Евгений Онегин / Eugene Onegin

There our Katenine did revive

Corneille’s majestic genius,

Sarcastic Shakhovskoi brought out

His comedies, a noisy rout,

There Didelot became glorious,

There, there, beneath the side-scene’s shade

The drama of my youth was played[9 - Denis Von Wisine (1741–1792), a favourite Russian dramatist. His first comedy The Brigadier, procured him the favour of the second Catherine. His best, however, is the Minor (Niedorosl). Prince Potemkin, after witnessing it, summoned the author, and greeted him with the exclamation, “Die now, Denis!” In fact, his subsequent performances were not of equal merit; Jacob Borissovitch Kniajnine (1742–1791), a clever adapter of French tragedy; Simeonova, a celebrated tragic actress, who retired from the stage in early life and married a Prince Gagarine; Ozeroff, one of the best-known Russian dramatists of the period; he possessed more originality than Kniajnine.

XVI

My goddesses, where are your shades?

Do ye not hear my mournful sighs?

Are ye replaced by other maids

Who cannot conjure former joys?

Shall I your chorus hear anew,

Russia’s Terpsichore review

Again in her ethereal dance?

Or will my melancholy glance

On the dull stage find all things changed,

The disenchanted glass direct

Where I can no more recollect? —

A careless looker-on estranged

In silence shall I sit and yawn

And dream of life’s delightful dawn?

XVII

The house is crammed.

On pit, stalls, boxes, brightly blaze,

Impatiently the gallery stamps,

The curtain now they slowly raise.

Obedient to the magic strings,

Brilliant, ethereal, there springs

Forth from the crowd of nymphs surrounding

Istomina[10 - Istomina – a celebrated Circassian dancer of the day, with whom the poet in his extreme youth imagined himself in love.

With one foot resting on its tip

Slow circling round its fellow swings

And now she skips and now she springs

Like down from Aeolus’s lip,

Now her lithe form she arches o’er

And beats with rapid foot the floor.