Part 37 (1/2)

And soon... by a secret network Russia...

Our Tsar was dozing...

Notes.

Pushkin added a series of notes to his edition of Eugene Onegin. I have referred to several of these in the Notes below, but have not translated them as a whole because they include long quotations, often from secondary poets, which themselves would require further annotation, and would, I think, interest only a tiny minority of readers.

I am indebted to the commentaries on Onegin by Vladimir Nabokov, Yuri Lotman and N. L. Brodsky.

1. 'Steeped in vanity, he had even more the kind of pride that will accept good and bad actions with the same indifference a the result of a feeling of superiority, perhaps imaginary. (From a private letter.)' There is no known source for this quotation.

DEDICATION.

1. Addressed to P. A. Pletnyov (1792a1865), man of letters and minor poet, in later years academician and rector of St Petersburg University. He met Pushkin in 1817 and remained one of his closest friends. From 1825 he was his princ.i.p.al publisher and, after the poet's death, his first biographer.

CHAPTER 1.

1. And it hurries... Prince Vyazemsky: The epigraph is from 'The First Snow' (1819), a poem by Pushkin's close friend Prince Pyotr Vyazemsky (1792a1878), mentioned several times in Onegin and appearing in person in Chapter VIII. The 'it' is 'youthful ardour', compared to the intoxication of a sleigh ride.

2. Zeus: Supreme G.o.d of the ancient Greek pantheon.

3. Ruslan and Lyudmila:(1820) A mock-epic and Pushkin's first major work. Pushkin signals his return to a light-hearted manner after a series of impa.s.sioned Romantic poems.

4. But now the North's unsafe for me: Pushkin's note 1 to the chapter reads: 'Written in Bessarabia', his initial place of exile.

5. Madame... pa.s.sed on her trust: Refugees from revolutionary France were employed as tutors by aristocratic families.

6. the Summer Park: The Summer Gardens, a fas.h.i.+onable park in St Petersburg.

7. Juvenal:(c. 42ac. 125 AD), Roman satirical poet, popular with the Decembrists (see Introduction) for his denunciations of despotism and depravity.

8. the Aeneid: Epic poem by Roman poet Virgil (70a19 BC).

9. Homer: Ancient Greek poet, somewhere between the twelfth and seventh centuries BC, supposed author of the Iliad and the Odyssey.

10. Theocritus: Ancient Greek poet of idylls, third century BC. Russian pre-Romantics, seeking a national alternative to Russian rococo, drew on Homer and Theocritus. Decembrist economists, on the other hand, dismissed the entire cla.s.sical poetic tradition as of no practical use.

11. Adam Smith: Scottish economist (1723a90) who influenced the Decembrists.

12. in the land... The simple product: A princ.i.p.al tenet of physiocrat economic theory, originating in eighteenth-century France, according to which national wealth was based on the 'produit net' of agriculture.

13. Ovid: Roman poet (43 BC-16 AD), author of Metamorphoses and The Art of Love, with whom Pushkin felt a kins.h.i.+p during his exile. Ovid died in exile on the Black Sea.

14. [9]: The omitted stanzas are of three kinds: those written and dropped; those which Pushkin intended to write but never got round to; and fict.i.tious ones in the ironic manner of Sterne, Byron and Hoffmann. Together they const.i.tute an invisible subtext.

15. Faublas: A sixteen-year-old seducer of young wives in a picaresque novel by Louvet de Couvrai (1760a97). But none of the husbands in the novel can be described as 'cunning'.

16. bolivar: A silk hat with a wide, upturned brim, named after Simon Bolivar (1783a1830), the Latin American liberator and idol of European liberals in the 1820s and of Latin American revolutionaries today.

17. Breguet: A repeater watch, invented by Parisian watchmaker Abraham Louis Breguet (1747a1823). A spring mechanism allowed the watch, while shut, to strike the hour or minute. A real dandy would not have carried one.

18. 'Away, away': The postilion's cry to pedestrians.

19. Talon's: A restaurant on the Nevsky Prospekt owned by a Frenchman until 1825.

20. Kaverin: Pyotr Kaverin (1794a1855), hussar and duellist, school friend and companion of Pushkin during his early Petersburg years, student at Gottingen (1810a11) and Decembrist.

21. comet wine: Champagne of vintage comet year 1811.

22. b.l.o.o.d.y roast beef: Fas.h.i.+onable in the early decades of the nineteenth century.

23. Strasbourg pie, that keeps for ever: Made from goose liver and imported in tins, therefore 'kept for ever'. Tinned food was invented during the Napoleonic wars.

24. ananas: Pineapple, an expensive taste throughout the nineteenth century and of Latin American revolutionaries today.

25. Limburg's cheese's living ma.s.s: Sharp, strong, soft and runny Belgian cheese, hence perhaps the epithet 'living' or, alternatively, because of the 'living dust' of microbes that covered it.

26. liberty's admirers: The Russian has: 'Where everyone, breathing liberty', a Gallicism from 'respirer l'air de la liberte'. At the Decembrist rising, the poet Ryleyev remarked: We are breathing freedom.'

27. Cleopatra, Phaedra... Moena: It is unclear what work Cleopatra figured in. Phaedra: heroine of an opera adapted from Racine's eponymous tragedy. Moena: heroine of Ozerov's tragedy Fingal.

28. Fonvizin: Denis Fonvizin (1745a92), author of The Minor, a satirical play about cruelty, smugness and ignorance.

29. Knyazhnin: Yakov Knyazhnin (1742a91), imitator of French tragedies and comedies.

30. Ozerov: Vladislav Ozerov (1769a1816), author of five tragedies in the French style, including Fingal (note 27 above), considered 'very mediocre' by Pushkin, who put his success down to the acting of Yekaterina Semyonova, whom he regarded highly.

31. Katenin: Pavel Katenin (1792a1853), playwright, critic and Decembrist, translated Corneille's Le Cid, firing Decembrist ideals. See Chapter I, stanza 18.

32. Shakhovskoy: Prince Alexander Shakhovskoy (1777a1846), theatre director and author of comedies satirizing contemporary writers.

33. Didelot: Charles Louis Didelot (1767a1837), well-known ballet master in St Petersburg.

34. Terpsich.o.r.e: Ancient Greek G.o.ddess of dance.