I know: some would make ladies
read Russian. Horrible indeed!
Can I image them
4 with The Well-Meaner21in their hands?
My poets, I appeal to you!
Is it not true that the sweet objects
for whom, to expiate your sins,
8 in secret you wrote verses,
to whom your hearts you dedicated —
did not they all, wielding the Russian language
poorly, and with difficulty,
12 so sweetly garble it,
and on their lips did not a foreign language
become a native one?
XXVIII
The Lord forbid my meeting at a ball
or at its breakup, on the porch,
a seminarian in a yellow shawl
4 or an Academician in a bonnet!
As vermeil lips without a smile,
without grammatical mistakes
I don't like Russian speech.
8 Perchance (it would be my undoing!)
a generation of new belles,
heeding the magazines' entreating voice,
to Grammar will accustom us;
12 verses will be brought into use.
Yet I... what do I care?
I shall be true to ancientry.
XXIX
An incorrect and careless patter,
an inexact delivery of words,
as heretofore a flutter of the heart
4 will in my breast produce;
in me there's no force to repent;
to me will Gallicisms remain
as sweet as the sins of past youth,
8 as Bogdanóvich's verse.
But that will do. 'Tis time I busied
myself with my fair damsel's letter;
my word I've given — and what now? Yea, yea!
12 I'm ready to back out of it.
I know: tender Parny's
pen in our days is out of fashion.
XXX
Bard of The Feasts and languorous sadness,22 if you were still with me,
I would have troubled you,
4 dear fellow, with an indiscreet request:
that into magic melodies
you would transpose
a passionate maiden's foreign words.
8 Where are you? Come! My rights
I with a bow transfer to you....
But in the midst of melancholy rocks,
his heart disused from praises,
12 alone, under the Finnish sky
he wanders, and his soul
hears not my worry.
XXXI
Tatiana's letter is before me;
religiously I keep it;
I read it with a secret heartache
4 and cannot get my fill of reading it.
Who taught her both this tenderness
and amiable carelessness of words?
Who taught her all that touching tosh,
8 mad conversation of the heart
both fascinating and injurious?
I cannot understand. But here's
an incomplete, feeble translation,
12 the pallid copy of a vivid picture,
or Freischütz executed by the fingers
of timid female learners.
Tatiana's Letter To Onegin
I write to you — what would one more?
What else is there that I could say?
'Tis now, I know, within your will
4 to punish me with scorn.
But you, preserving for my hapless lot
at least one drop of pity,
you'll not abandon me.
8 At first, I wanted to be silent;
believe me: of my shame
you never would have known
if I had had the hope but seldom,
12 but once a week,
to see you at our country place,
only to hear you speak,
to say a word to you, and then
16 to think and think about one thing,
both day and night, till a new meeting.
But, they say, you're unsociable;
in backwoods, in the country, all bores you,
20 while we... in no way do we shine,
though simpleheartedly we welcome you.
Why did you visit us?
In the backwoods of a forgotten village,
24 I would have never known you
nor have known this bitter torment.
The turmoil of an inexperienced soul
having subdued with time (who knows?),
28 I would have found a friend after my heart,
have been a faithful wife
and a virtuous mother.