The problem of the hero Eugene Onegin (Pushkin A.S.)

EUGENE ONEGIN

EUGENE ONEGIN- the main character of Pushkin’s novel in verse, the action of which takes place in Russia from the winter of 1819 to the spring of 1825 (see: Yu. M. Lotman. Comment.) Introduced into the plot immediately, without prefaces or prologues.

Eugene Onegin (chapter 1) goes to the village to visit his ill uncle; finds him already dead, enters into an inheritance, enjoys the peace of the village for two days, and then again falls into the favorite state of a disappointed dandy - the blues. Even economic experiments in the spirit of the times (replacing corvée with quitrents) cannot dispel boredom; loneliness is brightened up only by friendship with his neighbor Vladimir Lensky, a young poet and freedom lover who returned from the University of Göttingen. Evgeny Onegin is 8 years older than Lensky (born in 1795 or 1796); unlike Lensky, he is initially disappointed, but is in no hurry to disappoint Vladimir, who has fallen in love with his neighbor, Olga Larina (chapter 2). Lensky introduces Onegin to the Larins' house; Olga’s sister, Tatyana, falls in love with Evgeny and sends him a love letter, “tailored” according to the pattern of a love novel, and, moreover, extremely sincere (chapter 3). Evgeny is touched, but refuses to support the “novel” game. In accordance with the etymological meaning of his name (see article: “Lensky”), he acts like a noble secular man; After a pause, he comes to the Larins’ house and talks with an inexperienced girl in the garden. His confession, which develops into a sermon, is fatherly warm, but fatherly and moralizing; he is ready to love Tatyana “with the love of a brother” and even a little stronger - but nothing more (chapter 4).

The emerging love plot seems untied; Eugene lives as an anchorite, imitating Byron, in the summer he swims early in the morning in an icy river, in the winter he takes an ice bath “from sleep”; “since the morning” plays “two-ball billiards.” Onegin receives, through Lensky, an invitation to come to Tatiana’s name day, January 12, 1821 (chapter 5). Here, irritated by Tatyana’s semi-fainting (he continues to “read” her behavior through the novel’s prism and does not believe in the spontaneity of the impulse), Evgeny decides to tease Lensky and invites Olga (who is supposed to marry Vladimir in two weeks!) to a dance. He dances a waltz and a mazurka with her, “whispers tenderly / Some vulgar madrigal,” and seeks consent to a cotillion - which causes Lensky’s furious jealousy (chapter 5). The next morning, through his dueling neighbor Zaretsky (a typical literary surname of a Breter), he receives a challenge from Lensky to a duel. Responds - in accordance with the dueling code - with unconditional consent; then he regrets, but it’s too late: “<…>wildly secular enmity / Afraid of false shame” (chapter 6, stanza XXVIII). Having almost overslept and taking the French servant Guillot instead of a second, Onegin appears in the grove; starting with 34 steps, the duelists converge; Onegin shoots first - Lensky is killed (chapter 6). Evgeniy is forced to leave; Thus, as soon as it begins, the thread of the plot of a secular story breaks off.

But the love plot, after the false denouement of the 4th chapter, receives an unexpected continuation, ultimately restoring the genre “scenery” of the secular story. After a long journey through Russia [from July 1821 to August 1824: Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Astrakhan, the Caucasus, Taurida (Crimea), Odessa; the reader learns about the route later, from “Excerpts from Onegin’s Travels”, published as an “appendix” of the missing chapter to the main text of the novel] twenty-six-year-old Onegin at a social event meets Tatyana, who married an “important” general and became a Moscow princess. He is shocked by the change that has happened to her. Mirroring the plot “move” of Tatiana herself, the lover Onegin sends her a letter, another, a third, and receives no answer - only anger in her eyes and “Epiphany coldness” when meeting in “the same meeting.” Having lost his head, Onegin goes to Tatyana without warning; finds her reading her letter; listens to a tearful sermon (“I love you<…>/ But I was given to another; / I will be faithful to him forever"); stands “as if... struck by thunder,” and at that moment the “sudden ringing of spurs” from Tatyana’s husband is heard. The climax replaces the denouement; the ending is open; the reader parts with the hero at a sharp turning point in his fate (chapter 8).

