Composition Pushkin A.S. In Search of a Hidden Meaning: On the Poetics of the Epigraphs in Eugene Onegin P

The role and function of epigraphs in the works of A.S. Pushkin

The epigraph is one of the optional elements of the composition of a literary work. It is precisely because of its optionality that the epigraph, if used, always carries an important semantic load. Taking into account that the epigraph is a type of author's expression, two variants of its use can be distinguished, depending on whether the author's direct statement is present in the work. In one case, the epigraph will be an integral part of the structure of artistic speech, given on behalf of the author. In the other, it is the only element, apart from the title, that clearly expresses the author's point of view. "Eugene Onegin" and "The Captain's Daughter" respectively represent the two indicated cases. Pushkin often used epigraphs. In addition to the works under consideration, we meet with them in Belkin's Tales, The Queen of Spades, Poltava, The Stone Guest, Peter the Great's Moor, Dubrovsky, Egyptian Nights, and The Fountain of Bakhchisarai. The above list of works emphasizes that the epigraphs in Pushkin's works in a certain way "work" towards the formation of meaning. What is the mechanism of this work? What connections does each epigraph have with the text? What does he serve? The answers to these questions will clarify the role of Pushkin's epigraphs. Without this, one cannot count on a serious understanding of his novels and short stories. In The Captain's Daughter, as in Eugene Onegin or Belkin's Tales, we encounter a whole system of epigraphs. They are prefaced to each chapter and to the entire work. Some chapters have multiple epigraphs. Such a system is not uncommon in the literature. This is found, for example, in Stendhal's novel "Red and Black", written approximately at the same time as Pushkin's novels.

Epigraphs in the novel "Eugene Onegin"

In the twenties of the 19th century, the romantic novels of Walter Scott and his many imitators enjoyed great popularity among the Russian public. Byron was especially loved in Russia, whose sublime disappointment effectively contrasted with the motionless domestic everyday life. Romantic works attracted with their unusualness: the characters of the characters, passionate feelings, exotic pictures of nature excited the imagination. And it seemed that on the material of Russian everyday life it was impossible to create a work that could interest the reader.

The appearance of the first chapters of "Eugene Onegin" caused a wide cultural resonance. Pushkin not only depicted a broad panorama of Russian reality, not only recorded the realities of everyday life or social life, but managed to reveal the causes of phenomena, ironically connect them with the peculiarities of the national character and worldview.

Space and time, social and individual consciousness are revealed by the artist in the living facts of reality, illuminated by a lyrical and sometimes ironic look. Pushkin is not characterized by moralizing. The reproduction of social life is free from didactics, and secular customs, theater, balls, inhabitants of estates, details of everyday life are unexpectedly the most interesting subject of research - narrative material that does not pretend to be a poetic generalization. The system of contrasts (Petersburg world - local nobility; patriarchal Moscow - Russian dandy; Onegin - Lensky; Tatyana - Olga, etc.) streamlines the diversity of life reality. Hidden and obvious irony comes through in the description of the landowner's existence. Admiring the "dear old times", the village, which revealed the female ideal to the national world, is inseparable from the mocking characteristics of the Larins' neighbors. The world of everyday worries develops with pictures of fantastic dreams read from books, and miracles of Christmas divination.

The scale and at the same time intimacy of the plot, the unity of epic and lyrical characteristics allowed the author to give an original interpretation of life, its most dramatic conflicts, which were maximally embodied in the image of Eugene Onegin. Contemporary Pushkin's criticism has repeatedly wondered about the literary and social roots of the image of the protagonist. The name of Byron's Child Harold was often heard, but no less common was an indication of domestic origins.

Onegin's Byronism, the disappointment of the character are confirmed by his literary predilections, temperament, views: “What is he? Is it really an imitation, an insignificant ghost, or even a Muscovite in Harold's cloak ... "- Tatyana talks about "the hero of her novel." Herzen wrote that “Pushkin was seen as a successor to Byron,” but “by the end of their life, Pushkin and Byron completely move away from each other,” which is expressed in the specifics of the characters they created: “Onegin is Russian, he is possible only in Russia: there he necessary, and there you meet him at every step ... The image of Onegin is so national that it is found in all novels and poems that receive any recognition in Russia, and not because they wanted to copy it, but because you constantly find it near oneself or in oneself.

Reproduction with encyclopedic completeness of the problems and characters relevant to Russian reality in the 20s of the XIX century is achieved not only by the most detailed depiction of life situations, inclinations, sympathies, moral guidelines, the spiritual world of contemporaries, but also by special aesthetic means and compositional solutions, to the most significant of which are epigraphs. Quotations from familiar and authoritative literary sources open up the opportunity for the author to create a multifaceted image, designed for an organic perception of contextual meanings, playing the role preliminary explanations, a kind of exposition of Pushkin's narrative. The poet assigns a role to a quotation from another text communication mediator.

The choice of a common epigraph to the novel seems not accidental. The epigraphs of "Eugene Onegin" are distinguished by their closeness to the personality of its author. Their literary sources are either the works of contemporary Russian writers who are personally connected with Pushkin, or the works of old and new European authors who were part of his reading circle.

Let us dwell on the connection between the general epigraph and the title of the novel. Epigraph to the novel: “Imbued with vanity, he possessed, moreover, a special pride, which prompts him to admit with equal indifference to his good and bad deeds, as a result of a sense of superiority: perhaps imaginary. From a private letter. The content of the text of the epigraph to "Eugene Onegin" is a direct psychological description, given in the third person. It is natural to attribute it to the main character, whose name the novel is named after. Thus, the epigraph strengthens our focus on Onegin (this is what the title of the novel focuses on), prepares for his perception.

When Pushkin addresses his readers in the second stanza:
Friends of Lyudmila and Ruslan,
With the hero of my novel
Without delay, this time
Let me introduce you -

we already have some idea about it.

Let's move on to a direct analysis of the role of epigraphs before individual chapters of Pushkin's novels.

The first chapter of "Eugene Onegin" begins with a line from P. A. Vyazemsky's poem "The First Snow". This line succinctly expresses the nature of the “social life of a Petersburg young man”, to which the chapter is devoted, indirectly characterizes the hero and generalizes the worldviews and moods inherent in “young ardor”: “And he is in a hurry to live, and he is in a hurry to feel.” Let's read a poem by P.A. Vyazemsky. The hero’s pursuit of life and the transience of sincere feelings are allegorically contained both in the title of the poem “First Snow” and in its content: “A single fleeting day, like a deceptive dream, like a shadow of a ghost, / Flashing away, you take away the inhuman deception!”. The finale of the poem - "And having exhausted feelings, leaves a trace of a faded dream on our lonely hearts ..." - correlates with the spiritual state of Onegin, who "has no more charms." In a deeper understanding the epigraph sets not only the theme, but also the nature of its development . Onegin not only "is in a hurry to feel." It follows that "early the feelings in him cooled down." Through the epigraph, this information turns out to be expected for the prepared reader. It's not the story itself that matters, but what's behind it.

epigraph may highlight part of the text, strengthen its individual elements. Epigraph of the second chapter of "Eugene Onegin" built on a punning comparison of an exclamation taken from Horace's sixth satire with a similar-sounding Russian word. This creates a play on words: "O rus!.. O Rus!". This epigraph highlights the rural part of the novel: Rus' is predominantly a village, the most important part of life takes place there. And here the author's irony about the combination of the motives of European culture and Russian patriarchy clearly sounds. The unchanging world of landowners' estates with a sense of eternal peace and immobility contrasts sharply with the life activity of the hero, who is likened in the first chapter to "the first snow".

