Fare thee well, and if for ever,
Still for ever, fare thee well.
Byron
I
In those days when in the Lyceum’s gardens
I bloomed serenely,
would eagerly read Apuleius,
[4] while Cicero I did not read;
in those days, in mysterious valleys,
in springtime, to the calls of swans,
near waters radiant in the stillness,
[8] to me the Muse began appearing.
My student cell
was suddenly alight: in it the Muse
opened a feast of young devices,
[12] sang childish gaieties,
and glory of our ancientry,
and the heart’s tremulous dreams.
And with a smile the world received her;
initial success gave us wings;
the aged Derzhávin noticed us—
[4] and blessed us while descending to the grave.
III
And I, setting myself for law
only the arbitrary will of passions,
sharing emotions with the crowd,
[4] I led my frisky Muse
into the noise of feasts and riotous discussions—
the terror of midnight patrols;
and to them, in mad feasts,
[8] she brought her gifts,
and like a little bacchante frisked,
over the bowl sang for the guests;
and the young people of past days
[12] would riotously dangle after her;
and I was proud ’mong friends
of my volatile mistress.
But I dropped out of their alliance—
and fled afar … she followed me.
How often the caressive Muse
[4] for me would sweeten the mute way
with the bewitchment of a secret tale!
How often on Caucasia’s crags,
Lenorelike, by the moon,
[8] with me she’d gallop on a steed!
How often on the shores of Tauris
she in the murk of night
led me to listen the sound of the sea,
[12] Nereid’s unceasing murmur,
the deep eternal chorus of the billows,
the praiseful hymn to the sire of the worlds.
V
And having forgotten the far capital’s
glitter and noisy feasts
in the wild depth of sad Moldavia,
[4] the humble tents
of wandering tribes she visited,
and among them grew savage,
and forgot the speech of the gods
[8] for scant, strange tongues,
for songs of the steppe dear to her.
Suddenly everything around changed,
and lo! in my garden she
[12] appeared as a provincial miss,
with woeful meditation in her eyes,
with a French book in her hands.
And now my Muse for the first time
I’m taking to a high-life rout;44
at her steppe charms
[4] with jealous apprehensiveness I look.
Through a dense series of aristocrats,
of military fops, of diplomats
and proud ladies she glides;
[8] now quietly she has sat down and looks,
admiring the clamorous crush,
the flickering of dress and speech,
the coming of slow guests
[12] in front of the young hostess,
and the dark frame of men
around ladies, as about pictures.
VII
She likes the stately order
of oligarchic colloquies,
and the chill of calm pride,
[4] and this mixture of ranks and years.
But who’s that in the chosen throng,
standing silent and nebulous?
To everyone he seems a stranger.
[8] Before him faces come and go
like a series of tiresome specters.
What is it—spleen or smarting morgue
upon his face? Why is he here?
[12] Who is he? Is it really—Eugene?
He, really? So, ’tis he, indeed.
—Since when has he been brought our way?
Is he the same, or grown more peaceful?
Or does he still play the eccentric?
Say, in what guise has he returned?
[4] What will he stage for us meanwhile?
As what will he appear now? As a Melmoth?
a cosmopolitan? a patriot?
a Harold? a Quaker? a bigot?
[8] Or will he sport some other mask?
Or else be simply a good fellow
like you and me, like the whole world?
At least here’s my advice:
[12] to drop an antiquated fashion.
Sufficiently he’s gulled the world …
—He’s known to you?—Both yes and no.
IX
—Why so unfavorably then
do you refer to him?
Because we indefatigably
[4] bestir ourselves, judge everything?
Because of fiery souls the rashness
to smug nonentity
is either insulting or absurd?
[8] Because, by liking room, wit cramps?
Because too often conversations
we’re glad to take for deeds,
because stupidity is volatile and wicked?
[12] Because to grave men grave are trifles,
and mediocrity alone
is to our measure and not odd?
