A.S.Pushkin. - Eugene Onegin (tr.Ch.Johnston) - Chapter Three

Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven

Elle était fille, elle était amoureuse.
Malfilâtre

``You're off? why, there's a poet for you!''
``Goodbye, Onegin, time I went.''
``Well, I won't hold you up or bore you;
but where are all your evenings spent?''
``At the Larins'!'' ``But how mysterious.
For goodness' sake, you can't be serious
killing each evening off like that?''
``You're wrong.'' ``But what I wonder at
is this -- one sees from here the party:
in first place -- listen, am I right? --
a simple Russian family night:
the guests are feasted, good and hearty,
on jam, and speeches in regard
to rains, and flax, and the stockyard.''
{84}

II

``I don't see what's so bad about it.''
``Boredom, that's what so bad, my friend.''
``Your modish world, I'll do without it;
give me the homely hearth, and lend...''
``You pile one eclogue on another!
for God's sake, that will do. But, brother,
you're really going? Well, I'm sad.
Now, Lensky, would it be so bad
for me to glimpse this Phyllis ever
with whom your thoughts are so obsessed --
pen, tears, and rhymes, and all the rest?
Present me, please.'' ``You're joking.'' ``Never.''
``Gladly.'' ``So when?'' ``Why not tonight?
They will receive us with delight.''

III

``Let's go.'' The friends, all haste and vigour,
drive there, and with formality
are treated to the fullest rigour
of old-lime hospitality.
The protocol is all one wishes:
the jams appear in little dishes;
on a small table's oilcloth sheen
the jug of bilberry wine is seen.1
{85}

IV

And home was now their destination;
as by the shortest way they flew,
this was our heroes' conversation
secretly overheard by you.
``You yawn, Onegin?'' ``As I'm used to.''
``This time I think you've been reduced to
new depths of boredom.'' ``No, the same.
The fields are dark, since evening came.
Drive on, Andryushka! quicker, quicker!
the country's pretty stupid here!
oh, à propos: Larin's a dear
simple old lady; but the liquor --
I'm much afraid that bilberry wine
won't benefit these guts of mine.''

V

``But tell me, which one was Tatyana?''
``She was the one who looked as still
and melancholy as Svetlana,2
and sat down by the window-sill.''
``The one you love's the younger daughter?''
``Why not?'' ``I'd choose the other quarter
if I, like you, had been a bard.
Olga's no life in her regard:
the roundest face that you've set eyes on,
a pretty girl exactly like
any Madonna by Van Dyck:
a dumb moon, on a dumb horizon.''
Lensky had a curt word to say
and then sat silent all the way.
{86}

VI

Meanwhile the news of Eugene coming
to the Larins' had caused a spout
of gossip, and set comment humming
among the neighbours round about.
Conjecture found unending matter:
there was a general furtive chatter,
and jokes and spiteful gossip ran
claiming Tatyana'd found her man;
and some were even testifying
the marriage plans were all exact
but held up by the simple fact
that modish rings were still a-buying.
Of Lensky's fate they said no more --
they'd settled that some years before.

VII

Tatyana listened with vexation
to all this tattle, yet at heart
in indescribable elation,
despite herself, rehearsed the part:
the thought sank in, and penetrated:
she fell in love -- the hour was fated...
so fires of spring will bring to birth
a seedling fallen in the earth.
Her feelings in their weary session
had long been wasting and enslaved
by pain and languishment; she craved
the fateful diet; by depression
her heart had long been overrun:
her soul was waiting... for someone.
{87}

VIII

Tatyana now need wait no longer.
Her eyes were opened, and she said
``this is the one!'' Ah, ever stronger,
in sultry sleep, in lonely bed,
all day, all night, his presence fills her,
by magic everything instils her
with thoughts of him in ceaseless round.
She hates a friendly voice's sound,
or servants waiting on her pleasure.
Sunk in dejection, she won't hear
the talk of guests when they appear;
she calls down curses on their leisure,
and, when one's least prepared for it
their tendency to call, and sit.

