The Eugene Onegin Guide – the Conclusion

This is already the last part of the Eugene Onegin challenge. What a journey it has turned out to be! A lot has happened in the world since I started this challenge five months ago, and I hope that it has been a welcome form of distraction for you. It certainly was for me!

Now that we have discussed each chapter separately, it’s time to take a look at the novel as a whole and draw some conclusions. 

The structure

First of all the structure; within this seemingly effortless product of his quill, Pushkin has woven an extremely clever web of symmetries, overlapping themes, links and parallels, down to the smallest details. Especially if we take into consideration the fact that when Pushkin started to write the novel in 1823 he had no idea how it would end in 1831. Also he originally intended it to have nine or ten chapters, which at the last moment he changed into eight chapters. The plot symmetrical, Tatyana falls in love with Eugene and is rejected and later Eugene falls in love with Tatyana and is rejected. Each chapter ends with the same theme with which the previous chapter ended, and chapter 8 ends with the same Saint Petersburg theme with which chapter 1 started. The exact middle of the novel (5:5:6) reads ‘All objects either scared or charmed her, with secret meanings they’d impart’ – right in the middle of the Russian countryside, celebrating the svyatki and far away from the Saint Petersburg society. All this gives the novel a perfectly balanced feeling, it all seems to be just right. And then there is the Onegin sonnet and Pushkin’s plain and clear use of language. 

The plot

Onegin’s demonic side really shows when he is placed opposite the naive Lensky. It’s almost as if he cannot bear Lensky’s optimism. The revenge he takes on Lensky when it turns out that the name-day party is much bigger than promised is out of proportion. But Lensky’s reaction is even more out of proportion; even when it turns out that Olga is completely innocent, he lets the duel take place, with fatal consequences for him. Tatyana’s novels lead her to believe that Onegin is her perfect hero, but his novels show her that he is a fake hero. In spite of this discovery she continues to have feelings for him. She gives in to her mother’s wishes and the conventions of society and marries another man, but perhaps she also knew that a relationship with Onegin would ultimately lead to her downfall. Her husband sees her potential and appears to be worthy of her. The fact that Onegin does turn out to be capable of feelings after all and falls in love with Tatyana (the real one, because he pictures her in front of the window) is too little too late. His clumsy and inappropriate efforts to seduce her, emphasise his egotistical character once more. It’s ironic that in chapter 1 he has no trouble seducing married women, but in chapter 8 he cannot seduce the one married woman he actually loves.

Mine, mine!

Pushkin often writes ‘my Onegin,’ ‘my Tatyana,’ ‘my Lensky,’ ‘my reader’ and ‘my muse’. This implicates that the novel and its characters came from within Pushkin himself. Well, obviously, he wrote it all, but still it indicates how just connected he felt to each of them.

The Lensky in Pushkin

Lensky is a stylised young version of the poet Pushkin: full of poetic ideals, but hardly original. This is the poet before he was confronted with the realities of life and was visited by the demon. Lensky’s death is the result of a lack of potential as poet and his failure to recognise Onegin as a demon. By killing Lensky Pushkin has closed the youthful chapter of his life in a rather rigorous manner.

The Onegin in Pushkin 

Onegin symbolises the bubbling society life in Saint Petersburg, from which Pushkin at the time when he started writing Eugene Onegin was excluded due to his banishment from the capital. If Pushkin had not been exiled and suffering from a case of severe ‘fomo’ while he was living in Moldavia, Eugene Onegin would most likely not have seen the light of day!

The Tatyana in Pushkin 

We can recognise a lot of Pushkin in Tatyana: her passion for reading and nature, her longing for passionate love, het misunderstood feelings, but also her authentic ‘Russianness’, expressed in her love for the Russian traditions of story and fortune telling, combined with interest in Western culture, expressed in her foreign novels. Just like Pushkin and his muse, or even as his muse, she is capable of adjusting herself to her surroundings and triumph. The fact that she is the only character that he does not mock shows just how dear she was to him.

Byron

Byron has been an enormous source of inspiration for Pushkin. Onegin is the Russian version of the Byronic hero. He is rich, intelligent, well educated, but also maladjusted, egoistic and indifferent. No matter where he is or what he does, nothing can hold his interest. His life lacks a goal or purpose, hence the term ‘superfluous man’ (лишний человек), used in Russian literature. 

