Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin Chapter 3, Stanzas 16-30
100 Days of Charming Rotten Scoundrels tutorial - Goethe, Pushkin, Lermontov, Turgenev
100 Days of Charming Rotten Scoundrels tutorial - Goethe, Pushkin, Lermontov, Turgenev
February 20 - May 31, 2024
Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin
March 24, 2024
Chapter 3, Stanzas 16-30
16
The ache of love pursues Tatyana;
She takes a garden path and sighs,
A sudden faintness comes upon her,
She can't go on, she shuts her eyes;
Her bosom heaves, her cheeks are burning,
Scarce-breathing lips grow still with yearning,
Her ears resound with ringing cries,
And sparkles dance before her eyes.
Night falls; the moon begins parading
The distant vault of heaven's hood;
The nightingale in darkest wood
Breaks out in mournful serenading.
Tatyana tosses through the night
And wakes her nurse to share her plight.
THE NURSE!!! Just like Juliet, Tanya shares her sorrows with her nurse!!!
17
'I couldn't sleep... O nurse, it's stifling!
Put up the window ... sit by me.'
"What ails you, Tanya?'—-'Life's so trifling,
Come tell me how it used to be.'
'Well, what about it? Lord, it's ages.
I must have known a thousand pages
Of ancient facts and fables too
Bout evil ghosts and girls like you;
But nowadays I'm not so canny,
I can't remember much of late.
Oh, Tanya, it's a sorry state;
I get confused. — ‘But tell me, nanny,
About the olden days... you know,
Were you in love then, long ago?'
Ah, Tanya does not want fairy tales any longer - she wants to know what LOVE is!!!
18
'Oh, come! Our world was quite another!
We'd never heard of love, you see.
Why, my good husband's sainted mother
Would just have been the death of me!'
"Then how'd you come to marry, nanny?'
'The will of God, I guess... My Danny
Was younger still than me, my dear,
And I was just thirteen that year.
The marriage maker kept on calling
For two whole weeks to see my kin,
Till father blessed me and gave in.
I got so scared... my tears kept falling;
And weeping, they undid my plait,
Then sang me to the churchyard gate.
Love?! We never heard of LOVE!!! It was the will of god - and 2 teens were thrust into each other’s lives - for life… What IS love?!?!?! Such a fancy invention - we never had any time for such things as LOVE…
19
'And so they took me off to strangers
But you're not even listening, pet.'
'Oh, nanny, life's so full of dangers,
I'm sick at heart and all upset,
I'm on the verge of tears and wailing!'
*My goodness, girl, you must be ailing;
Dear Lord have mercy. God, I plead!
Just tell me, dearest, what you need.
I'll sprinkle you with holy water,
You're burning up!'—'Oh, do be still,
I'm ... you know, nurse... in love, not ill?
'The Lord be with you now, my daughter!'
And with her wrinkled hand the nurse
Then crossed the girl and mumbled verse.
I am not ill - I am IN LOVE!!!
20
'Oh, I'm in love,' again she pleaded
With her old friend. 'My little dove,
You're just not well, you're overheated.'
'Oh, let me be now... I'm in love.'
And all the while the moon was shining
And with its murky light defining
Tatyana's charms and pallid air,
Her long, unloosened braids of hair,
And drops of tears... while on a hassock,
Beside the tender maiden's bed,
A kerchief on her grizzled head,
Sat nanny in her quilted cassock;
And all the world in silence lay
Beneath the moon's seductive ray.
Brooding youth and fretting old age - together in the silence of the night…
21
Far off Tatyana ranged in dreaming,
Bewitched by moonlight's magic curse. .
And then a sudden thought came gleaming:
I'd be alone now... leave me, nurse.
But give me first a pen and paper;
I won't be long ... just leave the taper.
Good night.' She's now alone. All's still.
The moonlight shines upon her sill.
And propped upon an elbow, writing,
Tatyana pictures her Eugene,
And in a letter, rash and green,
Pours forth a maiden's blameless plighting.
The letter's ready— all but sent...
For whom, Tatyana, is it meant?
Texting a boy FIRST?!?!?! NEVER!!! And yet…
22
I've known great beauties proudly distant,
As cold and chaste as winter snow;
Implacable, to all resistant, Impossible for mind to know;
I've marvelled at their haughty manner,
Their natural virtue's flaunted banner;
And I confess, from them I fled,
As if in terror I had read
Above their brows the sign of Hades:
Abandon Hope, Who Enter Here!
Their joy is striking men with fear,
For love offends these charming ladies.
Perhaps along the Neva's shore
You too have known such belles before.
Love hurts… Love wounds…
23
Why I've seen ladies so complacent
Before their loyal subjects' gaze,
That they would even grow impatient
With sighs of passion and with praise.
But what did I, amazed, discover?
