The Eugene Onegin Guide – Chapter 5

All objects either scared or charmed her, with secret meanings they’d impart…

Svyatki

It’s January and the first snow has fallen. Tatyana, like a good Russian girl, loves winter. She hasn’t seen Onegin since his rejection last summer, but has she gotten over him yet? The beginning of January marks the time of the ‘svyatki’* in Russia, a time when traditionally rituals were performed to predict the future. Tanya, who is very superstitious, just like her creator**, is very eager to see what the future will bring and performs several rituals, focussing specifically on love and marriage. Apart from finding out that Tanya’s future husband will likely be called ‘Agafon*, we do not find out what kind of signs Tanya received so far.

Appealing to dark forces

The ultimate ritual she performs is to conjure a prophetic dream, and this dream turns out to be the most written about dream in the history of Russian literature. 

Because she is appealing to occult forces, she has to remove her silken sash, which normally protects her against the occult, before she goes to bed. A portrait of Lel, the old slavic equivalent of Eros, hangs above her bed and she has placed a mirror underneath her pillow.

The dream

Her dream is awesome and prophetic indeed! She is walking in a snow covered landscape and comes to a seething torrent that she dares not cross. A bear appears and offers to help her across. Although she is terrified she lets the bear help and tries to run away from him as soon as she is on the other side. Eventually she falls and the bear picks her up and carries her to a hut. Inside the hut grotesque monsters are sitting around a table. To her horror she sees Eugene between them; clearly he is the leader of the monsters! As soon as they spot Tatyana they start to shout “She’s mine! She’s mine!” and then Onegin cries “She’s mine!” and the monsters disappear. Onegin carries the terrified girl to a bed and then Olga and Lensky come into the hut. Angry that they were disturbed, Onegin stabs Lenski with a knife.

The dream is full of common elements of Russian fairy tales: the bear, the forest, the hut and the monsters. Freud had not been born yet, and the purpose of the dream was to show the future rather than to dig into Tanya’s psyche, but Tanya did have a book that explained dreams. Nabokov actually managed to find a copy of Martin Zadeck’s book and looked up the same symbols that Tanya looked up in her copy. He could only find three from the list: the crow predicts the death of a relative, the fir predicts marriage and the bear stands for wealth. As we shall see, all three will come true. 

In spite of the promised wealth and marriage the dream is rather ominous. Especially Onegin was a pretty dark figure in her dream; very different from the Onegin that Tanya addressed in her letter. But there was an erotic tension between them in the dream, which was broken by the arrival of her sister and her betrothed. It is therefore not exactly surprising that she struggles to control her emotions when she sees Eugene in real life only a few days after the dream. 

Tatyana’s name day

The name day celebrations echo the monster meeting that she saw in her dream. Onegin sees that Tanya is struggling to compose herself and guesses that he is the cause. For a tiny moment she manages to get his sympathy and he gives her a tender glance that reawakens her feelings for him. But Onegin is mostly furious that it is not the small family gathering that Lensky had promised, and he wants to punish his friend. He flirts with Olga the whole evening. We can only imagine how this must have made poor Tanya feel! At any rate, chapter 5 ends with Lensky galloping away, planning to challenge Onegin for a duel…

Pushkin at his best

In this chapter Pushkin really shows us what he can do. All his talents come together here. There is not just fantastic poetry brimming with alliterations and emotions; there is a mysterious fairy tale atmosphere, there are ancient Russian traditions, and there is an intriguing story line. I can almost guarantee you that you have already grabbed your copy to re-read certain stanzas.

Pushkin also managed some clever structural elements: in chapter 5 we find the exact middle of the novel: stanza 5, lines 6-7: All objects either scared or charmed her, with secret meanings they’d impart…

The beginning of stanza 13 is almost the same a stanza 38 in chapter 3, when Tanya flees into the garden. Within chapter 5 we find Olga, more rosy than the dawn before (21:11) opposite Tanya, paler than the moon at dawn (30:2).

Svetlana

This chapter was dedicated to Svetlana, the heroine of a romantic ballad by Zhukovsky, who in her nightmare is carried to her grave by her lover. She is also mentioned in chapter 3 (5).

Bonus material

• The days between January 6th and 19th (the birth and christening of Jesus) are called the ‘svyatki’. In this period the normal (church) rules did not apply and the occult became more accessible. In order to find out what the new year would bring (a good harvest, marriage, family), you could consult the occult forces through a wide variety of rituals. For instance, in order to find out what the name of your future husband was, you had to ask a random stranger on the road his name. One of the more scarier rituals involved going into the bath house (where there are no icons) to stare into a mirror until you saw a face of a man appear. People also dressed up, as bears for instance, which would also explain the bear in Tanya’s dream. Russian people were (and are) quite superstitious, something that the church wanted to rule out, and only during the svyatki were these kind of rituals allowed. Tolstoy described the svyatki traditions as well in War and Peace (book 7, chapter 10).

** In stanza 6 Tanya sees a hare and a monk dressed in black. When Pushkin once spotted the same two omens on his way to Saint Petersburg he turned around and went back home.

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Chapter 6 is scheduled for the 10th of May. Happy reading!

Text and photos © Elisabeth van der Meer 2020