I write to you. It’s all I can do. And now I know it’s in your power to punish my presuming heart. Yet if you have one drop of pity, you’ll not abandon me to my unhappy fate. I am in love with you and I must tell you this or my heart, my heart which belongs to you will surely break. I’d have never revealed my shame to you, if just once a week I might see you, exchange a word or two, and then think day and night of one thing alone till our next meeting. But you are unsocial they say that the country bore you. Is it true? Does the country bore you? Sometimes I wonder that you ever visited us. Why? I never know you or know this agony and fever. I know that all my life’s been leading me to this union with you. I recognize you at first sight and knew with certainty and say to myself: “it’s him, he’s come.” Help me. Resolve my doubts. Perhaps this is all nonsense, emptiness, a delusion, and quite another fate await me. Imagine it. I’m here alone, half out of my mind. I dread to read this over. My secret longing. I know that I can trust your honor, though I feel faint from shame and fear.
I can foresee the bitter scorn blazing at me from your proud eyes, when you have read my secret sorrow. When we first met, through chance, I saw tenderness, like a shooting star, but did not dare to put my faith to it. Then Lensky fell, which parted us still further. Then I tore my heart away from everything it loved, rootless, estranged from all I thought that liberty and peace would serve, instead of happiness. My god! How wrong I was! How I’ve been punished. No. Day by day to be with you, follow you everywhere, alive to every smile, each movement of your eyes, dwell upon your soul’s perfection, listen to your voice, grow faint with yearning. That is bliss. And I’m cut off from it. My time is short and each day and hour is precious. Yet I just drag myself around in boredom. Every day a desert, unless, when I wake up, I know the day will bring a glimpse of you. If you but knew the flames that burn in me, which I attempt to beat down with my reason. But let it be. I cannot struggle against my feelings anymore. I am entirely in your will.
奥涅金是个不婚主义者,烂情人,糟糕的朋友,想勾引自己嫂子的堂弟,一辈子做人做得很失败。但他远远谈不上坏,他只是自负、懒惰,而且太聪明又不肯装傻。他能一眼看穿奥尔加的轻浮肤浅人尽可夫,却“写的情书一泻如注,找到挚爱时连自己也不放在心上。”他本能的厌恶所谓为维护荣誉的决斗(想来这事儿在彼得堡时他干得多了),却最终受不了挑衅把自己的朋友一枪爆头。他一辈子都在迟到,且毫无悔意。最后的一次迟到,他在达吉雅娜的“You are too late.”之后结束了自己生命中唯一的一次爱情。他的自负,终于把自己诅咒了。