Chapter One: Spleen

And he hurries to live, and hastens to feel. — Prince Vyazemsky

"My uncle, a man of the strictest principles, has fallen seriously ill, and made us all respect him; he could have thought of nothing better. His example is a lesson to us all. But heavens, what a bore it is to sit beside a sick man day and night, not daring to take one step away! What low cunning, to amuse the half-dead, to plump up his pillows, to bring him his medicine with a sad face, to sigh, and think to oneself: When will the devil come for you?" So thought a young rake, flying through the dust by post, by the will of Zeus heir to all his kin.

Friends of Lyudmila and Ruslan, let me without more ado introduce to you the hero of my novel: Onegin, my good friend, born on the banks of the Neva, where perhaps you were born, my reader, or where you shone. I too once strolled there; but the north is bad for me.

His father served honourably, lived in debt, gave three balls a year, and went bankrupt at last. Fate kept Eugene: a French tutor taught him everything as a joke, did not weary him with strict morals, scolded him lightly for his pranks, and took him walking in the Summer Garden. When the time of restless youth came, the time of hopes and tender sadness, the tutor was driven out of the yard; and here is my Onegin, free: hair cut in the latest fashion, dressed like a London dandy, he saw the world at last.

He could speak and write French perfectly, dance the mazurka lightly, bow without constraint; what more could one ask? The world decided that he was clever, and very nice. We all learned a little, something and somehow, and so, thank God, it is easy for us to shine with learning. He knew enough Latin to make out an epigraph, to talk of Juvenal, to put a vale at the end of a letter; he could not tell an iamb from a trochee, however we tried; but he had read Adam Smith, and was a deep economist, and knew how a state grows rich and why it needs no gold when it has the simple product.

But in what he was a true genius, what he knew better than any science, what was his labour, torment and delight from his early youth, and occupied his whole long idle day, was the science of tender passion, which Ovid sang, and for which he ended, a martyr, in Moldavian steppes, far from Italy. How early he could play the hypocrite, conceal his hope, be jealous, make others believe him and disbelieve him, seem gloomy, languish, be proud, obedient, attentive or indifferent!

And his day? He wakes at noon; notes are brought: three invitations for the evening. In his morning dress, in a broad bolívar hat, he drives to the boulevard, and strolls until his watch, always alert, rings him to dinner. Then to Talon's, where Kaverin waits; then champagne, roast beef bloody, truffles, the Strasbourg pie, the golden pineapple; and then the ballet: the theatre full, the boxes shining, the stalls seething, the gallery clapping; and Istomina, half air, flies like down from the lips of Aeolus.

His study: everything that London sells, everything Paris invents to amuse, amber on Turkish pipes, porcelain and bronze, scents in cut crystal, combs, files of steel, thirty kinds of brushes, for teeth and nails. He spent three hours at least before the mirror, and came out of his dressing room like flighty Venus dressed as a man. Then to the ball, where the crowd swirls, the music thunders, the feet of pretty women fly — ah, those little feet! I have known them.

And did he wake, at last, to the noise of morning, the drum beating, the merchant rising, the cabman crawling to his stand, the milkmaid hurrying with her jug, while my Onegin, half asleep, drove home from the ball to bed? But was he happy? No: early his feelings cooled; the noise of the world bored him; beauties did not long occupy his thoughts; friends and friendship wearied him. In short, the Russian spleen took hold of him, little by little. Like Childe Harold, gloomy, languid, he appeared in drawing rooms; neither the gossip of the world, nor cards, nor a tender look, nor an immodest sigh, touched him; he noticed nothing.

I made friends with him then. I liked his features, his involuntary bent for dreaming, his strange originality, his sharp, chilled mind. I was embittered, he was gloomy; we both knew the game of passions; life had worn us both. We talked by the Neva on white nights, when the sky is transparent and bright, and remembered our youth. We were to travel together, to foreign lands; but fate parted us. His father died; the creditors came; he gave them all and kept nothing. And then he heard that his uncle was dying, and wished to say goodbye. He flew there by post — and found him laid out on the table. And so Onegin became a country squire, master of factories, waters, forests, lands; and was glad to have changed his course for something new.

For two days the lonely fields seemed new to him, the coolness of the dim oak grove, the murmur of the quiet stream; on the third, the grove, the hill and the field no longer interested him; then they sent him to sleep; and he saw plainly that in the country, too, the boredom was the same.

I was born for a peaceful life, for country quiet; there the lyre sounds clearer, creative dreams are livelier. I have written this first chapter; I have looked it over strictly; there are many contradictions in it, but I will not correct them. Go, then, my newborn creation, to the banks of the Neva, and earn me the critics' abuse, the noise, the gossip!