Novel
Eugene Onegin
Евгений Онегин
Alexander Pushkin · 1833
Synopsis
A dandy of Saint Petersburg, weary of balls and evening parties, inherits from an uncle an estate in the country. There he befriends his neighbour, the young poet Lensky, who takes him to the home of his fiancée's family, Olga Larina. Olga's elder sister, Tatyana, a reserved girl nourished on sentimental novels, falls in love with Onegin and confesses her love to him in a letter. He rejects her with cold condescension. Shortly afterwards, at Tatyana's name-day party, where he is bored, he courts Olga to take revenge on Lensky.
Context
Pushkin began the novel on 9 May 1823, during his exile, and worked on it for more than seven years. The chapters appeared one by one, from February 1825 to January 1832, and the first complete edition came out in 1833. The text is written, apart from a few letters and a song, in a fourteen-line stanza of iambic tetrameter with rhymes arranged in a fixed order, which has since been called the Onegin stanza. In January 1837, a month before the author's duel, the last edition revised in his lifetime appeared, which underlies the received text.
Who it is for
Eight chapters in regular stanzas, best read in a French verse translation, which keeps the form the author intended.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as a classic and one of the most important works of Russian literature; it continues to be retranslated into French.