Комментарии к «Евгению Онегину» Александра Пушкина - [302]

 With what magical yearnfulness

   my flaming bosom was compressed!

   But, Muse, forget the past!

[XVII]

   Whatever feelings then lay hidden

   within me — now they are no more:

   they went or changed....

 ⁴ Peace unto you, turmoils of former years!

   To me seemed needful at the time

   deserts, the pearly rims of waves,

   and the sea's rote, and piles of rocks,

 ⁸ and the ideal of “proud maid,”

   and nameless pangs.

   Other days, other dreams;

   you have become subdued,

¹² my springtime's high-flung fancies,

   and unto my poetic goblet

   I have admixed a lot of water.

[XVIII]

   Needful to me are other pictures:

   I like a sandy hillside slope,

   before a small isba two rowans,

 ⁴ a wicket gate, a broken fence,

   up in the sky gray clouds,

   before the thrash barn heaps of straw,

   and in the shelter of dense willows

 ⁸ a pond — the franchise of young ducks.

   I'm fond now of the balalaika

   and of the trepak's drunken stomping

   before the threshold of the tavern;

¹² now my ideal is a housewife,

   my wishes, peace

   and “pot of shchi but big myself.”

[XIX]

   The other day, during a rainy spell,

   as I had dropped into the cattle yard —

   Fie! Prosy divagations,

 ⁴ the Flemish School's variegated dross!

   Was I like that when I was blooming?

   Say, Fountain of Bahchisaray!

   Were such the thoughts that to my mind

 ⁸ your endless purl suggested

   when silently in front of you

   Zaréma I imagined?...

   Midst the sumptuous deserted halls

¹² after the lapse of three years, in my tracks

   in the same region wandering, Onegin

   remembered me.

[XX]

   I lived then in dusty Odessa....

   There for a long time skies are clear.

   There, stirring, an abundant trade

 ⁴ sets up its sails.

   There all exhales, diffuses Europe,

   all glitters with the South, and brindles

   with live variety.

 ⁸ The tongue of golden Italy

   resounds along the gay street where

   walks the proud Slav,

   Frenchman, Spaniard, Armenian,

¹² and Greek, and the heavy Moldavian,

   and the son of Egyptian soil,

   the retired Corsair, Moralí.

[XXI]

   Odessa in sonorous verses

   our friend Tumanski has described,

   but at the time with partial eyes

 ⁴ he gazed at it.

   Upon arriving, he, like a true poet,

   went off to roam with his lorgnette

   alone above the sea; and then

 ⁸ with an enchanting pen

   he glorified the gardens of Odessa.

   All right — but there, in point of fact,

   is a bare steppe around;

¹² in a few places recent labor

   has forced young boughs on sultry days

   to give compulsory shade.

[XXII]

   But where, pray, was my rambling tale? “In dusty

   Odessa,” I had said.

   I might have said “in muddy

 ⁴ Odessa” — and indeed would not have lied there either.

   For five-six weeks a year

   Odessa, by the will of stormy Zeus,

   is flooded, is stopped up,

 ⁸ is in thick mud immersed.

   Some two feet deep all houses are embedded.

   Only on stilts does a pedestrian

   dare ford the street. Chariots and people

¹² sink in, get stuck; and hitched to droshkies

   the ox, horns bent, replaces

   the debile steed.

[XXIII]

   But the sledge-hammer breaks up stones already,

   and with a ringing pavement soon

   the salvaged city will be covered

 ⁴ as with an armor of forged steel.

   However, in this moist Odessa

   there is another grave deficiency,

   of — what would you think? Water.

 ⁸ Grievous exertions are required....

   So what? This is not a great sorrow!

   Particularly since wine is

   imported free of duty.

¹² But then the Southern sun, but then the sea...

   What more, friends, could you want?

   Blest climes!

[XXIV]

   Time was, no sooner did the sunrise gun

   roar from the ship

   than, down the steep shore running,

 ⁴ I would be on my way toward the sea.

   Then, sitting with a glowing pipe,

   enlivened by the briny wave,

   like in his paradise a Moslem, coffee

 ⁸ with Oriental grounds I quaff.

   I go out for a stroll. Already the benevolent

   Casino's open: the clatter of cups

   resounds there; on the balcony

¹² the marker, half asleep, emerges

   with a broom in his hands, and at the porch

   two merchants have converged already.

[XXV]

   Anon the square grows freaked [with people].

   All is alive now; here and there

   they run, on business or not busy;

 ⁴ however, more on businesses.

   The child of Calculation and of Venture,

   the merchant goes to glance at ensigns,

   to find out — are the skies

 ⁸ sending to him known sails?

   What new wares have

   entered today in quarantine?

   Have the casks of expected wines arrived?

^12> And how's the plague, and where the conflagrations,

   and is not there some famine, war,

   or novelty of a like kind?

[XXVI]

   But we, fellows without a sorrow,

   among the careful merchants,

   expected only oysters

 ⁴ from Tsargrad's shores.

   What news of oysters? They have come. O glee!

   Off flies gluttonous juventy

   to swallow from their sea shells

 ⁸ the plump, live cloisterers,

   slightly asperged with lemon.

   Noise, arguments; light wine

   onto the table from the cellars

¹² by complaisant Automne[2] is brought.

   The hours fly by, and the grim bill

   meantime invisibly augments.