Eugene Onegin Part 40

27. A jackanapes... overstarched: The reference is possibly to Thomas Raikes, an Englishman who claims he met Pushkin in 1829. Beau Brummell had set the fashion for a lightly starched cravat in the first decade and a half of the century. Overstarching, which became the fashion in the late twenties, in France and Russia, was considered vulgar.

28. Morpheus: G.o.d of sleep.

29. I shall offend you: An echo of St Preux's letter to Julie (part 1, letter 2) in Rousseau's La Nouvelle Heloise: 'Je sens d'avance le poids de votre indignation...'

30. Manzoni, Gibbon: Alessandro Manzoni (1785a1873), Italian novelist, author of I promessi sposi (The Betrothed, 1825a7), which laid the basis for modern literary Italian. Edward Gibbon (1737a94), English historian. Onegin would have read his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776a88) in a French translation.

31. Chamfort: Sebastien Roch Nicolas Chamfort (1741a94), author of Maximes et Pensees (Maxims and Thoughts, 1803). Pushkin liked his aphorisms.

32. Bichat and Herder and Tissot: Marie Francois Xavier Bichat (1771a1802), French anatomist and physiologist. Johann Gottfried Herder (1744a1803), German philosopher and critic, notable collector of folk songs, and writer on history, literature and language. Simon Andre Tissot (1728a97), famous Swiss doctor, author of De la sante des gens de lettres (On the Health of Men of Letters, 1768).

33. Bayle: Pierre Bayle (1647a1706), French philosopher, author of famous Dictionnaire historique et critique (Historical and Critical Dictionary, 1697).

34. Fontenelle: Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle (1657a1757), French sceptical philosopher, author of Entretiens sur la pluralite des mondes (Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds, 1686), the Russian translation of which was banned by the Church.

35. The almanachs... treating me with animus: Almanachs, unlike journals or reviews, appeared irregularly and were more like anthologies. While he was writing Chapter VIII, Pushkin came under attack from the main literary journals, especially The Northern Bee, edited by the police spy Bulgarin.

36. E sempre bene: 'And excellently'.

37. magnetism: 'Magnetism' became a fashionable word at the time to designate immaterial influences.

38. Idol Mio, Benedetta: The barcarolle was popular in Russia at the time. Pushkin's neighbours at Trigorskoye enjoyed singing Kozlov's poem 'Venetian Night' to the tune of a gondolier's recitative ('Benedetta sia la madre' ('Blest be the mother')). 'Idol mio' is probably a duet by the Italian composer Vicenzo Gabusi: 'Se, o cara, sorridi' ('If you were to smile, my dear'), the refrain of which is: 'Idol mio, piu pace non ho' ('My idol, I have no peace any more').

39. blue blocks of hewn-out ice: In winter huge blocks of ice were cut from the Neva to be stored in refrigerators. During the March thaw sledges would transport them to buyers.

40. Sadi: Sadi or Saadi (b. between 1203 and 1210, d. 1292) was a Persian poet, born in Shiraz. Pushkin's quotation from Saadi gave cause to official suspicion that he was referring to the Decembrists.

FRAGMENTS OF ONEGIN'S JOURNEY

1. Fragments of Onegin's Journey: This was originally intended to be chapter VIII (with the preceding chapter in the present volume intended as chapter IX). It was published separately and includes stanzas written at various times. The description of Odessa was composed in 1825 while Pushkin was working on Chapter IV. The beginning of the published text was written in the autumn of 1829 and the final stanzas were completed on 18 December 1830, when Pushkin was staying at his Boldino estate. The Foreword first appeared in a separate 1832 edition of Chapter VIII. In the 1833 edition of the entire novel Pushkin included the Foreword and the Journey after his Notes. It is unclear whether a completed version of the Journey ever existed despite Pushkin's reference to it in the Foreword.

The route of the Journey is unclear. It is possible that Onegin spent some time abroad. He is away for some three and a half years. Since the surviving stanzas of the Journey represent him rushing from place to place, driven by ennui, it is unlikely that he spent all of that time in Russia. Moreover, his return to St Petersburg is compared with Chatsky's leap from boat to ball' in Chapter VIII, stanza 13, line 14.

