Ему был тошен; ничего
Не вышло из пера его,
И не попал он в цех задорный
Людей, о коих не сужу,
Затем, что к ним принадлежу.
XLIV
И снова, преданный безделью,
Томясь душевной пустотой,
Уселся он – с похвальной целью
Себе присвоить ум чужой;
Отрядом книг уставил полку,
Читал, читал, а всё без толку:
Там скука, там обман иль бред;
В том совести, в том смысла нет;
На всех различные вериги;
И устарела старина,
И старым бредит новизна.
Как женщин, он оставил книги,
И полку, с пыльной их семьей,
Задернул траурной тафтой.
XLIII
And you, young pretties, not the ladies,
Whom in the night time now and then
The dashing cabs by cobbled roadways
Speed at full tilt, Onegin them
Had also left without care.
This apostate of love and play
Stayed home in loneliness and tried
The life by stories to describe.
But writing novels is hard work,
He yawned not once and then had found
That writing novels isn’t his ground,
The trade of writers isn’t his shop.
I can’t make judgments just because
I, by myself, belong to those.
XLIV
And then, anew, as always idle
And being by a void depressed
He tried this time the others’ mind
To privatize. Here, I say – Yes!
Thus, on a shelf he’d set books’ row
And tried to read them, but what for?
Here’s boredom, there is fraud or lie,
Here – lack of conscious, there – poor style,
And all of them are far from freemen.
The old ones look quite obsolete,
The new – the old ones repeat.
Thus, he’d left books like did with women,
The shelf, where books were set in row,
He covered with taffeta cloth.