Genre: novel in verse
Plot: The novel begins with the lamentations of the young nobleman Eugene Onegin about the illness of his uncle, which forced Eugene to leave St. Petersburg and go to the sick bed to say goodbye to him. Having thus outlined the plot, the author devotes the first chapter to a story about the origin, family, and life of his hero before receiving news of a relative’s illness. The narration is told on behalf of the nameless author, who introduced himself as a good friend of Onegin.
Onegin received an appropriate upbringing - first, with a governess Madame (not to be confused with a nanny), then with a French tutor, who did not bother his pupil with an abundance of activities. Pushkin emphasizes that Evgeny’s education and upbringing were typical for a person from his environment (a nobleman who was taught by foreign teachers from childhood).Onegin's life in St. Petersburg was full of love affairs and social entertainment, but this constant series of amusements led the hero to the blues. Evgeny goes to his uncle in the village. Upon arrival, it turns out that his uncle died, and Eugene became his heir. Onegin settles in the village, but even here he is overcome by depression.Onegin’s neighbor turns out to be eighteen-year-old Vladimir Lensky, a romantic poet, who came from Germany. Lensky and Onegin converge. Lensky is in love with Olga Larina, the daughter of a local landowner. Her thoughtful sister Tatyana is not like the always cheerful Olga. Olga is one year younger than her sister, she is beautiful in appearance, but is not interesting to Onegin
Having met Onegin, Tatyana falls in love with him and writes him a letter. However, Onegin rejects her: he is not looking for a calm family life. Lensky and Onegin are invited to the Larins' for Tatiana's name day. Onegin is not happy about this invitation, but Lensky persuades him to go, promising that none of the neighboring guests will be there. In fact, upon arriving at the celebration, Onegin discovers a “huge feast,” which makes him seriously angry.
At dinner with the Larins, Onegin, in order to make Lensky jealous, unexpectedly begins to court Olga. Lensky challenges him to a duel. The duel ends with Lensky's death, and Onegin leaves the village.Three years later, he appears in St. Petersburg and meets Tatyana. Now she is an important socialite, the wife of a general. Onegin falls in love with her and tries to woo her, but this time he is rejected. Tatyana admits that she still loves Evgeniy, but says that she must remain faithful to her husband.
At this point the story is interrupted. The author leaves the discouraged Eugene and in a few remarks says goodbye to the readers and to his many years of work.
composition: the most complex: a novel within a novel, open (circular and linear at the same time) - coming to life. the composition is exclusively poetic (rhymed) Repeats the Onegin stanza in geometry (paired, circular and cross): drawing of the temple. One might say, a temple composition.
Pushkin created his novel for many years, periodically publishing individual chapters. At first glance, the narrative appears to be chaotic. Critics of those years considered the work lacking integrity. The author himself does not hide the fact that his work lacks a plan, so contradictions are inevitable. He defines his work as a collection of colorful chapters.
Taking a closer look at the novel, it becomes clear that this is a deeply holistic work, characterized by harmony and completeness.
The novel has a plot that is simple to the point of banality. It traces two lines of relationship between the main character Onegin: with Tatyana and with Lensky. The work does not have the usual ending. The author does not lead the hero either to death or to marriage. He leaves him in a difficult moment. The absence of an ending turns the plot into real story. Understatement is one of Pushkin’s techniques, according to which emptiness has a deep meaning and cannot be expressed in words.
To construct the composition of the novel, Pushkin chose the method of symmetry, according to which the characters must change the positions they occupy in the work. Tatiana meets Evgeny, unrequited love breaks out, accompanied by suffering. The author follows the heroine’s experiences and sympathizes with her. Following a harsh conversation with Onegin, a duel with Lensky occurs, which became the denouement of one direction of the plot and allowed a new one to develop.
The next time Tatyana meets Evgeny, he changes places with her, and everything that happened is repeated. But now the author is going through everything with Onegin. This circular technique makes it possible to look back again, which leaves the reading feeling of coherence.
The ring composition shows the crisis of the hero's soul. He managed to change by looking at the world through Tatyana's eyes. IN last chapter he emerges from seclusion almost like a poet, reading with “spiritual eyes.”
A return to the past makes it possible to observe Tatyana’s evolution, her maturation and acquisition of unshakable endurance. At the same time, the poverty of her character does not change. The new Tatyana still does not understand Evgeniy. In the past, she associated her beloved with literary images, which he did not comply with. Now Tatyana does not believe the truthfulness and importance of his experiences.
