The world decided that he was smart and nice. Alexander Pushkin - My uncle of the most honest rules: Verse. Eugene Onegin novel in verse

My uncle has the most honest rules,
When I seriously fell ill,
He forced himself to respect
And I couldn't think of anything better.

EO, Ch. 1, I

What does it say? Is it possible to retell it in your own words?

These lines are often quoted, especially in the press. Let's say a goalkeeper takes a penalty - immediately an article appears about how he thereby “forced himself to be respected”! But venerable Pushkin scholars as one remain deathly silent on this matter.

“And everyone - absolutely everyone: dads, mothers, grandmothers, grandfathers, children, grandchildren, actors, readers, directors, translators into other languages, and even Pushkin researchers - unanimously uttered nonsense about an uncle of high moral qualities, who finally forced himself to be respected , or began to look for another, fantastic meaning.”

Did you understand anything? I only understood that it was useless to climb into the Kalash row with a pig’s snout, trying to understand the meaning of the lines of our people’s poet. In other words, Pushkin is for God’s chosen researchers, who certainly know what and why he wrote, but do not want to explain it in their own words, since the subject of scientific dispute is too subtle for the uninitiated. By the way, instead of answering the question posed, the venerable Pushkin scholar chose to step aside, turning his attention to some mediocre proofreader who once put a comma instead of a semicolon after the word “ill.” And thereby killed Pushkin’s entire plan.

Well, perhaps - the scientist knows better. Only the question ultimately remained unanswered: what does the phrase “forced to respect myself” mean? At least with a comma, at least with something else... Is it really absolutely nothing?

I did not find an answer to this question in any phraseological or other dictionary. On one of the forums I happened to see a link to a book by M.I. Mikhelson “Russian thought and speech. Experience of Russian phraseology. Ours and Others' of the century before last. They say it’s there! I was delighted, rushed to search, managed to find it, opened it - alas... There is nothing about it there.

At the same time, many of the interlocutors immediately gave an answer, which seems to me to be correct, and the rationale for which I will try to get to the bottom of a little later. That's how they were taught at school! Probably, once upon a time there were teachers who loved their subject and honestly tried to understand it. And even today, in the newly published versions of Onegin, here and there there are modern comments that neither Brodsky, nor Nabokov, nor Lotman had... But I wanted to “reinvent the wheel” myself.

The result of the “invention” is below.

Let's start with the "fair rules". All researchers point to Krylov’s fable “The Donkey and the Peasant,” whose tailed hero was precisely “the most honest of the rules.” They also say that even without this fable, this phraseology was recognizable in those days.

Let's remember the fable:

A man in the garden for the summer
Having hired Donkey, he assigned
Ravens and sparrows are chased by an impudent race.
The donkey had the most honest rules:
I am unfamiliar with neither predatory nor theft:
He didn’t profit from the owner’s leaf,
And it’s a shame to give the birds a treat;
But the peasant's profit from the garden was bad.
The donkey, chasing the birds, with all the donkey's legs,
Along all the ridges, up and down,
Such a gallop has risen,
That he crushed and trampled everything in the garden.
Seeing here that his work was wasted,
Peasant on the back of a donkey
He took out the loss with a club.
“And nothing!” everyone shouts: “Serves the cattle right!
With his mind
Should I take on this matter?
And I will say, not to stand up for the Donkey;
He is definitely to blame (and the settlement has been made with him),
But it seems that he is also wrong
Who instructed the Donkey to guard his garden.

Let me note that Krylov’s Donkey is a decent creature. After all, he “... is not familiar with rapacity or theft: he did not profit from a single piece of paper.” Ordered to keep watch - he goes and keeps watch as best he can. A kind of selfless and naive worker - we, as a rule, do not respect such people. And, worse than that, they hit you painfully! Honest Donkey, for example, was beaten on the back with a club... Only after that Krylov partially absolved him of the blame and noted that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to ask the dunce the Man, who foolishly hired the wrong performer.

Finally respected, in general.

Onegin, as we know, honored his uncle with the same epithets that Krylov gave his Donkey. What kind of troubles the old man had is not important: the main thing is that in the end he, too, “was seriously ill.” And - alas! - only when a person dies or, even worse, has already died, various kinds of “pleasants” begin to pour in his address, which he so lacked during life. As a sign of belated respect.

