Yevgeniy Onegin [Eugene Onegin] (Alexander Pushkin)

[Crossposted.]

Yevgeniy Onegin is a novel in verse form by Alexander Pushkin.

Plot:
Yevgeniy is a dandy, who is bored with life. When he inherits an estate in the countryside from his uncle, he moves there and starts to lead a rather hermitical life, only pulled into society by his friend Vladimir Lensky, an idealistic young poet. When Vladimir falls in love with Olga, he brings Yevgeniy to a diner at her family’s place. Olga’s sister Tatyana immediately falls in love with Yevgeniy, who doesn’t know how to handle her honest and open affection and shuts her down.

The story of this novel is interesting and Yevgeniy as much as Tatyana are very interesting characters. But I’m afraid that so much of Pushkin’s genius is lost in the translation that what remains is rather boring.

At this point I should probably mention that I read the German translation, which is a translation into prose. The translator tells us why he decided to go for prose – and the reasons are good indeed. German just doesn’t have the grammar to be able to keep the structure Pushkin developped. But still, having it in in prose just took away from the overall impression of the poem. It just doesn’t flow like I’m sure the original does.

Which made the various digressions Pushkin includes hard to stand. I mean, I wanted to know what happened with Yevgeniy and Tatyana. I was not interested in The World According to Alexander Pushkin. Had the whole thing been more fluid, I’d probably wouldn’t have minded so much. But as it was, I just kept thinking: “GET TO THE POINT ALREADY!”

That was especially frustrating because I felt like just below the surface, I could feel the greatness of the book – but I wasn’t able to access it. I loved Onegin and Tatyana and the way Pushkin described them perfectly with only a few words, easily conjuring up mental images. And I liked their story, which can be interpreted in many different ways (if you’re so inclined). But everything around their story seemed to distract from them rather than add layers.

Summarising: Probably Pushkin should only be read in Russian to fully appreciate him.