The history of the creation of the novel "Eugene Onegin". Features of the genre

The first Russian novel in verse. A new model of literature as an easy conversation about everything. Gallery of eternal Russian characters. A revolutionary love story for its era, which became the archetype of romantic relationships for many generations to come. Encyclopedia of Russian life. Our everything.

comments: Igor Pilshchikov

What is this book about?

The capital's playboy Eugene Onegin, having received an inheritance, leaves for the village, where he meets the poet Lensky, his bride Olga and her sister Tatyana. Tatiana falls in love with Onegin, but he does not reciprocate her feelings. Lensky, jealous of the bride to a friend, challenges Onegin to a duel and dies. Tatiana gets married and becomes a lady of high society. Now Eugene falls in love with her, but Tatiana remains faithful to her husband. At this moment, the author interrupts the narration - “the novel ends nothing» 1 Belinsky V.G. Complete Works. In 13 volumes. M., L .: Publishing house of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1953-1959. IV. P. 425. ⁠ .

Although the plot of "Eugene Onegin" is not rich in events, the novel had a huge impact on Russian literature. Pushkin brought social and psychological types to the literary proscenium, which will occupy readers and writers of several subsequent generations. This is a "superfluous person", (anti) hero of his time, hiding his true face behind the mask of a cold egoist (Onegin); a naive provincial girl, honest and open, ready for self-sacrifice (Tatiana at the beginning of the novel); the poet-dreamer, dying at the first encounter with reality (Lensky); Russian woman, the embodiment of grace, intelligence and aristocratic dignity (Tatiana at the end of the novel). Finally, there is a whole gallery of characterological portraits representing the Russian noble society in all its diversity (the cynic Zaretsky, the "old men" Larins, provincial landowners, Moscow bars, metropolitan dandies and many, many others).

Alexander Pushkin. Around 1830

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When was it written?

The first two chapters and the beginning of the third were written in "southern exile" (in Chisinau and Odessa) from May 1823 to July 1824. Pushkin is skeptical and critical of the existing order of things. The first chapter is a satire on the modern nobility; while Pushkin himself, like Onegin, behaves defiantly and dresses like a dandy. Odessa and (to a lesser extent) Moldovan impressions were reflected in the first chapter of the novel and in Onegin's Journey.

The central chapters of the novel (from the third to the sixth) are completed in "northern exile" (in the Pskov family estate - the village of Mikhailovskoye) from August 1824 to November 1826. Pushkin experienced for himself (and described in chapter four) the boredom of life in the countryside, where in winter there is no entertainment other than books, drinking and sleigh rides. The main pleasure is communicating with neighbors (for Pushkin, this is the Osipov-Wulf family, who lived in the Trigorskoye estate not far from Mikhailovsky). The heroes of the novel spend their time in the same way.

The new emperor Nicholas I brought the poet back from exile. Now Pushkin is constantly in Moscow and St. Petersburg. He is a "superstar", the most fashionable poet in Russia. The seventh (Moscow) chapter, begun in August-September 1827, was completed and rewritten on November 4, 1828.

But the age of fashion is short-lived, and by 1830 Pushkin's popularity faded away. Having lost the attention of his contemporaries, during the three months of the Boldin autumn (September - November 1830) he would write dozens of works that made him famous among his descendants. Among other things, in the Nizhny Novgorod family estate of the Pushkins Boldino, Onegin's Journey and the eighth chapter of the novel were completed, and the so-called tenth chapter of Eugene Onegin was partially written and burned.

Almost a year later, on October 5, 1831, Onegin's letter was written in Tsarskoe Selo. The book is ready. In the future, Pushkin only rearranges the text and edits individual stanzas.

Pushkin's study at the Mikhailovskoye Estate Museum

How is it written?

"Eugene Onegin" concentrates the main thematic and stylistic findings of the previous creative decade: the type of a disappointed hero reminds of romantic elegies and the poem " Prisoner of the Caucasus", A fragmentary plot - about her and other" southern "(" Byronic ") poems by Pushkin, stylistic contrasts and the author's irony - about the poem" Ruslan and Lyudmila ", colloquial intonation - about friendly poetic messages Arzamas poets "Arzamas" is a literary circle that existed in St. Petersburg in 1815-1818. Its members were both poets and writers (Pushkin, Zhukovsky, Batyushkov, Vyazemsky, Kavelin) and politicians. The people of Arzamas opposed conservative politics and archaic literary traditions. Relationships within the circle were friendly, and the meetings were like fun gatherings. For the Arzamas poets, the favorite genre was a friendly message, an ironic poem full of hints that only the addressees could understand. ⁠ .

For all that, the novel is absolutely anti-traditional. The text has neither a beginning (the ironic "introduction" is at the end of the seventh chapter), nor an end: the open ending is followed by excerpts from Onegin's Travels, returning the reader first to the middle of the plot, and then, in the last line, to the moment of the beginning of work the author above the text ("So I lived then in Odessa ..."). The novel lacks the traditional features of the novel plot and familiar heroes: “All types and forms of literature are naked, openly revealed to the reader and ironically compared with each other, the conventionality of any way of expression is mockingly demonstrated by the author " 2 Lotman Yu. M. Pushkin: Biography of a writer. Articles and notes (1960-1990). "Eugene Onegin": Commentary. SPb .: Art-SPb, 1995.S. 195. ⁠ ... The question "how to write?" Pushkin worries no less than the question "what to write about?" Eugene Onegin is the answer to both questions. This is not only a novel, but also a metaromaniac (a novel about how a novel is written).

Now I'm not writing a novel, but a novel in verse - a devilish difference

Alexander Pushkin

A poetic form helps Pushkin to do without an exciting plot (“... now I am not writing a novel, but a novel in verse - diabolical difference" 3 Pushkin A.S. Complete Works. In 16 volumes. M., L .: Publishing house of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1937-1949. T.13. P. 73. ⁠ ). The author-narrator acquires a special role in the construction of the text, who by his constant presence motivates countless deviations from the main intrigue. Such deviations are usually called lyrical, but in reality they turn out to be very different - lyrical, satirical, literary-polemic, whatever. The author speaks about everything that he considers necessary (“The novel requires chatter " 4 Pushkin A.S. Complete Works. In 16 volumes. M., L .: Publishing house of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1937-1949. T. 13.P. 180. ⁠ ) - and the narrative moves with an almost motionless plot.

