Eugene Onegin

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1937.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Release date: Nov 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9780520346581

Book preview

EUGENE ONEGIN

EUGENE ONEGIN Translated from the Russian of ALEXANDER PUSHKIN

by DOROTHEA PRALL RADIN

and GEORGE Z. PATRICK

University of California Press

Berkeley • 1937

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

LONDON,ENGLAND

COPYRIGHT, 1937, BY THE

REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

BY SAMUEL T. FARQUHAR, UNIVERSITY PRINTER

CONTENTS

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

Canto ONE

Canto TWO

Canto THREE

Canto FOUR

Canto FIVE

Canto SIX

Canto SEVEN

Canto EIGHT

Notes

INTRODUCTION

ALEXANDER PUSHKIN was born in Moscow in 1799 and was killed in a duel in 1837. He is Russia’s best-known poet. His aristocratic birth, his liberal principles, his four years of not very severe exile in South Russia, his leadership in Russian literary circles of his own day and his great service to the Russian language in giving it fluency and grace, together with the long list of his poems and his prose writings are facts easily to be found in English books. The Encyclopaedia Britannica gives him a page under Pushkin, and his latest and most authoritative biography is that by Ernest J. Simmons soon to be published by Harvard University Press; readers who would compromise on length will find a brief but admirable estimate of his writings in Baring’s Outline of Russian Literature. The Soviet Government holds Pushkin in such high esteem that it has just published a monumental work of 1179 pages, The Literary Heritage of Pushkint part of a national plan for commemorating, in 1937, the hundredth anniversary of Pushkin’s death.

Almost as obvious and undeniable as these facts is the statement that Eugene Onegin, a narrative poem in eight cantos, written intermittently between the years 1823 and 1831, is Pushkin’s greatest work. And if not undenied or undeniable, it is still a literary commonplace among even the mildest students of the Russian novel that Tatyana, the heroine of the story, is the first shining picture in that long line of lovely and courageous Russian women whom Nekrasov, Turgenev, Dostoyevsky, and Tolstoy have helped to make one of the glories of nineteenth-century Russian literature.

This information being so well known or so easily ascertainable, all that is needed here is a few technical comments with respect to the present translation.

The degree of accuracy it may have attained is due entirely to Professor Patrick, who not only supplied a complete prose version which I have followed constantly, but who carefully corrected, also, many slips and misinterpretations.

As for previous translations, so far as I know there has been, until this year, only one complete translation in English, that by LieutenantColonel Spalding, published in 1881 and now out of print. In late autumn, this year, a translation by Babette Deutsch appeared in a volume of Pushkin’s prose and verse. There are French translations, and two excellent German ones: Bodenstedt’s, and the recent translation of Theodor Commichau, edited with notes by Arthur Luther. I have made free use of Arthur Luther’s notes and of Vaclav Lednicki’s comments in Belmont’s Polish translation of Onegin; I have also translated Pushkin’s own notes where they seemed useful to English readers.

As for the Russian editions from which this translation is made, I have finally used Pushkin’s own arrangement of the poem almost as he published it, and have added very few of the stanzas found and included only after his death. I have also omitted Onegin’s Journey, which was originally published separately, and which I think weakens the poem.

Now, a few words in explanation of the meter and rhyme-form of the present version. Pushkin wrote the Russian in fourteen-line stanzas with eight or nine syllables to the line. The rhyme scheme is: abab ccåå effe gg, a feminine ending being indicated by italics. This stanza I have followed in English, except that in lines i and 3 I have dropped the rhyme but retained the feminine endings; in lines 5-14 I have kept the rhymes of the Russian but disregarded the distinction of masculine and feminine endings. This has not only allowed more freedom and so made it possible to come less far from Pushkin’s characteristic flowing ease, but it has also avoided the effect of jingling which so many short and rhyming lines produce in English, an effect not so noticeable in Russian, where the like inflections of many words make the rhymes less emphatic. To help this lack of emphasis I have used many run-on lines and often slighted the rhymes, though without omitting them.