Name. Literary pedigree. Having given the hero the name Eugene and the surname Onegin, Pushkin immediately took him beyond the limits of real, living space. Since the time of Cantemir (second satire; here and below, see: Yu. M. Lotman. Commentary) the name Evgeniy was satirically associated with the literary image of a young nobleman, “enjoying the privileges of his ancestors, but not having their merits” (cf. the image of Evgeniy Negodyaev in the novel by A. E. Izmailov “Evgeniy, or the harmful consequences of bad education and community,” 1801) . The surname Onegin - as well as Lensky - is emphatically “fictitious”: a nobleman could bear a toponymic (less often, hydronymic) surname only if the toponym indicated his ancestral domain, and large rivers could not completely flow within the confines of the ancestral estates. (According to the same model, going back to the experience of Russian comedy of the 19th century, but with an eye specifically on Pushkin, the surnames Pechorin will be built by Lermontov, Volgin by Bestuzhev-Marlinsky, etc.) Having barely given the hero a “literary” nickname, Pushkin is here he correlated him with living people of the 1820s: Evgeny is familiar with Kavelin, he is “the second Chedayev”; on a friendly footing and with the Author of the novel [although the image of the Author (see article), in turn, only conditionally coincides with the personality of Pushkin]. But, having connected Eugene Onegin with living life, Pushkin refused to draw parallels between his fate and the fates of real people, “prototypes” (although later attempts were made to point in this regard to A. N. Raevsky, Pushkin’s sarcastic acquaintance during the period of southern exile, etc. ). “The Second Chedayev” is reflected in numerous literary mirrors, sometimes mutually exclusive. Onegin is compared either with the adventurous hero of Charles Methurin’s novel “Melmoth the Wanderer” (also beginning with Melmoth’s trip to his sick uncle), then with J. G. Byron’s disappointed Child Harold, or with Grandison (this is how Tatyana sees him; the author does not agree with her ), then with Chatsky from “Woe from Wit”, then with Lovelace. In the subtext - with Paolo, Francesca’s lover from Dante’s “Divine Comedy”, then with “piit” from the poem “To the Goddess of the Neva” by M. N. Muravyov. This achieves a remarkable optical effect: the image of the hero moves freely from living space to literary space and back; it eludes unambiguous characteristics.

Author and hero. This is largely explained by the fluidity of the author’s attitude towards the hero. It changes not only from chapter to chapter (the novel was published in separate issues as it was written; the idea changed as work progressed), but also within one chapter. Judging by the first of them, in Eugene Onegin one should recognize the type of contemporary Pushkin (practically one generation!) of St. Petersburg, who received a home “French” upbringing, superficially educated [knowledge of Latin in order to “parse epigraphs”, anecdotes (i.e. funny incidents) from world history that actually took place or at least plausible); inability to distinguish “iamb from trochee”], but he has comprehended “the science of tender passion.” Onegin “is in a hurry to live and in a hurry to feel.” (The routine of his day in the 1st chapter fully corresponds to the tradition of social pastime: late, before noon, waking up; classes in a “fashionable office”, a walk along the boulevard; friendly dinner; theater; ball.) Then he becomes disappointed in everything and cools his soul towards everything; attempts to write lead to nothing. Evgeny Onegin is overcome by a fashionable English disease - spleen (“Russian blues”).

At the beginning of Chapter 1, the Author is ready to bring together Onegin’s disappointment with the disappointment of the opposition youth from the circle of the pre-Decembrist “Union of Welfare”. (Eugene reads Adam Smith; his indifference to poetry is balanced by attention to political economy; his fashionable toilet, dandyism and Chaadaev-style hanging out smack of fronderism.) But by the end of the chapter, the psychological motivations of the image change; Having become disillusioned with the pleasures of the world, Onegin does not become a “serious” rebel; the reason for his languor is spiritual emptiness; its outer shine indicates inner cold; his caustic speeches indicate not so much a critical view of the modern world as contempt and arrogance. The “Byronic” type of behavior is deprived of its romantic aura. The author, who hastened to list Eugene Onegin as one of his friends, gradually distances himself from him in order to finally admit: “I am always glad to notice the difference / Between Onegin and me.”

Moreover, the “serious” point of view on Evgeny Onegin as an oppositionist was entrusted to the stupid provincial landowners, his neighbors on his uncle’s estate (somewhere in the north-west of Russia, a seven-day ride “on their own” from Moscow, i.e. wilderness like Mikhailovsky). Only they are capable of considering Evgeny Onegin a “most dangerous” eccentric and even a pharmacist. The author (and the reader) looks at him with a different, increasingly sober look. Which alienates the Author from Onegin to the same extent as it brings him closer to the hero again - but on a different level.

Evgeny Onegin, Tatiana and Lensky. Gradually, Tatyana should also come to this view, who (being, like every county young lady, a reader of novels) herself, with the help of her imagination, brings into the indifferent appearance of Onegin the features of a “fashionable tyrant”, according to the Author’s description - mysteriously romantic. Now he seems to her as the savior Grandison, now as the tempter Lovelace, now as a demonic robber, the leader of a gang, a ballad villain (this is how he enters her dream; see the article “Tatyana”). It is with this literary Eugene that she falls madly in love; It is to this literary Onegin that she addresses her love letter, expecting a literary reaction from him. (“Saving” or “tempting” - that’s how it turns out.) Onegin, although touched by the letter, acts like a well-educated socialite - and nothing more; Tatyana cannot arrange this in any way. However, Evgeniy is unable to change. As a socialite, he teases Lensky with his imaginary infatuation with Olga; as a secular person, he coldly accepts the challenge (despite the fact that he did not want to inflict a mortal offense on his friend at all and does not want to fight with him); like a secular man, he kills his antipodean friend. Not out of cruelty (he stands over the dead Lensky “in the anguish of heartfelt remorse”), but due to circumstances. And when, after Onegin’s departure to St. Petersburg, Tatiana finds herself in his village office, peers at the details (piles of books, a portrait of Lord Byron, a column with a cast-iron doll of Napoleon), tries to read novels through his eyes - most likely, “René” by Chateaubriand and “Adolphe” B. Constant (see: Yu. M. Lotman. Commentary), following the sharp marks of Onegin’s sleek nail in the margins, her point of view on Eugene Onegin comes closer to the author’s. He is not “a creature of hell or heaven,” but, perhaps, just a parody of his era and his environment.

The hero, who despises the world for its vulgarity, contrasting his behavior with the old-fashioned norm, suddenly turns out to be extremely dependent; and the fact that the sentence was passed by Tatyana, who still loves Onegin, is especially scary.

In such an emotional “halo” the hero appears before the reader in the 8th chapter. (The intermediate link of Onegin’s fate, which could once again sharply complicate his image - “Excerpts from the Journey” - was skipped and moved to the end of the novel.) Now it is not the Author, not Tatyana, but Pushkin’s Muse who is trying to solve the riddle of Eugene Onegin - spleen or “suffering arrogance "in his face? What mask is he wearing now? Melmoth? Cosmopolitan? Patriot? But the fact of the matter is that the psychological portrait of the hero will have to undergo another significant change.

A meeting with Tatyana makes something stir in the depths of a “cold and lazy soul”; the epithet, which was once already assigned to the poetic Lensky, at the beginning of the 8th chapter, as if inadvertently applied to Onegin (“silent and foggy”). And this “redirection” of the epithet turns out to be non-random and quite appropriate. Continuing to depend on the “laws of the world” (his love for Tatyana is stronger, the sweeter the forbidden fruit and the more unapproachable the young princess), Onegin nevertheless discovers in his soul the ability to love sincerely and with inspiration - “like a child.” The letter (which he writes in Russian, unlike Tatiana, who wrote in French) is both secular and courtly, boldly addressed to a married woman, and extremely cordial:

Stranger to everyone, not bound by anything,

I thought: freedom and peace

Substitute for happiness. My God!

How wrong I was, how I was punished.

But so be it: I’m on my own

I can no longer resist;

Everything is decided: I am in your vol

And I surrender to my fate.

It is not for nothing that Pushkin introduces into this letter a paraphrase of his own poem about peace, happiness and freedom: “There is no happiness in the world...” (conventionally dated 1834).

And when, having not received an answer, Onegin, in despair, begins to read indiscriminately, and then tries to compose - this is not just a repetition of episodes from his biography, which the reader knows about from the 1st chapter. Then (as well as in the village office) he read “out of obligation” - what was “on the ear”, imitating the spirit of the times. Now he reads Rousseau, Gibbon and other authors to lose himself in suffering. Moreover, he reads “with spiritual eyes / Other lines” (stanza XXXVI). Previously, he tried to write out of boredom, now - out of passion and, more than ever, is close to truly becoming a poet, like Lensky or even the Author himself. And the last act of Evgeny, which the reader learns about - an uninvited visit to Tatyana - is as much indecent as it is hot and frank.

The emptiness began to be filled - not with frivolous free-thinking, not with superficial philosophy, but with direct feeling, the life of the heart. It is at this moment that Onegin is destined to experience one of the most bitter shocks of his life - the final and irrevocable refusal of Tatyana, who teaches her secretly beloved Eugene a moral lesson of fidelity and the selfless power of suffering. This refusal negates all Evgeniy’s hopes for happiness (even if it is lawless!), but produces in him such a revolution of feelings and thoughts that is almost more important than happiness:

She left. Evgeniy stands,

As if struck by thunder.

What a storm of sensations

Now he's heartbroken!

