CHAPTER VI
La, sotto i giorni nubilosi e brevi,
Nasce una gente a cui ‘l morir non dole.1
Petrarch
1
On noticing his friend had vanished,
Onegin stayed at Olga’s side,
Pensive, again to boredom banished,
Content with vengeance satisfied,
Now Olen’ka like him was yawning,
Her eyes in search of Lensky turning,
While the cotillion’s endless stream
Oppressed her like a grievous dream.
But it has ended. Supper’s ready.
The beds are made. The guests are all
Assigned their place from entrance-hall
To housemaids’ quarters. All are needy
Of restful sleep. Alone Eugene
Drives home from this domestic scene.
2
All’s calm: from the salon ascended
The snores of heavy Pustyakov,
Beside his heavy wife extended.
Gvozdin, Buyanov, Petushkov
And Flyanov (somewhat over-sated)
Were on the dinner chairs located,
And on the floor Monsieur Triquet
In vest and ancient nightcap lay.
The rooms of Olga and Tatiana
Were full of sleeping girls. Alone
And sad, Tatiana shone,
Illuminated by Diana;
To sleep, poor thing, she could not yield
And gazed upon the darkened field.
3
Tatiana to her soul is riven
By Eugene’s unexpected call,
The sudden tender look he’d given,
His strange approach to Olga – all
Distresses her and makes her wonder,
To understand him’s quite beyond her:
A jealous anguish makes her start,
As if a cold hand pressed her heart,
As if a chasm, black and frightful,
Had opened, roaring, under her.
‘I’ll die,’ she says, but does not stir,
‘To die from him will be delightful.2
I shan’t complain, for I confess
He cannot bring me happiness.’
4
But onward, onward with my story!
Another character arrives.
Five versts away from Krasnogorye
(Lensky’s estate) there lives and thrives
In philosophical seclusion
Still to this day, without intrusion,
Zaretsky, once a brawler and
The hetman3 of a gaming band,
Chieftain of rakes, a pub declaimer,
But now, benign and simple, he
Maintains a bachelor family;
A steadfast friend, a squire grown tamer,
He’s even honest – thus our age
Improves itself at every stage.4
5
Time was, he stood upon a pedestal,
Society flattered him with praise:
He was a maestro with a pistol
Who could at twelve yards hit an ace,
And once, engaged in actual battle,
Enraptured, he displayed his mettle
By falling from his Kalmuck steed
Into the mud at daring speed;
Drunk as a swine, this precious hostage
Surrendered to a Gallic squad,
A modern Regulus,5 honour’s god,
Prepared to yield again to bondage,
To drain on credit two or three
Carafes each morning chez Véry.6
6
To tease was once his recreation,
He’d dupe a fool or stupefy
A man of educated station,
In public gaze or on the sly,
Although some tricks he perpetrated
Did not remain uncastigated,
And sometimes, like a simple chap,
He’d fall himself into a trap.
He could dispute and be amusing,
Respond with answers, smart or dumb,
At times judiciously keep mum
Or be judiciously abusing,
Encourage two young friends to strife
And set them duelling for their life,
7
Alternatively reconcile them,
Arrange a breakfast for the three,
And, later, secretly revile them
With merry jokes and braggartry.
Sed alia tempora!7Audacity
(Like lover’s dream, another vanity)
Departs when lively youth has fled.
And my Zaretsky, as I said,
Lives like a sage, discovering solace
Where bird cherry, acacia climb;8
Sheltered from storms, he spends his time
In planting cabbages, like Horace,9
And breeding ducks and geese, is free
To teach his kids their ABC.
8
He was not stupid; and, despising
The heart in him, Eugene admired
The spirit of his judgements, prizing
The sound opinions he’d acquired.
Eugene was always pleased to meet him
And so was not surprised to greet him
When, in the morning, Eugene saw
His neighbour standing at the door.
With salutations done, Zaretsky
Broke off the chat that they’d begun
And, eyes a-twinkle with the fun,
Passed on to him a note from Lensky.
Onegin to the window went
And read the note the poet sent.
9
It was a gentlemanly letter,
A challenge or cartel10 he’d penned;
Polite and cold and to the matter
He sought a duel with his friend.
Eugene’s immediate reaction
To this demand for satisfaction
Was swift enough. Discussion spared,
He said he’d ‘always be prepared’.