IX

Now, she devours, with what attention,
delicious novels, laps them up;
and all their ravishing invention
with sheer enchantment fills her cup!
These figures from the world of seeming,
embodied by the power of dreaming,
the lover of Julie Wolmar,3
and Malek Adel,4 de Linar,5
and Werther, martyred and doom-laden,
and Grandison beyond compare,
who sets me snoring then and there --
all for our tender dreamy maiden
are coloured in a single tone,
all blend into Eugene alone.
{88}

X

Seeing herself as a creation --
Clarissa, Julie, or Delphine6 --
by writers of her admiration,
Tatyana, lonely heroine,
roamed the still forest like a ranger,
sought in her book, that text of danger
and found her dreams, her secret fire,
the full fruit of her heart's desire;
she sighed, and in a trance coopted
another's joy, another's breast,
whispered by heart a note addressed
to the hero that she'd adopted.
But ours, whatever he might be,
ours was no Grandison -- not he.

XI

Lending his tone a grave inflection,
the ardent author of the past
showed one a pattern of perfection
in which his hero's mould was cast.
He gave this figure -- loved with passion,
wronged always in disgraceful fashion --
a soul of sympathy and grace,
and brains, and an attractive face.
Always our fervid hero tended
pure passion's flame, and in a trice
would launch into self-sacrifice;
always before the volume ended
due punishment was handed down
to vice, while virtue got its crown.
{89}

XII

Today a mental fog enwraps us,
each moral puts us in a doze,
even in novels, vice entraps us,
yes, even there its triumph grows.
Now that the British Muse is able
to wreck a maiden's sleep with fable,
the idol that she'll most admire
is either the distrait Vampire,
Melmoth,7 whose roaming never ceases,
Sbogar,8 mysterious through and through,
the Corsair, or the Wandering Jew.
Lord Byron, with his shrewd caprices,
dressed up a desperate egoism
to look like sad romanticism.

XIII

In this, dear reader, if you know it,
show me the sense. Divine decree
may wind up my career as poet;
perhaps, though Phoebus warns, I'll see
installed in me a different devil,
and sink to prose's humble level:
a novel on the established line
may then amuse my glad decline.
No secret crimes, and no perditions,
shall make my story grim as hell;
no, quite naively I'll retell
a Russian family's old traditions;
love's melting dreams shall fill my rhyme,
and manners of an earlier time.
{90}

XIV

I'll catalogue each simple saying
in father's or old uncle's book,
and tell of children's plighted playing
by ancient limes, or by a brook;
and after jealousy's grim weather
I'll part them, bring them back together;
I'll make them spar another round,
then to the altar, to be crowned.
I'll conjure up that swooning fashion
of ardent speech, that aching flow
of language which, so long ago,
facing a belle I loved with passion,
my tongue kept drawing from the heart --
but now I've rather lost the art.

XV

Tatyana dear, with you I'm weeping:
for you have, at this early date,
into a modish tyrant's keeping
resigned disposal of your fate.
Dear Tanya, you're condemned to perish;
but first, the dreams that hope can cherish
evoke for you a sombre bliss;
you learn life's sweetness, and with this
you drink the magic draught of yearning,
that poison brew; and in your mind
reverie hounds you, and you find
shelter for trysts at every turning;
in front of you, on every hand,
you see your fated tempter stand.
{91}

XVI

Tatyana, hunted by love's anguish,
has made the park her brooding-place,
suddenly lowering eyes that languish,
too faint to stir a further pace:
her bosom heaves, her cheeks are staring
scarlet with passion's instant flaring,
upon her lips the breathing dies,
noise in her ears, glare in her eyes...
then night comes on; the moon's patrolling
far-distant heaven's vaulted room;
a nightingale, in forest gloom,
sets a sonorous cadence rolling --
Tatyana, sleepless in the dark,
makes to her nurse low-voiced remark:

XVII

``I can't sleep, nyanya: it's so stifling!
open the window, sit down near.''
``Why, Tanya, what...?'' ``All's dull and trifling.
The olden days, I want to hear...''
``What of them, Tanya? I was able,
years back, to call up many a fable;
I kept in mind an ancient store
of tales of girls, and ghosts, and lore:
but now my brain is darkened, Tanya:
now I've forgotten all I knew.
A sorry state of things, it's true!
My mind is fuddled.'' ``Tell me, nyanya,
your early life, unlock your tongue:
were you in love when you were young?''
{92}

