Yevgeny Onegin

CHAPTER TWO

O rus!… *

HORACE

O Russia!

1

The place Yevgeny found so boring

Was a delightful rural spot,

Where you, with pleasures newly dawning,

Would have blessed heaven for your lot.

His manor house stood all secluded,

With winds by yonder hill excluded,

Above a stream. The prospect yields

A motley view of luscious fields,

Pasture and corn, sunlit and golden,

Dotted with hamlets here and there,

With cattle wandering everywhere,

And dense, dark alleys to be strolled on

Through a vast garden, overgrown,

With wistful dryads set in stone.

2

His castle, far from being squalid,

Was built as castles should be built,

Convenient, sensible and solid,

Ancestral to the very hilt.

The chambers had high ceilings, they did,

The parlour walls were well brocaded,

Tsars’ portraits hung on every wall,

The stoves bore coloured tiles. It all

Looked rather down at heel and seedy—

I’m not quite sure why this was so.

In any case my friend had no

Concern for this. He wasn’t greedy,

And in all settings, fresh or worn,

Ancient or modern, he would yawn. 3

A certain room drew him in deeper;

Here the old chap had vilified

For forty years his castle-keeper

As he squashed flies and stared outside—

A simple room with oak-wood floorage,

A table, soft couch, decent storage,

And not an ink-stain anywhere.

Onegin scoured the cupboards; there

He found a book, some sort of ledger,

Home-made liqueurs in a long rack,

Apple juice, and an almanac

For eighteen-eight, a source of pleasure

For one who’d had no time to look

At any other kind of book. 4

Yevgeny cut a lonely figure

Amidst his lands. To pass the time

He thought of something: he would trigger

Some changes, and reform this clime.

These peasants, thought our wasteland prophet,

Don’t like unpaid work—take them off it!

Let them instead pay a small tax:

They will thank Heaven, and relax.

But this remission of serf labour

Displeased the man next door, who viewed

It as too risky. He was shrewd,

As was another smirking neighbour.

The locals shared one thought: “By God,

That fellow’s dangerously odd.” 5

At first they came in droves to visit,

But on the back porch he would pause

Usually, wondering, “Who is it?”

And seize the reins of his Don horse.

A family carriage on the highway

Would send him shooting down a byway.

Outraged by conduct of this kind,

They soon left friendliness behind.

“He’s crazy, he’s a boor, a mason.

Red wine is all he drinks. How crass!

And always in a drinking glass!

He won’t kiss ladies’ hands. Disgraceful!

It’s ‘yes’ and ‘no’, but never ‘sir’.”

And thus did all of them concur. 6

Into his village in that season

Came a new landowner, a man

Who gave the neighbourhood good reason

For no less scrupulous a scan.

This person was Vladímir Lénsky,

Describable as “Göttingen-sky”,

A handsome young chap in his prime,

A devotee of Kant and rhyme.

From misty Germany returning,

Ardent and slightly odd, it seems,

Replete with freedom-loving dreams

And all the latest fruits of learning,

He got excited, spoke with strength,

And wore his black curls shoulder-length. 7

Society’s chilling excesses

Had not yet shrivelled up his soul.

A friendly greeting, girls’ caresses

Still kept him feeling warm and whole.

With silliness his heart was nourished,

And false hope still within him flourished.

The glamour of the world, the din,

Seized his young mind and took it in.

Amusement, fancy, taradiddle

Relieved his heart of doubts and strife.

For him the meaning of this life

Remained a captivating riddle

To which he often turned his mind,

Suspecting wonders unconfined. 8

He knows there is a twin soul waiting

To be united with him. She

Repines with anguish, contemplating

Each waiting day with misery;

And friends, to whom he stands indebted,

Will save his name and end up fettered

Willingly, hesitating not

To smash the slanderer with his pot.

And some there are, guided by destiny,

Whose sacred bond will one day slip

Into immortal fellowship

That beams a mighty luminescence

Upon us (be assured of this),

And furnishes the world with bliss. 9

Hot rage, compassion, with a dormant

And spotless love for all things good,

And glory with its lovely torment

Obsessed him, stirring his young blood.

He roamed the earth, and sang where Goethe

And Schiller lived, striving to nurture

The poet’s eagerness—a goal

That captured and inflamed his soul.

The very muses, though exalted,

Were not disgraced by his young bliss

Nor his proud poetry, nor this

High sentiment that never faltered,

The surge of dreams unspoilt and calm,

Simplicity with its grave charm. 10

Love was what he, the lovelorn, played on,

Singing the sweetest, clearest notes,

Clear as the thoughts of a pure maiden,

A sleeping babe, a moon that floats

The night sky with its far-flung glories,

Goddess of sighs and secret stories.

He sang of partings and sad times,

“The days of yore” and “misty climes”

And roses—with romantic language.

