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Eugene Onegin
Eugene Onegin is the master work of the poet whom Russians regard as the fountainhead of their literature. Set in 1820s Russia, Pushkin's verse novel follows the fates of three men and three women. Engaging, full of suspense, and varied in tone, it also portrays a large cast of other
characters and offers the reader many literary, philosophical, and autobiographical digressions, often in a highly satirical vein. Eugene Onegin was Pushkin's own favourite work, and this new translation conveys the literal sense and the poetic music of the original.
characters and offers the reader many literary, philosophical, and autobiographical digressions, often in a highly satirical vein. Eugene Onegin was Pushkin's own favourite work, and this new translation conveys the literal sense and the poetic music of the original.
240 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1825
About the author
Alexander Pushkin
1,531 books3,057 followersWorks of Russian writer Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin include the verse novel
Eugene Onegin
(1831), the play
Boris Godunov
(1831), and many narrative and lyrical poems and short stories.
See also:
Russian: Александр Сергеевич Пушкин
French: Alexandre Pouchkine
Norwegian: Aleksander Pusjkin
Spanish:Aleksandr Pushkin
People consider this author the greatest poet and the founder of modern literature. Pushkin pioneered the use of vernacular speech in his poems, creating a style of storytelling—mixing drama, romance, and satire—associated ever with greatly influential later literature.
Pushkin published his first poem at the age of 15 years in 1814, and the literary establishment widely recognized him before the time of his graduation from the imperial lyceum in Tsarskoe Selo. Social reform gradually committed Pushkin, who emerged as a spokesman for literary radicals and in the early 1820s clashed with the government, which sent him into exile in southern Russia. Under the strict surveillance of government censors and unable to travel or publish at will, he wrote his most famous drama but ably published it not until years later. People published his verse serially from 1825 to 1832.
Pushkin and his wife Natalya Goncharova, whom he married in 1831, later became regulars of court society. In 1837, while falling into ever greater debt amidst rumors that his wife started conducting a scandalous affair, Pushkin challenged her alleged lover, Georges d'Anthès, to a duel. Pushkin was mortally wounded and died two days later.
Because of his liberal political views and influence on generations of Russian rebels, Pushkin was portrayed by Bolsheviks as an opponent to bourgeois literature and culture and a predecessor of Soviet literature and poetry. Tsarskoe Selo was renamed after him.
See also:
Russian: Александр Сергеевич Пушкин
French: Alexandre Pouchkine
Norwegian: Aleksander Pusjkin
Spanish:Aleksandr Pushkin
People consider this author the greatest poet and the founder of modern literature. Pushkin pioneered the use of vernacular speech in his poems, creating a style of storytelling—mixing drama, romance, and satire—associated ever with greatly influential later literature.
Pushkin published his first poem at the age of 15 years in 1814, and the literary establishment widely recognized him before the time of his graduation from the imperial lyceum in Tsarskoe Selo. Social reform gradually committed Pushkin, who emerged as a spokesman for literary radicals and in the early 1820s clashed with the government, which sent him into exile in southern Russia. Under the strict surveillance of government censors and unable to travel or publish at will, he wrote his most famous drama but ably published it not until years later. People published his verse serially from 1825 to 1832.
Pushkin and his wife Natalya Goncharova, whom he married in 1831, later became regulars of court society. In 1837, while falling into ever greater debt amidst rumors that his wife started conducting a scandalous affair, Pushkin challenged her alleged lover, Georges d'Anthès, to a duel. Pushkin was mortally wounded and died two days later.
Because of his liberal political views and influence on generations of Russian rebels, Pushkin was portrayed by Bolsheviks as an opponent to bourgeois literature and culture and a predecessor of Soviet literature and poetry. Tsarskoe Selo was renamed after him.
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April 25, 2023
I dare you, double-triple-dog dare you¹, to find a Russian person who has never heard of Evgeniy Onegin.
Yes, the familiarity of Russians with 'Evgeniy Onegin' is quite stunning. And yet I think most of us, when you get to the bottom of things, have only superficial recollections of it, the bits and pieces of storyline (which may or may not feature a love story?), a duel, a passionate letter, a few aphorisms, and a phrase coming from the recesses of the third-grade memory: "Winter! The peasant, triumphant..."
And at the same time most of us, I think, would be hard-pressed to point out exactly why this book is so great - not unexpected given that 200+ pages of verse read at age 15 may not necessarily create a meaningful imprint on teenage minds.
And this is why I embarked on a re-read - and as a result having unintentionally impressed my literature teacher mother (yay, the perks of Pushkin! I wonder - is it a coincidence that my brother and I have the names of Alexander Pushkin and his wife Natalie?)
I wanted to discover those gems that critics and teachers see, and which evaded me the first time I read it at seven and then at fifteen. And, reader, I found them!
Did I mention before that this book is over 200 pages of verse, rhyming in a particular stanza structure that came to be known as 'Pushkin sonnet' ("aBaBccDDeFFeGG" with masculine endings in lower case and feminine endings in upper case - for you, literature buffs!). That seems like a huge feat to accomplish - and it did take Pushkin a decade to complete and publish it. And yet, despite the gargantuan effort, this novel reads so incredibly easy and effortlessly that it's almost too easy to overlook its beauty and sophistication under the deceiving cover-up of light simplicity.
These verses are two hundred years old, and yet sound very natural even to a modern Russian ear - a testament to Pushkin's amazing grasp of nuances and dynamics of living Russian language, not the stuffy official one (and that, admirably, was in the era where many educated Russians could speak flawless French, English or German but were often struggling with their native 'peasant' language - just like Tatyana Larina, actually!)
The plot of the novel can be easily seen as a love story - if you strip it down to its most basic elements, of course. A bored rich noble Evgeniy Onegin comes from the capital to a rural part of Russia, meets a young and naively passionate Tatyana Larina, a daughter of a local rural noble, and spurns her naive affections expressed in a passionate letter to him. A misunderstanding over Tatyana's sister leads to a duel between Onegin and his younger poet friend Lensky - and leaves Lensky dead. A few years later, Onegin runs into Tatyana in St Petersburg - now a married sophisticated lady of the higher society - and is smitten; but his affections get spurned by the older and wiser Tatyana who delivers a famous line that although she still loves Evgeniy, she "belong[s] to another and will be forever faithful to him". End of story.
What this simplified version that sticks in the minds of many readers years later lacks is exactly what makes this a great novel as opposed to yet another 19th century romance. What makes it unique is a masterful mockingly sarcastic portrayal of the entire 'cream' of Russian society so familiar to Pushkin, one of its members by birth.
From the very beginning, Pushkin assumes a conversational tone with the reader, breaking the literary fourth wall any chance he gets, emphasizing that the characters and customs he describes are well-known, contemporary and easily recognizable not only to him but also to his audience - the educated 'cream of the society' of whom he's making subtle fun.
Evgeniy is your typical "Byronic" young man, fashionably disenchanted with life, suffering from "хандра" - the Russian expression for ennui - and fashionably, as learned from the books (something that enamored with him Tatyana discovers to her distress), showing his tiredness of the world and showing off his trendy cynicism. He's reasonably good-looking, educated 'just enough' and unconsciously playing up a fashionable gothic stereotype, bored with life already at the age of twenty-six, sharply contrasted with Lensky, an eighteen-year-old poet ready to fall in love and sing it endless dithyrambs.
Evgeniy does seem fake in his boredom and despicable in his feeling of superiority and self-righteousness, and therefore his disappointment in pursuit of older, more interesting Tatyana's love comes as a deserved punishment, readers agree. And let's face it - despite the novel being named after Onegin, he in the hearts of the readers plays second fiddle to the one he first rejected and then hopelessly pursued - Tatyana Larina.
Tatyana Larina, in contrast to Evgeniy, has always been the darling of Russian literature. She is viewed as uniquely Russian (the fact that Pushkin himself emphasizes, even when he acknowledges that like many of the Russian nobles of that time, Tatyana had a hard time speaking Russian), the embodiment of what a perfect Russian woman should be - sincere, idealistic and passionate, and yet strong, resilient and faithful to her partner despite the temptations. She can be easily seen as an inspiration to all those noble Decemberists' wives who were willing to leave everything behind and follow their duty and obligation to the depths of Siberia, if need be. Her rejection of Evgeniy is viewed as undeniable integrity and strength of character, and the unwavering ability to self-sacrifice for what is right.
That's how I was taught to think about Tatyana, in any case. She steals the stage from Evgeniy so effortlessly and naturally to become a heroine and not just the girl in love. And yet, as I was reading this novel now, likely at least a decade older than Tatyana when she falls in love, I could not help but notice the bits in her character that made me question her place on the pedestal of ultimate Russian womanhood - and because of that actually made her more dear and more relatable to me.
You see, the sincerity and passion with which Tatyana embraced her young love on this read-through did not really pass my scrutiny. Let's be honest - she does not fall in love with Onegin; instead, raised on cheap romances, she falls in love with an imagined ideal of him, having glimpsed him only during a single evening he spends in her home. She falls in love with this mysterious handsome haughty stranger because, as the stories have taught her, she's supposed to. She's young and impressionable (her age is never stated, but at some point there's a mention of a thirteen-year-old girl, which to me feels a bit too young to be Tatyana - and so I tend to imagine her about seventeen or eighteen, making her younger sister Olga a 'marriageable material' as well).
She plays the role of a typical quiet, introspective, shy, pale and dreamy young woman very well, having internalized the idea of a romantic heroine. Her love is likely no more real than Onegin's trendy disappointment with life. Her passionate letter, written in French, is open and brave - but yet, on a closer reading, full of cliches that are clearly taken out of romance novels that kept her company throughout adolescence.
So basically what I see here is the meeting of two people both of whom are instinctively and therefore very sincerely playing the exact roles society and culture expect them to play - the world-weary Evgeniy and the romantically passionate Tatyana. None of them is the ultimate Russian hero, let's face it. The conventions they both pander to is what does not allow them to be happy.
Tatyana three years later, having turned into a refined Petersburg married lady commanding respect and admiration, appears a much more interesting character - to Onegin as well, unsurprisingly. But her astounding transformation really seems to be just another role she tries on and fulfills with the same aptitude as she did the role of a romantic provincial young woman in love. Tatyana wears her new expectations as a glove - and so does Evgeniy, madly falling in love with her just as would be expected for a young dandy meeting a refined alluring woman of higher society. Once again both of them play a part that's expected for them, and play it well. And even Tatyana's ultimate rejection of Onegin may not be so much the strength of her character as the expected behavior of a woman in such a situation as portrayed in the romance novels with which she grew up (the alternative to Tatyana's decision decades later was described by Tolstoy in 'Anna Karenina' with all the tragic consequences that followed).
An ideal Russian woman? Perhaps not. A young woman tragically caught in the web of societal and cultural expectations in her youth and now in her adulthood? Perhaps so. And in this, I think, is the strength and the tragedy of this story.
Pushkin seems to have felt the societal conventions very well to so exquisitely poke fun at them while showing very subtly the pain they can lead to. He shows the tragedy of yet another societal convention of establishing masculinity and honor - the duels. Onegin kills his friend Lensky in a duel that both of them know is not necessary but yet expected by the society - and Pushkin is not subtle about showing the wasteful unnecessity of such an act.
And this is why neither me nor my literature teacher mother can even fathom how, in winter of 1837, 37-year-old Alexander Pushkin himself allowed ridiculous societal convention to take his life, losing his life in a duel which supposedly happened over a woman - the duel he described so aptly years prior in his masterpiece.
But even without them, the 200+ pages novel in verse that has been the darling of Russian literature for two centuries now lives up to its hard-to-attain fame.
4.5 stars and extra respect from my mother for having reread it - and that ultimately is priceless.
¹ If you do somehow manage to find this living-under-the-rock person, I unfortunately cannot provide you with a monetary reward since I have no money to speak of. Instead, I will treat you to the my horrified expression akin to Edvard Munch's 'The Scream'. Sorry.This novel in verse permeates all aspects of Russian culture, lauded both in the tsarist Russia and the USSR. Children read it in literature class and are made to memorize passages from it starting in elementary school. There are operas, ballets, and films. The phrases from it have become aphorisms and are still widely used in the Russian language. It even dragged the name Tatyana out of the obscurity to the heights of long-lasting popularity (now the lines 'Her sister's name was Tatyana./It's the first time we dare/ To grace with such a name/ The tender pages of a novel' seem outright silly).
Yes, the familiarity of Russians with 'Evgeniy Onegin' is quite stunning. And yet I think most of us, when you get to the bottom of things, have only superficial recollections of it, the bits and pieces of storyline (which may or may not feature a love story?), a duel, a passionate letter, a few aphorisms, and a phrase coming from the recesses of the third-grade memory: "Winter! The peasant, triumphant..."
And at the same time most of us, I think, would be hard-pressed to point out exactly why this book is so great - not unexpected given that 200+ pages of verse read at age 15 may not necessarily create a meaningful imprint on teenage minds.
And this is why I embarked on a re-read - and as a result having unintentionally impressed my literature teacher mother (yay, the perks of Pushkin! I wonder - is it a coincidence that my brother and I have the names of Alexander Pushkin and his wife Natalie?)
I wanted to discover those gems that critics and teachers see, and which evaded me the first time I read it at seven and then at fifteen. And, reader, I found them!
Did I mention before that this book is over 200 pages of verse, rhyming in a particular stanza structure that came to be known as 'Pushkin sonnet' ("aBaBccDDeFFeGG" with masculine endings in lower case and feminine endings in upper case - for you, literature buffs!). That seems like a huge feat to accomplish - and it did take Pushkin a decade to complete and publish it. And yet, despite the gargantuan effort, this novel reads so incredibly easy and effortlessly that it's almost too easy to overlook its beauty and sophistication under the deceiving cover-up of light simplicity.
These verses are two hundred years old, and yet sound very natural even to a modern Russian ear - a testament to Pushkin's amazing grasp of nuances and dynamics of living Russian language, not the stuffy official one (and that, admirably, was in the era where many educated Russians could speak flawless French, English or German but were often struggling with their native 'peasant' language - just like Tatyana Larina, actually!)
The plot of the novel can be easily seen as a love story - if you strip it down to its most basic elements, of course. A bored rich noble Evgeniy Onegin comes from the capital to a rural part of Russia, meets a young and naively passionate Tatyana Larina, a daughter of a local rural noble, and spurns her naive affections expressed in a passionate letter to him. A misunderstanding over Tatyana's sister leads to a duel between Onegin and his younger poet friend Lensky - and leaves Lensky dead. A few years later, Onegin runs into Tatyana in St Petersburg - now a married sophisticated lady of the higher society - and is smitten; but his affections get spurned by the older and wiser Tatyana who delivers a famous line that although she still loves Evgeniy, she "belong[s] to another and will be forever faithful to him". End of story.
What this simplified version that sticks in the minds of many readers years later lacks is exactly what makes this a great novel as opposed to yet another 19th century romance. What makes it unique is a masterful mockingly sarcastic portrayal of the entire 'cream' of Russian society so familiar to Pushkin, one of its members by birth.
From the very beginning, Pushkin assumes a conversational tone with the reader, breaking the literary fourth wall any chance he gets, emphasizing that the characters and customs he describes are well-known, contemporary and easily recognizable not only to him but also to his audience - the educated 'cream of the society' of whom he's making subtle fun.
Evgeniy is your typical "Byronic" young man, fashionably disenchanted with life, suffering from "хандра" - the Russian expression for ennui - and fashionably, as learned from the books (something that enamored with him Tatyana discovers to her distress), showing his tiredness of the world and showing off his trendy cynicism. He's reasonably good-looking, educated 'just enough' and unconsciously playing up a fashionable gothic stereotype, bored with life already at the age of twenty-six, sharply contrasted with Lensky, an eighteen-year-old poet ready to fall in love and sing it endless dithyrambs.
Evgeniy does seem fake in his boredom and despicable in his feeling of superiority and self-righteousness, and therefore his disappointment in pursuit of older, more interesting Tatyana's love comes as a deserved punishment, readers agree. And let's face it - despite the novel being named after Onegin, he in the hearts of the readers plays second fiddle to the one he first rejected and then hopelessly pursued - Tatyana Larina.
Tatyana Larina, in contrast to Evgeniy, has always been the darling of Russian literature. She is viewed as uniquely Russian (the fact that Pushkin himself emphasizes, even when he acknowledges that like many of the Russian nobles of that time, Tatyana had a hard time speaking Russian), the embodiment of what a perfect Russian woman should be - sincere, idealistic and passionate, and yet strong, resilient and faithful to her partner despite the temptations. She can be easily seen as an inspiration to all those noble Decemberists' wives who were willing to leave everything behind and follow their duty and obligation to the depths of Siberia, if need be. Her rejection of Evgeniy is viewed as undeniable integrity and strength of character, and the unwavering ability to self-sacrifice for what is right.
That's how I was taught to think about Tatyana, in any case. She steals the stage from Evgeniy so effortlessly and naturally to become a heroine and not just the girl in love. And yet, as I was reading this novel now, likely at least a decade older than Tatyana when she falls in love, I could not help but notice the bits in her character that made me question her place on the pedestal of ultimate Russian womanhood - and because of that actually made her more dear and more relatable to me.
You see, the sincerity and passion with which Tatyana embraced her young love on this read-through did not really pass my scrutiny. Let's be honest - she does not fall in love with Onegin; instead, raised on cheap romances, she falls in love with an imagined ideal of him, having glimpsed him only during a single evening he spends in her home. She falls in love with this mysterious handsome haughty stranger because, as the stories have taught her, she's supposed to. She's young and impressionable (her age is never stated, but at some point there's a mention of a thirteen-year-old girl, which to me feels a bit too young to be Tatyana - and so I tend to imagine her about seventeen or eighteen, making her younger sister Olga a 'marriageable material' as well).
She plays the role of a typical quiet, introspective, shy, pale and dreamy young woman very well, having internalized the idea of a romantic heroine. Her love is likely no more real than Onegin's trendy disappointment with life. Her passionate letter, written in French, is open and brave - but yet, on a closer reading, full of cliches that are clearly taken out of romance novels that kept her company throughout adolescence.
So basically what I see here is the meeting of two people both of whom are instinctively and therefore very sincerely playing the exact roles society and culture expect them to play - the world-weary Evgeniy and the romantically passionate Tatyana. None of them is the ultimate Russian hero, let's face it. The conventions they both pander to is what does not allow them to be happy.
Tatyana three years later, having turned into a refined Petersburg married lady commanding respect and admiration, appears a much more interesting character - to Onegin as well, unsurprisingly. But her astounding transformation really seems to be just another role she tries on and fulfills with the same aptitude as she did the role of a romantic provincial young woman in love. Tatyana wears her new expectations as a glove - and so does Evgeniy, madly falling in love with her just as would be expected for a young dandy meeting a refined alluring woman of higher society. Once again both of them play a part that's expected for them, and play it well. And even Tatyana's ultimate rejection of Onegin may not be so much the strength of her character as the expected behavior of a woman in such a situation as portrayed in the romance novels with which she grew up (the alternative to Tatyana's decision decades later was described by Tolstoy in 'Anna Karenina' with all the tragic consequences that followed).
An ideal Russian woman? Perhaps not. A young woman tragically caught in the web of societal and cultural expectations in her youth and now in her adulthood? Perhaps so. And in this, I think, is the strength and the tragedy of this story.
Pushkin seems to have felt the societal conventions very well to so exquisitely poke fun at them while showing very subtly the pain they can lead to. He shows the tragedy of yet another societal convention of establishing masculinity and honor - the duels. Onegin kills his friend Lensky in a duel that both of them know is not necessary but yet expected by the society - and Pushkin is not subtle about showing the wasteful unnecessity of such an act.
And this is why neither me nor my literature teacher mother can even fathom how, in winter of 1837, 37-year-old Alexander Pushkin himself allowed ridiculous societal convention to take his life, losing his life in a duel which supposedly happened over a woman - the duel he described so aptly years prior in his masterpiece.
Bookworm buffs - check this out. The second greatest Russian poet, young Mikhail Lermontov, who wrote a famous and angry poem upon Pushkin's death in that ill-fated duel, proceeded to write a death-duel scene himself which almost exactly predicted his own death - also in a duel - a few years later.There was more to Onegin's story than we got to see in the finished version. As Pushkin wrote it when he has fallen out of favor, when he was in his Southern exile, he had Onegin travel all over Russia coming in contact with events and sights that the poet had eventually prudently decided were not risking his freedom over publishing and so destroyed those parts. How much do I wish those chapters had survived intact! There may have been some added depth to the character of the ultimate Russian world-weary dandy had they survived.
What was going on with Russian literary geniuses recognizing the futility and tragedy of conventions leading to duels and then dying in the same manner that they described and mocked?
But even without them, the 200+ pages novel in verse that has been the darling of Russian literature for two centuries now lives up to its hard-to-attain fame.
4.5 stars and extra respect from my mother for having reread it - and that ultimately is priceless.
December 20, 2023
December 19th, 2023 - my first re-read
This book is still as breathtaking as I remember it being!
July 18th, 2021 - my first read
“But even while his eyes were reading,
His thoughts were far away, as old
Desires, dreams, sorrows kept invading
And crowding deep inside his soul.
Between the lines before him, printed
His inward eye saw others hinted.
On these he concentrated most,
In their decipherment engrossed.
These were the secret legends, fictions
The heart’s dark story had collected,
The dreams with all else unconnected,
The threats, the rumours, the predictions,
Or else some lengthy, crazy tale
Or letters from a fledgling girl.”
Eugene Onegin
Chapter 8, Stanza 36
Have you ever read a book and asked, ‘How can words do this?’
I asked myself this question after reading every single stanza of Eugene Onegin.
I believe that the greatest works of literature are the ones that leave you with more questions than answers, more sorrow than joy, and more feelings than you’ve ever felt before.
Eugene Onegin is one of these “great works of literature,” and proof of this can be found in the questions I asked myself when reading my very first Pushkin.
‘How can he write with such ease and fluidity, while staying in the confines of the poetic form?’
‘How can Pushkin make me feel every emotion I’m capable of feeling?’
‘How can he paint such a lively and vivid picture in so few words?’
‘How can Pushkin tell such a vast and deep story in less than 200 pages?’
‘How can he give me so much, without giving me anything at all?’
‘How can Pushkin...just...how?’
The answer is, because he can and he did!
In chapter 8, stanza 36, “our hero” Eugene is found seeking the answers to life’s unanswerable questions, and he’s doing so by looking for them in the books on his shelf. Although I said, “I believe that the greatest works of literature are the ones that leave you with more questions than answers.” I’ve also realized that the “more questions” I'm left with, are in fact the “answers.”
The answers are in the questions, and the questions are in the books.
Here is a “Pushkin Stanza” of my own (silly) creation, dedicated to Pushkin (and Tolstoy)...
My dearest Tolstoy I’m afraid
My heart is no longer only yours.
Alexander Pushkin has paid
A visit to my heart's sweet door.
I wish to keep you both forever,
In that place always together.
I cannot part with either of you,
So here you’ll stay, not one but two.
And in your words I seek to find
Questions in which your words are rife.
