Onegin Evgeniĭ - Eugene Onegin

EUGENE ONEGIN ALEXANDER SERGEYEVICH PUSHKIN was born in Moscow in 1799. He was liberally educated and left school in 1817. Given a sinecure in the Foreign Office, he spent three dissipated years in St Petersburg writing light, erotic and highly polished verse. He flirted with several pre-Decembrist societies, composing the mildly revolutionary verses which led to his disgrace and exile in 1820. After travelling through the Caucasus and the Crimea, he was sent to Bessarabia, where he wrote The Captive of the Caucasus and The Fountain at Bakhchisaray, and began Eugene Onegin. His work took an increasingly serious turn during the last year of his southern exile, in Odessa. In 1824 he was transferred to his parents estate at Mikhailovskoe in north-west Russia, where he spent two solitary but fruitful years during which he wrote his historical drama Boris Godunov, continued Eugene Onegin and finished The Gipsies.

After the failure of the Decembrist Revolt in 1825 and the succession of a new tsar, Pushkin was granted conditional freedom in 1826. During the next three years he wandered restlessly between St Petersburg and Moscow. He wrote an epic poem, Poltava, but little else. In 1829 he went with the Russian army to Transcaucasia, and the following year, stranded by a cholera outbreak at the small family estate of Boldino, he wrote his experimental Little Tragedies in blank verse and The Tales of Belkin in prose, and virtually completed Eugene Onegin. In 1831 he married the beautiful Natalya Goncharova. The rest of his life was soured by debts and the malice of his enemies.

Although his literary output slackened, he produced his major prose works The Queen of Spades and The Captains Daughter, his masterpiece in verse, The Bronze Horseman, important lyrics and fairy tales, including The Tale of the Golden Cockerel. Towards the end of 1836 anonymous letters goaded Pushkin into challenging a troublesome admirer of his wife to a duel. He was mortally wounded and died in January 1837. STANLEY MITCHELL was born in 1932 in London. He read Modern Languages (French, German and Russian) at Oxford. He taught at various universities Birmingham, Essex, Sussex, San Diego California, McGill Montreal, Dar es Salaam Tanzania, Derby, University College London and Camberwell School of Art.

Subjects included Russian literature and art, comparative literature, art history and cultural studies. He retired from Derby as Emeritus Professor of Aesthetics and was made an Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the Art History Department of UCL. He has translated Georg Lukcs and Walter Benjamin, written a variety of articles and reviews, and given numerous lectures and talks. ALEXANDER PUSHKIN

A Novel in VerseTranslated with an Introduction and Notes by
STANLEY MITCHELL PENGUIN BOOKS PENGUIN CLASSICS Published by the Penguin Group
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Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL , England www.penguin.com First published 1833
This translation first published in Penguin Classics 2008
1 Translation and editorial material copyright Stanley Mitchell, 2008
All rights reserved The moral right of the translator and editor has been asserted Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser EISBN: 9780141889993 I should like to thank the following for their help: Peter Carson, my editor for his constant scrutiny; Nina Zhutovsky (St. Petersburg) who cleared up every mistake; Robert Chandler for his devotion and counsel; Angela Livingstone for her careful reading and improvements; Ruth Pavey for her pertinent comments; Carla and Dan Mitchell for their common sense; the late Hannah Mitchell for her enthusiasm and encouragement; Leonid Arinshtein (Moscow) for his suggestions; Yu D. Levin (Moscow) for his criticism; Sergei Bocharov (Moscow) for his advice about the map; Martin Thom for his clarification of the role of the Carbonari in my Introduction; PKS Architects and the Art History Department of University College, London for the use of their photocopy facilities; Tom Dale Keever for sending me an audiotape of Innokentii Smoktunovsky reading Eugene Onegin.

In retrospect, I am grateful to the late Isaiah Berlin and John Bayley for having blessed my very first stanza. I thank the following for their warm support throughout my work on Onegin: Antony Wood, Natalia Mikhailova (Deputy Director of the Pushkin Museum, Moscow), Nicholas Jacobs, Dmitry Gutov (Moscow) and Gina Barker. Above all, I am indebted more than I can say to Barbara Rosenbaum for her love of the poem and her unstinting efforts to ensure that my translation was poetic. Whether it is or not is my responsibility not hers. Stanley Mitchell

1799 26 May Born in Moscow. Father of ancient Muscovite aristocratic lineage; mother a granddaughter of Abyssinian General Abram Gannibal (hero of Pushkins unfinished novel The Negro of Peter the Great).181117 Educated at newly opened Imperial Lyce at Tsarskoe Selo.

First poetry (earliest publication 1814). 181720 Nominal government appointment in Foreign Office, St Petersburg. Life of dissipation. Free-thinking acquaintances (future Decembrists). 1820 Completed first major narrative poem, Ruslan and Lyudmila. 182024 Southern exile (via Caucasus and Crimea to Kishinev and, from July 1823, Odessa). 182024 Southern exile (via Caucasus and Crimea to Kishinev and, from July 1823, Odessa).

Byronic narrative poems, including The Captive of the Caucasus and The Fountain at Bakhchisaray. Began Eugene Onegin (1823). Recognition as leading poet of his generation. 18246 After misdemeanours in Odessa, exile continued in greater isolation of parental estate of Mikhailovskoe. The Gipsies (1824); Count Nulin; Boris Godunov (1825). 1826 September Summoned to Moscow by Nicholas I. 1826 September Summoned to Moscow by Nicholas I.

Freed from exile, with tsar as personal censor; subject thereafter to surveillance, guidance and counselling of Count Benkendorf, Head of the Third Section (Secret Police). Resumed life in Moscow and St Petersburg; restlessness, search for stability. 1828Poltava (narrative poem on Peter the Great and Mazeppa). Four-month visit to Transcaucasia. Witnessed Russian army in action against the Turks.

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