Never know these frightful dreams,
You, O my Svetlana!
Zhukovski
I
That year autumnal weather
was a long time abroad;
nature kept waiting and waiting for winter.
[4] Snow only fell in January,
on the night of the second. Waking early,
Tatiana from the window saw
at morn the whitened yard,
[8] flower beds, roofs, and fence;
delicate patterns on the panes;
the trees in winter silver,
gay magpies outside,
[12] and the hills mellowly spread over
with the resplendent rug of winter.
All’s brilliant, all is white around.
Winter! The peasant, celebrating,
in a flat sledge inaugurates the track;
his naggy, having sensed the snow,
[4] shambles at something like a trot.
Plowing up fluffy furrows,
a fleet kibitka flies:
the driver sits upon his box
[8] in sheepskin coat, red-sashed.
Here runs about a household lad,
a small “pooch” on a hand sled having seated,
having transformed himself into the steed;
[12] the scamp already has frozen a finger.
He finds it both painful and funny—
while mother, from the window, threatens him….
III
But, possibly, of such a kind
pictures will not attract you;
all this is lowly nature;
[4] there is not much refinement here.
Warmed by the god of inspiration,
in a luxurious style another poet
for us has painted the first snow
[8] and all the shades of winter’s delectations.27
He’ll captivate you, I am sure of it,
drawing in flaming verses
secret promenades in sleigh;
[12] but I have no intention of contending
either with him for the time being or with you,
singer of the young Finnish Maid!28
Tatiana (being Russian, in her soul,
herself not knowing why)
with its cold beauty
[4] loved Russian winter:
rime in the sun upon a frosty day,
and sleighs, and, at late dawn,
the radiance of pink snows,
[8] and murk of Twelfthtide eves.
They celebrated in the ancient fashion
those evenings in their house:
the servant girls from the whole stead
[12] told their young ladies’ fortunes
and every year made prophecies to them
of military husbands and the march.
V
Tatiana believed in the lore
of plain-folk ancientry,
dreams, cartomancy,
[4] and the predictions of the moon.
Portents disturbed her:
mysteriously all objects
foretold her something,
[8] presentiments constrained her breast.
The mannered tomcat sitting on the stove,
purring, might wash his muzzlet with his paw:
to her ’twas an indubitable sign
[12] that guests were coming. Seeing all at once
the young two-horned moon’s visage
in the sky on her left,
she trembled and grew pale.
Or when a falling star
along the dark sky flew
[4] and dissipated, then
Tanya would hasten in confusion
while the star still was rolling
her heart’s desire to whisper to it.
[8] When anywhere she happened
a black monk to encounter,
or ’mongst the fields a rapid hare
would run across her path,
[12] so scared she knew not what to undertake,
with sorrowful forebodings filled,
directly she expected some mishap.
VII
And yet—a secret charm she found
even in the terror itself:
thus nature has created us,
[4] being inclined to contradictions.
Yuletide is here. Now that is gladness!
Frivolous youth divines—
who nought has to regret,
[8] in front of whom the faraway of life
lies luminous, unlimited;
old age divines, through spectacles,
at its sepulchral slab,
[12] all having irrecoverably lost;
nor does it matter: hope to them
lies with its childish lisp.
Tatiana with a curious gaze
looks at the submerged wax:
with a wondrous cast pattern it
[4] proclaims to her a wondrous something.
From a dish full of water
rings come out in succession;
and when her little ring turned up,
[8] ’twas to a ditty of the ancient days:
“There all the countrymen are rich;
they heap up silver by the spadeful!
To those we sing to will come Good
[12] and Glory!” But portends bereavements
the pitiful strain of this dit:
to maidens’ hearts dearer is “Kit.”29
IX
The night is frosty; the whole sky is clear;
the sublime choir of heavenly luminaries
so gently, so unisonally flows….
[4] Tatiana into the wide yard
in low-cut frock comes out;
she trains a mirror on the moon;
but in the dark glass only
[8] the sad moon trembles….
