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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XVI

   Doubts trouble her:
   “Shall I go on? Shall I go back?... He is not here.
   They do not know me.... I shall glance
 4 at the house, at that garden.”
   And so downhill Tatiana walks,
   scarce breathing; casts around
   a gaze full of perplexity...
 8 and enters a deserted courtyard.
   Dogs toward her
   dash, barking… At her frightened cry
   a household brood of serf boys
12 has noisily converged. Not without fighting
   the boys dispersed the hounds,
   taking the lady under their protection.

XVII

   “I wonder, can one see the master house?”
   asked Tanya. Speedily
   the children to Anisia ran
 4 to get the hallway keys from her.
   Anisia came forth to her promptly, and the door
   before them opened,
   and Tanya stepped into the empty house,
 8 where recently our hero had been living.
   She looked: in the reception room forgotten,
   a cue reposed upon the billiard table;
   upon a rumpled sofa lay
12 a riding crop. Tanya went on.
   The old crone said to her: “And here's the fireplace;
   here master used to sit alone.

XVIII

   “Here in the winter the late Lenski,
   our neighbor, used to dine with him.
   This way, please, follow me.
 4 This was the master's study;
   he used to sleep here, take his coffee, listen
   to the steward's reports,
   and in the morning read a book....
 8 And the old master lived here too;
   on Sundays, at this window here,
   time was, donning his spectacles,
   he'd deign to play ‘tomfools’ with me.
12 God grant salvation to his soul
   and peace to his dear bones
   in the grave, in damp mother earth!”

XIX

   Tatiana looks with melting gaze
   at everything around her,
   and all to her seems priceless,
 4 all quickens her languorous soul
   with a half-painful joyance:
   the desk with its extinguished lamp,
   a pile of books, and at the window
 8 a carpet-covered bed, and from the window
   the prospect through the lunar gloom,
   and this pale half-light, and Lord Byron's portrait,
   and a small column
12 with a cast-iron statuette
   with clouded brow under a hat,
   with arms crosswise compressed.

XX

   Tatiana in the modish cell
   stands long as one bewitched.
   But it is late. A cold wind has arisen.
 4 It's dark in the dale. The grove sleeps
   above the misted river;
   the moon has hid behind the hill,
   and it is time, high time,
 8 that the young pilgrimess went home;
   and Tanya, hiding her excitement,
   and not without a sigh,
   starts out on her way back;
12 but first she asks permission
   to visit the deserted castle
   so as to read books there alone.

XXI

   Beyond the gate Tatiana parted
   with the housekeeper. A day later,
   early at morn this time, again she came
 4 to the abandoned shelter,
   and in the silent study, for a while
   to all on earth oblivious, she
   remained at last alone,
 8 and long she wept.
   Then to the books she turned.
   At first she was not in a mood for them,
   but their choice seemed to her
12 bizarre. Tatiana fell to reading
   with avid soul; and there revealed itself
   a different world to her.

XXII

   Although we know that Eugene
   had long ceased to like reading,
   still, several works
 4 he had exempted from disgrace:
   the singer of the Giaour and Juan
   and, with him, also two or three
   novels in which the epoch is reflected
 8 and modern man
   rather correctly represented
   with his immoral soul,
   selfish and dry,
12 to dreaming measurelessly given,
   with his embittered mind
   boiling in empty action.

XXIII

   Many pages preserved
   the trenchant mark of fingernails;
   the eyes of the attentive maiden
 4 are fixed on them more eagerly.
   Tatiana sees with trepidation
   by what thought, observation
   Onegin would be struck,
 8 what he agreed with tacitly.
   The dashes of his pencil she
   encounters in their margins.
   Unconsciously Onegin's soul
12 has everywhere expressed itself —
   now by a succinct word, now by a cross,
   now by an interrogatory crotchet.

XXIV

   And my Tatiana by degrees
   begins to understand
   more clearly now — thank God —
 4 him for whom by imperious fate
   she is sentenced to sigh.
   A sad and dangerous eccentric,
   creature of hell or heaven,
 8 this angel, this proud fiend, what, then, is he?
   Can it be, he's an imitation,
   an insignificant phantasm, or else
   a Muscovite in Harold's mantle,
12 a glossary of alien vagaries,
   a complete lexicon of words in vogue?...
   Might he not be, in fact, a parody?

XXV

   Can she have solved the riddle?
   Can “the word” have been found?
   The hours run; she has forgotten
 4 that she is long due home —
   where two neighbors have got together,
   and where the talk is about her.
   “What should one do? Tatiana is no infant,”
 8 quoth the old lady with a groan.
   “Why, Olinka is younger.... It is time,
   yea, yea, the maiden were established;
   but then — what can I do with her?
12 She turns down everybody with the same
   curt ‘I'll not marry,’ and keeps brooding,
   and wanders in the woods alone.”

XXVI

   “Might she not be in love?” “With whom, then?
   Buyánov offered: was rejected.
   Same thing with Ivan Petushkóv.
 4 There guested with us a hussar, Pïhtín;
   oh my, how sweet he was on Tanya,
   how he bestirred himself, the coax!
   Thought I: perchance, she will accept;
 8 far from it! And again the deal was off.”
   “Why, my dear lady, what's the hindrance?
   To Moscow, to the mart of brides!
   One hears, the vacant places there are many.”
12 “Och, my good sir! My income's scanty.”
   “Sufficient for a single winter;
   if not, just borrow — say, from me.”

XXVII

   Much did the old dame like
   the sensible and sound advice;
   she checked accounts — and there and then decided
 4 in winter to set out for Moscow;
   and Tanya hears this news....
   Unto the judgment
   of the exacting beau monde to present
 8 the clear traits of provincial
   simplicity, and antiquated finery,
   and antiquated turns of speech;
   the mocking glances
12 of Moscow fops and Circes to attract....
   O terror! No, better and safer,
   back in the woods for her to stay.

XXVIII

   With the first rays arising
   she hastens now into the fields
   and, with soft-melting eyes
 4 surveying them, she says:
   “Farewell, pacific dales,
   and you, familiar hilltops,
   and you, familiar woods!
 8 Farewell, celestial beauty,
   farewell, glad nature!
   I am exchanging a dear quiet world
   for the hum of resplendent vanities!...
12 And you, my freedom, farewell, too!
   Whither, wherefore, do I bear onward?
   What does my fate hold out for me?”

XXIX

   Her walks last longer.
   At present, here a hillock, there a brook,
   cannot help stopping
 4 Tatiana with their charm.
   She, as with ancient friends,
   with her groves, meadows,
   still hastens to converse.
 8 But the fleet summer flies.
   The golden autumn has arrived.
   Nature, tremulous, pale,
   is like a victim richly decked....
12 Now, driving clouds along, the North
   has blown, has howled, and now herself
   Winter the sorceress comes.

XXX

   She came, scattered herself; in flocks
   hung on the limbs of oaks;
   in wavy carpets lay
 4 amid the fields, about the hills;
   the banks with the immobile river
   made level with a puffy pall.
   Frost gleamed. And we are gladdened
 8 by Mother Winter's pranks.
   By them not gladdened is but Tanya's heart:
   she does not go to meet the winter,
   inhale the frostdust,
12 and with the first snow from the bathhouse roof
   wash face, shoulders, and breast.
   Tatiana dreads the winter way.

XXXI