Текст книги "Комментарии к «Евгению Онегину» Александра Пушкина"

Автор книги: Владимир Набоков

CHAPTER SIX

 
Là, sotto i giorni nubilosi e brevi,
Nasce una gente a cui '1 morir non dole.
 

Petr.

 

I

   On noticing that Vladimir had vanished,
   Onegin, by ennui pursued again,
   by Olga's side sank into meditation,
 ⁴ pleased with his vengeance.
   After him Ólinka yawned too,
   sought Lenski with her eyes,
   and the endless cotillion
 ⁸ irked her like an oppressive dream.
   But it has ended. They go in to supper.
   The beds are made. Guests are assigned
   night lodgings – from the entrance hall
¹² even to the maids' quarters. Restful sleep
   by all is needed. My Onegin
   alone has driven home to sleep.
 
 

II

   All has grown quiet. In the drawing room
   the heavy Pustyakov
   snores with his heavy better half.
 ⁴ Gvozdin, Buyanov, Petushkov,
   and Flyanov (who is not quite well)
   have bedded in the dining room on chairs,
   with, on the floor, Monsieur Triquet
 ⁸ in underwaistcoat and old nightcap.
   All the young ladies, in Tatiana's
   and Olga's rooms, are wrapped in sleep.
   Alone, sadly by Dian's beam
¹² illumined at the window, poor Tatiana
   is not asleep
   and gazes out on the dark field.
 
 

III

   With his unlooked-for apparition,
   the momentary softness of his eyes,
   and odd conduct with Olga,
 ⁴ to the depth of her soul
   she's penetrated. She is quite unable
   to understand him. Jealous
   anguish perturbs her,
 ⁸ as if a cold hand pressed
   her heart; as if beneath her an abyss
   yawned black and dinned....
   “I shall perish,” says Tanya,
¹² “but perishing from him is sweet.
   I murmur not: why murmur?
   He cannot give me happiness.”
 
 

IV

   Forward, forward, my story!
   A new persona claims us.
   Five versts from Krasnogórie,
 ⁴ Lenski's estate, there lives
   and thrives up to the present time
   in philosophical reclusion
   Zarétski, formerly a brawler,
 ⁸ the hetman of a gaming gang,
   chieftain of rakehells, pothouse tribune,
   but now a kind and simple
   bachelor paterfamilias,
¹² a steadfast friend, a peaceable landowner,
   and even an honorable man:
   thus does our age correct itself!
 
 

V

   Time was, the monde's obsequious voice
   used to extol his wicked pluck:
   he, it is true, could from a pistol
 ⁴ at twelve yards hit an ace,
   and, furthermore, in battle too
   once, in real rapture, he distinguished
   himself by toppling from his Kalmuk steed
 ⁸ boldly into the mud,
   swine drunk, and to the French
   fell prisoner (prized hostage!) —
   a modern Regulus, the god of honor,
¹² ready to yield anew to bonds
   so as to drain on credit at Véry's³⁷
   two or three bottles every morning.
 
 

VI

   Time was, he bantered drolly,
   knew how to gull a fool
   and capitally fool a clever man,
 ⁴ for all to see or on the sly;
   though some tricks of his, too,
   did not remain unchastised;
   though sometimes he himself, too, got
 ⁸ trapped like a simpleton.
   He knew how to conduct a gay dispute,
   make a reply keen or obtuse,
   now craftily to hold his tongue,
¹² now craftily to raise a rumpus,
   how to get two young friends to quarrel
   and place them on the marked-out ground,
 
 

VII

   or have them make it up
   so as to lunch all three,
   and later secretly defame them
 ⁴ with a gay quip, with prate....
   Sed alia tempora! Daredevilry
   (like love's dream, yet another caper)
   passes with lively youth.
 ⁸ As I've said, my Zarétski,
   beneath the racemosas and the pea trees
   having at last found shelter
   from tempests, lives like a true sage,
¹² plants cabbages like Horace,
   breeds ducks and geese,
   and teaches [his] children the A B C.
 
 

VIII

   He was not stupid; and my Eugene,
   while rating low the heart in him,
   liked both the spirit of his judgments
 ⁴ and his sane talk of this and that.
   He would frequent him
   with pleasure, and therefore was not at all
   surprised at morn
 ⁸ when he saw him;
   the latter, after the first greeting, interrupting
   the started conversation,
   with eyes atwinkle, to Onegin
¹² handed a billet from the poet.
   Onegin went up to the window
   and read it to himself.
 
