The relationship between Onegin and Tatyana is built on the principle of antithesis, opposition. But at the heart of this confrontation lies potential commonality. Like two oppositely charged poles of a magnet, Onegin and Tatyana are drawn to each other. Tatyana’s character contains positive life values ​​that Onegin needs so much and from which he is so far away.

At the same time, there is something in common between all the young heroes of the novel. And Onegin, and Lensky, and Tatyana have spiritually outgrown the environment that surrounds them. After all, Tatiana also feels like a stranger in her patriarchal-noble environment. “Imagine: I’m here alone, / No one understands me, / My mind is exhausted, / And I must die in silence,” she laments in her love letter to Onegin.

But unlike Onegin, Tatyana grows up in a different environment, in different conditions. Her main advantage over the “non-Russian” Onegin and the “half-Russian” Lensky is that, according to Pushkin’s definition, Tatyana is “Russian in soul.” And the author explains why she is like this. In contrast to Onegin, Tatyana grew up in the “wildness of a forgotten village,” in proximity to the people, in the atmosphere. fairy tales, songs, fortune-telling, beliefs and “legends of common folk antiquity”. Pictures of Tatiana's childhood, adolescence and youth echo Onegin's life according to the principle of antithesis: they are opposite in everything.

Evgeny has foreign tutors, Tatyana has a kind nanny, a simple Russian peasant woman, whom you can easily guess is Pushkin’s own nanny - Arina Rodionovna. Onegin has “the science of tender passion”; Tatyana has love of poverty, helping the poor and humble prayer, which “delights the melancholy of a troubled soul.” Onegin has a vain youth, reminiscent of a repeated ritual day after day - “a long row of the same dinners.” Tatyana has the solitude and concentration of a silently ripening soul.

Talking about Tatyana’s childhood, Pushkin introduces motifs from hagiographic literature into the novel for a reason. The childhood of all Orthodox righteous women was accompanied by alienation from fun, from children's games and pranks. Tatyana “didn’t play burners”, “she was bored by the ringing laughter and the noise of their windy joys”:

Thoughtfulness, her friend

From the most lullabies of days,

The flow of rural leisure

Decorated her with dreams.

Avoiding children's pranks, she loved on long winter evenings to listen to her nanny's stories, in which the legends of deep antiquity came to life. If Onegin led an unnatural lifestyle in his youth, “reversing the morning into midnight,” then Tatyana’s youth is obedient to the rhythms of nature and the rhythms of folk life that agree with it:

She loved on the balcony

Warn the dawn,

When on a pale sky

The round dance of the stars disappears.

Like God’s bird, she always wakes up at dawn, like all peasant and courtyard girls, on the morning of the first snow she “goes to greet the winter, / To breathe in the frosty dust / And to wash her face, shoulders and chest with the first snow from the roof of the bathhouse.”

The world of nature in the novel invariably correlates with the image of this girl, to whom Pushkin, risking the discontent of his readers, gave such a common name (in Pushkin’s era it sounded like Akulina, Matryona or Lukerya). The very definition of Tatyana’s Russianness is connected with her characteristic poetic sense of nature:

Tatiana (Russian soul,

Without knowing why)

With her cold beauty

I loved the Russian winter,

There is frost in the sun on a frosty day,

And the sleigh and the late dawn

The glow of pink snows,

And the darkness of Epiphany evenings.

Nature in Pushkin’s novel most often opens through the window into which Tatyana looks. We can say that Tatiana at the window is a leitmotif, a recurring plot situation in the novel:

...Waking up early,

Tatyana saw through the window

In the morning the yard turned white,

Curtains, roofs and fences.

“And often all day long alone / I sat silently by the window”; “And silent, like Svetlana, / She came in and sat down by the window”; “Tatiana stood in front of the window, / Breathing on the cold glass”; “Looks, it’s already light in the room; / In the window through the frozen glass / The crimson ray of dawn plays”; “Tanya sits down by the window, / The dusk thins; but she/does not distinguish between her fields”;

Alone, sad under the window

Illuminated by Diana's ray,

Poor Tatyana doesn't sleep

And he looks into the dark field.

As you read the novel, Russian nature with its succession of times of day and seasons becomes so fused with the image of Pushkin’s beloved heroine that you sometimes catch yourself thinking: any landscape in the novel is a “window” into the world of her poetic soul.

The reading circle, the European cultural tradition, which had a noticeable influence on the formation of Tatyana’s character, is also significantly different from Onegin. Onegin, even disillusioned with life and people, took with him to the village a number of books that retained unconditional interest and authority for him. Among them, Byron takes first place, and there are two or three more novels with him,

In which the century is reflected

And modern man

Portrayed quite accurately

With his immoral soul,

Selfish and dry,

Immensely devoted to a dream,

With his embittered mind

Seething in empty action.

Tatyana is a “district young lady”, she reads the old-fashioned literature of Western European sentimentalists, represented by the names of Richardson and Rousseau. Their works preserve faith in man, and high Christian ideals are associated with the deep needs of the human heart. Such literature does not contradict popular views on the true and imaginary values ​​of life. Sentimentalism is organically part of Tatiana’s “Russian soul”. And although the heroine’s structure of thoughts and feelings, inspired by sentimental novels, is naive, at the same time, as E. N. Kupreyanova noted, he is “highly spiritual and morally active.” In the novels of sentimentalists, cordiality was cultivated and it was not the egoist and skeptic, like Byron, who rose to the high pedestal, but a noble and sensitive hero, capable of the feat of self-sacrifice. The sentimentalist writer “showed us his hero as a model of perfection”:

He gave away his favorite object,

Always unjustly persecuted

Sensitive soul, mind

And an attractive face.

Feeding the heat of pure passion,

Always an enthusiastic hero

I was ready to sacrifice myself...

The poetic Tatiana dreams of such a chosen one of her heart when she meets in the wilderness of the village Onegin, who is unlike anyone else, despised and persecuted by all his neighbors. And she accepted him as her ideal, which she had nurtured for so long in her imagination, about which she shed tears in the “silence of the forests”:

You appeared in my dreams,

Invisible, you were already dear to me,

Your wonderful gaze tormented me,

In the letter to Onegin, the precious features of Tatyana’s character emerge - her sincerity and gullibility, as well as her simple-minded faith in her chosen dream. Tatyana is dear to Pushkin because she

...loves without art,

Obedient to the dictates of feeling,

Why is she so trusting?

What is gifted from heaven

With a rebellious imagination,

Alive in mind and will,

And wayward head,

And with a fiery and tender heart.

In contrast to the “science of tender passion”, from the love of secular “beauties of note”, Tatyana’s feeling for Onegin is sublime and spiritual. There is not a facet of the love game in it that Onegin paid tribute to and which until time poisoned and dried up his heart. In Tatiana’s eyes, love is a sacred thing, a gift from God, which must be handled with care and tenderness. In a letter to Onegin she says:

Isn't it true? I heard you:

You spoke to me in silence

When I helped the poor

Or she delighted me with prayer

The longing of a worried soul?

In love, the main thing for her is not sensual passion, but a deep spiritual connection with her loved one. Love is a way out of loneliness, from low mercantile desires and interests in which the people around Tatyana are mired. In alliance with Onegin, tempting prospects for spiritual growth and moral self-improvement open up for her:

My whole life was a pledge

The faithful's meeting with you;

I know you were sent to me by God,

Until the grave you are my keeper.

