Problems that are raised in the novel Eugene Onegin. Tatyana and Evgeny in the eighth chapter of the novel
History of creation
The history of the creation of the novel The writing of the novel took Pushkin more than seven years (1823 - 1830). It was published in separate chapters: the first chapter of the novel appeared as a separate book in 1825, the second - in 1826, the third - in 1827, at the beginning of 1828 the fourth and fifth chapters appeared, and in March 1828 - the sixth, seventh came out in March 1830 and the last - the eighth - was published in 1832. The outline of the general plan of the novel included nine chapters, but in the process of writing the plan changed slightly, so that in the first complete edition of "Eugene Onegin" (1833) Pushkin included eight chapters and "Excerpts from Onegin's Journey"
In addition, at the same time, the tenth chapter of "Eugene Onegin" was written in Boldino, which Pushkin burned, and only separate excerpts from drafts have come down to us (the poet encrypted the draft text, and literary critics managed to decipher incomplete 16 stanzas) containing pro-Decembrist messages dangerous for Pushkin. the utterances, as can be judged from the restored parts, are very caustic and caustic. The tenth chapter is not included in the canonical text of the novel. Completed work on "Eugene Onegin" on September 26, 1830.
Genre. Topic. Problem. Idea.
"Eugene Onegin" Pushkin analysis A. Pushkin's novel "Eugene Onegin" is the first realistic novel not only in Russian, but also in world literature.
Genre - socio-psychological novel in verse.
Subject - depiction of Russian life in the first quarter of the 19th century
Main characters: Eugene Onegin, Vladimir Lensky, Tatyana Larina, Olga Larina.
Composition: built "mirror": Tatyana's letter - Onegin's answer - Onegin's letter - Tatyana's answer.
The main conflict of the novel: the conflict of two life philosophies, the conflict of man and society, the conflict of man and environment.
Issues:
Man against the background of the era, time, the meaning of his existence on earth.
The problem of education and upbringing;
Literary creativity;
fidelity in married life;
human relationships;
True and imaginary life values;
The inner freedom of a thinking person and the dictates of a secular society;
The ideal of female beauty;
Family relations.
"Eugene Onegin" is a work about love. Pushkin's love is a high, free feeling. A person is free in his choice and happy with it, but not in this novel. ALTHOUGH Tatyana loved Onegin, but she was not happy with him, she did not even receive reciprocal love. You can trace the theme of love through two meetings between Tatyana and Evgeny.
Lyrical digressions
- this is a compositional and stylistic device, which consists in the author's deviation from the plot narrative and the introduction of direct authorial speech. They create the image of the author as a living interlocutor, narrator and open up the world of narration to the outside, introducing additional topics that are not related to the plot. In Eugene Onegin, lyrical digressions make up a significant part - almost a third of its volume. Lyrical digressions perform numerous functions in the novel: they mark the boundaries of the novel's time and replace the plot narrative, create the completeness of the image, characteristic of the "encyclopedia" and give the author's commentary on the events. It is lyrical digressions that introduce the author's "I", allow you to conduct a kind of dialogue with readers. By creating a distance between the author and the hero, they allow Pushkin to take the position of an objective researcher in relation to the events and characters depicted, which is necessary in a realistic work.
plot and composition.
Heroes:
Eugene Onegin:
Main character Romana - a young landowner Eugene Onegin, this is a man with a complex, contradictory character. The upbringing that Onegin received was disastrous. He grew up without a mother. The father, a frivolous St. Petersburg gentleman, did not pay attention to his son, entrusting him to "wretched" tutors. Thereby Onegin grew up as an egoist, a person who cares only about himself, about his desires and who does not know how to pay attention to the feelings, interests, suffering of other people. He is able to offend, offend a person without even noticing it. Everything beautiful that was in the soul of a young man remained undeveloped. Onegin's life- boredom and laziness, monotonous satisfactions in the absence of a real, living thing.
Image of Onegin not invented. In it, the poet summarized the features, typical images for young people of that time. These are people who were provided for by work and serfs who received a disorderly upbringing. But unlike most representatives of the ruling class, these young men are smarter, more sensitive, more conscientious, more noble. They are dissatisfied with themselves, their environment, social structure.