Of what is love, and what is life,
The quarries of a sleepless mind.
You have the answers, I can tell.
They’re in your books, for which I fell.
Carolyn Castagna
This book is still as breathtaking as I remember it being!
July 18th, 2021 - my first read
“But even while his eyes were reading,
His thoughts were far away, as old
Desires, dreams, sorrows kept invading
And crowding deep inside his soul.
Between the lines before him, printed
His inward eye saw others hinted.
On these he concentrated most,
In their decipherment engrossed.
These were the secret legends, fictions
The heart’s dark story had collected,
The dreams with all else unconnected,
The threats, the rumours, the predictions,
Or else some lengthy, crazy tale
Or letters from a fledgling girl.”
Eugene Onegin
Chapter 8, Stanza 36
Have you ever read a book and asked, ‘How can words do this?’
I asked myself this question after reading every single stanza of Eugene Onegin.
I believe that the greatest works of literature are the ones that leave you with more questions than answers, more sorrow than joy, and more feelings than you’ve ever felt before.
Eugene Onegin is one of these “great works of literature,” and proof of this can be found in the questions I asked myself when reading my very first Pushkin.
‘How can he write with such ease and fluidity, while staying in the confines of the poetic form?’
‘How can Pushkin make me feel every emotion I’m capable of feeling?’
‘How can he paint such a lively and vivid picture in so few words?’
‘How can Pushkin tell such a vast and deep story in less than 200 pages?’
‘How can he give me so much, without giving me anything at all?’
‘How can Pushkin...just...how?’
The answer is, because he can and he did!
In chapter 8, stanza 36, “our hero” Eugene is found seeking the answers to life’s unanswerable questions, and he’s doing so by looking for them in the books on his shelf. Although I said, “I believe that the greatest works of literature are the ones that leave you with more questions than answers.” I’ve also realized that the “more questions” I'm left with, are in fact the “answers.”
The answers are in the questions, and the questions are in the books.
Here is a “Pushkin Stanza” of my own (silly) creation, dedicated to Pushkin (and Tolstoy)...
My dearest Tolstoy I’m afraid
My heart is no longer only yours.
Alexander Pushkin has paid
A visit to my heart's sweet door.
I wish to keep you both forever,
In that place always together.
I cannot part with either of you,
So here you’ll stay, not one but two.
And in your words I seek to find
Questions in which your words are rife.
Of what is love, and what is life,
The quarries of a sleepless mind.
You have the answers, I can tell.
They’re in your books, for which I fell.
Carolyn Castagna
January 6, 2024
What to say about this "Eugène Onegin," oh so sublime work, bearing the name of a character oh how apart ... I would like to give thanks for the magnificence of this song with my simple words, and I immediately feel that this will prove to be a difficult task ... But I'm going anyway!
Let's talk about the plot first. Eugène Onegin is a love story between Onegin and Tatiana; it is an impossible love story. But, even if it is made impossible and lost forever because of the blindness and contempt of Onegin, a jaded character tired by all that constitutes life, particularly by men and especially love. The whole punctuated by the poet's intervention is Pushkin, who delivers to us with delight his wit.
We also have a magnificent encounter through this novel, that of the touching and tender Lenski, a young romantic poet who only responds to the heart's voice and follows this same path, which will make him lose. His precious life for The Love. Thus, he appears as an anti-Onegin in his amorous outpourings and faith in life, and his sacrifice makes him a splendid hero.
As for the form - please don't miss out on so much beauty - I found the verse writing divine and couldn't resist the urge to read aloud. So, this incredible song was offered to us by Pushkin, the Great Alexander Pushkin.
In short, I loved this novel, which is nothing more than a masterpiece of literature in Russian and worldwide.
Let's talk about the plot first. Eugène Onegin is a love story between Onegin and Tatiana; it is an impossible love story. But, even if it is made impossible and lost forever because of the blindness and contempt of Onegin, a jaded character tired by all that constitutes life, particularly by men and especially love. The whole punctuated by the poet's intervention is Pushkin, who delivers to us with delight his wit.
We also have a magnificent encounter through this novel, that of the touching and tender Lenski, a young romantic poet who only responds to the heart's voice and follows this same path, which will make him lose. His precious life for The Love. Thus, he appears as an anti-Onegin in his amorous outpourings and faith in life, and his sacrifice makes him a splendid hero.
As for the form - please don't miss out on so much beauty - I found the verse writing divine and couldn't resist the urge to read aloud. So, this incredible song was offered to us by Pushkin, the Great Alexander Pushkin.
In short, I loved this novel, which is nothing more than a masterpiece of literature in Russian and worldwide.
Read
March 30, 20231
Have you ever dreamt in verses,
Woke to thoughts that tapped in terces,
Units measured in finger tips,
Rhymes recurring on your lips,
Your whole mind on metre bent,
All prose thoughts, elsewhere sent?
That's what comes of reading Pushkin,
Late nights spent with his Onegin.
Scanning lines til eyelids droop,
And all your thoughts are in a loop.
Counting, counting, metres, feet,
Endless tapping, then repeat.
2
Woe to this reader, used to prose
Who seeks to fathom Eugene's pose,
Who daily must exerce her ear
And progress slowly, full of fear.
What if this poem, she can't finish,
In her eyes she will diminish.
But with practice, she gained speed,
And Pushkin's verses, learned to read,
Til soon she saw with failing heart
That she and Eugene soon must part.
The end loomed near, mere pages left,
She knew full well she'd feel bereft.
3
But now let's talk of Pushkin's style
Which she's observing all the while,
As eyes scan lines, and pages turn,
And poet thoughts by midnight burn,
Wondering, wondering, this:
If what she reads is even his?
The story, yes, she knows that is.
The verse form too, most likely, yes.
But oh, how far the language strides
From his chosen words, miles and miles.
But she reads them how she may,
With thanks to Mr Mitchell, Stanley:
But hush! I hear an awesome critic
Cry: ‘Drop your wreath of elegies,
So miserable and pathetic,’
And to us rhymesters bellow: ‘Cease
Your whimpering and endless croaking
About those times you keep invoking,
Regretting what is past, what’s gone:
Enough! Sing us another song!’
4
But where’s Onegin, by the way?
Let's meet the hero of the day.
We've heard the narrator, Mitchell style,
So now with Onegin we'll while
A little time away in verse, and
See him just as Pushkin planned:
Childe Harold to a T, Onegin
Lapsed into pensive indolence
Brooding, brooding, among his books,
Shunning, shunning, other folks,
Guards his heart from all soft feeling,
Tho teaching lessons, not resisting,
False love to his friend revealing,
And keen, harsh truths to introduce
To one whom truth loves far too much.
5
And what of Tatiana, pray?
We'll let the narrator have his say:
A wayward, silent, sad young maiden,
Shy as a doe, in forest hidden,
She seemed inside her family
A stranger, an anomaly.
By children’s games was not beguiled
To skip or play, but often, rather,
Would at a window silently
Sit on her own throughout the day.
And so we have our brooding pair
Both, loving books and winter's air,
And we know Pushkin will indeed
His Eugene and his Tanya lead
Where truth will love so harshly slay,
And love for truth, drive love away.
6
In praise of both, I do confess,
I, too, am glad to pen a verse,
Secure in my presupposition
That any zealous rot of mine
Will merit a regard benign,
And not the solemn inquisition
Of those, who, with their wicked smile,
Appraise my nonsense by its style.
Have you ever dreamt in verses,
Woke to thoughts that tapped in terces,
Units measured in finger tips,
Rhymes recurring on your lips,
Your whole mind on metre bent,
All prose thoughts, elsewhere sent?
That's what comes of reading Pushkin,
Late nights spent with his Onegin.
Scanning lines til eyelids droop,
And all your thoughts are in a loop.
Counting, counting, metres, feet,
Endless tapping, then repeat.
2
Woe to this reader, used to prose
Who seeks to fathom Eugene's pose,
Who daily must exerce her ear
And progress slowly, full of fear.
What if this poem, she can't finish,
In her eyes she will diminish.
But with practice, she gained speed,
And Pushkin's verses, learned to read,
Til soon she saw with failing heart
That she and Eugene soon must part.
The end loomed near, mere pages left,
She knew full well she'd feel bereft.
3
But now let's talk of Pushkin's style
Which she's observing all the while,
As eyes scan lines, and pages turn,
And poet thoughts by midnight burn,
Wondering, wondering, this:
If what she reads is even his?
The story, yes, she knows that is.
The verse form too, most likely, yes.
But oh, how far the language strides
From his chosen words, miles and miles.
But she reads them how she may,
With thanks to Mr Mitchell, Stanley:
But hush! I hear an awesome critic
Cry: ‘Drop your wreath of elegies,
So miserable and pathetic,’
And to us rhymesters bellow: ‘Cease
Your whimpering and endless croaking
About those times you keep invoking,
Regretting what is past, what’s gone:
Enough! Sing us another song!’
4
But where’s Onegin, by the way?
Let's meet the hero of the day.
We've heard the narrator, Mitchell style,
So now with Onegin we'll while
A little time away in verse, and
See him just as Pushkin planned:
Childe Harold to a T, Onegin
Lapsed into pensive indolence
Brooding, brooding, among his books,
Shunning, shunning, other folks,
Guards his heart from all soft feeling,
Tho teaching lessons, not resisting,
False love to his friend revealing,
And keen, harsh truths to introduce
To one whom truth loves far too much.
5
And what of Tatiana, pray?
We'll let the narrator have his say:
A wayward, silent, sad young maiden,
Shy as a doe, in forest hidden,
She seemed inside her family
A stranger, an anomaly.
By children’s games was not beguiled
To skip or play, but often, rather,
Would at a window silently
Sit on her own throughout the day.
And so we have our brooding pair
Both, loving books and winter's air,
And we know Pushkin will indeed
His Eugene and his Tanya lead
Where truth will love so harshly slay,
And love for truth, drive love away.
6
In praise of both, I do confess,
I, too, am glad to pen a verse,
Secure in my presupposition
That any zealous rot of mine
Will merit a regard benign,
And not the solemn inquisition
Of those, who, with their wicked smile,
Appraise my nonsense by its style.
October 8, 2021
Евгений Онегин = Yevgeniy Onegin = Eugene Onegin, Alexander Pushkin
Eugene Onegin is a novel in verse written by Alexander Pushkin. Onegin is considered a classic of Russian literature, and its eponymous protagonist has served as the model for a number of Russian literary heroes (so-called superfluous men). It was published in serial form between 1825 and 1832. The first complete edition was published in 1833, and the currently accepted version is based on the 1837 publication.
In the 1820's, Eugene Onegin is a bored St. Petersburg dandy, whose life consists of balls, concerts, parties, and nothing more.
Upon the death of a wealthy uncle, he inherits a substantial fortune and a landed estate. When he moves to the country, he strikes up a friendship with his neighbor, a starry-eyed young poet named Vladimir Lensky.
Lensky takes Onegin to dine with the family of his fiancée, the sociable but rather thoughtless Olga Larina. At this meeting, he also catches a glimpse of Olga's sister Tatyana.
A quiet, precocious romantic, and the exact opposite of Olga, Tatyana becomes intensely drawn to Onegin. Soon after, she bares her soul to Onegin in a letter professing her love.
Contrary to her expectations, Onegin does not write back. When they meet in person, he rejects her advances politely but dismissively and condescendingly.
This famous speech is often referred to as Onegin's Sermon: he admits that the letter was touching, but says that he would quickly grow bored with marriage and can only offer Tatyana friendship; he coldly advises more emotional control in the future, lest another man take advantage of her innocence.
Later, Lensky mischievously invites Onegin to Tatyana's name day celebration, promising a small gathering with just Tatyana, Olga, and their parents.
When Onegin arrives, he finds instead a boisterous country ball, a rural parody of and contrast to the society balls of St. Petersburg of which he has grown tired.
Onegin is irritated with the guests who gossip about him and Tatyana, and with Lensky for persuading him to come.
He decides to avenge himself by dancing and flirting with Olga. Olga is insensitive to her fiancé and apparently attracted to Onegin.
Earnest and inexperienced, Lensky is wounded to the core and challenges Onegin to fight a duel; Onegin reluctantly accepts, feeling compelled by social convention. During the duel, Onegin unwillingly kills Lensky.
Afterwards, he quits his country estate, traveling abroad to deaden his feelings of remorse. Tatyana visits Onegin's mansion, where she looks through his books and his notes in the margins, and begins to question whether Onegin's character is merely a collage of different literary heroes, and if there is, in fact, no "real Onegin".
Tatyana, still brokenhearted by the loss of Onegin, is convinced by her parents to live with her aunt in Moscow in order to find a suitor. Several years pass, and the scene shifts to St. Petersburg. Onegin has come to attend the most prominent balls and interact with the leaders of old Russian society.
He sees the most beautiful woman, who captures the attention of all and is central to society's whirl, and he realizes that it is the same Tatyana whose love he had once spurned. Now she is married to an aged prince (a general).
Upon seeing Tatyana again, he becomes obsessed with winning her affection, despite the fact that she is married. However, his attempts are rebuffed.
He writes her several letters, but receives no reply. Eventually Onegin manages to see Tatyana and offers her the opportunity to finally elope after they have become reacquainted.
She recalls the days when they might have been happy, but concludes that that time has passed. Onegin repeats his love for her.
Faltering for a moment, she admits that she still loves him, but she will not allow him to ruin her and declares her determination to remain faithful to her husband. She leaves him regretting his bitter destiny.
تاریخ نخستین خوانش روز بیست و ششم دسامبر سال 1970میلادی
عنوان: یِوگِنی آنِه گین - اوژن اونه گین؛ نویسنده: الکساندر پوشکین؛ مترجم منوچهر وثوقی نیا؛ تهران، گوتنبرگ، 1348، چاپ دوم 1357؛ در434ص؛ موضوع: داستانهای نویسندگان روسیه - سده 19م
شاهکاری شورانگیز، از «پوشکین» شاعر نابغه ی نیمه ی نخست سده نوزدهم میلادی سبک رومانتیک روسیه بودند، و هستند؛ قلم سحرانگیز پوشکین، در خوانشگر هماره اثری شگرف بر جای میگذارد
در «یوگنی آنگین»، از غم معشوق (تاتیانا)، و خودبینی شبه عاشقانه، پرده برمیدارد، و «یوگنی آنگین» که پس از درگذشت عمویش، به مال و منال فراوان رسیده، و با سنّتهای اشرافی روس، بزرگ شده، برای فرار از روزمرّگیهای زندگی، به روستای دور افتاده ای میرود، و آنجا به دختر زیبایی به نام «تاتیانا»، بر میخورد.؛ «تاتیانا» خواهرزن دوست شاعرش «ولادیمیر لنسکی»، بود...؛
نگاره های «پوشکین» برای این کتاب چنین آغاز میشود: (فکر من برای سرگرمی جامعه متکبر اشراف نیست، به خاطر علاقه ای ست، که به محبت دوستانه پیدا کرده ام؛ پس کنون میخواهم ارمغان شایسته تری، که شایسته ی روح عالی باشد، روح عالی که مملو از آرزوهای مقدس، فکر بلند و بی آلایش، عوالم زنده و روشن شاعرانه است، تقدیم تو کنم
هرچه باداباد - با دست ملتهب و خواستار، این مجموعه ای از فصول رنگارنگ را، بپذیر، مجموعه ای مضحک و تقریبا تاثرآور، عامیانه، ممتاز و ایده آل، ثمرات ناقابل تفنن، بیخوابیها، الهامات سبک ایام نارسی و جوانی، و پیری و پژمردگی من، بررسیها و مشهودات عاری از احساسات عقل، و هیجانات و تاثرات تلخ دل و جان
سپس فصل نخست
هم در زیستن عجله دارد و هم در احساس، شتاب عموی من قوانین قابل احترامی داشت و ...)؛ پایان نقل
اگر هنوز این کتاب را نخوانده اید، خوانش کتاب را بیش از یکبار سفارش و پیشنهاد میکنم، تا لبخند نیز، همچون بهار، هماره بر لبتان شکوفه بیاراید؛
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 09/08/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 15/07/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
Eugene Onegin is a novel in verse written by Alexander Pushkin. Onegin is considered a classic of Russian literature, and its eponymous protagonist has served as the model for a number of Russian literary heroes (so-called superfluous men). It was published in serial form between 1825 and 1832. The first complete edition was published in 1833, and the currently accepted version is based on the 1837 publication.
In the 1820's, Eugene Onegin is a bored St. Petersburg dandy, whose life consists of balls, concerts, parties, and nothing more.
Upon the death of a wealthy uncle, he inherits a substantial fortune and a landed estate. When he moves to the country, he strikes up a friendship with his neighbor, a starry-eyed young poet named Vladimir Lensky.
Lensky takes Onegin to dine with the family of his fiancée, the sociable but rather thoughtless Olga Larina. At this meeting, he also catches a glimpse of Olga's sister Tatyana.
A quiet, precocious romantic, and the exact opposite of Olga, Tatyana becomes intensely drawn to Onegin. Soon after, she bares her soul to Onegin in a letter professing her love.
Contrary to her expectations, Onegin does not write back. When they meet in person, he rejects her advances politely but dismissively and condescendingly.
This famous speech is often referred to as Onegin's Sermon: he admits that the letter was touching, but says that he would quickly grow bored with marriage and can only offer Tatyana friendship; he coldly advises more emotional control in the future, lest another man take advantage of her innocence.
Later, Lensky mischievously invites Onegin to Tatyana's name day celebration, promising a small gathering with just Tatyana, Olga, and their parents.
When Onegin arrives, he finds instead a boisterous country ball, a rural parody of and contrast to the society balls of St. Petersburg of which he has grown tired.
Onegin is irritated with the guests who gossip about him and Tatyana, and with Lensky for persuading him to come.
He decides to avenge himself by dancing and flirting with Olga. Olga is insensitive to her fiancé and apparently attracted to Onegin.
Earnest and inexperienced, Lensky is wounded to the core and challenges Onegin to fight a duel; Onegin reluctantly accepts, feeling compelled by social convention. During the duel, Onegin unwillingly kills Lensky.
Afterwards, he quits his country estate, traveling abroad to deaden his feelings of remorse. Tatyana visits Onegin's mansion, where she looks through his books and his notes in the margins, and begins to question whether Onegin's character is merely a collage of different literary heroes, and if there is, in fact, no "real Onegin".
Tatyana, still brokenhearted by the loss of Onegin, is convinced by her parents to live with her aunt in Moscow in order to find a suitor. Several years pass, and the scene shifts to St. Petersburg. Onegin has come to attend the most prominent balls and interact with the leaders of old Russian society.
He sees the most beautiful woman, who captures the attention of all and is central to society's whirl, and he realizes that it is the same Tatyana whose love he had once spurned. Now she is married to an aged prince (a general).
Upon seeing Tatyana again, he becomes obsessed with winning her affection, despite the fact that she is married. However, his attempts are rebuffed.
He writes her several letters, but receives no reply. Eventually Onegin manages to see Tatyana and offers her the opportunity to finally elope after they have become reacquainted.
She recalls the days when they might have been happy, but concludes that that time has passed. Onegin repeats his love for her.
Faltering for a moment, she admits that she still loves him, but she will not allow him to ruin her and declares her determination to remain faithful to her husband. She leaves him regretting his bitter destiny.
تاریخ نخستین خوانش روز بیست و ششم دسامبر سال 1970میلادی
عنوان: یِوگِنی آنِه گین - اوژن اونه گین؛ نویسنده: الکساندر پوشکین؛ مترجم منوچهر وثوقی نیا؛ تهران، گوتنبرگ، 1348، چاپ دوم 1357؛ در434ص؛ موضوع: داستانهای نویسندگان روسیه - سده 19م
شاهکاری شورانگیز، از «پوشکین» شاعر نابغه ی نیمه ی نخست سده نوزدهم میلادی سبک رومانتیک روسیه بودند، و هستند؛ قلم سحرانگیز پوشکین، در خوانشگر هماره اثری شگرف بر جای میگذارد
در «یوگنی آنگین»، از غم معشوق (تاتیانا)، و خودبینی شبه عاشقانه، پرده برمیدارد، و «یوگنی آنگین» که پس از درگذشت عمویش، به مال و منال فراوان رسیده، و با سنّتهای اشرافی روس، بزرگ شده، برای فرار از روزمرّگیهای زندگی، به روستای دور افتاده ای میرود، و آنجا به دختر زیبایی به نام «تاتیانا»، بر میخورد.؛ «تاتیانا» خواهرزن دوست شاعرش «ولادیمیر لنسکی»، بود...؛
نگاره های «پوشکین» برای این کتاب چنین آغاز میشود: (فکر من برای سرگرمی جامعه متکبر اشراف نیست، به خاطر علاقه ای ست، که به محبت دوستانه پیدا کرده ام؛ پس کنون میخواهم ارمغان شایسته تری، که شایسته ی روح عالی باشد، روح عالی که مملو از آرزوهای مقدس، فکر بلند و بی آلایش، عوالم زنده و روشن شاعرانه است، تقدیم تو کنم
هرچه باداباد - با دست ملتهب و خواستار، این مجموعه ای از فصول رنگارنگ را، بپذیر، مجموعه ای مضحک و تقریبا تاثرآور، عامیانه، ممتاز و ایده آل، ثمرات ناقابل تفنن، بیخوابیها، الهامات سبک ایام نارسی و جوانی، و پیری و پژمردگی من، بررسیها و مشهودات عاری از احساسات عقل، و هیجانات و تاثرات تلخ دل و جان
سپس فصل نخست
هم در زیستن عجله دارد و هم در احساس، شتاب عموی من قوانین قابل احترامی داشت و ...)؛ پایان نقل
اگر هنوز این کتاب را نخوانده اید، خوانش کتاب را بیش از یکبار سفارش و پیشنهاد میکنم، تا لبخند نیز، همچون بهار، هماره بر لبتان شکوفه بیاراید؛
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 09/08/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 15/07/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
June 30, 2021
And then, from all a heart finds tender
I tore my own; an alien soul,
Without allegiances, I vanished,
Thinking that liberty and peace
Could take the place of happiness.
My God, how wrong, how I’ve been punished!
- Alexander Pushkin, Chapter VIII
Contradictions. We are made of dreams and contradictions. We want something and after getting it, we don't want it anymore. But there's an even more bitter reality: we often want what we can't have. We compare our lives with the lives of the characters we love, and we long for that. The literary universe created by another human being fits our desires. The real world doesn't. And there's nothing we can do about that. The more we spend our time yearning for a fictional life, the more we lose our own.
I always enjoy reading about marvellous cities and great people I'll never meet; I usually find them more interesting than people I've actually met. But I should set boundaries. I don't want to miss getting to know wonderful people in real life—they certainly exist somewhere—for a life full of fiction. The world of books is a rewarding one that I'll never leave behind; however, the world I see out there is the only one I can fully experience, inhabited by people who can indeed answer my questions, soothe pain and be happy because of my own happiness.
This is a book where real life and fiction are too close to distinguish one from the other. This novel in verse tells the story of Eugene Onegin, a man who doesn't seem to be quite excited about taking care of his dying uncle.
