Eugene Onegin

by Alexander Pushkin

’To me, Onegin, all these splendours, This weary tinselled life of mine, This homage that the great world tenders, My stylish house where princes dine— Are empty. … I’d as soon be trading This tattered life of masquerading, This world of glitter, fumes, and noise, For just my books, the simple joys Of our old home, its walks and flowers, For all those haunts that I once knew … Where first, Onegin, I saw you; For that small churchyard’s shaded bowers, Where over my poor nanny now there stands a cross beneath a bough.

51 But those to whom, as friends and brothers, My first few stanzas I once read— ‘Some are no more, and distant… others.’* As Sadi* long before us said. Without them my Onegin’s fashioned. And she from whom I drew, impassioned, My fair Tatyana’s noblest trait… Oh, much, too much you’ve stolen, Fate! But blest is he who rightly gauges The time to quit the feast and fly, Who never drained life’s chalice dry, Nor read its novel’s final pages; But all at once for good withdrew— As I from my Onegin do.

The omission of certain stanzas has given rise on more than one occasion to criticism and jesting (no doubt most just and witty). The author candidly confesses that he has removed from his novel an entire chapter, in which Onegin’s journey across Russia was described. It behoved him to indicate this omitted chapter by dots or a numeral, but to avoid ambiguity he thought it preferable to label as number eight, instead of nine, the final chapter of Eugene Onegin, and to sacrifice one of its closing stanzas: It’s time: my pen demands a pillow; Nine cantos have I duly wrought, And now the ninth and final billow To joyful shore my bark has brought. All praise to you, O nine Camenae,* etc.

No sooner would the cannon, sounding, Proclaim from ship the dawn of day Than, down the sloping shoreline bounding, Towards the sea I’d make my way. And there, my glowing pipe ignited, By briny waves refreshed and righted, In Muslim paradise complete, I’d sip my Turkish coffee sweet. I take a stroll. Inciting urges, The great Casino’s opened up; I hear the ring of glass and cup; The marker, half asleep, emerges Upon the porch, with broom in hand, Where two expectant merchants stand.

But we, we band of callow joysters, Unlike those merchants filled with cares, Have been expecting only oysters … From Istanbul, the seaside’s wares. What news of oysters? Here? What rapture! And off runs glutton youth to capture And slurp from salty shells those bites Of plump and living anchorites, With just a dash of lemon flavour. What din, debates! The good Automne* From cellar store has just now come With sparkling wine for us to savour. The time goes by and, as it goes, The bill to awesome stature grows.

in a note to the stanza Pushkin comments archly: ‘The whole of this ironical stanza is nothing but a subtle compliment to our fair compatriots. Thus Boileau, under the guise of reproach, eulogizes Louis XIV. Our ladies combine enlightenment with amiability, and strict purity of morals with that Oriental charm which so captivated Mme. de Staël.’ See Dix ans d’exil.

Chapter 2 O rus! … O Rus’!: the epigraph employs a pun. The first ‘O rus!’ (Horace, Satires 2. 6) means ‘O countryside!’; the second invokes the old and lyrical name for ‘Russia’.

for Pushkin the term ‘ode’ suggested bombastic and heavy pieces in the eighteenth-century Russian manner; his own preference was clearly for the romantic ‘elegy’, by which term he would have described any short contemplative lyric. The mock debate conducted in this and the following stanza reflects an actual dispute between the ‘archaists’ and ‘modernists’ of Pushkin’s day.

at Yuletide, and especially on Twelfth Night, several traditions for fortune-telling were observed by women and girls (particularly among the common people). The shapes taken by molten wax or lead when submerged in water were read as prophetic, and so-called ‘dish divining songs’ were sung. In the latter case, girls would place their rings in a covered bowl of water before singing carols. At the end of each song, a ring was drawn at random, and its owner would deduce some portent or meaning from the kind of song just sung. Tatyana’s song on this occasion is a portent of death, whereas ‘The Kitty’s Song’, which girls prefer, is a prophecy of marriage.

by asking the name of the first stranger she encountered, a girl hoped to learn the name of her future fiancé. The name that Tatyana hears, Agafon (from the Greek ‘Agathon’), sounds particularly rustic and old-fashioned, and therefore comic, to a Russian ear.