It is obvious that the work is built on a combination of spontaneity of presentation, diversity of images, natural continuation of the theme and extraordinary harmony, which made the novel complete. The author brought his work closer to life, making it just as unique and original.
Option 2
The work is a form in the form free romance, the central figure of which is the narrator, who builds the relationships between the characters, and also talks with readers invited to the role of direct witnesses to the events taking place.
The poet chooses a novel in verse as the genre of the work, which makes it possible to reveal the dynamic development of the characters' characters, which is impossible in a romantic poem, where the hero is presented in a static state.
The novel is written in the form of a fully formed, holistic, closed, complete work of art, expressed in a compositional structure that combines lyrical and epic literary principles.
The compositional core of the work is the bright poetic look of the novel, as well as the use author's image. The use of poetic form in the novel determines the features of the plot line and compositional structure, combining the constructive principles of prose and poetry. In the novel, the poet uses his new invention in the form of the Onegin stanza, which is a modification of the sonnet structure, representing iambic tetrameter of fourteen lines in a special rhyme scheme: cross, pair and encircling.
A distinctive feature of the compositional structure of the work is its symmetry, manifested in central event novel, the dream of the main character, as well as territorial isolation, expressed by the beginning of actions in St. Petersburg and ending in the same place.
The plot line of the novel is presented in two expressions: a love line and a friendship line, while love story is mirrored, since in the finale of the work main character Tatyana changes the role of a person tormented by unrequited love with the main character Onegin. The use of mirror-inverted symmetry is reinforced by the author through the demonstration of intentional textual coincidences and proportionality of parts that make up the architectural precision of the novel's drawings and perform clear expressive functions.
In order to more deeply reveal the composition of the novel, the poet uses artistic technique in the form of landscape sketches that make it possible to demonstrate the distinctiveness of the characters, the vividness of their experiences, as well as the opposite attitude of Onegin and Tatyana to various social and natural phenomena. Throughout the narrative, manifestations of all seasons of the year are revealed to readers: sad summer noise, naked autumn forests, frosty winter, blooming spring.
The poetic novel exhibits organic integrity and unity, filling it with real life content. In the images of the main characters of the work, generalized, typified characters are presented, allowing the poet to build a plot using the relationships of the main characters Onegin and Tatyana, Olga and Lensky.
The compositional units of the work are eight chapters, each of which describes a new plot event, while the first chapter sets out an exposition telling about Onegin, the second begins the beginning of the relationship between Onegin and Lensky, the third chapter is devoted to Tatyana’s feelings for Onegin, the fourth and fifth chapters describe main events, and from the sixth it increases climax, leading in the subsequent seventh and eighth chapters to the finale of the storylines between Onegin and Lensky and, accordingly, Onegin and Tatyana.
A striking feature of the novel is the author’s use of architectonics in the form of omitted stanzas, which indicate transitional places in the narrative that do not affect the storyline of the work.
Peculiar compositional structure The novel, expressed in poetic freedom and flexibility, gives the work the author's genius in the narrative material, and the diversity of the collection of chapters carries a unique freshness and a sense of touching the sublime and beautiful.
Plot and features of the work
Despite the title, which implies that we will talk mainly about Onegin, Pushkin, having barely introduced his hero (“With the hero of my novel... / Let me introduce you: / Onegin, my good friend...”), immediately talks about him forgets and begins to talk with the reader: ...on the banks of the Neva, Where, perhaps, you were born or shone, my reader; I once walked there too: But the north is harmful to me.
A similar technique will be repeated very often throughout the novel: the author constantly wanders either into memories of “days of fun and desires”, or into sad reflections on the passing of youth (“But it’s sad to think that in vain / We were given youth ...”). then to reasoning about vicissitudes creative process: ...A neighbor wandered in to me, Unexpectedly caught by the floor, My soul with a tragedy in the corner, Or (but this is all jokes aside), We torment with melancholy and rhymes, Wandering over my lake, I scare the herd wild ducks... Onegin is then forgotten at the ball - and at this time the author is carefree walking along the seashore, sighing elegiacally: “I remember the sea before the thunderstorm...
", then Pushkin, in an "evil moment" for Onegin, says goodbye to the reader, leaving the hero in Tatiana's St. Petersburg house. To the plot of Onegin, set by the first stanza of the novel (Onegin's thoughts on the way to his uncle), the author's plot is added in the second stanza.
