Eugene Onegin

By Alexander Pushkin

Eugene Onegin (1823-31) is an eight-chapter novel in sonnets. The sonnet form employed is of Pushkin�s own devising. It enables him to modulate between tragic profundity and sparkling humour, and from exquisite lyrical descriptions of nature to devastating satire.

�Comparing the Penguin with the Dedalus leaves one in no doubt that, whatever Nabokov might have made of it, Dedalus�s is superior. It reads fluently, and when you check it off against Nabokov (which is, for all Wilson�s despair, frustratingly essential if you don�t have any Russian), you find far more often not that he has kept to the sense, style and technique of the original. This is a clever trick to pull off, particularly when you consider that Beck is actually a musician, an occasional translator from German, who learnt Russian precisely in order to translate this work. He has not, to put it mildly, wasted his time. Giving himself the freedom to use half-rhymes is entirely forgivable, and means that he can follow the sharp, breathtaking handbrake turns of Pushkin�s own mood. And now so can you.†Nick Lezard�s paperback of the week in The Guardian

�Eugene Onegin is a bitter-sweet love story. It is set in a particular place, Russia, and in a particular time, the 1820s - but it is also, as is all great literature, universal and timeless. Pushkin is one of the small, sublime company of aesthetic geniuses who can be drawn from any art, from any country and any time. This fine new translation is wholly welcome.â€
Iain Sproat in Scotland on Sunday

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dedalus Ebooks
• Release date: Nov 14, 2010
• ISBN: 9781907650109

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Reviews for Eugene Onegin

[amydross · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I've read another translation before in proper verse, and while I understand that the story's not the same without the rhymes, Nabokov's rendering is, I think, as close to perfection as I will come until I can read the original.

[mathmaverick-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Excellent book. The flow and rhythm of the poetry is very good and makes the book very readable. Very impressed with the translation. I would like to read another translation for comparison. Here is a great example of the poetry:

Suppose your pistol-shot has ended
A comrade's promising career,
One who, by a rash glance offended,
Or by an accidental sneer,
During a drunken conversation
Or in a fit of bind vexation
Was bold enough to challenge you -
Will not your soul be filled with rue
When on the ground you see him, stricken,
Upon his brow the mark of death,
And watch the failing of his breath,
And know that heart will never quicken?
Say, now, my friend, what will you feel
When he lies deaf to your appeal?

[hadriantheblind · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Lyrical, tragic, comical, romantic. Russian lit at its best.

[gbill_7 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Essential reading for anyone who loves the masters of Russia's golden age of literature; as Yarmolinsky says in the introduction to this volume, "Indeed, the accuracy with which the Russian scene in the post-Napoleonic era is delineated, the realistic concern with contemporary manners, makes this poem something of a social document. It opens that imaginative history of Russian society that may be constructed from the richly humorous tales of Gogol, the neat fictions of Turgenev, the substantial narratives of Goncharov, Doestoevsky's tortured inventions, Tolstoy's broad canvases."

Tatyana is a fascinating character, and it's ironic reading Onegin duel with Lensky in light of Pushkin's own death at age 38 from a duel with his wife's alleged lover.

Quotes:
On unrequited love:
"It was for you that I neglected
The call of fame, for you forgot
My country, and an exile’s lot –
All thoughts, but those of you, rejected.
Brief as your footprints on the grass,
The happiness of youth must pass."

"One who has lived and thought, grows scornful,
Disdain sits silent in his eye;
One who has felt, is often mournful,
Disturbed by ghosts of days gone by."

On the transience of life:
"Alas! by God’s strange will we must
Behold each generation flourish,
And watch life’s furrows briefly nourish
The perishable human crop,
Which ripens fairly, but to drop;
And where one falls, another surges…
The race of men recks nothing, save
Its reckless growth: into the grave
The grandfathers it promptly urges.
Our time will come when it is due,
Our grandchildren evict us too."

"But at the late and sterile season,
At the sad turning of the years,
The tread of passion augurs tears:
Thus autumn gusts deal death and treason."

