The chambers had high ceilings, they did,
The parlour walls were well brocaded,
Tsars’ portraits hung on every wall,
The stoves bore coloured tiles. It all
Looked rather down at heel and seedy—
I’m not quite sure why this was so.
In any case my friend had no
Concern for this. He wasn’t greedy,
And in all settings, fresh or worn,
Ancient or modern, he would yawn.
3
A certain room drew him in deeper;
Here the old chap had vilified
For forty years his castle-keeper
As he squashed flies and stared outside—
A simple room with oak-wood floorage,
A table, soft couch, decent storage,
And not an ink-stain anywhere.
Onegin scoured the cupboards; there
He found a book, some sort of ledger,
Home-made liqueurs in a long rack,
Apple juice, and an almanac
For eighteen-eight, a source of pleasure
For one who’d had no time to look
At any other kind of book.
4
Yevgeny cut a lonely figure
Amidst his lands. To pass the time
He thought of something: he would trigger
Some changes, and reform this clime.
These peasants, thought our wasteland prophet,
Don’t like unpaid work—take them off it!
Let them instead pay a small tax:
They will thank Heaven, and relax.
But this remission of serf labour
Displeased the man next door, who viewed
It as too risky. He was shrewd,
As was another smirking neighbour.
The locals shared one thought: “By God,
That fellow’s dangerously odd.”
5
At first they came in droves to visit,
But on the back porch he would pause
Usually, wondering, “Who is it?”
And seize the reins of his Don horse.
A family carriage on the highway
Would send him shooting down a byway.
Outraged by conduct of this kind,
They soon left friendliness behind.
“He’s crazy, he’s a boor, a mason.
Red wine is all he drinks. How crass!
And always in a drinking glass!
He won’t kiss ladies’ hands. Disgraceful!
It’s ‘yes’ and ‘no’, but never ‘sir’.”
And thus did all of them concur.
6
Into his village in that season
Came a new landowner, a man
Who gave the neighbourhood good reason
For no less scrupulous a scan.
This person was Vladímir Lénsky,
Describable as “Göttingen-sky”,
A handsome young chap in his prime,
A devotee of Kant and rhyme.
From misty Germany returning,
Ardent and slightly odd, it seems,
Replete with freedom-loving dreams
And all the latest fruits of learning,
He got excited, spoke with strength,
And wore his black curls shoulder-length.
7
Society’s chilling excesses
Had not yet shrivelled up his soul.
A friendly greeting, girls’ caresses
Still kept him feeling warm and whole.
With silliness his heart was nourished,
And false hope still within him flourished.
The glamour of the world, the din,
Seized his young mind and took it in.
Amusement, fancy, taradiddle
Relieved his heart of doubts and strife.
For him the meaning of this life
Remained a captivating riddle
To which he often turned his mind,
Suspecting wonders unconfined.
8
He knows there is a twin soul waiting
To be united with him. She
Repines with anguish, contemplating
Each waiting day with misery;
And friends, to whom he stands indebted,
Will save his name and end up fettered
Willingly, hesitating not
To smash the slanderer with his pot.
And some there are, guided by destiny,
Whose sacred bond will one day slip
Into immortal fellowship
That beams a mighty luminescence
Upon us (be assured of this),
9
Hot rage, compassion, with a dormant
And spotless love for all things good,
And glory with its lovely torment
Obsessed him, stirring his young blood.
He roamed the earth, and sang where Goethe
And Schiller lived, striving to nurture
The poet’s eagerness—a goal
That captured and inflamed his soul.
The very muses, though exalted,
Were not disgraced by his young bliss
Nor his proud poetry, nor this
High sentiment that never faltered,
The surge of dreams unspoilt and calm,
Simplicity with its grave charm.
10
Love was what he, the lovelorn, played on,
Singing the sweetest, clearest notes,
Clear as the thoughts of a pure maiden,
A sleeping babe, a moon that floats
The night sky with its far-flung glories,
Goddess of sighs and secret stories.
He sang of partings and sad times,
“The days of yore” and “misty climes”
And roses—with romantic language.
He sang of many a distant place
Of quietude and restful space
Where he had wept salt tears in anguish.