Zaretsky rose without explaining,
Not wishing to prolong his stay,
For household business claimed the day,
He left forthwith; Eugene, remaining
Alone, encountering his soul,
Was not contented with his role.
10
Indeed, a strict examination
Before a secret, inner court
Engendered much self-accusation:
First, that he’d not the right to sport
Last evening in such casual fashion
With Lensky’s timid, tender passion;
Then… why not let a poet play
The fool at eighteen, while he may.
Eugene, who loved him as a brother,
Might well have proved, by seeking peace,
To be no ball of prejudice
That’s batted one way or another,
No fiery boy, no fighting kind,
But man of honour, with a mind.
11
He might have manifested feeling
Instead of bristling like a beast,
He should have set about the healing
Of Lensky’s heart. Such thoughts soon ceased.
‘Too late now, everything is settled,
Now this old duellist has meddled
In the affair, what’s left to do?
He’s vicious and a gossip, too.
The answer to his droll dominion
Should be contempt, of course, but then
The whispers, laughs of stupid men…’
And there it is – public opinion!11
Our idol, honour’s spring, which, wound,
Ensures our universe goes round.
12
Lensky, at home, with hatred blazing,
Awaits the answer fretfully;
His neighbour in the finest phrasing
Conveys it with solemnity.
This sets the jealous poet cheering;
The prankster might – so he’d been fearing –
Treat the occasion as a jest,
And by some ruse avert his breast
And duck the pistol by retreating.
These doubts resolved, tomorrow they
Must at the mill ere break of day
Embark upon their fateful meeting,
To raise the cock and, taking aim,
A temple or a thigh to claim.12
13
Detesting a coquette so cruel,
Still seething, Lensky sought to shun
A rendezvous before the duel,
He kept consulting watch and sun.
The wish to meet, though, was compelling,
Soon Lensky’s at the sisters’ dwelling.
Olga, he thought, would be upset
And agitated when they met;
But not a bit of it: on spying
The desolate bard, as in the past
She skipped down from the porch as fast
As giddy hope, towards him flying,
Light-hearted, free of care, serene –
In fact, as she had always been.
14
‘Last night, why did you leave so early?’
Was what his Olen’ka first said.
His senses clouded, and he merely,
Without replying, hung his head.
Vexation, jealousy were banished,
Before her shining look they vanished,
Before her soft simplicity,
Before her soul’s vivacity!
He gazes with sweet feeling, heartened
To see that he’s still loved; and longs
Already, burdened by his wrongs,
To ask her whether he’ll be pardoned,
He trembles, can’t think what to say,
He’s happy, almost well today…
[15, 16]13
17
Pensive again, again dejected,
Vladimir, under Olga’s sway,
Is not sufficiently collected
To speak to her of yesterday;
‘I,’ he reflects, ‘will be her saviour.
I shall not suffer that depraver
To tempt a maiden’s innocence
With fiery sighs and compliments;
Nor let a worm with venom slither
A lily’s stalklet to enfold,
Nor see a flower two days old,
Half-opened still, condemned to wither.’
All this, friends, signified: I shall
Soon fire a bullet at my pal.
18
If he had known what wound was burning
My dear Tatiana’s heart! If she
Had been aware, in some way learning,
If she’d been able to foresee
That Lensky, Eugene would be vying
To find a grave for one to lie in;
Who knows, her love perhaps might then
Have reconciled the friends again!
But no one had as yet discovered,
Even by chance, their angry feud.
On everything Eugene was mute,
Tatiana quietly pined and suffered;
The nurse might just have known of it,
But she, alas, was slow of wit.
19
All evening Lensky was abstracted,
Now taciturn, now gay. Somehow,
A person by the Muse protected,
Is always thus: with knitted brow,
To the clavier he’d wander, playing
A string of chords, no more assaying,
Or whisper, seeing Olga near,
‘I’m happy, am I not, my dear?’
But it was late, his heart was aching,
He must depart, yet as he bade
Goodbye to her, his youthful maid,
His heart was on the point of breaking.
She looks at him: ‘What is it?’ ‘Oh,
It’s nothing, Olga, I must go.’
20
Arriving home, he first inspected
His pistols, ready for the fight,
Put them away, undressed, reflected
On Schiller’s verse by candlelight.
