The history of the creation of Eugene Onegin is briefly and simply understandable. The history of the novel

06.04.2019

Eugene Onegin" - a novel written by Pushkin, is one of the cult Russian works who have won world fame and translated into many languages. This is also one of the novels written in poetic form, which gives it a special style and attitude to the work wide range readers who often quote passages by heart, remembering them from school.

Alexander Sergeevich spent about seven years to fully complete the narrative line. He begins work on the first stanzas at the beginning of May 23, settling in the territory of Chisinau and finishes the last stanzas of the work on September 25, 1830 in Boldin.

ChapterI

Pushkin begins to create a poetic work in Chisinau on May 9, 1823. Finishes it in the same year on October 22 in Odessa. Then the author revised what he had written, so the chapter was published only in 1825, and the second edition was published at the end of March 1829, when the book was actually finished.

ChapterII

The poet begins the second chapter as soon as the first is completed. By November 3, the first 17 stanzas were written, and on December 8 it was completed and included 39. In 1824, the author revised the chapter and added new stanzas; it was released only in 1826, but with a special indication of when it was written. In 1830 it was published in another edition.

ChapterIII

Pushkin begins writing the passage on February 8, 1824 in the resort of Odessa, and by June he managed to finish writing to the place where Tatyana writes a letter to her lover. He created the remaining part in his beloved Mikhailovsky and was completed on October 2, 1824; it was published in mid-October of the twenty-seventh year.

ChapterIV

In October 1824, while in Mikhailovskoye, the poet begins to write another chapter, which stretches for a couple of years, due to other creative ideas. This happened due to the fact that during this time the author worked on such works as “Boris Godunov” and “Count Nikulin”. The author finished work on the chapter on January 6, 1826, at which moment the author added the last stanza.

ChapterV

The author begins the fifth chapter a few days before he finished the previous one. But writing took time, since it was created with significant breaks in creativity. On November 22, 1826, Alexander Sergeevich completed this part of the story, and after that it was edited several times until the finished version was obtained.

The edition was combined with the previous part of the narrative and printed on the last day of January 1828.

ChapterVI

Alexander Sergeevich began to create an excerpt from the work while in Mikhailovsky throughout 1826. There are no exact dates of writing, since the original manuscripts have not survived. According to assumptions, he completed it in August 1827, and in 1828 it was published for a wide range of readers.

ChapterVII

According to critics, the seventh chapter was started immediately after the sixth was written. So around August 1827. The narrative itself was written with long breaks in creativity, and by mid-February 1828 only 12 stanzas had been created. The chapter was completed in Malinniki, and then was published as a book, but only by mid-March 1830.

ChapterVIII

It began on December 24, 1829 and was completed only at the end of September 1830 on the territory of Boldin. On October 5, 1831, on the territory of Tsarskoe Selo, Pushkin writes an excerpt from Onegin’s written address to his beloved. The entire chapter was published in 1832, and on the cover there is the inscription: “ Final chapter"Eugene Onegin"

Chapter about Onegin's journey

Part of the narrative was not published in the whole novel, but was written, according to the author’s assumption, he wanted to place it in eighth place immediately after the seventh chapter, and lead to the death of Onegin in the work.

ChapterX(drafts)

Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin planned to release part of the work, but it was never published, and only isolated excerpts and drafts have reached the modern reader. Presumably the author was going to send the main character to long journey through the Caucasus, where he was to be killed.

But the sad ending did not reach the reader; it was already quite tragic, since Eugene himself late realized the feelings that were strong in him, and his beloved had already managed to get married.

A distinctive feature is that all chapters were published separately, and only then the book was published in full. The society of that time was eagerly awaiting the release of the next excerpts to find out how the fate of Eugene Onegin, who could not see his sincere feelings in time, ended. Some of the parts never saw the light of day, such as chapter ten. Readers can only guess what the fate of the main characters turned out to be after the end of the book narrative.

The history of the creation of Eugene Onegin briefly

"Eugene Onegin" is the first work written in realistic direction and the only example of a novel in verse in Russian literature. To this day, he occupies the most important place V multifaceted creativity the great Russian poet and writer Alexander Pushkin. The process of writing the work from the first to the last stanzas of the novel took many years. During these years some of the most major events in the history of the country. At the same time, Pushkin was “reborn” into the first realist writer of Russian literature, and the previous view of reality was destroyed. This, of course, is reflected in the novel. The plans and tasks of Alexander Pushkin as an author are changing, compositional structure and the plan of “Onegin” take on a different look, the characters and fates of its heroes lose a certain part of their romanticism.

Alexander Sergeevich worked on the novel for more than seven years. The whole soul of the poet came to life in the work. According to the poet himself, the novel became “the fruit of the mind of cold observations and the heart of sorrowful notes.”

Alexander Sergeevich began the process of creating the novel in the spring of 1823 in Chisinau, while in exile. Despite the obvious influence of romanticism, the work is written in a realistic style. The novel was supposed to consist of nine chapters, but ended up with eight. Fearing long-term persecution by the authorities, the poet destroyed fragments of the chapter “Onegin's Travels” that could become provocative.

The novel in verse was published in editions. This is called a "chapter edition". Excerpts were published in magazines. Readers were eagerly awaiting the release of the new chapter. And each of them made a splash in society.

The first complete edition was published only in 1833. The last lifetime publication occurred in January 1837 and contained the author's corrections and typos. Subsequent editions were subjected to severe criticism and censorship. Names were changed and spelling was unified.

From the plot of the novel you can glean almost everything you need about the era in which they are located. acting heroes: characters, conversations, interests, fashion. The author very clearly reflected the life of Russia of that period, everyday life. The atmosphere of the existence of the heroes of the novel is also true. Sometimes the novel is called historical, because in this work The era in which the main plot unfolds is almost thoroughly conveyed. So, the famous Russian, literary critic Vissarion Grigorievich Belinsky wrote: “First of all, in Onegin we see a poetically reproduced picture of Russian society, taken in one of most interesting moments its development" Based on this statement, it can be assumed that the critic views the work as a historical poem. At the same time, he noted that there is not a single historical figure. Belinsky believed that the novel was a genuine encyclopedia of Russian life and a truly folk work.

The novel is a unique work of world literature. The entire volume of the work is written in an unusual “Onegin stanza”, excluding the letters of Evgeniy and Tatiana. Fourteen lines of iambic tetrameter were created by Alexander Sergeevich specifically for writing a novel in verse. The unique combination of stanzas became distinctive feature works, and subsequently in the “Onegin stanza” Mikhail Lermontov wrote the poem “Tambov Treasurer” in 1839. Analysis of Platonov’s story The Little Soldier essay

"Little Soldier" - famous work which he wrote Soviet writer Platonov. The story tells about wartime and how difficult it was to live then. The title of the work can be divided into two parts.

The cruel morals of the city of Kalinov in Groza essay

In the drama “The Thunderstorm,” it is he who acts as the bearer of the author’s thoughts, exposing the morals of the inhabitants living in the “dark kingdom.”

Analysis of Sholokhov's story Alien Blood

The work is the final one integral part the writer’s prose cycle called “Don Stories”, which considers as the main theme the manifestation of human humanism and care for others.

Analysis of the story Turgenev's Date

The work is part of the writer’s prose collection entitled “Notes of a Hunter,” which considers human relationships in the form of fidelity and the depth of love feelings as the main theme.

A. S. Pushkin wrote the novel in verse “Eugene Onegin” intermittently for about nine years. It is the poet's most famous work. Why? Possibly because it was included in school curriculum, and all the children, before and after, crammed “I’m writing to you, why else,” and maybe because of the abundance of aphoristic lines that became catchphrases: “all ages are submissive to love”, “we all learned a little”; it is also stated that “Eugene Onegin” is “the most important part of our cultural code, the one that allows us to speak the same language, to equally understand the same jokes, allusions and comparisons.” Whether this is so or otherwise, everyone has their own opinion, but the fact remains that “Eugene Onegin” is a great work by a great poet.