Blest who was youthful in his youth;
blest who matured at the right time;
who gradually the chill of life
[4] with years was able to withstand;
who never was addicted to strange dreams;
who did not shun the fashionable rabble;
who was at twenty fop or blade,
[8] and then at thirty, profitably married;
who rid himself at fifty
of private and of other debts;
who fame, money, and rank
[12] in due course calmly gained;
about whom lifelong one kept saying:
N. N. is an excellent man.
XI
But it is sad to think that to no purpose
youth was given us,
that we betrayed it every hour,
[4] that it duped us;
that our best wishes,
that our fresh dreamings,
in quick succession have decayed
[8] like leaves in putrid autumn.
It is unbearable to see before one
only of dinners a long series,
to look on life as on a rite,
[12] and in the wake of the decorous crowd
to go, not sharing with it
either general views, or passions.
When one becomes the subject of noisy comments,
it is unbearable (you will agree with that)
among sensible people
[4] to pass for a sham eccentric
or a sad crackbrain,
or a satanic monster,
or even for my Demon.
[8] Onegin (let me take him up again),
having in single combat killed his friend,
having lived without a goal, without exertions,
to the age of twenty-six,
[12] oppressed by the inertia of leisure,
without employment, wife, or business,
could think of nothing to take up.
XIII
A restlessness took hold of him,
the urge toward a change of places
(a property most painful,
[4] a cross that few deliberately bear).
He left his countryseat,
the solitude of woods and meads,
where an ensanguined shade
[8] daily appeared to him,
and started upon travels without aim,
accessible to one sensation;
and journeys to him
[12] tedious became as everything on earth.
He returned and found himself,
like Chatski, come from boat to ball.
But lo! the throng has undulated,
a whisper through the hall has run….
Toward the hostess there advanced a lady,
[4] followed by an imposing general.
She was unhurried,
not cold, not talkative,
without a flouting gaze for everyone,
[8] without pretensions to success,
without those little mannerisms,
without imitational devices….
All about her was quiet, simple.
[12] She seemed a faithful reproduction
du comme il faut … ([Shishkóv,] forgive me:
I do not know how to translate it.)
XV
Closer to her the ladies moved;
old women smiled to her;
the men bowed lower,
[4] sought to catch the gaze of her eyes;
the maidens passed more quietly
before her through the room; and higher than anyone
lifted both nose and shoulders
[8] the general who had come in with her.
None could a beauty
have called her; but from head to foot
none could have found in her
[12] what by the autocratic fashion
in the high London circle
is called “vulgar” (I can’t—
—much do I like that word,
but can’t translate it;
with us, for the time being, it is new
[4] and hardly bound to be in favor;
it might do nicely in an epigram.…
But to our lady let me turn.)
Winsome with carefree charm,
[8] she at a table sat
with glittering Nina Voronskóy,
that Cleopatra of the Neva;
and, surely, you would have agreed
[12] that Nina with her marble beauty
could not eclipse her neighbor,
though she was dazzling.
XVII
“Can it be possible?” thinks Eugene.
“Can it be she? … But really … No …
What! From the wild depth of steppe villages …”
[4] and a tenacious quizzing glass
he keeps directing every minute
at her whose aspect vaguely has recalled
to him forgotten features.
[8] “Tell me, Prince, you don’t know
who is it there in the framboise beret
talking with the Spanish ambassador?”
The prince looks at Onegin:
[12] “Aha! Indeed, long have you not been in the monde.
Wait, I’ll present you.”
“But who is she?” “My wife.”
“So you are married! Didn’t know before.
How long?” “About two years.”
“To whom?” “The Larin girl.” “Tatiana!”
[4] “She knows you?” “I’m their neighbor.”
“Oh, then, come on.” The prince goes up
to his wife and leads up to her
his kin and friend.
[8] The princess looks at him …
and whatever troubled her soul,
however greatly she might have been
surprised, astounded,
[12] nevertheless nothing betrayed her,
in her the same ton was retained,
her bow was just as quiet.
XIX
Forsooth! It was not merely that she didn’t start,
or suddenly grow pale, or red—
even one eyebrow never stirred,
[4] she didn’t so much as compress her lips.
Though he most diligently looked,
even traces of the former Tatiana
Onegin could not find.
[8] With her he wished to start a conversation—
and … and could not. She asked:
Had he been long around? Whence came he—
and, peradventure, not from their own parts?