Onegin in terms of views and requirements for life, he is superior not only to his rural landlord neighbors, but also to representatives of the St. Petersburg high society. Having met with Lensky, who received his higher education at the best university in Germany, Onegin could argue with him on any topic, as with an equal. Friendship with Lensky, he discovers in Onegin's soul hidden behind a mask of cold egoism and indifference the possibilities of true, friendly relations between people.
Seeing Tatyana for the first time, without even talking to her, without hearing her voice, he immediately felt the poetry of the soul of this girl. In relation to Tatyana, as well as to Lensky, such a feature of him as goodwill was revealed. Under the influence of the events depicted in the novel, evolution takes place in the soul of Eugene, and in the last chapter of the novel, Onegin is no longer the same as we saw him before. He fell in love with Tatyana. But his love does not bring happiness, neither to him nor to her.
In the novel "Eugene Onegin" Pushkin portrayed a frivolous young man who, even in love, cannot give himself advice. Fleeing from the world, Onegin could not escape from himself. By the time he realized this, it was already too late. Tatyana now does not believe him. And this opens Onegin's eyes to himself, but nothing will change.
"Young rake" - these words can briefly describe Eugene at this time. He does not serve anywhere, leads a secular life, attends balls and dinners, pays much attention to his appearance. He knows how to appear smart and subtle, but in fact his knowledge is superficial, and he uses it only to impress.
He loves women, but his hobbies are superficial. Using his charm, he conquers women, and then quickly cools down.
Evgeniy Onegin in the village
In the end, Eugene cools off to this lifestyle. Fed up with both balls and female attention, he is going to travel, but then his uncle dies, and Eugene remains the heir to the estate.
Here we recognize Onegin on the other hand. Not afraid to arouse the displeasure of the local landowners, he replaces corvée with a light dues for the serfs. Having escaped from the entertainments of the capital, he does not visit his neighbors in the village, but he closely converges with the naive, but sincere Lensky.
killing a friend and rejected love
This friendship ends tragically. An ardent young man sends a challenge to Eugene. Onegin realizes that it is better to apologize to a friend, but narcissism makes him put on his usual mask of indifference and accept the challenge. Lensky dies at the hands of Onegin.
Having received Tatyana's letter, Eugene was touched. He sympathizes with Tatyana, but does not yet love her. Having never experienced true love for a woman, using her as a bargaining chip, he is generally incapable of taking this feeling seriously. Therefore, Eugene, as usual, enters the role of an experienced, cold-hearted person, while showing nobility. Eugene did not take advantage of Tatyana's feelings, but did not escape the temptation to read the notation to the girl in love.
epiphany Onegin
Several years passed and he had a chance to severely regret his coldness. In adulthood, he is no longer interested in spectacular poses, he is less focused on himself. Having met Tatyana, a married lady who has perfectly studied the art of "ruling herself", Eugene falls selflessly in love with her. Time does not heal him, months pass, and he still thinks only of her, driving himself almost to madness.
There is an explanation; he learns that Tatyana still loves him, but is not going to break her husband's loyalty.
Pushkin hero capable of real feelings, but an early commitment to light spoils him, forcing him to sacrifice love and friendship in favor of posturing. When Onegin finally begins to "be" and not "appear", many mistakes can no longer be corrected.
Similar information.
The work of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin on the work "Eugene Onegin" took place in a difficult period for Russia. The writing of the novel lasted eight years. During this time, one ruler of the state was replaced by another, the society was in the process of rethinking key life values, the worldview of the author himself was changing. It follows from this that many important moral questions are raised in the work.
Firstly, Pushkin touched on the topic of searching for the meaning of people's existence. In the novel, we can observe the life of the characters in dynamics, the path of their spiritual development. Some heroes managed to find the truth, to recognize the right ideals, having gone through trials. Others have followed the wrong path, wrongly prioritizing but never realizing it.
The secular society of those times had its own laws. Young people did not seek to make existence meaningful. They were busy with the senseless spending of parental money, an idle lifestyle, balls and entertainment, gradually degrading, corrupting, becoming similar to each other. To earn recognition among others, it was enough to follow fashion trends, dance well, speak French, and be able to communicate gallantly. And that's it.
Secondly, the theme of the relationship to marriage can be traced in the work. At first, young people, including Onenin, are burdened by serious relationships, consider family life boring, unattractive, unpromising. So Eugene neglected the feelings of young Tatiana, choosing freedom, and not the love of a modest provincial.
Only as time passed did a stable relationship become desirable for the protagonist. He wanted, passionately desired peace, comfort, warmth, quiet family happiness, home life. However, the opportunities for this were irretrievably missed through his own fault. If Onegin "matured" in time, he could not only become happy himself, but also make the romantic Tatyana happy.
Thirdly, the theme of friendship is present in the novel. Secular young people are absolutely incapable of loyal and true friendships. All of them are just friends, they support communication “from nothing to do”. But it is pointless to expect help in a difficult situation, support, understanding from them. So Lensky and Onegin seemed to be good friends, but because of some stupidity, one killed the other.
Fourthly, Pushkin mentions the issue of duty and honor. Tatyana Larina fully reveals this topic. She was, like Eugene, of noble origin, received a superficial upbringing at home. However, the morals of the world did not affect her pure and innocent soul. She is madly in love with Onegin, but she puts her duty to her husband, albeit unloved, above all else. Even the passionate tirade of the hero did not persuade her to change her decision.
A society mired in lies, hypocrisy, erroneous guidelines cannot find the true meaning of life, and therefore does not appreciate it. Eugene placed secular honor above moral duty by killing a romantic friend. Such a shift in ideals looks absurd, but, alas, such is the harsh reality.
The nineteenth century is rightfully called the golden age of Russian poetry, and I would also call it the golden age of prose. Among the constellation of names for many, the closest and dearest is the name of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin. Each person has his own life, his own destiny, but there is something that unites all people. In my opinion, these are, first of all, human feelings and aspirations, the search for oneself. It was about this, close to each of us, that Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin wrote in his works, he tried to reach out to the hearts of his readers, trying to convey to them all the beauty and depth of human feelings. When you read Pushkin, many questions arise, but the main thing that worries the reader is the eternal problems of good and evil, love and friendship, honor, decency, nobility.
My favorite work of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin is “Eugene Onegin”. Everyone tends to find in this novel something precious, unique, sometimes understandable only to him, but what moral ideals of the author himself can be found here?
Despite the fact that the novel is called "Eugene Onegin" - the main character, in my opinion, is the author himself. Indeed, in comparison with Eugene Onegin, the spiritual world of the lyrical hero, his attitude to life, to work, to art, to a woman is higher, cleaner, more significant. The life of Eugene Onegin, full of secular entertainment, bothers him. For him, love is "the science of tender passion"; he was tired of the theater, he says:
It's time for everyone to change, I endured ballets for a long time, But I'm tired of Didlo.
For Pushkin, the theater is a “magic land”.
In the poetic novel, Pushkin touches on the issue of honor. Onegin goes to the village, where he meets Lensky. In an effort (for the sake of entertainment) to tease a friend, Onegin courts Lensky's girlfriend. Lensky, in the heat of jealousy, challenges him to a duel - an opportunity to defend his tarnished honor. For Onegin - a convention, he would not have gone to shoot if not for the opinion of the world, which would have condemned him for refusing. Lensky dies. Pushkin shows how a person's life becomes cheaper than gossip.
Onegin embarks on a journey that will change him greatly. There is a reassessment of values. He becomes a stranger to the world where he was his own a few years ago. Onegin fell in love with a woman. For Pushkin, love is a moral value, how many beautiful lines he dedicated to this feeling. Let us recall his poem “I remember a wonderful moment...”:
The soul has awakened:
And here you are again
Like a fleeting vision
Like a genius of pure beauty.
Love for Pushkin is a sacred feeling. The love awakened in Evgeny is a clear indication of how Evgeny has changed. But the beloved woman remains with another - this is Onegin's severe punishment.
But the moral ideal in the novel for Pushkin is Tatyana Larina. From the first lines dedicated to her, we feel the author's sympathy for her, her kind and sensitive heart:
I love so much
My dear Tatyana.
We will not find a description of Tatyana's appearance in the novel, the author speaks only of her pure and beautiful soul, only the inner world of the heroine is important to him. He creates Tatyana as sweet and sensitive, her attachment to family and friends, understanding the beauty of nature are important to him. Only the world around us can give a person inspiration and peace.
Tatyana falls in love with Eugene Onegin. “Tatyana loves not jokingly,” Pushkin says about his heroine. She carries this love through her whole life, but she cannot sacrifice her husband's happiness for the person she loves. Tatyana explains her refusal to Eugene Onegin as follows:
But I am given to another;
I will be faithful to him forever.
