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Title: Eugene Oneguine [Onegin]
       A Romance of Russian Life in Verse


Author: Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin



Release Date: December 27, 2007  [eBook #23997]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)


***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EUGENE ONEGUINE [ONEGIN]***


E-text prepared by Stephen Leary <www.stephenleary.com>



EUGENE ONEGUINE [Onegin]:

A Romance of Russian Life in Verse

by

ALEXANDER PUSHKIN

Translated from the Russian by Lieut.-Col. [Henry] Spalding







London
Macmillan and Co.
1881




PREFACE

Eugene Oneguine, the chief poetical work of Russia's greatest poet,
having been translated into all the principal languages of Europe
except our own, I hope that this version may prove an acceptable
contribution to literature. Tastes are various in matters of poetry,
but the present work possesses a more solid claim to attention in
the series of faithful pictures it offers of Russian life and manners.
If these be compared with Mr. Wallace's book on Russia, it will be
seen that social life in that empire still preserves many of the
characteristics which distinguished it half a century ago--the period
of the first publication of the latter cantos of this poem.

Many references will be found in it to our own country and its
literature. Russian poets have carefully plagiarized the English--
notably Joukovski. Pushkin, however, was no plagiarist, though
undoubtedly his mind was greatly influenced by the genius of Byron--
more especially in the earliest part of his career. Indeed, as will
be remarked in the following pages, he scarcely makes an effort to
disguise this fact.

The biographical sketch is of course a mere outline. I did not think
a longer one advisable, as memoirs do not usually excite much interest
till the subjects of them are pretty well known. In the "notes" I
have endeavored to elucidate a somewhat obscure subject. Some of the
poet's allusions remain enigmatical to the present day. The point of
each sarcasm naturally passed out of mind together with the society
against which it was levelled. If some of the versification is rough
and wanting in "go," I must plead in excuse the difficult form of the
stanza, and in many instances the inelastic nature of the subject
matter to be versified. Stanza XXXV Canto II forms a good example
of the latter difficulty, and is omitted in the German and French
versions to which I have had access. The translation of foreign
verse is comparatively easy so long as it is confined to conventional
poetic subjects, but when it embraces abrupt scraps of conversation
and the description of local customs it becomes a much more arduous
affair. I think I may say that I have adhered closely to the text
of the original.

The following foreign translations of this poem have appeared:

1. French prose. Oeuvres choisis de Pouchekine. H. Dupont. Paris,
1847.

2. German verse. A. Puschkin's poetische Werke. F. Bodenstedt.
Berlin, 1854.

3. Polish verse. Eugeniusz Oniegin. Roman Aleksandra Puszkina.
A. Sikorski. Vilnius, 1847.

4. Italian prose. Racconti poetici di A. Puschkin, tradotti da
A. Delatre. Firenze, 1856.

London, May 1881.




CONTENTS

   Mon Portrait
   A Short Biographical Notice of Alexander Pushkin
   Eugene Oneguine
   Canto I:    "The Spleen"
   Canto II:   The Poet
   Canto III:  The Country Damsel
   Canto IV:   Rural Life
   Canto V:    The Fete
   Canto VI:   The Duel
   Canto VII:  Moscow
   Canto VIII: The Great World




Mon Portrait

Written by the poet at the age of 15.

Vous me demandez mon portrait,
Mais peint d'apres nature:
Mon cher, il sera bientot fait,
Quoique en miniature.

Je suis un jeune polisson
Encore dans les classes;
Point sot, je le dis sans facon,
Et sans fades grimaces.

Oui! il ne fut babillard
Ni docteur de Sorbonne,
Plus ennuyeux et plus braillard
Que moi-meme en personne.

Ma taille, a celle des plus longs,
Elle n'est point egalee;
J'ai le teint frais, les cheveux blonds,
Et la tete bouclee.

J'aime et le monde et son fracas,
Je hais la solitude;
J'abhorre et noises et debats,
Et tant soit peu l'etude.

Spectacles, bals, me plaisent fort,
Et d'apres ma pensee,
Je dirais ce que j'aime encore,
Si je n'etais au Lycee.

Apres cela, mon cher ami,
L'on peut me reconnaitre,
Oui! tel que le bon Dieu me fit,
Je veux toujours paraitre.

Vrai demon, par l'espieglerie,
Vrai singe par sa mine,
Beaucoup et trop d'etourderie,
Ma foi! voila Pouchekine.



Note: Russian proper names to be pronounced as in French (the nasal
sound of m and n excepted) in the following translation. The accent,
which is very arbitrary in the Russian language, is indicated
unmistakably in a rhythmical composition.




A Short Biographical Notice of Alexander Pushkin.

Alexander Sergevitch Pushkin was born in 1799 at Pskoff, and was
a scion of an ancient Russian family. In one of his letters it is
recorded that no less than six Pushkins signed the Charta declaratory
of the election of the Romanoff family to the throne of Russia, and
that two more affixed their marks from inability to write.

In 1811 he entered the Lyceum, an aristocratic educational
establishment at Tsarskoe Selo, near St. Petersburg, where he was
the friend and schoolmate of Prince Gortchakoff the Russian
Chancellor. As a scholar he displayed no remarkable amount of
capacity, but was fond of general reading and much given to
versification. Whilst yet a schoolboy he wrote many lyrical
compositions and commenced _Ruslan and Liudmila_, his first poem
of any magnitude, and, it is asserted, the first readable one ever
produced in the Russian language. During his boyhood he came much
into contact with the poets Dmitrieff and Joukovski, who were
intimate with his father, and his uncle, Vassili Pushkin, himself
an author of no mean repute. The friendship of the historian
Karamzine must have exercised a still more beneficial influence
upon him.

In 1817 he quitted the Lyceum and obtained an appointment in the
Foreign Office at St. Petersburg. Three years of reckless
dissipation in the capital, where his lyrical talent made him
universally popular, resulted in 1818 in a putrid fever which
was near carrying him off. At this period of his life he scarcely
slept at all; worked all day and dissipated at night. Society was
open to him from the palace of the prince to the officers'
quarters of the Imperial Guard. The reflection of this mode of
life may be noted in the first canto of _Eugene Oneguine_ and the
early dissipations of the "Philosopher just turned eighteen,"--
the exact age of Pushkin when he commenced his career in the
Russian capital.

In 1820 he was transferred to the bureau of Lieutenant-General
Inzoff, at Kishineff in Bessarabia. This event was probably due
to his composing and privately circulating an "Ode to Liberty,"
though the attendant circumstances have never yet been thoroughly
brought to light. An indiscreet admiration for Byron most likely
involved the young poet in this scrape. The tenor of this
production, especially its audacious allusion to the murder of
the emperor Paul, father of the then reigning Tsar, assuredly
deserved, according to aristocratic ideas, the deportation to
Siberia which was said to have been prepared for the author.
The intercession of Karamzine and Joukovski procured a commutation
of his sentence. Strangely enough, Pushkin appeared anxious to
deceive the public as to the real cause of his sudden disappearance
from the capital; for in an Ode to Ovid composed about this time
he styles himself a "voluntary exile." (See Note 4 to this volume.)

During the four succeeding years he made numerous excursions amid
the beautiful countries which from the basin of the Euxine--and
amongst these the Crimea and the Caucasus. A nomad life passed
amid the beauties of nature acted powerfully in developing his
poetical genius. To this period he refers in the final canto of
_Eugene Oneguine_ (st. v.), when enumerating the various influences
which had contributed to the formation of his Muse:

     Then, the far capital forgot,
     Its splendour and its blandishments,
     In poor Moldavia cast her lot,
     She visited the humble tents
     Of migratory gipsy hordes.

During these pleasant years of youth he penned some of his most
delightful poetical works: amongst these, _The Prisoner of the
Caucasus, The Fountain of Baktchiserai_, and the _Gipsies_. Of the
two former it may be said that they are in the true style of the
_Giaour_ and the _Corsair_. In fact, just at that point of time
Byron's fame--like the setting sun--shone out with dazzling lustre
and irresistibly charmed the mind of Pushkin amongst many others.
The _Gipsies_ is more original; indeed the poet himself has been
identified with Aleko, the hero of the tale, which may well be
founded on his own personal adventures without involving the guilt
of a double murder. His undisguised admiration for Byron doubtless
exposed him to imputations similar to those commonly levelled
against that poet. But Pushkin's talent was too genuine for him to
remain long subservient to that of another, and in a later period
of his career he broke loose from all trammels and selected a line
peculiarly his own. Before leaving this stage in our narrative we
may point out the fact that during the whole of this period of
comparative seclusion the poet was indefatigably occupied in
study. Not only were the standard works of European literature
perused, but two more languages--namely Italian and Spanish--were
added to his original stock: French, English, Latin and German
having been acquired at the Lyceum. To this happy union of
literary research with the study of nature we must attribute the
sudden bound by which he soon afterwards attained the pinnacle of
poetic fame amongst his own countrymen.

In 1824 he once more fell under the imperial displeasure. A letter
seized in the post, and expressive of atheistical sentiments
(possibly but a transient vagary of his youth) was the ostensible
cause of his banishment from Odessa to his paternal estate of
Mikhailovskoe in the province of Pskoff. Some, however, aver that
personal pique on the part of Count Vorontsoff, the Governor of
Odessa, played a part in the transaction. Be this as it may, the
consequences were serious for the poet, who was not only placed
under the surveillance of the police, but expelled from the
Foreign Office by express order of the Tsar "for bad conduct." A
letter on this subject, addressed by Count Vorontsoff to Count
Nesselrode, is an amusing instance of the arrogance with which
stolid mediocrity frequently passes judgment on rising genius. I
transcribe a portion thereof:


     Odessa, _28th March (7th April)_ 1824

Count--Your Excellency is aware of the reasons for which, some
time ago, young Pushkin was sent with a letter from Count Capo
d'Istria to General Inzoff. I found him already here when I
arrived, the General having placed him at my disposal, though he
himself was at Kishineff. I have no reason to complain about him.
On the contrary, he is much steadier than formerly. But a desire
for the welfare of the young man himself, who is not wanting in
ability, and whose faults proceed more from the head than from
the heart, impels me to urge upon you his removal from Odessa.
Pushkin's chief failing is ambition. He spent the bathing season
here, and has gathered round him a crowd of adulators who praise
his genius. This maintains in him a baneful delusion which seems
to turn his head--namely, that he is a "distinguished writer;"
whereas, in reality he is but a feeble imitator of an author in
whose favour very little can be said (Byron). This it is which
keeps him from a serious study of the great classical poets, which
might exercise a beneficial effect upon his talents--which cannot
be denied him--and which might make of him in course of time a
"distinguished writer."

The best thing that can be done for him is to remove him hence....

The Emperor Nicholas on his accession pardoned Pushkin and received
him once more into favour. During an interview which took place it
is said that the Tsar promised the poet that he alone would in
future be the censor of his productions. Pushkin was restored to
his position in the Foreign Office and received the appointment of
Court Historian. In 1828 he published one of his finest poems,
_Poltava_, which is founded on incidents familiar to English
readers in Byron's _Mazeppa_. In 1829 the hardy poet accompanied
the Russian army which under Paskevitch captured Erzeroum. In 1831
he married a beautiful lady of the Gontchareff family and settled
in the neighbourhood of St. Petersburg, where he remained for the
remainder of his life, only occasionally visiting Moscow and
Mikhailovskoe. During this period his chief occupation consisted
in collecting and investigating materials for a projected history
of Peter the Great, which was undertaken at the express desire of
the Emperor. He likewise completed a history of the revolt of
Pougatchoff, which occurred in the reign of Catherine II. [Note:
this individual having personated Peter III, the deceased husband
of the Empress, raised the Orenburg Cossacks in revolt. This revolt
was not suppressed without extensive destruction of life and
property.] In 1833 the poet visited Orenburg, the scene of the
dreadful excesses he recorded; the fruit of his journey being one
of the most charming tales ever written, _The Captain's Daughter_.
[Note: Translated in _Russian Romance_, by Mrs. Telfer, 1875.]

The remaining years of Pushkin's life, spent in the midst of
domestic bliss and grateful literary occupation, were what
lookers-on style "years of unclouded happiness." They were,
however, drawing rapidly to a close. Unrivalled distinction rarely
fails to arouse bitter animosity amongst the envious, and Pushkin's
existence had latterly been embittered by groundless insinuations
against his wife's reputation in the shape of anonymous letters
addressed to himself and couched in very insulting language. He
fancied he had traced them to one Georges d'Anthes, a Frenchman
in the Cavalier Guard, who had been adopted by the Dutch envoy
Heeckeren. D'Anthes, though he had espoused Madame Pushkin's
sister, had conducted himself with impropriety towards the former
lady. The poet displayed in this affair a fierce hostility quite
characteristic of his African origin but which drove him to his
destruction. D'Anthes, it was subsequently admitted, was not the
author of the anonymous letters; but as usual when a duel is
proposed, an appeal to reason was thought to smack of cowardice.
The encounter took place in February 1837 on one of the islands of
the Neva. The weapons used were pistols, and the combat was of a
determined, nay ferocious character. Pushkin was shot before he
had time to fire, and, in his fall, the barrel of his pistol
became clogged with snow which lay deep upon the ground at the
time. Raising himself on his elbow, the wounded man called for
another pistol, crying, "I've strength left to fire my shot!" He
fired, and slightly wounded his opponent, shouting "Bravo!" when
he heard him exclaim that he was hit. D'Anthes was, however, but
slightly contused whilst Pushkin was shot through the abdomen. He
was transported to his residence and expired after several days
passed in extreme agony. Thus perished in the thirty-eighth year of
his age this distinguished poet, in a manner and amid surroundings
which make the duel scene in the sixth canto of this poem seem
almost prophetic. His reflections on the premature death of Lenski
appear indeed strangely applicable to his own fate, as generally
to the premature extinction of genius.

Pushkin was endowed with a powerful physical organisation. He was
fond of long walks, unlike the generality of his countrymen, and
at one time of his career used daily to foot it into St. Petersburg
and back, from his residence in the suburbs, to conduct his
investigations in the Government archives when employed on the
History of Peter the Great. He was a good swordsman, rode well,
and at one time aspired to enter the cavalry; but his father not
being able to furnish the necessary funds he declined serving in
the less romantic infantry. Latterly he was regular in his habits;
rose early, retired late, and managed to get along with but very
little sleep. On rising he betook himself forthwith to his literary
occupations, which were continued till afternoon, when they gave
place to physical exercise. Strange as it will appear to many, he
preferred the autumn months, especially when rainy, chill and
misty, for the production of his literary compositions, and was
proportionally depressed by the approach of spring. (Cf. Canto
VII st. ii.)

