Eugene Onegin

Notes

Pushkin added a series of notes to his edition of Eugene Onegin. I have referred to several of these in the Notes below, but have not translated them as a whole because they include long quotations, often from secondary poets, which themselves would require further annotation, and would, I think, interest only a tiny minority of readers.

I am indebted to the commentaries on Onegin by Vladimir Nabokov, Yuri Lotman and N. L. Brodsky.

1. ‘Steeped in vanity, he had even more the kind of pride that will accept good and bad actions with the same indifference – the result of a feeling of superiority, perhaps imaginary. (From a private letter.)’ There is no known source for this quotation.

DEDICATION

1. Addressed to P. A. Pletnyov (1792–1865), man of letters and minor poet, in later years academician and rector of St Petersburg University. He met Pushkin in 1817 and remained one of his closest friends. From 1825 he was his principal publisher and, after the poet’s death, his first biographer.

CHAPTER 1

1. And it hurries… Prince Vyazemsky: The epigraph is from ‘The First Snow’ (1819), a poem by Pushkin’s close friend Prince Pyotr Vyazemsky (1792–1878), mentioned several times in Onegin and appearing in person in Chapter VIII. The ‘it’ is ‘youthful ardour’, compared to the intoxication of a sleigh ride.

2. Zeus: Supreme god of the ancient Greek pantheon.

3. Ruslan and Lyudmila:(1820) A mock-epic and Pushkin’s first major work. Pushkin signals his return to a light-hearted manner after a series of impassioned Romantic poems.

4. But now the North’s unsafe for me: Pushkin’s note 1 to the chapter reads: ‘Written in Bessarabia’, his initial place of exile.

5. Madame… passed on her trust: Refugees from revolutionary France were employed as tutors by aristocratic families.

6. the Summer Park: The Summer Gardens, a fashionable park in St Petersburg.

7. Juvenal:(c. 42–c. 125 AD), Roman satirical poet, popular with the Decembrists (see Introduction) for his denunciations of despotism and depravity.

8. the Aeneid: Epic poem by Roman poet Virgil (70–19 BC).

9. Homer: Ancient Greek poet, somewhere between the twelfth and seventh centuries BC, supposed author of the Iliad and the Odyssey.

10. Theocritus: Ancient Greek poet of idylls, third century BC. Russian pre-Romantics, seeking a national alternative to Russian rococo, drew on Homer and Theocritus. Decembrist economists, on the other hand, dismissed the entire classical poetic tradition as of no practical use.

11. Adam Smith: Scottish economist (1723–90) who influenced the Decembrists.

12. in the land… The simple product: A principal tenet of physiocrat economic theory, originating in eighteenth-century France, according to which national wealth was based on the ‘produit net’ of agriculture.

13. Ovid: Roman poet (43 BC-16 AD), author of Metamorphoses and The Art of Love, with whom Pushkin felt a kinship during his exile. Ovid died in exile on the Black Sea.

14. [9]: The omitted stanzas are of three kinds: those written and dropped; those which Pushkin intended to write but never got round to; and fictitious ones in the ironic manner of Sterne, Byron and Hoffmann. Together they constitute an invisible subtext.

15. Faublas: A sixteen-year-old seducer of young wives in a picaresque novel by Louvet de Couvrai (1760–97). But none of the husbands in the novel can be described as ‘cunning’.

16. bolivar: A silk hat with a wide, upturned brim, named after Simon Bolivar (1783–1830), the Latin American liberator and idol of European liberals in the 1820s and of Latin American revolutionaries today.

17. Bréguet: A repeater watch, invented by Parisian watchmaker Abraham Louis Bréguet (1747–1823). A spring mechanism allowed the watch, while shut, to strike the hour or minute. A real dandy would not have carried one.

18. ‘Away, away’: The postilion’s cry to pedestrians.

19. Talon’s: A restaurant on the Nevsky Prospekt owned by a Frenchman until 1825.

20. Kaverin: Pyotr Kaverin (1794–1855), hussar and duellist, school friend and companion of Pushkin during his early Petersburg years, student at Göttingen (1810–11) and Decembrist.

21. comet wine: Champagne of vintage comet year 1811.

22. bloody roast beef: Fashionable in the early decades of the nineteenth century.

23. Strasbourg pie, that keeps for ever: Made from goose liver and imported in tins, therefore ‘kept for ever’. Tinned food was invented during the Napoleonic wars.

24. ananas: Pineapple, an expensive taste throughout the nineteenth century and of Latin American revolutionaries today.

25. Limburg’s cheese’s living mass: Sharp, strong, soft and runny Belgian cheese, hence perhaps the epithet ‘living’ or, alternatively, because of the ‘living dust’ of microbes that covered it.

26. liberty’s admirers: The Russian has: ‘Where everyone, breathing liberty’, a Gallicism from ‘respirer l’air de la liberté’. At the Decembrist rising, the poet Ryleyev remarked: We are breathing freedom.’

27. Cleopatra, Phaedra… Moëna: It is unclear what work Cleopatra figured in. Phaedra: heroine of an opera adapted from Racine’s eponymous tragedy. Moëna: heroine of Ozerov’s tragedy Fingal.

28. Fonvizin: Denis Fonvizin (1745–92), author of The Minor, a satirical play about cruelty, smugness and ignorance.

29. Knyazhnin: Yakov Knyazhnin (1742–91), imitator of French tragedies and comedies.

30. Ozerov: Vladislav Ozerov (1769–1816), author of five tragedies in the French style, including Fingal (note 27 above), considered ‘very mediocre’ by Pushkin, who put his success down to the acting of Yekaterina Semyonova, whom he regarded highly.

31. Katenin: Pavel Katenin (1792–1853), playwright, critic and Decembrist, translated Corneille’s Le Cid, firing Decembrist ideals. See Chapter I, stanza 18.

32. Shakhovskoy: Prince Alexander Shakhovskoy (1777–1846), theatre director and author of comedies satirizing contemporary writers.

33. Didelot: Charles Louis Didelot (1767–1837), well-known ballet master in St Petersburg.

34. Terpsichore: Ancient Greek goddess of dance.

35. Istomina: Avdotya Istomina (1799–1848), prima ballerina of Petersburg ballet with whom Pushkin was smitten, pupil of Didelot.

36. Aeolus: Ancient Greek god of wind.

37. even Didelot’s boring stuff: Pushkin in his note 5 comments: ‘A feature of chilled feeling, worthy of Childe-Harold. Didelot’s ballets are filled with a liveliness of imagination and unusual charm. One of our romantic writers found in them far more poetry than in the whole of French literature.’ This ‘romantic writer’ was Pushkin himself.

38. Tsargrad: Old Russian name for Constantinople.

39. Perfumes: A fashionable novelty at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

40. Rousseau: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78), French writer and philosopher. In his note 6 Pushkin quotes at length from the description in Rousseau’s Confessions of Grimm’s toiletry.

41. Grimm: Melchior Grimm (1723–1807), French encyclopedist of German extraction.

42. Chaadaev: Pyotr Chaadaev (1794–1856), dandy and libertarian thinker, later a mystic, influenced the young Pushkin, famous for his later Philosophical Letters, contrasting Russian history unfavourably with the West, with which Pushkin disagreed. The journal carrying the first Letter was suppressed, Chaadaev being declared insane and placed under house arrest.

43. pantalons, frac and gilet: These were relatively new items of clothing at the beginning of the nineteenth century as yet without Russian names.

44. Chevalier Gardes: A privileged regiment of heavy cavalry created under Paul I to counterbalance the already existing Horse Guards regiment. Chevaliers Gardes were distinguished by their tall height and embroidered uniforms. However, in a manuscript note Pushkin mentions that in fact they wore court dress and shoes, but he included the spurs to give the picture a poetic touch.

45. Diana: Virgin goddess of the moon in ancient Rome.

46. Flora: Ancient Roman goddess of spring and flowers.

47. Elvina: Conventional name in erotic poetry of the time.

48. Armida: Chief heroine of the epic poem La Gerusalemme liberata (Liberated Jerusalem, 1580) by Torquato Tasso (1544–95), here meaning an enchantress.