Some of the stanzas were omitted with an eye to censorship, especially Onegin's visit to the notorious military settlements set up by Count Arakcheev (1769a1854), Alexander I's military adviser. These were harsh detention centres to which peasants were conscripted. Katenin (see below) wrote to Annenkov, Pushkin's first biographer, on 24 April 1853, that the poet had decided to sacrifice the entire chapter because of the violence of his comments. In his Foreword Pushkin is silent about his intentions and simply acknowledges Katenin's very different criticism of the omission there. Since Novgorod was one of the locations of these settlements, it has been suggested that Onegin's visit to them coincides with his stay in the town. In other words, the Fragments may have begun with such a visit. It is possible that Onegin also saw the settlements outside Odessa, the town that takes up most of the Journey. Pavel Ivanovich Pestel' (1793a1826), one of the leaders of the Decembrists in the South, wanted to foment a revolt in these camps.

2. nine Camenae: Roman water nymphs identified with the nine Greek Muses.

3. Makaryev: Annual fair originating outside the Makaryev monastery some sixty miles east of Nizhny and transferred into the town in 1817.

4. Terek: Caucasian river.

5. Kura, Aragva: Caucasian rivers. The Kura is the most important river in Transcaucasia.

6. There were the Russian tents unfurled: The Caucasus was first annexed by Peter the Great in 1722.

7. Beshtu: One of the five peaks of Besh Tau, a mountain, another one of which is Mashuk.

8. Pylades, Orestes: In Greek mythology, Orestes, accompanied by his friend Pylades, sails to Tauris to seek absolution from matricide. The rule of the small kingdom requires all strangers to be sacrificed to Diana, the local deity. Each of the two friends wants to die in the place of the other.

9. Mithridates: King of Pontus, who in 63 BC ordered a Gallic mercenary to kill him.

10. Mickiewicz sang his pa.s.sion: Adam Bernard Mickiewicz (1798a1855), Polish poet, spent four and a half years in Russia, visiting the Crimea in 1825 and composing the Crimean Sonnets. A friend of Pushkin until the Polish uprising of 1830, the suppression of which Pushkin enthusiastically supported.

11. What yearning pressed my flaming heart: Pushkin was in love with a daughter of the Raevsky family, with whom he was staying.

12. trepak: An energetic peasant dance.

13. 'And cabbage soup, while I'm the squire': Quotation from the poet Antiokh Dimitrievich Kantemir's (1708a44) fifth satire, 'On Human Depravity in General, in literal translation: 'A pot of cabbage soup, but I m the big one, master of the house. A similar Russian proverb reads: 'My fare is plain, but I am my own master.

14. O fountain of Bakhchisaray: Pushkin's narrative poem The Fountain of Bakhchisaray, composed in 1822 and published in 1824. Zarema is one of two female characters.

15. Morali: Born in Tunis, Morali (Ali) was a sea captain, suspected of piracy. He cut an extravagant figure in Odessa and was a close friend of Pushkin who referred to him as the Corsair (hero of Byron's eponymous poem).

16. Tumansky: Vasily Ivanovich Tumansky (1800a1860), a minor poet, worked with Pushkin as a clerk for Count Vorontsov, Pushkin's employer in Odessa.

17. Why, water... must be wrought: Water was transported to the town for about two miles uphill in small barrels. Later, aqueducts were used.

18. casino: Pushkin spells 'casino in Western letters. It was called 'casino de commerce, where not only gambling, but all manner of financial transactions took place, and it doubled as a ballroom.

19. Oton: Russian version of Automne or Autonne, the name of a well-known French restaurateur in Odessa.

20. A trader's youthful wife: Probably Amalia Riznich, one of Pushkin's Odessa loves.

21. Ausonia: Italy.

CHAPTER X.

1. Chapter X: Pushkin composed this politically explosive chapter in 1830, but burned most of it. Historical in character, it has nothing to do with the previous narrative, although there is evidence to suggest that Onegin might turn up, possibly as a Decembrist.

2. A ruler... those years ago: Pushkin's att.i.tude to Alexander I changed over the years as the latter became more reactionary. 'Those years ago' refers to the defeats of 1805a7, at Austerlitz and Eylau, when Alexander signed the humiliating Tilsit peace treaty with Napoleon.

