Eugene Onegin in which century the events take place. Creativity of the Decembrist poets. Themes and artistic originality of the lyrics of k. Poetry K.F. Ryleeva

The history of the creation of the novel "Eugene Onegin"

Pushkin worked on the novel for over seven years. During this time, much has changed in the life of Pushkin, and in the nature of his work. The most important thing was that since 1925 he turned from a romantic poet into a realist poet. If earlier he, like any romantic, in his poems, set the main task to pour out his soul, to reflect in the plots and images of poems his own feelings, experiences, suffering caused to him in life, then becoming a realist artist, he strives not so much to talk about oneself as much as about life itself, not so much to pour out one's feelings as to carefully observe, study, artistically generalize the surrounding reality.

The novel was, according to Pushkin, "the fruit of the mind of cold observations and the heart of sad remarks." Pushkin called the work on it a feat - of all his creative heritage, only Boris Godunov he described with the same word. Against the broad background of pictures of Russian life, the dramatic fate of the best people of the noble intelligentsia is shown.

Pushkin began work on Onegin in 1823, during his southern exile. The author abandoned romanticism as the leading creative method and began to write a realistic novel in verse, although the influence of romanticism is still noticeable in the first chapters. Initially, it was assumed that the novel in verse would consist of 9 chapters, but later Pushkin reworked its structure, leaving only 8 chapters. He excluded from the work the chapter "Onegin's Journey", which he included as an appendix. After that, the tenth chapter of the novel was written, which is an encrypted chronicle from the life of future Decembrists.

The novel is unique, because earlier in world literature there was not a single novel in verse. Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin created a novel in verse like Byron's poem Don Juan. Defining the novel as a “collection of motley chapters”, Pushkin emphasizes one of the features of this work: the novel is, as it were, “opened” in time, each chapter could be the last, but it can also have a continuation. And thus the reader draws attention to the independence of each chapter of the novel. The novel has become an encyclopedia of Russian life in the 20s of the century before last, since the breadth of the novel shows readers the whole reality of Russian life, as well as the multi-plot and description of different eras.

This is what gave rise to V.G. Belinsky in his article "Eugene Onegin" to conclude: "Onegin can be called an encyclopedia of Russian life and an extremely folk work."

In the novel, as in the encyclopedia, you can learn everything about the era: about how they dressed, and what was in fashion, what people valued most, what they talked about, what interests they lived. "Eugene Onegin" reflected the whole of Russian life. Briefly, but quite clearly, the author showed the serf village, lordly Moscow, secular Petersburg. Pushkin truthfully portrayed the environment in which the main characters of his novel live - Tatyana Larina and Eugene Onegin. The author reproduced the atmosphere of the city noble salons, in which Onegin spent his youth.

At the very beginning of his work on Eugene Onegin, Pushkin wrote to the poet Vyazemsky: "Now I am writing not a novel, but a novel in verse - a diabolical difference."

Indeed, the poetic form gives "Eugene Onegin" features that sharply distinguish it from the usual prose novel. In poetry, the poet does not just tell or describe, but at the same time he somehow especially excites us by the very form of his speech: rhythm, sounds. The poetic form is much stronger than the prose one conveys the feelings of the poet, his excitement. Each poetic turn, each metaphor acquires a special brightness and persuasiveness in poetry. Pushkin created a special form for his lyrical novel. The verses do not flow in a continuous stream, as in almost all of his poems, but are divided into small groups of lines - stanzas, fourteen verses (lines) each, with a definition, a constantly repeating arrangement of rhymes - the so-called "Onegin stanza", which consists of fourteen iambic tetrameter verses. These fourteen verses are divided into four groups: three quatrains and one couplet (final).

The novel "Eugene Onegin" is written in verse. This is surprising: in a small book of the novel, the poet managed to reflect the life of the Russian people and the nobility in the 19th century, managed to capture the life of Russia, the life and customs of many segments of the population. Managed to resolve one of the most difficult topics of human life - the theme of love. This is the eternal theme of Russian literature.

The novel "Eugene Onegin"

Slubskikh Kira Olegovna

A. S. Pushkin (1799--1837)

onegin novel pushkin

Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin was born in Moscow. From an early age, Pushkin was brought up in a literary environment. His father was a connoisseur of literature, had a large library, his uncle was a poet. The Pushkin House was visited by N.M. Karamzin, V.A. Zhukovsky, I.I. Dmitriev.

Grandmother, Arina Rodionovna, uncle Nikita Kozlov, the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum, where he began to study in 1811, played an important role in Pushkin's life. His friends at the Lyceum were: Ivan Pushchin, Wilhelm Kuchelbecker, Anton Delvig. There he began to write poetry, in 1814 the first poem "To a friend of a poet" was published.

After graduating from the Lyceum, A.S. Pushkin moved to St. Petersburg in 1817 and was enlisted in the Collegium of Foreign Affairs. In St. Petersburg, he communicated in secular society. In 1820 he completed the poem "Ruslan and Lyudmila" - the first major work.

For his works in 1820, Pushkin was sent into exile. There he wrote the poems "The Prisoner of the Caucasus", "The Fountain of Bakhchisarai", "The Robber Brothers", and in 1823 he began work on the novel in verse "Eugene Onegin".

In 1824 Pushkin was again sent into exile. There he continued to work on "Eugene Onegin", wrote "Boris Godunov", poems. In the same place, in Mikhailovsky, his friends visited him. Pushchin brought Woe from Wit to Pushkin, and from him he learned about the Decembrist uprising, in which many of his friends participated, as well as about their execution.

On September 4, 1826, Nicholas I unexpectedly summoned Pushkin to Moscow. But already in 1328, a decree was issued on the supervision of A.S. Pushkin. In the same year he left for the Caucasus.

In 1830 Pushkin got married to N. Goncharova. Before his marriage, he went to the estate in Boldino. This period in Pushkin's work is called the Boldin autumn, because. he wrote a large number of works.

May 15, 1831 Pushkin married and moved to St. Petersburg. During these years, he wrote works: "Dubrovsky", "The Captain's Daughter", "The History of Pugachev". Communicated with V. G. Belinsky, N. V. Gogol, with artists.

On February 9, 1837, Pushkin shot himself in a duel with Dantes, was mortally wounded and died on February 10 in his house on the Moika.

Foreword

The first commentator on the novel "Eugene Onegin" was its brilliant author himself: Pushkin provided his novel with notes, where he revealed allusions to various phenomena of literary modernity, personal life, explained poetic quotations, defended common words and expressions introduced into the text of the novel from reactionary criticism, translated foreign sayings.

The modern reader in Pushkin's novel encounters the characteristic details of a life alien to him, Gukovsky G.A. writes about the novel: “... the very number of everyday topics and materials fundamentally distinguishes Pushkin's novel from previous literature. In "Eugene Onegin" the reader passes through a series of everyday phenomena, moral descriptive details, things, clothes, colors, dishes, customs. The reader can ignore much of what was burning for Pushkin, what worried his contemporaries due to the acuteness of the questions posed, aimed at all the details familiar at that time, ideological currents, even faces, and which now requires specific historical disclosure. The novel is not only full of "the mind of cold observations and the heart of sad remarks" of the author, it is saturated with Pushkin's worldview - philosophical, political, aesthetic. "Friend, comrade" of the noble revolutionaries, he sharply castigates the morals of the noble nobility and backward groups of the ruling class, sympathizes with the advanced representatives of the noble culture. Thus, the task arises to describe the socio-political moods during the years of writing the novel that gave rise to the main characters of the novel, determined their social fate, psychology, forms of behavior, and to reveal the circle of ideas of the author himself in the reality that changed during his lifetime, when hopes for social transformations were dashed after the defeat. Decembrists.

"Eugene Onegin" is a novel in verse, written in 1823-1831.

It is unique, because earlier in world literature there was not a single novel in verse. Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin created it like Lord Byron's poem Don Juan. Defining the novel as a “collection of motley chapters”, Pushkin emphasizes one of the features of this work: the novel is, as it were, “opened” in time, each chapter could be the last, but it can also have a continuation. And thus the reader draws attention to the independence of each chapter of the novel. Pushkin called the work on it a feat - of all his creative heritage, only Boris Godunov he characterized with the same word.

V. G. Belinsky in his article “Eugene Onegin” concluded: “Onegin can be called an encyclopedia of Russian life and an extremely folk work.”

History of creation

The first mention of Pushkin's work on the novel is found in his Odessa letter to P.A. Vyazemsky on November 4, 1823: "As for my studies, now I am not writing a novel, but a novel in verse - a diabolical difference ..."

Pushkin did not count on the possibility of the novel appearing in print, fearing censorship. “There’s nothing to think about printing” ... “If someday it is“ my poem ”and will be printed, it’s true, not in Moscow and not in St. Petersburg” ... “I don’t know if this poor Onegin will be allowed in” into the heavenly realm of printing; just in case, I'll try," he wrote in 1823-1824. Vyazemsky, Bestuzhev and A.I. Turgenev.

Although at the beginning of his work the poet "did not yet clearly distinguish" the "distance of his novel", his form had already been thought out: the novel was to become - in a free genre form - a reflection of social life with abundant digressions from the main thread of the story about the hero and his fate it was supposed to become a social novel and a confession novel, a lyrical and satirical novel, a "romantic poem" and a pamphlet novel (a satirical and caustic pamphlet that offends a person), saturated with themes of living modernity and responses from a direct participant who "chokes with bile ". The style of the novel somewhat later (in 1828) was determined by the poet himself in a dedication to P.A. Pletnev, published in the first edition of the IV and V chapters of "Eugene Onegin":

“Not thinking proud light to amuse,

Loving the attention of friendship,

I would like to introduce you

A pledge worthy of you

Worthy of a beautiful soul,

Holy dream come true

Poetry alive and clear,

High thoughts and simplicity;

But so be it - with a biased hand

Accept the collection of colorful heads,

Half funny, half sad

vulgar, ideal,

The careless fruit of my amusements,

Insomnia, light inspirations,

Immature and withered years

Crazy cold observations

And hearts of sad notes.

