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Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837) was a poet, playwright, and novelist who achieved literary prominence before he was twenty. His radical politics led to government censorship and periods of banishment from the capital, but he eventually married a popular society beauty and became a regular part of court life. Notoriously touchy about his honor, he died at age thirty-seven in a duel with his wife's alleged lover.

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Eugene Onegin and Other Poems

Everyman's Library

Chapter One

Anxious to live, eager to feel. ? Prince Vyázemsky?

1.
"My" uncle, matchless moral model,?
When deathly ill, learned how to make
His friends respect him, bow and coddle ?
Of all his ploys, that takes the cake.
To others, this might teach a lesson;
But Lord above, I'd feel such stress in
Having to sit there night and day,
Daring not once to step away.
Plus, I'd say, it's hypocritical
To keep the half-dead's spirits bright,
To plump his pillows till they're right,
Fetch his pills with tears veridical ?
Yet in secret to wish and sigh,
`Hurry, dear Uncle, up and die!"

2.
So ran a rakehell's thoughts, disjointed,
Thick in the dust of trotting steeds.
By Zeus, by Jove, he'd been appointed
Heir to his kinfolk's trusts and deeds.
Fans of Ruslán and of Lyudmíla:?
Meet my new book! I'll now reveal a
Few things about its motley crew.
First let me introduce to you
Onegin, my true friend and trusty,
Who by the Neva's banks was born,
Just as were you, I would have sworn,
Dear reader ? but my memory's rusty
There once throve I, but left, I fear;
The North was, shall I say, "severe".?

3.
Once his father'd been most dutiful;
Now, though, lived by the phrase "Owe debts!"
Still, he staged grand balls quite beautiful,
Till his creditors cast their nyet's.
Fate intervened to save our hero:
First Madame (of whom we know zero),
And then Monsieur, to guide Eugene.
The lad was frisky, never mean.
The Frenchman sans un sou ? an abbot ?
So as not to torment the boy,
Used games for teaching as his ploy.
Moral redress was not his habit;
At boyish pranks he'd barely bark,
And strolled his charge through Letny Park.?

4.
When, finally came youth's grand upheaval ?
That age of pangs and sighs galore
When one is crushed on some coeval ?
Monsieur l'abbé was shown the door.
Eugene thus sipped from freedom's phial;
Coiffed suavely in the latest style,
Our dapper London ladies' man
Surveyed, at last, the world's vast plan.
En français he efficaciously
Talked up a storm, and wrote as well; Danced the mazurka like a swell,
Spinning fast and bowing graciously.
What more to want? The world, in short,
Ruled him a warm and witty sort.

5.
We've all absorbed, by candles burning,
A jot of this, a tad of that.
So thank the Lord, to shine in learning
In our old land is quite old hat.
Onegin, in the public's rating
(A court that's most discriminating),
Was deemed a bright, if stuffy, chap.
Among the feathers in his cap
Was that of, with few hesitations,
Ad-libbing glibly as a book,
And, with a connoisseur's sage look,
Remaining mum in disputations.
Last but not least, with crackling quips
He'd coax quick smiles to ladies' lips.

6.
De gustibus non disputandum
Has lost cachet, for Latins dead;
Yet shown a Latin phrase at random,
Eugene could tell you what it said;
He'd carve the meat from Juvenal's? gristle,
Conclude with Vale an epistle,
And knew by heart, though slightly skew,
Aeneid verses ? one or two.
He lacked the yen to go out poking
Into the dusty lives of yore ?
Historic details made him snore;
But as for anecdotes and joking ?
Droll tales from Romulus till now ?
He'd stocked a pile behind his brow.

7.
Onegin wasn't strongly driven
Life to forsake for sake of verse.
He couldn't (though to help we'd striven)
An iamb tell from its reverse.
Theocritus? and Homer spurning,
Instead to Adam Smith oft turning,
He studied economics hard,
To learn to judge in which regard
A country's prone to be imperial,
What it might profit from, and why
It might, despite no gold, get by,
Provided it's got raw material.
His father thought this all was Greek,
And sold his farmlands up the creek.

8.
My leisure I shan't spend on scrawling
Lists of Onegin's treasured skills;
I'll say, though, that his highest calling,
His truest art, his deepest thrills,
Since early youth his keenest pleasure ?
And toil and torment, for good measure ?
what occupied each day his droll
And lazy, melancholy soul,
Was the science of tender passion
Or "Art of Love", in Naso's? song,
For which he, Ovid, suffered long,
Ending his days bold, bright, and brash in
Harsh exile on Moldavia's plains,
Morose and Romesick, racked with pains.
[9.]?

10.
Eugene from greenest youth dissembled.
His hopes he'd cache, he'd feign to yearn,
Then dash her hopes. Oh, how she trembled!
He'd make believe that he was stern,
Standoffish, jealous, proud, obedient,
Alert ? whatever seemed expedient!
So languidly his tongue he'd mute,
Or else such tongues of flame he'd shoot
Across each nonchalant love letter!
He breathed but love, he loved but love,
And lost himself in quest thereof!
A tender glance he'd flash ? or better,
Bashful or bold; and yes, my dears,
Could twist that faucet of his tears!

11.
A young girl's rapture he could heighten
By feigning this was all so new;k With pre-prepared despair he'd frighten,
Or...