The faded garland of my youth?
Can it be true that in reality,
As fancy elegies might say,
My springtime days have flown away,
As I once said with jocularity?
Can those days never be resumed,
And am I to turn thirty soon? 45
And so my life has reached its zenith—
Something I cannot now deny.
Still, let us part as friends, not enemies,
My free-and-easy youth and I!
Thanks for the pleasures and enjoyment,
The disappointments and sweet torments.
For all the clamour, banquets, storms,
For all your gifts in each new form
I really must express my gratitude.
In all things, bringing storm or lull,
I have enjoyed you to the full.
Enough! With clear mind and new attitude
From my old life I take a rest
And set forth on another quest. 46
My favourite haunts I now look back on,
Where I spent long, sequestered days,
Days filled with idleness and passion,
My spirit in a wistful haze.
Young inspiration, do not soften,
Trouble my enterprise more often,
Fly to me when I sit apart
And agitate my sleeping heart,
Let not my poet’s soul be captured
To end up atrophied and tough,
Steadily petrified, made rough
By the smart world and all its rapture,
In this sad slough wherein we lie
Wallowing, my friends, you and I.
* Where skies are overcast and days are short / Is born a race that feels no pain in death. (Italian.)
CHAPTER SEVEN
Moscow, Russia’s favourite daughter,
Where is your equal to be found?
DMÍTRIYEV
How not to love our native Moscow?
BARATÝNSKY
Defaming Moscow? Worthless to see the world.
Where’s better?
Where we’re not.
GRIBOYÉDOV
1
Forced down by spring suns from the summits
Of nearby hills, the winter snows
Descend in turbid streams to plummet
Onto the flooded fields below.
With her bright smile, though still half-yawning,
Nature salutes the year’s new morning,
The heavens radiate dark blue,
The limpid woodlands are shot through
With verdure, and their fluff grows fuller,
Bees wander from their cells of wax
To fly the fields and take their tax,
The drying flatlands gleam with colour,
Cows moo, and nightingales delight
In singing through the silent night. 2
What sadness comes with your emergence,
O time of love. Yes, spring is spring,
When the soul stirs and the blood surges!
But, oh, what anguished pains you bring!
Ah, how my heavy spirit lurches
When springtime breathes on me and burgeons,
Wafting its charms into my face
In some secluded country place,
When happiness can seem discordant
And all things joyous, all things quick
Turn out to be a shabby trick
Leading to disaffected boredom,
Taxing a spirit long extinct
That sees all things as black as ink. 3
We cannot welcome the renewal
Of autumn’s dead leaves. It’s no good:
The loss of them is no less cruel
Despite new whispers from the woods.
Perhaps we watch the rise of nature
With blurred ideas, and link it later
With the slow fading of our youth,
Not destined to return, in sooth.
Or it may be our minds remember
In a poetic, sleepy haze
Another spring in bygone days
Which stirs the heart, and with the tremor
Come dreams of places far from this…
The moonlight… and a night of bliss. 4
It’s springtime. Come, you gentle idlers,
Epicureans, sages all,
You apathetic, smug insiders,
You armchair farmers, heed the call,
You Priams of the Russian country
You caring ladies, all and sundry,
The rural spring is calling you—
Warm weather, flowers, work to do,
With country rambles, oh, so bracing
Followed by long seductive nights…
Come to the fields, friends, now! Take flight
In laden carriages outpacing
Slow-trundling wagons and old crates.
Stream forth from every city gate. 5
Come, readers (loyally indulgent),
In coaches of the gaudy kind,
Come from your cities busy, bulging,
Leave all that winter fun behind.
Come with my wayward muse. Let’s listen
Together as the oak trees whisper
Above a nameless little brook
Where my Yevgeny found a nook,
Living in idle, sad seclusion,
And saw the recent winter through,
Near to the place where she lived too—
Tanya, my meditative maiden.
He lives no longer in this place,
Where he has left so sad a trace. 6
You see those hills set in a crescent?
Let’s go there, where a brooklet winds
Down to the river through those pleasant
Green meadows and that copse of limes.
Spring’s friend, the nightingale, sings for us,
And all night long we hear his chorus;
Wild roses bloom, the brook purls by
Near where a tombstone meets the eye
Beneath two shady pines, now ageing,
Its epitaph open to view:
HERE LIES VLADIMIR LENSKY, WHO
WENT YOUNG FROM THIS LIFE, AND COURAGEOUS.
(Age, years and details such as these)
YOUNG POET, MAY YOU REST IN PEACE. 7
On a low-hanging pine-tree twiglet,
Rocked gently by the morning breeze
O’er this mean funerary tribute,
There used to be an unsigned wreath.
Late in the evening, at their leisure,
Two girls would come out here together
By moonlight where the grave was dug
To shed warm tears and share a hug,
But now… the monument looks dismal,
Forgotten, and the path forlorn,
All overgrown. The wreath has gone.
Nearby, alone, withered and grizzled,
A shepherd warbles while he plaits
His wretched shoes, as in the past. [8, 9] 10
Poor Lensky! Olga did not languish
Or weep for very long. Alas,
This marriageable maiden’s anguish
Was something that was soon to pass.
Another fellow won her favour,
Another came along to save her
And soothe her sorrow, someone who
Knew all the tricks of how to woo.
A lancer won her heart… The altar
Awaited them. Soon, looking down,
She blushed beneath her bridal crown,
Steadying as she shyly faltered.
Her downcast eyes were blazing, while
Her lips played with the faintest smile. 11
Poor Lensky! Could he somehow know it?
Facing the eternal void, could he
Have felt this hurt, the tragic poet,
This fateful form of treachery?
Or is he on the Lethe, stealing
Away now, blissfully unfeeling,
Untouched by us till kingdom come,
Our world closed off from him, and dumb?…
That’s it—the cold void in attendance
Beyond the grave. We have no choice.
Foes, friends and lovers—every voice
Is stilled. Malevolent descendants,
A chorus of our angry heirs,
Will squabble over what is theirs. 12
And Olga’s bright voice at the Larins’
Did not last long. Her time was spent.
Her lancer (whose fate was the army’s)
Took her to join his regiment.
The mother, seeing off her daughter,
Her eyes an ocean of salt water,
Seemed to be less than half-alive.
But Tanya did not, could not cry.
Her saddened face was an array of
Pale shadows that resembled death,
Though when they walked out on the steps