Eugene Onegin

by

Alexander Pushkin

The Narrator Character Analysis

The narrator who tells Eugene’s story is acquainted with Eugene, Lensky, and some of the other major figures of Eugene Onegin. He is a writer who is a little older than most of the characters, and he bears many similarities to the real-life author of the novel, Alexander Pushkin. The narrator has a lot of sympathy for the melancholy and world weariness that Eugene experiences, but he is quick to point out his differences from Eugene as well—notably, that the narrator loves the countryside while Eugene soon bores of it. The narrator is well-educated and often takes a satirical or sarcastic tone, sometimes going on tangents that are thematically relevant but not connected to the plot. The narrator helps to set the tone of the novel, creating a sympathetic and tragic portrait of the main characters while also showing these characters limitations and at times even portraying them as humorous.

The Narrator Quotes in Eugene Onegin

The Eugene Onegin quotes below are all either spoken by The Narrator or refer to The Narrator. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Youth, Regrets, and the Passage of Time Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

‘My uncle, man of firm convictions…
By falling gravely ill, he’s won
A due respect for his afflictions—
The only clever thing he’s done.
May his example profit others;
But God, what deadly boredom, brothers,
To tend a sick man night and day,
Not daring once to steal away!
And, oh, how base to pamper grossly
And entertain the nearly dead,
To fluff the pillows for his head,
And pass him medicines morosely—
While thinking under every sigh:
The devil take you, Uncle. Die!’

Related Characters: Eugene Onegin (speaker), The Narrator
Page Number: 1
Explanation and Analysis:

We still, alas, cannot forestall it—
This dreadful ailment’s heavy toll;
The spleen is what the English call it,
We call it simply Russian soul.
‘Twas this our hero had contracted;
And though, thank God, he never acted
To put a bullet through his head,
His former love of life was dead.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), Eugene Onegin
Page Number: 22
Explanation and Analysis:

And then he saw that country byways—
With no great palaces, no streets,
No cards, no balls, no poets’ feats—
Were just as dull as city highways;
And spleen, he saw, would dog his life,
Like shadow or a faithful wife.
But I was born for peaceful roaming,
For country calm and lack of strife;
My lyre sings! And in the gloaming
My fertile fancies spring to life.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), Eugene Onegin
Page Number: 28
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2 Quotes

Another squire chose this season
To reappear at his estate
And gave the neighbours equal reason
For scrutiny no less irate.
Vladimir Lensky, just returning
From Göttingen with soulful yearning,
Was in his prime—a handsome youth
And poet filled with Kantian truth.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), Eugene Onegin, Vladimir Lensky
Page Number: 37
Explanation and Analysis:

From early youth she read romances,
And novels set her heart aglow;
She loved the fictions and the fancies
Of Richardson and of Rousseau.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), Tatyana Larin, Olga Larin
Related Symbols: Books
Page Number: 49
Explanation and Analysis:

Her husband at the time was still
Her fiancé—against her will!
For she, in spite of family feeling,
Had someone else for whom she pined—
A man whose heart and soul and mind
She found a great deal more appealing;
This Grandison was fashion’s pet,
A gambler and a guards cadet.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), Tatyana Larin, Olga Larin, Dame Larin, Dmitry Larin
Related Symbols: Books
Page Number: 49
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

‘Your Olga’s look is cold and dead,
As in some dull, Van Dyck madonna;
So round and fair of face is she,
She’s like that stupid moon you see,
Up in that stupid sky you honour.’
Vladimir gave a curt reply
And let the conversation die.

Related Characters: Eugene Onegin (speaker), The Narrator (speaker), Vladimir Lensky, Olga Larin
Related Symbols: The Moon
Page Number: 59
Explanation and Analysis:

Time was, with grave and measured diction,
A fervent author used to show
The hero in his work of fiction
Endowed with bright perfection’s glow.
He’d furnish his beloved child—
Forever hounded and reviled—
With tender soul and manly grace,
Intelligence and handsome face.
And nursing noble passion’s rages,
The ever dauntless hero stood
Prepared to die for love of good;
And in the novel’s final pages,
Deceitful vice was made to pay
And honest virtue won the day.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), Eugene Onegin, Tatyana Larin
Related Symbols: Books
Page Number: 62
Explanation and Analysis:

I’m writing you this declaration—
What more can I in candour say?
It may be now your inclination
To scorn me and to turn away;
But if my hapless situation
Evokes some pity for my woe,
You won’t abandon me, I know.

