No one would

Have thought this anything but good,

For rural laxity can pardon

Most things, within its happy laws,

As condescending Moscow does.

18

Reader, you must be in agreement:

Poor Tanya was gently let down.

Nothing but good was all that he meant.

Yevgeny once again has shown

That his pure soul could not be deeper,

And yet the ill will of bad people

Has spared him nothing, though his foes

Along with so-called friends, yes those

(Friends, foes—the difference may be worthless),

Pay him some desultory respect.

Foes flourish, but, to be correct,

From friends, not foes, may God preserve us.

Friends, friends of mine—they give me pause.

I recollect them with good cause.

19

Why so? Well, it is my intention

To put some blank, black dreams to sleep,

And in parenthesis to mention

That there’s no jibe too low or cheap

Spawned by a gabbler in a garret

For high-born scum to hear and parrot,

No phrase too gross for any man,

No vulgar gutter epigram

That won’t be smilingly repeated

In front of nice folk by your friend

In error, for no wicked end,

Though endlessly acclaimed and greeted.

And he’s still friends through thick or thin

Because he loves you—you’re akin.

20

Ho-hum. I ask you, noble reader,

How are your people? Are they well?

Permit me to insist you need a

Pointer from me so you can tell

What is implied by family members.

Families have their own agendas;

We must indulge them, show them love,

Woo them in spirit like a dove,

And, following the common custom,

See them at Christmas and, at most,

Send them a greeting through the post,

And then we can relax and trust ’em

To disregard us through the year…

God grant them long life and good cheer.

21

But still, the love of gorgeous ladies

Outweighs the claims of friends and kin;

With this, through all the storms from Hades,

You’re in control, reigning things in.

That’s it. But still there’s whirling fashion,

And nature with her wayward passion,

And world opinion… All that stuff…

While the sweet sex is light as fluff.

Besides, a husband’s known opinions

Must be observed throughout her life

By any truly virtuous wife.

Thus one of your female companions

Can suddenly be swept away.

Satan loves love. Watch him at play.

22

Who shall be loved? Who can be trusted?

With whom do we risk no betrayal?

Who weighs our words and deeds, adjusted

Obligingly to our own scale?

Who never blackens us with slander?

Who’s there to coddle us and pander?

Who sees our sins as “not too bad”?

Who will not bore us, drive us mad?

Stop your vain search for lost illusions:

You’re wasting all your strength and health.

The one to love is you yourself.

You are, good reader, in conclusion,

A worthy subject, we insist,

For no one kindlier exists.

23

But what has followed the encounter?

Alas, it isn’t hard to guess!

Love’s frenzied torments still confound her,

Still harassing with storm and stress

Her youthful soul that longs for bleakness.

Her passion worsens, and her weakness

Leaves Tanya with a burning head;

Sleep will not settle on her bed.

Her health, her life’s bloom, sweet and sparkling,

Her smile, her maid’s tranquillity,

Have, like an echo, ceased to be,

And gentle Tanya’s youth is darkling.

Shadow-clad storms can thus array

The birth of an emerging day.

24

Tanya, alas, is fading, sinking,

Withering, wasting, pale and dumb.

Nothing impinges on her thinking,

And her unstirring soul is numb.

Shaking their heads in knowing whispers,

The neighbours say to any listeners,

“By now she should be married off!…”

But I must speed on. That’s enough:

Imagination must be brightened

By love shown in a happy sense.

I cannot help it if, my friends,

Within my heart compassion tightens.

I’m sorry if my thoughts are such:

I love dear Tanya, oh, so much.

25

Lensky was caught, and hourly keener

On his young Olga and her charms,

But sweet enthralment pleased Vladimir,

Who welcomed it with open arms.

He’s always there. Birds of a feather,

They sit in her dark room together.

At morningtide they join up and

Stroll through the garden hand in hand.

And then? Besotted by his Olga,

Squirming with sweet embarrassment,

He makes occasional attempts

(Fed by her smile and growing bolder)

To toy with a loose curl, and then

To kiss her dress along the hem.

26

He’ll read to her, sooner or later,

An educational romance,

In which the author’s grasp of nature

Is greater than Chateaubriand’s,

Though, should he light on some few pages

Of raving nonsense, too outrageous,

Too risqué for young girls’ hearts—hush!—

He will omit them with a blush.

In some sequestered, far location

Over a chessboard, watching it,

Elbows on table, there they sit

Together in deep concentration…

And Lensky, with a distant look

Moving his pawn, takes his own rook.

