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Lirika I Narativ U Puskinu
Lirika I Narativ U Puskinu
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LYRICAND NARRATIVECONSCIOUSNESSIN
EUGENE ONEGIN
CraigCravens,The Universityof Texasat Austin
683
684
in EugeneOnegin
Consciousness
LyricandNarrative
685
another feature of Onegin, which distinguishesit from conventionalfirstperson novels: the inclusion of elements of the real-life biographyof the
author, which would have been immediatelyrecognizableto his readers.
Later in the Realist period of the nineteenth century,authorsoften create
narrativepersonae, which are manifestly not identical with the author.
Pushkin, on the other hand, brazenlybares his biographyin his work to
create a dynamicin the constructionof characterunlike that whichwe find
in most instancesof later Realist fiction.
In the first-personnovel of the Realist period- Dostoevsky'sDemons is
a good example- when the narratorshiftsfromretrospectiveto immediate
narration,that is, when he participatesin events, he tends to acquirecharacter traitsfrom the fictionalrealm he is narrating.The fictionalmode of
existence is transferredto him, and he "becomes"a fictionalcharacter.He
enters the fictionalrealm and exists on the same plane as the other characters. In part, as a reaction to this altered center of gravity,the reader's
attention shifts to the fictionalpresent tense, the time of events. At other
points, the narratorreflects on events from the retrospectivepole, and
readersare compelled to view events likewise retrospectively.
This shiftingof narrativemodes withinfirst-personnarrationis characteristic of Eugene Onegin. Most of the story is told retrospectivelyfrom a
seeminglythird-personviewpoint, but at times the narratorenters his fictional worldto become a charactertherein. Unlike the narratorof Demons,
however,Pushkin'snarratordoes not become fictionalizedin his own narrative. Conversely,I suggest, the fictional realm of the literaryheroes becomes what we might call "biographized"by the real-life author. This
biographizationis one of the elements Pushkinemploys to create fictional
charactersthat seem to free themselves from their dependence on the
author.
In the Realist period of the mid-1800s, authors come to invent new
methods of creating apparentlyautonomousconsciousnesses,of vivifying
characters.In Dostoevsky'sworks, for example, the authoreffaces himself
behindlimitedand delimitednarrators,and charactersappearto emerge as
beings independent of either author or narrator.Tolstoy, on the other
hand, employsa vocal authoritativenarratorwho is sometimesassumedto
be the authorhimself;his characters,however, likewise emerge as autonomous beings. Despite chunksof "eventmaterial"(Dostoevsky'smock execution, Tolstoy'smarriageproposal), neither author'sbiographyenters the
respectivenovels overtly. To be sure, Pushkin'sown narrativepersona in
Onegin possesses analogous elements; he is not coextensive with the author. The narratorat times appears to be confused by events, or to lose
track of his characters.At other times he is an omnipotentand omnipresent being commentingon events or on the novel itself. Pushkin'smethod of
characterconstruction,however, is in essence different from that of later
686
687
these authors, the dominant mode of literary creation was not mimetic
narrationwhereby an authorcreates a world similarto, yet distinct from,
the real one. Nor did they create third-person,seemingly autonomous
beings distinct from themselves. Rather, authors produced stylized selfportraits.Authorialsubjectivityprojectedonto third-personnarration,the
emotional engagementof the narratingvoice, and the ambiguousboundaries between life and art are all characteristicof European Romantic
literature. The Romantic hero emerged when the reader postulated the
existence of the literaryhero's alter ego, that is, the author, in real life
(Zhirmunskii,Greenleaf). When these writersprojected themselves into
the fiction, they discovereda whole range of psychologicalcomplexityand
narrativepossibilities.
This reveals a significantpreoccupation of pre-Realist literature: the
problemof creatingcharacterswho appearto exist and thinkon their own,
independentlyof the narratoror author.In the aforementionedworks, the
authoror narratoris the only excogitatingconsciousnessupon which other
charactersappearto feed. Direct inside views are restrictedto first-person
forms--the epistolary novel, the confession--while third-personworks
concentrateon externalbehavior- action ratherthan attitude.
