The Bronze Horseman...

Continued from last week

He attends a ball there, and he is deeply attracted to her poised and elegant woman who is the hostess. She is none other than Tatyana. He is uncontrollably attracted to her and the mental frame that had guided him so far seemed to have immediately evaporated. He begs her to end her current marriage and become his wife. Tatyana candidly expresses her love for him but refuses to renounce her marriage or betray her husband.

As one commentator remarked, 'this ends the story of a love out of phase and twice rejected, so curiously alien both to romanticism and to the new sensibility; and here the author wryly abandons his inadequate hero, the moody companion of his most creative years.' Eugene Onegin became a prototype for later writers of Russian fiction.

Many commentators on Russian literature have claimed that Eugene Onegin can be justly regarded as the first modern Russian novel and that it had a palpable impact on the forward movement of the Russian novel. The works of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Lermontov, Goncharov, in their different ways, bear testimony to this fact. As a discerning critic pointed out, the antithesis between a disenchanted and disoriented, though indubitably gifted and sophisticated man and an earnest, honest, sweet-tempered young girl haunted the Russian literary imagination for many years. Eugene Onegin, it should be noted, is a novel in verse - this mean that the poetry is extremely important and functional .and also the role of the author within the narrative discourse deserves careful consideration. He, in point of fact, plays three distinct and intersecting roles. First, he is the sanctioned narrator of the poem who is in control of the organization of it. Second, he is depicted as an acquaintance of the protagonist with all the suggestions f an incomplete understanding of Eugene. Third, he is presented as a character in the poem. This interplay of the three distinct roles issues in the establishment of diverse levels of poetic apprehension in the poem.

As we read this novel in verse, it is important to bear in mind the fact that the poetic texture of Eugene Onegin consists of narrative description and digression. In this regard, this poem reminds us of Lord Byron's Don Juan as well as Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy.

What we find in Pushkin's long narrative poem, then, is not only the display of narrative energy but also the deft shifting of mood and focus and tone. The narrative displays another layer of complexity in that the poet is unafraid to comment, as he progresses, on the very poetic technique and the rhetorical registers he ha sought to highlight.

While Eugene Onegin, in many ways, brings to mind Byron's Don Juan, it has to be pointed out that the former displays a great measure of self-discipline and precision which add so immeasurably to the impact of the poem.

The poem announces its self-discipline through that precision of language. The poem contains many elements - narration, description, reflection, commentary - but at the end the poet is able to sustain a unifying vision that allows the integrative energies to triumph.

The poem, in its very opening stanza, plunges into the thick off the narration. In Eugene Onegin as in the Bronze Horseman, the narrative impulse is unmistakably present.

Now that he is in grave condition

My uncle, decorous old dunce,

Has won respectful recognition;

And done the perfect thing for once.

His action be a guide to others;

But what a bore, I ask you, brothers,

To tend a patient night and day

And venture not a step away;

Is there hypocrisy more glaring

Than to amuse one all but dead,

Shake up the pillow for his head.

Does him with melancholy being,

And think behind a public sigh;

Deuce take you, step on t and die

And Pushkin builds on this narrative energy maintaining the unflagging interest of the reader through quick-paced and artful story-telling

But when young manhood's stormy morrow

Broke in due course for young Eugene

The age of hope and tender sorrow

Monsieur was driven from the scene.

This left Eugene in free possession;

Clad in London dandy's fashion

With hair style o the latest cast,

He joined society at last.

In writing and in conversation

His French was perfect, all allowed

He danced mazurkas well and bowed

Without constraint or affection.

Enough! society's verdict ran;

A bright and very nice young man.

Alexander Pushkin while propelling his narrative forward with alacrity is also interested in combing the narrative with descriptions and analyses of human situations that invest the narrative with a greater significance. In the following stanza, while he is advancing the narrative the poet is also successful in commenting on the behavior of his protagonist

How soon he learnt to feign emotion,

Act hopeless grief or jealous pet,

To smother or foment devotion,

Seem steeped in melancholy, fret,

By turns disdainful and obedient,

Cool or attentive, as expedient

How glum he was with gloom intense,

How flushed with flaming eloquence,

How casual-kind a lrtter-senser1

One end in view, one seeking most,

How utterly he was deengrossed1

How nimble was his glance and

tender

Bold-shy, and when the time was near,

Agleam with obedient tear!

Here the chosen and privileged adjectives and verbs carry a full freight of evaluative judgments. This is indeed, to my mind, a distinguishing feature of Pushkin's narrative poetry.

This novel in verse by Pushkin contains many strengths and the ability to evoke a mood, an atmosphere with telling details is one of them. The following stanza is a typical example

The house is full, the box-tier glitters

The pit, the stalls - all seethes and stirs;

Impatient clapping from the sitters

On high; the rising curtain whirs.