Hark! … the snow creaks … a passer-by; the maiden
flits up to him on tiptoe—
and her little voice sounds
[12] more tender than a reed pipe’s strain:
“What is your name?”30 He looks,
and answers: “Agafón.”
On the nurse’s advice, Tatiana,
planning that night to conjure,
has on the quiet ordered in the bathhouse
[4] a table to be laid for two.
But suddenly Tatiana is afraid….
And I—at the thought of Svetlana—
I am afraid; so let it be …
[8] we’re not to conjure with Tatiana.
Her little silken sash Tatiana
has taken off, undressed, and to bed
has gone. Lel hovers over her,
[12] while under her pillow of down
there lies a maiden’s looking glass.
All has grown still. Tatiana sleeps.
XI
And dreams a wondrous dream Tatiana.
She dreams that she
over a snowy plain is walking,
[4] surrounded by sad murk.
Before her, in the snowdrifts,
dins, undulates its wave
a churning, dark, and hoary
[8] torrent, not chained by winter;
two thin poles, glued together by a piece of ice
(a shaky, perilous footbridge),
are laid across the torrent;
[12] and in front of the dinning deep,
full of perplexity,
she stopped.
As at a vexing separation,
Tatiana murmurs at the brook:
sees nobody who might a hand
[4] offer her from the other side.
But suddenly a snowdrift stirred,
and who appeared from under it?
A large bear with a ruffled coat;
[8] Tatiana uttered “Ach!” and he went roaring
and a paw with sharp claws
stretched out to her. Nerving herself,
she leaned on it with trembling hand
[12] and with apprehensive steps
worked her way across the brook;
walked on—and what then? The bear followed her.
XIII
She, to look back not daring,
accelerates her hasty step;
but from the shaggy footman
[4] can in no way escape;
grunting, lumbers the odious bear.
A wood before them; stirless are the pines
in their frowning beauty;
[8] all their boughs are weighed down
by snow in clusters; through the summits
of aspens, birches, lindens bare
the ray of the night luminaries beams;
[12] there is no path; bushes, precipices,
all are o’er-drifted by the blizzard,
plunged deep in snow.
Tatiana enters wood; bear follows;
up to her knee comes porous snow;
now by the neck a long branch
[4] suddenly catches her, or out of her ears
tears by force their golden pendants;
now in the crumbly snow, off her winsome small foot,
sticks fast a small wet shoe;
[8] now she lets fall her handkerchief—
she has no time to pick it up, is scared,
can hear the bear behind her,
and even, with a tremulous hand,
[12] is shy to raise the border of her dress;
she runs; he keeps behind her;
and then she has no force to run.
XV
Into the snow she’s fallen; the bear deftly
snatches her up and carries her;
she is insensibly submissive;
[4] stirs not, breathes not;
he rushes her along a forest road;
sudden, ’mongst trees, there is a humble hut;
dense woods all round; from every quarter it
[8] is drifted over with desolate snow,
and brightly throws its light a window;
and in the hut there are both cries and noise;
the bear commented: “Here’s my gossip,
[12] do warm yourself a little in his home!”
and straight he goes into the hallway
and on the threshold lays her down.
Tatiana comes to, looks:
no bear; she’s in a hallway;
behind the door are cries and glass clink
[4] as if at some big funeral.
Perceiving not a drop of sense in this,
she stealthily looks through the chink
—and what then? She sees … at a table
[8] there sit monsters around:
one horned, with a dog’s face,
another with a cock’s head;
here is a witch with a goat’s beard;
[12] here, prim and proud, a skeleton;
yonder, a dwarf with a small tail; and there,
a half crane and half cat.
XVII
Still more frightening, still more wondrous:
there is a crab astride a spider;
there on a goose’s neck a skull
[4] in a red calpack twirls;
there a windmill the squat-jig dances
and with its vane-wings rasps and waves.
Barks, laughs, singing, whistling and claps,
[8] parle of man and stamp of steed!31
But what did Tatiana think
when ’mongst the guests she recognized
him who was dear to her and awesome—
[12] the hero of our novel!
Onegin at the table sits
and through the door furtively gazes.