This view of love is affirmed by the Orthodox Church in the “betrothal sequence,” where God Himself unites the bride and groom into an indestructible union and instructs them in every good deed in peace, like-mindedness, truth and love.

In tremulous moments, when Tatiana is waiting for Onegin, Pushkin accompanies her experiences with a round dance song of girls picking berries in the master’s garden:

Girls, beauties,

Darlings, girlfriends...

Thus, the poet once again emphasizes the deep rootedness of Tatiana’s heartfelt feelings in Russian national life and culture, the genuine nationality of her soul.

Fed up with superficial love joys, Onegin nevertheless felt something deep and serious in Tatyana’s letter. “The gullibility of an innocent soul” touched him and stirred up “long-silenced feelings.” Humanly appreciating Tatyana’s heartfelt impulse, Onegin sincerely admitted to her that he could not respond to her love with the same feeling:

But I am not made for bliss;

My soul is alien to him;

Your perfections are in vain;

I am not worthy of them at all...

But to refuse to accept “perfection” means not only to show generosity, but also to insult “perfection” by arrogantly rejecting it. “And happiness was so possible, so close!” - Tatiana will reproach Onegina in the scene of the last date at the end of the novel. What does this reproach mean? About the fact that Onegin is far from being such a complete antipode to Tatiana.

E. N. Kupreyanova writes: “Onegin is as superior to Tatiana with her Europeanized intellect as the “Russian soul” Tatiana rises above Onegin with her moral feeling, common to the people. And this feeling has not faded away in Onegin, but smolders somewhere in the depths of his soul, incinerated by an extraordinary, but chilled, embittered, Europeanized mind. And Onegin’s trouble is that he is not aware of this healthy feeling in himself and becomes a slave to his skeptical mind.”

In the wilderness of the village, Onegin meets Tatyana three times: at his first appearance at the Larins’, on the day of his explanation with Tatyana about her letter, and about a year later at her name day. And not one of these meetings leaves him indifferent, which, however, he does not want to admit to himself and for which he is even angry with himself and others.

He is angry with himself because the feeling for Tatyana, awakened in the depths of his dormant heart, undermines his self-confident and cold egoism, in which he finds himself captive. But at the same time, Onegin is also angry with others, with Lensky, for example, who believes “in pure love and the perfection of the world.” After all, the desire to kill this faith in the enthusiastic poet has been tempting Onegin for a long time: “He tried to keep the cooling word / In his mouth.” The contemptuous irritation that had been smoldering in Onegin’s soul for a long time breaks through now when Onegin himself is irritated by his indifference to Tatyana:

...But the languid maiden

Noticing the tremulous impulse,

Looking down in annoyance,

He pouted and, indignantly,

Swore to enrage Lensky

And take some revenge.

Paradoxical as it may seem at first glance, the sympathy for Tatyana penetrating into Onegin’s heart, incompatible with his “embarrassed mind,” is a source of irritation, which led to the severing of ties with Lensky, to a duel with him and to the murder of the young hero.

Tatyana’s heart’s intuition does not fail her here either. Let us remember her prophetic dream, in which she sees herself as the bride of Onegin, who acts as a tempter-robber, the leader of a gang of unclean, demonic creatures. Seeing Tatyana, this evil spirit wants to take possession of her as an impersonal commodity and shouts: “Mine! my!":

“Mine,” said Evgeny menacingly,

And the whole gang suddenly disappeared...

The destructive (robber) nature of Onegin’s egoism is measured in this dream by the measure of the folk tale that has entered Tatyana’s flesh and blood. And then Lensky appears as an obstacle to the realization of Onegin’s egoistic goals (“mine!”), a dispute arises:

The argument is louder, louder; suddenly Evgeniy

He grabs a long knife and instantly

Lensky is defeated; scary shadows

Condensed; unbearable scream

There was a sound... the hut shook...

And Tanya woke up in horror...

It is noteworthy that the picture of the wedding feast in Tatiana’s dream echoes the description of her name day celebration. The guests arriving at the ball, with their caricature, resemble the evil spirits that surrounded Onegin in Tatyana’s dream. Moreover, Pushkin shows “the barking of mosquitoes, the smacking of girls, the noise, laughter, the crush at the threshold” (compare: “hooves, crooked trunks, tufted tails, mustaches”) through the eyes of a dissatisfied Onegin, who “began to draw in his soul / caricatures of all the guests.”

The mortal cold, the threatening symptoms of which penetrated Onegin’s soul already in the first chapter, now begins its destructive work in relation to people close to the hero. Yu. M. Lotman, in his commentary to “Eugene Onegin,” convincingly showed that the bloody outcome of Onegin’s duel with Lensky was provoked by the second Zaretsky, who, in violation of the rules of the dueling code, cut off all paths to reconciliation: when handing over the cartel, he ignored the second’s duty to persuade the opponents to reconciliation; did not cancel the duel, although Onegin was almost two hours late; allowed his servant as Onegin’s second; I did not meet with this second the day before to discuss the rules of the duel. A researcher of the novel proved that Onegin did not intend to kill Lensky, that he turned out to be a reluctant killer. However, we note that it was Onegin who provoked the duel and that Zaretsky is the culprit of the murder with the silent connivance of the same Onegin, who, fearing unfavorable public opinion for himself, gave free rein to this rogue.

“In the anguish of heartfelt remorse,” Onegin leaves the estate. “He was overcome by restlessness, / Wanderlust.” By changing external impressions, he wants to drown out the remorse of conscience rising from the depths of his soul. The murder of a friend dealt a crushing blow to Onegin’s egoism. At one time, G. A. Gukovsky expressed the idea that during the journey, and then under the influence of awakened love for Tatyana, the hero’s moral rebirth occurs, that Tatyana did not understand these changes in Onegin and her refusal was the heroine’s cruel mistake.

In reality, everything is much more complicated. If Pushkin wanted to show Onegin's rebirth, he would not have excluded the chapter about his journey from the text of the novel. Starting from the seventh chapter, Pushkin’s attention from Onegin completely shifted to Tatiana, since it was with her that Pushkin’s dream about the ideal of the Russian man was connected. More than once in this regard, Pushkin confessed his love for Tatyana, and opened the seventh chapter with the theme of spring renewal. In this chapter, Tatyana is destined to withstand and overcome the temptation of which Onegin was a victim. She visits the wanderer’s office and reads those books that had a decisive influence on the hero’s inner world:

What is he? Is it really imitation?

An insignificant ghost, or else

Muscovite in Harold's cloak,

interpretation of other people's whims,

A complete vocabulary of fashion words?...

Isn't he a parody?

Discovering the intellectual world of Onegin, the “Russian soul” Tatiana not only understands him, but also rises above him, giving an accurate definition of one of the fundamental weaknesses of Onegin’s mind. The ease with which she overcomes this temptation testifies to the healthy moral foundation of her soul, the maturity of her intellect gaining strength.

