LESLIE O’BELL

Through the Magic Crystal to Eugene Onegin

Many scholars have sought to find the “magic crystal” through which, Puškin says, he dimly glimpsed the “far horizon of his free novel,” Evgenij Onegin (Eugene Onegin) (PSS VI: 190). Poring over manuscripts in dusty archives while intoning the metrical formula of the Onegin stanza, performing abstruse chronological calculations, creating dubious compounds of Wahrheit and Dichtung, we benighted but noble alchemists have yet to reach our gleaming objective. And what single “crystal” could bring Onegin into focus, a work that is so mutable and so elusive? By Puškin’s own account, it took him seven years, four months, and seventeen days to finish the novel (PSS VI: 532). As Lotman once put it, Onegin was begun by the writer of Baxčisarȧ j Fountain, continued by the creator of Boris Godunov, and completed by the author of the Little Tragedies. Yet perhaps this is not only the problem but part of the solution as well. We have had the philosopher’s stone in hand all along: Eugene Onegin is embedded in the larger and slowly developing crystal of those other works of Puškin which accompany and nurture it. Since Onegin required such long maturation, it should surely be considered in the process of its invention, growth, and change. The internal evolution of Onegin, from its drafts to the book which Puškin eventually published, is a fundamental part of the process, but the novel’s inner dynamic is also intimately involved in the movement of his entire work. How did Puškin clarify ideas of the novel; how did he periodically reenvision it? Playing with Puškin’s metaphor, we can say that he wrote Eugene Onegin by peering into a crystal ball that may very well have been his own inkwell.

Ideally, to reckon with this, we should take Onegin chapter by chapter, retelling it against the counterpoint of the works which form its context. I shall not be able to do so in the scope of this essay. Over the years a number of studies have accumulated which treat Onegin’s relation to one or another of Puškin’s works. Yet no essay has ever integrated these particular observations, bringing out the latent picture that they form while simultaneously coordinating them with the inner dynamic of the novel. The critical overview that I will offer here represents only a first step toward chronicling the unfolding of Onegin.

What emerges when we step back from the individual studies are four major contexts or complexes in Puškin’s work as a whole into which Eugene Onegin has been fit. They could be called first, the demon, second, the man of the world, third, the journey, and fourth, the farewell and homecoming. Actually, the four elements work together as parts of Puskin’s continual preoccupation with one character and his fate, the man of the world in his demonic aspect, compelled to wander but doomed to nostalgia for his lost home. They also reflect the poet’s increasing divergence from this character in an attempt to avoid sharing his fate and in the hope of accomplishing a different journey and winning for himself a homecoming. The demon and the man of the world are most important in the genesis of the novel, although they accompany it throughout. The journey, farewell, and homecoming naturally figure most prominently in the final chapters, especially when we include the “Wanderings” and the so-called Chapter X. But the journey theme was anticipated as early as the end of Chapter I, where Onegin and the poet were ready to set out for foreign parts. Eugene Onegin is a long farewell and the slow preparation of a nemesis.

Let us now consider in more detail how Eugene Onegin develops. We remember but seldom take effective cognizance of the fact that Onegin is addressed to “the friends of Ljudmila and Ruslan” (PSS VI: 15). In his introduction to Chapter I, Puškin wrote expressly that the first chapters “bear the imprint of the gaiety which marked the first works of the author of Ruslan and Ljudmila” (PSS VI: 638). Baevskij in a recent study has extended the reference to include the entire “tradition of light poetry in Eugene Onegin” as the source of the intimacy, informality, and banter which characterize the relationship between poet and reader in the novel. The conversational tone derives from genres of “light poetry” such as the friendly epistle and from the cultivated art of private correspondence. This is witnessed in the dedication and epigraph to the novel (“tiré d’une lettre particulaire”). Puškin becomes increasingly critical of light poetry, and Baevskij traces the influence of genres such as album verse and the madrigal on parodic episodes which appear in later chapters of Onegin: the album of the provincial young ladies versus the album of the Petersburg grande dame, Onegin’s “vulgar madrigal” to Ol’ga at the ball and M. Triquet’s painfully inept birthday verses for Tat’jana. Baevskij omits to mention the important role which Puškin originally envisioned for Onegin’s Album, or the way in which Tat’jana’s visit to Onegin’s library transforms the setting of “Gorodok,” that friendly epistle from the author’s country library. Baevskij concludes: “At the end of the introduction, Puškin indicates the other line of development which led him to Eugene Onegin, the romantic (The Prisoner of the Caucasus and the modern, melancholy elegies). Thus, the originality of Onegin was felt by Puškin against the background of the synthesis of all the artistic achievements of the first decade of his work” (1982: 113). Take Voltaire and Ariosto and add generous amounts of Byron and Sterne, Puškin’s latest models for the free, authorial presence. The author in Eugene Onegin, though descended from the poet of Ruslan and Ljudmila, is not identical with him. If we were to reconstruct the whole story behind the creation of the authorial presence or “obraz avtora” in Eugene Onegin, we would need to know more about the Kišinev diaries which Puškin destroyed in 1826.

