The urge to learn and toil, the blame
He might have felt for vice and shame,
The yearning dreams of something other,
Those tokens of a life beyond,
Those holy dreams of rhyme and song?
37
Could he have proved a benefactor,
Or maybe he was born for fame?
His silenced lyre might have been active
In thunderous and unbroken strains
For years to come. He could have risen
To occupy a high position
Within society’s pantheon.
His martyred spirit, moving on,
Perhaps took with it something sacred
And secret, something now destroyed,
Creative words lost in the void,
Sent to the grave, and separated
For ever from the hymns of time
And praise from some dynastic line.
[38] 39
Or maybe not. The poet’s story
Might have been commonplace and trite,
His young years lost in a furore
Of early flames not long alight.
He would have greatly changed and hurried
To drop the poems and get married,
Live, cuckolded, far from the town,
Happy in quilted dressing gown.
He’d have known life’s goodness and badness:
At forty gout, then food and drink,
Boredom and fatness, powers ashrink,
Only to die on his own mattress;
Amongst his children he would croak,
Doctors and weeping womenfolk.
40
But this is make-believe, dear reader.
Alas, poor Lensky, in the end,
Once poet, thinker and daydreamer,
Has been shot dead by his good friend.
There on the left, outside the village,
Where once he lived, where life was thrilling,
Two pines have intertwined their roots
Above meandering little brooks
That feed the stream down in the valley
Where shepherds love to halt and kip
And women reapers come to dip
The echoing pitchers that they carry,
There by the stream in deepest shade
A simple headstone has been laid.
41
Nearby, as April showers bespangle
The green fields, leaving them to soak,
A shepherd plaits his lime-bark sandals,
Singing of Volga fisherfolk.
And if a young girl, a newcomer
Down from the city for the summer
Gallops out as and when she feels,
Riding alone across the fields,
She may well halt her horse there, side on
Reining him in, and after that,
Raising a light veil from her hat,
She’ll set her soft, swift-moving eyes on
Lensky’s plain text, and they will brim
With tender, moving tears for him.
42
She’ll amble on through open pasture
With many ideas to contemplate,
Crestfallen, sick at heart, long after
Because of Lensky and his fate.
“So, what did Olga do?” she wonders.
“How long did her poor heart stay sundered?
Or did her tears abate somehow?
And where is Olga’s sister now?
And he, who left the world behind him
(Of stylish belles the stylish foe),
Where did that gloomy oddball go?
The man who killed, where shall we find him?”
These details I shall soon rehearse
For you, my friends, chapter and verse.
43
But not now. Though I am sincerely
Fond of my hero, and although
I shall return to him soon, really
I’m in no mood for him just now.
The years pass, and harsh prose is beckoning,
With giddy rhymes no longer reckoning,
And I (says he with a deep sigh)
Shall not pursue them—no, not I.
My quill has lost its old-time yearning
To spatter fleeting sheets with ink.
I now have colder thoughts to think
And concepts new, more brightly burning,
Which blight (in company or alone)
The gentle slumber of my soul.
44
I know new voices and new yearnings,
And sorrows new I also know,
But these desires are hopeless journeys,
And sorrows old—I miss them so.
O dreams, my dreams! Where is your sweetness?
Whence comes your (hackneyed rhyme!) your fleetness?
Must I at last confront the truth—
The faded garland of my youth?
Can it be true that in reality,
As fancy elegies might say,
My springtime days have flown away,
As I once said with jocularity?
Can those days never be resumed,
And am I to turn thirty soon?
45
And so my life has reached its zenith—
Something I cannot now deny.
Still, let us part as friends, not enemies,
My free-and-easy youth and I!
Thanks for the pleasures and enjoyment,
The disappointments and sweet torments.
For all the clamour, banquets, storms,
For all your gifts in each new form
I really must express my gratitude.
In all things, bringing storm or lull,
I have enjoyed you to the full.
Enough! With clear mind and new attitude
From my old life I take a rest
And set forth on another quest.
46
My favourite haunts I now look back on,
Where I spent long, sequestered days,
Days filled with idleness and passion,
My spirit in a wistful haze.