Pushkinalso employsthe Byronicinterpretationof life and art as well as
a vocal, authoritativenarrator:in the main, he uses external descriptions
that rely heavily on the use of culturalconventionsand stereotypes.Yet he
succeeds in creating characterswho seem to free themselves from the
subjectiveelement, from the authorialor narratorial"I." One key to Pushkin's achievement, I suggest, is the lyrical essence of his work, which, in
ways I will try to demonstratebelow, frees the charactersfrom the authornarrator'scontrol.
ii. Lyric and Narrative
688
Towarda definitionof the lyric, it will be helpful to begin conventionally--by contrastingit to narrative.The contrastbetween lyric and narrative is of long-standingderivation.It is commonlyheld that narrativeforegroundssequence and metonymy,and lyric foregroundssimultaneityand
metaphor(Jakobson).Narrativeconcentrateson story, lyric on a state of
mindor clusterof feelings. The lyricpresentsa speaker'ssubjectiveexperience and asks the readerto adopt the speaker'sperspective.The speakeris
present in the lyric not only as the author, not only as the subject of
representation,but also as its object, included in the aesthetic structure;
the speaker'sown feelings are the subjectmatterof the lyricutterance.The
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speaker expresses a lyrical, subjective attitude. Most Russians, for example, recognize the lyric lament of spring in 7.ii. as Pushkin's poetry, but
many are hard put to name the work it comes from. This is because it
stands on its own when excerpted from the novel. The narrator often
digresses into lyrical passages such as this one where the continuity of
action, or narrative, is suspended. Here, utterances become more selfreferential and less directly descriptive or communicative. The speaker's
attitude toward "reality," whether it be fictional or non-fictional, is foregrounded. Furthermore, the lyric and narrative modes are of different
temporal orders: the narrative sections tell a story and move forward in
time, while the lyric sections seem to exist beyond this chronological realm
as static entities. These interludes are detachable from the main action of
the story and mark no passing of time.5 As the narrative function changes,
so do the reader's reactions. The desire for narrative mimesis is suspended,
and the lyric portions are apprehended as if they were lyric poetry.
The reader perceives the lyric and novelistic sections of Onegin on two
different levels - the lyric interludes as subjective expressions of a real consciousness, and the novelistic sections as the creation of a fictional reality.
The two levels of the work, however, do not always remain separate. Often
the subjective, lyric impulse is ascribed to a created fictional character, and a
paradox arises. If we apprehend the lyric statements as subjective expressions of a real consciousness - as one does in the lyric outside of the novel then, in a sense, we have a case of a fictional character uttering non-fictional,
subjective lyric statements. As in the lyric on spring, these statements can be
removed from the work and read as lyric expressions on their own, yet in the
novel they are uttered by a fictional character. This is one way Pushkin
creates the illusion of cognitive function - what might be called the autonomous intelligence - of his characters.
Often during the lyric sections of Eugene Onegin, the lyric "I" is supplanted by a fictional one which assumes a life of its own. Through freeindirect discourse, the lyric "I" attaches itself to a character and poses as a
subjective attitude toward the fictional reality. Here, to take one outrageously famous example from chapter 1, the narrator appears to digress
from his fabula to relate a maxim concerning what at first appears to be his
own world-weariness:
KTO XKH H MbICJIHJI,
TOTHe MOKCeT
B yiymeHe npe3HpaTbniioeii;
KTO HyBCTBOBaJI,
TOrOTPeBO)KHT
IpH3paK
HeB03BpaTHMbIX
RHeH:
Bce 3TOMaCTO
nipHgaeT
691
Boaibmyronpenecrb pa3roBopy.
