A novel in verse

MAY be poetry makes nothing happen but for Russians it has always been a matter of life and death, with politics as the stuff of daily consciousness. The pressures of secular tyranny in the 19th and much of the 20th Century under the Soviets gave poetry the widespread appeal of a counter-culture, as instinct in the people's consciousness as the words of prayer or the Bible. What poetry did was to save language from the abuses of power, not as an artificially intact entity, but as a living thing where the most ordinary colloquial words were saturated with the greatest poetic content. The past master of this supreme art of naturalness that concealed art was Alexander Pushkin, who, for over 150 years has appealed to people of every period and political persuasion, cherished equally by tsars and communists, peasants and aristocrats simply because his poetry, shorn of all traces of effort, is spontaneous and perfect. And this is crystallised in Eugene Onegin where his art remains supreme from the first line to the last.

Eugene Onegin is "a novel in verse" in eight cantos which are called chapters. Written in special Onegin stanzas (in four- footed iambics of 14 lines) it is a story with a beginning, a middle and an end. Its unity is not an intended unity but rather something organic as an individual's life that reflects the changes he has gone through - in this case of a poet between his 24th and 32nd years. (Eugene Onegin was begun in 1823 and completed in 1830 with a few finishing touches added in 1831.)

The story is pretty straightforward. Eugene, the hero of the "novel in verse" is an uprooted individual of the 1820s, a bored dandy whose early dissipations are described in the first canto.

We wandered through our schooling/ haphazard; so to God be thanks,/ it's easy without too much fooling,/ to pass for cultured in our ranks.

Some days he's still in bed, and drowses,/ when little notes come on a tray/ What? Invitations? Yes, three houses/ have each asked him for a soiree:/ a ball here, there's a children's party;/ where shall he go, my rogue, my hearty?/ Which one comes first? It's just the same-/ to do them all is easy game.

Exhausted by the ballroom's clamour/ converting morning to midnight,/ he sleeps, away from glare and glamour,/ this child of luxury and delight./ Thereafter after midday he'll be waking;/ always monstrously gay,/ tomorrow just like yesterday./ But it was happy, his employment/

No, early on his heart was cooling/ and he was bored with social noise;/ no, not for long were belles the ruling/ objective of his thoughts and joys:/ so infidelity proved cloying,/ and friends and friendships soul destroying.

Eugene inherits an estate and leaves for the country. Tatyana, the neighbour's daughter falls in love with him and confesses it in a touching love letter.

I write to you - no more confession/ is needed, nothing's left to tell,/ I know it's now in your discretion/ with scorn to make my world a hell...

I might have said a word, and then/ thought, day and night, and thought again/ about one thing, till our next meeting./ But you're not sociable, they say:/ you find the country forsaken; though we... don't shine in any way,/ our joy in you is warmly taken....

You know, it's true, how I attended./ drank in your words when all was still-/ helping the poor, or while I attended/ with balm of prayer my torn and rended/ spirit that anguish made ill./ At this midnight of my condition./ was it not you, dear apparition,/ who in the dark came flashing through/ and, on my head gently leaning,/ with love and comfort in your meaning,/ spoke words of hope? But who are you: the guardian angel of tradition,/ or some vile agent of perdition,/ sent to seduce?...

Eugene is inwardly too cold for any deep feeling, yet he takes no advantage of Tatyana's naivete. From sheer boredom, he flirts with her younger sister and fights a duel with her fiance, whom he kills. Years of travel follow. At last he returns to Petersburg where he meets Tatyana, now a general's wife and a brilliant society beauty. This time he falls in love. Tatyana decides however to remain faithful to her husband, although she still loves Eugene.

That is all. But the transition from the boisterously high spirits of the first chapter to the muffled tragedy of the eighth is gradual, like the growth of a tree. The novel has the least apparent restraint: Pushkin lets himself go in digressions, lyrical, humourous and polemical. There is no artistic economy, no tautness. More than anywhere else, Pushkin relies for his effects on atmosphere, on creating an ambience:

Love tyrannises all the ages:/ but youthful, virgin hearts derive/ a blessing from its blasts and rages,/ like fields of spring when storms arrive./ In passion's sluicing rain they freshen,/ ripen, and find a new expression-/ the vital force gives them the shoot/ of sumptuous flowers and luscious fruit./ But when a later age found us,/ the climacteric of our life,/ how sad the scar of passion's knife:/ as when chill autumn rains surrounds us,/ throw meadows into muddy rout,/ and strip the forest round about.

The simplicity of the plot, its logical development from the actual features of its heroes and the suggestively unhappy ending provided a pattern to future Russian and European writers. As with tragedy, Greek or otherwise, Eugene Onegin is dominated by the stern moral law of Fates. Onegin's irresponsible self- indulgence and selfishness inevitably leads to his undoing while the calm restraint and resignation of Tatyana gives her the halo of moral greatness which is forever associated with her name.

In the creation of Tatyana, Pushkin's greatness lies in avoiding the almost unavoidable pit of making a puritan out of the virtuous wife who coldly rejects the man she loves. Tatyana is redeemed in her virtue by the sadness she will never get over, by her resigned and calm resolve never to enter her only possible paradise, but to live with never a possibility of happiness. The Tatyana-Eugene relation has often been a recurrent theme in Russian fiction and the juxtaposition of the small weak man with a strong woman almost commonplace in modern classics. But Pushkin's classic contribution in the creation of sympathy without pity for the man and of respect without reward for the woman has never been revived.

It is impossible here to quote more than what has already been provided above or to analyse any of the lyrics. All that can be said is that the characterisation is not analytical or psychological but poetical that depends on the lyrical and emotional atmosphere that accompanies the characters - not on the anatomy of their thoughts and sentiments. Many of the lyrics are subjective and spontaneous that are idealised and sublimated, preserving the ragged edges of raw emotions. But though they are subjective and based on

individual experience they are general in tone and based on common human experience. The style is free from wit, imagery and metaphor and the meaning depends as much on what is left unsaid as on what is said. And finally, the vexed notion that every poet loses in translation and therefore Pushkin must lose too. That may well be but the translation flows easily and naturally and that is all that matters.

Eugene Onegin, Alexander Pushkin, translated by Charles Johnston in Penguin Classics, Special Indian price, 4.99 pound.

RAVI VYAS

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