The capital and local nobility in A. S. Pushkin’s novel “Eugene Onegin”
Sample essay text
In the novel "Eugene Onegin" Pushkin with remarkable completeness unfolded the pictures of Russian life in the first quarter of the XIX century. The arrogant, luxurious St. Petersburg, ancient Moscow, dear to the heart of every Russian person, cozy country estates, and nature, beautiful in its variability, pass before the reader’s eyes in a living, moving panorama. Against this background, Pushkin’s heroes love, suffer, are disappointed, and die. Both the environment that gave birth to them and the atmosphere in which their lives take place are deeply and completely reflected in the novel.
In the first chapter of the novel, introducing the reader to his hero, Pushkin describes in detail his ordinary day, filled to the limit with visits to restaurants, theaters and balls. The life of other young St. Petersburg aristocrats was also “monotonous and motley”, all of whose worries consisted of searching for new, not yet boring entertainment. The desire for change forces Evgeny to leave for the village, then, after the murder of Lensky, he goes on a journey, from which he returns to the familiar environment of St. Petersburg salons. Here he meets Tatiana, who has become an “indifferent princess,” the mistress of an elegant drawing room, where the highest nobility of St. Petersburg gathers.
Here you can meet pro-Lassians, “who have earned fame for their baseness of soul,” and “over-starched impudents,” and “ballroom dictators,” and elderly ladies “in caps and roses, seemingly evil,” and “maidens with unsmiling faces.” These are typical regulars of St. Petersburg salons, where arrogance, stiffness, coldness and boredom reign. These people live by strict rules of decent hypocrisy, playing some role. Their faces, like their living feelings, are hidden by an impassive mask. This gives rise to emptiness of thoughts, coldness of hearts, envy, gossip, and anger. That’s why such bitterness can be heard in Tatyana’s words addressed to Evgeniy:
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...
The same idleness, emptiness and monotony fill the Moscow salons where the Larins visit. Pushkin paints a collective portrait of the Moscow nobility with bright satirical colors:
But there is no change in them,
Everything about them is the same as the old model:
At Aunt Princess Elena's
Still the same tulle cap;
Everything is whitewashed Lukerya Lvovna,
Lyubov Petrovna lies all the same,
Ivan Petrovich is just as stupid
Semyon Petrovich is also stingy...
In this description, attention is drawn to the persistent repetition of small everyday details and their immutability. And this creates a feeling of stagnation of life, which has stopped in its development. Naturally, there are empty, meaningless conversations here, which Tatyana cannot understand with her sensitive soul.
Tatyana wants to listen
In conversations, in general conversation;
But everyone in the living room is occupied
Such incoherent, vulgar nonsense,
Everything about them is so pale and indifferent;
They slander even boringly...
In the noisy Moscow world, the tone is set by “smart dandies”, “holiday hussars”, “archival youths”, and self-satisfied cousins. In a whirlwind of music and dance, a vain life rushes by, devoid of any internal content.
They kept life peaceful
Habits of a dear old man;
At their Shrovetide
There were Russian pancakes;
Twice a year they fasted,
Loved Russian swings
Subject to songs, round dance...
The author's sympathy is aroused by the simplicity and naturalness of their behavior, closeness to folk customs, cordiality and hospitality. But Pushkin does not at all idealize the patriarchal world of village landowners. On the contrary, it is precisely for this circle that the defining feature becomes the terrifying primitiveness of interests, which manifests itself in ordinary topics of conversation, in activities, and in an absolutely empty and aimlessly lived life. How, for example, is Tatyana’s late father remembered? Only because he was a simple and kind fellow,” “he ate and drank in his dressing gown,” and “died an hour before dinner.” The life of Uncle Onegin passes similarly in the wilderness of the village, who “for forty years scolded the housekeeper, looked out the window and crushed flies “Pushkin contrasts these good-natured lazy people with Tatyana’s energetic and economical mother. In a few stanzas, her entire spiritual biography is contained, consisting of a rather rapid degeneration of a cutesy, sentimental young lady into a real sovereign landowner, whose portrait we see in the novel.
