Plaintively Pondering Pushkin's Poetry

I have my last exam on Monday! Hoorah! First, however, I have to revise like a mad person. Perhaps I'll revise like Poprishchin in Gogol's Diary of a Madman. Or I could end up like poor Phaedra in Racine's work. She was a bit off too. If you couldn't guess already, my final exam is on European Literature. It's fun! Today I read Pushkin's Eugene Onegin. Have you heard of it? Almost the entire thing is written in "Onegin Stanza," which has iambic tetrameter and AbAbCCddEffEgg rhyming. Interesting!
Here's a painting by Repin. (Don't worry, its copyright has expired!) This could be interpreted as Onegin's and Lensky's duel... or as the men doing all the things that are more enjoyable than studying!

I first read a translation where it faithfully translated his exact words, but I switched to and enjoyed one that used that stanza form, and had pretty rhyming. This sort of worries me when I think of the saying that translations are like mistresses-- the faithful ones aren't pretty and the pretty ones aren't faithful. What does that say about my literary choices? Shame on me!

So. Back to England. I played tennis today in the lovely sunshine. Apparently there's a heat wave going on. This means that the temperature might just clear the 70 degree mark. I think I'm going to melt into a blob of irritation when I get back to Arizona. Although I do sort of miss the feeling of deliciously dry heat. But after tennis I revised for my exam. (And watched a movie, but that's irrelevant.)

My exam is on the first. On the second I'm going to London. On the third I'm going to find the scene of a nice painting. More details should follow about that one. And on the fourth I'm going back to London! Now all I really have to do is get through tomorrow so I can get through the exam. Then? Frighteningly Fantastic, Fun-Filled Freedom!