The history of the creation of the novel "Eugene Onegin" by Pushkin: the history of writing chapter by chapter. Biography of Eugene Onegin Years of work on Eugene Onegin

The novel by Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin "Eugene Onegin" can rightfully be considered one of the most striking works of the era. The time period in which the novel was written is fully reflected in the atmosphere and structure of the novel. The history of the creation of "Eugene Onegin" is a painstaking work on the crown of Russian literature.

Time of writing

The plot of the work takes place between 1819 and 1825. The era of the creation of "Eugene Onegin" is fully reflected in the work and covers not only historical events, but psychological portraits of the heroes of that time. The author himself notes that the creation of the work was not easy for him. He writes that "Eugene Onegin" is "the fruit of the mind of cold observations", but at the same time, "the sad notes of the heart" reflect Pushkin's deep immersion in the study and analysis of the mores of the nobility, his emotional experiences.

The year the work was written is not a clear date. Work on "Eugene Onegin" begins in the spring of 1823. At this time, Alexander Sergeevich is in the city of Chisinau, in exile. The author finished writing the novel already after the first chapters were published in a fashionable magazine at that time. Work on the work was completed in 1830 in Boldino.

The novel reflects the first half of the 19th century. After the defeat of the Napoleonic army, during the campaigns of Russian soldiers, society in Russia actively developed under the leadership of the ruler Alexander I. It was at this time that the plot of the novel unfolds.

Structure of the novel

"Eugene Onegin" was the author's transition from writing in the style of romanticism to the style of realism. The novel includes 8 separate chapters. Each of them is a completely finished passage. The novel has an "open structure". Each of the chapters could be the finale, but the story continues in a new chapter. With the help of this technique, Pushkin tried to draw attention to the fact that each of the chapters is independent and integral. The author himself defines the novel as "a collection of motley chapters."

Initially, 9 chapters were planned as part of the work. The part about the journey of the protagonist was supposed to be the eighth in a row. It was written, but at the last moment Pushkin decided to cross it out of the book.

"Eugene Onegin" - an encyclopedia of Russian life

The novel in verse has become a real asset classical literature, because thanks to "Eugene Onegin" you can understand exactly how the representatives of the described layer of society lived at that time. Literary critics, researchers, representatives of Russian literature call "Eugene Onegin" a textbook novel. V. G. Belinsky wrote about the novel that it can be considered an encyclopedia of life in Russia of that era.

The novel, which is presented to the reader as a love story, is full of details and descriptions of the life of the nobles of the 19th century. It describes the details of life, the characters that were inherent in that era in a very wide and accessible way. The complexity of the plot and the beauty of the composition attract the reader and immerse him in the atmosphere of time. The history of the creation of the work includes a deep study and understanding of life in general by the author. The life of Russia of that time is truly reflected in "Eugene Onegin". The novel describes how the nobles lived and what they wore, what was in fashion and what values were revered in those days. Briefly, the author also described the peasant life in the countryside. Together with the author, the reader is transported both to aristocratic Moscow and elegant St. Petersburg.

This article describes the history of the creation of the novel "Eugene Onegin". The material will help write an essay on this topic. The way Pushkin carefully wrote the novel, how he studied life and conveyed it on paper, with what love he speaks about his heroes, suggests that diligent creative work was carried out on the work. The history of writing a work, like the novel itself, and like life itself, is an example of deep love for the Russian word and its people.

Artwork test

Eugene Onegin ”- a novel written by Pushkin, is one of the cult Russian works that has gained worldwide fame and has been translated into many languages. It is also one of the novels written in poetic form, which gives it a special style and attitude to the work of a wide range of readers, who often quote passages by heart, remembering them from school.

Alexander Sergeevich spent about seven years to complete the narrative line. He begins work on the first stanzas at the beginning of May 23, settling in the territory of Chisinau and finishing the last stanzas of the work on September 25, 1830 in Boldino.

ChapterI

Pushkin begins to create a poetic work in Chisinau on May 9, 1823. Finishes it in the same year on October 22 in Odessa. Then the author revised what was written, so the chapter was published only in 1825, and the second edition was published at the end of March 1829, when the book was actually completed.

ChapterII

The poet begins the second chapter as soon as the first one has been completed. By November 3, the first 17 stanzas were written, and on December 8 it was completed and included 39. In 1824, the author revised the chapter and added new stanzas, it was released only in 1826, but with a special indication of when it was written. In 1830 it was published in another edition.

ChapterIII

Pushkin begins writing the passage on February 8, 1824 in the resort Odessa, and by June he managed to finish writing to the place where Tatyana writes a letter to her lover. The rest he creates in his beloved Mikhailovsky and finished on October 2, 1824, the publication came out in mid-October of the twenty-seventh year.

ChapterIV

In October 1824, while in Mikhailovsky, the poet begins to write another chapter, which stretches out for a couple of years, due to other creative ideas. This happened due to the fact that the author during this time worked on such works as "Boris Godunov" and "Count Nikulin". The author finished work on the chapter already on January 6, 1826, at this moment the author is finishing the last stanza.

ChapterV

The author begins the fifth chapter a few days before he finished the previous one. But writing took time, as it was created with significant interruptions in creativity. On November 22, 1826, Alexander Sergeevich finished this part of the story, and after that it was edited several times until the finished version was obtained.

The edition was combined with the previous part of the narrative and printed on the last day of January 1828.

ChapterVI

Alexander Sergeevich began to create an excerpt from the work while in Mikhailovsky during 1826. There are no exact dates of writing, as the original manuscripts have not survived. According to assumptions, he finished it in August 1827, and in 1828 it was published for a wide range of readers.

ChapterVII

According to critics, the seventh chapter was started immediately after the writing of the sixth. So around August 1827. The narrative itself was written with long breaks in creativity, and by mid-February 1828, only 12 stanzas had been created. The chapter was completed in Malinniki, and after that it was published as a book, but only by mid-March 1830.

ChapterVIII

Started on December 24, 1829 and completed only at the end of September 1830 on the territory of Boldin. On October 5, 1831, on the territory of Tsarskoye Selo, Pushkin writes an excerpt from Onegin's written appeal to his beloved. The chapter was completely published in 1832, and on the cover there is an inscription: "The last chapter of "Eugene Onegin"".

Chapter on Onegin's Journey

Part of the story was not published in a whole novel, but was written, according to the author's assumption, he wanted to place it in eighth place immediately after the seventh chapter, and lead to Onegin's death in the work.

ChapterX(drafts)

Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin planned to release part of the work, but it was never published, and before modern reader only isolated excerpts and drafts have survived. Presumably, the author was going to send the main character on a long journey through the territory of the Caucasus, where he was to be killed.

But the sad ending did not reach the reader, it was already quite tragic, since Eugene himself realized late the feelings that were strong in him, and his beloved had already managed to get married.

A distinctive feature is that all the chapters were published separately, and only then the book was published in full. The society of that time was looking forward to the release of the next passages in order to find out how the fate of Eugene Onegin ended, who could not see sincere feelings in time. Some of the parts never saw the light of day, such as chapter ten. Readers can only guess how the fate of the main characters developed after the end of the book narrative.

The history of the creation of Eugene Onegin briefly

"Eugene Onegin" - the first work written in realistic direction and the only example of a novel in verse in Russian literature. To this day, it occupies an important place in the multifaceted work of the great Russian poet and writer Alexander Pushkin. The process of writing the work from the first to the last stanzas of the novel took many years. During these years, some of the most important events in the history of the country took place. At the same time, Pushkin was "reborn" into the first realist writer of Russian literature, the old view of reality was being destroyed. This, of course, is reflected in the novel. The plans and tasks of Alexander Pushkin as an author are changing, compositional construction and the plan of Onegin take on a different form, the characters and destinies of his heroes lose some of their romanticism.

Alexander Sergeevich worked on the novel for more than seven years. The whole soul of the poet was brought to life in the work. According to the poet himself, the novel was "the fruit of the mind of cold observations and the heart of sad remarks."

Alexander Sergeevich began the process of creating the novel in the spring of 1823 in Kishinev, while in exile. Despite the obvious influence of romanticism, the work is written in a realistic style. The novel was supposed to have nine chapters, but ended up with eight. Fearing long-term persecution by the authorities, the poet destroyed fragments of the chapter "Onegin's Journey", which could become provocative.

The novel in verse was published in editions. This is called the "main edition". Excerpts were published in magazines. Readers eagerly awaited the release of a new chapter. And each of them made a splash in society.

The first complete edition did not appear until 1833. The last lifetime publication occurred in January 1837 and contained the author's corrections and typographical errors. Subsequent editions were subjected to severe criticism and censorship. Names were replaced, spelling was unified.

From the plot of the novel, you can learn almost everything you need about the era in which the acting characters are: characters, conversations, interests, fashion. The author very clearly reflected the life of Russia of that period, life. The atmosphere of the existence of the heroes of the novel is also true. Sometimes the novel is called historical, since in this work the era in which the main plot unfolds is almost thoroughly conveyed. Thus, the well-known Russian literary critic Vissarion Grigoryevich Belinsky wrote: “First of all, in Onegin we see a poetically reproduced picture of Russian society, taken at one of the most interesting moments in its development.” Based on this statement, we can assume that the critic considers the work as historical poem.At the same time, he noted that there was not a single historical figure in the novel.Belinsky believed that the novel was a genuine encyclopedia of Russian life and a truly folk work.

The novel is a unique work of world literature. The entire volume of the work is written in an unusual " Onegin stanza", excluding the letters of Evgeny and Tatyana. Fourteen lines of iambic tetrameter were created by Alexander Sergeevich specifically for writing a novel in verse. The unique combination of stanzas became a hallmark of the work, and later Mikhail Lermontov wrote the poem “The Tambov Treasurer” in 1839 with the “Onegin stanza”.

A truly great work was created by Alexander Pushkin not in the simplest years of his life and the life of the country as a whole, but the novel in verse can rightly be considered a masterpiece not only of Russian, but also of world literature.

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Eugene Onegin. Pushkin's illustration. With a few strokes of the pen, the type, character is conveyed and a hint of Byron is made. Only a person with all the makings of a professional artist can draw like that.

"Eugene Onegin", Pushkin's main work, is a poem about nothing. A young nobleman goes to the estate, the daughter of a neighbor landowner falls in love with him. The nobleman is indifferent to her. Out of boredom, he kills a friend in a duel and leaves for the city. A few years later he meets a rejected girl, this is now the young wife of a wealthy man. The hero tries to court her, but is refused. Everything.

It is not interesting. Not just uninteresting, but mockingly uninteresting. This is the plot of "Count Nulin" and "The House in Kolomna" - elegant jokes, from the point of view of the content of the components with "Eugene Onegin" a kind of triptych. "Vanka is at home - Manka is not, Manka is at home - Vanka is not." But "Onegin" is a whole book, and "Nulin" and "House" together do not make even one chapter of the poem.

Even such an empty plot in Pushkin falls apart. The duel scene is unmotivated, this is the same insert as the battle scene in Poltava, and even worse - the murder of Lensky should lead to the development of Onegin's character, ( positive hero turns into negative), but this is not there to tears. The author continues to admire "his Eugene".

Byron as a romantic poet. The real Byron resembled him just as Pushkin resembled Eugene Onegin.

Obviously, "Eugene Onegin" was written in imitation of Byron's "Don Juan", and from the point of view of the author's "I", the ironic style of narration and numerous digressions, this is undoubtedly true. But try to compare the content of two poems and you will start laughing in two minutes.

The action of Don Juan begins in Spain in the mid-18th century. Main character, almost a child, becomes the mother's friend's lover, and, caught by her husband in the bedroom, flees on a ship to Italy. The ship crashes, the passengers and crew perish, and the young Don Juan is thrown onto a deserted shore. He is found there by the beautiful Hyde, the daughter of a Greek pirate, and falls in love. But soon their father discovers them, captivates Don Juan and takes them to Constantinople to the slave market. The girl is dying of boredom. In Constantinople, the hero of the poem changes into a woman's dress and ends up in the Sultan's harem, where he falls in love with the beautiful Georgian woman Duda. Exposed, he, together with a fellow sufferer, an English officer, fled to Izmail, where Suvorov was conducting military operations against the Turks. Don Juan shows miracles of heroism, saves a five-year-old Turkish girl from the clutches of angry Cossacks, receives a Russian order and is sent by Suvorov to St. Petersburg with a victorious report. Here he, it was, becomes Catherine's favorite, but soon leaves for London as a Russian envoy.

Illustration for "Don Juan". Favorite scene of the English: decide who is.

Young man find charming Greek women on the shore. Somewhere about it already wrote, and for a long time.

By the absence of events, "Eugene Onegin" is similar to Byron's comic poem "Beppo". The action of the poem takes place in Venice, a noble townswoman's husband disappears without a trace, she finds herself a permanent lover. But many years pass, and the husband appears in the form of a Turkish merchant. It turns out he was kidnapped by pirates, he converted to Islam, got rich and fled. As if nothing had happened, his wife begins to flirt with him, asking if he has a harem, if an oriental robe interferes with him, etc. The "merchant" shaves off his beard and becomes her husband again. And a friend of a lover. At the same time, all adventures remain behind the scenes. Tru-la-la.

But “Beppo”, like “The House in Kolomna”, is a very small thing, and Byron never attached serious importance to it (which would be strange).

There is a whole trend among Pushkin's illustrators that imitates the poet's sketches. The beginning of this tradition was laid by the artist Nikolai Vasilievich Kuzmin, whose illustrations for "Eugene Onegin" were awarded a gold medal at the world exhibition in Paris in 1937.

Some consolation to the literary criticism of "Eugene Onegin" could serve as a satirical orientation of the poem. But neither is she. Also to tears. Byron's Don Juan, as it was written, began to degenerate into a satirical work - when the story reached the shores of the author's foggy homeland. That is, at the moment at which I stopped the retelling of the content of the poem above. After that, the development of the plot slows down, and the author begins to itch:

“There were two talented lawyers here,
Irish and Scottish by birth, -
Very learned and very eloquent.
Tweed's son was Cato by courtesy;
Erin's son - with the soul of an idealist:
Like a brave horse, in a fit of inspiration
He reared up and "carried" something,
When the potato question came up.

The Scot spoke wisely and decorously;
The Irishman was dreamy and wild:
Sublime, whimsical, picturesque
His enthusiastic language sounded.
The Scot was like harpsichords;
The Irishman is like a rushing spring,
It rang, always disturbing and beautiful,
Aeolian harp sweet-voiced.

