Eugene Onegin E-Book

Alexander Pushkin

• Herausgeber: Dedalus
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Pushkin was the first Russian writer of European stature, and he is among the very few artists - such as Homer and Shakespeare - to have shaped the consciousness and history of an entire nation and its language, thereby affecting the world at large. Eugene Onegin is not merely the greatest poem in the Russian language by its most influential poet: it is a global culture, social and political icon of the highest order. The historical power of this work - a novel in verse - is made all the more extraordinary by the simplicity of its subject. Eugene Onegin is a story of disappointed love. Tatyana falls for the handsome Eugene to whom she daringly makes advances. He cooly rejects her, then flirts with her sister, Olga. When challenged by Olga's fiance, Lensky kills him in a duel, seemingly indifferrent to the grief he causes. (Ironically, Puskhin himself was to be killed in similar circumstances in 1937, some seven years after he completed the work). Onegin leaves the district. When he returns four years later, Tatyana has married another man and it is her turn to reject his advances. But it turns out that Onegin's hauteur is affected: he has always loved her passionately. She loves him too and both reflect painfully on what might have been.

Leseprobe

Dedalus European Classics

General Editor: Mike Mitchell

Eugene Onegin

Alexander Pushkin

Eugene Onegin

Translated with an introduction and notes by Tom Beck

Published in the UK by Dedalus Ltd, Langford Lodge,

St Judith’s Lane, Sawtry, Cambs, PE28 5XE

email: [email protected]

www.dedalusbooks.com

ISBN 1 903517 28 1

Dedalus is distributed in the United States by SCB Ditsributors,

15608 South New Century Drive, Gardena, California 90248

email: [email protected] web site: www.scbdistributors.com

Dedalus is distributed in Australia & New Zealand by Peribo Pty Ltd,

58 Beaumont Road, Mount Kuring-gai N.S.W. 2080

email: [email protected]

Dedalus is distributed in Canada by Marginal Distribution,

695, Westney Road South, Suite 14 Ajax, Ontario, LI6 6M9

email: [email protected] web site: www.marginalbook.com

First published in Russia in 1831

First published by Dedalus in 2004

First e-book edition in 2010

Translation, introduction and notes copyright © Tom Beck 2004

The right of Tom Beck to be identified as the translator and editor of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act, 1988.

Printed in Finland by WS Bookwell

Typeset by RefineCatch, Bungay, Suffolk

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A C.I.P listing for this book is available on request.

THE AUTHOR

Alexander Pushkin (1799–1837) is regarded as Russia’s greatest poet. From an aristocratic family he was dismissed from government service for his revolutionary epigrams. In 1832 he married Natalia Goncharova, a great beauty, but rumours of an affair with Baron Georges D’Anthès led to a duel in which Pushkin was fatally wounded. Despite his untimely death he produced a large amount of verse and narrative poetry, prose and plays of the highest quality.

THE TRANSLATOR

Tom Beck trained as a musician and has specialised in translating books about music and poetry into English from German. Inspired by a new German translation of Eugene Onegin he learnt Russian so that he could translate Eugene Onegin into English. The result is a masterpiece.

FOR MY WIFE GERALDINE

‘A lily among thorns is my dearest among girls’

(The Song of Songs 2:2)

INTRODUCTION

Alexander Pushkin’s (1799–1837) ‘Novel in Verse’ Eugene Onegin was written between the years 1823–31, and is perhaps best known outside Russia through Tchaikovsky’s eponymous opera. Although the opera contains some glorious music and is deservedly popular in its own right, this popularity is nevertheless in some respects misleading, in that the opera bears as little resemblance to Pushkin’s masterpiece as does many an otherwise excellent Hollywood film to the book on which it is ostensibly based. The music often verges on the sentimental, not to say mawkish, qualities about as far removed from Pushkin as can be imagined. And the libretto takes only the tragic, Hollywoodesque ‘Love Story’ element of the novel, which in turn is in some ways its least important aspect. Indeed, there is relatively little in Tchaikovsky’s work which prepares a first-time reader of Pushkin for what the poet really intends.