     Mournful is thine approach to me,
     O Spring, thou chosen time of love

He usually left St. Petersburg about the middle of September and
remained in the country till December. In this space of time it was
his custom to develop and perfect the inspirations of the
remaining portion of the year. He was of an impetuous yet
affectionate nature and much beloved by a numerous circle of
friends. An attractive feature in his character was his unalterable
attachment to his aged nurse, a sentiment which we find reflected
in the pages of _Eugene Oneguine_ and elsewhere.

The preponderating influence which Byron exercised in the formation
of his genius has already been noticed. It is indeed probable that
we owe _Oneguine_ to the combined impressions of _Childe Harold_ and
_Don Juan_ upon his mind. Yet the Russian poem excels these
masterpieces of Byron in a single particular--namely, in completeness
of narrative, the plots of the latter being mere vehicles for the
development of the poet's general reflections. There is ground for
believing that Pushkin likewise made this poem the record of his
own experience. This has doubtless been the practice of many
distinguished authors of fiction whose names will readily occur to
the reader. Indeed, as we are never cognizant of the real motives
which actuate others, it follows that nowhere can the secret springs
of human action be studied to such advantage as within our own
breasts. Thus romance is sometimes but the reflection of the writer's
own individuality, and he adopts the counsel of the American poet:

     Look then into thine heart and write!

But a further consideration of this subject would here be out of
place. Perhaps I cannot more suitably conclude this sketch than by
quoting from his _Ode to the Sea_ the poet's tribute of admiration
to the genius of Napoleon and Byron, who of all contemporaries seem
the most to have swayed his imagination.

     Farewell, thou pathway of the free,
     For the last time thy waves I view
     Before me roll disdainfully,
     Brilliantly beautiful and blue.

     Why vain regret? Wherever now
     My heedless course I may pursue
     One object on thy desert brow
     I everlastingly shall view--

     A rock, the sepulchre of Fame!
     The poor remains of greatness gone
     A cold remembrance there became,
     There perished great Napoleon.

     In torment dire to sleep he lay;
     Then, as a tempest echoing rolls,
     Another genius whirled away,
     Another sovereign of our souls.

     He perished. Freedom wept her child,
     He left the world his garland bright.
     Wail, Ocean, surge in tumult wild,
     To sing of thee was his delight.

     Impressed upon him was thy mark,
     His genius moulded was by thee;
     Like thee, he was unfathomed, dark
     And untamed in his majesty.

Note: It may interest some to know that Georges d'Anthes was tried
by court-martial for his participation in the duel in which Pushkin
fell, found guilty, and reduced to the ranks; but, not being a
Russian subject, he was conducted by a gendarme across the frontier
and then set at liberty.




Eugene Oneguine

Petri de vanite, il avait encore plus de cette espece d'orgueil, qui
fait avouer avec la meme indifference les bonnes comme les mauvaises
actions, suite d'un sentiment de superiorite, peut-etre imaginaire.--
_Tire d'une lettre particuliere_.


[Note: Written in 1823 at Kishineff and Odessa.]



CANTO THE FIRST

'The Spleen'

'He rushes at life and exhausts the passions.'
                                Prince Viazemski


Canto the First

I

"My uncle's goodness is extreme,
If seriously he hath disease;
He hath acquired the world's esteem
And nothing more important sees;
A paragon of virtue he!
But what a nuisance it will be,
Chained to his bedside night and day
Without a chance to slip away.
Ye need dissimulation base
A dying man with art to soothe,
Beneath his head the pillow smooth,
And physic bring with mournful face,
To sigh and meditate alone:
When will the devil take his own!"

II

Thus mused a madcap young, who drove
Through clouds of dust at postal pace,
By the decree of Mighty Jove,
Inheritor of all his race.
Friends of Liudmila and Ruslan,(1)
Let me present ye to the man,
Who without more prevarication
The hero is of my narration!
Oneguine, O my gentle readers,
Was born beside the Neva, where
It may be ye were born, or there
Have shone as one of fashion's leaders.
I also wandered there of old,
But cannot stand the northern cold.(2)

[Note 1: _Ruslan and Liudmila_, the title of Pushkin's first
important work, written 1817-20. It is a tale relating the adventures
of the knight-errant Ruslan in search of his fair lady Liudmila, who
has been carried off by a _kaldoon_, or magician.]

[Note 2: Written in Bessarabia.]

III

Having performed his service truly,
Deep into debt his father ran;
Three balls a year he gave ye duly,
At last became a ruined man.
But Eugene was by fate preserved,
For first "madame" his wants observed,
And then "monsieur" supplied her place;(3)
The boy was wild but full of grace.
"Monsieur l'Abbe," a starving Gaul,
Fearing his pupil to annoy,
Instructed jestingly the boy,
Morality taught scarce at all;
Gently for pranks he would reprove
And in the Summer Garden rove.

[Note 3: In Russia foreign tutors and governesses are commonly
styled "monsieur" or "madame."]

IV

When youth's rebellious hour drew near
And my Eugene the path must trace--
The path of hope and tender fear--
Monsieur clean out of doors they chase.
Lo! my Oneguine free as air,
Cropped in the latest style his hair,
Dressed like a London dandy he
The giddy world at last shall see.
He wrote and spoke, so all allowed,
In the French language perfectly,
Danced the mazurka gracefully,
Without the least constraint he bowed.
What more's required? The world replies,
He is a charming youth and wise.

V

We all of us of education
A something somehow have obtained,
Thus, praised be God! a reputation
With us is easily attained.
Oneguine was--so many deemed
[Unerring critics self-esteemed],
Pedantic although scholar like,
In truth he had the happy trick
Without constraint in conversation
Of touching lightly every theme.
Silent, oracular ye'd see him
Amid a serious disputation,
Then suddenly discharge a joke
The ladies' laughter to provoke.

VI

Latin is just now not in vogue,
But if the truth I must relate,
Oneguine knew enough, the rogue
A mild quotation to translate,
A little Juvenal to spout,
With "vale" finish off a note;
Two verses he could recollect
Of the Aeneid, but incorrect.
In history he took no pleasure,
The dusty chronicles of earth
For him were but of little worth,
Yet still of anecdotes a treasure
Within his memory there lay,
From Romulus unto our day.

VII

For empty sound the rascal swore he
Existence would not make a curse,
Knew not an iamb from a choree,
Although we read him heaps of verse.
Homer, Theocritus, he jeered,
But Adam Smith to read appeared,
And at economy was great;
That is, he could elucidate
How empires store of wealth unfold,
How flourish, why and wherefore less
If the raw product they possess
The medium is required of gold.
The father scarcely understands
His son and mortgages his lands.

VIII

But upon all that Eugene knew
I have no leisure here to dwell,
But say he was a genius who
In one thing really did excel.
It occupied him from a boy,
A labour, torment, yet a joy,
It whiled his idle hours away
And wholly occupied his day--
The amatory science warm,
Which Ovid once immortalized,
For which the poet agonized
Laid down his life of sun and storm
On the steppes of Moldavia lone,
Far from his Italy--his own.(4)

[Note 4: Referring to Tomi, the reputed place of exile of Ovid.
Pushkin, then residing in Bessarabia, was in the same predicament
as his predecessor in song, though he certainly did not plead
guilty to the fact, since he remarks in his ode to Ovid:
                       To exile _self-consigned_,
   With self, society, existence, discontent,
   I visit in these days, with melancholy mind,
   The country whereunto a mournful age thee sent.

Ovid thus enumerates the causes which brought about his banishment:

   "Perdiderint quum me _duo_ crimina, carmen et error,
   Alterius facti culpa silenda mihi est."
                     _Ovidii Nasonis Tristium_, lib. ii. 207.]


IX

How soon he learnt deception's art,
Hope to conceal and jealousy,
False confidence or doubt to impart,
Sombre or glad in turn to be,
Haughty appear, subservient,
Obsequious or indifferent!
What languor would his silence show,
How full of fire his speech would glow!
How artless was the note which spoke
Of love again, and yet again;
How deftly could he transport feign!
How bright and tender was his look,
Modest yet daring! And a tear
Would at the proper time appear.

X

How well he played the greenhorn's part
To cheat the inexperienced fair,
Sometimes by pleasing flattery's art,
Sometimes by ready-made despair;
The feeble moment would espy
Of tender years the modesty
Conquer by passion and address,
Await the long-delayed caress.
Avowal then 'twas time to pray,
Attentive to the heart's first beating,
Follow up love--a secret meeting
Arrange without the least delay--
Then, then--well, in some solitude
Lessons to give he understood!

XI

How soon he learnt to titillate
The heart of the inveterate flirt!
Desirous to annihilate
His own antagonists expert,
How bitterly he would malign,
With many a snare their pathway line!
But ye, O happy husbands, ye
With him were friends eternally:
The crafty spouse caressed him, who
By Faublas in his youth was schooled,(5)
And the suspicious veteran old,
The pompous, swaggering cuckold too,
Who floats contentedly through life,
Proud of his dinners and his wife!

[Note 5: _Les Aventures du Chevalier de Faublas_, a romance of a
loose character by Jean Baptiste Louvet de Couvray, b. 1760,
d. 1797, famous for his bold oration denouncing Robespierre,
Marat and Danton.]

XII

One morn whilst yet in bed he lay,
His valet brings him letters three.
What, invitations? The same day
As many entertainments be!
A ball here, there a children's treat,
Whither shall my rapscallion flit?
Whither shall he go first? He'll see,
Perchance he will to all the three.
Meantime in matutinal dress
And hat surnamed a "Bolivar"(6)
He hies unto the "Boulevard,"
To loiter there in idleness
Until the sleepless Breguet chime(7)
Announcing to him dinner-time.

[Note 6: A la "Bolivar," from the founder of Bolivian independence.]

[Note 7: M. Breguet, a celebrated Parisian watchmaker--hence a
slang term for a watch.]

XIII

'Tis dark. He seats him in a sleigh,
"Drive on!" the cheerful cry goes forth,
His furs are powdered on the way
By the fine silver of the north.
He bends his course to Talon's, where(8)
He knows Kaverine will repair.(9)
He enters. High the cork arose
And Comet champagne foaming flows.
Before him red roast beef is seen
And truffles, dear to youthful eyes,
Flanked by immortal Strasbourg pies,
The choicest flowers of French cuisine,
And Limburg cheese alive and old
Is seen next pine-apples of gold.

[Note 8: Talon, a famous St. Petersburg restaurateur.]

[Note 9: Paul Petrovitch Kaverine, a friend for whom Pushkin in
his youth appears to have entertained great respect and
admiration. He was an officer in the Hussars of the Guard, and
a noted "dandy" and man about town. The poet on one occasion
addressed the following impromptu to his friend's portrait:

   "Within him daily see the the fires of punch and war,
   Upon the fields of Mars a gallant warrior,
   A faithful friend to friends, of ladies torturer,
                       But ever the Hussar."]

XIV

Still thirst fresh draughts of wine compels
To cool the cutlets' seething grease,
When the sonorous Breguet tells
Of the commencement of the piece.
A critic of the stage malicious,
A slave of actresses capricious,
Oneguine was a citizen
Of the domains of the side-scene.
To the theatre he repairs
Where each young critic ready stands,
Capers applauds with clap of hands,
With hisses Cleopatra scares,
Moina recalls for this alone
That all may hear his voice's tone.

XV

Thou fairy-land! Where formerly
Shone pungent Satire's dauntless king,
Von Wisine, friend of liberty,
And Kniajnine, apt at copying.
The young Simeonova too there
With Ozeroff was wont to share
Applause, the people's donative.
There our Katenine did revive
Corneille's majestic genius,
Sarcastic Shakhovskoi brought out
His comedies, a noisy rout,
There Didelot became glorious,
There, there, beneath the side-scene's shade
The drama of my youth was played.(10)

[Note 10: _Denis Von Wisine_ (1741-92), a favourite Russian
dramatist. His first comedy "The Brigadier," procured him the
favour of the second Catherine. His best, however, is the
"Minor" (Niedorosl). Prince Potemkin, after witnessing it,
summoned the author, and greeted him with the exclamation,
"Die now, Denis!" In fact, his subsequent performances were
not of equal merit.

_Jacob Borissovitch Kniajnine_ (1742-91), a clever adapter of
French tragedy.

_Simeonova_, a celebrated tragic actress, who retired from
the stage in early life and married a Prince Gagarine.

_Ozeroff_, one of the best-known Russian dramatists of the
period; he possessed more originality than Kniajnine. "Oedipus
in Athens," "Fingal," "Demetrius Donskoi," and "Polyxena," are
the best known of his tragedies.

_Katenine_ translated Corneille's tragedies into Russian.

_Didelot_, sometime Director of the ballet at the Opera at
St. Petersburg.]

XVI

My goddesses, where are your shades?
Do ye not hear my mournful sighs?
Are ye replaced by other maids
Who cannot conjure former joys?
Shall I your chorus hear anew,
Russia's Terpsichore review
Again in her ethereal dance?
Or will my melancholy glance
On the dull stage find all things changed,
The disenchanted glass direct
Where I can no more recollect?--
A careless looker-on estranged
In silence shall I sit and yawn
And dream of life's delightful dawn?

XVII

The house is crammed. A thousand lamps
On pit, stalls, boxes, brightly blaze,
Impatiently the gallery stamps,
The curtain now they slowly raise.
Obedient to the magic strings,
Brilliant, ethereal, there springs
Forth from the crowd of nymphs surrounding
Istomina(*) the nimbly-bounding;
With one foot resting on its tip
Slow circling round its fellow swings
And now she skips and now she springs
Like down from Aeolus's lip,
Now her lithe form she arches o'er
And beats with rapid foot the floor.

[Note: Istomina--A celebrated Circassian dancer of the day, with
whom the poet in his extreme youth imagined himself in love.]

XVIII

Shouts of applause! Oneguine passes
Between the stalls, along the toes;
Seated, a curious look with glasses
On unknown female forms he throws.
Free scope he yields unto his glance,
Reviews both dress and countenance,
With all dissatisfaction shows.
To male acquaintances he bows,
And finally he deigns let fall
Upon the stage his weary glance.
He yawns, averts his countenance,
Exclaiming, "We must change 'em all!
I long by ballets have been bored,
Now Didelot scarce can be endured!"

XIX

Snakes, satyrs, loves with many a shout
Across the stage still madly sweep,
Whilst the tired serving-men without
Wrapped in their sheepskins soundly sleep.
Still the loud stamping doth not cease,
Still they blow noses, cough, and sneeze,
Still everywhere, without, within,
The lamps illuminating shine;
The steed benumbed still pawing stands
And of the irksome harness tires,
And still the coachmen round the fires(11)
Abuse their masters, rub their hands:
But Eugene long hath left the press
To array himself in evening dress.

[Note 11: In Russia large fires are lighted in winter time in front
of the theatres for the benefit of the menials, who, considering
the state of the thermometer, cannot be said to have a jovial
time of it. But in this, as in other cases, "habit" alleviates
their lot, and they bear the cold with a wonderful equanimity.]