CnepBa OHerHHa SI3bIK
MeHI cMyula.: HOA npHBbIK
K ero 3sBHreaJIHoMy
cnopy. (1.xlvi)
We take this to be the lyric "I" of the narrator until the lines, "Sperva
Onegina iazyk / Menia smushchal; no ia privyk / K ego iazvitel'nomu sporu
[And though the language of my friend / At first disturbed me, in the end / I
liked his caustic disputation]," which reveal the preceding to be the subjective expression of Onegin's lyric "I." The lyric portion portrays and
thematizes a character's engagement with reality, his own subjective experience, through free-indirect discourse. None of the stanza is presented in
quotation marks to signal Onegin's voice, but the last two lines betray the
vocal origin. This brief lyrical section creates for the reader Onegin's image, his internal life, in a way not possible through a direct presentation of
a character's thoughts in the author's own "objective" voice. The passage
does not merely describe thoughts; it rather illustrates and thematizes a
way of cognizing the world, of engaging reality. The view is subjective as
well as general, and the passage invites the reader to enter and share this
point of view. The personality, however, is a constructed one with a
forward-moving biography of its own.
First of all, the universality of these lyric passages invites the reader to
participate in the speaker's emotion and identify with the point of view
expressed. Instinctively, the reader internalizes the lyric. In this way, Pushkin allows the reader access to a subjective mind. Subsequently, the author
attaches the lyrics to a fictional character to create the illusion of an autonomously acting and thinking being. Precisely crossing this boundary between
codes is characteristic of Pushkin's highly sophisticated manipulation of the
genre conditions of Romanticism.
The depersonalization and decontextualization characteristic of the lyric
is impossible in the traditional novel, since one of its defining characteristics is specificity of place and time. The Realist novel conventionally operates by developing a recognizable fictional world distinct from the reader's
692
own. The novelistic world comes to life outside the reader's soul--it is
grounded in a specific time and place.
The universality of the lyric allows Pushkin to attach it to a certain
character in a certain situation. A curious aspect of Pushkin's lyrics in
general is that, although they create a definite authorial image, this image
shifts with each genre of poem. Lidia Ginzburg notes an absence of a
single, central image, the absence of a lyrical hero in Pushkin's poetry as a
whole. No such unity, according to her, can emerge from Pushkin's multifaceted and multi-thematic verse. Rather, it contains an internal unity of
the author's point of view, an intensely developing unity, in which Pushkin
projects various embodiments of his authorial "I" (182).
According to Ginzburg, Pushkin passed through many stages of poetic
development and in each stage created a distinct authorial "I." Pushkin's
easy mastery of each genre and style of poetry contributed to his reputation
for proteanism. In Onegin, Pushkin uses the shifting authorial image of
each genre by attaching it to a different character. For example, Pushkin
initially endows Tatiana with the Sentimental image and Onegin with the
Byronic, but these poetic authorial images, as we shall see, evolve throughout the novel. Pushkin's poetic narration thereby creates not only distinctive, recognizable characters independent from the author, but also types
associated through genre. Let us examine another example.
In the following passage from chapter 2, Lensky visits the grave of Olga's
father and meditates on death. Here, rather than a character assuming the
narrator's lyric "I," the narrator displaces the character's, with all the
requisite shifts and redefinitions of authority.
"Poor Yorick! MOJIBHI
OHyHbIJIO,
OH Ha pyKax MeHSIepxcai.
KaK qaCTOB geTCTBe AI rpan
Ero OqaKOBCKOA
MenaibIO!"(2.xxxvii)
"Poor Yorick!" then he murmured, shaking,
"How oft within his arms I lay,
How oft in childhood days I'd play
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lo TafgHOfiBoJe npOBHgeHb6,
BocxoAr.T, 3peIOT H nalayT;
XpyrHe HMBocJieg HAyr...
Jl,
npiH3paKOB3aKpbIJIa BexcbI;
Ho OTanJieHHbie
HaAeieKbI
TpeBoxaT cepJuie HHorla:
Be3 HenpHMeTHoro
cniega
MHe 6bIo 6 rpycTHOMHpocTaBHTb.
