Eugene Onegin Read online

  I’ve scrutinized it all for any

  Discrepancies – and there are many,

  But any wish to change them now

  My publisher will not allow

  (see Chapter One, stanza 60)

  NOTES

  1. poetry of grammar: See Roman Jakobson, Verbal Art, Verbal Sign, Verbal Time (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985), pp. 37–47.

  2. ‘nakedness’ in prose: Pushkin talks of ‘the charm of naked simplicity’, Polnoye sobranie sochinenii, izd. AN SSSR (1937–50), vol. 11, p. 121.

  3. Eugene Onegin, trans. Charles Johnston (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977).

  4. Evgeny Onegin, trans. Oliver Elton (London: The Pushkin Press, 1943).

  5. A. D. Briggs produced a ‘revised translation’ in 1995, which does not essentially change the nature of Elton’s version (Alexander Pushkin, Yevgeny Onegin, edited with revised translation by A. D. P. Briggs, based on a translation by Oliver Elton, illustrated by M. V. Dobujinsky (London: Everyman, 1995)).

  6. John Bayley, Pushkin: A Comparative Commentary (London: Cambridge University Press, 1971).

  7. Viktor Shklovsky, Ocherki po Poetike Pushkina, Evgeny Onegin (Pushkin i Stern) (Berlin: Epokha, 1923), pp. 199–220.

  8. Eugene Onegin: A Novel in Verse, translated from the Russian with a Commentary by Vladimir Nabokov (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964).

  9. Eugene Onegin: A Novel in Verse, trans. Douglas Hofstadter (New York: Basic Books, 1999).

  10. to adapt the rhythms… verbal contortions: James E. Falen, Alexander Pushkin: A Novel in Verse (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. xxviii.

  A NOTE ON THE MAP

  The suggested location of the characters’ estates is imaginary, but the descriptions of Onegin’s estate in the first stanza of Chapter II and stanza 15 of Chapter VII (when Tatiana visits his manor house) reflect Pushkin’s family estate at Mikhailovskoye. For an alternative location see Nabokov’s Commentary, Eugene Onegin, vol. 2, p. 31 and vol. 3, pp. 111–12.

  Kishinev, Odessa, Mikhailovskoye, Moscow, St Petersburg and Boldino were the main places where Pushkin wrote Onegin (see Introduction).

  Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Astrakhan, the Caucasus and the Crimea are the stages of Onegin’s journey.

  EUGENE ONEGIN

  A Novel in Verse

  Pétri de vanité il avait encore plus de cette espéce d’orgueil qui fait avouer avec la meˆme indifférence les bonnes commeles mauvaises actions, suite d’un sentiment de supériorité, peut-eˆtre imaginaire.

  Tire´ d’une lettre particuliére.1

  Dedication1

  Tired of amusing proud society,

  Grown fonder of my friends’ regard,

  I would have wanted with due piety

  To offer you a pledge, dear bard,

  More worthy of your soul’s perfection,

  Full of a holy reverie,

  Of poetry and clear reflection,

  Of high thoughts and simplicity;

  But so be it – let your affection

  Accept these chapters and their rhymes,

  Half-comic and half-melancholic,

  Ideal and down-to-earth bucolic,

  The careless fruit of leisure times,

  Of sleepless nights, light inspirations,

  Of immature and withered years,

  The intellect’s cold observations,

  The heart’s impressions marked in tears.

  CHAPTER I

  And it hurries to live and it hastens to feel.

  Prince Vyazemsky1

  I

  My uncle is a man of honour,

  When in good earnest he fell ill,

  He won respect by his demeanour

  And found the role he best could fill.

  Let others profit by his lesson,

  But, oh my God, what desolation

  To tend a sick man day and night

  And not to venture from his sight!

  What shameful cunning to be cheerful

  With someone who is halfway dead,

  To prop up pillows by his head,

  To bring him medicine, looking tearful,

  To sigh – while inwardly you think:

  When will the devil let him sink?

  2

  Reflecting thus, a youthful scapegrace,

  By lofty Zeus’s2 will the heir

  Of all his kinsfolk, in a post-chaise,

  Flew headlong through the dusty air.

  Friends of Ruslan and of Lyudmila3

  Let me acquaint you with this fellow,

  The hero of my novel, pray,

  Without preamble or delay:

  My friend Onegin was begotten

  By the Neva, where maybe you

  Originated, reader, too

  Or where your lustre’s not forgotten:

  I liked to stroll there formerly,

  But now the North’s unsafe for me.4

  3

  Having retired from noble service,

  His father lived on borrowed cash,

  He gave three balls a year, impervious

  And lost all in a final crash.

  Eugene was saved by fate’s decision:

  Madame took on his supervision,

  Then to Monsieur passed on her trust.5

  The child had charm, though boisterous.

