1 rimovanje zapleta

Australia and New Zealand Slavists Association

New Zealand Slavonic Journal

The 'Plot Rhyme' Scheme in Aleksander Pushkin's "Eugene Onegin"Author(s): JANET G TUCKERSource: New Zealand Slavonic Journal, (1999), pp. 35-49Published by: Australia and New Zealand Slavists AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40922020 .Accessed: 12/10/2013 07:14

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Australia and New Zealand Slavists Association and New Zealand Slavonic Journal are collaborating withJSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to New Zealand Slavonic Journal.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 130.237.165.40 on Sat, 12 Oct 2013 07:14:04 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=anzsahttp://www.jstor.org/stable/40922020?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

New Zealand Slavonic Journal

1999

JANET G TUCKER

The 'Plot Rhyme9 Scheme in Aleksander Pushkin's Eugene Onegin1

Poetry has no monopoly on rhyme, the identical or similar sounds ('near rhymes') that have traditionally been central components of nineteenth and twentieth-century Russian verse. A prose work, especially the novel, can also be distinguished for its symmetrical configuration. Parallel situations or circumstances (the 'near rhymes' of plot) recur to form a pattern. The superstars of nineteenth-century Russian prose fiction were no strangers to this system. Both Dostoevsky and, especially, Tolstoy employed a technique Jan Meijer terms "situation rhyme," "the use of analogous events time after time in the course of a novel".2 Yet, in the end, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy were prosaists and their novels were definitively positioned, "situation rhyme" notwithstanding, firmly within the prose camp.

But what if the novel in question were itself in verse?3 Sitting astride the fault line that divides (or unites?) poetry and prose, Alexander Pushkin's Eugene Onegin (a 'prose work' in poetic form) is distinguished not only for stanzaic rhyme, but for 'situation' or plot rhyme as well.4 The purpose of the present essay is to determine the pattern of plot rhyme in Onegin, to relate this rhyme to other components in the novel, and to attempt to evaluate its significance.

Onegin is neatly divided into cantos and stanzas. That Pushkin terms his cantos 'chapters' is yet one more indication of the hybrid nature of this work that unites elements of poetry and prose,5 a novel - but a novel in verse - "the devil of a difference".6 Does the poetic dominate over the prosaic, is it the other way around, or are they equally important? Pushkin's narrator is no help here, enjoying the prosaic image of a goose's foot sliding on an icy pond as much as the poetry of a woman's beautiful feet. His heroine, Tat'iana, is at once a typically prosaic Russian country girl and, as Caryl Emerson has aptly remarked, the supremely poetic figure of the muse.7 Like the work as a whole, she combines poetic with prosaic elements, conjuring up magic dreams in the bathhouse but writing to Onegin in (French) prose.8

That Pushkin/the narrator alludes variously to poetic and prosaic works, to Byron, Richardson and Rousseau, among others, underscores the enormous breadth of a poetic novel drawing with equal facility from earlier traditions across the board, regardless of genre. That he links these writers and their protagonists to his own in Onegin enables the reader to

35

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

foreshadow: to anticipate plot and the fates of the characters, and to establish his/her own 'plot rhyme' based on this shared cultural knowledge. Will the characters in Onegin follow the pre-ordained pattern of Pushkin's models (with the plot and characters in Onegin adhering to earlier praxis), or will Pushkin react to at least an extent against this pattern (ironically or parodically) to have his characters go their own ways? That Tat'iana assumes these patterns to play as true to form in life as in art may well be a partial impetus behind her headlong tumble into passionate love. Is she, as Michael Katz suggests, "re-enacting the denouement of Rousseau's romantic novel"?9 Will the reader, assuming plot repetition or rhyme from an earlier work, fall into the same trap?

Perhaps Pushkin's reliance on the 'situational rhyme' that Jan Meijer discerns in Tolstoy's and Dostoevsky's prose is a distinguishing mark of the novel, and Onegin can be read as an intermediary work between poetry and prose by virtue of its designation as a 'novel in verse'. It certainly has the shape of a novel and contains the right ingredients, combined in the proper proportions. Onegin has the characters and structure we associate with the novel - inherited from the West - as it would later evolve in nineteenth- century Russian literature. A heroine falls in love with a hero who rejects her, she later rejects him, and a duel resulting in the demise of a poet, who dies 'before his time,' punctuates the space in the middle. These events, which frame Onegin, are echoed in the balls, marriages, journeys and letters recurring at regular intervals throughout. They punctuate the text and establish a plot rhyme scheme that complements Pushkin's stanzaic rhyme pattern in a novel clearly divided, as J Thomas Shaw notes, into two parts.10

Familiar to all readers of Onegin, the rhyme scheme of the following stanza (AbAbCCddEffEgg, from 111:5) is typical.11

[]CKaacn: KOTopaa TaTbHHa? -

a Ta, KOTopafl, rpycTHa H MOJmajniBa KaK CeTJiaHa BooiJia h cejia y OKHa.- HeyacTO Tbi BJiioOJiH b MeHbuiyio?

A uiTo?-fl Bbi6paji 6bi pyryio Koraa 6 a 6biJi KaK tw, no3T. B HepTax y Onbrn *M3HH hct. ToHb b Toqb b BaHjiHKOBOM MaaoHe:

Kpyrjia, KpacHa jimuom oHa, KaK 3Ta rjiynafl JiyHa Ha 3T0M rJiynoM HeocKJioHe. BiiajiMMnp cyxo oTBenaji M nocjie bo Becb nyrb MOJnaji.

["]Tell me, which one is Tat'iana?" - "Is she the one who, sadly And silently, like Svetlana Came in and sat by the window." "Are you really in love with the younger one?"- "What of it?" - "I'd have picked the other If I were a poet like you. There's no life in Ol'ga's features. Just like a Van Dyke Madonna: With a round and rosy face, Like that silly moon In the silly heavens." Vladimir answered drily And then was silent all the way home.

