American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages

American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages
Lyric and Narrative Consciousness in Eugene Onegin

Author(s): Craig Cravens
Source: The Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 46, No. 4 (Winter, 2002), pp. 683-709
Published by: American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages
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LYRICAND NARRATIVECONSCIOUSNESSIN
EUGENE ONEGIN
CraigCravens,The Universityof Texasat Austin
In his commentson Eugene Onegin, BakhtinconsidersPushkin'snovel in

verse a typicalnovel (1981, 43-49). This articleis not an attemptto refute
Bakhtin'sconclusions,but ratherto demonstratethat the situationis more
interestingand complex than Bakhtin assumes. It is Pushkin'smastery of
the forms of consciousnesscharacteristicof the lyric, I will argue, which
allows him to create full and complete literarycharacters.One must keep
in mindthat Pushkinwas writingat a time before the greatliterarydevelop-
ments in psychologicalRealism. Pushkin'sown creation and presentation
of consciousnessis distinctlypre-Realisticand, I will argue, more lyrically-
based than Bakhtin allows. By negotiating among the essentially "lyric"
realmsof author,narrator,and characters,Pushkindevelops his characters
psychologicallyas far as possible within the limits of his literarymethod,
creating charactersthat appear to exist independentlyfrom the author-
narrator'sconsciousness,but whichdo not constitutefully-embodied"pro-
saic"consciousnesses.EugeneOneginis indeed a "poet'snovel," but not in
terms of formalmarkersalone.
By employing the lyric in a narrative situation, Pushkin exploits the
capacityof lyric poetry to express a state of mind and combines it with a
fictionallycreatedcharacterand world. Althoughwritingin an era that did
not yet have fully roundedpsychologicalprose characters,Pushkin'smas-
tery of the different genres of lyric poetry allows him to create different
authorialimages or lyricpersonaewhich, when incorporatedinto the con-
text of his novel in verse, create psychologicallyconvincing characters
distinct from the overarchingconsciousness of the author-narrator.In
short, by mixingthe genres of lyric and novel, Pushkincreatesan unprece-
dented type of psychologicalnarration.
The narratorof Oneginis, to say the least, an idiosyncraticfigure. Push-
kin at times (and most insistentlyin chapter8) invitesthe readerto view the
narratoras an image of the author himself by attributingto him certain
autobiographicalfacts. At other times, he mitigatesthis view by pointingto
SEEJ,Vol.46, No. 4 (2002):p. 683-p. 709 683

684 Slavicand East EuropeanJournal
the bordersof the fictionalworld and stressingthe artificialityof his literary

construct,so that the image of the narratoremergesas a vague and stylized
portraitof the author,comprisingelements from the worlds-ofboth fiction
and reality.
In both guises, however, the narratorof Eugene Oneginis an authorita-
tive presence both omniscient and omnipresent. His temporal point of
narrationis some yearsafterthe event he narrates;spatiallyandpsychologi-
cally, however,he does not seek complete independencefrom his fictional
world. That is, he is in no sense a detached, objective observerof the type
we find in so many of the novels of later Realist writers. He is physically
present in parts of the story as Onegin's friend, and he does not hide his
psychologicaland emotional engagementwith the characterswhose lives
he relates- especiallyTatiana's.This duality- the narrator'sauthoritative
presence above and beyond events, both spatially and temporally,com-
bined with his occasional physical participationin the events themselves
and his emotional engagement with the characters--is typical of first-
person narration.
In first-personnarration, the reader's attention is usually divided be-
tween two spatio-temporalrealms, that of the narratorand that of the
narratedevents, and the narrationalcenter of gravity oscillates between
them. In some first-personworks, the narrativeprocess itself dominates,
while in others it all but disappearsso that charactersand events of the
story absorb the reader's attention almost exclusively.In both cases, the
author combines two modes of experience in the single persona of the
narrator.As a characterin the story, he is a fictional being within the
fictionalworld. This is the narrator'sexperiencingself. At the other end of
the spectrumwe have the narratingself: the fictional present tense be-
comes past, and the narratorreflectson events with the benefitof temporal
distance and hindsight. Usually the narratorof a first-personnovel oscil-
lates between these two perspectivalmodes depending on the effect the
authorwishes to produceon the reader.The narratingself is of coursestill
fictional,but only from a point of view outside the text. Withinthe text, the
first-personnarratoris "real."For this reason the Germannarrativetheo-
rist Kate Hamburger(313) refers to first-personnarrationas a "feigned
reality statement [fingierte Wirklichkeitsaussage]."
This descriptionof a first-personnovel is appropriateto Eugene Onegin
only with some qualification.Firstof all, Pushkin'snarratordirectlypartici-
pates in the fictional world in the first chapter only.1For the rest of the
novel he functionsas an omniscientthird-personnarratorlocated beyond
the fictional world. He often digresses from the fabulaic sequence of
events2to relate informationfrom his own biography,but after the first
chapter,these biographicalallusionsseem beyond the fictionalpale of the
novel becausethe narratoris no longerembodiedin the text. This pointsto

LyricandNarrative in EugeneOnegin
Consciousness 685
another feature of Onegin, which distinguishesit from conventionalfirst-

person 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 acquirechar-
acter 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 charac-
ters. 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 character-
istic of Eugene Onegin. Most of the story is told retrospectivelyfrom a
seeminglythird-personviewpoint, but at times the narratorenters his fic-
tional worldto become a charactertherein. Unlike the narratorof Demons,
however,Pushkin'snarratordoes not become fictionalizedin his own narra-
tive. Conversely,I suggest, the fictional realm of the literaryheroes be-
comes 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 autono-
mous beings. Despite chunksof "eventmaterial"(Dostoevsky'smock exe-
cution, 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 au-
thor. The narratorat times appears to be confused by events, or to lose
track of his characters.At other times he is an omnipotentand omnipres-
ent being commentingon events or on the novel itself. Pushkin'smethod of
characterconstruction,however, is in essence different from that of later

