Five-minute digest

Eugene Onegin

Alexander Pushkin

Summary

Eugene Onegin is Alexander Pushkin's novel in verse, published in parts between 1825 and 1832 and as a complete book in 1833. It is written in a special fourteen-line stanza, now called the Onegin stanza, and is considered the founding masterpiece of modern Russian literature. This text is the 1881 English verse translation by Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Spalding. Eugene Onegin is a bored young dandy of St. Petersburg who has grown tired of balls, theatres and love affairs. When his uncle dies, he inherits a country estate and settles there, where he befriends his neighbour Vladimir Lensky, an idealistic young poet educated in Germany. Lensky is in love with Olga Larina, the cheerful daughter of a local family, and introduces Onegin to the Larins. Olga's elder sister Tatiana, a quiet, dreamy girl who loves novels, falls in love with Onegin and writes him a passionate letter. Onegin answers her in person, kindly but coldly: he is not made for marriage and can love her only as a brother. At Tatiana's name-day party, irritated and bored, Onegin flirts with Olga to annoy Lensky. Lensky challenges him to a duel, and Onegin, unwilling to look a coward, shoots and kills his friend. Onegin leaves the district and wanders. Tatiana visits his empty house, reads his books, and begins to understand him. Her family takes her to Moscow, where she is married to a distinguished general, a prince. Some years later Onegin meets Tatiana again in St. Petersburg society, now a poised and admired princess, and falls desperately in love with her. He writes her letters but receives no answer. At last he finds her alone, weeping over one of them. She tells him that she still loves him but is married and will remain faithful to her husband, and she leaves him standing alone. Pushkin's narrator, witty and personal, comments throughout on literature, society and himself.

Top Lessons

Missed chances
Onegin rejects Tatiana when she loves him and loves her when it is too late.
Related across the library
- The Meek One, Lesson: Understanding too late
  Understanding too late. The narrator's insight comes only after her death, in a monologue that circles and contradicts itself. The story dramatizes the difficulty of seeing oneself truly.
- The Tempest, Act 5, Scene 1
  the rarer action is In virtue than in vengeance Moved by Ariel's pity for the captives, Prospero sides with his nobler reason against his fury and resolves to forgive.
- Phaedra, Lesson: Rash judgment and the use of power
  Rash judgment and the use of power. Theseus condemns his son within minutes, on a servant's word and a sword, and spends the one favour Neptune owed him on a curse. He refuses Hippolytus' oath, mocks his love for Aricia, and only begins to doubt when it is too late. The play makes a king's haste the instrument of catastrophe, and his final speech admits that his own glory now testifies against him.
- Fahrenheit 451, Lesson: Censorship begins with indifference
  Censorship begins with indifference. In Beatty's account, the government did not have to force book-burning on a resisting people; readers drifted toward faster, shorter, more soothing entertainment, and books that offended any group were abandoned before they were banned. The novel argues that a society can lose its books by not caring before anyone burns them, and that the firemen only finish what apathy began.
- The House of the Dead, CHAPTER I. TEN YEARS A CONVICT
  official Ivan Ivanitch Gvosdikof a venerable old man very hospitable and the father of five daughters of whom the greatest hopes were entertained Four times a week Alexander Petrovitch gave them lessons at the rate of thirty kopecks silver a lesson His external appearance interested me He was excessively pale and thin still young--about thirty-five years of age--short and weak always very neatly dressed in the European style When you spoke to him he looked at you in a very attentive manner listening to your word...
Honor and the duel
Onegin kills his friend because he fears looking a coward more than he values Lensky's life.
Related across the library
- The Gambler, Lesson: Russians abroad
  Russians abroad. Alexey compares Russians, French, Germans and English. The novel uses a spa town to study national manners and pride.
- St. Vitus and the Dancing Mania, Lesson: One name can hide several disorders
  One name can hide several disorders. St. Vitus's dance can refer to shrine-linked dancing mania, Sydenham's chorea, Huntington's chorea in loose older usage, or popular fears of epilepsy. Medical history begins by separating those uses instead of treating the phrase as one diagnosis.
- The Merry Wives of Windsor, Lesson: Many tongues in one town
  Many tongues in one town. Windsor is full of accents and errors: Evans's Welsh, Caius's French, Quickly's malapropisms, Pistol's bombast, the Host's catchphrases. Falstaff's final humiliation includes being mocked by a man who makes fritters of English. The comedy delights in language while gently teaching that pride in one's own speech can be another kind of folly.
- Father Goriot (Le Père Goriot), Lesson: The price of a place in society
  The price of a place in society. Every rise in the novel has a cost: the Restaud diamonds, the Nucingen fortune, the savings of Eugène's mother and sisters, young Taillefer's life. Balzac's society runs on money that is always someone else's, and the boarding house sits beneath the grand houses as their hidden foundation.
- Cuchulain of Muirthemne, Full Text
  CUCHULAIN OF MUIRTHEMNE THE STORY OF THE MEN OF THE RED BRANCH OF ULSTER ARRANGED AND PUT INTO ENGLISH BY LADY GREGORY WITH A PREFACE BY W B YEATS London John Murray third edition DEDICATION OF THE IRISH EDITION TO THE PEOPLE OF KILTARTAN My Dear Friends When I began to gather these stories together it is of you I was thinking that you would like to have them and to be reading them For although you have not to go far to get stories of Finn and Goll and Oisin from any old person in the place there is very little...
Faithfulness
Tatiana chooses fidelity to her marriage over her feelings for Onegin.
Related across the library
- The Age of Innocence, Lesson: Innocence
  Innocence. The title is ironic. Students can decide who in the novel is truly innocent.
- The Meek One, Lesson: Understanding too late
  Understanding too late. The narrator's insight comes only after her death, in a monologue that circles and contradicts itself. The story dramatizes the difficulty of seeing oneself truly.
- A Lost Lady, Part Two, Ch. V
  After a second stroke the townswomen take over the house, Mrs. Forrester collapses and lives on black coffee and brandy, and Niel takes charge of the nursing and night vigils.
- Daisy Miller, Part Ii
  a difficult promise to make said Winterbourne My aunt has taken an apartment in Rome for the winter and has already asked me to come and see her I don t want you to come for your aunt said Daisy I want you to come for me And this was the only allusion that the young man was ever to hear her make to his invidious kinswoman He declared that at any rate he would certainly come After this Daisy stopped teasing Winterbourne took a carriage and they drove back to Vevey in the dusk the young girl was very quiet In the...
- Effi Briest, Final chapters (c. Ch. 33–36)
  Effi's decline after Annie's visit, Rummschüttel's letter to her parents, and her death at Hohen-Cremmen.

