Parody inEvgenii Onegin: Lenskii’s Lament

Abstract

Among many examples of parody in Evgenii Onegin perhaps the most interesting and significant is the lyric poem which the poet Lenskii wrote on the eve of his duel with Onegin.1 Critics have pointed out that Lenskii's poem was actually a parody by Pushkin of the elegy.2 No critic, however, has analyzed the text closely to determine how the parody was achieved, or demonstrated the larger function this elegiac parody played in Evgenii Onegin. The elegy was the dominant lyric genre in Russia in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. Major poets like V. A. Zhukovskii,3 K. N. Batiushkov, E. A. Baratynskii, and the young Pushkin, and minor rhymesters such as V. I. Tumanskii and M. V. Milonov wrote elegies. No wonder that Pushkin's poet Lenskii too composed elegies, or that the elegiac style was associated with him from the moment he was introduced. The popular elegiac models of the period were the French poets Evariste Parny, Laurent