27

When he goes home, he still engages

Obsessively with Olga. Hence,

He paints her album’s fleeting pages

With doodled, detailed ornaments,

With rustic pictures, for example,

A tombstone or a Cypris temple,

A dove upon a lyre, a still

And slender bird of paint and quill,

Or else on pages for remembrance

Below where other folk have signed

He leaves a gentle verse behind,

Dream’s voiceless monument, a semblance

Of rapid thought with lasting trace,

Unchanged years later, still in place.

28

You’ve done it. You have been absorbed in

The album of some country miss,

In which friends have been busy daubing

The end, the start, and all that is.

Here, with the rules of spelling thwarted,

Run old lines metrically distorted,

Lines of true friendship badly done,

Which undershoot or overrun.

On page one you will see this jotting:

Qu’écrirez-vous sur ces tablettes?

Followed by toute à vous, Annette,

And on the last page, at the bottom,

Let him whose love is more than mine

Write for you underneath this line.

29

Undoubtedly you will pluck from it

Two hearts, a torch and blooms amid

Assertions of true love, a promise:

My love until the coffin lid.

Some army rhymester will have thought he

Might slip in something rather naughty.

My friends, in albums such as these

I also write, and feel well pleased,

In spirit being all too certain

That my keen rubbish will entrance

The passing favourable glance,

And with a bilious smile no person

Will solemnly attempt to spot

Whether my trash has wit or not.

30

But you odd volumes once engendered

For devils’ libraries, and you

Young ladies’ albums bound in splendour,

The bane of modern rhymesters too,

You tomes adroitly decorated

With Tolstoy’s art and magic painted,

Or Baratýnsky’s quill. I call

On God’s hot bolts to singe you all!

When a fine lady host approaches,

Handing her quarto book to me,

I tremble in my enmity

And a sharp epigram encroaches

Upon my soul, yet all along

Duty demands a pretty song!

31

But Lensky pens no pretty ditties

In his young Olga’s book. Behold,

His quill suspires with love, and wit is

Precluded as too bright and cold.

He writes exclusively of Olga

As a close listener and beholder;

His living truth is then bestowed

On elegies in a fast flow.

Inspired thus, Nikoláy Yazýkov,

Your heart feels mighty surges too,

As you hymn someone (God knows who),

And your rich verse will one day speak of

Your past in elegies, and state

The history that was your fate.

32

But soft! We hear the critic’s stricture:

Throw all those elegies away—

Their garlands make a sorry picture.

Our brother rhymesters must obey

His call: “I tell you not to snivel,

And not to croak the same old drivel;

Past times… The old days rued so soon…

Old hat! Sing us another tune!”

“All right, but then you will escort us

Back to the trumpet, mask and knife,

And old ideas devoid of life

You’ll bid us quicken in all quarters.

Is this not so?” “No! Stay your pen:

Write odes from now on, gentlemen,

33

Like those penned in an age of glory,

And long-established in our land.”

“So—solemn odes—is this our story?

Oh, come, my friend. This can go hang.

Think what was said in words satirical:

Can Other Views, though shrewd and lyrical,

Seem more acceptable to you

Than our repining rhymesters do?”

“The elegy amounts to nothing;

Its aims are pitifully low,

While solemn odes have aims that grow

To noble heights.” We shan’t be stopping

To quibble here. My lips are tight.

Two ages won’t be called to fight.

34

Vladimir, soul of fame and freedom,

Fraught with wild thoughts that ebbed and flowed,

Knew well that Olga didn’t read ’em

Or else he might have penned an ode.

Shall bards wax tearfully poetic

And read to others sympathetic

Their written works? They say that bliss

Holds no reward greater than this.

And blest indeed the modest lover

Who in his daydreams can immerse

The object of his love and verse,

A languid beauty like no other,

Well blest… And yet—it’s hard to say—

Her thoughts could well be miles away.

35

What of the products of my fancies,

My shots at harmony? In truth,

I read them to the one who chances

To be my nurse, a friend from youth,

And after dinner—tiresome labour!—

When called on by a passing neighbour,

I corner him, grabbing his coat,

And ram my sad lines down his throat,

Or else—I swear I am not jesting—

Worn down with yearning in my rhymes,

I tread my lakeside path betimes

And scare the flock of wild ducks resting.

They hear the sweet lines that I sing,

Then they are up and on the wing.

[36] 37

Onegin though… By the way, brothers,

I’m asking your indulgence here…

The daily round with which he bothers

I’ll now describe, correct and clear.

He lived a hermit-like existence,

Got up at six and strolled some distance,

In summer lightly clad, until

He reached the stream beneath the hill,

Feeling like Gulnare’s bard in choosing

This Hellespont to swim across.