Pushkin's text is characterized by a plurality of points of view expressed by the author-narrator and characters, and a stereoscopic combination of contradictions arising from the collision of different views on the same subject. Is Eugene original or imitative? What future awaited Lensky - great or ordinary? All these questions in the novel are given different, and mutually exclusive answers. "Behind such a construction of the text lay the idea of ​​the fundamental incompatibility of life in literature", and the open finale symbolized "the inexhaustibility of possibilities and endless variability reality " 5 Lotman Yu. M. Pushkin: Biography of a writer. Articles and notes (1960-1990). "Eugene Onegin": Commentary. SPb .: Art-SPb, 1995.S. 196. ⁠ ... This was a novelty: in the romantic era, the points of view of the author and the narrator usually merged into a single lyrical "I", and other points of view were corrected by the author's.

Onegin is a radically innovative work not only in terms of composition, but also in style. In his poetics, Pushkin synthesized the fundamental features of two antagonistic literary directions the beginning of the 19th century - Young Karamzinism and Young Archaism. The first direction focused on the average style and colloquial speech of an educated society, was open to new European borrowings. The second united high and low styles, based, on the one hand, on the book-church literature and the odic tradition of the 18th century, on the other, on folk literature. Giving preference to one or another linguistic means, the mature Pushkin was not guided by external aesthetic standards, but made his choice based on how these means work within the framework of a specific concept. The novelty and uniqueness of Pushkin's style amazed contemporaries - and we got used to it from childhood and often do not feel stylistic contrasts, let alone stylistic nuances. Having abandoned the a priori division of stylistic registers into "low" and "high", Pushkin not only created a fundamentally new aesthetics, but also solved the most important cultural task - the synthesis of linguistic styles and the creation of a new national literary language.

Joshua Reynolds. Lawrence Stern. The year is 1760. National Portrait Gallery, London. Pushkin borrowed the tradition of long lyrical digressions from Stern and Byron

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Richard Westall. George Gordon Byron. 1813 year. National Portrait Gallery, London

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What influenced her?

"Eugene Onegin" was based on the broadest European cultural tradition, from French psychological prose of the 17th-18th centuries to contemporary Pushkin's romantic poem, including experiments in parody literature. Defamatory Defamation is a literary technique that transforms familiar things and events into strange ones, as if they were seen for the first time. Detachment allows you to perceive what is described not automatically, but more consciously. The term was introduced by the literary critic Viktor Shklovsky. ⁠ literary style (from French and Russian iroicomic Irocomic poetry is a parody of epic poetry: a high calm here describes everyday life with drinking and fights. Typical examples of Russian heroic poems include Elisha, or the Irritated Bacchus by Vasily Maikov and Dangerous Neighbor by Vasily Pushkin. ⁠ and burlesque In burlesque poetry, the comic effect is built on the fact that epic heroes and gods speak in a crude and vulgar language. If initially the heroic poetry, where the low was spoken of in a high syllable, was contrasted with burlesque, then by the 18th century both types of poetry were perceived as one comic genre. ⁠ poetry to Byron's "Don Juan") and storytelling (from Stern to Hoffmann and the same Byron). "Eugene Onegin" inherited the playful collision of styles and parodying elements of the heroic epic from the heroic comics (for example, the "introduction" imitating the beginning of the classical epic). From Stern and sternians Lawrence Stern (1713-1768) - English writer, author of the novels "A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy" and "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, a Gentleman." Sternianism is the literary tradition that was laid by his novels: in Stern's texts, lyricism is combined with ironic skepticism, the chronology of the narrative and its coherence are violated. In Russian literature, the most famous Sternian work is Karamzin's Letters of a Russian Traveler. ⁠ rearranged chapters and missing stanzas are inherited, a constant distraction from the main plot thread, a game with a traditional plot structure: the beginning and ending are absent, and the Sternian heroic “introduction” has been transferred to chapter seven. From Stern and from Byron - lyrical digressions that occupy almost half of the novel text.

Initially, the novel was published serially, head by head - from 1825 to 1832. In addition to whole chapters that came out in separate books, in almanacs, magazines and newspapers, as we would say now, teasers appeared - small fragments of the novel (from a few stanzas to a dozen pages).

The first consolidated edition of Eugene Onegin was published in 1833. The last lifetime edition ("Eugene Onegin, a novel in verse. The work of Alexander Pushkin. Third edition") was published in January 1837, one and a half weeks before the death of the poet.

"Eugene Onegin", second edition of the 1st chapter. St. Petersburg, printing house of the Department of Public Education, 1829

"Onegin" ("Onegin"). Directed by Martha Fiennes. USA, UK, 1999

How was she received?

