¹⁹ Refers to the Circassian girl in Pushkin's poem The Caucasian Prisoner. ²⁰ River in the Crimea. The reference is to the harem girls in Pushkin's poem The Fountain of Bakhchisarai. -------- Chapter Two O rus! Horace O Russia! I The place where Eugene loathed his leisure was an enchanting country nook: there any friend of harmless pleasure would bless the form his fortune took. The manor house, in deep seclusion, screened by a hill from storm's intrusion, looked on a river: far away before it was the golden play of light that flowering fields reflected: villages flickered far and near, and cattle roamed the plain, and here a park, enormous and neglected, spread out its shadow all around -- the pensive Dryads' hiding-ground. {63} II The château was of a construction befitting such a noble pile: it stood, defiant of destruction in sensible old-fashioned style. High ceilings everywhere abounded; in the saloon, brocade-surrounded, ancestral¹ portraits met the view and stoves with tiles of various hue. All this has now gone out of fashion, I don't know why, but for my friend interior décor in the end excited not a hint of passion: a modish taste, a dowdy touch -- both set him yawning just as much. III The rustic sage, in that apartment, forty years long would criticise his housekeeper and her department look through the pane, and squash the flies. Oak-floored, and simple as a stable: two cupboards, one divan, a table, no trace of ink, no spots, no stains. And of the cupboards, one contains a book of household calculations, the other, jugs of applejack, fruit liqueurs and an Almanack for 1808: his obligations had left the squire no time to look at any other sort of book. {64} IV Alone amid all his possessions, to pass the time was Eugene's theme: it led him, in these early sessions, to institute a new regime. A thinker in a desert mission, he changed the corvée of tradition into a small quit-rent -- and got his serfs rejoicing at their lot. But, in a fearful huff, his thrifty neighbour was sure, from this would flow consequences of hideous woe; another's grin was sly and shifty, but all concurred that, truth to speak, he was a menace, and a freak. V At first they called; but on perceiving invariably, as time went on, that from the backdoor he'd be leaving on a fast stallion from the Don, once on the highway he'd detected the noise their rustic wheels projected -- they took offence at this, and broke relations off, and never spoke. ``The man's a boor; his brain is missing, he's a freemason too; for him, red wine in tumblers to the brim -- but ladies' hands are not for kissing; it's yes or no, but never sir.'' The vote was passed without demur. {65} VI Meanwhile another new landowner came driving to his country seat, and, in the district, this persona drew scrutiny no less complete -- Vladimir Lensky, whose creator was Göttingen, his alma mater, good-looking, in the flower of age, a poet, and a Kantian sage. He'd brought back all the fruits of learning from German realms of mist and steam, freedom's enthusiastic dream, a spirit strange, a spirit burning, an eloquence of fevered strength, and raven curls of shoulder-length. VII He was too young to have been blighted by the cold world's corrupt finesse; his soul still blossomed out, and lighted at a friend's word, a girl's caress. In heart's affairs, a sweet beginner, he fed on hope's deceptive dinner; the world's éclat, its thunder-roll, still captivated his young soul. He sweetened up with fancy's icing the uncertainties within his heart; for him, the objective on life's chart was still mysterious and enticing -- something to rack his brains about, suspecting wonders would come out. {66} VIII He was convinced, a kindred creature would be allied to him by fate; that, meanwhile, pinched and glum of feature, from day to day she could but wait; and he believed his friends were ready to put on chains for him, and steady their hand to grapple slander's cup, in his defence, and smash it up; < that there existed, for the indulgence of human friendship, holy men, immortals picked by fate for when, with irresistible refulgence, their breed would (some years after this) shine out and bring the world to bliss. ><sup>2</sup> IX Compassion, yes, and indignation, honest devotion to the good, bitter-sweet glory's inspiration, already stirred him as they should. He roamed the world, his lyre behind him; Schiller and Goethe had refined him, and theirs was the poetic flame that fired his soul, to burn the same; the Muses' lofty arts and fashions, fortunate one, he'd not disgrace; but in his songs kept pride of place for the sublime, and for the passions of virgin fancy, and again the charm of what was grave and plain. {67} X He sang of love, to love subjected, his song was limpid in its tune as infant sleep, or the unaffected thoughts of a girl, or as