He sang of many a distant place

Of quietude and restful space

Where he had wept salt tears in anguish.

He sang of fading life, as seen

By a young man not quite eighteen. 11

Yevgeny would be just the person

To say if he was any good.

His low opinion could not worsen

Of dining in the neighbourhood.

He shunned the locals’ noisy chatter,

However sensible its matter—

Haymaking, wine production, with

Much talk of kennels, kin and kith.

They prattled with no show of feeling,

No spark of poetry, no whit

Of brightness, intellect or wit,

No communality of dealings.

Their sweet wives’ talk was less intense

But even more devoid of sense. 12

Vladimir Lensky, rich, good-looking,

Was deemed by all a splendid catch.

The country folk were set on hooking

Their girls a profitable match,

In this case their “half-Russian” neighbour.

If he dropped in, the talk would favour

All comments, even if oblique,

That painted bachelordom bleak.

It’s teatime now, and Lensky’s coming.

Dunya controls the samovar—

“Go to it, Dunya, there you are!”

Here’s a guitar, and to its strumming

She screeches (what a caterwaul!),

“Come to me in my golden hall.” 13

But Lensky, not exactly raging

To bind himself in wedlock, sought

Acquaintance with this man, Onegin;

It can’t come fast enough, he thought.

The two men met. Liquid and solid,

Poetry–prose, ice-cold and torrid

Are not more polarized than they.

Their differences won the day

At first; they simply bored each other.

Then they drew closer. Far and wide,

They rode out daily side by side,

Each an inseparable brother.

Thus friendships form (something I rue)

From having nothing else to do. 14

But we exclude that kind of closeness.

As our unbiased thinking runs,

People are naughts, while, in our grossness,

We see ourselves as number ones.

We show Napoleon’s worst features.

Millions of bipeds, fellow creatures,

Exist for us to use as tools;

Feelings we leave to beasts and fools.

Yevgeny, though, was not unshakeable.

Although he took, to all men born,

An informed attitude of scorn,

Nevertheless (since rules are breakable)

With some he went against the grain

And let his feelings have free rein. 15

He smiled at Lensky as he chattered.

The poet’s language was ablaze;

His mind, his judgement of what mattered,

The inspiration in his gaze,

Seemed to Onegin unfamiliar.

His inward thoughts grew ever chillier,

Though he fought hard and held them back,

Thinking it stupid to attack

And spoil this brief bliss with correction.

“Time will enlighten him, not me.

So let the man’s illusion be;

Let him accept the world’s perfection.

To youth and fervour let’s succumb,

Young ardour and delirium.” 16

There was a good deal to divide them,

And make them think as thinkers should:

The compacts made by ancient tribesmen,

How science works, evil and good,

The age-old ways of superstition,

The mystery of non-existence,

Life, destiny, rose, as they must,

Before these men to be discussed.

The poet, holding forth with fervour,

Forgot himself and made things worse

By quoting bits of Nordic verse.

Yevgeny was a kind observer;

While understanding not a lot,

He listened hard with all he’d got. 17

But passion was what dominated

The minds of these reclusive chaps.

From its strong force emancipated,

Onegin spoke of this, perhaps

With some regret (and sighs), as follows:

“Blest he who in his passion wallows

And then at last puts it aside.

Twice blest is he who has denied

And cooled both love (with separation)

And enmity (with a sharp word),

Yawning with friends and wife, unstirred

By jealous agonies, too patient

To put dynastic funds to use

By risking all on one sly deuce!” 18

When we have hid beneath the banner

Of sensible tranquillity,

With ardour cooled in such a manner

That we can view indulgently

The lingering echoes of its surges—

Its once unstoppable emergence,

Brought down to earth with much ado,

We sometimes like to listen to

Wild passions as described by others.

They thrill the heart. Thus, drawing near

An old campaigner lends an ear

To tales from young, mustachioed brothers,

He long-neglected in his shack,

They in their wisdom talking back. 19

But youthful ardour in its madness

Hides nothing, leaves no room for doubt;

Love, enmity, delight or sadness—

Nothing will not come pouring out.

For love deemed now beyond the column,

Onegin listened and looked solemn,

Hearing the poet, who confessed

With eager, loving openness.

His simple, unsuspecting conscience

Stood openly revealed because

Yevgeny saw it as it was,

A young man’s tale of loving nonsense,

A touching story, it is true,

Characterized by nothing new. 20

Such love! No one would now bestow it,

Not nowadays. It was unique,

The frenzied spirit of a poet

Condemned to love and languish, weak

At all times, in all places, burning

With dreams and a familiar yearning,

Familiar anguish, as before.