He gives the signal—and all bustle;
he drinks—all drink and all cry out;
he laughs—all burst out laughing;
[4] knits his brows—all are silent;
he is the master there, ’tis plain;
and Tanya is no longer quite so awestruck,
and being curious now
[8] opened the door a little….
Sudden the wind blew, putting out
the light of the nocturnal flambeaux;
the gang of goblins flinched;
[12] Onegin, his eyes sparkling,
rises from table with a clatter;
all have risen; doorward he goes.
XIX
And she’s afraid; and hastily
Tatiana does her utmost to escape:
not possible; impatiently
[4] tossing about, she wants to scream—
cannot; Eugene has pushed the door,
and to the gaze of the infernal specters
the girl appeared; ferocious laughter
[8] wildly broke out; the eyes of all,
hooves, curved proboscises,
tufted tails, tusks,
mustaches, bloody tongues,
[12] horns, and fingers of bone—
all point as one at her,
and everybody cries: “Mine! Mine!”
“Mine!” Eugene fiercely said,
and in a trice the whole gang vanished;
remained in frosty darkness
[4] the youthful maid with him à deux.
Onegin gently draws32
Tatiana in a corner and deposits
her on a shaky bench
[8] and lets his head sink
on her shoulder; abruptly Olga enters,
followed by Lenski; light has gleamed,
Onegin has swung back his lifted arm
[12] and wildly his eyes roam,
and he berates the unbidden guests;
Tatiana lies barely alive.
XXI
The brawl grows louder, louder; suddenly
snatches a long knife, and forthwith Eugene
Lenski is felled; the shadows awesomely
[4] have thickened; an excruciating cry
has broken forth … the cabin lurched …
and Tanya has woke up in terror….
She looks—’tis light already in the room;
[8] in the window through the befrosted pane
there scintillates dawn’s crimson ray;
the door has opened. To her, Olga,
rosier than Northern Aurora
[12] and lighter than a swallow, flits in;
“Well,” she says, “now do tell me,
whom did you see in dream?”
But she, not noticing her sister,
lies with a book in bed,
turning over page after page,
[4] and says nothing.
Although that book displayed
neither a poet’s sweet conceits,
nor sapient truths, nor pictures,
[8] yet neither Virgil, nor Racine,
nor Scott, nor Byron, nor Seneca,
nor even the Magazine of Ladies’ Fashions
ever engrossed anybody so much:
[12] it was, friends, Martin Zadeck,33
head of Chaldean sages,
divinistre, interpreter of dreams.
XXIII
This profound work
a wandering trader had peddled
one day into their solitude,
[4] and for Tatiana finally,
with a broken set of Malvina, it
he’d ceded for three rubles fifty,
into the bargain taking also for them
[8] a collection of common fables,
a grammar, two “Petriads,”
plus Marmontel, tome three.
Martin Zadeck later became
[12] Tanya’s favorite. He joys
in all her woes awards her,
and sleeps with her inseparably.
The dream disturbs her.
Not knowing what to make of it,
the import of the dread chimera
[4] Tatiana wishes to discover.
Tatiana in the brief index
looks up in alphabetic order
the words: forest, storm, raven, fir,
[8] hedgehog, gloom, footbridge, bear, snowstorm,
et cetera. Her doubts
Martin Zadeck will not resolve;
but the ominous dream portends to her
[12] a multitude of sad adventures.
For several days thereafter she
kept worrying about it.
XXV
But lo, with crimson hand34
Aurora from the morning dales
leads forth, with the sun, after her
[4] the merry name-day festival.
Since morn Dame Larin’s house with guests
is filled completely; in whole families
the neighbors have converged, in winter coaches,
[8] kibitkas, britskas, and sleighs.
In vestibule there’s jostling, turmoil;
in drawing room, the meeting of new people,
the bark of pugs, girls’ smacking kisses,
[12] noise, laughter, a crush at the threshold,
the bows, the scraping of the guests,
wet nurses’ shouts, and children’s cry.
