Eugene Onegin: The Challenge of Love in an Age of Acedia

Everyone has heard of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, but readers of Russian literature in English translation may not be as familiar with Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837), who is commonly regarded as the “Father of Russian Literature.” In a speech delivered at the 1880 celebration of the unveiling of Pushkin’s statue, Dostoevsky reflected on Pushkin’s legacy: “One may positively say that if Pushkin had not existed, there would not have been the gifted writers who came after him.” Dostoevsky considered Pushkin “a brilliant illumination of our dark way” and “a presage and a prophecy.”

One reason for Pushkin’s relative obscurity among non-Russian readers is that much of his poetry gets lost in translation. For that matter, even with a good translation, Pushkin’s poetry is challenging to appreciate. It is dense with allusions and not as accessible as fiction by later Russian greats like Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, or Chekhov. Nevertheless, on several occasions over the last dozen years I have read and taught Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, a novel in verse written between 1823 and 1831. My preferred translation, and the one I will quote from here, is by Charles Johnston, which effectively captures the special rhyme scheme Pushkin devised for this poem.

Eugene Onegin is especially relevant today because of its depiction of Eugene’s acedia, which many have observed is a characteristic condition of our own age. Though it is commonly called “sloth,” acedia may appear not so much as laziness but as a lack of love; literally, acedia means “without care.” I have found Dante’s Divine Comedy, and especially Anthony Esolen’s wise notes to his translation of Dante’s great poem, to be helpful in making these connections. Dante sees unrepentant sinners characterized by acedia in the fifth circle of hell, and later encounters redeemed sinners with acedia in the fourth ring of Purgatory. In Purgatory, the sin is clearly shown to be a deficiency of love: “Here they restore a love of good that fell / short of its duty . . . . / The soul’s love strays if it desires what’s wrong / or loves with too much strength, or not enough” (from Purgatory Canto 17). We know that Pushkin was familiar with Dante’s work; in her essay “La Beatrice Nuova: The Process of Tatiana’s Beatification in Evgenii Onegin,” Keele University scholar Marguerite Palmer shows how Pushkin patterns Eugene’s journey after Dante’s.

Drawing inspiration from Dostoevsky’s view that Pushkin offers a prophetic vision, and the connections with Dante’s Divine Comedy, we may explore how Onegin sheds light on our situation and challenges us to fight our malaise. For most of the poem, Eugene is mired in a soul-numbing ennui that has grave consequences. But in the end, Onegin shows us that through goodness and beauty, as embodied in the character of Tatyana, there is a possibility for a reawakening to love.

Eugene’s Acedia

We first meet Eugene as he learns that his wealthy uncle is on his deathbed. Eugene leaves St. Petersburg, where he has been living a socially active but joyless life, to go to his uncle’s estate, which he stands to inherit. Much of Chapter One then fills in the backstory of Eugene’s life, and a typical day in his life, as seen through the eyes of the narrator. For example, the narrator contrasts the delightfulness of a ballet performance with Eugene’s boredom while attending the performance. The narrator reflects:

I was Onegin’s friend that season . . . .
The bitterness was mine – the ice
was his; we’d both drunk passion’s chalice:
our lives were flat, and what had fired
both hearts to blaze had now expired . . . (Chapter 1, Stanza 45).

A question that adds interest to the poem is whether Eugene will ever overcome this soul-numbing “spleen” (1.38). As the narrator notes, “nothing caused his heart to stir, / and nothing pierced his senses’ blur.” (1.38). The condition attributed to Eugene clearly resembles the sin of acedia. The end of the first chapter returns to the opening situation, as Eugene arrives at his uncle’s country estate—only to find him already dead. Eugene inherits the estate; however, the beauty of the country charms him only for a couple days, and he quickly tires of it.

Eugene’s Missed Opportunity to Love

Despite his splenetic disposition, Eugene makes a friend in the country as he meets a neighbor, an aspiring poet named Vladimir Lensky. Lensky is fascinated with Romantic poetry:

Schiller and Goethe had refined him,
theirs was the poetic flame
that fired his soul, to burn the same;
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
but in his songs [he] kept pride of place
for the sublime, and for the passions
of virgin fancy, and again
the charm of what was grave and plain. (2.9)

Vladimir and Eugene have contrasting characters and are described as “verse and prose,” respectively (2.13). Lensky has not succumbed to acedia like Eugene has; in fact, he is in love with Olga, the younger daughter of the neighboring Larina family.

