Eugene Onegin : a novel in verse (1832)

A wonderful story with plenty of character study and themes to review and reflect on. I admit that reading this for the first time, I was paying less attention to the social commentary and more on the character dynamics and the overall tragedy. I hope to improve my Russian enough one of these days to read it in its original because the lyricism was just beautiful. You could read my full review of the book over at my blog: http://www.rulethewaves.net/blog/?p=4684 ( )

I first encountered this at Endellion, when we were singing the Tchaik adaptation. I'm fascinated by the way in which Pushkin uses himself as a narrator and character all at once; want to punch Onegin in the head; and am fairly unconvinced by Tatyana as a romantic heroine. I know, I know, total blasphemy, but there you have it.

I suspect this may be the first appearance of the Meg Murry type in literature, which bears examination -- the quiet, bookish, outsider who is so prized by writers like myself as characters we identified with.

The notes in this version range from utterly inadequate to stunningly obvious. It's better than the Constance Garrett translation, but that's like saying a root canal is better than death by drowning. ( )

Holy crap, this thing is good. It's amazing. And it's only around 200 pages, so it's not as much of a commitment as, y'know, those other Russian assholes who can't stop writing.

It's a "novel in verse," which means epic poem, wtf, in iambic tetrameter. It's organized in stanzas that are almost sonnets, but far enough off to kindof fuck with your head, or mine anyway. The scheme is abab, ccdd, effe, gg, so he's switching it up in each quatrain, which leaves me constantly off-balance. But in a good way! Tetrameter has a dangerous tendency to sound sing-songy to me, and this helps counterbalance that somehow.

It also makes a tough challenge for a translator, and for a long time Onegin was considered untranslatable. My boy Stanley Mitchell has done what feels like an admirable job; I'm sure if I knew Russian I'd say he brutalized the thing, but one takes what one can get and this version felt readable and elegant. He's no Mos Def, but he's pretty good with the rhymes.

The story ends abruptly at Chapter VIII; Pushkin had to do some last-minute rearranging, by which I mean burning most of a chapter that was critical of the government, which really throws the pace off there. The version I have includes some fragments after VIII - stuff that survived the flames for whatever reason - but it's really not enough to be more than a curiosity.

Tolstoy called this the major influence for Anna Karenina, and you can see it. He kinda took this story and said what if, at a crucial moment, things had gone differently? So if you read these two together it's basically like a really long Choose Your Own Adventure with only one choice. Rad!

And as an added bonus, Pushkin includes what I can only assume must be the most beautiful ode to foot fetishes ever written. It's five stanzas long, so that's 70 lines of foot fetishing. I almost wish I had a foot fetish so I could've really gotten into that bit.

Here's a stanza that's not about feet, so you can get a feel for how good this shit is:

Let me glance back. Farewell, you arbours
Where, in the backwoods, I recall
Days filled with indolence and ardours
And dreaming of a pensive soul.
And you, my youthful inspiration,
Keep stirring my imagination,
My heart's inertia vivify,
More often to my corner fly.
Let not a poet's soul be frozen,
Made rough and hard, reduced to bone
And finally be turned to stone
In that benumbing world he goes in,
In that intoxicating slough
Where, friends, we bathe together now.

And if that doesn't kick your ass, you're no friend of mine.

Frankly, even if it does we're probably not friends. But we could be, if you want. ( )

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O que mais me atraiu nesse livro, já no princípio, é como o autor chama Oneguin de “O misantropo”.
Pushkin é brilhante.
Li há pouco tempo um comentário sobre como o duelo de Leskin e Oneguin foi contrário às regras, e que Oneguin não teve, de fato, chance de se desculpar. Sem mencionar que, simplesmente pelo atraso, ele deveria ter sido declarado derrotado. ( )