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.