Yevgeny Onegin

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Yevgeny Onegin Page 17

by Alexander Pushkin


  But—let us go back to our lady.

  Her charm was to be wondered at:

  Gracing the table, there she sat

  With lovely Nina Voronskáya,

  Our Cleopatra of the north,

  Whose sculpted beauty was not worth

  Enough to set her any higher

  Than her delightful vis-à-vis,

  However stunning she might be.

  17

  “I don’t believe it,” thinks Yevgeny.

  “Not her. Not her! It cannot be!

  What, that girl from the backwoods?” Straining

  With a voracious eyeglass, he

  Homes in and out, keenly exploring

  The sight of her, vaguely recalling

  Features forgotten ages since.

  “I say, who is that lady, Prince,

  There in the raspberry-coloured beret,

  Near the ambassador from Spain?”

  The prince looks once, and looks again.

  “You’ve been away from things. Don’t worry.

  I’ll introduce you, on my life.”

  “Who is she, though?” “She is my wife.”

  18

  “Married? I didn’t know. Such drama!

  Since when?” “Two years back, more or less.”

  “Who is she?” “Larina.” “Tatyana?”

  “You know her?” “We were neighbours. Yes.”

  “Come on then.” And the prince, engaging,

  Goes to her and presents Onegin

  As a relation and a pal.

  She looks. Her eyes seem natural.

  Whatever may have stirred her spirit,

  However deeply she was shocked,

  However wonderstruck or rocked,

  Nothing has changed her yet, nor will it.

  She kept her former tone somehow,

  And gave the normal, formal bow.

  19

  Indeed, her movements were no quicker,

  Her features neither blanched nor blushed,

  Her eyelids failed to show a flicker,

  Her lips showed not the slightest crush.

  Although he gazed and sought to garner

  Some vestige of the old Tatyana,

  Onegin could see none. He fought

  To speak with her—it came to naught;

  He could not manage it. She asked him

  When he’d arrived, whence had he come.

  Could it be where they had come from?

  She found her spouse by staring past him

  With weary eyes—then she was gone.

  Onegin stood there, looking on.

  20

  Could this have been the same Tatyana

  Whom he had faced alone that time

  At the beginning of our drama

  In such a dead and distant clime,

  When he had striven to direct her

  In that warm, moralizing lecture?

  The same young girl from whom he’d kept

  That letter from her heartfelt depths,

  So forthright and naively open?

  The same girl—was it just a dream?—

  He had rejected, who had been

  Left lonely, downcast and heartbroken?

  How could she have turned out so cold,

  So independent and so bold?

  21

  But soon he leaves the crowded dancing

  To drive home, wallowing in thoughts

  (All hope of quick sleep being chancy)

  Part beautiful but largely fraught.

  He wakes… A letter… Oh, that writing…

  It is the prince humbly inviting

  Him to a soirée. “Her house. Oh!

  I must accept, I will, I’ll go!”

  A nice response is quickly scribbled.

  Is this a weird dream? So absurd!

  What is this deep thing that has stirred

  Within a soul grown old and shrivelled?

  Pique? Vanity? Or—heavens above!—

  That ailment of the young ones—love?

  22

  Onegin counts the minutes, harassed.

  How sluggishly the day has crept!

  The clock chimes ten—he’s in his carriage,

  Flying along, then at the steps.

  He comes to see the princess, quaking.

  Tatyana is alone and waiting.

  They sit together some time, dumb.

  Time passes, and the words won’t come,

  Not from Onegin. He looks awkward

  And surly. All that he has said

  Is not a real response. His head

  Holds but a single thought. Still gawking,

  He watches her. She, if you please,

  Sits there serenely at her ease.

  23

  In comes her husband, nicely ending

  A most unpleasant tête-à-tête.

  Soon, with Onegin, he’s remembering

  Their jokes and tricks when they were mates.

  There’s laughter, and guests cut across it

  With salty bits of social gossip,

  Which lift a conversation that

  Tatyana looked on as light chat,

  Easy and sparkling, unpretentious,

  Now and then turning, it would seem,

  To measured thoughts on serious themes,

  But not to deep truths or sharp censure.

  It flowed on, causing no distress

  With its unbridled joyfulness.

  24

  These talkers are top Petersburgers,

  Quality people, dernier cri,

  And recognizable. These others

  Are fools from whom you cannot flee.

  Here are some older dames, delightful

  In caps and roses, and yet spiteful.

  Here are some young girls, all equipped

  With frigidly unsmiling lips.