So far we have only an author. What of his search for a hero? Kavkazskij plennik (The Prisoner of the Caucasus) is the confident reply. D’jakonov has written that “Eugene Onegin redevelops The Prisoner of the Caucasus by other means” (1982: 80). It is generally recognized that the Prisoner is the first character sketch for Onegin; he is the prematurely disillusioned romantic, the young man from the capital marooned in the wilds, stirred to feeling and renewed by the love of a simple girl, which he cannot, however, reciprocate, and from which she ultimately perishes. Note here the lineaments of a shadowy Tat’jana. D’jakonov has commented on the plot similarities between The Prisoner with its passive hero and positive, self-sacrificing heroine and Eugene Onegin (1982: 72). In The Prisoner, the man of the world begins his long farewell to youth from his first place of exile, exile explored from a different point of view in Puškin’s lyrics (“To Ovid” . . . ). The Prisoner dramatizes ennui and the lament for lost youth. But it is also the source of what Puškin called the “ljubovnyj bred” (delirious passion) which erupts into the other southern poems right up to Poltava, and finally even into the last chapter of Eugene Onegin (“Benedetta,” “Idol mio,” PSS VI: 184). Puškin’s preliminary epigraph from Faust “Gieb meine Jugend mir züruck!” (PSS IV: 286) might serve as the leitmotif for the lament. It migrated from the draft of The Prisoner known as The Caucasus to the draft of Tavrida (Fomičev 1982: 16). Tavrida, at times considered the predecessor of Onegin, eventually yielded stanzas of passionate reminiscence for Chapter I (“Ja pomnju more pred grozoju ...” [PSS VI: 19]) which bring “ljubovnyj bred” and the theme of “hidden love” into Onegin. As we remember, Puškin learned from The Prisoner that he made a poor romantic hero (“ja ne gožus’ v geroi romantičeskogo stixotvorenija” [PSS XIII: 52]). There was not enough distance in The Prisoner, too much submersion of the author into the character, a mistake not repeated in Onegin. Puškin’s second Caucasian journey, along with his memories from The Prisoner, are reflected in the Caucasian episode in Onegin’s “Wanderings,” and perhaps most poignantly in the verse from Onegin’s Album which returns us to the psychological springs of The Prisoner:

The “Prisoner of the Caucasus” is a romantically displaced young man from Petersburg society, a literary character known as the “man of the world,” to emphasize his connection with good society (le monde, svet) and his pretensions to experience and sophistication. This is the contemporary hero as society has made him. The Prisoner of the Caucasus immediately contrasts him to the natural setting with its grandeur and energy, to the primitive passions of the native tribesmen and the ardent spirit of the Circassian girl. The first chapter of Eugene Onegin, on the other hand, takes place in the capital, as if to develop the Vorgeschichte. We witness the education and creation of the hero in his own milieu. The first stirrings of a conception like this may be attested in the June 1821 plan for the comedy “Skazi, kakoj sud’boj” (Fancy Meeting You). Here, as Vol’pert writes, “we find images and themes which will be further developed in Onegin, the type of the contemporary dandy and the description of social mores” (1979: 175). This was to be a comedy of manners with the sting of social satire. The tone of the piece and its setting seem to anticipate Onegin, but this hero has nothing of the demonic element which entered the novel from the end of the first chapter.

The demon is the most thoroughly explored context for Onegin in Puškin’s work, and rightly so for its importance to the novel. Onegin has several personae, but even as man of the world or wanderer he is the demon. His vanity and pride, his egotism, his ennui, his very worldliness make the man of the world a fiend. When we hear repeatedly in the novel that Onegin is another Melmoth, the character in question is of course specifically Melmoth the Wanderer; and after the duel with Lenskij, Onegin undertakes his journey like an outcast Cain and murderer of his brother. The demon in Puškin has usually been considered in one of two aspects, either as the amorous seducer and betrayer or as the more philosophical “spirit of denial and doubt.” The one appears as a tempter from without, the other tends to work from within (Vacuro 1976). But the two both bring on a serious crisis of faith. Certainly Onegin, as the spirit of doubt and denial, also possesses demonic powers of seduction both in friendship and in love. Tat’jana, Lenskij, and the poet are all drawn to him, though Tat’jana’s dream hints at his demonic desire for possession (“moe!” [mine!] [PSS VI: 106]), and the duel with Lenskij reveals his capability for essentially mindless evil and the destructiveness latent in his ennui. The poet, too, often permits himself sarcasm toward love and friendship, whose ideal has been seriously undermined. The demon is actually a double, now a second self, now a magnetically attractive friend. His embodiment is a first step toward dealing with him and ultimately overcoming him.

We come to ask whether Onegin was truly demonic. “Who are you, angel or demon?” Tat’jana’s letter asked. “Kto ty, moj angel li xranitel’ / Ili kovamyj iskusitel’?” (PSS VI: 67). Reading in Onegin’s library, she stops short of pronouncing him a mere parody of the romantic demon (“uželi slovo najdeno?” [can the word have been found?] [PSS VI: 149]). The poet, launching Onegin on his journey, says in a draft that even the hero is tired of keeping up his reputation as a Melmoth (“Naskuča slyt’ ili Mel’motom / Il’ maskoj ščegoljat’ inoj” [PSS VI: 475]). The Album, later omitted, showing us a diary of his past, calls his malice into question and humanizes him (“Vy sovsem ne tak opasny . . . prosto očen’ vy dobry” [You are really not so dangerous . . . in fact, you are very kind] [PSS VI: 615]). In the final chapter the demonic seducer himself falls victim to love.

But let us return to the origins of Onegin. “Demonic” works accompany the novel throughout its development but decisively influence its initial stages. First we must consider the Gavriiliada (Gavriliada), and the plans for the story “Vljublennyj bes” (The Devil in Love), then the complex of poems surrounding “The Demon.” The most recent treatment of their connection to Onegin belongs to Ospovat (1986). Puškin began Chapter I of Eugene Onegin on May 9, 1823, and completed it on October 22, immediately proceeding to Chapter II, which was largely finished by December 8. The Gavriliada dates to April of 1823, the period just before Eugene Onegin. Xodasevič noted that the situation of Chapter II echoes the Gavriliada where Puškin had written: “Let’s talk about love’s aberrations. . . . To reawaken the memory of it, we like to chatter with a confidant” (1924: 66). “Veteran of love,” Onegin serves as the demonic confidant for Lenskij’s effusions. Ospovat points to the fact that a passage characterizing Onegin’s expertise in “the science of the tender passion” recasts several lines from the Gavriliada where Satan appears as the teacher (1986: 190). The demon as triumphant and carefree seducer is certainly the hero of the Gavriliada—and, as Ospovat observes, the author is his double. His speech most closely resembles the speech of Satan, and he declares himself “the demon’s friend, a rake and a deceiver” (“drug demona, povesa i predatel’ ” [PSS IV: 136]). Thus, in the Gavriliada Puškin tries out the demon as double for author.

“I bešenoj ljubvi prokazy / V arxivax ada otyskal” (PSS II: 1, 199, draft dedication), this is how Puškin characterized the enterprise of the Gavriliada: unearthing the episodes of mad love in the archives of hell. The devil seduces a willing Virgin Mary, beating out his rival, Gabriel, and exposing the hypocrisy of God the Father. Onegin behaves exactly like the devil of the Gavriliada, instructing girls on the quiet. But the amorous adventures of the devil are also the reflection of the author’s own past, of his “mad love.” “A ja povesa večno prazdnyj . . . / Ja nravljus’ junoj krasote / Besstydnym bešenstvom želanij” (But I, an eternally idle rake . . . /I please young beauty / with the shameless frenzy of my desires [PSS II: 1: 139-40; 1821; Ospovat 1986: 180]). The archives of hell are the memories of his Petersburg days, as attested by Puškin’s sketches of carousing, inhabited by his acquaintances from the capital and a long-tailed devil (Cjavlovskaja 1960: 115). “Strastej igru my znali oba” (We both knew how the passions play [PSS VI: 23]). Returning in memory to those times once more in the retrospective opening stanzas of Chapter VIII, Puškin wrote that his Muse had “sported like a Bacchante” (the drafts were more frank—”а как vakxanočka besilas’ ”Ja Muzu pylkuju privel na igry junošej razgul’nyx” (I brought my fervid Muse to the revels of boisterous youth [PSS VI: 621; Ospovat 1986: 193]). Compare Chapter I: “ljublju ja bešenuju mladost’ ” (I love mad youth [PSS 6: 7]).

The “Demon” poems of fall 1823 may be seen as the direct source of the pairing of Puškin and Onegin as the author and his familiar demon, a relationship so important to the structure of the novel and soon echoed in the friendship of Onegin and Lenskij. But the Gavriliada (April 1823) already anticipates this, as does the plan called “The Devil in Love” (1821-23). Ospovat links the two as the “amorous adventures of the devil,” on the one hand, and “the devil in love,” on the other, and points out the striking plot similarities between the devil in love and Onegin, suggesting that indeed “The Devil in Love” might well have influenced the formation of the novel (1986: 185). To quote the plan:

However, the plan for “The Devil in Love” would seem to be a development from early graphic sketches and verse of 1821 which Annenkov called the “Adskaja poèma” (Hellish Poem) (Cjavlovskaja 1960: 104). The most relevant sketch depicts a devil in hell forlornly warming himself and gazing into the fire while above him, as it were in his mind’s eye, wafts the figure of a woman. Thus he is the original “devil in love.” Despite the nervous line drawing which might suggest satire, because of the accompanying lyrics Cjavlovskaja is probably correct that Puškin envisioned a romantic narrative (1960:105-106). While the rest of hell keeps holiday, there is a remote corner where a contrasting scene is evidently in progress. Hell is a place “from which hope, peace, love and rest are forever exiled, where a terrible Satan laughs to hear the moans of sinners”: “V Geene prazdnik . . . vo t’me kromešnoj / Est’ udalennyj ugolok . . . Otkuda izgnanny naveki / Nadežda, mir, ljubov’ i son, / Gde grešnika vnimaja ston / Užasnyj Satana xoxočet” (PSS II: 989; PSS II: 1: 469). Motifs of isolation, exile, lost hope, the mockery of Satan: it is as if The Prisoner of the Caucasus had been transported to the underworld. There, too, ennui reigns. In a neighboring verse fragment, devils joke about playing cards to while away eternity, “tol’ko b večnost’ provodit’ ” (PSS II: 1: 382).

The Gavriliada and the plan “The Devil in Love” show what varied expressions the formant of the demonic double took in Puškin. Yet only “The Demon” is actually intertwined with the writing of Eugene Onegin, its drafts and related fragments interspersed with stanzas of the novel. As Medvedeva established in 1941, work on “The Demon” overlapped work on the end of Chapter I and the beginning of Chapter II (November-December 1823). Here Onegin becomes the gloomy and jaded companion of the poet and soon strikes up a friendship with Lenskij, whom he will eventually destroy. Nepomnjaščij has written, “The poem ‘The Demon’ can be called a metaphorical outline for the first chapter of the novel, a kind of mother cell containing the ‘genetic code’ of this ‘beginning of a long poem’ ” (1983: 278). At the end of Chapter I, the poet and his demonic double, Onegin, attain their closest rapprochement (“S nim podružilsja ja v to vremja . . . ja byl ozloblen, on ugrjum” [I became friends with him at that time . . . I was embittered, he was glum] [PSS VI: 23]). Lotman has written in his analysis of the evolution of characters in Onegin that only when Onegin has taken on the aspect of the demon with all his philosophical skepticism does he gain the stature to become the poet’s friend (1960: 143).

This fragment leading to “The Demon” is found among the drafts of Onegin, Chapter II (Medvedeva 1941: 61). In the person of Onegin, the “devil in love” joins the disillusioned hero of The Prisoner of the Caucasus. Onegin seems to shed his worldliness for worldweariness, the demon displacing “the man of the world,” and this attracts the poet. “Uslovij sveta svergnuv bremja, / Как on otstav ot suety, / S nim podružilsja ja v to vremja” (Casting off the burden of worldly conventions, / Like him, in retirement from their vanity, / I became friends with him at that time] [PSS VI: 23]). Onegin, previously little more than the automaton of the social whirl, rushing through a single day to the chime of his pocket watch, gains depth of character through memory, the magical element of the poet. They share reminiscences, “Vospomnja prežnjuju ljubov’ . . . tak unosilis’ my mečtoj / K načalu žizni molodoj” (Remembering past love . . . we would be transported thus in fancy / To the beginnings of our young life) (PSS VI: 24). Now both express their readiness for the journey, which means escape for Onegin, freedom for the poet. Perhaps we should stress Onegin’s razdvoennost’ or divided personality at this point in the novel: “Mečtam nevol’naja predannost’ . . . i rezkij oxlaždennyj um” (An involuntary dedication to dreams . . . and a sharp, cold mind). This corresponds to the famous sententia:

Stanzas 45 and 46 of Chapter I contain the principal elements of Puškin’s famous poem “Vospominanie” (Recollection, 1828) and its manuscript continuation—the serpent of memory, remorse, the ghost of the past, the reference to slanderers and a ruined youth. “Oboix ožidala Zloba / Slepoj Fortuny i ljudej / Na samom utre našix dnej” (The malice of men and blind fortune lay in wait for both of us / At the very dawn of our days [PSS VI: 23-24]). Slander and betrayal precipitated the psychological crisis which brought the demon to Puškin’s door, the spirit of negation and doubt. It is not surprising that he attributes the same experiences to Onegin, although there is nothing in Chapter I to substantiate the declaration.