Pushkin's plot rhyme scheme diverges from the stanzaic rhyme progression in radiating toward and out from a centre, with two sets of dividing lines in

36


the middle splitting the novel neatly into virtually equal parts that mirror each other.12 This sense of opposition underlying plot rhyme can be seen as early as 1:35, when the sleepy Onegin goes to bed just as workaday St Petersburg is getting up.13 That the first of these dividing lines hits at the beginning of January, at the border of the old and new years, underscores juncture in the plot rhyme scheme. Beginning, like the stanzaic rhyme pattern, with 'A,' the plot rhyme scheme is as follows:

ABCDEDECF//BGBG//DEBECFA with each letter standing for a major or significant event or series of actions in the novel. This schema should be read vertically, top to bottom:

A Authority B Ball (Petersburg) C Writing (a Letter) D The Journey E Love and Marriage D The Journey E Love and Marriage C Writing (a Letter) F Repudiation B Ball ('Dream')

G Duel ('Dream') B Ball (Nameday Party) G Duel D Journey E Love and Marriage B Ball (Petersburg) E Love and Marriage C Writing (a Letter) F Repudiation A Authority

A. Authority. (Chapter One). Initially, an authority figure (within the fabula, the actual events of the novel) variously functions 'offstage' or else leaves the scene of the action. Death is a convenient way of accomplishing this; Onegin's father and uncle die in rapid succession. A cynical and disgruntled Onegin rushes toward his uncle's bedside (an early Journey) at the very beginning, unaware that his uncle has already died. Onegin himself is en route at the beginning, with a long flashback intruding out of sequence in terms of plot events. Authority/Journey (A/D) may be the more accurate designation here. This nexus of Authority/Journey (with Authority the impetus behind an involuntary Journey) is recapitulated in Chapter Eight, when Onegin returns from his self-imposed journey into exile and, like Chatsky from Griboedov's play Gore ot uma (Woe From Wit' lands at a ball.14 At this initial point in the novel, Onegin seems to be the narrator who will eventually yield to the narrator/Pushkin. But, in actual fact, Pushkin's narrator encloses Onegin's uncharitable thoughts in quotation marks, thereby showing the reader who is really in charge. At this point, the narrator himself literally enters the novel, which reverses temporal and geographical direction back to St Petersburg and Onegin's childhood and youth. The narrator quickly dispenses with this background material, and we proceed to:

B. The Petersburg Ball (Chapter One), with ballet, also focused on dancing and feet, as a possible tie-in. Ball and ballet allow for a degree of freedom (movement) within restraint, which David Bethea associates with poetry.15 Men can watch women spectators at the ballet, not to mention the ballerinas. At the ballet, the perpetually tardy Onegin (always out of sync with time, as when he courts Tat'iana belatedly!) trains his lorgnette on the

37


loges of unfamiliar women ("Dvoinoi lornet skosias' navodit/Na lozhi neznakomykh dam," 1:21). The ball provides even greater opportunities, being a handy place to flirt and a particularly convenient venue for seducing married women. The narrator, no slouch in this department, cautions married men to guard their wives from the unwanted attention of bachelors on the prowl. The narrator's allusion to potential conflicts between married/affianced and single men is his first hint of the duel(s) to come (G).

C. Writing - here, a Letter (Chapter One). Actually this note is a doklad (a report) from an unidentified individual on the estate of Onegin's uncle. As elsewhere in the novel, writing is the impetus behind an abrupt change in life. At this point, it precipitates Onegin's fateful trip from Petersburg to his estate, a journey that throws him into contact with the other major characters of the novel.

D. The Journey. (Chapter One). This initial journey is Onegin's and, like others in the novel, precipitates or is precipated by another event (or events). The immediate causes of Onegin's journey are his uncle's impending death and Onegin's own precarious economic state, not to mention bored cynicism in Petersburg society.

E. Love and Marriage. (Chapter Two). A girl fells in love but is married off to another. Here, it is Tat'iana's and Ol'ga's mother, reluctantly united with a military hero. Tat'iana's nurse is forced to wed young, an experience she recounts when Tat'iana attempts to share the emotional turmoil of first love. The nurse's reminiscence constitutes an ironic counterpart to Tat'iana's confession and might function as a foreshadow of her charge's own later marriage, which takes place 'off stage'. All three Larin women will eventually marry military men. Ol'ga's is a love match following hard on the death of her 'true love,' the poet Vladimir Lensky. Like her mother's, Tat'iana's marriage to her "fat general" is arranged. Tat'iana seems to enter the match with graceful resignation, but the end result is the same: a loveless marriage.

D. The Journey. (Chapter Two). A journey combines a temporal (vertical) with a lateral (geographical) shift to project a character into a different fate, one not previously foreseen. But an unexpected fate can be repeated, which happens later in the novel. A girl moves from one venue to another. Here, Praskov'ia Larina moves from the city to the depths of the country, whence her husband has packed her against her will. The two capitals, Moscow and St Petersburg, have been conflated here.16 As is the case with Onegin, authority is the impetus behind the trip. Each woman is profoundly changed by her journey, which causes a major displacement or shift in the exterior circumstances of her life and in her interior reaction to them. Praskov'ia leaves 'true love,' Richardson and French affectation behind. All three Larin women change house and home during the novel; marriage and moving definitely have a cause and effect relationship on each other. Later, Ol'ga will move away when she weds her uhlan. Tat'iana will

38


journey to Moscow to get married and will travel to St Petersburg with her husband. Forced into exile himself by authority, the narrator has embarked on his own involuntary 'journey'. He observes his characters from afar. More accurately, he observes them as an omniscient narrator, thus underscoring the power of the writer - and writing.

