Eugene Onegin is a novel in verse written by Alexander Pushkin.
It is a classic of
Russian literatureRussian literature refers to the literature of Russia or its émigrés, and to the Russian-language literature of several independent nations once a part of what was historically Russia or the Soviet Union...
, and its eponymous protagonist has served as the model for a number of Russian literary heroes (so-called
superfluous menThe Superfluous Man is a 19th century Russian literary concept. It relates to an individual, possibly of talent and capability, who does not fit into the state-centered pattern of employment. Often the individual is born into the upper class and is rich and affluent. He may pursue a military...
). It was published in serial form between 1825 and 1832. The first complete edition was published in 1833, and the currently accepted version is based on the 1837 publication.
Almost the entire work is made up of 389
stanzaIn poetry, a stanza is a unit within a larger poem. In modern poetry, the term is often equivalent with strophe; in popular vocal music, a stanza is typically referred to as a "verse"...
s of
iambic tetrameterIambic tetrameter is a meter in poetry. It refers to a line consisting of four iambic feet. The word "tetrameter" simply means that there are four feet in the line; iambic tetrameter is a line comprising four iambs...
with the unusual rhyme scheme "AbAbCCddEffEgg", where the uppercase letters represent
feminine rhymeA feminine rhyme is a rhyme that matches two or more syllables, usually at the end of respective lines, in which the final syllable or syllables are unstressed.-English:...
s while the lowercase letters represent
masculine rhymeA masculine rhyme is a rhyme that matches only one syllable, usually at the end of respective lines. Often the final syllable is stressed.-English:In English prosody, a masculine rhyme is a rhyme on a single stressed syllable at the end of a line of poetry...
s. This form has come to be known as the "
Onegin stanzaOnegin stanza refers to the verse form invented by Alexander Pushkin for his interpersonal epic Eugene Onegin...
" or the "Pushkin sonnet."
The rhythm, innovative rhyme scheme, the natural tone and diction, and the economical transparency of presentation all demonstrate the virtuosity which has been instrumental in proclaiming Pushkin as the undisputed master of Russian poetry.
The story is told by a narrator (a lightly fictionalized version of Pushkin's public image), whose tone is educated, worldly, and intimate. The narrator digresses at times, usually to expand on aspects of this social and intellectual world. This allows for a development of the characters and emphasises the drama of the plot despite its relative simplicity. The book is admired for the artfulness of its verse narrative as well as for its exploration of life, death, love, ennui, convention and passion.
Main characters
A dandy from Saint Petersburg, about 26. An arrogant, selfish and world-weary cynic.
A young poet, about 18. A very romantic and naive dreamer.
A shy and quiet, but passionate landowner's daughter.
A beautiful, but vapid coquette.
Plot
1820s.
Eugene Onegin is a bored St. Petersburg
dandyA dandy is a man who places particular importance upon physical appearance, refined language, and leisurely hobbies, pursued with the appearance of nonchalance in a cult of Self...
, whose life consists of balls, concerts, parties, and nothing more. One day he inherits a landed estate from his uncle. When he moves to the country, he strikes up a friendship with his neighbor, an inexperienced young poet named Vladimir Lensky. One day, Lensky takes Onegin to dine with the family of his fiancée, the sociable but rather thoughtless Olga Larina. At this meeting he also catches a glimpse of Olga's sister Tatyana. A quiet, precocious romantic and the exact opposite of Olga, Tatyana becomes intensely drawn to Onegin. Soon after, she bares her soul to Onegin in a letter professing her love. Contrary to her expectations, Onegin does not write back. When they meet in person, he rebuffs her advances politely but dismissively. (This speech is often referred to as
Onegin's Sermon)
Later, Lensky mischievously invites Onegin to Tatyana's
name dayA name day is a tradition in many countries in Europe and Latin America that consists of celebrating the day of the year associated with one's given name....
celebration promising a small gathering with just Tatyana, her sister, and her parents. When Onegin arrives, he finds instead a boisterous country ball, a rural parody of and contrast to the society balls of St. Petersburg he has grown tired of. Onegin is irritated with the guests who gossip about him and Tatyana, and with Lensky for persuading him to come. He decides to avenge himself by dancing and flirting with Olga. Olga is insensitive to her fiancé and apparently attracted to Onegin. Earnest and inexperienced, Lensky is wounded to the core and challenges Onegin to fight a duel; Onegin reluctantly accepts, feeling compelled by social convention. During the duel, Onegin stoically kills Lensky. Afterwards, he quits his country estate, traveling abroad to deaden his feelings of remorse.