Evidently, Puškin at first conceived of the conversations between Onegin and Lenskij as an opportunity for the demon to exercise his fascination. “Kto žil i myslil, tot ne možet v duše ne prezirat’ ljudej / . . . vse èto často pridaet / Bol’šuju prelest’ razgovoru” (He who has lived and thought cannot / But despise people in his heart / . . . all this often lends / A great charm to the conversation [PSS VI: 24]). The poem “The Demon” refers to “stinging speeches” (“ego jazvitel’nye reči”). In the drafts to Chapter II we find the lines “ja neopisannuju sladost’ / V ego besede naxodil” (I took indescribable delight in his talk [Medvedeva 1941: 65]). “Sperva Onegina jazyk menja smuščal” (at first Onegin’s talk disconcerted me [PSS VI: 24])—this remark from Chapter I is the only hint of the disturbing nature of the new friendship between the poet and Onegin. But Onegin’s demonic traits do not really emerge until Lenskij enters the scene, that is, until Puškin creates a character from his past self to bear the brunt of Onegin’s influence. The poet himself has moved on and sees the pair from a distance. The naive Lenskij replaces the poet as the demon’s friend. Only the drafts have digressions in first person that Puškin recasts into poems such as “The Demon,” digressions that remind us how close the poet originally was to his character, the poet Lenskij. “Mne bylo grustno, tjažko, bol’no” (It made me sad). The demonic skepticism is a caustic that eats away at all ideals—love, friendship, freedom. Lenskij is a believer and an innocent: “On serdcem milyj byl nevežda” (He was a dear ignoramus at heart [PSS VI: 34]). His characterization in Chapter II.8 stresses just those articles of faith which the demon mocks: romantic love expressing elective affinities, devoted friendship, the fellowship of genius. Note also the identification of all this with “poetry.” Cf. Puškin: “Byvalo v sladkom osleplen’e / Ja veril izbrannym dušam” (Once in sweet blindness / I believed in chosen spirits [PSS II: 1: 294]).

But Lenskij is constructed as a “pure” poet, unlike the persona of the author; for Lenskij, Onegin is an opposite, not a double. (See the drafts: Lenskij “ne slavil seti sladostrast’ja ...” [didn’t praise the snares of concupiscence] [PSS VI: 270]). The demonic in Eugene Onegin is rather toned down in Chapter II—Onegin, though jaded himself, does not attempt to disillusion Lenskij: “On oxladitel’noe slovo / V ustax staralsja uderžat” (He tried to hold back the chilling word upon his lips); “Snosnee mnogix byl Evgenij . . . I včuže čuvstvo uvažal” (Eugene was more decent than most . . . and respected feeling in others) (PSS VI: 37-38). Eugene’s suppressed passion and his disdain for altruistic values are relegated to the drafts.

What happened was a purging of the demonic. Only the author’s mocking irony toward Lenskij’s idealism remains. In the lyrics: “Vzgljanul na mir ja vzorom jasnym . . . Uželi on kazalsja mne / Stol’ veličavyim i prekrasnym?” (I looked with clear eyes at the world . . . Could it really have seemed to me / So magnificent and so beautiful? [PSS II: 1: 293]). Of Lenskij:

Lenskij is not aware that a demon is near. The demonic side of Onegin emerges only as the plot progresses—foreshadowed in Tat’jana’s dream and revealed in the duel, Onegin’s demonic betrayal of love and friendship.

What “The Demon” did in a nutshell was to add conflict, struggle, and drama to the static disillusionment of The Prisoner of the Caucasus. In a poem such as “Ту prav, moj drug” (You’re right, my friend) of fall 1822, the transition from youth to embittered experience is unmotivated: “No vse proslo!—ostyla v serdce krov’, / V ix nagote ja nyne vižu /I svet, i žizn’, i družbu i ljubov’ ” (But all is over!—the blood has cooled within. / I now see in their nakedness, / The world, and life and friendship and love [PSS VI: 265]). When the Demon appears, he objectifies the feeling “I am a different person, something else has taken possession of me.” Without the separation of a Demon, plot is hardly conceivable. Only when a conflict has been discovered can the situation progress further, and Onegin is one of the works through which this conflict is clarified and played out. As has often been observed, in the writing of the lyric Puškin quickly goes from fascination by the Demon to a sense of sad oppression by him; he no longer declares their existences to be united forever (Lakšin 1979: 142; Ospovat 1986: 186). In Chapter I of Onegin the author’s closeness to his demon is already in the past, and attached to particular circumstances: “S nim podružilsja ja v to vremja” (I became friends with him at that time [Ospovat 1986: 172]). Puškin’s treatment of the demonic would pass through several more stages (“A Scene from Faust,” “The Angel,” “Devils”). The novel breaks off on an “ill moment” for Onegin. After Tat’jana makes her exit, he stands “thunderstruck,” a parody of Don Juan. The seducer is foiled, and the spirit of denial and doubt is himself cast into confusion. At the same time, however, during the Boldino autumn of 1830, in Kamennyj gost’ (The Stone Guest) another “demon in love” is left more tragically perplexed with his demonic aura intact (Cjavlovskaja 1960: 125).

But Onegin had to originate from a demonic fascination. His hold on the imagination was inexplicable and unsanctioned. For Puškin, at least in his early years, the very workings of the imagination could well hold something demonic. Remembering his beginnings as a poet, in the “Conversation of the Bookseller with the Poet,” the preface to Chapter I of the novel, Puškin speaks of the “demon” who had pursued him, whispering the marvelous sounds of poetry:

As Onegin was ending, in another reminiscence of first youth, Puškin wrote “v načale žizni školu pomnju ja” (I recall school in the beginning of life, 1830), with its two mysterious pagan “demons” (“To bylo dvux besov izobražen’ja . . . Bezvestnyx naslaždenij temnyj golod / Menja terzal . . . vse kumiry sada / Na dušu mne svoju brosali ten’ ” [There were the representations of two demons . . . The dark hunger of undiscovered pleasures / Tormented me . . . All the idols of the garden / Cast their shadow upon my soul] [PSS III: 1: 255]). Ospovat is right to say that “love and art had entered Puškin’s life full of demonic charm” (1986: 193).

At this point it may be useful to provide at least a schematic picture of where the remaining chapters of Onegin fall in the progression of the rest of Puškin’s work. Chapter III of Onegin, “Baryšnja” (The Young Lady), was written in alternation with The Gypsies’, both cover the period approximately January—October 1824. Although Chapter IV was begun soon after, Boris Godunov consumed most of 1825, and Puškin laid aside Onegin for nearly a year, returning to finish Chapter IV at the end of 1825. As he completed Chapter IV he also wrote Count Nulin (December 13-14, 1825). We might note that the so-called Odessa stanzas of Onegin’s Journey date to 1825 as well. The year 1826 marked a rededication to Eugene Onegin: Chapters V and VI were written in their entirety over the course of the year, although Puškin continued to polish Chapter VI into 1827. Some of Chapter VII was written in 1827, alternating with work on the unfinished “Arap Petra Velikogo” (Blackamoor of Peter the Great) (August-September). In 1827, however, Chapter VII differed from its present form. Most important, it was projected to include Onegin’s Journey. It began directly from Tat’jana’s journey to Moscow and did not as yet contain the introductory reflections on the fate of Lenskij or Tat’jana’s visit to Onegin’s library. Early in 1828, Puškin revised Chapter VII, writing the opening stanzas and reaching the point of insertion for Onegin’s journey, but he apparently changed his mind and finished the chapter without it. Work on the final version of Chapter VII was completed on November 4, 1828.

In the meantime, Puškin had dedicated much of the year to Poltava (April-October) and worked sporadically at fragments for society tales. In March 1828 he had published Chapter VI of Eugene Onegin as “the end of part I”—the reader remembers the summarizing reflections concluding Chapter VI, “Daj ogljanus’ ” (Let me look back), an apparent semicadence. Presumably, the plan was for another six chapters. Off and on in 1829, Puškin worked on Onegin’s Journey, as a separate chapter then called Chapter VIII. The best evidence is that the so-called Decembrist stanzas which Puškin eventually enciphered, and which have become known as fragments of Chapter X, were originally part of Onegin’s Journey and date to 1829. At the same time he wrote his own travel diary, “Voennaja gruzinskaja doroga” (Georgian Military Road), the cycle of poems based on the same journey, and, on his return, the unfinished “Novel in Letters” along with some of “Rusalka” (The Water Nymph) and the fragment Tazit. Chapter VIII as Onegin’s Journey was finished only in 1830, during the first Boldino autumn. By that time, Puškin hesitated between two plans, finishing Onegin in nine chapters or excluding the Journey entirely and doing the novel in eight, as attested by the draft preface to the final chapters (PSS V: 547-49).

Ultimately, he excluded the Journey, working some necessary transitional material on Onegin into the last chapter, today’s Chapter VIII. We now have only fragments of Onegin’s Journey left. Chapter VIII, begun in late December 1829, was completed along with the Journey at Boldino on September 25, 1830, though Puškin did revise it later. Onegin seemed to be finished. Puškin noted that he had “burned Chapter X,” some of which he nevertheless enciphered. However, on October 5, 1831, Puškin put the final touch to the novel by writing Onegin’s letter to Tat’jana. There is no evidence that Puškin ever wrote any material for further chapters of Onegin. We have no text, only the legend that Onegin was to have perished either with the Decembrists or in the Caucasus. The most that we can say is that there is the published Eugene Onegin such as we know it, and that there existed the undeveloped idea for an Onegin not for publication.

Puškin’s rhythm of composition in writing Eugene Onegin is schematically represented in the table. It is worth highlighting certain facts. The “first half’ of the novel up to the climax of Onegin’s duel with Lenskij came relatively easily—Chapters I, II, III in quick succession, a break for Boris Godunov, and then Chapters IV, V, VI. The years 1823 and 1826 were

particularly intense, with two chapters each. It was the razvjazka or resolution that came hard. Puškin spent two years on Chapter VII, two on Onegin’s Journey. Actually, the question of how to deal with the Journey occupied him for all four years, since originally it was to be part of Chapter VII. There was a break for Poltava, then the Journey and Chapter VIII. In 1830 Puškin again wrote two chapters, bringing Onegin to a close. Toward the end he had reconceptualized its structure as a novel in three parts (see his balance sheet from Boldino, 1830): Part I—I, II, III; Part II—IV, V, VI; Part III—VI, Journey, VIII (PSS VI: 532). In terms of plot dynamics, Part I corresponds to the development, including Tat’jana’s letter; Part II corresponds to the climax, including Onegin’s answer and the duel with Lenskij; Part III covers the consequences or aftermath. The development of the novel was closely intertwined with Puškin’s life: Chapters I, II, III were written in southern exile on the basis of reminiscences of Petersburg and country life. No sooner had Onegin been sent to the provinces than Puškin was dispatched there himself; the “country chapters,” IV, V, and VI, were written at Mixajlovskoe. In September 1826 Puškin returned to Moscow from exile, and Chapters VII, the Journey, and VIII follow his peregrinations—Moscow, the journey of 1829, and the return to Petersburg society. The rhythm of Eugene Onegin thus reflects both the rhythm of Puškin’s life and the rhythm of his creative work.

