Владимир Набоков - Комментарии к «Евгению Онегину» Александра Пушкина

   “I can't sleep, nurse: 'tis here so stuffy!
   Open the window and sit down by me.”
   “Why, Tanya, what's the matter with you?” “I am dull.
 4 Let's talk about old days.”
   “Well, what about them, Tanya? Time was, I
   stored in my memory no dearth
   of ancient haps and never-haps
 8 about dire sprites and about maidens;
   but everything to me is dark now, Tanya:
   I have forgotten what I knew. Yes, things
   have come now to a sorry pass!
12 I'm all befuddled.” “Nurse,
   tell me about your old times. Were you then
   in love?”

   “Oh, come, come, Tanya! In those years
   we never heard of love;
   elsewise my late mother-in-law
 4 would have chased me right off the earth.”
   “But how, then, were you wedded, nurse?”
   “It looks as if God willed it so. My Vanya
   was younger than myself, my sweet,
 8 and I was thirteen. For two weeks or so
   a woman matchmaker kept visiting
   my kinsfolk, and at last
   my father blessed me. Bitterly
12 I cried for fear; and, crying, they unbraided
   my tress and, chanting,
   they led me to the church.

   “And so I entered a strange family.
   But you're not listening to me.”
   “Oh, nurse, nurse, I feel dismal,
 4 I'm sick at heart, my dear,
   I'm on the point of crying, sobbing!”
   “My child, you are not well;
   the Lord have mercy upon us and save us!
 8 What would you like, do ask.
   Here, let me sprinkle you with holy water,
   you're all a-burning.” “I'm not ill;
   I'm... do you know, nurse... I'm in love.”
12 “My child, the Lord be with you!”
   And, uttering a prayer, the nurse
   crossed with decrepit hand the girl.

   “I am in love,” anew she murmured
   to the old woman mournfully.
   “Sweetheart, you are not well.”
 4 “Leave me. I am in love.”
   And meantime the moon shone
   and with dark light irradiated
   the pale charms of Tatiana
 8 and her loose hair,
   and drops of tears, and, on a benchlet,
   before the youthful heroine,
   a kerchief on her hoary head, the little
12 old crone in a long “body warmer”;
   and in the stillness everything
   dozed by the inspirative moon.

   And far away Tatiana's heart was ranging
   as she looked at the moon....
   All of a sudden in her mind a thought was born....
 4 “Go, let me be alone.
   Give me, nurse, a pen, paper, and move up
   the table; I shall soon lie down.
   Good night.” Now she's alone,
 8 all's still. The moon gives light to her.
   Tatiana, leaning on her elbow, writes,
   and Eugene's ever present in her mind,
   and in an unconsidered letter
12 the love of an innocent maid breathes forth.
   The letter now is ready, folded.
   Tatiana! Whom, then, is it for?

   I've known belles inaccessible,
   cold, winter-chaste;
   inexorable, incorruptible,
 4 unfathomable by the mind;
   I marveled at their modish morgue,
   at their natural virtue,
   and, to be frank, I fled from them,
 8 and I, meseems, with terror read
   above their eyebrows Hell's inscription:
   “Abandon hope for evermore!”20
   To inspire love is bale for them,
12 to frighten folks for them is joyance.
   Perhaps, on the banks of the Neva
   similar ladies you have seen.

   Amidst obedient admirers,
   other odd females I have seen,
   conceitedly indifferent
 4 to sighs impassioned and to praise.
   But what, to my amazement, did I find?
   While, by austere demeanor,
   they frightened timid love,
 8 they had the knack of winning it again,
   at least by their condolence;
   at least the sound of spoken words
   sometimes would seem more tender,
12 and with credulous blindness
   again the youthful lover
   pursued sweet vanity.

   Why is Tatiana, then, more guilty?
   Is it because in sweet simplicity
   deceit she knows not and believes
 4 in her elected dream?
   Is it because she loves without art, being
   obedient to the bent of feeling?
   Is it because she is so trustful
 8 and is endowed by heaven
   with a restless imagination,
   intelligence, and a live will,
   and headstrongness,
12 and a flaming and tender heart?
   Are you not going to forgive her
   the thoughtlessness of passions?

   The coquette reasons coolly;
   Tatiana in dead earnest loves
   and unconditionally yields
 4 to love like a sweet child.
   She does not say: Let us defer;
   thereby we shall augment love's value,
   inveigle into toils more surely;
 8 let us first prick vainglory
   with hope; then with perplexity
   exhaust a heart, and then
   revive it with a jealous fire,
12 for otherwise, cloyed with delight,
   the cunning captive from his shackles
   hourly is ready to escape.

   Another problem I foresee:
   saving the honor of my native land,
   undoubtedly I shall have to translate
 4 Tatiana's letter. She
   knew Russian badly,
   did not read our reviews,
   and in her native tongue expressed herself
 8 with difficulty. So,
   she wrote in French.
   What's to be done about it! I repeat again;
   as yet a lady's love
12 has not expressed itself in Russian,
   as yet our proud tongue has not got accustomed
   to postal prose.

   I know: some would make ladies
   read Russian. Horrible indeed!
   Can I image them
 4 with The Well-Meaner21 in their hands?
   My poets, I appeal to you!
   Is it not true that the sweet objects
   for whom, to expiate your sins,
 8 in secret you wrote verses,
   to whom your hearts you dedicated —
   did not they all, wielding the Russian language
   poorly, and with difficulty,
12 so sweetly garble it,
   and on their lips did not a foreign language
   become a native one?

   The Lord forbid my meeting at a ball
   or at its breakup, on the porch,
   a seminarian in a yellow shawl
 4 or an Academician in a bonnet!
   As vermeil lips without a smile,
   without grammatical mistakes
   I don't like Russian speech.
 8 Perchance (it would be my undoing!)
   a generation of new belles,
   heeding the magazines' entreating voice,
   to Grammar will accustom us;
12 verses will be brought into use.
   Yet I... what do I care?
   I shall be true to ancientry.

   An incorrect and careless patter,
   an inexact delivery of words,
   as heretofore a flutter of the heart
 4 will in my breast produce;
   in me there's no force to repent;
   to me will Gallicisms remain
   as sweet as the sins of past youth,
 8 as Bogdanóvich's verse.
   But that will do. 'Tis time I busied
   myself with my fair damsel's letter;
   my word I've given — and what now? Yea, yea!
12 I'm ready to back out of it.
   I know: tender Parny's
   pen in our days is out of fashion.