Eugene Onegin. Pushkin's illustration. With a few strokes of the pen, the type, character is conveyed and a hint of Byron is made. Only a person with all the makings of a professional artist can draw like that.
"Eugene Onegin", Pushkin's main work, is a poem about nothing. A young nobleman goes to the estate, the daughter of a neighbor landowner falls in love with him. The nobleman is indifferent to her. Out of boredom, he kills a friend in a duel and leaves for the city. A few years later he meets a rejected girl, this is now the young wife of a wealthy man. The hero tries to court her, but is refused. All.
It is not interesting. Not just uninteresting, but mockingly uninteresting. This is the plot of "Count Nulin" and "The House in Kolomna" - elegant jokes, from the point of view of the content of the components with "Eugene Onegin" a kind of triptych. "Vanka is at home - Manka is not, Manka is at home - Vanka is not." But "Onegin" is a whole book, and "Nulin" and "House" together do not make even one chapter of the poem.
Even such an empty plot in Pushkin falls apart. The duel scene is unmotivated, it is the same insertion as the battle scene in Poltava, and even worse - the murder of Lensky should lead to the development of Onegin's character (the positive hero turns into a negative one), but this is not to tears. The author continues to admire "his Eugene".
Byron as a romantic poet. The real Byron resembled him just as Pushkin resembled Eugene Onegin.
Obviously, "Eugene Onegin" was written in imitation of Byron's "Don Juan", and from the point of view of the author's "I", the ironic style of narration and numerous digressions, this is undoubtedly true. But try to compare the content of two poems and you will start laughing in two minutes.
The action of Don Juan begins in Spain in the mid-18th century. The protagonist, almost a child, becomes the lover of his mother's friend, and, caught by her husband in the bedroom, flees on a ship to Italy. The ship crashes, the passengers and crew perish, and the young Don Juan is thrown onto a deserted shore. He is found there by the beautiful Hyde, the daughter of a Greek pirate, and falls in love. But soon their father discovers them, captivates Don Juan and takes them to Constantinople to the slave market. The girl is dying of boredom. In Constantinople, the hero of the poem changes into a woman's dress and ends up in the Sultan's harem, where he falls in love with the beautiful Georgian woman Duda. Exposed, he, together with a fellow sufferer, an English officer, fled to Izmail, where Suvorov was conducting military operations against the Turks. Don Juan shows miracles of heroism, saves a five-year-old Turkish girl from the clutches of angry Cossacks, receives a Russian order and is sent by Suvorov to St. Petersburg with a victorious report. Here he, it was, becomes Catherine's favorite, but soon leaves for London as a Russian envoy.
Illustration for "Don Juan". Favorite scene of the English: decide who is.
A young man is found on the shore by charming Greek women. Somewhere about it already wrote, and for a long time.
By the absence of events, "Eugene Onegin" is similar to Byron's comic poem "Beppo". The action of the poem takes place in Venice, a noble townswoman's husband disappears without a trace, she finds herself a permanent lover. But many years pass, and the husband appears in the form of a Turkish merchant. It turns out he was kidnapped by pirates, he converted to Islam, got rich and fled. As if nothing had happened, his wife begins to flirt with him, asking if he has a harem, if an oriental robe interferes with him, etc. The "merchant" shaves off his beard and becomes her husband again. And a friend of a lover. At the same time, all adventures remain behind the scenes. Tru-la-la.
But “Beppo”, like “The House in Kolomna”, is a very small thing, and Byron never attached serious importance to it (which would be strange).
There is a whole trend among Pushkin's illustrators that imitates the poet's sketches. The beginning of this tradition was laid by the artist Nikolai Vasilievich Kuzmin, whose illustrations for "Eugene Onegin" were awarded a gold medal at the world exhibition in Paris in 1937.
Some consolation to the literary criticism of "Eugene Onegin" could serve as a satirical orientation of the poem. But neither is she. Also to tears. Byron's Don Juan, as it was written, began to degenerate into a satirical work - when the story reached the shores of the author's foggy homeland. That is, at the moment at which I stopped the retelling of the content of the poem above. After that, the development of the plot slows down, and the author begins to itch:
“There were two talented lawyers here,
Irish and Scottish by birth, -
Very learned and very eloquent.
Tweed's son was Cato by courtesy;
Erin's son - with the soul of an idealist:
Like a brave horse, in a fit of inspiration
He reared up and "carried" something,
When the potato question came up.
The Scot spoke wisely and decorously;
The Irishman was dreamy and wild:
Sublime, whimsical, picturesque
His enthusiastic language sounded.
The Scot was like harpsichords;
The Irishman is like a rushing spring,
It rang, always disturbing and beautiful,
Aeolian harp sweet-voiced.
There is no "potato question" and polemics between the Baltic Germans and crests in "Eugene Onegin". Even at the very beginning of work on the poem, Pushkin wrote to one of his correspondents:
“No one respects Don Juan more than me… but it has nothing in common with Onegin. You talk about the satire of the Englishman Byron and compare it with mine, and demand the same from me! No, my soul, you want a lot. Where is my satire? there is no mention of her in "Eugene Onegin". My embankment would crackle if I touched satire. The very word "satirical" should not be in the preface.