Tatyana visits Onegin's mansion where she looks through his books and his notes in the margins, and and begins to question whether Onegin's character is merely a collage of different literary heroes, and if there is, in fact, no "real Onegin."
Several years pass. The scene shifts to
MoscowMoscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
, to which Onegin has come to attend the most prominent balls and interact with the leaders of old Russian society. He sees the most beautiful woman, who captures the attention of all and is central to society's whirl, and he realizes that it is the same Tatyana whose love he had once turned away. Now she is married to an aged general. Upon seeing Tatyana again, he becomes obsessed with winning her affection, despite the fact that she is married. However, his advances are rejected. He writes her several letters but receives no reply. Eventually Onegin manages to see Tatyana and presents to her the opportunity to renew their past love. Tatyana admits that she still cares for him but declares her determination to remain faithful to her husband.
Major themes
One of the main themes of
Eugene Onegin is the relationship between fiction and real life. People are often shaped by art and the work is suitably packed with allusions to other major literary works.
Another major element is Pushkin's creation of a woman of intelligence and depth in Tatyana, whose vulnerable sincerity and openness on the subject of love has made her the heroine of countless Russian women, despite her apparent naivety. Pushkin, in the final chapter, fuses his Muse and Tatyana's new 'form' in society after a lengthy description of how she has guided him in his works.
Perhaps the darkest theme - despite the light touch of the narration - is his presentation of the deadly inhumanity of social convention. Onegin is its bearer in this work. His induction into selfishness, vanity, and indifference occupies the introduction, and he is unable to escape it when he moves to the country. His inability to relate to the feelings of others and his frozen lack of empathy - the cruelty instilled in him by the "world" - is epitomized in the very first stanza of the first book by his stunningly self-centred thoughts about being with the dying uncle whose estate he is to inherit.
"But God how deadly dull to sample
sickroom attendance night and day
...
and sighing ask oneself all through
"When will the devil come for you?"
However, the "devil comes for Onegin" when he literally kills the innocent and the sincere, shooting Lensky in the duel, and metaphorically kills innocence and sincerity when he rejects Tatyana. She learns her lesson, and armoured against feelings and steeped in convention she crushes his later sincerity and remorse. (This epic reversal of roles, and the work's broad social perspectives, provide ample justification for its subtitle "a novel in verse".)
Tatyana's nightmare illustrates the concealed aggression of the "world". She is chased over a frozen winter landscape by a terrifying bear (representing the ferocity of Onegin's inhuman persona) and confronted by demons and goblins in a hut she hopes will provide shelter. This is contrasted to the open vitality of the "real" people at the country ball, giving dramatic emphasis to the war of warm human feelings with the chilling artificiality of society.
So, Onegin has lost his love, killed his only friend, and found no satisfaction in his life. He is a victim of his own pride and selfishness.
He is doomed to loneliness, and this is his tragedy.
The conflict between art and life was no mere fiction in Russia. It is illustrated by Pushkin's own fate, having been killed in a duel. He was driven to death, falling victim to the social conventions of Russian high society.
Composition and publication
As with many other 19th century
novelA novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
s,
Onegin was written and published
serialIn literature, a serial is a publishing format by which a single large work, most often a work of narrative fiction, is presented in contiguous installments—also known as numbers, parts, or fascicles—either issued as separate publications or appearing in sequential issues of a single periodical...
ly, 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 on 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
OdessaOdessa or Odesa is the administrative center of the Odessa Oblast located in southern Ukraine. The city is a major seaport located on the northwest shore of the Black Sea and the fourth largest city in Ukraine with a population of 1,029,000 .The predecessor of Odessa, a small Tatar settlement,...
between February 8 and May 31, 1824. Pushkin's incurred the displeasure of the Tsarist regime in Odessa and was restricted to his family estate Miskhaylovskoe in
PskovPskov is an ancient city and the administrative center of Pskov Oblast, Russia, located in the northwest of Russia about east from the Estonian border, on the Velikaya River. Population: -Early history:...
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 Tsar 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
choleraCholera is an infection of the small intestine that is caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. The main symptoms are profuse watery diarrhea and vomiting. Transmission occurs primarily by drinking or eating water or food that has been contaminated by the diarrhea of an infected person or the feces...
