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Chapter 7
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 remembers reading Latin classics as a student. Back then, romance was the most important thing to him, and he saw passion as his own personal version of a Muse. Eventually, the narrator began to tire of the city and feel drawn to the countryside. Now, however, the narrator’s poetic Muse has led his attention back to the city, to a party in St. Petersburg where the narrator is surprised to see Eugene, a couple years after he left the countryside. The narrator wonders whether Eugene has changed at all in the time that’s passed since Lensky’s death or if he’s the same person.
For the final chapter, the narrative returns to St. Petersburg, where the story began. The narrator’s reflections about Latin classics are relevant because, as a long story told in poetic verse, Eugene Onegin takes inspiration from Greek and Latin classics like The Iliad, The Odyssey, and The Aeneid. In some ways, the narrator’s references to these classics are humorous, because the narrator’s own stories about his past romances and about Eugene’s life are relatively mundane compared to the epic stories of past poems.
Themes
The narrator thinks it isn’t right to scorn Eugene, who isn’t one of the lucky ones who followed a normal life path. Now 26 years old, Eugene can see no purpose in life. He has a vague ambition to do something with his life but isn’t sure what.
Eugene has learned little from his time in the country and his killing of Lensky, once again back in St. Petersburg and feeling dissatisfied with life. Nevertheless, the narrator offers him sympathy, showing how the novel in general seeks to understand at times sympathize with its characters, even as they make bad, self-destructive choices.
Themes
At the party Eugene attends, a general arrives with a woman who isn’t a traditional beauty but has something radiant about her. Eugene suddenly recognizes her as Tatyana and wonders how that could be possible. Eugene starts a conversation with the general and finds that the woman who arrived with him is indeed Tatyana, who is now his wife.
While Eugene is still his same old self after all the time that has passed, Tatyana has managed to transform herself into a successful member of mainstream urban society by marrying a general. There is a sadness to Tatyana’s transformation, which represents a symbolic death of her girlhood passions and ideals.
Themes
Tatyana is shocked to see Eugene at the party but tries not to show it. When he goes to greet her, he sees little of the Tatyana he used to know in the current lady she’s become. All this time, Eugene has kept the letter Tatyana sent him. He goes back home in a daze and the next morning finds an invitation from the general waiting for him.
Although Tatyana herself has changed, the letter that she once sent Eugene allows him to still preserve a part of her past self. Tatyana’s shock at seeing Eugene shows that she might not be as confident as she seems to Eugene. But, having learned her lesson years before, Tatyana now represses her feelings, not wanting to risk the pain that can come with emotional honesty.
Themes
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Eugene goes over to the general’s house, feeling nervous but not sure precisely why. When he arrives, Tatyana is there alone, just watching him. The general finally enters the room, however, and as more guests arrive, things become more sociable. Tatyana is a gracious host. The whole evening, Tatyana is all that Eugene can pay attention to, and he’s impressed at how she’s adapted to her new position.
As a girl, Tatyana used to avoid social gatherings and stay inside to read. The fact that Tatyana is now a gracious hostess capable of intimidating even Eugene with her social skills reflects how much she has changed since her marriage. When Eugene rejected Tatyana, he talked down to her, but now he himself feels beneath her.
Themes
Eugene finds himself in love with Tatyana, in a way he hasn’t felt since he was a boy. In the days after the party, he finds excuses to spend time near her. But nothing he does attracts her attention. Eugene begins to get sickly, and people urge him to see a doctor. He refuses and instead tries to cure himself by writing a letter to Tatyana. In the letter, Eugene writes that he knows Tatyana won’t want to hear this, but he says he’s always loved her and just didn’t want to accept it at first. Now all he does is think of her. He ends the letter by saying he knows it’s too late, but he’ll place himself in her power.
Eugene’s sudden infatuation with Tatyana mirrors her own infatuation with him, right down to the fact that he decides to write a letter to express his feelings. What makes his situation tragic is that he only developed these feelings for Tatyana after it was too late and she was already married. In many ways, this reflects Eugene’s approach to life in general—always unhappy with what he has and searching for things he either can’t find or can never have.
Themes
Eugene gets no answer, so he writes Tatyana another letter. Again, she doesn’t answer. Later, he sees her at a party, and even her look seems to reject him. He leaves the party feeling even more hopeless than before. He spends the next few days reading writers from around the world to try to figure out what to do next. Against his will, he begins thinking again of the day Lensky died.
Eugene’s multiple letters to Tatyana suggest that he is even more desperate and lovesick than Tatyana was back then—but that his efforts might be even more futile. Eugene’s reading of writers from around the world reflects how his current feelings are universal but also how books alone are not enough to provide him with a solution. Eugene’s thoughts of Lensky’s death, which he can’t escape, reflect how Eugene is haunted by regrets and suggest that perhaps his current desperation for Tatyana is part of an attempt to try to put his killing of Lensky behind him.
Themes
Although Eugene almost goes mad during this period of time, the narrator notes that he also became more like a poet than ever before. Winter ends, and by spring, Eugene begins to feel a little better. One day, he again decides to go see Tatyana. He finds Tatyana alone at her home, reading a letter and crying, looking like her old self for the first time in a while.
The narrator’s comment that Eugene was most like a poet when he was deepest in his madness is perhaps a humorous commentary that trying to understand human emotions as a poet does is a form of madness. One cannot, the narrator suggests, feel the full intensity of human emotion and remain a functional member of the human world. Paradoxically, when Eugene is at his most desperate, he is also close to understanding something about emotions like a poet does, perhaps because now Eugene acknowledges his problems rather than just being cynical and numb.
Themes
Tatyana looks up and sees Eugene. She tells him that just as he once made a speech to her, now she has to give a speech to him. She says that although he acted nobly earlier, he rejected her love, and she wonders why he’s still pursuing her now. She says that is she did anything to disgrace the general, it would be a major scandal.
Tatyana’s rejection speech to Eugene continues to mirror her earlier attempt to win his love and his rejection of her. Like Eugene, who portrayed himself as doing the honorable thing by sparing Tatyana from a bad marriage with him, Tatyana also tries to take the moral high ground. She shows how she is a faithful wife, even in difficult circumstances, further highlighting what Eugene lost by rejecting her.
Themes
Tatyana says she’d like to talk to Eugene as coldly as he did to her back after receiving her letter, but she won’t. Still, she says that he’s acting in a way that’s beneath him. She adds that she and Eugene were almost happy together, but now that’s impossible: Tatyana is married, and she intends to be faithful. Eugene leaves, feeling dejected, just as the general enters.
Tatyana’s speech to Eugene shows how he had may have had the potential for happiness with her at one point, but he wasted it. This reflects a general pattern of wasted potential in Eugene’s life. Eugene allowed himself to sink into cynicism before he even met Tatyana, and his killing of Lensky ended a potential friendship and wasted whatever potential Lensky had in his life.
Themes
The narrator says it’s time to leave Eugene for good. The narrator hopes that he and the reader can part on friendly terms. He says goodbye to the current book, which he worked long and hard on. The narrator says he admires people who know when it’s time to leave a feast, and he feels that this is what he has to do with Eugene Onegin.
On the one hand, the novel’s ending is bleak, with Eugene consumed by regret and Tatyana stuck in a cold, loveless marriage. Still, just as the narrator once hoped for a better future for Russia, here the narrator hopes that the sad story of Eugene and Tatyana may at least have some purpose in entertaining or instructing the audience.
Themes
