Catching up on Classics (and lots more!) discussion

This is the discussion thread for Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin, our Old School Classic Group Read for March 2019.

Spoilers allowed here.

Please feel free to discuss anything you wish, relating to the book and let us know what you thought :)

Listened to this today. I planned on just an hour or so, but got sucked in and finished it. I was pleasantly surprised with how much fun it was. I loved the poetry and enjoyed the overall story too. It definitely had a very Russian feel, with talk of landscapes, weather, French influence over Russia, hopeless love and of course a duel! 4 stars for me.

Still hoping to fit this one into my reading schedule for the month.

I hope you do Katy, I recommend the Stephen Fry narration, I found it easier going than reading the text.

The Fry reading definitely adds a lot to the reading, he did a great job. I've been listening to it while reading along in the book. Occasionally I pause the audio to re-read a verse. I've just been reading about 5% a day. At this pace I'll be finished in a few more days.
There is a lot of humor mixed in, usually of a sarcastic sort, which keeps it lighter.

I also have from the university library a small volume of analysis- Alexander Pushkin: Eugene Onegin by Dr. A.D.P. Briggs. I'll try to read at least some of that and then contribute anything very interesting from it.

Is anyone else not enjoying this?

I'll be done soon, and it just isn't working for me. The endless repetition of the rhyme scheme is grating on me--even making me laugh at the serious parts. :-/

I'm reading the Stanley Mitchell translation, and thinking maybe an audio would have worked better for this.

I'm hoping the end turns it around for me!

Last year I read a version calledYevgeny Onegin published by Pushkin Press, with the translator Anthony Briggs. I found it a lively and enjoyable translation.

Kathleen wrote: "Is anyone else not enjoying this? ..."

Actually I have been too intimated to try this one. Russian & verse-- sounds scary hard to read to me.

My review: Meh.

Katy wrote: "Kathleen wrote: "Is anyone else not enjoying this? ..."

Actually I have been too intimated to try this one. Russian & verse-- sounds scary hard to read to me."

Go for it, Katy. Mine wasn't hard at all (just annoying). Thanks to J BlueFlower's comments in the non-spoiler thread, I've decided to try the Nabokov version next. But I have to wait a while ...

I finished and ended up giving it 3 stars. I'm glad I read it, but overall I found the rhyming to be a distraction.

Over all, I prefer the lengthy novels like Anna Karenina and Brothers Karamazov in Russian literature for there refinement in characters and driving plots. But, this was a great book with plenty of referrals to previous classical works, The character Tanya was a favorite in this book. She had staying power and was a truly brave woman. It was a beautifully written early Russian novel and so poetic. 4 stars

Agreed the rhyming here was a bit of a distraction and felt forced to me. I think in his intro the translator describes the problem: keeping the balance between rhyme and accuracy. Maybe a prose translation would be more suitable for me.

I’m halfway through, (actually, far less then halfway) but I’m rather irritated that after 50 stanzas for rather disengaging writing, the author finally announces that the novel is starting.

I read the Stanley Mitchell translation , and there were times that I enjoyed the poetry, but at times it got to be a bit much and felt forced. If I ever read it again, I think I would seek out Nabakov's translation.

(view spoiler)[ I enjoyed Tatiana's transformation from love-struck country bumpkin to the imperious princess. Onegin struck me as a spoiled brat with too much time on his hands and not a lot of self-discipline, and it was fun to see the shoe of unrequited affection on the other foot. The turnabout felt very satisfactory to me. (hide spoiler)]

I found Pushkin's habit of addressing himself directly to the reader to be quite distracting-- it felt like I was being talked to by someone who assumed that I was in on a joke that I didn't know existed.

I normally love Russian literature, the grand descriptive passages, the passion and so forth. I did not enjoy this book. It's really a very short story padded out by some excessive prose. I really didn't enjoy reading it. I was hoping for something a bit more profound than girl fancies boy, boy doesn't fancy girl, boy is a bit of an arse (to girl and best friend), girl gets marries off, girl becomes huge social success, boy discovers he loves the successful socialite after all, but she won't have him.

The story wasn't profound, had the base story been better I might have put up with the prose a bit more. It was overall quite disappointing

Funny, Rachel. I described the book to my husband the same way that you characterized the plot! Yeah, I agree.

The rhyming pattern in Eugene Onegin was invented by Pushkin, an adaptation of the sonnet form.
I think we need to accept that to fully absorb this novel in poetry you have to be able to speak Russian and read it in its original language. Any translation will always be an approximation. Russians consider him to be the father of Russian literature who paved the way for Gogol, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.
As a novel it's quite short, really a novella, with a rather limited plot, which Rachel outlined above. So the poetry- what Pushkin did with the story- (as Roger Ebert used to say, "HOW it's about what it's about) is really the key element- a reader who feels the rhyming is a distraction doesn't "get it".
You could read the translation by Nabokov, who focused on accuracy of meaning, but about which British professor of Russian A.D. P. Briggs said, "this doggedly literal translation is idiosyncratic and uninspiring". Perhaps reading both Nabokov's version and that by Falen (or another "poetic" one) would give the best understanding short of learning Russian.
I haven't seen the opera "Onegin"; Briggs describes it as being very romantic, which the book is certainly not, being often sarcastic and mocking.
I wouldn't wish to read a book in the style of Onegin frequently, but I thought it fun to stretch my reading into something different. By the way, I don't think anyone has mentioned how Pushkin died- in a duel at age 37! It seems his sister's husband, a French military officer, had been coming on too strongly to Pushkin's wife.