, 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. It contained many satire and even direct criticism on contemporary Russian rulers, including the
Emperor himselfNicholas I , was the Emperor of Russia from 1825 until 1855, known as one of the most reactionary of the Russian monarchs. On the eve of his death, the Russian Empire reached its historical zenith spanning over 20 million square kilometers...
. Afraid of being prosecuted for dissidence, Pushkin burnt most of the 10th Chapter. Very little of it survived in Pushkin's notebooks.
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.
The duel
In Pushkin's time, the early 19th century,
duelA duel is an arranged engagement in combat between two individuals, with matched weapons in accordance with agreed-upon rules.Duels in this form were chiefly practised in Early Modern Europe, with precedents in the medieval code of chivalry, and continued into the modern period especially among...
s were very strictly regulated. A second's primary duty was to prevent the duel from actually happening, and only when both combatants were unwilling to stand down were they to make sure that the duel proceeded according to 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 even once if he would like to apologise, and because Onegin is not allowed to apologise on his own initiative, the duel takes place, with fatal consequences. Zaretsky is described as
classical and pedantic in duels (Chapter 6, Stanza XXVI), and 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, Zaretsky gets several more chances to prevent the duel from happening. Because dueling was forbidden in the
Russian EmpireThe Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
, 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 which was the last action to take from a noble man. (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, in the end Onegin wins the Duel.
Allusions to actual history, geography, and current science
In the book, Pushkin claims that Eugene Onegin is his friend. Indeed, Onegin's story resembles the life of Pushkin's friend,
Pyotr ChaadaevPyotr or Petr Yakovlevich Chaadayev was a Russian philosopher born in Moscow.Chaadayev wrote eight "Philosophical Letters" about Russia in French between 1826-1831, which circulated in Russia as manuscript for many years...
, to whom Pushkin devoted several poems, and whose name is mentioned in the first chapter of the original Russian version, where it says "my Eugene is like a second Chaadaev." Chaadaev is also the prototype for other Russian literary works. Tatyana's prototype is Dunia Norova, Chaadaev's friend, who is mentioned in the second chapter of the original Russian version.
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.
Arndt and Nabokov
Walter W. ArndtWalter Arndt born 1916 of German parents in Istanbul, Turkey , he is the Sherman Fairchild Professor of Humanities, Emeritus, of Russian Language and Literature at Dartmouth College...
'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 translationThe Bollingen Prize for Poetry, which is currently awarded every two years by Beinecke Library of Yale University, is a literary honor bestowed on an American poet in recognition of the best book of new verse within the last two years, or for lifetime achievement.-Inception and controversy:The...
. It is still considered one of the best translations.
Vladimir NabokovVladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a multilingual Russian novelist and short story writer. Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist...
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 YorkerThe New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
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 WilsonEdmund Wilson was an American writer and literary and social critic and noted man of letters.-Early life:Wilson was born in Red Bank, New Jersey. His father, Edmund Wilson, Sr., was a lawyer and served as New Jersey Attorney General. Wilson attended The Hill School, a college preparatory...
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.
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 speakers of English to reach for the dictionary on occasion — but most agree that the translation is extremely accurate.
Other English translations
Babette Deutsch published a translation in 1935 preserving the Onegin stanzas.
In 1977,
Charles JohnstonSir Charles Hepburn-Johnston GCMG, KStJ was a senior British diplomat.-Biography:He was born in London, the son of Ernest Johnston and Emma Hepburn, on 11 March 1912. He was educated at Winchester College, and Balliol College, Oxford, joining the Diplomatic Service in 1936...
published another translation
http://lib.ru/LITRA/PUSHKIN/ENGLISH/onegin_j.txt trying to preserve the Onegin stanza, which is generally considered to surpass Arndt's. Johnston's translation is influenced by Nabokov.
Vikram SethVikram Seth is an Indian poet, novelist, travel writer, librettist, children's writer, biographer and memoirist.-Early life:Vikram Seth was born on 20 June 1952 to Leila and Prem Seth in Calcutta...
's novel
The Golden Gate was inspired by this translation.
James E. FalenJames E. Falen is a professor emeritus of Russian at the University of Tennessee. He published a translation of Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin in 1990 which was also influenced by Nabokov's translation, but preserved the Onegin stanzas...
(the professor of Russian at the
University of TennesseeThe University of Tennessee is a public land-grant university headquartered at Knoxville, Tennessee, United States...
) 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 Pushkin's spirit according to Russian critics and translators.