Realist authors.For example, while it would be unthinkablefor a criticnot

to distinguishthe narratorfrom the author in Tolstoy's or Dostoevsky's
works, the term "author-narrator" with reference to Eugene Onegin is
quite common. Pushkin employs own persona and biographyin a way
his
later authorswould find unacceptable.Let us look at some examples.
i. Autobiography
In general, Formalist and Structuralistcriticismtends to stabilize the
relationshipbetween authorand narrator:the authoris presumedto keep
his narratorat an ironic arm'slength. In Onegin, however, Pushkinkeeps
this distance in constant flux, now approaching,now receding from his
narrativepersona. By packing his text with autobiographicalreferences,
Pushkinenvelops his novel in the largerextra-textual,real world of author
and reader,so that the worldsof fiction and realityare forced to intersect.
Alreadyin the second stanza, Oneginis introducedas the hero of the novel
and simultaneouslyas the friend of the author-narratorwho teases the
readerwith the possibilityhe is Pushkinhimself (or a simulacrumthereof)
at the end of the stanza by commentingon his own real-life exile to the
Crimea:"No vredensever dlia menia [But the north is harmfulfor me]."
Laterin the chapter,the narratorhimself appearsas a characterin a remi-
niscentialsection of the text as the friend of Onegin. He in fact becomes a
fictionalcharacter.The reader, too, is mapped onto the fictionalplane of
the novel throughthe author-narrator's constantapostrophizing.For exam-
ple, the author-narrator suggests in the second stanza that the reader and
the novel's hero may have been born in the same place, "Gdemozhet byt'
rodilis' vy [Where perhaps you were born]." More subtly in the same
stanza,he rhymesmoi priiatel'[myfriend],meaningof courseOnegin, with
chitatel'[the reader], and thereby introduces a covert semantic consan-
guinitybetween protagonistand reader.Thereby,three differentworlds-
the worlds of the character,author, and reader-come to exist intermit-
tently on the same plane; at the same time, however, they exist separately
in their own spheres. The "I" of the novel as a friend of Onegin (and
perhapsacquaintanceof the readeras well) is not identicalto the biographi-
cal author.However, he is presentedas such, and thereinlies the contradic-
tion. Dynamicallyand irregularlythe author-narratormixes the worlds of
reader, author, and character.Fixed borders collapse, and life overflows
into and animatesart and vice versa.
This almost mechanical mixing and intersecting of levels is one way
Pushkinbringshis world to life. It is not, however,unique to Pushkin.As
is often remarked,the principleof authorialinterferencewas quite com-
mon in the tradition of EnlightenmentRealism (El'sberg 257). We may
also look to European Sentimental and Romantic literature for closer
sourcesof influence. Constant,Richardson,and especiallyByron likewise
createdcharactersby projectingtheir own personalitiesonto the page. For

Lyricand NarrativeConsciousnessin EugeneOnegin 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 self-
portraits.Authorialsubjectivityprojectedonto third-personnarration,the
emotional engagementof the narratingvoice, and the ambiguousbound-
aries 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 Push-
kin's achievement, I suggest, is the lyrical essence of his work, which, in
ways I will try to demonstratebelow, frees the charactersfrom the author-
narrator'scontrol.
ii. Lyric and Narrative

From a narrativeperspective,the device Pushkinemploys to portrayhis
characterspsychologicallyis free-indirectdiscourse. Pushkin describes a
character'scognitive and emotional life by having his author-narrator
speak in the words and intonations of the characterwhile the narrator
technicallyremains outside, speaking grammaticallyin his own voice. A
brief example from James Joyce's A Portraitof the Artist [1916] demon-
strateshow this type of narrationtraditionallyfunctionsin prose:
He haltedsuddenlyandheardhis heartin the silence. How farhadhe walked?Whathourwas
it? (189)
The first sentence is a standardnarrationaldescription,whereas the two

followingincorporatethe character'semotionaland interrogativediction-
they seem to issue from the character'smind--but they retain the third-
personreferenceto the characterand the standardpast tense of narration.
While grammaticallybelongingto the narrator,emotionallythey belong to

the character.Roy Pascalcalls this mode of narrationa "dualvoice, which,

throughvocabulary,sentence structure,and intonationsubtlyfuses the two
voices of the characterand the narrator"(26). Bakhtin'sconcept of voice
zones elaboratesthe dualisticnature of free-indirectdiscourse.According
to Bakhtin, each character has his own voice zone [rechevaia zona], "his
own sphereof influenceon the authorialcontext surroundinghim, a sphere
that extends--and often quite far--beyond the boundariesof the direct
discourseallotted to him" (1981, 320). Within these zones, a given char-
acter's speech patterns and modes of expression dominate. At different
times, the narrator,author, or other charactersmay enter a character's
zone and speak from within it, that is, employ that character'smode of
speaking,thinking,and expressionwithout erasingthe boundarybetween
the two speech centers. This rich and flexible "quotingwithout quotation
marks"[bez kavychek]is, accordingto Bakhtin, among the most common
means of transmittinginner speech in the novel (1981, 319). It allows the
author'svoice to mergewith the character'swhile at the same time preserv-
ing its own expressivecontours;that is, one still recognizesthe presenceof
two voices. For the generalreader,free-indirectdiscourseis barelydiscern-
ible; in fact, its effect depends on its being almost unconsciouslyappre-
hended as a distincttype of narration.
In the history of fiction, free-indirectdiscourse occurs occasionallyin
eighteenth-centurynovels, where it is often difficultto distinguishfrom
mere narrativecommentary.It is when the novel begins to turn inward,
duringthe Realist period of the nineteenthcentury,that this discoursetype
becomes commonand requiresmore rigorousdelineation.
Pushkin's narrator in Onegin is not the dimmed personality of later
Realistfiction,who silentlyenters a character'spsycheand portraysit from
within. He is as vociferous and intrusiveas Fielding and Sterne who only
sporadicallyresort to free-indirectdiscourse.It is Pushkin'smasteryof the
lyric and poetic form that allows him his distinctly accurate and well-
focused access to - and creationof- a character'spsyche.
iii. The Lyric3