There are, however, other both musical and literary parallels to Pushkin’s ‘Novel in Verse’: on the one hand two of Mozart’s most famous Italian operas, Don Giovanni (1787) and Così fan tutti (1790), and on the other Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Byron’s Childe Harold and Don Juan. Let us start with Mozart, whom Pushkin greatly admired. Don Giovanni is nominally the ‘bad guy’ of the opera, as is Onegin in the novel. Yet we come away from the opera feeling that of all the characters, the Don is the only one for whom we have any real sympathy. And much the same is true of Pushkin’s hero Onegin, though of the ladies in the story Tatiana is a far stronger and more loveable creature than any of Don Giovanni’s female victims. Both Giovanni and Onegin are willing and able not only to stand up to what life throws at them, but also to follow it through to the bitter end, something of which among all the ladies involved only Tatiana proves herself capable. Indeed, she alone among all the characters of both novel and opera is the only one who grows in stature as the story develops, while Onegin, though he sees how wrong he had been about Tatiana, remains what he always was, a dissolute rogue, as does Giovanni.

Their world is not one that we particularly admire, but given that world as a starting point, Giovanni and Onegin alone take everything in their stride that life confronts them with, while most of the other characters fall at the first hurdle. Mozart achieves this with purely musical means, allowing us, the audience, to form our own opinions of the characters. The contrast, for instance, between the two noblemen, Giovanni himself and Don Ottavio, (Donna Anna’s beloved), could not be greater. Can anyone seriously imagine Ottavio taking on Giovanni? Beautiful though Ottavio’s two great arias are, they also reveal him as a timid gazelle to Giovanni’s hungry lion. And had he challenged the Don to a duel, his fate would doubtless have been that of Pushkin’s Lenski, though Giovanni would hardly have regretted his death as Onegin immediately does.1

In Così fan tutti (a comedy of errors not dissimilar to A Midsummer-Night’s Dream) the situation is even more extreme. The characters are all in their own way fairly abject,2 and yet the audience leaves the spectacle wiser, reflective, and thoroughly amused, as does the reader of Pushkin’s story. Mozart and Pushkin work at a number of different levels. Nominally the complex machinations of the opera are set in motion by the philosopher-sceptic Don Alfonso, as is the action of Pushkin’s tale by the equally cynical Onegin. But Alfonso, in turn, is Mozart’s creature (as Onegin is Pushkin’s), and is thus himself given life by Mozart. Both the composer and his fictional philosopher comment on the action throughout, either directly in aria and recitative, or in purely orchestral terms. Profoundest emotions are juxtaposed in the twinkling of an eye with mock heroics and pseudo-tragedy, all carried out with a seeming ease that defies belief. The opera’s action thus takes place at two removes, ostensibly set in motion by Don Alfonso but in reality by Mozart himself. And there is a third level, which constantly interweaves with the other two: the composer creating a philosopher who in turn creates the absurd comedy which creates the ‘emotions-within-the emotions’ we witness. We can also see Pushkin’s ‘Novel in Verse’ in a similar way, both fictitious hero and his creator intertwined and, as it were, observing each other, while at the same time commenting on the world which the two of them inhabit, and its denizens. It is the music and the poetry which guide us through these various levels, and it is not always easy to follow quite which strand is being woven, neither in the opera nor in the poem. Indeed, so complex is the opera that until a few decades ago it was largely regarded as a failure, a lost cause, and consequently hardly performed. And even Pushkin’s masterpiece took long enough to be fully recognised, not attaining the status it enjoys today until some thirty and more years after his death.

I have described those two operas at such length because more than anything else they provide us with a key with which to unlock the door to Pushkin’s magic world. Far removed from the almost mundane if sometimes lush sentimentality Tchaikovsky serves up, Pushkin inhabits the scintillating world of the Mozart he so delighted in. Like the Salzburg master, he also illumines our knowledge of the world with seemingly the lightest of touches, which nevertheless reveals more than many of the world’s would-be ‘serious thinkers’ combined. As Don Alfonso is Mozart’s alter ego in Così, so is Onegin in Pushkin’s novel. Neither is identical with their creator (as Pushkin is at pains to point out), yet both reflect their creators in many significant ways.

