Yevgeny Onegin, Pushkin’s novel in verse

by Dilshan Boange

Pre-Soviet literature from Russia that captured the grandeur and aesthetic richness of tsarist Russia had a considerable impact on literature from Western Europe. And one of the foremost figures in this regard is Alexander Pushkin who is today seen as the greatest of Russian poets. He is in fact regarded by some scholars to be the ‘father of Russian poetry’. To Pushkin not only Russia but the world of arts and letters in general owes a great debt for the tremendous contribution he made in the form of several volumes of narrative poetry, plays and also works of prose, during his short life of a mere 37 years (1799-1837).

The legacy left to the world of literature in the form of his body of work created over a rather short life makes Pushkin a prodigy with few equals in history. Considered one of the poet’s masterpieces, his work Yevgeny Onegin is called a novel in verse.

It is even regarded as the first Russian novel although perhaps that may not be in terms of labelling it strictly on the basis of narrative form, since the basis of the ‘novel’ as a separate genre of writing or narrative developed in Western Europe in the mould of prose which distinguished itself from the lyrical nature of poetry as verse, which would be characterised by its elements of subtle musicality and rhythmic flows when read out.

However, from a point of academic interest on the subject of Russian literature and the contribution that Pushkin’s Yevgeny Onegin made towards its development, there is no question that a love story that has an eponymous protagonist as its hero, a woman, a love interest, a twist of tragedy and romance reflecting the historical times and social milieu that the poet lived in, would have provided a conceptual premise to scholars and lovers of literature at that time to grasp narratives of ‘fiction’ that show the purpose of the novel though not actually written in the archetypical model of a prose work.

In this regard perhaps the contributions Yevgeny Onegin would have made towards the development of the Russian novel cannot be overstated.

Legend

An epic poem is usually a work in verse that has as its plot and storyline an existing legend or myth or some historical account that is part of oral lore which the poet develops into a narrative delivered with creative embellishments that heighten the emotions of the reader (or listeners for that matter), through descriptivism that engenders an aesthetic experience.

The Ramayana of India and the Iliad of the Greeks are good examples. Works as these cannot be classified in the genre of fiction for the base of the storyline and plot cannot be claimed as original inventions of the poet.

A work of fiction in comparison, which could either be written in prose or in verse, would be claimable by the author as tracing its birth in terms of story, plotline, and character to the author’s own imagination. There one finds the ‘novelty’ of a work of ‘fiction’ in comparison to the classical epic of ancient times.

Therefore, the ‘creative investment’ if I may use such a phrase of expression, of the authors of these two types of work could be distinguished in the light of how the creator of a fiction needs to invent the core idea behind the story all on his own, whereas the poet of the ancient world who narrated in verse a historical epic already had a core idea and storyline to work on. In this regard perhaps Pushkin’s Yevgeny Onegin is seen as possibly setting a precedent where attributes of the European novel took form in the Russian language as a written work albeit in verse.

The volume of Yevgeny Onegin which I have is an English translation that has been edited and revised in translation by A.D.P. Briggs based on a translation by Oliver Elton.

I would like to cite from the Introduction written by Briggs where a significant contribution that arose from Yevgeny Onegin has been discussed that indicates in clear terms the immensity of one of Pushkin’s contributions through his novel in verse “The happiest decision taken by Alexander Pushkin in the writing of this novel concerns his versification, and particularly the discovery of the ‘Onegin’ stanza.

Although all of Pushkin’s previous narrative poetry (and most of it subsequently) was written in flowing paragraphs of verse controlled by a variable rhyme scheme, for Yevgeny Onegin he decided to use stanzas.

The decision may have been inspired by Byron, who was much admired in Russian, as elsewhere, in 1823.

Pushkin is probably half-imitating, half ridiculing the achievement of Don Juan, but to do so he has replaced the Englishman’s constraining, dully repetitive, ottava rima by a marvellously versatile stanza capable of changing shape and renewing itself at the flick of a rhyming switch.

Pushkin never describes it as a sonnet, but that is what t is, in essence.

The only unsonnet-like quality about the ‘Onegin’ stanza is that it is written in tetrameters (four-foot lines) instead of the customary pentameters.”

Epigraph

The work narrated in verse is divided into eight chapters and opens with an epigraph which is as follows –“Precipitate to live, and all too swift to feel. –K. Vyazemsky.”

This struck me in certain ways as a feature which one finds at times at the opening of a novel which not only embellishes the opening of the narrative but indicates from a symbolic sense what the text could relate to in connection with the message that can be read out of the epigraph.

The more interesting fact in this regard would seem is that the ingredient of epigraphy extends on a chapter basis with each chapter having its own epigraphic opening with chapter seven having three such quotation that speak of the grand Russian capital –Moscow. I have produced here those three excerpts as in the text –

“Moscow, beloved daughter of Russia, where find thy equal?” –Dmitiriev

“How not love Moscow, our home?” –Baratynsky

“You run down Moscow? Why of travel make such fuss? Where better? –where there is none of us.” –Griboyedov.

It is also noteworthy that as in a novel, the narrative has its characters speak out lines and thereby creates the facet of dialogue as it would be so in a novel.

Principal characters

The principal characters in this work are the eponymous Yevgeny Onegin, the main female character Tatyana Larina, Tatyana’s sister, Olga, and her fiancé Vladimir Lensky, who incidentally is killed in a duel with Onegin.

The story deals with ‘unrequited love’ on the part of Onegin to Tatyana at first later that boomerangs as Onegin finds himself attracted to her later on in life since by then as Tatyana a married woman does not at first find herself attracted to Onegin anymore. The story is one that deals with moral perspectives and how foolish and misconduct leads to unhappiness and tragedy.

In today’s world of commoditised literature the demand for poetry as opposed to fiction is less.

The demand for a work in prose as opposed to a work in verse is more. While the novel in verse (as opposed to prose) has made its way to contemporary fiction which one finds in the works of writers like Vikram Seth, how much headway it can make in popularity today is questionable since the demand driven publishing industry may not provide many an opportunity for poets or writers of verse to enter the mainstream simply due to realities of profitability that affect any commercial venture.

When looking at how much the present world of literature has diversified and expanded not only in terms of narrative modes but also in terms of genre and theme one may wonder what were the forerunners of these manifold streams of writing that have not developed their own distinguished stylistics and other classifiable identities?

Therefore in this regard perhaps the work Yevgeny Onegin by the master Russian poet Alexander Pushkin can be seen as one of the forerunners that helped the birth of a genre known as the novel in verse.