What does the word “respect” mean? According to Dahl's dictionary - “to honor, to honor, to sincerely recognize someone's merits; highly valued..." By the way, already in our time Faina Ranevskaya said: “In order to receive recognition, one must, even must, die”...

In my opinion, it was precisely this simple meaning that Pushkin put into Onegin’s mouth. It's simple - “forced to respect myself” means: “died”! Because this is a guaranteed way to hear something respectful about yourself, even from those who have always hated you.

All his life Onegin cared deeply about his uncle - as well as about everyone else. And he rushed to him solely “for the sake of money,” deep down in his soul sincerely wishing for his death (“When will the devil take you?”).

Suddenly he really got
Report from the manager
That uncle is dying in bed
And I would be glad to say goodbye to him.
After reading the sad message,
Evgeniy on a date right away
Swiftly galloped through the mail
And I already yawned in advance,
Getting ready, for the sake of money,
For sighs, boredom and deception
(And thus I began my novel);

Well, he really didn’t want to “amuse the half-dead”... And then - a gift of fate: my uncle turned out to be a great guy and quickly died even before his arrival!

But, having arrived at my uncle’s village,
I found it already on the table,
As a tribute to the ready land.

Onegin is completely sincerely grateful to him for this: after all, of all the options for the development of events, his uncle chose the ideal one!

And I couldn't think of anything better.
His example to others is science;

- Well done, old man! - Onegin grins to himself. - I respect you!

It's too early to rejoice. If everything is so good, then why this “But”:

His example to others is science;
But, my God, what a bore
Sitting with the patient...

And this no longer matters, since there is a semicolon before the “but”! The thought is finished, the next one begins. There is no opposition. Here is a similar example from the fifth chapter of the same “Onegin”:

What joy: there will be a ball!
The girls jump early;
But food was served.
EO, Chapter 5, XXVIII

The ball is not canceled by the upcoming dinner: there is simply a time for everything. So it is here: the death of the old uncle is not canceled out by reasoning about how disgusting Onegin would have been sitting with a lean face at his bedside. Bored Evgeniy is prone to philosophizing and simply wonders what would happen if...

After reading the sad message,
Evgeniy on a date right away
Swiftly galloped through the mail
And I already yawned in advance,
Getting ready, for the sake of money,
For sighs, boredom and deception
(And thus I began my novel);

It turns out that hints of confidence in the uncle’s death seem to be inappropriate... But the novel begins not with the first stanza of the first chapter, but with the epigraph:

Eugene Onegin
Novel in verse

Pétri de vanité il avait encore plus de cette espéce d'orgueil qui fait avouer avec la méme indifference les bonnes comme les mauvaises actions, suite d'un sentiment de supériorite peut-être imaginaire.

Tire d'une lettre particuliere

Imbued with vanity, he also possessed that special pride that prompts him to admit with equal indifference both his good and bad deeds - a consequence of a sense of superiority, perhaps imaginary. From a private letter (French).

Thus, the first thing they tell us once again is that people like Onegin indifferently admit that they are doing wrong. Yes, Evgeny rushed headlong to sigh and lie for money. And only then, having become convinced that he had actually inherited his uncle’s farm, “the heir to all his relatives” immediately flew off somewhere “in the dust at the post office.” Where? Most likely, to a notary! Or settle things in the city before moving to the countryside for a long time. That is, in any case, not to the uncle, but from the uncle.

Impolite? There, the wake is in full swing: the priests and guests are eating and drinking... Yes, the “young rake” did not do very well. And what do you want from him: a rake, according to Dahl’s dictionary, is “an impolite, impudent naughty guy.”

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

And from everything it is clear that Onegin is in a good mood. He did not have to humiliate himself in order to become the owner of “factories, waters, forests, lands.”

Now let’s try to write a mini-essay on the content of the first stanza in our own words.

My uncle is an honest but narrow-minded old worker. He, sensing his approaching death, died immediately, without causing any trouble to anyone. If everyone followed this example, then the world would get rid of the sanctimonious pretense of those who, for the sake of an inheritance, would be forced to hang around the bedsides of useless capricious patients, cursing everything in the world and thereby wanting to quickly go to hell!

