А как вы представляете себе Онегина?
``My uncle -- high ideals inspire him;
but when past joking he fell sick,
he really forced one to admire him --
and never played a shrewder trick.
Let others learn from his example!
But God, how deadly dull to sample
sickroom attendance night and day
and never stir a foot away!
And the sly baseness, fit to throttle,
of entertaining the half-dead:
one smoothes the pillows down in bed,
and glumly serves the medicine bottle,
and sighs, and asks oneself all through:
"When will the devil come for you?"''
etc
II
Such were a young rake's meditations --
by will of Zeus, the high and just,
the legatee of his relations --
as horses whirled him through the dust.
Friends of my Ruslan and Lyudmila,
without preliminary feeler
let me acquaint you on the nail
with this the hero of my tale:
Onegin, my good friend, was littered
and bred upon the Neva's brink,
where you were born as well, I think,
reader, or where you've shone and glittered!
There once I too strolled back and forth:
but I'm allergic to the North...
III
After a fine career, his father
had only debts on which to live.
He gave three balls a year, and rather
promptly had nothing left to give.
Fate saved Evgeny from perdition:
at first Madame gave him tuition,
from her Monsieur took on the child.
He was sweet-natured, and yet wild.
Monsieur l'Abbé, the mediocre,
reluctant to exhaust the boy,
treated his lessons as a ploy.
No moralizing from this joker;
a mild rebuke was his worst mark,
and then a stroll in Letny Park.
{36}
IV
But when the hour of youthful passion
struck for Evgeny, with its play
of hope and gloom, romantic-fashion,
it was goodbye, Monsieur l'Abbé.
Eugene was free, and as a dresser
made London's dandy his professor.
His hair was fashionably curled,
and now at last he saw the World.
In French Onegin had perfected
proficiency to speak and write,
in the mazurka he was light,
his bow was wholly unaffected.
The World found this enough to treat
Eugene as clever, and quite sweet.
V
We all meandered through our schooling
haphazard; so, to God be thanks,
it's easy, without too much fooling,
to pass for cultured in our ranks.
Onegin was assessed by many
(critical judges, strict as any)
as well-read, though of pedant cast.
Unforced, as conversation passed,
he had the talent of saluting
felicitously every theme,
of listening like a judge-supreme
while serious topics were disputing,
or, with an epigram-surprise,
of kindling smiles in ladies' eyes.
{37}
VI
Now Latin's gone quite out of favour;
yet, truthfully and not in chaff,
Onegin knew enough to savour
the meaning of an epigraph,
make Juvenal his text, or better
add vale when he signed a letter;
stumblingly call to mind he did
two verses of the Aeneid.
He lacked the slightest predilection
for raking up historic dust
or stirring annalistic must;
but groomed an anecdote-collection
that stretched from Romulus in his prime
across the years to our own time.
VII
He was without that dithyrambic
frenzy which wrecks our lives for sound,
and telling trochee from iambic
was quite beyond his wit, we found.
He cursed Theocritus and Homer,
in Adam Smith was his diploma;
our deep economist had got
the gift of recognizing what
a nation's wealth is, what augments it,
and how a country lives, and why
it needs no gold if a supply
of simple product supplements it.
His father failed to understand
and took a mortgage on his land.
{38}
VIII
Evgeny's total store of knowledge
I have no leisure to recall;
where he was master of his college,
the art he'd studied best of all,
his young heyday's supreme employment,
its work, its torture, its enjoyment,
what occupied his chafing powers
throughout the boredom of the hours --
this was the science of that passion
which Ovid sang, for which the bard,
condemned to a lifetime of hard,
ended his wild career of fashion
deep in Moldavia the abhorred,
far, far from Italy, his adored.
(IX,2) X
How early he'd learnt to dissemble,
to hide a hope, to make a show
of jealousy, to seem to tremble
or pine, persuade of yes or no,
and act the humble or imperious,
the indifferent, or the deadly serious!
In languid silence, or the flame
of eloquence, and just the same
in casual letters of confession --
one thing inspired his breath, his heart,
and self-oblivion was his art!
