Eugene Onegin Research Articles

PUSHKIN’S WORD IN THE NARRATIVE DISCOURSE OF V.Е. MAXIMOV (based on the novels “Look into the abyss” and “The nomadism to Death”)

The article characterizes Pushkin’s quotes, including famous catch words and expressions, in the novels of the famous Russian prose writer of the second half of the twentieth century, V.Е. Maximov. The purpose of the study is a philological analysis of the features of the structure and semantics of winged units, determining the uniqueness of their functioning in narrative discourse. The novel “Look into the Abyss” uses Pushkin’s quotes from the poems “To the Sea” and “Demons,” while the novel “The nomadism to Death” mentions Pushkin’s quote from the novel “Eugene Onegin” and a catchphrase from “The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish.” Pushkin’s figurative words in Maximov’s artistic narration are a means of creating the author’s irony, speech characteristics of the main character and the primary narrator, form narrative polyphony, provide intertextual interaction, unite different plot lines of novels and ensure the structural and semantic integrity of texts.

The peculiarity of Pushkin-related texts in modern Russian literature

The topic of the article is relevant and timely, because the work is devoted to the study of works of mainly modern Russian literature. This article uses an integrated approach to the analysis of literary texts, including interpretative, analytical, intertextual and other methods. In the course of the conducted research, some "secondary" works of past periods of the literary process were updated, which in one way or another addressed the legacy of A.S. Pushkin. Empirical material: in the main part of the article, attention is focused on three categories of texts from the late XX–XXIst centuries, which use Pushkin's reminiscences, the Pushkin code, and the Pushkin myth. They are divided into three groups in the article: variations of modern literary references to the novel "Eugene Onegin"; works from the category of "alternative history", suggesting the construction of a different - fictional - fate of Pushkin; the use by modern authors of a kind of "literary franchise" of the legacy of Pushkin. As a result of the analysis, we come to the following conclusions: the importance of Pushkin's legacy for modern culture and literature is enormous. It encourages current artists of the word to bold, but not always productive experiments related to variations of Pushkin's texts, their sequels, parodies,new alternative historical twists and more. We believe that such phenomena as a whole can be considered an important component of the modern literary process, which should help restore interest in the classical heritage among younger generations.

Two Verse Novels — Two “Onegins”: Interlingual and Intercultural Translation

This article explores the connection between two literary works: Alexander Pushkin’s “Eugene Onegin” and Vikram Seth’s verse novel “The Golden Gate,” written more than 150 years after Pushkin’s text and referred to by critics as the “Eugene Onegin of San Francisco.” The aim of this study is a comparative analysis of the two novels, high-lighting Pushkin’s influence on the Anglophone text by the Indian author. Through the analysis, it is concluded that there are numerous borrowings present in Seth’s novel, including the Onegin stanza, the formula for introducing the main character, and various allusions and direct references to Pushkin’s text. The research material also encompasses the English translation of “Eugene Onegin” by Charles Johnston, which influenced Seth. The novelty of this research lies in the consideration of “The Golden Gate” as a form of double translation: both interlingual and intercultural. It is demonstrated that Seth’s work emerged as a result of the English translation of Pushkin’s verse novel, which served as a pretext that he reinterpreted within the context of twentieth-century American culture. This double translation unites two authors, two cultures, and two epochs.

Localization and pauses duration in Russian iambic tetrameter in the poetry of A. S. Pushkin

This article is a continuation of a study dedicated to the role of pauses in the prosodic structure of the Russian iambic tetrameter. New data on the localization and duration of the pauses in Alexander Pushkin’s “Eugene Onegin,” as voiced by three speakers, corroborate previously identified patterns in the organization of poetic lines at the prosodic level. Pauses of varying durations, occurring with different frequencies at various junctures, emphasize the depth of the varying degree of internal division within a line. The method of multidimensional classification revealed five groups of pause durations, ranging from ultra-short to super-long. It was found that within a line, ultra-short and short pauses predominate, while longer pauses tend to occur more towards the middle and less towards the beginning. The absence or brevity of pauses near the end of a line highlights a more prolonged inter-line pause. Individual pause strategies manifest in the observance or omission of inter-line pauses, their duration, the frequency of prosodic breaks within a line, and the frequency of using pauses of a particular duration group. High correlation coefficients indicate a consistent use of pauses among the three speakers.

