tide;

  And as his years of youth abated,

  The flame within him would have died.

  In time he might have changed profoundly,

  Have quit the Muses, married soundly;

  And in the country he’d have worn

  A quilted gown and cuckold’s horn,

  And happy, he’d have learned life truly;

  At forty he’d have had the gout,

  Have eaten, drunk, grown bored and stout,

  And so decayed, until he duly

  Passed on in bed … his children round,

  While women wept and doctors frowned.

  40

  However, reader, we may wonder …

  The youthful lover’s voice is stilled,

  His dreams and songs all rent asunder;

  And he, alas, by friend lies killed!

  Not far from where the youth once flourished

  There lies a spot the poet cherished:

  Two pine trees grow there, roots entwined;

  Beneath them quiet streamlets wind,

  Meand’ring from the nearby valley.

  And there the ploughman rests at will

  And women reapers come to fill

  Their pitchers in the stream and dally;

  There too, within a shaded nook,

  A simple stone adjoins the brook.

  41

  Sometimes a shepherd sits there waiting

  (Till on the fields, spring rains have passed)

  And sings of Volga fishers, plaiting

  His simple, coloured shoes of bast;

  Or some young girl from town who’s spending

  Her summer in the country mending—

  When headlong and alone on horse

  She races down the meadow course,

  Will draw her leather reins up tightly

  To halt just there her panting steed;

  And lifting up her veil, she’ll read

  The plain inscription, skimming lightly;

  And as she reads, a tear will rise

  And softly dim her gentle eyes.

  42

  And at a walk she’ll ride, dejected,

  Into the open field to gaze,

  Her soul, despite herself, infected

  By Lensky’s brief, ill-fated days.

  She’ll wonder too: ‘Did Olga languish?

  Her heart consumed with lasting anguish?

  Or did the time of tears soon pass?

  And where’s her sister now, poor lass?

  And where that gloomy, strange betrayer,

  The modish beauty’s modish foe,

  That recluse from the world we know—

  The youthful poet’s friend and slayer?’

  In time, I promise, I’ll not fail

  To tell you all in full detail
.

  43

  But not today. Although I cherish

  My hero and of course I vow

  To see how he may wane or flourish,

  I’m not quite in the mood just now.

  The years to solemn prose incline me;

  The years chase playful rhyme behind me,

  And I—alas, I must confess—

  Pursue her now a good deal less.

  My pen has lost its disposition

  To mar the fleeting page with verse;

  For other, colder dreams I nurse,

  And sterner cares now seek admission;

  And mid the hum and hush of life,

  They haunt my soul with dreams of strife.

  44

  I’ve learned the voice of new desires

  And come to know a new regret;

  The first within me light no fires,

  And I lament old sorrows yet.

  O dreams! Where has your sweetness vanished?

  And where has youth (glib rhyme) been banished?

  Can it be true, its bloom has passed,

  Has withered, withered now at last?

  Can it be true, my heyday’s ended—

  All elegiac play aside—

  That now indeed my spring has died

  (As I in jest so oft pretended)?

  And is there no return of youth?

  Shall I be thirty soon, in truth?

  45

  And so, life’s afternoon has started,

  As I must now admit, I see.

  But let us then as friends be parted,

  My sparkling youth, before you flee!

  I thank you for your host of treasures,

  For pain and grief as well as pleasures,

  For storms and feasts and worldly noise,

  For all your gifts and all your joys;

  My thanks to you. With you I’ve tasted,

  Amid the tumult and the still,

  Life’s essence … and enjoyed my fill.

  Enough! Clear-souled and far from wasted,

  I start upon an untrod way

  To take my rest from yesterday.

  46

  But one glance back. Farewell, you bowers,