In different ways, including in the immediate circle of the poet. In 1828 Baratynsky wrote to Pushkin: “We have released two more songs of Onegin. Each one interprets them in his own way: some praise, others scold, and everyone reads. I really love the vast plan of your Onegin; but more do not understand him. " The best critics wrote about the "emptiness of content" of the novel ( Ivan Kireevsky Ivan Vasilievich Kireevsky (1806-1856) - religious philosopher and literary critic. In 1832 he published the magazine "European", banned by the authorities because of an article by Kireevsky himself. Gradually moves away from Westernizing views to Slavophilism, however, the conflict with the authorities is repeated - in 1852, because of his article, the Slavophil edition "Moscow Collection" was closed. Kireevsky's philosophy is based on the doctrine of "whole thinking", which surpasses the incompleteness of rational logic: it is achieved primarily by faith and asceticism. ⁠ ), declared that this "brilliant toy" could not have "claims either to the unity of content, or to the integrity of the composition, or to the harmony of presentation" (Nikolai Nadezhdin), found in the novel "a lack of connection and plan" ( Boris Fedorov Boris Mikhailovich Fedorov (1794-1875) - poet, playwright, children's writer... He worked as a theater censor, wrote literary reviews. His own poems and dramas were unsuccessful. He often became a hero of epigrams, a mention of him can be found in Pushkin: "Perhaps, Fedorov, don't come to me, / Don't put me to sleep - or don't wake me up afterwards." It's funny that one of Fedorov's quatrains was mistakenly attributed to Pushkin until the 1960s. ⁠ ), "Many incessant deviations from the main subject" were considered "tiresome" (he is) and, finally, they came to the conclusion that the poet "repeats himself" (Nikolay Polevoy) Nikolai Alekseevich Polevoy (1796-1846) - literary critic, publisher, writer. He is considered the ideologist of the "third estate". Coined the term "journalism". From 1825 to 1834 he published the Moscow Telegraph magazine; after the authorities closed the magazine, Polevoy's political views became more conservative. Since 1841 he has been publishing the Russian Bulletin magazine. ⁠ , and the last chapters mark the "perfect fall" of Pushkin's talent (Thaddeus Bulgarin) Faddey Venediktovich Bulgarin (1789-1859) - critic, writer and publisher, the most controversial figure in the literary process of the first half of the 19th century. In his youth, Bulgarin fought in the Napoleonic detachment and even took part in the campaign against Russia, but by the mid-1820s he became an ultra-conservative and, in addition, an agent of the Third Section. He published the magazine "Northern Archive", the first private newspaper with a political section "Northern Bee" and the first theatrical anthology "Russian Talia". Bulgarin's novel Ivan Vyzhigin, one of the first Russian roguish novels, was a resounding success at the time of publication. ⁠ .

In general, Onegin was accepted in such a way that Pushkin abandoned the idea of ​​continuing the novel: he “turned the rest of it down to one chapter, and answered the Zoilians' claims with a“ House in Kolomna, ”the whole pathos of which is in the assertion of absolute creative freedom. will " 6 Shapir M.I. Articles about Pushkin. M .: Languages ​​of Slavic cultures, 2009.S. 192. ⁠ .

One of the first "great historical and social significance" of "Eugene Onegin" realized Belinsky 7 Belinsky V.G. Complete Works. In 13 volumes. M., L .: Publishing house of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1953-1959. T. 7.P. 431. ⁠ ... In the 8th and 9th articles (1844-1845) of the so-called Pushkin cycle (formally, it was a very detailed review of the first posthumous edition of Pushkin's works), he puts forward and substantiates the thesis that “Onegin” is a picture poetically true to reality. Russian society to the well-known era " 8 Belinsky V.G. Complete Works. In 13 volumes. M., L .: Publishing house of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1953-1959. T. 7.C. 445. ⁠ , and therefore "Onegin" can be called an encyclopedia of Russian life and highly popular product " 9 Belinsky V.G. Complete Works. In 13 volumes. M., L .: Publishing house of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1953-1959. P. 503. ⁠ .

Twenty years later, the ultra-left radical Dmitry Pisarev, in his article "Pushkin and Belinsky" (1865), called for a radical revision of this concept: according to Pisarev, Lensky is a senseless "idealist and romantic", Onegin from the beginning to the end of the novel "remains an insignificant vulgar", Tatiana - just a fool (in her head "the amount of brain was very insignificant" and "this small amount was in the most deplorable condition " 10 Pisarev D.I. Complete works and letters in 12 volumes. Moscow: Nauka, 2003.T. 7.P. 225, 230, 252. ⁠ ). Conclusion: instead of working, the heroes of the novel are engaged in nonsense. Pisarev's reading of "Onegin" ridiculed Dmitry Minaev Dmitry Dmitrievich Minaev (1835-1889) - poet-satirist, translator of Byron, Heine, Hugo, Moliere. Minaev became famous for his parodies and feuilletons, was the leading author of the popular satirical magazines Iskra and Alarm clock. In 1866, due to cooperation with the magazines Sovremennik and Russkoe Slovo, he spent four months in the Peter and Paul Fortress. ⁠ in the brilliant parody "Eugene Onegin of Our Time" (1865), where the main character is presented as a bearded nihilist - something like Turgenev's Bazarov.

A decade and a half later, Dostoevsky, in his "Pushkin's speech" Dostoevsky makes a speech about Pushkin in 1880 at a meeting of the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature, its main thesis was the idea of ​​the poet's nationality: “And never before has no Russian writer, either before or after him, united so sincerely and kindly with his people, like Pushkin. " With a preface and additions, the speech was published in the "Diary of a Writer". ⁠ (1880) put forward a third (conventionally "soil-based") interpretation of the novel. Dostoevsky agrees with Belinsky that in Eugene Onegin “real Russian life is embodied with such creative power and completeness as never before Pushkin " 11 Dostoevsky F.M. The Writer's Diary. 1880, August. Chapter two. Pushkin (sketch). Pronounced on June 8 at a meeting of the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature // Dostoevsky F.M. Collected Works in 15 volumes. Saint Petersburg: Nauka, 1995.T. 14.P. 429. ⁠ ... Just as for Belinsky, who believed that Tatyana embodied “the type of Russian women" 12 Belinsky V.G. Complete Works. In 13 volumes. M., L .: Publishing house of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1953-1959. T. 4.C. 503. ⁠ , Tatyana for Dostoevsky - “this is a positive type, not negative, this is a type of positive beauty, this is the apotheosis of a Russian woman”, “this is a solid type, standing firmly on its own soil. She is deeper than Onegin and, of course, smarter his" 13 ⁠ ... Unlike Belinsky, Dostoevsky believed that Onegin was not at all suitable for heroes: “Perhaps Pushkin would have done even better if he had named his poem after Tatyana, and not Onegin, for she is undoubtedly the main character poems " 14 Dostoevsky F.M. The Writer's Diary. 1880, August. Chapter two. Pushkin (sketch). Pronounced on June 8 at a meeting of the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature // Dostoevsky F.M. Collected Works in 15 volumes. Saint Petersburg: Nauka, 1995.T. 14.P. 430. ⁠ .

