Finished: Eugene Onegin (Pushkin). I loved this book! I haven't been disappointed with any of the Russian authors so far, and Pushkin is no exception. Eugene Onegin is billed as a "novel in verse", and so it was. I thought at first it might be difficult to read another novel written in blank poetry form, but it flowed so nicely. I read the version which was translated by Nabokov. He had criticized an earlier version which was translated to English, sticking very strictly to the rhyming schemes of the original Russian poem, but in the process, losing more precise meaning and clarity. The Nabakov translated version didn't rhyme at all, but was truly exquisite.

The narrator (a thinly veiled Pushkin himself) tells the story of Eugene Onegin, a 26 year old Russian man who has put his society ball days and womanizing ways behind him and moved to the country. He was bored with the society life, yet he also doesn't want to settle down with a wife and family. He just wants to live and do what he pleases, avoiding social crowds at all costs. He meets his country neighbor, 18 year old  Lenski, a poet and dreamer, and they become inseparable friends. Lenski is engaged to the more beguiling of two sisters, 16 year old Olga. She's a bit more shallow than her older sister (whose age they don't give, but probably 18 or 19), Tatiana. Tatiana is deep and bookish, thoughtful and naive. Lenski takes Eugene with him to dinner one night to meet his fiance, and though the shy Tatiana sits in a corner and barely speaks, she falls irreparably in love with Eugene! He charms both sisters and their mother. (Father is deceased).

Tatiana naively writes Eugene a love letter pouring out her love for him. He arrives for dinner again and tells her that if he were to ever fall in love or get married, she'd be just the one he would fall for...but, he has no intention of doing any such thing. However, he warns her not to be so forthcoming with her feelings to other men. Tatiana is heartbroken and mortified and doesn't see Eugene again for awhile. A few weeks later Lenski convinces Eugene to go back with him to Tatiana's "name day" celebration, insisting that the gathering will be just the two gentlemen, the two sisters and the mother. Instead, there is a huge ball going on, and this infuriates Eugene. Much to Lenski's and Tatiana's horror, to get back at Lenski for lying to him, Eugene flirts and dances with Olga all night. Incensed, Lenski challenges his good friend to a duel. Male pride, of course, will allow neither one to forgive the situation and the duel ensues. Lenski is killed. Heartbroken Eugene leaves to travel for a couple of years. Tatiana mourns her near-brother's death, and the fact that the man she loves killed him. Olga mourns for six months and then marries someone else. Lenski lies nearly forgotten in the grave.

The next year, Tatiana's mother insists on taking her to society in Moscow where a general, who's a prince, falls in love with her. She marries and is still her down-to-earth, lovely self, but is now in the habit of giving balls and galas with her husband. Who should arrive at one of their balls a couple of years down the road? Eugene! He is an old friend of the generals. He realizes that the lovely wife is Tatiana, and she acknowledges him as an old neighbor and friend. Not a spark of her old love is revealed on her face. Eugene falls instantly and irreparably in love with Tatiana, just like she did with him two years before. He comes to all their balls, but she rarely gives him more than polite conversation. He starts to whither away in despair and writes HER a love letter! He pours out his heart, and never hears a reply from her. When he goes to the next ball, she barely speaks to him. Heartbroken, he closes himself up in his house for six months. At that time, he finally bursts out the door, goes to Tatiana's house, goes through the door, and finds her alone, weeping, and reading his old letter. He sees that she has let her guard down and she actually DID still love him. He falls at her feet, but she gives him a lecture mirroring the one he gave her before. In the end, she tells him she loves him but would never be unfaithful to her husband. The end. :-)

So...imagine all that written, not in novel form, but in this amazing poem. At times, Pushkin goes off on tangents and maybe writes several lines about nature...or about the details of a ball....or about a few events of the times...but he always gets back to the main story, which is written so beautifully. Of course, I will include some favorite passages. I'm just not sure where to leave off on each one!

I'll start with a part of Tatiana's very long letter to Eugene:

Why did you visit us?
In the backwoods of a forgotten village,
I would have never known you
nor have known bitter torment.
The tumult of an inexperienced soul
having subdued with time (who knows?),
I would have found a friend after my heart,
have been a faithful wife
and a virtuous mother.
Another!...No, to nobody on earth
would I have given my heart away!
that has been destined in a higher council,
that is the will of heaven: I am thine;
my entire life has been the gage
of a sure tryst with you;
I know, you're sent to me by God......

......But so be it! My fate
henceforth I place into your hands,
before you I shed tears,
for your defense I plead.
Imagine: I am here alone,
none understands me,
my reason is breaking down,
and, silent, I must perish.
I'm waiting for you: with a single look
revive my heart's hopes,
or interrupt the heavy dream
alas, with a deserved rebuke!

Eugene finds Tatiana in the garden and responds to her letter:

Now we'll flit over to the garden
where Tatiana encountered him.

For a few seconds they were silent;
but up to her Onegin went
and quoth: "You wrote to me.
Do not disown it. I have read
a trustful soul's avowals,
an innocent love's outpourings;
your candidness is dear to me,
in me it has excited
emotions long grown silent.
But I don't want to praise you---
I will repay you for it
with an avowal likewise void of art;
hear my confession;
unto your judgement I commit myself.

