Eugene Onegin: A Novel in Verse

by Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin

New York, Basic Books, 1999

Reviewed by Richard Kade

The hot months of summer usually slow most cognitive activity, especially that of humans. Fortunately, Douglas Hofstadter has just published a "light-edition" (or as close to light-hearted while still being, as he always is when writing, enlightening) of the Pushkin classic, Eugene Onegin.

About a year ago Dr. Hofstadter mentioned in a phone conversation that he was working on a translation of Onegin. The question was inescapable, given his statements in lectures that the version by James Falen was superior to all others, had he reconsidered his opinion? When he stated that was not the case, I could not resist asking, "If you didn't expect to surpass his work, why do your own?" As his preface (really, more of a prolegomenon) so eloquently explains, Falen liberated him to take far greater latitude than otherwise would have been possible, had a "perfect" rendition not already been produced.

The result speaks immutably to the spirit of creativity. That old line (wish I knew the source or the exact wording) comes to mind: "I do not seek inspiration! It seeks me and holds me captive until I have fully served my obligation to it." (Then, again, there's the flip-side of the coin, when Alexander Calder was asked how he knew when one of his works was done and he responded: "When it's supper time!") Equally apt is the eleventh stanza from Le Po?e de l'extase , 1907, of Alexander Scriabin, which, in Russian, reads:

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The State Music Publishing House edition (Moscow, 1964), edited by L.N. Oborin and Y.I. Milstein, offers a rough English translation:

I summon you to life, secret yearnings! You who have been drowned in the dark depths Of the creative spirit, you timorous Embryos of life, it is to you that I bring daring.

Hofstadter's Onegin whets the appetite for the occasion when he might versify Dante's Inferno or even has opportunity to audit the extravagant 1976 theatrical opera-cantata, Final Alice by David Del Tredici. Just as fascinating, of course, would be an opinion by Del Tredici on Godel, Escher, Bach. . . .

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