“My uncle has most honest principles:
when he was taken gravely ill,
he forced one to respect him
4 and nothing better could invent.
To others his example is a lesson;
but, good God, what a bore to sit
by a sick person day and night, not stirring
8 a step away!
What base perfidiousness
to entertain one half-alive,
adjust for him his pillows,
12 sadly serve him his medicine,
sigh — and think inwardly
when will the devil take you?”
II
Thus a young scapegrace thought
as with post horses in the dust he flew,
by the most lofty will of Zeus
4 the heir of all his kin.
Friends of Lyudmila and Ruslan!
The hero of my novel,
without preambles, forthwith,
8 I'd like to have you meet:
Onegin, a good pal of mine,
was born upon the Neva's banks,
where maybe you were born,
12 or used to shine, my reader!
There formerly I too promenaded —
but harmful is the North to me.1
III
Having served excellently, nobly,
his father lived by means of debts;
gave three balls yearly
4 and squandered everything at last.
Fate guarded Eugene:
at first, Madame looked after him;
later, Monsieur replaced her.
8 The child was boisterous but charming.
Monsieur l'Abbé, a poor wretch of a Frenchman,
not to wear out the infant,
taught him all things in play,
12 bothered him not with stern moralization,
scolded him slightly for his pranks,
and to the Letniy Sad took him for walks.
IV
Then, when the season of tumultuous youth
for Eugene came,
season of hopes and tender melancholy,
4 Monsieur was ousted from the place.
Now my Onegin is at large:
hair cut after the latest fashion,
dressed like a London Dandy2 —
8 and finally he saw the World.
In French impeccably
he could express himself and write,
danced the mazurka lightly, and
12 bowed unconstrainedly —
what would you more? The World decided
that he was clever and most charming.
V
All of us had a bit of schooling
in something and somehow:
hence in our midst it is not hard,
4 thank God, to flaunt one's education.
Onegin was, in the opinion
of many (judges resolute and stern),
a learned fellow but a pedant.
8 He had the happy talent,
without constraint, in conversation
slightly to touch on everything,
keep silent, with an expert's learned air,
12 during a grave discussion, and provoke
the smiles of ladies with the fire
of unexpected epigrams.
VI
Latin has gone at present out of fashion;
still, to tell you the truth,
he had enough knowledge of Latin
4 to make out epigraphs,
expatiate on Juvenal,
put at the bottom of a letter vale, and he remembered, though not without fault,
8 two lines from the Aeneid. He had no inclination
to rummage in the chronological
dust of the earth's historiography,
12 but anecdotes of days gone by,
from Romulus to our days,
he did keep in his memory.
VII
Lacking the lofty passion not to spare
life for the sake of sounds,
an iamb from a trochee —
4 no matter how we strove — he could not tell apart.
Theocritus and Homer he disparaged,
but read, in compensation, Adam Smith,
and was a deep economist:
8 that is, he could assess the way
a state grows rich,
what it subsists upon, and why
it needs not gold
12 when it has got the simple product.
His father could not understand him,
and mortgaged his lands.