I read James Falen's second translation. I enjoyed the book, but felt sure I was missing a lot. Having read the translator's notes I can only conclude that I need to learn a great deal more about the literary context in which Pushkin was writing, as Pushkin's innovative content, and use of language passed me by. Before I read the notes, I'm afraid, I'd decided that Pushkin wrote verse but not poetry, and that Pope's Rape of the Lock 'did it better'. I was bewildered by Falen's comment that the novel's verse is 'poetry of the highest order' (p. xxi).

I didn't find the rhyme scheme itself intrusive - although I was startled to realise that, whenever I put the book down, for a short while after, I tended to fit whatever prose I then read into the scheme, which was annoying. What I did find intrusive was the fact that the scheme didn't seem to be used to any particular end. Falen remarks that the stanzas are organised differently (e.g. as a single unit, as an octect and sestet etc.), but not to what end.

Perhaps my problem is greater than not having enough background knowledge - perhaps I also need to be able to read the Russian.

George wrote: "By the way, I don't think anyone has mentioned how Pushkin died- in a duel at age 37! It seems his sister's husband, a French military officer, had been coming on too strongly to Pushkin's wife...."

A duel! Well, that is rather fitting I suppose. Sad he lost though, I wonder what happened to his poor wife after that.

I'm agreeing with and enjoying everyone's comments.

I did think about the duel, because of recently reading A Hero of Our Time. (I recommend it, by the way, for anyone who felt a little disappointed by this one.) The author of Hero, Mikhail Lermontov, came after Pushkin, and was also considered a big influencer of later Russian writers. He also died in a duel, at an even younger age, and after writing a book, Hero, about a character that dies in a duel. (It's sort of a picture-within-a-picture story all around.)

Here's a little article about both writers' deaths: https://www.rbth.com/arts/2014/05/20/...

I found that rhyming intrusive for the first Chapter where I felt was very dry and hard to continue. However it was not at all a problem in later chapters. For the first Chapter, I just paid more attention to the rhyming rather than the works and studied that instead of the content, which made me more used to the rhyming in preparation for the later chapters.

While the plot is rather usual, overall, some details are rather interesting (that Tatyana finds out about Onegin’s true self in his abandoned house). I also found her lovesickness earlier in the book quite relatable in some ways.

I can see why many consider this to be the best of Russian Literature. It is a novel, a romance with much social thought interwoven. For example the stanza when Onegin first arrives at the estate he has inherited, he decides to allow the Serfs to be paid a small amount for their labour. He goes on to write the two conflicting attitudes from others. On a more subtle note, Onegin’s killing of Lensky also symbolises a change in the literature scene, the transition from poetry to prose and the novel is particularly effective in expressing this because of the extensive use of ‘the poet’ to refer to Lensky. Many other opinions are interlaced between the stanzas and are definitely worth understanding to understand the era and also the ideas, many of which are still relevant today (like the Serf example aforementioned).

*paid more attention to the rhyming than the words. Pardon my typos (which are definitely more than what I can ever spot).

Finished. I ended up reading Falen’s translation. And my own copy with Hofstadter’s translation goes unread back on the shelf.

What a strange ending. What is happening here? Another duel? Or..... nothing?

What I liked best was the dialogues. Impressive to have them rhyming and not seem forced.

This begins the June 2025 Buddy Read of Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin. Warning the posts above this one will contain spoilers.

I've started this today for he 2025 buddy read. I'm using the Gutenberg version (Spalding translation). I read this in college but my copy from back then is nowhere to be found.

Jurij M. Lotman published a long monograph on the "Onegin" in 1975 ("Roman v stichach Puškina «Evgenij Onegin»"). I don't know whether there's an English edition; I read the Italian (Il testo e la storia. L'«Evgenij Onegin» di Puškin). Very dense and equally enlightening; it made a huge difference between my first read of Puškin and the second one, both last year.

Have never read anything Pushkin. Will participate for this book discussion.

Luffy Sempai wrote: "Have never read anything Pushkin. Will participate for this book discussion."

What? Chapter 1 has rhymes? Not sure about this now.

Just heard about this buddy read, so i will have to catch up later, but definitely interested! Didnt we read Puskin earlier this year? (I am trying to get more knowledgeable of Russian literature. Before this year it was zero. 😬😅)

I read this one a while ago (although not that long ago). Don't remember much but gave it 3-stars. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I read the free version from PoetryinTranslation.com which is my go too for most older poetry and i find it usually pretty good.

I've ordered a used copy of the Falen translation, and am looking forward to diving into this! I'm not a fan of a lot of Russian novels, I prefer the plays and poetry, so we'll see how this goes for me.

I'm sorry you missed the updates, April, I think you were the one who suggested doing a buddy read in the first place. Oh well, that happens. I do hope someone else will be reading this, too. I've never done a buddy read before.

Life is getting crazy, and I haven't started this yet. I still plan on reading it as soon as I can get to it, though.

I finished my 3rd reading of this :oD
review here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I finished this reread, this time using the Falen English translation which was good. Pushkin is a Russian great preceding but influencing many Russian authors to follow and not being able to read the poem in Russian or not being familiar enough with much of Russian culture and history to fully grasp the details what Pushkin is referencing is a difficulty, but I think we can still appreciate the poem. I recommend reading George P's post from an earlier read. four star read for me.

I finally received this from a library outside of my own. I did not expect the rhyming to be such a factor in reading this, but it was. I agree that it was a distraction, albeit a nice one. The translation I read was by Stanley Mitchell - I am sure I will be rereading this by a different translator at some future time.