It is clear that Pushkin expressed all this more gracefully and briefly.

By the way, one respected researcher of his work, whom I “turned on” with my interest in this issue, came to the conclusion that “I forced myself to respect” is an idiom introduced into use by Pushkin.

It may very well be. Therefore, you need to be careful with thoughtless quoting. The goalkeeper mentioned at the beginning, who took the penalty, may be offended by this. However, he is unlikely to be interested in such issues...

Reviews

I cannot agree with your extensive research.
It seems to me that you have filled it with a lot of unnecessary speculation.

1. “Honest rules”, without any allegories, means decency, decent behavior and the absence of discreditable actions. This expression does not imply any narrow-mindedness or limitation.

2. “Forced himself to be respected” - without any allegory, he simply FORCED himself to be respected in the sense of forced him to reckon with himself, forced him to perform rituals of respect in relation to his person.
Society in pre-Bolshevik Russia was extremely rich in rituals; in the hierarchy of values ​​of many high-status people, the “collection” of honors occupied a very important place. Only the so-called “gathering of honors” was considered reprehensible. "freethinkers".
After the destruction of class society, we simply stopped understanding such things.

3. For those who have an idea of ​​​​social and diplomatic etiquette, after reading this paragraph, their imagination will complete the content of their uncle’s letter. Something like: “Unfortunately, we paid little attention to each other and communicated little. In the last days of your life, you acutely regret such omissions. I would like to finally see you, xxx, uuu, nnn, talk to you all, get to know you all better in order to prevent injustice in the will..."
What can be invented better than such a letter for a young rake, the owner of his father’s estate to be mortgaged and remortgaged, leaving everything behind and flying head over heels to his dying relative, ready to compete with other competitors in respect, sympathy, even in caring for the sick?
(Despite the fact that the dying person has a servant. Care from relatives for the dying person is a ritual of respect, and not a necessity).

4. Whether the dying man learned that “The young master was traveling, as he read the letter, so at two o’clock he pawned the carriage and left...” from the riding servant, or whether the will was decided in favor of Eugene in a different way, we can only guess.. .
But, in my opinion, this is not required to understand the first paragraph.

5. By the way, for a real character, not a literary one, complaints about the burdensomeness of respect for older relatives in those days were seriously dangerous. Both Alexander I and Nicholas I, for such complaints, if they reached their ears, could easily send the young nobleman to the estate, and they could even transfer him to the Caucasus.

The novel “Eugene Onegin” is a must-read for all connoisseurs of Pushkin’s work. This large work plays one of the key roles in the poet’s work. This work had an incredible influence on all Russian fiction. An important fact from the history of writing the novel is that Pushkin worked on it for about 8 years. It was during these years that the poet reached his creative maturity. The book, completed in 1831, was published only in 1833. The events described in the work cover the period between 1819 and 1825. It was then, after the defeat of Napoleon, that the campaigns of the Russian army took place. The reader is presented with situations that took place in society during the reign of Tsar Alexander I. The interweaving of historical facts and realities in the novel that are important for the poet made it truly interesting and lively. Many scientific works have been written based on this poem. And interest in it does not fade even after almost 2 hundred years.

It is difficult to find a person who is not familiar with the plot of Pushkin’s work “Eugene Onegin”. The central line of the novel is a love story. Feelings, duty, honor - all this is the main problem of creation, because it is so difficult to combine them. Two couples appear before the reader: Evgeny Onegin with Tatyana Larina and Vladimir Lensky with Olga. Each of them dreams of happiness and love. But this is not destined to happen. Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin was a master of describing unrequited feelings. Tatyana, who falls madly in love with Onegin, does not receive the desired answer from him. He understands that he loves her only after strong shocks that melt his stone heart. And now, it would seem, the happy ending is so close. But the heroes of this novel in verse are not destined to be together. The bitter thing is that the characters cannot blame fate or others for this. From the very beginning of Eugene Onegin, you understand that only their mistakes influenced this sad outcome. The search for the right path was unsuccessful. The content of such deep philosophical moments in the work makes the reader think about the reasons for the actions of the heroes. In addition to a simple love story, the poem is filled with living stories, descriptions, pictures and colorful characters with difficult destinies. Through the chapters of the novel, step by step, you can trace the most incredible details of that era.

