Eugene Onegin is a
remarkable book written by a remarkable author, Alexander Pushkin. He was a
Russian who lived during one of Europe’s most significant political upheavals, the
French revolution and Napoleon’s subsequent attempt to master all of Europe. It
was also a time of rapid cultural change; ideas of the feudalist aristocracy
were slowly being replaced with beliefs, unleashed by the French, about the
universal rights of man. Pushkin’s personal origins were no less unique. His
maternal great grandfather, Ibrahim Gannibal, was an African captured from the
Ottomans, Russia’s perennial enemy, and who was brought to Russia to be a
servant. Gannibal eventually married into the Russian nobility, and produced
many offspring; Alexander Pushkin was one of his descendants. He went on to
become a prolific man of letters, and Eugene
Onegin is one of his supreme achievements of writing and narration.
Unsurprisingly, the book had a significant influence on later Russian geniuses
including Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.
Eugene
Onegin is the main character in the eponymously named book, but it includes his
friend, the poet Vladimir Lensky, and two sisters, Tatyana and Olga. The text
mainly focuses on Eugene’s relationship with Tatyana, which at various points
is impaired, because it is characterized with love and frustration not equally
shared. The story is expressed in verse not prose; and, to fully enjoy its
expression, reading it out loud is what I chose. Normally, I do not read that
way. But for Eugene Onegin I made an
exception, and therefore can say: taking that approach was worth it, it enhanced
the story’s scintillatingly fervent, lessons and insights on the messiness of
life, in the areas of love, loss, aging, and emotional strife.
Eugene is a young member of the nobility who does not
have to work to earn his bread; he therefore lives the life of a dilettante,
attending balls, seducing many women, gambling, drinking, staying up late and
sleeping for most of the day. Early in the text he has an eureka moment and
realizes how meaningless most of his activities are. He subsequently falls into
a depression of sorts, the kind distinctly associated with the disenchantment
of modernity. In Eugene one detected
Modern man
himself portrayed
With something of
his true complexion
With his immoral
soul disclosed
His arid vanity
exposed
His endless bent
for deep reflection
His cold,
embittered mind that seems
To waste itself
in empty dreams
Regardless of these defects, the beautiful and
virtuous Tatyana falls deeply in love with Eugene. Some of the most riveting
and lyrical verses express the intensity of her love. Tatyana:
Fell in love. For
thus indeed
Does Spring awake
the buried seed
Long since her
keen imagination
With tenderness
and pain imbued
Had hungered for
the fatal food
She had to tell him how she felt, but could not
arrange a private meeting. Eugene receives a letter from Tatyana which
expresses her longing and yearning, and at that point he must make a decision
on whether to continue his playboy existence or surrender to the duties and
obligations of married life. Eugene chooses the former because, despite his unhappiness,
he does not want to give up his freedom and he fears the monotony of marriage.
When Eugene rejects Tatyana’s love, he tells her
However much I
loved you, dear
Once used to
you…I’d cease, I fear
These lines provide a window into Eugene’s character.
He could have had the beautiful Tatyana if he wanted, for she was willing to
surrender herself entirely to him. But she wanted a husband, not a fling. He
chose to be honest about his unsuitability to that task, rather than, for
pleasure’s sake, wear a mask.
Tatyana’s love sickness is profound and oppressive,
but this is the result of her youth more than Eugene. Some of the best lines
describe early adulthood, that period when emotions, positive and negative, are
extremely intense; when, due to the lack of the cynicism that results from
experiencing life’s disappointments, the turbulence of emotions is completely
exposed:
But flaming youth
in all its madness
Keeps nothing of
its heart concealed
Its loves and
hates, its joys and sadness
Are babbled out
and soon revealed.
Meanwhile Eugene’s friend, the poet Vladimir Lensky,
is only 18 when he falls in love with Olga, and his soul was:
Aflame with
virgin fire. Olga
Gave Lensky
intimations
Of youthful
ecstasies unknown
This relationship looks promising because Vladimir,
unlike his friend Eugene, is fit for marriage:
So Lensky soared
as he awaited
His wedding day
two weeks ahead
With joy his heart anticipated
The mysteries of
the marriage bed
The frigid
yawning days to be
He never pictures
once, not he
While we…perceive
full well what home life means
But one long
string of dreary scenes
But my poor
Lensky, deep at heart
Was born to play
this very part
Tragically, their union is never consummated because
of Lensky’s untimely death in a duel with is erstwhile friend Eugene. The cause
of their discord is Eugene’s flirtation with Olga at a ball. Lensky is furious
and wants to avenge this slight against his honour, and so he challenges Eugene
to a duel. The latter accepts because a refusal would have been perceived as cowardly.
Lensky loses and dies at the tragically tender age of 18.
Returning to Tatyana, at times, her despair is so
intense, the reader gets the impression, that she will be permanently scarred
from Eugene’s rejection, but she eventually marries a dashing member of the
military elite, and goes on to live what seems like a life contented and
complete. Eugene, in contrast, remains disappointed and frustrated. As time
passes, he begins to question the value he placed on the freedom of the single
dilettante. Years later, his yearning for love appears, just as the winter is
ending. The not-coincidental parallels between the beginning of spring, and the
burning pangs of desire, will also sound familiar to many readers:
How sad I find
your apparition
O spring!...O
time of love’s unrest
What sombre
echoes of ambition
Then stir my
blood and fill my breast
What tender and
oppressive yearning
Possess me on
spring’s returning
Eugene also recognizes that he is not getting younger,
and that the spring holds lessons for the passing of his youth
Do we mark with
lamentation
How nature’s
lively renovation
Compares with our
own fading youth
For which no
spring will come, in truth
These existential reflections lead Eugene to regret
his decision of rejecting Tatyana’s love, and he blames his youthful naiveté
for that choice:
How sad that
youth, with all its power
Was given us in
vain, to burn
That we betrayed
it every hour
And were deceived
by it in turn
When he sees Tatyana again, she is married and
unavailable, and (perhaps not coincidently) Eugene falls in love with her. At
this point, the cynic might say that Tatyana’s marital status is what makes her
suddenly so desirable to Eugene, and Pushkin alludes to this possibility when
he tells the reader that
We’ve got to have
forbidden fruit
Or Eden’s joys
for us are moot
A more charitable interpretation is that Eugene
discovered that the freedom he so initially desired, and that led him to reject
the stability of marriage to Tatyana, was overrated. In classic tragic fashion,
by the time he learns this necessary truth, it is too late: Tatyana is
unavailable, and his youth is fading. Eugene nonetheless tries to woo her, and,
despite her continued feelings for him, she refuses his advances. It was the
right move, because one gets the sense that, as soon as Tatyana gave herself to
Eugene, he would lose interest in her. Their characters, or aims, are not
compatible. Meanwhile, she may not be passionately in love with her husband,
but he provides the stability and commitment that she desires. Many readers of Eugene Onegin will find these themes to
be very familiar.