XX

Faithfully shall I now depict,
Portray the solitary den
Wherein the child of fashion strict
Dressed him, undressed, and dressed again?
All that industrial London brings
For tallow, wood and other things
Across the Baltic's salt sea waves,
All which caprice and affluence craves,
All which in Paris eager taste,
Choosing a profitable trade,
For our amusement ever made
And ease and fashionable waste,--
Adorned the apartment of Eugene,
Philosopher just turned eighteen.

XXI

China and bronze the tables weight,
Amber on pipes from Stamboul glows,
And, joy of souls effeminate,
Phials of crystal scents enclose.
Combs of all sizes, files of steel,
Scissors both straight and curved as well,
Of thirty different sorts, lo! brushes
Both for the nails and for the tushes.
Rousseau, I would remark in passing,(12)
Could not conceive how serious Grimm
Dared calmly cleanse his nails 'fore him,
Eloquent raver all-surpassing,--
The friend of liberty and laws
In this case quite mistaken was.

[Note 12: "Tout le monde sut qu'il (Grimm) mettait du blanc; et
moi, qui n'en croyait rien, je commencai de le croire, non
seulement par l'embellissement de son teint, et pour avoir trouve
des tasses de blanc sur la toilette, mais sur ce qu'entrant un
matin dans sa chambre, je le trouvais brossant ses ongles avec
une petite vergette faite expres, ouvrage qu'il continua fierement
devant moi. Je jugeai qu'un homme qui passe deux heures tous les
matins a brosser ses ongles peut bien passer quelques instants a
remplir de blanc les creux de sa peau."
                          _Confessions de J. J. Rousseau_]

XXII

The most industrious man alive
May yet be studious of his nails;
What boots it with the age to strive?
Custom the despot soon prevails.
A new Kaverine Eugene mine,
Dreading the world's remarks malign,
Was that which we are wont to call
A fop, in dress pedantical.
Three mortal hours per diem he
Would loiter by the looking-glass,
And from his dressing-room would pass
Like Venus when, capriciously,
The goddess would a masquerade
Attend in male attire arrayed.

XXIII

On this artistical retreat
Having once fixed your interest,
I might to connoisseurs repeat
The style in which my hero dressed;
Though I confess I hardly dare
Describe in detail the affair,
Since words like pantaloons, vest, coat,
To Russ indigenous are not;
And also that my feeble verse--
Pardon I ask for such a sin--
With words of foreign origin
Too much I'm given to intersperse,
Though to the Academy I come
And oft its Dictionary thumb.(13)

[Note 13: Refers to Dictionary of the Academy, compiled during the
reign of Catherine II under the supervision of Lomonossoff.]

XXIV

But such is not my project now,
So let us to the ball-room haste,
Whither at headlong speed doth go
Eugene in hackney carriage placed.
Past darkened windows and long streets
Of slumbering citizens he fleets,
Till carriage lamps, a double row,
Cast a gay lustre on the snow,
Which shines with iridescent hues.
He nears a spacious mansion's gate,
By many a lamp illuminate,
And through the lofty windows views
Profiles of lovely dames he knows
And also fashionable beaux.

XXV

Our hero stops and doth alight,
Flies past the porter to the stair,
But, ere he mounts the marble flight,
With hurried hand smooths down his hair.
He enters: in the hall a crowd,
No more the music thunders loud,
Some a mazurka occupies,
Crushing and a confusing noise;
Spurs of the Cavalier Guard clash,
The feet of graceful ladies fly,
And following them ye might espy
Full many a glance like lightning flash,
And by the fiddle's rushing sound
The voice of jealousy is drowned.

XXVI

In my young days of wild delight
On balls I madly used to dote,
Fond declarations they invite
Or the delivery of a note.
So hearken, every worthy spouse,
I would your vigilance arouse,
Attentive be unto my rhymes
And due precautions take betimes.
Ye mothers also, caution use,
Upon your daughters keep an eye,
Employ your glasses constantly,
For otherwise--God only knows!
I lift a warning voice because
I long have ceased to offend the laws.

XXVII

Alas! life's hours which swiftly fly
I've wasted in amusements vain,
But were it not immoral I
Should dearly like a dance again.
I love its furious delight,
The crowd and merriment and light,
The ladies, their fantastic dress,
Also their feet--yet ne'ertheless
Scarcely in Russia can ye find
Three pairs of handsome female feet;
Ah! I still struggle to forget
A pair; though desolate my mind,
Their memory lingers still and seems
To agitate me in my dreams.

XXVIII

When, where, and in what desert land,
Madman, wilt thou from memory raze
Those feet? Alas! on what far strand
Do ye of spring the blossoms graze?
Lapped in your Eastern luxury,
No trace ye left in passing by
Upon the dreary northern snows,
But better loved the soft repose
Of splendid carpets richly wrought.
I once forgot for your sweet cause
The thirst for fame and man's applause,
My country and an exile's lot;
My joy in youth was fleeting e'en
As your light footprints on the green.

XXIX

Diana's bosom, Flora's cheeks,
Are admirable, my dear friend,
But yet Terpsichore bespeaks
Charms more enduring in the end.
For promises her feet reveal
Of untold gain she must conceal,
Their privileged allurements fire
A hidden train of wild desire.
I love them, O my dear Elvine,(14)
Beneath the table-cloth of white,
In winter on the fender bright,
In springtime on the meadows green,
Upon the ball-room's glassy floor
Or by the ocean's rocky shore.

[Note 14: _Elvine_, or _Elvina_, was not improbably the owner of the
seductive feet apostrophized by the poet, since, in 1816, he wrote
an ode, "To Her," which commences thus:

"Elvina, my dear, come, give me thine hand," and so forth.]

XXX

Beside the stormy sea one day
I envied sore the billows tall,
Which rushed in eager dense array
Enamoured at her feet to fall.
How like the billow I desired
To kiss the feet which I admired!
No, never in the early blaze
Of fiery youth's untutored days
So ardently did I desire
A young Armida's lips to press,
Her cheek of rosy loveliness
Or bosom full of languid fire,--
A gust of passion never tore
My spirit with such pangs before.

XXXI

Another time, so willed it Fate,
Immersed in secret thought I stand
And grasp a stirrup fortunate--
Her foot was in my other hand.
Again imagination blazed,
The contact of the foot I raised
Rekindled in my withered heart
The fires of passion and its smart--
Away! and cease to ring their praise
For ever with thy tattling lyre,
The proud ones are not worth the fire
Of passion they so often raise.
The words and looks of charmers sweet
Are oft deceptive--like their feet.

XXXII

Where is Oneguine? Half asleep,
Straight from the ball to bed he goes,
Whilst Petersburg from slumber deep
The drum already doth arouse.
The shopman and the pedlar rise
And to the Bourse the cabman plies;
The Okhtenka with pitcher speeds,(15)
Crunching the morning snow she treads;
Morning awakes with joyous sound;
The shutters open; to the skies
In column blue the smoke doth rise;
The German baker looks around
His shop, a night-cap on his head,
And pauses oft to serve out bread.

[Note 15: i.e. the milkmaid from the Okhta villages, a suburb of St.
Petersburg on the right bank of the Neva chiefly inhabited by the
labouring classes.]

XXXIII

But turning morning into night,
Tired by the ball's incessant noise,
The votary of vain delight
Sleep in the shadowy couch enjoys,
Late in the afternoon to rise,
When the same life before him lies
Till morn--life uniform but gay,
To-morrow just like yesterday.
But was our friend Eugene content,
Free, in the blossom of his spring,
Amidst successes flattering
And pleasure's daily blandishment,
Or vainly 'mid luxurious fare
Was he in health and void of care?--

XXXIV

Even so! His passions soon abated,
Hateful the hollow world became,
Nor long his mind was agitated
By love's inevitable flame.
For treachery had done its worst;
Friendship and friends he likewise curst,
Because he could not gourmandise
Daily beefsteaks and Strasbourg pies
And irrigate them with champagne;
Nor slander viciously could spread
Whene'er he had an aching head;
And, though a plucky scatterbrain,
He finally lost all delight
In bullets, sabres, and in fight.

XXXV

His malady, whose cause I ween
It now to investigate is time,
Was nothing but the British spleen
Transported to our Russian clime.
It gradually possessed his mind;
Though, God be praised! he ne'er designed
To slay himself with blade or ball,
Indifferent he became to all,
And like Childe Harold gloomily
He to the festival repairs,
Nor boston nor the world's affairs
Nor tender glance nor amorous sigh
Impressed him in the least degree,--
Callous to all he seemed to be.

XXXVI

Ye miracles of courtly grace,
He left _you_ first, and I must own
The manners of the highest class
Have latterly vexatious grown;
And though perchance a lady may
Discourse of Bentham or of Say,
Yet as a rule their talk I call
Harmless, but quite nonsensical.
Then they're so innocent of vice,
So full of piety, correct,
So prudent, and so circumspect
Stately, devoid of prejudice,
So inaccessible to men,
Their looks alone produce the spleen.(16)

[Note 16: Apropos of this somewhat ungallant sentiment, a Russian
scholiast remarks:--"The whole of this ironical stanza is but a
_refined eulogy_ of the excellent qualities of our countrywomen.
Thus Boileau, in the guise of invective, eulogizes Louis XIV.
Russian ladies unite in their persons great acquirements,
combined with amiability and strict morality; also a species of
Oriental charm which so much captivated Madame de Stael." It will
occur to most that the apologist of the Russian fair "doth
protest too much." The poet in all probability wrote the offending
stanza in a fit of Byronic "spleen," as he would most likely
himself have called it. Indeed, since Byron, poets of his school
seem to assume this virtue if they have it not, and we take their
utterances under its influence for what they are worth.]

XXXVII

And you, my youthful damsels fair,
Whom latterly one often meets
Urging your droshkies swift as air
Along Saint Petersburg's paved streets,
From you too Eugene took to flight,
Abandoning insane delight,
And isolated from all men,
Yawning betook him to a pen.
He thought to write, but labour long
Inspired him with disgust and so
Nought from his pen did ever flow,
And thus he never fell among
That vicious set whom I don't blame--
Because a member I became.

XXXVIII

Once more to idleness consigned,
He felt the laudable desire
From mere vacuity of mind
The wit of others to acquire.
A case of books he doth obtain--
He reads at random, reads in vain.
This nonsense, that dishonest seems,
This wicked, that absurd he deems,
All are constrained and fetters bear,
Antiquity no pleasure gave,
The moderns of the ancients rave--
Books he abandoned like the fair,
His book-shelf instantly doth drape
With taffety instead of crape.

XXXIX

Having abjured the haunts of men,
Like him renouncing vanity,
His friendship I acquired just then;
His character attracted me.
An innate love of meditation,
Original imagination,
And cool sagacious mind he had:
I was incensed and he was sad.
Both were of passion satiate
And both of dull existence tired,
Extinct the flame which once had fired;
Both were expectant of the hate
With which blind Fortune oft betrays
The very morning of our days.

XL

He who hath lived and living, thinks,
Must e'en despise his kind at last;
He who hath suffered ofttimes shrinks
From shades of the relentless past.
No fond illusions live to soothe,
But memory like a serpent's tooth
With late repentance gnaws and stings.
All this in many cases brings
A charm with it in conversation.
Oneguine's speeches I abhorred
At first, but soon became inured
To the sarcastic observation,
To witticisms and taunts half-vicious
And gloomy epigrams malicious.

XLI

How oft, when on a summer night
Transparent o'er the Neva beamed
The firmament in mellow light,
And when the watery mirror gleamed
No more with pale Diana's rays,(17)
We called to mind our youthful days--
The days of love and of romance!
Then would we muse as in a trance,
Impressionable for an hour,
And breathe the balmy breath of night;
And like the prisoner's our delight
Who for the greenwood quits his tower,
As on the rapid wings of thought
The early days of life we sought.

[Note 17: The midsummer nights in the latitude of St. Petersburg
are a prolonged twilight.]

XLII

Absorbed in melancholy mood
And o'er the granite coping bent,
Oneguine meditative stood,
E'en as the poet says he leant.(18)
'Tis silent all! Alone the cries
Of the night sentinels arise
And from the Millionaya afar(19)
The sudden rattling of a car.
Lo! on the sleeping river borne,
A boat with splashing oar floats by,
And now we hear delightedly
A jolly song and distant horn;
But sweeter in a midnight dream
Torquato Tasso's strains I deem.

[Note 18: Refers to Mouravieff's "Goddess of the Neva." At St.
Petersburg the banks of the Neva are lined throughout with
splendid granite quays.]

[Note 19:
A street running parallel to the Neva, and leading from
the Winter Palace to the Summer Palace and Garden.]

XLIII

Ye billows of blue Hadria's sea,
O Brenta, once more we shall meet
And, inspiration firing me,
Your magic voices I shall greet,
Whose tones Apollo's sons inspire,
And after Albion's proud lyre (20)
Possess my love and sympathy.
The nights of golden Italy
I'll pass beneath the firmament,
Hid in the gondola's dark shade,
Alone with my Venetian maid,
Now talkative, now reticent;
From her my lips shall learn the tongue
Of love which whilom Petrarch sung.

[Note 20: The strong influence exercised by Byron's genius on the
imagination of Pushkin is well known. Shakespeare and other
English dramatists had also their share in influencing his mind,
which, at all events in its earlier developments, was of an
essentially imitative type. As an example of his Shakespearian
tastes, see his poem of "Angelo," founded upon "Measure for Measure."]

XLIV

When will my hour of freedom come!
Time, I invoke thee! favouring gales
Awaiting on the shore I roam
And beckon to the passing sails.
Upon the highway of the sea
When shall I wing my passage free
On waves by tempests curdled o'er!
'Tis time to quit this weary shore
So uncongenial to my mind,
To dream upon the sunny strand
Of Africa, ancestral land,(21)
Of dreary Russia left behind,
Wherein I felt love's fatal dart,
Wherein I buried left my heart.

[Note 21: The poet was, on his mother's side, of African extraction,
a circumstance which perhaps accounts for the southern fervour of
his imagination. His great-grandfather, Abraham Petrovitch Hannibal,
was seized on the coast of Africa when eight years of age by a
corsair, and carried a slave to Constantinople. The Russian
Ambassador bought and presented him to Peter the Great who caused
him to be baptized at Vilnius. Subsequently one of Hannibal's
brothers made his way to Constantinople and thence to St. Petersburg
for the purpose of ransoming him; but Peter would not surrender his
godson who died at the age of ninety-two, having attained the rank
of general in the Russian service.]

XLV

Eugene designed with me to start
And visit many a foreign clime,
But Fortune cast our lots apart
For a protracted space of time.
Just at that time his father died,
And soon Oneguine's door beside
Of creditors a hungry rout
Their claims and explanations shout.
But Eugene, hating litigation
And with his lot in life content,
To a surrender gave consent,
Seeing in this no deprivation,
Or counting on his uncle's death
And what the old man might bequeath.

