In this article we bring to your attention an essay on the nobility as Pushkin shows it in the novel “Eugene Onegin”.
Nobility (High Society) in the novel "Eugene Onegin".
A.S. Pushkin in his novel “Eugene Onegin” depicted the life of the Russian nobility in the twenties of the 19th century. According to V. G. Belinsky, “ he decided to present to us the inner life of this class ».
The author of the novel pays special attention to the St. Petersburg nobility, a typical representative of which is Eugene Onegin. The poet describes in every detail the day of his hero, and Onegin’s day is a typical day of a metropolitan nobleman. Thus, Pushkin recreates a picture of the life of all St. Petersburg secular society.
Pushkin speaks about St. Petersburg high society with a fair amount of irony and without much sympathy, because life in the capital is “monotonous and colorful,” and the “noise of the world” gets boring very quickly.
The local, provincial nobility is represented very widely in the novel. This is Onegin’s uncle, the Larin family, guests at Tatyana’s name day, Zaretsky.
Prominent representatives of the provincial nobility gather at Tatiana’s name day: Grozdin, “ excellent owner, owner of poor men "; Petushkov, " district dandy "; Flyanov, " heavy gossip, old rogue ". If Pushkin introduces real historical figures, for example, Kaverin, into the story about the capital’s nobility, then in in this case the author uses the names of famous literary characters: The Skotinins are the heroes of Fonvizin’s “The Minor,” Buyanov is the hero of V.L.’s “Dangerous Neighbor.” Pushkin. The author also uses speaking names. For example, Triquet means " beaten with a stick " - a hint that he cannot be accepted in high society, but in the provinces he is a welcome guest.
The world of the landed nobility is far from perfect, because in it spiritual interests and needs are not decisive, just as their conversations are not distinguished by intelligence:
Their conversation is sensible
About haymaking, about wine,
About the kennel, about my family.
However, Pushkin writes about him with more sympathy than about St. Petersburg. The provincial nobility retains naturalness and spontaneity as properties of human nature.
A good family of neighbors,
Unceremonious friends.
The local nobles were quite close to the people in terms of their attitude and way of life. This is manifested in the attitude towards nature and religion, in the observance of traditions. Pushkin pays less attention to the Moscow nobility than to the St. Petersburg nobility. Several years have passed since Pushkin wrote the 1st chapter of his novel, and A.S. Griboyedov finished the comedy “Woe from Wit,” but Pushkin adds Griboyedov’s lines to the epigraph of the seventh chapter, thereby emphasizing that little has changed in Moscow since then. The second capital has always been patriarchal. So, for example, Tatiana is met at her aunt’s by a gray-haired Kalmyk, and the fashion for Kalmyks was at the end of the 18th century.
The Moscow nobility is a collective image, in contrast to the St. Petersburg nobility, where Eugene Onegin is the main character. Pushkin, speaking about Moscow, seems to populate it with the heroes of Griboyedov’s comedy, whom time has not changed:
But there is no change in them,
Everything about them is the same as the old model...
A real historical figure also appears in Moscow society:
Vyazemsky somehow sat down with her (Tatyana) ...
But in Moscow there is still the same bustle, “ noise, laughter, running, bowing ", which leave both Tatyana and the author indifferent
Pushkin managed to give in “Eugene Onegin” a detailed picture of the life of the noble class, and at the same time, according to Belinsky, the entire society “in the form in which it was in the era he chose, that is, in the twenties of the current 19th century.”
Here is an essay characterizing high society in the novel “Eugene Onegin”.
In the novel “Eugene Onegin,” Pushkin outlines various ways of Russian life: brilliant secular St. Petersburg, patriarchal Moscow, and local nobles.
The poet introduces us to the local nobility primarily in his description of the Larin family. This is a “simple, Russian family”, welcoming, hospitable, faithful to the “habits of dear old times”:
They kept life peaceful
Habits of a dear old man;
At their Shrovetide
There were Russian pancakes;
Twice a year they fasted;
Loved the round swing
Poblyudny songs, round dance;
On Trinity Day, when people
Yawning, listens to the prayer service,
Touchingly on the beam of dawn
They shed three tears...
IN life story Tatyana's mother reveals to us the ingenuous fate of a district young lady. In her youth, she loved novels (although she did not read them), had “secular” manners, “sighed” about the guards sergeant, but marriage changed her habits and character. Her husband took her to the village, where she took care of the house and household chores, forever abandoning “the corset, the album, Princess Polina, the Sensitive Rhymes notebook.” Gradually Larina got used to the new way of life and even became happy with her fate:
She went to work
Salted mushrooms for the winter,
She kept expenses, shaved her foreheads,
I went to the bathhouse on Saturdays,
She beat the maids in anger -
All this without asking my husband.
