Lensky began to do the same,
Squinting his left eye, taking aim…
Onegin fired… The hour determined
Had struck. The poet made no sound.
His pistol tumbled to the ground. 31
One hand across his breastbone resting,
He fell. But this was death, not pain;
His misted eyes gave out the message.
In this way, thick snows, having lain
Solid beneath the sparkling sunshine,
Slide slowly down the hillside sometimes.
Immediately Onegin ran
In a cold sweat to the young man.
He looked, he called him… All for nothing.
He’s gone. The bard, Onegin’s friend,
Has come to an untimely end!
The storm has petered out. The blossom
Has wilted in the morning light,
And, lo, the altar flame has died. 32
He lay quite still, his forehead seeming
Unusual, languidly at rest,
Blood oozing from a wound still steaming,
A bullet hole below the breast.
Just now his heart had been full, racing
With the strong force of inspiration,
With love and hope and enmity,
Beating with life, blood coursing free;
Now he looks like a house deserted,
Where all is quiet, all is dark,
The silence permanent and stark,
The shutters closed, the windows dirtied
With chalk. The mistress of this place
Has gone away and left no trace. 33
It’s fun to deal in witty sallies
And irritate a foolish foe;
It’s fun to see the poor chap rally,
Tilting his horns to have a go.
It’s fun when he sees his reflection
As something shameful for rejecting,
And funnier still, my friends, when he
Is fool enough to roar, “That’s me!”
But the most fun comes from insisting
On plans for a noble death, somehow
Fixating on the man’s pale brow,
And aiming coolly from a distance.
But sending him to kingdom come—
Surely you won’t find that much fun. 34
Imagine this: you with your pistol
Have murdered someone, a young friend,
Because some glare, some silly whisper
Or wrong response chanced to offend
Your feelings while you drank together,
Or maybe in his wild displeasure
He took offence and challenged you—
What is there left for you to do,
And will your soul feel any different
To see him stretched out on the ground
With death depicted on his brow,
And even now his body stiffening,
As he lies deaf and dumb down there,
Scorning your cries of wild despair? 35
Feeling the qualms of guilt intensely,
Gripping his pistol still, with dread,
Yevgeny glances down at Lensky.
“That’s it,” Zaretsky says. “He’s dead.”
“He’s dead?” The ghastly phrase, now uttered,
Shatters Onegin’s calm. He shudders
And walks off, calling to his men.
With utmost care Zaretsky then
Puts the cold body on the sledge back,
A burden of the direst sort.
Scenting a corpse, the horses snort,
Restively stamping as they edge back
And wetting their steel bits with foam.
Then arrow-like they fly off home. 36
My friends, you’re sorry for the poet,
Lost in the bloom of hope and joy,
Without a future, ne’er to know it,
So recently a little boy,
Now gone. Where is his raging ardour,
The noble striving ever harder,
The thoughts and sentiments of youth,
Bold, towering with tender truth?
Where are the longings of this lover,
The urge to learn and toil, the blame
He might have felt for vice and shame,
The yearning dreams of something other,
Those tokens of a life beyond,
Those holy dreams of rhyme and song? 37
Could he have proved a benefactor,
Or maybe he was born for fame?
His silenced lyre might have been active
In thunderous and unbroken strains
For years to come. He could have risen
To occupy a high position
Within society’s pantheon.
His martyred spirit, moving on,
Perhaps took with it something sacred
And secret, something now destroyed,
Creative words lost in the void,
Sent to the grave, and separated
For ever from the hymns of time
And praise from some dynastic line. [38] 39
Or maybe not. The poet’s story
Might have been commonplace and trite,
His young years lost in a furore
Of early flames not long alight.
He would have greatly changed and hurried
To drop the poems and get married,
Live, cuckolded, far from the town,
Happy in quilted dressing gown.
He’d have known life’s goodness and badness:
At forty gout, then food and drink,
Boredom and fatness, powers ashrink,
Only to die on his own mattress;
Amongst his children he would croak,
Doctors and weeping womenfolk. 40
But this is make-believe, dear reader.
Alas, poor Lensky, in the end,
Once poet, thinker and daydreamer,
Has been shot dead by his good friend.
There on the left, outside the village,
Where once he lived, where life was thrilling,
Two pines have intertwined their roots
Above meandering little brooks
That feed the stream down in the valley
Where shepherds love to halt and kip
And women reapers come to dip
The echoing pitchers that they carry,
There by the stream in deepest shade
A simple headstone has been laid. 41
Nearby, as April showers bespangle
The green fields, leaving them to soak,
A shepherd plaits his lime-bark sandals,
Singing of Volga fisherfolk.
And if a young girl, a newcomer
Down from the city for the summer
Gallops out as and when she feels,
Riding alone across the fields,
She may well halt her horse there, side on
Reining him in, and after that,
Raising a light veil from her hat,
She’ll set her soft, swift-moving eyes on
Lensky’s plain text, and they will brim
With tender, moving tears for him. 42
She’ll amble on through open pasture
With many ideas to contemplate,
Crestfallen, sick at heart, long after
Because of Lensky and his fate.
“So, what did Olga do?” she wonders.
“How long did her poor heart stay sundered?
Or did her tears abate somehow?
And where is Olga’s sister now?
And he, who left the world behind him
(Of stylish belles the stylish foe),
Where did that gloomy oddball go?
The man who killed, where shall we find him?”
These details I shall soon rehearse
For you, my friends, chapter and verse. 43
But not now. Though I am sincerely
Fond of my hero, and although
I shall return to him soon, really
I’m in no mood for him just now.
The years pass, and harsh prose is beckoning,
With giddy rhymes no longer reckoning,
And I (says he with a deep sigh)
Shall not pursue them—no, not I.
My quill has lost its old-time yearning
To spatter fleeting sheets with ink.
I now have colder thoughts to think
And concepts new, more brightly burning,
Which blight (in company or alone)
The gentle slumber of my soul. 44
I know new voices and new yearnings,
And sorrows new I also know,
But these desires are hopeless journeys,
And sorrows old—I miss them so.
O dreams, my dreams! Where is your sweetness?
Whence comes your (hackneyed rhyme!) your fleetness?
Must I at last confront the truth—