The plot of "Eugene Onegin"

Pushkin was a gentleman and an aristocrat. His hero Evgeny Onegin - typical representative the same circle. That is, when describing Onegin’s everyday life in St. Petersburg and in the village, Pushkin relied on own experience, was guided by his own life observations. That is why the novel contains so many everyday details of the customs of the capital and provincial Russian nobility of the first third of the 19th century. It’s not for nothing that the literary critic V. Belinsky called “Eugene Onegin” “an encyclopedia of Russian life”, and the main character of the novel “a suffering egoist... an involuntary egoist, (cold) to fruitless passions and petty entertainments”
All sorts of things literary work unthinkable without love story. In “Eugene Onegin” she is in the relationship between Onegin and Tatyana Larina. First, the girl falls in love with Evgeniy, but turns out to be unnecessary for him, then he seeks reciprocity, but Tatyana is already married
Another plot line of the novel is the conflict between friends Onegin and Lensky, which ended in a duel.

Description of the novel “Eugene Onegin”

The novel in verse "Eugene Onegin" consists of eight chapters, each with 40-60 stanzas (a stanza - 14 lines). The longest chapter is the first - 60 stanzas, the shortest second - 40. In the canonical text of the novel, Pushkin did not include a chapter about Onegin’s journey; it was published specially with a preface by the poet: “The author frankly admits that he omitted an entire chapter from his novel, in which Onegin's journey through Russia was described... P. A. Katenin noticed to us that this exception... harms... the plan of the essay; for through this the transition from Tatiana, a district young lady, to Tatiana, a noble lady, becomes too unexpected and inexplicable. The author himself felt the justice of this, but decided to publish this chapter for reasons that were important to him, and not to the public.” The chapter about Onegin's journey through Russia was the eighth. Pushkin transferred some of the stanzas from it to the chapter following “Wandering” - the ninth, which eventually became the eighth. In 1830, before the exclusion of “Wanderings,” Pushkin wrote the tenth chapter, but in the same year, in prison, he burned it. From this chapter, only the first quatrains of fourteen stanzas, written in a special font, have reached us, for example:

The ruler is weak and crafty
The bald dandy, the enemy of labor
Accidentally warmed by fame
He ruled over us then
…………………….

The novel “Eugene Onegin” is a work of amazing creative destiny. It was created for more than seven years - from May 1823 to September 1830. But work on the text did not stop until the appearance of the first complete edition in 1833. The last author's version of the novel was published in 1837. Pushkin has no works that would have equally long creative history. The novel was not written “in one breath,” but was composed of stanzas and chapters created at different times, in different circumstances, in different periods creativity. Work on the novel covers four periods of Pushkin’s work - from southern exile to the Boldino autumn of 1830.

The work was interrupted not only by the twists of Pushkin’s fate and new plans for the sake of which he abandoned the text of Eugene Onegin. Some poems (“Demon”, “Desert Sower of Freedom...”) arose from drafts of the novel. In the drafts of the second chapter (written in 1824), Horace’s verse “Exegi monumentum” flashed, which 12 years later became the epigraph to the poem “I erected a monument to myself not made by hands...”. It seemed that history itself was not very kind to Pushkin’s work: from a novel about a contemporary and modern life, as the poet intended “Eugene Onegin”, after 1825 it became a novel about another historical era. The “internal chronology” of the novel covers about 6 years - from 1819 to the spring of 1825.

All chapters were published from 1825 to 1832 as independent parts great work and even before the completion of the novel they became facts of the literary process. Perhaps, if we take into account the fragmentary, intermittent nature of Pushkin’s work, it can be argued that the novel was for him something like a huge “ notebook"or a poetic "album" (the poet himself sometimes calls the chapters of a novel "notebooks"). Over the course of more than seven years, the records were replenished with sad “notes” of the heart and “observations” of a cold mind.

