Là, sotto i giorni nubilosi e brevi,
Nasce una gente a cui ’l morir non dole.
Petr.
I
On noticing that Vladimir had vanished,
Onegin, by boredom again beset,
by Olga’s side sank into meditation,
[4] pleased with his vengeance.
After him Olinka yawned too,
sought Lenski with her eyes,
and the endless cotillion
[8] oppressed her like a grievous dream.
But it has ended. They go in to supper.
The beds are made. For guests
night lodgings are assigned—from the entrance hall
[12] even to the maids’ quarters. By all is needed
restful sleep. My Onegin
alone has driven home to sleep.
All has become calm. In the drawing room
snores heavy Pustyakov
with his heavy better half.
[4] Gvozdin, Buyanov, Petushkov,
and Flyanov (who is not quite well)
have bedded in the dining room on chairs,
and, on the floor, Monsieur Triquet
[8] in underwaistcoat and old nightcap.
The maidens, in the chambers of Tatiana
and Olga, all are wrapped in sleep.
Alone, sadly at the window
[12] illumined by Diana’s ray,
poor Tatiana does not sleep
and gazes out on the dark field.
III
With his unlooked-for apparition,
the momentary softness of his eyes,
and odd conduct with Olga,
[4] to the depth of her soul
she’s penetrated; is unable
to understand him utterly. Disturbs
her the ache of jealousy,
[8] as if a cold hand
compressed her heart; as if an abyss
blackened and dinned beneath her….
“I’ll perish,” Tanya says,
[12] “but perishing from him is lovely.
I murmur not: why murmur?
He cannot give me happiness.”
Forward, forward, my story!
A new persona summons us.
Five versts from Krasnogorie,
[4] Lenski’s estate, there lives
and thrives up to the present time
in philosophical reclusion
Zarétski, formerly a brawler,
[8] the hetman of a gaming gang,
chieftain of rakehells, pothouse tribune,
but now a kind and simple
bachelor paterfamilias,
[12] a steadfast friend, a peaceable landowner,
and even an honorable man:
thus does our age correct itself!
V
Time was, the monde’s obsequious voice
used to extol his wicked pluck:
an ace, ’tis true, he from a pistol
[4] at twelve yards hit,
and, furthermore, in battle too
once, in genuine intoxication,
he distinguished himself, boldly in the mud
[8] toppling from his Kalmuk steed,
swine drunk, and to the French
fell prisoner (prized hostage!)—
a modern Regulus, the god of honor,
[12] ready to yield anew to bonds
in order every morning at Véry’s37
to drain on credit some three bottles.
Time was, he would chaff drolly,
knew how to gull a fool
and capitally fool a clever man,
[4] either for all to see or on the sly;
though some tricks of his, too,
did not remain unchastised;
though sometimes, too, into a trap himself
[8] he blundered like a simpleton.
He knew how gaily to dispute,
wittily or obtusely to reply,
now craftily to hold his tongue,
[12] now craftily to raise a rumpus,
set young friends by the ears,
and place them on the marked-out ground,
VII
or have them make it up
so as to lunch all three,
and later secretly defame them
[4] with a gay quip, with babble….
Sed alia tempora! Daredevilry
(like love’s dream, yet another caper)
passes with lively youth.
[8] As I’ve said, my Zaretski,
beneath the racemosas and the pea trees
from storms having at last found shelter,
lives like a true sage,
[12] plants cabbages like Horace,
breeds ducks and geese,
and teaches his children the A B C.
He was not stupid; and my Eugene,
while rating low the heart in him,
liked both the spirit of his judgments
[4] and his sane talk of this and that.
He used with pleasure
to see him, and therefore not in the least
was he surprised at morn
[8] when he saw him;
the latter, after the first greeting,
the started conversation interrupting,
with gaze atwinkle, to Onegin
[12] handed a billet from the poet.
Onegin went up to the window
and read it to himself.
IX
It was a pleasant, gentlemanly,
brief challenge or cartel:
politely, with cold clearness,
[4] to fight a duel Lenski called his friend.