In the well-known table of contents for the novel third chapter is called "Lady". The epigraph to this chapter quite accurately represents its character. The French verse taken from the poem "Narcissus" is not accidental here. Let's remember that Tatyana
... didn’t know Russian well,
And expressed with difficulty
In your native language.

Quote from Malfilatr "She was a girl, she was in love" becomes the theme of the third chapter, revealing the inner world of the heroine. Pushkin offers girl's emotional state formula , which will determine the basis of the love vicissitudes not only of this novel, but also of subsequent literature. The author depicts various manifestations of Tatyana's soul, explores the circumstances of the formation of the image, which later became a classic. The heroine of Pushkin opens a gallery of female characters in Russian literature, combining sincerity of feelings with a special purity of thoughts, ideal ideas with the desire to embody themselves in the real world; in this character there is neither excessive passion nor spiritual licentiousness.

“Morality is in the nature of things,” we read before the fourth chapter. Necker's words in Pushkin's set the topic of the chapter. With regard to the situation of Onegin and Tatyana, the statement of the epigraph can be perceived ironically. Irony is an important artistic tool in the hands of Pushkin. "Morality is in the nature of things." Various interpretations of this well-known at the beginning of the 19th century saying are possible. On the one hand, this is a warning of Tatyana's decisive act, but the heroine, in her declaration of love, repeats the pattern of behavior outlined by romantic works. On the other hand, this ethical recommendation, as it were, concentrates the rebuff of Onegin, who uses the date for teaching and is so carried away by didactic rhetoric that Tatyana's love expectations are not destined to come true. The reader's expectations are also not destined to come true: sensuality, romantic vows, happy tears, silent consent expressed by the eyes, etc. All this is deliberately rejected by the author due to the far-fetched sentimentality and literary nature of the conflict. A lecture on moral and ethical topics is seen as more convincing for a person who has an idea about the foundations of the “nature of things”. Projected onto the Pushkin hero, the epigraph to the fourth chapter acquires ironic meaning: morality, which governs the world, is confused with moralizing, which is read in the garden to the young heroine by the “sparkling eyes” hero. Onegin treats Tatyana morally and nobly: he teaches her to "rule herself." Feelings need to be rationally controlled. However, we know that Onegin himself learned this by exercising vigorously in the "science of tender passion." Obviously, morality does not stem from rationality, but from the natural physical limitations of a person: “early feelings in him cooled down” - Onegin became moral involuntarily, due to premature old age, lost the ability to receive pleasure and instead of lessons of love gives moral lessons. This is another possible meaning of the epigraph.

The role of the epigraph to the fifth chapter is explained by Yu. M. Lotman in terms of setting the parallelism of the images of Svetlana Zhukovsky and Tatyana in order to identify differences in their interpretation: “one oriented towards romantic fantasy, a game, the other towards everyday and psychological reality.” In the poetic structure of "Eugene Onegin", Tatyana's dream sets a special metaphorical meaning for assessing the inner world of the heroine and the story itself. The author expands the space of the story to a mythopoetic allegory. Quoting Zhukovsky at the beginning of the fifth chapter - “Oh, don’t know these terrible dreams, you, my Svetlana!”- clearly reveals the association with the work of the predecessor, preparing a dramatic plot. The poetic interpretation of the "wonderful dream" - a symbolic landscape, folklore emblems, open sentimentality - anticipates the tragic inevitability of the destruction of the world familiar to the heroine. The epigraph-warning, carrying out a symbolic allegory, also draws the rich spiritual content of the image. In the composition of the novel, based on the techniques of contrast and parallelism with mirror projections (Tatyana's letter - Onegin's letter; Tatyana's explanation - Onegin's explanation, etc.), there is no opposition to the heroine's dream. The “waking” Onegin is set in the plane of real social existence, his nature is freed from the associative and poetic context. On the contrary, the nature of Tatyana's soul is infinitely diverse and poetic.

The epigraph of the sixth chapter prepares the death of Lensky. The epigraph-epitaph that opens the sixth chapter of the novel - “Where the days are cloudy and short, a tribe will be born that does not hurt to die”, - brings the pathos of “On the Life of the Madonna Laura” by Petrarch to the plot of the romantic Vladimir Lensky, alien to Russian life, who created a different world in the soul, whose difference from others prepares the tragedy of the character. The motives of Petrarch's poetry are necessary for the author to to attach the character to the philosophical tradition of accepting death developed by Western culture , interrupting the short-term life mission of the "singer of love". But Yu. M. Lotman also showed another meaning of this epigraph. Pushkin did not completely take the quote from Petrarch, but released a verse saying that the reason for the lack of fear of death is in the innate militancy of the tribe. With this omission, the epigraph is also applicable to Onegin, who equally risked a duel. The devastated Onegin, perhaps, also "does not hurt to die."

The triple epigraph to the seventh chapter creates a variety of intonations(panegyric, ironic, satirical) storytelling. Dmitriev, Baratynsky, Griboyedov, united by statements about Moscow, represent a variety of assessments of the national symbol. The poetic characteristics of the ancient capital will find development in the plot of the novel, outline the specifics of conflict resolution, and determine the special shades of behavior of the characters.

Epigraph from Byron appeared at the stage of a white manuscript, when Pushkin decided that the eighth chapter will be the last. The theme of the epigraph is farewell.
I ask you to leave me,
Tatyana says to Onegin in the last scene of the novel.
Forgive me and you, my strange companion,
And you, my true ideal,
And you, alive and permanent,
Even if it's a little work,
says the poet. Pushkin devotes the entire forty-ninth stanza to farewell to the reader.
The couplet from Byron's "Poems about Divorce" cycle, chosen as the epigraph of the eighth chapter, is permeated with elegiac moods, metaphorically conveying the author's sadness of farewell to the novel and characters, Onegin's parting with Tatyana.

The aesthetics of epigraphs, along with other artistic solutions of Pushkin, forms the debatable and dialogical potential of the work, colors artistic phenomena in special semantic intonations, and prepares a new scale for the generalization of classical images. final exams. When forming the educational...

Ranchin A. M.