‘A Melmoth? a cosmopolitan? a patriot?’: Melmoth the Wanderer's Russian Epigones

Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer had immediate, rich, and enduring influence upon Russian literature: Aleksandr Pushkin, after reading it in French translation in 1823, cited it in his own 1833 novel-in-verse Eugene Onegin, introducing the adjective ‘ mel’moticheskii’ (‘Melmoth-like’) to Russian. The titular demon of Mikhail Lermontov's dramatic poem The Demon (c. 1838) emulates Melmoth, while Maturin's novel was significant both for Nikolai Gogol and Fyodor Dostoevsky. Maturin's novel was just as widely read and (sometimes) travestied within Russia as the work of other Gothic-fantastic authors, like E. T. A. Hoffmann and Lord Byron. Yet no detailed English-language scholarly overview exists of Melmoth's Russian epigones, from Pushkin's Onegin to lesser-known, later imitations. This essay will clarify Maturin's impact on Russian literature by identifying the Russian authors most clearly influenced by Melmoth, from the dawn of Romanticism to the nostalgic fictions of Russian émigré and dissident authors in the early twentieth century.

SCHILLER’S MOTIFS IN THE IMAGE OF LENSKY IN A.S. PUSHKIN’S NOVEL EUGENE ONEGIN

When creating the image of Lensky, Pushkin combined two concepts of how Schiller was perceived in Russian culture of the 1820s: “sublime”, freedomloving, idealistic (as a figure of Sturm und Drang) and “pseudo-romantic”, elegiac, dating back to translations of Schiller’s elegies and ballads by Zhukovsky. At the same time, Pushkin himself in Eugene Onegin, obviously, does not completely separate them and does not oppose them, updating one or the other if necessary. The projection of both in the novel ranges from ironic reduction to sympathetic acceptance, which, along with their latent conflict with each other, creates a dialectical tension of Lensky’s image. It is Schiller’s motifs that give this image depth. In the draft versions, the exposition of Lensky’s image, the expressiveness and passion of his nature, rebellion and political engagement of the poet are much more strongly emphasized. But the author, while working on the text, “shifts” the image of Lensky towards a dreamy elegiac, while maintaining a recognizable Schiller appearance. The description of Lensky’s ideals moves entirely along the lines of Schiller’s philosophy and creativity. In this regard, the article for the first time examines possible reminiscences to the image of Lensky from Schiller’s poems “Die Hoffnung”, “Die Ideale”, “Die Freundschaft”, “Der Triumph der Liebe”, “Das Geheimnis der Reminiszenz. An Laura”, “Die Künstler”, “Das Glück”, “Das Ideal und das Leben”, “Der Flüchtling”. Having parodied the tradition of “dull” elegy on the example of Lensky’s dying poems, the author unexpectedly places two similar elegies as lyrical digressions. Despite the predominance of the Byron ideological and artistic context in the novel and Pushkin’s apparent irony in relation to the Schiller tradition, it represented for him a possible reference point for the development of Russian literature.

Eugene Onegin and Russian Identity

Eugene Onegin and Russian Identity

Лингвостилистические особенности литературы фанфикшн (на материале англоязычного фандома «Пушкин»)

The paper presents a linguostylistic analysis of English-language fan fiction works based on the novel “Eugene Onegin” by Alexander Pushkin. The studied texts are stylistically dependent speech works – stylizations and parodies, and, therefore, the characteristics of the works are considered taking into account the criteria of the theory of secondary texts by M. V. Verbitskaya. The research is comparative in nature and reveals the methods of linguistic transformation of the source text when creating fan fiction works. In addition, the paper touches upon various aspects of “secondariness” as a phenomenon in text linguistics, providing some observations on the place of fan fiction among scientific concepts of derivative texts. The aim of the research is to determine the methods of linguistic transformation of the source text in the creation of fan fiction. The scientific originality of the research is determined by the combination of textual and intertextual approaches to the fanfic. The paper is the first to examine in detail the stylistic aspects of the transformation of Russian classics into an English-language fanfic. As a result, the analysis allowed us to identify the most common approaches to the linguistic realization of amateur interpretations and to expand linguistic knowledge about fan fiction texts.