E. Love and (no) Marriage. (Chapter Three). Tat'iana falls in love with Eugene, an echo of her mother's experience in Chapter One. She stews about Eugene and decides (rashly) to take action without waiting for him to make the first move. Tat'iana cannot drop in on Onegin, so she takes what she deems to be the next best course - she writes him a letter. The letter is an indirect and brief verbal 'journey' made on paper. Onegin will deliver his response in person.

C. Writing - a Letter. (Chapter Three). Here, it is Tat'iana's letter to Onegin (III:between 31 and 32). Does Onegin play the part of muse here to Tat'iana - gender notwithstanding - as she will later do for him? As elsewhere in the novel, the narrator intrudes to give the reader the letter (has he watched over her shoulder?), to inform the reader that the letter is in French, although he has provided the Russian translation, and to regale the reader with the amusing image of a woman attempting to write grammatically correct Russian.17 The letter is in iambs and the rhyme scheme (beginning with AbAbAcc) bears strong resemblance to that in the work as a whole. But Pushkin breaks with his surrounding stanzaic pattern here, as he does elsewhere in two other places: in the 'Song of the Girls' (ni:between 39 and 40, the song given in trochees) and in Onegin's later missive to Tat'iana (VII:between 32 and 33). These three interpolated 'poems' fall in the cracks between the stanzas. Their placement in Onegin suggests that they enjoy a measure of independence from the narratorial voice. More to the point, the narrator/Pushkin generously gives (other) characters a chance at self-expression. He does so even if that expression is the product of limited reading (Tat'iana's), guilt-ridden supplication (Onegin's) or the ironically rebellious song of berry-picking serf girls.

F. Repudiation. (Chapter Four). Onegin rejects Tat'iana, noting that marriage is not for him. This refusal may actually be a twist on the events in 'E,' when a girl is married off regardless of inclination. Onegin's rejection will be echoed at the end of the novel, when Tat'iana lectures him. This repudiation, as well as her later renunciation of Onegin, may well be the verbal equivalent of the duel that punctuates the middle of the novel. As is the case with Writing (the Letter) and the Journey, the combination of Repudiation/Duel complicates and enriches the plot rhyme.

Pushkin/the narrator inserts an important division into the text, a 'caesura' in the plot rhyme scheme - marked above as two slashing lines: //. There are two great divisions in the novel, the first one, noted here, interrupts the plot between the old and new years and occurs midway through, between Chapters Four and Five. The first snow, arriving late in

39


the year on the third of January (old style), serves as a meteorological punctuation mark underscoring the chronological juncture referred to here.

B. The Ball- Nameday Party. (Chapter Five). The first nameday party is a dream (more specifically, a nightmare).18 There is an echo here of 'A,' Authority, with Eugene the hum (godfather) of the bear, a symbol of power in traditional Russian culture. Because the two dreams result from and are tied in with traditional beliefs - wax fortune-telling, spending the night in the bathhouse, the bear, etc - both are linked with pre-Christian ritual.19 The bear initially chases Tat'iana (recalling Onegin's pursuit into the garden, 111:38-39), then carries her to the 'party'. The 'guests' are a group of monsters in a lonely hut, with Eugene their leader (another reference to Authority). The plot line here has been punctuated by yet another 'journey,' this one through the snowy forest (of Tat'iana's subconscious mind?) at night. Pushkin/the narrator equates the dream party with a funeral feast (5:XVI), hinting at Lensky's immanent death in the dream and actual death in Chapter Six.

G. The Duel. (Chapter Five). Like the monster 'ball,' this is a dream duel. The weapons used in the actual duel are pistols. A knife figures in the dream duel; perhaps because this is the weapon of choice in oral tradition. True to its origins as a dream event, this duel is the stuff of nightmares, set at night instead of first thing in the morning, foreshadowed (?) by a bear, and preceded by monsters.

The second and last juncture, marked by the second set of double slashes - // - fractures the novel between foreshadowing dream action and the waking action that follows. Foreshadowing looms over Tat'iana's swconscious mind but does not carry forward into consciousness.20 On one level, she intuits that the actual nameday party will be a 'nightmare' and that there will be a tragic duel, but Tat'iana cannot act on her 'sixth sense' to prevent disaster.21 Perhaps the narrator engages in foreshadowing in both junctures and uses January as a tabula rasa for the coming year, especially with the newly-fallen snow providing the blank canvas- already prepared - on which the action can take place. And take place it does. The duel causes a snowball to form and roll, stains the snow with blood and freezes Lensky's fallen corpse22 (thereby underscoring the coldness and finality of death). Of course, any blank canvas - or fresh snow - incorporates foreshadowing; something must eventually be 'written' on it.

B. Ball - Nameday Party. (Chapter Five). This one is Tat'iana's actual party and a waking counterpart to the previous foreshadowing dream event. No monsters attend, of course, but the Skotinin family have an animal name.23 Does the party function as a backshadow which, as Gary Saul Morson observes, "in effect turns the past into a well-plotted story"?24 We have echoes here of 'Authority' and poetry in Pushkin's allusion to his own poet uncle Vasily L'vovich Pushkin, by way of his brain-child, 'cousin Buyanov'.25 The narrator won't let us forget that all the characters we

40


encounter, however solid they may seem to us, are only ink on paper. This 'ball' reinforces Writing - as do the notes pressed on married women in Chapter One.

Onegin and Lensky seem to compete for Ol'ga here, although Onegin is only trying to get even. He really does get even in the duel. If Onegin' s revenge foreshadows the duel, then that duel backshadows to the party. At the 'dream ball,' the nameday party, Lensky is the intruder who threatens Onegin. Like the dream party, the actual waking one is divided into three parts. Here, in a partial reversal of the dream: 1) Tat'iana is present before Onegin. 2) Onegin is indignant. 3) Lensky is angry at Onegin.

