Eugene Onegin (...and a little about Nabokov)
Eugene Onegin: a novel in verse, has been (i admit) bought and sent to me in a small cardboard package thanks to Mr. Nabokov. Being fascinated-borderline obsessed- with Nabokov, Pushkin was the next Russian on my reading list. There is also the fact that he is a great writer.
Eugene Onegin is a sophisticated novel of time and fleeting youth, its flooded with Lord Byron's influence and a pre-transcedental masterpiece of retreat to a simpler life. Pushkin, a precursor to Tolstoy, a classical romantic, wrote about the retreat to the country: a retreat to nature and to the older Russia. The lyrical, rhythmical descriptions of the land, the life, the seasons that change as youth fades, are overwhelming. Pushkin's verse-prose is gentle and then sharp. The first half of the novel makes no thematic promises of greatness and then the second half blows it out of the water.
Eugene Onegin is largely intertextual in its native scope: Pushkin name drops a lot of his fellow Russian writers, who the modern reader cannot be expected to know. However, the novel's intertextuality is also self-contained. Onegin's narrative is interwoven with Pushkin's; where, at times, the "I" could be either one of them speaking. The two story-lines work together in the sense that Onegin's story of failed love and lost purpose helps Pushkin address the nature of time and loss.
Eugene Onegin is slightly cynical, slightly arrogant, and he loves his freedom. He leads an aimless life in his dacha, when he meets Tatiana. At that time his friend Vladimir Lensky is enamoured with Olga. Tatiana writes Eugene a letter declaring her infatuation, and he rejects her 'elegantly'. The novel then moves away from Eugene and becomes Tatiana's story- but not before Eugene whisks away Olga at a ball and challenges Lensky to a duel, killing him.
Tatiana becomes the center point of the novel, and she transforms the most throughout the story, eventually almost trading places with Eugene. She gains the title of a Princess, and governs her fate autonomously. Perhaps what is most stunning is that the novel never ends, Pushkin simply moves us away from the final scene, which is left in eternal anticipation.
Pushkin goes farther, then comes nearer. His narrative proximity undulates throughout the story. At times he completely removes himself from his characters, speaking to us directly (Eugene fades), and then Eugene reappears. We meet Pushkin first as the novel begins with Pushkin tending on his "halfway dead" Uncle, he then begins to gradually introduce Eugene Onegin to us:
"Let me acquaint you with this fellow,
The hero of my novel, pray,
Without preamble or delay:
My friend Onegin was begotten
By the Neva, where maybe you
Reader! Pushkin calls you out, he names you, he recognizes those foreign future eyes of yours that will trace his words. Published in 1825 this is the first novel I have seen address the reader directly. And it is from here, I believe, that Nabokov borrowed this technique: most prominent in Lolita. The text becomes an interaction, a conversation in which Eugene Onegin is Pushkin's tongue. Pushkin seems to suggest that there is something greater here, something beyond the story, something you, as the reader, can partake in. He befriends you in a way.
The multitude of images is akin to Nabokov's prose: the country life, the Russian leaves and pines, the landscapes, the samovars, the intricate Tolstoyan life of aristocracy. All of Nabokov's Ada or Ardor echoes Pushkin's arbours and ardours:
"Let me glance back. Farewell, you arbours
Where, in the backwoods, I recall
Days filled with indolence and ardours
And dreamings of a pensive soul."
Both novels are concerned with the passing of time: youth fading and darling old Russia slipping away. Pushkin creates a mysterious, distant land where nostalgia blooms. All that is gone glimmers. And life, just as his novel, is left unfinished. Pushkin's characters live on, their story unwritten, as we leave Eugene Onegin alone to face Tatiana's husband.
"(Blest) who does not read right to the end
Life's still, as yet, unfinished novel,
But lets it go, as I do my
Onegin, and bid him goodbye."
Life is never finished, never done, until we can utter 'life' no more.
PS. Since I was disappointed with Stanely Mitchell's translation, and wished I had gotten Nabokov's translation instead, it can be found here.
izzy806
jbbartram-illu
titsay
blakekathryn
2087
andulkaphoto
stormborns
