Profound bliss as her bosom heaves.
Her eyes shine, wondrously ambrosial.
But stop, stop. That’s enough from you.
To folly you have paid your due. 53
They shout, laugh, bow and charge through dances—
Mazurka, gallop, waltz—all night,
But Tanya stands there with two aunties
Behind a pillar out of sight.
She watches things, uncomprehending,
Repelled by this world and its frenzy.
She cannot breathe… And, starry-eyed,
She floats back to the countryside,
Back to the poor folk in their hovels,
To distant parts, secluded nooks
Busy with sparkling, babbling brooks,
Back to her flowers and her novels,
To lines of lime trees dark and grim,
Where she had once encountered him. 54
But as her thoughts depart, dispersing
Beyond the guests, the noisy ball,
She is the target of one person,
A most impressive general.
The aunts wink at each other, touching
Tatyana with their elbows, nudging
Her, both of them, and hissing low,
“Look to your left… Quick… There you go.”
“Where on my left? What’s all this bother?”
“Oh, never mind… Across there, that’s
The one, leading that group. Two chaps
In uniform… and he’s the other…
He’s off… He stood there, sideways on.”
“That tubby general who’s just gone?” 55
Congratulations on your victory,
Lovely Tatyana, dear young thing!…
But we must change direction quickly
And turn to him of whom I sing…
A subject that’s worth going into:
I sing an old friend, whom I cling to,
With all his idiosyncrasies.
Bless this, my work, long as it is,
O Muse, thou mother of the epic!
Entrust me with thy rod and staff,
And stand me steady on my path.
Enough. My burden falls. I let it…
For every classic it seems fit
To pen a Prologue. This is it.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Fare thee well! and if for ever—
Still for ever, fare thee well.
BYRON
1
Long since, when young and at my gayest,
Through the school gardens I would go,
Lost in the lines of Apuleius,
Having no time for Cicero.
In spring I strolled secluded valleys,
Where swimming swans sang out their challenge
And waters glistened placidly.
’Twas then the Muse first came to me.
She lit my cell and made it precious,
Spreading before me one great feast
Of youthful fancies new-released,
Singing of boyhood and its pleasures,
Of Russia’s glory, and the art
Of building dreams to thrill the heart. 2
The world smiled, finding her disarming.
We soared on wings of young success,
And pleased the elderly Derzhávin,
Who blessed us just before his death.
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Submitting to a special token—
The laws of passion and of whim—
I threw my feelings widely open,
And took my bright Muse where I’d been:
To rowdy feasts and noisy quarrels,
Midnight patrols enforcing morals—
And to these wild, outlandish dos
She brought her talents as a muse.
Revelling like a young bacchante,
She drank with us, sang with good cheer,
And the young bloods of yesteryear
Chased after her, raucous and frantic,
While I turned to my friends with pride,
With this bright mistress at my side. 4
But soon I called off all our meetings,
And fled afar… But she came too.
A ministering muse, she sweetened
The lonely journey I came through
With magic in her secret stories.
She was what Bürger’s young Lenore is.
She galloped the Caucasian heights
Along with me in the moonlight.
On the Crimean seashore, roaming,
I knew with her the evening mist,
And heard the sea, the whispered hiss
Of nereids once known to Homer,
The waves with their eternal skirl,
Hymning the Father of the World. 5
The capital fell from her favour
(All glitz and raucous merriment)
And in the sadness of Moldavia
She visited the humble tents
Of wandering tribesmen close to nature,
Where she became a savage creature,
Leaving the language of the gods
For tongues that sounded poor and odd,
And songs the lovely steppe had taught her…
But all of this she soon forgot,
Becoming, in my garden plot,
A rural landowner’s young daughter
With sadness in her eyes, intense,
Holding a novelette in French. 6
Now for the first time let us summon
My muse to a smart party. Here,
The charms of this wild-country woman
I watch with jealous pride and fear.
As diplomats crowd through the entry
With soldiers brave and landed gentry,
She glides in past proud party queens
And looks on, sitting there serene,
Enjoying all the crush and clamour,
The gorgeous clothes, the clever talk,
The shuffling guests, queueing to walk
By the young hostess in her glamour,
Ladies with men ranged at their back—
A pretty picture framed in black. 7
She loves the oligarchic order
Which fixes all the verbiage,
The cold conceit in every corner,
The blending in of rank and age.
But who is this among the chosen,
Standing in hazy silence, frozen?
He’s like a stranger with no grasp
Of any faces that go past
Like tedious phantoms come to visit.
His face shows pained conceit, or spleen.
Which is it, and what does this mean?
Who’s this? It’s not Yevgeny, is it?
Yevgeny? You’re not serious?
It is him, wafted back to us. 8
Is he the same man? Has he mellowed
Or is he the oddball of old?
What has he come back for, this fellow?
How will he play his future role?
Who will he be? Melmoth the wanderer?
Globetrotter? A pro-Russian thunderer?
Childe Harold? Quaker? Hypocrite?
What other likeness could he fit?
Or is he just a fine young person
Like all of us, and just as nice?
Well, anyway, here’s my advice:
Old styles call out to be converted.
He’s fooled us all since long ago.
So, do you know him? Yes and no. 9
Why are you so unsympathetic
Towards Onegin as a man?
Because we are so energetic
In criticizing all we can?
Charged minds are prone to indiscretion,
Which small, smug nobodies may question
As laughable, offensive smut.
Wit wanders, and will not stay put.
Small talk is cheap, and we too often
Take it for active interest.
Foolishness flaunts its silliness;
Top people thrive on what is rotten.
With mediocrity we blend,
Treating it as our closest friend. 10
Blest he who, as a youth, was youthful,