XVIII

``What nonsense, Tanya! in those other
ages we'd never heard of love:
why, at the thought, my husband's mother
had chased me to the world above.''
``How did you come to marry, nyanya?''
``I reckon, by God's will. My Vanya
was younger still, but at that stage
I was just thirteen years of age.
Two weeks the matchmaker was plying
to see my kin, and in the end
my father blessed me. So I'd spend
my hours in fear and bitter crying.
Then, crying, they untwined my plait,
and sang me to the altar-mat.

XIX

``So to strange kinsfolk I was taken...
but you're not paying any heed.''
``Oh nurse, I'm sad, I'm sad, I'm shaken,
I'm sick, my dear, I'm sick indeed.
I'm near to sobbing, near to weeping!...''
``You're ill, God have you in his keeping,
the Lord have mercy on us all!
whatever you may need, just call...
I'll sprinkle you with holy water,
you're all in fever... heavens above.''
``Nurse, I'm not ill; I... I'm in love.''
``The Lord God be with you, my daughter!''
and, hands a-tremble, Nyanya prayed
and put a cross-sign on the maid.
{93}

XX

``I am in love,'' Tatyana's wailing
whisper repeated to the crone.
``My dearest heart, you're sick and ailing.''
``I am in love; leave me alone.''
And all the while the moon was shining
and with its feeble glow outlining
the girl's pale charms, her loosened hair,
her drops of tears, and seated there,
in quilted coat, where rays were gleaming
on a small bench by Tanya's bed,
the grey-haired nurse with kerchiefed head;
and everything around was dreaming,
in the deep stillness of the night,
bathed in the moon's inspiring light.

XXI

Tatyana watched the moon, and floated
through distant regions of the heart...
A thought was born, and quickly noted...
``Go, nurse, and leave me here apart.
Give me a pen and give me paper,
bring up a table, and a taper;
good night; I swear I'll lie down soon.''
She was alone, lit by the moon.
Elbow on table, spirit seething,
still filled with Eugene, Tanya wrote,
and in her unconsidered note
all a pure maiden's love was breathing.
She folds the page, lays down the plume.,
Tatyana! it's addressed... to whom?
{94}

XXII

I've known too many a haughty beauty,
cold, pure as ice, and as unkind,
inexorably wed to duty,
unfathomable to the mind;
shocked by their modish pride, and fleeing
the utter virtue of their being,
I've run a mile, I must avow,
having decyphered on their brow
hell's terrifying imprecation:
``Abandon hope for evermore.''9
Our love is what they most abhor;
our terror is their consolation.
Ladies of such a cast, I think,
you too have seen on Neva's brink.

XXIII

Thronged by adorers, I've detected
another, freakish one, who stays
quite self-absorbed and unaffected
by sighs of passion or by praise.
To my astonishment I've seen her,
having by her severe demeanour
frightened to death a timid love,
revive it with another shove --
at least by a regretful kindness;
at least her tone is sometimes found
more tender than it used to sound.
I've seen how, trustful in his blindness,
the youthful lover once again
runs after what is sweet, and vain.
{95}

XXIV

Why is Tatyana guiltier-seeming?
is it that she, poor simple sweet,
believes in her elected dreaming
and has no knowledge of deceit?
that, artless, and without concealing,
her love obeys the laws of feeling,
that she's so trustful, and imbued
by heaven with such an unsubdued
imagination, with such reason,
such stubborn brain, and vivid will,
and heart so tender, it can still
burst to a fiery blaze in season?
Such feckless passion -- as I live,
is this then what you can't forgive?