Olga is presented as “poetic in her simple pureness” (2.23). However, Olga is, in the narrator’s opinion, rather common and boring compared to her older sister, Tatyana: “Reader, the elder sister now / must be my theme, if you’ll allow (2.23). Though not as pretty as Olga, Tatyana captures the narrator’s admiration – and not only the narrator’s. In his 1880 speech, Dostoevsky refers to Tatyana as “the apotheosis of the Russian woman.” As Caryl Emerson notes in The Cambridge Introduction to Russian Literature, Tatyana is a traditional Russian type of character: a pravednitsa, a “female carrier of truth,” a saint-figure. Marguerite Palmer, for instance, highlights parallels between Tatyana and Dante’s muse, Beatrice, that are especially illuminating. 

Tatyana enjoys gazing out at the countryside, and is enraptured with reading romances and listening to horror stories:

Reflection was her friend and pleasure
right from the cradle of her days;
it touched with reverie her leisure,
adorning all its country ways (2.26).

When Tatyana sees Eugene, she falls in love with him, idealizing him as a Romantic hero like the ones that she has read about in novels. Enhancing the idea of Tatyana’s innocence, the narrator observes, “Tatyana’s love is no by-play, / she yields to it without condition / like a sweet child” (3.25). Enchanted with Eugene, Tatyana writes him a letter declaring her love to him and awaits his reply in the garden.

As we read Onegin, we should be attentive to Biblical motifs that enhance the author’s development of character and theme. The garden setting, where Tatyana awaits Eugene, is not a random choice, but one which should attract our notice. As Peter J. Leithart observes in A House for My Name, the motif of a man and a woman meeting in a garden reminds us of Adam and Eve in the paradise God created in Eden—could Eugene and Tatyana experience this blissful state? Will Tatyana’s love regenerate Eugene’s withered soul?

Jaded as he is, Onegin cannot receive Tatyana’s love, even though he is “deeply stirred” by the letter (4.11). He had been too long trained in finding fleeting enchantment, which quickly became disenchantment:

Spoilt by the habit of indulgence,
now dazzled by one thing’s effulgence,
now disenchanted with the next,
more and more bored by yearning’s text,
bored by success’ giddy trifle . . . (4.9).

The description of Eugene’s disenchantment reflects the sin of acedia. Significantly, the narrator here goes on to make a moral judgment about Onegin: “he killed eight years in such a style, / and wasted life’s fine flower meanwhile” (4.9). Will the poem offer any perspective to show us how Eugene may be able to move out of this state?

While showing that Onegin’s habits have rendered him unable to return Tatyana’s love, the narrator also points out that Onegin is honorable enough not to take advantage of her:

and though perhaps old fires were thrusting
and held him briefly in their sway,
Eugene had no wish to betray
a soul so innocent, so trusting (4.11).

Onegin’s refusal of Tatyana as they meet in the garden is ironically called a “sermon” by the narrator (4.17); among the reasons Onegin gives for his refusal is, “I’ve dreams and years past resurrection; / a soul that nothing can renew . . .” and his concluding exhortation is, “learn from my belief / that inexperience leads to grief” (4.16). While there is some wisdom in Eugene’s words – in her naivete, Tatyana may have been taken advantage of by someone less conscientious than he – why does he consider that nothing can renew his soul? Is there no hope for Eugene?

The Consequences of Rejecting Love

The much-anticipated garden meeting is unfruitful, as Eugene — at this point, at least — shuts himself off from the possibility of love and a new life with Tatyana. He withdraws to his own estate, living a hermit-like existence of reading and walking through the countryside, his senses still numbed.

Meanwhile, Tatyana still sees the world as a magical place:

Tatyana shared with full conviction
the simple faith of olden days
in dreams and cards and their prediction,
and portents of the lunar phase (5.5).

Tatyana now has an ominous dream that readers have enjoyed puzzling over for almost two centuries. In the dream, Tatyana is chased by a bear across a wintry landscape. The bear catches her and takes her to a hovel where fearsome creatures are feasting, presided over by Eugene, who, when the creatures clamor over her, clears the room by shouting, “She’s mine!” Olga and Lensky then appear, and Eugene stabs Lensky with a knife (5.11-21). The dream has fascinated critics over the years, whose various views are summarized well by Sally Dalton-Brown in her 1997 book-length study, Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin. The dream reveals much about Tatyana’s own psyche while foreshadowing the violence to come.