Excerpts from "Onegin" began to be included in educational anthologies as early as 1843 of the year 15 Vdovin A.V., Leibov R.G. Pushkin at school: curriculum and literary canon in the XIX century // Lotmanov collection 4.M .: OGI, 2014. P. 251. ⁠ ... By the end of the 19th century, a gymnasium canon was formed, highlighting the "main" works of art 1820s-40s: in this series, a mandatory place is occupied by "Woe from Wit", "Eugene Onegin", "A Hero of Our Time" and "Dead Souls". In this respect, Soviet school curricula continue the pre-revolutionary tradition - only the interpretation varies, but it is ultimately based in one way or another on Belinsky's concept. And the landscape and calendar fragments of Onegin are memorized from the elementary grades as virtually independent, ideologically neutral and aesthetically exemplary works (Winter! A peasant, triumphant ..., Hunted by vernal rays ... ", The sky was already breathing in autumn. .." and etc.).

How did Onegin influence Russian literature?

Eugene Onegin is quickly becoming one of the key texts in Russian literature. The problematic, plot lines and narrative techniques of many Russian novels and novellas directly go back to Pushkin's novel: the protagonist as a “superfluous person” who does not have the opportunity to find application in life for his remarkable talents; a heroine morally superior to the main character; contrasting "pairing" of characters; even a duel in which the hero gets involved. This is all the more striking since Eugene Onegin is a “novel in verse,” and in Russia, from the mid-1840s, a half-century of prose began.

Belinsky also noted that "Eugene Onegin" had a "tremendous influence on both modern ... and subsequent Russian literature " 16 Belinsky V.G. Complete Works. In 13 volumes. M., L .: Publishing house of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1953-1959. T. 4.P. 501. ⁠ ... Onegin, like Lermontov's Pechorin, is a "hero of our time", and vice versa, Pechorin is "this is Onegin of our time " 17 Belinsky V.G. Complete Works. In 13 volumes. M., L .: Publishing house of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1953-1959. T. 4.P. 265. ⁠ ... Lermontov openly points out this continuity with the help of anthroponymy: the name Pechorin is formed from the name of the northern river Pechora, just like the names of the antipodes Onegin and Lensky - from the names of the northern rivers of Onega and Lena, located very far from one another.

Behind this construction of the text lay the idea of ​​the fundamental incompatibility of life in literature.

Yuri Lotman

Moreover, the plot of Eugene Onegin clearly influenced Lermontov's Princess Mary. According to Viktor Vinogradov, “Pushkin's heroes have been replaced by heroes of the new era.<...>Onegin's descendant, Pechorin, is corroded by reflection. He is no longer able to surrender even to a belated feeling of love for a woman with the same direct passion as Onegin. Pushkinskaya Tanya was replaced by Vera, who nevertheless cheated on her husband, surrendering Pechorin " 18 Vinogradov V.V. Lermontov's prose style // Literary heritage. Moscow: Publishing house of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1941.T. 43/44. S. 598. ⁠ ... Two pairs of heroes and heroines (Onegin and Lensky; Tatiana and Olga) correspond to two similar pairs (Pechorin and Grushnitsky; Vera and Princess Mary); a duel takes place between the heroes. Turgenev reproduces a somewhat similar complex of characters in Fathers and Children (antagonists Pavel Kirsanov and Yevgeny Bazarov; sisters Katerina Lokteva and Anna Odintsova), but the duel takes on a frankly travesty character. The topic raised in Eugene Onegin is “ extra person"Passes through all the most important works of Turgenev, who, in fact, belongs to this term (" Diary of a superfluous person ", 1850).

Eugene Onegin is the first Russian metaromaniac to create a special tradition. In the novel "What is to be done?" Chernyshevsky discusses how to find a plot for a novel and build its composition, and Chernyshevsky's parody "discerning reader" vividly resembles Pushkin's "noble reader", to whom the author-narrator ironically addresses. Nabokov's Gift is a novel about the poet Godunov-Cherdyntsev, who composes poetry, wanting to write like his adored Pushkin, and at the same time is forced to work on the biography of Chernyshevsky, whom he hates. In Nabokov, just as later in Pasternak's novel Doctor Zhivago, poetry is written by a hero who is not equal to the author - the prose writer and poet. In the same way, in Eugene Onegin, Pushkin writes a poem by Lensky: it is a parody poem written in the poetics of Lensky (the character), not Pushkin (the author).

What is "Onegin stanza"?

All of Pushkin's poems, created before 1830, were written astrophic iambic Not broken into stanzas. ⁠ ... An exception is Onegin, the first major work in which the poet tested a strict stanza form.

Each stanza "remembers" its previous uses: the octave inevitably refers to the Italian poetic tradition, Spenserian stanza Nine-line stanza: eight verses in it are written in iambic pentameter, and the ninth in iambic pentameter. It is named after the English poet Edmund Spencer, who introduced this stanza into poetry. ⁠ - to English. Apparently, this is why Pushkin did not want to use a ready-made stanza structure: an unusual content requires an unusual form.

For his main work, Pushkin invented a unique stanza that had no direct precedents in world poetry. Here is the formula written by the author himself: “4 croisés, 4 de suite, 1.2.1. et deux ". That is: a quatrain cross rhyme, The most used type of rhyme in a quatrain, the lines are rhymed through one (abab). ⁠ quatrain contiguous rhyme, Here adjacent lines rhyme: the first with the second, the third with the fourth (aabb). This type of rhyme is most common in Russian folk poetry. ⁠ quatrain girdle rhyme In this case, the first line rhymes with the fourth, and the second with the third (abba). The first and fourth lines seem to encircle the quatrain. ⁠ and the final couplet. Possible stanza patterns: one of the varieties odic A ten-line stanza, the lines are divided into three parts: the first has four lines, the second and third have three. The rhyme method is abab ccd eed. As the name implies, in Russian poetry it was used mainly for writing odes. ⁠ stanzas 19 Sperantov V. V. Miscellanea poetologica: 1. Was there a book. Shalikov, the inventor of the "Onegin stanza"? // Philologica. 1996. T. 3. No. 5/7. S. 125-131. S. 126-128. ⁠ and sonnet 20 Grossman L.P. Oneginskaya stanza // Pushkin / Ed. N.K. Piksanova. Moscow: Gosizdat, 1924. Sat. 1.S. 125-131. ⁠ .

