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Eugene Onegin
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Eugene Onegin (Russian: ??????? ??????, BGN/PCGN: Yevgeniy Onegin) is a novel in verse written by Alexander Pushkin. It is a classic of Russian literature, and its eponymous protagonist served as the model for a number of Russian literary heroes. It was published in serial form between 1825 and 1832. The first complete edition was published in 1833, and the edition on which the current accepted version is based was published in 1837.
The work's primary defining feature is that it is almost entirely written in verses of iambic tetrameter with the unusual rhyme scheme "AbAbCCddEffEgg", where the uppercase letters represent feminine rhymes while the lowercase letters represent masculine rhymes.
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Eugene Onegin (Russian: ??????? ??????, BGN/PCGN: Yevgeniy Onegin) is a novel in verse written by Alexander Pushkin. It is a classic of Russian literature, and its eponymous protagonist served as the model for a number of Russian literary heroes. It was published in serial form between 1825 and 1832. The first complete edition was published in 1833, and the edition on which the current accepted version is based was published in 1837.
The work's primary defining feature is that it is almost entirely written in verses of iambic tetrameter with the unusual rhyme scheme "AbAbCCddEffEgg", where the uppercase letters represent feminine rhymes while the lowercase letters represent masculine rhymes. This form has come to be known as the "Onegin stanza" or "Pushkin sonnet."
The story is told by an idealised version of Pushkin, who often digresses from the story. This serves to make the plot of the novel quite scant, but the book is more loved for its style of storytelling than for what is actually told. It is partly because of this garrulous narrator that the book has been compared to Tristram Shandy.
Plot
Eugene Onegin, a Russian dandy who is bored with life, inherits a country mansion from his uncle. When he moves to the country, he strikes up an unlikely friendship with the minor poet Vladimir Lensky. One day, Lensky takes Onegin to dine with the family of his fiancée Olga Larina. At this meeting, Olga's bookish sister, Tatyana (Tanya), falls in love with Onegin. That night, Tatiana writes a letter to Onegin professing her love and sends it to him. While this is something a heroine in one of Tatiana's French novels would have done, Russian society would consider it inappropriate for a young, unmarried girl to take the initiative. Contrary to her expectations, Onegin does not reply by letter. The two meet on his next visit where he rejects her advances in a speech that has been described as tactful yet condescending.
Later, Lensky nonchalantly invites Onegin to Tatyana's name day celebration promising a small gathering with just Tatiana, her sister, and her parents. When Onegin arrives, he finds instead a grandiose ball reminiscent of the fast-paced world he has grown tired of. To exact revenge on Lensky, Onegin proceeds to flirt and dance with Olga. Lensky leaves in a rage, and in the morning issues a challenge to Onegin to fight a duel. At the duel Onegin kills Lensky, then flees.
Tatyana visits Onegin's mansion where she reads through his books and the notes in the margins, and through this comes to believe that Onegin's character is merely a collage of different literary heroes, and so there is no "real Onegin." Later, Tanya is taken to Moscow and introduced to society. In this new environment, Tanya matures to such an extent that when Onegin later meets her in St. Petersburg, he fails to recognise her. When he realises who she is he tries to win her affection despite the fact that she is now married, but his advances are rebuffed. He writes her several letters but receives no reply. The book ends when Onegin manages to see Tanya and is once again rejected in a speech where she admits both her love for him and the absolute loyalty she nevertheless has for her husband. In echoing the speech he previously gave her, she also demonstrates her emotional and moral superiority to Onegin.
Major themes
The main theme of Eugene Onegin is the relationship between fiction and real life. People are often shaped by art. The romantic sister, Tatiana, is reading a romance novel when her mother tells her real life is not like that. The work is packed with allusions to other literary works.
Composition and publication
As with many other 19th century novels, Onegin was written and published serially, with parts of each chapter often appearing published in magazines before the first printing of each chapter. Many changes, some small and some large, were made from the first appearance to the final edition during Pushkin's lifetime. The following dates mostly come from Nabokov's study of the photographs of Pushkin's drafts that were available at the time, as well as other people's work on the subject.
The first stanza of Chapter One was started on May 9, 1823, and except for three stanzas (XXXIII, XVIII and XIX), the chapter was finished on October 22. The remaining stanzas were completed and added to his notebook by the first week of October 1824. Chapter One was first published as a whole in a booklet on February 16, 1825, with a foreword that suggests Pushkin had no clear plan on how (or even whether he would) continue the novel.
Chapter Two was started on October 22, 1823, (the date when most of Chapter One had been finished) and finished by December 8, except for stanzas XL and XXXV, which were added sometime over the next three months. The first separate edition of Chapter Two appeared in October 20, 1826.
