<p>444–445. FROM EUGENE ONEGIN</p>1
{*}I«My uncle has most honest principles:when taken ill in earnest,he has made one respect himand nothing better could invent.To others his example is a lesson;but, good God, what a boreto sit by a sick man both day and night,without moving a step away!What base perfidiousnessthe half-alive one to amuse,adjust for him the pillows,sadly present the medicine,sigh — and think inwardlywhen
willthe devil take you?»IIThus a young scapegrace thought,with posters flying in the dust,by the most lofty will of Zeusthe heir of all his relatives.Friends of Lyudmila and Ruslan!The hero of my novel,without preambles, forthwith,I'd like to have you meet:Onegin, a good pal of mine,was born upon the Neva's banks,where maybe you were born,or used to shine, my reader!There formerly I too promenaded —but harmful is the North to me.IIIHaving served excellently, nobly,his father lived by means of debts;gave three balls yearlyand squandered everything at last.Fate guarded Eugene:at first, Madame looked after him;later, Monsieur replaced her.The child was boisterous but nice.Monsieur l'Abb'e, a poor wretch of a Frenchman,not to wear out the infant,would teach him everything in play,bothered him not with stern moralization,scolded him slightly for his pranks,and to Letniy Sad took him for walks.IVThen, when tumultuous youth'sseason for Eugene came,season of hopes and tender melancholy,Monsieur was ousted from the place.Now my Onegin is at large:hair cut after the latest fashion,dressed like a London Dandy —and finally he saw the World.In French impeccablyhe could express himself and write,danced the mazurka lightly,and bowed unconstrainedly —what would you more? The World decidedhe was clever and very nice.VAll of us had a bit of schoolingin something and somehow:hence education, God be praised,is in our midst not hard to flaunt.Onegin was, in the opinion of many(judges resolute and stern),a learned fellow but a pedant.He had the happy talent,without constraint, in conversationslightly to touch on everything,keep silent, with an expert's learned air,during a grave discussion,and provoke the smiles of ladieswith the fire of unexpected epigrams.VILatin has gone at present out of fashion;still, to tell you the truth,he had enough knowledge of Latinto make out epigraphs,descant on Juvenal,put at the bottom of a letter
vale,and he remembered, though not without fault,two lines from the
Aeneid.He had no urge to rummagein the chronological dustof the earth's historiography,but anecdotes of days gone by,from Romulus to our dayshe did keep in his memory.VIILacking the lofty passion not to sparelife for the sake of sounds,an iamb from a trochee —no matter how we strove — he could not tell apart;dispraised Homer, Theocritus,but read, in compensation, Adam Smith,and was a deep economist:that is, he could assess the waya state grows rich,and what it lives upon, and whyit needs not goldwhen it has got the simple product.His father could not understand him,and mortgaged his lands.VIIIAll Eugene knew besidesI have no leisure to recount;but where he was a veritable genius,what he more firmly knew than all the arts,what since his prime had been to himtoil, anguish, joy,what occupied the livelong dayhis fretting indolence —was the art of soft passionwhich Naso sang,wherefore a sufferer he endedhis brilliant and tumultuous spanin Moldavia, in the wild depth of steppes,far from his Italy.<1964>
