Oh, how I longed to know what bliss is
By covering those feet with kisses.
No, not once in the fiery blaze
Of my ebullient younger days
Did I in this way long and languish
To kiss a young Armida, or
Kiss burning pink cheeks and adore,
Or kiss a bosom racked with anguish.
No, never did a surge of lust
Assault my soul with such a thrust.
34
Another scene… Let me unfold it;
The cherished memory still stands…
A happy stirrup… There, I hold it,
Feeling a small foot in my hands.
This sets imagination seething—
That touch again, beyond believing,
New grief, new love. A surging flood
Inflames the fading heart with blood!
But let’s stop praising them, these snooty
Objects of my loquacious muse.
They’re worthless. Why do we enthuse,
Or sing of their inspiring beauty?
These sorceresses’ words and eyes
Are like their little feet—all lies.
35
Onegin? He looks none too brilliant,
Dozing his way home. Here he comes,
While Petersburg, ever resilient,
Awakens to the morning drum.
The dealer strides out, and the hawker,
The cabby to his stand (slow walker!);
An Okhta girl, her jug held close,
Crunches across the morning snows.
A morning rumble hums to wake her,
Shutters are down, from many a flue
Smoke climbs in a thin line of blue,
And there’s that fussy German baker,
Cotton-capped, who for some time has
Been busy at his was-ist-das.
36
But noisy ballrooms leave him weary;
He now turns midnight into morn,
Sleeping in shadow, blessed and bleary,
A man to wealth and pleasure born.
His life will be, when late he rises,
Spelt out for him with no surprises,
Coloured, but in the same old way,
Tomorrow being yesterday.
But was he, in this loose employment,
A happy young man, in his prime,
With brilliant conquests all the time,
With this quotidian enjoyment?
Heedless and healthy he would go
A-banqueting. Was this all show?
37
No. While still young he lost all feeling,
Finding the noisy world a bore
And lovely girls not so appealing,
Not so obsessive as before.
Betrayals left him sad and weary,
Both friends and friendship he found dreary.
You cannot keep on sluicing steaks
Or Strasburg pie with what it takes—
The best champagne! And it gets harder
To please the diners with bons mots
When headaches leave you feeling low.
Yevgeny, once a man of ardour,
Acknowledged that his love was dead
For conflict, sabres and the lead.
38
The malady that left him undone
(Of which we ought to know the cause)
Was like imported spleen from London,
Known as khandrá within our shores.
It gradually left him emptied,
Though, thank God, he was never tempted
To put a pistol to his head,
But still he seemed to be half-dead,
Childe Harold-like, with an impression
Of brooding gloom and nothing more,
And as for cards, or gossip, or
Fond looks, or sighs of indiscretion,
He found their impact less than slim,
For nothing registered with him.
[39, 40, 41] 42
You weird and wonderful high ladies,
You were the first that he forswore.
Oh, yes, your bon ton, I’m afraid, is
Considered nowadays a bore.
Some of your kind think nature meant them
To hold forth on Jean Say and Bentham,
But by and large they are awash
With empty words and dreadful tosh,
And their high-mindedness is hideous,
They are so stately and so wise,
So predisposed to moralize,
So circumspect and so fastidious,
And when it comes to men, so mean,
43
And those young beauties of the fun set,
Who, in those carriages of theirs
Are swept along into the sunset
Down Petersburg’s fine thoroughfares,
Yevgeny learnt to put behind him,
With all such sport. Where would you find him?
Locked in at home, where he sat still,
Yawning as he took up the quill.
He tried to write, but soon was killed off
By the hard toil, so not a scrap
Emerged from this non-writing chap,
Who never made that busy guild of
People whom I judge not. Ahem!
I could not, being one of them.
44
Idle again (and we should mention
His weary emptiness of soul),
He sat back, turning his attention
To other minds—a noble goal.
With rows of books to put his hand on,
He read and read, but quite at random,
All dull, dishonest, rambling stuff,
Not virtuous or clear enough.
They were in every way constraining.
Old things came over as old hat,
And new as old, too. That was that:
Books were (like women) not Yevgeny,
So all things dusty of that ilk
Were curtained off with funeral silk.