Only the second concerns us here. The four contexts for Onegin which have received the most attention (man of the world, demon, journey, farewell and homecoming) speak mostly to the beginning and the end of the novel. Some work, however, has been done on the middle chapters in their creative setting, much of it by L. D. Sidjakov (1977), which unfortunately I will not be able to consider here. Solovej has advanced the view that it was while working on Chapter VII (in October 1828) that Puškin decided on a nine-chapter plan for the novel. At least the plan for an edition of Puškin’s works prepared in February-March 1829 seems to reflect this (1977: 109). Onegin’s Journey, initially conceived, according to D’jakonov, as the “leisurely introduction to the second half of the novel” (1982: 97) (that is, Chapter VII of XII), was displaced from Chapter VII to Chapter VIII of IX and finally to fragments which found a place as an extended footnote to the final chapter, today’s Chapter VIII. Chapter VII now dealt with the end of the Lenskij-Ol’ga plot and with Tat’jana (Solovej 1977: 103). Puškin had provided a point of transition to Onegin’s Journey in Chapter VII after Tat’jana’s reflections on his library (PSS VI: 442). This was a possibility in late October 1828 (after Poltava).

However, very soon, probably within the week, Puškin had rejected this solution. About the same time Puškin was also considering what to do with Onegin’s Album. The Journey and the Album, like the sequence in Onegin’s library, were both devices for the self-revelation of the hero. Lotman now speculates that the famous enciphered stanzas of Chapter “X,” which probably derived from the Journey, are written from Onegin’s point of view, in his voice, and perhaps were part of his diary. The hero is not named, and Puškin is mentioned once in the third person (1986: 140). Simultaneously, Puškin excluded both the Album and the inner transition to the Journey from Chapter VII (Solovej 1977: 106-107). Now it is Tat’jana’s Journey to Moscow which occupies the analogous position. Puskin’s final plan for the close of Chapter VII ended with the following items: “Doroga, Moskva, General, Odessa” (The Road, Moscow, the General, Odessa [Solovej 1977: 107]). That is, the Odessa stanzas, “Ja žil togda v Odesse pyl’noj” (Then I lived in dusty Odessa), etc., as a final digression in Chapter VII, were to lead into Onegin’s Journey, Chapter VIII, which would bring the hero and the poet together after their separation in Chapter I. But the Odessa stanzas were to migrate further. As for Onegin’s Album, which Puškin excluded, Solovej has suggested that it became the germ for the development of Onegin in Chapter VIII (1977: 113-14). Thus, Chapter VII had simply been too big, and it had anticipated too much too soon. The Journey and Chapter VIII grew out of it. This inner evolution accompanied Puškin’s return to Eugene Onegin after Poltava.

We do not have the complete manuscripts to Onegin’s Journey. The “Odessa stanzas” had existed since 1825. Levkovič has noted (following Cjavlovskaja 1960) that on his way to the Caucasus Puškin gave a copy of Scott’s Ivanhoe to the Poltoratskijs, with inscriptions including part of a stanza to the so-called Chapter X. This confirmed D’jakonov’s hypothesis that the “Decembrist” stanzas were first meant for the Wanderings chapter (then Chapter VIII) and were written in Petersburg before Puškin’s departure for the Caucasus (1986: 249). The enciphered stanzas could have provided the ideological motivation for Onegin’s journey of discovery in his own land, whose first episode is a journey from Saint Petersburg to Moscow. In other drafts to the Journey, Puškin initially gave him a civic impulse—Mel’mot wittily rhymed with patriot: “Naskuča ili slyt’ Mel’motom / II’ maskoj ščegoljat’ inoj / Prosnulsja raz on patriotom” (Tired of being known as Melmoth / Or sporting some other mask / He woke up one day a patriot [PSS VI: 495]). The manuscripts that we have for the Journey date to Puškin’s return from Arzrum, when in the fall of 1829 he disengaged himself from his Caucasian impressions and returned to Onegin. Note the continuity with the end of Chapter VII, Tat’jana’s arrival in Moscow, and the narrator’s Moscow impressions. Levkovič suggests that in fall 1829 Puskin removed the patriotic aureole from his hero’s Moscow life. His journey thus will not fit him to be reborn as a political activist. (But Puškin marked the Melmoth Stanza “to Chapter X” in 1830.)

This changed perspective coincides significantly with Puškin’s return from Arzrum to his ingrata patria, from a journey which began in the desire to rejoin his Decembrist friends on the battlefield but which turned out to be a sequence of anti-climaxes. The hero of the Journey to Arzrum, a work based on the impressions of 1829, is driven by his “demon.” There, too, we often seem to hear the refrain of Onegin’s Journey: “toska, toska!” (anguish, anguish!). For Puškin, the journey to Arzrum was also a journey into reminiscence, back to The Prisoner of the Caucasus and lost youth, a revisiting of scenes of romantic inspiration. Work on Onegin’s Journey broke off at a psychological turning point, after taking Onegin to the Caucasus and the Crimea: “Kakie čuvstva ne tailis’ / Togda vo mne—teper’ ix net. / Oni prošli il’ izmenilis’ . . . / Mir vam, trevogi prošlyx let!” (Whatever feelings I then cherished—they are no more. / They are gone or changed . . ./ Peace unto you, cares of bygone years [PSS VI: 200]). Puškin returned to the Journey a year later, in the Boldino autumn of 1830. In early November 1829, after a break, he had written his last lines of that year for the Journey, the stanza “Ne dolgo vmeste my brodili” (Not long did we wander together [PSS VI: 505; Levkovič 1986: 264]), which prepares for Onegin’s return to Petersburg and the narrator’s journey to Mixajlovskoe (PSS V: 564). This stanza presupposed the Odessa stanzas, completing Onegin’s sequence Caucasus, Crimea, Odessa, and keeping him ever one step behind the narrator. It was the natural transition to Chapter VIII, “High Society,” which Puškin began shortly.

If Onegin’s Journey represented the wanderings of Melmoth turned patriot, Puškin was simultaneously exploring the spiritual itinerary of the Russian prodigal son. Petrunina has noted the parallel between Onegin’s Journey (along with Vjazemskij’s “Stancija” [The Station]) and Puškin’s fragment “Zapiski molodogo čeloveka” (Notes of a Young Man). She comments that ennui links Onegin and the youth, though the causes of it in each are quite different (1986: 79-80). As the predecessor of the narrator in “The Stationmaster,” the youth is the first to view the parable of the prodigal son in pictures. Petrunina remarks that the theme of the road or journey (“doroznaja tema”) is a crucial one in Puškin’s work of the late 1820s and early 1830s and becomes especially active under the influence of the journey to Arzrum (1986: 79-80).