A lot has been written about epigraphs in Pushkin's novel in verse. And yet, the role of epigraphs, their relationship in the text of the chapters is still not completely clear. Let's try, without pretending to the unconditional novelty of interpretations, without hurrying to re-read the novel. The landmarks in this re-reading - a journey through the small and endless space of the text - will be three well-known comments: “Eugene Onegin. A novel by A. S. Pushkin. A manual for secondary school teachers" by N. L. Brodsky (1st ed.: 1932), "A. S. Pushkin's novel "Eugene Onegin". Commentary” by Yu. M. Lotman (1st ed.: 1980) and “Commentary on the novel by A. S. Pushkin “Eugene Onegin”” by V. V. Nabokov (1st ed., in English: 1964).

Let's start, of course, from the beginning - from the French epigraph to the entire text of the novel (V. V. Nabokov called it "the main epigraph"). In the Russian translation, these lines, supposedly taken from a private letter, sound like this: “Imbued with vanity, he possessed, moreover, a special pride that prompts him to admit with equal indifference to his good and bad deeds - a consequence of a sense of superiority, perhaps imaginary."

Without touching the content for now, let's think about the form of this epigraph, let's ask ourselves two questions. First, why are these lines presented by the author of the work as a fragment from a private letter? Secondly, why are they written in French?

The reference to a private letter as the source of the epigraph is intended, first of all, to give Onegin the features of a real personality: Eugene allegedly exists in reality, and one of his acquaintances gives him such an attestation in a letter to another mutual friend. Pushkin will point to the reality of Onegin later: “Onegin, my good friend” (Chapter I, stanza II). Lines from a private letter give the story about Onegin a touch of intimacy, almost secular chatter, gossip and "gossip".

The original source of this epigraph is literary. As Y. Semyonov pointed out, and then, independently of him, V. V. Nabokov, this is a French translation of the work of the English social thinker E. Burke “Thoughts and details about poverty” (Nabokov V. V. Commentary on the novel by A. S. Pushkin "Eugene Onegin", Translated from English, St. Petersburg, 1998, pp. 19, 86-88). The epigraph, as well as other epigraphs in the novel, turns out to be “with a double bottom”: its true source is securely hidden from the inquisitive eyes of the reader. IN AND. Arnold indicated another source - the novel by C. de Laclos "Dangerous Liaisons".

The French language of the letter testifies that the person reported undoubtedly belongs to the high society, in which French, and not Russian, dominated in Russia. And indeed, Onegin, although in the eighth chapter he will be opposed to the light personified in the image of “N. N. a beautiful person ”(stanza X), is a young man from the metropolitan society, and belonging to a secular society is one of his most important characteristics. Onegin is a Russian European, "a Muscovite in Harold's cloak" (Chapter VII, stanza XXIV), an avid reader of contemporary French novels. The French language of writing is associated with Eugene's Europeanism. Tatyana, having looked through the books from his library, even wonders: “Isn’t he a parody?” (Chapter VII, stanza XXIV). And if the Author resolutely defends the hero from such a thought, expressed by a collective reader from high society in the eighth chapter, then he does not dare to argue with Tatyana: her assumption remains neither confirmed nor refuted. Note that in relation to Tatyana, who inspiredly imitates the heroines of sentimental novels, the judgment of pretense, insincerity is not expressed even in the form of a question. She is "above" such suspicions.

Now about the content of the "main epigraph". The main thing in it is the inconsistency of the characteristics of the person referred to in the "private letter". A certain special pride is connected with vanity, which seems to be manifested in indifference to the opinions of people (that is why “he” is recognized with indifference in both good and evil deeds). But isn't this imaginary indifference, isn't there behind it a strong desire to win, albeit unfavorable, the attention of the crowd, to show one's originality. Is “he” superior to those around him? And yes (“sense of superiority”), and no (“perhaps imaginary”). Thus, starting from the “main epigraph”, the complex attitude of the Author to the hero is set, it is indicated that the reader should not expect an unequivocal assessment of Eugene by his creator and “friend”. The words "Yes and no" - this is the answer to the question about Onegin "Do you know him?" (Chapter 8, stanza VIII) seems to belong not only to the voice of the world, but also to the creator Eugene himself.

The first chapter opens with a line from the famous elegy of Pushkin's friend Prince P. A. Vyazemsky "The First Snow": "And he is in a hurry to live and feel in a hurry." In Vyazemsky's poem, this line expresses ecstasy, enjoyment of life and its main gift - love. The hero and his beloved are rushing in a sleigh through the first snow; nature is embraced by the stupor of death under a white veil; he and she are burning with passion:

Who can express the happiness of the happy?

Like a light blizzard, their winged run

Snow breaks through with even reins

And, waving with a bright cloud from the earth,

Silvery dust covers them.

Time was embarrassing for them in one winged moment.

Young ardor glides through life so,

And he is in a hurry to live, and he is in a hurry to feel.

Vyazemsky writes about the joyful intoxication with passion, Pushkin, in the first chapter of his novel, about the bitter fruits of this intoxication. About surfeit. About the premature old age of the soul. And at the beginning of the first chapter, Onegin flies "in the dust on postal bags", rushing to the village to the sick and ardently unloved Lyada, and does not ride in a sleigh with a charmer. In the village, Evgeny is met not by numb winter nature, but by flowering fields, but he, the living dead, is not comforted by this. The motif from "First Snow" is "inverted", turned into its opposite. As Yu. M. Lotman noted, the hedonism of The First Snow was openly disputed by the author of Eugene Onegin in the IX stanza of the first chapter, which was removed from the final text of the novel (Lotman Yu. M. A. S. Pushkin’s novel “Eugene Onegin”. Commentary // Pushkin A. S. Evgeny Onegin: A novel in verse. M., 1991. P. 326).

The epigraph from the Roman poet Horace “O rus! ...” (“O village”, Latin) with a pseudo-translation of “O Rus!”, Built on the consonance of Latin and Russian words, is at first glance nothing more than an example of a pun, a language game. According to Yu. M. Lotman, “the double epigraph creates a punning contradiction between the tradition of the conditionally literary image of the village and the idea of ​​a real Russian village” (Lotman Yu. M. A. S. Pushkin’s novel “Eugene Onegin”, p. 388). Probably, one of the functions of this “two” is just that. But it is not the only one, and perhaps not the most important one. The identification of “village” and “Russia”, dictated by punning consonance, is ultimately quite serious: it is the Russian village that appears in Pushkin’s novel as the quintessence of Russian national life. And besides, this epigraph is a kind of model of the poetic mechanism of the entire Pushkin work, which is based on switching from a serious plan to a playful one and vice versa, demonstrating the omnipresence and limitation of the translated meanings. (Let us recall, for example, the ironic translation of Lensky’s pre-duel verses filled with colorless metaphors: “All this meant, friends: // I am shooting with a friend” [Chapter V, stanzas XV, XVI, XVII]).