There is no "potato question" and polemics between the Baltic Germans and crests in "Eugene Onegin". Even at the very beginning of work on the poem, Pushkin wrote to one of his correspondents:

“No one respects Don Juan more than me… but it has nothing in common with Onegin. You talk about the satire of the Englishman Byron and compare it with mine, and demand the same from me! No, my soul, you want a lot. Where is my satire? there is no mention of her in "Eugene Onegin". My embankment would crackle if I touched satire. The very word "satirical" should not be in the preface.

("Embankment" is the center of St. Petersburg, that is Winter Palace and the government. The word "satirical" is present in the preface, anonymously written by Pushkin himself, but in quotation marks of irony - see below.)

In this context, Belinsky declared (8 years after Pushkin's death) that "Eugene Onegin" is an "encyclopedia of Russian life":

“In his poem, he was able to touch on so many things, to hint about so many things, that he belongs exclusively to the world of Russian nature, to the world of Russian society! "Onegin" can be called an encyclopedia of Russian life and an eminently folk work.

"Encyclopedia of hints" - strong word! The famous "eleven articles on the writings of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin" are very detailed and endlessly fragmented philosophies of a village teacher. It is not clear “why and who needs this”, because the vocation of village teachers is to teach village children, and manuals for village teachers are written by city professors, but Belinsky is not such a fool. In his articles one can find (if desired) some common sense, especially when he writes about his own, rural. But the long-winded and childishly meticulous author does not confirm his thesis “about the encyclopedia”.

However, the "encyclopedia" was very liked by the Russian "critical mass" and went into growth like a dough.

Another amazing fragment from Belinsky's articles:

“Pushkin’s great feat was that he was the first in his novel to poetically reproduce the Russian society of that time and, in the person of Onegin and Lensky, showed its main, that is, the male side; but the feat of our poet is almost higher in that he was the first to poetically reproduce, in the person of Tatyana, a Russian woman.

Such monumentality is reminiscent of the beginning of the “Green Book” of the tragically deceased Arab enlightener: “A man is a man. A woman is also a person.

In fact, there is not only little action in Onegin, but the descriptions of this action are conditional and literary. Not only does the "encyclopedia" consist of five pages, not only are these pages filled not with articles, but with "hints", it is also "non-Russian".

Nabokov, in his commentary on Eugene Onegin, writes:

“We are not at all a “picture of Russian life”, at best, it is a picture depicting a small group of Russian people living in the second decade of the 19th century, having similarities with the more obvious characters of Western European novels and placed in a stylized Russia, which will immediately fall apart , if the French props are removed and if the French scribes of English and German authors stop suggesting words to Russian-speaking heroes and heroines. Paradoxically, from the point of view of the translator, the only essential Russian element of the novel is precisely the speech, the language of Pushkin, flowing in waves and breaking through the poetic melody, the like of which Russia has not yet known.

And elsewhere in the same comments:

“Russian critics… in a little over a century have accumulated the most boring heap of comments in the history of civilized mankind… thousands of pages were devoted to Onegin as a representative of something (he is both a typical “extra person”, and a metaphysical “dandy”, etc.)… And here is an image borrowed from books, but brilliantly rethought by a great poet, for whom life and a book were one, and placed by this poet in a brilliantly recreated environment, and played by this poet in a whole series of compositional situations - lyrical transformations, brilliant foolishness, literary parodies and etc., - is given out by Russian pedants (Nabokov probably meant to say "gelerters") for a sociological and historical phenomenon characteristic of the reign of Alexander I.

The problem (PROBLEM) of Belinsky is that he is not a writer. The basis of national literary criticism is the opinions of writers about each other, and, above all, the opinions of outstanding writers about each other. This is also followed by memoir literature (15%) and 15% of the work of textual critics and historians (which, at the very least, critics can be). As soon as critics close in on each other, they replace meaningful conversation with the production of ideological constructs. It's not that unnecessary, but simply "not there."

In the Russian history of literature, you will see many statements by Belinsky, Pisarev, Dobrolyubov, and so on, about writers, but very few statements by Pushkin, Gogol, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and so on. about each other. Obviously, this is not about that.

To this we can add that much more interesting fact are not the statements of the critics about the professionals, but the statements of the professionals about the critics. Regarding Belinsky, Pushkin remarked through his teeth:

“If with independence of opinion and with his wit he would combine more learning, more erudition, more respect for tradition, more circumspection - in a word, more maturity, then we would have a very remarkable criticism in him.”

Belinsky, not being a writer, did not understand the compositional and stylistic tasks facing professional writers. For example, the fact that the “spleen”, “spleen” of the protagonist is a very beneficial literary device that allows you to make arbitrary movements of the character across the space of the work. Why did Chichikov travel around the province and meet with the landowners? He had a business - he bought up dead souls. But the simplest "case" is idleness and boredom. Chichikov could meet with Nozdrev, Sobakevich and Plyushkin (and thus give the reader the same periodic system of human types) "just like that." Not much would have changed.

Under the boredom of Onegin, the basis was summed up " extra person”, which did not find a worthy application in tsarist Russia. And why did you miss the "London dandy"? After all, England had a constitutional monarchy and a parliament.

Maybe it's just a "bored male", which, in fact, is conveyed by the then euphemisms " socialite and "secular tiger". And a Russian proverb about a cat and eggs.

It must be said that Nabokov talks quite a lot in his comments about the shortcomings of Pushkin's "hallocentrism", which leads to the fact that our poet looked at Byron's work through the cloudy glasses of mediocre translations.

But Pushkin's shortcoming in this case was also a virtue. Nabokov's Anglocentrism was normal in the era of the Anglo-French interwar, and provided a bonus in the era of post-war Anglo-Saxon dominance. But the world of Pushkin AND BYRON is equally gallocentric. If Nabokov sneers at Pushkin's ignorance of German and of English language, forcing him to read French translations, then the English and German authors of that time themselves, in turn, were colossally dependent on French literature.

Mentioning the "spleen" in his Don Juan, Byron immediately refers to the French origin of the term.

“So the men went hunting.
Hunting at a young age is ecstasy
And later - a sure remedy for spleen,
Idleness made it easier more than once.
French "ennui" ("boredom" - approx.) Not without a reason
So it took root in Britain with us;
Found a name in France
The yawns of our boring suffering.

So, what is the famous English spleen? Nothing but a PHYSICAL imitation of the insufficiently cultured islanders of the LITERARY RECEPTION of the developed French civilization.

Byron as a character in a French novel.

Or, - why be trifles, - Apollo. Oh, those little peoples! (In 1800, there were less than 9 million English people and they grew by leaps and bounds.)

But this is closer to the topic. Although here the red-faced esquire still tried to maintain an interesting pallor, and the features of obvious alcohol degradation were softened as much as possible.

In his youth, before the period of alcoholic maturity, Byron was a lame-footed, absent-minded student with a somewhat stupid face. Which, of course, does not detract from his poetic gift, as well as the miserable appearance of Alexander Sergeevich.

If the Georgians have been world chess champions among women for a long time, then the British have won a place among the trendsetters - for men. At the same time, the English "Coco Chanel" Handsome Brummel, whom the British still admire, was a syphilitic with a sunken nose and cleaned his boots with champagne.

