As soon as he appears, discussion touches obliquely, but with speed, on the dull life that bachelors lead; and then it's tea that comes to mention, and Dunya works the samovar; and soon they bring her... a guitar and whisper ``Dunya, pay attention!'' then, help me God, she caterwauls: ``Come to me in my golden halls.'' XIII Lensky of course was quite untainted by any itch for marriage ties; instead the chance to get acquainted with Eugene proved a tempting prize. So, verse and prose, they came together. No ice and flame, no stormy weather and granite, were so far apart. At first, disparity of heart rendered them tedious to each other; then liking grew, then every day they met on horseback; quickly they became like brother knit to brother. Friendship, as I must own to you, blooms when there's nothing else to do. {69} XIV But friendship, as between our heroes, can't really be: for we've outgrown old prejudice; all men are zeros, the units are ourselves alone. Napoleon's our sole inspiration; the millions of two-legged creation for us are instruments and tools; feeling is quaint, and fit for fools. More tolerant in his conception than most. Evgeny, though he knew and scorned his fellows through and through, yet, as each rule has its exception, people there were he glorified, feelings he valued -- from outside. XV He smiled as Lensky talked: the heady perfervid language of the bard, his mind, in judgement still unsteady, and always the inspired regard -- to Eugene all was new and thrilling; he struggled to bite back the chilling word on his lips, and thought: it's sheer folly for me to interfere with such a blissful, brief infection -- even without me it will sink; but meanwhile let him live, and think the universe is all perfection; youth is a fever; we must spare its natural right to rave and flare. {70} XVI Between them, every topic started reflection or provoked dispute: treaties of nations long departed, and good and ill, and learning's fruit, the prejudices of the ages, the secrets of the grave, the pages of fate, and life, each in its turn became their scrutiny's concern. In the white heat of some dissension the abstracted poet would bring forth fragments of poems from the North, which, listening with some condescension, the tolerant Evgeny heard -- but scarcely understood a word. XVII But it was passion that preempted the thoughts of my two anchorites. From that rough spell at last exempted, Onegin spoke about its flights with sighs unconsciously regretful. Happy is he who's known its fretful empire, and fled it; happier still is he who's never felt its will, he who has cooled down love with parting, and hate with malice; he whose life is yawned away with friends and wife untouched by envy's bitter smarting, who on a deuce, that famous cheat, has never staked his family seat. {71} XVIII When we've retreated to the banner of calm and reason, when the flame of passion's out, and its whole manner become a joke to us, its game, its wayward tricks, its violent surging, its echoes, its belated urging, reduced to sense, not without pain -- we sometimes like to hear again passion's rough language talked by others, and feel once more emotion's ban. So a disabled soldier-man, retired, forgotten by his brothers, in his small shack, will listen well to tales that young moustachios tell. XIX But it's the talent for concealing that ardent youth entirely lacks; hate, love, joy, sorrow -- every feeling, it blabs, and spills them in its tracks. As, lovingly, in his confession, the poet's heart found full expression, Eugene, with solemn face, paid heed, and felt himself love's
invalide.