)KHBy, nHrmyHe Rni noxsan;
Ho A 6bi KaxeTCs xKenan
Ile,aanbHbl x)Kpe6HiCBOHI
npocJIaBHTb,
XTo6 o60 MHe,KaKBepHbhfi gpyr,
HanoMHHJI XOTbeAHHbIlt3ByK. (2.xxxix)
694
The lyric "I" is now the narrator's (and, by stylized extension, Pushkin's),
who expatiates on the elegiac theme begun by Lensky. He augments
Lensky's slightly comic lament with his own more serious philosophical
lyricism,7 and ends by referring to his own creation to remove any doubts
the reader may have had as to the identity of the speaker:
H ibe-HH6y/6b
OHcepxge TpOHeT;
H coxpaHeHHaAs
cyYb60t,
BbITb MOKeT B JIeTe He HOTOHeT
The "I" of the stanza belongs clearly to the narrator who broadens, modifies, and brings down to earth Lensky's image by transferring it into the
realm of his own poetic "I" and supplementing it with his own lyric world
view and presumed life experiences. The scene is originally set in a narrative, fictive situation, but it gradually moves into the realm of lyric and the
"I" of the narrator, whereby Lensky's image acquires more facets and
complexity. Onegin, Tatiana, and Lensky are all subject to similar lyric
narration where the narrator's voice displaces or, depending on the character, mixes with the character's voice.
In the case of Onegin and Lensky, the narrator describes and creates his
narrative, fictional world, and at moments he shifts to a lyric "I," employing the fictional world in the same way any lyric "I" would employ nonfictional reality, that is, as a pretext for his self-referential lyric dilations.
When the identity of the lyric "I" shifts to that of a character, the reader
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696
HH cBexecrboK ee pyMaHOlA
He npHBjeeKia6 oHa oqei.
[...]
He yMeJia
OHa JnacKaTTbcS
K OTRy, HHK MaTepH CBoeif. (2.xxv)
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character. She has, in fact, the most complex, developed, and dynamic
mental life and world view of any of the characters, which requires different and more subtle narrative means.
Similar to the vocal dynamic we saw in the example from Joyce, Pushkin's presentation of Tatiana's inner life relies on the subtle intertwining of
the voices of narrator and character. In Onegin, however, this character's
voice emerges from and begins to define the narrative texture of the work,
so that the reader senses more strongly her presence than that of any other
character.
Here we move closer to Bakhtin's reading of Eugene Onegin. Although
one does not sense the presence of two voices in the lyric passages Bakhtin
cites as double-voiced (1981, 43-50), other passages do in fact contain two
vocal origins, and most of these passages pertain to the heroine. Tatiana's
voice becomes the object of representation, but at the same time it represents her in her own characteristic style.
Often in the narrative passages of the novel, the narrator speaks as if
from the point of view of the character he is describing. He does not
express a general world view-as he does with Onegin and Lensky-but
describes a specific situation inseparable from the fictional world. In the
following passage, the tense of the verbs is the standard past tense of
narration, whereas Onegin's lyrics fall out of the action in part due to the
verbal present tense. Here Tatiana has written and sent the fateful letter to
Eugene and awaits his reply:
14Me)Iy
H cJIe3 6bI
nOJIOHTOMHbIiiB30p.
He cMeeT;MHrOM
o6excaIa
JI)KoK,
KypTHHbI, MOCTHKH,
HI,3aabixaacb, Ha CKaMbIO
(3.XXXViii)
And all the while her soul was aching,
Her brimming eyes could hardly see.
Then sudden hoof beats! . . Now she's quaking.
They're closer! coming here . . . it's he!
Onegin! "Oh!" -And light as air,
She's out the backway, down the stair
From porch to yard, to garden straight;
She runs, she flies; she dare not wait
698
It should be pointed out that the task of determining from a single passage
of free-indirect discourse (such as I have just quoted) whether a narrator is
699
expressing irony or sympathy regarding his character is notoriously difficult. Moreover, the structure of the Onegin stanza builds in routine ironic
reversals in the concluding couplet. Such judgment calls are less risk-laden,
however, when measured against the narrator's tone overall. The above
passage is preceded by a digression on the soporific qualities of Sentimental
and Romantic literature in general- the same literature according to which
Tatiana patterns her relationship with Onegin. Hence in this passage, the
Sentimental vocabulary in the narrator's voice is sensed as ironic.