But a sudden ringing of spurs rang out,

And Tatyana’s husband showed up,

And here is my hero,

In a moment that is evil for him,

Reader, we will now leave,

For a long time... forever.<…>

(Stanza XLVIII)

Evgeny Onegin freezes at the border where the closed novel space ends and the space of life itself begins. The perception of Onegin's image therefore turned out to be unusually contradictory - like the perception of a living, constantly changing person.

In the process of publishing the novel in separate chapters, the attitude towards the image of Eugene Onegin among writers of the Decembrist circle shifted; the expectation that Pushkin would “bring out” a second Chatsky, contrasting with the world and denouncing society (A. A. Bestuzhev), was not justified: the “dandy” placed at the center of the great novel seemed an inappropriate figure; K. F. Ryleev adhered to a point of view on Eugene Onegin close to Bestuzhev’s. The young I.V. Kireevsky, who had not yet become a Slavophile, but had an internal inclination towards pochvennichestvo, defined Onegin as an emptiness that does not have a definite physiognomy (“Something about the character of Pushkin’s poetry”, 1828). In a later (1844–1845) assessment by V. G. Belinsky, Eugene Onegin is an epoch-making type that reflected Russian reality; “a reluctant egoist”, tragically dependent on the “environment”. Onegin was perceived as a type of “superfluous person” not only by the “natural school,” but also by writers of M. Yu. Lermontov’s generation (Pechorin’s typological relationship with Onegin). In F. M. Dostoevsky’s “Pushkin Speech” (1880), Onegin is polemically defined as a type of European “proud man,” who is opposed by the image of the Russian humble woman Tatyana Larina; The theme of Onegin’s “Napoleonism,” only briefly outlined by Pushkin, grows to a general philosophical scale.

In Pushkin’s novel “Eugene Onegin” there is one invisible character who is undeservedly ignored. In the fifth chapter it appears:
XXII
But she, the sisters, without noticing,
Lies in bed with a book,
Going through leaf after leaf,
And he doesn't say anything.
Although this book was not
Neither the sweet inventions of the poet,
No wise truths, no pictures;
But neither Virgil nor Racine,
Neither Scott, nor Byron, nor Seneca,
Not even Ladies Fashion Magazine
So it didn’t interest anyone:
That was, friends, Martyn Zadeka, 33
The head of the Chaldean sages,
Fortune teller, dream interpreter.

XXIII
This is a profound creation
Brought by a nomadic merchant
One day to them in solitude
And finally for Tatyana
Him with the scattered Malvina
He lost for three and a half,
In addition, I also took for them
A collection of local fables,
Grammar, two Petriads,
Yes Marmontel third volume.
Martin Zadeka later became
Tanya's favorite... He is a joy
In all her sorrows he gives her
And sleeps with her constantly.

XXIV
She is troubled by a dream.
Not knowing how to understand him,
Dreams have terrible meaning
Tatyana wants to find it.
Tatyana in a short table of contents
Finds in alphabetical order
Words: forest, storm, witch, spruce,
Hedgehog, darkness, bridge, bear, blizzard
And so on. Her doubts
Martin Zadeka will not decide;
But an ominous dream promises her
There are many sad adventures.
A few days later she
I kept worrying about that.

Pushkin's note 33: Fortune-telling books are published in our country under the company of Martyn Zadeka, a respectable man who has never written fortune-telling books, as B. M. Fedorov notes.

A certain (one might say, Eugene Onegin = about certain, mysterious certain people here) Zadeka occupies more space in the novel (he is mentioned three times) than the uncle who died in Bose, who “loved to rule the most honest,” i.e. was an authority in the law among a certain kind of public. “What kind of commission, Creator?” What kind of Zadeka is this? Moreover, the girl gives a lot of money to the nomadic merchant for this Zadek, and he becomes her favorite and “sleeps with her constantly.” A little strange girl, don't you agree? Pushkin says about Zadek that he is “the head of the Chaldean sages.” In the note, however, he is afraid that he has highlighted this Chaldean, one might say, the wise man of Zion, and makes an excuse: “this venerable man never wrote fortune-telling books.”

Martin is Martin and Zadeka is Zadeka. Yes, only in Pushkin’s transcription. And so this is Martin Tzadik, translated from Hebrew - righteous. The book was translated from German, and there the name is spelled Zadek. And this is more than a surname, like: Kogan, Rabinovich. Rather, not even a position or title, but a status. Through the Greek language it came as a Sadducee, but a careful translator did not translate this surname in the ancient Greek transcription - Saddok, priest of King David. The head of the Sanhedrin, Caiaphas, who persecuted Christ and the apostles, was also a Sadducee. Zadok - http://www.eleven.co.il/article/14586

Let's see what people of Pushkinoman nationality will comment on Zadeka:

Those. You can’t read this excerpt from the novel without a Jewish encyclopedia.

