Long since the girl began to languish, Could burn in bliss, in dismal mood,
Her spirit longed for fatal food; Long since unbearable anguish
Made all young heart to pine away, For someone did her soul wait.
VIII
She waited, looked and anyhow She said: well, yes! it must be He
Alas! all days and nights are now One long and lone dream in heat,
All’s filled by Him, by image dear, And magic force, that she can hear,
Yet speaks of Him; and she avoids The sounds of the tender voice
And gaze attentive of her maidens; She daily greatly is depressed;
She doesn’t listen to the guests And curses their idle leisures,
Unwaited coming any day And each delay to get away.
IX
And -now she with great attention Voluptuous novels quickly reads,
With what a lively fascination Deludes herself with all deceits!
By happy force of own dreamings She brings to life all novel’s beings,
Like Julie’s lovers, grand Wollmar, Malek-Adel and De Linar,
And Vertcr, that rebellious martyr, Unimitable Grandison
With whom we all to sleep had gone; - For tender girl, the dreamer hearty,
In single image they confused, In one Onegin all were fused.
X
She feels herself like all her dear Of books beloved main persons feel:
Clarissa, Julie and Delphina; Tatyana in the forest’s still
With dangerous book alone’s hiking, In it reveals she so striking
Her secret heat, of which she dreamt, Whose plenitude ih heart she felt.
She sighs, assuming as her real Delights of others and the griefs;
Each day she whispers own myths Of letter to her image dear.
But hero, I’m not wrong, Could never be like Grandison.
XI
His style to pompous tune rerversing An ardent author tried sometimes
To show his beloved main person As perfect one for all the times,
And gave this person all the beauty, And made him wrongly persecuted;
With tender soul, clear sense Him gave attractive handsome face,
And heated by the pure passion This agitated person bade
His wish to sacrifice his fate; But for the end (to make impression)
Was always punished wicked vice, And good was given garlands twice.
XII
In haze are now minds of people: The moral them to sleep just makes;
The vice, that’s gentle but not feeble, In novels now celebrates.
Of British muse some old fables Her dreams disturb, and it enables
As idols now to have got Or Vampire, who’s lost in thought,
Or vagrant Melmoth, such distressful, Or Corsair, or Eternal Jew,
Or Sbogar, mythical a few.
Lord Byron with his whim successful Enveloped fussy egoism In hopeless romanticism.
XIII
But dear friends, it all is useless: If I in future won’t be
A poet by will of goodness, New devil then will enter me;
In spite of Foebus warning notes Myself I’ll humble to the prose, When novels in the old ways
Will take the twilight of my days.
Not secret tortures of the evil Would I in prose represent,
But simply I to you will send The legends of the Russian real