He sang of fading life, as seen
By a young man not quite eighteen.
11
Yevgeny would be just the person
To say if he was any good.
His low opinion could not worsen
Of dining in the neighbourhood.
He shunned the locals’ noisy chatter,
However sensible its matter—
Haymaking, wine production, with
Much talk of kennels, kin and kith.
They prattled with no show of feeling,
No spark of poetry, no whit
Of brightness, intellect or wit,
No communality of dealings.
Their sweet wives’ talk was less intense
But even more devoid of sense.
12
Vladimir Lensky, rich, good-looking,
Was deemed by all a splendid catch.
The country folk were set on hooking
Their girls a profitable match,
In this case their “half-Russian” neighbour.
If he dropped in, the talk would favour
All comments, even if oblique,
That painted bachelordom bleak.
It’s teatime now, and Lensky’s coming.
Dunya controls the samovar—
“Go to it, Dunya, there you are!”
Here’s a guitar, and to its strumming
She screeches (what a caterwaul!),
“Come to me in my golden hall.”
13
But Lensky, not exactly raging
To bind himself in wedlock, sought
Acquaintance with this man, Onegin;
It can’t come fast enough, he thought.
The two men met. Liquid and solid,
Poetry–prose, ice-cold and torrid
Are not more polarized than they.
Their differences won the day
At first; they simply bored each other.
Then the
y drew closer. Far and wide,
They rode out daily side by side,
Each an inseparable brother.
Thus friendships form (something I rue)
From having nothing else to do.
14
But we exclude that kind of closeness.
As our unbiased thinking runs,
People are naughts, while, in our grossness,
We see ourselves as number ones.
We show Napoleon’s worst features.
Millions of bipeds, fellow creatures,
Exist for us to use as tools;
Feelings we leave to beasts and fools.
Yevgeny, though, was not unshakeable.
Although he took, to all men born,
An informed attitude of scorn,
Nevertheless (since rules are breakable)
With some he went against the grain
And let his feelings have free rein.
15
He smiled at Lensky as he chattered.
The poet’s language was ablaze;
His mind, his judgement of what mattered,
The inspiration in his gaze,
Seemed to Onegin unfamiliar.
His inward thoughts grew ever chillier,
Though he fought hard and held them back,
Thinking it stupid to attack
And spoil this brief bliss with correction.
“Time will enlighten him, not me.
So let the man’s illusion be;
Let him accept the world’s perfection.
To youth and fervour let’s succumb,
Young ardour and delirium.”
16
There was a good deal to divide them,
And make them think as thinkers should:
The compacts made by ancient tribesmen,
How science works, evil and good,
The age-old ways of superstition,
The mystery of non-existence,
Life, destiny, rose, as they must,
Before these men to be discussed.
The poet, holding forth with fervour,
Forgot himself and made things worse
By quoting bits of Nordic verse.
Yevgeny was a kind observer;
While understanding not a lot,
He listened hard with all he’d got.
17
But passion was what dominated
The minds of these reclusive chaps.
From its strong force emancipated,
Onegin spoke of this, perhaps
With some regret (and sighs), as follows:
“Blest he who in his passion wallows
And then at last puts it aside.
Twice blest is he who has denied
And cooled both love (with separation)
And enmity (with a sharp word),
Yawning with friends and wife, unstirred
By jealous agonies, too patient
To put dynastic funds to use
By risking all on one sly deuce!”
18
When we have hid beneath the banner
Of sensible tranquillity,
With ardour cooled in such a manner
That we can view indulgently
The lingering echoes of its surges—
Its once unstoppable emergence,
Brought down to earth with much ado,
We sometimes like to listen to
Wild passions as described by others.
They thrill the heart. Thus, drawing near
An old campaigner lends an ear
To tales from young, mustachioed brothers,
He long-neglected in his shack,
They in their wisdom talking back.
19
But youthful ardour in its madness
Hides nothing, leaves no room for doubt;
Love, enmity, delight or sadness—
Nothing will not come pouring out.
For love deemed now beyond the column,
Onegin listened and looked solemn,
Hearing the poet, who confessed
With eager, loving openness.