She went to work
Solila on winter mushrooms,
She kept expenses, shaved her foreheads,
I went to the bathhouse on Saturdays,
She beat the maids in anger -
All this without asking my husband.
With his burly wife
Fat Pustyakov arrived;
Gvozdin, an excellent owner,
Owner of poor men...
These heroes are so primitive that they do not require a detailed description, which may even consist of one surname. The interests of these people are limited to eating food and talking “about wine, about the kennel, about their relatives.” Why does Tatyana strive from luxurious St. Petersburg to this meager, wretched little world? Probably because he is familiar to her, here she can not hide her feelings, not play the role of a magnificent secular princess. Here you can immerse yourself in the familiar world of books and wonderful rural nature. But Tatyana remains in the light, perfectly seeing its emptiness. Onegin is also unable to break with society without accepting it. Unlucky destinies the heroes of the novel are the result of their conflict with both the capital and provincial society, which, however, generates in their souls submission to the opinion of the world, thanks to which friends fight in a duel, and loving friend friend people break up.
This means that a broad and complete depiction of all groups of nobility in the novel plays an important role in motivating the actions of the heroes, their destinies, and introduces the reader to the circle of current social and moral problems 20s of the XIX century.
In the novel "Eugene Onegin" Pushkin describes his time, noting everything that was essential for the life of generations: the life and customs of people, the state of their souls, popular philosophical, political and economic trends, literary preferences, fashions. Throughout the novel and in lyrical digressions the poet shows all layers of Russian noble society: elite Petersburg, local and Moscow nobility.
The author of the novel pays special attention to the St. Petersburg nobility, a typical representative of which is Eugene Onegin. The poet describes the day of his hero in every detail, and Onegin’s day is a typical day of a capital dandy. Thus, Pushkin recreates a picture of the life of all St. Petersburg secular society. Fashionable daytime walk along a specific route:
Putting on a wide bolivar,
Onegin goes to the boulevard
And there he walks in the open space,
Bye vigilant breget
Dinner won't ring his bell.
Then lunch at a restaurant, visit to the theater:
The theater is an evil legislator,
Fickle Adorer
Charming actresses
Honorary citizen of the backstage...
Pushkin describes Onegin’s office and his outfit in great detail:
But trousers, a tailcoat, a vest,
All these words are not in Russian...
Thus, Evgeny Onegin is a typical young “socialite”, a representative of freedom-loving and at the same time dissatisfied, bored youth. Before us appears a "young rake", an egoist and a skeptic with a sharp with an evil tongue. The environment to which Eugene belonged and the mores of that society formulated his beliefs, morals and interests. Pushkin speaks about the St. Petersburg nobility with a fair amount of irony and without special sympathy, because life in the capital is “monotonous and motley”, and the “noise of the world” gets boring very quickly. Thus, we see that the life of the nobility in St. Petersburg is filled with entertainment from morning to night, but it should be noted that provincial society is represented very widely in the novel.
A striking example is fine landed nobility is Tatyana Larina's family, Onegin's uncle and guests at Tatyana's name day. The Larin family is the environment in which Tatyana grew up, having absorbed all the kindness, simplicity, patriarchy and cordiality of local morals and way of life. Her mother loved Richardson, but “not because she read it,” but because cousin Alina often talked about him. She got married unwillingly:
Her husband, but in captivity;
She sighed differently
Who with heart and mind
She liked it much more...
Tatyana's mother was initially unhappy in her marriage, but “habit sweetened the grief that could not be reflected by anything...”. She revealed the secret of how to manage her husband, and already managed expenses herself, “salted mushrooms for the winter,” “went to the bathhouse on Saturdays.” But, as Pushkin says, “her husband loved her heartily.” Guests, also small-scale nobles, often came to the Larins. The author gives us a description of them at Tatiana’s name day:
With his burly wife
Fat Pustyakov arrived;
Gvozdin, an excellent owner,
Owner of poor men;
The Skotinins, the gray-haired couple,
With children of all ages, counting
From thirty to two years;
District dandy Petushkov,
My cousin, Buyanov,
In down, in a cap with a visor
(As you know him, of course)
And retired adviser Flyanov,
Heavy gossip, old rogue,
Glutton, bribe-taker and buffoon.
Here the author uses speaking names, endowing landowners with mainly negative traits: they are ruthless serf owners, people of low culture, with base interests, all their conversations are “about haymaking, about wine, about the kennel, about their relatives.”
Perhaps only Lensky differs from the small landowners. He is “a romantic and nothing more,” according to Belinsky’s definition. “With a soul straight from Göttingen,” because Vladimir was educated in Germany. Pushkin himself sees two options when discussing Lensky’s future. The author believes that Vladimir could become either a famous Russian poet or an ordinary landowner, like Onegin’s uncle or Dmitry Larin.
The world of the landed nobility is far from perfect, because in it spiritual interests and needs are not decisive. However, Pushkin writes about the local nobility with more sympathy than about the St. Petersburg nobility. It is the local nobility that lives in close proximity to the people, and therefore the idea of revival is probably embedded in them.
Pushkin pays less attention to the Moscow nobility than to the St. Petersburg nobility. He speaks of him rather harshly, sharply and saterically, thereby giving very unflattering characteristics:
But no change is visible in them;
Everything about them is the same as the old model:
At Aunt Princess Elena's
Still the same tulle cap;
Everything is whitewashed Lukerya Lvovna,
Lyubov Petrovna lies all the same,
Ivan Petrovich is just as stupid
Semyon Petrovich is also stingy...
In the living room everyone is occupied with “incoherent, vulgar nonsense”:
They slander even boringly;
In the barren dryness of speech,
Questions, gossip and news
Thoughts won’t flash for a whole day...
There is endless melancholy all around, and Moscow society is occupied by “talking about nothing.” Tatyana herself feels stuffy in a secular environment, she wants to escape from this bustle:
Tatyana looks and doesn’t see,
The excitement of the world hates...
Pushkin emphasizes the typical characteristics of the deduced persons with a variety of examples that fit under one general definition- Griboyedovskaya Moscow. It is not for nothing that the author includes Griboyedov’s lines in the epigraph to the seventh chapter, thereby emphasizing that nothing has changed in Moscow since then. Thus, in the novel "Eugene Onegin" Pushkin drew us Russian society in "one of most interesting moments its development", recreating a truly realistic picture of the morals and customs of Russia in the first quarter of the 19th century.
The capital and local nobility in A. S. Pushkin’s novel “Eugene Onegin”
Many pages of the novel “Eugene Onegin” are devoted to the depiction of the capital and provincial nobility - their way of life, morals and tastes.
The poet was an opponent of home education. Superficial learning (“something and somehow”) becomes the beginning of a superficial attitude of young nobles towards art (Onegin yawns in the theater) and literature (“He could not distinguish an iambic from a trochee...”), the cause of “mourning laziness”, inability to work.
Describing the lifestyle of the capital’s “rake” (a morning walk on the boulevard, lunch in a fashionable restaurant, a visit to the theater and, finally, a trip to the ball), the author in his digressions gives an outline of social mores (“Freaks of the big world!”).
The author is contemptuous of the morals that reign among the “secular rabble”: the “cold-blooded debauchery” widespread in this environment, the attitude towards love as a “science”, the ostentatious virtue and “fashionable arrogance” of secular ladies:
They, with harsh behavior
Scaring timid love
They knew how to attract her again...
Among the “secular rabble” such lofty concepts as love and friendship are distorted and vulgarized. “Friends” from among the secular mob are hypocritical and sometimes dangerous.
Extraordinary, spiritually free, thinking natures do not fit well into the restrictive framework of secular false morality:
Ardent souls carelessness
Proud insignificance
Or it insults, or it makes you laugh...
The secular environment rejects independent minds and welcomes mediocrity. "Society" approves of those
Who strange dreams didn't indulge
Who has not shunned the secular mob,
Who at twenty was a dandy or a smart guy,
L is advantageously married at thirty...
However, the capital's nobles also include representatives of the ancient nobility, among whom education and intelligence, nobility of manners, strict taste, rejection of the vulgar and vulgar are valued - in a word, everything that is usually associated with the concept of aristocracy. Having become a princess, Tatiana “firmly entered into her role” and became a true aristocrat. She learned to control herself, to restrain her feelings: “No matter how much she was / Surprised, amazed... She retained the same tone...” Narrating about the evenings in the house of Prince N. Pushkin recreates the special atmosphere of these social events, at which “the color of the capital” was present. The author admires the “harmonious order of oligarchic conversations”, describes the relaxed conversation of the guests, in which there is no “stupid affectation”, vulgar topics or “eternal truths”.
The capital's nobility is the environment in which Onegin moved for many years. Here his character was formed, from here he learned life habits that determined his fate for a long time.
The landed nobility is represented in the novel, primarily by the Larin family, as well as by Onegin’s neighbors (whom he avoided, fearing conversations “about haymaking, about wine, about the kennel, about his relatives”). Using the example of the Larin family, the author talks about the life of local nobles, their reading range, tastes and habits. Larina Sr. married against her will, at the insistence of her parents. At first she “torn and cried” when she found herself in the village; true to her girlish habits, she wore narrow corset, wrote sensitive poetry, called the maids in the French way, but later she got used to her new life and settled into the role of a mistress. Like many provincial landowners, Larina “autocratically” ruled her husband and was actively involved in the household:
She went to work
Salted mushrooms for the winter,
She managed expenses, shaved her foreheads...
The patriarchal way of life brings landowners closer to the common people. Tatyana washes herself with snow, like peasant girls. Most close person for her - a nanny, a simple peasant woman. Larina's spouses observe fasts and celebrate Maslenitsa; they love “round swings,” round dances and sub-dish songs. Their home is always open to guests. If Onegin, living in St. Petersburg, ate exclusively French or English cuisine, then the Larin family accepted traditional Russian food. Onegin spent several hours in front of the mirror. Larin “ate and drank in a dressing gown,” his wife wore a dressing gown and cap. Describing Larin’s death, the author writes, not without irony: “He died an hour before lunch...”, emphasizing characteristic feature local life: the time of all events (even death) is counted from the time of food. “The habits of dear old times” were preserved in the Larin family even after the death of their father. Larina Sr. remained the same hospitable hostess.
However, life in the provinces also has its own negative sides. First of all, it is isolation from the world, a cultural lag from the life of the capitals. On Tatiana’s name day the author brings the whole “color” of the provincial nobility - trifles, brawlers, cattle, cockerels... It is no coincidence that Pushkin uses “defining” surnames here, which are reminiscent of the extinct literary tradition of the 18th century: characters from the past century came to the “huge feast” .
Describing the noble class in his novel, Pushkin avoids unambiguous assessments. The provincial hinterland, like the capital's light, is permeated with contradictory influences of the past and present, reflects the bright and dark sides life.
In his work, Pushkin paid attention to both the capital and local nobility. He opposed home education, since it could not provide the nobles with all the knowledge. The author was irritated by the morals of the capital's nobility of those times. Its representatives followed fashion trends, while treating love as a science; they performed actions for show, and not out of sincere motives. The concept of friendship was distorted in their minds, because they called everyone who belonged to the same metropolitan nobility as friends. It was in this environment that Onegin developed as a person.
