Eugene Onegin

by

Alexander Pushkin

Youth, Regrets, and the Passage of Time Theme Analysis

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Youth, Regrets, and the Passage of Time Theme Icon
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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 Theme Icon

Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin is a novel about youthful passions that have consequences and continue to haunt the characters even as months and years pass. At the heart of it is a duel between Lensky and Eugene, which arises from a conflict that began as a harmless prank. Before the duel, Eugene is a jaded man in his 20s who has stopped seeing pleasure in the world. Lensky, meanwhile, is an enthusiastic teenager who enjoys telling Eugene about his romantic exploits, which remind Eugene of his own happier youth. But this friendship all falls apart one evening when Eugene dances with Olga, Lensky’s fiancée, who is also full of youthful passion and briefly becomes infatuated with Eugene. Lensky acts rashly in the passion of youth and takes Eugene’s dancing with Olga as a serious offense, challenging Eugene to a duel. Meanwhile, Eugene is reluctant to duel but goes along with it anyway, in part because of how resigned to his fate the past few years have made him. It’s only after Eugene shoots and kills Lensky that he realizes their conflict didn’t have to end that way. While Lensky’s youthful enthusiasm once reminded Eugene of how life could be happier, in death, Lensky’s youth just reminds Eugene of all the things Lensky never got to do in life.

In one sense, the passing of time sweeps away Lensky’s memory from the earth, reducing him to humble gravestone. After his death, his former fiancée, Olga, soon marries to a lancer who serves with the military. But in another sense, Lensky remains alive in the regrets that Eugene carries with him wherever he goes. The narrator, who is himself a minor character in the story, sometimes goes off on tangents in which he reflects on his own youth with regret, as when he laments a failed romance. The narrator’s comments on Eugene and Lensky’s story suggest that while youth can be an exhausting and tumultuous time because of the intensity of passions a person experiences, maturity comes with its own challenges, including regrets over all the mistakes of youth. Eugene Onegin is a novel that celebrates the vitality of youth, but it also shows how the passions of youth can lead to mistakes that haunt people as they age.

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Youth, Regrets, and the Passage of Time ThemeTracker

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Youth, Regrets, and the Passage of Time Quotes in Eugene Onegin

Below you will find the important quotes in Eugene Onegin related to the theme of Youth, Regrets, and the Passage of Time.
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:

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

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

‘You wrote to me. Do not deny it.
I’ve read your words and they evoke
My deep respect for your emotion,
Your trusting soul… and sweet devotion.
Your candour has a great appeal
And stirs in me, I won’t conceal,
Long dormant feelings, scarce remembered.
But I’ve no wish to praise you now;
Let me repay you with a vow
As artless as the one you tendered;
Hear my confession too, I plead,
And judge me both by word and deed.’

Related Characters: Eugene Onegin (speaker), Tatyana Larin
Page Number: 87
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, 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:

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: