Onegin'S Letter To Tatiana
I foresee everything: the explanation
of a sad secret will offend you.
What bitter scorn
4 your proud glance will express!
What do I want? What is my object
in opening my soul to you?
What wicked merriment
8 perhaps I give occasion to!
Chancing to meet you once,
noting in you a spark of tenderness,
I did not venture to believe in it:
12 did not give way to a sweet habit;
my tedious freedom
I did not wish to lose. Another thing
yet separated us:
16 a hapless victim Lenski fell.
From all that to the heart is dear
then did I tear my heart away;
alien to everybody, tied by nothing,
20 I thought: liberty and peace are
a substitute for happiness. Good God!
How wrong I was, how I am punished!
No — every minute to see you; to follow
24 you everywhere;
the smile of your lips, movement of your eyes,
to try to capture with enamored eyes;
to listen long to you, to comprehend
28 all your perfection with one's soul;
to melt in agonies before you,
grow pale and waste away... that's rapture!
And I'm deprived of that; for you
32 I drag myself at random everywhere;
to me each day is dear, each hour is dear,
while I in futile dullness squander
the days told off by fate — they are
36 sufficiently oppressive anyway.
I know: my span is well-nigh measured;
but that my life may be prolonged
I must be certain in the morning
40 of seeing you during the day.
I fear: in my meek plea
your severe gaze will see
the schemes of despicable cunning —
44 and I can hear your wrathful censure.
If you hut knew how terrible it is
to languish with the thirst of love,
burn — and by means of reason hourly
48 subdue the tumult in one's blood;
wish to embrace your knees
and, in a burst of sobbing, at your feet
pour out appeals, avowals, plaints,
52 all, all I could express,
and in the meantime with feigned coldness
arm speech and gaze,
maintain a placid conversation,
56 glance at you with a cheerful glance!...
But let it be: against myself
I've not the force to struggle any more;
all is decided: I am in your power,
60 and I surrender to my fate.
There is no answer. He sends a new missive.
To the second, to the third letter —
there is no answer. He drives out to some
4 reception. Hardly has he entered — there she is
coming in his direction. How severe!
He is not seen, to him no word is said.
Ugh! How surrounded she is now
8 with Twelfthtide cold!
How anxious are to hold back indignation
her stubborn lips!
Onegin peers with a keen eye:
12 where, where are discomposure, sympathy,
where the tearstains? None, none!
There's on that face but the imprint of wrath...
plus, possibly, a secret fear
lest husband or
monde guess
the escapade, the casual foible,
4 all my Onegin knows....
There is no hope! He drives away,
curses his folly —
and, deeply plunged in it,
8 the
monde he once again renounces
and in his silent study comes to him
the recollection of the time
when cruel chondria
12 pursued him in the noisy
monde, captured him, took him by the collar,
and shut him up in a dark hole.
Again, without discrimination,
he started reading. He read Gibbon,
Rousseau, Manzoni, Herder,
4 Chamfort, Mme de Staël, Bichat, Tissot.
He read the skeptic Bayle,
he read the works of Fontenelle,
he read some [authors] of our own,
8 without rejecting anything —
the “almanacs” and the reviews
where sermons into us are drummed,
where I'm today abused so much
12 but where
such madrigals addressed tome
I used to meet with now and then:
e sempre bene, gentlemen.
And lo — his eyes were reading, but his thoughts
were far away;
chimeras, desires, sorrows
4 kept crowding deep into his soul.
Between the printed lines
he with spiritual eyes
read other lines. It was in
them 8 that he was utterly absorbed.
These were the secret legends of the heart's
dark ancientry;
dreams unconnected
12 with anything; threats, rumors, presages;
or the live tosh of a long tale,
or a young maiden's letters.
And by degrees into a lethargy
of feelings and of thoughts he falls,
while before him Imagination
4 deals out her motley faro deck.
Now he sees: on the melted snow,
as at a night's encampment sleeping,
stirless, a youth lies; and he hears
8 a voice: “Well, what — he's dead!”
Now he sees foes forgotten,
calumniators, and malicious cowards,
and a swarm of young traitresses,
12 and a circle of despicable comrades;
and now a country house, and by the window
sits
she... and ever she!
He grew so used to lose himself in this
that he almost went off his head
or else became a poet. (Frankly,
4 that would have been a boon, indeed!)
And true: by dint of magnetism,
the mechanism of Russian verses
my addleheaded pupil
8 at that time nearly grasped.
How much a poet he resembled
when in a corner he would sit alone,
and the hearth blazed in front of him,
12 and he hummed “Benedetta”
or “Idol mio,” and into the fire
dropped now a slipper, now his magazine!
Days rushed. In warmth-pervaded air
winter already was resolving;
and he did not become a poet,
4 he did not die, did not go mad.
Spring quickens him: for the first time
his close-shut chambers, where he had
been hibernating like a marmot,
8 his double windows, inglenook —
he leaves on a bright morning,
he fleets in sleigh along the Neva's bank.
Upon blue blocks of hewn-out ice
12 the sun plays. In the streets
the furrowed snow thaws muddily:
whither, upon it, his fast course
directs Onegin? You beforehand
have guessed already. Yes, exactly:
apace to her, to his Tatiana,
4 my unreformed eccentric comes.
He walks in, looking like a corpse.
There's not a soul in the front hall.
He enters the reception room. On! No one.
8 A door he opens.... What is it
that strikes him with such force?
The princess before him, alone,
sits, unadorned, pale, reading
12 some kind of letter,
and softly sheds a flood of tears,
her cheek propped on her hand.
Ah! Her mute sufferings —
in this swift instant who would not have read!
Who would not have the former Tanya,
4 poor Tanya, recognized now in the princess?
In throes of mad regrets,
Eugene falls at her feet;
she gives a start,
8 and is silent, and looks,
without surprise, without wrath, at Onegin....
His sick, extinguished gaze,
imploring aspect, mute reproof,
12 she takes in everything. The simple maid,
with the dreams, with the heart of former days
again in her has resurrected now.
She does not bid him rise
and, not taking her eyes off him,
does not withdraw
4 her limp hand from his avid lips....
What is her dreaming now about?
A lengthy silence passes,
and finally she, softly:
8 “Enough; get up. I must
frankly explain myself to you.
Onegin, do you recollect that hour
when in the garden, in the avenue, fate brought us
12 together and so meekly
your lesson I heard out.
Today it is my turn.