Tatyana's departure from the wilderness of the estate to Moscow, and then her appearance in the high society society of St. Petersburg at the philosophical level of the novel is accompanied by the resolution of the conflict between the “European” intellect and the “Russian soul” that Onegin was never able to overcome. When he meets Tatyana in St. Petersburg, he cannot combine in one person the simple-minded rural girl and the “goddess of the luxurious, royal Neva.” The secret of this unity remains beyond the threshold of his consciousness.

In his commentary on “Eugene Onegin,” Yu. M. Lotman drew attention to the fact that in the eighth chapter of the novel, Pushkin’s view of secular society becomes significantly more complicated. “The image of light receives double coverage: on the one hand, the world is soulless and mechanistic, it remains an object of condemnation, on the other hand, as the sphere in which Russian culture develops... like the world of Karamzin and the Decembrists, Zhukovsky and the author of “Eugene Onegin” himself, it preserves unconditional value." In this regard, Pushkin’s very understanding of nationality expands and becomes more complex. “In the fifth chapter it captures one layer of folk culture alien to “Europeanism.” Now it is conceived as a culturally comprehensive concept, covering the highest spiritual achievements, including the spiritual values ​​of the peaks of noble culture. Therefore, Tatyana, having become a society lady and intellectually rising to the level of an author, could remain for him a folk type of consciousness”:

She was leisurely

Not cold, not talkative,

Without an insolent look for everyone,

Without pretensions to success,

Without these little antics,

No imitative ideas...

Everything was quiet, it was just there...

Onegin’s sudden feeling for Tatyana is accompanied by a perplexed exclamation: “What! from the wilderness of the steppe villages!...” This exclamation suggests that Onegin’s feeling slides over the surface of Tatiana’s soul and does not capture its spiritual core: “Although he could not have looked more diligently, / But even traces of the former Tatiana / Onegin could not find.” And the hero is carried away “not by this timid, in love, poor and simple girl,” but by the “indifferent princess” and “unapproachable goddess.” His feeling is sincere, but the first place in it is still not spiritual intimacy, but sensual passion:

O people! you all look alike

To the ancestor Eva:

What is given to you does not entail

The serpent is constantly calling you

To yourself, to the mysterious tree;

Give me the forbidden fruit,

And without that, heaven is not heaven for you.

Onegin, devastated and aged in soul, is playing with fire, because his infatuation with Tatiana, reminiscent of youthful love (“in love with Tatiana like a child”), threatens him with complete incineration:

Love for all ages;

But to young, virgin hearts

Her impulses are beneficial,

Like spring storms across the fields:

In the rain of passions they become fresh,

And they renew themselves and mature -

And the mighty life gives

And lush color and sweet fruit.

But at a late and barren age,

At the turn of our years,

Sad is the passion of the dead trail:

So the storms of autumn are cold

A meadow is turned into a swamp

And they expose the forest around.

The wise Tatyana senses the disastrous nature of this “dead passion” for Onegin and, out of love and compassion for him, tries to extinguish it: “She doesn’t notice him, / No matter how he fights, even if he dies.” Tatyana is afraid for Onegin, for the crazy lines of his letter, in which he sees “all the perfection” of his beloved in the “smile of the lips”, “in the movement of the eyes” and says:

To freeze in agony before you,

To turn pale and fade away... what bliss!

Tatyana is afraid of the sensual fire that could burn Onegin. That’s why she doesn’t answer his letters, and when they meet, she showers him with “Epiphany cold.” And all this is out of pity, out of compassion for him. Against this background, Onegin’s complete misunderstanding of Tatyana’s noble intentions is especially damning:

Yes, maybe fear of a secret,

So that the husband or the world does not guess

Mischief, random weakness...

Everything that my Onegin knew...

The hero explains so minutely the reason for Tatyana’s inaccessibility. Trying to get rid of passion, he tries to go into random reading of books, the selection of which is striking in their strange diversity. And then some glimpses, some sparks of his possible awakening appear in the wilds of Onegin’s soul:

It's between the printed lines

Read with spiritual eyes

Other lines. He's in them

Was completely deep.

Those were secret legends

Heartfelt, dark antiquity,

Unrelated dreams

Threats, rumors, predictions,

Or a long fairy tale is living nonsense,

Or letters from a young maiden.

Onegin’s “spiritual eyes” finally turn from external impressions, from books that are of little help to him, in which someone else’s wisdom, far from Russian soil, is imprinted, into the depths of his own heart. And there, in the dark labyrinths, saving, alluring lights begin to wander. Conscience, the “snake of heart remorse,” awakens; Onegin sees a motionless young man on the melted snow - the ghost of Lensky, whom he killed; “a swarm of young traitors” flashes through his heart’s imagination, and suddenly, like a blow and a reproach - “it’s a country house - and she’s sitting by the window... and all of her!”

These Russian depths of Onegin’s soul, which he begins to discover in himself, lead him again to the “Russian soul” Tatyana, whom he did not understand or appreciate then and whom he is trying in vain to understand now. But everything in this soul is still so illusory, so foggy and uncertain that the author cannot stand it and breaks into a rude joke:

He's so used to getting lost in this

That almost drove me crazy

Or he didn’t become a poet.

Frankly, I could borrow something!

Onegin's trouble is that his intellect, his mind is not based on the high culture of human feelings. Onegin's feelings, for all their sincerity and strength, remain dark, damaged by the “science of tender passion.” Onegin does not know the spiritualized culture of love, rising above elementary human sensuality, which plays cruel jokes on the hero, turns him into a slave of elemental, uncontrollable passion. And Tatyana is right when, in the scene of the last date, she reproaches Onegin for “offensive passion”:

And now! - what's at my feet?

Brought you? what a small thing!

How about your heart and mind

To be a petty slave to feelings?

Onegin's love, deprived of national moral support, is therefore doomed, and that is why Tatyana is offended because, with all her strength and recklessness, she does not go beyond the limits of the secular “standard”. It is based on moral lightness and irrepressible sensuality. And therefore, turning to Onegin with annoyance and reproach, Tatyana says:

And to me, Onegin, this pomp,

Life's hateful tinsel,

My successes are in a whirlwind of light,

My fashionable house and evenings,

What's in them? Now I'm glad to give it away

All this rags of a masquerade,

All this shine, and noise, and fumes

For a shelf of books, for a wild garden,

For our poor home,

For those places where for the first time,

Onegin, I saw you,

Yes for the humble cemetery,

Where is the cross now in the shadow of the branches?

Over my poor nanny...

Thus, only Tatyana, whose high mind and intellect was nourished by her “Russian soul,” could understand all the power of Onegin’s love-passion and all its destructive futility. In the name of love for Onegin, not carnal, not sensual, but lofty and spiritual, Tatyana found the strength to utter the most courageous and wise words in the novel:

I ask you to leave me;

I know: in your heart there is

And pride and direct honor,

I love you (why lie?),

But I was given to another;

I will be faithful to him forever.

V. S. Nepomnyashchiy is right when he asserts that Tatiana’s feeling, love, is “not at all a manifestation of the ‘needs’ and ‘passions’ of the egoistic ‘nature’”: “For understanding the novel, first of all Tatiana, this is of paramount importance. All disputes, all bewildered or condemning glances towards Tatyana in connection with her behavior in the last chapter of the novel are explained by the fact that Tatyana’s actions are considered in the usual plane of the struggle between “feelings” and “duty”. But this is not Tatyana’s collision - her worldview is radically different from that described above. Tatyana’s feeling for Onegin does not at all “fight” with duty, quite the opposite: Tatyana breaks up with Onegin in the name of love, for his sake - and in this clash of the hero with completely different, unfamiliar to him, foundations of moral life lies the whole meaning of the novel’s ending.”

It was Tatyana who understood the deepest, tragic discrepancy between Onegin’s purpose and his existence, separating the “Onegin” from Onegin and making sure that this “Onegin” is a “ghost”, “parody”, “imitation”. It was she who felt that Onegin had a different, higher purpose, which “Oneginism” presses in him, preventing him from opening up and unfolding, turning Onegin into a victim of “turbulent delusions and unbridled passions.”

“The novel moves into the depths of the soul of the motionless hero,” notes V. S. Nepomniachtchi, “to where the light of hope for the revival of this soul may dawn, and stops at the moment when “Eugene stands / As if struck by thunder.” The refusal of Tatiana, who loves him, “showed that there are - not in dreams, but in reality - other values, a different life and a different love than those to which he was accustomed - and therefore, not everything in life is lost and one can believe in 'peace perfection." By her act, Tatyana showed him that man is not a game of “natural” elements and “natural” desires, that he has a higher purpose in this world.

V. G. Belinsky, who completely did not understand the depth and significance of Tatyana’s act, described the meaning of the open ending of the novel as follows: “What happened to Onegin later? Did his passion resurrect him for a new suffering more consistent with human dignity? Or did she kill all the strength of his soul, and his joyless melancholy turned into dead, cold apathy? “We don’t know, and why do we need to know this when we know that the powers of this rich nature are left without application, life without meaning, and the romance without end?” It’s enough to know this so that you don’t want to know anything else..."

Such a bleak view of the outcome of the novel directly follows from a misunderstanding of the meaning of its final scene. Belinsky’s very question, whether “passion” “resurrected” Onegin, indicates a misunderstanding of the destructive and destructive basis of this passion. Such passion is not capable of resurrecting anyone. Belinsky’s level of understanding of Tatiana’s act turns out to be even lower than Onegin’s. If Evgeny “stands... as if struck by thunder,” then Belinsky, not without irony, reasons: “But I was given to someone else, - precisely given, and not given away! Eternal loyalty - to whom and in what? Loyalty to such relationships that constitute a profanation of the sense of purity and femininity, because some relationships that are not sanctified by love are extremely immoral ... "

In a hidden polemic with Belinsky, F. M. Dostoevsky assessed Tatyana’s action in a speech about Pushkin differently. He argued that Tatyana firmly expressed her refusal to Onegin, “like a Russian woman, this is her apotheosis. She expresses the truth of the poem. Oh, I won’t say a word about her religious beliefs, about her view of the sacrament of marriage - no, I won’t touch on that. But what: was it because she refused to follow him... because she, “like a Russian woman”... is not capable of taking a bold step, unable to sacrifice the charm of honor, wealth, her secular significance, the conditions of virtue? No, the Russian woman is brave. A Russian woman will boldly go after what she believes in, and she has proven it. But she “was given to another and will be faithful to him forever.” To whom and what is she faithful?... Yes, she is faithful to this general, her husband, an honest man who loves her and is proud of her. Even though her mother “begged” her, it was she, and not anyone else, who gave her consent; after all, she herself swore to him to be his honest wife. She may have married him out of desperation, but now he is her husband, and her betrayal will cover him with shame, shame and kill him. Can a person base his happiness on the misfortune of another? Happiness does not lie in the pleasures of love alone, but in the highest harmony of the spirit... They will say: but Onegin is also unhappy; she saved one, and destroyed the other!... This is what I think: if Tatyana had become free, if her old husband had died and she had become a widow, then even then she would not have followed Onegin. We must understand the essence of this character! After all, she sees who he is... After all, if she follows him, then tomorrow he will be disappointed and look at his hobby mockingly. It has no soil, it is a blade of grass carried by the wind. She is not like that at all: even in despair and in the suffering consciousness that her life has been lost, she still has something solid and unshakable on which her soul rests. These are her childhood memories, memories of her homeland, the rural wilderness in which her humble, pure life began - this is the “cross and shadow of branches” over the grave of her poor nanny... Here is contact with her homeland, with her native people, with their shrine. What does he have and who is he?... No, there are deep and strong souls who cannot consciously give up their shrine to shame, even out of infinite compassion. No, Tatyana could not follow Onegin.”

This is Dostoevsky’s answer, seemingly deeper and more correct, with the exception of one thing: from the writer’s reasoning it remains unclear why Tatyana loves Onegin? In the interpretation that Dostoevsky gives to Onegin, everything in him is killed and supplanted by “Onegin,” “secular,” superficial and frivolous. Tatyana perfectly understands this facet in Onegin’s character and, of course, does not want and cannot love Onegin for his “Oneginism.” The whole point is that behind the secular depravity, groundlessness and emptiness of “Oneginism,” Tatyana discerns in Onegin a spiritual core that he himself is not fully aware of, relying on which he can turn his life in another, directly opposite direction. Tatyana loves in Onegin what he has not yet understood or revealed about himself.

Who are you, my guardian angel,

Or the insidious tempter:

Resolve my doubts, -

Tatyana asks a question in her girlish letter to Onegin. She retains the same high spiritual request towards him now, saying that she loves something else about him. Tatiana’s “given to another” means not only loyalty to her old husband, but also devotion to that greatest shrine that was revealed to her and which she sees in the disappointed, restless Onegin. But this shrine cannot be imposed on anyone. Onegin himself must discover it in himself through the painful experience of life.

Like a thunderbolt from his last meeting with Tatyana, Onegin remains on the threshold of a new life and a new search. At the end of the novel, Pushkin resolves its main, key conflict, showing Onegin through Tatyana’s mouth “the path, truth and life.” At the same time, in the character of Onegin, he gives the artistic formula for the future hero of Russian novels by Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky. All these writers will “open the brackets” of Pushkin’s formula and lead their heroes along paths whose vectors, as well as boundaries and horizons, are outlined by Pushkin. The same can be said about Tatyana. The gallery of female images of Turgenev, Goncharov, Tolstoy, Nekrasov, Ostrovsky and Dostoevsky dates back to it. Pushkin’s “Distance of the Free Novel” opens into the future of Russian life and Russian literature.

A.S. Pushkin plays a dominant role in Russian literature. Any work by Pushkin is serious, compressed in essence and form; it is the fruit of deep reflection. In the literary field, Pushkin was distinguished by the fact that he was always in search of the unusual, the precise, the beautiful. Literary conventions were not an obstacle to him.

A.S. Pushkin’s novel “Eugene Onegin” is a novel about personalities and feelings, about life and morals. With this novel, Pushkin laid the foundation for works in which an objective analysis of modern reality is given “with a heap” of complexities and contradictions.

Literary scholars have more than once noted the author’s predilection for arranging the characters of the novel “Eugene Onegin” in pairs: Onegin - Lensky, Onegin - the author, Tatyana - Onegin.

Today the object of our attention is the couple Lensky - Olga.