(“Embankment” is the center of St. Petersburg, that is, the Winter Palace and the government. The word “satirical” is present in the preface, anonymously written by Pushkin himself, but in quotation marks of irony - see below.)
In this context, Belinsky declared (8 years after Pushkin's death) that "Eugene Onegin" is an "encyclopedia of Russian life":
“In his poem, he was able to touch on so many things, to hint about so many things, that he belongs exclusively to the world of Russian nature, to the world of Russian society! "Onegin" can be called an encyclopedia of Russian life and an eminently folk work.
"Encyclopedia of hints" - strong word! The famous "eleven articles on the writings of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin" are very detailed and endlessly fragmented philosophies of a village teacher. It is not clear “why and who needs this”, because the vocation of village teachers is to teach village children, and manuals for village teachers are written by city professors, but Belinsky is not such a fool. In his articles one can find (if desired) some common sense, especially when he writes about his own, rural. But the long-winded and childishly meticulous author does not confirm his thesis “about the encyclopedia”.
However, the "encyclopedia" was very liked by the Russian "critical mass" and went into growth like a dough.
Another amazing fragment from Belinsky's articles:
“Pushkin’s great feat was that he was the first in his novel to poetically reproduce the Russian society of that time and, in the person of Onegin and Lensky, showed its main, that is, the male side; but the feat of our poet is almost higher in that he was the first to poetically reproduce, in the person of Tatyana, a Russian woman.
Such monumentality is reminiscent of the beginning of the “Green Book” of the tragically deceased Arab enlightener: “A man is a man. A woman is also a person.
In fact, there is not only little action in Onegin, but the descriptions of this action are conditional and literary. Not only does the "encyclopedia" consist of five pages, not only are these pages filled not with articles, but with "hints", it is also "non-Russian".
Nabokov, in his commentary on Eugene Onegin, writes:
“We are not at all a “picture of Russian life”, at best, it is a picture depicting a small group of Russian people living in the second decade of the 19th century, having similarities with the more obvious characters of Western European novels and placed in a stylized Russia, which will immediately fall apart , if the French props are removed and if the French scribes of English and German authors stop suggesting words to Russian-speaking heroes and heroines. Paradoxically, from the point of view of the translator, the only essential Russian element of the novel is precisely the speech, the language of Pushkin, flowing in waves and breaking through the poetic melody, the like of which Russia has not yet known.
And elsewhere in the same comments:
“Russian critics… in a little over a century have accumulated the most boring heap of comments in the history of civilized mankind… thousands of pages were devoted to Onegin as a representative of something (he is both a typical “extra person”, and a metaphysical “dandy”, etc.)… And here is an image borrowed from books, but brilliantly rethought by a great poet, for whom life and a book were one, and placed by this poet in a brilliantly recreated environment, and played by this poet in a whole series of compositional situations - lyrical transformations, brilliant foolishness, literary parodies and etc., - is given out by Russian pedants (Nabokov probably meant to say "gelerters") for a sociological and historical phenomenon characteristic of the reign of Alexander I.
The problem (PROBLEM) of Belinsky is that he is not a writer. The basis of national literary criticism is the opinions of writers about each other, and, above all, the opinions of outstanding writers about each other. This is also followed by memoir literature (15%) and 15% of the work of textual critics and historians (which, at the very least, critics can be). As soon as critics close in on each other, they replace meaningful conversation with the production of ideological constructs. It's not that unnecessary, but simply "not there."
In the Russian history of literature, you will see many statements by Belinsky, Pisarev, Dobrolyubov, and so on, about writers, but very few statements by Pushkin, Gogol, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and so on. about each other. Obviously, this is not about that.
To this we can add that a much more interesting fact is not the statements of critics about professionals, but the statements of professionals about critics. Regarding Belinsky, Pushkin remarked through his teeth:
“If with independence of opinion and with his wit he would combine more learning, more erudition, more respect for tradition, more circumspection - in a word, more maturity, then we would have a very remarkable criticism in him.”
Belinsky, not being a writer, did not understand the compositional and stylistic tasks facing professional writers. For example, the fact that the “spleen”, “spleen” of the protagonist is a very beneficial literary device that allows you to make arbitrary movements of the character across the space of the work. Why did Chichikov travel around the province and meet with the landowners? He had a business - he bought up dead souls. But the simplest "case" is idleness and boredom. Chichikov could meet with Nozdrev, Sobakevich and Plyushkin (and thus give the reader the same periodic system of human types) "just like that." Not much would have changed.
Under the boredom of Onegin, the basis of the “superfluous person” was summed up, who did not find a worthy application for himself in tsarist Russia. And why did you miss the "London dandy"? After all, England had a constitutional monarchy and a parliament.
Maybe it's just a "bored male", which, in fact, is conveyed by the then euphemisms "secular lion" and "secular tiger". And a Russian proverb about a cat and eggs.
It must be said that Nabokov talks quite a lot in his comments about the shortcomings of Pushkin's "hallocentrism", which leads to the fact that our poet looked at Byron's work through the cloudy glasses of mediocre translations.