But, oh my God, what desolation
To tend a sick man day and night
And not to venture from his sight!
What shameful cunning to be cheerful
With someone who is halfway dead,
To prop up pillows by his head,
To bring him medicine, looking tearful,
To sigh – while inwardly you think:
When will the devil let him sink?
(Chapter I, Stanza I)
Through Pushkin's witty and ironic writing, we learn that Eugene is not exactly a person full of integrity and generosity. Following the death of his uncle, he inherited his land and moved to the country.
Eugene is portrayed as a dandy: perfect hair and clothes, fond of dances and everything that characterized high society. A young man with charm and mind... A pedant, yet an able lad. In conclusion, an arrogant fool. There's a clear difference between Pushkin's words and mine and that leads me to my next point.
I always say I prefer writing over plot. I can deal with an undemanding storyline if it's wonderfully written. And this book is a fine example of that. The plot is quite simple (therefore, I shouldn't talk about it if I want to avoid spoilers); it's all about Pushkin's talent: his beautiful writing which can mesmerize even the most impassive human being on Earth. However, do not get the wrong idea. The plot may be simple, but the author managed to deal—in few pages—with both sublime and debased aspects of human nature. In this book, I found: an arrogant and shallow protagonist, a strong female character that loved to read, an interesting twist, numerous references to other authors and books (literary anxiety levels are increasing rapidly), a complex ending and Pushkin's superb writing style and clever insights. I can't ask for anything more. I loved this book.
I recommend this edition. I've always been fascinated with the translation process. One's subjectivity can create an entirely different work. Between respecting the structure and preserving the actual meaning the author intended to convey... rough work. I read Spalding's translation, and—in my opinion—this one is by far more superior. Both kept a correct rhyming, but Mitchell's flows like water, having lost all archaisms. Moreover, his notes are rather helpful. By the way, Nabokov's translation is coming soon. And then, I shall meet Mr Arndt. I can't imagine what reading Pushkin's poetry in the original language must be like.
Pushkin's words should end this review—beautiful words that irradiate hope. Because that's the thing about Pushkin: regardless of how unpleasant a situation may be or the pain a character may be going through, I can always find hope in his words.
Whatever, reader, your opinion,
A friend or foe, I wish to part
With you today like a companion.
Farewell. Whatever you may chart
Among these careless lines, reflections –
Whether tumultuous recollections
Or light relief from labour’s yoke,
The lively image, witty joke
Or the mistakes I’ve made in grammar –
God grant you find here just a grain
To warm the heart, to entertain,
To feed a dream, and cause a clamour
With journals and their clientele,
Upon which, let us part, farewell!
(Chapter VIII, Stanza 49)
March 24, 14-June 30, 21
* Later on my blog.
March 3, 2024
Pushkin es un fenómeno extraordinario, tal vez un fenómeno único del alma rusa, tal como lo expresó Gógol... Pushkin aparece precisamente en el despertar de nuestra autoconciencia...y, en este sentido es un guía y un profeta." Fiódor Dostoievski
Me encanta este libro. Alexandr Pushkin, como dice el genial escritor ruso supo entender como nadie la idiosincrasia del pueblo ruso y recomiendo fuertemente leer el “Discurso sobre Pushkin”, que Dostoievski pronunciara el 8 de junio de 1880 ante la "Sociedad de amigos de la Literatura Rusa" pocos meses antes de su muerte.
Es la manera de entender todo lo que Pushkin le dio a Rusia, sobre todo acerca de la importancia que este autor le dio a las Letras rusas durante el siglo XIX. En los siglos XVII y XVIII la literatura rusa estaba recién en formación y más allá de los esfuerzos de autores como Gavrila Derzhavin, Nikolái Karamzín, Iván Krylov o Denís Fonvizin quienes pudieron sentar algunas bases literarias importantes, fue recién a través del aire renovador de Pushkin -Gógol fue el otro gran pionero, aunque provenía de Ucrania-, que Rusia comienza a ser considerada una nación de letras fuertes, algo que finalmente iba a tener su despegue final con grandes como el mismo Dostoievski, Nikólai Gógol (ya nombrado), Lev Tolstói, Iván Turguéniev, Iván Gonchárov, y posteriormente Antón Chéjov, Máxim Gorki y Mijaíl Bugákov, sólo por nombrar a los más ilustres.
La aparición de Pushkin en las letras no puede ser más exacta. Y logra definir claramente el concepto de Rusia como nación y de dar a conocer a Europa las características más emblemáticas del hombre ruso.
La gran mayoría de sus novelas y cuentos dan prueba de ello: "Dubrovsky", "La hija del Capitán", "Boris Godunov" y "Los Cuentos del difunto Iván Petróvich Belkin. En estas narraciones logra retratar las distintas capas sociales de la Rusia de su época, algo que también desarrollarían en profundidad Gógol y Dostoievski.
Respecto a Eugenio Onieguin, el hecho en que esté narrado en verso con un vuelo poético tan elevado hace que mi admiración por Pushkin equipare a la que le tenía el mismísimo Dostoievski, quien lo consideró "el primero de los hombres rusos". Los versos de Pushkin adquieren brillo sin necesidad de utilizar retruécanos superfluos y la manera en que el narrador (que es él mismo, aportando muchos pensamientos y verdades de su propia vida) se aleja de la acción para narrarla sin obstaculiar la historia, le da a este pequeño libro un brillo especial.
Casualmente tanto en la poesía como en la prosa Pushkin utilizaba las palabras justas. A veces menos también es más para que las palabras lleguen al corazón. Pushkin fue el más romántico de los rusos, y esto se percibe claramente en la novela con los continuos estados de ánimo de los personajes -especialmente del príncipe Lenski y de Tatiana, no tanto de Olga y recién al final de la novela, de Eugenio Onieguin.
El Romanticismo, ese género tan apasionado, es reflejado por Pushkin a través de los autores del movimiento que tanto admiraba, como Schiller, Goethe (los impulsores del "Sturm und Drang" que disparó al Romanticismo), René de Chateaubriand y especialmente Lord Byron, el escritor preferido y una tanto imitado de Pushkin. Si hasta dice en un momento de la novela que un cuadro del mítico poeta inglés cuelga de una pared.
La historia entre Eugenio Onieguin y Tatiana tiene todos los ribetes necesarios para que el lector se entere de las pasiones desenfrenadas a las que son sometidas este tipo de personajes, pero a la vez narradas de manera genial, poética, apasionada, como sólo Pushkin podía hacerlo.
Creo que es Lenski el más romántico de todos los personajes, mientras que Onieguin y Tatiana sufren altibajos emocionales, producto de tanta ebullición sentimental. De todos modos, considero a Tatiana, más romántica que la sufrida Emma Bovary, otra famosa romántica que para variar, vive en un mundo completamente realista.
Otro punto a destacar es la notable similitud entre Eugenio Onieguin y Alexandr Pushkin, lo que demuestra las convicciones e ideales románticas del escritor ruso y el tema del duelo entre Onieguin con el Príncipe Lenski es realmente profético, pero con resultados disímiles entre ficción y realidad: en el caso de Onieguin, lo llevará a un estado de conmoción para el resto de la novela, pero casualmente, es ficción.
A Pushkin le fue peor. Casado con una hermosa mujer, Natalia Goncharova, sufrió conscientemente el acoso de un francés desertor, el capitán Georges d'Anthès sobre su esposa a quien cortejaba (incluso se caso con la hermana de Natalia).
Como mandaban los códigos de su época, Pushkin, cansado de la situación lo retó a duelo, pero d'Anthès disparó primero.
Sin saberlo y con ese disparo, d'Anthès envió a Pushkin a una inmediata inmortalidad transformándolo en el Padre de las letras rusas y en uno de los más aclamados escritores que nos legó el siglo XIX.
Me encanta este libro. Alexandr Pushkin, como dice el genial escritor ruso supo entender como nadie la idiosincrasia del pueblo ruso y recomiendo fuertemente leer el “Discurso sobre Pushkin”, que Dostoievski pronunciara el 8 de junio de 1880 ante la "Sociedad de amigos de la Literatura Rusa" pocos meses antes de su muerte.
Es la manera de entender todo lo que Pushkin le dio a Rusia, sobre todo acerca de la importancia que este autor le dio a las Letras rusas durante el siglo XIX. En los siglos XVII y XVIII la literatura rusa estaba recién en formación y más allá de los esfuerzos de autores como Gavrila Derzhavin, Nikolái Karamzín, Iván Krylov o Denís Fonvizin quienes pudieron sentar algunas bases literarias importantes, fue recién a través del aire renovador de Pushkin -Gógol fue el otro gran pionero, aunque provenía de Ucrania-, que Rusia comienza a ser considerada una nación de letras fuertes, algo que finalmente iba a tener su despegue final con grandes como el mismo Dostoievski, Nikólai Gógol (ya nombrado), Lev Tolstói, Iván Turguéniev, Iván Gonchárov, y posteriormente Antón Chéjov, Máxim Gorki y Mijaíl Bugákov, sólo por nombrar a los más ilustres.
La aparición de Pushkin en las letras no puede ser más exacta. Y logra definir claramente el concepto de Rusia como nación y de dar a conocer a Europa las características más emblemáticas del hombre ruso.
La gran mayoría de sus novelas y cuentos dan prueba de ello: "Dubrovsky", "La hija del Capitán", "Boris Godunov" y "Los Cuentos del difunto Iván Petróvich Belkin. En estas narraciones logra retratar las distintas capas sociales de la Rusia de su época, algo que también desarrollarían en profundidad Gógol y Dostoievski.
Respecto a Eugenio Onieguin, el hecho en que esté narrado en verso con un vuelo poético tan elevado hace que mi admiración por Pushkin equipare a la que le tenía el mismísimo Dostoievski, quien lo consideró "el primero de los hombres rusos". Los versos de Pushkin adquieren brillo sin necesidad de utilizar retruécanos superfluos y la manera en que el narrador (que es él mismo, aportando muchos pensamientos y verdades de su propia vida) se aleja de la acción para narrarla sin obstaculiar la historia, le da a este pequeño libro un brillo especial.
Casualmente tanto en la poesía como en la prosa Pushkin utilizaba las palabras justas. A veces menos también es más para que las palabras lleguen al corazón. Pushkin fue el más romántico de los rusos, y esto se percibe claramente en la novela con los continuos estados de ánimo de los personajes -especialmente del príncipe Lenski y de Tatiana, no tanto de Olga y recién al final de la novela, de Eugenio Onieguin.
El Romanticismo, ese género tan apasionado, es reflejado por Pushkin a través de los autores del movimiento que tanto admiraba, como Schiller, Goethe (los impulsores del "Sturm und Drang" que disparó al Romanticismo), René de Chateaubriand y especialmente Lord Byron, el escritor preferido y una tanto imitado de Pushkin. Si hasta dice en un momento de la novela que un cuadro del mítico poeta inglés cuelga de una pared.
La historia entre Eugenio Onieguin y Tatiana tiene todos los ribetes necesarios para que el lector se entere de las pasiones desenfrenadas a las que son sometidas este tipo de personajes, pero a la vez narradas de manera genial, poética, apasionada, como sólo Pushkin podía hacerlo.
Creo que es Lenski el más romántico de todos los personajes, mientras que Onieguin y Tatiana sufren altibajos emocionales, producto de tanta ebullición sentimental. De todos modos, considero a Tatiana, más romántica que la sufrida Emma Bovary, otra famosa romántica que para variar, vive en un mundo completamente realista.
Otro punto a destacar es la notable similitud entre Eugenio Onieguin y Alexandr Pushkin, lo que demuestra las convicciones e ideales románticas del escritor ruso y el tema del duelo entre Onieguin con el Príncipe Lenski es realmente profético, pero con resultados disímiles entre ficción y realidad: en el caso de Onieguin, lo llevará a un estado de conmoción para el resto de la novela, pero casualmente, es ficción.
A Pushkin le fue peor. Casado con una hermosa mujer, Natalia Goncharova, sufrió conscientemente el acoso de un francés desertor, el capitán Georges d'Anthès sobre su esposa a quien cortejaba (incluso se caso con la hermana de Natalia).
Como mandaban los códigos de su época, Pushkin, cansado de la situación lo retó a duelo, pero d'Anthès disparó primero.
Sin saberlo y con ese disparo, d'Anthès envió a Pushkin a una inmediata inmortalidad transformándolo en el Padre de las letras rusas y en uno de los más aclamados escritores que nos legó el siglo XIX.
January 2, 2015
This foundation stone of Russian literature is a smashing, lilting read - and it's only 200 pages to boot, so it's less of a commitment than all those later Russians who thought editing was for assholes.
It's a "novel in verse," which means epic poem, wtf, in iambic tetrameter. It's organized in stanzas that are almost sonnets, but far enough off to kindof fuck with your head, or mine anyway. The scheme is abab, ccdd, effe, gg, so he's switching it up in each quatrain, which leaves me constantly off-balance. But in a good way! Tetrameter has a dangerous tendency to sound sing-songy to me, and this helps counterbalance that somehow.
It also makes a tough challenge for a translator, and for a long time Onegin was considered untranslatable. Stanley Mitchell has done what feels like an admirable job; I'm sure if I knew Russian I'd say he brutalized it, but one takes what one can get and this version felt readable and elegant. He's no Mos Def, but he's pretty good with the rhymes.
The story ends abruptly at Chapter VIII; Pushkin had to do some last-minute rearranging, by which I mean burning most of a chapter that was critical of the government, which really throws the pace off there. The version I have includes some fragments after VIII - stuff that survived the flames for whatever reason - but it's really not enough to be more than a curiosity.
Tolstoy called this the major influence for Anna Karenina, and you can see it. He kinda took this story and said what if, at a crucial moment, things had gone differently? (The point I'm thinking of, if you're interested, is the duel. ) So if you read these two together it's basically like a really long Choose Your Own Adventure with only one choice. Rad!
And as an added bonus, Pushkin includes what I'm cheerfully going to assume is the most beautiful ode to foot fetishes ever written. It's five stanzas long, so that's 70 lines of foot fetishing, including hits like this:
I used to know a dude like that. His nickname was seriously "Sniffer."
Anyway, but in case you're not Sniffer, here's a stanza that's not about feet, so you can get a feel for how good this shit is:
Frankly, even if it does we're probably not friends. But we could be, if you want.
It's a "novel in verse," which means epic poem, wtf, in iambic tetrameter. It's organized in stanzas that are almost sonnets, but far enough off to kindof fuck with your head, or mine anyway. The scheme is abab, ccdd, effe, gg, so he's switching it up in each quatrain, which leaves me constantly off-balance. But in a good way! Tetrameter has a dangerous tendency to sound sing-songy to me, and this helps counterbalance that somehow.
It also makes a tough challenge for a translator, and for a long time Onegin was considered untranslatable. Stanley Mitchell has done what feels like an admirable job; I'm sure if I knew Russian I'd say he brutalized it, but one takes what one can get and this version felt readable and elegant. He's no Mos Def, but he's pretty good with the rhymes.
The story ends abruptly at Chapter VIII; Pushkin had to do some last-minute rearranging, by which I mean burning most of a chapter that was critical of the government, which really throws the pace off there. The version I have includes some fragments after VIII - stuff that survived the flames for whatever reason - but it's really not enough to be more than a curiosity.
Tolstoy called this the major influence for Anna Karenina, and you can see it. He kinda took this story and said what if, at a crucial moment, things had gone differently? (The point I'm thinking of, if you're interested, is the duel. ) So if you read these two together it's basically like a really long Choose Your Own Adventure with only one choice. Rad!
And as an added bonus, Pushkin includes what I'm cheerfully going to assume is the most beautiful ode to foot fetishes ever written. It's five stanzas long, so that's 70 lines of foot fetishing, including hits like this:
Once by the sea, a storm impending,Almost makes you wish had a foot fetish so you could really get into that bit.
I recollect my envy of
The waves, successively descending,,
Collapsing at her feet with love.
Oh how I wished to join their races
And catch her feet in my embraces!
1.32
I used to know a dude like that. His nickname was seriously "Sniffer."
Anyway, but in case you're not Sniffer, here's a stanza that's not about feet, so you can get a feel for how good this shit is:
Let me glance back. Farewell, you arboursRight? And if that doesn't kick your ass, you're no friend of mine.
Where, in the backwoods, I recall
Days filled with indolence and ardours
And dreaming of a pensive soul.
And you, my youthful inspiration,
Keep stirring my imagination,
My heart's inertia vivify,
More often to my corner fly.
Let not a poet's soul be frozen,
Made rough and hard, reduced to bone
And finally be turned to stone
In that benumbing world he goes in,
In that intoxicating slough
Where, friends, we bathe together now.
VI.46
Frankly, even if it does we're probably not friends. But we could be, if you want.
Read
November 12, 2016Umbert Eco once wrote that "Translation is the art of failure" and your opinion of this work is likely to be decided by the translation that you read.
Pushkin wrote Onegin in Alexandrines which have twelve syllable lines with an end rhyme. This works well in Russian, it feels fairly easy even natural achieving a light and classical tone. The Johnson translation that works so hard to achieve this in English has for me a trite and bouncy tone that detracts from the work rather than supporting it. But there is more than one translation available so you pay your money and make your choice.
The poem has a lot to offer. Onegin is the prototype of the superfluous man who was to have a long history in Russian history. He could have been a Byronic figure - but isn't, although that may be part of his appeal when Tatiana, who is a very literary heroine, first sees him.
The symmetry of its simple 'man rejects woman, woman then rejects man' plot interrupted by a 'man kills friend in duel' incident allowed Pushkin opportunity to look at values embodied in literature and the contrast between the city and the countryside which represent contrasting ways of life with alternate value codes and modes of appropriate behaviour.
It is a text that is open to a range of readings as Tchaikovsky's later syrupy opera shows, yet always has something new to offer.
The problem is rendering it into English. If you want to enjoy Onegin then possibly learning Russian is the only way to do it. Pushkin dominates the beginnings of modern Russian literature, his huge popularity meant that much of the rest of literary life in nineteenth century Russia is in response to the models he established, the stories that he told and his use of Russian. While the prose offers it's own challenges to the translator it gives more of a sense in English of Pushkin's lasting influence, skill and subtly than the poetry.
Pushkin wrote Onegin in Alexandrines which have twelve syllable lines with an end rhyme. This works well in Russian, it feels fairly easy even natural achieving a light and classical tone. The Johnson translation that works so hard to achieve this in English has for me a trite and bouncy tone that detracts from the work rather than supporting it. But there is more than one translation available so you pay your money and make your choice.
The poem has a lot to offer. Onegin is the prototype of the superfluous man who was to have a long history in Russian history. He could have been a Byronic figure - but isn't, although that may be part of his appeal when Tatiana, who is a very literary heroine, first sees him.
The symmetry of its simple 'man rejects woman, woman then rejects man' plot interrupted by a 'man kills friend in duel' incident allowed Pushkin opportunity to look at values embodied in literature and the contrast between the city and the countryside which represent contrasting ways of life with alternate value codes and modes of appropriate behaviour.
It is a text that is open to a range of readings as Tchaikovsky's later syrupy opera shows, yet always has something new to offer.
The problem is rendering it into English. If you want to enjoy Onegin then possibly learning Russian is the only way to do it. Pushkin dominates the beginnings of modern Russian literature, his huge popularity meant that much of the rest of literary life in nineteenth century Russia is in response to the models he established, the stories that he told and his use of Russian. While the prose offers it's own challenges to the translator it gives more of a sense in English of Pushkin's lasting influence, skill and subtly than the poetry.
September 5, 2022
Interesting story about how nothing good comes from playing a role in high society; made me think of an earlier Russian Edith Wharton. I enjoyed all the allusions to different literature and the suggestion that Eugene Onegin, as we saw him, was not even a real person, but a collection of inspirations taken from different characters and novels.
I have no original to compare it to, but I thought this translation was astounding. Possibly the best I've ever read. I'm not sure how Johnston managed to make this rhyme in English, make it beautiful, and make the language seem realistically early nineteenth century. Had I not known better, I would never have guessed this was originally written in Russian.
I have no original to compare it to, but I thought this translation was astounding. Possibly the best I've ever read. I'm not sure how Johnston managed to make this rhyme in English, make it beautiful, and make the language seem realistically early nineteenth century. Had I not known better, I would never have guessed this was originally written in Russian.
July 13, 2020
I finally read this marvel of a novel (poem?). Inevitably I have felt for a long time daunted by the stature of the work but now, after finishing it, I feel both still daunted and surprised because it was a much easier read than I had expected.
While reading it, the Onegin story rarely jumped at me. This very simple story, which I knew beforehand, kept receding into the background behind the text. Instead it was as if I were sitting with the Author, who kept changing chairs with a masked Narrator and to whose musings I listened eagerly. Luckily my edition provided excellent notes that clarified many of the references. Some were very specific to the Russia of the time, or to specific writers that now would be known only to specialists. But others elucidated aspects, such as the very many literary puns and parodies and ironic verses that could not touch my literary sensibility as it would have done to Pushkin’s contemporaries – and for these I was sorry I was not naturally/culturally equipped. The pastiches on neoclassical strophes, and the satirical references to the fresher romanticism just cannot have the same effect to a 21st century reader as the writer would have desired. And yet, in spite of the complex literary texture of the poem that was relayed to me indirectly, I highly enjoyed the open and candid tone of the narrator tremendously, and particularly, as said earlier, the very particular rapport the author establishes with his reader.
As with the other two works by Pushkin, Ruslan and Ludmila and Boris Godounov, I read this while watching their operatic versions (more than a hundred operas have been composed based on his writings – three by Tchaikovsky). And it is somewhat paradoxical that given that the plot is the least striking aspect of the poem, it should be the story what has invited an operatic rendition.
Tchaikovsky was born in 1840, that is three years after the death of Pushkin, and composed this opera in 1879, roughly half a century after the novel was published in complete form. The composer was directly involved in the libretto which meant that Pushkin’s exact lines were respected as much as possible. Striking is also that Tchaikovsky composed this with the specific intention that it should not be performed by professionals. He was seeking a freshness that in his view seasoned singers could not provide (may be the fact that Wagner’s Ring had just been premiered could have felt slightly intimidating leading Tchaikovsky to play in a different league). Another striking feature is that Tchaikovsky has Eugene sang by a baritone voice while the tenor is the unfortunate Lensky. The composer also omits Eugene’s Letter in his version. And talking about letters, it can only be perceived as uncanny that Tchaikovsky finished the opera at around the time when he met and quickly married Antonina Miliukova, who had addressed him a similar passionate letter as young Tatiana had sent Onegin.
I watched two versions of the opera – both produced by the Met. One with Renée Fleming and the my preferred one with Anna Netrebko . I wonder what Tchaikovsky would have thought of his young Tatiana being impersonated by such seasoned sopranos. I was delighted.