  Monsieur l’Abbé, a threadbare Frenchman,

  Made light of everything he taught

  For fear of getting Eugene fraught;

  Of stern morality no henchman,

  He’d mildly check a boyish lark

  And walked him in the Summer Park.6

  4

  But when young Eugene reached the morrow

  Of adolescent turbulence,

  Season of hopes and tender sorrow,

  Monsieur was straightway driven hence.

  Behold my Eugene’s liberation:

  With hair trimmed to the latest fashion,

  Dressed like a London dandy, he

  At last saw high society.

  In French, which he’d by now perfected,

  He could express himself and write,

  Dance the mazurka, treading light

  And bow in manner unaffected.

  What more? Society opined:

  Here was a youth with charm and mind.

  5

  We’ve all learned through our education

  Some few things in some random way;

  Thank God, then, it’s no tribulation

  To put our knowledge on display.

  Onegin was to many people

  (Who judged him by the strictest scruple)

  A pedant, yet an able lad.

  He was by fortune talented

  At seeming always to be curious,

  At touching lightly on a thing,

  At looking wise and listening,

  When argument became too serious,

  And, with a sudden epigram,

  At setting ladies’ smiles aflame.

  6

  Custom no longer favours Latin:

  The truth, therefore, was plain enough –

  That he was able with a smattering

  To puzzle out an epigraph,

  To talk of Juvenal7 or set a

  Concluding vale to a letter;

  From the Aeneid8 a verse or two,

  Not without fault, he also knew.

  He did not have the scholar’s temper

  In dusty chronicles to trace

  The story of the human race:

  But anecdotes he did remember

  Of bygone times, which he’d relay,

  From Romulus until this day.

  7

  The lofty passion not possessing,

  That sacrifices life to rhyme,

  He could, no matter how we pressed him,

  Not tell a trochee from an iamb,

  Homer,9 Theocritus10 he rubbished,

  But Adam Smith11 instead he relished,

  And was a great economist.

  That is, he knew how states subsist
,

  Acquire their wealth, and what they live on

  And why they can dispense with gold,

  When, in the land itself they hold

  The simple product12 ready given.

  His father could not understand,

  And mortgaged, therefore, all his land.

  8

  What Eugene knew of in addition

  I have no leisure to impart,

  But where he showed true erudition,

  More than in any other art,

  What from his early adolescence

  Had brought him bliss and painful lessons,

  What all day long would occupy

  His aching inactivity –

  This was the art of tender passion,

  That Ovid13 sang and paid for dear,

  Ending his brilliant, wild career

  In banishment and deportation

  To far Moldavia’s steppes, where he

  Pined for his native Italy.

  [9]14

  10

  How soon he learned the skill of feigning,

  Of seeming jealous, hiding hope,

  Inspiring faith and undermining,

  Appearing sombre and to mope,

  Now acting proud and now submissive,

  By turns attentive and dismissive!

  How languid, when no word he said,

  How fiery, when he spoke, instead,

  In letters of the heart how casual!

  Loving one thing exclusively,

  How self-forgetting he could be!

  How rapid was his look and bashful,

  Tender and bold, while off and on

  With an obedient tear it shone.

  11

  What talent for appearing novel,

  Causing with feigned despair alarm,

  Jesting to make the guileless marvel,

  Flattering to entertain and charm,

  Pouncing upon a moment’s weakness,

  Subduing innocence and meekness

  With passion and intelligence,

  Expecting certain recompense,

  Begging, demanding declarations,

  Eavesdropping on the heart’s first sound,

  Chasing his love, and, in a bound,

  Snatching clandestine assignations…

  And later in tranquillity

  Giving her lessons privately!

  12

  How soon he knew how to bedevil

  The heart of a professed coquette!

  Or, to annihilate a rival,

  How bitingly he would beget

  A train of malice, spite and slander!

  What snares he’d set to make him founder!

  But you, blest husbands, you remained

  His friends and kept him entertained:

  The cunning spouse, a Faublas15 pupil,

  Was eager to become his man,

  So, too, the wary veteran,

  And the grand cuckold, without scruple,

  Forever satisfied with life,

  His dinner and adoring wife.

  [13, 14]

  15

  Sometimes, when still in bed he drowses,

  Notelets are brought to greet the day –

  What? Invitations? Yes, three houses

  Inviting him to a soirée:

  A ball here, there a children’s evening,

  For which will my young scamp be leaving?

  With which begin? It matters not:

  He’ll be wherever on the dot.

  Meanwhile, apparelled for the morning

  And, donning a broad bolivar,16

  Onegin to the boulevard

  Drives out and strolls, at leisure swanning,

  Until Bréguet17 with watchful chime

  Rings out that it is dinner time.