Towarda definitionof the lyric, it will be helpful to begin convention-
ally--by contrastingit to narrative.The contrastbetween lyric and narra-
tive is of long-standingderivation.It is commonlyheld that narrativefore-
groundssequence and metonymy,and lyric foregroundssimultaneityand
metaphor(Jakobson).Narrativeconcentrateson story, lyric on a state of
mindor clusterof feelings. The lyricpresentsa speaker'ssubjectiveexperi-
ence 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

Lyricand NarrativeConsciousnessin Eugene Onegin 689
conception of poetry in general as non-mimetic became widespread during

the Romantic period in Europe when the presentation of the more visceral
life of the poet displaced the rationalist, Neoclassical poetics of mimesis
and genre hierarchies. Poets sought expressions of emotion rather than
reproductions of surroundings (Abrams 50). Lyric expression was per-
ceived as authorial self-projection, and most Romantic critics agreed that
the origin of lyric poetry was in passionate utterance rather than, as Aris-
totle had assumed, an instinct for imitation (Abrams 101). In the lyric, the
poet is at the center, and by the late eighteenth century, it had become the
epitome of the purest poetry in English and German aesthetic theories,
thereby challenging Aristotle's mimetic theory of art (Abrams 88-89). This
widespread shift in aesthetic theory had its effect on the development of
theories of cognition as well.
The revolution in epistemology made famous in philosophy by Kant
(that the mind imposes the forms of space and time on the external world -
or, expressed more generally, that the perceiving mind discovers what it has
itself partly made) occurred among Romantic poets before it became wide-
spread in academic philosophy (Abrams 58). What was "real" for a Euro-
pean Romantic was a subjective attitude toward the world rather than a
mimetic reflection of it. Reality was created in the mind of the subjective
consciousness. The subject matter of a lyric is a subjective attitude toward
reality, which for Kant and the Romantics is closer to actual epistemologi-
cal functioning than narrative mimesis.
Besides subjective expression, another widely-acknowledged aspect of
the lyric is its universality, for even though it is the most subjective form of
literature, it always strives for the general, to depict spiritual life as universal
(Levin). The lyric encourages the reader to identify with a single point of
view, but the point of view is presumably to be nearly universally accessible.
Lyric poetry is by no means always the direct speech of the poet about
himself and his feelings, but it is always an exposed point of view; it displays
the relation of a lyric subject to its surroundings. The reader is invited to
identify with the speaker's viewpoint and emotionally engage reality as does
the speaker. In narrative, on the other hand, the word is used denotatively to
create a fictional reality that pre-exists the utterance. The mimetic function
of narrative is replaced by the expressive function of lyric. And thus we
arrive at the paradoxical conclusion that readers apprehend the lyric utter-
ance as they would a real utterance and not a fictional one, a paradox
because the lyric "owes less" to reality and is less constrained by it.4
iv. Lyric in the Novel

Onegin is a work both narrative and lyric. In the main, it foregrounds
plot or narrative to create a fictional reality of characters and events. At
numerous points, however, the lyric impulse comes to the fore, and the

speaker expresses a lyrical, subjective attitude. Most Russians, for exam-

ple, 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 self-
referential and less directly descriptive or communicative. The speaker's
attitude toward "reality," whether it be fictional or non-fictional, is fore-
grounded. 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 con-
sciousness, 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 expres-
sions 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 autono-
mous intelligence - of his characters.
Often during the lyric sections of Eugene Onegin, the lyric "I" is sup-
planted by a fictional one which assumes a life of its own. Through free-
indirect discourse, the lyric "I" attaches itself to a character and poses as a
subjective attitude toward the fictional reality. Here, to take one outra-
geously 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:
ToMy ysK HeT oqapOBaHHH,
Toro 3MHWSBOCIIOMHHaHHA,
Toro pacKasHbe rpbI3eT.
Bce 3TOMaCTO
nipHgaeT

Lyric and Narrative Consciousness in Eugene Onegin 691
Boaibmyronpenecrb pa3roBopy.
CnepBa OHerHHa SI3bIK
MeHI cMyula.: HOA npHBbIK
K ero 3sBHreaJIHoMy
cnopy. (1.xlvi)
He who has lived as thinkingbeing
Withinhis soul musthold men small;
He who can feel is alwaysfleeing
The ghost of daysbeyondrecall;
For him enchantment'sdeep infection
Is gone; the snake of recollection
And grimrepentancegnawshis heart.
All this, of course, can help impart
Great charm to private conversation;
And thoughthe languageof my friend
At firstdisturbedme, in the end
I liked his causticdisputation.6
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 subjec-
tive expression of Onegin's lyric "I." The lyric portion portrays and
thematizes a character's engagement with reality, his own subjective experi-
ence, 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 im-
age, 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, Push-
kin allows the reader access to a subjective mind. Subsequently, the author
attaches the lyrics to a fictional character to create the illusion of an autono-
mously 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 characteris-
tics is specificity of place and time. The Realist novel conventionally oper-
ates by developing a recognizable fictional world distinct from the reader's

692 Slavic and East European Journal
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 multi-
faceted 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 through-
out the novel. Pushkin's poetic narration thereby creates not only distinc-
tive, 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
With his Ochakovdecoration."
Lensky's direct discourse is, of course, signaled by the quotation marks. In

the subsequent stanza, the narrator continues Lensky's thought grammati-
cally in his own (the narrator's) voice:
H TaMKe HanIIHCblOneqaJnbHoi
OTUaH MaTepH,B cJIe3ax,
OHnpax naTpHapxanbHbIl...
rIOqTHJI
YBbI! Ha XaH3HeHHbIX
6pa3Aax
MrHOBeHHOI )KaTBOfinOKOJIeHbSI,

lo TafgHOfiBoJe npOBHgeHb6,
BocxoAr.T, 3peIOT H nalayT;
XpyrHe HMBocJieg HAyr...
TaK Hame BeTpeHoeniieMa
PacreT, BOJIHyeTCa,KHnHT
H K rpo6y npaAeosB TecHHT.
ripHieT, npHAeT H Hame BpeMS,
H HamILIBHyKHB 1o6pbift qac
H3 MHpa BbITeCHiT H Hac! (2.xxxviii)
And then with verse of quickened sadness
He honored too, in tears and pain,
His parents' dust ... their memory's gladness ....
Alas! Upon life's furrowed plain-
A harvest brief, each generation,
By fate's mysterious dispensation,
Arises, ripens, and must fall;
Then others too must heed the call.
For thus our giddy race gains power:
It waxes, stirs, turns seething wave,
Then crowds its forebears toward the grave.
And we as well shall face that hour
When one fine day our grandsons true
Straight out of life will crowd us too!
The stanza continues the lament of the passing of generations begun by

Lensky. Grammatically, the narrator seems to speak, but Lensky's elegiac
tone, his voice zone, dominates. The next stanza moves closer yet to the
author-narrator's "I."
rIOKaMecTb ynHBaftTecbelo,
Cefi nerKofi )KH3HHIO,Apy3ba!
Ee HHITO)KHOCTb pa3yMeIo,
H MaJIo K Heft nIpHB3aH i;
Jl, npiH3paKOB3aKpbIJIa BexcbI;
Ho OTanJieHHbieHaAeieKbI
TpeBoxaT cepJuie HHorla:
Be3 HenpHMeTHoro cniega
MHe 6bIo 6 rpycTHOMHpocTaBHTb.
)KHBy, nHrmyHe Rni noxsan;
Ho A 6bi KaxeTCs xKenan
Ile,aanbHbl x)Kpe6HiCBOHInpocJIaBHTb,
XTo6 o60 MHe,KaKBepHbhfi gpyr,
HanoMHHJI XOTbeAHHbIlt3ByK. (2.xxxix)
So meanwhile, friends, enjoy your blessing:

This fragile life that hurries so!
Its worthlessness needs no professing,
And I'm not loathe to let it go;
I've closed my eyes to phantoms gleaming,
Yet distant hopes within me dreaming

Still stir my heartat times to flight:

I'd grieveto quit this world'sdim light
And leave no trace, howeverslender.
I live, I write- not seekingfame;
And yet, I think, I'd wish to claim
For my sad lot its shareof splendor-
At least one note to lingerlong,
Recalling,like some friend, my song.
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 coxpaHeHHaAscyYb60t,
BbITb MOKeT B JIeTe He HOTOHeT
CTpo4a cjaraeMaa MHOA;
BbITbMOweT(jiecTHaSHaARewa!)
YKaxKeT6yxyumkHHesewcga
Ha MOAnpocjaaBeHHbIAnopTpeT,
H MOJIBHT:
TO-TO6bIJI Io0T! (2.xl)
And may it touch some heart with fire;

And thus preserved by fate's decree,
The stanza fashioned by my lyre
May yet not drown in Lethe's sea;
Perhaps (a flattering hope's illusion!)
Some future dunce with warm effusion
Will point my portrait out and plead:
"This was a poet, yes indeed!"
The "I" of the stanza belongs clearly to the narrator who broadens, modi-
fies, 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 narra-
tive, 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 char-
acter, 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," employ-
ing the fictional world in the same way any lyric "I" would employ non-
fictional 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

initiallyapprehendsthis "I"as he does the poetic "I"of a real person, but

he subsequentlyrealizesthat the "I"is a charactercreatedby Pushkin.The
reader participatesin a character'semotions expressed lyrically,but soon
realizes that the poet is speakingthrougha created self. Throughthe cre-
ated character,the poet finds an emotion correspondingto a private emo-
tion of his own. He is able to expressa sentimenthe otherwisecould not, or
did not choose to, expressin his own voice, since the mediationof a created
consciousnessdissociateshim from the emotion.8
What makes this shifting of speakers' identities possible in Eugene
Onegin is an inherent feature of the lyric--the difficultyof determining
definitively and exclusively who is speaking, whether it be the author,
narrator,character,and when, where, and to whom he is speaking. As
Sharon Cameron notes, generalizingon this phenomenon, "In lyric, the
speaker'soriginremainsdeliberatelyunspecified,unlike charactersin nar-
ratives, whose first task is to particularizethemselves"(208). Lyric speak-
ers are non-specified and generalized--they seek epochal and trans-
historical expression and characterization.(Compare this chronotope to
that of the novel, where the significantfeaturesare particularityof descrip-
tion, characterization,and placement in a concrete time and space (Watt
17-18)). In short, the lyric voice is a shifter--all depends on the point of
view fromwhichthe lyricis uttered.But it is a shifterthat can literallybond
to anythingand start to speak (unlike novel voices). The speakerof a lyric
has no background. Hence, the shift from one lyric "I" to another in
Onegindoes not cause the dissonanceone would sense were the speaker's
identityin a novel to change.
The non-specificityof speakerand addresseein lyricreveals a significant
differencebetween the functioningof free-indirectdiscoursein prose and
lyric, and can help us see how lyriccharacterizationdiffersfrom character-
ization in a novel. Let us view the thesis from a Bakhtinianperspective.
Since the identity of the speaker of a lyric is unspecified, one cannot
distinguishthe two distinctvoices of the "dualvoice" of free-indirectdis-
courseas one can in narrative.Free-indirectdiscoursein prose relies on the
presenceof two voices, or more accurately,voice zones.
In contrast, the instancesof quasi free-indirectdiscoursejust described
in Onegin express only one voice. Due to the non-specificityof the lyric
voice, irony or sympathyfrom the narratoremerges only afteror before a
character'slyric passage, never within. Such a reading helps us see why
Bakhtinwould characterizepoetry as single-voiced(1981, 286). If the lyric
speakeris unspecifiedand undifferentiated,a second voice withinor along-
side would likewisehave to be unspecified.For this, surely,is a corollaryto
the dialogicprinciple:that two voices cannot coexist as autonomousvoices
expected to interact, if neither is distinguished.The narratorenters the
voice zone of his character(a lyric voice zone) and expresseshimself from