XLVI

And in reality one day
The steward sent a note to tell
How sick to death his uncle lay
And wished to say to him farewell.
Having this mournful document
Perused, Eugene in postchaise went
And hastened to his uncle's side,
But in his heart dissatisfied,
Having for money's sake alone
Sorrow to counterfeit and wail--
Thus we began our little tale--
But, to his uncle's mansion flown,
He found him on the table laid,
A due which must to earth be paid.

XLVII

The courtyard full of serfs he sees,
And from the country all around
Had come both friends and enemies--
Funeral amateurs abound!
The body they consigned to rest,
And then made merry pope and guest,
With serious air then went away
As men who much had done that day.
Lo! my Oneguine rural lord!
Of mines and meadows, woods and lakes,
He now a full possession takes,
He who economy abhorred,
Delighted much his former ways
To vary for a few brief days.

XLVIII

For two whole days it seemed a change
To wander through the meadows still,
The cool dark oaken grove to range,
To listen to the rippling rill.
But on the third of grove and mead
He took no more the slightest heed;
They made him feel inclined to doze;
And the conviction soon arose,
Ennui can in the country dwell
Though without palaces and streets,
Cards, balls, routs, poetry or fetes;
On him spleen mounted sentinel
And like his shadow dogged his life,
Or better,--like a faithful wife.

XLIX

I was for calm existence made,
For rural solitude and dreams,
My lyre sings sweeter in the shade
And more imagination teems.
On innocent delights I dote,
Upon my lake I love to float,
For law I _far niente_ take
And every morning I awake
The child of sloth and liberty.
I slumber much, a little read,
Of fleeting glory take no heed.
In former years thus did not I
In idleness and tranquil joy
The happiest days of life employ?

L

Love, flowers, the country, idleness
And fields my joys have ever been;
I like the difference to express
Between myself and my Eugene,
Lest the malicious reader or
Some one or other editor
Of keen sarcastic intellect
Herein my portrait should detect,
And impiously should declare,
To sketch myself that I have tried
Like Byron, bard of scorn and pride,
As if impossible it were
To write of any other elf
Than one's own fascinating self.

LI

Here I remark all poets are
Love to idealize inclined;
I have dreamed many a vision fair
And the recesses of my mind
Retained the image, though short-lived,
Which afterwards the muse revived.
Thus carelessly I once portrayed
Mine own ideal, the mountain maid,
The captives of the Salguir's shore.(22)
But now a question in this wise
Oft upon friendly lips doth rise:
Whom doth thy plaintive Muse adore?
To whom amongst the jealous throng
Of maids dost thou inscribe thy song?

[Note 22: Refers to two of the most interesting productions of
the poet. The former line indicates the _Prisoner of the
Caucasus_, the latter, _The Fountain of Baktchiserai_. The
Salguir is a river of the Crimea.]

LII

Whose glance reflecting inspiration
With tenderness hath recognized
Thy meditative incantation--
Whom hath thy strain immortalized?
None, be my witness Heaven above!
The malady of hopeless love
I have endured without respite.
Happy who thereto can unite
Poetic transport. They impart
A double force unto their song
Who following Petrarch move along
And ease the tortures of the heart--
Perchance they laurels also cull--
But I, in love, was mute and dull.

LIII

The Muse appeared, when love passed by
And my dark soul to light was brought;
Free, I renewed the idolatry
Of harmony enshrining thought.
I write, and anguish flies away,
Nor doth my absent pen portray
Around my stanzas incomplete
Young ladies' faces and their feet.
Extinguished ashes do not blaze--
I mourn, but tears I cannot shed--
Soon, of the tempest which hath fled
Time will the ravages efface--
When that time comes, a poem I'll strive
To write in cantos twenty-five.

LIV

I've thought well o'er the general plan,
The hero's name too in advance,
Meantime I'll finish whilst I can
Canto the First of this romance.
I've scanned it with a jealous eye,
Discovered much absurdity,
But will not modify a tittle--
I owe the censorship a little.
For journalistic deglutition
I yield the fruit of work severe.
Go, on the Neva's bank appear,
My very latest composition!
Enjoy the meed which Fame bestows--
Misunderstanding, words and blows.


END OF CANTO THE FIRST



CANTO THE SECOND

The Poet

"O Rus!"--Horace

Canto The Second

[Note: Odessa, December 1823.]

I

The village wherein yawned Eugene
Was a delightful little spot,
There friends of pure delight had been
Grateful to Heaven for their lot.
The lonely mansion-house to screen
From gales a hill behind was seen;
Before it ran a stream. Behold!
Afar, where clothed in green and gold
Meadows and cornfields are displayed,
Villages in the distance show
And herds of oxen wandering low;
Whilst nearer, sunk in deeper shade,
A thick immense neglected grove
Extended--haunt which Dryads love.

II

'Twas built, the venerable pile,
As lordly mansions ought to be,
In solid, unpretentious style,
The style of wise antiquity.
Lofty the chambers one and all,
Silk tapestry upon the wall,
Imperial portraits hang around
And stoves of various shapes abound.
All this I know is out of date,
I cannot tell the reason why,
But Eugene, incontestably,
The matter did not agitate,
Because he yawned at the bare view
Of drawing-rooms or old or new.

III

He took the room wherein the old
Man--forty years long in this wise--
His housekeeper was wont to scold,
Look through the window and kill flies.
'Twas plain--an oaken floor ye scan,
Two cupboards, table, soft divan,
And not a speck of dirt descried.
Oneguine oped the cupboards wide.
In one he doth accounts behold,
Here bottles stand in close array,
There jars of cider block the way,
An almanac but eight years old.
His uncle, busy man indeed,
No other book had time to read.

IV

Alone amid possessions great,
Eugene at first began to dream,
If but to lighten Time's dull rate,
Of many an economic scheme;
This anchorite amid his waste
The ancient _barshtchina_ replaced
By an _obrok's_ indulgent rate:(23)
The peasant blessed his happy fate.
But this a heinous crime appeared
Unto his neighbour, man of thrift,
Who secretly denounced the gift,
And many another slily sneered;
And all with one accord agreed,
He was a dangerous fool indeed.

[Note 23: The _barshtchina_ was the corvee, or forced labour
of three days per week rendered previous to the emancipation
of 1861 by the serfs to their lord.

The _obrok_ was a species of poll-tax paid by a serf, either
in lieu of the forced labour or in consideration of being
permitted to exercise a trade or profession elsewhere. Very
heavy obroks have at times been levied on serfs possessed of
skill or accomplishments, or who had amassed wealth; and
circumstances may be easily imagined which, under such a
system, might lead to great abuses.]

V

All visited him at first, of course;
But since to the backdoor they led
Most usually a Cossack horse
Upon the Don's broad pastures bred
If they but heard domestic loads
Come rumbling up the neighbouring roads,
Most by this circumstance offended
All overtures of friendship ended.
"Oh! what a fool our neighbour is!
He's a freemason, so we think.
Alone he doth his claret drink,
A lady's hand doth never kiss.
'Tis _yes! no!_ never _madam! sir!_"(24)
This was his social character.

[Note 24: The neighbours complained of Oneguine's want of courtesy.
He always replied "da" or "nyet," yes or no, instead of "das"
or "nyets"--the final s being a contraction of "sudar" or
"sudarinia," i.e. sir or madam.]

VI

Into the district then to boot
A new proprietor arrived,
From whose analysis minute
The neighbourhood fresh sport derived.
Vladimir Lenski was his name,
From Gottingen inspired he came,
A worshipper of Kant, a bard,
A young and handsome galliard.
He brought from mystic Germany
The fruits of learning and combined
A fiery and eccentric mind,
Idolatry of liberty,
A wild enthusiastic tongue,
Black curls which to his shoulders hung.

VII

The pervert world with icy chill
Had not yet withered his young breast.
His heart reciprocated still
When Friendship smiled or Love caressed.
He was a dear delightful fool--
A nursling yet for Hope to school.
The riot of the world and glare
Still sovereigns of his spirit were,
And by a sweet delusion he
Would soothe the doubtings of his soul,
He deemed of human life the goal
To be a charming mystery:
He racked his brains to find its clue
And marvels deemed he thus should view.

VIII

This he believed: a kindred spirit
Impelled to union with his own
Lay languishing both day and night--
Waiting his coming--his alone!
He deemed his friends but longed to make
Great sacrifices for his sake!
That a friend's arm in every case
Felled a calumniator base!
That chosen heroes consecrate,
Friends of the sons of every land,
Exist--that their immortal band
Shall surely, be it soon or late,
Pour on this orb a dazzling light
And bless mankind with full delight.

IX

Compassion now or wrath inspires
And now philanthropy his soul,
And now his youthful heart desires
The path which leads to glory's goal.
His harp beneath that sky had rung
Where sometime Goethe, Schiller sung,
And at the altar of their fame
He kindled his poetic flame.
But from the Muses' loftiest height
The gifted songster never swerved,
But proudly in his song preserved
An ever transcendental flight;
His transports were quite maidenly,
Charming with grave simplicity.

X

He sang of love--to love a slave.
His ditties were as pure and bright
As thoughts which gentle maidens have,
As a babe's slumber, or the light
Of the moon in the tranquil skies,
Goddess of lovers' tender sighs.
He sang of separation grim,
Of what not, and of distant dim,
Of roses to romancers dear;
To foreign lands he would allude,
Where long time he in solitude
Had let fall many a bitter tear:
He sang of life's fresh colours stained
Before he eighteen years attained.

XI

Since Eugene in that solitude
Gifts such as these alone could prize,
A scant attendance Lenski showed
At neighbouring hospitalities.
He shunned those parties boisterous;
The conversation tedious
About the crop of hay, the wine,
The kennel or a kindred line,
Was certainly not erudite
Nor sparkled with poetic fire,
Nor wit, nor did the same inspire
A sense of social delight,
But still more stupid did appear
The gossip of their ladies fair.

XII

Handsome and rich, the neighbourhood
Lenski as a good match received,--
Such is the country custom good;
All mothers their sweet girls believed
Suitable for this semi-Russian.
He enters: rapidly discussion
Shifts, tacks about, until they prate
The sorrows of a single state.
Perchance where Dunia pours out tea
The young proprietor we find;
To Dunia then they whisper: Mind!
And a guitar produced we see,
And Heavens! warbled forth we hear:
_Come to my golden palace, dear_!(25)

[Note 25: From the lay of the _Russalka_, i.e. mermaid of the Dnieper.]

XIII

But Lenski, having no desire
Vows matrimonial to break,
With our Oneguine doth aspire
Acquaintance instantly to make.
They met. Earth, water, prose and verse,
Or ice and flame, are not diverse
If they were similar in aught.
At first such contradictions wrought
Mutual repulsion and ennui,
But grown familiar side by side
On horseback every day they ride--
Inseparable soon they be.
Thus oft--this I myself confess--
Men become friends from idleness.

XIV

But even thus not now-a-days!
In spite of common sense we're wont
As cyphers others to appraise,
Ourselves as unities to count;
And like Napoleons each of us
A million bipeds reckons thus
One instrument for his own use--
Feeling is silly, dangerous.
Eugene, more tolerant than this
(Though certainly mankind he knew
And usually despised it too),
Exceptionless as no rule is,
A few of different temper deemed,
Feeling in others much esteemed.

XV

With smiling face he Lenski hears;
The poet's fervid conversation
And judgment which unsteady veers
And eye which gleams with inspiration--
All this was novel to Eugene.
The cold reply with gloomy mien
He oft upon his lips would curb,
Thinking: 'tis foolish to disturb
This evanescent boyish bliss.
Time without me will lessons give,
So meantime let him joyous live
And deem the world perfection is!
Forgive the fever youth inspires,
And youthful madness, youthful fires.

XVI

The gulf between them was so vast,
Debate commanded ample food--
The laws of generations past,
The fruits of science, evil, good,
The prejudices all men have,
The fatal secrets of the grave,
And life and fate in turn selected
Were to analysis subjected.
The fervid poet would recite,
Carried away by ecstasy,
Fragments of northern poetry,
Whilst Eugene condescending quite,
Though scarcely following what was said,
Attentive listened to the lad.

XVII

But more the passions occupy
The converse of our hermits twain,
And, heaving a regretful sigh,
An exile from their troublous reign,
Eugene would speak regarding these.
Thrice happy who their agonies
Hath suffered but indifferent grown,
Still happier he who ne'er hath known!
By absence who hath chilled his love,
His hate by slander, and who spends
Existence without wife or friends,
Whom jealous transport cannot move,
And who the rent-roll of his race
Ne'er trusted to the treacherous ace.

XVIII

When, wise at length, we seek repose
Beneath the flag of Quietude,
When Passion's fire no longer glows
And when her violence reviewed--
Each gust of temper, silly word,
Seems so unnatural and absurd:
Reduced with effort unto sense,
We hear with interest intense
The accents wild of other's woes,
They stir the heart as heretofore.
So ancient warriors, battles o'er,
A curious interest disclose
In yarns of youthful troopers gay,
Lost in the hamlet far away.

XIX

And in addition youth is flame
And cannot anything conceal,
Is ever ready to proclaim
The love, hate, sorrow, joy, we feel.
Deeming himself a veteran scarred
In love's campaigns Oneguine heard
With quite a lachrymose expression
The youthful poet's fond confession.
He with an innocence extreme
His inner consciousness laid bare,
And Eugene soon discovered there
The story of his young love's dream,
Where plentifully feelings flow
Which we experienced long ago.

XX

Alas! he loved as in our times
Men love no more, as only the
Mad spirit of the man who rhymes
Is still condemned in love to be;
One image occupied his mind,
Constant affection intertwined
And an habitual sense of pain;
And distance interposed in vain,
Nor years of separation all
Nor homage which the Muse demands
Nor beauties of far distant lands
Nor study, banquet, rout nor ball
His constant soul could ever tire,
Which glowed with virginal desire.

XXI

When but a boy he Olga loved
Unknown as yet the aching heart,
He witnessed tenderly and moved
Her girlish gaiety and sport.
Beneath the sheltering oak tree's shade
He with his little maiden played,
Whilst the fond parents, friends thro' life,
Dreamed in the future man and wife.
And full of innocent delight,
As in a thicket's humble shade,
Beneath her parents' eyes the maid
Grew like a lily pure and white,
Unseen in thick and tangled grass
By bee and butterfly which pass.

XXII

'Twas she who first within his breast
Poetic transport did infuse,
And thoughts of Olga first impressed
A mournful temper on his Muse.
Farewell! thou golden days of love!
'Twas then he loved the tangled grove
And solitude and calm delight,
The moon, the stars, and shining night--
The moon, the lamp of heaven above,
To whom we used to consecrate
A promenade in twilight late
With tears which secret sufferers love--
But now in her effulgence pale
A substitute for lamps we hail!