The Muse and the Demon

Pushkin places his muse on a pedestal. He celebrates her in the first seven stanzas of chapter 8. Her development is completely synchronised with Pushkin’s development as a poet. She first comes to him when he is a student, together they have their first literary successes. She accompanies him to the South, where she runs ‘wild’. At Mikhailovskoye she turns into Tatyana. Back in Saint Petersburg she holds herself very well amidst the glitter and glamour, just like Tatyana. Her opposite is the demon who tries to unbalance the poet with his mockery and cynicism. As we saw in the previous post Onegin personifies the demon.

The Reader

Pushkin has assigned himself an important part in Eugene Onegin as a very present narrator. He draws the reader into the story by directly addressing him, as if he is a friend writing you a letter. This creates an intimate setting and leads you to believe that you are hearing the story from a first hand witness. By treating the reader as his equal and simply telling the story ‘as it happened,’ the reader is free to draw his own conclusions.

Fact or Fiction?

The light tone, simple plot and poetic structure allow Pushkin to frequently lose himself in digressions. They make up one third of the novel! The details and people he talks about are mostly real. Often it’s obvious, but it can be difficult for the reader to distinguish between fact and fiction, especially so for the modern reader.  Pushkin happily places the very real Zhukovsky next to the fictitious Tatyana at the table. Even his characters sometimes struggle between fiction and reality; both Tatyana and Onegin mirror themselves on the novels they read, with disastrous consequences! That even Pushkin himself was surprised by the development of one of his characters was evident from one of his letters: “My Tatyana has gone and got herself married! I should never have thought it of her!”

The importance of Tatyana’s dream

Tatyana enthusiastically throws herself into the svyatki rituals in chapter 5. There is a small contradiction here, as we know that she is not interested in marriage, and all the rituals are aimed at finding out more about your future husband. Although he himself was very superstitious, Pushkin mocks these ancient traditions. Nonetheless he lets the predictions come true: both sisters marry a military man (5:4) and Tatyana will become rich (5:8). In her prophetic dream Tatyana first sees the demonic side of Onegin and she also foresees him killing Lensky. And who knows, perhaps the name of her husband really is Agafon. Pushkin leaves us guessing. The episode gives the novel an authentic Russian feel, and emphasises Tatyana’s Russianness. And it turns out that there is more truth and wisdom in the ancient traditions than in those foreign novels.

Words

Pushkin has used a mere 35000 words to write Eugene Onegin. He has inspired me to write a good 10000 words about Eugene Onegin. And then there’s Nabokov, who managed to fill more than a thousand pages dedicated to Eugene Onegin. And still it seems hard to really do justice to this wonderful and timeless classic. In spite of the sad turns of the plot, the overall atmosphere remains light and entertaining. Pushkin never forces his judgement upon the characters and leaves the reader room to form their own. Onegin can be seen as a fop who carelessly kills his friend and preaches the innocent Tatyana about love, only to later try to seduce her when she is married. But he can also be seen as a tragic hero, the sad product of an era, who has to live with the consequences of his actions forever. There are undoubtedly as many interpretations as readers, and also as many interpretations as readings.

An encyclopedia of Pushkin’s brain

The Russian literary critic Belinsky (1811-1848) called Eugene Onegin ‘an encyclopedia of Russian life.’  Thanks to Pushkin’s frequent digressions we have no doubt learned a lot about life in Russia at the beginning of the nineteenth century. But to me Eugene Onegin seems most of all an encyclopedia of Pushkin’s brain. He has given us everything he had: Greek mythology, Latin poets, western literature, Russian folklore, dreams, reality, human nature, psychological insights, superstition, satire, humor and the glitter and glamour in Saint Petersburg. It all came together in Eugene Onegin and formed a fascinating, sparkling and enchanting novel in verse. 

*****

As always I would love to hear from you in the comments, even those of you who came across this challenge at a later point. I am left with one burning question that I have not yet been able to answer: what does it mean that Onegin calls Tatyana ‘mine’ in her dream, when at that point he does not want her? Do let me know your thoughts about this. 

*****

I used the following (reference) works for this blog series:

Eugene Onegin in translations by James Falen, Roger Clarke and Vladimir Nabokov

Nabokov’s Commentary on Eugene Onegin 

Pushkin’s Tatiana – Olga Peters Hasty

An illustrated and annotated Russian edition of Eugene Onegin 

Through the magic crystal to Eugene Onegin – Leslie O’Bell

The author – narrator’s stance in Onegin – J.Thomas Shaw

The muse and the demon in the poetry of Pushkin, Lermontov and Blok – Pamela Davidson

Text and photos © Elisabeth van der Meer 2020

The Eugene Onegin Guide – Chapter 8

In which Eugene falls for Tatyana and she refuses him…

Tatyana is now Princess N.