Особенности рецепции «онегинского текста» в литературном процессе XXI в.

The present article is devoted to the study of the specifics of the “Onegin text” development in the modern literary process, which allows us to determine the nature of the reception of the classical text in the Russian poetry of recent decades. The aim of the research is to study the peculiarities of development and transformation of plots and motifs of the “Onegin text” in the literary process of modernity. The scientific novelty is determined by the fact that for the first time modern poetic revisions of A. S. Pushkin’s novel in verse “Eugene Onegin” are comprehended in the stated aspect, which allows us to expand the idea of their problem-thematic originality and compositional principles, as well as to determine the place of poetic paraphrases in the literary process of the XXI century. As a result, firstly, it is established that the emergence of a large number of the “Onegin texts” in the modern literary process is caused both by the desire to move away from the clichéd perception of the classical model and to comprehend modern reality through the prism of the genre of Pushkin’s novel in verse. Deconstructing the genre canon of Pushkin’s work, modern authors create travesty texts, various kinds of paraphrases and parodies of the classical plot, where the iconic hero becomes a marker of the contemporary era. Secondly, it was found that the authors of the 21st century create fanfics in order to draw attention to the creative personality of the creator of the text, to make it popular on the Internet. In addition, the emergence of the “Onegin texts” is due to the desire to reflect on the imperfections of the era, when the classical picture of the world is taken as a reference point.

‘Far too much of contradiction’ [‘Protivorechiy ochen mnogo’

Devoted to Pushkin’s novel in verse Eugene Onegin [Evgeny Onegin], the article is a sequel to the author’s previous article ‘What! From outback steppe villages…’ [‘Kak! Iz glushi stepnykh seleniy…’] (Voprosy Literatury, 2019, No. 5) on the same theme. The scholar sets out to reconstruct those facts of the protagonist’s and his relatives’ biography that can only be discovered by detailed historical analysis of the text in comparison with the historical and cultural realia of Pushkin’s days. Such in-depth analysis throws new light on the complicated relationships of the novel’s main characters, determined by a psychological as well as socio-cultural subtext that was immediately recognizable by Pushkin’s contemporaries, but which is lost on later generations. Based on her earlier studies of Russian Catholicism and the problems of the historical reconstruction of literary texts, E. Tsimbaeva proposes a tentative spiritual and intellectual portrait of Onegin’s mother, whom Pushkin never mentions directly. The scholar sees her goal in broadening the reader’s understanding of the poet’s original design as well as the stages of, and reasons for, subsequent alterations acknowledged by Pushkin himself in his mention of ‘contradictions’ in the final draft.

ПУШКИН И БАЛЫ: ЗВУК И ТЕМА В РОМАНЕ «ЕВГЕНИЙ ОНЕГИН»

Object of the essay: the author's digression about balls (dance events) in the first chapter of the novel in verse by A.S. Pushkin "Eugene Onegin" (EO, 1, XXIX-XXX). Subject of the essay: sound patterning (phonetic shift, alliteration and anagrams). Purpose of research: to uncover the semantic connection between the theme and sound patterning. Results: The essay demonstrates that the love-erotic theme is the leitmotif in the author's digression about balls and is realized primarily at the lexical level. The sound patterning techniques (shift, alliteration, anagram) used in the digression are analyzed. A sound shift is revealed in the text, which occurs when individual lines are perceived by ear. This shift (fusion of sounds) creates a phonetic imitation of an obscene verb, which enhances and underscores the love-erotic theme of the digression at a profane, carnivalesque level. Sound shift is an acoustic-phonetic phenomenon when the ending of one word and the beginning of the next or two words standing next to each other form a new word that changes the meaning of the phrase. The same obscene verb is camouflaged in the anagrammatic construction of some lines. The clustering and repetition of the sounds б-л (b-l) in adjacent words creates a phonetic field in which a semantic meaning, associated with the leitmotif theme, emerges. Application: literary criticism, Pushkin studies, teaching Russian literature of the 19th century. Conclusions: Alliteration on б-л (b-l) highlights the phonetics of the leitmotif word "бал" (ball). Sound shifts and anagrams in the author's digression about balls serve as a phonetic accompaniment to the leitmotif love-erotic theme.