With his portly spouse
there came fat Pustyakóv;
Gvozdín, an admirable landlord,
[4] owner of destitute muzhiks;
a gray-haired couple, the Skotínins,
with children of all ages, counting
from thirty years to two;
[8] the district fopling, Petushkóv;
Buyánov, my first cousin,
covered with fluff, in a peaked cap35
(as he, of course, is known to you);
[12] and the retired counselor Flyánov,
a heavy scandalmonger, an old rogue,
glutton, bribetaker, and buffoon.
XXVII
With the family of Panfíl Harlikóv
there also came Monsieur Triquet,
a wit, late from Tambov,
[4] bespectacled and russet-wigged.
As a true Frenchman, in his pocket
Triquet has brought a stanza for Tatiana
fitting an air to children known:
[8] “Réveillez-vous, belle endormie.”
’Mongst the time-worn songs of an almanac
this stanza had been printed;
Triquet—resourceful poet—
[12] out of the dust brought it to light
and boldly in the place of “belle Niná”
put “belle Tatianá.”
And now from the near borough,
idol of ripened misses,
joyance of district mothers,
[4] a Company Commander has arrived;
has entered…. Ah, news—and what news!
there will be regimental music:
“the Colonel himself has sent it.”
[8] What glee! There is to be a ball!
The young things skip beforehand.36
But dinner’s served. In pairs,
they go to table, arm in arm.
[12] The misses cluster near Tatiana;
the men face her; and, as all cross themselves,
the crowd buzzes, to table sitting down.
XXIX
Talks for a moment have subsided;
mouths chew. Upon all sides
the plates and covers clatter
[4] and there resounds the clink of glasses.
But soon the guests gradually
raise a general hullabaloo.
None listens; they cry out,
[8] laugh, dispute, and squeal.
The door leaves suddenly fly open: Lenski enters,
and with him Onegin. “Oh, my Maker!”
cries out the lady of the house. “At last!”
[12] The guests make room, each shifts
covers, chairs quick;
they call, they seat the pair of friends
—seat them directly facing Tanya,
and paler than the morning moon,
and more aquiver than the hunted doe,
[4] she darkening eyes
does not raise. Stormily there breathes
in her a passionate glow; she suffocates, feels faint;
the two friends’ greetings she
[8] does not hear; the tears from her eyes
are on the point of trickling; she is on the point,
poor thing, of swooning;
but will and reason’s power
[12] prevailed. A word or two
she uttered through her teeth in a low voice
and managed to remain at table.
XXXI
Tragiconervous scenes,
the fainting fits of maidens, tears,
long since Eugene could not abide:
[4] enough of them he had endured.
The odd chap, on finding himself at a huge feast,
was cross already. But the dolent girl’s
quivering impulse having noticed,
[8] out of vexation lowering his gaze,
he went into a huff and, fuming,
swore he would enrage Lenski,
and thoroughly, in fact, avenge himself.
[12] Now, triumphing beforehand,
he inwardly began to sketch
caricatures of all the guests.
Of course, not only Eugene
Tanya’s confusion might have seen;
but the target of looks and comments
[4] was at the time a rich pie
(unfortunately, oversalted);
and here, in bottle sealed with pitch,
between meat course and blancmangér,
[8] Tsimlyanski wine is brought already,
followed by an array of glasses, narrow, long,
similar to your waist,
Zizi, the crystal of my soul,
[12] the subject of my innocent verse,
enluring vial of love,
you, of whom drunk I used to be!
XXXIII
Having got rid of its damp cork,
the bottle popped; the wine
fizzes; and now with an important mien,
[4] long since tormented by his stanza,
Triquet stands up; before him the assembly
maintains deep silence.
Tatiana’s scarce alive; Triquet,
[8] addressing her, a slip of paper in his hand,
proceeds to sing, off key. Claps, acclamations,
salute him. She
must drop the bard a curtsy;
[12] whereat the poet, modest although great,
is first to drink her health
and hands to her the stanza.
Greetings, congratulations follow;
Tatiana thanks everybody.
Then, when the turn of Eugene
[4] arrived, the maiden’s dolorous air,
her embarrassment, lassitude,
engendered pity in his soul:
he bowed to her in silence,
[8] but somehow the look of his eyes
was wondrous tender. Whether
because he verily was touched
or he was being mischievous, coquetting,
[12] whether unwillfully or by free will,
but tenderness that look expressed:
it revived Tanya’s heart.
