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Eugene Onegin (Yevgeny Onegin, Евгений Онегин) is a novel in verse written by Aleksandr Pushkin. It is one of the classics of Russian literature and its hero served as the model for a number of Russian literary heroes. It was published serially 1823–1831. The first complete edition was published in 1833 and the edition the current accepted version is based on was published in 1837. The 1879 opera, Eugene Onegin, by Tchaikovsky based on the book is part of the standard operatic repertoire; there are a several recordings of it, and it is regularly performed. A staged version was produced in the USSR in 1936 with staging by Alexander Tairov and incidental music by Sergei Prokofiev. In 1999 a film version titled Onegin was made by Martha Fiennes, starring Ralph Fiennes and Liv Tyler.
Composition and publication
As with many other 19th Century novels it was written and published serially, with parts of each chapter often appearing published in magazines before the first separate edition of each chapter was first printed. Many changes, some small and some large, were made from the first appearance to the very final edition made in Pushkin's lifetime. The following dates mostly come from Nabokov's study of the photographs of Pushkin's drafts that were then available and his study of other people's work on the subject.
The first stanza of Chapter One was started on May 9, 1823 and except for three stanzas (XXXIII, XVIII and XIX) finished on October 22, 1923. The remaining stanzas were completed and added to his notebook by the first week of October 1924. Chapter One was first published as a whole in a booklet on February 16, 1825 with a foreword that suggests Pushkin had no clear plan on how (or even whether he would) continue the novel.
Chapter Two was started on October 22, 1823 (the date when most of Chapter One had been finished) and finished by December 8, 1823 except for stanzas XL and XXXV, which were added sometime over the next three months. The first separate edition of Chapter Two appeared in October 20, 1826.
Many events occurred which interrupted the writing of Chapter Three. In January 1824 Pushkin stopped work on Onegin to work on The Gypsies. Except for XXV, Stanzas I-XXXI were added on September 25, 1824. Nabokov guesses that Tanya's Letter was written in Odessa between February 8, 1824 and May 31, 1824. Pushkin's misdemeanors in Odessa caused him to be restricted to his his family estate Miskhaylovskoe in Pskov for 2 years. He left Odessa in July 21, 1824 and arrived in August 9, 1824. Writing resumed in September 5, 1824 and Chapter 3 was finished (apart from stanza XXXVI) in October 2, 1824. The first separate publication of Chapter Three was in October 10, 1827.
Chapter 4 was started in October 1824, by the end of the year Pushkin had written 23 stanzas and had reached XXVII by January 5 1825 at which point he starting writing stanzas for Onegin's Journey and worked on other pieces of writing. He thought it was finished on September 12, 1825 but later continued the process of rearranging, adding and omitting stanzas were till the first week of 1826. The first separate edition on of Chapter 4 appeared with Chapter 5 in a publication produced between January 31, 1828 and February 2, 1828.
The writing of Chapter 5 began on January 4, 1826 and 24 stanzas were complete before the start of his trip to petition the tzar for his freedom. He left on September 4, 1826 and returned on November 2, 1826. He completed the rest of the chapter in the week November 15, 1826 - November 22, 1826. The first separate edition on of Chapter 5 appeared with Chapter 4 in a publication produced between January 31, 1828 and February 2, 1828.
When Nabakov made his study on the writing of Onegin the manuscript of Chapter 6 was lost, but we know that Pushkin started Chapter 6 before he had finished Chapter 5. Most of the chapter appears to have been written before the begining of December 19, 1826 when he returned from exile in his family estate to Moscow. Many stanzas appeared to have been written between November 22, 1826 and November 25, 1826. On March 23, 1828 the first separate edition of Chapter 6 was published.
Pushkin started writing Chapter 7 in March 1827 but aborted his original plan for the plot of the chapter and started on a different tack, completing the chapter on November 4, 1828. The first separate edition of Chapter 7 was first printed on March 18, 1836
Pushkin intended to write a chapter called 'Onegin's Journey' which occurred between the events of Chapter 7 and 8, and infact was supposed to be the 8th Chapter. Fragments of this uncomplete chapter were published, in the same way that parts of each chapter had been published in magazines before each chapter was first published in its first separate edition. When Pushkin first completed Chapter 8 he published it as the final Chapter and included within its denouement the line nine cantos I have written still intending to complete this missing chapter. When Pushkin finally decided to abandon this chapter he removed parts of the ending to fit with the change.
Chapter 8 was begun before December 24, 1829 while Pushkin was in Petersburg. In August 1830, he went to Boldino where he was forced to stay by an epidemic of Cholera for three months. During this time he produced what Nabokov describes as an "incredible number of masterpices" and finished copying out Chapter 8 on September 25, 1830. During the summer of 1831 Pushkin revised and completed Chapter 8 apart from 'Onegin's Letter' which was completed on October 5, 1831. The first separate edition of Chapter 8 appeared on January 10, 1931.
Pushkin wrote at least eighteen stanzas of a never completed a tenth chapter.
The Onegin stanza
The work is (almost wholly) written in verses of iambic tetrameter with the unusual rhyme scheme "aBaBccDDeFFeGG" where the lowercase letters representing feminine rhymes and the uppercase representing masculine rhymes. This form that has become known as the 'Onegin stanza'. Unlike (for example) the Shakespearian sonnet of "abbacddceffegg" the Onegin stanza does not divide into smaller stanzas of four lines or two in an obvious way. There are many different ways the sonnet can be divided, for example the first four lines can form a quartrain or instead join with the "cc" to form a sestet. The form's flexiblity allows the author more scope to change how the semantic sections are divided from sonnet to sonnet, while keeping the sense of unity provided by keeping a fixed rhyme scheme. (Vikram Seth used this stanza in his 1986 novel The Golden Gate.)
Translations
There are a number of translations of the work into English. Vladimir Nabokov produced a translation which kept the literal meaning and the iambic rhythm, but in order to do so sacrificed the rhyme and much of the poetry of the original. Charles Johnston tried a translation which while not literal attempted to capture the panache and style of the original as well as the rhyme.
Summary
Eugene Onegin, bored with life, rejects the love of Tatyana, a humble country girl; she later rises in society and in turn rejects him. Another important thread in the narrative is Onegin's unfortunate pistol duel with his good friend Lensky, also induced by Onegin's early ennui and selfishness.
External links
- lib.ru (http://lib.ru/LITRA/PUSHKIN/ENGLISH/onegin_j.txt) Charles Johnston's translation
- The Poetry Lovers' Page (http://www.poetryloverspage.com/yevgeny/pushkin/evgeny_onegin.html) (a translation by Yevgeny Bonver)
- Pushkin's Poems (http://www.pushkins-poems.com/) (a translation by G. R. Ledger with more of Pushkin's poetry)
- The New York Review of Books (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/12829) Edmund Wilson's A review of Nabokov's translation
- On translating Eugene Onegin (http://www.tetrameter.com/nabokov.htm) a poem by Nabokov defending his choice to translate Onegin into free verse
- What's Gained in Translation (http://adaweb.walkerart.org/influx/muntadas/nytbooks.html) An article by Douglas Hofstadter on the book, which explains how he can judge the relative worth of different translations of Onegin without being able to read Russian
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