Pushkin’s diction is as easy and unstrained as his versification, and I have therefore used fairly informal and contemporary English. But Pushkin wrote his poem in the early nineteenth century, when for a heroine to declare her love unasked to a hero was an act calling for great honesty and courage, so that in some passages I have thought slightly stilted phrases best suited to stilted conventions.

Professor Noyes, of the University of California, with whom I first read Eugene Onegin as a student, has given the whole translation the most generous and elaborate criticism, which has, I think, very considerably raised its tone. I am also indebted to Mr. Harold A. Small, Editor of the University of California Press, for his painstaking and valuable suggestions and corrections, and to my family and friends for help in words and phrasing.

D. P. R.

BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA,

1936

Canto ONE

And he is in haste to live and in a wild hurry to feel.

—PRINCE VYAZEMSKY.

My UNCLE’S life was always upright And now that he has fallen ill In earnest he makes one respect him: He is a pattern for us still. One really could not ask for more— But heavens, what a fearful bore To play the sick-nurse day and night And never stir beyond his sight! What petty, mean dissimulation To entertain a man half dead, To poke his pillows up in bed, And carry in some vile potation, While all the time one’s thinking, ‘Why The devil take so long to die?’ "

So mused a youthful scapegrace flying Along the post road thick in dust, The only heir of all his kindred, By the decree of Jove the Just. Friends of Lyudmila and Ruslan, Let me bring forward this young man As hero of my tale without More preamble or roundabout. My friend Eugene Onegin, then, Was born beside the Neva; you May have been born there, reader, too, Or lived as glittering denizen.

I also used to sojourn there, But now I dread the northern air.

. 3

His father served with great distinction And lived along on credit. He Would give his three balls every season And so went bankrupt finally.

The fates were gentle with Eugene: At first a French Madame had been His guardian—then Monsieur. The child Was lovable though somewhat wild. Monsieur l'Abbe y the needy tutor, Taught him his lessons half in jest And treated morals lightly, lest He should appear the persecutor. The Summer Garden saw the pair Come frequently to take the air.

4

Now when Eugene had reached the season Of ardent youth when passion soars Or tender longing fills the bosom, Monsieur was driven out of doors.

Behold our hero!—not a flaw;

Modeled on fashion’s latest law;

A London dandy, combed and curled, Prepared at last to see the world. His French was perfect; he could write And speak without a foreign taint; His bow was free of all constraint, His step in the mazurka light.

The verdict was no more than truth: A charming, cultivated youth.

. 5

We all achieve a little learning Somehow, somewhere, with the result That dazzling by one’s erudition With us is never difficult.

And so Eugene, by those who grudged Their praises often, was adjudged Well read—almost to pedantry. He could discourse most happily Like an inspired amateur On anything in Christendom, And when the talk grew grave, become The wise and silent connoisseur, Then suddenly let fly a shaft Of wit, till all the ladies laughed.

6

Latin of late is out of fashion, And so our scholar, if I am To tell the truth, could muster barely Enough to read an epigram, To mention Juvenal, and, better, To add a Vale to his letter, Or quote from Virgil without break Two lines, though not without mistake. He had no love for history’s pages Nor any antiquarian lust For digging into ancient dust, But anecdotes of other ages From Romulus to us he’d find And store away within his mind.

7

Of poetry, that lofty mistress, He was no votary devout Nor knew an iamb from a trochee However one might count them out. Theocritus and Homer with Their kind he damned, but Adam Smith He read till he was a profound Economist. He could expound Wherein the wealth of nations lies And what it lives on and how all It needs is raw material, Not gold. His father was less wise, It seems, and could not understand His son: he mortgaged all his land.