"If life by the domestic circle
I'd want to limit;
if to be father, husband,
a pleasant lot had ordered me;
if with the familistic picture
I were but for one moment captivated;
then, doubtlessly, save you alone
no other bride I'd seek.
I'll say without madrigal spangles:
my past ideal having found,
I'd doubtlessly have chosen you alone
for mate of my sad days,
in gage of all that's beautiful,
and been happy---as far as able!

"But I'm not made for bliss;
my soul is strange to it;
in vain are your perfections:
I'm not at all worthy of them.
Believe me (conscience is thereof the pledge),
wedlock would be anguish to us.
However much I loved you, I,
having grown used, would cease to love at once;
you would begin to weep; your tears
would fail to move my heart---
and would only enrage it.
Judge, then, what roses
Hymen would lay in store for us---
and, possibly, for many days!

"What in the world can be worse
than a family where the poor wife
broods over an unworthy husband
and day and evening is alone;
where the dull husband, conscious of her merit
(yet cursing fate),
is always scowling, silent,
cross, and coldly jealous?
Thus I. And it is this you sought
with a pure flaming soul
when with so much simplicity,
so much intelligence, to me you wrote?
Can it be true that such a portion
is by stern fate assigned to you?

"For dreams and years there's no return;
I shall not renovate my soul.
I love you with a brother's love
and maybe still more tenderly.
So listen to me without wrath:
a youthful maid more than once will exchange
for dreams light dreams;
a sapling thus its leaves
changes with every spring.
By heaven thus 'tis evidently destined.
Again you will love; but...
learn to control yourself;
not everyone as I will understand you;
to trouble inexperience leads."

Eugene puts his plan into action to get back at Lenski for bringing him to the crowded affair:

Monotonous and mad
like young life's whirl,
the waltz's noisy whirl revolves,
pair after pair flicks by.
Nearing the minute of revenge,
Onegin, chuckling secretly,
goes up to Olga, rapidly with her
twirls near the guests,
then seats her on a chair,
proceeds to speak of this and that;
a minute or two having lapsed, then
again with her he goes on waltzing;
all in amazement are. Lenski himself
does not believe his proper eyes.

The unnecessary duel goes on, and Lenski is shot:

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

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

The narrator wonders if Lenski is aware of Olga remarrying:

My poor Lenski! Beyond the grave,
in the confines of deaf eternity,
was the dejected bard perturbed
by the fell news of the betrayal?
Or on the Lethe lulled to sleep,
blest with insensibility, the poet
no longer is perturbed by anything,
and closed and mute is earth to him?
'Tis so! Indifferent oblivion
beyond the sepulcher awaits us.
The voice of foes, of friends, of loves
falls silent suddenly. Alone over the estate
the angry chorus of the heirs
starts an indecent squabble.

Part of Onegin's long love letter to Tatiana when he meets her again later:

......By chance once having met you,
a spark of tenderness having remarked in you,
I did not venture to believe in it:
did not let a sweet habit have its way;
my loathsome freedom
I did not wish to lose.

Another thing yet parted us:
a hapless victim Lenski fell....
From all that to the heart is dear
then did I tear my heart away;
to everyone a stranger, tied by nothing,
I thought: liberty and peace
are substitute for happiness. Good God!
What a mistake I made, how I am punished!

No---every minute to see you;
follow you everywhere;
the smile of your lips, movement of your eyes,
to try to capture with enamored eyes;
to hearken long to you, to comprehend
all your perfection with one's soul;
to melt in agonies before you,
grow pale and waste away...that's bliss................

...........But let it be: against myself
I've not the force to struggle any more;
all is decided: I am in your power,
and I surrender to my fate.

Tatiana has a long, eloquent response, which I will only repeat part of:

"Even today---good God!---blood freezes
as soon as I remember your cold glance
and that sermon...but you
I don't accuse; at that terrible hour
you acted nobly,
you in regard to me were right,
to you with all my soul I'm grateful..........

............"But as to me, Onegin, this pomp,
the tinsel of a loathsome life,
my triumphs in the vortex of the World,
my fashionable house and evenings,
what do I care for them?...At once I would give gladly
all this frippery of a masquerade,
all this glitter, and noise, and fumes,
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,
and for the humble churchyard, too,
where there's a cross now and the shade of branches
over my poor nurse.

"Yet happiness had been so possible,
so near! ...But my fate
already is decided. Rashly
perhaps, I acted.
With tears of conjuration, with me
my mother pleaded. For poor Tatiana
all lots were equal.
I married. You must,
I pray you, leave me;
I know: in your heart are
both pride and genuine honor.
I love you (why dissimulate?);
but to another I've been given away:
to him I shall be faithful all my life."

She has gone. Eugene stands
as if by thunder struck.
In what a tempest of sensations
his heart is now immersed!
But a sudden clink of spurs has sounded,
and Tatiana's husband has appeared,
and here my hero,
at an unkind minute for him,
reader, we now shall leave
for long...forever.

Whew...I guess this is one of those books where I could have quoted the entire thing. :-) The mixture of the story with the poetry was so unique and lovely. A good read! As a matter of fact...I'm adding it to the favorite books list!!!