Many events occurred which interrupted the writing of Chapter Three. In January 1824 Pushkin stopped work on Onegin to work on The Gypsies. Except for XXV, Stanzas I-XXXI were added on September 25, 1824. Nabokov guesses that Tanya's Letter was written in Odessa between February 8 and May 31, 1824. Pushkin's misdemeanors in Odessa caused him to be restricted to his family estate Miskhaylovskoe in Pskov for two years. He left Odessa on July 21, 1824, and arrived on August 9. Writing resumed on September 5, and Chapter 3 was finished (apart from stanza XXXVI) on October 2. The first separate publication of Chapter Three was on October 10, 1827.
Chapter 4 was started in October 1824, by the end of the year Pushkin had written 23 stanzas and had reached XXVII by January 5, 1825, at which point he started writing stanzas for Onegin's Journey and worked on other pieces of writing. He thought it was finished on September 12, 1825, but later continued the process of rearranging, adding and omitting stanzas were till the first week of 1826. The first separate edition on of Chapter 4 appeared with Chapter 5 in a publication produced between January 31 and February 2, 1828.
The writing of Chapter 5 began on January 4, 1826, and 24 stanzas were complete before the start of his trip to petition the tzar for his freedom. He left on September 4 and returned on November 2, 1826. He completed the rest of the chapter in the week November 15 to 22, 1826. The first separate edition of Chapter 5 appeared with Chapter 4 in a publication produced between January 31 and February 2, 1828.
When Nabokov made his study on the writing of Onegin the manuscript of Chapter 6 was lost, but we know that Pushkin started Chapter 6 before he had finished Chapter 5. Most of the chapter appears to have been written before the beginning of December 19, 1826 when he returned from exile in his family estate to Moscow. Many stanzas appeared to have been written between November 22 and 25, 1826. On March 23, 1828 the first separate edition of Chapter 6 was published.
Pushkin started writing Chapter 7 in March 1827 but aborted his original plan for the plot of the chapter and started on a different tack, completing the chapter on November 4, 1828. The first separate edition of Chapter 7 was first printed on March 18, 1836.
Pushkin intended to write a chapter called 'Onegin's Journey' which occurred between the events of Chapter 7 and 8, and in fact was supposed to be the eighth Chapter. Fragments of this incomplete chapter were published, in the same way that parts of each chapter had been published in magazines before each chapter was first published in its first separate edition. When Pushkin first completed Chapter 8 he published it as the final Chapter and included within its denouement the line nine cantos I have written still intending to complete this missing chapter. When Pushkin finally decided to abandon this chapter he removed parts of the ending to fit with the change.
Chapter 8 was begun before December 24, 1829, while Pushkin was in Petersburg. In August 1830, he went to Boldino (the Pushkin family estate)
where, due to an epidemic of cholera, he was forced to stay for three months. During this time he produced what Nabokov describes as an "incredible number of masterpieces" and finished copying out Chapter 8 on September 25, 1830. During the summer of 1831 Pushkin revised and completed Chapter 8 apart from 'Onegin's Letter' which was completed on October 5, 1831. The first separate edition of Chapter 8 appeared on January 10, 1832.
Pushkin wrote at least eighteen stanzas of a never-completed tenth chapter.
The first complete edition of the book was published in 1833. Slight corrections were made by Pushkin for the 1837 edition. The standard accepted text is based on the 1837 edition with a few changes due to the Tsar's censorship restored.
Characters in Eugene Onegin
The five main characters are Eugene Onegin, his friend Vladimir Lensky, Pushkin's raisonneur (the novel's narrator), Tatyana Larina (Tanya), and Olga Larina, two sisters.
The duel
In Pushkin's time, the early 19th century, duels were very strictly regulated. A second's primary duty was to prevent the duel from actually happening, and only when both combatants are unwilling to step down, make sure that the duel proceeded according to the formalised rules. A challenger's second should therefore always ask the challenged party if he wants to apologise for his actions that have led to the challenge.
In Eugene Onegin, Lensky's second, Zaretsky, does not ask Onegin once if he would like to apologise, and because Onegin is not allowed to apologise on his own initiative, the duel takes place with the fatal consequences. As Zaretsky is described as classical and pedantic in duels (Chapter 6, Stanza XXVI), this seems very out of character for a nobleman. Zaretsky's first chance to end the duel is when he delivers Lensky's written challenge to Onegin (Chapter 6, Stanza IX). Instead of asking Onegin if he would like to apologise, he apologises for having much to do at home and leaves as soon as Onegin (obligatorily) accepts the challenge.