Contemporaries, by the way, were aware of Martyn Zadek, also known as Martin Tzadik. In 1833, the romantic writer A.F. Veltman (1800-1870) published the novel “MMMCDXLVIII year. Manuscript of Martyn Zadek” (3448. Manuscript of Martyn Zadek). Prof. Egorov B.F. in the book “Russian Utopias: Historical Guide” (St. Petersburg, “Iskusstvo-SPB”, 2007. - 416 pp.) writes: In the preface, the author explains that Martin Zadek is in fact the Jewish scientist predictor Martin Zadek, and his distant ancestor — Tzadek Melech, high priest under the biblical king Saul. Therefore, Roman numerals seem to demonstrate the antiquity of the published manuscript. The ideological core of the novel is a description of the ideal state of the future, Bosphorania, the capital of Bosphoran Rome (Constantinople, or what?) and the ideal ruler John. But the main content of the novel (large, in three parts) is adventurous and adventurous. John is overthrown by the robber Aeolus, who, in turn, is overthrown, and the throne of John is restored again, followed by kidnappings, seductions, seductions, the acts of robbers and pirates... Of course, in the end virtue triumphs, but still the utopian pictures are lost in the adventure leapfrog . As I understand it, after 1833 Veltman’s novel was no longer published.

The sun of our poetry in the Masonic lodge was very keen on the occult sciences. In the Russian novel, there are virtually non-Russian heroes. “Good job! They missed it - there’s no piano,” as Rina Zelenaya would say. Russian nannies and serfs. What about the main characters? “By the name of Vladimir Lensky, With a soul straight from Göttingen” (that is, with a non-Russian Masonic soul, foreign in origin), “All their daughters destined for their half-Russian neighbor”; Onegin - in essence: "He is a pharmacist; he drinks one
A glass of red wine." Farmazon is a mutated Freemason. And then the tongue-tied girl Tatyana appears:
I will have to, without a doubt,
Translate Tatiana's letter.
She didn't speak Russian well
I haven’t read our magazines,
And it was difficult to express myself
In your native language 3-26.

And here, in general, Pushkin openly writes that she is non-Russian:
Tatiana (Russian soul,
Without knowing why)
With her cold beauty
Loved the Russian winter, 5-4
Around this tongue-tied non-Russian girl, sleeping with the protocols of the Elders of Zion in the book of the leader of the Chaldean wise men, the author weaves the intrigue of the novel itself.

And here the schoolchildren draw a blasphemous conclusion: the German tsars with the pseudonym Romanovs needed a clique of non-Russian nobility to control the Russian cattle. And here you can’t argue with V.G. Belinsky: “an encyclopedia of Russian life.” Which must be read at times with a Jewish encyclopedia in hand.

=======================================
UPD
This is exactly the case when it is appropriate to remind - The position and opinion of the author may partially or completely disagree with the position and opinion of the editors.

Writers have always strived for a realistic depiction of Russian life; but for the time being these images lacked artistry and free creativity. Pushkin brought beauty, a powerful aesthetic principle to Russian literature; Artistically depicting Russian reality, he at the same time firmly took the position of deep realism.

A.S. Pushkin’s novel “Eugene Onegin” is a historical, philosophical work, it is a novel-life. The pictures of Russian society depicted in the novel are the most important material for the analysis of the era, characters, morals, and traditions.

"Eugene Onegin" is one of the most original novels in Russian literature. And Pushkin, of course, understood this. Before him, novels were written in prose, because the “prose” genre is more suitable for depicting the details of life, and for showing it in general. In the poetic genre it is different. When an author writes poetry, he involuntarily reveals his inner world, shows his “I,” and reflects life through the prism of his own ideas.

In the novel in verse “Eugene Onegin” Pushkin shows a picture of his era and does not separate it from himself. In the novel, fictional characters live, love, and suffer, but they are almost inseparable from the author. The story about their life is a diary of the author's soul.

Pushkin's innovative decision was the appearance in the novel of an unusual image, the image of the author. And the search for correlations between this image and the images of the heroes.

The novel is called "Eugene Onegin", it is natural to assume that one of the main characters of the novel is the character of the same name. Reading line by line, we understand that along with him, the author also plays a full role in the novel. The author is invisibly present where his heroes are. He is not a soulless verbal narrator; We can notice this both from the lyrical digressions and from the main storyline. The author constantly invades the narrative field, discusses various topics, creates a certain mood, and clarifies details. The author and I feel better; he is the link between the characters and us.

The author has a special relationship with Evgeny Onegin. The author is older than Onegin, he “has not sinned for a long time.” They are somewhat similar. Both are of the nobility. Both are fluent in French. Reading circle of Onegin - Byron, Methurin. But Pushkin himself read the same thing!