Olga also appears as a typical district young lady in the novel. “Always modest, always obedient, Always cheerful as the morning...” - this is an ordinary, mediocre girl, simple-minded and innocent both in her ignorance of life and in her feelings. She doesn't think deeply, strong feelings, any reflection. Having lost Lensky, she soon got married. As Belinsky noted, from a graceful and sweet girl she “became a lady of the dozen, repeating her mother, with minor changes that time required.”
The description of the life of the Larin family, Tatyana’s mother’s girlhood, her married life, her power over her husband is thoroughly imbued with the author’s irony, but in this irony there is “so much love.” By making fun of his heroes, Pushkin recognizes the importance of those spiritual values that are present in their lives. Love, wisdom reign in the Larin family (“her husband loved her heartily”), and the joy of friendly communication (“In the evening, sometimes a good family of neighbors would come together...”).
As V. Nepomnyashchy notes, the culmination of the Larins’ episode is the tombstone inscription: “The humble sinner, Dmitry Larin, the Lord’s servant and foreman, tastes peace under this stone.” These lines focus on the worldview of Pushkin himself, the peculiarities of his nature, his scale life values, where priority is given to simple Orthodox life, love, marriage, family.
Pushkin lists the entertainments of the local nobles, depicting the village life of Onegin and Lensky.
Walking, reading, deep sleep,
Forest shadow, murmur of streams,
Sometimes black-eyed whites
Young and fresh kiss,
An obedient, zealous horse is bridle,
Lunch is quite whimsical,
A bottle of light wine,
Solitude, silence...
But, paying tribute to the simple emotional relationships in the Larin family and the delights of rural life, the poet also finds shortcomings in the “dear old times.” Thus, Pushkin emphasizes the low intellectual level of landowners and their low spiritual needs. Their interests do not go beyond household chores, household chores, the subject of conversation is “haymaking”, “kennel”, stories about “their relatives”.
These characters are most characteristically outlined in the scene of a ball organized in the Larins’ house on the occasion of Tatyana’s name day:
With his portly wife
Fat Pustyakov arrived;
Gvozdin, an excellent owner,
Owner of poor men;
The Skotinins, the gray-haired couple,
With children of all ages, counting
From thirty to two years;
District dandy Petushkov,
My cousin, Buyanov,
In down, in a cap with a visor...
And retired adviser Flyanov,
Heavy gossip, old rogue,
Glutton, bribe-taker and buffoon.
Here Pushkin creates images in line with the literary tradition. He outlines human types, already known to readers, and at the same time creates new, bright, characteristic, memorable images.
Thus, the Skotinins, the “gray-haired couple,” refer us to the heroes of Fonvizin’s comedy “The Minor.” Advisor Flyanov reminds us of Griboyedov’s Zagoretsky: “A heavy gossip, an old rogue, a Glutton, a bribe-taker and a buffoon.” “The district dandy” Petushkov then seems to reincarnate as Manilov in Gogol’s poem “ Dead souls" “Perky” Buyanov, “in fluff, in a cap with a visor” - a portrait of Nozdryov. Gvozdin, “an excellent owner, Owner of poor peasants,” seems to anticipate the “thrifty owner” Plyushkin.
This environment is deeply alien to Tatyana; it’s not for nothing that all these people remind her of monsters. D. Blagoy believed that in the images of monsters that the heroine dreamed of in a dream, a caricature of small things was given landed nobility. If we compare the two passages from the novel, we do see clear similarities in the descriptions. In a dream, Tatyana sees “guests” sitting at the table:
Barking, laughing, singing, whistling and clapping,
Human rumor and horse top!
Approximately “the same picture” appears before us in the description of the name day held in the Larins’ house:
Barking mosek, smacking girls,
Noise, laughter, crush at the threshold,
Bows, shuffling guests,
The nurses cry and the children cry.
The poet also critically evaluates the morals of the local nobles. Thus, Zaretsky, a famous gossip, duelist, “father of a single family,” knows how to “fool a smart man nicely,” “calculately remain silent,” “to quarrel young friends And put them on the fence, Or force them to make peace, So that the three of us can have breakfast together, And then secretly dishonor ..." Lies, intrigue, gossip, envy - all this abounds in the quiet life of the district.
Zaretsky intervenes in the quarrel between Onegin and Lensky and with his very participation begins to “inflame passions.” And a terrible drama plays out between the friends, a duel takes place, the outcome of which is the death of Lensky:
Doused with instant cold,
Onegin hurries to the young man,
He looks and calls him... in vain:
He's no longer there. Young singer
Found an untimely end!
The storm blew, the color of the beautiful
Withered at dawn,
The fire on the altar has gone out!..
