Владимир Набоков - Комментарии к «Евгению Онегину» Александра Пушкина

• Название: Комментарии к «Евгению Онегину» Александра Пушкина
• Автор: Владимир Набоков
• Издательство: «Интелвак»
• Жанр: Критика
• Год: 1999
• ISBN: 5-93264-001-4

Комментарии В. В. Набокова освещают многообразие исторических, литературных и бытовых сторон романа. Книга является оригинальным произведением писателя в жанре научно-исторического комментария. Набоков обращается к «потаенным слоям» романа, прослеживает литературные влияния, связи «Евгения Онегина» с другими произведениями поэта, увлекательно повествует о тайнописи Пушкина.

Предназначена для широкого круга читателей и в первую очередь — для преподавателей и студентов гуманитарных вузов, а также для учителей и учащихся средней школы.

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X

   To love submissive, love he sang,
   and his song was as clear
   as a naïve maid's thoughts,
 4 as the sleep of an infant, as the moon
   in the untroubled deserts of the sky,
   goddess of mysteries and tender sighs.
   He sang parting and sadness,
 8 and a vague something, and the dim
   remoteness, and romantic roses.
   He sang those distant lands
   where long into the bosom of the stillness
12 flowed his live tears.
   He sang life's faded bloom
   at not quite eighteen years of age.

XI

   In the wilderness where Eugene alone
   was able to appreciate his gifts,
   he cared not for the banquets of the masters
 4 of neighboring manors;
   he fled their noisy concourse.
   Their reasonable talk
   of haymaking, of liquor,
 8 of kennel, of their kin,
   no doubt did not sparkle with feeling,
   or with poetic fire,
   or sharp wit, or intelligence,
12 or with the art of sociability;
   but the talk of their sweet wives was
   much less intelligent.

XII

   Wealthy, good-looking, Lenski everywhere
   was as a marriageable man received:
   such is the country custom;
 4 all for their daughters planned a match
   with the half-Russian neighbor.
   Whenever he drops in, at once the conversation
   broaches a word, obliquely,
 8 about the tedium of bachelor life;
   the neighbor is invited to the samovar,
   and Dunya pours the tea;
   they whisper to her: “Dunya, mark!”
12 Then the guitar (that, too) is brought,
   and she will start to shrill (good God!):
   “Come to me in my golden castle!..”12

XIII

   But Lenski, having no desire, of course,
   to bear the bonds of marriage,
   wished cordially to strike up with Onegin
 4 a close acquaintanceship.
   They got together; wave and stone,
   verse and prose, ice and flame,
   were not so different from one another.
 8 At first, because of mutual
   disparity, they found each other dull;
   then liked each other; then
   met riding every day on horseback,
12 and soon became inseparable.
   Thus people — I'm the first to own it —
   out of do-nothingness are friends.

XIV

   But among us there's even no such friendship:
   having destroyed all prejudices, we
   deem all men naughts
 4 and ourselves units.
   We all aspire to be Napoleons;
   for us the millions
   of two-legged creatures are but tools;
 8 feeling to us is weird and ludicrous.
   More tolerant than many was Eugene,
   though he, of course, knew men
   and on the whole despised them;
12 but no rules are without exceptions:
   some people he distinguished greatly
   and, though estranged from it, respected feeling.

XV

   He listened with a smile to Lenski:
   the poet's fervid conversation,
   and mind still vacillant in judgments,
 4 and gaze eternally inspired —
   all this was novel to Onegin;
   the chilling word
   on his lips he tried to restrain,
 8 and thought: foolish of me
   to interfere with his brief rapture;
   without me just as well that time will come;
   meanwhile let him live and believe
12 in the perfection of the world;
   let us forgive the fever of young years
   both its young ardor and young ravings.