49. Okhta: An outlying region of St Petersburg, populated by Finns supplying the capital’s dairy needs. The ‘Okhta girl’ is a milkmaid.

50. vasisdas: A window-pane. ‘Vasisdas’ has been taken to be a corruption either of fortochka, a ventilation-pane used in Russian windows, or of the French word vasistas (a small spy-window), which in turn is a corruption of the German was ist das? Pushkin keeps the more German spelling no doubt because the baker is German.

51. khandra: Russian for ‘chondria’, asin ‘hypochrondia’.

52. Childe Harold: The disillusioned and languid hero of Byron’s first great narrative poem, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1813), which brought him fame.

53. boston: A member of the whist family. Russian boston differs only slightly from ordinary boston.

54. bon ton: The Russian has ‘higher tone’, meaning well-bred conversation and manners. A near English equivalent would be ‘good form’.

55. Say and Bentham: Jean-Baptiste Say (1767–1832), French publicist and economist, follower of Ricardo and Adam Smith, author of Traité d’économie politique (A Treatise on Political Economy, 1803). Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), liberal English publicist and jurist.

56. Capricious ladies… spleen: In note 7 Pushkin remarks: ‘The whole of this ironic strophe is nothing other than a subtle form of praise for our fair compatriots. So Boileau, in the guise of reproach, praises Louis XIV. Our ladies combine enlightenment with amiability, and strict purity of morals with that Eastern charm that so captivated Mme de Staël (see Dix ans d’exil).’ Posthumously published in 1818, the latter work describes de Staël’s visit to Russia in 1812.

57. How often… bright: Pushkin’s note 8 refers the reader to Nikolai Gnedich’s (1784–1833) idyllic poem ‘The Fishermen’ (1822) for its ‘charming description’ of the Petersburg night, from which he quotes at length.

58. the Poet: An ironic reference, underlined by the capital ‘P’ and the archaic Russian spelling, to Mikhail Muravyov (1757–1807), an insignificant poet and founder of Russian Sentimentalism. In his note 9, Pushkin quotes the lines of Muravyov’s poem ‘To the Goddess of the Neva’, from which he lifts the phrase ‘leaning on the granite’.

59. Millionaya: A street in Petersburg, alluding to Katenin’s habit of returning from the theatre at this hour to his regimental barracks on Millionaya Street.

60. Brenta: River with Venice at its delta.

61. Albion’s proud poetry: Byron’s poetry.

62. Petrarch: Francesco Petrarca (1304–74), Italian poet.

63. Above the sea, forever roaming: Pushkin’s note 10 has: ‘Written in Odessa.’ It was from here that Pushkin sought to escape from Russia.

64. my Africa: In his note 11 Pushkin refers the reader to the first edition of the chapter, where he provides an extended footnote on his African forebears.

65. Salgir: A river in the Crimea. The captive maids are the harem girls of Pushkin’s narrative poem The Fountain of Bakhchisaray (1824). The ‘maid of the mountain’ is the Circassian heroine of his poem The Captive of the Caucasus (1822). In Chapter VIII of Onegin he reviews his literary heroines up to the point where they transmogrify into Tatiana.

CHAPTER II

1. Endowed with Göttingenian soul: Göttingen university, where Lensky studied, was one of the most liberal universities, not just in Germany, but in Europe as a whole. Situated on Hanoverian territory, it was subject to English law. The future Decembrists N. I. Turgenev and Pyotr Kaverin (see Chapter I, stanza 16, and note 20) studied there.

2. Kant: Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), German philosopher, author of three Critiques – of Pure Reason, Practical Reason and Judgement. His emphasis on imagination and genius in the third Critique influenced the Romantic movement in Germany and beyond.

3. vessel: The Church Slavonic use of this term, which adds to the heightened language of this stanza, can mean ‘weapon’, which is what is meant here.

4. Schiller, Goethe: Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805), German poet, philosopher, historian and dramatist. His early plays Die Räuber (The Robbers, 1781) and Kabale und Liebe (Intrigue and Love, 1784) and his idealist poetry fired the Romantics throughout Europe. He later joined Goethe in Weimar to promote a classical aesthetic. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), German poet, dramatist, novelist and scientist. His masterpiece Faust and his novel Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, 1795–6) strongly influenced the Romantics in Germany, although he came to see himself (with Schiller) as a defender of classical values. Pushkin’s knowledge of German literature was largely drawn from Mme de Staël’s De l’ Allemagne (On Germany, 1813), which put a Romantic gloss on Kant, Schiller and Goethe. His ability to read German was very limited.

5. Richardson: Samuel Richardson (1689–1761), English novelist, author of Pamela or Virtue Rewarded (1740), Clarissa Harlowe (1748) and Sir Charles Grandison (1754).

6. A Lovelace for a Grandison: Respectively villain of Clarissa Harlowe and hero of Sir Charles Grandison (see note 5 above).

7. She shaved the conscripts’ foreheads: Shaving foreheads was the way of marking out recruits for the army, thereby getting rid of unwanted serfs, who were torn away from their families and often had to serve for life.

8. shed tears… buttercups: A way of atoning for sins: the number of teardrops represents the number of sins.

9. kvas: Russian national soft drink (sometimes mildly fermented), usually made of leavened rye, dough or rye bread with malt. In other varieties honey or fruit is used.

10. a second crown: The first crown is the wedding crown.

11. barin: Squire or landowner.

12. penates: (Latin) guardian deities of the household.

13. Ochakov medal: Ochakov, on the Black Sea, was seized from the Turks in 1788 by Suvorov, under whom Larin served. The commemorative medal was given to all officers taking part in the campaign. Brigadier (a general’s rank) Larin might have expected the more illustrious ‘order’. Pushkin might have wanted thereby to keep Larin ordinary.

14. Lethe: River of fortgetfulness in Greek mythology.

15. Aonia’s maids: The Muses in Greek mythology. Aeonia was a region of ancient Boeotia, containing the mountains of Helicon and Cithaeron, sacred to the Muses.

16. will pat the old man’s laurel crown: Alongside the ignoramus, Pushkin addresses his future devotee. In the ‘old man’ Pushkin optimistically envisages his own future. A Latin teacher at Pushkin’s lycée, when introducing a classical text, would always remark: ‘Let’s pat the old man on the head.’

CHAPTER III

1. Elle était fille… Malfilâtre: ‘She was a girl, she was in love.’ A line from Narcisse, ou l’île de Venus (Narcissus, or the Island of Venus, 1768), a posthumous poem in four cantos by the second-rate French poet Jacques Charles Louis Clinchamp de Malfilâtre (1733–67), probably taken by Pushkin from Laharpe’s anthology of ancient and modern literature used at Pushkin’s lycée.

2. Jam in small dishes: Home-made preserves – cherry, raspberry, strawberry, gooseberry, red and blackcurrant – were presented to guests in small glass dishes on a tray. In a variant Pushkin has with but one spoon for all’. The guests would transfer their helpings (by means of that spoon) on to their respective saucers and then would eat the jam with their teaspoons or mix it with their tea.

3. board: Pushkin omitted the rest of the stanza in the final version, though it exists in his fair copy.

4. Svetlana: Heroine of Vasily Zhukovsky’s ballad of the same name (1812). Zhukovsky (1783–1852) was Russia’s outstanding Romantic poet, a friend and protector of Pushkin and a mentor of Nicholas I’s son and heir. Svetlana was a free adaptation of Gottfried August Bürger’s (1747–94) ballad Lenore (1773).

5. The lover of Julie Wolmar: St Preux, hero of Rousseau’s Julie, ou la Nouvelle Héloïse (Julie, or the New Héloise, 1761). Julie and St Preux are lovers, but only until she marries and assumes her husband’s name, Wolmar.

6. Malek Adhel: Hero of Mathilde, ou Mémoires tires de l’histoire des croisades (Mathilde or the Crusades, 1805), a novel by Sophie Cottin (1774–1807), described by Pushkin in his note as mediocre’. Malek Adel is a Muslim general at the time of the Third Crusade who falls in love with Princesse Mathilde, sister of Richard Lionheart.

