calendar for eighteen-eight:

having a lot to do, the old man never

looked into any other books.

IV

Alone midst his possessions,

merely to while away the time,

at first conceived the plan our Eugene

4 of instituting a new system.

In his backwoods a solitary sage,

the ancient corvée’s yoke

by the light quitrent he replaced;

8 the muzhik blessed fate,

while in his corner went into a huff,

therein perceiving dreadful harm,

his thrifty neighbor.

12 Another slyly smiled,

and all concluded with one voice that he

was a most dangerous eccentric.

V

At first they all would call on him,

but since to the back porch

habitually a Don stallion

4 for him was brought

as soon as one made out along the highway

the sound of their domestic runabouts —

outraged by such behavior,

8 they all ceased to be friends with him.

“Our neighbor is a boor; acts like a crackbrain;

he’s a Freemason; he

drinks only red wine, by the tumbler;

12 he won’t go up to kiss a lady’s hand;

’tis all ‘yes,’ ‘no’ — he’ll not say ‘yes, sir,’

or ‘no, sir.’ ” This was the general voice.

VI

At that same time a new landowner

had driven down to his estate

and in the neighborhood was giving cause

4 for just as strict a scrutiny.

By name Vladimir Lenski,

with a soul really Göttingenian,

a handsome chap, in the full bloom of years,

8 Kant’s votary, and a poet.

From misty Germany

he’d brought the fruits of learning:

liberty-loving dreams, a spirit

12 impetuous and rather queer,

a speech always enthusiastic,

and shoulder-length black curls.

VII

From the world’s cold depravity

not having yet had time to wither,

his soul was warmed by a friend’s greeting,

4 by the caress of maidens.

He was in matters of the heart

a charming dunce. Hope nursed him,

and the globe’s new glitter and noise

8 still captivated his young mind.

With a sweet fancy he amused

his heart’s incertitudes.

The purpose of our life to him

12 was an enticing riddle;

he racked his brains

over it and suspected marvels.

VIII

He believed that a kindred soul

to him must be united;

that, cheerlessly pining away,

4 she daily kept awaiting him;

he believed that his friends were ready to accept

chains for his honor

and that their hands would falter not in smashing

8 the vessel of his slanderer;

that there were some chosen by fate

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

12 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

IX

Indignation, compassion,

pure love of Good,

and fame’s delicious torment

4 early had stirred his blood.

He wandered with a lyre on earth.

Under the sky of Schiller and of Goethe,

with their poetic fire

8 his soul had kindled;

and the exalted Muses of the art

he, happy one, did not disgrace:

he proudly in his songs retained

12 always exalted sentiments,

the surgings of a virgin fancy, and the charm

of grave simplicity.

X

To love submissive, love he sang,

and his song was as clear

as a naïve maid’s thoughts,

4 as the sleep of an infant, as the moon

in the untroubled deserts of the sky,

goddess of mysteries and tender sighs.

He sang parting and sadness,

8 and a vague something, and the dim

remoteness, and romantic roses.

He sang those distant lands

where long into the bosom of the stillness

12 flowed his live tears.

He sang life’s faded bloom

at not quite eighteen years of age.

XI

In the wilderness where Eugene alone

was able to appreciate his gifts,

he cared not for the banquets of the masters

4 of neighboring manors;

he fled their noisy concourse.

Their reasonable talk

of haymaking, of liquor,

8 of kennel, of their kin,

no doubt did not sparkle with feeling,

or with poetic fire,

or sharp wit, or intelligence,

12 or with the art of sociability;

but the talk of their sweet wives was

much less intelligent.

XII

Wealthy, good-looking, Lenski everywhere

was as a marriageable man received:

such is the country custom;

4 all for their daughters planned a match

with the half-Russian neighbor.

Whenever he drops in, at once the conversation

broaches a word, obliquely,

8 about the tedium of bachelor life;

the neighbor is invited to the samovar,

and Dunya pours the tea;

they whisper to her: “Dunya, mark!”

12 Then the guitar (that, too) is brought,

and she will start to shrill (good God!):

“Come to me in my golden castle!..”12

XIII

But Lenski, having no desire, of course,

to bear the bonds of marriage,

wished cordially to strike up with Onegin

4 a close acquaintanceship.

They got together; wave and stone,

verse and prose, ice and flame,

were not so different from one another.

8 At first, because of mutual

disparity, they found each other dull;

then liked each other; then

met riding every day on horseback,

12 and soon became inseparable.

Thus people — I’m the first to own it —

out of do-nothingness are friends.

XIV

But among us there’s even no such friendship:

having destroyed all prejudices, we

deem all men naughts

4 and ourselves units.

We all aspire to be Napoleons;

for us the millions

of two-legged creatures are but tools;

8 feeling to us is weird and ludicrous.

More tolerant than many was Eugene,

though he, of course, knew men

and on the whole despised them;

12 but no rules are without exceptions:

some people he distinguished greatly

and, though estranged from it, respected feeling.