The French epigraph from the poem "Narcissus, or the Island of Venus" by Sh. L. K. Malfilattra, translated into Russian as: "She was a girl, she was in love," opens chapter three. Malfilattre speaks of the unrequited love of the nymph Echo for Narcissus. The meaning of the epigraph is clear enough. Here is how V. V. Nabokov describes him, citing a more lengthy quotation from the poem than Pushkin: “She [the nymph Echo] was a girl [and therefore curious, as is characteristic of all of them]; [moreover], she was in love... I forgive her, [as my Tatyana should be forgiven]; love made her guilty<…>. Oh, if fate would forgive her as well!”

According to Greek mythology, the nymph Echo, languishing in love with Narcissus (who, in turn, was exhausted from an unrequited passion for his own reflection), turned into a forest voice, like Tatiana in ch. 7, XXVIII, when the image of Onegin appears before her in the margins of the book he read (ch. 7, XXII-XXIV) ”(Nabokov V.V. Commentary on A.S. Pushkin’s novel“ Eugene Onegin ”. P. 282).

However, the relationship between the epigraph and the text of the third chapter is still more complicated. Tatyana's awakening of love for Onegin is interpreted in the text of the novel both as a consequence of natural law (“The time has come, she fell in love. / So the fallen grain / Spring is revived by fire” [Chapter III, stanza VII]), and as the embodiment of fantasies, games of imagination , inspired by read sensitive novels (“By the happy power of dreaming / Animated creatures, / Julia Wolmar's lover, / Malek-Adel and de Linar, / And Werther, the rebellious martyr, / And incomparable Grandison,<…>All for a tender dreamer / They clothed themselves in a single image, / Merged in one Onegin ”[Chapter III, stanza IX]).

The epigraph from Malfilatre, it would seem, speaks only of the omnipotence of natural law - the law of love. But in fact, the lines quoted by Pushkin in the very poem Malfilatre speak about this. In relation to Pushkin's text, their meaning changes somewhat. The power of love over the heart of a young maiden is told in lines from a literary work, moreover, created in the same era (in the 18th century) as the novels that fed Tatyana's imagination. Thus, Tatyana's love awakening turns from a "natural" phenomenon into a "literary" one, becomes evidence of the magnetic influence of literature on the world of feelings of a provincial young lady.

With Eugene's narcissism, everything is also not so simple. Of course, the mythological image of Narcissus will be forgiven for the role of a “mirror” for Onegin: the narcissistic handsome man rejected the unfortunate nymph, Onegin turned away from Tatyana in love. In the fourth chapter, in response to Tatyana's confession that touched him, Eugene confesses his own selfishness. But Narcissus's narcissism is still alien to him, he did not love Tatyana not because he loved only himself.

The epigraph to the fourth chapter, “Morality in the nature of things”, the saying of the French politician and financier J. Necker, Yu. M. Lotman interprets as ironic: “In comparison with the content of the chapter, the epigraph acquires an ironic sound. Necker says that morality is the basis of human behavior and society. However, in the Russian context, the word “morality” could also sound like a moral teaching, a sermon of morality.<...>. The mistake of Brodsky, who translated the epigraph: “Moral teaching is in the nature of things” is indicative.<…>. The possibility of ambiguity, in which the morality that governs the world, is confused with the moralizing that the “sparkling eyes” hero reads in the garden to the young heroine, created a situation of hidden comedy ”(Lotman Yu. M. Roman A. S. Pushkin “Eugene Onegin”. Comment. S. 453).

But this epigraph has, of course, another meaning. Responding to Tatyana's confession, Onegin indeed somewhat unexpectedly puts on the mask of a "moralist" ("That's how Eugene preached" [Chapter IV, stanza XVII]). And later, in turn, responding to Yevgeny's confession, Tatyana will remember with resentment his mentoring tone. But she will note and appreciate another thing: "You have acted nobly" (chapter VIII, stanza XLIII). Not being Grandison, Eugene did not act like Lovlas, rejecting the role of a cynical seducer. He acted, in this respect, morally. The hero's response to the confession of an inexperienced girl is ambiguous. Therefore, the translation of N. L. Brodsky, despite the factual inaccuracy, is not without meaning. Eugene's moral teaching is somewhat moral.

The epigraph to the fifth chapter from V. A. Zhukovsky’s ballad “Svetlana”, “Oh, don’t know these terrible dreams, / You, my Svetlana!”, Yu. M. Lotman explains as follows: “<…>The “doubleness” of Svetlana Zhukovsky and Tatyana Larina, given by the epigraph, revealed not only the parallelism of their nationality, but also a deep difference in the interpretation of the image of one, focused on romantic fantasy and play, the other on everyday and psychological reality ”(Lotman Yu. M. Roman A. S. Pushkin "Eugene Onegin", commentary, p. 478).

In the reality of Pushkin's text, the relationship between Svetlana and Tatyana is more complex. Even at the beginning of the third chapter, Tatyana Lensky compares with Svetlana: “Yes, the one who is sad / And silent, like Svetlana” (stanza V). The dream of Pushkin's heroine, unlike Svetlana's, turns out to be prophetic and, in this sense, "more romantic" than the dream of the heroine of the ballad. Onegin, hurrying on a date with Tatyana, the St. Petersburg princess, "walks, looking like a dead man" (Chapter VIII, stanza XL), like a dead groom in Zhukovsky's ballad. Onegin in love is in a "strange dream" (Chapter VIII, stanza XXI). And Tatyana is now "surrounded / by Epiphany cold" (chapter VIII, stanza XXXIII). Epiphany cold is a metaphor reminiscent of Svetlana's divination that took place at Christmas time, on the days from Christmas to Epiphany.

Pushkin either deviates from the romantic ballad plot, or turns the events of Svetlana into metaphors, or revives ballad fantasy and mysticism.

The epigraph to the sixth chapter, taken from the canzone of F. Petrarch, in Russian translation sounds “Where the days are cloudy and short, / A tribe will be born that does not hurt to die,” deeply analyzed by Yu. M. Lotman: “P<ушкин>, citing, he omitted the middle verse, which made the meaning of the quote change: Petrarch: “Where the days are foggy and short - a born enemy of the world - a people will be born that does not hurt to die.” The reason for the lack of fear of death is in the innate ferocity of this tribe. With the omission of the middle verse, it became possible to interpret the reason for not fearing death differently, as a result of disappointment and “premature old age of the soul” ”(Lotman Yu. M. A. S. Pushkin’s novel “Eugene Onegin”. Comment. P. 510).

Of course, the removal of one line dramatically changes the meaning of Petrarch's lines, and an elegiac key is easily selected for the epigraph. The motives of disappointment, premature old age of the soul are traditional for the elegy genre, and Lensky, whose death is narrated in the sixth chapter, paid a generous tribute to this genre: “He sang the faded color of life, / Almost eighteen years old” (chapter II, stanza X). But Vladimir went to the duel with the desire not to die, but to kill. Take revenge on the offender. He was killed on the spot, but it was painful for him to say goodbye to his life.

Thus, Petrarch's text, the elegiac code and the realities of the artistic world created by Pushkin, thanks to mutual overlap, create a flickering of meanings.