We left Tatyana in chapter 7 where she had caught the attention of a corpulent general. When we see her next in chapter 8 she is married and goes by the title ‘Princess N’. Instead of a  description of the engagement and subsequent marriage, Pushkin talks about his muse, who came to him in different guises at various stages in his life. At the end of stanza 5 we can recognise Tatyana as his muse. Now Pushkin has taken his muse into the salons of the high society in Saint Petersburg, where she holds herself very well indeed.

The lack of information about her engagement and marriage to general N, or even N’s full name (it is not even certain that he is the same as the corpulent general), is congruent with her own lack of interest in such things.

Onegin

Now we also see Eugene again, in his natural environment this time. He has apparently been traveling* and is now in his late twenties. No, he hasn’t changed, he’s still bored with everything. Until he meets Tatyana again, that is. He can’t believe his eyes when he spots the transformed Tatyana and has to double check with his cousin, who happens to be the general himself, if that perfectly accomplished and composed lady is really the shy girl he used to know. 

Whatever Tatyana may be thinking when she meets Eugene again, she shows no sign of it and greets him just like she would any old acquaintance. She has clearly taken the lessons that Eugene preached to her in 4:16:12 to heart. Although Tatyana has nothing fake or feigned about her, we are reminded of the opening of chapter 4: ‘the less we love her when we woo her, the more we draw a woman in’. Only now it’s the other way around; by not showing any interest in Eugene, she makes him fall in love with her.  

Onegin’s letter(s)

When all his conventional attempts to woo Tatyana fail, he resorts to writing her a letter. By mirroring Eugene’s letter with Tatyana’s letter from chapter 3, Pushkin emphasises the differences between the two. Eugene’s letter is a strange mixture of reproach (she doesn’t acknowledge his attentions) and commonplace phrases (To swoon and pass away… what rapture!). When she does not reply, he writes another, and another. She continues to ignore him, although she does understandably begin to show signs of annoyance. 

Like any self respecting literary hero would, Onegin loses himself all winter long in self pity and depression. When he has grown tired of that too, he hastens along the Neva’s bank to Tatyana’s house. There, as in a fairy tale, door after door opens until he finds himself in Tatyana’s boudoir. This scene echoes both Tanya’s flight into the garden (3:38) and the running away from the bear (5:13). Pushkin uses the same ‘interstrophic enjambment’ technique in stanzas 38-39 of chapter 3 as in stanzas 39-40 of chapter 8: “so fast that, panting, on a bench at last she falls..” and “But where in such a headlong rush has my Eugene directly hastened?” This continuation of one sentence into the next stanza is a literary trick that Pushkin employs to emphasise the parallels between the two scenes.

Tatyana’s rejection

Tatyana sits not yet fully dressed crying over presumably one of his letters. Onegin kneels in front of her and for a second it looks as if she may give in, but then she resolutely rejects him. Now it’s her turn to teach Eugene a lesson. She explains that she only married because of her mother, that she does not care for all the glitter and glamour that now surrounds her, and that she misses her former beloved country surroundings. She ends her speech with the famous last words ‘but I am now another’s wife, and I’ll be faithful all my life

How are we to understand Tatyana’s words? Is she really unhappy?

She insinuates that she married the first suitor who came along, just to satisfy her mother’s wishes. According to Nabokov’s calculations she is now in her early twenties, and her husband is about 15 years older. Hardly an old man. The marriage has freed her from a mother who does’t understand her. She has a proud and loving husband. As Princess N. she is a respected and wealthy lady. There is nothing that indicates that she is not free to visit her mother whenever she wants, or visit her husband’s country estate if she’s longing for fresh air. She is certainly now able to buy as many books as she likes.

Onegin’s appearance has stirred up her old feelings (the simple girl he’d known before, who’d dreamed and loved, was born once more 41:13) and she is fondly remembering the time when her future was still undecided, when she did not yet know that Eugene was not he she thought he was.

She knows that Onegin’s sudden interest in her has everything to do with her transformation into Princess N. He does not intend now, any more than he did in the past, to marry Tatyana, even if such a thing were possible in 1825. She points out to him that he has had and missed his chance and that it is wrong of him to try to seduce her. When she asks him to leave while admitting that she still loves him, she appears to be talking to the old Eugene. As such we can also interpret her final words as a reminder to herself to move on.

