Pushkin's Eugene Onegin

Onegin

What We Lost in Onegin

Eugene Onegin, Alexadner Pushkin's famous verse novel, stands not only as a record of its own time, but like any great piece of literature contains many messages to the people of any time, including (and perhaps especially) our own. The novel's characters are all easily identifiable types today just as they were nearly two centuries ago when this book was written; though the circumstances and some specific manners may have changed, the mannerisms and the attitudes and personalities that lead to them are all timeless, for better or for worse. The lessons they learn -- or fail to learn -- in the course of the novel are just as applicable today. On a deeper level, however, Eugene Onegin contains mediations on the universal attributes of human individuals and societies that can ultimately be seen as the primary cause and/or focus of all great literature; it explores what it means to be human.

One of the essential features of any human life is the experience of loss. This can come in many forms, and it does so in Eugene Onegin. There are the obvious and explicit examples of loss that arise as part of the novel's plot: the loss of unrequited love, the loss of a friend and of friendship, the loss of wealth (though more often the gaining of it), etc. There are other forms of loss that appear in the novel that are less explicit yet more profound, however, and these are among the elements of the novel that make it a truly great and timeless piece of literature. These larger elements of loss that appear in Eugene Onegin represent things that society at large as well as the individuals within it have experienced, beginning sometime before Pushkin wrote his novel and still sharply experienced and observable today. It is as a marker of such loss that this novel achieves its greatness.

From the first few stanzas of the verse novel, it is clear that one thing that has been lost is a real interest in humanity or society itself. Onegin's comments in regards to his the news of his sick and dying uncle, which will leave Onegin inordinately wealthy, shows the callousness of his character that is exhibited throughout much of the novel. There is not really an abundance of greed observable in his tone when he says "May his example profit others; / But God, what deadly boredom, brothers, / To tend a sick man night and day" (Pushkin 5). Rather, Onegin is already quite clearly weary of the world, and though he looks forward to his uncle's riches there is no grasping desperateness, but only a sense that he wishes his uncle would simply get on with it -- that the next thing to happen should simply happen, without the inherent boredom of the unnecessary waiting period.

This loss of interest in the people and society around us has largely been seen as endemic of the Industrial Revolution. As the verses that comprise this novel were written when the Industrial Reovlution was still only a few generations old, Pushkin can be seen as remarkably observant and perhaps even prescient in his assessment of the bored young heir. There is a great irony to Onegin's boredom -- and our own -- in a world of surplus such as that created (for many in society) by the advent of industry. Onegin clearly does not want for stimulation of the senses; he goes to lavish balls and other events of high society in St. Petersburg, and can afford any other pleasures he might want. This affordability, however, is precisely what leads to his boredom and frustration. Industrial societies have lost the connection to pleasures that working directly for them imbues them with.

For Onegin, this also holds true when he moves to the more peaceful country. There is no small amount of irony in the narrator's tone when he observes of Eugene Onegin that, "For two full days he was enchanted / By lonely fields and burbling brook [...] But by the third he couldn't stick it" (Pushkin 28). He has become so inundated with stimulation that even new features -- more peaceful, natural, and yet pervasive forms of beauty -- fail to make a lasting impression on him. Turning his back on society and on nature, Onegin primarily turns within himself throughout much of the novel, and in many ways society is still mirroring Onegin's loss of any sort of external connection. Though Pushkin could not have predicted the rise of the computer and video games, of course, these can be seen as progenitors of further disconnection, and possibly partially inspired by the already disconnected attitudes and mentalities of many individuals in our society. Realty has ceased to be exciting because its outcomes are, for the most part, certain, and often disappointing.