It was covered with writing and drawings

Onegin's hand all around,

Between the incomprehensible mess

Thoughts, remarks flashed,

Portraits, numbers, names,

Yes letters, the secrets of writing,

Excerpts, draft letters...

The first chapter, published in 1825, pointed to Eugene Onegin as the main character of the planned work. However, from the very beginning of work on the “big poem,” the author needed the figure of Onegin not only to express his ideas about “modern man.” There was another goal: Onegin was intended to play the role of a central character who, like a magnet, would “attract” diverse life and literary material. Silhouette of Onegin and silhouettes of other characters, barely outlined storylines As we worked on the novel, they gradually became clearer. From under the thick layers of rough notes, the contours of the destinies and characters of Onegin, Tatyana Larina, Lensky appeared (“drawn in”), and a unique image was created - the image of the Author.

The novel “Eugene Onegin” is Pushkin’s most difficult work, despite its apparent lightness and simplicity. V.G. Belinsky called “Eugene Onegin” “an encyclopedia of Russian life,” emphasizing the scale of Pushkin’s “many years of work.” This is not critical praise of the novel, but its succinct metaphor. Behind the “variegation” of chapters and stanzas, the change in narration techniques, hides the harmonious concept of a fundamentally innovative literary work - a “novel of life”, which has absorbed a huge amount of socio-historical, everyday, literary material.

Publications in the Literature section

Pushkin and his era in the novel “Eugene Onegin”

However, the name of the main character itself carried a very clear semantic connotation for the reader of the 19th century. Since the time of Antiochus Cantemir, they have been called negative characters. A hero named Eugene (Greek for “noble”) is most often a nobleman with a rich pedigree, but who has not achieved anything on his own. This is in many ways how Pushkin’s Evgeniy appears before us.

The hero’s surname is also interesting, the root of which contains the name of the large Onega river. As literary critic Yuri Lotman writes, Pushkin tried to construct Evgeniy’s surname so that it would be similar to ordinary noble families, however, has not lost its poetry.

IN Russia XIX centuries, “toponymic” surnames were not uncommon, including the names of estates, but derivatives from hydronyms (large rivers never belonged to anyone) were impossible. Pushkin deviated from this rule, giving both Onegin and Lensky “hydronymic” surnames, which, among other things, was also associated with the heroic nicknames of the commanders: Donskoy, Nevsky.

Lifestyle of Evgeny Onegin in St. Petersburg

About how the hero of the novel lived in Northern capital, the reader learns literally from the first stanzas. Pushkin gives detailed information about Onegin's education and upbringing, as well as how his day was structured.

Sometimes he was still in bed:
They bring notes to him.
What? Invitations? In fact,
Three houses are calling for the evening...

Onegin leads the life of a man free from both civil and military service, which only a few young people could afford. The novel does not say at what hour his day begins, but there are indications that the hero did not wake up too early.

Getting up late was a special privilege of aristocratic society. The day of the “people of light” sometimes began in the evening and ended with the first rays of the sun. This may partly explain the strangeness of one of Pushkin’s lovers, Princess Golitsyna, the owner of a famous St. Petersburg salon, who did not receive until ten o’clock in the afternoon. Onegin is less sophisticated in his fashion habits and gets out of bed at lunchtime. Yuri Lotman writes that the daily walk of the capital’s dandies took place at two or three o’clock in the afternoon; in Pushkin’s text we read:

While in morning dress,
Putting on a wide bolivar,
Onegin goes to the boulevard

A favorite place for festivities in the 10-20s of the 19th century was Admiralteysky Boulevard - apparently, that’s where “our Evgeny” goes. The very tradition of such a promenade was set by Emperor Alexander I, who always followed a certain route: “At one o’clock in the afternoon he left the Winter Palace, followed Palace Embankment, at Pracheshny Bridge I turned along the Fontanka to the Anichkovsky Bridge.<...>Then the sovereign returned to his place along Nevsky Prospekt. The walk was repeated every day and was called le tour impérial (“the imperial circle”). Whatever the weather, the sovereign walked in only a frock coat...”