The novel calls for chatter

Alexander Pushkin

The first rhyme of the stanza - female Rhyme with stress on the penultimate syllable. ⁠ , the final one is male Rhyme with accent on the last syllable. ⁠ ... The female rhyme pairs do not follow the female ones, the male ones do not follow the male ones (the rule of alternance). Size is iambic tetrameter, the most common metric form in the poetic culture of Pushkin's time.

Formal rigor only emphasizes the expressiveness and flexibility of poetic speech: “Often the first quatrain sets the theme of the stanza, the second develops it, the third forms a thematic turn, and the couplet gives a clearly formulated resolution themes" 21 ⁠ ... The final couplets often contain sharpness and thus resemble short epigrams. At the same time, you can follow the development of the plot by reading only the first quatrains 22 Tomashevsky B. V. The tenth chapter of "Eugene Onegin": The history of the solution // Literary heritage. M .: Journal-gas. union, 1934.T. 16/18. S. 379-420. P. 386. ⁠ .

Against the background of such a strict regulation, deviations stand out effectively. Firstly, these are inclusions of other metric forms: letters of heroes to each other, written by astrophic iambic tetrameter, and a song of girls, written by a tricycle with dactylic endings Rhyme with stress on the third syllable from the end. ⁠ ... Secondly, these are the rarest (and therefore very expressive) pairs of stanzas, where a phrase, begun in one stanza, ends in the next. For example, in chapter three:

Tatiana jumped into other hallways,
From the porch to the courtyard, and straight to the garden,
Flies, flies; look back
Doesn't dare; ran in a flash
Curtains, bridges, meadow,
Alley to the lake, woods,
I broke the bushes of sirens,
Flying through the flower beds to the stream
And breathless, on the bench

XXXIX.
Fell ...

The interstrophic transfer metaphorically depicts the fall of the heroine on the bench after a long running 23 Shapir M.I. Articles about Pushkin. M .: Languages ​​of Slavic cultures, 2009. S. 82-83. ⁠ ... The same technique is used in the description of the death of Lensky, who falls, killed by Onegin's shot.

In addition to numerous parodies of Onegin, later examples of the Onegin stanza include original works. However, this stanza turned out to be impossible to use without direct references to Pushkin's text. Lermontov in the very first stanza of "Tambov Treasurer" (1838) declares: "I am writing Onegin in size." Vyacheslav Ivanov in his poetic introduction to the poem "Infancy" (1913-1918) stipulates: "The size of the cherished stanzas is pleasant", and the first line of the first stanza begins with the words "My father was from the unsociable ..." (as in Onegin: "My uncle of the most honest rules ... "). Igor Severyanin composes "a novel in stanzas" (!) Under the title "Royal Leandre" (1925) and explains in a poetic introduction: "I am writing in Onegin stanza."

There were attempts to vary Pushkin’s find: “Other stanzas similar to Onegin’s were invented by way of rivalry. Almost immediately after Pushkin, Baratynsky wrote his poem "Ball", also in fourteen forms, but of a different structure ... And in 1927 V. Nabokov wrote "The University Poem" the beginning " 24 Gasparov M. L. Oneginskaya stanza // Gasparov M. L. Russian verse of the beginning of the XX century in the comments. M .: Fortuna Limited, 2001.S. 178. ⁠ ... Nabokov did not stop there: the last paragraph of Nabokov's "Gift" only looks prosaic, but in fact is a Onegin stanza written in a line.

Onegin. Directed by Martha Fiennes. USA, UK, 1999

Mstislav Dobuzhinsky. Illustration for "Eugene Onegin". 1931-1936 years

Russian State Library

Why are the secondary characters interesting in the novel?

The setting of the novel changes from chapter to chapter: St. Petersburg (the new European capital) - the village - Moscow (the national-traditional patriarchal center) - the South of Russia and the Caucasus. Characters vary surprisingly according to place names.

Philologist Maxim Shapir, having analyzed the character naming system in Pushkin's novel, showed that they are divided into several categories. "Steppe" landowners - satirical characters - are endowed with speaking names (Pustyakov, Petushkov, Buyanov, etc.). The author names Moscow bars without surnames, only by name and patronymic (Lukerya Lvovna, Lyubov Petrovna, Ivan Petrovich, Semyon Petrovich, etc.). Representatives of the St. Petersburg big world - real faces from Pushkin's entourage - are described in half-hints, but readers easily recognized real people in these anonymous portraits: "The old man, joking in the old way: / Excellently subtly and cleverly, / Which is somewhat funny today" - His Excellency Ivan Ivanovich Dmitriev, and "Greedy for epigrams, / For everything an angry gentleman" - His Excellency Count Gabriel Frantsevich Moden 25 Shapir M.I. Articles about Pushkin. M .: Languages ​​of Slavic cultures, 2009. P. 285-287; Vatsuro V.E. Comments: I.I.Dmitriev // Letters of Russian writers of the 18th century. L .: Nauka, 1980.S. 445; Proskurin O.A. / o-proskurin.livejournal.com/59236.html. ⁠ .