 

IX

   It was a pleasant, gentlemanly,
   brief challenge or cartel:
   politely, with cold clearness, to a duel
 ⁴ Lenski called out his friend.
   Onegin, on a first impulsion
   to the envoy of such an errand
   turning, without superfluous words
 ⁸ said he was “always ready.”
   Zaretski got up without explanations —
   did not want to stay longer,
   having at home a lot of things to do —
¹² and forthwith left; but Eugene,
   alone remaining with his soul,
   felt ill-contented with himself.
 
 

X

   And serve him right: on strict examination,
   he, having called his own self to a secret court,
   accused himself of much:
 ⁴ first, it had been already wrong of him
   to make fun of a timid, tender love
   so casually yesternight;
   and secondly: why, let a poet
 ⁸ indulge in nonsense! At eighteen
   'tis pardonable. Eugene,
   loving the youth with all his heart,
   ought to have shown himself to be
¹² no bandyball of prejudices,
   no fiery boy, no scrapper, but a man
   of honor and of sense.
 
 

XI

   He might have manifested feelings
   instead of bristling like a beast;
   he ought to have disarmed
 ⁴ the youthful heart. “But now
   too late; the time has flown away....
   Moreover,” he reflects, “in this affair
   an old duelist has intervened;
 ⁸ he's wicked, he's a gossip, he talks glibly....
   Of course, contempt should be the price
   of his droll sallies; but the whisper,
   the snickering of fools...”
¹² And here it is – public opinion!³⁸
   Honor's mainspring, our idol!
   And here is what the world turns on!
 
 

XII

   The poet, with impatient enmity
   boiling, awaits at home the answer.
   And here the answer solemnly
 ⁴ by the grandiloquent neighbor is brought.
   Now, what a boon 'tis for the jealous one!
   He had kept fearing that the scamp
   might joke his way out somehow,
 ⁸ a trick devising and his breast
   averting from the pistol.
   The doubts are now resolved:
   tomorrow to the mill they must
¹² drive before daybreak,
   at one another raise the cock,
   and at the thigh or at the temple aim.
 
 

XIII

   Having decided to detest
   the coquette, boiling Lenski did not wish
   to see before the duel Olga.
 ⁴ The sun, his watch he kept consulting;
   at last he gave it up —
   and found himself at the fair neighbors'.
   He thought he would embarrass Ólinka,
 ⁸ confound her by his coming;
   but nothing of the sort: just as before
   to welcome the poor songster
   Olinka skipped down from the porch,
¹² akin to giddy hope,
   spry, carefree, gay – in fact, exactly
   the same as she had been.
 
 

XIV

   “Why did you vanish yesternight so early?”
   was Olinka's first question.
   In Lenski all the senses clouded,
 ⁴ and silently he hung his head.
   Jealousy and vexation disappeared
   before this clarity of glance,
   before this soft simplicity,
 ⁸ before this sprightly soul!...
   He gazes with sweet tenderness;
   he sees: he is still loved!
   Already, by remorse beset,
¹² he is prepared to beg her pardon,
   he quivers, can't find words:
   he's happy, he is almost well....
 
 

XVII

   And pensive, spiritless again
   before his darling Olga,
   Vladimir cannot make himself remind her
 ⁴ of yesterday;
   “I,” he reflects, “shall be her savior.
   I shall not suffer a depraver
   with fire of sighs and compliments
 ⁸ to tempt a youthful heart,
   nor let a despicable, venomous
   worm gnaw a lily's little stalk,
   nor have a blossom two morns old
¹² wither while yet half blown.”
   All this, friends, meant:
   I have a pistol duel with a pal.
 
 

XVIII

   If he had known what a wound burned
   the heart of my Tatiana! If Tatiana
   had been aware, if she
 ⁴ could have known that tomorrow
   Lenski and Eugene
   were to compete for the tomb's shelter,
   ah, then, perhaps, her love
 ⁸ might have united the two friends again!
   But none, even by chance, had yet discovered
   that passion.
   Onegin about everything was silent;
¹² Tatiana pined away in secret;
   alone the nurse
   might have known – but she was slow-witted.
 
 

XIX

   All evening Lenski was abstracted,
   now taciturn, now gay again;
   but he who has been fostered by the Muse
 ⁴ is always thus; with knitted brow
   he'd sit down at the clavichord
   and play but chords on it;
   or else, his gaze directing toward Olga,
 ⁸ he'd whisper, “I am happy, am I not?”
   But it is late; time to depart. In him
   the heart contracted, full of anguish;
   as he took leave of the young maiden,
¹² it seemed to break asunder.
   She looks him in the face. “What is the matter with you?”
   “Nothing.” And he makes for the porch.
 