Douglas HofstadterDouglas Richard Hofstadter is an American academic whose research focuses on consciousness, analogy-making, artistic creation, literary translation, and discovery in mathematics and physics...
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 MarotLe Ton beau de Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language , published by Basic Books in 1997, is a book by Douglas Hofstadter in which he explores the meaning, strengths, failings, and beauty of translation....
. 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 April 2008,
Henry M. HoytHenry Martyn Hoyt, Sr. was the 18th Governor of Pennsylvania from 1879 to 1883, as well as a general in the Union army during the American Civil War.-Early life and career:...
published, through Dog Ear Publishing, a translation which preserves the meter of the Onegin stanza, but is unrhymed, his stated intention being to avoid the verbal changes forced by the invention of new rhymes in the target language while preserving the rhythm of the source. (ISBN 978-159858-340-3).
In September 2008,
Stanley MitchellStanley Mitchell was a British translator, academic, and author, noted for his English verse translation of Alexander Pushkin's Russian verse novel Eugene Onegin.-Life and works:...
, emeritus professor of aesthetics at the
University of DerbyThe University of Derby is a university in the city of Derby, England. The main site is on Kedleston Road, Allestree in the north-west of Derby close to the A38 opposite Markeaton Park...
, published, through
Penguin BooksPenguin Books is a publisher founded in 1935 by Sir Allen Lane and V.K. Krishna Menon. Penguin revolutionised publishing in the 1930s through its high quality, inexpensive paperbacks, sold through Woolworths and other high street stores for sixpence. Penguin's success demonstrated that large...
, a complete translation, again preserving the Onegin stanzas in English. (ISBN 978-0-140-44810-8 )
There are a number of lesser known English translations
http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~pml1/onegin/welcome.htm.
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 ChiracJacques René Chirac is a French politician who served as President of France from 1995 to 2007. He previously served as Prime Minister of France from 1974 to 1976 and from 1986 to 1988 , and as Mayor of Paris from 1977 to 1995.After completing his studies of the DEA's degree at the...
also wrote a translation which was never published.
German
There are at least a dozen published translations of
Onegin in
GermanGerman is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
.
- Carl Friedrich von der Borg, Eugenius Onegin, Erster Abschnitt, in "Der Refraktor. Ein Centralblatt Deutschen Lebens in Russland." Dorpat,1836 in fünf Folgen, beginnend am 1.August 1836 in der Nr.14, endend in der Nr.18 vom 29.August 1836
- R. Lippert, Verlag von Wilhelm Engelmann, Leipzig 1840
- Friedrich Bodenstedt, Verlag der Deckerschen Geheimen Ober-Hofbuchdruckerei, Berlin 1854
- Adolf Seubert, Reclam, Leipzig 1872/73
- Dr. Blumenthal, Moskau 1878
- Dr. Alexis Lupus, nur das 1.Kapitel, Leipzig und St. Petersburg 1899
- Theodor Commichau, Verlag G. Müller, München und Leipzig 1916
- Theodor Commichau und Arthur Luther, 1923
- Theodor Commichau und Arthur Luther und Maximilian Schick, SWA-Verlag, Leipzig und Berlin 1947
- Elfriede Eckardt-Skalberg, Verlag Bühler, Baden-Baden 1947
- Johannes von Guenther, Reclam, Leipzig 1949
- Theodor Commichau und Konrad Schmidt, Weimar 1958
- Theodor Commichau und Martin Remané, Reclam, Leipzig 1965
- Manfred von der Ropp und Felix Zielinski, Winkler, München 1972
- Kay Borowsky, Reclam, Stuttgart 1972 (Prosaübersetzung)
- Rolf-Dietrich Keil, Wilhelm Schmitz Verlag, Gießen 1980
- Ulrich Busch, Manesse, Zürich 1981
- Sabine Baumann, unter Mitarbeit von Christiane Körner, Stroemfeld, Frankfurt am Main 2009
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).
Opera
The 1879 opera
Eugene Onegin, by
TchaikovskyPyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Russian: Пётр Ильи́ч Чайко́вский ; often "Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky" in English. His names are also transliterated "Piotr" or "Petr"; "Ilitsch", "Il'ich" or "Illyich"; and "Tschaikowski", "Tschaikowsky", "Chajkovskij"...
, based on the book, is part of the standard operatic repertoire; there are various recordings of it, and it is regularly performed.