But Pushkin's shortcoming in this case was also a virtue. Nabokov's Anglocentrism was normal in the era of the Anglo-French interwar, and provided a bonus in the era of post-war Anglo-Saxon dominance. But the world of Pushkin AND BYRON is equally gallocentric. If Nabokov sneers at Pushkin's ignorance of German and English, which forced him to read French translations, then the English and German authors of that time themselves, in turn, were colossally dependent on French literature.
Mentioning the "spleen" in his Don Juan, Byron immediately refers to the French origin of the term.
“So the men went hunting.
Hunting at a young age is ecstasy
And later - a sure remedy for spleen,
Idleness made it easier more than once.
French "ennui" ("boredom" - approx.) Not without a reason
So it took root in Britain with us;
Found a name in France
The yawns of our boring suffering.
So, what is the famous English spleen? Nothing but a PHYSICAL imitation of the insufficiently cultured islanders of the LITERARY RECEPTION of the developed French civilization.
Byron as a character in a French novel.
Or, - why be trifles, - Apollo. Oh, those little peoples! (In 1800, there were less than 9 million English people and they grew by leaps and bounds.)
But this is closer to the topic. Although here the red-faced esquire still tried to maintain an interesting pallor, and the features of obvious alcohol degradation were softened as much as possible.
In his youth, before the period of alcoholic maturity, Byron was a lame-footed, absent-minded student with a somewhat stupid face. Which, of course, does not detract from his poetic gift, as well as the miserable appearance of Alexander Sergeevich.
If the Georgians have been world chess champions among women for a long time, then the British have won a place among the trendsetters - for men. At the same time, the English "Coco Chanel" Handsome Brummel, whom the British still admire, was a syphilitic with a sunken nose and cleaned his boots with champagne.
In the same way, Byron's personal life is an imitation of the highly talented but also undereducated English botanist of the adventures of the main characters of contemporary French novels. But Benjamin Constant, for all his declared autobiography, did not look like the protagonist of his "Adolf", and in the same way Chateaubriand did not look like the hero of "Rene". The writer very rarely dances naked in the moonlight, although he constantly describes such dances in his works. Pushkin, following Byron, began to dance the hips, but quickly stopped - because he was more cultured, that is, in this case, he knew the culture of France better and felt it better.
Village teachers, in general, say the right things. Once such a teacher invented bis logarithmic tables. Eugene Onegin really was an "extra person", being the alter ego of an "extra poet" - Alexander Pushkin.
What is the reason for writing this work? What did the author mean by this? Nabokov believes that the reason is in the immanent properties of Pushkin's genius - but this is not a cause, but a consequence. Pushkin solved the artistic problem in the way he could solve it. The question is why this task was set.
With "Eugene Onegin" Pushkin sat on the floor and began to run his finger over his lips: blah blah, blah blah.
And it was done on purpose. Pushkin began to write specifically about nothing. The “House in Kolomna” and “Count Nulin” were written in the same way, and with the same IDEOLOGICAL pathos.
The meaning of "Onegin" is revealed in a rough draft of the preface to the first chapter. Pushkin writes:
“Let us be allowed to draw the attention of the most respectable public and gentlemen of journalists to a dignity that is still new in a satirical writer: the observation of strict decency in a comic description of morals. Juvenal, Petronius, Voltaire and Byron - not infrequently did not retain due respect for the reader and for the fair sex. They say that our ladies are beginning to read Russian. - We boldly offer them a work where they will find true and entertaining observations under a light veil of satirical gaiety. Another merit, almost equally important, which brings no small credit to our author's gentleness of heart, is the complete absence of offensive transition to personalities. For this should not be attributed solely to the paternal vigilance of our censorship, the guardian of morals, state tranquility, no matter how carefully guarding citizens from the attack of the ingenuous slander of mocking frivolity ... "
“Several songs or chapters of “Eugene Onegin” are already ready. Written under the influence of favorable circumstances, they bear the imprint of cheerfulness ... "
"Favorable Circumstances" is a reference that had an excellent effect on the good-naturedness of the author, who wrote a light, decent work that can be safely recommended to wives and daughters (a paraphrase of Piron's remark, made by him sincerely, but sounding mockingly in the mouth of a pornographic poet, about which Pushkin later wrote in one of the notes).
In other words, "Eugene Onegin" is a trifle for censorship, which is the only one able to allow such things to go into print, as well as a harsh and shrill, but still an apology from a teenager. This is a "correction" of Pushkin, who was exiled to the South for political epigrams, about which he speaks with foolishness in the draft of the preface.
Men's fashion of the Pushkin era. Its legislators were of course not the British, but the French. The British at the beginning of the 19th century carved out only a certain sector for themselves, and so far they have not advanced further than this ghetto. Which is also not bad - Russians or Germans do not have this either.
Probably in such a case, everything would have been limited to one or two or three chapters, but Pushkin (and the public) liked it, and he wrote a great work. In general, the best of what they wrote.
And it didn't happen by accident either. Pushkin felt that the storyline was not very important for his poem. Moreover, due to the imitative nature of the work, it only interferes, for it turns free variations into dull rewriting (INEVITABLE at that level of Russian literary culture).