45
Freed from convention, and its burden,
Like him I gave up vain pursuits.
Befriending this man, I was spurred on
By noticing his attributes:
A strong capacity for dreaming,
A style inimitable-seeming,
A sharp and chilly cast of mind.
I was embittered; he repined.
We’d both known passion, and life’s canker
Had left us both dissatisfied.
The fire in both of us had died.
Ahead of us lay only rancour
From Lady Luck and men, all strife,
And in the morning of our life.
46
To live and think is to be daunted,
To feel contempt for other men.
To feel is to be hurt, and haunted
By days that will not come again,
With a lost sense of charm and wonder,
And memory to suffer under—
The stinging serpent of remorse.
This all adds piquancy, of course,
To conversation. To begin with,
I bridled at his witticisms,
But soon I settled to his rhythms:
The stinging shafts that he would win with,
The dark remarks, half-joke, half-bile,
That made his epigrams so vile.
47
On limpid summer nights, how often,
We watched as limpid evenings passed,
And saw the Neva night sky soften
On happy waters smooth as glass
With no Diana in reflection.
Recalling romance and affection,
We hymned serenely love gone by,
Breathed vapours from the tender sky
And living gladness from the scenery,
Glorying in it, drinking deep.
Like a freed convict, half-asleep,
; Transported into woodland greenery,
We dreamt ourselves away, in truth,
Back to the dawning of our youth.
48
Depressed in spirit, looking doleful
And leaning on the granite shelf,
There stood Yevgeny, sad and soulful
(As once a bard described himself ),
And in the stillness, from their entries,
Night sentries hailed their brother sentries.
Rattling carriages were about—
From Million Street the wheels rang out—
And then a splashing oarsman boated
His small craft down the dozing stream.
Far off, as in a pleasant dream,
A horn blew, singing came, full-throated.
But there’s no sweeter late-night sound
Than Tasso’s octaves, I have found.
49
O waters of the Adriatic!
Brenta! I will see you one day.
Inspired anew, I’ll be ecstatic
To hear your magic voice at play.
Apollo’s grandchildren revere it;
I know it well. I came to hear it
From tales that England’s proud lyre told.
And those Italian nights of gold
Will bring delight to me, a wanderer
Floating with a Venetian chum,
A girl, half-chatterbox, half-dumb,
Secreted with me in a gondola.
She’ll teach my lips the language of
Francesco Petrarch—and of love.
50
Shall I be one of God’s free creatures?
“Let it be now!” is on my lips.
I watch the weather, roam the beaches
And beckon to the sails of ships.
Clad in dark cloud, braving the waters,
Across the seas to the four quarters
I’ll sail in freedom one fine day.
This shore is drab. I’ll get away
From uncongenial climes so trying,
And in the shimmering haze of noon
In my own Africa I’ll soon
Be thinking of dark Russia, sighing,
Where I knew suffering, love and toil.
My heart is buried in her soil.
51
We were agreed, and might have started
To visit many an alien clime,
But all too soon we two were parted
By destiny for a long time.
Death came at this time to his father,
Which left Onegin faced with rather
A lot of greedy creditors,
Each with his argument or cause.
Yevgeny, loathing litigation
And happy with things as they stood,
Handed them every copeck. Good—
It didn’t seem like deprivation.
(Perhaps he could foresee the day
His rich old uncle passed away.)
52
And, sure enough, there came a letter
From uncle’s steward. My, oh my,
Uncle was ill, would not get better,
And he’d quite like to say goodbye.
With this sad missive in his pocket
Yevgeny set off like a rocket
In a post-chaise to visit him,
Yawning already at things so grim.
To get the money he was ready
For tedium, deceits and sighs
(My novel started on this wise),
But once he had arrived, instead he
Found uncle on the table, worth
No more than his six feet of earth.
53
The yard was full of staff and yeomen
Hailing from all localities,
Arriving there as friends or foemen,
Enthusiasts for obsequies,
And after uncle’s sad interment
People and priests fell in a ferment
On food and drink, then everyone
Went his own way, a job well done.
Onegin, in his rural wisdom,
Owns mills, lakes, woods and lands between.