There stands ashimmer, half-ethereal,

Submissive to the magisterial

Magician's wands, amid her corps

Of nymphs Istomina - the floor

Touched with one foot, the other shaping

A slow-drawn circle, then a surprise -

A sudden leap, and away she flies

Like down from Aeol's lip escaping,

Bends and unbends to rapid beat

And twirling trills her tiny feet.

Commenting on this verse, a well-known critic said that, 'this may very well be the supreme example of a motion-painting in all Russian literature.'

An aspect of Pushkin's poetic craft in Eugene Onegin is the deft way in which he combines narrative and reflection, incident and self-knowledge, giving the poem a density and many-layerdness that adds immeasurably to its final effect.

The following stanza illustrates how Pushkin was able- almost effortlessly - to blend the narrative and reflexivity.

Time was when fervent author-teachers

Their pens attuned to grace and worth,

Gave their protagonists the features

Of bright perfection come to earth.

The cherished objects, hunted ever

By wicked persecuting, clever

And highly strung bestrode their books,

Abetted by attractive looks

With purest passion all afire,

The noble hero seemed to yearn

For sacrifice at every turn,

And half way through the final quire

Vice was invariably scored

And virtue reaped its reward.

The following stanza also serves to illustrate this point. We see behind the words the power of a probing creative intelligence at work.

To you this kind of nature writing

May be of limited allure;

It's all low-style and unexciting,

Shows scant refinement, to be sure.

A bard of more exuberant lyre,

With inspiration's god afire,

Portrayed the virgin snow for you

And winter's charms in every hue;

I dare say you're devoted to him

As he depicts with lyric glow

Clandestine outings in the snow;

I've no intention to outdo him

Or challenge him in this regard,

Nor you, the Finland maiden's bard.

Pushkin had a remarkable ability to interweave narrative and natural descriptions that, as the story unfolds, take on a symbolic significance.

He does this with precision and economy and it is a delight to see how his words arrive on the pagr, one by one, with unforced certitude.

The night is frosty, brighter all heaven,

The lofty lanterns' wondrous choir

Wheels on, serenely calm and even..

Tatyana steps in loose attire

Out on the spacious courtyard, training

Her mirror at the moon; but waning

In the dark glass, there wanly shone

The melancholy moon alone...

Hark.....footsteps crunch the snow; tiptoeing

Up to the passerby she bounds

Hails him; the girlish treble sounds

More tuneful than the reed pipe's blowing;

What is your name/' he stares, and on

He strides, replying; 'Agafon.'

I have chosen to quote at length from Pushkin's Eugene Onegin so that readers not familiar with this verse narrative would be able to get a feel for it. It is not only in natural description that he excels' he is indeed equally good at social description and sensitively and accurately situating his characters in their proper social contexts. As I stated earlier, Alexander Pushkin regarded Eugene Onegin as his best work, although my feeling is that the Bronze Horseman, which I wish to discuss later, is a more accomplished and integrated work. Edmund Williams, the American literary critic played a crucial role in gaining recognition and visibility among English-speaking readers for Pushkin. He comments perceptively on Pushkin's poetry, comparing him to Keats, and claims that Pushkin dispensed with the conventionally romantic feel, the story book picturesqueness; he focused sharply ad empathetically on the realistic details. After all as he himself declared it is a novel in verse. As Wilson observed, 'no detail of country life is too homely, no phase of city life too worldly, for him to master it by the beauty of his verse. Artistically, he has outstripped his time; and neither Tennyson in 'In Memoriam' nor Baudelaire in Les Fleurs du Mal was ever to surpass Pushkin in making poetry of classical precision and firmness out of a world realistically observed. 'It is the integration of experience and language, which above all, serves to elevate this poetic text to a superior work of art,

Pushkin's Eugene Onegin - the first Russian novel in verse - is distinguished by an enviable gift of phrase and a refined poetic style and here I use the term style in its broadest sense, such that the discerning reader is captivated by this style as it takes him or her into a wonderfully realised world. Nabokov, one of the most insightful readers of Pushkin remarked that, 'Pushkin's composition is first if all and above all a phenomenon of style.' This style, I am persuaded, contains a vital redemptive power. Let me explain what I mean by this semi-cryptic remark. The duel between Eugene Onegin and Lensky and the eventual death of the latter is one of the most depressing episodes in the narrative.In this episode we observe with increasing unease how darkness and moral confusion descend upon the narrative. Eugene Onegin's actions, at times invite mild censure, but here we are witnessing something far more serious. Olga, Tatyana's sister, is betrothed to Lensky; at a social get-together Eugene flirts openly with her. Lensky is deeply upset, and he challenges Eugene to a duel in order to safeguard his honor. Lensky, unfortunately, is killed in the duel. It seems that there is plenty of blame to go around. Eugene is blameworthy because he is the prime agent of the unfortunate incident; Lensky is blameworthy because of his callowness and self-destructive in challenging Eugene to a duel; the society at large is culpable because it encouraged and legitimizes such mindless destruction.

To be continued