To return to the text, my edition is bilingual with the Spanish also rendered in verse. It also includes a fascinating Note on the Translation by Mijail Chílikov. Apart from explaining the difficulties of rendering the rhymes of an ‘analytical’ language to a ‘synthetic’ one, which means that the former relies on a complex flexing system for its syntax versus the reliance on a plethora of articles, prepositions and other particles of the latter (which mess up the syllable count), Chílikov also explained the structure of Pushkin’s strophes with the alternating male/female rhymes and the rhythm of the tonics. And this made me think that there must have been a musical reason and a framework basis for Tchaikovsky’s wish to keep Pushkin’s text as it was, that it went well beyond a general respect for the great literary figure. So, it is not just the plot that links these two works.
There is also the musicality of the inner structure.
May 1, 2022
Couple of decades ago I used to carry in my mind lots of questions, methinks hard to answer, but in truth all of them were less simple to clarify than one might expected. Circumstances entangled in such a joyful manner to transport me precisely in a place (an education institute) that is proudly bearing the name of Russians’ greatest poet.
I arrived at destination and immediately our professors aimed to verify our level of ‘culture’ :D It started with what is ‘Eugene Onegin’? Then who is Eugene Onegin? What did Eugene Onegin? and so on and so forth. I candidly confessed that I was partially (it's always braver to admit being wholly) an ignoramus on the subject, but I felt that the Russian teachers were actually glad to be given the opportunity to share their immense love, deep feelings, complex ideas and reflections on this unique “novel in verse”. So, then it started flowing an outpouring so grand, both in words and emotions, that even today I still remember it very warmly. That’s the kind of memories that will never vanish despite time eating out everything.
The paradox is that I have been told so many details and interesting information that I told myself that what is the point of reading it now. Well, I mean back then. I was already stuffed with the story, within and without. There was nothing new for me to discover or delve on. SO, that was how I thought in the past and, of course, a youth always speaks in these terms. Ha. Now I don’t think the same. Thank God! I would have missed reading a wonderful, brilliant, ‘word music’ work.
It’s true. This excellence and perfectness are only accessible in Pushkin’s Russian original. To reproduce it in a foreign language is simply impossible, and any attempt to translate Pushkin’s words into an English verse form not only fails to recapture the word music, but inevitably it distorts the transmission of the work as a whole.
I understand today that the story of the ‘novel’ – which is certainly a very sad, sorry story – can offer alternative interpretations, and it depends entirely on the point from where each reader decides to start the journey. In my case, I feel it is so very personal, so no chance to remove out my own, biased judgements. That is to say, I am myself both Onegin and Tatyana, twenty years back, but also the same two main characters, twenty years later, with a different representation of their psychological development. To me it is a novel that depicts the human behaviour, as it was in the early 1820s, but a behaviour that is very much credible today, of course with allowance for changing circumstances.
Moreover, the story has a striking simplicity and balance. A girl meets a man, falls in love, writes him a letter, and is rejected. A stupid quarrel and a duel, ended with a killing, drive them apart. Several years later, the same man meets the same woman; he falls in love, writes her a letter declaring his kindled love, and is rejected. All the rest - that is absolutely worth while - is to be found by reading yourself the ‘novel’.
I got so deeply immersed into the story that I stayed focused on the English translation chiefly. However, I aim to go back and re-read it, as per original Russian text, as a whole, not just a little bit here and there, as I have done now. Oddly enough, I feel it is a task imperiously required at my hands, as I believe I yielded the present happiness of the read to the power of the English text, which allowed me a too fast delivery. It crossed my mind that I was slightly cheating on myself :) So to correct my inconsistency, or profanity – which I mourn as a weakness of human nature – I wisely concluded to give myself a new chance.
I have copy-paste here the two letters as found in the eBook, which I have not read it otherwise. But I liked, better actually, the two ones from the paperback. So, these will be ‘typed’ additionally, so to complete my happiness :)
*** Tatyana’s Letter to Onegin (eBook)
I write to you! Is more required?
Can lower depths beyond remain?
’Tis in your power now, if desired,
To crush me with a just disdain.
But if my lot unfortunate
You in the least commiserate
You will not all abandon me.
At first, I clung to secrecy:
Believe me, of my present shame
You never would have heard the name,
If the fond hope I could have fanned
At times, if only once a week,
To see you by our fireside stand,
To listen to the words you speak,
Address to you one single phrase
And then to meditate for days
Of one thing till again we met.
’Tis said you are a misanthrope,
In country solitude you mope,
And we—an unattractive set—
Can hearty welcome give alone.
Why did you visit our poor place?
Forgotten in the village lone,
I never should have seen your face
And bitter torment never known.
The untutored spirit’s pangs calmed down
By time (who can anticipate?)
I had found my predestinate,
Become a faithful wife and e’en
A fond and careful mother been.
Another! to none other I
My heart’s allegiance can resign,
My doom has been pronounced on high,
’Tis Heaven’s will and I am thine.
The sum of my existence gone
But promise of our meeting gave,
I feel thou wast by God sent down
My guardian angel to the grave.
Thou didst to me in dreams appear,
Unseen thou wast already dear.
Thine eye subdued me with strange glance,
I heard thy voice’s resonance
Long ago. Dream it cannot be!
Scarce hadst thou entered thee I knew,
I flushed up, stupefied I grew,
And cried within myself: ’tis he!
Is it not truth? in tones suppressed
With thee I conversed when I bore
Comfort and succour to the poor,
And when I prayer to Heaven addressed
To ease the anguish of my breast.
Nay! even as this instant fled,
Was it not thou, O vision bright,
That glimmered through the radiant night
And gently hovered o’er my head?
Was it not thou who thus didst stoop
To whisper comfort, love and hope?
Who art thou? Guardian angel sent
Or torturer malevolent?
Doubt and uncertainty decide:
All this may be an empty dream,
Delusions of a mind untried,
Providence otherwise may deem—
Then be it so! My destiny
From henceforth I confide to thee!
Lo! at thy feet my tears I pour
And thy protection I implore.
Imagine! Here alone am I!
No one my anguish comprehends,
At times my reason almost bends,
And silently I here must die—
But I await thee: scarce alive
My heart with but one look revive;
Or to disturb my dreams approach
Alas! with merited reproach.
’Tis finished. Horrible to read!
With shame I shudder and with dread—
But boldly I myself resign:
Thine honour is my countersign!
*** Onegin’s Letter to Tatyana (eBook)
All is foreseen. My secret drear
Will sound an insult in your ear.
What acrimonious scorn I trace
Depicted on your haughty face!
What do I ask? What cause assigned
That I to you reveal my mind?
To what malicious merriment,
It may be, I yield nutriment!
Meeting you in times past by chance,
Warmth I imagined in your glance,
But, knowing not the actual truth,
Restrained the impulses of youth;
Also my wretched liberty
I would not part with finally;
This separated us as well—
Lenski, unhappy victim, fell,
From everything the heart held dear
I then resolved my heart to tear;
Unknown to all, without a tie,
I thought—retirement, liberty,
Will happiness replace. My God!
How I have erred and felt the rod!
No, ever to behold your face,
To follow you in every place,
Your smiling lips, your beaming eyes,
To watch with lovers’ ecstasies,
Long listen, comprehend the whole
Of your perfections in my soul,
Before you agonized to die—
This, this were true felicity!
But such is not for me. I brood
Daily of love in solitude.
My days of life approach their end,
Yet I in idleness expend
The remnant destiny concedes,
And thus each stubbornly proceeds.
I feel, allotted is my span;
But, that life longer may remain,
At morn I must assuredly
Know that thy face that day I see.
I tremble lest my humble prayer
You with stern countenance declare
The artifice of villany—
I hear your harsh, reproachful cry.
If ye but knew how dreadful ’tis
To bear love’s parching agonies—
To burn, yet reason keep awake
The fever of the blood to slake—
A passionate desire to bend
And, sobbing at your feet, to blend
Entreaties, woes and prayers, confess
All that the heart would fain express—
Yet with a feigned frigidity
To arm the tongue and e’en the eye,
To be in conversation clear
And happy unto you appear.
So be it! But internal strife
I cannot longer wage concealed.
The die is cast! Thine is my life!
Into thy hands my fate I yield!
July 30, 2021
I believe a potentially common experience for any lover of literature comes about when he/she discusses Russian literature with a Russian. We go in, expecting Tolstoy and Dostoevsky to be the artists that their nation reveres the most, and instead get “Pushkin” as the answer. This began to happen so much that I stockpiled the works of Pushkin, knowing that one day I would get to them. That day is here, and I have started with his masterpiece, Eugene Onegin.
The subject matter of this book was mostly standard – a love story. Why I think this book could be a hit with my generation (and those that are younger) is the personality of Onegin, our main character. Flirt, noncommittal, filled with angst and ennui, FOMO, FOMO, FOMO. So in that sense, it was an exciting take on the love story. It was also unique to see the novel written out entirely as a poem. There were 8 chapters, and each chapter had several stanzas. I read the Falen translation, which was beautiful. Each verse rolled off the tongue and there were few (if any) instances of awkward forcing through of the rhyme scheme, which was ABABCCDDEFFEGG. However, I have given this book 3 stars, as I felt a bit emotionally distant from the events of the book. This won’t stop me from coming back to this book in the future (hopefully I can try the supposedly stale Nabokov translation) and I will be tackling some of Pushkin’s prose in the near future.
The subject matter of this book was mostly standard – a love story. Why I think this book could be a hit with my generation (and those that are younger) is the personality of Onegin, our main character. Flirt, noncommittal, filled with angst and ennui, FOMO, FOMO, FOMO. So in that sense, it was an exciting take on the love story. It was also unique to see the novel written out entirely as a poem. There were 8 chapters, and each chapter had several stanzas. I read the Falen translation, which was beautiful. Each verse rolled off the tongue and there were few (if any) instances of awkward forcing through of the rhyme scheme, which was ABABCCDDEFFEGG. However, I have given this book 3 stars, as I felt a bit emotionally distant from the events of the book. This won’t stop me from coming back to this book in the future (hopefully I can try the supposedly stale Nabokov translation) and I will be tackling some of Pushkin’s prose in the near future.
June 25, 2021
Brilliant!
#####
Tchaikovsky’s opera based on Pushkin’s work has long been a favourite of mine, so why has it taken me until now to read it?
Whilst I read I listened to the excellent recording with the following cast:
Onegin - Evgeni Belov
Lensky - Sergei Lemeshev
Prince Gremin - Ivan Pretrov
Tatyana - Galina Vishnevskaya
Olga - Larissa Avdeyeva
Boris Khaikin conducting The Bolshoi Theatre soloists, Chorus and Orchestra
If I can tear myself away from my reading I might also watch one or both of my DVDs of this opera.
#####
Tchaikovsky’s opera based on Pushkin’s work has long been a favourite of mine, so why has it taken me until now to read it?
Whilst I read I listened to the excellent recording with the following cast:
Onegin - Evgeni Belov
Lensky - Sergei Lemeshev
Prince Gremin - Ivan Pretrov
Tatyana - Galina Vishnevskaya
Olga - Larissa Avdeyeva
Boris Khaikin conducting The Bolshoi Theatre soloists, Chorus and Orchestra
If I can tear myself away from my reading I might also watch one or both of my DVDs of this opera.
May 24, 2016
My honest reaction to this poem is a sense of awe at the art and the translation, rather than the story itself. Since I, regrettably, don't know nearly enough Russian to read the original, I can't speak to the accuracy of Anthony Briggs' efforts, but each stanza reads with an incredible, hypnotising rhythm and verve. It was fascinating to read the introductory notes about the multitude of issues the come with translating this work and I can well believe how many hours it must have taken to complete (a two-three year project according to Briggs http://pushkinpress.com/behind-the-bo...).
Thematically, the ennui and selfishness of society, embodied in the eponymous protagonist, had the most impact for me. Despite being written in the first half of the 19th C, Pushkin's commentary about the superficial, detached nature of social interaction, the obsession with beauty over emotion, and the rigid framework of society's expectations have more than a little relevance today. In opposition, Tatyana's innocence, idealism, and integrity make her the strongest moral character in the narrative; she dares to love and yet she holds to what is right when her marriage is later tested by Yevgeny. I couldn't help but be pleased that it remained a tragedy.
While reading this has given me an appreciation of why Pushkin is regarded so highly in Russia, and elsewhere, he hasn't quite made it into my list of favourite Russian authors. I have enjoyed Briggs' translation and will likely look for his version of War and Peace to add to my collection.
Many thanks to Pushkin Press and Netgalley for this copy in exchange for an honest review.
Thematically, the ennui and selfishness of society, embodied in the eponymous protagonist, had the most impact for me. Despite being written in the first half of the 19th C, Pushkin's commentary about the superficial, detached nature of social interaction, the obsession with beauty over emotion, and the rigid framework of society's expectations have more than a little relevance today. In opposition, Tatyana's innocence, idealism, and integrity make her the strongest moral character in the narrative; she dares to love and yet she holds to what is right when her marriage is later tested by Yevgeny. I couldn't help but be pleased that it remained a tragedy.
While reading this has given me an appreciation of why Pushkin is regarded so highly in Russia, and elsewhere, he hasn't quite made it into my list of favourite Russian authors. I have enjoyed Briggs' translation and will likely look for his version of War and Peace to add to my collection.
Many thanks to Pushkin Press and Netgalley for this copy in exchange for an honest review.
April 7, 2023
Die Ehrfurcht, mit der ich diesem Stück Weltliteratur entgegengetreten bin, wich schnell großem Vergnügen, das nicht nur einmal in Schmunzeln, ja Auflachen gipfelte. Neben all der Tragik der Geschichte flicht Puschkin immer wieder beißende Seitenhiebe auf die russische Gesellschaft
die Literatur der Klassik und Romantik, ja selbst auf sich selbst und sein bisweilen unbotmäßiges Verhalten ein.
Das machte die Lektüre für einen Klassiker erstaunlich leicht. Aber die Geschichte hat auch eine tiefere, tragische Seite. Der Gegensatz zwischen dem Hochgefühl der Einsamkeit, sprich der Freiheit und dem Glück der Liebe und der mit ihr einhergehenden Bindung. Für mich ist "Eugen Onegin" vor allem ein Plädoyer für die Wertschätzung des Lebens und gegen seine Verschwendung in hochmütigem Rückzug aus der Gesellschaft, in sinnlosen Duellen oder einer lieblosen Ehe.
Ich bedaure einzig die Tatsache, dass ich Puschkins wundervolle Verse nicht im Original lesen konnte. Die fast hundertjährige Übersetzung durch Theodor Commichau hat so viel Schwung und Witz, wie erfrischend und erfüllend muss da erst der russische Text sein.
Kaum barg das Grab die Erdenresteoder
Bezechten Popen sich und Gäste
Und taten beim Nachhausegehn
Als wär's in frommer Pflicht geschehn.
Verwandte sind die biedern Leute,
Die man in Herzensüberflu
Verehren, lieben, hätscheln muß
...
Damit uns ihre Nächstenliebe
(Gott soll sie segnen!) für den Rest
Des Jahres - ungeschoren läßt.
die Literatur der Klassik und Romantik, ja selbst auf sich selbst und sein bisweilen unbotmäßiges Verhalten ein.
Vor meiner Strophen Harmonie
Entfleucht das ganze Federvieh.
Das machte die Lektüre für einen Klassiker erstaunlich leicht. Aber die Geschichte hat auch eine tiefere, tragische Seite. Der Gegensatz zwischen dem Hochgefühl der Einsamkeit, sprich der Freiheit und dem Glück der Liebe und der mit ihr einhergehenden Bindung. Für mich ist "Eugen Onegin" vor allem ein Plädoyer für die Wertschätzung des Lebens und gegen seine Verschwendung in hochmütigem Rückzug aus der Gesellschaft, in sinnlosen Duellen oder einer lieblosen Ehe.
Ich bedaure einzig die Tatsache, dass ich Puschkins wundervolle Verse nicht im Original lesen konnte. Die fast hundertjährige Übersetzung durch Theodor Commichau hat so viel Schwung und Witz, wie erfrischend und erfüllend muss da erst der russische Text sein.
October 17, 2018
دوستانِ گرانقدر، میتوان گفت که این کتاب ارزشمندترین اثرِ زنده یاد «پوشکین» میباشد که حتی برخی از اصطلاحات و ابیاتِ آن به صورت ضرب المثل نیز درآمده است و «پوشکین» چیزی حدودِ هفت سال، تنها چکنویس هایِ این منظومه را خوانده و رویِ آن کار کرده است، که در نهایت کتاب از 434 صفحه و 8 فصل تشکیل شده است
این منظومه، اثری کاملاً متغیر است که از اندوه به سویِ خوشحالی و از بدبینی به سمتِ هیجان و احساسات میرود
من یکی از علاقمندان به سبکِ نوشتار و بیانِ داستان و رمان به صورتِ شعرگونه از «پوشکین» میباشم
شخصیتِ اصلی و به اصطلاح قهرمانِ «پوشکین» در این کتاب، مردی به نامِ «آنه گین» است که «پوشکین» علاقهٔ زیادی به شخصیتِ او دارد
جوانی پر شور و دلفریب و خوش پوش و البته اهلِ فلسفه، که با وجودِ ثروتِ بسیار و اشرافی بودنِ خانواده اش، او به هیچ عنوان غرور و خشک بودنِ یک ارباب و اشرافی را ندارد و درکل نزدِ همه محبوب است
بیشتر ابیات و قطعاتِ زیبایِ این کتاب، مربوط به عشق میانِ «تاتیانا» که دختری با وقار و البته در میانه هایِ داستان، زنی شوهردار است و همچنین شخصیت اصلیِ کتاب، «آنه گین» میباشد
به انتخاب بخش هایی از کتاب را برایِ شما دوستانِ ادب پرور، در زیر مینویسم
---------------------------------------------
لباس و آرایشِ سنجیدهٔ زن ها را دوست دارم
شیفتهٔ پاهایِ آنها هستم
آخ، پاها.. پاها! اکنون کجائید؟
کجا گلهایِ بهاری را لگد میکنید؟
همانطور که اثرِ پاهایِ سبُکِ شما رویِ چمن ها محو شدند
بهروزیِ دورانِ جوانیِ من هم محو و ناپدید گشت
************************
نیکبخت کسی که
مجلس جشنِ زندگی را پیش از پایانش ترک کرد
و کسیکه جامِ لبریز از شراب را تا به پایان سَر نکشید
و رستگار باد کسیکه تا پایانِ رمانِ زندگی را نخواند
************************
فکر میکردم: آزادی و آرامش، جانشینِ سعادت است
خدایا
چه اشتباهی کردم و چه مجازات شدم
************************
روزهایِ عید فرا رسیدند، این است سرور و شادمانی
جوانانِ بیخیال، فال میگیرند
جوانانی که تأسف هیچ چیز را نمیخورند
و پهنهٔ زندگی برایشان روشن و لایتناهیست
پیرها گویی که لبِ گور هستند
گواینکه بطورِ جبران ناپذیری همه چیز را از کف داده اند
از پشتِ عینک فال میبینند
چه فرق میکند؟.. امید، دروغ هایش را در گوشِ آنها نیز بچگانه نجوا میکند
************************
که را دوست داشته باشیم؟ به که اعتماد کنیم؟
آن کسی که به ما خیانت نمیکند، کیست؟
کیست که همهٔ کارها و تمامِ حرف هایش را بسنجد
و به قصدِ خوش خدمتی به معیارِ ما برداشت کند؟
کیست که بهتان و افترا برایِ ما اشاعه ندهد؟
چه کسی با غمخوارگی، ما را میپروراند؟
چه کسی عیبِ ما برایش گناه نیست؟
کیست که هیچگاه حوصلمان را سر نبرد؟
ای جویندهٔ بی نتیجهٔ این شبح
بی جهت زحمت نکشید
خود را دوست بدارید، اِی خوانندهٔ گرامیِ من
این دوست داشتن، خودش قابلِ توجه است
یقیناً هیچ چیز مهربانتر از <خودِ خود>، نیست
---------------------------------------------
امیدوارم از خواندنِ این اثر دلچسب و هنرمندانه، لذت ببرید و امید است که این ریویو در جهتِ آشنایی با این کتاب، کافی و مفید بوده باشه
«پیروز باشید و ایرانی»
این منظومه، اثری کاملاً متغیر است که از اندوه به سویِ خوشحالی و از بدبینی به سمتِ هیجان و احساسات میرود
من یکی از علاقمندان به سبکِ نوشتار و بیانِ داستان و رمان به صورتِ شعرگونه از «پوشکین» میباشم
شخصیتِ اصلی و به اصطلاح قهرمانِ «پوشکین» در این کتاب، مردی به نامِ «آنه گین» است که «پوشکین» علاقهٔ زیادی به شخصیتِ او دارد
جوانی پر شور و دلفریب و خوش پوش و البته اهلِ فلسفه، که با وجودِ ثروتِ بسیار و اشرافی بودنِ خانواده اش، او به هیچ عنوان غرور و خشک بودنِ یک ارباب و اشرافی را ندارد و درکل نزدِ همه محبوب است
بیشتر ابیات و قطعاتِ زیبایِ این کتاب، مربوط به عشق میانِ «تاتیانا» که دختری با وقار و البته در میانه هایِ داستان، زنی شوهردار است و همچنین شخصیت اصلیِ کتاب، «آنه گین» میباشد
به انتخاب بخش هایی از کتاب را برایِ شما دوستانِ ادب پرور، در زیر مینویسم
---------------------------------------------
لباس و آرایشِ سنجیدهٔ زن ها را دوست دارم
شیفتهٔ پاهایِ آنها هستم
آخ، پاها.. پاها! اکنون کجائید؟
کجا گلهایِ بهاری را لگد میکنید؟
همانطور که اثرِ پاهایِ سبُکِ شما رویِ چمن ها محو شدند
بهروزیِ دورانِ جوانیِ من هم محو و ناپدید گشت
************************
نیکبخت کسی که
مجلس جشنِ زندگی را پیش از پایانش ترک کرد
و کسیکه جامِ لبریز از شراب را تا به پایان سَر نکشید
و رستگار باد کسیکه تا پایانِ رمانِ زندگی را نخواند
************************
فکر میکردم: آزادی و آرامش، جانشینِ سعادت است
خدایا
چه اشتباهی کردم و چه مجازات شدم
************************
روزهایِ عید فرا رسیدند، این است سرور و شادمانی
جوانانِ بیخیال، فال میگیرند
جوانانی که تأسف هیچ چیز را نمیخورند
و پهنهٔ زندگی برایشان روشن و لایتناهیست
پیرها گویی که لبِ گور هستند
گواینکه بطورِ جبران ناپذیری همه چیز را از کف داده اند
از پشتِ عینک فال میبینند
چه فرق میکند؟.. امید، دروغ هایش را در گوشِ آنها نیز بچگانه نجوا میکند
************************
که را دوست داشته باشیم؟ به که اعتماد کنیم؟
آن کسی که به ما خیانت نمیکند، کیست؟
کیست که همهٔ کارها و تمامِ حرف هایش را بسنجد
و به قصدِ خوش خدمتی به معیارِ ما برداشت کند؟
کیست که بهتان و افترا برایِ ما اشاعه ندهد؟
چه کسی با غمخوارگی، ما را میپروراند؟
چه کسی عیبِ ما برایش گناه نیست؟
کیست که هیچگاه حوصلمان را سر نبرد؟
ای جویندهٔ بی نتیجهٔ این شبح
بی جهت زحمت نکشید
خود را دوست بدارید، اِی خوانندهٔ گرامیِ من
این دوست داشتن، خودش قابلِ توجه است
یقیناً هیچ چیز مهربانتر از <خودِ خود>، نیست
---------------------------------------------
امیدوارم از خواندنِ این اثر دلچسب و هنرمندانه، لذت ببرید و امید است که این ریویو در جهتِ آشنایی با این کتاب، کافی و مفید بوده باشه
«پیروز باشید و ایرانی»
May 5, 2023
Eugen Onegin (russisch: Евгений Онегин) ist ein Versroman des russischen Dichters Alexander Puschkin, der zwischen 1823 und 1830 entstand und erstmalig 1833 veröffentlicht wurde. Der Versroman beschreibt die komplexe kulturelle Situation Russlands um 1820, anhand des Lebens und Denkens junger Adeliger in den Metropolen St. Petersburg und Moskau und auf ihren Landgütern fern der Städte auf dem alten Traditionen verhafteten Land.