Byron's work "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" is Onegin's favorite book. Pushkin and his contemporaries also read to her. Childe-Harold's melancholy, despondency, and disappointment were even “copied” by some representatives of high society; the mask of a bored man was popular.

As for Maturin, both Onegin and Pushkin were interested in his novel “Melmoth the Wanderer”.

At this stage, we will make a lyrical digression and say that in the novel we do not identify the author with Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin. Pushkin and the author (the speech narrator in the novel) are not the same person. Although their biographies partly coincide.

The writer A. Tarkhov notes that the existence of two “I” (a certain author and the real poet Pushkin) is one of the main intrigues (contradictions) of the “free novel” “Eugene Onegin”.

Let's return to our heroes. How does the author feel about Eugene Onegin? With irony, but one cannot help but notice that with undisguised sympathy too. Although…

“I’m always glad to notice the difference
Between Onegin and me"

The similarities between the characters are present in their upbringing and education. The author notes with irony:

"We all learned a little bit
Something and somehow
So upbringing, thank God,
It’s no wonder to shine here.”

In what other ways are Onegin and the author similar and in what ways different?

They both know the banks of the Neva. Onegin tried to take up the pen, “but he was sick of persistent work,” the author is not like that. He belongs to the “perky guild” of writers.

For Onegin, theater and ballet are not temples of art where beauty and emotions are born, they are a place for flirting, romance, and sighing.

“The theater is an evil legislator,
Fickle Adorer
Charming actresses
Honorary citizen of the scenes."

“I was embittered, he was sullen;
We both knew the game of passion;
Life tormented both of us;
The heat died down in both hearts;
Anger awaited both
Blind Fortune and People
In the very morning of our days."

The difference between the types can also be traced in the fact that Onegin noticed “that in the village there is the same boredom,” and the author “was born ... for village silence.”

The image of Onegin in the novel is not static, it undergoes changes. It is at a time when Onegin experiences true disappointment that the author becomes close to his “good friend” Onegin, tries to develop creativity in him, and teach him to write poetry. But this attempt was not crowned with success, because “he could not distinguish iambic from trochee, no matter how hard we fought.”

As the plot develops, we see that the worldview of the author and Onegin changes. Onegin understood a lot, felt a lot. The author also became different. Onegin in the finale of the novel is more loyal and understandable; he is closer to the author.

How will Evgeniy’s future life turn out? I would like to hope that it is successful. Evgeniy has positive inclinations. The problem is that there is a gap between Onegin’s potential and the role that he has chosen for himself in society.

Conclusion

In the novel “Eugene Onegin” the same wonderful image of the “responding poet” appears. The author in the novel is not Pushkin, he is an independent hero, a full participant in events. The author and Onegin are similar in many ways. They think about life, are critical of many things, and are characterized by an intense search for a goal in life. They are taller than the crowd that surrounds them. But at the same time, they are different. The author treats Evgeniy ironically, but with obvious sympathy. The difference in the views of these two types was established in the first chapter. That is, the i's are dotted at the very beginning.

The author, whom Pushkin wisely made the hero of the novel, opens up with us and gives the necessary explanations. Thanks to the author, we better understand the image of Onegin, the images of other heroes of the work, and we better understand the plot line of the novel.

Is he familiar to you? - Yes and no.

A. Pushkin. "Eugene Onegin"

The novel in verse is named after the hero; to understand the novel means, first of all, to comprehend the being and fate of the one whose name is Eugene Onegin. This task is not easy; It’s easier to completely deny this strange hero any essence of his own and consider him an “insignificant parody”, an “empty imitation” of foreign models:

What will it appear now? Melmoth,

Cosmopolitan, patriot,

Harold, the Quaker, the bigot,

Or will someone else flaunt a mask?

The conviction that Onegin “fools the world” by constantly changing his masks is only an inside out, unkindly interpreted real problematic character of the hero.

In the novel, he is always under a question mark: and the reason for this is not only that the hero moves in time - that is, he changes from chapter to chapter - but also that his very being is multi-component, it hides in itself the most different possibilities. What features formed for Pushkin the composition of that phenomenon whose name was “hero of the time”?

Pushkin made his first approach to depicting the young hero of the time in the poem “Prisoner of the Caucasus”: “In it I wanted to depict this indifference to life and its pleasures, this premature old age of the soul, which became the hallmarks of the youth of the 19th century.” The poet was dissatisfied with this first experience; the problematic hero was limited by the boundaries of a romantic poem; a different genre was needed, which the author himself soon realized: “The character of the main person... is more appropriate for a novel than a poem.” So, Pushkin faces a most difficult creative task - a novel about modern man. There has never been such an experience in Russian literature; and what has European literature created here? What turned out to be especially important here for the creator of Eugene Onegin?