Good repays good - that is the eternal truth. Tatyana is close to this folk wisdom. And, perhaps, that is why Pushkin calls it “the Russian soul.”
“Take care of honor from a young age” - this is the epigraph of A.S. Pushkin’s story “The Captain’s Daughter”. The father gives the same instruction to his son Pyotr Andreevich Grinev, sending him to the service. The father himself is trying not to lead his son off the right path, sending him not to Petersburg, where the young man could go astray, starting to drink, play cards, but sends him to a small fortress, where he could honestly serve the fatherland, strengthen his soul , because Petr Andreevich Grinev is only seventeen years old. Pushkin in Grinev's father shows those traits that are valued in people of the old school, in people of the 18th century. The meaning of the life of Andrei Petrovich Grinev is that a person, under any trials, does not make a deal with his conscience. He believes that the goal of every man's life is an honest service for the good of the Fatherland.
In "The Captain's Daughter" we meet a lot of heroes for whom the principle "Take care of honor from a young age" is the main thing in life. For Pushkin, the concept of "honor" is associated with loyalty to friends, duty. We see how Grinev, being a prisoner of Pugachev, directly says to his eyes: “I am a natural nobleman; I swore allegiance to the empress: I can’t serve you.”
Maria Ivanovna, Grinev's fiancee, fainting when a cannon is fired in honor of her mother's name day, does not make a deal with her conscience, she rejects the offer of the traitor Shvabrin, who takes the opportunity and offers to take her out of the fortress if she marries him.
We see how Pushkin embodies his moral ideal in all the heroes: fidelity to duty and word, incorruptibility, the desire to help a friend or loved one.
It seems to me that Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin believes that the principle of “good is met with good” is one of the many wisdoms of the people. This wisdom is very close to him. Grinev, trying to save his bride, comes to Pugachev's camp. Pugachev remembers the good (Grinev met Pugachev before the uprising and gave him a sheepskin coat) and lets him go with Marya Ivanovna. Being held captive by Pugachev, Grinev hears a song about the tsar and the robber. The robber, like Grinev, honestly confesses to the tsar what he has done, Grinev tells Pugachev about his intention to serve Catherine P. The tsar executes the criminal, and Pugachev releases the prisoner.
I told about only two works of A. S. Pushkin. Like every person, he had his own view of what was happening, he sought to find an answer to the questions that worried his contemporaries, but there is no time frame for Pushkin's works, he is interesting to all ages. The moral ideals of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin - fidelity to duty, friends, purity of soul, honesty, kindness - these are universal values on which the world is based.
Problems and characters of the novel "Eugene Onegin"
Before talking about the problems and the main characters of the novel in the verses of "Eugene Onegin", it is necessary to clearly understand the features of the genre of this work. The genre of "Eugene Onegin" is lyrical-epic. Consequently, the novel is built on the inextricable interaction of two plots: epic (where the main characters are Onegin and Tatyana) and lyrical (where the main character is the narrator, on whose behalf the narration is being conducted). The lyrical plot is not just equal in rights in the novel - it dominates, because all the events of real life and the characters' life in the novel are presented to the reader through the prism of the author's perception, the author's assessment.
The key, central problem in the novel is the problem of the purpose and meaning of life, because at turning points in history, which was the era for Russia after the Decembrist uprising, a cardinal reassessment of values takes place in the minds of people. And at such a time, the highest moral duty of the artist is to point society to eternal values, to give firm moral guidelines. The best people of the Pushkin - Decembrist - generation, as it were, "leave the game": they are either disappointed in the old ideals, or they do not have the opportunity in the new conditions to fight for them, to put them into practice. The next generation - the one that Lermontov will call "a gloomy crowd and soon forgotten" - was initially "put on its knees." Due to the peculiarities of the genre, the novel, which literary criticism rightly interprets as a kind of "lyrical diary" of the author, reflects the very process of reassessment of the entire system of moral values. Time in the novel flows in such a way that we see the characters in dynamics, we trace their spiritual path. All the main characters are going through a period of formation before our eyes, painfully searching for the truth, determining their place in the world, the purpose of their existence.
The central image of the novel is the image of the author. For all the autobiographical nature of this character, in no case can he be identified with Pushkin, if only because the world of the novel is an ideal, fictional world. Therefore, when we talk about the image of the author, we do not personally mean Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin, but the lyrical hero of the novel "Eugene Onegin".
So, before us is the author's lyrical diary; a frank conversation with the reader, where confessional moments are interspersed with light chatter. The author is either serious or frivolous, sometimes maliciously ironic, sometimes simply cheerful, sometimes sad and always sharp. And most importantly - always absolutely sincere with the reader. Lyrical digressions reflect the changes in the author's feelings, his ability to both light flirtation (characteristic of "windy youth") and deep admiration for his beloved (compare stanzas XXXII and XXXIII of the first chapter of the novel).
... we, the enemies of Hymen,
In home life we see one
A series of boring pictures...
The spouse is perceived as an object for ridicule:
... majestic cuckold,
Always happy with myself
With my dinner and my wife.
But let us pay attention to the opposition of these verses and the lines of "Fragments
from Onegin's Journey":
My ideal now is the hostess,
My desire is peace
Yes, a cabbage soup, yes, a large one.
What in youth seemed to be a sign of limitation, spiritual and mental poverty, in mature years turns out to be the only correct, moral path. And in no case should the author be suspected of hypocrisy: we are talking about the spiritual maturation of a person, about a normal change in value criteria:
Blessed is he who was young from his youth,
Blessed is he who has matured in time.
The tragedy of the protagonist in many ways stems precisely from Onegin's inability to "ripen in time", from "premature old age of the soul." What happened in the life of the author harmoniously, although not painlessly, in the fate of his hero became the cause of the tragedy.
The search for the meaning of life takes place in different planes of existence. The plot of the novel is based on the love of the main characters. Therefore, the manifestation of the essence of a person in the choice of a lover, in the nature of feelings is the most important feature of the image, which determines his entire attitude to life. Love for the author and for his heroine Tatyana is a huge, intense spiritual work. For Lensky, this is a necessary romantic attribute, which is why he chooses Olga, devoid of individuality, in whom all the typical features of the heroines of sentimental novels have merged:
Her portrait, it is very nice,
I used to love him myself
But he bored me to no end.
For Onegin, love is "the science of tender passion." He will know the true feeling by the end of the novel, when the experience of suffering comes.
"Eugene Onegin" is a realistic work, and realism, unlike other artistic methods, does not imply any final and only true solution to the main problem. On the contrary, he requires an ambiguous treatment of this problem:
This is how nature made us
prone to contradiction.
The ability to reflect the "inclination" of human nature "to contradiction", the complexity and variability of the self-consciousness of the individual in the world are the hallmarks of Pushkin's realism. The duality of the image of the author himself lies in the fact that he evaluates his generation in its integrity, without ceasing to feel like a representative of the generation, endowed with common advantages and disadvantages. Pushkin emphasizes this duality of self-awareness of the lyrical hero of the novel: “We all learned a little ...”, “We honor everyone with zeros ...”, “We all look at Napoleons”, “So people, I repent first, / / There is nothing to do friends..."
Human consciousness, the system of his life values largely form the moral laws adopted in society. The author himself regards the influence of high society ambiguously. The first chapter gives a sharply satirical depiction of the world and the pastimes of secular youth. The tragic 6th chapter, where the young poet dies, ends with a lyrical digression: the author’s reflections on the age limit that he is preparing to cross: “Am I to be thirty years old soon?” And he calls on "young inspiration" to save the "soul of the poet" from death, not to let "... turn to stone// In the deadly ecstasy of light,// In this whirlpool, where I am with you// I bathe, dear friends!". So, a whirlpool, deadening the soul. But here is the 8th chapter:
And now for the first time I muse
I bring you to a social event.
She likes order
oligarchic conversations,
And the chill of calm pride,
And this mixture of ranks and years.
Yu.M. explains this contradiction very correctly. Lotman: “The image of light received double coverage: on the one hand, the world is soulless and mechanistic, it remained an object of condemnation, on the other hand, as a sphere in which Russian culture develops, life is spiritualized by the play of intellectual and spiritual forces, poetry, pride, like the world of Karamzin and the Decembrists, Zhukovsky and the author of Eugene Onegin himself, he retains an unconditional value. Society is heterogeneous. It depends on the person himself whether he will accept the moral laws of the cowardly majority or the best representatives of the world ”(Lotman Yu.M. Roman A.S. Pushkin “Eugene Onegin”: Commentary. St. Petersburg, 1995).