He drank his coffee while perusing

A magazine or some such dross,

And then got dressed…

[38] 39

Walking trips, sound sleep, bouts of reading,

The sylvan shade, the brooks that purl,

A cool, fresh kiss, their young lips meeting,

With a white-skinned but dark-eyed girl,

A stallion, bridle-true yet restive,

A dinner fancifully festive,

A wine flask brightening the mood,

Sequestered ways and quietude—

To this angelic life Onegin

Yielded himself unfeelingly;

Carefree, oblivious was he

To summer days fair and engaging.

Town life and old friends he forgot;

Festivities, he knew them not.

40

Our summer is a twisted version

Of winter in the south. Hello,

It’s here and gone! And every person

Knows this, but won’t accept it though.

Now o’er the sky comes autumn, soughing,

The thin sun shining much less often,

And we have come to shorter days

When in the woods a hidden haze

Has shown itself with a sad murmur,

And mists are on the fields released.

A honking caravan of geese

Heads south, and they leave ever firmer

The prospect of dull days… You wait…

November tarries at the gate.

41

Through the cold murk the dawn comes searching,

The noisy field work has tailed off,

The wolf is on the road, emerging

With his half-starving lady wolf.

A passing horse scents him and bridles,

Snorting, at which the wary rider

Gallops away uphill flat-out.

At dawn no herdsmen are about,

Bringing to pasture hungry cattle,

At noon no horn is heard to sing

And bring the cows into a ring.

And girls stay home to sing and rattle

Their spinning wheels. Friendly and bright,

The pine logs sting the winter night.

42

Now crackling frost descends and shows us

A silver canopy outdoors…

(You readers want a rhyme like “roses”;

You’re welcome to it; it is yours.)

Smoother than parquet stands the river,

Ice-covered, shiny and ashiver.

A tribe of gay young skaters slice

Their crunchy runs across the ice.

A tubby goose, red-footed, fearful,

Hoping to breast the waters, crawls

Gingerly out, but skids and falls

Upon the ice. Here comes the cheerful

First fall of whirling, gleaming snow,

Star-scattered on the banks below.

43

Out in the wilds what’s on this season?

Walking? The countryside, I’ve found,

Wearies the eyes for one good reason—

Unbroken nakedness all round.

Riding the prairie wild, of course, is

Perilous for your blunt-shod horses,

Who stumble on the treacherous ice

And down they clatter in a trice.

Stay in your bleak homestead. Try reading—

Here is your Pradt, here’s Walter Scott—

Or go through your accounts, if not,

Or fume, or drink. The endless evening

Will somehow pass, tomorrow too.

Great stuff! You’ll see the winter through.

44

Onegin, languid like Chile Harold,

Gets up to ponder and relax,

Sits in an ice bath unapparelled,

And then all day, not overtaxed,

Lonesome, engaged in calculation,

Takes a blunt cue, anticipating

A morning spent within four walls,

Chasing a pair of billiard balls.

The country evening draws on gently;

Gone are the table and the cue.

The table has been set for two

Beside the fireplace. Here comes Lensky,

Driving a three-roan troika. Fine,

Let’s serve the dinner. Waste no time!

45

Now Veuve Clicquot—or is it Moët?

A wine that’s blest to the last drop

Is served up chilled before the poet

And placed upon the tabletop.

It sparkles like the Muses’ fountain.

Spirited, full of fizz and flouncing

(Reminding us of that and this),

It dazzled me once; for its bliss

I would have spent my last poor lepton,

As you’ll recall, my friends. You know

The silly pranks its magic flow

Has brought about, while it has kept on

Producing jokes, verses in streams,

Wild arguments and merry dreams.

46

And yet, with its unsettling fizziness

It plays my stomach false, so now

Sedate Bordeaux is more my business.

I much prefer it, anyhow.

No more Aÿ. It leaves me listless.

Aÿ is like a lovely mistress,

Vivacious, brilliant, volatile,

Quirky and frivolous. Meanwhile,

Bordeaux, you are a good friend, present

In times of sorrow and despair,

A comrade always, everywhere,

Ministering with something pleasant

Or sharing our sweet leisure. So,

Let’s drink to our good friend, Bordeaux!

47

The fire’s gone out. A golden ember

Is dusted over with fine ash,

The curling vapour stream is slender,

And from the hearth comes just a dash

Of warmth. The pipe smoke seems to vanish

Straight up the flue. A fizzing chalice

Still shines mid-table. Now the home

Yields to encroaching evening gloam.

(I love the friendly idle chatter

And the odd friendly glass of wine

Enjoyed at what they call “the time

’Twixt wolf and dog”. Ignore the latter—

I cannot fathom things like that.)

Meanwhile the two companions chat:

48

“The ladies! How’s Tatyana faring?

Is Olga still as sharp, old man?”

“A half-glass. Be a little sparing…

That’s it, my friend… Yes, all the clan

Is fit and well.