Pushkin's Eugene Onegin. Book I Stanzas 46-48.

PUSHKIN'S POEMS

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EUGENE ONEGIN

(In this edition he is called Yevgeny Onegin).

BOOK 1 STANZAS 45-47

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.

Условий света свергнув бремя,
Как он, отстав от суеты,
С ним подружился я в то время.
Мне нравились его черты,
Мечтам невольная преданность,
Неподражательная странность
И резкий, охлажденный ум.
Я был озлоблен, он угрюм;
Страстей игру мы знали оба:
Томила жизнь обоих нас;
В обоих сердца жар угас;
Обоих ожидала злоба
Слепой Фортуны и людей
На самом утре наших дней.

XLV

I too the burden of social convention
Having cast off, like him, and leaving the fuss,
Made friends with him in this latter time,
I liked his manners and his face,
His unbidden tendency to dream,
And his inimitable, striking oddness,
His incisive mind, as sharp as ice.
I was embittered, he depressed.
The play of passions we both had known;
And life had sickened both of us;
In both the heat of the heart had flown;
And both had felt blind Fortune's frown
And the evil working of people's ways
At the earliest dawning of our days.

Кто жил и мыслил, тот не может
В душе не презирать людей;
Кто чувствовал, того тревожит
Призрак невозвратимых дней:
Тому уж нет очарований.
Того змия воспоминаний,
Того раскаянье грызет.
Все это часто придает
Большую прелесть разговору.
Сперва Онегина язык
Меня смущал; но я привык
К его язвительному спору,
И к шутке с желчью пополам,
И злости мрачных эпиграмм.

XLVI

Whoever has thought, whoever has lived
Cannot in his soul not despise the world;
Whoever is sensitive, he must be tormented
By the phantom of days which will not return:
For such a man there is no enchantment,
For memory's biting serpent gnaws him
And repentance of the past absorbs him.
All this can add to conversation
A frequent charm and great delight.
At first Onegin's talk and wit
Embarassed me, but I grew used to it,
And to his poisonous reprobation,
And to his jokes, half mixed with bile
And to his epigrams' spiteful guile.

Как часто летнею порою,
Когда прозрачно и светло
Ночное небо над Невою,
И вод веселое стекло
Не отражает лик Дианы,
Воспомня прежних лет романы,
Воспомня прежнюю любовь,
Чувствительны, беспечны вновь,
Дыханьем ночи благосклонной
Безмолвно упивались мы!
Как в лес зеленый из тюрьмы
Перенесен колодник сонный,
Так уносились мы мечтой
К началу жизни молодой.

XLVII

How often in the summer time
When lightly and transparently
Above the Neva the nightime sky
Is still, and the happy water's glass
Does not reflect Diana's face,
Remembering years of former romance,
Remembering many a former love,
In a sentimental, carefree trance,
The breath of night's munificence
We drank in rapture and in silence!
As when to a green wood from his prison
A sleepy convict in shackles is taken.
So in dreams we were carried far away
To life's beginning and its youthful day.