The “cowardly majority”, “friends” surrounding a person in a “dead” “pool of light” appear in the novel for a reason. Just as “the science of tender passion” has become a caricature of true love, so secular friendship has become a caricature of true friendship. "There is nothing to do friends" - such is the author's verdict on the friendly relations of Onegin and Lensky. Friendship without a deep spiritual community is just a temporary empty union. And this caricature of secular friendships infuriates the author: "... save us from friends, God!" Compare the scathing lines about the slander of "friends" in the fourth chapter of the novel with the penetrating verses about the nanny (stanza XXXV):
But I am the fruit of my dreams
And harmonic plots
I read only to the old nanny,
Friend of my youth...
A full-fledged life is impossible without disinterested self-giving in friendship - that is why these secular "friendships" are so terrible for the author. For in true friendship, betrayal is the most terrible sin that cannot be justified by anything, but in a secular parody of friendship, betrayal is in the order of things, normal. For the author, the inability to make friends is a terrible sign of the moral degradation of modern society.
But there is no friendship even between us.
Destroy all prejudices
We honor all zeros,
And units - themselves.
We all look at Napoleons
There are millions of bipedal creatures
For us, there is only one tool;
We feel wild and funny.
Let us pay attention to these verses, they are one of the most important, central in Russian literature of the 19th century. Pushkin's formula will form the basis of "Crime and Punishment", "War and Peace". The Napoleonic theme was first recognized and formulated by Pushkin as the problem of the purpose of human life. Napoleon appears here not as a romantic image, but as a symbol of a psychological attitude, according to which a person, for the sake of his desires, is ready to suppress, destroy any obstacle: after all, the people around him are only “two-legged creatures”!
The author himself sees the meaning of life in the fulfillment of his destiny. The whole novel is full of deep thoughts about art, the image of the author in this sense is unambiguous: he is first of all a poet, his life is unthinkable outside of creativity, outside of intense spiritual work.
In this he is directly opposed to Eugene. And not at all because he does not plow and sow before our eyes. He does not need to work, to search for his destiny. And the education of Onegin, and his attempts to immerse himself in reading, and his efforts to write (“yawning, took up the pen”) the author perceives ironically: “Hard work was sickening to him.” This is one of the most important moments for understanding the novel. Although the action of the novel ends before the uprising on the Senate Square, the traits of a man of the Nikolaev era are often guessed in Yevgeny. A heavy cross for this generation will be the inability to find their calling, to unravel their destiny. This motif is central in the work of Lermontov, and Turgenev comprehends this problem in the image of Pavel Petrovich Kirsanov.
Particularly important in "Eugene Onegin" is the problem of duty and happiness. In fact, Tatyana Larina is not a love heroine, she is a heroine of conscience. Appearing on the pages of the novel as a seventeen-year-old provincial girl dreaming of happiness with her lover, she grows before our eyes into an amazingly whole heroine, for whom the concepts of honor and duty are above all. Olga, Lensky's fiancee, soon forgot the dead young man: "the young lancer captured her." For Tatiana, Lensky's death is a catastrophe. She curses herself for continuing to love Onegin: "She must hate in him / / The murderer of her brother." A heightened sense of duty is the dominant image of Tatyana. Happiness with Onegin is impossible for her: there is no happiness built on dishonor, on the misfortune of another person. Tatyana's choice is a deeply moral choice, the meaning of life for her is in accordance with the highest moral criteria. F.M. wrote about this. Dostoevsky in the essay "Pushkin": "... Tatyana is a solid type, standing firmly on her own soil. She is deeper than Onegin and, of course, smarter than him. She already with her noble instinct foresees where and in what the truth is, which was expressed in the final poem. Maybe Pushkin would have done even better if he called his poem after Tatyana, and not Onegin, for she is undoubtedly the main character of the poem. This is a positive type, not a negative one, this is a type of positive beauty, this is the apotheosis of a Russian woman, and she the poet intended to express the idea of the poem in the famous scene of Tatyana's last meeting with Onegin. One can even say that such a beautiful positive type of Russian woman has almost never been repeated in our fiction - except perhaps for the image of Lisa in Turgenev's "Noble Nest". But the manner of looking down did something that Onegin did not even recognize Tatiana at all when he met her for the first time, in the wilderness, in a modest
the image of a pure, innocent girl, so shy before him from the first time. He was unable to distinguish completeness and perfection in the poor girl, and indeed, perhaps, he took her for a "moral embryo." This is she, an embryo, this is after her letter to Onegin! If there is anyone who is a moral embryo in the poem, it is, of course, himself, Onegin, and this is indisputable. Yes, and he could not recognize her at all: does he know the human soul? This is a distracted person, this is a restless dreamer in his whole life. He did not recognize her later, in St. Petersburg, in the form of a noble lady, when, in his own words, in a letter to Tatyana, "he comprehended with his soul all her perfections." But these are only words: she passed him by in his life, not recognized and not appreciated by him; that's the tragedy of their romance<…>.