G. The Duel. (Chapter Six). Lensky's death in the duel is the fourth in the novel, after those of Onegin's father and uncle (in chronological order here) and Dmitry Larin, Tat'iana's and Ol'ga's father. It precedes the demise of the nurse, an event Tat'iana alludes to in her lecture to Onegin (VIII:46). The nurse has actually died at some point offstage, between Chapters Seven and Eight. Lensky's death backshadows to Tat'iana's dream, suggesting her power to 'see' if not actually create the future. However, she "was unable," Michael Katz reminds us, "to apply her subconscious insight to her real life situation".26

The repeated rhyme of byt' mozhet (perhaps) in VL37-39 follows immediately after Lensky's death. The narrator invites the reader to speculate on Lensky's probable or likely fate, had the poet lived. But he died and, as Helena Goscilo astutely reminds us, mozhet byt

' (maybe) points to

the far more likely scenario of a typical and mundane life.27 Both forms of 'maybe' are in turn related to plot rhyme, where language determines plot and, by extension, Writing. Mozhet byt' is a reminder of the lesson Pushkin/the narrator gave us following the death of Dmitry Larin (11:38) - namely, that each generation lives out its allotted span, pushed by the succeeding one (ultimately, Chronos) into the grave.28 Interestingly, the prosaic 'mozhet byt" has precedence over its poetic variant 'byt' mozhet,' a reminder, perhaps, of prose (plot events) arranged poetically (subordinated to plot rhyme). Does Pushkin punish Lensky for being a bad poet by dooming him to a prosaic (theoretical) fate? Unlike the narrator/Pushkin, who can transform prosaic conversation into sparkling verse, Lensky writes wooden poetry. The second duel is the impetus behind Onegin's own Journey, played out offstage in what was originally to have been Chapter Eight.2 With the balls or routs, duels - and deaths - out of the way for now, plot rhyme bounces back to earlier events from the first part of the novel. 'G' is, therefore, followed by:

D. The Journey. (Chapter Seven). Tat'iana's 'journey' can be said to have ensued when she 'travelled' from her own home to Onegin's deserted house, a short trip physically, but one covering a great distance in knowledge - and self-knowledge. As Slonimsky points out, her entry into his home is actually into his inner world, his soul. His soul is his books,30 which

41


echoes the device characteristic of oral tradition of concealing the soul in a totem object. Tat'iana moves from the country to Moscow so her mother can marry her off, mother having despaired of ever being able to do so locally. Like her mother's earlier departure from Moscow to the country, Tat'iana's reversed direction is involuntary. In a rapid-fire staccato, the narrator enumerates the overwhelming details of the urban milieu that Tat'iana's carriage flies past (VII:38). These details suggest her disorientation and perhaps inspire her escape into daydreams at the aristocratic club where she's displayed for suitors (VII:51- 53).

'

Pushkin's two poetic heroines, the superficially poetic Praskov'ia Larina and the more genuinely poetic Tat'iana, endure the most prosaic of fates. Ironically, it is the utterly prosaic Ol'ga who enjoys the rather ironic rewards of a poetic fate. A poet falls in love with her 'until death'. She is, for however short a time, the bereft fiance of a dead poet; an uhlan woos her, weds her, and carries her off to a mysterious future that we are not privy to. The narrator/Pushkin was uninterested in pursuing this line further, given his obvious preference for Tat'iana.

E. Marriage without Love. (Between Chapters Seven and Eight). Ol'ga's marriage at the beginning of Chapter Seven more accurately fells under 4D' and is the exception to this pattern. True, she marries and then moves. But hers is not the significant wedding here, although it is the only one Pushkin invites his readers to and the only love match. Tat'iana's marriage is, of course, infinitely more important. Tat'iana moves from relatives to the aristocratic club, which functions only as a setting where the "fat general" can catch sight of her and fall headlong in love. The club setting may well be an echo of a much earlier scene in the novel, when Onegin made his initial visit to a humble evening of tea with the Larins - resulting in Tat'iana's passionate response (111:8-10).

B. The Ball. (Chapter Eight). The second grand ball (more accurately, a rout, VIII: 13-19) is itself a partial echo of the nameday party (and the dream party). It takes place in the most splendid of settings in St Petersburg. Whereas Onegin made a grand entrance in the ball of Chapter One (27-36), this time, it is Tat'iana's turn. She is followed closely by her husband the general, distant echo of Brigadier Dmitry Larin and a definite force to be reckoned with.32 Now that Tat'iana is a married woman, the reader might well recall the narrator's warning to husbands back in Chapter One: beware of balls.

E. Love without Marriage. (Chapter Eight). This time, Onegin fells madly in love with Tat'iana, in spite of the fact that she is sitting next to Nina Voronskaia, the most beautiful woman in Russia (next to Pushkin's own wife, of course). Onegin's passion is an obvious echo of Tat'iana's and ensues just as abruptly. There is, however, the obvious difference that Tat'iana was responding to unrealistic expectations based on her reading. Onegin, on the other hand, has his earlier experiences in St Petersburg, his

42


tte--tte with Tat'iana, the fatal duel with Lensky, and the journey that ensued from it behind him. He actually 'becomes acquainted' with Tat'iana through the medium of her husband, a wonderfully ironic touch on Pushkin's part. That Onegin and Tat'iana's husband are on intimate terms - a closeness reflected in their mutual use of the familiar pronoun ty - underscores an obvious earlier connection in Petersburg and reinforces the symmetry of the novel. In keeping with the plot rhyme scheme as developed up to this point, love is inevitably followed by:

C. Writing - a Letter. (Chapter Eight). This time, Onegin writes to Tat'iana, his 'muse'. Actually, Onegin writes more than one letter, but the narrator shows us only the first and alludes to the others, which we assume to be repetitions of the one we're privy to. Not only is the direction of the letters reversed, so are Tat'iana's and Onegin' s relative positions. Now distant and out of reach, Tat'iana also seems to have developed beyond the inherited literary conventions that shaped her earlier expectations and reactions, although her answer to Onegin is a stock response. The narrator simply presents Onegin's four-step iambic message in Russian, with no preamble about translating from the French. We presume that Onegin would have been able to write in Russian. He cannot, however, write poetry, so this letter, too, would have been transposed into verse. The inevitable echoing of Tat'iana's original note shatters the fiction that these individuals have actually written letters to one another. It reinforces the narrator's dominant role as a witness privy to what the other characters do. As Onegin correctly foresees at the very beginning, she'll reject him. His letter of excuses is no help. In fact, she does, in a mirror image of his earlier reaction. His letter(s) and intemperate attentions lead inevitably to:

F. Repudiation. (Chapter Eight). This is the second and final repudiation of the novel. In a scene that T E Little compares with the "entry of a fairy tale prince into an enchanted castle,"33 Onegin rushes through one empty room after another to find Tat'iana. His entry parallels ('rhymes with') her own earlier 'journey' to his house, culminating in the perusal of his books (his own 'inner chamber'). Her virtually empty house corresponds, of course, to two other 'empty' houses that appeared earlier: the touching image of the deserted house that underscores the poignant tragedy of the duel, Pushkin's irony notwithstanding, and Onegin's own abandoned home. Not that the latter is totally deserted, of course. Onegin may be absent physically, but his mind is present in the form of fingernail marks on the pages of his books. He is more palpably present when absent.

In any case, Tat'iana rejects his suit while acknowledging her own emotional surrender. She loves him. But she turns him down anyway in order to follow her principles, perhaps, also, to torture him and repay the suffering he caused her. As Little comments, Tat'iana uses Onegin's "own formula of rejection against him,"34 which reinforces not only the earlier comments on symmetry, noted above, but also the present thesis of the importance of plot rhyme. Slonimsky's observation that her letter of

43


Chapter Three paves the way for Tat'iana's later answer in Chapter Eight is consistent with the plot rhyme pattern of the novel.35

Tat'iana, Little comments, echoes Onegin's own employment of a literary code. It is the "literary convention of the French eighteenth-century novel . . . The significance of literary parody is strengthened, too, by the fact that Tatyana's last words to Onegin constitute a formula frequently found in folk songs."36 Her declaration that she longs to return to the countryside, where her old nurse is buried, parodies Onegin's distaste for the country and hearkens back (to II: 1-3) to his dead uncle. Parody, with its inherent reliance on echoing, is the ideal vehicle for the narrator to employ in the second half of a plot rhyme, which is what we have here.

The folk song at the end of Chapter Three (falling in between Tat'iana's letter and Onegin's lecture as well as outside the stanzaic pattern, like the two letters of the novel), foreshadows her later reaction and underscores the plot rhyme element of rejection. In the song, the girls pelt boys with cherries and raspberries, an attack echoed in Tat'iana's rebuke at the end.37 She abandons him immediately after scolding him and savouring the victory in their 'duel'. She has left him behind to the tender mercies of her husband, the old chum from his wanton Petersburg youth. Onegin hears the general's spurs as he approaches, the jingle of military paraphernalia delivering a palpable aural threat, in spite of the earlier intimacy of youthful days.

A. Authority enters. (Chapter Eight). In a 'near rhyme' that recalls the beginnings of the novel back in Chapter One, when authority (Onegin's father and his uncle, Dmitry Larin) 'departed' the scene, authority intrudes. As his entrance is foreshadowed by the sound of his spurs, is this an oblique allusion to yet another journey? Why did her husband come? Did he hear their conversation in a most inappropriate setting? Perhaps he simply wished to visit his wife. Her protestations of propriety to the contrary, Tat'iana may be staying with him because of respect, and not just out of a sense of duty.

Conclusion

What is the relationship of plot rhyme to other components of the novel? In the first place, the repetition and 'near' repetition (rhyming) of events relates characters to one another across the generational divide, although allowing for variations related to chronology, milieu, and innate differences. Praskov'ia Larina and Tat'iana share similar fates, with Praskov'ia's loveless marriage and journey from Chapter One echoed in Tat'iana's analogous fate in Chapters Seven and Eight. The departing authority figures of Chapter One resurface as the entering authority figure of the last chapter, Tat'iana's husband, and as the novel's ultimate authority, the narrator himself.

44


Earlier 'rhymed' events foreshadow later ones or, more to the point, later events baccshadow to previous ones. In what appears to be a dramatic example of sideshadowing,38 Tat'iana refuses to be seduced. Perhaps backshadowing, in the form of plot rhyme, is at work here. Pushkin/the narrator backshadows to an earlier repudiation and back even farther to the first ball, with his recollections of flirting with married women. Additional echoes of the ball/flirtation motif surface at the two nameday parties, the dream (nightmare) and the 'real' one. Flirtation can lead to a duel for the indiscreet - or the cynical - as Onegin discovers. This cause/effect relationship is linked with the 'rhyme' of balls and duels. We never learn what Onegin's fate would have been at the hands of Tat'iana's husband, who looms as a figure of retribution.

Writing, consisting variously of an initial report, letters, bad poetry, and the narrator's own asides, has a pivotal function in Onegin. It recurs frequently in the plot rhyme scheme. The report and letters propel the plot forward and, like journeys, alter the course of the action. Poor writing, or no writing at all, points to a character's limitations. Lensky wrote bad verse. Eugene produced no work of note beyond his letters). The narrator informs us that all of Eugene's attempts to write poetry (1:43, in passing; and VHI:38) led nowhere. On the other hand, the narrator's own verse plays the crucial role of setting the tone of a given passage, whether ironic, nostalgic, or saucy. Plot rhyme reinforces the importance of verse and serves as a reminder that the writing of literature, most notably poetry, is the most important and rewarding activity in Eugene Onegin, and in life.