The motto of Eugene Onegin, apparently written in French by Pushkin himself in a letter, would seem to sum up not only the hero of Pushkin’s novel, but also Don Giovanni himself, about whom Pushkin even wrote what he called a ‘Little Tragedy’ in 1830, which was itself turned into an opera by Dargomizhsky (1813–69). The motto reads:

‘Filled with vanity, he had even more of that kind of pride which allows a person, from a – perhaps illusory – sense of superiority, to admit to both his good and bad deeds with the same indifference.’

Yet we need not stray as far as Mozart’s Italianate world to understand Pushkin’s story in terms more familiar to an English-speaking readership. The main characters of Pushkin’s novel are in many ways of a type already familiar to the English reader from an entirely different source, and one entirely unknown to Pushkin himself. Although the protagonists of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, written some ten years before Eugene Onegin was even started, are largely those of bourgeois middle England and the minor aristocracy, whereas Pushkin’s main figures belong in no small part to the high society of St. Petersburg and Moscow, there are marked similarities between the two works. Tatiana, perhaps the best-loved character in all Russian literature, is in many ways a mixture of the two oldest Bennet girls. When we first meet her she is not dissimilar to the gentle, demure and naïve Jane Bennet, trusting and quickly impressed, and also just as quickly snubbed by the man she loves. Tatiana, however, undergoes a profound change in the course of the story, and in the last chapter turns into something approaching Elizabeth Bennet as we know her at the start of Jane Austen’s novel, self-assured and with a will and mind of her own. The scene in which Tatiana rejects Onegin (chapter eight) is in many ways comparable to Lizzie’s rejection of Darcy when he makes his first proposal during a visit to Lady Catherine.

Onegin himself has many of the characteristics of Darcy, at least of the Darcy we meet when Jane Austen’s novel begins. He, too, looks down on the simple country girls, their family, pastimes and surroundings. Indeed, in both novels it is a ballroom incident which plays a vital role in the story. Both Darcy and Onegin are so thoroughly bored by the company they find themselves in, that their future actions are dictated by what they experience. And as Darcy seeks to destroy his friend Bingley’s love for Jane Bennet, so Onegin also comes between his young friend Lenski and Lenski’s adored Olga, Tatiana’s younger sister. Darcy, like Onegin, is at first apparently a cold and supercilious figure, whose personality develops as the story progresses. But whereas Jane Austen provides us with a happy end, Pushkin leaves his hero’s fate open. Onegin comes to realise his earlier mistake, but his entreaties that the now-married and aristocratic Tatiana give him another chance are rejected, although she loves him still.3

Even the gallery of secondary characters in Pride and Prejudice is matched by Pushkin. The haughty Bingley sisters, the appalling and hysterical Mrs. Bennet (evidently a close relative of Mrs. Larin), her three foolish youngest daughters (Olga would feel at home with them, Lydia in particular), the sycophantic Mr. Collins and his snobbish patroness Lady Catherine all find their parallels in Pushkin’s novel, which can perhaps best be approached by an English-speaking reader as a Russian counterpart to Jane Austen’s masterpiece.

There is, however, one obvious difference between the two works. While Jane Austen writes the most delectable prose, Pushkin’s is a tale told in equally delightful verse. His model for a story in verse was Byron, and in particular Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812–18) and Don Juan (1819–24). Pushkin read Byron in French translations, which were enormously popular, if not very good. Nabokov tells us that Pushkin attempted to learn English, but with little success, and even thought the word ‘Childe’ was pronounced ‘chilled’! His initial attitude to Byron was enthusiastic, but this cooled to respect, rather than affection. There are various references to the English poet in Eugene Onegin, and all of them reflect Pushkin’s growing sense of distance to his erstwhile model. Many of the devices we find in Onegin would appear to have their origins in Don Juan. Both poets play with the difficulty of translating from one language (French) into their own, both employ lists of names to score some mocking point or other, both heroes have their difficulties with Latin and the classics in general, though the authors themselves refer to various writers of the ancient world with whom they themselves are perfectly familiar. The childhood days of Juan and Eugene, and their upbringing, are decidedly similar. Both are dissatisfied with life as they find it as young men, and the value of a legacy from the unexpected death of some aged relative is ironically stressed. One could go on. Digressions from the main theme, conversations within the structure of the verse, witty endings to a verse or chapter, deflating irony, the mocking of some fellow poets, the admiration for others, even descriptions of rooms which the respective heroes inhabit, they are all to be found in Byron and Pushkin.

The differences, however, are much greater. The idea of using sonnets for the novel was entirely Pushkin’s own. Writing came easily to both poets, but while Byron’s pen all too often seems to run away with him, leading to a verbosity which can at times try the patience of even the most devoted, Pushkin is a master of concentrated structure. As with the Mozart he so admired, everything is essential and thus infinitely more effective. Both Pushkin and Mozart can modulate from major to minor and back again, from gaiety to tragedy, from despair to laughter, from deepest insight into human nature to the ironic observation of their fellow men, effortlessly and in an instant. Poet and musician play with their respective art forms with a virtuosity that is uniquely breathtaking, and both produce music of the highest quality and the greatest beauty, unmatched in its own particular way either before or since.

The story of Eugene Onegin is one of realistic, turbulent, and ultimately unfulfilled love, which in some respects looks forward to the twentieth century. Pushkin does not allow the fractured circle of emotions to be closed by a classic nineteenth century happy-end. Onegin, a handsome stranger, having been left a legacy, appears one day from fashionable St. Petersburg in the provincial place where Tatiana lives. Though quickly disenchanted with country life, he is brought together with and befriends a young man and naïve poet, Lenski, who has arrived from Germany. Lenski falls in love with Tatiana’s younger sister, Olga, to whom he soon becomes engaged. Much as Bingley does with Darcy, Lenski drags the bored Onegin to meet his Olga, where Tatiana sees and is profoundly attracted to him. Having written him a letter declaring her love, she is coldly rejected. Once more Onegin is taken to the Larins’ house for Tatiana’s name day, where (as with Darcy) the rural celebrations infuriate him. Annoyed that his friend Lenski should have exposed him to such an imposition, he flirts outrageously with Olga. Lenski challenges him to a duel, is killed, and Olga promptly marries someone else.

Tatiana, still unwed, is taken to Moscow to find a husband and married off to a prince and general in the Russian army. Returning to St. Petersburg from his travels, undertaken in an attempt to forget the killing of his young friend, Onegin sees Tatiana at a ball, and this time he becomes obsessed by her. In his turn, he, too, writes a letter declaring his passion for her, is rejected, though Tatiana does admit that she still loves him and … Then what? We never find out, for Pushkin breaks off his tale at this point and rounds his novel off with a few reflective and valedictory verses. We do not even have the fascination of discovering, as we do in Pride and Prejudice, how or even whether this unlikely pair finally get together.

Apart from the two lengthy letters which Tatiana and Onegin respectively write to each other (of which Tatiana’s is regarded as one of the great moments of Russian literature, perhaps not unlike Hamlet’s ‘To be, or not to be …’ monologue for the reader of English), there are three further noteworthy episodes. These are Tatiana’s dream in chapter five, the duel between Onegin and Lenski in chapter six, and Tatiana’s visit to Onegin’s house in chapter seven (once he has gone on his travels), when she for the first time realises his true and apparently shallow nature. At this point there is a contrast with Lizzie Bennet’s visit to Pemberley, when she for the first time recognises that Darcy is in fact the very opposite of what she had imagined. The dream sequence foreshadows, in a mixture of comic adventures and grotesque images, the events leading to Lenski’s death, while mirroring Tatiana’s confused state of mind concerning Onegin. The duel scene contains some of the finest imagery in the entire poem, as Lenski’s death is described. And to the reader who remembers that Pushkin himself died in just such circumstances a few years after the completion of his masterpiece, this episode takes on an almost unbearable poignancy. Finally there are Tatiana’s visits to Onegin’s house, which reveal her as a shy, sensitive and naïve country girl, who in the most unexpected fashion is brought to see the truth about the man she has loved, which we, the readers, already know from chapter one in particular.

This brief account of the narrative throws light on one of its main characteristics: Pushkin’s preoccupation with real people and real things. Eugene Onegin is filled with the most striking portraits of people from all walks of life, both in the city and the country. The social life of St. Petersburg and Moscow, the theatres, the great receptions and balls, street scenes from both these cities on the one hand, and the simpler rustic jollifications, the rural inhabitants of Tatiana’s provincial home and surroundings on the other, are all presented with complete authenticity. Certainly, as with Jane Austen, there is often an element of parody or even downright malice in the portrayals, but that merely adds to the sense of realism, as we see Pushkin probing below the surface, not content with merely delineating outer appearances. Even Nature itself can be both beautiful, as in the many sonnets echoing its delights, or, as in Tatiana’s dream, terrifying. And neither is the animal world excluded: a shaggy bear, initially frightening and finally kindly, accompanies Tatiana in her dream, while the goose trying to go for a swim in an ice-covered river in chapter four has become legendary in Russian literature. Pushkin’s is not a romantic world, but a realistic one, in which things are as they are. Boris Pasternak, in his great novel about a poet, Dr. Zhivago, has his hero write in a diary entry about Pushkin:

‘It’s as if the air, the light, the noise of life, of real substantial things burst into his poetry from the street as through an open window. Concrete things – things in the outside world, things in current use, names of things, common nouns – crowd in and take possession of his verse, driving out the vaguer parts of speech. Things and more things, lined up in rhymed columns on the page.’4

It is Pushkin’s eye for detail, his delight in what he sees that removes from even the tragic scenes of the novel any trace of mawkishness or cloying sentimentality. Pushkin loves humanity with all its virtues and failings, and so he does not attempt to idealise the world or the people who live in it. There is no ‘Good’ or ‘Bad’, just life as we all experience it, a mixture of both which deserves neither condemnation nor praise, because it is what it is: our world. We do not transcend the world, but are reconciled to it, and enjoy what it has to give, without trying to flee into some paradise beyond. Music, theatre, poetry, whether accomplished or not, tragedy and joy, a little wisdom and absurdity in abundance, artistry and sexuality, they are all there, and Pushkin, and we with him, are glad of it. We do not crave more than is on offer, but realise that such is our world and we learn to accept and love that world for its own sake. It is not a coherent ‘philosophy’ with which the poet presents us, it is more: it is us as we are, ‘warts and all’. The leading British Pushkin scholar A. D. P. Briggs quotes S. L. Frank in Alexander Pushkin, a critical study:5

‘Aldous Huxley … has rightly observed that although Mozart’s music seems gay, it is in fact sad. The same can be said about the poetry of Pushkin … the explanation is the same in both cases. The artistic expression of sorrow, grief and the tragic is so filled with the light from some quiet, unearthly, angelic sense of reconciliation and enlightenment that the content appears joyful.’

Much has been written on the relationship between Pushkin himself and his hero. Although the poet distinguishes at all times between himself, Onegin, and Byron, it is not difficult to see similarities between the dissolute fictional dandy from St. Petersburg and Pushkin himself, whose dissipation, even by the standards of his own time, was remarkable. Both were also womanisers, and both fought duels over women: Onegin as the result of his own foolishness, killing his friend, while Pushkin himself was killed in a duel following rumours that his wife was having an affair with the Baron Georges d’Anthès, the adopted son of the Dutch Ambassador. The whole extraordinary story is brilliantly and excitingly told by Serena Vitale.6 Pushkin constantly imposes himself on the story, either with comments on the characters he is describing, or with comments about himself, his past life, society in general, his feelings about nature and the countryside, city life, his longing for Italy or even Africa, whence his great grandfather had come and of whom he was inordinately proud. At one point he even describes a meeting with his hero and their mutual admiration. And yet Onegin is in many ways pure fiction, if ultimately derived from Byron’s melancholy and defiant outcast Childe Harold on the one hand, and the delightfully witty Don Juan on the other. Three times Onegin is explicitly compared to Childe Harold,while Tatiana, visiting Onegin’s deserted house wonders whether he might not even be ’a Muscovite in Harold’s cloak.’