By the way, who said that secular, court life had perniciously touched her soul and that it was precisely the dignity of a secular lady and new secular concepts that were partly the reason for her refusal to Onegin? No, it wasn't like that. No, this is the same Tanya, the same old village Tanya! She is not spoiled, she, on the contrary, is depressed by this magnificent Petersburg life, broken and suffering, she hates her dignity as a secular lady, and whoever judges her otherwise does not understand at all what Pushkin wanted to say. And now she firmly says to Onegin:
But I am given to another
And I will be faithful to him forever.
She expressed this precisely as a Russian woman, this is her apotheosis. She tells 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: is it because she refused to follow him, despite the fact that she herself told him: “I love you”, or because she is “like a Russian woman” (and not southern or not some kind of French) , unable to take a bold step, unable to break his fetters, unable to sacrifice the charm of honors, wealth, his secular significance, the conditions of virtue? No, the Russian woman is brave. A Russian woman will boldly follow what she believes in, and she proved it. But she is “given to another and will be faithful to him for a century”<…>. Yes, she is faithful to this general, her husband, an honest man who loves her, respects her and is proud of her. Let her “begged her mother,” but she, and no one else, agreed, she, after all, she herself swore to him to be his honest wife. Let her marry him out of desperation, but now he is her husband, and her betrayal will cover him with shame, shame and kill him. And how can a person base his happiness on the misfortune of another? Happiness is not only in the pleasures of love, but also in the highest harmony of the spirit. How to calm the spirit if a dishonest, ruthless, inhuman act stands behind? Should she run away just because my happiness is here? But what kind of happiness can there be if it is based on someone else's misfortune? Let me imagine that you yourself are building the building of human destiny with the goal of making people happy in the end, finally giving them peace and tranquility. And now imagine, too, that for this it is necessary and inevitably necessary to torture only one human being, moreover, even if not so worthy, even funny in a different way, a creature, not some Shakespeare, but just an honest old man, a young husband his wife, in whose love he blindly believes, although he does not know her heart at all, respects her, is proud of her, is happy with her and is calm. And only he must be disgraced, dishonored and tortured, and your building should be erected on the tears of this dishonored old man! Will you agree to be the architect of such a building on this condition? Here is the question. And can you admit even for a moment the idea that the people for whom you built this building would themselves agree to accept such happiness from you, if suffering is in its foundation?<…>. Tell me, could Tatyana decide otherwise, with her lofty soul, with her heart, so affected? Not<…>. Tatyana sends Onegin away<…>. It has no soil, it is a blade of grass carried by the wind. She is not like that at all: she, both in despair and in the suffering consciousness that her life has perished, 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 the shadow of the branches over the grave of her poor nanny." Oh, these memories and former images are now the most precious thing to her, these images are the only ones left to her, but they save her soul from final despair. And this is not a little, no, there is already a lot, because here is a whole foundation, here is something unshakable and indestructible. Here is contact with the motherland, with the native people, with its shrine<…>."
The climax of the plot is the sixth chapter, the duel between Onegin and Lensky. The value of life is tested by death. Onegin makes a tragic mistake. At this moment, the opposition of his understanding of honor and duty to the meaning that Tatyana puts into these words is especially vivid. For Onegin, the concept of “secular honor” turns out to be more significant than a moral duty - and he pays a terrible price for the allowed shift in moral criteria: he is forever on the blood of a friend he killed.