Let's stop there. The role of the epigraphs to the seventh chapter is succinctly and fully described by Yu. M. Lotman, various, complementary, interpretations of the epigraph from Byron to the eighth chapter are given in the comments by N. L. Brosky and Yu. M. Lotman.

Perhaps it would be worth recalling only one thing. Pushkin's novel is "multilingual", it brings together different styles and even different languages ​​- in the literal sense of the word. (The stylistic multidimensionality of "Eugene Onegin" is remarkably traced in the book by S. G. Bocharov "Pushkin's Poetics" [M., 1974].) The external, most noticeable sign of this "multilingualism" is the epigraphs to the novel: French, Russian, Latin, Italian, English.

The epigraphs to Pushkin's novel in verse are like that "magic crystal" with which the poet himself compared his creation. Seen through their bizarre glass, the chapters of Pushkin's text take on new shapes, turn into new facets.

Ranchin A. M.

A lot has been written about epigraphs in Pushkin's novel in verse. And yet, the role of epigraphs, their relationship in the text of the chapters is still not completely clear. Let's try, without pretending to the unconditional novelty of interpretations, without hurrying to re-read the novel. The landmarks in this re-reading - a journey through the small and endless space of the text - will be three well-known comments: “Eugene Onegin. A novel by A. S. Pushkin. A manual for secondary school teachers" by N. L. Brodsky (1st ed.: 1932), "A. S. Pushkin's novel "Eugene Onegin". Commentary” by Yu. M. Lotman (1st ed.: 1980) and “Commentary on the novel by A. S. Pushkin “Eugene Onegin”” by V. V. Nabokov (1st ed., in English: 1964).

Let's start, of course, from the beginning - from the French epigraph to the entire text of the novel (V. V. Nabokov called it "the main epigraph"). In the Russian translation, these lines, supposedly taken from a private letter, sound like this: “Imbued with vanity, he possessed, moreover, a special pride that prompts him to admit with equal indifference to his good and bad deeds - a consequence of a sense of superiority, perhaps imaginary."

Without touching the content for now, let's think about the form of this epigraph, let's ask ourselves two questions. First, why are these lines presented by the author of the work as a fragment from a private letter? Secondly, why are they written in French?

The reference to a private letter as the source of the epigraph is intended, first of all, to give Onegin the features of a real personality: Eugene allegedly exists in reality, and one of his acquaintances gives him such an attestation in a letter to another mutual friend. Pushkin will point to the reality of Onegin later: “Onegin, my good friend” (Chapter I, stanza II). Lines from a private letter give the story about Onegin a touch of intimacy, almost secular chatter, gossip and "gossip".

The original source of this epigraph is literary. As Y. Semyonov pointed out, and then, independently of him, V. V. Nabokov, this is a French translation of the work of the English social thinker E. Burke “Thoughts and details about poverty” (Nabokov V. V. Commentary on the novel by A. S. Pushkin "Eugene Onegin", Translated from English, St. Petersburg, 1998, pp. 19, 86-88). The epigraph, as well as other epigraphs in the novel, turns out to be “with a double bottom”: its true source is securely hidden from the inquisitive eyes of the reader. IN AND. Arnold indicated another source - the novel by C. de Laclos "Dangerous Liaisons".

The French language of the letter testifies that the person reported undoubtedly belongs to the high society, in which French, and not Russian, dominated in Russia. And indeed, Onegin, although in the eighth chapter he will be opposed to the light personified in the image of “N. N. a beautiful person ”(stanza X), is a young man from the metropolitan society, and belonging to a secular society is one of his most important characteristics. Onegin is a Russian European, "a Muscovite in Harold's cloak" (Chapter VII, stanza XXIV), an avid reader of contemporary French novels. The French language of writing is associated with Eugene's Europeanism. Tatyana, having looked through the books from his library, even wonders: “Isn’t he a parody?” (Chapter VII, stanza XXIV). And if the Author resolutely defends the hero from such a thought, expressed by a collective reader from high society in the eighth chapter, then he does not dare to argue with Tatyana: her assumption remains neither confirmed nor refuted. Note that in relation to Tatyana, who inspiredly imitates the heroines of sentimental novels, the judgment of pretense, insincerity is not expressed even in the form of a question. She is "above" such suspicions.

Now about the content of the "main epigraph". The main thing in it is the inconsistency of the characteristics of the person referred to in the "private letter". A certain special pride is connected with vanity, which seems to be manifested in indifference to the opinions of people (that is why “he” is recognized with indifference in both good and evil deeds). But isn't this imaginary indifference, isn't there behind it a strong desire to win, albeit unfavorable, the attention of the crowd, to show one's originality. Is “he” superior to those around him? And yes (“sense of superiority”), and no (“perhaps imaginary”). Thus, starting from the “main epigraph”, the complex attitude of the Author to the hero is set, it is indicated that the reader should not expect an unequivocal assessment of Eugene by his creator and “friend”. The words "Yes and no" - this is the answer to the question about Onegin "Do you know him?" (Chapter 8, stanza VIII) seems to belong not only to the voice of the world, but also to the creator Eugene himself.

The first chapter opens with a line from the famous elegy of Pushkin's friend Prince P. A. Vyazemsky "The First Snow": "And he is in a hurry to live and feel in a hurry." In Vyazemsky's poem, this line expresses ecstasy, enjoyment of life and its main gift - love. The hero and his beloved are rushing in a sleigh through the first snow; nature is embraced by the stupor of death under a white veil; he and she are burning with passion:

Who can express the happiness of the happy?

Like a light blizzard, their winged run

Snow breaks through with even reins

And, waving with a bright cloud from the earth,

Silvery dust covers them.

Time was embarrassing for them in one winged moment.

Young ardor glides through life so,

And he is in a hurry to live, and he is in a hurry to feel.

Vyazemsky writes about the joyful intoxication with passion, Pushkin, in the first chapter of his novel, about the bitter fruits of this intoxication. About surfeit. About the premature old age of the soul. And at the beginning of the first chapter, Onegin flies "in the dust on postal bags", rushing to the village to the sick and ardently unloved Lyada, and does not ride in a sleigh with a charmer. In the village, Evgeny is met not by numb winter nature, but by flowering fields, but he, the living dead, is not comforted by this. The motif from "First Snow" is "inverted", turned into its opposite. As Yu. M. Lotman noted, the hedonism of The First Snow was openly disputed by the author of Eugene Onegin in the IX stanza of the first chapter, which was removed from the final text of the novel (Lotman Yu. M. A. S. Pushkin’s novel “Eugene Onegin”. Commentary // Pushkin A. S. Evgeny Onegin: A novel in verse. M., 1991. P. 326).

The epigraph from the Roman poet Horace “O rus! ...” (“O village”, Latin) with a pseudo-translation of “O Rus!”, Built on the consonance of Latin and Russian words, is at first glance nothing more than an example of a pun, a language game. According to Yu. M. Lotman, “the double epigraph creates a punning contradiction between the tradition of the conditionally literary image of the village and the idea of ​​a real Russian village” (Lotman Yu. M. A. S. Pushkin’s novel “Eugene Onegin”, p. 388). Probably, one of the functions of this “two” is just that. But it is not the only one, and perhaps not the most important one. The identification of “village” and “Russia”, dictated by punning consonance, is ultimately quite serious: it is the Russian village that appears in Pushkin’s novel as the quintessence of Russian national life. And besides, this epigraph is a kind of model of the poetic mechanism of the entire Pushkin work, which is based on switching from a serious plan to a playful one and vice versa, demonstrating the omnipresence and limitation of the translated meanings. (Let us recall, for example, the ironic translation of Lensky’s pre-duel verses filled with colorless metaphors: “All this meant, friends: // I am shooting with a friend” [Chapter V, stanzas XV, XVI, XVII]).

The French epigraph from the poem "Narcissus, or the Island of Venus" by Sh. L. K. Malfilattra, translated into Russian as: "She was a girl, she was in love," opens chapter three. Malfilattre speaks of the unrequited love of the nymph Echo for Narcissus. The meaning of the epigraph is clear enough. Here is how V. V. Nabokov describes him, citing a more lengthy quotation from the poem than Pushkin: “She [the nymph Echo] was a girl [and therefore curious, as is characteristic of all of them]; [moreover], she was in love... I forgive her, [as my Tatyana should be forgiven]; love made her guilty<…>. Oh, if fate would forgive her as well!”

According to Greek mythology, the nymph Echo, languishing in love with Narcissus (who, in turn, was exhausted from an unrequited passion for his own reflection), turned into a forest voice, like Tatiana in ch. 7, XXVIII, when the image of Onegin appears before her in the margins of the book he read (ch. 7, XXII-XXIV) ”(Nabokov V.V. Commentary on A.S. Pushkin’s novel“ Eugene Onegin ”. P. 282).

However, the relationship between the epigraph and the text of the third chapter is still more complicated. Tatyana's awakening of love for Onegin is interpreted in the text of the novel both as a consequence of natural law (“The time has come, she fell in love. / So the fallen grain / Spring is revived by fire” [Chapter III, stanza VII]), and as the embodiment of fantasies, games of imagination , inspired by read sensitive novels (“By the happy power of dreaming / Animated creatures, / Julia Wolmar's lover, / Malek-Adel and de Linar, / And Werther, the rebellious martyr, / And incomparable Grandison,<…>All for a tender dreamer / They clothed themselves in a single image, / Merged in one Onegin ”[Chapter III, stanza IX]).

The epigraph from Malfilatre, it would seem, speaks only of the omnipotence of natural law - the law of love. But in fact, the lines quoted by Pushkin in the very poem Malfilatre speak about this. In relation to Pushkin's text, their meaning changes somewhat. The power of love over the heart of a young maiden is told in lines from a literary work, moreover, created in the same era (in the 18th century) as the novels that fed Tatyana's imagination. Thus, Tatyana's love awakening turns from a "natural" phenomenon into a "literary" one, becomes evidence of the magnetic influence of literature on the world of feelings of a provincial young lady.

With Eugene's narcissism, everything is also not so simple. Of course, the mythological image of Narcissus will be forgiven for the role of a “mirror” for Onegin: the narcissistic handsome man rejected the unfortunate nymph, Onegin turned away from Tatyana in love. In the fourth chapter, in response to Tatyana's confession that touched him, Eugene confesses his own selfishness. But Narcissus's narcissism is still alien to him, he did not love Tatyana not because he loved only himself.

A lot has been written about epigraphs in Pushkin's novel in verse. And yet, the role of epigraphs, their relationship with the text of the chapters is still not completely clear. Let's try, without pretending to the unconditional novelty of interpretations, without hurrying to re-read the novel. The landmarks in this re-reading - a journey through the small and endless space of the text - will be three well-known comments: “Eugene Onegin. A novel (immortal work) by A. S. Pushkin. A manual for secondary school teachers” by N. L. Brodsky (1st ed., 1932), “The novel (immortal work) by A. S. Pushkin “Eugene Onegin”. Commentary” by Yu. M. Lotman (1st ed., 1980) and “Commentary on the novel by A. S. Pushkin “Eugene Onegin”” by V. V. Nabokov (1st ed., in English, 1964).

Let's start, of course, from the beginning - from the French epigraph to the entire text of the novel (V. V. Nabokov called it "the main epigraph"). In the Russian translation, these lines, allegedly taken from a private letter, sound like this: “Imbued with vanity, he possessed, moreover, a special pride that prompts him to admit with equal indifference to his good and bad deeds - a consequence of a sense of superiority, perhaps , imaginary”.

Without touching the content for now, let's think about the form of this epigraph, let's ask ourselves two questions. First, why are these lines presented by the author of the work as a fragment from a private letter? Secondly, why are they written in French?

The reference to a private letter as the source of the epigraph is intended, first of all, to give Onegin the features of a real personality: Eugene allegedly exists in reality, and one of his acquaintances gives him such an attestation in a letter to another mutual friend. Pushkin will point to the reality of Onegin later: “Onegin, my good friend” (chapter one, stanza II). Lines from a private letter give the story about Onegin a touch of some intimacy, almost secular chatter, gossip and "gossip".

The original source of this epigraph is literary. As Y. Semyonov pointed out, and then, independently of him, V. V. Nabokov, this is a French translation of the work of the English social thinker E. Burke “Thoughts and Details on Poverty” ( Nabokov V.V. Commentary on the novel by A. S. Pushkin "Eugene Onegin" / Per. from English. SPb., 1998. S. 19, 86–88). The epigraph, as well as other epigraphs in the novel, turns out to be “with a double bottom”: its true source is securely hidden from the inquisitive eyes of the reader.

The French language of the letter testifies that the person reported undoubtedly belongs to the high society, in which French, and not Russian, dominated in Russia. And indeed, Onegin, although in the eighth chapter he will be opposed to the light personified in the image of “N. N. a beautiful person” (stanza X), is a young man from the metropolitan world, and belonging to a secular society is one of his most important characteristics. Onegin is a Russian European, “a Muscovite in Harold's cloak” (chapter seven, stanza XXIV), an avid reader of contemporary French novels. The French language of writing is associated with Eugene's Europeanism. Tatyana, having looked through the books from his library, even wonders: “Is he a parody?” (chapter seven, stanza XXIV). And if the author resolutely defends the hero from such a thought expressed by a collective reader from high society in the eighth chapter, then he does not dare to argue with Tatyana: her assumption remains neither confirmed nor refuted. Note that in relation to Tatyana, who inspiredly imitates the heroines of sentimental novels, the judgment of pretense, insincerity is not expressed even in the form of a question. She is “above” such suspicions.

