Eugene Onegin: A Novel in Verse (Oxford World's Classics) Page 18

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  And here’s a chap whose words are biting,

  Who’s cross with everything about:

  With tea too sweet to be inviting,

  With banal ladies, men who shout,

  That foggy book they’re all debating,

  The badge on those two maids-in-waiting,*

  The falsehoods in reviews, the war,

  The snow, his wife, and much, much more.

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  And here’s Prolázov,* celebrated

  For loathesomeness of soul—a clown,

  As you, Saint-Priest,* have demonstrated

  In album drawings all through town.

  Another ballroom king on station

  (Like fashion’s very illustration)

  Beside the door stood tightly laced,

  Immobile, mute, and cherub-faced;

  A traveller home from distant faring,

  A brazen chap all starched and proud,

  Provoked amusement in the crowd

  By his pretentious, studied bearing:

  A mere exchange of looks conveyed

  The sorry sight the fellow made.

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  But my Eugene all evening heeded

  Tatyana … only her alone:

  But not the timid maid who’d pleaded,

  That poor enamoured girl he’d known—

  But this cool princess so resplendent,

  This distant goddess so transcendent,

  Who ruled the queenly Néva’s shore.

  Alas! We humans all ignore

  Our Mother Eve’s disastrous history:

  What’s given to us ever palls,

  Incessantly the serpent calls

  And lures us to the tree of mystery:

  We’ve got to have forbidden fruit,

  Or Eden’s joys for us are moot.

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  How changed Tatyana is! How surely

  She’s taken up the role she plays!

  How quick she’s mastered, how securely,

  Her lordly rank’s commanding ways!

  Who’d dare to seek the tender maiden

  In this serene and glory-laden

  Grande Dame of lofty social spheres?

  Yet once he’d moved her heart to tears!

  Her virgin brooding once had cherished

  Sweet thoughts of him in darkest night,

  While Morpheus still roamed in flight;

  And, gazing at the moon, she’d nourished

  A tender dream that she someday

  Might walk with him life’s humble way!

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  To love all ages yield surrender;

  But to the young its raptures bring

  A blessing bountiful and tender—

  As storms refresh the fields of spring.

  Neath passion’s rains they green and thicken,

  Renew themselves with joy, and quicken;

  And vibrant life in taking root

  Sends forth rich blooms and gives sweet fruit.

  But when the years have made us older,

  And barren age has shown its face,

  How sad is faded passion’s trace! …

  Thus storms in autumn, blowing colder,

  Turn meadows into marshy ground

  And strip the forest bare all round.

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  Alas! it’s true: Eugene’s demented,

  In love with Tanya like a boy;

  He spends each day and night tormented

  By thoughts of love, by dreams of joy.

  Ignoring reason’s condemnation,

  Each day he rides to take his station

  Outside her glassed-in entryway,

  Then follows her about all day.

  He’s happy just to be around her,

  To help her with her shawl or furs,

  To touch a torrid hand to hers,

  To part the footmen who surround her

  In liveried ranks where’er she calls,

  Or fetch her kerchief when it falls.

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  She pays him not the least attention,

  No matter what he tries to do;

  At home receives him without tension;

  In public speaks a word or two,

  Or sometimes merely bows on meeting,

  Or passes by without a greeting:

  She’s no coquette in any part—

  The monde abhors a fickle heart.

  Onegin, though, is fading quickly;

  She doesn’t see or doesn’t care;

  Onegin, wasting, has the air

  Of one consumptive—wan and sickly.

  He’s urged to seek his doctors’ view,

  And these suggest a spa or two.

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  But he refused to go. He’s ready

  To join his forebears any day;

  Tatyana, though, stayed calm and steady

  (Their sex, alas, is hard to sway).

  And yet he’s stubborn … still resistant,

  Still hopeful and indeed persistent.

  Much bolder than most healthy men,

  He chose with trembling hand to pen

  The princess an impassioned letter.

  Though on the whole he saw no sense

  In missives writ in love’s defence

  (And with good cause!), he found it better

  Than bearing all his pain unheard.

  So here’s his letter word for word.

  Onegin’s Letter to Tatyana

  I know you’ll feel a deep distress

  At this unwanted revelation.

  What bitter scorn and condemnation

  Your haughty glance may well express!

  What aims … what hopes do I envision

  In opening my soul to you?

  What wicked and deserved derision

  Perhaps I give occasion to!

  When first I met you and detected

  A warmth in you quite unexpected,

  I dared not trust in love again:

  I didn’t yield to sweet temptation

  And had, it’s true, no inclination

  To lose my hateful freedom then.

