Analysis of “Eugene Onegin” Pushkin. Analysis of the second chapter of the novel “Eugene Onegin” Brief analysis of chapter 2 of Eugene Onegin

In the huge and pure mirror of A. S. Pushkin’s novel “Eugene Onegin,” readers recognized modernity, recognized themselves and their friends, the entire environment. They heard the lively, conversational, intermittent, sincere and therefore doubly seductive speech of the best of his contemporaries. All the characteristics of the images were not random, not taken from nowhere, from just imagination. They represented a cross-section of an era.

Therefore, it is interesting to consider not only the images of the main characters of the novel, but also the secondary ones, who are described no less truthfully and picturesquely.

Thus, the poet devotes part of the second chapter (from 6 to 12) to characterizing the image of Lensky. He aptly notices special, distinctive features in the hero. But we are interested in three stanzas - 10-12, in which Lensky’s characterization is the most laconic and specific.

But before turning to the analysis of these stanzas, it should be noted that in the initial drafts of the poem Lensky is presented as “a loudmouth, a rebel and a poet.” He brought from the German university not only “freedom-loving dreams,” but also “indignation, regret” and even a “thirst for revenge.”

Thus, at first Lensky seemed more significant to Pushkin, closer to himself: he was a future Decembrist. In the final formation of the image, the poet abandoned these features, and in the luggage of the Russian youth who returned from abroad, only vague “freedom-loving dreams” and “always enthusiastic speech and shoulder-length black curls” were preserved.

Pushkin made Lensky simpler, an ordinary representative of the noble youth. Vladimir is so gentle and inexperienced, and one might say pure in his aspirations, that he does not see the difference between his own fiction and reality:

He sang love, obedient to love,

And his song was clear,

Like the thoughts of a simple-minded maiden,

Like a baby's dream...

This is what the author says about his hero, meaning that Lensky wrote poetry. So on the night before the duel, he will write his last poems to Olga, while Onegin was fast asleep... This detail - practicing poetry - is apparently very important for Pushkin. This is one of those features that should have made the hero related to the author. She emphasized not only Lensky’s romanticism, but also his ability to feel deeply and sincerely (it is no coincidence that the metaphorical comparison “like a baby’s sleep” is used here).

He sang separation and sadness,

And something, and a foggy distance...

He sang the faded color of life

Almost eighteen years old.

These lines convey irony about the hero’s creativity. Pushkin, as a true master of words, tries to emphasize the typicality of Lensky’s feelings. After all, all poets at the age of eighteen write about the withering of life and feelings. Although their life is just beginning, and what “sunset” is, they still don’t actually understand.

Lords of neighboring villages

He didn't like feasts;

He ran away from their noisy conversation.

Their conversation is reasonable...

In the desert, where Eugene is alone

I could appreciate his gifts...

What follows is a very condensed portrait of the hero, as his landowner neighbors imagined him: “Rich, good-looking Lensky // Was received as a groom everywhere...” Moreover, the phrase “good-looking” most likely refers not to the portrait of the hero, but to his ability to perform groom for the landowner's daughter:.

All daughters were destined for their own

For the half-Russian neighbor...

In general, the appearance of Lensky on the pages of the novel, and the fact that he became Evgeniy’s friend, is an important device. With the help of Vladimir, his open outlook on life, all images become brighter and more dramatic. He is like a child through whose lips the truth speaks.

The second chapter is devoted mainly to Lensky. Its content: Onegin’s activities in the village, his relationships with neighbors; characterization of Lensky, his love for Olga; characteristics of Olga and Tatiana; characteristics of the Larins. The chapter is static, there is almost no movement in it. It is all built on the principle of parallelism: Onegin - Lensky, Lensky - Olga, Olga - Tatyana, Tatyana - Onegin. Once in the village, Onegin becomes close to Lensky, and they become “friends with nothing to do.” Lensky and Onegin are opposite in their perception of life, in relation to it: on the one hand, a romantic, idealizing life, on the other, a cold skeptic, disillusioned with everything. “They got along. Wave and stone, poetry and prose, ice and fire are not so different from each other.” They are brought together by the range of socio-political, ethical and philosophical issues that were common to all advanced noble youth:

Between them, everything gave rise to disputes And age-old prejudices, And attracted to reflection: And fatal secrets of the grave, Treaties of past tribes, Fate and life in their turn, The fruits of science, good and evil, Everything was subject to their judgment.

Another parallel: Lensky - Olga. They are not opposite, but they are not similar. Olga is an ordinary, mediocre person, although she is very sweet. It is not yet clear how Olga could become the object of the poet’s mad love. They are similar in only one thing: in relation to the object of their love.

Ah, he loved, as in our years they no longer love; like one Mad poet's soul is still condemned to love.

The thirst for love, the desire to be loved, characteristic of a young age (Lensky is not yet eighteen years old), does not allow Lensky to see that Olga is not worth the kind of love that he, the poet, is capable of. It is clear why he “drily answered” to Onegin’s remark-question: “Are you really in love with a smaller woman?.. I would choose another if I were a poet like you.” But Lensky, in fact, did not choose:

A little boy, captivated by Olga, in the shadow of the guardian oak grove, not yet knowing the torment of the heart, he shared her fun, he was a tender witness, and the children were predicted to receive the crowns of her infantile fun; Friends and neighbors, their fathers.

This is his state of mind: it doesn’t matter who to love, just to love and be loved. This is what Onegin calls “the fever of youth.” And Olga loves Lensky because she wants to love, because she sees and feels his love for herself. She does not even suspect what kind of fire she lit in the poet’s soul; such subtle thoughts of his are inaccessible to her, such as, for example: “He believed that his dear soul should unite with him.” And it is not surprising that, having mourned his death, Olga soon marries a lancer: she is driven by the same need to love and be loved.

Lensky and the Narrator... The narrator is critical of Lensky as a romantic poet and judges his poetry for its vacuity and sweetness:

So he wrote darkly and languidly. What we call romanticism, Although I don’t see any romanticism here...

But Lensky is dear to him as a person of a special spiritual make-up; He is fond of his spiritual subtlety, “ardent and rather strange mind”:

The purpose of our life for him was a tempting riddle, He racked his brains over it and suspected miracles.

Lensky is also close to the Narrator in his poetic inspiration. The narrator loves his own youth in him, loves that state of mind that irrevocably disappears over the years - a state of sublime dreaminess. Not everyone is given the opportunity to experience such a state in their youth, but those who have experienced it value it at least as a memory. Is this why Onegin listens to Lensky so condescendingly:

He listened to Lensky with a smile. The poet's passionate conversation, And the mind, still unsteady in judgment, And the eternally inspired gaze - Everything was new to Onegin; He tried to keep the cooling word in his mouth

Let's try, looking ahead, to figure out what Lensky's death means. Lensky personifies a special state of mind characteristic of youth. He passes away as naturally as this wonderful time passes away from a person’s life. That is why his death is described so touchingly and sublimely:

Onegin fired... The clock struck: the poet silently drops the pistol, quietly puts his hand on his chest and falls. Misty gaze Depicts death, not torment. So I walk along the galloping mountains, As the sun shines with sparks, a block of snow falls. Doused with an instant cold, Onegin hurries to the young man, Looks, calls him... in vain: He is no longer there. The young singer has found an untimely end! The storm died, the beautiful color faded in the morning dawn, the fire went out on the altar!..

The author “takes” Lensky out of life because he is interesting and dear to him (and the reader) only for his mental state of youthful sublimity. This state of affairs does not last forever. In what direction could Lensky develop? Two possible paths of Lensky's life are predicted by the author: one is the path of a great poet or a major public figure, the other is the destiny of a Manilov-type landowner. Both lead to death: the first - to physical, the second - to moral. Lensky “brought the fruits of learning from foggy Germany: freedom-loving dreams, an ardent and rather strange spirit.”

The tragic death of Lensky is outlined in the epigraph to the sixth chapter. “Where the days are cloudy and short, a tribe will be born for which it is not painful to die” (Petrarch). And here is how A.I. Herzen explains the inevitability of Lensky’s tragic death: “Next to Onegin, Pushkin placed Vladimir Lensky, another victim of Russian life, the other side of Onegin. This is acute suffering next to chronic. This is one of those chaste, pure natures who cannot acclimatize in a depraved and insane environment; Having accepted life, they can no longer accept anything from unclean soil, except death. These youths—redemptive victims—young, pale, with the mark of fate on their brows, pass away like a reproach, like a remorse, and the sad night in which “they existed” becomes even blacker.”

Analysis of the second chapter of the novel “Eugene Onegin”

Other essays on the topic:

1. The sixth chapter contains the denouement of events. It consists of the following parts: characteristics of the provincial nobility; characteristics of Zaretsky; duel of Onegin and Lensky (Lensky...
2. Chapter eight occupies a special place in the novel. And not only because it concludes the story of the relationship between Onegin and...
3. Stanza I is the reflections of a young man on the way to the village to see his sick uncle. He honestly and directly tells himself that...
4. Evgeny Onegin is the main character of the novel, a young dandy with a rich inheritance, “the heir of all his relatives,” as he says about him...
5. The next morning, Onegin receives a note from Lensky challenging him to a duel. The letter is brought by second Zaretsky, a cynical but intelligent man...
6. The role of the image of Olga in the novel “Eugene Onegin” Pushkin worked on the novel “Eugene Onegin” for seven years, from 1823 to...
7. The young nobleman Eugene Onegin travels from St. Petersburg to the village to visit his dying rich uncle, annoyed at the upcoming boredom. Twenty-four-year-old Evgeniy...
8. In A. S. Pushkin’s novel “Eugene Onegin”, along with other problems, an important place is given to the topic presented in the title of this work...
9. The storyline of Onegin and Lensky performs a very important function in A. S. Pushkin’s novel “Eugene Onegin”. What brought these two together...
10. You read a work of fiction, get to know its characters. So what is next? Learn “images”: “the image of Onegin”, “the image of Lensky”, “the image of Tatyana Larina”? Tell,...
11. All the best in Russian society - sublime souls like Lensky, intelligent people like Onegin, faithful to their duty and their heart...
12. Lensky's death is described differently than all the others. This is the culmination of the plot, an event that decides the fate of all the main characters. You can be lenient with...

Oh. N. Greenbaum

SECOND CHAPTER OF THE NOVEL “EUGENE ONEGIN”

IN HARMONIC LIGHTING

The religiosity of a scientist consists of an enthusiastic attitude towards the Laws of Harmony.

Albert Einstein

A. S. Pushkin wrote the second chapter of the novel “Eugene Onegin” (hereinafter - EO) in Odessa from October 23 to December 8, 1823, immediately after completing work on the first chapter. Judging by the volume of the second chapter (40 stanzas, 560 lines), the poet worked with great speed and great enthusiasm: “I am writing with rapture,” Pushkin informed P. A. Vyazemsky in a letter dated November 4, 1823, “which has not happened to me for a long time.” was" 1. The first publication of the full text of the second chapter of the EO dates back to October 1826, but the poet’s friends became acquainted with it somewhat earlier (including from excerpts published

A. A. Delvig in the annual almanac “Northern Flowers” ​​in 1824 and 1826). Let us note right away that for our research the opinion of Pushkin’s contemporaries is of particular interest not only as witnesses and direct (in many cases) creators of the “golden” age of Russian poetry, but also simply because these statements and the assessments contained in them refer to that time when the full text of the EO did not yet exist. The new chapters of the novel that appeared later somewhat change the previous perception of the texts already read, which, when analyzing the expressive-harmonic component of the verse and its unified rhythmic meaning, can introduce a number of unjustified distortions into the overall picture of the dynamic development of Pushkin’s novel. Thus, we adhere to the research concept that involves the study of works of art as they unfold from the beginning to the end of the text, especially since rhythm as a dynamic phenomenon and as a temporal parameter of verse, rhythm in its relationship with meaning (“rhythm directly accompanies meaning” - A. Bely2) cannot, in our opinion, be studied in any other way, in any other conceptual perspective.

The temporal, i.e., unfolding in time, picture of Pushkin’s narrative is presented in a number of literary studies, in particular in the work

B. S. Nepomnyashchy, however, in none of the studies known to us the problem of the dynamic correlation of rhythm and content of verse is actually considered. This work is intended to partially fill this gap.

1. Historical and literary context

The second chapter of the EO in a number of its aspects not only does not surpass the first chapter, but is also inferior to it. This statement has actually become generally accepted literary

© O. N. Grinbaum, 2009

fact, and there are good reasons for this. The narrative outline of the second chapter, in contrast to its poetic plot, is simple and unpretentious. Here is how it is presented by V.V. Nabokov:

Chapter two consists of forty stanzas. Time of action - June 1820<. . . >The fictional estates in EO are four estates (with villages inhabited by serfs), each of which is located several miles from the other: the rich estate of Lensky (Krasnogorye, as it is called in chapter six), 3 miles from it the estate of Zaretsky ( the transformed brawler from the same sixth chapter), Onegin’s “castle” with vast lands and the relatively modest Larins’ estate with a manor house, which is called a “poor dwelling” and in which fifty guests can easily be accommodated for the night.<. . . >Pushkin saw the second chapter as dedicated to Lensky, a graduate of the University of Göttingen and a mediocre poet; and indeed, the whole song revolves around the village neighbor Onegin, but in structural terms its central part - albeit connected with Lensky, emanating from Lensky and returning to him again - tells not about Lensky himself, but about the Larin family. Fifteen stanzas (U1-XX) are devoted to the characterization of Lensky and his friendship with Onegin, after them, as if on steps, the reader walks along a series of seventeen stanzas (XX1-XXXUP): from Lensky’s beloved to her sister Tatyana; from Tatyana’s favorite novels to the characteristics of her parents; from her mother's sentimental education to the Larins' life in the village; from her to the death of foreman Larin; from this death to Lensky’s visit to the cemetery; which in turn leads to an eschatological and “professional” epilogue of three stanzas. All this intricate plot connection, interpreting the theme of the Larins and Lensky, connecting Arcadia with death and madrigals with epitaphs (thus foreshadowing through a foggy but polished crystal the death of Lensky himself in chapter six), is preceded by an idyllic description of Onegin’s stay in the village

The main line of the narrative (plot) as presented by V. S. Nepomnyashchy looks even less poetic and “surprisingly uncomplicated”:

Onegin in the village. Landscape, interior. Briefly about the hero's landowner activities and his attitude towards his neighbors.

Lensky appears. Characteristics of Lensky, his interests, poetry. His relationship with his neighbors. The heroes are getting closer. Their relationships, the content of their conversations. From conversations it turns out that Lensky is in love. His beloved is characterized.

The beloved has a sister. Sister is characterized.

The sisters had a father and a mother. It tells about the father, about the mother; her marriage, family life in the village. And in the end the father died. It is told how this happened and what is written on his tombstone.

Then it is told how Lensky visited his neighbor's grave. Here the author suddenly switches to a “digression” about the frailty of life, about the hope that his creations will outlive him and glorify him.

Acquaintance with the text of the second chapter caused a very restrained reaction from some of Pushkin’s contemporaries: “I received the second part of Onegin,” Vyazemsky wrote to Pushkin in the summer of 1825, “I am very pleased with Onegin, that is, with much in it; but this chapter has less brilliance than the first, and therefore I would not want to see it published separately, but perhaps with two or three, or at least one more chapter. In general or in connection with the next, she will retain her dignity intact, but I am afraid that she will not stand comparison with the first, in the eyes of the world, which demands not only equal, but better.” Other responses from the poet’s friends were more positive: “I read the 2nd canto

Evgenia Onegin; lovely! " (I.I. Kozlov to Pushkin, May 31, 1825); “Finally I got it out and read the second song of Onegin and in general I was very pleased with it; rural life in it is just as well depicted as urban life in the first. Lensky is drawn well, and Tatiana promises a lot. I will note to you, however (for you have initiated me into criticism), that to this day the action has not yet begun; the variety of pictures and the charm of the poem, on first reading, conceal this defect, but reflection reveals it; however, it can no longer be corrected, but another thing remains for you: to fully compensate for it in the following songs” (P. A. Katenin to Pushkin, March 14, 1826). Pushkin, at the beginning of 1824, assessed what had already been written (the first two chapters of the EO) as “[his] best work” (from the poet’s letter to his brother L.S. Pushkin).

If the “action” in the second chapter of EO “has not yet begun,” then, apparently, only because the poet needed time to complete the presentation of the main characters of the novel: Onegin, Lensky, Olga and Tatyana3. By March 1826, Pushkin (as we know, but P.A. Katenin did not know this) not only finished writing the third and fourth chapters, but also worked on the fifth chapter of the novel. The action in the novel, as if ahead of the call of P. A. Katenin, began in the third chapter - with Tatyana’s meeting with Onegin (“It’s time, she fell in love”) and her famous letter:

I am writing to you - what more?

What more can I say?

Now I know it's in your will

Punish me with contempt. ..

So, the latently felt anxiety associated with the supposed contradiction between the narrative plot (plot) of the second chapter, simplified to the limit, and the general high assessment of the initial “songs” of the novel, requires clarification. But before moving on to this issue and, further, to our own expressive-harmonic analysis of the second chapter of the EO, let us remember the statement of A. A. Bestuzhev, published in 1825: “The first chapter of the poetic novel Onegin, which recently appeared, is a tempting, animate picture of our inanimate Sveta. Wherever a feeling speaks, where a dream takes the poet away from the prose of the society he describes, the poems light up with poetic fervor and flow more sonorously into the soul.” The last phrase, as we will see, is equally applicable to both the first and second chapters of the novel: this, in fact, will be discussed below.

2. About the poetic plot and “miracle” of the second chapter of “Eugene Onegin”

“The horizons of the plot in “Eugene Onegin” strikingly do not coincide with the horizons of the plot,” wrote V. A. Grekhnev, developing and clarifying in his works a long-term research tradition dating back to the works of Yu. N. Tynyanov. “The aesthetic horizons of the plot of “Eugene Onegin” are invariably wider than its plot.” And further: “The plot of “Eugene Onegin” is epic-lyrical in nature. That is why, in our opinion, it includes not only the eventual fabric of the image, but also the author’s sphere of the novel, everything that is sometimes called “lyrical digressions.” By plot in this case we mean the event scheme of the “novel of heroes.” Developing these views,

V. N. Turbin noted not only their traditional nature, but also the important advantage of the “simplicity and clarity” of the distinction between the plot and the plot in the EO: the plot covers the sphere of the “novel of heroes”, and the plot arises where “above the plot, as if from outside it, The narrator’s polyfunctional monologue begins to sound.”

We use the term “poetic plot” (following V. S. Nepomniachtchi) in our works in order to emphasize the sensual (emotionally charged) side of Pushkin’s narrative, without, however, trying to clarify the concept of “plot” itself, but only focusing on its receptive (and even suggestive) qualities.

It is with this understanding of the poetic plot that the study of the rhythm of the verse becomes more important: rhythm expresses the “temporal sequence of the emotional content of the given,” rhythm, according to A. Bely, accompanies the meaning, rhythm is “the orderliness we directly feel<.. . >elements of the process, i.e., a phenomenon occurring in time.” Continuing this thought, S. M. Bondi wrote that the main task of poetry “is to find and scientifically comprehend the objective factors of that special artistic rhythmic excitement that accompanies our reading (or listening) of poetry.” Let us also remember the words of E.G. Etkind that “rhythm makes harmony tangible,” and the words of M.G. Harlapa: “we call rhythmic those movements that evoke in us a special experience, often expressed in the desire to reproduce these movements, a kind of “resonance” or empathy for the movement.”

Judging by the event plan of the second chapter of the EO, there should not be too many special experiences, but how true is this statement, with which we, in fact, began our research, we have to find out from the position of harmonic (aesthetic-formal) poetry.

The sensual outline of the plot of the second chapter reflects the emotional unrest of Pushkin himself in the early 20s and even his “crisis” of worldview - V. S. Nepomnyashchy writes about this in great detail. The critic points out the contrast between the two novel worlds - the St. Petersburg-Onegin and the rural-Larinsky, the futility of Onegin’s attempts to find peace of mind among the provincial nobility, and his friendship with Lensky - but therefore friendship, “just to pass the time,” draws our attention to the poet’s thoughts about death, lyrical digressions about Napoleon and “two-legged creatures,” etc. V. S. Nepomnyashchy connects all these “dramatic contradictions and conflicts” of the second chapter with Pushkin’s lyrical texts of 1822 and 1823, the main feature of which is “confusion and confusion". The conclusions that the critic comes to are very convincing: Pushkin “paradoxically found himself in a space where everything is illusory, everything fluctuates, everything is dual and reversible in its opposite, where there is no support,” and this feeling clearly comes through in the second chapter of EO.

But in the novel, not everything is so hopeless: the appearance of Tatyana, or more precisely, her image in the XXIV stanza of the second chapter, is an “absolute”, according to V. S. Nepomnyashchy, “surprise”, violating all the “laws of narration” of this chapter and therefore perceived by the reader as “miracle”, and stanza XXVIII - as a phenomenon of “cosmic” order.

Let's stop here for a few clarifications.

First, let's say a few words about the “miracle”. The emotional assessment of such power, given by V. S. Nepomniachtchi, could not (and we are absolutely sure of this) be based only on the prehistory of Pushkin’s text, that is, on the events of the first chapter and the first part of the second chapter already known to the reader (stanzas I-XXIII ). The critic, contrary to the concept of temporal analysis of narrative that he proclaimed, went beyond the currently known poetic text and looked ahead in the hope of finding

reasons for his enthusiastic assessment. This, at a minimum, is evidenced by the reviews of Pushkin’s contemporaries given at the beginning of this work.

Secondly, V. S. Nepomnyashchiy, being an adherent of the principle of symmetry as the beginning of aesthetic principles, is mistaken in asserting that the “miracle” begins “in the middle of the chapter.” On the next page of his study, the critic once again repeats the same mistake: “Silently appearing in the very middle of the narrative, she [Tatyana] confronts...”. However, the middle of the chapter, if we use the exact mathematical rules of division, falls not on stanzas XXIV, but on stanzas XX-XXI, in which we are talking about Lensky’s love, i.e., stanzas written in a high romantic style and constituting one of Pushkin’s brilliant examples soft irony

and, perhaps, self-irony (if you remember his youthful poems5).

Of course, V.S. Nepomniachtchi could easily avoid his very absurd mistake by replacing the words “middle of the chapter” with, say, “core of the chapter” in his analytical reasoning. But the fact is that the critic uses in his work a very common technique in literary criticism, which consists in using the compositional and structural symmetry identified in the text to obtain additional arguments in support of certain statements or assumptions. A similar thing occurs in the works of, for example, V.V. Nabokov, Yu.M. Lotman, E.G. Etkind and others. In this regard, let me remind the reader that “symmetry,” in the words

A. M. Vasnetsov, “this is an elementary property of beauty” and only “asymmetry creates phenomena” (P. Curie). Insufficient attention to the principle of the “golden section”, which, as the simplest, includes the principle of symmetry, has determined the unshakable conviction of literary scholars for decades in the truth of some statements of mathematicians, such as, for example: “symmetry, considered as the law of the structure of structural objects, is akin to harmony” . In particular, E. G. Etkind relies on this work in his basic postulates of compositional analysis of the text: “the principle of symmetry underlies any artistic composition.” But here is another position - A.F. Losev: “the law of the “golden section” is a universal law of artistic form and<. .. >Only dialectically can one unravel this universal and mysterious law of artistic form, which expresses meaning through material means both as identity and difference, and as a gradual transition.”

In this work, we do not see any particular need for a more detailed discussion of the principles of symmetry and asymmetry in relation to poetic creativity. To complete the topic related to the use of mathematical concepts in literary studies, I will quote A. Stendhal’s statement: “Of all the sciences, I love mathematics most of all, since in this science hypocrisy is absolutely impossible” [cit. from: 1, p. 7]6.

Let us return, however, to Pushkin. In the second chapter of the EO, the “miracle” still happens, but the manifestation of the “miracle” is shifted by the poet beyond the geometric center of the chapter for three stanzas: the “miracle” begins with the lines of the XXIV stanza:

Her sister's name was Tatyana...13)

A fragment of five or so stanzas (stanzas XXIV-XXVIII and the first 4-verse of the XXIX stanza), dedicated to Tatyana Larina, really stands out against the background

the overall rhythmic-harmonic panorama of the poetic plot and in an emotional sense really forms a special, contrapuntal center of the second chapter.

Moreover, the first stanza of this fragment (stanza XXIV) in compositional terms is located not in the geometric one, as V. S. Nepomnyashchy wrote, but in the harmonic center of the second chapter of the EO. In fact, stanza XXIV divides the entire volume of the second chapter in the proportion of the “golden section”: with the total volume of the stanzas of the second chapter (V = 40) and the value of the “golden section” coefficient F = 1.618, dividing the first number by the second gives the value 24.72 (the integer part of this number is 24, which corresponds to the XXIV stanza of the second chapter). Let us note that a number of psycholinguistic experiments confirm, according to I. I. Rimareva7, the fact that information located at the “golden section” point of some text directly enters and is recorded in a person’s subconscious, bypassing his consciousness.

No less important is the fact that the sequence of numbers (16-24-40) = 8 (2-35) is part of the Fibonacci harmonic series (1-2-3-5-8-...) with a plot-time length coefficient equal to eight. Previously, we showed that the numbers of this Fibonacci series a) correspond to the principle of rhythmic movement in the 4-verses of iambic tetrameter and b) correlate with the plot rhythm of the central motif “love” of Pushkin’s novel. Moreover, the numbers of another Fibonacci series (1-5-6-11-17-28-45-...) correspond to a) the principle of rhythmic movement in Pushkin’s 14-line “Onegin stanza” and b) the plot rhythm of the fifth, central chapter EO, and for both editions (1828 and 1833) of this chapter. Thus, the second chapter only strengthens our conviction in the correctness of E.K. Rosenov, who at the beginning of the 20th century. wrote that the natural law of divine proportion plays a role in the aesthetics of artistic formation, which “consists in establishing strictly proportionate proportions between all the main thoughts of the work.”

Let us now move on to the main part of our research. But first, we will have to briefly dwell on issues related to the central problem of poetic analysis, namely, issues of theory and practice in the study of the rhythm of verse.

3. Rhythm of verse and modern poetry

In a number of our previous works, both methodological and methodological issues of studying poetic texts within the framework of harmonic (aesthetic-formal) poetry were presented in sufficient detail. Anticipating the conversation about the concept of “rhythm” of a poetic text, let us briefly remind the reader that in our research we use the mathematical apparatus of aesthetic-formal analysis of a poetic text, based on the divine proportion of rhythm or, what is the same thing, on the law of the “golden ratio” . By the rhythm of a Russian poetic text we understand the dynamically changing relationship between its stressed and unstressed syllables.

Let us note that traditional poetry puts a different meaning into the concept of “rhythm”: “rhythm is symmetry in deviation from the meter,” and it is with this understanding of the essence of rhythm that poetry scholars have been using a “special, specifically “poetry” meaning for almost a hundred years, which has sharply narrowed its content and turned this such a comprehensive concept into a purely conventional designation, adapted to a given [statistical] poetry theory." It seems to us very important to remind about this for the reason that S. I. Gindin wrote about more than thirty years ago: “Statistical poetry (from A. Bely to A. Kolmogorov)<... >rhythm, paradoxically, has not been studied and is not being studied. Statistical description only reveals

probabilistic restrictions on the use of meter elements; to study rhythm, we must move from an integral consideration of the text as a whole to a differential analysis of the text in its unfolding.”

We contrasted the monopoly dominant static (statistical) method in poetry, which does not allow us to study the rhythm of a poetic text in its unfolding, with a dynamic (harmonic) method, based on the principle of the “golden section” as a “universal law of artistic form” (A. F. Losev). The dynamic properties of this law in its vector-geometric and algebraic representations make it possible to overcome the static (statistical) research stereotype and expand the search for the applicability of the “golden ratio” principle to objects of aesthetic nature, including poetic texts.

So, we use the idea of ​​the rhythm of verse as a measure of the harmonic orderliness of the movement of poetic thought, determined by the ratio of stressed and unstressed syllables in a Russian poetic text. This ratio is not absolute, but relative, and it is measured as the deviation of the real rhythm from the harmonic rhythm8. In turn, the harmonic rhythm is determined by the proportion of the “golden section” at the nodal (rhyme) points of the verse. The dynamic principle of the “golden section” allows us to combine in a single criterion three indicators that characterize a poetic text: rhythm, rhyme and stanza. Let us note that none of the methods known in science for studying poetic texts have such capabilities.

The operands of the harmonic proportion of the rhythm are: (a) the values ​​of the syllabic volume B of the text, read from its beginning; (b) the magnitude of the tonic volume T of the same text. Calculations for each ъ-th rhyme node (2-verse, 4-verse, etc.) are carried out according to three syllabic-tonic parameters of the verse, namely, the total number of syllables accumulated from the beginning of the text 8* ​​(“whole”), the number of accumulated unstressed syllables B* (“more”) and the number of accumulated stressed syllables T; (“smaller”):

T = 0.087/Dzs = 0.087/(8;/B; - B;/T;), (1)

where the coefficient 0.087 corresponds to a single level of RHT (rhythmic-harmonic perception of the text) then = 1. To move from the indicator of the harmonic rhythm of the verse t to the assessment of the psychophysiological perception of the poetic text, the Weber-Fechner law, known in psycholinguistics, is used, which establishes a logarithmic relationship between the strength of the external impacts and the intensity of human sensations resulting from these impacts:

RGT; = O; = 1+1p(t;). (2)

Formula (2) is a dynamic (temporal) assessment of the rhythm

harmonic perception of the text. To measure the degree of range of the RGT indicator, a relative indicator of the expressiveness of rhythm sensations Ke is used, calculated as the rate of change in the value O;:

Ke(g) = (AB8(O; - O4_1)/(xr - xr_1))/Ko, (3)

where the difference (xr - xr-() is the distance (number of lines) between two adjacent nodes

rhyming points of the verse, AB8 is the absolute value, and K o is the average level of Ke = 0.034 for the first chapter of EO, which we took as one.

Let us clarify once again: all values ​​of the parameters RGT and Ke are relative, i.e., they are calculated relative to their average (reference) values, taken as unity. This means that for a certain poetic text (in this case, for the second chapter of the EO), specific values ​​of harmony and expressiveness of rhythmic movement and the dynamics of their change make it possible to consider the correlation of rhythm and meaning not within the framework of abstract or metaphysical reasoning, but against the background of similar processes, taking place in the first (reference) chapter of the SW. For this reason, we included in the illustrative materials graphs of the behavior of the RGT and Ke parameters for both the second and first chapters of the EO.

11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 -1

1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 35 37 39

Rice. 1. Rhythmodynamic panorama of the first and second chapters of the novel “Eugene Onegin”

Rice. 2. Harmony of rhythm and content in the second chapter of the novel “Eugene Onegin”

stanzas of chapter 2

13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

Rice. 3. Expression of rhythm in the second chapter of the novel “Eugene Onegin”

The picture of the change in the harmonic rhythm and expressiveness of the movement of Pushkin’s poetic thought in the second chapter of EO (parameters RGT and Ke) is shown in the figures

1-3. The same figures indicate the main parts of the storyline and show excerpts of poetic text for a number of extraordinary points on the RGT and Ke curves - for the purpose of greater clarity of the upcoming rhythmic and semantic analysis.

The harmonic movement of poetic thought in the second chapter (this is clearly visible in Fig. 1) is actually divided into two parts: a surge in the meanings of harmony and expression occurs in the first 4-verse of the XXIX stanza - this is the “miracle” revealed to us by Pushkin in the form of his image the main character Tatyana. But the “miracle” does not happen in the text itself, but in the process of reading this text, with the reader, for “the poet makes our thoughts sing within us, not his own” (A. France [cited from: 34, p. 47]).

Let us especially pay attention to the following fact: at this moment we (readers) still know nothing about the future of the heroes of the novel and about the poet’s attitude towards Tatyana: words

Tatiana, dear Tatiana!

Now I'm shedding tears with you...

and many, many other things in the novel are not yet known to us, but the reader unconsciously, with some sixth sense, feels changes in his perception of Pushkin’s verse. This sixth sense is the sense of harmony: at the end of the story about Tatyana (line 396 and 3338 syllables from the beginning of the 2nd chapter), we observe an absolute coincidence of theoretical and real triplets of the Fibonacci series, and not for stanzas of a poetic text, as was the case with structural compositional “golden ratio”, and for many smaller units of text - stressed and unstressed syllables. It is the ratio of qualitatively different syllables that determines, as we have already said, the degree of closeness of the real rhythm to the harmonic rhythm. To the end of 396 lines from the beginning

Chapter 2 (end of the first 4-verse of the XXIX stanza), the accumulated number of stressed syllables is 1275, and the triple of Fibonacci numbers (1275-2063-3338) determines the value of RGT =

10.4 - at this point in the narrative, Pushkin’s text brings the reader into a state of absolute harmony, and this (in the opinion of V.S. Nepomnyashchiy and in our opinion too, in

slightly different perspective) and there is a feeling of “miracle”. “The miracle,” judging by the graphs, does not last very long, but Pushkin’s poetic text immediately switches the reader’s attention first to Tatyana’s father and then to Tatyana’s mother:

Her father was a kind fellow,

Belated in the last century. ..

Earlier (both in the initial chapter of EO and in the first 28 stanzas of its second chapter) nothing similar was observed in the behavior of the RGT parameter (see Fig. 1).

Let us now explain the very concept of absolute harmony, since the degree of persuasiveness of our entire rhythmic-harmonic analysis depends on the accuracy of its interpretation. Let's start with harmony. “The purpose and goal of harmony,” wrote Leon Alberti, “is to arrange parts, generally speaking, different in nature, by some perfect relationship so that they correspond to one another, creating beauty.” The philosophical concept of “measure” is inextricably linked with the concept of harmony. Measure corresponds to the concept of the whole, and harmony - to the relationship of parts within the whole. A measure is such a “qualitatively determined quantity, primarily as a direct” given (G.V.F. Hegel) and taken, first of all, as a quantity that “nothing can be added, subtracted, or changed without making it worse” (L. Alberti [cited from: 19, pp. 69-71]), and harmony is a measure of the relationship between the whole and its parts (and taken primarily as a quality)9.

In the language of mathematics, harmony is expressed by the law of the “golden section”: two parts of the whole are harmonious if their ratio is equal to the coefficient of the “golden section” Ф = 1.618033988... This is the simplest and most understandable interpretation of the principle of the “golden section”. The number Ф is irrational, therefore, in practical activities and measurement procedures it is unattainable, therefore in any research we are talking only about the degree of approximation to the value Ф « 1.618. In practice, therefore, calculations are limited to three (and even two) decimal places.

Let us once again remember the words of E. G. Etkind that “rhythm makes harmony tangible.” Now, if from the standpoint of humanitarian and exact knowledge we compare the number Ф = 1.6180339 with the value of the ratio between unstressed and stressed syllables at the end of line 396 of the 2nd chapter of EO (2063: 1275 = 1.6180392), then it turns out that the latter differs from the number F is only in the sixth (sic!) decimal place. It is precisely this unprecedentedly small difference between the real parameters of rhythm and the coefficient of the “golden section” that allows us to speak of the absolute harmony of rhythm that takes place in the 2nd chapter at the end of the story about Tatyana Larina.

So, the phenomenon of the “miracle” in the second chapter, which was not noticed by Pushkin’s contemporaries, but which so vividly struck V.S. Nepomniachtchi, requires, in our opinion, further comment. The critic very accurately felt the charm (beauty) of Pushkin’s story about the “elder sister,” but his attempt to explain his own impressions, finding worthy arguments for this, relied, first of all, on the knowledge of a qualified researcher and, first of all, on knowledge of the text of the entire novel. Let’s say that the appearance of Tatyana’s image could be called a “miracle,” V. S. Nepomnyashchy asserts: “Tatiana’s appearance is irrational,” and that if Onegin, Lensky and Olga “had to appear for the story to take place,” then “Tatiana could not to appear,

and, moreover, according to all the logic of the second chapter, it should not appear.” Further, this very controversial judgment leads the critic to the conclusion that the appearance of the image of Tatyana is “foreign”

similar to the logic that guided it, but it is there; and this fact, its very otherness, should become a new point of reference, the center of a new value structure ready to emerge.” The modality of obligation, as we understand it, cannot at all be correlated with the process of creativity as a phenomenon of self-limited self-development of artistic thought. In the case of analyzing the novel’s events “chapter by chapter,” this statement by the critic can only cause extreme amazement.

Polemics with V. S. Nepomniachtchi are not included in the immediate circle of our tasks, and therefore we will highlight the main thing: many of the critic’s assessments have real foundations, but in some cases the author’s explanations of his own assessments are very subjective and controversial. Thus, stanza XXVIII fully deserves the epithet “cosmic”, but only to a small extent, because in this stanza “the majestic sound that ends the first stanza of the 2nd chapter comes to life and acquires new strength and depth:

And the canopy expanded into a dense, huge, neglected garden,

Shelter of brooding dryads.

The explanation of V. S. Nepomniachtchi is unconvincing because, firstly, such associative echoes are unlikely to arise in the average reader of the novel - the distance between stanzas I and XXVIII of the second chapter is too great (26 stanzas, 364 lines, 65% of the chapter’s volume). And, secondly, according to Pushkin, “the mind cannot be content with just the play of sounds; feeling requires feeling; imagination - pictures and stories."

Logically structured argumentation and even associatively overlapping events in the novel’s narrative are far from sufficient to analyze the sensory and semantic perception of Pushkin’s verse. In any poetic analysis, the rhythm underlying the poetic text cannot but play a dominant role. Let us once again remember the words of S. M. Bondi: “with the help of rhythm, an artist (musician, poet, actor) takes possession of us, makes our heart beat faster or slower, breathe evenly or intermittently, feel time and its flow with our whole body<... >Immersed with the help of rhythmic influences in a special state, when our body resonates, becomes infected with this rhythm, we begin to especially sensitively perceive all the details of this rhythmically organized process affecting us and react especially strongly to them.”

To see (literally!) the sensory basis for such colorful assessments

V. S. Nepomnyashchiy, let us pay special attention to the nature of changes in the parameters of RGT and Ke in the interval from XXIV to XXIX stanzas (Fig. 2).

At the end of the XXIII stanza, Pushkin abruptly ends the story about Olga - at this point in the narrative the values ​​of the quantities RGT = 2.10 and Ke = 0.6. It is interesting that here is the local minimum of the RGT value, and the local maximum (RGT = 2.65) falls on the second 4-verse of the previous XXII stanza:

Sorry, the games are golden!

He fell in love with dense groves,

Solitude, silence,

And the Night, and the Stars, and the Moon...

decrease, which fully corresponds to the meaning of what was written here about the Moon - “replacing dim lanterns” and, finally, about Olga:

Her portrait: he is very cute,

I used to love him myself,

But he bored me immensely.

Commenting on this part of the second chapter, V. S. Nepomnyashchiy quite reasonably writes that the characteristics of Olga and Lensky’s poetry “are connected by the moon, which is given at first in a traditionally high key, but as we approach the “portrait of Olga” it is steadily “decreased” by the author - smoothly, with a completely innocent look, as if for a completely different reason, and with undeliberate causticity illuminates the object of Lensky’s adoration.” In relation to stanzas XXII and XXIII, this judgment is fully supported by our rhythmic-harmonic data (Fig. 3): the values ​​of Ke's expressiveness decrease in small zigzag jumps from 2.2 to 0.6 - with a constantly decreasing harmony, this behavior of expressiveness indicates a slightly noticeable irritation of the reader perceptions, irritation generated by the “almost sugary” portrait of Olga. Taking into account the poetic credo of Pushkin, who strove in his work for “the verisimilitude of feelings in the expected circumstances,” it seems to us that the poet’s intention was aimed precisely at such a receptive effect - to immerse the reader in the uncomfortable atmosphere of “sugary” poetry and abruptly interrupt it in order to bring onto the stage (by contrast!) the new heroine of his novel.

This is where the “miracle” begins imperceptibly, which the reader will be able to judge only in a little over five stanzas, but for now the first line of stanza XXIV, not yet foreshadowing anything supernatural, but located at the beginning of the structural-compositional “golden section” of the chapter (which will turn out to be even later), opens the story about the “big sister”:

Her sister's name was Tatyana...13

The three dots at the end of the line are very expressive: at least Pushkin had not yet begun his stanzas in this way, either in the first or second chapters. The pause after this line, indicated by the poet not only by means of punctuation, but also by a comment on Russian variants of Greek names (author's note number 13), seems to inadvertently encourage the reader to better remember this name - “Tatyana”; as if not particularly trusting the reader’s harmonic sense, Pushkin prefers to focus his attention at this point in a special way - by the need to re-read this line again, returning to it after getting acquainted with the list of “the most sweet-sounding Greek names: Agathon, Filat, Fedora, Thekla, etc.”

The poet begins the next XXV stanza with almost the same phrase:

So, the structural and compositional center of the chapter (stanza XXIV) is determined by three important details. Firstly, it is framed by two almost equivalent lines containing the name “Tatyana”, which obviously stands well for the reader

remember. Secondly, it is here that the poet’s intention to write a “tender novel” is first heard, even if in the word “tender” many are ready to hear slight irony or a hint of future romantic adventures. Let us note that Pushkin’s words in relation to Tatyana Larina:

For the first time in such a name We willfully consecrate the pages of a tender novel.

will turn out to be prophetic, and slight irony, if anyone noticed in the text and associated with the words “tender” and “sanctify,” will become less and less justified as one gets acquainted with other chapters of the novel.

Thirdly, the harmonic movement of poetic thought overcomes the inertia of its fall, the lower level of which falls at the end of the XXIII stanza (where “the type of Olga’s beauty,” wrote V.V. Nabokov, “makes Pushkin sad”), and begins its upward movement towards point of absolute harmony.

At first (in the XXIV and XXV stanzas) we observe a very unhurried increase in harmony (“switching from sentimentalism to romanticism” - V.V. Nabokov), and expression, having reached the value Ke = 1.63 in the middle of the XXIV stanza, again decreases to completely insensitive values ​​(0.7; 0.4; 0.1; 0.1); only at the end of the XXV stanza does it overcome the previous local maximum, growing to the value Ke = 2.0:

The child herself, in a crowd of children, did not want to play and jump,

And often all day long she would sit silently by the window.

In this place, the harmony, while remaining high, nevertheless decreases slightly, which is quite consistent with the meaning of this 4-verse and, as we see, does not need additional comments.

Further, the XXVI stanza “Thoughtfulness, her friend...” step by step leads to a noticeable increase in harmony (from 2.4 to 3.4), which continues throughout the XXVII stanza (from 3.4 to 3.9), but at the end of the stanza (and again in full accordance with the meaning) - a slight decline to the value of RGT = 3.4:

She was bored and the ringing laughter,

And the noise of their windy pleasures.

We especially note that if until the end of the XXVI stanza the harmony increased more or less smoothly, then starting from the XXVII stanza the RGT parameter, being very high, behaves differently: swaying with an ever-increasing amplitude, as if accumulating additional energy, the RGT values ​​successively take values 3, b; 3.9; 3.4; 3.9; 3.1; 3.9 (the amplitude grows in harmonic - sic! - proportion: 0.3-0.5-0.8), then a slight fading at the end of the XXVIII stanza (RGT = 4.0) and, at the end of the story about Tatyana, - “space” takeoff to the value of RGT = 10.4 at the beginning of the XXIX stanza:

She liked novels early on;

They replaced everything for her;

Let us remember Heraclitus: “Hidden harmony is stronger than obvious.” To sum up some results, let us use the words of V.N. Turbin, who wrote that from the very beginning “the direct description of Tatiana is replaced by an indication of the impression she makes (this is exactly what Homer’s Iliad says about Helen the Beautiful)<...>The final, general impression made by Tatyana is the impression of her luminosity<... >“A ray of light in a dark kingdom” - an image that with a light hand

N.A. Dobrolyubova, thirty years after “Eugene Onegin,” will firmly enter into everyday use in journalism, and is already emerging here.”

5. Integral rhythmic-expressive characteristics of the second chapter

The time characteristics presented in our drawings are the main indicators of the rhythmic movement of a poetic text. They make it possible to analyze the emotional and semantic processes of perception of a verse in the process of its unfolding from the beginning of the text to its completion. Other possibilities, additional to temporal ones, are the integral parameters of motion, which characterize a certain process through its average values. Integral characteristics of dynamic processes are widely used in a variety of fields of knowledge, for example in medicine, where a person’s blood pressure or pulse (health indicators) are determined as average values ​​for a certain time interval of measurements. With a careful and thoughtful approach to the joint use of such parameters, the researcher receives additional opportunities for describing and analyzing dynamic processes.

In our research we use the following integral parameters:

1) average values ​​for a certain text of the rhythmic-harmonic accuracy of the RGT OGF (along with the maximum value OMAX);

2) average values ​​of expressiveness of rhythmic sensations Ke-sr (along with the maximum value of Ke-max) for the same text.

3) impulsiveness of the harmonic rhythm IMP-oscillation (range) of RGT values ​​Oj relative to the average value Ocp (standard deviation);

4) instability of rhythm sensations NS-oscillation (range) of Ke values ​​relative to the average value of Ke-sr (standard deviation);

The third and fourth parameters allow us to assess the degree of variability (variability, scatter) of the rhythmic movement in a verse using standard means of mathematical statistics, and the index of rhythmic-sensory activity IND is, in our opinion, the resulting integral parameter of the rhythm of a verse. The parameters IMP and NS of a poetic text, associated with the stability of the rhythm of the verse, make it possible to introduce into research circulation a new concept of expressive-harmonic, creative zones of the rhythm of the text (KZR - Fig. 4), to correlate this concept with activation zones in the human brain and (together with the parameter IND) - to find a real mechanism for research interaction between poetry scholars, psychophysiologists and neurolinguists.

Below in the table. Figure 1 shows the values ​​of the integral rhythmic-expressive parameters of the second chapter of the EO in comparison with similar data for the first chapter and for the three previously studied emotional states of 10 Pushkin heroes.

0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0 2,5 3,0 3,5 4,0 4,5 5,0

Harmony, RGT

Rice. 4- Creative zones of the rhythm of Pushkin’s verse: 1) EO, chapter 1; 2) EO, chapter 2; 3) “inspiration”; 4) “love, jealousy, sadness”;

5) "envy"

Table 1. Integral rhythmic-expressive parameters of Pushkin’s verse (receptive aspect of analysis)

Poetic aura Volume of text V (syllables) Harmonic rhythm of verse RGT Expressiveness of rhythmic sensations K e ShB

Omax Osr 1MR K E-MAX K e-sr N8

1. EO, Chapter 1 6326 3.20 1.73 2.11 9.20 1.00 7.60 16.10

2. EO, Chapter 2 4720 10.40 2.28 1.27 46.90 2.10 4.90 9.90

3. Inspiration 658 4.17 2.50 1.15 23.20 8.10 6.20 10.50

4. Love, jealousy, sadness 349 4.20 1.80 1.15 28.20 10.00 9.70 19.00

5. Envy 704 5.43 2.17 1.24 47.70 18.10 14.90 35.30

Starting a brief comparative analysis of the rhythmic-expressive parameters of Pushkin’s verse, let us remember that, on the one hand, in 1823 Pushkin “enthusiastically” worked on the text of the second chapter of the novel, and on the other hand, it was “less brilliant” than in first. These estimates are fully consistent with the values ​​of the indices of rhythmic-sensual activity SB: if for the first chapter SB = 16.1, then for the second chapter the value SB = 9.9. The latter is very close to the value of this parameter for the emotional state “inspiration” (SB = 10.5), which is completely consistent with Pushkin’s own assessment: “I work with ecstasy.” The difference in the values ​​of this parameter for the first two chapters of the EO no less clearly reflects (and we have already written about this) the generally accepted literary fact that, in general, the second chapter is inferior to the first - one of the two “most colorful chapters of the novel.”

Let us now consider the behavior of the integral parameters for the second chapter of the EO in more detail. In order for the “miracle” stanzas to confirm (or refute) the applicability of A. A. Bestuzhev’s words that “wherever a feeling speaks, where a dream takes the poet away from the prose of the society described, poems light up with poetic fervor and flow more sonorously into the soul,” we it will be necessary to analyze the changes in the parameters of the harmony of RGT and the expression of Ke for three parts of this chapter: for the fragment we called “part 1” (stanzas 1-XX111), for the fragment “the image of Tatyana” (“part 2”, stanzas XXIU-XXYSH and 4 -verse XXIX stanza) and for the final part (“part 3”, stanzas XX1X-XL).

We will make a comparison based on the average values ​​of the parameters of harmony RGT (Osr) and expression Ke-sr, which most clearly reflect the essence of the emotional dynamics of the narrative. According to these parameters, the episode of the “miracle” (“part 2”) significantly exceeds the first chapter: almost twice in terms of RGT (3.4 versus 1.7) and four times in terms of expressiveness of Ke (4.1 versus 1.0). The difference between the first parts of the second chapter is no less noticeable: the RGT value for the first fragment is 1.6 (3.4 for the second), and the value of Ke =

1.4 (4.1 for the second). The third part of the second chapter (Larins, Lensky) demonstrates a decrease (relative to the second part) in the average values ​​of the RGT parameter (to 3.2) and the Ke parameter (to 2.7). These data alone are enough to confirm the correctness of A. A. Bestuzhev’s words from the standpoint of the harmony and expression of Pushkin’s verse: in the second part of the second chapter (“the image of Tatyana”) the poems really light up with poetic fervor and flow more sonorously into the reader’s soul.

But that’s not all: now we have the opportunity to confirm the words about Tatyana as “a ray of light in a dark kingdom.” In passing, we note that instead of the “dark kingdom,” the definition of a “boring” kingdom is most suitable for the second chapter: it is not for nothing that the poet begins stanza I with the words “The village where Onegin was bored...” or writes “About the boredom of single life” (stanza X11), or about Lensky and Onegin: “They were boring to each other,” and about the friendship that arose between the heroes - only because they had nothing to do in the village (stanza X111), or about Tatyana: “She didn’t play burners, / She was bored by the ringing laughter, / And the noise of their windy joys” (stanza XXUP).

So, about the “ray of light”: let’s write down the values ​​of RGT (Osr) and Ke-sr sequentially for

"Part 1", "Part 1 + Part 2" and "Part 1 + Part 2 + Part 3" (i.e. the entire second chapter

OSR: 1.6 - 1.9 - 2.3;

Ke-sr: 1.4 - 1.9 - 2.1.

No special explanation is required to notice the main thing: the simultaneous growth of two parameters - both harmony and expression - indicates an increase in the positive emotional coloring of the narrative, and the influence of the fragment of the “miracle” (“part 2”, “the image of Tatyana”) on the overall dynamics of this process . The values ​​of RGT and Ke-sr for “part 3” are twice as high as the same indicators for “part 1”, although in terms of content “part 3” of the second chapter does not stand out in anything special (remember the plot of this part as presented by V.V. Nabokov): the Larin family, Lensky’s visit to the grave of “foreman” Larin and, in conclusion, three stanzas of the author’s “eschatological” epilogue.

But the reflection of a luminous fragment does not allow the reader to completely immerse himself in the sedentary atmosphere of boring rural life, because, we repeat, the resonant outburst of our own feelings leaves a mark on our soul for a long time.

6. Movement of the plot and the bifurcation point

From the standpoint of the science of self-organizing systems (synergetics), the first 4-verse of the XXIX stanza represents a bifurcation point - the point of “acquiring a new quality in the movements of a dynamic system with a small change in its parameters.” Of course, from a semantic point of view, this will become obvious in the future - when getting acquainted with the content of the third and subsequent chapters of Pushkin’s novel, and therefore there would be no need to talk about bifurcation (in connection with the temporal line of analysis of EO), but a number of extremely interesting facts require their publication and comprehension already at this stage of the study.

Above we wrote about the modality of obligation in the judgments of V. S. Nepomnyashchiy and that the image of Tatyana presented in the second chapter of the EO as the center, in the critic’s opinion, there cannot be a new value structure ready to emerge (in the aspect of analysis “by chapters”) explained by standard techniques and means of literary analysis. It seems to us that it is for this reason that the critic was forced to resort to his very controversial argument. The situation we are considering is most accurately described by P. A. Katenin in his letter to Pushkin (see above): “Lensky is drawn well, and Tatyana promises a lot.” To assert more, a retrospective analysis must be based on knowledge of the text of the entire novel, even if the researcher agrees with the ideological position of V. Khlebnikov: “it has happened more than once that the future of a mature age is revealed to youth in faint hints.”

In our case, even such a strong research move, which is used, for example, by V.N. Turbin when analyzing the plot of EO, cannot help: “the plot of the novel moves from foresight or prediction to implementation.” The quarrel between Lensky and Onegin and its terrible ending were dreamed of by Tatyana Larina in the fifth chapter, and military husbands and the “campaign” were predicted a little earlier to the Larina sisters by the courtyard girls in the form of a playful prophecy. But all this will be only in the fifth chapter, and in the second chapter there is no talk of any predictions or foresights of Pushkin’s heroes.

The famous formula of O. M. Freidenberg does not help either: “The plot is a system of metaphors deployed into verbal action; the whole point is that these metaphors are a system of allegories of the main image.” In Pushkin’s text, which presents the reader with the image of Tatyana Larina, even in the 4th verse of the 21st stanza that concludes this fragment, everything is extremely realistic, and, despite the brilliant poetic style, it is very difficult to find metaphorical allegories in the “miracle” episode (at least for us).

The means of harmonic (aesthetic-formal) poetry allow, while remaining within the text of the second chapter of the EO, to see the nature of the suggestive beginning of Pushkin’s verse and explain what was previously hidden behind the shadow of many metaphysical reasoning. But before moving on to this issue, let us give a few statements that reveal the sequence of our logical conclusions.

“Through genius, nature gives rule to art” (I. Kant), and art, as M. Tsvetaeva wrote, is the same nature: “Do not look for laws in art other than your own (not the artist’s self-will, which does not exist, but precisely the laws of art )". Further: “nature is like a thrifty owner who is thrifty where necessary in order to be able to be generous in his time and in his place” (G. Leibniz). Further: “resonant excitation is one of the main methods of economy developed by nature, compressing the processes of evolution in time” and, we add, the only way in the artistic world (and more broadly in society) of effective non-contact interaction between participants in the communication process: “small, but topologically correctly organized influence, as Leibniz said, “in its time and in its place,” turns out to be extremely effective. For it is equivalent to the stable states of the natural environment itself, its own forms of organization.”

Having reached in the process of reading the second chapter up to the first 4th verse of the XXIX stanza, we (readers) discover (more precisely, feel) the point of bifurcation - the point of absolute

harmony, we feel that correctly organized small impact (only 0.7% of the volume of the second chapter), which ends the story of a genius about Tatyana Larina:

She liked novels early on;

They replaced everything for her;

She fell in love with the deceptions of both Richardson and Rousseau.

Of course, this 4-verse and its special qualities cannot be considered in isolation, outside the general narrative of the second chapter of the EO: these are those poems that appeared in their time and place and which, semantically, carry within themselves potential grounds for future novel action.

The future (the development of the love theme of the novel) will begin at the beginning of the third chapter (stanzas VII and VIII):

The time has come, she fell in love. . .

Her imagination has long been

Burning with bliss and melancholy,

Hungry for fatal food;

For a long time, heartache had oppressed her young chest;

The soul was waiting... for someone,

And she waited... The eyes opened;

She said: it’s him!..

But it is precisely in the second chapter, at the point of absolute harmony, that the emotionally resonant impact of the text on the reader, who is not yet familiar with the upcoming future, turns out to be maximum and therefore, for a sensitive reader, promising (Tatyana promises a lot - P. A. Katenin). The author's narrative is felt and perceived by the reader with the maximum degree of emotionality, not only because the verisimilitude of feelings is realized by the poet in words and their combinations, which give rise to “amazing transformations of meaning.” No less significant is the fact that harmony and expression are latently represented in the very nature of the movement of poetic thought, that unique (for a given poetic fragment) way of movement, to which both the choice of words and the way of their relative arrangement in the verse are subordinated.

Thus, in the sphere of temporary arts, which, of course, includes the art of poetry, the emotional and semantic potential of the bifurcation point has the greatest chance of being actually embodied in a future text. The bifurcation points themselves, as we believe, cannot but be located in the centers of the “golden section” - at least in the best works of great poets. Here's what he wrote about it at the beginning of the twentieth century.

E.K. Rosenov, a famous Russian researcher of poetic and musical texts: “The law of the golden ratio manifests itself most often in the most precise and logical forms in the most brilliant authors and, mainly, in their most spiritual creations,” since this law is “highly characterizes the very process of creativity." Of greatest interest in this regard are not only explicit (textual) ways of achieving the goals of poetic communication, through which the author seeks to draw the reader’s special attention to this or that

another fragment of the narrative (Her sister was called Tatyana - So, she was called Tatyana), but also latent (hidden) aspects of reception and suggestive impact on the reader of Pushkin’s verse.

And one last thing. The value of the SB parameter (index of resonant sensory activity) for the fragment of the “miracle” of the second chapter is truly cosmic (SB = 51.4): it is much greater than for all fragments of Pushkin’s text that we studied, including the emotional states of “envy” and “hatred.” . Five and a few stanzas of Pushkin’s text, bright as a ray of light, really evoke in us empathy for the emotional and meaningful movement of the poet’s poetic thought in full accordance with Pushkin’s poetic credo: “the truth of passions, the verisimilitude of feelings in the expected circumstances - this is what our heart requires.”

We will allow ourselves to stop here, since all further comments seem unnecessary to us - the researcher has no way to convince the reader of the reality of the identified analogies: in relation to the sensory perception of a literary text, the aphorism of Plautus Titus Maccius “Everyone hears only what he understands” is indisputable. We can only hope that an interested reader of Pushkin’s texts will be able to correlate his own impressions of reading the EO with our data and decide how close the aesthetic-formal methods of studying poetry are to the harmonious nature of Pushkin’s poetry.

1 Pushkin's correspondence is quoted from this edition. Hereinafter, italics are ours; other cases are specified separately.

3 Another main character of the EO is, of course, the author himself - in his “digressions”, comments, explicit and hidden assessments and statements - a direct participant in the poetic narrative.

4 “The first and main principle [of the study] was that the novel was read in chapters; the consideration included only the material that had been read at each given moment, and all comparisons were made only retrospectively: the analysis of, say, the sixth chapter could not involve material from the seventh or eighth.”

5 For example, Pushkin’s poem “Despondency” (1816): “Will the day shine behind the blue mountain, / Will the night rise with the autumn moon. . . "

6 In this regard, we, of course, foresee possible reproaches against us from many representatives of the humanities, but the question is not as harmless as it might seem at first glance. Let us recall, for example, the understanding of the rhythm of Russian verse that A. Bely proposed at one time (“rhythm is symmetry in deviation from the meter”, and the commentary to it by S.M. Bondi: “the concept of “rhythm” [in Bely] is extremely narrowed and turned into a specific term, closely related to a specific poetic (erroneous) theory." For more details, see: 9, pp. 170-197. The symmetrical analysis of the fifth chapter of the EO, proposed by E.G., most clearly demonstrates its uncertainty (which means unconvincing). Etkind. There are 42 stanzas in this chapter, and the most dramatic fragment of the narrative occurs in stanza XXI (“Onegin waved his hand...”) It would seem that “Pushkin’s symmetry” is irrefutable, but... two circumstances prevent us from recognizing the victory as final. wrote I.M. Dyakonov, “Pushkin’s passion for symmetry.” The plot of the 5th chapter ends only at the beginning of the 6th chapter - the first three stanzas of the 6th chapter finish off the story about the name day begun in the 5th chapter; the middle should be divided in half by the number 45, not 42. Secondly, the first edition of the 5th chapter was published by Pushkin in February 1828 and contained 45 stanzas, and only in the second edition in 1833 (which appeared as part of the full version of the novel ) the poet reduced the text of the chapter to 42 stanzas. Thus, Pushkin, by excluding three stanzas from the 5th chapter when publishing the full text of the novel, in our opinion, created a poetic miracle - he preserved the harmoniously completed unity of the plot rhythm. Moreover, and this is especially important, in the full text of the novel the harmonic perfection of the 5th chapter turned out to be impeccable both in the emotional-semantic and in the plot-logical aspects. Indeed, the contrapuntal center of the 5th chapter is located in stanza XVII (“But what did I think

Tatyana..."), and the number 17 is included in the Fibonacci harmonic series (1-5-6-11-17-28-45-...), which directly corresponds to the principle of the plot rhythm of the fifth, central, chapter of the EO. For more details see:.

7 “The process of transforming the act of perceiving a problem situation into a formalized piece of knowledge occurs according to the principle of the golden ratio. The golden ratio is the harmonic proportion of the developing system formation of any human system.”

8 Of particular importance to us is the fact that in biomechanics (practical science) “rhythm is a temporary measure of the relationship between parts of movements. It is determined by the ratio of the duration of the parts of the movement: DN: Dt2: Dt3... ".

9 I note that neither in aesthetic-philosophical, nor in practical terms nothing prevents us from applying the same concepts of measure and harmony to each of the parts of the whole.

10 We present these data only because “everything is known by comparison”; three emotional states correlate with the following poetic fragments: “inspiration” - EO, chapter 8, Pushkin’s Muse, stanzas I-VI, iambic tetrameter, 78 lines, 658 syllables; “envy” - “Mozart and Salieri”, first scene, first monologue of Salieri, “white” iambic 5-foot, 66 lines, 704 syllables; “love, jealousy, sadness” - Pushkin’s poem “Confession”, 1826, astronomical iambic tetrameter, 41 lines, 349 syllables.

Bibliography

1. Arnold V.I. What is mathematics? M., 2002. 104 p.

2. Bely A. Towards a future textbook of rhythm // Structure and semiotics of artistic text / Academic. zap. Tartu University. Tartu, 1981. Vol. 515. pp. 112-146.