XXV

The flirt has reason's cool volition;
Tatyana's love is no by-play,
she yields to it without condition
like a sweet child. She'll never say:
``By virtue of procrastinating
we'll keep love's price appreciating,
we'll draw it deeper in our net;
first, we'll take vanity, and let
hope sting it, then we'll try deploying
doubts, to exhaust the heart, then fire
jealousy's flame, to light desire;
else, having found his pleasure cloying,
the cunning prisoner can quite well
at any hour escape his cell.''
{96}

XXVI

I see another problem looming:
to save the honour of our land
I must translate -- there's no presuming --
the letter from Tatyana's hand:
her Russian was as thin as vapour,
she never read a Russian paper,
our native speech had never sprung
unhesitating from her tongue,
she wrote in French... what a confession!
what can one do? as said above,
until this day, a lady's love
in Russian never found expression,
till now our language -- proud, God knows --
has hardly mastered postal prose.

XXVII

They should be forced to read in Russian,
I hear you say. But can you see
a lady -- what a grim discussion! --
with The Well-Meaner10 on her knee?
I ask you, each and every poet!
the darling objects -- don't you know it? --
for whom, to expiate your crimes,
you've made so many secret rhymes,
to whom your hearts are dedicated,
is it not true that Russian speech,
so sketchily possessed by each,
by all is sweetly mutilated,
and it's the foreign phrase that trips
like native idiom from their lips?
{97}

XXVIII

Protect me from such apparition
on dance-floor, at breakup of ball,
as bonneted Academician
or seminarist in yellow shawl!
To me, unsmiling lips bring terror,
however scarlet; free from error
of grammar, Russian language too.
Now, to my cost it may be true
that generations of new beauties,
heeding the press, will make us look
more closely at the grammar-book;
that verse will turn to useful duties;
on me, all this has no effect:
tradition still keeps my respect.

XXIX

No, incorrect and careless chatter,
words mispronounced, thoughts ill-expressed
evoke emotion's pitter-patter,
now as before, inside my breast;
too weak to change, I'm staying vicious,
I still find Gallicism delicious
as youthful sinning, or the strains
of Bogdanóvich's11 refrains.
But that's enough. My beauty's letter
must now employ my pen; somehow
I gave my word, alas, though now
a blank default would suit me better.
I own it: tender Parny's12 rhyme
is out of fashion in our time.
{98}

XXX

Bard13 of The Feasts, and heart's depression,
if you'd still been with me, dear friend,
I would have had the indiscretion
to ask of you that you transcend
in music's own bewitching fashion
the foreign words a maiden's passion
found for its utterance that night.
Where are you? come -- and my own right
with an obeisance I'll hand over...
But he, by sad and rocky ways,
with heart that's grown unused to praise,
on Finland's coast a lonely rover --
he doesn't hear when I address
his soul with murmurs of distress.

XXXI

Tatyana's letter, treasured ever
as sacred, lies before me still.
I read with secret pain, and never
can read enough to get my fill.
Who taught her an address so tender,
such careless language of surrender?
Who taught her all this mad, slapdash,
heartfelt, imploring, touching trash
fraught with enticement and disaster?
It baffles me. But I'll repeat
here a weak version, incomplete,
pale transcript of a vivid master,
or Freischütz as it might be played
by nervous hands of a schoolmaid:
{99}

Tatyana's Letter to Onegin

``I write to you -- no more confession
is needed, nothing's left to tell.
I know it's now in your discretion
with scorn to make my world a hell.

``But, if you've kept some faint impression
of pity for my wretched state,
you'll never leave me to my fate.
At first I thought it out of season
to speak; believe me: of my shame
you'd not so much as know the name,
if I'd possessed the slightest reason
to hope that even once a week
I might have seen you, heard you speak
on visits to us, and in greeting
I might have said a word, and then
thought, day and night, and thought again
about one thing, till our next meeting.
But you're not sociable, they say:
you find the country godforsaken;
though we... don't shine in any way,
our joy in you is warmly taken.

