Комментарии к «Евгению Онегину» Александра Пушкина - Владимир Набоков

XV

   He listened with a smile to Lenski:   the poet's fervid conversation,   and mind still vacillant in judgments, 4 and gaze eternally inspired —   all this was novel to Onegin;   the chilling word   on his lips he tried to restrain, 8 and thought: foolish of me   to interfere with his brief rapture;   without me just as well that time will come;   meanwhile let him live and believe12 in the perfection of the world;   let us forgive the fever of young years   both its young ardor and young ravings.

XVI

   Between them everything engendered   discussions and led to reflection:   the pacts of bygone races, 4 the fruits of learning, Good and Evil,   and centuried prejudices,   and the grave's fateful mysteries,   destiny and life in their turn — 8 all was subjected to their judgment.   The poet in the heat of his contentions   recited, in a trance, meantime,   fragments of Nordic poems,12 and lenient Eugene,   although he did not understand them much,   would dutifully listen to the youth.

XVII

   But passions occupied more often   the minds of my two anchorets.   Having escaped from their tumultuous power, 4 Onegin spoke of them   with an involuntary sigh of regret.   Happy who knew their agitations   and finally detached himself from them; 8 still happier who did not know them, who   cooled love with separation, enmity   with obloquy; sometimes   with friends and wife yawned, undisturbed12 by jealous torment,   and the safe capital of forefathers   did not entrust to a perfidious deuce!

XVIII

   When we have flocked under the banner   of sage tranquillity,   when the flame of the passions has gone out 4 and laughable become to us   their waywardness   or surgings and belated echoes;   reduced to sense not without trouble, 8 sometimes we like to listen   to the tumultuous language of the passions   of others, and it stirs our heart;   exactly thus an old disabled soldier12 does willingly bend an assiduous ear   to the yarns of young mustached braves,   [while he remains] forgotten in his shack.

XIX

   Now flaming youthhood, on the other hand,   cannot hide anything:   enmity, love, sadness, and joy 4 'tis ready to blab out.   Deemed invalided as to love,   with a grave air Onegin listened   as, loving the confession of the heart, 8 the poet his whole self expressed.   His trustful conscience   naïvely he laid bare.   Eugene learned without trouble12 the youthful story of his love —   a tale abounding in emotions   long since not new to us.

XX

   Ah, he loved as one loves   no longer in our years; as only   the mad soul of a poet 4 is still condemned to love:   always, and everywhere, one reverie,   one customary wish,   one customary woe! 8 Neither the cooling distance,   nor the long years of separation,   nor hours given to the Muses,   nor foreign beauties,12 nor noise of merriments, nor studies,   had changed in him a soul   warmed by a virgin fire.

XXI

   When scarce a boy, by Olga captivated,   not having known yet torments of the heart,   he'd been a tender witness 4 of her infantine frolics.   He, in the shade of a protective park,   had shared her frolics,   and for these children wedding crowns 8 their fathers, who were friends and neighbors, destined.   In the backwoods, beneath a humble roof,   full of innocent charm,   she under the eyes of her parents12 bloomed like a hidden lily of the valley   which is unknown in the dense grass   to butterflies or to the bee.

XXII

   She gave the poet the first dream   of youthful transports,   and the thought of her animated 4 his pipe's first moan.   Farewell, golden games! He   began to like thick groves,   seclusion, stillness, and the night, 8 and the stars, and the moon —   the moon, celestial lamp,   to which we dedicated   walks midst the evening darkness,12 and tears, of secret pangs the solace...   But now we only see in her   a substitute for bleary lanterns.

XXIII

   Always modest, always obedient,   always as merry as the morn,   as naïve as a poet's life, 4 as winsome as love's kiss;   her eyes, as azure as the sky,   smile, flaxen locks,   movements, voice, light waist — everything 8 in Olga... but take any novel,   and you will surely find   her portrait; it is very sweet;   I liked it once myself,12 but it has come to bore me beyond measure.   Let me, my reader,   take up the elder sister.

XXIV

   Her sister   was called Tatiana.13   For the first time a novel's tender pages 4 with such a name we willfully shall grace.   What of it? It is pleasing, sonorous,   but from it, I know, is inseparable   the memory of ancientry 8 or housemaids' quarters. We must all   admit that we have very little   taste even in our names   (to say nothing of verses);12 enlightenment does not suit us,   and what we have derived from it   is affectation — nothing more.

XXV

   So she was called   Tatiana. Neither with her sister's beauty   nor with her [sister's] rosy freshness 4 would she attract one's eyes.   Sauvage, sad, silent,   as timid as the sylvan doe,   in her own family 8 she seemed a strangeling.   She knew not how to snuggle up   to her father or mother;   a child herself, among a crowd of children,12 she never wished to play and skip,   and often all day long, alone,   she sat in silence by the window.

XXVI

   Pensiveness, her companion,   even from cradle days,   adorned for her with dreams 4 the course of rural leisure.   Her delicate fingers   knew needles not; over the tambour bendin   with a silk pattern she 8 did not enliven linen.   Sign of the urge to domineer:   the child with her obedient doll   prepares in play12 for etiquette, law of the monde,   and gravely to her doll repeats the lessons   of her mamma;

XXVII

   but even in those years Tatiana   did not take in her hands a doll;   about town news, about the fashions, 4 did not converse with it;   and childish pranks   to her were foreign; grisly tales   in winter, in the dark of nights, 8 charmed more her heart.   Whenever nurse assembled   for Olga, on the spacious lawn,   all her small girl companions,12 she did not play at barleybreaks,   dull were to her both ringing laughter   and noise of their giddy diversions.

XXVIII

   She on the balcony   liked to prevene Aurora's rise,   when, in the pale sky, disappears 4 the choral dance of stars,   and earth's rim softly lightens,   and, morning's herald, the wind whiffs,   and rises by degrees the day. 8 In winter, when night's shade   possesses longer half the world,   and longer in the idle stillness,   by the bemisted moon,12 the lazy orient sleeps,   awakened at her customary hour   she would get up by candles.

XXIX