Verified Quotes

“Habit was given us in distress By Heaven in lieu of happiness.”

— Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin, Canto the Second, trans. Henry Spalding (1881).Quote card

On Happiness: Letter to Menoeceus and Principal Doctrines, Principal Doctrines 27
Of all the means which are procured by wisdom to ensure happiness throughout the whole of life, by far the most important is the acquisition of friends. Epicurus's praise of friendship.
Pride and Prejudice, Chapter Xxi.
in talking to undutiful children Not that I have much pleasure indeed in talking to anybody People who suffer as I do from nervous complaints can have no great inclination for talking Nobody can tell what I suffer But it is always so Those who do not complain are never pitied Her daughters listened in silence to this effusion sensible that any attempt to reason with or soothe her would only increase the irritation She talked on therefore without interruption from any of them till they were joined by Mr Collins w...
We Shall Fight on the Beaches, Summary
On 4 June 1940, less than four weeks after becoming prime minister, Winston Churchill reported to the House of Commons on the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk. German armored columns had broken through the Ardennes in mid-May, driven to the Channel, and cut off British, French, and Belgian armies in a shrinking pocket on the coast. Between 26 May and 4 June, in Operation Dynamo, the Royal Navy and a fleet of merchant ships and small private craft carried more than 330,000 men to England...
Obergefell v. Hodges, Full Text
constitutional obligation to license same-sex marriages or to recognize same-sex marriages performed out of State The petitioners sought certiorari This Court granted review limited to two questions U S The first presented by the cases from Michigan and Kentucky is whether the Fourteenth Amendment requires a State to license a marriage between two people of the same sex The second presented by the cases from Ohio Tennessee and again Kentucky is whether the Fourteenth Amendment requires a State to recognize a sam...
The Antichrist, INTRODUCTION
collecting newspaper clippings to this general effect and later on I shall probably publish a digest of them as a contribution to the study of war hysteria The thing went to unbelievable lengths On the strength of the fact that I had published a book on Nietzsche in six years after his death I was called upon by agents of the Department of Justice elaborately outfitted with badges to meet the charge that I was an intimate associate and agent of the German monster Nietzsky I quote the official proc s verbal an in...

“I love you—to what end deceive?— But I am now another’s bride— For ever faithful will abide.”

— Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin, Canto the Eighth, trans. Henry Spalding (1881).Quote card

Meteorology, Full Text
proposed and then go on to these questions Since water is generated from air and air from water why are clouds not formed in the upper air They ought to form there the more the further from the earth and the colder that region is For it is neither appreciably near to the heat of the stars nor to the rays relected from the earth It is these that dissolve any formation by their heat and so prevent clouds from forming near the earth For clouds gather at the point where the reflected rays disperse in the infinity of...
Meteorology, Full Text
one of the other elements would long ago have vanished However they cannot simply be said to be full of air either for even if there were two elements to fill the space between the earth and the heavens the air would far exceed the quantitu required to maintain its proper proportion to the other elements For the bulk of the earth which includes the whole volume of water is infinitesimal in comparison with the whole world that surrounds it Now we find that the excess in volume is not proportionately great where w...
Notes on Nursing: What It Is, and What It Is Not, Conclusion
seen more of what may be called surgical nursing i e practical manual nursing than perhaps any one in Europe honestly believes that it is impossible to learn it from any book and that it can only be thoroughly learnt in the wards of a hospital and she also honestly believes that the perfection of surgical nursing may be seen practised by the old-fashioned Sister of a London hospital as it can be seen nowhere else in Europe While thousands die of foul air c who have this surgical nursing to perfection the convers...
On Interpretation, Prior Analytics, Topics and Sophistical Refutations, Full Text
for animal belongs both to horse and to man but horse to no man If then it is assumed that A belongs to all B and B to all C the conclusion will be true although the premiss BC is wholly false Similarly if the premiss AB is negative For it is possible that A should belong neither to any B nor to any C and that B should not belong to any C e g a genus to species of another genus for animal belongs neither to music nor to the art of healing nor does music belong to the art of healing If then it is assumed that A b...
Lysistrata and Other Plays, Foreword
earth and that all argument is apparently vitiated from the start by the simple fact that Wagner and a rooster are given an analogous method of making love And therefore it seems impeccable logic to say that all that is most unlike the rooster is the most spiritual part of love All will agree on that schisms only arise when one tries to decide what does go farthest from the bird's automatic mechanism Certainly not a Dante-Beatrice affair which is only the negation of the rooster in terms of the swooning bombast...

Eugene Onegin

Summary

Top Lessons

Missed chances

Honor and the duel

Faithfulness

Verified Quotes