Young inspiration, do not soften,
Trouble my enterprise more often,
Fly to me when I sit apart
And agitate my sleeping heart,
Let not my poet’s soul be captured
To end up atrophied and tough,
Steadily petrified, made rough
By the smart world and all its rapture,
In this sad slough wherein we lie
Wallowing, my friends, you and I.
* Where skies are overcast and days are short / Is born a race that feels no pain in death. (Italian.)
CHAPTER SEVEN
Moscow, Russia’s favourite daughter,
Where is your equal to be found?
DMÍTRIYEV
How not to love our native Moscow?
BARATÝNSKY
Defaming Moscow? Worthless to see the world.
Where’s better?
Where we’re not.
GRIBOYÉDOV
1
Forced down by spring suns from the summits
Of nearby hills, the winter snows
Descend in turbid streams to plummet
Onto the flooded fields below.
With her bright smile, though still half-yawning,
Nature salutes the year’s new morning,
The heavens radiate dark blue,
The limpid woodlands are shot through
With verdure, and their fluff grows fuller,
Bees wander from their cells of wax
To fly the fields and take their tax,
The drying flatlands gleam with colour,
Cows moo, and nightingales delight
In singing through the silent night.
2
What sadness comes with your emergence,
O time of love. Yes, spring is spring,
When the soul stirs and the blood surges!
But, oh, what angu
ished pains you bring!
Ah, how my heavy spirit lurches
When springtime breathes on me and burgeons,
Wafting its charms into my face
In some secluded country place,
When happiness can seem discordant
And all things joyous, all things quick
Turn out to be a shabby trick
Leading to disaffected boredom,
Taxing a spirit long extinct
That sees all things as black as ink.
3
We cannot welcome the renewal
Of autumn’s dead leaves. It’s no good:
The loss of them is no less cruel
Despite new whispers from the woods.
Perhaps we watch the rise of nature
With blurred ideas, and link it later
With the slow fading of our youth,
Not destined to return, in sooth.
Or it may be our minds remember
In a poetic, sleepy haze
Another spring in bygone days
Which stirs the heart, and with the tremor
Come dreams of places far from this…
The moonlight… and a night of bliss.
4
It’s springtime. Come, you gentle idlers,
Epicureans, sages all,
You apathetic, smug insiders,
You armchair farmers, heed the call,
You Priams of the Russian country
You caring ladies, all and sundry,
The rural spring is calling you—
Warm weather, flowers, work to do,
With country rambles, oh, so bracing
Followed by long seductive nights…
Come to the fields, friends, now! Take flight
In laden carriages outpacing
Slow-trundling wagons and old crates.
Stream forth from every city gate.
5
Come, readers (loyally indulgent),
In coaches of the gaudy kind,
Come from your cities busy, bulging,
Leave all that winter fun behind.
Come with my wayward muse. Let’s listen
Together as the oak trees whisper
Above a nameless little brook
Where my Yevgeny found a nook,
Living in idle, sad seclusion,
And saw the recent winter through,
Near to the place where she lived too—
Tanya, my meditative maiden.
He lives no longer in this place,
Where he has left so sad a trace.
6
You see those hills set in a crescent?
Let’s go there, where a brooklet winds
Down to the river through those pleasant
Green meadows and that copse of limes.
Spring’s friend, the nightingale, sings for us,
And all night long we hear his chorus;
Wild roses bloom, the brook purls by
Near where a tombstone meets the eye
Beneath two shady pines, now ageing,
Its epitaph open to view:
HERE LIES VLADIMIR LENSKY, WHO
WENT YOUNG FROM THIS LIFE, AND COURAGEOUS.
(Age, years and details such as these)
YOUNG POET, MAY YOU REST IN PEACE.
7
On a low-hanging pine-tree twiglet,
Rocked gently by the morning breeze
O’er this mean funerary tribute,
There used to be an unsigned wreath.
Late in the evening, at their leisure,
Two girls would come out here together
By moonlight where the grave was dug
To shed warm tears and share a hug,
But now… the monument looks dismal,
Forgotten, and the path forlorn,
All overgrown. The wreath has gone.
Nearby, alone, withered and grizzled,
A shepherd warbles while he plaits
His wretched shoes, as in the past.
[8, 9] 10
Poor Lensky! Olga did not languish
Or weep for very long. Alas,
This marriageable maiden’s anguish
Was something that was soon to pass.
