him chimes dinner.

XVI

‘Tis dark by now. He gets into a sleigh.

The cry “Way, way!” resounds.

With frostdust silvers

4 his beaver collar.

To Talon’s4 he has dashed off: he is certain

that there already waits for him [Kavérin];

has entered — and the cork goes ceilingward,

8 the flow of comet wine spurts forth,

a bloody roast beef is before him,

and truffles, luxury of youthful years,

the best flower of French cookery,

12 and a decayless Strasbourg pie

between a living Limburg cheese

and a golden ananas.

XVII

Thirst is still clamoring for beakers

to drown the hot fat of the cutlets;

but Bréguet’s chime reports to them

4 that a new ballet has begun.

The theater’s unkind

lawgiver; the inconstant

adorer of enchanting actresses;

8 an honorary citizen of the coulisses,

Onegin has flown to the theater,

where, breathing criticism,

each is prepared to clap an entrechat,

12 hiss Phaedra, Cleopatra,

call out Moëna — for the purpose

merely of being heard.

XVIII

A magic region! There in olden years

the sovereign of courageous satire,

sparkled Fonvízin, freedom’s friend,

4 and imitational Knyazhnín;

there Ózerov involuntary tributes

of public tears, of plaudits

shared with the young Semyónova;

8 there our Katénin resurrected

Corneille’s majestic genius;

there caustic Shahovskóy brought forth the noisy

swarm of his comedies;

12 there, too, Didelot did crown himself with glory;

there, there, beneath the shelter of coulisses,

my young days sped.

XIX

My goddesses! What has become of you?

Where are you? Hearken to my woeful voice:

Are all of you the same? Have other maidens

4 taken your place without replacing you?

Am I to hear again your choruses?

Am I to see Russian Terpsichore’s

soulful volation?

8 Or will the mournful gaze not find

familiar faces on the dreary stage,

and at an alien world having directed

a disenchanted lorgnette,

12 shall I, indifferent spectator

of merriment, yawn wordlessly

and bygones recollect?

XX

By now the house is full; the boxes blaze;

parterre and stalls — all seethes;

in the top gallery impatiently they clap,

4 and, soaring up, the curtain swishes.

Resplendent, half ethereal,

obedient to the magic bow,

surrounded by a throng of nymphs,

8 Istómina stands: she,

while touching with one foot the floor,

gyrates the other slowly,

and lo! a leap, and lo! she flies,

12 she flies like fluff from Eol’s lips,

now twines and now untwines her waist

and beats one swift small foot against the other.

XXI

All clap as one. Onegin enters:

he walks — on people’s toes — between the stalls;

askance, his double lorgnette trains

4 upon the loges of strange ladies;

he has scanned all the tiers;

he has seen everything; with faces, garb,

he’s dreadfully displeased;

8 with men on every side

he has exchanged salutes; then at the stage

in great abstraction he has glanced,

has turned away, and yawned,

12 and uttered: “Time all were replaced;

ballets I long have suffered,

but even of Didelot I’ve had enough.”5

XXII

Amors, diaboli, and dragons

still on the stage jump and make noise;

still at the carriage porch the weary footmen

4 on the pelisses are asleep;

still people have not ceased to stamp,

blow noses, cough, hiss, clap;

still, outside and inside,

8 lamps glitter everywhere;

still, chilled, the horses fidget,

bored with their harness,

and round the fires the coachmen curse their masters

12 and beat their palms together;

and yet Onegin has already left;

he’s driving home to dress.

XXIII

Shall I present a faithful picture

of the secluded cabinet,

where fashions’ model pupil

4 is dressed, undressed, and dressed again?

Whatever, for the lavish whim,

London the trinkleter deals in

and o’er the Baltic waves to us

8 ships in exchange for timber and for tallow;

whatever hungry taste in Paris,

choosing a useful trade,

invents for pastimes,

12 for luxury, for modish mollitude;

all this adorned the cabinet

of a philosopher at eighteen years of age.

XXIV

Amber on Tsargrad’s pipes,

porcelain and bronzes on a table,

and — joyance of the pampered senses —

4 perfumes in crystal cut with facets;

combs, little files of steel,

straight scissors, curvate ones, and brushes

of thirty kinds —

8 these for the nails, those for the teeth.

Rousseau (I shall observe in passing) was unable

to understand how the dignified Grimm

dared clean his nails in front of him,

12 the eloquent crackbrain.6

The advocate of liberty and rights

was in the present case not right at all.

XXV

One can be an efficient man —

and mind the beauty of one’s nails:

why vainly argue with the age?

4 Custom is despot among men.

My Eugene, a second [Chadáev],

being afraid of jealous censures,

was in his dress a pedant

8 and what we’ve called a fop.

Three hours, at least,

he spent in front of glasses,

and from his dressing room came forth

12 akin to giddy Venus

when, having donned a masculine attire,

the goddess drives to a masqued ball.

XXVI

With toilette in the latest taste

having engaged your curious glance,

I might before the learned world

4 describe here his attire;

this would, no doubt, be daring;

however, ’tis my business to describe;

but “dress coat,” “waistcoat,” “pantaloons” —

8 in Russian all these words are not;

in fact, I see (my guilt I lay before you)

that my poor idiom as it is

might be diversified much less

12 with words of foreign stock,

though I did erstwhile dip

into the Academic Dictionary.