«…Не Шекспир главное, а примечания к нему»: комментарий академический и учебный, комментарий как автобиография, исследование и расследование

The paper deals with the history of academic commentary in the Soviet era, particularly the formation of standards for a description of the sources of the text, its creative history, and clarification of the encountered realities incomprehensible to the reader. A separate part of the paper is devoted to the critical editions of Russian “classics” designed for high school institutions, among them, e. g., the five-volume collection of works by A.S. Pushkin, issued by Lev I. Polivanov. The main specificity of these comments is that they precede the literary text and answer questions that students may have in advance. The next object of our analysis is N.L. Brodsky’s commentary on Pushkin’s novel “Eugene Onegin,” intended for secondary school teachers. It became a subject of sharp criticism by V.V. Nabokov, like a commentary on the same novel released by Yu.M. Lotman. A new stage in the genre of commentary has become the Russian version of Nabokov’s “A Novel in Verse by Alexandr Pushkin,” growing into an autobiography and a self-discovery tool for the editor (Nabokov). We are also considering the question of how fair was Nabokov’s criticism of the commentaries of Brodsky and Chizhevsky. Another type of commentary should be that of Odessa researcher S.Z. Lushchik, published as an appendix to Kataev’s novel “Werther has already been written” (1980) and entitled “A real commentary on the novel.” This type of commentary grows into a full-fledged study that discovers unknown and carefully hidden details of the famous Soviet writer’s biography.

Письма Т.Г. Цявловской к Н.В. Кузьмину и Т.А. Мавриной из собрания Государственного музея А.С. Пушкина

The letters of T.G. Tsiavlovskaya addressed to the Moscow artists N.V. Kuzmin and T.A. Mavrina, illustrators of A.S. Pushkin works, discuss the problems associated with the study of the poet’s biography. One of the important topics is the continuation of work on the Chronicle of Pushkin’s Life and Work, the first volume of which was published under the editorship of M.A. Tsiavlovskii in 1951 and ended with Pushkin’s stay in Mikhailovskoye. T.G. Tsiavlovskaya has devoted more than 20 years to the continuation of this fundamental work. Another important milestone in her work was the book “Pushkin’s Drawings,” which Tsiavlovskaya published in 1970 as well as the movie with the same title, filmed by the Central Television order according to her script in 1964. The preparation of this publication is also one of the central topics of the researcher’s correspondence with his correspondents. T.G. Tsiavlovskaya was able to identify many of the Pushkin manuscripts depicted on the pages, clarify the names of his acquaintances, comment on many drawings, relying on a deep knowledge of both the historical context and the circle of acquaintances and friends of the poet. Part of the letters is devoted to reviewing N.V. Kuzmin’s illustrations for the novel “Eugene Onegin” and “Epigrams of A.S. Pushkin,” combined by the artist into one book. The article also deals with preserving the memory of the poet in connection with the opening of a new museum on Prechistenka.

Principles and Procedures of the Construction of Opera Scenarios

"The construction of opera scenarios involves the development of a dramatic and narrative framework upon which an opera is built. These scenarios serve as the foundation for the libretto, music, staging, and overall production of the opera. In this introduction, we will explore the principles and procedures that guide the creation of opera scenarios. In summary, constructing an opera scenario is a complex and collaborative process that involves the careful consideration of narrative, character, music, and cultural context. The principles and procedures outlined here provide a foundation for the creation of opera scenarios that can captivate audiences and convey the depth of human emotion through music and drama. Over time, the evolution of the singing voice follows a phenomenon of symbiosis between words and music. The intertwining of the act of speaking with that of singing is constantly found in the concerns of the creators in ancient monody, Greek declamation, Gregorian chant, in the polyphonic style, in the opera performance as well as in all the ramifications of the vocal genre. Keywords: opera scenario construction, musical drama, analysis of the libretto, Eugene Onegin, The Queen of Spades."

