With salty bits of social gossip,
Which lift a conversation that
Tatyana looked on as light chat,
Easy and sparkling, unpretentious,
Now and then turning, it would seem,
To measured thoughts on serious themes,
But not to deep truths or sharp censure.
It flowed on, causing no distress
With its unbridled joyfulness. 24
These talkers are top Petersburgers,
Quality people, dernier cri,
And recognizable. These others
Are fools from whom you cannot flee.
Here are some older dames, delightful
In caps and roses, and yet spiteful.
Here are some young girls, all equipped
With frigidly unsmiling lips.
Here, talking politics with passion,
Stands an ambassador. Here too
A greybeard strongly perfumed, who
Tells jokes; his manner is old-fashioned,
With witticisms dry as dust,
Subtle but, nowadays, ludicrous. 25
A man of aphoristic thinking
Says everything’s deplorable:
The tea’s too sweet, not fit for drinking,
The men are boorish, women dull,
Some novel is too vague and misty,
Some badge has gone to two young sisters.
He rails against the war, the strife,
Journals that lie, the snow, his wife…
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Here is Prolásov, labouring under
The weight of being known as mean;
In every album he has blunted
The pencils used by you, Saint-Priest.
Here stands another ball dictator,
A model for an illustrator,
A pussy-willow babe, pink-faced,
Mute, motionless, tight round the waist.
Here’s someone who came unexpected,
An overstarched young blade. The guests,
Much taken by his prettiness,
Smile at behaviour so affected.
The wordless glances slyly cast
Show the shared sentence on him passed. 27
But all that evening my Onegin
Was transfixed by Tatyana, though
He followed not the lovelorn maiden,
Poor, plain and shy, of long ago;
He saw the princess, independent,
A goddess out of reach, resplendent
In royal Russia. As for you,
Good people, you are like unto
Ancestral Eve, our first relation:
What’s granted you don’t like at all,
You want the serpent’s ceaseless call,
The mystic tree that brings temptation…
You must have the forbidden fruit
Or paradise will never suit. 28
This is a deeply changed Tatyana,
Who knows her role from first to last.
She’s mastered the constraining manner,
The tight routine of rank and class.
Is that young girl, once sweet and tender,
This paragon of grace and splendour,
This legislatrix of the ball?
And he had held her heart in thrall!
It was for him that, in night’s darkness,
Waiting for Morpheus and relief,
She used to grieve her young girl’s grief,
Her moonstruck eyes gone dull and sparkless,
Believing in some future dream—
A humble life lived out with him. 29
Love is the master of all ages.
To pure young hearts it is revealed
In little sudden, wholesome rages,
Like spring storms watering the fields;
In streams of passion the fields freshen,
Renewed and ripening. The blessing
Of life’s strength germinates new shoots,
Luxuriant growth and sugared fruits.
But in the late and barren season
When life is in decline for us
Dead signs of love are fatuous.
Our autumn tempests, nearly freezing,
Turn meadows into liquid mud
And strip bare the surrounding woods. 30
Alas, there is no doubt: Yevgeny
Loves our Tatyana like a child,
His days and nights devoted mainly
To lovelorn dreams. He is beguiled.
Against the call of reason, gently
Each day he drives up to the entry
Of her house, the glass doors. He woos her,
And like a shadow he pursues her,
Happy to drape around her shoulders
A fluffy boa, or place his warm
Fingers upon her passing arm,
Or ease her forward and control her
Through motley flunkies, or retrieve
Her soft, discarded handkerchief. 31
Tatyana doesn’t even notice
His desperate efforts. Neat and prim,
At home she plays the perfect hostess;
When out, she scarcely speaks to him.
A single nod she might award him,
But otherwise she just ignores him.
(Flirtation is now at a stop,
Condemned by people at the top.)
Onegin withers, weak and pallid;
She doesn’t see, or doesn’t care.
Onegin wastes away. Beware:
Is this consumption? Question valid.
They send him where the doctors are;
The doctors recommend a spa. 32
But he won’t go. No, he would rather
Commune with ancestors and plead
For union with them soon. Tatyana,
True to her sex, pays little heed,
While he stands firm and unrelenting.
He hopes, he harasses. If anything,
He gains new strength from weakness, and
Manages with a feeble hand
To pen a heartfelt missive to her
(Though letters, rightly, he esteemed
As meaningless in the extreme).
He was, and played, the anxious wooer,
Agonized, lovelorn and disturbed.
Here is his letter word for word: ONEGIN’S LETTER TO TATYANA
I know you’re certain to resent
The secret sadness in this message.
I see the bile in your expression,
Your proud eyes brimming with contempt!
What do I want? What is my purpose
In coming to you to confess?
Does this allow you to feel virtuous
While revelling in vindictiveness?
We met by chance one day, and Venus
Lit up a spark of warmth between us,
Though I could not believe in it,
Spurning good sense for no good reason,
Obsessed by loathsome thoughts of freedom
In which I would not yield one bit.
Another thing that separates us
Is Lensky, wretched victim, dead…
From everything the heart holds sacred
I tore myself away, and fled,
From each and everybody running,
Thinking that being calm and free
Would pass for happiness. Dear me,
How wrong I was, how harshly punished!
Now, minutes spent with you I prize,
The merest chance to trail behind you,
To see you smile and watch your eyes,
To launch a loving glance and find you,
To listen to your voice, to see
Fulfilment in your perfect spirit,
To faint and fade in agony—
This is my pain; my bliss lies in it.
But I’m denied that. All I do
Is shamble after you at random,
Pledging dear hours, dear days to you.
To futile tedium I abandon