 

XX

   On coming home his pistols he inspected,
   then back into their case
   he put them, and, undressed,
 ⁴ by candle opened Schiller;
   but there's one thought infolding him;
   the sad heart in him does not slumber:
   Olga, in beauty
 ⁸ ineffable, he sees before him.
   Vladimir shuts the book,
   takes up his pen; his verses —
   full of love's nonsense – sound
¹² and flow. Aloud
   he reads them in a lyric fever,
   like drunken D[elvig] at a feast.
 
 

XXI

   The verses chanced to be preserved;
   I have them; here they are:
   Whither, ah! whither are ye fled,
 ⁴ my springtime's golden days?
   “What has the coming day in store for me?
   In vain my gaze attempts to grasp it;
   in deep gloom it lies hidden.
 ⁸ It matters not; fate's law is just.
   Whether I fall, pierced by the dart, or whether
   it flies by – all is right:
   of waking and of sleep
¹² comes the determined hour;
   blest is the day of cares,
   blest, too, is the advent of darkness!
 
 

XXII

   “The ray of dawn will gleam tomorrow,
   and brilliant day will scintillate;
   whilst I, perhaps – I shall descend
 ⁴ into the tomb's mysterious shelter,
   and the young poet's memory
   slow Lethe will engulf;
   the world will forget me; but thou,
 ⁸ wilt thou come, maid of beauty,
   to shed a tear over the early urn
   and think: he loved me,
   to me alone he consecrated
¹² the doleful daybreak of a stormy life!...
   Friend of my heart, desired friend, come,
   come: I'm thy spouse!”
 
 

XXIII

   Thus did he write, “obscurely
   and limply” (what we call romanticism —
   though no romanticism at all
 ⁴ do I see here; but what is that to us?),
   and finally, before dawn, letting sink
   his weary head,
   upon the fashionable word
 ⁸ “ideal,” Lenski dozed off gently;
   but hardly had he lost himself
   in sleep's bewitchment when the neighbor
   entered the silent study
¹² and wakened Lenski with the call,
   “Time to get up: past six already.
   Onegin's sure to be awaiting us.”
 
 

XXIV

   But he was wrong: at that time Eugene
   was sleeping like the dead.
   The shadows of the night now wane,
 ⁴ and Vesper by the cock is greeted;
   Onegin soundly sleeps away.
   By now the sun rides high,
   and shifting flurries
 ⁸ sparkle and spin; but still his bed
   Onegin has not left,
   still slumber hovers over him.
   Now he awakes at last
¹² and draws apart the curtain's flaps;
   looks – and sees that already
   it is long since time to drive off.
 
 

XXV

   Quickly he rings – and his French valet,
   Guillot, comes running in,
   offers him dressing gown and slippers,
 ⁴ and hands him linen.
   Onegin hastes to dress,
   orders his valet to get ready
   to drive together with him and to take
 ⁸ along with him also the combat case.
   The racing sleigh is ready; in he gets;
   flies to the mill. Apace they come.
   He bids his valet carry after him
¹² Lepage's³⁹ fell tubes
   and has the horses moved away
   into a field toward two oaklings.
 
 

XXVI

   On the dam leaning, Lenski had been waiting
   impatiently for a long time;
   meanwhile Zaretski, a rural mechanic,
 ⁴ with the millstone was finding fault.
   Onegin with apologies came up.
   “But where,” quoth with amazement
   Zaretski, “where's your second?”
 ⁸ In duels classicist and pedant, he
   liked method out of feeling and allowed
   to stretch one's man not anyhow
   but by the strict rules of the art
¹² according to all the traditions
   of ancientry
   (which we must praise in him).
 
 

XXVII

   “My second?” Eugene said.
   “Here's he: my friend, Monsieur Guillot.
   I don't foresee
 ⁴ objections to my presentation:
   although he is an unknown man,
   quite surely he's an honest chap.”
   Zaretski bit his lip. Onegin
 ⁸ asked Lenski: “Well, are we to start?”
   “Let's start if you are willing,” said
   Vladimir. And they went
   behind the mill.
¹² While, at a distance, our Zaretski and the “honest chap”
   enter into a solemn compact,
   the two foes stand with lowered eyes.
 
 

XXVIII

   Foes! Is it long since bloodthirst
   turned them away from one another?
   Is it long since they shared their hours of leisure,
 ⁴ meals, thoughts, and doings
   in friendliness? Now, wickedly,
   similar to hereditary foes,
   as in a frightful, enigmatic dream,
 ⁸ in silence, for each other they
   prepare destruction coolly....
   Should they not burst out laughing while
   their hand is not yet crimsoned?
¹² Should they not amiably part?...
   But wildly beau-monde enmity
   is of false shame afraid.
 
