Pushkin is kind of the Russian Byron, but for all his affectation of callousness, he is a much more morally serious person. Here, in Charles Johnson’s gorgeous translation, is the climactic duel scene in which Onegin kills his friend. The combination of flippancy and pathos astonishes me, and is everything I was trying to achieve in my book The Call-Out, which is essentially an Evgeny Onegin fan-fic.

 

XXX

"Now march." And calmly, not yet seeking
to aim, at steady, even pace
the foes, cold-blooded and unspeaking,
each took four steps across the space,
four fateful stairs. Then, without slowing
the level tenor of his going,
Evgeny quietly began
to lift his pistol up. A span
of five more steps they went, slow-gaited,
and Lensky, left eye closing, aimed –
but just then Eugene's pistol flamed...
The clock of doom had struck as fated;
and the poet, without a sound,
let fall his pistol on the ground.

[…] XXXII

He lay quite still, and strange as dreaming
was that calm brow of one who swooned.
Shot through below the chest – and streaming
the blood came smoking from the wound.
A moment earlier, inspiration
had filled this heart, and detestation
and hope and passion; life had glowed
and blood had bubbled as it flowed;
but now the mansion is forsaken;
shutters are up, and all is pale
and still within, behind the veil
of chalk the window-panes have taken.
The lady of the house has fled.
Where to, God knows. The trail is dead.

[…] XXXIV

What if your pistol-shot has smitten
a friend of yours in his first youth
because some glance of his has bitten
your pride, some answer, or in truth
some nonsense thrown up while carousing,
or if himself, with rage arousing,
he's called you out – say, in your soul
what feelings would assume control
if, motionless, no life appearing,
death on his brow, your friend should lie,
stiffening as the hours go by,
before you on the ground, unhearing,
unspeaking, too, but stretched out there
deaf to the voice of your despair?