In the same way, Byron's personal life is an imitation of the highly talented but also undereducated English botanist of the adventures of the main characters of contemporary French novels. But Benjamin Constant, for all his declared autobiography, did not look like the protagonist of his "Adolf", and in the same way Chateaubriand did not look like the hero of "Rene". The writer very rarely dances naked in the moonlight, although he constantly describes such dances in his works. Pushkin, following Byron, began to dance the hips, but quickly stopped - because he was more cultured, that is, in this case, he knew the culture of France better and felt it better.

Village teachers, in general, say the right things. Once such a teacher invented bis logarithmic tables. Eugene Onegin really was an "extra person", being the alter ego of an "extra poet" - Alexander Pushkin.

What is the reason for writing this work? What did the author mean by this? Nabokov believes that the reason is in the immanent properties of Pushkin's genius - but this is not a cause, but a consequence. Pushkin solved the artistic problem in the way he could solve it. The question is why this task was set.

With "Eugene Onegin" Pushkin sat on the floor and began to run his finger over his lips: blah blah, blah blah.

And it was done on purpose. Pushkin began to write specifically about nothing. The “House in Kolomna” and “Count Nulin” were written in the same way, and with the same IDEOLOGICAL pathos.

The meaning of "Onegin" is revealed in a rough draft of the preface to the first chapter. Pushkin writes:

“Let us be allowed to draw the attention of the most respectable public and gentlemen of journalists to a dignity that is still new in a satirical writer: the observation of strict decency in a comic description of morals. Juvenal, Petronius, Voltaire and Byron - not infrequently did not retain due respect for the reader and for the fair sex. They say that our ladies are beginning to read Russian. - We boldly offer them a work where they will find true and entertaining observations under a light veil of satirical gaiety. Another merit, almost equally important, which brings no small credit to our author's gentleness of heart, is the complete absence of offensive transition to personalities. For this should not be attributed solely to the paternal vigilance of our censorship, the guardian of morals, state tranquility, no matter how carefully guarding citizens from the attack of the ingenuous slander of mocking frivolity ... "

“Several songs or chapters of “Eugene Onegin” are already ready. Written under the influence of favorable circumstances, they bear the imprint of cheerfulness ... "

"Favorable Circumstances" is a reference that had an excellent effect on the good-naturedness of the author, who wrote a light, decent work that can be safely recommended to wives and daughters (a paraphrase of Piron's remark, made by him sincerely, but sounding mockingly in the mouth of a pornographic poet, about which Pushkin later wrote in one of the notes).

In other words, "Eugene Onegin" is a trifle for censorship, which is the only one able to allow such things to go into print, as well as a harsh and shrill, but still an apology from a teenager. This is a "correction" of Pushkin, who was exiled to the South for political epigrams, about which he speaks with foolishness in the draft of the preface.

Men's fashion of the Pushkin era. Its legislators were of course not the British, but the French. The British at the beginning of the 19th century carved out only a certain sector for themselves, and so far they have not advanced further than this ghetto. Which is also not bad - Russians or Germans do not have this either.

Probably in such a case, everything would have been limited to one or two or three chapters, but Pushkin (and the public) liked it, and he wrote great work. In general, the best of what they wrote.

And it didn't happen by accident either. Pushkin felt that story line for his poem is not very important. Moreover, due to the imitative nature of the work, it only interferes, for it turns free variations into dull rewriting (INEVITABLE at that level of Russian literary culture).

Oddly enough, it is the lack of action that makes Onegin so interesting to read. Imagine that the whole poem is written in the style of the destroyed "tenth chapter" (preserved in fragments). There it is smartly, witty and boldly written about history and politics, but this is mortal longing. (I believe that Alexander Sergeevich fully understood that the British humor of Byron and Stern would inevitably be replaced on Russian soil by furious rhymes.)

"Uninteresting plot" only enhances the true interest of Pushkin's main work. These are "cubes of the Russian language." Only these are not cubes for children, consisting of letters and syllables, but cubes for teenagers and even adults - cubes of phrases, feelings, comparisons, rhymes. "Eugene Onegin" is the Iliad of the Russian literary language, what the modern Russian language is made of. Reading "Onegin", memorizing it by heart is a real pleasure.

"More cupids, devils, snakes
They jump and make noise on the stage;
More tired lackeys
They sleep on fur coats at the entrance;
Haven't stopped stomping yet
Blow your nose, cough, hiss, clap;
Still outside and inside
Lanterns are shining everywhere;
Still, vegetating, the horses are fighting,
Bored with your harness,
And the coachmen, around the lights,
Scold the gentlemen and beat in the palm -
And Onegin went out;
He's going home to get dressed."

All this is spoken, thought through, felt, seen and heard (correct the mistake in the verb yourself). Imagine that you do not know the Russian language and suddenly you are given an injection of its perfect knowledge. And you begin to speak Russian, hear and understand Russian speech. Feel its phonetics, rhythm, style. Or some mind was given a human body, and it starts hissing, clapping, jumping, stomping and jumping on one leg - everything is so cool, dexterous and unusual. That is why the study of "Eugene Onegin" is the pinnacle of foreign knowledge of the Russian language, and that is why foreigners who have mastered the Russian language rejoice in "Eugene Onegin" so much.

There are a lot of illustrations for "Eugene Onegin", and what happens quite rarely, there are many successful ones among them. This is a drawing by Samokish-Sudkovskaya, an artist of the late 19th century. She was reproached for "excessive prettiness", but after all, "Onegin" is largely REAL female romance and female illustrations are quite appropriate here. A thought that would infuriate Nabokov (a teacher of literature at a women's college).

And of course, why "Eugene Onegin" in translation is completely incomprehensible. This should be asked of the eccentric Nabokov. Of course, it was very interesting for a bilingual prose writer and poet to translate, this is clear. But then ... Nobody read the Nabokov translation - like everyone else.

But there is something else in Onegin. Otherwise, Russian culture would be bent and ached in Croatia or Poland. This is the "other" quality that I drew attention to when speaking about the structure of Pushkin's "Monument": PHILOLOGICAL EXCESSENCE.

Even the first lines of "Eugene Onegin" for a complete understanding require comments on several pages.

"My uncle of the most honest rules,
When I fell ill in earnest,
He forced himself to respect
And I couldn't think of a better one."

The first line is a hidden quote from Krylov's fable "The Donkey and the Man": "The donkey had the most honest rules." The donkey, hired to guard the cabbage in the garden, did not touch it, but chasing the crows, crushed it with its hooves. That is, uncle is an honest fool, a simpleton.

(Sometimes it is believed that the expression “I forced myself to respect” is not only Gallicism, but also a euphemism meaning death: “I forced everyone to stand up”, “I forced me to take off my hat”, “I forced me to honor my memory.” This is not true, since at the end of the chapter indicates that Onegin is going to a dying, but not yet dead relative.)

In addition, the entire quatrain is a direct imitation of the first chapter of Don Juan, which refers to the protagonist's uncle:

“The late Don José was a nice fellow…

He died without leaving a will
And Juan became the heir to everything ... "

The beginning of "Eugene Onegin" is zakovykanny, this is a transfer not even of words, but of the thoughts of the protagonist:

"Thus thought the young rake,
Flying in the dust on postage,
By the will of Zeus
Heir to all his relatives."

But a strange thing, if you do not know the philological context of the first quatrain, it will of course be read incorrectly, but this still will not affect the general meaning.