The main idea of ​​the text of “Eugene Onegin” is not easy to identify. This book gives an understanding that true happiness is not available to everyone. Only people who are not burdened with spiritual development and aspirations for the highest can truly enjoy life. Simple things that anyone can achieve are enough for them. Sensitive and thinking individuals, according to the author, suffer more often. They will face inevitable death, like Lensky, “empty inaction,” like Onegin, or silent sadness, like Tatyana. This pattern is frightening and causes a feeling of melancholy. Moreover, Pushkin, in no case, directly accuses his heroes. He emphasizes that it was the environment around that made the characters this way. After all, every respectable, intelligent and noble person will change under the influence of the heavy burden of the serfdom and hard labor. The emergence of this abnormal system in society has made hundreds of thousands of people unhappy. It is the sadness from such events that is expressed in the last lines of the work. Alexander Sergeevich managed to skillfully combine the problems of society with the hardships of individual destinies. This combination makes you re-read the novel again and again, marveling at the suffering of the characters, sympathizing with them and empathizing. The novel “Eugene Onegin” can be read online or downloaded for free on our website.

In the second issue of “Moscow Pushkinist” (1996), an article by Valentin Nepomnyashchiy “From observations of the text of “Eugene Onegin” was published. Chapter I."

About those who stumbled on a punctuation mark

In the second issue " Moscow Pushkinist"(1996) article was published Valentin Nepomnyashchiy “From observations of the text of “Eugene Onegin.” Chapter I". On the Internet (http://www.speakrus.ru/articles/uncle1.htm) under it there is a copyright sign with the date “2000”; No later publications of this text were found on the Internet. Nevertheless, in a video on “Eugene Onegin” published in 2008–2012, Nepomniachtchi expresses the same point of view on the first stanza of the novel, and, therefore, the text of his article is valid. Here's the beginning:

“When I was first asked this question, I was confused, like a doctor facing an unknown disease:

- Say: after all “ Made me respect myself"– does this mean he died?

That is, how do you mean he died?! The hero to whom these words belong is dissatisfied with the fact that he will have to “to sit with the patient day and night” etc. - it seems clear... But - they managed to argue, and this continues to this day. Over time, the question - it always comes from actors, readers and even directors - acquired the character of an epidemic, and I stopped being surprised. Over time, I realized that, despite all the absurdity, the emergence of the question was not accidental. The actor's and reader's gaze is very attentive to details, particulars - sometimes inappropriately, at the expense of attention to things that are more important and even basic; and yet you cannot deny his peculiar vigilance. And this corrosive glance discovered a strangeness in the first stanza of the novel: if the uncle is a man "the most honest rules" that is, this is his eternal property, then why is it further said that he “I forced myself to respect”? No one, but Pushkin, can have such empty tautologies... Isn’t there another, figurative meaning here in this case? He ordered me to live long, forced me to respect myself...

"Interpretation" is wild“But the tautology is correctly noted.” (Here and below, italics are mine throughout. – VC.)

One should pay tribute to the indefatigable inquisitiveness of the famous Pushkinist. However, his very first wording message ( "empty tautology") raises a puzzling question: why “tautology”? After all, in each of the lines - "the most honest rules" And “I forced myself to respect”- they have their own, independent meaning, and there is no tautology in them - unless you interpret them literally (which Pushkin, presumably, did not count on). Let us recall the first stanza of the novel, about which Nepomniachtchi’s article was written:

As is generally accepted in Pushkin studies, the first line of “Onegin” refers to a line from Krylov’s fable “The Donkey Had the Most Honest Rules”, should be read as "My uncle, [donkey], when..."– and, in accordance with Pushkin’s punctuation marks, precisely “that’s his (uncle’s) way. – VC.) ever-present property". This mocking and cynical meaning is supported by the ironic and cynical meaning of the second and third lines, contrastive in relation to the first: “When (uncle) fell mortally ill, he (thereby) forced himself to be respected ( Although he and [donkey]).” One must think that it was precisely from this understanding that Nepomniachtchi was asked the question by “actors, readers and even directors” regarding the expression "forced myself to respect" the meaning of which they all, not by chance, associated with death.

