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 standing in the chosen throng,

silent and nebulous?

To everyone he seems a stranger.

8 Before him faces come and go

like a series of tedious 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 blown our way?

VIII

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…

— You know him? — Yes and no.

IX

— Why so unfavorably then

do you report on him?

Because we indefatigably

4 fuss, judge of 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?

X

Blest who was youthful in his youth;

blest who matured at the right time;

who, with the years, the chill of life

4 was gradually able to withstand;

who never was addicted to strange dreams;

who did not shun the fashionable rabble;

who was at twenty fop or dasher,

8 and then at thirty, profitably married;

who rid himself at fifty

of private and of other debts;

who gained repute, money, and rank

12 calmly in turn;

about whom lifelong one kept saying:

N. N. is an excellent man.

XI

But it is sad to think that youth

was given us in vain,

that we betrayed it every hour,

4 that it duped us;

that our best aspirations,

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

the general opinions or the passions.

XII

When one becomes the subject

of noisy comments, it’s unbearable

(you will agree) to pass among

4 sensible people for a feigned 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 without a goal, without exertions,

lived to the age of twenty-six,

12 irked by the inactivity of leisure,

without employment, wife, or occupation,

could think of nothing to take up.

XIII

A restlessness took hold of him,

the inclination to a change of places

(a most excruciating property,

4 a cross that few deliberately bear).

He left his countryseat,

the solitude of woods and fields,

where an ensanguined shade

8 daily appeared to him,

and started upon travels without aim,

accessible to one sensation;

and to him journeys,

12 like everything on earth,

grew boring. He returned and found himself,

like Chatski, come from boat to ball.

XIV

But lo! the throng has undulated,

a murmur 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 mimetic artifices….

All about her was quiet, simple.

12 She seemed a faithful reproduction

du comme il faut…. ([Shishkov,] forgive me:

I do not know how to translate.)

XV

Closer to her the ladies moved;

old women smiled to her;

the men bowed lower, sought

4 to catch her gaze;

maidens before her passed more quietly

across the room; and higher

than anyone lifted his nose and shoulders

8 the general who had come in with her.

None could have called her

a beauty; but from head to foot

none could have found in her

12 what is by autocratic fashion

in the high London circle

called “vulgar.” (I’m unable —

XVI

— of that word I am very fond,

but am unable to translate it; in our midst

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 brilliant Nina Voronskóy,

that Cleopatra of the Neva;

and, surely, you would have agreed

12 that Nina with her marble beauty

could not — though dazzling —

eclipse her neighbor.

XVII

“Can it be possible?” thinks Eugene.

“Can it be she?… But really… No…

What! From outback 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.”

XVIII

“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 whatsoever

troubled her soul,

however greatly

she was surprised, astounded,

12 nothing betrayed her,

her ton remained the same,

her bow was just as quiet.

XIX

Forsooth! It was not merely that she didn’t

flinch, or blanch suddenly, or flush —

she simply never moved an eyebrow,

4 did not even compress her lips.

Though he looked with the utmost care,

not even traces of the old Tatiana could

Onegin find.

8 With her he wished to start a conversation —

and… and could not. She asked: How long

had he been there? And whence came he —

from their own parts, maybe?

12 Then on her spouse she turned a look

of lassitude; glided away….

And moveless he remained.

XX

Could it be that the same Tatiana

to whom, alone with her,

at the beginning of our novel

4 back in a stagnant, distant region,

in the fine fervor of moralization

precepts he once had preached;

the one from whom a letter he preserves

8 where the heart speaks,

where all is out, all unrestrained;

that little girl — or is he dreaming? —

that little girl whom in her humble state

12 he had passed over — could it be that now

she had been so indifferent,

so bold with him?

XXI

He leaves the close-packed rout,

he drives home, pensive; by a fancy —

now sad, now charming,

4 his first sleep is disturbed.

He wakes; 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 a courteous

reply he scrawls. What is the matter

with him? In what strange daze is he?

What has stirred at the bottom of that cold

12 and sluggish soul?

Vexation? Vanity? Or once again

youth’s worry — love?

XXII

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

8 they sit together. From Onegin’s lips

the words come not. Ill-humored,

awkward, he barely, barely

replies to her. His head

12 is full of a persistent thought.

Persistently he looks: she sits

easy and free.

XXIII

The husband comes. He interrupts

this 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 nonsense

flashed without stupid affectation,

and meantime interrupted it

sensible talk, without trite topics,

12 eternal truths, or pedantry,

nor did its free vivacity

shock anybody’s ears.

XXIV

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, in mobcaps and in roses,

elderly ladies, 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

XXVI

Here was […], who had gained

distinction by the baseness of his soul

and 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 an exchange of silent glances was

his universal condemnation.

XXVII

But my Onegin the whole evening heeds

only Tatiana:

not the shy 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 have the forbidden fruit supplied to you,

for paradise without that is no paradise to you.

XXVIII

How changed Tatiana is!

Into her role how firmly she has entered!

The ways of a constricting rank

4 how fast she has adopted!

Who’d dare to seek the tender little lass

in this majestic,

this careless legislatrix of salons?

8 And he had stirred her heart!

About him in the dark of night,

as long as Morpheus had not come flying,

time was, she virginally