On the day of the duel, the day after Tatiana's name day on 13 January (Old Style), Zaretsky gets several more chances to prevent the duel from happening. Because dueling was forbidden in the Russian Empire, duels were always held at dawn. Zaretsky urges Lensky to get ready shortly after 6 o'clock in the morning (Chapter 6, Stanza XXIII), while the sun only rises at 20 past 8, because he expects Onegin to be on time. However, Onegin oversleeps (chapter 6, Stanza XXIV), and arrives on the scene more than an hour late. According to the dueling codex, if a duelist arrives more than 15 minutes late, he automatically forfeits the duel. Lensky and Zaretsky have been waiting all that time (chapter 6, Stanza XXVI), even though it was Zaretsky's duty to proclaim Lensky as winner and take him home.
When Onegin finally arrives, Zaretsky is supposed to ask him a final time if he would like to apologise. Instead, Zaretsky is surprised by the apparent absence of Onegin's second. Onegin, against all rules, appoints his servant Guillot as his second (Chapter 6, Stanza XXVII), a blatant insult for the nobleman Zaretsky. Zaretsky angrily accepts Guillot as Onegin's second. By his actions, Zaretsky does not act as a nobleman should, but apparently he expects to be in the centre of attention after the duel has finished.
Allusions to actual history, geography, and current science
In the book Pushkin claims that Eugene Onegin is his friend, however the name "Onegin" is not an authentic Russian surname but derived from the river and lake Onega. This literary artifice serves to contradict the implied reality of this "friend". Lensky is similarly named after the Siberian river Lena.
Translations
Translators of Eugene Onegin have all had to adopt a trade-off between precision and preservation of poetic imperatives. This particular challenge and the importance of Eugene Onegin in Russian literature have resulted in an impressive number of competing translations.
Into English
Arndt and Nabokov
Walter W. Arndt's 1963 translation (ISBN 0-87501-106-3) was written keeping to the strict rhyme scheme of the Onegin stanza and won the Bollingen Prize for translation. It is still considered one of the best translations.
Vladimir Nabokov severely criticised Arndt's translation, as he had criticised many previous (and later) translations. Nabokov's main criticism of Arndt's and other translations is that they sacrificed literalness and exactness for the sake of preserving the melody and rhyme.
Accordingly, in 1964 he published in four volumes his own translation, which conformed scrupulously to the sense while completely eschewing melody and rhyme. The first volume contains an introduction by Nabokov and the text of the translation. The Introduction discusses the structure of the novel, the Onegin stanza in which it is written and Pushkin's opinion of Onegin (using Pushkin's letters to his friends); and gives a detailed account of both the time over which Pushkin wrote Onegin and the various forms any part of it appeared in publication before Pushkin's death (after which there is a huge proliferation of the number of different editions). The second and third volume consists of very detailed and rigorous notes to the text. The fourth volume contains a facsimile of the 1837 edition. The discussion of the Onegin stanza contains the poem On Translating "Eugene Onegin", which first appeared in print in The New Yorker on January 8, 1955, and is written in two Onegin stanzas. The poem is reproduced there both so that the reader of his translation would have some experience of this unique form, and also to act as a further defence of his decision to write his translation in prose.
Nabokov's previously close friend Edmund Wilson reviewed Nabokov's translation in the New York Review of Books, which sparked an exchange of letters there and an enduring falling-out between them.
While many despair at the loss of what is at first most appealing in Pushkin's novel, Nabokov's translation is essential reading for anyone who wishes to study Onegin at a high level without learning Russian. Also, a number of later translations which do attempt to preserve melody and rhyme have been helped by Nabokov's literal translation.
John Bayley has described Nabokov's commentary as '"by far the most erudite as well as the most fascinating commentary in English on Pushkin's poem" and the commentary as being "as scrupulously accurate, in terms of grammar, sense and phrasing, as it is idiosyncratic and Nabokovian in its vocabulary". Some consider this "Nabokovian vocabulary" a failing, for it might require even educated native speakers to reach for the dictionary from time to time, but most agree that it is highly accurate.
Other English translations
Babette Deutsch published a translation in 1935 preserving the Onegin stanzas.
In 1977 Charles Johnston published another translation trying to preserve the Onegin stanza, which is generally considered to surpass Arndt's. Johnston's translation is influenced by Nabokov. Vikram Seth's novel The Golden Gate was inspired by this translation.
James E. Falen (the professor of Russian at the University of Tennessee) published a translation in 1995 which was also influenced by Nabokov's translation, but preserved the Onegin stanzas (ISBN 0809316307). This translation is considered to be the most faithful one to the Pushkin's spirit according to Russian critics and translators.
Douglas Hofstadter published a translation in 1999, again preserving the Onegin stanzas, after having summarised the controversy (and severely criticised Nabokov's attitude towards verse translation) in his book Le Ton beau de Marot. Hofstadter's translation has a unique lexicon of both high and low register words, as well as unexpected and almost reaching rhymes that give the work a comedic flair.