*The stanzas about Onegin’s travels were added to the novel as an appendix by Pushkin.

Interesting facts:

The majority of chapter 8 was written during the so-called Boldino autumn. A very prolific period in 1830 when Pushkin was quarantined due to a cholera outbreak.

In the original Russian text Tanya wears a ‘raspberry beret’ in stanza 17, which has caused speculations about Prince having read Eugene Onegin.

Stanza 27 originally stated that Eugene was so blinded by the vision of the new Tatyana, that he did not even notice the tsar and tsarina entering the room. Naturally this could never have gotten through the censure.

In a famous and passionate speech about Pushkin, Dostoevsky refers to Tatyana and her famous last words. He saw her as a fine example of the Russian woman, who prefers the simple things in life to wealth and status. She sacrifices her own happiness and is faithful to her husband, even if he is an old man who she cannot possibly love: “No, a pure, Russian soul decides thus: Let me, let me alone be deprived of happiness, even if my happiness be infinitely greater than the unhappiness of this old man. Finally, let no one, not even this old man, know and appreciate my sacrifice: I will not be happy through having ruined another.”

*****

Text and photos © Elisabeth van der Meer 2020

The appendix with Onegin’s travels is scheduled for the 21st of June. Happy reading!

The Eugene Onegin Guide – Chapter 7

In which Tatyana discovers the real fake Eugene Onegin 

You may well have been expecting to find a remorseful Onegin and a grieving Olga, but Pushkin wouldn’t be Pushkin if he hadn’t decided differently. We do get a glimpse of Lensky’s grave where indeed two sisters stood grieving in the moonlight a few months ago, but now it’s spring; the path to the grave is full of weeds, Olga has married another and has left her childhood home, and Onegin has apparently returned to Saint Petersburg.

Tatyana is now all alone. She’s struggling with her feelings; the passion that she feels for Onegin is still growing stronger, in spite of everything that has happened.

Literary context

Like fellow blogger Benn Bell wrote here, it’s virtually impossible to read a literary work without placing it in a literary context, whether we realise this or not. This context is made up of all the books that we have previously read. Benn saw large similarities in style between Eugene Onegin and The Raven (1845) by Edgar Allen Poe.

Chapter 7 of Eugene Onegin kept reminding me of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813): in both works the heroine is suddenly confronted with the estate of their love interest, who happens not to be home at that time, leaving our heroine with an excellent opportunity to investigate. Both are let into the house by a talkative housekeeper. Once inside the domain of the man in question his true nature is discovered. In the case of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy the outcome is unexpectedly positive, but Tatyana finds out that Eugene Onegin is not the romantic hero that she thought he was.

Tanya’s quest

To describe Tanya in her quest to know more about Eugene Pushkin uses the word ‘pilgrim’ (20). Tanya is a reader and we are therefore not at all surprised that she instinctively turns to his library to find out who he really is. The contents, or indeed lack of contents, of the bookshelves are always a good indication of the character of the owner. This explains the popularity of the #showusyourshelves hashtag and the sudden importance of a good ‘zoom background’. Our clever girl also understands that she has to focus particularly on the books that he has clearly read, and pays extra attention to the passages that Eugene had marked with a pencil or his nail (23).

With Pride and Prejudice in the back of our minds, we keep expecting Onegin to burst in on Tatyana at any moment, but that does not happen and she can read in peace. And what does she discover… Onegin is a fake! He apparently merely imitates the heroes of popular modern literature. Had Tatyana had access to the same modern novels at home, she would have seen through him immediately.

Tanya saw her ideal literary hero in Onegin, but he turns out to be just a copy of a literary hero. The essential difference between the Tanya and Eugene is that Tanya grows with her experiences, whether they were from a book or from her real life; Onegin copies what he reads, but he does not interpret it.

To Moscow, to Moscow, to Moscow!

While Tanya is busy discovering the real fake Onegin in his study, her mother is planning to take her to Moscow to find her a husband. The next January they depart with ‘almost all that they possessed’ (31:11) to spend the rest of the winter with an aunt in Moscow. And the attentive reader will notice that this is exactly one year after the Svyatki celebrations and Tanya’s prophetic dream.

The first thing that Tanya sees when she wakes up for the first time in Moscow are ironically the stables* in an unfamiliar courtyard (43:11). But at least she could probably hear the familiar sound of her own chickens, because they too were brought to Moscow! Our poor Tanya, who doesn’t even want to have a husband anymore, is being dragged from dinner to theatre. By the end of chapter 7 she has inadvertently caught the attention of a corpulent general.

