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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XXXIII

   There is no answer. He sends a new missive.
   To the second, to the third letter —
   there is no answer. He drives out to some
 4 reception. Hardly has he entered — there she is
   coming in his direction. How severe!
   He is not seen, to him no word is said.
   Ugh! How surrounded she is now
 8 with Twelfthtide cold!
   How anxious are to hold back indignation
   her stubborn lips!
   Onegin peers with a keen eye:
12 where, where are discomposure, sympathy,
   where the tearstains? None, none!
   There's on that face but the imprint of wrath...

XXXIV

   plus, possibly, a secret fear
   lest husband or monde guess
   the escapade, the casual foible,
 4 all my Onegin knows....
   There is no hope! He drives away,
   curses his folly —
   and, deeply plunged in it,
 8 the monde he once again renounces
   and in his silent study comes to him
   the recollection of the time
   when cruel chondria
12 pursued him in the noisy monde,
   captured him, took him by the collar,
   and shut him up in a dark hole.

XXXV

   Again, without discrimination,
   he started reading. He read Gibbon,
   Rousseau, Manzoni, Herder,
 4 Chamfort, Mme de Staël, Bichat, Tissot.
   He read the skeptic Bayle,
   he read the works of Fontenelle,
   he read some [authors] of our own,
 8 without rejecting anything —
   the “almanacs” and the reviews
   where sermons into us are drummed,
   where I'm today abused so much
12 but where such madrigals addressed tome
   I used to meet with now and then:
   e sempre bene, gentlemen.

XXXVI

   And lo — his eyes were reading, but his thoughts
   were far away;
   chimeras, desires, sorrows
 4 kept crowding deep into his soul.
   Between the printed lines
   he with spiritual eyes
   read other lines. It was in them
 8 that he was utterly absorbed.
   These were the secret legends of the heart's
   dark ancientry;
   dreams unconnected
12 with anything; threats, rumors, presages;
   or the live tosh of a long tale,
   or a young maiden's letters.

XXXVII

   And by degrees into a lethargy
   of feelings and of thoughts he falls,
   while before him Imagination
 4 deals out her motley faro deck.
   Now he sees: on the melted snow,
   as at a night's encampment sleeping,
   stirless, a youth lies; and he hears
 8 a voice: “Well, what — he's dead!”
   Now he sees foes forgotten,
   calumniators, and malicious cowards,
   and a swarm of young traitresses,
12 and a circle of despicable comrades;
   and now a country house, and by the window
   sits she... and ever she!

XXXVIII

   He grew so used to lose himself in this
   that he almost went off his head
   or else became a poet. (Frankly,
 4 that would have been a boon, indeed!)
   And true: by dint of magnetism,
   the mechanism of Russian verses
   my addleheaded pupil
 8 at that time nearly grasped.
   How much a poet he resembled
   when in a corner he would sit alone,
   and the hearth blazed in front of him,
12 and he hummed “Benedetta”
   or “Idol mio,” and into the fire
   dropped now a slipper, now his magazine!

XXXIX

   Days rushed. In warmth-pervaded air
   winter already was resolving;
   and he did not become a poet,
 4 he did not die, did not go mad.
   Spring quickens him: for the first time
   his close-shut chambers, where he had
   been hibernating like a marmot,
 8 his double windows, inglenook —
   he leaves on a bright morning,
   he fleets in sleigh along the Neva's bank.
   Upon blue blocks of hewn-out ice
12 the sun plays. In the streets
   the furrowed snow thaws muddily:
   whither, upon it, his fast course

XL

   directs Onegin? You beforehand
   have guessed already. Yes, exactly:
   apace to her, to his Tatiana,
 4 my unreformed eccentric comes.
   He walks in, looking like a corpse.
   There's not a soul in the front hall.
   He enters the reception room. On! No one.
 8 A door he opens.... What is it
   that strikes him with such force?
   The princess before him, alone,
   sits, unadorned, pale, reading
12 some kind of letter,
   and softly sheds a flood of tears,
   her cheek propped on her hand.

XLI

   Ah! Her mute sufferings —
   in this swift instant who would not have read!
   Who would not have the former Tanya,
 4 poor Tanya, recognized now in the princess?
   In throes of mad regrets,
   Eugene falls at her feet;
   she gives a start,
 8 and is silent, and looks,
   without surprise, without wrath, at Onegin....
   His sick, extinguished gaze,
   imploring aspect, mute reproof,
12 she takes in everything. The simple maid,
   with the dreams, with the heart of former days
   again in her has resurrected now.

XLII

   She does not bid him rise
   and, not taking her eyes off him,
   does not withdraw
 4 her limp hand from his avid lips....
   What is her dreaming now about?
   A lengthy silence passes,
   and finally she, softly:
 8 “Enough; get up. I must
   frankly explain myself to you.
   Onegin, do you recollect that hour
   when in the garden, in the avenue, fate brought us
12 together and so meekly
   your lesson I heard out.
   Today it is my turn.

XLIII

   “Onegin, I was younger then,
   I was, I daresay, better-looking,
   and I loved you; and what then, what
 4 did I find in your heart?
   What answer? Mere severity.
   There wasn't — was there?  — novelty for you
   in a meek little maiden's love?
 8 Even today — good heavens!  — my blood freezes
   as soon as I remember
   your cold glance and that sermon.... But I do not
   accuse you; at that awful hour
12 you acted nobly,
   you in regard to me were right,
   to you with all my soul I'm grateful....

XLIV

   “Then — is it not so?  — in the wilderness,
   far from vain Hearsay,
   I was not to your liking.... Why, then, now
 4 do you pursue me?
   Why have you marked me out?
   Might it not be because I must
   now move in the grand monde;
 8 because I have both wealth and rank;
   because my husband has been maimed in battles;
   because for that the Court is kind to us?
   Might it not be because my disrepute
12 would be remarked by everybody now
   and in society might bring you
   scandalous honor?

XLV

   “I'm crying.... If your Tanya
   you've not forgotten yet,
   then know: the sharpness of your blame,
 4 cold, stern discourse,
   if it were only in my power
   I'd have preferred to an offensive passion,
   and to these letters and tears.
 8 For my infantine dreams
   you had at least some pity then,
   at least consideration for my age.
   But now!... What to my feet
12 has brought you? What a trifle!
   How, with your heart and mind,
   be the slave of a trivial feeling?

XLVI

   “But as to me, Onegin, this magnificence,
   a wearisome life's tinsel, my successes
   in the world's vortex,
 4 my fashionable house and evenings,
   what do I care for them?... At once I'd gladly
   give all the frippery of this masquerade,
   all this glitter, and noise, and fumes,
 8 for a shelfful of books, for a wild garden,
   for our poor dwelling,
   for those haunts where for the first time,
   Onegin, I saw you,
12 and for the humble churchyard where
   there is a cross now and the shade
   of branches over my poor nurse.

XLVII

   “Yet happiness had been so possible,
   so near!... But my fate is already
   settled. Imprudently,
 4 perhaps, I acted.
   My mother with tears of conjurement
   beseeched me. For poor Tanya
   all lots were equal.
 8 I married. You must,
   I pray you, leave me;
   I know: in your heart are
   both pride and genuine honor.
12 I love you (why dissimulate?);
   but to another I belong:
   to him I shall be faithful all my life.”

XLVIII