the moon through heaven's expanse serenely flying, that queen of secrets and of sighing. He sang of grief and parting-time, of something vague, some misty clime; roses romantically blowing; of many distant lands he sang where in the heart of silence rang his sobs, where his live tears were flowing; he sang of lifetime's yellowed page -- when not quite eighteen years of age. XI But in that desert his attainments only to Eugene showed their worth; Lensky disliked the entertainments of neighbouring owners of the earth -- he fled from their resounding chatter! Their talk, so sound on every matter, on liquor, and on hay brought in, on kennels, and on kith and kin, it had no sparkle of sensation, it lacked, of course, poetic heart, sharpness of wit, and social art, and logic; yet the conversation upon the side of the distaff -- that was less clever still by half. {68} XII Vladimir, wealthy and good-looking, was asked around as quite a catch -- such is the usual country cooking; and all the neighbours planned a match between their girls and this half-Russian. 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<sup>3</sup> 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,<sup>4</sup> Sunday bath; meantime she'd give the maids a beating if her cross mood was at its worst -- but never asked her husband first. XXXIII No, soon she changed her old demeanour: girls' albums, signed in blood for choice; Praskovya re-baptized ``Polina''; conversing in a singsong voice; lacing her stays up very tightly; pronouncing through her nose politely the Russian N, like N in French; soon all that went without a wrench: album and stays, Princess Alina, sentiment, notebook, verses, all she quite forgot -- began to call ``Akulka'' the onetime Selina, and introduced, for the last lap, a quilted chamber-robe and cap. {79} XXXIV Her loving spouse with approbation left her to follow her own line, trusted her without hesitation, and wore his dressing-gown to dine. His life went sailing in calm weather; sometimes the evening brought together neighbours and friends in kindly group, a plain, unceremonious troop, for grumbling, gossiping and swearing and for a chuckle or a smile. The evening passes, and meanwhile here's tea that Olga's been preparing; after that, supper's served, and so bed-time, and time for guests to go. XXXV Throughout their life, so calm, so peaceful, sweet old tradition was preserved: for them, in Butterweek<sup>5</sup> the greaseful, Russian pancakes were always served; < ... ... ><sup>2</sup> they needed kvas like air; at table their guests, for all they ate and drank, were served in order of their rank. {80} XXXVI And so they lived, two ageing mortals, till he at last was summoned down into the tomb's wide open portals, and once again received a crown. Just before dinner, from his labours he rested -- wept for by his neighbours, his children and his faithful wife, far more than most who leave this life. He was a good and simple barin;<sup>6</sup> above the dust of his remains the funeral monument explains: ``A humble sinner, Dimitry Larin, beneath the stone reposes here, servant of God, and Brigadier.'' XXXVII Lensky, restored to his manorial penates, came to cast an eye over his neighbour's plain memorial, and offer to that ash a sigh; sadly he mourned for the departed. ``Poor Yorick,'' said he, broken-hearted: ``he dandled me as a small boy. How many times I made a toy of his Ochákov⁷ decoration! He destined Olga's hand for me, kept asking: "shall I live to see"...'' so, full of heart-felt tribulation, Lensky composed in autograph a madrigal for epitaph. {81} XXXVIII There too, he honoured, hotly weeping, his parents' patriarchal dust with lines to mark where they were sleeping... Alas! the generations must, as fate's mysterious purpose burrows, reap a brief harvest on their furrows; they rise and ripen and fall dead: others will follow where they tread... and thus our race, so fluctuating, grows, surges, boils, for lack of room presses its forebears to the tomb. We too shall find our hour is waiting; it will be our descendants who out of this world will crowd us too. XXXIX So glut yourselves until you're sated on this unstable life, my friends! its nullity I've always hated, I know too surely how it ends. I'm blind to every apparition; and yet a distant admonition of hope sometimes disturbs my heart; it would be painful to depart and leave no faint footprint of glory... I never lived or wrote for praise; yet how I wish that I might raise to high renown my doleful story, that there be just one voice which came, like a true friend, to speak my name. {82} XL And someone's heart will feel a quiver, for maybe fortune will have saved from drowning's death in Lethe river the strophe over which I slaved; perhaps -- for flattering hope will linger -- some future dunce will point a finger