The complex interaction of two plots - the plot of the author and the plot of the heroes (or, in the words of the novel researcher S. G. Bocharov, “the novel of the author” and the “novel of the heroes”) - determines the originality of artistic structure narratives in the novel.
With the hero of my novel Without preamble, this very hour Let me introduce you: Onegin, my good friend, Was born on the banks of the Neva... Onegin, on the one hand, is the “good friend” of the author, real person, and on the other hand, the “hero of the novel,” a figment of the author’s imagination, and Pushkin will constantly switch between these two hypostases of his hero. Together with Onegin, his friend, the author intends to go abroad (“Onegin was ready with me / To see foreign countries...”), and the author has the right to leave Onegin as a character in the novel in the park alley for an explanation with Tatyana (the final lines of the third chapter) and at the same time, it is hooligan to remark: But the consequences of the unexpected meeting Today, dear friends, I am not able to retell; After a long speech, I should go for a walk and rest: I’ll finish it sometime later.
Pushkin treats both the hero and the timeline of the narrative very freely: the first seven chapters are mirrored in the eighth, the final one. The story of Onegin and Tatiana is repeated exactly the opposite: Tatiana’s love for Onegin is replaced by Onegin’s passionate love for Tatiana, Tatiana’s letter is replaced by Onegin’s letter, and Onegin’s “sermon” is replaced by a “lesson”, which now, in turn, is given to the hero by Tatiana. A less obvious, but more psychological parallel is Tatyana’s dream - perhaps the only detailed picture in the novel psychological state heroine - and a ball on the occasion of her name day. The connection, firstly, is plot: the quarrel between Onegin and Lensky, the death of the latter; and secondly, the substantive detail, common to a nightmare and a festive reality, makes one associate associatively “freaks from the other world” and cheerful guests Larins: Barking, laughter, singing, whistling and clapping, People's rumors and horse tramping! (Tatyana's Dream) In the living room, a meeting of new faces, Barking mosek, smacking girls, Noise, laughter, crush at the threshold... (Name day) And now the Larins’ carefree and unsuspecting guests - “fat Pustyakov”, “county dandy” Petushkov”, “glutton” Flyanov - thanks to the plot rhyme, they appear before the reader in a grotesque light.
And even a peaceful picture with the snoring Pustyakovs, Gvozdins, Prostakovs and Monsieur Triquet “in a sweatshirt, in an old cap” can evoke an involuntary memory of Tatyana’s night vision: Here is a skull on a goose neck, spinning in a red cap... Pushkin constantly outlines possible, already expected reader plot twists (“Is the reader really waiting for the rhyme “rose”?
Here, take her quickly!") - but does not follow them: the situation shown in the second chapter is quite favorable: Lensky is in love with Olga - and we are loved (as it seems to him). The appearance of Onegin in the Larins' house is interpreted by all neighbors unequivocally - ".. “the wedding was completely coordinated, / But then stopped, / Because they didn’t get fashionable rings,” the heroes do not face any obstacles (the traditional novel scheme involves overcoming obstacles, be it the disagreement of parents or the intervention of a “third wheel”), but “happiness” , which “was so close, so possible,” does not come: Lensky dies, Onegin goes on a journey, Olga marries a lancer and disappears forever from the pages of the novel, Tatyana is taken to Moscow for a “bride fair.” Refusal of the obvious lines of plot development. most clearly demonstrated by the author using the example of Lensky’s novel fate.
There are two options for the possible future of his hero: Perhaps he was born for the good of the world, Or at least for glory... - or maybe even then: the poet Ordinary had a destiny waiting for him... I would have parted with the muses, gotten married, Happy in the village and horned He would wear a quilted robe... But the author begins to talk about both options when Lensky is already dead and none of the options for the hero’s fate can obviously be realized! Doesn't change the situation final meeting Tatiana and Onegin in St. Petersburg: Pushkin demonstratively refuses any plot effects: the explanation of Onegin and Tatiana ends with the “sudden ringing of spurs” of the heroine’s husband who appeared in the room - and a melodramatic scene, it would seem, is inevitable. However, it is precisely at this decisive moment that the author leaves the heroes and says goodbye to the readers.