withinthat zone as if he were the character.Two voices, however, are not

heardwithina single utterance.Only one resounds,the identityof whichis
later revealed to be that of author-narratoror character.
Pushkin, through his narration, employs this psychologicalmethod to
characterizechiefly Onegin and Lensky. The world views of these two
charactersare best expressed by the universalizingand isolating genre of
the lyric.Tatiana'spsyche and structuredrole in the work is more complex,
and here we encountera differentmethod of psychologicalportrayal.
v. Tatiana
The narrator'sattitude toward Onegin and Lensky is one of almost
locker-roomcamaraderie.He speaks of them from the point of view of a
boon companion, of one who has experienced similar stages of life. He
knows Lensky's Romantic sentiment, Onegin's splenetic Byronism, and
althoughall three charactersseem to be at differentpointsin theirdevelop-
ment, their progressionis along the same trajectoryand throughthe same
life experiences.
The narrator'sattitudetowardTatiana,by contrast,is protective,and he
appearshesitant, even reluctant,to narrateher. As has often been pointed
out in the literature,Tatianais initiallycharacterizedchieflyby her dissimi-
larityto her sister:
HH KpacoToA ceCTpbI CBOel,

HH cBexecrboK ee pyMaHOlA
He npHBjeeKia6 oHa oqei.
[...]
He yMeJia
OHa JnacKaTTbcS
K OTRy, HHK MaTepH CBoeif. (2.xxv)
Neither with her sister's beauty

Nor with her rosy freshness
Would she attract one's eyes
[. ..]
She never learned to show affection,
To hug her parents -neither one.9
Such negative physical characterizationsuggests qualities of Tatianathat

elude directand precise description.Moreover,it anticipatesthe narrator's
psychologicaldepictionof her.
Unlikehis lyricportrayalof Onegin'spsyche and despiteher superficially
more "lyrical"nature, the narratorwill not or cannot speak directly for
Tatiana:he will not express her thoughts or attitude through lyric free-
indirectdiscourseor any other type of narrationthat createsthe impression
that he knows her. This does not imply,of course, that she has no discern-
ible psychiclife or that she is not a psychologicallyconvincingor complex

character. She has, in fact, the most complex, developed, and dynamic
mental life and world view of any of the characters, which requires differ-
ent and more subtle narrative means.
Similar to the vocal dynamic we saw in the example from Joyce, Push-
kin'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 repre-
sents 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 TeMgymuaB Heft HbIJIa,

H cJIe3 6bI nOJIOHTOMHbIiiB30p.
B,pyr TonoT! . . KpoBb ee 3acTbIJIa.
BOT6iiiKe! cKayr ... H Ha aBOp
j
EsreHHfi!<Ax!> -H ner'e TeHH
TaTbHHanpbIr sB pyrHe ceHH,
C KpbiJIbn
a HaRBOP,H npSMOB cag,
JIeTHT, JIeTHT;B3IrIHyTb Hasaa
He cMeeT;MHrOM
o6excaIa
KypTHHbI, MOCTHKH,
JI)KoK,
Anjieio K o3epy, JecoK,
KycrbI CHpeHnepeJIoMaJia,
Io uBeTHHKaMJIeTI K py'bIO,
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

To glancebehindher; on she pushes-

Past gardenplots, smallbridges,lawn,
The lakewaypath, the wood; and on
She flies and breaksthroughlilac bushes,
Past seedbedsto the brook- so fast
That, panting,on a benchat last.
Notice how the two exclamations grammatically voiced by the narrator

"Vdrug topot! [. . .] Vot blizhe! [Then sudden hoof beats! [.. .] They're
closer!]" reflect Tatiana's anxiety. Not only do the exclamations seem to be
generated from Tatiana's perspective, but the rushed cadence of the whole
stanza (characterized by frequent enjambments that, significantly, run on
to the next stanza with the fateful and Biblically-laden verb Upala [She
fell]) reflects her physical and emotional situation and its whole liminal
vulnerability. Here we see the narrator's fundamental method of character-
izing Tatiana psychologically: in many of the narrative passages relating to
Tatiana, the narrator speaks from her viewpoint using her words and man-
ner of speaking, yet the narrator's own voice is always present alongside.
He sees her and can contextualize her fate. This insinuates her voice and
presence into the fabric of the narrative world.
In the early descriptions of Tatiana, the narrator uses this method with a
shade of irony; he predicts and presumes knowledge. In the following
passage from chapter 3, the narrator apostrophizes Tatiana in her own
Romantic/Sentimental language (emphasis added):
TaTbSHa,MHias TaTbaHa!
C To601 Tenepb S cje3bi j.bIo;
TbI B pyKHMOXHOrO THpaHa
YK oTTaJIacyab6y CBOIo.
HorH6HemE,MHJIaI;HOnpegAe
TbI 6 ocAenumenbHOUi naaeexc)e
EBaaxeHcmoo meMHoe 30BeIIIb,
TbI nezy XH3HH y3Haemub,
TbI nbemb 60oJue6Hbl1ua iceAlauui.(3.xv)
Tatiana, O my dear Tatiana!