``Why did you visit us, but why?
Lost in our backwoods habitation
I'd not have known you, therefore I
would have been spared this laceration.
In time, who knows, the agitation
of inexperience would have passed,
I would have found a friend, another,
and in the role of virtuous mother
and faithful wife I'd have been cast.
{100}

``Another!... No, another never
in all the world could take my heart!
Decreed in highest court for ever...
heaven's will -- for you I'm set apart;
and my whole life has been directed
and pledged to you, and firmly planned:
I know, Godsent one, I'm protected
until the grave by your strong hand:
you'd made appearance in my dreaming;
unseen, already you were dear,
my soul had heard your voice ring clear,
stirred at your gaze, so strange, so gleaming,
long, long ago... no, that could be
no dream. You'd scarce arrived, I reckoned
to know you, swooned, and in a second
all in a blaze, I said: it's he!

``You know, it's true, how I attended,
drank in your words when all was still --
helping the poor, or while I mended
with balm of prayer my torn and rended
spirit that anguish had made ill.
At this midnight of my condition,
was it not you, dear apparition,
who in the dark came flashing through
and, on my bed-head gently leaning,
with love and comfort in your meaning,
spoke words of hope? But who are you:
the guardian angel of tradition,
or some vile agent of perdition
sent to seduce? Resolve my doubt.
Oh, this could all be false and vain,
a sham that trustful souls work out;
{101}
fate could be something else again..,

``So let it be! for you to keep
I trust my fate to your direction,
henceforth in front of you I weep,
I weep, and pray for your protection..,
Imagine it: quite on my own
I've no one here who comprehends me,
and now a swooning mind attends me,
dumb I must perish, and alone.
My heart awaits you: you can turn it
to life and hope with just a glance --
or else disturb my mournful trance
with censure -- I've done all to earn it!

``I close. I dread to read this page...
for shame and fear my wits are sliding...
and yet your honour is my gage
and in it boldly I'm confiding''...
{102}

XXXII

Now Tanya's groaning, now she's sighing;
the letter trembles in her grip;
the rosy sealing-wafer's drying
upon her feverish tongue; the slip
from off her charming shoulder's drooping,
and sideways her poor head is stooping.
But now the radiance of the moon
is dimmed. Down there the valley soon
comes clearer through the mists of dawning.
Down there, by slow degrees, the stream
has taken on a silvery gleam;
the herdsman's horn proclaimed the morning
and roused the village long ago:
to Tanya, all's an empty show.

XXXIII

She's paid the sunrise no attention,
she sits with head sunk on her breast,
over the note holds in suspension
her seal with its engraven crest.
Softly the door is opened, enter
grey Filatevna, to present her
with a small tray and a teacup.
``Get up, my child, it's time, get up!
Why, pretty one, you're up already!
My early bird! you know, last night
you gave me such a shocking fright!
but now, thank God, you're well and steady,
your night of fretting's left no trace!
fresh as a poppy-flower, your face.''
{103}

XXXIV

``Oh nurse, a favour, a petition...''
``Command me, darling, as you choose.''
``Now don't suppose... let no suspicion...
but, nurse, you see... Oh, don't refuse...''
``My sweet, God warrants me your debtor.''
``Then send your grandson with this letter
quickly to O... I mean to that...
the neighbour... you must tell the brat
that not a syllable be uttered
and not a mention of my name...''
``Which neighbour, dear? My head became
in these last years all mixed and fluttered.
We've many neighbours round about;
even to count them throws me out.''

XXXV

``How slow you are at guessing, nyanya!''
``My sweet, my dearest heart, I'm old,
I'm old, my mind is blunted, Tanya;
times were when I was sharp and bold:
times were, when master's least suggestion...''
``Oh nyanya, nyanya, I don't question...
what have your wits to do with me?
Now here's a letter, as you see,
addressed to Onegin''... ...'Well, that's easy.
But don't be cross, my darling friend,
you know I'm hard to comprehend...
Why have you gone all pale and queasy?''
``It's nothing, nurse, nothing, I say...
just send your grandson on his way.''
{104}

XXXVI

Hours pass; no answer; waiting, waiting.
No word: another day goes by.
She's dressed since dawn, dead pale; debating,
demanding: when will he reply?
Olga's adorer comes a-wooing.
``Tell me, what's your companion doing?''
enquired the lady of the hall:
``it seems that he forgot us all.''
Tatyana flushed, and started shaking.
``Today he promised he'd be here,''
so Lensky answered the old dear:
``the mail explains the time he's taking.''
Tatyana lowered her regard
as at a censure that was hard.