EXPRESSIVE LOVE VOCABULARY IN THE LETTERS OF TATIANA AND ONEGIN

The crucial aspect of constructing a fictional text lies in identifying linguistic clichés and speech patterns that reflect the speaker’s thinking, behaviour, and cultural background. This is particularly important when exploring the love theme description in A.S. Pushkin’s novel “Eugene Onegin” and examining expressive and semantic speech mechanisms. The research aims to consider the techniques of using expressive language units of love context in the letters of the novel “Eugene Onegin”. The research offers novel insights into the extensive use of love vocabulary and illogical thematic organization in Onegin’s letter, providing a contrasting expressive context and character portrayal. It highlights the absence of letter etiquette and explores the significance of love letters in fiction. To achieve the research objectives, various methods, such as descriptive, content analysis, and comparative approaches, were employed. The research findings highlighted that comprehending linguistic clichés and speech standards, specifically their semantics and expressive nature, is essential for readers to grasp and fully immerse themselves in the depicted reality within the text. The love lexicon of the textual letters of the characters in A.S. Pushkin’s novel “Eugene Onegin” is no longer one of the elements reproduced and quoted in the text, but has become an important structural tool for describing the theme of love in the fiction text. The significance of the linguistic organization of the fragments representing the letters of Tatiana and Onegin is noted by Pushkin already at the level of the way they are included in the overall text. These ways include the introduction of the letters by a separate title, provided that neither chapters nor stanzas of the novel have titles, as well as the presence of special segments of text in the lyrical digressions, indicating a certain singularity of the letters. In addition, it has been determined that in the novel the synthesis of love vocabulary and expression has been developed in a linguistic-genre context of a higher level: the novel is permeated with the properties of lyrical poetry. In the composition of the text, such properties have found a clear form in the two most representative speech genres: in the love letter and the author’s multi-thematic and multidimensional reflections on love in the lyrical digressions. The practical significance lies in the use of the research results by scholars, as well as specialists in the field of linguistics and literary studies.

Literature Review of Onegin and Zhou Ping in Thunderstorm

This paper focuses on the study of the characters in the plays of Eugene Onegin and Thunderstorm, Using the literature approach, the author sorts out the research results on the image of Onegin and Zhou Ping. By means of a literature review, the author summarizes the research perspectives, viewpoints and conclusions of relevant scholars from the three aspects of literature, drama and history. Nowadays domestic and foreign research in this field on the analysis of the common characteristics of a character in the image of "Superfluous people", but the exploration of the causes of the "Superfluous" character is not in place. In particular, the personality characteristics of "Superfluous people" are more neglected. Finally, the author believes that should start from the specific plot, classify the similarities and differences in the time background of the image of "Superfluous people" at home and abroad, and more attention should be paid to their character and differentiated expression.

Perception of Prosodic Division Depth in Spoken Poetry (A.S. Pushkin’s “Eugene Onegin”)

Pauses are one of the most universal markers of prosodic division in different languages. Their duration depends on various factors such as genre, syntax, and punctuation. In poetry, pauses not only help reveal the structure of the poem and emphasize its division into lines, but also reflect the varying degree of internal division within a line. This study presents the results of a perceptual experiment involving 11 participants who evaluated the presence and depth of prosodic breaks in spoken Russian poetry using a 5-point scale, which has been proven effective in previous experiments conducted on prose texts in Russian and Dutch. The experiment showed that native speakers successfully identify pauses in spoken poetry and consistently determine their depth. When evaluating the depth of division within a line, participants tended to use the lowest possible score. Additionally, a correlation was found between the duration of physical pauses in the speaker’s speech and the level of evaluation of prosodic breaks by the participants. These findings fill a gap in understanding the depth of prosodic division in poetry and confirm previously identified patterns of pause distribution in Russian poetry.

“The New Onegin” from France with Love

The article presents to the Russian reader a remake of Pushkin’s novel «Eugene Onegin» written by a young French writer Clementine Beauvais and published in Russian under the title «Is it really the same Tatiana?» in 2019. The first part of the novel mostly follows the plot of the original: Tatyana falls in love with Onegin and writes him a letter, to which she receives a refusal. But here are important differences too. The main characters are young French people: when they met, she was less than 15, and Onegin was 17 years old. The next meeting happens accidentally in the Paris metro 10 years later, and the situation changes dramatically. This time the feelings of the characters are mutual, but there are new obstacles on the way to happiness. As in Pushkin’s novel, there is a third important character there, a narrator, or, to be exact, a female narrator who loves to appeal to the reader commenting on the behavior of her characters, and introducing lyrical digressions on landscapes. She is more sympathetic to the main character then to Tatiana, because he reinterpreted his past critically and this time he is ready for anything to make his union with Tatiana come true. But an obstacle comes from Tatyana. The ending of the novel is open. The author invites readers to choose their own version, as well as to compare many other plot parallels with Pushkin’s original. C. Beauvais successfully experiments with interactive forms: e-mails, emoticons, etc. As a result, C. Beauvais’s novel has got a great diversity of rhythmic and strophic lines, which especially attracts a young reader

AUTHOR, NARRATOR, HERO IN M.YU. LERMONTOV’S NOVEL A HERO OF OUR TIME: NARRATIVE POETICS

The article is devoted to the analysis of the correlation between the figures of the real author and the fictional author-narrator in the novel by M.Yu. Lermontov A Hero of Our Time. It is shown that as a result of the inclusion in the text of the second edition of the novel (1841) of the author’s preface, containing Lermontov’s polemic with the reviewers of the first edition, there was an interference of the “I” of the real creator of the work and the “I” of the fictional author, to whom the stories Bela, Princess Mary and the preface to the diary of the protagonist are attributed. It is significant that some of the biographical features of Lermontov and the fictional author coincide, and the two prefaces overlap. Thanks to all this, the effect of a non-trivial literary game arose, based on the illusion of the authenticity of the events set forth in the novel: the real author seems to get acquainted with Pechorin. This game is fundamentally different from the Sternian play and violation of the boundaries of the real and the fictional in A.S. Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, whose main characters are represented both by real persons and creations of the author’s imagination. Unlike Pushkin and many contemporary Russian prose writers, Lermontov does not expose, but, on the contrary, hides the fictional, purely literary nature of his narrative. At the same time, the creator of A Hero of Our Time does not resort to literary hoax, does not directly try to pass off either the first-level narrator or Pechorin as the real authors of the novel or part of it. The story of A. von Chamisso The Extraordinary Story of Peter Schlemil could serve as a model for such a game, in which the central character, who tells a fantastic story of the events of his life, is an acquaintance of the author and his real-life friends.

Intertextual Inclusions in Charles Maturin’s Novel “Melmoth the Wanderer”

The article examines Charles Robert Maturin’s novel “Melmoth the Wanderer”. The choice of this work is dictated by its undeniable significance for literature as a whole, on the one hand, and the insufficient study of the novel’s text from a textual, particularly intertextual perspective, on the other. In this study, intertextual relationships are divided by type and functional characteristics into intertextual and intercontextual. The first type of relationship serves a referential function, while the second serves a meaning-forming function. Both have common functional units: allusions, quotes, etc. With such a division in mind, an attempt is made to recognize and analyze prospective and retrospective intertextual inclusions encountered in Charles Maturin's novel. The study of these inclusions is based on the fact that the contexts of the novel are layered on top of contexts from well-known and significant works of European literature, including Russian literature: “The Monk” by M. Lewis, “Faust” by J. Goethe, “Eugene Onegin” by A. S. Pushkin, and others. This research approach allows us to speak of the polyinterpretability of “Melmoth the Wanderer” and to view it through the prism of works created both before and after the novel’s publication.