Other contemporaries of the poet are named full names if we are talking about the public side of their activities. For example, "The Singer of Feasts and languid sadness" is Baratynsky, as Pushkin himself explains in the 22nd footnote to "Eugene Onegin" (one of the most famous works early Baratynsky - the poem "Feast"). “Another poet” who “painted the first snow for us in a luxurious style” is Prince Vyazemsky, the author of the elegy “First Snow,” explains Pushkin in footnote 27. But if the same contemporary “appears on the pages of the novel as a private person, the poet resorts to asterisks and reductions " 26 Shapir M.I. Articles about Pushkin. M .: Languages ​​of Slavic cultures, 2009. P. 282. ⁠ ... Therefore, when Tatiana meets with Prince Vyazemsky, Pushkin says: “Somehow V. got hooked on her” (and not “Vyazemsky got hooked on her somehow,” as modern editions print). The famous passage: "Du comme il faut (Shishkov, I'm sorry: / I don't know how to translate)" - did not appear in this form during Pushkin's lifetime. At first, the poet intended to use the initial "Sh.", But then replaced it with three asterisks Star-shaped typographic mark. ⁠ ... A friend of Pushkin and Baratynsky, Wilhelm Kuchelbecker, believed that these lines were addressed to him, and read them: “Wilhelm, forgive me: / I don’t know how translate" 27 Lotman Yu. M. Pushkin: Biography of a writer. Articles and notes (1960-1990). "Eugene Onegin": Commentary. SPb .: Art-SPb, 1995.S. 715. ⁠ ... By adding names for the author, given in the text only as a hint, modern editors, Shapir concludes, at the same time violate the norms of Pushkin's ethics and poetics.

Francois Chevalier. Evgeny Baratynsky. 1830s. State Museum fine arts them. A.S. Pushkin. Baratynsky is mentioned in the novel as "The Singer of Feasts and languid sadness"

Karl Reichel. Pyotr Vyazemsky. 1817 years. All-Russian Museum of A.S. Pushkin, St. Petersburg. In the lines "Another poet in a luxurious style / Painted us the first snow" Pushkin had in mind Vyazemsky, the author of the elegy "First Snow"

Ivan Matyushin (engraving from an unknown original). Wilhelm Kuchelbecker. 1820s. All-Russian Museum of A.S. Pushkin, St. Petersburg. During Pushkin's life, in the passage “Du comme il faut (Shishkov, forgive me: / I don’t know how to translate), asterisks were printed instead of the surname. Kuchelbecker believed they were hiding the name "Wilhelm"

When do the events described in the novel take place and how old are the characters?

The internal chronology of Eugene Onegin has long intrigued readers and researchers. In what years does the action take place? How old are the characters at the beginning of the novel and at the end? Pushkin himself did not hesitate to write (and not just anywhere, but in the notes included in the text of Onegin): “We dare to assure that in our novel the time is calculated according to the calendar” (note 17). But does the novel time coincide with the historical one? Let's see what we know from the text.

During the duel, Onegin is 26 years old ("... Having lived without a goal, without work / Until twenty-six years ..."). Onegin had parted ways with the Author a year earlier. If the biography of the Author repeats Pushkin's, then this parting took place in 1820 (in May Pushkin was exiled to the south), and the duel took place in 1821. This is where the first problem arises. The duel took place two days after Tatyana's name day, and the name day - Tatyana's day - is January 12 (old style). According to the text, the name day was celebrated on Saturday (in drafts - on Thursday). However, in 1821, January 12 fell on Wednesday. However, perhaps, the celebration of the name day was postponed to one of the coming days (Saturday).

If the main events (from the arrival of Onegin to the village to the duel) still take place from the summer of 1820 to January 1821, then Onegin was born in 1795 or 1796 (he is three to four years younger than Vyazemsky and three to four years older than Pushkin), and began to shine in Petersburg when he was "almost eighteen years old" - in 1813. However, the preface to the first edition of the first chapter directly states that “it contains a description of the secular life of St. Petersburg young man late 1819 of the year" 28 Pushkin A.S. Complete Works. In 16 volumes. M., L .: Publishing house of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1937-1949. T. 6.C. 638. ⁠ ... Of course, we can ignore this circumstance: this date was not included in the final text (editions of 1833 and 1837). Nevertheless, the description of life in the capital in the first chapter clearly refers to the end of the 1810s, and not to 1813, when the Patriotic War had just ended and the foreign campaign against Napoleon was in full swing. The ballerina Istomina, whose performance Onegin watches at the theater, had not danced yet in 1813; hussar Kaverin, with whom Onegin is drinking at the Talon restaurant, has not yet returned to St. Petersburg due to boundaries 29 Baevsky V. S. Time in "Eugene Onegin" // Pushkin: Research and materials. L .: Nauka, 1983.T. XI. S. 115-130. P. 117. ⁠ .

"Onegin" is a poetically true picture of Russian society in a certain era

Vissarion Belinsky

In spite of everything, we continue to count from 1821. When Lensky died in January 1821, he was "eighteen years old," therefore, he was born in 1803. When Tatyana was born, the text of the novel does not say, but Pushkin told Vyazemsky that Tatyana's letter to Onegin, written in the summer of 1820, was "a letter from a woman, moreover, 17 years old, and also in love." Then Tatyana was also born in 1803, and Olga was younger than her by a year, a maximum of two (since she is already a bride, she could not be less than fifteen). By the way, when Tatyana was born, her mother was hardly more than 25 years old, so the "old woman" Larina at the time she met Onegin was about forty. However, there is no indication of Tatyana's age in the final text of the novel, so it is possible that all Larins were a couple of years older.

Tatiana arrives in Moscow at the end of January or in February 1822 and (in the fall?) Gets married. Meanwhile, Eugene is wandering. According to the printed "Excerpts from Onegin's Travel", he arrives in Bakhchisarai three years after the Author. Pushkin was there in 1820, Onegin, therefore, in 1823. In stanzas not included in the printed text of Travel, the Author and Onegin meet in Odessa in 1823 or 1824 and disperse: Pushkin goes to Mikhailovskoye (this happened in the last days of July 1824), Onegin to St. Petersburg. At a reception in the fall of 1824, he meets Tatiana, who has been married "for about two years." It seems that everything fits together, but in 1824 Tatyana could not speak with the Spanish ambassador at this reception, since Russia did not yet have diplomatic relations with Spain 30 Eugene Onegin: A Novel in Verse by Aleksandr Pushkin / Translated from the Russian, with a Commentary, by Vladimir Nabokov. In 4 vols. N.Y .: Bollingen, 1964. Vol. 3. P. 83; Lotman Yu. M. Pushkin: Biography of a writer. Articles and notes (1960-1990). "Eugene Onegin": Commentary. SPb .: Art-SPb, 1995.S. 718. ⁠ ... Onegin's letter to Tatiana, followed by their explanation, is dated in the spring (March?) Of 1825. But is this noble lady at the time of the final date only 22 years old?