Related Characters: Tatyana Larin (speaker), Eugene Onegin, The Narrator
Related Symbols: Books
Page Number: 73
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4 Quotes

How oft have tearful poets chances
To read their works before the glances
Of those they love? Good sense declares
That no reward on earth compares.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), Eugene Onegin, Vladimir Lensky, Tatyana Larin, Olga Larin
Related Symbols: Books
Page Number: 98
Explanation and Analysis:

Oh, blest is he who lives believing,
Who takes cold intellect for naught,
Who rests within the heart’s sweet places
As does a drunk in sleep’s embraces,
Or as, more tenderly I’d say,
A butterfly in blooms of May;
But wretched he who’s too far-sighted,
Whose head is never fancy-stirred,
Who hates all gestures, each warm word,
As sentiments to be derided,
Whose heart… experience has cooled
And barred from being loved … or fooled!

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), Eugene Onegin, Vladimir Lensky, Tatyana Larin, Olga Larin
Page Number: 106
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 Quotes

Tatyana (with a Russian duty
That held her heart, she knew not why)
Profoundly loved, in its cold beauty,
The Russian winter passing by:
Crisp days when sunlit hoarfrost glimmers,
The sleighs, and rosy snow that shimmers
In sunset’s glow, the murky light
That wraps about the Yuletide night.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), Eugene Onegin, Tatyana Larin
Page Number: 110
Explanation and Analysis:

Tatyana, in her low-cut gown,
Steps out of doors and trains a mirror
Upon the moon to bring it nearer;
But all that shows in her dark glass
Is just the trembling moon, alas….

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), Eugene Onegin, Tatyana Larin
Related Symbols: The Moon
Page Number: 113
Explanation and Analysis:

But no, she can’t. What explanation? …
Well, she’s just promised his good friend
The next dance too. In God’s creation!
What’s this he hears? Could she intend? …
Can this be real? Scarce more than swaddler—
And turned coquette! A fickle toddler!
Already has she mastered guile,
Already learned to cheat and smile!
The blow has left poor Lensky shattered;
And cursing woman’s crooked course,
He leaves abruptly, calls for horse,
And gallops off. Now nothing mattered—
A brace of pistols and a shot
Shall instantly decide his lot.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), Eugene Onegin, Vladimir Lensky, Tatyana Larin, Olga Larin
Page Number: 129
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6 Quotes

Our Lensky’s seat, there lived and thrived
In philosophical seclusion
(And does so still, have no illusion)
Zaretsky—once a rowdy clown,
Chief gambler and arch rake in town,
The tavern tribune and a liar—
But now a kind and simple soul
Who plays an unwed father’s role,
A faithful friend, a peaceful squire,
And man of honour, nothing less:
Thus does our age its sins redress!

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), Eugene Onegin, Vladimir Lensky, Zaretsky
Page Number: 134
Explanation and Analysis:

‘Approach at will!’ Advancing coldly,
With quiet, firm, and measured tread,
Not aiming yet, the foes took boldly
The first four steps that lay ahead—
Four fateful steps. The space decreasing,
Onegin then, while still not ceasing
His slow advance, was first to raise
His pistol with a level gaze.
Five paces more, while Lensky waited
To close one eye and, only then,
To take his aim…. And that was when
Onegin fired! The hour fated
Has struck at last: the poet stops
And silently his pistol drops.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), Zaretsky (speaker), Eugene Onegin, Vladimir Lensky
Page Number: 146
Explanation and Analysis:

I’ve learned the voice of new desires
And come to know a new regret;
The first within me light no fires,
And I lament old sorrows yet.
O dreams! Where has your sweetness vanished?
And where has youth (glib rhyme) been banished?
Can it be true, its bloom has passed,
Has withered, withered now at last?
Can it be true, my heyday’s ended—
All elegiac play aside—
That now indeed my spring has died
(As I in jest so oft pretended)?
And is there no return of youth?
Shall I be thirty soon, in truth?

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), Eugene Onegin, Vladimir Lensky
Page Number: 153
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

And so, in slow but growing fashion,
my Tanya starts to understand,
More clearly now—thank God—her passion
And him for whom, by fate’s command,
She’d been condemned to feel desire:
That dangerous and sad pariah,
That work of heaven or of hell,
That angel… and proud fiend as well.
What was he then? An imitation?
An empty phantom or a joke,
A Muscovite in Harold’s cloak,
Compendium of affectation,
A lexicon of words in vogue …
Mere parody and just a rogue?