It is no coincidence that modern Pushkin literary critics denied the novel integrity and unity: N. Polevoy considered “Eugene Onegin” as “a mine for epigraphs, and not an organic being,” and N. Nadezhdin believed that it was not a novel at all: “Eugene Onegin” was not and was not intended to be actually a novel...
He has no claims to the unity of content, nor to the integrity of the composition, nor to the harmony of presentation." And Pushkin himself, at first glance, gave grounds for such an assessment of his novel, as if specifically pointing out obvious compositional mistakes: ... Accept the collection of motley chapters , Half funny, half sad, Common people, ideal, The careless fruit of my fun... And where, I mean, is my incoherent story?..
And the distance of a free romance I have not yet clearly discerned through the magic crystal. The difference, however, was that critics did not see a novel in Eugene Onegin, but the author saw in it a novel of a new type. Fundamentally new laws artistic construction The texts were formulated by Pushkin in one of his letters to A. Bestuzhev: “A novel requires chatter.” Chatter is a conscious desire to create a text that could be perceived as an improvisational story; the desire to achieve the effect of a relaxed dialogue with the reader - and to destroy the conventional literary narrative about equally conventional literary characters.
It is no coincidence that Pushkin introduces his hero twice in the novel: in the first chapter (second stanza) and in the seventh (final stanza). Let's compare these fragments: Friends of Lyudmila and Ruslan!
With the hero of my novel Without preamble, this very hour Let me introduce you: Onegin, my good friend... I sing a young friend And his many quirks. Bless my long labor, O thou epic muse! A free and relaxed conversation with the reader - especially with an initiated reader - is replaced by a parodic appeal to the epic muse ("Don't let me wander at random and crookedly") in a belated "introduction" to the novel, which the author "remembered" only in the penultimate chapter.
Thus, the classicist strict regulation of the theme and structure of the work, the strictness of compositional rules, the predetermined nature of the author’s artistic attitude and the obligatory nature of high pathos are ironically refuted and the rights of a story free from any regulation are affirmed. Moreover, it is so “free” that the author sometimes has to remind himself who his hero is and what is happening to him, “so as not to forget who I am singing about.”
“Babbling to the utmost” (a quote from Pushkin’s letter to Delvig, in which he talks about the plan of his novel), the author thereby gets the opportunity to talk about everything - about elegies and odes, about apple liqueur and lingonberry water, about the Russian theater and French wines, about Lord Byron and the nameless German baker, about his “cousin brother Buyanov” and Napoleon, who remained standing at the walls of Moscow awaiting the keys to the city, and about much, much more. The diversity of descriptions and diversity of narrative do not contradict the internal unity of Eugene Onegin - the author is the lyrical center of the novel. Lyrical digressions, in the wonderful expression of S. G. Bocharov, do not retreat from the matter, but surround it from all sides. Pushkin makes the most effective use of the narrative capabilities of iambic tetrameter: iambic is flexible, easily varied and intonationally very close to colloquial speech size, it conveys the dynamics of live speech. The Onegin stanza serves the same purpose - fundamentally new type stanzas created by Pushkin specifically for the novel: the Onegin stanza includes 14 verses of iambic tetrameter with the rhyme AbAb CCdd EffE gg (capital letters indicate female rhymes, lowercase letters indicate male rhymes).
The semantic structure of Onegin's stanza - the thesis, its development, culmination, ending - conveys the very course of the movement of thought. Pushkin himself points out these shortcomings: ...Even though it’s late, there is an introduction. I finished the first chapter; I reviewed all this strictly: There are a lot of contradictions, But I don’t want to correct them. It’s time for me to become smarter, to get better in business and in style, and to clear this fifth notebook of digressions. At the same time, the need to get rid of digressions is spoken of in the next lyrical digression, and contradictions become one of the most important constructive principles of the novel. The author’s statement “I was already thinking about the form of the plan” is a clear contradiction author's definition novel as “an incoherent story”, and the recognition at the end of the eighth chapter “the distance of a free novel...
/ I haven’t yet clearly distinguished”; “the summer is chasing the naughty rhyme” also clearly does not correspond to a very rigid and never violated rhyme system. The contradiction also emerges at the plot level: in the third chapter, for example, the author claims that Tatyana’s letter is kept by him - “Tatiana’s letter is in front of me; / I cherish it sacredly...