  What’s more: poor guiltless Lensky perished,

  And his sad fate drew us apart…

  From all that I had ever cherished

  I tore away my grieving heart;

  Estranged from men and discontented,

  I thought: in freedom, peace of mind,

  A substitute for joy I’d find.

  How wrong I’ve been! And how tormented!

  But no! Each moment of my days

  To see you and pursue you madly!

  To catch your smile and search your gaze

  With loving eyes that seek you gladly;

  To melt with pain before your face,

  To hear your voice … to try to capture

  With all my soul your perfect grace;

  To swoon and pass away … what rapture!

  And I’m deprived of this; for you

  I search on all the paths I wander;

  Each day is dear, each moment too!

  Yet I in futile dullness squander

  These days allotted me by fate …

  Oppressive days indeed of late.

  My span on earth is all but taken,

  But lest too soon I join the dead,

  I need to know when I awaken,

  I’ll see you in the day ahead….

  I fear that in this meek petition

  Your solemn gaze may only spy

  The cunning of a base ambition—

  And I can hear your stern reply.

  But if you knew the anguish in it:

  To thirst with love in every part,

  To burn—and with the mind each minute,

  To calm the tumult in one‘s heart;

  To long to clasp in adoration

  Your knees … and, sobbing at your feet,

  Pour out confessions, lamentation,

  Oh, all that I might then entreat! …

  And meantime, feigning re
signation,

  To arm my gaze and speech with lies:

  to look at you with cheerful eyes

  And hold a placid conversation!…

  But let it be: it’s now too late

  For me to struggle at this hour;

  The die is cast: I’m in your power,

  And I surrender to my fate.

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  No answer came. Eugene elected

  to write again … and then once more—

  With no reply. He drives, dejected,

  To some soirée … and by the door,

  Sees her at once! Her harshness stuns him!

  Without a word the lady shuns him!

  My god! How stern that haughty brow,

  What wintry frost surrounds her now!

  Her lips express determination

  To keep her fury in control!

  Onegin stares with all his soul:

  But where’s distress? Commiseration?

  And where the tearstains? … Not a trace!

  There’s wrath alone upon that face …

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  And, maybe, secret apprehension

  Lest monde or husband misconstrue

  An episode too slight to mention,

  The tale that my Onegin knew ….

  But he departs, his hopes in tatters,

  And damns his folly in these matters—

  And plunging into deep despond,

  He once again rejects the monde.

  And he recalled with grim emotion,

  Behind his silent study door,

  How wicked spleen had once before

  Pursued him through the world’s commotion,

  Had seized him by the collar then,

  And locked him in a darkened den.

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  Once more he turned to books and sages.

  He read his Gibbon and Rousseau;

  Chamfort, Manzoni, Herder’s pages;

  Madame de Staël, Bichat, Tissot.

  The sceptic Bayle he quite devoured,

  The works of Fontenelle he scoured;*

  He even read some Russians too,

  Nor did he scorn the odd review—

  Those journals where each modern Moses

  Instructs us in a moral way—

  Where I’m so much abused today,

  But where such madrigals and roses

  I used to meet with now and then:

  E sempre bene, gentlemen.

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  And yet—although his eyes were reading,

  His thoughts had wandered far apart;

  Desires, dreams, and sorrows pleading—

  Had crowded deep within his heart.

  Between the printed lines lay hidden

  Quite other lines that rose unbidden

  Before his gaze. And these alone

  Absorbed his soul … as he was shown:

  The heart’s dark secrets and traditions,

  The mysteries of its ancient past;

  Disjointed dreams—obscure and vast;

  Vague threats and rumours, premonitions;

  A drawn-out tale of fancies grand,

  And letters in a maiden’s hand.

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  But then as torpor dulled sensation,

  His feelings and his thoughts went slack,

  While in his mind Imagination

  Dealt out her motley faro pack.

  He sees a youth, quite still, reposing

  On melting snow—as if he’s dozing

  On bivouac; then hears with dread

  A voice proclaim: ‘Well then, he’s dead!’

  He sees forgotten foes he’d bested,

  Base cowards, slanderers full-blown,

  Unfaithful women he had known,

  Companions whom he now detested …

  A country house … a windowsill…

  Where she sits waiting… waiting still!

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  He got so lost in his depression,

  He just about went mad, I fear,

  Or else turned poet (an obsession

  That I’d have been the first to cheer!)