7. de Linar: ‘Hero of baroness Krüdener’s delightful tale,’ notes Pushkin. The tale in question is Valerie, ou Lettres de Gustave de Linar à Ernest de G. (Valerie, or Letters from Gustave de Linar to Ernest de G., 1803). Mme von Krüdener (1764–1824) was a German novelist and mystic who wrote in French. De Linar, a dark-haired and violent young Swede, is the unrequited lover of Countess Valérie (probably from Livonia), who, like Julie in La Nouvelle Héloïse (see note 5 above), remains faithful to her older husband. She marries at fourteen and meets de Linar at sixteen.

8. Werther: Hero of Goethe’s Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (The Sorrows of Young Werther, 1774). Werther commits suicide after failing to win the love of Lotte, who is married to his friend.

9. Grandison: Hero of Richardson’s Sir Charles Grandison (1754).

10. Delphine: Eponymous heroine of Mme de Staël’s novel Delphine (1802). It has been suggested, but not accepted, that the Delphine mentioned by Pushkin belongs to a story by Marmontel, L’Ecole de l’amitié (School of Friendship, 1792), translated in 1822 by Nikolai Karamzin (1766–1826), an important predecessor of Pushkin. In Mme. de Staël’s novel Delphine is a widow of twenty-one whose admirer she gives up out of consideration for his wife.

11. Clarissa: Heroine of Richardson’s Clarissa Harlowe (1748).

12. The British Muse’s tales: Romanticism was in Russia largely taken to be an English trend in European literature.

13. the pensive vampire: Pushkin comments in his note: ‘A tale wrongly attributed to Lord Byron.’ During a stay in Switzerland in 1816 Byron, Shelley, Mary Shelley and Byron’s physician Polidori competed in writing horror stories of which the most successful and famous was Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Byron composed a fragment, The Vampyre, which Polidori later turned into a novel (1819).

14. Melmoth: Pushkin’s note: ‘Melmoth, Maturin’s work of genius.’ Charles Robert Maturin (1782–1824), an Irish clergyman, wrote Melmoth the Wanderer (1820), a long Satanic horror tale.

15. The Wandering Jew: The legend of the Wandering Jew was common at the time. Pushkin’s sources are probably Mathew Lewis’s (1775–1818) The Monk (1796) and Jan Potocki’s (1761–1815) enormous novel The Manuscript Found in Sara-gossa, published between 1803 and 1814.

16. the Corsair: Hero of Byron’s poem of the same name.

17. Sbogar: Hero of Charles Nodier’s (1780–1844) Jean Sbogar (1818). Sbogar is the Dalmatian chief of a robber band who redistribute wealth in favour of the common good’.

18. Coquettes… more assuredly: An imitation of the French poet Evariste de Parny’s ‘La Main’ (‘The Hand’). Parny (1753–1814) was renowned for his elegant love poetry. See lines 13–14 of stanza 29.

19. The Well-Meaner: Pushkin’s note reads: ‘A journal edited by the late A. Izmailov in a rather slipshod way.’ Pushkin and his friends treated the journal as a joke and privately read line 4 as With a phallus in their hand’.

20. seminarist… in yellow shawl: In this case a seminarist is a learned woman.

21. Bogdanovich: Ippolit Fedorovich Bogdanovich (1743–1803), poet, author of Dushen’ka (1783–9), based on the story of Cupid and Psyche; regarded as the founder of light poetry’ and valued by Pushkin for opening up poetry to popular speech. His influence on Pushkin is felt in Ruslan and Lyudmila (1820).

22. tender Parny’s: Evariste Désiré Desforges, Chevalier de Parny (1753–1814) French poet. He used the word tendre profusely in his elegies.

23. Bard of The Feasts: Yevgeny Abramovich Baratynsky (1800–1844), an outstanding poet of Pushkin’s period. The Feasts was written in Finland in 1820, where he was serving as a private in the army, having been expelled from military school for theft. It evokes the ebullient days spent in St Petersburg in 1819, when he got to know Pushkin. But he was more famed as an elegiac poet.

24. Der Freischütz: Opera by Carl Maria von Weber (1786–1826), a popular import when Pushkin was writing his third chapter.

25. The rosy seal: A round piece of sticky paper used to seal envelopes.

26. Song of the Girls: Invented by Pushkin, but adapted from folk songs he heard on his family estate at Mikhailovskoye. This is a wedding song where the bridegroom is symbolized by cherries and the bride by berries. It has the double effect of keeping the girls from eating the fruit and adding to Tatiana’s situation.

CHAPTER IV

1. La morale… Necker: ‘Morality is in the nature of things.’ Jacques Necker (1732–1804) was a politician and financier, minister in Louis XVI’s government at the beginning of the French Revolution and father of Mme de Staël, who quotes Pushkin’s epigraph in her Considerations sur les Principaux Evénements de la Revolution Française (Considerations on the Principal Events of the French Revolution, 1818).

2. Chateaubriand: François-René de Chateaubriand (1768–1848), French Romantic writer and politician, author of the novel René (1802).

3. Qu’écrirez-vous… Annette: ‘What will you write on these tablets?’… Ever yours, Annette.’

4. Tolstoy: Count Fyodor Petrovich Tolstoy (1783–1875), artist.

5. a madrigal: In this context is a complimentary poem written for society albums.

6. And, river-like… verities: A rare example of a two-rhyme octet resembling the Italian sonnet, which I render imperfectly – ababaabb. A similar, but less exact version is to be found in Chapter V, stanza 10.

7. Yazykov: Nikolay Mikhailovich Yazykov (1803–47), Romantic poet.

8. an awesome critic: The critic is Wilhelm Küchelbecker (1797–1846), who in an essay of 1824 denounced the elegy and praised the ode.

9. The Other Version: The reference is to Chuzhoy tolk (1795), a satirical verse narrative by Ivan Dmitriyev (1760–1837). The title may be translated as The Other Opinion’ or The Opinion of Others’. The poem ridicules the overblown style of the ode, attributing mercenary aims to its authors. The satirist and the lyric poet are characters in the poem.

10. 36: Stanza 36 was published only in the separate edition of Chapters IV and V.

11. Gulnare: Byron. Gulnare is the heroine of The Corsair.

12. Then drank… dressed: Omitted in the final text. After ‘And dressed’ there follows in Pushkin’s fair copy: but you’d not care to don/The article that he put on’.

13. (You’ve guessed… ‘petals’: Pushkin parodies a hackneyed rhyme which he himself used elsewhere: morozy/rozy, frosts/roses. The suggestion is perhaps reddening of the cheeks in the cold. The rhyme is irreproducible. Having used settles/petals before, in Chapter 1, stanza 16, I decided to use it again here, hoping that the reader might remember it. In neither case is it a hackneyed rhyme, but in both cases the context is frost. Compare a similar rhyme in Chapter IV, stanza 44, where Pushkin rhymes sladost’ with mladost’, sweetness/youth: Dreams, dreams! Where is your sweetness?/Where is its stock rhyme, youth?’ which I have translated, this time more successfully, I think, as: Where are my dreams, the dreams I cherished?/What rhyme now follows, if not perished’ since cherished’ and perished’ have a more hackneyed ring in English. I have used the same rhyme in Chapter VII, stanza 28. What Pushkin is getting at in both cases is the paucity of rhymes in the Russian poetry of his time.

14. Pradt and Scott: Dominique de Pradt (1759–1837), French political writer and priest to Napoleon; later a liberal under the Restoration. Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832), Scottish poet and father of the historical novel, who influenced Pushkin in the writing of his own historical novel The Captain’s Daughter (1836). Pushkin read Scott in French translations.

15. Aï: Aï or Ay is the name of a town in the Marne Department of Northern France, where this champagne originates.

16. ‘Between the wolf and dog’: A translation of entre chien et loup, meaning dusk or the time of day when it is too dark for a shepherd to distinguish his dog from a wolf.

