Eugene Onegin

by Alexander Pushkin

He who has lived and thought can never Help in his soul despising men, He who has felt will be forever Haunted by days he can’t regain. For him there are no more enchantments, Him does the serpent of remembrance, Him does repentance always gnaw.

But flaming youth is quite unable To hide a feeling or a thought And ever is prepared to babble Love, hatred, joy and sorrow out.

Forever modest and submissive, Forever merry as the day, As charming as a lover’s kisses, As artless as the poet’s way, Her eyes as azure as the heaven, Her flaxen curls, her smile so even, Her voice, her slender waist and stance These made up Olga… but just glance At any novel at your leisure, You’ll find her portrait there – it’s sweet, Once I myself found it a treat, But now it bores me beyond measure. Reader, I shall, if you’ll allow, Turn to the elder sister now.

Habit is heaven’s gift to us: A substitute for happiness.

Upon life’s furrows; in its wake Others the selfsame journey take. So, our light-headed tribe, now roaming, Grows up, gets animated, seethes, Sees off its ancestors with wreaths. But our time, too, is coming, coming, And one fine day our grandsons will Bundle us out with equal zeal!

Meanwhile, enjoy, friends, till it’s ended, This light existence, every dram! Its nullity I’ve comprehended And little bound to it I am; I’ve shut my eyelids now to phantoms; But distant hopes appear and sometimes Continue to disturb my heart.

Lord Byron’s whim most opportunely Clothed even hopeless egotism In woebegone romanticism.

How sad, however, if we’re given Our youth as something to betray, And what if youth in turn is driven To cheat on us, each hour, each day, If our most precious aspirations, Our freshest dreams, imaginations In fast succession have decayed, As leaves, in putrid autumn, fade. It is too much to see before one Nothing but dinners in a row, Behind the seemly crowd to go, Regarding life as mere decorum, Having no common views to share, Nor passions that one might declare.

O humans! You’re so similar To Eve, our ancestress: what’s granted Does not appeal to you at all, You hear the serpent’s endless call To where a secret tree is planted; Forbidden fruit provides more spice, Without it there’s no paradise.

But at a late age, dry and fruitless, The final stage to which we’re led, Sad is the trace of passions dead: Thus storms in autumn, cold and ruthless, Transform the field into a slough, And strip the trees from root to bough.

‘Admit that in our backwoods haven, From empty rumour far away, I was not to your liking… Say, then, Why you’re pursuing me today. Why have you marked me for attention? Might it not be because convention Includes me in the social round, Because I’m wealthy and renowned, Because my husband’s wounds in battle Have gained him royal favour, fame? Might it not be because my shame Would feed the flames of tittle-tattle And win you, in society, Seductive notoriety?

‘This pomp, Onegin, these excesses, The trumpery of hateful days, My high society successes, My fashionable house, soirées, What do they mean? Oh, I’d surrender At once this masquerade, this splendour, With all its glitter, noise and smoke For one wild garden and a book, For our poor home, to me the dearest, For all those places I recall, Where I beheld you first of all, And for the humble churchyard near us, Where now a cross and branches shade The grave where my poor nurse is laid…