Vladimir Lensky is a young, rich man. He recently returned to his native village from Germany, where he learned the basics of science. The author convinces us that Lensky has many positive qualities: he is pure in soul, freedom-loving, chaste, easy to communicate, affectionate. He is interested in poetry. Values ​​love and friendship. According to the poet,

“He was a dear ignoramus at heart,
He was cherished by hope,
And the world has new shine and noise
They also captivated the young mind.”

Pushkin calls Lensky an ignoramus. Who is this ignoramus? A person who is ignorant of any subject. Lensky, whose “mind is still unsteady in judgment,” thought a lot, “racked his brains.” But, in fact, thinking about life, he did not know real life itself. He was nice, but ignorant.

Lensky did not notice Tatyana, a kind young lady, an integral nature, to whom, we note, the love of the author of the novel was given. Lensky is infatuated with Olga.

Olga Larina is a sweet girl. She is obedient, modest, cheerful. Olga is not inclined to think hard about the meaning of life. She flutters through life, frisky, carefree. The same as her mother was in girls, even simpler, because her mother was raised in Moscow, and Olga lived in the village from birth.

Olga Larina is the usual type of a simple noble girl of the early 19th century.

Olga lives among simple, rude people who know little and think little. She falls in love with a man (Lensky), whose character is as easy as her own.

Young people are happy. Everything is approaching a successful outcome. True, Pushkin notes:

“But Lensky, without having, of course,
There is no desire to tie the knot..."

That is, love is love, but the prospects are vague. But for now both are absorbed in high feelings:

“They are in the garden, hand in hand,
They walk in the morning...
He only dares sometimes
Encouraged by Olga's smile,
Play with a developed curl
Or kiss the hem of your clothes.”

Lensky decorates the pages of her album and gives her tender poems.

“And, full of living truth,
Elegies flow like a river...

This eternal love would have continued like this, but circumstances intervened. Evgeny Onegin, one of the central figures of the novel, following his selfish habit of destroying everything, decided to take revenge on Tatyana Larina, Olga’s sister, for her inappropriately nervous behavior at the holiday. Having refreshed his memory of the “science of tender passion,” Onegin publicly flirts with Olga. Olga, a frivolous and naively simple-minded girl, succumbed to the slight flirtation, blushed, and became cheerful. Noticing Onegin's courtship of Olga, Lensky writes down Evgeniy as his enemy.

“Lensky is unable to bear the blow;
Cursing women's pranks..."

“Two bullets - nothing more -
Suddenly his fate will be resolved.”

The enraged Lensky, taking the rules of honor as a basis, decided to challenge Onegin to a duel. The result of the duel is the death of Lensky. At first glance, Lensky laid down his head for Olga’s “good”. He decided to bring to life the idea, not devoid of selfish, ambitious thoughts, of becoming “her savior.”

Without understanding the situation, paying attention only to external manifestations, he decided to become a fighter for the “good of the world.” But all decisions in life must be made carefully. Lensky destroyed himself. “Jealous delusions” and unwillingness to curb and humble one’s pride led to a tragic ending. Lensky didn’t even consider it necessary to talk to his loved one, Olga. Which, in fact, was supposed to support him both in sorrow and in joy.

Based on this fact, we can say that the relationship between Lensky and Olga was not completely real, their love did not stand the test.

However, Lensky also has correct concepts about honor. On the last date, Lensky did not say anything to Olga about the upcoming duel. Forgetting about romanticism, which he “picked up in abundance” while studying at the University of Göttingen (the abode of German romanticism), he acted like a man, with restraint and nobility. To Olga’s question: “What’s wrong with you?”, he answered briefly: “So.”

What about Olga? How long had she suffered, having lost a dear person, a beloved friend? The young bride cried for a short time. Soon she married a lancer. Unable to bear any time of mourning, she rushed into a new relationship. And the one who acted as a defender of her honor was hopelessly, hastily forgotten.

Conclusion

Among Pushkin’s contemporaries there were people who did not understand the novel “Eugene Onegin,” but there were no indifferent people. Everyone followed the storyline, tried to understand the motives of the characters’ behavior, and understand the principles on which the novel was built.

In the novel we can observe life in all its manifestations. Lensky is an image whose appearance is determined by life itself. Fate treated Lensky cruelly. We feel sorry for the young romantic, sorry to part with him. Maybe something would have changed in his life, and Lensky would have rethought a lot. Who knows? And Olga, his gentle companion, did not cry for long; she very quickly found herself in the arms of another person.

Alexandra POLYAN,
11th grade, school No. 57,
Moscow
(teacher - N.A. Shapiro)

Getting ready to write

Lensky and Tatyana

In the novel “Eugene Onegin”, along with the central character - Onegin - two more characters are clearly highlighted - Lensky and Tatyana.

The author speaks of them with obvious sympathy, lovingly talks about their destinies, and devotes many lyrical digressions to them. Relationships with these characters are the most important events in Onegin’s life (at least those included in the plot of the novel); in addition, these characters are extremely significant for understanding the image of the author: he connects one of the periods of his life with Lensky, Tatyana appears as an ideal that invariably accompanies the author.

Both heroes - Lensky and Tatyana - are introduced into the plot of the novel in the second chapter, which describes the beginning of Onegin's life in the village. This emphasizes their belonging to the world of local nobles and marks their opposition to Onegin, a resident of the capital. Onegin is a representative of the St. Petersburg “golden youth”, accustomed to social life; Tatyana and Lensky are landowners, raised “in the wilderness,” in a narrow circle of neighbors (even for Lensky, who studied at the university in Germany, life is obviously limited to the village). Onegin gets bored “among the fashionable and ancient halls” and suffers from the blues; Lensky and Tatyana did not lose the fervor of their feelings and did not experience disappointment in the world. But Onegin is able to look at life soberly, coldly and mockingly, he knows the true value of the people and circumstances around him, and Lensky and Tatyana have a poor understanding of reality, they live more of an imaginary life, transferring book situations into reality.

The author's attitude towards Lensky and Tatyana is also similar. Both characters are definitely loved. However, the intonation with which the author writes about them changes throughout the novel, and changes in a similar way. At first it combines sympathy and irony. The author mockingly imitates Lensky’s speech and indicates his tastes with a list of poetic cliches:

He sang separation and sadness,
And something, and the foggy distance,
And romantic roses;
He sang those distant countries
Where long in the bosom of silence
His living tears flowed;
He sang the faded color of life
Almost eighteen years old, -

and with a smile copies the language of the novels that Tatyana reads: “You are in the hands of a fashionable tyrant // You have already given up your fate,” “You are in blinding hope // You are calling for dark bliss, // You are recognizing the bliss of life, // You are drinking the magical poison of desires ", "Everywhere, everywhere in front of you // Your fatal tempter"; The author even describes the meeting between Tatiana and Onegin in this language: “Shining with his gaze, Eugene // Stands like a menacing shadow.”

However, in the second half of the novel, the intonation becomes more serious, losing its lightness and mockery. Lensky, killed in a duel, is mourned by the author without a hint of irony; Literary cliches that previously only caused a smile are filled with a new, tragically piercing meaning: “The young singer // Found an untimely end! // A storm blew, a beautiful color // Withered at the dawn, // The fire on the altar went out.” The author speaks more and more seriously and admiringly about Tatyana: at the end of the novel she is called a “sweet ideal.”