Neither the chill of distance nor

Protracted years of separation,

Nor hours devoted to the arts,

Nor lovely sights in foreign parts,

Nor study, nor wild celebration

Had changed the nature of his soul,

Still virginally warm and whole. 21

While still a lad, entranced by Olga

And free from heartache, Lensky grew

More and more happy to behold her

Frolicking wild, as young girls do,

And with the woodlands for their shelter

He shared her scatty helter-skelter.

Their fathers, neighbours and good pals,

Had them down as connubials.

Her dwelling was a humble chalet.

Her parents saw her charm and were

Delighted to consider her

A hidden lily of the valley

Mid the thick grass, for none to see,

Safe from the moths and bumblebee. 22

She gave the poet his first promptings

Of love’s young dream, delight, desire.

The very thought of her did something

To animate his doleful lyre.

Leaving behind his golden playtime,

He loved the dense woods in the daytime,

The still, sequestered afternoon

And night skies with the stars and moon,

The moon, celestial luminary

Resplendent through the evening gloom,

Who strolls with us, the one to whom

We once pledged joy, and pain, and worry…

Though now it’s just a thing more bright

Than our dim lanterns are at night. 23

Demure, compliant, all elated,

Brimming with early-morning bliss,

Like poets’ lives uncomplicated,

As winsome as a lover’s kiss,

Her sky-blue eyes so Anglo-Saxon,

Her smiling face, her tresses flaxen,

Her walk, her voice, her tiny waist…

But, no… According to your taste,

Take any novel at your leisure,

And there she’ll be. The portrait’s fine;

Though once a favourite of mine,

It bores me now beyond all measure.

Reader, with all respect to you,

I’ll take the elder of the two. 24

Tatyana… It may seem audacious

To introduce a name like hers

Into this novel’s tender pages,

But it is done; we are the first.

So? It’s a good name, nice when spoken,

And yet I know it’s more a token

Of olden times or something fit

For sculleries. We must admit

Our taste is almost non-existent

In choosing a becoming name.

In poetry it’s just the same—

Enlightenment is somewhat distant,

Consistently an open door

To affectation, nothing more. 25

Tatyana, then—a different creature,

Lacking her sister’s radiance,

Her rosiness, freshness of feature—

Seemed hardly worth a second glance.

Silent and gloomy, she would go like

A shy thing from the wild woods, doe-like,

And in the home she seemed to be

A changeling in their family.

Her parents, she could never thrill them

With girlish cuddles. She, a child,

Was temperamentally too mild

To hop and skip with other children.

And at the window she would spend,

Silently staring, days on end. 26

She stayed the same right from the cradle,

A friend of pensiveness, it seems.

Dull country leisure she was able

To ornament with her own dreams.

She was too delicately fingered

For needlework, and never lingered

O’er canvas workframes of the ilk

That called for fair designs in silk.

Signs of tyrannical intention:

A girl with her compliant doll

Anticipates what must befall

(Decorum, etiquette, convention),

Rehearsing with her poppet—ah!—

The strictures learnt from her mamma. 27

Tatyana gave no dolls a cuddle.

She did not, even at that age,

Discuss with dolly in a huddle

The town, and what was “all the rage”.

Frolicking girls tended to bore her.

What she preferred were tales of horror,

Dark deeds upon a winter’s night;

These stories were her heart’s delight.

Sometime her nurse enjoyed dispatching

Her playmates down the open lawn,

But Tanya would remain withdrawn

And would not go chasing and catching.

She found their raucous laughter dull,

Their games a silly spectacle. 28

She loved to stand outside, her eyes on

The east, the coming dawn of day,

The pallor of the far horizon,

Stars circling till they fade away.

The earth’s dark margin softly eases,

Morning is heralded in breezes,

And daytime slowly gathers light.

In winter, when the shades of night

Darkened the half-world of the valley,

A vale of lazy peace, unkissed

By moonlight in the murky mist,

The slothful east was slow to rally,

She would arise from her night’s rest,

Lighting the candles as she dressed. 29

She spent her youth in reading sessions;

Novels were all she wished to know.

She loved to take in false impressions

From Richardson and from Rousseau.

Her father was a good chap, decent,

Outdated, knowing nothing recent.

In novels he could see no harm.

He read none, he felt no alarm.

Book-reading was, in his opinion,

An empty toy. Why should he care

What secret volume she had there,

Dozing the night beneath her pillow?

His wife was smitten like their child

With Richardson. He drove her wild. 30

Though Richardson was her true favourite,

Not from the reading she had done,

And not that Lovelace seemed unsavoury

Compared to Mr Grandison.

No. Her cousine, Princess Alina,

In Moscow, where she’d often seen her,

Had told her all about these men…

Her spouse was her fiancé then,

Though this ran counter to her feelings.

Another man, for whom she pined,

And who had seized her heart and mind,

Was altogether more appealing—

A Grandison who played the cards,

A dashing captain of the Guards. 31

She was, like him, a stylish dresser

Following fashion and good taste…

But she was not consulted. Better

To get her wed now. They made haste.