I shed with you sweet tearstoo late;
Relying on a tyrant's honor,
You've now resigned to him your fate.
My dear one, you are doomed to perish;
But first in dazzling hope you nourish
And summon forth a somber bliss,
You learnlife'ssweetness... feel its kiss,
And drinkthe draughtof love'stemptations.
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

expressing irony or sympathy regarding his character is notoriously diffi-

cult. 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 communica-
tion act and as self-expression. First of all, the genre of the epistolary novel
as practiced by Richardson, Rousseau, and countless others in the eigh-
teenth 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 episto-
lary form are obvious and many - the implausibility of such incessant writ-
ing, its prolixity and repetition- but although the genre, as Walter Raleigh
writes, "inaugurated a century and a half of hyperasthesia" (161), it moti-
vated the revelation of a character's subjective inner life. The epistolary
novel revealed and succeeded in tracking the minute movements of con-
sciousness with heretofore incomparable detail. What differentiates this
method from later Realistic psychological descriptions is Realism's individu-
ation of character. In Sentimentalism, all characters are perceived as emanat-
ing 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 psycho-
logical presentation, and she becomes the first character of the novel al-
lowed 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

least one of Pushkin's contemporary reviewers thought Pushkin had al-

ready 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 gen-

eral: 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 non-
observance 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 sym-
pathetic and less ironic, and begins to narrate from her viewpoint and reflect
her mood. In the following passage from chapter 7, Tatiana has been re-
jected 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
CuibHee crpacrb ee ropHrT,
H 06 OHerHHegaJIeKoM
EAcepAuerpoMqeroBopHT.
OHa ero He 6ygeT BHseTb;
B HeM HeHaBHReTb
OHa OJiDKHa

Y6Hitly 6paTa cBoero;

Ho3T norH6 ... HOy)Kero
HHKTOHe IOMHHT, yK JlpyroMy
Ero Heaecra oT?anJacb
KaK JbIMno He6y rony6oMy,
O HeMlsa cepgla, MOKeT6bITb,
Erue rpycTT ... Ha qTO rpyTrHTb?. .
EBbi seBep. He6o MepmIo. BogbI
CTpyHUIHcb THXO.)KyK yacxKan.
Yx pacxoAHncb xopoBoEbI;
YXK3a peKOfi,gbIMacb,nbrian
OroHb pbl6aIHA. B none qHCTOM,
JIyHbInpH cBeTe cepe6pHcroM,
B CBOH Me'TbInorpyxKeHa,
TaTba Ha jonro tuna onHa.
IIIja, IIia. IHBApyrnepeq co6oio
C XOnMarocnoacKHfiBHAHT AOM,
CeieHbe, poiiy nog XOnMOM
H cag Ha; cBeTJnoIO peKoIo.
OHa rjIsiHT- cepgiIe B Heft
3a6Haocb iuaie H cHJlaHekt. (7.xiv, xv)
And in the solitude her passion
Burns even stronger than before,
Her heart speaks out in urgent fashion
Of faraway Eugene the more.
She'll never see him ... and be grateful,
She finds her brother's slayer hateful
And loathes the awful thing he's done.
The poet's gone ... and hardly one
Remembers him; his bride's devotion
Has flown to someone else instead;
His very memory now has fled
Like smoke across an azure ocean.
Two hearts, perhaps, remain forlorn
And mourn him yet.. . . But wherefore mourn? .
'Twas evening and the heavens darkled.
A beetle hummed. The peasant choirs
Were bound for home. Still waters sparkled.
Across the river, smoky fires
Of fishermen were dimly gleaming.
Tatiana walked, alone and dreaming,
Beneath the moonbeams' silver light
And climbed a gentle hill by night.
She walked and walked ... till with a shiver
She spied a distant hamlet's glow,
A manor house and grove below,
A garden by the glinting river.
And as she gazed upon that place
Her pounding heart began to race.

In the last three words of the first stanza, "Na chto grustit'? . . [But where-
fore mourn?. .]," the readersenses Tatiana'svoice. The free-indirectdis-
coursehere 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
speak directly nor does the narratorexplain analyze her inner life, but
or
his
by adjusting style to the character,the narratordescribesTatianaas if
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'sdevelopment-
youthfulperceptiveness,disenchantment,and, in the present tense of the
novel, maturere-enchantment.The narratoris able to understandand nar-
rate Eugene'scharacterwhichis, in Shaw'swords, "arrestedat the stage of
disenchantment,"because he too experiencedhis own stage of disenchant-
ment, of world-wearyByronism. Tatiana'sdevelopment, I would argue,
followsa similar,but not identical,pattern.In her stageof youthfulenchant-
ment, 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 re-
call, emergedfrom the single-voicedlyric and a confusionof vocal origins.
Tatiana'spsychic life is different in kind from Onegin's. His cynical By-
ronismis 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, how-
ever, 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

intricacies that complicate life.15 Whereas Onegin's character and psychic

life are best expressed by single-voiced, aphoristic "lyrical" language,
Tatiana's character emerges from a multi-voiced, more narratively-oriented
language which endows her with a more complex character, one more at-
tuned to fictional, narrated reality.16In chapter 7 and 8, the narrator time
and again enters Tatiana's voice zone and narrates from her viewpoint. Not
only do Tatiana's mood and character emerge from the combination of
voices, but they come to dominate and shape the texture of the narrative
itself, and the narrator's sympathy toward Tatiana becomes clear from the
overall tone of the final part of Onegin.
Let us now return to Eugene and his fate at the end of the novel. In the
final chapter, we encounter a new, love-struck and pensive Onegin and,
correspondingly, a new presentation of his inner life. Indeed, in the final
chapter, the narrator endows Eugene not with a single lyric voice, but with
a multi-faceted narrative one. Onegin too, finally, has outgrown his own
youthful (that is, prematurely aged) and naive world view. He is no longer
a lyric personality projected onto the surface of prose, blind to the world's
multifaceted nature. Now his previous universally valid, aphoristic lyrics
cannot narrate his new experience of complex, prosaic life. In chapter 8
almost every bit of narration describing Eugene is double-voiced:
OH OCTaBJIqeT
payT TecHbIi,
gOMOi 3aAyMMHBejeT OH;
Me'Tofi TO rpycTHOf, TO npejiecTHof
Ero BCTpeBOeKHnO3IHHfi COH.
rIpocHyJIc OHeMy npHHOCRT
rlHcbMo: KHI3b H nOKOPHOnpOCHT
Ero Ha Benep. <Boxe! K Hef! ..
6yy6yny!> H cKopefi
O 6y
MapaeT OH OTBeTyITHBbIi.
TITOC HHM?B KaKOMOH CTpaHHOMCHe!
TITOIeBeJIbHynOCb
B rIy6HHe
ymIIHXOJIOJHOfH neHHBOA?
J)ocaaa? cyeTHocTb? HJIbBHOBb
3a6oTa IKHOCTH-
JIo6oBb? (8.xxi)
He left the rout in all its splendor
And drovebackhome, immersedin thought;
A swarmof dreams,both sad and tender,
Disturbedthe slumberthat he sought.
He woke to find, with some elation,
PrinceN. had sent an invitation.
"Oh God! I'll see her ... and today!
Oh yes, I'll go!"-and straightaway
He scrawleda note: he'd be delighted.
What's wrong with him? . . . He's in a daze.
What'sstirringin that idle gaze,
What'smade that frigidsoul excited?