 

XXIX

   The pistols now have gleamed. The mallet clanks
   against the ramrod. The balls go
   into the polyhedral barrel,
 ⁴ and the cock clicks for the first time.
   The powder in a grayish streamlet
   now pours into the pan. The jagged,
   securely screwed-in flint
 ⁸ anew is drawn back. Disconcerted
   Guillot behind a near stump takes his stand.
   The two foes shed their cloaks.
   Zaretski paces off thirty-two steps
¹² with excellent accuracy; his friends
   apart he places at the farthest mark,
   and each takes up his pistol.
 
 

XXX

   “Now march.” The two foes, coolly,
   not aiming yet,
   with firm tread, slowly, steadily
 ⁴ traversed four paces,
   four mortal stairs.
   His pistol Eugene then,
   not ceasing to advance,
 ⁸ gently the first began to raise.
   Now they have stepped five paces more,
   and Lenski, closing his left eye,
   started to level also – but right then
¹² Onegin fired.... The clock of fate
   has struck: the poet
   in silence drops his pistol.
 
 

XXXI

   Softly he lays his hand upon his breast
   and falls. His misty gaze
   expresses death, not pain.
 ⁴ Thus, slowly, down the slope of hills,
   shining with sparkles in the sun,
   a lump of snow descends.
   Deluged with instant cold,
 ⁸ Onegin hastens to the youth,
   looks, calls him... vainly:
   he is no more. The young bard has
   found an untimely end!
¹² The storm has blown; the beauteous bloom
   has withered at sunrise; the fire
   upon the altar has gone out!...
 
 

XXXII

   Stirless he lay, and strange
   was his brow's languid peace.
   Under the breast he had been shot clean through;
 ⁴ steaming, the blood flowed from the wound.
   One moment earlier
   in this heart inspiration,
   enmity, hope, and love had throbbed,
 ⁸ life effervesced, blood burned;
   now, as in a deserted house,
   all in it is both still and dark,
   it has become forever silent.
¹² The window boards are shut. The panes with chalk
   are whitened over. The chatelaine is gone.
   But where, God wot. All trace is lost.
 
 

XXXIII

   With an insolent epigram
   'tis pleasant to enrage a bungling foe;
   pleasant to see how, bending stubbornly
 ⁴ his buttsome horns, he in the mirror
   looks at himself involuntarily
   and is ashamed to recognize himself;
   more pleasant, friends, if, as the fool he is,
 ⁸ he howls out: It is I!
   Still pleasanter – in silence to prepare
   an honorable grave for him
   and quietly at his pale forehead
¹² aim, at a gentlemanly distance;
   but to dispatch him to his fathers
   will hardly pleasant be for you.
 
 

XXXIV

   What, then, if by your pistol
   be smitten a young pal
   who with a saucy glance or repartee
 ⁴ or any other bagatelle
   insulted you over the bottle,
   or even himself, in fiery vexation,
   to combat proudly challenged you?
 ⁸ Say: what sensation
   would take possession of your soul
   when, motionless upon the ground,
   in front of you, with death upon his brow,
¹² he by degrees would stiffen,
   when he'd be deaf
   and silent to your desperate appeal?
 
 

XXXV

   In anguish of the heart's remorse,
   his hand squeezing the pistol,
   at Lenski Eugene looks.
 ⁴ “Well, what – he's dead,” pronounced the neighbor.
   Dead!... With this dreadful interjection
   smitten, Onegin with a shudder
   walks hence and calls his men.
 ⁸ Zaretski carefully lays on the sleigh
   the frozen corpse;
   home he is driving the dread lading.
   Sensing the corpse,
¹² the horses snort and jib,
   with white foam wetting the steel bit,
   and like an arrow off they fly.
 
 

XXXVI

   My friends, you're sorry for the poet:
   in the bloom of glad hopes,
   not having yet fulfilled them for the world,
 ⁴ scarce out of infant clothes,
   withered! Where is the ardent stir,
   the noble aspiration
   of young emotions and young thoughts,
 ⁸ exalted, tender, bold?
   Where are love's turbulent desires,
   the thirst for knowledges and work,
   the dread of vice and shame,
¹² and you, fond musings,
   you, [token] of unearthly life,
   you, dreams of sacred poetry!
 
