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,
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.