The landlord, who has so far been
A wastrel with no taste for system,
Is pleased that what he used to do
Has been exchanged for… something new.
54
The first two days were a new highlight:
The far fields with their lonesome look,
The chilly oak grove in the twilight,
The beauty of a burbling brook,
But then each hill and copse and covert
Lost interest, and he could not love it.
Now he was bored with every place,
Now stark truth stared him in the face:
Boredom is just as enervating
Where streets and mansions don’t exist,
Nor ballrooms, poetry, nor whist.
Depression dogged him, watching, waiting,
To chase him and to bring him strife,
His shadow or his loving wife.
55
I was born for a calm existence
Out in the country, where, it seems,
The lyre can sing with more insistence
And brighter shine creative dreams.
With pastimes innocent and plenty
I stroll the lakeside. Far niente
Is now a rule of life for me.
I wake up in the morning free,
Expecting pleasures with new hunger.
I read a little, sleep a lot.
Striving for glory I am not.
Those bygone days when I was younger,
Did I not spend them all like this
In shade and idleness and bliss?
56
O rural idyll, love and flowers!
O fields, to you I yield my soul…
I mark what differences are ours,
What separates us on the whole,
So that no reader, no wild joker,
No literary libel-broker
Can publish somewhere by design
Onegin’s features as for mine,
And then repeat the claim (outrageous!)
That here my portrait has been daubed
Like Byron’s, proudly self-absorbed,
As if one could not fill these pages
By painting someone other than
One’s own self as the leading man.
57
Poets, I tell you, are romancers,
Good friends of fancifying love.
I used to dream of cherished fancies
That moved my spirit from above,
Which seized their image to record it,
And later on the muse restored it.
In this way, blithely I portrayed
My ideal girl, the mountain maid,
And the harem on Salgir’s borders.
But now, friends, you bring me to task;
Time and again I hear you ask,
“Whom does your sad lyre set before us?
Which of the jealous maids is she?
Which girl is its dedicatee?
58
Whose gaze caressing and inspiring
Rewards you as she turns to nurse
You through your pensive lyring?
Who is the idol of your verse?”
There’s nobody, my friends, I swear it.
Love’s frenzy, I have had to bear it
Without delight worth thinking of.
Blest is the man who merges love
With rhyming fever; he redoubles
Poetry’s ramblings blessed by God,
He walks with Petrarch where he trod
And soothes the heart in its worst troubles.
He gains fame, too, for years to come.
But I, in love, was dense and dumb.
59
Love came and went. The muse, descending,
Cleared my dark mind, and I felt free.
I sought new magic in the blending
Of feelings, thoughts
and euphony.
I write now, and my heart is easy,
My pen, now swift, now bright and breezy,
No longer makes half-lines complete
With female heads and female feet.
Dead ashes, they are dead and ashen.
I still feel sad, but shed no tear.
Soon the storm clouds will disappear
From my sad spirit. Then I’ll fashion
A narrative in verse, a gem
In cantos, twenty-five of them.
60
Already I’ve begun to plan it;
I’ve named the hero—that is done.
This novel’s grown since I began it,
And now I’ve finished Chapter One.
I’ve scrutinized my work of fiction,
And find it full of contradiction,
But these are faults I’ll not pursue,
Paying the censorship its due.
My toil is done. I now deliver
To journalistic scavengers
This newborn child, my tale in verse.
Go! Stroll along the Neva River.
Earn me the fame that will induce
Skewed comments shrilling with abuse.
CHAPTER TWO
O rus!… *
HORACE
O Russia!
1
The place Yevgeny found so boring
Was a delightful rural spot,
Where you, with pleasures newly dawning,
Would have blessed heaven for your lot.
His manor house stood all secluded,
With winds by yonder hill excluded,
Above a stream. The prospect yields
A motley view of luscious fields,
Pasture and corn, sunlit and golden,
Dotted with hamlets here and there,
With cattle wandering everywhere,
And dense, dark alleys to be strolled on
Through a vast garden, overgrown,
With wistful dryads set in stone.
2
His castle, far from being squalid,
Was built as castles should be built,
Convenient, sensible and solid,
Ancestral to the very hilt.