Eugene Onegin. A Romance of Russian Life in Verse Read online

  Daily beefsteaks and Strasbourg pies

  And irrigate them with champagne;

  Nor slander viciously could spread

  Whene'er he had an aching head;

  And, though a plucky scatterbrain,

  He finally lost all delight

  In bullets, sabres, and in fight.

  XXXV

  His malady, whose cause I ween

  It now to investigate is time,

  Was nothing but the British spleen

  Transported to our Russian clime.

  It gradually possessed his mind;

  Though, God be praised! he ne'er designed

  To slay himself with blade or ball,

  Indifferent he became to all,

  And like Childe Harold gloomily

  He to the festival repairs,

  Nor boston nor the world's affairs

  Nor tender glance nor amorous sigh

  Impressed him in the least degree,—

  Callous to all he seemed to be.

  XXXVI

  Ye miracles of courtly grace,

  He left you first, and I must own

  The manners of the highest class

  Have latterly vexatious grown;

  And though perchance a lady may

  Discourse of Bentham or of Say,

  Yet as a rule their talk I call

  Harmless, but quite nonsensical.

  Then they're so innocent of vice,

  So full of piety, correct,

  So prudent, and so circumspect

  Stately, devoid of prejudice,

  So inaccessible to men,

  Their looks alone produce the spleen.(16)

  [Note 16: Apropos of this somewhat ungallant sentiment, a Russian scholiast remarks:—"The whole of this ironical stanza is but a refined eulogy of the excellent qualities of our countrywomen. Thus Boileau, in the guise of invective, eulogizes Louis XIV. Russian ladies unite in their persons great acquirements, combined with amiability and strict morality; also a species of Oriental charm which so much captivated Madame de Stael." It will occur to most that the apologist of the Russian fair "doth protest too much." The poet in all probability wrote the offending stanza in a fit of Byronic "spleen," as he would most likely himself have called it. Indeed, since Byron, poets of his school seem to assume this virtue if they have it not, and we take their utterances under its influence for what they are worth.]

  XXXVII

  And you, my youthful damsels fair,

  Whom latterly one often meets

  Urging your droshkies swift as air

  Along Saint Petersburg's paved streets,

  From you too Eugene took to flight,

  Abandoning insane delight,

  And isolated from all men,

  Yawning betook him to a pen.

  He thought to write, but labour long

  Inspired him with disgust and so

  Nought from his pen did ever flow,

  And thus he never fell among

  That vicious set whom I don't blame—

  Because a member I became.

  XXXVIII

  Once more to idleness consigned,

  He felt the laudable desire

  From mere vacuity of mind

  The wit of others to acquire.

  A case of books he doth obtain—

  He reads at random, reads in vain.

  This nonsense, that dishonest seems,

  This wicked, that absurd he deems,

  All are constrained and fetters bear,

  Antiquity no pleasure gave,

  The moderns of the ancients rave—

  Books he abandoned like the fair,

  His book-shelf instantly doth drape

  With taffety instead of crape.

  XXXIX

  Having abjured the haunts of men,

  Like him renouncing vanity,

  His friendship I acquired just then;

  His character attracted me.

  An innate love of meditation,

  Original imagination,

  And cool sagacious mind he had:

  I was incensed and he was sad.

  Both were of passion satiate

  And both of dull existence tired,

  Extinct the flame which once had fired;

  Both were expectant of the hate

  With which blind Fortune oft betrays

  The very morning of our days.

  XL

  He who hath lived and living, thinks,

  Must e'en despise his kind at last;

  He who hath suffered ofttimes shrinks

  From shades of the relentless past.

  No fond illusions live to soothe,

  But memory like a serpent's tooth

  With late repentance gnaws and stings.

  All this in many cases brings

  A charm with it in conversation.

  Oneguine's speeches I abhorred

  At first, but soon became inured

  To the sarcastic observation,

  To witticisms and taunts half-vicious

  And gloomy epigrams malicious.

  XLI

  How oft, when on a summer night

  Transparent o'er the Neva beamed

  The firmament in mellow light,

  And when the watery mirror gleamed

  No more with pale Diana's rays,(17)

  We called to mind our youthful days—

  The days of love and of romance!

  Then would we muse as in a trance,

  Impressionable for an hour,

  And breathe the balmy breath of night;

  And like the prisoner's our delight

  Who for the greenwood quits his tower,

  As on the rapid wings of thought

  The early days of life we sought.

  [Note 17: The midsummer nights in the latitude of St. Petersburg are a prolonged twilight.]

  XLII

  Absorbed in melancholy mood

  And o'er the granite coping bent,

  Oneguine meditative stood,

  E'en as the poet says he leant.(18)

  'Tis silent all! Alone the cries

  Of the night sentinels arise

  And from the Millionaya afar(19)

  The sudden rattling of a car.

  Lo! on the sleeping river borne,

  A boat with splashing oar floats by,

  And now we hear delightedly

  A jolly song and distant horn;

  But sweeter in a midnight dream

  Torquato Tasso's strains I deem.

  [Note 18: Refers to Mouravieff's "Goddess of the Neva." At St. Petersburg the banks of the Neva are lined throughout with splendid granite quays.]

  [Note 19: A street running parallel to the Neva, and leading from the Winter Palace to the Summer Palace and Garden.]

  XLIII

  Ye billows of blue Hadria's sea,

  O Brenta, once more we shall meet

  And, inspiration firing me,

  Your magic voices I shall greet,

  Whose tones Apollo's sons inspire,

  And after Albion's proud lyre (20)

  Possess my love and sympathy.