But by one thought he’s overtaken,
His melancholy does not slacken:
He sees before him Olga full
Of beauty inexplicable.
Vladimir closes Schiller’s verses,
Takes up his pen and writes his own –
Nonsense to which a lover’s prone;
It sings and flows. And he rehearses
His lines aloud, by fervour seized,
Like drunken Delvig14 at a feast.
21
By chance his verse can still be read now,
I have it, ready for your gaze:15
‘Whither, ah whither are you fled now,
My springtime’s ever-golden days?
What is the coming day’s decision?
Alas, it lies beyond my vision,
Enshrouded in the deepest night.
No matter, fate’s decree is right.
Whether I’m pierced by an arrow
Or whether it should miss – all’s well:
A predetermined hour will tell
If we’re to wake or sleep tomorrow:
Blest are the cares that day contrives,
Blest is the darkness that arrives!
22
‘When daybreak comes with rays ascending
And sparkling day dispels the gloom,
Then I, perhaps – I’ll be descending
Into the mystery of the tomb,
Slow Lethe will engulf for ever
My young poetical endeavour;
I’ll be forgot, but you’ll return
To weep on my untimely urn,
And, maid of beauty, in your sorrow,
You will reflect: he loved me, sworn
To me alone in his sad dawn,
Bereft now of its stormy morrow!…
Come, heartfelt friend, come, longed-for friend,
I’ll be your husband to the end.’
23
And so he wrote obscurely, limply
(Romantic16 is the term we’ve coined,
Though what’s Romantic here I simply
Have no idea; and what’s the point?),
And finally, as night was ending,
His head towards his shoulder bending,
Vladimir dozed, while lingering still
Upon the modish word ideal;
But scarcely lost in sleep’s enchantment,
He does not hear his neighbour, who
Enters the silent study to
Awaken him with a commandment:
‘Time to get up, past six, we’re late,
Onegin will not want to wait.’
24
But he was wrong: Eugene unheeding
Still sleeps a sleep that nought can mar.
Night’s shades already are receding,
The cock salutes the morning star,
Onegin sleeps on at his leisure,
The sun climbs high into the azure,
A passing snowstorm overhead
Glitters and whirls. But from his bed
Our dormant hero has not started,
Sleep hovers still before his eyes.
At last he wakes, prepares to rise,
The curtains of his bed he’s parted;
He looks outside – and sees, alack,
He should have started some time back.
25
He rings: his valet, French and chipper,
Reaches his chamber in a flash,
Guillot brings dressing-gown and slipper,
And hands him linen with panache.
Onegin hurries with his dressing,
Informs his man that time is pressing,
That he must take the duelling-case,
That they must leave, that they must race.
The sleigh is ready; Eugene, seated,
Flies to the mill, the horses strain.
He tells his valet to retain
Lepage’s fatal tubes17 till needed,
And have the horses moved to where
Two oaklings stand, and leave them there.
26
Leaning upon the dam stood Lensky
Who’d waited there impatiently,
While rural engineer Zaretsky
Surveyed the millstone critically.
Eugene arrives and makes excuses.
‘That’s very well, but where the deuce is
Your second, then?’ Zaretsky cried.
In duels he took a pedant’s pride,
Methodical by intuition:
To stretch out someone on the ground
Any old how was quite unsound,
One must obey a strict tradition
And follow rules of ancient days
(For which we should accord him praise).
27
‘My second? Yes, let me present him,
He’s here: Monsieur Guillot, my friend,
I do not see what should prevent him,
He’s someone I can recommend.
Although he’s not a well-known figure,
He is an honest guy and eager.’
Zaretsky bit his lip, appalled.
Onegin then to Lensky called:
‘Shall we not start now?’ ‘If you’re willing,’
Vladimir said. Behind the mill
They went. At some remove, meanwhile,
Zaretsky solemnly is sealing
A contract with the ‘honest guy’.
The two foes stand with lowered eye.
28
How long since they from one another
Were parted by a thirst to kill?
How long since, each to each a brother,
They’d shared their leisure time, a meal
And thoughts? But now with grim impatience,
As in a feud of generations
Or frightful dream that makes no sense
Each, cool and silent, must commence
To wreak the other one’s destruction…
Should they not stop and laugh instead
Before their hands have turned blood red,
Should they not spurn the duel’s seduction?…
But what the world cannot abide
Are bogus shame and lack of pride.