The most significant aspect of Tatiana's psychological presentation in the
first part of the novel is of course her letter. Although stylized and translated,
it is the first extended self-expression of a character's thoughts, which will be
repeated by Eugene in chapter 8. In general, Tatiana is an extremely literate
and literary character. After the narrator's apophatic description of her, she
is defined by the eighteenth-century Sentimentalism whose heroines become
models of behavior. She enters this well-established epistolary role, and
declares her literarily inspired ardor in a billet-doux to Eugene.10
Let us consider in more detail the genre of the letter both as communication act and as self-expression. First of all, the genre of the epistolary novel
as practiced by Richardson, Rousseau, and countless others in the eighteenth century was not only wildly popular but also a landmark in literary
psychological description. Through self-analysis and self-presentation, these
authors discovered a new form of character portrayal, anticipating later
Realistic psychological character presentation. The drawbacks of the epistolary form are obvious and many - the implausibility of such incessant writing, its prolixity and repetition- but although the genre, as Walter Raleigh
writes, "inaugurated a century and a half of hyperasthesia" (161), it motivated the revelation of a character's subjective inner life. The epistolary
novel revealed and succeeded in tracking the minute movements of consciousness with heretofore incomparable detail. What differentiates this
method from later Realistic psychological descriptions is Realism's individuation of character. In Sentimentalism, all characters are perceived as emanating from a single consciousness, the author's, which is the only one truly
present. One senses Richardson's own sensibility in all of the correspondents
of Pamela [1740], Clarissa [1748], and Sir Charles Grandison [1753], and in
Mme. de La Fayette's La Princesse de Cloves [1678] the author's psyche is in
all three characters of the love triangle."
In Onegin, Pushkin employs the letter as a vehicle for Tatiana's psychological presentation, and she becomes the first character of the novel allowed direct, unmediated self-expression. The letter presents a truthful and
detailed picture of the inner life of a young woman in love. In 1824 Pushkin
wrote to Prince Vyazemsky about Tatiana's letter, "But even if the meaning
is not clear, that makes the letter all the more truthful; it is a letter written
by a woman in love, and what is more she is seventeen" (PSS 13: 403). At
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least one of Pushkin's contemporary reviewers thought Pushkin had already mastered the epistolary genre in this, his first attempt. In one of the
first published reviews of chapter 3, P. I. Shalikov wrote about Tatiana's
letter (emphasis in original):
The poet is a moralPrometheanwho withoutthe slightesteffort takes into his heartfeelings
that do not belong to him and who appropriatesthe other [chuzhoe]as if therewere no other
for him in the whole world. (Vatsuroand Fomichev329)12
Shalikov points to the method of Sentimental character portrayal in general: the author/narrator presents a character's inner life as if it were his
own. But while this is true of Onegin and Lensky, Tatiana manages to elude
the grasp of the overarching narrative voice.
Besides its first-person form, another significant aspect of the letter is its
deviation from the form of the rest of the novel. Departing from the
Onegin stanza at first tentatively and then wholeheartedly, the letter is cast
in seventy-nine lines of freely rhyming iambic tetrameter verse. The nonobservance of the Onegin stanza strikes the reader forcefully whenever it
occurs (three times). As Tynianov notes in his Formalist study of Onegin:
as long as the constructive factor of a work remains constant (here, the
Onegin stanza), narrative digressions from the fabula will not be sensed as
digressive. In Tatiana's letter, we do have a departure from the form;
whatever its "original" language and ultimate truth value, we sense its
content as differently voiced, paced, and mediated. The letter individuates
Tatiana's consciousness and distinguishes it from the others. Through a
combination of first-person self-expression and constructive deviation,
Pushkin creates a consciousness that is meant to appear different in form
and depth from the other consciousnesses of the novels.