  The nights of golden Italy

  I'll pass beneath the firmament,

  Hid in the gondola's dark shade,

  Alone with my Venetian maid,

  Now talkative, now reticent;

  From her my lips shall learn the tongue

  Of love which whilom Petrarch sung.

  [Note 20: The strong influence exercised by Byron's genius on the imagination of Pushkin is well known. Shakespeare and other English dramatists had also their share in influencing his mind, which, at all events in its earlier developments, was of an essentially imitative type. As an example of his Shakespearian tastes, see his poem of "Angelo," founded upon "Measure for Measure."]

  XLIV

  When will my hour of freedom come!

  Time, I invoke thee! favouring gales

  Awaiting on the shore I roam

  And beckon to t
he passing sails.

  Upon the highway of the sea

  When shall I wing my passage free

  On waves by tempests curdled o'er!

  'Tis time to quit this weary shore

  So uncongenial to my mind,

  To dream upon the sunny strand

  Of Africa, ancestral land,(21)

  Of dreary Russia left behind,

  Wherein I felt love's fatal dart,

  Wherein I buried left my heart.

  [Note 21: The poet was, on his mother's side, of African extraction, a circumstance which perhaps accounts for the southern fervour of his imagination. His great-grandfather, Abraham Petrovitch Hannibal, was seized on the coast of Africa when eight years of age by a corsair, and carried a slave to Constantinople. The Russian Ambassador bought and presented him to Peter the Great who caused him to be baptized at Vilnius. Subsequently one of Hannibal's brothers made his way to Constantinople and thence to St. Petersburg for the purpose of ransoming him; but Peter would not surrender his godson who died at the age of ninety-two, having attained the rank of general in the Russian service.]

  XLV

  Eugene designed with me to start

  And visit many a foreign clime,

  But Fortune cast our lots apart

  For a protracted space of time.

  Just at that time his father died,

  And soon Oneguine's door beside

  Of creditors a hungry rout

  Their claims and explanations shout.

  But Eugene, hating litigation

  And with his lot in life content,

  To a surrender gave consent,

  Seeing in this no deprivation,

  Or counting on his uncle's death

  And what the old man might bequeath.

  XLVI

  And in reality one day

  The steward sent a note to tell

  How sick to death his uncle lay

  And wished to say to him farewell.

  Having this mournful document

  Perused, Eugene in postchaise went

  And hastened to his uncle's side,

  But in his heart dissatisfied,

  Having for money's sake alone

  Sorrow to counterfeit and wail—

  Thus we began our little tale—

  But, to his uncle's mansion flown,

  He found him on the table laid,

  A due which must to earth be paid.

  XLVII

  The courtyard full of serfs he sees,

  And from the country all around

  Had come both friends and enemies—

  Funeral amateurs abound!

  The body they consigned to rest,

  And then made merry pope and guest,

  With serious air then went away

  As men who much had done that day.

  Lo! my Oneguine rural lord!

  Of mines and meadows, woods and lakes,

  He now a full possession takes,

  He who economy abhorred,

  Delighted much his former ways

  To vary for a few brief days.

  XLVIII

  For two whole days it seemed a change

  To wander through the meadows still,

  The cool dark oaken grove to range,

  To listen to the rippling rill.

  But on the third of grove and mead

  He took no more the slightest heed;

  They made him feel inclined to doze;

  And the conviction soon arose,

  Ennui can in the country dwell

  Though without palaces and streets,

  Cards, balls, routs, poetry or fetes;

  On him spleen mounted sentinel

  And like his shadow dogged his life,

  Or better,—like a faithful wife.

  XLIX

  I was for calm existence made,

  For rural solitude and dreams,

  My lyre sings sweeter in the shade

  And more imagination teems.

  On innocent delights I dote,

  Upon my lake I love to float,

  For law I far niente take

  And every morning I awake

  The child of sloth and liberty.

  I slumber much, a little read,

  Of fleeting glory take no heed.

  In former years thus did not I

  In idleness and tranquil joy

  The happiest days of life employ?

  L

  Love, flowers, the country, idleness

  And fields my joys have ever been;

  I like the difference to express

  Between myself and my Eugene,

  Lest the malicious reader or

  Some one or other editor

  Of keen sarcastic intellect

  Herein my portrait should detect,

  And impiously should declare,

  To sketch myself that I have tried

  Like Byron, bard of scorn and pride,

  As if impossible it were

  To write of any other elf

  Than one's own fascinating self.

  LI

  Here I remark all poets are

  Love to idealize inclined;

  I have dreamed many a vision fair

  And the recesses of my mind

  Retained the image, though short-lived,

  Which afterwards the muse revived.

  Thus carelessly I once portrayed

  Mine own ideal, the mountain maid,

  The captives of the Salguir's shore.(22)

  But now a question in this wise

  Oft upon friendly lips doth rise:

  Whom doth thy plaintive Muse adore?

  To whom amongst the jealous throng

  Of maids dost thou inscribe thy song?

  [Note 22: Refers to two of the most interesting productions of

  the poet. The former line indicates the Prisoner of the

  Caucasus, the latter, The Fountain of Baktchiserai. The

  Salguir is a river of the Crimea.]

  LII

  Whose glance reflecting inspiration

  With tenderness hath recognized

  Thy meditative incantation—

  Whom hath thy strain immortalized?

  None, be my witness Heaven above!

  The malady of hopeless love

  I have endured without respite.

  Happy who thereto can unite

  Poetic transport. They impart

  A double force unto their song

  Who following Petrarch move along

  And ease the tortures of the heart—

  Perchance they laurels also cull—

  But I, in love, was mute and dull.

  LIII

  The Muse appeared, when love passed by

  And my dark soul to light was brought;