3. To pluck... pitched his tent: Alexander's authority was drastically undermined by these losses and the initial failures of the 1812 war, symbolized here by the 'plucking' of the Russian eagle. Napoleon's tent refers to the one he constructed on a raft in the middle of the Neman river where he conducted the negotiations of the Tilsit peace treaty. By appearing here several minutes before Alexander, Napoleon played the host, so humiliating the Tsar with his cheerful welcome.

4. Barclay: Prince Mikhail Bogdanovich Barclay-de-Tolly (1761a1818) commanded the Russian armies during the first part of the war, but his policy of retreat gave rise to accusations of treachery.

5. king of kings: A paraphrase of Agamemnon's t.i.tle in the Iliad, often applied to Alexander I during the period 1813a15 by official publications. Another provenance is a song sung in the French opera in 1814.

6. as he fattened: The Russian says simply: And the fatter, the heavier', but it seems likely that the reference is to Alexander, whose personal fatness' after victory creates greater heaviness' for the Russian people.

7. Maybe... done it, too: The Russian word for maybe' is the colloquial and popular avos, meaning on the off chance'. The 'high-bornrhymester' is Prince Dolgoruky (1764a1823), a satirical salon poet who addressed a poem to the word. Pushkin may have come across Byron's use of shibboleth' in Don Juan, XI, 12, 1 a 2: 'Juan, who did not understand a word / Of English, save their shibboleth, "G.o.d d.a.m.n!"'

8. To Albion the seas are granted: Britain's defeat of the French (and Spanish) at Trafalgar in 1805 ensured its supremacy over the seas.

9. the fraud: The reference is either to Prince A. N. Golitsyn (1773a1844) or to M. L. Magnitsky (1778a1855). Golitsyn changed from an atheist in his early years to an adherent of 'official mysticism', founding the Biblical Society' and becoming Minister for National Education and Spiritual Affairs. Magnitsky was notorious for his monetary greed.

10. Maybe Tsar Nicholas... free: In 1830 Pushkin continued to hope for Tsar Nicholas's mercy towards the exiled Decembrists. Here the tone is ironical.

11. This man of fate... rack of leisure: The 'man of fate is Napoleon. The pope attended his coronation in Paris. 'Rack of leisure refers to Napoleon's imprisonment on St Helena.

12. The Pyrenees... B's shadow: The stanza refers to two revolutions of 1820 that shook post-Napoleonic Europe and influenced Decembrism in Russia. The Spanish revolution was defeated in 1823 by the French, mandated by the Holy Alliance of France, Austria, Russia and Prussia. The Neapolitan was crushed by Austria in 1821, a.s.sisted by England and France. The 'one-armed prince was general Alexander Konstantinovich Ipsilanti (1792a1828), a Greek serving in the Russian army, who lost his arm in the battle of Dresden. In 1821 he led an abortive rising of the Greeks in Turkish Moldavia. Pushkin knew Ipsilanti in Kishinev and supported his endeavours, but was later disillusioned with him. Pushkin uses the former name Morea for the Peloponnese. From Kishinev Ipsilanti directed a secret society known as the Hetairae, which had its headquarters in the Pelo-ponnese and fomented a rising there. 'L refers probably to Louis Pierre Louvel 1783a1820), a saddler, who planned to kill all the Bourbons, a.s.sa.s.sinating 'B', duc de Berry, heir to the French throne in Paris, on 13 February 1820.

13. Our Tsar said... Alexander's menial: Alexander attended four congresses aimed at crushing revolution in Europe: in Aachen (1818), Troppau (1820), Laibakh (1821) and Verona (1822). At Laibach the Neapolitan revolution was the main concern, while the Verona congress planned the intervention in Spain. 'Alexander's menial is Count Arakcheev, the Tsar's most powerful adviser. See note i to 'Fragments of Onegin's Journey.

14. Toy regiment... deadly foes: The stanza refers to the Semyonovsky regiment founded by Peter the Great (1672a1725), who modelled it on the half-boy, half-toy regiment that he created in his boyhood. The 'tyrant was the mad Paul I (1754a1801, father of Alexander I and Nicholas I), slain by a gang of courtiers with the connivance of the Semyonovsky regiment, who were meant to be guarding him. The same regiment staged a rebellion in 1820, foreshadowing the Decembrist movement. Sergei Muravyov-Apostol (1796a1826) and Mikhail Bestuzhev-Riumin (1801a26), the hanged Decembrists leaders, had served in it.