As we have seen, Pushkin’s novel in verse carries within itself a very active “literary self-consciousness”; in particular, when in the third chapter the question of the hero is first translated into the plane of “problematicity” -

But our hero, whoever he is,

Surely it wasn’t Grandison, -

Pushkin immediately (stanzas eleven and twelve) “arranges a show” for the heroes of the old and new European novel. All this material is directly related to the problem of Pushkin's hero; but in this sense, another place in the novel turns out to be much more important, which, according to the author’s plan, leads closely to the solution to the hero. This is stanza twenty-two of the seventh chapter, where Onegin’s “cherished reading” is revealed to the reader, in the center of which there are “two or three novels” about modern man. They are not named by Pushkin, probably because they constitute that “selected European literature” that was most relevant to the concept of his own novel. Here are these three novels (they are named in the draft of the twenty-second stanza): “Melmoth” - “René” - “Adolphe”.

"Melmoth the Wanderer" (published in 1820) by the English novelist and playwright Maturin, "René" (published in 1801) by the French writer Chateaubriand and "Adolphe" (published in 1815) by the French writer and public figure Constant are those works that give a “sadly true” portrait of modern man: with a “cold” and “divided” soul, “selfish” and “sick”, with a “rebellious” and “gloomy” mind, pouring “cold poison all around” (draft twenty-second stanzas).

What makes this set of novels remarkable, among other things, is that they demonstrate two very different ways of depicting modern man. “Rene” and “Adolphe” are short psychological novels: they depict the recesses of a weak and sensitive soul or the gloomy passions of a heart that thirsts not for love, but for victory; they depict strange and irreparably lonely people who cannot find a place for themselves in life, are unable to give happiness to themselves and bring misfortune to others - in a word, these novels provide a psychological portrait of the modern “disillusioned hero”, possessed by the demon of boredom and skepticism. In contrast, “Melmoth” is a colossal work that synthesizes a variety of literary traditions, a novel whose method could be called philosophical and poetic. For an artistic solution to the problem of modern man, Methurin creates the image of Melmoth the Wanderer, combining in it the images of Faust and Mephistopheles from Goethe's tragedy. “Melmoth, according to the author’s plan, is a complex human image, a victim of devilish forces, their forced tool... Although Melmoth is not the tempter himself or the embodiment of devilish power, but only a victim, doomed to do evil against his will, he clearly manifests himself in him critical principle... This was the original “Mephistophelian” principle implemented by Maturin in the image of Melmoth, which so attracted the attention of the whole Myron of the first third of the 19th century to this literary hero.”

Above we have already talked about “universalism” as the most important feature of Pushkin’s novel; Therefore, it is not surprising that the poet is looking for the same all-encompassing synthesis of the most diverse artistic and semantic possibilities in the depiction of the hero - for the problem of modern man is covered by Pushkin on its entire scale, from psychological accuracy and socio-historical specificity to the eternal questions of human existence. Therefore, different literary ways of depicting modern man are equally important to him. The significance of “René” and “Adolphe” for Pushkin’s work, and in particular for “Eugene Onegin,” has long been clarified. It was also pointed out that Onegin had a clear connection with the hero of Methurin: “Onegin’s character was created against the backdrop of... numerous demonic heroes (Melmoth).” -The demonic Melmoth and his closest literary “ancestor” - Goethe’s Mephistopheles - turned out to be especially relevant for Pushkin during the period of the so-called southern crisis, the poetic expression of which became the poems “The Demon” and “The Desert Sower of Freedom...”. These two poems show the scale of Pushkin’s crisis: this is not only political skepticism associated with the collapse of freedom-loving hopes, but it is a revolution of the entire worldview - a complete revision of the previous “hot enthusiasm” in the light of the new “cold of doubt.” The Southern Crisis is the most important creative and spiritual crossroads in Pushkin’s entire life; and the fact that the crisis poems “The Desert Sower of Freedom...” and “The Demon” in their final form arose from the drafts of “Eugene Onegin” (they were, as it were, born of the novel itself) is obvious evidence that the main creative result of the southern crisis - and at the same time overcoming, a way out of the crisis - was the comprehensive plan of “Eugene Onegin”!