Heutzutage wird Eugen Onegin als das moderne russische Nationalepos gehandelt, und Puschkin als Nationaldichter. Dies liegt vor allem darin begründet, dass Puschkin mit seinem Gesamtwerk, aber insbesondere mit Eugen Onegin, als Begründer der russischen Literatursprache gilt. Um 1820 war die Verkehrssprache der russischen Oberschicht Französisch, amtliche und wissenschaftliche Texte wurden in der Regel in französischer Sprache geschrieben, kirchliche und weltliche russische Texte bis ins frühe 19. Jahrhundert in einem Kirchenslawisch, das zu Puschkins Zeit schon nicht mehr allgemein verständlich war. Kinder des Adels, wie Puschkin und Onegin selbst sowie Tatjana und Olga Larina, hatten französische Erzieher oder Sprachlehrer. Russisch lernte Puschkin von seiner Kinderfrau und perfektionierte es in der Zeit seiner Verbannung im Umgang mit der bäuerlichen Bevölkerung. Er war somit einer der ersten Dichter und Schriftsteller, der das moderne Russisch in seines Texte benutzte.
Eugen Onegin ist in acht Kapitel (cantos) gegliedert, denen jeweils ein kurzes Zitat aus der französischen, italienischen oder antiken Literatur bzw. eines russischen Autors vorangestellt ist. Insgesamt umfasst das Gedicht 384 Strophen. Die sogenannte Onegin-Strophe baut auf dem Sonett auf. Die Strophe zu je 14 Zeilen in vierfüßigen Jamben folgt einem komplizierten und strengen Reimschema, das über das ganze Gedicht hin eingehalten wird, mit Ausnahme der Briefe Tatjanas und Onegins, sowie Tatjanas Traum.
Der Versroman öffnet mit dem Charakter Eugen Onegin, einem gelangweilten Dandy im St. Petersburg der 1820er Jahre, dessen Leben nur aus Bällen, Konzerten und Partys besteht, ansonsten aber ziemlich leer ist. Nach dem Tod seines wohlhabenden Onkels erbt er ein beträchtliches Vermögen und einen Landsitz. Als er aufs Land zieht, freundet er sich mit seinem Nachbarn an, dem jungen Dichter Wladimir Lenskij.
Lenskij stellt Onegin der Familie seiner Verlobten vor, der geselligen, aber etwas gedankenlosen Olga Larina. Bei diesem Treffen lernt Onegin auch Olgas Schwester Tatjana kennen. Tatjana, a hopeless romantic, fühlt sich stark zu Onegin hingezogen. Sie offenbart ihre Seele in einem Brief, der in die Literaturgeschichte als einer der schönsten Liebesbriefe eingegangen ist.
Später lädt Lenskij Onegin schelmisch zur Feier von Tatjanas Namenstag ein und verspricht ein kleines Treffen nur mit Tatjana, Olga und ihren Eltern. Als Onegin eintrifft, findet er stattdessen einen ausgelassenen Ball auf dem Lande vor, eine ländliche Parodie und ein Kontrast zu den Gesellschaftsbällen in St. Petersburg, derer er überdrüssig geworden ist. Onegin ist verärgert über die Gäste, die über ihn und Tatjana lästern, und über Lenskij, der ihn überredet hat, zu kommen. Er beschließt, sich zu rächen, indem er mit Olga tanzt und flirtet. Olga ist unempfänglich für ihren Verlobten und fühlt sich offenbar zu Onegin hingezogen. Der ernste und unerfahrene Lenskij ist zutiefst verletzt und fordert Onegin zum Duell heraus; Onegin nimmt widerwillig an, da er sich durch die gesellschaftliche Konvention gezwungen fühlt. Während des Duells tötet Onegin Lenskij unfreiwillig. Danach verlässt er sein Landgut und reist ins Ausland, um seine Gewissensbisse zu betäuben.
Tatjana besucht Onegins Villa, wo sie seine Bücher und Randnotizen durchstöbert und sich zu fragen beginnt, ob Onegins Charakter nur eine Collage verschiedener literarischer Helden ist und ob es in Wirklichkeit keinen "echten Onegin" gibt. Tatjana, immer noch gebrochen durch den Verlust Onegins, wird von ihren Eltern überredet, bei ihrer Tante in Moskau zu leben, um einen Verehrer zu finden.
Einige Jahre vergehen, und die Szene verlagert sich nach St. Petersburg. Onegin ist gekommen, um die wichtigsten Bälle zu besuchen und mit den führenden Persönlichkeiten der alten russischen Gesellschaft zu verkehren. Er sieht die schönste Frau, die alle Blicke auf sich zieht und im Mittelpunkt des gesellschaftlichen Geschehens steht, und erkennt, dass es sich um dieselbe Tatjana handelt, deren Liebe er einst verschmäht hatte. Jetzt ist sie mit einem alten Prinzen (einem General) verheiratet.
Onegin ist besessen davon, Tatjanas Zuneigung zu gewinnen. Seine Versuche werden jedoch abgewehrt. Er schreibt ihr mehrere Briefe, erhält aber keine Antwort. Schließlich gelingt es ihm, Tatjana zu sehen, und er bietet ihr an, mit ihr abzuhauen. Nach kurzem Zögern gesteht sie ihm, dass sie ihn immer noch liebt, aber dass sie es nicht zulassen wird, dass er sie ruiniert. Sie ist entschlossen, ihrem Mann treu zu bleiben und weist Onegin erbarmungslos zurück. Tatjanas Zurückweisung ist ebenfalls eine ikonische Szene der Literaturgeschichte, die es auch auf viele Gemälde geschafft hat.
Ich las Eugen Onegin in einer englischen Übersetzung von Stanley Mitchell. Im Großen und Ganzen bin ich mit der Qualität der Übersetzung zufrieden. Mitchell behielt das Reimschema bei, was ich sehr begrüße, und sowohl Puschkins Witz als auch seine Wortgewandheit schaffen es ins Englische. Manchmal fließt der Text nicht gut und einige Reime sind schon sehr holprig, aber dennoch würde ich Mitchells Übersetzung empfehlen. Sie ist gut verständlich und macht Spaß.
Ich kann es gar nicht erwarten, diesen Versroman in unterschiedlichen Übersetzungen und unterschiedlichen Sprachen zu lesen. Ich möchte ihn mir auf jeden Fall noch auf Deutsch und Französisch zu Gemüte führen. Es wäre natürlich ein Traum, Puschkin mal im Original zu lesen, aber dieser Traum ist bei meinen russischen Sprachkenntnissen noch in weiter Ferne. Trotzdem habe ich großen Spaß daran einige Passagen, vor allem Tatjanas Brief an Onegin, im Original zu lesen und ich versuche zur Zeit, ihn sogar auswendig zu lernen. Auf YouTube fand ich eine Rap-Version des Briefes, die mir unheimlich beim Auswendiglernen hilft.
Wenn ich eine Liste mit den schönsten Liebesbriefen der Literaturgeschichte aufstellen müsste, würde es Puschkin sehr weit nach oben schaffen. Tatjanas Brief ist aus heutiger Sicht natürlich sehr überzogen und dramatisch, aber mich hat er trotzdem gekriegt. Ich glaube, dass mir Wentworths Brief aus Austens Überredung ("You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. [...] I have loved none but you.") vielleicht doch noch etwas besser gefällt, aber Tatjanas Brief comes as a close second.
Heutzutage wird Eugen Onegin als das moderne russische Nationalepos gehandelt, und Puschkin als Nationaldichter. Dies liegt vor allem darin begründet, dass Puschkin mit seinem Gesamtwerk, aber insbesondere mit Eugen Onegin, als Begründer der russischen Literatursprache gilt. Um 1820 war die Verkehrssprache der russischen Oberschicht Französisch, amtliche und wissenschaftliche Texte wurden in der Regel in französischer Sprache geschrieben, kirchliche und weltliche russische Texte bis ins frühe 19. Jahrhundert in einem Kirchenslawisch, das zu Puschkins Zeit schon nicht mehr allgemein verständlich war. Kinder des Adels, wie Puschkin und Onegin selbst sowie Tatjana und Olga Larina, hatten französische Erzieher oder Sprachlehrer. Russisch lernte Puschkin von seiner Kinderfrau und perfektionierte es in der Zeit seiner Verbannung im Umgang mit der bäuerlichen Bevölkerung. Er war somit einer der ersten Dichter und Schriftsteller, der das moderne Russisch in seines Texte benutzte.
Eugen Onegin ist in acht Kapitel (cantos) gegliedert, denen jeweils ein kurzes Zitat aus der französischen, italienischen oder antiken Literatur bzw. eines russischen Autors vorangestellt ist. Insgesamt umfasst das Gedicht 384 Strophen. Die sogenannte Onegin-Strophe baut auf dem Sonett auf. Die Strophe zu je 14 Zeilen in vierfüßigen Jamben folgt einem komplizierten und strengen Reimschema, das über das ganze Gedicht hin eingehalten wird, mit Ausnahme der Briefe Tatjanas und Onegins, sowie Tatjanas Traum.
Der Versroman öffnet mit dem Charakter Eugen Onegin, einem gelangweilten Dandy im St. Petersburg der 1820er Jahre, dessen Leben nur aus Bällen, Konzerten und Partys besteht, ansonsten aber ziemlich leer ist. Nach dem Tod seines wohlhabenden Onkels erbt er ein beträchtliches Vermögen und einen Landsitz. Als er aufs Land zieht, freundet er sich mit seinem Nachbarn an, dem jungen Dichter Wladimir Lenskij.
Lenskij stellt Onegin der Familie seiner Verlobten vor, der geselligen, aber etwas gedankenlosen Olga Larina. Bei diesem Treffen lernt Onegin auch Olgas Schwester Tatjana kennen. Tatjana, a hopeless romantic, fühlt sich stark zu Onegin hingezogen. Sie offenbart ihre Seele in einem Brief, der in die Literaturgeschichte als einer der schönsten Liebesbriefe eingegangen ist.
Я к вам пишу – чего же боле?Entgegen ihren Erwartungen schreibt Onegin ihr jedoch nicht zurück und bei ihrem nächsten Treffen weist er sie höflich, aber auch herablassend, zurück (Onegins Predigt). Er gibt zu, dass der Brief rührend war, sagt aber, dass er sich in der Ehe schnell langweilen würde und Tatjana nur Freundschaft anbieten kann; er rät kalt zu mehr emotionaler Kontrolle in der Zukunft, damit kein anderer Mann ihre Unschuld ausnutzt.
Что я могу еще сказать?
Теперь, я знаю, в вашей воле
Меня презреньем наказать.
Но вы, к моей несчастной доле
Хоть каплю жалости храня,
Вы не оставите меня.
Später lädt Lenskij Onegin schelmisch zur Feier von Tatjanas Namenstag ein und verspricht ein kleines Treffen nur mit Tatjana, Olga und ihren Eltern. Als Onegin eintrifft, findet er stattdessen einen ausgelassenen Ball auf dem Lande vor, eine ländliche Parodie und ein Kontrast zu den Gesellschaftsbällen in St. Petersburg, derer er überdrüssig geworden ist. Onegin ist verärgert über die Gäste, die über ihn und Tatjana lästern, und über Lenskij, der ihn überredet hat, zu kommen. Er beschließt, sich zu rächen, indem er mit Olga tanzt und flirtet. Olga ist unempfänglich für ihren Verlobten und fühlt sich offenbar zu Onegin hingezogen. Der ernste und unerfahrene Lenskij ist zutiefst verletzt und fordert Onegin zum Duell heraus; Onegin nimmt widerwillig an, da er sich durch die gesellschaftliche Konvention gezwungen fühlt. Während des Duells tötet Onegin Lenskij unfreiwillig. Danach verlässt er sein Landgut und reist ins Ausland, um seine Gewissensbisse zu betäuben.
Tatjana besucht Onegins Villa, wo sie seine Bücher und Randnotizen durchstöbert und sich zu fragen beginnt, ob Onegins Charakter nur eine Collage verschiedener literarischer Helden ist und ob es in Wirklichkeit keinen "echten Onegin" gibt. Tatjana, immer noch gebrochen durch den Verlust Onegins, wird von ihren Eltern überredet, bei ihrer Tante in Moskau zu leben, um einen Verehrer zu finden.
Einige Jahre vergehen, und die Szene verlagert sich nach St. Petersburg. Onegin ist gekommen, um die wichtigsten Bälle zu besuchen und mit den führenden Persönlichkeiten der alten russischen Gesellschaft zu verkehren. Er sieht die schönste Frau, die alle Blicke auf sich zieht und im Mittelpunkt des gesellschaftlichen Geschehens steht, und erkennt, dass es sich um dieselbe Tatjana handelt, deren Liebe er einst verschmäht hatte. Jetzt ist sie mit einem alten Prinzen (einem General) verheiratet.
Onegin ist besessen davon, Tatjanas Zuneigung zu gewinnen. Seine Versuche werden jedoch abgewehrt. Er schreibt ihr mehrere Briefe, erhält aber keine Antwort. Schließlich gelingt es ihm, Tatjana zu sehen, und er bietet ihr an, mit ihr abzuhauen. Nach kurzem Zögern gesteht sie ihm, dass sie ihn immer noch liebt, aber dass sie es nicht zulassen wird, dass er sie ruiniert. Sie ist entschlossen, ihrem Mann treu zu bleiben und weist Onegin erbarmungslos zurück. Tatjanas Zurückweisung ist ebenfalls eine ikonische Szene der Literaturgeschichte, die es auch auf viele Gemälde geschafft hat.
Ich las Eugen Onegin in einer englischen Übersetzung von Stanley Mitchell. Im Großen und Ganzen bin ich mit der Qualität der Übersetzung zufrieden. Mitchell behielt das Reimschema bei, was ich sehr begrüße, und sowohl Puschkins Witz als auch seine Wortgewandheit schaffen es ins Englische. Manchmal fließt der Text nicht gut und einige Reime sind schon sehr holprig, aber dennoch würde ich Mitchells Übersetzung empfehlen. Sie ist gut verständlich und macht Spaß.
Ich kann es gar nicht erwarten, diesen Versroman in unterschiedlichen Übersetzungen und unterschiedlichen Sprachen zu lesen. Ich möchte ihn mir auf jeden Fall noch auf Deutsch und Französisch zu Gemüte führen. Es wäre natürlich ein Traum, Puschkin mal im Original zu lesen, aber dieser Traum ist bei meinen russischen Sprachkenntnissen noch in weiter Ferne. Trotzdem habe ich großen Spaß daran einige Passagen, vor allem Tatjanas Brief an Onegin, im Original zu lesen und ich versuche zur Zeit, ihn sogar auswendig zu lernen. Auf YouTube fand ich eine Rap-Version des Briefes, die mir unheimlich beim Auswendiglernen hilft.
Wenn ich eine Liste mit den schönsten Liebesbriefen der Literaturgeschichte aufstellen müsste, würde es Puschkin sehr weit nach oben schaffen. Tatjanas Brief ist aus heutiger Sicht natürlich sehr überzogen und dramatisch, aber mich hat er trotzdem gekriegt. Ich glaube, dass mir Wentworths Brief aus Austens Überredung ("You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. [...] I have loved none but you.") vielleicht doch noch etwas besser gefällt, aber Tatjanas Brief comes as a close second.
March 29, 2020
Douglas Hofstadter, in his informative (but self-indulgent)
Le Ton beau de Marot
, devotes over 500 pages to the subject of translating a 28-line poem from French to English. The book is filled with a multitude of attempts, each with its own character, its own aims in conveying some element of the original, and each differing significantly in style, language and emotion. There is a seemingly infinite linguistic freedom and complexity in the translation of even a poem of just 60 words, between languages that are virtual siblings.
By comparison, Eugene Onegin is a poetic novel consisting of over 200 pages, which utilises a "poetry of grammar" completely alien to English understanding. What is left, then, must be regarded as a vague ghost of the original, and it would be pure folly to attempt an earnest review. Perhaps all that survives the distortion of translation are the most salient and immutable elements: the captivating story itself; Pushkin's playful genius; and his eclectic passion and enthusiasm. As for the rest, I will leave that to the judgement of the great Russian writers, who have universally regarded Onegin as one of the singular works of Russian literature.
By comparison, Eugene Onegin is a poetic novel consisting of over 200 pages, which utilises a "poetry of grammar" completely alien to English understanding. What is left, then, must be regarded as a vague ghost of the original, and it would be pure folly to attempt an earnest review. Perhaps all that survives the distortion of translation are the most salient and immutable elements: the captivating story itself; Pushkin's playful genius; and his eclectic passion and enthusiasm. As for the rest, I will leave that to the judgement of the great Russian writers, who have universally regarded Onegin as one of the singular works of Russian literature.
November 26, 2016
This was one of the most original books I have ever read. How Pushkin was able to accomplish this poem/novel is beyond me. The theme of rejecting love and then being rejected by that same love latter in life is masterful. Alexander Pushkin! - you are on my 'reading radar' and I will look for more of your works!
February 15, 2017
ARC review: 2016 Pushkin Press edition, translated by Anthony Briggs
[3.75?] I've yet to be convinced that it's possible to translate Russian poetry into consistently excellent English verse. Translator Anthony Briggs' introduction suggests that it is easier to make Russian poems sound good in English than it is French ones - which contradicts my experience as a reader. (I loved Kinnell's Villon, Millay's Baudelaire, among others, and was disappointed by two different versions of Tsvetava.)
It had been my intention, if I ever read Onegin, to go for Stanley Mitchell's translation (for what I'd seen of the actual poetry, though I love the cover too), but this new* version was on offer as an ARC last year. I liked the beginning of Briggs' War & Peace enough that I'd have read his translation if it had been available as an ebook. (It wasn't, so I went for the ubiquitous P&V.) I wasn't so impressed with his translation of some Pushkin poems in a funny little miscellany from the eponymous publisher, under the title The Queen of Spades, but they were reasonable enough - and this ARC was, after all, free, and, what's more, praised by Nick Lezard in the Guardian. (Lezard quite often makes good recommendations, but admitted himself that he was no expert on Pushkin translation.)
I read perhaps a third of this Onegin in April 2016, when I found it clunky and packed with banal sing-song rhymes. Though it seemed to improve at times - inconveniently for me, as I'd have to rewrite the at-least-half a hatchet job I'd already typed out. Returning to the book in January 2017, reading straight through from Introduction to FIN, I thought it not so bad. Somewhat better than the frustratingly blurred reflection of a celestial original that seemed the usual offering for Russian translated poetry in the body of a book, compared with the way the original was described in the introduction. Some stanzas are indeed embarrassingly sing-song others rather good; and plenty more dependent on how each reader hears all the line-end rhymes - whilst a few are convoluted, with sense and meaning obscured by the struggle to attain the correct structure in English.
In Briggs' introduction, Stanley Mitchell is both praised - for his use of approximate rhyme - and criticised - for taking it too far. I found the list of Mitchell's rhymes more pleasing to the ear, less pat, than many of those Briggs uses, so perhaps I'd still prefer his version. (Perhaps what I am really looking for is the equivalent of Edna St Vincent Millay's Flowers of Evil, a highly liberal translation that uses the essential sense of the poems to create a[n IMO] beautiful work that sounds like true poetry in English.)
For the reader who'd prefer a thorough, scholarly intro of the Penguin/Oxford ilk, Briggs' isn't terrible. He provides a thorough and persuasive case for calling the protagonist "Yevgeny Onegin" in English, due to the name's musicality and scansion, and how this metrical beauty is at odds with the anti-hero's conduct. Otherwise, it omitted useful points: cultural background (which I at least had via reading Tolstoy in the last few years, and I see how scenes in Onegin likely inspired some in War and Peace); and the poet-narrator and his relationship with his muse as a significant feature of the poem (it took the blurb of another edition on GR to make me notice that and not near-skim those stanzas as inconsequential fluff interrupting the "real" story). Briggs also spent time on a critical debate about Onegin's moral character in a manner superfluous for the first time reader, as he reaches the same conclusion Pushkin does in the poem:
His secret inner court will hear
Him charged with multiple offences…
Charge One: He had been wrong to jeer
At timid, tender love so easily
And so off-handedly that evening.
Charge Two: The poet might have been
An ass, but this, at just eighteen,
Could be excused. Judge whose fault this is:
Yevgeny deeply loved the youth,
And should have proved to be, in truth,
No mere plaything of prejudices,
No fiery, strapping lad, but an
Honourable and thinking man.
Onegin, packed with of-its-time cultural references, desperately needs annotations, and this Pushkin Press edition sadly has none.
From chapter two, a handful of the many examples: I've at least heard of [Sir Charles] Grandison but wouldn't mind a reminder about plot and character, and it's hardly one of the best known bits of British C18th lit; would have liked something on origin and reputation of the following gothic behaviour, implied as a French import:
She took to using blood when scrawling
In sweet girls’ albums
and in the same stanza, re-Russification as
she restored without mishap
The padded robe and floppy cap, some background to whose presumed nationalistic significance could, I think, only add to the edition.
This same allusiveness gives the poem a satirical, flippant air I hadn't anticipated. At first I was in two minds about use of noticeably contemporary phrases - a lodging with decent storage; a dashing officer who's the delight of local mums - but soon felt they sharpened the text. After all, the poem, picking over the mores of recently fashionable Romantic young things, would have felt as modern to readers of the 1830s as daft mockery of Millenials would to us. This sense of freshness is one of the impertinent advantages of a translated classic has over the original, and perhaps what I liked best about Briggs' Onegin, though not as much as in Clive James' Divine Comedy. I love noticing the cheeky wink of a half-hidden pop lyric; one especially deft example here amused me no end:
“I say, who is that lady, Prince,
There in the raspberry-coloured beret,
Near the ambassador from Spain?”
However, modernity occasionally went too far, and jarred: when Tatyana's nanny was wearing a "body-warmer"; and even brands crept in, albeit ones old enough to have been around at the time - so can't discount the possibility they were cited in Pushkin's original - Veuve Clicquot—or is it Moët? (I think that was when Robbie Williams' 'Party Like a Russian' started playing in my head...)
