Владимир Набоков - Стихотворения

I «My uncle has most honest principles:
when taken ill in earnest,
he has made one respect him
and nothing better could invent.
To others his example is a lesson;
but, good God, what a bore
to sit by a sick man both day and night,
without moving a step away!
What base perfidiousness
the half-alive one to amuse,
adjust for him the pillows,
sadly present the medicine,
sigh — and think inwardly
when will the devil take you?»

II Thus a young scapegrace thought,
with posters flying in the dust,
by the most lofty will of Zeus
the heir of all his relatives.
Friends of Lyudmila and Ruslan!
The hero of my novel,
without preambles, forthwith,
I'd like to have you meet:
Onegin, a good pal of mine,
was born upon the Neva's banks,
where maybe you were born,
or used to shine, my reader!
There formerly I too promenaded —
but harmful is the North to me.

III Having served excellently, nobly,
his father lived by means of debts;
gave three balls yearly
and squandered everything at last.
Fate guarded Eugene:
at first, Madame looked after him;
later, Monsieur replaced her.
The child was boisterous but nice.
Monsieur l'Abbé, a poor wretch of a Frenchman,
not to wear out the infant,
would teach him everything in play,
bothered him not with stern moralization,
scolded him slightly for his pranks,
and to Letniy Sad took him for walks.

IV Then, when tumultuous youth's
season for Eugene came,
season of hopes and tender melancholy,
Monsieur was ousted from the place.
Now my Onegin is at large:
hair cut after the latest fashion,
dressed like a London Dandy —
and finally he saw the World.
In French impeccably
he could express himself and write,
danced the mazurka lightly,
and bowed unconstrainedly —
what would you more? The World decided
he was clever and very nice.

V All of us had a bit of schooling
in something and somehow:
hence education, God be praised,
is in our midst not hard to flaunt.
Onegin was, in the opinion of many
(judges resolute and stern),
a learned fellow but a pedant.
He had the happy talent,
without constraint, in conversation
slightly to touch on everything,
keep silent, with an expert's learned air,
during a grave discussion,
and provoke the smiles of ladies
with the fire of unexpected epigrams.

VI Latin has gone at present out of fashion;
still, to tell you the truth,
he had enough knowledge of Latin
to make out epigraphs,
descant on Juvenal,
put at the bottom of a letter vale,
and he remembered, though not without fault,
two lines from the Aeneid.
He had no urge to rummage
in the chronological dust
of the earth's historiography,
but anecdotes of days gone by,
from Romulus to our days
he did keep in his memory.

VII Lacking the lofty passion not to spare
life for the sake of sounds,
an iamb from a trochee —
no matter how we strove — he could not tell apart;
dispraised Homer, Theocritus,
but read, in compensation, Adam Smith,
and was a deep economist:
that is, he could assess the way
a state grows rich,
and what it lives upon, and why
it needs not gold
when it has got the simple product.
His father could not understand him,
and mortgaged his lands.

VIII All Eugene knew besides
I have no leisure to recount;
but where he was a veritable genius,
what he more firmly knew than all the arts,
what since his prime had been to him
toil, anguish, joy,
what occupied the livelong day
his fretting indolence —
was the art of soft passion
which Naso sang,
wherefore a sufferer he ended
his brilliant and tumultuous span
in Moldavia, in the wild depth of steppes,
far from his Italy.

XXXII Diana's bosom, Flora's dimple
are very charming, I agree —
but there's greater charm, less simple,
— the instep of Terpsichore.
By prophesying to the eye
a prize with which no prize can vie
'tis a fair token and a snare
for swarms of daydreams. Everywhere
its grace, sweet reader, I admire:
at long-hemmed tables, half-concealed,
in spring, upon a velvet field,
in winter, at a grated fire,
in ballrooms, on a glossy floor,
on the bleak boulders of a shore.

XXXIII I see the surf, the storm-rack flying....
Oh, how I wanted to compete
with the tumultuous breakers dying
in adoration at her feet!
Together with those waves — how much
I wished to kiss what they could touch!
No — even when my youth would burn
its fiercest — never did I yearn
with such a torturing sensation
to kiss the lips of nymphs, the rose
that on the cheek of beauty glows
or breasts in mellow palpitation —
no, never did a passion roll
such billows in my bursting soul.