His simple, unsuspecting conscience
Stood openly revealed because
Yevgeny saw it as it was,
A young man’s tale of loving nonsense,
A touching story, it is true,
Characterized by nothing new.
20
Such love! No one would now bestow it,
Not nowadays. It was unique,
The frenzied spirit of a poet
Condemned to love and languish, weak
At all times, in all places, burning
With dreams and a familiar yearning,
Familiar anguish, as before.
Neither the chill of distance nor
Protracted years of separation,
Nor hours devoted to the arts,
Nor lovely sights in foreign parts,
Nor study, nor wild celebration
Had changed the nature of his soul,
Still virginally warm and whole.
21
While still a lad, entranced by Olga
And free from heartache, Lensky grew
More and more happy to behold her
Frolicking wild, as young girls do,
And with the woodlands for their shelter
He shared her scatty helter-skelter.
Their fathers, neighbours and good pals,
Had them down as connubials.
Her dwelling was a humble chalet.
Her parents saw her charm and were
Delighted to consider her
A hidden lily of the valley
Mid the thick grass, for none to see,
Safe from the moths and bumblebee.
22
She gave the poet his first promptings
Of love’s young dream, delight, desire.
The very thought of her did something
To animate his doleful lyre.
Leaving behind his golden playtime,
He loved the dense woods in the daytime,
The still, sequestered afternoon
And night skies with the stars and moon,
The moon, celestial luminary
Resplendent through the evening gloom,
Who strolls with us, the one to whom
We once pledged joy, and pain, and worry…
Though now it’s just a thing more bright
Than our dim lanterns are at night.
23
Demure, compliant, all elated,
Brimming with early-morning bliss,
Like poets’ lives uncomplicated,
As winsome as a lover’s kiss,
Her sky-blue eyes so Anglo-Saxon,
Her smiling face, her tresses flaxen,
Her walk, her voice, her tiny waist…
But, no… According to your taste,
Take any novel at your leisure,
And there she’ll be. The portrait’s fine;
Though once a favourite of mine,
It bores me now beyond all measure.
Reader, with all respect to you,
I’ll take the elder of the two.
24
Tatyana… It may seem audacious
To introduce a name like hers
Into this novel’s tender pages,
But it is done; we are the first.
So? It’s a good name, nice when spoken,
And yet I know it’s more a token
Of olden times or something fit
For sculleries. We must admit
Our taste is almost non-existent
In choosing a becoming name.
In poetry it’s just the same—
Enlightenment is somewhat distant,
Consistently an open door
To affectation, nothing more.
25
Tatyana, then—a different creature,
Lacking her sister’s radiance,
Her rosiness, freshness of feature—
&n
bsp; Seemed hardly worth a second glance.
Silent and gloomy, she would go like
A shy thing from the wild woods, doe-like,
And in the home she seemed to be
A changeling in their family.
Her parents, she could never thrill them
With girlish cuddles. She, a child,
Was temperamentally too mild
To hop and skip with other children.
And at the window she would spend,
Silently staring, days on end.
26
She stayed the same right from the cradle,
A friend of pensiveness, it seems.
Dull country leisure she was able
To ornament with her own dreams.
She was too delicately fingered
For needlework, and never lingered
O’er canvas workframes of the ilk
That called for fair designs in silk.
Signs of tyrannical intention:
A girl with her compliant doll
Anticipates what must befall
(Decorum, etiquette, convention),
Rehearsing with her poppet—ah!—
The strictures learnt from her mamma.
27
Tatyana gave no dolls a cuddle.
She did not, even at that age,
Discuss with dolly in a huddle
The town, and what was “all the rage”.
Frolicking girls tended to bore her.
What she preferred were tales of horror,
Dark deeds upon a winter’s night;
These stories were her heart’s delight.
Sometime her nurse enjoyed dispatching
Her playmates down the open lawn,
But Tanya would remain withdrawn
And would not go chasing and catching.
She found their raucous laughter dull,
Their games a silly spectacle.
28
She loved to stand outside, her eyes on
The east, the coming dawn of day,
The pallor of the far horizon,
Stars circling till they fade away.
The earth’s dark margin softly eases,
Morning is heralded in breezes,
And daytime slowly gathers light.