The next thing we learn about Onegin’s day is that he has lunch at a strictly defined time:

And there he walks in the open space,
While the watchful Breget
Dinner won't ring his bell.

The hero hardly cared about observing the regime. The reason for such scrupulousness lies elsewhere. Young bachelors Pushkin era They rarely had their own cook and therefore went to restaurants for lunch. At this time in St. Petersburg there were not many restaurants where you could eat well; in Moscow, oddly enough, the food was better. This means that St. Petersburg taverns were in abundance and the wealthy public gathered in the same establishments. So, the fashionable Onegin goes to the Talon restaurant on Nevsky, which at that time was the main meeting place for social dandies. Pushkin makes his hero an acquaintance of Pyotr Kaverin, who became famous, among other things, as a famous reveler and breter, that is, a duelist.

Appearing in such a place at a certain time meant that the guest was ready to adhere to the rules of behavior dictated by local society:

Entered: and there was a cork in the ceiling,
The comet's fault flowed with current;
In front of him roast beef bloody,
And truffles, the luxury of youth,
French cuisine has the best color…

Theater or ballet, which continues Eugene’s day, is also an integral part social life early XIX century. This is not only, not even so much, a “temple of art” as a club where one could kill time, meet friends, and start a love affair.

The ball became the highlight of the evening. It is interesting that Onegin goes there “in a Yamsk carriage.” Lotman writes that hiring a carriage was much cheaper than having your own ride, and the hero acts this way from the point of view of economy. However, there is another version. Actor Art Theater Leonid Leonidov quoted the words of his senior contemporary Alexei Stakhovich, a subtle connoisseur of social etiquette: “We had great trips, but it was considered chic to drive a van!”

Stakhovich's memories dated back to the second half of the 19th century, but, as the actor believed, this peculiar quirk could apparently have appeared in the first half of the century, and Pushkin grabbed it as the latest novelty.

As for the ball itself, such holidays were not uncommon for residents of St. Petersburg and were given according to for various reasons. Part of the evidence for this statement can be Anna Tyutcheva’s recollection of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna: "For the Empress fantasy world, which surrounded her with the worship of her almighty husband, a world of magnificent palaces, luxurious gardens, cheerful villas, a world of spectacles and enchanting balls filled the entire horizon ... "

Onegin belonged to this generation and at the beginning of the novel he himself bathed in this luxury.

Lotman Yu. M. Roman A. S. Pushkin “Eugene Onegin”: Commentary. L., 1983.

Balls in the novel

On days of fun and desires
I was crazy about balls:
Or rather, there is no room for confessions
And for delivering a letter.

In organizing the plot of “Eugene Onegin” balls play significant role. Suffice it to say that it was at the Larins’ ball that a quarrel between Lensky and Onegin took place, which ended in tragedy. At the ball main character meets Tatiana for the second time.

Similar holidays were important in the lives of Pushkin’s contemporaries. Beginning with Peter the Great's assemblies, balls were one of the few forms of organization social life. They were strictly regulated, and guests attending them had to obey the rules of ballroom etiquette. According to contemporaries, a complex set of rules of conduct was simply necessary for society:

“Where etiquette reigns, the courtiers are nobles and ladies of society, but where etiquette is absent, they descend to the level of footmen and maids, for intimacy without intimacy and without equality is always humiliating, equally for those who impose it, as well as for those to whom it is imposed", - recalled Anna Tyutcheva, daughter of the poet Fyodor Tyutchev and younger contemporary of Pushkin.

