My burden falls. I let it…
For every classic it seems fit
To pen a Prologue. This is it.
Fare thee well! and if for ever—
Still for ever, fare thee well.
BYRON
1
Long since, when young and at my gayest,
Through the school gardens I would go,
Lost in the lines of Apuleius,
Having no time for Cicero.
In spring I strolled secluded valleys,
Where swimming swans sang out their challenge
And waters glistened placidly.
’Twas then the Muse first came to me.
She lit my cell and made it precious,
Spreading before me one great feast
Of youthful fancies new-released,
Singing of boyhood and its pleasures,
Of Russia’s glory, and the art
Of building dreams to thrill the heart.
2
The world smiled, finding her disarming.
We soared on wings of young success,
And pleased the elderly Derzhávin,
Who blessed us just before his death.
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3
Submitting to a special token—
The laws of passion and of whim—
I threw my feelings widely open,
And took my bright Muse where I’d been:
To rowdy feasts and noisy quarrels,
Midnight patrols enforcing morals—
And to these wild, outlandish dos
She brought her talents as a muse.
Revelling like a young bacchante,
She drank with us, sang with good cheer,
And the young bloods of yesteryear
Chased after her, raucous and frantic,
While I turned to my friends with pride,
With this bright mistress at my side.
4
But soon I called off all our meetings,
And fled afar… But she came too.
A ministering muse, she sweetened
The lonely journey I came through
With magic in her secret stories.
She was what Bürger’s young Lenore is.
She galloped the Caucasian heights
Along with me in the moonlight.
On the Crimean seashore, roaming,
I knew with her the evening mist,
And heard the sea, the whispered hiss
Of nereids once known to Homer,
The waves with their eternal skirl,
Hymning the Father of the World.
5
The capital fell from her favour
(All glitz and raucous merriment)
And in the sadness of Moldavia
She visited the humble tents
Of wandering tribesmen close to nature,
Where she became a savage creature,
Leaving the language of the gods
For tongues that sounded poor and odd,
And songs the lovely steppe had taught her…
But all of this she soon forgot,
Becoming, in my garden plot,
A rural landowner’s young daughter
With sadness in her eyes, intense,
Holding a novelette in French.
6
Now for the first time let us summon
My muse to a smart party. Here,
The charms of this wild-country woman
I watch with jealous pride and fear.
As diplomats crowd through the entry
With soldiers brave and landed gentry,
She glides in past proud party queens
And looks on, sitting there serene,
Enjoying all the crush and clamour,
The gorgeous clothes, the clever talk,
The shuffling guests, queueing to walk
By the young hostess in her glamour,
Ladies with men ranged at their back—
A pretty picture framed in black.
7
She loves the oligarchic order
Which fixes all the verbiage,
The cold conceit in every corner,
The blending in of rank and age.
But who is this among the chosen,
Standing in hazy silence, frozen?
He’s like a stranger with no grasp
Of any faces that go past
Like tedious phantoms come to visit.
His face shows pained conceit, or spleen.
Which is it, and what does this mean?
Who’s this? It’s not Yevgeny, is it?
Yevgeny? You’re not serious?
It is him, wafted back to us.
8
Is he the same man? Has he mellowed
Or is he the oddball of old?
What has he come back for, this fellow?
How will he play his future role?
Who will he be? Melmoth the wanderer?
Globetrotter? A pro-Russian thunderer?
Childe Harold? Quaker? Hypocrite?
What other likeness could he fit?
Or is he just a fine young person
Like all of us, and just as nice?
Well, anyway, here’s my advice:
Old styles call out to be converted.
He’s fooled us all since long ago.
So, do you know him? Yes and no.
9
Why are you so unsympathetic
Towards Onegin as a man?
Because we are so energetic
In criticizing all we can?
Charged minds are prone to indiscretion,
Which small, smug nobodies may question
As laughable, offensive smut.
Wit wanders, and will not stay put.
Small talk is cheap, and we too often
Take it for active interest.
Foolishness flaunts its silliness;
Top people thrive on what is rotten.
With mediocrity we blend,
Treating it as our closest friend.
10
Blest he who, as a youth, was youthful,
Blest he who in due time grows old
And steadily becomes more rueful
While finding out that life is cold,
Who entertains no idle fancies,
Who with the rabble takes his chances,
At twenty, dandified hothead,
At thirty profitably wed,
At fifty owing not a penny
To other people or the state,
And who has been prepared to wait
For reputation, rank and money,
Of whom they’ve said throughout his span
So-and-so’s such a lovely man.
11
It’s sad that youth turned out so useless,
So futile and perfidious.
How frequently we have traduced her,
And she has disappointed us.
To think we watched our strongest yearnings,
Our purest aspirations, turning
Successively to dark decay,
Like leaves on a wet autumn day.
Unbearable, the future beckons,
With life an endless dining club
With decent membership and grub,
Where others lead and we come second.
At odds with them, we tag along,
Though we share nothing with the throng.
12
Unbearable (you won’t deny it)
To suffer many a jibe and slur
From decent folk, who, on the quiet,
Call one an oddball, a poseur,
Or maybe a pathetic madman,
Or a Satanic beast, a bad man,
Even the demon that I drew.
Onegin, to begin anew,
Took off after the fatal duel
With no clear plan, living for kicks,
Until the age of twenty-six—
An idle life with no renewal
Nor anything to which to cling,
Sans work, sans wife, sans everything.
13
He felt a jolt, a sudden flurry,
A longing for a change of air
(The kind of agonizing worry
That few of us would want to bear).
He quitted his estate, thus losing
The woods, the meadows, the seclusion,
The places where a bleeding shade
Arose before him every day,
And set off on sporadic travels,
With one idea to travel for,
But travel soon became a bore—
For travel, like all things, unravels.
He’s back “like Chatsky” (someone wrote),
“Straight to the ballroom from the boat.”
14
But then the throng was stirred and furrowed,
A whisper shimmered through the hall.
A lady neared the hostess, followed
By an imposing general.
Serenely she came, not stand-offish,
Not talkative, not cold or snobbish,
Devoid of hauteur, not too grand,
Devoid of self-importance, and
Without a trace of facial grimace
Or any ingratiating glance…
Easy and calm in her advance,
She showed herself the very image
Du comme il faut. (Shishkóv, forgive!
I can’t translate the adjective.)
15
Ladies came up to her more closely,
The old ones smiled as she went by,
The men bowed lower to her, mostly
Endeavouring to catch her eye.
Girls up ahead lowered their voices.
Tallest of all, and much the haughtiest,
The general then followed her
With nose and shoulders in the air.
No one could say she was a beauty,
But nothing could have been applied
To her that might have been described,
Out of some fashionable duty,
By London’s loftiest citizen
As vulgar. (Here we go again…
16
This is a favourite expression
That I’m unable to translate.
Because it is quite new in Russia
It hasn’t taken—as of late.
In epigrams it could score greatly.)
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,
He watches her. She, if you please,
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
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.
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