Lensky ingenuously related his conscience's record, and so Onegin swiftly came to know his tale of youthful love, narrated with deep emotion through and through, to us, though, not exactly new. {72} XX Ah, he had loved a love that never is known today; only a soul that raves with poetry can ever be doomed to feel it: there's one goal perpetually, one goal for dreaming, one customary object gleaming, one customary grief each hour! not separation's chilling power, no years of absence past returning, no beauties of a foreign clime, no noise of gaiety, no time devoted to the Muse, or learning, nothing could alter or could tire this soul that glowed with virgin fire. XXI Since earliest boyhood he had doted on Olga; from heart's ache still spared, with tenderness he'd watched and noted her girlhood games; in them he'd shared, by deep and shady woods protected; the crown of marriage was projected for them by fathers who, as friends and neighbours, followed the same ends. Away inside that unassuming homestead, before her parents' gaze, she blossomed in the graceful ways of innocence: a lily blooming in deepest grasses, quite alone, to bee and butterfly unknown. {73} XXII And our young poet -- Olga fired him in his first dream of passion's fruit, and thoughts of her were what inspired him to the first meanings of his flute. Farewell the games of golden childhood! he fell in love with darkest wildwood, solitude, stillness and the night, the stars, the moon -- celestial light to which so oft we've dedicated those walks amid the gloom and calm of evening, and those tears, the balm of secret pain... but it's now rated by judgement of the modern camp almost as good as a dim lamp. XXIII Full of obedience and demureness, as gay as morning and as clear, poetic in her simple pureness, sweet as a lover's kiss, and dear, in Olga everything expresses -- the skyblue eyes, the flaxen tresses, smile, voice and movements, little waist -- take any novel, clearly traced you're sure to find her portrait in it: a portrait with a charming touch; once I too liked it very much; but now it bores me every minute. Reader, the elder sister now must be my theme, if you'll allow. {74} XXIV Tatyana
3
was her name... I own it, self-willed it may be just the same; but it's the first time you'll have known it, a novel graced with such a name. What of it? it's euphonious, pleasant, and yet inseparably present, I know it, in the thoughts of all are old times, and the servants' hall. We must confess that taste deserts us even in our names (and how much worse when we begin to talk of verse); culture, so far from healing, hurts us; what it's transported to our shore is mincing manners -- nothing more. XXV So she was called Tatyana. Truly she lacked her sister's beauty, lacked the rosy bloom that glowed so newly to catch the eye and to attract. Shy as a savage, silent, tearful, wild as a forest deer, and fearful, Tatyana had a changeling look in her own home. She never took to kissing or caressing father or mother; and in all the play of children, though as young as they, she never joined, or skipped, but rather in silence all day she'd remain ensconced beside the window-pane. {75} XXVI Reflection was her friend and pleasure right from the cradle of her days; it touched with reverie her leisure, adorning all its country ways. Her tender touch had never fingered the needle, never had she lingered to liven with a silk
atour
the linen stretched on the tambour. Sign of the urge for domination: in play with her obedient doll the child prepares for protocol -- that corps of social legislation -- and to it, with a grave import, repeats what her mama has taught. XXVII Tatyana had no dolls to dandle, not even in her earliest age; she'd never tell them news or scandal or novelties from fashion's page. Tatyana never knew the attraction of childish pranks: a chilled reaction to horror-stories told at night in winter was her heart's delight. Whenever
nyanya
had collected for Olga, on the spreading lawn, her little friends, Tatyana'd yawn, she'd never join the game selected, for she was bored by laughs and noise and by the sound of silly joys. {76} XXVIII She loved the balcony, the session of waiting for the dawn to blush, when, in pale sky, the stars' procession fades from the view, and in the hush earth's rim grows light, and a forewarning whisper of breeze announces morning, and slowly day begins to climb. In winter, when for longer time the shades of night within their keeping hold half the world still unreleased, and when, by misty moon, the east is softly, indolently sleeping, wakened at the same hour of night Tatyana'd rise by candlelight. XXIX From early on she loved romances, they were her only food... and so she fell in love with all the fancies of Richardson and of Rousseau. Her father, kindly, well-regarded, but in an earlier age retarded, could see no harm in books; himself he never took one from the shelf, thought them a pointless peccadillo; and cared not what his daughter kept by way of secret tome that slept until the dawn beneath her pillow. His wife, just like Tatyana, had on Richardson gone raving mad. {77} XXX And not because she'd read him, either, and not because she'd once preferred Lovelace, or Grandison, or neither; but in the old days she had heard about them -- nineteen to the dozen -- so often from her Moscow cousin Princess Alina. She was still engaged then -- but against her will; loved someone else, not her intended, someone towards whose heart and mind her feelings were far more inclined -- this Grandison of hers was splendid, a fop, a punter on the cards, and junior Ensign in the Guards. XXXI She was like him and always sported the latest fashions of the town; but, without asking, they transported her to the altar and the crown. The better to dispel her sorrow her clever husband on the morrow took her to his estate, where she, at first, with God knows whom to see, in tears and violent tossing vented her grief, and nearly ran away. Then, plunged in the housekeeper's day, she grew accustomed, and contented. In stead of happiness, say I, custom's bestowed us from on high. {78} XXXII For it was custom that consoled her in grief that nothing else could mend; soon a great truth came to enfold her and give her comfort to the end: she found, in labours and in leisure, the secret of her husband's measure, and ruled him like an autocrat -- so all went smoothly after that. Mushrooms in brine, for winter eating, fieldwork directed from the path, accounts, shaved forelocks,