Another fellow won her favour,
Another came along to save her
And soothe her sorrow, someone who
Knew all the tricks of how to woo.
A lancer won her heart… The altar
Awaited them. Soon, looking down,
She blushed beneath her bridal crown,
Steadying as she shyly faltered.
Her downcast eyes were blazing, while
Her lips played with the faintest smile.
11
Poor Lensky! Could he somehow know it?
Facing the eternal void, could he
Have felt this hurt, the tragic poet,
This fateful form of treachery?
Or is he on the Lethe, stealing
Away now, blissfully unfeeling,
Untouched by us till kingdom come,
Our world closed off from him, and dumb?…
That’s it—the cold void in attendance
Beyond the grave. We have no choice.
Foes, friends and lovers—every voice
Is stilled. Malevolent descendants,
A chorus of our angry heirs,
Will squabble over what is theirs.
12
And Olga’s bright voice at the Larins’
Did not last long. Her time was spent.
Her lancer (whose fate was the army’s)
Took her to join his regiment.
The mother, seeing off her daughter,
Her eyes an ocean of salt water,
Seemed to be less than half-alive.
But Tanya did not, could not cry.
Her saddened face was an array of
Pale shadows that resembled death,
Though when they walked out on the steps
To say goodbye, in all the chaos
Around their carriage, sure enough,
Tanya was there to see them off.
13
She stood and watched the misty drama
Of their departure. In the end
She stood there, lonely. Poor Tatyana—
Alas, her lifetime’s bosom friend,
Her turtledove, her pal to hang on,
Her confidante and old companion,
Was seized by fate and whisked away,
Gone off for ever and a day.
Now she goes wandering like a shadow,
Inspecting their deserted plot.
Is there relief ? No, there is not,
Nor consolation. She grows sadder,
In tears that she could scarce suppress.
Her heart is sundered in her breast.
14
Her passion burns with more insistence
Now she’s alone, feeling apart.
Onegin, who is now so distant,
Speaks louder to her troubled heart.
They would now never see each other,
And he—the killer of her “brother”—
Was someone whom she ought to loathe.
But Lensky’s storybook is closed.
He’s not remembered. His fiancée
Has gone away with someone else,
And now the poet’s memory melts
Like smoke in a blue sky. Just fancy:
Perhaps the odd heart feels (or not?)
Some grief for him… But grief means… what?
15
Evening. A darkling sky. The waters
Go bubbling by, and beetles buzz.
Their dancing done, the peasants scatter.
Across the river, through the dusk,
Fires of the fishermen burn, plume-like,
While, lonesome in the silvery moonlight,
Tatyana strolls the fields and seems
Preoccupied, dreaming her dreams.
She wanders on. Then, with a s
hiver,
She spots a house down in a dell,
A village, copses down the hill,
And parkland by the gleaming river.
And one glance is enough to start
A faster frenzy in her heart.
16
She feels misgivings, sensing danger.
Go on? Go back? The choice is stark.
“He’s not here, and I am a stranger…
Just one glance at the house and park.”
And from the hilltop she walks down there,
Holding her breath. She looks around her,
Lost, apprehensive, on her guard,
And enters the deserted yard.
Some dogs rushed out to meet her, woofing.
She yelled in panic; as she did,
Some youngsters came out, servants’ kids,
And ran to her. After a scuffle,
They chased the mastiffs from the grounds,
Keeping the lady safe and sound.
17
“Could one ask where the big house keys are?”
Tatyana asked, and like a shot
The children rushed to find Anisya,
From whom the big keys could be got.
Anisya sped round in short order
To open up the big door for her,
And Tanya walked into the home
Where our hero had lived alone.
She looked around. A cue, unheeded,
Lay on the billiard-table top,
And she could see a riding crop
On a rough couch. Tanya, proceeding,
Was taken to the inglenook,
Where he’d sat on his own. “There, look.
18
And this is where our neighbour, Lensky,
Would come to dine last winter. See,
That’s the big study through the entry.
If you would kindly follow me…
Here he took naps and drank his coffee,
Heard statements from the steward’s office,
Or, in the mornings, read a tome.
This used to be the old squire’s home.
On Sundays I would sometimes visit,
And by that window—him in specs—