  It’s true: by self-hypnotic action,

  My muddled pupil, in distraction,

  Came close to grasping at that time

  The principles of Russian rhyme.

  He looked the poet so completely

  When by the hearth he’d sit alone

  And Benedetto* he’d intone

  Or sometimes Idol mio* sweetly—

  While on the flames he’d drop unseen

  His slipper or his magazine!

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  The days flew by. The winter season

  Dissolved amid the balmy air;

  He didn’t die, or lose his reason,

  Or turn a poet in despair.

  With spring he felt rejuvenated:

  The cell in which he’d hibernated

  So marmot-like through winter’s night—

  The hearth, the double panes shut tight—

  He quit one sparkling morn and sprinted

  Along the Neva’s bank by sleigh.

  On hacked-out bluish ice that lay

  Beside the road the sunlight glinted.

  The rutted snow had turned to slush;

  But where in such a headlong rush

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  Has my Eugene directly hastened?

  You’ve guessed already. Yes, indeed:

  The moody fellow, still unchastened,

  Has flown to Tanya’s in his need.

  He enters like a dead man, striding

  Through empty hall; then passes, gliding,

  Through grand salon. And on! … All bare.

  He opens up a door…. What’s there

  That strikes him with such awful pleading?

  The princess sits alone in sight,

  Quite unadorned, her face gone white

  Above some letter that she’s reading—

  And cheek in hand as down she peers,

  She softly sheds a flood of tears.

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  In that brief instant then, who couldn’t

  Have read her tortured heart at last!

  And in the princess then, who wouldn’t

  Have known poor Tanya from the past!

  Mad with regret and anguished feeling,

  Eugene fell down before her, kneeling;

  She shuddered, but she didn’t speak,

  Just looked at him—her visage bleak—

  Without surprise or indignation.

  His stricken, sick, extinguished eyes,

  Imploring aspect, mute replies—

  She saw it all. In desolation,

  The simple girl he’d known before,

  Who’d dreamt and loved, was born once more.

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  Her gaze upon his face still lingers;

  She does not bid him rise or go,

  Does not withdraw impassive fingers

  From avid lips that press them so.

  What dreams of hers were re-enacted?

  The heavy silence grew protracted,

  Until at last she whispered low:

  ‘Enough; get up. To you I owe

  A word of candid explanation.

  Onegin, do you still retain

  Some memory of that park and lane,

  Where fate once willed our confrontation,

  And I so meekly heard you preach?

  It’s my turn now to make a speech.

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  ‘Onegin, I was then much younger,

  I daresay better-looking too,

  And loved you with a girlish hunger;

  But what did I then find in you?

  What answer came? Just stern rejection.

  A little maiden’s meek affection

  To you, I’m sure, was trite and old.

  Oh God!—my blood can still turn cold

  When I recall how you reacted:

  Your frigid glance … that sermonette! …

  But I can’t blame you or forget

  How nobly in a
sense you acted,

  How right toward me that awful day:

  I’m grateful now in every way….

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  ‘Back then—far off from vain commotion,

  In our backwoods, as you’ll allow,

  You had no use for my devotion …

  So why do you pursue me now?

  Why mark me out for your attention?

  Is it perhaps my new ascension

  To circles that you find more swank;

  Or that I now have wealth and rank;

  Or that my husband, maimed in battle,

  Is held in high esteem at Court?

  Or would my fall perhaps be sport,

  A cause for all the monde to tattle—

  Which might in turn bring you some claim

  To social scandal’s kind of fame?

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  'I'm weeping…. Oh, at this late hour,

  If you recall your Tanya still,

  Then know—that were it in my power,

  I’d much prefer words harsh and chill,

  Stern censure in your former fashion—

  To this offensive show of passion,

  To all these letters and these tears.

  Oh then at least, my tender years

  Aroused in you some hint of kindness;

  You pitied then my girlish dreams….

  But now! … What unbecoming schemes

  Have brought you to my feet? What blindness!

  Can you, so strong of mind and heart,

  Now stoop to play so base a part?

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  ’To me, Onegin, all these splendours,

  This weary tinselled life of mine,

  This homage that the great world tenders,

  My stylish house where princes dine—

  Are empty. … I’d as soon be trading

  This tattered life of masquerading,

  This world of glitter, fumes, and noise,

  For just my books, the simple joys

  Of our old home, its walks and flowers,

  For all those haunts that I once knew …

  Where first, Onegin, I saw you;

  For that small churchyard’s shaded bowers,

  Where over my poor nanny now

  there stands a cross beneath a bough.

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  ‘And happiness was ours … so nearly!