XXIII

Obedient she had ever been
And modest, cheerful as the morn,
As a poetic life serene,
Sweet as the kiss of lovers sworn.
Her eyes were of cerulean blue,
Her locks were of a golden hue,
Her movements, voice and figure slight,
All about Olga--to a light
Romance of love I pray refer,
You'll find her portrait there, I vouch;
I formerly admired her much
But finally grew bored by her.
But with her elder sister I
Must now my stanzas occupy.

XXIV

Tattiana was her appellation.
We are the first who such a name
In pages of a love narration
With such a perversity proclaim.
But wherefore not?--'Tis pleasant, nice,
Euphonious, though I know a spice
It carries of antiquity
And of the attic. Honestly,
We must admit but little taste
Doth in us or our names appear(26)
(I speak not of our poems here),
And education runs to waste,
Endowing us from out her store
With affectation,--nothing more.

[Note 26: The Russian annotator remarks: "The most euphonious
Greek names, e.g. Agathon, Philotas, Theodora, Thekla, etc.,
are used amongst us by the lower classes only."]

XXV

And so Tattiana was her name,
Nor by her sister's brilliancy
Nor by her beauty she became
The cynosure of every eye.
Shy, silent did the maid appear
As in the timid forest deer,
Even beneath her parents' roof
Stood as estranged from all aloof,
Nearest and dearest knew not how
To fawn upon and love express;
A child devoid of childishness
To romp and play she ne'er would go:
Oft staring through the window pane
Would she in silence long remain.

XXVI

Contemplativeness, her delight,
E'en from her cradle's earliest dream,
Adorned with many a vision bright
Of rural life the sluggish stream;
Ne'er touched her fingers indolent
The needle nor, o'er framework bent,
Would she the canvas tight enrich
With gay design and silken stitch.
Desire to rule ye may observe
When the obedient doll in sport
An infant maiden doth exhort
Polite demeanour to preserve,
Gravely repeating to another
Recent instructions of its mother.

XXVII

But Tania ne'er displayed a passion
For dolls, e'en from her earliest years,
And gossip of the town and fashion
She ne'er repeated unto hers.
Strange unto her each childish game,
But when the winter season came
And dark and drear the evenings were,
Terrible tales she loved to hear.
And when for Olga nurse arrayed
In the broad meadow a gay rout,
All the young people round about,
At prisoner's base she never played.
Their noisy laugh her soul annoyed,
Their giddy sports she ne'er enjoyed.

XXVIII

She loved upon the balcony
To anticipate the break of day,
When on the pallid eastern sky
The starry beacons fade away,
The horizon luminous doth grow,
Morning's forerunners, breezes blow
And gradually day unfolds.
In winter, when Night longer holds
A hemisphere beneath her sway,
Longer the East inert reclines
Beneath the moon which dimly shines,
And calmly sleeps the hours away,
At the same hour she oped her eyes
And would by candlelight arise.

XXIX

Romances pleased her from the first,
Her all in all did constitute;
In love adventures she was versed,
Rousseau and Richardson to boot.
Not a bad fellow was her father
Though superannuated rather;
In books he saw nought to condemn
But, as he never opened them,
Viewed them with not a little scorn,
And gave himself but little pain
His daughter's book to ascertain
Which 'neath her pillow lay till morn.
His wife was also mad upon
The works of Mr. Richardson.

XXX

She was thus fond of Richardson
Not that she had his works perused,
Or that adoring Grandison
That rascal Lovelace she abused;
But that Princess Pauline of old,
Her Moscow cousin, often told
The tale of these romantic men;
Her husband was a bridegroom then,
And she despite herself would waste
Sighs on another than her lord
Whose qualities appeared to afford
More satisfaction to her taste.
Her Grandison was in the Guard,
A noted fop who gambled hard.

XXXI

Like his, her dress was always nice,
The height of fashion, fitting tight,
But contrary to her advice
The girl in marriage they unite.
Then, her distraction to allay,
The bridegroom sage without delay
Removed her to his country seat,
Where God alone knows whom she met.
She struggled hard at first thus pent,
Night separated from her spouse,
Then became busy with the house,
First reconciled and then content;
Habit was given us in distress
By Heaven in lieu of happiness.

XXXII

Habit alleviates the grief
Inseparable from our lot;
This great discovery relief
And consolation soon begot.
And then she soon 'twixt work and leisure
Found out the secret how at pleasure
To dominate her worthy lord,
And harmony was soon restored.
The workpeople she superintended,
Mushrooms for winter salted down,
Kept the accounts, shaved many a crown,(*)
The bath on Saturdays attended,
When angry beat her maids, I grieve,
And all without her husband's leave.

[Note: The serfs destined for military service used to have
a portion of their heads shaved as a distinctive mark.]

XXXIII

In her friends' albums, time had been,
With blood instead of ink she scrawled,
Baptized Prascovia Pauline,
And in her conversation drawled.
She wore her corset tightly bound,
The Russian N with nasal sound
She would pronounce _a la Francaise_;
But soon she altered all her ways,
Corset and album and Pauline,
Her sentimental verses all,
She soon forgot, began to call
Akulka who was once Celine,
And had with waddling in the end
Her caps and night-dresses to mend.

XXXIV

As for her spouse he loved her dearly,
In her affairs ne'er interfered,
Entrusted all to her sincerely,
In dressing-gown at meals appeared.
Existence calmly sped along,
And oft at eventide a throng
Of friends unceremonious would
Assemble from the neighbourhood:
They growl a bit--they scandalise--
They crack a feeble joke and smile--
Thus the time passes and meanwhile
Olga the tea must supervise--
'Tis time for supper, now for bed,
And soon the friendly troop hath fled.

XXXV

They in a peaceful life preserved
Customs by ages sanctified,
Strictly the Carnival observed,
Ate Russian pancakes at Shrovetide,
Twice in the year to fast were bound,
Of whirligigs were very fond,
Of Christmas carols, song and dance;
When people with long countenance
On Trinity Sunday yawned at prayer,
Three tears they dropt with humble mein
Upon a bunch of lovage green;
_Kvass_ needful was to them as air;
On guests their servants used to wait
By rank as settled by the State.(27)

[Note 27: The foregoing stanza requires explanation. Russian
pancakes or "blinni" are consumed vigorously by the lower
orders during the Carnival. At other times it is difficult
to procure them, at any rate in the large towns.

The Russian peasants are childishly fond of whirligigs, which
are also much in vogue during the Carnival.

"Christmas Carols" is not an exact equivalent for the Russian
phrase. "Podbliudni pessni," are literally "dish songs," or
songs used with dishes (of water) during the "sviatki" or Holy
Nights, which extend from Christmas to Twelfth Night, for
purposes of divination. Reference will again be made to this
superstitious practice, which is not confined to Russia. See Note 52.

"Song and dance," the well-known "khorovod," in which the dance
proceeds to vocal music.

"Lovage," the _Levisticum officinalis_, is a hardy plant growing
very far north, though an inhabitant of our own kitchen gardens.
The passage containing the reference to the three tears and
Trinity Sunday was at first deemed irreligious by the Russian
censors, and consequently expunged.

_Kvass_ is of various sorts: there is the common _kvass_ of
fermented rye used by the peasantry, and the more expensive
_kvass_ of the restaurants, iced and flavoured with various fruits.

The final two lines refer to the "Tchin," or Russian social
hierarchy. There are fourteen grades in the Tchin assigning
relative rank and precedence to the members of the various
departments of the State, civil, military, naval, court,
scientific and educational. The military and naval grades from
the 14th up to the 7th confer personal nobility only, whilst
above the 7th hereditary rank is acquired. In the remaining
departments, civil or otherwise, personal nobility is only
attained with the 9th grade, hereditary with the 4th.]

XXXVI

Thus age approached, the common doom,
And death before the husband wide
Opened the portals of the tomb
And a new diadem supplied.(28)
Just before dinner-time he slept,
By neighbouring families bewept,
By children and by faithful wife
With deeper woe than others' grief.
He was an honest gentleman,
And where at last his bones repose
The epitaph on marble shows:
_Demetrius Larine, sinful man,
Servant of God and brigadier,
Enjoyeth peaceful slumber here_.

[Note 28: A play upon the word "venetz," crown, which also
signifies a nimbus or glory, and is the symbol of marriage
from the fact of two gilt crowns being held over the heads
of the bride and bridegroom during the ceremony. The literal
meaning of the passage is therefore: his earthly marriage
was dissolved and a heavenly one was contracted.]

XXXVII

To his Penates now returned,
Vladimir Lenski visited
His neighbour's lowly tomb and mourned
Above the ashes of the dead.
There long time sad at heart he stayed:
"Poor Yorick," mournfully he said,
"How often in thine arms I lay;
How with thy medal I would play,
The Medal Otchakoff conferred!(29)
To me he would his Olga give,
Would whisper: shall I so long live?"--
And by a genuine sorrow stirred,
Lenski his pencil-case took out
And an elegiac poem wrote.

[Note 29: The fortress of Otchakoff was taken by storm on the
18th December 1788 by a Russian army under Prince Potemkin.
Thirty thousand Turks are said to have perished during the
assault and ensuing massacre.]

XXXVIII

Likewise an epitaph with tears
He writes upon his parents' tomb,
And thus ancestral dust reveres.
Oh! on the fields of life how bloom
Harvests of souls unceasingly
By Providence's dark decree!
They blossom, ripen and they fall
And others rise ephemeral!
Thus our light race grows up and lives,
A moment effervescing stirs,
Then seeks ancestral sepulchres,
The appointed hour arrives, arrives!
And our successors soon shall drive
Us from the world wherein we live.

XXXIX

Meantime, drink deeply of the flow
Of frivolous existence, friends;
Its insignificance I know
And care but little for its ends.
To dreams I long have closed mine eyes,
Yet sometimes banished hopes will rise
And agitate my heart again;
And thus it is 'twould cause me pain
Without the faintest trace to leave
This world. I do not praise desire,
Yet still apparently aspire
My mournful fate in verse to weave,
That like a friendly voice its tone
Rescue me from oblivion.

XL

Perchance some heart 'twill agitate,
And then the stanzas of my theme
Will not, preserved by kindly Fate,
Perish absorbed by Lethe's stream.
Then it may be, O flattering tale,
Some future ignoramus shall
My famous portrait indicate
And cry: he was a poet great!
My gratitude do not disdain,
Admirer of the peaceful Muse,
Whose memory doth not refuse
My light productions to retain,
Whose hands indulgently caress
The bays of age and helplessness.


End of Canto the Second.


CANTO THE THIRD

The Country Damsel

'Elle etait fille, elle etait amoureuse'--Malfilatre

Canto The Third

[Note: Odessa and Mikhailovskoe, 1824.]

I

"Whither away? Deuce take the bard!"--
"Good-bye, Oneguine, I must go."--
"I won't detain you; but 'tis hard
To guess how you the eve pull through."--
"At Larina's."--"Hem, that is queer!
Pray is it not a tough affair
Thus to assassinate the eve?"--
"Not at all."--"That I can't conceive!
'Tis something of this sort I deem.
In the first place, say, am I right?
A Russian household simple quite,
Who welcome guests with zeal extreme,
Preserves and an eternal prattle
About the rain and flax and cattle."--

II

"No misery I see in that"--
"Boredom, my friend, behold the ill--"
"Your fashionable world I hate,
Domestic life attracts me still,
Where--"--"What! another eclogue spin?
For God's sake, Lenski, don't begin!
What! really going? 'Tis too bad!
But Lenski, I should be so glad
Would you to me this Phyllis show,
Fair source of every fine idea,
Verses and tears et cetera.
Present me."--"You are joking."--"No."--
"Delighted."--"When?"--"This very night.
They will receive us with delight."

III

Whilst homeward by the nearest route
Our heroes at full gallop sped,
Can we not stealthily make out
What they in conversation said?--
"How now, Oneguine, yawning still?"--
"'Tis habit, Lenski."--"Is your ill
More troublesome than usual?"--"No!
How dark the night is getting though!
Hallo, Andriushka, onward race!
The drive becomes monotonous--
Well! Larina appears to us
An ancient lady full of grace.--
That bilberry wine, I'm sore afraid,
The deuce with my inside has played."

IV

"Say, of the two which was Tattiana?"
"She who with melancholy face
And silent as the maid Svetlana(30)
Hard by the window took her place."--
"The younger, you're in love with her!"
"Well!"--"I the elder should prefer,
Were I like you a bard by trade--
In Olga's face no life's displayed.
'Tis a Madonna of Vandyk,
An oval countenance and pink,
Yon silly moon upon the brink
Of the horizon she is like!"--
Vladimir something curtly said
Nor further comment that night made.

[Note 30: "Svetlana," a short poem by Joukovski, upon which his
fame mainly rests. Joukovski was an unblushing plagiarist. Many
eminent English poets have been laid under contribution by him,
often without going through the form of acknowledging the
source of inspiration. Even the poem in question cannot be
pronounced entirely original, though its intrinsic beauty is
unquestionable. It undoubtedly owes its origin to Burger's poem
"Leonora," which has found so many English translators. Not
content with a single development of Burger's ghastly production
the Russian poet has directly paraphrased "Leonora" under its
own title, and also written a poem "Liudmila" in imitation of it.
The principal outlines of these three poems are as follows: A
maiden loses her lover in the wars; she murmurs at Providence
and is vainly reproved for such blasphemy by her mother.
Providence at length loses patience and sends her lover's spirit,
to all appearances as if in the flesh, who induces the unfortunate
maiden to elope. Instead of riding to a church or bridal chamber
the unpleasant bridegroom resorts to the graveyard and repairs to
his own grave, from which he has recently issued to execute his
errand. It is a repulsive subject. "Svetlana," however, is more
agreeable than its prototype "Leonora," inasmuch as the whole
catastrophe turns out a dream brought on by "sorcery," during the
"sviatki" or Holy Nights (see Canto V. st. x), and the dreamer
awakes to hear the tinkling of her lover's sledge approaching.
"Svetlana" has been translated by Sir John Bowring.]

V

Meantime Oneguine's apparition
At Larina's abode produced
Quite a sensation; the position
To all good neighbours' sport conduced.
Endless conjectures all propound
And secretly their views expound.
What jokes and guesses now abound,
A beau is for Tattiana found!
In fact, some people were assured
The wedding-day had been arranged,
But the date subsequently changed
Till proper rings could be procured.
On Lenski's matrimonial fate
They long ago had held debate.

VI

Of course Tattiana was annoyed
By such allusions scandalous,
Yet was her inmost soul o'erjoyed
With satisfaction marvellous,
As in her heart the thought sank home,
I am in love, my hour hath come!
Thus in the earth the seed expands
Obedient to warm Spring's commands.
Long time her young imagination
By indolence and languor fired
The fated nutriment desired;
And long internal agitation
Had filled her youthful breast with gloom,
She waited for--I don't know whom!

VII

The fatal hour had come at last--
She oped her eyes and cried: 'tis he!
Alas! for now before her passed
The same warm vision constantly;
Now all things round about repeat
Ceaselessly to the maiden sweet
His name: the tenderness of home
Tiresome unto her hath become
And the kind-hearted servitors:
Immersed in melancholy thought,
She hears of conversation nought
And hated casual visitors,
Their coming which no man expects,
And stay whose length none recollects.

VIII

Now with what eager interest
She the delicious novel reads,
With what avidity and zest
She drinks in those seductive deeds!
All the creations which below
From happy inspiration flow,
The swain of Julia Wolmar,
Malek Adel and De Linar,(31)
Werther, rebellious martyr bold,
And that unrivalled paragon,
The sleep-compelling Grandison,
Our tender dreamer had enrolled
A single being: 'twas in fine
No other than Oneguine mine.

[Note 31: The heroes of two romances much in vogue in Pushkin's
time: the former by Madame Cottin, the latter by the famous
Madame Krudener. The frequent mention in the course of this
poem of romances once enjoying a European celebrity but now
consigned to oblivion, will impress the reader with the
transitory nature of merely mediocre literary reputation. One
has now to search for the very names of most of the popular
authors of Pushkin's day and rummage biographical dictionaries
for the dates of their births and deaths. Yet the poet's prime
was but fifty years ago, and had he lived to a ripe old age he
would have been amongst us still. He was four years younger
than the late Mr. Thomas Carlyle. The decadence of Richardson's
popularity amongst his countrymen is a fact familiar to all.]

IX

Dreaming herself the heroine
Of the romances she preferred,
Clarissa, Julia, Delphine,--(32)
Tattiana through the forest erred,
And the bad book accompanies.
Upon those pages she descries
Her passion's faithful counterpart,
Fruit of the yearnings of the heart.
She heaves a sigh and deep intent
On raptures, sorrows not her own,
She murmurs in an undertone
A letter for her hero meant:
That hero, though his merit shone,
Was certainly no Grandison.

[Note 32: Referring to Richardson's "Clarissa Harlowe," "La
Nouvelle Heloise," and Madame de Stael's "Delphine."]

X

Alas! my friends, the years flit by
And after them at headlong pace
The evanescent fashions fly
In motley and amusing chase.
The world is ever altering!
Farthingales, patches, were the thing,
And courtier, fop, and usurer
Would once in powdered wig appear;
Time was, the poet's tender quill
In hopes of everlasting fame
A finished madrigal would frame
Or couplets more ingenious still;
Time was, a valiant general might
Serve who could neither read nor write.

XI

Time was, in style magniloquent
Authors replete with sacred fire
Their heroes used to represent
All that perfection could desire;
Ever by adverse fate oppressed,
Their idols they were wont to invest
With intellect, a taste refined,
And handsome countenance combined,
A heart wherein pure passion burnt;
The excited hero in a trice
Was ready for self-sacrifice,
And in the final tome we learnt,
Vice had due punishment awarded,
Virtue was with a bride rewarded.

XII

But now our minds are mystified
And Virtue acts as a narcotic,
Vice in romance is glorified
And triumphs in career erotic.
The monsters of the British Muse
Deprive our schoolgirls of repose,
The idols of their adoration
A Vampire fond of meditation,
Or Melmoth, gloomy wanderer he,
The Eternal Jew or the Corsair
Or the mysterious Sbogar.(33)
Byron's capricious phantasy
Could in romantic mantle drape
E'en hopeless egoism's dark shape.

[Note 33: "Melmoth," a romance by Maturin, and "Jean Sbogar," by
Ch. Nodier. "The Vampire," a tale published in 1819, was
erroneously attributed to Lord Byron. "Salathiel; the Eternal
Jew," a romance by Geo. Croly.]

XIII

My friends, what means this odd digression?
May be that I by heaven's decrees
Shall abdicate the bard's profession,
And shall adopt some new caprice.
Thus having braved Apollo's rage
With humble prose I'll fill my page
And a romance in ancient style
Shall my declining years beguile;
Nor shall my pen paint terribly
The torment born of crime unseen,
But shall depict the touching scene
Of Russian domesticity;
I will descant on love's sweet dream,
The olden time shall be my theme.

XIV

Old people's simple conversations
My unpretending page shall fill,
Their offspring's innocent flirtations
By the old lime-tree or the rill,
Their Jealousy and separation
And tears of reconciliation:
Fresh cause of quarrel then I'll find,
But finally in wedlock bind.
The passionate speeches I'll repeat,
Accents of rapture or despair
I uttered to my lady fair
Long ago, prostrate at her feet.
Then they came easily enow,
My tongue is somewhat rusty now.

XV

Tattiana! sweet Tattiana, see!
What bitter tears with thee I shed!
Thou hast resigned thy destiny
Unto a ruthless tyrant dread.
Thou'lt suffer, dearest, but before,
Hope with her fascinating power
To dire contentment shall give birth
And thou shalt taste the joys of earth.
Thou'lt quaff love's sweet envenomed stream,
Fantastic images shall swarm
In thy imagination warm,
Of happy meetings thou shalt dream,
And wheresoe'er thy footsteps err,
Confront thy fated torturer!

XVI

Love's pangs Tattiana agonize.
She seeks the garden in her need--
Sudden she stops, casts down her eyes
And cares not farther to proceed;
Her bosom heaves whilst crimson hues
With sudden flush her cheeks suffuse,
Barely to draw her breath she seems,
Her eye with fire unwonted gleams.
And now 'tis night, the guardian moon
Sails her allotted course on high,
And from the misty woodland nigh
The nightingale trills forth her tune;
Restless Tattiana sleepless lay
And thus unto her nurse did say:

XVII

"Nurse, 'tis so close I cannot rest.
Open the window--sit by me."
"What ails thee, dear?"--"I feel depressed.
Relate some ancient history."
"But which, my dear?--In days of yore
Within my memory I bore
Many an ancient legend which
In monsters and fair dames was rich;
But now my mind is desolate,
What once I knew is clean forgot--
Alas! how wretched now my lot!"
"But tell me, nurse, can you relate
The days which to your youth belong?
Were you in love when you were young?"--

XVIII

"Alack! Tattiana," she replied,
"We never loved in days of old,
My mother-in-law who lately died(34)
Had killed me had the like been told."
"How came you then to wed a man?"--
"Why, as God ordered! My Ivan
Was younger than myself, my light,
For I myself was thirteen quite;(35)
The matchmaker a fortnight sped,
Her suit before my parents pressing:
At last my father gave his blessing,
And bitter tears of fright I shed.
Weeping they loosed my tresses long(36)
And led me off to church with song."

[Note 34: A young married couple amongst Russian peasants
reside in the house of the bridegroom's father till the
"tiaglo," or family circle is broken up by his death.]

[Note 35: Marriages amongst Russian serfs used formerly to
take place at ridiculously early ages. Haxthausen asserts
that strong hearty peasant women were to be seen at work
in the fields with their infant husbands in their arms. The
inducement lay in the fact that the "tiaglo" (see previous
note) received an additional lot of the communal land for
every male added to its number, though this could have formed
an inducement in the southern and fertile provinces of Russia
only, as it is believed that agriculture in the north is so
unremunerative that land has often to be forced upon the
peasants, in order that the taxes, for which the whole Commune
is responsible to Government, may be paid. The abuse of early
marriages was regulated by Tsar Nicholas.]

[Note 36: Courtships were not unfrequently carried on in the
larger villages, which alone could support such an individual,
by means of a "svakha," or matchmaker. In Russia unmarried
girls wear their hair in a single long plait or tail, "kossa;"
the married women, on the other hand, in two, which are twisted
into the head-gear.]

XIX

"Then amongst strangers I was left--
But I perceive thou dost not heed--"
"Alas! dear nurse, my heart is cleft,
Mortally sick I am indeed.
Behold, my sobs I scarce restrain--"
"My darling child, thou art in pain.--
The Lord deliver her and save!
Tell me at once what wilt thou have?
I'll sprinkle thee with holy water.--
How thy hands burn!"--"Dear nurse, I'm well.
I am--in love--you know--don't tell!"
"The Lord be with thee, O my daughter!"--
And the old nurse a brief prayer said
And crossed with trembling hand the maid.

XX

"I am in love," her whispers tell
The aged woman in her woe:
"My heart's delight, thou art not well."--
"I am in love, nurse! leave me now."
Behold! the moon was shining bright
And showed with an uncertain light
Tattiana's beauty, pale with care,
Her tears and her dishevelled hair;
And on the footstool sitting down
Beside our youthful heroine fair,
A kerchief round her silver hair
The aged nurse in ample gown,(37)
Whilst all creation seemed to dream
Enchanted by the moon's pale beam.

[Note 37: It is thus that I am compelled to render a female
garment not known, so far as I am aware, to Western Europe.
It is called by the natives "doushegreika," that is to say,
"warmer of the soul"--in French, chaufferette de l'ame. It
is a species of thick pelisse worn over the "sarafan," or
gown.]

XXI

But borne in spirit far away
Tattiana gazes on the moon,
And starting suddenly doth say:
"Nurse, leave me. I would be alone.
Pen, paper bring: the table too
Draw near. I soon to sleep shall go--
Good-night." Behold! she is alone!
'Tis silent--on her shines the moon--
Upon her elbow she reclines,
And Eugene ever in her soul
Indites an inconsiderate scroll
Wherein love innocently pines.
Now it is ready to be sent--
For whom, Tattiana, is it meant?

XXII

I have known beauties cold and raw
As Winter in their purity,
Striking the intellect with awe
By dull insensibility,
And I admired their common sense
And natural benevolence,
But, I acknowledge, from them fled;
For on their brows I trembling read
The inscription o'er the gates of Hell
"Abandon hope for ever here!"(38)
Love to inspire doth woe appear
To such--delightful to repel.
Perchance upon the Neva e'en
Similar dames ye may have seen.

[Note 38: A Russian annotator complains that the poet has
mutilated Dante's famous line.]

XXIII

Amid submissive herds of men
Virgins miraculous I see,
Who selfishly unmoved remain
Alike by sighs and flattery.
But what astonished do I find
When harsh demeanour hath consigned
A timid love to banishment?--
On fresh allurements they are bent,
At least by show of sympathy;
At least their accents and their words
Appear attuned to softer chords;
And then with blind credulity
The youthful lover once again
Pursues phantasmagoria vain.

XXIV

Why is Tattiana guiltier deemed?--
Because in singleness of thought
She never of deception dreamed
But trusted the ideal she wrought?--
Because her passion wanted art,
Obeyed the impulses of heart?--
Because she was so innocent,
That Heaven her character had blent
With an imagination wild,
With intellect and strong volition
And a determined disposition,
An ardent heart and yet so mild?--
Doth love's incautiousness in her
So irremissible appear?

XXV

O ye whom tender love hath pained
Without the ken of parents both,
Whose hearts responsive have remained
To the impressions of our youth,
The all-entrancing joys of love--
Young ladies, if ye ever strove
The mystic lines to tear away
A lover's letter might convey,
Or into bold hands anxiously
Have e'er a precious tress consigned,
Or even, silent and resigned,
When separation's hour drew nigh,
Have felt love's agitated kiss
With tears, confused emotions, bliss,--

XXVI

With unanimity complete,
Condemn not weak Tattiana mine;
Do not cold-bloodedly repeat
The sneers of critics superfine;
And you, O maids immaculate,
Whom vice, if named, doth agitate
E'en as the presence of a snake,
I the same admonition make.
Who knows? with love's consuming flame
Perchance you also soon may burn,
Then to some gallant in your turn
Will be ascribed by treacherous Fame
The triumph of a conquest new.
The God of Love is after you!

XXVII

A coquette loves by calculation,
Tattiana's love was quite sincere,
A love which knew no limitation,
Even as the love of children dear.
She did not think "procrastination
Enhances love in estimation
And thus secures the prey we seek.
His vanity first let us pique
With hope and then perplexity,
Excruciate the heart and late
With jealous fire resuscitate,
Lest jaded with satiety,
The artful prisoner should seek
Incessantly his chains to break."

XXVIII

I still a complication view,
My country's honour and repute
Demands that I translate for you
The letter which Tattiana wrote.
At Russ she was by no means clever
And read our newspapers scarce ever,
And in her native language she
Possessed nor ease nor fluency,
So she in French herself expressed.
I cannot help it I declare,
Though hitherto a lady ne'er
In Russ her love made manifest,
And never hath our language proud
In correspondence been allowed.(39)

[Note 39: It is well known that until the reign of the late Tsar
French was the language of the Russian court and of Russian
fashionable society. It should be borne in mind that at the time
this poem was written literary warfare more or less open was
being waged between two hostile schools of Russian men of
letters. These consisted of the _Arzamass_, or French school, to
which Pushkin himself together with his uncle Vassili Pushkin
the "Nestor of the Arzamass" belonged, and their opponents who
devoted themselves to the cultivation of the vernacular.]

XXIX

They wish that ladies should, I hear,
Learn Russian, but the Lord defend!
I can't conceive a little dear
With the "Well-Wisher" in her hand!(40)
I ask, all ye who poets are,
Is it not true? the objects fair,
To whom ye for unnumbered crimes
Had to compose in secret rhymes,
To whom your hearts were consecrate,--
Did they not all the Russian tongue
With little knowledge and that wrong
In charming fashion mutilate?
Did not their lips with foreign speech
The native Russian tongue impeach?

[Note 40: The "Blago-Namierenni," or "Well-Wisher," was an
inferior Russian newspaper of the day, much scoffed at by
contemporaries. The editor once excused himself for some
gross error by pleading that he had been "on the loose."]

XXX

God grant I meet not at a ball
Or at a promenade mayhap,
A schoolmaster in yellow shawl
Or a professor in tulle cap.
As rosy lips without a smile,
The Russian language I deem vile
Without grammatical mistakes.
May be, and this my terror wakes,
The fair of the next generation,
As every journal now entreats,
Will teach grammatical conceits,
Introduce verse in conversation.
But I--what is all this to me?
Will to the old times faithful be.

XXXI

Speech careless, incorrect, but soft,
With inexact pronunciation
Raises within my breast as oft
As formerly much agitation.
Repentance wields not now her spell
And gallicisms I love as well
As the sins of my youthful days
Or Bogdanovitch's sweet lays.(41)
But I must now employ my Muse
With the epistle of my fair;
I promised!--Did I so?--Well, there!
Now I am ready to refuse.
I know that Parny's tender pen(42)
Is no more cherished amongst men.

[Note 41: Hippolyte Bogdanovitch--b. 1743, d. 1803--though
possessing considerable poetical talent was like many other
Russian authors more remarkable for successful imitation
than for original genius. His most remarkable production
is "Doushenka," "The Darling," a composition somewhat in
the style of La Fontaine's "Psyche." Its merit consists in
graceful phraseology, and a strong pervading sense of humour.]

[Note 42: Parny--a French poet of the era of the first Napoleon,
b. 1753, d. 1814. Introduced to the aged Voltaire during
his last visit to Paris, the patriarch laid his hands upon
the youth's head and exclaimed: "Mon cher Tibulle." He is
chiefly known for his erotic poetry which attracted the
affectionate regard of the youthful Pushkin when a student
at the Lyceum. We regret to add that, having accepted a
pension from Napoleon, Parny forthwith proceeded to damage
his literary reputation by inditing an "epic" poem entitled
"Goddam! Goddam! par un French--Dog." It is descriptive
of the approaching conquest of Britain by Napoleon, and
treats the embryo enterprise as if already conducted to a
successful conclusion and become matter of history. A good
account of the bard and his creations will be found in the
_Saturday Review_ of the 2d August 1879.]

XXXII

Bard of the "Feasts," and mournful breast,(43)
If thou wert sitting by my side,
With this immoderate request
I should alarm our friendship tried:
In one of thine enchanting lays
To russify the foreign phrase
Of my impassioned heroine.
Where art thou? Come! pretensions mine
I yield with a low reverence;
But lonely beneath Finnish skies
Where melancholy rocks arise
He wanders in his indolence;
Careless of fame his spirit high
Hears not my importunity!

[Note 43: Evgeny Baratynski, a contemporary of Pushkin and a
lyric poet of some originality and talent. The "Feasts" is
a short brilliant poem in praise of conviviality. Pushkin
is therein praised as the best of companions "beside the
bottle."]

XXXIII

Tattiana's letter I possess,
I guard it as a holy thing,
And though I read it with distress,
I'm o'er it ever pondering.
Inspired by whom this tenderness,
This gentle daring who could guess?
Who this soft nonsense could impart,
Imprudent prattle of the heart,
Attractive in its banefulness?
I cannot understand. But lo!
A feeble version read below,
A print without the picture's grace,
Or, as it were, the Freischutz' score
Strummed by a timid schoolgirl o'er.


Tattiana's Letter to Oneguine

I write to you! Is more required?
Can lower depths beyond remain?
'Tis in your power now, if desired,
To crush me with a just disdain.
But if my lot unfortunate
You in the least commiserate
You will not all abandon me.
At first, I clung to secrecy:
Believe me, of my present shame
You never would have heard the name,
If the fond hope I could have fanned
At times, if only once a week,
To see you by our fireside stand,
To listen to the words you speak,
Address to you one single phrase
And then to meditate for days
Of one thing till again we met.
'Tis said you are a misanthrope,
In country solitude you mope,
And we--an unattractive set--
Can hearty welcome give alone.
Why did you visit our poor place?
Forgotten in the village lone,
I never should have seen your face
And bitter torment never known.
The untutored spirit's pangs calmed down
By time (who can anticipate?)
I had found my predestinate,
Become a faithful wife and e'en
A fond and careful mother been.

Another! to none other I
My heart's allegiance can resign,
My doom has been pronounced on high,
'Tis Heaven's will and I am thine.
The sum of my existence gone
But promise of our meeting gave,
I feel thou wast by God sent down
My guardian angel to the grave.
Thou didst to me in dreams appear,
Unseen thou wast already dear.
Thine eye subdued me with strange glance,
I heard thy voice's resonance
Long ago. Dream it cannot be!
Scarce hadst thou entered thee I knew,
I flushed up, stupefied I grew,
And cried within myself: 'tis he!
Is it not truth? in tones suppressed
With thee I conversed when I bore
Comfort and succour to the poor,
And when I prayer to Heaven addressed
To ease the anguish of my breast.
Nay! even as this instant fled,
Was it not thou, O vision bright,
That glimmered through the radiant night
And gently hovered o'er my head?
Was it not thou who thus didst stoop
To whisper comfort, love and hope?
Who art thou? Guardian angel sent
Or torturer malevolent?
Doubt and uncertainty decide:
All this may be an empty dream,
Delusions of a mind untried,
Providence otherwise may deem--
Then be it so! My destiny
From henceforth I confide to thee!
Lo! at thy feet my tears I pour
And thy protection I implore.
Imagine! Here alone am I!
No one my anguish comprehends,
At times my reason almost bends,
And silently I here must die--
But I await thee: scarce alive
My heart with but one look revive;
Or to disturb my dreams approach
Alas! with merited reproach.

'Tis finished. Horrible to read!
With shame I shudder and with dread--
But boldly I myself resign:
Thine honour is my countersign!

XXXIV

Tattiana moans and now she sighs
And in her grasp the letter shakes,
Even the rosy wafer dries
Upon her tongue which fever bakes.
Her head upon her breast declines
And an enchanting shoulder shines
From her half-open vest of night.
But lo! already the moon's light
Is waning. Yonder valley deep
Looms gray behind the mist and morn
Silvers the brook; the shepherd's horn
Arouses rustics from their sleep.
'Tis day, the family downstairs,
But nought for this Tattiana cares.

XXXV

The break of day she doth not see,
But sits in bed with air depressed,
Nor on the letter yet hath she
The image of her seal impressed.
But gray Phillippevna the door
Opened with care, and entering bore
A cup of tea upon a tray.
"'Tis time, my child, arise, I pray!
My beauty, thou art ready too.
My morning birdie, yesternight
I was half silly with affright.
But praised be God! in health art thou!
The pains of night have wholly fled,
Thy cheek is as a poppy red!"

XXXVI

"Ah! nurse, a favour do for me!"
"Command me, darling, what you choose"
"Do not--you might--suspicious be;
But look you--ah! do not refuse."
"I call to witness God on high--"
"Then send your grandson quietly
To take this letter to O-- Well!
Unto our neighbour. Mind you tell--
Command him not to say a word--
I mean my name not to repeat."
"To whom is it to go, my sweet?
Of late I have been quite absurd,--
So many neighbours here exist--
Am I to go through the whole list?"

XXXVII

"How dull you are this morning, nurse!"
"My darling, growing old am I!
In age the memory gets worse,
But I was sharp in times gone by.
In times gone by thy bare command--"
"Oh! nurse, nurse, you don't understand!
What is thy cleverness to me?
The letter is the thing, you see,--
Oneguine's letter!"--"Ah! the thing!
Now don't be cross with me, my soul,
You know that I am now a fool--
But why are your cheeks whitening?"
"Nothing, good nurse, there's nothing wrong,
But send your grandson before long."

XXXVIII

No answer all that day was borne.
Another passed; 'twas just the same.
Pale as a ghost and dressed since morn
Tattiana waits. No answer came!
Olga's admirer came that day:
"Tell me, why doth your comrade stay?"
The hostess doth interrogate:
"He hath neglected us of late."--
Tattiana blushed, her heart beat quick--
"He promised here this day to ride,"
Lenski unto the dame replied,
"The post hath kept him, it is like."
Shamefaced, Tattiana downward looked
As if he cruelly had joked!

XXXIX

'Twas dusk! Upon the table bright
Shrill sang the _samovar_ at eve,(44)
The china teapot too ye might
In clouds of steam above perceive.
Into the cups already sped
By Olga's hand distributed
The fragrant tea in darkling stream,
And a boy handed round the cream.
Tania doth by the casement linger
And breathes upon the chilly glass,
Dreaming of what not, pretty lass,
And traces with a slender finger
Upon its damp opacity,
The mystic monogram, O. E.

[Note 44: The _samovar_, i.e. "self-boiler," is merely an
urn for hot water having a fire in the center. We may observe
a similar contrivance in our own old-fashioned tea-urns which
are provided with a receptacle for a red-hot iron cylinder in
center. The tea-pot is usually placed on the top of the
_samovar_.]

XL

In the meantime her spirit sinks,
Her weary eyes are filled with tears--
A horse's hoofs she hears--She shrinks!
Nearer they come--Eugene appears!
Ah! than a spectre from the dead
More swift the room Tattiana fled,
From hall to yard and garden flies,
Not daring to cast back her eyes.
She fears and like an arrow rushes
Through park and meadow, wood and brake,
The bridge and alley to the lake,
Brambles she snaps and lilacs crushes,
The flowerbeds skirts, the brook doth meet,
Till out of breath upon a seat

XLI

She sank.--
   "He's here! Eugene is here!
Merciful God, what will he deem?"
Yet still her heart, which torments tear,
Guards fondly hope's uncertain dream.
She waits, on fire her trembling frame--
Will he pursue?--But no one came.
She heard of servant-maids the note,
Who in the orchards gathered fruit,
Singing in chorus all the while.
(This by command; for it was found,
However cherries might abound,
They disappeared by stealth and guile,
So mouths they stopt with song, not fruit--
Device of rural minds acute!)


The Maidens' Song

Young maidens, fair maidens,
Friends and companions,
Disport yourselves, maidens,
Arouse yourselves, fair ones.
Come sing we in chorus
The secrets of maidens.
Allure the young gallant
With dance and with song.
As we lure the young gallant,
Espy him approaching,
Disperse yourselves, darlings,
And pelt him with cherries,
With cherries, red currants,
With raspberries, cherries.
Approach not to hearken
To secrets of virgins,
Approach not to gaze at
The frolics of maidens.

XLII

They sang, whilst negligently seated,
Attentive to the echoing sound,
Tattiana with impatience waited
Until her heart less high should bound--
Till the fire in her cheek decreased;
But tremor still her frame possessed,
Nor did her blushes fade away,
More crimson every moment they.
Thus shines the wretched butterfly,
With iridescent wing doth flap
When captured in a schoolboy's cap;
Thus shakes the hare when suddenly
She from the winter corn espies
A sportsman who in covert lies.

XLIII

But finally she heaves a sigh,
And rising from her bench proceeds;
But scarce had turned the corner nigh,
Which to the neighbouring alley leads,
When Eugene like a ghost did rise
Before her straight with roguish eyes.
Tattiana faltered, and became
Scarlet as burnt by inward flame.
But this adventure's consequence
To-day, my friends, at any rate,
I am not strong enough to state;
I, after so much eloquence,
Must take a walk and rest a bit--
Some day I'll somehow finish it.


End of Canto the Third


CANTO THE FOURTH

Rural Life

'La Morale est dans la nature des choses.'--Necker


Canto The Fourth

[Mikhailovskoe, 1825]

I

THE less we love a lady fair
The easier 'tis to gain her grace,
And the more surely we ensnare
Her in the pitfalls which we place.
Time was when cold seduction strove
To swagger as the art of love,
Everywhere trumpeting its feats,
Not seeking love but sensual sweets.
But this amusement delicate
Was worthy of that old baboon,
Our fathers used to dote upon;
The Lovelaces are out of date,
Their glory with their heels of red
And long perukes hath vanished.

II

For who imposture can endure,
A constant harping on one tune,
Serious endeavours to assure
What everybody long has known;
Ever to hear the same replies
And overcome antipathies
Which never have existed, e'en
In little maidens of thirteen?
And what like menaces fatigues,
Entreaties, oaths, fictitious fear,
Epistles of six sheets or near,
Rings, tears, deceptions and intrigues,
Aunts, mothers and their scrutiny,
And husbands' tedious amity?

III

Such were the musings of Eugene.
He in the early years of life
Had a deluded victim been
Of error and the passions' strife.
By daily life deteriorated,
Awhile this beauty captivated,
And that no longer could inspire.
Slowly exhausted by desire,
Yet satiated with success,
In solitude or worldly din,
He heard his soul's complaint within,
With laughter smothered weariness:
And thus he spent eight years of time,
Destroyed the blossom of his prime.

IV

Though beauty he no more adored,
He still made love in a queer way;
Rebuffed--as quickly reassured,
Jilted--glad of a holiday.
Without enthusiasm he met
The fair, nor parted with regret,
Scarce mindful of their love and guile.
Thus a guest with composure will
To take a hand at whist oft come:
He takes his seat, concludes his game,
And straight returning whence he came,
Tranquilly goes to sleep at home,
And in the morning doth not know
Whither that evening he will go.

V

However, Tania's letter reading,
Eugene was touched with sympathy;
The language of her girlish pleading
Aroused in him sweet reverie.
He called to mind Tattiana's grace,
Pallid and melancholy face,
And in a vision, sinless, bright,
His spirit sank with strange delight.
May be the empire of the sense,
Regained authority awhile,
But he desired not to beguile
Such open-hearted innocence.
But to the garden once again
Wherein we lately left the twain.

VI

Two minutes they in silence spent,
Oneguine then approached and said:
"You have a letter to me sent.
Do not excuse yourself. I read
Confessions which a trusting heart
May well in innocence impart.
Charming is your sincerity,
Feelings which long had ceased to be
It wakens in my breast again.
But I came not to adulate:
Your frankness I shall compensate
By an avowal just as plain.
An ear to my confession lend;
To thy decree my will I bend.

VII

"If the domestic hearth could bless--
My sum of happiness contained;
If wife and children to possess
A happy destiny ordained:
If in the scenes of home I might
E'en for an instant find delight,
Then, I say truly, none but thee
I would desire my bride to be--
I say without poetic phrase,
Found the ideal of my youth,
Thee only would I choose, in truth,
As partner of my mournful days,
Thee only, pledge of all things bright,
And be as happy--as I might.

VIII

"But strange am I to happiness;
'Tis foreign to my cast of thought;
Me your perfections would not bless;
I am not worthy them in aught;
And honestly 'tis my belief
Our union would produce but grief.
Though now my love might be intense,
Habit would bring indifference.
I see you weep. Those tears of yours
Tend not my heart to mitigate,
But merely to exasperate;
Judge then what roses would be ours,
What pleasures Hymen would prepare
For us, may be for many a year.

IX

"What can be drearier than the house,
Wherein the miserable wife
Deplores a most unworthy spouse
And leads a solitary life?
The tiresome man, her value knowing,
Yet curses on his fate bestowing,
Is full of frigid jealousy,
Mute, solemn, frowning gloomily.
Such am I. This did ye expect,
When in simplicity ye wrote
Your innocent and charming note
With so much warmth and intellect?
Hath fate apportioned unto thee
This lot in life with stern decree?

X

"Ideas and time ne'er backward move;
My soul I cannot renovate--
I love you with a brother's love,
Perchance one more affectionate.
Listen to me without disdain.
A maid hath oft, may yet again
Replace the visions fancy drew;
Thus trees in spring their leaves renew
As in their turn the seasons roll.
'Tis evidently Heaven's will
You fall in love again. But still--
Learn to possess more self-control.
Not all will like myself proceed--
And thoughtlessness to woe might lead."

XI

Thus did our friend Oneguine preach:
Tattiana, dim with tears her eyes,
Attentive listened to his speech,
All breathless and without replies.
His arm he offers. Mute and sad
(_Mechanically_, let us add),
Tattiana doth accept his aid;
And, hanging down her head, the maid
Around the garden homeward hies.
Together they returned, nor word
Of censure for the same incurred;
The country hath its liberties
And privileges nice allowed,
Even as Moscow, city proud.

XII

Confess, O ye who this peruse,
Oneguine acted very well
By poor Tattiana in the blues;
'Twas not the first time, I can tell
You, he a noble mind disclosed,
Though some men, evilly disposed,
Spared him not their asperities.
His friends and also enemies
(One and the same thing it may be)
Esteemed him much as the world goes.
Yes! every one must have his foes,
But Lord! from friends deliver me!
The deuce take friends, my friends, amends
I've had to make for having friends!

XIII

But how? Quite so. Though I dismiss
Dark, unavailing reverie,
I just hint, in parenthesis,
There is no stupid calumny
Born of a babbler in a loft
And by the world repeated oft,
There is no fishmarket retort
And no ridiculous report,
Which your true friend with a sweet smile
Where fashionable circles meet
A hundred times will not repeat,
Quite inadvertently meanwhile;
And yet he in your cause would strive
And loves you as--a relative!

XIV

Ahem! Ahem! My reader noble,
Are all your relatives quite well?
Permit me; is it worth the trouble
For your instruction here to tell
What I by relatives conceive?
These are your relatives, believe:
Those whom we ought to love, caress,
With spiritual tenderness;
Whom, as the custom is of men,
We visit about Christmas Day,
Or by a card our homage pay,
That until Christmas comes again
They may forget that we exist.
And so--God bless them, if He list.

XV

In this the love of the fair sex
Beats that of friends and relatives:
In love, although its tempests vex,
Our liberty at least survives:
Agreed! but then the whirl of fashion,
The natural fickleness of passion,
The torrent of opinion,
And the fair sex as light as down!
Besides the hobbies of a spouse
Should be respected throughout life
By every proper-minded wife,
And this the faithful one allows,
When in as instant she is lost,--
Satan will jest, and at love's cost.

XVI

Oh! where bestow our love? Whom trust?
Where is he who doth not deceive?
Who words and actions will adjust
To standards in which we believe?
Oh! who is not calumnious?
Who labours hard to humour us?
To whom are our misfortunes grief
And who is not a tiresome thief?
My venerated reader, oh!
Cease the pursuit of shadows vain,
Spare yourself unavailing pain
And all your love on self bestow;
A worthy object 'tis, and well
I know there's none more amiable.

XVII

But from the interview what flowed?
Alas! It is not hard to guess.
The insensate fire of love still glowed
Nor discontinued to distress
A spirit which for sorrow yearned.
Tattiana more than ever burned
With hopeless passion: from her bed
Sweet slumber winged its way and fled.
Her health, life's sweetness and its bloom,
Her smile and maidenly repose,
All vanished as an echo goes.
Across her youth a shade had come,
As when the tempest's veil is drawn
Across the smiling face of dawn.

XVIII

Alas! Tattiana fades away,
Grows pale and sinks, but nothing says;
Listless is she the livelong day
Nor interest in aught betrays.
Shaking with serious air the head,
In whispers low the neighbours said:
'Tis time she to the altar went!
But enough! Now, 'tis my intent
The imagination to enliven
With love which happiness extends;
Against my inclination, friends,
By sympathy I have been driven.
Forgive me! Such the love I bear
My heroine, Tattiana dear.

XIX

Vladimir, hourly more a slave
To youthful Olga's beauty bright,
Into delicious bondage gave
His ardent soul with full delight.
Always together, eventide
Found them in darkness side by side,
At morn, hand clasped in hand, they rove
Around the meadow and the grove.
And what resulted? Drunk with love,
But with confused and bashful air,
Lenski at intervals would dare,
If Olga smilingly approve,
Dally with a dishevelled tress
Or kiss the border of her dress.

XX

To Olga frequently he would
Some nice instructive novel read,
Whose author nature understood
Better than Chateaubriand did
Yet sometimes pages two or three
(Nonsense and pure absurdity,
For maiden's hearing deemed unfit),
He somewhat blushing would omit:
Far from the rest the pair would creep
And (elbows on the table) they
A game of chess would often play,
Buried in meditation deep,
Till absently Vladimir took
With his own pawn alas! his rook!

XXI

Homeward returning, he at home
Is occupied with Olga fair,
An album, fly-leaf of the tome,
He leisurely adorns for her.
Landscapes thereon he would design,
A tombstone, Aphrodite's shrine,
Or, with a pen and colours fit,
A dove which on a lyre doth sit;
The "in memoriam" pages sought,
Where many another hand had signed
A tender couplet he combined,
A register of fleeting thought,
A flimsy trace of musings past
Which might for many ages last.

XXII

Surely ye all have overhauled
A country damsel's album trim,
Which all her darling friends have scrawled
From first to last page to the rim.
Behold! orthography despising,
Metreless verses recognizing
By friendship how they were abused,
Hewn, hacked, and otherwise ill-used.
Upon the opening page ye find:
_Qu'ecrirer-vouz sur ces tablettes?_
Subscribed, _toujours a vous, Annette;_
And on the last one, underlined:
_Who in thy love finds more delight
Beyond this may attempt to write_.

XXIII

Infallibly you there will find
Two hearts, a torch, of flowers a wreath,
And vows will probably be signed:
_Affectionately yours till death_.
Some army poet therein may
Have smuggled his flagitious lay.
In such an album with delight
I would, my friends, inscriptions write,
Because I should be sure, meanwhile,
My verses, kindly meant, would earn
Delighted glances in return;
That afterwards with evil smile
They would not solemnly debate
If cleverly or not I prate.

XXIV

But, O ye tomes without compare,
Which from the devil's bookcase start,
Albums magnificent which scare
The fashionable rhymester's heart!
Yea! although rendered beauteous
By Tolstoy's pencil marvellous,
Though Baratynski verses penned,(45)
The thunderbolt on you descend!
Whene'er a brilliant courtly dame
Presents her quarto amiably,
Despair and anger seize on me,
And a malicious epigram
Trembles upon my lips from spite,--
And madrigals I'm asked to write!

[Note 45: Count Tolstoy, a celebrated artist who subsequently
became Vice-President of the Academy of Arts at St. Petersburg.
Baratynski, see Note 43.]

XXV

But Lenski madrigals ne'er wrote
In Olga's album, youthful maid,
To purest love he tuned his note
Nor frigid adulation paid.
What never was remarked or heard
Of Olga he in song averred;
His elegies, which plenteous streamed,
Both natural and truthful seemed.
Thus thou, Yazykoff, dost arise(46)
In amorous flights when so inspired,
Singing God knows what maid admired,
And all thy precious elegies,
Sometime collected, shall relate
The story of thy life and fate.

[Note 46: Yazykoff, a poet contemporary with Pushkin. He was
an author of promise--unfulfilled.]

XXVI

Since Fame and Freedom he adored,
Incited by his stormy Muse
Odes Lenski also had outpoured,
But Olga would not such peruse.
When poets lachrymose recite
Beneath the eyes of ladies bright
Their own productions, some insist
No greater pleasure can exist
Just so! that modest swain is blest
Who reads his visionary theme
To the fair object of his dream,
A beauty languidly at rest,
Yes, happy--though she at his side
By other thoughts be occupied.

XXVII

But I the products of my Muse,
Consisting of harmonious lays,
To my old nurse alone peruse,
Companion of my childhood's days.
Or, after dinner's dull repast,
I by the button-hole seize fast
My neighbour, who by chance drew near,
And breathe a drama in his ear.
Or else (I deal not here in jokes),
Exhausted by my woes and rhymes,
I sail upon my lake at times
And terrify a swarm of ducks,
Who, heard the music of my lay,
Take to their wings and fly away.

XXVIII

But to Oneguine! _A propos_!
Friends, I must your indulgence pray.
His daily occupations, lo!
Minutely I will now portray.
A hermit's life Oneguine led,
At seven in summer rose from bed,
And clad in airy costume took
His course unto the running brook.
There, aping Gulnare's bard, he spanned
His Hellespont from bank to bank,
And then a cup of coffee drank,
Some wretched journal in his hand;
Then dressed himself...(*)

[Note: Stanza left unfinished by the author.]

XXIX

Sound sleep, books, walking, were his bliss,
The murmuring brook, the woodland shade,
The uncontaminated kiss
Of a young dark-eyed country maid,
A fiery, yet well-broken horse,
A dinner, whimsical each course,
A bottle of a vintage white
And solitude and calm delight.
Such was Oneguine's sainted life,
And such unconsciously he led,
Nor marked how summer's prime had fled
In aimless ease and far from strife,
The curse of commonplace delight.
And town and friends forgotten quite.

XXX

This northern summer of our own,
On winters of the south a skit,
Glimmers and dies. This is well known,
Though we will not acknowledge it.
Already Autumn chilled the sky,
The tiny sun shone less on high
And shorter had the days become.
The forests in mysterious gloom
Were stripped with melancholy sound,
Upon the earth a mist did lie
And many a caravan on high
Of clamorous geese flew southward bound.
A weary season was at hand--
November at the gate did stand.

XXXI

The morn arises foggy, cold,
The silent fields no peasant nears,
The wolf upon the highways bold
With his ferocious mate appears.
Detecting him the passing horse
snorts, and his rider bends his course
And wisely gallops to the hill.
No more at dawn the shepherd will
Drive out the cattle from their shed,
Nor at the hour of noon with sound
Of horn in circle call them round.
Singing inside her hut the maid
Spins, whilst the friend of wintry night,
The pine-torch, by her crackles bright.

XXXII

Already crisp hoar frosts impose
O'er all a sheet of silvery dust
(Readers expect the rhyme of _rose_,
There! take it quickly, if ye must).
Behold! than polished floor more nice
The shining river clothed in ice;
A joyous troop of little boys
Engrave the ice with strident noise.
A heavy goose on scarlet feet,
Thinking to float upon the stream,
Descends the bank with care extreme,
But staggers, slips, and falls. We greet
The first bright wreathing storm of snow
Which falls in starry flakes below.

XXXIII

How in the country pass this time?
Walking? The landscape tires the eye
In winter by its blank and dim
And naked uniformity.
On horseback gallop o'er the steppe!
Your steed, though rough-shod, cannot keep
His footing on the treacherous rime
And may fall headlong any time.
Alone beneath your rooftree stay
And read De Pradt or Walter Scott!(47)
Keep your accounts! You'd rather not?
Then get mad drunk or wroth; the day
Will pass; the same to-morrow try--
You'll spend your winter famously!

[Note 47: The Abbe de Pradt: b. 1759, d. 1837. A political
pamphleteer of the French Revolution: was at first an emigre,
but made his peace with Napoleon and was appointed Archbishop
of Malines.]

XXXIV

A true Childe Harold my Eugene
To idle musing was a prey;
At morn an icy bath within
He sat, and then the livelong day,
Alone within his habitation
And buried deep in meditation,
He round the billiard-table stalked,
The balls impelled, the blunt cue chalked;
When evening o'er the landscape looms,
Billiards abandoned, cue forgot,
A table to the fire is brought,
And he waits dinner. Lenski comes,
Driving abreast three horses gray.
"Bring dinner now without delay!"

XXXV

Upon the table in a trice
Of widow Clicquot or Moet
A blessed bottle, placed in ice,
For the young poet they display.
Like Hippocrene it scatters light,
Its ebullition foaming white
(Like other things I could relate)
My heart of old would captivate.
The last poor obol I was worth--
Was it not so?--for thee I gave,
And thy inebriating wave
Full many a foolish prank brought forth;
And oh! what verses, what delights,
Delicious visions, jests and fights!

XXXVI

Alas! my stomach it betrays
With its exhilarating flow,
And I confess that now-a-days
I prefer sensible Bordeaux.
To cope with Ay no more I dare,
For Ay is like a mistress fair,
Seductive, animated, bright,
But wilful, frivolous, and light.
But thou, Bordeaux, art like the friend
Who in the agony of grief
Is ever ready with relief,
Assistance ever will extend,
Or quietly partake our woe.
All hail! my good old friend Bordeaux!

XXXVII

The fire sinks low. An ashy cloak
The golden ember now enshrines,
And barely visible the smoke
Upward in a thin stream inclines.
But little warmth the fireplace lends,
Tobacco smoke the flue ascends,
The goblet still is bubbling bright--
Outside descend the mists of night.
How pleasantly the evening jogs
When o'er a glass with friends we prate
Just at the hour we designate
The time between the wolf and dogs--
I cannot tell on what pretence--
But lo! the friends to chat commence.

XXXVIII

"How are our neighbours fair, pray tell,
Tattiana, saucy Olga thine?"
"The family are all quite well--
Give me just half a glass of wine--
They sent their compliments--but oh!
How charming Olga's shoulders grow!
Her figure perfect grows with time!
She is an angel! We sometime
Must visit them. Come! you must own,
My friend, 'tis but to pay a debt,
For twice you came to them and yet
You never since your nose have shown.
But stay! A dolt am I who speak!
They have invited you this week."

XXXIX

"Me?"--"Yes! It is Tattiana's fete
Next Saturday. The Larina
Told me to ask you. Ere that date
Make up your mind to go there."--"Ah!
It will be by a mob beset
Of every sort and every set!"
"Not in the least, assured am I!"
"Who will be there?"--"The family.
Do me a favour and appear.
Will you?"--"Agreed."--"I thank you, friend,"
And saying this Vladimir drained
His cup unto his maiden dear.
Then touching Olga they depart
In fresh discourse. Such, love, thou art!

XL

He was most gay. The happy date
In three weeks would arrive for them;
The secrets of the marriage state
And love's delicious diadem
With rapturous longing he awaits,
Nor in his dreams anticipates
Hymen's embarrassments, distress,
And freezing fits of weariness.
Though we, of Hymen foes, meanwhile,
In life domestic see a string
Of pictures painful harrowing,
A novel in Lafontaine's style,
My wretched Lenski's fate I mourn,
He seemed for matrimony born.

XLI

He was beloved: or say at least,
He thought so, and existence charmed.
The credulous indeed are blest,
And he who, jealousy disarmed,
In sensual sweets his soul doth steep
As drunken tramps at nightfall sleep,
Or, parable more flattering,
As butterflies to blossoms cling.
But wretched who anticipates,
Whose brain no fond illusions daze,
Who every gesture, every phrase
In true interpretation hates:
Whose heart experience icy made
And yet oblivion forbade.


End of Canto The Fourth



CANTO THE FIFTH

The Fete

'Oh, do not dream these fearful dreams,
   O my Svetlana.'--Joukovski

Canto The Fifth

[Note: Mikhailovskoe, 1825-6]

I

That year the autumn season late
Kept lingering on as loath to go,
All Nature winter seemed to await,
Till January fell no snow--
The third at night. Tattiana wakes
Betimes, and sees, when morning breaks,
Park, garden, palings, yard below
And roofs near morn blanched o'er with snow;
Upon the windows tracery,
The trees in silvery array,
Down in the courtyard magpies gay,
And the far mountains daintily
O'erspread with Winter's