Oddly enough, it is the lack of action that makes Onegin so interesting to read. Imagine that the whole poem is written in the style of the destroyed "tenth chapter" (preserved in fragments). There it is smartly, witty and boldly written about history and politics, but this is mortal longing. (I believe that Alexander Sergeevich fully understood that the British humor of Byron and Stern would inevitably be replaced on Russian soil by furious rhymes.)
"Uninteresting plot" only enhances the true interest of Pushkin's main work. These are "cubes of the Russian language." Only these are not cubes for children, consisting of letters and syllables, but cubes for teenagers and even adults - cubes of phrases, feelings, comparisons, rhymes. "Eugene Onegin" is the Iliad of the Russian literary language, what the modern Russian language is made of. Reading "Onegin", memorizing it by heart is a real pleasure.
"More cupids, devils, snakes
They jump and make noise on the stage;
More tired lackeys
They sleep on fur coats at the entrance;
Haven't stopped stomping yet
Blow your nose, cough, hiss, clap;
Still outside and inside
Lanterns are shining everywhere;
Still, vegetating, the horses are fighting,
Bored with your harness,
And the coachmen, around the lights,
Scold the gentlemen and beat in the palm -
And Onegin went out;
He's going home to get dressed."
All this is spoken, thought through, felt, seen and heard (correct the mistake in the verb yourself). Imagine that you do not know the Russian language and suddenly you are given an injection of its perfect knowledge. And you begin to speak Russian, hear and understand Russian speech. Feel its phonetics, rhythm, style. Or some mind was given a human body, and it starts hissing, clapping, jumping, stomping and jumping on one leg - everything is so cool, dexterous and unusual. That is why the study of "Eugene Onegin" is the pinnacle of foreign knowledge of the Russian language, and that is why foreigners who have mastered the Russian language rejoice in "Eugene Onegin" so much.
There are a lot of illustrations for "Eugene Onegin", and what happens quite rarely, there are many successful ones among them. This is a drawing by Samokish-Sudkovskaya, an artist of the late 19th century. She was reproached for being "excessive prettiness", but "Onegin" is to a large extent REALLY a women's novel and women's illustrations are quite appropriate here. A thought that would infuriate Nabokov (a teacher of literature at a women's college).
And of course, why "Eugene Onegin" in translation is completely incomprehensible. This should be asked of the eccentric Nabokov. Of course, it was very interesting for a bilingual prose writer and poet to translate, this is clear. But then ... Nobody read the Nabokov translation - like everyone else.
But there is something else in Onegin. Otherwise, Russian culture would be bent and ached in Croatia or Poland. This is the "other" quality that I drew attention to when speaking about the structure of Pushkin's "Monument": PHILOLOGICAL EXCESSENCE.
Even the first lines of "Eugene Onegin" for a complete understanding require comments on several pages.
"My uncle of the most honest rules,
When I fell ill in earnest,
He forced himself to respect
And I couldn't think of a better one."
The first line is a hidden quote from Krylov's fable "The Donkey and the Man": "The donkey had the most honest rules." The donkey, hired to guard the cabbage in the garden, did not touch it, but chasing the crows, crushed it with its hooves. That is, uncle is an honest fool, a simpleton.
(Sometimes it is believed that the expression “I forced myself to respect” is not only Gallicism, but also a euphemism meaning death: “I forced everyone to stand up”, “I forced me to take off my hat”, “I forced me to honor my memory.” This is not true, since at the end of the chapter indicates that Onegin is going to a dying, but not yet dead relative.)
In addition, the entire quatrain is a direct imitation of the first chapter of Don Juan, which refers to the protagonist's uncle:
“The late Don José was a nice fellow…
He died without leaving a will
And Juan became the heir to everything ... "
The beginning of "Eugene Onegin" is zakovykanny, this is a transfer not even of words, but of the thoughts of the protagonist:
"Thus thought the young rake,
Flying in the dust on postage,
By the will of Zeus
Heir to all his relatives."
But a strange thing, if you do not know the philological context of the first quatrain, it will of course be read incorrectly, but this still will not affect the general meaning.
If you know the context, Pushkin wrote: “Yevgeny believes that his uncle is a straightforward fool, who foolishly (that is, suddenly) fell ill with a fatal illness and gave hope for an early inheritance.
If you don’t know the context, then the following is written: “Eugene considers his uncle a highly moral person who demands the same high qualities from relatives and makes them take care of their health.”
The continuation of the stanza puts everything in its place in both cases:
“His example to others is science;
But my god, what a bore
With the sick to sit day and night,
Not leaving a single step away!
What low deceit
Amuse the half-dead
Fix his pillows
Sad to give medicine
Sigh and think to yourself:
When will the devil take you!
Both the "bad uncle" and the "good uncle" infuriate the nephew equally.
And here is an illustration that Alexander Sergeevich would undoubtedly like very much. After all, this is his 3D sketch of Onegin.
The first stanza of "Eugene Onegin" imitates the poems of Byron, but at the same time relies on the national tradition (still very frail). It is also ambiguous, but this ambiguity spares the inattentive reader.