So, Pushkin’s task was to give a deep image of the “hero of the time”; the time was truly dominated by the “spirit of denial,” when the murmur of eternal dissatisfaction, the individualistic-rebellious pride of the mind and the “numbness” and coolness of feelings were different symptoms of one “disease of skepticism” that struck modern man. Let us repeat once again the fair idea that understanding the image of Onegin “requires, first of all, comparison with the demonic heroes of world literature” (I. Medvedeva). But, giving his hero the scale not of an “everyday type”, but of an “eternal”, philosophical image, Pushkin at the same time wanted to find for his “spirit of denial” (and Pushkin’s “Note on the poem “Demon”) the unique individuality of a modern person experiencing “demonism” "as your own, personal destiny. And this again reflected the universalism of Pushkin’s work: this is not only a philosophical poetic novel - but also “a historical poem in the full sense of the word” (V. Belinsky).

The synthetically complex nature of Onegin’s image has been noted more than once by Soviet researchers. “Onegin had to bear the traits of demonism” - however, he “first of all had to be a Russian character, organically connected with Russian reality” (I. Medvedeva); “The image of Onegin is synthetic... Onegin included both the thoughtless “young rake” and the “demon” tempting providence with his “caustic speech” (I. Semenko).. The universalism of Pushkin’s novel required a special method of depicting the hero. Already in Pushkin’s lifetime criticism, it was noted that “onegin’s description could belong to a thousand different characters,” because the author did not give his hero “a specific physiognomy.” In Soviet Pushkin studies, this circumstance received a convincing explanation: Onegin’s “character” cannot be considered as the “characters” of heroes created at a later stage in the development of realism in the 19th century. ...Pushkin’s method is a method of generalizations, different from those of “his predecessors and even heirs... he builds the image of a problematic hero as an image in which the breadth of generalization and variety of aspects prevails over psychological detail... Onegin is an artistic image, in . in which every feature, and especially something as serious as disappointment, is a condensation, a concentration of an idea.” Let us also remember here the term by Yu. Tynyanov - the sign of a hero”; Using this expression to denote Pushkin’s method of artistic typification and noting that Pushkin seemed to circle a certain complex of contradictory and diverse properties and traits of his hero “with a circle of his name,” the researcher probably had in mind the peculiar emblematic nature of the construction of the image in Pushkin’s novel. Not a “psychological” portrait, but an “emblematic” silhouette - this, in short, is the feature of the imagery of “Eugene Onegin”, which at the same time corresponded to the universality of the novel, and provided the opportunity for the manifestation of a variety of “faces” of the hero as the free novel unfolded in time.

In that most complex spiritual phenomenon, which is called Eugene Onegin, there are two main centers - as it were, two poles of this image. One of them is skeptical coolness, “demonism”; Pushkin speaks about something else in the first chapter after listing the “abilities” of his hero: “What a true genius he was” - and then follows the description of Eugene as a “genius of love.” At first, it can be considered a semi-ironic definition of the hero’s virtuoso Don Juanism, those successes in the “science of tender passion” that the “young rake” demonstrates. However, as the novel approaches the finale, it turns out that Pushkin’s hero is truly a genius of love, that this is “the highest gift of his nature and that in the multi-component image of Eugene this beginning is opposed to another - Onegin’s demonism. These two poles are the “genius of love” and the “spirit denials" - not only "accumulate" the drama of the hero, but also, as it were, store the potency of the entire development of the novel.

Pushkin's novel is a study of the fate of the hero of the time, a study carried out using an innovative "free" form. Pushkin’s very definition of his own novel as “free” is ambiguous: here is the problem of freedom in the novel, and its internal structure (“free” relations between two authors), and, finally, that feature of the plot development of “Eugene Onegin”, thanks to which each chapter it was published separately and, indeed, has great independence in the overall composition. This feature is organically connected with Pushkin’s initial focus on movement, the evolution of his hero (and the novel as a whole) parallel to the development of real historical time. The great Pushkin cultural and ideological novel also became a unique artistic and historical study, in which the fate of the Hero, the fate of the Author and the fate of the Creator were decided, and with them the fate of the entire Pushkin generation.

A. Tarkhov

Sources:

• Pushkin A.S. Eugene Onegin. Enter, article and commentary. A. Tarkhova. M., “Art. lit.”, 1978. 302. p. (School library)
Annotation: Readers are invited to the first experience of an annotated edition of the novel in verse by A. S. Pushkin “Eugene Onegin” - the poet’s greatest creation: “Here is all his life, all his soul, all his love; here are his feelings, concepts, ideals. To evaluate such a work means to evaluate the poet himself in the entire scope of his creative activity” (V. G. Belinsky).

Updated: 2011-09-10

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Useful material on the topic

• Works of A.S. Pushkin. The cultural significance of ethics and morality in the works of A.S. Pushkin, as the main meaning of the novel “Eugene Onegin”. Examples from the novel “Eugene Onegin”