The author was pleased with his creation: "This is my best work," he wrote in January 1824. L.S. Pushkin; “Still, he, Onegin, is my best work,” he repeated in a letter to A.A. Bestuzhev on March 24, 1825.

"I'm talking too much," he confessed to A. Delvig in November 1823, shortly before finishing the first chapter of the novel. "Chattering", a casual tone of light conversation, running from one topic to another, a casual manner of speech, constant appeals to the reader of his own, secular circle, "a comic description of morals" with the apparent indifference of the author, what impression serious topics and funny jokes make on the reader, This is the tone of the first chapter. Beginning with the second chapter, this tone of the "talking" poet changes; the novel includes themes of great content; the image of the hero began to become clear to the reader in the hopelessness of his situation against the background of the ossified noble life, in the conditions of the political impasse of the 1920s. Elements of satire in the new chapters are manifested in the author's attitude to the "wild nobility", in sharp criticism of the "big world" and its "prejudices", in criticism of social mores and the political system that broke and maimed people with a large supply of mental strength. The "careless" tone completely disappears in the last chapters, written after December 14, 1825, under the conditions of the gloomy reaction of Nicholas. The brilliant artist set himself serious problems about the relationship of the individual to society, about social and individual conflicts that are insoluble in a class society.

Pushkin, finishing the novel, said goodbye to him and to the reader with touching and exciting words:

"Whoever you are, my reader,

Friend, foe, I want to be with you

To part now as a friend.

Forgive me and you, my strange companion,

And you, my true ideal,

And you, alive and permanent,

Even a little work…”

Chronology of the novel "Eugene Onegin"

In the draft papers of Pushkin, P. Annenkov found a sheet on which the poet in 1830 sketched out a plan for the complete edition of Eugene Onegin.

Part one. Preface.

I song. Blues. Chisinau, Odessa.

II "Poet. Odessa. 1824.

III "The young lady. Odessa. Mikhailovskoye. 1824.

Part two.

IV song. Village. Mikhailovskoye. 1825.

V "Name day. Mikhailovskoye. 1825, 1826.

VI "Duel. Mikhailovskoye. 1826

Part Three

VII song. Moscow. Mikhailovskoye. P.b. Raspberries. 1827, 1828.

VIII "Wandering. Moscow. 1829. Pavlovskoye. Boldino.

IX "Big light. Boldino.

Note.

This sketch can be supplemented with more precise instructions from Pushkin's draft notebooks.

The novel was conceived in Chisinau on May 9, 1823, the first stanzas of the first chapter were begun on the night of May 28, 1823, work continued in Odessa and was completed on October 22, 1823.

The second chapter was begun the next day, by November 1, 16 stanzas were ready, under the XVII-XVIII stanzas the note is November 3; on the night of December 8, 1823, stanza XXXIX was completed.

The third chapter began on the night of February 8, 1824; finished October 2, 1824 (in the village of Mikhailovsky).

The fourth chapter is marked: at XXIII stanza - December 31, 1824 and January 1, 1825; under stanza XLIII - January 2, 1826: under stanza LI - January 6, 1826

The seventh chapter was written in 1827-1828; started in Moscow on March 18, 1827; in the spring (in Moscow and St. Petersburg) Pushkin wrote stanzas dedicated to the description of Moscow; after a long break, Pushkin resumed work at the beginning of 1828: between stanzas XII and XIII of the mark on February 19, 1828; the seventh chapter was completed on November 4, 1828. On December 19, 1827, Pushkin wrote a dedication to Pletnev. The seventh chapter includes "Onegin's Album" - litter August 5, 1828.

The eighth chapter - subsequently excluded and published under the title "Fragments from Onegin's Journey" - began on December 24, 1829, but even earlier (no later than 1827) Pushkin wrote stanzas dedicated to Odessa. By October 30, the beginning of the chapter was ready up to the stanza "He sees the Wayward Terek"; the last stanza ("And the shore of Soroti is sloping") is dated September 18, 1830.

The ninth chapter, which later took the place of the eighth, was conceived in 1829, completed on September 25, 1830 (in Boldin); in the summer (in July - early August) of 1831, the poet inserted several stanzas from Onegin's journey into the eighth (printed) chapter, wrote new stanzas (for example, XIII), replaced the old ones (for example, the first 4), reworked the picture of Petersburg light (XXIV -XXVI stanzas) and on October 5, 1831 inserted "Onegin's Letter to Tatiana". On November 21, 1830, a preface to "Eugene Onegin" was written, which Pushkin wanted to preface the planned edition of the eighth and ninth chapters together.

Tenth chapter. Pushkin's note has been preserved: "October 19, 1830, burned the 10th song." In the diary of P. Vyazemsky dated December 19, 1830: “Pushkin wrote a lot in the countryside; put in order VIII and IX chapters of Onegin, and ends with it; from X, supposed, he read me stanzas about 1812 and the following - a glorious chronicle! "

Return to "Eugene Onegin". By the autumn of 1833, there are sketches in which Pushkin speaks of his desire to continue his novel. September 15, 1835 he wrote two opening stanzas for a planned continuation of the novel.

Pushkin's letters

A.S. Pushkin about "Eugene Onegin"

“As for my studies, I am now writing not a novel, but a novel in verse - a diabolical difference! In the Don Juan family. There is nothing to think about printing: I write carelessly ... "

“Now I am writing a new poem, in which I am talking to the limit ... God knows when we will read it together ...”

“I am writing a new poem at my leisure, Eugene Onegin, where I choke on bile. Two songs are ready."

In January 1824 in a letter to L. S. Pushkin:

“Perhaps I will send him [Delvig] excerpts from Onegin; this is my best work. Do not believe N. Raevsky, who scolds him - he expected Romanticism from me, found Satire and Cynicism and didn’t get enough of it.

“There is nothing to think about my poem. - It is written in stanzas almost more freely than those of Don Juan. If someday it will be printed, then surely not in St. Petersburg and not in Moscow.

In early April 1824, in a letter to P. A. Vyazemsky:

“Slenin offers me as much as I want for Onegin ... The matter has become censorship, but I am not joking, because it is about my future fate, about independence - I need it. To print Onegin, I ... am ready even in the loop.

In April - the first half of May 1824 in a letter to P. A. Vyazemsky:

2You want to know what I am doing - writing colorful stanzas of a romantic poem - and taking lessons in pure Atheism ... "

“I will send you the 1st Song of Onegin with my wife. “Perhaps it will be published with the change of the ministry.”

“I will try to push towards the gates of censorship with the first chapter or the song of Onegin. Let's get through. You demand from me details about "Onegin" - boring, my soul. Some other time...”

“My Onegin is growing. Hell print it. I thought that your censorship had grown wiser under Shishkov, but I see that under the old, the old way.

“Knowing your old attachment to the pranks of the accursed muse, I was about to send you a few stanzas of my Onegin, but laziness. I don't know if this poor "Onegin" will be allowed into the heavenly realm of printing; I'll try it just in case."

In September - October 1824 in a letter to P. A. Pletnev:

“I carelessly and joyfully rely on you with regard to my Onegin. Call my Areopagus: that is, Zhukovsky, Gnedich and Delvig. I expect judgment from you and with humility I will accept its decision. I regret that there is no Baratynsky!”

In the first half of October 1824, in a letter to V. F. Vyazemskaya:

“As for my neighbors, at first I gave myself the trouble not to receive them; they don't bother me; I enjoy the reputation of Onegin among them - so I am a prophet in my fatherland ... I am in the best position imaginable to finish my poetic novel, but boredom is a cold muse, and my poem does not move at all; here, however, is the stanza to which I am indebted to you; show it to the prince [Pyotr Vyazemsky], tell him not to judge everything by this example.

In early November 1824, in letters to L. S. Pushkin:

“What is Onegin?.. Brother, here's a picture for Onegin - find a skillful and quick pencil. If there is another, so that everything is in the same location. Same scene, do you hear? This is what I absolutely need.”

In mid-November 1824, in a letter to L. S. Pushkin:

“Print, print “Onegin” and with “Conversation” ... Will “Onegin” have a picture?”

“... Your love letter to Tanya: I am writing to you - what more? - charm and craftsmanship. I do not find only the truth in the following verses:

But, they say, you are unsociable,

In the wilderness, in the village, everything is boring for you,

And we don't shine here!

An unsociable person should not be bored that they are in the wilderness and do not shine with anything. Here is counterintuition! - Do me a favor, send your Gypsies as soon as possible and let me print them especially! Let me print everything... In general, it's better to print in Moscow, or rather, it's cheaper. Petersburg literature has been so misguided, so humiliated, that it is a shame to deal with it. Journalists denounce each other, they only bother about pennies ... And it’s not bad for you to bother about pennies, or money for a rainy day; but this is different! Collect all your elegies and send them to me; you can print them separately. Then three poems. There are excerpts from Onegin; and finally the complete collection. Here is a glorious quitrent village for you! And dress me up with your Burmister. You now have a lot of time: there is leisure to collect, rewrite. Yes, and I'm idle and reluctant to do. And your occupation will be for me: do not do business, but do not run away from business. Do a favor for me and for yourself, attend to my proposal."