at my famed portrait and will say: he was a poet in his day. I thank him without reservation, the peaceful Muses' devotee, whose memory will preserve for me the fleeting works of my creation, whose kindly hand will ruffle down the laurel in the old man's crown! {83} Notes to Chapter Two ¹ Pushkin first wrote ``imperial portraits''; but this he later altered ``for reasons of censorship'' because, as Nabokov explains, ``tsars were not to be mentioned in so offhand a way''. <sup>2</sup> Lines discarded by Pushkin. <sup>3</sup> ``Sweet-sounding Greek names like Agathon... etc., are only current in Russia among the common people.'' Pushkin's note. ⁴ Serfs chosen as recruits for the army had their forelock cut off. ⁵ The week before Lent. ⁶ Gentleman, squire. ⁷ Fortress captured from the Turks in 1788. -------- Chapter Three Elle était fille, elle était amoureuse. Malfilâtre ``You're off? why, there's a poet for you!'' ``Goodbye, Onegin, time I went.'' ``Well, I won't hold you up or bore you; but where are all your evenings spent?'' ``At the Larins'!'' ``But how mysterious. For goodness' sake, you can't be serious killing each evening off like that?'' ``You're wrong.'' ``But what I wonder at is this -- one sees from here the party: in first place -- listen, am I right? -- a simple Russian family night: the guests are feasted, good and hearty, on jam, and speeches in regard to rains, and flax, and the stockyard.'' {84} II ``I don't see what's so bad about it.'' ``Boredom, that's what so bad, my friend.'' ``Your modish world, I'll do without it; give me the homely hearth, and lend...'' ``You pile one eclogue on another! for God's sake, that will do. But, brother, you're really going? Well, I'm sad. Now, Lensky, would it be so bad for me to glimpse this Phyllis ever with whom your thoughts are so obsessed -- pen, tears, and rhymes, and all the rest? Present me, please.'' ``You're joking.'' ``Never.'' ``Gladly.'' ``So when?'' ``Why not tonight? They will receive us with delight.'' III ``Let's go.'' The friends, all haste and vigour, drive there, and with formality are treated to the fullest rigour of old-lime hospitality. The protocol is all one wishes: the jams appear in little dishes; on a small table's oilcloth sheen the jug of bilberry wine is seen.<sup>1</sup> {85} IV And home was now their destination; as by the shortest way they flew, this was our heroes' conversation secretly overheard by you. ``You yawn, Onegin?'' ``As I'm used to.'' ``This time I think you've been reduced to new depths of boredom.'' ``No, the same. The fields are dark, since evening came. Drive on, Andryushka! quicker, quicker! the country's pretty stupid here! oh, à propos: Larin's a dear simple old lady; but the liquor -- I'm much afraid that bilberry wine won't benefit these guts of mine.'' V ``But tell me, which one was Tatyana?'' ``She was the one who looked as still and melancholy as Svetlana,<sup>2</sup> and sat down by the window-sill.'' ``The one you love's the younger daughter?'' ``Why not?'' ``I'd choose the other quarter if I, like you, had been a bard. Olga's no life in her regard: the roundest face that you've set eyes on, a pretty girl exactly like any Madonna by Van Dyck: a dumb moon, on a dumb horizon.'' Lensky had a curt word to say and then sat silent all the way. {86} VI Meanwhile the news of Eugene coming to the Larins' had caused a spout of gossip, and set comment humming among the neighbours round about. Conjecture found unending matter: there was a general furtive chatter, and jokes and spiteful gossip ran claiming Tatyana'd found her man; and some were even testifying the marriage plans were all exact but held up by the simple fact that modish rings were still a-buying. Of Lensky's fate they said no more -- they'd settled that some years before. VII Tatyana listened with vexation to all this tattle, yet at heart in indescribable elation, despite herself, rehearsed the part: the thought sank in, and penetrated: she fell in love -- the hour was fated... so fires of spring will bring to birth a seedling fallen in the earth. Her feelings in their weary session had long been wasting and enslaved by pain and languishment; she craved the fateful diet; by depression her heart had long been overrun: her soul was waiting... for someone. {87} VIII Tatyana now need wait no longer. Her eyes were opened, and she said ``this is the one!'' Ah, ever stronger, in sultry sleep, in lonely bed, all day, all night, his presence fills her, by magic everything instils her with thoughts of him in ceaseless round. She hates a friendly voice's sound, or servants waiting on her pleasure. Sunk in dejection, she won't hear the talk of guests when they appear; she calls down curses on their leisure, and, when one's least prepared for it their tendency to call, and sit. IX Now, she devours, with what attention, delicious