It must be said that both heroes turn out to be surprisingly significant in the novel: their role is not limited only to participation in its plot. From them, threads stretch through the eventual fabric of the novel: the image of the poet Lensky inevitably pulls behind it the image of another poet - the author (on the one hand, opposed to Lensky, and on the other, close and in some ways dear to him). And behind the image of Tatiana one can vaguely discern “the one whom the author does not dare to disturb with the lyre.”

Thus, the role of Tatyana and the role of Lensky in the figurative system of the novel are similar. It looks like the relationship between the author and the central character is being built towards them. However, this is where their similarities end. The profound differences between them are already evident in their interaction with the environment. They are both born of the landed nobility, but relate to it differently: for Lensky this connection is not obvious; the neighboring landowners seem to him an idyllic “home circle,” a shelter for the wanderer he imagines himself to be. Tatyana realizes that she is a child of this environment (in her letter to Onegin, she unites herself, her relatives and neighbors with the pronoun “we”). She inherited from her cordiality and simplicity (“And we... we don’t shine in any way, // Although you are welcome in simplicity,” she writes to Onegin), however, she feels her loneliness and dissimilarity with this environment and bitterly complains: “I here alone, // No one understands me"; she suffers and hates her circle (in her dreams, her neighbor-landowners even appear as monsters to her).

A very important characteristic of the hero for Pushkin is his attitude towards nature. For Lensky, nature appears only as a list of abstract concepts (“he fell in love with dense groves, // Solitude, silence, // And the night, and the stars, and the moon”). For Tatyana, nature is a beloved friend, a necessary interlocutor: before leaving the village, she, “as with old friends, // With her groves, meadows // Still in a hurry to talk.” Tatyana also has a constant companion in nature - the moon, under which all important events for Tatyana take place. It is the moon that she sees in the mirror, going out to tell fortunes, she notices it when talking with the nanny about her love; “Looking at the moon,” Tatyana conceives a letter to Onegin; in the “darkness of the moon,” she visits his estate. Finally, it is with the moon that she is compared in Chapter VII of the novel.

For Lensky, the moon is only “a heavenly lamp, // To which we dedicated // Walks in the midst of the evening darkness, // And tears, the joy of secret torments...”

Another important feature of the heroes, which turns out to be fateful for them, is their attitude to reality. Lensky refuses to see her, believing that somewhere there is another, better life. He dies at the first meeting with real life: feeling the collapse of his ideas about it (it turned out to be untrue that “friends are ready // For his honor to accept chains // And that their hand will not tremble // To break the vessel of the slanderer”), Lensky sees the only possible The way out of this situation is a way out that he learned from books - a duel, where he must either die for his honor or kill the “corrupter.”

For Tatyana, there are no such unambiguous and indisputable decisions; she is constantly tormented by doubts and searches. And she is able to correctly understand her love for Onegin and not expect book developments. She can rethink, reconsider her attitude towards him: if at first he can appear to her only in two faces ("guardian angel" or "insidious tempter"), then later she rejects this possibility of an unambiguous assessment, tries to understand Onegin better, is tormented by the question : “Isn’t he a parody?” - and finally changes roles with him at the end of the novel.

Only in connection with Tatiana is the problem of morality, fidelity and duty introduced into the novel. The heroine turns out to be able to overcome her feeling, no matter how strong it may be, so as not to break her vows of fidelity. Such torments of a strong nature are unfamiliar to Lensky. It is noteworthy that the author calls Lensky’s main quality “a straight Göttingen soul,” while Tatyana is called a “Russian soul.” Obviously, Pushkin connects moral quests and the constant evolution of man precisely with Russian nature. And Lensky, because of his reluctance to know life, died in the first collision with it, forever remaining an unchanged, static character, is perceived as something alien to the Russian character.

And so, Tatyana turns out to be much more complex and deeper than Lensky: she constantly tries to understand real life, without replacing it with her ideas about it, as Lensky does; she is capable of making much more complex decisions than he; finally, she is in constant change, moral evolution, while Lensky, who has never known life, forever stops in his development, “freezes.” It is with Tatiana that the most important themes and problems of the novel are associated; it is she who appears as the bearer of Russian in this novel - the “encyclopedia of Russian life.” However, it is noteworthy that at the end of the novel the image of Lensky reappears (it is no coincidence that these lines are written in his language):

Blessed is he who celebrates life early
Left without drinking to the bottom
Glasses full of wine,
Who hasn't read her novel...

The author takes a new look at his hero, once again evaluates him (like Tatyana - Onegin), arguing that there is a certain correctness in Lensky’s position and that it is impossible to give an unambiguous assessment of such a nature as Lensky and recognize any one point as correct view, one look at life.

Note: The work was written in class over four hours.

The novel “Eugene Onegin” was written by Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin in 1823 – 1831. The work is one of the most significant creations of Russian literature - according to Belinsky, it is an “encyclopedia of Russian life” of the early 19th century.

The novel in verse by Pushkin “Eugene Onegin” belongs to the literary movement of realism, although in the first chapters the influence of the traditions of romanticism on the author is still noticeable. There are two storylines in the work: the central one is the tragic love story of Evgeny Onegin and Tatyana Larina, as well as the secondary one - the friendship of Onegin and Lensky.

Main characters

Eugene Onegin- a prominent young man of eighteen years old, a native of a noble family, who received a French home education, a secular dandy who knows a lot about fashion, is very eloquent and knows how to present himself in society, a “philosopher.”

Tatyana Larina- the eldest daughter of the Larins, a quiet, calm, serious girl of seventeen years old, who loved to read books and spend a lot of time alone.

Vladimir Lensky- a young landowner who was “nearly eighteen years old,” a poet, a dreamy person. At the beginning of the novel, Vladimir returns to his native village from Germany, where he studied.

Olga Larina- the youngest daughter of the Larins, lover and bride of Vladimir Lensky, always cheerful and sweet, she was the complete opposite of her older sister.

Other characters

Princess Polina (Praskovya) Larina- mother of Olga and Tatyana Larin.

Filipevna- Tatiana's nanny.

Princess Alina- Tatiana and Olga's aunt, Praskovya's sister.

Zaretsky- a neighbor of Onegin and Larin, Vladimir’s second in the duel with Evgeniy, a former gambler who became a “peaceful” landowner.

Prince N.- Tatiana’s husband, “important general”, friend of Onegin’s youth.

The novel in verse “Eugene Onegin” begins with a brief author’s address to the reader, in which Pushkin characterizes his work:

“Receive the collection of motley heads,
Half funny, half sad,
Common people, ideal,
The careless fruit of my amusements."

Chapter first

In the first chapter, the author introduces the reader to the hero of the novel - Evgeny Onegin, the heir of a wealthy family, who rushes to his dying uncle. The young man was “born on the banks of the Neva,” his father lived in debt, often held balls, which is why he eventually completely lost his fortune.

When Onegin matured enough to go out into the world, high society accepted the young man well, since he had an excellent command of French, danced the mazurka easily and could talk freely on any topic. However, it was not science or brilliance in society that interested Eugene most of all - he was a “true genius” in the “science of tender passion” - Onegin could turn the head of any lady, while remaining on friendly terms with her husband and admirers.