As Tatiana matures and emerges from her youthful Sentimental world
view, the narrator's attitude toward her alters as well. In the later parts of
Onegin, the narrator's voice approaches Tatiana's - he becomes more sympathetic and less ironic, and begins to narrate from her viewpoint and reflect
her mood. In the following passage from chapter 7, Tatiana has been rejected by Eugene, her future brother-in-law has been killed, and her sister
has all too blithely decamped with another suitor. Note how the narrative
style reflects Tatiana's mood - at first passionate, then sad and sober - as
she makes her way through the woods to Onegin's former lodgings:
H B OAHHOqeCTBe >KeCTOKOM
EAcepAuerpoMqeroBopHT.
OHa ero He 6ygeT BHseTb;
B HeM HeHaBHReTb
OHa OJiDKHa
701
702
In the last three words of the first stanza, "Na chto grustit'? . . [But where-
fore mourn?. .]," the readersenses Tatiana'svoice. The free-indirectdiscoursehere is similarto the examplecited previouslyfromJoyce, but in the
Oneginpassage,all the surroundingwords, the whole of these two stanzas,
in fact, seem to express Tatiana'sworld view. The narratorhas modulated
his style- tone, syntax, and vocabulary-to Tatiana's.13
Nowheredoes she
does
the
narrator
or
nor
speak directly
explain analyze her inner life, but
his
to
the
character,the narratordescribesTatianaas if
by adjusting style
she were speaking,yet more eloquentlyand powerfullythanshe could ever
do herself. This is free-indirectdiscourse- the wordsare grammaticallythe
narrator's,yet emotionallythe character's.Were they voiced by either the
narratoror Tatianaalone, the powerful effect would be lost. Unlike the
lyric free-indirectdiscourse we examined concerningEugene, two voices
resoundat the same time. This is a trulydouble-voicedpassage.14
ThomasShaw(34) pointsto threephasesin the narrator'sdevelopmentyouthfulperceptiveness,disenchantment,and, in the present tense of the
novel, maturere-enchantment.The narratoris able to understandand narrate Eugene'scharacterwhichis, in Shaw'swords, "arrestedat the stage of
disenchantment,"because he too experiencedhis own stage of disenchantment, of world-wearyByronism. Tatiana'sdevelopment, I would argue,
followsa similar,but not identical,pattern.In her stageof youthfulenchantment, she idealizes (or completely fantasizes) Onegin by projectingupon
him her Sentimentalheroes. At this point, the narratorironizes Tatiana
(albeit tenderly), as we saw in the passage from chapter3. In the passage
quoted from chapter 7, Tatianais in the midst of her disenchantment-reality has not lived up to her ideals--yet it does not take the form of
Onegin's cynicism, which, as Tatianasoon sees in her visit to Onegin's
library,is likewise literarilyinspired. Tatiana'sdisenchantmentwith the
worldis much more reflective,sober, and educative.
The narrator'spresentationsof the cognitivelives of Oneginand Tatiana
differ accordingly.The mental lives of both charactersemerge through
free-indirectdiscourse, but only in Tatiana'ssection do we sense the voice
of both characterand narratorsimultaneously.Eugene's character,we recall, emergedfrom the single-voicedlyric and a confusionof vocal origins.
Tatiana'spsychic life is different in kind from Onegin's. His cynical Byronismis an aphoristicview of life best expressedby aphoristic,sententious
language.
Tatiana'spsychology,being more complex, requiresdifferentexpression.
Her early enchantmentwas also a kind of "lyricism":a Sentimentalworld
view ironizedby the narratorearly on. Towardthe end of the novel, however, we encounter a heroine with a view on the world tempered by the
"reality"of everydaylife, the "prose"of life that often (in Oneginat least)
exposesthe lyricworldview as unableto perceiveandadequatelyengagethe
703
TITOIeBeJIbHynOCb
B rIy6HHe
ymIIHXOJIOJHOfH neHHBOA?
J)ocaaa? cyeTHocTb? HJIbBHOBb
and today!