 

XXXVII

   Perhaps, for the world's good
   or, at the least, for glory he was born;
   his silenced lyre might have aroused
 ⁴ a resonant, uninterrupted ringing
   throughout the ages. There awaited
   the poet, on the stairway of the world,
   perhaps, a lofty stair.
 ⁸ His martyred shade has carried
   away with him, perhaps,
   a sacred mystery, and for us
   dead is a life-creating voice,
¹² and to his shade beyond the tomb's confines
   will not rush up the hymn of races,
   the blessing of the ages.
 
 

XXXIX

   And then again: perhaps,
   an ordinary lot awaited
   the poet. Years of youth would have elapsed:
 ⁴ in him the soul's fire would have cooled.
   He would have changed in many ways,
   have parted with the Muses, married,
   up in the country, happy and cornute,
 ⁸ have worn a quilted dressing gown;
   learned life in its reality,
   at forty, had the gout,
   drunk, eaten, moped, got fat, decayed,
¹² and in his bed, at last,
   died in the midst of children,
   weepy females, and medicos.
 
 

XL

   But, reader, be it as it may,
   alas, the young lover, the poet,
   the pensive dreamer, has been killed
 ⁴ by a friend's hand!
   There is a spot: left of the village
   where inspiration's nursling dwelt,
   two pine trees grow, united at the roots;
 ⁸ beneath them have meandered streamlets
   of the neighboring valley's brook.
   'Tis there the plowman likes to rest
   and women reapers come to dip
¹² their ringing pitchers in the waves;
   there, by the brook, in the dense shade
   a simple monument is set.
 
 

XLI

   Beneath it (as begins to drip
   spring rain upon the herb of fields)
   the herdsman, plaiting his pied shoe of bast,
 ⁴ sings of the Volga fishermen;
   and the young townswoman who spends
   the summer in the country,
   when headlong on horseback, alone,
 ⁸ she scours the fields,
   before it halts her steed,
   tightening the leathern rein;
   and, turning up the gauze veil of her hat,
¹² she reads with skimming eyes
   the plain inscription – and a tear
   dims her soft eyes.
 
 

XLII

   And at a walk she rides in open champaign,
   sunk in a reverie;
   a long time, willy-nilly,
 ⁴ her soul is full of Lenski's fate;
   and she reflects: “What has become of Olga?
   Did her heart suffer long?
   Or did the season of her tears soon pass?
 ⁸ And where's her sister now? And where, that shunner
   of people and the world,
   of modish belles the modish foe,
   where's that begloomed eccentric,
¹² the slayer of the youthful poet?”
   In due time I shall give you an account
   in detail about everything.
 
 

XLIII

   But not now. Though with all my heart
   I love my hero;
   though I'll return to him, of course;
 ⁴ but now I am not in the mood for him.
   The years to austere prose incline,
   the years chase pranksome rhyme away,
   and I – with a sigh I confess —
 ⁸ more indolently dangle after her.
   My pen has not its ancient disposition
   to mar with scribblings fleeting leaves;
   other chill dreams,
¹² other stern cares,
   both in the social hum and in the still
   disturb my soul's sleep.
 
 

XLIV

   I have learned the voice of other desires,
   I've come to know new sadness;
   I have no expectations for the first,
 ⁴ and the old sadness I regret.
   Dreams, dreams! Where is your dulcitude?
   Where is (its stock rhyme) juventude?
   Can it be really true
 ⁸ that withered, withered is at last its garland?
   Can it be true that really and indeed,
   without elegiac conceits,
   the springtime of my days is fled
¹² (as I in jest kept saying hitherto),
   and has it truly no return?
   Can it be true that I'll be thirty soon?
 
 

XLV

   So! My noontide is come, and this
   I must, I see, admit.
   But, anyway, as friends let's part,
 ⁴ O my light youth!
   My thanks for the delights,
   the melancholy, the dear torments,
   the hum, the storms, the feasts,
 ⁸ for all, for all your gifts
   my thanks to you. In you
   amidst turmoils and in the stillness
   I have delighted... and in full.
¹² Enough! With a clear soul
   I now set out on a new course
   to rest from my old life.
 
 

XLVI

   Let me glance back. Farewell now, coverts
   where in the backwoods flowed my days,
   fulfilled with passions and with indolence
 ⁴ and with the dreamings of a pensive soul.
   And you, young inspiration,
   stir my imagination,
   the slumber of the heart enliven,
 ⁸ into my nook more often fly,
   let not a poet's soul grow cold,
   callous, crust-dry,
   and finally be turned to stone
¹² in the World's deadening intoxication
   in that slough where with you
   I bathe, dear friends!⁴⁰