Tom Beck published a translation in 2004, preserving the Onegin stanzas (ISBN 1-903517-28-1).
In September 2008, Stanley Mitchell, emeritus professor of aesthetics at the University of Derby, published, through Penguin Books, a complete translation, again preserving the Onegin stanzas in English. (ISBN 978-0-140-44810-8 )
Into other languages
French
There are at least eight published French translations of Eugene Onegin. The most recent appeared in 2005: the translator, André Markovicz, respects Pushkin's original stanzas. Other translations include those of Paul Béesau (1868), Gaston Pérot (1902, in verse), Nata Minor (received the Prix Nelly Sachs, given to the best translation into French of poetry), Roger Legras, Maurice Colin, Michel Bayat and Jean-Louis Backès (does not preserve the stanzas).
As a twenty-year-old, former French president Jacques Chirac also wrote a translation which was never published.
German
There are at least eleven published translations of Onegin in German.
- R. Lippert, Leipzig 1840
- Adolf Seubert, Leipzig um 1906
- Theodor Commichau, Berlin 1916
- Friedrich Bodenstedt, Wien 1946
- Elfriede Eckardt-Skalberg, Baden-Baden 1947
- Johannes von Guenther, Leipzig 1949
- Manfred von der Ropp und Felix Zielinski, München 1972
- Kay Borowsky, Stuttgart 1972 (Prosaübersetzung)
- Theodor Commichau und M. Remané, Bearb. K. Schmidt, Ffm 1973
- Rolf-Dietrich Keil, Gießen 1980
- Ulrich Busch, Zürich 1981
Italian
There are several Italian translation of Onegin. One of the earliest was published by G. Cassone in 1906. Ettore Lo Gatto translated the novel twice, in 1922 in prose and in 1950 in hendecasyllables.
More recent translations are those by Giovanni Giudici (a first version in 1975, a second one in 1990, in lines of unequal length) and by Pia Pera (1996).
Film, TV or theatrical adaptations
Opera
The 1879 opera Eugene Onegin', by Tchaikovsky, based on the book, is part of the standard operatic repertoire; there are various recordings of it, and it is regularly performed.
Prince Gremin's aria «????? ??? ???????? ???????» -- "To love both young and old surrender" (Act III, Scene I) is partially hummed by the characters of Masha and Vershinin in Anton Chekhov's play Three Sisters. The tune hummed here may vary depending on audience and where it is performed, so a better-known tune may be used.
Ballet
John Cranko choreographed a three-act ballet using Tchaikovsky's music in an arrangement by Kurt-Heinz Stolze. However, Stolze did not use any music from Tchaikovsky’s opera of the same name. Instead, he orchestrated some little-known piano works by Tchaikovsky such as The Seasons, along with themes from the opera Cherevichkiand the latter part of the symphonic fantasia Francesca da Rimini.
Incidental music
A staged version was produced in the Soviet Union in 1936 with staging by Alexander Tairov and incidental music by Sergei Prokofiev.
Play
Christopher Webber's play Tatyana was written for Nottingham Playhouse in 1989. It successfully combines spoken dialogue and narration from the book, with music arranged from Tchaikovsky's operatic score, and incorporates some striking theatrical sequences inspired by Tatyana's dreams in the original. The title role was played by Josie Lawrence, and the director was Pip Broughton.
Film
The 1988 Decca/Channel 4 et al. film directed by Peter Wiegl is a stunning visual presentation of the opera. The music, conducted by Sir Georg Solti, is competently played. The solos are also competent but the harmonies are weaker, especially (inexplicably) in the crucial prologue which takes the operatic start point to one-third of the way through the original novel. The synchronisation of the actors with the dubbed sung parts is poor. Onegin is presented as deliberately shooting to hit, not miss, and is unrepentant at the end, but the visual artistry and acting are unforgettable.
The 1999 film, Onegin, is an English adaptation of Pushkin's work. The film compresses the events of the novel somewhat, such that the Naming Day celebrations take place on the same day as Onegin's speech to Tatiana. As a result, Onegin's reasons for dancing with Olga and insulting Lensky are no longer clear to the viewer and cause him to appear callous toward Tatiana who also sees him dance with her sister only moments after he has spurned her. The 1999 film, much like the 1988 one, also gives the impression that during the duel sequence Onegin deliberately shoots to kill.
Footnotes
External links
- The full text of the poem in Russian
- Charles Johnston's complete translation
- (a translation by Yevgeny Bonver)
- (a translation by G. R. Ledger with more of Pushkin's poetry)
- An article by Douglas Hofstadter on the book, which explains how he can judge the relative worth of different translations of Onegin without being able to read Russian
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