Evgeniy lived an idle life, walking along the boulevard during the day and visiting luxurious salons in the evening, where famous people of St. Petersburg invited him. The author emphasizes that Onegin, “afraid of jealous condemnation,” was very careful about his appearance, so he could spend three hours in front of the mirror, bringing his image to perfection. Evgeniy returned from the balls in the morning, when the rest of the residents of St. Petersburg were rushing to work. By noon the young man woke up and again

“Until the morning his life is ready,
Monotonous and motley."

However, is Onegin happy?

“No: his feelings cooled down early;
He was tired of the noise of the world."

Gradually, the hero was overcome by the “Russian blues” and he, as if Chade-Harold, appeared gloomy and languid in the world - “nothing touched him, he did not notice anything.”

Evgeniy withdraws from society, locks himself at home and tries to write on his own, but the young man does not succeed, since “he was sick of persistent work.” After this, the hero begins to read a lot, but realizes that literature will not save him: “like women, he left books.” Evgeny, from a sociable, secular person, becomes a withdrawn young man, prone to “caustic argument” and “joke with bile in half.”

Onegin and the narrator (according to the author, it was at this time that they met the main character) were planning to leave St. Petersburg abroad, but their plans were changed by the death of Eugene’s father. The young man had to give up his entire inheritance to pay his father’s debts, so the hero remained in St. Petersburg. Soon Onegin received news that his uncle was dying and wanted to say goodbye to his nephew. When the hero arrived, his uncle had already died. As it turned out, the deceased bequeathed a huge estate to Evgeniy: lands, forests, factories.

Chapter two

Evgeniy lived in a picturesque village, his house was located by the river, surrounded by a garden. Wanting to somehow entertain himself, Onegin decided to introduce new orders in his domains: he replaced corvee with “light rent”. Because of this, the neighbors began to treat the hero with caution, believing “that he is the most dangerous eccentric.” At the same time, Evgeny himself avoided his neighbors, avoiding getting to know them in every possible way.

At the same time, the young landowner Vladimir Lensky returned from Germany to one of the nearest villages. Vladimir was a romantic person,

“With a soul straight from Göttingen,
Handsome man, in full bloom,
Kant's admirer and poet."

Lensky wrote his poems about love, was a dreamer and hoped to reveal the mystery of the purpose of life. In the village, Lensky, “according to custom,” was mistaken for a profitable groom.

However, among the villagers, Lensky’s special attention was attracted by the figure of Onegin, and Vladimir and Evgeniy gradually became friends:

“They got along. Wave and stone
Poems and prose, ice and fire."

Vladimir read his works to Evgeniy and talked about philosophical things. Onegin listened to Lensky’s passionate speeches with a smile, but refrained from trying to reason with his friend, realizing that life itself would do this for him. Gradually, Evgeny notices that Vladimir is in love. Lensky’s beloved turned out to be Olga Larina, whom the young man knew as a child, and his parents predicted a wedding for them in the future.

“Always modest, always obedient,
Always cheerful like the morning,
How a poet's life is simple-minded,
How sweet is the kiss of love."

The complete opposite of Olga was her older sister, Tatyana:

“Wild, sad, silent,
Like a forest deer is timid."

The girl did not find the usual girlish pastimes fun, she loved to read novels by Richardson and Rousseau,

“And often all day alone
I sat silently by the window."

Tatiana and Olga's mother, Princess Polina, was in love with someone else in her youth - a guard sergeant, a dandy and a gambler, but without asking, her parents married her to Larin. The woman was sad at first, but then took up housekeeping, “got used to it and became happy,” and gradually peace reigned in their family. Having lived a quiet life, Larin grew old and died.

Chapter Three

Lensky begins to spend all his evenings with the Larins. Evgeniy is surprised that he has found a friend in the company of a “simple, Russian family,” where all conversations boil down to discussing the household. Lensky explains that he enjoys home society more than a social circle. Onegin asks if he can see Lensky's beloved and his friend invites him to go to the Larins.

Returning from the Larins, Onegin tells Vladimir that he was pleased to meet them, but his attention was more attracted not by Olga, who “has no life in her features,” but by her sister Tatyana, “who is sad and silent, like Svetlana.” Onegin's appearance at the Larins' house caused gossip that perhaps Tatiana and Evgeniy were already engaged. Tatyana realizes that she has fallen in love with Onegin. The girl begins to see Evgeniy in the heroes of the novels, to dream about the young man, walking in the “silence of the forests” with books about love.

One sleepless night, Tatyana, sitting in the garden, asks the nanny to tell her about her youth, about whether the woman was in love. The nanny says that she was married by agreement at the age of 13 to a guy younger than her, so the old woman does not know what love is. Peering into the moon, Tatiana decides to write a letter to Onegin declaring her love in French, since at that time it was customary to write letters exclusively in French.

In the message, the girl writes that she would be silent about her feelings if she were sure that she would be able to see Evgeniy at least sometimes. Tatyana reasons that if Onegin had not settled in their village, perhaps her fate would have turned out differently. But he immediately denies this possibility:

“This is the will of heaven: I am yours;
My whole life was a pledge
The faithful date with you."

Tatyana writes that it was Onegin who appeared to her in her dreams and it was him she dreamed about. At the end of the letter, the girl “hands over” her destiny to Onegin:

"I'm waiting for you: with one glance
Revive the hopes of your heart,
Or break the heavy dream,
Alas, a well-deserved reproach!

In the morning, Tatyana asks Filipyevna to give Evgeniy a letter. There was no answer from Onegin for two days. Lensky assures that Evgeny promised to visit the Larins. Finally Onegin arrives. Tatiana, frightened, runs into the garden. Having calmed down a little, he goes out into the alley and sees Evgeniy standing right in front of him “like a menacing shadow.”

Chapter Four

Evgeny, who even in his youth was disappointed with relationships with women, was touched by Tatyana’s letter, and that is why he did not want to deceive the gullible, innocent girl.

Having met Tatyana in the garden, Evgeniy spoke first. The young man said that he was very touched by her sincerity, so he wants to “repay” the girl with his “confession.” Onegin tells Tatyana that if a “pleasant lot had commanded” him to become a father and husband, he would not have looked for another bride, choosing Tatyana as his “friend of sad days.” However, Eugene “was not created for bliss.” Onegin says that he loves Tatyana like a brother and at the end of his “confession” turns into a sermon to the girl:

“Learn to control yourself;
Not everyone will understand you like I do;
Inexperience leads to disaster."

Discussing Onegin's action, the narrator writes that Eugene acted very nobly with the girl.

After the date in the garden, Tatyana became even sadder, worrying about her unhappy love. There is talk among the neighbors that it is time for the girl to get married. At this time, the relationship between Lensky and Olga is developing, young people spend more and more time together.

Onegin lived as a hermit, walking and reading. One winter evening Lensky comes to see him. Evgeniy asks his friend about Tatyana and Olga. Vladimir says that his wedding with Olga is scheduled in two weeks, which Lensky is very happy about. In addition, Vladimir recalls that the Larins invited Onegin to visit Tatiana’s name day.