novels, laps them up; and all their ravishing invention with sheer enchantment fills her cup! These figures from the world of seeming, embodied by the power of dreaming, the lover of Julie Wolmar,<sup>3</sup> and Malek Adel,<sup>4</sup> de Linar,<sup>5</sup> and Werther, martyred and doom-laden, and Grandison beyond compare, who sets me snoring then and there -- all for our tender dreamy maiden are coloured in a single tone, all blend into Eugene alone. {88} X Seeing herself as a creation -- Clarissa, Julie, or Delphine<sup>6</sup> -- by writers of her admiration, Tatyana, lonely heroine, roamed the still forest like a ranger, sought in her book, that text of danger and found her dreams, her secret fire, the full fruit of her heart's desire; she sighed, and in a trance coopted another's joy, another's breast, whispered by heart a note addressed to the hero that she'd adopted. But ours, whatever he might be, ours was no Grandison -- not he. XI Lending his tone a grave inflection, the ardent author of the past showed one a pattern of perfection in which his hero's mould was cast. He gave this figure -- loved with passion, wronged always in disgraceful fashion -- a soul of sympathy and grace, and brains, and an attractive face. Always our fervid hero tended pure passion's flame, and in a trice would launch into self-sacrifice; always before the volume ended due punishment was handed down to vice, while virtue got its crown. {89} XII Today a mental fog enwraps us, each moral puts us in a doze, even in novels, vice entraps us, yes, even there its triumph grows. Now that the British Muse is able to wreck a maiden's sleep with fable, the idol that she'll most admire is either the distrait Vampire, Melmoth,<sup>7</sup> whose roaming never ceases, Sbogar,<sup>8</sup> mysterious through and through, the Corsair, or the Wandering Jew. Lord Byron, with his shrewd caprices, dressed up a desperate egoism to look like sad romanticism. XIII In this, dear reader, if you know it, show me the sense. Divine decree may wind up my career as poet; perhaps, though Phoebus warns, I'll see installed in me a different devil, and sink to prose's humble level: a novel on the established line may then amuse my glad decline. No secret crimes, and no perditions, shall make my story grim as hell; no, quite naively I'll retell a Russian family's old traditions; love's melting dreams shall fill my rhyme, and manners of an earlier time. {90} XIV I'll catalogue each simple saying in father's or old uncle's book, and tell of children's plighted playing by ancient limes, or by a brook; and after jealousy's grim weather I'll part them, bring them back together; I'll make them spar another round, then to the altar, to be crowned. I'll conjure up that swooning fashion of ardent speech, that aching flow of language which, so long ago, facing a belle I loved with passion, my tongue kept drawing from the heart -- but now I've rather lost the art. XV Tatyana dear, with you I'm weeping: for you have, at this early date, into a modish tyrant's keeping resigned disposal of your fate. Dear Tanya, you're condemned to perish; but first, the dreams that hope can cherish evoke for you a sombre bliss; you learn life's sweetness, and with this you drink the magic draught of yearning, that poison brew; and in your mind reverie hounds you, and you find shelter for trysts at every turning; in front of you, on every hand, you see your fated tempter stand. {91} XVI Tatyana, hunted by love's anguish, has made the park her brooding-place, suddenly lowering eyes that languish, too faint to stir a further pace: her bosom heaves, her cheeks are staring scarlet with passion's instant flaring, upon her lips the breathing dies, noise in her ears, glare in her eyes... then night comes on; the moon's patrolling far-distant heaven's vaulted room; a nightingale, in forest gloom, sets a sonorous cadence rolling -- Tatyana, sleepless in the dark, makes to her nurse low-voiced remark: XVII ``I can't sleep, nyanya: it's so stifling! open the window, sit down near.'' ``Why, Tanya, what...?'' ``All's dull and trifling. The olden days, I want to hear...'' ``What of them, Tanya? I was able, years back, to call up many a fable; I kept in mind an ancient store of tales of girls, and ghosts, and lore: but now my brain is darkened, Tanya: now I've forgotten all I knew. A sorry state of things, it's true! My mind is fuddled.'' ``Tell me, nyanya, your early life, unlock your tongue: were you in love when you were young?'' {92} XVIII ``What nonsense, Tanya! in those other ages we'd never heard of love: why, at the thought, my husband's mother had chased me to the world above.'' ``How did you come to marry, nyanya?'' ``I reckon, by God's will. My Vanya was younger still, but at that stage I was just thirteen years of age. Two weeks the matchmaker was plying to see my kin, and in the end my father blessed me. So I'd spend my hours in fear and bitter crying. Then, crying, they untwined my plait, and sang me to the altar-mat. XIX ``So to strange kinsfolk I was taken... but you're not paying any heed.'' ``Oh nurse, I'm sad, I'm sad, I'm shaken, I'm sick, my dear, I'm sick indeed. I'm near to sobbing, near to weeping!...'' ``You're ill, God have you in his keeping, the Lord have mercy on us all! whatever you may need, just call... I'll sprinkle you with holy water, you're all in fever... heavens above.'' ``Nurse, I'm not ill; I... I'm in love.'' ``The Lord God be with you, my daughter!'' and, hands a-tremble, Nyanya prayed and put a cross-sign on the maid. {93} XX ``I am in love,'' Tatyana's wailing whisper repeated to the crone. ``My dearest heart, you're sick and ailing.'' ``I am in love; leave me alone.'' And all the while the moon was shining and with its feeble glow outlining the girl's pale charms, her loosened hair, her drops of tears, and seated there, in quilted coat, where rays were gleaming on a small bench by Tanya's bed, the grey-haired nurse with kerchiefed head; and everything around was dreaming, in the deep stillness of the night, bathed in the moon's inspiring light. XXI Tatyana watched the moon, and floated through distant regions of the heart... A thought was born, and quickly noted... ``Go, nurse, and leave me here apart. Give me a pen and give me paper, bring up a table, and a taper; good night; I swear I'll lie down soon.'' She was alone, lit by the moon. Elbow on table, spirit seething, still filled with Eugene, Tanya wrote, and in her unconsidered note all a pure maiden's love was breathing. She folds the page, lays down the plume., Tatyana! it's addressed... to whom? {94} XXII I've known too many a haughty beauty, cold, pure as ice, and as unkind, inexorably wed to duty, unfathomable to the mind; shocked by their modish pride, and fleeing the utter virtue of their being, I've run a mile, I must avow, having decyphered on their brow hell's terrifying imprecation: ``Abandon hope for evermore.''<sup>9</sup> Our love is what they most abhor; our terror is their consolation. Ladies of such a cast, I think, you too have seen on Neva's brink. XXIII Thronged by adorers, I've detected another, freakish one, who stays quite self-absorbed and unaffected by sighs of passion or by praise. To my astonishment I've seen her, having by her severe demeanour frightened to death a timid love, revive it with another shove -- at least by a regretful kindness; at least her tone is sometimes found more tender than it used to sound. I've seen how, trustful in his blindness, the youthful lover once again runs after what is sweet, and vain. {95} XXIV Why is Tatyana guiltier-seeming? is it that she, poor simple sweet, believes in her elected dreaming and has no knowledge of deceit? that, artless, and without concealing, her love obeys the laws of feeling, that she's so trustful, and imbued by heaven with such an unsubdued imagination, with such reason, such stubborn brain, and vivid will, and heart so tender, it can still burst to a fiery blaze in season? Such feckless passion -- as I live, is this then what you can't forgive? XXV The flirt has reason's cool volition; Tatyana's love is no by-play, she yields to it without condition like a sweet child. She'll never say: ``By virtue of procrastinating we'll keep love's price appreciating, we'll draw it deeper in our net; first, we'll take vanity, and let hope sting it, then we'll try deploying doubts, to exhaust the heart, then fire jealousy's flame, to light desire; else, having found his pleasure cloying, the cunning prisoner can quite well at any hour escape his cell.'' {96} XXVI I see another problem looming: to save the honour of our land I must translate -- there's no presuming -- the letter from Tatyana's hand: her Russian was as thin as vapour, she never read a Russian paper, our native speech had never sprung unhesitating from her tongue, she wrote in French... what a confession! what can one do? as said above, until this day, a lady's love in Russian never found expression, till now our language -- proud, God knows -- has hardly mastered postal prose. XXVII They should be forced to read in Russian, I hear you say. But can you see a lady -- what a grim discussion! -- with The Well-Meaner¹⁰ on her knee? I ask you, each and every poet! the darling objects -- don't you know it? -- for whom, to expiate your crimes, you've made so many secret rhymes, to whom your hearts are dedicated, is it not true that Russian speech, so sketchily possessed by each, by all is sweetly mutilated, and it's the foreign phrase that trips like native idiom from their lips? {97} XXVIII Protect me from such apparition on dance-floor, at breakup of ball, as bonneted Academician or seminarist in yellow shawl!