Владимир Набоков - Комментарии к «Евгению Онегину» Александра Пушкина

   “Let's go.” And off the two friends drove;
   they have arrived; on them are lavished
   the sometimes onerous attentions
 4 of hospitable ancientry.
   The ritual of the treat is known:
   in little dishes jams are brought,
   on an oilcloth'd small table there is set
 8 a jug of lingonberry water.
   . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
   . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
   . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
12 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
   . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
   . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

   They by the shortest road
   fly home at full career.17
   Now let us eavesdrop furtively
 4 upon our heroes' conversation.
   “Well now, Onegin, you are yawning.”
   “A habit, Lenski.” “But somehow
   you are more bored than ever.” “No, the same.
 8 I say, it's dark already in the field;
   faster! come on, come on, Andryushka!
   What silly country!
   Ah, apropos: Dame Larin
12 is simple but a very nice old lady;
   I fear that lingonberry water
   may not unlikely do me harm.

   “Tell me, which was Tatiana?”
   “Oh, she's the one who, sad
   and silent like Svetlana,
 4 came in and sat down by the window.”
   “Can it be it's the younger one
   that you're in love with?” “Why not?” “I'd have chosen
   the other, had I been like you a poet.
 8 In Olga's features there's no life,
   just as in a Vandyke Madonna:
   she's round and fair of face
   as is that silly moon
12 up in that silly sky.”
   Vladimir answered curtly
   and thenceforth the whole way was silent.

   Meanwhile Onegin's apparition
   at the Larins' produced
   on everyone a great impression
 4 and regaled all the neighbors.
   Conjecture on conjecture followed.
   All started furtively to talk,
   to joke, to comment not without some malice,
 8 a suitor for Tatiana to assign.
   Some folks asserted even that
   the wedding was quite settled,
   but had been stayed because
12 of fashionable rings' not being got.
   Concerning Lenski's wedding, long ago
   they had it all arranged.

   Tatiana listened with vexation
   to gossip of that sort; but secretly
   she with ineffable elation
 4 could not help thinking of it;
   and the thought sank into her heart;
   the time had come — she fell in love.
   Thus, dropped into the earth, a seed
 8 is quickened by the fire of spring.
   For long had her imagination,
   consumed with mollitude and anguish,
   craved for the fatal food;
12 for long had the heart's languishment
   constrained her youthful bosom;
   her soul waited — for somebody.

   And not in vain it waited. Her eyes opened;
   she said: “'Tis he!”
   Alas! now both the days and nights,
 4 and hot, lone sleep,
   all's full of him; to the dear girl
   unceasingly with magic force
   all speaks of him. To her are tedious
 8 alike the sounds of friendly speeches
   and the gaze of assiduous servants.
   Immersed in gloom,
   to visitors she does not listen,
12 and imprecates their leisures,
   their unexpected
   arrival and protracted sitting down.

   With what attention does she now
   read some delicious novel,
   with what vivid enchantment
 4 imbibe the ravishing illusion!
   Creations by the happy power
   of dreaming animated,
   the lover of Julie Wolmar,
 8 Malek-Adhel, and de Linar,
   and Werther, restless martyr,
   and the inimitable Grandison,18
   who brings upon us somnolence —
12 all for the tender, dreamy girl
   have been invested with a single image,
   have in Onegin merged alone.

   Imagining herself the heroine
   of her beloved authors —
   Clarissa, Julia, Delphine —
 4 Tatiana in the stillness of the woods
   alone roams with a dangerous book;
   in it she seeks and finds
   her secret ardency, her dreams,
 8 the fruits of the heart's fullness;
   she sighs, and having made her own
   another's ecstasy, another's woe,
   she whispers in a trance, by heart,
12 a letter to the amiable hero.
   But our hero, whoever he might be,
   was certainly no Grandison.

   His style to a grave strain having attuned,
   time was, a fervid author
   used to present to us
 4 his hero as a model of perfection.
   He'd furnish the loved object —
   always iniquitously persecuted —
   with a sensitive soul, intelligence,
 8 and an attractive face.
   Nursing the ardor of the purest passion,
   the always enthusiastic hero
   was ready for self-sacrifice,
12 and by the end of the last part, vice always
   got punished,
   and virtue got a worthy crown.

   But nowadays all minds are in a mist,
   a moral brings upon us somnolence,
   vice is attractive in a novel, too,
 4 and there, at least, it triumphs.
   The fables of the British Muse
   disturb the young girl's sleep,
   and now her idol has become
 8 either the pensive Vampyre,
   or Melmoth, gloomy vagabond,
   or the Wandering Jew, or the Corsair,
   or the mysterious Sbogar.19
12 Lord Byron, by an opportune caprice,
   in woebegone romanticism
   draped even hopeless egotism.

   My friends, what sense is there in this?
   Perhaps, by heaven's will,
   I'll cease to be a poet; a new demon
 4 will enter into me;
   and having scorned the threats of Phoebus,
   I shall descend to humble prose:
   a novel in the ancient strain
 8 will then engage my gay decline.
   There, not the secret pangs of crime
   shall I grimly depict,
   but simply shall detail to you
12 the legends of a Russian family,
   love's captivating dreams,
   and manners of our ancientry.

   I shall detail a father's, an old uncle's,
   plain speeches; the assigned
   trysts of the children
 4 by the old limes, by the small brook;
   the throes of wretched jealousy,
   parting, reconciliation's tears;
   once more I'll have them quarrel, and at last
 8 conduct them to the altar. I'll recall
   the accents of impassioned languish,
   the words of aching love,
   which in days bygone at the feet
12 of a fair mistress
   came to my tongue;
   from which I now have grown disused.

   Tatiana, dear Tatiana!
   I now shed tears with you.
   Into a fashionable tyrant's hands
 4 your fate already you've relinquished.
   Dear, you shall perish; but before,
   in dazzling hope,
   you summon somber bliss,
 8 you learn the dulcitude of life,
   you quaff the magic poison of desires,
   daydreams pursue you:
   you fancy everywhere
12 retreats for happy trysts;
   everywhere, everywhere before you,
   is your fateful enticer.