If, as Shaw has observed, the "basic theme of the work [is] the relentless, irretrievable passage of time,"39 then the Journey is its geographical equivalent. Plot rhyme serves as a reminder of the tendency of fate - and the events it seems to control - to be repeated from one generation to another. In his ironic comment on Lensky's unlikely or more probable fate, had he survived (VL37-39), the narrator not only passes ironic judgement on Lensky's poetic talents, but also hearkens back to Chapter One (34-36). Lensky will go the way of the previous generation, notwithstanding his long curls, his studies in Gttingen and his poetic ambitions. In spite of her youthful dreams, Praskov'ia, along with her husband Dmitry, will live according to what seems to be a pre-ordained pattern of tradition. Restricted within a traditional calendar, they will observe the holidays and, in time, pass beyond life's portal to the grave. Plot rhyme is a stylistic rubber band that backshadows, bouncing characters across the passage of time to the pre-ordained fate that awaits them.

That Onegin reappears in St Petersburg at the end not only serves as a reminder of his squandered youth at the beginning of the novel, but also underscores his limitations. Alone among all the characters of Onegin, he seems to have stood still while time, swirling around him, has altered everyone else. Pushkin's/the narrator's emphasis on time recalls the importance of fate in Onegin, with Authority as its instrument. The

45


departure of Authority in Chapter One not only gives Onegin a reason to abandon St Petersburg for the country but, more importantly, determines his fate. Fate acts as the impetus behind the plot of the novel, throwing him in with Tat'iana, Lensky and Ol'ga, a minor character who plays a very influential role. Authority entering at the end seals Onegin' s fate, although perhaps Tat'iana, too, has acquired a kind of authoritative status by this point, notwithstanding Pushkin's somewhat ironic treatment of her final rebuke.

However novelistic Onegin may be - and certainly it is designated as a novel by its creator - it is nevertheless written in verse, not prose. We may assume that Pushkin could have created Onegin as a prose novel instead, especially since The Captain 's Daughter (following in 1833-36) is just such a work. Perhaps the most important factor here is the poetic form that determines not only the configuration of a given stanza, but the shape of the plot as well. "Pushkin," maintains David Bethea,

... was a poet who was inspired to seek freedom within restraint (cf the notion of * genre consciousness') and who could not imagine life outside its historical, experiential forms. To speak of the poet-in-a-poet or to describe poetic influence as that struggle for self-begetting that takes place not on the specific level of stylistic repetition or parody but on some deeper, more invisible level of psychological 'defences' would be, to him, unthinkable.40

The structure of verse could well provide just such "freedom with restraint," perhaps most noticeable in the elegant combination of four-step iambs with an easy conversational tone. The use of plot rhyme, allowing a degree of freedom within the limitations of a previously determined framework, does for events what stanzaic rhyme does for language.

Brett Cooke notes this same sort of dichotomy between restraint and freedom in his stimulating analysis of the creative process in Pushkin. The poet must hearken to his muse (freedom) while "disciplining himself by submitting to a schedule (restraint).41 At the end of Onegin (VL43), Pushkin associated creativity with verse and expressed concern about being diverted into prose.42 Perhaps his use of plot rhyme is one way of "hearkening to his muse". By allowing verse to dominate over prose, the relative 'freedom' of a novel - and a novelistic plot - is enclosed within the 'restraints' of verse.

Notes

1 The present essay is based on a paper to be delivered at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, 1999.

2 Jan M Meijer and Jan van der Eng, The Brothers Karamazov by F M Dostoevskij, The Hague: Mouton, cited in Robert Belknap, 'Novelistic Technique,' The Cambridge Companion to the Classic Russian Novel, ed Malcolm V Jones and Robin Feuer Miller, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, 245.

46


Simon Franklin notes that both Onegin and Nikolai Gogol's Dead Souls are "transparently symmetrical". Simon Franklin, 'Novels Without End: Notes on 'Eugene Onegin' and 'Dead Souls", The Modern Language Review, Vol 79, Part 2 (April, 1984) 373. See also Richard Gregg's 'Tat'yana's Two Dreams: The Unwanted Spouse and the Demonic Lover', The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol 48 (1970), 505, where he refers to the "symmetry of narrative design" that Tat'iana's reading "reveals".

3 Onegin manages to be both. In his fine analysis, Briggs argues that Onegin is indeed a novel, although in verse. See A D P Briggs, Alexander Pushkin. Eugene Onegin, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, 99-1 13, esp 1 10.

4 SGBocharov, for instance, notes parallels between Petersburg scenes at the beginning and end of Onegin. Poetika Pushkina: ocherki, Moscow: Nauka, 1974,83.

5 Bakhtin has commented cogently on the "interweaving of the authorial 'prosaic' voice with, for example, Lenskii's poetic tones, which are separated from the prose voice through parodie intonation". Bakhtin argued further that "the author is located at the centre of 'intersecting dimensions'". Mikhail Bakhtin, Vospory literatury i estetiki, Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1975, 411, 415, cited in S Dalton-Brown, Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, Bristol: Bristol Classical Press, 1 977, 9. As Woodward notes in his penetrating essay on Onegin, "The . . . portrait of Tat'yana is the transition in the later chapters from [two groups of motives] which culminates in the fusion of the two groups that reflects the ... compromise ... between poetry and prose [and] suggests the possibility that even in Pushkin's subtitle and genre-designation 'novel in verse' may, at least in part, have been thematically determined". James B Woodward, 'The 'Principle of Contradictions' in Yevgeniy Onegin', Slavonic and East European Review, Vol 60, No 1 (January, 1982), 34. Ellipses added.