The journey to Arzrum had led Puškin once again to his demon, “demon neterpen’ja” (the demon of impatience [PSS VIII: 1: 462]). Compare Onegin: “I žit’ toropitsja, i čuvstovat’ spesit” (He hastens to live and hurries to feel [PSS VI: 5]). The draft to the poem “Besy” (Demons) dates to the return from Arzrum, the second half of September 1829 (Levkovič 1986: 276; revised Sept. 7, 1830). It is significant that the demons appear on the road, to the traveler. In fact, devils lead him into the storm, but these devils are themselves in torment in the final version. About two months later, Puškin wrote his note on Goethe and Byron, putting the lesser demon firmly in his place. “Goethe had a great influence on Byron. Faust troubled the imagination of the creator of Childe Harold. Several times he tried to wrestle with this giant of romantic poetry but kept limping behind” (Levkovič 1986: 267, emended text). We note that Puškin does not belittle Faust itself. He well understood the restless spirit, ever striving, never happy in the moment, goaded by his ennui instead of deadened by it. To the extent that this is Faust, there is something Faustian in Onegin’s Journey, an element that is compositionally unresolved.

Čumakov tries to argue against D’jakonov and with Tynjanov that the fragments from a journey are actually the end or “last lines” of Onegin, the “real finale of the novel on a par with the finale of Chapter VIII” (1976: 9). Graphically, they do follow the body of the text, appearing in the footnotes. This conception appeals to the modern reader; the form becomes open-ended and cyclical (returning us to the end of Chapter I). However, the conscientious reader does not actually arrive at the Journey last; he mentally inserts it where the footnote falls within Chapter VIII, a position which reflects Puškin’s decision to telescope the journey into a background element for the final chapter. The effort to see the Journey as following Onegin’s last interview with Tat’jana instead of preparing his return to Petersburg is meant to buttress the “Decembrist” interpretation of the novel whereby Onegin seeks a worthy alternative to ruined love or at least accomplishes “closure” by his death. Although it amounts to a major change in plan, this might make some sense if Puškin had not persisted in placing the Journey as the penultimate chapter as late as September 1830, when writing his last preface to Onegin, and if he had not assigned the fragments the role of footnote to Chapter VIII. A less doubtful hypothesis is that the Journey seemed to motivate whatever might have followed from Onegin and established a historical dynamic for future events. The exclusion of the Journey chapter from Onegin, because of the frankness with which it treated history and politics, forced the restructuring of the novel and effectively closed the door on its development. D’jakonov maintains that the Journey was meant to lead up to December 1825 and beyond, and when it could not, Puškin omitted it as the “gun which didn’t go off,” to use Čexov’s argument for artistic economy (1982). Yet Puškin attempted to keep the Journey as Chapter VIII in a finished text of nine chapters for publication, after drawing up his balance sheet and writing seven years, four months, seventeen days as the “bottom line.” He certainly sacrificed it reluctantly, probably in 1831 after personal censorship by Nicholas.

But didn’t Puškin mean to use at least part of the Journey as the basis for further chapters to Onegin? Yes and no. The question of a tenth chapter or continuation of Onegin is a controversial one. Puškin’s preface of 1830 remarks pregnantly, “Here are two more chapters of Onegin—the last, at least for print ...” (PSS VI: 541). This was after Puškin had jotted in the margin of the manuscript to “The Snowstorm,” “Burned Canto X” (PSS VIII: 1: 622). Puškin had marked the “Melmoth-into-patriot” stanza for transposition “to Canto X” (PSS VI: 496). He recited some of the enciphered stanzas to his friends, who thought that they were hearing material for a projected Chapter X. These stanzas originated as part of the Journey. Both their time of composition as evidenced by the Ivanhoe inscription of 1829 and their place in the inner chronology of the novel convince us this is so (they discuss conditions in Russia up to 1823, when Onegin and the narrator were to meet again in Odessa). D’jakonov has argued persuasively that Chapter X was a shortlived conception and that all we have is what Puškin extracted from Onegin’s Journey. When he saw, it seems in 1831, that it would be impossible to publish the Journey as he wished, the Journey and Chapter X again fell together (D’jakonov 1963: 60-61).

The commonplace has been that Puškin does not sufficiently prepare the reader for Tat’jana’s transformation from provincial girl to mistress of Petersburg salon, although he does motivate her changed view of Onegin through the library episode. Yet, without the Journey, we realize that Onegin’s life from the duel to the moment when he amazedly recognizes Tat’jana is a total blank. His transformation in Chapter VIII is equally abrupt. But we must admit that whatever Puškin sacrificed in the Journey, its remaining drafts and fragments do not serve to advance the plot. The Journey, punctuated by the refrain “toska, toska,” simply returns Onegin to his point of departure. No doubt, Puškin regretted the waste of such good material, and the cipher shows that he hoped to make use of it in the future. As Tomaševskij reports, perhaps fragmentary lines found by Bondi in Puškin’s last notebook show that in 1834 or 1835 Puškin was still working on a Chapter X, but perhaps he was just adapting it, using viable material from it as he had for the 1830 poem “Geroj” (The Hero) (Tomaševskij 1961: 226).

The important thing, as sober-minded scholars have long recognized, is, in Lotman’s words, that “we do not really know what the so-called tenth chapter of Eugene Onegin represents. If you think of it, the text is very strange and in many ways unlike the texture of the rest of the novel. Habit makes the contemporary reader perceive the remaining parts of ‘Chapter X’ as an unqualified apology for Decembrism” (1986: 149). Tomaševskij, too, had said that where Puškin was tending with Chapter X was hardly clear (1961: 234).