15. Russia again returned... smouldering: The Semyonovsky revolt was quelled, but the Decembrist movement had begun. Pushkin's image of the 'spark responds to a line in a poem sent to him from Siberia by the Decembrist Prince Alexander Odoevsky: 'From a spark a flame will burst'.

16. Foregathering... reciprocating greetings: The reference is to the conspiratorial Russian lunches' held by the Decembrist Ryleyev, who liked to stress his Russianness by serving only Russian food and drink.

17. Nikita's... debate: Nikita Mikhailovich Muravyev (1796a1843) was one of the most active members of the secret societies, formulating a plan for a const.i.tution. He was sentenced to twenty years' hard labour. Pushkin knew him in the lycee. Ilya Andreyevich Dolgorukov (1798a1848) was a member of the Union of Welfare, one of the main Decembrist organizations. No action was taken against him as a result of the intervention of his commanding officer, Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich.

18. Lunin... decisive measures: Mikhail Sergeyevich Lunin (1787a1845), guards officer, reveller and member of all the Decembrist societies. His decisive measures' refer, it seems, to a plan for a.s.sa.s.sinating the Tsar put forward by him in 1816. Pushkin befriended him on leaving the lycee.

19. Noels were brought and read by Pushkin: Pushkin was not present here, since he was not admitted to conspiratorial meetings. In any case, the occasion he refers to took place in Moscow in 1817. But he read his noels at other gatherings. The noel is a French Christmas carol with a topical reference. Pushkin's noels are political parodies of the form. Only one remains.

20. Yakushkin: Pushkin met Ivan Dmitrievich Yakushkin (1793a1857) in 1829 in St Petersburg and again in the South. One of the topics of the Moscow meetings in 1817 was Alexander's rumoured plan to move his residence to Warsaw and transfer part of Russia to Poland. It was this prospect that fired Yakushkin's impulse to a.s.sa.s.sinate him. Portraits of Yakushkin give an impression of dejection, apparently caused by unhappy love.

21. the lame Turgenev: Nikolai Ivanovich Turgenev (1789a1871), Decembrist. Pushkin saw the brothers Turgenev, Alexander and Nikolai, frequently in St Petersburg between 1817 and 1820, writing his famous ode 'Liberty' (1817) in their flat. Nikolai's influence can also be felt in the poem 'The Village' (1819), which deplores serfdom. The emanc.i.p.ation of the serfs motivated Nikolai's entire career. In 1824 he left for Western Europe, returning in 1856, when the Decembrists were amnestied. The limp in his left foot was the result of a childhood illness.

22. 16: This stanza is defective. There is a gap of two syllables in the middle of line 9, indicated by dots. Nor does the last word in line 9, 'tiranov ('tyrants), rhyme with the last word in line 12, 'sklonyaya ('inclining / persuading) except on the second syllable ('a'/'ya'), although they fit metrically. My 'tyrants'/'inclining misrhyme in a similar way. The stanza moves from the activities of the Northern Society of the Decembrists to those of the South.

23. Kamenka: An estate on the Dnieper, belonging to V. L. Davydov, where the Southern Decembrists met and Pushkin stayed during his exile in Kishinev.

24. Tul' chin: a small town in the Podolsk province housing the headquarters of the Second Army under the command of Count Wittgenstein (1768a1842) and the central group of the Southern Society.

25. Pestel': Pushkin met Pestel' in Kishinev, remarking that he was one of the most original minds he knew.

26. a cool-headed general: Sergei Grigor' evich Volkonsky (1788a1865), a leader of the Southern Society, sentenced to twenty years hard labour.

27. Muryavyov: To be distinguished from Nikita Muravyov in note 17 above. He is Sergei Ivanovich Muravyov-Apostol, mentioned in note 14.

28. 'Twixt a Lafitte and a Cliquot: This means during either dinner or supper: the meal would begin with Lafitte, a dry wine, and end with champagne, Cliquot.

end.