The Larin family belongs to the local nobility. Their life is extremely different from the life of the capital's nobles. They talk not about fashion trends and social events, but about haymaking, relatives, crops, etc. Despite the fact that the Larins were nobles, they were close to to the common people. In his metropolitan society, Onegin was accustomed to various delicacies, and in the Larins’ house only traditional Russian dishes were prepared. Their house was always open to guests.
However, the local nobility was less educated, as it was located far from the capital. But Pushkin shows that in the life of both the capital and the local nobility there are dark and bright sides. Everywhere exist good people, ready to help, as well as deceitful, evil and petty people.
Belinsky called the novel “Eugene Onegin” “an encyclopedia of Russian life”, it “poetically reproduces the picture of Russian life”, Pushkin depicted the noble society of the 20s of the 19th century, and showed in detail both the life of the provincial nobility and the capital’s society.
The main motive accompanying the description of St. Petersburg society is vanity (“it’s no wonder to keep up everywhere”), tinsel. Using the example of Onegin’s daily routine, the reader can judge his pastime socialite. For a socialite, the day began in the afternoon (“it used to be that he was still in bed: / They carried notes to him”) - this is a feature of aristocracy. A typical walking place for the nobility, Nevsky Prospekt, Promenade des Anglais, Admiralteysky Boulevard. As soon as the “waking Breguet” beats lunch, the dandy rushes to the most fashionable restaurant, Talon. The afternoon is theatre, and the highlight of the day is the ball. It was believed in good form arrive after midnight, and in the morning, when working Petersburg wakes up, go home to sleep.
When describing secular society, there is a motif of masquerade: the main feature of St. Petersburg life is boredom (in the theater Onegin yawns (“I saw everything: faces, clothes / He is terribly dissatisfied”). The author, describing the mores of society, uses irony, sometimes satire:
Here, however, was the color of the capital,
And know, and fashion samples,
Faces you meet everywhere
Necessary fools.
Fashion is of great importance in St. Petersburg: “Onegin is in the latest fashion, / Dressed like a London dandy”; Dandyism is fashionable as a way of life and, of course, melancholy as the Byronic mask of a socialite and, as a consequence, a special type of behavior (“But wildly secular hostility / Afraid of false shame”).
Life in Moscow is slow, static, unchanging. There are many reminiscences of “Woe from Wit” in the novel. The spirit of nepotism reigns here - this is the main motive in the depiction of Moscow society - patriarchy, everyone calls each other by name and patronymic: Pelageya Nikolaevna, Lukerya Lvovna, Lyubov Petrovna; hospitality:
To relatives who arrived from afar,
Everywhere there is an affectionate meeting,
And exclamations, and bread and salt.
Moscow gossip, unlike St. Petersburg, looks homely, like talking about each other in big family, where we will reveal all the secrets:
Everything about them is so pale and indifferent;
They slander even boringly.
In depicting the life of the provincial nobility, Pushkin follows Fonvizin: he gives an idea of the characters using the surnames of Fonvizin's heroes. Here reigns the “past century” and the past literary tradition with her “talking” surnames:
Tolsty Pustyakov.
Gvozdin, an excellent owner,
Owner of poor men;
The Skotinins, the gray-haired couple,
With children of all ages.
From thirty to two years.
The main feature of the provincial nobility is patriarchy, loyalty to antiquity (“They kept in their peaceful life / The habits of dear old times”), in relationships at the table the features of Catherine’s era were preserved (“And at the table their guests / They carried dishes according to rank”). Village entertainments include hunting, guests, and a special place is occupied by the ball, where ancient trends still dominate (“even the mazurka has preserved / The original beauty”). The villagers are one big family, they love to gossip about each other:
Everyone began to interpret furtively,
It is not without sin to joke and judge,
Tatiana intends to marry the groom...
The fate of provincial nobles is traditional (the fate of Tatyana's mother, the alleged fate of Lensky). The provincial nobility appears in the novel as a caricature of high society, but at the same time, it is in the province that Tatyana’s appearance is possible.