“My brother took Onegin to P.B. and print it there. Don't be angry, dear; I feel that in you I am losing my most faithful guardian; but under the present circumstances, any other publisher of mine will involuntarily attract attention and displeasure. “I wonder how Tanya’s Letter ended up in your possession. Interpret it to me. I am responding to your criticism. Unsociable is not a misanthrope, that is, one who hates people, but runs away from people. Onegin is unsociable for village neighbors; Tanya believes that the reason for this is that he is bored in the wilderness, in the village, and that glitter alone can attract him. If, however, the meaning is not entirely accurate, then all the more truth in the letter. A letter from a woman, also 17 years old, and in love!”

At the beginning of December 1824 in a letter to D. M. Knyazhevich:

“... It's been four months since I've been in a remote village - it's boring, but there's nothing to do. There is no sea here, no blue sky at noon, no Italian opera, no you, my friends. My solitude is perfect, idleness solemn. There are few neighbors around me, I know only one family, and then I see him quite rarely (perfect Onegin); riding all day, in the evening I listen to the tales of my nanny, the original nanny Tatyana: you seem to have seen her once; she is my only friend, and with her only I am not bored ... "

V. A. Zhukovsky to Pushkin in mid-November 1824:

“... I read Onegin and the conversation that served him as a preface: incomparably! By the authority given to me, I offer you the first place in the Russian Parnassus. And what a place if you combine with the loftiness of the Genius the loftiness of the goal.

“What is Kozlov blind? did you read Onegin to him?"

In December 1824, in a letter to L. S. Pushkin:

“By Christ God, I ask you to get Onegin out of censorship as soon as possible ... Money is needed. Do not bargain for poetry for a long time - cut, tear, shred at least all 54 stanzas, but money, for God's sake, money!

The efforts to publish the first chapter of "Eugene Onegin" were undertaken by P. A. Pletnev. So, he wrote:

"What to do, dear Pushkin! Your letter arrived late. The first page of Onegin has already been printed, 2,400 copies in number. Consequently, amendments cannot be made. Shouldn't they be left until the second edition? There will soon be a need for this ... Everyone is thirsty. "Your Onegin" will be a pocket mirror of the youth of St. Petersburg. What a charm! The Latin is hilariously sweet. The legs are delightful. The night on the Neva is not crazy for me. If in this chapter you fly and jump like that without almost any action, then I can't imagine what will come out after ... If you want money, then dispose of it quickly. When Onegin comes out, I hope to save up a significant amount for future editions, without depriving your whims of the necessary.

“You know from my previous letter that it is impossible to make amendments to Onegin and Conversation (unless you want to waste 2,400 sheets of velvet paper and delay the publication of the book for another month due to the accursed slowness of our printing houses). Now you still demand corrections, when everything has already been printed. Please, leave it until the second edition.

I anticipate your objection:

But I don't see shame here.

And in fact: your ticklishness is almost out of place. What you know, and who else, we will not understand. Everyone will think that it is impossible to write poems only about oneself.

“Today's letter will be a report, my soul, about Onegin... 2,400 copies printed. I made a condition with Olenin that he sell it himself and give it to whomever he wants for a commission, and I, apart from him, will not have accounts with anyone. For this he takes 10 per cent each, that is, he pays us 4 rubles for the book. 50 k., selling himself for 5 rubles. For all copies that he does not have in the shop, he pays money in full on every 1st of the month to send to you, or as you tell me. On March 1, that is, two weeks after Onegin went to press, I no longer found 700 copies in his shop, therefore, he sold, minus his interest, for 3150 rubles. Of this amount, I gave: 1) for paper (white and overlay) 397 rubles, 2) for typesetting and printing 220 rubles, 3) for binding 123 rubles, for sending copies to you, Delvig, father and uncle (your) 5 p. Total 745 rubles.”

“Bestuzhev writes me a lot about Onegin. Tell him he's wrong. Does he really want to banish everything light and cheerful from the realm of poetry? Where will satire and comedy go? Consequently, it will have to destroy Orlando furioso, and Goodibraz, and Pucelle, and Werner, and Reinecke-Foucault, and the best part of Darling, and La Fontaine's tales, and Krylov's fables, and so on. and so on. It's a little strict. The picture of secular life is also included in the field of poetry. But enough about "Onegin."

“... I share your opinion that pictures of secular life are included in the field of poetry. Yes, even if they didn’t come in, you, with your damn talent, would have pushed them in there by force. When Bestuzhev wrote his last letter to you, I had not yet fully read Onegin's first song. Now I have heard everything: she is beautiful; you grabbed everything that only such an object represents ... "

“Onegin is being printed, brother and Pletnev are looking after the publication; I did not expect him to rub his way through censorship. Honor and glory to Shishkov!..”

“Onegin has been printed; I think it has already come out…”

“It seems that Onegin owes you the patronage of Shishkov and the happy deliverance from Birukov. I see that our friendship has not changed, and this consoles me.

At the end of February 1825, in a letter to L. S. Pushkin:

“I read an ad about Onegin in Pchela; waiting for noise. If the edition sells out, then proceed immediately to another edition, or arrange with some bookseller. - Write about the impression he made. In the meantime, I have sent to the venerable Thaddeus Benediktovich Bulgarin two excerpts from Onegin, which neither Delvig nor Bestuzhev have: there never was and never will be... and who is to blame? All friends, all damned friends."

“... I have your Onegin, I read it and re-read it, and I burn with impatience to read its continuation, which, judging by the first chapter, must be more curious and more curious ...”

“Your letter is very clever, but still you are wrong; after all, you are looking at Onegin from the wrong point; Still, it is my best work. You're comparing the first chapter to Don Juan. No one respects Don Juan more than me (the first 5 songs, I haven't read the others), but it has nothing in common with Onegin. You talk about the satire of the Englishman Byron and compare it with mine, and demand the same from me! No, my soul, you want a lot. Where is my satire? There is no mention of her in "Eugene Onegin". My embankment would crackle if I touched satire. -- The very word satirical should not be in the preface. Wait for other songs. Oh! If you were to be lured to Mikhailovskoye!.. You would see that if one were to compare "Onegin" with "Don Giovanni" it would only be in one respect: who is nicer and more charming (gracieuse) - Tatyana or Yulia? Canto 1 is just a quick introduction and I'm happy with it (which happens very rarely to me). I conclude our controversy ... "

“What is Delvig? According to rumors, you should have him ... I look forward to him to hear his opinion about the rest of the songs of your "Onegin."

Mid-April 1825, in a letter to P. A. Vyazemsky:

“I am rewriting Onegin for you. I want him to help you smile. For the first time the reader's smile me sourit; excuse this plane: in the blood! .. But meanwhile, be grateful to me: I never rewrote anything for anyone, even for Golitsyna.

“Tolstoy will appear to me in all his splendor in the 4th song of Onegin, if his libel is worth it, and therefore ask for his epigram, etc. from Vyazemsky (by all means). You, my dear, do not find any use in my moon - what to do? and print like this.”

At the end of April 1825, in a letter to P. A. Vyazemsky:

“I have Delvig. Through him I am sending you the 2nd chapter of "Onegin" (rewritten to you and only for you). For a conversation with the nanny, without a letter, the brother received 600 rubles. You see that this is money, therefore it must be kept under lock and key.

At the end of May 1825, in a letter to A. A. Bestuzhev:

“Everything that you say about our upbringing, about foreign and internecine (charm!) imitations - is beautifully expressed and with heartfelt eloquence; in general thoughts boil in you. About Onegin you did not express everything that you had in your heart: I feel why, and I thank you; but why not make your opinion clear? For the time being, we will be guided by our personal relationships, we will not have criticism, and you are worthy to create it.

“... at the last mail, Prince Nikolai Sergeevich Golitsyn sent me from Moscow as a gift of your Onegin. Quite by accident I found my name in it, and this proof that you remember me and are well disposed towards me made me almost ashamed that I had not yet bothered to visit you ... I swallowed Mr. Yevgeny with excellent pleasure (as patronymic?) Onegin. In addition to charming verses, I found here you yourself, your conversation, your gaiety, and I remembered our barracks in Millonnaya. I would like to demand from you in fact the fulfillment of a joke promise: to write a poem, twenty-five songs; Yes, I don’t know what your disposition is now; our favorite activities sometimes become nasty. However, it seems that you have no dissatisfaction in literature, and your path to Parnassus is strewn with flowers ... "

At the beginning of June 1825, in a letter to A. A. Delvig:

“... What is my Onegin? Is it for sale? By the way, tell Pletnev to give Lev out of my money for nuts, and not for my commission ... What is Zhukovsky doing? Give me his opinion about the 2nd chapter of "Onegin" ... "

“... I heard from Delvig about the following songs of Onegin, but I can’t judge from oral stories ... If you knew how much I love, how much I appreciate your talent. Farewell, miracle worker ... "

"... J" ai lu le 2-m chant de "Eugene Onegin"; c "est un charme! .."

(I read the 2nd song of Eugene Onegin; lovely!)

“... I received the second part of Onegin and some other trinkets. I am very pleased with Onegin, that is, with much in it; but in this chapter there is less brilliance than in the first, and therefore I would not want to see it printed by itself, but perhaps with two, three, or at least one more chapter. In general, or in connection with the following, 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 ... "

In June 1825, in a letter to P. A. Vyazemsky:

“I think that you have already received my answer to the proposals of the Telegraph27. If he needs my poems, then send him whatever you come across (except for Onegin...).”