8

All the things Eugene had studied I could not possibly impart, But that wherein he was a genius, Which was his own peculiar art, That which from youth had been his pleasure, The toil and torment of his leisure, Which filled his days of idleness With melancholy, vague distress— That was the art which Ovid sung, The art of love, to which he died A martyr in Moldavia’s wide And barren wilderness, among Barbarian tribes, no more to see His own far-distant Italy.

9

The fire of love torments us early, Chateaubriand has said. Indeed, Nature is not our guide, but rather The first salacious book we read. Beholding love in some romance We seek to know it in advance Of our own season, and meanwhile All other joys seem puerile. Intent on this foretaste of bliss We spoil it by our very haste, Our youthful fervor goes to waste And all our lives are lived amiss. Such realizations came to vex Eugene. But how he knew the sex!

io

How soon he learned to cloak his feelings. To force his quarry to believe Him true, to languish, dark and jealous, To hide his hope—then undeceive;

To seem by turns subservient, Proud, thoughtful, or indifferent. With flaming eloquence to burn, Or sit profoundly taciturn. How in his notes of love unbounded He threw discretion to the breeze, Careless of all but how to please, And how his glance, at once compounded Of soft and keen, would then appear To start with the obedient tear.

11

How skillfully he played the novice! How well he knew the smiling ways That startle an unpracticed maiden And capture her with pleasant praise. How he could seize the moment where, Relenting at his feigned despair, She yielded some half-meant caress To his impassioned, shrewd address! How ardently he then would sue For an avowal! And at last, When he perceived her heart beat fast, Demand a secret rendezvous!

And then alone with her how he Would tutor her in privacy!

12

How early he had learned to trouble The heart of many a tried coquette; And when he chose to crush his rivals, What cunning pitfalls he could set! With what malevolence he stung Them with the poison of his tongue! But you, you happy husbands,

Reviews for Eugene Onegin

[thorold_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is another of those classics that it's — almost — redundant to read, because you have heard so much about them before you start. Not only from Tchaikovsky: just about every subsequent classic Russian novel involves characters discussing or comparing themselves to Onegin, Tatiana and Lensky. The plot runs along the lines we expect with all the precision of a tramcar: Tatiana falls for Onegin but he rejects her; he has to fight a duel with his best friend Lensky after flirting with his intended, Tatiana's sister Olga, and kills him; some years later Onegin falls heavily for the now-married Tatiana and it's her turn to reject him. So it's a kind of Russian Werther, a romantic tragedy in which all the players are very contemporary poets, tied up in the politics of early-19th-century Russia.But of course it's not really about the plot. Pushkin effectively invented the rules of modern literary Russian, and developed a bouncy, Byronic Russian verse-form (the "Pushkin sonnet") to suit his chatty, up-to-date style. In tune with his heroes Byron and Sterne he loves to wander off into digressions at key moments, and it's never absolutely clear whether the numerous "missing" stanzas or half-stanzas in his numbering scheme are errors, practical jokes at the reader's expense, or simply places he intended to come back to later. There are also the two chapters he never finished: the half-finished Onegin's Journey, which should have been Chapter VIII, and would have smoothed out the rather abrupt transition between Onegin meeting Tatiana as a young girl and then as a married woman, and the aborted Chapter X, which never got much further than a few bits of political satire attacking the Czar's government. It's not clear where he intended to fit this into the story: Onegin and Tatiana don't appear in the surviving fragments.Stanley Mitchell taught Russian at the University of Essex and elsewhere, and was a noted left-winger and a veteran of the 1968 student protests. He worked on Pushkin throughout his academic career. His 2008 translation tries the difficult trick of putting Pushkin's tetrameter meter and demanding rhyme scheme into English, and he pulls it off astonishingly well. The rather contrived rhymes that sometimes result have a quite appropriate feeling of Don Juan about them, and the bounce and colloquial chattiness of the original come through very strongly. Just occasionally there's a bit too much of a hint of WS Gilbert (II.10: "He sang of life's decaying scene, / While he was not yet quite eighteen."). But it's great fun to read, which is surely the most important thing.