The whole poem is written in a similar vein. Commentaries (underlined incomplete) Nabokov to this work amounted to a thousand pages. This piece is intricate and very well thought out. Dreams and predictions of Tatyana foresee the further development of the plot, the scene of the murder of Lensky and the last meeting of Onegin with Tatyana take place as if in a dream (in a parallel reality). Tatyana's firm "no" does not look at all as firm as it seems, and of course, in general, "Onegin" is the same super-literary work as Cervantes' "Don Quixote", all built on allusions to a huge layer of chivalric novels. In this case, these are love stories of the 18th and early 19th centuries.
From the point of view of a literary critic, "Eugene Onegin" is an unthinkable synthesis of borrowings and originality. This is the devil's box...
"Eugene Onegin" creates the illusion of a huge literary tradition. Starting from THIS starting point, the Russians AS LIKE began their serious literature not from the beginning of the 19th century, but at least a hundred years earlier. Pushkin destroyed the cultural odds of the Europeans. Whereas the real tradition - and "tradition" is primarily a living fabric of literary controversy - arose after the death of Pushkin.
Thanks to this strange circumstance, Russian culture turns out to be autonomous (circular). She can grow on her own. At the beginning of the 20th century, it was brushed off the planet, and at the end of the 20th, the crumbs also disappeared - as if it were not there. What has changed in the world? Nothing. In eternity, everything that was Russian, of course, remained. But living life...
And what would have happened if in 1917 the entire Western civilization had been wiped off the planet? And also nothing - the Russians would have had enough of themselves to continue to exist. There would be no degeneration. Even the destruction after 1917 took the Russians three generations of humiliation and murder to finally shut up.
Such completeness and autonomy is already contained in Pushkin (of course, in a potential form). By the way, some segments of his world did not turn around further, having dried up.
In conclusion of this chapter, I would advise reading "Eugene Onegin" to those who did not read it in adulthood or did not learn at least a few stanzas in childhood.
First, you will see the language you speak in its virginal purity. This language was created by Pushkin, and "Eugene Onegin" is the main work of the poet and the work, to the maximum extent, served as the basis of modern Russian vocabulary.
Secondly, - especially for people prone to intellectual abstractions - you will see how easily and how perfectly in our language it is possible to speak two-, three-, and even four-meanings, revealing gradually, and maybe never, but not disrupting the general train of thought.
Comparing La Fontaine (a fabulist, not a prose writer) with Krylov, Pushkin noted that despite the fact that, of course, Krylov imitates the famous Frenchman, there is a significant difference between them. La Fontaine, like all Frenchmen, is simple-hearted (straightforward, clear), and Krylov, like all Russians, has a "merry cunning of the mind."
Or, as the seminarian Klyuchevsky rudely said, both Great Russians and Ukrainians are deceivers. Only Ukrainians like to pretend to be smart, and Russians are fools.
In the end, the first graduation of the Alexander Lyceum produced two great people: the great poet Alexander Pushkin and the great diplomat Alexander Gorchakov.
Gorchakov. Pushkin's drawing.
The action in the work takes place from 1819 to 1825. The novel opens with a dedication to Pletnev. This is followed by the first chapter, beginning with Onegin's lamentations that he had to go to the village to a seriously ill uncle in order to care for him, show participation, and think for himself: "when the devil takes you."
Onegin at the beginning of the novel is a young rake, a handsome man, a "dandy". He received a typical noble upbringing and education, studied a little of everything, spoke excellent French, "knew how to dance a mazurka and bowed at ease." The hero is especially skilled in the "science of tender passion", he skillfully flirted, attended balls, theaters, restaurants. The day was scheduled by the hour, but all the time was occupied by social events, which soon bored the young man. We continue the summary of "Eugene Onegin" by Pushkin.
Eugene Onegin in the countryside
He comes to the village, no longer finds his uncle alive and decides that nature and a new way of life will help dispel boredom. But after three days he gets bored with the village. Onegin mopes, reads books, does not maintain relations with neighbors, as he is tired of their "prudent conversation about haymaking, about wine, about the kennel, about his relatives."
At the same time, Vladimir Lensky, an eighteen-year-old poet, a romantic dreamer who graduated from the University of Göttingen, arrives at his estate. He believes in love, in friendship, in the happiness of life, although he composes typically romantic poems about melancholy and withering.
Onegin and Lensky became friends, while they were completely different. They often come together, argue, talk, share their thoughts. Lensky tells a friend about his beloved Olga, the daughter of a neighbor, Larina.
One day, friends go on a visit to the Larins. On the way back, Onegin tells Lensky that the older sister Tatyana is more interesting than the younger, because Olga is beautiful, but ordinary, like an ordinary heroine of a novel. Lensky is offended. Summary of "Eugene Onegin" by Pushkin is presented by the literary portal site
The love affair gets complicated
Young people do not suspect that Tatyana is in love with Onegin. She suffers, does not sleep at night, confesses everything to an old nanny. She tells her about her fate, remembers her husband, mother-in-law and a difficult life. Tatyana decides to write to Onegin and confess her feelings. Her letter is reminiscent of romantic confessions from the sentimental novels of the XVIII, which the girl loved. The beloved appears as a kind of ideal that Tatyana was waiting for and immediately felt in her heart that it was he who was destined for her by fate. Having sent a letter, she waits a long time for an answer, she is tormented, but Onegin does not write to her.
