January 29, 2003

A Poetic Rejection!

I was reading Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin for my English class today, and first of all, I would like to say that this is truly an awesome undertaking by the author. The entire novel is in verse, that actually rhymes and stuff! Thinking about it further, I realized that it rhymes when I'm reading it in English and has a flow, much like other poems. But it wasn't written in English! Thus, whoever translated it from Russian even emulated Pushkin's rhyming verse. Pretty awesome. I haven't been this impressed with a novel since reading The Sound and The Fury by William Faulkner. Anyway, check out a this excerpt:

But I was simply not intended
for happiness—that alien role.
Should your perfections be expended
in vain on my unworthy soul?
Believe (as conscience is my warrant),
wedlock for us would be abhorrent.
I'd love you, but inside a day,
with custom, love would fade away;
your tears would flow—but your emotion,
your grief would fail to touch my heart,
they'd just enrage it with their dart.
What sort of roses, in your notion,
would Hymen bring us—blooms that might
last many a day, and many a night!

Now that's what a I call a rejection! So, learn from this: the best way to reject someone is to make it all poetic. Then they will be so moved by the poetic nature of the statement, they will forget to realize the meaning.