The only text that we have for Onegin ends with Chapter VIII, subtitled “High Society” (bol’šoj svet), in Puškin’s 1830 summation. The society setting, the issue of the social self, and the genre of the society tale are all involved. High society exerts a contradictory push and pull upon the author, who first idealizes Tat’jana’s salon but then comes to satirize the rest of its inhabitants. Solovej (1977) has shown that in the relevant stanzas, Puškin first makes use of his “Letter to the Editor of the Literary Gazette,” a document reflecting his views as one of the party of literary aristocrats. According to Solovej, the next stage of work on the society setting fell in 1831 and was influenced by “Moja rodoslovnaja” (My Genealogy), that is, by Puškin’s polemics with the novaja znat’ or parvenu aristocracy. The author’s efforts to define the society which he wished to create, on the one hand, and to distance himself from society as it existed, on the other, ran parallel to his explorations in the genre of the society tale begun in 1828 with fragments such as “Gosti s”ezžalis’ na daču” (The Guests Gathered at the Dacha). Sidjakov has written that in the dialectic of Puškin’s work, the idea for the society tale which appeared in conjunction with the development of Onegin returned to influence Chapter VIII (1977: 120, 124). In the context of the society tale, the hero, who is very much his social persona, “l’homme du monde malheureux” (PSS VIII: 2: 554), contrasts with the woman, much more the creature of her passionate nature. Their heroine is, as Axmatova put it, the “anti-Tat’jana.” She strays into Chapter VIII in stanza xvi, where the brilliant Nina Voronskaja sits next to Tat’jana without eclipsing her neighbor. Yet Chapter VIII is emphatically not a society tale; that is its secret. Tat’jana has made herself the mistress of social convention, not its slave, although her nature remains intact. As for the unhappy man of the world, Onegin, no predictable liaison awaits him. His situation is more like that of the Prince in “The Water Nymph.” The simple girl has become a queen, and now the hero, after abandoning her for his social role, desires her. But he has found true love too late. This motif also binds Chapter VIII of Onegin with Puškin’s Stone Guest, another product of the Boldino autumn of 1830 (Axmatova 1977: 189). In the last chapter of Onegin, the man of the world and the demon both turn out to be masks.

But what if we pass from the story of the heroes to the end of the poet’s novel which encompasses it and ask how that lyrical frame emerges? As the journey modulated into the final Petersburg chapter, Puškin’s lyrics took a similar turn. On December 23, 1829, he was still writing an invitation au voyage, “Poedem, ja gotov” (Let us go, I am ready), the day before beginning Chapter VIII. But starting the next day, December 24, he changed direction, returning to his first home, in reminiscences of the Lyceum and working through a translation of Southey’s “Hymn to the Penates,” the spirits of home. He questions his final destination (“Brozu li ja . . . ” [Wherever I roam . . . ]) hoping to find his resting place close to familiar abodes. Where am I going, what is my home, where is my end? These are the meditations that accompany the beginning of Chapter VIII (Levkovič 1986: 267-68). The retrospective digression that opens the chapter, which also begins with memories of the Lyceum, reflects this movement toward summation. By the end of Chapter VIII, the author has bid farewell to Onegin, a moment made possible by the conclusion of a long farewell to his own youth and past. It is well known that the mood of Onegin is echoed in the haunting series of love elegies from 1830 about the final farewell: “Proščan’e” (Farewell), “Zaklinanie” (Incantation), and “Dlja beregov otčizny dal’noj” (For the shores of a distant homeland). The final stanza of Onegin intones, “Inyx už net, a te daleče” (Some are gone and others far away), striking the elegiac note from The Fountain of Baxčisaraj which had come to be applied to the fate of the Decembrists. Vetlovskaja has noted that the source of Puškin’s lines may well not be Moore (or not only Moore) but Žukovskij’s translation of Goethe’s dedication to Faust (1986: 107). This is remarkable poetic closure. Puškin had modeled his preface to Chapter I on Goethe’s Vorspiel auf dem Theater (Prologue in the Theater), and now with the final stanzas of his novel he returns to the author’s position in Faust.

Parting from a work, Puškin naturally arrives at this theme as he finishes Onegin: Goethe’s sorrowful parting from Faust, then Gibbon’s “sober melancholy” on penning the last lines of his monumental history. Puškin’s poem “Trud” (Labor), written in connection with the completion of Onegin on the night of September 25-26, 1830, was based on Gibbon’s memoirs. “Mig voždelennyj nastal: okončen moj trud mnogoletnij. / čto ž neponjatnaja grust’ tajno trevožit menja?” (The longed-for moment has come: my labor of many years is accomplished. / Why then does an incomprehensible sorrow secretly trouble me? [PSS III: 184; Kibal’nik 1986: 157—58]). The classical meter pays tribute to Gibbon and antiquity and also solemnizes the poetic occasion. Along with the first stanzas of his Chapter VIII, Puškin had written a note on the publication of Gnedič’s Iliad which reworks his earlier letter to Gnedič of 1825 couched in these terms: “While your ship is sailing into port laden with the riches of Homer, there is no use talking about my Trifle Shop No. 1. I have a lot started, but nothing completed” (Levkovič 1986: 269; emended text). Now that Onegin was finished, Puškin measured it one last time against the classics.

In 1833 the first complete edition of the novel came out; in 1835, the second. On each occasion, Puškin attempted to frame a reply to the urgings of his friends—and his publisher—that he go on with the book. As Levkovič puts it, the fragmentary epistles of 1833 and 1835 are the author’s Afterword to Onegin (1974: 277). One fragment clearly echoes “The Conversation of the Bookseller and the Poet,” the Preface to Chapter I. Yet whether Puškin casts his thought in octaves, in Alexandrines, or in the Onegin stanza, we hear only the voice of the public and the counsels of expediency. The poet answers nothing, but his irony is evident. Onegin has successors in Puškin, but no continuation.

I have tried to present the context of Puškin’s works as something like the magic crystal through which he glimpsed Onegin. Perhaps, after all, the best image of this magic crystal is the kaleidoscope, in which one form blossoms out of another and finally explodes to collapse and rearrange itself into a shape unforeseen at the beginning. But we have only just begun to distinguish within the kaleidoscope the gemlike bits of glass which play so brilliantly in the light, and to follow a little the hand which turned the cylinder.