Eugene Onegin : A Novel In Verse

EUGENE ONEGIN Eugene Onegin A NOVEL IN VERSE BY Aleksandr Pushkin TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN, WITH A COMMENTARY, BY Vladimir Nabokov IN FOUR VOLUMES 3 Commentary on Chapters Six to Eight, "Onegin's Journey," and "Chapter Ten" Appendixes + Bollingen Series LXXII Pantheon Books Copyright © I 9 64 by Bolling en Foundation Published by Bollingen Foundation, New York, N. Y. Distributed by Pantheon Books, a Division of Random House, Inc., New York, N. Y. THIS FOUR-VOLUME WORK IS THE SEVENTY-SECOND IN A SERIES OF BOOKS SPONSORED BY BOLLINGEN FOUNDATION Library of Congress catalogue card No. 63-10708 Set and printed in the United States of America by Clarke&: Way, Inc., New York, N. Y. Bound by Russell Rutter Co., Inc., New York, N. Y. Designed by Bert Clarke Contents VOLUME THREE METHOD OF TRANSLITERATION CALENDAR ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS vu xiv xv Commentary (concluded) 3 68 CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT 129 NOTES TO "EUGENE ONEGIN" 252 253 253 254 FRAGMENTS OF "ONEGIN'S JOURNEY" Pushkin's Foreword The Fragments (including Expunged Stanzas) "CHAPTER TEN" 311 Addendum to Notes on "Chapter Ten" TRANSLATOR'S EPILOGUE THE WORK ["TRUD"] 365 376 384 Appendixes APPENDIX ONE: ABRAM GANNIBAL Foreword Pushkin's Comments Published During His Lifetime v 387 388 Commentary Pushkin's Ancestors The Documents Dates of Abram Gannibal's Birth and Death Gannibal's Origin Gannibal's Birthplace Gannibal's Sister Gannibal's Parentage Gannibal's Enslavement Gannibal in Turkey Gannibal and Raguzinski Gannibal's First Years in Russia (1706-16) Gannibal in Western Europe (1716-23) Gannibal and Annibal Gannibal's Later Years in Russia (1723-81) Conclusions Works Consulted 391 392 394 396 398 405 407 411 414 419 423 428 432 433 435 {4.2 APPENDIX TWO: NOTES ON PROSODY 1. Prosodies 2. Feet 3. The Scud 4. Tilted Scuds 5. Spondees 6. Elisions 7. The Origination of Metrical Verse in Russia 8. Difference in Modulation 9. Examples of Modulations 10. Counts of Modulations in Eugene Onegin 11. Other Meters and Rhythms 12. Differences in Use of Meter 13. Rhyme For the index, see vol. 4. Vl 448 449 454 462 472 475 478 491 496 514 521 525 527 Method of Transliteration Except when otherwise stated, I have followed in all my transcriptions of Russian texts the new spelling adopted in Russia after the Revolution. The reform did not affect, or at least was not supposed to affect, anything in the pronunciation. Its main object was to get rid of certain superfluous ornamental letters. Thus (to mention a few of the changes), it retained only one of the vowels, identically pronounced but differently spelled, corresponding to the English e in "yes"; abolished the so-called "hard sign" that used to follow all nonpalatalized consonants at the end of words; and substituted for the nonaccented a in the ago of genitive endings (pronounced like the a in the ava of Cavalleria) an o, which, being unaccented, is pronounced, or should be pronounced, exactly like the a it replaces. Below is a table of the transliterations used in the present work. Russian Character Transliterated A a a PRONOUNCED Like the Italian a. Resembles the a of "art" (never pronounced as in "man" or "male"). B 6 b As in "Byron." Exceptions: medial b before a voiceless consonant and final b tending to p. Thus prdbka, "cork," rhymes with kndpka, "tack," Vll Method of Transliteration Russian Character Transliterated PRONOUNCED and lob, "forehead,'' rhymes with pop, "priest" (but volshebno, "magi