Onegin is thus a kind of ‘pick-and-mix’, containing both elements of Pushkin himself, and Byron’s two most famous poetic heroes, ChildeHarold and DonJuan, themselves based on Byron’s own life and experiences. Pushkin’s attitude towards his hero in many ways resembles his feelings about the English poet he once so admired, but now felt increasingly distant from, as he makes clear in a number of passages in EugeneOnegin itself. Indeed, it is tempting to see the relationship between the two poets mirrored in that of Tatiana and Onegin themselves. Initially Tatiana is completely enamoured of Onegin, as was Pushkin of Byron, while at the end of the novel, though still loving him, she rejects him for her new life and position in society. Tatiana, the most purely human of all the characters in the novel, the one in whom Pushkin invested the tender side of his own personality, can thus be seen as the embodiment of the love the poet felt for his English forebear, who is finally cast off to be replaced by Russian life, language and literature.

Formal Considerations

The Pushkin sonnet uses an extremely flexible iambic tetrameter,7 which lends the stanzas a fairly fast pace (andante con moto). The scheme on which each is built is as follows, illustrated by the first sonnet of chapter one. The letters and numbers at the end of each line represent the end-rhymes, while the subscript numbers indicate the feet per line, 9 indicating a weak and 8 a strong ending:

“My uncle’s acted very wisely,

to seek his bed when he’s so sick;

his family’s reacted nicely

and he’s most happy with his trick.

He’s set the world a good example,

which others would do well to sample,

but it’s a bore, when night and day

the sick man forces you to stay!

To keep him sweet, as if he’s dying,

give him his daily medicine

and make quite sure that it goes in,

adjust the pillows while one’s sighing:

The Eugene Onegin sonnet divides up into three sections: lines 1–4, 5–12, 13–14. The first four lines present the essential subject of the stanza, the following eight allow a discourse on it, while the final two serve either as a kind of summary in the more serious passages, or bring it to a spirited conclusion in the more light-hearted verses. It is thus a highly flexible construction, which is, however, never allowed to dictate the actual nature of the writing, the sentence structure and the like. Pushkin also makes frequent use of enjambment,8 and even on occasion to great effect between two separate sonnets, connecting them to each other, thus extending the freedoms available to him. From a purely professional point of view, the first four lines are the most difficult to render into English. They set the tone of what follows, and have to ‘work’ within the strict confines of the quatrain. The next eight lines allow one to spread one’s wings, while the final couplet gives the writer a chance to be ‘clever’, show what one can do, a little like a cadenza in a concerto.

The differences between Russian and English make countless compromises necessary. The order of certain lines has to be altered, words have to be changed (an impatient horse might snort or shake its head in Pushkin, but stamp in my version, if it suits the needs of rhyme and rhythm). Many Russian words are longer than their English equivalents, which means that certain adjustments are inevitable. Furthermore, Russian sentence structure is different, which means that certain elements of the original have to be sacrificed. Some sonnets of the original, for instance, are made up of one single sentence. In the interests of lucidity this has at times had to be abandoned, as the greater number of words required in English can lead to confusion of meaning, if the same trick is attempted in the translation. Sonnet 20 of chapter eight is a case in point: the original is made up of 59 words in a single sentence, a question, while my version contains 94 words, and three separate question marks.

A Note on the Translation

Having been brought up initially speaking Czech, and later English and German, as a passionate admirer of Stravinsky, I eventually developed a reading knowledge of Russian, though my research in the 1960s with Egon Wellesz at Oxford centred on Viennese 12-tone music, art and thought. English and German remained my two native languages, and I later wrote for both English and German publications, also translating poetry and plays from German into English and vice versa. I had known Eugene Onegin for some considerable time, but the idea of actually translating it into English only came to me decades later purely by chance. My wife, returning from a visit to friends in Germany, brought with her three cassettes on which the great actor Gerd Westphal read Ulrich Busch’s German version of the poem.9 This had proved immensely popular in German-speaking countries, and were it not a ‘mere’ translation, it would surely be required reading for every student of the German language.