If you know the context, Pushkin wrote: “Eugene believes that his uncle is a straightforward fool, foolishly (that is, suddenly) ill deadly disease and gave hope for an early inheritance.

If you don’t know the context, then the following is written: “Eugene considers his uncle a highly moral person who demands the same high qualities from relatives and makes them take care of their health.”

The continuation of the stanza puts everything in its place in both cases:

“His example to others is science;
But my god, what a bore
With the sick to sit day and night,
Not leaving a single step away!
What low deceit
Amuse the half-dead
Fix his pillows
Sad to give medicine
Sigh and think to yourself:
When will the devil take you!

Both the "bad uncle" and the "good uncle" infuriate the nephew equally.

And here is an illustration that Alexander Sergeevich would undoubtedly like very much. After all, this is his 3D sketch of Onegin.

The first stanza of "Eugene Onegin" imitates the poems of Byron, but at the same time relies on the national tradition (still very frail). It is also ambiguous, but this ambiguity spares the inattentive reader.

The whole poem is written in a similar vein. Commentaries (underlined incomplete) Nabokov to this work amounted to a thousand pages. This piece is intricate and very well thought out. Dreams and predictions of Tatyana foresee the further development of the plot, the scene of the murder of Lensky and the last meeting of Onegin with Tatyana take place as if in a dream (in parallel reality). Tatyana's firm "no" does not look at all as firm as it seems, and of course, in general, "Onegin" is the same super-literary work as Cervantes' "Don Quixote", all built on allusions to a huge layer of chivalric novels. In this case, this romance novels 18th - early 19th century.

From the point of view of a literary critic, "Eugene Onegin" is an unthinkable synthesis of borrowings and originality. This is the devil's box...

"Eugene Onegin" creates the illusion of a huge literary tradition. Starting from THIS starting point, the Russians AS LIKE began their serious literature not from the beginning of the 19th century, but at least a hundred years earlier. Pushkin destroyed the cultural odds of the Europeans. Whereas the real tradition - and "tradition" is primarily a living fabric of literary controversy - arose after the death of Pushkin.

Thanks to this strange circumstance, Russian culture turns out to be autonomous (circular). She can grow on her own. At the beginning of the 20th century, it was brushed off the planet, and at the end of the 20th, the crumbs also disappeared - as if it were not there. What has changed in the world? Nothing. In eternity, everything that was Russian, of course, remained. But living life...

And what would have happened if in 1917 the entire Western civilization had been wiped off the planet? And also nothing - the Russians would have had enough of themselves to continue to exist. There would be no degeneration. Even the destruction after 1917 took the Russians three generations of humiliation and murder to finally shut up.

Such completeness and autonomy is already contained in Pushkin (of course, in a potential form). By the way, some segments of his world did not turn around further, having dried up.

In conclusion of this chapter, I would advise reading "Eugene Onegin" to those who did not read it in adulthood or did not learn at least a few stanzas in childhood.

First, you will see the language you speak in its virginal purity. This language was created by Pushkin, and "Eugene Onegin" is the main work of the poet and the work, to the maximum extent, served as the basis of modern Russian vocabulary.

Secondly, - especially for people prone to intellectual abstractions - you will see how easily and how perfectly in our language it is possible to speak two-, three-, and even four-meanings, revealing gradually, and maybe never, but not disrupting the general train of thought.

Comparing La Fontaine (a fabulist, not a prose writer) with Krylov, Pushkin noted that despite the fact that, of course, Krylov imitates the famous Frenchman, there is a significant difference between them. La Fontaine, like all Frenchmen, is simple-hearted (straightforward, clear), and Krylov, like all Russians, has a "merry cunning of the mind."

Or, as the seminarian Klyuchevsky rudely said, both Great Russians and Ukrainians are deceivers. Only Ukrainians like to pretend to be smart, and Russians are fools.

In the end, the first graduation of the Alexander Lyceum produced two great people: the great poet Alexander Pushkin and the great diplomat Alexander Gorchakov.

Gorchakov. Pushkin's drawing.

