Alexander Pushkin
excperts “XX “I am in love,” Tatyana’s wailing whisper repeated to the crone. “My dearest heart, you’re sick and ailing.” “I am in love; leave me alone.” And all the while the moon was shining and with its feeble glow outlining the girl’s pale charms, her loosened hair, her drops of tears, and seated there, in quilted coat, where rays were gleaming on a small bench by Tanya’s bed, the grey-haired nurse with kerchiefed head; and everything around was dreaming, in the deep stillness of the night, bathed in the moon’s inspiring light.” Tatyana’s Letter to Onegin “I write to you — no more confession is needed, nothing’s left to tell. I know it’s now in your discretion with scorn to make my world a hell. “But, if you’ve kept some faint impression of pity for my wretched state, you’ll never leave me to my fate. At first I thought it out of season to speak; believe me: of my shame you’d not so much as know the name, if I’d possessed the slightest reason to hope that even once a week I might have seen you, heard you speak on visits to us, and in greeting I might have said a word, and then thought, day and night, and thought again about one thing, till our next meeting. But you’re not sociable, they say: you find the country godforsaken; though we… don’t shine in any way, our joy in you is warmly taken. “Why did you visit us, but why? Lost in our backwoods habitation I’d not have known you, therefore I would have been spared this laceration. In time, who knows, the agitation of inexperience would have passed, I would have found a friend, another, and in the role of virtuous mother and faithful wife I’d have been cast. {100} “Another!… No, another never in all the world could take my heart! Decreed in highest court for ever… heaven’s will — for you I’m set apart; and my whole life has been directed and pledged to you, and firmly planned: I know, Godsent one, I’m protected until the grave by your strong hand: you’d made appearance in my dreaming; unseen, already you were dear, my soul had heard your voice ring clear, stirred at your gaze, so strange, so gleaming, long, long ago… no, that could be no dream. You’d scarce arrived, I reckoned to know you, swooned, and in a second all in a blaze, I said: it’s he! “You know, it’s true, how I attended, drank in your words when all was still — helping the poor, or while I mended with balm of prayer my torn and rended spirit that anguish had made ill. At this midnight of my condition, was it not you, dear apparition, who in the dark came flashing through and, on my bed-head gently leaning, with love and comfort in your meaning, spoke words of hope? But who are you: the guardian angel of tradition, or some vile agent of perdition sent to seduce? Resolve my doubt. Oh, this could all be false and vain, a sham that trustful souls work out; {101} fate could be something else again.., “So let it be! for you to keep I trust my fate to your direction, henceforth in front of you I weep, I weep, and pray for your protection.., Imagine it: quite on my own I’ve no one here who comprehends me, and now a swooning mind attends me, dumb I must perish, and alone. My heart awaits you: you can turn it to life and hope with just a glance — or else disturb my mournful trance with censure — I’ve done all to earn it! “I close. I dread to read this page… for shame and fear my wits are sliding… and yet your honour is my gage and in it boldly I’m confiding”… XIV ” “But I was simply not intended for happiness — that alien role. Should your perfections be expended in vain on my unworthy soul? Believe (as conscience is my warrant), wedlock for us would be abhorrent. I’d love you, but inside a day, with custom, love would fade away; your tears would flow — but your emotion, your grief would fail to touch my heart, they’d just enrage it with their dart. What sort of roses, in your notion, would Hymen bring us — blooms that might last many a day, and many a night! XV “What in the world is more distressing than households where the wife must moan the unworthy husband through depressing daytimes and evenings passed alone? and where the husband, recognizing her worth (but anathematising his destiny) without a smile bursts with cold envy and with bile? For such am I. When you were speaking to me so simply, with the fires and force that purity inspires, is this the man that you were seeking? can it be true you must await from cruel fortune such a fate?” Translation by Charles Johnston,1977 |
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