  16

  It’s dark: into a sleigh he settles.

  The cry resounds: ‘Away, away’;18

  Upon his beaver collar, petals

  Of frostdust form a silver spray.

  Off to Talon’s:19 he’s sure that therein,

  Waiting for him, he’ll find Kaverin.20

  He enters: cork to ceiling goes

  And comet wine21 spurts forth and flows,

  Bloody roast beef22 is there to savour,

  And truffles, young men’s luxury,

  The bouquet of French cookery,

  And Strasbourg pie, that keeps for ever,23

  Between a golden ananas24

  And Limburg cheese’s living mass.25

  17

  Thirst still replenishes the beakers

  To down hot cutlets one by one,

  But Bréguet tells the pleasure seekers

  Of a new ballet that’s begun.

  The theatre’s heartless legislator,

  Fickle adorer and spectator

  Of actresses, who are the rage,

  An honoured citizen backstage,

  Onegin flies off to the theatre,

  Where liberty’s admirers26 are

  Prepared to clap an entrechat,

  To hiss off Cleopatra, Phaedra,

  Call for Moëna27 (in a word,

  Make sure their voices can be heard).

  18

  Enchanting world! There shone Fonvizin,28

  Bold king of the satiric scene,

  A friend of liberty and reason,

  And there shone copycat Knyazhnin.29

  There, Ozerov30 shared the elation

  Of public tears and acclamation

  With young Semyonova; there our

  Katenin31 reproduced the power

  of Corneille’s genius; there the scathing

  Prince Shakhovskoy32 delivered his

  Resounding swarm of comedies;

  There was Didelot,33 in glory bathing;

  There, in the wings that gave me shelter,

  My youthful days sped helter-skelter.

  19

  My goddesses! Where now? Forsaken?

  Oh hearken to my call, I rue:

  Are you the same? Have others taken

  Your place without replacing you?

  When shall I listen to your chorus,

  Behold in soul-filled flight before us

  Russia’s Terpsichore34 again?

  Or will my mournful gaze in vain

  Seek a known face on dreary stages,

  And, with my disabused lorgnette

  Upon an alien public set,

  Indifferent to its latest rages,

  Shall I in silence yawn and cast

  My mind back to a bygone past?

  20

  The house is full; the boxes brilliant;

  Parterre and stalls – all seethe and roar;

  Up in the gods they clap, ebullient,

  And, with a swish, the curtains soar.

  Semi-ethereal and radiant,

  To the enchanting bow obedient,

  Ringed round by nymphs, Istomina35

  Stands still; one foot supporting her,

  She circles slowly with the other,

  And lo! a leap, and lo! she flies,

  Flies off like fluff across the skies,

  By Aeolus36 wafted hither thither;

  Her waist she twists, untwists; her feet

  Against each other swiftly beat.

  21

  Applause all round. Onegin enters,

  Treading on toes at every stall,

  Askew, his double eyeglass centres

  On ladies whom he can’t recall;

  At boxes, at the tiers he gazes;

  With all the finery and faces

  He’s dreadfully dissatisfied;

  Bows to the men on every side

  And, in profound abstraction pacing,

  Looks at the stage, then turns away –

  And yawns, exclaiming with dismay:

  ‘The whole damn lot there need replacing.

  I’ve suffered ballets long enough,

  And even Didelot’s boring stuff.’37

  22

  Still cupids, devils, snakes keep leapingr />
  Across the stage with noisy roars;

  And weary footmen still are sleeping

  On furs at the theatre doors;

  There’s coughing still and stamping, slapping,

  Blowing of noses, hissing, clapping;

  Still inside, outside, burning bright,

  The lamps illuminate the night;

  And still in harness shivering horses

  Fidget, while coachmen round a fire,

  Beating their palms together, tire,

  Reviling masters with their curses;

  Already, though, Onegin’s gone

  To put some new apparel on.

  23

  Shall I attempt to picture truly

  The secret and secluded den

  Where fashion’s model pupil duly

  Is dressed, undressed and dressed again?

  Whatever trinket-dealing London

  To satisfy our whims abundant

  Exports across the Baltic flood,

  Exchanging it for tallow, wood;

  Whatever Paris, in its hunger,

  Having made taste an industry,

  Invents for our frivolity,

  For luxury and modish languor –

  These graced, at eighteen years of age,

  The study of our youthful sage.

  24

  Pipes from Tsargrad,38 inlaid with amber,

  Bronzes and china on a stand,

  Perfumes39 in crystal vials to pamper

  The senses of a gentleman;

  Combs, little files of steel, and scissors,

  Straight ones and curved, and tiny tweezers,

  And thirty kinds of brush to clean

  The nails and teeth, and keep their sheen.