Eugene Onegin. A Romance of Russian Life in Verse

All about Olga—to a light

Romance of love I pray refer,

You'll find her portrait there, I vouch;

I formerly admired her much

But finally grew bored by her.

But with her elder sister I

Must now my stanzas occupy.

XXIV

Tattiana was her appellation.

We are the first who such a name

In pages of a love narration

With such a perversity proclaim.

But wherefore not?—'Tis pleasant, nice,

Euphonious, though I know a spice

It carries of antiquity

And of the attic. Honestly,

We must admit but little taste

Doth in us or our names appear(26)

(I speak not of our poems here),

And education runs to waste,

Endowing us from out her store

With affectation,—nothing more.

[Note 26: The Russian annotator remarks: "The most euphonious Greek names, e.g. Agathon, Philotas, Theodora, Thekla, etc., are used amongst us by the lower classes only."]

XXV

And so Tattiana was her name,

Nor by her sister's brilliancy

Nor by her beauty she became

The cynosure of every eye.

Shy, silent did the maid appear

As in the timid forest deer,

Even beneath her parents' roof

Stood as estranged from all aloof,

Nearest and dearest knew not how

To fawn upon and love express;

A child devoid of childishness

To romp and play she ne'er would go:

Oft staring through the window pane

Would she in silence long remain.

XXVI

Contemplativeness, her delight,

E'en from her cradle's earliest dream,

Adorned with many a vision bright

Of rural life the sluggish stream;

Ne'er touched her fingers indolent

The needle nor, o'er framework bent,

Would she the canvas tight enrich

With gay design and silken stitch.

Desire to rule ye may observe

When the obedient doll in sport

An infant maiden doth exhort

Polite demeanour to preserve,

Gravely repeating to another

Recent instructions of its mother.

XXVII

But Tania ne'er displayed a passion

For dolls, e'en from her earliest years,

And gossip of the town and fashion

She ne'er repeated unto hers.

Strange unto her each childish game,

But when the winter season came

And dark and drear the evenings were,

Terrible tales she loved to hear.

And when for Olga nurse arrayed

In the broad meadow a gay rout,

All the young people round about,

At prisoner's base she never played.

Their noisy laugh her soul annoyed,

Their giddy sports she ne'er enjoyed.

XXVIII

She loved upon the balcony

To anticipate the break of day,

When on the pallid eastern sky

The starry beacons fade away,

The horizon luminous doth grow,

Morning's forerunners, breezes blow

And gradually day unfolds.

In winter, when Night longer holds

A hemisphere beneath her sway,

Longer the East inert reclines

Beneath the moon which dimly shines,

And calmly sleeps the hours away,

At the same hour she oped her eyes

And would by candlelight arise.

XXIX

Romances pleased her from the first,

Her all in all did constitute;

In love adventures she was versed,

Rousseau and Richardson to boot.

Not a bad fellow was her father

Though superannuated rather;

In books he saw nought to condemn

But, as he never opened them,

Viewed them with not a little scorn,

And gave himself but little pain

His daughter's book to ascertain

Which 'neath her pillow lay till morn.

His wife was also mad upon

The works of Mr. Richardson.

XXX

She was thus fond of Richardson

Not that she had his works perused,

Or that adoring Grandison

That rascal Lovelace she abused;

But that Princess Pauline of old,

Her Moscow cousin, often told

The tale of these romantic men;

Her husband was a bridegroom then,

And she despite herself would waste

Sighs on another than her lord

Whose qualities appeared to afford

More satisfaction to her taste.

Her Grandison was in the Guard,

A noted fop who gambled hard.

XXXI

Like his, her dress was always nice,

The height of fashion, fitting tight,

But contrary to her advice

The girl in marriage they unite.

Then, her distraction to allay,

The bridegroom sage without delay

Removed her to his country seat,

Where God alone knows whom she met.

She struggled hard at first thus pent,

Night separated from her spouse,

Then became busy with the house,

First reconciled and then content;

Habit was given us in distress

By Heaven in lieu of happiness.

XXXII

Habit alleviates the grief

Inseparable from our lot;

This great discovery relief

And consolation soon begot.

And then she soon 'twixt work and leisure

Found out the secret how at pleasure

To dominate her worthy lord,

And harmony was soon restored.

The workpeople she superintended,

Mushrooms for winter salted down,

Kept the accounts, shaved many a crown,(*)

The bath on Saturdays attended,

When angry beat her maids, I grieve,

And all without her husband's leave.

[Note: The serfs destined for military service used to have a portion of their heads shaved as a distinctive mark.]

XXXIII

In her friends' albums, time had been,

With blood instead of ink she scrawled,

Baptized Prascovia Pauline,

And in her conversation drawled.

She wore her corset tightly bound,

The Russian N with nasal sound

She would pronounce a la Francaise;

But soon she altered all her ways,

Corset and album and Pauline,

Her sentimental verses all,

She soon forgot, began to call

Akulka who was once Celine,