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Summary
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Eugene Onegin, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Youth, Regrets, and the Passage of Time
Love, Courtship, and Marriage
Poetry vs. Reality
Russian Identity
Summary
Analysis
The narrator introduces Eugene Onegin, a man who was born by the Neva River (in St. Petersburg, Russia) and who served in the military. His father threw extravagant parties and was often in debt. Eugene himself now has a reputation for being educated and knowing some Latin, but he can sometimes be “pedantic.” He is bad at poetry and sometimes prefers reading prose books like those by Adam Smith.
The beginning of the novel introduces the main character of Eugene Onegin as a member of the upper class in Russia, but also as someone who isn’t particularly exceptional. Adam Smith, whom Eugene likes to read, was a Scottish writer who wrote about economics—a mundane, emotionally detached subject that is arguably the opposite of poetry. This paints a picture of Eugene as someone who is educated but perhaps a bit emotionally withdrawn.
Themes
Perhaps Eugene’s biggest interest is love. He thinks a lot about what to say and what to write to a potential beloved, and he often shows ingenuity, winning over women and defeating his rivals for their affection.
Eugene’s interest in love contrasts with his more mundane and “pedantic” interests when it comes to education and reading. They reveal unexpected depth to his character, showing how he is not as passionless as he might first seem.
Themes
Some mornings, Eugene wakes up and has invitations to three different parties. He’ll go out and spend the day making merry, eating lots of food and drinking lots of alcohol, then maybe going to see a new ballet. He finds the theater a particularly magical place, often arriving late and using the evening to search for women he hasn’t met yet. Still, one evening when he’s at the ballet, he gets tired of it all and decides to leave early.
This passage establishes Eugene as what might be called a dandy or even a libertine—that is, he is highly invested in fashion and style, and he enjoys sensual pleasures. The passage shows how life for the upper class in Russia in the early 18th century was full of leisure and pleasure, but it also shows how this constant leisure could become overwhelming and lead to a feeling of emptiness, which is what Eugene is beginning to experience.
Themes
Eugene likes collecting nice things from around the world, like fine china and perfumes. He dresses like a “fop,” taking three hours to examine himself in the mirror. He wears such fancy types of clothes that they all have foreign names, not Russian ones.
This passage emphasizes Eugene’s rejection of his Russian roots in favor of an identity grounded in Western culture. This reflects how Russia in general at this time was becoming increasingly open to European influence.
Themes
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After returning from the ballet, Eugene arrives back at his home’s gate. The narrator reflects on how he wasted much of his own youth chasing pleasure. He remembers his previous passions with women and how each seemed perfect at the time. He gets nostalgic for a while, then regrets it. Instead, he suggests that love is not worth all the praise and songs that it inspires.
This passage shows how, while the narrator isn’t an active participant in the events of Eugene’s life, he is nevertheless a character in his own right. The narrator’s nostalgia for a past love introduces youth as one of the novel’s main themes. Here, the narrator portrays youth as a period of one’s life characterized passionate, tumultuous feelings.
Themes
Turning back to Eugene, the narrator describes how Eugene comes home exhausted in the evening after a day of revelry. The things that used to give Eugene pleasure, like beautiful women and champagne bottles, now just bore him. He comes down with an affliction that the English call “spleen” and Russians call “Russian soul” and considers killing himself, but instead he just wanders through life in a daze.
The concepts of “spleen” and “Russian soul” both have multiple meanings, but here they seem to specifically to refer to a general sense of dissatisfaction with life. Eugene’s condition could also be seen as melancholy or ennui. This passage suggests that there are limits to how well earthly pleasures, like fancy parties and champagne, can sustain inner, spiritual happiness and fulfillment.
Themes
Late at night, Eugene locks himself in his den and tries to write, covering the emptiness in his soul by putting his own thoughts into other characters. Then he reads books by other writers and gets frustrated by how false or outdated everything is.
The novel explores how, while poetry and literature can help people better understand their emotions and the world in general, there are also limits to what a person can learn from a book. Eugene’s frustration at not being able to find truth in books is both a sign of the limits of books but also a sign of how Eugene’s dissatisfaction with life has made him cynical.
Themes
The narrator says that he actually first became friends with Eugene because both of them rejected worldly things in search of something more and were depressed. The narrator feels that anyone with the ability to feel is always trying to escape memories of the past. Still, the narrator found some solace in talking to Eugene, who despite being bitter was also frequently witty. They would drink together on quiet nights while the Neva sparkled.
By inserting himself into the story, the narrator blurs the lines between literature and reality. And by emphasizing the similarities between Eugene’s melancholy and the narrator’s own feelings, the narrator suggests that Eugene’s feelings of existential woe are universal to the human experience.
Themes
Eugene and the narrator talked about traveling abroad together, but fate drove the two of them apart after Eugene’s father died, leaving Eugene to deal with the many people who all want a share of the inheritance. Not long after, Eugene’s rich uncle gets gravely ill. Eugene goes to see his uncle but arrives too late—by the time he gets there, his uncle has died. While others come from around the area for a funeral feast, Eugene himself prefers to walk through the woods and by the stream near his uncle’s home, finding a temporary cure for the dissatisfaction he felt in St. Petersburg. But after two days, he wants to go back to the city.
The deaths of both Eugene’s father and uncle mark a transition point in Eugene’s life as he becomes the head of his family. In some ways this is a ”lucky” occurrence for Eugene, who suddenly and unexpectedly comes into a lot of money he didn’t have before. But the fact that this change ultimately does little to improve Eugene’s mood further highlights the inability of material comforts to bring about true, lasting happiness.
Themes
The narrator himself has a deep love of the countryside and its peaceful, poetic qualities—he disagrees with Eugene that it loses its splendor after a while. The narrator thinks it’s important to establish the differences between himself and Eugene—he wants it to be clear that he isn’t like Lord Byron, doing thinly veiled self-portrait. The narrator admits that many previous poets have written about love, but he feels compelled to do so himself, having recently gone through a heartbreak. The narrator reflects on his progress so far, and he’s proud of having completed a chapter about his hero. He expects critics will have things to say, but he personally wouldn’t change a word.
Lord Byron was an English poet and one of the leading figures of the Romantic literary movement, which Pushkin himself is sometimes considered a part of. Byron was famous for writing poems about men who were passionate and talented but also self-destructive. Although Byron clearly seems to have influenced Pushkin’s work, this passage also points to the ways Eugene differs from a Byronic hero. For instance, poem, he lacks the exaggerated romantic qualities of the typical Byronic hero.
Themes