“, and in the eighth chapter - that of Onegin: “The one from whom he keeps / The letter where the heart speaks...” Pointing out the “difference between Onegin” and himself, the author immediately adds: We both knew the game of passion: Tomila the life of both of us; The heat has gone out in both hearts... Due to the fact that the author draws the reader’s attention to the “technological” side of the story (gaps in time, the dotted movement of the plot, the introduction of plans and drafts of the same novel into the story), it comes to the fore. metaliterary meaning of the novel: when talking about his “friend,” Pushkin constantly reminds the reader of the “literary quality” of the entire work (“But our hero, whoever he was, / Surely was not Grandison,” “Straight Onegin Childe Harold / Went into a thoughtful laziness") - the true story of the novel "Eugene Onegin" - not Tatiana and Onegin, but the creation of the novel.
The creator of the novel himself, therefore, becomes its character - the only one whose biography is only outlined, unlike, for example, Onegin, Tatyana or even minor character Zaretsky: the “biography” of each of these characters is given a special part of the narrative. The chronology of Pushkin’s fate is not linear: the first chapter mentions the southern exile of the early 1820s. (“But the north is harmful to me”), in the sixth - lost youth: Am I really going to be thirty years old soon?
But so be it: let’s say goodbye together, O my easy youth! , blessed...
Thus, free variation of themes, styles, voices connected to the author’s narration, free movement in space and time, the combination of objective-narrative and subjective-lyrical types of narration are the most important principles of the compositional organization of the novel. Outside of the author's word, Pushkin's special style, "Eugene Onegin" turns into an ordinary weak melodrama - without denouement and spectacular scenes; the type of hero created by Pushkin is destroyed - the “good friend” of the author and at the same time the hero of the novel; Pushkin's image is destroyed artistic space, which was built in the novel on the principle of the overlap of two worlds - the real and the literary.
The theme of the novel “Eugene Onegin” (1831) is a depiction of Russian life first quarter of the XIX century. V.G. Belinsky called this work “an encyclopedia of Russian life” (V.G. Belinsky “Works of A. Pushkin”, article 9), because Pushkin in his novel “knew how to touch on so much, hint about so much that belongs exclusively to the world of Russian nature, to the world of Russian society” (ibid.). The idea of "Eugene Onegin" is to evaluate the type of modern young man, who cannot find a worthy application for his abilities in the life around him, since the usual for the noble circle life goals he is not satisfied, they seem unworthy and petty. For this reason, such young people find themselves “superfluous” in society.
The plot of the novel is based on the love story of Evgeny Onegin and Tatyana Larina. Consequently, the plot of the plot will be their first meeting in the Larins’ house, where Onegin ends up by chance: he wanted to look at Olga, Lensky’s “object of love.” Moreover, the very scene of the first meeting of the main characters is not described in the novel: Onegin and Lensky talk about it, returning home from guests. From their conversation it is clear the impression that Tatyana made on title character. Of the two sisters, he singled out Tatyana, noting the unusualness of her appearance and the mediocrity of Olga:
Olga has no life in her features.
Exactly like Vandice's Madonna.
She's round and red-faced... (3, V)
Tatyana fell in love with Onegin at first sight, as she admitted in her letter:
You barely walked in, I instantly recognized
Everything was stupefied, on fire
And in my thoughts I said: here he is! (3, XXXI)
The first meeting of Onegin and Tatyana occurs in the third chapter. This means that the first two chapters of the novel are an exposition of the plot, where the author talks in detail about the two main characters: their parents, relatives, teachers, their favorite activities, characters, habits. The climax of the plot is the explanation between Onegin and Tatyana in the garden, when the hero indifferently refuses the love of an extraordinary girl, and Tatyana loses all hopes of happiness. Later, having gained rich experience in the “whirlwind” of social life, the heroine realized that Eugene treated her nobly, and appreciated this act:
But you
I don't blame; at that terrible hour
You acted nobly
You were right with me. (8, ХLIII)
The second climax is the explanation of the main characters in St. Petersburg several years after the first. Now Tatyana, a brilliant society lady, continuing to love Onegin, refuses to respond to his fiery passion and scandalous proposal, and now Onegin, in turn, loses hope for happiness.
In addition to the main storyline - the love story of Onegin and Tatyana - Pushkin develops a side storyline - the story of the friendship of Onegin and Lensky. There is a plot here: two young educated noblemen, finding themselves in the wilderness of the village, quickly become acquainted, as Lensky
With Onegin I wished cordially
Let's make the acquaintance shorter.