704
The narrator gives expression to Eugene's inner turmoil by speaking with the
latter's emotional diction. The interrogatives and exclamations are from
Onegin's voice zone, but unlike his previous internal voice, this one is
grounded in the world of the novel. Such sympathetic passages where the
narratornarrates from the character's point of view are so numerous in chapter 8 that they create a new forward-pressing, psychological image of Onegin. He is now a character no longer able to express himself lyrically, which
was for him a facile genre. In short, he has entered the realm of Tatiana.
Finally, let us look at the evolution of the narrator. By the end of the
novel, he too has evolved. No longer is he the vociferous, dominating, and
quasi-manic presence from chapter 1, continually thrusting himself to the
fore. Like Tatiana and Eugene, he has become more subdued and reflective. We can explain this change, on the one hand, from a strictly narrative
standpoint: to present a sober, unironized image of Tatiana by mixing his
voice with hers, the narrator's own voice in the surrounding text must to a
certain degree come to resemble the character's. Were the narrator to
maintain his tone and style from chapter 1, we would, of course, have a
totally different image of Tatiana. This narrative modulation endows Tatiana's image with tremendous power and presence. Everyone seems to have
entered Tatiana's voice zone.
When the narrator modulates his voice to resemble Tatiana's, we sense
that it is he who enters her voice zone rather than vice-versa. The narrator's voice no longer creates the impression of a dominating external consciousness that we had sensed in chapter 1. At the end of Onegin, the
narrator loses his protective, gently ironic attitude toward Tatiana. He
approaches Tatiana's manner of speaking, and this change in tone creates
the impression that it is Tatiana's voice that has invaded and modified the
narrator's. Eugene, Tatiana, and the narrator are all somehow different by
the end of the novel, but the paradox of Tatiana is that it is she who
maintains the most continuity throughout and yet who experiences real
change. Hence, she appears to subsume all the other voices which arrange
themselves beneath her authority. Her voice zone and, consequently, her
image have attained the most prominent position in the novel. But in what
does this authority and strength consist?
At the beginning of the final chapter, Tatiana is most overtly identified
with Pushkin's muse:
H BOTOHa B cagy MOeM
BIsHnacb 6apbImHek ye3AHoA,
C neqnajbHoftjyMOI) B oqax,
C 4paHmy3cKOA KHEKKOIOB pyKax.
705
H HbIHeMy3y I BnepBble
Ha cseTCKHipayr npHBoXay.(8.v-vi)
And in my garden she appeared A country miss - infatuated,
With mournful air and brooding glance,
And in her hands a French romance.
And now I seize the first occasion
To show my muse a grand soir6e.
At the end of the novel, Tatiana is revealed as the spirit of Pushkin's poetic
inspiration, but she is a poetic spirit qualitatively different from the kind of
poetry associated with Onegin, Lensky, and the narrator, that is, the lyric.
These three male characters inhabit the same voice zone, and through an
interchange of vocal origins, the narrator creates the psychic life of Lensky
and Onegin. With Tatiana, the narrator shares no zone and no voice;
hence, he cannot narrate her thoughts directly. However, by interweaving
his own voice with hers, he penetrates her zone, her poetic aura.
Shaw (35) suggests that the novel stresses the importance of being poetic, and Caryl Emerson (1995) along the same lines sees Tatiana as representing a balanced poetic principle, a verse presence. I would add that
Tatiana's poetic nature is one that has experienced and taken leave of the
lyric view of life, a view in which nothing changes, in which characters and
their utterances are self-sufficient and whole, universal and unchanging.
She is lyric depth that learns to adjust to the arbitrariness and uncertainty
of narrative (life) and to find her own grace within it.
When Eugene passes through life, events do not accumulate and do not
change him. He passes from role to role with no qualitative evolution of
character. See 8.viii, for example, in which Pushkin enumerates Onegin's
roles. Onegin does not mature; he merely changes roles and voices, all of
which are unitary and literary, and when he sees Tatiana's evolution from a
poor, lovesick country girl into the "indifferent princess" and "unapproachable goddess" of the Moscow salon, he views her as if she too were playing
a role: "Kak izmenialasia Tat'iana! / Kak tverdo v rol' svoiu voshla! [How
Tatiana has changed! / How firmly she has entered into her own role!]"