Thus, “the court of rumor”, “public opinion”, “laws of honor” are eternal and unchanging categories in Pushkin for almost all ways of Russian life. And the local nobility here is no exception. Life on estates, among the beauties of Russian nature, flows slowly and solitarily, setting their inhabitants in a lyrical mood, but this life is full of drama. Here, too, their tragedies are played out and youthful dreams are destroyed.
Roman A.S. Pushkin's "Eugene Onegin" was created over the course of seven years. The poet worked hard on it like on no other work. Sometimes he called his scattered drafts of a novel in verse “notebooks,” emphasizing the naturalism and realism of the sketches, which served Pushkin as a kind of notebook, where he noted the features of the life of the society in which he moved.
V.G. Belinsky, despite his poverty critical article about “Eugene Onegin”, there is a famous expression. He calls the novel “an encyclopedia of Russian life.” And even if the critic’s further reflections are not characterized by logic and profundity, the above-mentioned statement most accurately indicates the vastness and, without a doubt, epoch-making nature of the work.
Literary scholars call the novel “Eugene Onegin” the first realistic novel in the history of Russian literature. Pushkin is responsible for the creation of a new type of character - the so-called “hero of the time”. Later he will manifest himself in the work of M.Yu. Lermontov, and in the notes of I.S. Turgenev, and even F.M. Dostoevsky. The poet set himself the task of describing a person as he is, with all his vices and virtues. The main idea of the novel is the need to show the confrontation between Western, European civilization and the original Russian, highly spiritual one. This confrontation is reflected in the images different types nobility - the capital, whose representative is Eugene Onegin, and the provincial, to whom the “sweet ideal” Tatyana Larina belongs.
So, the European nobility, the capital, does not evoke much sympathy from the author of the work. He very ironically describes the orders and morals of high society society, emphasizing its emptiness, covered with ostentatious pomp. So, the nobles of the capital live, spending time at balls, dinner parties, and taking walks. However, these amusements follow the same scenario day after day, so even Evgeniy often languishes in society.
The main value is European traditions, fashion, etiquette, ability to behave in society. The most talented and educated people in fact they turn out to be empty, “superficial”. The same Onegin studied with a French woman, and after that he was given to be raised by a “poor Frenchman,” who “taught young Eugene everything jokingly.” This led to the fact that the hero knew a little from everywhere, but was not a master or professional in any science. Pushkin writes modestly about Lensky, another representative of the capital’s nobility, making it clear that in Europe he received an equally superficial education, and brought with him from Germany only “freedom-loving dreams” and “shoulder-length black curls.”
Like Onegin, Vladimir Lensky, a young idealist, was burdened by secular society, but at the same time, both heroes were unable to break ties with it. So, for example, both of them, having cooled down, dream of forgetting about the duel, but at the same time, neither of them finds the strength to cancel the duel, since this contradicts secular concepts about honor and dignity. The price of this selfish desire not to lose face is the death of Lensky.
Provincial nobility depicted by Pushkin in a much more favorable light. Village landowners live a completely different life: they still have a connection with the Russian people, Russian tradition, culture, and spirituality. This is why Tatyana enjoys listening to her nanny’s stories so much; like Larina folklore legends, she is religious and devout.
A different life reigns in the village, calmer and simpler, not spoiled by the pomp of the world. But despite this, the provincial nobles are trying their best to match the capital: they throw feasts as rich as possible. The guests at the evening amuse themselves by playing whist and Boston, like the residents of the capital, since they have no worthwhile occupation. The “young ladies” Olga and Tatyana speak French, as is customary in high society. This feature is touchingly noted by Pushkin in the scene when Larina writes a love letter to Onegin: “So,” says the author. “I wrote in French.” “Dear Ideal” enthusiastically reads French romance novels, which replace everything for her, and Olga adores her album, in which she asks Lensky to write down poems for her. Such a desire to be like the capital's nobles does not evoke a positive response from the poet.
But the commitment to traditions and high spirituality of the provincial nobles are so attractive to A.S. Pushkin. They are sincere, kind and honest people, incapable of deception and betrayal that reigns in the world of high society. Poet like true Christian, wants to see Russian people as Russian, Orthodox, pious, who have abandoned imposed European values. The same idea of preserving “Russianness” will be continued by other titans of Russian literature of the “golden age”, for example, L.N. Tolstoy or F.M. Dostoevsky.
Thanks to the novel in verse "Eugene Onegin" we learn about the traditions, customs and way of life of all layers of Russian noble society. No wonder the critic V. G. Belinsky called the novel “Eugene Onegin” “an encyclopedia of Russian life.”
In the first chapter of “Eugene Onegin” we are presented with a turbulent metropolitan life, a description of one day of a representative of the “high society” is given. In subsequent chapters, the author introduces us to the “new” life of Eugene Onegin - in the village - and shows the attitude of the village landowners towards their young neighbor.