Onegin, in a first reaction,
to the envoy of such an errand
turning, without superfluous words
[8] said he was “always ready.”
Zaretski got up without explanations—
did not want to stay longer,
having at home at lot of things to do—
[12] and forthwith left; but Eugene,
alone remaining with his soul,
felt ill-contented with himself.
And serve him right: on strict examination,
he, having called his own self to a secret court,
accused himself of much:
[4] First, on his part it had been wrong enough
at timid, tender love
so casually to poke fun yesternight;
and secondly: why, let a poet
[8] indulge in foolery! At eighteen
’tis pardonable. Eugene,
loving the youth with all his heart,
ought to have shown himself to be
[12] no bandyball of prejudices,
no fiery boy, no scrapper,
but a man of honor and sense.
XI
He might have manifested feelings
instead of bristling like a beast;
he ought to have disarmed
[4] the youthful heart. “But now
too late; the time has flown away….
Moreover,” he reflects, “in this affair
an old duelist has intervened;
[8] he’s malicious, he’s a gossiper, he’s glib….
Of course, contempt should be
the price of his droll sallies;
but the whisper, the snickering of fools …”
[12] And here it is—public opinion!38
Honor’s mainspring, our idol!
And here is what the world twirls on!
Boiling with an impatient enmity,
at home the poet for the answer waits.
And here the grandiloquent neighbor
[4] has brought the answer solemnly.
Now, what a boon ’tis for the jealous one!
He had kept fearing that the prankster
might joke his way out somehow,
[8] a dodge devising and his breast
averting from the pistol.
The doubts are now resolved:
down to the mill they must
[12] tomorrow drive before daybreak,
at one another raise the cock,
and at the thigh or at the temple aim.
XIII
Having resolved to hate the flirt,
boiling Lenski did not wish
to see Olga before the duel.
[4] The sun, his watch he kept consulting;
gave up at length—
and found himself at the fair neighbors’.
He thought he would embarrass Olinka,
[8] confound her by his coming;
but nothing of the sort: just as before
to meet the poor bard
Olinka skipped down from the porch,
[12] akin to giddy hope,
spry, carefree, gay—
well, just the same as she had been.
“Why did you vanish yesternight so early?”
was Olinka’s first question.
In Lenski all the senses clouded,
[4] and silently he hung his head.
Jealousy and vexation disappeared
before this clarity of glance,
before this soft simplicity,
[8] before this sprightly soul! …
He gazes with sweet tender-heartedness;
he sees: he is still loved!
Already, by remorse oppressed,
[12] he is prepared to beg her pardon,
he quivers, can’t find words:
he’s happy, he is almost well….
XV, XVI
XVII
And once again pensive, dejected
before his winsome Olga,
Vladimir does not have the force
[4] to remind her of yesterday;
“I” he reflects, “shall be her savior.
I shall not suffer a depraver
with the fire of both sighs and compliments
[8] to tempt a youthful heart,
nor let a despicable, venomous worm
a lily’s stalklet gnaw,
nor have a flower two morns old
[12] wither while yet half blown.”
All this, friends, meant:
I have a pistol duel with a pal.
If he had known what wound
burned my Tatiana’s heart!
If Tatiana had been aware,
[4] if she could have known
that Lenski and Eugene tomorrow
were to compete for the tomb’s shelter,
ah, possibly her love
[8] might have conjoined the friends again!
But even by chance that passion
no one had yet discovered.
Onegin about everything was silent;
[12] Tatiana pined away in secret;
alone the nurse might have known—
but then she was slow-witted.
XIX
All evening Lenski was abstracted,
now taciturn, now gay again;
but he who has been fostered by the Muse
[4] is always thus; with knitted brow
he’d sit down at the clavichord
and play but chords on it;
or else, his gaze directing toward Olga,
[8] he’d whisper, “I am happy, am I not?”
But it is late; time to depart. Contracted
in him the heart, full of its ache;
as he took leave of the young maiden,
[12] it seemed to break asunder.
She looks him in the face.
“What ails you?” “Nothing.” And makes for the porch.