Some liberties and deviations from these rules were dictated by fashion and the social status of the guest. So, Onegin comes to the ball when “The crowd is busy with the mazurka”. This means that the hero appeared at the very height of the holiday, when the guests had already walked around in decorous Polish (polonaise) and could dance light dances, the main one of which was the mazurka.

“Mazurka has always had a special interesting meaning , - wrote memoirist Ekaterina Sabaneeva, - she served as a guide for considerations about the inclinations of the heart - and how many confessions were made to the sounds of her living melody".

Onegin, despite the ideology of dandyism, which ordered gentlemen to avoid dancing, and if they danced, then with an air of boredom and reluctance to do so, he still “danced the mazurka easily,” not being able to deny himself this pleasure.

As for the hero’s late appearance at the ball, this can be perceived as following the capital’s fashion (on Tatyana’s name day, Onegin and Lensky are also one of the last): being late was a sign of dandyism. Only on holidays in which the emperor took part, all invitees had to arrive invariably on time. This rule was observed especially strictly during the reigns of Alexander I and Nicholas I.

Eugene Onegin doesn't have much to say about women's ballroom etiquette, but there is one important illustration of how a society lady was expected to behave:

And whatever troubled her soul,
No matter how strong she was
Surprised, amazed,
But nothing changed her:
It retained the same tone
Her bow was just as quiet, -

This is how Pushkin describes the meeting of the already married Tatiana with Onegin in the eighth chapter. According to the rules of good manners, the representative high society I could never, under any circumstances, show my own feelings. Presence of spirit and external calm were considered a special virtue.

Lotman Yu. M. Roman A. S. Pushkin “Eugene Onegin”: Commentary. L., 1983.

Lavrentieva E. A. Daily life nobility of Pushkin's time. Signs and superstitions. M., 2006.

Duel

Duel of Onegin and Lensky. Ilya Repin. 1899

The death of Lensky in the sixth chapter of Eugene Onegin became a turning point for all the heroes of the novel. The hero is killed in a duel best friend; it is important that the conditions of this fight, despite the insignificant reason for the quarrel and Onegin’s desire to just annoy the young poet, but not to bring this story to a bloody end, were quite cruel.

Zaretsky thirty-two steps
Measured with excellent accuracy,
He took his friends to the extreme,
And everyone took their pistol.

Probably the distance between the barriers was no more than ten steps, and each of the shooters could take eleven steps towards each other. Moreover, there is no indication in the novel that the duelists were supposed to stop after the first shot. And this complicated the conditions of the fight.

An analysis of the duel scene itself and preparations for it shows that in its organization there was a whole series mistakes that could have prevented it from happening at all. So, Onegin arrives at the appointed place with a serious delay, most likely several hours:

The nights and shadows are already thinning
And Vesper was greeted by a rooster;
Onegin is sleeping deeply.
The sun is already rolling high...

Lotman notes that, according to the dueling rules, the opponents could deviate from the agreed time only for a quarter of an hour, after which the duel was considered invalid.

Another violation was the choice and behavior of the seconds. Firstly, Zaretsky, Vladimir Lensky’s neighbor and second, should have invited Evgeny to resolve the matter peacefully, but “stood up without explanation; I didn’t want to stay any longer, having a lot to do at home.” Secondly, he, a nobleman, could have stopped the fight the moment he learned that Onegin’s assistant would be his servant, the Frenchman Guillot, and yet the seconds should be equal to each other in status. Instead, the former brawler and ataman of the “gambler gang,” as Pushkin portrays him, calmly led the opponents to the barriers. Another violation was that the seconds met on the day of the duel, although they should have discussed all the rules the day before.

So, Zaretsky was interested in this fight, hoping, perhaps, in such a barbaric way to diversify village life. Looking ahead, let's say that the hero miscalculated. Lensky's murder went unnoticed, and his grave outside the church fence indicates that the young poet was buried as a suicide.