Chapter Five

Tatyana loved the Russian winter very much, including Epiphany evenings, when the girls told fortunes. She believed in dreams, omens and fortune telling. On one of the Epiphany evenings, Tatyana went to bed, putting a girl’s mirror under her pillow.

The girl dreamed that she was walking through the snow in the darkness, and in front of her there was a roaring river, across which was thrown a “trembling, disastrous bridge.” Tatyana doesn’t know how to cross it, but then a bear appears from the other side of the stream and helps her cross. The girl tries to run away from the bear, but the “shaggy footman” followed her. Tatiana, unable to run any longer, falls into the snow. The bear picks her up and carries her into a “wretched” hut that appears between the trees, telling the girl that his godfather is here. Having come to her senses, Tatyana saw that she was in the hallway, and behind the door she could hear “a scream and the clink of a glass, as at a big funeral.” The girl looked through the crack: there were monsters sitting at the table, among whom she saw Onegin, the host of the feast. Out of curiosity, the girl opens the door, all the monsters begin to reach out to her, but Evgeny drives them away. The monsters disappear, Onegin and Tatyana sit on the bench, the young man puts his head on the girl’s shoulder. Then Olga and Lensky appear, Evgeny begins to scold the uninvited guests, suddenly pulls out a long knife and kills Vladimir. In horror, Tatiana wakes up and tries to interpret the dream from the book of Martyn Zadeka (fortune teller, interpreter of dreams).

It’s Tatiana’s birthday, the house is full of guests, everyone is laughing, crowding around, saying hello. Lensky and Onegin arrive. Evgeniy is seated opposite Tatiana. The girl is embarrassed, afraid to look up at Onegin, she is ready to cry. Evgeny, noticing Tatiana's excitement, became angry and decided to take revenge on Lensky, who brought him to the feast. When the dancing began, Onegin invites Olga exclusively, without leaving the girl even during breaks between dances. Lensky, seeing this, “flashes up in jealous indignation.” Even when Vladimir wants to invite his bride to dance, it turns out that she has already promised Onegin.

“Lenskaya is unable to bear the blow” - Vladimir leaves the holiday, thinking that only a duel can solve the current situation.

Chapter Six

Noticing that Vladimir had left, Onegin lost all interest in Olga and returned home at the end of the evening. In the morning, Zaretsky comes to Onegin and gives him a note from Lensky challenging him to a duel. Evgeny agrees to a duel, but, left alone, he blames himself for wasting his friend’s love in vain. According to the terms of the duel, the heroes were supposed to meet at the mill before dawn.

Before the duel, Lensky stopped by Olga, thinking to embarrass her, but the girl greeted him joyfully, which dispelled her beloved’s jealousy and annoyance. Lensky was absent-minded all evening. Arriving home from Olga, Vladimir examined the pistols and, thinking about Olga, writes poetry in which he asks the girl to come to his grave in the event of his death.

In the morning, Evgeniy overslept, so he was late for the duel. Vladimir's second was Zaretsky, Onegin's second was Monsieur Guillot. At Zaretsky’s command, the young men came together and the duel began. Evgeny is the first to raise his pistol - when Lensky just started to aim, Onegin already shoots and kills Vladimir. Lensky dies instantly. Evgeniy looks at his friend’s body in horror.

Chapter Seven

Olga did not cry for Lensky for long; she soon fell in love with a lancer and married him. After the wedding, the girl and her husband left for the regiment.

Tatyana still could not forget Onegin. One day, while walking through a field at night, a girl accidentally came to Evgeniy’s house. The girl is warmly greeted by the courtyard family and Tatyana is allowed into Onegin’s house. The girl, looking around the rooms, “stands for a long time in the fashionable cell, enchanted.” Tatyana begins to constantly visit Evgeniy’s house. The girl reads her lover’s books, trying to understand from the notes in the margins what kind of person Onegin is.

At this time, the Larins begin talking about how it’s high time for Tatyana to get married. Princess Polina is worried that her daughter refuses everyone. Larina is advised to take the girl to the “bride fair” in Moscow.

In winter, the Larins, having collected everything they need, leave for Moscow. They stayed with an old aunt, Princess Alina. The Larins begin to travel around to visit numerous acquaintances and relatives, but the girl is bored and uninterested everywhere. Finally, Tatyana is brought to the “Meeting,” where many brides, dandies, and hussars have gathered. While everyone is having fun and dancing, the girl, “unnoticed by anyone,” stands at the column, remembering life in the village. Then one of the aunts drew Tanya’s attention to the “fat general”.

Chapter Eight

The narrator again meets the now 26-year-old Onegin at one of the social events. Eugene

"languishing in idle leisure
Without work, without wife, without business,
I didn’t know how to do anything.”

Before this, Onegin traveled for a long time, but he was tired of this, and so, “he returned and ended up, like Chatsky, from the ship to the ball.”

At the evening, a lady appears with a general, who attracts everyone's attention from the public. This woman looked "quiet" and "simple". Evgeny recognizes Tatyana as a socialite. Asking a friend of the prince who this woman is, Onegin learns that she is the wife of this prince and indeed Tatyana Larina. When the prince brings Onegin to the woman, Tatiana does not show her excitement at all, while Eugene is speechless. Onegin cannot believe that this is the same girl who once wrote him a letter.

In the morning, Evgeniy receives an invitation from Prince N., Tatiana’s wife. Onegin, alarmed by memories, eagerly goes to visit, but the “stately”, “careless Lawgiver of the hall” does not seem to notice him. Unable to bear it, Eugene writes a letter to the woman in which he declares his love for her, ending the message with the lines:

“Everything is decided: I am in your will,
And I surrender to my fate."

However, no answer comes. The man sends a second, third letter. Onegin was again “caught” by a “cruel blues”, he again locked himself in his office and began to read a lot, constantly thinking and dreaming about “secret legends, heartfelt, dark antiquities.”

One spring day, Onegin goes to Tatyana without an invitation. Eugene finds a woman crying bitterly over his letter. The man falls at her feet. Tatyana asks him to stand up and reminds Evgenia how in the garden, in the alley she humbly listened to his lesson, now it’s her turn. She tells Onegin that she was in love with him then, but found only severity in his heart, although she does not blame him, considering the man’s act noble. The woman understands that now she is in many ways interesting to Eugene precisely because she has become a prominent socialite. In parting, Tatyana says:

“I love you (why lie?),
But I was given to another;
I will be faithful to him forever"

And he leaves. Evgeny is “as if struck by thunder” by Tatiana’s words.

“But a sudden ringing sound rang out,
And Tatyana’s husband showed up,
And here is my hero,
In a moment that is evil for him,
Reader, we will now leave,
For a long time... forever..."

conclusions

The novel in verse “Eugene Onegin” amazes with its depth of thought, the volume of events, phenomena and characters described. Depicting in the work the morals and life of cold, “European” St. Petersburg, patriarchal Moscow and the village - the center of folk culture, the author shows the reader Russian life as a whole. A brief retelling of “Eugene Onegin” allows you to get acquainted only with the central episodes of the novel in verse, therefore, for a better understanding of the work, we recommend that you familiarize yourself with the full version of the masterpiece of Russian literature.

Novel test

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Retelling rating

Average rating: 4.6. Total ratings received: 23981.