THE END
NOTES TO EUGENE ONEGIN
1. Written in Bessarabia. >>
2. Dandy [Eng.], a fop. >>
3. Hat à la Bolivar. >>
4. Well-known restaurateur. >>
5. A trait of chilled sentiment worthy of Childe Harold. The ballets of Mr. Didelot are full of liveliness of fancy and extraordinary charm. One of our romantic writers found in them much more poetry than in the whole of French literature. >>
6. “Tout le monde sut qu'il mettoit du blanc, et moi qui n'en croyois rien je commençai de le croire, non seulement par l'embellissement de son teint, et pour avoir trouvé des tasses de blanc sur sa toilette, mais sur ce qu'entrant un matin dans sa chambre, je le trouvai brossant ses ongles avec une petite vergette faite exprès, ouvrage qu'il continua fi+èrement devant moi. Je jugeai qu'un homme qui passe deux heures tous les matins à brosser ses ongles peut bien passer quelques instans à remplir de blanc les creux de sa peau.”
(Les Confessions de Jean-Jacques Rousseau.)
Grimm was ahead of his age: nowadays people all over enlightened Europe clean their nails with a special brush. >>
7. The whole of this ironical stanza is nothing but a subtle compliment to our fair compatriots. Thus Boileau, under the guise of disapprobation, eulogizes Louis XIV. Our ladies combine enlightenment with amiability, and strict purity of morals with the Oriental charm that so captivated Mme de Staël
8. Readers remember the charming description of a Petersburg night in Gnedich's idyl:
Here's night; but the golden stripes of the clouds do not darken.
Though starless and moonless, the whole horizon lights up.
Far out in the [Baltic] gulf one can see the silvery sails
4 Of hardly discernible ships that seem in the blue sky to float.
With a gloomless radiance the night sky is radiant,
And the crimson of sunset blends with the Orient's gold,
As if Aurora led forth in the wake of evening
8 Her rosy morn. This is the aureate season
When the power of night is usurped by the summer days;
When the foreigner's gaze is bewitched by the Northern sky
Where shade and ambrosial light form a magical union
12 Which never adorns the sky of the South:
A limpidity similar to the charms of a Northern maiden
Whose light-blue eyes and rose-colored cheeks
Are but slightly shaded by auburn curls undulating.
16 Now above the Neva and sumptuous Petropolis
You see eves without gloom and brief nights without shadow.
Now as soon as Philomel ends her midnight songs
She starts the songs that welcome the rise of the day.
20 But 'tis late; a coolness wafts on the Nevan tundras;
The dew has descended;...
Here's midnight; after sounding all evening with thousands of oars,
The Neva does not stir; town guests have dispersed;
24 Not a voice on the shore, not a ripple astream, all is still.
Alone now and then o'er the water a rumble runs from the bridges,
Or a long-drawn cry flies forth from a distant suburb
Where in the night one sentinel calls to another.
9. Not in dream the ardent poet
the benignant goddess sees
as he spends a sleepless night
4 leaning on the granite.
Muravyov, “To the Goddess of the Neva.”
>> 10. Written in Odessa. >>
11. See the first edition of Eugene Onegin. >>
12. From the first part of Dneprovskaya Rusalka. >>
13. The most euphonious Greek names, such as, for instance, Agathon, Philetus, Theodora, Thecla, and so forth, are used with us only among the common people. >>
14. Grandison and Lovelace, the heroes of two famous novels. >>
15. “Si j'avais la folie de croire encore au bonheur, je le chercherais dans l'habitude.” Chateaubriand. >>
16. Poor Yorick! — Hamlet's exclamation over the skull of the fool (see Shakespeare and Sterne). >>
17. A misprint in the earlier edition [of the chapter] altered “homeward they fly” to “in winter they fly” (which did not make any sense whatsoever). Reviewers, not realizing this, saw an anachronism in the following stanzas. We venture to assert that, in our novel, the chronology has been worked out calendrically. >>
18. Julie Wolmar, the New Héloïse; Malek-Adhel, hero of a mediocre romance by Mme Cottin; Gustave de Linar, hero of a charming short novel by Baroness Krüdener. >>
19. The Vampyre, a short novel incorrectly attributed to Lord Byron; Melmoth, a work of genius, by Maturin; Jean Sbogar, the well-known romance by Charles Nodier. >>
20. Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate. Our modest author has translated only the first part of the famous verse. >>
21. A periodical that used to be conducted by the late A. Izmaylov rather negligently. He once apologized in print to the public, saying that during the holidays he had “caroused.” >>
22. E. A. Baratïnski. >>
23. Reviewers wondered how one could call a simple peasant girl “maiden” when, a little further, genteel misses are called “young things.” >>