Now about the content of the “main epigraph”. The main thing in it is the inconsistency of the characteristics of the person referred to in the “private letter”. A certain special pride is connected with vanity, which seems to be manifested in indifference to the opinions of people (that is why “he” is recognized with indifference in both good and evil deeds). But isn't this imaginary indifference, isn't there behind it a strong desire to win, albeit unfavorable, the attention of the crowd, to show one's originality? Is “he” superior to those around him? Both yes (“sense of superiority”) and no (“perhaps imaginary”). So, starting with the “main epigraph”, the author’s complex attitude towards the hero is set, it is indicated that the reader should not expect an unambiguous assessment of Evgeny by his creator and “friend”. The words “Yes and no” - this is the answer to the question about Onegin “Do you know him?” (chapter eight, stanza VIII) seems to belong not only to the voice of the world, but also to the creator Eugene himself.

The first chapter opens with a line from the famous elegy of Pushkin's friend Prince P. A. Vyazemsky "The First Snow": "And he is in a hurry to live and feel in a hurry." In Vyazemsky's poem, this line expresses ecstasy, enjoyment of life and its main gift - love. The hero and his beloved are rushing in a sleigh through the first snow; nature is embraced by the stupor of death under a white veil; he and she are burning with passion.

Who can express the happiness of the happy?
Like a light blizzard, their winged run
Snow breaks through with even reins
And, waving with a bright cloud from the earth,
Silvery dust covers them.
Time was embarrassing for them in one winged moment.
Young ardor glides through life so,
And he is in a hurry to live, and he is in a hurry to feel.

Vyazemsky writes about the joyful intoxication with passion, Pushkin in the first chapter of his novel - about the bitter fruits of this intoxication. About surfeit. About the premature old age of the soul. And at the beginning of the first chapter, Onegin flies “in the dust on the mail”, hurrying to the village to his sick and ardently unloved uncle, and does not ride in a sleigh with a charmer. In the village, Evgeny is met not by numb winter nature, but by flowering fields, but he, the living dead, is not comforted by this. The motif from "First Snow" is "inverted", turned into its opposite. As Yu. M. Lotman noted, the hedonism of The First Snow was openly disputed by the author of Eugene Onegin in stanza IX of the first chapter, which was removed from the final text of the novel ( Lotman Yu. M. The novel (immortal work) by A. S. Pushkin "Eugene Onegin". Comment // Pushkin A.S. Eugene Onegin: A novel (an immortal work) in verse. M., 1991. S. 326).

An epigraph from the Roman poet Horace “O rus!” (“O village” - Lat.) with a pseudo-translation “O Rus!”, built on the consonance of Latin and Russian words, is at first glance nothing more than an example of a pun, a language game. According to Yu. M. Lotman, “the double epigraph creates a punning contradiction between the tradition of the conventional literary image of the village and the idea of ​​a real Russian village” ( Lotman Yu. M. The novel (immortal work) by A. S. Pushkin "Eugene Onegin". S. 388). Probably, one of the functions of this “two” is just that. But it is not the only one, and perhaps not the most important one. The identification of “village” and “Russia”, dictated by punning consonance, is ultimately quite serious: it is the Russian village that appears in Pushkin’s novel as the quintessence of Russian national life. And besides, this epigraph is a kind of model of the poetic mechanism of the entire Pushkin work, which is based on switching from a serious plan to a playful one and vice versa, demonstrating the omnipresence and limitation of the translated meanings. (Let us recall at least the ironic translation of the colorless metaphors of Lensky's pre-duel verses: “All this meant, friends: // I am shooting with a friend” - chapter five, stanzas XV, XVI, XVII.

French epigraph from the poem "Narcissus, or the Island of Venus" by S. L.K. Malfilatra, translated into Russian as: "She was a girl, she was in love," opens the third chapter. Malfilattre speaks of the unrequited love of the nymph Echo for Narcissus. The meaning of the epigraph is clear enough. This is how V.V. Nabokov describes him, citing a quote from the poem that is longer than Pushkin: “She [the nymph Echo] was a girl [and therefore curious, as is typical of all of them]; [moreover], she was in love... I forgive her [as my Tatyana should be forgiven]; love made her guilty<…>. Oh, if fate would forgive her as well!

According to Greek mythology, the nymph Echo, languishing in love with Narcissus (who, in turn, was exhausted from an unrequited passion for his own reflection), turned into a forest voice, like Tatiana in ch. 7, XXVIII, when the image of Onegin appears before her on the margins of the book he read (ch. 7, XXII–XXIV)” ( Nabokov V.V. Commentary on the novel by A. S. Pushkin "Eugene Onegin". S. 282).

However, the relationship between the epigraph and the text of the third chapter is still more complicated. The awakening in Tatyana of love for Onegin is interpreted in the text of the novel both as a consequence of natural law (“The time has come, she fell in love. // So the fallen grain into the earth // Spring is revived by fire” - chapter three, stanza VII), and as the embodiment of fantasies, games imagination, inspired by reading sensitive novels (“By the happy power of dreaming // Animated creatures, // Lover of Julia Wolmar, // Malek-Adel and de Linard, // And Werther, the rebellious martyr, // And incomparable Grandison<…>Everything for a tender dreamer // They clothed themselves in a single image, // They merged in one Onegin” - chapter three, stanza IX).

The epigraph from Malfilatre, it would seem, speaks only of the omnipotence of natural law - the law of love. But in fact, the lines quoted by Pushkin in the very poem Malfilatre speak about this. In relation to Pushkin's text, their meaning changes somewhat. The power of love over the heart of a young maiden is told in lines from a literary work, moreover, created in the same era (in the 18th century) as the novels that fed Tatyana's imagination. Thus, Tatiana's love awakening turns from a “natural” phenomenon into a “literary” one, becomes evidence of the magnetic influence of literature on the world of feelings of a provincial young lady.

With Eugene's narcissism, everything is also not so simple. Of course, the mythological image of Narcissus asks for the role of a “mirror” for Onegin: the narcissistic handsome man rejected the unfortunate nymph, Onegin turned away from Tatiana in love. In the fourth chapter, in response to Tatyana's confession that touched him, Eugene confesses his own selfishness. But Narcissus's narcissism is still alien to him, he did not love Tatyana not because he loved only himself.

The epigraph to the fourth chapter - “Morality in the nature of things”, the saying of the French politician and financier J. Necker, Yu. M. Lotman interprets as ironic: “In comparison with the content of the chapter, the epigraph receives an ironic sound. Necker says that morality is the basis of human behavior and society. However, in the Russian context, the word "morality" could also sound like morality, preaching morality.<...>The mistake of Brodsky, who translated the epigraph: “Hormons in the nature of things” is indicative.<…>The possibility of ambiguity, in which the morality that governs the world, is confused with the moralizing that the “sparkling eyes” hero reads to the young heroine in the garden created a situation of hidden comedy ”( Lotman Yu. M. The novel (immortal work) by A. S. Pushkin "Eugene Onegin". A comment. S. 453).