17. Lafontaine: Not the fabulist Jean de Lafontaine, but August Lafontaine (1759–1831), a mediocre German writer, ‘author of numerous family novels’ (Pushkin’s note), popular in Russia at the end of the eighteenth century.

CHAPTER V

1. Never know… Zhukovsky: Epigraph from concluding lines of Zhukovsky’s ballad Svetlana (1812), which was considered a model of Romantic poetry based on folklore. Svetlana shadows Tatiana in this chapter.

2. kibitka: A hooded carriage.

3. One poet: In a note Pushkin refers to Vyazemsky and his poem ‘The First Snow’ (1819). The epigraph from Chapter I is likewise taken from Vyazemsky’s poem.

4. Finnish Maid: A reference to a fragment of Baratynsky’s poem Eda (1825).

5. With curious gaze… tomcat chants: Dish-divining took place at Yuletide and Twelfth Night. Divining times were divided between ‘holy evenings’ (25–31 December) and ‘fearful evenings’ (1–6 January). Tatiana chose the second period. Girls and women dropped rings into a dish containing water that was then covered with a cloth. As each is removed, a song is sung. The one sung for Tatiana predicts unhappiness and death. Tomcat songs foretell marriage, as Pushkin remarks in a note. In these the tomcat invites the she-cat to join him on his comfortable stove.

6. training a mirror on the moon: Another method of divination whereby a future husband was supposed to appear in the mirror’s reflection.

7. Agafon: In this context a comical peasant’s name, derived from the Greek Agathon. As Pushkin points out in his note 13 to Chapter II, concerning his choice of Tatiana’s name, sweet-sounding’ Greek names are only used by the common people. Asking the name of the first pedestrian Tatiana comes across is another ritual for discovering the name of her future intended.

8. fear assailed Tatiana… Felt fear as well: In her dream Svetlana, heroine of Zhukovsky’s ballad (see above), conjures up her lover only to be carried off by him to his grave. This reference presages Tatiana’s nightmare.

9. We won’t tell fortunes all night through: See Chapter IV, note 6 on the two-rhyme octet in Italian sonnets.

10. Her silken girdle she unknotted: Unknotting her girdle is a magical act like taking off a crucifix. It is an invitation to the secret world of superstition. Russians would often wear a belt in the bathhouse to ward off evil spirits.

11. Lel: Artificial god of love derived by eighteenth-century writers from chants and cries associated with wedding ceremonies (lyuli, lel’, lelyo).

12. Ladies’ Fashion: The full title is Journal of Ladies’ Fashions and refers to the French publication Journal des dames et des modes (1797–1838), which set the fashions throughout Europe. Tatiana, as Pushkin points out in Chapter III, stanza 26, line 6, did not read Russian journals, nor did a specific women’s fashion journal exist in Russia.

13. Martin Zadek:A fictitious person probably invented in Switzerland in the eighteenth century. His book of prophecies and divinations, the impressive title of which is too long to reproduce here, was translated from German into Russian and published in three separate editions (1814, 1821, 1827).

14. Malvina: A novel by Mme Cottin (1773–1807).

15. Petriads: Pushkin gives this ironic, high-sounding name to the various mediocre poems on Peter the Great current at the time.

16. Marmontel: Jean-Francois Marmontel (1723–99), French author; volume 3 of his complete works, all of which Pushkin possessed, contained his Contes moraux (Moral Tales).

17. her crimson hands extending: Pushkin comments in his note 34: ‘A parody of well-known lines by Lomonosov: Dawn with crimson hand/From morning’s tranquil waters’. These are the opening lines of a Lomonosov ode celebrating Empress Elizabeth’s ascent to the throne. Pushkin’s parody recalls the discussion of the ode in Chapter IV, stanza 33 . Lomonosov’s ‘crimson hand’ derives from Homer’s ‘rosy-fingered dawn’.M. V. Lomonosov (1711–65) was a scientist, poet, creator of the modern literary language and founder of Moscow University.

18. britska: A light carriage.

19. Pustyakov: Most of the names in this stanza are farcical, largely deriving from the comedies of Fonvizin (see note 28 to Chapter I). Pustyakov means Trifle, Gvozdin Basher, Skotinin Brute, Petush-kov Rooster or Cockahoop. Buyanov (Rowdy) is the hero of a skittish poem The Dangerous Neighbour by Pushkin’s uncle Vasily Pushkin (1770–1830). This allows his nephew to introduce Buyanov here as his cousin.

20. Kharlikov: Another comic name meaning Throttle’.

21. Réveillez-vous, belle endormie: ‘Awake, sleeping beauty.’

22. pie: The pie or pirog was either a meat or cabbage pie and traditional for a nameday feast.

23. blanc-manger: Nabokov writes in his Commentary: ‘blanc-manger (pronounced as in French): This almond-milk jelly (an old French and English sweet, not to be confused with our modern ‘blancmange’) might be artificially coloured. Its presence (as well as the presence of Russian champagne) at Dame Larin’s festive table stressed both the old-world style of her household and a comparative meagreness of means.

24. Tsimlyansky: A sparkling wine from Tsimlyanskaya Stanitsa, a Cossack settlement on the Don.

25. Zizi: Zizi or Yevpraksia Vulf (1809–83) was the youngest daughter of the large Osipov family headed by Praskovia Osipov, widow of Nikolay Vulf and Ivan Osipov. The Osipovs were Pushkin’s nearest neightbours during his exile at Mikhailovskoye (1824–6). He courted fifteen-year-old Zizi and several other members of the clan. Later, in 1829, the two briefly became lovers.

26. omber: A card game of Spanish origin, popular in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

27. Albani: Francesco Albani (1578–1660), Italian painter popular in the eighteenth century.

28. ‘I’ll go no more a-roving: I have allowed myself a quote from Lord Byron (1788–1824), since he is omnipresent in the text, from his poem So, we’ll go no more a-roving’.

CHAPTER VI

1. La, sotto… non dole: ‘There, where the days are cloudy and short, A race is born for whom death is not painful.’ A quotation from Petrarch’s In vita di Laura, Canzone XXVIII, which misses out the middle line: Nemica naturalmente di pace’ (‘By nature the enemy of peace’). The omission allows the quotation to refer more easily to Pushkin’s own generation.

2. To die from him will be delightful: Love for a villain was a common theme in contemporary Romantic literature and folklore (cf. Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer).

3. Hetman: Headman or captain, from the Polish hetman.

4. He’s even honest… every stage: Quotations from Voltaire (1694–1778): ‘et même devint honnête homme’ (Candide, 1759); ‘… combien le siècle se perfectionne’ (opening of Canto 4 of Civil War in Geneva, 1768).

5. Regulus: Roman general Marcus Atilius Regulus (d. c.250 BC), captured by the Carthaginians and sent to Rome with harsh terms of peace. Once there, he advised the Senate to continue the war and returned to Carthage, as he had promised, to face execution.

6. chez Véry: Pushkin’s note 37: A Parisian restaurateur.

7. Sed alia tempora: Latin: ‘But times are different.’

8. Where bird cherry, acacia climb: Nabokov, with customary botanical expertise, translates ‘bird cherry’ as ‘racemosa’ and ‘acacia’ as ‘pea tree’. He finds ‘racemosa’ more exact than ‘bird cherry’ and points out that the acacia’ of northern Russia (where the story takes place) is imported from Asia, has yellow flowers and is therefore not a true acacia, but a ‘pea tree’. (The more familiar acacia of southern Russia has a white blossom.) Nabokov refers to the yellow’ epithet in the following couplet by Konstantin Batyushkov (1787–1855), which Pushkin is parodying:

In the shade of milky racemosas

And golden-glistening pea trees

(Nabokov’s translation)

He may be right, but I have preferred the more recognizable ‘bird cherries’ and ‘acacias’. Batyushkov (1787–1855) was one of Pushkin’s predecessors from whom he learned standards of harmony and precision.