On scaring off some timid lover
With stern behaviour's grim attack,
These creatures then would lure him back!-
By joining him at least in grieving,
By seeming in their words at least
More tender to the wounded beast;
And blind as ever, still believing,
The youthful lover with his yen
Would chase sweet vanity again.
Love is COMPLICATED…
24
So why is Tanya, then, more tainted?
Is it because her simple heart
Believes the chosen dream she's painted
And in deceit will take no part?
Because she heeds the call of passion
In such an honest, artless fashion?
Because she's trusting more than proud,
And by the Heavens was endowed
With such a rashness in surrender,
With such a lively mind and will,
And with a spirit never still,
And with a heart that's warm and tender?
But can't you, friends, forgive her, pray,
The giddiness of passion's sway?
Ah, Tanya, can one be sincere while in love?!?!?! Can one be so vulnerable AND exposed?!?!?!
25
The flirt will always reason coldly;
Tatyana's love is deep and true:
She yields without conditions, boldly—
As sweet and trusting children do.
She does not say: 'Let's wait till later
To make love's value all the greater
And bind him tighter with our rope;
Let's prick vainglory first with hope,
And then with doubt in fullest measure
We'll whip his heart, and when it's tame...
Revive it with a jealous flame;
For otherwise, grown bored with pleasure,
The cunning captive any day
Might break his chains and slip away.'
And all this - after ONLY ONE meeting?!?!?!
26
I face another complication:
My country's honour will demand
Without a doubt a full translation
Of Tanya's letter from my hand.
She knew the Russian language badly,
Ignored our journals all too gladly,
And in her native tongue, I fear,
Could barely make her meaning clear;
And so she turned for love's discussion
To French.... There's nothing I can do!
A lady's love, I say to you,
Has never been expressed in Russian;
Our mighty tongue, God only knows,
Has still not mastered postal prose.
Ha ha ha ha ha!!! This is THE FIRST Russian love letter - written in Russian - translated by Pushkin from - what else - THE FRENCH!!! Which we are reading in English!!! Yes, Pushkin invented Russian love language!!!
27
Some would that ladies be required
To read in Russian. Dread command!
Why, I can picture them— inspired,
The Good Samaritan in hand!
I ask you now to tell me truly,
You poets who have sinned unduly:
Have not those creatures you adore,
Those objects of your verse... and more,
Been weak at Russian conversation?
And have they not, the charming fools,
Distorted sweetly all the rules
Of usage and pronunciation;
While yet a foreign language slips
With native glibness from their lips?
As the Russian General Arakcheyev pointed out - you can’t get things done by speaking softly in French!!! Thank you, former student Nick, for sending me this quote!!! Ah, Russian aristocracy - incapable of speaking in Russian!!! Tolstoy will write AN ENTIRE NOVEL about this - War and Peace, of course!!!
28
God spare me from the apparition,
On leaving some delightful ball,
Of bonneted Academician
Or scholar in a yellow shawll
I find a faultless Russian style
Like crimson lips without a smile,
Mistakes in grammar charm the mind.
Perhaps (if fate should prove unkind!)
This generation's younger beauties,
Responding to our journals' call,
With grammar may delight us all,
And verses will be common duties.
But what care I for all they do?
To former ways I'll still be true.
One of Pushkin's characters quips in his story “The Queen of Spades” - which Tchaikovsky turned into yet another Pushkin inspired opera - is there such a thing as a RUSSIAN novel?!?!?! In the 1820s - not yet... BUT JUST YOU WAIT!!!
29
A careless drawl, a tiny stutter,
Some imprecision of the tongue
Can still produce a lovely flutter
Within this breast no longer young;
I lack the strength for true repentance,
And Gallicisms in a sentence
Seem sweet as youthful sins remote,
Or verse that Bogdanóvich wrote.
But that will do. My beauty's letter
Must occupy my pen for now;
I gave my word, but, Lord, I vow,
Retracting it would suit me better.
I know that gentle Parny's lays
Are out of fashion nowadays.
The word Gallicisms comes from the word Gaul - as in modern France!!! Can a Russian express feeling of LOVE in Russian - without using French words?! Remember - the Russian peasant nanny never heard of such nonsense as LOVE - because she speaks only Russian!!! There were no words for love in Russian - yes, Pushkin invented the Russian love language!!!
30
Bard of The Feasts and languid sorrow,
If you were with me still, my friend,
Immodestly I'd seek to borrow
Your genius for a worthy end:
I'd have you with your art refashion
A maiden's foreign words of passion
And make them magic songs anew.
Where are you? Come! I bow to you
And yield my rights to love's translation. ...
But there beneath the Finnish sky,
Amid those mournful crags on high,
His heart grown deaf to commendation—
Alone upon his way he goes
And does not heed my present woes.
Bogdanovich, Parny, and Baratynsky - who served in the military in Finland - were either Pushkin’s friends or contemporaries and influenced his poetry!!!
Another one of my photos from the Pushkin estate at Mikhailovskoe… You can just imagine Tanya roaming here with a book...