But this epigraph has, of course, another meaning. Responding to Tatyana's confession, Onegin indeed somewhat unexpectedly puts on the mask of a “moralist” (“Thus preached Eugene” - chapter four, stanza XVII). And later, in her turn, responding to Yevgeny's confession, Tatyana will remember with resentment his mentoring tone. But she will notice and appreciate something else: “You have acted nobly” (chapter eight, stanza XLIII). Not being Grandison, Eugene did not act like Lovlas, rejecting the role of a cynical seducer. He acted, in this respect, morally. The hero's response to the confession of an inexperienced girl is ambiguous. Therefore, the translation of N. L. Brodsky, despite the factual inaccuracy, is not without meaning. Eugene's moral teaching is somewhat moral.

An epigraph to the fifth chapter from V. A. Zhukovsky’s ballad “Svetlana”: “Oh, don’t know these terrible dreams, // You, my Svetlana!” - Yu. M. Lotman explains this: “... The “doubleness” of Svetlana Zhukovsky and Tatyana Larina, given by the epigraph, revealed not only the parallelism of their nationality, but also a deep difference in the interpretation of the image of one, focused on romantic fantasy and play, the other on everyday and psychological reality" ( Lotman Yu. M. The novel (immortal work) by A. S. Pushkin "Eugene Onegin". A comment. S. 478).

In the reality of Pushkin's text, the relationship between Svetlana and Tatyana is more complex. Even at the beginning of the third chapter, Tatyana Lensky compares with Svetlana: “Yes, the one who is sad // And silent, like Svetlana” (stanza V). The dream of Pushkin's heroine, unlike Svetlana's, turns out to be prophetic and, in this sense, "more romantic" than the dream of the heroine of the ballad. Onegin, hurrying on a date with Tatyana, the St. Petersburg princess, “walks, looking like a dead man” (chapter eight, stanza XL), like a dead groom in Zhukovsky's ballad. Onegin in love is in a “strange dream” (chapter eight, stanza XXI). And Tatyana is now “surrounded // by Epiphany cold” (chapter eight, stanza XXXIII). Epiphany cold is a metaphor reminiscent of Svetlana's divination that took place at Christmas time, on the days from Christmas to Epiphany.

Pushkin either deviates from the romantic ballad plot, or turns the events of Svetlana into metaphors, or revives ballad fantasy and mysticism.

The epigraph to the sixth chapter, taken from the canzone of F. Petrarch, in Russian translation sounds “Where the days are cloudy and short, // A tribe will be born that does not hurt to die,” deeply analyzed by Yu. M. Lotman: “P<ушкин>, citing, he omitted the middle verse, which made the meaning of the quote change: In Petrarch: "Where the days are foggy and short - a born enemy of the world - a people will be born that does not hurt to die." The reason for the lack of fear of death is in the innate ferocity of this tribe. With the omission of the middle verse, it became possible to interpret the reason for not fearing death differently, as a result of disappointment and “premature old age of the soul” ”( Lotman Yu. M. The novel (immortal work) by A. S. Pushkin "Eugene Onegin". A comment. S. 510).

Of course, the removal of one line dramatically changes the meaning of Petrarch's lines, and an elegiac key is easily selected for the epigraph. The motives of disappointment, premature old age of the soul are traditional for the elegy genre, and Lensky, whose death is described in the sixth chapter, paid a generous tribute to this genre: “He sang the faded color of life, // At almost eighteen years old” (chapter two, stanza X) . But Vladimir went to the duel with the desire not to die, but to kill. Take revenge on the offender. He was killed on the spot, but it was painful for him to say goodbye to his life.

Thus, Petrarch's text, the elegiac code and the realities of the artistic world created by Pushkin, thanks to mutual overlap, create a flickering of meanings.

Let's stop there. The role of the epigraphs to the seventh chapter is succinctly and fully described by Yu. M. Lotman, various, complementary interpretations of the epigraph from Byron to the eighth chapter are given in the comments of N. L. Brodsky and Yu. M. Lotman.

Perhaps it would be worth recalling only one thing. The novel (immortal work) of Pushkin is “multilingual”, it brings together different styles and even different languages ​​- in the literal sense of the word. (The stylistic multidimensionality of "Eugene Onegin" is remarkably traced in the book by S. G. Bocharov "Pushkin's Poetics". M., 1974.) The external, most noticeable sign of this "multilingualism" is the epigraphs to the novel: French, Russian, Latin, Italian, English .

The epigraphs to Pushkin's novel in verse are like that “magic crystal” with which the poet himself compared his creation. Seen through their bizarre glass, the chapters of Pushkin's text take on unexpected shapes, turn into new facets.

This is Pushkin's characterization of Onegin, but not the character of the novel, but Onegin - the author of his memoirs. Even before the beginning of the narrative itself, the title of the novel is linked with the epigraph and dedication, and this not only gives a three-dimensional characterization of the hero, but also reveals him as the “author”. “Opposing” to the “publisher”, who revealed to the reader what he, the narrator, seeks to hide, he breaks the semantic connection between the title and the epigraph, introducing the words “novel in verse” by the right of the author of the memoirs, although he himself calls it in the text “ poem." The combination “novel in verse” takes on a special meaning: “a novel hidden in verse,” with a hint that the reader has yet to extract the novel itself from this external form, from Onegin’s memoirs.

The first chapter is preceded by a dedication: “Not thinking to amuse the proud world, loving the attention of friendship, I would like to present you a pledge worthy of you.” Immediately striking is the ambiguity of the expression “The pledge is worthier than you” (the only case in Pushkin’s creative biography when he used the comparative degree of this adjective) the question arises: to whom is this dedication addressed? The addressee clearly knows the writer and is in a “biased” relationship with him. Compare, in the penultimate stanza of the novel: “Forgive you, my strange companion, and you, my eternal ideal ...” “Eternal ideal” - Tatyana, about which S.M. Bondy. It is to her that Onegin dedicates his creation, and not to Pletnev Pushkin - in this case, the dedication would stand before the epigraph. The dedication already contains a voluminous self-characterization of the hero, referring both to the period of the events described, and to Onegin the “memoirist”.

The importance of Pushkin's epigraph was often noted by Pushkinists: from an explanatory inscription, the epigraph turns into a highlighted quotation, which is in a complex, dynamic relationship with the text.

The epigraph can highlight part of the text, enhance its individual elements. The punning epigraph to the second chapter of "Eugene Onegin" highlights the rural part of the novel: Rus' is predominantly a village, the most important part of life takes place there.

Projected onto Pushkin's hero, the epigraph to the fourth chapter acquires an ironic meaning: the morality that governs the world is confused with the moralizing that the “sparkling eyes” hero reads to the young heroine in the garden. Onegin treats Tatyana morally and nobly: he teaches her to "rule herself." Feelings need to be rationally controlled. However, we know that Onegin himself learned this by exercising vigorously in the "science of tender passion." Obviously, morality does not stem from rationality, but from the natural physical limitations of a person: “early feelings in him cooled down” - Onegin became moral involuntarily, due to premature old age, lost the ability to receive pleasure and instead of lessons of love gives moral lessons. This is another possible meaning of the epigraph.