Had I not written one short letter,
In which I mentioned Vikram Seth,
Perhaps it would have been much better
For those of you with little faith
In my admittedly poor talent.
But some, amongst you, who are gallant
And choose to lend at least one ear,
In cadenced verse, you shall all hear
How Russia’s scion Alexander
Sergeevich Pushkin wrote in verse
(Tetrameter, supple, terse,
Now flows, then ebbs, there’s nothing grander)
About his great protagonist
Eugene Onegin - amorist.
His early verses were erotic
But then he wrote about revolt.
The Tsarist times were quite despotic
And Pushkin was then forced to bolt
To country home where isolation
Served as a source of inspiration.
At court he leads his later life
By now he has a charming wife.
Alas! She leads him to perdition
As she falls for Baron d’Anthes
And Pushkin feels he’s forced to press
A challenge and uphold tradition.
His line comes back to haunt him now.
“The bloom has withered on the bough”.
Whence came the poet’s inspiration?
This child of Russia borrowed well.
A debt was owed the British nation
Lord Byron’s touch we all can tell,
Since Pushkin’s rhymes are quite audacious
The flowing rhythm always gracious
And frequently, asides are heard
As well as many a foreign word.
Verse novels are a strange invention.
What skill to write in verse like prose
And still ensure it smoothly flows!
Courageously he flouts covention
We cannot classify his style –
Sometimes he’s sad, then for a while
He’s funny or he’s idealistic
(For Pushkin there’s no pigeonhole)
At times, he’s earthy, folk-simplistic –
Escaping genres is his goal.
To classic ideals he won’t grovel,
Instead, like Byron, a free novel
Is what our poet has in mind
And freedom is just what we find.
There is no cause to be pedantic
And claim, like some, he wrote to rule
Or followed the romantic school.
To him, plain freedom means romantic.
Apparently he had a doubt
About the way it would turn out.
Some credit for this extravaganza
Is partly Jean de La Fontaine’s.
For he inspired this lovely stanza –
A couplet after three quatrains.
And, I, for one would bet upon it
This is, by far, the sweetest sonnet.
With La Fontaine, it was but chance.
But Pushkin made a new advance –
His is a regular formation,
With both a male and female rhyme
(Arranged quite differently each time)
Variety in permutation
Slow start; fast spin, while in between;
At end the resolution’s seen.
“What is translation? On a platter
A poet’s pale and glaring head,
A parrot’s screech, a monkey’s chatter,
And profanation of the dead”.
So quoth our eminent translator
Nabokov, to my mind, a traitor
Not to the sense, but to the flair,
That English speakers could not share,
Before Charles Johnston’s new translation.
Perhaps it’s not as erudite
But it has verve, and it has light, I
t truly is an imitation
Of Pushkin’s style, his slang, his rhymes,
And I have read it many times.
You may well ask what’s the connection –
One day while Vikram Seth did browse
Amongst a bookstore’s wide selection
Diverse translations did arouse
His curiosity. He has stated,
In Russian he’s not educated.
So he decided he’d compare
And see how both of them would fare.
And one, he found, he was just reading
Page after page, without a rest
No doubt, he thought, it was the best.
And which translation was succeeding?
Charles Johnston’s one, there was no doubt,
As you, dear reader, have found out.
It is now time for a description
Of Vikram Seth, which I could write,
But I do feel, his own inscription
Might be the best for me to cite -
“In ‘52, born in Calcutta.
8 lb. 1 oz. was heard to utter
First rhymes (“cat, mat”) at the age of three
A student of demography
And economics, he has written
‘From Heaven Lake’, a travel book
Based on a journey he once took
Through Sinkiang and Tibet. Unbitten
At last by wanderlust and rhyme,
He keeps Pacific Standard Time
At times a poet needs a mentor
So Vikram Seth was wont to feel.
In search, a shared room, he did enter
And quite by chance he found Tim Steele.
A happy choice for they could rattle
Off reams of rhyme, no idle prattle
But preparation for writing verse.
This is the way Tim Steele did nurse
In Vikram Seth the skill of rhyming
Iambic meter perfectly
And other tricks of poetry.
Such was his luck, so good his timing
He found the very friend he’d need
His dedication, now, I read -
“So here they are, the chapters ready,
And, half against my will, I’m free
Of his warm enterprise, this heady
Labour that has exhausted me
Through thirteen months, swift and delightful,
Incited by my friends’ insightful
Paring and prodding and appeal.
I pray the gentle hands of Steele
Will once again sift through its pages.
If anything in this should grate,
Ascribe it to its natal state;
If anything in this engages
By verse, veracity, or vim,
You know whom I must credit, Tim.”
Once poetry was for the masses
But now it is for connoisseurs
Or literary graduate classes.
The common man it no more stirs.
And Seth troubled by this situation
Decides to end the aberration,
Reverts to an ancestral style,
Which still can make us cry and smile.
And though this style is old and hoary
So fresh like dew we find his rhymes
As he writes of our modern times
And skillfully unfolds his story.
In his own words I shall relate
What Pushkin lent to “Golden Gate”.
I have presented the mere histories
Of both these works - a connecting curve.
To clarify the other mysteries
A genuine critic would better serve.
Strange theories they will often bandy
Derive the plot from Tristram Shandy –
Eugene and Tanya love in turns
Each time, each one, the other spurns
These theories have risks attendant
For neither poet planned or knew
What the main characters would do.
I find they are quite independent –
Though Pushkin tried to write some more
Eugene himself had stopped before.
To those of you who found this hateful
I’m sorry that I did offend.
I must admit that I am grateful
That my short verse is at an end.
Lay not the blame at this your preacher
For I was forced by my dear teacher.
But if, you think, I do amuse
Be thankful then to her my muse
Great feat or crime, she’s the abettor.
I lacked the courage to say nay,
When she asked me to speak today
About what I said in my letter.
And that is why I correlate
“Eugene Onegin” and “Golden Gate”.
