Had left us both dissatisfied.
The fire in both of us had died.
Ahead of us lay only rancour
From Lady Luck and men, all strife,
And in the morning of our life. 46
To live and think is to be daunted,
To feel contempt for other men.
To feel is to be hurt, and haunted
By days that will not come again,
With a lost sense of charm and wonder,
And memory to suffer under—
The stinging serpent of remorse.
This all adds piquancy, of course,
To conversation. To begin with,
I bridled at his witticisms,
But soon I settled to his rhythms:
The stinging shafts that he would win with,
The dark remarks, half-joke, half-bile,
That made his epigrams so vile. 47
On limpid summer nights, how often,
We watched as limpid evenings passed,
And saw the Neva night sky soften
On happy waters smooth as glass
With no Diana in reflection.
Recalling romance and affection,
We hymned serenely love gone by,
Breathed vapours from the tender sky
And living gladness from the scenery,
Glorying in it, drinking deep.
Like a freed convict, half-asleep,
Transported into woodland greenery,
We dreamt ourselves away, in truth,
Back to the dawning of our youth. 48
Depressed in spirit, looking doleful
And leaning on the granite shelf,
There stood Yevgeny, sad and soulful
(As once a bard described himself ),
And in the stillness, from their entries,
Night sentries hailed their brother sentries.
Rattling carriages were about—
From Million Street the wheels rang out—
And then a splashing oarsman boated
His small craft down the dozing stream.
Far off, as in a pleasant dream,
A horn blew, singing came, full-throated.
But there’s no sweeter late-night sound
Than Tasso’s octaves, I have found. 49
O waters of the Adriatic!
Brenta! I will see you one day.
Inspired anew, I’ll be ecstatic
To hear your magic voice at play.
Apollo’s grandchildren revere it;
I know it well. I came to hear it
From tales that England’s proud lyre told.
And those Italian nights of gold
Will bring delight to me, a wanderer
Floating with a Venetian chum,
A girl, half-chatterbox, half-dumb,
Secreted with me in a gondola.
She’ll teach my lips the language of
Francesco Petrarch—and of love. 50
Shall I be one of God’s free creatures?
“Let it be now!” is on my lips.
I watch the weather, roam the beaches
And beckon to the sails of ships.
Clad in dark cloud, braving the waters,
Across the seas to the four quarters
I’ll sail in freedom one fine day.
This shore is drab. I’ll get away
From uncongenial climes so trying,
And in the shimmering haze of noon
In my own Africa I’ll soon
Be thinking of dark Russia, sighing,
Where I knew suffering, love and toil.
My heart is buried in her soil. 51
We were agreed, and might have started
To visit many an alien clime,
But all too soon we two were parted
By destiny for a long time.
Death came at this time to his father,
Which left Onegin faced with rather
A lot of greedy creditors,
Each with his argument or cause.
Yevgeny, loathing litigation
And happy with things as they stood,
Handed them every copeck. Good—
It didn’t seem like deprivation.
(Perhaps he could foresee the day
His rich old uncle passed away.) 52
And, sure enough, there came a letter
From uncle’s steward. My, oh my,
Uncle was ill, would not get better,
And he’d quite like to say goodbye.
With this sad missive in his pocket
Yevgeny set off like a rocket
In a post-chaise to visit him,
Yawning already at things so grim.
To get the money he was ready
For tedium, deceits and sighs
(My novel started on this wise),
But once he had arrived, instead he
Found uncle on the table, worth
No more than his six feet of earth. 53
The yard was full of staff and yeomen
Hailing from all localities,
Arriving there as friends or foemen,
Enthusiasts for obsequies,
And after uncle’s sad interment
People and priests fell in a ferment
On food and drink, then everyone
Went his own way, a job well done.
Onegin, in his rural wisdom,
Owns mills, lakes, woods and lands between.
The landlord, who has so far been
A wastrel with no taste for system,
Is pleased that what he used to do
Has been exchanged for… something new. 54
The first two days were a new highlight:
The far fields with their lonesome look,
The chilly oak grove in the twilight,
The beauty of a burbling brook,
But then each hill and copse and covert
Lost interest, and he could not love it.
Now he was bored with every place,
Now stark truth stared him in the face:
Boredom is just as enervating
Where streets and mansions don’t exist,
Nor ballrooms, poetry, nor whist.
Depression dogged him, watching, waiting,
To chase him and to bring him strife,
His shadow or his loving wife. 55
I was born for a calm existence
Out in the country, where, it seems,
The lyre can sing with more insistence
And brighter shine creative dreams.
With pastimes innocent and plenty
I stroll the lakeside. Far niente
Is now a rule of life for me.
I wake up in the morning free,
Expecting pleasures with new hunger.
I read a little, sleep a lot.
Striving for glory I am not.
Those bygone days when I was younger,
Did I not spend them all like this
In shade and idleness and bliss? 56
O rural idyll, love and flowers!
O fields, to you I yield my soul…
I mark what differences are ours,
What separates us on the whole,
So that no reader, no wild joker,
No literary libel-broker
Can publish somewhere by design
Onegin’s features as for mine,
And then repeat the claim (outrageous!)
That here my portrait has been daubed
Like Byron’s, proudly self-absorbed,
As if one could not fill these pages
By painting someone other than
One’s own self as the leading man. 57
Poets, I tell you, are romancers,
Good friends of fancifying love.
I used to dream of cherished fancies
That moved my spirit from above,
Which seized their image to record it,
And later on the muse restored it.
In this way, blithely I portrayed
My ideal girl, the mountain maid,
And the harem on Salgir’s borders.
But now, friends, you bring me to task;
Time and again I hear you ask,
“Whom does your sad lyre set before us?
Which of the jealous maids is she?
Which girl is its dedicatee? 58
Whose gaze caressing and inspiring
Rewards you as she turns to nurse
You through your pensive lyring?
Who is the idol of your verse?”
There’s nobody, my friends, I swear it.
Love’s frenzy, I have had to bear it
Without delight worth thinking of.
Blest is the man who merges love
With rhyming fever; he redoubles
Poetry’s ramblings blessed by God,
He walks with Petrarch where he trod
And soothes the heart in its worst troubles.
He gains fame, too, for years to come.