9. planting cabbages, like Horace: Planting cabbages’ is taken from the French planter des (ses) choux, meaning ‘to cultivate a rural life’, which Horace lauded on his withdrawal from Rome to a country estate given to him by Gaius Cilnius Maecenas, adviser to the emperor Augustus.

10. cartel: A written challenge which the duellist’s second delivers to the former’s opponent. Lensky’s second is Zaretsky.

11. And there it is – public opinion: Pushkin’s note 38: ‘A verse of Griboyedov’s.’ The verse comes from the comedy Woe from Wit (finished, but not published, in 1824) by Alexander Griboyedov (1795–1829) in which the hero, Chatsky, is hounded by the rumour that he is mad. Only fragments of the play were published during the author’s lifetime. The whole play, still with cuts, appeared posthumously in 1833. Pushkin knew it from manuscripts which were widely circulated. The fact that Pushkin has not italicized the quotation means that he has assimilated it to his own viewpoint rather than treating it as a comment from outside.

12. A temple or a thigh to claim: The duellist would aim at his opponent’s leg if he wished to satisfy his honour with a simple wound. He would aim at his head if he wished to kill him.

13. [15, 16]: The omitted stanzas, 15 and 16, deal with the theme of jealousy.

14. Delvig: Baron Anton Delvig (1798–1831), a minor poet, one of Pushkin’s closest friends and a classmate at the lycée.

15. his verse… ready for your gaze: Every phrase of Lensky’s poem is a stereotype of contemporary elegiac poetry, including Pushkin’s own early verse, and translations from French and German poetry. Nevertheless, as elsewhere in the novel, parody blends with genuine feeling. The arrow’ in line 9 is not a poetic synonym for ‘bullet’, but a conventional literary euphemism for death.

16. Romantic: By ‘Romantic’ Pushkin meant something more full-blooded and realistic, as he explains in his preface to his historical drama Boris Godunov. Obscurely’ and limply’ are terms used by Pushkin’s friend the poet Wilhelm Kükhelbeker (1797–1846) in his attack on elegiac poetry.

17. Lepage’s fatal tubes: Jean Lepage (1779–1822) was a Parisian gunsmith.

18. The pistols… to the place: A Lepage pistol had six edges on the outside of the barrel; the inside was smooth. Powder was poured into the barrel through the opening and secured with a wad. The bullets were inserted with the help of a mallet and ramrod. The flint, which was held in place by a special screw, was raised and tiny grains of powder were poured on to the pan, a steel shelf near an opening in the breech. The powder would burst into flame when struck and ignite the powder charge inside the barrel, causing the bullet to be fired. One of the seconds would load the pistols, while the other observed him.

19. To call his people: Presumably inaccuracy on the part of Pushkin, since Onegin has brought no men with him, only Guillot.

20. [38]: This omitted stanza reinforces the previous one by suggesting that Lensky might have become a Kutuzov (the Russian general who defeated Napoleon), a Nelson, a Napoleon in exile or a Ryleyev (Pushkin’s Decembrist friend) executed by Nicholas I on the gallows.

21. But, reader… monument is laid: This stanza is written in a traditional elegiac mode. Lensky is buried here because, as a duellist, his grave is not allowed in consecrated ground.

22. And wonders: ‘How did Olga suffer?’: It is Pushkin who is doing the wondering, since the townswoman has no idea who Olga, Tatiana and Onegin are.

23. cherished… perished: Pushkin’s stock rhyme here is in Russian ‘sladost’/‘mladost’, ‘sweetness’/‘youth’ (he employs an archaic word for ‘youth’). I have substituted ‘cherish’/‘perish’ because these are hackneyed Romantic terms in English and are often used by Pushkin.

24. my thirtieth year: Pushkin was twenty-eight when he wrote this stanza.

25. In that intoxicating… together now: Pushkin points out in his note 40 that in the first edition of the novel the last two lines of stanza 46 were different and linked with another stanza, 47, all of which he quotes. This version reinforces the anger and satire of the previous stanza:

Stanza 46, lines 13–14:

Midst swaggerers bereft of soul,

Midst fools who shine in very role,

Stanza 47

Midst children, crafty and faint-hearted,

Spoiled and alive to every ruse,

Ludicrous villains, dull, outsmarted

And judges, captious and obtuse,

Midst the coquettes, devout and fervent,

Midst those who play the part of servant,

Midst modish scenes that daily hail

Polite, affectionate betrayal;

Midst the forbidding dispensations

Of cruel-hearted vanity,

Midst the banal inanity

Of schemes, of thoughts and conversations,

In that intoxicating slough,

Where, friends, we bathe together now.

The last two lines are the same as the final couplet of the present stanza 46.

CHAPTER VII

1. Dmitriyev… Baratynsky… Griboyedov: The first epigraph is from Ivan Dmitriev’s (1760–1837) poem The Liberation of Moscow (1795), the second from Baratynsky’s The Feasts, the third from Griboyedov’s Woe from Wit. Dmitriev’s poem is an official ode. Baratynsky’s gives an ironic representation of private mores. Griboyedov’s play, banned by the censor, is a biting satire on Moscow social life. Together they symbolize three contradictory aspects of contemporary Moscow.

2. Lyovshin: Vasily Lyovshin (1746–1826), a Tula landowner and prolific author of a vast range of subjects. Known in the 1820s for his books Flower Gardens and Vegetable Gardens and A Manual of Agriculture (1802–4). The school’s ‘fledglings’ are gentry and country landowners.

3.Priam: Last king of Troy, a venerable and kind ruler.

4. ‘tomfoolery’: A simple card game, played today in Russia mainly by children.

5. a cast-iron statuette… hat: Certain to be Napoleon in classic pose.

6. Juan and the Giaour: Poems by Byron.

7. three novels of the hour: In a draft Pushkin refers to Melmoth, René, Constant’s Adolphe’ as three novels which Onegin always took with him.

8. Circe: Sorceress in Homer’s Odyssey who turns men into swine. Here the meaning is coquette’.

9. philosophic measurement: The Russian has philosophic tables’, which is perhaps an ironic reference to Charles Dupin’s statistical tables’ showing the economic growth of European states including Russia in his book Forces productives et commerciales de la France (Paris, 1827), which was popular in Russia.

10. automedons: Ironic reference to Achilles’ charioteer in the Iliad.

11. Petrovsky Castle: Built in 1776, then rebuilt in 1840, the castle was roughly two miles from Moscow. Napoleon stopped here on his way to Moscow from St Petersburg. When the fire broke out in Moscow, he took up residence in the castle. The Larins followed the same route in their journey to Moscow, passing Petrovsky Castle on their left.

12. turnpike pillars: The turnpike pillars belonged to a triumphal arch, celebrating victory over Napoleon, which was still unfinished when the Larins entered Moscow.

13. street lamps: The streets were illumined by oil-lit lamps attached to striped pillars. These were lit at dusk and extinguished in the morning by a special staff. They gave out a dullish light.

14. Bokharans: Originating in Bokhara, Central Asia, they sold Eastern goods in Russia. Their shawls were very popular among Russian women in the 1820s.

15. Cossack messengers: Cossacks were employed to take errands by horse.

16. gates where lions curl: Heraldic animals made of iron or alabaster and painted green with no connection to the sculpted lion, nor any necessary resemblance to a real one.

17. Crosses where flocks of jackdaws swirl: According to the censor, the Metropolitan of Moscow took offence at Pushkin’s reference. The censor replied that, as far as he knew, jackdaws did indeed alight on church crosses, but that this was a matter for the Chief of Police, who allowed this to happen. The complaint went to the Tsar’s minister, Count Benkendorf, who politely advised the Metropolitan not to meddle in trivialities beneath his dignity.

18. 39, 40: There is no stanza missing here. Pushkin is probably trying to convey a sense of passing time.

19. St Khariton: A Muscovite identified his address by its proximity to this or that church. The saint in question was a martyr in the Orient, under Diocletian, in about AD 303. Pushkin had spent several years in this residential quarter as a child. The parish was in east Moscow, which explains why the Larins, who entered Moscow by the western gate, had to traverse the entire city.