Remarkable in chapter 7

Tatyana takes the centre stage again in chapter 7, in which farewells play an important part: the farewell to Lensky, implied by the grave scene in stanza 6; the farewell to Olga in stanza 12*; the farewell to Onegin, implied by the reading of his books; Tanya’s farewell to her beloved countryside, which echoes Pushkin’s farewell to the countryside at the end of chapter 6. Mrs. Larina hasn’t been in Moscow since her own wedding, and now she returns with the prospect of her daughter’s wedding. January 1821 was all about predictions regarding Tanya’s future husband, and January 1822 is all about finding Tanya a husband. In the first half of chapter 7 Tanya is exposed to Eugene’s library. In the second half she is exposed to Moscow.

*****

• Although Austen was apparently not widely read in Russia in Pushkin’s time, it is not completely unlikely that Pushkin had access to a French translation and was familiar with her work.

• Moscow was rather provincial compared to Saint Petersburg; all the big houses had courtyards with stables where pigs and poultry were held.

• This touching farewell must come as a surprise to the reader, because as we know the sisters were not that close. Tatyana for instance never told Olga about her love for Onegin.

Text and photo © Elisabeth van der Meer 2020

Chapter 8 is scheduled for the 7th of June, happy reading! 

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.

*****

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

Text and photos © Elisabeth van der Meer 2020

The Eugene Onegin Guide – Chapter 3

In which Onegin receives a love letter

Elle était fille; elle était amoureuse – a line from a poem by Malfilâtre about the unrequited love of Echo for Narcissus, who is in love with his own reflection.

Tatyana falls in love with Onegin in the summer of 1820. The feelings that up until then she only knows from books, are now becoming her own. And now that we are getting to know her better, we might as well call her ‘Tanya’.

From fiction to reality

Tanya is the only member of her family who reads, and she has to make do with the books that are available to her: French and English romantic novels that were hugely popular in her mother’s youth. Among Tanya’s favourites we find Richardson’s Clarissa (1748), Rousseau’s Julie (1761) and Madame de Staël’s Delphine (1802). All three are sentimental epistolary novels in which the heroine’s passions threaten to destroy her. The modern novels mentioned in stanza 12 are yet unknown to Tanya; she will read them in chapter 7.

We do not know much about the first meeting between Tanya and Onegin, apart from the fact that Onegin mentions to Lenski that he finds Tanya more interesting than Olga. It is definitely not love at first sight for Tanya. If anything it’s almost as if she were talked into the idea. Due to the lack of any real news, Tanya’s country neighbours take to speculations. They even invent wedding plans for Tanya and Eugene. Although she finds the gossip embarrassing, it does make her think of Eugene in a different way…

Tanya, nyanya, Vanya

She falls head over heels in love. One night her feelings become so intense that she can’t contain them any longer (17). She wakes up her nurse (her nyanya) and wants to talk with her about love. The scene is delightful in every possible way: Tanya asks her worried nurse if she was in love when she got married. Her old nurse is taken by surprise by this sudden talk about love and replies that in her days they didn’t even know what love was. When she was 13 the marriage was arranged and her Vanya was even younger than she was. And that was that. 

The letter

Although the nurse is normally the confidante of the infatuated young lady, like Shakespeare’s Juliet, Tanya cannot talk about her passionate feelings to her nurse. But her feelings are so overwhelming that she needs to give expression to them in some way. And so she writes them down in a letter. She writes the letter in the moonlight as if in a trance. For a girl in 1820 it was a risky business to send a love letter to a man she barely knew, and her feelings must have been pretty strong to overcome her rational thinking. Not only does she write the letter, she actually sends it! 

Pushkin assures us from stanza 22 to 31 that Tanya’s letter is original and sincere. Even though Tanya only knows passionate love and its expression from the sentimental novels that she likes to read, her letter shows only minimal signs of that influence. In the letter, that lacks a heading and closure, she writes about hope, torture, fated love, dreams and their first meeting, when she knew he was the one (which we have reason to doubt). Halfway she switches from the formal ‘вы’ to ‘ты’, only to change back again in the last line.

According to the narrator/Pushkin the letter was written in French by Tanya, who like most girls of her class, spoke Russian very well, but felt gramatically more comfortable with French. Moreover her literary examples were also written in French. Pushkin is again blurring the lines between fiction and reality, because the letter never really existed of course. The letter does not follow the strict rhyming scheme of the rest of the novel, a clever trick to make the letter seem like freely written prose. By waiting ten whole stanza’s before showing us the actual letter, the anticipation is built up high.