Ballet
John CrankoJohn Cyril Cranko was a choreographer with the Sadler's Wells Ballet and the Stuttgart Ballet....
choreographed a three-act ballet using
Tchaikovsky'sPyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Russian: Пётр Ильи́ч Чайко́вский ; often "Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky" in English. His names are also transliterated "Piotr" or "Petr"; "Ilitsch", "Il'ich" or "Illyich"; and "Tschaikowski", "Tschaikowsky", "Chajkovskij"...
music in an arrangement by
Kurt-Heinz StolzeKurt-Heinz Stolze was a German pianist, harpsichordist and composer.He was born in Hamburg. He studed piano, organ and conducting at the Hamburg Conservatory with Wilhelm Brückner-Rüggeberg. His first engagement was as repetiteur at the Royal Opera, Copenhagen. In 1957 he joined the Württemberg...
. However, Stolze did not use any music from Tchaikovsky’s
opera of the same nameEugene Onegin, Op. 24, is an opera in 3 acts , by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The libretto was written by Konstantin Shilovsky and the composer and his brother Modest, and is based on the novel in verse by Alexander Pushkin....
. Instead, he orchestrated some little-known piano works by Tchaikovsky such as
The SeasonsThe Seasons, Op. 37a is a set of twelve short character pieces for solo piano by the Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Each piece is the characteristic of a different month of the year in the northern hemisphere. The work is also sometimes heard in orchestral and other arrangements by...
, along with themes from the opera
CherevichkiCherevichki [alternative renderings are The Little Shoes, The Tsarina's Slippers, Les caprices d'Oxane, and Gli stivaletti] is a comic-fantastic opera in 4 acts, 8 scenes, by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. It was composed in 1885 in Maidanovo, Russia...
and the latter part of the symphonic fantasia
Francesca da RiminiPyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's symphonic poem Francesca da Rimini: Symphonic Fantasy after Dante, Op. 32, was composed in less than three weeks during his visit to Bayreuth in the autumn of 1876....
..
Choreographer
Boris EifmanBoris Eifman is a prolific choreographer associated with the Eifman Ballet of St. Petersburg. He is known for his dark portrayals of anguished sexuality and extreme psychological states. The company frequently tours abroad, and has been economically successful...
staged modern rendition of Eugene Onegin as a ballet taking place in modern Moscow. Performed by Eifman Ballet of St. Petersburg, music by Alexander Sitkovetsky, with excerpts from Tchaikovsky opera "Eugene Onegin".
Incidental music
A staged version was produced in the
Soviet UnionThe Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
in 1936 with staging by
Alexander TairovAlexander Tairov was one of the leading innovators of theatrical art, and one of the most enduring theatre directors in Russia, and through the Soviet era.-Childhood:...
and
incidental musicIncidental music is music in a play, television program, radio program, video game, film or some other form not primarily musical. The term is less frequently applied to film music, with such music being referred to instead as the "film score" or "soundtrack"....
by
Sergei ProkofievSergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor who mastered numerous musical genres and is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century...
.
Play
Christopher WebberChristopher Webber is an English actor, dramatist, theatre director, writer and music critic.-Biography :Webber was born in Cheshire and educated at The Manchester Grammar School and the University of Kent at Canterbury...
's play
Tatyana was written for
Nottingham PlayhouseThe Nottingham Playhouse is a theatre in Nottingham, England. It was first established as a repertory theatre in the 1950s when it operated from a former cinema. Directors during this period included Val May and Frank Dunlop.-The building:...
in 1989. It successfully combines spoken dialogue and narration from the book, with music arranged from
TchaikovskyPyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Russian: Пётр Ильи́ч Чайко́вский ; often "Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky" in English. His names are also transliterated "Piotr" or "Petr"; "Ilitsch", "Il'ich" or "Illyich"; and "Tschaikowski", "Tschaikowsky", "Chajkovskij"...
's operatic score, and incorporates some striking theatrical sequences inspired by Tatyana's dreams in the original. The title role was played by
Josie LawrenceJosie Lawrence is a British comedienne and actress best known for her work with the Comedy Store Players improvisational troupe, the television series Whose Line Is It Anyway? and more recently her role as Manda Best in EastEnders....
, and the director was Pip Broughton.
Film
- In 1911, the first screen version of the novel was filmed: the Russian silent film "Yevgeni Onegin" ("Eugene Onegin"), directed by Vasili Goncharov and starring Arseniy Bibikov, Petr Birjukov and Pyotr Chardynin
Pyotr Ivanovich Chardynin was a Russian film director, screenwriter, and actor. Pyotr Chardynin, one of the pioneers of the film industry in the Russian Empire, directed over a hundred silent films during his career.-Biography:...