They got along. (2, XIII)
The plot scheme of the friendship story can be built like this: the climax is Onegin’s behavior at Tatyana’s name day (his flirtation with Olga), the denouement is the duel of friends and the death of Lensky. The last event is at the same time a culmination, as it made Onegin, it seems for the first time in his life, “shudder” (6, XXXV).
The novel contains another side storyline - the love story of Lensky and Olga. In it, the author omits the plot, only mentioning in passing that a tender feeling was born in the hearts of young people a long time ago:
A little boy, captivated by Olga,
Having not yet known heartache,
He was a touched witness
Her infantile fun... (2, XXXI)
The culmination of this love story is the ball at Tatiana's name day, when Olga's character is fully revealed: a vain, proud and empty coquette, she does not understand that she is offending her groom with her behavior. Lensky's death unleashes not only the friendship storyline, but also the story of his short love.
From all that has been said above, it is clear that both the main and secondary storylines are constructed quite simply, but the composition of the novel itself is extremely complex.
Analyzing the main storyline, several features should be noted. The first of them is a rather lengthy exposition: it consists of two chapters out of eight. Why does Pushkin describe in such detail the development of the characters of the main characters - Onegin and Tatyana? It can be assumed that the actions of both heroes were understandable to readers, in order to most fully express the idea of the novel - the image of an intelligent but useless person who is wasting his life.
The second feature is that the main storyline has no resolution. After all, after the final stormy explanation with Onegin, Tatyana leaves her room, and the hero remains in place, shocked by her words. And then
Spurs suddenly rang out,
And Tatyana’s husband showed up... (8, ХLVIII)
Thus, the action ends mid-sentence: the husband finds Onegin at an inopportune hour in his wife’s room. What might he think? How will the plot turn next? Pushkin does not explain anything, but states:
And here is my hero
In a moment that is evil for him,
Reader, we will now leave,
For a long time... forever. (8, ХLVIII)
Contemporaries often reproached the author for such an ending and considered the lack of a definite outcome a disadvantage. Pushkin responded to this criticism in a humorous passage “In my autumn leisure time...” (1835):
What you say is true
Which is strange, even discourteous
Don't stop interrupting the romance,
Having already sent it to print,
What should your hero
Anyway, get married,
At least kill...
From the above lines it follows that Pushkin’s decision to interrupt the affair was quite conscious. What does such an unusual ending provide for understanding the content of the work?
Onegin's husband, relative and friend, seeing the hero in his wife's room, can challenge him to a duel, and Onegin already had a duel that turned his whole life upside down. In other words, Onegin literally finds himself in a vicious circle of events; not only his love story is built on the principle of “mirror reflection” (G.A. Gukovsky), but also his relationships with friends. The novel has no end, that is, it is built according to a circular composition: the action begins and ends in St. Petersburg, in the spring, the hero never finds love, once again neglects friendship (caring for a friend’s wife). This compositional structure successfully corresponds to the main idea of the novel: to show the hopeless, worthless life of the title character, who himself suffers from his uselessness, but cannot get out of the vicious circle of an empty life and find himself a serious occupation. V.G. Belinsky completely agreed with this end of the novel, asking the question: “What happened to Onegin later?” And he himself answers: “We don’t know, and why should we know this when we know that the powers of this rich nature are left without application, life without meaning, and the novel without end?” (V.G. Belinsky “Works of A. Pushkin”, article 8).
The third feature of the composition is the presence of several plot lines in the novel. The love story of Lensky and Olga gives the author the opportunity to compare the main characters with the secondary ones. Tatyana knows how to love “in earnest” (3, XXV), and Olga quickly consoled herself after Lensky’s death and married a lancer. The disappointed Onegin is depicted next to the dreamy, loving Lensky, who has not yet lost interest in life.
All three storylines are successfully intertwined: the climax-denouement in the story of friendship (duel) becomes at the same time the denouement in the love story of the young poet and Olga. Thus, in three storylines there are only two beginnings (in the main and in the friendship story), three climaxes (two in the main and one (ball) for two side) and one denouement (the same in the side storylines).
The fourth feature of the composition is the presence of inserted episodes that are not directly related to the development of the plot: Tatyana’s dream, Lensky’s poems, the girls’ song and, of course, numerous lyrical digressions. These episodes further complicate the composition, but do not drag out the action of the novel too much. It should be especially noted that lyrical digressions are the most important component of the work, because it is thanks to them that the novel creates the broadest picture of the Russian life of the indicated historical period and the image of the author, the third main character of the novel, is formed.