The formation of a civil, or social, current of Russian romanticism is directly related to the creation of the Union of Salvation (1816-1817), the Union of Welfare (1818-1821), the Northern and Southern secret societies (1823-1825). The documents of these societies contained political guidelines relating, in particular, to belles-lettres. Thus, the Welfare Union formulated its tasks in the field of art and literature as follows: “To find means for the fine arts to give the proper direction, which consists not in pampering the senses, but in strengthening and exalting our moral being.” In general, the Decembrists assigned a secondary role to literature and viewed it as a means of agitation and propaganda of their views. This, however, did not mean that they did not pay attention to the quality of literary production or that they all had the same literary tastes and predilections. Some accepted romanticism, others disavowed it. The Decembrists understood romanticism itself in different ways: some accepted the lessons of the "school of harmonic accuracy", while others rejected them. Among them, based on the definition given by Yu.N. Tynyanov, were "archaists" - supporters of the traditions of high civil lyrics of the 18th century, views on the literary language of Shishkov, and "innovators" who mastered the stylistic principles of the poetic language of Zhukovsky and Batyushkov. Among the "archaists" are P.A. Katenin, V.K. Kuchelbecker, to the "innovators" - A.A. Bestuzhev (Marlinsky), K.F. Ryleev, A.I. Odoevsky and others. A variety of literary tastes and talents, interest in various topics, genres and styles does not prevent us from highlighting the general tendencies of Decembrist romanticism, which gave a face to the civil, or social, trend in Russian romanticism during the heyday of the Decembrist movement, i.e. until 1825 The tasks of Decembrist literature were to educate readers' civic feelings and views. This reflects its connection with the traditions of the 18th century, with the Enlightenment. From the position of the Decembrists, human feelings are brought up not in a narrow friendly, family circle (as, for example, in V. Zhukovsky, K. Batyushkov), but in the public arena, on civil, historical examples. This forced the Decembrists, following the writers of the first years of the 19th century. (for example, V. Popugaev, who wrote the articles “On the Necessity of Historical Knowledge for Public Education”, “On History as a Subject of Political Education”, etc.) turn to national history. The historical past of different peoples (Russia, Ukraine, Livonia, Greece, both modern and ancient, ancient Rome, ancient Judea, etc. ) most often becomes the object of the image in the works of the Decembrists. Some periods of Russian history, from the point of view of the Decembrists, are key - they vividly expressed the common features of Russian national identity. One of these periods is the formation and then the tragic death of the veche republics of Novgorod and Pskov (historical ballads by A. Odoevsky "Ambassadors of Pskov", "Zosima", "The Elder Prophetess", A. Bestuzhev's story "Roman and Olga", etc. ). The veche republics were presented to the Decembrists as a model of civil order, the original form of life in Russian society. The Decembrists contrasted the history of the republics of Novgorod and Pskov with the history of Moscow, which personified the despotic tsarist rule (for example, the story "Roman and Olga" is based on this opposition). In the history of the Time of Troubles (XVIII century), the Decembrists found confirmation of their idea that without clear moral and civic guidelines in a difficult, transitional time, a human person cannot take place (A. Bestuzhev’s story “The Traitor”, V. Kuchelbeker’s drama “Prokofy Lyapunov " and etc.). The personality of Peter and the era of Peter's transformations were ambiguously assessed in the Decembrist (as well as in subsequent) literature. The most significant works on this topic, expressing opposing positions, are the thoughts and poems of K. Ryleev “Peter the Great in Ostrogozhsk”, “Voynarovsky”, on the one hand, the novels and articles of A. Kornilovich “Prayer for God, but service does not disappear for the king ", "The morning is wiser than the evening"; “The customs of Russians under Peter I” (“On the private life of Emperor Peter I”, “On the entertainment of the Russian court under Peter I”, “On the first balls in Russia”, “On the private life of Russians under Peter I”) - on the other. The Decembrists were especially interested in such historical figures of Ukraine as Bogdan Khmelnitsky, Mazepa, Voinarovsky, and others (the story "Zinovy Bogdan Khmelnitsky" by F. Glinka, the thought "Khmelnitsky" and the poem "Voinarovsky" by K. Ryleev, etc.). The history of the Livonian states became the subject of depiction in the historical stories of the Decembrists: in the cycle of “Castle stories” by A. Bestuzhev (“Castle Eisen”, “Castle Wenden” (1821), “Castle Neuhausen”, “Reval Tournament” (1824), in the story N . Bestuzhev "Hugo von Bracht" (1823), etc.). The artistic historicism of the Decembrist literature is peculiar. The task of the artist-citizen is to "understand the spirit of the times and the purpose of the century" (K. Ryleev). From the point of view of the Decembrists, "the spirit of the times and the purpose of the century" turn out to be similar for many peoples in different historical periods. The dramatic struggle of the tyrant-fighters against tyranny, the demand for a structure of life on the basis of firm and reasonable laws, form the content of various historical eras. Historical themes provided an opportunity for the manifestation of the active character of the hero of the Decembrist literature, therefore, historical works embodied in various genres (lyric epic, epic, dramatic) are most common in their work. The genre-species range of the Decembrists' works is extremely wide. AT creative heritage Decembrist writers embodied the genres of lyrical (from elegy, friendly message to ode), lyrical epic (from ballad, thought to lyrical poem), epic (from fable, parable to story), dramatic (from comedy to historical drama). The Decembrists sharply raised the question of the national identity of literature, of the development of nationally distinctive forms. A. Bestuzhev in the article “A Look at Russian Literature during 1824 and the Beginning of 1825” wrote: “We have sucked with milk the lack of people and surprise only to someone else. Measuring our works with the gigantic yardstick of other people's geniuses, we see our own smallness even smaller from above, and this feeling, not warmed by people's pride, instead of arousing the zeal to create what we do not have, tries to humiliate even what we have. The desire to find fresh, original and, most importantly, nationally original forms for Russian literature, corresponding to the growing national self-consciousness, is characteristic of the genre searches of the Decembrists. For example, the appearance in the 1810s of ballads by V.A. Zhukovsky was an important event in Russian literature. However, the Decembrists perceived Zhukovsky's ballads "as a genre stylization, the transfer of ready-made things", as translations from English, German and other languages. This could not satisfy the writers who aspired to national original literature. The Decembrist ballad (P. Katenin, A. Odoevsky, V. Kuchelbeker) was consciously oriented to the themes of Russian, often historical life, to the national hero, to the use of imagery and style of folklore, works of ancient Russian literature. In the 1820s, K. Ryleev began to master the genre of duma, which was close to the ballad, but was an independent art form dating back to Ukrainian and Polish literature. An important aspect of the stylistic manner of the Decembrists was the use of word-signals in the works. The word-signal is a certain poetic sign, with the help of which mutual understanding is established between the writer and the reader: the writer gives the reader a signal about the indirect meaning of this or that word, that the word is used by him in a special civil or political sense. This is how the Decembrists create their own stable poetic vocabulary, their own stable imagery, which have quite definite and immediately recognizable associations. For example, the words high (“Slaves, dragging fetters, Do not sing high songs!”), saint (“Holy love for the motherland”), sacred (“A sacred duty to you ...”) imply not only a strong and solemnly expressed feeling, but before of all the feeling inherent in a patriotic citizen, and are synonymous with the word civil. The word Slav evokes associations of civic prowess and freedom-loving ancestors. The Decembrists often call themselves to them, opposing those contemporaries ("reborn Slavs") who forgot about civic duty. The words slave, chains, dagger, tyrant, law, etc. were filled with civic content. The names of Cassius, Brutus (Roman politicians who led the republican conspiracy against Caesar), Cato (the Roman republican who committed suicide after the establishment of Caesar's dictatorship) became significant for the Decembrists, Riegi (the leader of the Spanish revolution of the 19th century), N.I. Panin (a Russian statesman who tried to limit the power of Catherine the Great), N.S. Mordvinov (a member of the State Council, who believed that the power of the tsar should be limited by the constitution), etc. The Decembrists saw the path of national development of literature in turning to Russian or common Slavic subjects, putting forward in them an acutely conflict situation in which they could most advantageously show his best civic-patriotic qualities and freedom-loving feelings are a positive hero, a socially active and courageous person. In this regard, the Decembrists made an attempt to create an updated system of genres, in which the "medium" (elegies, messages, ballads, thoughts, poems) and even "low" ("subject" and other songs) genres would be filled with high, meaningful content, and " high” genres would be animated by a lively personal, intimate feeling (hence such rapprochements are understandable - “joyful blood”, “love burns for freedom”, “joyful hour of freedom”, “And the glory of magnificent sweet freedom”). Thus, the Decembrists violated genre thinking and contributed to the transition to thinking in styles. Even if subjectively they denied romanticism (Katenin), they nevertheless objectively acted as real romantics, proclaiming the ideas of nationality, historicism (however, without rising to true historicism), and individual freedom.

Poetry K.F. Ryleeva

One of the brightest Decembrist poets of the younger generation was Kondraty Fedorovich Ryleev. His creative life did not last long - from the first student experiments in 1817-1819. until the last poem (early 1826), written in the Peter and Paul Fortress. Widespread fame came to Ryleev after the publication of the ode-satire "To the temporary worker" (1820), which was written in a completely traditional spirit, but was distinguished by its bold content. Initially, in Ryleev's poetry, poems of different genres and styles coexist in parallel - odes and elegies. The "rules" of the then piitiks weighed heavily on Ryleyev. Civil and personal themes are not yet mixed, although the ode, for example, is acquiring a new structure. Its theme is not the glorification of the monarch, not military prowess, as was the case in the lyrics of the 18th century, but ordinary civil service. The peculiarity of Ryleev's lyrics is that he not only inherits the traditions of civil poetry of the last century, but also assimilates the achievements of the new, romantic poetry of Zhukovsky and Batyushkov, in particular the poetic style of Zhukovsky, using the same stable verse formulas. Gradually, however, the civic and intimate streams in the poet's lyrics begin to intersect: elegies and messages include civic motifs, while ode and satire are imbued with personal moods. Genres and styles begin to mix. In other words, in the civil, or social, course of Russian romanticism, the same processes take place as in the psychological course. The hero of elegies, messages (genres that were traditionally dedicated to describing intimate experiences) is enriched with the features of a social person (“V.N. Stolypina”, “On the Death of Byron”). Civil passions receive the dignity of living personal emotions. This is how genre barriers collapse, and genre thinking suffers significant damage. This trend is characteristic of the entire civic branch of Russian romanticism. Typical, for example, is Ryleev's poem "Will I be in a fateful time ...". On the one hand, the features of ode and satire are obvious in it - high vocabulary (“fatal time”, “citizen of dignity”), iconic references to the names of heroes of antiquity and modernity (Brutus, Riego), contemptuous accusatory expressions (“pampered tribe”) , oratory, declamatory intonation, designed for oral pronunciation, for public speech addressed to the audience; on the other hand, an elegiac reflection imbued with sadness about the fact that the younger generation does not enter the civil field. Dumas . Since 1821, a new genre for Russian literature began to take shape in Ryleev's work - thoughts, a lyrical epic work similar to a ballad, based on real historical events, legends, devoid, however, of fantasy. Ryleev especially drew the attention of his readers to the fact that the thought is an invention of Slavic poetry, that as a folklore genre it existed for a long time in Ukraine and Poland. In the preface to his collection Dumy, he wrote: “The Duma is an ancient heritage from our southern brothers, our Russian, native invention. The Poles took it from us. Until now, Ukrainians sing thoughts about their heroes: Doroshenko, Nechai, Sahaidachny, Paley, and Mazepa himself is credited with writing one of them. At the beginning of the XIX century. this genre of folk poetry became widespread in literature. It was introduced into literature by the Polish poet Nemtsevich, whom Ryleev referred to in the same preface. However, not only folklore became the only tradition that influenced the literary genre of the Duma. In the duma, one can distinguish signs of a meditative and historical (epic) elegy, ode, anthem, etc. The poet published the first duma - "Kurbsky" (1821) with the subtitle "elegy", and only starting with "Artemon Matveev" does a new genre definition appear - the thought . The similarity with the elegy was seen in the works of Ryleev by many of his contemporaries. So, Belinsky wrote that “a thought is a trinity for a historical event or simply a song of historical content. Duma is almost the same as an epic elegy. Critic P.A. Pletnev defined the new genre as "a lyrical story of some event." Historical events are comprehended in Ryleev's thoughts in a lyrical way: the poet is focused on expressing the inner state of a historical personality, as a rule, at some climax of life. Compositionally, the thought is divided into two parts - a biography into a moral lesson that follows from this biography. Two principles are connected in the Duma - epic and lyrical, hagiographic and propaganda. Of these, the main thing is lyrical, agitational, and biography (hagiography) plays a subordinate role. Almost all thoughts, as Pushkin noted, are built according to one plan: first, a landscape, local or historical, is given, which prepares the appearance of the hero; then, with the help of a portrait, the hero is displayed and immediately delivers a speech; from it the background of the hero and his current state of mind become known; What follows is a summary lesson. Since the composition of almost all thoughts is the same, Pushkin called Ryleev a "planner", referring to the rationality and weakness of an artistic invention. According to Pushkin, all thoughts come from the German word dumm (stupid). Ryleev's task was to give a broad panorama of historical life and create monumental images of historical heroes, but the poet solved it in a subjective-psychological, lyrical way. Its purpose is to excite the patriotism and love of freedom of contemporaries with a high heroic example. At the same time, a reliable depiction of the history and life of the heroes faded into the background. In order to tell about the life of the hero, Ryleev turned to the sublime language of civil poetry of the 18th - early 19th centuries, and to convey the feelings of the hero - to the poetic style of Zhukovsky (see, for example, in the thought "Natalya Dolgorukaya": "Fate gave me joy In my sad exile…”, “And into the soul, compressed by melancholy, Involuntarily poured sweetness”). The psychological state of the heroes, especially in a portrait, is almost always the same: the hero is depicted only with a thought on his forehead, he has the same postures and gestures. Heroes of Ryleev most often sit, and even when they are brought to execution, they immediately sit down. The environment in which the hero is located is a dungeon or a dungeon. Since the poet portrayed historical figures in his thoughts, he faced the problem of embodying a national historical character - one of the central ones both in romanticism and in the literature of that time in general. Subjectively, Ryleev was not at all going to encroach on the accuracy of historical facts and "correct" the spirit of history. Moreover, he strove to observe historical truth and relied on Karamzin's History of the Russian State. For historical persuasiveness, he attracted the historian P.M. Stroev, who wrote most of the prefaces-comments to the thoughts. And yet this did not save Ryleyev from taking a too free view of history, from a peculiar, albeit unintentional, romantic-Decembrist anti-historicism. The Genre of Thought and the Concept of Romantic Historicism of the Decembrists . As a romantic, Ryleev placed the personality of a freedom-loving patriot at the center of national history. History, from his point of view, is the struggle of freedom lovers with tyrants. The conflict between the adherents of freedom and despots (tyrants) is the engine of history. The forces involved in conflict never disappear or change. Ryleev and the Decembrists do not agree with Karamzin, who asserted that the past century, having left history, never returns in the same forms. If this were the case, the Decembrists, including Ryleev, decided, then the connection between times would break up, and patriotism and love of freedom would never reappear, because they would lose their parental soil. As a result, love of freedom and patriotism as feelings are not only characteristic, for example, of the 12th and 19th centuries, but are also the same. The historical person of any past century is equated to a Decembrist in his thoughts and feelings (Princess Olga thinks in a Decembrist way, talking about the “injustice of power”, Dimitry Donskoy’s soldiers are eager to fight “for liberty, truth and law”, Volynsky is the embodiment of civil courage). From this it is clear that, wanting to be true to history and historically accurate, Ryleev, regardless of personal intentions, violated historical truth. His historical heroes thought in terms of Decembrist concepts and categories: patriotism and love of freedom of the heroes and the author did not differ in any way. And this means that he tried to make his heroes at the same time what they were in history, and his contemporaries, thereby setting himself contradictory and, therefore, impossible tasks. Ryley's anti-historicism aroused a strong objection from Pushkin. Regarding the anachronism committed by the Decembrist poet (in the duma “Oleg the Prophetic” the hero Ryleev hung his shield with the coat of arms of Russia on the gates of Constantinople), Pushkin, pointing to a historical mistake, wrote: “... during the time of Oleg, there was no Russian coat of arms - and the double-headed eagle is Byzantine and means the division of the empire into Western and Eastern ... ". Pushkin understood Ryleev well, who wanted to shade Oleg's patriotism, but did not forgive the violation of historical authenticity. Thus, the national-historical character was not artistically recreated in the thoughts. However, the development of Ryleev as a poet went in this direction: in the thoughts "Ivan Susanin" and "Peter the Great in Ostrogozhsk" the epic moment was noticeably enhanced. The poet improved the transfer of national color, achieving greater accuracy in describing the situation (“a slanting window” and other details), his narrative style also became stronger. And Pushkin immediately responded to these shifts in Ryleev's poetry, noting the thoughts "Ivan Susanin", "Peter the Great in Ostrogozhsk" and the poem "Voinarovsky", in which he, not accepting the general plan and character of historical figures, especially Mazepa, appreciated the efforts Ryleev in the field of poetic narration.

Poem "Voynarovsky". The poem is one of the most popular genres of romanticism, including civil or social.

Ryleyev's poem "Voynarovsky" (1825) was written in the spirit of romantic poems by Byron and Pushkin. The basis of the romantic poem is the parallelism of pictures of nature, stormy or peaceful, and the experiences of an exiled hero, whose exclusivity is emphasized by his loneliness. The poem developed through a chain of episodes and monologues of the hero. The role of female characters in comparison with the hero is always weakened. Contemporaries noted that the characteristics of the characters and some episodes are similar to the characteristics of the characters and scenes from Byron's poems "Gyaur", "Mazeppa", "Corsair" and "Parisina". There is also no doubt that Ryleev took into account Pushkin's poems "The Prisoner of the Caucasus" and "The Fountain of Bakhchisarai", written much earlier. Ryleev's poem has become one of the brightest pages in the development of the genre. This is due to several factors. First, the love story, so important to the romantic poem, is relegated to the background and noticeably muted. There is no love collision in the poem: there are no conflicts between the hero and his beloved. Voinarovsky's wife voluntarily follows her husband into exile. Secondly, the poem was distinguished by its accurate and detailed reproduction of pictures of the Siberian landscape and Siberian life, revealing to the Russian reader a natural and everyday way of life largely unknown to him. Ryleev consulted with the Decembrist V.I. Shteingel about the objectivity of the painted pictures. At the same time, the harsh Siberian nature and life are not alien to the exile: they corresponded to his rebellious spirit (“I was pleased with the noise of the forests, I was pleased with the bad weather, And the howling storm and the splashing of the ramparts”). The hero was directly correlated with the natural element related to his moods and entered into complex relationships with it. Thirdly, and most importantly, the originality of Ryley's poem lies in the unusual motivation for exile. In a romantic poem, the motivation for the hero's alienation, as a rule, remains ambivalent, not entirely clear or mysterious. Voinarovsky ended up in Siberia not of his own free will, not as a result of disappointment, and not in the role of an adventurer. He is a political exile, and his stay in Siberia is forced, determined by the circumstances of his tragic life. In the exact indication of the reasons for the expulsion - Ryleev's innovation. This both concretized and narrowed the motivation for romantic alienation. Finally, fourthly, the plot of the poem is connected with historical events. The poet intended to emphasize the scale and drama of the personal destinies of the heroes - Mazepa, Voinarovsky and his wife, their love of freedom and patriotism. How romantic hero, Voinarovsky is ambivalent: he is depicted as a tyrant-fighter, thirsting for national independence, and a prisoner of fate ("I was promised cruel fate"). The poem revealed in the process of evolution an attraction to the epic, to the genre of the story in verse, evidence of which was the strengthening of the narrative style in the poem "Voinarovsky". He was noticed and approved by Pushkin, especially praising Ryleev for his "sweeping style." Pushkin saw in this Ryleev's departure from the subjective-lyrical manner of writing. In a romantic poem, as a rule, a single lyrical tone dominated, the events were colored by the author's lyrics and were not of independent interest to the author. Ryleev broke this tradition and thereby contributed to the creation of verse and stylistic forms for an objective image. His poetic searches corresponded to Pushkin's thoughts and the needs of the development of Russian literature.

History of creation

Pushkin began work on Onegin in 1823, during his southern exile. The author abandoned romanticism as the leading creative method and began to write a realistic novel in verse, although the influence of romanticism is still noticeable in the first chapters. Initially, it was assumed that the novel in verse would consist of 9 chapters, but later Pushkin reworked its structure, leaving only 8 chapters. He excluded from the work the chapter "Onegin's Journey", which he included as an appendix. After that, the tenth chapter of the novel was written, which is an encrypted chronicle from the life of future Decembrists.

The novel was published in verse in separate chapters, and the release of each chapter became a big event in contemporary literature. In 1831 the novel in verse was finished and in 1833 it was published. It covers events from 1819 to 1825: from the foreign campaigns of the Russian army after the defeat of Napoleon to the Decembrist uprising. These were the years of the development of Russian society, during the reign of Tsar Alexander I. The plot of the novel is simple and well known. At the center of the novel is a love affair. And the main problem is the eternal problem of feeling and duty. The novel "Eugene Onegin" reflected the events of the first quarter of the 19th century, that is, the time of creation and the time of the novel approximately coincide. Reading the book, we (readers) understand that the novel is unique, because earlier in the world literature there was not a single novel in verse. Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin created a novel in verse like Byron's poem Don Juan. Defining the novel as a “collection of motley chapters”, Pushkin emphasizes one of the features of this work: the novel is, as it were, “opened” in time, each chapter could be the last, but it can also have a continuation. And thus the reader draws attention to the independence of each chapter of the novel. The novel has become an encyclopedia of Russian life in the 20s of the century before last, since the breadth of the novel shows readers the whole reality of Russian life, as well as the multi-plot and description of different eras. This is what gave grounds to V. G. Belinsky in his article "Eugene Onegin" to conclude:

“Onegin can be called an encyclopedia of Russian life and an eminently folk work.”

In the novel, as in the encyclopedia, you can learn everything about the era: about how they dressed, and what was in fashion, what people valued most, what they talked about, what interests they lived. "Eugene Onegin" reflected the whole of Russian life. Briefly, but quite clearly, the author showed the serf village, lordly Moscow, secular Petersburg. Pushkin truthfully portrayed the environment in which the main characters of his novel live - Tatyana Larina and Eugene Onegin. The author reproduced the atmosphere of the city noble salons, in which Onegin spent his youth.

Plot

The novel begins with a squeamish speech by the young nobleman Eugene Onegin, dedicated to the illness of his uncle, which forced him to leave St. Petersburg and go to the patient's bed in the hope of becoming the heir to the dying. The narrative itself is conducted on behalf of the nameless author, who introduced himself as a good friend of Onegin. Having marked the plot in this way, the author devotes the first chapter to the story of the origin, family, life of his hero before receiving news of the illness of a relative.

Lotman

"Eugene Onegin" is a difficult work. The very lightness of the verse, the familiarity of the content, familiar to the reader from childhood and emphatically simple, paradoxically create additional difficulties in understanding Pushkin's novel in verse. The illusory idea of the "comprehensibility" of the work hides from the consciousness of the modern reader a huge number of incomprehensible words, expressions, phraseological units, allusions, quotations. Thinking about a verse that you know from childhood seems to be unjustified pedantry. However, it is worth overcoming this naive optimism of an inexperienced reader in order to make it obvious how far we are even from a simple textual understanding of the novel. The specific structure of the Pushkin novel in verse, in which any positive statement of the author can be imperceptibly turned into an ironic one, and the verbal fabric seems to slip, passing from one speaker to another, makes the method of forcible extraction of quotations especially dangerous. In order to avoid this threat, the novel should be viewed not as a mechanical sum of the author's statements on various issues, a kind of anthology of quotations, but as an organic art world, parts of which live and receive meaning only in relation to the whole. A simple list of problems that Pushkin "poses" in his work will not introduce us into the world of Onegin. The artistic idea implies a special type of life transformation in art. It is known that for Pushkin there was a "devilish difference" between poetic and prosaic modeling of the same reality, even while maintaining the same themes and issues.

Comments on the novel

One of the first comments on the novel was a small book by A. Volsky, published in 1877. Comments by Vladimir Nabokov, Nikolai Brodsky, Yuri Lotman, S. M. Bondi became classics.

Psychologists about the work

Influence on other works

The type of "superfluous person", introduced by Pushkin in the image of Onegin, influenced all subsequent Russian literature. From the closest illustrative examples - surname "Pechorin" in Lermontov's "Hero of Our Time", as well as the name of Onegin is formed from the name of the Russian river. Many psychological characteristics are also close.
In the modern Russian novel "The Onegin Code" written under a pseudonym Brain Down, we are talking about the search for the missing chapter of Pushkin's manuscript.
In Yesenin's poem "Anna Snegina".