29
The pistols glistened; soon the mallets
Resoundingly on ramrods flicked,
Through cut-steel barrels went the bullets,
The cock has for the first time clicked.
A greyish powder was decanted
Into the pan, and the indented,
Securely screwed-in flint raised high
Once more. Behind a stump nearby
Guillot was standing, disconcerted.
The foes cast off their cloaks, meanwhile
Zaretsky measured off in style
Thirty-two steps and then diverted
His friends towards the farthest pace,
Each took his pistol to the place.18
30
‘Now march,’ came the command. And readily,
As if the two had never met,
The erstwhile comrades slowly, steadily
Advanced four steps, not aiming yet,
Four fatal steps the two had taken.
And then, advancing still, Onegin
Raised by degrees his pistol first.
Five further paces they traversed.
And likewise Lensky calculated,
Closed his left eye, as he took aim –
But, with a sudden burst of flame,
Onegin fired… the moment fated
Had struck: the poet, with no sound,
Let drop his pistol to the ground.
31
His hand upon his breast he presses
Softly, and falls, as, misty-eyed,
His gaze not pain, but death expresses.
Thus, slowly, on a mountain-side
A mound of snow, already teetering,
Descends with sunny sparkles glittering.
Onegin, shuddering, swiftly flies
To where the young Vladimir lies,
He looks and calls… but there’s no power
Can bring him back. The youthful bard
Has met an end untimely. Hard
The storm has blown, the finest flower
Has withered at the morning’s dawn,
The fire upon the altar’s gone.
32
He lay inert; uncanny-seeming,
A languid peace showed on his brow.
Beneath his breast the blood flowed, steaming,
The shot had gone right through him. How
One moment earlier inspiration
And love and hate, and aspiration
Had in this heart vibrated, churned,
How life had revelled, blood had burned;
But now, as in a house forsaken,
All it contains is dark and still,
A home forever silent, chill,
The windows shuttered, chalked and vacant,
The mistress vanished from the place
To God knows where, without a trace.
33
It’s pleasant with a verse to chasten
A dunderheaded clown and foe,
Pleasant to watch the fellow hasten
With butting horns descending low
To view his image in a mirror
And turn from it in shame and horror;
More pleasant, friends, if he howls out:
‘Oh look, that’s me there!’ like a lout;
Still pleasanter with quiet persistence
To plan a grave that lauds his name
And at his pallid brow take aim
From proper gentlemanly distance;
It’s hardly pleasant, though, you’ll find
To send him off to meet his kind.
34
What happens if your young companion
Is slaughtered by your pistol shot
For some presumptuous glance, opinion
Or repartee worth not a jot,
Insulting you while you were drinking,
Or if, in fiery pique, not thinking,
He calls you proudly to a duel,
Tell me the feelings that would rule
Your soul, when without motion lying
In front of you upon the earth,
Upon his brow the hue of death,
He slowly stiffens, ossifying,
When to your desperate appeal
He is insensitive and still?
35
With sharpening contrition growing,
Gripping the pistol in his hand,
Onegin watched Vladimir’s going.
‘Well then, he’s dead, you understand,’
Pronounced the neighbour. Dead! Onegin,
Crushed by the utterance, walks off, quaking,
To call his people.19 Straightaway,
Zaretsky gently on the sleigh
Settles the frozen corpse, escorting
The dreadful treasure to its home.
Sensing the corpse, the horses foam,
Wetting the steel bit, chafing, snorting,
But when they’re ready to depart,
They fly as swiftly as a dart.
36
My friends, you’re sorry for the poet:
Amid the bloom of hope, desire
From which the world will never profit,
And scarcely out of child’s attire,
Gone! Where’s the ardent agitation,
Where is the noble aspiration
Of youthful feeling, youthful thought,
Audacious, tender, highly wrought?
Where, too, is love’s acclaimed impatience,
The thirst for knowledge, thirst for work,
The dread where vice and shame may lurk,
And you, most cherished ruminations,
You, phantoms of unearthly life,
You, dreams with sacred verses rife!