In fact, in this Pushkin line there are two key words, and not one, as our respected philologist believes, giving the third line the meaning of real respect. to the word "respect" Dahl gives the following interpretation: “to honor, honor, spiritually recognize someone’s merits; to value highly...” Pushkin builds his irony on this interpretation, placing another verb next to it: “forced himself to be respected.” After all, according to Christian custom, a person who is on his deathbed or who has died is spoken of “only well,” with unconditional (“by default”) respect. That's exactly how it is forced those around him (that is, forced) to talk about himself by his uncle-[donkey], having become mortally ill. In fact, the words “forced to respect myself” became, thanks to Pushkin, idiom. Since Nepomniachtchi testifies that “the question (about the meaning of this expression. - VC.) has acquired the character of an epidemic,” this idiom is already quite widely known, and such a “deadly” interpretation of it cannot in any way be called “wild.” Moreover, it’s time to introduce it into the appropriate dictionaries.

Unfortunately, having trusted the literal reading of the 3rd line, Nepomniachtchi also draws from it several too far-reaching conclusions. For example, he proves that Pushkin in the second line used the word “when” in the sense of “if”, “if”: “In this phrase "When" makes sense not of time at all, but conditions: “...the most honest rules in the case when”, “in the event that” or simply "if" ("if"). Pushkin uses this meaning of “when” at every step: “If only I had hope...”, “If only you knew how terrible...”, “When Boris won’t stop being cunning, Let’s skillfully excite the people”, “When God has mercy on us, When I won’t be hanged...” etc. The list of examples in the “Pushkin Dictionary of the Language” is impressive - but “ When I got seriously ill" absent".

On this basis, the researcher decides to attribute the absence of this example to the inattention of the compilers of the “Dictionary”, to attribute to Pushkin’s pen “a clumsy and inexplicable inversion”, and to call the lines of the first stanza of “Onegin” (in generally accepted punctuation marks) “syntactic and semantic cacophony”. Truly, our Pushkinist “I couldn’t think of anything better!”

Further, he reinterprets the meaning of Pushkin’s lines, setting out their cause-and-effect relationship using such “clumsy and inexplicable” logic: “...Uncle, not at all, not always "the most honest rules"- He turned out to be Thus, he turned out to be capable of an act worthy of “respect”, and he “invented” not something, but – not as a joke (that is, fatally) to get sick”; elsewhere in the article, with the same logic: “My uncle is a man of the most honest rules in the event that he fell mortally ill.” Then from this “reasoning” Nepomniachtchi extracts “syntactically and semantically indisputable reasons for the semicolon after "fell ill"- that is, he rules Pushkin, and at the same time complains that “the academic tradition... and to hear about this (about replacing the comma in Pushkin’s text with a semicolon. - VC.) doesn't want"!

Finally, Nepomniachtchi mocks Turgenev, who translated the meaning of the first lines of the novel into French as follows: “When my uncle became seriously ill, he became more moral.” Nabokov also did not understand the meaning of Pushkin’s words “I forced myself to respect” and translated the idiom literally, and in order to somehow link this understanding with the context of the stanza, he suggested putting at the end of the first line colon(!!) But, ironizing over him, Nepomniachtchi does not notice that he himself is not far from Nabokov and that his semicolon gives Pushkin's words an equally absurd meaning.

The reason why Nepomniachtchi found himself in this rut ​​is amusing and instructive. The first edition of the First Chapter of Onegin was published in February 1825 without control from Pushkin, who was in exile. The publisher (Pletnev), who also did not understand the meaning of the ill-fated third line, decided to put a semicolon at the end of the second line - apparently based on the same false considerations that later came to Nepomniachtchi’s head. Based on the fact of the publication of the First Chapter with such punctuation, our philologist began to study theoretical basis this publishing error- despite the fact that Pushkin removed it in both lifetime editions of the novel.

We believe that from now on we should leave Pushkin’s punctuation of the first stanza of the First Chapter of “Eugene Onegin” alone, as, according to Valentin Nepomnyashchiy from his same article, “not only acceptable and not contrary to the author’s thoughts about the hero, not only completely consistent with the norms of the Russian language both in Pushkin’s time and in our time, but also the only one capable, in modern conditions, of correctly conveying the meaning of the first lines of the greatest Russian book.”