6 "... Eugene negin is not a fully-fledged novel," maintains Henry Gifford. "It is a lyrical novel, a novel in poetic embryo, emerging in the form of self-irony from Pushkin's very recent Romantic narrative poems Prisoner of the Caucasus and The Gipsies." 'Tatiana's Reading', Forum for Modem Language Studies, Vol IV, No 1 (January, 1968), 17.

7 See Caryl Emerson, 'Tatiana', in A Plot of Her Own: The Female Protagonist in Russian Literature, ed Sona Hoisington, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1995,6-20.

8 Bocharov maintains that the original letter would have been in French and in prose, translated by the narrator into Russian verse. Poetika Pushkina. 72.

9 Michael Katz, 'Love and Marriage in Evgeny Onegin ', Oxford Slavonic Papers, ed J L I Fennell, I P Foote and G C Stone, New Series, Vol XVII, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984, 80.

10 EEtkind notes the presence of 'symmetry in Onegin but suggests that this symmetry emanates from the "sound ornament" - from the iamb, mat is the basic building block of the novel. See E Etkind, Simmetricheskie kompozitsii u Pushkina, Paris: Institut d'tudes slaves, 1988, 8. J Thomas Shaw has commented that Onegin can be divided neatly into two parts: "[h]alf the novel was written during Alexander I's reign ... Between December 1825 ... and Nicholas I's coronation, Pushkin wrote Chapters V and VI. The final two chapters were written from 1827 to 1830, except for one inserted 'document', Onegin' s letter, which was written in the fall of 1831. The narrational time of the novel's final chapters implies the narrator's living under Nicholas I." "The Problem of Unity of Author-Narrator's Stance in Pushkin's Evgenij Onegin, Russian Language Journal, Vol XXXV, No 120 (Winter, 1981), 27. See also Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin, Rev ed, 4 vols, tr Vladimir Nabokov, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975; here, Vol 2, 195; cited in Shaw, 58. Richard Gregg comments on "[t]he symmetry of narrative design

47


..." in 'Tat'yana's Two Dreams', Slavonic and East European Review, Vol 48 (1970), 505.

1 1 AU Onegin citations are taken from Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin, Evgenij Onegin: A Novel in Verse, the Russian text, edited with Introduction and Commentary by Dmitry Cizevsky, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1953. Further references will be in the text. For a thorough analysis of rhyme schemes in Russian poetry in general and Pushkin in particular, see Ian K Lilly, The Dynamics of Russian Verse, Nottingham: Astra Press, 1995; Ian K Lilly and Barry P Scherr, Russian Verse theory Since 1960: A Commentary and Bibliography, Lisse: The Peter De Ridder Press, 1976; and Ian K Lilly and Barry P Scherr, 'Russian Verse Theory, 1982-1988: a Commentary and Bibliography', International Journal of Slavic Linguistics and Poetics, XLI, Columbus: Slavica Publishers, 1997, 143-191. See also Dean S Worth, 'Grammatical Rhyme Types in Evgenij Onegin' in Alexander Puskin: Symposium II, ed Andrej Kodjak, Krystyna Pomorska and Kiril Taranovsky, Columbus: Slavica Publishers, 1980, 39-48.

12 A Slonimsky notes that the first chapters of Onegin are distinguished by the same Romantic manner of writing that marked Pushkin's southern poems. The first chapters were written before the Decembrist Uprising, the last two afterwards. The image of winter that distinguishes Chapter One resurfaces in Chapter Eight. Masterstvo Pushkina, Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1963, 317, 333- 334, 370.

1 3 Bocharov, Poetika Pushkina, 3 1 . 14 TE Little reminds us that Pushkin had a low opinion of Chatsky. 'Pushkin's

Tatyana and Onegin: a Study in Irony', New Zealand Slavonic Journal, No 1 (1973), 25.

15 David Bethea, Realizing Metaphors: Alexander Pushkin and the Life of the Poet, Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1998, 73, n 127.

16 See Robert Maguire, 'The City', The Cambridge Companion to the Classic Russian Novel, ed Malcolm V Jones and Robin Feuer Miller, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, 24.

17 Slonimsky observes that "'French' and 'Russian' struggle within Tat'iana throughout the entire third chapter". Masterstvo Pushkina, 353.

18 Tat'ianas dream(s), as Slonimsky points out, "is one of the turning points of the novel . . ." Masterstvo Pushkina, 358.

19 For a discussion of skazka (folk tale) origins for the bear, see V F Miller, Pushkin kak poet-etnograf Moscow: 1899, 45; cited in Michael Katz, 'Dreams in Pushkin', California Slavic Studies, 1980, 91 .

20 Tat'iana, Michael Katz states, "was unable to apply her subconscious insight to her real life situation". Katz, 'Dreams in Pushkin', 95.

21 In his marvellous book Narrative and Freedom: The Shadows oj Time (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), Gary Saul Morson discusses foreshadowing extensivelv. notablv in reeard to Tolstov's Anna Karenina. See esp 69-8 1 .

22 Tat'iana falls onto the snow herself during her frenzied dream attempt to escape the bear; see V: 15.

23 Cizevsky notes that the party guests, Tat ana's neighbours, echo her dream monsters. 'Commentary', Evgenij Onegin, 261.

24 Gary Saul Morson, Narrative and Freedom, 236. For an excellent discussion o backshadowing, which Morson terms "foreshadowing after the fact", see his chapter 'Backshadowing', in Narrative and Freedom, 234-264, esp 234-237, 273, 275.

25 Buyanov was a character from Vasily L'vovich Pushkin's burlesque Opasnii sosed {The Dangerous Neighbour). Cizevsky, 'Commentary', Evgenij Onegin, 261. Perhaps Pushkin is implying that neighbours can be dangerous, especially Eugene.