[m.belljackson · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

5 stars for the poetry, 3 for the plot with a duel that could so easily have been shifted.Why kill off our favorite character and leave us with phony olde Eugene and his likely luckless and quickly worn off obsession? And how could Tatanya still cherish love for the guy who murderedLensky?

[colligan · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Well, what could I say? Do I have the audacity to "review" Pushkin? And, what's worse, Pushkin in translation? In a word, NO!

[alanwpowers · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Евгений Онегин это моя любимая романтическая поэма, равный Байрона Дон Жуан, на котором он частично смоделированы. Onegin is a cross between Byron and Wordsworth--an utterly great poem, and what is rare in any long poem, a gripping narrative. Having recently re-read it mostly in Elton, I found its ending perhaps the best ending of a novel. Period. Chapter Eight begins with Byron for epigraph: "Fare thee well, and if for ever,/ Still for ever, fare thee well." The narrator has known Evgeny's most every thought, but not now. Narrator has followed Tatyana to Moscow, the country girl judged by all, but: a Prince finds her. And a relative of the Prince shows up in the hall--who can it be? Onegin? How'd he get here. What a shift in perspective. Onegin now pines for Tatyana who in youth offered herself to him; he is rejected, though T admits she loves him, before she leaves, and...her husband the general returns, only his spurs heard. At the very end, Stanza 48, a delightful cutting off in medias, "But here, my reader, you and I/ Shall leave him, and our separation/ Shall last...for ever." (204)Elton's my favorite translation, half a century ago:The less we love her, when we woo her,The more we please a woman's heart,And are the surer to undo herAnd snare her with beguiling art.Men once extolled cold-blooded takingAs the true science of love-making,Your own trump everywhere you blew...And it strikes me as quite close to the Russian: yes, Pushkin's "heart"isn't in line two, but four; but Pushkin's хладнокровныdoesn't modify "debauch"--probably an English addition in one translation.Also, Elton has a feel for easy monosyllables and rhyme absent in the newer ones. After all, Pushkin was "translating" Byron, who would only have used "debauch" ironically. I have imitated it in my own 65-pp Parodies Lost, published 2016 [now in the British Library], though a few stanzas appeared in my earlier Westport Soundings, under the title "Onagain." It begins, "He knew--from a picture of Rod McKuen--/Of all his race, the poet makes/ The saddest face, and next to a hound/ The saddest sound. Despair, he found/ Came hardest on a sunny day/ With a butch haircut. But in the rain,/ Bedraggled, "Loneliness," he thought,/ "has wet me through." And going in / He wrote of going out again./ Though all alone, he never felt / At all poetic while he wrote."Vikram Seth beat me to publishing his fine quasi-Pushkiny "Golden Gate," though I began mine more than a decade earlier than his 1991.As for Pushkin, I think the film Mozart stole from his play, Mozart and Salieri. And his Onegin is unprecedented in world literature, and remarkably uninfluencial in English--Seth and Powers aside. My book also gives a biography of my brilliant Amherst College friend, Tom Weiskel, whom Clive James knew Tom's junior year abroad at Pembroke College, Cambridge, UK. Clive James mentions Tom in his last poem, "River in the Sky" in the New Yorker last Fall ('18). Harold Bloom mentored Tom, and still misses his wit and learning, 45 years later. Tom's tragic departure ends my otherwise amusing, book about Tom's parodic brilliance.

[asxz-2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Fan-bloody-tastic. A novel in verse with a translation that maintained the original rhyme scheme. So good on the truth of young love, so light and so funny. The duel is genuinely shocking and the ending abrupt and sad.

I hadn't realized that this would be a novel in sonnets. What a treat to find out that this translation was the inspiration for Vikram Seth's The Golden Gate which I read 20 years ago. I kinda feel that I should seek out Nabokov's non-rhymed translation for comparison.