Pushkin talks about Tatyana's unusualness, her love for solitude, reading books, and Russian nature. She especially liked winter, fortune-telling, rituals, fairy tales and terrible stories of the nanny on long winter evenings. Tatyana with her Russian soul is the author's "sweet ideal".
Finally Onegin arrives and an explanation takes place in the garden. The hero was tempted in female love, but did not want to deceive Tatyana, seeing in her letter the sincerity of first love. Therefore, he honestly admits that he is not ready to share her feelings, family life is not for him at all and gives advice to continue to be more careful, not to speak so frankly about his feelings.
Soon Tatyana has a terrible dream where she sees herself in the forest, a bear is chasing her, and then she is overtaken and carried to a hut in which monsters sit, and Onegin presides between them. He takes Tatyana, at this moment Lensky and Olga enter, Onegin does not like the appearance of uninvited guests, he kills the young poet. The dream turns out to be real.
Then the name day of the main character is depicted. Prior to this, Lensky invites Onegin to a holiday with the Larins, promising that there will be no other guests there. However, many landlord neighbors come to the house. Eugene is angry and wants to take revenge on Lensky. To do this, he several times invites Olga to dance, causing the jealousy of her lover. Vladimir decides that his friend wants to seduce Olga. In the end, in the evening, Onegin receives a challenge to a duel and accepts it.
Duel and final - a summary of "Eugene Onegin"
Before the duel, the hero thinks that it would be more correct to tell Lensky about his offense and make peace with him, but does not do this, fearing to be branded a coward. Lensky, before the fateful event, reflects on the uncertainty of the "day to come" and on Olga's love.
The next morning, Onegin comes to the duel much later than the appointed time, but the duel took place, and Lensky was killed. Shocked Onegin leaves these places.
Six months pass, Olga marries a lancer and leaves. Tatyana wanders around the surrounding fields and accidentally comes to Onegin's house. There, in his office, she reads books, sees what marks their owner left in the margins and concludes that Onegin is just an imitation of the fashionable type of Byronic hero. After a while, her mother persuades her to go to Moscow to the “bride fair”. There she is noticed by an important general, she is getting married.
A few years later, Onegin returns from a trip to St. Petersburg. At the ball, he meets Tatyana and does not immediately recognize: she has changed, has become a majestic, calm secular lady, causing universal respect and reverence. The author notes that Tatyana's unusual charm conquers Onegin, he falls in love and confesses his feelings to her in a letter. Having received no answer, he sends two more messages, but in vain. Then Onegin comes to Tatyana and finds the crying heroine reading a letter. Tatyana says that she loves Onegin, but "she has been given to another" and will be "faithful to him for a century."
You have read the summary of the novel "Eugene Onegin" by Pushkin. We invite you to visit the Summary section for other essays by popular writers.
What should everyone know about the famous novel in verse by Alexander Pushkin?
Text: Evgenia Vovchenko, Artem Novichenkov, writer, teacher of the course "School Literature"
Photo: play "Eugene Onegin" by the Vakhtangov Theatre. Director: Rimas Tuminas/vachtangova.ru.
"Eugene Onegin" by Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin is one of the most classic (if I may say so) works. Even those who have not mastered this novel in verse in its entirety are aware of all the events, because they certainly watched at least one of the adaptations, and possibly went to the theater. In extreme cases, you can always read a summary, and the fact that it is in prose is even more convenient. But to quote: “My uncle of the most honest rules…” or "I'm writing to you - why more?" everyone can. Because to admit in a decent society that you have not read or read, but forgot "Eugene Onegin", seems simply indecent. Therefore, the Year of Literature.RF, together with the YES TO READING literature educational project, decided to remind you of 10 facts about Eugene Onegin that will make you feel like an educated person in any society. And schoolchildren will be able to test their knowledge and find out if they are so well prepared for the upcoming
1.
"Eugene Onegin" was written for
7 years, 4 months and 17 days.
2.
The work was not published immediately, but partially, chapter by chapter.
Pushkin did not hide the fact that, among other things, this was explained by economic benefits.
The chapters were published as separate books, and then intertwined. 
3.
The name "Eugene Onegin" tells the reader - a contemporary of Pushkin, that
the hero, whose name is indicated in the title of the book, could not possibly be real.
It consists of the following: Eugene Onegin is a nobleman. But the name of a real nobleman could be associated with the river only if the entire river was in his possession. It is difficult to imagine the sole ownership of Onega.
Similarly with the surname of Vladimir Lensky. 
4.
Interestingly, when he started writing the first chapters, he did not have a general idea in his head. He lined up in the course of writing. And despite this, all the storylines seem to be arithmetically calculated and connected into a single whole. 
5.
In the first chapters, real people appeared from the environment of the young Pushkin. Mostly theater people.
6.
The fifth chapter was played by Pushkin in cards.
(Alexander Sergeevich was an avid gambler and even had a special note with the Moscow police as a well-known banker.) Having lost all the money, Pushkin, in the heat of excitement, tried to win back and put the manuscript of the 5th chapter, which also had a very real value: the publisher paid Pushkin 25 rubles per line! They began to play again, and again Pushkin lost - the manuscript passed to Zagryazhsky. Then Alexander Sergeevich put a box with dueling pistols on the line ... And - luck smiled at him: he won back "Onegin", his money loss, and even "pinched" his playing partner for a thousand and a half!