How soft his glance, or at discretion
how bold or bashful there, and here
how brilliant with its instant tear!
{39}
XI
How well he donned new shapes and sizes --
startling the ingenuous with a jest,
frightening with all despair's disguises,
amusing, flattering with the best,
stalking the momentary weakness,
with passion and with shrewd obliqueness
swaying the artless, waiting on
for unmeant kindness -- how he shone!
then he'd implore a declaration,
and listen for the heart's first sound,
pursue his love -- and at one bound
secure a secret assignation,
then afterwards, alone, at ease,
impart such lessons as you please!
XII
How early on he learnt to trouble
the heart of the professional flirt!
When out to burst a rival's bubble,
how well he knew the way to hurt --
what traps he'd set him, with what malice
he'd pop the poison in his chalice!
But you, blest husbands, to the end
you kept your friendship with our friend:
the subtle spouse was just as loyal --
Faublas'3 disciple for an age --
as was the old suspicious sage,
and the majestic, antlered royal,
always contented with his life,
and with his dinner, and his wife.
{40}
(XIII, XIV,) XV
Some days he's still in bed, and drowses,
when little notes come on a tray.
What? Invitations? Yes, three houses
have each asked him to a soirée:
a ball here, there a children's party;
where shall he go, my rogue, my hearty?
Which one comes first? It's just the same
to do them all is easy game.
Meanwhile, attired for morning strolling
complete with broad-brimmed bolivar,
Eugene attends the boulevard,
and there at large he goes patrolling
until Bréguet's unsleeping chime
advises him of dinner-time.
XVI
He mounts the sledge, with daylight fading:
``Make way, make way,'' goes up the shout;
his collar in its beaver braiding
glitters with hoar-frost all about.
He's flown to Talon's, calculating
that there his friend Kavérin's waiting;
he arrives -- the cork goes flying up,
wine of the Comet6 fills the cup;
before him roast beef, red and gory,
and truffles, which have ever been
youth's choice, the flower of French cuisine:
and pâté, Strasbourg's deathless glory,
sits with Limburg's vivacious cheese
and ananas, the gold of trees.
{41}
XVII
More wine, he calls, to drench the flaming
fire of the cutlets' scalding fat,
when Bréguet's chime is heard proclaiming
the new ballet he should be at.
He's off -- this ruthless legislator
for the footlights, this fickle traitor
to all the most adored actrices,
this denizen of the coulisses
that world where every man's a critic
who'll clap an entrechat, or scoff
at Cleopatra, hiss her off,
boo Phaedra out as paralytic,
encore Moëna -- and rejoice
to know the audience hears his voice.
more of etc.
(c) Poushkin
Мне всегда казалось, что это должен быть весьма субтильный, по-женски красивый, томный молодой человек, метросексуал (изъясняясь современным языком).
Ребята
А как вы представляете себе Онегина?
``My uncle -- high ideals inspire him;
but when past joking he fell sick,
he really forced one to admire him --
and never played a shrewder trick.
Let others learn from his example!
But God, how deadly dull to sample
sickroom attendance night and day
and never stir a foot away!
And the sly baseness, fit to throttle,
of entertaining the half-dead:
one smoothes the pillows down in bed,
and glumly serves the medicine bottle,
and sighs, and asks oneself all through:
"When will the devil come for you?"''
etc
(c) Poushkin
Мне всегда казалось, что это должен быть весьма субтильный, по-женски красивый, томный молодой человек, метросексуал (изъясняясь современным языком).
``My uncle -- high ideals inspire him;
but when past joking he fell sick,
he really forced one to admire him --
and never played a shrewder trick.
Let others learn from his example!
But God, how deadly dull to sample
sickroom attendance night and day
and never stir a foot away!
And the sly baseness, fit to throttle,
of entertaining the half-dead:
one smoothes the pillows down in bed,
and glumly serves the medicine bottle,
and sighs, and asks oneself all through:
"When will the devil come for you?"''
etc
(c) Poushkin
Мне всегда казалось, что это должен быть весьма субтильный, по-женски красивый, томный молодой человек, метросексуал (изъясняясь современным языком).