Could Eugene refuse the duel on his own, knowing full well that he was wrong? Alas, I couldn’t. Noble honor demanded that he accept this challenge “il cartel,” otherwise the hero had every chance of being branded a coward. Onegin also had no right to aim in the air, risking offending the enemy. As for the calmness with which Onegin raised the pistol and killed his friend, Lotman explains the hero’s behavior by the fact that he recognizes the dictate of the norms of behavior imposed on him by Zaretsky, “and immediately, losing his will, [Onegin] becomes a doll in the hands of the faceless ritual of a duel " Let us add on our own that Onegin’s behavior in a duel is similar to the behavior of Pushkin himself, for whom such fights were not uncommon.

“I knew Alexander Sergeevich to be hot-tempered, sometimes to the point of frenzy; but in a moment of danger, when he came face to face with death, when a person reveals himself completely, Pushkin possessed highest degree equanimity. When it came to the barrier, he appeared to him as cold as ice.”
Ivan Liprandi, participant Patriotic War 1812, Chisinau acquaintance of Pushkin

Lotman Yu. M. Roman A. S. Pushkin “Eugene Onegin”: Commentary. L., 1983.

Pushkin without gloss / comp., author. entry Art. P. Fokin. St. Petersburg, 2007.

History of creation

Pushkin began work on Onegin in 1823, during his southern exile. The author abandoned romanticism as a leading creative method and started writing realistic novel in verse, although in the first chapters the influence of romanticism is still noticeable. 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 Travels” from the work, which he included as an appendix. After this, the tenth chapter of the novel was written, which is an encrypted chronicle of the life of the future Decembrists.

The novel was published in verse in separate chapters, and the output of each chapter became big event V modern literature. In 1831, the novel in verse was completed and published in 1833. 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 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. A main problem is eternal problem feelings 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 action of the novel approximately coincide. Reading the book, we (readers) understand that the novel is unique, because previously there was not a single novel in verse in world literature. Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin created a novel in verse similar to Byron’s poem “Don Juan”. Having defined the novel as “a collection of motley chapters,” Pushkin emphasizes one of the features of this work: the novel is, as it were, “open” in time, each chapter could be the last, but it could 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 of the 20s of the century before last, since the breadth of coverage of the novel shows readers the whole reality of Russian life, as well as multiple plots and descriptions different eras. This is what gave V. G. Belinsky the basis to conclude in his article “Eugene Onegin”:

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

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

Plot

The novel begins with a grumpy 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 sick bed in the hope of becoming the heir of the dying man. The narrative itself is told on behalf of the nameless author, who introduced himself as a good friend of Onegin. Having thus outlined the plot, the author devotes the first chapter to a story about the origin, family, and life of his hero before receiving news of a relative’s illness.

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 “understandability” of a work hides from the consciousness of the modern reader huge amount words, expressions, phraseological units, hints, quotes that he does not understand. Thinking about a verse that you have known since childhood seems like unjustified pedantry. However, once we overcome this naive optimism of the inexperienced reader, it becomes obvious how far we are from even a simple textual understanding of the novel. The specific structure of Pushkin’s novel in verse, in which any positive statement the author can immediately be imperceptibly turned into ironic, and the verbal fabric seems to slide, transmitted from one speaker of speech to another, making the method of forcibly extracting quotes especially dangerous. To avoid this threat, the novel should be considered not as a mechanical sum of the author’s statements on various issues, a kind of anthology of quotes, but as an organic art world, the parts of which live and receive meaning only in relation to the whole. A simple list of the problems that Pushkin “poses” in his work will not introduce us to the world of “Onegin”. Artistic idea implies a special type of transformation of life 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 problematics.

Comments on the novel

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

Psychologists about the work

Influence on other works

Type " extra person", introduced by Pushkin in the image of Onegin, influenced all subsequent Russian literature. From the nearest illustrative examples- surname "Pechorin" in Lermontov’s “Hero of Our Time,” just as Onegin’s surname is derived from the name of a Russian river. Many psychological characteristics are also similar.
In the modern Russian novel "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".