Works of Alexander Pushkin (23 page)
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Authors: Alexander Pushkin
Farlaf confessed his guilt; Ruslan,
So happy was he, in him found it
All to forgive; the dwarf, undone,
His powers lost, was added to
Vladimir-Bright Sun’s retinue;
To mark an end to tribulation
A sumptuous feast of celebration
The Prince held in his chamber high,
By friends and family surrounded.
The ways and deeds of days gone by,
A narrative on legend founded.
EPILOGUE
Thus, the world’s mindless dweller, spending
Life’s precious hours in idle peace,
Its strings my lyre to me lending,
I sang the lore of bygone days.
I sang, the painful blows forgetting
Of fate that blindly o’er us rules,
The wiles of frivolous maids, the petty
And thoughtless jibes of prating fools.
My mind, on wings of fancy soaring,
To parts ethereal was borne,
While all unknown there gathered o’er me
The dark clouds of a mighty storm....
And I was lost.... But vou who always
Watched o’er me in my earlier years,
You, blessed friendship, giving solace
To one whose heart deep sorrow sears!-
You calmed the raging storm, and, heeding
M\ spirit’s call, brought peace to me;
You saved me-saved my treasured freedom,
Of fiery youth the deity!
Far from the social whirl, the Neva
Behind me left, forgotten even
By rumour, here am I where loom
Caucasian peaks in prideful gloom.
Atop high steeps, mid downward tumbling
Cascades and cataracts of stone,
I stand and drink it all in dumbly,
And revel, to reflection prone,
In nature’s dark and savage beauty;
To wounding thought my soul’s still wed,
Within it sadness lives, deep-rooted,
But the poetic fires are dead,
In vain I seek for inspiration:
Gone is the blithe and happy time
Of love, of merry dreams, of rhyme,
Of all that filled me with elation.
Sweet rapture’s span has not been long,
Flown from me has the Muse of song,
Of softly spoken incantation....
LIST OF POEMS IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER
ELEGY: HAPPY WHO TO HIMSELF CONFESS
ELEGY: THE EXTINGUISHED JOY OF CRAZY YEARS
GOD GRANT, MY REASON NE’ER BETRAY ME
RUSLAN AND LYUDMILA: CANTO THE FIFTH
RUSLAN AND LYUDMILA: CANTO THE FIRST
RUSLAN AND LYUDMILA: CANTO THE FOURTH
RUSLAN AND LYUDMILA: CANTO THE SECOND
RUSLAN AND LYUDMILA: CANTO THE SIXTH
RUSLAN AND LYUDMILA: CANTO THE THIRD
SONNET: POET, NOT POPULAR APPLAUSE SHALT THOU PRIZE!
THE BRONZE HORSEMAN. CANTO THE FIRST.
THE BRONZE HORSEMAN. CANTO THE SECOND.
THE BRONZE HORSEMAN. PROLOGUE.
THE NOISY JOYS OF THOUGHTLESS YEARS ARE SPENT
К ***
The Verse Novel
Imperial Lyceum in Tsarskoe Selo
— where Pushkin studied and developed his poetry
EUGENE ONEGIN
Translated by Henry Spalding
Regarded by many as Pushkin’s masterpiece,
Eugene Onegin
is a novel in verse, published in serial form between 1825 and 1832. It consists of 389 stanzas of iambic tetrameter with an unusual rhyme scheme, using a blend of feminine and masculine rhymes, which has since become known as the ‘Onegin stanza’ or the ‘Pushkin sonnet’. This innovative rhyme scheme, as well as the natural tone and diction have helped to establish Pushkin as the acknowledged master of Russian poetry.
Eugene Onegin
is also admired for its deft handling of verse narrative and its exploration of important themes, such as death, the nature of love,
ennui
and the defying of conventions.
Set in the 1820s, the story is told by an educated and sensitive narrator, similar to Pushkin himself. The character Eugene Onegin is portrayed as being a bored Saint Petersburg socialite, whose life consists of balls, concerts, parties and little more. When he inherits a landed estate from his uncle, he moves to the country, where he strikes up a friendship with his neighbour, the young poet Vladimir Lensky. One day, Lensky takes Onegin to dine with the family of his fiancée, the sociable but superficial Olga Larina. At this meeting he also catches a glimpse of Olga’s sister Tatyana, one of Pushkin’s most unique and famous characters…
The first edition’s title page
CONTENTS
Pushkin’s own illustration of the character Eugene Onegin, 1830
A late nineteenth century illustration
‘Onegin’ by Elena Samokish-Sudkovskaya, 1908
PREFACE
Eugene Oneguine, the chief poetical work of Russia’s greatest poet, having been translated into all the principal languages of Europe except our own, I hope that this version may prove an acceptable contribution to literature. Tastes are various in matters of poetry, but the present work possesses a more solid claim to attention in the series of faithful pictures it offers of Russian life and manners. If these be compared with Mr. Wallace’s book on Russia, it will be seen that social life in that empire still preserves many of the characteristics which distinguished it half a century ago — the period of the first publication of the latter cantos of this poem.