Yevgeny Onegin Read online

  The chambers had high ceilings, they did,

  The parlour walls were well brocaded,

  Tsars’ portraits hung on every wall,

  The stoves bore coloured tiles. It all

  Looked rather down at heel and seedy—

  I’m not quite sure why this was so.

  In any case my friend had no

  Concern for this. He wasn’t greedy,

  And in all settings, fresh or worn,

  Ancient or modern, he would yawn.

  3

  A certain room drew him in deeper;

  Here the old chap had vilified

  For forty years his castle-keeper

  As he squashed flies and stared outside—

  A simple room with oak-wood floorage,

  A table, soft couch, decent storage,

  And not an ink-stain anywhere.

  Onegin scoured the cupboards; there

  He found a book, some sort of ledger,

  Home-made liqueurs in a long rack,

  Apple juice, and an almanac

  For eighteen-eight, a source of pleasure

  For one who’d had no time to look

  At any other kind of book.

  4

  Yevgeny cut a lonely figure

  Amidst his lands. To pass the time

  He thought of something: he would trigger

  Some changes, and reform this clime.

  These peasants, thought our wasteland prophet,

  Don’t like unpaid work—take them off it!

  Let them instead pay a small tax:

  They will thank Heaven, and relax.

  But this remission of serf labour

  Displeased the man next door, who viewed

  It as too risky. He was shrewd,

  As was another smirking neighbour.

  The locals shared one thought: “By God,

  That fellow’s dangerously odd.”

  5

  At first they came in droves to visit,

  But on the back porch he would pause

  Usually, wondering, “Who is it?”

  And seize the reins of his Don horse.

  A family carriage on the highway

  Would send him shooting down a byway.

  Outraged by conduct of this kind,

  They soon left friendliness behind.

  “He’s crazy, he’s a boor, a mason.

  Red wine is all he drinks. How crass!

  And always in a drinking glass!

  He won’t kiss ladies’ hands. Disgraceful!

  It’s ‘yes’ and ‘no’, but never ‘sir’.”

  And thus did all of them concur.

  6

  Into his village in that season

  Came a new landowner, a man

  Who gave the neighbourhood good reason

  For no less scrupulous a scan.

  This person was Vladímir Lénsky,

  Describable as “Göttingen-sky”,

  A handsome young chap in his prime,

  A devotee of Kant and rhyme.

  From misty Germany returning,

  Ardent and slightly odd, it seems,

  Replete with freedom-loving dreams

  And all the latest fruits of learning,

  He got excited, spoke with strength,

  And wore his black curls shoulder-length.

  7

  Society’s chilling excesses

  Had not yet shrivelled up his soul.

  A friendly greeting, girls’ caresses

  Still kept him feeling warm and whole.

  With silliness his heart was nourished,

  And false hope still within him flourished.

  The glamour of the world, the din,

  Seized his young mind and took it in.

  Amusement, fancy, taradiddle

  Relieved his heart of doubts and strife.

  For him the meaning of this life

  Remained a captivating riddle

  To which he often turned his mind,

  Suspecting wonders unconfined.

  8

  He knows there is a twin soul waiting

  To be united with him. She

  Repines with anguish, contemplating

  Each waiting day with misery;

  And friends, to whom he stands indebted,

  Will save his name and end up fettered

  Willingly, hesitating not

  To smash the slanderer with his pot.

  And some there are, guided by destiny,

  Whose sacred bond will one day slip

  Into immortal fellowship

  That beams a mighty luminescence

  Upon us (be assured of this),

  And furnishes the world with bliss.

  9

  Hot rage, compassion, with a dormant

  And spotless love for all things good,

  And glory with its lovely torment

  Obsessed him, stirring his young blood.

  He roamed the earth, and sang where Goethe

  And Schiller lived, striving to nurture

  The poet’s eagerness—a goal

  That captured and inflamed his soul.

  The very muses, though exalted,

  Were not disgraced by his young bliss

  Nor his proud poetry, nor this

  High sentiment that never faltered,

  The surge of dreams unspoilt and calm,

  Simplicity with its grave charm.

  10

  Love was what he, the lovelorn, played on,

  Singing the sweetest, clearest notes,

  Clear as the thoughts of a pure maiden,

  A sleeping babe, a moon that floats

  The night sky with its far-flung glories,

  Goddess of sighs and secret stories.

  He sang of partings and sad times,

  “The days of yore” and “misty climes”

  And roses—with romantic language.

  He sang of many a distant place

  Of quietude and restful space

  Where he had wept salt tears in anguish.

  He sang of fading life, as seen

  By a young man not quite eighteen.

  11

  Yevgeny would be just the person

  To say if he was any good.

  His low opinion could not worsen

  Of dining in the neighbourhood.

  He shunned the locals’ noisy chatter,

  However sensible its matter—

  Haymaking, wine production, with

  Much talk of kennels, kin and kith.

  They prattled with no show of feeling,

  No spark of poetry, no whit

  Of brightness, intellect or wit,

  No communality of dealings.

  Their sweet wives’ talk was less intense

  But even more devoid of sense.

  12

  Vladimir Lensky, rich, good-looking,

  Was deemed by all a splendid catch.

  The country folk were set on hooking

  Their girls a profitable match,

  In this case their “half-Russian” neighbour.

  If he dropped in, the talk would favour

  All comments, even if oblique,

  That painted bachelordom bleak.

  It’s teatime now, and Lensky’s coming.

  Dunya controls the samovar—

  “Go to it, Dunya, there you are!”

  Here’s a guitar, and to its strumming

  She screeches (what a caterwaul!),

  “Come to me in my golden hall.”

  13

  But Lensky, not exactly raging

  To bind himself in wedlock, sought

  Acquaintance with this man, Onegin;

  It can’t come fast enough, he thought.

  The two men met. Liquid and solid,

  Poetry–prose, ice-cold and torrid

  Are not more polarized than they.

  Their differences won the day

  At first; they simply bored each other.

  Then the
y drew closer. Far and wide,

  They rode out daily side by side,

  Each an inseparable brother.

  Thus friendships form (something I rue)

  From having nothing else to do.

  14

  But we exclude that kind of closeness.

  As our unbiased thinking runs,

  People are naughts, while, in our grossness,

  We see ourselves as number ones.

  We show Napoleon’s worst features.

  Millions of bipeds, fellow creatures,

  Exist for us to use as tools;

  Feelings we leave to beasts and fools.

  Yevgeny, though, was not unshakeable.

  Although he took, to all men born,

  An informed attitude of scorn,

  Nevertheless (since rules are breakable)

  With some he went against the grain

  And let his feelings have free rein.

  15

  He smiled at Lensky as he chattered.

  The poet’s language was ablaze;

  His mind, his judgement of what mattered,

  The inspiration in his gaze,

  Seemed to Onegin unfamiliar.

  His inward thoughts grew ever chillier,

  Though he fought hard and held them back,

  Thinking it stupid to attack

  And spoil this brief bliss with correction.

  “Time will enlighten him, not me.

  So let the man’s illusion be;

  Let him accept the world’s perfection.

  To youth and fervour let’s succumb,

  Young ardour and delirium.”

  16

  There was a good deal to divide them,

  And make them think as thinkers should:

  The compacts made by ancient tribesmen,

  How science works, evil and good,

  The age-old ways of superstition,

  The mystery of non-existence,

  Life, destiny, rose, as they must,

  Before these men to be discussed.

  The poet, holding forth with fervour,

  Forgot himself and made things worse

  By quoting bits of Nordic verse.

  Yevgeny was a kind observer;

  While understanding not a lot,

  He listened hard with all he’d got.

  17

  But passion was what dominated

  The minds of these reclusive chaps.

  From its strong force emancipated,

  Onegin spoke of this, perhaps

  With some regret (and sighs), as follows:

  “Blest he who in his passion wallows

  And then at last puts it aside.

  Twice blest is he who has denied

  And cooled both love (with separation)

  And enmity (with a sharp word),

  Yawning with friends and wife, unstirred

  By jealous agonies, too patient

  To put dynastic funds to use

  By risking all on one sly deuce!”

  18

  When we have hid beneath the banner

  Of sensible tranquillity,

  With ardour cooled in such a manner

  That we can view indulgently

  The lingering echoes of its surges—

  Its once unstoppable emergence,

  Brought down to earth with much ado,

  We sometimes like to listen to

  Wild passions as described by others.

  They thrill the heart. Thus, drawing near

  An old campaigner lends an ear

  To tales from young, mustachioed brothers,

  He long-neglected in his shack,

  They in their wisdom talking back.

  19

  But youthful ardour in its madness

  Hides nothing, leaves no room for doubt;

  Love, enmity, delight or sadness—

  Nothing will not come pouring out.

  For love deemed now beyond the column,

  Onegin listened and looked solemn,

  Hearing the poet, who confessed

  With eager, loving openness.

  His simple, unsuspecting conscience

  Stood openly revealed because

  Yevgeny saw it as it was,

  A young man’s tale of loving nonsense,

  A touching story, it is true,

  Characterized by nothing new.

  20

  Such love! No one would now bestow it,

  Not nowadays. It was unique,

  The frenzied spirit of a poet

  Condemned to love and languish, weak

  At all times, in all places, burning

  With dreams and a familiar yearning,

  Familiar anguish, as before.

  Neither the chill of distance nor

  Protracted years of separation,

  Nor hours devoted to the arts,

  Nor lovely sights in foreign parts,

  Nor study, nor wild celebration

  Had changed the nature of his soul,

  Still virginally warm and whole.

  21

  While still a lad, entranced by Olga

  And free from heartache, Lensky grew

  More and more happy to behold her

  Frolicking wild, as young girls do,

  And with the woodlands for their shelter

  He shared her scatty helter-skelter.

  Their fathers, neighbours and good pals,

  Had them down as connubials.

  Her dwelling was a humble chalet.

  Her parents saw her charm and were

  Delighted to consider her

  A hidden lily of the valley

  Mid the thick grass, for none to see,

  Safe from the moths and bumblebee.

  22

  She gave the poet his first promptings

  Of love’s young dream, delight, desire.

  The very thought of her did something

  To animate his doleful lyre.

  Leaving behind his golden playtime,

  He loved the dense woods in the daytime,

  The still, sequestered afternoon

  And night skies with the stars and moon,

  The moon, celestial luminary

  Resplendent through the evening gloom,

  Who strolls with us, the one to whom

  We once pledged joy, and pain, and worry…

  Though now it’s just a thing more bright

  Than our dim lanterns are at night.

  23

  Demure, compliant, all elated,

  Brimming with early-morning bliss,

  Like poets’ lives uncomplicated,

  As winsome as a lover’s kiss,

  Her sky-blue eyes so Anglo-Saxon,

  Her smiling face, her tresses flaxen,

  Her walk, her voice, her tiny waist…

  But, no… According to your taste,

  Take any novel at your leisure,

  And there she’ll be. The portrait’s fine;

  Though once a favourite of mine,

  It bores me now beyond all measure.

  Reader, with all respect to you,

  I’ll take the elder of the two.

  24

  Tatyana… It may seem audacious

  To introduce a name like hers

  Into this novel’s tender pages,

  But it is done; we are the first.

  So? It’s a good name, nice when spoken,

  And yet I know it’s more a token

  Of olden times or something fit

  For sculleries. We must admit

  Our taste is almost non-existent

  In choosing a becoming name.

  In poetry it’s just the same—

  Enlightenment is somewhat distant,

  Consistently an open door

  To affectation, nothing more.

  25

  Tatyana, then—a different creature,

  Lacking her sister’s radiance,

  Her rosiness, freshness of feature—

&n
bsp; Seemed hardly worth a second glance.

  Silent and gloomy, she would go like

  A shy thing from the wild woods, doe-like,

  And in the home she seemed to be

  A changeling in their family.

  Her parents, she could never thrill them

  With girlish cuddles. She, a child,

  Was temperamentally too mild

  To hop and skip with other children.

  And at the window she would spend,

  Silently staring, days on end.

  26

  She stayed the same right from the cradle,

  A friend of pensiveness, it seems.

  Dull country leisure she was able

  To ornament with her own dreams.

  She was too delicately fingered

  For needlework, and never lingered

  O’er canvas workframes of the ilk

  That called for fair designs in silk.

  Signs of tyrannical intention:

  A girl with her compliant doll

  Anticipates what must befall

  (Decorum, etiquette, convention),

  Rehearsing with her poppet—ah!—

  The strictures learnt from her mamma.

  27

  Tatyana gave no dolls a cuddle.

  She did not, even at that age,

  Discuss with dolly in a huddle

  The town, and what was “all the rage”.

  Frolicking girls tended to bore her.

  What she preferred were tales of horror,

  Dark deeds upon a winter’s night;

  These stories were her heart’s delight.

  Sometime her nurse enjoyed dispatching

  Her playmates down the open lawn,

  But Tanya would remain withdrawn

  And would not go chasing and catching.

  She found their raucous laughter dull,

  Their games a silly spectacle.

  28

  She loved to stand outside, her eyes on

  The east, the coming dawn of day,

  The pallor of the far horizon,

  Stars circling till they fade away.

  The earth’s dark margin softly eases,

  Morning is heralded in breezes,

  And daytime slowly gathers light.