Nurse, who apparently never experienced passionate love herself, has given all her love to Tanya and her sister. In stanza’s 33-35 she calls Tanya ‘my sweet, pretty one, my little early bird*, my pet, and sweetheart’. Clearly Tanya’s happiness and wellbeing are her main concern**. As she doesn’t understand Tanya’s sudden passionate feelings at all, she also sees no harm in helping to get the love letter from her little early bird delivered to one of the bachelor neighbours, the one with the questionable reputation (2:5).

A reply?

Tanya spends the whole day waiting for a reply that doesn’t come. It turns out that reality is different from the novels, in which there is always a written reply! In the evening Lensky comes to visit. Alone. Suddenly the sound of hoofs*** announces Onegin’s arrival and Tanya flies through the backdoor into the yard like lightning. Her (beautifully described) panicky flight (38) forms a sharp contrast with the calmness with which she wrote the letter. And it definitely forms a parallel with Onegin’s own escape whenever he sees a neighbour coming (2:5:2). Exhausted she sits down on a bench. Somewhere in the garden serf girls are singing a folksong (made up by Pushkin) about temptation, to prevent them from being tempted to eat the raspberries that they are picking. But Tanya is only listening for footsteps… Just as she thinks that the coast is clear, Onegin suddenly arrives. Unfortunately Pushkin is too tired to continue, so we’ll have to wait for chapter 4 to read what happened next.

*Tanya rises when Onegin goes to bed.

**A Russian serf was connected to the same family his or her whole life. The nurse, often a wet-nurse, took a special place in the family. She slept with the smallest children and even after all the children were big, she would continue to live in the house with them. Pushkin was extremely fond of his (actually his sister’s) old nurse.

***Most likely Onegin arrived in his carriage, but most illustrations depict Onegin on horseback. 

*****

Chapter 4 is scheduled for the 12th of April 2020:

Text and photo © Elisabeth van der Meer 2020

The Eugene Onegin Challenge

I’m challenging you! Not to a duel, no, although it does involve one… I’m challenging you to read Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin with me. Whether you’re a curious first time reader, a longtime lover, or something in between; anyone who is interested is welcome to join.

Now I know that you all have TBR’s that reach the ceiling, not to mention to-do lists as long as the neck of a giraffe, but don’t worry; we’ll do this at a very doable pace. Pushkin deserves more than to be read at a record speed anyway. 

Why?

Eugene Onegin is a ‘novel in verse’, something between a poem and a novel. That, among other things, makes it notoriously difficult to translate. If you translate a poem literally, it probably won’t rhyme. If you make it rhyme, you’ll probably have to adjust the text. I had very high expectations when I first read Eugene Onegin. But although I enjoyed it, I felt that I didn’t quite get it. Looking back that probably had a lot to do with the translation that didn’t do the work justice. Luckily I did not give up on Eugene Onegin. I made attempts at reading it in Russian and tried other translations. And with each read I loved it more.

The plan

The plan is to make ten more posts about Eugene Onegin. In the next one I’ll explain the rhyming scheme, introduce the characters and talk about how and when Pushkin wrote his masterpiece. The following eight posts will be dedicated to the eight chapters of the novel. After each of the eight chapter posts I would love to read your thoughts, insights, questions and feelings in the comment section. In the final blog post I’ll summarise the journey that we took together, exploring this wonderful novel. 

Taking it one chapter at the time allows us to pay attention to details such as the structure, references and characterization that make Eugene Onegin the masterpiece that it is. Your comments will be a valuable addition to the posts.

The details 

I’ll mainly use the James E. Falen translation. I think that it captures the cheerful and witty spirit of Pushkin really well. There is an audiobook version of this translation read by the marvellous Stephen Fry, which can be found on YouTube. I recommend that you use a translation that has plenty of notes. Sunday next week I’ll publish the introduction to Eugene Onegin, and Sunday in two weeks the first chapter post. After that I aim to publish a chapter post every two weeks. At the end of the series you’ll be able to not just say that you’ve read Eugene Onegin (again), but hopefully also that you love it (even more)!

Finally I’d like to emphasise that everyone is welcome to join at any time, and read at his or her own pace. The journey is more important than the destination, so enjoy it!

*****

Eugene Onegin – Alexander Pushkin, translated by James E. Falen, ISBN 978-0199538645

Text and photos © Elisabeth van der Meer