20. grey-haired Kalmyk: The Kalmyks were originally a Mongolian people who moved westwards in the seventeenth century and were absorbed into the province of Astrakhan in south-west Russia in the eighteenth century, later to become a republic under the Soviets. It was an aristocratic fashion in the eighteenth century to keep a Kalmyk boy in the household, a practice that had fallen into disuse when the Larins arrived, so that the original boy is here an old man. Only a few very rich houses employed a special doorman; in most cases one of the household staff would take over this function like the Kalmyk here, who is still engaged in a household task as he does so.

21. Pachette: A Frenchified (and comic) version of the purely Russian Pasha.

22. St Simeon’s: St Simeon’s was in the same parish as St Khariton. St Simeon Stylites the Elder (390?-459) was a Syrian hermit who spent thirty-seven years on a pillar.

23. And since I pulled you by the ears: A slightly altered quotation from Griboyedov’s Woe from Wit, a recurrent source for this chapter, starting with the epigraph.

24. Lyubov Petrovna, Ivan Petrovich… Semyon Petrovich: These three are siblings.

25. Monsieur Finemouche: Probably a French tutor.

26. Pomeranian dog: The custom of keeping house dogs went back to the second half of the eighteenth century.

27. clubber: The reference is to the prestigious English club, a private establishment founded in 1770, famed for its good food and gambling.

28. graces of young Moscow: An ironic reference to three maids of honour, known in Moscow as the three graces’.

29. The ‘archive boys’: A designation coined by Pushkin’s friend S. Sobolevsky for a circle of writers inspired by the German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775–1854) known as the lyubomudry (‘lovers of wisdom’ – a Russified version of philosophy’ or philosopher’). The majority of them served in the archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Despite the satire here, Pushkin was by no means hostile to the group, who included the outstanding men of letters Prince Vladimir Odoyevsky, Stefan Shevyryov and Dmitri Venevitinov.

30. Vyazemsky: Pushkin has already referred twice to his friend Vyazemsky – in the epigraph to Chapter I and in lines 6–7 of Chapter III. Here he makes him a member of the cast just as he had done with his friend Kaverin in Chapter I, stanza 16. But, apart from the joke, Vyazemsky appears here as the only surviving figure of any substance in the ‘desert’ of Russian social life after the collapse of the Decembrist revolt.

31. an old man: Vyazemsky suggested that this is the poet Ivan Dmitriyev (see epigraph).

32. Melpomene: The Greek Muse of tragedy. Pushkin took a negative view of Russian tragedy at the time, arguing for a Shakespearean theatre in place of bad imitations of Racine.

33. Thalia: The Greek Muse of comedy. Given the banning of Griboyedov’s Woe from Wit and the general stagnation of comic drama in the mid-1820s, Pushkin took a sceptical view of Russian comedy, too.

34. the Assembly: The Russian Assembly of Nobility, founded in 1783.

CHAPTER VIII

1. Fare thee well… well: The opening of Byron’s poem Fare Thee Well’ from the cycle Poems of Separation, 1816.

2. The lycée Established by Alexander I in 1810 in the grounds of the Summer Palace outside St Petersburg to educate young gentlemen destined for a professional career. Pushkin boarded there from 1811 to 1817, regarding the school as his real home, and celebrated the date of its opening, 19 October 1811, with anniversary poems from 1817 until the year of his death. The model of the lycée was taken from France.

3. Apuleius: Lucius Apuleius, Roman author (c. AD125–180), whose fantastic and erotic tale The Golden Ass was popular in the eighteenth century in Russia. Pushkin read it in French.

4. Cicero: Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 BC), renowned Roman writer, politician and thinker.

5. Derzhavin: Gavrila Derzhavin (1743–1816), Russia’s first outstanding poet. As a schoolboy, Pushkin enthralled the ancient man with his recitation of his poem Recollections at Tsarskoe Selo’ at a public examination at the lycée in 1815.

6. joined the dust: Pushkin excluded the remaining ten lines of this stanza together with several others that were to follow stanza I. They offered a more extended and detailed poetic autobiography.

7. The noise and feasts… excursions: This probably refers to the Green Lamp, a libertarian organization of young noblemen that Pushkin joined after leaving the lycée and that, already conspiratorial, foreshadowed the Decembrist movement.

8. But I seceded… fled a far: Pushkin refers here to his exile through the prism of his Romantic narrative poems, Prisoner of the Caucasus (1820–21) and The Gipsies (1824), where the hero voluntarily flees from civilization.

9. Leonora: Heroine of the much-translated Lenore by Burger.

10. Tauris: The Crimea, where Pushkin spent three weeks during his first year of exile.

11. The Nereids: In Greek mythology, sea nymphs, the fifty daughters of Nereus and Doris.

12. Moldavia: Part of the province of Bessarabia, where Pushkin was exiled 1820–24. The Gipsies (1824), written later in Odessa and Mikhailovskoye, his family estate, drew its material from the environs of Kishinev, capital of Bessarabia.

13. Then suddenly… French book: This refers to the third stage of Pushkin’s exile at his family estate at Mikhailovskoye, when the Muse is transformed into Tatiana.

14. A Harold, Quaker, Pharisee: ‘Harold: i.e. Byron’s Childe Harold. Quaker: a member of the religious society of friends, founded by George Fox in 1648–50, adopting peaceful principles and plain living. Pharisee: originally a member of an ancient Jewish sect distinguished by its strict obsevance of tradition and written law; latterly, a self-righteous person or hypocrite.

15. Demon: A reference to Pushkin’s poem ‘The Demon’ (1824).

16. leaving boat for ball: An allusion to Griboyedov’s Woe from Wit, referring to the hero Chatsky’s return to Moscow in 1819 after three years abroad.

17. Shishkov: Admiral Alexander Shishkov (1754–1841), leader of the Archaist group of writers who contested the inclusion or adaptation of French vocabulary into Russian.

18. The Cleopatra of Neva: Probably Countess Yelena Zavadovsky, whose cold, queenly beauty was the talk of society.

19. Spain’s ambassador: An anachronism. There was no Spanish ambassador in St Petersburg in 1824, when Chapter VIII takes place. A new ambassador appeared in 1825, when Russia resumed diplomatic relations with Spain, broken off during the Spanish revolution. This and similar anachronisms in the last two chapters suggest that Pushkin wanted to set a post-Decembrist background to his story.

20. ten strikes: Ten o’clock. Onegin visits at the earliest opportunity. Normally, guests would arrive at a soirée much later.

21. The badge of which two sisters prated: The badge is a court decoration inscribed with the royal monogram granted by the Tsar to women who became ladies-in-waiting to the Empress. In an unpublished version of this stanza the sisters are referred to as orphans. When their father, General Borozdin, died, leaving them penniless, the Tsar took them under his wing.

22. the war: The reference is presumably to the war with Poland of 1830, another anachronism.

23. he found a bore: Omitted lines: there are a number of variants behind stanzas 23–6 that either reinforce the civility surrounding Tatiana in stanza 23 or sharpen the satire of stanzas 24–6.

24. Prolasov: Prolasov or Prolazov is derived from prolaz’ or pro-laza’, meaning climber’ or sycophant’. He is also a ridiculous figure in eighteenth-century Russian comedies and popular prints.

25. Saint-Priest: Count Emmanuil Saint-Priest (1806–28) was a hussar and fashionable cartoonist, son of a French émigré.

26. Palm Week cherub: Paper figures of cherubs (glued to gingerbread, etc.) sold at the annual fair during Palm Week, the week preceding Easter.

27. A jackanapes… overstarched: The reference is possibly to Thomas Raikes, an Englishman who claims he met Pushkin in 1829. Beau Brummell had set the fashion for a lightly starched cravat in the first decade and a half of the century. Overstarching, which became the fashion in the late twenties, in France and Russia, was considered vulgar.