"Again," Onegin "is sold (except for those that I have already notified you about, that is, by March 1, 700 copies, and by March 28, 245 copies) 161 copies, i.e. for 724 rubles 50 k... I repeat: 2,400 copies were printed, of which 1,106 copies were sold for money, and 44 copies came out without money for various people. Consequently, there are still 1,250 copies left to sell. decided to cede 20 per cent to the booksellers for the speedy sale, that is, to charge you 4 rubles per copy, and not 4 rubles 50 kopecks as before. Are you satisfied with my orders?"... In a letter on August 29: “I was talking about Onegin with book sellers so that they would take the remaining copies with a concession to them for the entire edition of 1000 rubles. They don’t agree at all. They think that this book has already stopped, but they forget how they will snatch it, when you print another song or two. Then we will laugh at them fools. I confess, I am glad of this. Full of them to amuse us with their money. Dear, take my advice!"...

“4 songs of Onegin are ready for me and many more passages; but I'm not up to them. I am glad that you like the 1st song - I love it myself ...

Pletnev again asks Pushkin to publish the next chapters of Eugene Onegin - in a letter on January 21, 1826: "I beg you, print one or two chapters of Onegin at once. I’m already afraid of that: they frighten me that there are lists of the 2nd chapter in the city. In a letter on February 6: "Do yourself a favour, let Onegin out. Shall I not interrogate?"

“... Let them let me leave the damned Mikhailovskoye ... And you are good! you write to me: rewrite, and hire clerk scribes, and publish Onegin. I'm not up to Onegin. Damn Onegin! I myself want to publish or give out. Fathers, help!”

“... Finally I took it out and read the second song of Onegin, and in general I am very pleased with it; rural life in it is just as well displayed as urban life in the first. Lensky is well drawn, but Tatyana promises a lot. I will note to you, however (for you initiated me into criticism), that up to this time the action has not yet begun; the variety of pictures and the charm of the poem, on first reading, mask this deficiency, but reflection reveals it; however, it is already impossible to correct him now, but another thing remains for you: to fully reward him in the following songs. Bude you do not print the second before the release of the almanac, donate it; but if you publish it first, we ask you to continue: it’s a lovely thing ... "

“... What is my friend Onegin doing? I would have sent him a bow with respect, but he didn’t care about all this: it’s a pity, but by the way, the little one is not a fool ... "

“... My deaf Mikhailovskoye makes me sad and furious. In the 4th song of "Onegin" I depicted my life ... "

“In the countryside, I wrote despicable prose, but inspiration does not climb. In Pskov, instead of writing the seventh chapter of Onegin, I lose the fourth chapter in shtos: it’s not funny.”

"Of the 2356 copies of the 1st Chapter" E. Onegin "remains in Olenin's shop only 750 copies, i.e. for 3000 rubles, and the other 1606 copies have already been sold and money has been received for them in full 6977 rubles.”

At the end of January 1827, in a letter to V.I. Tumansky:

"... They came to Odessa my passage"

“Nothing gives money so easily as Onegin, which came out in parts, but regularly every 2 or 3 months. This has already been proven, but posteriori. By the grace of God, it is all written. then you have a spleen. You answer the public in a fit of whim: here are the "Gypsies" for you; buy them! And the public, to spite you, does not want to buy them and is waiting for "Onegin" and "Onegin". Now let's see which of you will out-argue whom After all, the public has money: it’s more decent, it seems, that you submit to it, at least until you fill your pockets. they say, there's a whole regiment of old ones. All they need is the 2nd chapter of Onegin, which has settled in Moscow, but everyone here asked for it. So, upon receipt of this letter, immediately write to Moscow to send all the rest out of there. copies of "Onegin" of the 2nd chapter to St. Petersburg addressed to Slenin ... For the last time I beg you to rewrite the 4th chapter of "Onegin", and if you get excited, and the 5th, so as not to go to the censor with a thin notebook ... Everything shows that for your various creations, homeless and orphans, one breadwinner is destined by fate: "Eugene Onegin." Feel: your imagination has never yet created, and it seems will not create, a creation that would move such a huge amount of money by such simple means as this priceless treasure of the gold mine "Onegin". He ... should not lead the public out of patience with his frivolity.

In June 1827, in a letter to S. A. Sobolevsky:

“Write me a good word, where is Onegin Part II? Here it is required. Stopped even the sale of other chapters. And who is to blame? You..."

In November 1827, in a letter to S. A. Sobolevsky:

“If you had simply written to me, having arrived in Moscow, that you could not send me the 2nd chapter, then I would have reprinted it without any hassle; but you promised everything, promised - and, thanks to you, in all bookstores the sale of the 1st and 3rd chapters stopped.

At the end of 1827, in a letter to M.P. Pogodin:

"An excerpt from "Onegin" and "Stans" missed - one of these days I will send to Moscow .... "

Pushkin to E. M. Khitrovo:

At the beginning of February 1828 Petersburg:

“I take the liberty of sending you the chapters 4 and 5 of Onegin, which have just come out. With all my heart I would like them to make you smile.

Pushkin to E.M. Khitrovo.

End of January 1832 Petersburg:

“I am very glad that you liked Onegin: I value your opinion.”

E. Baratynsky to Pushkin. At the end of February - beginning of March 1828:

“... We have released two more Onegin songs. Everyone interprets them in his own way: some praise, others scold and everyone reads. I am very fond of the extensive plan of your "Onegin"; but most do not understand it. They are looking for a romantic plot, they are looking for the unusual and, of course, they do not find it. The high poetic simplicity of your creation seems to them the poverty of fiction, they do not notice that old and new Russia, life in all its changes, passes before their eyes, mais que le diable les emporte et que Dieu les benisse! I think that in Russia a poet can hope for great success only in his first immature experiments. All young people are behind him, finding in him almost their feelings, almost their thoughts, clothed in brilliant colors. The poet develops, writes with great deliberation, with great profundity: he is boring to the officers, and the brigadiers do not put up with him, because his poems are still not prose ... "

"... I recently read the third part of "Onegin" and "Count Nulin": both are charming, although, without a doubt, "Onegin" is superior in dignity.

At the end of March 1828, in a letter to S. A. Sobolevsky:

“Who is this Atheneic Sage who so well analyzed Chapters IV and V - Zubarev or Ivan Savelich?”

In April 1828 (received on the 5th) in a letter to I. E. Velikopolsky:

“Dear Ivan Ermolaevich, Bulgarin showed me your very nice stanzas to me in response to my joke. He told me that the censorship does not let them through as a person without my consent. Unfortunately, I could not agree:

Onegin's second chapter

Moved modestly on an ace -

and your note -- of course, personality and obscenity. And the whole stanza is unworthy of your pen. The others are very nice. I think you are a little dissatisfied. Is it true? At least your last poem resonates with something bitter. Do you really want to quarrel with me in earnest and force me, your peace-loving friend, to include hostile stanzas in the 8th chapter. "Onegin"? N.B. I did not lose the 2nd chapter, but I paid my debt with copies of it ... "

“There is Beketov in our neighborhood ... (he) has a sister - he knows all the chapters of Onegin by heart ... I found Pavlusha (son) in a notebook: criticism of “Eugene Onegin.”

“Here they think that I came to type stanzas in Onegin ... and I go by ferry.”

In early May 1830, in a letter to P. A. Pletnev:

“Tell me: did the review of the Northern Bee have an impact on Onegin’s consumption?”

“This is what I brought here: the last two chapters of Onegin, the eighth and ninth, completely ready for printing ...”

The novel begins with a grouchy speech by the young nobleman Eugene Onegin, dedicated to the illness of his uncle, which forced him to leave Petersburg and go to the patient's bed to say goodbye to him. Having thus indicated the plot, the author devotes the first chapter to the story of the origin, family, and life of his hero before receiving news of the illness of a relative. The narration is conducted on behalf of an unnamed author, who introduced himself as a good friend of Onegin. The very image of the author - the narrator and at the same time the "hero" of the novel - is a unique image.

Eugene was born "on the banks of the Neva", that is, in St. Petersburg, in the family of a typical nobleman of his time -

"Serving excellently nobly,

His father lived in debt.

Gave three balls annually

And finally squandered."

Onegin received a typical upbringing for many nobles - first the governess Madame, then the French tutor, who did not bother his pupil with an abundance of sciences. Pushkin emphasizes that Yevgeny's upbringing is typical for a person of his environment (a nobleman who was taught by foreign teachers from childhood).

Onegin's life in St. Petersburg was full of love affairs and secular entertainment, but in this constant series of amusements there was no place for sincere feelings, which led the hero to a state of internal discord, emptiness, boredom. Eugene leaves for his uncle, and now he will be bored in the village. Upon arrival, it turns out that the uncle has died, and Eugene has become his heir. Onegin settles in the village, but even here he is overwhelmed by the blues.

Onegin's neighbor turns out to be eighteen-year-old Vladimir Lensky, a romantic poet, who came from Germany. Lensky and Onegin converge. Lensky is in love with Olga Larina, the daughter of a landowner. Forever cheerful Olga is not like her thoughtful sister Tatiana.

"Nor your sister's beauty,

Nor the freshness of her ruddy ... "

Olga, beautiful outwardly, is devoid of inner content, which Onegin notices:

“Are you in love with a smaller one?

I would choose another

When I was like you, a poet.

Olga has no life in features.

Having met Onegin, Tatyana falls in love with him and writes him a letter confessing her feelings. Her letter is "woven" from reminiscences from sentimental novels, which made up the heroine's reading circle, but Tatyana's feeling is sincere and deep. However, Onegin rejects her: he is not looking for a quiet family life. Tatyana, through long disappointments and experiences, gradually comes to an insight about the deep essence of her chosen one. (In a prophetic dream, she sees Eugene among fanged horned monsters.)

Lensky and Onegin are invited to the Larins. Onegin is not happy about this invitation, but Lensky persuades him to go.

“[...] He pouted and, indignantly,

vowed to infuriate Lensky,

And take revenge."

