Владимир Набоков - Комментарии к «Евгению Онегину» Александра Пушкина

   But you, odd volumes
   from the bibliotheca of the devils,
   the gorgeous albums,
 4 the rack of fashionable rhymesters;
   you, nimbly ornamented
   by Tolstoy's wonder-working brush,
   or Baratïnski's pen,
 8 let the Lord's levin burn you!
   Whenever her in-quarto a resplendent lady
   proffers to me,
   a tremor and a waspishness possess me,
12 and at the bottom of my soul
   there stirs an epigram —
   but madrigals you have to write for them!

   Not madrigals does Lenski
   write in the album of young Olga;
   his pen breathes love —
 4 it does not glitter frigidly with wit.
   Whatever he notes, whatever he hears
   concerning Olga, this he writes about;
   and full of vivid truth
 8 flow, riverlike, his elegies.
   Thus you, inspired Yazïkov,
   sing, in the surgings of your heart,
   God knows whom, and the precious code
12 of elegies
   will represent for you someday
   the entire story of your fate.

   But soft! You hear? A critic stern
   commands us to throw off
   the sorry wreath of elegies;
 4 and to our brotherhood of rhymesters
   cries: “Do stop whimpering
   and croaking always the same thing,
   regretting 'the foregone, the past';
 8 enough! Sing about something else!” —
   You're right, and surely you'll point out
   to us the trumpet, mask, and dagger,
   and everywhence a dead stock of ideas
12 bid us revive.
   Thus friend?  — “Nowise!
   Far from it! Write odes, gentlemen,

   “as in a mighty age one wrote them,
   as was in times of yore established.”
   Nothing but solemn odes?
 4 Oh, come, friend; what's this to the purpose?
   Recall what said the satirist!
   Does the shrewd lyrist in “As Others See It”
   seem more endurable to you
 8 than our glum rhymesters? —
   “But in the elegy all is so null;
   its empty aim is pitiful;
   whilst the aim of the ode is lofty
12 and noble.” Here I might
   argue with you, but I keep still:
   I do not want to make two ages quarrel.

   A votary of fame and freedom,
   in the excitement of his stormy thoughts,
   Vladimir might have written odes,
 4 only that Olga did not read them.
   Have ever chanced larmoyant poets
   to read their works before the eyes
   of their beloved ones? It is said, no higher
 8 rewards are in the world.
   And, verily, blest is the modest lover
   reading his daydreams to the object
   of songs and love,
12 a pleasantly languorous belle!
   Blest — though perhaps by something
   quite different she is diverted.

   But I the products of my fancies
   and of harmonious device
   read but to an old nurse,
 4 companion of my youth;
   or after a dull dinner, when a neighbor
   strays in to see me — having caught
   him by a coat skirt unexpectedly —
 8 I choke him in a corner with a tragedy,
   or else (but that's apart from jesting),
   haunted by yearnings and by rhymes,
   roaming along my lake,
12 I scare a flock of wild ducks; they, on heeding
   the chant of sweet-toned strophes,
   fly off the banks.

   But what about Onegin? By the way,
   brothers! I beg your patience:
   his daily occupations in detail
 4 I shall describe to you.
   Onegin anchoretically lived;
   he rose in summer between six and seven
   and, lightly clad, proceeded to the river
 8 that ran under the hillside. Imitating
   the songster of Gulnare,
   across this Hellespont he swam,
   then drank his coffee, while he flipped
12 through some wretched review,
   and dressed

   Rambles, and reading, and sound sleep,
   the sylvan shade, the purl of streams,
   sometimes a white-skinned, dark-eyed girl's
 4 young and fresh kiss,
   a horse of mettle, bridle-true,
   a rather fancy dinner,
   a bottle of bright wine,
 8 seclusion, quiet —
   this was Onegin's saintly life;
   and he insensibly to it
   surrendered, the fair summer days
12 in carefree mollitude not counting,
   oblivious of both town and friends
   and of the boredom of festive devices.

   But our Northern summer is a caricature
   of Southern winters;
   it will glance by and vanish: this is known,
 4 though to admit it we don't wish.
   The sky already breathed of autumn,
   the sun already shone more seldom,
   the day was growing shorter,
 8 the woods' mysterious canopy
   with a sad murmur bared itself,
   mist settled on the fields,
   the caravan of clamorous geese
12 was tending southward; there drew near
   a rather tedious period;
   November stood already at the door.

   Dawn rises in cold murk;
   stilled in the grainfields is the noise of labors;
   with his hungry female, the wolf
 4 comes out upon the road;
   the road horse, sensing him,
   snorts, and the wary traveler
   goes tearing uphill at top speed;
 8 no longer does the herdsman drive at sunrise
   the cows out of the shippon,
   and at the hour of midday in a circle
   his horn does not call them together;
12 in her small hut singing, the maiden23
   spins and, the friend of winter nights,
   in front of her the splintlight crackles.

   And now the frosts already crackle
   and silver 'mid the fields
   (the reader now expects the rhyme “froze-rose” —
 4 here, take it quick!).
   Neater than modish parquetry,
   the ice-clad river shines.
   The gladsome crew of boys24
 8 cut with their skates resoundingly the ice;
   a heavy goose with red feet, planning
   to swim upon the bosom of the waters,
   steps carefully upon the ice,
12 slidders, and falls. The gay
   first snow flicks, whirls,
   falling in stars upon the bank.

   What can one do at this time in the wilds?
   Walk? But the country at that time
   is an involuntary eyesore
 4 in its unbroken nakedness.
   Go galloping in the harsh prairie?
   But, catching with a blunted shoe
   the treacherous ice, one's mount
 8 is likely any moment to come down.
   Stay under your desolate roof,
   read; here is Pradt, here's Walter Scott!
   Don't want to? Verify expenses,
12 grumble or drink, and the long evening
   somehow will pass; and next day the same thing,
   and famously you'll spend the winter.

   Onegin like a regular Childe Harold
   lapsed into pensive indolence:
   right after sleep he takes a bath with ice,
 4 and then, at home all day,
   alone, absorbed in calculations, armed
   with a blunt cue,
   using two balls,
 8 ever since morn plays billiards.
   The country evening comes; abandoned
   are billiards, the cue is forgot.
   Before the fireplace the table is laid;
12 Eugene waits; here comes Lenski,
   borne by a troika of roan horses;
   quick, let's have dinner!