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), Eugene Onegin, Tatyana Larin
Related Symbols: Books
Page Number: 167
Explanation and Analysis:

But roads are bad now in our nation;
Neglected bridges rot and fall;
Bedbugs and fleas at every station
Won’t let the traveller sleep at all.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), Tatyana Larin, Dame Larin
Page Number: 172
Explanation and Analysis:

The night has countless stars to light her,
And Moscow countless beauties too;
And yet the regal moon shines brighter
Than all her friends in heaven’s blue;
And she, whose beauty I admire—
But dare not bother with my lyre—
Just like the moon upon her throne,
Mid wives and maidens shines alone.
With what celestial pride she grazes
The earth she walks, in splendour dressed!
What languor fills her lovely breast!
How sensuous her wondrous gazes! …
But there, enough; have done at last:
You’ve paid your due to follies past.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), Eugene Onegin, Vladimir Lensky, Tatyana Larin
Related Symbols: The Moon
Page Number: 172
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

When one becomes the butt of rumour,
It’s hard to bear (as you well know)
When men of reason and good humour
Perceive you as a freak on show,
Or as a sad and raving creature,
A monster of Satanic feature,
Or even Demon of my pen!
Eugene (to speak of him again),
Who’d killed his friend for satisfaction,
Who in an aimless, idle fix
Had reached the age of twenty-six,
Annoyed with leisure and inaction,
Without position, work, or wife—
Could find no purpose for his life.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), Eugene Onegin, Vladimir Lensky
Page Number: 190
Explanation and Analysis:

‘And happiness was ours … so nearly!
It came so close! … But now my fate
Has been decreed. I may have merely
Been foolish when I failed to wait;
But mother with her lamentation
Implored me, and in resignation
(All futures seemed alike in woe)
I married…. Now I beg you, go!
I’ve faith in you and do not tremble;
I know that in your heart reside
Both honour and a manly pride.
I love you (why should I dissemble?);
But I am now another’s wife,
And I’ll be faithful all my life.’

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), Eugene Onegin, Tatyana Larin, The General
Page Number: 212
Explanation and Analysis:

But those to whom, as friends and brothers,
My first few stanzas I once read—
‘Some are no more, and distant… others.’
As Sadi long before us said.
Without them my Onegin’s fashioned.
And she from whom I drew, impassioned,
My fair Tatyana’s noblest trait…
Oh, much, too much you’ve stolen, Fate!
But blest is he who rightly gauges
The time to quit the feast and fly,
Who never drained life’s chalice dry,
Nor read its novel’s final pages;
But all at once for good withdrew—
As I from my Onegin do.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), Eugene Onegin, Tatyana Larin
Page Number: 212
Explanation and Analysis:
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The Narrator Quotes in Eugene Onegin

The Eugene Onegin quotes below are all either spoken by The Narrator or refer to The Narrator. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Youth, Regrets, and the Passage of Time Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

‘My uncle, man of firm convictions…
By falling gravely ill, he’s won
A due respect for his afflictions—
The only clever thing he’s done.
May his example profit others;
But God, what deadly boredom, brothers,
To tend a sick man night and day,
Not daring once to steal away!
And, oh, how base to pamper grossly
And entertain the nearly dead,
To fluff the pillows for his head,
And pass him medicines morosely—
While thinking under every sigh:
The devil take you, Uncle. Die!’

Related Characters: Eugene Onegin (speaker), The Narrator
Page Number: 1
Explanation and Analysis:

We still, alas, cannot forestall it—
This dreadful ailment’s heavy toll;
The spleen is what the English call it,
We call it simply Russian soul.
‘Twas this our hero had contracted;
And though, thank God, he never acted
To put a bullet through his head,
His former love of life was dead.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), Eugene Onegin
Page Number: 22
Explanation and Analysis:

And then he saw that country byways—
With no great palaces, no streets,
No cards, no balls, no poets’ feats—
Were just as dull as city highways;
And spleen, he saw, would dog his life,
Like shadow or a faithful wife.
But I was born for peaceful roaming,
For country calm and lack of strife;
My lyre sings! And in the gloaming
My fertile fancies spring to life.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), Eugene Onegin
Page Number: 28
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2 Quotes

Another squire chose this season
To reappear at his estate
And gave the neighbours equal reason
For scrutiny no less irate.
Vladimir Lensky, just returning
From Göttingen with soulful yearning,
Was in his prime—a handsome youth
And poet filled with Kantian truth.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), Eugene Onegin, Vladimir Lensky
Page Number: 37
Explanation and Analysis:

From early youth she read romances,
And novels set her heart aglow;
She loved the fictions and the fancies
Of Richardson and of Rousseau.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), Tatyana Larin, Olga Larin
Related Symbols: Books
Page Number: 49
Explanation and Analysis:

Her husband at the time was still
Her fiancé—against her will!
For she, in spite of family feeling,
Had someone else for whom she pined—
A man whose heart and soul and mind
She found a great deal more appealing;
This Grandison was fashion’s pet,
A gambler and a guards cadet.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), Tatyana Larin, Olga Larin, Dame Larin, Dmitry Larin
Related Symbols: Books
Page Number: 49
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

‘Your Olga’s look is cold and dead,
As in some dull, Van Dyck madonna;
So round and fair of face is she,
She’s like that stupid moon you see,
Up in that stupid sky you honour.’
Vladimir gave a curt reply
And let the conversation die.

Related Characters: Eugene Onegin (speaker), The Narrator (speaker), Vladimir Lensky, Olga Larin
Related Symbols: The Moon
Page Number: 59
Explanation and Analysis:

Time was, with grave and measured diction,
A fervent author used to show
The hero in his work of fiction
Endowed with bright perfection’s glow.
He’d furnish his beloved child—
Forever hounded and reviled—
With tender soul and manly grace,
Intelligence and handsome face.
And nursing noble passion’s rages,
The ever dauntless hero stood
Prepared to die for love of good;
And in the novel’s final pages,
Deceitful vice was made to pay
And honest virtue won the day.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), Eugene Onegin, Tatyana Larin
Related Symbols: Books
Page Number: 62
Explanation and Analysis:

I’m writing you this declaration—
What more can I in candour say?
It may be now your inclination
To scorn me and to turn away;
But if my hapless situation
Evokes some pity for my woe,
You won’t abandon me, I know.

Related Characters: Tatyana Larin (speaker), Eugene Onegin, The Narrator
Related Symbols: Books
Page Number: 73
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4 Quotes

How oft have tearful poets chances
To read their works before the glances
Of those they love? Good sense declares
That no reward on earth compares.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), Eugene Onegin, Vladimir Lensky, Tatyana Larin, Olga Larin
Related Symbols: Books
Page Number: 98
Explanation and Analysis:

Oh, blest is he who lives believing,
Who takes cold intellect for naught,
Who rests within the heart’s sweet places
As does a drunk in sleep’s embraces,
Or as, more tenderly I’d say,
A butterfly in blooms of May;
But wretched he who’s too far-sighted,
Whose head is never fancy-stirred,
Who hates all gestures, each warm word,
As sentiments to be derided,
Whose heart… experience has cooled
And barred from being loved … or fooled!

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), Eugene Onegin, Vladimir Lensky, Tatyana Larin, Olga Larin
Page Number: 106
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 Quotes

Tatyana (with a Russian duty
That held her heart, she knew not why)
Profoundly loved, in its cold beauty,
The Russian winter passing by:
Crisp days when sunlit hoarfrost glimmers,
The sleighs, and rosy snow that shimmers
In sunset’s glow, the murky light
That wraps about the Yuletide night.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), Eugene Onegin, Tatyana Larin
Page Number: 110
Explanation and Analysis:

Tatyana, in her low-cut gown,
Steps out of doors and trains a mirror
Upon the moon to bring it nearer;
But all that shows in her dark glass
Is just the trembling moon, alas….

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), Eugene Onegin, Tatyana Larin
Related Symbols: The Moon
Page Number: 113
Explanation and Analysis:

But no, she can’t. What explanation? …
Well, she’s just promised his good friend
The next dance too. In God’s creation!
What’s this he hears? Could she intend? …
Can this be real? Scarce more than swaddler—
And turned coquette! A fickle toddler!
Already has she mastered guile,
Already learned to cheat and smile!
The blow has left poor Lensky shattered;
And cursing woman’s crooked course,
He leaves abruptly, calls for horse,
And gallops off. Now nothing mattered—
A brace of pistols and a shot
Shall instantly decide his lot.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), Eugene Onegin, Vladimir Lensky, Tatyana Larin, Olga Larin
Page Number: 129
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6 Quotes

Our Lensky’s seat, there lived and thrived
In philosophical seclusion
(And does so still, have no illusion)
Zaretsky—once a rowdy clown,
Chief gambler and arch rake in town,
The tavern tribune and a liar—
But now a kind and simple soul
Who plays an unwed father’s role,
A faithful friend, a peaceful squire,
And man of honour, nothing less:
Thus does our age its sins redress!