At a dinner at the Larins', Onegin, in order to make Lensky jealous, suddenly begins courting Olga. Lensky challenges him to a duel. The duel ends with the death of Lensky, and Onegin leaves the village. It is here that Tatyana's final insight takes place. In Onegin's house, when, after her lover's departure, she visits his hereditary "castle", she reads his books. “An eccentric sad and dangerous, / Creation of hell or heaven ...” - this is how her chosen one now appears in the mind of the heroine. Tatyana's main discovery in Onegin is denoted by the author with the words "imitation", "parody". Onegin - “a Muscovite in Harold's cloak, everything in him is not his own, borrowed. His behavior is following Byronian patterns.

Three years later, after the trip, he appears in Moscow and meets Tatyana and does not recognize:

"She was slow...

Not cold, not talkative

Without an arrogant look for everyone,

No claim to success

Without these little antics

No imitations...

Everything is quiet, it was just in her.”

With her simplicity, naturalness and at the same time grandeur, she conquered secular Petersburg:

“Ladies moved closer to her;

The old women smiled at her;

The men bowed down

They caught the gaze of her eyes;

The girls passed quietly

In front of her in the hall ... "

Onegin was inflamed with love for her. He writes a letter to her. But Tatyana does not answer either the letter or the persecution of Onegin, despite the fact that Tatyana also loves him, but wants to remain faithful to her husband.

“I love you, (why lie?),

But I am given to another;

I will be faithful to him forever.

F. M. Dostoevsky, evaluating her act, exclaims: “She said it precisely, like a Russian woman, in this is her apotheosis ... can a person base his happiness on the misfortune of another? Happiness is not only in the pleasures of love, but in the highest harmony of the spirit ... Tell me, could Tatyana decide otherwise, with her high soul, with her heart, so much suffered? No; The pure Russian soul decides like this: “Let me, let me alone lose happiness ... but I don’t want to be happy, ruining another!”

Conditionally, the plot can be divided into two parts:

* chapters from the first to the seventh - the story of Tatiana's love for Onegin. In parallel, the line of Lensky and Olga is developing;

* Chapter Eight - Onegin returning from a journey and his love for Tatyana.

The culmination of each of these plots is a letter, and the denouement is an answer - a rebuff.

The work depicts events that contribute to the evolution of Onegin. The first chapter shows his monotonous monotonous existence in St. Petersburg, causing a state in him, which the author described as "Russian melancholy". Then, under the influence of a different rhythm of village life, Tatyana's love, friendship with Lensky, the murder of the latter in a duel, Onegin leaves the places "where the bloody shadow appeared to him every day." In the 8th chapter, another Onegin appears in St. Petersburg, able to wait for a date, to love ...

When Tatyana rejects his love, he stands "as if struck by thunder." The ending of the novel is fundamentally open. The reader will have to think about what "will happen to Onegin later"?

Storylines

1. Onegin and Tatyana. Episodes:

o Acquaintance with Tatyana,

o Talking to the babysitter

o Tatyana's letter to Onegin,

o Explanation in the garden,

o Tatyana's dream. name day,

o Visit to Lensky's house,

o Departure to Moscow,

o Meeting at a ball in St. Petersburg in 2 years,

o Letter to Tatiana (explanation),

o Evening at Tatyana's,

2. Onegin and Lensky. Episodes:

o Acquaintance in the village,

o A conversation after the evening with the Larins,

o Lensky's visit to Onegin,

o Name day of Tatyana,

o Duel (Lensky dies).

Characters

Eugene Onegin - the prototype Pyotr Chaadaev, Pushkin's friend, is named by Pushkin himself in the first chapter.

Tatyana Larina - one of the prototypes can be considered Avdotya (Dunya) Norova, Chaadaev's girlfriend. In this image, you can also find the features of Maria Volkonskaya, the wife of the Decembrist S. G. Volkonsky, a friend of Pushkin, as well as Anna Kern, Pushkin's lover.

Olga Larina, her sister, is a generalized image of a typical heroine of popular novels; beautiful in appearance, but devoid of deep content.

Vladimir Lensky - "energetic rapprochement between Lensky and Kuchelbecker, produced by Yu. N. Tynyanov"

Tatyana's nanny - a likely prototype - Arina Rodionovna, Pushkin's nanny

Zaretsky is a duelist, Fyodor Tolstoy-American was called among the prototypes

Tatyana Larina's husband, not named in the novel, "important general", General Kern, Anna Kern's husband.

Interesting Facts

Poetic Features

The novel is written in a special "Onegin stanza". Each such stanza consists of 14 lines of iambic tetrameter.

The first four lines rhyme crosswise, the lines from the fifth to the eighth - in pairs, the lines from the ninth to the twelfth are connected by a ring rhyme. The remaining 2 lines of the stanza rhyme with each other.

Translations

"Eugene Onegin" has been translated into many languages of the world:

into English by Walter Arndt, Vladimir Nabokov and others;

into French - I. S. Turgenev and L. Viardot, Jean-Louis Bakes and Roger Legr, Jacques Chirac and others;

into German by Rolf-Dietrich Keil and others;

into Belarusian - Arkady Kuleshov,

into Ukrainian - M. F. Rylsky,

in Hebrew - Abraham Shlonsky.

into Ossetian - Nafi Dzhusoyty.

In miniature

One of the Russian printing houses in 1837 published the novel "Eugene Onegin" in miniature - the last lifetime edition of A. S. Pushkin. The plans of the printing house were such that in one year the entire circulation (5,000 copies) could be sold at 5 rubles per book. But in connection with the sensation - the sad result of the life of the author of the work - the entire circulation was sold out within a week. And in 1988, the publishing house "Kniga" issued a facsimile edition of the book with a circulation of 15,000 copies.

One of the smallest complete editions of "Eugene Onegin" is a micro-edition in 4 volumes 8x9 mm in size 2002 Omsk, A. I. Konenko

Tenth chapter

On November 26, 1949, the chief bibliographer of the Leningrad State Public Library named after M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin D.N. Alshits discovered a manuscript of the second half of the 19th century, presumably with the text of the X chapter of Onegin. As David Samoilov stated, "not a single serious literary critic believed in the authenticity of the text" - the style is too unlike Pushkin's and the artistic level is low.

Influence on other works

In literature:

The type of "superfluous person", introduced by Pushkin in the image of Onegin, influenced all subsequent Russian literature. From the nearest illustrative examples - the surname "Pechorin" in Lermontov's "Hero of Our Time", as well as the surname of Onegin, is formed from the name of the Russian river. Many psychological characteristics are also close.

The modern Russian novel The Onegin Code, written by Dmitry Bykov under the pseudonym Brain Down, deals with the search for the missing chapter of Pushkin's manuscript.

The genre of a full-fledged "novel in verse" inspired A. Dolsky to create the novel "Anna", which was completed in 2005.

In music:

P. I. Tchaikovsky -- Opera "Eugene Onegin", (1878)

R. K. Shchedrin - Stanzas of "Eugene Onegin", for a cappella choir based on the novel in verse by A. Pushkin, (1981)

Contemporary critics

K. F. Ryleev, N. A. Polevoy, D. V. Venevitinov, N. I. Nadezhdin, F. V. Bulgarin, N. G. Chernyshevsky, N. A. Dobrolyubov, D. I. Pisarev, F. M. Dostoevsky, A. Grigoriev, A. V. Druzhinin

Eugene Onegin. Pushkin's illustration. With a few strokes of the pen, the type, character is conveyed and a hint of Byron is made. Only a person with all the makings of a professional artist can draw like that.

"Eugene Onegin", Pushkin's main work, is a poem about nothing. A young nobleman goes to the estate, the daughter of a neighbor landowner falls in love with him. The nobleman is indifferent to her. Out of boredom, he kills a friend in a duel and leaves for the city. A few years later he meets a rejected girl, this is now the young wife of a wealthy man. The hero tries to court her, but is refused. All.

It is not interesting. Not just uninteresting, but mockingly uninteresting. This is the plot of "Count Nulin" and "The House in Kolomna" - elegant jokes, from the point of view of the content of the components with "Eugene Onegin" a kind of triptych. "Vanka is at home - Manka is not, Manka is at home - Vanka is not." But "Onegin" is a whole book, and "Nulin" and "House" together do not make even one chapter of the poem.

Even such an empty plot in Pushkin falls apart. The duel scene is unmotivated, it is the same insertion as the battle scene in Poltava, and even worse - the murder of Lensky should lead to the development of Onegin's character (the positive hero turns into a negative one), but this is not to tears. The author continues to admire "his Eugene".

Byron as a romantic poet. The real Byron resembled him just as Pushkin resembled Eugene Onegin.

Obviously, "Eugene Onegin" was written in imitation of Byron's "Don Juan", and from the point of view of the author's "I", the ironic style of narration and numerous digressions, this is undoubtedly true. But try to compare the content of two poems and you will start laughing in two minutes.

The action of Don Juan begins in Spain in the mid-18th century. The protagonist, almost a child, becomes the lover of his mother's friend, and, caught by her husband in the bedroom, flees on a ship to Italy. The ship crashes, the passengers and crew perish, and the young Don Juan is thrown onto a deserted shore. He is found there by the beautiful Hyde, the daughter of a Greek pirate, and falls in love. But soon their father discovers them, captivates Don Juan and takes them to Constantinople to the slave market. The girl is dying of boredom. In Constantinople, the hero of the poem changes into a woman's dress and ends up in the Sultan's harem, where he falls in love with the beautiful Georgian woman Duda. Exposed, he, together with a fellow sufferer, an English officer, fled to Izmail, where Suvorov was conducting military operations against the Turks. Don Juan shows miracles of heroism, saves a five-year-old Turkish girl from the clutches of angry Cossacks, receives a Russian order and is sent by Suvorov to St. Petersburg with a victorious report. Here he, it was, becomes Catherine's favorite, but soon leaves for London as a Russian envoy.