XXVII

Not this is our concern at present:

we’d better hurry to the ball

whither headlong in a hack coach

4 already my Onegin has sped off.

In front of darkened houses,

alongst the sleeping street in rows

the twin lamps of coupés

8 pour forth a cheerful light

and project rainbows on the snow.

Studded around with lampions,

glitters a splendid house;

12 across its whole-glassed windows shadows move:

there come and go the profiled heads

of ladies and of modish quizzes.

XXVIII

Up to the porch our hero now has driven;

past the hall porter, like a dart,

he has flown up the marble steps,

4 has run his fingers through his hair,

has entered. The ballroom is full of people;

the music has already tired of dinning;

the crowd is occupied with the mazurka;

8 there’s all around both noise and squeeze;

there clink the cavalier guard’s spurs;

the little feet of winsome ladies flit;

upon their captivating tracks

12 flit flaming glances,

and by the roar of violins is drowned

the jealous whispering of fashionable women.

XXIX

In days of gaieties and desires

I was mad about balls:

there is no safer spot for declarations

4 and for the handing of a letter.

O you, respected husbands!

I’ll offer you my services;

pray, mark my speech:

8 I wish to warn you.

You too, mammas: most strictly

follow your daughters with your eyes;

hold up your lorgnettes straight!

12 Or else… else — God forbid!

If this I write it is because

I have long ceased to sin.

XXX

Alas, on various pastimes I have wasted

a lot of life!

But to this day, if morals did not suffer,

4 I’d still like balls.

I like riotous youth,

the crush, the glitter, and the gladness,

and the considered dresses of the ladies;

8 I like their little feet; but then ’tis doubtful

that in all Russia you will find

three pairs of shapely feminine feet.

Ah me, I long could not forget

12 two little feet!… Despondent, fervorless,

I still remember them, and in sleep they

disturb my heart.

XXXI

So when and where, in what desert, will you

forget them, madman? Little feet,

ah, little feet! Where are you now?

4 Where do you trample vernant blooms?

Brought up in Oriental mollitude,

on the Northern sad snow

you left no prints:

8 you liked the sumptuous contact

of yielding rugs.

Is it long since I would forget for you

the thirst for fame and praises,

12 the country of my fathers, and confinement?

The happiness of youthful years has vanished

as on the meadows your light trace.

XXXII

Diana’s bosom, Flora’s cheeks, are charming,

dear friends! Nevertheless, for me

something about it makes more charming

4 the small foot of Terpsichore.

By prophesying to the gaze

an unpriced recompense,

with token beauty it attracts the willful

8 swarm of desires.

I like it, dear Elvina,

beneath the long napery of tables,

in springtime on the turf of meads,

12 in winter on the hearth’s cast iron,

on mirrory parquet of halls,

by the sea on granite of rocks.

XXXIII

I recollect the sea before a tempest:

how I envied the waves

running in turbulent succession

4 with love to lie down at her feet!

How much I wished then with the waves

to touch the dear feet with my lips!

No, never midst the fiery days

8 of my ebullient youth

did I long with such anguish

to kiss the lips of young Armidas,

or the roses of flaming cheeks,

12 or bosoms full of languor —

no, never did the surge of passions

thus rive my soul!

XXXIV

I have remembrance of another time:

in chary fancies now and then

I hold the happy stirrup

4 and feel a small foot in my hand.

Again imagination seethes,

again that touch has kindled

the blood within my withered heart,

8 again the ache, again the love!

But ’tis enough extolling haughty ones

with my loquacious lyre:

they are not worth either the passions

12 or songs by them inspired;

the words and gaze of the said charmers

are as deceptive as their little feet.

XXXV

And my Onegin? Half asleep,

he drives from ball to bed,

while indefatigable Petersburg

4 is roused already by the drum.

The merchant’s up, the hawker’s out,

the cabby to the hack stand drags,

the Okhta girl hastes with her jug,

8 the morning snow creaks under her.

Morn’s pleasant hubbub has awoken,

unclosed are shutters, chimney smoke

ascends in a blue column, and the baker,

12 a punctual German in a cotton cap,

has more than once already

opened his vasisdas.

XXXVI

But by the tumult of the ball fatigued,

and turning morning into midnight,

sleeps peacefully in blissful shade

4 the child of pastimes and of luxury.

He will awake past midday, and again

till morn his life will be prepared,

monotonous and motley, and tomorrow

8 ’twill be the same as yesterday.

But was my Eugene happy —

free, in the bloom of the best years,

amidst resplendent conquests,

12 amidst delights of every day?

Was it to him of no avail

midst banquets to be rash and hale?

XXXVII

No, feelings early cooled in him.

Tedious to him became the social hum.

The fairs remained not long

4 the object of his customary thoughts.

Betrayals had time to fatigue him. Friends

and friendship palled,

since plainly not always could he

8 beefsteaks and Strasbourg pie

sluice with a champagne bottle

and scatter piquant sayings when

he had the headache;

12 and though he was a fiery scapegrace,

he lost at last his liking

for strife, saber and lead.

XXXVIII

A malady, the cause of which

’tis high time were discovered,

similar to the English “spleen” —

4 in short, the Russian “chondria” —

possessed him by degrees.

To shoot himself, thank God,

he did not care to try,

8 but toward life became quite cold.

He like Childe Harold, gloomy, languid,

appeared in drawing rooms;

neither the gossip of the monde