(The private detective Barboshin sings from Chaikovski's opera
Eugene Onegin before he goes walking under the windows of
Troshcheykin's flat, while Amor, Morpheus and little Brom hover over
Troshcheykin and his wife. The Event, Act Three)
The author of To Morpheus (1816) and Amor and
Hymen (1816), Pushkin never mentions Bromios ("the thunderer" or "he of the loud shout," an
epithet of Dionysus, or Bacchus, the god of fertility, wine, and
drama). But in his "anthological" poems
(1833) Pushkin speaks of шумная Вакхова
влага ("Bacchus's noisy liquid") and шумный
заступник любви ("the noisy protector of love"), meaning wine each time.
On the other hand, in the fragment "На углу маленькой
площади" ("In the Corner of a Small Square," 1831) Pushkin uses the
epithet шумный (noisy) as he speaks of a deceived
husband:
**
скоро удостоверился в неверности своей жены. Это чрезвычайно его расстроило. Он
не знал на что решиться: притвориться ничего не примечающим казалось ему
глупым; смеяться над несчастием столь обыкновенным — презрительным; сердиться не
на шутку — слишком шумным; жаловаться с видом глубоко
оскорблённого чувства — слишком смешным. К
счастию, жена его явилась ему на помощь.
**
soon found out that his wife was unfaithful. It threw him into great perplexity.
He did not know what to do. It seemed to him that to pretend not to notice
anything [the tactics adopted by Troshcheykin who knows that his wife is
unfaithful to him with Revshin] would be stupid; to laugh at this so very common
misfortune would be despicable; to get angry in earnest would be too noisy; to
complain with an air of deeply offended feeling would be too ridiculous.
Fortunately, his wife came to his aid.
One also remembers the opening line of Pushkin's famous poem: "Брожу ли я вдоль улиц шумных..." ("Whether I wander along
noisy streets..." 1829).
Alexey
Sklyarenko