XVI

   Between them everything engendered
   discussions and led to reflection:
   the pacts of bygone races,
 4 the fruits of learning, Good and Evil,
   and centuried prejudices,
   and the grave's fateful mysteries,
   destiny and life in their turn —
 8 all was subjected to their judgment.
   The poet in the heat of his contentions
   recited, in a trance, meantime,
   fragments of Nordic poems,
12 and lenient Eugene,
   although he did not understand them much,
   would dutifully listen to the youth.

XVII

   But passions occupied more often
   the minds of my two anchorets.
   Having escaped from their tumultuous power,
 4 Onegin spoke of them
   with an involuntary sigh of regret.
   Happy who knew their agitations
   and finally detached himself from them;
 8 still happier who did not know them, who
   cooled love with separation, enmity
   with obloquy; sometimes
   with friends and wife yawned, undisturbed
12 by jealous torment,
   and the safe capital of forefathers
   did not entrust to a perfidious deuce!

XVIII

   When we have flocked under the banner
   of sage tranquillity,
   when the flame of the passions has gone out
 4 and laughable become to us
   their waywardness
   or surgings and belated echoes;
   reduced to sense not without trouble,
 8 sometimes we like to listen
   to the tumultuous language of the passions
   of others, and it stirs our heart;
   exactly thus an old disabled soldier
12 does willingly bend an assiduous ear
   to the yarns of young mustached braves,
   [while he remains] forgotten in his shack.

XIX

   Now flaming youthhood, on the other hand,
   cannot hide anything:
   enmity, love, sadness, and joy
 4 'tis ready to blab out.
   Deemed invalided as to love,
   with a grave air Onegin listened
   as, loving the confession of the heart,
 8 the poet his whole self expressed.
   His trustful conscience
   naïvely he laid bare.
   Eugene learned without trouble
12 the youthful story of his love —
   a tale abounding in emotions
   long since not new to us.

XX

   Ah, he loved as one loves
   no longer in our years; as only
   the mad soul of a poet
 4 is still condemned to love:
   always, and everywhere, one reverie,
   one customary wish,
   one customary woe!
 8 Neither the cooling distance,
   nor the long years of separation,
   nor hours given to the Muses,
   nor foreign beauties,
12 nor noise of merriments, nor studies,
   had changed in him a soul
   warmed by a virgin fire.

XXI

   When scarce a boy, by Olga captivated,
   not having known yet torments of the heart,
   he'd been a tender witness
 4 of her infantine frolics.
   He, in the shade of a protective park,
   had shared her frolics,
   and for these children wedding crowns
 8 their fathers, who were friends and neighbors, destined.
   In the backwoods, beneath a humble roof,
   full of innocent charm,
   she under the eyes of her parents
12 bloomed like a hidden lily of the valley
   which is unknown in the dense grass
   to butterflies or to the bee.

XXII

   She gave the poet the first dream
   of youthful transports,
   and the thought of her animated
 4 his pipe's first moan.
   Farewell, golden games! He
   began to like thick groves,
   seclusion, stillness, and the night,
 8 and the stars, and the moon —
   the moon, celestial lamp,
   to which we dedicated
   walks midst the evening darkness,
12 and tears, of secret pangs the solace...
   But now we only see in her
   a substitute for bleary lanterns.

XXIII

   Always modest, always obedient,
   always as merry as the morn,
   as naïve as a poet's life,
 4 as winsome as love's kiss;
   her eyes, as azure as the sky,
   smile, flaxen locks,
   movements, voice, light waist — everything
 8 in Olga... but take any novel,
   and you will surely find
   her portrait; it is very sweet;
   I liked it once myself,
12 but it has come to bore me beyond measure.
   Let me, my reader,
   take up the elder sister.

XXIV

   Her sister
   was called Tatiana.13
   For the first time a novel's tender pages
 4 with such a name we willfully shall grace.
   What of it? It is pleasing, sonorous,
   but from it, I know, is inseparable
   the memory of ancientry
 8 or housemaids' quarters. We must all
   admit that we have very little
   taste even in our names
   (to say nothing of verses);
12 enlightenment does not suit us,
   and what we have derived from it
   is affectation — nothing more.

XXV