True, Pushkin himself categorically denied the fact of losing the manuscript, assuring that he "paid with copies of the book." 
7.
Pushkin himself had 20 duels to his credit.
What is curious: the last duel, with Dantes, took place for the same reason as Onegin had with Lensky - however, in a rather general sense. On the other hand, the poet, unfortunately, foresaw the technical details of his own death quite accurately: Dantes, like Onegin, fired without reaching the barrier, while Pushkin, like Lensky, was only aiming. And one more coincidence: Onegin and Dantes at that moment were 25 years old each. 
8.
The lines about the burial place of Lensky make it clear that Lensky is not buried in the cemetery. Because
duels were banned, his death was most likely presented as a suicide,
to avoid scandal, and buried outside the cemetery.
“There is a place: to the left of the village,
Where did the pet of inspiration live,
Two pines have grown together with their roots;
Beneath them the trickles meandered
Creek of the neighboring valley.
There the plowman likes to rest,
And plunge the reapers into the waves
Ringing jugs come;
There by the stream in the thick shade
A simple monument has been erected."
9.
Pushkin, wanting to give the work a more finished look, initially wanted to either send Eugene Onegin to fight in the Caucasus, or turn him into a Decembrist. However, in the end, he allowed the reader to think out the ending.
10.
And why is Eugene Onegin still an encyclopedia of Russian life?
In the novel, as in the encyclopedia, you can learn everything about the era: about how they dressed and what was in fashion, what people valued most, what they talked about, what interests they lived. Briefly, but quite clearly, the author showed the fortress village, the lordly Moscow, secular St. Petersburg. "Eugene Onegin" reflected the whole of Russian life. 
If you want to know more, come to the educational courses of the YES TO READING project. All the details in the groups of the project in social networks.
Year of publication of the book: 1825
Pushkin's novel "Eugene Onegin" is one of the most significant works in the work of the Russian poet. It took Pushkin more than seven years to write it, and the publication of this novel in verse took place one chapter at a time. The first chapter of the novel "Eugene Onegin" was published in 1825, and the full work was published only in 1933. Since then, the work has been reprinted more than once in more than 20 languages of the world, and the novel "Eugene Onegin" itself has become one of the most significant works in world literature. Therefore, it is not at all surprising that the author of the novel occupies the highest place in our rating, and his works are presented in many in the ratings of our site.
Subsequently, the protagonist of the novel "Eugene Onegin" leaves for Europe, and Olga soon gets married. Only the image of Tatyana in the novel remains unchanged. She refuses all suitors and, in search of a party for her daughter, her parents take her to St. Petersburg. Here she becomes an impregnable socialite. At the same time, Eugene Onegin returns to St. Petersburg. He is still full of blues, but at one of the balls he is again introduced to Tatiana. Now he falls in love with her and asks for her attention. But she is cold. And only once having called Tatiana to frankness, Onegin finds out that she still loves him, but she is given to another and will be faithful to him. This is where the novel ends.
The novel "Eugene Onegin" on the Top Books website
Despite the years, the novel "Eugene Onegin" is still popular to read. In many ways, schoolchildren also contribute to the popularization of the work, for whom "Eugene Onegin" should be read according to the school curriculum. In addition, they write essays based on the novel "Eugene Onegin". All these factors, combined with the genius of the work, allowed the novel to take first place in our rating. In addition, quite legitimately, the novel "Eugene Onegin" occupies the highest place in our ranking. At the same time, the positions of the novel are quite stable, which is typical for truly iconic works.
You can read the novel "Eugene Onegin" online on the Top Books website.
Eugene Onegin ”- a novel written by Pushkin, is one of the cult Russian works that has gained worldwide fame and has been translated into many languages. It is also one of the novels written in poetic form, which gives it a special style and attitude to the work of a wide range of readers, who often quote passages by heart, remembering them from school.
Alexander Sergeevich spent about seven years to complete the narrative line. He begins work on the first stanzas at the beginning of May 23, settling in the territory of Chisinau and finishing the last stanzas of the work on September 25, 1830 in Boldino.
ChapterI
Pushkin begins to create a poetic work in Chisinau on May 9, 1823. Finishes it in the same year on October 22 in Odessa. Then the author revised what was written, so the chapter was published only in 1825, and the second edition was published at the end of March 1829, when the book was actually completed.
ChapterII
The poet begins the second chapter as soon as the first one has been completed. By November 3, the first 17 stanzas were written, and on December 8 it was completed and included 39. In 1824, the author revised the chapter and added new stanzas, it was released only in 1826, but with a special indication of when it was written. In 1830 it was published in another edition.
ChapterIII
Pushkin begins writing the passage on February 8, 1824 in the resort Odessa, and by June he managed to finish writing to the place where Tatyana writes a letter to her lover. The rest he creates in his beloved Mikhailovsky and finished on October 2, 1824, the publication came out in mid-October of the twenty-seventh year.
ChapterIV
In October 1824, while in Mikhailovsky, the poet begins to write another chapter, which stretches out for a couple of years, due to other creative ideas. This happened due to the fact that the author during this time worked on such works as "Boris Godunov" and "Count Nikulin". The author finished work on the chapter already on January 6, 1826, at this moment the author is finishing the last stanza.
