Комментарии к «Евгению Онегину» Александра Пушкина - Владимир Набоков

XIX

   My goddesses! What has become of you?   Where are you? Hearken to my woeful voice:   Are all of you the same? Have other maidens 4 taken your place without replacing you?   Am I to hear again your choruses?   Am I to see Russian Terpsichore's   soulful volation? 8 Or will the mournful gaze not find   familiar faces on the dreary stage,   and at an alien world having directed   a disenchanted lorgnette,12 shall I, indifferent spectator   of merriment, yawn wordlessly   and bygones recollect?

XX

   By now the house is full; the boxes blaze;   parterre and stalls — all seethes;   in the top gallery impatiently they clap, 4 and, soaring up, the curtain swishes.   Resplendent, half ethereal,   obedient to the magic bow,   surrounded by a throng of nymphs, 8 Istómina stands: she,   while touching with one foot the floor,   gyrates the other slowly,   and lo! a leap, and lo! she flies,12 she flies like fluff from Eol's lips,   now twines and now untwines her waist   and beats one swift small foot against the other.

XXI

   All clap as one. Onegin enters:   he walks — on people's toes — between the stalls;   askance, his double lorgnette trains 4 upon the loges of strange ladies;   he has scanned all the tiers;   he has seen everything; with faces, garb,   he's dreadfully displeased; 8 with men on every side   he has exchanged salutes; then at the stage   in great abstraction he has glanced,   has turned away, and yawned,12 and uttered: “Time all were replaced;   ballets I long have suffered,   but even of Didelot I've had enough.”5

XXII

   Amors, diaboli, and dragons   still on the stage jump and make noise;   still at the carriage porch the weary footmen 4 on the pelisses are asleep;   still people have not ceased to stamp,   blow noses, cough, hiss, clap;   still, outside and inside, 8 lamps glitter everywhere;   still, chilled, the horses fidget,   bored with their harness,   and round the fires the coachmen curse their masters12 and beat their palms together;   and yet Onegin has already left;   he's driving home to dress.

XXIII

   Shall I present a faithful picture   of the secluded cabinet,   where fashions' model pupil 4 is dressed, undressed, and dressed again?   Whatever, for the lavish whim,   London the trinkleter deals in   and o'er the Baltic waves to us 8 ships in exchange for timber and for tallow;   whatever hungry taste in Paris,   choosing a useful trade,   invents for pastimes,12 for luxury, for modish mollitude;   all this adorned the cabinet   of a philosopher at eighteen years of age.

XXIV

   Amber on Tsargrad's pipes,   porcelain and bronzes on a table,   and — joyance of the pampered senses — 4 perfumes in crystal cut with facets;   combs, little files of steel,   straight scissors, curvate ones, and brushes   of thirty kinds — 8 these for the nails, those for the teeth.   Rousseau (I shall observe in passing) was unable   to understand how the dignified Grimm   dared clean his nails in front of him,12 the eloquent crackbrain.6   The advocate of liberty and rights   was in the present case not right at all.

XXV

   One can be an efficient man —   and mind the beauty of one's nails:   why vainly argue with the age? 4 Custom is despot among men.   My Eugene, a second [Chadáev],   being afraid of jealous censures,   was in his dress a pedant 8 and what we've called a fop.   Three hours, at least,   he spent in front of glasses,   and from his dressing room came forth12 akin to giddy Venus   when, having donned a masculine attire,   the goddess drives to a masqued ball.

XXVI

   With toilette in the latest taste   having engaged your curious glance,   I might before the learned world 4 describe here his attire;   this would, no doubt, be daring;   however, 'tis my business to describe;   but “dress coat,” “waistcoat,” “pantaloons” — 8 in Russian all these words are not;   in fact, I see (my guilt I lay before you)   that my poor idiom as it is   might be diversified much less12 with words of foreign stock,   though I did erstwhile dip   into the Academic Dictionary.

XXVII

   Not this is our concern at present:   we'd better hurry to the ball   whither headlong in a hack coach 4 already my Onegin has sped off.   In front of darkened houses,   alongst the sleeping street in rows   the twin lamps of coupés 8 pour forth a cheerful light   and project rainbows on the snow.   Studded around with lampions,   glitters a splendid house;12 across its whole-glassed windows shadows move:   there come and go the profiled heads   of ladies and of modish quizzes.

XXVIII

   Up to the porch our hero now has driven;   past the hall porter, like a dart,   he has flown up the marble steps, 4 has run his fingers through his hair,   has entered. The ballroom is full of people;   the music has already tired of dinning;   the crowd is occupied with the mazurka; 8 there's all around both noise and squeeze;   there clink the cavalier guard's spurs;   the little feet of winsome ladies flit;   upon their captivating tracks12 flit flaming glances,   and by the roar of violins is drowned   the jealous whispering of fashionable women.

XXIX

   In days of gaieties and desires   I was mad about balls:   there is no safer spot for declarations 4 and for the handing of a letter.   O you, respected husbands!   I'll offer you my services;   pray, mark my speech: 8 I wish to warn you.   You too, mammas: most strictly   follow your daughters with your eyes;   hold up your lorgnettes straight!12 Or else... else — God forbid!   If this I write it is because   I have long ceased to sin.

XXX

   Alas, on various pastimes I have wasted   a lot of life!   But to this day, if morals did not suffer, 4 I'd still like balls.   I like riotous youth,   the crush, the glitter, and the gladness,   and the considered dresses of the ladies; 8 I like their little feet; but then 'tis doubtful   that in all Russia you will find   three pairs of shapely feminine feet.   Ah me, I long could not forget12 two little feet!... Despondent, fervorless,   I still remember them, and in sleep they   disturb my heart.

XXXI

   So when and where, in what desert, will you   forget them, madman? Little feet,   ah, little feet! Where are you now? 4 Where do you trample vernant blooms?   Brought up in Oriental mollitude,   on the Northern sad snow   you left no prints: 8 you liked the sumptuous contact   of yielding rugs.   Is it long since I would forget for you   the thirst for fame and praises,12 the country of my fathers, and confinement?   The happiness of youthful years has vanished   as on the meadows your light trace.

XXXII

   Diana's bosom, Flora's cheeks, are charming,   dear friends! Nevertheless, for me   something about it makes more charming 4 the small foot of Terpsichore.   By prophesying to the gaze   an unpriced recompense,   with token beauty it attracts the willful 8 swarm of desires.   I like it, dear Elvina,   beneath the long napery of tables,   in springtime on the turf of meads,12 in winter on the hearth's cast iron,   on mirrory parquet of halls,   by the sea on granite of rocks.

XXXIII