XXXV
The chairs, as they are pushed back, clatter;
the crowd presses into the drawing room:
thus bees out of the luscious hive
[4] fly meadward in a noisy swarm.
Pleased with the festive dinner,
neighbor in front of neighbor wheezes;
the ladies by the hearth have settled;
[8] the maidens whisper in a corner;
the green-baized tables are unfolded:
to mettlesome cardplayers call
boston and omber of the old,
[12] and whist, up to the present famous:
monotonous family,
all sons of avid boredom.
Eight rubbers have already played
whist’s heroes; eight times they
have changed their seats—
[4] and tea is brought. I like the hour
to fix by dinner, tea,
and supper. We know time
in the country without great fuss:
[8] the stomach is our accurate Bréguet;
and, apropos, I’ll parenthetically note
that in my strophes I discourse
as frequently on feasts,
[12] on various dishes and corks,
as you, divine Homer,
you, the idol of thirty centuries!
XXXVII, XXXVIII
XXXIX
But tea is brought: the damsels primly
have scarcely taken hold of their saucers
than sudden from behind the door of the long hall
[4] bassoon and flute resound.
By music’s thunder gladdened,
leaving his cup of tea with rum,
the Paris of surrounding townlets,
[8] Petushkov goes up to Olga,
Lenski, to Tatiana; Miss Harlikov,
a marriageable maid of overripe years
is secured by my Tambovan poet;
[12] Buyanov has whirled off Dame Pustyakov;
and all have spilled into the hall,
and in full glory the ball glitters.
At the beginning of my novel
(see the first fascicle)
I wanted in Albano’s manner
[4] a Petersburg ball to describe;
but, by an empty reverie diverted,
I got engrossed in recollecting
the little feet of ladies known to me.
[8] Upon your narrow little tracks,
O little feet, enough roving astray!
With the betrayal of my youth
’tis time I grew more sensible,
[12] improved in doings and in diction,
and this fifth fascicle
cleansed from digressions.
XLI
Monotonous and mad
like young life’s whirl,
the waltz’s noisy whirl revolves,
[4] pair after pair flicks by.
Nearing the minute of revenge,
Onegin, chuckling secretly,
goes up to Olga, rapidly with her
[8] twirls near the guests,
then seats her on a chair,
proceeds to speak of this and that;
a minute or two having lapsed, then
[12] again with her he goes on waltzing;
all in amazement are. Lenski himself
does not believe his proper eyes.
The mazurka has resounded. Time was,
when the mazurka’s thunder crashed,
in a huge ballroom everything vibrated,
[4] the parquetry cracked under heel,
the window frames shook, rattled;
now ’tis not thus : we, too, like ladies,
glide o’er the lacquered boards.
[8] But in [small] towns, in country places,
still the mazurka has retained
its pristine charms:
saltos, heel-play, mustachios
[12] remain the same; them has not altered
highhanded fashion, our tyrant
the sickness of the latest Russians.
XLIII
XLIV
Buyanov, my mettlesome cousin,
has to our hero led
Tatiana with Olga; deft
[4] Onegin with Olga has gone.
He steers her, gliding nonchalantly,
and, bending, whispers tenderly to her
some banal madrigal,
[8] and her hand presses, and has flamed
in her conceited face
brighter the rose. My Lenski
has seen it all; flared up, beside himself;
[12] in jealous indignation,
the poet waits for the end of the mazurka
and invites her for the cotillion.
But no, she cannot. Cannot? But what is it?
Why, Olga has given her word already
to Onegin. Ah, good God, good God!
[4] What does he hear? She could …
How is it possible? Scarce out of swaddling clothes—
and a coquette, a giddy child!
Already she is versed in guile,
[8] already to be faithless has been taught!
Lenski has not the strength to bear the blow;
cursing the pranks of women,
he leaves, demands a horse,
[12] and gallops off. A brace of pistols,
two bullets—nothing else—
shall in a trice decide his fate.