Vexation?Pride?Or youth'sold yen

For all the caresof love again?17
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 chap-
ter 8 that they create a new forward-pressing, psychological image of One-
gin. 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 reflec-
tive. 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 Tati-
ana'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 narra-
tor's voice no longer creates the impression of a dominating external con-
sciousness 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.

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 po-
etic, and Caryl Emerson (1995) along the same lines sees Tatiana as repre-
senting 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 "unapproach-
able 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:

JII6BH Bce B03paCTbI nOKOpHbI;

Ho IOHbIM,geBCTBeHHbIM cepgiaM
Ee nopbIsbI 6JIaroTBopHbI,
KaK 6ypH BeriHHMenoJnM:
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 tender-
As 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 move-
ment 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:

BJiaxeH, KTOInpa3AHHKIKH3HH
paHo
OCTaBHJI,He OIIHB RORHa
BoKaja, noJIHoro BHHa,
KTOHe ARoenjee poMaHa
H1BApyryMeJipacCTaTbCac HHM,
KaK X c OHerHHbIMMOHM.(8.1i)
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 frommy Onegindo.
To conclude, let us summarize Pushkin's method of creating apparently

psychologically autonomous beings. In the two basic types of psychological
narration employed in Eugene Onegin--lyric and narrative free-indirect
discourse - the author-narrator overtly employs his own persona and con-
sciousness to endow characters with a psychic life. The narrator modulates
his voice, a poetic voice, among different styles and genres, which at differ-
ent points in the novel both corresponds to and helps create a character's
personality and world view. Through the first-person form, Pushkin is able
to project different facets of his poetic personality onto narrated characters
to create psychologically persuasive characters, each with its own dynamics
and internal logic, but which are ultimately based on what Ginzburg referred
to as the "intensely developing unity" of Pushkin's own poetic persona. The
author-narrator is not fundamentally separate from his characters nor is he
fundamentally separate from the real-life Pushkin and extra-textual reality.
Hence, the voices with which he endows his characters resonate beyond the
fictional world.
I have outlined two kinds of cognitive privilege in Eugene Onegin - lyric
and narrative. The former is ostensibly unproblematic direct psychological
expression or access. The latter, by contrast, is somehow mediated by
another consciousness--the narrator's-and, as in the case of Tatiana,
creates the most complex character in the work.
NOTES
1 And perhaps,as Lotmanpointsout, in chapter5 as a witnessto Tatiana'sfortune-telling
(1980, 268-69).
2 I use the termfabula as distinctfromsiuzhetas definedby Tomashevskii(136-46).
3 My accountof lyricdrawson Ginzburg,Olson, Phelan, Cameron,Abrams,Levin, and
Hamburger.
4 The comparativistEarl Miner points out that the mimeticbasis of Westernpoetics as
expoundedby Aristotle is the exception ratherthan the rule when comparedto other
culturalpoetics: "All other examplesof poetics are foundednot on drama,but on lyric.

Westernliteraturewith its manyfamiliarsuppositionsis a minorityof one, the odd one

out. It has no claimto be normative"(8).
5 This chronologicaldualismfinds an exact parallelin the more overtlyperformativearts
such as operatictime: recitativetells the story and thereforehas narrativeintegrityand
forwardmovement,while aria,as CarylEmersonwrites,"almostbegs to be set free from
the plot" (1986, 153, 165).
6 All translationsof Oneginare fromFalen.
7 In Bakhtin'sterminology,this is stylizationratherthan parody:the authoror narrator
introducesan intention"to make use of someone else's discoursein the directionof its
own particularaspirations"(1984, 193).
8 This dynamicproceedsalong the lines of T. S. Eliot's thirdvoice of poetry,the voice of
the dramaticcharacter,whenthe poet "issayingnot whathe wouldsay in his own person,
but only whathe can say withinthe limitsof one imaginarycharacteraddressinganother
imaginarycharacter"(96).
9 Falen'stranslationslightlymodified.
10 In her monographon Tatiana,Olga PetersHastyclaimsthatTatiana'sbehavioris "never
convention driven but always individual,motivatedfrom within." This is difficultto
accept,however,in view of the author-narrator's gentle ironizingof Tatianain the afore-
mentionedclich6dSentimentaldictionused to describeTatiana'sinnerlife. It seems that
it is not until the end of Oneginthat Tatianaassimilatesand modifiesthese preexisting
modes of behaviorand emergesas, in Hasty'swords,"theprinciplecharacterof Eugene
Onegin"(32).
11 Pushkin'sown attitudetowardSentimentalismwas mixed. In an articleentitled"Journey
from Moscow to St. Petersburg"written between 1833 and 1834, Pushkinwrites of
Richardson'sClarissa,"Manyreaderswill agree with me that Clarissais very wearisome
and dull;nevertheless,Richardson'snovel is of exceptionalmerit"(PSS 11: 244).
12 Pushkinbeganhis own epistolarynovel in 1829,Romanvpis'makh[Novelin Letters],but
nevercompletedit.
13 As Pushkin'scontemporary,the poet Kiukhelbekernoted "inhis eighthchapterthe poet
himselfresemblesTatiana"(Lotman1960, 161).
14 See 7.1iiifor anotherexampleof suchnarration.
15 Lotman (1966) sees the uncoveringof literaryconventionsby the "prose of reality,"
especiallyregardingLensky,as a characteristicfeatureof EugeneOneginandan example
of Pushkin'sdevelopmenttoward"realism."
16 Tynianov(86) hintsat a similarreadingof Onegin.By usingcolloquialintonations,claims
Tynianov,Pushkincreates a thin intonationallayer, which makes the narrativeitself a
kindof indirectspeech.
17 Lotman (1980, 349-57) analyzesthe variousviewpointsand voices in the first part of
chapter8.
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.