Then straight away, to stop her grieving,

Her husband acted wisely, leaving

For their new country home, where soon,

Hemmed in all round by God knows whom,

At first she wept a lot and bridled,

Close to divorce. But soon she’d been

Domesticated by routine,

And she contentedly subsided.

Routine is heaven-sent, oh, yes,

A substitute for happiness. 32

Routine calmed the despairing daughter,

Whose grief was unassuageable.

A big discovery then brought her

Relief that comforted in full.

Midst work and pleasure she discovered

How her new husband could be governed

And mastered with an iron rod—

So that things happened on the nod.

She toured the workings, field and factory,

She pickled mushrooms, laid them down,

She shaved serfs’ heads. She kept accounts.

She saw the bathhouse every Saturday.

She whacked the maids. Her every whim

Went though without a word to him. 33

She took to using blood when scrawling

In sweet girls’ albums. How bizarre:

Praskovya’s name was changed to Pauline

And normal speech went la-di-da.

She wore a very narrow corset.

She took the Russian “n” and forced it

Into a Frenchman’s nasal sound…

But soon all this turned upside down.

Album and stays, Princess Alina,

The book of tender poems, the lot—

Even the false names—she forgot,

Saying Akulka, not Selina,

And she restored without mishap

The padded robe and floppy cap. 34

Her husband loved her with deep feeling.

Her whims and fancies left him blank.

So, blithely trusting all her dealings,

He lounged about and ate and drank.

His life has struck an even tenor,

Not least as evening drew on when a

Group of their neighbours, good and true,

Arrived, down-to-earth people who,

After the usual friendly greetings,

Would gossip, moan and raise a smile…

The time would steal away; meanwhile

Olga was sent to get the tea-things…

The friends in due time, having fed,

Were driven off back home to bed. 35

Their peaceful lives passed in the old style

With good traditions still held dear,

Thus Russian pancakes came at Shrovetide

Floating on butter; twice a year

They fasted; they were happy playing

On little roundabouts, soothsaying

In songs; they loved a choral dance,

And on Trinity Day perchance,

When folk were yawning through Thanksgiving,

They’d splash a couple of teardrops

Upon a bunch of buttercups,

And rye beer made their lives worth living,

And guests at table ate and drank,

Served in accordance with their rank. 36

Behold the pair—now ageing mortals.

And for the husband his cold tomb

At last has opened wide its portals;

He has a new crown to assume.

He died with lunch nigh on the table,

And those who mourned him were his neighbour,

His children and his wife so true,

A forthright woman through and through.

He’d been a bluff and kindly barin,

And at the site of his remains

A monument in stone proclaims:

A humble sinner, Dmítry Lárin,

Here rests in peace beneath this sod,

A brigadier and slave of God. 37

Back on home soil, Vladimir Lensky

Came to this graveyard by and by,

Looked at the modest tomb intently

And blessed the relics with a sigh,

Which left him feeling melancholic.

“Oh dear,” he gloomed. “Alas, poor Yorick!

For he hath borne me in his arms…

How oft in childhood in my palms

I joshed his medal, that ‘Ochákov’.

He put dear Olga in my way,

And wondered if he’d see the day…”

Vladimir, with a sincere mark of

Sadness upon him, daubed his draft,

A fancy tribute epitaphed. 38

He paid another tribute, weeping,

To mark his parents and their past

And all his ancestors here sleeping.

Life with its furrows comes, alas,

To a swift harvest. Generations,

By Providence’s machinations,

Arise and flourish and are gone,

And others always follow on…

And thus our giddy tribe will breeze on,

Will rise and writhe and boil and bloom,

Then speed us to the family tomb.

For all of us there comes a season,

And grandchildren will one fine day

Drive us from mother earth away. 39

But you must now enjoy life (shall you?)

In all its emptiness, my friends.

I know its less-than-nothing value,

And there my interest in it ends.

My eyes are closed to all things ghostly,

Yet hope, of the remote kind mostly,

Sometimes intrudes upon my heart.

It would be dismal to depart

This life leaving no half-seen marker.

I live and scribble not for fame,

Though I have wanted all the same

To flaunt my fate as it grows darker.

Sound is my true friend. May it thrive

And keep my memory alive. 40

And may my sounds lift hearts tomorrow,

When, by the grace of Destiny,

Perhaps the Lethe will not swallow

This stanza now compiled by me.

And also (though false hope is famous!)

Perhaps some future ignoramus

Will point to a known sketch of me

And say, “That poet, what a man was he!”

My thanks to you who take delight in

The muses and their gentle work,

In whose remembrance there will lurk

Signs of my evanescent writings,

And whose too generous hand will pat

An old man’s laurel wreath—like that.

* O countryside!… (Latin.)