(xxvii). But Onegin is wrong. Tatiana is playing no role, but rather living
real "life." This motivates her pragmatic refusal of Onegin at the end.
The ending of the novel disappointed many of Pushkin's contemporary
readers since the hero was neither married nor dead, two conventional
fates. Onegin does not conclude conventionally because Tatiana will not
permit it. She knows and outlines to Eugene the "real-life" toll such marital
infidelity inflicts, and rather than play conventionally, she rejects him. The
roles are reversed at the end, but as the narrator points out, these roles are
not interchangeable:
706
Bce B03paCTbI
nOKOpHbI;
Ho IOHbIM,geBCTBeHHbIM cepgiaM
Ee nopbIsbI 6JIaroTBopHbI,
KaK 6ypH BeriHHMe
noJnM:
B gowKe cTpacTef OHHcBe)KeiOT,
H 06HOBsJIOTCH,
H 3peIOT -
H )XH3HbMoryLmaaIgaeT
H IIbIImHbIftiBeT H cinaKHfi rimo.
Ho B Bo3pacT no3HHHft H 6ecnnogHbIfi,
Ha noBOpoTeHaminxneT,
IleqaneH cTpacrTH
MepTBOfcineg:
TaK 6ypH oceHH xoJInoHoI
B 6onoJOTo6pawiaKITnyr
H o6HaxaIoT nec BOKpyr.(8.xxix)
To love all ages yield surrender;
But to the young its raptures bring
A blessing bountiful and tenderAs storms refresh the fields of spring.
Neath passion's rains they green and thicken,
Renew themselves with joy, and quicken;
And vibrant life in taking root
Sends forth rich blooms and gives sweet fruit.
But when the years have made us older,
And barren age has shown its face,
How sad is faded passion's trace!
Thus storms in autumn, blowing colder,
Turn meadows into marshy ground
And strip the forest bare all round.
Eugene wants to return to his previous Tatiana, and his lyric view tells him
that he can. The lyric is static; within it, what is past is not really past, but
somehow always freshly accessible. However, the narrative world is now
Tatiana's. She has control, and for such a narratively oriented character,
things past are things gone.
What Tatiana learns and what brings the narrator into her zone is the
value of leaving -of taking leave of a role, giving in to external pressures,
and surrendering to fate: "No sud'ba moia I Uzh reshena [But my fate / Is
already decided]" (8.xlvii). By accepting her immediate circumstances,
Tatiana becomes a real part of somebody's world. On the one hand, she is
identified with a narrative view of the world, one that has forward movement and leaves behind permanent change. On the other hand, she knows
when to leave the literary. We can view her as a balance of life and art, of
fabula and siuzhet. This is what the narrator wants to learn from Tatiana:
how to take leave of the literary. At the end of the novel, the narrator
recasts himself in Tatiana's zone; she is a continuously created character,
but her creator has more to gain by being inside her rather than outside her.
She teaches him:
707
BJiaxeH, KTOInpa3AHHKIKH3HH
paHo
He OIIHB
RORHa
OCTaBHJI,
BoKaja,
noJIHoro BHHa,
As I frommy Onegindo.
708
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REFERENCES
Abrams,M. H. TheMirrorand the Lamp:RomanticTheoryand the CriticalTradition.New
York:OxfordUP, 1953.
Bakhtin, Mikhail. The Dialogic Imagination.Trans. CarylEmerson and MichaelHolquist.
Ed. MichaelHolquist.Austin, TX: U of TexasP, 1981.
. Problemsof Dostoevsky'sPoetics.Ed. and trans.CarylEmerson.Minneapolis,MN:
U of MinneapolisP, 1984.
Cameron, Sharon. Lyric Time: Dickinson and the Limits of Genre. Baltimore, MD and
London:JohnsHopkinsUP, 1979.
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