Such examples in our language could easily be multiplied, but we have seen enough to demonstrate one of the trickiest problems of English translation: the besetting danger of verbal rhymes and other hackneyed pairings. All the existing translations, to varying degrees, are diminished by this recurrent disadvantage. (The present one will not be flawless in this respect, though at least it helps to have started out with this danger in mind and with every intention to keep feeble rhyming to a minimum. For example, the first five feminine rhymes of this translation, covering the dedication and the opening of the first stanza, are as follows: amusement/perusal, spirit/fill it/I will it, tragic/pragmatic, insomnia/phenomena, probity/nobody. The justification for such unusual rhymes is given below.)
But where exactly is the problem? Couldn’t we just refrain from using feminine rhymes, thus following the best English poets? It is not so easy. At least two translations have done exactly that, without success. The very first poetic version of Yevgeny Onegin, by Lt Col. Henry Spalding, came out as early as 1881, with Pushkin scarcely forty years dead; more than half a century would pass before the next translations began to appear, to celebrate the Russian poet’s centenary in 1937. Given the disadvantages under which Spalding laboured (lack of good dictionaries, research materials, and so on) he did a remarkably good job. His work is fluent, accurate and easily readable, though two things stand out as unfortunate. First, his use of our language seems archaic both in the words chosen and in their artificial deployment. For instance, nowhere but in poetry would you write, as Spalding does, “To freeze his finger hath begun…” This is unfaithful to Pushkin, whose language always seems modern and natural even after the passage of so many generations The second defect is more subtle. He has decided, for reasons that will be obvious from our discussion above, to dispense with feminine rhymes. This has an effect that becomes immediately apparent to anyone who can read the originaclass="underline" the rhythmic flow of Pushkin’s poetry has been changed and subverted. The imposition (in English) of snappy endings to lines that are already two syllables shorter than our national favourite (the iambic pentameter) creates a kind of jerkiness and staccato insistence that is slightly unpleasant and humdrum, a sharp contrast to the uncoiling subtlety of the Russian. It is not surprising that of all the subsequent translators only one has reverted to Spalding’s masculine-only style of rhyming; all the others do what they can to preserve the original rhythm. An imaginative attempt to get round this problem by using feminine endings on the usual regular basis but without rhyming them (the first line-ending “úpright” is paired with “respéct him”) certainly keeps to the original rhythm, but at great cost in terms of disappointment with the shape of the stanza (which depends entirely on the disposition of its rhymes).
There is one way out of this dilemma, which works admirably but may offend the purist because it involves an apparently anachronistic intervention. This is to allow approximate rhyming of the feminine endings (otherwise called near-, half-, off- or embryonic-rhyming). Here the danger is that if you overdo things you risk making the text read like a version of a modernist like Mayakovsky (1893–1930) or even e.e. cummings (1894–1962). Several translators of Yevgeny Onegin have used this device sparingly, risking the occasional rhyme that is slightly imperfect. Thus, here and there, you will encounter thoroughly acceptable rhyming partners like these: before him/decorum, hokey-pokey/trochee, shoulders/soldiers, palace/malice, rum-swirls/Come, girls!, purring/astir in.
As it happens, the use of approximate rhyming for Pushkin’s period is not quite the anachronism that it may appear to be. If you look closely at the rhyming patterns of English poets in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, you will discover some pleasant little anomalies of approximation that have lain there on the page for centuries unnoticed. (Examples follow; one or two may be due to subsequent changes in pronunciation, but most are true instances of deliberately faulty correspondence.) As far back as Alexander Pope (1688–1744), “the epitome of neoclassicism”, there are inexact rhymes such as air/star, glass/place, devil/civil, beams/Thames, give/believe and foredoom/home. In the work of Thomas Gray (1716–71) you will find flood/god, abode/God, towers/adores, cleave/wave, remove/love, ecstasy/spy, car/bear, sincere/there and bowl/scowl. William Blake (1757–1827) gives us pigeons/regions, field/behold, mine/join, sit/sweet and valley/Melancholy. Coleridge (1772–1834): cold/emerald, thus/Albatross, root/soot, gusht/dust, alone/on and sere/were/there. As for Lord Byron (1788–1824), apart from his obvious jokes with rhyme, such as answering “intellectual” with “hen-pecked you all” and “mathematical” with “what I call”, he will slip in a good number of approximations like Cincinnatus/potatoes, Homer’s/newcomers, already/Haidée, acquaintance/sentence, morsel/a horse ill, Agamemnon/the same one and never/river. Since Pushkin imitated Byron consciously (confident of his ability to tidy and transcend the unkempt genius of the English lord), it seems justifiable for us to indulge in this form of rhyming for our translation, given the dreadful pitfalls of not doing so.
Unfortunately, the one translator of Pushkin who saw the value and justification of approximate rhyming, Stanley Mitchell (2008), almost invalidates it by what we may describe as misuse. It is, for example, acceptable and enterprising to rhyme like this: sérvice/impérvious, Látin/smáttering, Tánya/mánner, madónnas/ón us and házard/gáthered. These are just what we need—fresh, new, closely associated compilations carrying wit and surprise, far superior to the verbal obviousness so often employed elsewhere. Despite the flavour of anachronism they are fully in tune with Pushkin’s own light touch and constant humour. We could have done with more of them. But where the system breaks down for this translator is his inclusion in the category of approximate rhyming of some words related only by consonants. Consonantal rhyme carries so little impact that it simply does not work. Sometimes called “consonantal dissonance”, it was not used at all before Hopkins, Owen and Dylan Thomas; it is difficult even to detect on the page and has never enjoyed full acceptance or popularity. To use it in relation to Pushkin is truly anachronistic and unsuitably experimental.