XV

He listened with a smile to Lenski:

the poet’s fervid conversation,

and mind still vacillant in judgments,

4 and gaze eternally inspired —

all this was novel to Onegin;

the chilling word

on his lips he tried to restrain,

8 and thought: foolish of me

to interfere with his brief rapture;

without me just as well that time will come;

meanwhile let him live and believe

12 in the perfection of the world;

let us forgive the fever of young years

both its young ardor and young ravings.

XVI

Between them everything engendered

discussions and led to reflection:

the pacts of bygone races,

4 the fruits of learning, Good and Evil,

and centuried prejudices,

and the grave’s fateful mysteries,

destiny and life in their turn —

8 all was subjected to their judgment.

The poet in the heat of his contentions

recited, in a trance, meantime,

fragments of Nordic poems,

12 and lenient Eugene,

although he did not understand them much,

would dutifully listen to the youth.

XVII

But passions occupied more often

the minds of my two anchorets.

Having escaped from their tumultuous power,

4 Onegin spoke of them

with an involuntary sigh of regret.

Happy who knew their agitations

and finally detached himself from them;

8 still happier who did not know them, who

cooled love with separation, enmity

with obloquy; sometimes

with friends and wife yawned, undisturbed

12 by jealous torment,

and the safe capital of forefathers

did not entrust to a perfidious deuce!

XVIII

When we have flocked under the banner

of sage tranquillity,

when the flame of the passions has gone out

4 and laughable become to us

their waywardness

or surgings and belated echoes;

reduced to sense not without trouble,

8 sometimes we like to listen

to the tumultuous language of the passions

of others, and it stirs our heart;

exactly thus an old disabled soldier

12 does willingly bend an assiduous ear

to the yarns of young mustached braves,

[while he remains] forgotten in his shack.

XIX

Now flaming youthhood, on the other hand,

cannot hide anything:

enmity, love, sadness, and joy

4 ’tis ready to blab out.

Deemed invalided as to love,

with a grave air Onegin listened

as, loving the confession of the heart,

8 the poet his whole self expressed.

His trustful conscience

naïvely he laid bare.

Eugene learned without trouble

12 the youthful story of his love —

a tale abounding in emotions

long since not new to us.

XX

Ah, he loved as one loves

no longer in our years; as only

the mad soul of a poet

4 is still condemned to love:

always, and everywhere, one reverie,

one customary wish,

one customary woe!

8 Neither the cooling distance,

nor the long years of separation,

nor hours given to the Muses,

nor foreign beauties,

12 nor noise of merriments, nor studies,

had changed in him a soul

warmed by a virgin fire.

XXI

When scarce a boy, by Olga captivated,

not having known yet torments of the heart,

he’d been a tender witness

4 of her infantine frolics.

He, in the shade of a protective park,

had shared her frolics,

and for these children wedding crowns

8 their fathers, who were friends and neighbors, destined.

In the backwoods, beneath a humble roof,

full of innocent charm,

she under the eyes of her parents

12 bloomed like a hidden lily of the valley

which is unknown in the dense grass

to butterflies or to the bee.

XXII

She gave the poet the first dream

of youthful transports,

and the thought of her animated

4 his pipe’s first moan.

Farewell, golden games! He

began to like thick groves,

seclusion, stillness, and the night,

8 and the stars, and the moon —

the moon, celestial lamp,

to which we dedicated

walks midst the evening darkness,

12 and tears, of secret pangs the solace…

But now we only see in her

a substitute for bleary lanterns.

XXIII

Always modest, always obedient,

always as merry as the morn,

as naïve as a poet’s life,

4 as winsome as love’s kiss;

her eyes, as azure as the sky,

smile, flaxen locks,

movements, voice, light waist — everything

8 in Olga… but take any novel,

and you will surely find

her portrait; it is very sweet;

I liked it once myself,

12 but it has come to bore me beyond measure.

Let me, my reader,

take up the elder sister.

XXIV

Her sister

was called Tatiana.13

For the first time a novel’s tender pages

4 with such a name we willfully shall grace.

What of it? It is pleasing, sonorous,

but from it, I know, is inseparable

the memory of ancientry

8 or housemaids’ quarters. We must all

admit that we have very little

taste even in our names

(to say nothing of verses);

12 enlightenment does not suit us,

and what we have derived from it

is affectation — nothing more.

XXV

So she was called

Tatiana. Neither with her sister’s beauty

nor with her [sister’s] rosy freshness

4 would she attract one’s eyes.

Sauvage, sad, silent,

as timid as the sylvan doe,

in her own family

8 she seemed a strangeling.

She knew not how to snuggle up

to her father or mother;

a child herself, among a crowd of children,

12 she never wished to play and skip,

and often all day long, alone,

she sat in silence by the window.

XXVI

Pensiveness, her companion,

even from cradle days,

adorned for her with dreams

4 the course of rural leisure.

Her delicate fingers

knew needles not; over the tambour