Eugene Onegin

I've been working through a translation of Eugene Onegin after seeing the Metropolitan Opera production of the Tchaikovsky opera from last fall live on demand. I was leery of reading a novel-in-verse, and I actually did cheat and read a prose translation by Roger Clarke before I attempted to get through a Russian-to-English translation of his verses.

I'm now very jealous of my Russian-literate friends, because I'm sure that as gorgeous as the language is translated into English, it's even more stunning in original Russian. It's very likely that being familiar with both the opera plot and having worked through a prose translation helped a great deal, but I found it much easier than I would have expected to read a novel-in-verse and still get the benefits of reading a novel narrative. That said, you still get Tatiana's gushy, passionate letter in verse form.

I write this to you - what more can be said? 


What more can I add to that one fact? 


For now I know it is in your power 


To punish me contemptuously for this act.


But you, keeping for my unhappy lot 


Even one drop of sympathy 


Will not entirely abandon me. 


At first I wished to remain silent;


Believe me, my shame, my agony, 


You never ever would have heard. 


As long as hope remained preserved



That rarely, even once a week,


I'd see you in our country house,

 To hear your voice, to hear you speak, 


To say a few words, and then, and then 


To think, and think, and think again,

All day, all night, until the next meeting.

I love Tatiana's letter-in-verse to Onegin because it really gets to the heart of why Eugene Onegin is one of my favorite classics. Maybe I watched too much Wishbone as a child, but for me, but for me, one of the great joys of reading and really latching onto a story is believing in/relating to the characters. Finding some hook to your own life. Tatiana reminds me so very much of a younger/high school version of myself, passionately scribbling away in the middle of the night, poring over books, and superimposing literary characteristics onto the people around me - all things that I did when I was younger.

For her character, this is very much a story of seeing the world through literature, falling in love, and having to disentangle her literary fantasies from real life. It's all so beautifully illustrated in the scene where she visits Onegin's library after he's left. While going through his books, she comes to the realization that the person she imagined him to be was really a superimposition of all the literary heroes she had read about.

I've been there before. I did not, however, write nearly as well as Tatiana (through Pushkin) did. Her letter is one of my favorite, and in my opinion, most beautiful parts of Pushkin's novel-in-verse.