[marse_4 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I enjoyed this translation by Charles Johnston of "Evgeny Onegin". Johnston, unlike Nabokov, translated it as a novel in verse and was enjoyable to read. I've read "Eugene Onegin" in Russian and various translations, and though none of the translations come close to the ease, the wit, the sheer joy of expression as the original, Johnston's translation was certainly adequate. The plot is simple. The hero is a bored, rich young man who is out of sync emotionally. He acts out in ways that destroy those who would in other circumstances be his closest friends or faithful lover. The digressions, however, are the best thing about the tale. Here we find a second story about creativity, writing, inspiration, memory and love. Lovely.

[rezeda-10 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I've read it when I was 11, at school, and liked it. Re-read it as an adult and loved it. Re-read again. Absolutely admired it... It becomes better every time.

[vanjr-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I read the Roger Clarke translation-one this is in prose. There are a number of other translations in English that are poetry. Which translation is best, well the original (Russian one) of course. But this classic literature is brilliant even in English. It is a book to be read many times so I plan to read a new translation each time.
Regarding the work itself (not the translations which all must fall short) Pushkin's Eugene Onegin is a work of genius. It is truly genius, but written over many, many years so indeed a work. I found it absolutely hilarious at times. The humor stands out in my mind. So read this edition or any other. If you have not read it you are missing out.

[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 endedA comrade's promising career,One who, by a rash glance offended,Or by an accidental sneer,During a drunken conversationOr in a fit of bind vexationWas bold enough to challenge you -Will not your soul be filled with rueWhen 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 feelWhen he lies deaf to your appeal?

[giraldus_papyrus · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A wonderful novel from early 19th century Russia, translated into clear and readable English prose in this edition. The narrator is a minor character and keeps us entertained throughout, with a great variety of tone and digression, but always coming back to the main story. The story is intensely Russian - vastness of sky and countryside, contrast between country and city, country customs, fashionable society in town, ways to avoid boredom or to succumb to it, family entertainments, love-hate relations with France and the French, memorable characters, even the minor ones - and packs a wonderful story into less than 150 pages. Amid all this, the central love story, between Onegin and Tatiana, is told with delicacy, beauty and psychological insight. Definitely one to re-read.

[alcracka · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Holy crap, this thing is good. It's amazing. And it's only around 200 pages, so it's not as much of a commitment as, y'know, those other Russian assholes who can't stop writing.

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. My boy Stanley Mitchell has done what feels like an admirable job; I'm sure if I knew Russian I'd say he brutalized the thing, 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? 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 can only assume must be the most beautiful ode to foot fetishes ever written. It's five stanzas long, so that's 70 lines of foot fetishing. I almost wish I had a foot fetish so I could've really gotten into that bit.

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 arbours
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.

And if that doesn't kick your ass, you're no friend of mine.

Frankly, even if it does we're probably not friends. But we could be, if you want.

[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 neglectedThe call of fame, for you forgotMy 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 mustBehold each generation flourish,And watch life’s furrows briefly nourishThe perishable human crop,Which ripens fairly, but to drop;And where one falls, another surges…The race of men recks nothing, saveIts reckless growth: into the graveThe 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 scatteredLike leaves that in wet autumn stray,Wind-tossed, and all too soon decay."On youth:"Youth’s fever is its own excuseFor 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 captureBy sullen time, and soon grow wryAnd hard and cold, and petrifyHere in the world’s benumbing rapture,This pool we bathe in, friends, this muckIn which, God help us, we are stuck."

[bookomaniac-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Duidelijk romantisch geïnspireerd: gevoelens zijn sterker dan we denken. De structuur mangelt, vooral op het einde, de overgang van Tatjana komt niet helemaal geloofwaardig over. De korte versmaat werkt in het begin het lichtvoetige sterk in de hand (het zijn meer puntdichten). Opvallend is de bijna voortdurende commentaar van de auteur.

[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.