The last syllable is stressed and that creates the rhyme. Rhyme, chime, dime, time are all masculine rhymes. The Russian language is full of natural feminine rhymes, but English is not. Feminine rhymes are rhyming words where the last syllable is unstressed. One of the major problems in translating Russian poetry involves feminine rhymes. The historical descriptions and efforts to treat line and rhyme translations are fascinating. Perhaps almost as brilliant as the novel itself is the explanation of the translations. It’s nearly impossible to keep the author’s original meaning in the pattern he created. I understand the difficulty of translation but adding in meter and rhyme patterns, especially without sounding repetitive, is extremely difficult in translations. It is essentially a novel-length poem that must be translated. It dawned on me that this is much more than just a simple translation from Russian. I later asked a Russian friend about the book and she said it was magnificent, but never read it in English. I picked up this book because it was listed as poetry. Pushkin was born into Russian nobility in Moscow. Pushkin was a Russian poet, playwright, and novelist of the Romantic era who is considered by many to be the greatest Russian poet and the founder of modern Russian literature. Yevgeny Onegin by Alexander Pushkin is a Russian masterpiece of literature.
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