3. Bely A. Symbolism. 1910. 633 p.

4. Bestuzhev A. A. A look at Russian literature during 1824 and early 1825. Excerpts // Pushkin in lifetime criticism, 1820-1827. SPb., S. 292.

5. Bondi S. M. About rhythm // Context 1976: literary theoretical. research M., 1977. P. 100129.

6. Hegel G. V. F. Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences // Hegel G. V. F. Works. M., 1968. P. 87216.

7. Gindin S.I. Ways of modeling the rhythmic organization of text // Structural and mathematical methods of language modeling. Abstract. report and message All-Union scientific Conf.: In 2 hours. Kyiv, 1970. Part 1. P. 33-35.

8. Grekhnev V. A. Dialogue with the reader in Pushkin’s novel “Eugene Onegin” // Pushkin: research and materials / USSR Academy of Sciences. Institute of Russian lit. L.: Nauka, 1979. T. IX. pp. 100-109.

9. Greenbaum O. N. “Who is walking right there...”, or How to maintain the status quo in poetry // Language and speech activity. 2004. St. Petersburg, 2006. T. 7. P. 170-197.

10. Greenbaum O. N. Harmonic structure of Pushkin’s verse. Part I. Rhythmodynamics of the novel “Eugene Onegin” and modern poetry // Language and speech activity. St. Petersburg: St. Petersburg State University Publishing House, 2004. T. 6. P. 86-121.

11. Greenbaum O. N. Harmony of Pushkin’s verse and the mathematics of harmony. St. Petersburg, 2007. 25 p.

12. Greenbaum O. N. Harmony of strophic rhythm in the aesthetic and formal dimension. St. Petersburg, 2000. 158 p.

13. Greenbaum O. N. Rhythmic images of “envy” and “hatred” in Pushkin’s gallery of poetic halos // Envy. Forms of its justification and exposure in culture. Materials of the international conf. St. Petersburg, 2007. pp. 22-47.

14. Greenbaum O. N. Aesthetic and formal poetry. St. Petersburg, 2001. 40 p.

15. Donskoy D. D., Zatsiorsky V. M. Biomechanics. M., 1979. 264 p.

16. Dyakonov I. M. On the history of the concept of “Eugene Onegin” // Pushkin: research and materials. L., 1982. T. 10. P. 70-105.

17. Knyazeva E. N., Kurdyumov S. P. Synergetics: nonlinearity of time and landscapes of coevolution. M., 2007. 286 p.

18. Losev A. F. Music as a subject of logic // Losev A. F. From early works. M., 1990. pp. 286-364.

19. Losev A.F., Shestakov V.P. History of aesthetic categories. M., 1965. 374 p.

20. Nabokov V.V. Commentary on the novel “Eugene Onegin” by A.A. Pushkin. St. Petersburg, 1998. 926 p.

21. Nepomnyashchiy V. S. Pushkin. Russian picture of the world. M., 1999. 542 p.

22. Pushkin A. S. Complete. collection cit.: In 10 volumes. 1978. Vol. 7.

23. Pushkin A. S. Complete. collection cit.: In 16 vol. M.; L., 1937-1949. T. 13. 658 p.

24. Rimareva I. I. Universal law of dynamics of cognitive systems // Psychology and socionics of interpersonal relations. 2003. No. 3. P. 19-47.

25. Rosenov E.K. Articles about music: Favorites. M., 1982. 271 p.

26. Stakhov A.P. Sacred geometry and mathematics of harmony. Vinnitsa, 2003. 32 p.

27. Turbin V. N. Poetics of A. S. Pushkin’s novel “Eugene Onegin.” M., 1996. 231 p.

28. Freidenberg O. M. Motives // Poetics: works of Russian and Soviet poetic schools. Budapest, 1982. pp. 673-688.

29. Kharlap M. G. On the concepts of “rhythm” and “meter” // Russian versification: traditions and problems of development. M., 1985. P. 11-29.

30. Khlebnikov V. Creations. M., 1987. 734 p.

31. Tsvetaeva M.I. Art in the light of conscience // A.S. Pushkin: pro et contra: In 2 vols.

St. Petersburg, 2000. T. II. pp. 89-95.

32. Shubnikov A.V., Koptsik V.A. Symmetry in science and art. M., 1972. 339 p.

33. Engelhardt B. M. Introduction to the theory of literature // Muratov A. B. Phenomenological aesthetics of the early twentieth century and the theory of literature (B. M. Engelhardt). St. Petersburg, 1996. pp. 24-45.

34. Encyclopedia of Thought / Comp. N. Ya. Khoromin. M., 1994. 574 p.

35. Etkind E. G. Conversation about poetry. M., 1970. 239 p.

36. Etkind E. G. Symmetrical compositions in Pushkin. Paris, 1988. 86 p.

The second chapter of Pushkin’s novel “Eugene Onegin,” written in the genre of a novel in verse, begins with a description. Country with touching love for her. Further, Pushkin describes the master's house, which Pushkin called in the European manner, a castle. There is nothing superfluous or random in the works of the great Russian poet; every line contains a deep meaning. This can be seen by analyzing the second chapter of the novel. (By the way, you can read its summary).

For example, by calling the master's estate a castle, the author wanted to emphasize the solidity and strength of the house in which Eugene settled. The description of the house characterizes its former owner. Having built the estate once, my uncle did not change anything about it for forty years. He ran his landowner’s household without any special innovations and “quarelled with the housekeeper for forty years.”

Next, Pushkin shows how Onegin lives on his uncle’s estate, his relationships with his neighbors. This is another dash to . At first, the neighbors tried to make friends with the young landowner from St. Petersburg. Someone cherished the dream of making him their son-in-law, someone was looking for communication with a new person, wanted to know St. Petersburg news and gossip. But “at first everyone went to him.” Only Onegin himself did not seek friendship with anyone, and as soon as he saw a wagon with another guest on the road, he literally fled on a stallion through the backyard.

True, it should be said here that having accepted the inheritance, he replaced the corvée with a light quitrent for the peasants. The more he alienated his neighbors. This action of his reflected the mood of the noble youth of that time, Onegin’s own desire for progress.

In the second chapter, Pushkin introduces another hero - who also arrived in his village almost at the same time as Onegin. Lensky is opposed to Onegin in everything. If Evgeny is a master of hypocrisy, then Lensky is honest and sincere with people. He expects the same from those around him, and therefore is naive and trusting, like a child. Onegin has cooled down and is bored with everything, Lensky looks at the world with wide eyes, in love with life, with the nature that surrounds him. His soul did not have time to become corrupted, like Onegin’s soul; he is devoid of skepticism, loves people and life itself.

Onegin’s education is homemade, his knowledge is scattered and has no logical system. Lensky is a graduate of the German University and has solid knowledge that he is ready to put into practice. In terms of character, mentality and ardor of soul, the image of Lensky is similar to Pushkin himself. In addition, he, like, writes poetry. But Pushkin also did not write Lensky from himself.

A visit to the graves of Dmitry Larin and his parents is another touch to Lensky’s portrait. This episode testifies to the subtlety and spiritual sensitivity of the young poet.

Lensky, like Onegin, was an eligible bachelor in the Russian outback, and although the neighbors’ conversations about haymaking, wine, the kennel, and his relatives did not arouse interest in Lensky, he did not avoid communicating with them. Lensky learned about Onegin from his neighbors and wanted to meet him.

The young landowners began to meet often. attracted them to each other, they were interested together. While riding horses, Onegin and Lensky argued on economic and political topics, discussed issues of science, religion, and talked about poetry.

An analysis of Chapter 2 of Pushkin’s novel “Eugene Onegin” shows that it is built on opposites. Onegin is contrasted with Lensky. In the same chapter, Pushkin introduces the reader to the girl Lensky loves. The simple-minded and sociable Olga is contrasted with her older sister - wild, silent. The sad and thoughtful girl is the antipode of her younger sister - lively and energetic.

The love of Lensky and Olga was largely instilled in them by their parents and public opinion. Olga and Vladimir grew up together. Probably the parents were friendly with each other and often visited each other with their children. Parents dreamed of getting their children married. These conversations inspired the obedient children with a feeling of affection, which they mistook for love. Olga had no other objects of adoration. But she was able to easily get carried away by someone else if a new attractive face appeared in her horizon. And Lensky, who, like Tatyana, grew up on novels, was a dreamy person, and mistook the desire to love and be loved for love.

Tatyana loved to read novels and was a dreamy, mystical person. Even Onegin, after meeting his sisters, remarked to Lensky that the dreamy and thoughtful Tatyana was more suitable for the poetic soul of his young friend. And Olga is sweet, charming, and looks like a doll. Her beauty can quickly get boring, just as the author got tired of it.

So why not Tatyana, but Olga became the love of Vladimir Lensky? The answer lies in these lines: “and children’s pranks were alien to her.” When guests with children arrived, she preferred to retire to her room or somewhere in the garden. And knowing Tatyana’s tendency to be alone, her kind parents did not bother her, leaving her to her own devices.