Illustration for "Don Juan". Favorite scene of the English: decide who is.

A young man is found on the shore by charming Greek women. Somewhere about it already wrote, and for a long time.

By the absence of events, "Eugene Onegin" is similar to Byron's comic poem "Beppo". The action of the poem takes place in Venice, a noble townswoman's husband disappears without a trace, she finds herself a permanent lover. But many years pass, and the husband appears in the form of a Turkish merchant. It turns out he was kidnapped by pirates, he converted to Islam, got rich and fled. As if nothing had happened, his wife begins to flirt with him, asking if he has a harem, if an oriental robe interferes with him, etc. The "merchant" shaves off his beard and becomes her husband again. And a friend of a lover. At the same time, all adventures remain behind the scenes. Tru-la-la.

But “Beppo”, like “The House in Kolomna”, is a very small thing, and Byron never attached serious importance to it (which would be strange).

There is a whole trend among Pushkin's illustrators that imitates the poet's sketches. The beginning of this tradition was laid by the artist Nikolai Vasilievich Kuzmin, whose illustrations for "Eugene Onegin" were awarded a gold medal at the world exhibition in Paris in 1937.

Some consolation to the literary criticism of "Eugene Onegin" could serve as a satirical orientation of the poem. But neither is she. Also to tears. Byron's Don Juan, as it was written, began to degenerate into a satirical work - when the story reached the shores of the author's foggy homeland. That is, at the moment at which I stopped the retelling of the content of the poem above. After that, the development of the plot slows down, and the author begins to itch:

“There were two talented lawyers here,
Irish and Scottish by birth, -
Very learned and very eloquent.
Tweed's son was Cato by courtesy;
Erin's son - with the soul of an idealist:
Like a brave horse, in a fit of inspiration
He reared up and "carried" something,
When the potato question came up.

The Scot spoke wisely and decorously;
The Irishman was dreamy and wild:
Sublime, whimsical, picturesque
His enthusiastic language sounded.
The Scot was like harpsichords;
The Irishman is like a rushing spring,
It rang, always disturbing and beautiful,
Aeolian harp sweet-voiced.

There is no "potato question" and polemics between the Baltic Germans and crests in "Eugene Onegin". Even at the very beginning of work on the poem, Pushkin wrote to one of his correspondents:

“No one respects Don Juan more than me… but it has nothing in common with Onegin. You talk about the satire of the Englishman Byron and compare it with mine, and demand the same from me! No, my soul, you want a lot. Where is my satire? there is no mention of her in "Eugene Onegin". My embankment would crackle if I touched satire. The very word "satirical" should not be in the preface.

(“Embankment” is the center of St. Petersburg, that is, the Winter Palace and the government. The word “satirical” is present in the preface, anonymously written by Pushkin himself, but in quotation marks of irony - see below.)

In this context, Belinsky declared (8 years after Pushkin's death) that "Eugene Onegin" is an "encyclopedia of Russian life":

“In his poem, he was able to touch on so many things, to hint about so many things, that he belongs exclusively to the world of Russian nature, to the world of Russian society! "Onegin" can be called an encyclopedia of Russian life and an eminently folk work.

"Encyclopedia of hints" - strong word! The famous "eleven articles on the writings of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin" are very detailed and endlessly fragmented philosophies of a village teacher. It is not clear “why and who needs this”, because the vocation of village teachers is to teach village children, and manuals for village teachers are written by city professors, but Belinsky is not such a fool. In his articles one can find (if desired) some common sense, especially when he writes about his own, rural. But the long-winded and childishly meticulous author does not confirm his thesis “about the encyclopedia”.

However, the "encyclopedia" was very liked by the Russian "critical mass" and went into growth like a dough.

Another amazing fragment from Belinsky's articles:

“Pushkin’s great feat was that he was the first in his novel to poetically reproduce the Russian society of that time and, in the person of Onegin and Lensky, showed its main, that is, the male side; but the feat of our poet is almost higher in that he was the first to poetically reproduce, in the person of Tatyana, a Russian woman.

Such monumentality is reminiscent of the beginning of the “Green Book” of the tragically deceased Arab enlightener: “A man is a man. A woman is also a person.

In fact, there is not only little action in Onegin, but the descriptions of this action are conditional and literary. Not only does the "encyclopedia" consist of five pages, not only are these pages filled not with articles, but with "hints", it is also "non-Russian".

Nabokov, in his commentary on Eugene Onegin, writes:

“We are not at all a “picture of Russian life”, at best, it is a picture depicting a small group of Russian people living in the second decade of the 19th century, having similarities with the more obvious characters of Western European novels and placed in a stylized Russia, which will immediately fall apart , if the French props are removed and if the French scribes of English and German authors stop suggesting words to Russian-speaking heroes and heroines. Paradoxically, from the point of view of the translator, the only essential Russian element of the novel is precisely the speech, the language of Pushkin, flowing in waves and breaking through the poetic melody, the like of which Russia has not yet known.

And elsewhere in the same comments:

“Russian critics… in a little over a century have accumulated the most boring heap of comments in the history of civilized mankind… thousands of pages were devoted to Onegin as a representative of something (he is both a typical “extra person”, and a metaphysical “dandy”, etc.)… And here is an image borrowed from books, but brilliantly rethought by a great poet, for whom life and a book were one, and placed by this poet in a brilliantly recreated environment, and played by this poet in a whole series of compositional situations - lyrical transformations, brilliant foolishness, literary parodies and etc., - is given out by Russian pedants (Nabokov probably meant to say "gelerters") for a sociological and historical phenomenon characteristic of the reign of Alexander I.

The problem (PROBLEM) of Belinsky is that he is not a writer. The basis of national literary criticism is the opinions of writers about each other, and, above all, the opinions of outstanding writers about each other. This is also followed by memoir literature (15%) and 15% of the work of textual critics and historians (which, at the very least, critics can be). As soon as critics close in on each other, they replace meaningful conversation with the production of ideological constructs. It's not that unnecessary, but simply "not there."

In the Russian history of literature, you will see many statements by Belinsky, Pisarev, Dobrolyubov, and so on, about writers, but very few statements by Pushkin, Gogol, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and so on. about each other. Obviously, this is not about that.

To this we can add that a much more interesting fact is not the statements of critics about professionals, but the statements of professionals about critics. Regarding Belinsky, Pushkin remarked through his teeth:

“If with independence of opinion and with his wit he would combine more learning, more erudition, more respect for tradition, more circumspection - in a word, more maturity, then we would have a very remarkable criticism in him.”

Belinsky, not being a writer, did not understand the compositional and stylistic tasks facing professional writers. For example, the fact that the “spleen”, “spleen” of the protagonist is a very beneficial literary device that allows you to make arbitrary movements of the character across the space of the work. Why did Chichikov travel around the province and meet with the landowners? He had a business - he bought up dead souls. But the simplest "case" is idleness and boredom. Chichikov could meet with Nozdrev, Sobakevich and Plyushkin (and thus give the reader the same periodic system of human types) "just like that." Not much would have changed.

Under the boredom of Onegin, the basis of the “superfluous person” was summed up, who did not find a worthy application for himself in tsarist Russia. And why did you miss the "London dandy"? After all, England had a constitutional monarchy and a parliament.

Maybe it's just a "bored male", which, in fact, is conveyed by the then euphemisms "secular lion" and "secular tiger". And a Russian proverb about a cat and eggs.

It must be said that Nabokov talks quite a lot in his comments about the shortcomings of Pushkin's "hallocentrism", which leads to the fact that our poet looked at Byron's work through the cloudy glasses of mediocre translations.

But Pushkin's shortcoming in this case was also a virtue. Nabokov's Anglocentrism was normal in the era of the Anglo-French interwar, and provided a bonus in the era of post-war Anglo-Saxon dominance. But the world of Pushkin AND BYRON is equally gallocentric. If Nabokov sneers at Pushkin's ignorance of German and English, which forced him to read French translations, then the English and German authors of that time themselves, in turn, were colossally dependent on French literature.

Mentioning the "spleen" in his Don Juan, Byron immediately refers to the French origin of the term.

“So the men went hunting.
Hunting at a young age is ecstasy
And later - a sure remedy for spleen,
Idleness made it easier more than once.
French "ennui" ("boredom" - approx.) Not without a reason
So it took root in Britain with us;
Found a name in France
The yawns of our boring suffering.

So, what is the famous English spleen? Nothing but a PHYSICAL imitation of the insufficiently cultured islanders of the LITERARY RECEPTION of the developed French civilization.

Byron as a character in a French novel.

Or, - why be trifles, - Apollo. Oh, those little peoples! (In 1800, there were less than 9 million English people and they grew by leaps and bounds.)

But this is closer to the topic. Although here the red-faced esquire still tried to maintain an interesting pallor, and the features of obvious alcohol degradation were softened as much as possible.

In his youth, before the period of alcoholic maturity, Byron was a lame-footed, absent-minded student with a somewhat stupid face. Which, of course, does not detract from his poetic gift, as well as the miserable appearance of Alexander Sergeevich.

If the Georgians have been world chess champions among women for a long time, then the British have won a place among the trendsetters - for men. At the same time, the English "Coco Chanel" Handsome Brummel, whom the British still admire, was a syphilitic with a sunken nose and cleaned his boots with champagne.