On coming home his pistols
he inspected, then inserted
them back into the case, and, undressed,
[4] by candle opened Schiller;
but there’s one thought infolding him;
his melancholy heart does not drowse:
in loveliness ineffable
[8] Olga he sees before him.
Vladimir shuts the book,
takes up his pen; his verses—
full of love’s nonsense—
[12] sound and flow. He reads them
aloud, in lyric fever,
like drunken D[elvig] at a feast.
XXI
The verses chanced to be preserved;
I have them; here they are:
“Whither, ah! whither are ye fled,
[4] my springtime’s golden days?
What has the coming day in store for me?
In vain my gaze attempts to grasp it;
In deep murk it lies hidden.
[8] It matters not; fate’s law is just.
Whether I fall, pierced by the arrow,
or whether it flies by,
all’s right: of waking and of sleep
[12] comes the determined hour;
blest is the day of cares,
blest, too, is the advent of darkness!
“Tomorn will gleam the ray of daydawn,
and brilliant day will scintillate;
whilst I, perhaps—I to the tomb’s
[4] mysterious shelter shall descend,
and the young poet’s memory
slow Lethe will engulf;
the world will forget me; but thou,
[8] wilt thou come, maid of beauty,
to shed a tear over the early urn
and to reflect: he loved me,
to me alone he consecrated
[12] the woeful daybreak of a stormy life!…
Friend of my heart, wished-for friend,
come! Come: I am thy spouse!”
XXIII
Thus did he write, “obscurely” and “limply”
(what we call romanticism—
though no romanticism here in the least
[4] do I see; but what’s that to us?),
and, before dawn, at last
sinking his weary head,
at the fashionable word “ideal”,
[8] Lenski dozed off gently;
but scarcely in the spell of sleep
has he been lost than the neighbor already
enters the silent study
[12] and wakens Lenski with the proclamation,
“Time to get up; past six already.
Onegin’s sure to be already waiting for us.”
But he was wrong: Eugene
was at the time in a dead sleep.
The shadows of the night now thin,
[4] and Vesper by the cock is greeted;
Onegin soundly sleeps away.
By now the sun rides high,
and shifting flurries
[8] glitter and swirl; but his bed
still Onegin has not left,
still sleep hovers over him.
Here finally he has awoken
[12] and drawn apart the curtain’s flaps;
looks—and sees that ’tis time
long since already to drive off.
XXV
Quickly he rings. Runs in
to him his French valet, Guillot,
offers him dressing gown and slippers,
[4] and hands him linen.
Onegin hastes to dress,
orders his valet to prepare
to drive together with him and take also
[8] the combat case along.
The racing sleigh is ready.
He has got in, flies to the mill.
They’ve come apace. He bids his valet
[12] Lepage’s39 fell tubes
bear after him and has the horses
moved off into a field toward two oaklings.
On the dam leaning, Lenski
long had impatiently been waiting;
meanwhile, rural mechanic,
[4] Zaretski criticized the millstone.
Onegin with apologies comes up.
“But where,” quoth with amazement
Zaretski, “where’s your second?”
[8] In duels classicist and pedant,
he liked method out of feeling,
and to stretch one’s man
he allowed not anyhow
[12] but by the strict rules of the art
according to all the traditions of old times
(which we must praise in him).
XXVII
“My second?” Eugene said.
“Here’s he: my friend, Monsieur Guillot.
I don’t foresee any objections
[4] to my presentation:
although he is an unknown man,
quite surely he’s an honest chap.”
Zaretski bit his lip.
[8] Onegin asked Lenski:
“Well, do we start?” “Let’s start if you are willing,”
Vladimir said. And they repaired
behind the mill. While at a distance
[12] our good Zaretski and the “honest chap”
enter into a solemn compact,
the two foes stand with lowered gaze.
Foes! Is it long since from each other
bloodthirst turned them away?
Is it long since their hours of leisure,
[4] meals, thoughts, and doings
they shared in friendliness? Malevolently now,
similar to hereditary foes,
as in a frightful, enigmatic dream,
[8] they for each other, in the stillness,
prepare destruction coolly….
Should they not burst out laughing while
their hand is not encrimsoned?
[12] Should they not amicably part? …
But wildly beau-monde enmity
is of false shame afraid.
XXIX
The pistols have already gleamed.
The mallet clanks against the ramrod.
Into the polyhedral barrel go the balls,
[4] and the first time the cock has clicked.
Now powder in a grayish streamlet
is poured into the pan. The jagged,
securely screwed-in flint
[8] is raised anew. Behind a near stump
perturbed Guillot places himself.
The two foes shed their cloaks.
Thirty-two steps Zaretski
[12] with eminent exactness has paced off,
has placed his friends apart at the utmost points,
and each has taken his pistol.
“Now march toward each other.” Coolly,
not aiming yet, the two foes
with firm tread, slowly, evenly
[4] traversed four paces,
four deadly stairs.
His pistol Eugene then,
not ceasing to advance,
[8] gently the first began to raise.
Now they have stepped five paces more,
and Lenski, closing his left eye,
started to level also—but right then
[12] Onegin fired…. Struck have
the appointed hours: the poet
in silence drops his pistol.
XXXI
Gently he lays his hand upon his breast
and falls. His misty gaze
expresses death, not anguish.
[4] Thus, slowly, down the slope of hills,
in the sun with sparks shining,
a lump of snow descends.
Deluged with instant cold,
[8] Onegin hastens to the youth,
looks, calls him … vainly:
he is no more. The youthful bard
has met with an untimely end!
[12] The storm has blown; the beauteous bloom
has withered at sunrise;
the fire upon the altar has gone out! …
Stirless he lay, and strange
was his brow’s languid peace.
Under the breast he had been shot clean through;
[4] steaming, the blood flowed from the wound.
One moment earlier
in this heart had throbbed inspiration,
enmity, hope, and love,
[8] life effervesced, blood boiled;
now, as in a deserted house,
all in it is both still and dark,
it has become forever silent.
[12] The window boards are shut. The panes with chalk
are whitened over. The chatelaine is gone.
But where, God wot. All trace is lost.
XXXIII
’Tis pleasant with an insolent epigram
to madden a bungling foe;
pleasant to see how, stubbornly
[4] bending his buttsome horns,
he can’t help looking in the mirror
and is ashamed to recognize himself;
more pleasant, friends, if he
[8] like a fool howls out: It is I!
Still pleasanter—in silence
for him an honorable grave to prepare
and quietly to aim at his pale forehead
[12] at a gentlemanly distance;
but to dispatch him to his fathers
will hardly pleasant be for you.
What, then, if by your pistol
be smitten a young pal
who with a saucy glance or repartee
[4] or any other bagatelle
insulted you over the bottle,
or even himself, in fiery vexation,
to combat proudly challenged you?
[8] Say: your soul
with what feeling would be possessed
when, stirless on the ground,
in front of you, with death upon his brow,
[12] he by degrees would stiffen,
when he’d be deaf and silent
to your desperate appeal?
XXXV
In the ache of the heart’s remorse,
his hand squeezing the pistol,
at Lenski Eugene looks.
[4] “Well, what—he’s dead,” pronounced the neighbor.
Dead! … With this dreadful interjection
smitten, Onegin with a shudder
walks hence and calls his men.
[8] With care Zaretski lays
upon the sleigh the frozen corpse;
home he is driving the dread lading.
On sensing the corpse, snort
and jib the horses; with white foam
wet the steel bit;
and like an arrow off they fly.
My friends, you’re sorry for the poet:
in the bloom of glad hopes,
not having yet fulfilled them for the world,
[4] scarce out of infant clothes,
has withered! Where is the hot agitation,
where is the noble aspiration
both of young feelings and young thoughts,
[8] high, tender, dashing?
Where are love’s turbulent desires,
the thirst for knowledges and work,
and fear of vice and shame,
[12] and you, fond musings,
you, [token] of unearthly life,
you, dreams of sacred poetry!
XXXVII
Perhaps, for the world’s good
or, at the least, for glory he was born;
his silenced lyre
[4] a resonant, uninterrupted ringing
in centuries might have aroused. The poet,
perhaps, upon the stairway of the world,
had a high stair awaiting him.