37
Perhaps he was for good intended
Or at the very least for fame;
His silenced lyre might have extended
Its sound through centuries to come
With ringing music. There awaited
Perhaps a special niche created
For him at an exalted site.
Perhaps his martyred shade in flight
Carried away a holy secret,
Remaining with him, and the joys
Are lost of an uplifting voice,
While from beyond the gravestone’s remit
No hymn will rush to where he’s laid,
Nor peoples come to bless his shade.
[38]20
39
But then again the poet’s portion
Might well have been quite commonplace.
The years of youth give way to caution,
Slowing the soul’s impetuous pace.
Of poetry he might have wearied,
And, parting from the Muses, married;
A happy squire, with cuckold’s crown,
Wearing a quilted dressing gown;
He might have learned life’s true dimension,
At forty he’d have had the gout,
Drunk, eaten, moped, declined, got stout
And died according to convention
As children thronged and women cried
And village quacks stood by his side.
40
But, reader, we shall never know it;
Sufficient that upon a field
A youthful lover, dreamer, poet
Has by a friendly hand been killed!
A leftward path from the location
Where dwelt that child of inspiration
Leads to two pines with roots entwined,
Beneath which tiny currents wind
Out of the valley’s brook they border.
The ploughman rests beside their brink
And female reapers come to sink
Their ringing pitchers in the water;
There, by the brook, in deepest shade,
A simple monument is laid.21
41
A herdsman to the tomb retreating
Sings (as the spring rain dots the grass)
Of Volga fishermen, while plaiting
His mottled sandals made of bast.
A young townswoman who is spending
Her summer in the country, wending
On horseback through the fields alone,
Rides headlong, comes upon the stone
And halts her steed, before it pausing,
As, tightening the leather leads,
She lifts her veil of gauze and reads
The plain inscription quickly, causing
A tear to dim her tender eyes
At Lensky’s premature demise.
42
And, at a trot, she rides through meadows,
Sunk a long time in reverie,
Her soul pervaded by the shadows
Cast by the poet’s destiny;
And wonders: ‘How did Olga suffer?22
Was it for long she mourned her lover?
Or did she only briefly rue?
And where’s her sister now? Where, too,
Is he, the fugitive, the hermit,
Of modish belles the modish foe,
Where did that gloomy oddball go,
The slayer of the youthful poet?’
I promise in due time I’ll bring
A full account of everything,
43
But not today. Although my feeling
For Eugene has not changed a bit,
Though I’ll return to him, unfailing,
Right now I am not up to it.
To Spartan prose the years are turning,
Coquettish rhyme the years are spurning;
And I – I with a sigh confess –
I’m running after her much less.
My pen has lost its former pleasures
Of daubing fleeting leaves, it seems,
Today, quite different, chilling dreams;
Quite different, unrelenting pressures,
In stillness or in social noise,
Disturb the sleep my soul enjoys.
44
I’ve come to know new aspirations,
I’ve come to know new sadness, too;
The former hold no expectations,
And earlier sadness still I rue.
Where are my dreams, the dreams I cherished?
What rhyme now follows, if not ‘perished’?23
And is the garland of my youth
Withered at last, is this the truth?
Is it the truth, all plain, unvarnished,
Not in an elegiac cloak,
That (hitherto said as a joke)
The springtime of my days has vanished,
Can’t be brought back and that I’m near
Already to my thirtieth year?24
45
The noontide of my life is starting,
Which I must needs accept, I know;
But oh, my light youth, if we’re parting,
I want you as a friend to go!
My thanks to you for the enjoyments,
The sadness and the pleasant torments,
The hubbub, storms, festivity,
For all that you have given me;
My thanks to you. I have delighted
In you when times were turbulent,
When times were calm… to full extent;
Enough now! With a soul clear-sighted
I set out on another quest
And from my old life take a rest.
46
Let me glance back. Farewell, you arbours
Where, in the backwoods, I recall
Days filled with indolence and ardours
And dreamings of a pensive soul.
And you, my youthful inspiration.
Keep stirring my imagination,
My heart’s inertia vivify,
More often to my corner fly.
Let not a poet’s soul be frozen,
Made rough and hard, reduced to bone
And finally be turned to stone
In that benumbing world he goes in,
In that intoxicating slough
Where, friends, we bathe together now.25