To summarize, we note that the novel “Eugene Onegin” in the history of Russian literature was innovative both from the point of view of describing life (a realistic depiction of reality) and from the point of view of creating the character of the title character (the image of Pushkin’s contemporary, “ extra person"). Glubokoe ideological content expressed in an original form: Pushkin used a ring composition, “mirror reflection” - repetition of the main plot episodes, and omitted the final denouement. In other words, the result is a “free novel” (8, L), in which several plot lines are skillfully intertwined and there are digressions of various types (inserted episodes more or less closely related to the plot; humorous and serious discussions of the author about everything in the world).
The construction of “Eugene Onegin” cannot be called logically flawless. This applies not only to the lack of a formal resolution in the novel. Strictly speaking, several years must pass between the events described in the seventh and eighth chapters until Tatyana turns from a provincial young lady into a society lady. Initially, Pushkin decided to fill these few years with Onegin’s travels around Russia (chapter “Onegin’s Travels”), but later placed them in an appendix to the novel, as a result of which the logic of the plot was broken. Both friends and critics pointed out this formal shortcoming to the author, but Pushkin ignored these comments:
There are a lot of contradictions
But I don’t want to fix them. (1, LX)
The author very accurately called his work “a collection of motley chapters” (introduction): it reflected real life, organized not according to the strict laws of logic, but rather according to the theory of probability. However, the novel, following real life, has lost neither dynamism, nor artistic integrity, nor completeness.
"Eugene Onegin" as a novel in verse. Features of genre and composition
“As for my studies, I Pushkin sought to create a satiated, dissatisfied and bored hero, indifferent to life and its joys - a real hero of the time, infected with the “disease of the century” - boredom. But at the same time, the author did not just strive to show characteristic features boredom, he wanted to know its source, that is, where it comes from. Realizing that the genre romantic poem assumes a static character of the hero, Pushkin deliberately abandons it in favor of the novel - a genre within which the dynamics of the development of the hero’s character can be shown.
Pushkin builds the composition of a “free novel”, in the center of which is the figure of the author, who organizes relationships not only with the characters, but also with the readers. The novel is written in the form of a conversation between the author and the reader, hence the impression that it is being written in front of the reader’s eyes, making the latter a direct participant in all events.
The genre of “Eugene Onegin” - a novel in verse - presupposes the presence of two artistic principles - lyrical and epic. The first is connected with the author’s world and his personal experiences and is manifested in lyrical digressions; the second assumes the objectivity of the narrative and the author’s detachment from the events described in the novel and represents the world of epic heroes.
IN prose novel the main thing is the hero and what happens to him. And in a poetic work, the compositional core is the poetic form itself and the image of the author. In Eugene Onegin, as in a novel in verse, there is a combination of the constructive principles of prose (deformation of sound through the role of meaning) and poetry (deformation of meaning through the role of sound).
The poetic form determined both the composition and the features of the plot in Eugene Onegin. Special view stanzas - the Onegin stanza - was invented by Pushkin specifically for this work. It is a slightly modified sonnet structure: fourteen lines of iambic tetrameter with a specific rhyme scheme. In the first quatrain (quatrain) the rhyme is cross, in the second it is paired, and in the third it is encircling. Schematically, it looks like this: AbAb CCdd EffE gg (capital letters indicate feminine rhyme, that is, the stress falls on the penultimate syllable of rhyming words, and lowercase letters indicate masculine rhyme, in which the stress falls on the last syllable of rhyming words).
Speaking about the composition of the work, it is important to note two points. Firstly, it is symmetrical (its center is Tatiana’s dream in the fifth chapter), and secondly, it is closed (the action began in the spring of 1820 in St. Petersburg and ended there five years later). There are two storylines in the novel - the line of friendship and love line, and the second is mirrored: in the third chapter, Tatyana writes a letter to Onegin and understands that her feelings are not mutual, and in the eighth they change roles.
Also important for understanding the composition of a work landscape sketches, with the help of which the author helps the reader to delve deeper into the essence of the experiences of his characters and emphasizes the features of their characters. For example, the contrast between Onegin and Tatyana is more clearly visible in the example of the heroes’ attitude to rural nature.