  Here, talking politics with passion,

  Stands an ambassador. Here too

  A greybeard strongly perfumed, who

  Tells jokes; his manner is old-fashioned,

  With witticisms dry as dust,

  Subtle but, nowadays, ludicrous.

  25

  A man of aphoristic thinking

  Says everything’s deplorable:

  The tea’s too sweet, not fit for drinking,

  The men are boorish, women dull,

  Some novel is too vague and misty,

  Some badge has gone to two young sisters.

  He rails against the war, the strife,

  Journals that lie, the snow, his wife…

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  26

  Here is Prolásov, labouring under

  The weight of being known as mean;

  In every album he has blunted

  The pencils used by you, Saint-Priest.

  Here stands another ball dictator,

  A model for an illustrator,

  A pussy-willow babe, pink-faced,

  Mute, motionless, tight round the waist.

  Here’s someone who came unexpected,

  An overstarched young blade. The guests,

  Much taken by his prettiness,

  Smile at behaviour so affected.

  The wordless glances slyly cast

  Show the shared sentence on him passed.

  27

  But all that evening my Onegin

  Was transfixed by Tatyana, though

  He followed not the lovelorn maiden,

  Poor, plain and shy, of long ago;

  He saw the princess, independent,

  A goddess out of reach, resplendent

  In royal Russia. As for you,

  Good people, you are like unto

&nbs
p; Ancestral Eve, our first relation:

  What’s granted you don’t like at all,

  You want the serpent’s ceaseless call,

  The mystic tree that brings temptation…

  You must have the forbidden fruit

  Or paradise will never suit.

  28

  This is a deeply changed Tatyana,

  Who knows her role from first to last.

  She’s mastered the constraining manner,

  The tight routine of rank and class.

  Is that young girl, once sweet and tender,

  This paragon of grace and splendour,

  This legislatrix of the ball?

  And he had held her heart in thrall!

  It was for him that, in night’s darkness,

  Waiting for Morpheus and relief,

  She used to grieve her young girl’s grief,

  Her moonstruck eyes gone dull and sparkless,

  Believing in some future dream—

  A humble life lived out with him.

  29

  Love is the master of all ages.

  To pure young hearts it is revealed

  In little sudden, wholesome rages,

  Like spring storms watering the fields;

  In streams of passion the fields freshen,

  Renewed and ripening. The blessing

  Of life’s strength germinates new shoots,

  Luxuriant growth and sugared fruits.

  But in the late and barren season

  When life is in decline for us

  Dead signs of love are fatuous.

  Our autumn tempests, nearly freezing,

  Turn meadows into liquid mud

  And strip bare the surrounding woods.

  30

  Alas, there is no doubt: Yevgeny

  Loves our Tatyana like a child,

  His days and nights devoted mainly

  To lovelorn dreams. He is beguiled.

  Against the call of reason, gently

  Each day he drives up to the entry

  Of her house, the glass doors. He woos her,

  And like a shadow he pursues her,

  Happy to drape around her shoulders

  A fluffy boa, or place his warm

  Fingers upon her passing arm,

  Or ease her forward and control her

  Through motley flunkies, or retrieve

  Her soft, discarded handkerchief.

  31

  Tatyana doesn’t even notice

  His desperate efforts. Neat and prim,

  At home she plays the perfect hostess;

  When out, she scarcely speaks to him.

  A single nod she might award him,

  But otherwise she just ignores him.

  (Flirtation is now at a stop,

  Condemned by people at the top.)

  Onegin withers, weak and pallid;

  She doesn’t see, or doesn’t care.

  Onegin wastes away. Beware:

  Is this consumption? Question valid.

  They send him where the doctors are;

  The doctors recommend a spa.

  32

  But he won’t go. No, he would rather

  Commune with ancestors and plead

  For union with them soon. Tatyana,

  True to her sex, pays little heed,

  While he stands firm and unrelenting.

  He hopes, he harasses. If anything,

  He gains new strength from weakness, and

  Manages with a feeble hand

  To pen a heartfelt missive to her

  (Though letters, rightly, he esteemed

  As meaningless in the extreme).

  He was, and played, the anxious wooer,

  Agonized, lovelorn and disturbed.

  Here is his letter word for word:

  ONEGIN’S LETTER TO TATYANA

  I know you’re certain to resent

  The secret sadness in this message.

  I see the bile in your expression,

  Your proud eyes brimming with contempt!

  What do I want? What is my purpose

  In coming to you to confess?

  Does this allow you to feel virtuous

  While revelling in vindictiveness?