.
- In 1919 in Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
was produced a silent film "Eugen Onegin", based on the novel. The film was directed by Alfred Halm, starring Frederic ZelnikFrederic Zelnik was one of the most important producers-directors of the German silent cinema. He also appeared on screen as an actor.-Early life and career:...
as Onegin.
- In 1958 Lenfilm
Kinostudiya "Lenfilm" is a production unit of the Russian film industry, with its own film studio, located in Saint Petersburg, Russia, formerly Leningrad, R.S.F.S.R. Today OAO "Kinostudiya Lenfilm" is a corporation with its stakes shared between private owners, and several private film studios,...
produced a TV film "Eugene OneginEugene Onegin is 1958 Soviet opera film, produced by Lenfilm Studio, directed by Roman Tikhomirov, starring Vadim Medvedev, Igor Ozerov and Ariadna Shengelaya....
", which was, actually, not a screen version of the novel, but a screen version of the opera "Eugene OneginEugene Onegin, Op. 24, is an opera in 3 acts , by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The libretto was written by Konstantin Shilovsky and the composer and his brother Modest, and is based on the novel in verse by Alexander Pushkin....
" by Pyotr Tchaikovsky. The film was directed by Roman Tikhomirov and starred Vadim Medvedev as Onegin, Ariadna Shengelaya as Tatyana and Igor Ozerov as Lensky.The principal solo parts were performed by notable opera singers of the Bolshoi TheatreThe Bolshoi Theatre is a historic theatre in Moscow, Russia, designed by architect Joseph Bové, which holds performances of ballet and opera. The Bolshoi Ballet and Bolshoi Opera are amongst the oldest and most renowned ballet and opera companies in the world...
.The film was well received by critics and viewers.
- In 1972 Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF) produced a music film "Eugen Onegin"
- In 1988, Decca/Channel 4 produced a film adaptation of Tchaikovsky's opera, directed by Petr Weigl. Sir Georg Solti
Sir Georg Solti, KBE, was a Hungarian-British orchestral and operatic conductor. He was a major classical recording artist, holding the record for having received the most Grammy Awards, having personally won 31 as a conductor, including the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In addition to his...
acted as the conductor, while the cast featured Michal Docolomanský as Onegin and Magdaléna VášáryováMagdaléna Vášáryová , is a Slovak actress and diplomat, prominent for her liberal anti-nationalist stances. In 1971 she completed her studies at Comenius University in Bratislava. Until 1989 she acted in several Slovak theatres, including Slovak National Theatre and in numerous movies...
as Tatyana. One major difference from the novel is the duel: Onegin is presented as deliberately shooting to hit and is unrepentant at the end.
- In 1994 was produced the TV film Yevgeny Onyegin, directed by Humphrey Burton, starring Wojtek Drabowicz as Onyegin.
- The 1999 film, "Onegin
Onegin is a 1999 British-American romantic drama film based on Alexander Pushkin's novel in verse Eugene Onegin, co-produced by British and American companies and shot mostly in the United Kingdom...
", is an EnglishEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
adaptation of Pushkin's work, directed by Martha FiennesMartha Fiennes is a British film director, writer and producer. An award-winning director, Fiennes is best-known for her films Onegin and Chromophobia .-Career:...
, starring Ralph FiennesRalph Nathaniel Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes is an English actor and film director. He has appeared in such films as The English Patient, In Bruges, The Constant Gardener, Strange Days, The Duchess and Schindler's List....
as Onegin, Liv TylerLiv Rundgren Tyler is an American actress and model. She is the daughter of Aerosmith's lead singer, Steven Tyler, and Bebe Buell, model and singer. Tyler began a career in modeling at the age of 14, but after less than a year she decided to focus on acting. She made her film debut in the 1994...
as Tatiana, and Toby StephensToby Stephens is an English stage, television and film actor who has appeared in films in both Hollywood and Bollywood. He is best known for playing megavillain Gustav Graves in the James Bond film Die Another Day , Edward Fairfax Rochester in the BBC television adaptation of Jane Eyre and Philip...
as Lensky.The film compresses the events of the novel somewhat: for example, the Naming Day celebrations take place on the same day as Onegin's speech to Tatiana. The 1999 film, much like the 1988 one, also gives the impression that during the duel sequence Onegin deliberately shoots to kill. This screen version was also criticized for a number of mistakes and inconsistencies.
External links