[12] Then on her spouse she turned
a look of lassitude; glided away….
And moveless he remained.
Can it be that the same Tatiana
to whom, alone with her,
at the beginning of our novel
[4] in a stagnant, far region,
in righteous fervor of moralization
he had preached precepts once;
the same from whom he keeps
[8] a letter where the heart speaks,
where all is out, all unrestrained;
that little girl—or is he dreaming?—
that little girl whom he
[12] had in her humble lot disdained—
can she have been with him just now
so bland, so bold?
XXI
He leaves the close-packed rout,
he drives home, pensive;
by a dream now melancholy, now charming,
[4] his first sleep is disturbed.
He has awoken; he is brought
a letter: Prince N. begs the honor of his presence
at a soiree. Good God—to her?
[8] I will, I will! And rapidly
he scrawls a courteous answer.
What ails him? What a strange daze he is in!
What has stirred at the bottom
[12] of a soul cold and sluggish?
Vexation? Vanity? Or once again
youth’s worry—love?
Once more Onegin counts the hours,
once more he can’t wait for the day to end.
But ten strikes: he drives off,
[4] he has flown forth, he’s at the porch;
with tremor he goes in to the princess:
he finds Tatiana alone,
and for some minutes together
[8] they sit. The words come not
from Onegin’s lips. Ill-humored,
awkward, he barely, barely
replies to her. His head
[12] is full of a persistent thought.
Persistently he gazes: she
sits easy and free.
XXIII
The husband comes. He interrupts
that painful tête-à-tête;
he with Onegin recollects
[4] the pranks, the jests of former years.
They laugh. Guests enter.
Now with the large-grained salt of high-life malice
the conversation starts to be enlivened.
[8] Before the lady of the house, light tosh
sparkled without a stupid simper,
and meantime interrupted it
sensible talk, without trite topics,
[12] without eternal truths, without pedanticism,
and did not shock anyone’s ears
with its free liveliness.
Yet here was the flower of the capital,
both high nobility and paragons of fashion;
the faces one meets everywhere,
[4] the fools one cannot go without;
here were elderly ladies,
in mobcaps and in roses, wicked-looking;
here were several maidens—
[8] unsmiling faces;
here was an envoy, speaking
of state affairs;
here was, with fragrant hoary hair,
[12] an old man in the old way joking—
with eminent subtility and wit,
which is somewhat absurd today!
XXV
Here was, to epigrams addicted
a gentleman cross with everything:
with the too-sweet tea of the hostess,
[4] the ladies’ platitudes, the ton of men,
the comments on a foggy novel,
the badge two sisters had been granted,
the falsehoods in reviews, the war,
[8] the snow, and his own wife.
Here was […], who had gained
distinction by the baseness of his soul,
who had blunted in all albums,
[4] Saint-P[riest], your pencils;
in the doorway another ball dictator
stood like a fashion plate,
as rosy as a Palm Week cherub,
[8] tight-coated, mute and motionless;
and a far-flung traveler,
an overstarched jackanapes,
provoked a smile among the guests
[12] by his studied deportment,
and a gaze silently exchanged
gave him the general verdict.
XXVII
But my Onegin the whole evening
is only with Tatiana occupied:
not with the shrinking little maiden,
[4] enamored, poor and simple—
but the indifferent princess,
the inaccessible goddess
of the luxurious, queenly Neva.
[8] O humans! All of you resemble
ancestress Eve:
what’s given to you does not lure,
incessantly the serpent calls you
[12] to him, to the mysterious tree:
you must be offered the forbidden fruit,
for Eden otherwise is not Eden to you.
How changed Tatiana is!
Into her role how firmly she has entered!
Of a constricting rank
[4] the ways how fast she has adopted!
Who’d dare to seek the tender little lass
in this stately, this nonchalant
legislatrix of salons?
[8] And he her heart had agitated!
About him in the gloom of night,
as long as Morpheus had not flown down,
time was, she virginally brooded,
[12] raised to the moon languorous eyes,
dreaming someday with him
to make life’s humble journey!
XXIX
All ages are to love submissive;
but to young virgin hearts
its impulses are beneficial
[4] as are spring storms to fields.
They freshen in the rain of passions,
and renovate themselves, and ripen,
and vigorous life gives
[8] both lush bloom and sweet fruit.
But at a late and barren age,
at the turn of our years,
sad is the trace of a dead passion….
[12] Thus storms of the cold autumn
into a marsh transform the meadow
and strip the woods around.
There is no doubt: alas! Eugene
in love is with Tatiana like a child.
In throes of amorous designs
[4] he spends both day and night.
Not harking to the stern reprovals of the mind,
up to her porch, glassed entrance hall,
he drives up every day.
[8] He chases like a shadow after her;
he’s happy if he casts
the fluffy boa on her shoulder,
or touches torridly
[12] her hand, or separates
in front of her the motley host of liveries,
or else picks up her handkerchief.
XXXI
She does not notice him,
no matter how he strives—even to death;
receives him freely at her house;
[4] elsewhere two or three words with him exchanges;
sometimes welcomes with a mere bow,
sometimes does not take any notice:
there’s not a drop of coquetry in her,
[8] the high world does not tolerate it.
Onegin is beginning to grow pale;
she does not see or does not care;
Onegin droops—and almost,
[12] in fact, is phthisical.
All send Onegin to physicians;
in chorus these send him to spas.
Yet he’s not going. He beforehand
is ready to his forefathers to write
of an impending meeting; yet Tatiana
[4] cares not one bit (such is their sex).
But he is stubborn, won’t desist,
still hopes, bestirs himself;
a sick man bolder than one hale,
[8] with a weak hand to the princess
he writes a passionate missive.
Though generally little sense
he saw, not without reason, in letters,
[12] but evidently the heart’s suffering
had now passed his endurance.
Here you have his letter word for word.
ONEGIN’S LETTER TO TATIANA
I foresee everything: you’ll be offended
by a sad secret’s explanation.
What bitter scorn
[4] your proud glance will express!
What do I want? What is my object
in opening my soul to you?
What malevolent merriment
[8] perhaps I give occasion to!
By chance once having met you,
a spark of tenderness having remarked in you,
I did not venture to believe in it:
[12] did not let a sweet habit have its way;
my loathsome freedom
I did not wish to lose.
[16] a hapless victim Lenski fell….
From all that to the heart is dear
then did I tear my heart away;
to everyone a stanger, tied by nothing,
[20] I thought: liberty and peace
are a substitute for happiness. Good God!
What a mistake I made, how I am punished!
No—every minute to see you;
[24] follow you everywhere;
the smile of your lips, movement of your eyes,
to try to capture with enamored eyes;
to hearken long to you, to comprehend
[28] all your perfection with one’s soul;
to melt in agonies before you,
grow pale and waste away … that’s bliss!
And I’m deprived of that; for you
[32] I drag myself at random everywhere;
to me each day is dear, each hour is dear,
while I in futile dullness squander
the days told off by fate—
[36] they are, in fact, quite heavy anyway.
I know: my span is well-nigh measured;
but that my life may be prolonged
I must be certain in the morning
[40] of seeing you during the day.
I fear in my humble appeal
your austere gaze will see
designs of despicable cunning—
[44] and I can hear your wrathful censure.
If you but knew how terrible it is
to languish with the thirst of love,
to be aflame—and hourly with one’s reason
[48] subdue the agitation in one’s blood!
wish to embrace your knees
and, in a burst of sobbing, at your feet
pour out appeals, avowals, plaints,
[52] all, all I could express,
and in the meantime with feigned coldness
arm both one’s speech and gaze,
maintain a placid conversation,
[56] glance at you with a cheerful glance! …
But let it be: against myself
I’ve not the force to struggle any more;
all is decided: I am in your power,
[60] and I surrender to my fate.
There’s no reply. He sends again a missive.
To the second, third letter—
there’s no reply. To some reception
[4] he drives. Scarce has he entered, toward him
she’s heading. How austere!
He is not seen, to him no word is said.
Ugh! How surrounded now
[8] she is with Twelfthtide cold!
How much to hold back indignation
the obstinate lips want!
Onegin peers with a keen eye:
[12] where, where are discomposure, sympathy,
where the tearstains? None, none!
There’s on that face but the imprint of wrath …
XXXIV
plus, possibly, a secret fear
lest husband or monde guess
the escapade, the casual foible,
[4] all my Onegin knows….
There is no hope! He drives away,
curses his folly—
and, deeply plunged in it,
[8] the monde he once again renounced
and in his silent study
he was reminded of the time
when cruel chondria
[12] pursued him in the noisy monde,
captured him, took him by the collar,
and locked him up in a dark hole.
He once again started to read without discernment.
He read Gibbon, Rousseau,
Manzoni, Herder, Chamfort,
[4] Mme de Staël, Bichat, Tissot.
He read the skeptic Bayle,
he read the works of Fontenelle,
he read some of our native authors,
[8] without rejecting anything—
both “almanacs” and magazines
where sermons into us are drummed,
where I’m today abused so much
[12] but where such madrigals
to me addressed I met with now and then:
e sempre bene, gentlemen.
XXXVI
And lo—his eyes were reading,
but his thoughts were far away;
dreams, desires, woes
[4] kept crowding deep into his soul.
He between the printed lines
read with spiritual eyes
other lines. It was in them that he
[8] was utterly immersed.
These were the secret legends
of the heart’s dark ancientry;
dreams unconnected with anything:
[12] threats, rumors, presages;
or the live tosh of a long tale,
or a young maiden’s letters.
And by degrees into a lethargy
of both feelings and thoughts he falls,
while before him Imagination
[4] deals out her motley faro hand.
Either he sees: on melted snow,
as at a night’s encampment sleeping,
stirless, a youth is lying,
[8] and hears a voice: “Well, what—he’s dead!”
Or he sees foes forgotten,
slanderers and wicked cowards,
and a swarm of young traitresses,
[12] and a circle of despicable comrades;
or else a country house, and by the window
sits she … and ever she!
XXXVIII
He grew so used to lose himself in this
that he almost went off his head
or else became a poet.
[4] (Frankly, that would have been a boon!)
And true: by dint of magnetism,
the mechanism of Russian verses
at that time all but grasped
[8] my addleheaded pupil.
How much a poet he resembled
when in a corner he would sit alone,
and the hearth flamed in front of him,
[12] and he hummed “Benedetta”
or “Idol mio,” and would drop
into the fire his slipper or review.
Days rushed. In warmth-pervaded air
winter already was resolving;
and he did not become a poet,
[4] did not die, did not lose his mind.
Spring quickens him: for the first time
his close-shut chambers,
where he had hibernated like a marmot,
[8] his double windows, inglenook—
he leaves on a clear morning,
fleets in a sleigh along the Neva.
Upon blue blocks of hewn-out ice
[12] the sun plays. Muddily thaws
in the streets the furrowed snow:
whither, upon it, his fast course
XL
directs Onegin? You beforehand
have guessed already. Yes, exactly:
arrives apace to her, to his Tatiana,
[4] my unreformed odd chap.
He walks in, looking like a corpse.
There’s not a soul in the front hall.
He enters a reception room. On! No one.
[8] A door he opens…. What is it
that strikes him with such force?
The princess before him, alone,
sits, unadorned, pale,
[12] reading some letter or another,
and softly sheds a flood of tears,
her cheek propped on her hand.
Ah! Her mute sufferings—who
would not have read in this swift instant!
The former Tanya, the poor Tanya—who
[4] would not have recognized now in the princess?
In the heartache of mad regrets,
Eugene has fallen at her feet;
she started—and is silent,
[8] and at Onegin looks
without surprise, without wrath….
His sick, extinguished gaze,
imploring aspect, mute reproof,
[12] she takes in everything. The simple maid,
with dreams, with heart of former days
again in her has resurrected now.
XLII
She does not bid him rise
and, not taking her eyes off him,
does not withdraw from his avid lips
[4] her insensible hand….
What is her dreaming now about?
A lengthy silence passes,
and finally she, softly:
[8] “Enough; get up. I must
frankly explain myself to you.
Onegin, do you recollect that hour
when in the garden, in the alley, we
[12] were brought by fate together and so humbly
your lesson I heard out?
Today it is my turn.
“Onegin, I was younger then,
I was, I daresay, better-looking,
and I loved you; and what then?
[4] What did I find in your heart?
What answer? Mere austerity.
There wasn’t—was there?—novelty for you
in the love of a humble little girl?
[8] Even today—good God!—blood freezes
as soon as I remember your cold glance
and that sermon…. But you
I don’t accuse; at that terrible hour
[12] you acted nobly,
you in regard to me were right,
to you with all my soul I’m grateful….
XLIV
“Then—is it not so?—in the wilderness,
far from futile Hearsay,
I was not to your liking…. Why, then, now
[4] do you pursue me?
Why have you marked me out?
Might it not be because in the grand monde
I am obliged now to appear;
[8] because I’m wealthy and of noble rank?
because my husband has been maimed in battles;
because for that the Court is kind to us?
Might it not be because my disrepute
[12] would be remarked by everybody now
and in society might bring
you scandalous prestige?
“I’m crying.… If your Tanya
you’ve not forgotten yet,
then know: the sharpness of your scolding,
[4] cold, stern discourse,
if it were only in my power
I’d have preferred to an offensive passion,
and to these letters and tears.
[8] For my infantine dreams
you had at least some pity then,
at least consideration for my age.
But now! … What to my feet
[12] has brought you? What a little thing!
How, with your heart and mind,
be the slave of a trivial feeling?
XLVI
“But as to me, Onegin, this pomp,
the tinsel of a loathsome life,
my triumphs in the vortex of the World,
[4] my fashionable house and evenings,
what do I care for them? … At once I would give gladly
all this frippery of a masquerade,
all this glitter, and noise, and fumes,
[8] for a shelfful of books, for a wild garden,
for our poor dwelling,
for those haunts where for the first time,
Onegin, I saw you,
[12] and for the humble churchyard, too,
where there’s a cross now and the shade of branches
over my poor nurse.
“Yet happiness had been so possible,
so near!… But my fate
already is decided. Rashly
[4] perhaps, I acted.
With tears of conjuration, with me
my mother pleaded. For poor Tanya
all lots were equal.
[8] I married. You must,
I pray you, leave me;
I know: in your heart are
both pride and genuine honor.
[12] I love you (why dissimulate?);
but to another I’ve been given away:
to him I shall be faithful all my life.”
XLVIII
She has gone. Eugene stands
as if by thunder struck.
In what a tempest of sensations
[4] his heart is now immersed!
But a sudden clink of spurs has sounded,
and Tatiana’s husband has appeared,
and here my hero,
[8] at an unkind minute for him,
reader, we now shall leave
for long … forever…. After him
sufficiently we on one path
[12] roamed o’er the world. Let us congratulate
each other on attaining land. Hurrah!
It long (is it not true?) was time.
Whoever you be, O my reader—
friend, foe—I wish with you
to part at present as a pal.
[4] Farewell. Whatever you in my wake
sought in these careless strophes—
tumultuous recollections,
relief from labors,
[8] live pictures or bons mots,
or faults of grammar—
God grant that you, in this book,
for recreation, for the daydream,
[12] for the heart, for jousts in journals,
may find at least a crumb.
Upon which, let us part, farewell!
L
You, too, farewell, my strange traveling companion,
and you, my true ideal,
and you, my live and constant,
[4] though small, work. I have known with you
all that a poet covets:
obliviousness of life in the world’s tempests,
the sweet converse of friends.
[8] Many, many days have rushed by
since young Tatiana,
and with her Onegin, in a blurry dream
appeared to me for the first time—
[12] and the far stretch of a free novel
I through a magic crystal
still did not make out clearly.
But those to whom at friendly meetings
the first strophes I read—
“Some are no more, others are distant,”
[4] as erstwhiles Sadi said.
Finished without them is Onegin’s portrait.
And she from whom is fashioned
the dear ideal of “Tatiana” …
[8] Ah, fate has much, much snatched away!
Blest who life’s banquet early
left, having not drained to the bottom
the goblet full of wine;
[12] who did not read life’s novel to the end
and all at once could part with it
as I with my Onegin.
THE END