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PUSHKIN'S POEMS


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EUGENE ONEGIN

BOOK 1 STANZAS 6-8

(In this edition he is called Yevgeny Onegin).

The Russian text is printed both  in image format, and as plain Russian script.  Errors in the Image version I hope have been corrected in the plain text below.   Two or three stanzas are printed on each page, with the English translation alongside.

 


Латынь из моды вышла ныне:
Так, если правду вам сказать,
Он знал довольно по-латыне,
Чтоб эпиграфы разбирать,
Потолковать об Ювенале,
В конце письма поставить vale,<<2>>
Да помнил, хоть не без греха,
Из Энеиды два стиха.
Он рыться не имел охоты
В хронологической пыли
Бытописания земли;
Но дней минувших анекдоты
От Ромула до наших дней
Хранил он в памяти своей.

 

 

VI

Latin is nowadays not much in vogue:
And so, if truth grew old in telling,
He knew enough of that old tongue
To decipher the odd phrase and saying,
Or to chat of Juvenal occasionally,
Or to end his letters with the word vale,
And he knew by heart, (not perfectly)
Two whole verses from the Aeneid.
He had no strong desire to rummage
In the chronological dust
Of the world's historical baggage:
But spicy stories from day's gone by
From Romulus' time to our own day
He kept intact in his memory.

 

Высокой страсти не имея
Для звуков жизни не щадить,
Не мог он ямба от хорея,
Как мы ни бились, отличить.
Бранил Гомера, Феокрита;
Зато читал Адама Смита,
И был глубокий эконом,
То есть, умел судить о том,
Как государство богатеет,
И чем живет, и почему
Не нужно золота ему,
Когда простой продукт имеет.
Отец понять его не мог
И земли отдавал в залог.

 

 

VII

Having no intense passion and longing
To sacrifice his life for poetry,
Trochees and iambics, despite our efforts he

Could not distinguish in any way.
He railed at Homer and Theocritus,
Instead he studied Adam Smith
And in economics was well versed,
That is, an argument he could rehearse
About the wealth of government.
Both how it lives, on what, and why
It does not need reserves of gold
When basic products are its main supply.
His father could not understand the theory
And mortgaged all his land completely.



Всего, что знал еще Евгений,
Пересказать мне недосуг;
Но в чем он истинный был гений,
Что знал он тверже всех наук,
Что было для него измлада
И труд и мука и отрада,
Что занимало целый день
Его тоскующую лень, -
Была наука страсти нежной,
Которую воспел Назон,
За что страдальцем кончил он
Свой век блестящий и мятежный
В Молдавии, в глуши степей,
Вдали Италии своей.

 

 

 

VIII

Of all those things which my Yevgeny
Knew, I have no leisure to tell;
But for true genius, if there is any,
The thing he knew better than any science,
Which from youth onwards was for him
His toil, his torture, his delights,
Which occupied his days and nights
And all his pining idleness, -
It was the science of tender passions,
Which Ovid the poet once sang,
For which, an exile, he ended in strife
His dazzling and tumultuous life
In Moldavia, in the steppe's immensity,
Far, far from his beloved Italy.

     

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