There are many such minor inconsistencies in the text of the novel. At one time, the literary critic Joseph Toybin came to the conclusion that in the 17th note, the poet had in mind not historical, but seasonal chronology (the timely change of seasons within the novel time) 31 Toybin I. M. "Eugene Onegin": poetry and history // Pushkin: Research and materials. L .: Nauka, 1979.T. IX. P. 93. ⁠ ... Apparently, he was right.

"Eugene Onegin". Directed by Roman Tikhomirov. USSR, 1958

Mstislav Dobuzhinsky. Illustration for "Eugene Onegin". 1931-1936 years

Russian State Library

How does the text of Onegin, which we know today, compare with the one that was read by Pushkin's contemporaries?

Contemporaries managed to read several versions of Onegin. In editions of individual chapters, the poems were accompanied by various kinds of additional texts, of which not all were included in the consolidated edition. Thus, the prefaces to a separate edition of the first chapter (1825) were the note "This is the beginning of a large poem, which, probably, will not be finished ..." and a dramatic scene in the verse "Conversation of a bookseller with a poet."

Initially, Pushkin conceived a longer essay, perhaps even in twelve chapters (at the end of a separate edition of chapter six we read: "The end of the first part"). However, after 1830, the author's attitude to the forms of narration changed (Pushkin is now more interested in prose), readers to the author (Pushkin is losing popularity, the public thinks that he has "written out"), the author to the public (he gets disappointed in her - I want to say " mental abilities "- aesthetic readiness to accept" Onegin "). Therefore, Pushkin interrupted the novel in mid-sentence, printed the former ninth chapter as the eighth, the former eighth ("Onegin's Travel") published in fragments, placing it at the end of the text after the notes. The novel acquired an open ending, slightly camouflaged with a closed mirror composition (it is formed by an exchange of letters between characters and a return to the Odessa impressions of the first chapter at the end of The Journey).

Excluded from the text of the first consolidated edition (1833): an introductory note to chapter one, "A Conversation of a Bookseller with a Poet" and some stanzas that were published in editions of individual chapters. Notes for all chapters are placed in a special section. A dedication to Pletnev, originally pre-sent to the double edition of chapters four and five (1828), is placed in note 23. Only in the last lifetime edition (1837) do we find the familiar architectonics: The general form of the structure of the text and the relationship of its parts. A concept of a larger order than composition - understood as the location and relationships of details within large parts of the text. ⁠ the dedication to Pletnev becomes the dedication of the entire novel.

In 1922 Modest Hoffmann Modest Ludwigovich Hoffman (1887-1959) - philologist, poet and Pushkin scholar. He became famous for the "Book of Russian Poets of the Last Decade" - an anthology of articles on Russian Symbolism. Since 1920, Hoffman worked at the Pushkin House, published a book about Pushkin. In 1922, Hoffmann went on a business trip to France and never returned. In emigration he continued to study Pushkin studies. ⁠ published the monograph "The Missed Stanzas of Eugene Onegin". A study of draft versions of the novel began. In 1937, on the centenary of the poet's death, all known printed and handwritten versions of Onegin were published in the sixth volume of the academic Complete Works of Pushkin (volume editor - Boris Tomashevsky). This edition implements the principle of "layer-by-layer" reading and presentation of versions of draft and white paper manuscripts (from final readings to early versions).

The main text of the novel in the same collection was printed “according to the 1833 edition with the layout of the text according to the 1837 edition; censorship and typographical distortions of the 1833 edition were corrected according to autographs and previous editions (individual chapters and excerpts) " 32 Pushkin A.S. Complete Works. In 16 volumes. M., L .: Publishing house of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1937-1949. T. 6.C. 660. ⁠ ... Subsequently, this text was reprinted in scientific and mass publications, with rare exceptions and with some spelling variations. In other words, the critical text of Eugene Onegin, to which we are accustomed, does not coincide with any of the publications that came out during Pushkin's lifetime.

Joseph Charlemagne. Set design for the opera "Eugene Onegin" by Pyotr Tchaikovsky. 1940 year

Fine Art Images / Heritage Images / Getty Images

No: they are dynamic "equivalent" text 33 Yu. N. Tynyanov. About the composition "Eugene Onegin" // Yu. N. Tynyanov. Poetics. Literary history. Cinema. Moscow: Nauka, 1977.S. 60. ⁠ , the reader is free to substitute anything in their place (compare with the role of improvisation in some musical genres). Moreover, it is impossible to consistently fill in the lines: some stanzas or parts of the stanzas are abbreviated, while others have never been written.

Further, some stanzas are present in the manuscripts but are absent from the printed text. There are stanzas that were available in editions of individual chapters, but excluded from the consolidated edition (for example, a detailed comparison of Eugene Onegin with Homer's Iliad at the end of chapter four). There are stanzas that were printed separately as excerpts from Eugene Onegin, but were not included either in a separate edition of the corresponding chapter or in a consolidated edition. Such is, for example, the passage “Women”, published in 1827 in the “Moskovsky Vestnik” - the initial stanzas of chapter four, which in a separate edition of chapters four and five are replaced by a series of numbers without text.

This "inconsistency" is not an accidental oversight, but a principle. The novel is filled with paradoxes that turn the story of the creation of the text into an artistic device. The author plays with the text, not only excluding fragments, but also, conversely, including them "on special conditions." So, in the author's notes, the beginning of a stanza that was not included in the novel is given ("It's time: the pen asks for peace ..."), and the two final stanzas of chapter six in the main text and in the notes are given by the author in different editions.

Manuscript "Eugene Onegin". 1828 year

Wikimedia Commons

"Eugene Onegin". Directed by Roman Tikhomirov. USSR, 1958

Was there a so-called tenth chapter in Eugene Onegin?