Vladimir KOZAROVETSKY

Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin

Eugene Onegin

Novel in verse

Pe€tri de vanite€ il avait encore plus de cette espe`ce d'orgueil qui fait avouer avec la me^me indiffe€rence les bonnes comme les mauvaises actions, suite d'un sentiment de supe€riorite€, peut-e ^tre imagine.

Not thinking of amusing the proud world,
Loving the attention of friendship,
I'd like to introduce you
The pledge is more worthy than you,
More worthy than a beautiful soul,
Saint of a dream come true,
Poetry alive and clear,
High thoughts and simplicity;
But so be it - with a biased hand
Accept the collection of motley heads,
Half funny, half sad,
Common people, ideal,
The careless fruit of my amusements,
Insomnia, light inspirations,
Immature and withered years,
Crazy cold observations
And hearts of sorrowful notes.

Chapter first

And he’s in a hurry to live, and he’s in a hurry to feel.

“My uncle has the most honest rules,
When I seriously fell ill,
He forced himself to respect
And I couldn't think of anything better.
His example to others is science;
But, my God, what a bore
To sit with the patient day and night,
Without leaving a single step!
What low deceit
To amuse the half-dead,
Adjust his pillows
It's sad to bring medicine,
Sigh and think to yourself:
When will the devil take you!”

So thought the young rake,
Flying in the dust on postage,
By the Almighty will of Zeus
Heir to all his relatives. -
Friends of Lyudmila and Ruslan!
With the hero of my novel
Without preamble, right now
Let me introduce you:
Onegin, my good friend,
Born on the banks of the Neva,
Where might you have been born?
Or shone, my reader;
I once walked there too:
But the north is bad for me.

Having served excellently and nobly,
His father lived in debt
Gave three balls annually
And finally squandered it.
Eugene's fate kept:
First Madame I followed him
After Monsieur replaced her;
The child was harsh, but sweet.
Monsieur l'Abbe€, poor Frenchman
So that the child does not get tired,
I taught him everything jokingly,
I didn’t bother you with strict morals,
Lightly scolded for pranks
And he took me for a walk to the Summer Garden.

When will the rebellious youth
The time has come for Evgeniy
It's time for hope and tender sadness,
Monsieur kicked out of the yard.
Here is my Onegin free;
Haircut in the latest fashion;
How dandy London dressed -
And finally saw the light.
He's completely French
He could express himself and wrote;
I danced the mazurka easily
And he bowed casually;
What do you want more? The light has decided
That he is smart and very nice.

We all learned a little bit
Something and somehow
So upbringing, thank God,
It's no wonder for us to shine.
Onegin was, according to many
(decisive and strict judges),
A small scientist, but a pedant.
He had a lucky talent
No coercion in conversation
Touch everything lightly
With the learned air of a connoisseur
Remain silent in an important dispute
And make the ladies smile
Fire of unexpected epigrams.

Latin is now out of fashion:
So, if I tell you the truth,
He knew quite a bit of Latin,
To understand the epigraphs,
Talk about Juvenal,
At the end of the letter put vale,
Yes, I remembered, although not without sin,
Two verses from the Aeneid.
He had no desire to rummage
In chronological dust
History of the earth;
But the jokes of days gone by
From Romulus to the present day,
He kept it in his memory.

Having no high passion
No mercy for the sounds of life,
He could not iambic from trochee,
No matter how hard we fought, we could tell the difference.
Scolded Homer, Theocritus;
But I read Adam Smith
And there was a deep economy,
That is, he knew how to judge
How does the state get rich?
And how does he live, and why?
He doesn't need gold
When simple product It has.
His father couldn't understand him
And he gave the lands as collateral.

Everything that Evgeniy still knew,
Tell me about your lack of time;
But what was his true genius?
What he knew more firmly than all sciences,
What happened to him from childhood
And labor, and torment, and joy,
What took the whole day
His melancholy laziness, -
There was a science of tender passion,
Which Nazon sang,
Why did he end up a sufferer?
Its age is brilliant and rebellious
In Moldova, in the wilderness of the steppes,
Far away from Italy.