28. Morpheus: God of sleep.

29. I shall offend you: An echo of St Preux’s letter to Julie (part 1, letter 2) in Rousseau’s La Nouvelle Héloise: ‘Je sens d’avance le poids de votre indignation…’

30. Manzoni, Gibbon: Alessandro Manzoni (1785–1873), Italian novelist, author of I promessi sposi (The Betrothed, 1825–7), which laid the basis for modern literary Italian. Edward Gibbon (1737–94), English historian. Onegin would have read his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776–88) in a French translation.

31. Chamfort: Sébastien Roch Nicolas Chamfort (1741–94), author of Maximes et Pensées (Maxims and Thoughts, 1803). Pushkin liked his aphorisms.

32. Bichat and Herder and Tissot: Marie Francois Xavier Bichat (1771–1802), French anatomist and physiologist. Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803), German philosopher and critic, notable collector of folk songs, and writer on history, literature and language. Simon Andre Tissot (1728–97), famous Swiss doctor, author of De la santé des gens de lettres (On the Health of Men of Letters, 1768).

33. Bayle: Pierre Bayle (1647–1706), French philosopher, author of famous Dictionnaire historique et critique (Historical and Critical Dictionary, 1697).

34. Fontenelle: Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle (1657–1757), French sceptical philosopher, author of Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes (Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds, 1686), the Russian translation of which was banned by the Church.

35. The almanachs… treating me with animus: Almanachs, unlike journals or reviews, appeared irregularly and were more like anthologies. While he was writing Chapter VIII, Pushkin came under attack from the main literary journals, especially The Northern Bee, edited by the police spy Bulgarin.

36. E sempre bene: ‘And excellently’.

37. magnetism: ‘Magnetism’ became a fashionable word at the time to designate immaterial influences.

38. Idol Mio, Benedetta: The barcarolle was popular in Russia at the time. Pushkin’s neighbours at Trigorskoye enjoyed singing Kozlov’s poem ‘Venetian Night’ to the tune of a gondolier’s recitative (‘Benedetta sia la madre’ (‘Blest be the mother’)). ‘Idol mio’ is probably a duet by the Italian composer Vicenzo Gabusi: ‘Se, o cara, sorridi’ (‘If you were to smile, my dear’), the refrain of which is: ‘Idol mio, piú pace non ho’ (‘My idol, I have no peace any more’).

39. blue blocks of hewn-out ice: In winter huge blocks of ice were cut from the Neva to be stored in refrigerators. During the March thaw sledges would transport them to buyers.

40. Sadi: Sadi or Saadi (b. between 1203 and 1210, d. 1292) was a Persian poet, born in Shiraz. Pushkin’s quotation from Saadi gave cause to official suspicion that he was referring to the Decembrists.

FRAGMENTS OF ONEGIN’S JOURNEY

1. Fragments of Onegin’s Journey: This was originally intended to be chapter VIII (with the preceding chapter in the present volume intended as chapter IX). It was published separately and includes stanzas written at various times. The description of Odessa was composed in 1825 while Pushkin was working on Chapter IV. The beginning of the published text was written in the autumn of 1829 and the final stanzas were completed on 18 December 1830, when Pushkin was staying at his Boldino estate. The Foreword first appeared in a separate 1832 edition of Chapter VIII. In the 1833 edition of the entire novel Pushkin included the Foreword and the Journey after his Notes. It is unclear whether a completed version of the Journey ever existed despite Pushkin’s reference to it in the Foreword.

The route of the Journey is unclear. It is possible that Onegin spent some time abroad. He is away for some three and a half years. Since the surviving stanzas of the Journey represent him rushing from place to place, driven by ennui, it is unlikely that he spent all of that time in Russia. Moreover, his return to St Petersburg is compared with Chatsky’s leap from boat to ball’ in Chapter VIII, stanza 13, line 14.

Some of the stanzas were omitted with an eye to censorship, especially Onegin’s visit to the notorious military settlements set up by Count Arakcheev (1769–1854), Alexander I’s military adviser. These were harsh detention centres to which peasants were conscripted. Katenin (see below) wrote to Annenkov, Pushkin’s first biographer, on 24 April 1853, that the poet had decided to sacrifice the entire chapter because of the violence of his comments. In his Foreword Pushkin is silent about his intentions and simply acknowledges Katenin’s very different criticism of the omission there. Since Novgorod was one of the locations of these settlements, it has been suggested that Onegin’s visit to them coincides with his stay in the town. In other words, the Fragments may have begun with such a visit. It is possible that Onegin also saw the settlements outside Odessa, the town that takes up most of the Journey. Pavel Ivanovich Pestel’ (1793–1826), one of the leaders of the Decembrists in the South, wanted to foment a revolt in these camps.

2. nine Camenae: Roman water nymphs identified with the nine Greek Muses.

3. Makaryev: Annual fair originating outside the Makaryev monastery some sixty miles east of Nizhny and transferred into the town in 1817.

4. Terek: Caucasian river.

5. Kura, Aragva: Caucasian rivers. The Kura is the most important river in Transcaucasia.

6. There were the Russian tents unfurled: The Caucasus was first annexed by Peter the Great in 1722.

7. Beshtu: One of the five peaks of Besh Tau, a mountain, another one of which is Mashuk.

8. Pylades, Orestes: In Greek mythology, Orestes, accompanied by his friend Pylades, sails to Tauris to seek absolution from matricide. The rule of the small kingdom requires all strangers to be sacrificed to Diana, the local deity. Each of the two friends wants to die in the place of the other.

9. Mithridates: King of Pontus, who in 63 BC ordered a Gallic mercenary to kill him.

10. Mickiewicz sang his passion: Adam Bernard Mickiewicz (1798–1855), Polish poet, spent four and a half years in Russia, visiting the Crimea in 1825 and composing the Crimean Sonnets. A friend of Pushkin until the Polish uprising of 1830, the suppression of which Pushkin enthusiastically supported.

11. What yearning pressed my flaming heart: Pushkin was in love with a daughter of the Raevsky family, with whom he was staying.

12. trepak: An energetic peasant dance.

13. ‘And cabbage soup, while I’m the squire’: Quotation from the poet Antiokh Dimitrievich Kantemir’s (1708–44) fifth satire, ‘On Human Depravity in General, in literal translation: ‘A pot of cabbage soup, but I m the big one, master of the house. A similar Russian proverb reads: ‘My fare is plain, but I am my own master.

14. O fountain of Bakhchisaray: Pushkin’s narrative poem The Fountain of Bakhchisaray, composed in 1822 and published in 1824. Zarema is one of two female characters.

15. Morali: Born in Tunis, Morali (Ali) was a sea captain, suspected of piracy. He cut an extravagant figure in Odessa and was a close friend of Pushkin who referred to him as the Corsair (hero of Byron’s eponymous poem).

16. Tumansky: Vasily Ivanovich Tumansky (1800–1860), a minor poet, worked with Pushkin as a clerk for Count Vorontsov, Pushkin’s employer in Odessa.

17. Why, water… must be wrought: Water was transported to the town for about two miles uphill in small barrels. Later, aqueducts were used.

18. casino: Pushkin spells ‘casino in Western letters. It was called ‘casino de commerce, where not only gambling, but all manner of financial transactions took place, and it doubled as a ballroom.

19. Oton: Russian version of Automne or Autonne, the name of a well-known French restaurateur in Odessa.

20. A trader’s youthful wife: Probably Amalia Riznich, one of Pushkin’s Odessa loves.

21. Ausonia: Italy.

CHAPTER X

1. Chapter X: Pushkin composed this politically explosive chapter in 1830, but burned most of it. Historical in character, it has nothing to do with the previous narrative, although there is evidence to suggest that Onegin might turn up, possibly as a Decembrist.

2. A ruler… those years ago: Pushkin’s attitude to Alexander I changed over the years as the latter became more reactionary. ‘Those years ago’ refers to the defeats of 1805–7, at Austerlitz and Eylau, when Alexander signed the humiliating Tilsit peace treaty with Napoleon.

3. To pluck… pitched his tent: Alexander’s authority was drastically undermined by these losses and the initial failures of the 1812 war, symbolized here by the ‘plucking’ of the Russian eagle. Napoleon’s tent refers to the one he constructed on a raft in the middle of the Neman river where he conducted the negotiations of the Tilsit peace treaty. By appearing here several minutes before Alexander, Napoleon played the host, so humiliating the Tsar with his cheerful welcome.