XXXVII

Day faded; on the table, glowing,
the samovar of evening boiled,
and warmed the Chinese teapot; flowing
beneath it, vapour wreathed and coiled.
Already Olga's hand was gripping
the urn of perfumed tea, and tipping
into the cups its darkling stream --
meanwhile a hallboy handed cream;
before the window taking station,
plunged in reflection's deepest train,
Tatyana breathed on the cold pane,
and in the misted condensation
with charming forefinger she traced
``OE'' devotedly inlaced.
{105}

XXXVIII

Meanwhile with pain her soul was girdled,
and tears were drowning her regard.
A sudden clatter!... blood was curdled...
Now nearer... hooves... and in the yard
Evgeny! ``Ah!'' Tatyana, fleeting
light as a shadow, shuns a meeting,
through the back porch runs out and flies
down to the garden, and her eyes
daren't look behind her; fairly dashing --
beds, bridges, lawn, she never stops,
the allée to the lake, the copse;
breaking the lilac bushes, smashing
parterres, she runs to rivulet's brink,
to gasp, and on a bench to sink.

XXXIX

She dropped... ``It's he! Eugene arriving!
Oh God, what did he think!'' A dream
of hope is somehow still surviving
in her torn heart -- a fickle gleam;
she trembles, and with fever drumming
awaits him -- hears nobody coming.
Maidservants on the beds just now
were picking berries from the bough,
singing in chorus as directed
(on orders which of course presume
that thievish mouths cannot consume
their masters' berries undetected
so long as they're employed in song:
such rustic cunning can't be wrong!) --
{106}

The Song of the Girls

``Maidens, pretty maidens all,
dear companions, darling friends,
pretty maidens, romp away,
have your fill of revelry!
Strike the ditty up, my sweets,
ditty of our secret world,
and entice a fellow in
to the circle of our dance.
When we draw a fellow in,
when we see him from afar,
darlings, then we'll run away,
cherries then we'll throw at him,
cherries throw and raspberries
and redcurrants throw at him.
Never come and overhear
ditties of our secret world,
never come and like a spy
watch the games we maidens play.''
{107}

XL

They sing; unmoved by their sweet-sounding
choruses, Tanya can but wait,
listless, impatient, for the pounding
within her bosom to abate,
and for her cheeks to cease their blushing;
but wildly still her heart is rushing,
and on her cheeks the fever stays,
more and more brightly still they blaze.
So the poor butterfly will quiver
and beat a nacreous wing when caught
by some perverse schoolboy for sport;
and so in winter-fields will shiver
the hare who from afar has seen
a marksman crouching in the green.

XLI

But finally she heaved a yearning
sigh, and stood up, began to pace;
she walked, but just as she was turning
into the allée, face to face,
she found Evgeny, eyes a-glitter,
still as a shadow, grim and bitter;
seared as by fire, she stopped. Today
I lack the strength required to say
what came from this unlooked-for meeting;
my friends, I need to pause a spell,
and walk, and breathe, before I tell
a story that still wants completing;
I need to rest from all this rhyme:
I'll end my tale some other time.
{108}

Notes to Chapter Three

1 Stanza left incomplete by Pushkin.
2 Heroine of Zhukovsky's poem of the same name.
3 Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloise. by Rousseau, 1761.
4 Hero of Mathilde, by Sophie Cottin, 1805.
5 Lover of Valérie, by Madame de Krudener, 1803.
6 Delphine, by Madame de Staël, 1805.
7 Melmoth the Wanderer, by C. R. Mathurin, 1820.
8 Jean Sbogar, by Charles Nodier, 1818.
9 ``Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate. Our modest author has
translated only the first part of the famous verse.'' Pushkin's note.
10 Magazine (1818) edited by A. Izmaylov.
11 Russian poet and translator from the French.
12 French poet (1755-1814). Author of Poésies Erotiques.
13 Evgeny Baratynsky (1800-1844). Poet and friend of Pushkin.