A couple of months ago I started reading an English translation of Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, but I found it hard going. Perhaps it was the translation, but more likely it was just that a modern novel which mixes up magic and realism tends to leave me cold.

I persevered for a while, but about a quarter of the way through, maybe less, I decided that it was a case of "thus far and no further" with Bulgakov (1891-1940) and decided to retreat a couple of centuries and try Pushkin's verse novel, Eugene Onegin, instead.

I was immediately enchanted - the eponymous hero seems to be a blighter after my own black heart, and the unique sonnet form that Pushkin created, and a bloke called Spalding translated into English sonnets that follow Pushkin's rhyme scheme (with four feet per line rather than five) had me sniggering right from the opening verse:

My uncle’s goodness is extreme,
If seriously he hath disease;
He hath acquired the world’s esteem
And nothing more important sees;
A paragon of virtue he!
But what a nuisance it will be,
Chained to his bedside night and day
Without a chance to slip away.
Ye need dissimulation base
A dying man with art to soothe,
Beneath his head the pillow smooth,
And physic bring with mournful face,
To sigh and meditate alone:
When will the devil take his own!

He he, I love a dissimulating hero who is hoping to come into a pile of unearned cash. So now, having laid aside Bulgakov, I feel I have found the writer for my latest sally into English translations of Russian literature.

Eugene Onegin consists of 389 sonnets. It was published bit by bit as Pushkin (1799-1837) wrote it between 1825 and 1832 and then in a single volume in 1833.

The Plot of Eugene Onegin

Eugene Onegin, a wealthy young Russian (a "superfluous man" after the manner of a Byronic hero), becomes bored with country life and rejects Tatyana, a shy young woman who falls in love with him and writes him a love letter.

Onegin becomes friends with a young poet, Lensky. At a party, Onegin ignores Tatyana, and flirts and dances with Lensky’s fiancée, provoking Lensky to challenge his friend to a duel. Onegin kills Lensky (prefiguring Pushkin's own demise) and is deeply troubled by his death.

Years later, Onegin meets Tatyana again and falls in love with her, but she is now married and refuses to leave her husband.

The plot is quite basic and is really little more than a clothes horse which Pushkin drapes with various colourful garments of Russian life. Eugene Onegin offers a portrait of a society in transition, over which Pushkin casts a wry, ironic and witty eye, and it is this expansive and immersive quality of Russian literature, pioneered by Pushkin, which I especially enjoy.

Pushkin's Fatal Duel

Pushkin married Natalia Gonchorova (1812-1863), a society beauty.

Natalia attracted the interest of a French Cavalier Guard, Georges-Charles d'Anthès (1812-1895), who married her sister yet continued his pursuit of Pushkin's wife. Pushkin wrote him a deliberately insulting letter and the expected challenge to a duel followed. Neither party was willing to back down and so the duel took place at dawn. The cavalier fired first and hit Pushkin in the guts. The fallen poet lifted himself up to fire his shot, which grazed the French arm. Pushkin died in agony, but not before forgiving d'Anthès.

The First (and Best?) English Translation

Eugine Onegin was first translated into English in 1881 by a retired British army officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Spalding (1840-1907). His translation preserves the form of Pushkin's verse and even the rhyme scheme (ABAB,CCDD,EFFE,GG), and is written in what to many today would seem to be the slightly archaic diction of the nineteenth century, which has the merit of making the narrator's mock-seriousness particularly effective, as well as grounding the translation in an age that is closer to Pushkin's than our own. It was apparently admired by Ivan Turgenev (1818-1883, author of Fathers and Sons). It is great fun to read, and Spalding's notes are informative without the pedantry of Eugine Onegin's most notable translator, Vladimir Nabakov (1899-1977).

And best of all, you can read Spalding's translation free on Gutenberg:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/23997/23997-h/23997-h.htm

Brevet Major Henry Spalding and the Anglo-Zulu War

I did a bit of research on Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Spalding and it turns out that he was a commissioned officer in the 104th Regiment of Foot (Bengal Fusiliers). He was posted to the British Embassy in Saint Petersburg, where he learnt Russian.

In the late 1870s he was posted to South Africa where he served as Lord Chelmsford's Deputy Assistant Adjutant and Quartermaster General at Rorke's Drift, a former trading post on the Buffalo River, the frontier between British Natal and the Zulu Kingdom. When Lord Chelmsford (1827-1905) crossed the Buffalo he left Brevet Major Spalding at Rorke's Drift as the Quartermaster General responsible for keeping the advancing troops supplied. With him at Rorke's Drift was a garrison of about 150 men.

The garrison was attacked by several thousand Zulu warriors, but shortly before the Zulu's arrived, Brevet Major Spalding handed temporary command of Rorke's Drift over to Lieutenant John Chard of the Royal Engineers and rode out in search of a missing column of men,

and with it him went his chance of military glory.

(rorkesdriftvc.com/battle/full_defence_account.htm)

Even so, Spalding must have located the men and led them towards Rorke's Drift, however,

three miles distant from the mission-station, Spalding was confronted by a number of Zulus who deployed in an attempt to surround his two hundred or so men. Spalding ... withdrew,

(rorkesdriftvc.com/battle/full_defence_account.htm)

and so he did indeed miss his chance of military glory, but preserved his honour and his men, and most important for us, his life, so that he could return to England and translate Eugine Onegin for our pleasure.

Interestingly, given Spalding's African adventures, his experience of the ferocity of the Zulus, and the part-African heritage of Pushkin, Spalding has this to say about Pushkin's duel with Georges-Charles d'Anthès:

The poet displayed in this affair a fierce hostility quite characteristic of his African origin but which drove him to his destruction.

And here is the young poet Lensky's fierce reaction when his fiancée declines his invitation to dance since she has already promised to dance with Eugene Onegin yet again,

She fears she cannot.—Cannot? Why?—
She promised Eugene, or she would
With great delight.—O God on high!
Heard he the truth? And thus she could—
And can it be? But late a child
And now a fickle flirt and wild,
Cunning already to display
And well-instructed to betray!
Lenski the stroke could not sustain,
At womankind he growled a curse,
Departed, ordered out his horse
And galloped home. But pistols twain,
A pair of bullets—nought beside—
His fate shall presently decide.

@ @ @ ~~~ @ @ @

When I was but a seven year old boy my father, a Staff Sergeant in the First Fortress Squadron, Royal Engineers, Gibraltar, took me to the cinema to see the film "Zulu," which pretty much blew my tiny English mind!

And here it is in all its glory on YouTube:

Cheers!

DH
#InspiredFocus

Sources

• Eugine Onegin: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/23997/23997-h/23997-h.htm
• Henry Spalding: https://en.everybodywiki.com/Henry_Joseph_Spalding
• Henry Spalding and Rorke's Drift: https://rorkesdriftvc.com/battle/full_defence_account.htm

Images

• Natalia Pushkina, by Alexander Brullov, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Natalia_Pushkina_by_Brullov.jpg
• The pistol duel between Onegin and Lensky. Watercolour by Ilya Repin, commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Yevgeny_Onegin_by_Repin.jpg
• The Defence of Rorke's Drift, by Alphonse de Neuville y Alphonse de Neuville - 5AFi-BKNCeU_VA at Google Cultural Institute maximum zoom level, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21997608