most clearly marked, while the middle sections are treated with great variety. The final masculine couplet, especially, tends to stand out as a tersely pointed and often ironic coda.
There are considerably more than 5,000 lines of verse in this work, and the sheer quantity of its rhyme, it must be admitted, sorely tests the translator's inventiveness. I am also well aware that rhyme today is somewhat less common in serious English verse than it used to be and that its pervasiveness here may seem uncongenial to the modern ear. I rely, therefore, on the reader's tolerance for traditions beyond the borders of current taste and on the hope that something archaic may have grown so unfamiliar as to offer, perhaps, the pleasure of novelty. On some of the Russian names in the text and on a few other words I have placed an accent mark on the syllable that bears the stress; in general, however, the iambic metre should be a sufficient guide to the pronunciation of unfamiliar words. The Russian text used for this translation is essentially that used by Nabokov, the so-called 'third' edition, the last to be published during Pushkin's lifetime.
Finally, let me express once again my indebtedness to the previous translators of Pushkin's poem. Vladimir Nabokov's work, in particular, was a constant challenge to strive for greater accuracy, and his extensive commentary on the novel was an endless source of both instruction and pleasure. I want also to express my gratitude to Oxford University Press for giving me, in this second edition of my translation, the opportunity to revise the text and to add to it the verse fragments on 'Onegin's Journey' that Pushkin appended to his novel. I should like also to repeat my thanks to Professor Lauren Leighton of the University of Illinois at Chicago for his considerable support and encouragement and to my colleague John Osborne for patiently reading all those early drafts and for urging me, when my energy waned, to continue with a restless ingenuity. My wife, Eve, has been a sharp but always partial critic. To all those, including those unnamed, who have helped to improve
this translation and to eliminate, at least in part, its lapses from sense and grace, many thanks.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barta, P., and Goebel, U. (eds.), The Contexts of Aleksandr Sergee-
vich Pushkin (Lewiston, NY, 1988). Bayley, J., Pushkin: A Comparative Commentary (Cambridge, 1971). Bethea, D. (d.), Pushkin Today (Bloomington, Ind., 1993). Bloom, H., Alexander Pushkin (New York, 1987). Briggs, A., Alexander Pushkin: A Critical Study (Totowa, NJ, 1983).
------Alexander Pushkin: Eugene Onegin (Cambridge, 1992).
Chizhevsky, D., Evgenij Onegin (Cambridge, Mass., 1953). Clayton, J., Ice and Flame: A. Pushkin's Eugene Onegin (Toronto,
1985)-Debreczeny, P., The Other Pushkin: A Study of Pushkin's Prose Fiction
(Stanford, Ca., 1983). Driver, S., Pushkin: Literature and Social Ideas (New York, 1989). Fennell, J., Pushkin (Harmondsworth, 1964).
Hoisington, S., Russian Views of Pushkin's 'Eugene Onegin ' (Blooming-ton, Ind., 1988). Jakobson, R., Pushkin and his Sculptural Myth, tr. J. Burbank (The
Hague, 1975). Kodjak, A., and Taranovsky, K. (eds.), Alexander Pushkin: A
Symposium on the 175th Anniversary of his Birth (New York, 1976).
------------Alexander Pushkin Symposium II (Columbus, Oh. 1980).
Lavrin, J., Pushkin and Russian Literature (London, 1947).
Levitt, M., Russian Literary Politics and the Pushkin Celebration of
1880 (Ithaca, NY, 1989). Magarshack, D., Pushkin: A Biography (London, 1967). Mirsky, D., Pushkin (London, 1926; repr. New York, 1963). Nabokov, V., Eugene Onegin: A Novel in Verse by Alexander Pushkin,
Translated from the Russian with a Commentary, 4 vols. (New York,
1964; rev. edn. Princeton, 1975). Proffer, C. (ed. and tr.), The Critical Prose of Alexander Pushkin
(Bloomington, Ind. 1969). Richards, D., and Cockrell, C. (eds.), Russian Views of Pushkin
(Oxford, 1976). Sandler, S., Distant Pleasures: Alexander Pushkin and the Writing of
Exile (Stanford, Ca., 1989). Shaw, J. (d.), The Letters of Alexander Pushkin (Bloomington, Ind. 1963). ------Pushkin's Rhymes (Madison, Wis., 1974).
Shaw, J. Pushkin: A Concordance to the Poetry (Columbus, Oh., 1985).
Simmons, E., Pushkin (New York, 1964).
Tertz, A. (Sinyavsky), Strolls with Pushkin, tr. C. Nepomnyashchy
and S. Yastremski (New Haven, Conn., 1993). Todd, W., Fiction and Society in the Age of Pushkin (Cambridge,
Mass., 1986). Troyat, H., Pushkin, tr. N. Amphoux (London, 1974). Vickery, W., Pushkin: Death of a Poet (Bloomington, Ind., 1968).
------Alexander Pushkin (New York, 1970; rev. edn. New York, 1992).
Wolff, t., Pushkin on Literature (London, 1971).
A CHRONOLOGY OF ALEXANDER SERGEEVICH PUSHKIN
(all dates are old style)
1799 Born 26 May in Moscow. On his father's side Pushkin was descended from a somewhat impoverished but ancient aristocratic family. The poet's maternal greatgrandfather, Abram Hannibal, was an African princeling (perhaps Abyssinian) who had been taken hostage as a boy by the Turkish sultan. Brought eventually to Russia and adopted by Peter the Great, he became a favourite of the emperor and under subsequent rulers enjoyed a distinguished career in the Russian military service. All his life Pushkin retained great pride in his lineage on both sides of the family.
1800-11 Entrusted in childhood to the care of governesses and French tutors, Pushkin was largely ignored by his parents. He did, however, avail himself of his father's extensive library and read widely in French literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. His mastery of contemporary Russian speech owes much to his early contact with household serfs, especially with his nurse, Arina Rodionovna.