……………………………………
……………………………………
……………………………………

How early could he be a hypocrite?
To harbor hope, to be jealous,
To dissuade, to make believe,
Seem gloomy, languish,
Be proud and obedient
Attentive or indifferent!
How languidly silent he was,
How fieryly eloquent
How careless in heartfelt letters!
Breathing alone, loving alone,
How he knew how to forget himself!
How quick and gentle his gaze was,
Shy and daring, and sometimes
Shined with an obedient tear!

How he knew how to seem new,
Jokingly amaze innocence,
To frighten with despair,
To amuse with pleasant flattery,
Catch a moment of tenderness,
Innocent years of prejudice
Win with intelligence and passion,
Expect involuntary affection
Beg and demand recognition
Listen to the first sound of the heart,
Pursue love and suddenly
Achieve a secret date...
And then she's alone
Give lessons in silence!

How early could he have disturbed
Hearts of coquettes!
When did you want to destroy
He has his rivals,
How he sarcastically slandered!
What networks I prepared for them!
But you, blessed men,
You stayed with him as friends:
The wicked husband caressed him,
Foblas is a long-time student,
And the distrustful old man
And the majestic cuckold,
Always happy with yourself
With his lunch and his wife.

……………………………………
……………………………………
……………………………………

Sometimes he was still in bed:
They bring notes to him.
What? Invitations? Indeed,
Three houses for the evening call:
There will be a ball, there will be a children's party.
Where will my prankster ride?
Who will he start with? Doesn't matter:
It’s no wonder to keep up everywhere.
While in morning dress,
Putting on wide bolivar,
Onegin goes to the boulevard,
And there he walks in the open space,
While the watchful Breget
Dinner won't ring his bell.

An excerpt from the novel in verse Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin.

My uncle has the most honest rules,
When I seriously fell ill,
He forced himself to respect
And I couldn't think of anything better.
His example to others is science;
But, my God, what a bore
To sit with the patient day and night,
Without leaving a single step!
What low deceit
To amuse the half-dead,
Adjust his pillows
It's sad to bring medicine,
Sigh and think to yourself:
When will the devil take you!

Analysis of “My uncle has the most honest rules” - the first stanza of Eugene Onegin

In the first lines of the novel, Pushkin describes Uncle Onegin. He took the phrase “the most honest rules” from Krylov’s fable “The Donkey and the Man.” Comparing his uncle with a character from a fable, the poet hints that his “honesty” was only a cover for cunning and resourcefulness. Uncle knew how to skillfully adapt to public opinion and, without arousing any suspicion, carry out his shady deeds. Thus he earned a good name and respect.

My uncle's serious illness became another reason to attract attention. The line “I couldn’t have come up with a better idea” reveals the idea that even from an illness that can cause death, Onegin’s uncle tries (and succeeds) to derive practical benefit. Those around him are sure that he fell ill due to a neglectful attitude towards his health for the benefit of his neighbors. This apparent selfless service to people becomes a reason for even greater respect. But he is unable to deceive his nephew, who knows all the ins and outs. Therefore, there is irony in Eugene Onegin’s words about illness.

In the line “science is his example to others,” Pushkin again uses irony. Representatives of high society in Russia have always made a sensation out of their illness. This was mainly due to issues of inheritance. A crowd of heirs gathered around the dying relatives. They tried in every possible way to gain the favor of the patient in the hope of reward. The dying man's merits and his supposed virtue were loudly proclaimed. This is the situation that the author uses as an example.

Onegin is the heir of his uncle. By the right of close kinship, he is obliged to spend “day and night” at the patient’s bedside and provide him with any assistance. The young man understands that he must do this if he does not want to lose his inheritance. Do not forget that Onegin is just a “young rake.” In his sincere reflections, he expresses real feelings, which are aptly designated by the phrase “low deceit.” And he, and his uncle, and everyone around him understands why his nephew does not leave the dying man’s bed. But the real meaning is covered with a false veneer of virtue. Onegin is incredibly bored and disgusted. There is only one phrase constantly on his tongue: “When will the devil take you!”

The mention of the devil, and not God, further emphasizes the unnaturalness of Onegin’s experiences. In reality, the uncle’s “honest rules” do not deserve a heavenly life. Everyone around him, led by Onegin, is eagerly awaiting his death. Only by doing this will he render a real invaluable service to society.