Meanwhile, Lensky invites Eugene to Tatyana’s name-day party. At that party, Eugene, immediately regretting that he consented to go along with Lensky, resolves to get revenge on Lensky by dancing exclusively with Lensky’s beloved Olga. Filled with jealous passion and anger, Lensky resolves to fight for his honor by challenging Eugene to a duel. We may wonder why Eugene’s cruelty to his friend must escalate so awfully; Caryl Emerson points out that according to the traditions that governed duels, this one should have been called off because of the way Onegin appointed his valet to be his second, instead of a gentleman. Still, in a horrifying series of stanzas (6.28-35), we read on as Eugene shoots and kills Lensky in the duel. Lensky’s naïve enchantment blinds him to Eugene’s cynical character, leading to his tragic death. (Here I cannot resist noting that in a strange case of life imitating art, Pushkin himself was killed by gunshot in a duel. Pushkin had challenged a man, Georges d’Anthés, who had been pursuing his wife, and was fatally wounded.)

As the narrator relates the aftermath of Lensky’s tragic death in Chapter Seven, we learn that Olga quickly recovers from the loss of Lensky and marries a soldier. Eugene leaves his country estate to go on a long journey. Meanwhile, Tatyana wanders around the countryside and comes across Eugene’s estate after he has gone away. She gains access to Eugene’s library and reads his books and marginalia, which, not surprisingly, further document his disenchantment with life. Tatyana’s mother compels her to go to Moscow, in order to increase Tatyana’s chances of finding a husband, now that her younger sister has already married. Though Tatyana bristles at the vanity of society in Moscow, she soon catches the eye of a “fat general” (7.54).

Eugene’s Reawakening to Love

Chapter Eight picks up the narrative three years after the fatal duel, and two years after Tatyana has married. Eugene re-enters society after his journey (Pushkin had drafted a narrative of this journey, but it did not make it into the final poem and exists only in fragments). Both Eugene and Tatyana have changed: Tatyana has learned to be at ease among the circles of society within the city, while Eugene has somehow regained the capacity for enchantment and love. In particular, he is now in love with Tatyana, whom he had previously rejected.

The poem ends with a satisfying symmetry. Reversing what happened earlier, Eugene is now the one writing a declaration of love to Tatyana. When he follows up on his letter by visiting her at home, she responds:

I love you (what’s the use to hide
behind deceit or double-dealing?)
but I’ve become another’s wife—
and I’ll be true to him, for life (8.47).

As Dostoevsky observed, Tatyana in her goodness would not commit adultery with Eugene and thereby hurt her husband. After the words spoken above, Tatyana leaves and her husband appears as Eugene is “thunder-struck” (8.48). The narrator then takes his leave of telling the story, while we readers can only wonder what becomes of Eugene.

The Challenge of Interpreting and Applying the Poem

Since Onegin was written over eight years, with many individual stanzas and a couple of sections omitted in the final version, the poem is highly complex. Dostoevsky provides helpful guidelines for interpreting the poem in his 1880 speech. He notes that Eugene and Tatyana represent two Russian types—and of course it is Tatyana, the true Russian soul, who is the most admirable as she remains faithful to her husband, not wanting to hurt him. Onegin, Dostoevsky says, is “the past and present type of Russian drifter.” However, as Sally Dalton-Brown argues, Onegin is not so much a “superfluous man” as he is a “superman,” one “incapable of accepting his own subjection to moral laws.” Dostoevsky saw the harmful effects of such a mindset and depicted the consequences memorably in his novels, as with the murderer Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment, even as he pointed to the possibilities of redeeming love through Sonia’s love for Raskolnikov.

We may hope that even though Tatyana was in no position to reciprocate Eugene’s newfound love, Eugene’s reawakening to love through her will not be in vain. Perhaps if Tatyana had agreed to be Eugene’s illicit lover, he would have tired of her and lapsed back into disenchantment. Now, she will remain for him an ideal of truth, beauty, and goodness, untarnished by sin. While Tatyana is no longer available to Eugene in the way he desires, she may yet be, as Beatrice was to Dante, an inspiration on Eugene’s subsequent journey, a journey which will hopefully lead him toward God.

But how do these ideas relate to our own lives? In an age characterized by acedia, we may see aspects of Eugene’s character in ourselves as we read Pushkin’s poem. As we grow older and face disappointments, like Eugene we will be tempted to wallow in acedia. On the other hand, Tatyana provides a good model for how we should live. She grew past her initial naïve form of love, through heartbreak and personal suffering, to a more mature form of love – a love that sought to do good both to her husband and to Eugene. By not committing adultery with Eugene, but rather telling the truth to him, she set Eugene free to reorder his loves.

How should we respond upon reading this story? We must fight the spirit of acedia that persists today. Rather than remaining mired in apathy, we need to keep persevering in love for God and for others, so that we do not waste the “fine flower” (4.9) of the life God has given us.

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