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), Eugene Onegin, Vladimir Lensky, Zaretsky
Page Number: 134
Explanation and Analysis:

‘Approach at will!’ Advancing coldly,
With quiet, firm, and measured tread,
Not aiming yet, the foes took boldly
The first four steps that lay ahead—
Four fateful steps. The space decreasing,
Onegin then, while still not ceasing
His slow advance, was first to raise
His pistol with a level gaze.
Five paces more, while Lensky waited
To close one eye and, only then,
To take his aim…. And that was when
Onegin fired! The hour fated
Has struck at last: the poet stops
And silently his pistol drops.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), Zaretsky (speaker), Eugene Onegin, Vladimir Lensky
Page Number: 146
Explanation and Analysis:

I’ve learned the voice of new desires
And come to know a new regret;
The first within me light no fires,
And I lament old sorrows yet.
O dreams! Where has your sweetness vanished?
And where has youth (glib rhyme) been banished?
Can it be true, its bloom has passed,
Has withered, withered now at last?
Can it be true, my heyday’s ended—
All elegiac play aside—
That now indeed my spring has died
(As I in jest so oft pretended)?
And is there no return of youth?
Shall I be thirty soon, in truth?

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), Eugene Onegin, Vladimir Lensky
Page Number: 153
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

And so, in slow but growing fashion,
my Tanya starts to understand,
More clearly now—thank God—her passion
And him for whom, by fate’s command,
She’d been condemned to feel desire:
That dangerous and sad pariah,
That work of heaven or of hell,
That angel… and proud fiend as well.
What was he then? An imitation?
An empty phantom or a joke,
A Muscovite in Harold’s cloak,
Compendium of affectation,
A lexicon of words in vogue …
Mere parody and just a rogue?

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), Eugene Onegin, Tatyana Larin
Related Symbols: Books
Page Number: 167
Explanation and Analysis:

But roads are bad now in our nation;
Neglected bridges rot and fall;
Bedbugs and fleas at every station
Won’t let the traveller sleep at all.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), Tatyana Larin, Dame Larin
Page Number: 172
Explanation and Analysis:

The night has countless stars to light her,
And Moscow countless beauties too;
And yet the regal moon shines brighter
Than all her friends in heaven’s blue;
And she, whose beauty I admire—
But dare not bother with my lyre—
Just like the moon upon her throne,
Mid wives and maidens shines alone.
With what celestial pride she grazes
The earth she walks, in splendour dressed!
What languor fills her lovely breast!
How sensuous her wondrous gazes! …
But there, enough; have done at last:
You’ve paid your due to follies past.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), Eugene Onegin, Vladimir Lensky, Tatyana Larin
Related Symbols: The Moon
Page Number: 172
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

When one becomes the butt of rumour,
It’s hard to bear (as you well know)
When men of reason and good humour
Perceive you as a freak on show,
Or as a sad and raving creature,
A monster of Satanic feature,
Or even Demon of my pen!
Eugene (to speak of him again),
Who’d killed his friend for satisfaction,
Who in an aimless, idle fix
Had reached the age of twenty-six,
Annoyed with leisure and inaction,
Without position, work, or wife—
Could find no purpose for his life.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), Eugene Onegin, Vladimir Lensky
Page Number: 190
Explanation and Analysis:

‘And happiness was ours … so nearly!
It came so close! … But now my fate
Has been decreed. I may have merely
Been foolish when I failed to wait;
But mother with her lamentation
Implored me, and in resignation
(All futures seemed alike in woe)
I married…. Now I beg you, go!
I’ve faith in you and do not tremble;
I know that in your heart reside
Both honour and a manly pride.
I love you (why should I dissemble?);
But I am now another’s wife,
And I’ll be faithful all my life.’

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), Eugene Onegin, Tatyana Larin, The General
Page Number: 212
Explanation and Analysis:

But those to whom, as friends and brothers,
My first few stanzas I once read—
‘Some are no more, and distant… others.’
As Sadi long before us said.
Without them my Onegin’s fashioned.
And she from whom I drew, impassioned,
My fair Tatyana’s noblest trait…
Oh, much, too much you’ve stolen, Fate!
But blest is he who rightly gauges
The time to quit the feast and fly,
Who never drained life’s chalice dry,
Nor read its novel’s final pages;
But all at once for good withdrew—
As I from my Onegin do.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), Eugene Onegin, Tatyana Larin
Page Number: 212
Explanation and Analysis: