Eugene Onegin: A Novel in Verse (Oxford World's Classics) Page 8
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So meanwhile, friends, enjoy your blessing:
This fragile life that hurries so!
Its worthlessness needs no professing,
And I’m not loathe to let it go;
I’ve closed my eyes to phantoms gleaming,
Yet distant hopes within me dreaming
Still stir my heart at times to flight:
I’d grieve to quit this world’s dim light
And leave no trace, however slender.
I live, I write—not seeking fame;
And yet, I think, I’d wish to claim
For my sad lot its share of splendour—
At least one note to linger long,
Recalling, like some friend, my song.
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And it may touch some heart with fire;
And thus preserved by fate’s decree,
The stanza fashioned by my lyre
May yet not drown in Lethe’s sea;
Perhaps (a flattering hope’s illusion!)
Some future dunce with warm effusion
Will point my portrait out and plead:
‘This was a poet, yes indeed!’
Accept my thanks and admiration,
You lover of the Muse’s art,
O you whose mind shall know by heart
The fleeting works of my creation,
Whose cordial hand shall then be led
To pat the old man’s laurelled head!
Chapter 3
Elle était fille, elle était
amoureuse.*
Malfilâtre
1
‘Ah me, these poets … such a hurry!’
‘Goodbye, Onegin … time I went.’
‘Well, I won’t keep you, have no worry,
But where are all your evenings spent?’
‘The Larin place.’—‘What reckless daring!
Good God, man, don’t you find it wearing
Just killing time that way each night?’
‘Why not at all.’—‘Well, serves you right;
I’ve got the scene in mind so clearly:
For starters (tell me if I’m wrong),
A simple Russian family throng;
The guests all treated so sincerely;
With lots of jam and talk to spare.
On rain and flax and cattle care….’
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‘Well, where’s the harm … the evening passes.’
‘The boredom, brother, there’s the harm.’
‘Well, I despise your upper classes
And like the family circle’s charm;
It’s where I find …’—’More pastoral singing!
Enough, old boy, my ears are ringing!
And so you’re off… forgive me then.
But tell me Lensky, how and when
I’ll see this Phyllis so provoking—
Who haunts your thoughts and writer’s quill,
Your tears and rhymes and what-you-will?
Present me, do.’—’You must be joking!’
’I’m not.’—’Well then, why not tonight?
They’ll welcome us with great delight.’
3
’Let’s go.’
And so the friends departed—
And on arrival duly meet
That sometimes heavy, but good-hearted,
Old-fashioned Russian welcome treat.
The social ritual never changes:
The hostess artfully arranges
On little dishes her preserves,
And on her covered table serves
A drink of lingonberry flavour.
With folded arms, along the hall,
The maids have gathered, one and all,
To glimpse the Larins’ brand new neighbour;
While in the yard their men reproach
Onegin’s taste in horse and coach.*
4
Now home’s our heroes’ destination,
As down the shortest road they fly;
Let’s listen to their conversation
And use a furtive ear to spy.
’Why all these yawns, Onegin? Really!’
’Mere habit, Lensky.’—’But you’re clearly
More bored than usual.’—’No, the same.
The fields are dark now, what a shame.
Come on, Andryúshka, faster, matey!
These stupid woods and fields and streams!
Oh, by the way, Dame Larin seems
A simple but a nice old lady;
I fear that lingonberry brew
May do me in before it’s through.’
5
’But tell me, which one was Tatyana?’
’Why, she who with a wistful air—
All sad and silent like Svetlana*—
Came in and took the window chair.’
’And really you prefer the other?’
’Why not?’—’Were I the poet, brother,
I’d choose the elder one instead—
Your Olga’s look is cold and dead,
As in some dull, Van Dyck madonna;
So round and fair of face is she,
She’s like that stupid moon you see,
Up in that stupid sky you honour.’
Vladimir gave a curt reply
And let the conversation die.
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Meanwhile … Onegin’s presentation
At Madame Larin’s country seat
Produced at large a great sensation
And gave the neighbours quite a treat.
They all began to gossip slyly,
To joke and comment (rather wryly);
And soon the general verdict ran,
That Tanya’d finally found a man;
Some even knowingly conceded
That wedding plans had long been set,
And then postponed till they could get
The stylish rings the couple needed.
As far as Lensky’s wedding stood,
They knew they’d settled that for good.
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Tatyana listened with vexation
To all this gossip; but it’s true
That with a secret exultation,
Despite herself she wondered too;
And in her heart the thought was planted…
Until at last her fate was granted:
She fell in love. For thus indeed
Does spring awake the buried seed.
Long since her keen imagination,
With tenderness and pain imbued,
Had hungered for the fatal food;
Long since her heart’s sweet agitation
Had choked her maiden breast too much:
Her soul awaited … someone’s touch.
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And now at last the wait has ended;
Her eyes have opened … seen his face!
And now, alas! … she lives attended—
All day, all night, in sleep’s embrace—
By dreams of him; each passing hour
The world itself with magic power
But speaks of him. She cannot bear
The way the watchful servants stare,
Or stand the sound of friendly chatter.
Immersed in gloom beyond recall,
She pays no heed to guests at all,
And damns their idle ways and patter,
Their tendency to just drop in—
And talk all day once they begin.
9
And now with what great concentration
To tender novels she retreats,
With what a vivid fascination
Takes in their ravishing deceits!
Those figures fancy has created
Her happy dreams have animated:
The lover of Julie Wolmár,*
Malék-Adhél* and de Linár,*
And Werther, that rebellious martyr,
And Grandison, the noble lord
(With whom today we’re rather bored)—
All these our dreamy maiden’
s ardour
Has pictured with a single grace,
And seen in all … Onegin’s face.
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And then her warm imagination
Perceives herself as heroïne—
Some favourite author’s fond creation:
Clarissa,* Julia,* or Delphine.*
She wanders with her borrowed lovers
Through silent woods and so discovers
Within a book her heart’s extremes,
Her secret passions, and her dreams.
She sighs … and in her soul possessing
Another’s joy, another’s pain,
She whispers in a soft refrain
The letter she would send caressing
Her hero … who was none the less
No Grandison in Russian dress.
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Time was, with grave and measured diction,
A fervent author used to show
The hero in his work of fiction
Endowed with bright perfection’s glow.
He’d furnish his beloved child—
Forever hounded and reviled—
With tender soul and manly grace,
Intelligence and handsome face.
And nursing noble passion’s rages,
The ever dauntless hero stood
Prepared to die for love of good;
And in the novel’s final pages,
Deceitful vice was made to pay
And honest virtue won the day.
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But now our minds have grown inactive,
We’re put to sleep by talk of ‘sin’;
Our novels too make vice attractive,
And even there it seems to win.
It’s now the British Muse’s fables
That lie on maidens’ bedside tables
And haunt their dreams. They worship now
The Vampire with his pensive brow,
Or gloomy Melmoth, lost and pleading,
The Corsair, or the Wandering Jew,
And enigmatic Sbogar* too.
Lord Byron, his caprice succeeding,
Cloaked even hopeless egotism
In saturnine romanticism.
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But what’s the point? I’d like to know it.
Perhaps, my friends, by fate’s decree,
I’ll cease one day to be a poet—
When some new demon seizes me;
And scorning then Apollo’s ire
To humble prose I’ll bend my lyre:
A novel in the older vein
Will claim what happy days remain.
No secret crimes or passions gory
Shall I in grim detail portray,
But simply tell as best I may
A Russian family’s age-old story,
A tale of lovers and their lot,
Of ancient customs unforgot.
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I’ll give a father’s simple greetings,
An aged uncle’s—in my book;
I’ll show the children’s secret meetings
By ancient lindens near the brook,
Their jealous torments, separation,
Their tears of reconciliation;
I’ll make them quarrel yet again,
But lead them to the altar then.
I’ll think up speeches tenderhearted,
Recall the words of passion’s heat,
Those words with which—before the feet
Of some fair mistress long departed—
My heart and tongue once used to soar,
But which today I use no more.
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Tatyana, O my dear Tatyana!
I shed with you sweet tears too late;
Relying on a tyrant’s honour,
You’ve now resigned to him your fate.
My dear one, you are doomed to perish;
But first in dazzling hope you nourish
And summon forth a sombre bliss,
You learn life’s sweetness … feel its kiss,
And drink the draught of love’s temptations,
As phantom daydreams haunt your mind:
On every side you seem to find
Retreats for happy assignations;
While everywhere before your eyes
Your fateful tempter’s figure lies.
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The ache of love pursues Tatyana;
She takes a garden path and sighs,
A sudden faintness comes upon her,
She can’t go on, she shuts her eyes;
Her bosom heaves, her cheeks are burning,
Scarce-breathing lips grow still with yearning,
Her ears resound with ringing cries,
And sparkles dance before her eyes.
Night falls; the moon begins parading
The distant vault of heaven’s hood;
The nightingale in darkest wood
Breaks out in mournful serenading.
Tatyana tosses through the night
And wakes her nurse to share her plight.
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’I couldn’t sleep … O nurse, it’s stifling!
Put up the window … sit by me.’
’What ails you, Tanya?’—’Life’s so trifling,
Come tell me how it used to be.’
’Well, what about it? Lord, it’s ages …
I must have known a thousand pages
Of ancient facts and fables too
’Bout evil ghosts and girls like you;
But nowadays I’m not so canny,
I can’t remember much of late.
Oh, Tanya, it’s a sorry state;
I get confused …’—‘But tell me, nanny,
About the olden days … you know,
Were you in love then, long ago?’
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’Oh, come! Our world was quite another!
We’d never heard of love, you see.
Why, my good husband’s sainted mother
Would just have been the death of me!’
’Then how’d you come to marry, nanny?’
’The will of God, I guess …. My Danny
Was younger still than me, my dear,
And I was just thirteen that year.
The marriage maker kept on calling
For two whole weeks to see my kin,
Till father blessed me and gave in.
I got so scared … my tears kept falling;
And weeping, they undid my plait,
Then sang me to the churchyard gate.
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’And so they took me off to strangers …
But you’re not even listening, pet.’
’Oh, nanny, life’s so full of dangers,
I’m sick at heart and all upset,
I’m on the verge of tears and wailing!’
’My goodness, girl, you must be ailing;
Dear Lord have mercy. God, I plead!
Just tell me, dearest, what you need.
I’ll sprinkle you with holy water,
You’re burning up!’—’Oh, do be still,
I’m … you know, nurse … in love, not ill.’
’The Lord be with you now, my daughter!’
And with her wrinkled hand the nurse
Then crossed the girl and mumbled verse.
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’Oh, I’m in love,’ again she pleaded
With her old friend. ‘My little dove,
You’re just not well, you’re overheated.’
’Oh, let me be now … I’m in love.’
And all the while the moon was shining
And with its murky light defining
Tatyana’s charms and pallid air,
Her long, unloosened braids of hair,
And drops of tears … while on a hassock,
Beside the tender maiden’s bed,
A kerchief on her grizzled head,
Sat nanny in her quilted cassock;
And all the world in silence lay
Beneath the moon’s seductive ray.
Far off Tatyana ranged in dreaming,
Bewitched by moonlight’s magic curse…
And then a sudden thought came gleaming:
’I’d be alone now … leave me, nurse.
But give me first a pen and paper;
I won’t be long … just leave the taper.
Good night.’ She’s now alone. All’s still.
The moonlight shines upon her sill.
And propped upon an elbow, writing,
Tatyana pictures her Eugene,
And in a letter, rash and green,
Pours forth a maiden’s blameless plighting.
The letter’s ready—all but sent…
For whom, Tatyana, is it meant?
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I’ve known great beauties proudly distant,
As cold and chaste as winter snow;
Implacable, to all resistant,
Impossible for mind to know;
I’ve marvelled at their haughty manner,
Their natural virtue’s flaunted banner;
And I confess, from them I fled,
As if in terror I had read
Above their brows the sign of Hades:
Abandon Hope, Who Enter Here!
Their joy is striking men with fear,
For love offends these charming ladies.
Perhaps along the Neva’s shore
You too have known such belles before.
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Why I’ve seen ladies so complacent
Before their loyal subjects’ gaze,
That they would even grow impatient
With sighs of passion and with praise.
But what did I, amazed, discover?
On scaring off some timid lover
With stern behaviour’s grim attack,
These creatures then would lure him back!-
By joining him at least in grieving,
By seeming in their words at least
More tender to the wounded beast;
And blind as ever, still believing,
The youthful lover with his yen
Would chase sweet vanity again.
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