In the above fragment, the local nobility is represented by the image of the deceased Uncle Eugene and the neighboring landowners.
Pushkin describes the entire life of the “village old-timer” in a few lines:
He (Eugene) settled in that peace,
Where is the village old-timer?
For about forty years he was quarreling with the housekeeper,
I looked out the window and squashed flies.
Such everyday details as: “not a speck of ink anywhere”, “jugs of apple water”, “a whole line of liqueurs”, “calendar of the eighth year” complete the appearance of Uncle Onegin. The author ironically describes the life of a typical village landowner: “The old man, having a lot to do, did not look at other books.”
Evgeny Onegin's neighbors match his uncle. They regard his desire to “establish a new order” and replace corvée with quitrent as “a most dangerous eccentricity.” They rejected Onegin and ended their friendship with him, since “he is not suitable for ladies,” “everything is yes, but no; will not say yes, sir, or no, sir,” that is, he demonstratively refused the conventions of etiquette, for which he was put on trial by the village landowners.
Pushkin also describes Lensky as a person whose appearance was subjected to “equally strict analysis”, since he, too, was different from the “villages”:
He's from foggy Germany
He brought the fruits of learning:
Freedom-loving dreams.
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V. G. Belinsky called the novel “Eugene Onegin” “an encyclopedia of Russian life”, it “poetically reproduces the picture of Russian life”, Pushkin depicted noble society 20s of the 19th century, and showed in detail both the life of the provincial nobility and metropolitan society.
The main motive accompanying the description of St. Petersburg society is vanity (“it’s no wonder to keep up everywhere”), tinsel. Using the example of Onegin's daily routine, the reader can judge the pastime of a socialite. For socialite the day began in the afternoon (“it used to be that he was still in bed: / They carried notes to him”) - this is a feature of aristocracy. A typical walking place for the nobility is Nevsky Prospekt, English Embankment, Admiralteysky Boulevard. As soon as the “waking Breguet” beats lunch, the dandy rushes to the most fashionable restaurant, Talon. The afternoon is theatre, and the highlight of the day is the ball. It was believed in good form arrive after midnight, and in the morning, when working Petersburg wakes up, go home to sleep.
When describing secular society, there is a motif of masquerade: the main feature of St. Petersburg life is boredom (in the theater Onegin yawns (“I saw everything: faces, clothes / He is terribly dissatisfied”). The author, describing the mores of society, uses irony, sometimes satire:
Here, however, was the color of the capital,
And know, and fashion samples,
Faces you meet everywhere
Necessary fools.
Fashion is of great importance in St. Petersburg: “Onegin is in the latest fashion, / Dressed like a London dandy”; Dandyism is fashionable as a way of life and, of course, melancholy as the Byronic mask of a socialite and, as a consequence, a special type of behavior (“But wildly secular hostility / Afraid of false shame”).
Life in Moscow is slow, static, unchanging. There are many reminiscences of “Woe from Wit” in the novel. The spirit of nepotism reigns here - this is the main motive in the depiction of Moscow society - patriarchy, everyone calls each other by name and patronymic: Pelageya Nikolaevna, Lukerya Lvovna, Lyubov Petrovna; hospitality:
To relatives who arrived from afar,
Everywhere there is an affectionate meeting,
And exclamations, and bread and salt.
Moscow gossip, unlike St. Petersburg, looks homely, like talking about each other in a large family, where we tell all the secrets:
Everything about them is so pale and indifferent;
They slander even boringly.
In depicting the life of the provincial nobility, Pushkin follows Fonvizin: he gives an idea of the characters using the surnames of Fonvizin's heroes. Here reigns the “past century” and the past literary tradition with her “talking” surnames:
...fat Pustyakov.
Gvozdin, an excellent owner,
Owner of poor men;
The Skotinins, the gray-haired couple,
With children of all ages.
From thirty to two years.
The main feature of the provincial nobility is patriarchy, loyalty to antiquity (“They kept in their peaceful life / The habits of dear old times”), in relationships at the table the features of Catherine’s era were preserved (“And at the table their guests / They carried dishes according to rank”). Village entertainment includes hunting, guests, and a special place is occupied by the ball, where ancient trends still dominate (“even the mazurka has preserved / The original beauty”). The villagers are one big family, they love to gossip about each other:
Everyone began to interpret furtively,
It is not without sin to joke and judge,
Tatiana intends to marry the groom...
The fate of provincial nobles is traditional (the fate of Tatyana's mother, the alleged fate of Lensky). The provincial nobility appears in the novel as a caricature of high society, but at the same time, it is in the provinces that Tatyana may appear.