26 Michael Katz, 'Dreams in Pushkin', 95.

48


27 Helena Goscilo, 'Multiple Texts in Eugene Onegin: A Preliminary Examination', Russian Literature Triquarterly, 23, 1980, 281. See also the remarks in L N Shtil'man, 'Problemy literaturnykh zhanrov i traditsii', American Contributions to the Fourth International Congress of Slavicists, International Congress of Slavicists, Mouton: 'S-Gravenhage, 1958, 326.

28 J Thomas Shaw astutely observes that "... the basic theme of the work [is] the relentless, irretrievable passage of time". 'The Problem of Unity of Author- Narrator's Stance in Puskin's Evgenij Onegin' Russian Language Journal, Vol XXXV, No 120 (Winter, 1981), 44.

29 Cizevsky notes that Onegin' s Journey "was to have been the eighth chapter of the novel". 'Onegin's Journey', Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin, Evgenii Onegin, 296.

30 Slonimskv. Masterstvo Pushkina. 327. 31 This breathless description echoes ('rhymes with') Tat'iana's much earlier flight

from Onegin into the garden, when she rushes past everything from bridges to a copse (111:38).

32 "But it is not certain/'states Dmitry Chizhevsky, "that Tat'jana's husband is the same general who singled her out in Moscow (VII:54)." 'Commentary', Onegin, The Russian Text, 281.

33 Little, 'Pushkin's Tatyana and Onegin', 20. 34 Ibid, 24. 35 Slonimsky, Masterstvo Pushkina, 354. 36 Slonimsky, Masterstvo Pushkina, 18; cited in Little, 'Pushkin's Tatyana and

Onegin', 28 n 18. See Little, 24-26. Michael Katz notes that peasant society had no tolerance for adultery. Katz, 'Love and Marriage in Evgeny Onegin1, 82.

37 According to Slonimsky, Pushkin had originally intended to place a lament entitled 'Vyshla Dunia na dorogu' (Dunia set out on a Journey) here, which would have further underscored the (repeated) journey motif or plot rhyme touching Onegin, Tat'iana, Ol'ga, and their mother. Masterstvo Pushkina, 353.

38 "Sideshadowing," Gary Saul Morson observes, "casts a shadow from the side, that is, from the other possibilities. Along with an even, we see its alternatives; with each present, another possible present." Narrative and Freedom, 118.

39 Shaw, 'The Problem of Unity', 44. 40 David Bethea, Realizing Metaphors, 73, n 127; emphasis in original, ellipsis added. 41 Brett Cooke, Pushkin and the Creative Process, Gainesville: University Press of

Florida, 1998,33. 42 Ibid, Pushkin, 142.

49

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jspArticle Contentsp. 35p. 36p. 37p. 38p. 39p. 40p. 41p. 42p. 43p. 44p. 45p. 46p. 47p. 48p. 49Issue Table of ContentsNew Zealand Slavonic Journal, (1999), pp. i-viii, 1-390Front MatterFrom the Editor [pp. vii-vii]Nabokov, Pushkin, Shakespeare: Genius, Generosity and Gratitude in "Dar" and "Pale Fire" [pp. 1-21]Pushkin and Rimskii-Korsakov [pp. 23-33]The 'Plot Rhyme' Scheme in Aleksander Pushkin's "Eugene Onegin" [pp. 35-49]Drawing Conclusions on Pushkin's "Evgenii Onegin" and 'Stantsionnyi smotritel' from "Povesti Belkina" [pp. 51-61]New Translations by A D P Briggs of Poems by Alexander Pushkin [pp. 63-90]Alexander Pushkin: a Celebration of Russia's Best-loved Writer by A D P Briggs. An Interview concerning the book between the author, Professor Briggs and Irene Zohrab [pp. 91-96]A New Zealand Production of Pushkin's "Mozart and Salieri": Translation and Commentary [pp. 97-108]POEMS BY NEW ZEALAND POETS DEDICATED TO PUSHKIN [pp. 109-118]Constructs of Pushkin on the pages of "The Citizen" and Dostoevsky's globalisation of the 'People's Poet' in the context of Russia as Europe's Other [pp. 119-181, ii, viii]Pushkin Book ReviewsReview: untitled [pp. 183-186]Review: untitled [pp. 186-189]Review: untitled [pp. 189-191]Review: untitled [pp. 191-192]Scandalous "Sanin" Revisited: A Literary Re-Assessment [pp. 193-202]Boris Vysheslavtsev on the Russian National Character [pp. 203-216]New Zealand through some Soviet Eyes: 1950-1967 [pp. 217-245]Liberal Man Encounters 'Kremlin Man' And Russian Man: The Politics of Exclusion and the Meeting of Minds in Bruce Mason's "Courting Blackbird" and "To Russia, with Love" [pp. 247-272]Russophobia and New Zealand-Russian Relations, 1900s to 1939 [pp. 273-296]Hazel and some other Nut Terms in Russian [pp. 297-318]Creation of Strangeness (the writings of Tadeusz Konwicki) [pp. 319-324]Book ReviewsReview: untitled [pp. 325-328]Review: untitled [pp. 328-330]Review: untitled [pp. 330-331]Review: untitled [pp. 331-333]Review: untitled [pp. 333-334]Review: untitled [pp. 335-339]Review: untitled [pp. 339-341]Review: untitled [pp. 341-343]Review: untitled [pp. 343-344]Review: untitled [pp. 345-345]Review: untitled [pp. 346-348]Review: untitled [pp. 349-350]Review: untitled [pp. 350-351]Review: untitled [pp. 351-355]Review: untitled [pp. 355-360]Review: untitled [pp. 360-361]Review: untitled [pp. 361-362]Review: untitled [pp. 363-365]Review: untitled [pp. 366-367]Review: untitled [pp. 368-371]Review: untitled [pp. 371-374]HumourLev Trotsky in Anecdotes, Jokes and "Chastushkas" [pp. 375-384]Back Matter

Documents

1 rimovanje zapleta