"But oh, how deeply we must rue it,
That youth was given us in vain,
That we were hourly faithless to it,
And that it cheated us again;
That our bright pristine hopes grew battered,
Our freshest dreams grew sear, and scattered
Like leaves that in wet autumn stray,
Wind-tossed, and all too soon decay."

On youth:
"Youth’s fever is its own excuse
For ravings that it may induce."

On youth and the human condition:
"And you, oh youthful inspiration,
Come, rouse anew imagination –
Upon the dull mind’s slumbers break,
My little nook do not forsake;
Let not the poet’s heart know capture
By sullen time, and soon grow wry
And hard and cold, and petrify
Here in the world’s benumbing rapture,
This pool we bathe in, friends, this muck
In which, God help us, we are stuck."

[whitreidtan · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The high school I went to had a very different curriculum from most. The overwhelming number of choices we had for classes was amazing, and for an English and history loving geek like me, the best thing ever. I took elective classes like 20th Century Wars, an Asian history class, the Hero in Literature, Literary Outcasts, and Russian-Soviet Life. The latter class was a cross-departmental english and history class and we read some of the great Russian and Soviet authors. I still have my copy of The Complete Prose Tales of Alexandr Sergeyevitch Pushkin on my shelves. But as the title suggests, we never did read Pushkin's poetry, not even his most famous work, the novel in verse, Eugene Onegin. But because I have long been susceptible to buying all the works I can find by an author I enjoy, said novel in verse has been sitting on my shelves unread for literally decades. Note I said I acquire the books, not actually read them. Although in this case, I did finally tackle this most Russian of poems. And it was surprisingly accessible.

Eugene Onegin's eponymous main character is a young man who enjoyed the social whirl and was a hit with women but he became jaded and tired of this life, retreating to his country estate and a fairly hermetic life there until Vladimir Lensky, a young poet moves into the area and the two men strike up a friendship. Lensky takes Onegin to dinner with his love Olga's family where Olga's older sister Tatyana falls for the experienced Onegin. She writes him an impassioned letter and is coldly and effectively rebuffed. After a disastrous evening at a country ball where Onegin unthinkingly flirts with Olga, Lensky calls him out and a duel ensues. Our hero flees the countryside, wandering for a couple of years, during which time Tatyana goes to St. Petersburg and marries, becoming a cosmopolitan young woman. And now Onegin falls head over heels in love with her, now that she is unavailable.

I expected this to a tough read for a couple of reasons. I am (too many to count) years out of school and so not liable to find anyone willing to discuss this with me to help tease out meaning. I have never been a wild poetry fan and the thought of an entire novel in verse was daunting (Sharon Creech's lovely middle grade book Love That Dog being my only other attempt at it and while charming, that one is hardly in the same league as this one). I have to be in the proper mood for the dour Russians (which is why a class for moody high schoolers was genius, I tell you, genius). But I was pleasantly surprised. While tragedy and frustrated love abound here, the mood of the poem is not bleak and unremitting. There is much playfulness and light in it. The depictions of Russian society are detailed and wonderful as are the contrasting depictions of the regular Russian. I know much has been made of the difficulty of translating this poem in particular given the unnaturalness of the rhyme in English but I hardly noticed the oddness of the Pushkin stanza and since my own Russian was never very good, I'm unlikely to ever read it in the original to make an unflattering comparison. In any case, this Johnston translation captures the romance and the heartbreak of this long but engaging work. Those not too intimidated by poetry who want a less dense entry into Russian classics would be smart to start here.

[poetontheone · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Pushkin's verse novel shows him as the masterful powerhouse of language, weaving together an intricate web of characters to create an affecting story full of wit and beauty. A testament to love and the power of the Muse and of ennui. Falen's translation is musical and readable, making the experience of this novel in verse a highly pleasant one for the modern reader.

[imshi_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Read it, didn't hate it, but for me the translation just didn't work. I think, though, that it's probably difficult to translate something like this in an all-around satisfactory way - I shall have to read the original now, I think.

[jwhenderson_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a classic poem from the early romantic tradition in Russian literature. The romantic intrigue involved in the story of Tatyana, Lensky and Onegin has inspired readers and artists alike for more than a century. I found this verse translation very satisfying reading.