In 1964 Vladimir Nabokov had published his famous and notoriously eccentric English rendering of the work, literal, composed in shadowy iambics, completely without rhyme, and at times almost incomprehensible. So great was his love for Pushkin’s masterpiece, that he felt to attempt any more would be a desecration of the work. In spite of its manifold oddities, the translation and the magnificent 1000 page commentary Nabokov produced, remain essential reading for anyone who wishes to delve deeper into Eugene Onegin. What Busch, however, showed was that it is possible to produce a translation which is a true work of art in its own right. Using, as I have also done, not only normal rhyme, but also occasionally devices such as half-rhyme and assonance,10 and permitting himself a certain degree of freedom, enabled Busch to cope with perhaps the greatest problem facing a translator: making the result sound as if it actually might have been written in the language into which it has been transported. And if such a feat could be accomplished in German, then why not in English? This translation is an attempt to answer that question.

For various reasons (censorship, or fear of it, being perhaps the main one) Pushkin left out a number of sonnets, and even individual lines. The omitted sonnets have been indicated by the number they would have had, while other missing passages are indicated by a broken line.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

It is my pleasant duty to proffer my profoundest thanks to two people in particular, whose help in this project has been of inestimable value. First I must thank my wife, who first introduced me to Ulrich Busch’s German version. She has read and re-read every word of the English text, made countless enormously valuable suggestions, proof-read and checked the manuscript time and again, and remained cheerfully encouraging those many times when I could no longer contemplate finishing another sonnet, let alone completing the whole novel. Then there is my editor, Mike Mitchell of Dedalus, who has likewise read every word through many times. He displayed both patience and humour in his dealings with me, his comments and many suggestions were always eminently intelligent and perceptive, while his refusal simply to allow me my own way prompted a huge variety of ideas and improvements. Mike in some ways had the easier task, for he had to bear my doubts and occasional spells of impatience from the other end of an e-mail connection. My wife was heroically obliged to put up with me at first hand, never an easy task at the best of times … I have also received some most useful help from the staff at Dedalus Books. All have contributed immeasurably to whatever merits this translation might have. Its failings, needless to say, are entirely my own work.

I have already mentioned the curious literal translation and extraordinarily brilliant commentary by Vladimir Nabokov, which were invaluable to me, as to everyone else who has delved further into this work, and which I can only recommend to all those whose interest might have been aroused by the present version of Eugene Onegin. Ulrich Busch’s superb German version ignited the spark of insight as to how the task of making an enjoyable English version of Eugene Onegin might be undertaken. Also consulted were A. D. P. Briggs’ useful study of Pushkin, Elaine Feinstein’s monograph on the poet, and T. J. Binyon’s monumental and splendid biography.

EUGENE ONEGIN

A Novel in Verse

Alexander Pushkin

Pétri de vanité il avait encore plus de cette espèce

d’orgueil qui fait avouer avec la même indifférence les

bonnes comme les mauvaises actions, suite d’un sentiment

de supériorité, peut-être imaginaire.

Tiré d’une lettre particulière

TO PETER ALEXANDROVICH PLETNEV

Not thinking just of entertaining

society, but dear friends too,

I wish my gift were more sustaining

and worthier of all of you,

more worthy of a noble spirit,

replete with an immortal dream,

with poetry so clear and vivid

which simply and sublimely gleams,

brimful of lofty thoughts. So be it.

Now take this work of motley tales,

half humorous, half melancholy,

humanely told, and popularly,

the careless fruits of fun and pale

insomniac imagination,

neglectful, sterile withered years,

the intellect’s cold observation

and then the heart’s unhappy fears.

CHAPTER ONE

To live it hurries and to feel it hastes …

Prince Vyazemski

CHAPTER ONE

1

“My uncle’s acted very wisely,

to seek his bed when he’s so sick;

his family’s reacted nicely

and he’s most happy with his trick.

He’s set the world a good example,

which others really ought to sample,

but it’s a bore, when night and day

the sick man forces you to stay!

To keep him sweet, as if he’s dying,

give him his daily medicine

and make quite sure that it goes in,

adjust the pillows while one’s sighing:

‘Don’t even think of getting well,

the devil take you, go to hell!’”

2

Thus thought a ne’er-do-well and dandy

whom Zeus had made his uncle’s heir:

to him the money’d come in handy,

so coach and horses rushed him there.

For those who love my comic thriller

of Ruslan and his dear Ludmilla,

I’ll introduce without ado,

the hero of my tale to you:

Onegin, whom I’ve long befriended,