Eugene Onegin
Page 21
And several maidens, far from gay
Unsmiling faces on display;
And here's an envoy speaking slyly
Of some most solemn state affair;
A greybeard too . . . with scented hair,
Who joked both cleverly and wryly
In quite a keen, old-fashioned way,
Which seems a touch absurd today!
25
And here's a chap whose words are biting,
Who's cross with everything about:
With tea too sweet to be inviting,
With banal ladies, men who shout,
That foggy book they're all debating,
The badge on those two maids-in-waiting,*
The falsehoods in reviews, the war,
The snow, his wife, and much, much more.
26
And here's Prolzov,* celebrated
For loathesomeness of soula clown,
As you, Saint-Priest,* have demonstrated
In album drawings all through town.
Another ballroom king on station
(Like fashion's very illustration)
Beside the door stood tightly laced,
Immobile, mute, and cherub-faced;
A traveller home from distant faring,
A brazen chap all starched and proud,
Provoked amusement in the crowd
By his pretentious, studied bearing:
A mere exchange of looks conveyed
The sorry sight the fellow made.
27
But my Eugene all evening heeded
Tatyana . . . only her alone:
But not the timid maid who'd pleaded,
That poor enamoured girl he'd known
But this cool princess so resplendent,
This distant goddess so transcendent,
Who ruled the queenly Neva's shore.
Alas! We humans all ignore
Our Mother Eve's disastrous history:
What's given to us ever palls,
Incessantly the serpent calls
And lures us to the tree of mystery:
We've got to have forbidden fruit,
Or Eden's joys for us are moot.
28
How changed Tatyana is!
How surely She's taken up the role she plays!
How quick she's mastered, how securely,
Her lordly rank's commanding ways!
Who'd dare to seek the tender maiden
In this serene and glory-laden
Grande Dame of lofty social spheres?
Yet once he'd moved her heart to tears!
Her virgin brooding once had cherished
Sweet thoughts of him in darkest night,
While Morpheus still roamed in flight;
And, gazing at the moon, she'd nourished
A tender dream that she someday
Might walk with him life's humble way!
29
To love all ages yield surrender;
But to the young its raptures bring
A blessing bountiful and tender
As storms refresh the fields of spring.
Neath passion's rains they green and thicken,
Renew themselves with joy, and quicken;
And vibrant life in taking root
Sends forth rich blooms and gives sweet fruit.
But when the years have made us older,
And barren age has shown its face,
How sad is faded passion's trace! . . .
Thus storms in autumn, blowing colder,
Turn meadows into marshy ground
And strip the forest bare all round.
30
Alas! it's true: Eugene's demented,
In love with Tanya like a boy;
He spends each day and night tormented
By thoughts of love, by dreams of joy.
Ignoring reason's condemnation,
Each day he rides to take his station
Outside her glassed-in entryway,
Then follows her about all day.
He's happy just to be around her,
To help her with her shawl or furs,
To touch a torrid hand to hers,
To part the footmen who surround her
In liveried ranks where'er she calls,
Or fetch her kerchief when it falls.
31
She pays him not the least attention,
No matter what he tries to do;
At home receives him without tension;
In public speaks a word or two,
Or sometimes merely bows on meeting,
Or passes by without a greeting:
She's no coquette in any part
The monde abhors a fickle heart.
Onegin, though, is fading quickly;
She doesn't see or doesn't care;
Onegin, wasting, has the air
Of one consumptivewan and sickly.
He's urged to seek his doctors' view,
And these suggest a spa or two.
32
But he refused to go. He's ready
To join his forebears any day;
Tatyana, though, stayed calm and steady
(Their sex, alas, is hard to sway).
And yet he's stubborn . . . still resistant,
Still hopeful and indeed persistent.
Much bolder than most healthy men,
He chose with trembling hand to pen
The princess an impassioned letter.
Though on the whole he saw no sense
In missives writ in love's defence
(And with good cause!), he found it better
Than bearing all his pain unheard.
So here's his letter word for word.
Onegin's Letter to Tatyana
I know you'll feel a deep distress
At this unwanted revelation.
What hitter scorn and condemnation
Your haughty glance may well express!
What aims . . . what hopes do
I envision In opening my soul to you?
What wicked and deserved derision
Perhaps I give occasion to!
When first I met you and detected
A warmth in you quite unexpected,
I dared not trust in love again:
I didn 't yield to sweet temptation
And had, it's true, no inclination
To lose my hateful freedom then.
What's more: poor guiltless Lensky perished,
And his sad fate drew us apart. ..
From all that I had ever cherished
I tore away my grieving heart;
Estranged from men and discontented,
I thought: in freedom, peace of mind,
A substitute for joy I'd find.
How wrong I've been! And how tormented!
But no! Each moment of my days
To see you and pursue you madly!
To catch your smile and search your gaze
With loving eyes that seek you gladly;
To melt with pain before your face,
To hear your voice. . . to try to capture
With all my soul your perfect grace;
To swoon and pass away . . . what rapture!
