Из книги: Eugene Onegin
Chapter Ten
I A weak and cunning sovereign, A balding dandy, foe of toil, By glory accidentally favored, Ruled over us in that time. ........................
II We knew him to be very meek, When not our cooks but others came To pluck the double-headed eagle At Bonaparte's encampment. .....................
III The tempest of the year twelve Arrived — who helped us then? The people's fierce devotion, Barclay, winter or Russia's god? .....................
IV But god helped — the murmur fell, And soon by force of circumstance We found ourselves in Paris, And Russia's tsar head of all tsars. .....................
V And the fatter, the heavier. O our foolish Russian people, Tell me, why did you really .....................
VI Avos, O national shibboleth, To you I would dedicate an ode, But a most noble versifier Has already anticipated me ..................... The seas fell to Albion .....................
VII Avos, forgetting rent, A hypocrite will lock himself in a monastery, Avos at Nicholas's beckoning Siberia will return to families ..................... Avos they'll fix our roads for us .....................
VIII This man of fate, this wanderer of war, Before whom tsars were humbled, This horseman, crowned by the Pope, Vanished like the shadow of dawn, ..................... Tormented by the punishment of peace .....................
IX The Pyrenees trembled menacingly — Naples' volcano blazed, The armless prince to the friends of Morea Already signaled from Kishinev. ..................... L's dagger, B's shadow .................
X I'll quiet everyone with my people,— Our tsar spoke at the congress, But about you he doesn't give a damn, You're Alexander's serf .....................
XI The toy regiment of Peter the Titan, The company of old mustached men, Who once betrayed the tyrant To a fierce gang of executioners. .....................
XII Russia grew quiet again, And the tsar caroused all the more, But a spark of a different flame Already long before, perhaps, .....................
XIII They had their own gatherings, They over a cup of wine, They over a glass of Russian vodka .....................
XIV Famous for sharp oratory, Members of this family gathered At restless Nikita's, At cautious Ilya's. .....................
XV Friend of Mars, Bacchus and Venus, Here Lunin boldly proposed His decisive measures And muttered inspiredly. Pushkin read his Noëls, Melancholic Yakushkin, It seemed, silently bared A regicidal dagger. Seeing only Russia in the world, Pursuing his ideal. Lame Turgenev listened to them And, hating the whips of slavery, Foresaw in this crowd of noblemen The liberators of the serfs.
XVI So it was over the icy Neva, But there, where spring comes earlier And gleams over shady Kamenka And over the hills of Tulchin, Where Wittgenstein's forces The plains washed by the Dnieper And the steppes of Bug occupied, Other affairs were already underway. There Pestel — for tyrants And an army ............ gathered The cold-blooded general, And Muravyov, inclining him, And full of boldness and strength, Hastened the moment of outbreak.
XVII At first these conspiracies Between Lafite and Clicquot Were merely friendly disputes, And did not enter deeply Into hearts the seditious science, All this was only boredom, Idleness of young minds, Amusements of grown-up pranksters, It seemed ............... Knots to knots ............ And gradually with a secret net Russia ................. Our tsar slumbered ......... .....................