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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XXX

   “Now march.” The two foes, coolly,
   not aiming yet,
   with firm tread, slowly, steadily
 4 traversed four paces,
   four mortal stairs.
   His pistol Eugene then,
   not ceasing to advance,
 8 gently the first began to raise.
   Now they have stepped five paces more,
   and Lenski, closing his left eye,
   started to level also — but right then
12 Onegin fired.... The clock of fate
   has struck: the poet
   in silence drops his pistol.

XXXI

   Softly he lays his hand upon his breast
   and falls. His misty gaze
   expresses death, not pain.
 4 Thus, slowly, down the slope of hills,
   shining with sparkles in the sun,
   a lump of snow descends.
   Deluged with instant cold,
 8 Onegin hastens to the youth,
   looks, calls him... vainly:
   he is no more. The young bard has
   found an untimely end!
12 The storm has blown; the beauteous bloom
   has withered at sunrise; the fire
   upon the altar has gone out!...

XXXII

   Stirless he lay, and strange
   was his brow's languid peace.
   Under the breast he had been shot clean through;
 4 steaming, the blood flowed from the wound.
   One moment earlier
   in this heart inspiration,
   enmity, hope, and love had throbbed,
 8 life effervesced, blood burned;
   now, as in a deserted house,
   all in it is both still and dark,
   it has become forever silent.
12 The window boards are shut. The panes with chalk
   are whitened over. The chatelaine is gone.
   But where, God wot. All trace is lost.

XXXIII

   With an insolent epigram
   'tis pleasant to enrage a bungling foe;
   pleasant to see how, bending stubbornly
 4 his buttsome horns, he in the mirror
   looks at himself involuntarily
   and is ashamed to recognize himself;
   more pleasant, friends, if, as the fool he is,
 8 he howls out: It is I!
   Still pleasanter — in silence to prepare
   an honorable grave for him
   and quietly at his pale forehead
12 aim, at a gentlemanly distance;
   but to dispatch him to his fathers
   will hardly pleasant be for you.

XXXIV

   What, then, if by your pistol
   be smitten a young pal
   who with a saucy glance or repartee
 4 or any other bagatelle
   insulted you over the bottle,
   or even himself, in fiery vexation,
   to combat proudly challenged you?
 8 Say: what sensation
   would take possession of your soul
   when, motionless upon the ground,
   in front of you, with death upon his brow,
12 he by degrees would stiffen,
   when he'd be deaf
   and silent to your desperate appeal?

XXXV

   In anguish of the heart's remorse,
   his hand squeezing the pistol,
   at Lenski Eugene looks.
 4 “Well, what — he's dead,” pronounced the neighbor.
   Dead!... With this dreadful interjection
   smitten, Onegin with a shudder
   walks hence and calls his men.
 8 Zaretski carefully lays on the sleigh
   the frozen corpse;
   home he is driving the dread lading.
   Sensing the corpse,
12 the horses snort and jib,
   with white foam wetting the steel bit,
   and like an arrow off they fly.

XXXVI

   My friends, you're sorry for the poet:
   in the bloom of glad hopes,
   not having yet fulfilled them for the world,
 4 scarce out of infant clothes,
   withered! Where is the ardent stir,
   the noble aspiration
   of young emotions and young thoughts,
 8 exalted, tender, bold?
   Where are love's turbulent desires,
   the thirst for knowledges and work,
   the dread of vice and shame,
12 and you, fond musings,
   you, [token] of unearthly life,
   you, dreams of sacred poetry!

XXXVII

   Perhaps, for the world's good
   or, at the least, for glory he was born;
   his silenced lyre might have aroused
 4 a resonant, uninterrupted ringing
   throughout the ages. There awaited
   the poet, on the stairway of the world,
   perhaps, a lofty stair.
 8 His martyred shade has carried
   away with him, perhaps,
   a sacred mystery, and for us
   dead is a life-creating voice,
12 and to his shade beyond the tomb's confines
   will not rush up the hymn of races,
   the blessing of the ages.

XXXIX

   And then again: perhaps,
   an ordinary lot awaited
   the poet. Years of youth would have elapsed:
 4 in him the soul's fire would have cooled.
   He would have changed in many ways,
   have parted with the Muses, married,
   up in the country, happy and cornute,
 8 have worn a quilted dressing gown;
   learned life in its reality,
   at forty, had the gout,
   drunk, eaten, moped, got fat, decayed,
12 and in his bed, at last,
   died in the midst of children,
   weepy females, and medicos.

XL

   But, reader, be it as it may,
   alas, the young lover, the poet,
   the pensive dreamer, has been killed
 4 by a friend's hand!
   There is a spot: left of the village
   where inspiration's nursling dwelt,
   two pine trees grow, united at the roots;
 8 beneath them have meandered streamlets
   of the neighboring valley's brook.
   'Tis there the plowman likes to rest
   and women reapers come to dip
12 their ringing pitchers in the waves;
   there, by the brook, in the dense shade
   a simple monument is set.

XLI

   Beneath it (as begins to drip
   spring rain upon the herb of fields)
   the herdsman, plaiting his pied shoe of bast,
 4 sings of the Volga fishermen;
   and the young townswoman who spends
   the summer in the country,
   when headlong on horseback, alone,
 8 she scours the fields,
   before it halts her steed,
   tightening the leathern rein;
   and, turning up the gauze veil of her hat,
12 she reads with skimming eyes
   the plain inscription — and a tear
   dims her soft eyes.

XLII

   And at a walk she rides in open champaign,
   sunk in a reverie;
   a long time, willy-nilly,
 4 her soul is full of Lenski's fate;
   and she reflects: “What has become of Olga?
   Did her heart suffer long?
   Or did the season of her tears soon pass?
 8 And where's her sister now? And where, that shunner
   of people and the world,
   of modish belles the modish foe,
   where's that begloomed eccentric,
12 the slayer of the youthful poet?”
   In due time I shall give you an account
   in detail about everything.

XLIII

   But not now. Though with all my heart
   I love my hero;
   though I'll return to him, of course;
 4 but now I am not in the mood for him.
   The years to austere prose incline,
   the years chase pranksome rhyme away,
   and I — with a sigh I confess —
 8 more indolently dangle after her.
   My pen has not its ancient disposition
   to mar with scribblings fleeting leaves;
   other chill dreams,
12 other stern cares,
   both in the social hum and in the still
   disturb my soul's sleep.

XLIV

   I have learned the voice of other desires,
   I've come to know new sadness;
   I have no expectations for the first,
 4 and the old sadness I regret.
   Dreams, dreams! Where is your dulcitude?
   Where is (its stock rhyme) juventude?
   Can it be really true
 8 that withered, withered is at last its garland?
   Can it be true that really and indeed,
   without elegiac conceits,
   the springtime of my days is fled
12 (as I in jest kept saying hitherto),
   and has it truly no return?
   Can it be true that I'll be thirty soon?

XLV

   So! My noontide is come, and this
   I must, I see, admit.
   But, anyway, as friends let's part,
 4 O my light youth!
   My thanks for the delights,
   the melancholy, the dear torments,
   the hum, the storms, the feasts,
 8 for all, for all your gifts
   my thanks to you. In you
   amidst turmoils and in the stillness
   I have delighted... and in full.
12 Enough! With a clear soul
   I now set out on a new course
   to rest from my old life.

XLVI