‘Eugene Onegin’: Pushkin as a Painter of Modern Life

by François Mauld d’Aymée

François Mauld d’Aymée, in tracing the tragic arc of Eugene Onegin, unveils a requiem for the old world, where the modern man — proud, idle, and self-destructive — advances like an elegant executioner, laying waste to the fragile beauty of a vanishing order.

A virtuoso work with an untranslatable poetic essence, forged at the crossroads of Apollonian titans, rhymed like The Divine Comedy (1321) and written in grand iambic meter like Paradise Lost (1667), Eugene Onegin (1833) is a gospel of the modern. Revived just under fifty years later by Tchaikovsky, a composer seated on the Olympus of Russian music, the work was christened “Lyric Scenes in Three Acts and Seven Tableaux” (1879), bringing to life the key passages of the original work and thereby providing, for popular culture, a missal of modernity. Eugene Onegin is today the most emblematic work in Russia of both Pushkin and Tchaikovsky, and its longevity compels us to question the durability of the sociocultural codes established at the dawn of the nineteenth century.

Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837)

Eugene Onegin, an archetypal edification of the modern urban individual — idle and sharp-witted — mercilessly tears down all traditional structures, first and foremost that of the rural ecosystem. Pushkin presents us with a well-born young man, newly emancipated, eager to rush forward at the pace of his carriage towards wherever the imminence of an event calls him. It is only after growing weary of the tumultuous void of social life, and burning with the desire to accomplish, to be, and to become — so characteristic of the young Romantic — that he paradoxically chooses to withdraw from the whirlwind of the cities in order to rediscover and embrace the depth and vastness of the rural world, albeit within the comfort of his family estate.

Eugene is a master of conversation and stands out above all for a particular kind of stinginess. He first observes, judges, evaluates, and then delivers his retort. Cruel, he only strikes when his interlocutor has already let down his guard. Reserved, urbane, young, and polished by the vices of high society, Onegin is armed with all the tools needed to ruin the ideal young girl — pure, beautiful, and innocent. Consumed by pride, a stranger to faith, but always dressed according to the latest fashions, he keeps in his St. Petersburg apartment all the instruments of a dandy: combs, scissors, and files of every form and length, a variety of perfumes — esteemed all the more for being imported and exotic (meaning from the heart of civilization: Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, and their wares) — for a Russia still considered to be in a “savage state.”

Lacking the temperament to finish a book, he subsists on scattered quotations useful in social settings — snippets of knowledge for ready-made, attention-seeking discourse. Devoured by impatience, he loathes his inability to produce, to reinstall within his soul the nightingale of inspiration. All his attempts result in abandoned drafts, crossed-out and left unfinished. His portrait is that of an enthusiastic requiem, punctuated by the tolling bells of a fate already sealed: Eugene is perfectly armed — he himself is the weapon of modernity that will destroy the fragile delights of the old world still standing in his path.

The work is also a vast fresco of all the figures of modernity, without neglecting the absence of the father — who is conspicuous everywhere by his disappearance — and the initial substitute figure of the uncle, whose customs are outdated. The action reflects the new speed of life, of movement, foreshadowing the imminent arrival of motor vehicles, leaving in their wake the casualties of modernity: the old, the pure, the poor, and the Romantics.

Onegin’s Ontological Wandering

Having grasped and personally suffered from his youthful Romanticism, forcibly adapted to the violence of new social relations dictated by bourgeois norms, Onegin prepares to seize his next prey — Tatiana — while also adding a collateral victim in the person of the young Romantic poet Lensky. Onegin kills Lensky in a duel that arose from a trivial quarrel, yet one for which he himself provided the pretext: annoyed by the provincial repetition of Petersburg’s social vices, Eugene deliberately amuses himself by charming Olga, Lensky’s fiancée, merely to sow discord for his own amusement — all this at the ball given for Tatiana’s birthday. Tatiana, alone, sad, and frustrated at being ignored by Onegin, had confessed her love to him, yet he remains indifferent. Retreating into his pride and unable to make amends in front of a large company, he dismisses Lensky’s calls for explanation as childishness and ultimately feels compelled to accept the challenge. Thus, he kills Lensky, not truly wishing to do so, but carried by the terrible chain of consequences set in motion by his own carelessness.

Lidia Timoshenko (1903–1976), Eugene Onegin

Having destroyed behind him both his social and bucolic life, the hero logically embarks on the road of travel — only to exhaust its substance just as quickly. Cornered by the gaping void of his existence, ashamed and resigned, he decides to return to the capital, seeking the only remnant of meaning in his ontological wandering: the parties. Consumed by self-hatred, Onegin sees himself as an aging bachelor (eight years pass between the early scenes and the final ball; Onegin and Lensky are eighteen at the beginning, with Tatiana likely a little younger) — good for nothing, trained for no trade, taciturn, and above all, a murderer. This thoroughly modern atmosphere is masterfully conveyed by Onegin’s monologue that opens the final act of Tchaikovsky’s opera.

Ironically, all these thoughts are instantly swept aside when Onegin believes he sees Tatiana — now a fully blossomed flower (she must be twenty-four by then), accustomed to high society, sculpted by the finest silks and gemstones — after having been ruthlessly shattered by him. With his back against the wall, Onegin believes he has found redemption by submitting to a reversal of roles with Tatiana. He humiliates himself in an attempt to reclaim the heart of a woman now bound by the vows of marriage. Sorrowful but resolute, faithful to an esteemed elder (Prince Gremin), Tatiana — still in love with Onegin — pleads for him to disappear as the sound of the old general’s approaching footsteps echoes in the boudoir, where the two enact a form of hasty, tragic farewell, without the classical resolution that usually compels heroes to take their own lives. Instead, they are simply denied a happy life.

Onegin is ultimately the architect of his own downfall, as well as of the destruction of everything around him that possessed an intrinsically ancient value — everything fragile and beautiful, once revered with religious devotion. Pushkin, too great for the confines of his era, moving from exile to fleeting glories within the short yet astonishingly prolific span of his life, sketches the outlines of a destiny he foresees and writes in advance, ensuring that he continues to reign over posterity and triumph over Lethe, the dreaded muse of oblivion: to live as Onegin, and to die as Lensky.

(Translated from the French)