For much of the poem, I didn't feel a great deal for the characters. I was sorry for the infatuated Tatyana - I felt that fiction and film gave me a similarly misleading impression of social life and romance when I was younger - but it was a sympathy often out of step with the ironic relating of the silly girl's fandoms and mopings. May as well have been watching a black comedy about hipsters. (Натан Ячмень, Москва 1830?)
Among my favourite of the human scenes was when Tatyana, pining for Evgeny, reads his favourite books to try and understand him, and instead finds them an excellent way to get over him:
And my Tatyana comes by stages
To understand the very man
(Depicted clearly as outrageous?)
Destined for her by some weird plan,
Sent to unsettle and derange her,
A maverick oddball bringing danger,
A child of heaven, of hell perchance,
Devil and god of arrogance.
What is he? A copy of mischances,
A ghost of nothingness, a joke,
A Russian in Childe Harold’s cloak,
A ragbag of imported fancies,
A catchphrase-monger and a sham.
Is he more parody than man?
I've done similar in my time (sometimes the books - or films - are a key, sometimes they are not: not everyone sees themselves in their favourites, or loves works that reflect themselves, though Evgeny clearly did). But thankfully, in the early twenty-first century, it is easy to get one's own copies of those titles remembered, no trespass required.
Sardonic archness wasn't what I expected from Russian epic verse, so for some time I wondered whether this was a property of the translation (British dry wit) or of the original. The duel scene and its immediate aftermath altered my opinion: it was clearly meant to be that way. The stanzas from the fight itself were marked by an instantaneous a change of tone, gripping and utterly immediate, like a movie scene:
Out come the pistols (how they dazzle!),
The ramrods plunge, the mallets knock,
The leaden balls roll down the channels,
The triggers click, the guns are cocked.
The greyish powder streams out, steady,
Into the pan, while, waiting ready,
The solid, jagged, screwed-down flint
Stands primed. Guillot can just be glimpsed
Lurking behind a stump, much worried.
The two foes cast their cloaks aside.
Zaretsky walks thirty-two strides
With an exactitude unhurried,
Then leads each friend to his far place.
They draw their pistols from the case.
On its heels, verse reminiscent of one of Hilaire Belloc's Cautionaries, only for slightly older boys:
But the most fun comes from insisting
On plans for a noble death, somehow
Fixating on the man’s pale brow,
And aiming coolly from a distance.
But sending him to kingdom come—
Surely you won’t find that much fun.
Afterwards, there was profound feeling, which soon admixed back into the former social irony and the odd Keatesian landscape. The original's emotional trajectory, and the translator's control of his material became clear; my respect for Briggs increased again.
Friends who know my tastes will not be surprised to hear that it was mostly the stanzas about peasant customs, and winter, on which I was most swept away. I'm not sure whether these were also qualitatively better in translation than plenty of others, or if I'm simply so very susceptible to this type of scenery. (I suspect the latter, because so many of the spring and summer verses bored me.)
Through the cold murk the dawn comes searching,
The noisy field work has tailed off,
The wolf is on the road, emerging
With his half-starving lady wolf.
A passing horse scents him and bridles,
Snorting, at which the wary rider
Gallops away uphill flat-out.
At dawn no herdsmen are about,
Bringing to pasture hungry cattle,
At noon no horn is heard to sing
And bring the cows into a ring.
And girls stay home to sing and rattle
Their spinning wheels. Friendly and bright,
The pine logs sting the winter night...
A tubby goose, red-footed, fearful,
Hoping to breast the waters, crawls
Gingerly out, but skids and falls
Upon the ice. Here comes the cheerful
First fall of whirling, gleaming snow,
Star-scattered on the banks below...
Riding the prairie wild, of course, is
Perilous for your blunt-shod horses,
Who stumble on the treacherous ice
And down they clatter in a trice.
Stay in your bleak homestead. Try reading—
Here is your Pradt, here’s Walter Scott—
Or go through your accounts, if not,
Or fume, or drink. The endless evening
Will somehow pass, tomorrow too.
I've not read enough classic English poetry lately to be confident in comparing the quality - for instance, with Byron, one of Pushkin's inspirations, and whose verse forms Briggs hoped to emulate - but I have included ample quotes, so you may be able to make up your mind whether Briggs' translation is for you, if you wanted to read Onegin in the first place.
(Incidentally, does anyone else worry about whether reading Russian lit now means more, something unsavoury, compared with even six months ago; not the same configuration as it might have forty years ago, so more confusing? Or is it just me and that's laughably paranoid, even for these strange times?)
This translation is rather fun, especially if you enjoy the modern elements alongside the more typically early nineteenth century themes; if it were accompanied by a more detailed introduction, and some notes, I'd more readily recommend it; the lack of either is always a drawback to an edition of a classic, as far as I'm concerned. Like so much great literature of its time, Onegin is a story of youngsters and their betrothal intrigues, but the irony and detachment means that it may still appeal to those who are no longer in that phase of life (though I do think there much to be said for reading classics before or around that time), including those whose years have now outspanned Pushkin's own.
* A few days after reading, I've noticed that there's an Everyman edition of Yevgeny Onegin (same spelling) from 1995 translated by Briggs. As this Pushkin Press one clearly says "English language translation copyright A.D.P. Briggs, 2016", I'm assuming that it's is a revised version - although surely not entirely new as the blurb suggests.
Thank you to Edelweiss, and the publisher, Pushkin Press, for this free advance review copy.
[3.75?] I've yet to be convinced that it's possible to translate Russian poetry into consistently excellent English verse. Translator Anthony Briggs' introduction suggests that it is easier to make Russian poems sound good in English than it is French ones - which contradicts my experience as a reader. (I loved Kinnell's Villon, Millay's Baudelaire, among others, and was disappointed by two different versions of Tsvetava.)
It had been my intention, if I ever read Onegin, to go for Stanley Mitchell's translation (for what I'd seen of the actual poetry, though I love the cover too), but this new* version was on offer as an ARC last year. I liked the beginning of Briggs' War & Peace enough that I'd have read his translation if it had been available as an ebook. (It wasn't, so I went for the ubiquitous P&V.) I wasn't so impressed with his translation of some Pushkin poems in a funny little miscellany from the eponymous publisher, under the title The Queen of Spades, but they were reasonable enough - and this ARC was, after all, free, and, what's more, praised by Nick Lezard in the Guardian. (Lezard quite often makes good recommendations, but admitted himself that he was no expert on Pushkin translation.)
I read perhaps a third of this Onegin in April 2016, when I found it clunky and packed with banal sing-song rhymes. Though it seemed to improve at times - inconveniently for me, as I'd have to rewrite the at-least-half a hatchet job I'd already typed out. Returning to the book in January 2017, reading straight through from Introduction to FIN, I thought it not so bad. Somewhat better than the frustratingly blurred reflection of a celestial original that seemed the usual offering for Russian translated poetry in the body of a book, compared with the way the original was described in the introduction. Some stanzas are indeed embarrassingly sing-song others rather good; and plenty more dependent on how each reader hears all the line-end rhymes - whilst a few are convoluted, with sense and meaning obscured by the struggle to attain the correct structure in English.
In Briggs' introduction, Stanley Mitchell is both praised - for his use of approximate rhyme - and criticised - for taking it too far. I found the list of Mitchell's rhymes more pleasing to the ear, less pat, than many of those Briggs uses, so perhaps I'd still prefer his version. (Perhaps what I am really looking for is the equivalent of Edna St Vincent Millay's Flowers of Evil, a highly liberal translation that uses the essential sense of the poems to create a[n IMO] beautiful work that sounds like true poetry in English.)
For the reader who'd prefer a thorough, scholarly intro of the Penguin/Oxford ilk, Briggs' isn't terrible. He provides a thorough and persuasive case for calling the protagonist "Yevgeny Onegin" in English, due to the name's musicality and scansion, and how this metrical beauty is at odds with the anti-hero's conduct. Otherwise, it omitted useful points: cultural background (which I at least had via reading Tolstoy in the last few years, and I see how scenes in Onegin likely inspired some in War and Peace); and the poet-narrator and his relationship with his muse as a significant feature of the poem (it took the blurb of another edition on GR to make me notice that and not near-skim those stanzas as inconsequential fluff interrupting the "real" story). Briggs also spent time on a critical debate about Onegin's moral character in a manner superfluous for the first time reader, as he reaches the same conclusion Pushkin does in the poem:
His secret inner court will hear
Him charged with multiple offences…
Charge One: He had been wrong to jeer
At timid, tender love so easily
And so off-handedly that evening.
Charge Two: The poet might have been
An ass, but this, at just eighteen,
Could be excused. Judge whose fault this is:
Yevgeny deeply loved the youth,
And should have proved to be, in truth,
No mere plaything of prejudices,
No fiery, strapping lad, but an
Honourable and thinking man.
Onegin, packed with of-its-time cultural references, desperately needs annotations, and this Pushkin Press edition sadly has none.
From chapter two, a handful of the many examples: I've at least heard of [Sir Charles] Grandison but wouldn't mind a reminder about plot and character, and it's hardly one of the best known bits of British C18th lit; would have liked something on origin and reputation of the following gothic behaviour, implied as a French import:
She took to using blood when scrawling
In sweet girls’ albums
and in the same stanza, re-Russification as
she restored without mishap
The padded robe and floppy cap, some background to whose presumed nationalistic significance could, I think, only add to the edition.
This same allusiveness gives the poem a satirical, flippant air I hadn't anticipated. At first I was in two minds about use of noticeably contemporary phrases - a lodging with decent storage; a dashing officer who's the delight of local mums - but soon felt they sharpened the text. After all, the poem, picking over the mores of recently fashionable Romantic young things, would have felt as modern to readers of the 1830s as daft mockery of Millenials would to us. This sense of freshness is one of the impertinent advantages of a translated classic has over the original, and perhaps what I liked best about Briggs' Onegin, though not as much as in Clive James' Divine Comedy. I love noticing the cheeky wink of a half-hidden pop lyric; one especially deft example here amused me no end:
“I say, who is that lady, Prince,
There in the raspberry-coloured beret,
Near the ambassador from Spain?”
However, modernity occasionally went too far, and jarred: when Tatyana's nanny was wearing a "body-warmer"; and even brands crept in, albeit ones old enough to have been around at the time - so can't discount the possibility they were cited in Pushkin's original - Veuve Clicquot—or is it Moët? (I think that was when Robbie Williams' 'Party Like a Russian' started playing in my head...)
For much of the poem, I didn't feel a great deal for the characters. I was sorry for the infatuated Tatyana - I felt that fiction and film gave me a similarly misleading impression of social life and romance when I was younger - but it was a sympathy often out of step with the ironic relating of the silly girl's fandoms and mopings. May as well have been watching a black comedy about hipsters. (Натан Ячмень, Москва 1830?)
Among my favourite of the human scenes was when Tatyana, pining for Evgeny, reads his favourite books to try and understand him, and instead finds them an excellent way to get over him:
And my Tatyana comes by stages
To understand the very man
(Depicted clearly as outrageous?)
Destined for her by some weird plan,
Sent to unsettle and derange her,
A maverick oddball bringing danger,
A child of heaven, of hell perchance,
Devil and god of arrogance.
What is he? A copy of mischances,
A ghost of nothingness, a joke,
A Russian in Childe Harold’s cloak,
A ragbag of imported fancies,
A catchphrase-monger and a sham.
Is he more parody than man?
I've done similar in my time (sometimes the books - or films - are a key, sometimes they are not: not everyone sees themselves in their favourites, or loves works that reflect themselves, though Evgeny clearly did). But thankfully, in the early twenty-first century, it is easy to get one's own copies of those titles remembered, no trespass required.
Sardonic archness wasn't what I expected from Russian epic verse, so for some time I wondered whether this was a property of the translation (British dry wit) or of the original. The duel scene and its immediate aftermath altered my opinion: it was clearly meant to be that way. The stanzas from the fight itself were marked by an instantaneous a change of tone, gripping and utterly immediate, like a movie scene:
Out come the pistols (how they dazzle!),
The ramrods plunge, the mallets knock,
The leaden balls roll down the channels,
The triggers click, the guns are cocked.
The greyish powder streams out, steady,
Into the pan, while, waiting ready,
The solid, jagged, screwed-down flint
Stands primed. Guillot can just be glimpsed
Lurking behind a stump, much worried.
The two foes cast their cloaks aside.
Zaretsky walks thirty-two strides
With an exactitude unhurried,
Then leads each friend to his far place.
They draw their pistols from the case.
On its heels, verse reminiscent of one of Hilaire Belloc's Cautionaries, only for slightly older boys:
But the most fun comes from insisting
On plans for a noble death, somehow
Fixating on the man’s pale brow,
And aiming coolly from a distance.
But sending him to kingdom come—
Surely you won’t find that much fun.
Afterwards, there was profound feeling, which soon admixed back into the former social irony and the odd Keatesian landscape. The original's emotional trajectory, and the translator's control of his material became clear; my respect for Briggs increased again.
Friends who know my tastes will not be surprised to hear that it was mostly the stanzas about peasant customs, and winter, on which I was most swept away. I'm not sure whether these were also qualitatively better in translation than plenty of others, or if I'm simply so very susceptible to this type of scenery. (I suspect the latter, because so many of the spring and summer verses bored me.)
Through the cold murk the dawn comes searching,
The noisy field work has tailed off,
The wolf is on the road, emerging
With his half-starving lady wolf.
A passing horse scents him and bridles,
Snorting, at which the wary rider
Gallops away uphill flat-out.
At dawn no herdsmen are about,
Bringing to pasture hungry cattle,
At noon no horn is heard to sing
And bring the cows into a ring.
And girls stay home to sing and rattle
Their spinning wheels. Friendly and bright,
The pine logs sting the winter night...
A tubby goose, red-footed, fearful,
Hoping to breast the waters, crawls
Gingerly out, but skids and falls
Upon the ice. Here comes the cheerful
First fall of whirling, gleaming snow,
Star-scattered on the banks below...
Riding the prairie wild, of course, is
Perilous for your blunt-shod horses,
Who stumble on the treacherous ice
And down they clatter in a trice.
Stay in your bleak homestead. Try reading—
Here is your Pradt, here’s Walter Scott—
Or go through your accounts, if not,
Or fume, or drink. The endless evening
Will somehow pass, tomorrow too.
I've not read enough classic English poetry lately to be confident in comparing the quality - for instance, with Byron, one of Pushkin's inspirations, and whose verse forms Briggs hoped to emulate - but I have included ample quotes, so you may be able to make up your mind whether Briggs' translation is for you, if you wanted to read Onegin in the first place.
(Incidentally, does anyone else worry about whether reading Russian lit now means more, something unsavoury, compared with even six months ago; not the same configuration as it might have forty years ago, so more confusing? Or is it just me and that's laughably paranoid, even for these strange times?)
This translation is rather fun, especially if you enjoy the modern elements alongside the more typically early nineteenth century themes; if it were accompanied by a more detailed introduction, and some notes, I'd more readily recommend it; the lack of either is always a drawback to an edition of a classic, as far as I'm concerned. Like so much great literature of its time, Onegin is a story of youngsters and their betrothal intrigues, but the irony and detachment means that it may still appeal to those who are no longer in that phase of life (though I do think there much to be said for reading classics before or around that time), including those whose years have now outspanned Pushkin's own.
* A few days after reading, I've noticed that there's an Everyman edition of Yevgeny Onegin (same spelling) from 1995 translated by Briggs. As this Pushkin Press one clearly says "English language translation copyright A.D.P. Briggs, 2016", I'm assuming that it's is a revised version - although surely not entirely new as the blurb suggests.
Thank you to Edelweiss, and the publisher, Pushkin Press, for this free advance review copy.
April 12, 2018
Existe algo de brilhante neste texto a que não consigo aceder na plenitude. Tendo gostado bastante de ler e sentido por vezes que atingia um certo zénite, não consegui permanecer por lá todo o livro, apesar de o ter procurado já que o desejo por realizar esta leitura era bastante elevado. Pushkin é uma referência da história internacional da literatura, é o Camões, ou talvez melhor, o Dante do russo. Estranhamente no início do século XIX a elite russa usava mais o francês do que o russo, um pouco à semelhança da elite que só escrevia em latim quando Dante ousou escrever em italiano.
Creio que a minha leitura sofreu por três razões pessoais, que espero um dia ultrapassar: o meu desgosto com o romantismo; a minha fraca inclinação para a poesia; e o meu limitado interesse por novelas curtas. Começando pelo último, os textos curtos fazem-me sempre sentir que tudo passa demasiado a correr, sem espaço/tempo para um verdadeiro desabrochar dos personagens. Já a poesia perco-a na forma, por se dedicar mais à sintaxe que à semântica, é um pouco como se a literatura almejasse a ser música, sendo artes dotadas de tão distintas valências. Por fim o romantismo, já muitas vezes me queixei do mesmo, julgo que não adianta apontar os seus problemas, não foi por mero caso que a corrente desapareceu no tempo.
Por outro lado, agora refletindo e comparando com outras obras de contornos épicos, não que este seja um épico declarado mas pode ser encarado como tal pelo que disse acima, considero que fui provavelmente exigente demais. Aqui atribuirei as culpas ao brilhantismo de Pushkin. O modo como escreve é assombrosamente acessível, dotado de um ritmo de tranquilidade que faz tudo parecer tão fácil, quase como se estivesse ali no papel por zelo natural. Pushkin consegue fazer-nos esquecer que estamos a ler em verso, consegue fazer-nos esquecer que continua a obedecer aos parâmetros do romantismo, os quais ele obsessivamente persegue na forma do seu grande ídolo, Byron. Em certa medida, e depois de passar os olhos por algumas peças escritas por Pushkin, fico com a ideia que esta sua abordagem de simplificação, de facilitar o acesso, dar a ver e não esconder, no fundo uma certa fuga ao romantismo, se deve a uma sua outra obsessão, Shakespeare.
Uma obra para reler.
Também publicado no VI: https://virtual-illusion.blogspot.pt/...
Creio que a minha leitura sofreu por três razões pessoais, que espero um dia ultrapassar: o meu desgosto com o romantismo; a minha fraca inclinação para a poesia; e o meu limitado interesse por novelas curtas. Começando pelo último, os textos curtos fazem-me sempre sentir que tudo passa demasiado a correr, sem espaço/tempo para um verdadeiro desabrochar dos personagens. Já a poesia perco-a na forma, por se dedicar mais à sintaxe que à semântica, é um pouco como se a literatura almejasse a ser música, sendo artes dotadas de tão distintas valências. Por fim o romantismo, já muitas vezes me queixei do mesmo, julgo que não adianta apontar os seus problemas, não foi por mero caso que a corrente desapareceu no tempo.
Por outro lado, agora refletindo e comparando com outras obras de contornos épicos, não que este seja um épico declarado mas pode ser encarado como tal pelo que disse acima, considero que fui provavelmente exigente demais. Aqui atribuirei as culpas ao brilhantismo de Pushkin. O modo como escreve é assombrosamente acessível, dotado de um ritmo de tranquilidade que faz tudo parecer tão fácil, quase como se estivesse ali no papel por zelo natural. Pushkin consegue fazer-nos esquecer que estamos a ler em verso, consegue fazer-nos esquecer que continua a obedecer aos parâmetros do romantismo, os quais ele obsessivamente persegue na forma do seu grande ídolo, Byron. Em certa medida, e depois de passar os olhos por algumas peças escritas por Pushkin, fico com a ideia que esta sua abordagem de simplificação, de facilitar o acesso, dar a ver e não esconder, no fundo uma certa fuga ao romantismo, se deve a uma sua outra obsessão, Shakespeare.
Uma obra para reler.
Também publicado no VI: https://virtual-illusion.blogspot.pt/...
June 21, 2017
"(...) aceita, indulgente, estes
capítulos assim variegados,
ou meio jocosos ou meio tristes,
em fala vulgar ou em tom elevado,
fruto leviano do passatempo,
da insónia, da leve inspiração,
do imaturo, e do murcho, tempo,
de um frio exame da razão,
das marcas dolentes no coração."
Li Eugénio Onéguin, há dois anos, numa tradução para castelhano; reli-o, agora, na versão para português de Nina e Filipe Guerra. A qualidade das traduções não posso avaliar, que não percebo russo, mas comparei algumas estrofes e parece-me que a da editada pela Relógio D'Água não fica atrás da da Catedra.
A primeira leitura foi a da descoberta; essencialmente conhecer as personagens e emocionar-me com os seus destinos. A segunda foi a do prazer; o deslumbramento com a arte de Pushkin.
No meu primeiro Oneguin, fiz um textozito que fica aqui para quem tiver paciência para o ler.
Agora, vou arrumar as minhas duas maravilhosas edições para deixar de olhar para elas e tirar este sorriso tolo da cara...
capítulos assim variegados,
ou meio jocosos ou meio tristes,
em fala vulgar ou em tom elevado,
fruto leviano do passatempo,
da insónia, da leve inspiração,
do imaturo, e do murcho, tempo,
de um frio exame da razão,
das marcas dolentes no coração."
Li Eugénio Onéguin, há dois anos, numa tradução para castelhano; reli-o, agora, na versão para português de Nina e Filipe Guerra. A qualidade das traduções não posso avaliar, que não percebo russo, mas comparei algumas estrofes e parece-me que a da editada pela Relógio D'Água não fica atrás da da Catedra.
A primeira leitura foi a da descoberta; essencialmente conhecer as personagens e emocionar-me com os seus destinos. A segunda foi a do prazer; o deslumbramento com a arte de Pushkin.
No meu primeiro Oneguin, fiz um textozito que fica aqui para quem tiver paciência para o ler.
Agora, vou arrumar as minhas duas maravilhosas edições para deixar de olhar para elas e tirar este sorriso tolo da cara...
June 16, 2018
Relectura marzo 2016 (*)
En los pedestales literarios siempre hay algún libro que hace todo lo posible para que la gente dude del motivo de su permanencia en ese lugar. Según mi parecer, este no es uno de ellos. Mientras se lee se percibe su vigencia, se respira la atmósfera de los personajes, se viven sus tensiones. Y sí, también sus desfallecimientos. Esta historia abarca todo en pocas páginas: el hastío, el amor, el rechazo, las convenciones sociales, las apariencias y las verdaderas esencias. Suena a mucho, pero está tratado de una forma que ni decepciona ni crea la sensación de estar hablando de todo y de nada al mismo tiempo.
La trama es (más o menos) sencilla. El personaje del título es un joven que no se dedica a nada, salvo a asistir al teatro, fiestas y demás diversiones. No quiere compromisos, pero le encanta conquistar por deporte. Su vida es rutinaria y él, casi por consecuencia, padece de melancolía. Un día, le avisan que un tío que tiene una finca en el campo está muy enfermo y que desea verlo. Eugenio acude al llamado (no sin quejarse), el tío muere y entonces él se da cuenta de que el cambio de aires no le vendría nada mal. Allí conocerá a Lenski y se hará amigo de él. Y por medio de este muchacho conocerá a Tatiana, que tiene un papel fundamental en esta historia.