ChapterV
The author begins the fifth chapter a few days before he finished the previous one. But writing took time, as it was created with significant interruptions in creativity. On November 22, 1826, Alexander Sergeevich finished this part of the story, and after that it was edited several times until the finished version was obtained.
The edition was combined with the previous part of the narrative and printed on the last day of January 1828.
ChapterVI
Alexander Sergeevich began to create an excerpt from the work while in Mikhailovsky during 1826. There are no exact dates of writing, as the original manuscripts have not survived. According to assumptions, he finished it in August 1827, and in 1828 it was published for a wide range of readers.
ChapterVII
According to critics, the seventh chapter was started immediately after the writing of the sixth. So around August 1827. The narrative itself was written with long breaks in creativity, and by mid-February 1828, only 12 stanzas had been created. The chapter was completed in Malinniki, and after that it was published as a book, but only by mid-March 1830.
ChapterVIII
Started on December 24, 1829 and completed only at the end of September 1830 on the territory of Boldin. On October 5, 1831, on the territory of Tsarskoye Selo, Pushkin writes an excerpt from Onegin's written appeal to his beloved. The chapter was completely published in 1832, and on the cover there is an inscription: "The last chapter of "Eugene Onegin"".
Chapter on Onegin's Journey
Part of the story was not published in a whole novel, but was written, according to the author's assumption, he wanted to place it in eighth place immediately after the seventh chapter, and lead to Onegin's death in the work.
ChapterX(drafts)
Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin planned to release part of the work, but it was never published, and only separate passages and drafts have reached the modern reader. Presumably, the author was going to send the main character on a long journey through the territory of the Caucasus, where he was to be killed.
But the sad ending did not reach the reader, it was already quite tragic, since Eugene himself realized late the feelings that were strong in him, and his beloved had already managed to get married.
A distinctive feature is that all the chapters were published separately, and only then the book was published in full. The society of that time was looking forward to the release of the next passages in order to find out how the fate of Eugene Onegin ended, who could not see sincere feelings in time. Some of the parts never saw the light of day, such as chapter ten. Readers can only guess how the fate of the main characters developed after the end of the book narrative.
The history of the creation of Eugene Onegin briefly
"Eugene Onegin" is the first work written in a realistic direction and the only example of a novel in verse in Russian literature. To this day, it occupies an important place in the multifaceted work of the great Russian poet and writer Alexander Pushkin. The process of writing the work from the first to the last stanzas of the novel took many years. During these years, some of the most important events in the history of the country took place. At the same time, Pushkin was "reborn" into the first realist writer of Russian literature, the old view of reality was being destroyed. This, of course, is reflected in the novel. The plans and tasks of Alexander Pushkin as an author are changing, the compositional construction and plan of Onegin take on a different look, the characters and fates of his heroes lose some part of romanticism.
Alexander Sergeevich worked on the novel for more than seven years. The whole soul of the poet was brought to life in the work. According to the poet himself, the novel was "the fruit of the mind of cold observations and the heart of sad remarks."
Alexander Sergeevich began the process of creating the novel in the spring of 1823 in Kishinev, while in exile. Despite the obvious influence of romanticism, the work is written in a realistic style. The novel was supposed to have nine chapters, but ended up with eight. Fearing long-term persecution by the authorities, the poet destroyed fragments of the chapter "Onegin's Journey", which could become provocative.
The novel in verse was published in editions. This is called the "main edition". Excerpts were published in magazines. Readers eagerly awaited the release of a new chapter. And each of them made a splash in society.
The first complete edition did not appear until 1833. The last lifetime publication occurred in January 1837 and contained the author's corrections and typographical errors. Subsequent editions were subjected to severe criticism and censorship. Names were replaced, spelling was unified.
From the plot of the novel, you can learn almost everything you need about the era in which the acting characters are: characters, conversations, interests, fashion. The author very clearly reflected the life of Russia of that period, life. The atmosphere of the existence of the heroes of the novel is also true. Sometimes the novel is called historical, since in this work the era in which the main plot unfolds is almost thoroughly conveyed. Thus, the well-known Russian literary critic Vissarion Grigoryevich Belinsky wrote: “First of all, in Onegin we see a poetically reproduced picture of Russian society, taken at one of the most interesting moments in its development.” Based on this statement, we can assume that the critic considers the work as historical poem.At the same time, he noted that there was not a single historical figure in the novel.Belinsky believed that the novel was a genuine encyclopedia of Russian life and a truly folk work.
The novel is a unique work of world literature. The entire volume of the work is written in an unusual "Onegin stanza", excluding the letters of Evgeny and Tatyana. Fourteen lines of iambic tetrameter were created by Alexander Sergeevich specifically for writing a novel in verse. The unique combination of stanzas became a hallmark of the work, and later Mikhail Lermontov wrote the poem “The Tambov Treasurer” in 1839 with the “Onegin stanza”.
A truly great work was created by Alexander Pushkin not in the simplest years of his life and the life of the country as a whole, but the novel in verse can rightly be considered a masterpiece not only of Russian, but also of world literature.
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