[8] His martyred shade,
perhaps, had borne away with it
a sacred mystery, and for us
a life-creating voice has perished,
[12] and past the tomb’s confines
will not rush up to it the hymn of races,
the benediction of the times.
XXXIX
And then again: perhaps, the poet
had a habitual lot awaiting him.
The years of youth would have elapsed:
[4] the fervor of the soul cooled down in him.
He would have changed in many ways,
have parted with the Muses, married,
up in the country, happy and cornute,
[8] have worn a quilted dressing gown;
learned life in its reality,
at forty, had the gout,
drunk, eaten, moped, got fat, decayed,
[12] and in his bed, at last,
died in the midst of children,
weepy females, and medicos.
XL
But, reader, be it as it may,
alas, the young lover,
the poet, the pensive dreamer,
[4] is killed by a pal’s hand!
There is a spot: left of the village
where inspiration’s nursling dwelt,
two pines have grown together at the roots;
[8] beneath them have meandered streamlets
of the neighboring valley’s brook.
’Tis there the plowman likes to rest,
and women reapers to dip in the waves
[12] their ringing pitchers come;
there, by the brook, in the dense shade
a simple monument is set.
Beneath it (as begins to drip
spring rain upon the herb of fields)
the herdsman, plaiting his pied shoe of bast,
[4] sings of the Volga fishermen;
and the young townswoman
spending the summer in the country,
when she on horseback headlong
[8] ranges, alone, over the fields,
before it halts her steed,
tightening the leathern rein;
and, turning up the gauze veil of her hat,
[12] with skimming eyes reads
the simple scripture—and a tear
dims her soft eyes.
XLII
And at a walk in open champaign rides,
sunk in a reverie, she;
her soul a long time, willy-nilly,
[4] is full of Lenski’s fate;
and she reflects: “What has become of Olga?
Did her heart suffer long?
Or did the season of her tears soon pass?
[8] And where’s her sister now?
and where’s the fleer from mankind and the world,
of modish belles the modish foe,
where’s that clouded eccentric,
[12] the slayer of the youthful poet?”
In due time an account to you
in detail about everything I’ll give.
But not now. Though with all my heart
I love my hero;
though I’ll return to him, of course;
[4] but now I cannot be concerned with him.
The years to austere prose incline,
the years chase rhyme, the romp, away,
and I—with a sigh I confess—
[8] more indolently dangle after her.
My pen has not its ancient disposition
to scrawl fugitive leaves;
other, chill, dreams,
[12] other, stern, cares,
both in the social hum and in the hush
disturb my soul’s sleep.
XLIV
I have learned the voice of other desires,
I’ve come to know new sadness;
I have no expectations for the first,
[4] and the old sadness I regret.
Dreams, dreams! Where is your dulcitude?
Where is (its stock rhyme) juventude?
Can it be really true that finally
[8] its garland’s withered, withered?
Can it be true that really and indeed,
without elegiac devices,
the springtime of my days is fled
[12] (as I in jest kept saying hitherto),
and can it be that it has no return?
Can it be true that I’ll be thirty soon?
So! My noontide is come, and I must
acknowledge this, I see.
But, anyway, as friends let’s part,
[4] O my light youth!
My thanks for the delights,
the melancholy, the dear torments,
the hum, the storms, the feasts,
[8] for all, for all your gifts
my thanks to you. In you
amidst turmoils and in the stillness
I have delighted … and in full.
[12] Enough! With a clear soul
I now set out on a new course
to rest from my old life.
XLVI
Let me glance back. Farewell now, coverts
where in the backwoods flowed my days,
fulfilled with passions and indolence
[4] and the dreams of a pensive soul.
And you, young inspiration,
excite my fancy,
the slumber of the heart enliven,
[8] into my nook more often fly,
let not a poet’s soul grow cold,
callous, crust-dry,
and finally be turned to stone
[12] in the World’s deadening intoxication
in that slough where with you
I bathe, dear friends!40