Translation by Charles H. Johnston. 1977
Few foreign masterpieces can have suffered more than
Eugene Onegin
from the English translator's failure to convey anything more than -- at best -- the literal meaning. It is as if a sound-proof wall separated Pushkin's poetic novel from the English-reading world. There is a whole magic which goes by default: the touching lyrical beauty, the cynical wit of the poem; the psychological insight, the devious narrative skill, the thrilling, compulsive grip of the novel; the tremendous gusto and swing and
panache
of the whole performance. Vladimir Nabokov's rendering into unrhymed iambics reproduces the exact meaning, but explicitly disclaims any further ambition. While Nabokov admits that in losing its rhyme the work loses its ``bloom'' he argues, irrefutably, that no rhyming version can be literally accurate. It can however certainly strive for something else. It can attempt to produce some substitute for the ``bloom'' of the original, without which the work is completely dead. It can try to convey the poet's tone of voice, whether world-weary or romantic, the sparkle of his jokes, the flavour of his epigrams, the snap of his final couplets. None of these effects can emerge from a purely literal unrhymed translation. In fact, to offset the inevitable loss in verbal exactness, a rhyming version can aim at a different sort of accuracy, an equivalence or parallelism conveying, however faintly, the impact of the original. Apart from the overall difficulty of his task, the translator with ambitions of this type will find that Pushkin's work presents him with two particular problems. The
brio
of the Russian text partly depends on a lavish use not only of French and other foreign words, but of slang and of audacious Byronic-type rhymes. If the translator produces nothing comparable, he is emasculating his original. If he attempts to follow suit, he must do all he can to avoid the pitfalls of the embarrassing, the facetious and the arch. {29} Secondly, he must be on his guard against the ludicrous effect that the feminine ending (for instance the
pleasure/measure
rhyme, which is so much derided by Nabokov) can all too easily produce in English. He must not sing, like Prince Gremin in one English version of Chaykovsky's opera: ``I wouldn't be remotely human Did I not love the Little Woman.'' (The libretto of the opera, which was written and first performed more than forty years after Pushkin's death, is by Chaykovsky himself and Konstantin Shilovsky, a minor poet of the time. It is nominally based on Pushkin's text, but in fact the relationship is not very close.) Anyway, it should be possible now, with the help of Nabokov's literal translation and commentary, to produce a reasonably accurate rhyming version of Pushkin's work which can at least be read with pleasure and entertainment, and which, ideally, might even be able to stand on its own feet as English. That, in all humility, is the aim of the present text. Acknowledgements are due to Messrs. Routledge and Kegan Paul for permission to quote from Vladimir Nabokov's notes in volumes 2 and 3 of his edition of
Eugene Onegin
(London, 1964. Revised edition, 1976). I am much indebted to my friends Sir Sacheverell Sitwell, for his interest and support, and Sir John Balfour, for his searching and constructive criticism of the translation; to Professor Gleb Struve, for generously giving me the benefit of his unrivalled scholarship and insight; above all, to my wife Natasha, for her loving encouragement. C. H. J. {30} --------
x x x
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)
{31} {32} --------
x x x
To Peter Alexandrovich Pletnev Heedless of the proud world's enjoyment, I prize the attention of my friends, and only wish that my employment could have been turned to worthier ends -- worthier of you in the perfection your soul displays, in holy dreams, in simple but sublime reflection, in limpid verse that lives and gleams. But, as it is, this pied collection begs your indulgence -- it's been spun from threads both sad and humoristic, themes popular or idealistic, products of carefree hours, of fun, of sleeplessness, faint inspirations, of powers unripe, or on the wane, of reason's icy intimations, and records of a heart in pain. {33} {34} --------
Chapter One
To live, it hurries, and to feel it hastes. Prince Vyazemsky I ``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?"'' {35} 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...
1
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