4. Barclay: Prince Mikhail Bogdanovich Barclay-de-Tolly (1761–1818) commanded the Russian armies during the first part of the war, but his policy of retreat gave rise to accusations of treachery.

5. king of kings: A paraphrase of Agamemnon’s title in the Iliad, often applied to Alexander I during the period 1813–15 by official publications. Another provenance is a song sung in the French opera in 1814.

6. as he fattened: The Russian says simply: And the fatter, the heavier’, but it seems likely that the reference is to Alexander, whose personal fatness’ after victory creates greater heaviness’ for the Russian people.

7. Maybe… done it, too: The Russian word for maybe’ is the colloquial and popular avos, meaning on the off chance’. The ‘high-bornrhymester’ is Prince Dolgoruky (1764–1823), a satirical salon poet who addressed a poem to the word. Pushkin may have come across Byron’s use of shibboleth’ in Don Juan, XI, 12, 1 – 2: ‘Juan, who did not understand a word / Of English, save their shibboleth, “God damn!”’

8. To Albion the seas are granted: Britain’s defeat of the French (and Spanish) at Trafalgar in 1805 ensured its supremacy over the seas.

9. the fraud: The reference is either to Prince A. N. Golitsyn (1773–1844) or to M. L. Magnitsky (1778–1855). Golitsyn changed from an atheist in his early years to an adherent of ‘official mysticism’, founding the Biblical Society’ and becoming Minister for National Education and Spiritual Affairs. Magnitsky was notorious for his monetary greed.

10. Maybe Tsar Nicholas… free: In 1830 Pushkin continued to hope for Tsar Nicholas’s mercy towards the exiled Decembrists. Here the tone is ironical.

11. This man of fate… rack of leisure: The ‘man of fate is Napoleon. The pope attended his coronation in Paris. ‘Rack of leisure refers to Napoleon’s imprisonment on St Helena.

12. The Pyrenees… B’s shadow: The stanza refers to two revolutions of 1820 that shook post-Napoleonic Europe and influenced Decembrism in Russia. The Spanish revolution was defeated in 1823 by the French, mandated by the Holy Alliance of France, Austria, Russia and Prussia. The Neapolitan was crushed by Austria in 1821, assisted by England and France. The ‘one-armed prince was general Alexander Konstantinovich Ipsilanti (1792–1828), a Greek serving in the Russian army, who lost his arm in the battle of Dresden. In 1821 he led an abortive rising of the Greeks in Turkish Moldavia. Pushkin knew Ipsilanti in Kishinev and supported his endeavours, but was later disillusioned with him. Pushkin uses the former name Morea for the Peloponnese. From Kishinev Ipsilanti directed a secret society known as the Hetairae, which had its headquarters in the Pelo-ponnese and fomented a rising there. ‘L refers probably to Louis Pierre Louvel 1783–1820), a saddler, who planned to kill all the Bourbons, assassinating ‘B’, duc de Berry, heir to the French throne in Paris, on 13 February 1820.

13. Our Tsar said… Alexander’s menial: Alexander attended four congresses aimed at crushing revolution in Europe: in Aachen (1818), Troppau (1820), Laibakh (1821) and Verona (1822). At Laibach the Neapolitan revolution was the main concern, while the Verona congress planned the intervention in Spain. ‘Alexander’s menial is Count Arakcheev, the Tsar’s most powerful adviser. See note i to ‘Fragments of Onegin’s Journey.

14. Toy regiment… deadly foes: The stanza refers to the Semyonovsky regiment founded by Peter the Great (1672–1725), who modelled it on the half-boy, half-toy regiment that he created in his boyhood. The ‘tyrant was the mad Paul I (1754–1801, father of Alexander I and Nicholas I), slain by a gang of courtiers with the connivance of the Semyonovsky regiment, who were meant to be guarding him. The same regiment staged a rebellion in 1820, foreshadowing the Decembrist movement. Sergei Muravyov-Apostol (1796–1826) and Mikhail Bestuzhev-Riumin (1801–26), the hanged Decembrists leaders, had served in it.

15. Russia again returned… smouldering: The Semyonovsky revolt was quelled, but the Decembrist movement had begun. Pushkin’s image of the ‘spark responds to a line in a poem sent to him from Siberia by the Decembrist Prince Alexander Odoevsky: ‘From a spark a flame will burst’.

16. Foregathering… reciprocating greetings: The reference is to the conspiratorial Russian lunches’ held by the Decembrist Ryleyev, who liked to stress his Russianness by serving only Russian food and drink.

17. Nikita’s… debate: Nikita Mikhailovich Muravyev (1796–1843) was one of the most active members of the secret societies, formulating a plan for a constitution. He was sentenced to twenty years’ hard labour. Pushkin knew him in the lycée. Ilya Andreyevich Dolgorukov (1798–1848) was a member of the Union of Welfare, one of the main Decembrist organizations. No action was taken against him as a result of the intervention of his commanding officer, Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich.

18. Lunin… decisive measures: Mikhail Sergeyevich Lunin (1787–1845), guards officer, reveller and member of all the Decembrist societies. His decisive measures’ refer, it seems, to a plan for assassinating the Tsar put forward by him in 1816. Pushkin befriended him on leaving the lycée.

19. Noëls were brought and read by Pushkin: Pushkin was not present here, since he was not admitted to conspiratorial meetings. In any case, the occasion he refers to took place in Moscow in 1817. But he read his noëls at other gatherings. The noël is a French Christmas carol with a topical reference. Pushkin’s noëls are political parodies of the form. Only one remains.

20. Yakushkin: Pushkin met Ivan Dmitrievich Yakushkin (1793–1857) in 1829 in St Petersburg and again in the South. One of the topics of the Moscow meetings in 1817 was Alexander’s rumoured plan to move his residence to Warsaw and transfer part of Russia to Poland. It was this prospect that fired Yakushkin’s impulse to assassinate him. Portraits of Yakushkin give an impression of dejection, apparently caused by unhappy love.

21. the lame Turgenev: Nikolai Ivanovich Turgenev (1789–1871), Decembrist. Pushkin saw the brothers Turgenev, Alexander and Nikolai, frequently in St Petersburg between 1817 and 1820, writing his famous ode ‘Liberty’ (1817) in their flat. Nikolai’s influence can also be felt in the poem ‘The Village’ (1819), which deplores serfdom. The emancipation of the serfs motivated Nikolai’s entire career. In 1824 he left for Western Europe, returning in 1856, when the Decembrists were amnestied. The limp in his left foot was the result of a childhood illness.

22. 16: This stanza is defective. There is a gap of two syllables in the middle of line 9, indicated by dots. Nor does the last word in line 9, ‘tiranov (‘tyrants), rhyme with the last word in line 12, ‘sklonyaya (‘inclining / persuading) except on the second syllable (‘a’/’ya’), although they fit metrically. My ‘tyrants’/‘inclining misrhyme in a similar way. The stanza moves from the activities of the Northern Society of the Decembrists to those of the South.

23. Kamenka: An estate on the Dnieper, belonging to V. L. Davydov, where the Southern Decembrists met and Pushkin stayed during his exile in Kishinev.

24. Tul’ chin: a small town in the Podolsk province housing the headquarters of the Second Army under the command of Count Wittgenstein (1768–1842) and the central group of the Southern Society.

25. Pestel’: Pushkin met Pestel’ in Kishinev, remarking that he was one of the most original minds he knew.

26. a cool-headed general: Sergei Grigor’ evich Volkonsky (1788–1865), a leader of the Southern Society, sentenced to twenty years hard labour.

27. Muryavyov: To be distinguished from Nikita Muravyov in note 17 above. He is Sergei Ivanovich Muravyov-Apostol, mentioned in note 14.

28. ’Twixt a Lafitte and a Cliquot: This means during either dinner or supper: the meal would begin with Lafitte, a dry wine, and end with champagne, Cliquot.