In the same way, Byron's personal life is an imitation of the highly talented but also undereducated English botanist of the adventures of the main characters of contemporary French novels. But Benjamin Constant, for all his declared autobiography, did not look like the protagonist of his "Adolf", and in the same way Chateaubriand did not look like the hero of "Rene". The writer very rarely dances naked in the moonlight, although he constantly describes such dances in his works. Pushkin, following Byron, began to dance the hips, but quickly stopped - because he was more cultured, that is, in this case, he knew the culture of France better and felt it better.

Village teachers, in general, say the right things. Once such a teacher invented bis logarithmic tables. Eugene Onegin really was an "extra person", being the alter ego of an "extra poet" - Alexander Pushkin.

What is the reason for writing this work? What did the author mean by this? Nabokov believes that the reason is in the immanent properties of Pushkin's genius - but this is not a cause, but a consequence. Pushkin solved the artistic problem in the way he could solve it. The question is why this task was set.

With "Eugene Onegin" Pushkin sat on the floor and began to run his finger over his lips: blah blah, blah blah.

And it was done on purpose. Pushkin began to write specifically about nothing. The “House in Kolomna” and “Count Nulin” were written in the same way, and with the same IDEOLOGICAL pathos.

The meaning of "Onegin" is revealed in a rough draft of the preface to the first chapter. Pushkin writes:

“Let us be allowed to draw the attention of the most respectable public and gentlemen of journalists to a dignity that is still new in a satirical writer: the observation of strict decency in a comic description of morals. Juvenal, Petronius, Voltaire and Byron - not infrequently did not retain due respect for the reader and for the fair sex. They say that our ladies are beginning to read Russian. - We boldly offer them a work where they will find true and entertaining observations under a light veil of satirical gaiety. Another merit, almost equally important, which brings no small credit to our author's gentleness of heart, is the complete absence of offensive transition to personalities. For this should not be attributed solely to the paternal vigilance of our censorship, the guardian of morals, state tranquility, no matter how carefully guarding citizens from the attack of the ingenuous slander of mocking frivolity ... "

“Several songs or chapters of “Eugene Onegin” are already ready. Written under the influence of favorable circumstances, they bear the imprint of cheerfulness ... "

"Favorable Circumstances" is a reference that had an excellent effect on the good-naturedness of the author, who wrote a light, decent work that can be safely recommended to wives and daughters (a paraphrase of Piron's remark, made by him sincerely, but sounding mockingly in the mouth of a pornographic poet, about which Pushkin later wrote in one of the notes).

In other words, "Eugene Onegin" is a trifle for censorship, which is the only one able to allow such things to go into print, as well as a harsh and shrill, but still an apology from a teenager. This is a "correction" of Pushkin, who was exiled to the South for political epigrams, about which he speaks with foolishness in the draft of the preface.

Men's fashion of the Pushkin era. Its legislators were of course not the British, but the French. The British at the beginning of the 19th century carved out only a certain sector for themselves, and so far they have not advanced further than this ghetto. Which is also not bad - Russians or Germans do not have this either.

Probably in such a case, everything would have been limited to one or two or three chapters, but Pushkin (and the public) liked it, and he wrote a great work. In general, the best of what they wrote.

And it didn't happen by accident either. Pushkin felt that the storyline was not very important for his poem. Moreover, due to the imitative nature of the work, it only interferes, for it turns free variations into dull rewriting (INEVITABLE at that level of Russian literary culture).

Oddly enough, it is the lack of action that makes Onegin so interesting to read. Imagine that the whole poem is written in the style of the destroyed "tenth chapter" (preserved in fragments). There it is smartly, witty and boldly written about history and politics, but this is mortal longing. (I believe that Alexander Sergeevich fully understood that the British humor of Byron and Stern would inevitably be replaced on Russian soil by furious rhymes.)

"Uninteresting plot" only enhances the true interest of Pushkin's main work. These are "cubes of the Russian language." Only these are not cubes for children, consisting of letters and syllables, but cubes for teenagers and even adults - cubes of phrases, feelings, comparisons, rhymes. "Eugene Onegin" is the Iliad of the Russian literary language, what the modern Russian language is made of. Reading "Onegin", memorizing it by heart is a real pleasure.

"More cupids, devils, snakes
They jump and make noise on the stage;
More tired lackeys
They sleep on fur coats at the entrance;
Haven't stopped stomping yet
Blow your nose, cough, hiss, clap;
Still outside and inside
Lanterns are shining everywhere;
Still, vegetating, the horses are fighting,
Bored with your harness,
And the coachmen, around the lights,
Scold the gentlemen and beat in the palm -
And Onegin went out;
He's going home to get dressed."

All this is spoken, thought through, felt, seen and heard (correct the mistake in the verb yourself). Imagine that you do not know the Russian language and suddenly you are given an injection of its perfect knowledge. And you begin to speak Russian, hear and understand Russian speech. Feel its phonetics, rhythm, style. Or some mind was given a human body, and it starts hissing, clapping, jumping, stomping and jumping on one leg - everything is so cool, dexterous and unusual. That is why the study of "Eugene Onegin" is the pinnacle of foreign knowledge of the Russian language, and that is why foreigners who have mastered the Russian language rejoice in "Eugene Onegin" so much.

There are a lot of illustrations for "Eugene Onegin", and what happens quite rarely, there are many successful ones among them. This is a drawing by Samokish-Sudkovskaya, an artist of the late 19th century. She was reproached for being "excessive prettiness", but "Onegin" is to a large extent REALLY a women's novel and women's illustrations are quite appropriate here. A thought that would infuriate Nabokov (a teacher of literature at a women's college).

And of course, why "Eugene Onegin" in translation is completely incomprehensible. This should be asked of the eccentric Nabokov. Of course, it was very interesting for a bilingual prose writer and poet to translate, this is clear. But then ... Nobody read the Nabokov translation - like everyone else.

But there is something else in Onegin. Otherwise, Russian culture would be bent and ached in Croatia or Poland. This is the "other" quality that I drew attention to when speaking about the structure of Pushkin's "Monument": PHILOLOGICAL EXCESSENCE.

Even the first lines of "Eugene Onegin" for a complete understanding require comments on several pages.

"My uncle of the most honest rules,
When I fell ill in earnest,
He forced himself to respect
And I couldn't think of a better one."

The first line is a hidden quote from Krylov's fable "The Donkey and the Man": "The donkey had the most honest rules." The donkey, hired to guard the cabbage in the garden, did not touch it, but chasing the crows, crushed it with its hooves. That is, uncle is an honest fool, a simpleton.

(Sometimes it is believed that the expression “I forced myself to respect” is not only Gallicism, but also a euphemism meaning death: “I forced everyone to stand up”, “I forced me to take off my hat”, “I forced me to honor my memory.” This is not true, since at the end of the chapter indicates that Onegin is going to a dying, but not yet dead relative.)

In addition, the entire quatrain is a direct imitation of the first chapter of Don Juan, which refers to the protagonist's uncle:

“The late Don José was a nice fellow…

He died without leaving a will
And Juan became the heir to everything ... "

The beginning of "Eugene Onegin" is zakovykanny, this is a transfer not even of words, but of the thoughts of the protagonist:

"Thus thought the young rake,
Flying in the dust on postage,
By the will of Zeus
Heir to all his relatives."

But a strange thing, if you do not know the philological context of the first quatrain, it will of course be read incorrectly, but this still will not affect the general meaning.

If you know the context, Pushkin wrote: “Yevgeny believes that his uncle is a straightforward fool, who foolishly (that is, suddenly) fell ill with a fatal illness and gave hope for an early inheritance.

If you don’t know the context, then the following is written: “Eugene considers his uncle a highly moral person who demands the same high qualities from relatives and makes them take care of their health.”

The continuation of the stanza puts everything in its place in both cases:

“His example to others is science;
But my god, what a bore
With the sick to sit day and night,
Not leaving a single step away!
What low deceit
Amuse the half-dead
Fix his pillows
Sad to give medicine
Sigh and think to yourself:
When will the devil take you!

Both the "bad uncle" and the "good uncle" infuriate the nephew equally.

And here is an illustration that Alexander Sergeevich would undoubtedly like very much. After all, this is his 3D sketch of Onegin.

The first stanza of "Eugene Onegin" imitates the poems of Byron, but at the same time relies on the national tradition (still very frail). It is also ambiguous, but this ambiguity spares the inattentive reader.

The whole poem is written in a similar vein. Commentaries (underlined incomplete) Nabokov to this work amounted to a thousand pages. This piece is intricate and very well thought out. Dreams and predictions of Tatyana foresee the further development of the plot, the scene of the murder of Lensky and the last meeting of Onegin with Tatyana take place as if in a dream (in a parallel reality). Tatyana's firm "no" does not look at all as firm as it seems, and of course, in general, "Onegin" is the same super-literary work as Cervantes' "Don Quixote", all built on allusions to a huge layer of chivalric novels. In this case, these are love stories of the 18th and early 19th centuries.

From the point of view of a literary critic, "Eugene Onegin" is an unthinkable synthesis of borrowings and originality. This is the devil's box...

"Eugene Onegin" creates the illusion of a huge literary tradition. Starting from THIS starting point, the Russians AS LIKE began their serious literature not from the beginning of the 19th century, but at least a hundred years earlier. Pushkin destroyed the cultural odds of the Europeans. Whereas the real tradition - and "tradition" is primarily a living fabric of literary controversy - arose after the death of Pushkin.

Thanks to this strange circumstance, Russian culture turns out to be autonomous (circular). She can grow on her own. At the beginning of the 20th century, it was brushed off the planet, and at the end of the 20th, the crumbs also disappeared - as if it were not there. What has changed in the world? Nothing. In eternity, everything that was Russian, of course, remained. But living life...