En primer lugar, es destacable la voz del narrador. Inscripto en el romanticismo, Pushkin se tomaba muy en serio lo que hacía y buscaba que el texto tuviera una personalidad, un Yo marcado, así que no es extraño que sea un protagonista más de la historia. Es diez veces más molesta que la de Mark Twain en Las aventuras de Tom Sawyer, pero tiene unas intervenciones tan útiles, certeras y bellas (salvo cuando habla de los “piececitos” de las damas y de cómo los hacen sufrir y blah blah blah) que uno se olvida por completo de eso, salvo que padezca de intolerancia a los escritores “pretenciosos”. A veces hasta se da el lujo de opacar lo que está ocurriendo con sus criaturas, ya que retrasa la acción al divagar por temas profundos o superficiales. Los asuntos más interesantes, según mis gustos, son los de la oposición ciudad- campo y las continuas menciones a poetas y obras de teatro de la época (hayan muerto o no).
En segundo lugar, pero no menos importante, está la intensidad de los personajes. Hay un balance muy delicado entre los pares Oneguin- Lenski y Tatiana- Olga. Tan delicado es que los que deberían cruzarse por similitudes en el carácter no lo hacen. Todos cometen sus errores y ninguno intenta repararlos, algo que parece extraño y un poco adrede para que la historia continúe. La incapacidad de razonar y la exaltación de los ánimos desatan las consecuencias, así que bienvenido sea. Me hicieron acordar a los personajes de las tragedias griegas o shakesperianas, en donde sufren una especie de ofuscación que no les permite cambiar el rumbo de los acontecimientos y se precipitan a lo peor, por no pensar antes o por no poder ganarle al destino. Oneguin no se hace querer, pero tampoco se hace odiar y eso es un punto a favor. Reitero la preponderancia de Tatiana en el libro, por su temeridad al hacer algo que en su tiempo era inesperado. Y aunque el resultado no sea el más feliz, es un punto de quiebre y lleva la narración a otro nivel. El final me sorprendió gratamente y creo que está muy bien ubicado en mi ranking personal de “conclusiones que me dejaron en shock”. Si Pushkin buscaba un golpe de efecto, lo logró.
Hay miles y miles de cuestiones para hablar sobre Eugenio Oneguin pero creo que recomendarlo con toda la fuerza recomendadora (?) del mundo es suficiente. Se puede decir mucho de Pushkin y mucho de Oneguin (¿serán la misma persona?). Curiosamente, hay una escena que después se replica en la vida real del autor, hecho que da un poco de escalofríos. En fin, es un libro memorable y vale la pena leerlo, sobre todo porque me dejó más claras las razones por las cuales el autor era tan genial. Quiero releerlo en algún momento. Había leído varios poemas, pero ninguno me pareció tan contundente como este.
(*) La relectura me produjo más admiración y era esperable. Después de leer La hija del capitán una entiende que Pushkin era excelente forjando personajes complejos que eluden el acartonamiento que podría producir la exaltación del patriotismo o del hastío, por ejemplo. Si bien esta novela en verso fue compuesta por partes, las costuras, por suerte, no se notan (salvo en las estrofas que se eliminaron y dejaron su huella) y la historia siempre sigue su curso. No quería dejar de notar que hay un humor muy ácido en las observaciones sobre la vida en sociedad (a la que Pushkin entró no sin cierta reticencia), tal vez resentido, y hasta salpican las palabras de Lenski, el poeta. Maravilloso.
Reseña en Clásico desorden
En los pedestales literarios siempre hay algún libro que hace todo lo posible para que la gente dude del motivo de su permanencia en ese lugar. Según mi parecer, este no es uno de ellos. Mientras se lee se percibe su vigencia, se respira la atmósfera de los personajes, se viven sus tensiones. Y sí, también sus desfallecimientos. Esta historia abarca todo en pocas páginas: el hastío, el amor, el rechazo, las convenciones sociales, las apariencias y las verdaderas esencias. Suena a mucho, pero está tratado de una forma que ni decepciona ni crea la sensación de estar hablando de todo y de nada al mismo tiempo.
La trama es (más o menos) sencilla. El personaje del título es un joven que no se dedica a nada, salvo a asistir al teatro, fiestas y demás diversiones. No quiere compromisos, pero le encanta conquistar por deporte. Su vida es rutinaria y él, casi por consecuencia, padece de melancolía. Un día, le avisan que un tío que tiene una finca en el campo está muy enfermo y que desea verlo. Eugenio acude al llamado (no sin quejarse), el tío muere y entonces él se da cuenta de que el cambio de aires no le vendría nada mal. Allí conocerá a Lenski y se hará amigo de él. Y por medio de este muchacho conocerá a Tatiana, que tiene un papel fundamental en esta historia.
En primer lugar, es destacable la voz del narrador. Inscripto en el romanticismo, Pushkin se tomaba muy en serio lo que hacía y buscaba que el texto tuviera una personalidad, un Yo marcado, así que no es extraño que sea un protagonista más de la historia. Es diez veces más molesta que la de Mark Twain en Las aventuras de Tom Sawyer, pero tiene unas intervenciones tan útiles, certeras y bellas (salvo cuando habla de los “piececitos” de las damas y de cómo los hacen sufrir y blah blah blah) que uno se olvida por completo de eso, salvo que padezca de intolerancia a los escritores “pretenciosos”. A veces hasta se da el lujo de opacar lo que está ocurriendo con sus criaturas, ya que retrasa la acción al divagar por temas profundos o superficiales. Los asuntos más interesantes, según mis gustos, son los de la oposición ciudad- campo y las continuas menciones a poetas y obras de teatro de la época (hayan muerto o no).
En segundo lugar, pero no menos importante, está la intensidad de los personajes. Hay un balance muy delicado entre los pares Oneguin- Lenski y Tatiana- Olga. Tan delicado es que los que deberían cruzarse por similitudes en el carácter no lo hacen. Todos cometen sus errores y ninguno intenta repararlos, algo que parece extraño y un poco adrede para que la historia continúe. La incapacidad de razonar y la exaltación de los ánimos desatan las consecuencias, así que bienvenido sea. Me hicieron acordar a los personajes de las tragedias griegas o shakesperianas, en donde sufren una especie de ofuscación que no les permite cambiar el rumbo de los acontecimientos y se precipitan a lo peor, por no pensar antes o por no poder ganarle al destino. Oneguin no se hace querer, pero tampoco se hace odiar y eso es un punto a favor. Reitero la preponderancia de Tatiana en el libro, por su temeridad al hacer algo que en su tiempo era inesperado. Y aunque el resultado no sea el más feliz, es un punto de quiebre y lleva la narración a otro nivel. El final me sorprendió gratamente y creo que está muy bien ubicado en mi ranking personal de “conclusiones que me dejaron en shock”. Si Pushkin buscaba un golpe de efecto, lo logró.
Hay miles y miles de cuestiones para hablar sobre Eugenio Oneguin pero creo que recomendarlo con toda la fuerza recomendadora (?) del mundo es suficiente. Se puede decir mucho de Pushkin y mucho de Oneguin (¿serán la misma persona?). Curiosamente, hay una escena que después se replica en la vida real del autor, hecho que da un poco de escalofríos. En fin, es un libro memorable y vale la pena leerlo, sobre todo porque me dejó más claras las razones por las cuales el autor era tan genial. Quiero releerlo en algún momento. Había leído varios poemas, pero ninguno me pareció tan contundente como este.
(*) La relectura me produjo más admiración y era esperable. Después de leer La hija del capitán una entiende que Pushkin era excelente forjando personajes complejos que eluden el acartonamiento que podría producir la exaltación del patriotismo o del hastío, por ejemplo. Si bien esta novela en verso fue compuesta por partes, las costuras, por suerte, no se notan (salvo en las estrofas que se eliminaron y dejaron su huella) y la historia siempre sigue su curso. No quería dejar de notar que hay un humor muy ácido en las observaciones sobre la vida en sociedad (a la que Pushkin entró no sin cierta reticencia), tal vez resentido, y hasta salpican las palabras de Lenski, el poeta. Maravilloso.
Reseña en Clásico desorden
September 24, 2016
"Blest who betimes has left life's revel,
Whose wine-filled glass he has not drained,
Who does not read right to the end
Life's still, as yet, unfinished novel,
But lets it go, as I do my
Onegin, and bid him goodbye."
(p.197)
Whose wine-filled glass he has not drained,
Who does not read right to the end
Life's still, as yet, unfinished novel,
But lets it go, as I do my
Onegin, and bid him goodbye."
(p.197)
December 22, 2022
A novel in verse is not so novel.
The idea goes back as far at least
As old Homer, or the fossil
Of that ancient Gilgamesh.
Yet Pushkin’s book is innovative;
His approach is highly creative.
His native Russian never knew,
Verse so natural and so true.
It reads as easily as prose,
And pops and burns like firecrackers,
Flies along like fleeing blackbirds,
And hits its target on the nose.
If only he hadn’t had that duel,
We might have yet another jewel!
The protagonist is rather shallow,
The female lead is rather pale;
The poet Lensky is wholly callow,
The plot is thin and somewhat frail.
No matter, the book is full of style,
Sharp insights abound and while
It may not be the most profound,
Its common sense is always sound.
Though his country now is infamous
We cannot fairly blame the author.
That would be like damning Chaucer
For the sins of Queen Elizabeth.
I hope it is not controversial
To proclaim Pushkin universal.
The idea goes back as far at least
As old Homer, or the fossil
Of that ancient Gilgamesh.
Yet Pushkin’s book is innovative;
His approach is highly creative.
His native Russian never knew,
Verse so natural and so true.
It reads as easily as prose,
And pops and burns like firecrackers,
Flies along like fleeing blackbirds,
And hits its target on the nose.
If only he hadn’t had that duel,
We might have yet another jewel!
The protagonist is rather shallow,
The female lead is rather pale;
The poet Lensky is wholly callow,
The plot is thin and somewhat frail.
No matter, the book is full of style,
Sharp insights abound and while
It may not be the most profound,
Its common sense is always sound.
Though his country now is infamous
We cannot fairly blame the author.
That would be like damning Chaucer
For the sins of Queen Elizabeth.
I hope it is not controversial
To proclaim Pushkin universal.
September 3, 2018
I Will Survive
[condensed 6/27/16]
Maybe the first notable Western novel hitting a favored theme in the arts: the ugly duckling's transformation into a swan and turning the table back against her rejector with a big ...
This brings to mind a song like I Will Survive (Gloria Gaynor):
Years later, Onegin sees the now extraordinarily beautiful Tatiana at a society ball in St. Petersburg and becomes obsessed with winning her affections, despite the fact she's now married. Saying anything more would be a spoiler.
Pushkin's Onegin is apparently the first among a long line of fictional Russian "superfluous men," a character type Pushkin borrowed from Lord Byron and his "Byronic hero," a miserable, cynical, passive man, usually borne from privilege, full of himself yet deeply sensitive.
Tolstoy compared Pushkin's storytelling to Homer's. By comparison, Dostoevsky condemned Eugene Onegin as a "Western intrusion and [the] glorification of Tatiana as the exemplar of Russian womanhood." Professor Stanley Mitchell notes Russian "[r]adicals and conservatives fought over Pushkin's characters as if they were real people."
Recommended for change of pace, especially if you enjoy epic poems.
Maybe the first notable Western novel hitting a favored theme in the arts: the ugly duckling's transformation into a swan and turning the table back against her rejector with a big ...
This brings to mind a song like I Will Survive (Gloria Gaynor):
weren't you the one who tried to hurt me with goodbye?Pushkin's one-of-a-kind novel-in-verse set in Russia in the early 1800s is told in 389 stanzas of iambic tetrameter. In it, Tatiana falls deeply for Eugene Onegin while he visits her home with a friend who's engaged to Tatiana's beautiful younger sister Olga. Tatiana, at the time rather plain, confesses her love for Eugene in a letter. He politely rejects her, in favor of pursuing shallow, vain Olga, putting him at odds with his friend (and into a duel).
Did you think I'd crumble
Did you think I'd lay down and die
Oh no, not I
I will survive...
Years later, Onegin sees the now extraordinarily beautiful Tatiana at a society ball in St. Petersburg and becomes obsessed with winning her affections, despite the fact she's now married. Saying anything more would be a spoiler.
Pushkin's Onegin is apparently the first among a long line of fictional Russian "superfluous men," a character type Pushkin borrowed from Lord Byron and his "Byronic hero," a miserable, cynical, passive man, usually borne from privilege, full of himself yet deeply sensitive.
Tolstoy compared Pushkin's storytelling to Homer's. By comparison, Dostoevsky condemned Eugene Onegin as a "Western intrusion and [the] glorification of Tatiana as the exemplar of Russian womanhood." Professor Stanley Mitchell notes Russian "[r]adicals and conservatives fought over Pushkin's characters as if they were real people."
Recommended for change of pace, especially if you enjoy epic poems.
August 22, 2021
"¿Quién es aquel hombre
que permanece taciturno
entre esa gente distinguida?
Se muestra extraño a los presentes.
Los mira cual si se tratara
de una turba de fantasmas.
¿Qué se expresa en su rostro?
¿Revela spleen o ufanía?"
Me alegra por fin haber leído este clásico ruso. El género de la obra me cae como anillo al dedo ya que estoy muy acostumbrado a leer poesía narrativa y me encanta más que la poesía convencional. En este caso sé que Pushkin es un autor muy querido en su natal Rusia y quien realmente se puede decir fue el pionero de su literatura que abrió las puertas a otros destacados como Tolstoi o Dostoievsky. Debido a que de hecho la literatura rusa no tenía resonancia en Europa antes de él prácticamente.
Pero así como él abrió las puertas a Europa, pues eso no hubiera pasado si antes Rusia no se abría completamente a Europa primero. La gran influencia de Inglaterra en el Romanticismo y de Francia en el realismo permitieron eso.
Hay un gran parecido del autor con Lord Byron y deduzco no solo en la manera de vivir del autor sino incluso en este poema. Yo ya he leído "Don Juan" del poeta inglés y las características son muy similares. Un personaje un poco alejado de la moral común de su tiempo, su centro como personaje de este poema, sus continuas referencias a cosas contemporáneas o incluso algún ataque a algún enemigo del escritor o revistas contemporáneas (aunque Lord Byron lo hacía más y eso no me agradaba). Pushkin mismo lo menciona varias veces en su poema, compara a Oneguin con Child Harold e incluso habla de Byron por momentos. Esto desde luego le baja un poco a la apreciación que puedo dar de esta obra.
"La sociedad le fastidiaba;
las damas ya no ocupaban
sus pensamientos como antes;
ya le tenían fatigado
las tradiciones; los amigos
y la amistad le aburrieron"
La historia nos cuenta a Eugenio Oneguin quien es un joven rico del cual su tío ha muerto dejándole alguna herencia. Desde el inicio conocemos que Oneguin se harta de las ceremonias, convenciones, Etc y tiene un desgano en general para lo que al común de la gente puede satisfacerle. Una de las cosas que más le llama la atención son las mujeres en las cuales ya no busca apasionarse por ellas sino más bien pasar el rato o divertirse enamorándolas. Cuando él llegue conocerá en ese ambiente rural a diversos personajes como su amigo Vladimir Lenski, Tatina y Olga. Lenski es un poeta muy virtuoso quien parece tener la cabeza en las nubes cosa que por momentos fastidia al todo superado Oneguin.
Eugenio Oneguin no me pareció un gran personaje ni demasiado bien construido, falta mucha esencia, descripción y fortaleza de su personalidad. Desde luego, eso no tiene que ver con el hecho de sus características propias, he visto personajes parecidos pero que quizás llaman más la atención. Será también porque el poema va y viene y eso te hace perder a veces la esencia del relato. Muchas páginas olvidan por completo a
Oneguin.
Desde luego la que lleva la fiesta y el tono del poema entero es Tatiana quien con su inocencia, rusticidad, pureza, catolicismo aunque también creencias mágicas da los mejores momentos en mi parecer del poema. Cuando ella está las pasiones se describen y viendo toda la obra integralmente para mí Pushkin tiene sus mejores ratos cuando habla del amor a través de sus personajes principales.
Otro de los rasgos que me gustó en el autor es su descripción de las costumbres rusas, su gente, sus fiestas, sus creencias, sus habitudes. Debo decir que he descubierto más de Rusia en Pushkin que en Tolstoi o Dostoievsky donde parece que Europa se muda al ambiente ruso. Aquí no, tal vez sea por el hecho del ambiente rural y campesino, aunque leí que por otras obras también narra asuntos del Cáucaso. Así, tal vez eso hace que las descripciones sean mucho más globales.
El argumento en sí es bastante simple pero las descripciones de los sentimientos sobre todo me gustó mucho y también tiene varias frases que he apuntado.
"Aquel que vive razonando
termina por sentir desprecio
en su alma hacia los humanos"
que permanece taciturno
entre esa gente distinguida?
Se muestra extraño a los presentes.
Los mira cual si se tratara
de una turba de fantasmas.
¿Qué se expresa en su rostro?
¿Revela spleen o ufanía?"
Me alegra por fin haber leído este clásico ruso. El género de la obra me cae como anillo al dedo ya que estoy muy acostumbrado a leer poesía narrativa y me encanta más que la poesía convencional. En este caso sé que Pushkin es un autor muy querido en su natal Rusia y quien realmente se puede decir fue el pionero de su literatura que abrió las puertas a otros destacados como Tolstoi o Dostoievsky. Debido a que de hecho la literatura rusa no tenía resonancia en Europa antes de él prácticamente.
Pero así como él abrió las puertas a Europa, pues eso no hubiera pasado si antes Rusia no se abría completamente a Europa primero. La gran influencia de Inglaterra en el Romanticismo y de Francia en el realismo permitieron eso.
Hay un gran parecido del autor con Lord Byron y deduzco no solo en la manera de vivir del autor sino incluso en este poema. Yo ya he leído "Don Juan" del poeta inglés y las características son muy similares. Un personaje un poco alejado de la moral común de su tiempo, su centro como personaje de este poema, sus continuas referencias a cosas contemporáneas o incluso algún ataque a algún enemigo del escritor o revistas contemporáneas (aunque Lord Byron lo hacía más y eso no me agradaba). Pushkin mismo lo menciona varias veces en su poema, compara a Oneguin con Child Harold e incluso habla de Byron por momentos. Esto desde luego le baja un poco a la apreciación que puedo dar de esta obra.
"La sociedad le fastidiaba;
las damas ya no ocupaban
sus pensamientos como antes;
ya le tenían fatigado
las tradiciones; los amigos
y la amistad le aburrieron"
La historia nos cuenta a Eugenio Oneguin quien es un joven rico del cual su tío ha muerto dejándole alguna herencia. Desde el inicio conocemos que Oneguin se harta de las ceremonias, convenciones, Etc y tiene un desgano en general para lo que al común de la gente puede satisfacerle. Una de las cosas que más le llama la atención son las mujeres en las cuales ya no busca apasionarse por ellas sino más bien pasar el rato o divertirse enamorándolas. Cuando él llegue conocerá en ese ambiente rural a diversos personajes como su amigo Vladimir Lenski, Tatina y Olga. Lenski es un poeta muy virtuoso quien parece tener la cabeza en las nubes cosa que por momentos fastidia al todo superado Oneguin.
Eugenio Oneguin no me pareció un gran personaje ni demasiado bien construido, falta mucha esencia, descripción y fortaleza de su personalidad. Desde luego, eso no tiene que ver con el hecho de sus características propias, he visto personajes parecidos pero que quizás llaman más la atención. Será también porque el poema va y viene y eso te hace perder a veces la esencia del relato. Muchas páginas olvidan por completo a
Oneguin.
Desde luego la que lleva la fiesta y el tono del poema entero es Tatiana quien con su inocencia, rusticidad, pureza, catolicismo aunque también creencias mágicas da los mejores momentos en mi parecer del poema. Cuando ella está las pasiones se describen y viendo toda la obra integralmente para mí Pushkin tiene sus mejores ratos cuando habla del amor a través de sus personajes principales.
Otro de los rasgos que me gustó en el autor es su descripción de las costumbres rusas, su gente, sus fiestas, sus creencias, sus habitudes. Debo decir que he descubierto más de Rusia en Pushkin que en Tolstoi o Dostoievsky donde parece que Europa se muda al ambiente ruso. Aquí no, tal vez sea por el hecho del ambiente rural y campesino, aunque leí que por otras obras también narra asuntos del Cáucaso. Así, tal vez eso hace que las descripciones sean mucho más globales.
El argumento en sí es bastante simple pero las descripciones de los sentimientos sobre todo me gustó mucho y también tiene varias frases que he apuntado.
"Aquel que vive razonando
termina por sentir desprecio
en su alma hacia los humanos"
April 21, 2020
Well! I have been familiar with this over 200 page Russian narrative poem--one of the jewels of Russian literature written by one of the greatest of Russian authors--but don't recall reading the whole of it before now. It may be best known in the west because of Tchaikovsky's opera Eugene Onegin. But I know it is something very familiar still to Russian schoolchildren, the story of an aloof upper class man who spurns the advances of young provincial Tatyana only to find her later in life, making advances on her, who is now very different and happily married. So he finds love, the transformative power of love, too late, alas, but hey, you don't exactly get to love and sympathize with the guy, really.
I liked it, though I am not a huge fan of "verse novels," given the strictures that call attention to the language. Pushkin wrote the whole thing in alexandrines, with rhyming couplets. Add to that the limitation that I am reading it in translation, hearing all the hubbub about how Pushkin in particular is impossible to translate. See Manny's review where he basically just posts Vladimir Nabokov's poem about that impossibility, though if you see Jim Elkins's very long review you will see that Nabokov himself wrote a translation of the 200 page poem that with footnotes is more than FOUR VOLUMES, 1,200 pages!!!? Literary scholars, hmmph, they can be obsessively crazy. But hey, the poem is great, published in the early nineteenth century in serial form initially, and what do I know about this translation by Mary Hobson versus any other one? I don't know the original, but I thought it was very readable and witty and well done.
I liked it, though I am not a huge fan of "verse novels," given the strictures that call attention to the language. Pushkin wrote the whole thing in alexandrines, with rhyming couplets. Add to that the limitation that I am reading it in translation, hearing all the hubbub about how Pushkin in particular is impossible to translate. See Manny's review where he basically just posts Vladimir Nabokov's poem about that impossibility, though if you see Jim Elkins's very long review you will see that Nabokov himself wrote a translation of the 200 page poem that with footnotes is more than FOUR VOLUMES, 1,200 pages!!!? Literary scholars, hmmph, they can be obsessively crazy. But hey, the poem is great, published in the early nineteenth century in serial form initially, and what do I know about this translation by Mary Hobson versus any other one? I don't know the original, but I thought it was very readable and witty and well done.
