Rex’s Reviews > Eugene Onegin An immortal novel in verse in a brilliant new translation by Walter Arndt > Status Update

Oh, dreams, my dreams, where is your sweetness?
Oh, youth's (the rhyme fair beckons) fleetness!
Can it be really true at last,
Its lovely bloom is past, is past,

"Roué-in-chief and tavern plyer,
But now all kindness and well-bred,
A good papá, although unwed,
A faithful friend, a peaceful squire,
And even, lo, an honest man:
Such progress in a life's brief span!"

As unreflecting and unfading
As life's young pulse that never halts,…

"Allurement's phial that I adored,
Drunk with the wine of love you poured!"

"…Love's a bore."

"Spent dreams, spent years there is no reliving."

"The less we love her, the more surely
We stand to gain a woman's heart
And ruin her the more securely
Ensnared by the seducer's art."

”I’ve known too many a haughty, beauty,
cold, pure as ice, and as unkind,
inexorably wed to duty,
unfathomable to the mind;
shocked by their modish pride, and fleeing
the utter virtue of their being.”

”Because she loved and was not artful,
Gave in to impulse, with her heart full,
Her nature too confiding-swift,
Endowed by heaven with the gift
A thousand fancies to engender,
With wits and will above her kind,
Originality of mind,
A heart inflammable and tender?
Would you not hesitate to scourge
The recklessness of passion’s urge?”

"But minds are all unhinged at present,
True worth is boring to this age;
outside of novels, vice seems pleasant,
And in them, it is all the rage."