  We met by chance one day, and Venus

  Lit up a spark of warmth between us,

  Though I could not believe in it,

  Spurning good sense for no good reason,

  Obsessed by loathsome thoughts of freedom

  In which I would not yield one bit.

  Another thing that separates us

  Is Lensky, wretched victim, dead…

  From everything the heart holds sacred

  I tore myself away, and fled,

  From each and everybody running,

  Thinking that being calm and free

  Would pass for happiness. Dear me,

  How wrong I was, how harshly punished!

  Now, minutes spent with you I prize,

  The merest chance to trail behind you,

  To see you smile and watch your eyes,

  To launch a loving glance and find you,

  To listen to your voice, to see

  Fulfilment in your perfect spirit,

  To faint and fade in agony—

  This is my pain; my bliss lies in it.

  But I’m denied that. All I do

  Is shamble after you at random,

  Pledging dear hours, dear days to you.

  To futile tedium I abandon

  Days measured out to me by Fate;

  They cloy and oversatiate.

  My day is done—time gives due warning—

  But, yearning to prolong my stay,

  I must be certain every morning

  That I’ll see you during the day.

  I fear this humble supplication

  Will strike your dark, discerning eye

  As shabby, sly and calculating,

  And I can hear your angry cry.

  If you but knew my ghastly torment,

  My weary heart, my thirst for love,

  My hope that reason, one fine moment,

  Might cool the boiling of my blood…

  I would fall down before you, choking

  And sobbing, while I hug your knees,

  Outpouring all that could be spoken—

  Reproaches, declarations, pleas…

  But, no, with simulated froideur

  I gird my gaze and speech, and try

  To chat and look you in the eye,

  Like one who goes from glad to gladder.

  That’s it. I cannot fight myself;

  I have no stomach for the battle.

  The die is cast. Now nothing matters.

  My fate’s with you, and no one else.

  33

  No answer comes. In swift resumption

  He sends a second note, a third.

  No answer… One day, at some function

  He enters… and runs into… her,

  Straight opposite. She, strict and sombre,

  Ignores him. Not a word comes from her.

  Oh dear, she has been crystallized

  In January’s coldest ice.

  As if to stifle indignation,

  She stands with tightness in her lips.

  Onegin gawps. His eyes are gripped—

  Where is her sympathy, her patience?

  Where are the tear stains? Not a trace.

  Only annoyance on that face,

  34

  And possibly a secret worry

  That her spouse, or the world, might guess

  Her bygone lapse, her youthful folly,

  All that Onegin knows… Oh, yes,

  His hopes are dashed! He sets off, cursing

  The dark, demented disconcertion

  Which leaves him now so deeply hurt…

  And, once again, he shuns the world.

  Back in his silent study, brooding,

  He called to mind how things had been

  In those days when a kind of splee
n

  Had stalked the brash world and pursued him,

  Collaring him, locking him in hell,

  Abandoned in an unlit cell.

  35

  He now reads anything: not only

  The works of Gibbon and Rousseau,

  Herder and Chamfort and Manzoni,

  Madame de Staël, Bichat, Tissot,

  But also, keeping things eclectic,

  Of Fontenelle and Bayle, the sceptic,

  And Russians, specially perhaps,

  Rejecting nothing by our chaps,

  As well as almanacs and journals

  All sermonizing, smart and slick,

  In which today I get some stick

  In bits and pieces, fancy-worded,

  About me, published now and then.

  E sempre bene, gentlemen.

  36

  So what? His eyes may have been reading,

  But he was miles away in thought;

  Daydreams, desires and hapless pleadings

  Rendered him soul-destroyed, distraught.

  He read between the lines as printed;

  In spirit, though, his eyes were glimpsing

  Some other lines; he was immersed

  Deeply in these lines from the first.

  These were the stuff of myth and legend

  With age-old, well-loved, secret themes,

  Of random, unconnected dreams,

  And threats, tales, promises and pledges,

  Or letters that had been conveyed

  To his hands from a sweet young maid.

  37

  But gradually his thoughts and feelings

  Were lulled to sleep, and from afar

  Imagination came forth, dealing

  Him images like playing cards.

  First, melting snow… Then something odder,

  A figure like a sleeping lodger,

  A rigid youth resting his head.

  And then a voice… “Let’s look… He’s dead.”

  Now he sees enemies forgotten,

  Vile gossips, even viler rats,

  A swarm of women, faithless cats,

  Companions altogether rotten,

  And then the house, the window sill,

  And always her… She stands there still.

 

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