Eliot, T. S. On Poetryand Poets.Toronto:McGraw-HillRyersonLtd, 1976.

El'sberg, Ia. E. "Pushkini razvitierealizmav mirovoiliterature."Vzaimosviazii vzaimo-
deistvienatsional'nykhliteratur.Moskva:AkademiiaNauk, 1961. 249-67.
Emerson, Caryl. Boris Godunov: Transpositionsof a Russian Theme. Bloomington, IN:
IndianaUP, 1986.
"Tatiana."A Plot of Her Own: The FemaleProtagonistin RussianLiterature.Ed.
Sona StephanHoisington.Evanston,IL: NorthwesternUP, 1995. 6-20.
Ginzburg,Lidiia. O lirike.Leningrad:Sovetskiipisatel', 1974.
Greenleaf,Monika."Pushkin'sByronicApprenticeship:A Problemin CulturalSyncretism."
SlavicReview53.4 (Winter1994):382-98.
Hamburger,Kate. TheLogic of Literature.Trans.MarilynnRose. Bloomington,IN: Indiana
UP, 1973.
Hasty,Olga Peters. Pushkin'sTatiana.Madison,WI: U of WisconsinP, 1999.
Jakobson,Roman. "TwoAspects of Languageand Two Types of Aphasic Disturbances."
Languagein Literature.Ed. KrystynaPomorskaand Stephen Rudy. Cambridge,MA:
HarvardUP, 1987. 95-114.
Joyce,James.A Portraitof theArtistas a YoungMan. 1916.Alexandria,VA:Time-Life,1982.
Levin, Iu. I. "Zametkio lirike."Novoe literaturnoeobozrenie8 (1994):62-72.
Lotman, Iurii. Pushkin: Issledovaniiai materialy.Vol. 3. Moskva-Leningrad:Akademiia
nauk, 1960.
"The Structureof EvgenyjOnegin."Russian Views of Pushkin'sEugene Onegin.
Trans. and ed. Sona Stephan Hoisington. 92-108. Originallypublished in Uchenye
zapiskiTartuskogogosudarstvennogo universiteta184. Tartu,1966:5-32.
RomanA. S. Pushkina"EvgeniiOnegin:"Kommentarii.Leningrad:Prosveshchenie,
1980.
Miner,Earl. ComparativePoetics:An Intercultural Essayon Theoriesof Literature.Princeton,
NJ: PrincetonUP, 1990.
Olson, Elder.On ValueJudgementsin theArtsand OtherEssays.Chicago,IL: U of ChicagoP,
1976.
Pascal, Roy. The Dual Voice:Free IndirectSpeech and its Functioningin the Nineteenth-
CenturyEuropeanNovel. Totowa,NJ: Rowmanand Littlefield,1977.
Phelan, James."CharacterJudgmentin Narrativeand in Lyric:Towardan Understandingof
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Raleigh,Walter.The EnglishNovel. New York:CharlesScribner'sSons, 1894.
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sbornik4: 295-325.


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Lyric and Narrative Consciousness in Eugene Onegin

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CraigCravens,The Universityof Texasat Austin

In his commentson Eugene Onegin, BakhtinconsidersPushkin'snovel in

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the bordersof the fictionalworld and stressingthe artificialityof his literary

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another feature of Onegin, which distinguishesit from conventionalfirst-

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Realist authors.For example, while it would be unthinkablefor a criticnot

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ii. Lyric and Narrative

The first sentence is a standardnarrationaldescription,whereas the two

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the character.Roy Pascalcalls this mode of narrationa "dualvoice, which,

iii. The Lyric3

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conception of poetry in general as non-mimetic became widespread during

iv. Lyric in the Novel

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speaker expresses a lyrical, subjective attitude. Most Russians, for exam-

KTO XKH H MbICJIHJI,

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"Poor Yorick! MOJIBHI

Lensky's direct discourse is, of course, signaled by the quotation marks. In

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The stanza continues the lament of the passing of generations begun by

So meanwhile, friends, enjoy your blessing:

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Still stir my heartat times to flight:

And may it touch some heart with fire;

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initiallyapprehendsthis "I"as he does the poetic "I"of a real person, but

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withinthat zone as if he were the character.Two voices, however, are not

HH KpacoToA ceCTpbI CBOel,

Neither with her sister's beauty

Such negative physical characterizationsuggests qualities of Tatianathat

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14Me)Iy TeMgymuaB Heft HbIJIa,

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To glancebehindher; on she pushes-

Notice how the two exclamations grammatically voiced by the narrator

Tatiana, O my dear Tatiana!

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expressing irony or sympathy regarding his character is notoriously diffi-

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least one of Pushkin's contemporary reviewers thought Pushkin had al-

Shalikov points to the method of Sentimental character portrayal in gen-

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Y6Hitly 6paTa cBoero;

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intricacies that complicate life.15 Whereas Onegin's character and psychic

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Vexation?Pride?Or youth'sold yen