March 26, 2016
কয়েকদিন আগে গার্সিয়া মার্কেসের একটি বহু পুরনো প্রবন্ধে রবীন্দ্রনাথ সম্পর্কে সিরিয়াসলি আপত্তিকর একটি মন্তব্য পেলাম। তার নিজের নোবেল বিজয়ের ঠিক ১২ মাস আগে লেখা এই দীর্ঘ প্রবন্ধে তিনি পুরস্কারের হিট-এন্ড-মিস ইতিহাস নিয়ে লিখেছিলেন। সেই প্রসঙ্গেই রবীন্দ্রনাথের অবতারনা। "El indio Rabindranat Tagore, a quien debemos tantas lágrimas de caramelo, fue arrastrado por los vientos de la justicia del carajo." মোটামুটি চলনসই ইংরেজি অনুবাদ করলে এর অর্থ দাঁড়ায় "The Indian Rabindranath Tagore, to whom we owe so many saccharine tears, was swept away by the winds of **** justice." আমার সীমিত জ্ঞানে যতটুকু ধরে, কারাহো শব্দ একটি অশ্রাব্য গালি বলেই জানি - তবে নিঁখুত ভাষান্তর কি হবে জানা নেই বলে আপাতত তারকা দিয়ে সারলাম।
পুশকিন পড়তে গিয়ে কবিগুরু সম্পর্কে গার্সিয়া মার্কেসের উপরের কথাটি মনে এলো। বাঙালি রবীন্দ্রনাথ বলতে যা বোঝে - আক্ষরিক অর্থেই আমাদের সংস্কৃতি ও মননের একদম কেন্দ্রবিন্দু - বহির্বিশ্বের কাছে রবীন্দ্রনাথের সেই আসন নেই, থাকার কথাও না। কিন্তু তারপরেও রবীন্দ্রনাথের অনুবাদ-ভাগ্য একটু বেশি খারাপ বলেই আমার কাছে মনে হয়। স্প্যানিশ ভাষায় রবি-চর্চার হাল-হকিকত জানা নেই - অর্থাৎ কিসের ভিত্তিতে গাবোর এই উষ্মা - তবে ইংরেজিতে রবীন্দ্রনাথের কবিতা বা গান যতবারই চোখে পড়েছে (এমনকি তার নিজের অনুবাদেও), ততবারই মনে হয়েছে এত ফিকে, এত দুর্বল, মূলের কাব্যময়তা আর বোধের ব্যাপ্তি থেকে এত যোজন দূরে? দুটো কি করে একই টেক্সটের ভিন্ন ভাষারূপ হতে পারে?
এখন মনে হয় যে রবীন্দ্র-লিরিকের অন্তর্গত উষ্ণতা (আমি যেটাকে ভাবি emotional temperature হিসেবে) সেটা ইংরেজিতে সঠিক প্রতিফলন করতে পারার মত দক্ষ অনুবাদক হয়তো এখনো জোটেনি। অথবা জুটলেও আমার চোখে পড়েনি। অথবা দুই ভাষার নিজস্ব গুণাবলীর কারণেই সেই উত্তাপ আদৌ কখনো ইংরেজি অক্ষরে অনুভূত হবে না। জানি না আসলে, কারণটা কি। আমি নিশ্চিত যে রুশ ভাষাভাষীরাও জেমস ফালেনের এই অনুবাদ পড়ে হাসবেন, আমাদের মত অ-রুশ পাঠকদের নেহায়েত করুণা করবেন। যেমন আমরা করি কবিগুরুর অবাঙালি পাঠকদের। রবার্ট ফ্রস্ট কবিতানুবাদ সম্পর্কে যথার্থই বলেছিলেন - Poetry is what gets lost in translation.
ইয়েভ্গেনি আনিয়েগিন - ইংরেজিতে ইউজিন অনেগিন - নিযে বিতর্ক আরো কয়েক কাঠি বাড়া। বাঙালির কাছে রবীন্দ্রনাথ যা বোঝায়, ইংরেজের কাছে শেক্সপীয়র, বা জার্মানের কাছে গ্যেটে, রুশ জাতির কাছে আলেক্সান্দার পুশকিনের সেই একই মর্যাদা। অর্থাৎ সংস্কৃতির আকাশের উজ্জ্বলতম নক্ষত্র, যার আলোয় আগের-পরের সকলেই ম্রিয়মান। তারই মহোত্তম সৃষ্টি এই ইউজিন অনেগিন - প্রায় ৪০০ সনেট সম্বলিত একটি দীর্ঘ কাব্য-উপন্যাস। প্রতিটি সনেট একটি নির্ধারিত ছন্দের ছক মেনে চলে - ABABCCDD EFFEGG। বোদ্ধারা এর আলাদা নামই দিয়ে দিয়েছেন - Onegin stanza।
১৮২০-এর দশকের রাশিয়ার প্যানোরামিক পোর্ট্রেট এঁকেছেন পুশকিন, যার কেন্দ্রে রয়েছে দুটি চরিত্র - শিরোনামের অনেগিন, এবং তার বিপরীতে তাতিয়ানা লারিনা। অনেগিন আপাদমস্তক শহুরে প্লেবয়, মস্কো-সেন্ট পিটার্সবার্গ কাঁপিয়ে দেয়া ক্ষ্যাপাটে যুবক, অতীতে বহু নারী যার বাহুতে ধরাশায়ী। তবে বর্তমানে জীবনের উপর পুরোপুরিই বীতশ্রদ্ধ, চাচার রেখে যাওয়া গ্রামের জমিদারিতে দিন গুজরান করছে উদাসীন আয়েশে। তারই প্রেমে পড়ে যায় নেহায়েত অনিচ্ছায়, লজ্জা আর শংকায় আড়ষ্ট সম্ভ্রান্ত ঘরের সাদাসিধে মেয়ে তাতিয়ানা। জুলিয়েট বা ওফেলিয়া বা বনলতা সেন যেমন এক নামে একেকটি সভ্যতার কাছে পরিচিত, তাতিয়ানা লারিনাও রুশ সংস্কৃতির আদর্শ নারী, তাদের সাহিত্যের প্রিয়তম চরিত্র।
তবে অনেগিন-তাতিয়ানার ব্যর্থ আশেকী এই উপন্যাসের একটি অংশ কেবল, আরো হাজারো বিষয়ের অবতারণা আছে এখানে। বিখ্যাত সমালোচক ভাসিলি বেলিনস্কি বলেছিলেন অনেগিন "রুশী জীবনের বিশ্বকোষ।" সমকালীন সমাজের বহুমুখী প্রাণবন্ত উপস্থাপনা আছে, আছে বিলাসী জমিদার শ্রেনীকে নিয়ে তীব্র স্যাটায়ার (A family with a single creed / All sons of boredom's endless greed)। বিভিন্ন মৌসুমে রুশ প্রকৃতির উল্লসিত বন্দনা, জীবন মৃত্যু ভালোবাসা নিয়ে কবির নিগূঢ়তম ভাবনা - সর্বোপরি হারানো যৌবনের জন্যে হতোদ্যম আক্ষেপ আর জরা-সন্ধ্যার জন্যে অনিবার্য অপেক্ষা লুকিয়ে আছে পুশকিনের পংক্তির শিরায় শিরায় - And is there no return of youth? Shall I be thirty soon, in truth? ক্ষণে চপল ক্ষণে গুরুগম্ভীর তার কন্ঠস্বর - যেন আলো-আঁধারির নিরন্তর পালাবদল।
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অনেগিন অনুবাদের সাতকাহন
Untranslatable বলে অনেগিনের দুর্নাম আছে গত দুই শতাব্দী ধরে, এবং বিংশ শতকের অন্যতম বিখ্যাত সাহিত্য-কাইজ্জার প্রত্যক্ষ কারণও এই বই। ললিতার স্রষ্টা রুশ অভিবাসী লেখক নবোকভ সোজা বলে দিয়েছিলেন যে ছন্দের কাঠামো কঠোর অনুসরণ করে অনেগিন অনুবাদ করা অসম্ভব, তাই সেই চেষ্টা করতে যাওয়াও নিরর্থক। নবোকভ নিজে প্রচন্ড যত্ন সহকারে বইটি অনুবাদ করেছিলেন - তবে শি���িল পদ্য অথবা free verse ফর্মে। তার এই প্রচেষ্টাকে ধুয়ে দিয়েছিলেন লেখকের নিকট বন্ধু এবং আরেক বিখ্যাত লেখক-সমালোচক এডমান্ড উইলসন (The Strange Case of Pushkin and Nabokov)। ব্যাস, শুরু হয়ে যায় পত্রিকার পাতায় উত্তর-প্রত্যুত্তর - ফলাফল নবোকভ-উইলসন বন্ধুত্বের অকাল প্রয়ান।
এই কি না সেই বই! তবুও নবোকভের শাসানির ভয়ে অনুবাদকরা বসে থাকেননি - যুগের পর যুগে তারা চেষ্টা চা��িয়ে গেছেন, এখনো যাচ্ছেন। অনেগিনের ইংরেজি অনুবাদ হয়েছে গোটা দশেক, জার্মানে এক ডজন, ফরাসিতেও বেশ কয়েকবার। অনুবাদ নিয়ে আমি একটু খুঁতখুতে, তাই যাচাই-বাছাই না করে সহসা বই ধরি না, আর তাও যদি হয় রুশ সাহিত্যের খোদ ভিত্তিপ্রস্তর, তাহলে তো আরো না! তবে বিগত কয়েক বছরের পাঠের অভিজ্ঞতার আলোকে বলতে পারি যে অক্সফোর্ড ওয়ার্ল্ডস ক্লাসিক্সের সংস্করণগুলো প্রায় সময়ই বেশ উঁচু মানের হয়ে থাকে, এমনকি হয়তো পেংগুইন ক্লাসিকসের চেয়েও বেশি। তাই জেমস ফালেন-এর অনুবাদে এই অক্সফোর্ড সংস্করণটি যখন পুরনো বইয়ের দোকানে দেখতে পেলাম, খুব বেশি ডান-বাম চিন্তা না করেই কিনে ফেলি।
সৌভাগ্য আর কাকে বলে। শুরু করার আগে দিয়ে জাস্ট একটু হালকা ব্রাউজ করে নিয়েছিলাম ব্যাকগ্রাউন্ড সম্পর্কে - এবং পেয়ে যাই ডগলাস হফষ্ট্যাটারের এই চমতকার প্রবন্ধটি। সেই ১৯৯৬ সালে হফষ্ট্যাটার একটি তুলনামূলক বিশ্লেষণ করেছিলেন - অনেগিনের সেরা ইংরেজি অনুবাদ কোনটি? জেমস ফালেন নাকি ওয়াল্টার আর্ন্ট? জন্সটন নাকি এল্টন/ব্রিগস? তার আলোচনা থেকে বুঝতে পারলাম যে ফালেন-ই হয়তো অনেগিনের সবচেয়ে স্বার্থক অনুবাদক।
অনুবাদ নিয়ে বেশি ত্যানা-প্যাঁচানি হয়ে যাচ্ছে হয়তো, তবুও বলবো এই ক্ষেত্রে দরকার আছে। ফর্মের দিক থেকে অনেগিন বিশ্বসাহিত্যে প্রায়-অনন্য একটি গ্রন্থ। আর স্ট্যাঞ্জার কাঠামোর প্রতি প্রশ্নহীন আনুগত্য স্বীকার করে পুশকিনের দ্রুতলয়ের ছন্দ, সর্বোপরি তার রংধনু কন্ঠস্বরের বিশ্বস্ত প্রতিফলন ঘটানো - এগুলো মোটেও সহজ কাজ নয়। প্রচন্ড পরিশ্রমী এবং মেধাবী অনুবাদকের পক্ষেই এই মাল সাইজ করা সম্ভব! যদি বলি যে পুশকিনের নিজেরই এই বই লিখতে আট বছর খরচা হয়ে গিয়েছিল - তাহলে এই গুরুদায়িত্বের একটি আন্দাজ পাবেন। আট বছরের অর্থ হলো কবি প্রতি মাসে গড়ে দুই পাতার বেশি লিখতে পারেননি। অথচ এত সাবলীল-স্বচ্ছন্দ-মসৃণ এই কবিতা যে ২০০ বছর পরেও জড়তার কোন লেশমাত্র নেই - কোথাও কোথাও ছন্দের তাল এত দ্রুত, যে জোরে আবৃত্তি করলে দম নেয়ার ফুরসতও মিলবে না। আর পুরনো কবিদের বেলায় প্রায়ই যেটা ঘটে পুশকিনকে কখনোই কাঠখোট্টা বলে মনে হয় না - বরং মনে হয় এই তো আড্ডাচ্ছলেই বলে যাচ্ছেন ইউজিন আর তাতিয়ানার গল্প। ২০০ বছ���ের তফাতেও একদম টাটকা ফ্রেশ contemporary কবিকন্ঠ।
ভিন্ন একটি ভাষায় এত কিছু বাগে আনা যে কত দুরূহ, তার কিছুটা আন্দাজ দেয়ার চেষ্টা করলাম। আর অনুবাদকদের কাছে অনেগিন কেন এত লোভনীয় পুরস্কার সেটাও সহজেই বোধগম্য। হফষ্ট্যাটারের কথাই ধরি। বিজ্ঞানের পাঠকদের কাছে তিনি সুপরিচিত তার বিখ্যাত বই Godel, Escher, Bach এর কারনে। ব্যক্তিজীবনে তিনি ইন্ডিয়ানা বিশ্ববিদ্যালয়ের প্রফেসর। অথচ অনেগিনের অমোঘ ডাক উপেক্ষা করতে পারেননি তিনি - এমন ভূত চাপলো যে কেবল এই বই অনুবাদ করার উদ্দেশ্যেই তিনি রাশিয়ান ভাষা শিখে ফেলেছিলেন! তার সেই অনুবাদটি বেরিয়েছিল ১৯৯৯ সালে। আর ইংরেজিতে নিত্যনতুন অনুবাদের ফ্লো তো এখনো থামেইনি - যেমন গত মাসেই বেরুলো ব্রিগসের আরেকটি অনুবাদ।
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তাই পুশকিনের পাশাপাশি অনেগিনের অনুবাদকরাও অকুন্ঠ প্রশংসার দাবীদার। পাঠক হিসেবে এতটুকু কৃতজ্ঞতা যদি স্বীকার না করি, তাহলে ভীষণ অন্যায় হয়ে যাবে। জেমস ফালেন-এর কিছু উদ্ধৃতি দিয়েই রিভিউ গুটিয়ে আনি। প্রথমেই ভূমিকা থেকে কিছু মন্তব্য -
"In working, over quite a few years, on several visions and revisions of this translation, I have found myself searching for an ever more natural and unforced flow of language, for a more fluid and straightforward syntax, a lighter and more readily comprehensible style; I have tried to avoid as much as possible the sorts of inversions and verbal contortions that have marred in my view the earlier translations - all in an effort to capture what seemed to me the poem's spontaneous and unlaboured effect in Pushkin's Russian... Ultimately, I have attempted to provide the English-speaking reader of today with a more accessible version of one of the great works of the Russian literary imagination, one that would speak in a familiar, not-too-distant English voice and that would convey not only something of the novel's sense and shape, but some hints of its characteristic flavour as well : its verve and sparkle, its lyricism and wit, its succinctness and variety..."
অত:পর আমার নিজের পছন্দের কিছু পংক্তি...
রাতভর পার্টি শেষে রাজধানী শহরে ভোরের কলরব... শুনুন...
But what of my Eugene? Half drowsing,
He drives to bed from last night's ball,
While Petersburg, already rousing,
Answers the drumbeat's duty call.
The merchant's up, the pedlar scurries,
With jug in hand the milkmaid hurries,
Crackling the freshly fallen snow;
The cabby plods to hackney row.
In pleasant hubbub, morn's awaking!
The shutters open, smoke ascends
In pale blue shafts from chimney ends.
The German baker's up and baking,
And more than once, in cotton cap,
Has opened up his window-trap.
...যেন একটা সিনেমা দেখছি।
সন্ধ্যা নামছে গ্রামে - স্বচ্ছল গেরস্থের বৈঠকখানায় চা-নাস্তার আয়োজন হচ্ছে - কিন্তু তাতিয়ানার বিষন্ন মন পড়ে আছে অন্য কোথাও...
'Twas dusk; and on the table, gleaming,
The evening samovar grew hot;
It hissed and sent its vapour steaming
In swirls about the china pot.
And soon the fragrant tea was flowing
As Olga poured it, dark and glowing,
In all the cups; without a sound
A serving boy took cream around.
Tatyana by the window lingers
And breathes upon the chilly glass;
All lost in thought, the gentle lass
Begins to trace with lovely fingers
Across the misted panes a row
Of hallowed letters: E and O.
চার শত সনেট থেকে যদি একটি মাত্র আমাকে বেছে নিতে বলা হয়, তাহলে বোধ হয় এটিই বেছে নেব। স্ফটিকের মত স্বচ্ছ পংক্তিগুলো, কিন্তু কি কাব্যময়তা, কি অসীম মায়া। শব্দের কি মিরাকিউলাস মিতব্যয়! এক কথায় dazzling! লম্বা লম্বা স্বরবর্ণগুলো কেমন যেন একটা স্বপ্নিল নস্টালজিক আবহ সৃষ্টি করে - gleaming, steaming, swirls, flowing, dark, glowing, lingers, breathes, trace, fingers, hallowed...
অতপর আরেকটু হালকা মেজাজে ততকালীন রাশিয়ার সড়ক যোগাযোগ ব্যবস্থা নিয়ে পরপর দুটি স্ট্যানঞ্জা!
When we have broadened education,
The time will come without a doubt
(By scientific computation,
Within five hundred years about),
When our old roads' decayed condition
Will change beyond all recognition.
Paved highways, linking every side,
Will cross our Russia far and wide;
Above our waters iron bridges
Will stride in broadly arching sweep;
We'll dig bold tunnels 'neath the deep
And even part whole mountain ridges;
And Christendom will institute
An inn at every stage en route.
But roads are bad now in our nation;
Neglected bridges rot and fall;
Bedbugs and fleas at every station
Won't let the traveller sleep at all.
No inns exist. At posting stages
They hang pretentious menu pages,
But just for show, as if to spite
The traveller's futile appetite;
While some rude Cyclops at his fire
Treats Europe's dainty artefacts
With mighty Russian hammer whacks,
And thanks the Lord for ruts and mire
And all the ditches that abound
Throughout our native Russian ground.
ফালেনের দুর্ধর্ষ স্কিলের আরেক পরিচায়ক নীচের কটি ছত্র - বহুদিন প্রবাসী অনেগিন অবশেষে দেশে ফিরে আসে, এক পার্টিতে গিয়ে দূর থেকে দেখে এক আকর্ষণীয়া রমণীকে। কিন্তু কে ইনি?? ইনিই কি ���েই সুদূর অতীতের সাদামাটা তাতিয়ানা?! এও কি সম্ভব?!! কিভাবে???
"But tell me, Prince, you wouldn't know
Who's standing there in conversation
Beside the Spanish envoy, pray .. .
That lady in the red beret?"
"You have been out of circulation.
But I'll present you now with joy."
"Who is she, though?" "My wife, old boy."
"You're married! Really?" "On my honour."
"To whom? How long?" "Some two years since . . .
The Larin girl." "You mean Tatyana!"
"She knows you?" "We were neighbours, Prince."
"Well then, come on . . . we'll go and meet her."
And so the prince led up to greet her
His kinsman and his friend Eugene...
জাস্ট মুখের বচনের এমন অনবদ্য, ন্যাচারাল, প্রাণবন্ত পরিবেশনা কি কখনো পড়েছেন? তাও ছন্দ কবিতায়?? তাও আবার অনুবাদে?? আমি পড়িনি। হলফ করে বলতে পারি এই ছত্রগুলো পড়ে বিস্ময়ে চোখ গোল-গোল হয়ে গিয়েছিল আমার।
মনে মনে ভাবি... বাংলায় এমন অসাধারণ অনেগিন কি পাবো কোনদিন? সোভিয়েত বুকস ইন বেঙ্গলি ওয়েবসাইটে চেক করেছিলাম - পুশকিন আছে বেশ কিছু, কিন্তু কোন অনেগিন দেখলাম না। প্রগতি-রাদুগার দিন গত হয়েছে ২৫ বছর আগে - হয়তো তারই সাথে হারিয়ে গেছে বাংলায় অনেগিনের যথার্থ অনুবাদের শেষ সম্ভাবনাও। হায়াত মামুদ, ননী ভৌমিক, অরুণ সোম-রা পারলেও হয়তো পারতেন - তারা যখন নেই, বাংলায় অনেগিনের আশা করার দুরাশা আর করবো না। আমাদেরই লস সেটা, বাঙালি পাঠকের লস।
ফালেন তো ফালা ফালা করলাম। ভবিষ্যতে হাতে পেলে জনস্টন বা আর্ন্ট পড়ারও আশা রাখি। আধুনিক কালে ইংরেজি ভাষার সবচেয়ে সফল কাব্য-উপন্যাসটি লিখেছিলেন "এ স্যুটেবল বয়" খ্যাত বাঙালি লেখক বিক্রম শেঠ। আশির দশকের সান ফ্রান্সিস্কো শহরের পটভূমিতে লেখা এই উপন্যাসের শিরোনাম "দ্য গোল্ডেন গেট"। মজার ব্যাপার যে বিক্রম শেঠ তার ৩০০ ��াতার উপন্যাসটি লিখেছেন আগাগোড়া অনেগিন স্ট্যাঞ্জায় - জানা যায় চার্লস জনস্টনের অনেগিন অনুবাদে বিমুগ্ধ হয়েই শেঠ নিজে একটি কাব্য-উপন্যাস লিখে ফেলার দুঃসাহস করেছিলেন। ক্লাসিকাল মিউজিকেও আছেন অনেগিন - চাইকোভস্কি রচিত অপেরাটি বোধ করি বর্তমানে পুশকিনের উপন্যাসের সমানই জনপ্রিয়। কালজয়ী সাহিত্যের এই আরেক গুণ - যুগ থেকে যুগে, নানা হাতে নানা জাতে তার অনুরণন ধ্বনিত হয়।
PS ডুয়েল নিয়ে ��িখে আর দীর্ঘায়িত করলাম না - শুধু এটুকুই বলবো যে বাস্তব জীবনে রাশিয়ার কবিরা যেমন মারা গেছেন ডুয়েল লড়ে (পুশকিন নিজে, অথবা লের্মন্তভ), তাদের চরিত্ররাও অহরহ মরেছেন এই একই মরণ খেলায় - এই উপন্যাসে লেন্সকি যেমন। ডুয়েল এবং ১৯শ শতকের রুশ সাহিত্য নিয়ে নিশ্চয়ই কোন না কোন অভিসন্দর্ভ লেখা হয়েছে কোথাও।(উপরে অনেগিন-লেন্সকি ডুয়েলের চিত্রটি এঁকেছিলেন ১৯শ শতকের বিখ্যাত শিল্পী ইলিয়া রেপিন।)
PPS ইংরেজ অভিনেতা স্টিফেন ফ্রাই আবৃত্তি করেছেন ফালেনের সম্পূর্ণ অনুবাদটি। আগ্রহীরা শুনে দেখতে পারেন এই ইউটিউব লিংকে।
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