Pushkin wrote his novel, not yet knowing how he would finish it. The tenth chapter is a continuation variant rejected by the author. Because of its content (the political chronicle of the turn of the 1810s-1920s, including a description of the Decembrist conspirators), the tenth chapter of Onegin, even if it had been completed, could hardly have been published during Pushkin's lifetime, although there is information that he gave it to Nikolai for reading I 34 Lotman Yu. M. Pushkin: Biography of a writer. Articles and notes (1960-1990). "Eugene Onegin": Commentary. SPb .: Art-SPb, 1995. P. 745. ⁠ .

The chapter was written in Boldino and was burned by the author on October 18 or 19, 1830 (there is Pushkin's litter about this in one of the Boldin work notebooks). However, what was written was not completely destroyed. Part of the text was preserved in the form of the author's cipher, which in 1910 was solved by the Pushkin scholar Pyotr Morozov. Cryptographic writing hides only the first quatrains of 16 stanzas, but does not fix the remaining 10 lines of each stanza. In addition, several stanzas survived in a separate draft and in the messages of the poet's friends.

As a result, from the entire chapter, a passage of 17 stanzas has come down to us, none of which is known to us in its complete form. Of these, only two have a complete composition (14 verses), and only one is reliably rhymed according to the Onegin stanza scheme. The order of the surviving stanzas is also not entirely obvious. In many places, the text has been parsed hypothetically. Even the first, perhaps the most famous line of the tenth chapter ("The weak and crafty ruler", about Alexander I) is read only presumably: Pushkin writes in the cipher "Vl.", Which Nabokov, for example, deciphered as "Lord" 35 Eugene Onegin: A Novel in Verse by Aleksandr Pushkin / Translated from the Russian, with a Commentary, by Vladimir Nabokov. In 4 vols. N.Y .: Bollingen, 1964. Vol. 1. Pp. 318-319. ⁠ ... ⁠. On the other hand, the short English haircut is contrasted with the romantic German à la Schiller. Such a hairstyle from Lensky, a recent Gottingen student: The University of Göttingen was one of the most advanced educational institutions of the time. Among Pushkin's acquaintances were several graduates of Göttingen, and all of them were distinguished by free-thinking: the Decembrist Nikolai Turgenev and his brother Alexander, Pushkin's lyceum teacher Alexander Kunitsyn. ⁠ "Curls black to shoulders " 38 Muryanov M. F. Portrait of Lensky // Questions of Literature. 1997. No. 6. S. 102-122. ⁠ ... Thus, Onegin and Lensky, in everything opposite to each other, differ even in their hairstyles.

At a social event, Tatiana "in a crimson beret / With the ambassador speaks Spanish." What does this famous detail testify to? Is it really that the heroine forgot to take off her headdress? Of course not. Thanks to this detail, Onegin realizes that in front of him is a noble lady and that she is married. The modern historian of European costume explains that the beret “appeared in Russia only at the beginning of the 19th century, simultaneously with other Western European headdresses, tightly covering the head: wigs and powdered hairstyles in the 18th century excluded their use. In the first half of the 19th century, the beret was only a woman's headdress, and, moreover, only for married ladies. Being part of the ceremonial dress, he was not filmed either at balls, or in the theater, or at parties evenings " 39 Kirsanova R. M. Costume in the Russian art culture XVIII- the first half of the XX centuries. (The experience of the encyclopedia). Moscow: TSE, 1995. P. 37. ⁠ ... Berets were made of satin, velvet or other fabrics. They could be decorated with plumes or flowers. They were worn obliquely, so that one edge could even touch the shoulder.

At the Talon restaurant, Onegin and Kaverin are drinking "comet wine". What kind of wine? This is le vin de la Comète, an 1811 champagne whose excellent quality was attributed to the influence of the comet now called C / 1811 F1 - it was clearly visible in the Northern Hemisphere from August to December 1811 of the year 40 Kuznetsov N.N. Wine of the comet // Pushkin and his contemporaries: Materials and research. L .: Publishing house of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1930. Issue. XXXVIII / XXXIX. S. 71-75. ⁠ .

Perhaps Pushkin would have done even better if he had named his poem after Tatyana, and not Onegin, for she is undoubtedly the main heroine of the poem

Fedor Dostoevsky

In addition, in the novel, which seems to be written in the same language as we speak, in reality there are many outdated words and expressions. Why do they become obsolete? First, because the language is changing; secondly, because the world he describes is changing.

During a duel, Onegin's servant Guillo "becomes a near stump." How to interpret this behavior? All illustrators depict Guillot perched near a small tree stump. All translators use words meaning "the bottom of a felled, cut down or broken tree." The "Dictionary of Pushkin's Language" interprets this passage in exactly the same way. However, if Guillot is afraid of dying from an accidental bullet and hopes to hide from it, then why does he need a stump? Nobody thought about this until the linguist Alexander Penkovsky showed in many texts of the Pushkin era that at that time the word "stump" had one more meaning, in addition to what it has today - this is the meaning of "tree trunk" (not necessarily " felled, sawn down or broken ") 41 Penkovsky A. B. Studies of the poetic language of the Pushkin era. M .: Znak, 2012. S. 533-546. ⁠ .

Another large group of words is obsolete vocabulary denoting obsolete realities. In particular, in our days horse-drawn transport has become exotic - its economic role has been leveled, the terminology associated with it has left the common language and today is mostly unclear. Let's remember how the Larins are going to Moscow. "On a skinny and shaggy nag / A bearded postilion sits." The postilian (from German Vorreiter - the one who rides in front, on the front horse) was usually a teenager or even a little boy, so that the horse could carry him more easily. The postiller must be a boy, while the Larins have a "bearded" one: they did not leave for so long and sat in the village that they already had a postilian got old 42 Dobrodomov I. G., Pil'shchikov I. A. Vocabulary and phraseology of "Eugene Onegin": Hermeneutical essays. M .: Languages ​​of Slavic cultures, 2008. P. 160-169. ⁠