I am guessing that quite a bit has been written about Pushkin and a death wish. His challenge to a duel suggests it, as do some of his poems. The morbidity of this side of his poetry seems to contrast with Eugene Onegin. Do you agree? Or is this impression just a result of my unfamiliarity with him?
In my first reading of this poem, before looking at the crib, the opening image struck me as odd: church, even a crowded one, is not a place I’d usually associate with “wild youths.” Sober old people is more what church seems like to me. Yet the crib says the same thing. It’s a scene I find hard to picture.
But I get it: the energy of the young people is the life that he’s aware is impermanent and that he is leaving behind before they do. I wonder, would another adjective besides "wild" be better to describe them, to get that sense? Are they just rambunctious?
This is not an easy poem to translate in strict tetrameter and with rhyme, and I agree that reverting to off-rhyme is much better than creating a fully rhyming poem that is dead on arrival. You've done nice work.
S1 seemed the one that needs the most work. The end-stopped lines in Pushkin’s opening stanza seem important for setting the tone of the poem, so I’d try hard to avoid enjambment. I hope you don’t mind, but I messed around with S1 using the crib and came up with this:
When I walk noisy avenues,
I stop inside a crowded church,
and sitting with some reckless youths,
my mind begins to dream and search.
I’m not saying this is good, just that I think you haven’t exhausted the options there of getting in the rhymes and off-rhymes, the tetrameter, and the end-stopped lines.
Your S2 does this well, imo. I like that stanza. I’m not sure I understand what P. means by gathering under eternal vaults, however. Does he mean in the spheres of heaven? Is there a way for that to be clearer and still stay close to Pushkin’s sense?
I also think S3 works well. Outlasting a “span” is a little different from outlasting an “age,” it seems to me, but I think it is close enough.
S4, too, reads nicely. I’d prefer a comma after line 3, instead of the em dash, and revising line 4 to “for you to bloom as I decline,” to avoid the repetition of “your time.”
In that same stanza, “tender child” and “caress” might have unfortunate sexual connotations, especially these days. Is another adjective possible?
S5: Add a comma after “see off”?
In S6, line 2’s “trails” is not the greatest match for “remains.” Would “in battle, journeying, in waves” work? I like getting the idea of the journey in there, which “dusty trails” does not evoke.
The next stanza is lovely. The rhymes work very well, the sense is clear.
The last stanza is good overall as well. “In indifference” is a little awkward, however. Would “indifferently, let nature bloom” be an option?
That’s all for now. I’ll pop back after further readings, if anything occurs to me worth saying.
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