And I'm deprived of this; for you
I search on all the paths I wander;
Each day is dear, each moment too!
Yet I in futile dullness squander
These days allotted me by fate . .
. Oppressive days indeed of late.
My span on earth is all but taken,
But lest too soon I join the dead,
I need to know when I awaken,
I'll see you in the day ahead....
I fear that in this meek petition
Your solemn gaze may only spy
The cunning of a base ambition
And I can hear your stern reply.
But if you knew the anguish in it:
To thirst with love in every part,
To burnand with the mind each
minute,
To calm the tumult in one's heart;
To long to clasp in adoration
Your knees . . . and, sobbing at your feet,
Pour out confessions, lamentation,
Oh, all that I might then entreat!. ..
And meantime, feigning resignation,
To arm my gaze and speech with lies:
to look at you with cheerful eyes
And hold a placid conversation!. . .
But let it be: it's now too late
For me to struggle at this hour;
The die is cast: I'm in your power,
And I surrender to my fate.
33
No answer came. Eugene elected
to write again . . . and then once more
With no reply. He drives, dejected,
To some soire . . . and by the door,
Sees her at once! Her harshness stuns him!
Without a word the lady shuns him!
My god! How stern that haughty brow,
What wintry frost surrounds her now!
Her lips express determination
To keep her fury in control!
Onegin stares with all his soul:
But where's distress? Commiseration?
And where the tearstains? . . . Not a trace!
There's wrath alone upon that face . . .
34
And, maybe, secret apprehension
Lest monde or husband misconstrue
An episode too slight to mention,
The tale that my Onegin knew ....
But he departs, his hopes in tatters,
And damns his folly in these matters
And plunging into deep despond,
He once again rejects the monde.
And he recalled with grim emotion,
Behind his silent study door,
How wicked spleen had once before
Pursued him through the world's commotion,
Had seized him by the collar then,
And locked him in a darkened den.
35
Once more he turned to books and sages.
He read his Gibbon and Rousseau;
Chamfort, Manzoni, Herder's pages;
Madame de Stal, Bichat, Tissot.
The sceptic Bayle he quite devoured,
The works of Fontenelle he scoured;*
He even read some Russians too,
Nor did he scorn the odd review
Those journals where each modern Moses
Instructs us in a moral way
Where I'm so much abused today,
But where such madrigals and roses
I used to meet with now and then:
E sempre bene, gentlemen.
36
And yetalthough his eyes were reading,
His thoughts had wandered far apart;
Desires, dreams, and sorrows pleading
Had crowded deep within his heart.
Between the printed lines lay hidden
Quite other lines that rose unbidden
Before his gaze. And these alone
Absorbed his soul... as he was shown:
The heart's dark secrets and traditions,
The mysteries of its ancient past;
Disjointed dreamsobscure and vast;
Vague threats and rumours, premonitions;
A drawn-out tale of fancies grand,
And letters in a maiden's hand.
37
But then as torpor dulled sensation,
His feelings and his thoughts went slack,
While in his mind Imagination
Dealt out her motley faro pack.
He sees a youth, quite still, reposing
On melting snowas if he's dozing
On bivouac; then hears with dread
A voice proclaim: 'Well then, he's dead!'
He sees forgotten foes he'd bested,
Base cowards, slanderers full-blown,
Unfaithful women he had known,
Companions whom he now detested . . .
A country house ... a windowsill. . .
Where she sits waiting . . . waiting still!
38
He got so lost in his depression,
He just about went mad, I fear,
Or else turned poet (an obsession
That I'd have been the first to cheer!)
It's true: by self-hypnotic action,
My muddled pupil, in distraction,
Came close to grasping at that time
The principles of Russian rhyme.
He looked the poet so completely
When by the hearth he'd sit alone
And Benedetto* he'd intone
Or sometimes Idol mio* sweetly
While on the flames he'd drop unseen
His slipper or his magazine!
39
The days flew by. The winter season
Dissolved amid the balmy air;
He didn't die, or lose his reason,
Or turn a poet in despair.
With spring he felt rejuvenated:
The cell in which he'd hibernated
So marmot-like through winter's night
The hearth, the double panes shut tight
He quit one sparkling morn and sprinted
Along the Neva's bank by sleigh.
On hacked-out bluish ice that lay
Beside the road the sunlight glinted.
The rutted snow had turned to slush;
But where in such a headlong rush
40
Has my Eugene directly hastened?
You've guessed already. Yes, indeed:
The moody fellow, still unchastened,
Has flown to Tanya's in his need.
He enters like a dead man, striding
Through empty hall; then passes, gliding,
Through grand salon. And on! ... All bare.
He opens up a door. . . . What's there
That strikes him with such awful pleading?
The princess sits alone in sight,
Quite unadorned, her face gone white
Above some letter that she's reading
And cheek in hand as down she peers,
She softly sheds a flood of tears.
41
In that brief instant then, who couldn't
Have read her tortured heart at last!
And in the princess then, who wouldn't
Have known poor Tanya from the past!