XXXIV Sometimes I dream of other minutes
by hidden memory retold —
and feel her little ankle in its
contented stirrup which I hold;
again to build mad builders start;
again within a withered heart
one touch engenders fire; again
— the same old love, the same old pain…
But really, my loquacious lyre
has lauded haughty belles too long
— for they deserve neither the song,
not the emotions they inspire:
eyes, words — all their enchantments cheat
as much as do their pretty feet.

Half-merchant and half-prince
half-scholar and half-dunce,
half-knave — but there's a chance
he'll be complete for once.

What is my name to you? 'Twill die:
a wave that has but rolled to reach
with a lone splash a distant beach;
or in the timbered night a cry…

'Twill leave a lifeless trace among
names on your tablets: the design
of an entangled gravestone line
in an unfathomable tongue.

What is it then? A long-dead past,
lost in the rush of madder dreams,
upon your soul it will not cast
Mnemosyne's pure tender beams.

But if some sorrow comes to you,
utter my name with sighs, and tell
the silence: «Memory is true —
there beats a heart wherein I dwell».

A magic day — sunshine and frost —
but you, in dreamland still are lost…
Come, open your enchanting eyes
with honeyed indolence replete....
Star of the North, arise to meet
Aurora in her wintry skies.

That blizzard yesternight! It spread
dimness and tumult overheard.
The moon through a lugubrious veil
was but a blur of jaundiced grey,
and you were listless.... But to-day —
well, let the window tell its tale:

Fabulous carpets of rich snow
under the cloudless heavens glow.
Alone the gauzy birches seem
to show some black, while green occurs
among the frost-bespangled firs,
and blue-shot ice adorns the stream.

The room is flooded with a light
like amber, and with all its might
the hot stove crackles. Lolling there
in meditation is no doubt
enjoyable… but what about
a sledge behind the chestnut mare?

Sweet friend, together we shall speed
yielding to our impatient steed
on new-born whiteness, fleet and free,
and visit silent fields of snow,
woods that were lush two months ago,
a lakeshore that is dear to me…

Farewell! Nevermore shall we meet,
we shall never touch hands — so farewell!
Your heart is now free, but in none
will it ever be happy to dwell.

One moment together we came:
time eternal is nothing to this!
All senses we suddenly drained,
burned all in the flame of one kiss.

Farewell! And be wise, do not grieve:
our love was too short for regret,
and hard as we found it to part
harder still would it be if we met.

If I do love my land, strangely I love it:
'tis something reason cannot cure.
Glories of war I do not covet,
but neither peace proud and secure,
not the mysterious past and dim romances
can spur my soul to pleasant fancies.

And still I love thee — why I hardly know:
I love thy fields so coldly meditative,
native dark swaying woods and native
rivers that sea-like foam and flow.

In a clattering cart I love to travel
on country roads: watching the rising star,
yearning for sheltered sleep, my eyes unravel
the trembling lights of sad hamlets afar.

I also love the smoke of burning stubble,
vans huddled in the prairie night;
corn on a hill crowned with the double
grace of twin birches gleaming white.

Few are the ones who feel the pleasure
of seeing barns bursting with grain and hay,
well-thatched cottage-roofs made to measure
and shutters carved and windows gay.

And when the evening dew is glistening,
long may I hear the festive sound
of rustic dancers stamping, whistling
with drunkards clamoring around.

I dreamt that with a bullet in my side
in a hot gorge of Daghestan I lay.
Deep was the wound and steaming, and the tide
of my life-blood ebbed drop by drop away.

Alone I lay amid a silent maze
of desert sand and bare cliffs rising steep,
their tawny summits burning in the blaze
that burned me too; but lifeless was my sleep.

And in a dream I saw the candle-flame
of a gay supper in the land I knew;
young women crowned with flowers.... And my name
on their light lips hither and thither flew.

But one of them sat pensively apart,
not joining in the light-lipped gossiping,
and there alone, God knows what made her heart,
her young heart dream of such a hidden thing....

For in her dream she saw a gorge, somewhere
in Daghestan, and knew the man who lay
there on the sand, the dead man, unaware
of steaming wound and blood ebbing away.