Evgenii Onegin

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:30:25 -0500

Summary

Evgenni Onegin, pronounced as best as I can tell yev-gainy on-yay-gen is a Russian aristocrat, that seems to be the only stories from Russia I read. Onegin evidently falls into a literary category known as “superfluous men”, Onegin has drank the glass to the bottom and is bored. Bored of the fancy balls, the gossip, the incessant conversation, of everything. Inheriting his uncle’s estate he moves there with no real hopes or ambitions but is surprised to run into a young poet named Vladimir Lensky. This young poet is still full of life and hope much like Onegin’s younger self and helps to lift the boredom and bring color back into Onegin’s life. The poet falls in love with a pretty coquettish girl named Olga, but we ignore her in favor of her more interesting sister Tatyana. Olga had the looks and Tatyana the brains, unfortunately for her she falls in love, the way that only a sixteen-year-old can, with Onegin. She writes him a letter declaring her love and putting herself at his mercy. He replies in what is now known as “Onegin’s Sermon” the essence of which is that Onegin felt like the marriage would be a disaster because he would become bored with her, and eventually her with him. The tone of his reply was polite but also condescending. This of course completely devastates Tatyana who retires into the background of the novel for a time. Shortly thereafter the poet Lensky tricks Onegin into coming to a country ball. This upsets Onegin, who hates the society and finds nothing diverting there. He chooses quite unaccountably to start flirting with the poet’s fiancé Olga, they dance, and she appears to be attracted by Onegin’s studied advances. This causes the poet to callout Onegin and demand satisfaction by a duel. The once friends now face off, with Onegin surviving he is of course distraught by his friend’s death and decides to travel to take his mind off of it. The novel then jumps forward a couple years, Onegin back from his travels goes to a St. Petersburg ball and is surprised to find the innocent 16-year-old transformed into a lady of high society, and now married to a older general. Immediately smitten he does everything he can think of to rekindle their relationship but in an epic turnabout Tatyana gives him her own sermon. She essentially says that she is going to remain faithful to her husband and the novel ends with Onegin yet again in turmoil.

Aristocratic_life on George's Blog

Evgenii Onegin