The author compares two possible paths of Lensky: the sublime (“for the good of the world, or at least glory was born”) and the mundane (“ordinary destiny”). And for him it is important not what fate is more real - it is important that there will be none, Lensky is killed. For the light that does not know the true meaning of life, human life itself has no value. For the author, it is the greatest, ontological value. Therefore, the author's sympathies and antipathies are so clearly visible in the novel "Eugene Onegin".
The attitude of the author to the heroes of the novel is always definite and unambiguous. Let us once again note Pushkin's unwillingness to be identified with Eugene Onegin: "I am always glad to notice the difference / / Between Onegin and me." Recall the ambiguity of the author's assessment of Eugene: as the novel is written, his attitude towards the hero changes: the years go by, the author himself changes, Onegin also changes. The hero at the beginning and end of the novel is two different people: in the finale, Onegin is "a tragic face." For the author, the main tragedy of Onegin lies in the gap between his true human capabilities and the role he plays: this is one of the central problems of the Onegin generation. Sincerely loving his hero, Pushkin cannot but condemn him for fear of violating secular conventions.
Tatyana is Pushkin's favorite heroine, the image closest to the author. The poet will call her "sweet ideal." The spiritual closeness of the author and Tatyana is based on the similarity of the basic principles of life: disinterested attitude to the world, closeness to nature, national consciousness.
The attitude of the author to Lensky is love-ironic. Lensky's romantic worldview is largely artificial (remember Lensky's scene at the grave of Dmitry Larin). The tragedy of Lensky for the author is that for the right to play the role of a romantic hero, Vladimir sacrifices his life: the sacrifice is absurd and senseless. The tragedy of a failed personality is also a sign of the times.
A special conversation is the author's attitude to secondary and episodic characters. He largely reveals in them not individual, but typical features. This creates the attitude of the author to society as a whole. Secular society in the novel is heterogeneous. This is also the “secular mob”, which has made the pursuit of fashion the main principle of life - in beliefs, in behavior, in reading, etc. And at the same time, the circle of people accepted in Tatiana's Petersburg salon is a true intelligentsia. The provincial society appears in the novel as a caricature of the high society. One phenomenon at the name day of Tatyana of the four Skotinins (they are also the heroes of Fonvizin's comedy "Undergrowth") shows that nothing has changed in the fifty years separating the modern Pushkin province from the province described by Fonvizin. But at the same time, it is in the Russian provinces that Tatyana's appearance is possible.
Summing up, it should be said that the fate of the heroes of the novel primarily depends on the truth (or falsity) of the values that they take as the basic principles of life.
Bibliography
Monakhova O.P., Malkhazova M.V. Russian literature of the 19th century. Part 1. - M.-1994.
Lotman Yu.M. Pushkin's novel "Eugene Onegin": Commentary. St. Petersburg - 1995
Pushkin's novel "Eugene Onegin" is a masterpiece of Russian literature. Pushkin in his work reveals many moral issues relating not only to the youth of that time, but also to our life now.
The most pronounced problem of the work is the "golden youth". Eugene himself, the protagonist of the novel, is its brightest representative. These people are obsessed with balls, social events and games. Without a lofty goal, they burn their lives.
Eugene Onegin mopes, he does not accept the ideals of a society in which he is bored to be, but like all its representatives, Eugene lacks a lofty goal. This expresses the problem of finding one's place in life.
Pushkin touches on the issue of the lack of education of the population.
Arriving in the village, Eugene could not find a person with whom he could talk. Because of his narrow-mindedness, the villagers took Yevgeny for a fool:
“Our neighbor is ignorant; crazy;
He is a pharmacist; he drinks one
A glass of red wine;
He does not fit the ladies' hands;
All yes yes no; won't say yes
Or no, sir.” The author also raises questions about love and duty. Tatyana loved Yevgeny all her life, as she swore her love to him. This reflects the decency and devotion of Tatyana, while Eugene, unlike her, could neither love nor be loved.
Friendship for Eugene is also not something important and necessary. They could not remain friends with Lensky through the fault of Evgeny himself.
But is it possible to become happy without knowing how to love, make friends, and also without having a lofty goal? Obviously not. This is a question about happiness and what it depends on.
All these moral questions make you think and reevaluate your ideals, as well as understand for yourself what is really important and what is the cause of the degradation of society.
Updated: 2017-12-04
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