brooded,
12 raised to the moon a dying eye,
dreaming that someday she might make
with him 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 rich 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.
XXX
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 mind’s stern protests,
up to her porch, glass vestibule,
daily he drives.
8 He chases like a shadow after her;
he’s happy if he casts
the fluffy boa on her shoulders,
or touches torridly
12 her hand, or if he parts in front of her
the motley host of liveries, or picks up
her handkerchief.
XXXI
She does not notice him,
no matter how he strives — even to death;
receives him freely at her house; at those
4 of others says two or three words to him;
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 wastes away:
12 he’s practically phthisical.
All send Onegin to physicians;
in chorus these send him to spas.
XXXII
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 he with a weak hand to the princess
writes an impassioned missive.
Though generally little sense in letters
he saw, not without reason;
12 but evidently torment of the heart
had now passed his endurance.
Here you have his letter word for word.
Onegin’S Letter To Tatiana
I foresee everything: the explanation
of a sad secret will offend you.
What bitter scorn
4 your proud glance will express!
What do I want? What is my object
in opening my soul to you?
What wicked merriment
8 perhaps I give occasion to!
Chancing to meet you once,
noting in you a spark of tenderness,
I did not venture to believe in it:
12 did not give way to a sweet habit;
my tedious freedom
I did not wish to lose. Another thing
yet separated us:
16 a hapless victim Lenski fell.
From all that to the heart is dear
then did I tear my heart away;
alien to everybody, tied by nothing,
20 I thought: liberty and peace are
a substitute for happiness. Good God!
How wrong I was, how I am punished!
No — every minute to see you; to follow
24 you everywhere;
the smile of your lips, movement of your eyes,
to try to capture with enamored eyes;
to listen 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 rapture!
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 — they are
36 sufficiently oppressive 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 meek plea
your severe gaze will see
the schemes of despicable cunning —
44 and I can hear your wrathful censure.
If you hut knew how terrible it is
to languish with the thirst of love,
burn — and by means of reason hourly
48 subdue the tumult 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 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.
XXXIII
There is no answer. He sends a new missive.
To the second, to the third letter —
there is no answer. He drives out to some
4 reception. Hardly has he entered — there she is
coming in his direction. How severe!
He is not seen, to him no word is said.
Ugh! How surrounded she is now
8 with Twelfthtide cold!
How anxious are to hold back indignation
her stubborn lips!
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 renounces
and in his silent study comes to him
the recollection of the time
when cruel chondria
12 pursued him in the noisy monde,
captured him, took him by the collar,
and shut him up in a dark hole.
XXXV
Again, without discrimination,
he started reading. He read Gibbon,
Rousseau, Manzoni, Herder,
4 Chamfort, Mme de Staël, Bichat, Tissot.
He read the skeptic Bayle,
he read the works of Fontenelle,
he read some [authors] of our own,
8 without rejecting anything —
the “almanacs” and the reviews
where sermons into us are drummed,
where I’m today abused so much
12 but where such madrigals addressed tome
I used to meet with now and then:
e sempre bene, gentlemen.
XXXVI
And lo — his eyes were reading, but his thoughts
were far away;
chimeras, desires, sorrows
4 kept crowding deep into his soul.
Between the printed lines
he with spiritual eyes
read other lines. It was in them
8 that he was utterly absorbed.
These were the secret legends of the heart’s
dark ancientry;
dreams unconnected
12 with anything; threats, rumors, presages;
or the live tosh of a long tale,
or a young maiden’s letters.
XXXVII
And by degrees into a lethargy
of feelings and of thoughts he falls,
while before him Imagination
4 deals out her motley faro deck.
Now he sees: on the melted snow,
as at a night’s encampment sleeping,
stirless, a youth lies; and he hears
8 a voice: “Well, what — he’s dead!”
Now he sees foes forgotten,
calumniators, and malicious cowards,
and a swarm of young traitresses,
12 and a circle of despicable comrades;
and now 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. (Frankly,
4 that would have been a boon, indeed!)
And true: by dint of magnetism,
the mechanism of Russian verses
my addleheaded pupil
8 at that time nearly grasped.
How much a poet he resembled
when in a corner he would sit alone,
and the hearth blazed in front of him,
12 and he hummed “Benedetta”
or “Idol mio,” and into the fire
dropped now a slipper, now his magazine!
XXXIX
Days rushed. In warmth-pervaded air
winter already was resolving;
and he did not become a poet,
4 he did not die, did not go mad.
Spring quickens him: for the first time
his close-shut chambers, where he had
been hibernating like a marmot,
8 his double windows, inglenook —
he leaves on a bright morning,
he fleets in sleigh along the Neva’s bank.
Upon blue blocks of hewn-out ice
12 the sun plays. In the streets
the furrowed snow thaws muddily:
whither, upon it, his fast course
XL
directs Onegin? You beforehand
have guessed already. Yes, exactly:
apace to her, to his Tatiana,
4 my unreformed eccentric comes.
He walks in, looking like a corpse.
There’s not a soul in the front hall.
He enters the 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, reading
12 some kind of letter,
and softly sheds a flood of tears,
her cheek propped on her hand.
XLI
Ah! Her mute sufferings —
in this swift instant who would not have read!
Who would not have the former Tanya,
4 poor Tanya, recognized now in the princess?
In throes of mad regrets,
Eugene falls at her feet;
she gives a start,
8 and is silent, and looks,
without surprise, without wrath, at Onegin….
His sick, extinguished gaze,
imploring aspect, mute reproof,
12 she takes in everything. The simple maid,
with the dreams, with the 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
4 her limp hand from his avid lips….
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 avenue, fate brought us
12 together and so meekly
your lesson I heard out.
Today it is my turn.
XLIII
“Onegin, I was younger then,
I was, I daresay, better-looking,
and I loved you; and what then, what
4 did I find in your heart?
What answer? Mere severity.
There wasn’t — was there? — novelty for you
in a meek little maiden’s love?
8 Even today — good heavens! — my blood freezes
as soon as I remember
your cold glance and that sermon…. But I do not
accuse you; at that awful 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 vain 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 I must
now move in the grand monde;
8 because I have both wealth and 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 honor?
XLV
“I’m crying…. If your Tanya
you’ve not forgotten yet,
then know: the sharpness of your blame,
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 trifle!
How, with your heart and mind,
be the slave of a trivial feeling?
XLVI
“But as to me, Onegin, this magnificence,
a wearisome life’s tinsel, my successes
in the world’s vortex,
4