And what would have happened if in 1917 the entire Western civilization had been wiped off the planet? And also nothing - the Russians would have had enough of themselves to continue to exist. There would be no degeneration. Even the destruction after 1917 took the Russians three generations of humiliation and murder to finally shut up.

Such completeness and autonomy is already contained in Pushkin (of course, in a potential form). By the way, some segments of his world did not turn around further, having dried up.

In conclusion of this chapter, I would advise reading "Eugene Onegin" to those who did not read it in adulthood or did not learn at least a few stanzas in childhood.

First, you will see the language you speak in its virginal purity. This language was created by Pushkin, and "Eugene Onegin" is the main work of the poet and the work, to the maximum extent, served as the basis of modern Russian vocabulary.

Secondly, - especially for people prone to intellectual abstractions - you will see how easily and how perfectly in our language it is possible to speak two-, three-, and even four-meanings, revealing gradually, and maybe never, but not disrupting the general train of thought.

Comparing La Fontaine (a fabulist, not a prose writer) with Krylov, Pushkin noted that despite the fact that, of course, Krylov imitates the famous Frenchman, there is a significant difference between them. La Fontaine, like all Frenchmen, is simple-hearted (straightforward, clear), and Krylov, like all Russians, has a "merry cunning of the mind."

Or, as the seminarian Klyuchevsky rudely said, both Great Russians and Ukrainians are deceivers. Only Ukrainians like to pretend to be smart, and Russians are fools.

In the end, the first graduation of the Alexander Lyceum produced two great people: the great poet Alexander Pushkin and the great diplomat Alexander Gorchakov.

Gorchakov. Pushkin's drawing.

History of creation

The novel was published in verse in separate chapters, and the release of each chapter became a big event in modern literature. In 1831 the novel in verse was finished and in 1833 it was published. It covers events from 1819 to 1825: from the foreign campaigns of the Russian army after the defeat of Napoleon to the Decembrist uprising. These were the years of the development of Russian society, during the reign of Tsar Alexander I. The plot of the novel is simple and well known. At the center of the novel is a love affair. And the main problem is the eternal problem of feeling and duty. The novel "Eugene Onegin" reflected the events of the first quarter of the 19th century, that is, the time of creation and the time of the novel approximately coincide. Reading the book, we (readers) understand that the novel is unique, because earlier in the world literature there was not a single novel in verse. Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin created a novel in verse like Byron's poem Don Juan. Defining the novel as a “collection of motley chapters”, Pushkin emphasizes one of the features of this work: the novel is, as it were, “opened” in time, each chapter could be the last, but it can also have a continuation. And thus the reader draws attention to the independence of each chapter of the novel. The novel has become an encyclopedia of Russian life in the 20s of the century before last, since the breadth of the novel shows readers the whole reality of Russian life, as well as the multi-plot and description of different eras. This is what gave grounds to V. G. Belinsky in his article "Eugene Onegin" to conclude:

“Onegin can be called an encyclopedia of Russian life and an eminently folk work.”

Plot

The novel begins with a squeamish speech by the young nobleman Eugene Onegin, dedicated to the illness of his uncle, which forced him to leave St. Petersburg and go to the patient's bed in the hope of becoming the heir to the dying. The narrative itself is conducted on behalf of the nameless author, who introduced himself as a good friend of Onegin. Having marked the plot in this way, the author devotes the first chapter to the story of the origin, family, life of his hero before receiving news of the illness of a relative.

Lotman

"Eugene Onegin" is a difficult work. The very lightness of the verse, the familiarity of the content, familiar to the reader from childhood and emphatically simple, paradoxically create additional difficulties in understanding Pushkin's novel in verse. The illusory idea of the "comprehensibility" of the work hides from the consciousness of the modern reader a huge number of incomprehensible words, expressions, phraseological units, allusions, quotations. Thinking about a verse that you know from childhood seems to be unjustified pedantry. However, it is worth overcoming this naive optimism of an inexperienced reader in order to make it obvious how far we are even from a simple textual understanding of the novel. The specific structure of the Pushkin novel in verse, in which any positive statement of the author can be imperceptibly turned into an ironic one, and the verbal fabric seems to slip, passing from one speaker to another, makes the method of forcible extraction of quotations especially dangerous. To avoid this threat, the novel should be viewed not as a mechanical sum of the author's statements on various issues, a kind of anthology of quotations, but as an organic artistic world, parts of which live and gain meaning only in relation to the whole. A simple list of problems that Pushkin "poses" in his work will not introduce us into the world of Onegin. The artistic idea implies a special type of life transformation in art. It is known that for Pushkin there was a "devilish difference" between poetic and prosaic modeling of the same reality, even while maintaining the same themes and problems.

Comments on the novel

One of the first comments on the novel was a small book by A. Volsky, published in 1877. Comments by Vladimir Nabokov, Nikolai Brodsky, Yuri Lotman, S. M. Bondi became classics.

Psychologists about the work

Influence on other works

The type of "superfluous person", introduced by Pushkin in the image of Onegin, influenced all subsequent Russian literature. From the closest illustrative examples - surname "Pechorin" in Lermontov's "Hero of Our Time", as well as the name of Onegin is formed from the name of the Russian river. Many psychological characteristics are also close.
In the modern Russian novel "The Onegin Code" written under a pseudonym Brain Down, we are talking about the search for the missing chapter of Pushkin's manuscript.
In Yesenin's poem "Anna Snegina".

Notes

Links

Pushkin A. S. Eugene Onegin: A novel in verse // Pushkin A. S. Complete works: In 10 volumes - L .: Science. Leningrad. department, 1977-1979. (FEB)
"Eugene Onegin" with full commentary by Nabokov, Lotman and Tomashevsky on the website "Secrets of the Craft"
Lotman Yu. M. The novel in Pushkin's verse "Eugene Onegin": Special course. Introductory lectures in the study of the text // Lotman Yu. M. Pushkin: Biography of the writer; Articles and notes, 1960-1990; "Eugene Onegin": Commentary. - St. Petersburg: Art-SPB, 1995. - S. 393-462. (FEB)
Lotman Yu. M. Roman A. S. Pushkin "Eugene Onegin": Commentary: A guide for the teacher // Lotman Yu. M. Pushkin: Biography of the writer; Articles and notes, 1960-1990; "Eugene Onegin": Commentary. - St. Petersburg: Art-SPB, 1995. - S. 472-762. (FEB)
Onegin Encyclopedia: In 2 volumes - M .: Russian way, 1999-2004.
Zakharov N.V. Onegin Encyclopedia: thesaurus of the novel (Onegin Encyclopedia. Vol. 2. / Edited by N. I. Mikhailova. M., 2004) // Knowledge. Understanding. Skill. - 2005. - No. 4. - S. 180-188.
Fomichev S. A. "Eugene Onegin": The movement of the idea. - M.: Russian way, 2005.
Bely A.A. "Génie ou neige" Literature Issues No. 1, . P.115.

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"Eugene Onegin"- a novel in verse, written in 1823-1831, one of the most significant works of Russian literature.

"Eugene Onegin" history of creation

Pushkin worked on this novel for over seven years, from 1823 to 1831. The novel was, according to the poet, "the fruit" of "the mind, cold observations and the heart of sorrowful remarks." Pushkin called the work on it a feat - of all his creative heritage, only Boris Godunov he described with the same word. In the work, against a wide background of pictures of Russian life, the dramatic fate of the best people of the noble intelligentsia is shown.

Pushkin began work on Onegin in May 1823 in Chisinau, during his exile. The author abandoned romanticism as the leading creative method and began to write a realistic novel in verse, although the influence of romanticism is still noticeable in the first chapters. Initially, it was assumed that the novel in verse would consist of 9 chapters, but later Pushkin reworked its structure, leaving only 8 chapters. He excluded the chapter "Onegin's Journey" from the main text of the work, including its fragments as an appendix to the main text. There was a fragment of this chapter, where, according to some sources, it was described how Onegin sees military settlements near the Odessa pier, and then there were remarks and judgments, in some places in an excessively harsh tone. Fearing possible persecution by the authorities, Pushkin destroyed this fragment of Onegin's Journey.

The novel covers events from 1819 to 1825: from the foreign campaigns of the Russian army after the defeat of Napoleon to the Decembrist uprising. These were the years of the development of Russian society, during the reign of Alexander I. The plot of the novel is simple and well known, in the center of it is a love story. In general, the events of the first quarter of the 19th century were reflected in the novel "Eugene Onegin", that is, the time of creation and the time of the novel approximately coincide.

Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin created a novel in verse similar to Lord Byron's poem Don Juan. Having defined the novel as a “collection of motley chapters”, Pushkin highlights one of the features of this work: the novel is, as it were, “opened” in time (each chapter could be the last, but it can also have a continuation), thereby drawing readers’ attention to the independence and integrity of each chapters. The novel became truly an encyclopedia of Russian life in the 1820s, since the breadth of the topics covered in it, the detailing of everyday life, the multi-plot composition, the depth of the description of the characters' characters still reliably demonstrate to readers the features of the life of that era.

This is what gave grounds to V. G. Belinsky in his article "Eugene Onegin" to conclude:

“Onegin can be called an encyclopedia of Russian life and an eminently folk work.”

From the novel, as well as from the encyclopedia, you can learn almost everything about the era: about how they dressed, and what was in fashion, what people valued most, what they talked about, what interests they lived. "Eugene Onegin" reflected the whole of Russian life. Briefly, but quite clearly, the author showed the fortress village, the lordly Moscow, the secular St. Petersburg. Pushkin truthfully depicted the environment in which the main characters of his novel live - Tatyana Larina and Eugene Onegin, reproduced the atmosphere of the city noble salons in which Onegin spent his youth.